Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 47-minute teaching, Ven Robina Courtin diagnoses attachment — the habit of seeing objects as inherently desirable — as the root cause of suffering. She walks through the chocolate-cake example step by step: how attachment makes it appear objectively beautiful, why we eat beyond satisfaction chasing promised happiness, and why we only stop when it becomes disgusting. She then traces the deeper root delusion: ignorance, the belief that things exist objectively, independent of the perceiving mind. Moving into subtle Buddhist psychology, she explains how deluded thoughts disturb wind energies, creating emotional storms we blame on others. Grounding the teaching in personal experience — her volatile anger, her sister’s eating disorders, romantic love — she concludes with a liberating insight: a millimeter of doubt about how things exist can crack open saṃsāra. For serious practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 DAR 2003 06 22.mp3
UUID: f964b6d0-c5bf-4b54-b64d-36875f4c906c
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Death and Rebirth (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2003-06-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 47.4 minutes
Words: ~8,548
That brings us happiness and joy and bliss, and that there’s such a thing as a negative state of mind that pollutes and poisons and causes us suffering, and that they are absolutely different. They are as different as chalk and cheese, you know. There are no redeeming features about poison. Okay, you can talk in the more advanced level of practice when you’re a real alchemist. You can use poison for medicine, but you’ve got to first even know it’s poison and you’ve got to be extremely careful with it.
So there are ways of talking, as we know, in the highest levels of practice where we talk about transforming poison into the path, utilizing the delusions, but it’s highly sophisticated level of practice. We’ve got to first be on the ground and be able to even distinguish between them first. And again, this is not moralistic, this is not kind of heavy duty, this is just intelligence, you know. We’re trying to locate what it is that causes me pain. We’re still not talking about compassion here, we’re not even discussing what causes other people pain, we’re looking at our own mind, we’re being our own therapists for my sake.
So then what is attachment? How come, you know, how come there is problem when I eat my chocolate cake, when I have a relationship? Why is there a problem, you know? It’s because of attachment. It’s because of attachment.
And then because of attachment, the others all come. If you didn’t have attachment, there’d be no depression. If you didn’t have attachment, there’d be no jealousy. There’d be no anger. There’d be no pride.
It’s impossible. Attachment is like the default mode of the mind. Attachment goes to And we’re talking gross level here, but it goes to such subtle levels. It is the default mode of the mind. It’s just there all the time.
Not manifest, but it’s just at the level of assumption, too. At the level of assumption attachment. So even use the gross example is a good one, you know. So what Buddha’s saying is that what we call happiness, which is let’s say the scenario of getting the cake or whatever. Just change the object, you know, whatever object you like.
He says that that is suffering, that this whole scenario, not just being full, but that from the moment you start, it’s in the nature of suffering. It’s just that it’s subtle. That’s always a honey covered razor blade. So like I said initially, it’s a bit depressing to hear this because the only way we know how to get happiness is through the medium of attachment, isn’t it? First, we have to at what attachment is.
But let’s just look more broadly at why Buddha says the logical reasons Buddha would use for saying that our happiness is nothing other than suffering. The first one in relation to chocolate cake, this is the example, is that it this is why it’s called the suffering of change. Okay. Let’s look at attachment. Attachment’s the name of the delusion, okay?
It’s the cause of it here, we’re going to go much more deeply into it. But attachment, which is overriding all the others, is the main voice going on here, you know? So one of its jobs is one of its functions is to see the object as extremely delicious. Okay. We’re not looking I’m just diverted a bit here.
I’m sorry. I was going to skip the reasons Buddha says why it’s suffering, but I’m now looking at the second noble truth. I’m looking at the attachment itself and how it functions. This is important to understand, so we’re now going to look at that. We’re looking at the attachment itself, which is called delusion and it’s a cause of suffering.
So we’re trying to look at how it functions, what attachment is. So this brings us to understand, of we haven’t had our tea break, I’m sorry. You wanna be attached to the tea break? We can, do you want, have a tea break. Come on.
Then I’ll go into it later. There’s enough stuff already. Is that alright? I jump around a bit. Hope you can get notes from all this.
I know I’m not very logical. Is it okay? Doing okay? So please have a cup of tea, everybody, and then we can talk a bit more about it after. I’ll have one.
Okay. Carry on. Nothing? Try again. So we’re looking at the mind.
We’re looking at the broader picture of the mind, mental consciousness, sensory consciousness. They’re completely different. All everything happens in the mental consciousness, you know. The sensory consciousness is just the doorway. We give it more power than it really has which is really what leads us up garden paths.
The mental consciousness we can divide into the way it functions into conception, perception. Conception is the gross level at which we function from day to day which incorporates, crucially incorporates emotional. And I’m gonna describe this because it’s extremely important to understand. And secondly, we have what we call perception, which we virtually never touch. It’s only when we start to be great meditators that we can access the subtle level of our mind where we can see something directly.
