Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 70-minute talk, Ven Jamyang addresses a common Western barrier to Buddhist practice: the shame around self-care. He establishes loving oneself as foundational—not selfish, but essential for developing the compassion needed to help others. Drawing on Buddhist philosophy of mind, he explains why happiness and suffering arise from our own mind, not external circumstances, and how the self-centered “I” is the root of all problems. He covers karma—how recognizing that feelings result from past actions allows us to stop reacting and purify karma in the moment. He discusses true love versus attachment-based love, and how to work with anger by sitting with it rather than suppressing or venting. Aimed at practitioners entering a formal retreat.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2007 10 02 session3 021007.mp3
UUID: 96bea831-15ab-46ae-b60b-d1b83b4981a9
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2007-10-02
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 70.8 minutes
Words: ~10,399
It’s a little bit hot here. It’s a bit chilly. It was chilly in the morning. I thought I’ll heat a little bit up, but turned out of control. The clock has disappeared.
So somebody has to remind me when it’s around eleven. No clocks? Okay. We’ll do on intuition. That’s also good.
This is Aileen. She’s from Malaysia and she’s on a holiday here for two weeks and she’s a member of the FPMT center in Malaysia. Welcome. Yeah. And she wants to come just for two classes, one or two classes.
You know, normally we sign up for the whole course. I just say I wanna check with everybody if everybody’s alright with her. We do have a kind of policy that whatever happens here is staying in the group, you know, just so that everybody feels safe to express whatever they wanna express. I didn’t talk with you about that, but I ‘m sure you’re happy with that. And I don’t know.
We also talked about that if somebody talks that we give them the time and the space to talk. Did Last time, and Janice and Judy were not here or you were a little bit here but not completely. I’ll go a little bit over don’t know where my text is in my mind. What we did last week is we talked about mind and its potential. And we talked about that the mind itself is clear and knowing.
It’s that which is clear and knowing, according to Buddhism. Mind is not the same as the brain. Mind is not something physical, but mind is consciousness. Consciousness is that whatever we experience internally, that is consciousness. Consciousness is the mind itself.
It’s like space. It’s like it has no color. It has no shape. We can’t see it, we can’t hold on to it. It’s just vast, limitless like space.
What arises in the consciousness is our thoughts, our disturbing emotions, feelings. And these take on the mind takes on the appearance of whatever arises in the mind. But that is not the mind itself. It’s like you have an empty space which has no walls and what we do then is we put in furniture and then we put in other furniture and then we put in other furniture. What we see is the furniture.
We never see the space itself. What we see is if anger arises in the mind, we see I’m angry. When love arises in the mind, we say I feel love. When thoughts arise in the mind, we say, My mind is so busy. But we never really look at the mind itself.
We only look at that which pops up into the mind. That which pops up in the mind is more coarse, easier to see. The mind itself is very, very, very subtle. So it’s hard, you know, if there is a lot of busyness going on, to focus on the space. Some people say mind is like the blue sky.
The mind itself is like the blue sky. All the thoughts and emotions that arise are like clouds. They come and they go. They can obscure the sky. We might not be able to see the blue sky because there are too many clouds.
We might believe the blue sky is not there anymore but from experience we know that as soon as the clouds are moving, the blue sky is there. The blue sky can never be touched by the clouds. Right? Although the clouds are in there, they don’t really touch the nature of the blue sky. They never melt with the nature of the blue sky.
That’s the same with the thoughts that arise in the mind and the emotions arise in the mind. They never damage or touch the nature of the mind. The nature of the mind is pure. The nature of the mind is pure, non dual. Some people say there was just love.
That nature is never touched by anything that appears in it. So in Buddhism they call that nature the Buddha potential. Because we have that nature and because the thoughts and emotions that arise in that nature are never touching each other, we can change anything that arises in the mind. If we learn to know why things arise in the mind and how we generate these kinds of minds, we know, we can learn from that how to develop minds that we wish for, to develop minds that we feel happy with, that we feel that are beneficial. So that is what the potential is of the mind.
Because the potential of the mind, because the mind itself cannot be touched by anything that arises in the mind, the potential of the mind is limitless. It’s the same as its nature. If we find the tools and the techniques, we can learn to cultivate anything that we wish for in the mind. Right? That’s not an easy job.
That’s hard work. That’s disciplined work. It’s like consistent work putting into place. But it is also work that if you start doing it, it definitely will lead to result. You know, it’s like what you put in it, you’re going to get out of it.
Okay? That’s very sure what we talked about. So that’s what I would like you to keep in mind all the time. The nature of the mind is pure. We all have that essence.
It’s just that it somehow obscured of our deluded views, because of our misconceptions, because our wrong beliefs, because our emotions, because it’s obscured. It’s full of clouds. What we try to do with meditation is first of all, you can see the clouds. We somehow believe these clouds are not moving, they’re fixed. Maybe some clouds are moving but some clouds are definitely fixed.
They are part of us. What we’re going to see meditation is that these clouds are actually moving. If we take some distance from the clouds, the clouds can start moving. We can see the nature of the clouds coming and going. What we can do with meditation is focusing on the nature of the mind and getting a feel for that.
What we can do with meditation is challenging the reason, the beliefs that are behind these clouds popping up again and again so that they can’t pop up that strongly anymore, so that they lose their power. So meditation we can focus on the different things in order to what we want to do is what arises in the mind is more similar with the nature of the mind. That is what we try with Buddhism. The more what arises in the mind is similar with what the nature of the mind is, the more happiness we experience. The more arises in the mind which is very different from the nature of the mind, the more we suffer.
