Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Ven Robina Courtin frames Buddhist practice as learning to be your own therapist. She begins with motivation: what matters is your intention, not the external action. She introduces Buddha nature—the claim that every sentient being has the potential to become a Buddha. Buddhism, she argues, integrates psychology (how the mind works) and philosophy (reality as it is). Through the example of attachment to a cup, she reveals how misconceptions about permanence create all our suffering. The antidote is not changing circumstances but changing your fundamental view of reality. She covers the three scopes of practice and emphasizes a critical gap in Western Buddhism: many study it intellectually without letting it transform their daily life. Pitched at anyone curious about Buddhist psychology or serious about bridging theory and practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 2002 01 18 BYT.mp3
UUID: e52fdd17-e747-4d5d-91ac-335aee2da691
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Be Your Own Therapist (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2002-01-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~8,566
Thinking about their meaning, applying them to our lives. Given given that according given, you know, the according to the Mahāyāna tradition of lord Buddha’s teachings, the main determining factor in the karmic result that will come from whatever we do, say, or think, and, indeed, Buddha is saying that there is, you know, always a result to whatever we do, say, or think. The main determining factor isn’t the thing itself. You know? Isn’t this activity of looking holy, sitting, listening to Buddha’s teachings.
It’s what’s in our mind. It’s what’s in our mind. Clearly, the most far reaching, altruistic motivation to have for doing something, obviously, is altruism. The most far reaching is altruism. So even though we mightn’t have very much compassion or love for even one person in our heart right now, maybe our heart feels pretty hopeless and cold, that’s okay.
Shall I wait till you’re ready? You tell me when you’re ready, darling. That’s fine. Your mom’s taking one more time. Oh, okay.
We’re starting now. We’re ready now. Yeah? Yes. Okay.
Good. Thank you so much. So, yeah, the main motivation, let’s think this way, know, is this one of altruism. So if we haven’t got that in our heart right now, we tend to think in the West, well, if it’s not in my heart, it’s not sincere, you know, what can I do? Well, you know, the Buddha’s view is you start you start.
You have to start somewhere just like you start doing anything. So you start with a thought. There’s a Tibetan saying that everything exists on the tip of the wish. So we have a thought. And by understanding by understanding the logical shall I wait until we start?
Because I’m supposed to record this for some course. It is actually recorded on one tape. It’s meant to be on two tapes, so the final one is on the Oh, okay. So we’re okay then. I beg your pardon.
Alright. They told me to make sure somebody’s asked me to make sure it’s all taped, they have to use it as a course. I have to try and Good. Me too. Okay.
So we’re trying to be doing our motivation here. Beg your pardon. Interrupting all the time. Alright. So we put into our mind the thought, you know, the thought.
We think, okay. You know? According to Buddha, I have the potential to be extraordinarily developed, to have a I’ve got this enormous potential for for for clarity and joy and kindness and love and all the rest. This is, in fact, my natural state. So thinking how fantastic, how wonderful it would be if I if I could develop that.
So for that reason, I’m sitting here right now listening to these teachings, thinking about their meaning, seeing if there’s something there relevant to my life in order to develop this this very marvelous potential. So this is our motivation. And it’s for the sake of all sentient beings. Think like that. You know?
So we can just sing a prayer. The first part of this prayer is going for refuge, and the second part of it is is this expressing of this altruistic motivation. And for auspiciousness, let’s offer a mandala, as they say. That’s a prayer that we recite that basically is saying that we’re offering all the most precious things in the universe to every pore of the Buddha, to the Buddha as a request to receive the teachings. Thinking like this.
Okay. So I think it’s probably not not some kind of it’s not just a cute cliche, you know, to say that being a Buddhist means being your own therapist. It’s actually deeply true, you know. So, okay, there are different levels of practice, and obviously, in anything you’re attempting to learn, there are different levels, aren’t there, of capability? Also, the way the teachings are presented, the way Lord Buddha’s teachings are presented as something practical that’s sort of unique to the Tibetan approach is, according to this system they call the Lamrim, which is really presenting all the stages of the path to enlightenment in a nice orderly way.
You know? So you know perfectly well that’s when you want to learn to be a carpenter. You want to learn music. You want to learn anything. You know, you go to structured courses.
You begin at the beginning, then the the most easy, then you you develop you know, let’s say you’re learning piano. You know, you learn certain techniques to make your fingers nimble or your your scales and your arpeggios, and you learn the little pieces, then you graduate to grade two and so on and so forth. So we understand perfectly how to learn something. It’s very comfortable in our minds. But what’s most interesting, as soon as we get to something called spiritual, we kind of throw out all our logic.
We tend to think it’s beyond ordinary. There’s no logic to it. There’s no practical step by step path. You just somehow, it’s all to do with something very miss fairly mystical. We don’t really know why.
