Ultimate Healing — Track 1-5

Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. In this three-hour dialogue, Ven Jamyang challenges a student’s lifelong pattern of using hope and fantasy to escape suffering—a survival strategy formed in childhood—and argues that true healing requires facing difficulty completely. He teaches foundational Buddhist concepts: the self doesn’t exist as we perceive it; body and mind are separate entities; consciousness has existed since beginningless time. He then examines hope and fear as mechanisms rooted in fight-or-flight reactions and fear of annihilation, showing how these keep us trapped in unrealistic expectations and projection onto others. Two meditation techniques are introduced—clarity of mind and white light healing—to gradually weaken these patterns. Woven throughout is a direct challenge to Western culture’s denial of death, which perpetuates bondage to hope and fear. Pitched at practitioners ready to face mortality and suffering directly.

File metadata (for organising)

File: Track 1-5.mp3

UUID: f7b82473-2bbc-4653-a633-74aba1035a56

Teacher: Ven Jamyang

Collection: Ultimate Healing (Ven Jamyang)

Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide

Duration: 180.7 minutes

Words: ~20,191

Alright. It’s a little bit loud maybe. How are you? Pretty good. Pretty good?

Mhmm. Everything going fine? Oh, lots of challenges going on around me, but I seem to be just going belly up. Good. Yeah. I just find that I’m observing a lot and I’m breathing and all of what we’ve covered so far I’ve had some great opportunities for getting to practice in the last especially week.

And that went well? Well, I guess I didn’t, I always sort of noticed that, oh, that’s really interesting. So yes, guess amongst that challenge it was, I was just going ”Interesting. And reflecting without getting even though I was affected a little bit but it was more of a case of being affected and then observing came in there a bit stronger, much more stronger to just be more discerning. Does that make sense?

That was the You mean judging? Assessing what is best for me. Yeah. One thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Assessing what’s best for me. Did you stay more the the observer or did you? Well, at first I was affected but then I noticed that my new skill of coming in was there ready for me to grab as a tool, if you know what I mean? So it was I was conscious of it.

Good. So that that’s a good thing. Yep. Good. So how are the meditations going?

Not too bad. Not about? I’ve done about probably half, I think. I didn’t mention every day. Yeah.

But what you’re saying about the just observing. I’m I’m getting better at observing too and being more objective. Yeah. So you meditate during the day? Well, try to yeah.

That’s like meditation, isn’t it? Yeah. That’s it? Know sitting down and doing the meditation that’s like having a coffee it’s like your quality time a quality time that is very rare to really get it’s very difficult to get that you know it’s it’s not something that automatically oh we just say I’ll take five minutes and I’ll do it it’s something that we really have to think of and give it to ourselves and and and it can become a really nice time with yourself where you can restore and where you can, rejuvenate and reconnect with yourself. Observing during the day is also fantastic, but you do not have that strong connection yourself if you just keep it there.

It’s like in the meditation you create that basis where you can fall back to during the day if things are difficult. As soon as you start observing there is a kind of space which you really know well and which you are familiar with and where you feel happy and comfortable in and safe and where there is no need to react. That is what you create when you sit down with yourself and it’s like you give yourself more chance in the daily life when you observe but you know it’s very good when you do it during the day. I want to catch myself before I react. Yeah, yeah.

But the more you sit down and connect with that space where you do not react, you know, you have more chance during the day. Otherwise it’s hard, it’s hard during the day. It’s hard anyway. But you make it easier for yourself if you have that little bit of time. Are you going alright?

Yeah, just found that I can see. I just definitely want to do more of that and commit to that. But I did notice that after I left the other day, was a little bit thinking about what we discussed on the whiteboard, as in talking about desire and aversion and being in this Western society. And for a couple of days, that I wasn’t sure about all of that. As in I really examined and was thinking about that and I was thinking it’s very difficult not to be completely like that in this framework we’re living in.

Very difficult. Framework, framework. It’s almost like, I felt like it was like, is that a separate framework or does that fit nicely amongst this framework or into this and integrate it? Obviously I want to integrate it an integrate an integration in this framework, obviously. But I did think about it a lot, and I questioned it a lot, actually.

That’s good. That’s very good. We will talk about it more with hope and fear. Yes. Because what we are doing here is completely different of what you normally do.

It’s like you go against a stream. Yeah. And if you talk to normal people they say that’s weird you know why would you do that? It’s not weird. I like it.

I like it obviously. It’s not weird but it’s you know when you it’s automatic when you are creating to basically manifest when you have children and live in this society. And I guess I thought when there was something you said that you said we don’t really need very much, we need very little and like if we weren’t, say for example, working and we’d have Centrelink. Well That is not what I said. That’s not what I said.

Well, basically you said the government, you know, would No. Yeah, he did. Did I? Yeah. No.

I I I’ve never I’ve never meant to sketch anything that looks like we don’t have to do anything and the government will pay. That’s ridiculous. Didn’t say it like that, but you did mention it. Well it’s like some people do a lot negativities in order to keep their job because they feel if I do not have my job I have nothing. I will not survive.

I will you know and I said but it is not like what I’m saying is the mindset, the thinking is not correct because even if you lose your job you will not die. Yeah, right and then I said because there is a sense again because but what I mean is like what I want to what I want to depict I think is that the bigger picture you’re trying to get across well and also the mindset you know the mind that holds on to beliefs and believes them to be true and I said well they’re not really true because this and this and this and this is there which makes it not true but if we have these thoughts in our mind they look like they are reality and what I say is it’s not true true that’s not reality because you also have this and this and this and this. Never say you know so I’m not saying you can’t work I’m not saying you should not engage in these activities you should you know if you have children bad luck you can’t you can’t practice that it’s not like that it’s like it’s about a basic attitude that we have in life and that attitude has with it many beliefs that it holds on to and we believe these things are really true and because we believe they are really true we cannot change our habit and our attitude so that’s why I say what we believe in is not true and I demonstrate that but I’m not saying so then that is what you have to do right you have to look into your own life what every moment what am I doing?

Where do I hold on to? Many times the thought comes up I can’t do this because We have all these ideas If I say this to my friend this will happen, that will happen, that happen, that will happen All these fears that tie us up, they lock us up and they bring us to a point where we have no freedom to do what we think is actually appropriate or right. So what I’m saying is I challenge these beliefs and if you can cut through them then maybe you come at a stage that you have the courage to be honest and truthful you know without and there might be still the fear like you still might lose your job you still might you know I don’t know lose your friend or lose something but it’s never going to destroy you in a way you feel it’s going to destroy you. You know what I mean? I do know what you mean.

Yeah. I do know what you mean. I guess just because I I know that you said, I know what you’re focusing on and obviously you’re very intelligent and what you’re translating to us basically is a very intelligent system of thinking. But I guess I sort of thought maybe it was the whole first response of what we’re talking about and it was like being on a merry-go-round, oh I’m just on this ride for a while’ as in looking at it and going ‘yeah’. And I think just you know the nature of last week when I think the other lady was saying that oh you know otherwise you just get up and you’d be depressed if you would Are you?

I think the other lady mentioned something about well otherwise you’d just get up and be depressed every day if you had to and so think it was just all a bit like at first I saw that. Well these are the things, that is a view too, know that is a belief So we have to look into all of them. Are they correct? Are really correct? And where are they based upon?

Are they based upon reality or fear or hope? Yeah, yeah, I mean obviously Jamie I want to put this lovely It’s good that you to say it but because I might you know sometimes I know that I say things black and white and if you do miss somewhere a link you can get a complete different story and I actually try to bring it across and that is you know that that can that can be me communicating not properly. I think you’re a good communicator I think what it was was when you were saying we need very little in society and I know what you meant at the end of the day. I know what you meant because it won’t destroy us even, but I can see what you’re saying in the bigger picture that we can get so carried away and consumed with I want, I need, like, I want, what I need, like and you’re just so far away from your authentic self. Know what you mean.

So I’ll just be quiet and get on with it. No no no. And then you have all these other voices that say but what about this, what about that, what about that. These voices are constantly there, you And that is what constantly makes that we engage in these things. So it’s good that you get the essence but it’s also good that you see all these voices because we all have them.

Me too. It’s there. It’s all the time there and we are raised like that. Have learned that if we do not hold on to these beliefs and follow them we’re not going to survive. It’s so deep and it’s maybe deeper than this life.

You know, maybe it’s in our genes. Maybe it’s It feels like it. It is. Don’t know. Talked about, did we talk about the mind, that existence has been since beginningless time and the body that no we didn’t?

Okay, good. We’ll talk about that today. We talked about the self. Yeah, We talked about a lot about the self. And I Yeah.

That it doesn’t exist in the way that we think it does. Yeah. We’ll go deeper into that today because so you can see that the I doesn’t exist the way it appears Do you still remember that from last time that we have this feeling of this this self that comes up that is a separate entity or if it appears as part of us Then it appears to be single entity, independent, permanent. And it appears that there is something there that we have to nourish, that we have to feed, that we have to defend, that we have to take care of, that we have to and that I appears to be more important than anybody else’s eye. We feel very justified.

If somebody is angry at us we can get easily angry back and we feel justified because that guy got angry at us so we have the right to do that and we do not even see that we’re doing exactly the same as that person because we feel, hey but I’m different, he shouldn’t treat me like that. That eye gives us all these messages. And if we look into that with our rational mind, we can see, oh, but it doesn’t actually it doesn’t exist like that and it doesn’t exist like that. But everything that we are doing is based on that. Right?

So then maybe everything that we are doing is not as valid as we thought it was or as we think it is because the basis from where we are doing it is already not so valid as we thought it was. So our actions that we do every day we are habituated to them we are We believe that they are good you know and yes We put a lot of time into thinking I want to be a good person So I want to do the right thing but even then you know it is all based even being a good person is based on that I that appears in a certain way so how valid is even thinking what is good you know so I’m going to challenge all these beliefs right and giving you a way how to look at it in a different way so that it’s not so related to that I but that it has a base which functions for everybody. So you can apply that to every situation. So if we look at the body and the mind and we look at is everybody alright if I say we have a body and a mind?