Right? So the more we can find like, this is a concept, this is something that is created by the mind, this is something that is not natural in the sense of how the mind is natural. Is something fabricated. Concepts are fabricated. Even the concepts that are very deep, very subtle and we believe that they are true.
The concept of I I am that is a fabricated thing. I fabricated that a long long long time ago and I have nourished that many many lifetimes so it looks like that’s really true but actually it’s fabricated and everything that appears in the mind is fabricated like that. Because it’s fabricated, we can change that. We can change it in something that looks more similar than the nature of the mind and the more we are able to do that, the more we can experience that nature of the mind which gives us the feeling of happiness. Buddhism is like a concept that shows you that nature of the mind.
If we could really practice it, we could bring our mind in a state where you experience what nature of the mind is where you can experience the ultimate happiness that we can experience in the nature of the mind. Buddhism is not more than that. It’s a concept. We can also use concepts from Christianity or concepts from other religions that, as long as they are in accord with the nature of the mind, they all lead to happiness. If we start to practice a concept and it leads to more unhappiness, we have to be aware and say I must do something wrong because this is not what Buddhism tries to achieve.
We’re not trying to cultivate unhappiness. We’re trying to cultivate concepts that lead us to happiness. So if you feel that actually I feel that I’m gonna suffer more and more, please check, you know. Maybe there is some concepts coming in on a other level which we don’t wanna nourish and have to get rid of. Maybe you go through some purification that can also happen that you just experience a lot of sometimes when you adopt a good concept that is a good means in accord with reality some of these clouds might start dissolve and to surface, you know.
That might feel really awful. That doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. That means there is something shifting in your mind and it can take a while before that is purified, before that has moved away from your mind so when something like that happens please check so that we can check what is actually going on is something good moving or did we put something in which we actually don’t want to put in? Yeah? Can we follow all that?
That was what we talked about last week, isn’t it? And last week, we gave the homework to write how did the meditations go? Good. Good. Good.
You enjoy it very much? You wanna share with the whole world? That’s great. If you start getting that feeling, I wanna share that with everybody. That’s fantastic.
I really mean that. I’ve I’ve been able to do this discipline for quite a while. And every time that I get into a negative situation and and let it lead me astray from the path, I get myself in a huge state. And then I think now I’m sensible enough to go and think to myself, you need to get back and do your meditation and behave yourself. And I was just I’ve forgotten your name.
Nick. Nick. I was just explaining to Nick. Now that I’ve sort of gone down the path a bit, it’s a joy. I’ve I’ve made a a sacred space for myself.
And to go into that space, and and it’s the most beautiful room. And the the morning sunrise comes through this massive river red gums. And to sit there in complete tranquility in the morning and not to allow any extraneous piece of junk to come into my space and to ground myself again. And just the joy of that relaxation and that tranquility and not allowing this Good. I’m I’m gonna sue this one.
Gonna tell you that. All these clouds popping up. And just just to cut to learn to compartmentalize the mind and say, this is not the time. Once you get off that treadmill and just be, that’s just beautiful. Fantastic.
To go into that emptiness. You know, just Good. Yeah. Thank you. Takes a lot of work to get to.
Yes. Yes. And some days, you might do better than other days. You know? Some days, the mind just keeps on running mad.
Mhmm. Well, it’s it’s it’s learning to that that just constant even if you don’t succeed very much sometimes, it’s that constant, I’m not gonna allow this Yeah. And just pull it back. Pull it You had some days like that, didn’t you? And that you said, I tried, but you had a feeling you didn’t do that well.
But what what Anne is saying is that even if when you try, that is when you’re doing well. We are not in control how we wake up, how crazy the mind is. The only thing what we can do is then try, try, try, try. That trying, that is doing well. Not having a peaceful mind, not having a blissful mind.
That’s not a guarantee that you’re doing well. If we wake up with a very blissful mind, we can sit down and we don’t have to do anything. That’s not training. That’s just blissing out. We really can train when the mind is upset, when the mind is agitated.
That is where the training comes in. What? It’s hard, isn’t it, if you But I want you to start seeing that meditation is the same as reality. Meditation is a reality. And that even when we don’t meditate, things pull us out all the time, isn’t it?
Things happen in our life and they pull us out. That is the moment that we can say back with my mind. Where am I now? I can bring my mind right here. Every time when I can do that, you’re meditating.
Right? Even if you don’t sit in meditation, bringing the mind back the way you said it, that is meditation. Is mindfulness. I’m being mindful where I am right now, what my hands are doing, what I’m saying, who’s present with me. The more you’re mindful of that, the more the disturbing emotions will subside, will calm down.
And sitting in meditation is helpful because we are beginners, because it’s very difficult to to have any control over bringing the mind back. So that’s why we sit down. But as soon as you have felt the technique, you can practice it in any situation. Maybe we’re gonna generate it today. I first thought I’m gonna a very short one because I have the whole teaching here.
So if you’ve got Yes. But it’s hard anyway because you constantly focus on somebody else, isn’t it? And you have that agitated mind state yourself and then you constantly have to take care of somebody else. And it feels like you needed a time out to recover yourself when you talk about it. It was a little bit too much?
No. Not too much because there’s been a group dealing with I know very deeply that they were tight, but I grew quite easily walked away. Mhmm. So that’s what I mean. The need.
