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 uses the metaphor of being your own therapist to teach how understanding truly works in Buddhist practice. She distinguishes sharply between conceptual knowledge and direct experience—between understanding a recipe and tasting the cake. The fundamental problem, she explains, is that most practitioners carry not just concepts instead of reality, but wrong concepts altogether. Her main instruction walks through analytical meditation and concentration meditation working together to build genuine insight into emptiness—something that shifts from intellectual understanding to lived realization. This realization naturally dissolves delusions like grasping, fear, and anger that keep us trapped. An extensive Q&A covers daily practice, the nature of Buddhas, karma, abortion, and other pressing concerns. Addressed to sincere practitioners ready to work on their minds.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 23 2002 01 20 BYT.mp3
UUID: 29ce7db4-6182-4e40-a81b-8c5cd455bf19
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Be Your Own Therapist (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2002-01-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~9,504
So conceptual. Includes the emotions and the head. Then but that’s just the gross level. And in the analogy of this and the the subtle level, which we never touch virtually until we learn to meditate, Buddha says, until we’ve learned to access the subtle level of our conscious awareness, which has the capability of experiencing something like emptiness directly, way beyond concepts. So the analogy here is sort of like conceptual knowledge is like the recipe for the cake.
Perception knowledge, direct knowledge, real knowledge, actual knowledge is like tasting the cake. Makes sense. Right? Where conceptual knowledge is having the map. Got it.
The the the perception knowledge is having is being in the place, the direct experience of it. So, you know, here we’re talking having direct experience of emptiness, direct experience of karma, direct experience of reincarnation, past lives, future lives, all of these things, which Buddha says we are capable of. So but so how do we approach all that stuff? Because it’s clear we can’t at this moment in time without only our conceptual mind remember a past life, understand emptiness, do karma, blah blah blah blah. You know?
But doesn’t mean should you know, it’s in the same way that in order to get to to to Paris, let’s say I always use these to okay. Never mind. Get to Paris, you can’t just kind of oh, gotta get to Paris. You know? Suddenly, gotta now be in Paris.
You gotta learn the word. You gotta learn the route. You gotta go to a a travel agent. You gotta know how to do it. You gotta learn how far it is, where it’s close to.
You gotta learn to recognize when you get to this stop, you know, you’re on the way. You learn the whole deal. Then when you’ve got the concepts correct, you can follow the steps and you’ll be able to taste Paris, won’t you? Well, it’s the same with emptiness. It’s the same with a cake.
It’s the same with everything. It starts with the conceptual knowledge. So on in the in the long term, conceptual is artificial in the sense that it’s only the recipe, but in the recipe. But this is the problem. This is thing about busy mind before.
You know? Buddha is saying right now, we’re full of concepts bad enough because all we’re doing is learning about things. We’re never learning direct we don’t we don’t have the direct experience of anything. It’s all about everything. There’s many, many more things to say than just about concepts.
We could spend months on this. It’s most fascinating, how the mind functions and everything. But, you know, we we head full of concepts, but the big problem is now bad enough that they’re just concepts and not the real thing, but they’re wrong concepts. So it’s bad enough that you think you’re a cook and you’ve already got a recipe, but, honey, you’ve got the wrong recipe. You got double trouble.
You know? So first job to do is to clean up the recipe and get the right recipe, shuck out the wrong recipes. So what you’re doing here in this course, you know, hearing is Buddha’s views of what the right recipe is. Reincarnation, interdependence, karma, this, that, emptiness, compassion, blah blah blah. The whole deal.
Right? That’s Buddha’s view of what the right recipes are. He says once you’re on the right track conceptually, it’s just a question of time before you get the direct experience. It’s easy then. It’s just, you know, it’s falling off a log.
So, okay, this is where meditation comes in. The conceptual level is the the mode of mind we function at all the time apart from our senses. Okay? So what we need to do is learn to use these very sophisticated techniques for developing these states consciousness, which as I said before, in our western view, they don’t even exist. Right?
There’s no positing of a subtle level of mind. Even though we all experience it every time we dream, every time we leave our bodies and have these visions and things, but no one kind of understands them or accepts them. That’s fine. I’m just not complaining, just talking, because no one accepts anything. It’s not the brain.
Right? But the Buddhist view is that we have this subtle level of awareness, which when we access it in meditation so Paul got it just once by some, like, a fluke, you know, from his past karma and from a blessing, but he couldn’t get it again. He hasn’t got the skill. When we are able to access it at will, when we’ve accomplished this fifth perfection called the single pointed concentration or samadhi, you know, when we have accessed this subtle level, then at will can we take the mind where it wants to go, bring past, future, you name it. You get clairvoyance.
You have extraordinary experiences. And then the deeper you perfect your this quality, the more profound your experiences come. The more you remove all the delusions, the more profound your mind comes until eventually you become a Buddha whose mind is completely clairvoyant and sees everything. This is how Buddhism talks. It’s the it’s the nature of mind anyway to do this.
It’s just it’s obscured right now. So what we need to do, we learn conceptually all these things, and particularly emptiness. We learn the right words. But even hearing, you know, the words can actually generate some kind of feeling in us, some sense of it, you know, and get a glimpse of it. That’s why we have to keep meditating upon it and thinking about it.
