Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 64-minute teaching, Ven Jamyang explores how trauma shapes our sense of self and offers practical methods for dissolving the protective shields we build in response to harm. He traces how childhood experiences condition us either to open or armour ourselves against threat, explaining why the mind builds layers of protection through anger and denial, making the “I” increasingly rigid and defended. Jamyang acknowledges that traditional Tibetan Buddhism dismisses such psychological work as self-cherishing, yet argues that Western practitioners must first heal early wounds before genuinely practising Dharma. He distinguishes between the mind bound by attachment and emotion versus the free mind capable of boundless love, then teaches a guided loving-kindness meditation beginning with self-compassion, extending to an inner child, family, and enemies, radiating outward to all sentient beings. The teaching bridges Western psychology with Buddhist philosophy, aimed at practitioners ready to face difficult emotions.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Mind Healing 021007 second part.mp3
UUID: 5bab002a-9705-4342-91cb-83c236acb00d
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 64.4 minutes
Words: ~7,336
I want to say a little bit about how we build up the I. Just now Mary gave me an idea. We have had that eye, according to Buddhism, since beginningless times. So it’s not that we can point out how it all started. But there are conditions that lead to a mind that holds on stronger than other conditions which help us to let go of that concept of the I.
So when we are born, normally what happens at the time of death is that our consciousness dissolves into a very, very subtle consciousness. And that very subtle consciousness, that is our inner nature, that is our Buddha potential. That is the mind which is pure, where there is no concept of an I, where there is the feeling of unity, where there is no duality, our whole mind dissolves into that mind. In that moment of death, we completely let go of all conceptions of I. So that must be very blissful.
Then we get born again and then that means that from that blissful empty state, due to karma that is in our mind, a body gets formed again. And the mind goes through a process of maybe you can say opening up or developing again conceptions, develop then again experiencing sensations through the body and you connect them with the conceptions. So then you start experiencing the I again. So if we are born in a very loving, caring family where we are protected, where we feel protected, where we have a nice relationship with our mom, very nice relationship with our dad, they do they act in accord with what we expect a good father or mother to act like. That I feels nourished, that feels loved, that feels open.
And that I might actually feel very happy to help others. That might be very happy just being who it is. However, most of us have not encountered that ideal situation. We look at our own childhood, there might be maybe we had a difficult relationship with our mother or with our father or maybe there was violence or maybe there was an accident or maybe there was harm coming from somewhere outside the family. As soon as we experience harm, that eye that we have inside there feels under threat.
So what happens when we have no knowledge about how the eye exists, which is how we normally are? Then that eye wants to protect itself. Builds up layers of protection. How do we do that? We do that by generating anger and saying, Anybody who comes close to me and tries to harm me, I’ll make sure I will stop that person before it can harm me.
We that doesn’t function, sometimes that doesn’t function, a young child might not be capable of defending itself because there is a perpetrator which is too big for the child. What then happens is that we, for instance, dissociate with who we are and we just pretend that we’re not feeling anything and we just we somehow create a denial in our mind. We somehow separate from these traumas. But still still the I that has been under such a threat is still there. We still hold on to that very, very strong.
Right? So if we had experiences in our early day where we had a feeling we had to protect ourselves, first First of all, the feeling of I is very strong. And second, the feeling of I have to protect my I because if I don’t do it, something bad will happen to me or something scary will happen to me or something disastrous will happen to me. We create that protection shield around it. And we also feel that we need to do that in order to survive.
So if you don’t listen to Buddhist teachings, what Buddha says is: that shield is actually because of your own unhappiness. In order to feel more happy you have to drop that shield. You feel I can’t do that because if I drop the shield, I’m going to go to that terror state where I was and what I don’t experience. I’m going to fall apart. I’m going to feel I don’t know that I won’t exist anymore or I’m going to feel horrified or whatever scary emotions are there that we haven’t faced.
