Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 83-minute talk, Ven Lobsang Namgyel teaches Tibetan Buddhist thought transformation to a retreat group in Kathmandu, weaving together foundational doctrines with practical techniques for working with daily emotions. He opens with the core claim that every sentient being possesses Buddha potential—the emptiness of mind—and explores why that potential can develop despite being empty of inherent existence. Working through discussion-group questions, he explains how karma operates (sixty-five imprints per second; boomerangs with razor blades), why Samsāra persists (collective karma creating realms of experience), and what distinguishes enlightenment (wisdom and compassion replacing delusion and ego). He then guides practitioners toward practical application: using antidotes from the Lamrim for negative emotions, and employing what he calls kitchen-sink Buddhism—catching the irrational self mid-reaction and asking wisdom questions about how it truly exists. He closes with personal narrative, recounting a near-fatal car accident in Australia that shifted him from wealth-seeking to spiritual practice, illustrating how suffering itself can become the catalyst for transformation. Pitched at intermediate practitioners willing to engage complex Buddhist philosophy alongside everyday life challenges.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 29 Teaching 5.mp3
UUID: d16cf59a-3447-433d-87a4-43df503c0db2
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: VenNamgyel Thought Transformation (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 82.9 minutes
Words: ~9,544
Yeah. Sangye Chödän Sökkyi Choknam La, jang chub bar du, I go for refuge and to enlightenment to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly. By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So now we have the finger aerobics. Finger aerobics.
Let’s see how well he does. Not bad. Looks okay. Okay. So right behind the left, little finger, put your thumbs.
Next one up. Two fingers between two fingers and grab them. And there you have Mount Meru, four continents, sun and moon. In other words, this is the desire realm. So offering all the incredible things that you can think of in the desire realm.
So everything you really enjoy, offer it. This ground anointed with perfume, strewn with flowers, adorned with Mount Meru, four continents, the sun and the moon. I imagine this is a Buddha field and offer it. May all living beings enjoy this pure land. Thank you.
There’s a little bit of water left. I think I can survive. Because I was just in the cafe having a cup of tea because I couldn’t make it in my room. So I think it’s okay. Actually, is It’s okay.
Thanks. It’s the heat. It addles your brain. Yeah? You get to what time is the next session?
Where am I? Yeah. So did you have interesting chats in your discussion groups? Maybe we should start with you again. I can’t give you the microphone.
Dead. Does the flower of karma exist? Truly exist? It is potential. Potential.
Yes. Potential. Okay. You’re tricky people. Very, very tricky.
Either you’ve got very good minds or you’re reading very good books. You know we talk about Buddha, well I haven’t mentioned it but you might have read it somewhere. Buddha nature, Buddha potential. Have you heard about this? Some haven’t.
So we say that in our heart that there is a Buddha potential or Buddha nature. It depends on which way you translate. I tend to not use the word Buddha nature or the phrase Buddha nature because that to me seems to indicate something existent. Right? So I prefer the word Buddha potential because it means that by taking care of it, by nurturing it and helping it, it can grow, it can develop, and that’s what we have to work with.
And so we have all levels of Buddha potential in this room. Some of you are probably already enlightened already, because it’s said that in every group there are Buddhas and maybe all of you are Buddhas and I’m the only one who’s not. And You’ve organized this class to help me to become enlightened. Actually we used to have a joke. There was a friend of mine who was in the school of dialectics.
He’s English and he learnt Tibetan very well and they’re very good on debate, know. So he was very sharp and good on debate. We used to say to him, we are all enlightened. The whole world is enlightened. Every sentient being is enlightened except for you.
And we’re all here to help you. And we’re just really waiting for you. Because the minute you’re enlightened, the lights go out, all the suffering disappears, and it’s all still here because of you. And he used to get really irritable and cranky about this because there’s no way you can disprove it. Right?
So it was a really funny argument. So we all have this Buddha potential or Buddha nature as some people say. Then what is that Buddha potential? It’s the emptiness of your own mind. So this comes back to where you were coming from, which is that the potential exists, but then the potential itself is empty of inherent existence.
The potential exists, but it’s empty of inherent existence. Because it’s empty of inherent existence, it means it can develop, it can grow. If it were inherently existent, it would mean fixed, permanent, unchanging. Also, by the way, permanent is different from inherent. That one you have to think about.
There can be permanent, something permanent which is not inherent. Right? Something permanent which is not inherent. So you can think about that one. But the emptiness of the mind is its ultimate nature.
And means because of that emptiness, because of that spaciousness or that emptiness, then you can actualize all qualities. That’s the ability that you have. You have you have your Buddha potential. Everybody according to Buddhism, what everybody has, every sentient being, whether it’s an ant, whether it’s a hell being, whether it’s a human being, whichever realm you’re in, we all have that potential, that Buddha potential. And what surrounds it as a visualization is all the negative actions that we’ve done.
So you’ve got your Buddha potential and you can you can describe that as like a marshmallow. So you’ve got your soft squishy marshmallow surrounded by this hard toffee, you know, treacle or whatever. And they’re all the negative actions and inside is the positive. So none of that situation is inherently existent. It’s a potential which is empty of inherent existence.
Okay? So you have a Buddha potential which is empty of inherent existence. Because if the Buddha potential were inherently existent, it couldn’t change, it couldn’t move. It would just stay that size and then there is not a potential. You are clever.
