Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 51-minute talk, Ven Robina Courtin opens by explaining Buddhism as religion, psychology, and philosophy unified in a practical way of life, then establishes karma as the central principle explaining how experience unfolds across lifetimes. She argues that consciousness is non-physical and continuous, not created by our parents—instead, it carries forward shaped by our actions and mental habits, which explains why children are born with different temperaments and tendencies. The core teaching: external events (a punch, an insult, a kindness) are catalysts, not causes. Real happiness or suffering springs from the mental states we carry—anger, attachment, delusion, or their opposites—which is why meditation and clear seeing become tools for genuine change. Drawing on prison work and everyday examples, she shows how this view empowers us to transform our lives and generates compassion for both victims and those who cause harm. Accessible to anyone new to Buddhism.
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“category”: “title”,
“severity”: “medium”,
“description”: “Title ‘Death and Rebirth’ does not reflect actual content. Teaching covers karma and continuity of consciousness as the foundation for understanding rebirth, but does not address death processes, dying, bardo states, or what occurs at the moment of death—topics typically central to Death and Rebirth teachings.”,
“evidence”: “Ven Robina confirms ‘Death and Rebirth, wasn’t it?’ at the start, but the word ‘death’ never reappears. Teaching focuses exclusively on karma, mind, consciousness, and how mental tendencies persist across lifetimes.”
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File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 DAR 2003 06 20.mp3
UUID: 22f168cc-fc79-4897-9787-fe2848ea4dcd
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Death and Rebirth (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2003-06-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 51.9 minutes
Words: ~10,460
Center based in Fullerton. It’s been established for over twenty one years in Adelaide, and it’s running too. There are many things that are offered there. If you don’t have any information about Buddha House, I’m sure that there’s some up the back or anyone that you asked would be able to assist you. Buddha House is part of an international organization, FPMT, FPMT, which stands for the foundation of the preservation of the Mahāyāna tradition. And the FPMT has twenty one centers in Australia and over one hundred and twenty centers around the world as well as hospices, publishing houses, schools, and the Maitreya project, and all aim to alleviate the suffering of living beings and bringing happiness.
And I hope this evening, some suffering is alleviated and some happiness comes to each of us. The weekend course is death and rebirth, one of Venerable Robina’s specialties. And as I said earlier, you’re more than able able to get some information about how to join. There are pamphlets with information about Buddha House down the back. Many of you may have seen the documentary on Venerable Robina called Chasing Buddha.
It’s been shown several times on television and at various national and international films. It’s an award winning documentary, riveting, and a piece of film filmmaking which reveals Venerable Robina’s rebellious life, her prison work in America, and her meeting of Buddhism in that in Buddhism and that fundamentally changed her life. At present, Venerable Robina’s main passion in life is the Liberation Prison Project. Venerable Robina started this project in America in nineteen ninety six after a prison inmate wrote to her seeking advice about the Buddhist path. The project now supports over two thousand inmates in prisons across America.
During Venerable Robina’s visit here to Australia in two thousand and one, she established the Liberation Prison Project in Australia. Under the care of Venerable Yeshe Khadro in Queensland, Venerable Gloria in Adelaide, both Western nuns, and others in Victoria, Western Australia, the project has quickly grown to support, visit, and write to many inmates in over twenty prisons around Australia. The Liberation magazine that you were all offered this evening is a free publication which provides information about the project. And just to give you an introduction to the Venerable Robina, here she is. Would you please welcome Venerable Robina Courtin. It’s not on. Where’s Graham?
Oh, yes. Thank you. That’s better. Can you hear me down there? Can you hear me down there?
Okay. Very good. Can you see me? I wanna see you all. Yes.
I can see you all. Okay. Oh, I’m very happy to be in Adelaide again. I think I probably said it last year, but this is where I ran away to when I was nineteen, and I thought I was a good Catholic girl and I fell in love with a married man and I was too scared to be naughty, I ran away. And I ran away to Adelaide.
And I remember I walked in worked in some place, Elizabeth something. What is it? Where the WRE that’s it. I worked there for eleven dollars or eleven pounds a week. I remember.
Anyway, I’m happy to be an Adelaide again. What was the topic? Death and Rebirth, wasn’t it? Death and Rebirth? Okay.
Thank you. Well, I’m glad I make someone happy. Okay. karma. But I wanna start with a little prayer first.
Okay? But don’t get all holy because you hear the word prayer because actually the Buddhist view is every thought, every thought counts, every thought is a seed, which is really the meaning of karma, which I’ll talk about. And so prayer is just a bunch of thoughts basically, and thoughts, you know, every thought count. Every thought we put into our mind is what in Buddhist terms what produces this very person, you know. So this the first this first little prayer, this one little prayer, the first two lines are just expressing our going for refuge as we say as Buddhists in the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha.
So if we’re Buddhist already, then we have that in our heart and if not, the second never mind if we’re not, it’s okay. And the second two lines are expressing an altruistic motivation for doing this activity of listening to these Buddhist ideas about the mind, about life, about reality and seeing if there’s anything relevant to me, which is the point, you know, for my life, but then doing it thinking that I’m listening to this so that I can develop my own amazing potential which Buddha says we all possess, so that in turn I can be of use to others in whatever way, you know, in my life. Well, there’s many ways of talking about what Buddhism is and therefore, there are many ways of describing why a person would want to be a Buddhist or wanna use Buddhism in their life, you know. So one way, you know, in the very classical way, obviously, Buddhism is a religion. I mean, here we have these religious images and, you know, I’m so I’m I’m a nun.
These are immediately, know, these immediate religious trappings. And then of course, if you read about Buddhism, it’s couched in religious terms. And so somehow, it’s interesting when we hear religion, we often immediately seem lose our common sense sometimes. We don’t hear it in a very practical way, know. Whereas on the other hand, if we were to hear psychology, which indeed Buddhism is, we we kind of spark up and think, that’s relevant and that’s real and that’s down to earth.
