Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 83-minute teaching, Ven Jamyang opens with a pointed question: why is genuine compassion so rare in modern life? He then offers the Buddhist answer — that problems arise not from events themselves but from our resistance to accepting them. Through meditation practice, we learn to observe difficult feelings without identifying with them, remaining the observer rather than becoming the emotion. Suffering, when truly accepted, becomes a gateway to wisdom and genuine connection with others. The session challenges guilt-driven helping as a wrong consciousness rooted in fear rather than clarity. Self-compassion is emphasized as essential, not selfish. Through group dialogue, Ven Jamyang explores the practical tension between caring for ourselves and serving others, offering concrete guidance on balance. A guided compassion meditation concludes the session. Pitched at practitioners with established Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2007 10 16 Jamyang – session 2 161007.mp3
UUID: 1d33ef67-25de-495b-87b0-e49d4acbdaef
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2007-10-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 83.0 minutes
Words: ~9,983
I just want to run on and push in. Yeah. You probably can. If you I mean, I can put your name down. Oh, you want?
No. We didn’t last week. We were completely consumed in in our own work. We didn’t get to the meditation, and we then I thought, no. Just no.
New homework. So that’s coming today. Ten. Could somebody let me know if it’s twelve? Yeah.
Oh. Yeah. You know. Okay. What is it?
It’s five minutes fast. Compassion for ourselves. What are the benefits of compassion? Benefits of compassion? Maybe positive things?
Why is it good to generate compassion? Maybe you already know that. Why? It’s a twofold benefit. It helps those you’re compassionate for.
And even by being compassionate, you won’t hurt yourself tomorrow. Mhmm. Compassion slash happiness. It it’s like a cycle. For use that logic that compassion is happiness for yourself?
Mhmm. Yeah. You’re not repeating me. You’re not, do you? You would know that from yourself.
Yeah. Yeah. Generally compassion helps you to reconnect with that, what we actually are. Begs the question, why is there such a staggering lack of it out there? Yeah.
But huge. I mean, it’s almost, you know, it’s it’s like the war end of the equation. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
It’s because we’re so ignorant and because we have this belief of self. And due to that belief of self, we engage into you know, we wanna fill our desires. We wanna get away from our suffering. And we believe in that so strongly that we keep on doing that. And with that, we move more and more away from what we really are.
Didn’t used to be like that in you wouldn’t know that in Australia because you weren’t here, but I think that we’re so bombarded with so much from America that people actually used to care about their neighbors, used to go. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Closing the door? To tell you the truth, being in being in Adelaide being in Adelaide, I think, oh, people are so about each other.
Coming from my background it’s unbelievable how much people care here about each other and how relaxed life here is and how little stress there is here. Yes. So I come from a different background which has much, much more stress than here. Constantly, constantly, constantly. Here it’s like people really look you into the eyes.
If you go to a shop they make some personal connection. I’m surprised how friendly and kind everybody is here. Much more time. You know? I don’t know.
It’s like I enjoy. I really enjoy being here because I can open my heart much easier than I could anywhere else. If you go to the northern suburbs and or keep heading north out to the outback Well, I live there. It’s it’s it’s even a lot lot lot lot better. Mhmm.
But I I don’t think we have that. I don’t think it used to be like we have this sort of idealization. I mean, the the all white policy, the the way immigrants were treated. I mean, there’s been a lot of nastiness out of this country as well. But I think what happened a long time ago, like ten years ago, twenty years ago, there was not so much material possession.
Know, drive was not that big yet and it’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and that will only keep increasing. So because it keeps increasing people will go more and more mad. Know? This is not gonna stop. This tendency that we have, that we are creating in the world is not gonna stop.
Degenerating age. If you think if you know how the mind works and if you see what we do with our world, you know that it’s only can it become more mad. Right? More disasters will happen. More problems will come.
That’s just what is going to happen if we like it or not. So we have to give up our day. I always had a strong idea if this just would change then the world will be much better. It was a long time work to give that up. The world is not going to be better.
The world is going to get worse. But we can do a lot about ourselves and we can do a lot about our own little world and on the long term that will have a positive effect also on the world itself. But the world will not change. I think if you really accept it, I don’t experience it as a depression. I get caught up in that sometimes.
But you can also say it’s realistic. If you know how the mind works, you cannot expect people to become less crazy. You have to expect people to become more crazy. So if you can take well care of yourself, you don’t have to become more crazy. So you can become like a refuge.
You can control that part of yourself. But I want to think of the next generation. Like, you know what? My son, who He will deal with that. The words he wanna live in.
And He will deal with that. Yeah. Yeah. That’s fine. And he’ll have innate coping mechanisms that we didn’t have at his age.
No. These things were different for us then. Yeah. It’s true. It’s true.
So you cry with him. You know? But after the crying, the the crying stops and you can accept it. I don’t know. This is this is Yeah.
I know it’s something It is. You’ve gotta take into perspective of what our parents went through, though, of of what as as Germans and Dutch people, you would have a pretty close hand view of things over there. I mean, we’re not in world wars anymore. Well, no. That generation’s completely different because they their whole focus was growing exponentially because of communication booming.
Kids grow up wanting to starve as being Madonna. You know? You know? It’s that level of that’s going to make me good if I’m that wealthy, that successful, and that famous. You know?