So now she has something to say. Why is it developing? It’s not who’s developing it? Well, you have you have blessings. So you have According to Buddhism, you have the Buddhas,, the Bodhisattvas who are constantly praying and working for the benefit of sentient beings.
That can help you. So it could happen that you have a very positive karma and one day you go outside and just to try and think of an example, You go outside and you sit and you look at the view. So you’ve got this beautiful view of the mountains and the valley. And suddenly your heart opens and you feel compassion for all sentient beings. So that would be like a blessing.
It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a person, it’s an animal or whatever. It could just be even in the environment that something clicks, something, you know, it’s what do they call it? The light bulb. You have the light bulb moment, know, it’s like the light bulb goes on. I can tell you the story about Asaṇga.
Asaṇga became a very great teacher of emptiness and Asaṇga was meditating on Maitreya, the Buddha of love for many many years. So it’s a long story but I’ll cut it very short. So every three years he would come out of his cave having achieved nothing and think, give up. Right? So after twelve years he comes out of the cave and he sees a dog with maggots.
Then he thinks, Oh dear, this is really awful. You know, I need to do something about this dog, but equally I need to do something about the maggots. So he thought, If I take the maggots off the dog, the maggots are going to die. So he decided to cut a piece of skin from his thigh and he cut that skin and then he was going to pick them with his fingers but then he realized that would probably kill them. So he decided to do it with his tongue.
So you’ve got this mangy, you can imagine Boudhanath Stūpa, right? You’ve seen some of the dogs down there. It’s a smelly mangy dog with sores and maggots. So he really doesn’t want to do this but he closes his eyes and he sticks his tongue out and he’s getting closer and closer and something happens and he looks and there’s Maitreya. The dog’s disappeared.
So he said to Maitreya, what just happened? And Maitreya said, well for twelve years I’ve been sitting in that cave waiting for you to become enlightened for something to happen. Nothing happened. And Asaṇga said, well I’ve been meditating, meditating. Asaṇga said, yeah, Asaṇga, I know.
He said, I was sitting right next to you and to prove it, I’ll show you my robes. And he showed him the robes and all down the side of the robes Maitreya had spit. So Asaṇga used to turn and spit in one corner and Maitreya was sitting in that corner the whole time. So Asaṇga then believed, oh this is true. And Maitreya said, your karma only allowed you to see me as a dog.
You couldn’t see me as more than the dog. But when you generated love and compassion, suddenly you saw me as an enlightened being. So Asaṇga said, great, now I’m going to take you around the village and I’m going to show everybody. And Maitreya said, nobody will see me. And maybe one or two people will see a dog, but mostly nobody will see me.
So Asaṇga put Maitreya on his shoulders, he’s going around shouting, there’s a Buddha here, look there’s a Buddha. One old lady saw a mangy dog. The rest of the people saw nothing and thought he was crazy. So this is Asaṇga’s real, know, he’s somebody who wrote many of the texts on Maitreya. This is his experience of trying to actualize the practice of Maitreya.
So it’s said that we need blessings, we need help in order to overcome our negative states of mind. So this is one help. Sometimes it could be a dog at the stupa, it could be a beggar, it could be somebody being really kind to you. If you’re thought transforming, it happens in any way. It can happen in any situation in any way.
But we all have those karmic seeds because we’ve lived from countless lifetimes. We all have very positive seeds and we’re human. Right? So we have the ability to think, to change our minds, to become enlightened, to actualize wisdom and compassion. We all have that potential.
So all we’re looking for is the conditions to help the potential to arise and that can happen anytime in any place. Does it answer? Does Samsāra exist? Buddhism doesn’t assign a beginning. Buddha just saw what was.
He just said this is the way it is. You know? This is this is the truth when he talks about the four noble truths or any other teaching. He says this is a truth in the way of any realized being will see the same thing. So when I guess when people asked about saṃsāra, nirvana, know, all these sort of things, we’re looking for a meaning.
Whereas in Buddhism, it’s just created by karma. So because of karma, Samsāra exists. And there are different realms, places to go, but this particularly is the desire realm. And in the desire realm, the predominant feeling of the countries and the people in those countries is wanting more, is desire. And it’s that desire that has created the good things in this world but also the problems in this world.
So Buddha said, we’re in the desire realm. And once you understand that, you understand that you’re being fueled by that desire. And so every happiness that you’re trying to get is you’re trying to get from desire. And so if you have dissatisfaction and you’re never very happy, then you understand why. Because you know when I go to the West, all I see is advertising billboards.
You’re being pushed constantly by this, by this, by this. This isn’t good enough. You need better. You need more. So what’s the point where you are happy?
Where you say, well, yeah, I do have an SUV, black and you know, gigantic wheels and right up off the ground. And you get that SUV and then they tell you, oh no, that’s not the latest one. You need the new SUV with XP blah blah blah. You know, it’s always more and more and more and more, isn’t it? And so always that feeling, earn more, spend more, show more.
So that’s the desire realm. And then part of that is greed. So in the greed is a possibility of stealing, lying, cheating, you know, all those things can happen too. So that’s why it’s very important in this time in the desire realm to think what do you take refuge in and what values do you believe in. Because otherwise you get swept along by just the desire realm.
So if you decide, well I have decided I don’t kill, I don’t steal, I don’t lie, no sexual misconduct, no intoxicants, these are the the five lay vows in Buddhism. This is a beginning of making your safe boundaries and saying, I don’t get involved in that. And then, that’s when you start to remove yourself from Samsāra. Because Samsāra is a club, isn’t it? We joined the club.
