Peaceful Living & Peaceful Dying — 2011-10-12

Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. In this 120-minute teaching on Peaceful Living and Peaceful Dying, Ven Lobsang Namgyel guides practitioners through essential preparation for death by cultivating key attitudes now. He begins with guided breathing meditation and motivational reflection, then takes a direct question about fairness in the face of sudden death and dementia. Rather than avoid the hard topics, he uses them to explore how karma ripens through causes and conditions, why purification matters, and how the mind we carry into death—shaped by our habits and realizations—is all that accompanies us. He walks through the four powers of purification (the object, regret, opponent forces, and commitment), clarifying how karma becomes complete or incomplete through intention, action, and satisfaction. He emphasizes that without practice now—meditation, not just intellectual understanding—these qualities cannot suddenly emerge at death. He then introduces the graduated path to bodhicitta, beginning with equanimity (seeing all beings as neither inherently friend, enemy, nor stranger), recognizing all beings as our mothers, and remembering their kindness. Throughout, he addresses resistance to these practices with humour and frank advice: change your habit of constant mental sorting, choose dharma or drama daily, and start now—there is no time to wait. The talk assumes familiarity with refuge and bodhicitta but welcomes serious practitioners from any level.

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File: 2011 10 12 Ven Namgyel – 01 – Wed 12th Oct.mp3

UUID: 74075874-76a5-4550-9772-c78dcee23334

Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel

Collection: Peaceful Living & Peaceful Dying (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)

Date: 2011-10-12

Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide

Duration: 120.0 minutes

Words: ~14,764

Thanks. Prayers. Do you remember what we did last week? Page thirty four, if you have the book. So it’s taking refuge, generating bodhicitta for immeasurable beings, seven limb and short mandala offering.

Twice in Tibetan, once in English, taking refuge. Chudan sokki chok nam la jang chub bar du, dag ni kyab su chi, dag gi jin sok gi yi sönam kyi, I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme assembly. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. 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 the mandala offering in Tibetan and then in English. This ground anointed with perfume, strewn with flowers, adorned with Mount Meru, four continents, the sun, and the moon. I imagine this as a Buddha field and offer it.

May all living beings enjoy this pure land. Idam guru ratna mandala kam nirya tayami. So we’re going to start with a few minutes of breathing meditation. thinking about your motivation. There are various levels of motivation, so you can think about just yourself, but it’s not enough.

Just family and friends, it’s not enough. Then we can include all other people, but that also is not enough. We include all living beings in our motivation, wanting them all to be happy, not wanting them to suffer. And then focusing on the sensation of the breath as you breathe in and out through the nostrils. Being aware when your mind is distracted.

And when it’s distracted, gently coming back to the sensation of the breath. Just three more minutes. And slowly becoming aware of the room we’re sitting in, the cushion you’re sitting on, and the meditation we’ve just been doing. In your own time, please finish your meditation. Okay.

So the people who were here last week, do you have any questions? It’s all crystal clear. Good. It’s not quite that crystal clear. Yeah.

Go on. Right. TV, neighbors. Right. Be amazing, yes.

Yes. Yeah. We don’t know what’s going to happen, do we? You know, while we’re healthy, we’re thinking we’re going to have a nice death, you know, sort of in quotes, nice, whatever we think nice is, whether it’s at home or in a hospice or, you know, but we don’t think we’re going to die with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or, having had an accident, a car accident. This is a question many people ask.

What happens when there’s a car accident and somebody dies just like that? You don’t have time to go through the death process. So my question back to you would be, is karma fair? Well, it depends on on which karma you’ve created. You know, what you’ve done, not just this life, but previous lives.

We tend to focus on just this life because this is what we can see and what we can remember. But our life now is a combination of countless lifetimes of what we’ve done, and it’s led us to here, not just presently in this room, but this country, this body, our situation, whatever work, whatever relationships we’ve had, whether we’ve had a peaceful life or a harmonious life or a negative life or many problems in life. So I think unless we understand karma, then life can seem unfair. You can see really good people having terrible problems. You know, you think, why?

Why is that happening to that person? It doesn’t seem fair. So if you if you work on the the fair, unfair system, I’m not sure it’s much better than lucky, unlucky, you know, because karma doesn’t sort of sit, you know, on your shoulder or somewhere and think, well, should I should I be fair or unfair? The karma ripens in relation to the conditions. So when somebody’s experiencing dementia, one of my students is, her grandmother is experiencing this at the moment, and she’s having a lot of problems dealing with it because when she goes to see the grandmother, the grandmother says, who are you?

You know? Do I know you? And another time, she will remember many, many things. And this is really confusing for the granddaughter. So she has to fly from England to Ireland.

So she flies there, and sometimes the grandmother knows her, and sometimes she doesn’t. And she said to me, maybe I should leave her at home. And I said, but how could you? You wouldn’t know what she’d do. She could set the house on fire.

You know, anything could happen. And she’s been, obviously, a really nice lady in her life. She’s taken care of her grandmother, her grandchild. When the parents died, she was there. And then within the last six months, this dementia suddenly came.

So why this really good person and suddenly experiencing dementia? So you can have the scientific idea. You know, it could be chemicals. It can be changes in the brain, things like this. But from a a karmic point of view, we’d have to look at what would be the cause of that confusion, of that lack of memory, and, experiencing that situation she’s experiencing now.

So I think, yeah, there’s many seemingly unfair things happening now, like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diabetes. Also, it’s tragic, really. If you have diabetes, I think very difficult to be a practitioner. So I think for all of us who are, alive and some degree of health, we need to take the opportunity now to start thinking, what sort of death do I want? And when I die, where do I want to go?

Have you thought about where you’re going? You know? I often ask people, where do you want to be reborn? They have no idea. Well, you can’t suddenly decide at the last minute, you know.

Oh, would I go there? It’s like, you’ve got this holiday brochure, you know, and you’re looking at all the different places and you think, oh, Fiji. Oh, Bali. Oh, oh, oh, you know, and then you’ve gone in total confusion. So we need to make prayers to be reborn in a certain way, and we need to do practices while we’re healthy to ensure that the brain is functioning and that we are healthy, not just assume it’s going to happen.

We need to create causes for it to happen, and we need to remove negative karma. We need to purify it. We don’t have to experience it. We can purify it. The last thing I do before I leave Adelaide is we’re going to have a purification day.

I will leave you clean. Then you can mess up your house again. Right? Because we can’t think we just clean one day, and then for the rest of the time, we’re fine. But we need to have some sort of ongoing program of cleaning up the house.

Because on a daily basis, for sure, we’re doing some negative actions, but maybe not aware of them. And that’s when karma seems unfair. Day after day, if we think, oh, I’m perfect. You know? I’m absolutely perfect.

I don’t harm any sentient beings. You may not want to, but I noticed today there’s a whole lot of ants outside. You know? I went out to water the garden, and I saw swarms of ants everywhere. So if you’re not really aware, you can kill a lot of ants.

So I think that we need to become more aware. We need to have, good motivation for the day. So awareness of the motivation. We need to be aware of the negative actions that we do. We need to purify on a daily basis.

And we need to be thinking about, not just life, but death. Because when we think about death, we become very aware of life. The Buddhist way is not depressing at all. It’s that you’ve got to a certain stage with your life, and it’s time to move on. You’re moving out of the guesthouse, and you’re going to another guesthouse.

But we treat this building, this body, as if it’s permanent and unchanging. But you can remember when you were young. You compare your body now. You know that as you get older, it gets more difficult. And so there’s a point where you think, oh, it’s time to go, really.

But we don’t have much choice. There’s some people who would like to die and can’t die. You know? They get older and older and older, and they’re on their sticks, and they get I’m gonna die any minute. You’ll all be sorry.

You know? They’re the ones that go on and on and on. You know? So it’s not that we can die when we want to by program, but we’re going to die when the karma is finished. When the living karma is finished, we will die.

And what we’re leaving behind is the guesthouse, something temporary. But we’ve been treating it as if it’s something permanent. We’ve been decorating it, you know, reorganizing the furniture constantly. Put this up. Get rid of that.

