Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute teaching, Ven Robina Courtin unpacks attachment—the mind-state generating daily suffering—through audience questions. She distinguishes attachment (neurotic neediness) from simple liking, showing how it exaggerates objects, breeds expectation, and fuels anger when thwarted. A craving for chocolate cake, thwarted by carrot cake, becomes visible anger—proof attachment was there. She explores attachment’s forms: the partner suffocating through need, the mother unable to say no, the seeker chasing security. Why does love tangle with attachment in relationships? When to stay, when to leave? The core teaching: suffering isn’t what happens to you; it is your attachment, anger, and delusions interpreting events. She closes on a harder truth—taking responsibility for your own mind is unpopular but liberating. For practitioners ready to use their confusion as practice material.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 16 2002 01 20 BYT.mp3
UUID: 5f7dc03c-ff47-4cf4-b6e4-768e98bdcb94
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Be Your Own Therapist (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2002-01-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~9,945
But she’s asking you if holding on to attack to to bliss and compassion. What do you mean holding on to it? Explain what you mean. Valorizing that and making that your focus. What would be what would be wrong with having a mind full of compassion?
What how would that be causing you suffering? How would that cause you suffering? Well, it’s more a point of making a judgment on the other. No one’s still discussing anybody else. We’re discussing ourselves here.
We’re not discussing anybody else. We’re discussing ourselves. So the point is, what we have to do by analyzing all this is discover which states of mind this is why we have to look at it, not be moralistic about it. Look at really what are the states of mind that are the cause of my happiness. We’re not discussing it even the benefit to others.
We’re trying to look into our own minds and deeply understand what are the causes of my own suffering and what are the causes of my own happiness. Do you see this? Do you understand? Yes. So then, okay, you’re saying, you know, we’re we’re talking about now trying to attain a state called happiness and joy.
That doesn’t mean again, like with a cake, it doesn’t mean you have to be attached to it. Like we said, you there’s there’s nothing wrong with liking chocolate cake. No one’s saying attachment is liking. I’m making that point very specific. But right now, and liking completely go together like milk and water.
We can’t see the difference. So there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy, Buddha says. It’s perfectly valid to want to be happy because it’s our natural state to be happy. He just says we’re using the wrong methods. That’s all.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy. Wanting to be happy is not attachment. There’s a complete difference. Attachment is a neurotic state of mind. It grasps at something being more than it really is.
I mean, I haven’t even begun to talk about the suffering of attachment yet, so let me maybe do that first more, and you might hear what I’m saying. You know? So what the the other characteristic of attachment, there’s many, many. Right? So multifaceted.
So huge. One word we all really understand when I when we say, oh, my god. He’s so needy. Don’t we all understand that? That is attachment.
It says and what is what is neediness? You check neediness, a very good phrase, you know, in the West. What is neediness for something? Why is a person kind of, oh, needy for something? It’s obvious because they think they lack something.
Do you agree? They lack when you really feel like you lack something, you kind of yearn and hanker after something, don’t you? Well, that energy is attachment energy. The major energy of attachment is this one. At first, exaggerates and makes it look more gorgeous than it really is.
Then you hanker after it, thinking about it all the time, wishing you had it, the logic being that when I get it, then I’ll be happy. But it’s this thing at the end of the rainbow. It doesn’t exist. You know? We we why we just looked at it.
One of the reasons Buddha says that the happiness we get now from what we think brings it doesn’t bring happiness. It just brings the yearning for even more things. So when we’re bottomless pit of neediness, we can have a hundred people loving us every day. We can have a thousand chocolate cakes. We will still be needy.
We’ll even be more needy. We can all see it. You know? We can see it, but we don’t quite get it. You know?
So attachment is neediness. Because why? Because you feel you lack something. That’s the irony of ego. You know?
Attachment is the main voice of ego. Irony of ego is we’re lonely, separate, bereft, cut off, miserable, locked in this pinhead, big sense of self. You know? So then we have naturally, it gives rise to this massive, need something out there that when I get it, I’ll feel full. I’ll feel content.
We all know. The like our moms told us, the more we get, the more we want, which is why Buddha is saying the happiness we get now is suffering, actually. Using attachment to get it. So being attached to something is being neurotically dependent upon it being there. And unless it is, you’re nothing.
You fall down and collapse. Look at us. You know? I mean, I’m not trying to be mean. I’m trying to get us to see.
That’s all. It’s needy. It all it also causes to manipulate. Look what we do, how we manipulate each other frantically. People sometimes are so manipulative or we say so controlling.
That’s exactly a function of attachment. Okay. Attachment’s different. It has many sort of facets and manifests in different ways in different people. So one person, let’s say, who’s got massive attachment to being seen as important, that will combine with, say, enormous pride and arrogance.
So that person is very manipulative, very controlling, you know, really cunning and all these different qualities to get what they want in order to be famous and important or whatever. Another person could just be attached to cake. You understand what I’m saying? Just kinda eat and eat and eat and eat. We all know ourselves.
Another person is attached to love, being loving, being loved by somebody, being needed by somebody, being around somebody. The thought of being on their own is like death. So they’ve gotta have a relationship, gotta have a person. Other people are attached to sex. I mean, you can be attached to a multitude of things.
Attachment is endless in its invention of different objects. You know? The disease is the same, the attachment. It just manifests in different ways in different people. But it’s what these characteristics of feeling like I’m lacking something, therefore needing something.
