Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 84-minute exploration of the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation, Venerable Lobsang Namgyel guides a group of practitioners through the nuanced ethical terrain of the text by working through live questions. He begins with a central problem: how to condemn negative actions without condemning the person doing them, and how to understand karma and delusion without condoning harm. He then moves into the practice of transforming enemies into teachers, emphasizing that an enemy’s hostility is often an appearance or label we have placed on them rather than something intrinsic. Throughout, he stresses the distinction between a wrathful face adopted for compassionate reasons and anger disguised as wrathful compassion, cautioning against self-deception. A substantial portion addresses romantic love and attachment in Western and Eastern contexts, arguing that conditional love tied to expectations and reciprocation differs fundamentally from the unconditional love of a bodhisattva. He illustrates this through the lens of self-cherishing, the self that arises whenever we expect something in return, and explains how this subtle grasping creates suffering. The talk weaves together philosophy with storytelling—anecdotes about raising Lama Osel, choosing a compassionate doctor over an arrogant one, and the difficulty of assessing motivation in ethical dilemmas. He closes with the shared dedication of merit using Śāntideva’s verse, anchoring the day’s teaching in practical compassion.
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File: 2011 10 01 Ven Namgyel – 06 – Sat 1st Oct.mp3
UUID: 3bb78768-3532-476c-886b-7d99fe594a12
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: 8 Verses Thought Transformation (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Date: 2011-10-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 83.7 minutes
Words: ~10,195
Who is in group one? Only you. Alone. The lonely group. Yes.
Who’s your reporter? You. Surprise. Just me alone. Tell me.
Any questions or comments? I see. Okay. Two. Good evening.
Good. Juicy. I think it’s the lady behind you. Yeah. Who was it?
You, you, And you? Oh, that must be an interesting group. Yeah. Right. I don’t know if we’re supposed to accept the action.
But I I think you’re right in what you’re saying in that when we’re talking about, say, somebody stealing. Right? So you have a person who’s stealing. So then, can you see the person as causing the stealing or, doing the stealing through karma and delusion. We can understand it from that point of view, but can we condone the stealing?
Right? So Buddha didn’t say condone negative actions because then there wouldn’t be any karmic teachings. You wouldn’t have the ten non virtues. So Buddha wouldn’t have said, don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie like this. He wouldn’t have said that.
He would have said, any action is okay. Don’t worry about it. But what he actually said was avoid these negative actions. They don’t turn you into a bad person. But what they do is they create the potential for you to receive the result and for you to harm others.
So how by harming others can you have happiness? How is this possible? So there’s a it’s true what you’re saying. There’s a difference between the person doing the action and the action. Condemn the action.
That’s okay. Condemn the self-cherishing that caused the action. That’s okay. Where does the action come from? You know, you want to remove the self-cherishing.
But can you say, oh, it’s okay. No problem. You know? You hurt others. No problem.
You can’t say it like this. So I I think the way you’re you’re viewing it is right. It’s the right thing. What did they think? You agree?
There’s a difference between the person and the action, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s a good point. So are you judging the action or the person doing the action? Right.
Yeah. Not to judge. There’s many who will do that. Don’t need to add add ourselves into that. But, yeah, if you see I’m trying to think of an example.
A mother in the supermarket, you know, just to take a simple example. So a mother in the supermarket with a two year old child, and the two year old’s taking all the stuff off the shelves, and the mother’s getting really hassled. And then you see the mother slap the child. Right? Immediately, the mind can think, oh, that’s not right.
You know, she shouldn’t hit that child. The problem is you can’t see what’s going on in the mind of the person doing the action. This is the difficulty. They could be a Bodhisattva. They could be a Buddha doing incredibly high level practices, or it could be an ordinary person with karma and delusion.
Very difficult to say. So we have to react on our conventional level. Right? We have to think conventionally. We can’t keep thinking, oh, any action is okay.
I don’t need to protect that person because that they must be a Buddha doing doing that action. So I think, in the case of a mother hitting a child, would you accept that situation? Would you judge the mother, or would you judge the action? And even in the action, it’s difficult. It’s problematic.
Because in the Bodhisattva vows, it says, if there’s a wrathful action that you should do in order to stop negative behavior, you should do it. This is where it becomes difficult. Yeah. It’s hard to know. I mean, I often give the example of the mother who loves the child.
I mean, mothers love children, their child, usually. And you’re walking you know, the mother’s walking with the child along the street, and the child wants to keep running into the street. And there’s a great danger of that child dying by running into the street. And so the mother keeps saying, come back. Come back.
Very sweetly, come back. And the child is so difficult, it doesn’t listen, and it wants to run out. So then the mother shows a wrathful face. Stop stop doing that. You know?
And by showing this different face, the child listens. But the mother is doing it only through love and compassion. That’s that’s a different thing. That’s different. And and that’s hard to know when the mother’s doing it that way.
Mother has to eat her child. It’s reflection on her. Usually. Yeah. Yeah.
But sometimes you have children who don’t listen. Right? And so if if, the mother totally loves the child, she will try any way she can in order to protect that child, and sometimes it’s wrathful. But the problem with wrathful, big problem, is I usually say to people, don’t think you can be wrathful because wrathful means you are compassionate. Without any anger, you’re showing a heavy, angry sort of face.
You know, it’s like putting a mask, the Japanese mask. It’s like you’ve changed mask, but your heart is totally peaceful, totally loving, totally there for the other person. How can we do that without the feeling? You know, me, I arising. So often people come into Buddhism and they hear about compassion, wrathful compassion, and they they say, in order to hide their negative actions, I’m being wrathful.
And they’re not being wrathful. They’re angry. Right? So it depends on the motivation, and it depends on whether you have your mind under control. So I usually say, don’t cheat yourself.
Call anger anger. Call irritability irritability. Don’t call it wrathful. Right? So in judging the action, we also need to be a little bit careful because we sometimes we don’t know all the circumstances.
