Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 127-minute session, Ven Jamyang resolves a question from the previous week—whether Buddhism requires anger for protection—by clarifying that assertiveness works without the wish to harm. He then teaches the central mechanism of suffering and happiness: contact triggers feeling, our reaction to that feeling plants a seed in the mind, and these seeds eventually ripen as future suffering or happiness. He carefully distinguishes reacting from attachment or aversion, which plants seeds for suffering, from acting from wisdom and compassion, which seeds happiness. Practical guidance covers observing strong emotions without suppressing them, and he addresses questions about proof of karma, how attachment to loved ones leads to suffering, and whether daydreaming exhausts positive karma. The session closes with an equanimity meditation designed to weaken the mind’s habitual division of people into friend, enemy, and stranger. Suited to Discovering Buddhism students with prior exposure to basic Buddhist concepts.
File metadata (for organising)
File: jamyang mind and its potential 5.mp3
UUID: faa29d38-2c46-4943-b913-ab2dc08be9f4
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Mind and its Potential (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 127.6 minutes
Words: ~14,732
Okay. So how is everybody doing? Going? Good? Lots of practice every day.
Yes. Who’s doing that? Yeah. Fantastic. Is it nice to do?
Sometimes it is not, but sometimes it’s really hard to do. Yeah. It After twenty years, that’s great. Any other good experiences? I gave you the opportunity.
Is it helpful? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That’s good. Why not have you taken the screen?
Sorry? Why not send me questions? You can. You can. I’m always happy with your questions.
But I might say, you know, we do that another time. But please keep on asking. Okay? Okay. So last week we finished with a discussion and we talked about what is the difference between attachment and love.
And we talked about that later, you know, I put it on the board. And there was also a question like do we need anger for protection? And I had a feeling that we didn’t completely finish that question. Do people have that same feeling or? Yeah.
Shall we give that a little bit of time? Because I don’t know if you have thought about that during the week, having to go home without a proper answer. Was that hard? I don’t know. Did it keep you busy?
Or did you just let it go and thought, oh, next time or you let it go? Yeah. Do we need anger for protection? No? Why not?
Yep. Yeah. So But do we need it to protect ourselves? No? So what do we see as being angry?
What is anger? Sorry? It’s a But what does anger want? So last week we talked about all the mental factors. And I said in Buddhism all the mental factors have a definition.
It’s like all the different emotions are defined in a certain way so that we learn to recognize them. In the West we have nothing like that, isn’t it? We talk about anger and we just assume that everybody knows what we’re talking about. And in the extremes we know what anger is. If somebody is really angry we all agree on that.
But then there are subtleties and, you know, there are even cultural differences that in one culture something looks like you’re angry. You know, I know that when I talk to a Dutch person, Australians think I’m very angry, but we are just excited. Anger is something that we have in the mind. It has to do with intention, what we want, isn’t it? If we are very attached or if we have loss in our mind, we know what we want, isn’t it?
We want somebody else. Yeah, we agree on that? So when we’re angry, what do we want? We want to harm? Do we agree on that?
Want the other person to with us. But in order to get that done, you can choose for many different methods to get that done. But when you choose for anger, you choose for a certain method. I don’t think it necessarily anger doesn’t necessarily mean for how much you want the other person to change their behavior. To change You can get angry at your child, but that doesn’t mean you wanna hurt your child.
So what okay. So then Buddhism would say, is that anger or not? Because you can be ruffled without wanting to harm, or you can be ruffled and wanting to harm. Right? If we were really angry at somebody, what do we wish that person?
Bad. Bad. That I call hate, contempt. Okay. Okay.
So when you hate somebody, then you wish harm. Before that, you don’t. I mean, if I hate a person, not necessarily angry, I mean, not Okay. Yes. So anger and hatred are state of mind, and then you have a behavior that reflects that kind of mind.
Yes? Anger is a state of mind, but how what we we say, this is anger. We’re not used to doing this, saying what is what is anger? What is attachment? What is jealousy?
We’re not used to phrase that, isn’t it? It’s like we have a feeling and then we just think that if we talk about a feeling everybody knows what we’re talking about. But Buddhism is very strong about, and I said last week everything that they discuss leads to knowledge that helps you to achieve your potential, helps you to become free of suffering. So and a lot of that has to do with the intention that we have in our mind. So every intention for for loving or for hating has a result and we will talk about that today.
So if we can see the intention of anger, we can create a kind of definition, isn’t it? So if somebody hurts you isn’t deeply, what do you want? Is your you want revenge? You want to strike back? You want to harm?
You want that person to suffer? Is it? It’s true, isn’t it? With the big five. Yeah.
Also, I want to be as strong as I think the other person is. Yes. At least as strong, strong, isn’t it? It’s better if we are stronger. That’s right.
Yes. Because then we know that we have that protection, isn’t it? We feel them. That gives us the feeling of being protected. Buddha says, to say it very simple, it is the wish to harm or even the wish for that other person to suffer.
And that can come quite easily. It’s like, when we love somebody, we want that person to be happy. Right? And we know that from everybody that is close to us, we want them to be happy. Until they do something that really hurts us, then suddenly we think, oh, I hope he’s not going to get that, you know, that he doesn’t get his job or that something will happen to his car or we suddenly start to wish for other things for these people.
That is anger. You don’t have to necessarily say that. You don’t have to become physically, you know, in a state that everybody can see that you’re angry. You just have that wish that you do not want them to be happy. That is what Buddhism calls anger.
If the wish to harm is not there, then it’s like you can call it an agitation. Or there is an aversion, definitely an aversion for what is going on. Yeah, and if the aversion gets more and more fueled, then at a certain point you can imagine that the anger is going to come from that. Isn’t it? If you love your daughter really, you know, very deeply, it’s difficult for anger really to arise because you want your daughter to be happy.
So that is clashing with anger. Can you see that? Say attachment is that you believe that you are happy when you get what you want. Right, so you’re chasing whatever you want because you believe that makes you happy. What you want.
So then when you do not get what you want, you’re not going to be angry. True? So when there is already attachment involved in everybody that you love, there is attachment, then when something happens, the anger is much easier to pop up into your mind. Just for that. Yes.
They go together. Yeah. So do we need anger for protection? No? You really lift that?
You really if somebody attacks you, you don’t get angry? Teach me. Yeah. But if you get agitated, then anger can very easily come. When anger comes, you’re weak.
But anger appears as something that looks like it’s strong. It makes you strong. It gives you the feeling, oh, I’m stronger than the other person. And then in that way, gives you protection. Children need anger.
Sorry? Children need anger to protect themselves. Children need anger to protect themselves. Only Why not adults? Yeah.
If you don’t show anger, the bullying is people in the bloodstream, you show anger at the neighbor. Is that only with children who get bullied, or what about adults who get bullied? A refuge place for people who are bullied. It’s the same, isn’t it? I think adults and children is the same.
And it almost looks like that in in this if you do not get angry, if you do not stand up for yourself, you know, you you you’re gonna snow under. Isn’t that how it appears, isn’t it? I can’t stand up for yourself and not get angry. How do you do that? Tell Raj.
Do you can I pick up about getting angry? You don’t wish the other person harm. You just wish the person to change their behavior. Isn’t that the same? I’ll challenge that.
If someone attacks me, I will do whatever I need to protect myself. So but if you wanting to change that person, is that not a form of harm? Don’t think it is. I mean, if someone I mean, that person feels like, I wanna express myself like that, and I have the need to do that. Why are you stopping me?
Am I need yeah. Gives them a good feeling. Trying to change someone’s behavior is not necessarily anger. I mean, it’s changing their behavior because they’re they’re assaulting me. Yeah.
