Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 74-minute teaching, Ven Jamyang works with students on the root of suffering—the strongly felt sense of “I” that drives protective habits and endless need-seeking. He explores why satisfying wants brings only fleeting happiness, then addresses compassion: the distinction between genuine care for others’ freedom from suffering versus conditional helping driven by the helper’s own need to feel good. Much of the session becomes practical Q&A on anger and aversion—how to sit with rage and emotional pain in a safe space rather than suppress or act it out, allowing clarity to emerge. He addresses healing difficult relationships by seeing the perpetrator’s own suffering, recognizing their lack of control, and letting genuine care replace protective contraction. For practitioners working with real family wounds and emotional reactivity.
File metadata (for organising)
File: part 2.mp3
UUID: 67e64462-d1ca-4cc2-bd2a-509879c3416d
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 73.8 minutes
Words: ~8,721
Who else is missing? You’re beautiful. So they make sometimes. So they have one here, and I’m not sure that it’s comparable to the second. They were feeling your spiritual being, something like that.
It’s just stuff that’s so good. Looks beautiful. So we know that we have a mask. We know that we have walls. We know that we have habits.
We know that we have ways of surviving. And all these ways of surviving is about me surviving. There is an I involved. If we would not have the feeling of an I, all this would never have happened, isn’t it? We would not have built it up.
If we would still be in paradise, like Adam and Eve, that would not have happened. Right? We would just have been in how will we feel if that is all all gone? I feel like a fetus. Would feel like a fetus.
What is the characteristic of a fetus? You wouldn’t have been born. Mean, you’re still in another So the feeling of I is a mental feeling. We can still have a body without feeling I. Without feeling that exaggerated feeling of I.
The Buddha has still an I but he does not have that whole layer of habits that we have. How do we feel when the layers are gone? Peaceful. Big Just be very connected to everything else. Connected to everything else.
Void. That sounds scary. Is it is it scary? Not scary. Void.
Is that peaceful? Peaceful. You have an idea how it could be like? How it will be like? Could be.
You have the feeling it might be a very miserable place? Because it’s something that we’re going to Buddhism says every action that we’re doing will have a result. So if we reinforce our habits, the habits will get stronger. Right? If somebody has been angry many times in their lives or from the time that they were very young, anger is a habit.
If we got everything that we wanted from very early on and never dealt with the fact that we maybe are not going to get what we want, we think that is normal. So we are very good at getting what we want. We have perfected that. We created the causes for that to become a stronger habit. We can also create the causes for something else to arise.
We can also create the causes for something else to grow in us. If you have the feeling that might be not a good thing then of course you’re not going to create a cause for that. So I’m trying to think if you have somewhere in your mind the feeling this is how it might look like. This is how I think it’s gonna look like. Like paradise.
Like paradise. Like, what paradise is sitting on the lightest pond in the botanic gardens when it’s in full bloom. That is just exquisite. That feeling is going to come. You don’t have to sit on a lotus pond.
Can feel her bliss when she talks about it. What about the bliss? Would you like the bliss? I don’t know. You don’t know?
You’re somewhere else? No, from here. Yeah? I can’t think of the bliss at the moment. Right.
Is it you’re holding on too much or you have to hold on so strongly? I’m not really holding on too much. Is that because it’s scary what we’re doing, or are there things happening for you that Other things. Other things that you have the feeling I have to keep It’s not scary. Yeah.
It’s something I wanted. Yeah. But it can still be scary. You know? Yeah.
Yeah. It’s funny. Creating a different habit. So what we are concerned with in our life is we have this feeling of I and everything we are doing, everything we are doing is about making that I happy and about trying to free that I from suffering. When we work for that I, we normally forget others.
We’re not so concerned with others. Alright? If we really work for that I, I want to have this, we’re even prepared to harm others. This is really important for me and I don’t care what you think about it. Alright?
We get this non caring attitude about others. True? I see a big question mark on Elena’s face saying oh I don’t agree with this. It certainly looks to me as if there are people who are in that in that situation, but I also feel that there are many people who are not. So I don’t want to to condemn one with with the others.
Where are you? You? You have to look in your own life and see how we all have the habit to take care of that I who is in here. That everything we’re doing is to try to make that I happy. And if we want something really strongly, we don’t care too much about the others.
We all have been a little girl that said I want to have this, didn’t I! I think if you’re really looking at it you can see the normal ages but there are certain ages that things might appear stronger like the two year old girl is a very strong one. But even the little child gets separated from the mother when they are a year old. You have the fear of separation. What mother does is help the child, constantly give the child what it wants.
