Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 72-minute talk, Ven Jamyang, a Buddhist nun and former physiotherapist, introduces her first Mind Healing course, merging healing work with Buddhist practice. After establishing confidentiality and safe space, she teaches the Four Noble Truths, focusing on the nature of suffering: obvious suffering (birth, aging, death, separation); suffering of change (temporary pleasures fluctuate); and pervasive suffering (uncontrolled reactions and lack of mastery over mind and karma). Rather than healing through changing external conditions, she guides students to examine how the mind creates its own torment through blame, grasping, and reactivity. The session includes dialogue with participants facing actual difficulties—including someone with a speech disability—using their experiences as teaching material on the mind’s role in suffering and the possibility of transformation through awareness and practice.
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File metadata (for organising)
File: 2009 08 01 1809 Mind Healing.mp3
UUID: 4d4c507a-fcf3-45b9-a1bd-88a3e0e7965a
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009-08-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 72.2 minutes
Words: ~8,602
Too many things to do. I’ve got my cushion. I’m gonna come sit here with us. It’s just that I’ll probably be more comfortable leaning on this leaning back like still hear somebody there. Somebody, I think, is still gonna come, but we’ll wait.
Turn a little bit more up. Welcome, everybody. Sorry I’m not sitting in a chair, but I really like to sit on the floor and otherwise I get restless and can’t concentrate so well. It’s nice that you all here. I hope that next week maybe a few more people come.
I think we had a newsletter a little bit laid out so that not many people knew that it was happening. But even if nobody else comes, you know, we’ll just do together and see what happens. This is the first time I’m doing this course. I’ll say I’ll tell a little bit about myself and about how what I think what we’re gonna do in the course and then we’ll go from there. Hi.
Hi. That’s alright. We just started. And maybe we can do the recitation in the break. Come and sit in the front.
My name is Jamyang. I’m originally from Holland. I have an accent. Maybe I sometimes use the words in the wrong place in a sentence. Maybe I sometimes have to look for the word but I’ve heard that sometimes that also makes the mind more alert and says what is she talking about?
If you really don’t know what if you really don’t know what I’m talking about, please ask. Although I’m doing this course for the first time, I think I’ve been my whole life involved in healing. I was a physiotherapist before I became a Buddhist nun. And since I was twenty eight, so it’s almost twenty years ago, I was I started to work really with healings. I always worked with little children, babies, and half of the time I was working with babies and all the rest was children until twelve years old.
Children who had emotional problems, who had physical problems, who had psychological problems and when I was twenty eight I came in contact with healings like chakra healings and aura healings that kind of things. But I think I also connected with a gift you can call it that I felt that was so natural to do. I felt physiotherapy was always so unnatural to do. And in in the years that I worked after that as a physiotherapist, I learned how to combine both techniques. So I appeared to be physiotherapist but actually I felt I was doing something very different than the normal physiotherapist was doing.
I know what is possible especially when you see little children who are not so locked into fixed ideas, holding on to things, they can let go much easier of stuff in their mind and I’ve seen how you can change. Not only how you feel but also how your body moves. And then if if if the energy starts to to move better through your body, it’s like all your functions can improve. Everything. You know?
Everything that you feel like this doesn’t go well, this doesn’t go well, that goes well can start to improve. Working with adults is a very different story because we have all these concepts, we have all these ideas that we hold on to which make it hard to go really to the experience and see how to say. If we look at children there is it’s like a not knowing or it is like they don’t think about what they’re doing. They just engage based on their intuition or based on their feelings. There’s nothing in between what they meet and how they respond to that.
We have all these layers of thoughts and conclusions and expectations that prevent that from happening. So our reactions to things are not natural in that way. Our reactions are blocked. Reactions are based on previous experiences in our life. Most of the time experiences that were not so nice.
Which means that we lose some kind of being open. Which means that we always, I don’t know, we engage with a kind of holding back, maybe a mistrust. Maybe first have to see what is gonna happen before I step in. All these ideas that we needed at one stage to survive, normally we have problems to let them go. At the moment we don’t need them anymore.
We hold onto them and take them into our life. So then the older we get, the harder it’s going to be to let that go and then to allow changes to happen. So working with adults was very different than working with children. I know that if I work with people who have done the work on a more intellectual level, who understand and on an emotional level, healing works just as simple and just as well. Know?
But but we have to understand how we have responded to things that happen to us. We have to understand how we can let that go. We have to understand expectations which are not in accord with reality that we try to hold on to. And if we do all that work, can make the same changes as children. I think have the same potential to do that.