We bought the Samsāra ticket and we sort of, we’re in the club, yeah? But you don’t have to stay in the club. You can move to a different club. You can go somewhere else, you know? But when you’re in the club, it can actually feel quite nice because everybody else is doing the same thing.
If you’re in that desire realm society, you’re earning money, you’re spending it, you’re earning it, everybody else is doing the same, isn’t it? So it’s like a club. And then you feel, well what else is there? And then maybe you come here and you think, oh these people are crazy. Renunciation, give up, you know.
I mean it sounds a bit crazy. We’re not saying give it all up. We’re saying start to look at the desire, the attachment and look at the pain that comes with it. That’s Samsāra. Yeah.
This dissatisfied mind, very unhappy mind. Some very happy people in Samsāra, then you’re okay. But if you’re unhappy, you’ve got to try and find the causes of the unhappiness, the dissatisfaction. Oh, we’re back. Does that answer?
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. We talk about realms, but realms don’t really exist. Realms exist because of karma.
So say, now we have a collective karma. Right? There’s an individual karma and a collective karma. So you’ve got individual karma, your experience of these teachings, this room, but collectively we also have a karma that we will experience in the future. This is a very positive collective karma, so in the future we’ll come together again in a very positive way.
If we have a very negative experience together, then collectively, because our experience is similar, we then create a realm. So that realm, that experience will last as long as your karma lasts. When your karma finishes, you leave, you go to another place. When you go out to a very, very bad situation, you could then possibly go to a very good situation. Because you’ve used up some very heavy negative karma, you could then go to a very good situation.
Then you’d use that up and then you could go to another situation. That’s Samsāra. It’s just moving around and around. If you want to study Samsāra, there’s a wheel over there and it shows you the different realms in the wheel. And this is a description of the different realms of Samsāra.
And you see a bigger one outside the main Gompa, a very big wheel. So this is always put there outside the monastery to remind the monks and the nuns, don’t get involved in Samsāra. You know? Get out. And it’s funny how we talk about getting in, getting out, realms, you know, as if everything really exists.
But we’ve got to use some sort of language in order to express we’re saying. It’s like when we’re talking about emptiness, it’s actually really stupid. That’s why I feel stupid talking about emptiness because we’re using words to describe something that can’t be experienced in words. Right? So then the words are like the finger pointing to the moon.
So you say to me, I’ve never seen the moon. What does the moon look like? And I say, oh, there’s the moon. And you get really interested in the finger, and you think the finger is the moon. Right?
You’ve got to look up there to see the moon, but you somehow you caught down here. So that’s what words do. They catch you and they hold you down here, and actually with emptiness and compassion and all these things, you’ve got to go beyond the words. You’ve got to go to the feeling. Isn’t it?
Get into the heart and see how it feels. You know yesterday we were talking about the eight worldly dharmas. Just how does it feel? Tells you whether you like it or not. And if you don’t like it, what do want to do about it?
And if you like it, leave it alone. You know? There’s no person that comes along and sort of puts probes, you know, Buddhist probes on your head and says, you really want to have fame. You know? Terrible.
Oh, you know? I mean, we say, you should be very rich, very powerful, and very famous in order to benefit sentient beings. If you have control of your mind, isn’t that what you should be? So that you can help others? But if you’re caught up in it, big danger.
Get out, you know, don’t get involved. So if you think fame would be dangerous for you, you have to do something about it. I’m not gonna tell you to do something about it. It’s your choice with your life, your mind, as to what you think is going to produce happiness and what’s causing suffering. Okay.
So the next are you okay now? Yes. Call them the extraordinary group. Yeah? I was asked this this morning about any books that talk about karma in the context of emptiness.
karma and emptiness. I mean they are taught separately, but karma and emptiness. I think perhaps looking at one of the transcripts of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s November courses. No? Because he talks at Lama Zopa Rinpoche talks a lot about emptiness and always in relation to something else.
And up in the library they have transcripts of the November courses and they have at the beginning, you know, the subjects are. So that would be a good place to start because Rinpoche’s famous subject is emptiness. So he must have talked about emptiness and karma somewhere in there. I think that would be a sensible place to start. By the way, you’re going to watch a video with Lama Zopa tonight and it’s a thought transformation video because I thought you need to hear patience and you have to hang in there because if you can get it the first time, if he actually comes to teach you, you need to have some experience of how he speaks.
It’s very unusual. So you need that experience. Yeah. Seven thirty in here. It’s a talk Rinpoche gave about Milarepa before he gave the Milarepa initiation in Hong Kong.
So the sound quality is very good, which is unusual with Rinpoche because usually the microphone gets lost and then you hear and then it comes back and we’ve had many many problems over the years trying to record Rinpoche but this one, it’s just over an hour and the sound is very good quality. What gave you nineteen or nineteen? I don’t know if I have one. Yes. Well, first of all, need a generic idea of emptiness.
You know, what does it mean? Like what are the definitions? You know, to point you. There’s the moon, there’s emptiness. And just to point you in that direction.
