Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 130-minute opening of a six-week course, Ven Jamyang reframes Buddhism as a training in mind management rather than belief or prayer. He opens with a striking contrast: we fuss constantly over our body, yet most of us have almost no understanding of our mind—which feels uncontrollable and endlessly chattering. The core teaching: our minds are trapped in past and future; bringing awareness to the present moment is the breakthrough. He guides students through breath meditation (the mind wanders, you gently return it), explains how understanding naturally produces control without force, and explores a key distinction—consciousness versus the physical brain—that grounds later teachings on karma and rebirth. Two guided meditations frame the session.
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File: jamyang – DB Mind and its Potential 1.mp3
UUID: 266aa4bb-a12d-412f-aa38-d6e060e4cea0
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Mind and its Potential (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 130.7 minutes
Words: ~15,028
Are we right here. Mhmm. Can I start slowly? Or Yes. You want me to wait?
No. That’s alright. You can I can wait for a few minutes? That’s alright. Oh.
No. That’s alright. Because I’ve got a number of others who are gonna pay by credit card, so we’ll do it at the end of the evening. Okay. Now I’ll take the Can you tell them?
Can you say that to them? Books. I’ll give I’ll give Nadine. I’ll give so we’ve got Oh, you’re very kind. Just we have to check how many we need.
Yeah. Okay. Whose is this? I don’t know. I don’t know.
Hello, everybody. Can you hear me? Loud enough? Yes? You’re in the front.
In the back. Can you hear me? No. He may have. Oh.
I’ll put it up a little bit. Welcome everybody. You’re a big group. I wanna see if everybody has the book. Everybody who paid for the whole course, do you all have a book?
Yes? No? No? Yep. Good.
I forgot to hand out the completion cards, but I’ll do that at the end of the night. Okay. We talked about that last week. Who was not here last week? A few people.
So last week, we talked about the whole course and how things are gonna go, and I might mention that just in between the lines. We went through all the different modules, and I think I gave all away all my sheets, but I can have a look if I have still some left for you guys. Wow. I’m a little bit shy with so many people. Sorry?
So I think I hope everybody has seen me before. My name is Jamyang. If there are gonna be any questions during the weeks that you would like to see answered straight away or you need me for whatever, I’ll give you my email address. And then you can also see how you spell my name to remember quick. What?
So what we’re gonna do tonight is that we will start I’ll say a little bit about tonight and how we’re gonna look at the mind. Then we’ll do a short meditation, and then we go more into teaching, and then we at the end of the day of the night, we’ll do a meditation on the clarity of the mind. And before that meditation, we have a discussion. My I’m gonna try to finish at quarter past nine at the latest, you know. So with so many people, we have to contain our energy a little bit.
And I know that when the classes are on, at a certain point, everybody likes to talk, and we have to contain that a little bit. Okay? So part of the night you can talk, and part of the night you have to listen. And when we talk about the mind, you will become clear that even if you wouldn’t say anything, that that really doesn’t matter. You know?
It’s it’s like what we’re doing. We’re processing everything in our own mind. And sometimes silence is even better than just talking. Silence means that especially if you wanna talk and you keep yourself silent, what happens is like we become like a pressure cooker, and everything that happens inside digests even quicker. Right?
That’s what we do when we go in retreat. We keep silence because then you create the situation like a pressure cooker. So just keep that in mind if you don’t have a chance to say anything. See the virtue of that. So Mind and Its Potential is a six weeks course, six weeks in the sense that there are sessions like this.
After that, we have one video night with a video related to the topic. And then straight after that, the on a Saturday is a meditation day. Because I will be away on the last day of this course and the meditation day, Jampa Gendun will take that. Then what else we’re gonna do is we have required reading. You have that all with you.
So at the end of the night, I’m gonna give you a little sheet with some homework, right, where I’ve written what kind of reading is related to today, what we discussed today. I’m gonna ask you just to read through that to refresh your mind, you know, and to I mean, these are texts from the Dalai Lama and from Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. They can say the things much better than I can. So please read it back and make sure that I said it right. So the main emphasis of the whole course of discovering Buddhism and also Mind and Its Potential is that we we wanna we wanna it is a practical course.
It’s about experiencing the mind, experiencing your own potential. It’s about meditation, you know. So I’m gonna give quite some emphasis on doing a meditation practice. What we like to do, and I think that’s why we’re all here, is somehow we are not content with who we are with our life. Somehow we have the feeling it can be done better.
It can be different, but we’re not sure how to go about. And if we want to transform our mind, if we want to change our life, we have to put some effort in it. We all know that if we want to change our house, we have to put some effort in it. It’s not gonna happen that we say, I wish that I had a different kitchen, and then the kitchen arrives like that. It doesn’t happen.
We will have to put in the work. And that goes in different stages. Right? You first collect the money, and then you make the plan, and then you look for somebody who can do it in the way you would like to have it. And then you have to prepare that you can cook somewhere else, and then you start to do the whole rebuilding.
We know how that goes, isn’t it? If we want to train a body, exactly the same. We go to a trainer. We talked about that last and the personal trainer tells us how to go about. We get a whole training schedule.
If we want to change our mind, it’s not different from that. You’re gonna get a training schedule. Or you’re gonna get advice how to go about there are two seats here on the front, the end, if you want. Put I was thinking today, like, how much how much time do we put in the body to make sure that the body is happy? How much time of the day?
Oh, what shall I wear today? Oh, no. That doesn’t feel nice. I’ll take something else. I know that doesn’t look like.
I’ll take something else. And how do I do my hair? And what shall I eat? And how shall I walk? Shall I take my car?
Oh, no. Go by bike. Constantly, we’re wondering, like, what would my body like? But if we’re gonna look at our mind, we have no idea what’s going on there. We just know that we sometimes get crazy from our mind because it doesn’t shut up and it just keeps chatting.
But we have no idea how to go about so that we get a result that we really like, that we say, oh, wow. That makes me really feel good. And we know some maybe some relaxation courses and yoga courses, and we have tried all that. Yes. You can make yourself feel good, but you also know that then after time, the mind slips again in its old habit.
How do we change them? If we wanna change these deep behavioral patterns, we have to train. Okay? Without training, you know, you can listen. And if training is also that you reflect during the day what’s going on.
Right? Training is not necessarily that you sit on a cushion and that you formally meditate. Training is that you observe what is going on in your mind during the whole day. Right? So even if you have moments during the day that you stop and think, what’s going on in my mind?
That can be and if you have some tools what to do with that, you know, that can be moments where you can make transformation happening. Okay? If you put in no work, there will be no result. If you put in a lot of work, there will be a big result. Right?
And how much you’re gonna do, that’s up to you. I just give you some suggestions, and you can see if that’s suitable for you or not. So, you know, talk about Buddhism, but the real essence of Buddhism is just what is going on inside, what is happening right now in the mind. The religion of Buddhism is in the mind. Lama Zopa says the workshop is in the mind, nowhere else.
He says become a professional how does he say that? You have to become a professional in in your your how you relate to your own mind, what you do with your mind. What we all would like to do is what can I do so that I find more happiness? What can I do so that I find less suffering, less less depression, less dissatisfaction? How do I go abide?
How do I go about? We don’t know that, do we? Do we do you do you ever look into your mind? And especially for those who have never meditated, do you ever sit still and look what’s going on? Who who has never done that?
Everybody has. Fantastic. What are you too scared to say? I know when I started meditating, never ever watched and saw it. And when I started, I was pretty shocked.
I just wanted to get out as soon as possible. In Buddhism, we say if you understand the nature of the mind, if you really understand the nature of the mind, that understanding will naturally give you control over your mind. At the moment, our mind is completely out of control. Is And even if the mind is calm, we have a calm mind, but we have no idea how to redirect the mind, how to change it, how to put it in a different state, we have no idea. Most of the time, our mind is running around like crazy.