A body is made out of matter, a mind is made out of consciousness. The mind is not the same as the brain. Why not? Buddhism does say, well if you die you still have brains but you don’t have a mind. You don’t have a consciousness.

You don’t have awareness. The moment your consciousness leaves the body there is no awareness in the body anymore. It’s just meat. It’s true isn’t it? It’s like just because there is and you cannot call it life or you can call it my spirit or as something is in the body that is what gives it life and that is what makes the life and the whole body is like a tool or a vehicle for what I call the mind.

As soon as it leaves it then the vehicle is not anymore nobody else can use it. Nobody can come in and say, Oh! Nobody’s home. Nobody’s home. Exactly.

And the Tibetans they say, you know when you die you’re actually going home. It’s like going home. Is just a temporary motel or something where we stay in as long as this life lasts. So if we have the body and the mind then they are two separate entities. They come together, they function for a while together and then they separate again.

So you can look into it like where does the body come from and how does it exist because if we are ill or sick many times that is related to the body and even if we are, we feel Sick or ill or not good on a mental level, know if we are very sad or very depressed or angry or that also affects the body All right, so it’s like there is the body so we can look into the body and say what is this? Where does it come from? How does it exist? And what has to do with the mind? So this body we carry with us our whole life.

Because it is always with us we have a feeling of this is my body and it’s always with us and that gives a kind of permanent feeling of it is always like that. My body and my mind, I am always like this. Even my body changes all the time. Somehow I have this feeling of but I’m always like that. Right.

So the body comes into existence because the sperm and egg of the mom and dad they meet and Buddhism says you need a consciousness to enter that before it can start growing and become really a human being or a creature, a living being. Do you mean before it starts growing the consciousness? Yeah. Can you repeat that? Yeah, they come together.

All three come Yeah. That’s what they say. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

And there are many people who fight that you know with many reasons but I can just tell you that this is how it is. You know Buddhism is two and a half thousand years old and that is how they describe it. So now with science maybe there is somewhere an adjustment, but I’ve never heard that they adjusted this because if the consciousness leaves the body and there’s only dead meat how can then the sperm and the egg start to grow when there was no consciousness but then let’s say you know if you have a twin, a one one egg twin, how you say that? Out of one egg, identical twin? Then the they split up a little bit later, don’t they?

They split up not immediately when the egg and the sperm meet but then first you get a division and then I think they split up. So let’s say what about that? They are two minds or do they have the same mind which is split up? Can you split up the minds? According to Buddhism you can’t.

Anyway you have the sperm and the egg they come together and then they start growing and although they appear to be with us all the time the body is changing all the time. We know that it comes into existence somewhere we can see that we can trace it back. Science has made it visible even that we can see it with our eyes. This is where the body starts to grow and we can see when the body dies. We can see that there is a change, you know, if we see pictures from ourselves when we were six years old and when we were twenty and when we were thirty five we see the difference we see there is a change I’m changing we do and but but So the change that we can see is called gross impermanence So we say the body is impermanent on a gross level, and that means the impermanence that we can see Then we know also now from science that we can see that the body is not only impermanent on a gross level but it’s also impermanent on a subtle level.

Every moment there is movement. Every moment there is an exchange of nutrients and waste products in ourselves on every level. Constantly it’s a big manufacturing where things are created and things disposed of all the time, all the time. But we can’t see that with our eyes. We know it from science but with our eyes we can’t see it.

So our eyes do not perceive that body is also impermanent on the subtle level. Right? But it is impermanent on the subtle level. We know that. So we say the body is impermanent on the gross level and on the subtle level.

The gross level is the change that we can see and it is from being born into ceasing to exist or dying. The subtle impermanence is the change that happens from moment to moment and is this change that we cannot see. So that’s the body. In Buddhism they say the body comes from the parents. It’s not yours.

It comes from the sperm and the egg from your mom and dad. So it’s actually their body. You borrow that from them or you got that from them. So because there is this connection, there is this feeling of appreciation and being grateful for what your mom and dad have done because only they, they gave you the body. We could never ever have gotten the body without them.

Never. We think it’s my body, hey it’s my body. I’m living in it. It’s my body. Buddhism says, No, not really.

Is it really your body? Where does it come from? And it’s very interesting if you start meditating on it because we have this feeling of ownership you know and when I was young I was angry at my mom like I didn’t want to be born and I don’t want to this body in you know but I felt like it’s my body and I can do with it whatever I want and if you start to realize but it’s actually not my body in that sense. It’s not my body. It comes from somewhere and somebody has created that and I have the opportunity to be in that body, you know, then why would I use my body only for myself, for my own pleasure?

Why do I not use my body to serve the others? Because the body was never mine. So why do I not use them for them? So thoughts like this you can start to generate from that basic feeling but you have to think about my body is not mine Where does it come from? So in Buddhism everything that comes into existence that needs what they call a substantial cause Maybe I should look then I’m not sure how I’m gonna go with my sound thing, how far I’m gonna go.

But I want you to know the term substantial cause. And then there are many causes and conditions which are secondary. So substantial cause means that without the sperm and the egg the body cannot come into existence, not possible. If I would like to grow a tree, an apple tree, what is the substantial cause? What do I need?

The seed. The seed of the apple tree. Not just the seed, the seed of the apple tree. No matter what seed I have, if it’s not seed of an apple tree I cannot grow the apple tree. Then I need many causes and conditions for the tree to grow which is like the water, the sun, the soil, that kind of things.

Without a seed it cannot grow, without a sperm and an egg the body cannot grow. So the substantial cause for the body is the egg and the sperm of mom and dad. So that is the body. So if we look at the mind, how does the mind exist? The mind Maybe we talk first what is the mind?

What is the mind? The mind the mind is that which is clear and knowing. That’s the definition of Buddhism. That which is clear and knowing. Do I write that down?

This is all for Carol. If Carol knows how the mind is that which is clear and knowing. Mind is like space. Mind is like space where things arise in the mind and because they arise in the mind we can know them, right? But the mind itself is clear.

We cannot see the mind. The mind is unobstructed, right? I can think beyond this board. I can think what is behind this board. I can think what is behind the wall.

I can think of my sister in Canada. When I do it my mind is not obstructed by the wall. My mind is like space, you know, I can go anywhere where I want. And my mind is something that knows. Every time when I look at something, I hear something, there is a knowing that comes with that.

Knowing doesn’t mean that I know the ultimate nature or that I know exactly how it exists but there is an appearance and I can see the appearance. There is an I know. The thinking thoughts is a kind of knowing. It can be wrong knowing but it is still knowing. But that is what the mind does.

Every time when thoughts come up and we have an experience, when we know there is a knowing in that. So we perceive something and there is a knowing. So you can also say there is an observer and something that is being observed all the time. When anger arises in the mind there is somebody that can observe anger and there is the anger. There are two things.

There is an object and there is a subject. Both are mind. They are minds. So everything exists within mind. All feelings, emotions.

Yeah. We need our brain to become aware of but the awareness happens in the mind. We need the brain to They don’t come from somewhere else they come from within the mind. Yes, yes. What do you mean they don’t come from somewhere else?

Well there’s nowhere outside of mind. Is there for those feelings, emotions No. Things to come from. They all come from within your mind. Yes.

Yes. You mean taking on things from other people? Yeah. I’m trying to think where your question comes from. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have You know you can talk about I don’t know bad influence from Your parents your friends your you know or if somebody gets really angry you can get this feeling and maybe you feel that you take it on or, and Buddhism they say whatever you take on it’s yours. The moment you take it on it’s yours. So where does it come from? You know everything that what arises in the mind and you somehow grab it then it’s yours.

So a big trick in the mind is letting go, you know. How do I let go? What arises in the mind? Because we have this grasping nature that holds onto things and that believes things. If we can let go, we can let go of all the rubbish that is not ours, not part of our true self, not really benefiting us but somehow we hold on to them.

So when you say not part of our true self, if all those things exist in your mind already how can you say that it’s not So everything arises in mind but the way we see things, way we experience things is based on our vehicle. At the moment us being human being. The way I see an object is based on my eyes as a human being. If a dog sees the same object he would see something different because the way his eyes are constructed. So in that sense because I’m in a human being that is a kind of limitation.

We’re not aware of that because we share that with everybody around us and when we talk about it we think everybody experiences the same and sees the same and because we all share that that must be true. And yes on a certain level it is true but on another level it’s maybe different you know. If you can see the limitation of our physical existence and everything that we perceive then you can start opening up for things that we cannot directly perceive with our body. We can open up for ways of thinking that at the moment we’re not sharing with all human beings but if we start thinking about it they actually make a lot of sense. Know, even the thoughts that we have, the beliefs that we have, we share that with so many beings.

That is what they call karma. That’s where we locked up into But that is not our true self. That’s not our potential. That’s not our nature You know having body and the way it functions at the moment It’s like a big veil that is on top of our nature and we believe that a veil isn’t reality. We believe that a veil is true We cannot see what is underneath.

So in consciousness whatever arises it is like it’s colored. We can’t see it clearly. We can’t see the clear nature not of object, not of ourselves. Right. We’ll talk about that more and more you know so that It is already good that you that you can hear like that you can hear that and think ah Maybe there is something else, you know that that that is already that’s the doorway to open up and to to be able to let go of where you are at the moment and make make a step away from that.

