Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 43-minute session from a Death and Dying weekend, Ven Lobsang Namgyel explores how strong emotions—anger, fear, anxiety—function in modern life and where they come from. He begins with Q&A on participants’ own emotional experiences, using concrete examples to show how the mind exaggerates small situations into crises. A student searching for a hot water bottle becomes a template: pain in the back triggers the label “problem,” which requires a “solution,” which triggers frustration when unmet, which spirals into compounded agitation. Namgyel traces this pattern to outdated survival instincts—the “dinosaur response”—that hijack the nervous system over trifles. He then explores why we label situations as problems at all, how that labeling invites emotion, and how delusion itself creates the confusion that prevents clear thinking. The central teaching: through meditation and practice, we can develop the ability to catch these reactive patterns in split seconds, before the mind’s exaggeration takes hold. He closes with brief Buddhist perspectives on negative karma as transformable energy. Suited for practitioners in a retreat setting, though the emotional psychology and practical introspection speak to a broad audience.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2011 11 27 Death and Dying Weekend.mp3
UUID: ca871b5a-43d6-45df-ad1d-6c27a469ca77
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: Death and Dying Weekend (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Date: 2011-11-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.6 minutes
Words: ~4,685
Okay. What did you learn? Sweden. The what story? Really?
Oh. You see, there’s jealousy. Jealousy towards you. I know. The Swedish are not coming out and talking about things, are they?
So you’re doing something that you really like, and then fear arises. Yeah. Because? What did you work out why? I I didn’t.
Yeah. I I I find. Uh-huh. In the paraglider or out? Wow.
Right. Right. Right. Was the hostess running up and down the aisle screaming? Get off the paraglider!
You don’t even have a hostess, do you? Yes. Yes. Yes. Was this based on this reaction, was it based on the previous time, do you think, of when you had fallen from the sky?
Right. Right. Right. So maybe with the accumulation of experience. Yeah.
Was interesting when I was in Pokhara in in Nepal teaching, in the Buddhist center, you could see upon have you been there? Where they do paragliding, hang gliding and paragliding. They do a lot from the hill. There’s a a a high hill, and then they paraglide, down towards the lake. And so sometimes the winds switch, And so you see they’re coming down and suddenly there’ll be no wind, and they just start going like this, you know?
It’s quite frightening when you’re watching it. And then I was talking to a a guy who was teaching in the area, I think Italian, and he said he was coming down and the electric wires appeared in front of him and, you know, in Nepal, India there are electric wires And so he was coming down towards the wires and he was trying to avoid them and the only thing he could do was go into a muddy field. And so he sort of got covered in mud and, you know, everything got tangled up And so he disconnected himself, and he had to walk into town, maybe a couple of kilometers, sort of dripping wet with mud. And he thought, I need a cup of coffee. So this will make me feel better.
You know? I need a cup of coffee. So he went to a restaurant but stood outside the restaurant like a beggar and said, you know, please, I need a cup of coffee, but I’m not coming inside because look at me. But, yeah, I used to watch these, things going on and I used to think, must be quite dangerous. And in the danger, you get this adrenaline and you get this sort of surge of energy, isn’t it?
I have to say those are the best meditations. Have to really concentrate. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Mhmm. Any other? Yes, Miss Uruguay. Do you have emotions? Well, thank goodness for that.
You’re South American. You must have emotions. Right? So did you find one? Real anger or irritability anger?
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Yes. He changed. And then? I’m losing my job. When you’re standing by your principles, you don’t always get rewarded for people who don’t agree with your principles.
Right? Oh here we go. Now I see where this conversation is going. I get the feeling of blame. Yes, yes, thank you very much.
It’s all to do with me. Anyway, I’m sure you’re going to get an you’ll get another job. It won’t that won’t be a problem. But I think, you know, you could suppress. Oh, alright then.
And yet, you know, chopping away at the chicken. But which is better? And these are the decisions that we need to make in the time, in the moment. You feel better because you made the right decision for you, but maybe it’s not the right decision for him. And so that’s what we need to Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Till December. Yes.