That’s me, you know. But actually, there’s no contradiction for a Buddhist between, for example, you know, religion, psychology and certainly even philosophy. I mean, Buddha is Buddhism is definitely a very detailed, you know, profound if you like philosophy. A presentation of Buddha’s findings about how life is, how reality findings about how life is, how reality is, the cause of happiness, the cause of suffering, where universe has come from, where sentient beings come from. Buddhism is all it’s very extensive presentation.
But again, for a Buddhist, there’s no contradiction between any of these whereas in our culture, we can see now, certainly now, they’re very separate areas, know. We’ve got religion, philosophy, psychology, you know, way of life, and all these are separate. But for a Buddhist, if we’re really doing it properly, you know, there’s no contradiction between any of these and they all they all they all come together in way of life. They’re all totally valid and appropriate and relevant to one’s life, you know. In fact, if they’re not, then it’s a complete waste of time.
But it seems to me we’ve kind of, you you know, we think of philosophy as something rather rarified and fascinating and rather interesting, but we don’t necessarily see that it relates to our life which is a little bit like, you know, or it’s a bit like having ideas. You know, it’s it’s it seems like we have the ideas, the concepts. We don’t think it has to be experienced. Well, it’s a bit like, you know, having a recipe but sort of forgetting that the reason for a recipe is so that you can make the cake, you know. So it’s recipes have to be relevant, have to be practical.
So So philosophies too have to be something practical. So, okay, what are some of Buddha’s ideas? Why would a person want to use Buddhism in their life, you know? Well, this idea, this this karma one is really for some for some people, even for some Buddhists, it doesn’t sort of relate too much to their life. But if we want to look at the extensive overview of all Buddha’s deal, you know, Buddha’s way of seeing reality, karma really is at the very center of it.
It’s it’s Buddha’s really Buddha’s explanation for how come? Why this? Why that? Why me? This big question we often ask.
Why war? Why September eleven? Why Bali? Why suffering? Why happiness for that reason, you know, for that matter?
It’s really Buddha’s ex actually, in the text, you know, if we want to look into it deeply, extensive presentation of his of his of his view of reality, how come, you know. And so so this brings us to where the one of the major differences between Buddhism and I’d say all other religions. One of the most one of the major reasons and often for for this reason, many people would even think Buddhism isn’t a religion and that is that Buddhism doesn’t assert a creator. Doesn’t assert a creator. Buddha is not a creator.
In many ways, if you look at the qualities of you can say a Buddha because one of the Buddha things that Buddha says is that each of us has the potential to become a Buddha. It’s a Sanskrit word that means fully awake. The word enlightened. You know, these these these refer to the state of a person who has achieved, you know, who who is who is accomplished, who has become a Buddha. So a Buddha you you can hear the qualities of a Buddha and it sounds very like God, you know.
Infinite infinite compassion, infinite wisdom, pervading the universe, you know, benefiting all beings, blah blah blah, like this. You could say it sounds a little bit like God. But the the the fact is it’s not Buddhist view that the Buddha is a creator at all. In fact, Buddha does not assert a creator at all. And so it’s interesting because we have the two major views in the world, don’t we?
We have either you have the view that you’re there’s a creator or we have the view that what you know, with the materialist view that our mother and father made us and that, you know, that it’s only there’s no other there’s no soul, there’s no nonphysical phenomenon, and there’s no there’s no creator. But Buddhism is sort of sort of neither of these. So this is where the karmic view comes in. But where where the whole principle of karma, and we’ll discuss it, where it takes place, is in what we call mind. So this word needs explaining because obviously we all know the word, but usually in our in the west, we’ll say mind, and we’ll refer to this thing called the brain, you know, or we might mean by intellectual process, the conceptual process.
But in Buddhism, it’s got a much broader application, a much more dynamic use, the word mind. So first of all, it it it’s used virtually synonymously with the words consciousness. And it’s really it’s a word in Buddhism that you is used to refer refer certainly not to the brain because in Buddhist terms, mind or consciousness is is is not physical. It’s a word that refers to the entirety of our inner experiences, our thoughts, feelings, emotions, the intellect, you know, unconscious, subconscious, even what we wanna call spirit, soul, whatever, you know. All of this is mind or consciousness, but it’s it’s more dynamic in the sense that it really refers to the process itself of the thoughts and feelings.
The the, you know, the thoughts and feelings selves. This is one’s mind, you know. And so the Buddhist view is, first of all, it’s that. It’s not physical. The second point is, as I said before, it’s not created.
It’s not one atom of our being that’s created by a superior being. But the point, which is where Buddhism would differ most radically from most for the con for most of the accepted views that we all just have, we take as assumption, you know, that we’re made by our parents. That my I’m like my mother and father. I’m angry because my mother and father angry or I’m kind intelligent because of my mother and father, you know. Or equally, I’m angry because my my my father hit me.
I’m happy because my mother was kind to me. So this this these views or the the particularly the view that were not made by our parents is is is the Buddhist view. Meaning, body, no problem. This is clear. Our body, what was provided by our mother and father.
Thank you very much. You know, they provide us with a body. But in if you like, the person that occupies the body. So for Christians, what causes us to come into being, you know, at the time of conception is is God putting a soul there. I mean, just loosely speaking.
But the Buddhist view is is not like that. And nor are we merely the egg and sperm, merely the DNA and the genes, you know. So this is where we come into the one of mind. That this mind of mind, all these thoughts, the feelings, my emotions, my tendencies, the bad ones, the good ones, you know, the Hitler ones, the Mother Teresa ones, whatever, these are mind. So we trace back all our thoughts and feelings like this dynamic, you know, river of mental moments, all our thoughts and feelings right back.
We all know it would we we’d go back to the first moment of conception, you know. Clearly, a subtler level of our mind. This is the way Buddhism would talk. And basically, you can at the time of conception, you know, you’d trace your egg and sperm back to your mommy and daddy, but you can trace your consciousness, Buddha says, which was at a subtler level then to a previous moment of itself. This is the Buddhist view.