I think if people have had a drug experience, I’m not recommending to have a drug experience, but if people have had a drug experience, they probably had some sort of feeling of what it means to lose the self and to dissolve and stuff like that. So often people who have used LSD and those sort of drugs have said in the seventies to Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa when they described their experience, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa said similar to emptiness but not the same. Yes. Well, your mode what you might call modus operandi, but the reason for living once you’ve reached the stage of a Bodhisattva is that you exist in relation to others for others. When you have realization of emptiness, there’s different levels of realization of emptiness.
You know, it gets deeper and deeper. But a realization of emptiness means not that you don’t exist, there’s still something existent. Right? There’s still a body and a mind. But now how do you exist?
What’s what’s your relationship? And it’s about what can I do for you instead of what can I do for me? That would be the major difference. Well I think, yeah, because my guess would be that if you have this realization of emptiness, in one way there’s nothing. You’ve all the delusions.
All the delusions are gone. All these negative emotions that kept appearing as ordinary sentient beings have gone. My my view of myself also. Yes. Yes.
The clinging, the pride, the ego, you know, it’s all gone. And what you have is wisdom and you have compassion. Right? So now you’re operating from a wisdom and compassion point of view, from that operating system. Right?
So then that makes a connectivity with everybody, and you know what’s going on in their minds because now you’re clairvoyant, so you know what’s going on, and you know the the problems and the delusions that they have. I think in another way it can be extremely painful. They say right up to nearly enlightenment, you can get really sad and upset through others’ sufferings. Because you’re so sensitive. Because you’re so sensitive to what’s going on within them.
So, you know, it’s often said, I think as a debate debate thing, do you think once you become a bodhisattva, you’re just happy all the time? And then the question is asked, if you understand somebody else’s suffering, how can you be happy? If you can empathize or sympathize, step into their shoes or, you know, through your clairvoyance, know how much they’re suffering, then how would you be happy? So on one hand, because of emptiness, you’re blissful. You’ve got this incredible bliss going on in in your body.
Your body’s very light. I mean if you try and follow Lama Zopa who’s in his sixties around the stupa, you won’t be able to keep up. He moves so fast. You know? It’s like he’s floating and doing prostrations and you know like this.
So incredible energy and hardly sleeping and you know working all the time. Just totally incredible. So all this bliss but on the other hand, knowing your suffering. So one helps the other, I think. Back to group one.
Is it? Oh, we’ve changed reporters. Okay. From herself? Because actually people keep saying to you, you should stop gossiping.
You should stop. You do more of it. Isn’t We talk about that a lot, how other people will tell you what to do. Yeah. What was the reaction?
People don’t like it, do they? No. We talked about smoking. People telling me to stop smoking. You know it’s bad for you.
I know. I know. Because your instinct may be to react to the criticism or the judgment or whatever it is. I think the last one, yeah, it’s a big concept but I think to bring it down to ordinary practical everyday terms, everyday, I’ve got something in my mind. What is it?
Kitchen sink Buddhism. This is new. Kitchen sink Buddhism. You’re washing the dishes and you get this flash of insight, you know. I think basic, very down to earth, we have emotions.
Right? And as westerners, we have very strong emotions. We’re not Tibetans. We didn’t We don’t live in the plains and you know hardly see anybody and no advertising, no television, no novels. We have a lot of stuff going on in our lives and so we have very little space We have a lot of clutter, a lot of stuff going on.
I think because we get stressed and we get very tired, strong emotions arise. Am I on the right track? Yeah? So we need to have some quick way of dealing with those emotions. One way is in the Lamrim, you have antidotes.
Every Lamrim verse is an antidote to some negative state of mind. Whether it’s impermanence, death, precious human rebirth, compassion, whatever it is, there’s an antidote there for those negative states of mind. So you’re your own psychiatrist. You see the negative mind arising and hopefully before it’s too strong, you’re applying the antidote and you find a balance. Okay?
That’s one way. Another way which cuts at the root of every delusion is emptiness. It works with everything. It’s like the the major antibiotic for every single delusion. You only need to remember emptiness.
You don’t need to know the whole Rim, just emptiness. But of course much more difficult to apply. So how are we applying emptiness in the kitchen sink way? I think it’s this idea of in meditation, starting to become aware of the self that you think exists, but doesn’t really exist. Now I’m not talking about the conventional self.
Remember I said, there is a self that’s okay. Leave it alone. I’m talking about the problem self. That other one. The difficult one.
You know? I want it And it’s like a little child, isn’t it? I want it now. You know, but you’re forty. Where’s my dinner?
I’ve been working all day, you know. What have you been doing, you know? Poor woman sort of there with sweat pouring off her and, you know, kids all over the place and ironing and washing and what have you been doing all day? I’ve been working, you know. And that irrational crazy sort of self comes up, doesn’t it?
So if you can catch it in time, if you’ve been meditating on it every day, you become aware more and more of that unreasonable self. And then you can quickly say to yourself, so how does it exist? Where does it exist? Does it exist? And just asking those questions are wisdom questions.
They’re wise. They’re the antidote to this ignorance that says that self does exist, should exist, and now we’re about to attack. Now what happens when you attack? Sixty five karmic imprints per second. So instead of thinking of karmic imprints, I’ll give you another visualization.
In Australia we have boomerangs. So boomerangs with razor blades on the edge. Okay? So this is negative karma, bad action, you’re being really angry. Sixty five boomerangs.
Sixty five boomerangs with razor blades on the edge that you’re throwing per second. Sixty five, sixty five. It really helps if you just say to yourself sixty five, sixty five. That can also snap you out of it, know, just to get that picture of sixty five boomerangs going out sixty five, sixty five, sixty five. Now what happens?
