Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 95-minute session from a Death and Dying weekend, Ven. Lobsang Namgyel explores how emotions shape suffering in daily life and relationships. Drawing on practical Buddhist psychology and direct questions from participants, he guides the group through the gap between how we think we should feel and how we actually feel, showing how guilt and self-blame compound depression and anxiety. He examines anger in depth—the dangers of suppression versus uncontrolled expression—and offers concrete strategies for transforming difficult emotions into constructive energy. The teaching moves into family dynamics and addiction, using a story about seeking an unknown birth mother to illustrate how unmet expectations create lasting pain. Namgyel emphasises acceptance without agenda, the limits of external help, and the necessity of inner change when others cannot or will not. He concludes by reading verses from Śāntideva’s Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra on universal compassion and the aspiration to benefit all beings. Suited for practitioners working with difficult emotions and family relationships.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2011 11 27 05 – Track 5 ——-Venerable Namgyel 27-11-2011 4;15pm Death and Dying Weekend.mp3
UUID: 95ad9585-631f-46ff-a410-43c15bedb7ed
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: Death and Dying Weekend (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Date: 2011-11-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 95.1 minutes
Words: ~9,010
So this morning we did prayers. We took refuge for immeasurables, seven limbs. We did mandala. So then thinking that this session is a continuation of the prayers that we did this morning, taking refuge in Buddha’s advice, the advice that he gave to remove the confusion from the mind and to increase the wisdom in the mind. The four immeasurables to transform the mind into equanimity, loving-kindness, joy, compassion.
The seven limbs to be aware of all of our activities as being the potential of accumulation and purification. The mandala offering using the mind in order to transform our environment into a perfect environment. So everything comes from the mind. All happiness and suffering come from the mind. So we’ve used these prayers in order to direct the mind into more happiness, less suffering, and then not only for ourselves, but for others.
So why do I transform my mind? Why do I remove the confusion? If it’s only for myself, the purpose is limited. If it’s for all sentient beings, the purpose is limitless. Countless sentient beings, then the motivation is beyond any boundaries, wanting to benefit all sentient beings.
Gosh. Once a wish, two a kiss. What’s three. Once a wish, two a kiss, and three is? Come on.
You must know. When people sneeze, you say once a wish, two a kiss. Three. Three, a boy or a girl. I’m not sure that’s good news.
Okay. So understanding emotions that we experience. So I’ll just go through my notes and see if there’s anything I’ve missed out. We started off with saying that in this time, we’re understanding emotions that we experience. We’re reducing emotional vulnerability and decreasing emotional suffering.
So we’re still in the understanding emotions that we experience. For depression and anxiety, there’s often a big gap between how we think we should feel and how we feel. Right? There’s a gap there between how we think we should feel and how we do feel. What we feel we should do and what we’re doing.
Okay? What we feel we should do and what we’re doing. And then there’s guilt and self blame about not being or doing what we think we should be. So, again, it’s about projecting something. I should be doing this.
I should be feeling this way. And then we’re not actually doing it, and then we feel guilty because we’re not doing it, and then we blame ourselves for not doing it. So can you see how it’s all the mind creating all the suffering? You know, it’s all arising from one’s own mind. That we create this depression by, saying, I should feel that way or I should be doing that, and then we’re not doing it, and then we blame ourselves for not doing it.
So interesting to have a deeper understanding of depression and anxiety. And then under expression of anger, we talked a bit yesterday about anger, and the purpose is not to suppress anger, but it’s also not to express anger in the sense of uncontrolled anger. So often underexpression of anger can lead to depression. True? Under underexpression.
Right? So underexpressors, people who can’t express their anger, may be unable to set boundaries or to define who they are and what they want. They may suffer from obsessive worry, compulsive behaviour, or somatic complaints with difficult to trace physical causes, lack of direction or vision in their work lives. Underexpressors often stay isolated and rarely complain, except that they sometimes have unexplainable eruptions of disagreement that seem out of proportion. So typically serious anxiety, depression, or a major breakdown in relations is the catalyst for an under expresser to seek help.
So this, sense of, bottling it up and bottling it up and then, something happens. So it’s usually, serious anxiety or depression or a major breakdown in, a relationship that then may stimulate the underexpressor into saying I need help. So for the underexpressor, what’s what’s recommended is, the it’s the danger of not learning how to hold, understand, or deal constructively with angry or harmful feelings. Right? So the danger of not learning how to hold.
What we’re doing is we’re watching and we’re holding onto the emotion, you know, in the sense of not saying go away, go away, but we’re just being there watching, but not not rejecting and not saying I am the emotion. So this is something that we need quite a good skill with. So we need to deal constructively with angry or harmful feelings, not to have self blame, not to have agitation or lack of energy, an absence of zest and fullness of life. Because in the most extreme cases, people feel that they just don’t want to live anymore. So this sense of, when you can’t cope with, this feeling of anger towards people or the world or whatever, and there’s this suppression of the anger all the time, then there’s a feeling of blaming oneself, and then what results is agitation or lack of energy.
