Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 63-minute session, Venerable Lobsang Namgyel teaches Buddhist principles of thought transformation and personal change, beginning with the foundational steps of learning, conviction, determination, action, and effort. He emphasizes that meaningful change requires more than intellectual agreement—it demands sustained contemplation and meditation on core Buddhist topics like impermanence and the preciousness of human life. Namgyel then shifts to explore how negative and positive thoughts shape our world, introducing the concept of karmic seeds: each second plants sixty-five mental imprints that ripple outward, either reinforcing destructive habits or cultivating virtue. He moves into practical examination of humility and tolerance, arguing that these qualities are not weakness but profound wisdom—essential for learning from others, reducing suffering, and ensuring human survival. Throughout, he uses concrete examples and daily practices, such as contemplating death each night and spending time in reflection, to show how practitioners can interrupt reactive patterns and gradually transform mind and behavior.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 IC_A_002.mp3
UUID: 72618e82-8ab5-4982-891f-9ee78fcd2453
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: VenNamgyel Thought Transformation (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 62.9 minutes
Words: ~9,353
Okay. So I apologize to the people who are on the last course. Please forgive me. Please forgive me. I’m going to repeat myself for the benefit of the others.
So you’re asking what you need in order to change. So I told you the first thing you need is knowledge, is learning. Right? You need to investigate your situation. How do you do that?
Through reading, through contemplating, and through meditating. So reading is the first step. So when you read, don’t just, you know, like a like a a good book. And and then afterwards, can’t remember a thing. You actually have to read a paragraph and stop.
Because if you’re reading something that is different from your habit, there’s some sort of filter. You know? The the ignorance is the filter. And so we’re going, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I agree with all that. Fun. You know? But actually, it doesn’t produce change. It’s like it’s being filtered.
So actually, what you read that agrees with you, you you hear it. You read it. And what doesn’t agree with you, you filter it out. And so you need to read it, and we say three times. Recently, I read I used to think one’s for body, one’s for speech, and one’s for mind.
That’s what I used to think. But I read recently somebody saying, one’s for the left ear, one’s for the right, and one’s for everything balanced. So that’s a nice way of thinking about it too. One’s for one’s left side, right side, and then balanced. So we usually read things three times.
In Buddhism, we say, you have to hear the teaching three times before they start to penetrate. So the first thing is learning and that includes contemplation meditation. Right? Because contemplation is not the same as just reading the book. It’s now taking something from it, you know, maybe just a a word, a sentence, and thinking about it, going into it.
Well, what does that mean? And what does it mean to me? Don’t immediately negate anything that comes up. You know? So if your mind says, no.
I don’t believe in that. Don’t immediately say, well, that’s wrong. You shouldn’t think like that. And often people say, Buddhist think this way. So we now we should think this way.
You shouldn’t do that. You know, that that’s just wiping out what you believe and what you think. Look at what you do believe and what you do think and pay respect to that. That’s what’s worked for you up to now, but it hasn’t worked really well. It’s worked, but it hasn’t worked really well.
So that some change needs to happen. So as part of contemplation, some dialogue starts to happen between what you’re reading and what you’re thinking. So what you believe and what’s coming from outside. Okay? So that’s in the contemplation.
So you read, then you contemplate a lift that’s a little bit deeper going underneath the surface. And then meditation is that you take this idea, say for instance impermanence. Just take that as an idea. So you take that in a meditation and then you meditate on it. In the meditation, you’re thinking, well, the trees are impermanent.
That’s impermanent. That’s impermanent. So the external phenomena are impermanent. Then internal phenomena, my body, my blood, my bones, everything’s impermanent. My emotions are impermanent.
My mind is impermanent. My difficult situation is impermanent. That’s important to know that our situation that is a suffering is a difficult situation for us. Its nature is impermanent. If it weren’t impermanent, it would have to be permanent.
There’s only permanent impermanent. So did you always have this difficult situation, this person that you resent, that you’re angry towards, that you’re jealous towards, whatever the negative feeling is? Did you always have that? No. There was a point where it started, where it developed.
That proves impermanence. That also means it can be removed. So by analyzing it, then you see everything can be changed. So that would be an example of a meditation, analytical meditation on impermanence. And then once you get that feeling it’s true, you stop analyzing.
Okay? So in the afternoon meditations, when we’re doing the analytical meditations, if you get a feeling that the meditation is true, stop analyzing. You don’t need to keep on and on and on. It’s like the horse already won, and you keep beating it. You know, go faster.
Go faster. Stop. Your mind can now relax because you have this feeling. Oh, this is true. You know?
I need to forgive or less anger or whatever it is. Oh, it’s true. And then you allow that feeling to develop and to grow. Just that feeling. Because the feeling is based on learning, contemplation, then meditation.
It’s not just based on you should change your mind. Just change it, you know. You’ve worked it out. So that’s the first bit, learning. The second one is conviction.
I need to change. So the first quality that you need, learning. Research it. Know about it. The second one is conviction.
I need to change. Then the third one is determination. And I must continue. I’m not going to give up. Because if you remember, there’s not just this life.