It might be a little bit more hard work than the children but we all have that same potential. So in this course what we’re going to do is I realized when I was preparing for it I thought, oh, I thought I could just give the course and then I realized no, I’m gonna be involved in the course. Know, I will have to go again through a non healing process. And I think even if you feel for me there’s nothing to heal, being in a course like this, you will have to look at what how your mind responds to things, what your part is in your story, and what you can do about that part in your story. So we cannot think, oh, I’m just gonna listen and I stay outside.
If you feel like that, you are here and you’re gonna be part of it. Right? That might be difficult. I gonna ask everybody to whatever is said here in the room that we don’t bring that outside, that we there is a confidentiality, that we respect everybody’s story, that we try to generate an attitude that is willing to listen to other people’s story, to be where they are at, and help to create a space where we all feel safe and can let go of whatever is there that needs to be healed. Letting go is very very difficult.
I know that from my own experience. And I personally feel like letting go has a lot to do with feeling really safe. If we don’t feel safe with each other, it’s hard work. You might have to do more at home. I want to create a space where you can share whatever you feel you want to share.
You don’t have to share if you feel like, no. I don’t I I don’t feel safe enough to do this. That’s up to you what what you want to bring in. That’s a little bit about me. I haven’t said too much about me, have I?
A little bit of where I’m coming from and why I’m doing this course. I’ve said that. Yeah. Would you like to introduce? Maybe we do a very short quick round to introduce ourselves and where we’re coming from and do we all agree that we keep this a safe space for ourselves, for for each other?
Okay. Good. You wanna start, Maryanne? She can’t talk. You wanna sit maybe more The mind is still there to work with, isn’t it?
Very bright and shiny, I think. Alright. Great. Thank you. Chilos?
Yeah. Which one are you doing? You’re doing Monday nights? Or Wednesday nights. Oh, yeah.
That’s right. Yeah. Mhmm. Great. Yeah.
Thank you very much. Catherine? You have suffering in your family? Mhmm. Mhmm.
That’s a very important thing for carers, isn’t it? How do you find the balance between Yeah. As you get a bit more understanding, I can have my. Yeah. Yeah.
Great. Thank you. Thank you. Is that why it is, your son not coming? But he was in school, isn’t he?
Yeah. Yeah. He’s not suffering. He’s he’s almost retired, he doesn’t suffer at any it’s all about surrendering. Is that right?
On June the nineteenth. Uh-huh. And he has accepted that then? Yeah. Amazing, isn’t it?
Thank you. Thank Oh, I’m turning forty in a month, which is the most. It’s just one day more. Yeah. It’s okay.
Another year. Yes. That’s me in a nutshell anyway. Maybe with your name and a little bit where you’re coming from. Yeah.
Yeah. What what attracted you to come and do this course? Yes. I knew of that. Being completely arrogant and taking life totally for granted and totally without compassion for others.
And then ten years ago, completely king-hit. I lost everything, including nine members of the family, which included my three dogs. And Thank you. Big journey. Maybe you can go up again.
Maybe you can go up again. You said you you had to come down. You know? You said, I was like this and like this. And Yeah.
I think with the the person who’s holding from one hand, yeah, person is huge. Thank you. I’m gonna give you every week homework so that we don’t have to do everything here. Homework in the sense of we’ll first start with when we talk about Buddhism, we do talk about helping others. But helping others start with helping ourselves and help ourselves start with looking honestly at where we are at and maybe a whole journey that we have gone through so far.
So I’m gonna ask you to do that for next week. I’ll talk about that later more in-depth. What we’re also gonna do every week is doing a different kind of meditation. I try to look at which meditations are we gonna do and there’s so many. It’s like I I have to make a choice.
But I’m gonna ask you to I’m gonna give you today the basic techniques, how you start meditating. And then I’m gonna ask you to do that every day, two times five minutes, two times ten minutes. Sit with it and do it. Because the only thing that something can shift in our life is when we really do it. If you just listen to the teachings, yes, something happens because you will think about it and you will look at your life in a different way and that will have its effect too.
If you’re really going to sit with yourself, there is where the work has to be done. Rinpoche, who is the spiritual director of this center, he calls it that’s our inner job. If we want to be professionals, we first have to become inner professionals. Look what is inside there, how we can work with that. So today, we we will do every day, every time we do the session, have a break somewhere in the middle.
I’m not sure yet if we start with having, you know, going around and see how everybody is doing or that I just start with an hour teaching and that we then go from there with meditation and discussion. Probably the last one. So if we look for healing, we are looking for something, isn’t it? It’s like why do we want to heal? We miss something in our life or something is not right in our life or we experience something that we think has to be addressed.
