Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 79-minute teaching, Venerable Lobsang Namgyel continues an intensive weekend on thought transformation, focusing on how the mind habitually labels experiences as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral—and how these instant judgments crystallize into rigid opinions and prejudices that drive suffering. He explains that labels feel like they come from the object itself (a person is “bad”), when in fact they’re projections from our side. Using concrete examples—romantic love, workplace conflict, international tensions—he traces how a single label strengthens through repetition into elaborate stories, and how changing our minds becomes psychologically costly. He then presents His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s five-step framework for genuine change: learning about delusions, conviction that you need to change, determination not to give up, knowing and applying antidotes, and sustained daily effort. He teaches three foundational meditations—precious human rebirth, impermanence, and death—as sources of urgency and energy, and introduces the four immeasurable thoughts as a practical tool for neutralizing discriminative habits throughout the day. Aimed at serious practitioners seeking to dismantle the mental patterns that create conflict, both personally and globally.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 IC_A_001.mp3
UUID: 81c9b4dc-6d7f-423b-9491-239b87bf6467
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: VenNamgyel Thought Transformation (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 79.0 minutes
Words: ~11,019
On what we were talking about this morning, and then I’m going to hear what happened in your discussion groups. So as His Holiness says, Delusions are states of mind which when they arise within our mental continuum leave us disturbed, confused and unhappy. Therefore, those states of mind which delude or afflict us are called delusions or afflictive emotions. Is that okay? Everybody’s clear about the definition?
Okay. So that’s what we’re talking about on this weekend. We don’t want more afflictive emotions. We don’t want more delusions, do we? We want to reduce them and we want to increase the possibility, the potential of having more good emotions.
Being in love. Oh, in love. No use asking me about that. Hannah, the love expert. She writes a love column for one of the local newspapers.
Is love deluded? Well, state of being in that day is Well, we’re all deluded. Buddha said that we’re in the mental hospital called the world, you know? So what makes love less delusional or more delusional? I mean, in a way more delusional because not only is this imputation that I was saying this morning that you’re imputing onto the other person, they’re absolutely perfect, and they’re imputing onto you, you’re absolutely perfect.
There’s a chemical that now the scientists have found that operates for about a year or two, that is a collusion of that. It’s like eating chocolate every day. So you’re on this sort of high of masses of chocolate, but you’re not getting the chocolate, it’s love. You know, you’re on the love high. When it stops, you suddenly see all the things that you didn’t see before.
And So there’s the delusion. In actual fact, if you could see what is, just what’s there, what the person is, there wouldn’t be much trouble. But because we’re projecting what is not, that’s what creates the problem. That’s the delusion. So when desire’s involved, whether it’s a dress, jeans, jewelry, whatever it is, there’s a projection going on.
If I get this, I’m gonna be really happy. It’s going to make me more handsome, more beautiful, more attractive, and then if I wear this when I go out tonight, somebody will notice me, and before I know it, I’m married with three children. There’s this whole, sort of story when you’re buying the dress, it’s not just I’m buying a dress. So you may have that sort of delusion. We have many, many delusions around buying things, about relationships.
Keep looking at the amount of projection you put into situations and you’ll see why, particularly with relationships, there’s a lot of confusion there. It’s because of this projection from both sides. And it’s not saying that just people in love are the only ones with delusion. Buddha said, we’re in this mental hospital called the world, and we have to get out of it if we accept that’s our situation. Not I’m doing okay and you’re not, but we’re all in that mental hospital because we’re all not seeing things clearly.
We all have ignorance, you know? Not, I have a little bit of ignorance and you have much more, so I’m doing okay, but actually we’re all in an ignorant state of mind, and so therefore we all don’t understand how things exist and which way they exist, whether there’s an I, not an I. If there’s an I, there’s me, mine, and this is mine. Therefore, there’s a separate you and yours, and I want to keep mine and you don’t touch it and you keep away if I don’t like you. You know?
So that’s when the separation comes between me, what I have, mine, you and yours. And then that’s one. And then get a few people together, get many people together, and you get these big separations. And we draw the line now. Here’s the line, here’s the border, and you people over there, we’re over here, and we hate you because of this, and we hate you because of that, and that’s how we get these big separations and big wars.
Again, caused by imputation on this is our land, and this is how we feel about the land, and this is why we want to keep this land. And our nationality and our culture and all this sort of thing, we put so much into it and then we make a division. We make a separation between us believing in all of that and others who don’t, and instead of acceptance, we bring into it aversion. I don’t like you because you don’t agree with me, therefore, there’s the line, you go over there, stay over there, and we’re over here, and we don’t meet. As long as we don’t meet, we don’t talk, we’re okay, but if we have to meet and talk, we fight.
So, this comes down to the feeling aggregate. You know, so in the sūtra, at the top of page eighty, it said on the second line, Beholding those five aggregates also is empty of inherent nature. And then in that first paragraph, Form is empty, emptiness is form. It’s all a bit scary, isn’t it? Form is empty, emptiness is form.
So then you think, well, how can emptiness be form and how can form be emptiness? I mean, it doesn’t seem to make sense at all. And this is the sūtra that’s going to solve all my problems. Can’t even understand it. So what it’s saying is emptiness doesn’t refer to the room being empty, it’s referring to a potential.
So it’s saying that because emptiness exists, because there is no inherent existence, then something can appear out of that non inherent existence. Do you understand? If everything’s inherently existent, without causes and conditions, nothing could appear. But because there is non inherent existence, it means things can appear. So I’ll give you the example to go back to the flower.
There was no flower. In emptiness, there was no flower. And then a bud started to appear, and then out of emptiness, the flower appeared. Right? So out of emptiness, form appeared.
But that form is also empty, and that form is not permanent, it’s not inherently existent, it will also disappear. So form is emptiness. As soon as we say flower, we start to get the idea the flower is inherently existent without causes, without conditions. That’s not the way it exists. It exists through causes and conditions, right?
