Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 140-minute session on mind and its potential, Ven Jamyang teaches Buddhist psychology as an intervention map rather than abstract philosophy, helping students recognize exactly where they can redirect their mind. After breath meditation and refuge, he explains how feelings, recognition, intention, concentration, and contact create repeating cycles, and introduces eleven virtuous mental factors (aspiration, diligence, equanimity, pliancy, and others) alongside six root afflictions (attachment, pride, ignorance, doubt, anger, wrong views) that underlie suffering. Rather than transcending these patterns, students learn concrete intervention points: avoiding triggering objects, observing feelings without following them, recognizing attachment and aversion as they arise. A small-group discussion distinguishes love from attachment—love as unconditional giving, attachment as self-focused grasping with expectations—grounding the teaching in lived relationships. The session closes with meditation on impermanence and letting go.
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File: jamyang – DB Mind and its Potential 4.mp3DB 4.mp3
UUID: a4dc1141-fedd-4dad-b960-2e2f9bd90010
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Mind and its Potential (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 139.8 minutes
Words: ~12,613
A new people a few new people have joined today, so let’s welcome them. Everybody has two handouts? Okay. Everybody has done the homework? Yes?
Some people are I might ask questions about that today. I’m not sure yet. You’re enjoying the homework? Who is doing it? Yeah?
Is it nice to did somebody watch somebody watch the mind during the day? Yeah? Mhmm. What can you tell me something about that? I was always looking ahead or looking at the Uh-huh.
You were never really where you were? Well, most Most of the times. And then did you bring your mind back? Yeah. Uh-huh.
And even just waking up in the morning before I’m conscious, really, I I recognize my mind’s already going. Uh-huh. Very fast. Is that a common experience? Mhmm.
No. Actually, you plan with your mind in the moment. So so you are with your awareness in the moment, and then you plan. But you do not lose track of where you are right now. But when we wander off, we forget where we really are.
Yeah. Isn’t it? So you can think about your future, but you do that from your present situation. You know, that’s not a problem. It’s not a problem to think ahead.
It’s not a problem to reflect in the past, but do that while you’re grounded in the moment. Because then you can do something with your reflections. And otherwise, it’s just going over and over and over and over, and it’s going nowhere. It’s just creating a lot of misery for yourself. Alright.
Other people experience? You wonder if the sky is wandering off or the clouds are wandering off. Is that Yeah. And then when I go, oh, I’m on the cloud. Yes, Yes.
Yes. Yeah. That that’s what we do, and then we go with them. Yes. Or we think our thoughts are are us.
Yes. I am my thoughts. Whatever I think is me. And somehow we feel we have to go on with our thoughts, walk with them because because me is there where the thoughts are. And if we stop doing that, then it’s it’s it’s strange in the beginning, but it gives a lot of peace of mind.
So we’ll start today with a small meditation, a meditation on the breath. And because it’s discovering Buddhism and, you know, a a course where we really try to give you the Buddhist practice on all different levels, you know, Buddhism in itself is is secular, which means that you do not have to be religious to practice Buddhism. But at the same time, part of Buddhism is also does practice in in a certain way with the Buddhadharma Sangha. And during this course, we will explain how you how you reflect on that while you do the the the practices, you know, so that it’s not just a faith and a blind faith that you follow, but that it’s actually a a tool that helps you to reflect going over certain aspects of Buddhism again and again and again. So I will slowly slowly implement that during the course and explain where I can, but the main explanation will come in the in the modules that talk about that.
So first, we start with a meditation just to calm the mind and bring the mind to the present moment. So make sure that your posture is comfortable. If you sit on the chair, make sure that your feet are on the floor. And if you need a cushion under your feet, it’s okay to do that. Your back is straight.
Your shoulders are relaxed. Your stomach is relaxed. The hands are resting on the knees or on your thighs, or you can put your hand right hand on top of the left, the thumbs slightly touching each other. Whatever is comfortable. Your head is a little bit bent forward.
Your jaws are relaxed. Your tongue is touching the palate, and your eyes are slightly closed. Then check for yourself all the different points that we just went through again, making sure that your body is in the right posture and relaxed, your feet, your back, your shoulders, and your hands, your neck, jaws, tongue, and your eyes. Just merely bringing your body into this posture. It’s so suitable for meditation that that’s almost like a meditation.
If you go over these points again and again, you bring your mind to the present moment. The more you can make sure that your body is relaxed and at the same time active, the energy has a chance to start flowing through your channels. And then focus your awareness on your abdomen where you can observe the rising and falling every time when you breathe in and breathe out. Let your mind rest on the on the movements. And at the same time, be very alert.
Keep checking if your mind is still resting. If you notice that your mind gets distracted, bring it gently back and refocus. Make your mind very sharp that you don’t miss a moment of the movements of your abdomen. Let the mind rest. Allow yourself to be completely here with your body in the present moment.
Gather back all the thoughts that are dwelling in the past. Gather in the thoughts that are running away to the future. And focus on the experience of feeling and observing the movements of the abdomen. And then try to adjust your motivation. Try to create a motivation that is bigger than just yourself, your own benefit.
And you can think of those that you love and that you like, visualizing them around you, and reflecting on why you came here tonight, what you would like to learn, how you would like to use it, and how you would like it to affect yourself and those around you. And then think of any benefit that you just set out for, how that would affect other people around you, those that you do not do not know so well, but also those that you have problems with. If your mind will improve, if your skills will improve, how would that affect all your relationships? And if thinking about that gives you confidence, make your circle bigger. Make those that you can affect, visualize them as more and more more people, more animals, more beings.
And then if we would like to affect our mind in a positive way, refuge in something. We take refuge in something that we believe helps us in that. So in Buddhism, we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. The Buddha is being the person who has realized full compassion, full wisdom, and has perfect ability to help all sentient beings. So in that way, he is like the teacher, like the doctor.
When we take refuge in the Buddha, we also take refuge in our own potential to achieve Buddhahood, to realize full compassion, to realize full wisdom, and our own potential to have perfect ability to help each and every sentient beings. And when we take refuge in the Dharma, we take refuge in the medicine that which is gonna help us to develop these realizations, which are the teachings of the Buddha. It’s like the Buddha describes the medicine, but then we have to take it. We have to practice it. And every act of practicing is becomes also an object of refuge.
And if we take refuge in the Sangha, we take refuge in all those who support us to practice the Dharma, to take our medicine, to follow the advice of the doctor. So when you keep that in mind, I’ll just read the refuge prayer in that we normally say in Buddhism in English three times. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened. Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. Then already started.