And so then it’s okay. We’re not going to achieve everything in this life, but we’re going to develop good habits that go into the next life. So you’re donating something good for the next life. You know, you’re giving good habits to the next being in the next life. So don’t think, well, I’m only going to be determined to do this short thing in the long term.
What are you going to be determined to do over the long term and over the short term? Right? You need short term goals, medium term goals, long term goals. So today, what are you going to do? Just today.
Right? This week, or it could be this year, it could be five years. Over your life. You know, you could think, well, I want to develop compassion for all living beings. I want to develop whatever it is.
That’s the long term goal. But in order to get to the long term goal, you need something today. It’s no use saying, I want to develop compassion and then driving like a lunatic, winding down the window, screaming at people on the motorway, you know, throwing things at people. And then you say, and I’m a Buddhist and I’m going to become compassionate. You know, it’s like get real.
You’re not even trying because today is the seed, isn’t it? That’s the seed that you plant in your mind. So what’s the seed that you’re planting in your mind? What do you want to be planting there? So you must be determined to continue with that.
You know, not just I planted today, but I’m going to be determined to carry it on, to continue, to keep going. The fourth one is action, then what do you do? Right? So learning, conviction, determination, then action. So what are you going to do to produce the result that you want to have?
What do you do? Action. And then the fifth one is effort. This is making a continuous effort. And the example I like to give is, you know, I think it’s a Zen a Zen example, Japanese example of the water dripping on the rock.
If the water just drips one drip, drip, drip, the rock, even though it’s very hard, softens, and it it becomes round. So the same with our mind. If we apply continual effort, something will change. Even for the most difficult rock like mind, there is always a possibility. So if you think you’re the worst in the world, I can’t change.
Well, I’ve got news for you. Anybody can change. Right? But you need to make that continual effort until the effect starts to come into something that appears, something that people can see or you can see. So keep making that effort.
In order to make effort, you need great enthusiasm and you need urgency. So you’ve got those five, but then how do you keep your enthusiasm going? How do you have that sense of urgency? I told you this morning about precious human rebirth, impermanence, death. That’s how.
That’s what keeps you going. Right? So on a daily basis, you wake up and you think, incredible. I didn’t die. I could have died in the night.
This is reality. I could have died in the night, but I didn’t. I woke up and I only have today because this is realistic. It’s all we can say. We have today.
So today is a precious gift. What am I going to do with this gift of life? It’s not something I deserve. It’s a gift. So I only have this today.
What will I do with it? Because by tonight, I’m going to be dead. Dead. Not you’re gonna commit suicide, please. But by tonight, I’m going to be dead.
So try doing this for about a week or two weeks. It has an incredible effect on you because you’re thinking, by ten o’clock tonight, I’ll be dead. Ten o’clock tonight, you’re not dead, I hope. So then you go to bed thinking, it’s a miracle. It’s incredible.
I didn’t die tonight, but I’m gonna die in the night. By thinking before you go to bed, I’m going to die in bed tonight, then you think, is there anything I need to sort out? Anything I did today that needs to be resolved? Don’t go to bed on negative thoughts. Right?
So if there’s anything that needs to be resolved, do it before going to sleep because you’re going to die in your sleep. Right? That’s that’s the mirror. It holds the mirror up to your life, and it says, what haven’t you done? Because we’re procrastinators.
Right? I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow. You know?
Always, I’ll do it tomorrow. Right? I have a friend in India, and I call and I said, I asked you to do that, but but did you do it? No. That’s right.
I must do it. I said, you’re an incredible procrastinator. He says, what’s procrastinate? I said, it’s you. You just keep putting it off, putting it off.
You know? Always putting it off, putting off. Why don’t you do it? It takes less energy to do it than to have to keep remembering to do it. Just get on with it.
You know? So if you have to forgive somebody, forgive. If you have to reduce your anger, get on with it. So death puts you in that sort of, I must get on with it. You know?
You need that urgency and enthusiasm. So if you’ve got to that stage in your life where you’ve tried everything and you don’t have urgency and you don’t have enthusiasm and you think, I’ve read all these books and I’ve tried all these things and nothing worked. True. You know? Nothing worked.
Is there a cake? Do you have a cake anywhere? Cup of coffee? That should work. You know?
So we think sugar and sugar will work. But that doesn’t work either. So you think, nothing works. You know? Nothing makes me feel better.
So you get that blah feeling. You know? You get a bit down within your emotions that you you have tried and it didn’t seem to work. So you need that sense of urgency. I must have a determination to do this.
How do I get that determination? I’m going to die today. Do I want to die with this state of mind? No. Do I want to die with negative emotions?
No. Do I want a positive future? Yes. Of course, we do. So then if I’m going to die today, would I be getting so cranky and irritable and angry?
Would I bother if I’m dying today? Of course not. Automatically, the answer comes, of course not. Right? If I’ve only got today.
We get angry because we think we’ve got another fifty years or forty years or thirty years, and we’ll solve it in the future. So short term, I’ll get angry. Long term, I’ll solve it. Right? But if you only have today, there is no long term to solve it.
You’re going to solve it today. You’re going to get on with it today. Right? This is this is teacher who says the power of now. Well, Buddha’s Buddha talked about it two thousand six hundred years ago.