But if mom would really walk away, the child would scream just as a two year old. It’s just when it’s a two year old, people let her scream. And when it’s a year old, people don’t let us scream. But it’s exactly the same pattern that is underneath. Even if you have missed out on indulgence, there is a longing for indulgence.
Right? There is still a wish. You have to catch up and you never have enough. And somehow it maybe even think if I had had the indulgence when I was younger, I would not have this catching up afterwards. Okay.
Right. But what Buddhism says, we all have this tendency to fulfill our needs. Maybe I should say like this. Because only when our needs are fulfilled we feel happy. At the same time, we live in a world where no matter how much we try to fulfill our needs, we never get really satisfied.
The satisfaction that we say, Now I have enough forever, never comes. Right? If we eat, we eat till we have enough, till we’re satisfied but the hunger will come again. When we eat something nice, we eat till we have enough but the need to have more will come. Definitely.
Know, fulfilling a need is never going to stop that need from arising again. The need will keep on coming. Right? So what we’re doing all our life is fulfilling these needs. Because when the needs are fulfilled, we have this short term happiness.
You know? It all lasts only a little bit, but gives us a feeling of well-being or satisfaction. Very, very short. But it’s not the everlasting satisfaction that we really would like to have. Right?
Because that’s what we are looking for. We only get this very short term satisfaction. What I wanted to say is that we have because we feel that I so strongly, we try to do things that make that I feel feel good. We all want to feel good. We all want to feel good all the time.
Every action that we are doing is focused on I want to feel good. Even and I’m going to throw this in Even if we help others, we help others because I want to feel good. Right? I push things away because they make me feel miserable. I don’t want to feel miserable.
We are doing this every minute of our life. Every minute is driven by that feeling, I want to feel good. I don’t want to suffer. This is completely natural. Right?
We cannot change that. This is part of us being human beings. This is part of us being sentient beings, having feelings. This is what all animals are doing. This is what all human beings are doing.
We cannot change that and there’s no need to change that. Right? We have to acknowledge that that is just how we work. What is what makes you just said, if I have a goal, then I want to go for it. That makes me feel good.
That makes me happy. Buddhism is about setting a goal because what we have, we have that longing to fulfill a goal. The goal at the is me. I want to be happy. I want to be happy.
If you know how you really create happiness, you can set your goal different and then still long for that goal but then with the knowledge and with the wisdom that striving for that goal is going to bring you the happiness that you are looking for. That I want to be happy is not going to give dissatisfaction. We all know that. It’s not going to give the lasting satisfaction if you only think I want to be happy. Because if it would have given us the lasting satisfaction, we would not be here.
We would know how to do it. We would not think, Why is it not working? What is wrong with me? We would not suffer sickness. And if we were sick, would not suffer from it.
So what Buddhism says is that happiness, we cannot change that. We have to find a way that we If I would think I’m only one person, right? If I want to be happy and I only work for me, why would I invest all that energy in one person? I can also invest that energy in other persons. I can make everybody happy.
If we in the West think about making everybody happy, somehow everybody is excluding ourselves. That’s how that what we have learned. You too? If if I’m focused on making others happy, I’m not involved. Not as much as others because I want to give others more than I have.
I don’t fulfill my own needs when I make others happy, which means that if I’m constantly focused on others, I will burn out. That’s the tendency that we have. Somehow, either we focus on I want to be happy or if we focus on I want others to be happy, we forget ourselves. It’s either me or others. Somehow we don’t have the way how we can make everybody happy.
If we could make others happy and make ourselves happy at the same time, just as much happy or even more happy, that will be a good thing, isn’t it? If every action that we are doing leads to our own complete fulfilment and to the happiness of others, then we have both fulfilled. We don’t have to do either this one or that one. We can do them at the same time. Depends on your motivation.
Many people who work as a helper, they get burned out. They want to help so much. They’re so focused on the other person they lose themselves in their work. Right? Yes, there is a fulfillment.
But I don’t know. Sometimes you lose yourself. Sometimes you can’t say no. You know? And you can’t keep on giving.
You cannot say stop. This is enough. Now I have to take care of myself. So you’re looking for a way that another person feels, oh, I like doing this. Yes.
I’m also looking for a way that we can do it well for you. Yes. Yes. Rather than, you know, No. So it’s all conditional.
Yeah. Yeah. Our our love that we have is very conditional. The help that we’re giving to others is very conditional. You know?
If somebody’s rude to us, how easy do we give up our help? It’s very hard to keep the heart open and keep the helping attitude if rudeness comes back to us. Very, very difficult. So there we need a protection, isn’t it? That’s where we miss the protection.