We don’t know the whole thing. And what we’re doing is we’re trying to protect our minds from becoming negative. And then by not becoming negative, perhaps we can see more clearly than if we became emotional, if we had this emotional reaction. And then with a calm mind, think, well, what can I do? How can I do it?
How could I benefit in this situation? It’s a bit more complicated than just having a reaction. In order to put a pause, you know, you see a negative action. What you think is negative, you put a pause, and then you check. What can I do?
How can I think of you know, it’s a bit more complicated? But the, the ability to not react in a negative way gives you more choices. It’s like you’re working with wisdom. Then there’s this this this. But with reaction, there’s only one.
I react, and I do what I normally do. So in order to not have that reaction, we need to take away the self-cherishing, the I, and just see it as it is. What could I do about it? So you you brought up a a hairy issue. It’s an uncomfortable issue.
You know? And I think in our society, you know, there’s so much talk now about abuse, about, you know, beating, you know, all these sort of abuses. And so we can’t you know, as a teacher anyway, I don’t want to sound make it sound like abuse is acceptable. Right? Because it’s not.
I don’t believe in in beating children at all, but I also know children can be very difficult. And so, you know, you can’t say never because it’s the mother’s responsibility, the father’s responsibility. I think you have to have incredible love and compassion in your heart to be able to beat without anger. And I would say with most parents, they’ve got to a frustration where it becomes anger and then then they hit. And that’s not acceptable.
Because when you hit like that, the child is receiving the communication, I don’t like you. Anger is the opposite of love. So what you’re communicating to the child is, I don’t love you. I’m angry. Right?
And is that the sort of communication we want to have with the child? So these are all the Buddhist issues that we wouldn’t talk about out there, but these are the issues we have to talk about. I don’t have all the answers, but I think at least we need to discuss these sort of things so that we make some sort of decision. What do we believe? How would I live if I had a very difficult child?
I’ve I lived with Lama Osel for one year. He was a very difficult child. Very difficult. And, then you have to really go to your principles that no matter what you do, I’m not going to get angry, you know, because I could see what what he would do. He’d go in, and he’d he was playing with you inside like this, you know, for when he was five years of age, six years of age.
He was very difficult. And a child really is the teacher. In his case, he was very he was very much the teacher. But, anyway, the child the child is the teacher. Yeah.
But in his case, he was the teacher because it’s Lama Yeshe. So he’s got Lama Yeshe’s mind, but in a child’s body. So unless you respect him as Lama Yeshe, then you start to think this is just a child. But, since him, I don’t see any child as just a child. I think they’re all extraordinary.
I see extraordinary children all over the place because you look for the extraordinary in the child even when they’re being difficult. But I’d go to bed at twelve o’clock at night. You know, Lama Osel would be awake all day from six in the morning till twelve o’clock at night, all day. He would not stop. Five.
And then I’d say in the afternoon, you should rest, meaning I should rest. You know? And he would not rest. And so I would eighteen hours a day, I was with him. And then I go to bed, and I think, oh, at last at last at least I can sleep.
And he’d wake me up at three o’clock in the morning. I need to go to the bathroom. And I said, go to the bathroom. You don’t need me. And he say, I can’t go alone.
You have to come with me. So then and it was always the night when I’d think, at least I can get six hours sleep. You know? He’d wake me up. The nights when I wouldn’t think it, he wouldn’t wake me up.
So then you start to think, oh, something’s going on here. You know? He he was great at poking and prodding and not memorizing. He had to memorize four four new lines of Tibetan every day, and he didn’t speak Tibetan. So he had to learn four new lines every day.
And some days, he’d do it, just saying, We could finish in twenty minutes. And some days, we’d spend three hours, four hours, and you’d forget the last one, then forget this one and messing around. And then you can feel your your tension building. You know? Why are you doing this to me?
And then I thought, no. I’m not gonna get upset about this. Okay. You stay there. I’m going outside.
The thing he really hated was to be alone. So I had to find what he didn’t like and then apply that, you know. So he didn’t like to be alone. So I said, okay. You stay in the room.
I’m going outside. And I don’t like sitting in the sun, but I’d have to sit in the sun. So I’m sitting in the sun, like, pretending like I’m sunbathing, having a great time, but I’m actually thinking I’m cooking and I I hope this doesn’t take very long before I get burnt, you know. And he’s screaming and screaming, you know. This is in Copan.
He’s on the top of the monastery and he’s screaming. Not like this. And but I just leave him, and he’s screaming and screaming. And then he’s crying, and then he comes to the toilet and he says, alright. I’ll do it.
You know, like this. So all the monks were convinced I was beating him every single day. You know? Because day after day, we went through this struggle of, okay. You don’t wanna do it?
I leave you alone. And he’d scream and scream. And so, years and years later, I was in Copan, and one of the monks said, anyway, you’re not a nice person. And I said, I’m not? And he said, no.
We all know you used to beat Lama Osel every single day. I said, I never touched him. Well, he was screaming every day. And I said, yeah, because this is what I used to do. But they they thought I was beating and beating and beating, but I couldn’t, you know, because I think this is Lama Yeshe.
Then how can you beat Lama Yeshe? This is awful. And if you think like that about a normal child, this is a Buddha. How can you beat a Buddha? Then if you think in the relationship, this is Tārā or this is Buddha, how could you be abusive?
You know? That’s where this way of thinking turns your mind because if there’s an inkling, this is a Buddha or a potential Buddha, your mind completely changes. You couldn’t do it. So there’s the the person as opposed to the action. You know?
You’re seeing the perfect person. It’s really good in a relationship to see, or it could be a mother daughter relationship, or it could be a relationship, but see the other person as something very valuable, a jewel. Then how could you be abusive? How could you steal from them? How could you lie to them?
You know? How could you go there if they were perfect? And then from the other side, if you think they do a negative action, but they’re perfect. So why are they doing this action? That’s another interesting thing.
