Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 90-minute introductory talk, Ven Robina Courtin opens with a personal story, then demystifies Buddhism as applied psychology. She walks listeners through the nature of mind—the entire spectrum of inner experience, not the brain—and how it transforms through practice. She contrasts Buddhist and Western views of happiness: we cannot find it “out there”; we cultivate it by changing our own minds. Her core teaching is karma: negative actions rooted in anger and attachment cause suffering, while developing positive qualities brings happiness and shapes future lives. Consciousness continues after death, she explains, determined by our past actions. She emphasizes that wisdom (inner work) and compassion (helping others) must grow together, illustrated by the Dalai Lama’s kindness despite decades of Tibetan suffering. A closing Q&A addresses cloning and euthanasia.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 2002 01 17 PT.mp3
UUID: 57838bff-7f37-4d95-8caf-17fc76a02db6
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Public Talks (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2002-01-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 89.8 minutes
Words: ~10,994
I need one. Happy to be here. Thank you very much. Actually, when I was nineteen and I was fell in love with a married man, I ran away to Adelaide from the what? I gotta put a mic on.
I’ll put it go to where? Okay. I think I wanna sing a little prayer to start, and that’s okay. You don’t have to feel holy or anything.
It’s just it’s a little prayer. It’s really just expressing an optimistic motivation for doing this activity of listening to these ideas, these ideas in Buddha about reality, about the mind, about how we function, about how to be happy, and not just like how to get happy and so on and so on. Well, what a saying actually that the term this mind of ours, we’ve all got, possessing within this mind of ours unbelievable potential. So when we think of normally in our culture, we think of first, we think of the mind. We think of our brain.
We think of the intellectual process. But Buddhism talks about it in quite a different way. But and secondly, we think of potential, we used to think of our potential to be musicians or, you know, long distance runners or whatever. You know? But what Buddha is talking about is this natural potential.
He calls it something that’s absolutely natural within us. And and that is to say what we simply would call our qualities, you know, or something kind of esoteric, something mystical. And this is very much what Buddha’s spiritual practices. As soon as we hear the word spiritual or religious, we tend to think of something separate from our ordinary life, don’t we? You know?
So we very rarely think of something completely to do with our life. Life is life and then spiritual sort of over there. You know? The Buddhist approach is that within this mind of ours, which is a word that Buddhism uses to refer to the entire spectrum of our inner experiences, not just the brain. You know?
Within this mind of ours, it possesses enormous potential. And as another as a Buddhist, one another says, the workshop is in the mind. So you can very much say that a person who’s a Buddhist, a a spiritual practitioner, a Buddhist, is a person who’s working on their mind, developing this extraordinary potential. And the the potential of the good qualities that we’re talking about actually go to to degrees way way more, far more radical than we would ever imagine in our own culture. And this potential we have the potential to develop these extraordinary qualities, plus, which means, implies, the potential to be eliminated eventually, which is what Buddha is saying, not just decrease slightly, but eliminate completely the so called bad qualities.
You know? And why you wanna do this is something quite simple, quite practical. It’s not because it’s it’s somebody said you should, which is how we tend to think about religion. You know? We should do this because God or Buddha said so.
You know? Or start thinking I should do this because mommy said so. The Buddhist approach is the reason to do something is because either it develops your qualities or it then gets others. There’s only really two reasons. So the reason to to eliminate the, you know, the unhappy parts of our mind is because they are what cause us suffering and cause us to harm others.
And the reason to develop the so called positive parts of this is because that’s what brings us happiness, and that’s what helps us benefit others. It’s so fundamental. So, of course, normally speaking, don’t we? We think, you know, you know, we we we know we want to be happy. We know we don’t want to suffer.
But the usual view we have is this is like schizophrenic, one lama said. You know, the polite word in Buddhism is dualistic. But this one lama said, this schizophrenic view we have, a deeply instinctive in our being, is that you have to look for happiness. It’s like a needle in a haystack out there that you gotta search for. Right?
And happiness is is is is the result of getting something. And so we need to accumulate the causes of it to get it in order to get happy. And that’s all equally we need to avoid the opposite things in order to avoid suffering. On the Buddhist approach, you know, we know all these words and such. I mean, almost cliches for us.
The Buddhist approach is it’s about changing our own mind that we find happiness and we avoid suffering by changing our own mind. Almost you can say, just from one point of view, of the work we need to do in our mind, you can almost say that the outside world isn’t our business. There’s this analogy in Buddhism that the bird has two wings. One is the wisdom wing and one is the compassion wing. So the compassion wing is all indeed, all the work you do in relation to others.
And that, if you like, is the supreme expression, certainly in Buddhist terms. The supreme expression of a of a developed person is is is this effortless ability to do whatever is useful and wisdom, which is the work we do in our own mind. And so the like I said, the reason the only reason we know we wanna be happy because what Buddha is saying is by developing this wing brings us our happiness. But on the basis of this, by developing this wing, we can we can help others. We can make them happy.
So we need the both wings. You know? But, of course, if we haven’t done the inner work, then we can’t do very much, not even for a dog. Know? We’re not so useful.
So it’s reasonable that we do wanna be useful to others, and there’s something reasonable and logical because this is an independent we’re highly interdependent. We can see this as the the nature of how things are. And the world certainly needs it. I mean, look at the world. We need to work on ourself with our own mind together.
So from the point of view of the compassion, when you can say, you are not your business. Everyone else is your business. And then from the point of view of the wisdom, you can say no one else is your business. You are your business. So you see the way we are now, you know, without without without various unhappy states of mind and the way we project up to the outside world and kinda go searching for happiness out there and blaming and and pointing fingers and all the time analyzing, you know, dissecting everything out there, never looking at this one.
Then it’s like we’re we’re making everything our business now where exactly it’s not. You know? So if we’re really doing this first job, this first wing, this developing of our own qualities, We need to develop the skill to know what on earth they’re thinking and feeling. I mean, this sounds so simple. It’s not a joke.