Isn’t it? That? What is it that we experience? And I don’t want to hear a physical problem. I want to hear what is our experience that we feel I’m not happy with that or I would like to change that.
A yearning? For what? I thought I’m gonna write it down with yearning. I already have a problem how to spell that. E I g on the end.
Yearning. A yearning for what? Change. For change. On a selfish level, something better, I suppose.
Yeah. Uh-huh. Inner peace. A yearning for something better means there is something not good. How does that feel when it’s not good?
It’s scary. Fear? It can be scary if it’s if it’s a long-seated belief. It’s been in here for a long time. Yeah.
Is it a fear for a belief, experience? Is it a fear All of the above, I guess. Yeah. Sorry? The fear that it will continue.
The fear that you there is no end to the feeling. So what feeling is that that might not end? Well, I feel a lot of anxiety. Mhmm. And that can be very consuming.
Trying to see an end to that. Is that expressing a lack of control? Yes. Not knowing how to change that situation? Yeah.
Yeah. Because we don’t really know who we are. Uh-huh. So who are we? What we have to let go or the other one?
Let go of it. But big thing. I know it’s it’s the hardest thing to do, but just knowing that. Yeah. But you say you’re afraid of being Not just me generally.
But Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.
It is the fear of fear of letting go Mhmm. Who we think we are. Mhmm. Because we don’t really know what we are. Mhmm.
We don’t really know what we are. How do you know that? So you have the experience of letting go and experiencing something else? Yeah. I know that it’s very important what you’re saying, you know.
So we create something that we think we are. Yeah. Yeah. So once you once you understand that, can you keep your awareness that you have to understand? It’s easier, but it’s due to It’s still difficult, and it’s still every every time scary to let it go, to let go.
Yeah. Who we are, and all of a sudden, there’s a big change in our life, and all of a sudden, flounder, and you don’t really know who you are. Mhmm. Yeah. Then to find out who you are to are under crisis, Yeah.
Or maybe you you get another aspect of you coming up under crisis and you think, oh, what’s that? You know? I never saw that before. So, for one side you’re scared of the potential, what you really are which is fantastic and then you have the potential of being that. That negative part and both is scary to experience.
Well, I feel down the sadness. Learning to heal to heal the sadness Mhmm. And grief. And grief. Where are going?
Is that also something you realize in a crisis more that you thought you had? And because you have this, you are aware of this. But I think we’re all in the same situation. It’s just we don’t realize it. So I wake up in the morning and I think I have no question that I can open my mouth and talk.
But there is no guarantee that I can do that. I might get a stroke in the night. I won’t be able to do anything when I wake up. Isn’t it? It’s is like having a physical problem like you have, there is this constant awareness.
But that also means that there is a constant awareness that today I can talk. How precious is that? But that awareness of I might not be able to do this tomorrow or finding out I’m not able to do that, it can happen to each and every one of us every moment of day. Having the problem that you have is even if you wouldn’t have had this physical problem, that’s not a guarantee that you would not have the problem of not being able to talk. Do you see what I mean?
Yeah. No. Yes, so you become more careful. You may become more appreciative. And I also think for us it’s not a guarantee just because it looks like we have a healthy body today.
It’s not a guarantee that we have a healthy body tomorrow. Isn’t it? We don’t even know what will happen in our next moment or when we leave the building here or when a car might hit us, something might happen. We might all die before you die. We might all experience the same problems in a worse isn’t it?
It’s like but what we believe is like, I have the sickness and because of that I can’t talk. Buddhism takes these two aside and says the reason why you have a problem with talking, yes, it’s like your physical problem is a condition for that. The experience of not being able to talk has a different cause in the mind which has nothing to do with your physical problem. Buddhism is going to rip that all apart. That can be very strange in the beginning.
Think, Hey, but diseases like this and diseases like that Buddhism doesn’t care about that. It’s like this is the real cause for why you have this problem that you experience as a problem. Some things are a condition for that but are not a cause for that. Okay, so I’m going to ask you to think, yes I have a problem today with but even if I would not have had these physical conditions probably I would still have had a problem with talking but maybe with a different cause. Maybe with throat cancer or maybe with something else.
Know, you don’t know. But it is something that you experience and then you can work with that experience. You see what I mean? Pull it away from your physical problem. The feeling of I’m not being able to express myself is something different than having a a physical problem.
There are human beings. There are, say, little children who have who are severely handicapped, who don’t know themselves in a different way as not being able to express themselves. Some of them have not a problem not expressing themselves because that’s how they exist. Right? So having that problem is not a reason why you feel frustrated having the problem.