And then sometimes we have a good moment, and then there is peace and joy and happiness and love. And we think, oh, that’s wonderful. I wish I had it all the time. The fact that we do not have that all the time shows that we do not really understand the nature of our own mind. So Buddhism says the more you understand the mind, then control will naturally come.
And we as Westerners, if we hear control, we hear tightness. We hear suppression. We hear making sure that everything goes the way we want it. But that’s not what I mean with control. Control control means nothing more than knowing.
If we really know, the mind cannot go crazy anymore. That is control. Right? Because the knowing is so strong that you just cannot go into the craziness anymore. So it is gentle.
It is open. It’s not tight. It’s not something that you that you force onto your own mind. You know, we have to somehow we already do that enough, I think, forcing things onto our mind. What we try to do is we try to be gentle with our mind, but if we know, we can be very consistent with our mind.
For instance, when we do meditation, what we do in the beginning is we try to we try to focus our mind. Our mind finds it very difficult to be still on one object, isn’t it? Our mind jumps from one to the other. Whole story is going around in our mind. Focusing the mind is very difficult.
So in the beginning, when we have an object and we focus our mind on that, what we see is that the mind starts wandering off. We start thinking about what happened yesterday. Are we thinking about what we’re gonna do tomorrow or straight after this class? And then when we notice that, we bring the mind gently back. Right?
We as Westerners may say, go back, or we beat the mind up. You didn’t do the right job. That’s not how we wanna do it. We take the mind gently and say, please come back. Then when we see two seconds later, the mind goes again.
When we notice it, we bring the mind gently back. Where we are very consistent is that every time when we notice the mind is wandering off, we say, no. Come back. Right? That is what we do firm.
What we like to do is we say, oh, no. But I really like this. Oh, this is so beautiful what I’m thinking about now. Or I really wanna fix this problem, and if I keep on thinking about it, the problem I will get the problem fixed. Right?
That’s what we have to try to do is say, no, I’m not going to engage in that. I do not want to think about it. I bring my mind back. I just want to focus. I bring my mind back.
I wanna focus. Right? We are very consistent in that, but not tight. Can you can you see the difference? Can you see how we either beat ourselves up and bringing ourselves back?
Or we let ourselves go and we’re very flexible and that we can wander everywhere as long as it is nice or useful. Alright. Even if you have the most beautiful meditation, if you set out from the beginning of the meditation, I’m gonna focus on my breath, and your mind after two minutes gets this incredible feeling of love for all sentient beings and you say, oh, wow. This is so much more profound. I’ll just focus on that.
Right? What we say is that was not a good meditation. During the meditation you never change your topic. If you set out the next five minutes I’m going to focus on my breath, that’s what you’re going to do no matter what happens. Right?
No matter what beautiful experience passes. Just let them go and know that one day they will come back. Okay? It’s difficult, isn’t it? You can see the mind already like, oh, but it would be so nice.
Very consistent. That is the training. You know, it’s like when your personal trainer says, now you have to walk for five minutes, you have to stop running, you have to walk. And then, but you feel like, oh no, but I really would like to run. Now the trainer says, no, you have to walk.
You have to stop running now to walk so that on the long run you will have a much bigger effect on your on your body than when you keep on running when you feel good. Sure. Can you see that? The more you can see that that is important, the more you will be able to bring your mind back, you know, because your mind start to do deals when you’re meditating, trying to convince you that it’s much nicer to go somewhere else. And you have to be strong enough to say, no, I’m not gonna do that.
So transforming your mind has nothing to do with believing in some upper being, in a god or a Buddha or whoever we might think is there. We cannot just do prayers and then it will happen. You know, prayers alone is never going to give you any result. Prayers have a kind of a function in the sense that not sure I should go there yet. Prayers have a function, but we have to do the training.
Otherwise, prayers cannot do their function. Right? So I will talk another time about prayers in another module, but now about the mind. It’s not going to come from anywhere except from yourself. Explained when I I I described the meditation, I explained a little bit already what we’re gonna do.
Isn’t it why we meditate? We bring the mind back. Who has never meditated before? Everybody? Who has never done Buddhist meditation?
You know? Good. I’ll tell you. So we all suffer from a distracted mind. When my mind is distracted, that means my mind is not in the present moment.
You have to check if what I’m saying is correct. Right? If my mind is distracted, it is indulging in thoughts. Right? Where do the thoughts go?
They either go to what is going to happen to me the next five minutes, tomorrow, whenever, in the future, or it’s going over what already has happened to me. We never think about what we’re doing right now. We’re thinking about past experiences or future experiences. True? So every time when a mind gets distracted, come in.
So they take us away from the present moment. When thoughts are there, have a certain belief. Thoughts trigger our feelings, or our feelings trigger thoughts. They influence each other. And then when feelings come, we put more thoughts in it.
And then we start to fuel either our excitement, looking forward to what is going to happen or maybe to what already has happened, or we start getting angry of something that has happened or might happen. True? And then the more we feel our emotions, the more we start to think and the more we make it, the bigger we make it. We suffer from that. Is that true or not?
Do we suffer from that? Yeah. We want that to be quiet. So what we then have to do is if we bring our mind to the present moment, there will still thoughts arise. But if we do not follow the thoughts, there will be no fuel that can stir up emotions.
Right? So the mind and emotions cannot stir up more thoughts. We we just cut the cycle by bringing the mind to the present moment. Is it possible to think in the present moment? Is it?
If you focus on your body right now, is it possible to have a thought when you when you focus on your body? Is it? You you have to check. Yeah. I think it’s possible.
So the moment there is a thought, where is the thought? Is that a thought, or is that an experience? No. It’s a thought. What do you think?
That I have to keep my mind. I’m so disappointed. Okay. So now the distracting thought comes. What does what does that think?
You’ve given me a distracting thought. Which is? Good. So your thought process is invoked. The fusion and the wisdom will come from that, you know, you will sort it out.
When you focus in a moment, yeah, what we do is we do say, oh, no. I have to go back. I have to go back. I have to go back. Right?
And that is to bring our mind back. So we won’t have talk about that thought because that’s really difficult to see that that is not in the present moment. But if you feel if you’ve experienced your breathing, can you do you think in that moment that you experience? You focus on the experience. The mind is always focused, right?
The mind is always an object, always a focal object. So if I focus on my experience, then they cannot be at the same time a thought that I focus upon. They can come very quickly after each other. Right? So I can focus on my experience, and then a thought comes in, and I focus on the thought.
And then I go back to my experience, and then a thought comes in, and then I go back to the experience, and the thought comes in. If I keep on bringing my mind back to experience, the thoughts have much less chance to surface than when I keep indulging in my thoughts. Can we see that? It’s like we bring our mind away from what it likes to do all the time. So in itself, focusing on the breath can be very boring, you know, you’re just breathing.
And our mind likes entertainment. So that’s gonna happen. In the beginning you think like, what’s this about? This is boring. You know?
Just bring your mind back. Just bring your mind back. If you keep on doing that, the thoughts will naturally subside, emotions naturally subside, then everything starts to calm down. Then you start to perceive space in your mind, clarity in your mind. And that space and clarity gives a feeling of freedom, gives a feeling feeling of that, oh, I can breathe again, you know, I can think again.
There is some wisdom that can come in the clarity. Okay? They say, you can compare the mind. I should have brought a glass of water with mud in it. And then when I stir the water, we all know that the mud is going to go in the water, and it will pervade the whole of the water.
That is how what we normally do with the mind. We keep on stirring. Right? And then we say, I don’t know, you know, why I can’t find any solutions for my problems. The problems are too big, you know, but the actually, the water is too cloudy.
So when we start stirring and we just focus on our body or on our breath, then slowly the mud is gonna sink down and the water becomes clear. Our mind is exactly the same. Right. So when we do meditation, we wanna create that clarity. We want to develop that clarity.