But, actually, we can see, isn’t it, that in our culture, we’re not really educated in that way. It’s not part of that. It’s not part of our mainstream culture. Culture. It’s not part of our mainstream education to teach us about our thoughts and feelings and emotions and how we and, crucially, how we can change them.
I mean, my mother knew when I was a little girl that I couldn’t walk, so she showed me the methods of how to learn. You know, she taught me. She she knew I couldn’t play the piano. She had skills, so she taught me. I couldn’t write.
I couldn’t read. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t do that. So she taught me. She had skills.
We’re very sophisticated in our skills in the west of how to learn things. But she didn’t have skills to teach me how to be less angry or less jealous or less depressed or more kind or more compassionate or more generous. We tend don’t we? We tend to concretize this personality that we kinda came out of the womb with. We tend throughout our life to have the view, well, you know, I didn’t ask to get born.
I got flunked here by somebody. You know? And we tend also, the worst part of all, really, because of the wolf approach, is we tend to assume, well, this is just who I am. What can I do? I mean, it’s the most appalling idea if you think about it.
I mean, if my mother thought that and she saw me, a little bundle of nothing, I’d still be a bundle of uselessness right now, you know, to walk rough, you know, read talk or anything else. Oh my god. What a hopeless daughter I’ve got. She can’t walk. No.
No. She saw she saw it being couldn’t So this is just who she is, try and hone it, try and harness it, you know, make something, get a reasonable package out of it, but no real techniques. Popping rude, you know, when mom my mom did the world and the universe, you know, science and who knows what. I remember reading in Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time, just a little bit I’ve read. And he said and this is a really crucial point for Buddhism.
We he said, we’ve almost learned the mind of god. But he said, it hasn’t taught us the first thing about human behavior. And this is this is the point. The Buddha saying is absolutely absolutely missing in our scientific approaches, in our psychological approaches, you know, action, and even clearly missing in our religious approaches. We tend to mystify religion and put it way up there somewhere.
You know? Because it is not about life, if it’s not about the human mind, if it’s not about how we are and how we think and feel, then what on earth is spiritual practice all about? You know? I mean, it’s so easy even with Buddhism and all these religious things. It’s fourteenth century clothes and bald heads and everything, you know, prostrations and holy things.
It’s very easy to get caught up and think that’s what spiritual is. You know? But, actually, when you really strip Buddhism down, it is not a joke. It’s not some kind of cute cliche. It’s just sort of a marketing line to tell you that it’s psychological.
It really isn’t. You know? I mean, every word you’re hear tonight, who you’ve heard so far, is coming straight from texts two thousand years ago. Okay. Spoken of an Australian accent and packages it in a western way, but it’s complete it’s it’s it’s Buddha’s view Buddha’s view of reality.
So this the mind of ours, what is it? I mean, if if we possess this amazing potential, Buddha says, and if and if the workshop is in the mind, then we ought to know very precisely, ultimately, what the mind is and what it’s not. And this is even we can see in our Western culture this huge discussions about this. What are the know, what what is it? What isn’t it?
Where does it come from? All the rest. And, also, these are all the questions we ask ourselves. We all have these questions. Who am I?
Where do I come from? What is the why is the world away? Is why suffering? Why is there suffering? And why this?
Why that? You know? Used generally speaking, Mind is used synonymously with the word consciousness. So you can immediately can see it’s got a different kind of dimension, different flavor. So first of all, crucial point, mind consciousness is not physical.
There’s not one atom of our mind that is physical. There are words that refer to the entire spectrum, you could say, about inner experiences, thoughts, intellect, you know, feelings, emotions, unconscious, subconscious, soul, spirit, you name it. That’s all the mind. That’s the mind. That’s where the workshop is.
That’s where the potential is. It’s not physical, Buddha says. It’s clear that it has a very intimate relationship with this brain and nervous system. It’s very obvious. There’s no contradiction there.
But according to Buddhism, mind, meaning your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your unconscious, your subconscious, none of this is physical. You know? You can see you can relate it to parts of the brain, but it doesn’t mean it is the brain. Okay. If we’re a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, we would all agree there is something that’s not physical, and that’s called the soul.
So Buddhism doesn’t talk about some the nonphysicality of us as being something uniquely holy. Anger is your mind, but it’s certainly not holy. So not just the holy part of you. It’s nonphysical in Buddhist terms. And other than than than the the the material’s view is the mind is only the brain, and then it’s also only the intellect.
You know? The Buddhism doesn’t have that UI. That’s too that’s too narrow. The way that we’re And we’re way we’re about mother and father, thank you very kindly, mother and father, provide us with the body. Egg and sperm come together.
That provides us with like the beginning that’s the beginning of our body. But the mind of Robina, the qualities, the feelings, the emotions, you know, the Hitler-ness of Hitler, the Mother Teresa-ness of Mother Teresa, whoever. That is their mind, their consciousness, their personality, their propensities, their tendencies, and then the actions of their body and speech that they do on the basis of those tendencies. All of that does not come from the parents, which is a bit of depressing in the West, and we don’t have to stop you know, it differs in its actual explanation. The Buddhist approach and this, of course, is where these ideas of karma and reincarnation come in.
And these are just not some hippie inventions. They are actually Buddha’s philosophical presentation of reality. Not hippy-dippy reality. You know? So, okay, basically, how when we’re what you know, to who made Ravina?
Well, Buddha’s saying, Robina made Robina. So what that means is that at the time of conception, it’s highly complex, the whole process. I’m just giving you the principles here. And the the real point is to give you implications of these principles. This is the point.
At the time when the egg and sperm came together and assuming you were, you know, you were conceived in the old fashioned way in your mother’s womb, not in a petri dish or something, but this is this explanation in Buddhism has to do with the old fashioned way of being conceived. When the egg and sperm came together, what caused them to stay together, you know, as opposed to a soul from God. You’re not needing the egg sperm, you know, but at the the entry of a subtle level of this very consciousness that we now call. Right? Well, we can see it’s it’s a dynamic continuity of moments, isn’t it?
