Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jamyang explores saṃsāra—the repetitive cycle of rebirth—as a state of mind, and probes a central paradox throughout this 54-minute session: Do we have any real freedom or choice? He walks through the death process in detail: the dissolution of the five elements, the white light, consciousness in the intermediate state. He discusses karma’s relationship to choice in rebirth and addresses near-death experiences. A participant shares her brother’s death and the sudden clarity he experienced before passing. He clarifies common misconceptions: hell is not a literal realm but a state of mind, horoscopes map potential rather than fixed fate, and freedom is available now. The session concludes with a compassion meditation: reconnecting with yourself and others through understanding mutual suffering becomes the healing path. For practitioners with some familiarity with Buddhist concepts.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Mind Healing 6Track 14.mp3
UUID: 0f09885a-7991-4a02-8cd8-7d4789709ae2
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 54.4 minutes
Words: ~7,039
So we have taken rebirth again and again and again. We’re still not satisfied with what we have. We’re still not satisfied with life. We go from high to low. We go from, you know, we go through all kinds of experiences and we repeat it over and over and over and over and over and over again.
That is what is called Samsāra. We have some good rebirth, we have some very bad rebirth. We have some rebirth where we’re happy, we have some rebirth where we are suffering. That is Samsāra. As we talk about Samsāra, when we talk about Samsāra, talk about a situation in the mind where we have no control over this repetition.
No freedom. I have no freedom over my birth. I cannot choose where to be reborn. I cannot choose if I’m gonna be reborn or not. I have no choice.
I have a lack of freedom. I have a lack of choice. So Samsāra is a state of mind. It’s not the environment we’re in, but a state of mind where we have lack of freedom. Or I can say no choice.
Can you see that? Some people think that you do. This is in the Buddhist. Yeah. So when you die, do you have freedom to choose where you’re gonna go?
Well, some people believe that you do have a choice. Yeah. So if you have the choice to go where you wanna go, do you choose parents to abuse you? So who tells you have to learn a lesson? I know these assumptions.
If you talk about I have to learn a lesson, it’s almost like there is a higher being who tells you that you have to learn a lesson. Buddhism doesn’t accept that. Buddhism believes that we have the potential to become the highest of the highest of the highest. So where does Buddhism believe you get to? You keep coming back.
But what about the Dalai Lama? If we don’t do anything, this will happen. Then what we’re trying to do here and what we’re trying to do with Buddhism, Buddhism tries: This is what we’re doing because we do not know the nature of reality. If we would understand how we create this, we can stop creating it. So what Buddhism says is like learn how you do that and learn what it is based upon.
That going around and around and around is based on: I want to be happy and I do not know the nature of reality, and because of that not knowing I engage in a certain way actions that keep me going. So, the more I can remove that veil of delusions, that veil of ignorance, at a certain point I can change my mind from a mind that is wandering in saṃsāra into a mind that abides in nirvana. nirvana means freedom. This is the same mind. So would you say that the Dalai Lama then, even though he’s here, chosen to be here helping us, he’s actually in nirvana?
Yep. He’s not in saṃsāra? No. Okay. He’s not in his mind, he’s not in saṃsāra.
No. So I can be born as a human being with a mind that is in nirvana, abides in nirvana. I get no distraction, I’m not suffering complete freedom to choose to help whoever, endlessly. That’s nirvana. Because I have my delusions, my attachment comes up, I can’t say I’m not going to eat, you know.
I can maybe do that for one meal or for one day and maybe for three days, you know, but there is a point that my body cannot deal with it and I have to eat. Right? I have no freedom over that. But there are many high meditators who can be without food for years, no problem, years. What sustains their body?
The bliss of the meditation. It’s beyond my grasping. I know. If you go to certain states of meditation, your body completely changes. The laws in your body completely change.
And your mind can get full control over anything that is happening in the body. Do they drink? No, or even eat? Strange. Not necessarily. Very strange, isn’t it, to think about that? Because as long as we are on saṃsāra we are under a kind of law.
