Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this brief 3-minute talk, Ven Lobsang Namgyel addresses two key obstacles that arise in Medicine Buddha practice: the scattered, unfocused mind and the practical difficulty of sustaining motivation when practising alone. He emphasizes how group practice provides both energy and accountability, making it harder to cut sessions short. He then explores a classical concentration teaching about the mind’s “gatekeeper” — a five-percent guard that monitors for wandering — explaining that this is not literal duality but rather a metaphor for cultivating awareness. He reframes the teaching as a practice of noticing when attention drifts, using visualization as a tool to make the instruction feel tangible rather than merely conceptual.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2011 10 15 MBP questions.mp3
UUID: f8019575-c626-4df0-b710-ac43129b344b
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: Medicine Buddha Practrice (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Date: 2011-10-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 3.3 minutes
Words: ~495
And our mind is really all over the place. You know? You can see just trying to do a short practice how much the mind goes out and comes back. It’s easier when you’re in a group because it’s the power of the group, and you don’t give up so easily. You know?
But when you’re alone, it’s so much easier to say, oh, you know, it’s already been seven minutes. I think that’ll do. You know? Can’t switch the dishwasher on or make the beds or something like this. So having a group practice is really good.
While you’re here, you do it. I find that’s very helpful. It’s very nice to be with a group of similar people. You know? It has a nice energy.
Yeah. Anything else? Yeah. Ganesh? Exactly.
Who is? When you find out, let me know. If you find out who’s controlling my mind, I’d really like to know. Well, you have to have the intention. There is no controller in the sense of a person controlling the mind, but you have to have the intention of placing the mind on something.
And so it can give you the feeling that there is a controller and a controlled, a duality, isn’t it? But in actual fact, there’s only one mind. But it’s said in the concentration texts, you take about five percent of the mind, and you put that as a guard on the mind, the gatekeeper. And you say, well, you take care and make sure that we’re concentrating on what we’re supposed to be concentrating on. And once you start wandering off, that gatekeeper says, hold on.
You’re going off. But then people say, well, hang on. So that means ninety-five percent of the mind is on this and five percent of the mind is on that. You know, it produces some sort of mental problem, doesn’t it? But this is what the texts say.
Because anyway, the mind is not always on something. You know, it’s not always on Medicine Buddha. So I think what it’s saying is be aware when you’re wandering off. Have a level of awareness. So that’s the five percent.
Be aware that you’re starting to wander off. We seem to need some sort of visual image of how it feels, and this is why we have all of this. Without the visual image, just saying ninety-five percent, five percent starts to bring up obstacles, doesn’t it? But I think this sense of you have the main guard and you have the guard’s assistant, something like that, or the driver and the driver’s assistant. And the driver’s assistant is the one telling you, you’re on the right road or you’re going off the road.
It’s the one mind, but the one mind can perform many tasks. Not simultaneously, but it can perform many tasks. Any other questions? Okay. Well, thank you all very much.