So the two extremes. Not feeling to engage in life, and then a feeling actually not to live anymore. So then can you go from being an underexpressor to expressing your anger in a constructive way? This is the the question, isn’t it? Can we go from just not acknowledging the emotion, suppressing the emotion, and go to a constructive expression of the emotion?
Can you go from one to the other? I think there has to be steps along the way, doesn’t it? Leaf has the answer. Yeah. Right.
Well, maybe what you’re going to do with it, isn’t it? It’s an energy. And what you’re about to do with it in in the chicken case, she could have grabbed the cleaver, you know, and started chasing him up and down. She might well be able to have the anger about don’t kill the chickens or take care of the chickens. You know, what about the chickens?
You could have an anger about that, which, could be turned into a constructive thing, or it could go into the destructive way, which is I hate you because you’re going to eat chickens and chase them up and down the aisle. So this is true, that in your investigation of the emotion, is the emotion itself something that we should be saying is bad or is what we’re doing with the emotion something that could be bad or something that could be good? You know, there was that guy here one day who was arguing about good anger, but we have to be really careful about this good anger, you know, in the sense of, we might say, because the trees are being chopped down, we we have a good anger, and we’re going to go out and save the trees. But then you can become very self righteous about the idea of saving the trees. You need to also be careful of the ego that gets involved with saving the trees, saving the chickens, saving the dogs and the cats, or whatever it is, that self righteous anger then becomes dangerous.
So the anger itself, I think, is just an energy because on tantric level, it says you can use this anger for very good purposes. It can be transformed. But on the sūtra level, it says this anger is very dangerous, not because of the energy, but because of what you can do with it. Can you control it? You know?
And so as much as possible, find a way of of moving this energy into another channel. Do something else with it. So often I say to people, put on your your running shoes. You know, get out. Because many people come on courses, who have a difficult family life, and they find that it’s often the family who are the ones doing the poking and the prodding, you know.
People go home from a course, ten day course, I’m never going to be angry ever again. You know? I think this is fatal. Because then immediately the family start poking and prodding. You know?
And then you get angry and then say, yeah, I knew you couldn’t stop. So it’s also said in the dharma text, don’t go around advertising the changes that you want to produce. Don’t talk about it. When you talk about it, it produces a resistance from another side, from the other side. So keep it to yourself, but do it.
We have these secret practices that we want to put into effect. So don’t go around saying to everybody, now I’m really patient. Now I’m compassionate. Now I’m practicing loving-kindness. For sure, somebody’s going to stop doing something to you.
So I think this idea of take the anger, transform it into something else. Well, what would you like to transform it into? Okay? So we have the energy. What would you use it for?
Now you may not be able to stay in the kitchen with somebody who’s poking and prodding, so you may want to transform it into exercise and you get out the house. And often people say to me, I’m in a situation where I’ve been fighting with my partner or my parents or something for years. So now how am I going to change the situation? You can’t go home and say, you have to stop being angry. That goes back to them.
They need to change. Right? So you can’t go home and say, I went to a course and what I learnt is you have to stop being angry. So in actual fact, you have to take on the responsibility. So I say to them, you can say, I don’t want to be angry anymore.
I don’t want to fight anymore. And so in order for me not to fight, when I feel the irritability or the anger coming on, I’m going to go out. And I’m gonna go around the block until I’ve calmed down. So I think you can declare yourself in that way, but don’t expect others to follow. Others may not change.
Oh, sorry. And, also, you had a question, wasn’t it? Oh, I thought that was the tea. Yeah. Right.
Clicky. Sure. Right. Yes. Yes.
You know what I’ve seen with the Tibetans over the years? That as Westerners we often engage fully or disengage fully. And with Tibetans there’s usually another way, the third way. And so isn’t there the third way? If you drop, you know, his answer, which is I must have the hot water bottle or, you know, these extremes, which is the panic and the anxiety where we go, the fear.
If I don’t get it, what’s going to happen? If you drop that, breathe it out, let it go, is there a possibility of a third thing you could do? I’m I’m out. I ought to be there. Right.
Right. Right. Right. Right. And the but it went wrong.
Mhmm. But then you want a result different from their result, isn’t it? No. But do you have to be out completely? Do you think it has to be like that?
There’s there’s not another way? Yeah. But then can’t you also look back over that year and think, is there any other thing I could have done? Because it really doesn’t sound like there is then. You know, it’s not that you tried one thing, then you tried the other thing.
It sounds like you tried many things. So then where’s the guilt coming from? Accept. You know, when there’s karma and delusion, retreat hits the fan, is the the Buddhist way of putting it. We throw this retreat on the fan, and one day we reach across and we switch on the fan when it’s hot.
Right? And you go and it goes, and you think, why me? It’s not fair. But we don’t see that it’s me who’s been doing this. And so your mother has created the cause for this.
