Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Lobsang Namgyel guides participants through foundational Buddhist practices on working with difficult emotions, using the four immeasurables as a daily tool to transform habitual reactions. Over 84 minutes, he emphasizes the importance of starting with what is difficult and real rather than lofty aspirations, encouraging practitioners to begin with the simple phrase “may you be happy” when encountering people who irritate or upset them. He explains how resistance and boredom in practice are signs of genuine transformation, not failure, and explores the relationship between anxiety, fear, and worry as escalating mind-states we create through exaggeration. The talk moves into the mind’s capacity to project beauty or ugliness onto neutral objects, the role of attachment in grief, and how a sense of control—even illusory—reduces fear in medical settings. Participants are invited to map their emotional reactions in a practical worksheet, bridging awareness with embodied change. The teaching assumes familiarity with Buddhist philosophy but is accessible to newcomers genuinely curious about the mind’s habitual patterns and everyday transformation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2011 11 27 03 Death and Dying Weekend.mp3
UUID: 17c800f9-f06e-4292-94af-9e9bfe6524aa
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: Death and Dying Weekend (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Date: 2011-11-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 84.8 minutes
Words: ~9,177
Yeah. You see it keeps tangling itself. So for immeasurables, how we use it is by thinking, this difficult person in my life, where’s this difficult person coming from? It’s either coming from the outside or the inside. It’s either coming from there or here.
Is there another choice? There, here, or drop down from another planet. So you can check all the choices. That’s what it tells you to do in the philosophical text. You check all the choices.
Is it from the outside? Is it from the inside? Is it from somewhere else? So it’s important to think like that. Where does this difficult person come from?
If it’s coming from the outside, then maybe there’s very little or nothing I can do about that person. If it’s coming from the inside and I change, I use this as a way of transforming my mind, then it becomes something valuable to me. And at least I’m going to minimize the harm I’m going to do to them. So if we’re saying that we’re good people, you know, that we want others to be happy, then the others should include this difficult person. Shouldn’t it?
You can’t say, I’ll make them happy, and then this person, this person, this person, I exclude. But I think in some way we maybe would like to do that. It would be much easier if we can have an exclusion zone. You know, the room where we can open the door, shove them in mentally, shove them in, lock the door, and say, well, I dealt with that. But in actual fact, still in your mind is that person that disturbs you.
And if we have the karma with them to have that connection, you’re in the supermarket, where are they? You bump into them. You go to the cinema to get away from everything, where are they? In the cinema. You know?
So it’s not that you can get away from your karma. Your karma creates this person. You can’t run away from this person because this person is created by you, by your karma. And so what’s a very simple practice to change the karma, the reaction towards that person? One of the things to do is the four immeasurables.
It’s very simple, you know? I mean a lot of the Dharma things that we talk about may be more complicated and take time. But this one, may you be happy, seems really easy. But when you don’t like somebody and you’re thinking, may you be happy? There’s a definite resistance to that being true, isn’t it?
You can find the resistance in there. So when there’s a resistance, there’s your Dharma practice. That’s when you really need to think, this is the time to practice Dharma because there’s a resistance. When there’s no resistance, your practice just goes long. Everything’s going well.
But when you have the resistance, it’s sometimes the time when we think, oh, this is too difficult. I give up. But in actual fact, the resistance is showing you that you’re changing something, that something is changing. It is transforming. So the resistance is a good sign.
It’s a sign that something is changing and you should go on, not the time to give up. So particularly, the first line, may all beings have happiness. I change it for a daily practice for when you’re out amongst people. I change it to may you be happy. This is a little bit too long.
Alright? May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. You’ll get lost by the end of it. So may you be happy is one thing to do. And the second line, may you not suffer.
And that’s something we also need to really check. Would we like somebody to suffer? Of course not. You know? But if it’s the enemy, would you like the enemy to suffer?
You know, the person that you really don’t like? So given the choice of the enemy winning the lottery or the enemy, suffering, which would you choose? That yeah. Right. But say you are not in there at all in in the choices.
You haven’t bought a ticket. You know? But you still want to win the lottery. Exactly. Yeah.
But that feeling comes up, doesn’t it? I want to win the lottery even if I haven’t bought the ticket. And for sure, my my whatever we’re calling I think enemy is not a very good word because we don’t think of enemies. But irritating person, difficult person in my life, the boss at work, you know. The child at home that said, you know, like this.
So we we have these difficult people in our lives, don’t we? So when that difficult person, the boss that you can’t stand who’s always so rude and horrible to you, when that person wins the lottery, you know, like a hundred million dollars, and you think, oh, great. Now they’re going to leave the office. You know, they’re going well, this is a good this is a good result. They got enough money.
They’re gonna be able to leave, and they say to you, and now I’m never going to leave the office. You know? How would you feel? So this is the way to check whether there is any feeling towards that person that you don’t like, any negative response. It’s important to check the responses.
You know when you go to the doctor and he hits the knee and the leg comes up like this? We need some sort of test for the mind. I don’t quite know what this checks. What does it check? Reflexes.
So you’re dead if you’re if you bang your knee and nothing happens? Might have a damaged knee. That’s my point. It doesn’t always mean something does it? But it’s an indication isn’t it?