They go out and out and out and out and out and they disappear. So, could be hundreds of years later, they’re on the way back circling, right? And you’re thinking, life, so incredible. You know? I’ve got the relationship I wanted, the house I wanted, la la la, and the boomerang comes and goes, and you think, why me?
It’s not fair. Right? So that’s the problem, is the boomerang goes out and it goes around and you forget. Or ninja stars, you know? That you’re throwing out these ninja stars and you just don’t see where they’re going.
But they’re headed back towards you. Everything that you do is headed back towards you. When you’re doing good stuff, that’s great. You have to keep rejoicing and saying, well done, well done, that’s great, I rejoice. If you can’t do it, you rejoice when somebody else is doing it.
At least you’re not getting jealous. But what we need to control is the negative emotions. And you have to find a method that works with those. But somehow it comes back. Yeah, in one way it’s like that.
I mean we have this potential inside us so we’re planting a negative seed potential or potentials, right? Which sets you up for somebody to say something to you that you won’t like. It’s like a bit like a magnet. Like this negative speech magnet that you’ve just set up in your heart, and when it comes across the right conditions, it goes, you know, and somebody says, you’re ugly. And you think, what did I do?
You know, I was being nice. I said nice things. And they come back with, you’re ugly. What happened? That was that karma that just ripened from a long time ago, and there’s no relationship with right now.
And It seems crazy. Right? Now what happens? You say, you’re ugly too. You know?
And there you go again. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Thought transformation is, whoopee, this is great. I’m purifying past negative karma. It’s finishing.
Right? That’s wise. But if we’re not wise, we do it again, and we throw it out again, and it comes back around. And that’s saṃsāra. It’s continually going around and around and around.
And why we talk about this is to make you sick of Samsāra. To say, I’m fed up. I wanna get out. You know, enough of this around and around and around. I want to evolve.
I wanna get better instead of just being caught in the mud. You know, like your feet are caught in the mud of saṃsāra. I think there are indications that your negative karma is finishing. Usually what happens is the heavy karmas start to reduce and then you start to get lighter karmas. And lighter karmas are things like smaller arguments, small headaches, small problems in the body, but not sort of particular big things.
If you really want to know, you have to check with a very high lama. A very high lamas can check and can tell you. But I think usually there is a feeling that sometimes you have a feeling that it s going along really well and then suddenly, if you’re a Dharma practitioner, it can suddenly seem like things start to go wrong. You’re practicing Dharma, you’re purifying, things are going along well, and suddenly things start happening, and you wonder why it’s happening to you. And it’s said that when you’re practicing Dharma and thought transformation, it’s like shaking the bottle of dirt.
You’re bringing up the dirt, and now’s the opportunity to finally remove these buried deep karmas. It’s coming up to the surface. So as a dharma practitioner, you usually don’t experience it in a very strong way. But you know there’s no hard and fast rule. It’s not like sort of black, white, this is what happens, this is what doesn’t happen.
But you know just generally it’s said in the thought transformation texts that often when you’re practitioner and you’re practicing Dharma for a while and practicing thought transformation, stuff starts to come up and but you’re able to deal with it and you’re able to transform it and then that transformation means it’s not going to happen again. It has purified it. And then you need a belief in the fact that you have purified. What’s important is that you believe in the purification. Yes.
These days people seem to say that they feel karma is much more immediate than it used to be. We used to talk about karma ripening in decades or not decades, what you call hundreds of years, centuries. In centuries, but these days people are saying they feel that they do something bad and quite quickly it seems to come back on them. Whether that’s a sign of the times, I don’t know, but I think it’s a very good thing. I think if you feel it’s coming back on you, you really pay attention.
Whereas if you think, oh, I got away with that, you know, I stole some money or I lied, got away with that, that’s good. But if it came back on you quite quickly, you’d think that’s not good. You know, there is something coming back around. So which is another group? Oh, over to you.
He’s the brain expert. Oh, you were in the group? Yeah. Might have known. Thank you very much.
I was just about to refer you for the answer. Now I’m stuck. I think it’s brain. I think, and I don’t know, I don’t have a reference for this, but I think what’s happening is that if you damage the brain, you’ve damaged for instance, say the operating system. So it’s like the mind is the driver and then the brain is the vehicle that you’re using in order to drive this body and to have, you know, stuff going on.
So I think if you damage the brain, then parts of it are not able to cognize. Parts of it are to do with anger. Parts of it are to do with creation and creativity. So I think if you’re damaging parts of it, then the condition has changed. And so then the mind the mind itself might also, because there’s been some damage, the mind might now have some anger or some change of karma because of the accident.
You know, say you’re in a car accident and the brain is damaged and then there’s all that anger or resentment towards the driver who did this to you. You can still cognize that that was done to you. That could conceivably develop a very negative karma which would change the person’s outlook. Before the brain damage? Assuming it’s a dharma practitioner, you mean?
Yeah. Secret dharma practitioners. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, I think we’re in the realm of maybes, you know?
That in each individual situation, you’d have to look at the situation and who the person is, what their experience is before the accident, what their experience is after the accident. But, you know, I can tell you personally, talking about brain damage, I was knocked down by a car in Canberra in Australia. Before I became Buddhist, I saw somebody outside my house. The car was breaking down and smoke coming out of the car. And I went outside to ask her, was she okay?