We’re not supposed to know why, and we cross our fingers, and we hope for the best. It’s sort of like this. I’m not trying to be rude to us. But the Buddhist approach is it’s as practical as learning how to be a carpenter. You know?
Okay. We’re talking about something kinda more sublime than being a carpenter. Nothing wrong with carpenters. We’re dealing with transforming this human mind of ours into something that is truly astonishing. In the long term, certainly according to the Mahāyāna teachings, Buddha would say that the capability of every living being is to become a perfect person, to become, you know, you could say, like, it could become god, which sounds shocking.
When my my Catholic mom heard this, she was completely outraged, you know, thought this was a very wicked thing to say. But Buddha’s not trying to be wicked. It’s just Buddha’s teachings, you know. He says that every single living being possesses Buddha nature. So what this word what this phrase simply refers to I mean, the word Buddha is Sanskrit.
It means fully awakened, which already has an interesting flavor. You know? It’s indicating that we’re asleep right now. And you’ll see from the way the teachings unfold, this is very much a way Buddha talks. Know?
And then this Buddha nature, all it means, so simple, is that we each possess innately, naturally, the potential to be a Buddha, which is to be perfect, basically, to be fully awake. I mean, the this is you know, the when we hear that what a Buddha is, it sounds a bit like god, really, but this is the Buddha’s teaching. We have each of us innately. If you exist, you necessarily possess this potential. This is if you like, this is who you are.
You know? It’s who you really are. It’s your it’s it’s it’s it’s who you know? It’s your nature. So what a Buddha is, essentially there are three qualities, you know.
There’s one analogy in Mahāyāna Buddhism that says that a bird needs two wings. And one is wisdom and one is compassion. So you could say that two of the qualities of a Buddha one way of describing a Buddha it’s complete, actually, but there is a third quality we can add, but actually it’s contained in these two. The full development of wisdom, and eventually that means literally omniscience, knowing everything. And the full development of compassion, empathy with all living beings as if they were oneself.
We’re gonna be describing this this unfolding this path. Okay? So that’s what a Buddha is. And then also, the third quality can be described as infinite power, effortless ability to do whatever needs to be done to benefit every one of these living beings in this universe for whom one has infinite compassion, and incidentally, who’s one one in whose minds one knows perfectly. These are the qualities of a Buddha.
And what Buddha is saying is that’s who we are, every one of us. This is our nature. Like, when I I mean, you know, I mentioned last night if you were there. If you see an acorn, you you know that an acorn isn’t just this little cute thing. You know what it really is is the seed for this amazing, wonderful oak tree.
So the oak tree ness of us, basically, is Buddha. That’s what Buddhism is saying. So all the teachings, you know, the teachings of the Buddha, according to the Mahāyāna tradition, there are two main traditions in Buddhism, have two different goals, is you know, presents the steps of how to achieve that potential, how to become who we really are. This is the idea. You know?
So this this idea of being your own therapist is actually it’s it’s profoundly true. You know? Because the essential job we’re trying to do is transform this consciousness of ours, this human consciousness of ours, into its true nature. This doesn’t necessarily refer to being in another place called heaven. You know, it’s simply it’s it’s it’s a psychological process, and that’s not meant to diminish it or demean it at all, you know, but it’s actually true.
Buddha is dealing actually with psychology, which is sort of surprising to us because when we hear religion, we immediately hear something that’s completely kind of marginalised. It’s nothing to do with psychology. Psychology is kind of real and it’s life, isn’t it? But religion, you know, is marginalized for most of us in our minds. We don’t see it as to do with life.
That’s the Buddhist idea. There’s no contradiction, not a fraction of contradiction, you know. Where you do another saying from from another lama, he says, the workshop is in the mind. The workshop is in the mind. That’s why we’re doing the work.
You know? Because that’s where all the potential is. That’s where our Buddha nature is. Buddha you know, our potential isn’t in our nose or our eyelashes or our toenails. It’s not in the body.
It’s in our mind, our consciousness. So this weekend, we’re gonna be sort of presenting the stages of the path to becoming who we really are, and showing again and again all the way through the constant theme is one’s own mind, you know. So like I said before, there are different levels of practice. And so this presentation, according to the Tibetan tradition, is divided into three scopes of capability, if you like. One, the most basic, the second, the more advanced, and the third, the most advanced.
And so using this, know, linking it to the analogy of the two wings, the first two scopes of practice are the first wing, are all the work that we do to develop what we call wisdom, and we’ll go into all this. And the third scope, the most advanced, is the second wing, the work of compassion. So another way of presenting this is all the work of the compassion wing is all is whatever we do that is actively, directive directly relating to benefiting others. So there are all these various practices and techniques we do to develop this capacity, you know, to be this Buddha. The wisdom wing is all the work we do directly that brings no.
That brings direct benefit to you can say it like this. Look. The compassion wing brings direct benefit to others, and indirectly, of course, to oneself. But the wisdom wing brings direct benefit to oneself, and, of course, indirectly to others. So they’re absolutely linked, you know?