And then within the mental consciousness, can say from the point of view of its components, we can say we have positive, negative, indifferent or neutral. Let’s forget the neutral. We have positive and negative. We need to distinguish between these because the negative make suffer and cause us to harm others and the positives make us happy and cause us to benefit others and because we want to therefore develop the positive and lessen and diminish the negative. So that’s a very clear logic to it all.
So we’re looking at the experience. We’re trying to then see now what is this about the negative qualities that causes suffering. So when we’re looking at it in the context of the first noble truth, the second kind of suffering, the suffering of change, which we’re using the example of the chocolate cake. We would normally call the whole scenario of eating the chocolate cake happiness, and Buddha would say it’s nothing other than suffering. The key component in that suffering is the attachment.
So we need to understand how attachment functions in order to understand how it causes us suffering. Because it’s a honey covered razor blade. We think it’s the cause of happiness. So there are general We’ve talked about this but let’s very clear again about it. There are various characteristics that the negative, so called negative states of mind possess that are why they cause us suffering and therefore cause us to harm others.
There’s very many characteristics. The two specific two important ones, one, as we discussed this Friday, one is indicated by one of the characteristics of the negative states of mind is indicated by this particular term, which is a synonym for negative state of mind, disturbing emotion. You know, it’s just disturbing emotions. Well, they call sometimes afflicted emotions. Disturbing emotion.
I mean, it’s fairly obvious, know. We know the words. We might We will have doubt about attachment being happiness and suffering because we will use it from very different ways from Buddha. But we can even get confused. We can generally see jealousy, anger, pride, depression, anxiety, stress.
We all know they’re suffering even though we might defend our right to have them and think other people blame us, other people cause it and so on. We know it’s painful, we really look. And that’s why we say it’s disturbing emotions. But actually, if we really got profoundly in touch with just this one, the experience of them and could own the fact that they’re mine and that it’s painful, yes indeed John punched me but that’s his problem, my anger’s mine and that’s the key point here. This is the key point about one of the characteristics, one of the things to look at about the mind.
Right now we have this wrong philosophy, Buddha says, that throws us off the track, know, throws us off the scent. We know the anger’s painful when John punches me. We know the anger and the fear and the resentment are extremely painful. But because my philosophy is that he caused it, he did this, it’s his fault, he should change, how dare he, he shouldn’t do it, Therefore, we’re actually in our mind, we know it’s painful, view is so rock solid that it’s his fault and he did it, that I don’t think I should change, I think he should change. Do you see my point?
That’s what’s so fascinating. It’s like he injected all these things into me and he better stop doing that. Then I’ll stop being unhappy. That’s the logic we all use and that’s why the one major reason why we can’t we don’t even consider that I should change. Because we got the wrong view, the wrong interpretation, Buddha says.
We haven’t located precisely the cause of my suffering. Yes, of course it’s wrong that John punched me. No one can argue with that. Buddha does not argue. It’s called immorality.
It’s wrong to punch. But it’s like he’s saying, excuse me, Rabina. It’s bad being punched, but why be miserable as well? Because the punch isn’t technically the main cause of the suffering. The attack, the anger is, the hurt, the fear, the mind in other words.
So when we understand this, that tells us the solution. So that means we have to then understand it. And so we can see broadly that the delusions, this gross level, you know, cause me suffering. Excuse me. They’re disturbing.
And actually, if the world could get in touch with this one and could cut the philosophy and could really own the fact that it’s my pain, my anger, my jealousy. Yes, he did this. Yes, they did that. The world’s a horrible place, but this is mine. If we if the world could see this, who on in their right mind would ever want to be angry again?
Nobody. Just nobody would. So it shows us that we’re not in touch with this simple fact that my delusions caused me suffering. We’re just not in touch with it. We know it’s painful, but the philosophy that he did it to me is overriding all the recognition of my pain.
It’s like a wrong view. This is why Buddha says we have to think so much about this one. Then we can have the courage to say, okay, it’s my anger. Now the second characteristic of all these delusions, these unhappy states of mind, the negative states of mind, the disturbing emotions, and again this is indicated by another term that’s a synonym for all of these, and that is delusion. So I touched on this on Friday again but let’s go more deeply here because this is the crucial one.
Okay. So delusion. So like I said, Friday I think, when we think of delusional, we don’t think of ourself. We think of a person who’s off the wall, know, really, you know, in la la land. Extreme delusions, you know?
But all Buddha is saying, it’s the most interesting point, all he’s saying is, I’m sorry you guys, everyone’s delusional. It’s just a question of degree, that’s all. All This is why Buddhist psychology, in a sense, is so interesting, it’s so clear. Such a simple model actually. As long as there is any delusion at all, one or another, jealousy or anger or pride or attachment and they all go to very subtle levels in our mind because they’re so second natured now from many lives of practicing them.
You know, that as long as they’re there, then to some extent, and this is Buddha’s exact point, to some extent we’re not in touch with reality. That’s why right at the beginning we’re talking about learning to develop wisdom. Learning to get insight into reality because he’s saying we’re not in touch with reality, which is what we don’t think. We don’t think like that. We think we’re down to earth, realistic human beings that go along, do our job, put everything together, keep the family, and we do.