These are two different things again. Can you see that? The condition that you have is a reason why your mind gets agitated or frustrated. So what we’re gonna do is look at how can we work with the mind. If you believe it comes because of that and if the problem was just fixed I would have no problem anymore.
Buddhism is completely the opposite. It says that condition is there. How can we work with it so that I still feel okay? We cannot change this condition. We’re not even trying it.
We’re not even blaming it. No. No. Yeah. Yeah.
I understand that. Healing. How does it feel when we are healed? Healing has so first, we have to pull them outside of each other and say, can you see that if you would be able to let go of your frustration, let go of your wish to express yourself, let go of all the energy that is behind there, if you could somehow channel that energy in a different way so it doesn’t want to go there anymore, that you can feel healed. Can you see that?
Can we all see that? Can we apply it to our own situation? What we normally do is that we say, we have all these ideas or if I would just have this or if this was just different or if this was different, if I had more money, if I had a better car, if I had a nicer house, if my mom wouldn’t have died, if I wouldn’t be so ill, if I just would not have this depression coming again and again, I would feel good. I would feel healed. That’s what we think.
That’s how we think. That’s how the mind works. We experience something and then we think it’s coming from there. If just this would not be there, my problem would be solved. Right?
That’s what we’re constantly doing. So we’re constantly looking if this was different, I would have no problem. So yeah, or even your body. Know, it’s like that’s how our mind works. That’s the nature of our mind and we really have to understand how that does it.
And you can say you blame something but it is a kind of blaming. It’s pointing the cause of a problem outside us. Soonest a problem arises in the mind, what is a problem? How does it feel a problem? We name it a problem but how does it feel when we experience a problem?
Anxious? Burden? Unhappy, restless? Terrible. Terror.
That arises. And then you say I wish I hadn’t done that. I wish that person would have done that different. I wish this condition would not have happened. I wish that person wouldn’t have said that.
I wish and we’re looking. If something would have not happened, I would not experience this. When you get to a point where you can recognize what you’re doing, that you’ve done it and it’s become so ingrained for so long that it’s on a It can be done. It can be done. Yes.
Know that we all have this pollution on a cellular level. It’s all so ingrained in us. This habit of pointing out, pointing out, looking outside, looking outside. We have eyes that look out sight. Right?
That’s all we see. We don’t have our eyes looking inside. So when something goes wrong, that’s naturally where we go. I don’t agree with that. I’ve done so much inward work that When did you start it?
Constantly that’ll take you back. Yeah. I’ll constantly return you and and just to get rid of those constant triggers. Like, as soon as I started to talk about the past Yeah. That it’s constant it’s there.
Past is there. Can go, oh, yes. Well, this and that and something else and it’s only, you know, the way you’re thinking and so forth. So the grief that you feel, right, what I hear you saying is there is a loss. The loss something has been taken away from me.
Something has left me. I’m separated. In the morning with sheer terror of constant panic. Yeah. So where’s the panic coming from?
What horror is gonna hit me today? Yeah. What horror could hit you today? That’s it. That’s that’s then you’ve got a it’s all that self talk that goes on.
Okay. Where you it’s not that old. So you realize it’s a self talk. It’s self talk and I’ve got a Y there for ten minutes going. We’re okay, we’re not for nothing, we’re safe and secure.
But it never goes. But there is the appearance that there is terror. And you have to convince yourself, no, I’m okay because outside there is nothing. I’m still laying in bed, nothing is happening, no earthquake, no house is not falling apart, I still have food today. Have to convince yourself that you’re okay.
You have to do it every But there is the appearance in your mind that there is danger coming. Danger coming. Isn’t it? Somehow your mind creates that appearance. If you go one step further, and if you go one step further you keep on looking outside.
What’s going to hit me? What’s going hit me? And if one person does something that you experience as a hit you say where is it coming from? That person hits me. That’s how our mind works.
That is how all our minds work. But it’s a dread too of how do you get rid of that? So that’s why we’re here. That’s we’re here. But first we have to see how does the mind work because if we can’t recognize that, we cannot cut off from that.
We cannot see that terror comes from inside. You can’t see it, you know, but still it appears as coming from outside. So first we have to stop that. Stop putting that finger there. Stop putting the finger, I’m suffering because this condition.
And I’m still doing it, I confess. It won’t go away like that. It’s so primal. Because it’s so primal, and we have done that for so many years. We have done that our whole life.
