Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute teaching, Ven Robina Courtin uses the Four Noble Truths to explain how the mind creates suffering and, strikingly, identifies what we call happiness as itself a subtle form of suffering. She positions Buddhism alongside science as a method of rigorous observation, yet argues it is more radical and subtle, accessing levels of mind unavailable to the gross senses. Robina walks through three kinds of suffering: the obvious (pain and harm), the subtle (what we call happiness, driven by attachment), and the most subtle (all-pervasive suffering rooted in ignorance). She analyzes how the mental consciousness constructs experience through sensory input, memory, and labeling, then sharply distinguishes attachment—a distorting delusion—from genuine pleasure and love, which Buddhism does not ask us to relinquish. Grounded in precise psychological analysis and concrete examples, the teaching is suited to practitioners ready to examine their own mind with rigor.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 DAR 2003 06 22.mp3
UUID: 03fb0eca-0ed0-414a-8223-490682d85cfb
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Death and Rebirth (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2003-06-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.1 minutes
Words: ~8,936
We don’t have this concept in science. We only talk at science at the level of the conceptual, you know, and Buddhists say that’s not enough. You can’t see reality with just the eyes and the ears. With the brain, you can’t. That’s the that’s the that’s where the principle is the same in Buddhism, but he would just extend it.
He’s more radical. He says, we have subtle levels of mind that have the capacity to see things at a subtler level, which cannot be known by the gross level. But can be known, can be verified, can be observed. Same principle as science. And that’s the Buddhist approach.
So what we’re trying to do is access a subtle level of mind so we can observe directly that emptiness is how things exist. That karma is the process that determines what happens to any living being. That the mind is a continuity of consciousness that can trace trace back since beginningless time and will go on forever. This is the Buddha’s view and it is his observation. So in just the same way that if you had Einstein up here telling you his findings and he started to say, well, I’m not sure if I’m right and it’s a speculation and you better believe it.
Again, we’d think he’s a load of rubbish. Of course, he’s gonna say he’s right. He’s only getting up here to talk because he’s done his homework, and he now is confident that he’s right, and he’s gonna present it to you. And then all his findings are there for you to for you to verify it yourself. Buddha’s the same.
Of course, he says he’s right. He’d be stupid if he said he’s wrong. Or like we think in religion, well, we’re all allowed to think what we like. You know? It’s all it’s right for me, and that’s right for you.
Excuse me. Two and two is four or it’s not. You can’t say, oh, two and two is is five for me and two and two is three for you. We we are, in other words, dealing with what is reality, and Buddha is saying there is reality. There is reality.
There is how things exist. There is a way that things exist. Not just for me. There is a way things exist objectively. That’s the view of science.
That’s the view of Buddha too. It’s just that Buddha, like I said, is more radical, more subtle in his in his assessment of just where at what level reality exists and how we can see it. The principles are the same. And here what he’s saying is the very nature of our mind when we’ve accessed these subtle levels is that it can know that which exists. Know, cognize, be aware of what exists.
It’s the very nature of mind. That which exists and mind, you know when you learn the Buddhist philosophy, you study the different things of of you you know? Yeah. And one of the things you study one of things you learn from the very beginning, actually, they learn the monks and the monasteries. There’s this know, the various synonyms, for example.
I think I mentioned this, maybe it wasn’t here, of that which exist. So one is the word phenomenon, object, existent, established base. There are several synonyms of that which exists. And I think the definition of the word existent is that which can be known slash cognized slash, you know, known or cognized as synonyms by the mind. But it’s axiomatic.
That which exists is that which can be known by mind. But by valid mind, not a deluded mind or a blind you know, mind meaning a state of mind. So that the job one way of saying what the job of a Buddhist is is to see what exists, to be in touch with reality. It’s the job of the scientist. They’re trying to find reality, aren’t they?
You know? Aren’t they? You know? That’s the point. This is the pursuit.
This is the same pursuit of those dudes up in the mountains. You know? This is what’s interesting. And the tool they’re using, the microscope they’re using is their own mind. That’s what’s mind blowing in my opinion about Buddhism.
You know? That’s what’s mind blowing. So it’s like so sophisticated. It’s phenomenal. You know?
Buddha says we can know what exists, and it’s just the very nature of what exists that it can be known by mind. In fact, it can’t be existing if it can’t be known by mind. It’s totally interesting. So Buddha’s found the way things exist and then he presents it. But, you know, Buddha’s findings. His findings.
That’s all. And he’s saying, don’t believe me. Go check it out for yourself if you want to bother putting the effort into it. And he gives the advantages of doing that is that you’ll get blissful on the way. That’s one of the side product or the byproducts is that you get blissful.
You get happy because Because our not being in touch with reality is how come we suffer. So we might know that I want to know what exists. Well, I might think, yeah, I wanna know what exists, but we definitely say, yeah, I wanna be happy. Well, they come together, you know. The pursuit of wisdom is the is is is the, you know, is the accomplishment of happiness.