So Buddhism says what makes our life meaningful is if we can make others happy. If we’re not living only our life for our own benefit, to get a better car, to get a bigger house, to get more money, to get a good health. If that is the only reason why we are living, our life is empty, our life is meaningless. If we can be of benefit to others, that is what is gonna make our life worthwhile. Then no matter Dennis Dennis asked thinking, oh, but I can only benefit if I have this and this and this.
Buddhism says, no. It’s not about having anything. It’s not about doing anything. It’s about you wanting to be of benefit. That’s all you have to do.
If we are benefiting others, what we want is that others are free of suffering just as we are, isn’t it? That’s what we do when we help somebody. We help somebody to make it somebody to make it easier. When we make it easier, we relieve somebody from their suffering. Right?
So we want people to be free of suffering. That’s how we help others or to have less suffering. If we help others, if we really help others what we’re going to feel is that we start to feel more connected to others. True. If we live an empty life only for ourselves, we start at a certain point, we feel completely disconnect.
We feel like aliens just walking around and thinking, you know, I don’t really understand what goes on in the people and I don’t really feel that I have to say something to them and I don’t really feel any connection. If we really can generate compassion for others and compassion means to wish others to be free from suffering, we start feeling connected. If we really want others to be free of suffering, what you’re doing is saying I want you to be free from suffering. I’m willing. Want you.
First of all, wish somebody to be free from suffering. Maybe the next step is that we say I would like to take the suffering over from you. Right? Taking on suffering. Right?
You know that attitude? Maybe I think women, sometimes easier, can do that, especially if you have children, especially if you have only one child. You know? If your child is sick, the only thing what you wanna do as a parent is I want that suffering. I wanna feel it.
Suffering. I wanna feel it. I wanna have it. I don’t want my child to suffer. That is compassion.
Buddhism says what we try to do is to try to generate a compassion that is like the love of a mother for her only child who is prepared and willing to take on that suffering. If we want to take on suffering of others, we first of all have to take on our own suffering. If we cannot deal with our own suffering, we cannot deal with the suffering of others. What do we normally do when we hear about suffering, when we feel suffering? Out.
You know? Not for me. Our own suffering, it’s hard to bear, isn’t it? It’s very hard to bear. Only when we really can bear our own suffering, then the compassion will arise from that.
If we cannot bear our own suffering, suffering, we might help others, but that’s not real that’s not real compassion. That’s not a compassion as the Buddha talks about compassion. That can be partly compassion, but it can be also there might be how to say that? There might be a self-cherishing energy behind that. I feel good To make you feel good, you help somebody but you’re not capable of really taking on that suffering.
True? I don’t know. I was a helper for a long time. So I’m I I do this. Right?
I’m not I’m not pointing to anybody here. I had a lot I I I love it when people are happy. But the more I look into my own mind, the more I can see see that I feel very unhappy when others are unhappy. And that unhappiness, wanting to be free of that, very selfish, that’s why I want others to be happy. Not because I cannot experience that unhappiness.
I want them to be free of suffering. Because if everybody is happy, don’t have to feel my own suffering, basically. That’s where I help from. That was my main motivation to help. I could not bear my own suffering.
So every time when I saw somebody suffer, I would be reminded of my own suffering and I wanted them to be free from that because then I didn’t have to feel it. And looking at my colleagues, I saw many, many people suffering from the same problem. Know, it’s like So for me, sitting with my own suffering, sitting with my own suffering, trying to bear it, trying to be with it, trying to understand it, that that was something that I prevented to do all the time. I have all reasons why I don’t have to sit down with it. And I work very hard for others so that I don’t have to sit down and feel it.
Do you recognize hard to sit with our own suffering. If we can sit with our own suffering and if we can bear the pain then it’s like that you sink in the pain, you sink in the pain and at a certain point there is a space where it becomes very quiet, where it becomes very peaceful and then from there an energy comes of care which is a free care, is not conditioned, which is there naturally. That’s a different care. Then it doesn’t matter if people take it or not. It’s And then, also, you sit through that, what I feel is that I get less and less personal preference.
It’s there for everybody. It’s not just for the persons I like. Or maybe I like more people. The more I sit through my own suffering, the more my dislike for certain people just disappears. Dislike is many times that we will feel something that we don’t like.
We feel something that we don’t like. When I see you, I feel something that I don’t like. So I don’t like you. That’s how we do, isn’t it? But if we could sit with that feeling that arises in us and just sit with that and sit with that until it subsides, then the dislike for that person is gone.
