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 investigates the two characteristics of negative emotional states: they disturb the mind and misrepresent reality. Attachment—a neurotic dependence on external things for happiness—is the default mode of our minds and the root of suffering, fundamentally different from love or preference. She traces how anger, depression, jealousy branch from attachment, then offers Buddhism’s radical reframe: the cause of happiness is your own mind, not circumstances. Through examples from the Dalai Lama and her work in prisons, she explores why understanding karma, not anger, is the logical response to injustice. The Q&A addresses hard questions: How do we handle injustice without anger? What about people with severe mental illness?
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 DwA.mp3
UUID: ba340db4-c3b5-4fe6-9ff3-0adf6586dcca
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Chasing Buddha 2001 robina (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2001 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~9,113
So our personality, you know, is simply the habit, the various habits we’ve had done, we’ve brought with us from before, just like we know within a certain period in this life. So we look into the one of the negative ones, we can see, you know, that they’ve two Buddha says they’ve got two characteristics. The suffering states of mind, the negative states of mind, suffering states of mind have two characteristics. And these are what we have to investigate to really get strong taste for because that tells us like I said before, gives us a logic of why they are negative, you know, not just because someone told you. One is is that it’s disturbing.
There’s a term used in Tibetan that translates as one of the terms used for unhappy emotions. It’s called disturbing emotions. Well, it’s fairly obvious, this one. If we had enough awareness of our own heart, our own mind, and we already lack that one. We’ve never done it in our lives.
It’s not part of our culture to look into our hearts, is it? No one taught us how to do that. So that already is an amazing job we have to learn to do to learn the skill of listening to ourself, hearing what on earth is going on. Already, we’re really on the right track when we can begin to do that. But we can really learn to look into our hearts, look into the nature of anger, the nature of depression, the first obvious characteristic is that it’s miserable.
Your mind is miserable. Your heart is unhappy. You’re disturbed. It’s so clear, you know. But our problem with that is because we have this kind of this other this view so strongly that you caused it, we know we’re miserable, but our logic says you caused it.
So therefore, I think I don’t have any control over it because you did it. So therefore, you have to change. I mean, it’s so hopeless, isn’t it? It’s so depressing. It’s so kind of unempowering.
Depressing. It’s so kind of unempowering. It’s so victim mentality. Not being mean about us. It’s just how it is, isn’t it?
But that’s the view we all have. So we always feel overwhelmed by our emotions like we can’t change them. All this mean, horrible world out there, they’ve gotta change, you know? Buddha says wrong. Sure, could change, but you can’t control it.
The one thing you have control over is your own mind, and and your anger’s yours, you know? It’s so empowering, it’s outrageous. Doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it’s To know that it’s possible is the radical change that can help It’s the radical shift we have to make. So we have to see the benefit of wanting to change our own mind, you know? So the first characteristic of what’s called a negative state of mind is that it’s disturbing to me.
Forget about other people. We’re not looking at them yet. We’re looking at us, you know. It’s disturbing to me. So we own this.
This already is so profound, you know, amazing. Now the second characteristic, which we’ve implied already, but it’s harder to really comprehend and it’s linked to Buddha’s view of wisdom, to Buddha’s wisdom teachings of how things exist, which is this idea of things that are interdependent. There’s different ways of talking about reality as Buddha describes how things exist. We’re cut off, bereft, lonely, separate, alienated, you know. Poor miserable me out here.
Horrible me, nasty you over there. Or indeed, poor miserable me over here and gorgeous, this is divine you out there that I’ve gotta kinda suck up like a vampire so I can get happy. Right? So when the delusions are in the mind, when the unhappy emotions, the disturbed emotions are in the mind, more prevalent, let’s say, than the virtuous ones, and they’re all mixed up, unfortunately, then there’s a a sense of disturbance, number one. And number two, the mind is deluded.
The mind is mistaken in how things are. And this is where it’s not in touch with reality, and this is a very interesting and fascinating way that Buddha talks. It takes a lot of looking, you know. One whole way that Buddha describes everything is we suffer because we’re living in la la land in relation to reality, where our minds are not in sync with how reality is. And that’s what I’m meaning by this one.
Kate and I are sitting there and she’s angry and I’m angry or she’s hurt and I’m hurt or she’s depressed or whatever, then because she’s her mind is overwhelmed by these emotions, she’s blinded from seeing the reality of me and us and everything else. When I’m full of delusions and neuroses, my my own anger and my hurt is there, then I’m blinded from seeing Kate. So there’s no reality. There’s no sense of interdependence and there’s no there’s no kind of reality. I’m seeing some monster, she’s seeing some monster.
We’re we’re not in sync with reality. This is the most fascinating and very profound. The second characteristic of these unhappy emotions and they are implied by this term delusion, another term that’s used to refer to these unhappy emotions, these negative states of mind. One is called disturbing emotions. And another term used is delusions, or if you like, delusional.
Now we would say, excuse me, I’m not delusional. Come on, some dude out there who sees dragons and things, they’re delusional, right? I’m not delusional, I’m normal. What’s interesting, and he’s not being rude, Buddha, he’s never rude, but what he’s saying is, excuse me, we are all delusional. It is just a question of degree.