So why don’t you just accept that? Because I I think that I have the right not to accept it. Uh-huh. I think every living being has the right to not have to accept that. But if if I express something to you that is really rude, right, or that you feel is really rude, and you stop me from doing that, you try to change me.
Right? Mhmm. So I feel that as a harm. Out behavior is not appropriate and could be offensive, maybe maybe you will consider it and think about it. Now we have a deal.
Maybe. Yeah. So there is this grey area, isn’t it? And you have to check every time is this anger or is this not anger? When I do it like this, is that anger or is it not anger?
And really check-in your mind if this is behind And the wish to harm is not always that clear in the mind. You know, it’s it’s it’s because I think when we talk about angry anger, we talk about that big anger that arises and we recognize that when it’s there. But there’s also subtle forms of anger where you just have these thoughts popping up and where you wish somebody which is something that is not so nice. Right? So when you start looking into your mind you also start to recognize these thoughts and try to arrest them.
Buddhism says anger is the most destructive emotion that exists if it is this, right, wish to harm. And it has, doesn’t fulfill any purpose. You’re right with that, Raj? No. Well, then it’s not called anger anymore.
Then you have to find another word for that state of mind. So for instance, when you want to address a behavior of a child, you know, you can do that ruffle, but without any anger. You can do that compassionate. Then you do not wish that child to harm, but you want to direct the child in a certain way. Maybe the Dalai Lama can, but I can’t.
I mean, the problem is that Western society views angular as different as point of view. Yes. Yes. And that’s why I’m saying, and many, many, not many, there are forms of behavior that some of us would call anger, and then Buddhism says, no, we do not call that anger, you know. So when I talk about anger, I’m talking about this.
Right? Sometimes people call just being assertive. They say, Oh, that’s an angry person. You know, they’re standing up for themselves, you know, that’s a form of anger. But, you know, it’s not a wish to harm.
Anger comes very quick. Yeah. Yeah. Anger also has a kind of clarity in it. When we’re angry, we know really well how we can hurt that other person.
Isn’t it? We know very precise how to say it, how loud, how slow slow or fast, how we know, isn’t it? What? Some of the comments that they come out with Yeah. Awful.
Yeah. Because anger anger has a clarity in it that is very, very sharp. We know that, isn’t it? When we’re angry we can see exactly how we’re going to hurt that other person or how we could hurt that other person. So I do not agree completely that there is no thought.
I do not think that there is control, but there is thought and a clarity there. But we cannot stop it. We cannot and we haven’t really thought through it with wisdom. You can say that. If someone’s coming at you with a gun and you want them to change their behavior, does that answer?
I don’t know. I would just run away. But Yeah. Maybe you can’t. I don’t know.
It doesn’t have to be. I know there was here a person who, I think he’s alright if I tell her that story, he was one day walking on the beach and he saw a person coming from the other side and that person had a knife. And that person, he was in a different country, and he said he had only a few seconds and in these seconds he was contemplating that that person must think I’m an American because there was something happening in the world, that some groups of people were attacking Americans. They must think I’m an American and I have exactly the same knife in my cupboard. And he thought something else, and then he opened his mouth very clearly talking in a different language, and the person immediately dropped the knife and walked away.
So he had this huge clarity of mind and it could redirect that aggression. He didn’t think that he could do that. He said, When you had asked me before I would never have been able to give you the answer. This is how I’m going to react. But it just happened and so I Michelle?
Right, and if you want to be right, the wish to be right is pride. It’s not anger necessarily. But we support our pride with anger. So when somebody doesn’t say, Yeah, yeah, I can see that you’re right, then anger is going to come in and it’s going to think very clever how we can get that other person to say that we were right. Yes.
Last one, and then we wanna move on. One thing about anger in your relationship. Angry being angry at yourself. Yes. Being self destructive?
Yeah. Yeah. What is your question? Anger is anger. It’s wish to harm.
And you can do that to yourself or to others. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Thank you.
Is everybody happy with that? Yeah. We have spoken about the mind, what the mind is. What is the mind? Somebody remembers?
That which is clear and knowing. Who said it? Ah, fantastic! That which is clear and knowing. And the clear refers to the spacious aspect of the mind, and the knowing refers to a knowing that we have in our mind.
We know, mind is what knows. We perceive, we experience, and there is something that experiences us. There is a knower and something that is known. They both arise at the same time. That is what is the mind.
We have spoken about that the mind exists as a continuum that goes from life to life, because we cannot trace back the beginning of the mind. Mind is something different than the body. The body, we can see it has a beginning and we can see it has an end. With the mind, we have to ask where does the mind come from to find a beginning, if we would like to find a beginning. And in Buddhism we say the mind comes from the previous moment of mind, which comes from the previous moment of mind.
And if we keep on tracing that back, we can’t actually point out a beginning. We cannot say the mind started, for instance, at the time of birth or the time of conception, because if you would state that, then the mind also would cease and you need some cause for that to happen. True? Everything needs for something to happen we need causes that it can happen. If I want to have a cup of tea, I have to do certain things in order to get a cup of tea.
If I do not do that, I can wish whatever I want, this cup is not going to appear. True? So whatever we’re doing, whatever we’re creating, we need causes for that to happen. So everything on a physical has causes. If I’m looking at a chair, the chair has certain causes.
We need certain material, we need certain process, we need people who bring the chair here, we need a whole process in order to get a chair. These are all causes. And we said for everything that arises, for everything that exists, there is a substantial cause and then there are many causes that help, that contribute to that, that are like conditions that we need for something to arise. So for a tree, we talked about a substantial cause of a tree. Do you remember?
That was a seed. So then we talked about, in the same way, the mind, which is not made out of matter, which is just like space, we talked about in order for the mind to exist it needs a cause too, it needs a substantial cause. You’re looking at me as if you heard for the first time. Good, good. Do you remember that we talked about this?
Oh, maybe not, yeah. So for the mind to come into existence you need a substantial cause, something that without that the mind cannot arise. And then you have all kinds of conditions that contribute to the state of mind that arises. So the substantial cause for the mind is what we say in Buddhism the previous moment of mind. And the substantial cause for that previous moment of mind is its previous moment.
Because that is a substantial cause, you cannot say, and before that there was nothing. You know, because otherwise nothing will be the substantial cause. If the mind arises out of nothing, nothing will be the substantial cause. True? That’s very illogical, isn’t it?
That doesn’t sound right. Everybody following me? Yeah, am I talking too difficult? Or not so? So we said that the mind exists since the beginningless time and because of that we must have taken rebirth many times, we must have taken a body many times.
This is not the first time that we have a body. We have done this many times. We have had many different kinds of body. What else did we talk about? And then we talked about the mind, that if the mind itself is clear and knowing and it has a spacious aspect, then many things can arise in the mind.
And last time we talked about that, about all the mental factors that can arise, all the emotions, all the feelings, our wisdom, our compassion, our discrimination, everything that arises in the mind we can somehow label that. We can give it a name and we can define that. And the more we do that, the more we can learn to distinguish what is going on in our mind. True? So, you’ve got a whole list of many, many mental factors.
You know them by heart? Is it you check before you ask it. Okay. The mind of a human being Yeah. Oh, we’re gonna talk about that today.
We’re going to? Yes. So hold your question. No. Write it down.
Write it down. Somebody have a paper for for no. Really, your question because we’re gonna talk about the mind and about what we create in the mind. We saw last week all these mental factors and we saw, we talked about the five omnipresent mental factors. That was feeling, recognition, intention, concentration and contact.