And it’s not so important when we’re talking about a flower, but when we’re talking about the emotions that we were saying yesterday, envious person, jealous person, you know, this sort of thing, it seems to be true. And then as if that person can’t change. That’s the way it is. So it’s important then to think about emptiness because in emptiness, out of emptiness, anything is possible. You can actualize your potential, which is to have clarity in your mind, to have spaciousness in your mind, to have wisdom, to have compassion, anything’s possible.
But if you keep making things solid and real, it’s as if it’s true. And then you’ve got to actually destruct, take it apart, you know, what you think is true, in order to see what is really true. Is it true? So we’re talking about the feeling aggregate, and in this paragraph is also not other than emptiness. In the same way, feeling, discrimination, compositional factors, and consciousness are empty.
So they’re the five aggregates. So then, Buddha said, monks, he was talking to monks, monks there are beings who suffer, not from disease of body for one year, for two years, even for a hundred years. But it is hard to find in the world beings who can admit freedom from mental disease, even for one moment, save only for those who’ve destroyed delusions. So it’s really difficult to find somebody who’s experiencing freedom from mental disease, and Buddha’s not talking about schizophrenia and stuff like this. He’s talking about our mental disease.
When he was talking about mental diseases, he was talking about the eighty four thousand afflictive states of mind, the eighty four thousand delusions, which come and go in our mind. Okay? So he’s not talking about anything extraordinary, he’s just talking about us. So he’s saying, even even for one moment, difficult to find somebody who doesn’t experience mental disease, never mind trying to find somebody who’s destroyed the delusions, who never experiences delusions. Really difficult to find that one.
But we can find people who don’t experience disease for one year, two years, that. We can find that. But trying to find somebody who is mentally free from afflictions, Try to find the person who’s completely free of all afflictions, difficult. So that’s in order of difficulty. Removing all delusions, the most difficult.
Removing some delusions, difficult. Having a healthy body, not so difficult. So, the feeling aggregate, so here we’re talking about the five aggregates. He gave feeling, discrimination, compositional factors, consciousness. The feeling aggregate is defined as an omnipresent factor of the mind.
An omnipresent factor means it’s always there. It’s a factor which is always there. So the feeling aggregate is always in the mind. It’s a mental factor which labels experiences into three categories. So what are those three categories?
And it’s not tall, short, and very short, just to give you a clue. Yeah. Or we can say it another way, pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. Okay? So pleasant, unpleasant, neutral.
So that’s what we’re constantly doing is because of the feeling aggregate, one of these five aggregates, the feeling aggregate, as soon as it sees something or somebody, immediately puts a label pleasant, pleasant, or neutral. And it happens so quickly, it’s as if the label is in the person or the object. You don’t even realize you’re putting the label so quickly. So when the label pleasant is given to an object, we develop attachment. We like, we want it, so you want it closer.
When the label of unpleasant is given to an object, we start to develop aversion, and with that, we can develop anger or hatred. Not necessarily, but it’s possible. Then as I said this morning, when the label of neutral is given to an object, we often don’t care about the object or we ignore it, and we think that’s okay. We think, well, that’s alright because I’m not doing anything. I’m not reacting in one way, I’m not reacting in the other, so actually this is the best thing.
Let’s just have a non caring attitude. But as we were saying this morning, there is something happening in there, in that we’re denying our closeness in the way of, we’re all related, we’re all interrelated. We all have an effect on each other, so you have to go into that. So the process of labeling by the feeling aggregate usually only takes a fraction of a second, And once we’ve applied the label, then we tend to create a static opinion. So once you put that label, then it’s a static opinion.
It tends not to change. So we have now a static opinion, unchanging, and an image of the object in our mind. So now you’ve fixed this object in your mind. And at that stage, then the seeds of prejudice are planted. Prejudice in the way of I like or I don’t like.
Already these seeds are planted, and this comes back to sixty-five seeds per second. So each time you go back to that object or that person and you reaffirm, I like more attachment, more I like. Okay? Sixty five, sixty five, sixty five of I like, I like, I like. When there’s something you don’t like, you keep going back and saying don’t like, don’t like, like and you’re making it stronger and stronger.
So it’s not just that you have an imputation, but you’re strengthening the imputation. The original label is now building into a story. It started with one word, then it becomes a sentence, and then it becomes a chapter, and then it becomes a book. And none of it’s happening from its own side, it’s all happening from you. Then you think, poor me, why do I have so many horrible people around me?
So, once you’ve established the opinion, and it’s only your opinion that something is pleasant or unpleasant, then we often need a large amount of evidence before we’re willing to change our mind. If we’re willing to change our minds at all. So once you’ve set your opinion on something, it tends to be very difficult to get you to see another aspect of that situation. Once we’ve labeled an object or a person unpleasant, bad, it appears as if the object is bad by itself. So the badness seems to be an inherent quality, something that exists in the person or the object.
So once you’ve said, That’s bad, then it seems to be coming from the side of the object or the person. So we can label a person bad, but then, if you go and talk to the friends of that person and say, well that person is bad, then those friends are not going to agree with your discrimination, with your perspective, with your way of looking at that being. I don’t like that person. They are bad. You go and talk to the friends, and they say, No, no, that’s a really nice person.
You think, Well, it’s not possible because I don’t like them. So they’re seeing good qualities, you’re seeing bad, and can that exist as two separate entities? Of course not. Right? There’s not two separate people.
One’s bad, one’s good. It’s one person, and based on their behavior and our discrimination, what we’re seeing from our side, we put the label, and then we say, it’s like that. Like, don’t like. Pleasant, unpleasant. So we need to realize that good and bad are subjective opinions.
There’s something that’s coming from my side onto the object or the person, it’s not coming from the other side. The other problem about this is we can put the label and then people and objects tend to change quicker than our mind. So as they’re changing, they’re transforming, they’re changing, we keep the label. So then this also stresses us out because we put the label in the first place and particularly if it’s a label of dislike. I don’t like that person.
And then you see them doing something really good, you know, like helping an old person across the road. And then you think, oh, they’re only doing that because And you can see something bad in it. So even if they’re doing good actions, you’re still trying to accord with the first label, the bad label. So you see them doing something nice, something good, helping this, helping that. Yeah, they’re doing that for publicity, or they’re doing it for this, or they’re doing it for that.