And indeed, in the Tibetan monastic universities, they debate on it using these very sophisticated techniques to really break through. As Lama Yeshe said, you can get realizations on the debate yard. So even using concepts. In other words, don’t underestimate the power of the conceptual mind. When it’s correct, when the words we’re saying are in sync with reality, those words have a lot of power.
When words are just kind of blah blah blah, all our rubbish emotions and all nonsense and projections, of course, they have. They’re completely depressing. They drag us all down. But words, if they are linked to reality, have great power because they resonate with that reality. You know?
You think about that. Makes sense. In other words, if the words are truthful in terms of reality, in terms of anything, there’s power behind those words. So we use the conceptual mind because that’s where we’re at. But meanwhile, we learn to start practicing developing single pointed concentration.
We learn to access, and it’s very difficult. You know, we we can do it, though, if we really try. But, usually, in the traditional way, they talk about, you know, you’ve got to have all these appropriate conditions to do it, which means you have to have completely subdued all your delusions, pretty much, have no social responsibilities, be able to be completely content with whatever you have and be not fussy and not worried, find some perfect environment up in the mountains is best with an appropriate set of friends who can support you and take care of you for a year or so, then you’re ready to go get single point of concentration. That excludes probably ninety nine percent of us. But we can start somewhere.
Don’t be, you know, don’t be too miserable. Just start doing it a little bit every day. You know? So what you’re doing is you’re using you’re developing that single point of concentration, then then the thing that you’re meditating on in second meditation mode in insight, by initially doing some analysis, you then you know, the way an analytical meditation and and and and concentration meditation work is sort of like this. Let’s say you’ve got some understanding about Some words.
You got some you’re have the words to do analysis. Right? You develop some concentration. Then you then you do your concentration mode first. You get your concentration nice and fixed and clear.
Then you take your thing that you’re gonna meditate on, which is using these words, emptiness this, that, dependent, arising. You use logic. It’s what it is. And then at some point, in the use of your because your mind’s quite subtle. It’s still conceptual.
Not a problem. And you’re doing this analysis. And at some point, because your mind’s very focused, you get a strong insight into it, a strong kind of awareness of it. Well, you you’ll get a taste. So what you do is you hold that taste.
You revert to your concentration mode, and you concentrate on the taste. You hold it. You concentrate. You don’t keep analyzing. And then when that insight wears thin and wears out, you go back to the analysis, and you go back and forth like that.
That’s how you get and then eventually, when you got single point of concentration, you can go straight to the deep level immediately without effort, and you can hold the taste at a very deep level. And it’s in this way that you build up insight into emptiness and eventually perfect it. This is how it works. It’s a very practical process. And when you’ve realized emptiness, and then you have to perfect it, it’s like this truly a paradigm shift, profound, fundamental, different way of seeing.
Everything is different now. Everything in the universe is different now. There’s no longer grasping, no longer fear, no longer anger, jealousy, attachment, pride. In the gross level, we have them now. Nothing.
Can’t be. Not possible. Because all these delusions we have now are based on the assumption of a self existent, solid, real, independent, permanent, meanness, which Buddha says is a complete hallucination. It does not exist like that. So realizing emptiness on the basis of thinking about dependent arising is the conclusion, is the recognition of that.
Any questions? Time to finish. Any questions about that? Because we’re nearly done now. Okay.
So There’s a question. Where’s that? Yes. I understand. Yeah.
Well, there’s various ways they recommend. You know? Sometimes you can have the whole oh, yes. How to do sorry. How to do how to use this approach of the two kinds of meditation in your daily practice from day to day.
So let’s say using the stages of the path. Well, you know, one approach is you would have, let’s say, the morning meditation, for example, you do your other you do your Śākyamūni, you do some mantra, you do some this, you do some concentration, and then you’d take maybe one text, a Lamrim text. Or you if you’ve really heard the teachings many times, you might take one of the Lamrim prayers that kind of touches briefly on each of these because it’s so you take one verse or you take one section of the page in in the teaching, and you just read it. You read it, and then it’s it’s one particular topic or outline or heading in in the topic, you know. And then you read it, and then you you use that as the basis of your analytical meditation.
You you try to taste it and go into it very deeply, analyze and taste it and look at it and feel it, and and you go using your concentration meditation. You do a little bit of this every day. It might take you two years to go through the entire thing. No. What I’m yeah.
What I’m I’m in general, what I’m saying is in order to really develop genuine compassion, you’ve got to have developed some wisdom. But you don’t kinda keep doing wisdom, wisdom, wisdom, wisdom, and then ten years later, do compassion. Not like that. Recommended way Yes. To start with?
Yes. The beginning. Start with the beginning that we’ve been doing through the order. And then say, do that for If you have a book it depends on the book and depends on how deep you wanna go. I mean, some people go off to do retreat for seven, ten years on this stuff.
So they just keep going through it, and then go back again and back again and keep deepening. Or if you’ve got a lot of lot of awareness and a lot of many, many things that you’ve thought about and heard about, you know, you you’ve because you’ve had many teachings on it, so you’ve a lot of stuff and a lot of notes, a lot of food for thought, then you could spend months on just one topic. If you haven’t heard that many teachings, you can’t spend months because you haven’t got the you haven’t got the concept to back it up, you know? So it depends on your own knowledge and how much you heard it and how many variations in arguments of the ego you can use to refer to it all. So it’s up to you how much you’ve got inside you.