It’s just a question of emphasis. So the work on the wisdom wing, or the first two scopes, is where you’re really learning to harness the crazy energy of this uncontrolled body, speech and mind of our own, really learning to understand what is the cause of our suffering, what is the cause of our happiness, really learning to take responsibility, to really be your own therapist, and learn to know exactly how our mind functions, what is positive, what is negative, why do I suffer, why am I happy. So it’s like bringing all the energy in to really investigate our own mind, you know, rather than being totally caught up in and seduced by the outside world, which is how we are now. Happiness is out there. Suffering is out there.
Work is out there. It’s all out there. But Buddha is saying it’s actually in here. There’s not meant to be some cliche, you know. Slowly, slowly, we begin to see this.
So in terms of the wisdom wing, we must do this job first. If we can’t put ourselves together, how on earth can we benefit even a dog? Know? Not possible. We can’t really begin to develop genuine compassion until we’ve done something with our own mind.
Another way of saying that is, you know, how can I possibly really understand the suffering of another until I really understand my own suffering, and the causes of suffering? We’re dealing with that very directly in the second scope of practice. So, basically, what I’ll do tonight is just give an overview, just touch on the main kind of almost like the main headings of the various stages of practice, and then we’ll it point by point tomorrow, you know, tomorrow morning. But we’ll be giving I’ll give the overview tonight. And just gonna give a general approach, actually, really, which is important, to how to how to listen, how to hear, how these words that will be coming out of my mouth, which are, you know, hopefully valid Buddhist teachings, not something Rabina made up, how to make these something practical for our life, which is the whole point.
I think, you know, when we think about learning the theory of botany in order to become a gardener, recipes in order become a cook, it’s kind of very clear, the distinction, isn’t it? We understand when you’re doing the theory, and we really can see the difference when you’re doing the practice. Well, it’s much more difficult in something like this, because the theory is in using one part of the mind, and practice is using another part of the mind. So it’s very easy to get caught up in thinking that you’re practicing being a Buddhist when all you’re doing is knowing the theory, about all the thoughts, all the concepts. You know?
It’s very easy to do that. And this is we can see in our culture, you know, there’s a very strong emphasis on, you know, on on really learning. I mean, we have marvelous intelligent minds. I mean, Tibetans are always kind of the Tibetan lama is always completely impressed by the general amount of intelligence in the western the very technical western mind, you know, and how we’re very educated. We know how to use our minds.
So we know how to learn all about different psychological models. We know all about the theories. We know all about philosophy and different standpoints of different beings in the universe, you know. We know a lot about a lot of things. But what’s interesting, when it comes to psychology and philosophy, we learn how to look we know how to learn them and intellectualize them.
But even it seems sometimes in our culture that to actually practice them almost makes it inferior, you know. So one needs to retain some objectivity. So we can pass our exams in psychology and philosophy, but still walk get home and be depressed and not know that what we just learned should be affecting us. We should be able to make it go from the theory to the heart, theory to practice. So that’s the key.
And so one of the essential qualities of this particular way of presenting Buddha’s teachings is in terms of its being experiential. So as Lama Tsongkhapa, the lineage lama of one of the Tibetan traditions which teachings will be presented according to, says that there’s no contradiction between scripture and practice. You know? Also, all the teachings are to be taken as sound advice as there is no contradiction between scripture and practice. Well, scripture is just the theories, the words, you know, the texts, the philosophical presentations.
There’s no contradiction, and everything needs to be taken as practice for this reason, to hear it in that way. So just like you know yourself, if you’re learning to be a cook, you never get to the point where you suddenly get so confused and you you you think you really know that you know how to make a cake when you’ve never actually made one. You’ve a head full of recipes, you know. And you say you’re a cook. Oh, please make me a chocolate cake.
Well, no. I don’t actually know to do that. Well, I know the recipe. I mean, people would laugh you out of the kitchen if you said you were a cook, wouldn’t they? If you only knew the theories.
So we can see, you know. And we can see this is our big problem and why so many of us perhaps in our culture have become cynical with religion. Because all we ever do is see people who say all the words but never do it, you know. So it’s like saying all the recipes but never making the cake. So we I mean, it’s reasonable.
So the the key thing is to is to know that every word you’re hearing in this room this weekend, maybe ninety five percent of it you might not even like. I You’re pretty brave to sit through the whole weekend if that’s the case. But let’s just say, ninety five percent of it you don’t want to know about. That’s okay, it’s your decision anyway. But the key thing is to know that one hundred percent of every word uttered here necessarily is something that is practical, that is a recipe that will bring a cake, even if you don’t understand it.
It doesn’t matter. But have that kind of take that as an assumption. And so then you hear it in a very different way. You hear it in terms of, well, how to practice it, how it links to my life, you know. So the way to listen is as as if someone were giving you advice, as if a doctor were giving you advice.
