y Public Talks — 2006-08-04

Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. In this 121-minute public talk, Ven Robina Courtin examines fear as the fundamental energy underlying ego and all mental suffering. She moves systematically through Buddha’s analysis: how delusion gives rise to attachment, anger, jealousy, and pride—each a distortion of reality. These are not inherent human traits, she argues, but layers of mental construction that obscure an innate capacity for wisdom and compassion. The core practical method: stop blaming others and recognize these patterns in your own mind, understand karma’s role in relationships, and gradually deconstruct the false sense of self. She bridges Western psychology and Buddhist psychology throughout, emphasizing that genuine transformation happens through direct observation of your mind—and reinforces this point with stories from her prison work, showing people working on their own suffering step by step.

File metadata (for organising)

File: 06 2006 08 04 PT.mp3

UUID: 2c38b37e-f769-48e6-af02-3f91d13562aa

Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin

Collection: y Public Talks (Ven Robina Courtin)

Date: 2006-08-04

Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide

Duration: 121.5 minutes

Words: ~21,541

Okay. Well let’s start with just a little prayer. But remembering that prayers are thoughts. Buddha is being very practical. We get all very holy when we hear the word prayer.

Don’t be holy, Buddha is being very practical. He says every thought counts. As Lama Zopa Rinpoche puts it, everything exists on the tip of the wish. The first step is the thought. So here we’re just going to sing a little prayer.

The first two lines are expressing our going for refuge in the Buddha. And if we feel we’re Buddhist already, then we have that in our heart. And the second two lines are expressing an altruistic motivation for a reason, altruistic reason for doing this action of sitting here together, listening to Buddha’s ideas about the mind, about life, about what to do about it. So why? So that we can develop our own phenomenal potential, so that we in turn can be of benefit to others.

So we think like this, if it makes sense to us as we sing the prayer. Another little prayer is making a making a mandala offering as we call it. So just, you know, in a simple way, imagine offering to the Buddha as a request for the teachings as if the Buddha himself were giving the teachings. Imagine offering all the things of this world that be that we all use, the good things. Just imagine.

You know, use your creative and imagine offering these to the Buddha because it’s auspicious to offer something in order to receive it. Okay. So I think the title is something about fear, right? Fear and ego, something like that? Well it’s interesting that we can talk about that in a very general way in the West, in a materialist way about the world, but it’s very specific for Buddha.

But the way Buddha’s model of the mind, know, is is in a sense quite simple, seemingly simple, but actually quite profound, you know, but very straightforward. He he would say that the source of all of our problems, the source of all living beings’ problems, you know, which of course includes the entire universe. The source of it is this is this kind of primordial delusion. This word delusion has got a very clear meaning for the Buddha. Kind of muddle these up in the West. We tend to think sometimes something is bad and sometimes something is good. But the way Buddha’s model of the mind works is very straightforward. There are certain parts of our mind, certain states or own nature necessarily are virtuous, positive, productive, beneficial, useful, helpful to me and therefore to others.

And at the same time, there are some negative states of mind, suffering states of mind. Deluded ones, harmful ones, unproductive ones that unnecessarily painful and necessarily cause me suffering and then cause me to harm others. And so the key thing in Buddhism, key, I mean really the simple way of saying what Buddhist practice is all about is to identify the so called negative ones within our own mind, not everybody else’s, we love to do that. In our own mind because what Buddha is saying very simply is that they are the source of our pain, are the source of our suffering. And he of course is talking not just in a fairly superficial way but he’s talking to an extraordinary subtle degree.

And so what he’s saying is too that we have this innate potential to rid our being, to rid our mind of these so called negative qualities. Now psychologically speaking, that sounds pretty straightforward but it’s shocking actually, quite radical if you think about it because if you go to some therapist and you say, Well I want to learn to go beyond all anger, beyond all pride, they’ll think you’re a megalomaniac. They really think you’re mentally ill because somehow there’s a view in the West that we all somehow they’re all just the way we’re born, it’s just how we are, everybody’s got them and sure not be too extreme with them but keep them under control but it’s almost as if we need a bit of anger and a bit of jealousy and a bit of depression to be kind of a nice rounded human being. And this is really an assumption we all tend to have. We know they cause us pain, we know they’re miserable, but we don’t ever tend to think, well how can I get rid of them?

You go to any therapist, they won’t tell you you can. They’ll just say, come on, get to know yourself, it’s a natural part of being human. But Buddha fundamentally disagrees. And so the root of these deluded ones, the root of these unhappy emotions, kind of the source of all the others, you know, is a simple one that he called that Buddha calls ignorance actually, which you know is a very broad term. But it’s a very specific level of ignorance.

Okay, it’s not too bad. The chair is quite low. Thank you very much. This ignorance has got a very specific function but it’s extremely hard to recognize. If we hear a word and I’ll talk about it because fear is linked directly to this one.

I mean if we talk about anger we all recognize it. If we talk about depression we might all recognize that. We talk about jealousy, we all recognize this. But this ignorance, when we begin to describe it, we might not recognize this because it’s at such a primordial level. It’s just utterly there.

It’s just instinctively there all the time. There’s never a second we’re free of this. And so and so for this reason, we can be forgiven for thinking that, this ignorance, and I’ll describe it, and therefore the other delusions that come as a result, attachment, anger, pride and all the rest, that they are at the core of our being. But this is the crucial point the Buddha is making, you know, and it does take thinking about. It’s not just meant to be some cute religious statement.

We really need to discover it by looking into our own minds, understanding what he means and by looking into our own minds, being our own therapist as Lama Yeshe puts it, and really discovering clearly that anger, jealousy, pride, and all these delusions all the way down to this primordial ignorance are not at the core of our being. Like I said, this is not meant to be just some religious statement. We hear often we hear religion in a very airy fairy way. Whereas if we were a scientist sitting up here talking about sort of scientific things, we’d be very practical and sort of we’d feel very we’d have our intelligent hat on. We’re supposed to we think we’re supposed to have our spaced out hat on here because it’s called religious.

But actually Buddha really does utilize the kind of he demands that we utilize the kind of precision and clarity and depth of analysis that we all know we need to employ in scientific discovery, in the discovery of our mind, discovery of internal reality. So this ignorance, begin to recognize this ignorance is really the key. To recognize all of them is the key to being a Buddhist practitioner, you know. And I mean, so when you go and study say Buddhist psychology, started using the beginning, it sounds terribly boring and terribly intellectual, know. They don’t give too much experiential stuff, they’ll just tell you the list of the numbers of states of mind and attachment has got this particular function, it’s this, and it does this and it is that.

And it all sounds very I mean we don’t really recognize it when we hear the bare bones descriptions. But the same as if you hear some strange scientific equation, it’s just boring. This strange E equals MC squared, I mean it doesn’t blow your mind when you hear it, does it? But with years and years and years of practice, when you hear that phrase, you you hear the universe. It’s something huge.

You know the implications. You understand it deeply. Well, that’s the same with this mind of ours. I mean, sounds also curious too. We think, excuse me.

I know my own mind. But I’m not so sure, you know. Why do we have to go find therapists when we’re having mental breakdowns? Because we don’t know our own mind. I mean, there’s there’s there’s thousands of ways of describing the mind in our culture, isn’t there?

And there’s no there’s no common ground, you know. And there’s so many every day, even now there are new types of therapy being invented by new by new people. And then also we can see so clearly it’s not part of our education. Our parents didn’t bring us up to know our minds. We were told to behave nicely and speak nicely and don’t lie and don’t do this.

But we’re not we don’t you know and we’re told to not be angry and not be jealous. But you know who gave us methods when we were little kids to investigate our own emotions, to understand them, to be able to discriminate between my positive ones and my negative ones, to be able to distinguish between what I feel and what someone else seemingly did to me. We didn’t learn this clarity. So we just stumble along bringing ourselves up, learning intellectually all sorts of things, brilliant intellectually. But emotional cripples with great respect to us.

Really. Not knowing what we feel. It’s only when we wake up one morning and just isn’t it? And realize we can’t get up because we’re so depressed. Then we realize, Oh my God, I’m depressed.

But it’s been going on for years. We’ve not noticed at the deeper level in our mind the thoughts all going, all going, rumbling along underneath all the emotions. We only know we’re angry when the words vomit out the mouth, you know, when you explode. We didn’t see it coming before. And this tells us perfectly the problem, that we don’t, we’ve not learned techniques to be aware of what we feel.

Be aware of what we feel. And therefore what we think. I mean there’s a type of therapy called cognitive therapy. And it’s not a joke to say that Buddhism is the most sublime, the supreme cognitive therapy. Right at the core of what Buddhism is, is psychology.

He didn’t use that term then, it wasn’t coined then. But it’s nothing other than about the mind. When you’re being if you’re seriously being a Buddhist, doesn’t just mean you’re listening to some interesting philosophical explanation. It doesn’t just mean you’re looking like a bald headed person with fourteenth century clothes on. It doesn’t just mean you’re being holy and holding a mala and saying mantra or visualizing or doing your concentration or watching your breath or being mindful.

These are all the cliched ways we think about being a Buddhist. It’s when you’re really working on your own mind, when you’re really taking responsibility for what you think and what you feel in response to the things that other people do to us. But if we can do mantra and listen to teachings and, you know, until the cows come home. But if we’re always objectifying everything and putting it out there and blaming this person and resenting that one and and you know believing in the outside world, then we will never ever ever change. We will never ever ever become happy.

Which is what Buddha is asserting we have the potential to become. This is the point. This is why we would want to look at our minds. This is why we would want to understand these delusions, as Buddha calls them, all the way down to this root delusion, this root state of mind, which we’ll talk about. So in Buddha’s nice little package of Buddha’s teachings called the four noble truths, in his third one, he’s asserting that we have the potential to be free of suffering, which really means the potential to be full of happiness.

It’s just the flip side of the coin. So if we’re religious, normally speaking, that is something we aspire to but we can only get it when we go to heaven with God. If we’re materialists, we desperately crave it and never stop searching but somehow cynically think it’s not possible to get it. So this is awful conflict in our daily life as materialists. As a Buddhist, neither of these views.

Buddha would say logically, happiness is our potential. Logically, potential for clarity, wisdom, joy, love, compassion, all of these which have the potential, which have the character of happiness. This is at the core of our being. This is our potential. It’s not just some hit and miss thing either.

It’s got very specific methods for how to achieve this potential, which is within our mind right now. And so the method to discover this is first to hear the instructions. You need to hear Buddha’s instructions. But then we need to learn to look inside, to be our own therapist. It’s a nice marketing ploy, it’s true, as long as you would put it, be your own therapist, but it’s an accurate one, I tell you.

Because that is exactly the point. If you’re going to find a person who’s really putting their money where mouth is, they are working on their own mind. They are dealing with their own mind. And this is what we do. This is the point to become more and more and more familiar, more and more deeply, not in a self centered way, you know, deeply familiar with the workings of our mind.

But the point is we can’t just look into the mind, close our eyes and get all mindful and think something magical will happen, you know. Just like if you have a big massive overgrown green stuff out there and you and someone says you can turn it into a marvelous garden. You don’t get all bliss, you know, kind of cosmic about it and just start looking at it, hoping, know, getting all mindful, like you think it will all kind of turn into a garden overnight. Mindfulness is necessary too but as Lama Zopa says, excuse me, thieves need mindfulness. There’s nothing innately holy about it.

But you have to imbue your looking, your mindfulness with intelligence. And that’s what? Well, you know, you go botany school. So here we’re talking Buddha’s botany. You learn about how the Buddha sees the mind.

And this is really important. So the benefit to hearing the teachings, you know, is to hear is to be precise. And like I said before, we’re not used to thinking in spiritual terms, thinking in terms of clarity when we think of spiritual, because we think it’s all la dee da beyond normal. It is not like that. Buddha has been very accurate, very clear, very precise.