There’s a magnetotherapist that I used to visit in Mexico and she’s trained by a German magnetotherapist. She’s really, really good. And, she said to me, don’t eat chicken anywhere in the world. Now there’s so many, things being passed on, viruses being passed on in chickens because they’re they’re keeping them in closed containers, you know, and then if they die, they chop them up and feed them to the other chickens so that the diseases are being fed to the chickens, you know. And she finds it through the magnets.
Really incredible. You know? I had never been to Germany before this year. Never in my life I’ve been to Germany. And she doesn’t know where I’ve been.
And when I arrived in Mexico, I always go to her first and see how she is. She’s a very nice lady. And, she checks me with the magnets and she said to me, you have E. Coli from Germany. From Germany.
She knew. This is why I believe in her so much because she really knows. And, so she checked she said, yep. Definitely from Germany. You picked up E.
Coli. And it was that time, you know, when this thing was going on in Germany, when the E. Coli started to spread into Europe? I was there right then, and, it was from soy sauce. We were eating them because it was so hot.
They were making all these salads, and, that’s how we I got the E. Coli. But she said to me, everywhere in the world now is, a problem with chickens. So you’re probably right from a health point of view. You’re probably right.
Free range, she says, are okay. But do they use them? But do they use them? But still. Yeah.
So good on you. She’s probably got a pet chicken. Bring the rooster to the class. You know? So it’s interesting when you have this feeling I.
You know, the I arises. What you can also find is his experience of I, but your values are different. Your values are not based on the same thing. You know? So his values are based on business, making money, being successful.
Your values are based on something else. So you won’t always get a meeting of values, a meeting of minds in the sense of I agree with you. But I think what you did was good for you, but you also did what was good for him because you’re continuing to work hard for him to support his business, to take care, and to stay on until he needs you, which is twenty fourth, you could have said, okay. I’m out of here now. Then then it would now.
Yes. Exactly. Yeah. You could leave immediately and get a job anywhere. So I think we have to remember that when we are changing, when there is sometimes conflict, we’re not always going to agree with the other person.
And that’s also okay. Right? That they may not agree with us or we may not agree with them, but that’s okay. Just have acceptance that this is the way it is. They don’t have to believe in what I believe.
With the hat in the South American way, chasing him up and down the cafe with the the cleaver. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So difficult to be a dharma practitioner and to be a business person. To mix those two is really difficult because, you know, in business they say there’s parameters, there’s laws within the business, but actually how do you put them into practice? And if you don’t, is it good for the business? This is the conversation I’m having now with a lot of business people, big business companies.
If you’re not ethical, will you last? Will you be here in the next twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years? This is the interesting conversation now because we talk about ethics on an individual level, but also on a company level. Often they say, yeah. Yeah.
We really believe in ethics. Good. You know? But then they will do something completely opposite to what they’re believing in, that they don’t follow the ethical guidelines. And so this company I taught recently when I flew to Nepal to give this talk, how I finished the talk was this is the age of ethics.
This time is the time to be very ethical. Because if you’re not, then it will come back on you. You know? It will come back to bite you. So I think this is the time individually we have to have our own ethics.
We have to decide what our ethics are and then not to sell them or promote them to others, but to accept that others will not agree, will not always agree, which is exactly what you did. You know? You accepted that he has his way of thinking, you have your own. That’s okay. Go on.
Australia? Australia? Did you find one? You wouldn’t want to be sick after five thirty. Like me.
There’s probably all that traffic is people driving up and down looking for a chemist for water bottles, just like me. It was open all the time but closed at two. The angst of the situation. Yeah. Yeah.
It went on and on and on. Right. Spent hours on the road. Like it didn’t melt. It was plastic.
Didn’t melt. Well So I had a shower and made the whole bottle. Mhmm. Yeah. You should live in India.
You know? I mean, this is what Indian people do, isn’t it? They don’t think, I’ll go and buy a hot water bottle. They look around for something there that they can use. And this is what we’ve lost, and this is what the, I’m sorry, the Indians are losing too.
They don’t repair as much as they used to, and, you know, now it’s switching over to buying things rather than repairing and making do with things that you have. But this takes a bit more creativity, doesn’t it? Than just thinking in the box. I need something hot hot water bottle. So when you think outside the box, you think it’s already there.
The answer’s there. No. The professional model. It’ll do. And and how the mind exaggerates, you know, because you keep adding to the thoughts?