So if we, you know, if we’re sick, we listen very carefully to advice. We don’t wanna miss a single point because we know we wanna get better. So that’s one of the analogies I would use in Buddhism, that we all have we’re all suffering to one extent or another, and we’re gonna talk in detail about what exactly that means, you know? So if so having that attitude, it it really brings some kind of eagerness to listen to it. You know?
And, again, you mightn’t like the advice, and that’s okay. That’s your decision too. You don’t need to be a Buddhist. You can be also, you can be a one percent Buddhist. That’s really okay.
But to have this attitude, to know how to listen, you know? Another little analogy they use is don’t listen like the three there’s an example of three pots. Don’t be like the three pots. The first pot up, the order. It doesn’t matter.
Don’t be like the pot that’s got a hole in it. It’s like in one ear, out the other. Don’t be like that kind of pot that’s got a hole. Everything goes in or leaks out. That’s bit useless.
So learn to retain. And this is very interesting. The in the Tibetan monasteries, one of the the the ways they learn is to memorize everything, not just to become kind of some, you know, parrot. Because instead of having your external computer, your own mind is your computer. Can you imagine?
I mean, they learn from tiny children to memorize all the the vast text and things, and so when they’ve them all down and memorized and they go to the teaching and start hearing it, they can kind of access, oh, yeah, chapter three, line two, blah blah blah, it’s all in here, you know? It’s amazing. And then, of course, logically, with the idea Buddhist idea of reincarnation, you take it all with you, very comfortable. So listening in that way, the first pot. The second pot is the one that’s dirty.
What you know, you’ve got a very polluted dirty pot. Whatever goes in gets polluted too. So this doesn’t mean you have to sort of go, oh, oh, I believe all this is what’s being said. You have a very intelligent mind, but very steady mind that listens with a good open mind, good kind of objectivity. But have your mind very open, not full of pollution.
It doesn’t help. It’s just not benefit to you. And the third one is don’t listen like the pot that’s upside down. Nothing goes in. So if you’re sitting here and your head is full of other things ninety percent of the time, I mean, you’ve wasted your money and your time.
Might as well go out the door, you know? I mean, we all know we haven’t got such good concentration. We get scattered quite a But when we just think of this, then we really take the essence of whatever’s here, and then we can say with objectivity afterwards, having thought about it, yes, there’s something useful there for me. And another way to listen, which is important actually, we tend to hear things and we think of, oh, my mother really should hear this, you know. My next door neighbor, my husband, my god, I wish he was here.
He needs to hear this kind of thing. We mean it well, but we also mean it, my goodness, he really needs it, you know, isn’t it? That might be true. The world needs it. Come on.
But we’re here so this is one way to think too. You’re here today for yourself. In terms of developing yourself to make yourself a better person so you can benefit the whole world. Fantastic. But you’re here to learn skills, you know.
That’s the way. That’s the way to think. It’s for yourself. So refer like I said before, it’s advice for a sickness. You know?
So refer it all to yourself. Take it personally. And, also, he also and this is interesting too. I mean, we’re in a retreat this weekend. It’s not gonna be silent.
Well, we well, if you all like it to be silent, we can easily be silent. I mean, I have to talk, I’m afraid. But, you know, if you wanted to be silent, maybe we’ll talk about it the end of the day. Or have you decided already? Did you discuss all this, Gloria?
You’re gonna be silent? The whole weekend? Yes. You wanted. They you told them or they’ve agreed?
I told them. But I mightn’t agree. We can always change. Let’s just just just maybe maybe we can discuss. Because sometimes there is advantage in talking some of the time because it’s really good to discuss all this stuff.
So if you wanna think about it by the end of the day end of the night. If you have any opinions because you’ve all decided it’s already gonna be decided. Maybe you’re happy. Okay. I don’t mind.
Whatever. Well, that’s the case. We can have talk in here, know, we can discuss as much as you like. You can shout and yell and debate with me. I don’t care.
So the okay. So that’s interesting because then if you’re gonna be if we’re gonna be silent, then that really is really good because that means it’s like you’re here on your own. Even if you’re sharing a room with somebody, you know, one of the things when we’re all together like this and this you know, we try to be silent and make it like a retreat. Then when we’re together a lot, we commonly have all these kind of polite ways we are with each other. We sort of excuse me, I’m sorry, and we smile, and we say hello, and how are you?
Which is very nice. But actually, the the idea here is to it’s like you’re here on your own. Just kind of they talk about a yogi as a person who just walks straight ahead, doesn’t look left or right. So have have sort of get a sense of that. You’re just walking straight ahead.
Know? You’re here for yourself to really look inside, to listen to this stuff, using using using it as a sounding board to hear to look at yourself. You know? So that’s marvelous. You wanna be silent.
That’s fantastic. I mean, my suggestion might have been to have silence from, say, up to lunchtime or something. Anyway, whatever. But if you’d like that, that’s great. Do you have a preference?