Last time I said that I would like to know you all. I know so many. So I’ve been thinking, and I thought, even if we just know each other’s name, that would be nice. And we’re not going to remember everybody tonight, but we can make a small step. And then next time, we do a little bit more and a little bit more.
So I thought and it’s we really have make it really short. Right? Because we don’t wanna have this very, very short. If you could just say your name and say in one or maximum two sentences, what is the main thing that has affected your mind so far in coming here during the course? Is that Okay?
So think about it in one second. Is that Okay? Reading one or two sentences so that we keep it really short. Would you like to start? And speak up loud because maybe we turn off the air con for a while here.
My name’s Judy, I have a very confused mind. You discovered a confused mind. That’s good. Yes. Have to keep bringing it back and.
That’s good. That’s where we start. That’s fantastic. If you can start seeing that, you know, great. Sarah and.
Uh-huh. I’m Monica. I like coming here. Thank you. Uh-huh.
Thank you. Thank you. Mhmm. You get some you find some power there. Good.
That’s very important to have it. Thank you. Rebecca. I’m Andrew, and Uh-huh. What is so far what did it bring you so far?
But has something touched you that you think like, oh, I can do something with that? You can’t say no. It’s not a problem. I think I’m having a revelation. I’ve been around this stuff for quite some years.
Yeah. So this is a reminder. Not something that you could just do for a week or month or a year. It’s a lifelong thing. Okay.
Thank you. Thank you. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Good.
Some more mindfulness. That’s good. Uh-huh. You wanna say what you would like to get out of it? That we’re eventually gonna achieve.
Thank you. Thank you. So this helps to bring you into discipline of practicing every day. Practice and also the discipline of understanding that. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Oh, good. Thank you.
Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. It’s already very good if we discover how crazy our mind is, you know, and how distracted it is.
And it’s such a long term habit that in the beginning it can be scary and you think, Oh my God, what’s going on there? And it looks maybe even that it’s getting bigger and bigger and worse, but that’s normal, right? It’s not getting worse, it’s just that you see it better. So that’s the first step that’s good. Thank you, Glenn.
Great. Thank you. Thank you. Uh-huh. Oh, that’s good.
That’s a good. You. Mhmm. And you feel that it that it helps, that it works, that you become a little bit calmer? Yes.
That’s good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good.
Thank you. Remember yourself? Yep. It’s been a good journey, I think. Thank you.
I’m Scott. Uh-huh. And I enjoyed the meditation for the metta. Mhmm. Oh, thank you.
Thank you all for practicing at home. You know, that’s so fantastic. That’s It’s possible. That already is so fantastic. It is possible.
Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Thank you. So anything that is of benefit to you is of benefit to others.
It’s not selfish, right? You have to learn to say that right. Because the selfish one starts beating themselves up. So when you sleep better you’re more of a benefit to others. Fantastic.
Indulge in it. Uh-huh. Thank you. Uh-huh. Thank you.
Thank you. Where’s your friend? Where’s Mel? Where’s Mel? Last week, you did the other way around.
Having a Having a rest. Okay. Mhmm. Thank you. That’s that’s very good, and I hope you asked them.
Sorry? Yes. You can only ask, you know, and the answers will come. Thank you. Good.
Good. Uh-huh. Practice and patience or the practice of patience? Both. Uh-huh.
Oh, good. And you? Good. Thank you. Uh-huh.
Thank you. Thank you. So then, normally, the next exercise is that you repeat the story of the person next to you. Maybe when we go in little groups, you know, we can do something similar and then that you really learn to know a smaller group. Thank you everybody for sharing that and I appreciate that you practice at home, that you because you practice, you know, that’s like that’s sort of that is what gives me the most happiness.
If you guys start practicing it’s like the whole energy starts to lift and your mind becomes more clear and the compassion starts to rise and, you know, the more we do that the more fun we’re going to have. Thank you. So, for those who are here today for the first time I’m going to go only very, very quickly over the last three weeks. The first week we have spoken about what the mind is. The mind is that which is clear and knowing.
It’s all the experiences that we have. The mind is like a continuum of experiences and at the same time an experiencer, isn’t it? They both arise together. The mind, every moment of mind comes from the previous moment of mind which comes from the previous moment of mind. And when we trace that back, and last week we did a meditation on that, we actually cannot find a beginning.
Buddhism doesn’t say a beginning, there is no beginning. Buddhism says cannot find a beginning. We cannot point out a beginning. So then they say so that must mean that the mind exists since beginningless time. If you however could prove Buddhism that there is a beginning, they will be very happy with that.
But so far that hasn’t happened, right? So we say the mind has been existing since beginning of this time, and because of that will exist still, I don’t know if you can say the end of time, because that also doesn’t really continue to exist. Which means that if you think like that, it must mean that past lives and future lives are a reality in that sense. It cannot be that if the mind exists since beginningless time, it will exist continuously after this life that only in this life we take rebirth. That would be really funny, isn’t it?
It’s like, why did it happen? And why did it take this form? And why? Why? You know, there are many, many questions come up.
It is much more logical to think that we must have done this before, and we will do this after after this life. Do not have to accept that blind. I would not like you to accept that blind. But with the meditations that I’ve given you, if you do the meditations again and again and again, it’s like your mind starts to maybe change or starts to think, oh, yeah, that could be a possibility or starts to get a feel for it or maybe not. But all the meditations that you have is actually to make your mind more flexible, to make it more to have more control, to make it more focused.
You know? So these are exercises that you do. And it doesn’t really matter what the truth is. But if you practice that, your mind becomes more open. You can imagine if your mind suddenly goes from this life to many, many lives, that’s a very different perspective.
That will do something with how you stand in this life. It’s like your perspective becomes broader. We think that’s a good thing if you have broader perspective. So that’s just an exercise. Last week, we talked about the differences between perception and conception.
And you have two handouts. And the first handout is actually what we went through last week. So the difference between perception and conception is on the back. And we said that perception we said that we have two kinds of consciousness. We have sense consciousnesses, and we have a mental consciousness.
There are five sense consciousnesses related to the sense organs and one mental consciousness. In general, with our sense consciousnesses, perceive reality directly. You know, if I see a form, I see that directly. I don’t have something in between. Like when I think about the form that I just have seen, I access that form through a generic image, through a memory.
Right? So that is what is called that is the conceptual mind. That’s the difference between perception and conception. Conception happens in the mental consciousness. But if we develop a mental consciousness, then we also can perceive things directly with our mental consciousness.
For instance, if have clairvoyance and we can see the mind of other beings, we perceive something directly with our mental consciousness. Clairvoyance is not seeing with your eyes. Seeing somebody’s mind is not that you don’t do that with your eyes. You do that with your mental consciousness. Yeah?
