Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 66-minute teaching, Ven Lobsang Namgyel guides practitioners through the heart of transforming destructive emotions and self-centeredness into compassion and wisdom. He opens with a striking image of how quickly anger arises in daily life—road rage, family conflicts, resentment held for years—and traces its roots to delusion and self-cherishing: the belief that the world revolves around “me.” Through concrete examples and direct questioning, he explores humility as the practical antidote: making the ego smaller so there is room for others. He unpacks how karma and delusion compel both ourselves and others to harm, offering a path to genuine forgiveness not as weakness but as freedom from the cycle of grudge and retaliation. Drawing on Mahatma Gandhi, Desmond Tutu, and his own teacher Lama Zopa, he shows that forgiveness is an act of self-interest—a choice to release the burden we carry when we refuse to let go of the past. The teaching moves fluidly between Buddhist philosophy and lived situations: the hamster wheel of reactivity, the joy of forgotten ego, the discipline of a gratitude diary, and the choice between drama and dharma. Suited for practitioners new to Buddhist thought and those deepening their practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 44 _4 1.mp3
UUID: f013f75d-3ab5-4c44-963d-047f01b0e446
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: VenNamgyel Thought Transformation (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 66.6 minutes
Words: ~9,906
It said bye and clicked off. I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to another place. You see, even mp3s have feelings. It’s like that.
When you investigate your own situation, just on the surface level, but you go under, deeper into your situation. How do I do things? Why do I do things? Which person in this room has not been angry at all in their life, has not had regret about their anger? Right?
Every one of us has had anger and said things that we wish we hadn’t said and afterwards you think, that was terrible. You know, why did I say that? Why did I do that? Right? Everybody except maybe Marlinda.
Marlinda? Have you done it? Never. I thought so. She’s a saint.
The woman is a saint. Also a good actress, I must say. But you know, if you look at the past, say, Yeah, I’ve done that. So, we’ve all had those situations where we behaved in a way that afterwards we wish we hadn’t. Now, why is that acceptable to you and you can’t use that understanding towards others?
Why? Right? That’s where you need to use the understanding and you look at the other person’s situation and you say, well when they were angry towards me, when they were doing harmful things towards me, they were doing it because they have self-cherishing. They’re me, me, me, you know, it’s all about me, the world’s about me, and they got angry and resentful on whatever they did because of their karma and delusion. That’s why they do it.
So in the same way that I do it, they do it. And if you can understand that, then you can forgive. You can you can easily look at the other side and say, yes, I get it. I understand why there’s not even actually anything to forgive because it’s the human condition. This is what Buddha said.
He said, we’re in a mental hospital called the world and we’re all in that mental hospital and maybe the people who are in the real mental hospital are the same ones. He didn’t say that, but I’m saying. Maybe it’s like that. We all think we’re sane and they put the crazy ones away, but maybe the crazy ones are the same ones and we’re all insane. Why are we insane?
Why did Buddha say we’re all crazy? Because we all have delusion. And when we have delusion, it’s like we’re crazy. Right? Because we get this this state of mind where we don’t know what we’re doing.
Now look at this modern society and how more and more there’s rage. When people have rage like road rage or in a relationship they get so angry they want to lash out, you know, beat people, people, whatever it is. Where does this rage come from? So it seems like this rage is now building in our society and I think it’s because we’re running so fast we don’t take time to just stop and be aware of our emotions and our feelings. Are they reasonable?
Where is it coming from? Yesterday then we talked about humility. humility is making this ego smaller. So you’re taking a big ego and you’re trying to reduce the size of it because you see that that big ego which would easily fill this room doesn’t leave any space for anybody else. You know, you say you want friends, you want family, you want to be close to people, la la la.
But when you come into the room, bring this huge ego and everybody’s pushed out. You know, you think, why am I all alone? We come back to the me. Why me? Why don’t I have any friends?
Why doesn’t anybody call me? Because there is nobody to call. You’re so busy with yourself. Or your friend calls and says, Oh, you know, I’ve had a terrible day and you say, I’m really busy. Call me back.
You don’t remember those times you’ve done it. You know, all the times when somebody wanted to talk about their problem and you say, yeah, yeah, yeah. You think you’ve got problems but listen to my problem. You know? And you overrule them.
So this self-cherishing sometimes appears as a very unreasonable person. And then it can go back down. But when it goes back down, we forget the times we’ve been very unreasonable. Right? Because it was a delusion.
The delusion comes in like a storm and then in that storm, you don’t see anything clearly. It’s confused. When it goes away, you tend to forget what you’ve done. Forget that you’ve been angry, you’ve been resentful, you’ve been jealous, you’ve done harmful things and you think you’re okay. Know?
So we all take the view that we’re okay, we’ve done nothing harmful and it’s all of them that’s the problem. They’re the ones who do the harmful things. But now we’re looking at what do we do? Not blaming it on others. So humility is becoming smaller and looking at our interaction with others.
How kind they are. Just even to provide this building. You know, so you think the building, the electricity, the water. Where would we be without countless sentient beings providing us with all the resources that we have. We wouldn’t have jobs.
We wouldn’t have money. We’d be in the stone age maybe living in caves. Right? So think of all of that. We can’t do without others.
We don’t live alone. Even if we’re living alone in a one room flat or whatever, we still rely on others to provide us with everything that we need in order to eat, cook, etc. Okay? So humility is reducing the size of the ego. In order to have better qualities, you first need to reduce the size of the ego.