It’s amazing, in my opinion, that we do so many things, given that we have so many delusions. It’s astonishing we can hold ourselves together, quite frankly. We all know that. It’s almost like sometimes we’re on the edge, aren’t we? We almost can’t believe we’re holding it together.
Any minute we’ll just lose the whole thing and go mad, we all know this one. We’ve all been mad at some point, meaning more delusional, that’s all. So it is remarkable that you could say that our virtues are so strong and stable that they’re able, we’re able to handle all the crazy stuff. It’s just fascinating. But Buddha’s saying we’re all delusional.
It’s a question of degree. That’s the point. So let’s look at how the so called negative states of mind have this characteristic of being liars, being delusional, being in la la land, being not in touch with reality because that’s the meaning of delusional. Okay, let’s look. Let’s look at the chocolate cake now.
So back to the second kind of suffering in the first noble truth, there is suffering, the suffering of change. So like I said, when the cake is there, you know, the senses do their job. They see the shape and color. That triggers the computer to wake up and then to access all the various bits of information. Chocolate cake, like chocolate cake, had it before then that all simultaneously, you know, attachment is triggered which is the one that overrides all the others and is the delusion, is the suffering, is why we shove four pieces in, why we get fat and miserable, why we crave it again, all these things.
But because we’re not totally aware of the entire process, because we’re not intricately involved, because we haven’t done the analysis, we vaguely know it’s suffering but we kind of vaguely also know it’s happiness and we can’t really see why it got both together. But then we make these assumptions, well you gotta have happiness, you have suffering, and we’ll go on like this, you know. But it’s not clear enough, Buddha says. So one of the first things about the experience of the chocolate cake is that if we look when we begin to look at the attachment very the mind very deeply, and as Lama Yeshe says, I can tell you about attachment for one whole year. You’ll never begin to understand it until you start building up something so deeply in your own mind through your meditation, through you know, using all this process.
It’s just in other words, it’s quite subtle cause it’s so ancient in our mind, so spontaneous, so second nature, you know. Default mode of the mind. One of the first things, one of the major lies that all the delusions tell us, you know, when the delusions in the mind were delusional or it’s a liar, is that it truly believes. Attachment, you can say the part of the mind, you know, we can call it attachment. We can say I believe, we can say attachment believes, the part of the mind that does that job.
It believes, this is the one we said before, that the chocolate cake’s the cause of happiness. It’s one of its beliefs. The anger, when John punches me, believes that John is the cause of my suffering. Like I said, Buddha says we just got the analysis wrong. That’s the major lie which then causes to have all the other lies too, all the misinterpretations.
Now, the one key characteristic too we can say of this delusional part, one of the ways it’s delusional is in all the delusions is when the attachment is prevalent in the mind, that itself, that attachment itself causes, this is what’s fascinating, causes the cake to appear delicious to me. Again, as our wise Buddhist teachers told us, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s a profound word, profound statement that we kind of think is cute, know. We usually, when a person looks really ugly to us, we say, oh, well God, beauty must be in the eye of the beholder, we say. But really what we think, attachment thinks is an objective view here and that’s the point.
Attachment causes us to believe that cake is objectively beautiful, objectively delicious. It’s like a deliciousness is in the cake kind of vibrating deliciousness at us, kind of just forcing me to eat it. Like, what choice do I have? Look at this delicious cake. We faint with pleasure and we have no choice, right?
Isn’t it? So this is what’s most fascinating and this is where the deeper delusion now, I’m gonna divert here but not divert, just go more deeply. The deep delusion, the one that’s the root delusion, the one that’s the cause even of attachment. And this is the one that’s the cause of the third type of suffering and this is the one that’s the cause even of being born therefore. And this is called simply ignorance.
Ignorance. And it’s the Tibetan word is ma rig pa, unawareness. It’s a primordial unawareness of how everything actually really finally ultimately exists. It’s the biggest lie of all. It’s the lie that pervades all the others but for which there would be no other lies.
If it weren’t, you know, if it’s not there, you couldn’t have it. Like in attachment, without it, you kind of anger, jealousy and all the rest. Without ignorance, you wouldn’t even have attachment. It’s the root, they call it the root delusion. And so it’s the recognition of emptiness, realization of emptiness that’s the antidote to the ignorance.
It cuts the root, cuts the root of ignorance. When you’ve done that and have perfected that realization, you’re out of saṃsāra. You’ve achieved nirvana. You’ve achieved your liberation. You’ve perfected the wisdom wing.
This is the root delusion and it permeates all the other delusions. And its function in this whole little scenario, the function of the ignorance is to is to is to cause is to cause the the cake to appear, in this case, delicious, as they would say, from its own side. Like I’m saying before, it appear the deliciousness appears to be in the cake itself as if as if deliciousness were, you know, what your mother put in the recipe along with the chocolate and the sugar. A spoonful of deliciousness, you know? It’s like we really do it’s like almost puzzling to say, but it looks delicious.