And I give some differences between perception and conception. So if we look at something, if we look at a form, for instance, the frame with a painting on the wall, what we see, what we see, we see that frame. If we think about the frame, what the mind mind does is that it eliminates everything that is not frame. And with that, we can see the frame. That’s a very different way of perceiving something.
Can you understand that? Yeah. So we say that perception engages in the object in a positive way as an affirmation. I see that painting, and the conception eliminates everything that is not the painting. That is just how it works.
Yeah. If we look at something and we see something directly, we do not exaggerate anything around it. But if we think about things or if we access something with our mental consciousness in a conceptual way, we have the tendency to exaggerate. If we like something, it becomes more beautiful or more funny or more whatever. If we do not like something, then we make it more negative than it actually is.
We put that like a taste on top of that. When we perceive something, our perception engages with real object. You know, that’s always in the hearer and now, as conception doesn’t engage with a real object. It uses a real object, but then uses a mental image of that object and engages like that with the object. So perception is therefore, most of the times, very accurate, and conception is always mistaken.
And last week we talked about that when we think, we think that our thoughts are reality and our stories are reality. But in fact, they have nothing to do with reality. They are all created by the mind. Everything that we think is in creation of our own mind. It’s not reality itself.
So I I see somebody, and that person looks a little bit angry at me, and I and I start making a story. And I think, oh my god. What I’ve done wrong? Did I say something wrong last time when I saw her? And and the whole story and then I say, I must have done something wrong.
What was it that I said to her? Oh, it must be that thing that I said to her that she didn’t like, and and the whole story is there. Nothing might be true. Nothing is probably true. But we do that all the time, isn’t it?
And then I ring my friend and I say, you know what? This person is angry with me because And then I tell a whole story, which is all made up with my own, by my own mind. Do we recognize that? That’s all fantasy world. That’s all not real.
And that all gives us a lot of suffering, you know. We somehow it entertains us. It keeps us busy, and we somehow feel that we are very alive when we do that. But at the other sides, you know, you’re all here because you actually want to have peace from that. So you have to catch yourself when you start making these stories and say, oh, yes, although this story maybe now is somehow entertaining and it looks really true, that is actually gonna make me really unhappy and it’s making my mind restless and it’s making my mind busy and stressed and I won’t be able to concentrate so well and I let it go.
I don’t give any attention to it. I just say focus on what I’m doing now. Okay? That’s what I wanna about perception and conception. And I want to say, you know, and then at the front page of your handout, first are the five aggregates.
What we said, what is a person? What is what we designate as a person? And we said that which has the five aggregates, which has form, primary consciousness, feeling, recognition, and compositional factors. We talked about seven types of awareness. And then we start talking about what is all present in the mind.
Right? If we look at the mind itself, the mind is that which is clear and knowing. It is like space. Imagine we clear out space, but then we have no walls. The space is forever.
The space is vast. The mind is like that. There is nothing in it. It’s completely unobstructed. And then in that mind, many, many things arise.
Feelings, thoughts, it all arises. The more we know about what arises and why it arises and how we can change that, the more we can get control over that mind. True? So we start talking about what about the mental factors. Buddhism calls that mental factors what arises in the mind.
Mental factors are like a color. It colors the mind. If I’m really angry with somebody, everything that I see at that moment changes, gets a different color. Nothing. You can’t do anything good anymore.
You know? I’m angry with you and everything you’re doing, I see through certain perspective, everything is wrong. No matter how hard you try, I can see everything is wrong. True. That’s what we do.
If we fall in love with somebody, no matter what a person does, everything is right. Right? So when this attachment and desire’s attachment is in the mind, we exaggerate. When anger is in the mind, we exaggerate. It’s like everything that we see and do and hear is colored by our emotions, by what is arising in the mind.
So we’re going to look today into what is all arising in the mind. Okay? We call that mental factors. And last week, we talked about the ever ever present mental factors of omnipresent mental factors. Can you remember that?
There were five omnipresent mental factors. And they are always in the mind. Every moment of consciousness, all these five arise. So the first one is feeling, and I did this last time, but I wanna say a little bit more in relationship to our practice. The second one is recognition, intention, four is concentration, and five is contact.
So last week, we talked about these five and we said we can see how these five keep us going into a cycle. Cycle. We make contact with a certain object. And because of that, feelings arise, happy feelings, unhappy feelings, or neutral feelings. We recognize it for what it is.
And because of the feeling, our mind goes in a certain direction. When we like it, we go towards it. When we don’t like it, we go away from it. Right? So intention follows what we call attachment or aversion.
Concentration helps us to focus on the object to make it more clear, and then we are back to contact. The moment we react to whatever is happening to us, we create the causes for feelings to arise in the future. Can you remember that? We said feelings. We normally think feelings is that it comes, we know it’s not coming from the object that we make contact with, but somehow it looks like that, isn’t it?
If I see a nice person and I feel happy, I think somehow that that person is making me happy, that happiness is so strongly related and dependent upon that other person. It’s almost like it’s coming from the other person. If the person is not there I don’t feel happy anymore and it’s not coming just naturally by itself. Buddhism says feeling has nothing to do with the other person. The person is a condition for that feeling to arise, but the real cause you have created in a previous life.
The feeling is not coming from the other person. The person is not the cause of that feeling, but it is a condition. And the real cause for that feeling comes from actions from previous lives. But because we believe that that feeling comes from that object or that person, we react and we say, hey, there is my friend, or I like my friend, and attachment arises. Right?
Or there is that person that harmed me so much, and aversion arises. These reactions place an imprint on our mind which will ripen in the future in the form of feelings. So when attachment arises in my mind, which is like happiness, a seed gets planted in my mind, which will result in the next life or in a future life into another experience. Right, so by doing that we keep on going on, isn’t it? We keep on creating experiences for ourselves.
In general, they say when we follow this, the result from both is suffering. And this will be, we will discuss this very extensively during the course. We believe that if we go after something that we like, it’s giving us happiness. And Buddhism says, well, the long term effect is actually more suffering, you know, and that is I won’t go into that today but what I want to do is show you where we practice because Buddhism divides everything in the mind in a way that you can use it for your practice. No other reason than that, right?
How can I change this? Because this is involuntarily, isn’t it? We are not in control over this. As soon as a feeling arises and we recognize the object, the intention is there, the mind reacts. We have no control.
The whole day, every movement that we make, every word that we say is based on that. Right? So if you look at these, I’m just going to show you where your practice is. If you’re very caught up in this and feelings arise and you have no way to stop it, right, the best way to prevent yourself from having going through that cycle again and again is that you stop contact with that certain object. You avoid it.