We keep on going there, you know. So we cannot even imagine that you can get out of that because with our mind it’s not possible. But the Dalai Lama eats and drinks? Yeah, he eats and drinks. Yeah.
Okay. What will happen to him when he dies? Where does he die? To another rebirth. To another body.
What happens when somebody dies in saṃsāra, you go to the intermediate state, right? And you have no choice over the rebirth where you go. And I know that there are people saying you have, and I’ll explain how I think they have choice. If the Dalai Lama dies, he doesn’t go to the intermediate state like we, because he’s not part of Samsāra. Because he’s not part of saṃsāra.
He let me think, where does he go? They go straight to a pure land And they bliss out there for a while and then they take rebirth again. But others follow, they have choice. They can decide. They have bodhicitta.
He is a Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva.
bodhicitta means that you have developed a good heart. Bodhisattva means that you are a person who has developed a good heart and who’s walking the path. When we are in intermediate state, I said we have a subtle body that is unobstructed. If Sarah thinks about somebody in Canada, she’s straight away in Canada with that person. And that person might feel a wind.
You have heard of this, isn’t it? This is when I’m dead. When you’re dead, yeah, yeah, when you have passed on, yeah. Straight away in Canada, and your sister who lives over there, she feels this wind and she thinks about you. And she says: Oh, there’s Sarah.
She notices that. Yeah, we know these stories, don’t we? Does she know she’s the wind? Will she know she’s in Canada? She’s not the wind.
She is the consciousness riding the wind. But will she know? Would I know I was? Yes, you know. She would know.
She would see her sister? She would see her sister. Sarah is capable of seeing her sister. Her sister is not capable of seeing Sarah unless her sister is clairvoyant. Can she see her sister every day?
If she wants to. No, not if she wants to. If she thinks about her sister. Until she takes rebirth, then it’s finished. So what happens when have such a subtle body and when you’re not obscured by such a gross body as we have, your mind is much more subtle at the same time, you know, you cannot have a gross mind with a subtle body.
So, you have a subtle body, you have a very subtle mind. The subtle mind has clairvoyance. So, the subtle mind can see where you’re going in your next life. The mind can see what kind of lesson you have to, you know, what the karma is going to be and what kind of opportunities that you have. Maybe the mind can see even that.
Then people think: So, I have a choice. But you don’t really have a choice. So we don’t choose our parents? No. Can you Well, know I’ve been in that circuit of the New Age, you know, where they say, you chose your parents or whatever, and you go back to the state before birth, and I could see where I was going, you know?
And it feels like you have the choice to go. At the same time I realized, yeah, did that, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I did that. At the same time, it was like, who would choose for that? Know? Cosmic, Jesus.
Isn’t it? It’s Yeah. But I think when you can see it, you know it. And then we think, When I know it, I have a choice. We believe that when we know it, we have a choice.
We don’t even have the choice what we’re going to do tomorrow, but we believe they had a choice what I’m going do in my next life. So do you believe there are clairvoyants that can see spirits? Yep. And the spirits can tell them things? Yeah, but you know there are people who say, you know, Sarah has passed away and she has passed away last year and I’m still wondering about things and I go to a clairvoyant and she says: Oh yeah, you know, I get this message from Sarah.
Then Buddhism says: No, no, that’s not really Sarah. That is a spirit who has clairvoyance, who could see what Sarah has been doing, who can see what the relationship was between this person who asked the question and Sarah, and answers on Sarah’s behalf, because the spirit wants to have contact with the human beings. That’s what Buddhism, how they explain that. So they say, no, it can’t be really Sarah because Sarah has taken a new rebirth and she’s not there anymore. It is the spirit that uses this opportunity to come in.