Yes. Yes. Get out. Yes. No, it’s true that you have this pain and you think there’s an I, I ness, you know, that must must be happy, doesn’t want to experience the suffering of the pain in the back or the legs or whatever it is.
And so there’s a sense of, only me existing within my pain bubble, and I must do something about it. Yeah. Who cares? Now you see this on ten day courses. You know, when the first day everybody’s okay, but by the second day, third day, the pain’s hitting, of sitting hour after hour after hour.
And you know, you’re trying to concentrate, but you can’t because you keep going back to the pain. And then people start to get really irritable and then, nasty. And you can see it’s because, actually, in this situation, there’s no solution. There’s nowhere to go. You know?
You can’t get in the car and drive and look for the chemist. There is no chemist. You’re not going anywhere. And when people sit with the pain, the pain goes away. What you realize is the pain was being projected from here, from the mind.
And you go into the pain One good thing to do with pain when you’re experiencing pain is, to imagine, sort of ghost fingers, I guess, going where the pain is and massaging to pay attention to it and give it some positive energy. Often the pain just disappears. It’s another way of the mind saying, stop. Do something else. You know?
Because you’re approaching something beneficial. So the mind says pain, don’t do it. And when you go to the pain and you give it a bit of psychic massage, not actual massage, most people the pain just disappears. So the pain wasn’t there. It was an experience of of the mind.
You needed to just to distract, you know, you were distracting, distracting. So you get in the car, you’re driving up and down. But when you really focus, you have the answer there all the time. When you remove the the, energy of the emotion, then there’s the answer. So you can see how the emotion actually creates something like a tornado effect, isn’t it?
You know? Everything becomes sort of whipped up and and hazy. You can’t see clearly. That’s the function of emotion. Delusion let’s be more specific.
Delusion creates a confused state of mind. Right? So that’s what we’re experiencing. When we’re experiencing delusion, it’s creating a confusion in the mind so that we don’t know what to do anymore. And you can end up in this heightened sense of delusion where you feel that the only solution is the hot water bottle.
You know? And then, actually, that’s a false premise that it’s the only solution. There there are other solutions, but you can’t think of them because your mind’s confused. It’s fixated on that one solution. So it gets really confused and doesn’t solve the problem.
When you drop that way of thinking, the solution appears. That was a good one. Anybody else? Come on then. Well, if it’s this negative emotion fear, anxiety, anger, you know, these emotions that we experience what does it do for us?
Right? That’s what we need to go into. Why are we experiencing this emotion? What will it do for us? So, when the mind is exaggerating, taking something and then exaggerating it into really bad.
And then because it’s really bad, I’m angry with it. It’s it’s bad. It’s harmful. It’s ugly or whatever it is. I get angry with it.
So what function in that situation would the emotion have? I think it’s, an exaggeration of our survival technique. Think we have a survival technique, but it’s not appropriate for our present society. It was appropriate when we were a million years ago, and there were dinosaurs, and you needed this extreme response. Dinosaur, danger, run.
But the present operating system is still set on that. But now the dinosaur is not a dinosaur. It’s a car that nearly hit you. It’s a water bottle that you couldn’t get. It’s your partner who didn’t cook for you because they’re not feeling so well, but you don’t care about that.
You just want your food. You know? It’s anything like that, and it’s often very small things that get a huge reaction because of it’s a dinosaur. You know? Dinosaur and Car Nearly Hit Me are virtually the same within your mind.
The response is the same. So what benefit is this emotion? It gives us the power and the energy to run. But we’re not running. We’re we’re sitting there.
But you then you’ve got this gripped, you know, the gripped experience. You’re gripping onto the wheel. You’re driving too fast. You’re driving aggressively, whatever it is. We’re we’re doing, too much because of the exaggeration.
In the past we would have needed that too much in the feet, in the breathing, in the in the effect of being able to run from the enemy. And in this case the enemy is, the pain in the back. So that becomes the enemy. Then the enemy is the chemist. Then the traffic, you know, you you keep building this exaggeration of the story.
It keeps building and getting bigger and bigger. And so your response is building towards your world. But where are you going to go? You know? There’s nowhere to go.
So in the past, we were running from the dinosaur to a safe place. But now we’ve created this this lack of safety within ourselves. It’s self created. When somebody nearly hits us in the car, we suddenly exaggerate into, I could have been killed. And then what would my family, my children, you know, it goes on, you weren’t.