Because if you avoid that object, this whole thing can’t happen. You cut the cycle. Right? So there are Buddhists for whom that is a very important practice. You stop the contact.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s not about feeling good, know, and it’s okay to feel good. Don’t hear me wrong. It’s okay to feel good.
It’s very good if you feel good. It’s it’s There’s so many things that are starting to shine on your face or or looking at the Yeah. I mean, they will make you feel wonderful. Okay. To avoid contact with all those things No.
No. No. Let’s let’s let’s okay. You hate somebody. And every time you see that person you get so angry, you get so upset, and it takes you two days to get over that.
That means that you have no way in your mind to deal with that, which means that it’s best if you could avoid contact with that person. If you’re used to abuse, that is what you’re doing. Yeah. That is what you look for. No.
So you can have some withdrawal signs where you do this, right? It’s like letting go your alcohol or cigarettes or whatever. But it can be a start. It can be a very good start. Another way where you can try to get some control is when you look at the feelings.
You know, we talked about you have pleasant or happy feelings or you have unpleasant or unhappy feelings or you have neutral feelings. What we normally do when we get happy, our mind starts to grasp for that object. Right? So what you can do is you can also become the observer of your feelings. Oh, this is a really nice ice cream, you know, I can feel my mind would like to grasp, but but I know that that grasping is not gonna make me happy.
I just enjoy the ice cream. I enjoy the pleasant feelings, but I won’t grasp for more. Right? That is another way of practice. When we do mindfulness and we step back again and again and stop following our thoughts, that is actually what we’re practicing.
Did we do a body scan last week going through the body? We didn’t. Okay. I think that is going to happen in the next module. If you observe your breath, you know, and you there are feelings, what you can do is you can follow the feelings.
And from the feeling, thoughts come in, you start wondering, you know, oh, yeah. What happened last week and the week before? And when you bring your mind back, you bring your mind back from the feelings. You stop following these feelings. Right?
So that is another moment of practice where you where you can stop this cycle cycle or where you can make it less powerful. Is that alright with you? You’re hearing this for the first time. Is that okay? Then another per place where you can step in is that here in the intention.
For instance, intention. For instance, you see attachment coming up. And the attachment, you know, tells you, oh, you have to go to the shop and buy more ice cream because tomorrow you also wanna make sure that you have ice cream in the day after tomorrow. And you can say to yourself, no. That’s attachment.
That’s just gonna make me sick. I’m not gonna do that. I stop there. Right? So you see the attachment coming up, and you stop.
And what we do when attachment comes up, we contemplate all the negative aspects of that object that we like so much. You know? And with ice cream, you can think about that it’s not good for your health and whatever. You can create a whole story. When I mean, everything has a negative aspect, doesn’t it?
If you indulge in it, the suffering is gonna come no matter how nice it is. If you meet a friend and you think, I really like being with this person Yep. I’d like to see them again tomorrow Yep. Do you have to then start thinking about the negative parts of meeting them? It depends how you say, I would like to meet that person tomorrow.
So you say to the person, I’d like you to meet you tomorrow, and the person says, that’s actually too much for me. And you get very upset, and you and you actually and you start to manipulate the person. Then I think you’re going a little bit too far. Right? That is the craving.
So that you still try to get what you want. And if you just recognize that I feel happy when I have a coffee with this friend Yeah. Now. That’s not no problem. Wanting to do that tomorrow, if it’s perfectly fine with them too, is that following that attachment?
I do think it is following the attachment. If if you’re not sure if you’re not sure, you have to check what would happen in your mind if you don’t get it. Ah, okay. And if you see that you get upset or angry, you know that attachment is there. Okay.
Yeah? If aversion arises in the mind or anger, we try to contemplate in a way that it is opposing the anger. So in order to do that we need a lot of wisdom. We have to investigate what are the good things of this, what are the negative things of this, what is the good thing about meeting somebody who’s really harmful to me, what I perceive as harmful or rude or what is the good thing? How can I deal with me being upset?
How can I deal with my anger? How can I deal with my tendency that I actually want to slap him in the face? How do I deal with that? The more you think about that, the more tools you have in that, the more you can actually work with your aversion. You can counteract it.
Very simple is if you have aversion, you’re focused on the negative aspects. So if you have somebody that triggers the aversion in you, you can start looking for good qualities in that person. The moment you see good qualities, a kind of love starts to rise in your mind, and the anger cannot stay in the mind. Love and anger for one object cannot stay together in the mind. So it’s a trick.
Right? But it’s very healthy and very nice trick. Phil. Yeah. Yeah.
And there are many tools like this that gives you and that is based on wisdom, isn’t it? As soon as you can do that, you have to step back from your own aversion. You have to look into the situation. You have to contemplate what is going on for the other person. And if you do that in a certain way, then you can actually say, oh, it’s not even worth to go there.
If you know that this makes you really unhappy and sick indulging in this, then there are tools that help you getting out of that situation. Okay? I have to move quicker. Let me see what we’re to do today. So that was the handout.
Just read through it. I think we all discussed it. And then there is another handout, which is handout number two. And that is about all the mental factors that can arise in the mind. And as you can see, Tibetan Buddhism is doing a very extensive job.
And again, this is just done to help you to practice. So I’m going to just mention the main ones. Mention the main ones. So we have spoken about the five ever present mental factors. And then the next one are the five object ascertaining mental factors.
If you these mental factors help you to gain wisdom of what is really going on. Buddhism has a definition for each and every one of them. Right? They’re all very, very nicely defined. This is exactly what aspiration is.
This is exactly what appreciation is. They all have to do with focusing on the object, understanding what is going on, holding the object, thinking about it from all kinds of angles, and then ascertaining what is really going on. The more you can do that, the more you’re going to be in control of what your mind is doing. Normally, react before any wisdom can arise, isn’t it? Reactions become before the wisdom.
As wisdom arises, reactions won’t come. Do you have that experience? The moment you can step back, my mom said, was counting till ten before you react. Never did that, but I think, no, that was really helpful if I had done that. If you step back and you make that gap and you allow the wisdom to come and to contemplate, and Buddhism will give you many tools in how to contemplate, You get some space from your own reactions.
And if you see that your reactions is the main thing that makes you unhappy, you get more control over your happiness. Right? So these are just thinking about these mental factors: oh, I have these five opportunities in my mind that can help me to get more clarity about what really is going on. If I develop them, then I will be more in control over my mind. Mental factors, we have all the potential in our mind to develop these mental factors.
Some we have developed already really good. Some, they are a little bit dormant. You know, we have to wake them up. But the more attention we give each and every one of them, the more we learn how they work, the stronger they will become, the more predominant they will become. So that’s what we try to do.