If I trace my mind, my conscious moments back from this moment, I end up inexorably at the time of conception, wouldn’t I? We know there’s not one single moment missing. So it’s like this moment comes from a previous, which comes from a previous, which comes from a previous. You keep following following it back. You end up full of conception.
Well, then at a moment of conception when the consciousness went into the egg and sperm, Buddhism would say you can you can trace back the consciousness to a moment before that. Because the consciousness isn’t created by god or Buddha. Doesn’t come from mom and dad. Isn’t physical. And we all know nothing can come from nothing.
It just doesn’t kinda pop up. It came from previous moment itself. So Buddhism talks about mind or consciousness being this one approach to it as this kind of dynamic kind of river of mental moments, you know, that was existing before your body. Because this of course, this is the Buddhist approach that the body isn’t the mind. The body isn’t the brain.
And what caused this body to be a live body, what caused the egg and sperm to even begin to develop into a fetus, was the entry of this consciousness that we call. So, you know, began from that moment. This package we know is. And this package we know as will end at that time what we call death, when the body turns into the yellowy brown, you know, and the consciousness will continue the next moment. Continue.
Continue. Okay. So the creative energy, if you like, that determines the quality of that consciousness, the type of life it experiences, what it does, what it thinks, what it feels, even what happens to it, this is called karma. And this is I mean, Buddhism doesn’t use this term, creation. Right?
Not in the sort of way we think about it in a religious sense. Buddhism I’m just using it loosely in the sense of karma, if you like, is Buddha’s creative principle. It’s Buddha’s explanation of how come me, how come this, that, anything else. There’s no other creative principle. There’s no superior being who creates things.
There are superior beings. I mean, the term in Sanskrit is ariya being, know, and that’s a Buddha. And even less, it’s being on the way to becoming a Buddha. So this is really just something to name for the development of our amazing potential. We can all become a Buddha.
Buddhism says. So the one of the jobs, if you like, of a Buddha is not to create sentient beings. It’s So the the implication of this, and I’ll talk more about karma, the real the real implication of this one is that I created me. I in other words, I am the fruit of what I have done. karma. Do this, you get that.
If you do this, this comes. Know? That’s just the seed. If you try that’s if you get that fruit. It’s not it’s not a question of punishment and karma is indeed a process of cause and effect.
If you do this, If this, comes. You But just the seed. If you try that seed, you get that fruit. It’s not it’s not a question of punishment and reward. The seed had its own nature.
It brings its own fruit. Whereas, you know, as all our mothers talk about, our secret Buddhist mothers, they said, virtue has its own rewards. That’s exactly the principle of karma. The so called positive karmas or actions, because the word karma stands when it means action, but in the in the dynamic sense of implying a reaction. Seed, we know it implies a fruit.
Action implies a reaction. So everything, you know, that that is we whatever we call a negative action, and that’s something that comes from a sort of unhappy place in here that’s called attachment or anger or pride or anxiety or depression or whatever you name it. We’ll go into that. That necessarily leaves an imprint or a seed in our consciousness that will if we leave that seed there, will eventually ripen as we know seed do in future experiences. Robina’s, or whether she’s tomorrow or next day, whether she’s in Robina’s body or another one.
Now that what determines those experiences is they’re not just random events. They’re not caused only by the outside conditions. The main cause of them is Ravina’s past karmas, the energy that she puts into her own mind. And so all the virtuous or positive actions that Ravina does, you know, things that come in from kindness or generosity or patience or you name it, this stuff, long loaded stuff. You know?
This leaves a seed in Robina’s mind that will then ripen as future positive experiences. The negative ones ripen as a suffering experience. The positive ones ripen as a happy experience. And like I said, this is and that seed has its own nature and brings its own fruit. The Buddha’s the Buddha’s Buddha’s minds, as the job of Buddhist through through the techniques called meditation, to really become your own therapist, as one lama said, the job is to really identify very clearly and very precisely the components of our own consciousness, our own this big soup of emotion in here, to begin to make sense of it all, and to begin to recognize the so called positive qualities, and then to develop and grow those, and then to recognize the so called negative ones, and to diminish those.
And we’re not even talking it for the sake of others. We’re talking for our own sake. Is an incredibly important point. In fact, if we just we’re not even talking about compassion we get, and we could really get this one. Can you imagine what a peaceful case the world would be?
Whoever would be angry for one second because you know it’s gonna cause you suffering, not just now, but in He had the qualities. He had practiced piano before. We practiced anger before. We practiced compassion before. This is the idea of karma.
Okay. What’s what’s we can see with according you know, the it’s sort of like a seed. You know, you know perfectly well the main cause of an apple tree is an apple seed. But you know you can hold an apple seed up here for twenty years, you’ll never get an apple tree. You need water, soil, and sunshine.
Well, it’s the same with us. Except we we attitude we tend to have now, you know, to why we are the way we are. It’s as if we’re saying, you know, I pour water on the ground, and I created an apple seed. There’s nonsense. You know there’s an apple an apple tree.
You know that seed has to be there. So the seed of anger has to be in her man’s mind. And so even if her father beats her up, you know, we tend to think, I’m I’m angry because my father beat me. Well, it says no. That’s just that’s just the cooperative potential isn’t just sort of almost it’s not even as if you were an option in a sense.
It’s like if someone’s got this incredible potential of being a musician, it’s always gonna be painful for that person if you don’t give them a piano, isn’t it, and help them develop their potential. It’s kinda like they’re dying to do it because it’s just like waiting to run them. How tragic not to grow seeds into apple trees. You know? What what a waste is to have a mind there.
So the Buddha is sort of saying that with us, that if you exist, if you have mind, naturally, the term for a living being is actually mind possessor, something like that. Mind possessor, having mind. I think it’s something like that. So we are mind possessors. We possess consciousness.
We’re living beings. And so if you exist, you possess consciousness in you, and your consciousness in its nature or it really is. So we say, who am I? We don’t just go to tend to ask, what is my real nature? We will say, who am I?