And I think on the form that I gave you there was a little verse that said from contact comes feeling, from feeling comes reaction. Can you remember that? Have you seen that? This is what keeps us in the cycle of birth and death. Our reactions to our feelings are our passport to rebirth.
So I’m going to talk about that today to make sure that we are really clear about what we can do with the mind and how we create our own reality. Yeah? That’s what we’re going to try. I don’t know. Do you want me to write that down, what I just said?
You didn’t from contact comes feeling. From feeling comes reaction. This is I’ll put it on the board. Our reactions to our feelings are our passport to rebirth. So if everything has a cause, then Sorry?
What do you mean? Having a passport? Or what? Having passport to visa, I thought it would not exist. You were scared that it would just cease to exist at one moment.
No, no, no. You as long as Don’t worry about that. You maybe wish one day that you ceased to exist. If you hear this whole story, no I’m joking, don’t run away. So if we talk about the law of cause and effect, everybody has heard about that, that Buddhism talks about karma, and if you just look in the material world everything that we’re doing has an effect.
Every effect has a cause, has more than one cause. True? We agree on that. So, on the level of matter the law of cause and effect is very visible for us. If we talk about the mind, we talk about something that is not matter, something that is like space, something that only exists out of experiences that arise in everybody’s mind.
On that level also the law of cause and effect works. Everything that we experience is an effect of something. Last week I said every feeling that arises is an effect of something. We believe the feelings that arise when I drink, the feeling that arises comes from the tea. That’s what we believe.
And Buddhism says, no, that feeling, the cause for that feeling has been planted in your mind stream a long time ago. The reason why somebody likes the tea or somebody doesn’t like the tea, that cause has been created a long time ago. Right? So then every so if we know what causes us to feel unhappy or miserable and what causes us to feel happy, we can start creating the causes for happiness and suffering, whatever we choose, right? Paul, you have a free choice in that.
Whatever we choose that will arise in the future. So, today I can work on my future, alright? By being present today and being mindful of my actions and making sure whatever I’m doing is going to lead to result that I want, I don’t have to think about, I don’t have to think about my future. It will naturally one day arise. Yeah, but it’s not because in the past I already liked the tea, so today I like it again.
It’s not like that. It’s like if I like something, if I get a happy feeling from something, that means that I must have done something beneficial in the past because something good or something beneficial or something virtuous, that is what gives me a happy feeling. It doesn’t have nothing to do with the tea. Right, I can get cancer tomorrow and they give me chemo and I can’t enjoy the tea anymore. Same tea, you know, with different conditions in my life.
And suddenly this non virtuous karma is ripening and anything that I try to enjoy I have no enjoyment anymore. I only have suffering. We know that, isn’t it? Things like this can happen and we think, Oh, it’s because of the chemo that I don’t enjoy the tea. No.
It’s not the chemo is just a condition. But it is it is just time that’s you know, a time that non virtuous karma ripens and we’re going to experience the result of actions that we have done in the past. And you don’t, it’s not clear yet but we’ll go into that deeper. So if we say from contact come feelings we try to look at that when we meditate, isn’t it? We try to sit and we try to feelings arise.
And when feelings arise we know that we react to the feelings. As soon as happy feelings arise we react with attachment. We want to have more of that. And as soon as negative feelings or unpleasant feelings arise, we react with aversion. True?
So I just put them here to remember. Oh, they’re right here. From feeling comes reaction. So these are the reactions that we have. As soon as we react to whatever happens in our life, and we do that actually in every moment of our awareness, every moment of mind we experience something and we react to cannot stop ourselves doing that.
That’s just how we exist at the moment. So every time when I react with attachment or aversion, what happens they say is that a seed is planted in our mental continuum which will carry it over from life to lifetime and that seed has a certain potency. If I do something, if I get really, really angry at somebody and wish that person really harm and I even engage in that harm and rejoice after the deed, that is a seed that is planted in my mind. And in the future somewhere that seed is going to ripen. Because it was such a strong negative action, that seed has a big potency for a lot of suffering to arise.
If I if I know a little bit about this or even if I just like instance to give a lot. I like to give. I like to give just because I’m happy to do that and I like other peoples to be happy. If I do that I’m not reacting from attachment of aversion. Right?
I’m doing the opposite, I’m just acting. I’m not reacting, I’m acting. True? If I act and I do that in a beneficial way, something that helps others and helps myself at the same time, a seed is planted in my mind that one day will ripen in a happy experience. And that can be many, many, many things, you know, that can be help at the time that you need it or that can be that some money comes or it can be that you have good friends or it can be many things just as a suffering can ripen in many, many ways.
Buddhism is very much, there are just two options: either you react or you do not react and you respond. Either you come from a mind that is reactive and is just concerned about yourself or you come from a mind that is there just to be of benefit to others. If we have the state of mind, and we both have these minds, isn’t it? We have the mind, both the minds. Sometimes we feel like we want to be of benefit, sometimes we feel that we’re more caught up in our attachment and aversion.
If we act from that attachment and aversion or react from attachment and aversion we plant a seed for suffering in our mind that will ripen in the future in the form of unpleasant experiences where we are not happy. When we do something for the benefit of others, then we plant a virtuous seed in our mind that will ripen one day in happy experiences. Right? So focusing on what we where we are today and what we are doing, our actions of body, speech and mind, observing them and trying to make sure that we’re not going to be under this influence and trying to redirect this reaction by working with our mind we can determine our future. We do determine our future.
We change our future. Can you see that? Or do I go too fast? Yes, it’s interesting. What kind of proof would you like to see?
It’s beyond proof, yes. It’s also beyond logic. So in Buddhism we have three kinds of, what I call three kinds of phenomena. One is what we can see with our eyes, what we can perceive with our sense organs. And we can agree with each other, this is how it is.
Then there is a level which is called hidden phenomena and you can only access hidden phenomena with logic. For instance, an example that I gave is that if there somewhere, no, if you see somewhere smoke there must be a fire, you know. Because there is smoke it must be that there is a fire. So the hidden phenomena have to do with, for instance, the emptiness of the mind, the ultimate nature of things. We cannot see that with our sense organs.
They are too gross. The nature of mind is so subtle that we cannot access that with our sense organs. We also cannot now access that with our mental consciousness because it’s too gross, you know. So, at the moment we can only think about it and use reasoning to refine our mind and then eventually we can, with reasoning we can establish that emptiness must exist and how it must exist. And then you have, so that’s the second kind of phenomena, the hidden phenomena.
You do that with reasoning. And then you have the extremely hidden phenomena and these are phenomena that you cannot access in any way. karma is an extremely hidden phenomena. You cannot see karma, they say, until you are a Buddha. Only the Buddha can really see why we are experiencing right now what we are experiencing, what we have done to be where we are now.
So yes, you can say that you can’t prove it, that’s true, but you can prove all the things that, you know, comes from the Buddha’s teachings. You can prove all the things that you can see, what we agree upon. You can prove all the things that you do with logic and then you can say, Okay, you know, ninety percent I can actually access that material with my own mind. I can realize that in my own mind and I can understand that. So the ten percent of karma that I don’t get, I have to trust that what he’s saying is true until I achieve that state myself.
Then you can go really in debate with the Buddha if you don’t agree. But before that, you know, you can’t. When you reach that state how do you deem the doubt that comes in your mind? You have to reflect on your source, you know, the validity of your source. Yeah.
Other teachings. And if you find mistakes in it, you know, if you have found many, many mistakes in the teachings of Buddha, can say, Well, you know, so many mistakes, why would I believe karma? But if you can’t find any mistakes, then you can say, Well, I’ll just accept or I It’s a kind of a belief, isn’t it, that you hold on to. Because if you say, Oh, I have to wait till I can prove karma before I’m going to accept doesn’t mean that karma doesn’t exist, right? Me believing in karma doesn’t make karma existing or not existing.