He said, this impermanence death meditation are the two most important meditations that there are. If you look at all the meditations, it’s the most important. Why? Because it gives you energy to do something. If you don’t have the energy, you don’t do it.
Right? So you if you don’t have the energy, you’re not meditating and thinking enough about precious human rebirth, impermanence, death. So then I’m going to go on to what I’m supposed to be talking about. So how we think. So I’m going to now I’m switching from traditional Buddhism over to essential education.
So this is the the beginning of these four four new ways of thinking, if you like, four new habits. So how do we think? Where do these negative thoughts come from, and where do the positive thoughts come from? So here it says, when analyzed, thinking is far more than an intellectual activity or a brain function. Thinking lies behind every word we utter and every deed we perform.
As such, our lives are shaped by the way we think from the time we’re a small child until the time we die. So that comes back to here. The way we think lies at the root of what we do. Right? So we have to first look at the outside.
What do we speak? What do we show with our body? Where is that coming from? The mind. And then what is the mind thinking?
So we’ve got these three covetousness, malice, wrong views. We can have malicious thoughts and not think there’s anything wrong with them. We can have covetousness, which is desire. Go back to malice. Malice is the basis, is anger, hatred.
Right? That’s one negativity. The other side is covetousness, desire, attachment. I want. Covet right?
Covetousness is very much I want. Malice says, I don’t want. So there’s the two opposites. You’ve got the anger hatred on one side, a desire attachment on the other side. And what’s in the middle between the two?
We we were talking last weekend, ignorance. And ignorance means ignorant of something. It doesn’t mean ignorant of CD players or ignorant of m p threes and stuff like that. These days, we we think of wisdom as do you know how to program a DVD player? Do you know how to switch on a computer?
That’s not what we’re talking about when we say wisdom. Wisdom is knowing that negative actions produce negative results. Positive actions produce positive results. Right? This is wisdom because this gives you the power to control your future.
Not giving the power to somebody else, but giving you the power. And then what I told my students from last week and so maybe I have to repeat this. Five. Right? I have to repeat this, don’t I?
That was a good one. Okay. So Amanda told me this is this is really good to know. Isn’t it? How do we create our world?
Buddha said, one second, Okay? So that’s one second. Produces sixty five seeds. So sixty five imprints in your mind. So if you think of your mind as a garden I like to think of the mind as a garden.
So in your garden, you have just bought sixty five in one second seeds of anger or resentment or hatred or whatever it is. Sixty five seeds are planted as potential. They’re not full they’re not full. They haven’t ripened. They’re just seeds that are potential.
So I used to think, oh, I was only angry for three days. Then it horrified me when I became a Buddhist. So sixty five times sixty equals three thousand nine hundred negative seeds per minute. Three thousand nine hundred per minute. Per hour, two hundred and forty three thousand per hour.
So when you say, was only angry for three days, multiply that by twenty four by three and you’ll get up into the millions. Not only that, when you plant just one seed in the garden, you know you have nice soil, you plant one seed. You water it. This is the conditions. Right?
The difficult people around us are the conditions that make it possible for this angry seed to ripen. Right? So you have just one angry seed in your garden, and you have difficult people around. Say you have a difficult boss. Oi.
Where’s that file? Put it on your desk. Oi. Why didn’t you do that? I did it.
And it goes on like that. Until one day, the conditions are too much. The water’s been coming down. Right? The sun’s been shining.
One day, this starts to grow. Oh, a creature. And what happens if it’s an acorn and it starts to grow into a massive tree? Not just one tree, fruit or more seeds. These drop and these become more seeds.
So this sixty five doesn’t stay as it is. It produces more seeds. When it starts to grow, it produces more seeds of a similar nature. That’s why it gets more difficult to change as you keep practicing the same behavior. It becomes a habit, and then that habit is difficult to break because you’ve got so many imprints of a similar type, which is forcing you into similar behavior that you’ve done in the past.
So then, we use sixty five dots, my two eyes. This is me. As you can see, I was really good in art school. So this is me. I’m producing sixty five dots per second that I am projecting onto the world from my karma in my seed bank.
So however I’m viewing the world, my karma movie, my horror movie, whatever it is, per second, I’m accessing sixty five karmas plus delusion in order to perceive my world. And that’s it’s that’s why it’s my world. And sometimes we agree, and sometimes we disagree, right, according to our individual experience. So sometimes you get a group of people who have a similar experience, and that’s called group karma. They’ve got similar karma, and sometimes the experience is very different.
You go to a movie, one person loves it, one person hates it. The movie’s the same. But the imp the imprints, what’s being projected onto the movie, is your individual experience. And this is how. This is why.
Okay? You can talk about that in the discussion group. And if you can’t understand it, Len will explain it. Thanks, Len. But you really need to know this because then you start to think, I’m gonna die today, sixty five per second.
I need to get on with this. I need to do something about it because this is worrying. This this causes some feeling of pulling back from the negative emotions rather than going into them. You know? You think, gosh.
If it’s sixty five seeds per second, I shouldn’t indulge myself in the resentment and the anger. It’s it’s indulging. You know? You have a choice. Go in it or don’t.
You need good reasons for not indulging. Right? Rather than think, oh, like I used to. It’s only three days. I was only moody for three days.