We what do you mean it is delicious, we say? What are talking about, you know? But this is what so interesting. This is the point where the Buddha will say we have to start discussing more deeply and arguing and analyzing and arguing with ego’s dumb views. We have to see if it were truly delicious, inherently from its own side delicious, we say, there’s that delicious chocolate cake.
In other words, even before we go on now, we don’t see that our mind plays any part in this. We’re not thinking that beauty is in the eye of our beholder at all, do we? We don’t think our eyes are making it up, do we? Or another way we say it, you got your rose colored spectacles on. That’s another profound Buddhist statement.
Meaning, right, when attachment’s in the mind, you’ve got your rose colored spectacles, then whatever you see through them will look just gorgeous. So this is the thing, the consequence of this is the consequence of this basic view of attachment, the consequence is we will then believe it’s the cause of my happiness, we then run after desperate to get it because it is the cause of my happiness. That’s why we frantically wanna put one piece and then two pieces and then three pieces in the mouth, you know, because any minute now I’m gonna get happiness. Oh, maybe next mouthful, next mouthful, next mouthful, you know? Even though your stomach’s shouting, Rubina, I’m full.
Your little mind is still dissatisfied. You haven’t got happiness yet. That’s why even when we’re stuffed, just out of mindlessness, we’re shoving it in just in case and it’s like just in case the happiness will come, kind of missed it, you know? But the only and again, we see the only reason we stop eating is because we would vomit if we carried on. So in other words, we don’t stop eating satisfaction.
And this is the tragedy about attachment. It can’t bring satisfaction but we totally believe that attachment, that excitement, that kind of energy, that seeing it as gorgeous, a it’s like prelude to happiness. So when we get the object this is what attachment thinks. When I get the object, I’ll get happiness. That the well, that’s the absolute belief of attachment.
That the that when I get the object, I’ll get happiness. When I get the object, I’ll get happiness. That’s why we keep eating it. Then we get stuffed and then we kind of calm down and we go to the toilet, get hungry again and off we go again. And Buddha says we’ve been doing this process for countless lives.
Bashing our heads against brick walls, never realizing, duh, maybe I better change my methods, you know? It’s like if someone gives you a route to get somewhere and you and you realize it’s the wrong route and you don’t get there, you keep trying. Maybe I made a mistake. I’ll I’ll try it again, you know. We’ve doing it for eons, he says.
Keep taking the wrong route. We’re heading south instead of north, we’ll never get to happiness. Because we’re junkies, basically. Another Another way of saying what a hatchet is is a junkie mode. And again, not joking.
It’s like saying we’re all junkies. It’s just a question of degree. So like, you know, in our world, you know, we call people who are junkies addicts, you know, the ones who are into heroin, you know, the object. We define it by the object, don’t we? If you’re attached to heroin, you’ve got you’ve got problems.
And indeed, it’s true because there’s pretty fierce object. It’s obvious. Alcohol’s a pretty fierce object. What the Buddha’s saying is we have to concentrate on the thing itself, on the attachment itself. It happens to be unfortunate if in our life our attachment gets, you know, projected onto something like heroin or alcohol.
We are in extra trouble, it’s true. The other objects aren’t so, you know, they’re not so malignant. It’s true. But the Buddhist view is the problem yes, the problem is that, of course, it’s a heavy object, it can be quite painful, but the real problem is the attachment, is the addiction. Addiction is just a stronger word in Buddhism for attachment.
So we’re all addicts, we’re all junkies, it’s a question of degree. And we can see the variations of it in our life. I mean, at our obsession with food, know, and all the variations of the suffering. The bulimia, the anorexia, anorexia, bottomless pit in there, you know. And this is where it’s so interesting.
You can see it, you know, just talking, like one of my sisters is bulimic and anorexic. I mean, they’re kind of linked, aren’t they? You know, the variations depending on the person. And the more she look into her own mind, the more one can analyze it oneself and me, you know, it too. We can see that all the delusions when they’re very strong, it’s just, you know, shoving the cake in and you turn up, you know, you turn it, you know, you become three hundred pounds weight or I don’t know.
I’m never used to kilos, actually. I lived in England and America for too long and I never got into kilos. Can’t work out the kilos. Never mind. Habit.
Habit roughly, okay. Good to me. So you know, it’s like you are, it’s the same kind of, it’s the same one, it’s the bottomless pit. You know, looking at the thing and gonna make me happy but there are variations of it and this is why the anorexic one, the bulimic one is usually linked to self hate. But this is what is so fascinating about all these delusions which we really have to look at which is Buddha’s point is that attachment is a sentient beings’ source of self loathing.
Attachment is a sentient beings’ source of low self esteem. Attachment is the source of our pain and suffering. Attachment is all the delusions are sentient beings’ source of low self esteem. So we can only see it when it’s extreme. Then we say that person’s got a problem, send them to a psychiatrist, you know?
