Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Kaye Miner teaches how transforming the mind can transform your life. In this 91-minute talk, she begins with guided mindfulness of breath meditation using nostril and central channel visualization to settle a scattered mind. She then frames the core problem—we all experience undesirable circumstances and emotional suffering—and explains that the Buddhist solution lies not in changing external conditions but in understanding and transforming how we think. She walks through the Four Noble Truths, introduces the concept of karma as cause and effect, and identifies the three main delusions (anger, attachment, ignorance) that motivate harmful actions. The heart of the teaching is subduing the mind through meditation, developing awareness of positive and negative mental states, and learning to respond rather than react to difficult situations. She emphasizes practical examples—working with difficult people, maintaining composure—and clarifies key distinctions: compassion versus anger, self-esteem versus pride, responding versus reacting. The final portion addresses audience questions on grief, rebirth, the nature of consciousness, and the ethical implications of abortion from a Buddhist perspective. The talk is grounded in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy but accessible to newcomers and serious practitioners alike.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1996 08 02 Change your Mind, change your life.mp3
UUID: 6cb66385-57ec-4192-8c74-1faadc5a6889
Teacher: Ven Kaye Miner
Collection: Change your mind change your life (Ven Kaye Miner)
Date: 1996-08-02
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 91.4 minutes
Words: ~10,120
It’s dropped, but I tend to have a fairly loud voice so I don’t think there should be any problems. So I don’t really need to introduce myself since Jim’s so kindly done that. I normally go into quite a spiel and that takes up about fifteen minutes. But I’m very pleased to be here. In fact, think I see a few faces that were here from about twelve months ago, when I was last here.
Tonight, what I thought to talk about was about how we can change our lives by changing our minds. And there’s several parts to that. One, need to understand our minds, what we mean by the mind, why do we need to change our lives in the first place? And how we bring that about? But I thought before we start talking too much, since meditation is a very effective tool to understand our mind and to learn to control our mind, then it would be a good opportunity to join together and do some meditation.
Has anyone here meditated before? How about anyone who hasn’t meditated here before? No? Yeah, okay. Well, I’ll go through the whole kind of basics again.
I don’t think it hurts to be reminded. And I find even personally that when I do go through the basics with other people, it makes me check out how I’m doing it myself because so often we fall into bad habits. Since we’re going to be talking a fair bit about the mind, then I thought what we would do tonight is a mindfulness meditation. And we’re going to use the breath as a tool to focus our concentration and to get an inkling or a look at our mind. Have people done breathing meditation before?
It’s really one of the most common, but often one of the most difficult, isn’t it? People find that? Sometimes it’s almost Sometimes they liken it to trying to push water uphill. It’s rather difficult. So we’re going to use the breath as our tool.
We’re going to focus on the sensation of the breath as it enters and leaves the body. Now it’s really hard if you’ve got a blocked nose. So you can either focus on the sensation of the breath as it passes through the nostrils, or you can focus on the rise and the fall of the abdomen. And there’s a number of techniques to help us become aware of our breathing. And the one I thought I might do tonight is a little bit different.
I’m not sure if people might have had experience or exposure to this before. But we begin by breathing in three times through our right nostril. We actually block off the left one. Okay, we breathe in three times through that, and then, well, as we breathe in, we breathe in once through the right nostril, and then out through the left. In through the right, out through the left.
In through the right, out through the left. Got the picture? So three times you’re breathing in through the right and out through the left. And then three times you breathe in through the left and out through the right. Okay?
Then, the third round is that we actually breathe in through both nostrils, and we imagine that rather than breathing out through the nostrils, that it shoots through the top of our head. A bit spooky. But that technique is a really good way to focus on the breathing, because at first it’s very hard. Our minds are really distracted with all the things of coming here tonight and the weather and what’s going to be talked about later. So it’s often good to have a technique to help focus our minds.
And so when we’re doing this breathing, if you’re comfortable with doing some visualization, you can actually visualize that there are three channels running through the center of your body, just a little bit in front of your spinal cord or your back bone. And these channels, there’s about the thickness of your little finger. Okay? They’re hollow, they’re just like a channel or a straw of light. And so there’s the central channel that’s going right the crown of your head straight down to just below your navel.
And then there’s the two side channels, which one’s going, the right one’s going from the tip of your nostril up, curving over, a bit like an umbrella handle or a walking stick handle. Coming down beside that central channel and just meeting underneath. So clear kind of picture? And so the left one’s the same as the right. So we can visualize.
I’m drawing here, if you can see what I’m doing. So we’ve got the two side channels that are coming up over through the crown of the head, coming down, and they meet just underneath the navel. And then there’s the central channel that goes up the side. So when we’re doing this breathing, when we’re breathing in through the right, we imagine that the air is coming in through the right nostril, going up, coming right down, and then it meets into the left channel, and then comes up and goes out the left nostril. Is that clear?
Is that making sense? So we’re imagining that three times. Then we imagine we breathe in through the left three times, comes down, and then it comes up through the right and out through the right nostril. So you’re doing that three times. Then you imagine it’s coming in through the side once at the same time as you’re breathing in through both nostrils, and it shoots up through the central channel.
So if you understand that and if you’re good at visualization and if that feels comfortable to you, you can use that as a technique to help become more aware of your breathing to begin with. If however you don’t feel comfortable with doing that, maybe it seems a little bit too complicated, then just be aware of the sensation of the breath coming and going from around the nostrils or the rise and fall of the abdomen. We got any questions on that? Okay. Okay, so let’s just find a comfortable meditation posture.