Her daughter has created the cause for this, and now they’re in a a dance enjoying each other in this, which is maybe, in one way, it’s a sort of, a compensation for being alone. And then you could say, well, your mother’s got her daughter as a companion in the delusion. However, it also might be if your mother was alone or your sister was alone, things would have changed because of being alone, because people get desperate when they’re alone. But when they’re in in this dance with somebody else, Very difficult to come in from the outside and as a crazy person, you know, defined by Buddhism crazy, as a crazy person telling others they’re having problems. Who’s to say?
You know? We we only say from a societal point of view, this is dysfunctional. But you’re also crazy. And so you’re crazy, but you know it, and you can do something about it. Your mother’s exhibiting exhibiting sentient beings of craziness, but may not be suffering enough yet in order to do something about it.
If we don’t suffer enough, I really don’t think we have this feeling to give up, to give up some sorrow. It’s the suffering and the awareness of the suffering. You know how we were saying yesterday about dementia? I wonder with dementia do you then generate renunciation because the dementia helps you to forget, doesn’t it? So you with dementia, you’re really you’re suffering because you’ve lost something, but you don’t know what you’ve lost.
I think the greatest gift is you’re suffering and you remember your suffering. You know you’re suffering. But in in this family situation, your mother may say she knows, but how much does she really know? How much does she want to change? There’s there is something called tough love.
Yeah. It’s like giving heroin to somebody who says, without heroin, I’ll die. You know? And when you’re a user, you only see that drug, what you use, the alcohol or whatever it is, as the answer, the solution. But you’re not professional.
You know, in this situation, as a family member, I think the amount that you can help is very limited because of the emotion and you’re being used. Emotionally. You’re being blackmailed to do what they want you to do. And so what they need is somebody professional who can go in as a caring person but not somebody that you can keep doing this to, you know, give me money, give me this, give me this, and you go, oh, okay. One just one more time.
It actually doesn’t work. They need somebody from the outside. What you want to hear. Yeah. But, you know, you have to accept at some point, this is this is the karma that they’ve created.
You know? That in some of the the sutras where it talks about Buddha going around and trying to sort things out, you know, there’s a fight between these people. And Buddha goes and he gives teachings, and he tries and he tries and he tries. And at some point, he says, I have to leave. You know?
And they say, well, why are you leaving? And he says, there’s nothing I can do in this situation. I have to go. So he also taught us that sometimes we have to walk away with love and compassion and kindness. We also walk away.
We don’t always stay for anything, you know? Because in Samsāra, anything can be really dangerous. Isn’t it? You have the answer. Oh.
Yeah. Yeah. The epiphany. Yeah. I must give up alcohol.
Yeah. Rise. Rise. Rise. Right.
Right. Epiphany is coming any moment. Yeah. Her last chance. Yeah.
Yeah. Right. It’s the power of addiction, isn’t it? Yeah. Right.
So do you think what they do is they hook into the the savior aspect of the family that help me and you can save me? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right.
And we’ll yeah. We’ll continue to dance as long as you want to dance. Yeah. I’ll go bar and buy her a drink. Anyway yeah.
I think the this is yeah. But do you do you unconditionally love? Because when you unconditionally love, it’s this sense of giving without wanting something back. And you went through all these stages, didn’t you, to get to some point of I give, but now I don’t look for something back. You’re her her part her part of the agreement that you weren’t telling her about, isn’t it?
You know? So I’m gonna do the all this stuff for you, and the secret agreement that I’m signing you up for is that you’re gonna give up alcohol, and you’re going to become a good person. But in natural fact, she’s choosing whatever she wants to do, you know, how she wants to do it. But but that’s where your problem is, isn’t it? That you feel abandoned.
So even though you say, I’ve given up, you took control, and you felt you gave up the situation. In actual fact, you felt abandoned. And so that’s where the healing has to happen because even though you say I’ve given up the situation, you still have this strong feeling of I’ve been abandoned by my mother. Your strongest feeling is about your mother. Right?
I mean, I can tell you a friend of mine who’s a nun, many years ago went to Lama Zopa, and, she said, I’m adopted. I found out I’m adopted, and I want to find the real parents. And Rinpoche said, I wouldn’t bother. You don’t need your real mother. You’ve got countless mothers.
You know? Like that. You so many mothers. Everybody’s been your mother. She said, no.
No. I really want to know who my mother is. And he said, ah, I really wouldn’t bother. Because he said, when I was very small, from two years of age onwards, he used to leave his mother and go up the mountain, sit in the cave and say, you know, I’m the Lama in the cave. So he used to go away from his mother, and his mother was very kind to him.
And when, he was about six, she decided out of kindness, the best thing she could do for him was to send him to Tibet, to the monastery, to send him away, that this is her love for him. And so he said, I haven’t had a mother for most of my life. And so my friend’s saying, yes. But I really want to find out who my mother is. And so he said, well, okay.
Yes. You can look, but I don’t think it’s going to make you very happy. So she said, okay. So she contacted the, the adoption people and she found out who had adopted her out, the mother, who was Irish. And the her brother, real brother, was living a hundred kilometers away.