But you just can’t see the goodness in them, because you think they’re bad. And once you place that label, the story starts to grow. So labeling is a convenient way to quickly make some sense of our surroundings, because like I said this morning, imagine if we had to keep changing the labels constantly. What’s that, what’s that? You’d have to keep making up new labels.
So we need labels, but realizing that we’re categorizing things into things that are good, things that are bad, and things that we don’t care about. So we’ve got these three main categories and the I don’t care about them, well, we don’t even think about that one. The good category, as soon as we put that label, you want every action to accord with that first label. Whatever they do must go along with that first label. Whatever’s bad or whoever’s bad, then again, you keep building the story around that.
And changing our mind is stressful. And so that’s where the anxiety and the stress comes in. But we tend to have oversimplified labels. I mean it’s a very broad concept, isn’t it, to just say good, bad. It’s not very refined.
And so because we’re not refining the labels, we don’t have a very fine label. Or maybe that person’s good, but there could be a little bad in there. Because it’s just good or bad and don’t care, then they’re very don’t simple labels, and that can also create many problems for us. So that’s what we were talking about this morning, labeling the feeling aggregate, which is doing this projection. And then, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and his book, Art of Happiness,, talks about five things that you need to have in order to change your situation.
What I was talking about this morning was the first of the five points that His Holiness mentions. So the first one is learning. Okay? So in order to produce change, we need learning. We need to know about our situation.
And this requires honesty, to look at your situation honestly. And I guess also we need to have a sense of humor about it, Because often we think, oh my situation is really tragic, I’m the worst. I’ll never change, blah blah blah. But sometimes you just need to be a bit lighter about it. So in that learning, don’t bring in guilt.
Don’t use it to beat yourself up. Recognize that we’re all in the mental hospital and we’re all trying to deal with difficulties. Then the second one, the second point of the five, first we have learning, then there’s conviction. So conviction is, I need to change. Right?
This is why we tell you lots of things about delusions, because actually we could just start with, okay, what do you think delusions are? I give you, we write down the list, and then I say, who wants them? Everybody says, no. Okay, you want to change? Yes.
Okay, and of course. Should be that easy. That we just say, don’t want them? Finish. But we know it’s really difficult to change the mind from these delusions.
They seem to be very strongly embedded in our mind. So the first is learning about the delusions. Do they help you or harm you? The second is conviction. I need to change.
I really don’t want this delusion anymore. The third is then determination. His Holiness says don’t give up. Right? So particularly in relation to Tibet, but you know, he’s been practicing patience for fifty years.
So if anybody has a difficult situation, he does, and he keeps saying you always keep trying. So it’s especially true with the delusions. You always keep trying. So having determination. I’m not going to give up.
Then the fourth one is action. What are you going to do? So that’s what we talk about tomorrow. What are the antidotes? What’s the medicine that you’re going to apply to the sickness?
So what’s the action that you’re going to take in order to change the situation. So you need to know antidotes, mental antidotes. The fifth one is effort. You need to put an effort in. And it needs to be constant.
It needs to be over time. It’s no use coming on a course like this and saying, Yes, I must change. And then you go home, you completely forget about it, and then four weeks later you’re in this, you know, ranting or raving or full of desire and attachment or whatever it is, and you think, oh, that course, that’s right. You look at the notes and you think, oh yes, that’s right. This is what I need to do.
And then again you forget about it. So there’s something that has to be done on a daily basis. Like the drops of water dripping on the stone. We need to soften the mind. We need to gradually remove the delusions.
We need to do it on a daily basis, rather than waiting until it happens. So we’re trying to prevent the delusions arising. We’re not waiting until they arise. So we’re Is it proactive or pre active? Pro active.
We’re proactive. I would have thought it was pre active. Before, like, before the anger you do something. That’s not pre. Like preliminary.
Prelude. I thought pre is before and pro is after. But we’re being proactive before. Anyway, think about that. The English language.
Okay, so effort, you need something that gives you the energy to want to make the effort. And then there are three meditations which I think you did some of them this morning. Precious human rebirth, impermanence and death. And you might think, goodness gracious, meditating on death is not going to stimulate me into doing something. But actually the death meditation is like a mirror for your life, for your situation and what’s going on.
So the death meditation says to you, if you’re going to die today, what state of mind do you want to have? How do you want to die? So what type of human being do you want to be? Okay, so this is what the death meditation is very useful for. It really brings it home to today.
It doesn’t keep saying next week, next month, next year, which is what we do. You know, put it off, put it off, put it off. You wake up in the morning and you think, oh it’s cold. I’m not getting up. You wake up, it’s hot and you think beach.
So when does the meditation happen? Never happens. Because if it’s cold, you don’t do it and if it’s hot, you go out. So you’re always waiting for exactly the right conditions in order to do the meditation. In actual fact, you need these steps before, right?
The learning, the conviction, the determination. You know, I’m going to do it. Applying the antidotes and the effort to apply the antidotes. Where do you get the effort from? You have to wake up and think, incredible, I’ve got today.
You know, having that state of mind, I didn’t die, I’ve got today. This is very important. So I think if you can, from the time you do this course, try and do this for a week or two. You can’t do it forever, but just do it for a week or two. Just at the time when you’re going to sleep, think in my sleep, I’m going to die.
It’s very liberating, you know, because then any worries, any anxieties, you let go of them. Anything to deal with, you have to deal with it. Don’t go to sleep holding on to things. So deal with them before you sleep, because you’re going to die in your sleep. Okay?
Then you’ll have a nice sleep. When you wake up in the morning, you’ll feel refreshed. And then the first thought is, but I didn’t die. I’m alive. And you should feel very strongly, I’m alive.
And what should I do with today? I only have today. Right? Because that’s all you can say. I only have today.
You don’t know you have tomorrow. We keep assuming we have tomorrow, you know, booking holidays, I’m going here, I’m going to do this, but actually we’ve only got today. And today is a gift. It’s something very special. So it’s very important.