So it’s not created. Doesn’t come from nothing. I mean, nothing comes from nothing. It doesn’t come from mommy, daddy. It isn’t physical.
It comes from previous moments of itself. This is this basically, this is the Buddhist concept, you know, the Buddhist idea, and then which is, of course, bringing in the view of reincarnation and this whole concept of continuity of consciousness. I mean, if you want to look at the big Buddha’s view, this is this is this is the view that Buddha’s having, you know. This is his view of reality. And so where where karma, what karma is is simply a way or simply the name of the of the law, if you like, and Buddha would call it a natural law, you know, because this again is one of the simple points.
Buddha’s not if he’s not a creator of the universe and nor is he a creator of the concepts, nor is he a creator of laws or morality or like that. That’s not that’s not how Buddhism would say. So this law is you can call it the law of cause and effect, which we kind of get a sense for. We, you know, it’s it’s in the Christian teachings. You sow what you reap.
This kind of idea, you know. So what we tend to hear is in a fairly vindictive way. You know, karma’s usually bad, you know. If you suffer, oh my god, I must have done something bad. But we often take for granted the good things that happen to us, like it’s our right, you know.
But the Buddhist view, simply speaking about karma is is is like the that is the creative principle. So we are the you know, we we tend to think we if we even if we have a view of a creator, we tend to often think, well, nobody knows why things happen. Some things seem to happen coming out of left field, you know. This? Why that?
We don’t know why. Nobody knows, we say, you know. So it’s sort of fairly fatalistic. But the Buddhist view is that you could say roughly, you know, that every single thing that any living being ever experiences, each moment of our thoughts and feelings and emotions, our own tendencies, our personality, even each moment of whatever we experience from out there, good or bad, you know, this is all the fruit of our past actions, cause effect. So given you know, just even just to listen to this as as an interesting hypothesis, you don’t have to accept it.
I mean, by the way, Buddha is saying don’t believe a single word of this. Don’t just believe it. Don’t reject it. If you have any interest, you would check it out. Think about it.
See if it’s coherent. This is the Buddhist approach, you know. So if you just even take it as a working hypothesis, we have to assume for the moment that consciousness is nonphysical. There’s like a a river this river of mental moments, you know. And so the Buddhist idea is if we look at ourself now, but look at my tendency to be angry, for example, which my mother can tell you I’ve had since I was born.
Definite. So, you know, now okay. We have a view that it comes from your parents. And and also also, when you look at it in the other way, we can see that it’s not training. I mean, my mother didn’t have time to train me.
I was coming out shouting, you know, and since it’s a tiny girl, it was evident I had anger, you know, so she hadn’t had time to train me. So there it was in Ravina’s personality, and we can all see this. If we look objectively at little little ones, you know, we even say, oh, look, oh, she’s an old soul, we say, you know. We can see some kids are more unhappy than others, and we can see that the mother hasn’t done anything to them to make them unhappy or happy yet. So, you know, this the Buddhist view is when look at the personality of a person, the this we brought with us, basically, the tendencies that we are already beginning to express as children, you know.
So when we’re in me and venerable Gloria in prison today, we went she she visits she’s chaplain, Buddhist chaplain in in in Adelaide. Or is it South South Australia? South she’s the Buddhist chaplain for South Australia. And she visits several prisons teaching, and we were there today in Mobilong and Yatala. Okay.
And we were discussing now I lost my track. What were discussing? I just forgot. I have such a long introduction, I forgot the point. We were discussing something.
karma? Tendencies. Tendencies. Oh, yes. That’s right.
We were discussing one like two different examples. We can see a young kid who just kind of stamps on the snails and delights that they’re dead or just and we say, oh, well, that’s just kids. You know, they need educating. But excuse me, you know, this a friend of mine, her her she was telling me about her son who’s three years old. She was taking the lice out of his head, and he started to cry.
Mommy, mommy, leave them alone. Don’t hurt them. It’s their home. Now, I mean, she knew she hadn’t taught him that. You know?
So, I mean, excuse me. We all say, oh, isn’t it amazing? Just kinda like it came out of the sky like this, you know? Well, there’s Mozart. Your mom gave him a piano at the age of three, you know, and he’s offering symphonies.
Wow. Amazing. He’s born a genius. But we tend to think it just sort of comes from nowhere, you know. Well, the Buddhist explanation is it comes from previous tendencies.
So Hitler’s tendencies, they came from previous actions like that carried in his mind stream. So obviously, to even think about this concept, we have to even consider for a moment, even just take it as a hypothesis, as I said, that there is something that continues, that mind isn’t physical, and there is it’s got its own existence. And this is the Buddha’s view. I mean, the teachings go into it very extensively and explain it, you know, but it’s up to us if we want to to pursue this and observe it and experience it ourselves. But the the general so the real point of this, though, is is an interesting philosophy, but is to get the real point is to get the experiential implication of it.
And the the Buddhist approach is the experiential implication of this, and we were definitely talking about that with the guys in prison today, know. It’s very relevant, especially when you’re in a situation like that, you know. The experiential implication of karma is that is that my qualities are qualities are mine, which doesn’t mean guilt because it includes the good ones. And this is already this is important because that tells you if it’s mine, then I can change it. And it and it counteracts that very strong view we all take as a truth.
You check. I mean, first of all, we definitely believe our mommy and daddy made us, you know? But in Buddhist view, your mommy and daddy were just lying there and your consciousness comes along and hops in. So I mean, excuse me, they didn’t make you. You came along, you know.
This is a Buddhist view. So it’s a very different kind of a scenario. So like a much more interdependent scenario. So we’re kind of a we’re we’re kind of part of the deal. We didn’t get made by somebody.
