y Public Talks — z public talk July 31

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

About this talk. In this 89-minute talk, Ven Robina Courtin teaches that suffering arises not from external events but from how our mind interprets them—and that stabilizing the mind is the foundation for genuine compassion, not an escape from it. She contrasts Buddhist psychology with Western therapy: while conventional approaches search the past for external causes, Buddha focuses on present thoughts and viewpoints as the prime drivers of experience. Using vivid examples—particularly a woman imprisoned on death row who refused to let rage destroy her mind—Courtin argues we cannot always change the world, but can change our response to it. She explores attachment, low self-esteem, and the desperate need for others’ approval as the deepest sources of suffering, arguing these are removable, not essential to who we are. The Q&A addresses practical obstacles: guilt about not doing formal retreat, how to sit with difficult emotions without being controlled by them, and why perfectionist fantasies about a peaceful world are themselves delusion.

File metadata (for organising)

File: z public talk July 31.mp3

UUID: a2e6465b-51f7-4703-a86b-addba271b879

Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin

Collection: y Public Talks (Ven Robina Courtin)

Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide

Duration: 89.5 minutes

Words: ~16,755

Good evening. I on behalf of Buddha House, I’d like to welcome everybody here. Some of you, of course, know of Venerable Robina. Those of you who don’t are in for a very entertaining evening. Needless to say, she’s a very wise woman.

She’s a nun who’s been ordained for almost forty years, Robina, and she’ll probably fit you in on a bit of her life as she talks. But she’s she’s got a a teaching attitude that I think is very refreshing for us in the West. You know, I often think of Buddhists as sitting down quietly and being very peaceful. Well, that’s not happening tonight. Robina is much loved by us.

She’s been to Adelaide many times before. She’s achieved some incredible things in her life other than, you know, being an incredible teacher. She’s been the editor of, Wisdom Publications, mandala Magazine, and also she helped to found the liberation prison project, which she she may weave some of those stories into her talk tonight. I’m not gonna spend any more time introducing her. Please enjoy, and thank you so much for coming, Robina.

Okay. So I’m gonna start with this little prayer. I mean, I always like to say, don’t start feeling all holy just because I say the word prayer. Actually, the Buddhist view of your prayers, like, it’s almost it’s like thoughts, aspirations, wishes, you know? May this, may that.

It’s positive thoughts. So this little prayer is got two parts. The first two lines may be relevant to anybody in the room who kind of identifies with being a Buddhist, and it’s reiterating our reliance on the Buddha and his teachings and so on. And the second two lines can be for all of us, and it’s really this expressing an altruistic reason or goal or a purpose for being here together to listen to these viewpoints, they’re Buddha’s viewpoints, Buddha’s, you know, experiential, observations about happiness, suffering, the mind, these things. All the questions, you know, all the things we think about.

His observations about them. And the reason to this is to see if there’s some tools there. It should be practical. You know? If this were cooking class and I raved on about how nice cakes are, if it never gave you one recipe, I think you’d go away disappointed.

So the aim is to have some tools. You might not want the tools, that’s okay because you’re the boss, not Buddha. But to listen to it with that attitude, if there’s some practical advice. So for what? What purpose?

Well, to develop even a tiny part of what for the Buddha is our incredible, incredible potential for, you know, for for less neurosis, less fear, less jealousy, less depression, more kindness, more wisdom, more courage, more self confidence. This is essentially what Buddha’s deal is, you know, how to develop our own humanity. So the tools are from this to help us develop that, but then because as the Buddha would say, a bird needs two wings, wisdom and compassion, and this is the first wing, how to put yourself together, then you start to realize we’re all in the same boat. We all live together in this insane world, you know. And so we need to so for the sake of others as well, because we’re very social beings, we live with creatures, we live with humans.

So to listen to for some tools to help us become better people so we can help others. Basically that that’s what’s being expressed in this little prayer. So how to stay sane in a crazy world? Well, it’s not easy, frankly, is it? You know?