That’s how we change our mind. Yeah? So then you have eleven virtuous mental factors. I knew you were going to ask them, so I wrote them down. Aspiration means that you focus on an object, and that you really want to go there, and that you hold on to, and that you investigate it.
Aspiration means that you want to go there. For instance, I aspire to become enlightened. That means that every time when I contemplate about the good qualities of enlightenment and the way to go and my aspiration to really go there and keep on pursuing that direction becomes stronger. Right? Aspiration, I need wisdom before the aspiration can arise in the mind.
Otherwise, aspiration is a result of something. And recollection means staying aware of what you intend. Recollection means that we do not forget what we were after. Okay, so then we go to the eleven virtuous mental factors. And virtuous mental factors means they will lead to happiness.
Very simple. Anything that is virtue means they will result into happiness. There is no other meaning than that. There is no meaning of good and bad like Christianity, right? Our virtues is really good and non virtues is really bad.
Virtues is only good because it leads to happiness. If you do a virtuous deed and it makes you unhappy, you have to check if it was really virtue what you were doing. Probably not. Something was not right there in what you were doing. If you think you’re doing a bad deed but it leads to happiness, you have to check if your judgment was right about the good and the bad.
Maybe it was a virtuous deed. Maybe you were coming from a very good place when you did that. Okay? So you check on the result if your deeds are virtues or non virtues. But then looking back, you can say, these are the virtuous mental factors.
If you develop these more and more in your mind, the happiness will naturally come. How can embarrassment be virtuous? What is What embarrassment? It’s in relationship to others. So for instance and I don’t want to use that example.
So if I do something that a nun really should not do, embarrassment is a virtuous mental factor because it will help me to correct my behavior. If I realize what my teacher is going to think about me, if he would know and he knows, then I’m going to be really embarrassed. And it helps me to correct my behavior. I like the self respect. Self respect, I’ll tell you what that means.
Self respect is avoiding wrongful actions in regard to oneself. And it provides the basis for abstaining from negative conduct. So if you respect yourself, you stop engaging in negative actions, because negative actions bring you unhappiness. So when you self respect, you create for yourself the causes to become happy. Sorry?
Pliancy is a flexibility. Pliancy is the strength in the mind that can bring your mind anywhere where you like. You know? When we do meditation and we think about something, can feel that your mind is stiff and it really doesn’t want to go there and it has the habit to always go to the other side and you try to bring it back but that’s already hard work and then it goes again and plant means that you bring your mind wherever you want it to go and you go around objects however you like it. It’s a flexibility, and the flexibility can also work through into your body.
So you have mental and physical pliancy. Embarrassment. Diligence is that you keep on engaging in virtuous actions or that you delight in virtuous actions. Equanimity means that we stay in an even state. If we have the attachment and aversion, equanimity is the state where we do not go in either way.
So that keeps the mind very balanced. In the beginning, we feel that as boring. Boring. Nothing is happening. You know?
This attachment and aversion is our entertainment. So when we have to let that go, it starts it first feels like boring, and it takes a while before we start to appreciate the peace and the space that actually arises in our mind. And after that, happiness can come. Yeah. So just know that when it’s boring, you’re on a good you’re on a good track.
No. Not that I know of, but that can be my not knowing. I don’t know. So the more we practice these, the more our mind will move into a happy state. Okay?
So you can just check what am I doing? Oh, you know, or what can I do in order to make myself more happy? Practice this. So then it goes to the six root afflictions, and these are the basis of all the afflictions that arise and which is the basis of all our unhappiness. If we can recognize them for what they are, then the moment they arise we can say, Oh no, that is actually an affliction, that is actually something that makes my mind restless, that agitates my mind, that is not really helpful for what I would like.
We’re all looking for a peaceful, calm, relaxed mind, right? At the same time we’re constantly triggering it and making it more restless and unsettled. If we can recognize what unsettles unsettles the mind and we really say, Oh no, that is what is unsettling the mind, we can stop involving in that, engaging in that. So what is attachment? Wanting more chocolate and thinking that that bar of chocolate is going to bring you real happiness, isn’t it?
We have all these expectations of chocolate that is going to make you really happy. We exaggerate. And the chocolate never lives up to what you expect from that. So you want more. You wanna try another piece.
Maybe that is gonna make you happy. And, again, it’s not making you happy. That is attachment. Exaggerating the positive qualities, which means it has to lead to disappointment. Can you see that?
Yeah. You did. I I just had a perfect example of attachment on the last two weekends ago. I’ve I’ve been trying to get this a long time. Uh-huh.
Oh, many guys do that at the moment. Yes. Yes. I’m happy guys on that. So it is very difficult.
It is very difficult, No doubt. But what it is about is that you recognize that this is attachment and this is love. Right? If it is attachment, you are not happy when you don’t get it. If it is love, you’re happy give it to somebody else.
Right? No. But it’s just recognize it. Oh, I have a lot of attachment. I have a lot that’s okay.
We all have that. You know? We don’t have to beat ourselves up. That’s wrong. No.
That’s just how it is. You know? We first have to make a diagnosis. I have a lot of attachment. That’s okay.
We all have. That’s why we are here. If we had no attachment, we would not be born here. One second. Is that all right?
I understand the theory of it. So then the difficulty with attachment, if we’re going to practice to let go of attachment, we have to feel the feeling that we’re to let go of our happiness, isn’t it? Oh, I have to let go of that what makes me so happy. I’m so in love with this person. If I have to practice detachment or non attachment, I have to let her go.
And I’m losing my object and be and be happy, which means but it sounds like I’m going to lose my object that makes me so happy, Isn’t it? Letting go of our attachment feels like we won’t have it. And that’s not the case, not necessarily. If it is the case, you better let it go, you know? But many times, the objects still stay with us, or the people stay with us.
But what changes is our mind. And we get a lot more freedom in our mind to laugh and just be nice persons instead of being possessive. Somebody without attachment, you don’t get upset if they do not do what you want. Yeah, might this have signaled for them to do whatever Yes. They can do that will affect you.
How can they accept that? No, no, no, no. You have to go a little bit back. I want to have a discussion tonight in little groups about love and attachment. So can I leave it for that?
And if you can’t sort it out in the group, we’ll bring it back at the end. Is that Okay? So then the other root afflictions are pride, pride where we feel superior, or inferior, that’s also a pride. Now we normally do both. Isn’t it?
We all have this low self esteem, and at the same time we believe that we are superior and better and higher? That is, in the West they say, the main affliction that we have. We might think it’s attachment, but it’s actually pride. And pride is very subtle and very difficult to recognize and to remove. So then there’s ignorance, which has to do with not knowing about reality.