There’s no reason to dislike anybody. The main reason is that something arises in us that we don’t like, That we feel as a suffering, that we feel as something that we don’t want, that we feel as something that is harming us, that’s something that we don’t want to have. We have an aversion for that. If we can sit through our aversion, right, a whole surviving is based on, I wanna protect me. If I allow this to come in, there is aversion.
If I can sit with my aversion and and not not follow it, not react to it, not not believe in it, but just sit with that, then that whole aversion at a certain point subsides. You know? First, I might get a big pain in my stomach and feel very uncomfortable and everything might start turning around. But then after a while, it just it’s gone. And then it’s like, what was that?
What was that about? I found that very hard to believe. You’re sitting, witnessing something that’s absolutely horrific. You really think that we can sit with it until to the point where we go, Doesn’t Not per. Not ‘I don’t care’.
We’re not going to go to the position where I don’t care but where I do care. But I don’t care on emotional grounds. I don’t care because I don’t like this. I care because I care of that other person. Then, if if I can go to that space and I can let go of all my emotional needs that I have invested in that, if I can let go of that, wisdom is in my mind.
I can help in a situation with much more wisdom and insight. Right? If I can help from an emotional point of view, there is always good and bad. If I see that somebody gets beaten up, what we do is we always empathize with the victim. We always feel for the person who gets beaten up.
We never feel for the person who is beating. We have aversion to that person. Somehow we have attachment to the victim and we have aversion for the perpetrator. That is already our attachment aversion. Both are a cause for ourselves to suffer.
That aversion, that attachment. The perpetrator and the victim, they can only arise. A victim can only arise because there is a perpetrator. The perpetrator can only arise when there is a victim. They can only arise in dependence upon each other.
They need each other. They need many conditions in order for them to come together. They are dependent on each other. Right? Is not somebody who is absolutely always only a victim.
Although we would like to believe that. And some people appear and alive as being only a victim. So what does this perpetrator suffer from? Turmoil. Isn’t it?
Absolutely. If we feel turmoil, that’s huge suffering, isn’t it? If they feel huge suffering, then you want to become aggressive because you want to get rid of that turmoil. Actually, it gets out of control. So you get out of control.
But that’s a desire to get rid of a very, very unpleasant feeling that arises in your mind. That is when you become violent. We don’t see that. Don’t see that. We think the perpetrator is in control.
That they can stop themselves. Somehow we believe and I’m a big part of this that person should just stop doing what they’re doing. But one of the characteristics of a perpetrator is that lack of control. They’re completely out of control. They appear to be in control because somehow everybody’s scared of them and everybody listens to them and follows them.
And so they appear to be in control, but internally, they’re completely out of control. And they suffer. You think when you get angry. You get angry when you suffer. You don’t get angry for anything else.
You get angry when you get something on your plate that you don’t want. If you don’t want something, you feel it as a suffering. The stronger you don’t want it, the stronger the suffering that you get it. So then you want to get rid of it so you get angry. You know?
About a sadist? I don’t know that one. Lama Zopa would say. He’s just having a good time hurting something. He did have a good time.
They’re having a good time. So a sadist is not suffering from something. They have a good time. They have pleasure. So I can’t feel any empathy for that sadist?
Why not? You can compassionate. Everybody has suffering. Somehow we are all out of control all the time but it still looks like we still have some control. So if we can recognize that a person who has the anger is actually the one who is suffering a lot, if you can somehow imagine their suffering.
What we normally do is when somebody attacks us, the the eye immediately is there trying to protect itself and maybe can’t protect itself, running running away, finding its way out. We don’t have an eye for what is happening with the other person. We’re just thinking, I have to protect myself. If we would have the courage courage and the knowledge and the if we would have one second thinking about that person, what is going on for that person? That person also wants to be free of their suffering.
That person is suffering immensely. As soon as we could see, that person is suffering so much. If we could really see that with a heart, we want to care for that person. Our whole self interest in caring for ourselves or protecting ourselves is gone. Our heart is wide open.
We want to care. As soon as we see the suffering that is behind the perpetrator. Right? As long as we are not focused on the other person and we just feel our own aversion for what that person gives us on our plate, we suffer, isn’t it? We we go we we we somehow we get this contraction inside and we wanna protect ourselves.
That’s a normal reaction. What Buddhism tries to do when we try to develop compassion is to look into the suffering that everybody is experiencing and try to think of benefiting that other person. Right? If we could think about that other person when they start harming us and see their suffering, we don’t have to hold on to here. We stay open.
Can you can you somehow So, I I think, I heart and care for that person. What’s going on for you? Can I help you? Then nothing happens on us. And then you don’t get hurt anymore.
Why is that? Because our heart is open. The compassion that we generate in our heart is going to be our protection shield. Our compassion means I want you to be free from suffering. Right?