That’s that’s sort of common currency now. I don’t know. I was eighteen, and they all came to Poland, and I’ve never got used But it’s like a shock, isn’t it? It’s like your whole system goes in a shock, and you haven’t come out of that shock yet. The second shock was when when the planes actually came in.
And we all stood in the backyard. The whole family was duelling because the German plane had been shot. And burns to nothing, and there are people in there. And I might have told that they were doing what they actually You just saw the people and the suffering of the people and that already. And then if people around you are happy, that must be really, really strange because you as a child who has that natural compassion Mhmm.
Then it’s like, why do they want that person to suffer? You know? But but if you’re still in a shock, the shock makes that you keep surviving. The shock makes that you somewhere you have to accept that reality. That is how the mind works.
People rejoice. People rejoice in the hurt of their enemy. That’s how the mind works. That was a big lesson. Yes.
But you have to think about that. That’s a natural in such an extreme way. Such an extreme way. But in a way, it’s natural for human beings to do that. So you have to keep on telling yourself that it’s like to get you out of the shock, that is what human beings are.
That is what they are about. And we’re part of that. We have the same mind. And we have to accept that. And the more you can accept it, the more you can come out of that shock and you can change that way of reacting because we all have it.
Know, our parents were not different from us. Don’t you think we’ve improved by? I mean The working of the mind doesn’t change, you know. Our mind is still the same as in the time of the Buddha. The principle of how the mind works doesn’t change.
No. No. But what I mean is, I mean, at least we have now got a Buddha house in Adelaide, which we wouldn’t have had fifty, sixty, seventy years But we are still invading countries and we’re still killing and we’re are very intolerant to people who have a different color of the skin and we’re still there is a lot of Not as much as we would. We find there’s a a lot more tolerance. You can see it in the last session of violence in Canada and.
I think there’s more tolerance, and there’s more intolerance. I think it’s gone both ways. Yeah. They a lot more tolerant, tolerant, but there’s far more extreme intolerance. I mean, tolerance is such a ghastly word anyway.
It should be about acceptance, not tolerating something. You know, just on that level, I thought, you know, as a gay male, I hate being tolerated. You know? Excuse the language, but fuck you. I’m not a box of cornflakes.
No. I don’t need to be tolerated. No. You accept me. Don’t you think of this?
It’s accept me. Don’t tolerate me. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Tolerating already has a feeling of That’s just, you know, semantics maybe, but it it’s it’s a funny word. It’s you know, you tolerate a mosquito at night in your bedroom if you don’t accept it. You know what I mean? Well, we’re trying to go there that we also accept a mosquito.
Mosquito is very, very different. But it’s true and I think the extremes are getting bigger. I think if you want to get away from the craziness, you know, you have to go on a spiritual path. It’s almost not possible. If you just live your normal life you can only go in the direction of getting more crazy.
It’s like because of the way the mind works, because the way we create a society, if you don’t do anything you can only go in the direction of being more crazy. So then yes, the good thing about that is that there is like a condition that spiritual practice can start, you know, surfaces again and that we can start engaging in that. In a way, it’s a very good soil for spiritual practice. But if you don’t pick it up, you do go more mad. So if you are a person who engages in spiritual practice, you will go and see around you and you you know, people are mad.
Many people are mad. That sort of goes back on itself because so many of these conflicts come from spiritual dogma. Also. Which But that’s like that’s not a proper practice, isn’t it? That’s like a misinterpretation.
Yeah. Yeah. So if you wanna get out of that, you have to practice properly and you have to get rid of all these pre prejudice that we have. Benefits of compassion. Lama Zopa says if we have to generate compassion, you know, and because we what we do is we generate compassion for the long term.
But actually, when we generate compassion here now today it has benefits straight away. If we can generate compassion our own problems they diminish straight away. If we can think about the suffering of others, our own problems diminish. If we are really with the person, the other person, you know, or if we really sit with our own suffering, the problem goes away. Problems is something that we don’t want.
We talked about it, I think, in the third session. Problem is something that we don’t want. That is what we label problem. Problem is something that comes to us and we have this aversion coming up. As soon as aversion coming up, we say that’s a problem.
Right? But the problem is not here. The problem is the fact that we react with aversion and we want to push it away. That makes it a problem. As we can invite it in our life, the moment we can say I accept this, the problem is gone.
Because the nature of the problem is that it is something that we don’t want. So as soon as we say I want this, the problem is gone. This is psychology. That is Buddhist psychology. Our biggest enemy is that reaction that comes up again and again.
The avoidance, the aversion, that’s our biggest problem. The aversion and also the attachment to things, you know, that goes together. But as soon as we say, I don’t want, there is a problem. Right? Soon as we can say, I invite it, problem is gone.
So if you can generate compassion, compassion is accepting the suffering, sitting with the suffering, allowing the suffering to be there, contemplating on the suffering. We allow you know, we stop that reaction of, I don’t want this. I don’t like this. We stop it, then problem is gone. It doesn’t feel like?
It’s not suffering. The suffering is that we don’t like it. Reaction to it. That’s the suffering. That makes it that it is suffering.
As soon as we really can accept it, suffering is gone. So you contemplate it. You don’t actually contemplate the suffering. You don’t contemplate that what appears outside. You contemplate your own reaction.
There’s something that that I don’t like. You know? And how can I make that attractive? Because as soon as it is attractive and I start liking it, the problem is gone. Then Lama Zopa would say, So what we try to do is to like our problems.