And delusional is a characteristic of the negative states of mind. So if Kate and I have a prevalence of kindness and love, then we’re reasonably in touch with reality. We’re reasonably in touch with each other. We can kind of reasonably see what’s going on, and we’re reasonably content. How amazing.
But when we’re miserable, look at us, miserable, we’re unhappy, disturbed, and we’re out of touch with reality. We’re delusional. It’s hard to see this one, but it’s really important to see it. It’s very interesting. And this is the problem.
This is this is what suffering is all about, Buddha says. These are the causes of it, the two main you know, the two characteristics of the deluded the unhappy states of mind. They’re disturbing and they’re deluded. Delusional, quite literally. Now, it’s really hard to see, but if you analyze it like this, you know, when we say when you’ve got attachment You know, for example, you know, we say we have a saying that our moms taught us and it’s very profoundly Buddhist.
You know, when you got your rose colored spectacles on, everything looks gorgeous, doesn’t it? Well, that’s exactly in Buddhist terms when you have attachment in the mind. Attachment isn’t there. Attachment isn’t meaning liking or happiness. Attachment is a neurotic, over exaggerated dependence upon something as being the cause of your happiness and frantically grasping at it because you’re convinced it is the cause of your happiness.
That’s what attachment means. Even when you say, oh, I like chocolate cake, that’s not attachment. That’s a reasonable assessment of, you know, your cultural reality. A Tibetan will say, I love yak cheese. You know, Australians say they love Vegemite.
Ask an American, they think it’s disgusting, you know. I just read yesterday something somebody said about when they were sent a package during the second world war in the Eastern Europe by an their Australian uncle or something and they sent some Vegemite but they didn’t know what it was. They thought it was, you know, shoe polish but it was a bit sticky. So then they thought maybe you clean your stove with it. Anyway, what is this on the side?
But Vegemite, okay? So we’ve all got these cultural, you know, cultural experiences. So there’s nothing wrong with liking chocolate cake. Nothing wrong with loving a person. How appropriate?
But attachment is what poisons those things. And the trouble is right now, we can’t separate the attachment from the liking or the attachment from the love. They’re like completely mixed together like milk and water, you know, inseparable for our minds. In fact, we even think they’re the same thing. Buddha says they’re absolutely opposite.
What Buddha means by love, it’s our love, care, you know. This is a friend. It’s necessarily altruistic. It’s a word that refers to an altruistic state of mind that is, one, isn’t disturbing and two, is interdependent, is in touch with reality, is recognizing interdependence. It’s an altruistic thing.
It’s the wish that Kate be happy and then it’s the development of this and the wish brings affection and all the rest, you know. That’s pure and fantastic. The more of this, the better, please. But the trouble is now it’s polluted by attachment. And so the way Buddhism uses the term attachment, so don’t use your own term here, I’m giving you Buddha’s deal, okay, so you can understand it.
Buddha’s view. It’s the name necessarily given to a polluted state of mind, a neurotic state of mind, a state of mind that’s deluded and a state of mind that’s disturbed. And like I said, it’s coming from the neurotic sense of I and there’s a huge neediness, expectation, grasping, fear not getting, you know, all the rest. It’s got many, many characteristics, many shapes and sizes and tastes to it and it’s very deep inside us. So that’s one of So then you’ve the negative states of mind and the positive, right?
So we obviously, if we wanna be happy as Buddha We all do, then Buddha says the cause of happiness is the positive states of mind, the positive actions the cause of suffering is the negative ones, then obviously, if you think that’s a reasonable idea and that you can do it, you have this potential, then clearly you’ve gotta start looking, isn’t it, at the suffering ones and at happy ones and learn to investigate them and discriminate between them. It’s like you’ve got this big massive overgrown green stuff out there and you can’t tell the weeds from the herbs, you’re in trouble, right? You gotta go learn botany first and discover what is a herb and what is a weed and how they’re different, blah blah blah. You think they’re the same right now. You can’t just rush in and pull something out because you think it’s a herb.
I mean, weed, isn’t it? You ought to learn botany. Well, here we’re talking Buddha’s botany. Okay? Internal botany.
Everyone in this room has a different view of what they think anger is and is it right, is it wrong, where does it come from, or attachment. Well, I’m using Buddha’s deal here, okay? You don’t to accept it. You can have Jung’s if you prefer. It’s up to you, you know?
Just giving Buddha’s one here. But what Buddha demands is the kind of precision and clarity and analysis we think is used, that we think is necessarily only in science and numbers. Well, the precision and clarity analysis that we use in that is what Buddha says we must use to investigate and know our own minds. We know that if someone says your water can be depolluted or been, and you go, wow, how amazing. We’ve gotta go learn all about water, don’t you, About pollution.
You can’t just kinda cross your fingers and hope it’ll come out by being all holy. You gotta learn on the earth, you know, what is science? What I mean, what is pollution? What is nature? How do I get rid of it?
It’s a very subtle job, you know. Same with the mind. We’ve to learn to really know what is a delusion, what is a virtue, what is the difference, how do they evolve, how do they mix together. They’re very mixed right now. We can’t tell like an overgrown garden, you know.