Everybody? Or we just assume you’ll be silent? On other retreats at Buddha House, we actually maintain silence outside of the but within the Gompa we’ve had discussions. So that silence isn’t strictly shut up and sit up the whole time. It is actually voicing opinions and About the cheating?
Yeah. So when you come in, so you wanna have a gander about the weather, you come into the Gompa. Is that what you’re saying? That’s possible. Well, that’s cheating.
There’s no point in being there. That’s just ridiculous. It’s not being silent at all. Is possible, but it’s generally being too there’s a need to be discussion. Oh, I see.
Okay. It’s good to discuss. Yeah. Anyway, we’ll see what happens. Okay.
So So like I said, this way of presenting all of these stages of the path in terms of how to in in in in incorporate them. Okay? Is it’s very interesting. This is this is more about how to think as well. This is really part of Buddha’s this is part of Buddha’s teachings, is how to think as well.
But, like I said, you know, we we hear something religious. We hear psychology. We sort of hear something pretty practical. Philosophy is kind of interesting concepts and ideas about how things are. And so Buddhism is both of those.
Buddhism had Buddha has a very extensive and detailed and very precise presentation of how the mind functions, a very kind of solid model of the mind. You know? And indeed, Buddhism is absolutely philosophy. It’s a very, again, detailed and profound presentation of Buddha’s view of how come the universe, how come me, Hitler, suffering, war, Osama bin Laden, happiness, rich people, poor people, you name it. Buddha’s view of who am I?
Where do I come from? Who created me? Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? All the questions every one of us asks, you know?
So Buddha has detailed explanations, answers for all these things. So again, another way to think is important when we hear the Buddha’s teachings. It’s like Buddha is saying, don’t believe a single word I’m telling you. The aim in Buddhism is not to blindly believe it, nor indeed to blindly reject. So that’s not an intelligent way to see it.
You know? It’s to hear it in an objective way, and then, like I said, just to apply it to oneself. We don’t need to believe it. It’s to try and work it out, you know, to see how it functions. And so and then, you know, so Buddhism is psychology.
It’s a very detailed explanation of the human mind. And as I said, it the essential job of Buddhists is being their own therapist, so we’re dealing with the mind. And then there’s Buddhist philosophy, his view of reality presented very clearly. Then also you can say, for sure, where all this integrates, where this completely kind of where these intersect completely, psychology and philosophy, is in terms of it it’s being a way of life. And so what Buddhist religion or spiritual path is all about is doing this job, knowing your own mind, knowing according to Buddhist philosophy that it has astonishing potential, and then by changing this is the point in Buddhism.
By changing the way we see things, or another way to say it, changing all these layers upon layers of what Buddha says are fundamental wrong assumptions that we act according to. Completely just in just in our being, in our bones. They’re so ancient, you know? And he’s saying they’re fundamentally wrong assumptions about how reality is. And so this is where the, you psychology and philosophy completely intersect.
And sort of having this background really helps understand hearing the teachings in a clear way, you know, that the extent to which Buddha’s saying, the extent to which we have a wrong assumption about something and therefore act according to that assumption in our daily life is the extent to which we suffer. And he’s saying equally, which is most fascinating, the extent to which we’re we have less wrong assumptions, the the extent to which we are more in sync with how things are, is the more happy we are. There’s this direct relationship that’s kinda most interesting. And we’re we’re really describing this, you know, all the way through. So for example, you know, one of Buddha’s main kind of tenets, one of the very extensive presentations of his view of reality according to a certain level, because it goes to levels and levels and levels ever more subtle, is that everything’s impermanent.
Now we go, okay. That’s really intelligent. We know that. Don’t need Buddha to tell us that. But Buddha’s saying, excuse me.
Maybe we know the words, but we act as if things ought to be permanent. We kind of act as if things are permanent. So look look at this as an example. This is exactly the point I’m saying. So I’m attached to my cup.
Believe me, I’m not. It doesn’t keep my drinks cold, hot, and it leaks, so I’m not attached to it. But, nevertheless, still, it’s my only cup, and so I think, where’s my cup? You know? So it has to be then.
The more you’re attached to your cup, isn’t it, or whatever the thing is, you think about it, your own self, your whoever, the the more you have this kind of projection onto the cup that it that it ought to be there. It’s just it’s it’s like a it’s like this expectation we have, isn’t it? It’s completely just fundamental in us. The more we want the cup to be there, the more we want the more we are attached to it, the more we want it to be there, the more we expect it to be there. In other words, we expect that it is permanent, that it ought to be there when we want it, and it ought to be nice and shiny and new, you know, and function well.
We I mean, what Buddha is saying is this is actually what we think inside, this deep assumption, but it’s so almost beyond words for us because it’s so now so automatic that we don’t notice it. Our head says one thing, but, actually, you know, our heart is completely doing something else. There’s this complete separation. And the proof of this is this. You know, you get up, let’s say, I break my cup or something, especially if it’s my grandma’s special antique cup, you know, up on my shelf up there looking beautiful every day that you treasure and and love and think about and don’t want to get lost and hope it’s not broken and all this.