You you needed some space for yourself. We’re gonna talk about that today. I thought we’d talk about the disturbing emotions, but then I thought, probably, you’re all here because you suffer from that and probably you don’t want to know that straight away. So I thought we’ll talk today about loving oneself so that we first make a nice ground where we feel happy with ourselves, where we feel that we know how to do that. And then the more we can generate that in ourselves, then maybe from there, there is some space to look at all the things that can arise in the mind that are not so beautiful.
So I’ll first talk a little bit about it. Okay? Loving oneself. I know that for many people, especially with our Christian background, loving oneself is always somehow, we have the feeling that to love oneself loving oneself is an egoistic thing, is an ego centric thing. It’s something that we’re not supposed to do.
It’s something which is I don’t know. We feel shame. We feel guilt when we do that. It’s something that is labeled as very, very selfish. And somehow, we are so trained in giving, giving, giving, giving, but not taking care of ourselves.
How is that in Malaysia? I think from Chinese background, seem to Same. We self depreciate ourselves. Yeah. Depreciate ourselves.
So we do tend to Yeah. Similar. So it’s not even limited to Christianity. Think it’s a. I don’t know.
It’s don’t know if it’s Well, I was gonna say that and I thought, oh, not sure. I’m not right. I think Nicholas might suffer from the same thing. I don’t know. I mean, I think it ebbs and flows in all of us, but I think there’s a degree of whether it’s guilt or not, you’re conscious of it, think, in Western society anyway.
You’re very conscious of it even if you’re a right bastard who goes out of his way or her way to be completely self serving and obsessed. I think you still have to be aware of it Yeah. You know, to actually perpetuate it. Mhmm. But I think it’s not much different in Buddhism or the way we understand.
I know. But that’s because we are programmed like that. Yeah. So we have the understanding. If we listen to Buddhism, that Buddhism is telling us the same.
And it’s like, how do we do that? Because it’s our ears that hear we should not take care of ourselves. Well, I think because we don’t understand how to reduce our ego, how not to have an ego is to love ourselves. Contradictory. So we’re going talk about that today, to get the both separated.
Loving oneself is not at all contradictory to Buddhist teachings and especially to the teachings that what we talk about is we have to cherish others. We want to cherish others. The more we cherish others, the more happy we are. Cherishing others is not contradictory to loving oneself. They can go very well together.
As a matter of fact, the more in order to generate that love for others and that feeling that you want to work for others, that you want to cherish others, we do have to take care of ourselves. We do have to love ourselves. Otherwise, we can never ever make it. We are not able to access the source that gives us the capacity to do that. So we have to find a way to love ourselves.
So if you look at how we exist, it’s that every action that we are doing, action of our body, every action of our speech, every action of our mind is to achieve happiness. We have the natural tendency to look for happiness, to look for comfort, to look for pleasant feelings. And we have an aversion for pain, discomfort and unpleasant feelings. That’s our self obsession: I want to be happy. And we share that with all sentient beings.
Sentient beings are the beings who have feelings. Sentient beings are the beings who have some kind of a belief of an I. The I is based on a wrong conception, right, on a misapprehension. That ‘I’, how we experience that, that is a misapprehension. On the basis of ‘I’ there is an ‘I’ that experiences pleasant feelings and unpleasant feelings.
We label something as pleasant feelings because there is an attraction to that, because there is a like to that. Right? Because we have feelings, because we have an I, there is an I that likes things and an I that doesn’t like things. Right? Because we experience an I, we experience others.
Because we experience an I, we experience duality. In duality there are good things, bad things pleasant things, unpleasant things. So because we have that feeling of I arising in the mind, we experience things that we label as this is pleasant, I like that’ and we experience things as this is unpleasant, I don’t like that’. And we have the natural tendency to constantly look for the things that we find pleasant, comfortable and a natural tendency to get away from the things that we don’t like. That is all based on ‘I’.
The ‘I’ that we feel is really there. The ‘I’ that is there in contrast to others. Right? We cannot change that. That is just how we are.
Even if you look at the tiniest insect like an ant running around very busy, the only reason why they’re running around being busy is because they’re looking for happiness. Whatever any creature does that we can see, it’s all motivated by our want to be happy. We can check that. You can check that during the week. If you look at a dog, if you look at cats, if you look at birds, if you look at they’re all looking for that feeling of pleasantness, comfort, safety, happiness and everybody wants to get away as soon as displeasure arises in the mind.
Because we have that view of I, everything that we experience, if we experience that we get what we want, we say I’m happy. If we are disconnected from something that we want, we call that unhappy. If we are separated from that what we want or we don’t get what we want, we feel unhappy. What we learn is that every time we get what we want we say I’m so happy. If we get something that we don’t want or if we don’t get what we want, I’m so unhappy and we go into the poor me thing.
So that means that every time that we get what we want, we experience happiness. So how can you make sure because a mind is like that we can shift our mind? So the only thing that we have to know is every time that I get what I want, I experience happiness. So how can experience happiness? Making sure that I always get what I want.
Not the way you think. True or not? It’s true, isn’t it? It’s just that if we do it with the skills that we have at the moment, we know that that doesn’t work. So there must be somewhere, a trick that we could apply or a technique that we could apply so that we get what we want.
So maybe we have to adjust what we want. If we can adjust what we want but still feel that is what I want, then we can find our way to that happiness. True? Also, if we get what we want and we call that happiness, means that happiness is not coming from outside. The happiness is something that we set out for.