So actually, attachment Buddhism is is pretty much the default mode of our mind from day to day life. The default mode of our mind is attachment. There’s even a deeper cause of suffering which is the primordial sense of I. Let’s forget about that one. But all that one is the source, then all the others come from that, you know?
But attachment is like the default mode. It’s not kind of like, you know, it only arises when you get excited about a chocolate cake. It’s just there as the default mode all the time. We don’t even notice it. It’s so primordial, so subtle, so pervasive in our mind, you know.
That’s that’s why it’s so hard to see. And then when we do see it, it’s really hard to see how it’s the cause of suffering, which is what Buddha says. So it takes a lot of looking, not just believing him or rejecting his ideas, you know? Then what comes from it is one lama said, anger is the response when attachment doesn’t get what it wants. The more we look into our minds, the more we can see how very deeply true that is, you So it’s logic that if we have anger, it’s logic we have a lot of attachment, a lot of neediness, a lot of expectation therefore that what we think we need has to be there in just the way we think it ought to be because why do we think this?
Because it’s gonna give me happiness. So freak out if it doesn’t come, isn’t it? And you check you check how we are during the day. You know what what So what we mean This is the point. What we mean by happiness and the implication is the methods we use to get it which is attachment.
Buddha actually says that’s suffering. I’m sorry, guys. So it kinda sounds scary, a bit. If what I call happiness is suffering, where do I go with that, you know? So it’s too painful to look at it.
And it needs that’s why it needs a lot of looking. Being your own therapist is not a joke, you know. So attachment is this kind of, like I said, this primordial this neediness. When we say, God, he’s so needy, we really kinda get that, don’t we? When you say someone’s so attached, we all have different But needy, we understand it’s got a real flavor.
Well, neediness is attachment. It’s very deep inside our bones, you know, in our being. Needy for something. So you think about it, when you’re needy for something, it’s kind of interesting, isn’t it? The implication is that you haven’t got something, you’re missing something, isn’t it?
So one of the characteristics of attachment is like this bottomless pit of wanting, needing something out there because you think it’s got the cause of your happiness. And and obviously, it comes from thinking that you’re missing something, so it’s like this aching hole inside us. So one of the characteristics of attachment is profound dissatisfaction. Huge dissatisfaction, which we are dissatisfaction which we are constantly filling up with things, right? This is why it’s so hard to see how attachment is the cause of suffering.
Because you know, basically in our lives what we’re doing is we’re you know, especially in our western culture where it’s where we’re very you know, we’ve got plenty of things and it’s fairly easy to get what you want. We’re spending our life basically every day getting what we want and we assume that’s called happiness. And then when we don’t get what we want, we call that suffering. Just like I said, know, how are you today? Oh, I’m great.
What happened? The green lights, people were kind, food was good, the weather was nice, everything went smoothly, I got exactly what I wanted every minute. By definition, we mean that’s called happiness. That’s called happiness, isn’t it? A person in their life who defines their life as successful is a person who gets what they want.
Not being mean about us, you know, implying we shouldn’t get what we want, but it’s how we interpret, this is the point. Well, this is attachment, you know. And in a sense, it’s like the junkie mode. I’m not trying to insult you if you’re a junkie. We’re all junkies, Buddha says, and I’m really meaning this.
Again, it’s like a question of degree. And attachment is the junkie mind that just assumes without question that that and that and this and this are the cause of my happiness. So when I get them, I’m happy. That’s the conclusion, isn’t it? And then the logic is when I don’t get them, I’m unhappy.
And that’s when aversion aversion arises which is what anger comes from, you know, aversion. So then the two modes we go from one extreme and one extreme to another in our daily life and all the other emotions sort of are all like branches of these, know, branches are off that, you know? So as long as we have this assumption that getting out there, the green lights and the this and the that and the lovers and the something and the food and the blah is the cause of our happiness, Buddha says we can kid ourselves that we’re happy. As long as It’s like if you imagine, you know, if if you can always get what you want, then of course you think you’re gonna be You are happy and that’s how we think it is. But this is the point.
What Buddha’s saying is that isn’t happiness. There is It is happiness. But he’s criticizing, he’s saying you don’t realize the level of happiness you’re capable of. And I’m not talking about being in heaven, you know. I’m talking about psychological.
He says we have no conception of the extraordinary degree of joy and contentment and fulfillment and bliss and happiness that we really can experience. But here we are cravenly dependent, neurotically dependent, all these different things that we can’t control, that are impermanent, we have no control over them. And we we really think that’s the only way to be happy. He’s just saying you have no idea, you know, how how miserable that level of happiness really is in comparison with what you could really have. And don’t try to hit it in a religious way, you know.
It’s psychological we’re talking. It’s kind of an interesting idea, you know. It’s an interesting idea that Buddha’s saying we can be hugely, extraordinarily content and fulfilled and happy and blissful, whatever words you want, you know. But as soon as we hear those things and we hear it’s called religion, we can, oh, yeah, yeah, come on. Let’s get down to earth here, please.
Well, Buddha is talking in a down to earth way. And the method for doing this is giving up being a junkie, giving up attachment, which doesn’t mean you have to give up cakes and handsome bodies. Not at all. You can have your cake and you can eat it too. Okay?