So she got hold of his address, wrote to him, and said, I’m your sister, long lost sister, you know, from fifty years ago. I’m your sister. So he said, okay. You know, let’s meet. And so they met, and he talked about the family, which is from Ireland and, from this small village in Ireland.
And he said, you know, but the mother was now dead. And what had happened was she got pregnant, and they’d sent her to England from Ireland. They sent her to England to have the baby and come back and pretend she never had a baby. Seventeen, eighteen years of age. So it was a big secret.
And the whole village didn’t know about this secret. Right? And so this friend of mine said, well, I I’d like to go to the village and see the village and meet the relatives. And he said, well, whatever you do, don’t tell them who you are. So oh, no.
Of course not. So bear in mind, Lama Zopa said, I don’t think this is gonna bring your great happiness. She went to Ireland. She met the family. Everything was fine.
She went to a bar one night. She doesn’t drink, but she went to the bar and everybody’s talking. And they said, and so what are you doing here? And she said, well, I’m the daughter of so and so. And then she went and it went right around the village.
Whoosh. Island. You know? By the next morning, everybody knew this woman that they all respected had an illegitimate child. She’s back and then the family would never talk to her ever again.
Told her, leave the village. We never want to see you ever again and that was it. The brother in England never talked to her, the family in Ireland never talked to her, it turned into a huge disaster. I don’t quite know why I gave that as an example. Anyway, you want a mother.
We all want a mother, the ideal of the mother. But our karma dictates on what we have the appearance of. And even you can lose your mother, you know, your adopted mother, you want to find your real mother, you think it’s going to be great, it isn’t necessarily because your karma is writing the story of the situation. So if you want to change the situation from your own point of view, something needs to change within you. And then from the other point of view, the other person, I think like he’s saying, you can give, but you can’t have any hidden agenda.
And that’s it. You can give money, you can give time, you can give whatever you want to give, but actually you can’t ask for anything back. Because the minute you want not you. The minute you ask for the minute you ask for something back, there’s an agenda. And who gets hurt in the agenda?
You. And then from you being hurt, you hurt back. And so it goes backwards and forwards that, I love you, but I want something back from you. And when you have this hidden agenda of I want you to give up the alcohol or I want you to give up the drugs, so you’re writing this hidden agenda within the love and these people know it. They’re very sensitive to knowing that you’re not just giving to me, you’re saying I’m giving to you but but I want something back from it.
And their desire and their attachment for their object of addiction is so strong that they can’t stop. It’s so complicated. You know? We’re talking about ordinary desire, attachment, aversion, hatred. But what you’re talking about is extreme.
So when you’re talking about the extreme and you’re not a dharma practitioner, you don’t have that awareness, how much can you deal with? How much can you change? You need a lot of help. And like you’re saying, you can find counselors or psychologists and you can tell them whatever you like and they may go along with it. They may not change.
You know? And this is the life that they’re choosing. And so what’s the life that you’re choosing? You know, to be abandoned? To be given up by your mother?
If you choose that view, you’re choosing to make yourself suffer. And then what’s your future? You know, that’s what you need to be careful about, what your future is. Because if the if the, DNA or the family potential is like that, you very much need to hold on to who and what you are in your your good heart. She baked me a cake.
Two now, I believe, isn’t it? One before, one today. You didn’t make a cake today? You brought a cake. Oh.
Yeah. Linda just told me before you brought a cake. Who brought a cake? Nobody. It could be poisoned.
Linda just told me. Oh, I see. In the future. I thought she meant today. No.
Because I I told everybody. She made an incredible cake. You didn’t cook cakes before. You see? Now she’s turned into brilliant on the gluten free cakes.
But what that’s an indication of, you can take a a skill that you don’t have, and you can develop a skill. And the skill to develop in this situation is acceptance and love even though you’re not getting it back. I think it’s the only thing you can do. Acceptance is you’re not holding on to your own expectations of what others should do. You accept whatever’s whatever the appearance is as long as there’s no harm to you and to others.
There has to be a morality involved with the acceptance. You can’t just sit there when somebody’s got a razor and they say, I’m going to kill myself, and they go like this. That’s not wise acceptance. You can’t just leave it like that. But as long as they’re not hurting you or others, you have to accept this is the way that they want to live.
Because actually what’s been proven is you’ve done everything you can to change the situation and they won’t change. You’ve asked for time. You begged, you know, as your daughter, give me time. No. As your daughter, give me this.
No. So you’ve asked for whatever you wanted, but you haven’t been given it. So this shows you. Begging for it, asking for it, trading for it, trying to manipulate it. Whatever you do, if it’s not going to come from the other side, you’re not going to get it.
You don’t have the karma to experience it from that person. You must have the karma to experience kindness from the mother. Right? If the mother doesn’t have a karmic connection with you to give you kindness, you can say whatever you like. She’s not gonna give it to you.
The connection has to be there. Okay. Leave frown milk. Yes. Intertwined. Yes.