I want to have this and if I get it, I’m happy. That experience happens inside. That This is what I want happens inside. It has nothing to do with outside. If we get what we don’t want and we feel I have a problem, we feel problem comes from outside.
If that just would change, we could get what we want. But if we start to recognize that there is something that we want that we don’t get, it’s coming from inside and because that doesn’t appear in front of us, we feel a problem or we feel unhappy, then we can maybe also realize that problem comes from the mind. Problem comes from inside. Problem comes from how we experience experience something depends on how we what we set out for. True?
Could the definition of happiness, could we call that the wishing to be in a positive atmosphere rather than a negative atmosphere and moving what you know, instead of remaining in a negative energy, we say, okay. I’ll remove my mind from that negativeness, negativeness and I’ll move it into I’ll just keep on maintaining the positives? I think positive and negative is already defining on what makes you happy and what doesn’t make you happy. Negative and positive maybe has nothing to do with the energy itself, but it’s how we experience it. It’s like if you feel a negative energy, you actually feel something that you don’t want to be with.
You know? But that energy in itself can be experienced by somebody else as something positive, maybe. Yes. But your personal happiness could be what you define as positive or negative. Yeah.
But I think that goes together with each other. Mean, those decide what’s positive and negative anyway. It depends on how you feel, isn’t it? That depends on what makes you happy. So happiness is what gives you a positive Yes.
So I would say everything that happiness is experiencing positive feelings or emotions. Yes. Yeah. That’s happiness. Yes.
Yeah. And suffering saying what life that makes it, you know, our happiness, Well, what is this ill defined thing that if you sort of think of it as your own balance of pause and neg, it it sort of changes the way you think of it, and you can sort of say, I don’t want my mind to be in that negative space. I just need to go. I’ve this bit where it feels better. If that’s a good tool for you, you definitely have to apply that.
Yeah. Yeah. Happiness and problems come from inside. How easy is that to grasp? Have nothing to do with outside.
Not as easy as it sounds. Sorry? Not as easy as it sounds. But if you hear it, can you understand it on an intellectual level? Can you see what I’m saying?
It’s like before we can feel it, it’s something very different. But first, we have to grasp it on the intellectual level and say, oh, that’s right. That’s right. There’s my problem coming from. It’s because my mind wants something and I don’t get it.
It’s values you’ve had adhered to those things outside. Sorry? It’s values. Yeah. Predisposed values that you’ve determined whether something is positive, negative, Or to even think that, yes, that’s absolutely outside of me because, you know, if you’re being held up in a bank, you’re not gonna go, well, this is my precondition of thinking this is a bad thing.
Of course, you’re gonna. Yeah. But that’s actually what we’re trying to to look for. That when we end the bank and when that person arises and is really angry at us, you know, are many ways how to look at that so that it doesn’t affect your mind. But it’s not easy because what you have to do is you have to generate a whole shield of compassion in order to protect yourself from that harm coming in.
Compassion towards yourself as well? Also. Compassion towards yourself but compassion means wanting somebody to be free from suffering. So when you could see that other person as a suffering person, not in control of his own mind, not capable of changing, then what we see is somebody that harms us. That person is harming me.
Right? As soon as you experience that, your shield of compassion is gone. If you can see that person just as a person, a suffering sentient being, that you want to be free of suffering and you want to help them to be free of suffering, they cannot touch you with negative energy. I guess I’m just trying to make a difference because it depends on the relationship you have with that person. Also?
That’s completely different. If it was anybody else, it doesn’t affect you. You can easily you can it’s easy to come, yeah, to have compassion and and understanding, to to have that wisdom. With your family? No.
If it’s not your family When it’s when it’s not your family? No, sorry. If it’s family, it’s not harder. Because we’re with them more often. And you expect more.
That’s our own expectation. It’s our own expectation that our friends are not hurting us. Friends is something who a friend is somebody who benefits us. So if the one who is the friend or the family starts to hurt us, we get very messed up and think: But my friend should benefit me. So then there is no expectation that they’re gonna harm you.
So your whole shield of compassion is gone. But if you would really see them for the suffering creatures that they are, who do have their own illusions and they come you know, then It’s a needy, needy person who’s holding that gun to your face. Yeah. It’s a hard one, but yeah. It is a very hard one.
Isn’t it? It’s a very hard one. We won’t be able to solve this straight away. It’s like that sixty shot from Vietnam and the flower went in the gun barrel. It’s almost sort of think of that.
I mean, what would a robber do if you put a flower in their gun? We will come back to that. How do you deal with negative energy from people who are angry or just things that you pick up or maybe your own negative energy? But I want to do that later on in the course so that we first build up the positive things. I think everything that appears to us in the negative sense, the more we have of that positive, the less it can affect us.
I first want to focus on building up that positive. It’s like a barrier almost that you create, where negative things cannot really touch you because you have protected yourself in a shield of love and compassion, basically. So if we can see that if things arise in the mind and it is a pleasant thing, we call that happiness if it is an unpleasant thing, we call that unhappiness that with that happiness and problems are related to our mind, are coming from our mind, we can see then where are feelings coming from. Because we are feeling creatures so we do experience feelings and because we believe in the I, we experience pleasant feelings, we experience unpleasant feelings, we experience things that benefit us, things that harm us. You know, it can label it like that.
