Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Lobsang Namgyel delivers a 98-minute teaching on the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation, blending formal commentary with wide-ranging group discussion. He opens with guided Tonglen practice—breathing in suffering as black smoke, visualizing it dissolving in the heart, then radiating white light of compassion outward—before pivoting to extended Q&A on practical challenges: giving to others without expectation of return, dysfunctional relationship patterns and past karma, the meaning of guru devotion and spiritual guidance, worldly concerns that trap practitioners in saṃsāra, and how to apply patience and love as antidotes to anger when betrayed by someone you’ve helped. Namgyel emphasizes that expectations disappear with sustained practice for others, that a guru or teacher should touch your heart and guide you toward genuine transformation rather than solve life’s logistics, and that bodhisattva ethics sometimes require accepting harm without hate while using wrathful means if truly necessary. Suitable for practitioners already familiar with core Buddhist concepts and the Lamrim framework.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2011 10 03 Ven Namgyel – 10 – Mon 3rd Oct.mp3
UUID: 9c5352f6-7597-4556-925f-3ad0283314f1
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: 8 Verses Thought Transformation (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Date: 2011-10-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 98.2 minutes
Words: ~9,377
So you have the idea. We’re only going to use ourselves as the example. Somebody to take the suffering from, somebody to give the happiness to. So thinking, I’m doing this practice in order to develop the mind of bodhicitta, wanting to benefit all sentient beings. But in order to benefit sentient beings, I need to have the willingness to do so.
I need to have the method, the way of doing so, and so I’m going to do this practice of Tonglen in order to change my mind, in order to transform my mind into compassion and love. Taking three deep breaths. Breathing in peace and breathing out thoughts. Then visualizing the mirror image of yourself in front of you, sitting just like you, peacefully, quietly. In your heart is the black cloud of all the negative actions and delusions that have been created from beginningless time.
Inside that black cloud is your enlightenment potential or your positive potential, but it’s obscured by the black cloud. In your mirror image is the same black cloud, also obscuring the positive potential. That black cloud is caused by ignorance and self-cherishing, harming others in order to make ourselves happy, but in fact, creating the causes of suffering. So now each time you breathe in, you breathe in the black smoke from your mirror image sitting in front of you, taking away the suffering. You breathe it in, and it absorbs into the black smoke in your own heart, which gradually gets bigger and bigger.
Each time you breathe in, breathing in more black smoke, more suffering than causes of suffering, And it absorbs into your own suffering and causes of suffering, your own black smoke, which gets bigger and bigger. We have three more minutes breathing in the black smoke, taking away the suffering. Now take three more breaths. And on the third breath, as you take away the last of the black smoke, there’s an explosion. Billions of black atoms go out into the universe.
Now you’ve revealed your positive potential, your Buddha potential in the form of white light radiating from your heart. So from your heart, you offer this light and positive qualities to your mirror image. From your heart to the image’s heart. And your image fills up with white light, transforming into light, but also taking on positive qualities which are being offered by you. And then once the person in front of you is full of light and positive qualities, from their heart to your heart, the same light comes back, transforming your body and your mind into light.
And you also take on those same positive qualities. And then from your heart, countless light beams go to countless living beings, offering them qualities, their body and mind transforming to light. They receive whatever success and happiness that they want. And you rejoice. And then slowly bring your awareness back to the room we’re sitting in, the meditation we’ve just been doing.
In your own time, please finish your meditation. Okay. Back to business. Where’s group one? Jack?
The microphone is going this way, this way. Now he’s going to say, no, we have nothing to say. They want to hear in the back. Don’t worry, it’s not not this back, that back. Bill’s listening.
Office. Sorry, Bill. We were just talking about giving to others and how challenging and difficult that is. Based around the example that was given this morning with money. And then we were talking about relationships at the end and the challenges around attachment around relationships and being single.
Well, single challenging, relationship challenging, no perfection in saṃsāra, you know, but we’re looking for perfection. But definitely no perfection in saṃsāra. So you see good relationships, you know, based on a common understanding, common values. But I think the problem is when one person is so radically different from the other and you don’t realize it in the beginning. And then it starts to become obvious over time.
I knew one girl in Sydney who was a model, and she said to me, after being engaged for six years, she was getting married. And I said, oh, that’s really good. And the next time I saw her, she was married. They’ve been together six weeks, and they were separated. So I said, but how could you be separated, you know, after you knew each other for six years?
How could you get separated after you got married? And she said, he totally changed. She said, before marriage, he cooked. She said, I don’t cook. He cooked, and then I did the garbage, the dishes, you know, so I don’t mind doing that.
He did the cooking. So after marriage, he said, I don’t cook anymore. Now you’re the wife, I’m the husband, I’ll do the garbage, and you cook. She said, well, if you’re waiting for me to cook, you’re going to be waiting a long time, and you’re gonna starve. So every night, she used to call takeaway, you know, so pizza one night, Thai the next night, like this.
So it went on for six weeks. He didn’t change his mind. So then she said, well, we might as well break up. So they separated. They went to counseling.