If you go around with this massive ego, then you’re not going to be able to develop the good qualities. The big ego stops you from doing it. So you start reducing it. Make it a bit smaller and now what do you start to do? You’re a bit more tolerant and you’re tolerant with yourself as well as being tolerant towards others.
So it doesn’t start towards others. You have to start towards yourself. You are more tolerant with your quirkiness and the weird things that happen in your mind and the weird things that you do, and you think, oh, I get it. Now I understand why I’m like that. It’s because I’ve created karma in the past.
It’s coming back. It’s forcing me to see the world in a certain way. And if I choose to do this same action again, because the thought is arising, then I would continue. And it’s like being a hamster on a wheel. That every time you do a similar action to the past, you create similar karma and the wheel keeps turning.
And you keep walking on that wheel and you keep saying, oh, this is exhausting. You know, I go around and around and around. And then you think, I want to get out. I want to get out of this wheel. Know, I want to escape.
And so you walk faster and the wheel goes more and more and more. You know, so doing more actions doesn’t necessarily make you escape from the wheel. We need to stop. You know? Even if it’s two or three minutes in the day, you need to stop in order to be aware of the mind that is creating that wheel, that’s creating that trap.
Yeah. Yeah. The emotions. Well I think time, they always say time heals, doesn’t it? But I think you have want to heal.
Healing has to put you in the position of power and not victimization. So if you are thinking of healing in the way of, I know they’ve all harmed me, but by healing I’m going to remain a victim, then actually you don’t heal because your mind hasn’t come around to why should I. You’re still stuck in the they did this to me and so why should I do this for them? That sort of attitude, you know. So there has to be a really good reason for yourself to want to heal.
And not just for yourself, but for all others to want to heal. And so from a Buddhist point of view, we talk about the self-cherishing. So first of all, there’s the illusion. Here’s myself, is red, of course. It wouldn’t be blue or green.
But my ego, myself, here, in here, in the heart area, I think exists. I think this ego, this self exists, but Buddha said, it never existed ever. You don’t have a self. So when we talk about the self that you’re going to heal, Buddha said, there is no self. It’s an imputation.
So imputing the self on the body mind, we think the self exists and it exists in the way of a rainbow. So, we do have a self that sits, listens, that walks, that talks. There is that self in that way. But when we say, I am angry. Right?
I am hurt. How does that self exist? This is really hard to get your mind around because new age thinking and the way of the world operating is for sure you’ve got an eye and your eyes hurt and in order to get over that hurt you need to buy a new television or a new car or you need to do this and you need to buy this book and you need to do that. So very much out there, there is an I that needs to be healed. But Buddha’s answer is completely radical.
It says, you think that I exists, but when you try to find, investigate that I, how and where it exists, it doesn’t exist the way you think. It exists as an illusion. So it exists like a dream, and we experience dreams. We can remember dreams. It exists like a rainbow.
We experience them, but they come together because of causes and conditions. So you have the water drops in the air for the rainbow, the water drops in the air, the sun at a certain angle, your eye consciousness, a functioning mind, a functioning brain, and with all of that, a rainbow exists. But does the rainbow really exist in the way of I can touch it, can get hold of it, and it exists all the time without causes and conditions? No. It exists because of causes and conditions.
So the angry eye that appears the angry eye that appears appears because of causes and conditions. It appears and then it disappears. If it always existed, we’d always be angry. Right? If it was a jealous eye, it would be there twenty four hours a day.
If it was a resentful eye that couldn’t forgive, it would be there twenty four hours a day. But it comes and it goes. Why does it reappear? Because our mind goes back to the previous situation and then you don’t forgive or you’re like scratching the sore. It comes back up again, know.
And that’s revisiting the emotions is like that. It’s like going back to it and adding to it and adding to it. And what are emotions? Emotions are something that happens within the mind. It’s not separate from the mind.
So emotions are thoughts and the thoughts then appear within the body. They become physical. Right? So we project them into the body and then there’s a physical appearance, say, for anger, you get it in the stomach, and you can feel it, and it starts coming up, and you think, uh-oh, here we And then you feel it in your arms and the flush and the power that’s coming, is the adrenaline. So you’ve got the adrenaline going, these chemicals in the body that give you the power to stay and fight or run.
Right? And just there is the decision. What do I do? Stay, fight or run? And our habit may be to stay and fight, which adds to the habit of it continues.
It continues. The wheel turns. The wheel turns. And so it’s compounding the habit of reacting with anger or jealousy or aversion or hatred or whatever it is. And also this resentment, you know, you did this to me.
I resent you and I’m not going to forgive you. This is also a habit. Right? So what we’re trying to do is break it down into small components rather than saying, look at a big situation. Break it down into small components and look at each one of those components like looking at the drops in the air, the sun.
All those different components produce that rainbow. All those different components produce the resentful self or the angry self or whatever it is. But when you take them apart, they’re not strong. They’re not powerful. When you put them together, they become a very powerful package, which then projects itself outwards.
But what does it do? It comes back. Right? So you put all this out, you think, oh, that was good. But it’s all gone out, and it’s on its way back.
So now, all that anger and jealousy and hatred that you put out there is on its way back to you in a much bigger way, like a tsunami. So you put out just a little bit, but because of the power of karma, it comes back to you in a much more forceful way, and then it creates the habit of reacting again. So it’s like an emotional roller coaster where we learn this comes, I put that out. This comes, I put that out. And it just keeps on and on like that.