It doesn’t matter. Now you’re taught up how many imprints, and then you think it does matter. On the other side, don’t just think negative. This works for the positive. The moment that you’re patient, the moment that you have a good thought, sixty five.
So that one good thought is also consequential. The fact that you’re here and for the whole weekend, you’re spending your time on doing this is highly consequential. So you can multiply twenty four, sixty five by sixty by twenty four for two days, it’s incredible. So that’s why I say to people, when you do something positive, very strongly rejoice. When you do something negative, then regret.
Don’t say, oh, they deserved it. I should have been angry or whatever. Have a strong regret. It reduces the power of the negativity. Rejoicing increases the power of the positive.
Right? So immediately, you can start to change things by regretting and rejoicing. So getting back to how we think. If we pause to consider, we can see that behind every emotion is a thought. Usually, we’re not conscious of it.
An outburst of anger vivid and dramatic though it may be is always resting on a thought of maybe this frightens me. This person doesn’t like me. I’m going to get hurt. I can’t get what I want. I’m not good enough.
So the reason we don’t catch the thought is because of our habitual fast reaction. Our habitual fast reaction to the situations which trigger our anger. Okay? So you have a situation which triggers your anger. You have these imprints sitting there, and when the whole thing comes together, there’s a habit.
When I’m in this sort of situation, I react in this sort of way. And some of us react with anger. Some of us react by pushing down the anger. They’re angry, but they’re not going to express it. Right?
So they go, yes, everything’s fine. I just need to go and have a cigarette. You know? So you can’t say you’re not angry, but they’re trying to show they’re not angry. Right?
Nice people don’t get angry. Some people get taught that, don’t they? Nice girls don’t get angry. Nice boys don’t cry or don’t have emotions and stuff like this. So we get taught stuff as children that then make it very difficult for us to express ourselves in a healthy way.
So we have our habit, and it could be a recent habit, it could be a long time back habit, but there’s some habit of how do we behave when we’re in difficult situations. If you’re used to getting angry, it gets easier and easier to be angry. If you’re used to being jealous, easier and easier to be jealous or to be intolerant, whatever it is. Once you’ve got the habit of being patient, kind, compassionate, it becomes easier to do that. So that’s why it’s so difficult for us to change from the negative habits to the positive.
We’ve got to know why they’re harming us, that it’s a sickness, that it’s harming us, and we don’t want to die from the illness of anger or hatred or whatever it is. Okay? So it’s the same with a spontaneous gesture of kindness. Behind the smile, we give to the stranger on the bus could be the thought, she looks so grumpy. How sad?
She might cheer up if I smile at her. So you might have the thought in your mind, you know, that somebody looks grumpy. If I smile at them, they’ll cheer up. So we think it’s spontaneous, but actually there was thinking going on behind us. So then I want to get on to humility.
So what does it mean to be humble? And is there a connection between humility and happiness? Can we learn to be more humble? So humility these days, as I said before, doesn’t get a very good press. Literature, theater, and cinema are bound with humble characters who are invariably portrayed as weak and self effacing.
Or else there are characters whose humility is a hallmark of low status or economic difficulty. humility is this aspect in this aspect can be synonymous with servile. So you’ve got to now go into what do you think of humility. Do you think of humility as a quality, or do you think of somebody who has humility as being servile, as being get me a cup of tea. If only we had somebody like that.
But is that what you think humble means? They they become a servant. Actually, in Buddhism, we say you become a servant to all sentient beings, and we have no problem with that at all. When you when you become a bodhisattva, somebody who wants to remove suffering and give happiness, you become the the servant to all sentient beings. And when you think like that, you think, I’m only one.
Sentient beings are countless. What’s the purpose of my life? The purpose of my life is to benefit others. Then you have no problem. But on the way, we have a problem.
When we start out, we have a problem because we think, well, I’m not sure humble is good. I can remember sitting in Copenh at the back of the monastery when I first went on on my course, my one month course. And I sat at the very back, two hundred and fifty people, and most of them did prostrations. What I what I do now? And I thought, they won’t get me doing that.
I think it’s not healthy. All this bowing down. It’s really strange. You won’t get me doing it. Then become Buddhist.
Then I have to start doing prostrations. And then I can feel this conflict. You know? And what’s in conflict? Pride.
So it’s your pride that doesn’t want you to bow down. We’re not bowing down to Buddha and saying, oh, you’re so incredible. You’re the creator. You saved me. We’re not bowing down like that.
We are making ourselves humble in front of qualities. So we we think the Buddha’s qualities and we think, well, what do you have that I don’t have? You have wisdom. You have compassion. You have love.
Not just for me, for all sentient beings no matter what they do. I don’t have that, but I want it. And how you get it is by paying respect to it. So when we do prostrations, we’re humbling ourselves. We’re making ourselves smaller.
So prostrations are really difficult to do. I had a big struggle with that one. But at some point you realize this is a method that they’re using in order to quickly humble me. So teachers have to do prostrations before the seat, so that when you sit down, you’re not sitting down like I’m the greatest teacher in the world. You’re sitting down as a humble human being, trying to share something with others.
You don’t put yourself up. You put yourself down. And it’s not low self esteem. This is another problem, you know. Does humble mean low self esteem?