Finally, there’s no question. There’s a question of what methods we need to use at different stages, that’s all. But that’s our potential, Buddha says. So, you know, how do you know when you look at attachment? It’s very hard to recognize attachment because we’re so caught with so mixed right now with what we call pleasure and happiness that we can’t, like I said, we can’t even discriminate.
We assume they’re just the same thing. So it’s very hard to see. But the really perfect time to see that you’ve got attachment is when you don’t get what you want. So, you know, you and I, Kate and I could be having our going to a cafe and ordering our delicious chocolate cake. We’re so excited.
Yeah, let’s have some chocolate cake, you know. Then look at the look at the difference. Let’s say that, you know, the carrot cake comes instead. And Kate goes, oh, that’s cool. I like carrot cake too and she enjoys.
And I go, excuse me, I ordered chocolate cake. Who do these people think they are? How dare you? And you storm out, you know. That shows I had attachment.
In other words, we both wanted chocolate cake, we both like chocolate cake, no problem. But I had expectation that it should come and I had, to trying to control the whole thing, I had the neediness for it, the assumption being that absolutely only that can make me happy. And therefore, you have this aversion when you see carrot cake. This is what That’s the sign of attachment. That’s why if we’re really trying to practice, the best time when you can’t get what you want.
When the lights turn red, the person’s mean, they up and leave you, the money all leaves the bank, the job, you’re sacked from the job. I mean, it sounds awful, I know. But if you’re really practicing, this is the best time. We have a whole level of practice we call transforming problems into happiness. And it’s full on, you know.
And we understand it, we call it, you know, we all know wake up calls can be the best thing for us. All my friends in prison, the classic one, the commonest thing they say has been their wake up call. All these people, I mean, especially some of my gangster friends in California who’ve been shooting and stabbing and raping since they’re nine years old, you know. So now here they are in their cells all day and all night for the rest of their lives and they’re only sixteen. You either you go mad or you start to look into something because you can’t look anywhere else.
There’s nothing in an eight by ten foot cell with ten books and a pen. What else if you can’t look anywhere else? You’ve got nothing to stimulate you, nothing but your own human mind. So the commonest experience I see amongst so many people in prison, especially in serious situations like that or guys on death row, you know. They they’re the ones who come to us anyway.
I mean, the psychos don’t come to us, obviously. But they they It’s their wake up call. And they learn huge kind of patience and humility and really begin to see their own human potential. And when you cannot get what you want, that’s the time to really see what your mind can do. As long as we get lulled into believing we’re happy and can always get what we want, I’m sorry, nothing will ever change.
This is why when I wrote a twenty first birthday card to one of my friends when he was, you know, he was in he’s a Mexican gangster. He was in one of these cells twenty three hours a day for the rest of his life as far as the system is concerned. He said to him, your prison is nothing in comparison with the prison of ordinary people. And he means us. Okay?
The prison of attachment, the prison of depression, the prison of pride, the prison of jealousy. And somehow, it could be patronizing, you know. But these guys, they get that. And this is something that we have to get. But the tragedy is we don’t get it until life gets suffering, you know.
Until we get the wake up calls. But what being a Buddhist is is being intelligent enough not to wait to be told you’ve, you know, you got death row or you got AIDS, you got cancer or someone to leave you. You gotta give ourselves our own wake up calls through practice. That’s how can we meditate on death and impermanence? How can we meditate on perfect human rebirth?
How can we meditate on karma and all these things? This is intelligently giving ourselves, using our own mind to discover these truths, not wait until you, you know, got cancer to discover them. It’s very intelligent, actually. It’s very hard. Am I gonna have my time or something?
Do you wanna ask questions? I didn’t go too deep into what anger is or isn’t, but never mind. Do you got any questions? Oh, jeez. My hot water, very boring.
When I go to American cafe, can’t say hot water, they don’t understand me. I have to say I have to think and then I say, hot water. Then they understand me. Water. Yeah, that’s right.
Or when I ask for butter on my bread, I have to ask for butter. Or if I have to talk about karma, I can’t say karma because they see they they hear c a l m e r. So I’ve gotta say karma. So anyway, please, any questions? Exactly, yeah.
How do we react to situations that are very clearly injustice in this world? I mean basically you’re saying does that mean we shouldn’t be angry with that as well? Is that what you’re saying? Okay. Well, I mean, the September thing September eleventh thing is a classic example, you know?
Or this whole war that’s happening. Like I’m saying, it’s fine for all the people in America who are having all this suffering right now and all these fears. It’s fine when beforehand, they’d like to hear the Dalai Lama talking about no anger for your enemy and forgiving your enemy and not having any war and all this. But now, when it happens to yourself, then it’s painful to hear this. So it it is something quite profound.
And Buddha would say, we really look deeply and logically into all these emotions we have that, you know, that even when it comes to having your family blown up, it’s not a question of you shouldn’t be angry like I’m a bad person. He’s just saying that it doesn’t help. Of course, it’s natural if we all have the tendency, but it’s like, you know, when you really practice on your mind, let’s just assume that Dalai Lama is an example of that, everyone can see, you know, every single human being on this earth who’s known him and seen him. They all see the Tibetan situation. Unbelievable suffering, you know.