And then I think what you were saying before as well about even no matter what is happening around you and we sort of might get, like, you know, with with whatever, and and not take that on. But then when the moment you start taking that on then that’s your stuff, that’s a real tricky one in the beginning. I honestly found that was one that particularly came up for me, like on the weekend, really strongly I just thought because I realised I lived in a particular environment in my upbringing and now I can see I don’t know if this is incorrect to use this as an example, but I can see that atmosphere produced a feeling inside me or just an atmosphere. And it was really, oh my gosh, and I realized that it was very unhealthy. And I almost like, not driven mad, but I just sort of knew that I could not be there for a very long time because it was interesting.

Because now I’m older I can see it even more clearly because I’m so different where the environment is still exactly the same. It’s a re round of the same mentality and all of that. So I guess what I’m trying to say, being that in that example of that sort of but I can see what you mean, though, from the moment then you take that on as, like, basically, judging it this is good or not good or oh this is very unhealthy or very dysfunctional. But even if you grow up as a child you know, you just take for normal, what happens? You have no awareness that’s something else.

Some families can exist in a completely different way. You believe that whatever you experience is happening everywhere. Know, only when you start moving away and if you start listening to other people and you are open to hear that there might be other things then can you move away from it otherwise you would never be able to see it. And maybe part of that group that you were with they are not even aware that they are dysfunctional. Oh absolutely not.

They think this is normal. Oh yeah. So that’s what I mean you you need to open somewhere in your mind in order to be able to see what is, that there are different opportunities than only that. I thought, was this why I felt the way I did as a child? Because I questioned it even back because I was a questioner, so I was in a framework that was not and I questioned everything.

I hadn’t changed obviously. So now I can see it even more, much more stronger and my children were in that environment and it was just like, woah. And I guess what I’m trying to say is that just no matter what you said, no matter what, it’s still you start when you start getting caught up in that or responding from that, even though it may not necessarily have come or derived from your mind, well I suppose it does even as a child isn’t it? Your interpretation of your Your experience. Yeah.

So I guess it always comes back to that, yes? Gosh how fascinating. Mhmm. But other people I mean, even even ending up in that fa you know, that is all part of you. Ending up in that family is part of you.

But But also psychic energy and people’s energy can really impact on you. Oh, yes. And I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. That’s a really tricky Yes. Yes.

That’s really really tricky. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yes. I mean, but it’s all the time.

It’s there, you know? Yes. Oh, yes. No matter what group we are no matter in which group we are It’s always there if you start to isolate yourself, and then you come back then you start to become aware like oh my god There is so much going on and then it’s not necessarily wrong, you know, but it is like It is much more difficult to really clear your mind when there is a lot of busyness and many people around you with different ideas. If we ask people who come here, you know, to not engage in stealing and lying and killing that kind of things because we know it makes the energy very different.

If people come here with a violent mind you can feel it. They’re entering and you can feel it. Right? So and then if I have a predisposition for that too to react I might get very angry when I see that person you know so then I can trick them up in my whole system. As in affected even though it’s still your responsibility?

It’s my responsibility but things outside can be sort of conducive to maybe how you immediately respond or just feel your mood fluctuate can be and dah dah dah dah etc. That’s really yeah That takes a that’s a skill. I would say that would be a skill for life. It’s a skill for life. Yep.

And we’re not finished when we die. I don’t think I will be finished when I die. It’s very, very subtle. You know? Very subtle.

But incredibly, almost that’s sort of at the fundamental level of how you operate in the world. That in itself, that whole interacting and exchanging of all of that is just Let’s move on. Consciousness, I want to talk about consciousness because the more that we can see how the mind works or the better we understand what the mind is the more hope I think there is. Hope not that kind of hope but hope based on reality. If mind so if we look at mind and mind itself is clear and knowing, mind itself has no characteristics.

Know, if we would have an empty space there is nothing to hold on to. It’s just space. Then thoughts come up, emotions come up. These color mind. The mind takes the aspect off.

So when we become angry it looks like I am angry. It’s like everything in me is anger. Is only anger. We forget that there was also a me that could be compassionate and happy and there was just anger or depression or whatever kind of emotion. Mind appears like that.

The mind is colored by that anger. If anger would be really part of the mind, anger would not be able to disappear out of the mind. Is that true? If depression was part of our mind, it would not be able to disappear. If sadness is really part of our mind it would not be able to disappear, it would be always there.

If something like that exists, anger that is always there, depression that is always there, sadness that is always there, we do not even have to come here together to try to change our mind because it would just be a fact that it was like that. But because the mind is like space anything can arise in the mind due to causes and conditions, right? Causes and conditions are secondary things. It’s not substantial cause for mind but anything can arise in the mind because the mind is like space and there is nothing that exists fixed inherently in the mind that can never go away. Everything changeable.

Things arise and then they go again. Things arise and then they go again. Now we have from previous lifetimes or maybe this lifetime we have certain habits and these habits arise easier and maybe more often in the mind than things that we are not so familiar with. And then we meet conditions in our life. You know we were born in a certain family where there’s also a certain tendency and and if that is the same as the tendency that we already have that will just reinforce that tendency on our mind and the more that tendency is there we we have somehow the feeling that is really part of us we cannot imagine ourselves without having that aspect.

We would maybe like not to have it but then thinking then how would I be if it wasn’t there? That’s really weird because who would I be without that? So there’s a very strong identification with certain habits that we have that come back more easy in the mind than other habits. If you always have bad luck you might believe my bad luck is part of me’ and you cannot even imagine that you are going to be lucky one day and things happen as you wish. If you always have been disappointed in your life it’s very difficult to even believe that it can be possible that something good is going to happen because we habituate ourselves to that.

But if we can see that whatever arises in the mind, it’s not fixed in the mind, it can disappear, and why does it arise? Due to causes and conditions. Then we can look at all right what are the causes and conditions for the mind to arise. Because if we know that then we can say all right something happens in the mind. If I really know what is on the base of that how can I change that?

Right? True? So if there is this in the mind a substantial cause just as the body had need the sperm and the egg and a tree needs the seed, the substantial cause for the mind they say is the previous moment of mind. Only when there is a previous moment of mind that is what causes the next moment of mind to appear. And when that ceases that triggers the next moment of mind and that triggers the next moment of mind.

Without a moment of mind you cannot have the next moment of mind. So if that is true then we say okay then the mind from this moment comes from the previous moment and that moment comes from the previous moment and that comes from the previous moment and when if you think about our own life I can think back about yesterday and what I was doing and how I felt and what was going on and I still feel the traces of that now in my mind, and but I also can feel that a change is happening and I’m moving towards something else. And what yesterday happened, I know that that came from something else, and and, you know, sometimes you can trace things back. As I said the coffee is my thing. So yesterday I had a big pain in my liver and I thought right this is the coffee that I keep on drinking and that I should stop.

But you can trace back where moments come from and where habits come from and you can see when you have habits that things easier arise. If I have the habit that if somebody, if I have the If I have the idea that I’m only good enough when I win, right, I might try to engage in actions that give me the feeling that I win again and again and again and I might start believing that, you know, I can never ever lose, right? There are people who never win and they’re always losers, right? Really? Yeah.

Are you sure? Yeah. They always Some people but it’s like Some people they buy for the lottery their whole life and they never win some people they buy one thing and they win so you know it’s But if something appears again and again and again we start to believe in it and we start to react in accord with that. If I try to achieve something or try to change something, you know, and I’m I’m very small and I can’t manage and when I’m a little bit bigger I try it again and I can’t manage and a little bit bigger I try again and I can’t manage and that keeps on happening at a certain point I might give up even trying, alright, and I believe I don’t even have to try because I’m never going to make it, right? And then when we have created this belief that belief keeps on circulating as if it is part of us and that is the only way we know ourselves.

If that’s the only way how we know ourselves it’s very difficult to let that go because if we let it go then who are we? But then don’t you just get sick and tired of being sick and tired so then you end up doing something else to try and change that situation? But sometimes people give up. If women are in a situation where they are abused again and again and again at a certain point they give up. If rats are what was this thing if they if you have rats and you give them some electric shock, you know, they first try to escape and then you give another one they try to escape but after a few shocks they give up and they get used to the shock.

Because they can’t find another escape. They can’t find another escape. So they believe this is it. Alright. Many?

So you don’t so humans really don’t get they don’t get to a point where they get really sick and tired of being sick and tired. Yes. So they might try to do something a different way or they may surrender to something or whatever. Many. Just look around.

How many people surrender to certain ideas? Know I might give extreme ideas but they can be for instance, don’t know, what do you believe that you are? What do I believe? Yeah. That you cannot change.

Something that you feel that’s really me. I was always like that. There wasn’t really a thing that came to my mind I feel I couldn’t really change. The only thing I feel that came up after a while of the only thing I probably couldn’t change is deep down rooted is probably my positivity and then I was thinking that’s what came after a while it wasn’t the first thought but then I thought well why would I want to change that? Yes why would you do that?

But that’s the only thing I thought at the core of me. That’s something that is helping you, that’s benefiting you and that can benefit others. You don’t have to change There’s nothing else that I don’t think I couldn’t change. But things can be hard, you know? I’m not saying that they’re not hard.

I’m not talking about that. And also people give up. You can see that around you. You can say I do not do that but you can see around Well I didn’t actually say that. I said but wouldn’t others get sick and tired of being sick and tired?

And then they would either surrender to what they need to do, maybe they’re thinking of like well I’m not going to think that way anymore because that’s causing me that suffering or But people don’t know that. I ask you that. Yeah, I’m just saying absolutely. People don’t know that. It may take a month, might take years, but wouldn’t they always go from here to the My mom has no idea what I’m talking about.

My mom is locked up and suffering and she’s creating it every day herself and I can see how she does that and she might even able to see how she does it and she has no idea, she has not even the idea that she could change it. But how do you know that subtly, even subtly she is trying to change on the inside but she may be appearing to do the same thing because that was a good example, thanks for saying your mum’s I just realised my mum’s like that too. But how do we really know that they’re not shifting? I’m just looking at the mind, right? I’m not trying to tell the truth about people, I’m trying to tell the truth about them.