If you’re sitting in a chair, it’s good to have your feet firmly planted on the ground. Sometimes it helps to have a cushion underneath your feet. If you’re sitting on the floor, try to be as comfortable as possible. It’s often a little bit difficult when we’re not so used to sitting cross legged. The important is to have a straight back, and it’s the mind that’s meditating.
And you can have the hands resting in the lap, with the right hand on top of the left and the thumbs just gently touching. Just sort of scan through your body. Have a quick look as to how you’re seated, whether there’s any tension. And you can either have your eyes closed or half open. But it’s probably best not to have them too far open because you get very easily distracted by sights, watching other things happen around you.
And the head can be tilted just a little bit forward. Be aware not to have it tilt too far forward, otherwise there’s a tendency to fall asleep. Or to have it tilted too far backwards, because that tends to lead to excitement. And the jaw should be relaxed, the tongue resting comfortably in the mouth, the lips just gently touching. So when you found comfortable position, then we begin by turning the mind inwards, letting go of all the distracting thoughts, Not being distracted by sounds.
Meditation and the mindfulness of the breath to show me how uncontrolled my mind is. Other people have that same experience. It’s really quite amazing. You have that experience, do you? No?
Okay. What does meditating mean? Oh, that’s an excellent question. What does meditating mean? Basically, meditating means familiarizing the mind with something positive.
It means getting to know good things in simple terms, so that your mind becomes more used to doing good things, more used to understanding good things than bad things. Okay? Alright. Tonight we’re talking about changing our mind in order to change our lives. And I think there’s one little verse that I’d like to recite before we begin.
And that really for me encapsulates that whole concept, and not just the concept of wanting to change our lives, but also the means to do it. And that verse is, if I can remember it right, I’ll be very proud if I can, Do not commit any non virtuous actions. Practice perfect virtue. Subdue your own mind. This is the teaching of the Buddha.
Now that’s the most incredible verse. It holds just about the whole of the Buddhist path there in those few words. Sometimes it’s a bit hard to practice perfect virtue. And I think that’s probably the real stumbling point for me with that verse, practice perfect virtue. I mean, I find it so hard just to have a kind mind.
But the essence of that verse is that basically there are situations that we face in our life we don’t really enjoy. I think everybody will have had some what we call undesirable experiences. Things you don’t like, things that don’t go your way. Everyone’s had that experience? I think that’s pretty common.
And so that first actually contains four facts about our existence. And they’re sometimes known as the four noble truths in Buddhism. I’m coming from a Buddhist perspective tonight. I hope that’s okay with everyone, alright? So, the four noble truths.
And the first of those noble truths, or the first of those facts of existence is that basically we all have undesirable experiences. And we’ve all just agreed on that, haven’t we? Fact number one, we have undesirable experiences. Fact number two is that there must be some reason why there must be some cause to having those undesirable experiences. Would we agree on that?
I’d like disagreement too, if it’s useful. Third thing is that, well, if there’s a cause to having undesirable experiences, then if we remove that cause, then we won’t have those undesirable experiences. Making sense? So there’s a cessation or there’s a stop to having undesirable experiences. So that’s the third noble truth, that cessation.
And then the fourth is, well there must be some way. There must be some way to stop creating those causes and to stop having those undesirable experiences. So they’re the four facts of our existence, the four noble truths. And so that verse actually talks about that. The very beginning thing is that we have undesirable experiences.
And it’s it’s by having those that we recognize that there’s something that’s not quite right in our lives. Something we want to do something about it. We want to change. We want to prevent having those undesirable experiences. I mean, I can go through a list of undesirable experiences.
We have a job, we lose it. We have money, we lose it. We have relationships, we lose it. They break down. There are many, many.
I mean, we could go through people are not kind to you. Cuts in front of you in the traffic. You know? You can go from very gross, incredibly difficult to deal with undesirable experiences down to the little kind of picky, petty things. There is a whole range, a whole gamut of undesirable experiences.
But when we recognise that we don’t particularly want to have those undesirable experiences, when we recognise that we don’t want to feel uncomfortable, we don’t want to feel angry, we don’t want to feel lonely, we don’t want things not to go our way, then we’re recognising that there’s something fundamentally wrong. Everyone feel that way? So that recognition is like the first step. It’s the first step to doing anything. And they often say that when you have a major drama in your life, it’s an incredible catalyst for change, don’t they?
We notice with people who have life threatening illnesses how it helps them to sort out problems that they may have had with their families and things like that. You know, they start to get their life in order, to see what’s really important and what’s not important, and discarding the unimportant. So that recognition is really the first step. And as part of that recognition, it’s starting to take responsibility. Rather than always blaming outside, it’s starting to say, well, maybe inside I can do something here.
Maybe it has the way I experience things has a lot to do with the way I’m feeling, what’s going on in my mind. So in order to be able to have a transformation or to deal or to change the experiences that you have from being something that you don’t like into something you can cope with and in fact enjoy, then it really comes down to your own self, taking your own self responsibility rather than sort of always pointing outside and blaming the outside. So in order to be able to do that, then it’s a matter of recognizing and understanding the nature of our minds. This is always very interesting. I really like to ask people where they think the mind is and what they think the mind is.
Can I ask someone that question? Anyone like to give me an idea of what they think the mind is? And where I might find it? Out there. There.
There. Between the two hands? There. Just there. And so you’re saying outside or inside person?
Not. You’re not. It’s just there somewhere. Alright. Okay.
Anyone else like to add? Which mind? Let’s just talk about your mind for the the time being. Uh-huh. Right.
Right. And so you see that as being like two minds. Uh-huh. Anyone else? Mhmm.