I hate that. I’m not gonna like my problems. But that is how he phrases it. Sorry? Transforming the problems into happiness.
Yes. You can call it like that. But he says you like problems. I never get that but I’m starting to get it better and better. Do you really mean?
Because the moment you like it, it’s not a problem anymore. Isn’t it? But what he says is you welcome your problems. You say, Welcome problem. The moment you can really feel it, problem is gone.
And many times if you really sit with the problem and you hold your reaction of aversion, you somehow can allow it to be there so that your reaction doesn’t come up, wisdom comes naturally. Compassion comes naturally. I’m sure you’re about to get into this and explain, okay, how you do that. But if you do have a car accident Yeah. You’d be hard pushed to go, no.
This isn’t a problem. Yeah. The kids are starving, but they’re real. Who cares? Well, I think what you do is you train first of all, you train on your cushion and you think about things like that.
Or you start with mindfulness meditation. You just sit. What we did in the beginning in the first few courses, you sit and you scan through your body. If you scan through your body, feelings arise. Pleasant feelings, unpleasant feelings.
If pleasant feelings arise, we want to go with them. If unpleasant feelings arise, we want to push it away. We want to get away. You see see your mind trying to get away from it. So then what you say is you step back and you say, Feelings just arise.
Sometimes pleasant feelings arise, sometimes unpleasant feelings arise. I don’t have to do anything with that. I don’t have to respond to them. So then you’re gonna detach. Detach the detaching.
You detach from what your normal behavior is. We identify with our feelings and we have this drive that every time there is a good feeling I want to have more. Every time there is a bad feeling I don’t want to have it. If you meditate and you observe feelings you step back from it so that you cut through that drive. You say I’m not going to follow that anymore.
It’s useless. That is not going to bring me happiness you know. When you follow your feelings it’s not going to bring you the happiness you want. You get a sensory pleasure and after that you get a dissatisfaction. Plus if you want to get away from something that you don’t want you just get more and more suffering.
If you really have that insight you have the tool that can help you to step back from your feelings and say I don’t have to follow that. If the craziness comes up you don’t have to follow it. Just sit with that and observe that Gee, my mind is crazy today. But I don’t have to be that mind. I don’t have to become the mind.
The crazy mind. I can be the observer of the crazy mind. If I really am the observer, that craziness that comes up into the mind and it dissolves back into the mind. If I become the craziness, I get more and more crazy. Very difficult to let it dissolve back into the mind.
Because part of the craziness I want to cultivate because that feels good and part of the craziness I want to get away from it. Both reactions aggregates the whole situation. As soon as I can step back it can go away. It can get out of my mind. Right?
Any feelings that arise in the mind, they come and they go. That’s the nature of anything. If anger arises in the mind, anger comes at a certain point, anger goes. Isn’t it? If happiness arises in the mind, at a certain point it goes.
If jealousy arises in the mind, at a certain point it goes. Even if we do nothing, that is just how it works. The more we think about something, that person has harmed me, we think, think, think, think. Very difficult for the anger to get out of the mind. It’s very difficult for other states of mind to come in.
But if we can step back and say, Oh, there was anger arising in my mind. Yeah. Well, this person did something that I didn’t like. Yes. And then naturally I react like that but I know it’s not so clever to do that.
But I know that I have these tendencies so I just observe what I do. Oh, I actually wanna harm that person. I really wanna harm that person badly. If I would do that, that person would get angry at me and blah blah blah blah blah. So you contemplate but you don’t follow it.
Then you see the negativity that comes with anger. And the more you do that at a certain point, it’s like you’re not going to even it’s like why would I follow my anger? But in the beginning it’s like hey my anger is my protector. If I don’t follow that, who’s gonna protect me? That takes a while to get to the point of I don’t have to follow that anymore.
You know? But then when the accident happens in the car, it’s like I don’t know. The last accident that happened to me was like, oh, what was that? Oh. Then the person didn’t wanna pay.
Then I got I saw the anger rising. So you always have to work something. So that’s one way that you can contemplate. If you have an illness or if you have a problem you can say because I have this problem I can understand very much what other people experience who have the same kind of problem. Not only can you do that but you could even say I can take on the suffering of others who experience that problem.
May me having this problem or disease be the cause that other people are completely free from their suffering. Let me go through the suffering from their problem so that they are free from their suffering. Right? So that means that you not only take the the the your own problem on, you know. If we have a disease, we don’t want that.
It’s awful. We don’t function anymore so we want to push it away. If we can welcome the disease and we can say, this is like a gift. I wanna this has so much benefit for me that I have this. This has benefit for me.
And we’re gonna see the benefit that it has for me, then that attitude of don’t want it’ disappears. That is most of us suffering. If we can see the benefits of our disease we might be happy with what we have. Disease is a label. Yeah, that’s a hard one.
I know. I never believed that one. I’ll keep on talking. I’ll try. If we can say, you know, if can you see that the reason why you suffer, a big part of your suffering is that you don’t like what you have.
You hate it because it goes against everything that you would like to do in your life. It’s not what you meant. You did not set this out for your life to get this. It’s giving you exactly the opposite. So it’s something that is really you wanna get rid of it.