It causes if it combines with, say, anger and pride, it combines becomes a very fierce and outrageous person. If it combines with kind of low self esteem and kind of depression, the person’s really quiet and unharmful to most people except themselves, you know? It manifests in many, many, many different ways. So what happened is this huge neediness that causes to manipulate, that causes to control, you know, that causes to kind of, expect hugely. That’s the major one.
The more you feel you need that person in your life in the needy in the neurotic way, okay, I’m not talking virtues yet. Please hear me. In the needy neurotic way, the more we we we we need them to be there in our life, it is obvious, the more we expect them to do precisely what we want, the more we are gonna be devastated when they don’t. I mean, look, even they’re ten minutes late coming to coming on a date, you know, apparently got mental breakdown already. Why?
Because you’ve got this massive neediness, massive expectation, so then absolute panic when something goes wrong. I mean, it’s obvious the suffering of attachment. It’s obvious that attachment causes incredible suffering. You know? It’s obvious, but we don’t think of it like that.
Anger, if you like, is is a common is a is a common response when attachment is thwarted. So you check. You know? A common response when your attachment is thwarted is to be angry. It’s like even you you go into the cafe and you got a real neediness.
You got attachment to chocolate cake. Yes. You also enjoy it. That’s fine. Yes.
It is a good chocolate cake. That’s fine. But you have attachment to it. You want. You need in this desperate way to have your chocolate cake.
You don’t think of it like that. You just think, oh, I have you know, I like chocolate cake. But, actually, it’s attachment. There’s neediness for it, so you build it up in the mind. So then what happens when choc when carrot cake comes?
How I ask for chocolate cake, you know? These people, who do they think they are? They don’t even listen, you know? God. I’m not gonna come here again.
That’s called aversion. That’s called anger. Now if you weren’t so attached to chocolate cake, but you merely enjoyed it, then when carrot cake comes, you’d go, oh, it’s cool. I can enjoy this too. So that means you don’t you didn’t have attachment for it.
It means you merely enjoyed it, but you’re prepared to have something else. You’re not freaking out, you know? So we can see. Our day, you check at our day looking more subtle now, not at the gross object of people and cakes. You check just the the day to day level.
You know, this is where you can say attachment is the default mode of your mind. We we don’t think we’re walking around attached to getting what we want, but, basically, we are. You check. You’re driving on the road, thinking you’re all kind of friendly and friendly, looking at the sky and all happy, and suddenly a car swerves in front of you. How?
Blah blah. You’re getting angry. That means because the attachment was automatically in your mind. It was like the default mode of your mind. It was just there.
But you didn’t notice because it’s just how you are all the time. So when and that’s a perfect sign to show when the anger arises. That indicates attachment was there in the first place. If attachment weren’t there, and and a person drives in front of you, oh, please. Come on.
Welcome. You’d relax. You’d be patient. It wouldn’t matter. So it indicates.
So attachment, when it’s in the mind, is very hard to see. But when you don’t get what you want, that’s the perfect time to see your mind. That’s the best time, you know? So, okay, in a relationship, it’s not just attachment. If there were, you’d be a vampire, and you’d eat them for breakfast.
You’d suck them dry. Right? If it were just attachment. Obviously, there’s love there as well. So what’s love?
That’s defined in Buddhism as the wish that you’d be happy, the delight that you’d be happy. It’s the one that’s connected, that’s interdependent, that isn’t disturbing, and is not a liar. It’s more in touch with reality, actually, the virtues. Because reality in Buddhist terms is that everything’s interdependent, from way of saying it. So we can see when there’s friendship and there’s love for a person, there’s a delight in them, there’s wish they’d be happy, you want to help them, you want and that’s that’s that’s marvelous.
That’s virtue. That’s fantastic. The more of that, the better, please. But the trouble is it’s polluted by the attachment. And some days, we can see.
Maybe it’s seventy percent attachment, thirty percent love, which means big trouble. Some days, it’s seventy percent love, thirty percent attachment, which means no trouble, less trouble. You know? So it’s all a question of seeing the degree of it. But we can’t right now because we assume it’s all the same thing.
We just can’t see the difference, and we don’t ever think, therefore, it’s possible to change. You know? So the delusions, the unhappy states of mind, we have to learn to recognize them. Because if Buddha says you can’t be happy to get get rid of attachment, you better know what attachment is. You can’t just kind of vaguely guess and chuck out the baby with the bathwater, which is what we often do.
You know? It’s not appropriate at all. So it takes much looking. Like I said, mommy, yes, you can set I can tell you about it for a whole year, he said. You won’t begin to understand until you really build something up in your own mind by looking at your own self, looking looking deeply in the mind.
You know? I mean, it does seem almost impossible to us to think of having a relationship, especially a love relationship with a person where there’s no attachment. It almost and it is virtually impossible for us right now. But once we understand it’s possible, once we understand what attachment is and what it’s not, once we understand that it’s not love, then we’ve got somewhere to go with it, you know, then we can begin to practice. That’s why for any of us who, you know, who have these relationships, it’s all wonderful, grist for the mill.
Fantastic. Be brave, you know, go for it. But that means learning every second about your own mind, Every minute. You know? And knowing that if you’re suffering, it’s not because of what the other person is doing, and I don’t care what they do.
It is not because of what the other person is doing. It is because of your attachment, your anger, your pride, your jealousy. This sounds tough. But when we can begin to understand this, it is this is like I said, it’s the key to freedom, the key to happiness, the key to sanity. I’m not saying it is right that people harm us.
Of course, I’m not saying that. But until we can, like, cut ourselves off from this object, from the blame mentality, we will never ever ever be free. We’ll only ever suffer. What, darling? When someone swerves in front of you in the car.