Buddhism says feelings are coming from other results of previous actions. They are the results, maybe, of actions that we have done in previous lives. Feelings have nothing to do with what comes from outside but outside is like a condition that triggers certain feelings to arise. These feelings are the result from things that we have done a long time in the past, Have nothing to do with what happens outside. If you have different people in the same kind of environment, all experience looking at the same thing.
They all experience something different because they all have their different karma with that. Which means that if I eat an ice cream and I like the ice cream, you eat the same ice cream and you don’t like the ice cream. That’s based on karma. All the good feelings that we experience come from virtuous karma, come from meritorious karma. All the negative feelings that we experience come from non virtuous karma or harmful karma.
So if we talk about karma in another point, I will go deeper into that but karma means action. karma means that every action that we are doing has an effect right now but also places an imprint on our mind which will create a similar effect for us in the future. So when I say something nasty to you, you know, first of all there is a problem that will arise definitely in our relationship. You might feel hurt. I have an imprint in my mind and at some stage in the future, due to causes and conditions, that imprint will ripen and somebody is going to say the same kind of thing to me or even worse.
Or I can see people, I see in front of me people doing that with each other and I experience suffering with that. So the result will be that I experience a similar kind of suffering in the future. And that can happen in different ways. But I will experience at least a similar thing as what you have experienced. So when these feelings arise, as I can say, the moment I can say, These feelings are coming from my past actions.
They have nothing to do with the outside in itself and also I don’t have to react to that. I don’t have to follow these feelings. Then, what I say, that karma will be purified. Right? I’ve said one harsh thing to you.
That comes back to me. If I can stop myself from reacting back, that karma at that moment is purified. Is gone. It’s out of my mind stream, will never come back. The moment I react to you or to that person who is starting to insult me, I create more of the same karma.
It will come back to me again. Experience in our life. Things come back to us again and again and we think, Where does it come from? But it’s because we react to that in a similar way. So the moment we can stop doing that, we stop karma, new karma to be produced which means that we stop future suffering for ourselves.
So if we can recognize that feelings are coming as a result of actions, we also have to say, So myself, in another lifetime, I was the creator of these feelings. So, if I can acknowledge that I’m the creator of my feelings then I can think: So, what kind of actions are going to create positive feelings and what kind of actions are going to create negative feelings? And by adjusting my actions to that, I can create causes for positive feelings to arise in the future and I can stop creating causes for negative feelings to arise in the future. That’s a power that we have in every moment. Is my action going to be a benefit?
If it is, I know that happiness is going to come from that. Is my action going to be harmful? I know that suffering is going to come from that. So that’s where we’re going to find the control of our future happiness. And not just, you know, future lives.
It’s like it will happen straight away. Okay? It’s a hard concept. It’s not actually that hard a concept when you really get down to it. It’s you’ve got a choice.
You can either look at a lotus or you can look at something horrible. And it’s just that split second decision, isn’t it, that you make? But it’s you know, our habits are not easy to change. But it’s true. We can all do that.
But it’s not easy. It’s not something that you can do. You need training. And you have done some training, you know. So it’s good that you can say, I can do it.
Just that quickly. Yeah. You can do it now that quickly. Choice. You can do that now, you know, but you have had training.
So in the beginning, it’s hard. It’s first you have to learn to listen to this. This already quite difficult to hear for some people. Especially if you’re very harmed in this life. It’s very, very difficult to hear.
You don’t want to hear this, actually. Isn’t it? It’s much easier to blame other people than to take responsibility. Also sometimes you got maybe hurt in a situation where you felt, I couldn’t do anything. You know, I was too small or it was too overpowering or it was too so you don’t want to hear, but you are actually the creator of that.
You know? It’s like you want to actually hear you couldn’t help it. And, yes, whatever happened to you in this life, you could not help that. That. You could not prevent yourself from becoming sick.
I’m not saying that. That is maybe what we hear in the West. If you’re the Creator, you could have stopped that from happening. It’s not true. We don’t have control.
We don’t have control for whatever is going to ripen. If tomorrow five guys appear in front of me and they start doing whatever, I’m not in control of that. It can happen to me tomorrow. That doesn’t mean I’m going to blame myself and say it’s all coming from me and, you know, I have to acknowledge that there is something in my karma, something in my mind that allows these people to arise. If I would not have that in my mind, they could not appear in front of me.
And even if they would appear in front of me, they could never cause that suffering. Even if they would attack me, if I don’t have the imprints in my mind for suffering, I would not experience any suffering. You know, I think last time we talked about when the plane crashed the towers, that there was this blind man on floor eighty seven. Did I talk about that? Maybe I talked in Discovering Buddhism and why not?
karma is like if you don’t have the karma to die, no matter what happens, you’re not going to die. Lama Zopa wants to prove these things so he’s always looking for stories that prove, you know, even if it looked like it was very certain that somebody was going to die, if you don’t have the karma, you cannot die. So when the planes crashed into towers, that was a disastrous situation for anybody who was in the towers, wasn’t it? There was like no way to escape from death there. There was was a man who was blind and he had a dog with him.
He was on the eighty seventh floor when it happened and he walked all the way down with his dog and he came out without any problem. That’s like he did not have the karma to die. Die he just couldn’t die. He just found his way out. So that’s like if I don’t have the karma to suffer from an attack, then even if people attack me, I would not suffer from it.