The two don’t equate. humble means that you have qualities, but you don’t need to go around telling everybody about the qualities. And you know that those qualities are still less than other people’s qualities. And you have qualities that are more than others. So you have some qualities that are better than others, some qualities which are worse than others.
There are things you don’t know. There are things you do know. So you can put yourself, you know, in there somewhere. You’re not the highest, you’re not the lowest. You’re in there with everybody else.
So it’s said that when you have pride, you put yourself on top of the mountain, you sit on the very top, and nothing grows on top of the mountain. You can’t grow plants on top of the mountain. You sit there on the rock, on the snow, and you’re alone. So what are you gonna learn up there? What are you going to know from others up there?
That’s why at the beginning, you need to put yourself down in the valley where everybody else is. humble yourself. So in many countries, it’s now considered quite normal to be loud and egotistical about what you think and what you want. Assertiveness and self aggrandizement assertiveness and self aggrandizement, it’s a long word, are increasingly considered qualities for success in life. In this sort of cultural climate, the practice of humility can seem both out of place and out of date.
However, there is an opposite viewpoint. In traditional cultures such as seventh century Tibet, humility of mind was linked with wisdom, the wisdom to realize how much we do not yet know or understand about life. The truly learned man is he who understands what he knows is is but little in comparison to what he does not know. That was said by the cousin of prophet Muhammad. The person who is humble possesses a profound respect for the skills and experience of others and a willingness to listen and learn.
humility is an ability to see beyond our own concerns and include the welfare and viewpoints of others in our thinking. On this basis, it seems likely that it’s important not only for our own own happiness and peace of mind, but also for the very survival of society and the human species. humbleness means we’re going to survive. Why? Come on, Amanda.
Think. Which would include right. Look at the ecosystem. You know? Look at what we’re facing now.
If the human race had shown more humility, then we wouldn’t be facing this present crisis. Right? Because at the moment, if you just drive along from Caramandel, it’s shocking that there’s one whole hillside where all the trees have been not, you know, cut down, but the trees are still lying there. You know? It’s not like cut down for a reason, just cut down.
Right? And lying all over that hillside. And then waters, you see pollution happening. I mean, I’ve lived in India for twenty two years. The water systems in India are holy holy water, not just ordinary water, holy water.
And yet they have effluent going into it, chemicals going into it. The water in Varanasi was the most poisonous some years ago, and yet people on their holy pilgrimage would go down into that water and dip down three times in order to cleanse themselves, but it’s full of poison. And some somewhere, the the Indian people woke up and said, this is holy water. We should clean it up. We shouldn’t be allowing factories to just put all their rubbish into the the water.
We shouldn’t be doing our toilet in this water. So at some point, they woke up and they realized that it was them who were damaging the water, not somebody else, but us. We’re doing it. Now the water is completely transformed just in a few years. It’s incredible.
They keep taking tests of it and they they say now there’s virtually no bacteria, no viruses from totally polluted a few years ago. So say we have that same respect for this environment. In every country, that that environment is precious to us and not where the superior species, but we give respect to every species. Instead of species dying out, we’d have everybody living in harmony. So this is where humility gets you is that you put yourself lower, not thinking I’m the worst, I’m the most awful, but looking from a lower point of view at others and thinking, well, you’re important.
You should survive. You should live. You should be happy. Instead of thinking, I should survive, I should live, and I should be happy, which is our normal state of mind. This is what we’re normally thinking about.
Me, me, me, me, and me. Right? All day. Just me, me, me, me. Why did I sit here?
I could get a better position. And why why did I take that food? That looks more delicious. And, you know, always looking, looking, looking, looking. I want, I want, I want.
But that I want separates you, puts you up on the top of that mountain, doesn’t put you down with everybody else where we would actually like to be. We like to be in the crowd. You know? We like to have lots of friends and going along with everybody and harmonious. And yet our behavior without us knowing it can separate us and put us up there.
I’m not saying in a nice way in a cave meditating, but in a in the cold, damp, freezing cold place, you’re up there and you’re thinking, why am I up here alone? Why me? Why have they done this to me? Why did they put me up here? You know?
Not what why did I put myself up here, but why did they do this to me? Society did it or my family did it. So a change of mind has to happen to bring yourself down. So that you’re not, you know, I know how to do that, and I know how to do this. But actually, no, I don’t know.
So being able to learn from others is an incredible ability that we can ask how to do that, what to do. But if you put yourself up with pride, then you’re up there alone. You can’t ask. You can’t learn. So thinking about humility, we can speed up the process of gaining wisdom and understanding through learning to slow down and make time for more reflection in our hectic lives.
There are many methods that can help us to do this ranging from simple meditation to disciplines such as yoga, tai chi, and martial arts. So they’re saying in this manual, you need to slow down your life because we go at a very fast pace. Somewhere in your day, you need to slow down and sit on the cushion. Or if you can’t sit on the cushion, it’s not everybody’s cup of tea or coffee. To sit down and do meditation is not easy for some people.
But some people like to do tai chi or yoga, qigong. And if that’s what you like to do, do that because it’s a method of connecting the body with the mind. Right? Placing the the mental processes on something to concentrate. What are you concentrating on?