You know? Isn’t it? It’s we wanna be able to shift things around. I remember one student in Kopan, years ago. She was Australian.

And I said, each one of them could lead a meditation. And so she did a meditation for the first time she’d ever done a meditation, and she wrote it herself. And it was really hard for us not to laugh and laugh because she said, as we get older, everything goes south. You know? And it was such an Australian thing to say that I’m not sure if the Singaporeans and the Japanese understood it, but everything’s going south.

And it’s true. Everything is heading south. Right? And you can have all these operations to sort of head it back north, but it doesn’t work for very long. And so if we’re dissatisfied, we have a dissatisfied mind, then no matter how many operations we have, we’re still dissatisfied.

And then the operations can go wrong. Unfortunately, I missed a program tonight where a woman had a breast operation, and her breasts ended up, her nipples are near her shoulders or something. I really wanted to find out about this so I could mention it to you. The the dangers of this. You know?

Because we think operations are good and perfect, and, you know, we can do this, and we can do this. But in actual fact, there’s so many dangers involved with just living. And we assume that we’re not we’re not going to be part of those dangers. Just crossing the street is dangerous. Driving a car is dangerous.

Plugging in electric cables can be dangerous. So it’s not that, we’re living a completely safe life. We’re faced with many dangers. So the one thing that is sure, we’re all going to die. This is sure.

But the time is unsure. And so that’s what we need to keep our minds on each day thinking, I’m really not sure when I’m going to die. And will it be fair or unfair in the sense of, will I remember my dharma? Will I remember where I want to go? Will I be able to be kind and compassionate as I’m dying?

Or will I be going in a really difficult way in the sense of having an accident or having a very serious illness? Can you imagine if you’re in so much pain that you want painkillers? And because of the painkillers, you can’t remember anything. Then what would happen in that situation? The lamas usually say, don’t take the painkillers.

How many of us would choose not to take the painkillers? Give us give me the drugs. You know? He’d be screaming, give me the drugs. You know?

So we might make the decision, I’m strong enough. I don’t need drugs. As I’m dying, I won’t need the drugs. And then we start to experience it and give me the drugs. You know?

I can’t I can’t do this. This is too much pain, too much suffering. So if we haven’t trained in life to be satisfied, to be tolerant, to be patient, to have qualities, at the time we’re dying, we’re not going to suddenly be able to develop them. Isn’t it? That’s why these practices in life are really important for death.

But if you don’t practice now and, you know, the word is practice. It’s not in the sense of, getting an l plate or a p plate, you know, as a driver. But what I mean is putting it into practice. We talk about tolerance and patience, but then we’re irritable. You know?

We talk about tolerance and patience, but we won’t let somebody in when we’re driving. We want to be number one. We want to be first. And so this creates a pressure and attention which will affect our minds. It will affect our brains, our blood pressure, it will affect our health.

So these qualities that we’re developing are also good for our body, also good for our brain. And in that case, the chances are better that we’re going to be able to die the way we want. Fingers crossed. Just in case. You know?

Isn’t it? You want to touch wood or cross your fingers or something. But does that really work? If you say, well, I cross my fingers or I throw the salt over the left shoulder. We can have these superstitions, but actually what works is doing something, putting something into practice.

So not waiting until later, not thinking when I’m older, I’ll have the time and then I’ll do it, but actually starting now. There is no time to wait. We might only have today. And so if you think, if I’ve only got today, what would I do? Actually, what you’re doing is the best thing to do because you’re exploring your mind.

The only thing going with you is your mind. This dilapidated building is being left behind, but the mind is going with you. So all the habits that you have, the thought patterns that you have, the emotions that you have, the realizations you have, all that is going with you. The qualities you have, they’re all going with you. But, unfortunately, the negative things that we haven’t purified are also going with us.

They’re the things that we don’t want to experience, that we don’t want. And so we need to do something about what we don’t want. And what we do want, then we rejoice and we increase the potential of it. Right? Somebody here want yeah.

Is that No, no, no debate. Oh, this is what they call debate in Australia. Yeah. It’s a really good question because we think becoming bodhisattva or having compassion, never mind bodhisattva, but, you know, having compassion, becoming a bodhisattva means we’re going to have to do whatever anybody else says, whatever they want us to do. So we need to investigate.

Is that true? Is that good for others? That’s the question, isn’t it? Not is it good for me, but is it good for them? Right.

May you be happy! Well, we’re ordinary people. Right? So I think, you know, we need to talk about what ordinary people do, not what extraordinary people do. We’re trying to go from ordinary to extraordinary.

Right? So we have to have an idea that we do want to become extraordinary, not stay ordinary, not to be continually bothered by the traffic, by the people, by the pollution, by the carbon tax, which is passed. This is going to be the next thing now. In Australia, I guarantee the whinging and moaning about the carbon tax, and they will all die. Right?

So this could take up day and night, the emails, the campaigns, then you’ll die. You know? So is it worth it to become so irritate irritable and immersed into what she’s doing to this country, you know, and how this has gone through the parliament? I can just imagine, you know, the people and it’s going to add nine more dollars a week, you know, like this. So I know when people are on the edge, this can really push them off the edge Because if they’re financially, constrained right now, this can seem like it creates even more problems, and it’s even more unfair.

Right? And the government says, oh, don’t worry. We’ll move the tax level so that you’ll hardly pay for it. I mean, we’ve heard this before. Right?

And so we don’t particularly believe anymore what governments say. So there’ll be a sense of panic. So if there’s something that we can do about it, something constructive for others as a group, we should do it. We should because it’s for others. But if it’s about just me, you know, say the carbon tax is only going to affect me and nobody else, but it’s beneficial for others and not for me, I should swallow it.

In the swallowing of it, in the may you be happy everybody, you know, I’ll pay the carbon tax, you won’t, in that would be the transformation from ordinary to extraordinary. Not in the resentful, angry, oh, alright, then I’ll I’ll swallow it, but I recognize this is good for you. So that’s how you make the decision as to whether to do something about a negative situation or not. Is it about me, or is it about you? If it’s about me, stop and be really careful about what you’re about to say.

If it’s about you and helping you to develop and to grow, still stop. Be careful what you’re about to say because you have to be really skillful in order to teach others how to be a better person. If you’re talking about children, you know, leaving dishes and stuff like that, I have a firm belief that children need to be taught, that parents shouldn’t pick up after them all the time, that parents should teach them how to cook, how to clean like this. Because if they don’t, when they grow up, they don’t know. You know?

They leave home, and then they come back quickly. You know? It’s always as a nightmare. You know? Now suddenly, I have to clean, cook, do all these things that I never did before.

So there is an element of training in having children, isn’t there? But not from a harsh point of view, from the point of view of, I’m teaching you because this is the best thing I can do for you rather than you’re infringing on me. You’re making problems for me, and my reaction is coming from there. You know? From the, oh, you’ve done something to me, and I don’t like it.

Like that. So I think in any situation, when you’re trying to go from ordinary to extraordinary, you have to have an extraordinary response. And the extraordinary is thinking of the other rather than oneself. And so what would be the best thing for them in this situation rather than for me? And then it takes out the anger.

It takes out the resentment or the jealousy or the hatred because it’s not about me. It’s about you. But I need to tell you this because if I don’t, then I’m also not being compassionate because compassion means I don’t want you to suffer. Right? So if I don’t teach you, I leave you in your suffering.

This is what happens with Dharma, isn’t it? We offer Dharma in order that you will not suffer anymore. But if you don’t put it into practice, that’s your problem. No. I can’t save you.

Buddha can’t save you. You have to save yourself. So it’s the same with children. You know, if they don’t want to suffer anymore, they have to do something. It’s not just dependent on you.

It’s dependent on you teaching them. But if they don’t want to learn, if they don’t want to develop, what can you do? You know? So drawing the line is about them, not you. Right?

Ordinary people draw the line for themselves. I want to be happy. I don’t want to suffer. What we’re doing is we’re shifting that to you be happy, you not suffer, rather than may I not suffer, may I be happy. Right?