The fight against what you have, the frustration that you have something that you don’t like, that is a big part of your suffering. That’s the biggest part of your suffering. That’s maybe ninety percent of your suffering. The moment you could say, this sickness is so much of benefit. I’m so grateful that I have that.’ If you would imagine that you would have that attitude, that part of the suffering that says, ‘I don’t want that, that part is gone.
That part you cut through at that moment. Which means that we have to find benefits of being sick. Right? In order to get that attitude, we have to find the benefits. How can we use sickness for our sickness for our own growth?
How can we use sickness to develop our mind in a positive way? How can we how can we can we, when pain arises, say this pain is actually going to show me something about reality and about myself that I would never ever be able to access without this? This is going to show me corners of my mind that I’ve never ever been able to see, that I never will see without a sickness. Suffering, if we can allow the suffering in, there is our wisdom, there is our compassion. If we don’t have suffering, we will never experience the compassion in a deep level.
We won’t be able to do that. If we don’t have suffering we cannot develop our wisdom about reality. We are all born with this veil where we don’t really see reality. As soon as sickness comes we have to see that that veil is not completely in accord with reality. Reality is actually something different.
Only because we have that sickness we have a tool, we have an opportunity to see beyond that. If you look around people are healthy and everything goes well in their life. They cannot access that. It’s not possible. Suffering is like the gateway.
Suffering is a gateway to happiness. Suffering is the gateway to our compassion. Suffering is a gateway to our wisdom. Right? If we see that it is a gateway, if we really see it’s a gateway, we can drop part of that aversion.
We can say there’s actually something in this that is going to benefit me, that is going to help me. So then part of that aversion can go. If you could see that your suffering is what you just said is is very similar than the suffering of other beings who are in a similar situation. If you really connect with your own suffering and you have the courage to feel that, you know what somebody else go through. You know?
Yeah. If if you have experienced a suffering in your life and you don’t have the capacity to feel it, you can say, oh, yeah. I experience the same as you. But you’re not you you really have not experienced that yet. As long as you have not really experienced that, you cannot really be with that person.
Right? So if you can accept that unbearable feeling that you have about your own suffering, that makes that you can connect with others who have the same kind of experience. What we have done in our life, we have built up this wall where we want to protect ourselves, where we where and which is not necessarily benefiting us and what we wanna get away from. If we are able to feel our suffering deeply, we can make that bridge with other people who have the same kind of experience. That is our bridge.
Really feeling our suffering is what helps us to connect with them. And if we can connect with others, we feel I don’t know if you can if you know if you know that experience. If you really connect with others, that moment, your life has meaning. That moment, you feel my life is worthwhile. The moment you have that connection.
If we don’t make that connection, we’re living an empty life. Compassion is what helps us to connect. Compassion we can develop on the basis of suffering. So that is one of the benefits of suffering. As soon as you can apply that, suffering is not suffering anymore.
Suffering is something that we don’t want. As soon as we can feel it, then that not wanting is gone. There is an acceptance. There is a relief. And on the base of that, we connect with others.
You know? And we can say to others, you know, the fighting is actually your biggest pain. Sometimes something happens in our life. It takes five minutes. What you saw with that plane coming down, a few minutes.
Your whole life, you take it with you. It was only a few minutes. If we would have the capacity to feel it straight away and to digest it completely, it’s gone. But because we don’t have the capacity, it goes with us. Year after year after year, determining our life.
Being there as burden, you know, always coming up back into the memory. You still experience the suffering. If you could really go into the suffering and feel it in all your bones and all your cells, it will go. The image will go. You know?
But you will have something else with you. So it’s not that you’re ever gonna forget it, but it’s it’s like it becomes different. It becomes something of value that you carry with you. It’s not just a nightmare, or she It’s not a nightmare anymore. The nightmare as soon as you really can see the nightmare, the nightmare is not a nightmare anymore.
But you have to feel it in all your cells. And that is where the whole system is like, oh, no. I can’t do that because you’ll faint. Faint means that you have the feeling you it’s almost like dying, isn’t it? It’s like an escape of the mind that says, can’t can’t handle this.
So the moment you you can handle it, the moment you can say yes to that experience, that nightmare is gone. The nightmare is a nightmare because we can’t face it. Sometimes they say if if you have fear, the moment you look fear straight in the eyes, the fear is gone. But what we want to do is there is fear. We just don’t want to look.
We can’t look. Our whole instinct says don’t look. Run away. We have to go to it against our instinct. As soon as we can do that, the nightmare is gone.
I’m gonna sleep a while. Are there any nights? Yes. I give you meditation. That’s meditation and compassion and a little bit of homework.
Thank you. I had why does this say week I had one week five. What was this? Well, this this is week five, but this is week four. No.
It’s. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I changed the wording a little bit, and I put somewhere week five, and now I copied week four.
But it’s still it’s still the same. Yes. I give everybody the same as you have. Okay? See you next week.
See you. If we could generate compassion, It’s like you lift your whole life out of a different space. You lift your life out of the normal space that it is. If we live our normal life, we have meetings and it can be nice. But our life is still ordinary.
As soon as compassion comes in our life and we can make that connection from our heart, our life gets in a completely different dimension. Our life becomes much more meaningful. We feel like today my life had meaning. Even one connection. My life has meaning.
Right? So if we even when we die, if we could think when we’re dying that we take on the suffering of others and that may my death be of greatest benefit to others. May I take with me the suffering of all sentient beings. May I if you die like that, your die is your death is so meaningful. Can can you imagine that that when you when you generate that kind of attitude that you’re not doing things for you alone, you’re doing things for others.