What am I going to do with it? So do your meditation. Sit on the cushion, do ten or fifteen minutes of meditation. This is medicine for you. We’re not very good at giving ourselves something.
When I teach Reiki, people say, Oh, I’ll give Reiki to other people, but it’s so difficult to give Reiki to myself. Grace is the exception, I think. The exception to the rule, isn’t it? Grace gives to herself and she finds it more difficult, or you can’t find the people. Can’t find the people.
Anyway, the rule that tends to happen is people don’t want to give to themselves. I think this is very unhealthy. Why don’t we want to give kindness to ourselves? Why don’t we want to give ourselves half an hour of walking in the forest or in the park or sitting peacefully with ourselves. Why don’t we want to do this?
What’s the problem? We think, oh, this is being selfish. Then I’ll be a bad person, you know, labeled by myself bad. In actual fact, it’s what we should be doing. In order to be there for others, we have to take care of ourselves.
So you need the right amount of sleep, you need the right amount of exercise, of food, you need to take care of your body and your mind in order for you to be able to take care of others. To be the Bodhisattva who takes care of all sentient beings, you have to have the resources, you have to have the energy and the strength. So first of all, not from a selfish motivation, but from a very good motivation. I want to help others, but to do that, I’ve got to take care of myself first. And in order to take care of others, you need to sit on the seat and do your meditation, because that gives you clarity.
It gives you spiritual strength. Not saying spiritual in the sense of you are Buddhist or any other religion, but just connecting with the world around you. You know? Your mind opens up and you realize we all have a connection. And nurturing that connection.
So that’s a very nice way to start the day. If you can start the day like that, there’s some wisdom in there, there’s some compassion in there, and then through the day you’re thinking, I’m getting irritable, I’m getting upset, but I’m going to die tonight. Ten o’clock tonight, I’ll be dead. Is it worth getting irritable and angry if I’m going to die at ten o’clock tonight? Why would I bother?
There’s no point. So that’s what the death meditation does for you. It puts a mirror in front of you and says, is this the behavior that you want if you’re going to die today? And of course your mind says, no. There’s no point in being like that.
Because how you live is how you die. This is what nurses say. Right? If you live with a very difficult mind, you die a very difficult death. And then the future, and we believe in a future in Buddhism, we say there’s future lives, whether or not you believe in it, then there’s a future.
And do you want that future of even more difficulties, even more anger, even more hatred? That’s what you’re giving as a legacy to the next person or the next being along the line. When you’re reborn, you’re handing all that to them and then they have to deal with it. You don’t recognize, oh this is me from the last life, but you think, some people think, why am I so lucky? My life is incredible.
I’m really lucky. It’s not lucky. It’s somebody before you did all the work, you know? Then some people think, why me? Such a horrible life, such a horrible world.
Well, the person before made a lot of mess, you know, or people before. We have many lives. We make such a mess sometimes, somebody ends up with that mess. So is that what you want? Is that what you want in the future?
So this is another way of antidoting these negative states of mind that appear. You don’t want to experience the result of it. Not in this life and not in future lives. So then we have precious human rebirth. It’s not precious by its nature.
It’s precious because of what you’re doing with it. It’s precious because of the opportunity. What’s the opportunity? It’s to be able to benefit all sentient beings. And that starts with benefiting yourself.
Having kindness, giving kindness towards yourself, giving kindness to others, then love, then compassion. Ultimately bodhicitta, wanting to liberate all sentient beings from their suffering. It’s an incredible state of mind. But it has to start with a seed, just one small seed has to be planted. Kindness.
You start being kind to yourself. Not selfishly, but thinking this is really good because I’m going to be able to give to others. If I have more spiritual strength, if I have more physical strength, I can be of use to others. And to build spiritual strength, we need to sit on the cushion. Because we know out there is not so easy anymore.
Like I said, all this busyness, this multitasking, when do you get peace and quiet? You have to get it for yourself. You have to organize it first thing in the morning. So that’s the starting the day in the right way. Then thinking impermanence.
Everything changes. Nothing stays the same. Nothing is static. So the labels that I’m placing with super glue, I don’t like you. You write them, you super glue them, and then to change your mind, you have to go back and scrape that label off and it’s so difficult because you managed to super glue it.
Why did you make so much trouble for yourself? So don’t go around placing so many labels, super gluing and scraping them off. Try throughout the day looking at everybody and saying, may you be happy. You know in the four immeasurable thoughts that we recited this morning, the first one is, may you be happy. So instead of discriminating thoughts, disliking thoughts, unpleasant thoughts, hateful thoughts, whatever it is, instead of any of that, if you’re having a bad day, keep thinking, may you be happy.
That’s why I really like silence because this is a good habit to get into while you’re in silence. That while you’re walking up to the building, whoever you see, you think, may you be happy, may you be happy, may you be happy. Yeah? You should say, may all sentient beings be happy. But we need to personalize it bring it down to: May you be happy.
Because that’s the one that you could be discriminating against. Saying, I don’t like, I don’t care. Right? May you be happy. Even our desire and attachment can make people unhappy.
Isn’t it? We can’t assume that desire and attachment also makes people happy. Once we have desire and attachment, we possess them. We hold on to them and say, And you’re mine. Don’t call anybody, don’t see anybody.
You’re mine. You know? And then jealousy arises. And then arguments start. Where were you?
What time do you call this? You know? It only takes seven minutes to drive from work to here. It’s nine minutes. Where have you been?
People get like this when they’re jealous, in love, you know, this wonderful state of being in love. You can be throwing pots and pans and you know. When I was living in Sydney, the houses were really close together and if people were fighting, you heard all the details. Where were you? You know, that.
And the pots and pans flying. And you think, Gosh, I never want to be in a relationship like that. But you can easily get into a relationship like that when you have attachment. So this may you be happy presupposes that you are going to help others to be happy. What can you do to make them happy?
Right? These small acts of kindness are what makes others happy in the beginning, isn’t it? Just looking. When you go up to the dining room, does somebody need a fork or a knife? Do they need to have a plate pass to them?