What’s the purpose of life? Well, Buddha says, who you really are, what your true nature is, which isn’t developed yet, but is just bursting to be developed, is to be a perfect being, to be a Buddha, fully developed in the positive qualities, completely free of the negative. Now this is a psychological statement. We’re dealing with the mind, and it’s actually very radical if you think about it. And there’s no psychological model that I know about, not that, you know, educated in the in the western in our western world that actually will posit that we have the potential to be absolutely free of all delusions, all neuroses, and absolutely full of all positive qualities.
We don’t have any models for this at all. You know? Well, that’s a boy’s statement. And, actually, it is simply a radical psychological statement. Although it’s called This mind of ours, this natural state, is to be that.
So in Christian sense, we might say, we we have this yearning to be oneness with god. You could say, the Buddha is saying, we have this yearning for oneness with our own center, but to become who we really are. So if you’re one of the interestingly, in the long term, one of the consequences of that, this is where it sounds religious. One of the consequences of fully is that you do become oneness with all living beings. Because right now, the way we are, this sense of separateness from others, this sense of enemies and friends and strangers and alienation and loneliness and this sense of profound, in an actual sense, a separate sense of separateness, isn’t it, that we all possess?
That we somehow feel we have to feel from out there. We’re saying that’s the that’s the result of the of these delusions deeply ingrained in our being for a long time. And our true nature is fully developed, is to be, you know, blissfully who we are ourselves and be oneness with others. There’s gonna be no separation from others in this kind of concept. Another way of talking about the nature of our mind is practical sense.
It’s sort of like, you know, if you see if we we know an a horn, for example, is something that we when we learn, it’s not evident by looking. It’s some kind of thing. When you learn it from a botanist, that can become that amazing oak tree, and then you go, wow. Really? That little thing.
So then in a sense, you know, you know that that’s what an acorn is. Not as if you have the option to make it, you know, a pear We all possess. If you exist, then you possess it. Okay. So if this is true, if my potential is to be developed and brought up by all these words, then what is it at this moment that’s preventing me from experiencing that?
If this little acorn is sitting there, it can become this, then what is it that’s preventing me as the acorn from being that great oak tree right now? So we obviously need you to find the appropriate way to help that potential grow, don’t we? So what is it that’s preventing me from being a Buddha right now? A Buddha would say, you know, it’s the presence in my mind of these so called of these neurotic qualities. So we, in the west, in most cultures, totally take the branch of being normal.
They could be normal, all of them, in normal in that sense. Course, they’re normal. Well, look. They’re normal in that sense. But Buddha is saying they’re not they’re not natural in the sense that they’re like pollution in the water.
Totally normal everywhere the water pollution these days, and we all take it for granted. But we still know it’s not an analogy. You know? We still know that what water is in its nature is this pure, clear stuff. But we know it can be pollution, and we know that mostly it is pollution.
So it’s sort of like we don’t need anyone to tell us that when you hear the words kindness, generosity, patience, you know, these words, either if you’re experiencing them yourself or if you’re receiving endorphin, we don’t need god or the word to tell us that they are they feel good. They’re good. They’re positive qualities. We all know that. Nor do we nor do we need some, you know, high people to tell us when you hear the words jealousy, anger, depression, anxiety, fear.
So when you’ve got them or when you’re at the receiving end of them that they feel terrible. Heartbreaking. But what Buddha is saying is that it’s that stuff, the so called unhappy stuff, that is why we suffer, that are the roots of why we suffer. And then when we follow through with them, with our body and speech, which is what our tendency is, in the desperate wish to kind of make the suffering go away, because we’re convinced that the person out there is causing it, then we perpetuate those habits and keep making suffering worse, and we make a mess with the people out there, and we create negative karmic in our mind, and we keep creating more of the same in the future. So it was vicious circle where you know?
So the job of a Buddhist, being your own therapist, is using is learning to know your own mind. You know? Learning to see and to listen to what the hell is going on in here. So right now, usually in our culture, even now, isn’t it, we tend to think we can look at our minds. But we find it very difficult to look.
So it’s confusion to us. You close your eyes and try to look at your mind, as they say. You just feel this chaos in there, isn’t it? It’s not it’s not chaotic against nature. It’s only chaotic because we’ve never learned to harness it.
Yeah. We’ve never learned to comprehend it. Intelligence in the west. We’re very intelligent when it comes to numbers, you know, the shapes and sizes and numbers, highly, highly developed. And, actually, you know, the precision and clarity and analysis that we use in what we call scientific scientific endeavors is exactly the precision and clarity and analysis that the Buddhist uses.
Do you understand your mind? It’s kind of interesting. Yeah. I mean, you ask with the vet how monasteries that were in India. One famous monastery known as Nālānda was really flourished in the seventh, eighth century.
Ten thousand kind of these yogis and monks there, you know, highly developed intellectually in Buddhist philosophy and other philosophies as well as the great meditators. You know? So this is practical. Again, don’t mystify it, please. Okay?
Put it up in the sky somewhere. Very practical psychological techniques, very sophisticated techniques for developing this human mind of ours. That’s all we are. Nothing more. Nothing less.
You You know? I mean, a communist can very much do happily do meditation techniques, certain kinds. No conflicts. They’re not religious in their nature. Indeed, to get to grips, the whole group of techniques that are related to the deity practices and all this kind of stuff, the seemingly, obviously, religious aspect of using mantras and so So thing.
Thing. I that’s same you know, you’re You’re do do to You’re ups will get you really handsome and beautiful, you know, you get all those hearted, and you’re very depressed after one time of doing push ups. You’re not handsome and beautiful yet, but we know it takes time. We’re the same as meditation. You know?
In fact, in the beginning of doing your push ups, you probably feel worse, aches and pains and, you know, dreadful. With the mind. And any job you begin to do for the first time is not necessarily easy, you know, of course, it’s not necessarily not easy. So bring I mean, if we never learn to look into our minds very deeply and really know well what’s going on with incredible clarity and honesty. It’s very it’s a very painful job.