I’m studying because I want to alleviate myself from suffering but not only me because when I can alleviate myself from suffering I know I can help others much better. That’s the reason why I’m doing things. Because with every step I’m doing, there can be a step that can help others to do the same kind of thing, to find the same kind of way. If I can generate that mind every step becomes meaningful no matter what I experience. Lama Zopa says he has these kind of dedication prayers where he says, no matter if I’m criticized or praised or harmed or benefited or how does he say that?
No matter what people do to me, if they say bad things or good things, if they if I’m gonna die or if I’m living if I’m healthy or if I’m unhealthy, whatever life I experience, may that be of greatest benefit to others. Everything I’m doing, may everything that I experience be of benefit to others. May it be of benefit. May it be of benefit the situation that I’m in now. I’m in a mess.
May it be of benefit somehow. As soon as you can think that, you lose a little bit of that reaction that wants to get away from it. You can think, can this be of benefit? Can it be of benefit? I’m such a mess and it’s going be of benefit.
You have no idea how that can be but that’s your wish that whatever mess you are in may I be of benefit. It’s very powerful when you suffer from depression to think like that actually. It’s a complete antidote. Yeah. You feel useless, you feel worthless and then you say, may this be of benefit.
It’s like you have the mind like, what? Eventually it will take you through the suffering, actually. Eventually it will go. We have a mind that tries to stick in good and bad. I know somebody who says, oh, when I do that, it’s really bad.
When I do this, it’s really good. And then she talked to Rinpoche and Rinpoche says, oh, girl, whatever you wanna choose, you choose. But just as long as you think may this be of benefit. It doesn’t matter which choice you make in life. As long as you think may my choice be of benefit.
That helps you to get rid of that whole mind. You know, if you are a person who wants to do really good. Doesn’t matter what you’re doing. It’s all good. As long as it is of benefit, then it’s gonna benefit you.
It’s all good. It’s all good. It’s all good. He says even if you’re a prostitute, if you’re motivated by compassion, your life is very meaningful. Right?
And we might think, oh, a prostitute. Even if you’re a prostitute, if you can do that for the benefit of others, if you have a helpful attitude when you’re when in in in in what you’re doing, your life is very meaningful. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. You know? It’s your attitude, how you do it with so how do we practice compassion for ourselves?
Is it really twelve o’clock? Oh my god. Because we have this feeling, if I’m going to take care of myself, I’m very selfish. I don’t want to do that. Or we think my needs are not important.
I had a mother and she thought her needs were not important. First you have to think about and understand about yourself. Buddhism is not like that. This is actually quite foolish. The Buddha said at a certain point, I have investigated my whole the whole world and my mind, and never did I find anyone dearer than myself.
The Buddha said that. So, since I myself is dearer than others, if I really love myself, then I can never harm others. Right? Knowing that there is nobody who takes more care of you, first, have to acknowledge that. There is nobody who can take better care of you.
So you have to do that job because there’s no one in the world who can do that better. And then you’re gonna think, how can I take best care of myself? Well, if you know that happiness comes from not harming, then you say, then I have to stop harming others. I cannot never harm others. If I wanna take care of myself, I never can harm others.
True? But first acknowledging there’s no one who who can take better care of me than myself. I’m the person who knows what I want and what I don’t want, what I like and what I don’t like, what I need and what I don’t need. Right? If I use my wisdom and I know that if I generate compassion, that is actually helping me through my own suffering, that is helping me to generate a happier state of mind, then that is what I have to practice.
And I know how to do that. I know where my mind is at. I know where the resistance is in my mind. And I have the biggest wish in the world to benefit me. Right?
My wish to benefit me is bigger than my wish of my mother to benefit me, than the wish of my father to benefit me. Even they did everything they could. Right? I’m the only person who really knows, wants, can. We all have the feeling how to say our whole feeling is that our whole world is around that ‘I’ and benefiting that ‘I’.
That’s how we are. Constantly driven by ‘I want to be happy and my happiness is more important than others. That is just how we are. Right? We have to acknowledge that.
If we can acknowledge that then we can say Okay, now we’re going to apply wisdom. If that’s the case, that we function like that, how can I become more happy? I can become more happy when I stop harming, when I start benefiting. So we have the I and the tendency is there. We have the belief that my happiness is more important than others’ happiness.
Our whole system works that things that we like give us a feeling of happiness and we say yes to that. Things that we don’t like and give us a feeling of unhappiness, we don’t want that. We cannot stop that. We cannot stop that until we realize the nature phenomena, which is on the long, long term. As long as we haven’t done that, that nature is there.
So we can work with that nature. We cannot ignore it. We cannot deny it. We have to work with that mechanism that is in us. So we say, okay.
It’s okay that I’m the one who can take best care of my happiness because that’s that’s the consequence, isn’t it? I’m the one who’s reacting constantly. So I’m the one who can take care best of my happiness. But then, at the moment, the way I do it is not that wise because we know that we don’t find what we’re really looking for. So how can I do it more wise?
If I know that happiness is coming from benefiting others, then if I say yes to benefiting others, I know that happiness is going to come. If I know that happiness is coming from stopping harming stopping harm, then that is what if I use really my wisdom, then that is what I should should apply. That is what I should engage in. But it goes straight into our instinct, completely opposite to our instinct. So you have to think about again and again and again.