I would have that shield of and see that they could not help what was going on and blah blah blah. Know. I actually had once a guy who came into my flat, and I was so stupid and innocent. So I let him in, and he was selling pens for handicapped people and all all these sad stories. And I’m so cold, and I would like to have a coffee, and I would like to have this, and I would like to have a shower, and I would like to have and I was like, what is this?
But I was very giving. You know? And I said, oh, are you really cold? You know? Come in and blah blah blah.
And I gave whatever he needed. And at the end, it turned out he actually wanted to have something else. And I thought, what are you doing? And then he kept on saying he wanted to have more coffee and more beer and I gave him that and then he tried to get something else and I was like, What are you doing? And I had no experience of suffering.
I just thought, What is he doing? And in the end, he left voluntarily. Thanks God. But that could have been really, really horrible together with him, you know? But at that moment, I had no experience of You had no fear.
Nothing. I have been different in my life. I have also other experiences. But in that moment, there was nothing. So it’s like there was nothing that could ripen.
So he, no matter what he did, didn’t touch. No. I can also tell the opposite stories. I won’t go there now. We’re talking about loving oneself.
Loving oneself. If we feel problems with loving oneself, then that means that we have some concepts that are not in accord with reality. We have to make that conclusion if we say yes, you know, by the beginning of the teaching. If we experience a problem, if we feel guilt, if we feel shame, if we feel I’m selfish, if we feel any negative feeling arising from that, we have a belief which is not in accord with reality about loving oneself because every concept that is in accord with reality, we say that leads to happiness. So if we have the right concept about loving oneself, happiness is going to arise in our mind.
We’re to find that concept. Loving oneself in Buddhism is recognizing where all the problems come from. And if you find that where all the problems come from, you take that out. If you find that where the problems come from and you are able to remove it, no problems can arise in the mind anymore. Buddhism says that is real love in yourself.
Find where your problems come from, take it out. True? It’s not that easy but true? Probably. If you find the cause of your problems, that is what you take out.
So the cause of our problems, when we just talked about, we have this view of I and on the basis of that view, feelings arise good feelings, bad feelings feelings that benefit that I, feelings that don’t benefit that I or harm that I. But the root is that I. The root is the view of that I, the way we see ourselves. That is the root from where all happiness and problems at the moment arise. If we can take that out, nothing can arise, no problems can arise.
True? Not sure. So that I is our self centered mind that is concerned with my happiness, my suffering. Right? That I is we experience the I as the center of the universe and we are constantly working for that I to get happiness and to get free of suffering.
Every action that we’re doing, we’re working for that I. Having that I is the root. If we could get rid of that Mhmm. We lose that whole interest in serving that I. Right?
It’s nothing to serve. There’s nobody to serve. So you’re looking for somebody else to serve. Right? So Buddhism says, and especially Lama Zopa says, We are very uptight about that I and that I wants to have happiness.
If you somehow can just get rid of that uptight self centeredness, at that moment your problem is gone. The moment you see that the only reason why you experience all the frustration is because you hold on to that I and you can see that that I is actually not really there, you can drop it. You don’t it’s like there’s nothing to fight for because what you feel is there is not even there. So why would you keep your mind in that fighting state? You can just drop it.
You are learning that now. You’re saying, I don’t believe what arises in the mind. All that negativity, I don’t have to listen to that. I can just shift my mind. But when I get really hungry, it doesn’t matter how much I meditate, the stomach still hurts.
Yes. That can change too. Oh gosh. Actually, there was a professor and he did a lot of research for depression and anxiety too many depression actually and how that works in the mind and how meditation influences that. So he goes around in Australia and he has groups of people and he does a lot of tests with them and looking how he calls it how quick the mind switches from left to right and what it has to do with meditation, what it has to be with manic depression.
He suffered himself from huge problems with food. If he did not have the meal right on time, his stomach would be so painful. Due to his interest in meditation, he went out to the mountains and talked to big meditators and he learned to do Tonglen, taking and giving and he started to do that every time when he had this pain in the stomach. Because of his lectures, he would always teach at very irregular times so he would miss meals. Every time when that would come up, he would practice Tonglen, taking on the suffering of others and then giving everybody what they need.
He said he has no problems anymore with his stomach. He can do anything. Any problem that arises in his mind But he never needs to eat? Well, we still need to eat. We can’t stop that.
But suffering from hunger is different as the need to eat. We are also pack animals and I think we have We’re trying to get beyond the animal thing. We still need to be loved. We need to become somebody who tell you that nobody. Yep.
We also don’t try to become nobody. But ultimately? No. The Buddha says, I’m a Buddha. The Buddha is not nobody.
We don’t try to get rid of an I. We don’t try to get rid of the I. But what we feel is like especially when you are very hungry or when you are very angry and emotional we feel that I arising here and that I sits somewhere here as something real that we have to follow, that we have to take serious, that is really there. Buddhism says that I does not exist. What we do is constantly serving that ‘I’.
We are the slave of that ‘I’. Right? We are slaves. But Buddhism says that ‘I’ is not there. There’s nothing there.
If we could really see that there’s nothing there, we don’t have to serve that ‘I’. We still have a body to take care of. We still have to take food. We still have to find nourishment. We do need love.
We are human beings. We are social animals. So we do all need that. But being the slave of that I that appears here is something that we don’t have to do. That’s what causes us all the suffering.
So if we could somehow drop that, it doesn’t mean we become nobody. You are still the same person. You still have the same body. You still have the same mind. You just not serve that feeling that arises.