They’re going to arise. We feel that they might come up and we couldn’t deal with that in the previous, you know, a long time ago so we had a feeling I can’t deal with that now. Then I said I’m not going to do that because that’s too scary for me. So then you hold on more. So if that happens for you, what you first have to do is to sit with yourself and sit with that pain and think about that whole relationship between you and the pain and between you and the shield of protection that you created and between you and the disadvantages of that shield and think, do I still need that today?
I needed that before and it was good that I had it before. But do I need that today in every situation in the same kind of way? Or could I let it go now? Is there enough safety in my life that I can let it go? If there’s not enough safety, how can I create that safety?
Know? Letting go, opening up that shield is painful. That is that ripping open your heart. It’s like you’re gonna feel things that you fell before you could not bear. You’re gonna open up for that.
You’re gonna allow yourself to feel that. It might be that if you start ripping open your heart, you’re gonna feel that pain. You’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna sit down and you’re gonna cry and you’re gonna cry and you might feel you’re gonna drown in your own tears. But at a certain point, that will be finished. You know?
It’s like the open heart will naturally go to that purified state. It’s not that we can keep on crying. I believed that for a long time but I know now it’s not. I cried for many, many, many years. It stops.
Somewhere it stops. It will stop. But the moment that we cry and we see the pain comes up, if we go into ‘poor me, poor me’ and you go into the same kind of trying to protect yourself then you keep triggering that same kind of pain again and again. What you try to do is when the pain comes up you try to stay open and say Okay, I’m going to feel all the pain. I’m going to feel how I’m going to be destroyed.
I’m gonna be I don’t know. What can we feel when we open up? What are our fears when we’re gonna open up? Fear of Fear of the unknown. But what is that?
What if you rip it open? I think you feel you’re going be destroyed. Feeling of being destroyed. Part of you is dying. That’s exactly what we’re going to feel.
That’s what we’re going to feel. But actually what you’re doing is is died is something died a long time ago. The moment we close it, that moment we stop living, that part of us. That moment we stop breathing, part of us. That moment there was an experience.
Part of me is going to die. It was just too scary to experience so we buried it. When we rip our heart open that same feeling comes to surface. We’ve experienced that. We really experienced that for the first time.
It feels like we’re going to die. It feels like we’re going to be destroyed. But if we can sit through that, you know, if you can sit down and say, Okay, how does it feel when I’m going to be destroyed? Just allow the feeling to arise. After that, only freedom can come.
You know? Because you realize it’s only a feeling coming up. The destroying not really happens right now. There is no destroying. But what happens if you just get so sick of the damn crying that you sort of decide that you can’t be bothered to do it anymore because it’s too depressing?
That’s good. Get over yourself. It’s still there. Yeah, but sometimes it’s good that you can shift your mind to something else, what you’re saying. I’m not going to go there anymore.
I’m not going to cry anymore because it’s not going to give me anything. It’s just repeating the same thing. I’ll focus my mind on something else. You never get away Well, at different moments there are different techniques what would help best. So I think if you never have ripped yourself open or sit with the real pain that is down there, that can be really, really good.
But then if you do that again and again and the only thing you can do is re experience that without anything dissolving, then it might be a better technique to say: Okay, I know it is there but at the moment it’s not useful to really do that technique but I can bring my mind to something else. I can focus my mind on something positive. I’m going do that. That’s now more suitable. The more you do that, the less influence that negative will have on you.
Maybe it will dissolve without any effort from your side because the positive becomes so big and takes the whole thing over. Right? But most of us have part which we don’t want to look at. We have to push that away. Then it’s good to sit with that and allow that to arise.
Sometimes conditions in our life arise which trigger these parts. Oh, this is really awful for me. I’m going to survive. Blah, blah, blah. All the stories are coming into mind.
Then try to sit with the feeling that is there. How does it feel if this happens to me? Because if we really look at a situation, we’re living in a country where nobody dies from hunger, where hardly anybody dies through violence. Some die. Unless you’re an Sorry?