It’s the most interesting view, you know. So the tools to do it are in the the mind is the tool, and the mind is where the workshop is too, as Lama Zopa says. So the first type of meditation, this are these it’s a practical psychological technique. Don’t mystify it. Okay?
It’s insulting it. It’s putting it in the toilet. It’s a refined, sophisticated, you know, psychological technique that needs masses of discipline, masses of self confidence, masses of hard work to get single point of concentration. Then to whatever extent we got it, you know, even just hovering around the first stage, whatever level, we then employ that in the second mode of meditation. And as I said, that’s called insight.
Insight into what? Into how things exist. Okay. So the tool No. The the methods we use to get insight is the concentrated mind, but now using it in a type of activity simply called analysis.
Now this is why this what we call is analytical meditation. It it’s almost is a contradiction for us because we have all these cliched views of meditation. But really this analytical meditation is a process that we are totally familiar with. We do it, we use it all the time. It’s how we exist.
We just don’t call it analytical meditation. We call it thinking. You know, for George to become a dentist, he had to use a lot of thinking. He had to hear a lot of information, and he had to sort of which initially was just in out there confusing an intellectual, but he had to by thinking about listening to it, thinking about it, processing it in his own mind until eventually it became second nature. Well, that is all we’re trying to do in this process here of becoming enlightened.
There’s not a fraction of difference in the process. It’s again that Buddha says we can, you know, we can learn to refine the mind more and more and more and use this analysis at an ever more subtle level. In fact, conceptual because it’s the conceptual level of the mind. We’re utilizing conceptual level, but the Buddhist view is that you can This conceptual level can go to extremely subtle levels. Way more subtle and concentrated and refined than we could ever imagine, you know?
So there you are in the second mode. Let’s say you’re contemplating Let’s say you’re meditating on anything but let’s just say emptiness, know? But first of all, you can’t analyze emptiness, can you? You can’t analyze, you know, dentistry or whatever that, I don’t even know a subject about dentistry, but never mind just whatever it might be, know. How gums work, the problem of gums, let’s say.
You can’t analyze that if you haven’t heard the information, have you? You can’t just go, well, I’ll meditate on gums, you know. Or get an insight into how gum disease works. A blessing will come from the sky, know. A feeling will come, we’ll say.
I mean, it’s embarrassing to talk like this. We think we’re intelligent when we talk like this. It’s really embarrassing. So same with karma, same with emptiness, same with compassion, you know. You gotta first hear it.
Here we’re talking hearing Buddha’s deal on it, you know, because we’re giving Buddha the go. It can be Christian. It can be Jesus or Yom, it’s up to you, you know. Then you have to have your concentrated mind and then you go to the insight mode and you do the analysis of it. Except that you do it like this, not because you’re trying to be holy, it’s because it’s practical.
Because if you’ve got your eyes open and your ears open and you’re kind of all busy and slumping and big and kind of gross, you can’t go deep in your mind, can you? So it’s obviously practical to sit quietly in a quiet environment best where you subdue the senses so you can start accessing this microscope of your mind, you know. That is necessarily beyond the conceptual. And then, you know, at whatever level you do your analysis, but you know, it’s and and actually the way they talk about this process, it’s really a quite a sophisticated level of analysis that demands enormous kind of subtlety, you know. Looking at it from many points of view, using many logical arguments to argue within ego’s entrenched views, you know, with the ignorance.
This is the analysis. This is the this is actually what you’re doing in the insight meditation. Then what happens what happens is this, the bell will ring. You’ll get an insight. Oh, I see.
And then what you’ll do in your meditation, you’ll stop the analysis, you’ll revert to the concentration mode, and now instead of con you know, you’d concentrate not on the breath, you’d concentrate on that insight, on that feeling that just came, the feeling, the taste of it. That’s how you do these two kinds of meditation. That’s how you realize emptiness. That’s how you realize anything. You’re utilizing these two modes, you know.
And they’re just it’s just a skillful way of describing how you will use your mind to understand something, that’s all. But the level of understanding we’re talking about is obviously subtler than the level we talk about that we’re capable of with our gross mind, that’s all. And the way they say it is it’s like you when you get this insight and eventually if it’s emptiness, let’s say, eventually the mind the more subtle the mind is, the more deep the analysis, the more the more profound the insight, the taste. Until eventually they say, you you realize it irreversibly. It’s now become truly oneness with who you are, with who you are, and no longer will you ever lose it.
That’s fine. When you’ve And when you’ve perfected that, the one on emptiness, then you achieve what they call liberation. You’ve cut the root of this ignorance irreversibly irreversibly. No longer, you know, are you in saṃsāra. No longer are you caught up in the gross levels of delusions.
You’ve now cut the root of delusions. This is how meditation works. It’s just skillful techniques, that’s all, for internalizing what we call Buddhism. That’s all. For making it oneness with you.
For making it who you are. No longer separation between the words and the feeling. Just like dentistry. Just like if you play the piano till you’ve perfected that piece. It just spontaneously comes.
Your piano your fingers and the piano meet and the music just comes. That’s because you’ve you’ve completely realized the music. That’s all. It’s just practice makes perfect. You you it’s become you.