And that feeling that arises makes that you engage in actions that are not so good for you actually at all. Right? That is what you stop. But what you can do instead if you stop doing that, what you can do is you can make your actions so that they are beneficial, not just for that one but for everybody. The more you can see that is not really there, you get a freedom from choosing what you’re going to do.
And then you can do actions that are very wise in the sense that actions that are going to give you a lot of happiness in the future and also happiness now. Now we have no choice. So in a sense, it’s not the the singular me, myself, I that you should think about. It’s being the one of many. Yes.
Yeah. Okay. And if you look after after this Spiritual communion. Service. You look after the spiritual person that’s within you, then you have that ability to expand that into following and helping humanity.
Yes. Yes. To be of benefit. Mhmm. Yeah.
And I think the I we hold on to sometimes is because we take on certain roles in life. Because we? We take on certain roles in life. Mhmm. And and we take on, I am this.
I am that. A mother, and I get very upset if my son scolds me. But I’m absolutely wonderful if my neighbor’s son scolds me because I can so learn to my neighbor’s son. You know? I’m quite detached because I don’t you know?
It’s the same. It’s just yeah. You know, this is attachment that I hold Yeah. So letting go means that there is an I and then a child and they’re very connected. Connected.
Letting go of the child is also based how easy you can do that is based on how strong you hold on to the I. The more we can see that that I is not such a valid concept, the more we can loosen this up, the more anything that is attached to that I can go, isn’t it? True? If my car gets damaged, it hurts ten times more than when I see somebody else’s car. If I see somebody else’s car, it’s like, it’s just a car.
If it’s my car, I think, what? My car? My car? Isn’t it? It’s based on me, as if I am somebody different than somebody else.
If my experience is my car is much more important. Everything that is connected to me, me is much more important than anybody else. My happiness is much more important than anybody else. My car is much more important, worthwhile to protect than anybody else. My house, my son, my everything that is my has more importance than anything else.
That feeling of I am more important, that is the root of the problems. That is what is called, you know, on the basis of that I is more we develop all that attachment. We can cut through that, believing that is the root of our problems, we can cut through that, then we can see that my car is just as important as somebody else’s car. If my car gets scratched, somebody else’s car gets scratched, I can test where my I is. If something happens to my car, do I really react with detachment, the same as any other car?
With true compassion. With true compassion. If you drive past that and go, oh, that poor person. Look what’s happened. Oh, dear.
How am I gonna get to work tomorrow? You know, if you if that if you have that sort of compassion that you can understand where that individual is coming from. Is that how you see No. We’re first talking about me and the experience of me. You know, that is you’re you’re three classes ahead.
We’re talking about me, My car. Right? I experience a problem with my car because I believe so strong in me. The less strong I believe in me, the less problems I will experience if something happens to my car. True?
Well, if you’re going to see compassion as an antidote to believing in your own eye, that could work. Could work. Sorry? It’s eleven. Okay.
But first I want to diagnose the problem. I want to diagnose the problem. I don’t want you to talk about the medicine yet. We don’t know the problem are we going to take medicine? We don’t know if the medicine is working or not.
I want you to identify very clearly: Oh, this is what it is about. There I I have to make the change. The more clear you can see it. Now we’re going to talk how you can make the change but first you have to see where to make the change. Right?
The more clear you see it, every time it happens in your mind, can see it. If you don’t see it clear, you can’t recognize it. Then things pass and things build up again, then more problems come. Yeah. And we come to that compassion.
Maybe I’ll finish this after the break. How do I go ten minutes longer? You want me to go on? Ten minutes? Yeah.
Okay. So the moment we can let go of that self centered mind, of that I, I, I, the moment we can let it go it’s not that only on the long term we’re going to get benefit from that but the moment we can let it go, peace will arise in the mind. If you have a big problem and you think Oh my god, how am going to do this and what about this and what about that and what about that and how this and how that and how that, the moment you can see that a problem is all around I, you can let that I go, that holding onto let it go, pieces in your mind straight away. It’s not easy to do but if we can do it, there is peace straight away. Can we get that intellectually that that is what would happen or not?
You can get that? You hear me? No? I don’t know if I feel it but I understand. Yes. First we have to get an intellectual understanding and then we can work on it on deeper levels.
If we don’t have it up here, we can never because our feelings are so contradictory with what I’m saying. Our feelings are saying No way! I’m not going to give that up. It’s something that we cherished for so many lifetimes. How can I ask you not to take care of that?
How can I ask you not to listen to that? How can I ask you not to believe in that? And that is what I’m doing. You know? So, yes, a whole feeling.
I understand the giving up of the self, the ‘I’ thing. Yeah. But then what? Then what? That’s gonna come.
That’s gonna come. But I’m not sure if everybody you get that. I can’t sleep. Not happy, isn’t it? It’s like, oh my god.
But it is something that is going to lead to happiness. Can follow that intellectually? Intellectually, yes. You can follow that. If I will be able to do that but emotionally you feel like, Oh no, that’s not what I want to do, that’s okay.
That’s right. You cannot expect the I to be happy without because the I feels threatened in a way or not happy. But as long as you understand it intellectually because we’re going to go to a good point where you feel, Oh, this is actually really nice if I can do that. So that you’re going to feel that. In the next ten minutes?
Let me see. If we still hold on to that I, then no matter what we practice, no matter how many mantras we say, no matter how many books we read, inside our heart is that little baby, that little child that says, But I’m not happy. I’m not happy. Me, me, me. Listen to me.