They got back together, and, he cooked. So she said, I don’t know what happened, you know, but we got married, and something happened in his mind where it said, I’m the husband, you’re the wife, this is my role, this is your role, you know. If you have that type of thinking these days, I think very difficult to be in a relationship, you know, because now people are people. Thank goodness. The problem is trying to work out how to manage between the two people.
Because when there were roles, you do this and I do that. When there’s no roles, you have to work it out. There needs to be a very good communication. So I think the problem maybe nowadays is that people find it difficult to talk about money. So before they’re married, they don’t talk about money, where they’re going to live, how they’re going to manage, is the money going to be put together or separate.
All these things have become issues afterwards. So I think that if people are serious about relationships, maybe it’s good to seek professional help, like marriage counseling. You know, somebody who helps to teach you how to talk about issues. Because otherwise, issues become dramas. You know?
I want a child. You don’t. Well, it would have been better to know this. You know, sometimes it’s somebody wants four children, and then the other person wants none. And then there’s fights over the children.
You know, I don’t want, you want. So I I think the all these things can produce a lot of tension and stress now in relationships. And then also being alone can also be quite difficult. You know? And you have to be very self sufficient.
And, I think then if you’re alone, it’s good to have a sangha, People with similar values that you can come together with, that you can talk to, that you can meditate with. I think that helps a lot because I can’t imagine being alone in a city without people that you can talk to who have a similar mind. You know? You can go to a bar and just chat, but to have harmony in your values is not so easy to find. So I think that’s when the dharma center becomes really important.
Yeah. This, this thing about having friends and giving money, And then, I was reading a newspaper article the other day where one married couple had a business partner, and he said his niece or his daughter, anyway, somebody in his family was very sick and needed money, and so he borrowed some money off them. And it was quite a large amount of money, and then continued to borrow money off them. So they mortgaged their house in Queensland and ended up losing their house, and now they live in a caravan. And it was only after he had quite a large amount of money that they said to him, so where is our money going?
And he said, there’s a lot of money in Africa, and it’s, black money. It’s stained with ink or something, and it needs to be washed. So this money is going to washing this money, and then we’re going to be rich. And this married couple said, oh my goodness. So that’s it.
We’ve lost we’ve lost the money. It’s all gone. You know? And they had to sell their house. And then they sued this guy, and he went to prison because he was cheating them.
So we need to be aware, isn’t it? You can’t necessarily believe what the person’s saying. Maybe they are being honest and trustworthy, but we need to check it out and make sure that we’re not assenting to lies, colluding with them in their lies. And this again, this is awkward. You know?
We want to be able to believe friends. We want to be able to trust them, but, this day and age, don’t know. We just don’t know anymore. You hear so many stories of cheating. I’m surprised that millions of dollars are going out of Australia to Africa for these cheating schemes.
I mean, we’ve been receiving these emails for years. Send me your details. There’s money in a vault, you know, twenty million dollars. And if you just send me your details, I’m going to give you that money. I mean, come on.
It’s ridiculous that people are still believing this. And in India now, it started, and Indians are sell sending huge amounts of money out of the country. They’re reckoning it’s now millions of dollars are going out of India to Africa for these cheating emails. You know? So it shows you how much people want to believe and how greedy people are, you know?
And when people are greedy, they keep thinking a little bit more. If I send a little bit more, a little bit more, and that’s how they keep it going. So you don’t want to be cynical, negative, but on the other hand, you don’t want to collude with cheating a lie. So the this is another one of those things of being very aware, and I think trusting your intuition. I’m reading Blink at the moment where it says, within a minute, you can size people up.
As much as experts and psychologists, you can just look at somebody, and you can know whether you can trust them or distrust them within a very, very short time. So it’s a really interesting book to read because we often think we can’t trust our instincts, but this is actually saying you can. And they did many experiments, scientific experiments on this, where people would be sent into a room, and they had to describe the occupants of the room without ever meeting the person. And they would describe them more accurately than their friends were describing that person. Very interesting.
There was a Getty Museum art piece, a Greek a Greek man, and, in very good condition, supposed to be thousands of years old, and all the experts of the Getty Museum said it was authentic. They did tests of the body, took a little piece, you know, did everything. Absolutely. It’s authentic. And they brought in people from outside who looked at it and said, oh, dear.
You haven’t bought this, have you? That’s not authentic. Just from instinct, that’s not authentic. And they said, why? I don’t I just feel it’s not authentic.
It’s not real. And so they kept bringing in outside experts who kept saying, it’s not real. But the Getty’s experts were saying it’s real because they wanted to believe it was real. And they paid eighty million dollars, and it turned out to be a fake. No.
It’s a a statue of a man, but they were sure it was real. Absolutely sure. You know? So it became a huge controversy, because it was a new museum, and they wanted to prove it was real. They didn’t want to disprove it.
They wanted to prove it. So, this book, Blink, blink and, turning, tipping point. I want to read that too, which is about New York and how it was very violent and lots of drugs and many problems. And there’s a what they call a tipping point where enough people decide this must stop, and then the whole thing changes. And it’s the same with the coral reef, and it’ll change to the point where it won’t survive anymore.
What’s the tipping point? So same man. So I want to read that too. So these scientific books are very interesting, giving us an understanding into ourselves and that we’re not as stupid as we think we are. You know?