So the very basic fair tasting techniques, which can basic but, you know, simple simple in their not simple in their nature. Difficult only because we’ve not done that sort before. They they really get first of it to harness this crazy energy. So then one of the immediate benefits is is concentration meditation, for example, where you simply even beginning simply, you learn to focus just on the on the sensation of the air at your nostrils. Many, many ways you can do it.
You can use anything to focus on. This is a really helpful one. Something so simple. Just even doing five minutes of this. You know?
The long term result of this type of technique is extraordinary degrees of very deep concentration, where one is able actually to access subtle levels of our consciousness, which we don’t even assert as existing in the west. You know? That’s the long term for various reasons. For the short term, immediate benefit, which is what makes it painful, is that if you’re sitting there for five minutes in the morning with your with your with your senses subdued, but awake and clear, not asleep, we are not distracted by the the busy outside world, which is what distracting us now from ever looking into ourselves. If you’re sitting there even for five minutes, being with yourself as your boring old self for five minutes, and you’re trying to watch your breath, then really what may end up happening is all this chaos is very visible to you.
The crazy thoughts, all the emotions, all this stuff that you’ve never really dealt with, that you you put a put away behind. You know? You’d rather not look at. Begin to see the chaos in your own mind. You know?
We gotta start. We gotta start somewhere. And so we all know positive, what good, what bad, what is love, what is compassion, how do you deal them, what causes them, blah blah blah. Buddha’s body. So, okay, what is it about then what is it about, you know, let’s say, any old quality we know is painful when we had it.
Let’s say anger, for example, common under orders. What is it about that that itself is destructive? Not it’s because someone said it’s destructive, but it is destructive. It’s like when your mom says, keep away from the fire when you’re a kid. You say, why?
And she might say, because I said so. But that’s not the real reason. We know that. The real reason is because honey, I’m hurting you. So the real reason to not be angry, it’s not because God or would have said so, which is how we tend to think, is because it will harm you.
Don’t even mention harm the other side. It’ll harm you. So what in and year out and never let it go. I mean, it’s so thick and it’s so fucking. It’s so obvious.
Obvious. So this is a tragedy because we have this, you know, the schizophrenic view and so caught up in the righteousness of it that I’m allowed lock you up along with their son and their life. You know? Yeah. We’re all the same.
And this thing can sound quite outrageous. We’re thinking, well, excuse me. No worries. You you must be allowed to be angry when something like that happens. But this is the thing that makes it very difficult.
But when we really learn a little deeper, we can see how this is logical. There is no logic to say, just because you harm me, I have to be angry. This is the point of view that Buddha said this all right way. We’re completely like puppets on a string right now. This is a tragedy.
We think we we think absolutely. If you harm me, of course, I’m gonna be angry. This is and equally the same where it comes to something called attachment. Delicious, divine, vibrating, gorgeous, lovely chocolate cake cups. Well, of course, I wanna shove it in my mouth.
Look at of me. What can I do? I mean, what is really saying, well, I’m victims right now. This is a tragedy, and this is the irony of ego, the schizophrenic view we have of the world. We’re like these little kind of empty vessels walking through life, completely victimized by everything, you know, feeling it’s not under no control.
Of course, I’m gonna be angry if you’re mean to me. Of course, I’m gonna be angry if, you know, if if if the weather’s bad. Of course, I’m gonna be attached if chocolate cake comes. What is this? Come on.
We’ve gotta grow up. I mean, it’s is very popular there. Lucky is here. Right? Many times, people love to go to his talks.
They’re all praising. He knows he’s amazing. As we know, he’s an amazing person who, you know, if you look at the worldly if it’s from a worldly point of view, he has every reason to be out of his brain with anger and violence. You know? I mean, look at Tibet.
A million and a half of six million people murdered. The monasteries destroyed. Trees being trucked out of that country twenty four hours a day for fourteen years, and it’s almost unbearable. Everything being ripped out of the country, wild animals destroyed. You name it.
You know? If he hasn’t got every reason to be so beyond his brain and anger, I can’t think of anybody. But everybody can see this funny, happy, ridiculously kind, practical, delightful, lovely human being. It blows everybody’s mind. So what’s interesting, and this why we’re so insulting when we come to religion.
You know? We that. You know? But, I mean, when you really understand the the view of karma, you know, the Buddhist approach that it and the intense amount of work you need to do to become like that based on this liberating philosophy, then it wouldn’t make sense, and it all makes sense. I mean, you’re frustrated.
Not because he’s a just a cute guy, because you realize how hard he must have worked to become like that. Were you know, he’s very, very tiny, but he’s got this beaming smile. He’s he’s known for his incredible kindness. And he’s he he just said he wouldn’t even imagine the things that he chose. He has a shred of anger and misery and suffering in his mind.
He came out of that experience more loving, more compassion. And it sounds nice when you say words like a god of compassion. But, hell, to get to that, it means unbelievable how hard you have to work in letting go of all the garbage inside. Yeah. Letting go of it.
Letting go of blame. All based on and who else, you ask, works. There’s not a single thing any living being experiences that isn’t the fruit of what they have done before. One: if you call that thing suffering, that is the result of your past negative actions.
If you call it happiness, it is the result of your past virtuous actions. This is the principle of karma in Buddhism. It’s not a moralistic story. It’s not punishment. It’s not a rule.
It’s very interesting. So slowly slowly. Let’s tell this is like living around the mind, find out what the hell’s in there on the basis of this confidence that I can change. That’s what’s amazing. If I think if I learned as a little child that I could change me, how critical can you imagine how we be?
Like I said, like I said, these assumptions, we carry so deep in our bones that I of So the Buddhist view would be term. So the Buddhist view would be that your consciousness, mine, everybody’s, you know, we just haven’t been in this life. We haven’t even had this one past life because the okay. I mentioned before. So the implication of having your consciousness that existed from before and then before, and it’s like this cause and effect thing, is what it it is beginningless, Buddha says, which sounds like a shocking idea.