And she said, the car had just stopped. So we called her father and her father said, the radiator’s frozen over. She didn’t have antifreeze. And so we had to boil water and then pour water over the radiator. So she poured her jug of water and I was pouring mine and suddenly there was a big bang and somebody hit the car at eighty kilometers an hour and then I was carried about four meters down and then under the car and then when I woke up the car was running over me and I managed to push myself out.
So, for about twelve months, I had a slip disc. I had teeth knocked out and all this was ripped open, but not too bad. But black and blue, completely black and blue down my body. Just after the accident I got into the bath because I was in so much pain. I got in the bath and I couldn’t get out because I was just black and blue.
So I was stuck in this cold bath, you know, trying to find a way of crawling out of the bath. It was that much pain. And then I went up to Sydney and the doctor said, Oh, you’ve got a slipped disc and, you have to go to physiotherapy. So then I went to physiotherapy every day, I think for about six months. And, they put me on a machine that pulled me this way and stark naked with the door open.
You know, I’m being pulled like this and people are walking past, oh hello. You know, you like this? You have to lose your ego in these situations, you know? And then I had to go to a chiropractor every day and then four times, three times a week until it was okay. So sometimes I get back problem, but not too bad.
But during that whole time, and why I’m telling you, was my mind totally changed for the better. Because at that time, I was only interested in sports cars, money, and to be rich. That was it. I was sure that if you were rich, you were safe. That everything would be okay, you know.
And then, because of that accident, every day I kept thinking I could have died. I could have died. I could have died. Every day I woke up, I could have died. And because of that experience, I was doing the death meditation.
I started thinking about, so what if I had died? What good was money? What good was a car? What good was anything? Actually, all my friends disappeared.
I had many, many friends disappeared when I was sick, not interested. Didn’t wanna come around. So then you think, well your friends disappear, you can’t work, etcetera, etcetera. You know, I mean a lot of thoughts. And that’s when I started reading Krishnamurti.
I used to read Krishnamurti in the bath. Whatever problem I’d have, oh Krishnamurti. I’d gone by new Krishnamurti book, you know, candles, bubbles, hours in the bath. I go like a prune, you know? Oh, my my whole skin was like a prune.
So I with this Krishnamurti book, you know, reading, reading. Krishnamurti’s emptiness. He talks about emptiness. He says, no, no, no, no, no. Then I come out the bath thinking, yep, this is it.
I’ve got the answer. No, no, no, no, no. I wake up in the morning and think, but what does that mean? Didn’t understand it. You know, there was I could get it for the moment, but then it would be lost.
And then one day, I read Shirley MacLaine’s Out on a Limb. And she was doing this spiritual journey thing in the eighties, early eighties. And I thought, wow, this is very similar to me. I never thought of myself as being spiritual. But I thought this is very similar to me.
So I wrote to Shirley MacLaine and said, this had a really profound effect on me. Thank you very much for writing the book. And she wrote back to me and she said, don’t worry. When you’re ready, a guru will appear. Well, have the same reaction to you maybe to the word guru.
So I thought, what a load of rubbish, you know, from a star writing stuff like this, you know. I wanted something about Hollywood, didn’t want something about gurus. And then after three months, you know, the mind goes down and then I start thinking, guru, a guru will appear. I’m in Australia, kangaroos will appear, but will a guru appear? You know?
So I didn’t I didn’t get it. You know, guru. Who needs a guru? You know, like this. Anyway, just to make a long story short, one day I just bought a book that was I bought three travel guides.
I had no money, but three travel guides. I think I’m going somewhere now. And so, one’s India, one’s Ladakh, and one’s Nepal. Well, India, I’m definitely not going to, but I’ve lived there twenty three years on and off. Ladakh, who knows where it is?
And Nepal, I open it and it says you have to go to Kopan monastery. Every month every November there’s a course. It’s October. And somebody calls me and says, will you sell your house? I just renovated a house, so I sold my house.
Somebody rang me and said, you sell your car? Sell my car. I sold my furniture. I was off. I bought the ticket.
I came here. I’ve been here ever since. So sometimes it happens like that. But to get back to the accident, I think this accident was the most profound, best experience I ever had in my life. Because now I could be sitting in Woolara or Potts Point with an incredible view, pots of money.
I’m really unhappy. All surrounded I mean, yeah. Anyway, Yeah. No need to get into hedonism in in Sydney. But there’s a lot of stuff that goes in Sydney on in Sydney that you can really get involved in.
And then you get caught, you know? You just get caught up and you think that’s life and you think that’s happiness and it’s avoiding suffering. So for me, this accident was a really good thing. Now, how are you feeling? I’m happy despite the sometimes problems with my body.
Yeah, satisfied, you know? And I never wanted to be a teacher. I never wanted to teach Buddhism, never. And from the very beginning of coming to Kopan on my first course, they got me to lead a meditation. And I was so nervous.
I was, you know, like this shaking in front of two fifty people and I had I had to write the meditation myself and then lead it. And since then I’ve been teaching and so I’ve got some karma with teaching. So before every teaching there’s always this feeling of oh dear here we go again. What do I do and how do I do it? So I never feel supremely confident about it.
Know? I always feel I have to study more. I have to I have to try harder. But I’m always happy when I hear about people’s change. People write to me and say incredible things.