Quite understand. In general, it’s appropriate to have a teacher, as we’ve discussed. But, you know, let’s say you haven’t got a teacher, but you’ve got some teachings. You’ve been hearing the teachings, you’ve got the books, and you’ve got this ability, and you wanna do it. You can start.
It helps to have a teacher, but you can do if you have all the basis, you’ve had the teachings already, it’s all there, you’ve got the basis for it. But if you’re gonna do, like, a serious retreat on it, it really is helpful to have definitely need guidance about how to do it and the way to do it because the person near the teacher can see what is the best for us. And each person’s quite different in how they it. But you’ve got to start somewhere. Yeah.
Absolutely. You you talked about the lesson of the rules in case of Paul. Yes. The Buddhist idea god is. It’s not that obvious yet god like a Christian god, is it?
The Buddhist idea of god. Well, Buddhism, as I’ve been saying, doesn’t have the term god. So you could say the closest the simplest word to use instead is Buddha. The difference so let me just again say the qualities of Buddha, a person who is a Buddha. It could be any person because there are countless beings who’ve become Buddha.
Right? So okay. So like I’ve said already, the qualities of a Buddha are one, the complete development, excuse me, of the wisdom wing, which is virtually omniscience. So, yes, indeed, Buddhism does assert an omniscient being, but countless ones. Omniscience.
And the word whereas we know the word means literally knowing everything. And this is what the development of the wisdom wing is, is what a person who is a Buddhist is attempting to develop is omniscience. You’re moving towards it by doing this job we discussed. Right? The key to it is is emptiness.
The complete perfection of the wisdom wing, specifically seeing the minds of all beings perfectly, all their past, all their future, whatever. Seeing them perfectly. The second quality of a Buddha is this wing, compassion wing, which is a complete development of all these qualities we’ve discussed, which basically culminates in having this absolute empathy with every living being as if they were you. No separation any longer. No longer a sense of individual I whatsoever.
I like your your mind is as big as the universe now because the fact is too, the quality is of this consciousness, is now omniscient and infinitely compassionate. This consciousness, which is potential that you’ve got and I’ve got in everybody, when it’s fully developed like this, it it it isn’t confined by space or time or matter. How can it be? It’s not physical. So it literally pervades the universe.
Wherever there is existence, that there is that consciousness, just naturally. Plus, the other quality, which is the one that Tārā represents, what we did this morning, is what they call I keep saying emptiness. What’s the other one? What’s that one? Not emptiness.
The opposite. No. No. That word. Omnipotence.
Thank you. Omnipotence. Okay? Omnipotence. Okay?
Meaning infinite power. The effortless ability to do whatever needs to be done to benefit any one of those beings in the most perfect way based on the compassion that wants to do that and the wisdom that knows how, and especially the ability to manifest that consciousness, you know, effortlessly. This is what the Buddha’s capability is. In billions of forms throughout billions of universes for billions of eons as long as billions of sentient beings exist. Now if that’s not god, I don’t know what is.
But the difference is Buddha doesn’t say it’s god. Buddha doesn’t say that being has always been that. Buddha says you can become that, and Buddha doesn’t also say that the job of that being is to create things. Now the fact is an omniscient omniscient, compassionate being called a Buddha can manifest entire universes, entire peoples of people. They could create, quote unquote, but they would be the Buddha.
They wouldn’t be ordinary beings, which is the argument Buddhism has that it’s not possible, Buddha was I’m just saying it simplistically now, that for an omniscient being to create a being who’s now ordinary. If we were the creations of God, Buddha says, of Buddha, then we would actually be emanations of Buddha, which means we actually would be Buddha, and we wouldn’t be suffering. So that’s a simple way to say what Buddhism would say. So Buddhas have the power. I mean, there’s all these endless stories of how Buddhas even the lowest level bodhisattva, well before they’re a Buddha, has the capability of their own consciousness in a hundred different forms in different places simultaneously.
They’re being fed there and a dog there and a worm here and a human here. They say that. So a Buddha has the capability of doing this effortlessly and with infinitely. So there’s a story just a tiny story, just to tell you, of the Dalai Lama. Lama Zopa told this story a few years ago.
When the Tibetans were had been in India a few years already, and the Dalai Lama and it was already set up in his government in Dharmasala in North India and was negotiating with the Tibet the Buddhist the Indian government to get land for their monasteries down south, in the south, right, for the big monastic universities. And so the Dalai Lama sent his appropriate Tibetan minister down to to Delhi to to see the into New Delhi to see the Indian minister. But Indian bureaucracy being the way it is, he couldn’t get a meeting. So he got fed up and frustrated and went back to Dharmasala, and he see it was impossible. Know?
The Dalai Lama said, don’t worry about it. It’ll be okay. Go back down. I mean, obviously, I’m paraphrasing here. I wasn’t in the meeting.
I promise. So then the the the the the Zibetan minister went down Delhi, he got for some reason, he got into the office that day, and for some reason, the little boy, the son of the Indian minister, was in the office. And the little boy expressed a wish for a dog. So the the Tibetan was delighted to do something, to kind of turn the wheel somehow. You know?
So he went outside, and he found this Indian sadhu, you know, a holy man, who people who walk around the streets with a little dog. Please, can I buy your dog? So sure. So the little dog came in. He ran to the little boy, he was happy.
Then he ran to ran to the daddy, and daddy was happy. Everybody was happy, and things worked. You know? So as Lama Zopa said, the dog and the sadhu were manifestations of the Dalai Lama’s mind. So this is the real way that Buddhas work for others.