Over six million people murdered. A sixth of their population. Can you imagine forty million Americans murdered? I mean, they do this for three thousand. I’m not I’m not criticizing people.
I’m seeing how deep and strong all these emotions are in us. But there’s the Dalai Lama who hasn’t declared war on the Chinese for forty five years. And look at them, I mean, ripping off that country completely. They’ve been trucking trees out of that country apparently for twenty four hours, every For twenty four hours, nonstop, for forty five years. I mean, you always can’t comprehend how many trees that is, isn’t it?
Not to mention everything else and the wildlife destroyed and the people destroyed and the religion destroyed and still the Dalai Lama walks around with a happy mind and he’s kind of cute and funny and makes jokes No, I mean, it’s almost too much when you look at the details, you know? So where does that come from? Why is he doing this? Why is he saying this? It seems insane.
Well, that’s the point. Buddhism would say when you really look into the way the mind is as we’re discussing here, just touching on it, when you really begin to understand karma, or karma is the big one. I’ll say a little bit more about that. But the one of even if we look into our minds now, that anger is maybe natural because it’s in our mind, but it is not helpful. And when we understand the energy of karma, we realize that every single thing we do, say and think leaves imprints in our mind that will bring us similar experiences in the future.
So if I really know that, then who would want to plant poison seeds in their garden? You wouldn’t. Even if the thing is that’s happening to you is horrible. If you realize, and this is only one thing, I’m not even discussing karma yet, previous karma, the cause which I’ll talk about. If you really deeply can see that anger in your mind only brings incredible painful suffering to you in the future, then of course, when you’ve worked on your mind, and this is a very profound level, you would you would you would know there is no benefit of being angry.
It distorts your mind. It blinds you from seeing reality. You can’t do anything about it. It doesn’t help. I mean, it sounds shocking to our ears when you hear this, but this is one of my friends who’s Tibetan, a young monk who turned monk when he was seventeen in in eighty seven when they had their first big uprising, not big, but, you know, demonstrations by the monks and nuns against the communists since fifty nine.
Right? They were very brave and very courageous, these people. And he anyway got arrested, he got tortured, his friend got his head blown off, and then he eventually left the country. His father got murdered, brother got murdered, the whole typical story of so many people suffering, you know. And he’s telling me about this when he was in Nepal.
And he was sad, you know. And I said to him, do you ever get angry? And he looked at me really puzzled. He said, angry? What for?
He said, it’s our own fault. Now this phrase, it’s our own fault, sounds so horrific to us, we can’t believe it. What he means simply speaking is it is karma. So what that means is, you know, that this is the Buddhist view of karma and this is Buddha’s view of reality. It just happens to be Buddha’s view.
Okay? That whatever you experience, good or bad, whatever is coming at you, you know, you’re being bombed out of a building, you’ve been you know, you die, you you get a punch in the nose, you get a million bucks, good or bad, I don’t care. Whatever this is one of the views of karma. Whatever experience you’re having is necessarily yours. It’s the fruit of your seeds planted before before before before.
Remember, Buddha says that our consciousness has been existing before before before before. You haven’t Hitler hasn’t always been Hitler. He was this kind, sweet, little dude in one, you know, many lives. Mother Teresa hasn’t always been Mother Teresa, some holy saint. She didn’t fall out of the sky like that, you know.
Osama bin Laden wasn’t always this, you know, archetypal monster, everybody thinks he is right now. We’re kind of so simplistic in how we judge good and bad. We’ve all had countless lives, Buddha says, countless experiences, we’ve done countless good and bad, and every moment of our experience is those fruits coming back to us. And this is not meant to be punishment and reward, which is how the way we hear it. It’s got nothing to do with anybody up there pulling the strings and making kind of judgment calls.
It’s got nothing to do. We say virtue is it has its own reward or something, don’t we? Well, that’s exactly what karma is. It’s a natural law, Buddha says. So then whatever arises in your life is the result of what you’ve done before.
So when we really deeply have integrated this, and this is already a pretty amazing level of practice, I mean, integrated this experientially like that monk, then it was natural to him to not have anger. It’s not that he had to suppress his anger. He simply it didn’t arise because if you analyze it psychologically, anger, which takes a lot of time to see it, is the response of this outraged victim. Now, not being rude to us because it’s all we’ve all got it right now. But how dare you do that to me?
I didn’t deserve this. So nobody deserves suffering if you think about it in that sense, like that kind of heavy sense. But the Buddha is saying we’re all in the same boat, we’re all experiencing the fruit of what we’ve done before and we’re all creating the cause of what we will experience in the future. So, if you’re really in touch with this reality according to the Buddha, you know, and then let’s assume the Dalai Lama is, he’s said to be a high being, then this is why he talks like he does. Not because he’s just born nice, you know.
This his philosophical view of reality and he lives according to it. He’s not pretending, you know. So the reason not to be angry is one, because it doesn’t help and it causes more suffering. That’s how come the Dalai Lama doesn’t declare war, you know? Because some of this kind of object convey kind of notion about it’s bad.
It’s logical. Just like you wouldn’t sow poison seeds in your garden, you know? This is the idea. No one’s saying it’s easy. It’s profound actually.