So within this mind of ours, okay, that has at the core of its being the positive qualities. As I said, we have positive qualities and we have negative ones. So the negative ones are a bit like the pollution of the water. The water the water nest, the h two o is at the core of the being of what we call water. The pollution is pretty intense, Yes.

But it’s not at the core of the being. It doesn’t belong there, and it can be removed. This is what Buddha is saying about mind consciousness. At the core of our being, which is our consciousness, our mind, the positive qualities are there. So we need to learn to develop them.

Now this is curious because, you know, we know we want happiness. We’re not so sure what the cause is though. We and we definitely we are sure though, and this is a mistake, but it’s out there somewhere. That handsome body, this lovely job, that nice this, this tree, that piece of clothing, this bit of weather. We’re all the time pursuing the outside.

Well, Buddha says this is completely mistaken. Not moralistically speaking but just practically speaking. Buddha says happiness. So in other words the logic we have is when I get that, then I’ll get happy. When I get this, then I’ll get happy.

When I’m free from that misery, then I’ll be happy. We see it kind of as like dualistic or as Lama Yeshe puts it schizophrenic. But again, is a very precise point Buddha’s making. Happiness, Buddha says, is not the result of getting something. That’s just the junky mode of getting happiness.

When I get the fix, then I’ll be content. When I get this, then I’ll get happy. He says mistaken. Not like embarrassing. But it’s so simple we can’t hear it because we’re utterly addicted to the other view.

For for eons, Buddha says. That’s what being in saṃsāra means, caught up in this wrong view. So Buddha says, you know, again, we say happiness is what I will get when I get what I want. What Buddha is saying, happiness is what we get when we get rid of the pollution. So happiness is what will be there just naturally as we get rid of the delusions, as we get rid of anger, attachment, jealousy, pride, fear, neurosis, grasping, the wish to harm, depression, anxiety, all the way down to this primordial delusion called ignorance.

What’s difference, there or there? Okay, whatever you like. Here I’ll put it right here. Can you hear me back there? Do I have to shout like this?

Okay, I’ll talk closer to the mic. What is this ignorance which is at the root? What is this ignorance and how is it linked to fear? Well this ignorance in Tibetan, unawareness. Its function is in a simple way the way it is ignorant, the way it is unaware, it’s kind of primordially unaware, ignorant of how and this sounds curious to us, we don’t think about things like this primordially unaware of how I, self, and all other things and people exist actually.

Now this is really an abstract concept to us. To think that we don’t know how things exist sounds just completely ridiculous. We don’t walk around life thinking, how do things exist? Buddha is saying that this ignorance, it blinds us to seeing how I really exist. But let’s just speak more colloquially about it, okay?

It doesn’t merely not know how things exist. It’s got its own elaborate misconception, its own elaborate story about let’s say how I exist. And so even speaking more colloquially, it’s the energy of this ignorance, if you like, is simply the way we can talk is is what we mean what Buddha means by ego. Now Lama Yeshe said one time that he says ego is the self pity me. Self pity.

Now this sounds really cruel actually because we don’t think we have self pity. But if we start to look, forget even about identifying this ignorance, but if we start to look at the main voices of ego, the main voices of this primordial ignorance which itself is really hard to identify, then we will see its main voice is attachment. Then from this is anger and then the others all branch out in their own ways. Okay, they’ve each got specific relationships, but they all come from this ignorance, which and the main voice of ignorance and meaning effectively the main cause of our suffering from day to day, is this one called attachment. And then from this comes anger.

As one lama said, anger is the response when attachment doesn’t get what it wants. So this kind of this motor that propels us from moment to moment, the one that’s constantly searching for the delicious object that we think when we get it we’ll get happiness, that’s the one called attachment. And that too, I mean effectively from day to day life, that’s the cause of our suffering. Now the point I’m getting at here though in relation to fear is this, that when we start to investigate our mind, investigate these delusions, investigate delusions, investigate ego and its voices, investigate the self pity me, we will see that fear is the main energy there. Fear.

We think of fear as an added thing that just comes sometimes, extra anxiety about something, fear because of September eleven, fear of heights, fear of dogs, fear of the dark, fear of being alone. We see it as a specific thing. Buddha would say that this fear, as long as we have this ignorance, and then as long as we have attachment and anger, jealousy, pride, depression and all the rest, then we will be completely locked into fear. To whatever degree we have those delusions, fear is the main energy of these delusions. So when we’ve gone beyond the delusions, as Lama Zopa Rinpoche puts it, there is no fear.

So even, I mean there’s this wonderful New Age saying, it’s either love or fear. I tell you there’s something profound about that. Buddha would totally agree. It’s just that he’s very precise in his understanding and description of how it works, know, which is what we need in order to have the methods. And so fear is linked to what?

To I. So this is the one. Let’s look at how we can distinguish even again sort of colloquially to distinguish between the so called negative states of mind, the so called negative voices, the ego and the so called positive ones which are not ego. Just speak colloquially about it because we’ll kind of get a feeling for this, we’ll understand this. So let’s just say, you know, okay so what Buddha is saying is that when we’re the positive states of mind and the negative ones are kind of there, like a big soup of emotion, know, there’s a great big soup with all these bits.

Sometimes a lot of attachment, sometimes a little bit of attachment, a lot of anger, little bit, a lot of love, some kindness, a big about of generosity, a small amount of patience. All the time the soup is changing, know. But it’s extremely hard for us to distinguish one bit from the other. So it’s not only like this big soup is all boiling away, all the bits flying about, but it’s like the soup is pureed. You cannot even distinguish any difference between the positive negative, because they all seem to happen in this spontaneous way, just driving us forward, you know.

And it’s only when the anger is very strong, when the taste is very bitter. Uh-oh, there must be some anger strong here. It’s only when the depression is very strong, we realize the depression is there. But most of the time, we’re unaware, know, we just blot along in our lives, acting kind of unconsciously, asleep, most of the time Buddha would say. The word Buddha means fully awake and he’s got a very real meaning to this.

And as we work on our minds, we will start to understand why why he’s talking about fully awake. Because the way one of the functions of these delusions, these unhappy states of mind, is they completely dull us, know. Causes pain, yes, acute pain. But we’re asleep to what is going on, we’re blinded. So one of the functions of the delusions, this is how it links to ego, this concept of ego, is that the stronger we are caught up in the delusions, the more concrete is our sense of self, the more self conscious if you like we are.

And therefore the more narrow our view of the world, the more separate we feel, the more the ego, then the more we feel separate from others, alienated, lonely, cut off from others. The stronger the delusions, the more lonely and cut off we are. The more the positive qualities are prevalent, the more linked to others we are. Now we can see this every day in our ordinary experiences. Don’t make it all religious, you know.

If Lin and I are sitting there having a friendly time, she’s listening to me, I’m listening to her, it’s kind of harmonious, you know. Just, we all have this. You wouldn’t sit there thinking, well I really love Lin. You wouldn’t think you’re doing this. But actually that’s what’s happening.

Because love Buddha would say, is the delight in another person’s happiness. Like it would it would enable you to be aware of the other person. Just to notice unselfconsciously what they’re saying, listening to their words, affirming them, laughing at their jokes, you know. That’s what love is. Love is not some big dramatic emotional trip, which is what we think it is, which is just attachment love.

Love is just this kind of a sense of delighting in her happiness. That’s what love is. So when she and I are sitting here quietly chatting away and having a friendly time and there’s no dramas, we wouldn’t think we love each other, but that’s actually what’s happening. Now, you check what’s happening too. There’s a sense of interdependence there, isn’t there?

A sense of we, isn’t there? There’s no vivid sense in Lin of I this, I that or Rabina, I this, I that. We’re each listening to the other. We’ve got a very unselfconscious sense of our self, haven’t we? In other words, there’s more of a sense of we there, isn’t there, of a sense of connectedness.

Well that’s the result of virtues or positive states of mind being prevalent within us in our living relationship for five minutes. Now watch what happens when we start to argue, when she starts to say things that I don’t like, when I start to say things that she doesn’t like. Look what happens. Suddenly the sense of we has gone completely, hasn’t it? Suddenly the she’s over there, I’m over here, suddenly she’s super aware of what she’s thinking, how dare this, she, this, she, that, Robina, that’s not fair for me, what is she saying, I’m being all upset with her, suddenly we’ve disappeared, we’ve locked into our own little sense of self, all upset hurt, all self pity, me in other words.

Angry, resentful, how dare she, this, that, angry, upset, jealous, hurt, totally, I can’t see past my own nose now. You understand? Well that’s the function, that’s what happens when the deluded states of mind are prevalent. Now when they’re kind of fairly mild, we don’t notice the anger there, the jealousy, the depression. But the fact is, the more we look into our minds, the more we try to practice being our own therapist, we are going to see that they are really, really vividly there.

But because they’re not kind of totally at the painful level, which is in our world what we think suffering, mental suffering is, then we just think we’re normal. But when we look at our minds, there’s this general pervasive sense of anxiety, isn’t there? Something always not being right and something missing and dissatisfaction and always looking for something more and kind of upset and the smallest thing happens, we get upset at the traffic and the smallest thing we hear on the radio, we read the paper, kind of agitated, they get angry when the shops man I mean it’s so easy for the anger to suddenly become strong, for the depression to suddenly become strong, isn’t it? We’re just sort of sitting there and they suddenly pow, go. This shows that they’re there waiting, just waiting to be triggered, know.

And because we’ve never in our culture, it’s not part of our education as I said, to look more deeply. And even if we try to look deeply, it’s just confusing because we don’t know how to label what we see. And we’re scared as hell of what’s in there. We don’t know where it came from. We think our mother made us this way with respect if we have a feeling of creator, you know I’m just talking Buddha’s view, he doesn’t talk about creator.

You know, we think somebody made me this way. We’ve never looked very deep inside because it’s kind of frankly scary. And we don’t know how to look. We don’t have the tools. So we try to cover it up, don’t we?

Fill the gaping holes, fill it up with people and things and sounds and smells and tastes. I mean it’s true, if we were deprived of our sensory experiences for just for an hour, we’d go insane, you know. I mean if you’ve done Nyung Nae’s any of you, those fasting retreats, and you just can’t even drink, you know, not only do you not eat for one day, you don’t drink. It’s terrifying because we’re so used to constantly bombarding our senses. This is the desire realm Buddha says, he’s not joking.

We’re junkies, know, long as we can stuff one sense or another, we can keep it’s kind of like we’re putting off that panic that’s underneath us, putting off that fear that’s there, putting off the depression, putting off the whatever it is that we’re feeling underneath It’s all the time just the surface, know. Well this is mental suffering Buddha says. Ordinary day to day mental suffering, you know. We don’t think we’re mentally suffering. We think people out there, over there who are called psychotic or paranoid, they’re mentally suffering, know.

But it’s not a joke to say, the way Buddha’s talking, that we’re all mentally suffering. As long as we have attachment, anger, pride, depression, jealousy, even at small degrees, we are mentally suffering. But it’s just a question of degree, that’s all. So when we’re sitting in our busy little world full of sensory objects and full of busy, busy, nice, nice, then we are averting it, we’re avoiding it. But you know, like many of our friends who get thrown into prison and lose all their sensory objects overnight, lose their life, lose the persona that they identified with, then every one of them goes through some kind of mental breakdown first.

Some incredible sense of pain and loss. Because again one of the functions of this attachment, which we utterly take for granted, is it’s again schizophrenic that we identify who we are, not by our own self. We have no sense of that. And psychologically in the world there’s a big puzzle about that. No one agrees even what it is, you know.

We identify ourselves by whether we’ve got nice objects, nice people, nice smells, nice tastes, a busy life, you know, Gucci coffee makers and all the important things in life. We identify ourselves by those things. So if our Gucci coffee maker breaks we get miserable. If our boyfriend leaves us we get miserable. But if we mean a million bucks we get happy.