It’s like a veil, not being able to see reality as it really is. Then there is doubt, and we talked about that last time. Doubt makes that we cannot make a decision. Do I going to do this or not? And doubt is a root affliction because it prevents us from engaging in virtue.
I’m not sure if I believe that. I’m not sure if I will go to this class. I’m not sure if I, you know, which means that we probably won’t do it because laziness is very strong and other negativities are very strong. Can you see that? The doubt can bring us down very easily.
So in that way it’s a root affliction. Right. I mean, my understanding of it is that But if you feel like, wow, I did it really well, and I had a perseverance, I somehow developed a skill that I could do, that’s fantastic. That’s great. That’s a good pride.
But if you say, I’m sure my husband my my neighbor could never do that. I’m better than him. That is an afflicted pride. So not all pride is a is a negative thing? The pride no.
There is a pride, what we call divine pride, where you’re just happy with the qualities that you have, not comparing it to anybody else, that is that pride is okay. That’s actually very helpful. But all the pride where you compare yourself with others and where you are better or worse than them, that’s afflicted pride. Okay? And then there are wrong views.
And there can be many wrong views. One is that we feel that how we think about a world and about reality is more superior than others. There is the wrong view of holding on to a really existing self. That’s like a wrong view. That is really something that prevents us from being happy.
And we will talk about that extensively in other classes. And from these six root afflictions come twenty secondary afflictions. And when we go through them, you can see that some are more related to anger, some are more related to attachment, some are related to ignorance, and some are combination of different delusions. This is a whole study thinking about the mental factors. And the study is called Lorig, or awareness and knowledge.
There it is, awareness and knowledge. Awareness knowledge. Some call it Buddhist psychology. Some call it mind and mental factors. Some call it, you know, sort of that it is a whole study, and it’s in at Buddha House, it’s part of the basic program.
And it will take a couple of years before we’re gonna do it. But there was a a study that we do on a Thursday night, and it goes very, very extensively in all the through all the mental factors. You know, if if you’re after discovering Buddhism, you’re still interested, you we can do that there. But I won’t go into that in detail. If you’re really interested and you wanna know, you know, books or whatever, this actually a nice book.
Not too difficult, which is called Buddhist psychology from Geshe Tashi Tsering. And that discusses a lot about the mind and the mental factors perception and conception and goes into the afflictions. And then at the end of the page, you see four variable mental factors, sleep, regret, general examinations, and precise analysis. And they have to they are variable because if they are virtuous or non virtuous depend on the general state of mind. So when I’m very angry, I regret that I didn’t punch that person.
I have done very good examination. My analysis is very precise, but it’s non virtue. If I have a virtue state of mind, then I actually regret that I punched that person and I can see why my behavior was not correct, why it is actually causing myself a lot of suffering, why it’s causing a lot of others suffering, then it becomes a virtuous mental factor. Sleep, I can go to sleep with a virtuous attitude, thinking about sentient beings, sleeping for the sake of sentient beings, for the benefit of sentient beings, then it can become a virtue. But if we sleep because we like it so much and we just want to forget the whole world and withdraw, then it can become a non virtue.
We’re more familiar with that last one, isn’t it? Buddhists are so yes, yep. So your question is? I don’t know, really. It’s a very good proposition of feeling.
So feelings do you have? You’re actually very angry? Yeah. Do you think that other person can perceive that? Uh-huh.
But you feel like I’m not why are you angry? Is that I don’t not gonna help you? Or Because I try to be objective and stand back. But you’re very angry, means that you’re not objective and you do not stand back? I guess I’m angry because they think I’ve been unhelpful where I’ve actually tried to be helpful in an objective way.
Uh-huh. What is what is that being helpful in an objective way? I’ll try to take your emotions out. Take my emotions out, I think. Yeah.
And Uh-huh. And there was no anger when you did it? No. Uh-huh. Okay.
So did you tell them that? Because what they do is so you try to to stay outside of something and you help them without getting more emotionally involved. And then people do not recognize that and don’t see that. That’s right. And then you become very angry.
That is that is pride. Right? So it’s not about a problem that was there, it’s about them not seeing that you are so helpful. That’s true. They did not recognize your helpfulness.
Is the delusion that is coming into your mind and your anger, that is the pride. Yeah? So that has nothing to do with them. That’s your emotion that you start to project on them. Okay?
So you have to step out of them and say they don’t have to recognize them. And if they keep on asking you, then you say, I actually tried to help you, and I tried to help you like this and this and this. But somehow I had a feeling that you you can’t appreciate or can’t see the help that I gave you, but this is all I can do. But don’t ask them for recognition. You’re doing the same as them.
Okay. Okay? Okay. Try. So the the all the mental factors that arise in the mind, there are some they happen on different levels.
Right? And when we looked at the five omnipresent mental factors, we know that in that first stage, when the feeling is there, when the aversion and attachment arises, most of the times, we are not aware of that. It’s on a very, very subtle level. True? Because it happens the whole day, every moment.
We are not aware of every moment. We’re not aware of that our mind is reacting to what is going on. Every scratch that we make, every movement that we make is to make us feel more comfortable and is to avoid the discomfort that is on a subtle level. We do that because there is an I. We perceive an I that wants to be comfortable and not uncomfortable.
Right? So it is like a self centeredness. We are very self centered creatures. We like to think that we are very helpful and social, but actually how we behave on a very subtle level is completely self centered. And then if you go to a less subtle level, more coarse level, that self grasping, that belief in that self, that even that self believes also that my happiness is more important than your happiness.
Isn’t it? That’s what we believe. And my suffering is more important than your suffering. And that is called self-cherishing. We’re not only self centered, but then we think we are more important than anybody else in the world.
So our comfort is more important. So our discomfort is more important. Because we have that attitude, we engage very easily in negative actions. You’re disturbing my comfort. You’re preventing my no.
You’re disturbing my comfort. Yeah. You’re preventing my comfort. You’re giving me discomfort. And we’re reacting from that self centeredness and that self-cherishing.
That is on we’re doing that all the time. Are we not even aware of it? That’s on a more coarse level. And then when we start to scream up somebody with we maybe we think, oh, what was that? You know?
That is on the level that we are aware most of the time, sometimes not even, and where we feel we can do something. If we want to really transform our mind, we have to go through all the levels. Right? We begin with what we can see with the most coarse level. And when we have worked through that, we start seeing the most subtle level.
And then we start seeing the most subtle level. And what you are doing now when you start meditating, you see all that stuff happening in your mind. That’s the most coarse level. You start seeing it. Fantastic.
And then you start working with it. And the more you work with it, the more space comes in your mind. And when the space comes in your mind, the more subtle levels can become more visible. And then you can start working with them. Okay?