I’m just trying to give you a way of looking at your own mind, how you can change that. So you’re talking about the habitual response. Yes, and we have habits and we know, I don’t know, maybe maybe you don’t have that, you know, like, but but I’m sure Helena and Jo know how hard it is to change certain habits. I know. Hard.

Yeah. Why is that? Because the mind works in a certain way and because we do not really know what causes the mind to be like this and what causes the mind to be like that. So the only thing that I try to say is that the more we know that the more we have tools to make changes that we would like to make. If we look at substantial cause for the mind, so the mind, the substantial cause is the previous moment of mind and a substantial cause for that is the previous moment of mind.

If I go back I can go back to when I was twenty, I can go back to when I was six, I can go back to when I was born. I must have had the same mind, same mind stream. My mind can change but the mind stream is still the same. That mind stream must have been there before I was born. Mind stream according to Buddhism, that comes to the sperm and egg the moment they come together, sperm and egg come together.

But where was that mind stream before? Where was it then? Where was it then? Well if the substantial cause for the mind is the previous moment of mind where is it before conception? Waiting.

There is a previous moment and there must be previous moment. According to Buddhism if you keep on going back you cannot find a beginning. You cannot find the moment that the mind came into existence. So to say the mind always has been there. The mind has existed since beginningless time.

Yes, yes and the mind will keep on existing until I don’t know, you know, there is nothing that can destruct the mind. Obstruct. Destruct. Right. It’s like destructing the space.

How can you do that? You can’t. It’s not possible. So is the space full of minds waiting? Yes.

Or in different bodies that we can’t see. The Dalai Lama says as long as space as long as sentient beings remain, I too will remain. He says everywhere where is space are sentient beings. Even if they can’t see them. Even if our eyes are very limited.

I believe that you know. Really believe Everywhere are beings. Everywhere where there’s space. So that means only not on this earth, you know. He says the whole universe is full of sentient beings.

It’s definitely full. It’s full, alright? So you have consciousness that we cannot trace back which means our consciousness has taken a body right now and then we will leave that body. It is most likely that we will take another body that we will repeat that. It will be very strange as we say this is the only you know we exist since beginning of this time we will exist until the end of time but we only take one time a body.

That will be really weird I think. So this is more likely if you go into that kind of thinking that you take a body again and again and again. Due to causes and conditions you take a body and due to causes and conditions you die and you pass on, you move on and I will talk about it. Just let me talk. So then if you look at consciousness In Buddhism, they say they say there are six different consciousnesses you have a mental consciousness And you have five sense consciousnesses.

We have the consciousness that is related to our eyes, our ears, our body, you know whatever we feel on the skin, but also in our muscles, our tongue and the nose. This is how we feel. This is how we perceive ourselves and the world around us. We do that through our five sense consciousnesses and then we think about that and that is what we do with our mental consciousness. The five sense consciousnesses they give us the feeling of reality.

This is everything that we perceive with the five sense consciousness. That is reality. All human beings agree upon that. If we can make it visible for our eyes, for our ears, then it exists. If we cannot access it with a sense consciousnesses then somehow we believe it doesn’t exist.

True? This is how we believe. So Buddhism challenges that. Buddhism says well you know you have the five sense consciousness yes and everything that you perceive with these consciousnesses exists. It exists on a conventional level but there are also things that exist that we cannot see directly with these five sense consciousnesses but if we start thinking about them we can actually somehow realise that it must be like that.

So they say, this is a very obvious phenomenon. I can see it with my eyes. I can feel it with my hands. If I start talk thinking about rebirth, that’s not an obvious phenomenon. We can’t see it with our eyes.

Although there are many people around who talk about rebirth and who know who have memories of their previous lives, so we do not believe it. If we have memories of previous lives coming up in our mind we still do not believe it because we can’t see it with our sense organs and we believe so strong that only what I see with my sense organs is real and all the rest is fantasy. Buddhism uses, so they say the things that we cannot access with the sense organs they are called hidden phenomena. Hidden phenomena we cannot see them but we can think about it and we can use logic. We can use our intellectual brain, you know, they say as human beings we are very fortunate to have this brain that can think logically.

So if we use logic then certain things must be like that. For instance impermanence. Impermanence is not although we see coarse impermanence or gross impermanence we can see that with our eyes somehow are we do not completely believe it. But then the subtle impermanence, we know it. We know the changes from moment to moment.

But we can’t see it with our eye consciousness, we can’t access it with our sense organs. Now science has proven with using microscopes and that kind of things that it exists and it can show us and then we say oh yeah now I believe it. But does that mean that before we had a microscope subtle impermanence did not exist. When we didn’t see it did it not exist? It did exist but we could not access it.

But with logic you could have proven it. You know you can prove that if something comes into existence and then ceases to exist that cannot be the only change that happens. There must be something that happens all the time. Time. And when you start thinking about it it’s not more than logic.

It’s not that something arises, is permanent, stays the same and then gets destroyed. It’s not possible. Something that is permanent can not be destroyed. So this can’t be permanent. This must be, this is under the law of change.

So why would a change only happen from the moment it comes into existence until I smash it against the wall? Why is there no change in between? Right? So with logic you can think about that and this is maybe difficult topic to start with but if you look into nature or if you look into our body we can more easily understand there must be changes all the time. We feel our heartbeat, we feel our blood going through our body, there must be changes all the time, right?

But we can’t see it. So we use our mind, we use our thinking, we use our brain, our intellect in order to understand how reality exists. So when we think about the I, you know, the I is something that we can’t see, it’s something that we feel and we feel that it exists in a certain way and we completely believe it, how it feels like, right? There’s never anybody who starts thinking, oh I shouldn’t say that, most people do not think, do not even doubt that it might be not like that. But if you use your intelligence and start thinking about how the eye appears and then you check but can it exist like that?

You must say no it can’t because of this and this and this and many reasons why it can’t. So we use our reasoning to understand what kind of wrong beliefs we have adopted by being a human being, by living amongst human beings who have these beliefs. These beliefs come into existence because of the way our sense consciousnesses are created, you know, it’s like and that is what we call karma. We share a karma with all human beings. They all perceive things in a certain way and they all believe they are true in that way.

We have to think again and again and challenge, is that really true? Why is it and why is it not? And the more we look at things, the more we investigate things. If things are really true we only find proof that it is true. But if things are not true we will find like oh this is really funny that I believe this but actually, you know.

So you will see that the things cannot really exist the way we feel them. But just on that note, also sometimes we want to look for proof to validate our thoughts as well. Oh yes. And that can be driving me as well. We look for proof to prove me right Yes, but that’s a different proof.

But you know what I mean? Yes. I just thought that’s something that I mentioned there because we look for proof, we try and look for it to validate our beliefs. Yes. That’s what we always do.

But what I’m saying is use do. Yeah. And that is based on emotion. That’s not based on rationality. Understand you.

Yeah. But that’s what mostly happens. Yes. Yes. That’s part of the I saying.

Yeah. And I’m right. And I’ll answer someone else who thinks the same thing and that’ll make me feel like That’s right. Yes and what do we do if something has happened to us? We ring up a friend and say: Hey do you know what has happened to me?

And a friend says: Oh and ah! And then we have this feeling, Oh I’m right. This is the truth. But that’s not really logically checking. That’s not logically checking.

That’s not what I mean. Because our consciousness goes from moment to moment to moment we can remember what was happened. Because our body goes from moment to moment in this life our body can remember from this life. And there are people who even say the body can remember from previous lives. Previous lives.

It’s like something that you haven’t finished you take that with you and you have it in your mind and your mind somehow connects that with your body. So we are in a collection of body and mind. The mind has all these beliefs and thoughts that are not necessarily true. And then there is the body and the body reacts in accord with laws or beliefs that it has has been following for centuries, for a long, long, long time. Somebody said you can see the body as a continuity of you get a new body and a new body and know new people are born and then they grow up and then from them new bodies are born and from them new bodies are born.

So there is a kind of biological, I wouldn’t say wisdom, but an instinct that we have, that we carry with us and that we have what we can say that is in our genes, you know, that has been passed on from mother to mother. I think this whole surviving system is part of our body. Not that a body can say, oh no I shouldn’t say that. So when you said before that our body comes from our parents, that is the genetic makeup being given to us by our parents, there’s also this other aspect now that you’re talking about. Yeah.

That’s deeper even. Right. Where so does that mean that you can be reborn into the same family or same kind of family traits and habits and things because of that predisposition or that instinctual I think the instinctual thing is Buddhism we believe that you can be reborn as anything, right, not just necessarily as human beings. So in my next life they said if I do not practice well I will be a goose. They said I was an elephant in my previous life.

Somebody taught me that personally. If you don’t practice virtue you will be reborn as a goose. Is it random or do you choose the family, the contingent No, we don’t choose. But we’ll talk about that later. But if I will be reborn as a goose, as a human being, I receive a kind of nature that belongs to human beings, how human beings survive.

Part of that comes from my family but part of that I also think is naturally in my body. I don’t know I have, yeah, if you watch human beings how they behave they have certain tendencies. Children, you know I work with children. Some children were born and for instance some children when they tried to go to sleep they would do this and the mother would say, I know from my mother that I did that when I was that little. Where does it come from?

Don’t know. It must have something to do with genes or I don’t know. But I think in this way we have habits that we do naturally. If I’m hungry I’m going to look for food. That’s something natural.

Right? Nobody taught me that. Maybe my mom taught me how to find food but I don’t know. There is something that we receive whether it’s just from a mother or from deeper inner genes which just keeps on going and which keeps our body alive and functioning in the way it does and that has been going on for a long, long, long time. And in this surviving there are very deep beliefs.

Sometimes I think the beliefs of surviving they are in our genes. They are on that level. If we cannot change that deep we will not be able to let go of our fight and flight reactions. At the same time me as a Buddhist I can never think that comes just from the body. It’s like the mind.