As soon as we can really feel that, stay there with the suffering of that person. But sometimes also when somebody gets so angry, how do say? Might aggravate your anger? It might aggravate your own anger, but some people also say it it it you get scared of your own anger. You don’t want your own anger to arise or you maybe you have suppressed your own anger or I don’t know.
Lama Zopa says, Although a person can be really angry and although a person can harm our body, if we can keep our heart open and care for that other person and not go into that contraction in our mind that we normally go in, then that enemy cannot really harm us. That enemy can harm this body and this life, but our mind stays open. So even if we would die from somebody attacking us, even if we would die at least in our next rebirth, our mind is still open. The moment I’m going to protect myself for that harm, contraction, the moment I get an aversion, the moment I get angry at that person and I would die, that anger I’m going to take with me. That anger is going to bring me to very miserable states in my future life.
So my only protection is that I stay free of that anger, stay free from that reaction. Allow to happen whatever happens. Let go of all our surviving mechanisms. A man it’s difficult because her whole instinct is like, no way, I’m not going to let that happen. So then you sit with that.
You go sit with that. Sit with that. Because that sickness, you have felt that many times and you have not allowed yourself to feel that. And now you did. But at first you’re going to get sick.
At first you’re going to feel your suffering. That’s what we all run away from. So sit down and feel your suffering and feel the sickness and feel how it turns around and stay in it. It might give you the feeling that you completely get wiped away by it. I brace myself from here.
Yeah. If you sit in it it because it still hasn’t finished, isn’t it? You still haven’t felt it completely deeply. No. But what I do now is just I just don’t the minute I feel that emotion coming up in him, I just hang up.
I just refuse to talk to him. But if you go and sit on your cushion and you sit with this and you imagine that you hear your dad, you imagine. Right? Not unreal. You imagine.
At first, then you let the feeling arise. You let the feelings come up. Feel it in your bones. I can see it. I can see it and you have to experience that.
You can experience that and yet what you’re going to see is that now you have the feeling that if I’m going to experience that, it’s going to destroy me. Have to leave. Then your anger is going to come. I feel like he’s he’s lowered my standards, because he’s really made me angry and I don’t think that’s it’s not who I am. I don’t want to be angry.
Okay. So you trust yourself that you’re really not that person? Well, I guess so. That’s why I’m trying to get it. Because if you really cannot get angry, you can easily listen to him because you know the anger is not going to come.
Yes, I know but that’s what I mean. But you’re scared that the anger is going to come. So you don’t believe yourself completely that you don’t have that anger. No, that’s true. So, in order to find that, you have to sit with that.
First of all, let your anger come. Let it come. But you’re not going to follow it. By sitting, you may analyse it. Feel it.
You have to feel it. But where it comes from? So first, what is gonna happen? Well, work. It’s more you’re gonna sit down talk and something happens here and you stay connected with that feeling and you let it get bigger.
You let you say it’s okay that that feeling is there and you let it get bigger and bigger. And then maybe you’re gonna feel your anger and you say, alright. That is how my anger looks like. Right. But I don’t want to cultivate that.
But there is a feeling that says, get out, you know. So you allow that to rise too. And it just you allow it to arise but you not become it. If you can sit through that, through that whole process, after that, after the turmoil of your own anger has arisen, it will subside. Why are you feeling anger?
It doesn’t matter. She has a lot. But the one person that just gets me makes me furious and has all my life is my father. And he’s just needling you with things that you just don’t. It’s a long story, but he is just not a his mind is he’s a control freak, really.
And, anyway, I don’t know how to say it in a few words. It’s very difficult. It’s also not important. What you have to do is sit with that furious feeling and acknowledge that. Because somehow you believe, you know, I’m not an angry person.
I do. That’s the problem. And part of you has experienced that anger and you don’t know what to do with it and you don’t like it. You don’t want to be that. Few years ago, I got so angry with him and I didn’t like that at all and I was thinking that’s not the way to deal with it because I was hurting him and I was hurting myself, and I did not like who I became.
So I’ve made I’ve made a decision there and then. I’m not gonna get angry anymore. But I think if you make the decision, anger can arise in your mind but I’m not going to become the anger. That’s a different decision. Then you don’t suppress the feeling.
You allow the feeling to come but you don’t follow it. You don’t become it. You don’t express feel it coming, you say to your dad, Dad, I really have to go now. Can we finish this talk another time? And you’re going to sit down with your anger on your cushion.
Right there and Right? You do keep on talking and become it. But you do allow it to arise. Because anger being suppressed is very destructive. Anger following and becoming angry is very destructive.