We understand this process, you know. But this is the way of describing how we do it. And it’s extremely intelligent, extremely sophisticated, and it’s a psychological process. I mean, look how we mystify. Again, I can’t get over this one.
You know, how we rabbit on spiritual, meditation, mystical, beyond. Wow. You know, it’s just it’s like a two year old. It’s embarrassing. So this is meditation.
Okay? Meditation. Okay? Any questions about meditation before we continue on with our little job? Oh darling, of course it’s conscious.
Do you mean? First of all, maybe just to be clear, what do you mean by subconscious? What do you mean by that? Would say that’s part of our ignorance, that we are not really aware. The whole point of this is, this is what I’m trying to say, I’m trying to demystify it.
It’s a totally conscious process, that’s what I’m saying. That’s the point of why we’re not in touch with our subconscious because the gross level is so busy. This is the point of concentration meditation, you subdue the gross level so that you can, if you like, the way you’re saying it, you can get in touch with the subconscious but you’re not sitting there watching it, you’re driving it. You know, we tend to think all the mind is this, all this stuff happens, I’m gonna watch what goes on in my mind when these weird things come. You know, you’re in charge of it, and you can then use that subtle level, you call it subconscious, but it’s very refined and focused now, to do this analysis.
Know, it’s a very conscious focus, my point, you know. Totally conscious. But it’s a brand new activity for all of us. I mean, we’re not used to, you know, you understand, but the the idea is the same. Do you see?
As with the way we use it, we’re just going to a subtle level. Do you see? Yes, Amy. Clarify, do you think we come to these insights in our day to day life about these practices, but they’ve been made easier? Of course.
No, we’re doing it. Darling, is it yes. Question, degree. I mean, these insights, I was gonna say tell you all that. We can have it at any level.
We can have an insight at any level, but all Buddha is saying is that the deeper you go in the mind, the more profound the insight. That’s all. That’s where it becomes irreversible. So we have to start at the gross level though. We can’t leap to the subtle level.
You’ve got to go through the stages of the gross, and we’re having insights at every level all the time, all the time, and those build up. So all absolutely valid. They’re absolutely valid and that’s why at any level that we do our own internal work, it’s valid to do that. It’s not as if you’re only doing it when you do the subtle level. That’s when you want it affected, that’s all.
So of course we are all the time getting insights and that’s exactly, know, as you said, sitting feeding the chooks. Something can occur in our mind because our minds all if we’re working with it well, you’re driving along the road, you’re working through something, you get it. It’s an insight. Of course it is. Sitting here listening to all this stuff, me speaking to myself, I’m getting little insights.
We all are all the time. Oh, yeah, I see. Oh, I get it. Oh, yeah, right. That’s it, you know?
And we hear it again, it goes a bit deeper, a bit more, you know, that’s exactly the point, Amy. Yes. And that’s all part of the process. And that’s what we do at whatever level, and we rejoice at whatever we’re doing because if we’re working on our mind how incredible I mean how incredible absolutely that’s exactly how you should feel. Darling, listen, this is now what we’re gonna talk okay.
Know. This is what we’re gonna talk about this morning, go more deeply into the mind and learning to distinguish between when it’s wrong pride and right pride if you like. That’s all. That’s and that is incredibly important job we have to do. So let’s discuss this right now.
Moves because what we’ve done until now, just to give back and just let’s look at the overview, we started off looking at the very nature of our mind, how it is beginningless and non physical and not created and all blah blah blah and how it has its potential for perfection. Then we look, well, it’s true, I’ve got the potential for perfection, I better find someone to show me how to do it. We looked at the whole concept of needing a teacher, a guru, and then the appropriate way to relate to that person, how to find them and how to relate to them. Then we looked at Atisha’s request that we then contemplate again and again the preciousness of this marvelous human life we’ve got rather than taking it for granted, which is the fruit of our hard work and how tragic to waste it, and how wasting it is basically doing anything less than refraining from harming others. And then we looked at, you know, in the first point on the first scope, we then sort of started to look at Buddha’s teachings on impermanence, particularly in relation to one’s own death.
Death is definite. The time of death is uncertain, and what’s important at the time of death is only the positive imprints in our mind. The non virtuous ones are useless. Our family and our health and our wealth and our reputation, all the other things that we focus mostly on in our life are essentially essenceless at that point, Which as I said, doesn’t mean you chuck them out, you just change your view towards them, you know. Instead of having attachment and and anger with your family, have love and compassion with your family.
Keep your family, but just start doing different things in relation to them. That’s all. So then when they when you die, you’ve given up attachment and you’re and the virtuous imprints are there, which will carry your mind on. You know? Then we went on to the the next contemplation of the suffering of the of the suffering beings, the lower realms as we call, you know, just trying to and contemplating from the point of view of wanting not to have that for oneself, which takes time to think about.
Then we look went on, well, whom can I turn to? We turned to the Buddha for refuge, didn’t do much about that at all. And then we started well, now we begin to actually abide by the laws of karma, which is Buddha’s essential teaching of how to behave, how to act, how to think, how to speak for our benefit. We’re not even looking yet at compassion. We’re trying to see how to stop ourselves from suffering.