So it’s like we can see. Buddha would say it’s a serious mental problem. It’s a sign of insanity, the way we normally function. Now we think it’s normal because the whole world does it. But Buddha would say it’s insane.

Buddha would say it’s mentally suffering. So this needs really looking at this attachment one. But the point here to see the fear is beneath, how fear is the energy beneath all the delusions. So the only time we think of very strong fear is when the instinct as we call in the West, the instinct for survival is triggered. When someone threatens you or attacks you or the plane nearly crashes, the car nearly crashes, and this incredible heart beating, pounding, isn’t it?

And this panic arises. We call that instinct for survival. Well, that’s interesting. That’s an interesting concept. But you know, we think of some concrete thing.

But as far as Buddha’s concerned, that’s the function of the ego grasping, which is another term for this ignorance, when it’s triggered strong. It’s lying there quietly like a sleeping lion. And when someone comes and threatens you, it triggers exactly that primordial ignorance, the ego grasping as it’s known colloquially. That’s the sense of I. This vivid sense of I rises when someone I did not do that.

Who does she think she is? How dare? Or whatever it is. In all the different voices, whether it’s a depressed voice, the angry voice, jealous voice, whichever voice it is. The ego’s got all these different voices, you know?

But the ego behind is the sense of I. Now this fear, this powerful sense of fear that arises and we just think it’s utterly normal when someone attacks you. Buddha would say it’s just the function. It’s just the function of this ego grasping. It’s the function of this ignorance and that can be eliminated.

Buddha’s not joking when he says this. He’s meaning it act actually. And all his methods, you know, beyond all the cultural packaging and the pictures and the things and the mantras, all these things, the actual heart job you’re trying to do is eliminate that one. And then once you’ve eliminated the root, all the others fall away. This is the job of a Buddhist.

It’s utterly psychological. It’s just that it’s couched in religious terms. And Buddha has many, many, many methods, including mantra, including prostrations, all the different methods we have. They’re all for the same purpose. To remove these delusions from our mind.

Why? Because they cause us unbelievable suffering and this is the reason all beings suffer. And of course as we can see they cause us to harm others which is the suffering in the world. Look at the world. So what he’s saying is eminently practical.

But it sounds easy because I mean to talk I mean in the West we have all these complicated terms. Every day there’s a new disease discovered. You know, ADHD and ADD and all these endless, endless, you know. New different ones, there’s a bipolar, there’s this and there’s manic depression of that and something else and depression, are long, long, long intellectual things written about them. But there’s no coherent picture, you know?

And Buddha would say it’s because we haven’t hit on what the mind actually is yet. Right? So Buddha’s view is Buddha you know, the mind is is is is is a non physical part of us. If we’re religious, normally we’d call them non physical part of a soul. If we’re materialist, we have no non physical part.

But Buddha doesn’t have the view of soul, but he has the view of mind, consciousness, which is all of our thoughts and feelings, all of our emotions, concepts, unconscious, intuition, instinct, you name it. The whole deal, the whole spectrum, that’s mind consciousness. It depends upon the brain, very obvious, depends upon a working nervous system. That’s clear. But it’s not the nervous system, it’s not chemical imbalances.

Depression is not a chemical imbalance. But because the mind and body are utterly interdependent, then when you take your serotonin, clearly it subdues the chemical imbalance, which then activates which makes it easier for your mind to function more perfectly reasonable, you know? So the but our mind, Buddha says, is our own. Our thoughts, feelings, emotions, unconscious, subconscious. This is mine.

It does not come from a creator. It does not come from mother or father. It does not it is not physical. And it does not come from nothing. So this is where Buddha would assert very clearly, you know, and describing in great detail in his teachings, how mind, consciousness is like a river of mental moments that we can trace back, trace back, back, back, trace back, you know.

And that whatever’s in it, the components of it, they are mine. We are truly the creators of our self, Buddha says. Not joking, not in a magic wand sense. But we are truly the creators of our own being, you know. Our mind is our own.

So it’s the thing we must become familiar with. If we’re Buddhist, if we’re not familiar with our own mind, we’re not really Buddhist, we’re just pretending. It’s like you’re learning recipes but you never make a cake. It’s very fine, it’s nice, you might be able to guide someone else but you’re useless. If you can’t make a cake, what’s the point of a recipe?

Well you know if you can’t look in your own mind and take responsibility and know what these things are and be able to distinguish between love and hate and this and that and attachment and all the rest, it’s better than nothing to do other things, but you haven’t got the point of being a Buddhist. This is the point. And it’s a hard job, because we’re not brought up this way. I mean when I first heard Buddhists talking about look at my mind, get irritated. What do you mean look at my mind?

Where? I kind of stretch my head and look, what do you mean look at my mind? You know, I didn’t know what it meant. I’d be annoyed with this silly statement look at my mind. You know, it takes a while, you start to get the hang of it.

Part of the reason it’s hard for us to look at our mind is because we’re so seduced by the outside world, again in this sensory world. We only know we’re alive because our senses are triggered. We have no sense of who we really are. We only have a sense of our self in relation, as I said before, to things. So if the things are all pleasing we have a good sense of who we think we are.

If the things are unpleasing we have a terrible sense of who we think we are. This is an valid way of describing ourselves. But that’s the only way we know. And talk about schizophrenic, it’s good statement. So to get to know who I am regardless of whether people like or love me, regardless of whether I’m in prison or at home, regardless of whether I’m a millionaire or poverty stricken, that’s the hard job.

That’s what’s difficult. It’s a puzzle to us. But all we can do is keep trying. Again it’s not hit and miss. It’s not a hit and miss affair.

Buddha’s instructions are incredibly clear. So this attachment, to begin to understand the fear, it really helps to understand this attachment. The actual cause of all the suffering, the root delusion is called this ignorance, this ma rigpa (marigpa), this ego grasping. But effectively in day to day life, it’s attachment. So each of us in this room, if we discuss it, we’d all probably come up with a different definition.

So it’s extremely important if we say we’re Buddhist that we’re on the same page as the Buddha. So one of the characteristics that all the unhappy states of mind share, as I said, the major one is they’re all linked to this neurotic sense of self. They’re all the voices of a neurotic self. The self conscious me, the self pity me, the poor me. There’s this character, there’s this flavor to all the delusions.

Delusions, which is totally interesting because we wouldn’t ever think like that. It’s poor me. I’m at the center. Another characteristic that really helps us begin to identify the different delusions, and this is common to all of them, they’ve each got their own flavor, is that they distort. They are inflations of reality.

In this way that Buddha says we’re not in touch with reality. Each of them though has their own flavor. So anger in the mind or aversion aversion is the state of mind that’s the source of this emotion we call anger. Aversion. When it’s prevalent in the mind, its function is to cause that person to look uglier than they really are, more mean than they really are.

Or whatever the object is, if you have aversion to chocolate cake, the chocolate cake will look uglier than it really is. The aversion is like paint when it’s in your mind, it like pains a picture on your eyes. It’s like a particular set of spectacles. You’ve got your angry spectacles on. And when you see the cake through the medium of these, it will look ugly.

When you see the person through the medium of your angry spectacles, they will look ugly. Now the difficulty is we know they look ugly, but we think they are ugly, don’t we? We think ugliness is a characteristic of the person. What Buddha says, and this is what’s scary, is no, excuse me, ugliness is a story, is a projection of ugly glasses. It’s like if you’ve got, you know, our mothers told us, you’ve got your rose colored spectacles on.

When you’ve got your rose colored spectacles, that’s attachment. That’s attachment. It causes the person to look more gorgeous than they really are. And then because attachment is the craving, the yearning, the neediness to get happy, the junky mode, then you’ll manipulate to get the person, you’ll expect them to be a certain way, and then you’ll freak out when they’re not that way. Aversion distorts the ugly aspects of the sort of it brings out the ugly aspects of the cake, the person, the weather, whatever it might be you have aversion for.

So all the delusions have this characteristic. And it’s in this way that Buddha says quite literally that our mind makes things up. Now this is hard to hear. Because again, if Lin punches me in the nose, everybody in the room would attest to that fact. They all saw her punch me in the nose.

But Buddha wouldn’t argue with this. But what he’s saying is that the anger that arises in my mind is not a direct result of the punch. He’s sort of saying, excuse me, Rubina. Just because Lin punches you is no reason to be angry. Just because Milko is kind to me is no reason to be attached or no reason to be happy.

This is shocking because this is the logic we use now. Well of course I’m happy, Milko was kind. Well of course I’m unhappy, Lin was unkind. And this is the distinction we have to make. We have to see that we have the freedom to decide the way we respond to something.

This is the key to practice. Is tough because everything in ego wants to blame Lin for making me miserable. And a sense, everything in ego wants to blame Milko for making me happy. We don’t think like that, but that’s the same thing. Attachment is completely over exaggerating his gorgeousness, manipulating to get him to keep being pretty and nice to me because that’s the cause of my happiness.

That’s what attachment does, it’s a junky mode. Aversion is the response when attachment is thwarted because I don’t want to be hit, so then I have aversion for Lin and blame her for making me suffer. So this attachment is the default mode of the mind. Virtually from day to day, it’s the virtually there all the time. We don’t think we’re driving on the freeway, were attached to anything.

But you watch how you respond when the person jumps in front of you. Aversion, fear, how dare you curse and you swear. Well that’s the proof that there was attachment there. It’s just at the default level, just there at a subtle level, an assumption that you would get what you want. This is the one that drives us from second to second, this constant craving to get what we want through medium of the senses or mentally.

And as long as we can fill the hole and get all the nice things, then that’s what we call happiness. But like I said, know, it’s social we didn’t say it, we’ve implied it, but you look, it’s unbelievably short lived, we know we guarantee we’re going to feel good forever. We know this just below the surface, that kind of nervousness, the fear, the anxiety, there’s something missing. And it’s just below the surface, know. It’s like that the need for the junk all the time.

Almost as soon as you’ve had the fix, already you’re craving for the next fix. This is the way attachment is. It sounds shocking, but until we start looking into our minds, we will never see this. This is what we have to see. And then when we can become more familiar with the other delusions and how they function, how they’ve got this distorting distorting characteristic, that when they’re prevalent in the mind, the object as I say in Buddhist psychology, when if attachment’s in the mind, the object, let’s say the chocolate cake, takes on the aspect, as they say, takes on the aspect of what’s in the mind.

So the cake will look delicious at us, won’t it? Again, we think the cake is delicious. We think deliciousness is a characteristic of the cake. We don’t think deliciousness is a projection of our mind, do we? This is how deep we are in saṃsāra.

In other words, It’s as if I’ve put it, we all believe in what we see. We believe the cake is delicious. We believe hello sweetie pie. We believe that Milko is mean and ugly. Is it your friend?

No. Oh, is. Oh, good. Oh, well done. Good.

So you know, this sounds curious to say we believe in our believe in it. It’s okay. We believe in things, you know. It sounds very odd, but so let’s look at what this one is because this is now getting very close to the ignorance to really understand the root delusion of all, the ego grasping, okay. As Lama Zopa says, it’s bad enough that when I see the cake I believe that inherently out there from its own side it has this delicious characteristic that which causes us to somehow feel like some victim that I what choice have I gotten, know, no choice but to shove it in my mouth, is there?

This is how we feel, right? Isn’t it? That’s the feeling we have. Like I’m this, you know, and this is where we’re getting into ignorance now, okay? And this is where we’re getting into how we’re really not in touch reality.

So you check yourself when, it’s like you know I said before, when Lin and I are being friendly, there’s a sense of interdependence, connectedness, of like we’re interdependently connected. So when you see how it is with the cake, it’s just like it is when Lin and I start to fight. We get angry and hurt. When you’ve got a strong attachment for that delicious thing out there, there’s a very powerful sense of separateness from it, isn’t it? And a panic and an anxiety to get it in the mouth, isn’t there?