Anger is a very strong energy. If we can let the anger arise, actually a lot of clarity can come in our mind. Anger cuts through very, very strongly. Cuts through delusions. Isn’t it?
If we can allow the anger to arise and just be there and dissolve back into the mind, you get clarity. If you suppress, suppress actually can create some of your depression too. Oh, sure. I’m sure. And that’s why I’ve been doing it for years.
And And it gives you a cloudy mind. Yeah. Karma doesn’t mean, oh, I don’t have to do with it. It means action. karma means that you can finish that today.
Yes, and I know I have to. Yeah. So that means sit with that and sit with the suffering and sit with that where he pushes you in. He pushes you in a position where you feel very, very uncomfortable. Sit in that position and feel it.
Feel that discomfort. Your anger comes from If you sit on your cushion at home in a safe place, nothing can happen to you. I know. Right. So you tell yourself, although you might have the feeling you’re going be destroyed by what he’s trying to do you where is the position that he puts you in, you keep on checking.
I’m sitting in my own house. I’m safe here. I’ll go I’ll go I go through an experience that makes me going to be destroyed. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to now.
I don’t want to cry again. That’s good because you’re connecting with them. Because you want it you want it to arise. You want it to go away. You and sometimes, you know, if somebody attacks you in personal, you you feel, I cannot let this happen.
I cannot You keep protecting yourself. You keep on pushing it away. But that pushing away is the cause of suffering that comes to you again and again and again. Feeling one time what’s going to happen can stop that whole thing. Feeling that, you don’t do that where the person is that is doing that.
You first create a safe space for yourself where you feel safe enough to experience that. Where you feel that even if I feel I’m going to be destroyed, I know that’s just a feeling. Even if you feel you’re to be ripped apart, that’s only a feeling. That feeling is okay when that arises here in my safe environment. But underneath is something else.
Anger is also protection of me. Anger is not really you. No, I know. But first you’re gonna need that layer of anger that you needed in order to protect yourself. You know?
So you’re gonna you’re gonna you’re gonna see that and just acknowledge that. Oh, that is what I had to build up in order to feel that I could survive. I don’t need it anymore. You know? It’s not you.
You are something else. You’re behind that. You’re underneath that. In order to connect with you, you have to go through all these layers. You have to go through a layer of anger.
You have to acknowledge it. You have to see, wow. Was I angry? Gee. What a power.
Yeah? Anger is also power. We have all these powers. You know? We all have the quality, the capacity to kill to harm others in order to defend ourselves.
That’s just how we are. I I just wonder I mean, you know, I’m supposed to know. I wonder if I to to release that energy. I just wonder what I’d be really like. Wonder what I’d be really like.
After that? Yeah. I think you’re wonderful. Yeah. I I know.
I need to do something about it. Yes. Can I say something? Yes. I went something through something very similar ten years ago when my ex walked out with another woman that decided to live under the same roof while he did it, and he was trying to throw me out of the house.
And I came here to Buddha House, and I sat in the hallway, and I tried everything to be calm and tranquil while all of this was going around. And a girlfriend said to me, she said, Anne, you have to get angry. You have to get angry. And that was ten years ago. And you can you still saw me last week when I you hit the right button, but it’s a quick brief.
There was I mean, I cried for years, full on screaming, yelling, and to get that out of that absolute what I considered injustice of that what that person I trusted most in the world. But, I mean, the floods have gone, but there’s still a little shower occasionally. And, We do have to get angry but you can’t go back and read all the Buddhism says no, but allow the anger to arise. We don’t have to do anything with the anger. Don’t pretend you’re not angry.
I’ve pretended my whole life I’m not angry. Bet it didn’t work. You meet all these people who push your buttons all the time and they’re all the time there until you have to acknowledge, maybe I am angry. Right? Don’t pretend you’re not angry.
Don’t pretend you don’t have anger. But if anger arises, just just say anger is in my mind. My mind is not the anger. I am not the anger. But there is anger in my mind.
That anger can arise and it dissolves. Any feeling that arises in the mind dissolves naturally back into the mind. Any good feeling, we all know that. We cannot hold on to good feelings. They just dissolve back into the mind somehow.
What we try to do is we hold on to feelings because we believe in them. We believe we are it, are the feeling. We never think I’m such a wonderful person and we stay all the time in the feeling with that feeling, isn’t it? Actually, that’s what we want to try to do with Buddhism, that we get there. But what we think is if bad feelings come up, we believe we are that.
Oh, I am the anger. I am this person who always keeps hanging into things, keeps repeating things from the past. I am that. No, that’s just a feeling that arises. And Buddhism says feelings arise due to past actions.