The way to break it is by knowing about it. You know? Once you see yourself in your mind as a hamster on the wheel, you think, oh gosh, I I don’t want to be this hamster on the wheel, and I don’t want to be creating, all this suffering and harm for myself. Instead of saying, you all change, you look at yourself and you say, now you must change. You know?
We say, when you’re doing that, you’ve got four fingers pointing towards yourself. Right? So when you point at them and say, you’re the problem. You’re the problem. You’re the problem.
Actually, four fingers are pointing at you and saying, you’re the problem. So who’s responsible? Me. Who can change the situation? Me.
Not anybody else. In Buddhism, we don’t say, sit down at the computer and make a list of problems of somebody else. And here’s your problems. Here’s what you have to do in order to change and make me happy. If you do that, you’re handing over something to somebody else.
You’re saying, I’m the victim of you, and you have to stop victimizing me. Right? That doesn’t work. Because then they think, well, actually, you’re victimizing me. And so now they think of all the things you need to do in order to stop victimizing them.
And that’s how we go back to, you do all these things wrong, you do all these things wrong, and it creates a fight, and you go back into it again. So how do you break that cycle? You take responsibility and you say, I am creating this situation and I am projecting it onto my world. It’s my world. It’s not anybody else’s world.
And what sort of world do I want to live in? Do I want to live in an angry world or a resentful world where everybody’s fighting? I mean, do you want to be reborn in Gaza? You know? That’s where you’re headed.
If you don’t give up this anger, this, you know, intolerance constantly or this rage, you’ll get reborn in Gaza. You know? Why does Gaza continue? Because we keep continuing it. Neither of those sides will let go.
And so I often say, well, we look at Israel and Palestine and we say, oh, that’s terrible. You know, I really think that they should stop being angry and talk to each other. But do we, in our family or with our friends when we have a fight? Don’t tell me you’re all peaceful, nice people. We have fights.
Right? What do you do? Do you go to them and say, oh, I’m really sorry. You know, I I’m the one that’s wrong. Or do you wait for them to apologize?
Do you make the, you know, the first move? Do you go out and try and solve it? Do you try to heal? The problem, Healing is you do something for others. We’re so wrapped up in ourselves and our problem that we don’t look at others and their problem.
And what’s more powerful is to try and heal others and what you’ve done to them and what they’re experiencing, and then that karma comes back as healing. The most incredible time you can have in your life is the moment that you forget about yourself. Right? The moment that you just forget about yourself, you see some problem, you know, over there, and you just go and you help them, you feel incredible joy afterwards. But when you’re thinking, why doesn’t anybody call me?
Why don’t I have friends? Why doesn’t anybody care about me? You know, and you build that sort of mind. Why not? Why not?
Like that. It’s more and more and more suffering. But drop all that and say, look at them. They’re experiencing much more suffering than me. What can I do for them?
In that moment, you’ll experience incredible joy because you’ve dropped the ego and you’re using what you have, the resources that you have in order to be of help to others. That’s healing. Right? But there’s constantly trying to do something for myself. It’s like a bottomless pit.
It just goes on and on and on. You know? Because you’re only one trying to heal one. But if you use your resources to help many others, many others then give to you. So instead of only one giving to you, you have many giving to you.
That’s much more powerful, isn’t it? Join Greenpeace. Yeah? Isn’t it that working for something like that is extremely satisfying because of the giving, not the taking? Yeah?
Yeah. Go on. Oh, you’re one of them. Yeah. Yeah.
So it’s of like Yeah. Yeah. I know. I’m I’m a bit scared. I know.
Your problem is you. Right? But you give so much, you you don’t take care of yourself. Yes. Yeah.
That’s why I kind of You you you get to a burnout stage. Yeah? Where I I’ve met many, many social workers where they come to me and they say exactly the same psychiatrists, doctors, many professional people, and they say, I give and I give and I give and give, and nobody gives to me. You know? Or very few give to me.
I think one problem is not being grateful. Right? Not having gratitude. And so my answer back is usually you need a gratitude diary, a gratitude journal. You know?
Because what you’re seeing is the cup as being half empty instead of half full because of the nature of the work. Your work will never finish just like mine won’t. So, you know, I could think, another course. You know, Why are these suffering people coming every weekend? What’s wrong with them?
You know? But if you didn’t exist, I didn’t exist. Isn’t it? Right? And maybe they’re all Buddhas.
Think of this. Okay? In your work, and we each have problems in our work. Right? So this is a really good technique.
But in your work, if you’re really having problems or in your family, you’re really having problems, try doing this. Try thinking that everybody who’s causing problems for you is a Buddha. So Buddhas manifest in whichever way is beneficial for you in order for you to develop qualities. So if you’re not very patient, how should Buddhas manifest as irritating people? So you should you have the opportunity to practice patience.
Right? So the Buddha could manifest as the person shouting at you, as the person giving you the ticket for your car just at the moment you don’t need a ticket, as the policeman who’s following you because you’re ten kilometers over the speed limit, because you’re rushing to help somebody who needs help. And you think, why me? You know? I’m helping others.
This is not fair. Well, you need to your limits need to be pushed a little bit further each time. The ego comes up and says, why me? It shows that you have limits. Right?
Instead of no limitation, there’s limitation. Isn’t there? We have a concept of how much we can do. And because we put that limit, we make our own suffering. Because I can remember before I became Buddhist, I’d work really hard and I do stuff and I get home, and I’d say, right.
Now tonight is for me. I’d have it all planned. You know? It’s the bath. It’s Krishnamurti.