You know, a friend of mine was in the school of dialectics in Dharmasala. He was a monk and, studied Tibetan and did debate. And we used to say to him, do you know? You’re the only person in this universe who’s not a Buddha. We’re all enlightened, and you’re the last person who’s not enlightened.
So because of you, saṃsāra still exists. And the day that you become enlightened, saṃsāra will disappear. And you used to get so upset because there’s no way that you can disprove this. You can’t disprove anybody’s not a Buddha. Right?
So he say, we’re all Buddhas. We’re only here to help you. You’re the last one, you know. Hurry up. Then we can all go.
So if you think all beings around you are Buddhas, helping you to become enlightened, or even the negative actions can turn into something positive. What does this teach me? If somebody’s stealing from me, what does it teach me? Not to steal. Right?
Protect others’ belongings. If they’re lying to me, what does it teach me? I’ve lied. This is coming back to me, and I don’t like it. And when I don’t like it, then don’t do it.
It gives you a very strong principle to work from. So even when you see negative actions, this can be a teaching. What you see is what you’ve done before, and so therefore, don’t do it. It can that can be very helpful too. But, yeah, I think separate between the person and the action.
This is really good. Yeah. Thank you. To act on the compassion for the enemy. Again, I think it depends on the situation because what are you going to do?
You have an enemy, and, usually, we would dislike the enemy. Right? But now we’ve decided this is a person I would normally dislike that I would normally not talk to, but I am going to transform my mind. I’m going to do something about this label enemy. Because is the enemy real or not?
Is the enemy empty of or are they really the enemy? So from the shunyata point of view, the enemy doesn’t exist the way we thought. There’s just a base, and on that base, we’re putting the label enemy. So from the other person’s side, they’re not enemy. We’re deciding enemy.
Usually, in these thought transformation things, we’re usually talking about somebody who doesn’t like you rather than you disliking them. You know? This is quite different. If, you’re just out there doing your thing, and then somebody says, I really don’t like you. What have I done?
Nothing. I just don’t like you. That’s quite different than you deciding from your own mind, your own way of thinking, I don’t like that person. Right? So when they don’t like you, it seems unreasonable.
What have I done? You know, you lie awake at night thinking, what did I do? Is it my hair color? Is it the clothes I wear? What?
What? No answer. Right? So then what do you do with that type of situation? Are you really the enemy, or you’re you’re an appearance of the enemy?
So then if you’re just the appearance of the enemy, you can let it go. You could just let it go. But our concern as Buddhists would be, if there’s an enemy and there’s a reaction, the person who’s reacting is creating negative karma. So your concern as baby bodhisattvas can we call you baby bodhisattvas? It’s quite nice, isn’t it?
Baby bodhisattvas is, are you protecting the other? Not yourself. Our concern is always with ourselves and protecting ourselves. People often ask me, what’s the line? And I said, well, when you’re ordinary, there’s a line.
When you’re extraordinary, there’s no line at all. Right? So the line, if you want to make a line, is how far can they go before you draw the line to stop them from negative behavior, from creating future causes of suffering, that would be your compassion. I don’t want you to suffer. So you can’t lecture them.
Listen. I know I don’t like you. Actually, I hate you, but I’m gonna tell you something. You know? Blah blah blah blah.
No. No. Thank you. I don’t wanna listen to you. You don’t like me, and I don’t like you.
Like that. No communication. Right? So what can we do when there’s an enemy? Whether it’s an enemy from our side or an enemy from their side, the most skillful thing to do is to try and avoid them creating more negative thoughts and more negative actions.
So if that means removing yourself from their area, from seeing you. That’s what you could do. Or skillfully trying to arrange situations so that they can reduce their negative actions. That’s what you could do. Or maybe there’s nothing you can do at all.
But your main concern is, I don’t want you to suffer. Therefore, I want to protect you from doing more negative actions. That’s your baby bodhisattva behavior, the best. You know? Because if we keep trying to protect ourselves, there’s a sense of, something worth protecting.
So what’s worth protecting? Our self-cherishing. It’s a self-cherishing protecting itself with its force field, you know, around itself. That’s not worth protecting. So attack that.
Protect the other. And by protecting the other, automatically, you protect yourself. You’ll be okay because you’re protecting others. Does that make sense? Yeah?
Any other? Gosh. That’s an interesting question. I’ve never heard that one before. Well, while you don’t have realization of emptiness, Every emotion would have the basis of ignorance.
I exist. I grasp onto that I. I cherish that I. So therefore, without the realization of emptiness, all emotions would be tainted by I, I ness. Right?
So your compassion, your love. What’s love? You know? Oh, I love you so much. Do you love me?
You know? That that sort of thing. Right? Romantic love. Oh, I love you so much.
It’s usually connected to attachment, isn’t it? So love means I’m attached to you. Therefore, you’re mine. So, you know, I get hold. You’re mine.
And then if it’s reciprocal, which is often what we want when it’s romantic love and you’re mine from both sides. So is attachment something healthy or not? self-cherishing or not? We can see it with attachment, that self-cherishing, producing attachment is not healthy, is not something that, works. Because from self from self-cherishing comes attachment, comes jealousy, comes anger, you know, comes negative emotions.
So very much we want to remove this sort of romantic attachment and have, a love that isn’t attached. So this is it’s a healthier situation, but it’s based on wisdom. The eye being removed. We haven’t removed the eye. We still have the eye.
So we’re playing around a little bit. You know? It’s a little bit like we we play games slightly because we don’t have realizations. But it’s better than being full on into saṃsāra, creating incredible causes of suffering and problems. So I think we have to go in stages.
You know, we can’t go from where we are to enlightened beings without stages. We have to go to the next step, the next step. And so in this conversation that you have with yourself and with others, you start to investigate, anger. Where does anger come from? self-cherishing?