Right? Otherwise, we have this natural resistance to virtue to, you know, to really be a good person. I don’t know. There is a resistance sometimes or not. What you have to overcome, you have to overcome your own your own mind that believes that I have to protect myself.
I have to take care of myself. Have to overcome that wall. Overcoming that wall feels like a resistance. So to really be of benefit we have to overcome that resistance. In order to do that we have to think.
We have to use our wisdom. Otherwise, without instinct alone, we cannot do it. So what we have to do is that we have to learn to be very kind with ourselves. We have to learn to be very gentle with ourselves. Beating ourselves up because we did something wrong is not the way to go.
It’s not a way to love ourselves. It’s not a way to have compassion for ourselves. The way to say, okay. That’s okay what you did. You know?
Next time, I’ll try more this or I’ll try more that, but it’s okay. You did the best you could. You did the best you could. We all do the best we can. It’s very hard to find a balance, though, isn’t it, between trying to benefit others and benefiting yourself?
Well, it’s because we have these two minds. We can either do this or either do that. But what we’re going to try to do is to do that together. That when we benefit ourselves, that we benefit others too. That we’re going to see that when you benefit yourself, you are benefiting others.
They are not contradictory to each other. Yeah. Yeah. I think I guess I’m speaking also in terms of you might benefit I know that for years I was so deluded, but I thought I benefit others. No.
But that is what we all have the tendency to do. Because we have this idea that I don’t need it or I’m not worth worthy of it or we have wrong ideas there about ourselves, about taking care of ourselves, about taking care of our own needs. They’re always selfish. And I’m just thinking this by benefiting others, you don’t necessarily benefit yourself. No.
Which is what I used to think. But if you don’t benefit yourself while you’re benefiting others, you’re actually not benefiting others. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That’s true. Yeah. So that is where we have to go with our thoughts. If you benefit others and you actually feel that, no, you’re not benefiting yourself, you’re not benefiting others. Yeah.
Yeah. I know. You’re giving It took me a long time to get This? Yeah. Me too.
And I still don’t have it. You know? I still try to go in benefiting, which is actually harming me. Yeah. Which, you know, that’s like I it’s a long term lesson that I have to learn to stop doing And maybe we all have that tendency.
I don’t know. You have that? Yeah. Going too far, doing too much. Mary has that.
You too? Yeah. Yeah. So where is the you know, where do we say no? Where do we take care of ourselves?
What we can do is we can do the meditation. I think what we have to try to do in daily life is that we never lose the connection with either one of them, you know, with ourselves and without us. And That is what many times happens. It’s like maybe and that’s maybe because of the war but that’s my speculation. I would have to think deeper by that.
It’s like you can only benefit what is at this side or at that side. But as long as we haven’t bridged that, it’s almost like they cannot go together. And I think when you can, in your actions, keep connection with your own benefit, you can see why this action is benefiting you and you can see why it is benefiting others. Benefiting others, that might actually help to bridge that wall, you know, to to overcome that split that we have. But that’s a practice.
It’s not something that happens overnight. It’s not something that is naturally there. Yeah. And then you can say, why do you rescue? Yes.
So what if you don’t rescue? What happens to you? Well, yeah. That’s the question, really. Yeah?
What happens to you when you don’t rescue? What will you experience when you don’t rescue? Guilt? Negative feeling? I’m not good enough when I don’t do this?
I’m doing something wrong? Yeah, I feel like you should be doing something. But that’s a suffering, isn’t it? Feeling guilt. That’s a suffering.
It’s a big suffering. It’s a big drive for us to engage in something. So if you could sit with that guilt and experience a suffering of it’s actually beating yourself up. You’re saying I’m not good enough when I don’t engage in this. So if you can say, I don’t have to engage in this.
You know? It’s like, if you really think about karma, that that person experiences something due to their own actions that I even the guilt is a karma. It’s something that you experience due to your own actions. But guilt is a wrong consciousness. Consciousness.
Guilt somebody said to me, a Buddha doesn’t feel guilt. So when a Buddha doesn’t feel guilt means that guilt is a wrong consciousness. If it was appropriate to feel guilt, a Buddha would have guilt. But a Buddha doesn’t have guilt. So it’s something that is not in the nature of the mind.
We think if I don’t have guilt or if I don’t engage, we do nothing. That’s not true. Isn’t it? That’s what you can think. Yeah.
I guess that must have been dropped into me. Yes, indeed. Definitely. What? What?
It’s my fault. It’s my fault. Yeah. Maxima. My biggest fault?
Yeah. It’s so big. It is my Yeah. Everything is my fault. Yeah.
I actually in Buddhism, they say all the happiness comes from others and all the suffering comes from ourselves. That is a little bit similar than that one, you know. So I had to think a lot about that in order to get that separated because what Buddhism is saying is that everything, negative experience that we have comes due to us because we have acted out of a self centered attitude. We have only thought about ourselves. Every happiness that we experience comes from compassion, comes from a loving mind, comes from thinking about others.
So in that sense if you think only about yourself then yes negative feelings arise. Create causes for harm in the future. We create causes for harm in the present. If we can open our to others, yes, we do experience happiness. So then you can say, oh my suffering is my fault.
It’s my fault. In that sense. It’s true. It’s very fine but we make it too big, you know. We use it in an inappropriate way.