We think that how can I know somebody in one minute? There’s a relationship expert that can look at a video of a couple and tell you ninety nine percent accurate whether they’ll stay together or not. So he can look at them just talking to each other, and he can tell you. And then another and a lady came along after that and said, I think I can do it even better than that. And she got it down to a few minutes, a minute or a few minutes with university students just looking at a video, and they would say, yep.
They’ll stay together. No. They won’t without hearing anything, just looking at them. The same as this expert with many, many years experience, these people could say, yep, no, yep, and it was as accurate. So we have that Buddha potential, that wisdom potential within us, but we don’t allow it.
You know? We don’t trust it. We go against it, we say, I’ll give them money. You know? This thing from from Africa must be real.
You know? Twenty million dollars. I’ll give my credit card details. Why not? And we go against our instincts.
So I think we also have to have more of a trust in our inner inner Buddha, our inner wisdom, instead of what we’re being told outside that seems to conflict with our inner wisdom. Trust your Buddha. I must say that the people in here are proving very difficult. They will not use the microphone. Bill?
Okay. How about He’ll be in soon. Oh, hello, Bill. It’s her. J’accuse.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. A full set of delusions. Yeah. Yeah. And agreeing happily that you should send the money to Africa.
Really? Stop pushing it. Yeah. But then you could be a centipede or something, you know, and you’re looking for a functional centipede. I mean, we laugh about it, but it’s not really funny, is it?
But he’s everywhere around me. See my Yes. Yes. At at least you could then agree with each other, but maybe you fight over your delusions. Yeah.
Well, I think, you know, you have to ask yourself, why do you keep finding dysfunctional people? It’s not it’s not them, it’s you. Must be. Yeah. Must be.
It’s not not a coincidence, you know. When you get to four, you have to start thinking there’s something going on here, isn’t it? Did you go on the website dysfunctional boyfriends? Yeah. What’s that?
Yes. Yes. Yes. Certainly relationships can provoke more delusions. If it’s not a healthy relationship, it can it can promote more delusions.
I see within the dharma world, good couples, very nice couples, you know, where they’re going off to retreat separately or together, it seems to work. But I think certainly in the ordinary samsaric world, happiness is shopping, consuming. We’re happy with our delusions and we promote our delusions. The more desire and the more attachment, the more seeming happiness, but actually then the more causes of unhappiness and suffering. But, you know, the way you’re talking, it sounds to me like you think there’s a choice in relationships, but I thought people used to fall in love.
Has that all finished now? Is there no love anymore? I thought it was a chemical thing. You know, you you didn’t have choice. You fell in love and then the choice was out the window.
Isn’t that how it is? There’s no love? Uh-oh. Sudan is now going to answer that question. Oh, you’re not?
Yeah. Yeah. It goes on doesn’t it? Yeah. Yeah.
It’s the caring and the cherishing, and there’s a lot of good qualities in love, isn’t it? I really want you to be happy. And you’re not having to grab your own happiness. They want you to be happy. But what happens when it’s dysfunctional is one person’s functioning, and the other person is not.
And that’s what makes the relationship. It’s a sort of one leaning on the other, you know, and take away one, the other collapses. So it’s a codependency. Codependency is not healthy. So, in love, very difficult to control the emotions, very difficult to have choice.
Because once you’re in love I mean, I have people ask me about their relationships, and I very rarely give them any advice about their relationship. If they’re in love, I don’t give them any advice at all because they’re not gonna listen. You know, once they’re in love, it’s attachment, grasping, and there’s there’s no mental choosing in there. But if you can have a friendship that develops into love, I think you have a much better chance. But this sort of, you know, you meet and you sort of fall in love really quickly, it’s possible to fall out of love very quickly.
You know? So to make friends and then develop that friendship. Actually, I think I’d rather be in a relationship where it’s two friends than in love. I think in love, it can be distressing because sooner or later that chemical finishes, and then you’ve got the underwear hanging all over the place and the dirty dishes. No.
Or you eat a lot of chocolate, you know, still gives you serotonin. But in the West, we want this high of in love, don’t we? It’s the drama of the in love, and I think it’s not often very healthy. But it’s something you have to decide for yourself, whether it’s productive for you, whether you like it, but, you know, you’re saying for relationships and it’s still not working. Then, I think you have to go back to yourself.
And, what is it that you’re experiencing that you don’t like that then you know that you’ve done in the past that needs to be removed from you? Because this person is a mirror for your past karma, and your past karma is now manifesting as a person. So that’s where you need to go in your meditation, you know, so that it becomes very obvious. Oh, it’s this. This is what I must have done, and so then I need to remove that.
Actually, the best is to make a vow to say, I’m never going to do this again. You must have been dysfunctional. I think we’ve had this conversation before. Didn’t we have this conversation in Copenhagen? I thought we had this conversation about being dysfunctional.
Anyway, somebody I had this conversation with somebody. I think when there’s, meeting dysfunctional people, we must have been dysfunctional, and that’s how it’s coming back. So we need to make a a decision. We’re not going to be dysfunctional. And in this life, you wouldn’t like to be dysfunctional, would you?