Instead of saying, me, me, me, me, me, you’re too busy trying to get your body into different postures. You know? So that’s really good for you. Instead of thinking, why didn’t I get that? Why me?
Why me? Just slow down. Get some space. Go for a walk. You know?
Take a walk in the countryside, notice the butterflies and the flowers and all that sort of thing. Do we take time out in our day? So in this rhythm of our life, are we taking time out for ourselves? Okay? So take a few minutes in in the middle of the day, can really help the way we function.
Because if you just rush out of the door in the morning, rush home at night, rush around the house at night, and then go to bed, and then you lie there with all these thoughts going on, you find you can’t relax. You can’t sleep very well. So trying to find a better rhythm throughout the day. And then when you get home, take the time to just spend five, ten, fifteen minutes sitting down, cup of tea or coffee, and think back through the day and what happened instead of just getting on with the next job. But sit down and spend a little bit of time with yourself.
What do you rejoice about today, and what do you regret today? These are two very important things to think about at the end of the day. What do I rejoice? What do I regret? Okay?
What you regret is what needs to be changed. This gives you information for your operating system. What you regret is what you need to change. What you rejoice in is what you did well. You’re noticing when you’re doing something well.
Instead of before, you would have beat yourself up about what you didn’t do well, and you don’t even remember what you did well. So it seems like you’re a disaster, and you’re the worst disaster in the world. Isn’t it? When we’re good, we’re really good, and we’re on top of the mountain. And when we’re bad, we put ourselves down as the worst in the world.
It’s not like that. You look at at how you’re doing some good things, some bad things throughout the day. So take time out. Every couple of hours, try to take two or three minutes to just stop and be aware of what’s going on. And in your quiet moments, you often discover what’s been happening in the day and then what needs to be changed.
So I’m sort of skipping because of time. So when we think about how independent we are and how self sufficient we are, we don’t need sentient beings, we don’t need others, then you start to realize that this is very superficial. It’s not actually how things are. If you think just about this retreat, that in order to come on a retreat, we don’t normally think about the people in the office, Hannah, the spiritual program coordinator who spent nearly one year emailing me about the different programs that we could do. And so just to get this forgiveness retreat on one weekend takes probably nearly one year of emails.
That relies on emails, which relies on computers, which relies on servers, which relies on telephone lines. You start to think of all the systems that we’re using in order to get a retreat like this. Think about electricity. Where does that come from? We just go click.
Don’t think about the thousands of people involved with producing electricity, But not just thinking about them, being grateful to them. Because nowadays we think money, I buy it. Right? We don’t think somebody actually produced this and if they didn’t, we wouldn’t have it. What about the roads?
It’s a really hard job to make roads.. Look at this road how it’s falling down. Somebody has to fix it. Somebody has to pay to fix it, but you need people to fix it. It doesn’t look like there’s the people.
So you need people who are willing to fix the robes. Then you need a building like this. Somebody, carpenters, builders had to come in and make a building like this. Then we have to continually keep fixing it because it’s impermanent. It’s not permanent.
As soon as you build it, think, oh, finished now. Well, it’s not because it keeps leaking over there and things happen. Right? So in every building, there’s always that constant maintenance that goes on. So then you think, constant maintenance.
Then we have to have people looking after the altars and, you know, doing water bowls or whatever. And you think, well, what’s a lot of nonsense? You don’t need water bowls. Why do you need that? Again, it’s humbling ourselves and paying respect.
It’s saying, please help us with your wisdom and knowledge in order to transform our minds into wisdom, into the knowledge of how to be compassionate, how to be kind, how to be patient. So like inviting an honored guest, we offer water. It’s the simplest thing to offer. We can’t be sitting there thinking, I wish I hadn’t offered that water. That you have so much attachment to water, you wish you hadn’t given it.
Whereas if you think, oh, I must offer a bar of chocolate to Buddha. Then you put it up there because you know you’re going to get it back. Right? So you put it up there and then you’re sitting down there thinking, well, when can I take that chocolate? Should I wait until tomorrow or is today enough?
Anyway, Buddha doesn’t need chocolate. So, you know, so you can have covetous ness about what you’re offering. Water, there’s no covetousness. There’s no clinging and grasping. And so these water bowls are symbolic of the things we would offer a guest.
In the old days when a guest arrived, the first thing you did was wash their feet because they didn’t have shoes. And it was a hot hot walk. They didn’t have buses and cars and things like that. You walked sixty kilometers, a hundred kilometers, however. So you wash their feet.
You give them water to drink. Right? This is what you would do for a guest. You would give them food. You would offer them music, nice smell, incense.
So think about what you would offer to somebody who’s very precious, very special. That’s what those water bowls offer. Somebody does that for you. You don’t come in here and do it. Somebody does it.
I prepare the teachings. I come and sit here. So from your side, what do you have to do? You can actually do something in the way of being humble. You make your mind big, but the ego small.
Isn’t it? And with a small ego, mind, there’s a possibility of something going in. Or you can make your mind like Mon Ami, plastic, the where it just all bounces off, know, like Scotchgard. So you sort of spray Scotchgard on your mind and then it all bounces off and you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I went to the tolerance course and I went to this course and I went to that course and I’m still completely the same.