We’re starting there. May I be happy? May I not suffer? That’s where we already are. How do we switch over to may you be happy?

May you not suffer? Not dependent on what they do, but dependent on our qualities, which is love and compassion and kindness. That’s hard. You know? But we know where we’re going because we want to die with kindness and love and compassion.

Otherwise, you’ll be dying. You know, your your bedroom door will open. You’ll see the dishes, and you’ll say, what? You didn’t do the dishes, and I’m dying? And the next minute in the bardo, you’re a plate or you’re a frying pan, you know, floating around in like in Star Trek or something.

You’ve got, I don’t know, it’s a joke, but I don’t think you’re gonna reincarnate as a plate. But wouldn’t it be awful if you if the door open, you see this pile of dishes and you just go and you then you’re dead. Right? A lifetime of patience, gone, dead. So that’s why we need training.

Day after day after day, no matter what happens, our response is going to be what? We have to decide. Right? Ordinary or extraordinary? Dharma or drama?

Right? I like this one, Dharma or drama. You get to the fork in the road, you know, the the yeah, it’s a fork, isn’t it? So you get to the fork, and there’s Dharma or drama. Oh, I don’t know.

That drama path is quite interesting. You know? And then you think, yeah, but Dharma, love, compassion, extraordinary. Ah, yes. But on the other hand, there’s other ways.

So exciting. Up the steep cliffs hanging off by your toenails and fingernails and, you know, it can be really quite interesting. And so that’s why we need to change our habit rather than automatically going up the the drama way, and up and down and this way and this. Why did I do it? Because I chose.

So having mindfulness is coming to the fork and saying, uh-oh. Now we’re going dharma or drama. Decide. If it’s dharma, then the response shouldn’t be anger, irritability. You look at people doing these silly things.

You know, in front of me the other day, somebody was doing wheelies, and there was all this smoke coming out of the tires, and then they took off, you know. And you can think, you know, look at that. But we could have also done the same thing, you know, if we had cars that fast in our day, which we didn’t. So we can be critical and judgmental looking at young people and thinking, why are they doing this? But they have karma and delusion just like we did.

We just didn’t have so many opportunities to release them onto the world. Right? But nowadays, they do. Nowadays, young people can buy these v six or v eight or, you know, strong cars and go around doing wheelies and stuff like this. So maybe we didn’t have the conditions, the the ability to do it, but we were also doing crazy things, maybe with fireworks or, you know, stuff like that, wasn’t it?

So when you have compassion, you look at what others are doing and you think, of course, karma and delusion. Of course. Why wouldn’t they be doing that? Because they’re born from karma and delusion. They’re not born from wisdom and compassion as a bodhisattva would be.

They’re born from karma and delusion, just like all of us. So where’s my superiority? You know? When you make yourself superior, you’re suddenly on top of the mountain and all sentient beings drop away, and you’re positing yourself as the perfect being, not making any mistakes. But in actual fact, when we look at our behavior day after day, we’re making mistakes.

And so when you look at others making mistakes, you can understand why they make mistakes. karma and delusion. But if you don’t understand karma and delusion in that time, you get critical and negative and put them down. And in that superiority, we’re creating negative karma. We’re creating the ability to stay in our suffering, not to have a peaceful life, not to have a peaceful death.

Because we’re discriminating. We’re being irritable. We’re getting angry. Well, how are those qualities going to help us at the time of death? They don’t make us happy in life, and for sure, they’re not going to make us happy when we’re dying.

So looking at the qualities that we need to have a peaceful life, not just peaceful, but a peaceful life are the qualities that you need when you’re dying. You know? We we need it now. We need it later. But we have the opportunity to develop it.

At the time of death, there is no opportunity. All you’ve got is your resources is what you’ve done, the habits that you’ve created in this life. At that time, you have no choice. Right now, we have choice. You know?

So when you go home to the dishes, what’s your choice? You have to have some way of changing your mind. You know? I like the catchphrases, like dharma or drama or ordinary extraordinary because quickly you can think, stop. Dharma or drama?

And that can stop you dead in your tracks. You know, like, I would have just done something, isn’t it? Yeah. Okay? And I hope your children’s lives are less oppressed now.

And my advice would be buy a dishwasher. They never and they don’t You see how it is now? In my day, it used to be the washing of the dishes, but now it’s nobody wants to stack and unstack the dishwasher. You know? Life should be much easier.

We should be happier, but we’re not because we’re getting lazier. The more machines we have, actually, the more work it creates. Right? You put them in the dishwasher, you take them out, and sometimes they have the the dirt still on them. And then you think, I paid all this money for this dishwasher and, you know, then you buy the special powder that they advertise that won’t give you any streaks and all the rest of it and still the streaks and it goes on and on and on.

I remember years ago, it was buy a mixer. Right? So you buy one of these mixers, and you have all the different blades. But then by the time you get the thing out of the cupboard, and they used to weigh about ten kilos, so you get it out, and then you have to find the bowl, and then the thing that inside, and then put the special top on, and then you have to wash the whole thing. It would be easy just to use a whisk.

Right? But we had to have mixers, and then we had to have dishwashers and microwaves, and all these machines actually seem to make life more complicated. You know? And maybe stop the dishwasher. If they don’t stack the dishwasher, lock it up and say, okay.

We’re going back to manual. If we can’t stack, we go back to manual. And we we wash the dishes and we dry them. Isn’t it? I mean, you can make fun out of it.

You can have fun as a family doing the dishes together, which is what we used to do. You know? But now because it’s a solitary activity, the dishwasher on one person stacking it, nobody wants to do it. It’s actually fun to bring the family together and do things together. Any other?

Okay. So last week, we talked about motivation, wasn’t it? And familiarity. Right? Hello?

Was anybody here? Right. Okay. So the power of destruction is the next one. So the power of destruction is what what I was saying just before, destroying all negative karma by practicing the four opponent powers.

Particularly, if you’re a Dharma practitioner, it’s advised to, remove the negative karma that you’ve created in relation to your teacher, your Dharma friends, your family, your other friends, etcetera. Because when you have a a teacher, then if you think, oh, you know, why do I have to do these difficult practices? You can actually turn away psychologically, mentally. You can turn away from your teacher and think, oh, I’m not going to do that. And so it makes an obstacle for you to actually be able to practice the Dharma.

Or if your teacher’s given you advice, and then you didn’t follow the advice, you asked for the advice, and then you didn’t follow it, what Lama Yeshe used to call, spiritual supermarket shopping. You look for the guru who will tell you the nicest thing to do. So you go from gurus or kangaroos. You go from guru to guru. What should I do?

Oh, five hundred thousand prostrations. Then you go to another one. What should I do? Three hundred thousand water bowls. Oh.

Go to another one. And what you’re doing is you’re accumulating advice that you don’t intend to keep. And I always warn people against doing this. Be very careful when you’re asking for advice. So if you’re not going if you don’t intend to keep it, then maybe at the time of death, you’re going to remember this.

All the things that you didn’t do are going to come into your mind. So before that happens, we need to be aware of the advice that’s been given to us. And then if we can’t keep it, do something about it. Right? If you can see the teacher, try to apologize or say, you know, at the moment, I’m just not able to do it.

I hope in future I’m going to be able to do it, but right now, I don’t feel I can do it. So I think this is important because often people ask, for instance, Lama Zopa. And Lama Zopa can give a list. And then when people see the list, they don’t have any intention of keeping the advice because they think it’s just beyond them. So at least try and start.

Try and do something. Because if it’s somebody extraordinary like Lama Zopa, he’s giving you practices which will enable you to become enlightened. He’s not giving you practices to torture you, to make you suffer, to make you have more problems. He’s pinpointed the practices that will enable you to have a better life, a better death, a better future, for sure. But we may not rejoice when we’re given all of these practices.

So be very careful about advice that you’ve been given. Be careful about your Dharma brothers and sisters because, this is a community. You know, you become a community. So to be kind to each other is really important and to be aware if you’ve hurt anybody, if you’ve harmed anybody, then you want to purify that, and then thinking about family and friends. Maybe we need to talk about a little bit the four opponent powers, I guess.