Unless you’re an Aboriginal. You were an Aboriginal Australian? But if you are an Aboriginal Australian you might die, please. Situation is different. Yeah.
They get killed by other aboriginals. But where we are right now, we had the feeling I’m going to be destroyed but if you really look at how we can be destroyed in our life, the chance is not that big that that would really happen to us but there is a very strong feeling that it might happen to us. So there is a difference between how we feel and how reality is. If we can look at the difference and we can see the way I feel is too much for the reality, we can say: That’s not accurate anymore. That was one day accurate but today it doesn’t serve me anymore.
The more you see that that protection is actually also preventing you from reaching out to others, it’s also preventing you from experiencing happiness, it is preventing you from achieving your own goals, your own needs, you know, then maybe there is a good thing about letting that go. Right? It’s not just a protection that you let go, it’s something that prevents you from growing that you let go. One day that needed to protect you but maybe today it doesn’t. You’re right with that?
It’s a hard one, isn’t Reflect on it again and again. Do I really need that? Only when you feel safe, you know, you sit with that. As long as you feel like, No, I can’t do that. I can’t do that.
You can push yourself a little bit but don’t push yourself too much. Make it safe that you see, really see, I don’t need that. Then the mind is very happy to give that up. Don’t fight with the mind in that because the surviving part will always win. Lama Zopa says, or Buddhism says, The mind that can rip itself open, the mind that can be free of me, me, me, the mind that can cherish others that is the same kind of mind, the same mind.
We can experience that mind. We can also experience the mind that says me, me, me and hold on to that me. We have the choice what we’re going to develop. We have the choice if we do this or we have the choice if we can let go. We have that choice every moment of our life.
Which mind do I going to follow? Do I follow the mind with the attachment, with the emotions? What we believe is that we are that mind with the attachment and the emotions. That’s a misperception. That is not us.
We can also be the mind without any emotions in the sense of attachment, without any negative emotions. We can be the mind with no anger, with no attachment, completely free in choosing what we’re going to do. We can be both minds. We have the potential to be both minds. The mind that is free free and can choose whatever at once is a mind that experiences a lot of happiness.
The mind that feels the need to identify with the attachment, to follow the emotions, that is a mind that suffers a lot. It’s the same mind. It’s a different direction that we bring the mind to. Right? We have potential for both.
We are very habituated to the emotional mind. We are very habituated to the attachment. We are very habituated to I, how I exist. It’s a habituation. We are so used to it.
It’s our best friend. You know? If we would not have that I, we would be nobody, what you said. I would be nobody. But that’s that’s already a misperception.
We would still be somebody. We would still feel I. But that I would not be mixed with the attachment. That I would not be mixed with the emotions, which means it’s an I that experiences a lot of freedom and happiness. You know?
But there’s still an I. We’re not giving up the I. We’re giving up the I made out of emotions. The I that believes I am more important than others. The I that believes my happiness is more important than the happiness of others.
That is the one that we give up. The I that we we keep is the I that says, I think that your happiness is just as important as my happiness. I have the wisdom that if I serve you in finding your happiness, I’m going to find my happiness in the same way. It will come naturally to me. Right?
The I that we stay with is saying, Well, here are seven, eight people. The happiness of eight people is more important than my happiness of one person, only me. So why would I work for one? Why would I not work for eight? I can better work for all these eight people.
It’s a different choice what we make. So loving oneself, real love is purified from attachment. If we can love ourselves loving ourselves means that we give ourselves everything we need to find that satisfaction, to find ability to work for others. If I want to work for other people’s happiness, I have to fulfill a need in myself. If I’m very needy and with that needy mind I’m going to make other people happy, I always give two things.
Isn’t it? There is always a part of me that actually wants something back. True? And if that doesn’t come, I’m going to get angry. Other people will feel that.