You did something to me. I don’t like it. I’m angry. You want to react. Right?
Then we understand self-cherishing, anger. Okay. Now say compassion. What would be the basis of compassion for me right now? Not how I would like to be, but me right now, I see suffering.
Me doing something could be self-cherishing, wanting to remove the suffering. Right? So you can see how even subtly, when we’re doing things for others, there can be the feeling of me doing it, and you notice it. I often say to people, take this as an example, Christmas. Christmas is coming.
You buy the gifts, you give them, nobody says thank you, and nobody gives you a gift back. What would you do? Would you keep quiet? Difficult? Did you forget something?
No? Oh, did you like the gift I gave you? Yeah. It was great. Thanks so much.
But imagine, nobody gives you anything back. Following year, you buy gifts. You give them. Nobody gives gifts back. How long would you give gifts for?
I don’t think you’d go on forever. One year, two years, three years. But it would be really difficult, this selfless giving. Right? The perfection of giving.
Can you imagine doing it for very long when nobody is reciprocating? Really hard. So there’s the self, the self that arises and says, but what about me? You know? So in very subtle ways and also very gross ways, we find the self arising and itself and self-cherishing.
One is the self that has an appearance but doesn’t really exist, that self. And then because that self is appearing, we grasp onto it and say, me, mine, I. You know? There’s a definite appearance. Like, it exists.
And then we cherish. We take care of it. You’re alright. You know, do you want some more popcorn? It’s it’s a bit like this.
You know, we’re referring to it. Do you need more? Are you alright? And from that comes the negative actions. And from that comes Samsāra, which is not where we want to be.
Samsāra is a really shitty place to be. You know, I tell you. We’re interior designing Samsāra. We’re moving around the furniture, but it’s not a good place to be. It’s about time we stopped interior designing Samsāra and decided enough is enough.
I’m getting out. I want out. You know? I just don’t want to suffer in here anymore. So see the suffering for what it is.
Don’t put chocolate on it. Don’t put Nutella on it. See it as it is, and use that as a cause for developing renunciation, for letting go of saṃsāra. But while we stay in saṃsāra, there is no perfection. Cannot find perfection because everything is karma and delusion.
Right? So everything is from the I, from the ignorance, and then as a result of that, tainted by ignorance. So our compassion, our love, our kindness, even all the positives tainted by our ignorance, but more positive than the negative actions, which are only harmful. So don’t use what I’m saying as an excuse. Oh, well, the compassion is ignorant.
The love the love is ignorant. The anger is ignorant. So it’s okay. You know? Not like that.
The negative emotions do harm, you and others. The positive emotions don’t harm. The love and the compassion without the attachment doesn’t harm. So what’s the harmful part? The attachment.
Work on the attachment. You know? And then gradually reduce the attachment, And then you don’t get this, you know, the feeling in the heart. When you have attachment, you get this pain. Why are you doing this to me?
That goes. Okay? I went on about that a lot because you’re young and beautiful. You need to know about attachment. Right?
As you get older, you’ll find out. You’ll remember these words. In our society, I think there’s an attachment fan club, isn’t it? Very hard to understand attachment, detachment because when we talk about detachment, it seems like there’s no feeling. It’s very much a feeling, but it’s without the clinging and the grasping, your mind.
So this is what we really need to investigate. How would it be if I loved, if I had compassion, but without the clinging and the grasping? It’s not emotionless. There’s still a very strong emotion. I really want you to be happy.
I want you to not suffer, without that, you know, you’re mine. This is really complicated. But when you’re special people, you can think about this. You’re special. You know?
Because when ordinary is, attachment rules. We love attachment. You know? On the courses in Nepal and India, people have big problems with letting go of attachment. Don’t like the idea at all.
So just starting to work on it starts to take away the value of it. This is a good direction to go. Any more? No. I think I think it was Excellent.
Thank you. Love. Love. Magda, love. But you feel you feel it.
Well, you’d have wisdom, love, compassion replace the negative emotions. Right? So when you’re talking about being a Bodhisattva, you’re replacing a positive set of emotions with the negative. Right? So when we’re talking about attachment, love with attachment, love with detachment, The emotion or the the quality that you’re developing is renunciation, so letting go.
But still, there’s a great concern and a kindness and a love for the other person because you want them to be happy. But the wanting them to be happy doesn’t have a condition in it, which is I want you to be happy so that I can be happy. You suffer when you put that condition in there. It’s conditional love. Right?
Unconditional love is, I want you to be happy, and that’s it. But if you say, want you to be happy in order for me to be happy, you put a loop into it. So when the loop doesn’t come back, you’re not making me happy. I’m not responsible for my happiness. You’re responsible for making me happy.
That’s when we start to feel there’s something wrong. I mean, also, there has to be trust. Right? There has to be faith. There has to be trust.
You can’t or you I think you find it very difficult to be in a relationship where you believe everything is good between you, but actually the other person’s not in that relationship the way you think. I think you’re what we call an in the womb bodhisattva. I’ve had to retract my statement of baby bodhisattva. You have gone back. You are back into the womb, even conception.
Well, maybe this is something to really think about because we do have expectations. And when we have expectations, expectations will inevitably be trashed, rubbished, thrown in the bin sometimes, a lot of the time. Know, I mean, one of the major causes of emails to me is one of the major causes of emails is I had an expectation, whatever the expectation was. And in reality, what happened was something else. And, it just happened two days ago.
A Spanish boy I know wants to transcribe my teachings, so he has very good motivation. So he spoke to his father who has a flat south of Barcelona. And can I use this flat to do some meditation and some transcribing? And the father says, yeah. Yeah.
No problem. So then the father has a girlfriend and, a friend who then decided they wanted to visit that flat. So they call and say, in two days, we’re going to be visiting. And he says, no. No.
No. No. Don’t do that. I’m in a sort of retreat doing meditation and transcribing. So she said, oh, okay.