Like a sixth sense sense. You know, you’ve got your eye sense and touch sense, and you’re saying something more than that, like a sixth sense. Mhmm. Okay. I really like this because I remember that somebody asked me this question in one of the first talks I went to on Buddhism, and I thought the mind was up there somewhere.
I thought it was something, like, greater than than the physical me. Well, from a Buddhist perspective, the mind is something not physical. The body is a physical being, physical entity, but the mind is something not physical. It doesn’t actually come from biological cells. So it’s not located somewhere in the body that you can perform an autopsy and you pull out heart, liver, kidneys, mind.
It’s not like that. It’s not physical. It doesn’t have a shape. It doesn’t have a color. It’s like formless.
But it has this ability to know or to cognise. It has this essential kind of purity and awareness. And there are many sort of facets to the mind. Know, are these different types of consciousness, like the eye sense consciousness, the ear sense consciousness, the tactile sense consciousness. So it has all of those facets to it.
But it’s something very difficult to actually draw a picture and say this is the mind. And so we tend to use analogies to give us an idea or help us to understand the nature of the mind. And so one of them is like water. You know how water is basically, well, maybe Adelaide water is not so hot. But you know, basically water is clean and clear and pure.
Right? We agree on that? Okay. So is the mind. But just as you stir up the mud and that goes right through the water, and then it does look like I had a late water, then the same with the mind.
The delusions stir up in the mind, and they obscure this essential clarity, this essential knowingness, this essential purity of the mind. And just as if you let the mud settle, then again the water returns to its pure state, so too with the mind. If you let the delusion settle, then the clear nature of the mind shines through. Making sense? Another analogy they talk about with the is like the sun shining unobstructively in the sky.
And just as the clouds come across the sky and obscure the sun shining unobstructively, so do the delusions come across the mind and obscure the purity of the mind. And just as the clouds can be blown away by a big gale, so too can the delusions be blown away. Or that, you know, that you can remove those layers and allow the true nature of the mind to shine through. So, because the delusions, the thing when I’m talking about delusions, I’m talking basically about, you know, the anger, hatred, sort of ignorance kind of delusions. So because they’re like the clouds going across the sky, or because they’re like the mud being stirred up in the water, they are not one with the mind.
The mind is essentially this purity, this knowingness, this ability to be able to cognize. And so the delusions are just like these sort of obstructions, but they’re not stuck. They’re not fixed with the mind. So the delusions are not always going to be there. You can do something removing them just like the clouds being blown across the sky.
Making sense? I like to have nods. Good. Okay. Alright.
Now, from my perspective, and I’m talking personally here, and I hope to try and get you people to also to get this feeling too. That for me is the most liberating thing that I’ve ever been able to hear. Because I’m not stuck with being angry all the time. I’m not stuck with being deluded. I have the ability, the potential here to remove those delusions and be able to rest in my own true nature.
You know, the potential is just amazing, I find. If we recognize that there are things in our lives that are undesirable and that we want to do something to remove those undesirable experiences, and then we start to recognise that the nature of our mind is essentially pure, and that we’ve got these delusions that are obscuring this essential purity. Then, the next step, logically, is what can we do to what are those delusions? What are those things that are obscuring our minds? And why does it happen?
And so this leads me on to the kind of cause and effect relationship. I think you might have all heard the word karma before. karma often has different, people often give different sort of definitions to karma. But from the perspective that I’m coming from, karma, the word actually means action. But we’re talking about the law of cause and effect, actions yielding results.
So, karma means that what we are now, what we are experiencing now, is the result of actions that we’ve created in the past. What we will be in the future is dependent upon our actions now. And I’ve often heard people say, well, you know, that’s incredibly unfair. For example, somebody’s got an illness, and you’re saying that it it’s been caused by actions that they’ve done in the past, but these people have been really nice. They’re really good people.
It just seems so unfair that this person’s got this illness. You think like that, don’t you? Well, it’s not a matter of being fair or unfair. karma is like nature. It’s like gravity.
You throw a ball up in the air and it comes down. You don’t get upset and say, Oh, it’s unfair the ball came down, do you? You say, well, you know, that’s the nature of gravity, is that the ball comes down. It’s like you plant a seed and a flower grows. You don’t get upset that the flower grew from the seed, do you?
You know, it’s just a result of planting the seed that you’ve got the flower. So the same with the things that we experience. Okay? The same with the actions that we create. They are like a seed that’s planted that yields a result.
And the thing with karma is that the actions that we create or what type of actions we create determines what result we will experience. So if we create good actions, then it kind of naturally follows that we’re going to have happy results. We create not so good actions, then it follows that we’re going to probably experience not so good results. So it comes back to responsibility again, doesn’t it? You’re responsible for your own actions.
And if you choose sort of a path of creating positive actions, then you’re probably going to have much more positive results later on, going to be happier. So that gets back again to that verse that I mentioned at the beginning. It said, Do not commit any non virtuous actions. So non virtuous actions are basically these not so good actions. These actions that tend to be motivated by our delusions.
And I sometimes call it the non virtuous actions like the Buddha’s ten commandments, in a way, because there ten non virtuous actions that we can very easily understand. They’re things like killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, trying to split people by playing them off against each other by the way you speak to them. Harsh speech. Meaningless talk. And then there’s things like coveting other people’s possessions and having a harmful intent or a harmful motivation trying to harm others, and then wrong views.
So these are basically the ten non virtuous actions. Now, the reason that they’re called non virtuous is because if you look at each one of them, bound to cause harm to somebody else, aren’t they? Okay? If you kill another being, then you’re harming another being. If you steal from someone, then you’re taking away their things, their possessions.