There’s bound to be somebody who doesn’t know the four opponent powers. Who are you? Oh, it’s a huge crowd. Alright. So first of all, become aware of your actions throughout the day.

So become aware of the ten virtues and the ten non virtues. We don’t have time to talk about all of that, but, particularly, killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, gossip, divisive talk, these sort of things, can be done on a daily basis. Like I said, there’s so many ants around now. It’s not so difficult to kill. Stealing, you can pick something up and then think later, where did I get it from?

You know, it doesn’t have to be, conscious. It can also be something subconscious. The action is not as strong when you don’t have a motivation, but still the action is there. So we can’t just think, oh, well, I didn’t intend to do it. Still, there is karma.

I’m going to be really sorry I’m asking this. How many of you don’t know the parts of karma to make karma complete and incomplete? Alright. Here we go. I will tell you.

Because if you don’t know let’s take an example such as stealing. If you don’t know the parts of karma to make karma complete or incomplete, you then can’t relate it to the four powers and how to purify. So it’s important that you study karma because karma is the operating system. It’s what’s write writing the program. Right?

It’s what makes your future. So if you don’t know what karma is, you’re not writing your own future. You’re just bad luck, good luck, and let’s hope it’s all going to be okay. karma gives you the ability to change your life dependent on the virtuous actions that you’re doing and avoiding the non virtuous actions. Okay?

So, on the purification day, if you have questions or if you’re coming for it, we can talk more about this. I’ll take an example of stealing. So you need an object. The object needs to be something of value, not something valueless, but something of value valued by somebody. Right?

So, I value my flowers, so this can be an object. You may think, well, this is from a garden. It doesn’t mean anything. But if I really value these flowers, it’s an object of value for me, the owner of the flower. Okay?

So you need an object, and then you need an intention. So this is the second part, intention. As part of intention, it’s a package deal. You have discrimination. So you’ve identified that this belongs to somebody else and that you want it.

You’re not going to buy it. You’re not going to go to the shops. Nothing like that. Already, there’s some sort of negative feeling happening within the mind that you’re going to take it. You’re not going to buy it.

You’re not going to ask me for it. It’s going to be something that is taken. And it’s this one, not this one. So as part of discrimination, it’s knowing what you want. It’s very clear.

Okay? This is what makes the action very strong as opposed to wishy washy, I didn’t really know what I was doing. So you have the discrimination, this flower, then there’s a motive you intend to steal. Right? Not just picking up a pen in the bank and then thinking afterwards, whose pen is this?

But you intend to steal it. And then you need a delusion. So this is the next part. So the object is the first one, the intention is the second one, and discrimination, motive is part of that second one. Then the third one sorry.

And and then delusion is part of that. So, having attachment or anger or hatred or something like that, you have to have some reason to do it because having an emotion moves you to do something. If there’s no emotion, you know, like attachment, desire, hatred, anger, then there’s no movement. So we need some sort of movement to say, I’m gonna take this. And it’s a negative movement.

It’s something harmful. So object, intention, and then we have the act. You actually do something, you know, you take it. However, this is where it becomes interesting. It can be done by somebody else.

So I can say to Helen, Helen, go back in that room and go and get that flower for me. And she said, is it alright? And she said, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It’s fine. You know, don’t worry about it. Just get it. Right? And so you can get somebody else to do it for you, but still the karma is coming to you.

Okay? So you have the act, and then the last one is the completion. You get it, and then you’re satisfied. You’re happy that you’ve got it. You’re satisfied with it.

So how you can weaken the action is by thinking you’re not satisfied. So Helen brings me the flower, and she gives it nice what am I doing? You know, am I have I gone mad? No. No.

No. Take it back. So that means the fourth part would then not be complete. The fourth part is you must be satisfied that you’ve got the object. Alright?

So you can have the object, you have the intention, which has got an emotion, why why it’s happening. Then you’ve got the act. We actually did something. I didn’t just sit there thinking about it, but something actually happened. I got hold of the object, and then you should have a completion.

I’m happy I got the object. So if all those four parts are complete, the action is called a propelling karma. And a propelling karma is what makes your future life. It’s the type of rebirth you’re going to take, and there’s many propelling karmas. It depends on the strongest, the most habitual propelling karma that you have at the time of death that will take you into your next life.

But what happens when all the parts are not complete? They create the conditions around us. So when there’s, two parts, three parts, when it’s partially complete, then it’s what we call completion karma. It’s what creates the condition. So for instance, born as a dog is a negative karma, but the dog of queen Elizabeth, pretty incredible conditions.

Right? The food is coming on the silver platter, and they say, oh, you know, what would you like today? So they have the chef for the dog. You know? So you can see bad propelling karma, but positive completion karma.

Then you’ve got a human being, good projecting karma, good propelling karma, but in a very difficult situation, no money, no shelter, living on the street. In a very difficult situation, bad completion karma. So that’s how we get the differences in individuals because each time we perform karma, then we create either propelling karma or completion karma. Then apart from that, you’ve got, karma that we create as a group together. So that’s also something else.

Okay. So do you understand the four parts? So the object, the intention, then the action, and then the completion. Now in order to purify, we need four powers relating to those four parts of the karma. Alright?

So we go back to that. First, we have the power of the object. So in order to purify, we need the power of the object, and this is either all sentient beings or if you’ve made a vow, Buddha, Jesus, whoever you promised, you know, so if you’re Buddhist, you make a promise to Buddha, the Three Jewels. If you’re Christian, then you promise to Jesus. God, I’m not going to do that anymore.

So say you say, I’m not going to steal, and then you steal. You’ve promised not to steal. You’ve broken your promise to whoever you promised, say Buddha. Then who did you steal from? A sentient being.

So who do you harm? A sentient being. And you harm your connection with the person that you promised, Buddha or Jesus, Muhammad or whatever. So in order to purify, we need to purify towards two fields of merit. One is the Three Jewels, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and the other is all sentient beings.

And why bodhicitta is said to be so powerful and so important is because every time we motivate with bodhicitta, I want to liberate you from your suffering, and I’m going to do it. Then that is the antidote to the harm that we’ve done to others. It’s the medicine. It’s like the universal cure for all the harms that we’ve done from beginningless time. Do you understand?

So that’s why bodhicitta is so important. It says, without exception, I’m going to benefit others as opposed to the harm that I’ve done to them in the past. So this is why we need bodhicitta. We need it because it’s the way of removing the harm that we’ve done. It equalizes the mind, and then it puts others as more important, others as needing help.

And who’s going to help them? Me. How do I help them? I’ve got to liberate myself from my suffering. You know, it’s like, if I’m in a swamp, in the mud, then I can’t help somebody else unless I get out the mud.

If I’m in quicksand, I can’t say, want to liberate everybody in their quicksand. You know, it’s just daydreaming. So first, you have to get yourself out of the mud, the mud of saṃsāra, in order to benefit others. So bodhicitta is the way of doing that. So we’ve got the power of the object, Three Jewels, and all sentient beings.

Then the second one is the power of regret. Regret is different from guilt. And for those of you who are into guilt and enjoy your guilt, and when you go home, you have your little whips, I suggest that you need to investigate the difference between regret and guilt. It’s not so easy to find the difference. We can talk about the difference, but actually, many people say they understand, but then they go back to guilt.

Guilt stops you. It actually stops you in your tracks. You know? It doesn’t promote something more beneficial happening in the future. What it can do is it can make you angry, and then you can repeat the same negative actions.

So it’s really important in Buddhism that we drop the guilt. We don’t even have a word for guilt. In Tibetan, there is no word for guilt. They don’t even have that concept. So when you talk to Tibetans, they don’t understand why the why we do what we do.

The way we think is alien to them. They can’t even understand it because they don’t have guilt. They have regret. And regret is from my present position with more wisdom or more compassion, looking back, I can understand why I did what I did, that it was harmful, and now I regret it, and I want to do something about it. And so that negative is transformed into something positive because you’re in a better position now.