True? Me believing in previous lives doesn’t make previous lives existing or not. They do exist or they do not exist. karma exists or does not exist. Is a Sanskrit word for action.
And every action that we are doing has an effect. You’re right. But we don’t believe it. We live as if we do not believe it. Every day of our life we show that we do not believe that what we’re doing has an effect.
We think we can get away with things. We think it’s not, Oh no, that’s not going to be having such an effect. You try and believe it. Yeah, but it’s like we live as if we do not believe it, isn’t it? So karma is very very difficult for Sorry?
Yeah. That’s that’s the way how we say it, isn’t it? In a in a way, we have it in a culture that we know that when you give that something is going to come back. We know that. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Is in there for me now? It’s true that whatever actions that we are doing now is going to ripen in the future lives. But if I start to do, if I start to engage in actions that open more my heart, that are more loving, that are more compassionate, what I also do is that seeds that have been planted in the past that are related to virtuous actions, they start to ripen too in the present.
So by doing these actions I actually ripen seeds that are already in my mind that will going to give me happiness. So my level of happiness will rise but not because the seeds are ripening right now, but because seeds from previous lives are ripening. One sec. Yeah? As soon as they start to ripen then it’s very difficult to do anything about it.
But you can do many things to prevent them from ripening and you can do many things that help to reduce the potency of the seeds. So that if something has, for instance, the potency to, you know, give you cancer and that you die from that, you can maybe change it into a headache. Alright? The potency has reduced so much that one day you have a headache and the seed is gone or finished. It’s not burned but it’s yeah?
You’re right with that? But we’ll talk about that kind of things later and, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, what? No. We do not know what seats we have in our mind. We do not know. But if we have existed, this is what the Dharma says, if we have, yeah, yeah, come on, yeah, it’s fine, it’s fine.
If you, if we have existed since beginningless time, have taken birth since beginningless time, if we have been under influence of this since beginning of this time and have done actions coming from this, you know, so all anger, attachment, hatred, whatever we have done, if that is all going to ripen in the form of suffering we can be sure that we have many seeds that can ripen into suffering. What? That will lead to suffering in the future because it comes from your attachment, isn’t it? Just your own benefit. So that’s going to lead to suffering in the future.
However, the suffering that arises as the result of some past karma can also be Yeah, we can use these experiences to change our mind. So what we want to do, if we have all these functions in our mind that we can develop or that we can abandon. That’s basically what it is, isn’t it? There are certain functions that we know that if we develop them we become happier, stronger, kinder, wiser people. We have that choice.
And there are functions in our mind that if we develop them we become first of all very unpleasant people, but also we will more suffer during our life and in future lives. There is a choice. I want you to see that, that there was a, yeah, wait a second. There is a choice. So I can, not I can, we can create a completely miserable life.
You know, if I constantly every day I’m just sitting on my anger and I think why did that not happen and why did you do that? Every day I go over and over and over again. Not only am I miserable that day, we also know from the whole medical world that what you do is you shut all your functions in your body, you start, you know, your blood pressure and your heartbeat and everything starts to function in a more destructive way or not an optimal way. And you create a lot of misery for the future. Nobody wants to be around you anymore, you end up lonely so that you have more suffering.
It’s just misery, right? It’s like you can create hell if you want, if you choose to do so. Having all these functions in the mind we also have opportunity, especially because we have a human rebirth and we are intelligent people, we have an option to create the causes for happiness and remove, stop following the negative minds. And if we can stop following negative minds and if we can start improving the positive functions like love and compassion and wisdom, and the result, happiness will naturally come. We do not have to doubt that, it will naturally come.
And then I’m trying to engage in the dharma and I’m trying to apply the dharma. And especially they say when you take vows where you for instance say, Okay, anger is the wish to harm, I’m going to stop killing as a way to make my mind more virtuous so that I will have a happier life. Can everybody see that, how we can do that? So when I say I’m going to take that vow, then I’m not going to kill anymore. What normally happens is that, or what is my experience, and I’m not sure that always happens, but it’s like negative, it’s almost like a lot of suffering comes up in your own mind.
It’s like you try to become a good person and then suddenly all the suffering comes. So then Buddhism has a lot of ways how to deal with that, and that’s what you said, that you can use situations that are very unpleasant and where you react with aversion. You know that when you keep on reacting with aversion you create more causes for suffering. So you can for instance say, okay, I’m going to say it’s okay that I have that. I can actually see some benefit.
Oh, how fantastic I have that, please give me more of that. If we can generate that attitude, at least the suffering of having aversion is finished. When we suffer, we have two things that we suffer from. First of all, there’s the pain or the experience, you know, somebody walks out of a life or is angry with us or whatever, we have the suffering and then we have the the aversion to the situation. Our mind that goes like, Why did he do that?
All that stories that we’re talking. We suffer more from the stories than from that experience that we had in life. I think the story that we create is maybe ninety percent of our suffering. If we can stop the story by saying, Okay, that happened in my life, that’s okay, you know, I’m going to see what I can learn from it. I’m going to see how I can get benefit out of this.
Yes, it is not pleasant, but how can I get benefit? How can I grow from this? Right? Then you stop your aversion, and then that helps to reduce the suffering. Thank you.
I have two, but I don’t have the time to drink. So, yeah, these are techniques that we use to to because we cannot stop suffering from arising. We cannot stop ex as long as we have this body, we will experience the pain of birth, the pain of sickness, the pain of old age, the pain of death, we will experience it. Unless we die young, we don’t have the old age, you know, but we will experience these kinds of suffering. We will experience the suffering of being separated from something that we do not like, that we like.
We will experience the suffering from not getting what we want. We cannot stop that because we are beings who have feelings and who like to have pleasant feelings and who do not like to have unpleasant feelings. We will experience suffering as long as we have this body. And as long as our mind does and cannot stop doing this, So it’s like we are in, we are the creators of our own happiness and unhappiness. Unhappiness.
We are the creators Buddhism calls it about of our own Samsāra and nirvana. Samsāra is that cycle where we keep on repeating the same kind of things again and again and again, and trying to find happiness and knowing that we’re never gonna find it. nirvana means that we are free of that. And I think next year there’s going be a module on nirvana and Samsāra nirvana where we talk how how are we caught up in Samsāra? Why is it that we go around and around and around again and again?
Why can’t we stop it? And then then we talk about and how can we stop it? You know? And then how do we create nirvana? So it’s like when death comes into the picture, it’s like it’s like you cannot run away from The people who have never ever considered anything about death or dying have been living their lives, and suddenly, they’re told they’ve got leukemia, and But not straight away?
No. No. So first they fight. Yeah. Before five weeks, they attack.
Even if they know that they’re going to die from what they’ve got Yeah. They do think we I don’t know. Some type of pacing as well. Yes. So what do we do normally with death?
How do we treat death in our own mind? We ignore it. We try to push it away, isn’t it? It’s not coming yet. It’s not going to hit me.
Definitely not today. I still have so much to do and so, so long to go. So we pushed death away. And I think in death, in death there are, thinking about death, there are so many opportunities to improve your life. And you see that when people are really sick and they have to think about death, they have no choice.
Suddenly they start to realize what is important in life and what is not. Seeing death so close gives you that opportunity to see really clearly, oh I don’t want to do that anymore, you know, all that crap what we’re trapped in. And many times people start to realize, oh you know, it’s all about as long as we love each other and if we’re good, you know, on good terms with each other that is the most important thing in life. So they start to open up their hearts just because of that. Yeah.