Yep. Okay. That’s the point. Attachment is like this just this primordial state of mind. You know, we often think of it in terms of an object, but it’s just this attachment to getting what you want, attachment to be happy.
And that means attachment attachment to being happy. Not everyone was wanting to be happy, but it’s this attachment to being to getting a having a good feeling, and then all the assumptions in the mind that a good feeling is getting what I want when I want it. So you think of a day, you know, we we we just as as long as we’re driving on the road, we’re getting what we want. We’re being un unhindered, aren’t we? Every time the green light comes, we’re doing what we want.
We’re continuing to go. We’re kind of propelled by this attachment that is moving us forward, moving us forward. It’s very subtle. That’s why we don’t notice it as a problem. There’s just this assumption that I will get what I want, that I will hear the nice sounds, see the nice things, smell the nice things, have people praise me, have people respect me, have people love me, give me things when I want.
This is just what we assume are the causes of happiness. It’s very deep inside us. You agree? Well, the second any of that is thwarted, then obviously what arises is irritation or depression or anxiety or anger or jealousy, you name it. So this is where it’s very hard to see.
It sounds very cruel because we don’t know what it means to be happy unless we get what we want. And if you and we define happiness in our culture. You know, when you have a nice house, this is why I’m happy. When we have nice food, that’s why I’m happy. When we have people smile at us, that’s why we’re happy.
When people praise us, that’s why we’re happy. When we get like when people like us at our job, that’s why we’re happy. When people people love us at home, hello, darling. Welcome home. That’s why we’re happy.
And the thing is, to be happy is wonderful. Please be much more happy, Buddha says. We can be happy. But the only way we know to get it now is by getting what we want. So this is why the most amazing practice is to practice learning to be happy when you don’t get what you want.
Learning to be happy when the red lights come. Learning to be happy when the person is mean to you. Learning to be happy when the person leaves you. Learning to be happy when you get the carrot cake. That’s what the practice is.
Amazing, unbelievable level of practice, you know. Because this is the point now. We don’t believe happiness is what we can we don’t think we can get happiness unless we get what we want. It’s the logic of our society. It’s the logic of Samsāra, Buddha says.
Ants are the same. Dogs are the same. You name it. Because it’s this disease we’ve got. We’re junkies.
You know? This is the point. So we have to learn to realize by hearing this, first of all, say, that happiness is not coming from what you get when you get what you want. Happiness is a state of mind. And even when you do get what you want, what you are experiencing is happiness, and it is your state of mind, we make the mistake of thinking it’s the chocolate cake that caused it.
It triggered it, definitely. Just like the person punching me triggered my my anger. But when we can begin to separate ourselves from the experience and realize that the happiness is mine, the anger is mine, and I can learn to go against it or or to have it, whether I get what I want or not. This is this big miracle to separate ourselves from the external world. And at the moment, we’re completely in the thrall of.
You know? Do you see what I mean? And that’s that’s why it’s so difficult. It’s a very subtle job to do. She’s wondering where this starts because you have a little kid.
Is it what’s what’s the what how’s your child? His four. And what is he how does he act? Does he get upset when he doesn’t get what he wants? Yes.
Exactly. That’s right. We tend to think, that’s just a kid. He’ll grow up. But it’s not.
Some children, we can see, some kids are very content. They’re very spacious. That means, yes, it’s to do with karma, that’s the actions similar to the cause. He’s got his own little personality that due to past habit has brought certain habits with him. So we can see the seed of them already in tiny children, not to be depressed about it, because that’s why if we’ve got an understanding about our own mind ourselves, we can understand theirs more and actually help them learn.
You know? That’s the point. And and and that’s my goal to teach them. Absolutely. Absolutely.
And your and the fact is this is, you know, how if you don’t know your own mind, how can you know his? So that’s why the best way to be the best mother is to practice on your own mind, learn your own mind, you know, really, really practice on your own self, understand your own mind so well. Isn’t it? Sort of obvious. If you if you wanna, you know, learn if your child is a good musician or not, the only way you can really know is if you’re a musician, you know, and you recognize very subtle levels.
This is why the best first day is to to help others, we’ve got to first work on ourselves. That’s why. Also having the Buddhist assumption is not that it’s my child that I made, but it’s your job to be like the nurturer of this child who has his own personality, who brought his own stuff with him, you know, and and therefore have some objectivity that it’s his mind and be very objective, not just kind of blown out by attacking him, isn’t he so gorgeous, poor darling? Oh, look at him. He’s just having a chucking wobbly, you know.
But seeing that that’s called anger, doesn’t mean about it, by helping him understand, you know, training gently, gently, Not giving lectures, but even by you being a certain way. I mean, children are very we know that they learn so much by just the experience about them. You know? So by our being a different example, already, they can kind of sort of seep it in through their bones. You know?
Isn’t it? Someone else? I’m thinking about my attachment to security. Mhmm. Absolutely.
I understand. So this this attachment we have to security, for example, especially in the world where it’s changing so much, so so is there a language of living in the moment in Buddhism? Yes. It’s one that’s been adopted, especially in certain conditions like Zen, you know? But it’s actually very it’s it’s actually when a person is really accomplished, when a person has really gone beyond these delusions to a very profound degree, you could very easily say they’re they’re they’re really in living in the moment.