And so, of course, we’re all gonna have different we’ll have different reasons. Every one of us in the room would have a different reason about why it’s hard to deal with life or why, know, life is difficult, what the reasons are. But probably we’d all agree, instinctively we tend you know, we’d all agree that it’s something out there that’s the reason why life is difficult. You The uncontrolled kids, the partner who doesn’t leave the dishes, the red lights, the ache in the knee, the noise. There’s always something, and it’s pretty spontaneous.

We don’t have to make that up. It’s fairly evident, know. As soon as all the outside world gets too unruly, then we kind of we seem to not be able to stay stable by being in a storm, isn’t it? So naturally then, if we think it’s the outside world that’s the problem, we try to fix the outside world. But we can see very clearly.

We just can’t sometimes. It’s a fact, you know? I mean, husband, you can you can leave the lousy boss, but often even then we sort of feel so paralyzed we don’t think we can. But still we all know that if we we know you could fix one problem and then another one will come because the outside world is very unstable. You know, things go wrong all the time no matter how hard we try to make it all perfect.

I mean, we kind of know this. This is not some religious idea. It’s kind of scientific fact, you know. So but also so what Buddha proposes, which is also he doesn’t own it. He doesn’t make it up.

He’s not a creator. You know, his deal Buddha’s expertise is the human mind, actually. It might be surprising to us because we think of it as a religion. You know? I just sang a prayer.

Sounds like religion. But the Buddha’s expertise is actually his mind the mind the mind and how it works. And his deal is, very simple, we all know it, kind of vaguely, that if you change here, you pay attention to what’s going on between our ears, your thoughts and feelings and emotions, you’ll notice this this is the stuff that’s really not stable. You know, you know very well one day you wake up the world, you know, it’s raining and you feel you don’t feel so bad, feel quite perky and the rain doesn’t bother you. Next day you wake up it’s still raining, you feel really depressed.

So we can’t blame the rain. One day you’re feeling perky driving down the road and the red lights come, but you don’t mind. Next day, even if the green lights come, you’re feeling miserable. So we can sort of see that it’s the mind, our thoughts and feelings and emotions and attitudes that don’t seem so stable. But then the trouble is, I think, we then go, well, that’s normal.

I mean, we’ve amazing psychotherapy these days since mister Freud and his his mob came along. We’ve got marvelous techniques to helping us know our minds and understand our minds. And maybe and so, like, just, you know, as we know recently, there were these these among all the neuroscientists, one of the greatest findings of the twentieth century, one of these scientists said, was this fact that they now prove to be a fact that you’re not stuck with the brain you’re born with. This, you know, neuroplasticity. Well, I’m very happy that we finally found out in the twentieth century that you can change your mind.

And that’s really Buddha’s deal. Like I said, he doesn’t own this. He’s not a creator. He didn’t make this up. He’s observed this to be so.

So just sort of to remind us then, where does this mister Buddha come from? What is he? Well, he came out in this amazing Hindu tradition. It was the Dalai Lama I was reading recently that really struck me, you know. It was these Hindus, these Indians more than three thousand years ago who are the ones who who were invent who really got deeply, who were the ones who began the extraordinary investigation into the nature of self.

That was their expert that was their expertise, and it was they who came up with these incredibly sophisticated psychological techniques called meditation, which means somehow mystifies some weird wacko strange event, you know. But then there’s this particular one that’s still around the world today and more and more more and more prevalent called mindfulness. There’s lots of understandings of that, but essentially it’s coming from this extraordinary technique that these amazing thinkers more than three thousand years ago came up with, you know, which is this extraordinary it’s it’s it is a psychological technique, and we don’t think meditation is that. Buddha doesn’t talk about a soul or a spirit, he talks about the mind, but he’s got or they use the word also consciousness. So he came out of this tradition.

They were the ones who came up with this technique that enables a person and it takes immense discipline and a long time, but it’s attainable by anybody. This it it gives us the capability of focusing the mind to a stunning degree of subtlety. So the Buddha came out of this, and this technique is one of the crucial techniques he uses. Anybody who is a Buddhist is using, but it’s got this purpose. But the point is this they they they basically, you know, investigated and discovered subtler, more refined levels of our own consciousness, our mind, our thoughts, our feelings at a much subtler level.