Do you understand? We feel this. The cake is there, vibrating deliciousness, anxiously kind of demanding that I eat it. And there’s me here anxious and empty and miserable and bereft and full of pain and just hungry to shove it in, right? That’s how it is.

Well that’s the function of ego. What’s happening here is attachment’s got its flavor. The flavor of deliciousness, the yearning, wanting, neediness, that’s the attachment energy. But the one beneath it, which is the ego one, is the one that sees the cake out there separate from me as if it has nothing to do with me, as if there’s nothing coming from my mind. I’m just this innocent bystander.

Do you see? That’s how it feels. Well that feeling is function of the ego, of the ignorance, of the ego grasping. And that’s what’s utterly mistaken. As Lama Zopa Rinpoche said, when we really realize the true nature of the cake, when we realize emptiness, he said, it’s as if there’s no cake.

What does exist, he said, actually. He said, It’s as if there’s no cake. We’ve truly realized the real nature of cake. We’ve truly realized interdependent characteristic of phenomena. It’s as if there’s no cake.

We will realize that it’s all coming from the mind. It’s a huge massive hallucination. Buddha’s not joking when he says this, he means it precisely. And all his teachings lay it out how this is so. It’s not again not just some hit and miss thing.

So that feeling of kind of anxiety, we know it all. This anxiety, it’s all going so fast in the mind isn’t it? That we can’t give it more than a few seconds between yearning and the hand grabbing it in the mouth isn’t it? But we feel it there, there’s this anxiety, sense of pain if you don’t get the object. Now going to the fear one, it’s clear that’s fear.

That’s a level of fear you know. Look when it’s really intense attachment for a human being. It’s like unbearable isn’t it? It’s like death if you don’t get that person. And so the manipulation that comes and that we do, the manipulation we do to get the person.

And the fear of not getting is such panic. Now I mean that’s utter fear, isn’t it? And then of course if we get the person, if we get the object, get the cake, get the person, if the attachment is fulfilled, if the craving is fulfilled, then there’s a kind of an alleviation of the pain, isn’t there? But you watch what happens, not very long before you’re hungry again and the thing starts again. So this is why Buddha is not joking when he says attachment.

Mean, Western words, it’s really the junky mode. We’re all junkies, he’s saying. But it’s just a question of degree. Again in our culture, junkies are way out over there, know? And they’re usually junky in relation to serious objects like alcohol or heroin.

But Buddha doesn’t define attachment in terms of the object, he defines it in the mind because that’s where it is. And attachment is his word for addiction. That’s all. Just that in the West we think attachment is normal and that addiction is serious. Well that just means you’ve got more attachment, that’s all.

But attachment is attachment is attachment. It’s a junky mode. And it’s in relation to and it makes up endless in its capacity to invent things and people and sounds and smells and tastes and objects to of glob itself onto. We can see the fear of not getting is just there on the surface. It’s terrifying.

The more strong the object, the strong the attachment, the more the panic, isn’t it? Then you look what happens when you don’t get what you want, when he doesn’t turn up for the date. The mind goes crashing down, you know? Absolute panic, devastation, unbearable, like you can’t even imagine existing, you know? But if that’s not fear, I don’t know what is, you know?

The eye has been totally thwarted. Panic. Jealousy. Look at all the strong emotions. Directly, you can taste the fear.

And fear is linked to this sense of I that is vivid when the delusions are prevalent, that is not vivid when the virtues are prevalent. This is why, so simply, the positive qualities are the source of our happiness. They’re the opposite to the fear. They calm the fear. And they open us to others, which is interdependence.

So love is you can say that one of the characteristics of the negative states of mind, the painful ones, is that they’re not in touch with reality. Buddha’s meaningless literally. Not for nothing does he refer to them as delusions. When a person is delusional, oh my God he’s so delusional, we’ll say. They think they’re God or Mozart or something.

Well again Buddha’s saying we’re all delusional. It’s just a question of degree. Because attachment, anger, pride, jealousy and all the rest, the way down to the ignorance, are delusional. When we’re caught up in the throes of them, we are not in touch with reality. There’s no sense of interdependence.

There’s interdependence. There’s a vivid sense of a separate I cut off from everything else. And that’s not how things exist. So when we’re in touch with the virtues, we are more in touch with how things exist because there’s a sense of interdependence. And that’s how things exist.

So Buddha is speaking so practically, you know, and all his methods are to help us get this experience. Like I said, it’s not a hit and miss affair. So we can see too that you know, Lama Yeshe’s sort of tasty phrase for ego is really quite accurate. Self pity me. You check when you’re caught up in the depression or the anger or the jealousy or the attachment.

You check. You check what’s inside, the voice. It’s a vivid I, I, I this, he this, or what they did to me. The I is the subject and the object, isn’t it? Because I, I, I, or what they, they, they did to me.

I is the center of the story when there’s the delusions. It’s obvious. Anger, jealousy, pride, you name it. It’s obvious. I is loud.

And the quality of the sense of I is poor me. It’s the things they did to me. How dare, you know. The voice of anger. Who do you think you are?

How dare you do that to me? It’s like this righteousness, you know? The jealousy, the pain of the jealousy is like the heart fragmented, isn’t it? I unbearable. The attachment, the desperate neediness of this aching, hungry eye, you know?

Eye is there between at all of them, the source. And there’s panic, fear. So to push away the ugly thing, to grasp the delicious thing to us, to get what we want all the time. We can see. And all these delusions, they’re all coming from attachment.

Attachment really effectively is the source and that in turn coming from the ego grasping. So you know, you can hear how attachment is the main voice. Ego grasping, ironically ego, is vivid, self conscious sense of a separate I ness, me ness. It’s naturally the more vivid that sense of I is, separate, bereft, cut off, lonely, the more strongly there’s a sense of I therefore I need. The heavier the ego grasping, the heavier the attachment.

Naturally, because you know and why do you think you need something? Attachment is a symptom, you check, of incredible low self esteem. Why would you have neediness? The energy of attachment is neediness. In the text they simply call it dissatisfaction.

Sounds rather mild, doesn’t it? Neediness is very delicious. Why would you be need check. So logical. Why are you needy for something?

You check. It’s because you feel you lack something, it? So attachment is the symptom of low self esteem, just necessarily. Necessarily. It sounds peculiar to us.

Attachment is neediness. Why? Because you feel you’re lacking something. So the stronger the attachment, the more miserable you are. Therefore the more you manipulate.

Now the difficulty with attachment when it comes along, if we were experiencing a hundred percent attachment at any given point, it would be really easy to identify it. Then we’d be like a vampire basically just sucking blood you know. But it doesn’t come, it’s easy to talk about it in isolation but it’s just you know but when you get it all mixed up with all the other weeds, it’s like one weed all mixed up with all the entangled with the herbs and flowers and weeds, you can’t discriminate. You can’t see it. It’s too complicated until you learn botany.

The same here. We can describe attachment very clearly. Why it’s so hard to see it? Especially, it’s because it is dressed up so often as liking, as kindness, as love, as being good to others. It’s really wicked, you know.

That that I mean, the kind of attachment that functions in relation to people. Some people have attachment, strong attachment, but also have strong anger and pride, and strong miserliness. Well that’ll be very clear. That person would just be greedy, grasping, and arrogant, and harmful to others, all coming from their attachment. Now another person who have a lot of attachment might be very kind as well, because you don’t just have one quality.

The person might be very kind, not so angry, you know. That person would look really kind, and they are kind, don’t say they’re not. But it’s mixed with attachment. It’s polluted by attachment, by their own fierce needs to get what they want. And much of that person’s attachment would function or their their kindness would function the the kindness would be a a method that attachment uses to get what it wants.

It doesn’t mean the kindness also wouldn’t be valid. It would be. Better than harming somebody. Better. It’s better to be kind and attached than to be angry and attached.

That’s definite. You see my point? There’s all these different mixtures in the recipe, you know? But it’s very hard. I mean many of us even if we angry we’ve also got kindness, we’ve also got love for certain people.

But we don’t see that it’s utterly polluted by attachment. As long as Oprah Winfrey says that right now we do have love for others but it’s unstable because upon attachment. It’s dependent upon getting what we want. As long as I get what I want from that person of course I’m prepared to love him. Of course I’m prepared to want him to be happy which is what love is.

I will do anything for this person. Look at the world. This is what our relationships are. I mean why is it seventy percent of what they call marriage in this country break down? Just the first ones.

You don’t break down you don’t give up a relationship because of love, believe me. You give up because of attachment that has been thwarted, which is turning into anger. Or you give it up because attachment has turned into boredom. You wake up one morning, you can’t believe how boring he is, so you leave him for another nice newer model, you know. There’s only two ways.

Attachment, because all the illusions are distortions, attachment is an inflation of what’s lovely. So when we got in the in love mode, he looks like heaven and God incarnate, doesn’t he? From the head down to his toenails, know. Everything is divine. Now that can’t, that cannot, that has to explode.

It’s an inflation. So the bubbles got to burst at some point. So it either turns into aversion, you just can’t stand Him anymore or it turns into boredom, which is ignorance. There are three root delusions: ignorance, attachment, aversion. So you check.

Attachment has the function of making it look more divine. It can’t sustain itself. It’s unsustainable. It has to burst. And where does it go?

It turns into aversion or it turns into ignorance, indifference, boredom, know, in terms of other people. Now you look at our own self, you know, they talk about manic depressive, bipolar I think it’s called now, maybe bipolar is a more severe, I don’t know, so complicated now. But all I know is my entire, I always confess this, my entire family, me and my six siblings were all diagnosed as manic depressive thirty years ago. Every one of us, this doctor in Melbourne thirty won the lottery I think. An entire family.

And so I can see, some of us in different degrees, he gave us all lithium. And that was a very kind doctor, mean before that my mother was getting them electric shots, my poor sisters and everything. But anyway, cause I all had mental breakdowns at some point. Now we’re all fine, we’re doing very well. I mean as well as you can imagine.

But the point is, you know if you analyze what really what manic depression is, I mean you check, it’s the up mode, depending how psychotic it is or just how normal, you know, is completely like you think you’re God or Moses, you can fly off mountains, everything’s perfect, you’re completely amazing, all this amazing energy, have to sleep, you can do things, you understand creative mode. Where does it go when it bursts? Crashing down to the depths of depression. The bigger the balloon, the bigger the crash. Now excuse me, we’re going through a thousand bipolar episodes in a day.

You check, you check, a little up when things go well, oh god the lights are green, oh great you know? The next traffic lights are red, down again you know? I’m not joking, you see my point. A thousand times a day we have the bipolar mode you know? When you get what you want you’re all overexcited and then it doesn’t last very long, suddenly go crashing down.

So you mightn’t be called what they all call out there the medical system bipolar because you’re not extreme one you know. And then indeed there are people who have the extreme ones, don’t deny. But if you look at it, we understand the mental state. This is how Buddha talks. So it’s up, it’s attachment, we get what you want.

And then down, crashing, is aversion or depression. And let’s face it, depression has a major characteristic of being internalized anger. You’re the enemy. And it’s all concrete and internalized, you know. When it’s out and angry it’s all volatile, isn’t it?

When it’s in we don’t even notice it. It’s just deep, dark, death, depression. Right? That’s aversion and you’re the object. Anger is aversion for someone else out there who’s the object, that’s all.

So we’re going all the time in these you know. So fear is an interesting one to get into actually. And I think many of us and certainly in these days you know, people you know, when something happens like bombs and wars and things, people have incredible fear. And also it shows how irrational fear is actually. We all think it’s valid to have fear.

But it’s irrational. You know, say a person’s got fear of flying. I mean we want not being mean about us or fear of dogs or fear of high buildings or I mean the fact is you might or might not die. But we’re convinced we will, this is why we had the fear. But when the plane lands and you are proved to be wrong, but because it’s so strong we don’t question.