Yeah, it’s an indication. So that’s what I’m getting at. We need these indications of where we’re at mentally, spiritually because it’s hard to know. You know, everything’s fine. I’m okay.
Don’t worry about me. You know? We can put on that smile that everything’s okay. Don’t worry about me, you know, my mind’s okay, but actually it’s not. And so how do we check whether there is change going on, whether there is transformation happening, whether you do have this difficult person in your life, it’s that feeling of resistance.
That feeling of, in the heart, some sort of resistance and pushing against something. And the other thing this is it this incredible teaching even before we start. And the other thing, just in case I die, and the other thing is, when I was doing retreat, there was a point I reached where I decided I was incredibly bored. You know? And if your practice gets boring, it means you’re on the edge of a spiritual breakthrough.
This is incredible to know. You know, I didn’t know this. So I’m doing this Lamrim over and over and, you know, ten days on one subject is a long time. Just every session, Lamrim, you know, Lamrim, but one subject. And so one day I’m so bored and I think, oh, you know, two more years of this.
How am I going to go on? How am I going to continue with without making it interesting? Because what your mind wants to do is make it interesting. So if we went to the cinema, Lamrim would be much better or if we I don’t know what what the mind throws up, but think what your mind throws up when you sit down to do your Dharma practice and your mind says, don’t do this. This is boring.
You know? Do the washing. There’s dishes in the sink. That’s much more interesting. Or there’s a bed to make.
Change the sheets. That’s much more interesting. It gets to the point sometimes when your practice is more boring than the dishes and all those other things. So why? You know?
I was very fortunate. I had a book and I was I just opened this book and it was Chogyam Trungpa. And Chogyam Trungpa said, If you’re feeling really bored with your Dharma practice, you’re on the edge of a breakthrough. Keep going. And I thought, okay, you know, you just keep going.
You do just keep doing it. And what happens is there’s a sense of letting go. You’re attaching to the ego that says, don’t do it. Don’t do this practice because you’re attacking me. And there’s a great text that Chodron Rinpoche taught on in Vajrapāni Institute, I think eleven years ago now, and it was the debate between ignorance and wisdom.
And it went on for days. Rinpoche was giving this comment commentary for days. And it’s I can’t tell you exactly, but it’s something like, wisdom says to ignorance this is all happening within you. Wisdom says to ignorance, I’m gonna get rid of you. I’m going to get remove you completely from my continuum.
And ignorance says, you can’t do that. I’ve been with you since beginning last time. Look what I’ve done for you. And wisdom says, yeah, look what you’ve done for me. Look at the mess you’ve made of this life.
You know, and it keeps going backwards and forwards. And it’s a really funny text, but it’s this debate between wisdom and ignorance. So in our lives, we have these imprints of ignorance, you know, this background of ignorance, and what we’re trying to develop is the wisdom. If we had the wisdom, we wouldn’t need to develop it. The seeds, the potential of the wisdom is within us.
We need to develop it and to grow it. So what happens is, as you’re developing that wisdom, it starts, colliding, if you like, coming up against the ignorance that says Stop! And the way that this manifests in your mind is boredom. This is really boring, I think I’ve got it you know, like that. I need to do the dishes.
I need to do anything than this. This is the imprints of ignorance stopping you from doing your Dharma practice. So this is one of the subtle signs that something’s happening. But if we don’t interpret the subtle signs in the right way, we give up. So this is important for you because what you’re trying to do is transform your delusions, your ignorance, and your other delusions into something beneficial, wisdom, compassion, love.
You want to transform. But if you don’t realize that there are going to be signs appearing and you’re going to misinterpret the signs, you’ll then give up. And then you start going backwards. So when you hit the wall, when you feel the resistance, that’s the time when your Dharma practice is on the edge of transformation, with something happening. So this, may you not suffer when you’re thinking of a difficult person in your life and you’re thinking may you not suffer, may you not suffer.
Maybe there’s this little voice that says suffer, suffer. And then you think, may you not suffer and you suffer, suffer, you know? So there’s one part of you that wants that person to suffer because they’ve made you suffer. I think the classic example is divorce, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Fiona?
I know. But you know people. I know people too. I think, with divorce, there can be a lot of acrimony. So, you know, in the beginning I’ll Yeah, it’s all harmonious, but may you suffer.
Somebody I know people cheated on people in business. You know, lost a lot of money, millions of dollars in business. And then afterwards, how do you feel about that person that cheated you and takes away all your money? I think one guy lost fifty million dollars or something, in a business deal and it was cheated. Think about those difficult situations where you want to have love and compassion, but the instinct is may you suffer.
And it could be even something small. You’ve been in a small situation. We’re talking about bigger situation, divorces, business things, business deals, but just something very small. Somebody takes your parking space. Right?
That can happen, isn’t it? You’re driving around a busy car park, you’re busy. You know, you’re busy and you’re looking for a parking space and you see one and you wait and then somebody’s coming out and somebody else goes you know, in. How do you feel? Do you say: Oh!
Good on you! So happy! You got that space. May you be happy. You know?