The point I was making that a very negative situation can turn into a very positive situation. Yeah. But negative and positive is also what we project on it, isn’t it? Both. Yeah.
So negative means I don’t like it. I have a version in my mind. Positive means I like it. Right? And we can every time when we have aversion arising, we can say how can I make this a benefit?
And then at least we turn around that aversion. This is like a burden in the mind. I don’t know if you recognize that when I talk about it. It’s like this mind that constantly tries to move around things. How can I get out of that?
How can I avoid that? And if something happens, how can I get out of that? And how do I address that? And it’s like it’s like a burden for the mind. It makes makes the mind down, it makes the mind heavy.
If we can say, oh wow, what an opportunity, what a challenge, how can I use this for the benefit, you know, not only of myself, also from other people, then the mind lifts and then maybe we can do something positive with it? Right? I want you to see that it’s all in your mind and that there is a choice. Although we cannot stop doing this, right? It’s like this is on a very, very subtle level and last time I explained that, that’s on a very subtle level and we can only stop that when we realize the nature of reality.
But we can stop the reactions that we are aware of or we can counteract them. And every time that you counteract reactions, every time when anger arises in my mind and I can say: Oh, I do not want to go there, you know, how can I counteract this? And then there are techniques in Buddhism that you can use. You start creating, you start to purify your mind, you start to create the causes for happiness to arise. And as soon as you start doing that, your whole life will become better.
Right? You don’t have to wait till next life, but that’s a bonus. Next life, you know, it will happen straight away. So what would happen to you if your veggie garden is gone? So, there are two things.
One is you experience pleasure and then there is attachment. If you experience pleasure from doing your veggie garden, that pleasure, that happiness comes comes from actions that you’ve done in the past, right? That’s just a ripening of virtuous actions. That’s a good thing. So you can say, Oh wow, because I like this so much, I must have done something good in the past, how wonderful!
Then you do not necessarily have to get attached to them. You can just enjoy the pleasure. Right? If you enjoy the pleasure then you also know that the seeds for your pleasurable experiences, they become less. So you have to make sure that you keep on planting seeds for that too.
Alright? Not just the plants in your veggie garden, but maybe you give some veggies away so that you create some good karma and then make sure that in your future you also enjoy your veggie garden. But that’s perfectly alright. Any enjoyment that we have, fully enjoy. Because enjoyment comes from virtue.
Yes, but if you know, if you really know where it comes from, if you really can see that your feelings are coming from the past and not from that object that is there in front of you, And if you really if you can see that by your reaction you actually take away that feeling from yourself, why would you react? It’s not so clever. And I know we do that, you know, but you do it because you believe that your pleasure is coming from that object. So that’s why you have to think about where feelings are coming from. You have to think about it again and again and again because the moment you realize, oh, so my actions, what I do right now is going to determine how I feel, you don’t have to worry about anything external anymore.
You just walk and you are very mindful where you are and you’re very mindful of the actions that you’re doing and you make sure that whatever you’re doing is purified or is, you know, doing with a good motivation that is for the benefit of all and then you’re that whatever is going to happen in the future that is going to happen, you know, that is the best you can do. That doesn’t mean that there was always success guaranteed, you know, but you cannot do more than taking care of your action right now. If you grasp for something that you would like to happen in the future, you miss opportunities to really create causes for happiness and you go into the mind of attachment. But that’s a trick, isn’t It’s a whole system constantly tricks us and tries to let us know like, oh, no, no, it’s that thing that makes you happy and you want to go for it. And every time when we have it, we realize, oh, no, that’s not actually giving me what I was looking for.
Yeah, now where’s the chocolate? Every time we talk about the chocolate, the chocolate is never as good as it looks like. And you still keep on going for it. It does. Talking about, say, your children.
Children are your biggest object of attachment. Absolutely. Yep. I I I just had to think it’s possible to have been detached from something that’s No. That’s close to you.
No. Don’t don’t start there. Don’t start there. But there always will be a level of attachment. Well, I don’t think it’s possible to If you realize the nature of phenomena, attachment will be cut.
But I don’t think, you know, to have the privilege to go there with your mind, you need so many fantastic conditions, you must have done so much work in the past. So for us, trapped in Samsāra, we can just do the best that we can. Right? So yes, attachment for your children will always be there. That doesn’t mean that you have to cultivate that more.
But you can look at it. Oh, look, there’s my attachment. Oh, look, for my children, my children seem to be so much more important than the childrens of my neighbor. That’s attachment, isn’t it? Or that?
I mean There are my children. That is attachment. Yeah, my children’s got to be my boyfriend. I mean, it’s long way to say, but That is attachment, you know? It is.
So you just if you recognize it in your mind, it’s like when we talked about anger. Only when you recognize it, you can properly counteract it. So when you recognize attachment, then attachment is very difficult to recognize. Let’s say it’s like oil that goes into the cloth, you know? And then you try to wash it, you can’t really get it because it’s everywhere.
Attachment is like that. It merges with all the good things that we have in life. So to get attachment out of all the good things that we have is very, very, very difficult. So don’t expect that to happen. No.
You will always have attachment to your children, that’s okay, you know. You’re not a bad person because you have attachment. We’re not bad, right? It’s just that attachment leads to suffering and we all want to be happy. So we try to work with that and we start where we are.
And if you have lots of attachment then that’s where you start. You don’t beat yourself up like, oh, I’m so bad, I have so much attachments, I have to change. It’s not like that. You say, yes, we all have attachment and that makes me suffer, How can I do it differently? And maybe you do going to pay more attention to the children of your neighbors.
And you say, these are just the same kind of children as my children and they want just as much happiness as my children want happiness. Why do I only take care of my own children? Why would I not give also to them? And you will suffer in the future. Yeah.
Yeah. Or what you can do is that when that love is so strong and you want to completely engage in it, be also the observer. Wow, that’s such a strong love, you know? Then when you are the observer, you do not identify so strong with the attachment. So although you can fully enjoy it, you know, the effect, the negative effect will be not so big in the future.
So when you have very strong emotions arising and they are, you know, they are mixed with love like attachment and you really want to follow that. If it is already arising in the mind, don’t stop it. Don’t suppress it. Buddhism is not about suppressing all these good feelings, you know. It’s it’s or all the bad feelings, both anger and attachment, don’t suppress it.
If it is already arising, let it arise. The more you become the observer, the less it will completely swap you away. If arises in the mind, let it arise. Try not to follow it. Yes, yes.
The energy is in itself, you know, it’s anger is a very, very strong energy. Before this anger, it’s just a strong energy. And then the mind and then the mind experience something I don’t like. And then you move the direction to that other person that you wanna harm that person. If you redirect that energy and then you allow it to arise, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Right? If it’s still anger, you still let it arise and you can observe how you would like to harm that other person, but you do not engage in it. You say, oh, wow, that’s a huge big cloud of anger. And you blow it away. That’s what you try.
Right? And when you start doing that in the beginning, and Christelle will talk about that in the next module, I think. When in the beginning when anger arises, we are completely one with that anger. We I am the anger. We feel that we are the anger.
So we become the anger. If you start to say, Oh, but I’m not the anger. You know, the anger arises in my mind but it’s not me. Right? There is no ‘I’ in the mind.
There are things arising. There are feelings, there are emotions, there are functions arising in the mind. We are not that. We are not one of them. Right?
So you can say, Oh, you know, if wisdom arises in your mind you don’t say, Oh, there was wisdom. I have to suppress that or I have to you know, you just you can just observe it. Oh, wow. Where did that come from? When you talk in terms of attachment and detachment, when and you’re saying, you know, that to be attachment is not necessarily a good thing.