They’re going be upset about that, aren’t they? So that’s harm. Sexual misconduct, I mean, you know, to go into a quick sort of explanation of what that means, that basically means any sexual behaviour that actually causes harm to somebody else. So if you look at all of those ten things, they’re actually actions that will be harmful to others. And as a result of them being harmful to others, they in turn are harmful to yourself.
So that’s okay, you know, okay, well maybe we see that that’s reasonable, that maybe we should sort of avoid stealing, we should avoid killing, and we should avoid lying, and things like that. But for me the big question is, well, why on earth would we do those things in the first place? What sort of motivates us to do them? And again, it comes back to our delusions. It comes back to the mind of anger or hatred or desiring after things, or it comes back to a mind of ignorance.
These are the three sort of main delusions, they’re sometimes called the three poisonous minds. So, whilst ever we have those kind of delusions present in our mind, then we’re going to create these non virtuous actions that are harmful to others as well as to our selves. And whilst ever we create those kind of actions, then we’re going to have undesirable experiences. Everyone see the logic to that? So we’ve decided we basically don’t want the undesirable experiences, you know, but that’s sort of, you know, a fact about our existence at the moment.
We’ve decided that there’s a cause to those undesirable experiences, which is the actions that we’re creating, the non virtuous actions we’re creating. We’ve decided that if we don’t create those actions, then there’s a chance of having, you know, a cessation to the undesirable experience, a sense of peace. And so now it’s like, well, okay, how do we, what’s the methods? What are the methods to cut at the root of these delusions that motivate us to do these non virtuous actions, that create the karma or the causes to experience the results later on of the undesirable experiences. And this is going back to this verse that I mentioned at the beginning.
Do not practice any non virtuous actions. Start to see that those non virtuous actions can actually cause us to have problems. Practice perfect virtue. I’m still having a bit of a block with that one. We’ll get on to that in a minute.
Subdue your own mind. That is the key. If you are able to subdue your mind, then the delusions dissipate. Those delusions that motivate you to do those actions that create the karma to experience the result later on. It’s like, you know, do you remember that old song, you know, that the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone is connected to I can’t remember that song.
There was a song, wasn’t there? Yeah, I never was very good with that. But it’s a bit like that. It’s like one thing leading onto the other. Subdue your own mind.
That’s the key. And when it says this is the teaching of the Buddha, basically all the spiritual teachings are really about confronting these delusions in the mind. Confronting the things like anger, attachment, desire, ignorance. And then of course there’s the pride and doubt and wrong views, the other kind of root delusions. But the teachings of the Buddha are confronting these delusions, removing these delusions from your mind, because they’re the base, they’re the culprit.
They’re the things that are just like ruining your life. That’s not just the property of Buddhists by the way. It’s not just the property of the Buddha that this is his teaching, not solely. Any action within any spiritual tradition, whether it’s Christianity, Judaism, Islam, whatever, any action that is about subduing the delusions is spiritual training. It’s a religious kind of action, a spiritual action.
That’s what it’s all about, you know, the bottom line. So, subduing your own mind. This is the teaching of the Buddha. So, how do we subdue our minds? Boy, we just tried to do a mindfulness meditation.
How many people’s minds were running all over the place? Gosh, it seems hard work, doesn’t it? So what we’re talking about is trying to transform the negative states of mind into positive. Okay? And this is really like trying to push water uphill.
This really takes some doing, takes some training. So meditation is probably our best friend in all of this. Meditation is the tool. And at first, like doing this kind of meditation we did earlier, it’s really hard because our minds are just like spinning out of control. They sometimes call it monkey mind.
And you can see that it’s monkey mind because it’s like jumping from one branch to another to another. The meditation is really the best tool because by putting in the effort, by meditation training, just like you’re going to do some weight training or some fitness training, which requires you to be consistent and put in the effort, right? But through that meditation training, what happens is that you start to become aware of how your mind works. You become aware of what’s positive in your mind and what’s negative in your mind. And with that awareness, you then are able to set about trying to eliminate the negative things in your mind.
Eliminate sounds very kind of powerful to me. It’s almost like I’m going to eliminate this person, you know. But it’s removing those negative states of mind. Removing those negative states of mind, removing the delusions that motivate the actions, is the way to change your life. And when we’re talking about changing our lives, we’re not changing it for the worse, are we?
Like who’d bother trying to change your life for the worse? That will happen anyway if you don’t do anything. So the idea is to actually change your life for the better. So to change your life for the better, then you need to change the mind, so that you eliminate the negative aspects and actually develop the positive aspects. So when we’re talking about meditation, at the beginning when I was asked the question, by the young man down here who didn’t fall asleep, When we talk about meditation, initially, you know, meditation is about familiarizing the mind with virtue, familiarizing the mind with positive states.
So it’s not just trying to sort of narrow down the mind, like stopping all thoughts and just completely narrowing the mind and becoming kind of dull. That’s not what meditation is about. Meditation is really about trying to widen the mind, to brighten the mind. So certainly, trying to develop some sense of calmness by trying to remove the distracting thoughts is good, and that can certainly help to a point. But it’s very hard to walk around like that all the time.
We find it hard to sit on a cushion for five minutes and do it, so to walk around and have lives like that is very difficult. So it’s certainly got its use. But the greatest benefit comes from understanding your mind, from knowing your mind, from recognising the positive aspects, recognizing the negative aspects of the mind. And that’s what you do in meditation. So there are so many different meditation techniques, And well, are so many different individuals and everybody has different propensities.