I need this. I need that. Keeps on screaming. Right? If we talk about love, love in general, what we mean is if you say, Oh, I love that person.
What you mean is that person is doing something good for me. Right? If I say, I hate that person, that means that I experience harm from that person. The love that we feel at the moment is based on if somebody benefits us or harms us, not benefits us. Isn’t it?
The love is based on I. The love and in Buddhism we say that love is not pure love. That’s love mixed with attachment. Attachment based on I. Pure love means that somebody benefits me.
Pure love means that I want you to be happy. No matter what you give me, I want you to be happy. I want you to be happy. I want you to be happy. That’s what love is, right?
Independent of what you’re going to give me. Normally, when we feel strong love, that’s family, that’s friends. If they do something that we don’t like, that goes very easily into the opposite. Stronger the love is, the stronger the hate is going to be. If we have a partner that we love dearly and we think, Oh, we’d do anything to make that person happy, the moment he cheats on us, that love has gone very quickly, isn’t Suddenly we don’t want this person to be happy anymore.
We want him to suffer. Isn’t it? That love becomes hate straight away because it’s based on attachment to the eye and anything that helps the I benefits the I, we want to give something back. But anything that harms the I, we want to make that person suffer. That’s based on me.
That’s based on I. If we could shift, if we could somehow purify that love because the love of what we feel for people that are close to us in a way it’s valid. Part of it is good. Part of it is pure love but part of it is attachment. So what we try to do is to get rid of that part of the attachment and then practice the only part that we practice is love.
So when we have people around us, what we want to do is instead of focusing How can a person benefit me? Is that we think How can I benefit that person? What can I do for that person? What can I do for that person? I see a deep worry on your mind, Helena.
I’m talking about the issue. Okay. You okay if I keep on going? Yes. Okay.
Yeah. I think that did that all good. Question? Question? Yes?
Is it at any time okay to experience absolute anger? Sorry? Is it is it possible to experience it any time? Is it is it an option to vent? Never.
According to Buddhism, never. Because it’s not that we want to if anger arises, anger is something that we know is very harmful, very destructive. So I think in the West we have two options: either I suppress it and I don’t want to know about it or I get rid of it completely. Buddhism is in the middle and says, We don’t want to suppress it because it’s harmful to ourselves. It will destroy our own body and our own mind.
But letting it out is also destructive, not just for the other person but also for ourselves because we create a habit of being angry. The more we do that, the more it’s like we cultivate anger in our mind. And that’s not what we want to do. So what Buddhism does is, if anger arises, you try to sit with your anger, you try to see it arising so you don’t push it away. But you say, okay.
I’m angry. Or you could say there is anger in my mind. My mind is full of anger, but my mind is not anger. I am not the anger. And you let the anger arise.
And you let the anger just arise, arise, arise and it will naturally dissolve into the mind. Naturally, there will be a time that the anger is gone. Right? All the emotions, all the thoughts, they arise in our mind and they dissolve back into the mind. What we do is either when they start to arise we say, Oh, no, I don’t want that, which means that the other starts pushing up, pushing up, becomes stronger.
Or what we say, I am this! And we just bring it forth, you know, we just express it all. Buddhism says we are not that. We are not whatever arises. We are not that really.
What we really are is the mind itself, that purity itself. That is what we really are. Every time when we have things popping up and we think we are that, we make a mistake which leads to problems. So what you do is you sit and you allow that feeling to arise and it will go back into the mind. It will just dissolve.
We don’t take it serious in the sense that we believe in it, that we are that. We see that it’s just a feeling that arises. And it’s not a nice feeling. It’s feeling that comes from feeling harmed. Normally, angry is anger comes from I feel harmed.
But what you try to do is, at the same time, you try to reflect on that I that I feel as harmed, that I where is it actually? Is it in my body? Is it in my mind? If you look for it, can’t find it. So you try to let it go.
You try that I that you feel as harmed. You cannot find that anywhere. And you try to contemplate that what happened is just that some causes and conditions came together, you know, and then because of that, some negative karma ripened and that’s very painful and it’s very unfortunate. But if I’m gonna fuel that by expressing, I’m gonna create more. So I stop doing that, and I sit with it.
And that’s hard. To sit with your anger is very hard. But if you can do it, it will naturally subside. And how would you say that the people that were sitting in the gas ovens and things like that in the holocaust. The holocaust. We’re not talking about the Holocaust. We’re talking about you right We circumstances. We have experienced them all.
We have. And we also all have been to kill us. We have done it all. We have it all in our capacity. Everything is there.
If your torment is still there, how do you stop the anger? Just find this very difficult. It is very difficult. If the torment is in your mind you have the feeling it happens No, it’s there. It’s there.
You first have to own that. It’s in here. It’s in your mind. That’s what I can’t get around it. Sorry.
That’s okay. Problems happen in the mind. If we don’t have the karma to experience torment, we cannot experience torment. First we have to own that. Otherwise, you cannot change it.
If it’s happening outside, you cannot change it. We cannot change outside. We can’t. We can only change our own contribution to it. And when we really are able to change it, it’s gone.
It will be gone. And you can do that. You can. I promise you, you can. Very, very hard.
Letting go is very, very hard. You know? It’s not I’m not saying it’s an easy thing to do. I’m just saying it is possible. Promise you we’ll work that out in this course.
Thank you. Okay? We’re going to have a break. Okay. Tea and coffee is in the kitchen.