Let somebody in front of you. Just small things, you know, we don’t have to think of placing them in a state of enlightenment, which you think, Oh, well I can’t do that anyway, so there’s nothing else to do. But just the small stuff, right? Then the next one is suffering. Instead of, May all beings not experience suffering, may you not experience suffering.
So it’s just start with, may you be happy, may you be happy. Then the next one is, may you not suffer. And in that is, I’m not going to make you suffer. Right? You’re not just saying, May you not suffer, but it also brings up a feeling, I don’t want to make you suffer.
So that helps to change your attitude. May you be happy. May you not suffer, and that’s love and compassion. It’s bringing love and compassion into your day, and it’s really important when you live in a city, because when you’re in a city, we can get anxious and frazzled and running and we forget. So you can make a compassion day, you know.
I really must practice more compassion today, especially Monday. Maybe you could do Monday and Friday. You know, they seem to be the worst days, don’t they? And then in between bad hair days. But Monday is compassion day.
Friday is love day and in between is bad hair days. Just joking. Sunday could be kindness day, but you know, you can think of different days. Take a day and think this is what I’m going to really think about today. Being less irritable, being more patient, you know, just take a day like that and think, this is what I’m emphasizing, more wisdom today.
And what would wisdom mean? Is wisdom cutting in, in front of somebody? Is wisdom winding down the window? Oh, it’s electric these days, isn’t it? You go, Oi, have you got a driving license?
You know, is that wisdom? And you think, would the Buddha do that? Oi! Can you imagine? You know, his holiness.
Oi! You know, couldn’t imagine it. So it’s really helpful to think, would Śākyamūni Buddha do this? Would His Holiness do this? If you have some feeling of their nature, know, the kindness and the peace, you think, they’d never do something like that.
So then it helps to pacify you. Not suppressing, but it actually changes the mind that wants to be irritable, that wants to be angry, that wants to react. It just puts some water or some oil on the surface. It’s really good for bringing it down. Thinking impermanence is thinking about how everything changes.
So if you’re in a difficult situation at work, it will change. If you’re in a difficult health situation, it will change. If you’re in a difficult relationship, it will change. So the nature of all phenomena and people is impermanence, not permanence. So also be careful that you’re not imputing permanence onto any situation, because we do that too.
You can be really happy at a certain time of your life and you think, and I don’t want this to change. But it doesn’t allow for growth and for change. Why not? It can change even better. So don’t be afraid of change, be flexible.
I think in this day and age what we need most of is flexibility, mental flexibility. The ability to change quite rapidly. But we want to maintain our values. What are your values? And then be flexible in the way of allowing change to happen.
So that’s impermanence. People often say to me, oh I know about impermanence, you don’t need to tell me about impermanence, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve got it. And I say, really, when you go home, you know, like you’re here now, and you go home and you’ve got your family home or the place where you live, imagine if you got there and you got out the taxi and the building’s gone. There’s no sign as to where it’s gone, but just the building’s gone. But it couldn’t be.
Right? You look at the street sign. Must be on the wrong street. No, I’m on the right street, the right number. But, but, but, but.
Somebody who has realization of impermanence would say, well, that’s impermanence. Oh, well. Right? I mean, really. We’d worry about the people inside, wouldn’t we?
Inside the building. But still, there’d be a psychic shock. You wouldn’t be able to deal with it because we project permanence. Unchanging. This is how I like it.
Don’t move. You know? Keep it like this. Virtually impossible because you’re changing and the people around you are changing and the phenomena around you are also changing. So we need that flexibility, the ability to change, you know, from one position to another.
Then death, as I said to you already, is looking at your situation, recognizing that it is not permanent, it is impermanent, and there are two types of subtle impermanence and gross impermanence. So one is moment to moment change, and gross impermanence is this body. It’s a guesthouse. We treat it like it’s a permanent mansion, but it’s a guest house. We move into the guest house and we pretty it up and then we have to leave it.
So if you spend too much time fiddling around with the paintwork and the carpet and the light fittings, well, maybe you’re not spending enough time on changing your mind, on developing some wisdom and compassion. Why spend so much time on the structure? You know, it’s just a guesthouse. It’s not your structure, Somebody else’s building. You’re renting a room in the guesthouse.
Think like that. So when you move into Mahāmudrā, didn’t bring tins of paint. Robin, who’s in the red room, she said, Oh, I don’t like the red room. I want a green room. So runs down to Colville, gets green paint, comes back in the break.
She’s up there painting the room and typing a new label, then she thinks, oh, All the furnishings are red. Back down to Colville. No. No. We don’t have any green bed sheets and blah, blah, blah.
Rushes up to Coromandel, buys the bed sheets. And then she looks at the carpet and they’re all wrong. Goes down, buys another carpet, gets pipe fittings and all the rest of it. At the end of the weekend she leaves. And up in the office they come to look at this room and they think, wow, incredible.
But why did bother? We could have just moved her into the green room. But we bother, right? We can spend so much time on this body and nothing on the mind. So it’s not saying don’t take care of the body, it’s saying have a balanced life.
Just be balanced about it. Some people spend all their time on their mind, not on the body. Some people spend all their time in the gym, on that machine and doing all these weights and all the rest of it. You can spend hours in there and nothing on their mind. The body is important because it supports the mind, right?
If you’re really sick, you can’t think of anything except the body. So you want to be healthy, but you don’t want to be obsessional. Don’t go to the extreme. Just find a balance between the two. And then use that balanced state of existence in order to benefit others.
Then your life is worthwhile, because it’s not just about you, there’s so many others apart from you. We’re one and there’s six billion human beings, countless sentient beings. So if you think of one, six billion, what’s more important, of course, six billion. So then to start to develop the qualities that will help you in order to be a benefit to those six billion. Okay, then the discussion groups.
Did anything interesting come out of it? Obviously not. Yes. And you’ve kept that thought ever since. Permanently and unchanging.
Yes. Yes. Yeah. It was like years ago, there was a recognition that science was not perfect, right? I don’t think science came into it very much.
In that when children were born they could die, depending situation. In my mother’s day, you had a home birth. I think most of the children at that time were born at home. You didn’t go to a hospital. And then it started being, oh this is wrong, dirty, disgusting, they should go to hospital.