I’m sorry. Have have a little bit of a thing here because I haven’t got well, it’s hanky, which is great for you. So I have to use a tissue. Because you know they do this. It’s rather dramatic, but it’s quite polite.
You suddenly see the the leap that throw their shawl over their head is so bizarre, and then having a good snort. It’s very funny. Polite. This is No. It’s well, it’s impolite just to sort of blow your nose everybody, I suppose.
I don’t know. That makes sense. Spreading the germs. That’s right. Okay.
So now we’re up to the second okay. If we practiced from impermanence to karma, these are the first these are various practices of the first scope of teachings, then we’re it’s like the basic level of practice, and the heart culmination of which really is the one of abiding by the laws of karma. All the other stuff is sort of to prime our mind to get to that point. If we practice just according to the laws of karma, which means we, you know, wouldn’t you you zip your lip and keep your hands to yourself and be a nice person and look at your mind and, you know, where are your course notes? We haven’t got them yet, have we, George?
Where are course notes? We’re waiting for Anita to bring them back. Oh, how kind. She’s got the rest, isn’t she? Wonderful.
Okay. Fantastic. That’s yeah. Because the death one will be in there, I think we can put the other sheets on later because no, not the death, the death one is in there. I’ve got an analysis of the death process we talked about last night in our course notes plus the looking at the ten non virtuous actions which I didn’t go into detail about which is the one of karma which are in there too.
So the point is, at this point, up to the point of karma, if we abided by the laws of karma, we’d be blissful, and the world would be a happy place. We wouldn’t harm each other, how fantastic. It’s the basic level of practice. Now we move on to the second scope, we’re kind of moving into high school now, if you like, where are now beginning to look into our mind in a more profound way, in a more sophisticated way, understanding the mind, how it functions, what is suffering, what isn’t suffering, virtues, non virtues. We’re looking at the mind in a more sophisticated way, really learning to be our own therapist in a very genuine way.
And Here, a very nice way of packaging another package of Buddha’s teachings that are quite useful for presenting the mind, how it functions, but particularly for recognizing suffering and wanting to go beyond it is as we discussed I think briefly on Friday night is presenting it in the context of the four noble truths. Could You know, like I said, the third one is really the same as what we started which is Buddha’s assertion that we can be free of suffering, that we can be full of bliss, full of joy, full of happiness, full of perfection, Buddhahood, blah blah, whatever you like. Okay, so if it’s true we can be free of suffering, which seems a reasonable thing to want, thank you very much, then we surely need to know what suffering is. We’ve got to be very precise. I mean this is why again we’re using it in a scientific way, don’t just be all blah blah about it and emotional.
You know, it’s like pollution. Your water’s polluted and water comes along, hey guys, your water can be free of pollution. So, you never thought it before because you just thought, well pollution’s part of water. What to You’re just taking it for granted like we all do. Well, suffering is just part of life, just the way we are, and we even defend our right to have it, and we think that someone says you should go beyond it.
We feel kind of dumb, ridiculous. You’ve to have anger. You’ve to have jealousy, all these things, you know? Buddha says load of rubbish. We do not.
So we need to know, we need to be all on the same page about precisely what suffering is. Why? So you can identify the pollution so you can remove it, it’s really obvious. Again, you don’t sort of go and be all mystical, well, maybe the pollution will just go away, you know? Excuse me, you gotta be very gotta get your hands dirty.
Then the second one is extremely important too, the crucial one. That is the causes of it. You gotta know what the causes of the pollution are because if you don’t know what causes are, you can keep removing it till doomsday, but you keep growing it again. If you don’t know what the causes of it are, you’ve to know what the causes of suffering are, so you stop it. But it’s so obvious, you know?
So as we discussed on Friday, I think, or whenever, there are two causes of suffering. This is the point we made, you know. Buddha says there are two causes of suffering. And to hear this one already is so mind boggling, but he’s being so precise, but it’s quite mind boggling because it completely argues with the view we have now about the causes of suffering. As I said before, we look at the world’s behavior, just the world in general, meaning us, join the club, we’re all in the world.
But look at the way we all tend to behave, it’s absolutely evident by our behavior what our philosophy is. Just you look at a person how a person behaves, you can tell what they think. Meaning, look at the way we we deal with suffering. We try to make it go away. We blame it, sue it, kill it, push it away, manipulate it, harm it.
I mean, look at the world. So obviously, the Palestinians think the Israelis are the cause of their suffering, that’s why they try to kill them. And obviously, the Israelis think the Palestinians are the cause of suffering, that’s why that’s why they try to kill them. It’s very clear what we think. So Buddha says, excuse me guys, there are two causes of suffering and neither is the other person.
Yes, there are many you can say, there’s a very specific difference, there’s a very clear difference in the way Buddhism would describe between main causes and secondary causes. Like we all know about plants for example. We can use these words, but it’s absolutely obvious to all of us. The main cause of the apple tree is an apple seed for goodness sake. It’s not the water in the soil.