If you were to see a person who’d accomplish what they call single point of concentration, this this technique that stayed intact since these people three thousand years ago, they would look like they were dead. So of course it doesn’t fit with our materialist view. There’s no way because the mind equals the brain in our culture, but not for the Buddha and certainly not back to these people. So Buddha came out of that tradition, this extraordinary rigorous investigation of of the very nature of a person, the mind, the consciousness, the and discovering what this self, what is what is it what what are who are we? What are we?

Where do we come from? What is our purpose? I mean, is a big question we all ask, the scientists ask, but these days, the philosophers, the psychologists used to, the religious people. And that’s why for me I really never criticize any religion. I think it’s amazing that anybody should even think about the meaning of life.

You want to call it God? Go ahead. Call it whatever. But I really respect anybody who thinks about these types of things. So Buddha came out of those Hindus, you know, two and a half thousand years ago, he was he appeared on the earth.

And then he diverged in his own direction about in in relation precisely to this idea of what actually is a person. Who am I? What is an I, a self, a person? What are our qualities? And crucially, what’s our potential, you know?

So Buddha’s deal is that we we’ve got this potential, and it’s not complicated to say it, it’s just that it’s so utterly radically different from what we think in our world that we can’t almost hear it, you know? His own findings or his own experience are that we have the potential. Every mind possessor, the term that’s often translated into English from the Sanskrit and the Tibetan language as sentient being, Tibetan word for it’s wonderful, it’s mind possessor. Every mind possessor just naturally, by virtue of being a mind possessor, just naturally possess the potential to rid the mind utterly of all neuroses. The low self esteem, the fears, the dramas, the anger, the depression, the jealousy, the stuff that we are utterly familiar with and which in our culture we utterly take for granted and assume are normal.

In fact, we assume they’re so normal that you’d be abnormal if you didn’t have them. The Buddhist findings is no. They’re you know, the term in Buddhist psychology is that they’re adventitious. I mean you know, get your dictionary out for that one. It means they’re not at the core of our being.

They’re like unnecessary bells and whistles. So this alone is a shocking concept, completely not fitting with how we think. And not only that, we can fully develop all the good stuff. We know the words compassion, wisdom, empathy, you know, kindness, forgiveness, these things. We know these words backwards.

And so in our culture, I think we take it as a given that know, we give equal status to all of these. In Buddhist psychology, they’re referred to as negative states of mind and positive states of mind. They’re technical terms, not moralistic ones. Don’t mishear that. I’ll describe, you know.

But the Buddha’s finding is that we can develop this astonishing potential of goodness and wisdom and clarity and rid the mind of the other rubbish. That’s the meaning of this word nirvana. nirvana’s not someplace like heaven, believe me. It’s a state of a person’s mind having accomplished this. So it’s way out about, you know, that’s not how we think.

If you want to use a therapist and they come and ask you for some methods please to get rid of all ego, all fears, all neurosis, all jealousy, all depression and develop infinite love for compassion for all beings all the time, you’ll think I’m seriously mentally ill. Not kidding. Because that’s not our view, is it? So it’s quite a different way to talk, you know. And because, you know, when we read Buddhism, we usually put the religious hat on or mystical hat, assuming that because, let’s say, Buddha talks about past and future lives, then we assume that’s a belief, we assume it’s not provable and not knowable, so we become we kind of lose the plot a bit, we get lose all our common sense and not hear the word simply.

And also I think because, you know, first of all, I mean, I’m I’m a product of the Tibetan system, this marvelous Tibetan monastic university system that’s been in Tibet since well, since they first came there from India, the sixth or seventh century seventh century, eighth century. And then, you know, coming from the great tradition too in back in India. But because there’s such respect for the tradition, like in any of our traditions, you know, that you you you know, you you can’t you don’t just reinvent the wheel every time. You you hear what you heard from the previous masters and you repeat the words and and use the right terminology. Like, I’m studying Bach, I know it doesn’t make up what I think Bach says, I try to really get clear exactly what he meant four hundred years ago, five hundred years ago, you know.