And so the scientific thing started to come into it and maybe then situations which could have killed the child at home could be done, something could be done at the hospital. Then cesareans came in, know, so many scientific changes. I think through science we have the wrong view that nothing will happen, nothing will go wrong. You know, it seems to be the scientific view that we can control everything. And this seems to be how we’re trying to be now.
And yet we have earthquakes, we have volcanoes, we have tornadoes, we have cyclones, we have so many things that are uncontrollable and then we don’t know what to do. And I think there are also things about our life that we can’t control. We could become very famous, very rich and overnight lose it all. You know? We could have no children and really want to have a child and always be thinking, and I’ve had this happen where people write to me and say we’ve been trying to have a child for five years, ten years, we’ve tried all the tests, we’ve tried everything.
We just can’t have a child. We’re so desperate, you know, like that. And in the old days it was like people just had children really easily. Now it’s getting more and more difficult to even get pregnant because of pollutants. They say the male of the species is dying out.
We can see that now. Know, there’s only one here. So I was just reading that because of chemicals going into water and different things, different animals and different creatures are starting to show less and less male characteristics, more and more female. And so it’s becoming more difficult to even get pregnant. So I think because there’s so much attachment to the projection of having a child, the thought of losing that child is too traumatic.
Whereas in the old days, you had like eight children and you lost three or four, you know, it was like that. And so it was, well, we’ll have some and we’ll lose some. It was acceptable. Then there was also war, you know, at that time. And war, think, had a very profound effect on people’s lives because they always thought today I could die.
I know in my mother’s time, were being bombed constantly. Every night the bombs would come and so they’d think, well we’re going to die today, what should we do? And so they used to sit in the shelters telling jokes and know, stuff like this and I think they had a great sense of humor often because of these very traumatic situations. Often a great creativity and humor comes out of it. So we try to avoid stressful situations, but in actual fact we often grow in stressful situations.
And you know in Buddhism we say, well, you take this human rebirth, you check into the body, and then you check out. And we understand it’s just checking in, checking out. But if you don’t have that view, you can really see it as this one and only time. And then I think, it’s, yeah, and you can’t, it’s impermanent, you’re gonna die, but you’ve got another chance. That’s the nice thing in Buddhism about this way of thinking.
It’s not just this time, you have another chance, another chance, another chance. So don’t put everything onto this life. Don’t think I have to have full compassion, full wisdom, full everything in this life. You start in this life and you start planting the right seeds and pulling the weeds out and you just see that as good behavior, good habits that you create, and the next life will be continuation of that, because it’s not lost. Whatever you’ve created is not lost, good and bad.
So you’re creating good imprints for the future. That’s the way to go. Purifying, accumulating. Yeah? Thanks.
Yeah? Well, it can go anywhere. So it’s formless. It’s got a very subtle form. When, you know, when people say they see ghosts, this is what they could be seeing, the Bardo beings.
It’s called the Bardo, and Bardo is intermediate state. So it means from the moment that your consciousness leaves the body, that’s the time of death for a Buddhist. It doesn’t mean when the heart stops beating. It means when the consciousness leaves the body. And, one of the gross signs is blood coming from the nose.
That’s how you know the consciousness is left. And you’ll see that the body starts to deteriorate from that time. Because while the consciousness is in the body, it’s supporting the body. Even though there’s no heartbeat, there’s no breathing, still the body is able to be supported by the mind because of the power of the mind. Once the mind leaves, then it’s wind and mind.
So the wind, this very subtle wind, subtle energy, this wind creates a Bardo body. So it has a very subtle form, which looks like what you’re going to be in your next life. So your karma appears as a subtle body. And then you start looking for the next rebirth. And usually we would take rebirth very quickly, because we have attachment and grasping for our body.
So that’s why we say meditate a lot on letting go of attachment and grasping, because if you have very strong attachment and grasping, there’s no choice at the time of death about which body you take. You know, you could see two dogs and you just think, Oh, body. You’re not thinking two dogs. I don’t want to be a dog. You’re just thinking body because you have attachment.
You want to form as quickly as possible. So in actual fact, you want to slow the process down. You’ve got up to forty nine days. It’s about the state of mind at the time that you die, which brings together the karma that will produce your next life. So you could have been a really bad person all your life, and at the last moment you have a flash of insight, a really nice mind, and that produces a good rebirth.
Or you could be a really good person and at the time of death have a bad mind and that would produce a bad rebirth. So it’s that last mind at the time of death that triggers, it’s that delusion that triggers the karma that then produces the future rebirth. So the time of death is extremely important. That’s why it’s important to say now, I’m going to die. I’m going to die.
It’s not that you’re going to make yourself die now, but you come to terms with what it means. Last year, I went through this funny thing where I had a test and one of the leads on the machine was faulty. And it came up on the computer that I had a myocardial infarction, which means you’re going to die within half an hour. Fifty percent of people die within half an hour. And at that time, I was just down the road, I was just starting to teach the death course.
So we started Friday morning, Friday lunchtime we started, and I was there I think Friday afternoon or Friday evening. So we’d just started the death course and I had to come back to talk about death. So I’m down there and they have this machine and looking at the machine and looking at me. Are you alright? Yeah, I’m fine.
Strange, you don’t look very white. No, I’m okay. You sure you’re not palpitating? And it was, you know, all this, you alright? And in the end I started really worried, What’s going on here?
You know, just stay calm, everything will be fine, just another few minutes and it’s already going on for a long time. So okay, sit up, take all the leads off. Well according to the machine you’ve had a myocardial infarction which means part of your heart has died. Oh! So I said well you know I’ve got to get back to the center, you know, even though part of my heart’s died, I’ve got to get back to work.
And she said, No, no, just sit here peacefully, quietly. I’m just going to call the cardiologist. So off she goes, you know. So I’m sitting there and I look over and there’s all these books and I see one and I just pick it up and I open it and it says myocardial infarction because I didn’t know much about it. It just fell open at that page myocardial infarction.