Or do you say: May you suffer! Oh, no. I don’t think it was may you suffer. Maybe it should be may you not suffer. You know?
But maybe the instinct is may you suffer. I’m not happy about that at all, you know, that you took my space. Because there’s a me. Like she’s honestly saying, there’s a me that wants to win the lottery. There’s a me that wants to be happy.
Right? That I is clinging and grasping to its happiness. And what we’re trying to do is switch it around to clinging and grasping to others’ happiness. Now we got the clinging and grasping to my happiness. We switch it around to clinging and grasping to their happiness.
I want you to be happy. I’m attached to that, to that goal. Right? And then you remove the clinging and the grasping. But right now, we have the clinging and the grasping.
So use it for something better, something more beneficial, others, and then drop the clinging and the grasping. Otherwise, if we try and remove the clinging and grasping first, it may take so long. Others are waiting. You know? So we can use what we have and just switch it around.
Instead of for me, it’s for you. Like I said, if you understand how to make you happy individually, you know how to make yourself happy, use that information in order to make others happy. Turn it around. So that’s the way to start putting your Dharma into practice rather than using it in a philosophical sense. Oh, it would be very nice to be compassionate, but you’re not actually doing anything.
What we need to do is from today, we start something. Right? From today, we start in the direction of enlightenment, and in that direction, we go through kindness and love and compassion. We go through these various, feelings that we have towards others, and then the resistance comes. At some point, the resistance says, this is too much.
You know, I can’t be compassionate to all sentient beings. I’ll just leave out the boss. You know, I’ll leave out this person in the car park, the person who took my seat on the bus. You know, you have this list. Maybe little things, but irritation.
So you leave out those people in the list. That means you cannot cross the border between ordinary compassion and bodhicitta. There’s an ordinary compassion. You know? You’re compassionate towards those you like.
And those you don’t like, you don’t include. We we know that. That’s easy. But great compassion, you have to cross a border. The border is the one that you set up.
You made this border. It’s not that it was given to you. You should liberate this number of beings, help this number of beings. You decided in your mind, I will help a certain number of beings, the ones I like. So bodhicitta is cross the border and go into the land of I will liberate every sentient being.
And why does it say every? Because we’ve had connection with every being. But, also, what it does is it brings up a resistance, doesn’t it? The minute you say every, you go, oh. You know?
Every? You sure you mean every? Including, you know, the definitely including these difficult people. Because if you don’t include them, you can’t have the generation of great love, great compassion, great means all, and then bodhicitta. Cannot.
As soon as you exclude one, cannot develop bodhicitta. So we say we have this motivation of bodhicitta, but if we’re excluding one person in our mind, bodhicitta is impossible. So this is why it’s so important to us. This is why we need to start where we are at the very foundation, not in the the sort of lofty, you know, I’d love to climb Mount Everest. You know, like that?
I love to climb Mount Everest. And have you ever been up this hill? Oh, no. You know? So it’s like a dream.
You know, we have these dreams that wouldn’t it be incredible to do that? So you can’t dream about Mount Everest if you haven’t climbed the small hill. First, you need to climb the small hills, which is may you be happy. Just thinking. Every person you see, may you be happy.
May you be happy. May you be happy. And in that repetition, you’re planting very strong seeds, imprints on your mind stream. But, also, what you’re going to do is trigger something else. Something else is going to come up.
The may you not be happy will will appear. Sooner or later, that will appear. And then the second line comes, may you not suffer. Right? So you should stick with the may you be happy until the may you not be happy appears.
Okay? Because then you need the antidote to that. And then you start on may you not suffer, may you not suffer, may you not suffer. So this the four immeasurables, it looks like it’s just there, doesn’t it? Because we just go blah blah blah blah blah blah.
But, actually, there’s a great meaning behind this. And as a daily practice, it’s something that’s very easy to put into practice. It doesn’t require visualizations, doesn’t require anything complicated. Just you remembering throughout the day, may you be happy. That first remember we talked about the first labeling thought.
Right? So that first labeling thought on form or shape and color. So you have shape and color, shape and color, shape and color. You’re not discriminating because usually what we’re doing, shape and color discrimination, label. And it happens very quickly.
Okay? So we’re not doing that. What we’re doing is seeing shape and color, and then on the basis of shape and color, we’re saying, may you be happy before anything else can happen, before any any other thought can project. So then on the basis of may you be happy, then other positive thoughts come after that. So it’s very interesting to do when you go over to the supermarket or, you know, you’re walking around the shops and there’s just many, many people without looking and saying like, dislike, don’t care, may you be happy, may you be happy.
Okay. Now we do it. Page thirty four. Sangye, Chödang, Tsokyi Choknam La, Jangchub Bardu, Dagni Kyab Su Chi, Dagi Jinso Gipe Sönam Kyi, I go for refuge until I’m enlightened, to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly. By my practice of giving in other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings.
And then for the four immeasurables, before you start, you think of that irritating person if there’s one in your life, And then as you’re reciting it, you recite particularly for that person, offering these good thoughts to that person. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from the happiness that is free from suffering. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for friends and hatred for enemies.
Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, and mind. I present clouds of every type of offering, actual and imagined. I declare all my negative actions accumulated since beginningless time and rejoice in the merit of all holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of dharma for living beings. I dedicate my own merits and those of all others to the great enlightenment.
And then for the mandala offering, thinking of everything that you’re attached to. So all the pleasures that we want to have in our life. So you can think, if you like cakes or you like desserts or coffee or tea or whatever it is. But imagine, lots of it. Not small amounts, but lots of it.
And then you you visualize that you’re giving that to all the Buddhas. And then by doing that, you create the cause to experience the result. So you’ll have, plenty of resources in your life, which you’ll be able to use to benefit others. And it’s using your mind to accumulate merit, which you can also dedicate for others. Joshingmetog, Trahameri Rabblingji, This ground, anointed with perfume, strewn with flowers, adorned with Mount Merrow, four continents, the sun and the moon.
I imagine this is a Buddha field and offer it. May all living beings enjoy this pure land. Aumidam Guru Ratna Mandala Kam Niryatayami. So we’re going to do a meditation. First, you check your posture.
And then once you have the correct posture, Breathing deeply through the nose, all the way down into the abdomen. And then becoming aware of the sensation of the breath. As you breathe in and out through the nostrils. Using your mindfulness and your awareness to concentrate on the sensation of the breath. And then being aware of the intrusion of thoughts, sounds, sensations.
How the mind wants to let go of the object, the sensation of the breath. The mind wants to go somewhere else. So gently bring it back. Hold all your attention on the sensation of the breath. Two more minutes.
And slowly bring your awareness back to the room we’re sitting in, the cushion you’re sitting on, and the meditation we’ve just been doing. So yesterday you discussed fear, anxiety, sadness, depression. And then for some reason, we had a long talk about death. Death and dying, wasn’t it? All centering around Ganesh.
You know? Ganesh’s life story, Ganesh’s operations. No wonder Ganesha’s in that book so much. Very popular. I’m just joking.
So, we did talk something about how, when we need help, it’s not always easy to accept help, but we want to give help. So we have to look at the do we just want to give, or can we also receive help? We talked about death and dying, funerals, leaving the body behind, throwing it in the ground, what do you do with it? So some interesting talks around that. So apart from that, apart from all we talked about, is there anything from any of the other groups that you didn’t get to ask or that we didn’t talk about?
Is there anything left over? Ja, meine liebe Frauen? Okay. I’m looking for my paper. So many papers.
Okay. Anxiety and fear. So we have, fear and anxiety words. So apprehension. Do you understand that?
Anxiety. You understand that? Distress. Dread. Really not wanting to do something or be involved in something.
Edginess. Okay. Hysteria. Easy peasy. No.
Jumpiness. Nervousness. Overwhelmed, panic, tenseness, uneasiness, worry. So I’m not sure that, fear and anxiety are synonymous. Would you say they’re synonymous?
No. There’s a scale. So does fear lead to anxiety, or does anxiety lead to fear? Where would be the connection between the two? Yes?
Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. What’s often the problem with language?
You know, we have the same problem with Spanish. That in Spanish, there’s often a lot of words, for something that doesn’t accord with English, that doesn’t match with English. And so this could be the the problem of language that, you can’t really translate it into your own language because then you’re taking anxiety and fear and making it into one word. So the Well, I think that anxiety is on the way to fear so you can be anxious without having fear. Isn’t it?
It’s something more happening under the surface so you could be anxious about if you get a say, you get some money every week. Say, for instance, the government sends you money every week like this, and you have no savings at all, and the money is coming on Friday every week. And so if the money comes as it should on Friday, you’ve got money for the weekend. You’re okay. But say it doesn’t.
And so you find by Wednesday, Thursday, the food’s running out, and you start feeling something. Now would it be fear that would probably be too much in response to is the money coming or not? But what would start, I think the feeling that would start would be anxiety. Is it coming? And it’s probably also associated with, worry.
Right? So maybe we also need to add in worry. We talked about it in in the Reiki course, but it’s it’s not really in here. But how much do we worry about things? Because worry is about often trying to control something that we may not be able to control.
And so when you’re worrying, you’re using your energy in order to make something happen the way you want or worrying about something that may not happen or worrying about in two weeks time or three weeks time or in months time. You know, we’re often not present. We’re often worrying about what happened in the past that we’ve already done and what could happen in the future and the only moment we can change is this present moment. Right? So worry will take us to past and future and remove us from the present.
And I think with worry also comes anxiety. Because when you’re worrying, you’re thinking about possibilities. You know? Say this doesn’t the money doesn’t come. Say I don’t have anybody I can ask for help.
I’m going to die. And then if you escalated it more and more fear would come. I’m going to die. Which was is then your operation, you know, to that level of, oh, this is terrible. So I think there’s a a sort of where does it start?
How does it escalate? It’s not escalating itself. We are using our mind to escalate the anxiety, the worry into fear. So I think that’s why it’s important to have these small words rather than just talk about fear. On the way, we went through markers, if you like.
We went through, something small, and now we’re using our negative mind to increase that small seed into something bigger and bigger. So your anxiety, your worry is growing, and then that could escalate to the point of fear. Yes. Yes. Yes.