But then but it’s not created by somebody, and it can’t cover nothing. So it has to keep coming from the moment before, the moment before, the moment before. So, okay, the assumption here would be in Buddhist terms, that as long as we’ve got these negative prints in our mind, they are what creates the cause to have a life and have suffering and have all sorts of things, and the good things too. Right? So then we’ve got so the interaction here is right at this moment in time, you’re this human being called a male Australian, maybe Australian.
What all, you know, what’s your name? Peter. Peter. Peter. With his various qualities.
So just a few, a tiny few of his billions of calming seeds have ripened to be Peter of his life. So Buddha would say, for a start, at the time, maybe not more than seven, they talk about in the esoteric Buddhist texts, not more than seven human weeks before your conception And who knows what kind of body? But the Buddhist view would be, given that you are a human now, one of the ways karma ripens is in terms of the kind of life you’re gonna get, whether it’s a dog life or a human life or a spirit life or all kinds of Buddha would have served. Okay? A whole spectrum of possibilities and experiences, the realms of existence they call.
The logic is that you must have created a huge amount of virtuous energy in your mind because that is the main karma that ripe at the time you passed death that became like the cause, like, you know, the cause like, the the program. You program yourself, basically, for your consciousness when it left that body, it goes happening to your present mother’s womb. So it’s in this very real sense, you know, you not chose in the literal sense, but created a cause to have your present mother, and therefore and then then secondly, all the qualities in Peter’s personality, his thoughts, his feelings, and then even the stuff that happens to Peter, all of this is karmically created. So this is just one of the karmas. You’ve got millions more sitting there in your mind stream now, okay, for all sorts of lives in the future and experiences.
So, okay, this is sort of a long term view of practice. And certainly, the Tibetan tradition, one of the this is a practice we do every night. And it’s a pure what we call purification. So it’s a very practical job of pulling out the weeds before they ripen. So it’s one level of practice.
It’s the long term view. You know? Given that you have these countless lives, given that you’ve been up and down and up and down like a yo-yo and the good ones and the bad ones, given that we’re all in the same boat, the you know, by learning to know your own mind well and dealing with who you are and taking responsibility, then you learn to deal with the punches and the kisses that come in life, not to grasp too strongly at nice things, not to get too mad at the ugly things, and learning in in this life, you can see. I mean, can’t they tend to say that you sow seeds now and are likely in the future. Right?
But it we can even have a huge effect from this moment forward. It’s just like if you’re driving on the road, you know, let’s say, hundred k’s, and you’re lucky, you know, because someone on on a hill can see that you keep going this way, and I keep going that way, we’re gonna meet in a crash in three minutes time. So that’s if you just follow karma, follow your old rubbish, you know, you’re gonna have that crash money. You can’t stop it. But as soon as you put your foot on the brake now, everything changes.
You shift. You don’t you won’t even move me. How does Buddhism think about cloning or science? Well, how do I think? Okay.
Well, cloning, for example okay. Cloning, isn’t it? It’s based on the on the on the assumption that that that is that a that human or a cow, a human, say, a human being, is created is is only the physical. Right? Isn’t it?
This is a scientist’s view, isn’t it? That it’s only the physical. And so that we can clone another a a person to look like this person. Is that the idea? By using the physical stuff.
Well, I don’t what they work with, the genes and all that stuff, is it? Well, the good of you would be, in a sense, it’s kind of dumb because, you know, a sentient being isn’t you don’t create sentient beings. There are billions of consciousnesses out there, right, who have the potential to be human if they find the right human womb. So, you know, you could just like so, you know, you could create humans by being okay. You know, from the Buddhist point of view, because of the see, there’s, you know, there’s a series of assumptions behind cloning, isn’t it?
One of the assumptions is that we make beings, and that we can if we have control, we can ensure they have good health and good bodies and handsome and all those things. Right? Well, the Buddhist view is you don’t have to clone people to do that. You just practice morality. You so if you’re the view of karma is this, if in this life, we have reasonable you know, so if you’ve got some money at all in this life because you’ve been generous in the past, this is gonna be some cosmic trick.
This is Buddha’s view of creation. Okay? If you’ve got a reasonable body that people find appealing to look at, you know, as opposed to a poor old rat, let’s say. I mean, look at you as a rat. I wanna just kill an idiot.
You know, can you imagine if you would like to have the karma be and that’s the karma of that creature. It’s been really patient in the past. The fact that when we speak and people believe us is because we’ve been truthful in the past. This is the world’s view. You know?
So then this is how you make decent human beings. If you wanna be healthy and handsome and beautiful and rich and famous and loving and kind and truthful and funny, just sow all the seeds now, and you can turn yourself into it. So it’s kind of a ridiculous idea to clone. I’m not trying to be rude about science now. I’m just trying to say, because this is the Buddhist view.
These are the assumptions for a Buddhist. So, obviously, everything we do is determined by the assumptions we have. So one of the key key assumptions key assumptions in the Western view, the scientific, is that there’s only the physical and that we don’t know. I mean, we all agree. We haven’t got a clue in our Western world why this if, you know, why sickness and why let me get certain things fixed up.
We don’t know why cloning, as one you exact gave an example of, this is the Buddhist approach to it. It probably sounds cosmic, I agree, but this is the Buddhist view. So other but in general, the attitude of not a lot of science. I mean, Buddhism itself has very sophisticated okay. Wisdom terms are sophisticated, Worst of terms are sophisticated.
But, you know, these texts about cosmology and the universe and how it comes into being and how beings I mean, highly developed explanations of exactly what the mind is and what the psychophysiology is and what causes and how it becomes this and what I mean, extraordinary developed, very sophisticated views. You know? So it’s all there. This this this explanation of external reality are all there. No problem with this.
The only difference is in Buddhist terms, you’re missing the crucial thing, which is the consciousness, the mind, because that is the main cause of everything in good terms. Does that answer your question? I’m just thinking if if you if if the baby was cloned. If the baby was cloned, yes. Consciousness who has some karma to be born there.
That’s all. So you don’t create the baby. You just create the body. You create the condition into which the consciousness will then go and become a human being. Do you see my point?