You strike me as the opposite of dysfunction. Right? You really try your best to be very on you know, very accurate, the opposite of dysfunction, like to function. But function isn’t really the right word. But it seems to me you want to be the opposite of dysfunction, So it must be distressing when you meet somebody who’s dysfunctional.
So then you have to accept, I you have created this, So you make a very strong decision. I’m never going to do that ever again. And, you have to think about how you can create from your mind the situation that you want. This is how visualization works. You know?
If you want a perfect partner, you visualize Chenrezig. Chenrezig’s the perfect partner. And then from visualizing perfect, you have more chance of meeting the perfect person, perfect parenthesis. You know? There’s a possibility then because if the mind is projecting negative karma, you experience negative karma.
It comes back. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s from you. Yeah. But it’s not you in this life.
It’s you in past lives. It’s what you were. And so there’s such a gap between what you were and what you are now. It seems unfair. Right?
It’s not? You were dysfunctional? But you were dysfunctional? You were dysfunctional? Really?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But maybe you project the wrong thing because how you come across is that you’re very strong. And so I would think somebody who isn’t as strong would be attracted to you because you come across as, I’m gonna fix it for you. I’m gonna be able to help you to fix it, you know, because you seem like you’re decisive and strong. Yeah. You’re right.
But it’s a very popular misconception in our society that we’re jigsaw puzzles, and what we’re looking for is the right piece to fit the puzzle. You know? And then once I found that piece, that person will fulfill all my wishes. It’s very common, and usually the source of great distress, because we’re not jigsaw puzzles. We can’t lean on somebody within our inadequacies.
We can’t lean on somebody constantly, that you’re strong, I’m weak, and therefore we’ll be okay. It doesn’t work. It’s very distressing. Anyway, is that all you had? Oh, I say.
Okay. And two, Guru or Guru? Guru, there’s Guru Jack. Maybe we need to define the word guru. Yeah.
I I would I would agree. Yeah. Yeah. No, I would agree. Because I think when you’re proud, you’re not looking for a guru.
You think you are the guru. You know, you look in the mirror and you say, wow. You’re good. You know? You’re amazing.
What a guru. You are. I’ve been praying for a guru, and there you were all the time. You know? Don’t need to go anywhere.
You’re just in the the reflection in the mirror. So there’s the pride gone gone beyond the guru. And guru devotion is very much about subduing the ego, you know, putting the ego down because it’s not gonna get you to a place of happiness. It’s just going to create more and more suffering causes. So what I see of the Lamrim and why we start with guru devotion is because we need to be inspired, we need teachings because it’s an oral lineage.
You need teachings to be passed on. You need somebody’s interpretation of the Dharma because if you just hear it in a Tibetan way or in an Indian way from two thousand five hundred years ago, it may not fit with your life. And so the the guru or the teacher is actually somebody relevant to each one of us. It can be somebody who’s male or female. It can be, male, it can be a monk or a nun.
It can be, any nationality. So there’s no, definition of who it must be and who it cannot be. It has to be somebody that touches your heart. So it’s somebody with qualities who touches your heart, who inspires you to putting the Dharma into practice. And, when we find a guru, and maybe it’s better to use the word teacher or guide, when we find that person, I think the most important thing is to make sure that they do know about the Dharma, that they are able to guide you out of your suffering to happiness.
And usually what I say to people is check-in the way of, when they give Dharma teachings, does it apply to you? Does it do you feel it goes to your heart? If you ask for personal advice and you get the advice, does it seem to apply to you, or is it just a general answer that they give to anybody? So is there some sort of relationship between you that you can feel is beneficial for you? And if there is, then from the guru’s side, they have to put in an effort because they take responsibility.
And from the disciple’s side, they have to take responsibility for their spiritual practice. The guru’s not there to tell you how to get a job, whether to buy and sell your house, and, whether to go into this situation or not, and, you know, but people in the west now think guru teacher means they’re gonna solve every single problem for you, you know? So people write to me, you know, and I I sort of read these emails, and I said, well, this is up for you to decide, not for me to decide. I’m not in a codependency relationship. You know?
You may want to be, but I’m not. So I’m not there to hand out advice whenever people feel. So I think be very careful about what you think a relationship with a teacher is. It’s not somebody who tells you what to do all the time. They can give you spiritual advice.
They can give teachings. They can give you guidance, but it’s all to do with the mind and the spirit. Not your life, you know, in the sense of, should I be in this relationship or not? I mean, I do get people writing and saying there’s abuse in the relationship, and this problem, this problem, this problem, and I’ve decided to leave the relationship, and what do you think? It’s okay.
I I can give an opinion. But then what you decide is up to you, isn’t it? It can’t be up to me or up to another teacher. So, the definition of guru in Tibetan is lama. It means female, so the word is female in Tibetan, la ma.
Ma is female. It means, spiritual guide, but in a female sense of nurturing, caring, like a like a spiritual mother, somebody who really cares about your practice and wants to help you to become enlightened as quickly as possible. When you find that person, then spiritually, you subdue your ego in response to them because there’s the benefit. You put them up and yourself down, then there’s more benefit. But when you put yourself up and them down, you start to see fault in them.