Some people are very good at imagery and visualization. Some people are more oral and the sound of a mantra, like you know, sacred syllables, reciting sacred words, is more beneficial for them. But the real transformation comes from finding out about these things, finding out how particular actions yield a particular result. Everyone’s been angry, haven’t they? You know when you get angry and it builds up and it builds up and you you start shouting at people, it just makes it worse.
So you look at examples in your own life and how you relate to those, how you behave and what was the consequence of that particular behavior. So meditation, rather than it just being sitting on a cushion for five minutes a day or fifteen minutes or anything like that, becomes an awareness or a mindfulness throughout your whole life. Everything you do becomes a meditation. Everything you read, everything you look at, every situation you’re in becomes a meditation practice. Because what you’re looking there for is how’s your mind reacting?
Is it in a positive state? Are you reacting or acting out of a positive motivation? Or are you acting out of a delusion? And so the only way you can do that, the only way you will have that awareness is by developing this mindfulness, developing this space or clarity in the mind, developing an understanding of how positive actions lead to a happy result and how negative actions lead to a negative result. So you need to have some kind of knowledge, I guess, of those things to have the awareness of what’s going on in the situation when you’re confronted by it.
Does that make any sense? Yeah. So certainly it helps to begin by just sitting on a cushion for fifteen minutes a day and developing this awareness of the breath. Because until you are able to sort of gain that much space in your mind, then it’s very difficult to be in a confronting situation and really check out what’s going on. You don’t really have the space, you know, because you’re used to reacting quickly all the time.
So meditation, where you’re sitting very quietly, is very effective to be able to develop that space in your mind that carries on outside into the other situations. So, just to recap all that, because I can go on and on. But just to recap all that, we want to change our lives because there’s a recognition that we have experiences that we prefer not to have, or that we react in certain ways that we maybe we feel unhappy. So once we’ve had that recognition, it’s like a catalyst for us to want to change, to do something about it. So then we want to find out, well, what’s causing us to have those undesirable experiences?
So we look at our minds, because our mind is the fundamental solution. It’s not the external object. It’s not the external person, external situation. It’s how we react to it. So the mind is the fundamental solution.
So we start to be aware of our actions and how those actions yield results. We recognize that the delusions motivate us to create actions that are harmful to others as well as to ourselves. And that in order to prevent us from creating those actions, we need to subdue our minds, we need to subdue the delusions, And to be able to subdue the delusions, then we need to use some effective tools, and meditation is probably the most effective tool. Sounds simple. Sounds simple.
And I think the thing about that is that when your mind becomes more positive, when your mind becomes subdued, then you don’t need outside protection anymore. The mind that’s subdued, the mind that is positive, is your greatest protector. It’s your greatest refuge. It’s like nothing can harm you. There’s this inner strength, this inner courage, that whatever situation you confront doesn’t worry you anymore, doesn’t hurt you.
I mean it doesn’t mean that you become brain dead or you’re a real wimp or anything like that, but it doesn’t hurt you anymore. You’ve got incredible courage to be able to withstand anything that comes in your way. You can look at your own life, just experiences that you may have had, where there’s been some difficulty that you’ve had to go through. Maybe working with somebody that’s really, really difficult. You might have got angry, you might have had to ended up crying, you might have thought many times about giving up the job because working with this person is so difficult.
However, you keep persevering. You keep trying to not get upset by this person, keep your mind focused on doing your job, try and think about what might be going on in their life that causes them to be so difficult with you. But if you are able to work through that situation and later there is no problems with that person, that you can actually work quite well together. Somehow you’ve got the courage, haven’t you, that, well, if I could work with them, can work with anyone. I’ve been working up until a short time ago, and I was working for a very, very difficult man.
I’ve never worked for anyone as difficult in my life. I mean, I’ve certainly, I mean, we all have, you know, there’s been people that have been really, you know, that you just don’t get on with. Oh, this this man was unbelievable. And I kept thinking, I’m not going to let them worry me, but they did. I would go home upset.
I would be stewing about, you know, what am I going to say, how can I kind of get my message across to this person? And it got to a point that I now feel that having survived working with that person for a long period of time, that I can take on anyone. So you can see in your own life with examples like that, that being able to work through them develops more courage. Right? You’re able to withstand things more.
And so, similarly with subduing the delusions, with acquainting the mind with positive things, then again you develop the courage to be able to deal effectively with any situation. I like to use two words, reacting and responding. And I think in the majority of cases we tend to react in situations. Someone pushes the button, the button of our ego, you know, and we react, don’t we? We’re talking about here is rather than reacting, which reacting really hasn’t got us where we wanted to be so far, has it?
What we’re talking about is trying to respond. And the difference is, when you’re confronted with situation that’s undesirable for you, that you don’t like, if you react, you tend to see it negatively. Whereas if you respond, you’re looking for the positive in it. Two words, reacting and responding. I think most of us react.
Certainly when someone’s yelling at us, we react. But the idea is if you can transform it from the negative to the positive, from reacting to responding, then the experience of that situation becomes more tolerable. The experience of that situation, rather than it being distressing, becomes something like, well maybe I can do something here. Sometimes they call this type of thinking thought transformation. And you’ll hear all the kind of buzzwords in corporate culture these days, know, all these sort of motivational seminars: We don’t have problems, we have challenges.
Right? We’re talking about the same thing here. Rather than seeing something as a problem, you see it as a challenge, you see it as an opportunity. There are many, many different techniques within these thought transformation teachings within Buddhism. To see them positively, to see an undesirable experience as perhaps a means of you developing compassion for others.