It’s not the sunshine. But that’s in a sense what we’re thinking now. By our behavior, it’s like we believe that when I water the earth, I’ll get a tree. We don’t even think about the seed, you know. So we water we water and water and water.
Then sometimes a tree comes and think, oh, that must be the cause of it, you know, a tree is me watering the water, me watering the the ground. It happens to be that there’s a seed under there, but, know, you don’t know that. So we think it’s like the way we behave now, we’re thinking that, you know, the catalyst for my in other words, John punches me. Again, I know. And naturally we think that’s okay, I’ll forgive you.
That’s why we think the main cause of my suffering is John punching, but in this analogy, John’s punch is like the catalyst, it’s like the water, it’s like the water that nourishes the seed in Rabina’s mind, in this case called anger and therefore suffering. So the suffering’s mine, the seed of my suffering and we are that is mine. His punch is like the is just like the the water that you pour on the soil. It’s a catalyst. It’s not the main cause at all, you know?
But it’s a crucial cause. You gotta have it. In other words, the seed, we all know the seed is the main cause of apple trees, but you can hold it up here. For forty two years, you won’t get an apple tree. Why?
Because you need the soil, the water, the sun. So they’re totally crucial because things are interdependent. But we will have to try and locate the main cause. It’s extremely important, you know. And then you can study all the things, the seed and the soil and the water and the sun, the whole interdependent scenario, but you can still say the main cause of appleness is the apple seed.
Very clear. The main cause of appleness is not the water, but it’s a crucial catalyst. So the main cause of my suffering and of course my happiness too is in my mind. That’s all. The seeds in here not coming from his punch, not coming from the chocolate cake.
That’s the point. So that So by locating, as I say, locating the cause of something, the main cause, that tells you solution. So why Buddha points out that the main cause of my suffering is in me and there are two, and I’ll say them in a minute, why he’s locating this is because that will tell us the solution. So when you really begin to know that the main cause of your suffering is you, you change you, not John’s punch. Sure, get out of his way, it’s very practical.
But where you have to look for the solution is in yourself. It’s a very specific technical point, but because we’re so full of emotion, we just can’t hear it, you know? So there are two causes Buddha says. There’s the long term cause, which is the karmic action. The action, the karma that I did two and half lives ago or whenever by harming this particular consciousness which was labeled who knows what back then that caused us to come together again.
The why John and I meet is no is not a random event. It’s not somebody up there pulling the strings. It’s very specific. It’s our karmic. The karma this is a law that determines in Buddha’s view.
Whatever comes, the energy of everything, everything, the universe, everything. What holds the universe together is morality. What pulls what collapses it apart is immorality, you know? I mean, this is the Buddha’s view of this is his technical explanation of reality. So what causes John and me to come together is our past karma between us, the past karma between us.
And in this particular case what causes him to the main cause from my point of view, why he punches me, is my past punch. From his point of view, why he punches is his past habit of punching. And why he punches me is because I’ve punched him before. So that’s his causes from his side and mine are mine, but they come together, you know. So the term first cause of suffering is karma.
Second cause of suffering, delusion. My present anger, fear, neurosis, upset, you know, whatever you want to call it. So this implies there are two solutions, two types of practice. There’s the long term practice which is purifying your karmic seeds which is that four opponent powers. As Lama Zopa says, we’re insane not to do it every day.
Because if you think about it, as long as we’re in saṃsāra, quote unquote, which means as long as our minds are caught up in some level of delusion, then every second we’re creating karma, it’s likely one or other of the delusions is motivating it. You don’t need to be Hitler to create negative karma. This is the point, you know? But because we hear this kind of thing in such mental way, we feel so guilty and it’s not fair and everybody just has to go to heaven, know. It’s just so evil to think that anybody who suffers, we can’t bear to think about it.
But the Buddha would say, you know, we have to look more subtly at our minds and accept with more humility that we’re all in saṃsāra. We’ve all got delusions. This is how it is, you know. So the second cause of my suffering is delusions. So there are two kinds of practice.
One is the long term of removing the karmic seeds that I’ve already planted in infinite beginningless that are sitting in my mind waiting for the appropriate conditions for them to ripen as suffering for me. They’re sort of like, you know, you’ve eaten a whole pile of poison and it’s working really slowly. You’ve known over the years you’ve been eating all this poison but it hasn’t sort of ripened as suffering yet and you hear about this. Excuse me, you’re gonna do an awful lot of hard work to get those seeds out before they ripen as you’re suffering, aren’t you? You’re gonna start going on diets and cleaning yourself up.
We all understand the process. We do it all the time with our physical health. We just don’t know how to do it for our mental health, that’s all, because we’re so dulled. We’re so locked into our old patterns, so locked into our, you know, locked into our just old junky patterns of following all the instincts, following all the feelings, thinking we’re making intelligent choices, thinking we’re being using free will and all this. We’re just blindly being propelled by our past karmic imprints, that’s all.