Where do you I say the attachment leads to suffering. Leads to suffering. Okay. Yeah. So where do you sit then with the fact that So where some adults now experience a lot of the sense of loss because there was a lack of attachment in childhood?
And is that a different interpretation? What is the So we are all samsaric beings and we all function on the basis of attachment. And we’re all needy, right? The neediness, our neediness is our attachment. And in order to grow up we need things.
We need to be loved, we need to be careful and we need a mom that is attached to us and wants to do that from her attachment. That is how we function. But Buddhism says that whole cycle is that where we are in is a source of suffering, is completely ingrained with suffering and what we try to do is not to fix that and make it a better place but we want to bring our mind to a state where we completely remove that from our mind stream. So as you know you act where you are and then you start to think about Buddhism and then you can make certain choices. But you do not say, oh yeah, attachment is not good so I’m not going to I’m not going to be loving loving and kind loving and kind to my child and I just leave it there and because it shouldn’t get attached to me and I shouldn’t get attached to the child.
Don’t do that, Right? I’m not telling you that. Love with your whole heart and give everything that your child needs. Right? We have needs and we die when the needs are not fulfilled, isn’t it?
But that neediness, if you look into the neediness, and especially when you see it in adults, the neediness is never coming from a healthy place. So what you try and that has to do with attachment. The neediness is like you have to give me something. I want something from you. And from the flow of attachment.
Well, when we engage when we go into a relationship, we have normally what we talked about last week. We have love and attachment. The love is that we really feel sincerely that we want another person to be happy, but there is always a neediness that we want something in return. For us it’s not possible to have a relationship with only love because we are beings driven by attachment. It’s like that keeps everything going, our attachment.
So it’s not something that you think, oh, I just remove them. It’s very, very, very difficult. So you don’t have to worry that we get detached when you start doing Buddhism. Detachment means that you do not want to engage, isn’t it? What we try to develop is non attachment, where there is love but non attachment.
Attachment. That’s something else. Yeah. And I was talking about non attachment, but it’s a different sort of non attachment. Yeah.
You can be I think you talk about detachment where you No. Yeah. Detachment’s one thing, but there is a non attachment, which is the issue around children having non attachment with parents. But I know what you mean. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Buddhism wouldn’t call that non attachment. Okay.
That’s what I wondered. No. Non attachment, you need a lot of wisdom to get to a place of non attachment. If you do not have that wisdom and you behave like you’re non attached, there is something wrong. Yeah.
Yeah. Anybody else? Yeah. Dreams. I’m going to practice.
Dreams. Is that right? Yeah. Dreams come from karmic seeds. When we dream, we plant new seeds of mind.
Yes. Yes. We create karma when we dream. That is actually if you can really you mean consciously making choices and changing your dreams? That’s quite a gift, I must say.
I don’t think everybody can do that. Can anybody do that? That’s great. You must have done something in the past to master that. Yeah.
When we dream, you know, I talked about three levels of consciousness: the gross level, the subtle level and the extremely subtle level. Dreaming we do on a subtle level of consciousness. So going in there and manipulating your dream, it means that you have to go, have to bring your awareness to that very subtle level. Normally, can only do that when you have trained your mind in the past in doing so. So that’s a good thing.
Did do you meditate? Happens since, you know, meditation, but I mean, I’ve done meditation quite a bit. Yeah. This starts to come up. Yeah.
And, probably, you you are triggering the seeds that you placed previous lives and they all start to ripen and all your attainments are coming back. Fantastic. So we create karma in our dreams too. But it’s not sure if the karma is going to ripen. It’s like it’s very difficult to have in our dream a really conscious motivation that we’re going to do something bad or good and that, you know, we don’t make complete actions in our dreams.
So the results absolutely not that strong. That’s what we do during the day. Is daydreaming and bad? Daydreaming and fantasy bad. So we have to be careful with being good and bad.
True? It’s a Christian background, isn’t it? I want to be good. Bye bye. I want to be a good person or I don’t want be a bad person.
So Buddhism is not talking about doing the good thing or not doing the bad thing. There is no good and bad. There are things that lead to happiness, there are things that lead to suffering. Right? No good and bad, no judging.
There is nobody there saying, oh, he’s a bad boy, you know, or that is really bad what you’re doing now. Nobody. It’s like you can do something that leads to suffering. Daydreaming, sorry? Is it skillful to do daydreaming?
What do you do when you do daydreaming? I’ll let you answer the question. Everywhere, except? Except the present moment. So what happens in your mind when your mind goes everywhere except in the present moment?
What do you create? Fantasy, but you remember that we talked about that all the thoughts and the delusions, just fuel them. You create a big mess that can feel fantastic. You’re spacing out, but you lose all your power, lose all your strength. It’s very disempowering for yourself to do that.
Your strength is here right now. The more you have your moment and the mind in the present moment, the more we can be in our own power. Power means taking control over our life, taking control over our future. It’s only right here. So daydreaming, is it bad?
It’s not bad. It’s not negative in that sense, but it doesn’t create that you connect with your inner strength. It creates the opposite. It creates pleasant feelings. Sorry?
It pleasant feelings, or do you experience pleasant feelings? It can be that the feelings, the feelings come from the past, from actions that you have done in the past. So what you can be doing is exhausting a lot of positive karma, of pleasant feelings. I actually think you don’t really have a pleasant feeling when you daydream. I would doubt that.
I think the present moment you feel that there are so many problems there for you that you cannot handle them, that the daydreaming is like a relief from the suffering that you cannot encounter. You know, it’s like when you sit on a chair and at a certain point when you keep on sitting very still you start to suffer and then you move. That moving feels like a relief of suffering, but we also know that when we stay there the suffering is going to come again. So daydreaming is like that relief of suffering. No.
If you’re happy, you don’t no. If you’re really happy in the present, you don’t daydream. It’s a lot of ignorance, I think. And I think you can make them the mind really dull, and and you lose a lot of clarity. If you’re in the present moment, the mind can clear up.
When you’re daydreaming, you can’t. Imagination is good for you. Sorry? It can, you can use imagination in itself. It’s not good or bad.
You can use it to improve yourself, but you can also use it to completely destruct yourself. It’s your choice. If you use the imagination to imagine beneficial things, you know, it’s very good. I don’t know. I that Robina said they’re all it’s all attachment, all attachment.
And I know that there are some artists who say I have to keep up with my attachment, otherwise, you know, I won’t be able to create anymore. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. The right stories that we like and that we like to daydream on.
Is it late? Am I too late? Everybody’s running away. You okay, Judy? Yeah, you can another artist.
And I yes? Yeah. If you stay anchored and you you open up your mind, is that what you’re saying? Yeah. So some people yeah.
I don’t know. This is I’m I’m gonna tell something, and I don’t know where I’m gonna go with that. I don’t know if I should do that. Drugs and I thought that producing really great stuff and I understand the word. Yeah.
So that is that is that’s not true. Well, it’s like you can you can bring your mind in a different kind of state. Right? And if you I don’t know. I’m just gonna put out a hypothesis.
Hypothesis. Hypothesis. In previous lives, I’ve done a lot of meditation and I really have connected with some kind of quality, not necessarily clear voice, but something that gives me the ability to perceive other dimensions or I don’t know how to name it. And then I get born and somehow part of that is still here and I like it to be in there because it feels so good, you know. So then I want to stimulate that.
And if I’m to develop that in a way that I’m not anchored, you can become very chaotic in your mind and very not really knowing what’s going on and not going on and produce at the same time the most fantastic work. What would happen to that person in the next life? How would their life look like? How would their mind look like? What are you doing with your mind when you do that?