Because we’re not absorbing it, you know. And in Buddhism, we say to be like unlike three pots. One pot is upside down. So if it’s upside down, it can’t retain what it’s hearing. So if your mind is upside down, you don’t hold on to it.
Another example is a pot that’s cracked. So it looks okay, but it’s leaking. So the information comes in one ear and it goes out the other ear. And the other example is where the pot is dirty. It’s already polluted with dirt.
So whatever is put in there is changed by your delusions. So you’re hearing it, but you’re actually changing it. You’re not listening to it purely. You’re listening to it in your own way. And that’s what I said about when we read, we tend to put into it what we think instead of what’s really there.
So then the the next point that we need to talk about is tolerance. And so the meaning of tolerance, I’ll just very quickly do this. We’re supposed to finish now, but I’m not going to finish. I want to go on. So you’re going to have to tolerate me not finishing..
So tolerance, the second quality, is a very expansive state of mind. It’s the it’s having a flexibility to cope with whatever we encounter. Now you start to see how these qualities build up to the third one which is forgiveness. So tolerance is not being so reactive. Yeah?
You’re not reacting so quickly. It’s having the wisdom and the courage to relate to people, relationships, and situations as they really are, even if this differs from the way we would like them to be. So that’s what you need to investigate for yourself. How much do you make up stories in your mind? How you would like a situation to be?
You project it onto the situation, and then the situation is different from what you thought. And then you’re intolerant. Right? I’m leaving. And out you off you go.
You know? It can be a relationship. It can be friendships. It can be a restaurant. But we can get very intolerant when it’s not how we thought it was going to be.
Worst is, you know, when somebody raves about a restaurant? Oh, have you been to that restaurant? Hungry Jack’s. Oh, it’s incredible. They give you tons of food.
It’s so cheap. The service is amazing. And you’re, oh, Hungry Jack’s. Hungry Jack’s. I must go to Hungry Jack’s.
And then you go along. I think there is a restaurant called Hungry Jack’s. Isn’t there? Maybe. Anyway, if there is, I’m not talking restaurant, but just came in my mind.
So then you go along, you sit down at the table, you’re waiting, waiting. The waiters are going past you. They go past you. Go past you. You think this is tolerable.
My friend said the service here was the best. So you’ve already got that projection, should be incredible service. And then eventually, you get the menu. You don’t see anything that you really like. Oh, alright.
Then I’ll have this one. Number thirty two. And then number thirty two comes along. It’s a really good a la carte restaurant. So numb comes along and it’s all and it looks greasy and horrible and you’re picking at it and you don’t like the taste.
And then the bill comes. It’s much more expensive than you thought because they’ve added in all these extra costs, and it keeps getting worse and worse and worse. So if you’d gone in there without any preconception, half of this wouldn’t have happened, three quarters wouldn’t have happened, maybe all of it wouldn’t have happened. You would have just seen the menu as it was. You thought you would have thought, this is not the restaurant for me.
I’m going somewhere else. If it’s not the food you want. But because somebody tells you, oh, it’s incredible. It’s wonderful. Then you set yourself up.
Right? So how tolerant are you in your life? When you come up against situations that are different from the way you thought, do you have tolerance? Or just start to get uptight? So often we start to get uptight, don’t we?
And the drumming of the fingers, you know, or the clicking of the pen or whatever it is. We have some habits that start to show or the grinding of the teeth that start to show I’m getting irritable. And you can start to say, I’m getting irritable. That weight is really driving me crazy. I don’t know how much longer I can start, you know.
And you’re building up into anger. You’re saying to yourself and the other person or other people you with, I’m getting angry. I can’t stand this anymore. And everybody else is getting really nervous because the volcano is about to erupt. And this is supposed to be a night out.
You’re going to enjoy yourselves. And does it matter if the food comes five or ten minutes later? But we turn it into a big deal because we’re not tolerant. We don’t have patience. Right?
I want the best service. Again, it’s all about me. This restaurant is only here to serve me. And if you say, but there’s sixty other people. Yeah, but I’m paying the bill I deserve.
Right? Also, they deserve. So in the first one, were thinking about how all the kindness of all the things that we experience comes from others. Electricity, gas, this, this, this, this. This is their kindness.
Not I deserve it, but they’re being kind. Now the restaurant, so kind to provide this restaurant so that I can experience food that I don’t cook. But how tolerant am I when it’s not going my way? So tolerance is having an open heart. When we’re tolerant, we’re relaxed and we’re open to whatever life offers.
We’re kind and respectful to the people around us. This is very important, isn’t it? That we’re kind and respectful. It’s the opposite of the uptight attitude which creates tension tension and anxiety for everyone in range. One of the main characteristics of a tolerant person is that they don’t seek to impose their point of view and standards on anybody else.
So when you’re tolerant, you’re not imposing your point of view. You’re not imposing your standards on anybody else. It’s like your mother who comes over to visit you and runs her finger along the mantle piece, isn’t it? And she looks in horror at the the dust. You like to live with dust.
So what? The Buddha’s humorist — Ogden Nash. Now who’s heard of Ogden Nash? The Buddha’s humorist Ogden Nash, very famous people. You see, us Buddhists, know about these people.