I’ve got the nice music and some candles. You know? And somebody would call inevitably on that night. Somebody would call and say, I have to see you. Something really bad’s happened.
I need somebody to talk to. And I’d say, oh, alright. You know? But in my mind, I’m thinking, there goes the bath. There goes Krishnamurti.
And what’s Krishnamurti teaching? Be kind be kind to others. But I’m not being kind to others. I’m thinking, but what about me? Right?
And it’s that big ego that creates the problem. If you have a small ego or no ego, like my teacher, you know, Lama Zopa. When I first met Lama Zopa in Kopan, I was on a one month course, the one where I looked at the prostrations and thought, well, you’ll never get me doing this. Then we heard about the hell realms for two weeks. Two whole weeks.
Every meditation, every teaching was on hell. There’s sixteen Buddhist hells. Sixteen. Because each one is a manifestation of your mind. So actually, there’s countless hells.
Right? We know hellish states of mind that we can create in our everyday life. So that means there’s many, many different types of hells. So I’m sitting there. This is my first Buddhist course, listening hell, hell, hell, hell.
And I think, you know, after more than a week, and I’m running to the shop to buy chocolate and and biscuits. I never ate so much chocolate and biscuits in all my life. And if there was a cake, I’d just stuff down the cake because, you know, this is the only answer to all this this that I’m listening. So eat, eat, eat. And I thought, well, at least when this Lama Zopa arises, it’s gonna be better.
Little did I know he’s the specialist on the hell realms. So but in listening to all that about the hell realms, I was thinking, well, the Buddhists are much worse than the Christians because at least they only have one hell and a purgatory. But, you know, this lot, they have cold hells, hot hells, this hell, you know, like this. So it really made me think a lot about the mind that creates the hell. Then when Lama Zopa came, I’d heard he was a bit unreliable about the times that he appears.
So I was in business before that. So I think if you’re coming at three thirty, you come at three thirty. So we’re all waiting, two hundred and fifty of us, and they’re chanting, you know, waiting, waiting, waiting, quarter to four, four o’clock. And gradually, the people sit down. They’re not very patient or tolerant.
So they sit down. There’s only three or four chanting by this time. And then they give up. So when everybody stopped chanting, a note appears. You know?
So I think, oh, yeah. What’s this? Rinpoche says he’s not coming today. It’s not beneficial, but you all need to go for a walking meditation. And I thought, oh, well, sounds good.
So you need to go out the gate of Kopan, and there’s a really narrow path which is muddy, slippy. And from the monsoon, great big rocks had fallen down this pathway. You had to climb over these rocks. And if you fall, you go all the way down. You could really kill yourself.
You know? I didn’t know this at the time. So I’m thinking, oh, walking meditation. That sounds really nice. And while you’re walking, you have to think, the next step, I’m going to die.
The next step, I’m going to die. Or the next breath, death. Next breath, death. I thought, god. These people, they’re heavy.
You know? Why couldn’t we do something really nice? So we had to do that. Death, death, death, death. And it was really possible because of this narrow pathway and two hundred and fifty people going along this narrow pathway.
And then we get to a hill hillside where we’re going to watch the sunset. And then we think, but I’m not dead. I’m alive. I’ve got my precious human rebirth. And so we did this walking meditation, death, death, death, death.
Sat on the hillside, looked at the sunset, which is incredible on the Himalayas going down. I’m alive. And the whole energy of the course changed. And then I realized that Lama Zopa is incredibly skillful, and that if he come, it was two weeks of hell. Our energy was so down.
He wouldn’t have been able to change it. But that walking meditation completely changed it. And then I got to know know Lama Zopa quite well over the years, and he never slept. And I used to think it’s not possible. You know?
He must sleep sometime. We all sleep. And Rinpoche would teach until three o’clock in the morning. He could teach twelve hours, fifteen hours nonstop without having a tea break, without going to the bathroom. He would just go on and on and on, and people never left the room.
You know, it was like he just held you there. And he would teach until three o’clock in the morning. Three o’clock in the morning, he would go back to his room and then start his prayers, which would finish at nine o’clock in the morning. And then at nine o’clock in the morning, he’d start having interviews with people and be busy all through the day. And I think it’s not possible, you know?
And then I got to know him, and there we’d be at two o’clock in his morning in the morning, and he’d be folding robes and talking about his holiness and this and that. And I’m like, really? Completely exhausted. And Rinpoche is like full of energy. You know?
And then it’s, oh, three o’clock. I have to start my prayers now. And six hours of prayers. And then nine o’clock, he has breakfast and off he goes. And this is because Rinpoche has no ego.
Rinpoche only lives to benefit others. And that’s when I started to think there’s another way of living, not the way we live, which are with our limitations and our concepts and our limited amount of love and kindness, and our compassion is limited to just those few. He is completely all sentient beings. And last night, I started looking at stories about Rinpoche traveling around the world. And just wherever he goes, trying to benefit, it could be in the airport, gift shop.
Rinpoche starts talking to the lady behind the counter, and they start talking and talking. And the Tannoy is saying, Lama Zopa, Rinpoche. You know, the plane is going. You must check-in now. And he’s talking to and the assistant is saying to Rinpoche, Rinpoche, the plane’s going.
We must go now. The bags are on the plane. We must go now. And Rinpoche, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And the plane goes. And then Rinpoche’s assistant says, Rinpoche, what was all that about? You know?