Right? When you’re looking back, you can look back from a better position, and you can say, oh, now I get it. Now I understand why I shouldn’t have done that. And so what I’m going to do is change. Right?

That’s regret. Regret is you see the negative, and you want to transform it into something positive. But guilt is I am a bad person. I’ve done something bad, and it’s like a roadblock. You just stop.

You know? So where do we go from here? If I’m guilty, what can I do? I need somebody to save me. But with regret, you’re saving yourself.

You’re changing yourself. You’re transforming yourself. Forgiving yourself doesn’t move in a way. You have to forgive yourself also. So there’s forgiveness.

There’s a more wisdom, more compassion, more understanding, more kindness. You know? If we’re guilty, we may not be kind. We’re not being kind to ourselves. And so how can we be kind to others when they make mistakes?

When you go home and, somebody did something really bad, you know, broke the TV or something, and you get really angry because you can’t be kind to yourself. Therefore, how are going to be kind to others? And these are minor things, you know, just possessions. But what about when somebody does something really bad, really harmful? Can we forgive?

Would we forgive ourselves if we did something really harmful? Like you’re driving home, you hit somebody. If you get guilty, you could live with that for the rest of your life, and it doesn’t make you a better person. It makes you a worse person. So what can we do in order to take that situation and transform it?

It’s not saying, oh, it’s okay to do it, but take the lesson from it. You know, what do you learn from it, and how can you change and become a better person? So regret, I think, good to investigate. The third one is the power of the opponent force. The power of the opponent force.

You can call it the power of the medicine if you want. So you’ve done something negative. Now you need the medicine, something opposite, something powerful in order to fix it. What are you going to do? It’s not enough to just have regret.

Oh, that was terrible. Okay. Moving on, you know, now you need to do something which is an opponent force to the negative. So if you find a habit that you have, week after week after week, there’s some habit that you find that you do. What can you do opposite to that habit?

So say it’s, anger, irritability. You know? What would be the opponent force to being angry, to being irritable? One of them is, may you be happy. Right?

Anger is the opposite of love. So this is important to remember. Every time you’re getting angry, this is the antidote to love. So if you want more love in your life, the more angry you are, the less love you’re going to have in your life. So why children react so badly when you’re angry.

You know? There’s an immediate they want to get away from you because this is the opposite of what they want to experience. They want to be closer to you. They want to love you. But with anger, actually, there’s a an emotional backing away.

It’s the opposite. So love is, I want you to be happy. Anger is, I want to be happy, and it’s an extreme energy. It’s a destructive energy. So if you want others to be happy, controlling your anger makes others happy.

So the power of the opponent forces, what are you going to do to antidote the negative action that you did that you want to change. Okay? You have to find something suitable, something that you’re going to do. Could be meditating on bodhicitta, but then you’ve got to put something in practice. It’s too easy to sit on the cushion, you know, and just say, bodhi cheetah for all sentient beings, and that’ll fix it.

But you’ve been angry, you’ve been irritable, you know, whatever. So you’ve got to do something. It can’t just be on the level of the cushion. The cushion is good training to be able to do things in a better way outside. The the cushion is the flight simulator.

Right? If you’re gonna fly a seven four seven, they don’t give you the keys and tell you to go and fly it. Have you flown before? Oh, no. Oh, it doesn’t matter.

Here’s the keys. You know? You’ll find you’ll find where it’s a turn, press the button. You know? It’s fairly automatic.

Well, I’ve flown one of these little things. Ah, it’s similar. You know? It’s got wings. So it’s the same with life.

We can think about bodhicitta. We can think about compassion and love. But at our level, it’s very difficult for us to put it into practice. And so how do you put it into practice? First, you practice on the cushion.

You can do a visualization of the situation and how you would do it in a different way because your mind believes it’s it’s true. Whether you visualize it or you do it, your mind believes it to be true. It thinks you’re actually doing it. So when you see yourself being kinder, more compassionate in your visualization, the mind thinks this is true. You’re really doing it.

And so this is how we can change things. Remember, everything’s like a dream. Right? We think it’s all real. It’s all true.

But Buddha said it’s all like a dream. So if everything’s like a dream, you’re not an inherently bad person. You can change, but you need a method to change. You need a way to do it. And so meditating is the way to do it, is the the chewing of the difficult food, the the chewy food.

Meditation is the chewing. So if you don’t meditate, you’re not going to be able to put it into practice. It stays on the intellectual level. Then the fourth one is the power of commitment. How long can you promise not to do the negative action again?

How long? It’s no use saying I’ll never do it ever again if you know you can’t keep it. So you have to promise for a period of time that you can keep. If there’s people who smoke and they want to give up smoking, I tell them, you can promise for an hour. I won’t smoke for one hour.

Or if you come into a teaching, I won’t I won’t smoke for two hours. When you’re going to bed, I won’t smoke for six hours or eight hours. You can keep making short term promises rather than making big promises and then not keeping them. It’s more important to keep them. So promise for an hour, two hours, three hours, half a day, a day, but don’t make promises that you’re going to break.

If you can keep it for a week, a month, a year, for life, you have to decide. So the power of commitment is how long can I keep this promise for? And then make that promise. You promise again to the Three Jewels and to all sentient beings. This is what I’m going to do.

Okay? So you have the action that you’re going to do to antidote the negative behavior, but then how long are you going to do this for? We often think, okay. I will never do that ever again. Like, I will never be angry again.

It’s exaggerated. You know? If you’re used to being angry, you can’t suddenly say, I’ll never be angry ever again. So you say, okay. I’m not going to be angry for the next hour or for the next two hours.

Actually, when you’re going to bed is a great time to promise. I’m not going to be angry tonight. Right? It’s eight hours or seven hours or six hours of non angry sleep. This is the power of vows is that even when you’re sleeping, you’re keeping the vow, and that’s why vows are really important.

Right? Next. When is it? Sunday. Sunday is the refuge.

Refuge. So for those of you who took refuge and took vows, these are important things to talk about. How do I change things? Because often it seems really difficult to change habits that we’ve had for a long, long time. So we need to find skillful methods in order to be able to change.

Okay? Clear? Any questions? Come on. Don’t be shy.

Step two. I gave you four. I think that’s when you fell asleep, Jack. I thought I heard somebody snoring. The power of the object, power of regret, opponent force, and then the power of commitment.

You’re forgiven. Regret and move on. Well, you don’t have the intention to be angry. You know? You have to have the intention.

So then if you’re angry, maybe you become more aware that you’re having angry dreams. You know? If you don’t make promises, for instance, if you don’t say, I will never I will not kill anymore, you don’t become aware of the negative mind, of the of the the lack of, caring about the ants on the ground, things like this. vows take you to a different level of of intention. So if you make that vow at night and then you realize, gosh, even in my dreams, I’m really angry.

Then can you make the promise that you’re not going to be angry in your dreams? You might feel that you’re a hypocrite. You know? If you’re promising not to be angry at night, but you are angry, you might feel that you can’t then make that promise that you have to do something through the day to develop your, habit of being more peaceful, more patient, and then you can promise at night. But, you know, people could be angry every single night and not know about it.

They might just wake up exhausted, feeling horrible. You know? So making this type of promise, taking precepts. You take precepts for one day. I won’t kill, steal, lie.

You know, you do this for one day. I won’t sing and dance. It’s the day you sing and dance. Guaranteed. I will not sing and dance today.

The next minute, you find yourself, you know, you never sing and dance. On that day, you sing and dance. So it shows you it’s the karma that’s coming up, that’s appearing, and so then you purify. I remember, talking to a monk years and years ago, an Australian monk, and I said to him, what is the point in taking all these vows if we can’t keep them? And he said, because we take them, we break them, we purify.

We take, we break, we purify. It’s a very good habit to develop. If we never took them, we’d never break them, we’d never purify. So taking vows is actually very skillful. We may not like it, but it’s skillful.

Any other questions? Just on that breaking them. I remember I did a ten day retreat, and I never drink gin and tonic. But I started meditating on gin and tonic every day. That that’s I really wanted it.

It came up for me so strongly every day. It was bizarre. I thought when I finish this retreat, I’m gonna go A bottle of gin? But just during the retreat. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing. I drink it.