That clarity is, I’m not sure if I can say that, almost synonymous with our wisdom. If we have a quiet mind, wisdom can surface. We know instinctively what is the right thing to do. Okay? So that’s what we’re gonna we’ll do that now.
A short meditation, five minutes, just to give you a taste. And, also, I’m gonna ask you to do that at home every day. Meditation is not about achieving anything, you know, we’re not going to go anywhere. You don’t have to think about I’m going to get a result from this. Meditation is simply being aware of what is.
Being aware of what is. When we are aware of what is, we stop our fantasies of what could have been in the past or what can be in the future. If we think about the past, we always try to change our story. I don’t know if you have ever noticed that. We go over it and we thought, ah, but it wouldn’t have been it would have been nice if this and this and this would have happened.
Or if he would have said this or if I would have done this, then this and this and this might have happened. We try to change the story all the time. That’s a fantasy. That’s not reality. It’s almost try to change reality.
Right? It’s quite sad, isn’t it, if you start thinking about it? And then what we do in the future, if we think about the future, we create these fantastic things that might happen if and then we have all the different scenarios happening. And I can only tell you this because I know how that works. Think I’m free of this.
If we bring our mind to the present moment, we focus on what is. And focusing on what is, there is no space for fantasies. Fantasies make us miserable. Fantasies make us sick. Even if they’re beautiful fantasies, they still make us sick.
They’re based on delusions. They’re based on nothing. It’s pure air, you know, bubbles, nothing. They have no reality in itself. The more we are away from reality, the more we suffer.
Right? So bringing our mind to reality, just experiencing what is, that in itself helps suffering to become less in your life. What is really happening? And that’s a question that you can ask every day. What’s really happening right now?
Right? Come back. It’s almost like grounding process. We’re not so grounded, are we? Okay.
Let’s do the meditation. So no reason just observing what is. Turn off your mobiles. Thank you. That was just on time.
That’s okay. It’s not a problem. When we meditate, we you know, the next module is about how to meditate. So I’m not gonna go into very extensive in all in all the details, but I got few very quick what is important in your posture. The main thing is that we have a straight back.
Straight and at the same time relaxed. You know? Normally, when we have straight back, we go like this and then the shoulders go up, and then we become too tight. So you have to find the middle between sitting like this and sitting like that. Yeah.
So for me, what works is that I roll my pelvis up and down, and then at a certain point, I find a place where I feel that my spine naturally straightens up. And then I can feel that I can let go of my shoulders. I can just relax them. So try to find that place for your spine. If you sit on a chair, it’s good if you have your feet on the floor.
You can put your hands on your lap. You can put them on your thighs, on your knees, wherever you feel is comfortable. And your head is a little bit bent forward. It helps a little bit to calm the mind. And then be aware of your body.
And every time that you notice that your mind goes somewhere else, you just gently bring it back to your body. Be aware that you are a Buddha house, in the meditation room or the as we call it. You’re sitting on a chair or a cushion. And you’re present in your body. Your mind wanders off, bring it gently back to your body.
And then bring your awareness to your abdomen where you can observe the rising and falling of that abdomen every time when you breathe in and breathe out. Breathe natural and follow the rhythm of your breath. Bring your mind back to the rhythm of your breath. Observe the movements of your abdomen. When you breathe in, your abdomen rises.
When you breathe out, your abdomen falls. When your mind gets distracted, bring it gently back, observing the rising and falling of your abdomen. And watch very carefully, very precise, the movement of your abdomen. Don’t miss any part of the movement. Bring your mind back.
And then relax the mind. If you feel ready, can open your eyes. Was it long time? Short? Short?
Short? Long? Where? Long? So it was about four minutes.
That can be short and long, you know. Long and short is just an experience. When you meditate you can lose time and three minutes can take ages and sometimes thirty minutes goes like that, you know. So, we never know. And that can be every time different.
Was it difficult to bring your mind back? No? Yes? Could you put in that effort again and again? Could you see the tendency of your mind to sneak and to negotiate and to see if we could get a deal?
Uh-huh. No. No. No. First, it goes off, and then you realize, oh, I’m I forgot.
You know? So then you have to go after it and bring it back. That’s how it’s in the beginning, that’s normal. You know? And if you keep on meditating, if you keep on trying, then at a certain point, it goes away and and you can run after it much quicker.
You know? And then it it takes quite a while before you notice, oh, there it wants to go. Oh, no. You’re not going. You know?
That takes quite a while. So don’t expect that. And don’t you know, sometimes the mind can be away for five minutes and then you think, oh, I’m meditating. I have to bring it back. That’s okay.
The fact is that as soon as you catch it that you bring it back. That’s the only thing that you have to do. All the rest, yeah, we try our best. So we are all here in Buddhism, it’s very important to set a good motivation at the beginning of any activity that you do, that’s what they actually say. But we’ll especially do it when we try to study Buddhism or when we try to understand the mind because it makes whatever results is going to come from this makes it much more powerful and more long lasting.
And you will get more extensive explanations about this in the during the course, so you have to take this on my word. So trying to think about what your motivation is for coming here. You know, and we all have different reasons. And some of you might come because you are in pain physically or emotionally. Others might come because, you know, you have tried many things in your life and nothing worked and now you’re to try Buddhism.
And others might come before because they’re just looking for more meaning in their life. But everybody is different and everybody has their own motivation and so try to think about what your motivation is. Most of us, we like to improve our life how it is right now, you know. And most of us, we try to do that in trying to fix what we call Samsāra. Samsāra is the cyclic existence where we repeat the same kind of mistakes over and over again.
Buddhism is not about fixing saṃsāra. We cannot fix saṃsāra. As long as we have delusional states of mind, we will suffer. But we cannot escape from that. No matter how much we study, no matter how much we practice, we cannot fix that.
What we can do is we can create a better state of mind so that we have more space from our pain, so that we have more tools to deal with our pain. And by applying that, the pain might become less and less and less. But we cannot change the nature of Samsāra. Right? That’s just how it is.
What we can change is we can change our mind and we can bring our mind slowly, slowly in another direction than Samsāra. We can bring our mind out of Samsāra. Right? But we cannot stop the pains of life. We cannot stop death.
We cannot stop aging. We cannot stop sickness. Right? These things will keep on ripening. So if you have an expectation like that, put it aside, it’s not going to happen.
But you can learn to deal better with whatever happens to us. Right? That’s what Buddhism is about. So then just close for a minute your eyes and with that motivation that you just had in mind, imagine that you are surrounded by all the people in your life. All your friends, the people that you love, the people that you like, but also all your enemies, which are the people that you do not like, those who have harmed you, and also also the strangers, those that you know from a distance.
And imagine that they are really here doing this course with you, sharing the insights and understandings that you generate during this evening. They open their hearts and transform their minds just as you open and transform your mind. They connect with the essence just as you connect with yours. And then reflect on the reasons for being here. What made you look into the newsletter or the website to come, pay your course fee.
What is it that you want for yourself? And what is it that you want for all these people of your life who are here in your imagination meditating with you? Try to make that really clear. And then make a strong determination that while you listen that you keep an open mind and that you achieve what you set out to do both for yourself and for these people of your life. And then when you feel that you have it clear, you can open your eyes.
So why do we want to know about the mind? Why is it important to know about the mind? Sorry? So we can shut it up. So we can shut it up.
How do you feel when your mind shuts up? Relieved. Enormously. Yes. More happy.
Right. Yes. To understand our experiences or to get control over our experiences. Is that what what you’re saying? To control our mind?
That’s why we wanna know about the mind. To control the mind. And then if we can control the mind, how does the mind what do we experience? Peace. What else?
Clarity. What else? Happiness? Of Of what? What is?
Yeah. Wisdom. Is this not included in this? If we understand the mind, we experience wisdom. Or is wisdom the understanding of the mind?
I’m not sure. You see what I’m saying? It can be both, but space for wisdom. This is all about feeling better, isn’t it? There’s nothing that comes out that we’re going to feel worse.