But the rest of us are normal. But Buddhism says we’ve these variations of low self esteem, self loathing. It’s the very nature delusions that I’m, as my mother would always point out to me, Bob’s, you’re your own worst enemy, she’d say. We all are. Join the human race.
And it’s the nature of delusions. So in other words, Lama Yeshe would call ego, because ego is a very loosely used term and it’s in general we can use it here to refer to being caught up in all these different neuroses. So ego, we tend to think of it as like big and strong. But ego, Lama Yeshe calls it the self pity me. It’s rather cruel but the more we get in touch with our attachment, our anger, our fears, our jealousy, you know, our junky mode, whatever, the variations of all these, we will see the voice behind all is poor me.
It’s poor me, unhappy me, badly badly done by me. There are variations of it. It can be even arrogant. Arrogance, actually, even look at arrogance, which looks like so cruel and heavy because it does harm others as well as me, but it’s basically about me. Arrogance is like this overblown sense of self, but it’s neurotically dependent upon others seeing me and if they don’t, pity help them and it’s hugely competitive and it will hurt others.
But it’s like a little girl in there, see me, please see me, I beg you, see me, and is freaking out if others are seen instead. It goes all based down to poor self. It comes down to poor self pity me, poor me. The I, the narrow, miserable, unhappy, neurotic, bottomless pit of I, miniature, self centered I is the root, is the voice of all the delusions just by their nature. It’s just their nature.
Now I think we can see this. This is not meant to be judgmental or heavy or moralistic, you know, we can see it. You know, you know, like to say, Amy and I are having a nice chat, being friendly to each other, you know? Meaning, in Buddhist terms, that our virtues are more prevalent, like love and kindness and generosity, and we don’t think, oh, we’re being loving and kind and generous, we just think we’re being normal. But actually, when we’re being friendly to each other, it’s she’s listening to me and I’m listening to her, you can say that in our minds, the virtues are more prevalent.
Love means, may Amy be happy. It’s a delight that she’s happy, you know, a natural kind of not big lovey dovey California huggy feely, you know, just pleasant easygoing, delighting in someone else. Now, if you look at that, it’s very interesting. You look at that, the the two characteristics of the delusions are disturbing and deluded. Well, we can see here that the the characteristics of the virtues is the opposite.
Not deluded. I mean, not not not not disturbing. We’re we’re feeling content, spacious, happy, relaxed, and not deluded. Meaning, to some extent, these virtues are in touch with reality and reality in a broader sense in Buddhist terms is that everything’s interdependent. Well, when she and I are just chatting to each other friendly, it’s almost like you can say there’s we there, isn’t there?
We’re so together comfortably, it’s easygoing and friendly and it’s like a we, there’s interdependence, you know? But when she starts arguing and I start arguing and she gets angry and I get upset, suddenly it’s two vivid separate people, isn’t it? She’s all freaking out, I I I I, Rubina, this means that. I’m thinking Amy this, Amy that, she, she, I I, it’s poor me. Suddenly ego now takes over and there’s no sense of interdependence at all.
It’s too vivid sense of separate people, isn’t it? That’s the function of delusions. While we have this separate sense of self and when the delusions are very strong, you look at the main suffering. This isolated sense of a separate me. No one loves me.
It’s not fair. Poor me, all alone. Whether it’s depression, they’ve all got their own voices, depression is self loathing, just aversion for me, I’m the worst enemy, you know? Anger, you know, anger is all these hideous people out there against poor me. Pride is I’m so special, all those people out there, you know.
Attachment is all those gorgeous people, oh, I want them so badly, oh, I’m so oh, they’re so delicious, I must have it. There’s always a it’s always the reference point is poor me, lonely me, isolated me, bereft me, lonely me, miserable me. Miserable me. That’s the hideous irony of ego. It’s poor me, miniature, pinhead, big sense of me.
But like a vulture, like a vampire, bottomless pit me that blames all the ugly things and craves like a a vampire all the delicious things. Why would you crave something? It’s because you feel you lack something for God’s sake. Why are we a bottomless pit? Because we think we aren’t anything.
That’s the point. That’s the tragedy of ego. That’s why Buddhism, you know, if we hear Buddhism wrongly, it sounds cruel and heavy, you know? But actually when we hear it properly, it’s just so liberating because it’s locating the causes of my suffering and they happen to be in here. But because we’re so dualistic because we’re so into the blame mode, we hear it as guilt, you know?
Oh, I’m so bad. This is another way of beating ourselves up. So it actually takes a lot of maturity and intelligence and self respect to hear that your delusions cause you suffering. To be brave enough to own it, you know, without guilt and neurosis. It’s just it’s liberating because we’ve finally located the problem.
Now we can fix it. So all the delusions are, they’re completely disturbing, they’re miserable, they’re suffering and they’re liars. They lead us up garden paths. Attachment believes the chocolate cake will make make me happy which is why I shove it in. It causes the cake to look delicious.