Well then are you suggesting immediately after death when you were in this fifty day period? Yeah, forty nine. I should say forty nine, yeah. That some wind or something can create your image, not that you have an image, but say your but have people that have after death appeared to very close loved ones. And it’s that loved one that may see that person, but Sarah’s just wind, but somehow that person, she materialises as she was through the eyes of the person seeing and getting into the no, Nobody ever tells a story that Sarah really is there in her body.
I’ve seen my sister who passed away really in her body. Nobody sees that. They see something that they know is Sarah and maybe something that looks like Sarah, but they never see Sarah in a concrete body like we have. Not possible. If they say that, something is wrong, you know.
Sarah has passed away, she has left her body, so she cannot be seen in this body. It’s toenail clippings now. Like once I’ve left it, it’s not mine. No, you start, The body starts to disintegrate. But these are just explanations, know, and you can think about it and you listen to it and you just do whatever you want.
So what happens you see these people that have died and they see this white light and they go into a white light and they come back into their bodies? What does that mean? I’m not sure, but I’ll tell you what, so says, so we’ll talk about death one day. If you die, what happens is that the matter of your body and your consciousness, they’re going to separate. The consciousness or how do I say that?
The matter does not support the consciousness anymore. They normally ride together and somehow they cannot stay together anymore. The karma of that combination is finished. So slowly, slowly parts, they call that like the earth element, starts to stop supporting the consciousness, which means that the consciousness that was first riding on the earth element disappears, dissolves, doesn’t exist anymore. And then the consciousness of the water element that rides in the water element.
When the water element dissolves, that consciousness disappears. And what happens in our consciousness is that the very gross consciousness dissolves, dissolves, dissolves. So at a certain point our body becomes weak, we lose control over our body, then we can’t see that well anymore, we don’t recognize people anymore, so our eyes are not going to give us the right information anymore, which is a gross consciousness. So all the sense consciousnesses start to disintegrate, to disappear. You have to put away your phone.
Is your work ringing you? I’m here. You have to be there? No. You have to go?
Okay. So the gross conscious, the gross form is losing its strength and its power. It cannot support a consciousness and the consciousness that belongs to that or is right on that part of the body dissolves. So we can’t hear first see not well anymore, then we can’t hear anymore. We don’t recognize our friends as our friends.
They’re just strangers, just appearances. And slowly, slowly it dissolves further. And when all the elements have dissolved, and that is the moment that you die according to Western science, that moment there is a white appearance in the mind. And I think that white appearance is maybe that white light, maybe that’s the same. I’m not sure.
Isn’t that near death experience? Yeah. And then you come back and you die? Yeah, so according to the western science you die and then straight you go into that white appearance. But Buddhism says as soon as you enter into that white appearance there’s no way back.
You know, so maybe these people are just on that edge where they see the white light but then they turn around and come back. So they look like they have died but you know they’ve managed to reverse that process. As soon as you go into the white appearance you can’t reverse it anymore. Not possible. When my brother before last was dying, he came to live with me while he was dying, and then for the last two days of his life, we both went into Mary Potter.
Mhmm. And and I had a little bed beside his. But he went through all those stages you talked about, and then his eyes, he was fully there, Gloria. Absolutely fully there. And he said to me, oh, Sarah, it’s all making sense.
It’s all coming together. And he was so I’ve never seen him in all his living days more present than he was at that moment. And there was this huge wow about him. He was so relieved and so profoundly grateful. But that gross consciousness is gone and then you see what it is all about.
You know? That gross consciousness that is just obscuring us. We can’t see because of that. Beautiful. Beautiful.
But that’s a very beautiful death. That’s an exception. You have to turn it on? You have to keep it on? Can you turn it off?
Or perhaps through things in And was he walking the pathway of Buddhism? No, no. He wasn’t. But this is just human being, you know? This is human being stuff.
This has nothing to do with Buddhism. This is what we all go through. But I’m very interested to hear someone die with such calmness and such beauty within him and sort of so overwhelmed at where he was going. That’s just fascinating. I had a friend of mine recently, her father died from cancer this morning last month and he was in hospital dying.