The pleasure you were getting from it. Yeah. It was a gin and tonic retreat. That happened. But maybe in the past life, you know, you had this habit.

Because I I remember my grandmother and my mother used to have a gin and tonic every single afternoon at a certain time. So every single day, they will have gin and tonic. And I think I must have been around three or four because I said one day, I want some of that. You know? And my mother said, no.

No. You can’t have any. And it was every day, I want some of that because they look so happy, you know, drinking their gin and tonic. And so my mother made something for me that wasn’t gin and tonic. It was the tonic and, you know, but I must have known, there was no gin in it.

And so one day, I went and I I took the gin and I drank it. And then I had to go to the hospital and have my stomach pumped. So, they had this habit every single day. And so imagine in a past life, if you have that habit, when you’re purifying, it appears in your purification. In your your retreat is a purification.

So it’s strong. Imagine at the time of death, you suddenly start thinking, I must have a gin and tonic. And you’re thinking, where am I going? What am I gonna gin and tonic. Gin and tonic.

You know? It’s like that. It’s these thoughts appear out of nowhere, and you think, well, where’s that coming from? Haven’t purified it, and so therefore, it’s appearing. No questions?

Onto bodhicitta. Okay. So as part of, the power of destruction, then, we want to remove all negative karma. So as I said, the way to do it, what we really need is bodhicitta. So bodhicitta comes from kindness, then love, then compassion.

Then there’s got to be more than that. So you have kindness, just in our everyday life, doing nice things for others, not wanting you to suffer, compassion, wanting you to be happy, love, but bodhicitta has to be more than that. So what more is there? It sounds like we’re mentioning everything, doesn’t it? Kindness, love, compassion.

So what what more are we doing? In bodhicitta, there’s an intention. I am going to liberate myself, so I’m going to become enlightened in order to come back and benefit you, help you. Right? So that’s what makes bodhicitta.

It’s that intention. It’s what sets you apart from others. So even though you’ve got compassion, you want others to be happy, not suffer, love and compassion, it’s still not bodhicitta if you’re not going to liberate yourself and then come back in order to benefit others. So just liberating yourself is not enough. We can be, you know, floating on the lotus thinking, wow, this is incredible.

I always wanted a lotus. Now I’ve got a lotus. And then you can look down. Oh, look at all that suffering. Well, it’s not my problem.

That’s their problem. So then what was the point in becoming enlightened if it’s only for yourself? You become enlightened in order to benefit others, to reach out to others. And so how we start to develop that mind is through two methods. One is seven cause and effect, which is seeing all beings as your mother or your father or your brother or your sister or your grandfather.

That’s one method, and the other is, Tonglen. So I thought, we’ll start to talk about, the seven cause and effect because I think it’s more difficult. I think it’s more hairy, more difficult. I think many people, many western people don’t like this method, So that’s why I chose it. I like to irritate people.

I do. I love it. Then you can practice your equanimity. Right? You’ve got something to practice on.

It’s me. When I say your enemy is sitting in front of you, it’s me. So if you have problems with your mother, and many people do, you know, it’s not that our mothers are perceived as always being perfect, always great. Many people have problems with their mother or their father. If you do have problems, when should you deal with it?

At the time of death or now? So that’s why I thought we should start to talk about this. Because if you do have a problem, it’s better to start thinking about it now, not later, not when you’re you’re on the edge of leaving the body. You know? Then resentment and anger can arise because of what you think your mother did to you, your perception of what your mother did to you.

So this method, even though it’s difficult, I think is really beneficial for a good life and then to have a peaceful death. So the steps. There’s six steps. The seventh is bodhicitta. So you’ve got six steps leading to the seventh step, bodhicitta.

So it’s called seven cause and effect or six causes and one effect. The effect that we’re looking for is bodhicitta. So we start with equanimity. So in equanimity, we’re developing an equal mind towards all beings. Even this is not easy.

Spiders. Spiders, cockroaches, rats, people who are trying to the children who don’t do the dishes, you know, the boss at work who’s so difficult, the people who, don’t agree with you. Right? We’re always looking for people to to agree with us, and we want to get rid of those who don’t agree with us. This is how we produce happiness, and we avoid suffering.

But we develop weak minds because we’re trying to get rid of them and bring them towards us. But in bringing those towards us that we like, there’s the possibility that they’re going to do something we won’t like. This is the problem. Friends can become enemies, and enemies can become friends. So if we fixate on this is the friend and that’s the enemy and it’s unchanging, we’re causing our own suffering.

We’re holding ourselves in a permanent position, which is not tenable. It’s not permanent. The position will change because my mind can change, their mind can change, and you have to think of a way that it could change. Okay? So one way of doing this is doing a meditation where we have the friend, the enemy, and the stranger.

The stranger’s in the middle, the friend on the left, the enemy on the right. Then when you think about the neutral person, this person you don’t know, and you can think of somebody in this room that you don’t know, You haven’t heard their story. You don’t know anything about them. There’s no feeling of good or bad, like or dislike. It’s just a face.

Okay? So when you visualize them, you think, well, this is a neutral person. Why should I care about this person? I don’t know them. I don’t know anything about them.

They haven’t done anything for me. So you see, where does the help come from? I want to help because you’ve done something for me. But if you haven’t done anything for me, why should I help? This is how our society is now.

Right? But bodhicitta is, I want to help every being. How do we develop the mind that says, I want to benefit you even though you’ve done nothing for me? You’re a neutral person. So how do I change my mind?

So just leave the neutral person. We go to the friend. The friend is the person that agrees with you, that likes you, that says nice things to you, that gives you gifts, remembers your birthday, remembers your Christmas, takes you out for lunch. Okay. We know what friend is.

Does all those nice things for us. But was that friend always a friend? Forever. That friend at one time was a neutral person. Right?

So this is when your mind starts to change. Because what you realize is that all friends came from neutral people and then became friend based on what they did for us, based on their actions towards us, helping us, being kind to us, agreeing with us, that’s when we label them friend. The neutral person we’re labeling neutral or stranger Hasn’t done anything for us, hasn’t been kind to us, hasn’t done anything. So that person, we sort of push back, you know? That person, I have no feeling towards.

Then what about the enemy? This other one, you know, disagreed with me, doesn’t like what I do, doesn’t like what I say. So that person, the irritating person, I put the label enemy. So the enemy also came from neutral person. At one time, that person was unknown to me, and then because of their actions became the enemy.

The other one, because of their actions became the friend. So now you have your three people. The two extremes come from neutral. So now you’re starting to think a little bit more differently about the neutral person. There’s a little bit more interest because we’re selfish, we want more friends.

Right? We want more people who will agree with us, who will be nice to us. So we start looking at the neutral people in a slightly different way. Now we imagine, say the friend did something against us. What could the friend do to you that you would not like at all?

Steals all your money. You can think of something. That, person that you thought of as friend would suddenly become enemy. Just like that. Wouldn’t take long, you know.

If you came home and that friend had done something really bad to you, just like that, your mind would change. Enemy. Now imagine the enemy, the one that you’ve had as the enemy, doing something nice to you, apologizing to you, saying, I’m really sorry. I know I was unskillful. I said bad things to you.

I didn’t agree with you. But what I’ve realized is you’re an incredible person. I really like you, and here’s a gift. And the gift is something that you would really like. Wouldn’t your mind start to change?

Wouldn’t you start thinking, this seems like a nice person? So the enemy can become the friend. The friend can become the enemy, and everything comes from the neutral person. From their side, they’re a human being. Three human beings.

But from our side, based on their behavior, we’re labeling them in a way that suits us. Enemy, friend, neutral. But then if you think, from their side, they’re not enemy or friend. They want happiness. They don’t want suffering.

Then their mother doesn’t see them as an enemy. If their mother loves them, you know, I remember Lama Zopa saying once, even Saddam Hussein’s mother loves him, you know, or Osama bin Laden. So we can think of somebody that many people can really dislike, and that person’s mother really likes them. Right? So they’re not the enemy for everybody.