They’re not you know, one of the signs of attachment, which sounds so insane because we’re all like this all the time, one of the signs of attachment is when we’re thinking about something that isn’t there. So, you know, we can see our mind when we’re kind of we’re either living in the past. Our fantasy mind is so active, we’re living in the past, or we’re living in the future, constantly constructing these castles in the air, you know. And that’s what we do. That’s how can we even achieve anything.
So there’s nothing wrong with constructing something in the air and thinking, wanna get it. But when it’s attachment, when it’s fantasy, there is a big, big problem, big, big suffering. That’s we end up bitter and depressed at the end of our life. You know? So the real key of a person living in the moment is a person who’s gone truly beyond attachment.
It’s a very sublime being. They’re not kind of just sort of narrow minded, but they’re really in dealing with what is the reality now and not living in a fantasy about what could happen, maybe happen, if only happen, why not happen, if I’ll be happy then blah blah blah, you know, or living in the past of all the regrets and the stuff like that, which is how we spend much of our life. You know? So, absolutely, yeah, that’s a definite a definite result, but it’s a very profound state of mind. Absolutely.
Somebody else? Yeah. If you’re planning the If you’re planning for the future, yes. Perfect. And how do you know where it’s a always realize Very good point.
Absolutely. Yeah. So if you’re planning for the future, how do you know it’s fantasy or if it’s realistic? Well, is the key. We have to first establish what to begin to distinguish between attachment and just simply, you know, there’s a term that we would use called aspiration.
So in this sense too, it’s not as if attachment is is trying to not want anything. That’s insane. That’s become you just become a vegetable. That’s ridiculous. There’s nothing wrong with wanting.
In other words, someone could say, would you like some chocolate cake? And you say, oh, yeah. I’d love a piece. You wouldn’t say if you’re giving up attachment, wouldn’t say, oh, I don’t care. Know?
Would you like sugar? I don’t care. Coffee, oh, I don’t care. That’s called indifference. That’s horrible, you know.
Do you wanna be a carpenter? Do you wanna be a you you gotta know. We live in this relative world. So if we remember the two wings of the bird, you know, if we think like this, and we really get this kind of clear in our minds, the one is compassion and one is wisdom. So that means, really, there are two reasons to do anything using this view.
There are two reasons to do anything. Two. Only two. They cover everything. One is the wisdom wing, which is to say that the reason you do something or want something in the future, doesn’t matter what it is, or want something now, is because it will help you develop your qualities and lessen your neuroses.
Or, two, it will help another person. That’s the entire universe, isn’t it? So that’s the way to use to think. So when it’s attachment, this is what we have to do. We can’t just it’s hard to see the difference.
But that’s what we have to do by meditating and looking and thinking and analysing and looking and listening to the teachings again and again and thinking again and again and distinguishing between attachment and wanting to do something. Attachment you know, the key to attachment is, like I said, when you don’t get it, when it’s thwarted, you freak out. Well, I mean, we can see almost everything’s attachment right now, or it’s polluted by attachment right now, you know. It’s very hard. So we have to go slowly and carefully and learn from our experiences all the time, You know?
Richard? Exasperation. Exasperation, did you say, or aspiration? Aspiration. Could also be what?
Attachment. Uh-huh. Very easily. And it very commonly is right now for us. So putting it like this, we can see now in general, we very rarely love a person we’re not attached to, and we very we’re never attached to a person we don’t love.
Very rare, isn’t it? So they come together for us. So when we can begin to separate them, then we can have healthy love. So, of course, right now, we’ve got this huge kind of codependence and strings attached like crazy. We yearn for a person to be happy, and usually that means attachment because we’re so scared and we see them do the wrong thing.
We’re running around trying to make them happy because we can’t better see them. They’re miserable because we take it personally. So it is manipulative now, and it’s really coming from attachment. So to want a person to be happy is just a genuine, clear aspiration. And then when you have wisdom, because because love and compassion are this side, you know, the delight in you being happy, the wish that you’d happy, just very kind of no strings attached is what it is, really.
And then the wisdom is to know if I have a job to do this, how to do it. But the way when it’s motivated by attachment, it feels so amazing and love and incredible. But it’s really you remove the attachment from it, and the love will collapse most likely. That’s the problem. So we we have to keep learning.
Let’s keep looking and learning all the time. And that’s why in a relationship, when we start to really, let’s say, we start to try to change to develop our own qualities, it can be very scary when it’s a really normal kind of attachment relationship and the other person isn’t isn’t on the same wavelength, because they’ll start to think that you’re you’re rejecting them, you know, because you’re not playing the same ego games any longer. I mean, one doesn’t do it in a cruel way, but it can be very because with attachment relationships, we’re both like kind of laser beams at each other all the time, checking every single I’m checking every single thing you’re doing and saying and thinking, constantly assessing where you’re at, and that you’re continuing to feed me and feed me and feed me, you know? And you’re constantly checking me. So when that starts to shift, this can be very scary.
Absolutely. That’s why it’s not an easy job. Somebody else wanted something before. Yeah. Where?
You. Who? What, darling? You’re not gonna say it now. Okay.
There’s no problem. Yep. Just in regards to, learning about your own attachment and the concept of retreat and in your own practice, do you keep the chocolate cake there? I understand. Absolutely.
So learning to look at your own attachment and going into retreat and understanding how it functions and all that. Right? Do you keep the chocolate cake there, or do you remove yourself from it? Well, that’s all a question of how attached you are, isn’t it? So it’s like a we use examples like or alcohol, for example.
We obviously can see that a person, because of the power of the object, we can see that a person who’s attached to alcohol, we call as alcoholic. It’s it’s no one would expect a person to give up attachment to alcohol by continuing to drink alcohol. It’s too powerful an object. Right? You agree?