And I I think often, what we’re doing is we’re talking about big words, you know, depression. And people will say, but I don’t get depressed, but you can get sad. You know? Anger, but you can be irritable. Fear, but you can be anxious.
You can have worry. You know? So I think when we’re talking about the big words, people will often say, oh, no. I don’t experience that. But if we scale it down a little bit, well, yes, I can experience that.
And if I experience that on a regular basis, according to Buddhism, what you’re doing is planting another seed of a similar type, another one, another one, and you’re gathering those together into a very strong potential. Instead of a strong positive potential, a strong negative potential, a way of viewing the world, a way of responding to what’s happening around. So the more you worry, the more you create the potential of worry. You’re digging the hole. You’re throwing yourself in and you say, why me?
You know? Who put me down here? It’s not fair. You know? But we’ve got to see our involvement in picking up the spade and digging the hole quite happily, by the way.
You know, it’s not that we’re whinging and moaning that we’re digging. We’re saying, isn’t this great? We’re I’m digging. So it feels like we’re doing something. When we worry, when we’re anxious, it feels like we’re doing something constructive, but we’re not.
We’re filling our minds with these negative thoughts, which then ripen into a possible negative result. So I think that that’s important. Yeah. Sure. Right.
Right. Right. Observed or experienced. Definitely. Yeah.
Yes. Yes. Yeah. But you’re going too quickly. You have to slow down.
You’re a speedy little German. You know? That’s the problem. They go faster on their motorways. BMW on the motorway.
You’re speeding along. I’m trying to get this flower up, but I’ve completely destroyed it. I wanted this whole flower, but now I’ve got petals. There’s the emptiness of the flower. Imagine this is a whole flower.
And I look at the flower, and I love the flower so much that it’s like my mind and the flower become one. Imagine. Right? So there’s not a visualization of a flower where you you observe. It’s like the flower and my mind have become one.
That would be what we would be saying nondualistic, right, without that feeling of separation. But when we’re talking about emotions, which is on the way to non duality, emptiness, we’re on in the Lamrim, we’re only on the way. When we’re talking about, emotions, I think what’s very helpful is to step back instead of to step forward. So when I see the flower and I really like the flower, I can be absorbed in the flower, like the flower really exists. You know?
My mind and the flower are one oneness with each other. So the beautiful feeling, the angry feeling. Go for opposites. I like the opposites. You know?
You go up to Mount Lofty. You go up to Mount Lofty, and, you know, there’s this beautiful view. And so you look out at the view, and your mind becomes one with the view. It’s like your mind opens up, and you think, wow. You know, this is really nice because your mind was feeling small.
So your mind opened up. Wow. This is incredible. And then think of the opposite when your mind becomes irritable and small or worried and tense, you know, anxious, like that. Think of the two.
So it’s like the mind becomes oneness with the emotion. Okay? So what we’re trying to do is instead of stepping into the emotion and becoming involved, like getting married to the emotion, of doing that, we want to step back and say, okay, a small part of my mind is the observer. I’m watching. Instead of being involved.
So I’m just it was like this. The observer steps back and watches the mind. So you have to put a small part of your mind on the door. It’s said as a gatekeeper or as a guard. You want somebody on the door to make sure nobody comes in that shouldn’t come in.
Right? So when you’re observing, you need to be quite sharp, quite aware. So you need a gatekeeper, and you need your attention, your mindfulness. You step back and you’re watching. And then as you’re watching, this will start to go away because you’ll lose your interest in this.
You know? So if I had my flower, I have my flower, and I’m thinking, wow. That’s so interest so beautiful. So I’m very interested in it. But after a while, it starts to lose its interest.
And so it’s sort of drifting away like this. My attention is still here, and now my mind is looking for something else because that’s the habit. So, oh, you know, something interesting. And so that’s how your mind drifts from object to object to thought to on and on and on like that. So when we’re working with the emotions, by stepping back, I am not my emotion.
Yes, you’re creating the duality, but I I quite like the duality, to be honest. I really like it. Because even within emptiness, we have a dualistic way of explaining emptiness, which is conventional truth and ultimate truth. And so the conventional truth exists. I am angry.
You know? So the if I say in that moment, but you’re not angry. I am angry. You know? I know I’m angry.
Right? So in that sense, you feel my anger exists. So that conventional truth is important to find. And with the Dharma practices that we’re doing, if we jump too far ahead, if we nip over the delusions, you know, I’ll just skip over that, and I’ll skip over the karma, and I’ll skip over this, and I’ll just go straight for the top ones emptiness, bodhicitta, compassion. Then what you haven’t done is you haven’t investigated enough the level that we are actually at, what we’re experiencing in everyday life, the emotions.
And so when you find that duality, then you’ve got more to negate, you’ve got more to cut when you come to emptiness. So, you know, from my perspective, I understand why it’s in the Lamrim in the way it is. It’s because you need to you need to become very aware of what you’re not aware of. It’s like, something is taking over your mind, but you don’t really know it’s taking over. It’s a bit of an alien, you know, really.