They don’t just walk around being one person like Buddha with a halo, then they die. They’re manifesting in countless forms all the time. If because if they’re a Buddha, that’s what they can do. Right? So that dog and that sadhu aren’t created by Buddha in the sense that Jesus the god created I’m not being critical.
I’m just saying god created those beings as being separate from himself. Buddha would say they were actually mean, Buddhism would say that that sadhu and that dog were illusory in in the sense that they flesh and bones, and the dog acted like a dog and pee peed and caca. It didn’t act like the Dalai Lama. But it was actually the living energy of the Dalai Lama pretending to be a dog. So in fact, in that way, Buddhas, of course, can create anything, but it is actually the Buddha.
So there’d be no reason to have a universe full of pretend Buddhas. You know? Do you see? So that’s the difference in Buddhist view. Does that answer the question?
Yeah. I can’t want one of those dogs. That’s right. That’s right. Yep.
Just a sec. Now they say all the time, you know, the Tibetans have a thing that if they you know, they always say you can never tell who anybody is, so you never judge. Just be careful. There’s so many stories, you know, of ordinary people who are actually manifestations. I mean, all these stories, you read them in the zen stories too.
There’s like one story about this long, long story, but the essence of it was this particular practitioner, this yogi, this male yogi. He was walking with his with his teacher, I think, and this is showing how even the the student had more realizations than the teacher in this particular And the they were going to coming to the edge of a river, and there’s this kind of ugly looking old leper lady there who wanted to be carried across, and the teacher didn’t wanna do it. So he showed his magical powers and walked with kind of walked across the water and everything, didn’t bother to carry this smelly old lady. But the student had compassion. So when he got halfway across, the the teacher turns around, and there’s this old smelly old lady manifesting now as this blissful female Buddha called Vajrayoginī, who’s carrying this yogi into the sky, you know, to the pure lands of Vajrayoginī.
So, actually, this smelly old lady was really the Buddha. They have all these stories all the time. The story of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, many stories like this Roger, he’s an Australian monk who is his attendant, told one story of a few times in India that that one one story was when they were in this village. They a whole bunch of cars were driving through this village, and Lama Osel, who was the reincarnation of Lama Yeshe, who’s now about seventeen years old, a Spanish boy, he was with them too in another car. And all of sudden, they’re all heading towards Bodh Gaya.
Right? And then Lama Zopa and Roger in one car, Roger says Rinpoche says, please turn back to that village we just went to. So he did. And then, basically, what Rinpoche did was he got an offering, and he went over to this crowd crowd of people with a young girl in the middle, like a fifteen year old girl. And then he started circumambulating.
He first circumambulated the group, which is what you do to it when there’s a holy object there. So everyone is looking kinda curiously, you know, and then as he walks up very respectfully with these offerings to this girl, offers her these things, and then backs out, very respect that they do from a holy being, got back in the car, and they went back to Bodh Gaya. And then Lama Osel said to Roger, where were you? What happened? You know?
So Roger explained, and he said, who do you think that was, Lama? And he said, oh, that was Tārā. So there’s all the time they have stories. There’s another woman, apparently, this old kinda like old bag lady who lives near Swayambhu stupa in Nepal. She’s like an old bag lady.
You know? But she and Rinpoche treats her with this incredible respect like a holy being. It makes special offerings. So the logic being that Rinpoche has a clairvoyance to see these are actual Buddhas, but not like an ordinary looking fifteen year old girl or an ordinary old bag lady, you know, or an ordinary dog for that matter. So this saying in Tibet, you’d be very careful who what you do because you never know who anybody is.
It could be the Buddha manifesting as a worm, as a dog, as a this or as a that. And, also, they often talk about how your guru manifests in this way to benefit you. So be careful. You know? Yeah.
When talking about the cup being connected to the designer and blah blah blah. Well, it’s so much connected, but it’s nothing other than it’s nothing other than all those things. Mean, mean, sense, the cup is connected and probably everything else is there? You can say it like that, but sort of more than that. It’s more subtle than that, but that’s okay.
They say that ignorance this is the words for it. This is what takes so much time to see. Ignorance in our mind, this profound primordial kind of grasping that everything is having an inherent nature, clings and grasps to this cup as having just being in and of itself cup with no relationship to anything else. But in fact, it is all those other things. There’s nothing other than all of that, and you can’t find cup among any of those things.
So the interdependent the dependent arising when it comes to self is karma. That whole story for us is karma. So right now, isn’t it, between you and me and us, are we having a fight? There’s this powerful sense of my ego being separate and cut off, and how dare you, this wicked person who has nothing to do with me, do that terrible action to point innocent me who has done nothing to deserve it. But, actually, it’s a all I am is a result of countless karmic actions that is culminated in this moment in time where I am meeting my own karma back by having you there punch me in the nose.
Everything is completely interdependent. The whole scenario, you can’t isolate anything. It’s just it’s being one big interdependent scenario. So it’s sort like we’re just the different bits of atoms in this scenario, but we all take it all personally. It’s a way of saying it.
You know? So when we really have the realization of karma, we don’t have delusions. We don’t get angry. We don’t get depressed. We don’t get jealous.
We completely blissed out. We completely see everything’s interdependent. It’s like it’s like the best way to realize emptiness. It’s by seeing that we’re not this isolated, separate, innocent self. That’s how we do it.