But it’s it’s got profound implications of oneself, you know. It’s extraordinary. Not to mention, definitely bringing future happiness. You know, this is the idea. What else, people?
I can’t see anything, there’s no lights so you have to give me a shout. Yeah. I understand. To people who’ve got schizophrenia and severe mental problems have the same potential. Buddha would say every living being whether there’s all these And Buddha would assert realms of existence, a sort of spectrum of mental possibilities of rebirth.
There’s like those very blissful ones called the God realms, there’s the human realm, there’s the animal, all the insects, there’s spirit realms, there’s hell beings. There’s a whole spectrum of possibilities, billions and trillions and trillions of beings. The humans are just a tiny percentage of all of them, okay? Buddha would say, if you exist, by definition, you possess this potential. Whether you’re insane, whether you’re Hitler, whether you’re a mosquito, doesn’t matter.
You possess this potential innately. It simply is who you are. So, you know, a person, generally speaking, Buddha would say that to have a human life is a result of a lot of hard work. He says, we each one of us in this room sitting right here now whom we assume are all human, okay, we label human. He says, if we really realize how much work, hard work, morality, patience, compassion in the context of spiritual path that we must have practiced quite recently, that is the energy that propelled our consciousness out of our from our previous death into our present mother’s womb.
He says we would just We’d be overwhelmed at the heart what we must have done. It’s amazing. It give us incredible kind of confidence. So, we can also see within the human realm, we’ve gone and got won the lottery. Thank you very much.
But that, you know, lots of We can see there’s a whole spectrum of possibilities within the human realm. There are some who are very blissful, very happy, very wise, all the way to the most intense suffering to ones who are completely kind of screwed up minds, unhappy minds, right? So they all possess the potential, but you can say that maybe a certain certain kind of mental suffering is so strong in that life that in that life you can’t you can’t do you can’t go much further with it. You can’t develop much. By having the experiences of suffering, you’re at least purifying your karma though.
You’re kinda cleaning up your act by having suffering, you know. So some of us we can see. I mean, many of the people I know in prison, they tell me about especially the guys on death row. They talk about some of the guys who are really psycho, who are really addicted to killing. I mean, got really unhappy, twisted minds.
Okay, Buddhism has all these explanations of how come, but there’s no way in the world those guys are gonna kinda suddenly become all holy and magic overnight, who really got distorted, really suffering, mentally suffering minds, you know, who just think of killing all the time, they say, and imagine killing and love killing, go to it like a magnet. I mean, the people who come to us aren’t like that. They’re people who due to circumstances, something’s happened, you know? So some people you can see, whether they’re called schizophrenic or psycho or whatever, their minds are so disturbed, There’s so much negative karma ripening for them. But equally, it can be for some person who’s mentally disturbed who might not be able to do much of this life, but is pure like I said, is purifying by having those experiences.
So this is very hopeful also. But the potential’s there, it’s the same. Just by by existing, you possess it. It’s not as if somebody Mother Teresa has it and we don’t, you know. If you exist, if you have mind, you necessarily possess its potential.
It’s just your nature. It’s a question of finding the appropriate conditions for it to ripen, that’s all. Do you see? That makes sense? Okay.
Person behind you. Yeah. Okay, darling, you go. That’s it, darling. I know you get caught up in all the rubbish she says.
It’s so true. Yes. Do, darling? Yes. I understand.
It’s a very good point. First of all, she’s saying, I need to do this for the tape recordings. First of all, it’s like, you know, we get so much rubbish in the world. You said illusion. We get we get it’s easy to get caught up in it.
It’s so true. And if you give up attachment, you become indifferent and hard and cold. Absolutely not. If you’re understanding it really correctly. So let me understand.
Let me tell you about the second one. The point is here, because when as soon as we hear the English word attachment and we think of the opposite, we think of detachment, don’t we? And that sounds awful, doesn’t it? It sounds cold and indifferent. But it doesn’t mean this.
So think of it like this, think of it like this. I’ll use the analogy of water, okay? What we mean by water is a pure clear stuff, isn’t it? That’s what we mean by water, but we know it can be polluted. So you know yourself, if you’re removing if you’re skillful enough to discover the the, you know, the nature of the pollution, you can remove the pollution from the water.
You don’t then have to go and find water nature and inject it back into the water, do you? What’s left after you’ve removed pollution is what? Pure water. Pure water is just there, isn’t it? Do you see my point?
You don’t have to put a put pure water back into it. So that’s the same with our mind. It’s almost so simple we can’t hear it. When we really understand attachment, which is a pollution, if we really and it takes time to really see what it means, attachment. The logic is as we remove the pollution, so the natural good qualities of our mind come to the surface and they are called love and kindness and contentment and fulfillment and humor and generosity and all that.
Do you see? They also You can actively work on those good qualities to even improve them. But how does attachment actually impact That’s exactly what you’re spot on, honey. Exactly. Attachment comes from so much grasping and fear, you know?
And then we do all the other things as a anger and depression and jealousy, they all come as a result. This is why it’s so profound, know. So when we begin to lessen attachment, initially, maybe you’ve gotta be a bit detached. Like if you’re attached to alcohol, you’ve gotta detach yourself from the object because it’s so powerful. And that’s where your first point about being caught up in it.