The people who had so much fear as a result of September eleven. I mean the people on the one hundred and twentieth floor, whatever the floor was, where the gorgeous restaurant was, remember it was a sunny lovely day on September eleven, two thousand and one, they weren’t having any fear whether their death was coming in thirty minutes. Now Buddha says if you really got insight into reality, you’d know. You’d be out there like a flash of lightning you know. But you’re sitting there completely ignorant and there’s no fear but you should be scared.

You should be scared as hell. Your death’s coming and the balloon’s going to collapse on you. So we have fear but nothing happens. Well we don’t have fear and then the disaster’s about to happen you know. It’s like you’ve cancer don’t realize.

It’s like you’re eating poison, you don’t realize, you just completely like we say, ignorance is bliss. Well Buddha says ignorance ain’t bliss. It feels like it. We don’t know because we don’t know what we’re doing, you know? But fear is at the source, it is, it’s the voice of I.

And all the delusions, the different voices of I. Attachment, anger, pride, jealousy, these ones. And these, you know, a million variations of these. A million variations of these. And so our job is to know ours, to know our own model of it, to know our recipe, our particular one.

A little bit of attachment, a lot of anger, some jealousy, a lot of pride, very generous, not so this, very loving, all these distinct characteristics. But what’s interesting, we have such a vivid sense of I that permeates all these things, that sort of is the character that’s bigger than all the parts. This is the one that actually where we link totally now to the ego grasping and is linked completely to the fear. This sense of I that we have that’s so real, Buddha says it’s a complete fabrication. Complete fabrication.

A story made up by our mind. It’s hard to hear this. And it’s easy if we hear it to chuck the baby out with the bathwater. Oh well, there must be no I. Okay, well shoot my head off, doesn’t matter, there’s no I.

Completely not like that, it’s extremely subtle. As Rinpoche says, like I said, in relation to the cake, it can be the same in relation to oneself. When we’ve really realized emptiness, when we’ve really investigated this mind to an extraordinary degree and deconstructed all these misconceptions, de polluted our mind, and finally deconstructed and removed this ignorance, deconstructed it, this ignorance, and seen the truth. He says, it’s if there is no I. But he said there is.

But what does exist is so subtle. It’s as if it’s an illusion. These are really tasty words. When we’ve done the deconstructing of this fantasy, multi million story construction of I and all the voices and things and this and that and our needs and projections and this and anger and jealousy and pride and nonsense and blah and so complex, so complicated, such an incredible architectural construction. What we have to do, what practice is, is not some cosmic thing, but it really is enormous awareness with the way the mind works.

Recognition of all these delusions, their characteristics, of how they function, of how they evolve, and then the gradual brick by brick deconstruction of this eye. The deconstruction of the fantasy eye. And what is revealed amazingly, know, is that if you like the real eye, which is blissful and amazing and light, but so subtle it’s as if there’s no eye there. But what’s interesting, another way to say about this I when we discover the real I, if you like, it’s an I that’s as big as the universe because it’s an I, a sense of I that’s utterly inseparable from all others. Whereas now this elaborate construction is a separate self.

Talk about schizophrenic. Completely separate, independent, not depending on anything else. Separate, alienated, very elaborate, powerfully held concrete sense of I. So the deconstructing of this which is as scary as hell because we’ve clung to it for eons what it reveals when we’re brave enough is an amazing, huge sense of I. Nothing to be afraid of, actually.

There’s an amazing, huge sense of I that is necessarily connected to others. And His Holiness, the Dalai Lama said one time, he said, listen, he said, bodhisattvas have huge egos. What he meant was, you know, like this, what we’re saying here, is because, you know, we have this mistaken sense in the West. Buddha says, Oh, there’s no I. So we get all kind of nihilistic, you know, such wrong understanding.

There’s like there’s a wrong eye and there’s a right eye is a way of saying it. And the one we cling to is this fantasy fabrication, this elaborate million story construction which we have to deconstruct brick by brick by brick. And that’s as scary as hell because it’s the one we’ve held onto for eons. We’ve held this sense of I when we’re a lion, when we’re a dog, when we’re a man, when we’re a woman, when we’re Australian, when we’re a Tibetan, when we’re a worm. This one set of thing that is constant is this vivid primordial sense of I that takes on the different shape according to the life.

That’s the motor that propels us from life to life, from second to second. And that’s the one we have to annihilate to discover the real I. And like I said, fear is the main energy that propels us. Because fear is the voice of I. When Lama Zopa Rinpoche was describing when he was eight years old one time and he was up in the mountains in Nepal.

And across the river he could see all these strange blue eyed pale skinned straw haired people he’d never seen before. Has that intimation of his own future connection. All his students are Not all of them, many of them are black haired from other countries, but all these strange Westerners. And he just had this strong wish to go and meet them, right? So he bought bowl of potatoes, which is what you give when you’re up in the Sherpa land, I suppose, to offer people.

So he walked across this little rickety bridge and he fell in the water. I remember the time he described it was quite interesting. The way he talked about himself quite objectively. He said the head, his own head kept bobbing up and down, up for air. And the potatoes all fell in of course and there’s river pulling him along and every time he put his head up he could see the monk running on the water to try and get him, right?

But he was saying, he said, the thought occurred. The person known as the Lawudo Lama, that’s who he’s called, is about to die. And he said, I didn’t know anything about emptiness in this life. But he said, there was no fear. There was no fear.

It was an objective statement. A person known as a Lawudo Lama is about to die. But there was no fear. Well, mean, my own commentary on that would be that clearly he must have and this is what he said to have done from his past life, had realization of emptiness because he was a great yogi in the mountains and died with complete control and then got reborn as little Zopa Rinpoche, you know, and got recognized. So this is the indication.

The proof of the pudding is that when the in other words, there’s no instinct for survival. The so called as we call it as an absolute given in this earth, there’s instinct for survival. It’s just ego rising, it’s all panic, I freak out, you know. When you realize emptiness, then there is no fear. When someone attacks you, there’s no fear.

When someone’s angry with you, there’s no fear. When someone takes your things, there is no fear. It doesn’t mean you don’t know what’s happening. You’re not stupid, you know. We tend to think if you don’t have instinctive survival you’re kind of dumb.

No, your mind isn’t disturbed, that’s all. You’re seeing it as clearly as you’re seeing a quiet sunny day. Your mind isn’t disturbed by it because there’s no longer this vivid identity with this fantasy construction called independent, real, solid, self existent me ness. Which is hard for us to hear. I mean this is a subtle concept.

With respect to psychology in the West, there’s no concept really quite like this. Perhaps there’s some intimations of it. People are investigating a little bit. But I have to admit with greatest respect to Buddha. Who am I to say that Buddha’s intelligent?

How dare I? So how arrogant can you get? But it seems to me quite tasty how Buddha talks about the way I doesn’t exist and does exist. When we get the big picture, Buddha says we know that a bird needs two wings, wisdom and compassion. So what we’re talking here specifically is the wisdom wing, the work we have to do on our own mind.

The deconstructing of the garbage. The reconstructing inevitably as a result of, if you like, a loving, kind, compassionate me. And then the compassion wing is when we actively grow, grow that positive one. Actively practice phenomenal levels of love, compassion and so on to others, you know. But the capacity to do this is completely dependent upon the development of the wisdom wing.

There’s no way in the world that our compassion can grow very far unless we’ve gone beyond the eye. Because all the time right now, as we can see with our love and our kindness and compassion, it’s completely polluted by the attachment. So there’s a low ceiling on our capacity to benefit others when there’s a vivid sense of I because there’s always I am doing it and why don’t they appreciate me? And aren’t I a good person? And poor me they don’t respect me?

And look at them using me up. How dare they? Is the kind of the goodness. So we can see our goodness now, our kindness now with respect to ourselves is polluted by attachment. It’s unstable.

To have as we call it, love with no strings. It’s a very nice phrase. Does it say? Un what? Unconditional love.

That’s exactly precisely how Buddha is talking. But you can’t get that if you haven’t done the wisdom wing, if you haven’t gone deeply, sophisticatedly into your own mind and understood exactly the construction, the construct of ego and deconstructed it. Then your love and your compassion are literally limitless. Mean, there’s an example. In the Buddha’s teachings, get these extreme examples way beyond what we ever think we could accomplish.

But there’s this marvelous one. I always remembered a teaching from Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche. Me. Need some lubrication. I think as you get older, isn’t it your voice box.

What is it? All these things now you can do. You inject some weird kind of fat or some weird thing from an animal, think. I’ve heard about it. Old people are doing it, you’re injecting it into all your voice cords so you get all these nice young high voicing in.

Instead of all croaky old. It’s like another way of doing, it’s like doing, know, it’s like Botox for your larynx. It’s like pig something or something, I remember about it. Some doctor found it just by accident, now it’s the most favorite thing. To give a nice young voice.

Yeah, it’s wonderful. Anyway I need that one, I need to inject my voice cords or something. That’s right. Here could you imagine me talking like that all day? Doesn’t really suit her.

So what I going to say? Something here. What was I going to say? Oh yeah, compassion wing, wisdom wing. Oh yeah, the story.

Okay, Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche. This lama, he said, it’s a kind of extreme example. But I think the extreme examples really make the point of how So this what Buddha is saying, we have the capacity. This is the level to which we have the capacity to go beyond ego and to have real love and compassion. He said a certain level of bodhisattva, this person on the way to becoming a Buddha, or an awakening person who already must have realized emptiness, gone beyond ego to a stunning degree and have developed extraordinary levels of compassion.

He said for this person, for them an animal, oh no, sorry, cut this person cutting their hand off and feeding it to a starving animal. He said for that person that action is as inconsequential as a leaf falling off a tree. Now in normal western terms that’s insane isn’t it? No one could imagine going that far. You see my point?

I mean giving you money, giving you clothing, even if you’re a mother jumping in the river, maybe if you’re a mother you might, know, for a child. But that seems insane, doesn’t it? Well this is the point. So the point is that level of compassion, which is insane, is impossible if it’s still the sense of I, the neurotic sense of self. You have to have realized emptiness.

You have to have deconstructed ego. Which like I’m saying is not how we talk in the West at all. Could we just put it in nice religious terms, all these weird Buddhists, you know? But actually Buddha is being incredibly clear psychologically, just what the causes of the suffering and how we actually can do it. So when you’ve done this and you’ve practiced the compassion wing, then no problems.

Cut your hand off. Cut the other hand off too. In other words, right now the thing that we take as a given is this powerful primordial sense of self, isn’t it? That’s the given for us, and we can’t imagine going beyond that. There’s no reference point in our Western world.

But this is Buddha’s point. We can go beyond it. And the person who has gone beyond it, that means there’s the space for them to have such phenomenal compassion for that starving animal. That the the the compassion in other words is huger than any sense of self they might have had. So it’s just incidental that they haven’t got a hand, you know.

Right now the pain we feel is mainly because of ego grasping. This is a shock to us. Because of ego, we’re massively identified upon this body. This is how we identify I, so massively. And in our culture of course there’s again no reference point for beyond this.

It just sounds bizarre, you know. But this is the way Buddha talks. When you really have done the inner work of the wisdom wing, and deconstructed the eye, gone beyond the fear, gone beyond, we’re talking about an incredibly sophisticated job, life after life no doubt. Then there’s this massive space for this phenomenal sense of connectedness with others. Quite literally, as they say in the Methods, you know, exchanging self for others.

Again, another story, this marvelous story always tell about Harry, this friend of ours, Harry, an American guy. Everyone who knows Harry says, Oh amazing, wow Harry must be a Bodhisattva. Now I wouldn’t know that he was, he’s this nice guy, right? But all I know is this story shows me he must be a Bodhisattva. So I’ll tell it.