Things like that. So in order to change our lives, to bring about a greater sense of happiness, which I think we all want, we certainly don’t want any more suffering, do we? Then the solution has to be to change your mind. And I hope I’ve just given you some helpful ways of trying to do that. So, I think I’ve probably talked enough, and if anyone’s got any questions, then I’d be delighted to try and answer them.
Any questions? That’s probably the main delusion attachment. Grief often comes from a failure. I don’t want use that word because it’s so negative, isn’t it? You’ve got be careful with words how you use them.
I think so many people don’t appreciate the fact of our existence is that we are born and that we die. And so when someone that we care very much about dies before us, then often it’s a shock we don’t expect them to die. So there is perhaps not a full understanding of the nature of our existence, that everything is subject to change. Everything is impermanent. What is born dies at some stage.
So I think that has some factor to play, but often attachment would probably be identified as the major delusion that would cause grief. But you know, I don’t think grief is necessarily something totally negative. The suffering of grief. So it’s a hard one. They would probably say attachment’s the main delusion.
But I think it’s an interesting question, that one. Interesting question. Yeah. Well again I think this is words. I think we have to be careful of words.
I think pride is seen to be a delusion. But self esteem is something And when we’re talking about trying to bring up children to have confidence in themselves so that they become a well rounded human being able to benefit themselves and others, then we’re talking more about developing self esteem. Pride is more of a negative way of thinking of, well, I’m better. Again, it of comes back to negatives and positives a lot, doesn’t it? Pride is the negative I’m better than.
The positive is more like a confidence and a positive way of viewing self esteem. What about the motivation? The motivation. Did I talk about motivation? Tonight?
Motivation is like the crucial thing. Whilst ever you have a motivation of benefiting others, then you won’t create non virtuous actions. You know? Like if you really, I mean, that’s a real generalization obviously, but if you have in your mind of benefiting others, then you won’t go about If I want benefit you, I’m not going go and kill you. If I want to benefit you, I’m not going to steal from you.
So motivation is a very, very important factor. And even in terms of when we talk about karma and the creation of a non virtuous action, there are many different factors that have to be present for it to be what they call complete action, and the intention is one of them. For example, stealing. There are several different things that have to be present for it to be a real complete action of stealing. One of them is the intention to take something away from somebody else, and the recognition that what you are going to take belongs to somebody else.
So again, the mind underneath is very, very important. Whilst it’s a mind like we’re stealing, it’s coveting belonging to somebody else. So it’s a delusion motivating you to do that action. If you have motivation of benefiting others, there’s just no way you’ll go and steal from someone else. So the underlying state of mind, the motivation is really important.
Again, it’s the motivation. So, I mean, we often talk there’s one example. Child runs across the road. Okay? If you say, there, there, dear.
Don’t run across the road. It’s dangerous. Are they going take much notice of you? Probably not. Right?
But if you’re quite forceful, don’t you run across the road. Don’t you realize it’s And sometimes they’ll go, Oh, yeah, righto mom. You know? Well, you’ve got to think what’s beneficial for them. Okay?
And what is your motivation? Is your motivation to make them do what you want to do, or is it your motivation for their benefit? Okay. Yeah, well generally. So just always check the motivation.
The motivation is one of love and compassion, trying to do the best thing you can for your child, or the family in general, rather than a selfish concern of getting your own way, then I see I don’t think you’d be angry. I think you’ve got to be careful about Anger is again, we’re talking about positives and negatives here, anger is more negative because it’s based on what you want, feeding your desires, your wants. Whereas you can be forceful, sometimes they use the word wrathful. Some people say wrathful. I say wrathful.
Okay. Very difficult, different because one’s motivated by compassion, one’s motivated by selfishness. Anger’s motivated by selfishness, but but wrath is motivated by compassion. So often, know, when you say, don’t you run across the road. Okay, sometimes it can be anger because you’ve had a shock or something like that.
But sometimes you need to have that level of strength and forcefulness with your words and your actions to get the message across. It’s based purely on compassion because you don’t want to see that person suffer. So just to be clear on definitions again, compassion is the wish for others to be free from suffering. Okay? Love is the wish for them to be happy.
Okay? So whenever you’re motivated by wishing them to be free from suffering, there’s compassion in that motivation. And even if you’re strong, forceful, then it’s not anger. Well, there are many different types of consciousness. I’ve just alluded to a few before, you know, there’s the sight sense, eye sense consciousness, the ear sense, like the hearing sense consciousness.
So there are different sort of levels of consciousness and mind, and so it’s just one aspect of the mind, those consciousnesses. So mind is sort of a term that encompasses them, but also encompasses, you know, the ability to cognize and things like that. Oh, I love. I love that kind of question. Well, from when we were talking about the mind before, okay, and I was explaining that it was something not physical, okay, it didn’t come from the biological cells.
But to get to the answer to your question is recognizing the continuity of the mind. That this moment of mind came from a previous moment of mind. It came from a previous moment of mind. Cause and effect kind of relationship here, but So, okay, so if it’s not something physical, yet obviously we’ve got it, okay? It didn’t okay.
Step back a bit. So, the mind of the embryo in the womb, where did it come from? If it came from the parents, and one parent was happy and one parent was angry, then if it came from both the parents, then you’d be happy and angry at the same time. So that’s not so, is it? You can’t be.
So also if it came from the parents, then you would have all of their knowledge. So if your mind came from your parents, you’d have all of their knowledge, but you don’t, do you? I like to think so, but unfortunately, I don’t. Okay. And also, if your mind came from the parents, then when there’s twins or when there’s brothers and sisters, then you should all have similar kind of dispositions, similar way of thinking.