If I have developed my mind in a previous life in a way that I can separate myself from my fight and flight reactions, you know, then I think it doesn’t matter what kind of body I’m reborn I will be able to do that. But I’m not sure about that. If I will be reborn as a goose I will have very different habits than as a human being. You can see it happening can’t you? I’ll meet you there.

Then maybe you might have if you’re a goose next time, like, you might have the same response for a while of fight and flight, but it’s shorter. Shorter or you make Well definitely I will use a different language. It’s a good language but I’m talking about your response, I don’t know. I was going to ask you that. Well yeah maybe, It’s like if I cultivate certain emotions in me they belong, they will fit with that animal.

And if I will cultivate anger in this life I might become a very angry goose that is constantly fighting. That kind of tendency is definitely we take them with us and they are from us. But then there are tendencies that we have as human beings that are really specific for human beings and I will not take them with me. We can’t take everything. We can’t take everything, maybe not.

You don’t need it or We don’t. No. But it’s also yeah. It’s maybe on a different level. I’m not sure.

I’m talking here on a level which is to to we have to sit with that ourselves I think. Stay tuned. I’m going to talk about hope and fear after the break. I just want to have a cup of tea. The hope and fears, what it does.

Okay. Says you have the eye and then what we do is we say, we put all these qualities on it. We say it’s permanent. We say it’s independent. And Buddhism says, it doesn’t say this doesn’t exist.

Buddhism says that is not there, that is not there, it is also not single, it is also not like that. It is also not like that. It is still there, but all these qualities that we put on top are not there. So what is it that you have to take off? What is it that is not there?

That is what we can think about. Buddhism doesn’t posit the I as something. Buddhism doesn’t say the I exists like this. Buddhism only posits the I as something that doesn’t exist as. Right?

So that is why it’s called emptiness. It is empty of being a permanent entity. It’s empty of being an independent entity. It is empty of being singular. That is what emptiness is.

They do not posit anything in return. But if you take everything off, what is not there, then you can see the ultimate nature of reality. So Jampa will talk a lot about what is not there. So I think that could be a very good class to go to. And then there is the learn to meditate classes on Monday and Tuesday night from six till seven that can be very helpful.

And on the morning, Sunday morning meditations from nine till ten. And I think the biggest change is in order to meditate you need to have the knowledge because last time we said every mind has an object, right? The mind cannot exist without an object. When there is mind, there is an object. Every moment of mind has an object and every moment of mind has a subject.

They arise together. Mind cannot exist without an object and we might not be aware of the object. For instance, when we sleep, you know, we might think, Oh, my mind has no I can’t remember anything. But that doesn’t mean that our mind doesn’t have an object. We just can’t remember.

Why do I say that mind has an object? Oh, so you have the subject and you have the object. You always have something that arises and something that observes being aware or not. And that arises together in the mind. So mind always has an object.

Why did I say that? I can’t remember. Oh yeah, so if you’re going to meditate you have to know the object that you meditate upon. You cannot meditate without knowledge. You cannot meditate without knowing what you’re going to look at.

Right? You can sit down and you are quiet and you think, I’m meditating, but what are you actually doing? What is your mind doing? How much can you direct your mind where you want it to go? When you meditate, you make a very clear object and that is where you focus your mind upon.

And you know why you focus on that and not on something else. So in order to meditate properly you need knowledge. At the same time when you have the knowledge, the only way that we can let it sink in into our minds, into the places where we have these wrong views, into these places where we have this attitude that is not so beneficial. Only when we meditate it can sink into these deeper levels, right? Because knowledge is something that happens in the cortex, isn’t it?

It’s like the intellectual knowledge that is only and it is just that superficial. But if we look at our brains and we know how the brain functions, we know that here in the stem there is the fight and the flight reactions. There is the beginning of what we suffer so from. So if we want to have that knowledge that when we hear it is up here, we have to let that sink in. And we know there is this emotional center, limbic system, isn’t it?

And then underneath the system where the more primitive reactions are, it has to go in completely there in order to transform our brains, in order to transform the reactions that are so connected, are so primitive, they are so deep in our system. So that is what you get when you meditate. But only when you really know it you can penetrate because your emotions are telling you, Oh no, that’s not true, and they have all these emotional reasons that you believed for how many lifetimes. And then when you go deeper you have all these instinctive reasons that have been there maybe in every lifetime that we have, when we were animals, when we were spirits, they are all even deeper. If you want to shift that, you know, you need really good reasons in order to counteract these reactions in yourself because your whole system says, I have to get out!

And you say with your mind, Oh no, you can stay, you know. Who’s going to win? Right? Only when you know exactly that you can stay and that you will be safe and that your system is completely fooling you only when you really know it you can do it, you know, otherwise your instinct will win. They’re too strong.

Yeah? So that’s why we meditate and that’s why we need the knowledge first. So in the Sunday morning they do like a half an hour mindfulness meditation, just breathing meditation, and then half an hour a kind of analytical meditation where they think sometimes it’s a meditation on love, sometimes it’s a meditation on compassion, sometimes it’s a meditation on suffering, but all kinds of topics that we discuss here too they bring that in the meditation and it can be nice to experience that. Can’t get you on a Sunday. No, can’t get here on a Sunday.

And also I think maybe the Thursday morning you could come one day. We can ask Hans. Yeah. Alright. Is that alright?

Yeah. I can’t believe there’s annoying, but I like all of what you’re suggesting. Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah.

See what what you know? How you how you schedule this and Alright, hope and fears. So I’m just going to say something about hope and fears because Helena said in the beginning, I cannot get rid of my sadness and that has been with me your whole life. You know, when you started your life, you had all these hopes and actually when you look back in your life nothing has evolved the way you hoped it would go. So that’s very painful, right?

And then if you have to die, you look back on a life where you didn’t get what you wanted or hoped for, it’s very, very, very painful, know. So yes, there must be a lot of sadness. Hope and fear, they are very much related. And hope and fear are very much related to our fight or flight mechanisms. You know, so that’s why I thought, okay, we talked about this already two times and I think if you really understand how we do that, the more you understand how the mind works, it’s like when you understand the sickness, you know the medicine.

Right? If you can see, Oh, there we constantly build up something which is actually very painful, that if you can really see it, can stop doing it. But if you do not understand how you do it, you know, no matter how much medicine you take, how much Dharma you practice, how much meditation, you keep on building up the same kind of expectations or hopes. Hope and fear. Fear, we can very easily see how fear is related to the fight and flight.

Right? As fear arises in the mind, and flight mechanisms are there or cope mechanisms. And if you look at the way we cope with things, you know, fight and flight shows something which is, that looks very obvious, but if we look in our own mind it might be more subtle then, you know, to recognize that what we’re doing is fight and flight. So if you look at the fight, you know, you can say, Oh, if you really obviously have the fighting, now what kind of emotion is related to that? Anger.

Anger. And if you have the flight, it’s fear. Fear for? Safety. Fear for safety.

You’re looking for safety, so you fear danger? Flee. I was thinking flee. Fight and flight? You want to have fight and flee?

No, no, no. Don’t want to fight and flee, but I think with flight there is flee associated with that and fear. What is flee? Is appears to run away. Yeah.

Yeah. That’s what I mean with that. Yeah. I was just saying now I feel that that is okay. So Destroy.

Destroy. Unknown. Danger is fear the unknown. Fear for the unknown? Yeah.

So what can that do to us? Well, you’re not sure if you’re going to be able to be equipped to respond. Yeah, and if you’re not equipped, them? Then you think you won’t be able to handle it. And them?

Well then you don’t want to What could happen? What is the worst thing that could happen? Well you don’t really know, but you believe that something could happen that’s beyond your capabilities. And what is the worst thing that can happen when something happens that is beyond your capabilities? You might have to change.

You might have to change. And that’s what’s the scariest bit. Why? Because you get comfortable with your comfortableness. Yes.

What is scary? What is scary? Because you’ve been doing things the same way and you might think, I can’t do that because this is how I am. Yes. So when I ask the questions I’m asking you to step into the unknown, right?

And what you do is you keep on phrasing the known. Oh, but I know this and I’m comfortable in that and I’m afraid to go. What happens if you go? You said I’m afraid I might not be able to enough equipment with me. So what would happen if you don’t have enough equipment?

What is the worst thing that can happen? Just say whatever comes up, you know? Because it can be ridiculous. I could put in things I have to think. Maybe I’ll someone else I have to think.

Could be the You lose And when you lose control, what’s going to happen? What can happen? Change? So it’s changed. Or But what I want to see what is going to come from that, right?

Yeah. What is that? Because we fear something. Loss of control means something about us. The change and not being able to cope with the change, it is like I say, loss of control is negative.

Not being able to cope with change is negative. But what really happened, what is really happening when we cannot cope? What really happens when we lose control? What? Disempowered.

Disempowered? Well you’re not empowered. You have no power? Disempowered. No power?

If you have no power you’re powerless. It’s already very hard to find a word that gives the positive, isn’t it? You’re powerless. If you’re powerless, what is happening to you? Die.

Or you feel you won’t be able to get out of this? And if you can’t get out of it, what happens? What is the worst thing that can happen? You stay there. You stay there For a while anyway.

And then? Then you get sick and tired of being sick and tired. And then? They do. They’re something different.

This this, you know, this woman, this French woman who was captive for so many years, what’s her name, who was just recently released from Colombia in Colombia? Have you, you haven’t seen it? Oh, it must be me as European looking at that. It was a French woman, she was captive for seven years. She was put on a chain for three years, day and night on the chain.

And she, you you said, you know, if you can’t get out of it, what happens? Well then you said, well at a certain point you change. But normally when you can’t get out of it there is only one option, you’re going to die. You might die. Well, we’re all definitely going to die.