And first of all, this this view counteracts straight away that often that victim view we tend to have, well, excuse me, I didn’t ask to get born, it’s not my fault. You check, we really have that really as a truth, you know. So if you feel already like a victim, you know, it’s not your fault, I I didn’t ask to get born, it’s very strong one. Then, of course, it’s gonna be rather impotent, feel like a victim, feel rather hopeless, and, of course, it’s the blaming attitude, and, of course, it’s the conclusion, what can I do about it? It’s their fault, you know.
Then secondly, in our life, we can see we have a very strong view, and this is a crucial point in the whole Buddhist practice. We have the view that, you know, happiness is what you get when you get what you want, isn’t it? That’s what we mean by it. Happiness is what you get when you get what you want. Meaning, happiness comes from something out there.
Happiness comes from someone loving me. Happiness comes from getting a nice job. Happiness comes from the sunny weather. Happiness comes from the green lights coming when I want them, you know? Do you see my point?
And then suffering is the opposite, isn’t it? Suffering is when you get the red lights, when you get the wrong meal, when the person leaves you, when the, you know, when the pay’s lousy. So in other words, we have a very deep view at the level of assumption. In other words, we all take it as truth that suffering and happiness emanate from the outside. Or another way to say it is the main cause of suffering is the outside, what people do to me, the way the world goes, you know, and the main causes of happiness is the outside.
So the Buddhist view argues directly with this one, and it really needs quite a lot of intricate looking at. I mean, this is very interesting too. The, you know, the the depth of analysis and clarity and precision that we all know we need to employ in the investigation of physical phenomena or intellectual pursuit like, you know, mathematics or something or science. That is the same clarity and depth of analysis and precision that Buddha would say we need to use to investigate our own mind and the workings of our mind and why happiness and why suffering, which is where the whole concept of meditation comes in, you know. So meditation really is just a word that refers to actually, you can say it, very sophisticated psychological techniques.
Not joking. I mean, Buddha didn’t use the word psychology. We coined that recently. But he’s sure not talking about your nose meditating or your toes meditating or your eyelashes. It’s your mind, your consciousness, your thoughts, you know.
And so many many meditation techniques, but the very first and most basic one and already quite simple but difficult to do, not because it’s difficult in its nature, but difficult because we’ve not practiced it. It’s where we learn to control and concentrate the mind. And we need to do that in order to become familiar with our mind. So this is the starting point for a Buddhist. If because Buddha’s saying happiness and suffering aren’t coming mainly from the outside.
Yes, indeed. Your punch in my nose is definitely very playing a major role in my suffering. But it sounds a bit shocking initially, but one needs to look into it, that what Buddha’s saying is that your punch is only a catalyst for my suffering. Because if it is the main cause, and look at the world, this is the view we’ve got. We all consider it the main cause.
That’s why we stay suffering, we get depressed. We get angry. We get resentful. We wanna punch you back. We wanna sue you.
We wanna divorce you. We wanna put you in jail. Whatever. When you suffer, then I’ll feel better. This is the view we have.
Look at the world, you know. We just have to look at our behavior to see what we think of as the main cause of suffering. The Buddhist view is, of course it’s wrong to punch somebody. No one can argue with that. But Buddha says, it’s sort of like bad enough being punched.
Why be miserable as well? You understand my point here? So the Buddhist view is, yes, of course it’s terrible to punch, but honey, you can change your mind. Again, the logic we have so this is what again, meditation comes in as a tool to help us begin to really investigate deeply and precisely the workings of one mind one’s mind, you know. And Buddha has a very very precisely laid out model of the mind, actually.
And so this this idea is, you know, that, yes, indeed, external world plays a major role. I mean, we live as an interdependent phenomenon on this earth. It’s very obvious. Everything plays a role. Everything is very interdependent, definite.
But here, we’re trying to do, what we’re trying to do is locate the main cause of happiness and the main cause of suffering very precisely, you know. Because what Buddha’s saying is that we all have this phenomenal potential. This is like almost another way of saying the basis of why a person would be a Buddhist. Buddha’s saying, hey, guys, every living being has this amazing potential, simply speaking, for extraordinary levels of happiness, joy, contentment, fulfillment, you name it. You name it, you know.
And then in fact, that is the natural state of who we really are. And putting it in another more simple way, we can say all the positive qualities, and we all know those. We don’t need God or Buddha or great philosophers to tell us. When we hear the words love, compassion, wisdom, joy, contentment, fulfillment. We know they refer to the good things, whether they’re inside me or whether I’m on the receiving end.
We know it, you know? And then we know the negative ones, but we don’t need or God again or philosophers to tell us anger, jealousy, fear, depression, anxiety, stress. They refer to the painful ones, you know? There’s no question. So the basic Buddhist idea is that it’s it’s the it’s the positive qualities, the presence of the positive qualities in my mind and my development of them, that is the main cause of my happiness.
They are the main cause of my happiness. The delicious chocolate cake and the handsome body are merely catalysts. And so as long as I believe and take as a truth, which we do, that the main cause of my happiness is the chocolate cake, then basically I’m I’m functioning at the level of the junky mode, you know? You’re not happy unless you get the cake. And equally suffering, as we know, is when you get, you know, if you really love your chocolate cake, well then, you know, happiness is when you get your chocolate cake and suffering is when you get the carrot cake, when you order the chocolate cake, you know.
Like, how dare you give me that? I asked for this. So when we have this So you know, suffering, as we call it, is when we don’t get what we want. Happiness is when we get what we want. So I mean, actually taking that as a as a mode of getting happiness and not getting suffering is kinda scary because we can all see we try really hard, don’t we, to manipulate the outside world to get it just so so we can get happy.
But look how fragile it is. I mean, we spent all our energy doing that. The right house, the right person to live with, the right kids, the right job, the clothing, the health, the food, the the temperature. We never stop getting the outside world just to be so. But it seems to go like a dream, doesn’t it?
You know? Set it all up and it collapses. So I mean, it’s really fraught, this method for getting happiness. And all Buddha’s saying, he’s not sort of being moralistic and saying, hey, guys, you’re not allowed to enjoy chocolate cake. He’s not saying that.