We concretize and isolate everything. This is a way of saying it. You know? So the cup is nothing other than all of those things. Like, you and me and I and all the past karma brought us to this point in time.
So there’s a million different causes and conditions for this particular scenario, but we act as if there aren’t any. Isolated me. How dare you do that to me? But, actually, good karma explains it. You know?
So we are nothing other than all those things come together. It’s just a way of saying it. You know? Well, it must be such a I think we have to meditate on it very much to get it. But you’re on the right track here.
Yeah. Say that again? Yeah. Put a manifest in the body and be there for a month or or, like, in library for a month. You mean share it with you for a second?
Share it with me. But it has to do it. I mean, the Buddha yeah. Sure. It can do anything, but there’d be not much I mean, how to say that?
Oh, yes. He asked, can can Buddha manifest in, like, his body just for a moment or something or anybody’s body just for a moment, but even without our knowledge? Of course, the Buddha could. It’s all a question of the Buddha doing whatever’s beneficial. That’s all.
So it’s only it’s only been doing it if it was beneficial. So there’s gonna be some you know? I mean, I mean, well, for example, they have this is a bit not quite what you mean, but they do all the time have in in Tibetan Buddhism, there’s this system of people people who are called what’s the word? You know? Losing my memory.
Oracles. Oracles. Oracles. They’re a group of people, often monks, who who become, if you like, possessed by a Buddha, who then you know, there’s an elaborate system. The Dalai Lama’s government still has it.
There’s a certain oracle, and he he he comes as a monk who who become who becomes sort of they they conjure up the presence of this this very fearful powerful Buddha that he called the oracle. And so then the government then asked the Dalai Lama or they could ask various questions to this oracle. And then the Buddha speaks through the oracle, and they give the answers, so then they do what they have to do. You know? That’s very common.
So, yes, Buddhas can act like that. They can do like that. I’ve seen many examples of that, that type of thing. So manifesting in our bodies, sure. We’ve got some job to do on behalf of the Buddha.
They can do that. Yes. But so can also negative spirits. Negative spirits can do that too. Yeah.
Yeah. I’m asking the world because you’re about a mosquito. Yes. The mosquito. Yes.
Taking one tiny, tiny drop of blood. I’m sure you didn’t get that. That’s right. I mean, could you would wisdom say it’s not a wise thing? Uh-huh.
Okay. You would say yes if you do definitely know that that mosquito is a malaria carrying mosquito. So if we don’t but, I mean, is it common in this country for mosquitoes to give malaria? It’s not, is it? I’ve got malaria in India Okay.
Two years in a row. Well, whatever it is. If we know definitely I mean, I and it’s like and it’s also dependent upon karma. That’s the point that our karma — all the, you know, the insect spray people, marketing people, don’t take all this into consideration. Right?
They have these big pictures of the big flies, and they don’t take karma into consideration. You’ve to have the karmic imprint to get malaria or Ross River Fever or whatever. But, of course, you don’t know that either. But look at the stories we told about the fly, about Harry, about the BMW, about the guy hearing his own, curing his own AIDS. I mean, wouldn’t be surprised if you genuinely give your blood out of compassion to a mozzie that you won’t get, you know, the disease.
Because, you know, your compassion overrode it. That’s the point. It comes right there. If you really are in an area where you get Ross River fever or you get malaria and you really don’t wanna risk it because you’re not brave enough to let the mozzie have its blood because you don’t want that’s fine. Recognize your limitations but with compassion.
Sorry, mozzie, and go a little blow on it and you know? That reminds me of another story about a Mozzy, actually. When I visited up in Cairns, I visited the prison in Lotus Glen. And there’s a couple you know, two, three, four or five blokes in the group, and there’s one aboriginal bloke in the group who studies there. And he was telling me about this story when he was in the box.
They call it the hole in America. It’s where you’ve chucked out when you’ve been naughty. Know, you go and sit there in the box for a while. So he’s in the box, and, of course, he’s up in Cairns, so he’s eaten alive by the mozzies right at night. And he’s going crazy, hitting them.
He’s covered in blood. He got so exhausted, he said. And he realised it’s an insane thing to do, you know. So one night later, was just completely fed up and exhausted, he’s talking to the mozzie. Said, okay, you blokes, please, I cannot bear this any longer.
Know, I’m I don’t want to kill you anymore. I can’t bear it. So please, just do a deal. He said he should talk like this to the mozzies. Right?
He felt really embarrassed telling us. But he said, look. I promise you I won’t kill you. There’s one mozzie there. But please go and tell your mates to leave me alone.
Okay? But I won’t kill you. I promise. I don’t want to. And he said he couldn’t believe that they all stopped coming.
I have no idea where that comes from. But who knows? You know? I mean, who knows? It could be, you know, you you the the Dalai Lama manifesting as a mozzie to help him learn something.
I mean, who knows? Anything. Just just be careful. So you have to be be practical. Be where you’re at.
You know? Somebody else? Yeah. You were talking about abortions. Uh-huh.
Was I? Oh, I see. Yes. Okay. That they survive.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Absolutely. Sure. She she said that, well, you know, we’re talking about abortion, how we should be grateful that our moms didn’t abort us and all that.
And so what basically, what’s abortion? Well, you know, as we’ve just talked From both sides. Of course. Mother’s side. Absolutely.