A couple of days more, her friend calls a man and says very abusively, how dare you shouting at him, you know, and you can’t stop us from coming, and we’re coming. So then this Spanish boy wrote to me, and he said, I had very good intentions. This is what I wanted to do, blah blah blah. And I said, yeah. You had a very good projection of how it was going to be, and your karma turned it into something else.
This is your self-cherishing. So you have to accept. From their side, they have a different way of viewing the situation, and you have to let go. So today, he wrote to me and he said, you’re completely right. The minute I let go and could communicate, the whole thing changed again.
But while you’re defending your indefensible position, more and more trouble appears. So I understand what you mean. Mean, when you get into a relationship, want to believe that the other person believes what you believe, isn’t it? You want a harmony in the relationship. You give, they give.
But like I said, Christmas, say you kept giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, and you never get anything back. How long would you love for? Isn’t our love wanting something back? That’s what you have to research, you know, more and more deeply. It’s I love, I want you to be happy in order for you to make me happy.
And when there’s that hook there, inevitably, sooner or later, something will happen where you think, I don’t think that person loves me because they did that. You know? They didn’t realize the hook was there. So can we just give? Loving, giving, you know, can we?
As Westerners, our conditioning is very much about it coming back. Very much. You know? So I think all we can do at this stage is just talk, think about it. Is it possible?
I mean, you need a pretty enlightened boyfriend or girlfriend. You know? They need to be pretty cluey to be able to deal with this stuff. Because if you’ve got two opposing positions, one is the unconditional giving of love, and the other one was the giving of love with attachment, how’s the relationship going to be? It’s a bit difficult, isn’t it?
The the meeting of those two minds, two emotions, I think, is is problematic. So you need somebody on the same wavelength. And what usually happens with people who are in an ordinary relationship and one of the people starts to become involved in dharma, the relationship often becomes rocky because one person changes, the other stays the same, and then you can have a problem with emotional communication. That’s where the problem happens. So I know in Western Western lifestyle, Western concepts, this stuff is really difficult because we’ve it’s very ingrained in us that we must have attachment and expectations and virtually a contract before marriage.
Ganesh, I’m looking for the Indian point of view now. It’s different, isn’t it? Yes. Still there. Yes.
Yes. Yeah. There’s no divorce. But now divorce has started to happen in India, unfortunately. But in your family, they have arranged marriage.
So they pick somebody for you. That’s why you’re not going home. But this is what happens, isn’t it? They find the suitable girl and you don’t know her, and you have to quickly meet, get to know her, and then you get married. And often it works, but they start out like, neutral people, become friends.
So, I think I saw a program about this where they were asking, so do those marriages work as well as Western marriages? And they discovered that Indian marriages work much better because they start out in a neutral position and become friends rather than being based on, concepts of you’re perfect, you’re you’re incredible, and then you you come down, you know, after a year or two, you see all the problems, but in the beginning, you didn’t see the problems at all. So I think six of one and half a dozen of other, but it’s according to society. Indian society was very different. And I think this idea of arranged marriage is is quite interesting.
Yes. Yes. Yeah. This is true. Yeah.
When you think of what are you looking for in somebody, often it is like a refuge, isn’t it, that they they complete me? I’m a jigsaw puzzle, and they’re the piece of the puzzle. And then everything will be good. And without that piece, I’ve got something missing. I mean, it sounds a little bit unhealthy just from that concept of looking for a piece to to complete me.
Whereas in in the Indian marriages, I think the parents very much look at the the nature, the personality of the boy, the girl, and try and find a good match on two people who will become friends. And some of them that I know, they they fall in love. They later fall in love. But in the beginning, they start out as two strangers and then stay together fifty years. So it it’s quite interesting.
Emotions are very it’s a sticky subject, isn’t it? Because we’re very connected to our emotions and our reaction from the emotions. So you don’t think you’re going to have an arranged marriage? Maybe you will. Maybe you will.
But do your parents keep writing to you and saying, Ganesh, it’s time? Yeah. Yeah. I know. This is Indian parents, isn’t it?
Yeah. I know Indian friends, you know, who are overseas, and they say, oh, every week my mother says to me, you know, it’s time, isn’t it? So the from the an Indian point of view, this is an extremely important occasion. It’s not your occasion. It’s their the family’s occasion, isn’t it?
So this is quite different from a Western society where it’s the decision of two people, not the whole family. In an Indian way, it’s the whole family. I think with Tibetans, it was, I think it was also arranged. But now with the young Tibetans, it’s love marriages. It’s they’re falling in love.
No. They don’t have a ceremony. There was no Buddhist ceremony of of marriage. It was if one person wants to marry somebody else, they go to the lama of the village, and they’d ask the blessing of the lama. And the lama would say, yeah.
Yeah. I give my blessing. Okay. Off you go. And that was it.
But once you got the blessing of the lama, it was like a seal. You know? A holy seal, so you stay together. But then they had, what’s it called? Polygamy, isn’t it?
Where the polyandry or polygamy? Poly something. Two. Two. Yeah.
So the the brothers share one wife, and then that means there’s not too many children. So this is to protect the population of Tibet, which was very fragile. You know? They kept the population about six million, I think. It was a small population because it’s mostly farming three months of the year.
You can’t have a huge boom in population. So then I also used to wonder about, well, if one girl is married to three boys or four boys, how do they manage the jealousy issues? You know? So I asked the Tibetans, well, how do you manage? They said, jealousy?
Don’t get it. They don’t have this concept of jealousy. They hang a hat. I think it was something like they hang a hat on the door. If the wife is with this brother tonight, there’s a hat hanging on his door.
So she’s with him, and that’s it. She’s not available tonight. She’s busy, but there’s no jealousy. They have their own other problems, but the doesn’t seem jealousy was a problem. Now will the jealousy be a problem in modern Tibet?