Is that a mind that is going to be happy and knows and can direct the mind and has some control control over things? Or is that the mind that is just tapping into some good quality that you have from the past and all the rest is a mess around that? And I I I these are extremes that I If they created something that they feel very happy about, not necessarily have a very attachment to, they’re very happy that they’ve done that, they’ve been very good satisfaction. So the happy feelings are coming from from actions in the past. If you as soon as you have experienced happiness, the result of these actions that you have done is finished, right?
So the seeds are gone. If you just do that to get a happy feeling, you’re not creating any new seeds for happiness. So your happiness is running out at a certain point. But then you have to create something new. Yeah.
So when you’re an artist and you you you do that and you say, I want to paint for the benefit of all such I want that that everybody who sees this is immediately becoming happy. Right? If you do it like that, then you give your you you create new causes for happiness to rise in the future. Sorry? No.
I know. There are also artists who do it for other people. But it’s it’s I don’t know. You have to think you know, it’s like it’s they already see how complex karma is. There are so many, many things involved, and I’m just a devoted being and I don’t know.
Yeah. No. It’s what’s right. Even it’s a release of the past bad karma through this hard work. Yeah.
I think isn’t that a good thing? A release of bad that means that you experience suffering. That is that means that bad karma ripens, you experience suffering. A lot of artists will do it suffering, but they become very creative because of their suffering. Yeah.
But I think artists when they experience a lot of suffering, what they do is they they they connect with that suffering. They go in the suffering. They don’t run away from it. And that is the bravery word they have that can help them to transform their mind, you know? It it depends it’s a lot depends on on our own attitude to whatever we experience.
I don’t know. The artist’s mind. I think the brilliance comes from that you tap into something that you have connected with in previous lives. And if you only look for that, I think you are just exhausting something. But if you have that quality and then you develop other qualities in you that can help you to make that channel or if you want to call the channel even bigger and stronger and more accessible, you know, then you also in next lives you have a lot of profit from what you’re doing.
I don’t know. Yeah, true? I don’t know. That’s my experience. I brought two meditations today, and I didn’t know where I was going to end up.
I think we’re going to do the meditation on equanimity because we talked a lot about attachment and aversion and we all know that when we meet somebody and we have attachment, immediately there is this feeling that we like the person to be happy. If we meet somebody that we feel aversion, we suddenly do not really care if that person is happy or not. And if we feel a very strong aversion, we actually would like that person to suffer. That’s how our mind works, isn’t it? That’s just a diagnosis.
That mind that distinguishes between I like you and I don’t like you, I want you to be happy and I do not want you, you know, I want you to suffer or I don’t care about your happiness. That mind is a mind that brings us a lot of suffering, both sides, just reacting from that place. And so Buddhism says that is an invalid place, it’s a place that makes you unhappy. Everything that makes you happy, sincerely happy, is valid according to Buddhism. That is what we want to practice.
Everything that makes us unhappy is not valid. So that attitude that we have and that we have in daily life all the time, it’s not valid. It’s not in accord with how reality really is. If we would live in accord with reality, we will be perfectly happy. When we are unhappy we can think, oh I must live somewhere not in accord with reality, otherwise I would not be unhappy.
Yeah, so you can our reality is that we are loving compassionate beings, that is our nature, but we have moved away from our nature due to our ignorance, due to our not knowing reality. And due to that not knowing, we constantly judge, I like this, I do not like this. I want to engage in this, I don’t want to engage in that. And that not knowing makes that we constantly choose to go in the direction and that makes us either direction is the cause for suffering. So I’m going to ask Jampa Gendun next week to do a meditation on love so that you get connected with your true nature.
And today I want to do a meditation on equanimity so that we just see how you can counteract that. We have this nature, but we can do many things to counteract that nature by thinking about our reactions, seeing that it cannot be correct the way I think, the way I react, by faking that we react in a different way. How will it be if I do it like this? And then slowly, slowly we can lessen this and every step that we make in this lessens your suffering. So before we do that, I have to check a few things.
So next week, Jampa is gonna come. Jampa again then? And we haven’t spoken yet what he’s gonna talk about, so I can’t go there. I can’t tell you. But he knows a lot.
And any questions that you have, you can ask him. And then the week after that is or the Saturday after that, on the eighteenth of April, is a meditation day. You have all made a cross in your diary. I have got to go to the meditation day of Buddha’s. So we have part of the program is that Geshe, he’s a Tibetan lama, Tibetan teacher, he’s going to come and teach on Mind and Its Potential one point five hours in the morning just to give you a different kind of input.
Know, we Westerners have made it a little bit juicy and they teach in a very clear straight way. They’re very structured in how they think and how they present the material. And so I’m curious how you’re going to experience what you think about that. On a On the eighteenth. Yeah.
What time is it? Ten till five. All day. All day. And because you are Discovering Buddhism students, get a discount for the day.
Okay. Have this echo coming. Does anybody already know who’s going to come? Who’s going to come? Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, is part of the module.
Yes. Yeah. Have to pay for that separately. Yeah. Yeah.
Forty, thirty five, thirty. If you remember, days for thirty dollars for a whole day. Where do you get so much fun for the whole day for thirty bucks? Shopping is gone in a minute. We have asked you to bring lunch to share, right?
What do you think? Around twenty? Twenty from this group? So I think another five or six are going to come on top of that. I didn’t put the hand up.
That’s all right? Yeah. Well, you can turn up and No. No. No.
Please come. If you have to go to work, just come the time that you can come. Okay? We just we just you just pay for whatever you come. If you want who wants to do the discovering as a real study and filling in the forms and stuff?
And okay. So you all come to the meditation day. Right? The geshe’s teaching food. You’re happy to do that?
Bring a plate of food to share. It can be a little bit busy. We all are going to be in that space. So if you can help. Sorry?
Oh yes, something that is easy to eat, that doesn’t need reheating or, you know, a snack or Yeah, vegetarian. Yes, please. Yeah. Okay, and we’re going to try and if we are with too many on these days, we’re just going to maybe think about ordering some meal and let everybody pay some money that, you know, it’s it’s that can be easier do. I don’t know.
We have to we try this week or next week. If it’s going to be a disaster, let me know and we’ll change it or let Christel know. Then after that, you have on the next Wednesday a video night. Right? And that is not necessary that is like suggested.
You can you can do that. If you like to come, you can do that. If you feel like I wanna have a break and do something else on a Wednesday night, that’s fine too. If you are a student, you do not pay for that. And then there is a week free, isn’t it?
And then on the sixth of May, Christel is gonna do how to meditate. Can I discuss? She has been so kind to accept my request to do that. Do you want me to say something about Christel has done the Discovering Buddhism herself and she has done a couple of retreats and she’s doing the basic program at the moment. I think she’s very clever and she is gonna I don’t know, you feel comfortable with the questions that people ask here?
Yeah, okay. Or Geshe la, you know, when Geshe la comes in the meditation day of how to meditate, also Geshe-la is going to come and he’s going to talk about a specific topic that Christel will explain you. Is that alright? And then as the the the module how to meditate is four weeks, and then there was again a video night and a meditation day, and then there was a week break, and then it’s the sixteenth of July June, and then the next module starts, and I’ll be back. Now there will one wait.
One of those is not so I can still get so you’re not getting CDs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you need a CD from any night if you know next week, I’m not gonna come.
Please tell the person who is Diane? Where’s Diane? Please tell Diane or Gail and write CD in that week, and then somebody can come and make the CD for you so that it is ready when you come next time. Yes. And also, I’m not sure if we can use the CDs again, but if you already have a CD, it’s handy if we can put like six teachings on it instead of one, so that we and I don’t care about the money, but I do care about environment, and I feel very bad if I have to throw these CDs in the bin.