You know? So there’s enormous assumption that it’s gonna be staying there every day, a need for it to be like that. Right? We’re all the same. So what happens when you work when you come one day and you see it broken?
I mean, mental breakdown. Right? Sure. So we think so the logic is, so, what’s wrong? Nanny’s cup broke.
Freak out. Freak out. Sue who knows what. You know, you’re gonna sue somebody for breaking it. Whatever you’re gonna do.
So we think, I think I’m unhappy because my cup broke, which is the usual way we talk. Buddha says, no. Wrong. Wrong. You’re unhappy because you thought your cup shouldn’t break.
And this is all the way across the board how Buddha talk talks. You know? So this is the way to kind of this this is sort of the Buddha’s way of talking, that we have these wrong views, these misconceptions, these fundamental kind of primordial wrong assumptions, that these misconceptions that are so deep in our being now they are totally automatic, we never question, we don’t even notice that we think them, because they are just how we see things. It’s the status quo. Well, this is why it is hard to see our minds very deeply, and therefore it’s why it’s hard to change, because these mis these misconceptions aren’t just some kind of inter interesting intellectual concept when you say, oh, that’s that’s a plate.
No. No, Rubina. It’s a cup. Uh-oh. Sorry.
Change my concept. It’s a cup. Okay. Got it. They’re much more profound than that.
And what Buddha is saying is we we hold on to these assumptions as the truth. And when they’re attacked and and when we’re thwarted in our life and our assumptions are are, you know, are attacked, then we freak out. That’s what suffering is. You know? So this is why Buddha says, the way to liberation is by changing your mind.
He’s not joking. It’s not me doing again, some kind of cute cliche. It’s a profound truth. You know? It’s and it’s the most difficult job of It’s easy to become get a handsome, beautiful body.
It’s easy to become a great physicist and become rich or whatever. That’s falling off a log. To transform this mind, my goodness. That’s another story. But what Buddha is saying is this.
As I said before, the extent to which we suffer is the extent to which we are out of sync with reality, is the extent which we hold these misconceptions deeply in our being about how things are at many, many levels. You know? And this is what we’re gonna be discussing the weekend going through all this. So we’re gonna be presenting you know? And already, this is a Buddha’s view.
I’m already presenting Buddha’s view. So we are presenting Buddha’s view of how things are, Buddha’s view of why we suffer and how we how we alter and how and how to get happy, and then the methods of how to do so, of how to integrate these how to remove from the mind, if you like, these misconceptions, these wrong assumptions, and how to replace them, if you wish, with what Buddha is saying is the is the correct thoughts, conceptions about how reality is. So this is where, of course, it comes in that you don’t have to believe this. It’s up to each one of us in this room whether we take this further after this weekend. If we’re already Buddhist because we’ve thought about it and we’ve committed our lives to changing our our assumptions, you know, then fine.
If we’re not, then we think about it. And if we feel it’s reasonable, we go to the next step, and then the next step, and we keep following and unfolding it, unraveling it to see. And as long as it continually works for us, then, of course, you keep doing it. If you get to a certain point where it doesn’t work, or you really feel it’s inconsistent, or it doesn’t work for you, or, you know, you have faith in Jesus Christ more than Buddha, that’s completely cool, you know. That’s totally our own decision.
It’s like an an ongoing act very proactive process, you know, that demands much thought, much integrity, much honesty, you know, to to to really develop these qualities that Buddha says we have naturally. So this whole process, you know, is what being a Buddhist is. You know? So the job is to learn quite literally, what we’re trying to do as a Buddhist is literally learn to change the way we think at very profound levels. So you can hear, I think, the type of psychological you know, sort of a psychological model in the West, I think, called cognitive therapy or something, isn’t there?
This is very similar, straight from Buddha, you know. It’s exactly what Buddha is, a cognitive therapist. But to a degree that’s kind of a bit more mind boggling than I’d say we’d think in the West, actually. You know? I don’t think there’s any psychological model that I’ve heard about so far that asserts what Buddha is asserting, which is that we can absolutely develop into a perfect being psychologically to have not a fraction of negativity left in the mind, not one fraction of neurotic ego, and to be absolutely full of all the perfect qualities, which is expressed in these two wings, completely full of empathy for every living being as if they were you, and completely full of the wisdom that finally is omniscient, that sees everything as it is and sees the minds of all beings.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a psychological model that says you can achieve that. So in that sense, Buddha is far more radical, a cognitive therapist, than any cognitive therapist you’re ever going to meet. And if you’re one in the room and I’m taking the wrong thing, please correct me. So, okay, this overview. I’ll just give you each point.