Locked into our comfort zone, you know. Thick as a post. As our mothers would tell us. So then the second level of practice is dealing with your mind now. There’s a long term practice which is, you know, the practice of removing the seeds before they ripen.
Then the short term practice and the most immediate and the first one, the most urgent one is when you get punched dealing with your mind then. So this is where if we look into the Mahāyāna level where we have this marvelous level of practice called transforming problems, you know, which we’ll talk about this afternoon. Where you learn to welcome the punches. As Lama Zopa says, you learn to like problems like you like ice cream. Not because you’re a masochist, it’s because you really want to practice, you really want to get on with the job.
Just like any sportsman or person really working hard in their field loves the challenges. No challenges, no growth, we all know that. No pain, no gain, we all know that. Well, learning to work with problems is that approach because problems are what causes to know, problems are the challenges. People being kind to us and loving to us and, you know, comfort and warmth and all the food nice every time, that’s not challenging.
That’s just getting what attachment wants, you know? It keeps us in a dull, lazy, thick, gross, ignorant mode. Following attachment, it’s a junky mode, know. We’ve got to stretch ourselves and that means dealing with our mind right now. And that’s why concentration meditation is so important because one of the immediate benefits is it gives you the skill to see what the hell is going on inside you when it’s going on.
As and when it’s happening. This is crucial, you know. But the real one is, you know, is to deal with whatever arises in front of us. If you think about it, we mightn’t get punches all the time. When we begin to understand suffering at a subtle level, which is the second kind of suffering in this first noble truth, which I’ll talk about now, the second kind of suffering is the one that’s really sneaky and it’s really scary to look at it.
It’s called the suffering of change. In order to see this one, we need really much more awareness. To see the suffering of being punched is easy and then to really learn to struggle with the anger that arises. This is a gross level and already extremely important. But the suffer level of suffering Okay, let’s go back to the Noble Truth now.
Three kinds of suffering, Buddha says. The first kind is the ordinary everyday suffering, the punch in the nose. That’s called the suffering of suffering and that’s the result of past harming others. It’s the gross delusions that cause me to get that kind of suffering. It’s the evident kind and it’s the kind that we all call suffering and it’s usually all we call suffering.
The second one is the kind of scary one. It’s called the suffering of change. It’s an innocuous title, but it’s kind of scary because what it’s referring to is what we call happiness. Happiness. The ordinary I’m not talking about big bliss now.
I’m talking about your daily happiness of getting what you want and your food and your this and just following all the usual old things, you know. Fulfilling, kind of sustaining our comfort zone, you know. What we call happiness is what Buddha is saying actually is a subtle level of suffering, which is a bit depressing if that’s all we know is happiness because we think, well, where the hell do I go with that, you know. Am I supposed to give up my heart, give up my happiness as long as we’re alive — is what Oprah says we think? We we have to give up attachment because the cause of this one is attachment.
The cause of the gross ones from the past is is the gross delusions. The cause of the present one of what we call happiness is attachment. We’ll discuss this one because it’s really extremely interesting. Now the subtlest level of suffering, we don’t even consider it. It’s called all pervasive suffering and we’ll discuss this in a minute, but something we don’t even think about.
We don’t even think about the second one because we call it happiness. We try to avoid the first which is the gross suffering. But this is the point. This is where the causes come in and are absolutely crucial to understand this whole process. The second cause of Okay.
So we now go to the causes of suffering. We just talked about what suffering is which is the first noble truth. Suffering of suffering, suffering of change, all pervasive. I want to focus on the suffering of change now. So now we have to go to the second because remember Buddha saying we can be free of suffering.
So we’ve got to go to the second, the causes of suffering. And in general, I said it’s two, karma and delusion. So interestingly, even looking at the delusions, they talk about the three root delusions: ignorance, attachment, anger. If we look at the three kinds of suffering, we can say the first level of suffering is caused by the gross delusions like the anger, the harming. That’s how come people harm us and hurt us now.
The second cause of suffering which we call happiness is caused by attachment, like a honey covered razor blade. We’ll talk about this. The third cause kind of suffering which we actually don’t even think about at all and that’s actually, okay all pervasive suffering refers to being born in the first place with these aggregates, having no choice but to continue to perpetuate delusions. We’ll discuss it. That’s caused by ignorance.
So to remove the gross level of suffering we have to stop harming others. To remove the second level of suffering we have to get rid of attachment. To remove the subtlest level we have to finally realize emptiness and get rid of ignorance. Just different stages of realization. So let’s look at the causes of suffering, specifically the second one.
So again, let’s back off a bit, go back a bit, let’s we have to look at the mind again to get a perspective of the mind so we can understand delusions broader context. Mind in Buddhism is the word, like we said, that refers to you can say all the spectrum of our inner experiences, thoughts, feelings, emotions, unconscious, subconscious, soul, spirit, whatever you want to call. All of that deal is your mind, your mental continuum, your river of mental moments. Different ways of dividing the components of the mind. We can see the mind from the two points of view.