We have to because at the moment, we’ve got our own delusions so strongly, a lot of attachment, lot of pride, a lot of jealousy, and we’ve got no awareness of what we’re thinking and feeling, then what we’re doing is being dragged around by everybody. It’s sort of like you just you’ve got no control, isn’t it? But as you So what you’ve got The very first level we have to see is sometimes if certain objects like alcohol or that mean person are really too strong for us, you gotta back off from it. That’s detachment. But that’s not that’s not the end result.
That’s just to help you on the way. Do you see my point? And then when you’ve got more inner strength, then Or like we say in the west, more boundaries, more understanding of where you are and that’s coming That’s comes from less delusions. Then you really can be in the middle of the rubbish. Like a lot of my friends can be in this chaos in these prisons.
You can’t imagine the violence and the wars they have and the stabbings every day, it’s unbelievable. They can develop their practice, you know, because they’ve really got a lot of inner strength. So when you get the inner strength, then you can be around and you don’t get pulled here and there. It’s only when you got attachment and anger and pride that we get pulled around, you know? Do you see?
So it’s really knowing where you’re at and it’s so important to know what you need, you know? So for some people to live around with too many human beings because they’re so fragile, it makes them crazy. So it’s best for them if they say they’re Buddhists to go off and be living in a quiet place on their own. Other people, cities are like grist for the mill, you know. Yeah.
Give me more, you know. You understand? Good. Who else? Yes.
So I can work the other way around. She’s saying this can be attached to a good thing. It gives you strength. Yes, that’s it. Grab at it, yeah.
Absolutely, there’s nothing wrong. I mean, shouldn’t be too idealistic and think, well, I shouldn’t be attached. And we misinterpret it and we think, well, I should be detached. That’s indifference and that’s terrible. It’s almost like given that we have got attachment, which is so deep, at least be attached to something that’s useful to you.
It’s better if you’ve got a friend gonna beat up every day, you’ve got a friend who’s good to you, excuse me, be attached to the good friend. At least while you got attachment, be intelligent with your attachment, you know? I’m glad my mother had attachment for me. I’d be dead if she didn’t because I was such an impossible person, right? So just as well had attachment for me.
Do you see my point? It’s not in the end you wanna get rid of all of it, but it can be useful at some point. So don’t worry about being attached to your practice. The suffering of attachment is if you freak out when you don’t get the thing. But if you even And and also secondly, being attracted to something doesn’t mean attachment because that’s the point.
Like I said with Kate and me and our chocolate cake, we both look like we’re very enthusiastic about it. So she didn’t have attachment, she just had enthusiasm. I had enthusiasm and attachment and that’s the problem. So you don’t chuck the baby out with a bathwater when you give up attachment. That’s what amazed me when I first met all the Tibetan lamas, they all seemed so kind. I had this concept of Buddhists as sort of like indifferent and kind of, oh, you want chocolate cake?
No, I don’t care. You want carrot cake? Oh, I don’t care. How depressing, you know. I had that view, thought that was what Buddhism was.
And I saw Lama Yeshe laughing hysterically and falling off the throne and Dalai Lama walking fast and laughing and I thought, well, these people, they’re not Buddhist, you know? Because they’ve got they’ve they’ve got the plot. They’ve given up attachment, but they’ve got huge joy and happiness and love in their hearts, you know. So anyway, yes, you’re really right, actually. So don’t be scared of attachment.
Use it, you know. Just a sec. This man with the blue jacket somewhere. Yes. You with the white teacher.
Yes. Thank you very much. You’re a kind man. Peter. Happy to meet you, Peter.
Tonight? Who turned you away? What’d do to them? Oh, okay. Oh good.
Well good, you had a good bit of cover ripening, didn’t you Peter? Good. Well, good. Happy to be here. Yeah.
Yes. Yes. I understand. So what’s the benefit, you mean? See the benefit.
Uh-huh. Building this big thing. I understand, Peter. Thank you very much. Well, Peter, first of all, is grateful because he got turned away.
He didn’t have any money, but all these kind monks and nuns brought him back, and so he’s happy to be here. And he wants to know what the benefit is of building one of these big things, you know, big stupa. Okay. It’s an interesting point, Peter. I’ll try and say it concisely.
According to the Buddhist teachings, certain objects, can say, statues, stupas, they they they represent enlightened energy. So what a Buddha is is a is a word used to refer to a being that you possess the potential for, who’s really gone to degrees of astonishing development. Their consciousness pervades the universe. They know everything. They know the minds of all beings.
They have infinite compassion for every single being. They have infinite power to manifest in millions of forms, in millions of universes for the sake of millions of sentient beings for millions of eons. So enlightenment by the way is not just a good feeling, that’s enlightenment. Buddha says that’s what Buddha nature That’s what your Buddha That’s what you have the potential to eventually become come to. So if there’s such a being existed, that sounds like a pretty nice person to be around, a pretty amazing and powerful and compassionate person.
So Buddhism would say that Buddha energy, because it’s not physical, it does pervade the universe. So if you think about it, wherever there is space and time and matter is where the consciousness is. So the Buddhist tradition is that a stupa is like a reliquary of various objects that represent this. And so the entire thing represents presence of enlightened energy. So it’s almost like if you you know, that it it really is like saying the Buddha is there because the Buddha doesn’t have to be confined to having a fleshy body or something, you know, or or just it’s something way beyond what we normally would think And so this a statue, the same.