The vibrating deliciousness at me just begging me to eat it. It’s the innocent victim. What can I do? Look, there’s the cake. What can I do?
Nothing to do with me. We never think for one second that anything is coming from my mind, that I’m just this innocent victim of this big delicious chocolate cake, demanding, you know, it’s its fault, you know. So we just have to shove it in, you know. So it’s a suffering of change simply because we all know it but we don’t get it, that if you keep eating it, attachment thinks as you eat it, you’re gonna get happy, isn’t it? Maybe one more mouthful, I’ll get happy.
You know, maybe the next one I’ll get happy. I’ll get satisfied. Next one. Next one. But all we know is we have to stop.
Why? Because now it’s become disgusting. If cake were in fact the cause of happiness, as we eat it, we get more happy. I mean, please, all be bulimics. Best.
Eat it and eat it. My sister Janet said she couldn’t I mean, when she’d tell me what she would eat, it was she was little. She’s so small, you know. It was inconceivable to imagine how much she could fit into her poor little stomach. So if if cakes and, all the things that she ate were the cause of happiness, she would have been in a total state of bliss every time she stuffed herself.
And we should all stuff ourselves endlessly because if it’s the cause of happiness, then we all we all want happiness and it’s valid to have happiness. But what what comes instead? Variations of incredible suffering. Why? Because the cake turns from looking like a delicious object to look like a disgusting object now.
And then, of course, now there’s a version in the mind that changes from attachment to aversion, the object changes from delicious to ugly and now we believe the cake is ugly, isn’t it? It’s now disgusting because it looks ugly, it’s vibrating ugliness at us and demanding we push it away, you know? And we believe in each one as if they’re both the truth. Fantasy made up by the mind. It’s neither delicious nor ugly.
It’s just nonsense, you know, at this ultimate way we’re seeing it. The worst suffering of all of why Buddha says it’s all suffering is because, you know, we are believing that satisfaction will come at the end. That’s the result of eating chocolate cake. But what comes instead? As my again, my secret Buddha’s mommy told me, and again, she’d say, Bob’s, the more you get, the more you want.
That’s so profound, that statement. We think the more I get, the more satisfied I’ll get. No. The more you get, the more you want. We all know it, but we don’t get the the full import of it.
We all know these things, but we just don’t it hasn’t we haven’t got realization of it because we’ve got all the other wrong views clouding our mind, you know. We can all see it. We all talk about the rich people who keep getting wanting to get richer, and the more you get, the more you want. The more you get, the more you want. That’s the worst suffering of all of attachment.
As the Buddha says, we’ve been doing this for countless lives. Total junkie mode. Pursuing the outside object. Frantically, desperately trying to get happy. Knowing we didn’t get happy, but keep thinking maybe it’s my mistake.
You know, you have the relationship. I mean, the cake is a simple example of the gross attachment. Well, the person is the is a huge example of of the, you know, the way attachment works. Look how divine he to you when you’ve fallen in love. I mean, just the embodiment of perfection down to his toenails, enough to make you faint, you know.
So gorgeous, isn’t it? And of course, we don’t think that his appearing so gorgeous has anything to do with my mind. This is what’s so stunning. We can’t see the part we play. This is why they say, Buddha would say, our mind makes it up.
It sounds nonsense when we say that, but this is really the point. And this is why when you realize emptiness, Lama Tsongkhapa said, when you realize the emptiness of the person, the cake, when you’ve realized the true nature of the cake, when you’ve stripped away, you know, as he would say, when you’ve the delusions decorate on top of what is already there. Layers upon layers upon layers of qualities or characteristics that aren’t there. So when we stripped away those layers by deconstructing all the delusions in our mind, then we eventually see nakedly the way the cake exists. We realize the emptiness of the cake and we realize the nature of the cake.
Now as he says, when you realize this, he says it’s as if there is no cake. He says as if it’s he says as if there’s no cake. It’s as if but he says, there is a cake. But what does exist is so subtle, it’s as if it’s an illusion. That’s a really interesting way to say it.
We mightn’t get it, but it’s a very tasty way to hear, you know. It’s he says, when you realize the emptiness of the cake, which means when you realize the reality of the cake, what really does exist, it’s as if there’s no cake, there is a cake. But it’s so subtle, it’s as if it’s an illusion. And all the delusions have this particular job of projecting something onto what isn’t there, you know, something onto what’s there. So for example, you know, they all have their own characteristic.
As we said, John, when he punches me, he’s the enemy. He’s ugly. He’s awful. So a version in my mind which is prevalent then, here comes Venerable Gloria with our documents. Thank you, Venerable Gloria.
Oh, it’s lunchtime. Oh, no. It’s not yet. So, you know, when you’ve got a version in your mind for the John who punches you in the nose, we all know that he looks ugly. He looks horrible, he looks revolting.
You hate him, want to kill him, looks so disgusting, you know? So anger projects ugliness. It’s a projection. It decorates on top of John a layer called ugliness. So his nose looks ugly, his ears look ugly.