What they do, you don’t agree with. They get up early, you don’t like it. They get up late, you don’t like it. They go to the toilet, you don’t like it. Once you’ve got that mind, whatever they do, you don’t like it.
And so we have to be very careful not to develop a negative view of the guru because, there’s no profit. The only profit is when we have respect for that person, for their spiritual guidance. And it’s from both sides. There has to be a quality, you know, from the teacher’s side and from the student’s side. And I think if you really are looking for a guru, it’s good to read, Calling the Guru from Afar.
In this prayer book, there’s a short one and a longer one, and it’s very moving that, you know, it’s like you’re saying, I I need you, and now’s the time to appear. Otherwise, we’re not opening the door. We need to open the door for the possibility to happen. Does that answer you? Okay.
And then? Yeah. Yeah. Any Lamrim book. If you want to read Pabongka Rinpoche, Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, so any extensive Lamrim book will have these eight worldly concerns.
Sometimes they’re called worldly concerns, sometimes worldly dharmas. Different people translate them in different ways because Dharma means to hold. So worldly Dharma, to hold on a worldly path. Whereas worldly concern has a different feeling. So maybe worldly Dharma is a better translation because when we’re really involved in these eight, we’re locked into saṃsāra.
We’re on the path of saṃsāra. So Dharma meaning path. It’s a worldly path, and you can’t get out of it. It sort of loops around constantly. So maybe worldly Dharma is a good translation, whereas concern seems a bit mild in comparison with how much we get involved with these eight.
So the eight, gain and loss, and then, pleasant, unpleasant, praise and blame, and then, good reputation, bad reputation. The pleasant, unpleasant, sometimes they say, happiness and displeasure. Sometimes the the translation is slightly different, so you have to understand more the meaning. What does it mean? It means when you’re experiencing pleasure, you attach and you don’t want to lose it.
And when it’s lost, you’re going to experience something different and you don’t like it. And then you want to get back what you had, so that way of bouncing backwards and forwards between one extreme and the other. Go on. Well, it’s not inherently existent. It has a power, but the power is not inherently existent.
The power is created through causes and conditions by bringing together texts, statues, you know, all different holy objects representing perfection, the perfection of the mind, and then the person’s response to that, the mental response to that. So even though the fly doesn’t have a mental response to it in the sense of looking at the stupa and thinking, oh, I really like that stupa. It’s a holy object. Still, because of its previous karma, it’s triggering previous positive karma in response to the stupa, to in response to the power of the object. So the power of the object is there, but is not without causes and conditions.
Emptiness doesn’t mean nothing exists. It means something exists in a relationship with something else. So you have this something created that’s positive, but the person receiving benefit from it is coming from their side. You have the power of the object this side, the person this side, and there’s got to be a meeting of those two. Otherwise, the stupa’s just there.
The sentient being never goes anywhere near it, then the power of the object doesn’t exist for that sentient being. There has to be a relationship between the two. So when somebody, walks around the stupa or goes near the stupa or sees the stupa, through the power of the object, it triggers previous positive karma, and that previous positive karma ripens then as a change of mind, as a ripening of something beneficial. So now the lamas are saying we should build more and more big statues, big stupas, because in the future, the dharma is going to disappear, and all that will be left is, statues and stupas. And then through the power of the object, then there’ll be a response in the people who are around, and that will trigger positive karma.
And then, there’s a potential for them to become enlightened through that, just through the power of the object, triggering previous karma. There’s people known as, What are they called? People who have previous experiences and don’t need a teacher in this life, and just through seeing holy objects have realizations. So they don’t need a teacher.
They don’t need Dharma. They just see something that triggers their previous Dharma experience, and they have realizations. So there are those people. And, in the future, holy objects will help people with Dharma experience when there’s no Dharma. There won’t be any Dharma.
It’s on its way out. Degenerate times. There’s a prediction by Buddha that at one at some time, Buddhism will disappear, and then all that will be left is the statues, the stupas, the gompas, and, there’ll be many diseases, a lot of warfare, a lot of greed and hatred. And the prediction at the moment from the lamas is approximately five hundred years more, about five hundred years before this happens. And you can see now, look at the Middle East.
You know? There’s a lot of fighting going on. It’s all over oil, control, power. So when there’s no dharma, what we have is imprints, and then those imprints will be triggered by holy objects. And then things will hit rock bottom, then we start to go back up, then things get better and better and better.
Life life gets longer, left less diseases, then we’ll hit the top, then we start to go down. Things get worse and worse and worse. We hit the bottom. We start to go back up. Buddha said, we’ve been in these cycles since beginningless time.
It doesn’t have to happen, but because of greed, there’s a prediction it’s going to happen. And so, things like logging and polluting the water are predictions that Buddha made two thousand five hundred years ago. He said this is going to happen. And because of that, there will be more pollution in the world, and because of the pollution, there’ll be more diseases, more sicknesses. And he gave a prediction of nineteen new diseases, And he was very specific how each disease would manifest.
I think we’re up to number four. So he predicted, cancer, AIDS, all these sicknesses, which are caused by internal and external conditions. And then? Tools for pursuing They want tools for pursuing the illusory. Yeah.