A statue is representing, actually representing the energy of the Buddha because we are all human. You know, we might love somebody. It’s not enough just to have them in our heart. We need a photo of them, you know. And if we really love that person, we we get upset if the photo falls on the ground, don’t we?
Because it represents that person for us. It’s got some power for us. Well, stupas and the statues have that power. And so the Buddhist approach would be, just a bit of background here, that everything we say, everything we do, everything we think, everything we see, everything we hear leaves a karmic imprint in our mind. And so by seeing even a stupa, by having anything to do with it, by being an ant that crawls across it, by being a dog that pees on it, you create strong karmic connection with what the energy that it represents, which is enlightenment, which is And so that means at some point in the future, you will connect with teachings, spiritual teachings that will guide you, that will help you develop your own amazing potential.
This is the kind of logic behind it. How do you mean by that? The Buddha is us all. What do you mean by the Buddha is within us all? What Buddha?
We had like I said before, Buddha says we all possess. Peter possesses the potential to be a Buddha. He’s not a Buddha yet. Like an acorn isn’t an oak tree yet, but we know the presence of an acorn implies it can become an oak tree implies it can become an oak tree. So, yeah, Peter has the potential to become a Buddha then?
Right. Yes. They do. But that’s not that’s not the yes. That’s true.
That’s not the issue though. The the the point of the well, the various points about dismantling the statues in in Afghanistan. One of the points is that those statues represent the living energy of the Buddha. So it’s like I’m saying, yes, of course it’s in our mind, Peter, but we’re humans with forms and eyes and ears. Right?
So of course it’s in us. But it’s like saying, oh, well, music is inside me. Why have a piano? Well, excuse me, dear, you need a piano for the music to come out. And second, you need a piano to help you give the music to others.
So, of course, the Dharma’s inside you. Of course, the Buddha’s inside you. But by having an edifice that represents this energy, it’s very powerful, you know. It can It’s it’s like a reminder. It’s like a It reflects it back to somebody.
Like a like your photo of your loved person on your wall. It reminds you of that person. It lifts your heart up. So they all just use it. They’re like walking sticks we need to use to help us get to Buddhahood.
Finally, ultimately, you know, the Dharma is just on pieces of paper. Paper’s toilet paper. Finally, an edifice is just bricks, but we all know that things mean more than just that. This is just, you know, you can say this is the four elements, but we all know there’s a human being there. So there’s got more there’s more power to it, you know, and they represent.
Represent. And so the the reason to do it very magnificent and big is because it has got some power. It involves many, many people. All those people create incredibly good karma. Everybody who sees it, who hears about it, and the more the bigger it is, the more people hear about it.
It was some little kind of two inch little kind of thing we’ve all got on our altars. Who could care less, you know? So it’s got kind of It’s got some kind of energy behind it and some It’s got some logic because people connect with it and that means all of those people are creating positive karma and will meet eventually. Who knows how many lives in the future? We’ll meet spiritual teachings.
So there’s purpose behind it, there’s energy behind it and done with a very pure motivation too. Does that make sense, Peter? Something to think about, isn’t it? That’s the main thing, think about it. Who else?
The yellow man. What, sweetheart? I can’t hear you. Go up. Up.
Up. I know. Yes. Uh-huh. I understand.
I understand. What’s your name? Rick. Rick. Thank you very much, Rick.
Rick wonders if there’s, you know, he’s got this potential. He has life such a struggle most of time and it’s a struggle to go it’s easy to go down. It’s really hard to go up. And he wonders if his entire life is the fruit of all the things he’s done before. Well, the Buddhist view is this, your life is precious.
You must have been unbelievably virtuous, Rick, to have your consciousness zap into your present mommy’s womb. You won the lottery, honey. I’ve read in a book somewhere, in a text somewhere that it is said that at the time, you know, let’s say when a human mother, a human male and female are having sex, billions of consciousnesses that have recently died have left all the different realms, not just the human. Billions of them are all kind of hovering around, of desperate to get in, you know? And one gets it.
I mean, talk about winning the lottery. So, honey, you must have first of all created unbelievable amount of virtuous karma in the context of spiritual practice, in the context of morality and vows and the wish to be beneficial to others, to be who you are now to be Rick. It should make you weep every day with joy. But then, darling, listen to me. There’s four kinds of karma.
We’re just talking here about the fact that you got the result, you won the lottery, you got the human womb. Now, darling, there’s other kinds of karma. There’s all the junk that happens to you, which is what you’re talking about right now. And thirdly, the tendencies within you, these are different kinds of karma. There are four ways that karma ripens.
One is the form you get, you won the lottery, you got a really good one. But two, you’ve maybe got some negative tendencies in your mind like the rest of us. Well, there’s one kind of karma due to having done it before, they’re called actions similar to the cause. But then, sweetie, you’ve got the ones called experiences similar to the cause. They’re all the punches and the people being mean to you and all the dramas happening.
That’s because of your own rubbish coming back. Now the fact is, you’re also fortunate