So the more we naturally know that we’re going to feel better. It’s true, isn’t it? That is what your wisdom is saying. If I know more, I will be more happy. That means that part of us knows that if we know more, we can control more, then we will become more happy.
That means also that somehow we know that our state that we are in now is not a happy state. It’s not a normal state in the sense that it’s not our potential. It’s not the end. It’s not our maximum what is possible. Intuitively, we know that there has to be more.
We know that there is a peace somewhere in the mind that we can find. There is a happiness in the mind that we can find. True? It’s very interesting, isn’t it? So, Buddhism says that if you know, if you understand the mind better, you learn to control the mind better and then the mind will naturally go to its nature.
This is the nature of the nature What we have to learn is to understand our craziness and how that is not the nature of the mind. We have to learn to distinguish what is, how our craziness delusions look like, how our not knowing looks like. And if we can identify that and we can say, oh, but that’s not the nature of the mind, then it naturally will go away. It will not come back anymore. Is that true?
Not sure? After a long time. The moment you see, oh, that’s not my nature, that’s a very powerful awareness, isn’t it? Because then every time after that you think it is part of you, you say, oh no, no, no, because I had an experience it’s not part of me, right? And the moment, yes, then you might have to train yourself in letting go that tendency that we have of what we believed in.
But you know that that is your nature, right? As soon as we’re going to experience the space that we have in the mind, the better we familiarize ourselves with that. Then when all the noise comes again, we can say no, no, no, I have something else in my mind that I can focus upon and that I can develop. At the moment we believe that we are an uncontrolled mind. True?
We don’t know anything different. Yes. Why have I done that last one on my own? You know? Just don’t do that.
And it’s because I think that all that stuff that I think is my mind is what is. It’s what I’ve been identifying, and that I can’t really hear that stuff. Mhmm. So that is me. Mhmm.
Yeah? Yeah. And it isn’t. And especially, you know, if you you you I mean, if you want to know about yourself, the first thing that we do is maybe we go into therapy, you know. Some are lucky and they go straight to Buddhism, but you go into therapy and what you do is you go into your mind and you go into all the pains that you had.
And And I’m not saying that that is wrong, right? It can be very useful. But you go into the pain and then, you know, you say, oh no, that is not what I wanted and I want it actually like this and I want the nourishment, I want to But what you’re doing is you’re constantly talking about your uncontrolled mind. And you can make your uncontrolled mind you can help that to feel a little bit better. And you get more insight in that.
But you never can go with these techniques beyond your uncontrolled mind. Right? Because Buddhism doesn’t talk about that, psychology doesn’t talk about that. You get techniques where you can learn a little bit control and now they have the breathing meditation and the mindfulness and, you know, they take some techniques from Buddhism, but they never go beyond the uncontrolled mind. And if you really want to find peace and if you really want to find everlasting happiness, you have to go beyond your own delusions, your own ignorance, your own, Lama Yeshe would say, your own ego.
Lama Yeshe says you have two things, you have the nature of the mind and we have our ego. Our ego is what is our ego? We think we are. Who we think we are. Oh, yeah, very good.
Who we think you are. Who we think we are. Who we think we are, right? Not who we are, but who we think we are. We have an idea about this is me, me, I, mine.
We define ourselves with different things, right? We define ourselves with our personality. We define ourselves with the role that we have, maybe in society, in our family, We identify ourselves with culture, possessions, a culture, achievements, Achievements. Can also go the other way, isn’t it? Our misery.
Isn’t it? Oh, poor me. And what we’re doing is we we we think this is what we are. That’s what we believe, isn’t it? And in this we try to be as happy as we can.
And if we have a lot of misery, then we have some techniques to get us a little bit out of that misery. And when the misery comes in the family then we might change family, husband, friends, whoever. If it is in a society we change a profession, if it’s a personality we go into personality training, you know. If we don’t like the culture we might move to another country. We try to be as happy as we can by changing things here, doing it as good as we that it fits to us, that we feel, yeah, this is me.
We have this feeling inside that we think this is me, and we try to match whatever happens here with that me so that that me is as happy as possible. True? That me can be we can have a feeling of me that is how do say that? Inflated? How do say it?
What is the opposite of that? Thank you. So we cannot have an inflated or deflated ego. And most of the times we have both, isn’t it? We have this low self esteem and then we create all these stories of what we actually actually are but nobody can see that and nobody acknowledges that.
Is that true? We have both. So Buddhism says we are all not that, really. This is all not the nature of the mind. This is all pollution, complete pollution.
This is actually something that doesn’t exist at all in the mind, really. It’s not truly existing. Buddhism says that the nature of the mind is from the beginning pure, has no stains, no mud, you know. The mind is like pure water. So sometimes they compare the mind with the blue sky.
The nature of the mind is like the blue sky. And then everything that has to do with ego. What what is related to ego? What we have thoughts about ego? Thoughts.
What else pops up in the mind related to the ego? Emotions. Emotions. More? More?
Attachment. Attachment. Yep. Can I call that feelings? Feelings.
Pleasant and unpleasant. And from there Self seeking. Is that thoughts? Yeah. So this pops up in the mind, all related to this.
Buddhism says what pops up in the mind is like cloud. If we compare the nature of the mind with the blue sky, then whatever pops up is like clouds. And what we have at the moment is we have this very clouded sky. The clouds are very thick. And we believe that that is all there is.
We have never seen anything else. So we look up and we think that’s me. That’s just me. And nobody has ever told you, beyond the clouds, there’s actually blue sky. These clouds are not you.
They’re just obstructing the side of you. But if we can remove the clouds clouds and can see what we really are, then let’s say if we would really realize that we are actually the blue sky, perfect happiness will come. With the clouds we can be happy, you know, but it’s all this temporary happiness which comes and goes and never really gives us satisfaction. But as soon as we can remove the clouds it’s just already there. We don’t have to do anything to be happy because it’s already there.
Happiness is part of the nature of the mind. Peace is part of the nature of the mind. Contentment is part of the nature of the mind. All the positive qualities that we just had on the board, they’re all part of the nature of the mind. They are already there in us.
We just can’t see it because we are so obscured by our own ego, by our own thoughts, by our own emotions, and we believe that we are that. We are not more than that. We try to create more beautiful clouds and better clouds and different colors. And we have techniques for that. And that’s not in itself wrong, you know, it’s like it can help you to have because for a while, even if you study Buddhism, for a long while, we will have clouds.
So it’s good to know how you can make the clouds most beautiful or less thick maybe, you know. But eventually you want to penetrate that and you want to learn to know the nature of the mind. The nature of the mind is what is real. It’s like, you know, when we see the sky, it’s like that is always there, isn’t it? It’s unchanging.
It’s like we can almost if we think if we would like to touch it, we feel like no, you actually cannot touch it no matter how you try. You cannot touch that blue sky. They say the mind the mind is similar in the sense that it is like space. We cannot touch it. We cannot feel it.
We cannot see it. We can see the blue sky because it’s blue. But if there was no blue, then it would be very difficult to see, isn’t it? So we see this blue but at the same time there is nothing blue that can be touched, is it? It’s like, it’s like, it is like space, it is space, space that looks blue.
The mind is like space, but it has no color. We can’t see it with our eyes. We can’t touch it. We can’t smell it. We can’t hear it.
It is like space, and thoughts and emotions arise in that. And thoughts and emotions, they appear like they are real. They appear like they are reality itself. True? We almost believe that our thoughts is True?
Reality. But everything that appears in the mind has nothing to do with reality. So we can have thoughts that go very far away from the nature of the mind, which are sometimes even opposite of how the nature of the mind really functions. Some Sometimes we have thoughts that are in accord with the nature of the mind. But still these so the thoughts that are more in accord with the nature of the mind, if we have them in our mind, we will experience more happiness and joy.