I think so. You can see that Tibetan emotions are changing in relation to Western society. When they come to the West, they seem to develop Western emotions. So, maybe it’s a a learned response, which in Buddhism would be the conditions are triggering previous negative karma with the emotions from past lives in response to the conditions. So if you don’t see any jealousy around you, there’s no conditions to promote jealousy.
Jealousy doesn’t arise. But if you change society where there’s jealousy, jealousy can arise. Ganesh. I just want to say on my behalf. Say that again?
In order to experience positive emotions. Well, I think it would depend on whether you count ignorance as an emotion. I don’t think ignorance is an emotion, but ignorance, by its nature triggers self grasping and then self-cherishing. And then self-cherishing, we would call an emotion. And so in order to do, say, a good action of picking somebody off off the street, you know, you see somebody lying in the street, your motivation for picking them up might not be pure.
So if there’s an impurity there, it would be ignorance, self grasping, self-cherishing, picking the person off the street. So the action is good, but it it’s I think it’s nearly impossible to have a perfect action when you’re still in saṃsāra. The action always has a a tainted quality to it. But very small, it can be extremely small, but it means it’s just not perfect until you have realization of emptiness. And then even until eighth level bodhisattva, you have gross delusion.
After eighth level bodhisattva, you have subtle delusion. So this is pretty amazing. You have wisdom. You have compassion. And until eighth level bodhisattva, you’re manifesting numerous forms.
You’re able to do incredible incredible things, but still you have gross delusion until eighth level. Then nine, ten, you have subtle delusion, and then you become a Buddha. So it shows you how these delusions are so strong. They hold on to us, and we hold on to them. So how many of our actions are done with pure motivation?
Maybe very few. You know? When you do operations, I wonder about people doing operations. You know? Could they do operations with a totally positive motivation?
Or would there always be some sense of ego involved with the operation? Could you be a surgeon without an ego? You know? It’s it’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? Without the payback, could you be a surgeon?
So these are good things to think about. Okay. Where are we up to? One two three. Jack?
I’m sorry. I need your problems. Really? Give me your problems. No.
Not yet. Oh, you had lots of problems. Well, we did a lot of problem solving. Oh, very good. That’s good.
Right. Right. Yeah. How awful. Yeah.
Yes. Yes. Exactly. Immediately, it arises. Yeah.
Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
It’s thinking me. Yeah. Don’t worry about this. That’s the time. Yes.
Yes. Yes. So, really, when you then turn that around, you think one hundred percent. Heck. This is something.
But have you met doctors who are incredibly selfless? And then if you met doctors Yeah. The ones who operate who are very self? Yeah. Yeah.
They they come Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I wonder, you know, would there be a different quality for the patient between the selfless doctor and the the doctor with self? I mean, I visit I met a doctor in India, in Delhi once.
It was the the funniest thing. I went to the this clinic called Green Park in Delhi. So it’s supposed to be the best clinic. And, I had to meet this doctor. And so I went in, and it was in the nineteen nineties, and I’m looking around, you know, and you’re you’re checking for signs of cleanliness.
And there’ve been people spitting in the corner, you know, the red beetle. So it’s spat in the corner. I thought, well, I was living in India for some years. So well, okay. It’s cultural.
You know? They spit in the corner. You know? For me, it’s not particularly a sign of clean or dirt. And then the doctor comes out, and he’s this little Sikh ji.
He’s a Sikh. So he’s about, like, this tall and with a huge turban, like, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, you know, three stories high. So he was really tall according to the turban, but when you actually saw him, it was really short. So I thought, you know, maybe it’s not a good sign. So we go into his office, and he was so arrogant and egotistical, you know, and he said to me, so first thing, you know, he opened his his briefcase, and he said, so which health insurance do you have?
I said, oh, I don’t have health insurance. You stupid idiot. This went down well. You stupid idiot. This operation, if you have to have it, is going to cost you a lot of money.
I said, yeah. Anyway and then I saw this cockroach walking up the wall, and I’m thinking, oh, this is all these signs are not good. You know? So we talked for a little while, and he said, you have to have some tests, and you have to come into the clinic for one day for these tests. I said, oh, yeah.
So which clinic would that be? He said, this one. And I thought, oh, and which who’s the doctor? I would be the doctor. Oh.
I said, okay. I’ll think about it. So I went out, and outside, there was a door labeled laboratory. You know? So I thought, I’ll just check the laboratory.
So I opened the door, and there were stains everywhere. It was filthy dirty, and I thought, no. I’m not having any operations here. So I went back to my ordinary doctor, and I said, I think I’ll wait a little while. And he said to me, you didn’t like the doctor, did you?
And I said, no. I didn’t. He said, you need to find a doctor that you trust, that you believe in. And so I found one just down the road, Safdarjung Hospital. It was a private hospital.
And, extremely nice man, the president of India’s doctor. And he sat down with me, he looked at the X rays, and he said, yeah. Yeah. I’m pretty sure I know what’s wrong with you, but, you know, you need to come into the hospital for one day and blah blah blah. And he was so sweet and so kind.
And I said, well, anyway, I’ll think about it. And I went back home and I thought, there’s no point in waiting any longer because you’re only gonna worry. So I called him up, and I said, tomorrow. And he said, you’re absolutely sure? Yep.
Let’s do it tomorrow. So I really felt the difference between one man who was totally concerned with me and the other one who was concerned about the money, you know, the bill, which I was gonna pay. But there was a very different feeling, and I think that’s what we’re experimenting with, that we have our self-cherishing. And how would it be to be a cherishing others type of person? How would they feel?
It’s very interesting to think about because you’d be totally open to others. And in being totally open, there’s gonna be some problems that will ensue. For sure, something’s gonna come back. You know? I don’t like you.
Why are doing this? Some some sort of harm. Then what are you going to do with it? Are you going to change your mind? The bodhicitta barrier will come down, or are you going to use it for transformation?