So we go in layers. We won’t be able to remove the whole thing. We won’t be able to do it very quickly. It’s a gradual process, step by step by step by step. Every time we are mindful and we try to do something is a step.
It’s like the drop in the bucket. And if we keep on doing that, then gradually, gradually, naturally, the mind will change. What is the all the time that compassion is there? We’re not talking about compassion. I wanna ask one question.
You have all these mental factors on your list. Did you see where’s the I? There’s no I there, it? Pride? Pride?
It? There I, is it? There is no I. Written on the paper. We identify very strongly with the pride.
We think we are the pride, but the the paper says you’re actually not, isn’t it? The paper says there are only factors. Pride can arise, and I have the choice if I follow the pride or if I let it go and don’t indulge in it. And then when I don’t indulge in it, it becomes less. We feel if I don’t indulge in it, I’ll cease to exist.
Nobody’s hearing me anymore. I don’t exist anymore. Oh my god. How scary. I have to hold on to my pride.
Right? But Buddhism’s that I that we believe is there and that we hold on to it doesn’t, it’s not there. It’s not part of the mind. We move that I through all the mental factors, isn’t it? When we have compassion we feel I have compassion.
When we have wisdom we think I, oh, I’m so intelligent. When we’re are angry we believe I am the anger. Buddhism says you all know that. These are just mental factors arising in the mind. And we can direct the mind in a way that some mental factors become more strong and some we we can actually even remove them.
You know, like the anger, the root afflictions, we can all remove them. Okay. Now your question. Well, maybe we can bring it up some other time if we’re not talking about compassion tonight. No.
We’re not talking we’re not specific. No. Yeah? Okay. I wanna do a discussion.
Fifteen minutes. Is that alright? I have here some little I want you to be in a group of five, and and I’ve put some questions on a paper. And, Diane, can you hand them up? I want you to talk about it and write down what you come up with, and then we bring it back to the group.
Okay? We just have to keep it short and contained. So what if we make groups of five you can make your own group, or do you want me to do some counting? Are you going ask a question? Oh, people are already walking.
Try to find a group with five. And before you start talking, introduce yourself again. Okay. Six is okay. Maybe you turn around.
You can do six if you need Melissa. Yeah. Here is a group of four. Melissa, you wanna sit here? Everybody alright?
Are you okay? Two four six seven. Yeah. One more there. Donna, you go there.
You wanna go there? Up on here. Yep. Did you Yeah. And then you can go here.
Oh, that’s okay. That’s okay. That’s okay. Six is alright too. Yeah.
Go here. You wanna be here? Okay. You come here. And maybe one person writes oh, you can also remember.
But if you sometimes write some things down. Okay. Can you try to finish it off? Can you try to finish your discussion and come back to the group? Can we try to finish this?
Can we try to finish? Nobody here. I tried already five times. Can we please come back? Can we please finish our discussion?
I’m going to talk really clearly in the microphone. Can we come back? Can we please come back? Please put your seat back. Can you please put your seats back?
I’ll come back to your seat. It’s very addictive, the talking. No. Just people talking. Is it helpful?
Is it helpful? Distinguish between love and attachment? Who has the answer? Think we have one Okay. We think that attachment is something that brings suffering.
Ourselves and to everyone around us. So it is all inclusive? Yes. Good. Did somebody else had something?
No, I said this is all inclusive. It means that sometimes you have the feeling, oh, this is only making me happy and not everybody else. Or this is everybody making everybody else happy, but not me. It’s like me and others sometimes feel as two different worlds. But Andrew was talking about love brings me and others happiness, and attachment brings me and others suffering.
Do we have another way of looking at it? Basic need. Yeah. And attachment? What is attachment?
All right. So how do you describe love? If I can say you don’t expect anything back? Giving? Yeah, I want you to hear your answers because there was a unconditional.
And you had talked about love is giving, an action of giving. And when you look at attachment, it’s more taking. Yeah. Yes. It’s focused on your own benefit, isn’t it?
Why do you mean that? Well, if you were to play mother and child One sec. Say that again. Love will always be there. So when we talk in our language about love, what we actually talk, according to Buddhism, talk about a mixture between love and attachment.
Our love is not always love in accord with what Buddhism means with love, and it’s not always just attachment. We both, they come together. And we call that love. Right? So when I talk about I love somebody that means I like them and I want to be with them.
Two things: one is that I want to give to that person, but I also want something for me. The expectations, yeah, something has to come back. Right? That is my, that is our love, what we call love. If we can separate what part is the love and what part is the attachment, we know that this is the part that gives us the trouble in the relationships.
And this is the part that brings the good times. So if we know what brings the good times, what is helpful for that, we can adjust our own attitude. If we realize that, if we are very unhappy with our partner, we think: Oh, wish you would love me more and wish, you know, we have all these wishes. These wishes come from attachment. My needs that I feel are not fulfilled.
So I become unhappy and if I stay focused on that I just become more and more and more unhappy. Right? And I try to explain to my partner please love me like this and this and he doesn’t understand so he keeps on giving me the wrong thing. Right? If I instead go say okay, love is going to bring me happiness, but it’s focused on the other person.
Although I don’t get really for my partner what I want, I still love him, I still have feelings for him. So I’m going to focus on what he would like, I’m going to give, I’m going to I’m going to invest. What would you like? You know? What is going on for you?
And you invest in what is going on into that other person. You go away from your own self grasping, self-cherishing attitude. That already is a relief, you know, that gives you a lot of space and you create a causes for more happiness. That’s how we practice. One sec.
I come. That’s what we practice. Very simple. Right? No, it’s very difficult to do, but if you see it, you know, and if you really have the wisdom that can say, because you have to let go what feels as your own happiness.
You have to let go of your own happiness. That is how it feels like. But what you’re going to get is actually being happy. We believe that if I follow my attachment, I’m going to be happy. This is what makes me happy.
This is what we believe. And that’s a mistake. That’s a wrong belief. That grasping for happiness makes us so miserable. And our whole world tells us if you grasp right you’re really going to be happy.
You know, you just didn’t grasp for the right product or the right person or you haven’t met it yet. That is what our culture tells us, you know, but it’s not going to get, not ever is going to bring you that happiness that you want, never. So it feels like giving up your happiness. But the moment you start giving and start, you feel it immediately, your heart opens up, you get away from this and it’s like, you know, yes, that didn’t get fulfilled, but if you just put it aside, actually all your needs are going to be fulfilled. If you start giving to somebody else, we all know that if we give freely it is always going to come back, isn’t it?