Why did we miss the plane? And Rinpoche says, it must have been more beneficial to stay for that one person than to fly to the Dharma center and teach all those people just for that one person. Think of living your life like that, that you only use your life, your time, your energy, your resources to be a benefit to others. And so constantly, you’re looking at others in the way of what can I do for you instead of what can you do for me? Imagine.
Not in the social work way, you know, but what can I do for you in that there’s a joy in wanting to give? You know? And I think often professional people lose the joy. They’ve lost it, you know, because it’s it’s a job. There’s always gonna be suffering people, always people who need.
And so my job is is endless. But also our job is endless. You know? We’ve got to teach and benefit all sentient beings until every sentient being is enlightened. Well, it’s eons away.
But if you’ve got a joy about it, then what it’s giving you back is so much more than what you’re getting. Right? It comes back like that. So I think the thing to remember every day is how much benefit are you giving, and how much gratitude gratitude do you have for what you’re doing? And for the people who don’t have gratitude, I usually give them homework.
Have you got to find five new things every day? Five. Five new things that you’re grateful for every day. I tell you, it’s really nice on the first day. The sunrise, breakfast, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
You know? Easy. The second day, you can’t use the same things. So now, a little bit more difficult because you’re looking for somebody to smile at you, so you have to smile. You’re looking for somebody to be kind to you, so you have to be kind.
You know? It starts pushing you into you doing something because you’re looking for something to be grateful for. And by the end of the week, you’re totally desperate. You know, because you’ve used up everything and you don’t know where to go. You know?
So if if you go in the grateful way, it’s amazing. It really helps you to see the world in a completely different way because you’ve got your health, you’ve got your family, whatever you’ve got. You see all the things that you’re grateful for instead of all the things that you’re not grateful for and that seem to weigh down on you. And that sort of goes away and then you have much more sense of joy and humility, you know, that you’ve been put in a very important situation to be a benefit to others. That applies to all of us.
Every one of us is in an important situation. We have friends and family that we can benefit, And it’s only you who can do it. Don’t think somebody else can do it. Only you can do it that you can be a benefit to others. So if there’s something to solve, who should do it?
Me. If there’s something that in the past wasn’t good, wasn’t nice, who should do it? Me. Don’t be thinking they should do it. They should solve it.
They should be nice. They should make the first move, but I take the responsibility. I’m going to do it. So Yeah. He moves he moves the line.
Is there a line? Do you draw a line? Well, think that’s what we often do is if if you have limitations or if you feel that limitations are good for somebody else, You know? I mean, it’s it’s you can’t say to a child, here’s the matches and here’s the petrol and do what you like, you know, and then be surprised when they set the place on fire. And I think it’s the same with adults.
Some adults cannot be trusted to know what’s appropriate. You know? And so if you know better, if you really love and you care, but you know better in the way of having wisdom, you’re the one that has to draw the line. You’re the one that has to say, this is not good behavior. You know?
Don’t call me at three o’clock in the morning. Don’t keep asking me for money or don’t keep doing this or whatever it is, but teaching better behavior. You know? I think that’s part and parcel of being a good human being is if you’ve grown up and you’ve become a good human being with skills and qualities, you use that in order to teach others. But if you don’t use it to teach others, the other way is, you know, I remember saying that you either teach to fish or you give the fish.
Right? So if somebody’s hungry and you keep giving the fish, they come back tomorrow and they say, I’m hungry, and you give the fish. And they say, I’m hungry. You give the fish. And one day you say, it’s not a very good example for a Buddhist, anyway.
We go to the shop and we buy a fishing pole and I take you to the river and I teach you how to catch the fish or I keep doing it for you. Or the vegetable garden. You know, I teach you to to grow the vegetables if you’re a vegetarian. But which way are you approaching life? Are you just giving, giving, giving, and that person keeps saying, well, this is easy.
Take, take, take. But what happens when you’re not around to give? There’s a void. What do they do? You know, they have to start looking to somebody else to give.
And so they’re not learning better behavior, evolved behavior. They’re staying where they are because it works for them. There’s a habit of just, James, give me. James, give me. James, do this for me.
James, you know, like that. And so I think in families, it’s often difficult. But what do you want that person to do? Do you want them to evolve and grow and change, or do you want them to stay as they are? And then when you disappear, what do they do when you’re in New Zealand?
You have to look at somebody else. Right? Steve, Fred, you know? And then when James gets back, back to James. That’s not healthy.
Many years ago, his holiness said, it’s something that stuck in my mind. Being a bodhisattva, a bodhisattva is somebody with great compassion who wants to alleviate suffering. Right? So we call that bodhicitta. And that attitude is bodhicitta.
So it’s a a big mind. So being a bodhisattva, somebody with compassion, does not mean you become a doormat. Right? It doesn’t mean you become that doormat with welcome written on it, and you say to people, wipe your feet on me. So you may think when you’re developing compassion, I’m becoming a doormat, but actually you’re not.
You teach. You know? You you guide people and you teach them to evolve and to grow and to become better people. And that’s part of having good habits is not just going, oh, alright. You know, I’ll give you this time, but don’t come back.
And then, oh, alright. Then I’ll give you this time and don’t come back. But actually seeing the harm in the situation. Sometimes you have to be quite wrathful in order to stop that person creating negative karma. If you care about negative karma and they’re doing a negative action towards you, you care about the fact they’re harming themselves more than the fact that they’re harming you.
Right? So if you reduce the ego, it’s not about me being harmed. It’s about them harming themselves. It’s not about what they’re doing towards me. It’s about what they’re doing for themselves.