We use it in a way that we actually paralyze ourselves in something that is not bringing any benefit. It’s very interesting if you have the feeling I have to do something and the guilt is there to just abstain one time from action and see what happens. What happens if I don’t act on this guilt and sit with it? What happens outside there and what happens in me? Guilt is an unbearable feeling.
Isn’t it? That is what makes us act. But because it’s unbearable, it’s a suffering that we have not accepted yet. But you are responsible for yourself. I am, yeah.
And I am, in a different sense. I am responsible for everyone and myself. Yeah. Not responsible for their karma. No.
No. Even a Buddha can’t carry that. No. And even a Buddha can’t change that. A Buddha if a Buddha could, he would help.
You know? But even a Buddha can’t help. So why do you think we can help? So it’s a very fine balance. And it’s almost that I think when you find the right balance, then whatever you’re doing is giving you I shouldn’t say happiness, but definitely fulfilling.
Yeah. Because if you are if you are acting out of no. I’m I’m thinking about purification. Sometimes things happen to you. You keep on doing things, and you experience horrible feelings.
You know? But that can be a purification that you go through as as part of your guilt mind is letting go. You know? That can be an awful experience. But if you work slowly, slowly through that, then you actually remove that completely from your mind stream.
We’ll talk about that another time. We’re talking today about compassion. We’re gonna do meditation and compassion. Unless there are any questions? Compassion for ourselves.
Finding the balance. I think just think about it at home and think about the guilt and think about what guilt really is. What we want to do is we want to lift up our heart. You know, we want to lift up our life. Guilt is very heavy.
Somebody said it’s the it’s the lowest vibration on earth, guilt, in the sense of of I don’t know. All No. And why is it feeling heavy? Yeah. Yeah.
Well, when he said able to do something good though? Or No. No. I haven’t removed it yet completely. I’m working on it, but I know that when he said, this is the lowest vibration on earth.
That really put me into into thinking. I thought, so what am I creating if I follow that? You know? It’s like on an emotional level, there is something happening that is not pure. You know?
If somebody works on your guilt and from that guilt, you act on an emotional level, it’s not pure. So it’s not it’s not what we wanna practice. What you wanna practice is pure love. You know? Love is light.
It’s happy. It’s guilt is very heavy. So you have to do it. Yeah. You know?
Otherwise, they’re gonna be angry and otherwise, this and that. All these repercussions that are gonna come when you don’t do it. You know? That is what we have to free ourselves from. That’s a fear for us.
Oh, this is all gonna happen to me when I don’t do that. That’s our fear. We are driven by that fear. If we can break ourselves free from that and say, well, even if they’re gonna do all that with me, do it with me. You know?
Then at least you don’t have to be afraid anymore. Isn’t it? Oh, when I don’t do that, my dad doesn’t like me anymore. When I don’t do that, this person is going to do that. When I don’t do that just check how bound you are by all these threats.
You know? I don’t feel the guilt in that I’m concerned about what other people will think or repercussions from other people. Mhmm. It’s purely just personal guilt abrupt on me. What what is your what is your what is what is your mind telling?
How are you not a good person? What what do you tell yourself when you don’t do it then? It’s something that you tell yourself. Mhmm. So what what what is it the information?
But you do give yourself a message. You know, then you do it with yourself. For myself. Yeah. But I’m disappointed.
Yeah. So you have to listen to that voice, what that voice is telling you, and then checking if that is really true. Are you not a good person when you don’t do that? What makes you a good person? A good person makes you that your deeds are there to benefit others, that your deeds are there to benefit yourself, that your deeds are there to practice love and compassion, that you wanna make the the, I don’t know, life more meaningful, beautiful, happy, whatever.
All of the above. Is that really true that when you don’t do that you are not a good person? It’s not true. So it’s it’s not true. You can still be a very good person even if you don’t do that action.
So you have to show that yourself. That doesn’t make me a good good person. That’s a wrong thinking. It’s not true. The most wrong perception that we have Yeah.
Of But it’s deep voices. Yeah. If it’s something that we perceive needs or should be done, we should be out of love as opposed to wrapping ourselves over the wrists about it. Yeah. But should be is there can be already something underneath, isn’t it?
It’s like, where is that coming from? Should be. Yes. Family school. Well, we are growing up with shoulds, many shoulds, which is a lack of freedom, you know, to choose.
And what we can do as human beings is that we really look at our actions and check every action we are doing and say, is this beneficial or not? What are virtuous actions that will take care of other sentient beings? You know? Maybe when you engage I don’t know. I have this, you know, I had I had.
I would I I loved to clean the guesthouse when I was at Chenrezig, you know. I loved to clean the guesthouse. But I had this drive and somehow that I have to have to have clean and then there’s this guilt or whatever. But how many beings are harmed in doing that? You know, that I had to check myself, like, so are you really benefiting when you do that?
Are you really benefiting when you follow the drive that it all has to be clean and cool? Or are you actually harming on your way of, you know, trying to be a good girl? So I had to that’s a whole that was a whole pattern that I had to shift. So were you still doing it or not? No.
Not like that anymore. Or doing it for the right reason. Well, I try you know, this this this wanting to be a good girl. Actually, on on my way, I harm many. I harm many.
And I and but the drive was so strong that I could not stop that. You know? So it took me a long time to slow down, slow down, and take care of this, take care of that. It’s not important how it looks like. It’s more important that your actions are not harming.