Yeah. No. I mean, it’s a lot to talk about. One thing you can do is when you’re experiencing an emotion, if you can sit and meditate while you’re experiencing an emotion where there’s a strong feeling of I, I’m upset, I’m angry. If you can sit with that, there’s a very strong feeling of where it is.
And then mentally, you look for it inside your body. So where is it? I must exist because I feel it does exist, because I’m angry. So then looking, is it here? Is it here?
Is it here? And each time you look and you try to grasp onto it, it gets smaller and it gets weaker because the cause of the I is ignorance. Looking for it is wisdom. So when you keep searching, you’re searching with wisdom, not ignorance. Therefore, you’re antidoting the ignorance that created the I, the appearance of the I.
So I think that’s probably the easiest and the best way to start, is because we all experience emotions. And once the emotion has gone away, we can look back at the emotion and say, well, that wasn’t very pleasant. You know? I wish I didn’t have that as a delusion. It’s not very nice, whether it’s irritability, anger, jealousy, hatred, you know, whatever.
So then what can I do about it? One thing is you can work on the delusion, but the delusion is the result of ignorance. Ignorance is the ultimate delusion. Believing the I to exist, we grasp onto the I, and we cherish the I. This is the root delusion.
Then from that, all other delusions appear. So there’s two ways of approaching the situation. One is to work on the secondary delusion, and the other is to work on the root delusion. So if you want to work on ignorance, the root delusion, then go to go into a meditation where you manifest the I experiencing an emotion, where it’s very strong, and then look for it. Try to grasp onto it.
And then you find it becomes weaker, weaker, weaker. And then the next time it appears, you say, ah, yeah. But last time, I looked for you, and I couldn’t find you. So do you really exist? And as soon as you start feeling you may not exist, it takes away the power of the I, the power of the illusion.
Whereas up until now, we’ve assented to the illusion. We’ve said the elephant is definitely in the room even though we know it’s not. You know? So we’ve we’ve been the magician believing in the elephant. Now we need to be the magician.
I created the illusion, but I’m not believing in it. You know? I think that’s the simplest way to start. Yeah? During healing disturbing emotions, we talk a lot about anger, fear, anxiety, panic, you know, the emotions.
And so we’re working with, pruning the branches off the trees. This is the easiest place to start, is pruning the branches to make the situation clearer, easier. But to go for this root is the best but the hardest, because there’s a tenaciousness about the eye that wants to stay. That’s why we have to keep going back to, are you really there? Does it really exist?
You know? So keep trying. Okay. Next. You two didn’t have anything at all.
Call me. I’ll be waiting. Yeah. Well, I often say, you know, once you’ve heard teachings, you’re damned, you’re cursed, you know, you’re never the same ever again because you’ve heard it. When you haven’t heard it, you can get away with it.
Once you’ve heard it, if you’re sincere with yourself, it’s like you’re cursed, you know, your life will never be the same ever again. And so from that point, your life starts to change. But, depending on how much we can do depends on our sincerity, but also on the amount of enthusiasm we put into our practice. We need to put a lot of enthusiasm into practice in order to change the mind because the previous negative habits are so strong. It’s very difficult to change them.
And so to be patient and to say, well, I must get to enlightenment as quickly as possible because others are suffering. However, it took Buddha three countless eons. What makes me think I’m better than Buddha? So on one hand, it can take a long time. On the other hand, I should go as quickly as possible.
So depending on whether you’re being lazy or, too excited, find the balance between the two, but just keep going. Don’t give up. Keep going. And then that way, you’ll find there is a change. Day after day after day, you keep doing things for others, being open to be kind to others, being patient with others.
So you look back over time and you say, have I changed or not? If you’ve been in Buddhism three years and you haven’t changed, it’s a little bit of a worry. Five years, ten years, it’s more of a worry. If you haven’t changed over fifteen years, you are not Buddhist. You should go to another religion, another philosophy, because you’re not putting it into practice.
Buddhism is not a religion where we say, save me, you know, beam me up. It’s up to you, not up to me. Very much, it’s self responsibility, training the mind, transforming the mind. And so if that’s not happening fifteen years, well, you’re in the wrong place. You’re hearing the wrong things.
So as you’re saying, it’s something that you need to take away with you, and then start thinking, so what can I do? Rather than this is intellectual. How can I put it into practice? It’s not intellectual. It’s very much you and your life and changing your mind.
So I think this is the best way. Make it practical. You’re going to read something to me, aren’t you? Okay. Yes?
Where are you people? I’m just on his agenda, Jack’s agenda. Jack is now in charge. Nobody wants to use this microphone, do they? I’m happy to use.
Oh. Some of the discussions we had and and the questions which came up after that, they have been answered already. This I thought of during this discussion from other groups. How to, how not to expect when you do things for others? How to drop the expectations?
Yeah. Yeah, how? Do have any tips or tools? Yeah. If I figure it out, I’ll let you know.
Well, it’s part of renunciation, I think. In the beginning of the Lamrim, we’re developing renunciation, which is letting go of the happiness of this life. So expectations are part of wanting happiness in this life, isn’t it? Wanting instant instant mashed potato, instant coffee, instant results from what you’re doing, that you are going to get something that you expect back. I think if you help enough people, you get to know that what you expect is often not what you get.