He’s just being practical. He’s saying it’s the wrong method for getting happiness. You you you should look from your experience and you see. No matter how how many chocolate cakes you get, you don’t get happiness. I mean, we have to see this, you know.
Which doesn’t mean we don’t have chocolate cakes. It’s a much finer point than saying, oh, well, you chuck out the chocolate cakes. It’s not like that. It’s learning to see that happiness is your own contented, fulfilled, happy, joyful, loving, compassionate mind. So we all know those words.
Why? Because we’ve got them. They’re all in us. But this is another view we all tend to have. Well, I didn’t ask to get born.
I just got plonked here, and I was made this way, like I’m being sort of made like a I don’t know what you’re saying. What are we saying in Australia? I’m used to talking to Americans. Cookie cutter. What do we call it here?
Those things, you know? Biscuit cutter. Biscuit cutter. Sounds so Biscuit cutter. Sounds so sweet.
Biscuit cutter. I had to say biscuit cutter. Anyway, a biscuit cutter. Know, you kinda you made this shape, and I’m stuck with it. You know?
I mean, what a depressing view. Lord. So Buddha is saying, yeah, we’ve got a certain shape of this much anger, this much jealousy, that much generosity, this much that, but he says it’s not stuck, it’s not permanent, we can change. And so on the basis of practical meditation skills, practical psychological skills that enable you to see, you know, to calm your mind down, steady it down, that chaos inside there, this huge soup of emotion that just starts in the morning and doesn’t stop till the end of the day until we’re exhausted, so we have to go to sleep to get a break. I mean, we know that we can learn to unravel that.
We can learn to calm it down and put some kind of steadiness to it. Know, okay, it takes a while, but it’s possible because it’s my mind. And if I can’t change my mind, then who can, you know? And then the process of concentrating, of developing concentration is that you then learn to have some control. I mean, now thoughts arise and we’re off.
Within ten minutes, we’ve written a novel, and then then we wonder why we get depressed, you know? Then another ten minutes later, you got another thought, you’re up there in the sky all excited. We follow all these thoughts and just go on a train, you know. We have to learn to sort of harness this energy, and then we learn to see it more clearly, and then we can begin to unravel it by recognizing the positive ones, distinguishing them from the negative, and then we can really become familiar with what we already know, but more deeply familiar with the fact that it’s my depression and my anger and my jealousy and my pain and my stress that are the cause of my suffering. They are the cause of my suffering.
Not guilt, not blame. It’s just it’s empowering. You know, it’s like if you try to the reason to find the cause of a problem is so you can find the solution, isn’t it? So if we think the cause of the problem is you, then the solution is I have to change you. It’s very obvious.
Again, look at the world. But it doesn’t work. We’ve tried. We ought to see by now. We’re bashing our heads against brick walls, you know.
So like so all Buddha’s saying is learn to empower yourself, learn to see your own mind, learn to recognize the positive from the negative, and then really see, yes, it’s true. It’s heartbreaking. We like I said today at the prison or yesterday or somewhere, you know, we don’t say, oh, I was jealous yesterday and it was just great. I mean, we know we don’t say that. We know it is heartbreaking.
So then that’s all. But because we’re full of the words, I’m jealous because he did that, diverted from the truth. We get diverted from the real problem. We then think we have to change that. Meanwhile, it’s sort of like you someone just stabbed you and you’re so caught up with the size of the knife and that she did it and she did it then at four o’clock.
Meanwhile, you’re bleeding to death, people. Do something about the wound, you know. Yes, it’s true that the knife is seven inches long and yes, it’s true that she stabbed you. Excuse me, deal with the problem. The other part’s secondary, you know.
This is the real point. You know, yes, it’s not appropriate you punch me, but meanwhile, my anger’s mine, you know, and I can change that. Again, a very interesting example of this. And there’s often extreme examples that can really sort of show it, you know. I go every year to one of the many of the prisons I visit in United States.
One is in Kentucky. And it’s actually if anybody’s seen that Chasing Buddha, it was the the prison there, you know, the people in the prison there we that were on the film. And there are several of the people there on death row. And one they were telling me that that this old, very old guy, eighty five or something, this old guy who comes to visit every, you know, regularly. He’s an old Catholic, a very compassionate, kind old man, you know.
Maybe he’s even more than that. And he what’s interesting, thirty years ago, I think, his daughter was murdered. And so, of course, you know, like many people first of all, like everybody, in immense grief, but like a lot of people, not everybody, enormous rage and anger, bitterness, rage, anger. I mean, just out of control, he said, twenty years. And I think, but there his daughter was dead.
Finally, the guy got executed. And still all this rage, he said. And then somehow, something happened to really show him that the rage was why he was suffering. His rage was why he was suffering. His daughter was dead.
The man was executed. And there he is carrying this mountain of misery going out of his mind, you know. But this is we all know this one to some extent. We’ve all been badly done by by somebody. We all know this story.
And it’s kind of interesting because the thinking he was discussing this and other people that I remember talking or hearing about, I saw a television program, for example, about people whose children had been killed in all those school killings in America a few years ago, you know? And the same kind of thing that I learned from this one too. But this old man, he eventually this huge change, he kept went back to his faith and became very full of compassion. You know? He realized that it was no benefit.
This insanity was no benefit. It was making him truly insane. You know? And so he was able to see that, yes, it’s true his daughter was killed, and yes, it was true that it was inappropriate. But he was able to see that finally, he had to learn to change himself.
And this is all I’m talking about, you know. I mean, I haven’t even begun to talk about karma yet, but for a Buddhist, he’d use the logic of karma, but he used his logic of being, you know, having faith in God, and something shifted in his mind. And so what happened is he became a happy person. It’s so interesting, you know? We we don’t even have to look at ourself to know this.
You just have to think of someone in your life you know who’s really angry. It’s obvious that that person is suffering because of their anger. It’s just obvious, isn’t it? But of course, the part of the problem is we defend our right to be angry. I mean, that man, it’s in the world, there’s absolute logic.