So it depends on the object. That’s why it depends on us. We have to look and check. So we can see with even with anger, with aversion of somebody. Let’s say we have a relationship that’s really intense, really heavy, and it causes us like, lose our brain all the time, you know.
Maybe it’s best to remove yourself from that person. Don’t blame the other person, but know that because of karma, you have strong connection with that person. If it’s gonna make you wanna kill them, best to keep back off, please. Remove yourself from the object. So we have to know ourselves what we can and can’t handle.
So that’s why it’s sometimes I mean, I’ve got the kind of mind, the personality, that it’s so much easier to say no to to cut it off completely. That’s why I’m a nun. That’s not meant to be inferior. I’m glad I’m like that. It’s so much easier for me to remove myself from the usual attachments of of relationships that I always found so intense.
I just go almost crazy, you know? So it’s much easier for me to get some space from it, to focus on the part of the positive parts of myself to try to develop my qualities in the freedom of not having that, you know. That’s just very clear for me. The same even, like, recently. The last six or eight months, nine months, I’ve been on this special diet because I’ve got candida.
Right? And one of the things I can’t eat at all is sugar, any kind at all. Sugar, fruit, any description. So I’m a sugar junkie completely. I just, you know, have my hit every day, normally, chocolate, cake, whatever.
You know? I mean, I’m not as berserk as I might have been, but still, you can say it in the mind. I’m talking about the mind here, not the body, the mind. You know? Wanting kind of wanting something kind of this sweet thing, having a hit.
So even though now, probably, my candy is a lot better, I could eat some sweet things again, but I’m it’s easier for me to say no completely. So much easier. It’s like freedom for me. Isn’t it all the time having to control? I just have a little bit.
You know? But when you just have this kind of barrier between you and the object, even though when you see it, it just doesn’t it doesn’t it doesn’t energize you. You just you’ve freedom from it. Thank you. I prefer that.
It’s easier. Much easier for my mind. So it depends on the person. We gotta know where we’re at with everything. You know?
Do you see? Do you see? You’re talking about the mother? Yeah. Is that running away?
Okay. So let’s say there’s a mother who’s got a a junky kid. You know? Is it you mean, is it running away if the mother wants to leave or have the child leave? Yeah.
Well, is again, it’s a question of the motivation. And, like I said, there are two main motivations. One is that the action of doing whatever you do will actually help you develop your qualities or will protect you from your own delusions, which maybe are very strong, like the sugar one. Or it is an action that is genuinely of benefit to the other person. So that needs a lot of wisdom to know.
So, you know, this is like the one of tough love. If a mother really has genuine love for that child and she can see the only thing to do is to force them out on their own because maybe they’ll grow up then, you gotta have a lot I mean, especially if they’re junky, it’s a very dangerous one. But in in not even just using the junky one. Because, you know, this is the one about having these relationships and loving ones. Because it’s coming from a lot of attachment, like he was saying, Richard, especially with mothers and children, there’s so much attachment there that everybody else can see that the mother’s just giving in all the time to this kid’s needs and they’re not growing up at all.
Because it’s not love, it’s attachment. It’s easy. It’s the easy way out, you know, because they’re darling boy. Give them this. You know?
Because they really are scared to say no because there’s no and because there’s so much attachment. So we have to have the wisdom to really know what is best. Either it’s something that we just can’t bear ourselves. We can’t handle it. And, you know, and maybe you’re not brave enough, you’re strong enough yet to be able to do the thing that’s really of the benefit to the other person.
You can only just handle it yourself. Otherwise, you’re gonna drown and die. You know? So then you must do that action. Even at the level of, let’s say, you know, you’ve this neurotic friend who’s all the time ringing you up and wanting to come over and go blah blah blah.
And you can see it’s just they come they’re just they’re just grasping at you and just wasting your time and wasting theirs. But, you know, you really see that you can’t you don’t know how to help them. You don’t know how to help them, but it’s making you crazy, you can’t handle it. So you you can’t get all kinda noble and try and keep saying, yes. Come over.
And then they make you go crazy completely because you haven’t got enough strength. It’s better. Even if you alienate them, it’s better because it’ll protect you to say, no. Please don’t come. You know?
You protect yourself. But you’ve got to do it with a very pure motivation, not to harm the other person, but to know that you’ll drown if you don’t. And we we find this very nice in relationships, when there’s a person, let’s say, who’s very needy of us, very demanding, very bullying. It mightn’t be the right thing for that person, but we’ve got to first protect ourselves if we can’t do the the most profound one, which is to really benefit the other person. So we do it for our own sake, but in a pure way, not in an attachment way.
You know? It’s very necessary because half the time, we stay in garbage relationships because we’re scared to leave. So we think it’s all being so noble. That’s not being noble at all. It’s just because we’re babies, we can’t we can’t we don’t wanna get out on our own.
So we stick around in a really lousy relationship where it’s full of all this codependence or full of all this aversion and misery. Not good for the other person, not good for ourself. We kind of pretend that it’s okay because, you know, it’s security and all this stuff. That’s not true. We’ve gotta be very brave, you know, and say goodbye.
I’m leaving. Time to grow up. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? Yeah.
Not easy to have this wisdom. So there’s wisdom and there’s compassion. The whole area, all we’ve talked, all the stuff at the moment about karma, and all the things of the mind, and the way the mind works, all that’s the wisdom wing. All that’s the first two scopes. All that works that you do on your own mind, to put yourself together.