It’s not about me, but but them putting into practice something of Buddhism. One I’ll give you an example. A nurse from New Zealand who was on a course in New Zealand said to me, something practical I need to know. I’m in a really difficult situation at work. I just don’t know what to do with it. I’m very resentful and angry and the management are doing the wrong thing and I just don’t know what to do.
So I advised her to do some mantras and to do some meditation. She wrote to me three months later and she said the whole situation’s totally changed. And she said, my mind has changed so much that when the administrator came to see me and said to me, how’s everything? And then she said, I looked at this woman and said, well, you know, not so good. The administrator laughed and said, yes, I know.
And she said, we had for the first time some communication. Whereas before, this woman was just angry. So when people write and say I tried it, I put it into practice, mostly they’re not Buddhist. Tried it, put it into practice, it works, then you think incredible. Then your life is worthwhile.
Teaching’s worthwhile because it helps people to remove some suffering and gives them more happiness. So yeah, that makes me really happy. If I’m causing more suffering, I don’t think I’d be happy. Then it’d be a good excuse to give up teaching. Okay.
So there must be one more group or two more. Yeah. Yeah. It is a democracy. Forced into the job.
Yeah. Yeah. But appropriate in some sense, Francisco. Right. Right.
Maybe I should leave the room now. Where people can share. And I think also over the days you might find some people are very satisfied, very happy with what they’re and then another day they’re not and that also shows you how the mind changes and it’s not always the same and it’s not always reacting the same. Over the days we’ll see how. Yeah.
The kitchen sink idea, I think. You know that sometimes we think about just the whole system and if I don’t agree or don’t know about the whole system, I can’t put it into practice. But like I said, know, there’s these people around the world, they have one problem, they put one idea into practice and that whole situation changes And then it it turns them on to doing more, experiencing more of that. So I think knowing the whole system of Buddhism takes a long long time. If we’re gonna wait for that, we’re waiting a long time.
But having an overview of the system really helps. I think you know the feeling I get in this room is that some people don’t know Buddhism very much at all. Which I think is a It’s like a major problem because thought transformation sort of relies on the teachings of Buddhism particularly karma, emptiness. So that’s why I’m sort of trying to fill in the gaps for you. Because actually originally this course was assuming that people would know about those other teachings.
But it’s also quite interesting to talk about this other stuff, about things that we wouldn’t normally talk about. I think we won’t take a break. We’ve only got about fifteen minutes left. But what would be interesting is if anybody would like to say why? What Kopan wants to know is why would you want to come on a course like this?
Because this course has never been done before. This is a first. Right? So we have never had a thought transformation course because it was thought nobody would be interested. Because it’s tough.
You found out how tough it is. So from Kopan’s side, they’re wondering, well what is it that makes people so interested in thought transformation? I mean it seems logical to me that you would be but why? And I guess if anybody has any other questions or any other comments that they want to make, they can also make them. Oh, does somebody want to answer the Copan question?
Yes. Yes. I think that that title actually then attracts quite extraordinary people rather than ordinary people. I think once you say thought transformation and they’ve got a mind like you that thinks, oh, you know, then it makes an extraordinary group. And what you keep hearing from the discussion groups is extraordinary comments rather than ordinary.
Right? So it’s interesting the difference in quality between this and an introductory course. Where we put introductory Buddhist course, you know, and then certain people turn up for that. And then this one, thought transformation. You’re sort of already thinking along the thought transformation lines.
You’re already going there. Yeah? So that’s what’s interesting for me. Makes it very good. Yeah.
That helps. But how? Yeah. Well I think it’s a very valid point that you know in the centers in Asia we’ve mostly had introductory courses, Tuśita, Root Institute. And just within about the last year or two, it started to change and more intermediate courses started to be offered.
So I think from Kopan’s side, there’s a sort of like awakening. Oh, there are people interested in intermediate courses. You see, I started here maybe nearly four years ago with the Medicine Buddha retreat. In Monsoon, we never had any courses or any retreats. In monsoon, Kopan virtually closed down the western retreats and teachings.
So from the last course in May until September, there was virtually nothing. And I was here and Annie Fran said to me, there’s nothing going on. Why don’t we do a course? And I said, well, what would we do? And she said, well, what what do you really like?
And I said, well, like Medicine Buddha. And she said, okay, let’s do Medicine Buddha. So we put some posters down in town and eleven people turned up. And so that’s how we started this program in the monsoon was first Medicine Buddha that year, then the next year was Medicine Buddha and something else. And then the next year and it sort of evolved into this year where we have Medicine Buddha, Tārā, you know different things like that.
And now this more intermediate. So I think Copan is seeing that actually we want more of the challenging stuff. We don’t just need the Heinz fifty seven baby food that’s going to just be spooned to us. We’ve got to the stage where we want to know what to do with all of this and that’s more of an intermediate level. I think it’s good that Kopan hears this so that more intermediate courses are offered.
I don’t believe in democracy. Then you get divisiveness. You’ll get some people saying yes, some people saying no, and some people saying I don’t care, and then you get fights amongst the group and then off we go. I think the important thing for me is that you have enough space in which to think about and chew these ideas. And if we speed up the course, the course will go into this, like, I feel like they’re pushing me along and it’s too fast and I don’t like it.
Because I think maybe I don’t know if it’s a skill or something. Anyway, whenever people come to my courses they always say it seems easy. I have an ability to talk about things where it makes it seem easy. But then when you actually try to put it into practice or when you try to chew it, it then isn’t that easy. And there’s got to be a changeover from what you’re hearing to what you’re feeling.