He knew he was dying but he didn’t want to die. He actually didn’t want to die. He was rebelling against dying. And she said it was just incredible. Did not want to, could tell he did not want to die.
He didn’t want to go but he was going. But he didn’t want to go. Wouldn’t that be a horrible feeling? What do you think? It is, isn’t it?
It’s better to learn how to let go. Could I give you the meditation? You don’t miss it? Yeah, I’m going to try. I’ll try it again.
You put that one on the on the table, and I’ll see if I can change that. Okay. But, you know, I also always wonder whether it’s easier to See. Yeah. To be really sick and to know that you’re gonna Well if you know that you’re going to go you can prepare.
But if you are too long very sick, then these natural states do not occur like that. The best death is when you’re old and you just pass on. Sick Or do you sleep? No, no, no, you want to be awake. When you pass?
Yeah. Yeah, you want to be there every moment. What if it’s like? Otherwise you missed it. Otherwise you missed it.
Yeah. I’ll talk about that another time. Yeah. We’ll talk about death another time. Death is the is the most transforming moment in our life.
If we can use death, if we can utilize death in a way that it becomes the most transforming moment in our life, if you know how to do that, you’re looking so much forward to your death. That is going be the moment should not ever get to that stage of But we can prepare, maybe next life, you know? The more we know about it, then maybe next life, we are ready for it. It doesn’t matter if it’s this life or another life. But even knowing about it is so inspiring, how that works.
The Dalai Lama says: We have fear. I hope I don’t have fear anymore by that time. We like this because otherwise it’s too hot. Too hot? Yeah.
Thank you. But Sarah’s brother at the last moment had no fear. And he went almost was But so we worked, he and I worked together for many weeks as a process to that process. Together, yes. But what was beautiful was that he went through this, he was unconscious, he had all those stages you talked and then clear as a bell and all of life just made sense to him.
So while he was in that, it didn’t seem really there, he was obviously processing everything and came into completion. What if we sleep? You know, if we sleep something similar happens to us than when we die. You know, when we sleep we can’t hear anymore, we can’t see anymore, we can’t smell anymore. No matter what happens around us, when we were asleep, that world doesn’t exist.
You know, so sleep, falling asleep is a similar kind of process in the mind than when we die. When we wake up from sleep, we are fresh, you know, because these first moments the mind is much more subtle, and then we are longer awake, and then the gross delusions come, and they come, and they come, and we become ourselves again. True? So at death the same thing happens. So the moment that your brother had that, the clarity was there because he had let go of all the delusions that were holding on to him.
Who decides when you die? Your karma. So if you die at fifteen or twenty two or twenty five, it’s karma. Your previous previous actions, your merit. Not this life.
No. Could it be both of them? Well, you can create conditions that you go faster, you know, but what they say is that when the karma ripens for your next life, there is a lifespan that you have, a maximum lifespan that no matter what you do you cannot. Maybe you can increase it with a few years, but not really. If it’s like eight years, you can not make eighty So there is a point that this is your merit, finished.
Unless you’re going to do something unbelievable, fantastic in that life, that can have a direct effect on your lifespan. But normally that won’t happen, it’s very difficult. So you have maximum lifespan, say, of twenty years. And then you might have some life obstacles when you’re twelve and when you’re fifteen. And if you have enough merit and are careful enough, you know, you’re not going on the bike in front of that truck who could hit you, something like that.
But if you do not have the merit or the intelligence or whatever, then you might actually, or maybe you left home very angry and that anger might trigger you appearing before that truck and kill you. Then your life is finished when you’re twelve. You actually had twenty years, but it can be finished when you’re twelve. Is that why some people die in a car accident and some people live? Sorry?
Princess Diane, you know, if they looked into her horoscope, day when they looked back, they said, you know, it wouldn’t be possible for her not to die. Are you for real? But then she chose that karma, didn’t she? Didn’t chose. She didn’t.