Having lots of negative feelings arising just means that we have engaged in many non virtuous actions. Yes, we have done that. We cannot change that. We cannot change feelings from arising. But what we can change is following these feelings, becoming these feelings, living these feelings.
Right? So we can just allow them to arise and say thank you very much for being exhausting of past karma. I don’t have to do anything with that because it’s not my essence. Feelings is not my essence. In every moment of my consciousness are feelings.
But that’s not me. I am not my feeling. If I engage today in virtuous actions for the benefit of myself and others, all these negative feelings will naturally they will come for a while because we did these actions in the past. So these seeds that are in our mind ripen into that kind of feelings. But then it’s finished.
Then the seeds are exhausted. So with time, positive feelings will come. If we create causes again and again, positive causes, then positive feelings will come. Naturally. We don’t have to work hard to feel good.
Right? We always feel I have to do something to feel good. Buddhism says you do now something and then later you feel good. So at a certain point in our life we’ll get somewhere where we get somewhere where we feel good without doing anything. We just feel naturally good.
Right? Because it’s just a natural result. In the meantime, when you start practicing, there is a period of time that you feel bad, that you feel crap, that you feel because all these seeds start to ripen. What you say is, I’m not going to follow this anymore. Every time somebody harms me, I’m not going to follow my intuition to harm that person back or run away or hide or do this.
The avoiding of the suffering. I’m not going to run away. You want to hurt me? Hurt me. Feel it.
Feel what happens. Feel it. Don’t do anything with it. Feel it. And at a certain point, you don’t have to do anything.
The energies changes and it’s like your wisdom comes and your understanding comes. Happens, if you allow that process to happen, the next time the person can’t hurt you anymore. But you haven’t gone to the bottom yet. When you have gone to the bottom, you will see that your dad can’t hurt you anymore. He won’t.
Anything. Anything. Anyway. Yeah. So he’s your biggest teacher.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s not a nice job to do. It’s something that we don’t like.
It’s something that we have tried to get away from all our life, all our previous lives. You know? But we know that getting away from it is not giving us what we’re actually looking for. We have to make somewhere the decision, I’m not going to run away anymore. I’m going to feel it.
And then, of course, before that you try to do all the right things among you should do. You’re trying to be very patient and tolerate and and tolerate and explain and and we’ll come back again. But in the last few years, when I start to know, just like magic of when he gets very angry, he, you know, he will start shouting at me all these words there Mhmm. Anger, his anger diffused, has beat much faster. And you gave him the ability Yes.
To let his anger drop too? Right. Mhmm. So over the years, the the visits have actually dropped down so much. And Yeah.
Yeah. It’s your mind that gets angry, and you don’t have to follow it. Yeah. But when we get angry, you know, we always feel that the harm is coming from outside. So you’re doing this to me.
How can he? But also your son. He thinks she’s making me angry. Yeah. Yeah.
And the same thing to you. And you think the same thing. You you know? That’s right. You’re harming me.
How can you do that? And and he’s talking about karma. One thing he said, which makes me very conscious about karma, is when he was he said his very upset. Why are you so angry? And I just ran into another room, opened the cupboard, pulled up my bedside photo, and says, you, I’m too late.
I’m too late again. You’re already married. Really? Yes. And I just say, you know, I wasn’t relating to Buddhism so much.
I was saying, where is this coming from? You know, because How old was he? How old It was sort of like, again. So I just thought, where were you in my last life? But then he also was too late.
Isn’t it? He has had experience a few times. Alright. He has to make it at this point then. You know?
Yeah. And he wants a different relationship with you and he’s always too late. He’s always your child. So you work out a lot together, isn’t it? Yeah.
It’s like you can choose to believe in the anger and live it all out and and and but you can also you see how it can transform as soon as you one of the two people can put their attention somewhere else. You know? And you’re only freeing yourself but you’re also freeing your son. I’m very mindful to get out of this this. It’s twelve forty five.
I know that you’re driver. Said, hey. You finished at twelve thirty? I had a meditation on compassion, but I might leave that for the next time because I think we still have to talk a lot about really the generation of compassion and how we do that. Mhmm.
You alright? A tough one, isn’t it? It’s working hard. You can sort of that now. You’re not depending on your mother being alive.
It sometimes can be helpful but sometimes it can also be helpful when the person actually has died. It can be both. Don’t think I can’t do it because my mother has already died. You can do it. You don’t need your mother for that.
Don’t give up yet. No. You can still do it. Shall we do that love meditation? How did that go?