Do you understand? The focus switches, and you think, well, I don’t particularly care if they do this to me. You know? I I don’t have such an attachment to my ego now But if they’re angry towards me, it doesn’t bother me so much. If they want to take money from me, it doesn’t bother me so much.
But, actually, what bothers me more is what they’re doing to themselves, the harm that they do to them. That’s what bothers me. That’s what I want to change. Yeah. So then forgiveness.
So we’re back to the essential question. Why is it important? Why is forgiveness important? So it says here, no one is an island, and no one is perfect. So I I talked this morning about the karma and delusion.
So in that way, we recognize I’m not perfect. So why do I expect everybody else to be perfect? Nobody is perfect. So as we go through life, it’s inevitable that some of our interactions with others are going to be painful. There will be times when both as individuals and communities, we’re going to hurt one another.
In fact, as our world becomes even more complex and interconnected, the opportunities for conflict are likely to increase. I find this with emails and SMSs. You know? Sometimes you can get an email that you misread or that you don’t quite understand what’s behind it, and you can easily, you know, and put something nasty in there. And then they don’t quite know why you’re being nasty, and then they send something nasty back.
And because of our quick communication now, emotions can build very easily. And the same with SMSs. You know? And then you send it. And then afterwards, you think, why did I do it?
If you have something negative to send, my advice is put it into the draft box, D r a f t. Not draft as in windy, but the draft box. It’s a really good place to put it. Just leave it there. Wait a day.
Go back to it and read it. Read the email you received. Read the email that you’re sending back. You’ll often recognize that you’ve misread it, that you didn’t quite get the situation. Maybe because you’re already upset, you’re tired.
We often do emails at an unreasonable time of day. Know, eleven o’clock at night is not the time to be doing emails. Right? But we often do. I know many many people now that sit on their computers late at night and you become exhausted.
Know, your eyes go square and your fingers get really sore and your back gets sore and your mind gets sore and then you receive this email that you’re not quite sure about and you can react because of the the situation. Put it to one side. Read it when you’re feeling peaceful and relaxed. You’ll find that you see it in a completely different way and then you’ll be really happy you didn’t send that answer because you’re just about to create a whole situation where somebody has to forgive you. Right?
You’re going to have to put out, you’re going have to, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean that blah blah blah blah. And they’re going to have to forgive you recognizing that you make mistakes and you’re imperfect. So we’ve all done that. So why is it that they make mistakes and they’re imperfect and we don’t forgive?
You have to look at it from the other side. So when we experience difficulties with others, one option is that we can simply react with anger. Mahatma Gandhi is someone who experienced many hardships in his life, but felt strongly that anger was not the way to go. An eye for an eye leaves the world blind. It’s really good to think about because we grow up with this eye for an eye.
So Mahatma Gandhi, when he was told about this saying said, well then the whole world’s going to end up blind if everybody takes an eye for an eye. Yeah? So this was his comment on the idea of retaliation and revenge. Do we want to go that way? Do we want to have retaliation and revenge?
When you’re peaceful and quiet, think, of course not. I don’t want those qualities, those, you know, very negative feelings. I don’t want them in my life. But when we’re angry, we start thinking about retaliation and revenge. So Gandhi’s logic was that any of us who fails to forgive is actually trapped in a cycle of inner and sometimes outer violence which will eventually come back to hurt us.
So if you don’t forgive, you’re being violent towards yourself. And that violence towards yourself can result in external violence. We only have to look around us to see tragic cases where whole nations and societies are suffering in this way. So I think now the famous one is Israel, isn’t it? And Palestine.
Neither side forgives and so there’s no end to the violence. And Somalia and you know these tribe violences and everything. At any one time, there’s forty wars happening in the world. Forty wars. And none of us would say that we want to be in a war, that we want to experience war.
But what about individual war? Each one of us can have an individual war going on with our partner, with our friends, with our family, and that creates the karma to experience more of it. So do you want more of that in the future? That’s the decision to make. Laurens van der Post.
You know Laurens van der Post? At last, one person knows Laurens van der Post. You know Laurens van der Post? Okay. We’re getting somewhere now.
Mahatma Gandhi, I didn’t bother asking. I suppose you all knew Mahatma Gandhi. So he wrote a book called Night of the New Moon. He said forgiveness, my prison experience had taught me, was not mere religious sentimentality. It was as fundamental a law of the human spirit as the law of gravity.
If one broke the law of gravity, one broke one’s neck. If one broke this law of forgiveness, one inflicted a mortal wound on one’s spirit and became once again a member of the chain gang of cause and effect from which life has labored so long and so painfully to escape. So he says, if you don’t forgive, you become a member of the chain gang of cause and effect. And so you create the causes again to experience more harm, and this is because you don’t forgive. Then, archbishop Desmond Tutu said to forgive is not just to be altruistic.
It’s the best form of self interest. You need to forgive for yourself. Right? No matter what it does to the other person, but you must do it for you because it makes you feel better. It makes your heart feel more peaceful and happier.
The to forgive not just to be altruistic. Desmond Tutu. Do you know him? I believe his holiness loves him. Apparently they get together and have laughing parties.
Just the two of them laughing and laughing and laughing. Yeah. That must be that must be really nice. To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It’s the best form of self interest.
Wasn’t it Desmond Tutu who did that? They had the forgiveness tribunals? Wasn’t it reconciliation tribunals where people would come and say, I murdered these people, I did this and I did this in order that everybody could forgive. And they say that’s how South Africa has flourished is because they put a lot of work into forgiving. Because otherwise there would have been no People would have constantly been thinking why did they get away with it?