Chose that environment. Gave up her actually had the control of she gave up her The only thing that she did was that she stepped into a car with her boyfriend. She didn’t choose to die. She doesn’t want to die? You think so?
Well I don’t know, I’m confused now. Why? Why are you confused? Where? Well you told me that she doesn’t think we’re mixing it You think karma is choice?
karma is no choice. karma means no choice. So when she chose her parents or the parents chose her? No choice. Choice.
She know how long she’s going to live? No. Nobody knows? No. Have different states of consciousness.
Some consciousness was meant to on that day. Is that what you’re saying? She was meant to go on that day. Yeah, around yeah. But I think she’s had some part in that because she gave up her bodyguards, the M1 There are conditions.
Yes, that’s a good way to put it. She did help to create those conditions. But she did not help to create the conditions to die, you know? She tried to create the conditions to live. Oh yes, she was trying to get free.
But afterwards you can say that was actually a condition that she died. But that was not her choice. Whose choice was it? No choice. No choice.
Mention about horoscope? Sorry? What did you mention about horoscope? Said when they look back I know, I know that I said that and I don’t know what kind of buckets I open for you guys when I say these words. Because I’ve thought a long time about how it all fits together.
If you look into the horoscope, horoscope is like, if I say that before we enter this life we have clear voice and we can see the life where we are going, you know, then there must be somewhere, some energy that represents that. So we are born on a certain day and on the day that we are born we can look into the stars and the way the stars have their position that that means something. It is like it is a possibility for that life, it is a potential for that life. You can look to that and yes or you have the potential to be very angry, very arrogant, you feel many times like the victim, but you also have the qualities of being an artist or becoming a very good psychologist or whatever. That is all written in your horoscope.
What you do with that is up to you. So it’s like, it’s your good karma and your bad karma or your negative karma and positive karma are represented in that. And then it depends on your life which you’re going to tap into. And it depends how you deal with different situations, how you are going to develop. But it’s more, there are opportunities, you know.
Every problem in the horoscope that looks like a problem is actually an opportunity for growth. Every quality that is there is something that can help you to benefit others, or that can help you to overcome your challenges that you have in life. And you can also see which days are going to be very difficult for you. And yes, then when the conditions arise, you might die that day. So when somebody looks back, Diane dies, and they look back, then they can say: Oh yeah, you can see that she was going to die on that day.
But it doesn’t mean that you would have seen that beforehand. And even if you see it beforehand, what was the story again? This guy, he knew he was going to die, the Lamas had told him: You’re going to die, you have to be very careful, whatever. So this guy locked himself up in his room. Stories, and then the story comes how he dies in that room.
If the karma is there to die and the karma is definite, you cannot escape. You just cannot escape. But then I would say Diana contributed to her own karma, because she didn’t wear seat belt. A condition, you know, it’s just a condition. But she didn’t decide.
Wasn’t able die, then not wearing the seat belt wouldn’t have killed her. Or if it really her karma to die, she would have had a thought, oh I have to put on my, you know, thoughts that we have, these ideas, oh I have to make sure I’m not going to do that. This is karma. Thoughts are a result of karma. When you have the idea, you you have abused women, they have not the thought to leave their husband.
That’s karma. Then one day they wake up and they think: I don’t have to do this, I’m going to go. That’s karma. That means the karma of having to stay there is finished. The karma that you are about to leave has started.
That is how karma works, the idea is there. And you move on. You know, it’s like we repeat ourselves again and again and again. And at a certain point we feel like we wake up and we suddenly see that we have another opportunity, another possibility, or maybe it appears like another choice. The moment that appears, the karma of that old habit is finished and you start to move into something new.
What about me, now that I’m elderly, and I say to myself, nah, I nearly got killed recently going on a walk locally. What? You got killed? I nearly got killed. I was just okay, I just jumped back in time.