So there’s immense respect for the tradition, but because of this, coming to our culture, which is profoundly different the way we frame things and think, that as soon as we hear the words, we mystify it, you know. Like, the first teachings I heard from a Tibetan Buddhist, you know, Lama Zopa, who’s the boss of this organization that I’m part of, my teacher. I sat there for one month completely gobsmacked. I heard his words, but it was this arcane medieval language constructs, you know. So I remember then they said that using the Buddha’s idea, don’t just believe what you hear, check it out, listen to it.

And I really knew I liked one part of me liked what I heard, but the other part was just was just beyond me. So I knew I had to really think it through, try to unpack it and unravel it, you know, to get to see if there’s anything universal there. Because if it were only Tibetan Buddhists or only for Tibetan people or only Asian people, what on earth was I doing there? So, you know, so here I am all these years later and feeling it’s really feeling important to unpack and unravel these concepts. Not just make up your own ideal, which I think is a very common thing.

There’s a lot of rubbish published, I think, about Buddhism, but to really put it in universal terms. And so the essence of being a Buddhist, you could say beyond all that and apart from all that the essence of it is this point about the mind. Buddhists deal about what our potential is, what our potential is, what the mind’s potential is. So therefore these techniques in Buddhism are about learning as one of our teachers, Lama Yeshe, says learning to be your own therapist, learning to be your own Learning to be your own psychologist. Sounds like a marketing ploy.

It is, but it’s correct. It’s perfect, you know. But that’s not an easy job, somehow. And one of the that means learning to become in a very precise, disciplined way, in a very focused way, familiar with the contents of our own mind. So, of course, because, you know, therapies psychotherapy, since mister Freud, is extraordinary investigating, talking things through, working out feelings, unpacking things is marvelous.

It’s really common in our culture now. But still, you know, the Buddhist view even still, we there’s an approach, for example, in our culture because the assumption is that I’ve come from my mother and father, you know, you are either created by your mommy and daddy, aren’t you created by a creator in the the world that are these two main options, that you’re the product, you’re the handiwork of mommy and daddy. So then naturally or by then, and I’m the product of my events and people’s behavior, We have a very strong emphasis in our culture, don’t we, on the outside world, like I said before. So when things are going wrong in here and having panic attacks and depression and anxiety or anger, we naturally want to look out there to try and find the source of it, sort of like a needle in a haystack way back somewhere. Nothing wrong with looking into past events.

Buddha wouldn’t disagree. But the Buddhist approach almost kind of always seems naive, always seems too simple. It says look into the past, look at what your mother did, your father did, it can help you learn to know about yourself. But he says the mind is its own self. It’s got its own entity.

Your thoughts themselves are what we have to learn to investigate. The thoughts themselves. So this means, you know, the Buddha’s view is very interesting. Right now we, you know, we notice for example, in my life, anger was my second name. Believe me.

I got born with it. My mother didn’t have to teach me. I had perfected it. And we can see this. We’ve all got these tendencies since we’re little kids.

Right? So if I’d heard what Buddha said back then that, Robina, your anger is a is a series of conceptual thoughts, I would have laughed at his face. As far as I was concerned, in much of my life, anger is this explosive emotion, you know. If you see a person in the in in the midst of an angry fit, you see the body is shaking, the heart is racing, the blood is heated up, the tears are coming out the eyes, the eyes are wide, the mouth is, you know, spitting out spit as well as irrational words. That’s what we mean by anger or indeed many of our emotions, you know, if you’re a person who internalizes, you won’t know you’re depressed depressed until you can’t get out of bed one morning.

So we you know, because maybe still we’re not brought up with techniques that enable us to notice our thoughts and to realize that they are the prime players in this life, the main things, not the external events, which is a bit of a shock to us, then we give immense emphasis to it. We’ve learned the ability to listen to the thoughts, but beneath the emotions. One of the skills, you know, this meditation technique in Buddhism that anyone can do, I mean, communist can do it, it’s not religious in any way, is a practical skill where you learn to focus. Even if you start with two minutes in the morning, you sit there instead of the second you wake up already the thoughts of yesterday, the dreams and the dramas racing ahead. You sit there for a couple of minutes, steady yourself, have a couple of deep breaths, I mean, special about that, and you you watch maybe you focus on something, two or three minutes, meaning for two or three minutes you consciously don’t follow the constant streams of thoughts.