And that’s where the eight verses come in. It keeps you on the path. Even though you’re you’re receiving what you don’t want to receive, still you keep going. I think I’ll find another doctor. If somebody’s putting their knife on me, I want to make sure that it’s somebody who’s not abusive.
You know I think that yeah yeah Well, that’s the what they’re doing, not that person. Right? Buddha didn’t say, go around abusing people. Yeah. You know?
He didn’t say, here’s the ten things that you should do. Slap them across the face, punch them, abuse them, shout at them. He didn’t say this. He said, develop kindness, love, and compassion. So when I receive from a professional person abuse, to me, it’s not a good sign of their heart of why they’re doing this.
Should you just do it as a thought transformation exercise? You can. You know? But, your wisdom would say this is not a good sign. It’s not totally indicative of who and what they are.
But if if a doctor says to you, you’re an idiot, you have to check what’s their motivation for doing it, why they’re doing it. I mean, his seem to be only money. The biggest concern seemed to be the money, not me. And when I’m looking for a doctor, I’m looking for a doctor who’s concerned with me, with my body, not with the money, not with other things, because I’m I’m gonna pay anyway. But you want somebody who’s, the most compassionate being possible.
This is what it actually says in the Tibetan texts in relation to a a Tibetan being a doctor. They say the best doctor is the most compassionate one, not necessarily the most knowledgeable one, but the most compassionate. So when you study the Tibetan text on on medicine, on becoming a doctor, the qualities are all about being there for the patient, being kind to the patient, you know, all these good qualities. So you can take that as an indication of what you should be looking for when you’re looking for a doctor. And the Tibetan laypeople and the Tibetan doctors know this.
This is the meeting between the two. So in our Western society, we have the Hippocratic oath. Don’t harm. You know? Do good.
So, if you have a doctor who is verbally abusing in some way, you have the choice. You don’t have to practice thought transformation on it. You you can practice thought transformation in the way of you don’t get angry, but you don’t have to go through with the operation with that person. The main thing is you protect your bodhicitta. You want to liberate that doctor from his suffering.
You haven’t excluded him from your compassion. Right? So when somebody’s abusive towards you, you don’t exclude them. But it doesn’t mean you have to have an operation with them. Right?
There’s a there’s a sort of separation, I think, between the way we think and then what we accept in the sense of, if it’s a professional person and we’re buying their services, which sort of person do you entrust yourself to? Because you have a precious human rebirth. Your job is to protect your precious human rebirth for you to have the longest possible life so you can become enlightened, so you can benefit others, not to shorten your life. Your responsibility is is to care for your life. How is that not so much?
Because you’re you’re just caring for the the vessel, the body. You know? You’re not thinking my body, but you’re just thinking body. You know? It’s like having a car, and you’re tinkering with the car to keep the car going, but you don’t let the wheels fall off, the engine blow up.
You know? You you take care of it. You need to do what needs to be done, but, also accepting it’s impermanent. It’s gonna pass away one day. That’s okay.
But not being, grasping and attached to the body, accepting it’s impermanent. But on the other hand, shortening its life. Again, it’s all about balance, isn’t it? You know? We want to try and find a balance between the two.
So there’s nothing you can give me, Jack? He doesn’t become the enemy. Yeah. Exactly. His Holiness said once at a teaching I was attending, when you’re developing compassion, bodhicitta, you don’t become a doormat with welcome written on the doormat, you know, so that people can wipe their feet on you.
You say, oh, well, this is compassion. You know? We misunderstand what compassion means. Compassion sometimes is quite strong, quite ruthless, you know, stop, and then sometimes allows. But it doesn’t mean you just accept any nasty, negative, abusive behavior because your concern is with others.
So we’ll talk about that more later with the other verses, but it’s a very important point because it may sound as though in any abusive situation, we just say like, we throw up our hands and we say, oh, well, there’s nothing I can do because I’m a baby bodhisattva. It’s not true. Baby bodhisattva means put the ego to one side and then do something. Don’t do it from your ego because when the ego arises, the motivation isn’t positive. It’s me.
So try and put the ego to that one side, and then what’s the skillful, wisest action to do? We’re thinking about it, isn’t it? Anything else? Okay. Group four, which I suspect is the Indian group, the Pondicherry group.
Yes. Pondicherry in Melbourne. Oh, so that was an interesting group. Yeah. It’s it’s good to have somebody with a different point of view.
And then you spoke about karma. karma’s another hairy subject. Very hairy. Yes. Did you come to any conclusions about karma?
No. It’s a laughter. What do you disagree on? Yeah. The gap between the action and the effect is too big.
This is the problem with karma. And that’s when you need to depend on a on an enlightened being to explain karma because it’s only an enlightened being who understands cause and effect. At our level, we see cause, and the effect that follows does not connect to the cause. The effect is from a previous cause, another time. So, an example I often give is, you know, the cockroach is going across the table, and I go like that, and the cockroach’s back snaps.
Right? It’s dead. And my back immediately goes, snap. And I think, oh, that’s karma. You know, I shouldn’t have done that in future.
I won’t be doing that anymore. Right? It would be an immediate lesson on karma. But I kill the cockroach. I put it in the dustbin, and nothing happens.
And now there’s an appearance of a clean kitchen. So it appears that the negative action, the violent action, produced a positive result. Clean kitchen. And later when I get sick, could be another life, I get sick, and I think I’m sick because of the conditions around me right now, not because of a previous time when I killed a cockroach. These things are very difficult to connect because the gap is too big.
So that’s why we need Buddha. You know? Buddha was incredibly kind because he gave us all this information. He said, I can’t liberate you, but I can liberate you by giving you information. And then you have to process it in your own way.
And I think until you really get it, don’t don’t, agree. Just to agree. You have to keep researching it and checking it. Does it really make sense to me? And if it doesn’t, keep researching.
That’s what Buddha said we should do. Right? As if we’re buying gold, keep checking. Don’t just buy gold. You know?