These emotions are a bit of an alien. I like the example of Sigourney Weaver, you know, and the tentacles coming out of the chest and she’s saying before that she was saying, trust me people, there’s no alien in me. The alien has not got me. Let me in. And then this alien is in is in her.
Well, that’s how we feel when we’re getting upset. The alien is taking over. When we’re jealous, the alien is taking over. Right? And so in that sense, there is this feeling of being taken over how you are and then being taken over.
It’s like, somebody’s buying the building, you know, somebody’s taking you over. The guest house that you’re inhabiting is being invaded. And then you want to know what’s invading. This sense of I. Right?
So first, let’s subdue the emotion. Let’s sort of get that under control. The pot was boiling, and we’ve got the gas. Now we found the gas control, and we’re fiddling with the gas, trying to understand how does it work. And the boiling comes down a bit.
And then you start to understand, ah, there’s more to this situation than I thought. It’s not just emotion. There’s I experiencing the emotion. That’s the hand, the I coming to turn it down. You know?
So there’s more parts to it than we thought. There’s not just emotion. There’s more to it. And so in the emotion you need to be able to define it, to declare it, to say how how it exists for you and then, what can we do with it? What methods are we going to use in order to subdue it?
Because we can’t initially just remove. It’s not just a decision. I don’t like my, irritability or anger or jealousy or hatred or whatever. I don’t like it. It must stop.
It’s not just that. It would be easy. It would be New Year’s Eve and you make the list. You know, it would be easy. But we know that doesn’t work.
So we know that we have to do more than that. And when we’re dealing with the mind, Buddha was extremely clever. You know, he didn’t just say, Here’s one method and do that. He actually gave a progression. You know?
He gave teachings to gradually move your mind to an enlightened state because he knew the resistance was going to come up along the way. And the resistance we’re having is because we’re in the desire realm, and we’re using our desire and attachment to hold on to ourselves, our own happiness, and our pleasure. Right? And because our pleasure and our happiness is being attacked, the appearance of being attacked is happening, then the response is, I don’t like you. I don’t want you around me.
So why is that response coming? Because I. You know, the anger doesn’t come because, you’re worried about them. The anger comes mostly because you’re worried about yourself. Me.
Right? So in the emotion when you become more aware, you become more aware of I am angry. I am irritable. Now you have the two things. Now reduce the delusion.
The I becomes more and more apparent. And then once you’ve got the delusions under control, not necessarily totally removed because eighth-level Bodhisattva still has subtle delusion. It means it’s gonna take us a long time to remove all the delusions. But we’ve got the gross delusions pretty much under control. You can then start to work on the eye.
And when you cut the I, you cut all the delusions. Then you’re really going somewhere. But I think this method of working with the delusions for us is very successful. You know? I received so many emails from people saying, you know, I really changed from that time.
Not just because of the decision, but being able to work with the emotions. Yeah. Yeah. Because the positive emotions are still based on ignorance, still based on ego. Still.
Right? There’s still a me who wants you to be happy. Isn’t it? I want you to be happy. Like that.
So there’s still an I. And when we do actions, nice actions, you know, here’s a gift, there’s still that bit of a hook there. But this is what his holiness says is wise selfishness. At least do things for others to make them happy knowing that you’re going to get something back. That’s okay.
That’s wise selfishness. Because you’re doing something good. But if you thought there was nothing in it for you, would you still do it? They’re not sure, you see. So it’s really good to know about our selfishness and how to use our selfishness in order to benefit others, in order to benefit ourselves in a better way than I see the cake and I go, you know, give me that cake.
And then, oh, sorry, and put it back, you know, with the fingerprints and everything, like, and all mashed, but you put it back and you oh, how embarrassing. Right? So you give the cake knowing that cake is going to come back to you anyway. It’s a boomerang. It’s a nice boomerang.
It brings flowers, You know? So you get this beautiful boomerang coming back. The problem is we don’t know when it’s coming back. If you have the expectation of it must come back today or tomorrow, you’ll be disappointed. So we must give up on our expectations.
We just do what we’re doing because we believe in it, because we believe in being good people, you know, not because we expect reward, we expect some definite result today, tomorrow. We just do it like that. Any other questions? See, senorita. Yeah.
I guess it could become part of your operating system of who you think you are. In Tibetan Buddhism, when somebody passes away, we concentrate on them for seven weeks. As you know, you know, so that we have this seven weeks of every week doing prayers and saying special things for them to hope and pray that their future will be good. You want them to be happy. You want them to go on to a better life.
And so I think that this idea of not just going to a funeral, you know, like, we know Brian’s gonna have a funeral. Right? Lavish, very beautiful. Let’s pick the music and everything. But you could go to a funeral and Are you gonna have an open coffin or a closed coffin?
Okay. So we can’t go up to the coffin and say, oh, Brian. You know? So we’re all sitting in the well, if your face maintains as it is, I I keep it open. Right.
So, you know, you go up to the coffin, you look at Brian. Oh, Brian. You like this, and somebody says, stop crying. Right? So often in the Christian tradition, I think there’s this thing of that one day where you can sort of be upset, and you go to the funeral, the coffin goes into the ground, and then after that finished.