So if I really want to give, I have to make sure that I have the capacity to give. I have to be sure that my needs are met in a certain way. My needs, not my wants. I want this to be happy. Only when I have this I’m going to be happy.
It’s something different as I need this in order to feel nourished, order to function, in order to be able to give, in order to It’s a different thing, isn’t it? Can you see that? Need is on a completely different level than wanting. What we think, If I get what I want, I’m going be happy, that is a wrong concept. But we can say, If I get what I need, in order to find satisfaction, in order to be able to let go, in order to These are all conditions that when I have them, it will be so easy to love others, to serve others, to take care of others.
So that is a healthy taking care of yourself. That’s something that we have to do first before it can overflow to others. Right? So there is a fine balance between and I’m not sure if I’m completely cutting on the edge between taking care of yourself from a healthy point of view, from a dharmic point of view, going into the I want thing, without going into the me me me thing. You know?
And for that, in order to find that fine line, we we have to check again and again and again. And I feel I’m not capable yet of really making it really, really clear. You know? But I know that for me, think about the long term and I think if I’m gonna do this now, how would I feel in one week, two weeks time? You know?
Is that really gonna benefit me? Or what what happen to me if I say no to this? You know? Many of us have problems saying no. Because when we say no, the guilt comes, all these things come.
But sometimes saying no can be a protection so that you can sustain your energy, so that you can keep on giving on the long, long term. Then saying no is actually practicing the Dharma mind. You can also say no out of selfish selfishness because I want to have the time for me. There is a difference. There is a difference in the attitude and we have to learn to distinguish between both.
One, there is a grasping narrow mind. One, there is an open mind. It will take time, you know. I feel I’m not completely capable of doing that. I’m still learning.
Yes. But but the danger is always there that we benefit ourselves because out of I want because we’re so habituated to that. It comes back to motivation. Yeah. It all comes back to motivation.
Why am I doing this? Taking care of myself so that I can benefit others. Benefiting others but first taking care of myself. Maybe that’s what you think of: If I take care of myself like this, am I more capable of benefiting others? If the answer is yes, go for it.
If the answer is not sure, then maybe not. It also depends upon the perspective of where you’re born in the world and what you’re used to. You know within yourself whether you’re asking for too much or too little. I mean, if we’re in a grass hut in a grass hut in Sumatra or something and we can afford to give this to another person, You know, it might only be very small, whereas the same example in this country would be ridiculous. I’m I’m not saying as well.
It it’s gotta be But we can only look at where we are now with all the conditions that we have. And yes, being born in a country gives a certain condition. Being born in a culture gives a certain condition. Yes, and that would make there is not one, two people who would have exactly the same actions which make them happy of being of benefit. You know, we are all unique in that.
So the only judge we have is ourselves, our own wisdom. And that can differ from person to person, from moment to moment, you know. We don’t have a standard thing that says, If you just do this, if you all meditate ten minutes a day, you do exactly this meditation, this and this is going to happen. It’s not like that. We have communicate with our own mind and see where our own mind is at and see what our own mind has learned to believe and check if that is in accord with reality and purify that from things that are not in accord with reality.
That’s for everybody different. You’re right in that. How are we going with the writing? You haven’t done any writing? It’s not coming out?
Yeah. Not quite. I’ve got a real block about it. You have a block about it? How are you going, Sandy?
I spent a couple of days generally. Yeah. Not religiously, but I’m really trying to think about the essence of my potential. Mhmm. Yeah.
So you were able to write it down? Yeah. You? Well, I’ve sort of given up, generally. I I did that at another stage.
Mhmm. And then that’s all about horror and nastiness. And nurturing myself. Thinking about your own inner potential. Sorry.
Sorry. Thinking about your own inner potential. It can also be very nurturing. Yes. That sort of thing.
What do I want now? What direction now that I’ve learned the big lessons, what what can I do in this with the rest of the time that I have? Meditating upon that. And I’m actually I’m thinking about Cambodia and going and having a look at the young lady that runs the orphanage. I’ve got a WEA tour.