We will live more in accord with reality. The thoughts that are far away from the nature of the mind and sometimes opposite of the nature of the mind, they give us problems, misery, suffering. Right? So what we can do, you know, at the moment, we do not have the capacity to penetrate the nature of the mind straight away. We can’t we we gotta do a meditation on that later tonight.
But to really we can maybe see some glimpses. But to realize the nature of the mind as it really is is very, very difficult because it’s a very subtle mind. Well, how to say, what we have to do in order to get there, we will have to purify the thick layer of ignorance. We will somehow have to make it thinner. We somehow have to make our thoughts more in accord with the nature of the mind.
And the more we can do that, the more we will move our mind towards a relief from suffering, freedom from suffering, right? Happiness is not more than freedom from suffering. When we can remove that whole ego thing, we are free of that ego thing. So we are free from the suffering that comes with that. We suffer of aging because we believe we would like our ego to be in another way, isn’t it?
Or at least the body that belongs to that ego. The body. Yes. We it’s a very strong one. All the celebrities.
Not only them. No. We do that too. Freedom from suffering. So we can can do a lot here in making ourselves happy, but it’s all temporary happiness.
It’s all the happiness that goes up and down. It’s all the happiness that never gives us the real satisfaction. We know that happiness, isn’t it? We know that anything that we strive for and we get it, we have this feeling of happiness and at the same time disappointment because we’re not as happy as we actually thought we were going to be. When we think we’re going to get something, we have this fantasy about how happiness feels like.
But when we get it, that happiness is never there. True? That’s because happiness is not coming from there. Happiness is not coming from anything external. When you think about it you already have the feeling of happiness.
That feeling is coming from your mind. So you know how happiness feels like. It’s already there. It’s just that you believe that if you get that, the feeling is going to come, but the feeling is already there. And then you get that and you get a burden, and your happiness is gone.
I exaggerate a little bit. But we have this you don’t agree? Oh, I think you’re exaggerating. I don’t think you’re exaggerating. You don’t agree with that part.
So looking for happiness outside is never going to give it, never ever. Because happiness is an internal experience. It’s coming, it’s inside us, isn’t it? We believe if I have that I will have a nice feeling arising in my mind, I will be happy. And we have tried this many, many, many, many times and never ever has that happiness come.
The chocolate is never as nice as we think it is, isn’t it? We, You still have a lot. You still eat in chocolate. And you still hope, isn’t it? Maybe this piece.
Maybe this Yeah. Yeah. And that is what they tell us. Hey, you want to be happy, this is what you have to do. Buy our insurance, buy this car, do it now, have a house like this, then you’re going to be happy.
A whole society is based on this. Imagine that our society would say, oh you don’t have to do that because happy is already in your mind. Just realize the nature of your mind and you’re perfectly happy. What would happen to our society? Sorry?
The use of capitalism. But we don’t have to worry about that, you know, because human beings are driven by desire. So this will always function on this planet, right? But we can be free of that. We do not have to follow that whole institution.
Sorry? Buddhism doesn’t say move out of society. Right? No, it doesn’t. Doesn’t say go against society?
It seems to be a lot easier to be a Buddhist than a Catholic in the fall than in Australia. Yes. Because here our desire is constantly triggered. And we get constantly told like, you know, you know, stupid you are, you’re still unhappy. Just do this, do that, do that, you’re going to be happy, you know, and it’s not true.
And we get fooled by our own desire again and again and again. And we think, oh, maybe they are alright. Maybe, maybe if I find the right girlfriend, I’m going to be happy. You know, and then you start looking for it and then disappointment and, oh, maybe I didn’t do the right thing. And you try it again and you go in therapy to make yourself better and more attractive and whatever.
And it’s just never working. Mhmm. But also the also the Nepali people suffer from this desire very much, very much, and they’re trying to be like us, and we’re trying to be like them. And we think if the culture would be just different or if we, you know. Buddhism says this is all based on fantasy, basically.
Buddhism says the way we believe in I, the way we believe that I exist ultimately is a fantasy, is not true, is not how I really exist. So Buddhism doesn’t say there is no I, that we do not exist. No, we do exist. But the way we exist is very different as the way that we appear to exist. What we do is we react in the way things appear to us.
So when I get very emotional, my eye surfaces and there is this eye appearing to me and I’m very angry and I feel I have the right to defend myself and I have a feeling there is a real entity that I have to defend. Right? And I do whatever is needed to make that entity feel safe. That entity what appears Buddhism says it’s a complete fantasy doesn’t exist. It’s not there.
There is nothing, is it? There is nothing. And that might be shocking when you hear that. Buddhism doesn’t say, so you do not exist. No, you do exist.
But that what appears there, doesn’t exist. That’s the creation of the mind. It’s like a mental construction. A mental construction, like a conception, like a belief. So that I that appears.
I won’t go into that tonight because that’s a long thing. That’s the last module. Almost the last module. If that doesn’t really exist, that means that if we realize the opposite of that, this will all disappear. Right?
It’s like it’s it’s like you you turn on the light in a very dark room. The moment the light you turn on the light, the darkness is gone. The moment you see the opposite, you the moment you see how the eye really exists, you know that this is all not true and it will disappear. Tou, can you see that? Yeah, we live within it.
Yes. Yes. And not going to tell you, so Buddhism is not about how can I live within this comfortably? Buddhism is about how can I get out of this? Because this is like a prison, you know, because we believe that and we we act in certain ways.
We we believe that a world exists in certain ways. We believe that our possessions exist in a certain way. And from that, we act all the time. That’s like a prison. That’s not not a freedom, right?
So most things that you find in the world is about how can I fix this? How can I be happy in this prison? Buddhism is about how can I get out of the prison? All right? Yes?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you exist. As long as you have this feeling, that’s from where you live. Right? So it’s not that you say, oh, the self forms up, but it doesn’t exist, so I just put it aside and I don’t listen to it.
That’s that’s not what I’m trying to say. Don’t go there because that’s dangerous, you know. You go a little bit mad if you do that. Don’t do that. You just live naturally however you live.
At the same time you listen to the teachings and you listen to the nature of the mind and then slowly, slowly you learn how to take this not so seriously. So this power diminishes a little bit and you learn to know about the nature of the mind. And the more you know about this, the more you can say, oh, I won’t take this so seriously. Or when it comes up very strongly, I have some other thoughts that I can let surface surface because I know about this part too, right? And then slowly, slowly the power diminishes, right?
But as long as you feel that, you keep on living from that. No. The construct what we have is not right. And on the basis of the construct, we develop a lot of attachment. So you wanna know how the how the eye exists?
Takes them away. Yeah. So the I is not more than a name that we impute on the body and the mind. I mean, like Yeah. Yeah.
You can talk to someone if you have met a quote. I’m a I’m an engineer. Or You’re still an engineer. It’s not gonna change. It’s not gonna change.
But you stop you But that’s fine. You can still do that. But this is about you you keep on living in a normal way. Right? But as as Buddhist, you don’t start going strange.
Don’t do that. Stay normal. In your mind, you can do other things, but stay normal. This is about if I learn more about this and this starts to lose its power, right? Then when I’m an engineer, how do say that in English?
Say that again. Engineer. And I lose, you’re not, you’re cheating. When I’m a nurse, you’re a nurse, When I’m a nurse and for instance I get an accident, a car accident and I can’t walk anymore and I to stop being a nurse. Right?
If you identify really strongly and a lot of your personality depends, and your life depends upon that, your life falls apart. Right? The more you know about this, you are still a nurse, but you don’t, you it’s not so important for you to survive. This is almost that we need this to survive, to be who we are. And if we lose it, our life is gone.
Right? The more you know about this, doesn’t matter what you are. You know? You can be anything. I mean, I’ve never felt that needle that’s happened to survive.
Yeah. But it’s just who I am. But if you lose it, you need you know the moment you lose it, you know how much you needed it to survive. True? Does has anybody that experience?