From the child and the mother’s side. But as we’ve discussed, you know, as we’ve discussed, Buddhism would assert that in general, you be a baby, a person, a person begins when the egg and sperm stay together because the consciousness has gone into it. So Buddhism would say, generally speaking, it’s bizarre and impossible for an egg and sperm to develop into a fetus unless that fetus already has a consciousness there that determines the shape of the fetus. Because the shape of our body, sure, it’s due to our mom and dad, but it’s our karma that we have a certain body with this, this, and a broken bone there, and a genes here, or whatever it is, you see, it’s our karma. So the the egg and sperm can only start to become a being when the consciousness is there.
So, obviously, it’s a human being from that second. So, clearly, if you have an abortion, you just kill a human being. It’s very clear. So I had an abortion when I was twenty three. Now that means and then for me, it’s interesting.
Or, you know, this one time ever that I got pregnant, it and I never had these experiences before, but I remember the vividly, the day, the person mean, I just really sleep around. Right? But I remember this particular bloke, this horrible Australian architect. I remember in London. Was I was really sleeping around in London, right, all these these old hippie having a good time.
I remember this bloke I didn’t like. And I remember the time. I was in Earl’s Court, this particular day, and I remember something went inside me. And it was a really clear experience. I was very surprised, but I remembered as vivid as the day.
You know? But I didn’t put the words to it because I wasn’t a Buddhist, and I wasn’t anything. Was this old hippie. You know? I mean, I was something.
I was a hippie. But I had no I didn’t put the words. It was a sentient being. I didn’t have the words, but I knew I didn’t want it. So it happened to be that you get, you know, abortions on the national health.
That was in nineteen sixty eight. You can have abortions on the national health at that point. So I went straight up marching out to the doctors and gave them some reason, because I talked about my dad or something, and they, you know, said, okay. I have an abortion. So I remember they put me in the hospital, and I remember they they didn’t cut me cut the poor little thing out properly.
And I’d never get depressed in my whole life, but I was deeply depressed for ten days, they very kindly gave me a room to look after me for ten days. How kind they were. But it was so clear to me when I looked back. Even then, it was clear to me what I was doing. But I didn’t have I didn’t say the words.
I couldn’t I didn’t say the words, I am killing a human being, but I was depressed because, obviously, I was. But I didn’t have the words. I didn’t say. So I had the intention. I knew it was a living thing.
I knew it would turn into a baby if I let it grow. So, obviously, I knew it was a living thing, but it shows how our minds are so dull. You know? But I didn’t actually say the words, I will kill a human being. I didn’t say that.
But it was clear what I was doing, so I had the intention, and I followed through. You know? Now as for the sentient being, that poor person in there, they had the karma to be killed by me, obviously. They wouldn’t have been there if they hadn’t. This is the absolute point.
This is where, if we think of, let’s say, we’ve done harm in our lives, we’ve hurt someone or killed somebody, people have done this all the time. I mean, you know, we’ve had accidents, people die, all this. We can have such grief and guilt. But we’ve got to remember it’s not meant to make it kind of take off the guilt from ourselves, but remember it’s interdependent. If that child that I happened to conceive didn’t have the karma to die, nothing would have let me have an abortion.
I might have gone. They might have done it. They wouldn’t have done it. They wouldn’t have given me permission. Something would have shifted.
So I had the intention, but the person had the karma. Boom. Happened. Came together nicely. What do you do, like, to purify?
Purify. Like we’ve been like we did last time. You do the four opponent powers. The four opponent this regret. You know, these steps are psychological, and there aren’t any other steps if you analyze them.
Regretting sincerely because you don’t want the future suffering. Compassion and, you know, refuge, Buddha. Compassion. Do the actual practice and determine not to do again. What else can you do?
That’s it. That’s purification. There’s no karma we can’t purify. Yeah. How how does that, explain the case of the mother’s pregnant and she spontaneously miscarriages?
Miscarriages. She did yeah. She did Okay. It means she had nothing to do with it. It means she didn’t have the intention to kill, so therefore, created zero karma.
But the child still had the karma to to die young. That being the being had the the karma to die young, to die before they got born, the same as the aborted one. The extra one was the person that I aborted had the karma to be killed by me, but the other one just had had the karma to have a life worth a month, you know, in a womb. That’s it. But the mother did no karma.
There’s no karma at all, except the grief they experienced. Maybe it’s the grief I mean, you could say that that was the result of some karma, the pain of the loss, because they somehow have maybe some past karma between them and that sentient being from who knows what life when they maybe did some kind of something, a rejection. Who knows? You know? So then they lose the baby now, so their heart breaks.
But they create no negative karma. They just experience some negative karma. They experience some pain. You know? Do you see?
Because that’s the point, the strong karmic connection. I mean, I’ve heard the one lama say that even just to us for us to meet in this room, we might never meet again in this life. We must have met hundreds of times before. So can you imagine how many lives you’ve had together to be born to a person’s womb? Sure.
That’s pretty close. Who else? What’s happening? Yes. Go on.
Go on. You were saying before that calm had something to do with the form of you as it Yeah. Even what the form of you has to do with your karma. Yep. I was just wondering what the idea of birthmarks were and the marks that you were born with and whether they had something to do with the past lives or what.
I don’t know anything about birthmarks, darling. I don’t know anything about birthmarks. That could have some meaning, but I don’t I don’t I’ve never heard anything. But, you know, the even how the body is, it’s like you create first of all, you’ve got a mother. Let’s say, this is now another story.