But, you know, the mind automatically goes into this exaggeration. So there would have been a benefit, and maybe in extreme situations, there can be a benefit. But in our situations, in our society, is there a benefit to this exaggeration? Is there a benefit to yourself, and is there a benefit to others? So without being told the answer, it’s good to research the times when you felt this very strong emotion, and is there a benefit in it?
You know? The I think the benefit is actually afterwards. In his case, it’s the benefit is afterwards. Right? Then you could laugh about it and because you dropped it then.
So if you could drop it earlier through your practice, you know, you breathe it in, you breathe it out, you let it go. If you could just breathe it out, let it go, then your practice would would be quicker. You cut in faster. But you had to go through that whole process of you know searching for the chemist, driving up and down, getting more and more irritable to the point where at some point you let go. You dropped it.
Right? As an issue it was dropped. Yeah. So that that’s the problem. We have the attachment to the problem, and that attachment to the problem doesn’t create a solution.
We create it from our minds. This is a problem. And so from the mind, the mind itself has to create the solution. So now you’ve created this, and you’ve gotta create this. There’s your duality.
Right? So you create this problem. You have to create this solution. But if you can drop the sense of problem, you know, why now here’s another question. Why do we label problem?
Right? We have the situation at the back, but it becomes a problem. Why isn’t it just pain in the back? Discomfort. It becomes a problem, and then the problem needs a solution.
Right? And that’s where the emotion comes in. As soon as you say problem, don’t you have some sort of response? I yes. Yeah.
Yeah. So it becomes your problem, and then you need the solution. So I think that’s when you then conjoin the emotion with the problem. You know? You’ve established there is a problem, and now I need the solution.
And then the solution is the chemist. And then the chemist isn’t fulfilling my wishes, isn’t doing what I want. Right? And then that feels like it’s not a dinosaur but it’s a minor dinosaur. You’ve already had the dinosaur and now you’ve got the minor dinosaurs along the way because the chemist isn’t open when it should be etc etc.
You know it just goes on and on and on. Right. It gets so complicated. Yeah. Yeah.
So why do we make it all so complicated? Because the mind is exaggerating and creating the confusion in that time. Right? It’s not just the exaggerating mind, you’ve now created adrenaline and so the adrenaline is pumping in the body and saying, drive faster. You know?
Like, go. Go. Go. So you’ve got this chemical response as well as the exaggerated mental response. So all of that is creating a potentially dangerous situation for you and for others.
You know? I mean, like I said, you read this litigation magazine of why did you kill your family? It’s not for much more than you experience. You could come home with a bad back, you didn’t find the, the hot water bottle, you’re frothing at the mouth, and you say to the wife, where’s dinner? And she says, I didn’t cook.
And you you know? And the music goes, you know, like this. It doesn’t take much more to attack. And that’s what people say. Because they didn’t have the ability to reduce the confusion, to reduce the strong emotion, because they don’t have that ability, then it’s one thing on top of another, on top of another, and then somebody says or does something and they snap.
Right? And in that snapping, it seems that attacking somebody else is the answer. And then afterwards, why did you do that? I don’t know. It just seemed to make sense at the time.
You know? It seemed like the answer at the time. But now I look back. Yeah. I fully agree.
Completely crazy. It’s like the mind’s gone completely crazy in its confusion. But it’s that step by step adding more, adding more, adding more confusion. And who’s doing the adding? Not society, not outside, but me.
Actually, doing it myself. I’m increasing the heat, turning up the heat on the stove, you know? I’m turning it up and saying, why is it getting so hot? Not recognizing that it’s me actually in control. Any other?
Yes, Ganesh? Since you’re our star Yeah, you can. According to Buddhism, there is. Yep. Yep.
No. I mean, it’s split second that you see shape and color. Right? Just because in that split second, it doesn’t take very long to have that perception. And then on that is, placed the label.
On that is placed the discrimination. Angry, like, dislike, whatever it is. So it happens very, very quickly. Now what we need is split second discrimination. If we have nondiscrimination in the sense of can’t see, I’m not saying the good one, nondiscrimination in the sense of neutrality, you know, equanimity, but in the sense of I don’t see what’s appearing to the mind.