But again, you can see that’s not true. Anyone that’s got brothers and sisters can see that often you’re very different, right? Okay, so looking at those kind of examples or reasonings, you come to the conclusion that the mind did not come from the parents. But there must have been a preceding moment of mind. So the first moment of mind of the embryo in the womb has had to come from somewhere else.
And so that’s come from it’s come from, you know, the previous life. So the mind goes from life to life to life. And because it’s not a physical thing, the mind, it’s able to pervade. It’s able to, you know, go through. It doesn’t sort of have, you know, a bit like ghosts I guess, but no, not quite.
But it’s able to penetrate, able to go through. So it’s this mind or this subtle wind energy that goes from life to life. And the mind resides in our body, it doesn’t actually reside out there somewhere, it resides in our body on these sort of subtle psychic energy nerve channels flowing through our body. And the body and the mind are very closely connected, interconnected. And that’s why when you’re agitated in your mind, there is a physical response.
And that’s why when you’re very calm, it can slow down the heartbeat, etc, etc. So they’re very closely related. Answering your question, I hope I’m answering your question. Yes, it comes from life to life. Does that answer you?
Love the mind. It’s entity. Yeah. Well, within Tibetan Buddhism, they document this quite closely. They talk about, at the moment, when a person dies, there’s a clinical death.
That’s normally when the heart stops beating or the lungs stop breathing. That will be the time of death written down on the death certificate. From a Western medical perspective, this is the time of death, it’s the clinical time of death. But from a Buddha’s perspective, the actual death doesn’t occur until the consciousness leaves the body, until the mind leaves the body. And that can actually occur sometime after the clinical death.
I think for the majority of us it’s only a couple of hours. In an accident they say that the mind pretty much straight away leaves. For very experienced meditators, they are able to maintain the slow dissolving of the mind in the body for quite a period of time after the clinical death. In fact, a year ago in New Zealand, one of my teachers passed away at three pm on a Friday. He sat in full meditation posture without any decaying of the body until the Tuesday afternoon, when the consciousness left his body and all of a sudden rolled over.
And I’ve heard I love these stories I’ve heard stories of meditators in very cold climates, as my mother pointed out to me. Actually sitting in meditation for a long period of time and the hair is still growing and the nail is still growing, but there’s no heartbeat and there’s no breathing. Know, and like twelve months I was told. I’ve heard stories. I haven’t actually seen with my own eyes and until I do I still have a little of skepticism.
Was your question again? Good, I knew I’d got off the track a bit. So when the clinical death happens, there’s still some time for the mind to actually exit the body. I’ve always found this fascinating and I’ve been very fortunate that there’s been a number of people who have asked me to be with them as they die. And so I’ve sat there for quite a period afterwards, trying to observe any sign because I heard that you can tell.
Definitely I feel that there is some change that takes place after a period of time. As I say, normally a few hours. Anyway, so the consciousness leaves the body. But it’s not again, it’s this very subtle sort of wind energy. So you can notice actually sometimes that the hair on the crown will move as it leaves the body.
Now it doesn’t come out that you can see anything there. It’s not like a bit of smoke or because it’s formless and shapeless, etc. It’s not anything that you can actually see as such. And so, when it sort of exits the body, it takes a rebirth immediately. Now it may not be the next life in terms of taking a human rebirth.
It’s what they call an intermediate state. And that intermediate state, they say, actually resembles what the next rebirth will actually be. Guess in a way, I mean when we talk about near death experiences, it’s normally, you know, people think they’ve died and they see lights and different things and then they come back into their body. But I guess that’s exiting. You’re probably right.
That’s probably quite close to it. I can’t remember. Yeah. Yeah. There have been stories.
There have been stories. But actually, I was just thinking there’s something I heard just a week or so ago. There have certainly been stories like they become ghosts and they come back around, but that’s really not the case from a Buddhist perspective. They’ve actually taken an intermediate state, rebirth, and then they will take the next rebirth. So from a Buddhist perspective, it’s not like they’re the ghosts that are coming around and moving the furniture.
They still say that when the person’s consciousness or mind in that intermediate state, they are still quite closely connected to the people that were close to them in their previous life. So it’s encouraged that if it’s someone that you’ve been close to who dies, that you say prayers for them and sort of try and wish them well to go on to the next rebirth whilst they are still in that intermediate state. There is still some ability to I don’t know how all this works, it’s sort of like radio signals to me I guess. There is still some impact it can have during that time. It varies.
They say, and I mean, they say, I don’t know. I haven’t actually, I can’t remember this myself. I’ve not actually been there witnessing all this. It’s said that each seven days after the death, there is another what they call small death. And it’s at that point that they can actually take rebirth.
Rebirth in next life, or rebirth as another intermediate being. And they say that can go on for up to seven weeks. So like forty nine days is often considered to be the period of time that you say a lot of prayers for someone who’s been dying to help them take a good rebirth. But some people may, after the seven days, take immediate rebirth. Whether that happens or not is dependent upon their karma, the actions that they’ve created in the path.
Yes, yes, yes. It can be, it’s up to forty nine days, but some people will take their next life rebirth after seven, some after twenty one, some after, you know. So it just depends on your karma when that will happen. So there’s not definitely, you will definitely be there for a hundred days or anything like that. Yeah.
But that intermediate rebirth is not like in a form like this. The intermediate rebirth is not a form like this. It’s, how can I describe it? It takes an appearance or a vision like appearance. I guess that’s probably the best way to to describe it.
Is that making sense? Yeah. It’s There’s a couple of good books to read. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which you’ve probably all heard about. Another book is Death, Intermediate State and Rebirth by I think Lati Rinpoche.
That’s probably one of the best ones to read. Oh, this is getting very deep. Very, very deep. Well, our time is pretty subjective anyway. I mean, what is time?