Chronic is very, very serious and it means that fifty percent of people will die within half an hour. Great! Can’t finish the course, you know, like this. But the interesting thing for me wasn’t, Oh my God, you know, and running out the office screaming and shouting, I’m going to be dead within half an hour. But it was really this very calm feeling of, Oh well, if it’s going to happen, the best thing to do is write out my instructions on what should happen and then that’s it.
So I was actually very happy because it shows you what happens with your Dharma practice is that when you’re living, you’re really alive, and when you’re dying, then you’re dealing with your death in a nice way. It’s not going to freak you out, and that’s what we want. Because it’s the most important time in order to produce the next life, which is a continuation of the work that you’ve started in this life. So it turned out anyway that there was a faulty lead on the machine and that’s what was giving the computer false information. And as soon as she called the cardiologist, the cardiologist said, you’ve got a lead that’s faulty.
And she said, But how do you know those? And the cardiologist said, Well, that’s why I’m a cardiologist. So they know these things, you know, but an ordinary person wouldn’t know. So doing this type of meditation and thinking about your death, whenever it’s going to come, and not putting things off, solving things quickly as you go along, really helps, because we do tend to procrastinate. You can have an argument with your mother or your father or brother, sister, something, and you think, I’ll solve it soon.
Soon, soon, soon. And after a while, you can’t. And so that procrastination becomes an obstacle. And you know in the back of your mind it’s something that you should solve, but somehow you can’t seem to get the energy to do it. And so procrastination takes actually more effort than solving things.
It’s really better to solve it now than to have it hanging over you. Because at the time of death, you’re going to suddenly come up with a whole list of things that you should have done. And then it’s too late. Yeah? So live life the way you want to die.
It’s really nice. Sven, did you have your hand waving around before? Come on. Yes, ask. Don’t be embarrassed.
Oh no, I just really like my, discussion. The what? Discussions, I guess. Oh yeah, go on, tell me about it. Anything interesting?
Tell me all. Tell me the secrets. So you had different viewpoints, but there was a similarity between them. Oh, Sonam? Yeah.
You were in Venerable Sonam’s group, The beginner group. So it was interesting. So no difficulties arose out of it. You’re all on track. Okay, you can teach tomorrow.
I’m having a holiday tomorrow. And the other group? Any problems or questions from the other groups? Was it group or groups? Yeah.
Yeah. Well I think also, isn’t there a possibility of being present but projecting? I think the projection comes from ignorance, is coming from an opinionated point of view, isn’t it? An ego that thinks that it knows. That way.
And so, you see that person in front of you. An ordinary person might see a Mexican maid and think, well, I’m the Dalai Lama, you know. I’m not talking to a Mexican maid. Well, you’re in your ego, you’re not thinking about the person in front of you, and you’re not relating to your values. You’re not coming from your values.
The ego is a block to the values. I think the values are then something that you’ve studied, but you haven’t actualized. So the values would click in and out according to the situation. If you’re relaxed, if you’re peaceful, calm, you can access your values. But if you’re stressed out and, you know, there’s a possibility of winding down the window and saying, Oi!
You know, like that. So yeah, I think being present is important, but what are your important values? Where do you want to come from? And then in every situation, trying to bring that into the situation. That would require to be present, as you’re saying.
Not coming from your ego that thinks it knows. That’s the problem with the ego is it thinks it knows. You know? So it projects what thinks it knows onto the person in front, so you don’t even have to ask them who are you, what are you, because you already know. That’s the arrogance of the ego, isn’t it?
And I don’t like you. Poor person hasn’t even opened their mouth, you know, and I don’t like you. And then another one, you know, shape, right height, whatever it is, and woah, I like you. And then they open their mouth and you say, oh, I don’t like you. We think, oh, we’re right.
This is a desirable one. Oh, I like you. And then, oh, no, I don’t like you. Wrong. Know, like that.
So we can get it so confused, so messy because of this projection that we do. But imagine if we just left space. Imagine if there was no labeling, no projection onto people. Right? Imagine just trying to do that for a short time.
Just don’t project, don’t put a label, just allow space and let wisdom arise. Just try to do that and see how that would feel. To have acceptance, to allow people to be whatever they want to be and then you accept instead of you wanting to make them into what suits you. That’s completely different. The self is different from the ego?
Well there’s a merely label self which is the one I said this morning when I say I’m sitting, that sort of self, it’s okay. You know, in Buddhism we would say it’s okay, it’s not really a troublemaker. The ego, same thing really, but when we talk about ego, we get more of the feeling of, an emotion, something together with the self, you know? So not just I’m sitting, I’m sitting really well, and I’m sitting better than you, I can tell you. You know, then that’s the ego, isn’t it?
I’m a really compassionate being and I’m going to liberate all sentient beings from their suffering. It could be a really faulty ego, or it could be a great motivation. It depends on from where you’re coming. Yeah? So the ego, we’re usually talking about in a negative sense, and is what needs to be cut, is what needs to be removed, because when the emotion comes up, we think I, as if the I and the emotion are together, and then it becomes a very powerful deal.
And we react from that point of view. And at that point, you drop your discrimination. The discriminating mind can’t function now. You go into confusion and ignorance and that’s when the trouble comes. Right?
Because you can’t discriminate. It’s a little bit like being drunk, isn’t it? You have, yeah, they say you only need one drink and and you lose your discrimination. Just one drink. So it’s the same with this confused state of mind that arises.
As soon as it arises you lose your discrimination and then you can hurt and harm. And then you think afterwards, but why? But how? Because it’s the delusion that’s producing that state of mind that doesn’t discriminate. Yeah.
Any other comments? I’m going to tell you a story. Not a very nice one, but anyway. There was a university study done where they put an actor in a room all glassed in and attached to an electric chair. And then they brought in volunteers they said, people from the street, and they said, you see this person, they’ve done really bad things and they need to be punished.
So what I want you to do is turn this dial to give them an electric shock. There was actually no electricity going through to the person. They were an actor. So the dial showed mild, medium, strong, danger, you know, and red zone, danger. So people would say, no, no, no, I couldn’t do that.