We all know this. It’s fascinating how it works. Actually, quite fascinating. We all and we of course then and then we of course we believe he’s ugly, don’t we? Someone says John’s nice, oh god, they’re stupid as well, aren’t they?
I can see they can’t see the real person that I can see, you know? Now when John’s when I have attachment for John, he appears like, you know, God incarnate, as I said, like your makes you faint with bliss, you know, the thought of him, even his toenails. His smell of his pillow is so divine he can’t believe it, right? Isn’t it? It’s totally fascinating.
So that means that attachment’s prevalent in my mind and the attachment causes him to look beautiful. So it’s decorating on top of him qualities. I mean, it’s exaggerating qualities. Exaggerating qualities. That’s the point.
So the aim of when you give up attachment isn’t you don’t see him as beautiful anymore. You’d see him as beautiful in a different way, not the distorted way attachment sees it, you know, because attachment is is just I-based, and it’s like, you know, causes you to be a vampire. Because also then attachment believe when he looks beautiful, then believe he’s going to cause you happiness, that’s why you want to, you know, ingest him. Cake doesn’t mind if you shove it in, people do, you know. So what’s interesting, so aversion projects ugliness onto him.
Attachment projects beauty onto him. But what’s interesting, ignorance projects John ness onto him. It’s more subtle. It’s the more pervasive one. This is of course the hardest one to see and we’ll discuss this one.
And so they all work together, you know. The attachment is completely mixed with the ignorance. The ignorance gives the energy of cake existing out there from its own side, you know. The attachment functions as the deliciousness. The aversion functions to make it look ugly.
And then, and this is the thing, as Lama Zopa says, bad enough that we see the cake as delicious from its own side. Bad enough, we see John existing as ugly from his own side. The killer is, and I’m paraphrasing him, the killer is we believe it is true. That’s what keeps us locked into saṃsāra. And that as Rinpoche says, the profound practice we have to do, what Pabongkha Rinpoche says too, is just to say to ourself, maybe John doesn’t exist in the way he appears to me.
Even you don’t know quite what it means. But just to shake this profound view that grips you completely. That is like mind boggling. It’s like shaking the whole of your saṃsāra. Just to say, maybe he doesn’t exist in the way he appears to me.
Not sure what it means even. Doesn’t matter. It’s incredible. It’s having a millimeter of a doubt, know? In other words, you know, when you’ve got a strong emotion, this is the point about something, and you really are absolutely caught up in it and you believe it and no one can change your position.
Look at that, we all know it’s impossible when two people are arguing, know, like we can get the, forget the Israelis and Palestinians level of that one, just our ordinary life, you know. I am right and he is wrong. But if you allow one fraction of a millimeter of space to come in there, that’s beginning of sanity, isn’t it? It’s the beginning of complete happiness and sanity and agreement. But as long as you can’t have that tiny part that maybe it doesn’t exist as it appears, maybe I’m, you know, maybe it’s gonna maybe it exists in another way.
Maybe it’s not true what I’m seeing. Just that’s like a miracle. Just a thought. Not quite sure how, but just to allow yourself that space that’s the crack that will cause the whole edifice to collapse, you know. As long as you can’t believe that, as long as you believe firmly in what you’re seeing is true, nothing will change.
Only wars go on. Only nightmares. Only suffering. Look at the world, you know. It’s like a person who refuses to change their position on something.
Like, you know, you look at the really classic example of the extreme racist or the extreme extremist or whatever. You’re fixed in your view. You are right. Meaning, you’re believing in whatever appears to you as the truth. There’s no space, no space.
So the causes of our suffering and the causes of our happiness obviously exist within our in our mind. What our mind means, not some secret little kind of pool of something we have to sort of locate in here. It’s just simply in the way we see things. Cognitive, you know. Our mind means how we think, that’s all.
How we think and how we see things and how we feel. So let’s look at how conceptual and emotional are completely linked. In our ordinary world and all our views of the mind, they’re completely separate except there’s some understanding there which is marvelous in this cognitive therapy idea which is just excellent. It’s completely on the right track in my opinion. It’s amazing.
Myself and my life, anger was one of my main emotions as we call it. You know, we call it emotion because you can see, I can see in my family that anger expressed itself in this really volatile way. Usually that’s what we mean by anger, when it’s volatile, when it comes out the mouth, when it’s shaking and shouting. But we can have another person who will say, oh, I’m not angry. And it’s true, we’re not angry in the sense we mean, but internally, we know they’ve got this anger.
We call it, you know, passive aggression or something. There’s one variation. I like that. Now as a kid, I was the big volatile one so I stood out as the angry one and in our family of seven kids, was always the angry one and I was. But I knew the passive aggressives.
I could see them. I knew they were angry inside but they got away with it and used to infuriate me, you know, because I knew I got all the blame because I was big and loud but they were kind of quiet about it. I could tell, you know, but it’s interesting this. And this is in a way an advantage because I could see that I was angry, I couldn’t mistake it. But another one of my sisters say she couldn’t see because it was not it’s not expressed.