And even a mere act of giving gives so much. True? So this is how we use our practice. Okay, this is how we use mental factors. Two cannot they go together.
They go together. If we separate them we can become more happy. If we lessen this one, practice this one, we become more happy. If we practice this one, we become more unhappy. Success guaranteed.
You try. It’s true. It’s that’s the amazing thing with that. What I find in Buddhism, if you do it, it’s it’s true. It’s and it works every time.
It’s not just an idea. It’s based on something. Okay. One more question. Which one would you like to do?
Do we need do we need anger for protection? Don’t we need anger for protection? Do we need anger? It’s true. So you still believe that you need anger for protection?
If you’re helpless? Feels like our big friend isn’t it who protects us. If we get attacked, if we are unhappy anger makes sure that we get out of the situation. It is part of the fight and flight. But when it arises, it appears as our helper.
You have to beat yourself. Do you do that? Uh-huh. But if you get attacked? Have the right to protect myself.
Where does that come from? That comes from the eye. Uh-huh. But as a human willingly expose or accept. We say that isn’t it?
I have the right to protect myself, I have the right to punch this person because he attacked me first, I have the right to? Not not just to punch someone because they attacked me, but if someone is beating me up, I have the right to to try and stop that. I’m not just gonna lie there unless this person freeze the living. I believe I do have the right, but I don’t have to get angry about it. Uh-huh.
Can I can I ask a question on that? Yeah. I’m thinking if somebody punches me in the mouth and I punch them back, If you work in a hospital and you get attacked with these patients, can if you would focus with compassion on their situation and you try to stop them so that they cannot harm themselves and others more, right, and you do that with compassion, that’s perfectly alright. But what Andrew says, if somebody, you know, outside somebody punches you, the fact that to punch back, you need that aversion of the pain and then react to that. But I’m saying is that when someone attacks you, when someone’s biting into your arm, have to defend yourself.
But it’s like it’s like it’s like saying but believing that you have the right. Get this breast off my arm. Yeah. That’s it’s I’m not just gonna It’s like where is it written that we have the right? Because all sentient beings have the right to be happy.
Yes. Well, have the right to strive to be happy. And we have the right to strive for that. It’s But then so then then if you were to reflect on the fact that person is biting you, it’s just giving you something back that you did before, right? And if you now try to get rid of him, you know, and you do that in a nasty way, that person is going to come back to you again.
You’re sick. Don’t have to get angry, you don’t have But you still you’re protecting yourself. If you really understand karma, anyway, I I won’t because I don’t really understand karma, so I won’t say. The main thing that I want to say is that we believe that anger is our protector. Anger is our friend.
It’s like we feel safe when we get angry. If we do not use our anger we might feel unsafe. Or if you feel like I’m not allowed, for instance you have to suppress your anger, you’re not allowed to be angry, that can give you a very unsafe feeling. Right? So so being able to use our anger gives us a safe feeling.
So we have grown up like that, we have been living like that for many many eons. As sentient beings that is what we believe. But if you look into it, how anger harms, Anger is the wish to harm. All right, the wish to harm according to Buddhism is never beneficial, never. So you have always these very difficult examples that challenge my wisdom and I mean, the examples that I’ve experienced.
Yes. From from a different point of view from other learnings I’ve done, they say anger is It’s like when your mind is already unhappy. You’re always angry because there’s deep rooted Yes. Yes. And it’s also when you’re already unhappy, anger easily gets triggered.
When you’re already happy it’s very difficult for anger to be triggered. I wouldn’t say anger is the unhappiness. It’s how we benefit. Yeah, the more unhappiness we have, the more anger can arise. Anger is that we feel that we do not get what we want.
Unhappiness is related to that too. So they they they easily they they exaggerate each other. Not how you say that today? Trigger each other. Mhmm.
Thank you for doing that. It’s getting late. I would like to finish with meditation on looking into the mind and looking into that attachment and that aversion that arises all the time. You know, how you can recognize that and how you can play with that? So allow the mind to come to rest.
Be aware of your body. Be aware of sitting. Allow your mind and all your energy to come back to your body. And then let the mind rest on the breath. You can do that by observing the movements of your abdomen.
And then think about what a mind is. The mind is that which is clear and knowing. It has no characteristics of its own. So try to think what that means. If the mind has no characteristics of its own, that means that anything can arise in the mind.
It also means that because it is empty of having characteristics, It can become anything. If the mind had characteristics of its own, that would limit the possibilities of what it could become. While you focus on your body, accept whatever whatever occurs, any feeling that arises, any suffering that arises. If we can accept whatever suffering occurs, that means we have no aversion. Being able to bear the suffering that we experience in life without having aversion.
That is what is is called in Buddhism patience. And try to connect that with your own experiences, what this means in your life. If we have no expectations of what might come, that means we have no attachment or desire. If we feel sad, unhappy, or irritated, have to check our expectations. Probably we desire something that we do not get.
Think about if that is true and if you can recognize it in your own mind. If we can see the disadvantages of clinging, the misery that can come from that, if we can see how clinging leads to strong negative feelings, the more we understand the nature of clinging, the more we can let go of our expectations. When we can see the impermanent nature of whatever arises in the mind, the impermanent nature of feelings, of suffering, happiness, naturally there will be no clinging and no aversion. Because we realize that there is nothing to hold on to. Everything passes away by itself.
If we understand the nature of things, impermanence. When things happen to us, we know to let go. We don’t get disturbed when we lose something or when things change. The mind can get used to anything, positive or negative. If we would suddenly receive a lot of wealth, we might be first excited.
But after a while, the mind gets used to it and goes back to its previous state. If we lose something that is very precious to us in the beginning, you might have the feeling that we can’t survive without it. But after a while, the mind adjusts and gets used to it. So at the moment we are familiar with confusion and distraction. We are used to that.
And when we meditate, we try to become the opposite. We try to become more mindful. If we try again and again, the mind will get used to it. Imagine your mind being used to being mindful. And if that would happen, then you can imagine that as soon as we have developed that quality of being mindful, it’s very difficult for the mind to become distracted.
The more we understand the nature of our mind, the more we can see what is happening, the more we can take control and adjust or redirect our mind in a way that we become more happy. And what we’re doing is more beneficial. The more we are in control of our own mind, the more we can be of benefit to others. And then we dedicate merits of having done this session by thinking about any wisdom that has come from listening and reflecting and discussing the mind and its potential, any compassion that arises from having done this. May we be able to use that for the benefit of all those around us.
May it help our own positive qualities to develop further and further. Thank you very much for coming. So there is a new home worksheet at the the door. Diana will give you one. And the same same kind of practices as the last time, you know, with some some exercise for during the day.
And I’ll see you next week.