Harry always goes up to the mountain. He’s done a lot of meditation in his life. Okay. And these are meditation no doubt on emptiness, on wisdom, on compassion, all these techniques that are taught in this Tibetan tradition. Not up there just being mindful watching his boring old breath, believe me.

And so he was in Kathmandu and leaving Kopan monastery where Lama Zopa monastery in Kopan. He was about to go up to the mountains and he left. And then Lama Zopa Rinpoche apparently said that he had a dream that Harry would die. And so tried to get a message to Harry not to go, but he missed. So Harry was going up the mountains.

So I always heard this story and there was this one nun who used to tell the story who was with him. Venerable Sarah, English nun who lived at Kopan for a while. Then I recently, a few years ago I saw Harry and I checked on the story and he verified it. And he told me a couple of things had happened in his mind at the time of this thing happening. So this seems to me he must be.

He’s certainly done years of meditation, so he must be some kind of Bodhisattva. So anyway the story is this. He’s going up a mountain with his big pack on, kilos or something. Up there to meditate in the mountains. Very very narrow path up up up big thousand foot drop or something here, the cliff down and then a mountain here.

And he sees four Sherpa porters coming down. And when you’re a porter, as you see them, they’re strapped in this great big pack and they’re bent double. All you can do is see your feet. So you can’t see what’s in front of you. You’re just trudging down the mountain.

So these four porters coming down and he’s walking up. Sarah’s behind him. Back a bit I think. Enough to see it. So it’s a very narrow path.

So he said the first thing that occurred to him when he saw them was Four of them, one of me. All I’ll step to the side. Now this is interesting because as you know if you’ve heard the teachings on the compassion wing, all these techniques and ways of thinking that one trains in to try to exchange oneself for others, to go beyond the sense of cherishing me more than most, which is one of the main symptoms of this ego grasping. So obviously we would normally assume that if you’re just a normal person and there’s four people coming in a very narrow road, you’d sort of clamp up against the mountain hoping that they don’t fall over when they pass you. You can’t imagine, you know, naturally just the first thought arising that you’d naturally step to the side to let them pass.

So he have some practice. Then as I got closer, I don’t know all the details here, he said the next thought that occurred was if they knock me I won’t hold on. Now in other words, he’s going give his life. I mean excuse me, a bit radical isn’t it? Cutting your hand off or something, a bit absurd.

But this is what happened. There he is, and he’s not being some drama queen or anything. Oh my dears, look at me, I’m about to give my life for four Sherpas. No he wasn’t doing that. He was sitting there no doubt quietly trying to help these guys pass you know and they’re sort of concentrating on their job of walking with their big packs.

And then somehow he got knocked and then indeed he was falling and he didn’t hold on. So he was falling and the whole thing this whole thing must have happened in about a half a second because his feet are on the ground, his pack is pulling him okay and he said he had a psychic vision of the complete fall. He saw his body and his mind crashed to the ground. But he’s halfway through the fall still before his feet are off the ground, and he feels these two hands very powerfully pushing him. And so he reversed direction.

Now I mean, for me that’s the bonus, the end is the bonus. The real point of the story is to show that with meditation, with practice, these very specific techniques we’re talking about, we haven’t talked about but are there in this tradition, that would enable one to literally as I’m saying deconstruct the fantasy eye and to develop this phenomenal love and compassion and this genuine appreciation of others more than oneself without a blink of the eye, Without fear. So the thing is, the way they’d say about karma, this phenomenal compassion that arose in his mind at that time to give his life for four other people, know. Strangers. Not his best friends, not his children.

People do that for their children all the time, but for strangers, excuse me. You know, that phenomenal compassion that arose was enough to, you know, to activate this what we would call a miracle for the holy beings, the Buddha, for you know, Lama Zopa, whoever to do this action, to to be there and to help him to save his life. So I mean, but the the real point for me was this one of the mind going beyond the ego. And there’s no way in the world you could cut your hand off for a starving animal. Or there’s no way in the world you could calmly, unselfconsciously give your life for others if you haven’t practiced.

This just doesn’t come out of the sky. Just like you can’t play a piece of Bach if you haven’t practiced. We all know practice makes perfect. And this again I think is where we mystify spiritual stuff to an absurd degree. Absurd degree.

Because we’ve lost the methodology. The Buddha’s got this amazing methodology. Methods are as down to earth and practical, whether they’re for enlightenment or cake making. The results, sure, they’re pretty amazing. But the methods are practical.

How to is practical, know. And that’s what Buddha’s got, these amazing practical methods to bring this marvelous result of our own bliss and our own capacity, you know, to benefit others. Maybe you can ask me some questions now if you would like to. Yep. I will.

What, my dear? Yeah, well I think the fear is the voice of ego. Ego is this sense of our so ego meaning the way to say it really is this concrete sense of I that is so just intuitive to us, but which we notice strongly when someone harms us or attacks us. You understand what I’m saying? So that when we can see the voice very loud and clear, the heart beats faster, the blood rises, eye freaking out.

Well that sense of eye is there all the time. And so fear is simply the energy of that eye. So it’s as if ego is a response to the fear. Fear is like the main energy of that eye. So it’s always a sense of protecting the eye and getting what it wants and not getting what it doesn’t want and avoiding hurting it.

Eyes is like you’re always protecting it, cherishing it most. Do you see my point? Well this is another word, this primordial ignorance is just another way of describing this I. Technically speaking, there is no such thing as this ego. In the sense that there’s not in other words, there’s Dalai Lama said one time when you do all these meditations, it’s not as if you go, you find the ego and then throw it out.

This is a loose way of talking in the West actually. But it’s more strictly speaking it’s actually this sense of I, this mistake Buddha would say it’s a mistaken sense of I that’s eons old and that its energy is fear, its energy is neediness and all the voices of it are anger, attachment, jealousy, pride and all the rest. But it’s this sense of that we carry around all the time. This is the point. And ignorance is simply the name given to particular state of mind that clings to that That’s the point.

You see. That’s the way to say it. Right. Someone else have any points to make? Yes.

I understand. Joe is saying that every time he hears emptiness, it’s true. It’s got this kind of vacuity of nothing, kind of nihilism, it’s true. Well, it’s it’s I agree. But so then obviously the point is you have to get to know what Buddha means by it.

It’s like if you hear that e equals m c squared, it sounds kind of weird and it’s got no real meaning unless you’ve studied it all. Well, the same with this one, isn’t it? And so this is why in a way tonight purposely I haven’t been saying emptiness too much. I’ve been saying when I say things like interdependence, when I say things like, you know, that’s the flip side of emptiness. It’s an affirmative way of talking about how things exist.

So okay, simply speaking then what Buddha is saying, let’s talk about it technically. Buddha is saying that everything exists in a certain way. And the simple words for things exist interdependently. This sounds kind of nice. Oh yeah, that’s kind of cute interdependent.

But he’s got real specific meaning there and we have you know, takes an immense amount of work to get what he means by that. But just saying it broadly speaking, okay? But there is this ignorance within us, this primordial ignorance that doesn’t realize that, that acts as if things are independent. So this is why quite literally there’s this Joe sitting over in that chair with his own vivid sense of self and Rabina sitting in this one her vivid sense of self. This sounds strange, but even in the long term, the overall big picture, the fact that there are separate eyes sitting in this room is a symptom, is a result of this ignorance that’s so primordial within us.

We’ve literally constructed our own individual separate independent selves. It’s a fantasy. In reality, putting it Okay, so in reality things don’t exist independently. We don’t But you see the thing is we wouldn’t think we walk around life thinking things do exist independently. We just don’t think about it.

So it seems peculiar. So what Buddha is saying is on the one hand things exist interdependently. On the other hand we think they don’t. We think they’re independent. And he’s saying that things lack that independence.

This is another word for lack is empty. That’s all. That’s another word, that’s all. Empty just means lacking. So he happened to the word emptiness.

Instead of saying the word lacking, he’s used the word emptiness. Empty. Things lack that independence that we think they have. We don’t think we think they have, and that’s why it’s hard to see the problem. So emptiness is simply meaning lacking.

So when Buddha says everything is empty, which is the shorthand way to talk, what he means is everything is lacking the kind of existence that we think everything has. That’s just the technical way to say. So what we’ve got to get our head around obviously is what he actually means by all that and that’s what practice is. But the reality is when you realize emptiness of Joe, your Joe will be as big as the universe. This is my point before what I said purposely.

When you get rid of your own, you know our own, when we get rid of our own neurotic narrow limited sense of self, when we realize emptiness, we will be as big as the universe because your sense of I now will be limitlessly connected with countless other beings. There’ll be no separate sense of self at all. One simple way of saying it. You’re saying through practice you start to experience the awareness. That’s right, precisely.

That’s exactly right. More simply, as you get rid of attachment and anger, jealousy, pride and as you grow love, compassion, patience, wisdom, so that’s what happens. That’s the inevitable result. Happiness, joy, connectedness, love, compassion. They are the inevitable results of working on the delusions, getting rid of them.

Which are the voices of I? Yeah. Yes. You mean the good parts? Yes, so what she’s saying is that as the delusions get less her virtues get strong.

You’re right, that’s exactly how it is. Is that a big discovery? No, a wonder, it is a big discovery. It is so simple, it’s embarrassing, but it’s a profound discovery. No, that is correct.

It is a profound discovery. Because that’s the point the Buddha is making. You see we think happiness is out there like a needle in a haystack that we have to find and we’re so frantically searching all the time until we die. Buddha says Hey guys, happiness is just what happens naturally as you get less attached, less angry, less jealous. So as you lessen those, just naturally love and kindness and compassion increase.

It’s just natural. So yes, it’s an amazing discovery. You mean as we call it in the West like extremely ill people, mentally very suffering people. Yes. Oh no, no, Of course it does.

It just means people got extra paranoia and extra jealousy and extra I mean, you see, karma comes into it too. We haven’t discussed that tonight, not even once. But this is a major one that the West doesn’t even factor in at all. Of course, doesn’t because there’s no view like this. You know?

We have no understanding half the time of why people are crazy. Of course there are people who are seriously crazy in this life and who never can get better in this life. That’s reasonable. That would fit with the Buddha’s view completely. So there’s two things going on here.

There is the components of the mind in terms of when the mind is suffering are called delusions. And even a person who’s completely out of their brain and what we call schizophrenic or completely locked up and on drugs and everything, you understand my point? That we just say this, if you understood their mind even in Buddhist terms you’d say an enormous amount of paranoia, a lot of anger, lot of this, not enough. Certain components of the mind not so developed and other components hugely developed called the deluded ones. So there’s massive ego there.

Therefore massive suffering. Now there’s also karma and of course there’s no talk of this among Christians, among most religions because most religions would say that you began in the womb when God made you or your mother made you, one or the other, isn’t it? Now Buddha would say that your consciousness came from before, before, before, before, from countless lives and you’re bringing all your garbage and all your good stuff with you. So a person, let’s say, past You know, for example, one of the causes for why we have even present paranoia, even vague paranoia, is from having harmed others in the past. So from a lot of harming others in the past, one of the karmic consequences of this is to be completely out of your brain with paranoia, imagining people coming at you with weapons and everything, quite literally.

Do you see my point? Now, you know, that’s just not factored on in the West at all, is it? But that’s just simply speaking a Buddhist explanation. So enormous amount of the stuff that we experience in our life is from past karma. You know, a relationship you have with a person, and you really can’t work out why it’s going bad, and you keep thinking, what have I done wrong, and what has he done wrong, and he thinks you did this, and you think he did this, in reality you’ve done nothing really, and suddenly the karma changed.

Before that was all the nice things ripening, all the good virtue from the past was ripening, so you saw him as lovely, he saw you as lovely, and he was kind, and you were kind. Then all of a sudden, without even realizing it, you think you’re going crazy, ugly things are happening. He doesn’t like you anymore, he thinks you’re doing this, and he’s accusing you of doing this. It’s past karma ripening. It’s past karmic stuff between you ripening in the present, you know?