You can think, oh, no. It’s not so important for me. I can easily give that up until it’s taken away from you. And then suddenly, you realize, then what am I? Who am I?
When you get really drunk and you’re kind of No. No. I’m not talking about drunk. It’s that sort of feeling where am I? Who am I?
No. No. No. No. When you’re drunk, you you can even identify with you being a drunk, you know, an alcoholic.
I’m an alcoholic. You know, that can be one of your identifications. Andrew? Yes. The stronger we do this, the more unhappiness can occur in our life.
Yeah. The more we can let us go and it’s, you know, it’s not that it doesn’t exist, but we don’t hold on to it so strong, then the more freedom we have from that. So then no matter what happens in our life, we just know how to just keep on floating. Right? Then the happier we are.
We have a freedom from this. Could somebody turn on the echo? It’s getting a bit hot here. So oh, open the door. Yep.
So the nature of the mind was was that alright with you, that answer that I gave? It’s a mere name imputed onto the body and the mind? So the nature of the mind is free of the ego, completely free of the ego. This is a concept, an idea, basically. It’s just an idea.
It’s a very, very subtle one. Know, it’s not that you can go into your mind and say, oh, there is my idea about my ego. It’s not like that. It’s on many, many levels and it’s a very, very deep and very deep subtle levels. We have concepts that we can’t see just by looking into our mind now, you know, you have to meditate, meditate, meditate, study, study, study, meditate, study, meditate for a long period of time and go deeper and deeper and deeper.
But it is a concept. The nature of the mind is free of all concepts. There are no concepts at all. Concepts are like the clouds in the sky. The nature of the mind is free of any clouds.
No, no, no. As long as you worry about this, you keep on worrying about this. It’s not a problem. If you know this, the more you know this, the more you can see, you know, well, you know, there might be a day that we can’t pay for the mortgage and that we have to leave this house. The more you understand this, the less you will suffer from whatever happens to your life because you are more flexible.
You do not hold on to that. I need this house in order to be happy. So you just loosen up your own tie. You know, we tie ourselves up. Yes?
Or many questions? Yeah? I just wanted to Oh, sorry. I can’t. Yeah.
I’m sorry. No. That’s alright. Keep on going. Of drew up my own little diagram Yeah.
And put body and personality and family around nature and mind as well. Uh-huh. And I think what what we’re getting at is not that that suddenly doesn’t exist anymore, but that No, this is your actual existence. This is your actual existence. I don’t know.
It just doesn’t feel quite right. Because I think I still need to We do. Oh, it is not that if you realize this, this doesn’t exist anymore, right? But what we see is that what ego does is ego likes or doesn’t like, right? So when we like something the ego gets attached.
So you can look into your life everything that you’re attached to, everybody that you love, everything that you like, all the wealth that you have, your house, your car, you’re attached. Everything that you don’t like you try to remove from your life because you have an aversion for that. So you make sure that you don’t meet that person that you do not like, you go another way when you go to your work and blah blah blah. So the ego functions under the control of attachment and aversion. When we realize the nature of the mind, the attachment and aversion becomes less.
The power of this becomes less, so the attachment and aversion becomes less. This still exists. We can cherish our friends and family completely, right? But our attachment to them lessens. So that means our attachment to those that we love lessens, which means that we don’t need so much from them, and we are more free to give.
Our aversion to those that we do not like lessens, which means that we can make friends with those that we first didn’t like. So if you make this less strong, you become more happy because you can cherish those that you love much more. You can learn to cherish those that you didn’t like before. The friends in your life are going be bigger and more and more friends. Everything happens to you is alright.
It all, you know, you are okay with everything. Learning about the nature of the mind is not letting go of your family, friends, body, whatever. That is still there. But your relationship with it changes. Yeah?
And it becomes a more positive relationship. It becomes a more ego is needy, right? Ego is not that part of us that freely gives. Ego is the part that says, I want, I want. What can you do for me?
Oh, you can give me a lot, you’re my friend. That’s the ego. Right? The nature of the mind, the nature of the mind is love. The nature of the mind is what can I do for you?
Nothing, expecting nothing in return. Yeah? No. No. So the nature of the mind is love, compassion.
Love is the wish others to be happy. Compassion is the wish others to be free of suffering. That is our nature. But what we are doing is we do not recognize that nature, right? Sometimes we might have that surfacing once in a while, you know, that feeling of compassion that you just want to give and share and you don’t care about getting anything in return.
That might be a glimpse of how our actual nature looks like. That’s not indifference. Indifference is if our ego is very hurt, and we make a very big wall around it, and we say, I don’t want to feel anything anymore. I don’t want to have any attachment or aversion to anything. I don’t care.
I just put myself on an island. That’s not the nature of the the difficult for us. It’s very difficult. For us, it’s mixed. You know, when we feel love, there is attachment.
And when there is attachment, there is love. And, you know, the Dalai Lama says we the nature of mind, you shouldn’t have attachment. Don’t say shouldn’t. We have attachment. We haven’t realized the nature of the mind.
We are all here. Okay? We’re all here. Some are here and some are here, but we are all here. About this?
That’s all. We’re trying to think about it. The ideal is that you don’t have to answer it. No, it’s not an ideal. It’s like if you want to be perfectly happy, then this is how you can achieve that.
But you can’t achieve that if you’ve got attachment to something. No. That’s true. That’s true. That’s what I’m saying.
The ideal is to love, but not to have attachment. That’s your ideal because you want to be happy. Don’t make that an what you’re doing is you’re making that some kind of outside truth. Oh, I should actually be doing that. So that means I’m not doing it.
I’m a bad person. Right? It’s not about that. Isn’t that for Buddhism? No.
Absolutely not. Buddhism yes. That’s true. Buddhism says, what do you want in life? And you say, I want to be happy.
And Buddhism says, well, if you do this, this is the cause of your unhappiness. This is going to make you happy. You choose. Buddhism doesn’t care what you do, you know. It’s up to you.
There is nobody who is going to judge you. Oh, he’s a very good boy because he’s looking for the nature of his mind. Be truly happy, you need to be able to love but not be attached. Yes. That’s true.
Can you see what I’m saying? You just said a few minutes ago that attachment is part of We are still in here. So we still function on the input of attachment. When we love, that is always mixed with attachment. If there is more love, there is more space for giving.
Right? If something happens that is not so nice, there is space for giving. If the attachment is very big, then there will be lots of fight and the relationship easily breaks. Right? But yes, we are there.
We our relationships are mixed. As soon as somebody starts hurting you, you can see how much love you have, really, you know? And if you really love, you can work through that. If you don’t really love, you will leave. But we don’t beat ourselves up.
Right? We just make a diagnosis. This is where we are. I actually wanna be here, and this is what you can practice. That’s all.
Nobody who tells you what to do. Okay? And you have to understand. You understand? It’s very important to get that out of your mind.
There is no god, Buddha, whoever, who’s judging whatever you’re doing. You don’t have to do it for anybody except for you, for you, to give you happiness because you deserve that. This is your nature. It’s your nature. We do not believe that.
Right? You’re not the only person. We do not believe that this is our real nature. We believe that we are that we are actually putting ourselves down all the time. We cannot even think that this is possible.
Right? That’s why we have to think about it. That’s why we have to talk about it. This is possible. There are many lamas who show that this is possible.
We believe in our little world, everything that we see on television is all about this. Everything. There is not one glimpse of the nature of the mind. So we are never exposed to that this is a possibility for us. Right?
We, you know, even if you have a inflated ego, you know, it’s still never ever going to touch what we actually are. No matter what kind of goddess you appear to be, it’s nothing compared to the nature of the mind if you realize that. Okay? So we have to open our mind and see there is something completely beyond what we know. Which is much better?
Well, actually, we do know. Because every time when we long for happiness, we are longing for the happiness that is the happiness of the nature of the mind. So instinctively we know that somehow, and we never give up looking for happiness. Every moment of our life we are driven by looking for happiness. Everything we’re doing is focused on wanting to be more happy.