They’re the enemy for certain minds, for certain people. So this starts to shake your belief in the enemy. And also the friend came about through certain causes and conditions. So if those causes and conditions are changed, that friend can change, can become the enemy. So this makes the mind more practical and more flexible.

It’s not saying we want the enemy, to always be the enemy. We want the friend to always be the friend. What it’s saying is things change because it’s true. I’ve heard it so many times. You know?

I travel around the world. I talk to a lot of people, and a lot of people say this has happened to me. You know, my enemy became my friend. And my friend became my enemy, and I never thought this would happen. So in the meditation, what you’re doing is you’re recognizing three human beings instead of three beings with labels.

Alright? Does that make sense? So we we take away the power of the thoughts that we’ve been putting onto the person. You know? We put the label.

You are my friend. And we superglue it onto the person and say it’s not going to change. It’s superglued. And then the friend does something, and you start scraping off the label. You know?

And there’s so much trouble. But you’re determined. This label is coming off. You are not my friend anymore. And there’s where the pain and suffering lies.

You know? And now maybe we want revenge because you were my friend. Now you’ve done something bad to me. So you want revenge. And then there’s the enemy who becomes the friend.

That’s quite pleasant. We don’t mind that. But the friend becoming the enemy, we don’t like that at all. It’s it hurts us in our heart because we put the label in a permanent way. It’s unchanging.

It will never go away. This person will never hurt me. It’s unrealistic because of karma and delusion. Because of karma and delusion, things happen. Okay?

So that’s one way of doing it. You can do that meditation of the three people, and the other way of doing it is by thinking everybody wants happiness, nobody wants suffering. That’s another way of developing equanimity. If the three people are difficult for you, just keep investigating who wants happiness, who doesn’t want suffering. I remember Lama Zopa saying years ago, if you take a little piece of grass and you touch an ant on the nose, the ant will stand up as if to say, why are you doing that to me?

So even the ant wants happiness. Even this tiny creature wants happiness. Even the spider wants happiness. Right? So it’s not just us.

When you start to look at others I go around the world and I say, who wants suffering? You know? Who volunteers for suffering? I haven’t had one person yet volunteer. Okay.

Give it to me. I’ll do it. Give me more suffering. Nobody. Nowhere.

Not Russia, not Finland, not New Zealand, not Australia. Nowhere. Nobody says, give me more suffering. But who wants more happiness? Everybody wants more happiness.

So in that way, we’re all similar. Whether we’re human, whether we’re animal, whether we’re in this country or that, we’re all very similar in that way. More happiness, less suffering. So in that way, equal. Whether, dogs, cats, birds, they all want happiness.

Okay? So you’ve got two methods to develop equanimity. Choose a method that works for you and start to put it into your meditation. If you don’t meditate on it, your mind won’t change. If you don’t have equanimity, you’re not going to develop the other steps, the other the other levels of emotional maturity, the ability to have bodhicitta for all.

It relies on equanimity. Okay? Then having meditated on equanimity, you would start to think about all beings as your mother. Is it possible? For those of you who don’t believe in reincarnation, you’ve got a real problem.

But you can think, maybe you’ve got, temporary amnesia. You know? You can’t remember your rebirth. You can’t remember past lives. So it’s a little bit like having temporary amnesia.

So if just suspend disbelief. If there is rebirth, then in this life, you have one mother. In other lives, you must have had a mother. If the mind is beginningless, that means you’ve had countless mothers. Right?

So Buddha did not posit a beginning and an end to the mind. Even when you’re enlightened, you still have a mind. So Buddha said, there’s no beginning to the mind. There’s no end to the mind, therefore, we’ve had countless rebirths. If we’ve had countless rebirths, we’ve had countless mothers, countless fathers, brothers, sisters, friends.

So when you look at everybody, you know, each person, do you see mother, father, brother, sister, or do you see strangers? So this is a method to help you to change your mind, to see the relationship between each other rather than the separation. I don’t know you. Why should I care about you? This is ignorance.

You know? Not understanding the relationship is ignorance. If we’ve had a relationship, and by logic, we’re saying we’ve had a relationship, then why aren’t we repaying that relationship? Why aren’t we doing something back? That’s where we’re headed.

So you need to have this strong feeling, you’ve all been kind to me. Even if you’re being difficult, still, in the past, we’ve been friends. You’ve been my mother. I’ve been your mother. So in that way, we’ve all got a relationship.

So then the second step is remembering their kindness. They’ve you’ve had mothers, countless mothers. Now you think about this mother’s kindness. This is challenging. If you don’t think your mother was that kind, there’s a challenge in there to find the things that she did rather than the things that she didn’t do.

Right? As I tell you many times, she didn’t let me go to the Beatles concert. I am not going to forget this at all. You know? This is years and years and years and years, but it it sticks there.

You can remember when your mother said no, but it’s really difficult to remember when she said yes. But now in this meditation, you start thinking about when did she say yes? How kind was she to you? You know? When I was doing this meditation in retreat, then I suddenly realized, oh, yeah.

Why do I like anise? This licorice. You know? When I was in India for I’ve been in India twenty five years. People used to say, what can I bring you?

I’d always say licorice. They say, nothing else? No. Just licorice will be fine. And then I couldn’t understand.

Why licorice? You know, because I’d just say automatically licorice. You know? Why licorice? And then in retreat, I found the answer.

When my mother was pregnant, I think she was eighteen. She was very young. She married a Protestant. She was Catholic, Irish Catholic, so she was excommunicated from the church. The monsignor came over and he said, if you don’t bring up your children as Catholics, you’re out.

So she was out. Her her family were horrified. You know? But she said, I want my children to have an education. In those days, it was the bible, thirty hours of the bible.

So it wasn’t anything against the religion, but it was the education system. So she’s pregnant with me. Nobody said stop smoking. She was smoking forty capstan full strength a day. Without filters, forty.

As soon as she got pregnant, she stopped. Nobody said to stop, but she thought this can’t be good for the baby. But she couldn’t stand not smoking. It must be so difficult to give up smoking. So there was a sweet called Victory V’s.

Right? Hard sweet, and she used to break them up into small pieces and all day, she’d eat these sweets. They were hot and but anise. You know? Something Fisherman’s Friend is something similar.

Love Fisherman’s Friend. There’s a licorice licorice fisherman’s friend. Whenever I find them around the world, I I get them. So I’m thinking in my retreat, why licorice? You know?

And then this memory of my mother giving up smoking, and I thought, gosh, how incredibly kind. You know? Because you think, but she didn’t let me go to the Beatles concert, but she did this. How incredibly kind. So I never smoked.

Never. I tried, but she stopped me every single time. I bought cigarettes. I get the matches. You had to organize, you know, to get the money together to buy the cigarettes, to get the matches, to get the opportunity, because I decided it’s cool.

You know? We didn’t have cool in those days, but it’s cool to smoke. So I’d get everything ready, and then she catch me, and she’d say, give me the cigarettes. So then she, as a smoker, was the one stopping me from smoking, which is why I never smoked. So once you start on this track, you start thinking, gosh.

She did this, and she did this, and she did this, And your feeling towards your mother develops and grows. Your mind completely changes, and you think, how kind my mother was. So not just this mother of this life, but mothers of other lives. You look at the the dogs who’ve had puppies, automatically, they start to take care of the puppies. They start licking them and caring for them.

Cats, the same. The birds with the the eggs. You know, they’re so worried about the eggs, and they’re sort of looking around constantly, but they’ve gotta go and get food. If they don’t get the food, then they die. Then the chicks that are coming, they die.

So if you look at nature, the mothers in nature are the ones who stay. It’s not usually the father who stays, it’s usually the mother who stays. I like that also that penguin. Was it happy feet? That was nice.

You know? They go away and then they come back. So seeing those sort of things really helps you to start thinking about how kind rather than why didn’t she do this? And why didn’t she do that? You know?

So we need to think in a different way. And when we start to think in a different way, we start to value others more because we think, this must have been my mother. This one. This one. This one.