But I think there’s a process. And Buddhism, I think, is quite clever in the process of you’ve got seven weeks. So instead of the regret, you have something positive to do, which counteracts the grief. Because the grief is about attachment, and the counteraction to attachment is giving. Right?
So every week for seven weeks, you’re giving to that person who’s just passed away. May they be happy. May they, go on to a good life and blah blah blah blah. So I think this is very clever psychologically. Whether or not it benefits the person, I don’t know.
Depends on whether they can receive the benefit. But from our side, we know that that sense of giving counteracts the grief because people often say it took about seven weeks for them to get over the death of a person. You know? And scientists now say they agree with this. They think it takes around, seven weeks or eight weeks.
They think, you know, there is a time a time frame, which is about two months. So this is a good thing to do. You give, and you keep giving. Even though they’ve gone, it’s a sense of giving. And wouldn’t that counteract the grief, which has a sense of attachment, grasping, holding on.
You want to let go. So in your prayers and, you know, your dedications, everything you’re doing, it’s that sense of letting go, giving. You had a revelation. Oh, Trust you. You’re gonna put the downer on it now.
Yeah. Hang on. She’s Catholic. What’s the six weeks? Oh, is it?
Oh, see. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Uh-huh. The graver. Yeah. That’s true. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. As the griever, yeah. Yeah. You you can have methods, but it doesn’t mean that the method is going to change the person’s mind.
This is the thing. You can have thought transformation. You can have, six weeks. You can have seven weeks. You can have a year, whatever.
But if that person is attached to their grief, they’re not going to change their grief or their anger or their anxiety or whatever it is. Could be. I mean, don’t think it necessarily has to be. But I think also in our society, don’t we believe in grief? Don’t we put this forward as something that we should have?
Then back to work. Yeah. Yeah. But I find in, say, Mexican society, Italian, Spanish, they grieve. Right?
And then they have the death day every year. I think October in Mexico when they have skulls and crossbones and all this sort of thing. And they have it’s it’s it’s like a huge it’s a huge festival, but it’s it’s the death festival. They go to the cemeteries. They clean up the graves.
They have this special time when they really think about the people who died and they reconnect, but in a joyous way, a little bit of an Irish way, you know, they’re sort of dancing on the grave. But I think this idea of, somebody dies and then you hold on. We need to investigate why are they holding on, you know, what what works for them. And, as dharma practitioners, does it make sense to us? Does it work for us?
When you see great suffering in people, then, you can look at that from a little bit of a distance as an observer and say, well, does that work for me? Is that how I want to be? And unless you make strong decisions about things, you may find you are the one who’s experiencing this. Sometimes it’s when people’s cats or dogs die. You know?
That they never get over it. They grieve for years and years and years. So, it doesn’t necessarily also have to be a human. It could be something that people invest all their love and their energy into. Their attachment goes on to even the animal.
And then when they die, we know they’re going to live twelve, thirteen, fourteen years. But somehow there’s this thought, maybe my dog or cat will live much longer. Maybe it won’t happen because we love them so much. And then after the death, there’s great feeling of attachment. So it’s not the problem of having the relationship, the parents, the pet.
It’s the attachment that creates the suffering when anything changes. Remember we’re talking yesterday about how we attach to permanence. We don’t want things to change. Right? So when we attach to permanence, inevitably, things are changing, whether we like it or not.
And so because of that attachment, we create the suffering, Not being able to move on, not being able to see things in a different way because the mind is holding onto this present thought. Anything else? Yes, Ganesh. Another operation. Oh, now there’s operation number three.
You must experience this in your work. Yes. As I said in the beginning, one of the things that we’re doing is defining emotions that we may not have a definition for. This is why we need the conversations because, like my friend is saying, Miss Liebfraumilch I thought her name was Liebfraumilch. Lieber Frau Milk.
I picked exactly the right one. Right? Her hair went whoop. Right? She found the I.
I am not that wine. Now completely missed the point. You shocked me so much. Who is he? So I think, when we have fear, it’s an exaggeration, from the beginning point.
The way of viewing the beginning point, which is shape and color, whether it’s shape and color person or shape and color sickness, whatever it is, there’s some sort of thought, some sort of projection that’s going on. And then from that, we’re choosing the exaggeration. And so if we don’t recognize this exaggeration of what we’re doing, we’re taking something that is, as it is, and then we’re exaggerating it into fearful or into beautiful or into, something that I shouldn’t care about. So in the sense of, you know, wow, how beautiful, as if it’s really coming from here, but in actual fact, understanding it’s coming from here. It’s coming from this way.
Because if I say, does everybody in the room agree? This is really beautiful. Inevitably, somebody will say, it’s not. Right? Liebfraumilch, for some people, is the most delicious wine in the world, and for some, not.
My grandmother used to drink baby champagne. What was it called? Baby champ. Baby champ. She loved it.
Now, people who love champagne would say, you know, that gunky stuff. Then you can see there’s not the deliciousness, the handsomeness, the beautifulness coming from the object side. It’s coming from the mind side. So then what does the mind do when there’s a perception of something and it doesn’t understand it? I think part of it is not understanding it.