I’ve got a tour going out in February, and I’ll go on that. But, yes, it’s journaling done. Future. You give up, Nick? I haven’t given up.
I I ruminate over it. Oh, that’s good. Keep on keep on doing that. Keep on doing that. You know?
But, actually, sitting down and putting pen to paper, yeah, I’ve found it quite frustrating. Can you draw? No. No. I mean, it I think it’s the actual act of sitting down and doing it Uh-huh.
Period. It’s, yeah, just not sitting well with me. That’s not to say I’m not thinking about it quite a bit. I’m getting angry at myself for not doing it, but more just thinking about it as if I were and just trying to be mindful as much as I can as well to a certain extent. So it’s not a totally lost cause.
Can I I’m just gonna jump in here? The thing that I found about journaling is that you it’s a record of your progress. And when you write even if you just jot something down and you go back six I thought about I give you specific task with reason. Yeah. Know.
I know. It’s And if your mind keeps on busying, that’s good enough for me. Keep on thinking about it. Don’t beat yourself up for not doing it. I don’t want that.
I’m going to meditate and try to get back in Observe. Observe. Oh, I have trouble to do that. Have trouble to sit down. I have trouble to find peace.
Trouble to find rest. I have trouble. But you’re coming from a very busy life. Stopping that and sitting down and looking inside, it’s like that shift can be too big at once. Maybe you go for a walk in the park or maybe you go you know, on the beach or something that calms the mind too.
And maybe you first have to do that for a while before you can really sit down and look inside. That old adage of but how do you try and find the lost car keys? Yeah. Once you stop and find them. Yeah.
That’s what it feels like. Because, yeah, my mind is just, yeah, a bit insane. I mean Yeah. So be gentle with that. Mhmm.
You know? Because, otherwise, it’s just gonna rebound more and more, and it’s not gonna give you what you I think so. I think you’re right. I just keep on giving you things. Is that okay?
Yeah. And you can do with that wherever you are at. How are you doing with the writing? Yeah. I’m quite excited to have go on Facebook.
Have to see if I have attention. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. What’s gonna happen when you have your glasses?
Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. The size of my head is gonna change. Yes.
But, yeah, it is quite People don’t know your story because it happened between last week and this week, isn’t it? Yeah. Yes. Reaching a bit more Yeah. A little bit more to your potential.
Keep more potential. Yeah. It’ll be good. We’re gonna do a love meditation today. Unless there are other questions?
What time is it twenty past twelve? Yes. I better hurry up. Do we have questions? Sorry?
Oh, the exercise of last week, I’ll go and get it for you in the I have yeah. My whole folder. Is that okay? I’ll give you that in the end. The exercise last week is to ask to write down their own inner potential.
If they could live in accord with their potential, how would their life look like. We did meditations, isn’t it? The white light meditation and another meditation where you scan through the body. But the scanning, if you have a lot of disturbing emotions which are not so pleasant to sit with, it’s very difficult to do that meditation because you’re constantly in that space where you want to get rid of. Isn’t it?
Then your whole mind wants to run away because of that. So we’ll first try to cultivate nice feelings so that you feel pleasant to that you feel you can generate something pleasant in your mind that you wanna sit with. And if you have that ability a little bit, then you can maybe also sit with the more unpleasant things. Okay? Everybody alright?
Love meditation? You can do this at home as extensive as you want. Love meditation is about loving others. But what we’re first going to do is love yourself and how to do that and how to do the meditation that really nourishes you. So because we had different experiences in our life, some when we were young, some when we were older.
Every time when you we all have these inner children, as Anna is saying. If you find an inner child in you that has missed something or needs more nourishment or needs more attention or needs more love or needs more, I want you to stay with the child and do the exercise. Then maybe there’s a child with another age and you can do that exercise. Maybe there’s another child from another age and you can do that exercise. Exercise.