They call it the epistemological, which is how the mind functions, and then the actual psychological, the components of it. So Okay. So let’s look at the way the mind functions. This is It’s not just intellectual. It’s actually extremely interesting.
There’s two ways the mind works. Just two. We call them conception and perception. They’ve got, again, very specific meaning in Buddhism. Conception is the level we function at from day to day with the gross mind, And that incorporates thoughts and feelings most interestingly.
And we’re gonna look at this exactly. Perception I’ve got a very specific meaning in Buddhism and it mean They talk about it as being, well, they say non conceptual. And so in relation to the thoughts and to the to the mental consciousness, the perception we never get in touch with. It’s the capacity of the mind at the subtle level when you’ve accessed the microscope of your mind through meditation, when it can taste emptiness or when it can see emptiness directly, see impermanence directly. These are not words we use usually in relation to these ideas, but to give you It’s like the It’s like when you taste something.
So the conceptual level is like the recipe. Perception level is like the tasting of the cake versus the analogy. So we never touch the perception. We’re never there because we’ve never accessed a subtle level of mind. So we effectively live at the conceptual level with our mental consciousness.
This is how Buddhism would say. So like we said before with meditation, we’re trying to access the subtle level which is the what they call perception or non conceptual where we can directly see emptiness, see reality and cut the roots of nonsense, all the roots of all the nonsense. Okay, now let’s go to the psychological model of the mind, the components of the mind. No, no, sorry, another way back to, sorry, how the mind functions. Another way of dividing the mind is into sensory consciousness, mental consciousness and is interesting because we tend to think because we, you know, we don’t think the mind is separate from the body, so we think of it as sort of whole, you know, whole a whole thing which has many traps because Buddha, first of all, would say the mind and the body aren’t the same.
They’re not the same at all. Intimately connected, obviously, but absolutely not the same phenomena. Two completely separate phenomena. And one of the And so there’s a multitude of traps we fall into by thinking the mind is the body. So many problems that come from this, you know, and we’ll discuss it.
So we look at the mental consciousness. We have the sensory consciousness and the mental consciousness. So what’s the sensory consciousness? Well, you know, it’s the eye consciousness. We can say the eyes.
Now we mean the eyeball in the west, but no, Buddha says that’s the physical. Consciousness is the capacity of your mind to be functioning through the medium of the eyeball. We call it eye consciousness. And what’s its job, you know? Okay.
What’s the definition of mind? This is important too. All these things are important to get clear. You have to define something very precisely. And if you look at any definition of anything, you’re gonna see there are two parts to that definition.
And you’ve got to have the definition really clear, otherwise you’re not gonna communicate. You have to find your terms, you know. So microphone, you can say the first part of the definition of anything is the character of it, the characteristics and we can say this metal cone and that’s very nice. Thanks a lot. It’s a metal cone, big deal.
The next question is, excuse me, what does it do? So the second part of any definition tells you its job, its function. So, oh, which amplifies sound? Now you understand it. What’s a cup, mom?
Oh, well, it’s a flat bottomed round container. Well, thanks a lot. That holds your tea. What are glasses, you know? This frame, blah blah blah, that help you see.
So what’s the mind? The first part is the conventional characteristic. It’s they call it’s a bit abstract for us but they simply say it is clear. Meaning in these terms, not physical. And the second part tells you its job.
Its function is simply to be aware. Aware is not some abstract like be very aware of what’s going on, know, like just awareness, bit abstract. Awareness is the job of the mind. It’s like what’s the job of the eyes? To see something.
Well, job of the mind is to be aware of something. So clearly the gross level is aware of gross things, the subtle is aware of subtle things. So awareness or you can say the job of the mind is to be aware or to know in this dynamic sense of knowing something or to cognize. They’re all synonymous. That’s the job of the mind.
It’s the job of your mind to cognize, to be aware, to know something, not just abstract knowing. Something has got to the eye has got to see something, doesn’t it? You know? There’s up the subject subject and there’s object. So mind has a sub is the subject and then has its objects.
And different levels of the mind have their own particular objects. So sensory mind has very limited capacity. We actually this is one of the major problems. We give huge power to the mind. As Lama Yeshe says, we make the body the boss, and it causes us the untold suffering in our life because we have the mistaken understanding of what of of the power of the of the sensory consciousness.
So for example, we’ll say, oh, look at that divine chocolate cake. In other words, we’re actually believing that our eye consciousness is seeing delicious chocolate cake. Well, the Buddha says the the model of the mind that’s developed in Buddhism over the centuries, you know, says that, you know, the eye consciousness, they’re like dumb animals, have very limited capacity. We’ll describe this process. The eye consciousness itself is capable of perceiving merely two things, shape and color.
That’s it. That’s it. Shape and color. Ear consciousness. God, isn’t that incredible bark, you know?
No. Ear has no clue. It simply hears sound. Taste simply experiences taste. That’s it.
So how come we say there’s a delicious chocolate cake? Well, this is where the mental consciousness comes in. So when the cake’s there, all that first split second, masses of things are going on in the mind, you know, a million different things that have all worked are all working so beautifully together because we’ve trained ourselves for countless lives, these sensory beings that we are. So we’re totally kind of it all happens instantly. And so we have to sort of slow down.