You simply don’t follow them. You do your best not to follow. One of the immediate benefits of this is you can’t help but notice them. In other words, you’re learning to be introspective in an intelligent, focused way, not just in a in a you know, not in a weird, strange way. So then what happens is you bring the skill to bear in your daily life and when you’re driving along the road, not caught up, you know, unconsciously in the worries and the fears or chatting away, and then out of the blue you freak out because the car leaps in front of you.

But if you’ve learned to notice your thoughts and what’s going on, be equally aware of what’s here as well as what’s there, then you’re prepared for the red light, you’re prepared for the car, and you have control over what goes on here because you you learn to listen to all the conceptual elaborate stories that that inform inform the emotion when it hits the body. So you’re able to get it, and this takes time. You’re able to get to the thought processes that inform the emotion. Because all the emotions this is clear. Again, Buddha doesn’t he didn’t invent this, but if we analyze this, a cognitive behavioral therapist talked like this.

I mean, Buddha is your best cognitive behavioral therapist, believe me. That’s the approach. No. So if we can change the way we think, which is at the deepest level, thinking for the Buddha is at the subtlest level, the way beyond what we think of as thinking. And it’s deeply instinctive within us that we program so much, we program with it.

So to unpack and unravel that programming is really the job. But it’s a long term job, you know? No magic overnight. So slowly, what comes from this is like some confidence that I can learn to know and eventually harness and work with and reconfigure my own thoughts that we’re not set in stone. You know?

I mean, it sounds easy words, but the feeling is that we are set in stone. I mean, didn’t I didn’t have to be taught to be angry. It was completely spontaneous. So the way Buddha talks about the Buddhist model of the mind is kind of interesting. On the face of it, quite simple.

You know, they talk about we’ve got this sensory consciousness. This is already interesting, you know, the way the mind works according to the Buddhist model. And it’s taught, you know, it’s studied extensively in the literature, that you’ve got your sensory consciousness. The words mind and consciousness in Buddhism are virtually synonymous. But you’ve got your sensory consciousness, which precisely is that part of your mind.

And for the Buddha, mind is not the brain. He’s not arguing that you don’t have a brain, but he’s not talking about the brain. You ask the great Tibetan meditator who’s been up in the mountains the last fifty years and hasn’t had any contact with Westerners, you ask him where his brain is, he won’t know. Never heard of such a thing. But I tell you, he knows his mind intimately and well.

So the Buddhist view is your mind is not your brain. So we take that as our hypothesis here, okay? So consciousness or mind, they’re virtually synonymous. So the part of a mind that functions through the medium of the eyeball, the eardrum, the skin, the nose, blah blah, that’s your sensory consciousness. But it’s already very telling, the way the Buddha will talk about how the mind works.

So, you know, let’s say, I look at that and I’ll go to you, well, that’s a pretty cup, isn’t it? You know? So the assumption, assumption, of course, is that my eye consciousness is con cognizing a pretty cup. Well, Buddha says not like that. No.

Eye consciousness has is capable of cognizing only two things. It’s extremely limited in its capacity for cognition. It cognizes shape and color. So where does a pretty come from come from? Well, this is the point, Buddha’s point.

It’s kind of interesting. The, you know, the millisecond my eyes lay lay themselves on that, instantaneously, and it’s a great a great analogy, quicker than Google, my mental consciousness is accessed. And this is where the workshop is as well as the storehouse. This is where everything that ever and the Buddha would say everything any sentient being sees, hears, experiences through the senses and thinks about is stored away there. Again, we’re not talking about the brain.

It’s stored in our mind. It’s locked away in there. It’s stored there. So we can see, I’ve obviously cultivated certain views in this life about, you know, I’ve learned it’s a cup. I’ve learned it my view of what pretty is, you know.