So when it doesn’t understand it, doesn’t understand the process, or has, if we’re talking about fear of losing the body, doesn’t want to lose the body. So then again, come back to not just fear, but attachment. Attachment to the body. So the body, unchanging, never being lost in the sense of I’m leaving and the body’s there and I’m going out of the body So I’m never going to lose my body, which is inevitably going to happen. So if we have these, ignorant ways of thinking in the sense of not being wise, then we’re distressing ourselves.
When the doctor says, you have a sickness, but I can treat it, but the worry escalates into fear into, no. I don’t want to do anything because I’m so afraid. Why would we do that when there’s an answer? So, you know, Lama Tsongkhapa says, why worry if there’s an answer? Why worry if there’s no answer?
But I can tell you in our society, we’ll worry anyway. So he said, if there’s an answer to this the problem, why worry? If there’s no answer to the problem, why worry? But we’ll we’ll worry anyway. That’s our third answer.
You know? That’s what we’ve learned to do in our society. So what you’re having to deal with is a societal thing. You know? We worry.
We want to be in control of what’s going on. And when we go to hospitals, doctors, dentists, whatever, we’re not in control. So I think as much as possible, professionals should give people the feeling they are in control. I think this is when you alleviate a lot of the fear and the anxiety, when there is a feeling, I I have control. I have some sense of control.
You know, one of the studies they did was on this, plunger for pain, and that they found that when people had a plunger that they could press to remove the pain, they used less drugs than if they were injecting morphine on a regular basis because people felt in control. So this is very interesting that people are choosing less drugs rather than more because when you feel in control your endorphins are actually counteracting the pain anyway. You’re in a better state of mind. So how do we support people when they have fear, anxiety, you know their mind’s exaggerating? It’s difficult because we’re not going to be able to just suddenly, you know, change their minds.
But I think the more that you stay in control and stay calm well, a picture just came into my mind because I fly a lot. Imagine the plane is bumpy. Right? So it’s like this and the announcement comes, hello passengers, you know, like when I was just flying recently, they said for the next hour or something, we’re gonna go through bumpy. So imagine they say that and, will all the hostesses please sit down or whatever and you know then they’re all heading to their seats and you’ve got one stewardess or steward screaming and running up and down the aisles you know, saying we’re all doomed!
This is the one who’s taking care of you. What would you feel if that one professional is running up and down the aisles sort of frothing and screaming and, you know, pulling the hair, you wouldn’t feel confident. And so I think in our society we give a lot of power to professionals, the doctors, the dentists, the specialists. And what we expect from them is to give us a feeling of, it’ll be okay. So to give choices, but then, to have that feeling of whichever choice you make is okay.
I think that’s difficult, you know? But I I think for me, if I was really sick and I had a doctor like you, I think it would really help, to be honest. Because I think you have a very nice attitude. And there’s some doctors who don’t have a very good attitude, and then they they can freak out the patient, you know, because there’s there’s no feeling of warmth, of communication, and that’s what we’re looking for in order to remove the fear, isn’t it? Because the fear is an exaggeration.
And so what you need is the opposite, the cooling effect of somebody who knows, who says it’ll be okay. You know? Don’t worry. But I think we have a society that is being, worried. There’s a benefit in the consumer society to worry people, to make them anxious, to upset them.
There’s there’s a benefit. Why? Because they consume more when they’re, you know, sort of on the edge than if they’re peaceful and happy. There’s a benefit. This is awful, really, that our society is developing into one of we have to be worried so that we’ll consume more of something.
More coffee or cocoa or whatever. I don’t know. But, there’s that sense of we’re always being pushed. You know? Pushed and pushed and pushed to sort of stay on the edge.
And then what does that do for us physically? What does it do for us mentally? These are the choices that we have to make to stop exaggerating our minds into something that disturbs us. Like that guy said the other day about the black and the white. It was very interesting after he said that about I love, I hate, we use this language, you know?
I read in a book I’m reading of the Dalai Lama, His Holiness, saying in Western society he finds that the the language is very extreme. So I don’t know whether that guy read it in that book or not, but it it’s, a series of small articles of his holiness that he says about the environment and different things. And he said, be careful of language because we’re using language to exaggerate, to go to extremes. Okay. Today, you’re going to have a break.
Wow. I actually managed to organize that. So but but it’s a work break, of course. Where’s my little Judy? Come on, dear.
You did such a good job yesterday. Just one one each. So this goes along with what we’ve been saying. It’s select an emotional reaction and then fill out the sheet as much as you can. So what are you feeling in your body?
What’s your facial expression? What do I feel like doing? So you can do it individually, but also if you want to talk to somebody about it, you can do that. Again, we’re trying to define things and become more aware of things. So it’s it’s not an examination.
It’s just something for you. Alright? So I think twenty minutes. So it gives you enough time to have a tea or coffee and then to fill this in. And then when we come back, we can discuss this, and we’ll go on.
I need to talk about under expression of anger, and is there a positive side to emotions. So we start again at twenty past. Any emotion, but preferably one that’s recent. I can’t switch it off. I press the button on the top.
It’s not going to pop. Preferably something recent that is not an imagined emotion. What would it be like?