And if you’re going to be captivated somewhere, then the chance that you’re going to die is much bigger and the chance that you’re going to get out of it is much smaller. So this is there, I think. This is at the end, fear of destruction that we die. And when we get destroyed, you know, destroyed means that we don’t exist anymore. We don’t exist anymore when we get destroyed.

Yeah. So Or we think that we won’t exist anymore. Yes, yes. We are afraid that we do not exist anymore. If we look at it and we say, Oh, but we just talked about the mind since the beginning of time, so we don’t really die.

Part of us moves on, but if the danger is there that threatens our body, this, the fear is of annihilation that we will be destroyed. I am going to be destroyed, me, you know, then identify very strong with the body and I will be destroyed. If I sit and I really check-in my mind, I know it can’t be like that. I know my mind will move on. But if the fear is there, I lose that connection with the mind.

I lose that connection with me existing since the beginning of this time, you know, and that is the veil that comes in. I suddenly believe when my body is gone I’m gone, I’m destroyed. Right? Only when we can sit in safety we can see, oh that’s not really true. Right?

So we need safety to recognize how it really is. The whole day we engage in situations where we do not feel one hundred percent safe. And that’s not feeling one hundred percent safe, the fear comes in, the fear creates that veil. The fear is based on I will be annihilated, right? So that is, and the I that is based on ignorance, right?

That’s like a not knowing. We do not know exactly how that I exists. So That is like the veil. How do I spell that? Like this?

This not knowing is like a veil. And because we can’t see how I exist, we have this feeling of I and as soon as the I comes in, is in danger, this fear comes up that we’re going to be annihilated. And everything that we do, you know, during the day, although we never really face death or maybe sometimes but hardly ever, this is constantly underlying everything we’re doing. And we have been doing this since the beginning of its lifetimes. We have built up patterns of thinking on the basis of fear for dying, you know.

How can I get out of this? You know the people who have unbelievable skills in getting out of things. I don’t know if you I had a sister who was very good in that. Every time when something had to be done she had the skills to get out of it and nobody would know it, nobody would see it, nobody would observe it but she would never take part in it. Very, very skilled, you know.

So I think she did a good job. But it is a fail. It’s like, you know, she cannot really face what’s going on. She cannot be when she, when how to say? If you look at the Dalai Lama who has to face what is happening into his country and how he has, you know, the Chinese they just they just present him as if he is ridiculous and crazy and a very dangerous man and if, imagine what happens to his eye when that happens and then in the face of all that he keeps on loving them.

If you think about that it’s like he must have done something with this whole system otherwise he would not be able to do that, isn’t it? If we would get attacked the way he gets, this would start working and it would drive us mad. We would already have been in a mental hospital. We would not be able to cope, right, because of this. So when we have the fear, when the fear comes up we know how the fear can consume us.

I don’t know, have you experienced fear? Very, it’s like everything’s, your whole physiology, physiology. Physiology to change, you know, feel your heartbeat, you feel your breathing, you feel that your organs do differently, you feel that your muscles are differently, you feel that you look differently and at a certain point you know you’re gonna, you maybe even know that you can’t really see what is there but you believe, you start to believe these things, right? The more fear that arises in the mind the more we even disconnect from our sense organs. True?

Because we start to believe things, Oh, I’m going to be annihilated, you know, and, Oh, person is probably part of that and this person. And suddenly we become a little bit paranoia and what we’re going to observe in people’s behavior which might all not be true. And we have no capacity anymore to check because we’re too afraid. If we are afraid we don’t check anything. We just, whatever comes up and we put a sticker on it and we believe it.

It becomes a truth. Maybe you have not experienced that so much. Oh I’ve experienced it. Yeah. Why did you ask that?

Yeah. That I haven’t maybe experienced that so much. Sorry? Why did you ask me? Because sometimes I feel that you think, Oh, I don’t have that, I don’t have that.

No, I Do you recognize that? Yeah. And that you feel that you are sometimes I have the feeling when fear comes up it’s like your whole energy system goes up, you know, and you lose literally you lose connection with the ground and you lose literally connection with reality which is there, right? And at the moment that you do that, the fear is in the mind, we can’t think rationally anymore. We can’t think clearly anymore because images are rising all the time and we can’t see what is really there and we know that these are images, but at the same time we can’t just put them down.

What you’re picking up in me and what you see from my body language is, for me, that used to be much stronger, but for me it’s not as strong anymore. So that’s what you’re reading from my body language. It used to be stronger, but I have a better way of coping with things and Yeah. Transferring and transforming. Yeah.

But I definitely know what you’re talking about. Yeah. I could. So you’re really threatened. So if took a long time to get over there.

Yes, yes. To find your way back, you know, it’s very, very, very difficult for, and especially for human beings. If you look at animals, if animals are in fear, you know, if for instance a tiger is chasing, what are they chasing? Zebras, zebras? Right, you can see that they’re running away and then at a certain point imagine that the tiger couldn’t get anyone.

The one that has been chased for a long time, what animals do is they shake like that and they shake the fear off and then they’re back to normal. But what we do is the fear stays in our system and we do not know, you know, and the longer we hold onto it we do not know how to let it go. We somehow cannot create that feeling of safety. I don’t know, this is me thinking, you know, I’m not sure how true. But to create, I don’t know, if you’re in the war your mom is afraid too, you know.

So then when you are as a kid afraid there is nobody to go to to let go of your fear. Also, I think because of this, I don’t know, we have this denial about dying. If you look at primitive nations, dying is part of life. There is nothing wrong with that and there is no fear for that. It’s just when it’s your time then you go, right?

But we, I don’t know if that’s the Western world with all, you know, a material gain that we believe that we are, you know, maybe we believe because of that we are beyond that or we are above that. But somehow we deny that we’re going to die. We do not like to have that unpleasantness that comes with that. We have taken that away out of our society. But we can’t get rid of the fear, so the fear stays in the system and the fear, fear makes that we If you have a lot of fear in your system, how do you survive?

The mechanism is to avoid those situations. Yep. Where will arise again. Yep. Where you think it will arise.

Until you learn better ways and more helpful ways and more understanding. So you try to avoid? And what else? What else do you do? Well, you I think that you get intelligent about learning that you need to find a different way to respond and understand, go deeper in understanding.

So if your energy goes up like that, right, up like that if you are afraid, right, it goes up like that. And we know all thoughts are coming. This whole system is very much stimulated, all right? And we cannot go back. We cannot bring our energy back.

If you say I’m going deeper, you are already on your return way. Return way. No. Are you talking about in the actual fight or flight response, what I’m saying? I’m saying when the fear arises in the mind, the fear is there.

What do you do when you’re not able to drop it? So Joe said you try to avoid situations where the fear gets triggered because then even more comes. Out of fear you avoid, right? What else do you do? I want to first know where you go, you know, where do you go because we’re talking about hope and fear.

Your energy is up here and thoughts, you know. We all know the dreamers, the children who are not really here. Where are you? Or the people who feel we feel they’re not really here? They’re in dreamland.

Where? Right? What do you do when you’re in dreamland? What do you create? Fantasies.

Fantasies. How things could be and how you would not be in this fear if this and this and this and this would happen. If I would find somebody who could take care of me, right? Having lived in deep fear what you’re longing for is safety and what we then do is project that on somebody else. If I would have somebody who could take care of me.

So we put our hope on somebody else who might then maybe we’re safe and then maybe we can let go of the fear. And we don’t even think like that, but that’s how we work. Right? If you look at, we have spoken about neediness and I talk about the different levels. The neediness that we have is in the basis of our system.

And codependence is related to that. We engage in codependent relationship out of our neediness. So if our energy is up here, here is no energy. Here just becomes a hole which is craving for something, which is our neediness. And we can fill in that many different things depending on what we feared.

So if you need safety you’re looking for something that is going to give you safety. Because your energy is up here you’re not looking in yourself, you’re looking outside. I need somebody who can give me that. If you have experienced that you have no house and that has given you a lot of fear, will you believe that if you have a house, at least I have a house, you know. So you somehow get a, If I would have my own house then this and this and this and then I will be okay.

But that’s based on neediness, which is based on fear, right? If I would have give me your fantasies. Give me your hopes that you had when you were a kid. Long But you can remember. Damage in that.

And I know that you said, you know, you had all these expectations of life and nothing happened, so what were your expectations? What were your hopes that you created in that fearful environment. You created the hopes for when get, when I’m get out of this because everything was going to be fine. Everything was going to be fine. Who told you that?

Is that something that did to yourself or? No, no, I think my father kept me going and let me go. Yeah. So that’s like as long as you hope, you keep going. Yeah.

Right? So the hope is what keeps us going. We’re not going to die. As long as we have hope, we’re not going to die. But is that a good thing, you’re saying hope?

Well, I’m trying to explain the mechanisms that we have, It causes a lot of suffering, hope, but we all have it, we all do it. Can we have mutual hope or excessive hope? It doesn’t matter. I hope after this everything will be all right, keeps you going. It’s very unrealistic.

Why? Because life isn’t like that. No. You can’t just arrive at a plane where anything is alive. But you were in a situation where many things were not alright, where there was terrible suffering, where you could not even even think about feeling the suffering, right?

That’s right. The suffering we feel up here, above, just above the neediness. Yeah. Or we can feel it in all systems, you know, but this is important place. So what do we do in order not to feel the suffering?

We create something that looks different. One day it will be different, you know. That is a way to move through difficult Yes. So that might even be true that you would not have survived without these fantasies. Oh yes.

Right? So we need them when it is when when they check with people who survived the war, you know, that if you have that hope, that is what can break you, is what can keep you, take you through it. If you give up somewhere, then there are many stories that naturally death will come. Yeah. But can you see that what you do with is because you cannot face the suffering of the time, you cannot face the fear that comes with that, it is like you’re running away, it’s like it is you alleviate yourself yourself above the earth, above real real life and you create a fantasy.