You go to a shop and you say, oh, that looks nice. Ten thousand dollars. And then you find out later it’s rubbish. And then you have a lot of regret because you didn’t check. You believed in that person who was selling it.
So we need to know how to check, which way to check. So this is in the heart, checking within yourself. But I I call them karmic boomerangs. You know? You throw the boomerang, and a long time later, it comes back.
And that’s the difficulty. We’re throwing boomerangs, and we just don’t know when they’re coming back. Do we like it when they come back? None of us likes it when they come back, and they they go chop. So try and relate the effect with a cause.
So we have to work backwards rather than the cause than trying to think about the effect. Go for the effect, the environment that we’re living in, the problems that we experience. That’s the effect of karma. Then go backwards and think, so what would be the cause of that? And then try to get that feeling.
Do I feel I did these these negative actions to produce this effect? It’s usually the way you can get more of a handle on karma. Yeah. Okay. And nothing else?
Ganesh. Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting that they often then complain about the relationship to the friends, and the friends say, you should leave. And then the person goes back to the to the partner and says, so and so said I should leave you, which results in more beating.
And then the person who gave the advice being beaten. These issues are very difficult because there can be a codependency, you know, in the abusive relationship. The victim needs a victimizer, and they’re sort of comfortable in that relationship. But what if it’s somebody’s victimizing, but the person doesn’t want to be a victim? Then it’s uneven.
Right? And then, we have to again separate the action from the person. But is the action constructive? Is it helpful? Is it kind?
Is it compassionate? Or is it harmful? So, of course, it’s not helpful. It’s not kind. Can we support the person who, doesn’t want to experience the abuse?
The lying is that person is creating negative action. And by creating negative action, they’re going to experience a negative result. So not protecting ourselves, but protecting the other from their negative actions is the right thing to do. In that case, even if you have to do wrathful actions, you should. And wrathful could mean calling the police or calling a society who deals with these things.
So his holiness often talks about these things and says, sometimes we have to do wrathful actions, but we have to do them without any anger or hatred. We need to do it from love and compassion. So I think that’s the hard part. Often, have a self righteous anger. You know?
If it’s happened to us and we see it happening to somebody else, we can get quite upset about it. So try and remove that and then think clearly. What’s the best thing to do? But, yeah, the line is drawn to protect the other, ultimately. At our level, we draw lines anyway.
We have our lines. You know, people say to me, so what’s the line? I say, oh, come off it. You have the line. You know?
We already have the lines drawn. Our job is to move the line a little bit, a little bit out, a little bit out, a little bit out so that we get broader, bigger, not smaller. Yeah. So that that’s our job. But for others, we shouldn’t be tolerant.
To protect them or to protect a group of people, we shouldn’t be tolerant. We should very much draw a line and say, that abuse is not right, and we should try and do something about it. That’s when we shouldn’t be tolerant. You. You know, it would be nice if we could ask upstairs.
Hello? Śākyamūni Buddha helpline. Wouldn’t it? You know, if you could just call and say, now listen. Here’s the situation.
But mostly in society, we’re alone, and we have to figure it out. Am I wanting to do something for me to change the situation for me or for the other? That’s how you can check. Is it right? And then is there any anger?
Is there any attachment involved? Any aversion? Any hatred? That even just that, it’s quite difficult because we often have subtle, subtle emotions. But if you meditate, not medicate, but if you meditate, you become much more aware of the subtle emotions.
This is why Buddha said meditation is essential, to become friends with your inner self rather than the world around you. So we’re very well aware of the world around us, but are we aware of our inner world? The panic, the anxiety, the the anger, the stress. You know, all these emotions that we’re experiencing, we’re experiencing on a deeper level. So in order to become aware of that, we need to meditate on a daily basis.
We find an equilibrium. When we’re out of equilibrium, we feel it in the meditation. We become more aware of the actual emotions, the actual feeling rather than what we think is going on. So I think in times of doubt, sit, meditate, then act. Don’t just act.
We need to pause and go in and become aware of what’s inside. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we know what’s going on. We’re not cheating ourselves. We know, isn’t Don’t look worried. It’ll be okay.
Okay. We can stop. We still have more time tomorrow. Let’s offer all the positive energy. Do you mind doing Śāntideva again?
Good. Thank you. I heard a resounding, no, we don’t mind. I love this dedication. So it’s on page thirty two, isn’t it?
Yeah. Thirty two. So it’s very important once you’ve done something good, you’ve you’re creating all this merit, this positive energy, and then you’re putting it somewhere specific. You’re acknowledging all these different sufferings, and then you’re saying, may this stop. May this be alleviated.
May this stop. You know? So you’re paying attention to the sufferings. You’re not turning away from them, and you’re saying I have something very positive, and I want to add I want to offer it. So this is very much opening your heart and a giving.
So if you can finish the day with this open heart and giving, it’s a really way to a good way to finish your practice. May all beings everywhere plagued by sufferings of body and mind obtain an ocean of happiness and joy by virtue of my merits. May no living creature suffer, commit evil, or ever fall ill. May no one be afraid or belittled with a mind weighed down by depression. May the blind see forms and the deaf hear sounds.
May those whose bodies are worn with toil be restored and finding repose. May the naked find clothing, the hungry find food. May the thirsty find water and delicious drinks. May the poor find wealth. Those weak with sorrow find joy.
May the forlorn find hope, constant happiness, and prosperity. May there be timely rains and bountiful harvests. May all medicines be effective and wholesome prayers bear fruit. May all who are sick and ill quickly be freed from the ailments. Whatever diseases there are in the world, may they never occur again.
May the frightened cease to be afraid and those bound be freed. May the powerless find power, and may people think of benefiting each other for as long as space remains, for as long as sentient beings remain, until then, may I too remain to dispel the miseries of the world. Thank you, baby bodhisattvas.