So that helps to start loosening the expectations. But I think that often people are not doing enough for others to have a concern about expectation. It’s not a usual question. And I think because often people are not doing enough. When you’re doing more for others, you start having to work with expectation.
It’s like if you don’t teach and you start to teach, then you bring your expectation into teaching. And so then you teach because you want others to do something, whatever it is. If you work with healing others, then you want them to be healed. And if they’re not, it’s a disappointment, and so that can be a problem. So I think one part is renunciation, letting go of the need for happiness in this life, the expectation of happiness in this life, because this is dictated by past actions.
And so when happiness arises, it’s a nice surprise, But don’t expect it. Don’t be attached to it. And I think working on, unconditional love, that when you give, you give without any feeling to receive. So this is within the six perfections, the practices that you do as a bodhisattva in order to become enlightened. So the first perfection is generosity.
The giving of whatever you have, but without expecting anything back for from it. You don’t want something back. If something comes back, okay, but you don’t expect it. So I think the training is within the six perfections. And I think the basis would be renunciation and loving-kindness.
I give without wanting something back. I give, material possessions without wanting anything back. I give love, protection from fear without wanting something back, giving the dharma without expectation of anything back, like that. So it’s very much a training process of training the heart to be open to the needs of others and knowing that anyway from karma, if you believe in karma, it’ll come back. You don’t need to expect.
And when you expect, it usually doesn’t work out the way you think, you know. So you disappoint yourself. The students you know, I’ve had people fall asleep in my meditations, in Tuśita and Dharamsala, and snoring, you know, like this. And I think, well, that person really doesn’t like my meditations, do they? And this one particular lady, as we were walking out the door on the last day, she put her arm around me and she said, Your meditations are so moving, you know?
So you never know. The ones that you think really connect with the teachings may disappear, you never see them again. They say, oh, you know, I’ll see you there there there, you know, never see them again. The people you think don’t connect, you see them suddenly coming back again. So what I’ve learned is you can’t expect anything.
You have to just be in the moment, be non conceptual, and just, react in the way that’s appropriate in the time rather than writing the story. Expectation is writing the story before it’s happened, and that’s a recipe for disaster. You know? You’re writing the story. They have to be in your story.
But we have to allow others to write their own story. Good or bad, that’s up to them, but to allow that. I think it’s a process in Dharma, a process of working with unconditional love in meditation, in giving, giving, giving. You know? And then in the meditation, automatically, something’s coming back.
So you’re training your mind to say, let go. Breathe it out. Let go. So it’s very much connected to meditation too. That in the meditation, when you discover that you’re attaching to something, you train yourself to breathe it out, to let it go.
It’s a process. You know? But I think renunciation and loving-kindness. And if that doesn’t work, then you need to study karma more deeply to understand that karma is coming back. So if you do good things, it is definitely coming back.
May not be on your agenda, but it’s coming back. So why not trust it’s coming back? Why do you have to write the story? Yeah? Is that it?
Yeah. It’s about verse number six. Verse number six. Yes. Someone you benefited and they’ve done terrible things to you.
My understanding is, at least reading a bit before coming to this, we can retreat about patience. Yes. Is that right? Or To be patient. Well, definitely don’t be angry, and so apply the antidote to the anger that would probably arise.
The resentment, the anger, you know, why are you doing this to me? I’ve been such a good person to you. You know, that’s where we’re going now. It’s a much stronger emotion, than before. So the antidotes to anger are patience is one, tolerance is another, and particularly love, which sounds a little bit strange as an antidote for anger.
But love is I want you to be happy. Anger is I don’t want you to be happy. And so love is a direct antidote to anger. And so if you find that you are irritable or you are are angry, you need to go back to your love meditation, wanting others to be happy. So, yeah, number six is very much about applying strong antidotes to an angry mind, being patient.
But, patience may not be enough. Because patience it’s difficult to meditate on patience. You know? It’s difficult. There’s a story about a Tibetan Geshe, you know, who goes to the mountain and meditates for twelve years on patience.
And then, his friend thinks I have to go and see how he’s doing. And he opens the curtain and he says, eat shit. And the lama is sitting there meditating on patience, and the meditator turns and says, you eat shit too. You know? So the Tibetans often tell this story because they say, you can be meditating for twelve years on a mountain on patience, and with nobody to test you, you’re still angry.
Yeah? We need the people. So we’re in the best place to know, are we irritable and angry? So meditating on patience, saying, must be patient. I must be patient.
I don’t think it works. But meditating on love, I want you to be happy. And especially Tonglen, you know, give me your anger. Take my happiness. This can really benefit.
It can be a very nice meditation. Take the emotion that you don’t like and breathe it in. Whatever it is, breathe it in and give back the opposite. Right? This is an interesting exercise of what makes you uncomfortable.
Breathe it in, then breathe out the opposite. And that helps the mind to change. To breathe in the anger, the irritability, and then give back patience, happiness, joy, that helps your mind. Okay? Okay.
It’s your time. Okay, everybody in the office and everywhere. Jack is about to take over. Jack is now going to read something. Are you listening?
Okay. They’re ready. I hope they are. They better be, actually. There will be there will be an examination after this on how much you are listening.