So you don’t make a baby a worshipping. You’re not gonna follow-up and make babies, and you just give it a body. That’s all. Okay. What would be the reason or motivation for a being to go into that cloned form?
Well, unless okay. Buddhism would say that unless you’re a very highly developed being, you don’t have you don’t choose to go anywhere. It’s just your karma takes care. You could by the time you stop in your previous life, you’ve lost the plot by the time you stop breathing. So whatever karma you’ve sown ripens at the time of your death.
Okay? That’s the one that they call throws your consciousness. You’re not all about fired up by death. So due to the karma that was ripened, and it’s highly complex, the whole procedure, you’ve also got a karmic relationship with that somebody. I need to analyze my own mind, not the other person’s. I have to see that I’m suffering because I’m attached, angry, jealous, depressed, fearful, stressful, stressed, you name it.
Do understand my point? It gets right down to a unique individual. So if there’s any suffering anywhere, it’s because okay. This is what I thought about karma again. There are four ways in which our past karma can ripen.
Right? And let’s just use one example of to try and avoid harming any living being, particularly not to kill any living being at all. Okay. Let’s just say that the action called killing. Alright?
So let’s assume when you do that action of killing, we know we know ninety nine percent of the time that anyone kills is not out of love for that creature. It can be sometimes. We can have compassion because the creature is dying, let’s say. But most of the time, when anybody kills anything, creature anybody kills anything, human, a mosquito, anything, there’s some kind of aversion is there, some kind of attachment or angle or whatever reason, it’s highly complex again, but it’s not a good reason usually. So let’s assume an action that someone does, called killing, is a negative action. There are different ways it can ripen, and then I’m gonna answer your question on the basis of this.
One is, like I said already, it it will you know, if it ripens in the fullness as a result, it will ripen as a suffering kind of life. Buddhism would say like a dog or an animal realm or other realms that are very suffering. This is one that’s one. That’s a complete way. Then within, let’s say let’s say, due to a virtue ripening at the time of your past death, you get a human life.
Now we can see within that human life, which is a result of virtue, you can also have the other three ways that killing can ripen. So one of those is in the habit to kill. So a lot of people in this world and most humans kill something. Right? They have it to kill without a second thought, whether it’s rats or the mice, indeed, whether it’s you you can see it’s very common tendency.
So that’s the second way that the action of killing will ripen. The third way is in being killed. There’s all the stuff that happens to you, and there’s all the stuff that you do. Which is in one way kind of interesting. It’s all your own personality.
The other one is all the stuff that happens to you. So you would so one of the this kind of result, you know, is that you would get killed, or you will die young, or you will be sick. This is the one that results from having killed in the past. Now you just take these I’m not even gonna mention look at the fourth one is is the environment. Even the environment, something like or a mysterious person called mother nature.
It is in fact or have occupied it and will occupy it. And then even the way the environment is now is due to our karma. All these sorts of things. Never mind that one. These are the two I’m concerned about to answer your question.
So why there’s suffering in the world now? We can see it’s the one is karma due to the habit of having done something, and the other one is having the experience done to you. So what’s suffering? Suffering is that you’re because you’re in a situation, you know, where you’re, like, look at look at look at two people. Just forget about Israel or Palestine or complicating things like, you know, the Muslims and all this.
These are two little Because of others. And then secondly, the other person having the same story, then why you suffer in relation to them is because you harmed them, therefore, so now they harm you back. So if you look at the world, you’re either harming or being harmed. That’s what suffering is, isn’t it? Okay.
For nations and wars and also complicated and political. When it comes to right down, it’s human it’s it’s individual living beings either harming or being harmed or both. So that’s all basically harm. So I’m not trying to make it just two people fighting. You might as well be in love with each other, so close.
You can’t get each other unglued, you know, because you just completely eye wide contact. They’ll get like moths to a flame. This is one strong kind of connection between you. Two, harming each other now because the last time around, let’s say, you harmed each other before. So you’re just carrying on the job.
You know? And then the energy that keeps you there I mean, look at how we are in our relationships sometimes. Look at people’s relationships. You’d think if we didn’t want suffering, as soon as someone was mean to us, we’d say, see you later, babe. I’m gone.
Gone. Out of it. You know? But who does that? We go back for more, and we keep blaming the other person.
I’m not trying to make it mean, and we’re all the same. This is a strong karmic connection between us, and because we’re convinced that, you know, if I just work at it, I’ll make it better. Well, I’m recognize that now you don’t buy something. But what is this? Honey, start sowing the seeds for not suffering in the future.
This is a conclusion, isn’t it? So don’t buy. Don’t steal. Don’t harm. Don’t kill.
Don’t bad mouth. Feel of talk, you know, in what determines the karmic result of an action we do. And we’re just discussing now the euthanasia we’re discussing in terms of the person who does the action of killing. Okay? That the karma for a person for for a for an action to be negative, it isn’t even finally determined by the thing you do, the killing.
We can deduce that killing is usually bad because why? Because the motivation is negative. So that the main determining factor for the karmic result that will come to you from an action that you do, not the object, the person’s body, the main determining factor is the motivation behind it. So we like I said, we get deduced from ninety nine percent of killing, it’s it’s it’s a negative motive. Now we can see, obviously, with something like euthanasia, whether it’s your auntie or whether it’s an ant.
Right? Oh my god. That ant is suffering. That poor little ant, he says, so he must kill it. Okay.
Now you can say it in your point of view. You don’t tread very negative karma because your heart meant well. You you have softness in your heart, not aggression to that ant. Right? Same with your auntie.
Now it does, though, demand you ask the question. Well, I wonder if my auntie did benefit from this because the reason I did it is for her sake. Right? We never ask that question. We just think it’s enough that I meant to her.
And also because, you know, okay, reasonable enough, we have the view that that suffering is now finished. But as we can hear already, the Buddha’s view is that her consciousness will continue the moment it leaves the body and will carry on on autopilot and will go into another life. And the quality of that life is solely is hugely dependent, not solely, hugely dependent upon the karmic seed that ripened in my auntie’s mind at the time I killed her. So, you know, if you have so what as you would be, if you can be sure that your auntie’s consciousness led your body and took a really good life better than this one, then you’re absolutely correct in killing her. But if you can’t be sure, then excuse me.