Okay? I know about birthmarks. But you know how even the car even the type of body we have is due to our karma means the choice. Your mother’s egg and sperm. There’s no problem with that.
It’s obvious. Your mom and dad. The DNA, whatever you like. And let’s say, you know, that that they got the DNA to have, you know, a certain kind of shaped body because that’s, you know, that’s that’s the family you’re born into. Well, you create the cause, that’s the point, to have that shaped body.
Let’s say it’s a kind of body that everyone calls beautiful. You can see some people are just born with beautiful bodies. A conventionally thing, we call them beautiful, and the whole family is beautiful. Well, the beauty or karma of much patience in the past, you create the cause to go to a mother who’s got, you know, genes to have a beautiful body. But we can also see the same family might have one un-beautiful kid.
I mean, I’m just talking relatively now. You know what I’m saying? I’m not trying to be kind of judgmental because everything’s relative, you know? It’s all karma. So it’s still the karma, you know?
Or you can have a person who’s born to a mother who’s got the, you know, the DNA to get cancer, but they don’t get cancer because they haven’t created the cause. You know? So all this even so all you can what one way to say all this is we create the cause to have that body, that sickness, that mind, that evil, that group, you name it. But within whatever the condition is called the mother or whatever, is simply the physical condition that does have those aspects. They’re not the main cause of our having that.
They’re simply the condition that our consciousness goes into. So in that sense, we created the cause, you know. So for a child who, let’s say, is born with a really mangled suffering body, you know, completely kind of whatever the words are, nervous system, completely wrecked and really mentally suffering as well, that those genes did come from the parents, but the really, the main energy that caused that is the consciousness that got born into it. That’s the direct karmic karmic result of that, of that child, not the parents. You know?
The DNA didn’t cause it. That’s just the condition. In other words, the child created a cause to get born to a mangled DNA, you know, whatever the words are. That’s the point. Yeah.
What? Oh, yes, please. Talk to me. I’m just on the subject of the last Conception? Or I understand.
So talking about subtle perception, is there something to recommend taking drugs, hallucinogenic drugs? At some, you know, at some level, of course, it can alter, but alter the senses, isn’t it? Alter the chemistry of the body. And because the body and the mind have an intimate relationship, of course, it plays a big role. I mean, my goodness.
I mean, anyways, if you’ve had a few trips on a few things, I can definitely say that. That’s true. But the Buddhist approach would be that that’s it can help you. So for me, it was a catalyst to see that my mind could think different things. That was good.
But in the end, it was very clear. It it didn’t go anywhere with me. It was just became this kind of distorted experience. It was kind of interesting for a while. But there’s no there’s very little there’s no control.
There’s very little you can do with it. Same with alcohol. You know? There’s very little you can do with that experience. So the Buddhist approach.
Because eventually, what you have to do is access a subtle level of mind that’s got nothing to do with the senses. So finally, it’s beyond the senses completely. So as a as a learning experience, sure, but in the end, you get experiences of emptiness, zero to do with drugs. They would just completely destroy, wreck. No help.
No advantage. I remember even one I mean, this is not quite like that, but, no, that’s another point, actually. No. It’s just a funny story again. When I was a nun already, and I was living in England, and I visited my friend Bridget in her house in London.
And she was up and having a shower, and I was getting the place ready for dinner. And only because I I noticed she had some chocolate cake, and only because I was on a diet, I only had one piece. But, of course, it was hash cake. Right? So I got completely stoned.
So you’d have broken your vows about not drinking or get drug, you know, stuff. What can you do? I couldn’t vomit or anything. Well, I couldn’t wouldn’t would have helped. It was in my bloodstream already.
But what was interesting was a very nice experience, definitely. But the next day, I was like lead. My body was heavy. My mind was heavy. I and I thought, that just shows.
It’s not worth it. You know? There’s just little bit for a little kind of it’s like a little cute experience. Please excuse me. I mean, I don’t meditate and have great experiences, but, know, what they say you’re gonna achieve in meditation, if you’re thinking of good experiences, is so superior.
It’s like a joke. You know? Yeah. Anyway, what else, people? I understand.
I understand. You know, if the person let’s say a person is really desperate for you to apologize, are you feeding their attachment by apologizing? You might be, but, you know, the real point here is the real point here is the practice of compassion, our compassion. If you have enough wisdom to know that it’s much better not to because that would genuinely help that person. If you really have that wisdom, then please, you choose that instead.
It would be for a body sufferer, you do whichever is the most beneficial. Do you see? You do whichever is most beneficial. You have that amount of wisdom, but if you don’t, then, you know, apologize. How amazing.
But even that, we can see it might make you know, it we don’t necessarily have to do that because it I mean, the person with a BMW, it just felt it felt like a good thing for him to do. He wasn’t thinking that the guy would then do something nice to him. It was the bonus for him. It was just the bonus. That was like the bonus on the top.
He felt it was good for him to do this. Somehow, he felt that was kind of good for him to finish this thing, for him to apologize. But it happened to be the bonus that this guy kind of he he forgot about it. He kind of made it up, you know, stopped. But so you’ve gotta have, you know with when you’re looking about the compassion wing, the main main emphasis is on you opening up your heart, you forgiving others, you developing compassion, you developing patience.
There’s not really much concern about where the person’s at. On the wisdom wing, there is. Now on the wisdom wing, not thinking about the person, all you’re thinking about yourself, have developed yourself. The same with compassion one. But then the compassion one also is the you’re using the skill to know what’s the best thing to do for that person, genuinely the best thing.