But this is where meditation comes in. First hearing the the the teachings and then learning to actually see the process all in that first split second of what’s going on in the mind to deconstruct the way the mind functions in order to begin to understand even what a delusion is, what is virtue, what is this, this, what is that. It’s a again, a highly sophisticated job we have to do. It’s technical, but extremely tasty. And when we can begin to do it at this level, we can really begin to go beyond delusions.
You know, we gotta have this kind of precision, like I said, and clarity and depth of analysis of our own mind. So what happens roughly speaking when we see the chocolate cake? You know, the chocolate cake comes. The eye consciousness meets it. Well, at the same instant of a second, you know, what’s happening is suddenly then because they’re all working beautifully together, these parts of us, the mental consciousness is now accessed.
And it’s like that’s where that’s where the computer is. That’s where all the information is. That’s where the feelings are, the good, the bad, this, the that, all the knowledge, all stored, the memories, everything is there. The eye consciousness is just a doorway, you know? It’s extremely limited, but we give it more power than it has, and that causes us, as I said, so many problems.
We’ll discuss. So what happens instantaneously is the mental consciousness is accessed, and your little computer is accessed, and boom, you know, you go and it pick and it calls up chocolate cake. In other words, you got a good working memory, and there locked away is that label, and then you see the shape and color, and that triggers the mental consciousness, and then chocolate label, you know, chocolate cake label comes up. Tick. You’re correct.
It’s a chocolate cake. Okay? You got it right. Then the memory of having had it before comes up. That’s how you come.
You can label it. The memory of having had had enjoyed it before comes up. And so all of these, you see, we’re okay. Just keep that picture now. Let’s go for a moment to the mental consciousness.
We can say the components of the mental consciousness are three, precisely three. No more. The mental consciousness. There’s there’s positive, negative, and neutral states of mind. There’s no fourth category.
Let’s forget the neutral. The positive negative are the ones we’re trying to get in touch with. They are precisely where all the suffering and all the happiness comes from. These are the ones we have to learn to recognize and then learn to, you know, to work with. So the positive and the negative are the two.
So there are a multitude of positive and negative states of mind all working together here, all mixed up together like a big soup. Not just like a big soup with lumps in it, but a pureed soup. So seamlessly working together, we just cannot see the difference. And we have all these projections about what’s going on in our mind, you know, but we’re not really seeing it so clearly, and that’s what we have to do. So your senses do their little job, just the doorway.
They’re the doorway to the experience, you know. You see the shape and the color. Mental consciousness is triggered. You remember the name chocolate cake. You remember having eaten it.
You remember the pleasure. So all of those are valid states of mind. You can’t say they’re wrong. They’re not negative states of mind. They’re simply it’s correct to say chocolate cake.
It’s valid to, you know, to like chocolate cake. It’s totally valid to have pleasure. Totally valid. Nothing wrong, you know. I’d say yes, you would say more pleasure the better, you know.
We sound that with that, oh, it’s a bit sneaky. I mean, it’s like it’s happiness sounds kind of mild and quite nice, doesn’t it? But pleasure sounds a little bit suspect, you know, especially if you’re trying to be religious, you know, isn’t it? But I mean, excuse me, pleasure is called happiness. Happiness is our human right.
It’s the nature of our mind. Look at those people who meditate. Such bliss, they can’t believe it. Pleasure’s on it’s it’s there, know, it’s ours. So, okay.
We’re trying to identify here the parts of our mind that do what jobs, you know, so we can decide which ones are negative and get rid of them because they’re a drag, and which ones are positive. Now, right now, for example, we use the word attachment virtually interchangeably interchangeably with love, pleasure, liking. So, of course, as Lama Zopa says, when we hear we have to give it up, we go, oh, I’ve gotta give up my heart, give up my happiness. No. You just got it wrong.
You’ve labeled the things wrongly. That’s all. So then what happens is when you become when you start being, you know, common view of people getting to Buddhism, all fundamentalist, all holy and miserable and, you know I mean, how depressing can you get, you know? Look at the world. We have these two main modes.
Hedonistic, shove it all in, or completely kind of fundamentalist, puritanical. So gross, you know, so inappropriate. So we have to have much more subtle, refined understanding of how the mind functions and extract, you know, learn to identify very precisely the delusions, the attachment, and very precisely remove it, extricate it, you know. Leaving the pleasure, the happiness, the love, the joy. In fact, not just leaving it, increasing it.
This is what’s so ridiculous. So what’s attachment? Because that’s where the problems come. You don’t have problems with chocolate cake and shove four pieces in and get fat and miserable because you like chocolate cake, because, you know, you had chocolate cake, because even of the chocolate cake. They’re not the reasons.
It’s because you’ve got attachment to the chocolate cake. So what then is also triggered simultaneously in this process is this ancient delusion called attachment that is so powerful. It it just covers all the others. It takes over. It just you know, one drop of poison in a gallon of water poisons all the water.