Right? That’s because that part of us must know that there is something that we can achieve, right? Otherwise, why would we do it? If life would be really miserable and there was no happiness possible, why would we keep on striving? It’s very strange that we do that, isn’t it?
But I think because we somehow know deep inside we know that that is a possibility. So we have to think big, and you can wish big happiness. It is there. And the more you think about it and the more you make that comparison between the mind and the sky and what we think we are with the clouds, And you keep on focusing on the sky, you know, that gives you space from your thoughts. So can you imagine?
We’ll do that meditation later tonight. I saw some fingers that I ignored. It’s not it’s not having expecting anything back. That’s true. We yeah.
Yes. Yes. Yes. So the love love pure love means that you wish others to be happy, which means nothing comes in return necessary. Yeah.
Thank you. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Did everybody hear that?
Yeah, it’s true. It’s true. That’s why we have all these images here, you know, just to remind us of the nature of the mind. Because every being that you see here has realized the nature of the mind. So everything that you see reminds, it’s like an imprint, you know, just as such watch telly and you see all the crap from this side, and you like that, and you come here and you think, oh, this is a little bit exaggerated, but well, your telly is more full of more items than what you see here.
Right? But it is all to remind you of the nature of the mind. Yeah. Just one and a half hour a week. That’s it.
But it can help to at home to find something, you know. Even if you have a picture of the blue sky, that can help with the sun, you know, that can help to remind you of that nature. What about the rose in a vase? A rose in a vase. Where is that?
Yeah. That that could help us, like, remind us of the nature. Is it? There are no roses here and no vases. But it’s it’s usually and it’s well, I I I always stop and smell the roses.
I always make That’s fine. And and you get you get, you know, you get a nice feeling and a nice experience, and you’re happy. But it’s very momentary, you know. And, yes, we should enjoy every every pleasant experience that we have. It’s very, very good to enjoy every pleasant, even if it comes from here, you know, that’s not a problem.
Just know that that is not it. This is not going to give you the lasting happiness. There is something else that can do that, right? So, sorry, the rose is part of this. The blue sky in itself is part of this, but I want you to use that, you know?
Also, all these images are part of this, but we can use it to get a sense of what is actually there. Yeah? Every thought that we say, everything that we say, every concept that we have in the mind, even if it is about the nature of the mind, that’s still not the real nature of the mind. It’s just a concept. Right?
True? Can we see that? When I talk about the nature of the mind, I’m using words. I cannot show you the nature of the mind. You can go inside, and you have to think about it, you reflect on it.
And then we can get a feeling for it. Right? And if you really realize the nature of the mind, that seems to be like an atom bomb, you know, you know, something explodes, I don’t know, something big happens in your mind. But the more we think about it, the more we we prepare our mind that is actually a possibility. And now you can check your mind, you know, you might think, well, that doesn’t really I don’t believe that.
Do you believe it, really? Not because I say it. Right? Don’t believe me, but you check with your own mind. You think that that is a real possibility?
The mind. Now I’m in a doubt. I wanted to talk tonight about the brain and the mind, and I haven’t even gone there. Is the mind the same as the brain? Maybe it’s all very clear for you guys.
Let’s try. So no? Why not? Yeah. And the mind?
The mind is consciousness. Mind. Mind is is consciousness and then you have very subtle subtle and gross. Why is the consciousness not a brain? Yeah.
You’re saying consciousness exists beyond this life? Yeah. Yeah. But now I’m a I’m a scientist, and I said, well, I don’t believe in future life. So what are you talking about?
Why is consciousness not a brain? It’s not physical? Why not? Well, you can’t see it. You can’t see it?
But the brain. Yeah. Sorry? Matter. Not matter.
Does everybody agree on this? Where is the critical scientist? The brain is something that we use. We we is the consciousness. Yes.
We are not the body. We are not the brain. You can change your mind? No. That’s not true because scientists have proven that the brain is very plastic.
So so you can change your brain. It will follow. Yeah. But, no, you can’t you can’t no. We can’t do that.
Yeah. No brain or consciousness. Is that true? So do you talk about that you can’t think or that you’re brain dead? Brain dead.
So then we have the bodies that are kept alive without the brain functioning. Is that consciousness still there or not? You say no, isn’t it? Sorry, I’m beside there. No, no, no.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s good. No, I just I how did you say that? Say that again, no? No consciousness. No brain, no consciousness.
I would say no brain. You definitely have no thoughts, right, and no emotions. Yeah, no brain, no thoughts, and no emotions. I would agree with that. No consciousness?
I’m not sure. Which one? Why? Because? I don’t believe it.
When you die Yeah. Yes. But you can have no brains, and you haven’t died yet. True? Yeah.
That’s gonna have to die? You can have no brains. Your brains cannot function anymore, and you haven’t died yet. You got. Yeah.
Yes. But where is your conscious you still have consciousness? So according according to Buddhism, when somebody has died in the in the you know, there’s no heartbeat anymore. There’s no breathing anymore. When you have died, according to the Western science, the very subtle consciousness hasn’t left the body yet.
The very subtle consciousness has no concepts, doesn’t function with thoughts, that’s the pure nature of the mind, you know. So that’s still consciousness. So I can imagine that there is no function in the brain, but consciousness is still there according to Buddhism. If people would prove it with how do say that? So there are lamas who die.
And the Western doctor comes and said, yes, this person has passed away. And they, according to Buddhism, they are actually meditating on the very subtle nature of their mind. And they can stay in meditation posture for seven days or even longer, and the mind and the body doesn’t show any form of deterioration, smells even pleasant and nice like flowers, you know, so then Buddhism says, well, that is because the consciousness is still there. The moment the consciousness leaves the body, you can you can see that that within very, very short time, the body starts to smell and starts to decompose. You know?
Would science accept that? There is a guy. He’s actually a Western guy. And I think on the Internet, I will ask our translator, he’s very fond of him. What he does, he shows his brain activity.
And so what he says is, I’m going to do now this meditation. And he goes in the meditation and you see what his brain is doing. And he can go to a state where there is no brain function. And then he comes out and he said, So that was where I had no brain function. I don’t know.
I can I can ask him, and you can look it up? Sorry? Red lines in in brain activity. Yes. He there was yes.
Well So if you die, if we die, if we really die, right, the body starts to decompose. Are there still brains? So the the brains are there, but it’s not functioning. Do we still call that brains? Yes.
So we have brains, but they don’t function. So what makes the brain function? But the mind, that’s logical. But I wanna hear what you really think, you know, not what you think Buddhism is gonna say. Electrical signals, yeah.
So why does the mind why does the brain stop producing that? When your heart stops and your blood stops and So why did it stop? Who’s telling them what to do? That sounds like we have control. And I wouldn’t say that I do.
But Yeah. Sorry? Yeah, where are they coming from? The knowers. The knowers.
Why are they functioning? You know, when we die, everything stops functioning, isn’t it? It’s like the whole body, suddenly everything collapsed. It’s not that that one thing stops functioning and the rest keeps on going. It’s like everything stops functioning.
Why? The heart stops pumping. Uh-huh. But we don’t have a conscious effort. We can’t have a No.
No. No. That just happens to us, isn’t it? Death just happens. We don’t consciously die.
Like, now I’m gonna die. And it’s like, do you all keep holding pressure again during the phase? I mean, you can’t stop breathing. No. If the brain would be the consciousness let’s turn it around.
What if the brain is the consciousness? That would mean that when the body dies, when we then we die. Then that’s it. There’s nothing else after that. We don’t like that, do we?
If that will be it, right, then what is the purpose of life? If that is it, why do we try to be a good person? Why do we sorry? So do we think about death normally? No?
We try not to. Yeah, we try very hard not to. I don’t know. You have to think about this and see if you can make a distinction, right? Buddhism believes that there are brains and there is a mind.