That’s what that’s where skill comes. So if you really like I said, if you really can see that it would actually, in the long term, benefit this mind this person’s mind to not apologize, then, of course, you would without any doubt, you wouldn’t apologize. Here’s another question. Yeah. Can you be attached to dharma and Mhmm.
So I understand? I understand. Okay. Attachment, remember, is a neediness for something that if you don’t get it, you freak out. You get angry.
You get depressed. You blame people. Now my feeling is if that’s how you feel about your dharma, it won’t last very long. You you it wouldn’t be Dharma. At first, it wouldn’t be Dharma, really, and it wouldn’t last very long anyway.
You’d give up after a while. Be too boring. You know? So to want to practice Dharma, to want to go to the teachings, get excited about going somewhere to hear the Dalai Lama and crying if you can’t, I’m not sure if that’s attachment. That’s just kind of you you really want it.
That’s fantastic. You know? Nothing wrong with that. But if you and okay. If you find you get angry when you don’t go and you blame everybody else because they you know, you missed the plane and how they’re there and you’re gonna sue somebody because you couldn’t get to see the Dalai Lama, I would say that’s attachment definitely.
You know what I mean? So in a way, you’re of you’re messing it up if you do that. You know? But on the relative level, it seems to me it’s like this. Given that we have got attachment, we’re still samsaric, and you’ve got you’ve got a you’ve got a person who beats you up every day, they’re talking relatively now, a person who’s brutal and mean and nasty and leads you up garden paths and makes you smoke drugs and be crazy, or you have a person who’s a nice person who helps you and loves you and supports you.
Excuse me. Be attached to the second person. Do you see my point? And eventually, if you’re practicing properly, you’ll get rid of attachment anyway. But at least be attached to something that helps you.
You know? Yeah. Or if you think about it even this way sorry. You wanna say that to me? What’s happening?
I’m sorry. Can’t. Thank you. I’m finished. You’re trying to make me go or something.
I’m sorry. Fine. Okay, darling. It won’t be long. So it’s like I think of, you know, I think of, say, my mom, who was very attached to me excuse me.
I’m glad she was attached to me. If she if she weren’t, I’d be dead by now. So difficult to put up with. I mean, any child. You think, I look at other people’s children, I can’t believe that their poor mother bears it.
It’s only because she’s got this unbelievable attachment and adores this little bundle of thing, you know? So this is mean, in a sense, you can almost say what a relief our mothers had attachment. You know, look at the mothers who don’t, who beat their kids to death instead. Excuse me. I’m glad I might have attachment for me.
I mean, given that you’re gonna be Samsāra because you got love there, you know, okay. You know what to do? Best of a bad world, isn’t it? See what I mean? The aim isn’t to keep the attachment.
Of course not. Yes, darling. Yeah. Come on then. Just try.
She has all this attachment for her four year old. Okay? Yep. And they have tantrums. They you know, when they get what they want.
Yep. Sounds like the rest of us. That’s right. Yep. Your own stuff.
They got this little thing. Oh my goodness. I’m glad I’m a nun. What? Yes.
That’s right. I know. Oh, darling. I don’t know. I mean, I I understand.
It’s like, so what to do in the middle of all the drama? The kids screaming and crying and shouting or and one of them was three or seven or what? Oh, my god. It’s not easy. You know, I really don’t I mean, it’s a bit like that question is a bit like saying, when I’m in the when I’m about to crash on the freeway, what’ll I do?
Darling, the answer is the extent to which you’ve done any driving test or driving training beforehand is the extent to which you can do anything then. It’s a bit late, except to do damage control. So I it’s sort of like that in a way. So this is why, really, back to how much training you’ve done. There’s no other answer.
Because this is what I find interesting about kids, and I even remember myself as a child. That it’s it’s like it was like we were like these barometers of whatever was going on around us. I remember it. You didn’t notice it then, but I remember it. That whatever’s you know, the energy between my mom and dad was kind all this fighting and dramas, and there’s all this business with my father, and all these other things happening.
So there’s so much and many layers all going on. And, yes, this little bundle of intuitive rage and and this and wanting to be loved and attachment and confusion and seven of you. It’s like chaos, you know. So, I mean, most of the time, we have this emotional ranting because no one knew how to control their minds. My mother and father were experiencing all their things, so you’re actually responding much of the time to their dramas.
They’re kind of responding to you and I mean, it’s just chaos because of their stuff. So it seems to me not a joke to say the best way is for you to continue to work on your mind, to continue to know your mind. And the more clean you are, then even, one, you might you know, the child mightn’t be perfect, but at least you will have more clarity to know how to deal with it. Then, two, they will have a better barometer. Think children are bar what is it?
Not even barometer. They’re like a mirror of what’s going on around them. So so often what happens, I think, isn’t it, that let’s say you’re having some kind of emotional stuff, the kid’s like a maniac because they’re just they’re just kind of reflecting what you’re feeling. So you think, this damn kid, you be not realizing it’s our own stuff that the little child is picking up on. And I really think it’s like that from my own experience, you know.
It’s so subtle somehow. Because they’re not controlled adults who kind of learn to know that there’s some you then give mom space and walk out the door. So he just screams and shouts. I’m not saying this every time like that. So there’s so many levels of things going on, it seems.
So back to the same old one.