There’s there’s got to be something happening in between. So that’s where the space is important. And this is this schedule is just a normal schedule. It’s not abnormal. Except usually it would go on for ten days and then it seems much more intense because you’ve got ten days.
I find it really helps because you can go for a walk and you can look out. I mean I can remember on my very first course when I was hearing a verse of thought transformation and I felt like this is all mad, you know, completely mad, opposite to what they believed down there. And I used to go and sit on the side of the hill and just look at the view, and it really helps your mind to open up and to become spacious. But if there’s no time to do that, you start feeling like it’s all too much, you know, and you’re in a pressure cooker, and the pressure cooker is blocked and it’s about to blow up. You know, that that type of feeling.
You know, if people want to do yoga, there’s time to do yoga. You can all I told you already, you can organize yoga classes. You can be up at five o’clock in the morning doing yoga before before the first session. Nobody’s stopping you. There’s the hill the hill up there.
You’ve got this grassy area here. There’s a room upstairs, you know, that room. So there’s places to do yoga. So if you want to if you want to organize it, you’re very welcome. More meditation.
I have thought in the morning and afternoon sessions, if we get through all the information we need to get through, then we’ll do ten, fifteen, twenty minutes more meditation in the morning and the afternoon. So the main thing well, my main concern was the Lamrim. Once I realized there are people in this room who don’t know what the Lamrim is, I realized we’re in time trouble. Because I’m thinking seven days, what virtually one verse a day, tons of time. Suddenly, have to talk about the Lamrim, and that takes up time.
And then you have questions because you don’t know about the Lamrim. So that’s where my time frame suddenly went out the window. But I think we’re okay now. We’re sort of we’re cruising along. Thirty kilometers an hour, we’re doing okay.
Yeah. So back to you. Merely labeled I. Merely labeled I. So merely means empty.
Merely labeled I is the label label that you can put on the self, but then doesn’t exist. That self, you know, the the I is changing moment to moment. And sometimes, you know, you could in one moment have a transcendental thought, and then in the next moment have a very bad thought, and they’re different minds. So different minds are arising at different times. And then we have the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, the very subconscious mind.
So we have different minds, sort of levels of consciousness that we go into. So the analogy of conscious mind would be like the waves. And then the subconscious mind in meditation, you’re going below the waves and more into, the depths of the mind. But is there is there a controller or a watcher, an observer? What do you think?
But we live in duality. Right? Our conventional world, we’re living in duality. And then when we realize emptiness, then we go beyond duality. But while we’re living in the conventional world without the realization of emptiness, we’re living in a duality.
We’re always saying like, dislike, I want, I don’t want, you know, this this duality. But with realization of emptiness, then we we go beyond the duality. But I think, you know, again, it’s sort of using words in a way that doesn’t really describe the meaning. I think there’s a problem with words. But I understand what you’re saying in that it seems like you need, a horse and a rider.
Right? So if you’re giving the analogy of the mind as the horse, then who’s the rider? And so we talk about, concentration, awareness, mindfulness. You know, in this way, we talk about the horse and the rider. That mindfulness awareness is what controls the situation.
If we don’t have mindfulness, awareness, introspection, if we don’t have qualities, then there is no control over the mind. The mind just reacts, through habits and through karma and through delusion to each situation. If you control, then you need mindfulness. You need to have understanding. You need, knowledge.
And then you need to have awareness of when negative minds are arising, and then you need to know how to apply the antidotes. So that seems there there’s a person inside, doesn’t it? Seems like a little person at the control and then the controls. It I think it gives that impression. And that’s what I mean when I say words fail because I think when you’re describing, then it starts to seem like something mechanical.
You know? Like we’ve got a ship and there’s a rudder, and there’s an engine room, and there’s a captain, and and I think it’s not like that at all. I think it’s For me, it’s something like impelling energy, like energy that moves us in a certain direction. And because of our response to the environment, we suddenly change directions and different energies appear. And by being aware of those energies, we can pull them back, control them, or we allow them.
Maybe somewhat some sort of feeling like that. But I think by the end of the week, then I’ll try and get Lama Lhundup to come in, the abbot, and then see if he can give you a a better idea. Yeah. Because you’re you’re gone gone beyond. Okay.
Nearly finished. Anything else? Yeah. Mhmm. The water pipe?
Oh, I don’t know. Did you hear anything about the water pipe? There is water. There is yeah. Well, I mean, we’ve got gigantic tanks up on the hill.
Doesn’t mean it’s forever. Do you know? I will find out because I haven’t heard anything. It it came into my mind too. But we have massive tanks all over Kopan.
But when they’re empty, that’s that’s the end of it. Uh-huh. It might have been. I mean, I wouldn’t think it would take longer than twenty four hours to fix. So if water was empty and then it’s come back, it sounds like it’s been fixed, but I will try and find out for you.
Yeah. Maybe you go to tea, you might see Annie Fran or somebody and you can let them know if they can actually go to the toilet now. Because they’ve really been hanging on for twenty four hours. No showers, no toilet, nothing. You know, just squeezing.
Using the bushes. Yeah. Anything else? Okay. So we’ll dedicate all the positive energy.
So thinking about family, friends, people that you have particular karmic connection with and then all sentient beings. Page ninety eight. May all beings everywhere plagued by sufferings of body and mind obtain an ocean of happiness and joy.