There is a body and there is a mind. Consciousness, the brain and the body is made out of matter. These are two different kinds of energies. These energies, they go together and they cannot mix. You know, you cannot make from mind matter and you cannot make from matter mind.
But they do influence each other, right? And we know how we can influence with our mind, how we can influence matter. And we also know how matter can influence our mind, right? Because that’s what we’re constantly trying. We’re trying to be happy by looking what is nice in the material world.
So these have a relationship with each other. They meet each other. I want you to keep on thinking about this, why it is not a brain. If you look into matter, how does matter really exist? So for us, it looks like these are very concrete things, right?
But if you look into it, into the substance, what is it really made of? Yes. And that they move around a lot. Yeah. Uh-huh.
And these things, they move. And in between, there’s a lot of space. And if you look into them, there is, again, there is a lot of space, and there are some things moving. And that keeps on going like that, isn’t it? So there’s a lot of space, and there are some things moving.
Mind, it’s quite similar. But it doesn’t, know, in a sense that there is a lot of space, and there are things moving in it. Thoughts, emotions, feelings, they’re all moving. But we can’t see anything like that. We cannot see matter on how it really exists.
Matter manifests in a way that it actually doesn’t exist. In reality, a table doesn’t exist in a way it appears to us. We do not see the space that is actually in a table, do we? It looks very concrete, very solid. But if we would see it on a cellular level or on a molecular level, then we can see a lot of space.
Right? So matter manifests in that way to us. That is we we get a little bit of consciousness exists similar way. There is a lot of space, which is the nature of the mind, and then a lot of things appearing in the mind. And these things that appear because they appear, we can see the mind.
So I can see my thoughts, but it’s very difficult to go to the nature of my mind. But when I can the better I can see the thought, the better I can almost look next to the thought and get a glimpse of that nature. All the feelings, the emotions, the thoughts that we have, they surface and then they go away. They somehow, they say, color our mind. If anger arises, that gives a kind of feeling, a kind of taste, a kind of color in the mind.
If happiness arises, that gives a kind of feeling and taste in the mind. But mind itself is like space. So by observing what is going on, you can get an understanding of your mind. I don’t know if that helps. Yes.
Yes. I agree with that. Not to make it, but they go together. Right? If we had the very subtle mind, they say the subtle mind, they say, rides on a very subtle wind.
And wind is a very subtle form of matter, right? If we say that matter is made out of the four elements, then wind is part of that. So this rides on a very subtle wind. They cannot be separated. They always go together.
And they influence each other. Does consciousness die? Die? What is dying? Ceases to exist?
No. According to Buddhism, it can’t cease to exist. But there is something that doesn’t die. Yes. Just as at the elements, you know, they don’t we cannot cannot destroy the elements.
We cannot destroy the basic elements of earth, water, fire, and wind. We can change the shape in which which they are or the form in which they manifest, but we cannot destroy that element. When the body dies, it goes back to the elements. Yes. Has it died?
No, we can’t, Because it’s connected to that very subtle wind that you can also not you can’t destroy that. Why do you make that conclusion? Yeah. Or you call the individual the person? Body.
Like, Jamyang? Or Body. When Jamyang dies, my body my body dies, and my consciousness will pass on will move on take another body. That’s that’s what Buddhism says. But it won’t be Jamyang.
Never. Jamyang can’t come back ever. Just as the Jamyang of tomorrow is a very different Jamyang as the Jamyang of today, you know? What is today can never come back. Does that answer your question?
More questions. That consciousness carries the karma of all the actions that I’ve performed. Yes. Yeah. So all the good things that happened to me, they are thanks to somebody in the past who had the same kind of consciousness as me, the same stream, who performed all these good deeds, you know?
I experienced the happiness from that. So it doesn’t merge with the cosmic consciousness. It doesn’t merge with the cosmic consciousness, not according to Buddhism. No. It means it remains an individual stream.
Yeah. We will talk more about the continuity of the mind, about how that is related then to past and future lives. I’ll try to find more reasons why the brain is not a consciousness and I want you to find more reasons too, you know, because the more we really understand and see it with our mind, the more we will have to accept that if the consciousness is not a brain, that has consequences, you know, for our thinking. We cannot say, I believe in reincarnation, but if you have no reasons to believe in that, the moment it’s going to make you unhappy, you just chuck it out. If you know that that exists, then even when the situation is difficult, you don’t give that belief or that thought up up because it’s based on good reasoning.
So the more reasons that we have, the stronger our knowing will become. Okay? I want you to think about that. And I didn’t put it on the homework, but I’ll just tell you that. And I wanna finish because it’s already quarter past nine.
No. With the meditation on the clarity of the mind. And then before you leave, you I’ll give you are people gonna rush off, isn’t it? How many people are here? No.
We don’t have enough of those. That’s okay. I’m gonna put them out there so that when you go, you just take one. And a few people have to stay because we do not have enough. Is that alright?
I’ll just put them outside. And then when you feel that, you know, when the meditation is finished, you can go in your own peace. So what I put there is a completion card, and that is if you wanna do the module, you take a completion card, and you can fill in what you have done. Okay? When you there is also the meditation and the clarity of mind.
You take that, and there was a little sheet with some homework. The homework is part of reading. So you’re gonna I have given you some pages that you read in the required reading. And if you didn’t get that today, I’m very sorry. Next time, you will have it.
Well, you still have the meditation. And then there is one thing that I ask you to do is that during the day that you sometimes stop and just observe what is going on in your mind. And maybe wonder, is this worthwhile to keep on indulging in these thoughts, or can I focus on something else? Okay? Just observing without judging, without beating yourself up.
Don’t beat yourself up. So breathe in a few times deeply and breathe out deeply. You can empty your mind. Try to let go of all the thinking that we have been doing. Even if it’s not clear yet, even if you do not really understand, it’s really it’s it’s not important.
Just let go of all the thinking, all the thoughts. And then observe your breath. Observe the rising and falling of your abdomen. Every time when you breathe in and breathe out. Your consciousness or your mind is whatever you are experiencing at the moment.
The sensations in your body, thoughts, feelings, perceptions of sounds, All experiences are the mind. And the nature of each of these experiences is clarity. Clarity in a sense that it has no form, no color. It is like space. Pure awareness.
Focus your attention on this clear, pure nature of the mind. So when thoughts arise or emotions or feelings, see the fact that it has no form, that it has no color, that it is like space. In the beginning, it might be very difficult to find the actual object, the clarity of our thoughts and feelings. And if that’s the case, then we can use that image of the blue sky to help us. So imagine that you’re laying staring at a sky that is completely clear and free of clouds.
Concentrate on the vast unobstructed emptiness. Imagine that at vast unobstructed emptiness flows down and embraces you and your surroundings, and that everything becomes empty like space. Try to hold that experience and feel that the nature of your mind is like this. It is like clear empty space. Thoughts and distractions will arise, but you don’t react to them.
You don’t follow them. You don’t suppress them. But you remember that they are clear by nature. They have no substance. When you see a thought, feeling arising when you observe that, see its spacious aspect.
Thoughts and feelings are not reality itself. Thoughts and feelings of no substance. Concentrate on that space, that clarity. Try to hold the mind there continuously. The better we can concentrate and try to look in the reality of our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, our mind, the clearer we will see it.
The stronger the concentration, the more clarity can come. So try to hold your object as good as you can. And then we dedicate all the positive energy that we created today by listening listening and thinking and asking questions and contemplating. And we can dedicate that towards the happiness and the welfare of everyone, everyone here, everyone in your life, and everyone in the world if you like. And thank you very much for coming.
Okay. Thank you, Lisa. Should have done that. Yes. I hadn’t even noticed.
I’m very sorry. I’ll make a few more copies. Oh. Yeah. No.
You will get it. I No. You just credit card if they could make me in the office. I’ll do those now for you. Okay.