My daughter was murdered. I have a right to be angry. Well, of course, you have a right to be angry, but like you have a you know, but excuse me, notice that it’s causing you suffering. But it’s interesting. Like, we have this one of the children’s parents, you know, these kids who’ve been murdered.
It was really clear when I saw these different parents being interviewed, you know, and one of them this woman, a mother, she had no anger. She had had grief, but she wasn’t angry with the child who murdered her child. Another man, a father, was full of rage and wanted this kid to burn in hell forever. And you could it was obvious. I’m not criticizing here.
What we’re doing is really precisely trying to locate what it is that causes us pain, and therefore, what the solution is. That’s all. It’s practical, you know. It’s not moralistic. It’s extremely practical.
And it was really obvious by looking at them, the father was absolutely suffering far more than that mother, totally suffering. Why? Because he was angry. This is not meant to sort of be all holy and moralistic. Please hear it, you know, it’s not like that.
And then and so the point here too is if it’s true that anger let’s just we call it one as an anger, you know, we know all these words, but let’s just say anger. Let’s say we accept that anger causes us suffering. We then obviously really have to be clear, don’t we, about exactly what anger is. Because I know already we’re all thinking, you know. Well, sometimes anger’s good.
It helps us do things. It helps us make political change, you know. And then we imagine if you’re not angry, you’re sort of this soft, sweet, gooey person. You’re like a passive wimp, you know. But somehow that’s what’s interesting.
When you really look at your mind, this is the way Buddhism taught, in a more refined way, you will see that when you give up anger, you’re not giving up your power, you’re not giving up your strength, you’re not giving up your courage, you’re not giving up your your your ability to see wrong and to do something to change it, you’re not giving up any of that. You’re giving up some enormously suffering part of yourself, which brings us again to this point that you’ve got to have a lot of ability, a lot of inner awareness, clarity to really dissect the parts of your mind. And then to look all the time at all the assumptions we have now of what is anger, what is not, what is good, what is bad, you know. So, okay, we’re here, we’re talking Buddha’s view. And again, it’s up to us.
I mean, Buddha’s saying don’t believe a word I’m telling you. Check it out, you know. You’re not supposed to believe what Buddha says. That’s not appropriate. That’s not the Buddha’s view at all.
It’s really looking at our minds in a very precise way, much more intricate because what we can see now is, you know, we have this view of what anger is. And so because we tend to have the view in our culture that you made with it and therefore you can’t change it, it’s obvious we have to sort of see that sometimes it’s good, you know. So we have to really look carefully and be able to recognize exactly what it is that’s that what are the components, in other words, of what of a negative state of mind. In other words, what determines that something is so called negative, and what determines something is so called positive. And that’s very much what one has to do as a Buddhist, really know one’s mind well, you know?
And so let’s look at that as a very interesting point, you know? Because if I can’t locate precisely what is the problem, just like if someone says I can be free you know, my water can be free of pollution. If I can’t locate precisely the pollution, I’m gonna be removing the wrong things, you know? So if we think anger is also meaning action, then I’ll chuck the baby out with the bathwater. That’s not appropriate, you know?
So what the main one of main characteristics well, there are many characteristics the way Buddhist psychology talks. One of the main characteristics of so called negative states of mind is this well, this one we’ve already described, and this is actually indicated by one of the terms that’s a translation of the Tibetan. It’s a disturbing emotion. In other words, you know, we we know when we’re disturbed. Okay.
We might know when it’s just mildly disturbed because we tend to take it for granted because Buddha says, remember, we can be free of it, actually. So it’s learning to recognize when your mind’s, you know, agitated, upset, disturbed in whatever way, that’s an indication there’s some or other negative state of mind that we just have to locate which one it is. That’s all. And also, this is an interesting point, because we’re not really educated mostly, more so these days. Certainly, when I was a kid, no one you know, I didn’t learn how to look at my mind.
I didn’t learn how to really understand my mind, understand what is anger, what is jealousy, their characteristics, and how to change it. You’re supposed you’re just supposed you’re just taught to behave well, keep it inside, you know? So anyway, the aim is to try and really locate what it is about them that makes them negative, then we can begin to really recognize. So okay, one of them, as I said, it’s it’s got this characteristic of being disturbing. That is already very clear, you know.
The other one another one is which is a curious term to use is another synonym, if you like, for negative state of mind or disturbing emotion, and this is the word delusion. Now, I mean, we’d say, oh my god, he’s so delusional. Means he’s person who’s in la la land, isn’t it, in relation to reality, seeing worms coming out of people’s eyes, psychotic or whatever. And we wouldn’t think, well, I’m normal, but they’re delusional. Well, I’m sorry to tell you, but Buddha’s saying, sorry, guys, we’re all delusional.
But it’s just a question of degree, and I’m not joking here. This really is the Buddhist approach, and I’ll explain. You’ll see it’s true, you know. Delusional, really, we can say it means simply not in touch with reality, but we usually mean it in an extreme way, don’t we? Well, the simple view is what Buddha is saying, and you can see this in your own relationship, let’s say, you know, your hubby or or or your or your person you’re living with or your kid or somebody close to you in your relationship, you suddenly have a flare up and you have an argument and you really get angry, you know?
You you wanna kill them at that moment. You think they’re a monster at that moment, don’t you? They appear so mean. You’re in tears about their meanness, how horrible they are, and they appear horrible to you. You can’t stand the sight of them.
Then you calm down, and the next day you kinda feel embarrassed, you saw things so ridiculous. I mean, you understand what I mean? So we can see that anger, if we really begin to see it deeply, we can see it’s a certain kind of viewpoint that’s got all this kind of cotton wool packed around it, is emotion, you know? But it’s a distorted state of mind. It’s distorts.
It’s not accurate. And sometimes we can very commonly see when we’re angry, we exaggerate the problem. We all can see this. As our mummies told us, you made a mountain out of a molehill. We can certainly see it with everybody else.