I just want you to keep on checking with your inner children to give them what they need before you really go on to others. First, we have to make our mind healthy before we can really practice the Dharma. So in order to make the mind healthy, we do that inner child work, taking care of that inner child. That’s not really part of Buddhism. That’s not something that Tibetans know.
They never talk about inner children. Just think it’s self-cherishing, just get rid of it. We need that somehow as Westerners. We need to first heal that part of us before we can move on to the practice of the Dharma. So take your time for that.
Can I ask you, why isn’t that such a big focus in Tibetan Buddhism for example? Because they all have the same problems as Sweden. But children? Don’t think culturally they have a completely different experience about certain things. For instance, if you have Native Americans, if they have a wound, if a boy gets a wound, they feel proud of that because by having the wound and showing no pain they actually get a status.
Having a wound is associated with getting more status which means good pride. If we have a wound, we say Oh no, you can cry and you should cry and blah blah blah so we get all this poor me, poor me happening. If you are in Tibet, if you’re beaten up in Tibet, they say Oh that was great that my dad beat me up because of that, there’s a completely different experience. I wish you used to do that. Know, I find that just nothing really happens with the students.
He would say, I’m nothing with you compared to how I would be with Tibetans. With Tibetans, they hit the Tibetans with the mala on the head. They have a completely different experience of what is good and what is bad. That’s what I do. You have the mala, your rosary, and they hit the rosary, you know, like the beads.
And also the teacher, they have a stick and they hit with a stick. When we see it, it’s like, Oh my god, this is abuse and we can’t do this. Because you label it different. You say, How fantastic is the children because he beats all the crap out of me. That’s what I believe in.
Today, the children say, Don’t you dare to touch me because I’ll go to the police and tell you that you’re abusing me. That’s what the children say today. Times have changed, our mind has changed, but it is a concept, it’s a preconception that when you get hit, it’s abuse. It’s also a preconception that when you are hit, you’re getting purified. And it’s both an idea of what we believe in.
But it’s contextual too because children that come from very, I don’t know, we say dysfunctional families, end up in foster care, constantly wanna go back to their original family. It’s what you said before that the we have an ideal image of what a family is, and so we handcuff an ideal all the time even though our experience isn’t necessarily that. We want we we want that romantic idea. To be fulfilled. To be fulfilled.
So we will do anything, even give up ourselves. Kids can give it themselves up to make it. Yeah. And they’ll write create stories about who their parents are that aren’t necessarily always real. Mhmm.
But if you have a whole culture that doesn’t care about that I don’t know. Have you been in India before or are you going for the first time now? It’s normal. And Tibetans, many Tibetans, they don’t have the right education there for their children. They send their children to other places where they can study.
They don’t see their children for many, many years and they don’t care because the only thing they want is the best for their child. That attachment is not that strong. It’s not that. We believe that a child should always stay with us. It’s a belief and then we live in accord with that.
I get the concept. It’s that there is a concept good or bad. It’s not about that. Some concepts lead actually to a lot more suffering than other concepts. If we could very happily adopt the feeling that if you beat somebody, that person actually purifies their karma and you would rejoice in that, you get a completely different society.
Isn’t it? Or if we would have the conviction that if we crash cars, that’s the most auspicious event that can happen to us. If we really believe that and feel that, it would be no problem when we crash cars. It’s just how we think about things. But it has to be the dominant idea.
It just can’t be one person’s idea. It has to be authentic. We share all that. Yeah. It has to have an authenticity.
That’s why Western psychology is just so completely different. You know? Going back to childhood, how we just analyze our our life, which I’m sure they don’t. Buddhism? No.
No. Never go back to anything? No. No. No.
That’s a waste of time. But if you’ve been brought up with all of these wonderful philosophies anyway, you’d have you’d be a really stable person. Yes. And not attached mean, parents are not would not be attached. No.