This girl came screaming by and she didn’t even notice me. And I was just walking along the pathway and she just happened to come in and turn that way and I was just crossing one of the back roads and she just sailed through. Luckily I was still able to jump. But the point I’m making is that now I say to myself, I must be careful. I’ve got old and I must watch this traffic, it’s pretty fast.
Now what’s that got to do with my karma? Because I’m obviously trying to look after myself so that my karma would allow me to live longer. That’s good. Alright. You can do that, you know?
That’s what I am trying to do. But it’s not a guarantee. No, no. Nor does it guarantee that when you’re not careful you’re going to have an accident and die earlier. We do not know.
We do not know what we’re doing. We do not know what kind of result our action is going to have. We do not know how our thoughts contribute to the next step. We do not know. Isn’t it?
We have no idea. If we didn’t know we wouldn’t be able to deal with it, don’t think, would we? If we wouldn’t know we would have some choice. Would we or would we completely implode? If I can see in the future and I can see, Oh, if I follow this person’s advice, I’m actually going to end up in a big misery, you know, even if it sounds very attractive in the moment.
Then I have the choice to say, No, I’m not going to do it. But when it sounds really attractive, my attachment says: Yes, I want to go there. And I might end up in hell. I don’t know. Isn’t it?
So there is such a thing as hell, because I don’t believe in hell. I end up in in misery. Hell, yeah, because I certainly don’t believe in hell. So if you believe in hell or not, does that mean that hell exists or not? I don’t believe it does.
But if you believe in it, does it mean that it doesn’t or does exist? I believe it’s Does your belief in something make it existing or not? No, of course it doesn’t. But I mean, it is a religious concept, isn’t it? There is such a thing as hell.
It doesn’t matter. It’s important to see that no matter what you believe, that doesn’t change if it exists or not. See, I see hell as being part of our life on Earth. I don’t think we have to be going there afterwards. Buddhism talks about states of mind.
We have at the moment a kind of karma that creates a human body that is born in a certain environment. If I die with a lot of anger, I might be reborn situation and maybe in a different body. Yes, I know someone like that. And he raged right through to the very end of his life except the day before he died he was suddenly incredibly quiet. He was a pretty horrible old man.
So I’ll start with Samsāra. If we know Samsāra, the better we know Samsāra, the better we know how we get tricked into that cycle of existence again and again and again. The better we know how to stop creating the causes for that. And when we stop creating the causes for that, we can slowly, slowly develop, you know, the delusions get less and less and less thick and we start to move in the direction of nirvana. We can only achieve liberation from our suffering when we realize the nature of reality.
When we realize how we suffer and how that makes us going, again and again and again to the same kind of experiences of suffering, then and we can see that we have a relationship with each and every sentient being somehow in this life or in previous lives, then we can maybe also see that these beings are suffering just like us. How selfish would it be for me to just liberate myself from suffering and leave all these sentient beings in their suffering? Right? So, by seeing my own suffering and then by realizing that I have a connection with others, and that others are suffering exactly the same, from there the compassion comes, that we want others to be free from suffering. So to really develop compassion, we have to know what suffering is.
We have to know how reality looks like. We have to know how we depend upon others and what our relationship is with others. These are the components. If we study that and if we think over that again and again and again, we create the causes for compassion to arise in our mind. You say the three again?
I just want to make sure I’ve got them right. Our own suffering, the suffering of saṃsāra, the interdependency with others, and that others are suffering just as much as that we do. Right, so what we do, how to say, of mind if they arise due to previous state of mind. That means that in order for compassion to arise in the mind there is a previous moment of mind. The previous moment of mind is like the interdependence, is knowing the suffering, is So, putting study in these topics means that the compassion will arise naturally.