Why didn’t they say it? Why didn’t they ask for forgiveness? Why didn’t anybody get the opportunity to forgive? It creates a rift in society. Know?
And you think of small society, your relationship, your family, your friends, if we don’t do the same thing within there, it creates a rift and often families don’t talk to each other. So if we look closely, we can see that holding a grudge can be emotionally painful to the so called wrong party. So you’re wronged. Somebody did something harmful towards you. You hold a grudge and it’s you who gets hurt because of the grudge.
It just continues on and on. It can also have the potential to be physically harmful. Bitterness can eat into us like cancer making us sick in body and mind. At a family level, not forgiving a perceived perpetrator can lead to generations of unhappy relations as resentment and ill will are nurtured. At a national level, not forgiving can be catastrophic leading to an endless cycle of wars, death and misery.
Forgiveness is the tool that can enable us to stop hitting back at the people and situations that cause us pain. It is also the healing that enables us to move on from a painful situation and regain our happiness and peace of mind. So we have to start looking at the situation in a different way in order to heal. If you are holding on to grudges and situations, past anger, and you don’t see it in a different way, you won’t want to heal. You won’t want to remove the resentment and the anger.
You won’t want to forgive. So that’s why we have to do the work of looking at why do I do negative things? Why do I harm? Right? Do I want to?
Is it because I always want to be angry? Do I always want to be jealous? Or sometimes it just happens. Right? Sometimes that delusion and karma comes together.
It’s a very powerful force. We do a negative action and then afterwards we regret it. Right? And we think, Oh, I wish I hadn’t done that. Don’t you think others do the same?
Don’t you think others do that same harm not wishing to, but it comes about because of the force of karma and delusion and all the conditions coming together. So therefore, if I have done negative situations in that way, others have done it in the same way, I should forgive myself and in the same way I should forgive others. Okay? Do you understand? It’s looking at it from your own perspective and then using your own experience to look at it from another’s perspective.
Rather than you only look at it from your own perspective and you say, they’ve harmed me, I’m the victim, they’re wrong, I’m right, and you continue suffering. The only thing that these grudges and anger does for us is to make us sick, to harm us. Right? So we need to forgive, but we need to find a reason to forgive. What does it mean to forgive?
Does it mean to forget? You know? In South Africa, they didn’t say we forget, they said we forgive. You don’t forget the harm that’s been done in the past, but you forgive it. You don’t forget, you forgive.
People frequently misunderstand what it means to practice forgiveness. Right at the outset, it should be made clear that forgiving someone does not mean that we forget the harm that person has done to us or pretending that it never happened. So often that’s what we do when something bad has happened after a while. We sort of act as if it never happened. We pretend.
But then our mind goes back to when they did it, and we feel they never apologized, they never tried to fix it, and now we’re not quite sure if they’re going to do it again, so can we fully trust them? Right? So it also undermines the trust that you can have in somebody. How can we ever overcome our difficulties if we deny they ever occurred or try to wipe them from our memory? True forgiveness does not attempt to erase or rewrite the past.
Instead, forgiveness allows us to let go of those destructive attitudes towards the past that condemn the victim and the perpetrator to remain needlessly imprisoned in a cycle of recrimination and guilt. So how do we forgive? So here it’s saying forgiveness allows us to let go of those destructive attitudes towards the past. So the past has happened. The past is a memory.
Right? We’ve moved on from the past, but what we’re doing is holding our position, our way of viewing the past. And the view is a negative view. And who is it harming? Me.
It’s potentially harming other people. But initially, what we’re concerned with right now is it’s harming me. By holding on to this negative view, I am hurting myself I’m also potentially hurting others. So there’s this cycle of recrimination and guilt which just continues on and on. So you say, You did that.
You know, and then they feel guilty. But it just goes on and on. There doesn’t seem to be a way of getting out of it. So how do we break out of this? So then it cites Desmond Tutu, who presided over the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, which was set up in nineteen ninety five to help South Africans talk about and come to terms with the atrocities that took place during the apartheid era.
His conclusion from this experience was that without memory, there is no healing. He said, Desmond Tutu said, without memory, there is no healing. Without forgiveness, there is no future. Without memory, there is no healing. Without forgiveness, there is no future.
You mean talking to somebody who’s unforgiving? But it doesn’t depend on them. It only depends on you. You change your mind. So you’re the one who feels you need to forgive.
Somebody, okay, let’s take a situation of Mary and you’re Amanda, right? So Mary does something harmful towards Amanda and then Amanda stops talking to Mary. Right? And so this is six months ago. Every day Amanda keeps going back to it.
Mary did this to me. Mary did this to me. And you’re building the resentment and the anger. Right? You’re adding to the habit of it keep going back.
Keep going back. But every time you go back, the feeling’s building because you’re adding more seeds to it. And so the time that you spend on it could be longer, more intense, deeper. Remember that poem about going into the hole? I fall into the hole.
You’re digging the hole. I’m determined to get into this hole. Then it’s going be so difficult to get out. Know, so you go deeper and deeper and deeper. So what you’re doing, you know where it says, without forgiveness there is no future.
Where are you putting your energy? The past. There is no future. You don’t have a future. You’re only thinking what’s happened in the past, which is a memory.
It doesn’t exist anymore. But it exists because you continually revisiting it and carrying it around on your shoulders. It’s becoming a burden because you decide to make it a burden. So if there’s something to forgive, you can forgive, but it doesn’t need something from the other side. It doesn’t need for them to say, I’m sorry.