They would just know that they were going forth and doing a wonderful work in the world. And maybe when there is a whole you know, for generations you practice this, then it’s like it’s in the whole generations. It’s almost in the genes that and you pass that on. I think the attachment is a very, very different experience than we experience the attachment. I think they have much more freedom from that than we have.
So they don’t experience that suffering in that sense. They don’t have that, which makes life much easier. But what we try to do is try to constantly fix our life in accord with our attachment. Instead of giving up our attachment, we keep on more, making sure that I feel good, you know, which means that we nourish that attachment again and again and again. It’s not going to make it smaller.
It’s only growing and more demanding and Okay. You okay? You still have time? Is there anybody who has to run away? No?
Fifteen minutes? You okay with your driver? Okay. So sit comfortable. I think I said it in the beginning.
The main thing is your motivation, where you’re coming from, and what kind of mind that you’re gonna generate. So before we start doing the meditation, just wonder, what is the purpose of my life? And if benefiting others is that which is going to lead to happiness, with that wisdom, with that knowledge, try to think that the purpose of my life is not just to solve my own problems and find happiness for myself alone. The purpose of my life is to free everyone who is suffering from all problems and their causes and to bring them happiness. This is the purpose of my life.
This is the meaning of me being alive. Trying to think that you’re gonna benefit others can be scary. Try to go through that fear. Be like a warrior that says I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna take care of others.
Just as that I want to be taking care of myself. Then observe your breath by observing the rising and falling of your abdomen. Let your mind relax. All the thoughts subside. All the worries subside.
Being aware of your body, being aware of your breath will help you to bring your focus here right now. You can let go everything that you’ve heard today. Let go of all the worries. So what are gonna do with that? Go to your wisdom mind, your wisdom mind which is quiet, silent.
Do what the mind knows. And then imagine that all be living beings are around you, a human form. And then see yourself as you are right now, with all your faults and shortcomings, but also with the recognition that you have the potential to free yourself from all your problems. And you can visualize yourself in front of you as you are right now. See your your needs, your hurt, your love, your tolerance, your compassion.
Generate from the depth of your heart a wish for yourself to experience all the happiness and goodness you can imagine. And then send from your heart white light that fills your whole body, giving you everything you need. And you can visualize that with that white light you send out your body in whatever form needed to give you what you need. You can visualize words coming out of your mouth, saying whatever you need to hear. You can visualize your wealth multiplying, fulfilling whatever you need.
You can visualize merit, not just your own merit. You can visualize the merit of all the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Give it to yourself And feel how your needs are fulfilled. Feel how that leads to the experience of happiness and bliss, and visualize that a smile appears on your face. Then see yourself when you were younger, maybe somewhere in your childhood where you went through some painful experiences.
Visualize yourself as a child, as a person in front of you, seeing the pain, seeing the needs, but also seeing the potential for love and compassion. Generate from the depth of your heart a wish for that child to experience all the happiness and goodness you can imagine. Wish that child to be free of suffering. Wish that child that it can let go of the pain. Wish that child that is able to receive goodness, love.
Wish that child that it can open up again. And then send from your heart heart white light, which fills the child’s whole body, giving it everything it needs. And, again, you can think of material needs, emotional needs, filled with white light. The heart gets healed. All the needs are fulfilled.
And visualize that a child experiences happiness and bliss and that a smile appears on his face. So when you do this meditation at home, you can do this for more inner children. But now pay attention to all those living beings who are around you. Visualize your mother on your left, your father on your right, and other relatives and friends are behind you. Visualize in front of you those you dislike or those who have hurt you.
Then all other sentient beings are around your human form, and visualize them right to the horizon. They are all sitting quietly like you, and a sense of harmony and peace pervades everyone. How nice it would be if were able to love all these beings. Just as you, they all want to be happy, and they all want to be free from suffering. They’re all trying to make the best of their lives, even those who are angry and violent.