Compassion is something that we have naturally with us. It’s obscured because we have wrong views, because we do not understand the nature of reality. The moment we start to understand, it will naturally arise. Until it arises we have to practice, because so we fake it a little bit, you know. It’s like we try to understand how it would feel like, so that when it starts to arise, we maybe to inspire us, maybe to habituate our mind to a different way of thinking and being, and then eventually when it comes naturally we know, oh yeah, this is how it is.
That’s compassion. Is there any literature on this that’s not too involved, it’s fairly simple, so that can get the I’ll go and look for a free book. It could be useful. Yeah, let’s do that. The Joy of Compassion, have you read that?
From Lama Zopa Rinpoche? Yeah, I think I’ve got that one. Is that red and orange? It’s yellow. I have to see it, Jane.
Okay, let’s have a look. I think the red and orange is making let’s have a look. Yeah. I’m gonna ask I don’t know. We’ll start next time with this meditation.
So I’m gonna ask you to take this meditation home and doing it home and get some feel for it and see if you understand. I want you to understand intellectually. The more you understand it intellectually, the more you can catch yourself when your mind is going into a direction. And you say: No, no, no, I don’t want to go there. Come back, I want you to go there.
You know, that is The more we understand, the more choice we’re actually going to have. If we do not know, we have no choice. Okay? So, is that alright when I hand that out to you? And we start talking about death.
I wanted to first talk about suffering and death is part of suffering, but I will use one session just to talk about the death process and how the death process looks like and how that feels like and how Buddhism uses it to transform. And I will say a little bit about that. Because it’s a very powerful experience. It’s the most transforming experience that we have, isn’t it? It’s that you leave this body.
Transformation. It happens naturally. So you can use that natural transformation process in order to do that same thing with your mind. Is that alright? And then, so I hand that out to you and we just dedicate for today, and next time we start talking about suffering, if I go straight into that, are people prepared for that?
We’re not going to be depressed? Okay? We’re going to be yeah. If you see it brings you more to life, then it’s not a problem. Alright?
Yeah, I’m not depressed. One’s crap. I know you know, but there are two girls next to you who sometimes have a question. Not? Yeah, yeah.
They’re young, I suppose. Doesn’t matter. So even if I looked at you, was talking to someone else. No, I can understand it. And normally we don’t like to think about suffering.
It’s difficult. Not just the youth, anybody. We do not like to think about suffering. No, and I wouldn’t have been as smart as these two sitting up here at twenty, I can tell you. That’s great, isn’t it?
The that they’re both here is exciting. I think so too. Young girls that I see here that have got the wisdom. It’s very fortunate. I really appreciate you including me in that glance.
Am I forty four? No. No. Forty four, you’ll be. Yeah.
Forty four. Well, you look nothing like but that would make you if you had a child twenty Sixty four. Two and a half. You could be in your Yeah. That’s right.
I don’t believe she would be in her sixties. I don’t believe that. That’s unbelievable. You’re joking. No.
I’m not joking. Sorry. I’m joking. How old are you, come? How old are you?
Sixty two. I’ll be sixty three. No. Oh, for heaven’s sake. Can’t you draw your screen?
Look at your at your skin. Yeah. She’s very beautiful for her age. She’s beautiful for her age. You’re extraordinary.
Not a word. Thank you, Pam, but thank you, Linda. Sometimes I’ll look in the mirror and think, who’s that cranky old woman? No. No.
No. No. No. I do. True.
No. But thank you. I can’t but isn’t it amazing, Jamyang? She’s amazing. And So is she?
We know she’s amazing. Mean, she’s not nice at I’m not sexy too, yeah. No, no, no, no. But you’re also amazing. We’re all amazing.
We’re all very lucky. We all love you, Jamyang. We do. So if I’m gonna be shy, that’s the way it goes. We can see your goodness.
No. I’ll tell you, I’ll have tears in my eyes, but I’ll tell you I love you. Says Judy. We love you too, Judy. Thank you, Ven Jamyang.
Emotional. What’s your birthday? Twenty sixth of March. Are you? Seventeenth of April.