But she was a child. I’m not judging. This is just, this is how all our minds works, you The reality was very much research. The reality? The reality of the time was very much with us.

With us. With us. But the only way to escape it is it was in Yeah. Is through imagination. But then you have the imagination, you know, when I’m going to get out of that.

What imagine, what did you imagine about your husband? Who I hadn’t met yet, but then I hadn’t met him. No, and you hadn’t met him. Gentlemen. Uh-huh.

Gentleman. Very kind. Kind. Uh-huh. And very romantic.

Mhmm. Everything very, very, very Uh-huh. On the positive side, and I didn’t look at the negative side at all because that was no So you were this little young girl with all these beautiful dreams, and this guy appeared, and you put all your dreams on this guy, and you felt completely in love? Oh, absolutely. And did you believe that he had all these qualities that you dreamed of?

Yes. Yes. And then? So did you well, the first husband, was he romantic? Yes.

He was. Did so he fulfilled some of your expectations? That’s alright. I wouldn’t come too healthy. Uh-huh.

I had to get through. So the breakup was very, very But that he went to another woman, that was unexpected. Can you see that if you have been too high in the hope that you cannot really see where your husband is at? I saw it all the time. I hope it will go away.

Right. You keep on hoping one day it will be different. That’s the same as what you did in the war. You see something around you, but you hope that it’s going to be all right. So with the second one you do the same.

You see negativities and you hope that it gone away. You put on top of that your hopes. One day it will go away. Then It’s excellent chemical plant. Yes.

And slowly that Yes. Gets in a way. And you hope that that one day manifests in their body from that other person? Yes. Your hopes.

Yes. Can you see how unrealistic that is? Well, stupid sounds harsh for yourself but, you know, you had reasons why to do it like that. But if you think about it like that back, you can see where you have been in the hopes and where you put your expectations onto the person and hope that a person one day shifts. We all do this, you know, but maybe not as extreme as you but we all do this.

You hope that certain qualities will appear in the person, certain qualities will go away. So what are you gonna do without no. Not with the kids? Because what at the moment, you still feel sad because things didn’t happen the way you hoped. Yes.

I don’t quite know where is. Somehow, something. Yes. So when I tell you this, do you have more understanding where you do it? And can you practice that right now?

Because only when you start to practice it right now your sadness will go away. Can you see why you’re still creating your hopes and your beautiful stories that you put on top of things and people so you have to stop doing that. And seeing that that is the cause of all your sadness and you have to keep on thinking, Oh no, I put that on. That’s not really there. And stop living in a world where you project on people but start living in what they really show and what they really are.

It’s about that you do it, you know. If you can do that before you die, you will die very peacefully and without regret. If you do not die, do it and feel that you haven’t fulfilled what you wanted to fulfill in your life when you die. That’s very painful death. But if you’re gonna die, you live every moment of your life believing in death because every moment in your life you still live in fear, you still behave with hopes.

That shows, you know, that you’re not that happy to die yet. No. So you have to cut through that. Right? Because you will have to do that one day and you can think, Oh, but I had that experience so I will die peacefully.

Not guaranteed. In order to die and to get to that experience you have to cut through all the layers of hope that you have built up. Good. Good. So this is just as much as for Helena.

I don’t know, you must recognize your own bit in that or not. Well, that’s why I asked you if you have excessive hope or neutral coping can help you do it. Well, hope can be very good. It is a coping mechanism, you know, and I don’t want to say it’s good or bad. Hope is a coping mechanism and it takes people through a very difficult stage.

But it’s just as a fight and a flight, they’re good because they can save us in certain situations, you know. There is nothing wrong with them in and of itself. But then, when you’re safe, you have to let them go and start living again. But what we do is we constantly live from them. We do not know anymore how to live without them.

We do not know the life that is beyond them. We only know the life that exists out of fight and flight. That’s what I meant by when I said, and then you get, and I’m speaking about myself, you get, you go deeper you get more Yes, but if you go deeper you have to let go of your fear, right? Yes, you’re right, that is what we aim for. It’s time though for all of us.

It’s very, very difficult, it’s not an easy thing. And I think we all will have to go that way, you know, one day or the other. It’s something that we will have to do. If you do not go in that way you will with fear. One very important realization in Buddhism is we’re going to die.

One day I’m going to die. We, because of this whole mechanism, we do not believe we’re going to die. There is this hope, I’m not going to die, based on all this fear of being destroyed, based on being a fear of being annihilated. You know, we create these expectations, I’m not going to die. Yeah.

If I do this, if I do that, if I go this way and make that choice and then we keep postponing. Yeah. The moment you can say I am gonna die, if you can really feel it, that helps you to get through that whole fear, running away from things. And then you’re going to say: And I do not know when I’m going to die. Because you can think: Oh, I have still time to do this.

But you do not know if you have time to do it. If you really look into reality, you know, tomorrow our world can change in a way that we’re not going to make the day after tomorrow. We don’t know. That is reality. So then you’re going to think, I do not know when it’s going to happen to me.

It might take another forty years, but it might come tomorrow. But that means I only have today to practice. I only have today to change my habits. Alright? So that makes that your practice becomes much more powerful.

I’m going to do it right now. I’m not going to wait. You have to think about that, Helena. I’m going to die. I might die tomorrow.

I might even die today. But fantastic. I still have a human body, you know, and we we all have to do that. But if you have grown up in a lot of hope and things will get better, then naturally looking at death is not part of that. Postponing death is part of that.

Yeah? And that can feel like that is what you do not want to look at. This is what you have tried to avoid your whole life. You know, in the war, you you there is so much death and destruction around you. You do not you can’t even bear to look at it.

And I’m saying, look at it. Look at it. That’s the nature of reality. The destruction is there. It is part of life.

But also, we can have healthy hope as as well. Like? Like, not just the importance of I’m doing all of that just for not to die. You can just naturally come from again. Yeah.

Do you believe that? Hope for? Just a natural healthy hope. How does it look like? How does it look like?

Because this hope also comes naturally from within, you know. That’s what I was asking. That’s what, that’s kind of what I was asking. Is it excessive hope or neutral hope? But but you healthy hope.

That’s what I was asking then. I think hope based on reality Yeah. Is healthy hope. So which hope is based on reality? We all have Buddha potential.

That’s for sure. So we all have a mind that has the potential to develop until we are a Buddha or towards a Buddha. That is a hope which which is based on reality. Right? Living in an outer situation which is horrible and then hoping that one day you will be out of that, that is If you put it into practice, you know, then you then you you make it real.

But if you only sit there and keep hoping that one day it will change, you know, then it’s not gonna do anything. And then it’s only deluding yourself. Yes. So it is good to look at positive things and it is good to set up in a positive way, but then you have to make it real. And only making it real makes it healthy.

And it’s changeable as well. Yeah. Yeah. And it takes If you expect the change to come from somebody else Oh, no. It’s never it’s that is unhealthy.

It’s never gonna come. Never the way you want it. Never. Never. And then life can be really harsh and life can hit you again and again and again until you understand I cannot expect anything from anybody.

No change can come. I’m the only person who can do it. That can be hard. Can also be liberating. It is liberating at the same time.

But to go to that place in the mind where you can really feel that. Especially if you had a lot of hope, you know? Because the hope feels so nice and it is so nice when somebody comes along and everything has changed. Wouldn’t that be fantastic? That’s a very blissful feeling.

And what you have to do is cut off from that feeling and say that’s not going to bring me anywhere. I have to go to reality and look what is there and create the causes from there and that’s bloody hard work. But it’s worth it. It’s bloody hard. But it’s worth it.

It’s worth it, changing. Yes. I’m not saying that it’s not. I want people to feel that it’s bloody hard work. It’s worth it.

Can you feel that it’s bloody hard work? What would that do with you when you feel it? To me, like, really, I don’t look at it like it’s bloody hard work. I look at it as my focus, so my focus follows my intention. Rather than looking at it like that it becomes a way of living.

If I say it’s bloody hard work, what I want people to do is to connect. There are things that we do not like to do. Are things that are painful, there are things that are horrible to face that we want to get away from. If I say it’s bloody hard work, I’m telling you that is is the first thing you have to do. You cannot create all these actions and step over the horrible things that we cannot face.

We cannot step over them. That’s right. We have to face them. Yep. That’s right.

So And how you choose to do that, you can do that in that sort of way, or you can do it with a bit of penance or a bit of joy as well, or just not a be just a total, this is bloody hard work. You know, just totally, like but it’s necessary if you wanna get out of that suffering. You have to know the suffering if you wanna get out of it. Absolutely. Yeah.

And don’t think for a minute that I haven’t been there, Jeremy, because I’ve been through much, much than, you know, that people would even realize. But I agree with everything you’re saying and even your cute bloody hard work. Very safe. We all have the tendency not to go there, you know? I want to go there.

For me it’s something I want to do that. I’ve been like it since those of the child. I don’t know why I’m like this, but I want to go there. And we all have things that happen. And then when we start having the ability to and the skills and and coming to date to moments like like this with you, then we can just empower ourselves so much.

Next time we’ll talk about, what do we talk about? Healing.? You know, the real healing, as soon as we go the other way and we drop the fight and the flight, we drop it, healing naturally happens. It’s like the mind naturally heals itself. But we can only get there when we face completely, when we feel completely. Then can we go to that space where that natural healing takes place, you know.

So that’s why when I worked with the kids I had to put them through their suffering. This is your suffering. Feel it. You can scream, you can but know it’s all not really true, you know. And at the same time I give you a space where there is a lot of love and a lot of safety where you can do your screaming and then let it go, you know?

And then the healing naturally takes place and then miracles can happen, right? I’m looking for that healing. Me too. There is a lot of healing in the world where people try to avoid the suffering. Oh, don’t go there because then you really get crazy.