And then imagine that the love that you have just generated for yourself and has filled your whole body with light and love overflows and flows towards others. First, start with your family, and your friends. And imagine a warm, luminous energy radiating from your body, touching them, filling their whole bodies and minds. Think sincerely when you look at each of them. May you be happy.
May all your thoughts be positive and all experiences good. And imagine that you give them everything they need until they’re completely fulfilled. Their minds become peaceful, clear, and full of pure happiness. A blissful smile appears on their face. Then turn your attention to the people in front of you, those you have difficulty with, and contemplate that they are also in the need for happiness and that you can give that to them by sending them love.
Imagine your positive, loving energy flowing out from your heart to those people, filling their whole bodies and minds. And try to think sincerely. May you be happy. May all your thoughts be positive and all your experiences good. Good.
You give them everything they need until they are completely fulfilled. And, again, you can give them everything they need on a material level, on the emotional level, on the spiritual everything you give, their mind become more com more peaceful, more clear. And keep on sending light and love until they’re full of pure happiness and a blissful smile appears on their face. And then continue to send your positive, loving energy out to all the other people. Your energy flows in every direction, reaching all beings.
And you can think of those who are lonely, those who are very busy, Those who are sick. Those who are healthy. Send your love to the hungry, and those who are well fed are too well fed. Send love and light to those who are confused and those who are clear. To those are oppressed and those who are oppressing.
Send it to those who are frustrated and those who are irritating. Send it to those who are frightened and to those who are frightening. And keep on thinking. May you be happy. May all your thoughts be positive and all your experiences be good.
And you keep on giving them everything they need until they’re completely fulfilled. Their minds become peaceful and full of pure happiness. A blissful smile appears on their face. And then contemplate your own potential to love everyone. Rejoice in that.
And generate the wish to develop this potential more and more. If we want to develop this potential for loving each and every sentient being, we have to overcome our self centered mind with all its disturbing emotions. And we have to open up our mind for the big universal love that leads to happiness of ourselves and others. And then dedicate the merits by thinking that all the positivity positive energy that we gathered created by this meditation, May that be the cause for ourselves and for others to find all our temporary and ultimate happiness. I think that all the merit created by generating a positive motivation and all the merit created by doing this positive action of meditating.
May any living being, just by seeing, hearing, touching, remembering, or talking about me, immediately be freed from all obstacles to happiness. May they be freed from disease, spirit harm, negative actions, and obscurations, and quickly achieve the highest happiness of enlightenment. And then when you feel ready, you can slowly open your eyes. How was that? Was it nice to do? Can we feel that we will be able to do that, to send that love to even those who hurt us, to send the love to people that we don’t know, to send love to our own inner child?
I want to. Did you feel like, Oh, I actually will be able to do that if I practice this? There is a capacity in me that can do that? Was a sort of spaciousness I felt as I was. Isn’t it?
You get a big mind. Yes. Go beyond that, Nick. Yeah. That’s good.
The big love is limitless, I say. Why do you put your enemies before all the other people? Why would you thought more deserving? They are more deserving. That’s not because of that.
It’s it’s a psychological thing. It’s like how the mind does that. But I I I the the lamas never explain why it is like that. Some people say they are right in my face. Normally what we do is prevent them.
We can practice love for everybody but not that person. Buddhism is very strong. Mahāyāna Buddhism is if there is one person that you leave out in your practicing of love, you miss out on achieving the highest goal. The one person that you want to leave out is the one who hurt you most. So that’s the one we put right in front of us.
So that we don’t forget that person because that’s the most important person that’s going to lead us to our own happiness. If we can deal with that person, we can deal with everything. Maybe it’s like that. Okay. Are you tired?
Thanks for coming. You’re going to have a nice sleep, I think. You have a good holiday? I’m going to try to make CDs for you. If you can’t come, I’m trying to record and then make CDs but I’m not technically educated in that.