We might see it with ourself. We’re all great therapists when it comes to other people. You know what I mean? You can see a person’s exaggerating. They get upset, they’re crying, they’re angry, you did this and you did that, and you they you know they’re exaggerating.
Do you see my point? Well, that’s delusional. They’re not in touch with reality. They’re they’re not they’re not seeing accurately what’s happening. When you’ve got attachment, and the Buddhist use of the word attachment is again very precise.
It doesn’t refer to love or pleasure. They are positive things. We’re allowed to have pleasure. We’re allowed to have love. My goodness, love is fantastic.
Love is Buddhist view of what they say it is, love is the wish that others be happy. It’s like altruistic. It’s a delight in the happiness of others. It’s joy and open and spacious, you know. But attachment is like this huge neediness which causes to manipulate, to get something, to manipulate a person to make us happy.
It’s anxious, it’s worried, it’s needy, it’s neurotic. It’s in an exaggerated way dependent upon something being a certain way that causes you to be upset if you don’t get it. That’s attachment. So again, it’s also delusional. So even just the old chocolate cake, if you’re extremely hungry or needy for the chocolate cake, you know, like, that’s attachment.
We all know it looks extremely delicious to us, doesn’t it? I mean, it looks far this is the point. We when attachment is in the mind, it exaggerates the deliciousness of the object, the person, the job, the clothing, whatever it is, you know. Attachment works a bit like you know, you see it, you get overexcited, you get it, you convince it’s gonna bring you happiness, then you like to look at it and you like to taste it and touch it every day and look at it, but after a while what happens? It starts looking boring to you, so you change it for another model, a person or a bag, you know?
It gets boring, doesn’t it? We all know. First of all, it’s just divine, you can’t believe it, you never stop thinking about it. Even your new handbag, or just even the delicious chocolate cake, the gorgeous person, variations of the same theme, you know? But after a while, when when attachment kind of when the bubble bursts, there’s two there’s two results.
You either have aversion for the person, can’t stand them now, or you get bored. There’s the two options, aversion and boredom. So attachment is like this exaggeration of the deliciousness of something that eventually the bubble bursts, you know. So we go up and down like this all the time. So now we take it as normal, like I said.
We think it’s just normal, you know. This is just the way human beings are, we say. But the Buddha’s view is these are distorted states of mind. And what’s if you like, what’s radical about what Buddha’s saying is we don’t need to have these states of mind. Yes, they are normal.
Yes, we’ve all got them. Yes, we’re all born with them, but they’re not our inherent nature. They are not who we really are, which I think is really quite a radical statement to say. It completely argues with every view we all take as a truth, you know. And this, of course, is where the karmic view comes in.
Because we all know, you know, if it’s true that I was created, and I’m not being rude if you’re a Christian, please don’t take me wrong, but it’s just looking philosophically at the explanations, you know. If it’s true that I began at the time of conception, whether my mommy, daddy, or as a creator, then I think it’s true that you have to answer, no one knows why anybody. Why Hitler? Why Mother Teresa? You know?
Why some kid kills snails? Why some kid cries with compassion for lice? You can’t really find an explanation. And frankly, I don’t think the DNA one explains it, you know? I mean, we can see in DNA there’s a tendency for cancer, but I don’t think they found in DNA a tendency for anger or killing, have they?
I don’t think so. So, you know, we have all this mystery, as we call mysteries because we say, oh, we haven’t discovered it yet. We mean we in this twenty first century, you know? But, I mean, Buddhist view is this so even just as a as a working hypothesis, it’s interesting to view that you bring tendencies with you. The Hitler tendencies, your Mother Teresa tendencies, or whatever ones.
And that as an explanation, I find quite fascinating, actually. I find it quite workable, you know? And I’m using it as my working hypothesis in my life, and I can say for me so far, it it it’s I find it a useful explanation for why me? Why did that happen? Why did that person kill that person?
You know? So this is okay. Now this brings us to the broader issue of karma, which explains not just my own tendencies now, but explains why, you know, you punched me. So we would normally when you, you know, you read in the papers about someone who’s a criminal, they did this and did that, and the first thing they do is they psychoanalyze the person and get back to their parents and what their childhood was like. We’re trying to find the source, not we’re trying to find the reason why that person’s like that.
But the Buddha would say it’s not enough just to look at the external circumstances. You gotta look at the mind of the person themself, you know. And so also it’s interesting. Let’s say you punch me in the nose, and so we’re doing an analysis of why you punched me, and we say, oh, well, because your father punched you. But that’s that answers why you punched.
It doesn’t answer why you punched me. You see my point? It doesn’t answer why me. It’s still like potluck as far as I’m concerned that I got the end of your punch. But the Buddhist answer to why me, and this is where it sounds could be sounding heavy, but if you look at if you look at it from the good point of view, from the happiness point of view, it’s it’s very nice.
Okay. Let’s let’s just talk about the punch then. Let’s talk about it the nice let’s say you’re kind to me. Let’s say this gentleman here is kind to me or generous to me and very loving to me and goes out of his way to help me. So we would again think, well, that’s my human right.
And he’s a nice bloke, yes, but I deserve it, we’d think, you know? But the Buddhist view is, excuse me, there’s no way in the universe he could do anything good for me if his consciousness and mind don’t have a strong, as they call it, karmic connection from the past? How come we just bump into each other? In Buddhist terms, no way is that random. And this is not meant to be some kind of cosmic hippie idea.
I mean, is two two and a half thousand years old, this view, you know? That have some karmic connection. And how come when he sees me, he feels, you know, he wants to help me instead of punch me is because I have been extremely virtuous to him in the past. So in other words, we get what we deserve, which sounds cruel when it’s suffering, but it’s really nice when it’s the good things. In other words, here we all are sitting in this room right now, in this room in Adelaide.