Right. Yours is not Aries. Thirty first? Is that Aries? Aries.
Aries. Aries. Aries. Aquarius is air. Oh no, it’s water.
No, no it’s air. Aquarius is air. Yeah, think it’s a trick. The Pisces comes after that and they’re water. What’s in Aries?
Thought it was a ramble. Fire. God, yeah. They have the first idea, you know, they first who go for something. And they’d say, what have I started?
Yes. And after the start is made, they say, now I’m bored, I wanna have a new start, that’s it. Somebody else can do that. Oh yes, that’s a bit lovely. Alright.
Next time around if we did have a choice, think I’d choose another sign. It’s painful, isn’t it? It’s not easy. And I was told that Aries are the babies of the zodiac and the reason I always feel like I know nothing is because I’m an Aries and so everything’s new. Is that right?
So I felt like a learner all of my life and yet there are things that contradict that, but also that. Yeah? And and I was told that that’s because we’re the and that’s why it starts with Aries and goes around. So we’re the least involved and and maybe come back. It might not be the first time as an Aries, but that’s the baby of the zodiac.
You’ve got everything to learn and other people are always Not true, not true. You don’t have everything to learn, no. You come with a lot of wisdom, come on. Yeah, yeah, but honestly, Jamyang, I am. Yeah, you can feel like that.
You have the feelings like that, but it doesn’t mean that it is like that. I feel like my So it feels like I don’t know anything and you feel like, you know, you meet things for the first time, but that doesn’t mean you have a whole range of experience that has nothing to do with these feelings, which is there too. That’s true. That’s true. You know, it’s the feelings that make you somebody or some sign.
Okay. But it’s incredible how the characteristics of a sign are so true. It’s incredible. My Libra sign, it’s spot on. Whatever it says about me, my characteristics is spot on.
I don’t make my noise. I’ll give you your website where you can go. I’m supposed to be independent. I’m waiting. I think you’re pretty.
Yeah, I think you are. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That’s dedicated to the discussion about this outside.
I’m getting off track today. So just relax for a few moments. Just be aware of your body. Be aware of where you are. And then reflect on the fact why we suffer or when we suffer.
Every time when we are not connected with reality, every time when we are disconnected from reality, we feel disconnected from ourselves or disconnected from others. Disconnection feels like pain. You can think about different aspects in your life where that surfaced or where that was very visible. You know, the first disconnection from your mother, being born, it’s painful. The separation from your mother, where the mother leaves the room and you can’t see your mother anymore, it’s painful.
Going for the first time to school is painful. Every separation, every disconnectedness is painful. And the more we hold on to the wish to be connected, the more we will suffer from the disconnection. So if we know that that is what we suffer from, then we can also know that when we start to reconnect, we free ourselves from suffering. We can reconnect by developing compassion.
To reconnect with ourselves, we compassion for ourselves. To reconnect with others, we develop compassion for others. And the more we connect, the more we become whole, the more we become healthy, the more we feel fulfilled and happy. So because compassion has the capacity to connect, or maybe it’s in the nature of connecting, compassion, as soon as it arises, it heals. It heals ourselves and it heals others.
And the more we heal, the happier we become. Healing is connecting with our true self with our Buddha potential. And then try to feel that the better we can do that with ourselves, the better we know how to give that to others. The more we can connect with our own true nature, the more we can connect with others true nature. So then try to think of everything that you’ve learned today.
That you use that to reconnect with yourself, which helps you to reconnect with others. Which means that you and others will become more happy, find more fulfilment, find more peace. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you again. Welcome.
Jamyang, there was so much happiness today in this session. Was it? Yes. It filled the room, didn’t it, with everybody? Oh, great.
It was everywhere. All of it. Yes. Was all of it. Yeah.
Well, that’s that’s my feeling. It was just all of it. Yeah. It was wonderful. Wow.
It was a wonderful afternoon session. Thank you. I don’t know. It’s just that we were all together.