And in Buddhism say we don’t only have this life. We have had many, many lifetimes. This habit, we have done many, many lifetimes. We cannot change it like that. But we can tell ourselves this is a habit which is not valid.
This is a habit that we can change. We don’t have to go with a habit. Right? And we always have to react always the same way and we do do that. We do do that.
So first we have to see it’s not coming from outside. Then we’re going to say okay then if it’s just about our reaction to situations, how do we react to situations? What is our tendency to react to situations? How is our natural response to situations? Where do we say there you have it again.
It happens to me again. I tried this and I tried that, but this happens again. We all have this red thread going through our life where similar things happen seem to happen to us again. Right? That’s our story.
That what we experience that happens again is our story. And that experience has something to situations. Right? How we view situations. It has to do with our beliefs.
Right? So if we wanna heal that, we have to look into that. We have to look into what are the events that are coming back into my life again and again? How do I experience that? What is my suffering in that?
What is the deepest pain or the deepest frustration or the deepest misery that I feel in that. And then we can say so how do I respond to that? What do I do? And how does that contribute to the situation? Or how does that help to resolve the situation?
So we have to check. And we have to our own attitude what it is. Because sometimes I had in my life the feeling of it’s like I’m like a magnet just attracting the same thing. And there is something in me and I have no idea where it is and no idea how to change it and no idea. But there is something in that attracts situations coming again and again and again.
How do I stop that? Well, that’s the way how you can say it. Have to find out and listen. Buddhism would say there are a lot of wrong views there, which are not in accord with reality. You see you want you you believe in things that are not really there.
Or it’s your attitude that attracts that. It’s the way how you treat others that comes back to you. It is It’s also accepting. I mean, it sounds very pessimistic, but life is kinda shitty. That’s where we start.
That’s where we start. Life is no no guarantee that we weren’t sort of given a sort of grip that it was, you know, you weren’t gonna have x, y, z as as the ultimate undertaking or reward. Do we have we this expectation life is gonna be good. Life is It’s meant to be even if not, but it should be. Should be.
It’s meant be for us in Western society. And all of it was fatuous. Like, it was so silly, you know, and and nonsensical, but sells millions of magazines nonetheless. Yeah. You know?
So we have created that that a little bit in our life, isn’t it? Or a little bit. In the west, I think, very much. It’s like we we have created the the appearance that happiness is natural. Hey, if you can’t be happy, something is wrong with you or you’re stupid or, you know, you’re just out of date or, you know Even in America, it’s too much, isn’t it?
Yeah. Yeah. It’s too much. In America, it’s even worse, like, religiosity, like, god and wealth seem to go hand inherently. If you’re not wealthy, well, you’re probably not a good Christian.
Uh-huh. Which is Is that right? Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah.
We have created this appearance that if you just are able to obtain what you want to have, you’re going to be happy. Isn’t it? Every commercial is this happy person or this happy family. If you just have this, you’re going to be happy. So if you feel unhappy you think, Oh, I might need to have that.
And then you have that and you’re still not happy and you think something is wrong with me because everybody looks happy who has this. And I worked so hard for it to get it and I have it and I’m still not happy. Something is wrong with me. So then we start hiding maybe or not acknowledging that and we pretend we’re happy and we’re just the same as others because we don’t want to be separated from the group. We want to be part of the group.
And we are deceiving ourselves again and again and again. Isn’t it? It’s like we completely get lost from ourselves. Seems with a lot of the eastern teachings that you you’ve gotta be humble and give away everything and not worry about possessions and so forth. But there is nothing fun about sitting under a sheet of corrugated iron in the middle of winter with no pills, no education, and your children are running around in rags and and so forth.
I think there is a a certain level where you’ve gotta have This is not what I’m saying. Okay. I’ll shut up. You’re you’re going to the other extreme. Don’t go there.
It’s it’s about Buddhism Buddhism is not about becoming poor. Buddhism is not about becoming unhappy. Buddhism is not about not doing anything to to improve your material situation. It’s not like that. We like to have good conditions.
I like to have good conditions because if I have good conditions I can practice better. Right? There is no negative feeling about that. We need good conditions even. We need to have a healthy body.
We need to have all these things. We have to have them in place in order to function. Right? But what we’re talking about is about the mind. Right?
It’s great to have a TV. You’re not going to have a more enriched life if it’s the size of that wall, just because it’s bigger and it’s got more gadgets and buttons on it. Just because, like, the monstrous machine that is advertising stuff, you know, a a product is development developed, and then the customer need is infected afterwards. It’s just, you know Yeah. That is one thing.