So if we can somehow do it like that, that will be great. Yeah. It’s an m p three. Sometimes people want to do it on a CD player and it doesn’t work. You can play it on your computer?
Oh, you’ve got one session and not the other? Right. Okay. We’ll try that again. Try it on the computer, and if it’s not there, we’ll give it to you again.
Yeah. There was one last thing. Oh, yes. We one of the requirements is that we do an exam. Right?
And because I’m gonna go away, I will not be able to do that exam straight after. So I was wondering how people feel when I come back back and we do on a Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon, whatever we agree upon. We just meet and we do for two hours. Some question and answer. Answers.
No, it’s worth everybody together. You know, it’s like you don’t have to you just read through the material and you absorb it and you do not have to study like that, but that you have some familiarity with the material. And then we go over it. And exam means that you give your mind a chance to reproduce the material in another way than you normally do. When you think about something or when you say it, it’s two very different things.
And we are very good at thinking about things, but we’re not so good at saying things. And for me, when I you know, this is how Lama Yeshe wanted us to study, that we talk to each other about the material. And when I started doing that, I couldn’t believe how wrong things go out of my mind. And you think, and you think it’s very clear in my mind, and you say it, and you think, that’s not what I tried to say or what I would like to say, but it’s a very good exercise. And the more you do it, you get a lot of clarity because when you hear yourself saying it, you hear that it’s not right, you know, and that already helps you to try it again and try it again until it comes out the way you would like to say it.
Or maybe it’s only my problem. Maybe you’re all very good at that. I don’t know. And it’s just funny, you know? It’s just going to be fun.
It’s going to be what? As we’re not going to resonate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. We’re going to have fun.
We’re all going to pass. Yes, we’re going to pass. I’m not sure about you, Gail. I’m not going to ask anything in detail. It’s like that you have an idea.
It’s like you want to have power over your mind. Then you have to know a little bit about your mind. What you have done for. Yeah. Please do not worry.
Do not get nervous. That’s what we’re doing. And our pride comes in, oh, I don’t want to make mistakes, and I’m not doing it right, and the whole low self esteem, don’t go there. Yeah. We do on a Wednesday night when we have that break.
Which break? Well, somebody Ah. We do it on a Wednesday. But we won’t have that after every module. Oh, you have to bracket up and No.
We will find a time that we can do it. And if somebody cannot come on that time, we’ll just do that separate. Right? I don’t mind coming then another time. Can you the the dates for all of the modules still here?
Yes. We need to work there. Okay. Yes. And I have a small change in that, but that is not gonna happen before September.
It’s for everybody. You need that paper? Yeah. Just just come later. Yeah.
Yeah. If somebody doesn’t have the schedule, we handed it out on the first night. Please wait. Do not run away, and I’ll get some for you. Okay?
Everybody ready for the meditation? Oh, just leave it at the door so that people can pick it up when they go out. Yeah. Or maybe, yeah, after the meditation, stand there. Yeah.
Equanimity meditation. Equanimity, if we can develop equanimity in our mind, it’s is like that is something that we need before we can even think about generating genuine compassion, a compassion that is not mixed with attachment. At the moment our love and compassion is completely mixed, isn’t it? Love arises when there is attachment. When we love there is attachment, they can only rise together.
In order to make the love and the compassion pure we try not to distinguish between those who harm us and those who benefit us. When we really want to have if love and compassion is something that makes us happy and something that leads to happiness, we would like to love everybody because that is going to make us happy. And in order to do that we have to free ourselves from that tendency to only love those that we like, only love those that are beneficial to us. We have somehow find a way that we can love everybody. And in order to do that, we first need equanimity that we see that everybody is equal in a certain way.
So that is what the meditation is about. So make yourself comfortable. Allow your mind to relax. Let all the thoughts disappear so that your mind becomes empty. And then imagine in a space in front of you, three people.
Someone that you like, someone that you dislike, and someone you feel indifferent to. And try to retain these three images throughout the meditation. And in this meditation, I will call the person that you like, I will call them that, him or her, your friend. The person that you dislike, I will call that your enemy. And the person that you feel indifferent to, I call that the stranger.
So first of all, focus on your friend and allow your feelings for him or her to arise. Reflect on the goodness of this person. How he or she satisfies your needs is there for you. And feel your conviction that this person is definitely your friend. Feel how you really want this person to be happy and to be free of suffering.
Your love and compassion naturally arises when you think of this person. Emerge yourself in the good feelings. And now turn to your enemy, the person that you do not like, who’s not kind to you, who doesn’t satisfy your needs, who annoys you, makes you angry, who hurts you, look carefully at this person and carefully watch your feelings. Feel your conviction that this person is definitely a bad person, and feel how easy it is to wish this person harm or not to be happy or to suffer. And then turn to the so called stranger.
A person that you know a little, but you don’t like or dislike them. Look carefully at the person and note your feelings of indifference. Now recognize that the basis for your relationship to these three people is solely what they do or do not do for you, whether they benefit or harm you. Your relationship is based on what you need. It is self centered.
And just see that without any judgments. This is just how we are, how we function, how we all function. We share this with all sentient beings. According to Buddhism, our minds exist since beginning of this time. And we have met these three people before in different forms, and we have had different relationships with them.
Relationships with them. So now return to your friend and imagine a situation that would cause the relationship to end. Imagine your friend turning against you, and then feel the resentment and the hurt, How you no longer feel warm and no longer wish him or her well. Where Where is your friend now? And then recall that this person was not always your friend.
This person was not your friend before you were acquainted. And this person could very easily cease to be your friend if something happens just as you have visualized. Realize that there is no sound reason for feeling kind and loving towards only the friend of the moment. Relationships changed in the past and will continue to change. Today’s friend can become tomorrow’s enemy.
Then turn your awareness to the present enemy and imagine a situation in which you could draw could be drawn together, maybe a common interest or a word of praise or kindness coming from your enemy. And when you imagine that, look carefully at a person and your feelings. Are you softening? You can learn to feel warmth towards your enemy. This has happened before and will happen again.
So why do we hold on so strongly to that conception that this is definitely an enemy? So then what about a stranger? Imagine how one act of kindness or anger from this person could immediately turn him or her into a friend or an enemy. There is no inherent definite stranger there and no sound reason for your feelings of indifference. Remember that your present friend and enemy were strangers to you beforehand.
This stranger could become your friend or your enemy. So keep the people clear in front of you and think about a fragile impermanence of these relationships. It’s only our misconceived belief in the stability of them that holds your mind back from the possibility of change. Your friend, enemy, and stranger all want happiness just as much as you. And in this respect, respect, everyone is equal.
And everyone is equal and having the potential to develop their minds to the fullest and achieve clarity and compassion. And try to see that we all have the same mind. We all want exactly the same. We all react in the same kind of ways. The differences that we see in people are superficial based on our mistaken and self centered viewpoint.
In fact, everyone is equal and deserving our care and compassion. So none of this means that we should not discriminate. On the practical level, we wish we should definitely discriminate. And naturally, we feel closer to some people and are wise to keep others at distance. This is not a contradiction.
But doing this meditation helps us to develop an equal concern, an equal regard for everyone, whether they help us or harm us at this point in time. And then make your own conclusion of this meditation. And then dedicate the positive energy and insight that you got to the well-being and happiness of all the beings that are in your life and all those that you know that exist but don’t have in your life right now. Thank you for coming. And enjoy your meditation day.
And the next module with Christel. You alright? And you see that environment is very competitive, and and I think there is a lot of working. There is a bit more.