I’ll just give all the points we’ll be touching on over the weekend. This fundamental, all these points I’ve mentioned first, they’re like the sort of the underpinnings. You know? So the very first thing we can think about, the one of the first contemplations, and we we we there are ways we learn to meditate on each of these things. The very first thing to contemplate is this idea of what the mind is, of this concept of Buddha nature.
I think in our Western culture, Western culture, we have such different views of what the mind is, And then we talk about the spiritual part of ourselves, the soul, or whatever. So it’s really helpful, I think, for us to get some kind of clarity, and using as a reference the different religious views that are existing, and never in a sectarian way. Have a completely happy heart about all religion. You know? I brought up a Catholic, and I feel very close.
I always love coming to Catholic places. I feel like a Catholic still. Although people sometimes anyway, never mind. Wanna tell you a story. This reminded me.
I’m not being mean, but I remember I was in Los Angeles a couple of years ago at the teachings of the Dalai Lama, and in the in the hotel where he was staying at the same time, was this conference of Catholic I don’t know what, but these handsome looking men with their nice little sort of things on, little hats and everything. I don’t know, monsiners and things. I’m not sure. I forget. But something like that.
Priests, basically. And I was very happy to see them, and I smiled, I shook the hand of one of them, I said, I’m very happy to meet you. And I know it seems odd to you. I’m a Buddhist nun now, but in my heart, I feel like a Catholic as well. And I think he’s a bit shocked.
And all he and all he said was, well, he couldn’t come back, you know. And I I mean, I understand. I’m sorry to disappoint him. Anyway, let’s look at what this mind is, and this is in this is where we really get very clear because if we’re talking in Buddhist terms about becoming a Buddha and transforming our mind into this amazing thing, we ought to know what the hell this mind is. If we think it’s our brain, we’re gonna be in big trouble.
Right? So we gotta be very clear what the mind is and what it’s not and how it links with these words soul and all the rest. So we have a starting point from it from the very beginning, we’ve got some sense of what it is we’re trying to transform. So okay. You know?
So Buddha’s saying, every living being, if you exist, then by definition, possess the potential to become a Buddha, just by definition. You don’t it’s not just mother Teresa’s of the world who are born with special qualities. You know? Okay. We’re all in different stages of our evolution.
We’ve got the Hitlers and the Osama bin Laden’s and the mother Teresa’s. It’s clear. And as well as the ants and scorpions, for we all, every living being, ants, scorpions, you name it. You know? And Buddha asserts a whole spectrum of possibilities of of types of rebirth, which we’ll discuss tomorrow.
You know? Buddha is saying if you exist, if you’re a sentient being, a living being, a being that possesses consciousness is the defining it’s the word in Tibetan, you know, a mind you’re like a a mind possessor, then you necessarily are a are a potential Buddha. It’s simply your nature. It’s just who you are. You know?
Just like an acorn, you don’t have the choice to make it an apple tree or a pear tree. It is a potential oak tree, isn’t it? It’s just nature. Well, our nature is to be a Buddha. And this is so we could spend the weekend, I tell you, thinking and meditating on just this.
It’s a sublime point. Somehow, it’s amazing, you know, and it could give us enormous courage and self confidence and humility, and would then cause us to really have great energy to want to not waste this precious life and to develop this marvellous potential. Because you can see it’s a direct opposite of how we actually instinctively feel. We actually instinctively feel that we’re naturally bad. And I think even as I I don’t know enough about any religion.
I’m sorry. Even though I was a Catholic, I didn’t study so much. But I think I’ve heard that it’s a teaching that in some religious, you know, views, that we’re naturally bad and need to be you know? So Buddha’s sort of agreeing in a sense, but our true nature underneath, maybe it’s the same as maybe it’s the same as other religions as well. We’re naturally we’ve got this potential to be good, to be perfect.
It doesn’t mean we are it now. It’s very evident. Just look at the world. It’s clear we’re not on that right on that track. You know?
And Buddha is saying it’s because we haven’t we we’ve kind of haven’t got the methods. We’re kinda heading north instead of south. We want happiness. We have the potential to be utterly, blissfully, perfectly, holy, totally, completely happy, whatever you like. But we’re going in the wrong direction, and we’re gonna discuss all that.
So this mind of ours, its true nature is to be a Buddha. No one and and so that’s one crucial point. The next crucial point is that there’s not one atom of your mind that is physical, Buddha says. So, okay, mind is used, generally speaking, synonymously with the word consciousness. So already you can see it’s got a different kind of dimension.
We tend to say mind meaning this this thing here, the brain, you know, the thoughts only. Then we have another part called emotions, don’t we? And then we have another part we call spirit or soul. Buddhists are saying they’re all part of the same continuity. You know?
There’s there’s there’s the gross level of our mind or consciousness, which indeed is the psycholog the the intellectual, the thinking process, the thoughts, the negative or positive ones. It includes mind and consciousness. These words include emotion, feelings, positive ones, negative ones, you know, unconscious, subconscious, instinct, intuition, soul, spirit, the whole deal. All of this is known as your mind in Buddhist terms. Another way of dividing all of this in, you know, and taking from the esoteric Buddhist teachings is in terms of we’ve got the gross mind, which is the walking, talking, thinking, sensory, intellectual person we are, you know.