I made a mistake. Please forgive me. You forgive because you want to. You say, okay, I recognize that that person out of karma and delusion did a harmful action. They didn’t know what they were doing because of karma and delusion and obviously they still don’t because of karma and delusion.
Right? They can’t see out of their confusion that they’ve done something harmful. Then actually I’m more sorry. I have more compassion for somebody like that who can’t even see it. Because it means in their life they’re doing many harmful actions which they don’t understand because of their confusion.
And what they’re creating for themselves in the future is even more harm. Even more alienation, more anger, more hatred, less friends, less family. So you should have more compassion. So out of your love and compassion, you forgive. And then if they ever come to you and say, please forgive me.
You say, well actually I did that a long time ago. I wasn’t carrying it around. I’m really happy for you that you changed your mind, but from my side, I changed my mind a long time ago. So it’s not dependent on them. It’s dependent on you.
How you want to change your feeling so that you’re a happier human being. So you can come from qualities rather than coming from negativities. Which is important for you? Do you want to have resentment and bitterness and anger and jealousy? Do you want those in your life?
Like inviting poisons into your heart? It’s like drinking poison. Or do you want the good qualities? So this is what we decide. Said last week, Dharma or drama?
So what we’re talking about is Dharma But you know, there’s the the other pathway which is the drama. I’m sorry but many of you choose the drama path because you watch the bold and the beautiful and the young and the restless and what was the Australian series? Neighbors Neighbors and you know, twenty years later they’re still doing the same thing. Somebody trying to kill somebody, somebody divorcing somebody, somebody sleeping with somebody. Never finishes.
Just always drama, oh, so interesting. Or you’re reading that sort of drama book, you know. I had a friend who was a Buddhist and she used to read lots of, oh what was her name? Not Enid Blyton. The one who writes many, many books like a book a week and it’s always a man coming along on a white horse.
Who? Barbara Cartland. Yeah. Barbara Carton. She’d read Barbara Carton every single week and she always thought this guy was gonna come along on a white horse and just whisk her up, you know, onto that horse and gallop away with her.
And I said, why do you think this? And she said, well, you know, somehow it’s in these books and she was always thinking it will happen. And of course, it never happens that way. And if you’re always waiting for it, it’s not gonna happen that way. You’re always waiting for a horse.
You know, there’s not many horses these days, possibly on an RX-seven motorbike or something, but not a horse. But you can start to view the world in that way. Or you start to think that actually drama is really interesting and dharma’s a bit boring. You know, having love and compassion and forgiveness and all that, it’s a bit boring. There’s no ups and downs.
It’s all nice. Nice, nice, nice, nice. And so people say to me, I think life would be a bit boring to be like that. Well, who needs all this interesting stuff? Fighting all the time, jealous all the time, hatred all the time.
It exhausts you. You exhaust your adrenal glands. You exhaust your kidneys. So your adrenals are connected to the kidneys. You exhaust your kidneys.
Your kidneys are connected to your heart, which affects your blood pressure. So your blood pressure goes up. Your kidneys are not functioning, you start to hold water, you get bigger, you get heavier, you have a heart attack and you drop dead. And you think, well, at least life was interesting. It takes time.
And it takes time. As far as being gentle in yourself, say it’s gonna be hard. What’s it’s to start with yourself and being gentle on yourself, being kind to yourself, Not with the We have to be careful because out there, in the normal world, we say be kind to yourself, but it’s a never ending well. You know? It doesn’t finish.
The purpose in Buddhism of being kind to yourself is so that you can be kind to others. The purpose of being patient towards yourself is to be patient with others. So you’ve got to experience it towards yourself in order to give it to others. So you have to be a bit careful that you don’t just think, I’m going to keep giving to myself so that, ultimately, I’ll be able to help them and it never happens. You know?
Because it’s just all about me, me, me, me and this big ego. So, yes, you do have to start there and sometimes you will choose the drama path. But you know. Right? Now you know.
I say to people, once you know this, you’re damned in the way of cursed. You know? Because you come to the the fork in the road and you think, drama? Drama. Well, you know, haven’t had much drama in my life lately.
Oh, alright. I’ll go for the drama this time. But you know you’re choosing. Whereas before, you never knew. You just did it.
Right? So you go from drama, confusion, exhaustion. I’m tired of this. Looking for an answer, you find Dharma which is a path to take you out of all that confusion. So it’s a path out of confusion or the rocky path into confusion.
Which road do you take? Which path do you take? And in the path, there wasn’t a choice. There wasn’t a path. There was just the rocky one.
Now there’s a choice. And so sometimes you choose drama. Sometimes you choose Dharma. Then more Dharma, less drama because you recognize how it’s so harmful for you and it’s so harmful for others. So the dharma is more, drama less, gradually it changes until one day you see that the dharma is complete and the drama has disappeared.
You know it just seems to have vanished because you’re not creating the causes for it. You’re not continually putting those seeds to experience the result. It’s completely transformed. But you need to keep planting those seeds. Know, I like to think of the mind as a garden.
And what are you planting in your garden? Know, because we love beautiful gardens. We don’t love poisonous plants and spiky plants and cactuses and stuff like that. We don’t like them. So why are we planting them?
So whenever you have these negative states of mind that arise, the resentment and the the grudge that keeps going on and on and on, you keep seeing that as those seeds, those seeds, those seeds. Why do you keep planting it? Because you’re only going to experience the result of it. And you don’t want the result of it, isn’t it? Okay.
Have a cup of tea and think about that.