If my action is harming, even if it feels like it’s a fantastic action, but if my action is harming, it’s not a good action. But you don’t harm anybody between the phone. There are many ants. A Chenrezig cupboard was full of ants and spiders and during the day obsessing about getting to the cleaning. You could’ve dismissed people.
Yeah. Also. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But you can do things like that, you know? But then there is the caring attitude and that’s the main thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Lots to think about maybe. I hope. Meditation and compassion. Ten minutes.
Yeah. And I’ll give it home with you and you can I see already a mistake? You you just try it. Compassion is the healing power of the mind for ourselves and for others. So any minute, any moment, you can generate compassion, which means that you accept the suffering, which means that you tolerate or welcome the suffering.
Any moment you can do that, you are working for your own healing. And you will also see that you your happiness will increase, your feeling of satisfaction will increase, your feeling that your life has meaning will increase, and you will enjoy enjoy your life much more. So when we start doing the meditation, first try to think that we are not doing this just for our own benefit. We are also doing this for our own benefit, but we are also doing it for the benefit of others. Any compassion that we generate either for ourselves or for others will help the world.
And we are part of that world. And then if you sit relaxed, with some space in your mind, Visualize all sentient beings around you. They are all human form. They are sitting. And imagine that a whole space is filled with beings.
Visualize in front of you the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. These are beings who have great compassion. These are beings who have compassion for each and every sentient being. They have first practiced equanimity in their mind. And equanimity is the basis that we can feel compassion for our friends, for our enemies, and for those who are strangers to us.
Great compassion is a compassion that doesn’t include one exclude one sentient being. So those who have achieved that in their minds are in front of us. The only reason why Buddhas and Bodhisattvas come to this world is to save others from suffering and to bring them to happiness. That is their purpose of life. And you can focus on the heart of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and imagining white light pouring from the hearts coming to you and entering your body through your crown, feeling it completely.
And that white light purifies all your negativities, all your problems. It purifies all your past harmful actions. And it purifies your potential to harm in the future. Feel that you become soft, gentle, open, And if we have purified all our past harmful actions, if we have purified our potential to harm, that means that all the causes for suffering, all the causes for disease disappear out of our body and mind. They go completely.
If we can adopt that strong compassion, that great compassion, suffering and the causes for suffering disappear. And our body and mind are filled with limitless love, limitless compassion of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Our body and mind feel clear, light, blissful. Then contemplate on the suffering of your parents and other people who are close to you. Open your heart to the physical and psychological problems they are experiencing.
And think that just as you, they all want to be free of their suffering. How wonderful would it be if they were free and could enjoy the peace and bliss of enlightenment? And you can visualize that all the suffering disappears. While you visualize them in front of you, you visualize that all their suffering disappears out of their body, is taken away. How wonderful that we can free others from their suffering like this.
Then think about the people that you don’t like or who have hurt you and imagine their suffering, their physical pain, their discomfort, their feelings of loneliness, insecurity, fear, dissatisfaction. And just like you, they don’t want to have any problems. But they have no choice. As long as the mind is confused confused and ignorant, it cannot find peace, and it will experience suffering. So try to open your heart for them.
And imagine that they are relieved from all their suffering. And think how wonderful it will be if they will be all happy people. And then think of the people that you have no particular relationship suffering. Many are in physical pain, experiencing discomfort, experiencing anxiety, depression, loneliness, insecurity, fear, dissatisfaction. And we know how many there are who have these kind of experiences.
And their mind is just like ours. They don’t wanna perceive that suffering. They all want to be free of that. They all want to be happy. So think how wonderful it will be if they could experience that freedom from suffering.
And visualize. You can imagine that that love and compassion from the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in front of you descends onto them, takes away all their suffering, all their pain, all their discomfort, frees them completely. How wonderful. And try to expand your awareness. Try to include as many beings as you can imagine.
And while you contemplate on the different individuals think about that uncontrollable mind? Constantly looking for pleasure, constantly looking to avoid suffering, and not having the right means to do that. I wish each and every one of them to be free of that uncontrolled mind. And then dedicated merits that by doing this kind of meditation, may my compassion grow. My compassion that is the source of all healing and happiness.
May that grow in my mind and in the minds of all living beings, especially those experience sickness, disease. And then when you feel ready, you can open your eyes. Another one. What to do? You’re tired when you leave here?
You’re doing a lot with that. Is it helpful? Yes. Try to sit with your suffering. But also in a positive way, you know, that that that you make it something nice, that you make it don’t make it a burden to sit with your suffering because that’s not the intention.
It is the intention to transform it into something beautiful, you know. And if we have that other attitude, all suffering will go. Some people are like that. I don’t know. Are you reading the book Ultimate Healing?
Not as but in the beginning, there are stories from people who Lama Zopa gave certain practices and they heal very quickly. Of course, these are the stories he writes about. But that’s the power of the compassion that, you know, it can inspire. Like, oh, oh, is this possible? Yeah.
Oh, it is it is very hard. You know, I know you will. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you. See you next week.
I hope. So there was no paperwork last week? No. There was nothing. Okay.
No. I make you the DVD, CD. CD and no. We just skip that because everybody was so so busy with the the previous ones. Oh, really?
Yeah. That I felt like, oh, it’s not gonna happen. Yeah. Well, keep on going with what you’re doing.