It’s guide to the Bodhisattva’s way of life. Yep. It’s first thirteen in chapter three. It’s it says, having given this body up for the pleasure of all living beings, by by killing, abusing and beating it, may they always do as they please. Mhmm.
And I suppose that it relates to the text, but the difficulty is if if they do that, then they create their own negative karma as well. Sure. Sure. But if they’re going to do it anyway, for instance, you’re under the Chinese rule in a prison camp, and they’re going to do it anyway, what attitude should you have? In that case, the protection for them is not to think they’re a bad person.
They’re beating me, abusing me. By staying patient and compassionate, you reduce the harm that they’re going to gain from their negative karma. But, of course, if we’re in society and there is some way to prevent that harm, you should. His Holiness says, sometimes we need to use wrathful means. But if we can’t, there’s absolutely no answer.
You’re trapped. Then the only answer is what you read, Thought transformation. But if you have a choice, if there’s something other that you can do to stop this negative action, you should do it. So it’s not saying be passive. It’s saying don’t be reactive.
Be very careful because somebody’s trying to harm you. Why? You created this. You know, in the past, you have abused, beaten, insulted. And now your karma’s coming back to you, forcing the other person into beating you.
You’re responsible. You’re forcing them into the negative action because of your past karma. So now you’re responsible for your past karma, and they’re responsible for the negative action. So from both sides, it becomes a responsibility. We’re not victims, but we’re experiencing the result of negative karma.
And this is where it’s really difficult to go. We want to point the finger and say, they’re bad. I’m good. But now we’re saying, we’re both equal. So if there’s something I can do to stop you from doing a negative action and then experiencing the result, I must do that as a bodhisattva.
But if I can’t, I’m going to keep my compassion and my bodhicitta in my heart. I am not going to give it up. And that’s even if it’s perceived as bad, if there is something you can do about it? Again? When you talk about the wrathful, even if it’s perceived as bad Yes.
But from within within your mind From the motivation. But even if everyone else perceived it as bad, you still do it. If you have a positive motivation, a good motivation for doing it, you have to do it. But, in the bodhisattva vows, what about the vow about reputation, a bodhisattva has to maintain reputation? How does that fit in?
Oh, none of it’s easy. I mean, it says you shouldn’t harm others, but then it also says in the bodhisattva vows, if there are wrathful means that you can use and you don’t use them, you break your vows. So there’s many different approaches. You know? You have to think, in this situation, what’s the most important vow to keep?
What’s the most important vow to break? You can’t keep all your vows in all situations. So in some situations, it says you should kill. So that would be breaking the killing vow. But then the higher vow says you should kill in relation to the lower vow.
So this is where it gets complicated because you have different levels of vows. What’s the most beneficial thing that you can do, that you should do? You can’t keep all the vows. You’re gonna break some of them, but which is the best to keep and the best to break? That’s the decision you make.
And that’s why we need wisdom. You might be able to keep them all if you live in a cave by yourself and don’t speak to anyone. Yeah. Even then even then, I think difficult. You know, I’ve lived alone in in the Himalayas, and then you get the birds on the roof, you know, going squawk, squawk, squawk, and I go, if I had a gun, you know, I’d shoot these birds.
And so you can be living alone, and then the birds appear, and then the monkeys appear, and then the the, scorpions, come from under and sting you, and, you know, it’s like you’re under invasion when you’re in retreat in the Himalayas. And so you may think it’s very nice and very isolated, but actually sentient beings will find you, and then sentient beings will poke you and prod you. So we go through a lot when we’re trying to practice Dharma. And so I think, rather than thinking where we can go and maybe somewhere else would be better to go, we’re in the ideal situation. I mean, we’re not in a prison camp in Tibet.
Just think, you know, today, there’s a million people in a prison camp in Tibet, all over Tibet, being beaten, electrocuted, you know, these sort of things. We’re not in that situation. When we’re talking about beaten, tortured, we’re talking conceptually. It’s probably not going to happen to us, but it is happening to others. And so it’s always a possibility in the future, but not now, not right now.
And so as quickly as possible, remove the causes of suffering. Tonglen is very good for doing that, Working for the benefit of others with bodhicitta motivation is very good for that, for removing the causes of suffering. So we should do that. We can do that. Yeah?
Okay. Thank you. Okay. So we’ve come to the end. It’s very sad, isn’t it?
We could continue for another month, I think easily. But there’s always got to be beginning and an end. But anyway, I think that you had really good questions, really good concerns, very stretching, I will say, because I don’t have pat answers that I can just come up with, but I think that, your questions were really good and that the way you’re approaching these eight verses is very good. It’s very constructive, and you’re you’re seeing it in the right way, not in a harmful way, a damaging way, but in a very constructive way of how you can develop bodhicitta. So, we’re going to dedicate with Śāntideva, And, just from my side to say thank you very much for being here and for listening so well.
It made my first weekend in Australia, Adelaide, Adelaide, made it very enjoyable, and, thank you very much. So page thirty two. 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 on 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 harvest. May all medicines be effective and wholesome prayers bear fruit. May all who are sick and ill quickly be freed from their 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. So I might see some of you on Wednesday. Some I might not.