But he said, the hardening of the arteries, means arteries, but he think it’s from the Middle Ages or something. The hardening of the arteries as something to be avoided at all costs. It’s maybe it should be pronounced as arteries, the hardening of the arteries. Orteries. It ought to be like this.
It ought to be like this. It and it’s the hardening of the arteries. Right? So as you get older, you keep saying, it should be like this. Wasn’t like that in my day.
You just so irritate me when I heard that as a child. Then you find as you’re getting older, you say things like that. You know, doesn’t taste the same as it used to. Whatever you buy doesn’t taste the same as it used to and it’s their fault not the fact that your taste buds are getting older. So we become intolerant.
Right? The ice cream isn’t as good as it used to be or the chocolate doesn’t taste as as good as it used to be. Wagon wheel. Oh, I remember wagon wheels. Well, now they’re down to this size.
Yeah. What? What’s shorter? Curly Wurlys. Curly Wurlys.
What’s a Curly Wurly? It’s a kind of long chocolate chewy thing like toffee. Oh. Oh, I never discovered that one. Curly Wurlys.
Write that down, people. If you’re ever in that country, try Curly Wurlies. Yeah? But it’s true, isn’t it? That as we get older, we look back and we’re more intolerant rather than more tolerant and thinking, well, it’s not like how it used to be, you know, when I was a child, and it’s much more expensive than it used to be, and it’s not as tasty as it used to be, and people aren’t as good as they used to be.
I remember twenty years ago people were much nicer and they’re not as nice now. If you read the newspapers, you think the world is much worse than it used to be. Know? His Holiness says, it’s not newsworthy that somebody does something good. Right?
Little boy takes granny across the road. You don’t see front page banners saying, little boy helps granny or somebody gives some money to somebody. You know? We just don’t read about these things. But what we read about is gloom and doom and disaster.
And if you keep reading the news, you think that’s all there is. But actually, that’s not all there is. There’s so many good people doing so many good things. You know? And you need to rejoice in those things thinking how incredible it is that there are those good people out there.
So if we think about Martin Luther King, he devoted his life to the civil rights movement. I suppose you do know Martin Luther King. Starting to despair of you people. So he said, we’ve flown the air like birds. We’ve swum the sea like fishes, but we have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers or sisters, we could say.
Right? So we’ve done incredible things in this century, you know. We’ve been to the moon. We’ve been down there, and yet we still have intolerance. We still have from intolerance to hatred.
Not so long ago, women couldn’t vote. Right? Not so long ago. Not so long ago, black people couldn’t go into schools in America. They weren’t allowed.
I mean, I remember in the sixties that all this fighting that was going on when black people wanted to go to a normal and just an ordinary school. Now, we we have a black president. Right? Incredible. We’ve gone such a long way.
And yet individually, we might still have intolerance. And where does that intolerance come from? We want things to be our way, what makes us comfortable. This is what I’ve learned. This is what I’m comfortable with.
And it I know I should change, but it’s really difficult for me to change. Right? So that’s the stretching, isn’t it? That’s what makes the problem for us. Tolerance can be viewed as a form of respect.
It proposes that we should live and let live. We’re called to trust that the other person is doing their best to be happy and to allow them the space to learn and grow from their experience. Tolerance also involves having the humility to accept that we may not always know best or have the right answer. So when we’re intolerant, we go back to being on top of the mountain, criticizing the others down there and thinking that we know what they should be doing and how they should be doing it and we have all the answers. And yet we haven’t got even got the answers for ourselves. We haven’t even solved our problems, but we’re so busy solving other people’s problems.
You know, if you at your window looking out and saying, oh, look at them. You can become like that. So intolerant that you’re looking at the other people out the window and saying, look what they’re doing. Look what they’re doing. Me, me, me, me, know, like this.
And this is where gossiping comes in. Going around and convincing everybody else in the neighborhood that the person you’re watching is a bad person. The person that you you think is bad is bad. This is so intolerant. And yet if we said we should be tolerant, people would say, yep.
It’s true. Don’t be intolerant. Oh, no. No. I completely agree.
But are we intolerant? Actually, yes. Because we have the seeds of intolerance. From the past, we’ve got the seeds. And now we’re experiencing the result but we don’t want to continue that result.
The seeds that are projected onto the world don’t tolerate, don’t tolerate, don’t tolerate, be impatient, be angry. Now we see these minds as they’re arising and we decide that’s not who I want to be. That’s not the kind of person that I want to be. And so that’s the decision. Do we go with the past, the projection of our karma onto the world or do we decide to do things in a different way?
Okay. There I really must stop. But it’ll give you something to talk about at your discussion group anyway. Okay? Everybody okay?
Len, you okay? Did you fall asleep at nine thirty and just wake up? Don’t worry. I have full tolerance. Okay, we’re going to dedicate.
Maybe this is a new idea to you. So we started off with something positive, a positive motivation. So then we finish with page two forty six. This is an Indian saint, Buddhist saint called Śāntideva and it’s giving away all the positive energy that we’ve created to others. So you don’t hang on to it for yourself, you gonna give it away.
But that might be difficult but you can practice. 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 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