We’re in a reasonable country and a civilized reasonably civilized with reasonable politics and reasonable weather and nice places and good smells and good food and reasonable health and reasonable money and friends. And we all just think, that’s just because I’ve worked hard and because I deserve it. But Buddha would say, if we knew how much hard work, morality, patience, generosity, compassion, hard spiritual practice we had practiced in a most recent life, we would all be in tears with compassion for that pre with kindness, with gratitude to that previous person who worked so hard, you know, whose fruits we are now experiencing. I mean, it’s all our mind, you like, continuity. But so Buddha says there’s nothing that we experience that doesn’t have a cause in my mind from the past, you know.
There’s nothing in other words, you look in your garden and you see the roses and you see the weeds and that’s your garden, you know. You might remember planting those seeds, but that’s your garden. So it’s kinda like my life is my garden. What I get, what I give, how I think, how I feel, the way even I experience the environment, what country I’m born in, what parents I have, the education I have, how people treat me. This is my garden.
I planted the seeds. This is the idea about karma, you know. So rather than being guilty, oh, I’m such a bad I must have been such a bad person, it’s actually a good thing because it’s empowering. In Buddhist terms, it answers that question, why me? It shows that it’s not random, but mainly the experiential application of it is, if this is my garden, I can turn it into the garden I want.
So I look at my garden now and I see all the weeds. Oh, god. I just didn’t do enough gardening, so better start now, you know. Instead of who put weeds in my garden? How dare you put weeds in my garden?
Oh, poor me or I’m so guilty, I’m so bad, impotent, you know. It’s useless, that attitude. So this karmic view, if we’re using it properly, is extremely empowering. And then of course, when you can put it together for yourself, it gives you a valid understanding of other people and therefore a basis for compassion, you know. Because you have an explanation of why the person punched that person, how come that person is punched, and all this, you know, and equally the good stuff.
So it gives a very different view. And I mean, I know myself attempting to use this in my life. It really brings this firstly, it empowers yourself, but then it as I said, it caused you to have much compassion for others, including the oppressors. I mean, we love to have compassion for victims, you know, and we love to think victims are innocent. In other words, if if somebody you just saw someone got punched in the nose, you turn around the corner and you see someone go punch, you’d immediately, wouldn’t you, feel compassion for the victim and immediately get mad at the person who did the punching?
But if you’d been there one minute before, you would have seen the the victim punching the oppressor. You think, it serves them right, wouldn’t you? You know? So we we love to have innocent victims and naughty wicked oppressors, you know? These nice sort of archetypes.
But Buddha says it’s not as simple as that. We’ve all had countless lives. This is the Buddha’s view, you know. Take it or leave. It doesn’t matter.
This is the Buddhist explanation of how come. And this we’re in this big interdependent scenario, you know. This is not just it’s sort of like at the moment with no memory, the Buddhists would say. We’ve got like a tunnel vision, you know. Just just always seeing as this little kind of pinhole big view here.
We’re gonna get the big picture. And, again, the experiential implications of this are that I can change my life and I can benefit others. This is the idea. You know? I don’t know.
Is that enough yet? You got questions? What do you think? Let me think. I’ll say a bit more about karma.
Okay? Just a bit more a bit more technical things about explaining how karma ripens, putting what I’ve just said now into just a layer down a bit more. Okay? And then talk about how you purify karma because again, in the prison today, we’re talking a lot about this one actually. No.
Actually, a slightly different shift. Okay. I’ll do something different. There’s various ways of explaining Buddha’s views, Buddha’s philosophy, Buddha’s psychology, and one very nice packaging of these Buddha’s teachings, if you like, is known as the four noble truths. Okay?
And so this in a way, the third one I don’t know why Buddha put Buddha didn’t put this first. I prefer this one first actually. I don’t know why Buddha did that but never mind. So I’ll tell you what I think. I think the third one is important.
The third one’s a nice starting point. The third one is Buddha saying, hey, guys, you can be free of suffering. And he’s I mean, it’s not just meaning when you die, you’ll then you’ll get happy. He’s meaning it’s something that is our potential and need to start to do the work now and it exists in our mind. The job is done by the mind, our thoughts, our feelings.
That’s where it exists. And this potential for freedom from suffering exists in here too, because it’s in here. It’s the way we see and think things. It’s viewpoint. It’s our mind.
And so, okay, it’s interesting. Freedom from suffering means what? Well, put it another way, a flip side, you’d say we all have the potential to be fully happy, fully happy, you know. So one way of saying is your water can be free of suffering, free of pollution. Another way of saying the same thing, your water can be pure.
Means the same thing, isn’t it? But just Buddha talks about from the suffering point of view because that’s what we have to locate because that’s the problem. So he says we can be free of it. Meaning simply, as I’ve sort of suggested, that our mind, the positive qualities, that is who we really are. So using the analogy of water, you know, what is water?
We mean there’s two bits of h and one bit of o, roughly speaking. Okay? Like, I know there are minerals and things. There’s a say. So that’s what we mean by water is that pure, clear stuff, isn’t it?
Now we all know it can be polluted. So it’s sort of like our water, our mind, has been polluted for so long that we just take it for granted. Well, that’s just the way water is. What to do? So you put the sugar in and try and pretend it’s not there, you know, to cover up the taste.
And Buddha comes along and says, hey, guys. You can be free your water can be free of pollution. So it sounds rather nice. I’d like so what does that mean? Let’s look at the positive qualities.
What would happiness be if we had it? Enormous, you know, love, compassion, generosity, patience, fulfillment, joy, all these words would be fully developed beyond which you couldn’t develop them further. This is the Buddhist idea. And equally, obviously, the pollution would be completely gone. Not just a bit, but completely.
This is the Buddhist view, and I would call that radical, actually. He says, when all the jealousy and anger and pride and confusion and fears and neuroses and even the the very subtle level how they talk in Buddhism, this very this mistaken sense of self that we have, which he talks about very much, this completely gone. That is what happiness is, you know. I mean, even you can say that’s what they mean by Buddha talking more more advanced. You know?
But it’s like that’s and Buddha says that is our natural state. That is who we actually are. You know?