I actually I think the love is okay if it’s without the attachment, but I think there’s attachment there. You know? Yes. They want want something back. You detach.
I mean, you can still love. Yeah. Yeah. You can still help, but without the expectation, the attachment that something is going to come back from this. That’s what we have.
It’s the attachment that makes you suffer. Yeah. It’s the attachment to me that then helps me to attach to you. Right? So first, what we can find is the attachment to me, myself, my pleasure, pleasurable feelings.
Alright? So like I said to you, we can have this wise selfishness where I’m giving to you, and I know I’m going to get something back from it. But what happens when you’re giving and you’re not getting something back from it? Do you give up? Now if it was a friend, labeled friend, you give up.
After a while, you give up. You’re giving. You’re giving. You’re giving. I think you give up.
But when it’s a relative, mother, sister, there’s an emotional component to it, you don’t give up. So you have the attachment there because it’s a family member, and particularly mother, father. You know? We don’t want to give up on them. So you keep trying and trying, but you’re trying not necessarily for them just for them, but for me.
I want you to change. You know? And sometimes this I want you to change works because they see the love, you know, coming from the family. So in interventions, they use this when they bring together the whole family and they do an intervention and they say, this is what we feel about you. We all love you.
And still that person can say, Pew! Tough luck. You know, I don’t love you. I don’t want to be with you. So you can reveal yourself, your innermost feelings.
It doesn’t necessarily mean the addicted person, the person with strong desire and attachment, will be able to let go of their desire and attachment and change the situation. So this is so complicated when we’re talking about the desire realm. The the place that we’re living is the desire realm, and so what we experience as human beings is strong desire. And usually for us, it’s sleep, sleep, food, drink, sex, you know, these sort of things. But when it goes out of control into, an addiction to something, to eating too much or drinking too much or collecting too much.
This is the the latest thing, isn’t it? This, the house full of stuff. Hoarding. So now hoarding is a new desire attachment to where you’ve you virtually can’t get into the house. You have to climb over everything to get into the house.
And you say to people, so why are you doing this? They build themselves a little cocoon. In all of this stuff, they have this little place where they stay, and it’s like a safe place surrounded by stuff. You know? So their desire attachment is giving them a sense of safety.
But then the other side of it is the government comes along and says, we’re gonna take away your house. This is a fire hazard. This is dangerous. You’re gonna lose your home. So is it also that the addictions that people show, are they also crying out for help in the sense of somebody standing up and saying enough is enough?
You know? Do they keep pushing to the edge until somebody says no more? Don’t know. But the extremes, I think, are are so difficult to deal with because you see people being emotionally manipulated within families when it’s to do with addiction. And in our society, alcohol addiction used to be quite acceptable.
Right? You could drink, and that wasn’t a problem. But now we recognize the dangers of alcohol, the dangers of other be other behaviors. Anything else about addiction? You want to say something about addiction?
The clean side of the room? You’re young. You might have something to say about addiction. Doctor? Yeah.
They need each other. Yeah. So do you want to be needy? Do you want to be pathetic? Yeah.
To play the game. There’s a there’s a bargain. There’s something. Yes. Yeah.
So you can see all this. You understand all this. But why are you still craving for the mother that you didn’t have? They do? Well, I was thinking you could be her mother.
I think. I think I can pair you off. You know? Kathy needs a mother. Leave frown milk.
Really? You don’t dress alike, do you? Gosh. Does she say who are you? Really?
So she’s in school, but you’re her daughter. Wow. Yeah. Gosh. So that shows you how strong the imprint is to hate somebody.
It’s so strong it’ll get through dementia. And to give something. Yeah. And it’s sitting close to you. Lama Zopa told me many years ago, Tārā’s your mother, and that’s it.
More more than that, I’d say. Yeah. He went off to the monastery in Tibet and then came out of he was forty six, fifty nine. Yeah. Maybe sixteen about sixteen when he saw his mother again.
But but I think we have this ideal, you know, the was it? That woman on TV who used to be the American program, ideal of the mother in the sixties. Leave it to Beaver. Missus Cleaver. She was the perfection.
You know, like you get home from school and she had an apron and there was cookies in the stove and the smell and, you know, she was always calm and peaceful, sedated. But, you know, not like your own mother who would never think of baking cookies and stuff like that. But we have this sort of ideal of the mother. And when you were talking about actually, when you start to hear other people’s experiences of families and mothers and sisters and whatever, what came into my mind was, welcome to the modern world. This is now the world that we’ve created because now people are getting married, divorcing, married, divorcing.
The mother doesn’t necessarily live where the children are. The mother doesn’t necessarily want to know the children or has multiple childrens from different families which make things very complicated for the children and for the partners. So I think now the incidence of disease, like I said, dementia, Alzheimer’s is rocketing and so you don’t necessarily have your mother’s mind there even if she’s willing to be your mother. She doesn’t necessarily remember you because of dementia, or Alzheimer’s. Parkinson’s, very debilitating.