Suffering is part of life and also But there are two things. There are two things. One is that we have created this image about we all can be happy. We have the right to be happy. Happy.
If we have the right things, we will be happy. We have created this idea that happiness goes together with if we get what we want. If we get what we want, we are happy. That is an idea that we all have in the West. When something goes wrong on that, we become unhappy because we have learned that if I have what I want then I’m happy.
If I don’t have what I want, I’m not happy. That is a false idea about happiness or a very superficial idea about happiness. So we’re going to look into then what is happiness? What is happiness if it’s not because we all know that no matter what material things we have, it’s not bringing what we want. So what is real happiness?
Because we do look for happiness in Buddhism. We do look for deep, stable happiness. So we have define what is that, what we are looking for. If it’s not a superficial thing, we all agree we can’t find it there, then how can we find it? The other thing is what Catherine said, life is suffering.
And the Buddha taught that in the first noble truth. The first teaching that the Buddha gave was the Four Noble Truths. The first truth was life is suffering. Why did he tell that as his first teaching? We all don’t want to hear it actually, is it?
It’s like it takes a while in our life before we realize, hey, but actually not everything alive is good. Even if I have everything, not everything alive is by definition happiness. And if things happen to us as that your health doesn’t function the way you would like it or you lose people that are very dear to you or you see suffering around you, you you the more you connect with that suffering and I said I think you said that, the more more you’re going to realize what probably many many human beings experience and not only human beings also animals. We all experience levels of suffering and that is part of life. We cannot walk away from that.
That life is in the nature of suffering. That is what the Buddha is saying. He defines suffering. Well, there are many divisions of suffering but one of the divisions is that you have this very obvious suffering that we can from. Like the suffering of birth is the first suffering that we go through.
Being born is a very painful experience. Then we grow older. There is a lot of suffering there separated from what we think we need. Even birth, you’re separated from the womb where you always felt so safe. And then you grow up and then you’re going to be separated from your mother.
Your mother was your safety. You have to go away from that. And we all know the struggle of the children who are around one half two years old about, oh mommy where are you? Where are you? Then we go to school which is more suffering from a mother and from a family.
Then we go further, further away from what we felt was safe. And then eventually some say we go back home when we die. But even that is a suffering because somehow we feel that our body is not functioning the way we would like it to function. Have this I don’t know. Maybe we still want to do the things that we couldn’t do when we were young and now we are older and we still haven’t had the opportunity to do that.
There was a whole suffering and just growing older and eventually dying. So that is the core of suffering. That’s what is called suffering of suffering. That is everywhere and we do put that away, isn’t it? We we we don’t wanna see the sick people.
We don’t wanna see disabled people. We don’t wanna see the old people. If you go there, you actually realize, oh, there is so much precious opportunities here when you are with these people. But in general, we don’t like to see it. Isn’t it?
We we have abandoned it out of society. We don’t wanna be confronted with that. We don’t wanna feel that suffering of suffering. Then another suffering that the Buddha says is then that all these experiences of happiness that we just talked about, about having a new car and having a big TV or having a nice partner having whatever, having, having, having. What we think is going to give us pleasure and what has given us pleasure.
Having an ice cream, having an ice cream, having any sense pleasure that can be fulfilled but also mental pleasure of having nice relationships and that kind of things. If you look at how that happiness exists, it’s always a fluctuating happiness. It’s never a stable happiness. If we have a new item in our house, we will experience a peak experience of happiness but soon after that, that will change. We become adapted to it and we think, I don’t feel it that more.
I would thought I’m so discontent because that feeling is already gone. Then you want to have a new thing because we are looking for these experiences. So we think, oh by that, maybe that is going to give me more happiness. And yes, the moment we get it there is this short period of happiness but it changes again. And somehow we go into this wave of feeling good and it goes away.
Feeling good and it goes away. And what we want is we want to be on that top. We want to feel good. So we’re chasing that. And that’s what the Western world uses in the commercials, isn’t it?
They use our desire for happiness and the fact that we try to chase it again and again and again. The fact that that happiness that we find is not stable, not reliable, is not predictable, is not always there. Is why the Buddha says that happiness is actually in the nature of suffering. It’s not a real happiness. He even says it’s a mere absence of suffering.
For a while there is the absence of suffering. And having the absence of suffering we believe that that is happiness. But it’s not a real happiness. If something is real happiness, if something is real, if something is really the way we experience it, would mean that the more we have from it the more happy we would feel. Can we agree on that?