But you can’t put your finger on it. We don’t think of that in the West. Okay, this is Buddha’s explanation. It needs a lot of thinking about it. But it explains an awful lot of things.

I’m speaking simply about it now. Stuff between countries. There’s nothing the Tibetans were doing at the time they were doing that. They were just being little monks in their monasteries and suddenly all this garbage came, you know? I mean there’s karma from a thousand lives ago.

Why it happened? That plays a major role. Do you see what I’m saying? Is it physiological at all or is just The mind isn’t physiological, but we can obviously see there are physiological things. If you’ve got a chemical imbalance, the Western medicos aren’t wrong.

There probably is a chemical imbalance, and when you take your serotonin, it balances it out. But that’s not your mind. Depression isn’t the chemical imbalance. Depression is is is what will be triggered by the chemical imbalance. So if you have a fever, you hallucinate, don’t you?

Got very sick one time, I was having all this incredible fever. I was completely hallucinating. Now that wasn’t literally the fever. The fever triggered the mind to imagine crazy things, because the mind and the body are intimately connected. This is the Buddhist way of saying it.

So you go to your Tibetan Buddhist doctor, same. He’ll diagnose, he’ll check your pulses and he’ll diagnose as too much air energy. So you’ve got all this anxiety and all this miserable and tears and everything. He’ll give you some tablets, it’ll calm the wind energy down or your anxiety will go away. The anxiety wasn’t the imbalance of the winds but they’re intimately connected.

Do you see my point? This is the Buddhist way of saying it. Do you see my point? Yeah? Roughly a little bit?

Well think about it, Think about it. I mean we don’t posit a thing that’s called mind in the West that isn’t physical. We only think of it in terms of the brain and the DNA and the genes and this and that. This is not the Buddhist way of talking at all. It doesn’t contradict the part the physical plays.

So for example with the DNA you could say that you’re born to a mother who’s got the DNA whatever it to get cancer let’s say. Now then you would say okay my mother’s fault I’ve got cancer. No, because Buddha would say due to past life karma you created the cause by certain actions you did to be born to a mother who has a DNA that causes you to have a tendency to get cancer. So you are even the cause karmically of getting that mother. So it always comes down in Buddhist terms to karma and the mind.

This is the Buddhist explanation. I mean there’s no time to talk about it. We could, if it’s at one o’clock we could talk about it. You help a person? We can all see sometimes when a person is so locked into that mode, what can you do?

There’s nothing much. But you can help by being kind and loving and give them conducive environment and the drugs that are appropriate and being sensitive to where they’re at. I mean many people can be helped hugely if you’ve got the time and compassion to do it. But most of the time we haven’t. We just lock them up and shove them with drugs and make them unconscious and hope it will all go away.

So then it may I mean you just look at the state of some of the mental places you know. It’s like God you don’t want to go insane just living in them. It’s like prisons you know. You make disgusting and ugly and violent, you’re going to get more ugly people and more violent people. You treat them like human beings and give them conducive environments and it can help an awful lot.

But it doesn’t mean a person has the potential in this life to be completely become brilliant. I mean sometimes the suffering is very strong will never stop but you can help alleviate it, can’t you? Is realizing emptiness as the means to deconstruct? The job of deconstructing is there are many delusions I’ve been saying anger, jealousy, pride, attachment, this, that, all the variations. They’re all the part of the construction.

The foundation of the construction is ignorance. So when you remove the foundation, all the others collapse. So you work away on all the others. And then the more you work away on the others the more you understand how delusions in general work. And then you can work on the more subtle one, the one that’s harder to see which is the ignorance.

And then the antidote to the ignorance is the realization of emptiness. They’ve each got their specific antidotes and that’s final one that has to go. Does that make sense? I mean ignorance generates fear and then fear continues to trigger the ignorance. You know like vicious circle, definitely.

Ignorance is the root. That’s And then just strengthens the fear and strengthens themselves, keeps deepening the foundation, deepening the roots, yes. Well, that’s the final antidote. That’s the antidote specifically to the ignorance, but the antidote to attachment is the opposite, the antidote to aversion is the opposite of it. So you apply the particular antidote to each of this, the more you identify what attachment is the more you know the antidote.

The more you know what aversion is, you know the antidote. So every time you work on those that loosens the ego. But the antidote, the specific antidote to the ego is the meditation on emptiness, is the recognition of interdependence or of emptiness. That’s the specific antidote for the ego grasping, for the root delusion, the foundation. Yes, it’s like that a bit I think.

Yeah, definitely. Because the more you work on attachment, the more it lessens your anger. The more you work on your anger, the more it lessens your attachment. The more it lessens your attachment and your anger. The more you work on that, the more it lessens your ignorance.

They all help each other, and they’ve each got their specific antidotes. And the more we get in touch with the poison, the more you can understand the antidote. Is why interesting, you know, often in Buddhism people say, Oh, Buddha goes on about suffering, can’t we talk about the nice things? It’s a bit like if you were trying to remove pollution from the water, you’ve got to get in touch with the pollution, you’ve to get your hands very dirty, you’ve got to know precisely the nature of the pollution, otherwise you’ll never find the antidote. You can’t just go on about how nice the water is.

They won’t help the pollution. You’ve got to identify the pollution. Which is why it’s pretty full on being your own therapist because you’re dealing with your garbage. So you got to have a lot of strong confidence in your own self and confidence in your own innate goodness to look at your delusions. Because if you just normally look at your delusions you just get more depressed and more miserable and more self hating you know.

So it’s extremely important to do it in a nice balanced way. Meaning the more you understand your innate potential for perfection, which is what Buddha would say, and the more you understand the goodness is at the core of your being, the more courage you get to look at the poison, to look at the pollution, to get your hands dirty, to taste the vomit. But it’s absolutely necessary, you can’t avoid it. Someone else? Okay.

Yes, go John, go for it. Well if we look, not so much, well it feeds it is a better way to say it. I think once we start looking into the mind and into these different painful diluted parts of us, right? I mean you think about attachment just a piece of delicious food. If you really look at it, I mean it’s all happened so quickly, we don’t even notice.

And we’re also polite now, we’re not like when we’re two years old wearing all our emotions on our sleeve, we’re much more polite about it. We don’t sort of rush and burst into tears when someone else takes my nice piece of cake. You know what I mean? But it’s like if you look behind that, there’s kind of a panic there. When attachment attachment’s very strong, okay let’s just get to the level of being really extreme attachment to something.

It’s panic as a thought of not getting it. I mean I know when I was really in love at some point, know. I remember particular person unbelievably, obsessively attached to this particular person. I was like a mad person in my mind. I was a mad person.

I would have done anything. And the panic that arose at the thought of not getting there on time or missing this person or him not turning up. It was like real panic. If I looked into how deep the attachment was, that’s fear. Almost like you get hysterical.

That’s fear. I mean fear, panic, know what words you like. The I threatened in other words. It’s like it’s unbearable not to it’s like the junkie mode, it’s unbearable not to have the thing. It’s unbearable to think of not getting it.

It’s horrifying. Well that’s fear, surely. Isn’t it? That’s what I’m saying. The fear is the function of the root delusion which is ignorance and the root of it all is ignorance.

That’s the root of all of it. And fear is the primal, is the energy of that one. But then fear is just below the surface of all the delusions. So when you look at anger, it’s like panic at this thing that I just can’t stand. I have to make it go away.

That’s fear beneath it. Fear is beneath jealousy. Fear is beneath attachment. Fear is the the heart. And fear is another word almost for ego grasping.

It’s I. I. Absolutely. Yeah, good, absolutely. Absolutely, good point.

Yeah, the afraid eye, low self esteem eye, what would you say, what else one? The self defeating. You will see this is the irony of ego is that where as my mother would always tell me Bobs she’d say, she’d call me Bobsie, Bobsie she’d say your own worst enemy. And so actually when we look at these different aspects of ego, like I said before attachment is low self esteem. The more I’m needy for something the less I think I’m worthy.

This is sort of obvious. So so I go with the strong ones like anger, attachment, jealousy, pride and so on. But you’ve also got the low self esteem, the depression. Low self esteem is the flip side of pride. Now this seems scary because if we’ve got low self esteem we might recognize it, we might never think we have pride.

But it’s kind of interesting. So is pride then? The way Buddhism would talk. It’s this, you know, an inflated sense of your importance. Now we mightn’t think we have that because we sort of tend to think of an arrogant person and I’m not arrogant we’ll think.

But it’s very sneaky one and we have it quite a lot you know, very quietly but it’s there. Now the moment that’s thwarted, then that’s low self esteem. So it’s either, Oh, I’m so special. Even slightly or even wanting to be, and then immediately crushed when we meet a person who’s better. That’s low self esteem.

So they really go together. So you look at a very proud person and they meet a person who is definitely better than they are. They have very strong low self esteem after that, but it sort of becomes very resentful though. So if it’s mixed with anger, it might look so much like what we think of as sad, poor me, low self esteem. Because some person who has low self esteem might not have much aversion, anger.

So if you get anger and pride together, you’ve a very volatile person, very arrogant person, very harmful to others. But you’ve a person who’s got low self esteem, which is the flip side of pride, but doesn’t have much anger. So they’re bit mousy. They’re a more mousy kind of person. So that’s the kind of person we would think of as kind of insecure and like that.

And that can also be mixed with humility which is a good quality. So there’s always mixes like recipes, they’re so complex. We’re all our own recipe. So again the characteristic, like let’s say in a group of people you have two people who are say gorgeous, it’s the quality that they both share to be looking gorgeous let’s say. And one of them has a lot of pride, arrogance, and one has a good quality which is really what we can mix up with pride but is confidence in themselves.

Now that person who’s got confidence would also be very humble. That means they’d be delighted to meet a person who’s better than they are and very open to learning from that person. Whereas the proud person will be walking around very fearful of finding a person who’s better than they are. And why are you fearful? Because you don’t want to feel like you’re the worst.

You need to be reaffirmed by others that you’re important. You’re kind of walking around wanting others to say you’re the best and constantly worried you’re going find someone else who’s better. But the confident person is self consciously confident, delighted in who they are, content with it, and therefore the space to appreciate others, therefore humble. So they could look similar, but the difference is the proud one is coming from the neurotic eye again, and then you that person, the proud person to meet the other one who’s even better than they are, and they’re going go crashing down and get depressed. That’s low self-esteem, isn’t it?

And then maybe because they’ve got attachment, they’ll manipulate to harm the other person or to make sure they win or something. You see my point? Which comes from pride. But low self esteem is like pride is you’re looking in the mirror and saying, Oh, aren’t I important? And low self esteem is looking in the mirror and saying, Oh, aren’t I ugly?

They’re both a symptom. The symptom is the eye. And one is a bad picture and one is a They’re both inflations of the truth. This is the distinguishing characteristic of all the delusions. They’re an inflation of the truth.

So low self esteem and self hate and guilt are inflations of the truth. You’re not that bad. But you know those particular qualities say I am so terrible, I am so bad, I am hopeless, I am no good. And that’s what suffering is. And it’s the same as saying I am important, I am so special, and how dare you?

So the difference is a person with arrogance and pride and anger harms others as well as themself. A person with low self esteem and depression only probably harms themself. Do you see my point? So that’s one reason to be grateful is not out there. But often with depression and low self esteem you don’t notice, you can’t see it.

It’s all dark and hidden and concrete and put away. Whereas anger, I can never deny in my life that my anger was clear, it was volatile, was out my mouth in three seconds. Whereas one of my sisters had a lot of depression. So it took her longer to recognize it as having the same characteristic which was aversion. But she was the object of the aversion.