And so and then cancer, the incidence of cancer seems to be growing. And so your mother could be around but may not live until you’re older. And so I think this is a part and parcel of the modern times that we live in is that this is what we have to get used to, that we can’t keep going back to our ideal of what we would like to have. We can only have an acceptance of what we have, and then be as happy as you can with with that. You’re comparatively settled in your situation with your mother and and the way it is.
But if you keep thinking every day, why me? You’re not gonna be happy. You’re not going to be able to, be as effective serving others if you you’re thinking of the problems of me. For you, I know it’s it’s like a crushing blow that you get in life. You know, it’s one of these sort of crushing blows that goes on and on and on and on because she’s still alive.
I think if your mother died, you would have said, well, it was awful and she’s gone. But because she’s still around, you still have hope. And maybe the break was in the hope that the break would bring about something something better. In the cutting off of the mother, then you’re hoping she’s gonna call or contact you and say, I’ve realized now you’re really important. I want to see you.
But she doesn’t. Oh. Oh. Right. Right.
Right. Right. Right. I don’t either. We put a lot of emphasis on on the the mother, isn’t it?
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But in actual fact, she’s she’s calling the cleaning company, you know, and saying I’m really busy, come around and clean the house.
So that’s our modern society, you know, is that the mother may not be doing the cleaning or the cooking, she may not be the role model that we thought. And I think this is where the disturbance is coming from in many people’s minds is that we’re looking for our perfection of something from TV and whatever. You should be like that. And then she’s dissatisfied. Yeah.
Yeah. You’ll be right. Yeah. You’ll be a good mother. But so I think there’s pressure from advertising society or whatever on the mother to be the perfect mother, but also to work, to cook, to clean, to do everything, to be the superwoman.
And then from the children’s side, looking at the mother and each child wants also the perfect mother, you know, and the mother wants the perfect child. And I think this was always the way it was, but maybe now it’s just more difficult to to do this because of the this intense pressure that everybody’s receiving. It’s not just from family pressure, but, advertising pressure, TV pressure. You know, there’s a lot of pressure from, everything around us. Without saying the mother.
Yes. But for you now, she’s the mother. Yes. Alright. Yes.
Yes. And secretly running the office. You know? Yeah. But Australia now is a society where, according to the surveys, often both people are working and often now they’re choosing not to have children.
But there seems to be the ideal of one of those two is not working. She’s at home and yet all the facts and figures show she’s at work. No. You’re you’re showing this role model but in actual fact something else is happening in society. Yeah.
Yeah. I saw a program yesterday where it was talking about, economics and it was saying, that Australia’s headed into a very difficult economic phase because so many people are retiring. It’s the baby boomers and now a huge amount of people and they’re retiring. They want to retire at the age of sixty, around sixty, sixty five. And we’re not bringing in enough immigrants in order to satisfy all the vacancies that we have.
So this guy was saying, so what then what’s the answer to the problem is we need to persuade people not to retire, to continue on, but also for women to go back to work. Because they go to work, then if they do have a child, they give up work, And then they don’t necessarily go back to work because they’re not no. No. Exactly. It’s so expensive.
It’s not supported. Yeah. So it’s like we we have problems, but situations in this country that we don’t necessarily address. We have the ideal that should happen. You know?
People should be able to go out to work, have a baby, manage, blah blah blah. But somehow we’re not addressing situations. And so we project this perfection onto the situation which doesn’t necessarily help those who are struggling with the difficulties of childcare and one thing and another. So are we supporting a mother to have the child and to be able to take care of the child and then to be able to go back to work? You know, these are sort of social issues I think that we face.
But individually, are we looking for something that we can’t have In our desire for wanting something in our lives, are we looking for something that we can’t fulfill? Are you looking for the sister that you can’t have? Are you looking for the mother that you can’t have? The reality comes down to the, with acceptance, you can live happily given the situation. Without acceptance, then what’s the feeling?
There’s always this dissatisfaction, unhappiness, because there’s always that feeling of an emptiness that has to be filled by that person. Isn’t it? Yeah. Now there’s a competition. Ganesh is supremely, kind and polite.
What’s the first thing she asks you? And then? And then? Are you married yet? Have you found a girl yet?
Does she ask every week? She’s she’s persistent. I’ll give her that. Yeah. For for an Indian person, this is we must say, this is an extremely difficult thing to do for an Indian boy to give up the attachment to the mother, the ideal of the mother, isn’t it?
Because they they grow up with a very strong bond that’s fostered, that’s deliberately fostered between the mother and the child from what I’ve seen in India. So I think that you must have a very strong bond with your mother. But you’ve managed to. Right. Right.
Yes. Because if you don’t, emptiness and you have to go you have to go home. Basically, the then the only answer becomes, I stay here and I’m empty and lonely without the mothering that I’m looking for, then I have to go home. Right? And that’s a bit sad that you can’t use your intelligence to find another way to make yourself happy and also to make others happy.