You know? Yeah. So it’s oh, I find that hard to describe. I think there is still the appearance of time like we know it, for the intermediate state. But then for the type of rebirth, then the concept of time can be actually quite different, depending on what the rebirth is.
Because of course from a Buddhist perspective, it’s not always going to be a human rebirth. And this could freak you all out. From a Buddhist perspective, you can take rebirth as an animal. From a Buddhist perspective, you can take rebirth as different kinds of beings which we have got absolutely no concept of. And there are also rebirths as formless beings and things like that.
Quite hard to conceptualise. Not like a chair, but formless like not with form like this. Absolutely. Absolutely. But there’s nobody out there with a big slate, you know, sort of saying, ah, she did lots of non-virtuous actions, therefore down there.
It’s not like that. I mean, it’s not like someone making a judgment for you. This is why karma is such an important thing from a Buddhist perspective, because it’s up to you. It’s your personal responsibility. A Buddhist perspective, if you want to be sure that you don’t take what we call a lower rebirth, which is like being born an animal or being born in the hell realms, which is where the time thing is quite different, then to prevent that happening, you need to create the causes for it not to happen.
You need to create the causes for obtaining a future rebirth or a better rebirth. Within Buddhism, there are many scopes, certainly one of them is to try and aspire for a better rebirth next time. It’s said that a negative action leaves a negative imprint or a negative seed in the mind, which later manifests as suffering state. Mhmm. And I can understand how that might be Did everyone hear that?
Yeah. That’s a good question. What do other people think? Yeah, yeah. The tree falling on your house or the person that goes into the back of your car are the conditions for you to experience the suffering result.
Whether I suffer or not, you just bump into the car. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so the negative actions, when they put an imprint on your mind stream or a seed or whatever, they they it just like sits there, you know.
And then when the conditions come about, then it can ripen. So the conditions are like, you go to plant a seed, okay, but for that seed to germinate and to grow into a flower, you need the conditions of water and fertilizer and sunshine and things like that. So similarly, you might have the imprint on your mind stream from a previous negative action, and the conditions ripening like tree falling on your house, cause that seed to ripen and you have that undesirable experience, that suffering. It’s a condition. It’s your karma to experience the suffering as a result of that, but it’s not your karma that caused that tree to fall over.
Time to go, isn’t it? Oh, well, don’t think I can set myself up as being Buddhist expert on this. I don’t know. I mean, they say that the mind enters or takes rebirth when the sperm meets the egg at the time of the actual conception. So, if you’ve got test tubes, right, then, you know, that’s happening then.
But they say they say that is generally, generally, the mind takes rebirth at the union of the sperm and the egg, generally. And actually this came up, not this actual question, but I was talking about test tube babies the other day, and this is what came up was that it says generally that’s when it takes place. So maybe with the test tube babies, it hasn’t actually taken place until it gets implanted into the womb. I don’t know. I don’t know one hundred percent.
I mean, it’d be worthwhile checking with some people that makes Right. Mhmm. Mhmm. Right. It cannot.
So therefore, excuse me. Yeah. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Imagine the poor pig. Right. So therefore, destroying these frozen embryos is not a problem. But you’re not actually destroying life. Right.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Right. Very interesting. Yeah.
Just containing potential. But this the same thing. We were just saying that Geshe Doga was saying, like I explained earlier, the consciousness taking place at the time that seeds come together. But see, I was having teachings in Melbourne with Geshe Doga, my teacher, last week, and he made this thing about generally that’s what happens, but of course with test tube things it’s different. That’s what he said.
I’ve actually probably got my notes. I’ll look them up tonight anyway when I get home. No, no, no. He made this kind of condition word generally. So, it’s I think an interesting sort of ethical debate.
I’d like to ask His Holiness Dalai Lama that question. From a Buddhist perspective, it’s a negative action to kill or to take life. Okay? But myself personally, as a Buddhist practitioner, I wouldn’t dream of judging somebody else’s actions in that regard. Okay?
Yeah, okay. I mean, from a karmic perspective, you know, are different levels of the power of the karma, how heavy it is, I guess. But it’s still considered to be a non virtuous action because the consciousness has taken place. The mind has entered into the union of the sperm and the egg. So from a Buddhist perspective, that is still considered to be a non virtuous action.
Probably. Make sure you speak very loudly for everyone. Parents. But you do carry the genes from both your parents. Yeah.
Your body has come from your parents. You’re carrying the genes from your parents. Ah, but it’s not the same as the mind. No, no, no. I was talking before about the continuity of the mind, okay?
And and also, when one moment of mind came from the previous moment of mind. So therefore, if the first moment of mind in the embryo, in utero, came from the parents, then it should have been what they were just thinking, or their previous moment of mind. But it’s not. Because and and if it was, then that you should have all the knowledge that they had had in that previous moment of mind. That’s what we’re getting to.
Yeah. I think there’s a certain amount of logic and then there comes to a certain amount of, well, faith. I think Kaye’s spoken quite a lot. I’m sure it’s something. I think he’s trying to shut me up. Yeah.
At least Alright. Last then you outside. Last two. Leslie and then this lady. Yep.
Yep. Well, I think, primarily, it’s to from a Buddhist perspective, the major goal is to achieve a state of enlightenment or complete awakening or Buddhahood. And so that state is where fully perfected your wisdom and your compassion and completely removed, you know, all the kind of negative karmas purified. And so, an experienced meditator can use that death experience as a means to achieve enlightenment. So if they’re able control the experience of their death, like clinically they’ve died, but they’re still in a meditation.