So even if you’re not looking at the compassion wing, the usual motive we have now is attachment. What we’re trying to develop is another motive, it’s also for our own benefit, but now it’s a clean one. It’s clean. It’ll help us develop our qualities, not just drag us down more into attachment. And it could even be painful.
This could equally mean you would stay in a relationship that looks lousy, because you know this is exactly where you have to be to learn about your attachment, to learn about your aversion, and you can know that you can handle it, and you can go beyond it and grow out of Fantastic, you know? But the usual criteria we use, you check. The usual criterion we use is if it’ll make me feel good right now. If it doesn’t, it must be a bad relationship. If it does, it must be a good one.
Rubbish. The one that is the quick fix is the codependent relationship, as we call it. You scratch mine, and I scratch yours, you know, looking like it’s all lovey dovey. It’s just each feeding the other’s attachment. It’s not healthy.
And there’s very little love there. It’s just all kind of rubbish, you know? It’s gluey and revolting. Then you’ve the, you know, the other one where it could look like a lousy relationship, you’re really working on your mind, you’re really working with this. The person maybe is mean to you, but you’re really working with it, you’re getting great strength from this fantastic relationship.
Leave the first one, stay in the second one. But it’s not the way we usually think, you know? The usual criteria we use is it makes me feel good, must be good. You know, if the person is mean to me at work, he must be a creep, I have to go. Not true.
Not at all. Not if you’re trying to develop wisdom, and certainly not if you’re trying to develop compassion. Yeah. Is it compassionate, though, to allow someone to be mean to you? I understand.
To whom? The other person? We’re always saying we’re in a relationship with someone who’s being mean to you. Is it compassionate to stay in because they’re creating this I I understand. Is it compassionate to stay in a relationship where a person is being mean because it seems like you’re helping them create negative karma?
It’s true. On the face of it, it’s true. But it’s probably more complex than that, of course. You know, there’s a strong karmic connection. Let me give you good example.
I always use an example, Always use this one. It’s not as shocking in our regular terms, you know? There’s this my my my family was a bit we didn’t call it dysfunctional. We just thought it was our normal family, you know, but now we I know it was a dysfunctional family, like most of us, no doubt. So my mum my mum we were Catholics, right?
We had this preserved kind of emotional rubbish in the family, always fighting and shouting and yelling and stuff, and my dad and everything. And so then my mum had this best friend called Sheila. Sheila had a dysfunctional family too, but because it’s someone else’s dysfunctional family, you don’t mind it so much, you know? And then anyway, she had six boys. So I used to like going hanging out with Sheila.
Right? Sheila’s family was insane. All these boys were ridiculous, and Reg was a horrible, mean, ugly, drunk husband who used to virtually rape her half the time, you know? But Sheila was a Catholic. She loved God.
Mean, she had an incredible relationship with God, and she was this funny, wonderful, light, wonderful human being. The stuff that she got from Reg, I swear to you, was water off a duck’s back. And, you know, as a child, you don’t want to hang around with a person who’s miserable and depressed. You don’t want to touch them, but I loved being around Sheila. She had this funny sense of humor, more than my mum.
Right? She had this wonderful sense of humor. She smoked like eighty cigarettes a day, she lived on bread and butter, she was skinny as a rake, endless cups of tea, right? And she had this creepy husband who’s such a horrible person, you know? But Sheila had this incredible view that God was in everybody, and she meant it was the depth of her heart, she was very, very spiritual, and that God was in Reg.
Reg was her husband, this was her life, and so she loved Reg. And she did. She was incredible. So what he did with her was sort of like, got this petulant child, you know? It didn’t affect her at all.
He was one who was so neurotic and suffering, it was very clear. So for me, was a really good example. Now, was a Christian, I’m not talking she’s a Buddhist, but that was her reasoning. So therefore, because she had this strength inside her, and I really can see this, everybody saw it too, you know, she was renowned for this, she didn’t fight with Reg. She didn’t get caught up in it, into all the dramas and anger and bitterness and, oh, and victim.
She was just, like, funny about it. Because she could see this this silly boy, this man, you know, and she just loved him for what he was, and took care of him and loved him. Eventually, he kind of just adored her, was like this little kind of kid, you know, when he got older, eating out of a hand, you know. That was just who he was. So that was that was Sheila’s view.
So, okay, you could say, well, that was wrong for her to stick around because he created negative karma, but maybe you could say that if she’d left him, would have completely become a berserk alcoholic and gone around and killed people, because he would have been ten times worse. So if you have genuine compassion, which she did, I can see, then she wasn’t suffering. Truly, wasn’t suffering. And he somehow, because the karma was very strong between them, he ended up becoming docile and useless and sort of not not harming anymore. So it was really just all this kind of kind of posturing, you know?
So in the end, it was kind to him. Do you see my point? So, I mean, it’s not easy to be this way when we get so caught up, and then we think it’s the other person. So if Sheila had been angry and resentful and bitter, I mean, then everybody would have, you know, said, poor Sheila, look at her. She’s he’s causing all this suffering.
But people all saw that she wasn’t suffering. Not because Reggie was nice, he wasn’t. But Sheila was able to go beyond it, therefore she wasn’t suffering. So therefore was quite a different story. So if you can’t, let’s say you have that kind of relationship and it’s making you insane, really making you miserable and bitter and a victim, and you go and complain to everybody, and you keep going home like a like a moth to a flame, you know.