So the Buddha’s, what he’s saying is the state of mind, the the the bare bones of anger is the state of mind called aversion. Aversion. We don’t even use that word. I’m so averse, we’d say. We don’t talk like that, it’s so rather silly.
But it’s the state of mind, it’s a very good word, aversion, and it’s the direct opposite of attachment. Attachment is the one that exaggerates the deliciousness and really is attracted to it and goes like a magnet towards it and wants it. And aversion is a state of mind that finds it ugly and wants to push it away. And then there are variations of that, punching, killing, what all the rest, do you understand? The variations of that.
But basic state of mind, you know, that anger is the expression of which is just, you know, is the aversion. And that absolutely we all have. Look. If you look in your day, there has to be lots of things that irritate you. We okay.
We call it this is an interesting point. We say, yes, we’re frustrated, irritated, annoyed. They’re all just variations of aversion. That’s all. They’re just variations of anger.
That’s all. Impatient, we say. Frustrated, annoyed. They’re all variations of the state of mind called aversion which is the opposite to attachment. So we’ve all got it.
Just that it mightn’t be volatile, that’s all. But of course, because in our culture we’re not brought up to be vividly aware of our minds and our feelings, our emotions, then we might not even recognize it which is why commonly people would say, well, I’m not angry, you know. So okay, what Buddha’s saying, this model of the mind, extremely interesting in how he understands it and it’s quite amazing because it gives us the space to be able to change this understanding that he has. Is that at the bare bones of these very strong emotions, it’s all thought. The bones, the structure of it, the basis, the foundation, the root, the structure, the infrastructure, it’s a conceptual construction.
In other words, anger is just a bunch of thoughts, but because, this is why, because we’ve had it for life after life and have built it up so strongly, it’s so spontaneous now, it happens like in an instant, but because it’s so strong in the mind, it now has the emotional component plus the physical. So the common experience we have in the world is that these emotions are physical. And even till we talk about the, you know, the emotions are in the body, we talk, we say like this. So the Buddhist would say that’s not correct, but it’s not wrong to say there’s an intimate relationship between the body and mind. In fact, in tantra, you know, as we discussed with the dying process, the whole way of talking in this esoteric teaching is very sophisticated, you know, way of describing the physiology and the mind, the relationship between the two.
And the way they talk is that, you know, we have all these subtle channels and the wind energies course through these channels and the mind, all the delusions are intimately linked to these various wind energies, and so they say the mind rides on the winds. So when the winds are disturbed, so when the mind is agitated, because the mind, it’s the mind that comes first, when the mind is agitated, it affects the wind like a storm occurs in your body, which is why you feel it at a physical level. You understand? You feel it as a physical level because the winds are now really disturbed, like a big storm happening inside you, but it’s the mind that stirred it up. The anger itself, and this is what’s fascinating the way they describe in tantra, the deluded minds pollute the winds, they pollute the winds.
So when we have extreme anxiety, extreme anxiety, they talk in Tibet and they call it lung, which is the word for wind. The wind energies are really disturbed. But it’s activated by the attachment mind, is the anxious one that’s going around and this and maybe this and not this, all this and the fantasies. It’s like a very disturbed state of mind pollutes the wind energies which causes in all the anxiety and the stress and the heartache and having to have your drugs to calm you down. The wind, the agitation of the delusion of aversion disturbs the winds to make it like a big huge storm.
It’s impossible to calm your mind down. Your heart’s beating, the blood’s racing, and then the words just tumble out, the screaming happens. Of course it’s physical, but that’s the anger isn’t the physical. The physical is the symptom of the aversion which is in the mind. It’s thoughts, it’s thoughts, it’s thoughts.
But those thoughts are so We’re so trained in those thoughts from countless lives that it just triggers this powerful kind of interdependent relationship of body, mind, emotions, all just screaming and shouting, yelling, you know? So you look at now, okay, look at attachment energy when it comes to sexual. It’s totally fascinating, this physiologically how it happens. Attachment is concepts and these concepts have the character, as we’re saying, they exaggerate the beauty. They say he’s so divine, it’s so gorgeous, it’s so fantastic, it’s so beautiful, it’s just adorable, I just love it and I can’t wait to have it.
It’s all those types of thoughts built up to a huge degree, right? So that pollutes the wind energies that, you know, causes the wind energies to go in a very nice configuration that brings a very pleasurable feeling in the body. Which is how come you have such pleasure? Attachment triggers that pleasure. That’s why it seems so depressing to have to give up attachment because we know it is a when you when you get the object when you have that attachment, all the excitement, the story, the build up, the fantasy, the wonderful excitement, it’s all thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, build up, build up, thoughts.
Elaborate conceptual story, right? So then it triggers all the wind energies. This is how they describe Entantras, most interesting. It affects all the wind energies which then course through the body that make a very nice feeling. So of course we think attachments