Were those mothers that you talk about, the ones with mothering qualities, were they involved in your healing process? Yeah. Yeah. So it’s interesting that in looking for the mothering qualities, you also end up with people who will mother you in the time when you’re sick, the time when you need help, isn’t it? Yes.
Leave frown milk. Yes. The first step. Right. Right.
Just she’d been okay, and then she died. Mhmm. She would have liked me. Mhmm. Than the one originally.
Yes. Without the dementia. That’s why I was wondering whether this dysfunctional mother, whether you can work on thinking, you know, she’s only doing the best that she can do. She cannot do any more than she’s actually doing, but that’s not good enough for you. That’s the hard part, is that she’s doing the best that she can do.
When she gives you an hour, for her, it’s probably like a week. That’s the best that she can do. But from your side, it’s not enough. And so then you have to go to the what we call in Buddhism, the Ganesh solution. It’s been written into the sutras, the Ganesh solution, which is then you find other nurturing, mothering people to involve within your life so that you can feel the qualities of mothering.
But then you have the real mother who you can connect with every now and again. But, you know, I I don’t know. I travel around the world a lot, and I meet a lot of people. I I cannot think of somebody who said, I have the perfect mother. Okay.
You have the perfect mother? You. Get out. You think of your mother as the guru. That’s different.
Oh, you. You think of yourself as the perfect mother. Well, what’s an ego? People? Well, I think I am.
Oh, well, every every son says that. No. No. No. No.
We just say things like that. Your baked beans are the best in the world, mom. You know? How much do you love me? All the world and a shilling change.
You know, all that sort of stuff. That’s what boys do. No, no, no, no. Stay in your little your little bubble. Stay in your little bubble.
It’ll burst in another year or two. Once he gets married and then he says that, oh, you’re the best woman in the world. And then when you overhear, he’s, excuse me? What about me? Yes.
Well, you now you’re number two. Downgraded to number two. Well, at least we finished at least we finished with a laugh. You know? That was very good.
Well, if it’s intelligent. Physical. Yes. Well, when you say mother, it’s a reflection of you. Right?
In the quality. Well, you know, Buddhism, we talk about feminine as being wisdom, which is interesting because, you would think that compassion should be feminine. Wouldn’t you think that? But, compassion is male and wisdom is female. Wisdom is voidness.
So when you see, these different qualities in people, then if you see male, female, and then you bring them together, wisdom and compassion, you bring them together in bodhicitta, and then there is no duality. Your actions are all based on wisdom. So you have action, compassion, based on wisdom. So I think the duality can be good to have a perception of non duality because, as I said, our world is duality, the way ordinary people are experiencing it, and that’s why Buddha said, you’re all crazy. You know?
You think the room exists. You think the problems exist. You think everything exists, and that’s what’s crazy. So in that craziness, we have to find our our way to the the exit door. You know?
We need some sort of sign that says exit to know that’s the way out of this turbulence and this craziness. Yeah. So, you know, in your duality, you you see this, male female, and you see various qualities. And you see what you don’t like, what you want to get away from, what you like, what you want to move towards. If you’re fortunate enough to have those ripening conditions, many people don’t.
You know, we can’t say everybody experiences that, but the people who are fortunate enough, to receive, I think, Dharma teachings because of the understanding of the mind and how to develop your mind into wisdom and compassion. This is so rare, so precious, and it’s not asking anything back from you. You know, it’s not saying, do this in order that we get this. You know? So I I really like dharma from the point of view of this unconditional giving and unconditional loving of others.
I think it’s extremely rare in in this time. And because we’ve come in contact with these amazing conditions to ripen our positive karma, we have amazing potential to be a benefit to others. If we don’t use it in this time, it’s not sure in future times we’ll be able to use it. If you look at how quickly things are degenerating, how thing how quickly things are changing, more wars, more turbulence. You know?
It’s much easier to start a war than to start peace. Right? All we have to do is go po po po down at the pub, and we could have a war in Bearwood. So, you know, we can we can start a war quite easily, but peace is much more difficult to get started. And so you can see these peace people down in the park.
The rain came. They gave up. They’re supposed to be back today demonstrating for peace. But when they were demonstrating before for Iraq, thousands of people turned out in Adelaide. Now, very few people.
So around the world, there’s pockets of people turning up and saying, we do want peace. We do want harmony. We do want something better. But it doesn’t seem as strong as in the days of, ban the BAM. You know?
I can remember that and that symbol. Remember? You know? So there was a ban the BAM, CND. Wasn’t it?
CND. We used to be very sort of, I don’t know very emotional about we want a better world. These days it’s like yeah I’d like a better world but you know I’m a bit busy. There’s other things to do you know And so, yeah, if I can fit it in in my lunch break, I’ll go to the park and I’ll demonstrate. So it doesn’t seem like there’s a strong feeling for peace.
So it seems like still delusions are the winner. The the king and the queen at the moment are delusions. And so what we have and we’re only a small group, but what we have is an incredible opportunity to bring about peace and harmony and kindness and compassion in our own lives and affect others with that. Not to go and tell others that they should be doing that, but we do it ourselves. We try to do this ourselves.