That’s the kind of time you should either this is the point. You know, this is the point about the victim mentality. I’m not criticising because people do get abused in relationships, they lose all their sense of what’s right and what’s I know that exactly. But using the Buddhist reason for it but like with the Afghani kids, don’t go and tell them this, you know? But if we understand our own minds, that when we have this really extreme suffering victim mentality, we don’t know how to find our own freedom.
But we we we’re not just being a nice person either. We’re full of hate for this person. A person who’s a victim feels like they’re being beaten up, and it’s true they are being, but they have a lot of anger, you know, a lot of resentment and bitterness, but they keep going back. So one of the key things, this is the key thing, is to slowly, slowly feel that whatever it is that we’re in, we make it our choice. So as soon as we choose to be in that relationship, just like Sheila, it was perfectly fine.
And that’s very brave to have this idiot as your husband, you know? You didn’t get much pleasure from him. Do you see my point? But she made her choice. So when you really make something your choice, you are empowered, and the person cannot hurt you.
As soon as you feel like a victim and I’m being forced to stay there, then you’re a victim, then you completely suffer, go mad, you know? So what and this is why even let’s say we don’t like our mum, because, you know, she’s this and she’s that and she’s neurotic and all these, whatever the reasons are, let’s say. And we dread or anybody, we dread having to visit. But we go because we feel we should, you know, so we complain about it all the time beforehand, we complain about it all the time when we leave, we dread the next visit, and we keep going like a magnet back, you know, thinking that she’s forcing me. But stop taking responsibility, you know?
You either go or you don’t go. Either way, make it your choice. But when you’re a victim, you feel like the other person’s forcing you to do something, and then that same mind wants to then blame the other person. And that’s how we all are, we can see. Either way, we never take responsibility.
So this is the thing about a relationship. We have to start seeing, and it takes a lot of courage, that I have got a choice. I have got a choice, you know? And if I’m gonna choose to leave because it’s the best thing for my mind and I can’t stand this suffering any longer, then we we leave goodbye, you know, with a good motivation, not blaming, knowing that I can’t bear it. Or we choose to stay.
We make it our choice, and then everything changes, you know. But that’s really hard. But this is the point, we do have a choice. Maybe if you’re in prison and the door’s locked, you can really see that you can actually physically say you don’t have a choice then, which is how many of the people I know are really practicing. They’re making this their choice, you know?
But what’s interesting, and this is why Lama Yeshe, when he wrote to one of these young guys one time, and he sent him their twenty first birthday card to one of the Mexican ex gangsters. He said, your prison’s nothing in comparison with the prison of ordinary people, the prison of attachment, the prison of pride, the prison of jealousy, the prison of anger, prison of guilt, whatever, you know? It’s really true. You look at relationships. People it’s like you’ve got a door locked they can’t get past.
But it’s not. It’s our own mind, our scared, our fear. I’m not criticizing us. We’re all the same. We’re very suffering, you know.
So it’s really to do the right thing is very, very profound, you know. Yeah. Happiness. You talked about all those power in amongst all that attitude, depression. I understand.
Yeah. Sure. When I was reading through the stages of death you described Yes. Interesting. I understand.
I understand. So where does depression fit, basically? Feeling is I haven’t had depression is one of my major problems, but I understand it because I’ve had it. I have it. Depression, my feeling is it’s it’s it’s self it’s it’s aversion but for the self, and it brings, like, a heavy dullness, you know, like a disconnection, doesn’t it?
But it’s aversion for the self. Most of my aversion has been happily put on other people, you know, so I haven’t had depression. So I think would you would you would anybody agree with this? When you look at this, internalized aversion is kind of complete, and it becomes, like, thick and dark and, like, a sense of separateness and, like, nothing happening, you know, dull. It’s it’s self it’s self it’s not like that violent kind of against oneself, cutting yourself up, everything could even bring to that.
Mean, I don’t know if that’s connected with depression too. But it’s it’s the state of mind is aversion, and the object is self. Does that what do you think about that? Does that sound right to you? Yes.
I think it’s probably Yes. Exactly. That’s it. And I think that’s the point about when it’s internalized. I mean, there’s a person I know yeah.
Example, I think a person I know who I’ve known well for quite a while, And she like, deep deep depression was her mode. So there she was a very passive person. She never you you you she would never think that she had any kind of aversion or anger in her mind. She’s not. She’s a very quiet person, you know, but deeply depressed.
So she would kind of and she also had all these anxious kind of habits of pulling her hair out and and having panic attacks, just completely hysterical. Or she would, like, sleep for twelve, fifteen hours, unbearable, the thought of getting up. Right? Just unable to face. Does it sound like depression?
Yes. Okay. What’s interesting when I observed her working with herself and everything, and really learning to come in touch with her mind and certain things, you know, working with she was working with a very strong person who’s kind of used to kind of activate this aversion in her, and slowly, you could see the aversion started to kind of she started to get more volatile. And it was like she started to realize for the first time that she had aversion because it started to go out. It started to sort of be expressed out.
And that’s a really good sign because it was getting sort of all the the thickness was sort of unraveling, you know. So then, interesting, for herself, really began to see that she had this it was a strong aversion, but she was the object. So as she kind of let go of it and began to have more self respect, she started to see the aversion more externalized to other people and blaming and things like that. So that’s healthy. It’s a healthy sign.
Now she’s going even beyond that, you know. So I think that’s the that’s the common For someone like me in my life, always, was in my family, I’m thinking of the seven different seven kids, and we all had our different ways of responding to our, you know, our emotional chaos in the family. It was like a parody. You know, each of us was this ridiculous kind of example. I was the kind of when the moment there was trouble, I’d be there like a magnet, kind of provoking it to make it worse just about, you know?