Then you never can get out of it. That is the normal tendency also in people that heal. I know the only way is to go completely into the shit. And it’s almost like an Aussie statement, Jamyang, oh you’ve heard the expression, don’t go there. You see how you don’t go It’s that.

It’s like an Aussie expression. Well, in Aussie land, land. Don’t know if it’s in Europe but In Europe it’s the same. Do they say Yeah. I think Aussies are more happy people who get over things, they get over it much easier.

Get over it. Really? Get over it. And that one as well. And I think in Europe, people go deeper and look more into the other side and then get that kind of things.

I I can see a good thing in both, you know. It’s it’s but even besides the culture, if you look at the mind and how the the mind works, only when you hit rock bottom, is that how you say it? Then the mind something starts to happen in the mind, some magic starts to happen in the mind. You know? And that that is that is why we have to do that.

That is why we have to go to the places that we do not want to be in. Because if we can allow ourselves and nourish ourselves and support ourselves in these places and just say, I’m okay, everything is alright, you know, and feel a love for ourselves in that place, healing naturally takes place. We do not have to do anything to heal. We have to stop doing. We have to back off completely.

Right? Fight and flight, that whole mechanism that we have built up, that naturally leads to destruction, that naturally leads to our death, right? Healing is going beyond that. If you see big meditators, look at their skins, you know, where is the aging process? Well, you have a quick skin.

You don’t look like forty. If you look at the Geshe, look at his body, you know, it looks like a young boy. It’s like, what is that? It’s like when the healing takes place, the growing older, what you do is actually you conquer death. What we are doing is we run towards death again and again because of our fight and flight reactions.

If you know people who are very angry, who have a lot of that fight reaction, they can age very quickly, right? If you have somebody with a lot of worry, a lot of delusions, they age very quickly, right? People who can drop all that, they seem to be naturally calm, beautiful, like nothing is touching them. Yeah? It definitely requires a lot of diligence and perseverance.

Definitely gentle perseverance. True. But it can be done because if we can think about it like that and we can see it like that, that means it can be done. If it was not possible we would not be able to have these thoughts. We would not have been able to lay it out and say this is what we normally do and this is where you can change it.

True? So no matter how difficult it looks like, no matter how ingrained whatever you suffer from looks like, because of this you can change it. Good. Next time we’re going to start talking about how we reverse this. But I think in the meantime I made two meditations, one is the white light meditation and one is the clarity of the mind, meditation on the clarity of the mind.

So I’m just going to give them to you and, you know, these are from a book so you can normally people read them and then you can do them. They’re not too difficult. Meditation on the clarity of the mind is that you, you know, that is the meditation on the mind is like space. And what we normally do, thoughts and emotions come up and what we do is we think we are the emotions, we think we are the thoughts. We somehow hold on to emotions and thoughts and we relive them again and again or they become bigger again and again.

What this meditation does is say, And now step back and identify yourself with the clarity of the mind. And these thoughts and emotions they just come and they go and they come and they go. And then when you can identify with the clarity of the mind you can make that more spacious, you can make that more open, you can make that more open. And the more open you can make that, thoughts can just arise and they don’t bother you anymore. It doesn’t happen straight away but that is what we can aim for.

Yeah, that’s the clarity of the mind. White light healing meditation is about if we all have purified our body, if our body would be pure, if we would not have this veil of ignorance, then our body would be made out of light. If you look at the Buddhas, their body is made out of light. So what we’re going do is we’re going to pretend that that is already there. And it’s not really pretending, you know.

If you look at that that is really the nature of us, how we exist, if that is our true nature, then what we do is we actually identify with our true nature. And we stop pretending that we have this veil, that we are the veil because identifying with that veil, with that whole layer of ignorance, that is not really true. It makes it stronger. It makes it stronger but it’s also not true, it’s not a reality. So I say pretending, I say because somehow we believe we are the veil, right?

But now what you’ve got to do is you train your mind and Oh no, I’m actually not. I’m completely filled with white light and I’m pure and all the grossness in my body has disappeared and if you train that then you’re holding on to that grossness and to that ignorance and to that veil just weakens. Every time when you do it the other side weakens. So both these meditations help you to weaken this whole pattern. Okay?

So you can do that as many times as you want. You can do it once a day. You can do it once a week. You can do it but I I would encourage you to do it on a regular basis, you know, even if you if you do it two or three times a week, it is really, really nice for the body and the mind to sit with that. It’s like it’s like the fight and the flight and everything that comes around that makes us tired, that gives us this feeling of a burden, of carrying something with us, of not being free, not being able to be ourselves.

And if you do these meditations that starts to drop, you know, so you give yourself some space and you give yourself some lightness, more lightness will come. You’re already so light. I know what to do, I always know what to do. No one escapes. One I did have I think I left the homework in the office.

So you wanted to have that? Yeah. Yeah. I have that in the office. What was the homework then?

The home work is You got five weeks. Well, you have the other two. That’s a big thing. And then we got five weeks as well. And there’s five weeks.

But I mean, it’s a big thing to write down what your potential is and what your What do you think your potential is? Yes. What do you think? What do you think? So I think my potential is, and then you write.

Yep. And the purpose is? The purpose is many times many times especially, you know, if you’re sick and you suffer and there is this belief, I cannot become, I can’t get over this. I do not know how to fix this. I do not know how to and you start to believe that might be part of you, right?

I always believed that anger was part of me, I really believed that. And with all the children I treated I believed every child had its pure nature. I could see them and I treated every child like that but not me. It’s very strange but not me. I was completely convinced not me.

Because you thought it was a part of you. I thought was part of me and I thought it was deep, deep rooted and I could never ever get it. And I didn’t even see that I treated the children so different than myself, you know? So it’s like a complete blind spot. If somebody had asked me, What is your potential?

I think that would have been a very good question because then I would have been confronted straight away with that tendency that I had. And I know I’m not the only person, I met more people who did the same thing. If you are an adult you somehow create this belief that you are in a certain way and you cannot see anymore what your real potential is, you cannot see how much possibility there is to grow because you already lived for such a long time with that limited experience of yourself. And then you believe in that and you think that it’s you and then going beyond that is quite difficult. You know, if you feel I’m not good that, I’m not good in that and also that doesn’t go really the way I want it and I’ve been trying for so many years to change that and you know, yes some things have happened but if I think about you know what else could happen till I die or till I’m seventy and I go in the same speed as I’ve been doing down and not much can happen.

So you start to believe that you have only this much potential in this life even. And maybe you don’t even think that you have a potential in your next life that you could keep on building up. But if you start writing that down and you really think what is the potential of a human being, what is the potential of me, you know you can do both. What is the potential of me? What is the potential potential of me?

What is the potential of a human being? What can we achieve? How would it look like? How would I exist when I live in accord with my potential? Sometimes we had a feeling I didn’t get the chances that I needed in my life.

If that wouldn’t have happened to me I would feel this and this and this would not have happened to my mind or I would feel much better like that. Or if my mom had just sent me to this school, then this and this and if I had just done this, then this and this, we have these ideas which shows that we feel limited somewhere. We show that we have not been able to develop what we feel we have inside. So then we start writing what you have inside that can help to free that and connect again with that because that is your potential, that is there, you know. Just the conditions have not arisen yet for that to open up.

But isn’t it true that what you experience and what you come into contact is for your highest growth? Everybody thinks like that? No, I’m asking you that. But you asked the question away as if everybody knows that already. Okay then, well, isn’t everything that happens to you But that’s a belief, isn’t it?

That actually gives you the, almost the platform to have the opportunity to transform. Yes, yes. But we’re not there yet. We do that next time. You already have learned a lot, right, through your development, through your spiritual practice?

I have a long way to go. Yes. And in your growth, you know, you learn certain things about life and you practice that and you see that it is like that and you change your mind and you change your view and you change your attitude and I think, you know, that is how you grow and that is how you heal. And we do but not everyone is in the same place. And that’s fine.

So I cannot have laws that say, but it is like this. I can only say you can use things like that. I just wonder if the Buddhist concept is that like, that in actual fact everything that we’ve drawn to us is, we’ve drawn to us from our mind, we’ve drawn it all to us. So there’s got to be some we might think, oh, that’s all being terrible and that suffering as well. But also there has to be that that duality with that as well.

Or then, you know, hang on. Maybe if you just look on the other column, there’s a whole lot of positives as well. But you don’t think that along the way until you start going up. Yes. It’s hard to see something, you know.

If if I’m gonna tell Helena, you know, war that was actually a very good thing to happen to you, that’s like a horrible story. I couldn’t say that. Oh, I don’t think that it was no, I don’t think that, but what I’m but I’m sure that some of the strength that this beautiful woman woman has inside of her that she’s carried since then from all of that experience would have been, I’m sure, given such and you do have a lot of beauty that then you’ve brought into this world and what you’ve given in this lifetime too, I’m sure. And, you know, such a catastrophic experience. Do you feel that?

I’m saddened. Mhmm. Definitely. She was very And many years, how did you see it? Take the day and live today.

Let’s dedicate the merits, and I give you that, and I’m gonna get the other one. I’m not sure what I wrote on it. It’s it has to do with the meditation, and it has to do with living your potential, what would change in your life, I think. Well, I have it too then. Yeah.

And it’s good to write, you know, and to think about it and to and and if you have a question, what what what what what would Jamyang like me to write down? You can and you see it from different angles. Write it down in different ankles, you know, because that all shows you something from from you. So just try to think for a moment of all the positive energy that we have generated. By thinking about life, thinking about our minds.

And then rejoice that you have been able to be here. Listen to what was said. Think about it. That you have given yourself the opportunity to take this time for yourself. And then try to think positive energy that we have collected, that we not only keep that for ourselves, but that we dedicate it for the peace and happiness and health of all those that we know and all those that we do not know dedicating it to whoever can benefit from it.

Thank you very much for coming. So the next class is on the nineteenth of August. We have to tell Hans. And how do we tell Carol?