The love meditation that you had last time? Was it nice? So what if we do that another week? And I don’t give you extra homework but you keep on doing what you were doing because I’m sure you all haven’t finished what I gave you so far. Tormentor is your greatest teacher, I’ve heard.
What is that? Your tormentor. If you can learn to deal with it and if you can learn to solve the problem inside, yes, definitely. If not, if you want I can give you that meditation that we did last time. The next time we’ll talk more about compassion and how, you know, just think about the concept and think about the mask that we have and how we try to protect ourselves and how we, you know, then lose touch with taking care of the other and just think about it and what that means in your life.
And do keep on doing the love meditation so that you feel very supported and loved. Also that you feel that for others that helps, you know, to soften and to to connect with that path that we actually want to develop. Alright? You were saying about No escape? So I don’t believe in knocking on doors.
So So I kept on saying to that person, you are so angry with me. You know? At that point, no. You cannot say anything at all. All.
Nothing gets through at all. Is there another point where you can I can get in my car and run away? No. Don’t run away. You feel safe enough to I mean, if that person follows you everywhere, you can stay with that person in one room?
No. You’ll keep on running away? Oh, it’s awful. You’ve got no sacred space that you can get away to. Bad idea.
As I walk in it. And then then she could be coming through the window or something. Is that a person that lives with you? Yep. Is that a child?
Well, not a child, but a child. It’s my child, but not a child. Not a child. Yes. Alright.
And is the child angry at you? Oh. For something? For something? Yep.
Have you ever said, I’m so sorry? I’m so sorry for what I’ve done. Apparently that person experiences a lot of harm coming from you. You might not have done that but that person experiences that. So that person experiences a lot of pain inside and thinks that you have done that.
Sometimes if you really sincerely say, I’m so sorry that you experienced that because of something that you feel that I have done. Mhmm. Or maybe you could even say it’s something that I have done. I’m so sorry what I have done that it makes you feel like this. I can try.
Sometimes somebody says, I’m so sorry, you know, really from the heart, a big part of the anger can go. True or not? If somebody has harmed you and some somebody says, I’m so sorry that I harmed you, you know, then the anger is gone, isn’t it? As soon as you acknowledge that you have done something. Harming them, they they will harm you back.
Know, Lama Zopa had a few students, and they had a very beautiful car, a new car. And and within a week or something, they had a big scratch in it. And so they had a scratch repair. Didn’t know where it come from. A week later they had a scratch in it.
This happened a few times and they had a feeling it might be the neighbor. So they went to the neighbor and confronted him. Now he denied it completely. Then I thought about what would Lama Zopa do in this situation. Apparently that person is harming them.
Right? Somebody only harms because they think you have harmed them. So they went with a big box of chocolate to the people and said, We are so sorry for what we have done. We want to be your friend. Finished.
No more scratching the car. It doesn’t have to make any sense to you, you know? But if you imagine what goes on into your other’s mind, apparently, that person must think that you have harmed them. I’m so sorry. So sorry you’re feeling that because you want the person to be happy, don’t you?
Without yelling. Without yelling. You can cry without I’m so sorry. Can you do that psychologically with yourself? Oh, yeah.
Yeah? Yeah. Because it might feel that you go in a position where you actually don’t feel safe and where you don’t want to go. I think that might happen with other people but not with her. Alright.
You have to give up something from you if you say that. You have to let go some of your I haven’t done anything wrong or Okay. Think about that. I said, no one yells at me like that. I know she’s done something.
And sometimes these these you know, there’s also periods, but you worked that out with your son. Still working. Still working. You know, and also seeing that’s her anger. It’s not coming from you.
But it can still be that she experiences that harm, you know, her son said, you are making me angry. That’s what your daughter feels. You are making me angry. You’re the one who’s doing that so you say I’m so sorry. But I cannot stop that anger.
I wish I could. I don’t know. Try. And next time we’ll talk about more things that we can do in the compassion. Okay?
I’m just gonna stop. Maybe. Yeah? Because it’s much too late. I’m sorry that I didn’t do a meditation.
Maybe we just dedicate the merits. Just take a moment and think about all the positive energy that we have generated today. It was hard work, looking so deep in the mind, looking so honestly in the mind. If you can acknowledge what causes you the suffering, then that’s the first step in being free from that suffering. I rejoice that we did that today.
Such a wonderful opportunity. And I think that these actions from today, but all also all our other positive actions that we have done in this life and in all past lives, may that help us to generate compassion in our minds, which is the source of all healing. And may that compassion also grow in the minds of all living beings, especially those who are experiencing disease, discomfort, unhappy minds. May whatever we have done today lead to complete freedom of all suffering for all sentient beings, including ourselves. Thank you so much for coming.
Thank you.