You know, we all know in this life, there’s no way we would do something so drastic to anybody if we didn’t know the consequences. If I’ve a headache and you’ve got cyanide and aspirin in your hand, you kinda mixed them up and you forget. If you’re so the right motivation in this context would be that an act that you definitely okay. The two wings of the bird. Right?
One is compassion. The purest always the most far reaching, therefore, the most sublime motivation for doing something is out of a genuine wish to benefit another person. So even in the killing of my auntie, my motivation was compassion. It might have been so high, but it definitely was compassion. And that’s why from my point of view, I create the car.
But I didn’t help my auntie. I chucked her from the frying pan into the fire for god’s sake. So therefore, compassion is not enough. It has to have wisdom as well. So what wisdom is, it’s not only so in other words, it’s not enough to want to do the right thing.
That’s already amazing. That’s the motor that compels you to do it. But you gotta know what to do and when that will actually benefit that person. That’s wisdom. And that you only get, in good terms, from removing all the pollution from your own mind.
When I’m completely caught up with attachment or anger or pride or, you know, especially attachment to somebody, I don’t have wisdom at all. There’s no wisdom there. I’m only I’m blinded by my own needs. So if I have compassion, which is I want Be wisely selfish. Nothing wrong with that.
It’s a good it’s a good start. If we could just get this one, I agree. Compassion is the most of my one. But that’s the that’s kind of more sublime. The Buddhist point is start looking at what’s gonna benefit you first.
Obviously, he’s saying we haven’t got a clue what’s gonna getting what we want. All we’re doing is treading more suffering. So at least let’s first learn, the most basic level before you start looking high, what will benefit me and what won’t. That’s not selfish. That’s very, very intelligent.
So when I just have to put myself together and realize that I don’t wanna get too close to the five, it’s gonna burn me for god’s sake. How intelligent. No one will complain about that. Or I don’t wanna drive too fast. I don’t wanna get mangled.
So I don’t wanna get angry because I don’t wanna suffer. Don’t put that down. That’s amazing. Then I can expand to seeing that you don’t wanna suffer either. Then I’ll try and benefit you.
Do you see what I’m saying? It’s step by step. Yeah. Do you understand my point? Yep.
It’s really important to sort of just be all high in the sky about compassion being the top. It is the top. So we don’t start there. Extreme example — excuse me, I’m using an extreme example. Thank you.
Yeah. Oh, a lot of it. Okay. Using the extreme example of one of these say this to get in the mind of those who’ve been tortured for years. Because they have a view, they because they have the view and they probably even have the memory because they’re some of these guys are quite advanced, that they know the karma between themselves and the torturer.
So they have almost such grief that they have been a catalyst for this person to be so out of their brain, to be so sadistic one to beat them up and torture them and pull their teeth out and harm them or do whatever. So already this huge compassion and therefore already enormous forgiveness immediately because they know why this person is doing it because the karmic result will come to you from something you do isn’t even the action itself, let’s say, standing on that ant. It’s the motivation to do it. So say the four main factors involved. The key factor, the most important, almost the medium term is the intention to do something.
It’s the mind moving towards that decision. I will stand on that ant. If you have that intention, and then within that, your motivation is you just don’t like ants, then you have a a negative the completion. Great. You’re now dead.
You know? If those four are there, that’s a complete action, and that will come right in future stuff and lives for you. Now you can see, you can just like you said, you can have not had the first one. No intention. There is the ant, you stand on it, and it dies.
You could say there’s very determined result for you at all because there was no intention. But you could also say, you could have the intention to kill the ant, but the ant is there, you stand, but it doesn’t die. So the ant’s happy. You create far think of that, there’s not a single moment of the day when we’re not standing on something. If you look at our bodies, they’re probably built zoos.
You know? We’re kind of breathing in subtle creatures. We’re killing them when we drive. We kill them. And we think we’re so holy if we don’t eat meat, for example, but, excuse me, more creatures die becoming picky veggies.
So in a sense, keep using this amazing opportunity, which is resulting in incredible good past past virtue in the past life. You gotta use it now to create more. Be conscious, be aware, actively better than others, actively develop wisdom, actively purify your negative karma to use now is that you can be dynamic and strong and outraged at at suffering without being angry. And that’s very sophisticated, but it’s possible. So I’m not criticizing anybody here.
We all have to learn, you know, all of us, of course. So there is a be And this is almost impossible for us to see. We hate to be any other way. And that’s why I remember talking about the Buddhist approach. It’s really quite radical. It’s skillful compassion.
She loves them both, and she gives the beach what they need. So genuine compassion, actually, when you’ve got it, in those terms, I’m telling you, you would have more compassion for those two pilots than you would for the people who died in the buildings. And that’s that’s just shocking, but I’m trying to make a point. Because what real compassion is is we’re all in the same boat, all suffering from life to life to life life, getting it, giving it, getting it, and it’s kind of exhausting. When you realize it’s big picture they’re all in the same boat, you have compassion for everybody.
Everybody. And you especially have compassion for the for the oppressors because they’re the ones just beginning to have untold suffering in the future. But that doesn’t mean you they can’t help it. You still do what you have to do to stop them, like that monk did. But But we all know because of the corruption and all the other conditions, by the time the rice leaves wherever it’s coming, it ends up just completely being filtered down the drain, taken, stolen, and disappearing.
You know? Because the people’s karma is so strong to be starving. This sounds outrageous, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t make a change. So that’s the thing when karma shifts, and you’ve got all the people out there working, NGOs trying to send different things and do whatever they’re doing, really working very hard, many people trying to change things in the world. We can all see that.
And the only thing that got through was these magnificent empty stainless steel pots. I mean, that’s just, you know, that’s in the Buddhist view, it’s because the karma of the people is so strong. So too with wars. It’s the same. You can say if there are enough numbers