If something is real, then the more you get, the more you’re going to feel happy. If we look at having a nice ice cream, we see that that’s not true because it’s not the more we have of that ice cream, the more happy we’re going to be. There is always a point that it collapses and that we’re going to get sick from that ice cream. Morning when you walk out and see the sunrise? Isn’t that a joy?
An an ongoing joy through your whole life? You can experience joy there, but not everybody experiences joy. So That joy has nothing to do with the sun. The sun is a condition for that joy to arise. And if you have an appreciation for that, that’s fantastic.
And if you know that you can feel good when you do that, fantastic. Buddhism is not about you’re not allowed to feel good. If you want to have an ice cream and an ice cream makes you feel good, please have the ice cream. And enjoy the ice cream. Enjoy it completely because we work somewhere else in order to get enjoyments.
And I’ll talk about that later about karma. Why do we experience enjoyments that has to do with things we have done before? So if you enjoy things, fantastic! Go for it! But don’t believe that that is real happiness.
See it as a temporary pleasure. See it for what it is. Just see it for what it is. Don’t make anything else out of it. Don’t hold on.
This is going to give me what I really need. What we need is a stable happiness. We’re not looking for that going up and down. Somehow, every time we think I don’t know. I think maybe this time, I will stay up here.
Maybe this time, this will last longer. How, every time, I create this expectation. It never happens. It always goes down. Alright.
This is if you see that, you can still enjoy going up, going up, enjoy every up that you’re doing. But know that that is not what you’re looking for. That is just a help so that you can I don’t know? In Buddhism, we use that in order to work have the conditions to work better on our mind so that we can create a more stable happiness. Right?
If we are constantly unhappy, it’s very difficult to work with your mind. If you look at people who constantly have to work very hard to just stay alive, they’re not interested in any spiritual practice. They’re only consumed by surviving. So we don’t want to go back to that. We are very happy with what we have and we do.
Yes, if you have a good life, you have good conditions to practice. Enjoy your good life but know it’s temporary pleasure. Right? That’s not real pleasure. It’s in the nature of suffering, the Buddha says.
If you recognize that, you don’t grasp at it. You don’t believe in it. Right? You don’t get deceived again and again. You don’t invest in it fully.
Not with your whole emotional life. No. You can still buy that big TV if you enjoy that. And maybe you wanna share it with your friends and whatever and you have the money. Why not?
But know that that is not the real happiness that you’re looking for. You know? It’s it’s it’s because if you believe that, you feel empty. It’s like a spirit of joy Yeah. Pretty much it.
Yeah. Yeah. If you see it like that, you know, it’s not a problem. I understand what you’re saying too because there is a, you know, you know, the relationship you build up with a puppy over years and years and years as it becomes your power and things like that. That’s an ongoing joy.
Sunsets every day is definitely an ongoing Yeah. Joy, but I’m I’m trying to still see where the where the two don’t quite where is it? It’s not it’s not a it’s not a happiness that burgeoning, like, getting bigger all the time. It is still only a temporary it’s a fleeting thing. So yeah.
But it can be a kind of contentment. I do sort of see the relationship with the puppy that you’ve bonded with. You know what I mean? There’s something there that I think has a degree of permanence until it’s, you know, hit by a bus or, you know, something like permanent. Yeah.
Right? Yeah. It is permanent. It’s not permanent. What we do is that if we have something if we have something that gives us pleasure, somehow we we I will go into that.
I wanna first tell a little bit more about the suffering, and then I’ll go into that. Why because, yes, enjoy the presence of anybody around you, any living creature. You And there can be a lot of very beneficial exchange between a puppy and you in both ways. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do that, but know that that is not a lasting happiness that you that you have with each other. Know that everything that comes together one day has to separate from each other.
Crazy. Yeah. And if we know that, then we can still enjoy. But aware that this is a very temporary thing. Normally we have our enjoyment mixed with a grasping that it is always going to be there.
Somehow we believe that things always will be there. That’s a natural belief that we have. I go into that later. I’ll first talk about the suffering, that last bit of the suffering because we have so if we recognize that happiness is also in the nature of suffering, then there is a third kind of suffering which is even more subtle than that. We all have body.
Somehow we all like to feel we are in control of our life. But if you really look at how our mind works, I don’t know, I’m not one second in control of my mind. It’s like the mind is just running, running, running, engaging in all kinds of things. But it’s very hard for me to say I want my mind to be focused only on that. Very, very difficult.
And whatever happens to us, you know, if something good happens to us, there is immediately this feeling of, yes. I like this. I wanna have it. If something bad happens to us, we have immediately, oh, I wanna run away from that. How do I get out of that?