My sister Polly would become catatonic, and Julie would get asthma, and Janet would run around controlling and go and vomit and, you be anorexic. Everybody had their own way of dealing with all the suffering, you know, it was like insane. But I was the one who was always the volatile one. Was the one who always seemed to provoke the problems. As soon as I saw it, I’d try and make it worse, provoke my father, all these things, you know.
So I was the who was evidently angry. But you wouldn’t say, see, one of my sisters, you would never call her angry, because she was the one who became catatonic. It was all internal, you know? But it’s it’s still aversion. The state of mind is aversion, but the self is the object.
So, okay, there is an advantage to that. I don’t mean advantage. It’s better to be that way because at least with me, my anger I harmed me with my anger, plus I harmed other people. At least when you have depression, you don’t harm other people. That’s that’s a good thing.
You should rejoice. Okay? Truly, that you don’t harm other people. That’s fantastic. It’s amazing.
Okay. You harm yourself, but my goodness, so did I. But it doesn’t look like I did. So, for example, in my family, three of my sisters, all in a row, had mental breakdowns. Complete mental breakdowns.
Know? All the seven of us, this one psychiatrist my mother sent us all to, he diagnosed the seven of us as being manic depressive. He was so happy to have this entire family k sister, you know? So the whole seven of us were all diagnosed as manic depressive, and three of all had mental breakdowns, and he was kind of helping them heal. Was a very nice man.
I didn’t want his rubbish medicine anyway. Was too proud. But anyway, it was like three of my sisters had mental breakdowns, and the three who did were more in control of their emotions. I was the one who was completely berserk. I’d never had a mental breakdown.
Mean, other people had a mental breakdown, no doubt. But because I expressed mine, so, you know, that was maybe one healthy thing for myself. But even one of my sisters now has a year out of her life that she just can’t remember, you know, completely suppressed. So we all have these different ways of dealing, you know. That’s why to look into our minds and to see that so why we have mental suffering is because of delusions.
Why we get angry? Because of delusions. Why we do this? Why we have harm? Because of delusions.
So all of us, it’s the same. It’s this question of how they manifest, because we’re all so different, you know. That’s why it takes a real lot of time for a person so let’s say for a person who has more who doesn’t express their aversion, the the commonest thing is, oh, I’m not angry, you know. My friend who would who always have said that she wasn’t angry. But she had self loathing like you can’t believe, so that’s called anger, for goodness sake.
So when it kind of got released, it started to kind of become, you know, more expressive. Then she could see it more clearly. So if a person is like that, you’ve got to go through the process of first recognizing and going inside, not being afraid of what’s there. And many people who don’t like to express their aversion, we can see they’re terrified of it. So therefore you deny, you push it away, you call it something else.
It manifests in these different ways, you know? So that’s why being your own therapist is not an easy job. The mind is so complex. We have so many the ego has so many skillful methods to to to get us to avoid what is going on inside, you know? It’s very interesting.
Just sex we have. Yes? And a question in relation to all of this. Yes. So the Buddhist way would would then I understand.
So basically the point is that, you know, if a person suppresses it, and I’m indicating that it seems like a healthy process for the person to let it arise and let them see it and even express it. So the key to this, I think, is in itself, no, in itself, simply to express anger is not necessarily beneficial. The key is whether you see it and own it. So all I’m saying is the process for a person who’s always denied it, obviously you’ve to start acknowledging it. And acknowledging it isn’t some interesting intellectual process, it’s very painful because it has to explode out.
And for the person who’s working on their mind, and that’s the point, if you’re working on your mind, then it’s beneficial to see it. So that’s why we need a good therapist. Forget about even being your own first, let’s find another good therapist who can help us unravel the complexities of our own crazy minds. And that’s the benefit you know, the purpose of a therapist is to be this sounding board, this safe place for where we can actually express it. But if we’re just going to a therapist to continually express our anger, then we believe in the story and don’t want to change, then indeed there’s no benefit.
That’s the key. There is benefit in expressing it if you want to work on it. In and of itself, there’s not the therapy in Buddhism of just expressing somehow gets rid of it. No. The reason to express is because you can see it more clearly, and therefore understand how it’s causing you so much pain, and not to be afraid of it.
This is the key one, and this is why there’s no contradiction between saying anger is destructive, but don’t be afraid of it. So I can say in my life I had the arrogance to not be afraid of it. Was actually arrogant and thought I was superior, because I said what I wanted and when I wanted, and no one was going to stop me. But there was also something healthy about that for me, because because I somehow couldn’t help but see it. And, also, I continually got criticized, so I I certainly got the suffering for it.
You know? I was always the baddie, always at school, in my jobs. I kind of was like this magnet, but being as the bad one. So then I eventually started to grow up from that because I used to wear that as like a big victim too. Poor me.
No one loves me. They don’t understand me, you know? So there’s all these different ways you have to look at. The key thing is to know that all these states of mind, are locked deep inside, are so complicated, so constructed, and all mixed up, you know, we just have to learn to unravel them, and whatever methods we can use, and I don’t care, whatever methods we can use to see ourselves, please do them. You know?
Go to ten therapists, meditate, go to the mountains, become a nun, or not become a nun. Do whatever you like, whatever it is that helps you get to see your mind, take responsibility and know that you can change. That’s the miracle, you know. Relevant advice, go to Buddha House. Oh, go to Buddha House, yeah.
Okay. Yes. So are we communicating?