I just couldn’t do it. And they kept talking, go on, You know, they listen. They’ve done this bad thing, this bad thing, this bad thing. So write the label. Now story.
Label, label, outlaw. Bad, bad, bad, bad. So they deserve to be punished, don’t they? Yes, they do. Go on, turn the dial.
So they turn the dial a little bit, and then the actor would go, woah, woah, woah, woah. And then they’d say, oh, they got an electric shock. Yes, I think this is a bad person. Now this is from the volunteer side, right? Not from the other people.
Now the volunteer says, I think they’ve done really bad things. I think they need a greater shock than that. And they start turning the dial and sometimes they would turn the dial into the danger zone and the people running the experiment would say, You know that’s really dangerous. You could kill them. And they’d say, Yes, but they’re a bad person and they need to be disciplined.
So this was shocking when this was released. It was shocking because nobody would believe this could happen. Why I’m mentioning it is because this experiment was repeated just, I think last month or the month before, different people, they repeated the experiment and the results were exactly the same. Why? Because we have our line, our morality line, and once we cross that morality line, anything becomes possible.
So we need to be very clear as to our values, as to what we believe in, And that we don’t go against those values. Because if we do, anything else is possible. We’ve lost our discrimination. That’s where delusion takes you. No discrimination.
You don’t understand what’s right and what’s wrong. What’s not harmful, what’s harmful. So that’s what that experiment showed, is that you take good people, ordinary people, and in quite a short time you can train them, you know, turn the dial, and they’re saying, I’m turning it right up to the maximum because they’ve done bad things. This is horrendous. Yeah.
So we accept authority, don’t we? We We say, well they should know, you know? So I think what’s important, what this teaches us is, we need to know as our own authority what we believe in. What are the values that you believe in? Not what everybody believes in.
If I’m teaching you blue and green should never be seen except with a color in between, it won’t help you much in society these days. But if you have the values of love and compassion and flexibility and impermanence and death and precious human rebirth, this helps you a lot. Because you wake up with energy and you think life’s changing moment to moment, even if I’m experiencing a traffic jam, impermanent. Even if I’m experiencing a difficult boss, impermanent. My relationship is a little bit rocket mode, impermanent.
So you keep focusing on the impermanence rather than the permanence, and then I’ve only got today. And what will I do with today? What’s the most important thing I can do with it? Think of that. And don’t put so much energy into the negativities, into the delusions.
Automatically, the balance starts to change just by seeing things in that way, because you start to put an emphasis on the importance of today. What do I want to do with my life today? One day at a time, but today. Do I want anger? Do I want hatred?
Discrimination? You know, all these sort of things that we say we don’t want, but they arise in our minds. Do we want it today? If I’m going to die tonight, is this important? And often when you think about it, these things that where the ego is starting to get involved and say, you can’t talk to me like that or I don’t deserve this.
Often it just dissipates. It’s not so important. Your ego builds it up, but you can smooth it down. Let go of it. Just let it go.
Okay, anything else before we dedicate? Yes, Ronald? Compassion. Ron, you always ask difficult questions. The third one is wanting to place all sentient beings in a state beyond suffering.
So you have to think, what would that state be? You know, the Four Noble Truths, it’s a cessation of suffering. At the moment, our happiness is the alleviation of suffering. Right? This is very important to establish.
Whenever we experience pleasure or happiness, it’s actually the alleviation of suffering. It’s not pure happiness, true happiness, because it’s an alleviation. Then the suffering comes back. Okay? Now we want all beings to be in that state beyond suffering.
Never to experience even one moment of suffering, and particularly that includes a neighbor that I can’t stand, who has the loud music, who mows the lawn at six o’clock on the Sunday morning when I want to sleep in. You say, I love all sentient beings, you know, except when they’re running the lawn mower at six o’clock in the morning. Or except when you’re in Mexico and they’re having Fiesta at three o’clock in the morning. Yeah? This is when the time the time when the mind can switch and you can think, I’m not happy about that.
Maybe there’s a hundred people enjoying themselves, but my sleep is important. I want my sleep. So we want to develop compassion, but very quickly the selfish mind can cut back in. So those people who are having a good time, even if it infringes on me, allow it, let it go, you know, because you want everybody to have only pleasure, only happiness, no suffering. And the last one is to have equanimity.
That actually it should be the first one, right? So often it is put first that if everybody had equanimity, free of bias, free of hatred, free of attachment, then we’d all be doing okay. And that’s like the motivation. You know, it’s like the path. So it’s like the Four Noble Truths.
Truths is that, you know, you’ve got path at the end. In the four immeasurables, you’ve got path at the end, but it’s actually where you start, isn’t it? You’ve got to build up some sort of enthusiasm to say, okay, I’ll do it, so what do I do? And then it’s have equanimity. Don’t be so unbalanced.
Just have a bit more balance. We’re not asking for extremes. You go from really angry to really patient, really desire to really detached. Not like that, but just a little bit more balance. Don’t push it, know, don’t sort of go for things that are really difficult.
Go for what you can achieve. Because if you go for something really difficult you try for a few days and then you give up. It’s the new year. Did anybody make the new year list? Did you?
I’m not going to drink anymore, I’m not going smoke anymore, I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m not saying for you, but you know, we can make outrageous promises. I’ll go to the gym five times a week and you know, I’ll do this and this and after a few days we give up. But if we make it doable, then it’s a good thing to write out, isn’t it? Did you make it doable?
Yeah. Then it gives you enthusiasm. Next year you do it again. But if you write outrageous things down that you can’t do, next year you think, oh, there’s no point in making promises. I can’t keep them.
Make promises that you can keep. Right? Move the boundaries a little bit. Let’s move the boundaries out a little bit more. Include somebody in your prayers who criticizes you.
Include somebody who doesn’t like you so much. Include that person into your prayers. Gradually you’ll be able to work with that person in your meditation as the most important person in your life, because that person is teaching you qualities. But right now we can’t work with them, so we start to work with them in our prayers. May they be happy.
May they not experience suffering. And then one day you’re able to put them in your meditation in front and you’re able to take on their suffering and you give them happiness. This is where we are headed. Okay.