Then we have a subtle level, subtle consciousness, which we virtually never access, but which we do access during our dreams, but in a very kind of vague and inconsistent way. We can’t really do it with much kind of control, you know. But when we when we learn to meditate and all the very sophisticated meditation techniques that are in Buddhism, many of which come from Hinduism, aren’t unique to Buddhism. But they’ve been perfected by Buddhists, you know, it’s one of their great skills. The through very sophisticated accomplishment of very sophisticated meditation techniques, one is capable of accessing absolutely at will a subtler level of our consciousness, which in the West we wouldn’t even kind of posit as existing, you know.
And this level of consciousness, in Buddhist terms, has the capacity for what we call clairvoyance, seeing the minds of others, seeing the past, seeing the future. This is just part of the deal of spiritual progression in Buddhism. It’s not meant to be some kind of New Age trip, you know. It is simply part of our our our our spiritual or mental capability as we develop our qualities. And of course, it’s got to be grounded and used in an appropriate way.
It’s got to be used only for the sake of others, only for compassion, only to benefit others, you know. Buddha says we have astonishing capabilities in terms of spiritual powers as we develop, but they’re all only for the sake of others. So we have the gross level of mental mental, you know, our consciousness, mind, the conceptual, the sensory, including, interestingly, all the emotions, all the feelings and thoughts and emotions, the whole deal. We’ll describe all this. Then then we have the subtle level called subtle consciousness, which as I said, we virtually never access, but which we can learn to access when we’re you know, when we when we develop in meditation.
Then we have what they call the very subtle consciousness, which, if you like, is the subtlest level of your being beyond which it can’t be subtle. Right? I was meant be going quickly over all the points, but I started going along over one. Never mind. I forgot what I was doing.
Okay. Never mind. So then, okay, to look at the, you know, the the subtle very subtle consciousness, which is, as I said, the subtlest level of our being beyond which it can’t be subtler. And Buddhism doesn’t call this the soul, Buddhism simply says this is very subtle consciousness. And another way of talking about it, even use the term indestructible consciousness, consciousness.
Another term, clear light consciousness. And generally speaking, another characteristic of this consciousness, if you like, it’s like it’s sort of like the repository of all the the you know, this is where karma comes in, the karmic imprints, the seeds of everything you’ve ever said, done, and thought is like you left the impression in this very subtle consciousness. And this very subtle consciousness is what goes into the egg and sperm at the time of conception, because the third main point about who we are, and this is where it’s radically different from other religious views, is that it does not come from your from God or Buddha, from no superior being. You’re not created by somebody. You’re not created by somebody.
We all possess Buddha nature, but that’s not meaning in the sense that we’re all made by god. We possess the potential to be Buddha, but sort of sort of like not the job of Buddha to create, which is usually the main, you know, the main defining characteristic of a religion, isn’t it? Which is why I think many people would think Buddhism isn’t a religion. Do you believe in a creator god? No.
Conclusion, you’re not religious. Well, you ask any Tibetan, they’ll say, of course, I’m religious. So that’s not the criterion for a Buddhist, the one of believing in a creator god. So, you know, this subtle very subtle consciousness of ours, this being of ours that that is our, you know, of the very essential our central nature. Not our central nature.
That’s wrong. The very subtle level of our consciousness. Okay? This does not is not made by god or Buddha. Interestingly, also, there’s not one atom of us, including our you know, including in in our mind Yeah.
Personality, thoughts, feelings, emotions, whole deal, that is made by our parents either. So if you are a materialist, we’re made by mommy and daddy. If we’re a religious person, we’re made by god. Neither of these is what Buddha says. Buddha is saying this consciousness of ours and the very subtle consciousness possesses all the potentials for this for the for the rest of us, for the person that develops, you know, all the potentials are there that start to develop into the person.
And so the energy in Buddhist terms is the if you like, the creative energy. They don’t use that term, but it’s it’s one we understand. So the creative force in Buddhism is is not a person. It’s simply this force of karma. And karma is a Sanskrit word that just means action, but it’s got this very dynamic kind of meaning of implying a reaction.
So, you know, when you say the word seed, you know it means a fruit, don’t you? A fruit will come. It’s not just some kind of interest in this interesting little tiny thing here. You you you understand what kind of fruit it will bring. Well, that’s the attitude of karma.
So whatever we do, whatever we say, whatever we think is a is a seed, is a karma that will bring a result to oneself, not to mention others. So it’s a this this process of karma is the force, the energy, the the momentum, the creative force, whatever you wanna call, and I’ll we’ll be describing it in detail. How we create it, how we purify it, good karma, bad karma. Right? This is the creative force that determines what that consciousness