And out of that, if fifteen people do it and fifteen people affect a hundred, well, there’s fifteen hundred. And fifteen hundred affect another hundred, there’s fifteen thousand, a hundred and fifty thousand. It does gradually go out and out. And worldwide, there is a slow movement outwards into more and more people quietly wanting something better. But I but, you know, my one concern is that, with all these wars and all this strife around the world, I think we shouldn’t keep thinking there’s another fifty years to do this or a hundred years.
I’m not sure now we can say like that. I think we should say we should do it as quickly as possible. You know? Change as quickly as possible, but don’t stress yourself out. Right?
So that you get this strong energy for change. You don’t know how much longer there is. Just last night, the Americans killed, twenty four Pakistanis by mistake. So now the Pakistanis is they’re saying NATO did it, and NATO admitted they did it on the border, and now they’re cutting off the supplies to Afghanistan. Very easy.
Pakistan could turn against America, and then Pakistan and India could start at it again. And now Pakistan has the bomb, India will have the bomb. Like that, we might not be here anymore. So, you know, don’t be thinking I have another month, I have another two months. Think today, what do I want to live by?
What do I want to have in my life? What do I want to discard, let go of? And don’t put it off because very much we can’t rely on the situation anymore. It’s quite unstable in in the turbulence in the Middle East. And so I think that what you’ve started is something amazing, and you shouldn’t downgrade that either.
You should really think that what you’ve started is really amazing. And I think also the fact that in this group, you can speak so honestly. It’s not easy to talk about personal things and to speak honestly about dementia and, you know, things that are happening in the family and your response to it. It means you have a trust and a faith and a belief in each other, and that’s really helpful. But then take that out and then try and develop it out in society so we develop a better society.
It’s not just about us. It’s also about taking it out. Okay? So, I did bring something, but I don’t have a copy for you. So I’ll read it to you.
This is from Śāntideva. I’ll read it to you and then we can use the other one. But I thought you’d like to hear something different for a change. So open your page at twenty thirty something thirty two and then I’ll read this to you. So this is from Bodhicaryāvatāra, which is the Bodhicharyavatara.
May I be the doctor and the medicine, and may I be the nurse for all sick beings in the world until everyone is healed. May a rain of food and drink descend to clear away the pain of thirst and hunger. And during the eon of famine, may I myself change into food and drink. May I become an inexhaustible treasure for those who are poor and destitute. May I turn into all things they could need, and may these be placed close beside them.
Without any sense of loss, I shall give up my body and enjoyments, as well as all my virtues of the three times for the sake of benefiting all. By giving up all, sorrow is transcended, and my mind will realize the sorrowless state. It is best that I now give everything to all beings in the same way as I shall at death. Having given up this body up for the pleasure of all living beings, by killing, abusing, and beating it, may they always do as they please. Although they may play with my body and make it a source of jest and blame, because I’ve given it up to them, what’s the use of holding it dear?
Therefore, I shall let them do anything to it that does not cause them any harm. And when anyone encounters me, may it never be meaningless for him. If in those who encounter me a faithful or an angry thought arises, may that eternally become the source for fulfilling all their wishes. May all those who say bad things to me or cause me any other harm, and those who mock and insult me have the fortune to fully awaken. May I be a protector for those without one, a guide for all travellers on the way.
May I be a bridge, a boat, and a ship for all who wish to cross the water. May I be an island for those who seek one, and a lamp for those desiring light. May I be a bed for all who wish to rest, and a slave for all who want a slave. May I be a wishing jewel, a magic vase, powerful mantras, great medicine. May I become a wish fulfilling tree and a cow aplenty for the world.
Just like space and the great elements such as earth, may I always support the life of all the boundless creatures. And until they pass away from pain, may I also be the source of life for all the realms of varied beings that reach until the ends of space. And then we read Śāntideva. May all beings everywhere plagued by sufferings of body and mind, obtain an ocean of happiness and joy by virtue of my merits. May no living creature suffer, commit evil, or ever fall ill.
May no one be afraid or belittled with a mind weighed down by depression. May the blind see forms and the deaf hear sounds. May those whose bodies are worn with toil be restored and finding repose. May the naked find clothing, the hungry find food. May the thirsty find water and delicious drinks.
May the poor find wealth. Those weak with sorrow find joy. May the forlorn find hope, constant happiness, and prosperity. May there be timely rains and bountiful harvests. May all medicines be effective, and wholesome prayers bear fruit.
May all who are sick and ill quickly be freed from the ailments. Whatever diseases 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.
So maybe since you’ve been so good to use your weekend, I’ll give you these papers now so that you can look at them before next Wednesday because next Wednesday is the last day. So do you want to give this one out? So this is, I think, one. It’s all the same, I think, but they’ve they turned around. So one each of those.
Is it double sided, that one? Yeah. Okay. Joe, to give out this one also.