And so you know loneliness is something, the truth is really strong for most people. That’s a direct consequence of attachment. Loneliness because you don’t think you’re worthy. Why are we lonely? Because we don’t think we’re worthy just on our own.

In other words, someone has to love us to make us feel that we’re a real human being. I mean it’s quite shocking if you think about it. We just think it’s so normal. I remember reading in the news now about Nancy Reagan not criticizing, just observing how we all talk. And her friend Betsy Bloomingdale, her best friend.

If you read all the news you always know that Betsy Bloomingdale is Nancy Reagan’s best friend. They’ve been a friend for fifty years, And she said that the saddest thing for Nancy was that she had nothing, she was just alone in that house with this empty shell. Because poor old Ronnie was, you know, with his Alzheimer’s. So she had nothing to share with him. So she wanted to laugh in front of the television at some joke and turn and share it, and she couldn’t.

So that was the saddest thing in her whole life. Now that’s how we think of life. We think unless you share it with somebody you’re worthless. Mean that, I’m sorry, is an awful view to have. I mean we have everything that we are is inside here.

We have phenomenal potential. A person, the Buddha would say, who’s achieved that potential even a little bit is a very content person and would not possibly be lonely. Impossible to be lonely. You’d be completely happy to have your own experiences and watch television and laugh at your own jokes. You wouldn’t mind you couldn’t share them with somebody else.

Because you check how we are, you’re even driving on the road and you see something unusual, even before you finish seeing it you’re already in your mind telling somebody. Now if you’ve got no one to tell, you feel lonely. This is just called attachment. We don’t give ourselves any validity unless someone else is there holding us up. You must be a worthwhile person to be, I’m next to you.

But the sad part is that person also has no self esteem either, so here’s a person who doesn’t like themselves and here’s me not liking myself and we’re both trying to hold each other up. I mean no wonder our relationships are so depressing. You can see my point anyway. I mean isn’t it? I mean my nephew, it’s interesting when he was he made a film about me and anyway when he was traveling with me when was nineteen.

And he said at the end of it, he said, Rabina, I have to say I find your life really depressing. Because you know I travel all over the world, everybody says it sounds so exciting. Travel all over world, meet all these thousands of people and going here and going there and airplanes and all this and all that. And he said, Rabina, actually you’re really depressing. He said, You don’t seem to have one particular friend.

You don’t seem to have a house. So what makes you happy? He said, I just don’t know. I’m not trying to say I’m so happy but it was a very important point he made. It was a really clear point.

He couldn’t because I didn’t have a person that I went home to and shared my life with. He’s a cancer, that must be the reason. I’m saying it’s cherry blossom. I think anyway, five years later when I saw him recently in Melbourne he said, Robina, I think I understand you a bit better now he said. He’s trying to get up his own attachment to girlfriends.

Anyway, we’re communicating right? You, we’re communicating? Communicating? Okay. Any more questions people?

Yeah, go on. What is the root of compassion? That’s a good point. Love Buddhism would say is may you be happy. And it grows and grows into this enormous affection, you know, that I would have for you if I had that truly.

Compassion is, May you not suffer. This is the way Buddhism describes it. So they’re like, again they’re like flip sides of the coin. So compassion in me would be seeing your suffering and wanting you not to have it. And then if I really develop that compassion, it will be a strong wish that it’s my job to take it away from you and be a sense of responsibility.

And love is the joy and affection that I would feel and wants you to be happy. And we can see they come together, you know. That’s the way Buddhism would talk. Does that answer your question or is it more than that? Well I can’t say I’ve got much compassion, it just sort of happened.

No, mean well, just speaking practically, there’s this guy who wrote, this young Mexican guy wrote. And all I could do was see that he was quite sincere. And there he was, he wrote a letter, and I got the letter, so I answered it eventually, it took me a few months, and sent him a book. And then he wrote back and said he was delighted and loved it and fantastic and would you visit? And then a friend wrote and sort of just kind of I mean, yeah, a practical sense I saw that these human beings who didn’t seem to have much means were sincere, wanted what I had.

And like to, I’m arrogant I suppose, I like to go blah blah and give people what I have that I find. That if someone likes what you’ve got and you want to share it, and I’m happy to share it. So I know it just kind of I suppose it’s yeah, I mean you can say it’s okay. Empathy, when you work on your own mind, certainly for myself anyway, okay. In my own life lots of anger, of volatile, lots of energy, lots of crazy energy, right.

So for sure this Buddhist approach of trying to work on my own mind I find very appealing and I find it effective. So then that help can’t help but open me up a little bit to see that others are in that boat as well. So all these guys riding from prison who’ve got lots of violence and have killed people and been in gangs. I mean, so my heart reached out somehow. I thought wow, have great appreciation especially people living in a horrible situation who are working on the same parts of themselves.

So it was really for me very appealing. I have great respect and great affection for anyone is trying to work on their own mind. I think that’s speaking in a practical way. So that is the point I think. The more you work on, I’m not saying me done much, but the more you work on your own mind, the more content you become, naturally the more connected to others you become.

So I can see for myself if I’m full of all the new needs and you’re worried and had a job and mortgages and husbands and children and dramas and jealousy and the usual garbage, excuse me with respect, not garbage, you’ve got very worthwhile lives. You understand my point? What time would I have? Mean especially if you have children, the world supports that you give all your love and all your affection to your children and you almost you’d be criticized for giving it to too many other people because you’re taking it away from your children. And I’m not trying to sound so holy, but I remember at some point when I was a bit of an old communist or something, I forget what I was, one of those things back early when I was in the, you know, radical politics.

And I remember I was all into this happiness like everybody else in all these relationships with all these blokes, and just having lots of suffering in my relationship because I’m a bit volatile. And it was just but it always just seemed it always just seemed enormously suffering, almost so much jealousy and so much drama and he wouldn’t come and worrying. I couldn’t stand the pain, it was almost too much for me. I couldn’t understand how anybody could stick around in relationships and have all these arguments and come to me in tears and talk about their friends. I kept thinking, why do you stay around?

I really thought for myself. People then felt very sorry for me. Actually my family felt so sorry for me. But I remember thinking that the suffering that came with the happiness didn’t make the happiness worthwhile. It wasn’t worth it.

So I remember making some decision and maybe there’s something, it must be some monastic karma I have. So I remember very consciously when I was very involved in doing all this political stuff and all sounding all feeling all so noble and everything trying to save the world. Remember thinking a conscious moment. I said to myself, I’m giving up sex. I can’t stand all these relationships, you know.

And then I thought I’d rather give myself it sounds so noble I know but I’m telling you what happened. I said to myself, I’d rather I don’t want to give myself just to one person, I want to give myself to everybody I thought. So this has been my life. I’m not trying to saga myself to everybody, it’s just something that occurred to me that works for me in this life. What can I tell you?

And I get enormous pleasure from it, I mean all these handsome boys in prison you know. I’ve got a lot of young men friends. It’s very funny. So I don’t know. There you go.

What can I say? But I really have to say I think I appreciate anybody who’s working on their mind. I have such respect. And in a way the more crazy you are, the harder you work. I mean there’s one guy and I talk about him in our magazine, we haven’t got enough copies to give everybody.

But there’s this one guy called Ritchie and his gang gang name is silent death. He’s a Mexican. He’s killed three people, think, in prison at least, not to mention some on the street. Anyway, he’s been he’s in forty something and he’s got definitely life. There’s no way he’s going to see the streets ever again.

And he gave up the gangs and now he’s on every second person’s hit list because if you give up the gangs you’re a snitch, you’re a complete disaster. So he’s given up gangs. He’s always fighting. He’s got incredible anger this guy. And I’ve known him for eight years, six years now.

And he told me in his first letter about his anger. Anyway, I went to visit him. It was up in Pelican Bay. And it was in between glass, two hour visit. And I remember joking, I said to him, How’s your anger?

And he kind of blushed under his tattoos, mean covered in tats, With his gang name everywhere as they do. Tears on his face, tattoos. So I remember he kind of blushed, said Oh Robina, I had a fight with my cellmate this morning. He said I put his head down the toilet. And then he said, but I took it out again.

So I thought, I nearly was in tears, I thought that’s amazing you know progress in spiritual practice is relative. He’s killed three people, he’s in prison for life, he fights every second person and he didn’t kill another person. I couldn’t help but be so happy but even now I think about it makes me happy you know. Now that’s progress, that’s amazing. Give me him any day than some little wimpy person who doesn’t do anything good or bad.

You understand, there’s some energy there you know and that’s amazing. Wow. So there’s so many people I know in prison who are like this. But then what he did, had the guy thrown out and then he sat down and did his Tārā meditation, he loves Tārā. There you go.

He’s still alive, he hasn’t not been killed, he hasn’t been shot, stabbed yet. Stabbing each other all the time on the yards. Yeah, so what else people? Is it time to go do you think at nine thirty? I think it probably is, isn’t it?

Oh, right. Isn’t Effie here? So the cards and stuff? We’ll do a commercial okay. Every year we do a pilgrimage to the holy places in India and Nepal connected to the Buddha, right, when he got enlightened, died, born, all that.

And it raises money for our prison project, gives us nearly a month budget. So, if you’ve ever thought of going to India and Nepal, and it’s really good to go to a lot of these places with a group because they’re so isolated, but they’re very marvelous, very special. People just have a marvelous time. I’m always amazed, you know, because I lead it. And about a month, of mid October to mid November and it’s we’re doing one again this year and so few places left still.

So what will we do? Got a list out there to sign? Where is it? Well Katie will be at the table right here and if you have any questions about the pilgrimage she will answer them for you and she’ll show you where you can put your name and address. And then Effie who’s very kind who lives in San Francisco who runs it for us, she will send you information.

But even if you’ve only even vaguely thought about it, worry, put your name and address there or whatever. Because it’s a very special experience actually. It’s wonderful. We go to Kathmandu first, go to Kopan Monastery, do a course there. Then we go to Lumbini where Buddha got born and we meet at Vaishali, India.

And then we go to Shravasti where he did all his rains retreats. Very special there, very beautiful place. Then we go to Kushinagar where he passed away. Then we go to Varanasi which is one of the oldest cities in the world, think, five thousand years old. And then near there is Saranath where Buddha taught the four noble truths.

And then we go to Bodh Gaya where he became enlightened and then we go to Rajgir where he taught the Vulture Peak where he taught the Heart Sūtra. It’s really amazing actually. I love to go, can’t imagine. Fourth one this year. So there you go, that’s my commercial.

Yeah, a number people have gone on them. So Katie has been one and then you’ve been another, there she is, look. So you can stand down by the table and you can give your testimonials. And Lynn, yeah that’s three at least. Well, okey doke, that’s it isn’t it?

We’re done. This is it until when? When am I, next time? End of September. September.

So I’ll see you all in September. What’s happening next? Thursday? Oh, Land of Medicine Buddha on Thursday night, yes sure. Okay, so thank you everybody very much.

And we finished, gone like a dream. He would have been two hours and as Buddha would put it, as many thoughts as we’ve all had each of us in this room tonight sussing these things out, listening, thinking, contemplating is as many seeds each one of us has planted. Because Buddha would say every single thought is a seed. In fact every sixty, they say sixty four in one snap. So there’s millions of seeds each of us has planted.

So everything we do think does count. We’re moving ourselves forward step by step. No reason to be depressed, Every reason to rejoice. So we’ve just done two hours of gardening, how amazing. So we think, we rejoice in this.

And then all these seeds we planted, we think, may they ripen in just the way we motivated in the development of our amazing potential so that we really can be of benefit to all beings. Beings. And so therefore this reason, think you’re not the same person that walked in two hours ago, this concrete me that walked in, you’re a very different person. There’s many seeds in your mind now that weren’t there two hours ago. And therefore already you’re molding yourself into a different person.

So how fantastic. And the second little prayer we can sing is just making the aspiration, the compassion, grow and grow in the hearts of all beings.