If we don’t have the ability to see the perceive the emotion that’s arising, the emotion arises, and I am my emotion. And so meditation gives you the ability to see in split seconds. That’s the benefit. Right? So the great the great benefit of, meditation according to scientific studies now is that you see in split seconds.
It’s very valuable. If you don’t see quickly, the thoughts go on, you know, and on, I need the hot water bottle, and the story is being added and added and added until something happens, good or bad. You know, he’s fortunate. But say, he got to the point of rage, can quite easily happen. From this, it could escalate into rage and driving like a lunatic, you know, through Adelaide and sort of hit somebody and then blaming them for being hit and and it just goes on and on like that.
So I think it’s a really useful experience when you have this sort of emotion and you start to understand the process. Well, where did all this come from? There must have been that moment of discrimination. I don’t like. And it was I don’t like the pain.
And from that I don’t like the pain. I need a solution. And so it goes on from there. So in that split second, somebody decided I don’t like. And it’s not them, it’s me.
And it’s because of my instinct, my imprints don’t like. So if we don’t like pain, pain arises and immediately I think don’t like. We’re not used to it. Right? So that’s what I say when we’re told, sit, don’t move, immediately pain appears.
Like, immediately go: Oh! It’s really amazing how it just it comes up like that. No. It’s it’s the potential of that karma is negative because the motivation and the action that you did was negative. So it’s like shit.
It’s just it’s shit. Do you want to eat it for lunch? Right? It’s shit. But can you do something positive with it?
You can transform it into manure. So the the basic, energy of it at the moment is something that we would discriminate against and say negative, but you can transform it through your practice into something positive. Well, you had to have, if you’re doing a negative action, you’ve got a karma, an action, and you’ve got the delusion. The delusion is the negative feeling, the attachment, the grasping, the hatred. The emotion that goes with the action was negative.
And then so the reason for doing the negative action is negative. What’s behind it is negative. And so that imprint, that potential of energy, is negative. It’s like nuclear power, you know, in its raw form. It’s negative.
But used safely, it can be transformed into something positive. So as we understand it at our level, we see it as something that we don’t like. Right? But if we’re better practitioners, we can take it and use it and transform it into something good. It depends on the level of the practitioner.
Theravadin practice is about protecting yourself with vows. You put a bubble around you, and you protect yourself. Through my vows, lay vows, amongst and nuns vows, I’m going to try and protect you and me from these negative actions. Then with the Mahāyāna, I now see others as more important, so I have the vows to protect myself, but I also have the vows to protect others. And then the tantric vows are just seeing everything as potential, everything as energy, and transforming it.
So depending on the level of the mind of the practitioner, we decide where we are. To change. Well, maybe you don’t like the word bad. I mean, the potential is there to create suffering. In within the karma, it’s like you have over here, the seed of a poisonous plant.
And over here, you have the seed of a dahlia or a dandelion. Oh, no. No. A something. Something.
It’s lunchtime. So, you know, you have a poisonous seed, a a a seed that will create a poisonous plant. A seed that will create, say, a medicinal plant. They both look like seeds. You can’t discriminate between the two seeds, but the potential is there for this to be poisonous and this to be, something that helps others beneficial.
Right? So when you plant it and then it starts to grow into its potential, then even then you can take the flowers from this one and transform it into homeopathic medicine. Then it’s still not poisonous, or somebody could eat it and die. You have to have the skill to know what to do with the poison. Right?
So even the poison can be something good. The first noble truth is suffering, but you don’t need to suffer. If we’re not skillful with the poison, we suffer. If we’re skillful, we stop suffering. There’s a transformation going on.
Yeah? Okay. No? Can you ask after? Would you be here?
Do you mind? It’s just we’ve gone over, and people will start wilting. I know how they are. They wilt. Wilt like a plant without water.
The leaves go. Thirty two, as we still have to dedicate. May all beings everywhere play 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 their ailments.
Whatever diseases there are in the world, may they never occur again. May the frightened cease to be afraid and those bound be freed. May the powerless find power, and may people think of benefiting each other for as long as space remains, for as long as sentient beings remain. Until then, may I too remain to dispel the miseries of the world. So what you need to think about is may all medicines be effective, including hot water bottles?