We’re not in control of that. We have these reactions all the time. Having these reactions all the time, this uncontrolled existence. That is what the Buddha calls the suffering, the pervasive suffering. It’s like in every moment of our life, we react to things on a subconscious level.
And Buddhism, if you look about they talk about karma. We probably all have heard about that. And karma is about that we create actions, And actions have an effect. And Buddha says we are not in control of our actions. You know?
Yes. We might stop ourselves maybe of hitting somebody if we if we but we’re not in control of our mind. The mind keeps on running. The mind keeps on doing whatever it wants to do. The mind keeps on reacting.
And what we are doing is we’re following the mind. How can I keep on following the mind? Right? I see something there. I wanna run after.
I see something that I don’t like I want to make sure I’m not going to get down. Constantly we are doing that. And every action that we are doing creates a result in the future. A result that we have just as less control over as over our actions. That’s a difficult one.
Where did I get you confused? At the moment, we are not in control of our mind. Yeah. It is scary but it’s like when you were young, if you would look back, you feel you were in control over your mind or have you learned that? Yeah.
So then certain conditions can arise and start working with your mind and then you learn that you can get some control over our mind. But if we don’t do anything, if we are just human beings who don’t think about anything, we are not going control over our mind. We can learn it. We have the potential to get complete control over our mind. But at the moment, maybe you have some control, maybe you have a lot of control.
I can’t see that. But I can only talk for me, you know, and everybody has to look inside and say what is happening for me. I have no control. I appear sometimes to be and some people think I’m really in control but I know I’m not, you know, because one thing can happen and I and immediately the reaction is there. I don’t want that.
You know? And then the whole thing is triggered again and I’m caught up and I have to do meditation, meditation, meditation. Get some space for and I go out and I think, oh, it happens again. And, you know, yes, I’m trying to learn to control my mind. But it’s still it’s still hard working.
Yes, we can all learn to control the mind. But you have yeah. Is that alright? I’m sure you have done a lot of work. Sorry?
You still have a gut instinct reaction sometimes. I have it many times. If you’re really honest, it’s like now I think, I would like to have a cup of coffee. What time is it? There is my mind.
It’s very hard to stop that. It’s because, you know I mean, if we’re reacting in the real world and you’re you’re out in the real world and there’s a Mack truck come bearing down on you as as you walk along Portrush Road, I mean, there’s a a billion things like that constantly happening and and it’s it’s a learning of both not to react quite so sensationally to everything, every little thing that Well, first, we have to acknowledge there are reactions coming from our mind and just look at what it is. It’s not a fault. We all have that. It’s just that we suffer from that.
Can’t make an overly reactionary mind. We have we suffer from that. And and we look at more on that after the break. It’s like the real suffering that we experience is our own state of mind that pops up again and again and again. If we could get some control there, I would still run away from the truck.
Know? We’re not gonna let the truck ride us. But if there’s not a truck, I can relax. You know? At the moment, I might still think, oh, where is the truck?
You know? I’m sure there’s another truck coming. That’s my own mind. If there’s no truck, I should not have these reactions. So if you did it two or three times, every time you stepped on down on the Portrush Road, you’d be hit by a truck after the fourth time, you’d probably be quite too it would be a habit.
It would be an ingrained habit too. Exactly. And that is how we create all habits. But then what we also do is that we’re going to lift these habits in different situations where we don’t need these habits. We hold onto these reactions also in situations where we don’t need it anymore.
So there we have to let go, learn. How do we do that? That’s what we’re all here for. Negative side. Yeah.
That is really quite annoying to experience something. Because you can observe so well what is happening. Yeah. And it’s it’s really quite beneficial. It can be.
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes. But then you still see your mind coming?
You still see your mind? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do.
You’re still aware of it. Yeah. You can create a light mind, which is not constantly doing these things and but it’s still actively involved in actions. You know? Yeah.
Yeah. It’s just this when when you do experience that, it’s quite like and it’s quite a it’s just uh-huh. You can learn a lot in the depression if you yeah. You can. Of my life is the crap that hit me.
Yeah. It’s been absolutely wonderful. It is. We we we can use that in a very, very positive way. You know?
And but but at the same time, we still wanna free ourselves from that torment that goes on in our mind, isn’t The lessons weren’t okay. Let’s just we don’t need any more of that medicine. Yeah. Yeah. Have a little break.
Fifteen, twenty minutes. Maybe some of you know where the kitchen is. We can get a cup of tea or coffee in the kitchen. And maybe sit here on the table, and we have some biscuits here. I can check them out.
Oh, and you have to go to the shop also. And Yeah. Do you think?