As I said last week, you know, I saw this, documentary by his holiness, Heart of Tibet, and he said every time he sees somebody, he thinks mother, father, brother, sister. And that way, he feels very open towards anybody. Doesn’t matter what they are, whether they’re powerful and rich or poor, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t see that. What he sees is human being of an age that could be my father, my brother, my sister, like that.

And he said, this really helps him to be open and not to have paranoia about meeting people. So perceive all beings as your mother, remembering their kindness. And then the third stage, you then want to repay that kindness. What can I do to give something back? I’ve received so much, but what would I like to give back?

I need to give something back. So that’s the third stage. So you can see how you’ve got to go step by step. If you don’t develop equanimity, you’re still sorting. You’re still saying friend, enemy, stranger.

So your bodhicitta is not going to happen. So you need to work on your equanimity. On that basis, you start to think, have all beings been my mother? And that will bring into come into play rebirth, so past lives, future lives. And if there’s no future life, we don’t need to do anything in this life.

We can go home. Right? So if there’s no rebirth, we don’t need to do any of this. If there is rebirth, then we need to do something. And I always say to people, well, just in case, let’s do something.

Right? If you’re not sure about rebirth, just in case, it doesn’t do you any harm. Then if you’ve had countless rebirths, must have had countless mothers, fathers, start to think of the kindness of this mother and then all other mothers, all other fathers, brothers, sisters, friends. So develop the feeling of universal family. And you then the next step, universal responsibility.

What can I give back? Okay? Then that brings us to the fourth step, which is great love. And then fifth step is great compassion. Sixth step is this special attitude.

Seventh step is bodhicitta, but we’ll we’ll continue next week. So we’ve done the first three steps. The equanimity isn’t a step. It’s an essential. Without the equanimity, you can’t even start.

Okay? So it’s not counted in the steps. You must have equanimity to start and then one, two, and three. So what I suggest in this next week is start to look at, do you have equanimity? And for sure, you don’t.

Guaranteed. Absolutely, you don’t. Right? This is the hardest thing to do. And so how can I bring about equanimity?

Try the meditation on the three people. So, maybe next week, we can start with a meditation I do where we have the three people, and we give a special gift to each one of those people. The gift of your qualities, we can we can try next week. But investigate it this week to see, is there a resistance to being equanimous, having an equanimity? Is there a resistance?

I’ll guarantee there’s a resistance. We’ve got this habit of saying, these people are safe, these people are not safe, and these people, who cares? You know? It’s it’s our habit. So we’ve got to get out of that habit of automatically sorting.

You watch when you go to the mall. You know? You’re walking around the shops, like, dislike, don’t care. It’s like this automatically, you know, label, label, label, label, label. So stop the label.

Just may you be happy. May you not suffer. Instead of I like you or I possibly like you, I don’t like you, try working without that label of like and dislike, and don’t care. Try thinking, doesn’t matter how you look, what you’re doing, I want you to be happy. Just see.

Okay? Any questions? Sure. Excellent. Oh, your partner.

Oh, okay. Yes. Right. Yeah. That’s true.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Because when we go into the supermarket, we don’t even recognize anymore where all this has come from. You know, we may see the people putting the things on the shelves, but we don’t recognize where the food comes from, the whole process it goes through in order for it to get onto the shelves.

And then cars, we just use the cars and we put the petrol. We don’t think where the petrol comes from. So there’s so many functions, so many things that happen around us, and we think, yeah, but I have money. I can buy things. Right?

So they’re not being kind to me. I have money, and I can buy it. But then where does your money come from? Your money has to come from the kindness of others. So it’s interesting how the mind keeps throwing up arguments.

Yes. But you know? And so you have to keep working on it that, actually, we’re so so fortunate to be the recipient of all this kindness. You know? In the end, this is the conclusion that you come to.

But it’s better not to come to the conclusion too quickly. It’s better to keep working on it, looking at the resistance that arises in the mind that says, yes, but. Yes, but. Yes, but. And using your logic, keep wearing it away.

You know? Don’t just say immediately, oh, yeah. That’s true. All sentient beings are so kind. You have to you have to keep working on the deep down objections.

Otherwise, your mind doesn’t change. You’re you’re building on a false foundation. You know? So this is where years of practice get you to in that, in the beginning, we have resistance, but we don’t notice the resistance. And then after time, you start to notice the mind is resisting change.

The mind doesn’t want to think of everybody as beneficial. So keep working on it. It’s a really good point. Thank you. Any other good points?

Even Julia Gillard. Is beneficial. Even Julia Gillard, who just brought in the carbon tax. Say yes. You think the carbon tax is gonna be a good thing?

Yes. It is. Do you? I’m not sure because I’ve seen these advertisements that say, Australia uses one point five percent of the world’s carbon. Why is it going to bring in the highest taxation in the world for carbon?

What would your answer? It’s going to tax all the big polluters. It’s going to tax the coal miners. It’s gonna tax the people. We’re gonna get some, but the big polluters are gonna pay the most.

Buy a big make a bigger house? Yeah. This is also true, you know. If the benefit goes to the people, then we can understand this is worthwhile. But often with, you know, we don’t see benefit.

And I think that’s what we need in our society, better health, better better care. Not of the rich, but the people who can’t take care of themselves. So I think, you know, when you’re kind people, you think, okay, I’ll pay a bit more, but as long as the benefit goes to the health services and, you know, all these sort of things. But does it? Isn’t it?

Does it? This is Then it would be very good, wouldn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

What were you saying? Right. Right. Right. So this is the the discussion that needs to be had, isn’t it?

Because it’s going to fall into those who really dislike this tax, those who really like this tax, and those who don’t care. We come back to the three again. Right? And so we need to have this conversation in order that we don’t get a split in society, you know. So I think it’s good to have the conversation.

Okay. Let’s dedicate. Yes, my dear. Congratulations. What it actually is.

Well, I always tell people not to think of themselves as healing, because I think there there goes another ego. You know, in the next minute I’ll be walking on water, and the next minute I’ll be making miracles. So I think, Reiki the definition of Reiki is universal energy. So universal energy is energy that’s all around you, and, scientists have found this energy now. It’s actually the pulsation of the earth’s electromagnetic, energy, force.

And when you’re using Reiki, you’re tuning into that force. And so that’s, what a Reiki master does, is, connect you with that energy, and then that energy is flowing through you. So people often ask me, as a Buddhist monk, why? Why Reiki? And I said, well, it’s all very well sitting on the cushion, but then if there’s something that you can do, some way that you can benefit others, this is one of those ways.

It’s something easy to learn, but something very beneficial for others. It gives people really nice relaxation. And, for many people, it really helps them with their sicknesses. But, you know, I’m very careful about this word healing. You know, because if you say, I’m healing you or I’m a healer, your ego can get very involved.

So it’s just an energy passing through you that then the other person can utilize for their benefit. Yeah. It’s a natural energy around you. It’s not your own energy. So, therefore, how can you be egotistical if it’s not your energy?

And then, if you think you’re just like a pipe and the energy is flowing through you. But people ask me, well, what’s the difference between various practitioners of Reiki? The difference is the more you do meditation, the more you, become a better person, more love and more compassion, the more energy is flowing through you. So the more more benefit you are to yourself, the more benefit you can be to others. You know?

So that’s the difference between people doing Reiki. That’s the connection with the Dharma practice. Put the Dharma into practice, your Reiki is better. Yeah? Okay.

So I think we’ll finish with Śāntideva, my favorite. Page thirty two. May all beings everywhere plagued by sufferings of body and mind, obtain an ocean of happiness and joy by virtue of my merits. May no living creature suffer, commit evil, or ever fall ill. May no one be afraid or belittled with a mind weighed down by depression.

May the blind see forms and the deaf hear sounds. May those whose bodies are worn with toil be restored on finding repose. May the naked find clothing, the hungry find food, may the thirsty find water and delicious drinks. May the poor find wealth. Those weak with sorrow find joy.

May the forlorn find hope, constant happiness, and prosperity. May there be timely rains and bountiful harvest. May all medicines be effective and wholesome prayers bear fruit. May all who are sick and ill quickly be freed from the 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.