So a pretty cup is not the object of my senses. Handsome friend who is the cause of all my happiness is not the object of my eye consciousness. It’s a story. This is Buddha’s deal. We can see it.

It’s a it’s a it’s a story. It’s a viewpoint that I’ve cultivated. And this is the point in the Buddha’s view about the mental consciousness. Everything in there, all the theories, all the concepts, all the musical thoughts, the mathematical thoughts, you know, all the thoughts about who I am, what I think, all the thoughts about what’s ugly, what’s good, whether the Sydney Swans are better than oh, we’re playing an Adelaide next week. This week?

Aren’t we? Oh, you’re not. Don’t you know football, you people? I’m not in I play in Adelaide. Well, we’re playing here this week.

You don’t even know. You’re gonna you’re too Gucci’s not coming. You know who I’m talking about, do you? Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. Anyway, he’s not coming. No. He’s not coming. Anyway, back to he’s sulking.

You see, already you want a blue good zee. See, look, he’s already an anti good zee. Wow. Story made up in our minds. So Buddha is saying this, whatever is in here, whatever words come out their mouth, they are this is so fascinating.

They are viewpoints. They’re opinions. And that includes anger. So listen to anger. If I wrote it down, you transcribe me having an angry fit, and you wrote down the words.

First, you’d know immediately there’s anger. You can’t hear the shouting, but you can deduce that there’s an angry person. What what are you reading there? This elaborate presentation, this view, this description of that wretched person, who he is, how dare he do that, he is the cause of all my suffering, you know, all these things. They’re viewpoints.

You can’t say it’s not, you know. It’s very interesting. They’re viewpoints. And Buddha’s deal is some of the viewpoints in our mind are valid viewpoints. They’re in sync with reality.

And he would say the virtuous viewpoints, compassion, kindness, love, these things. He says they’re relatively related to reality. He talks about reality as being things everything’s interdependent. I mean, there’s a whole lot of stuff there. And then the other stuff, the viewpoints of all the neurotic states of mind.

There’s a very clear in Buddhism, very clear hierarchy of these. The starting point is this this primordial misconception of our own self, completely distorted, fractured, broken, you know, lonely, separate, bereft, unhappy little self. This is the irony of ego in Buddhism that we’ve got this dreadful, fractured, broken sense of a self that then has massive attachment, neediness, bottomless pit to get what it wants every second because it’s always feeling lonely and bereft. Then on the basis of attachment not getting what it wants, that’s what anger is, or depression if you internalize it, and then all the other dramas as a result of this jealousy and all the best. So these are just elaborate, elaborate, deep, deep habits in our mind, he says, and we have to unpack them and hear the stories that they’re telling us and begin to look at the assumptions.

Look at because there are a bunch of assumptions. But there’s because they’re so spontaneous, it’s very hard to see that. Because when you’re caught up in that view, you don’t think it’s a view, you think it’s a truth. You know? We can see that.

We don’t think it’s a view, we think it’s a truth. And this is what Buddha said we need we need to look into and look at and really unpack and unravel and question. So it’s full on hard work, you know? So, of course, we’re using Buddha’s model of the mind here. This is not Jung’s or Freud’s or whoever’s.

And that’s one’s choice, of course, to use this one. So it’s a full on job to be your own therapist. But the fundamental point that Buddha is making forget that we can achieve this nirvana, this cessation of suffering, this radical state of being, which he says is the potential of every being forget that long term, but even the fact that he says we by knowing our own mind, listening to our thoughts, and having this confidence and courage to know that I can reconfigure them, that maybe what I’m seeing, maybe my that the feelings which are real, but which are informed by these stories, but the stories that inform them maybe don’t have a basis in reality. And this is not easy to see. It takes a lot of rigor, a lot of discipline, a lot of confidence, and a wish to do that.

It’s a very interesting take on life, you know. So basically what it’s saying is unhappy emotions, are the source of our misery. Love and compassion are not the source of your misery. Attachment, neediness, dissatisfaction, always thinking I haven’t got enough, always wanting something more, which is the energy of attachment. Then attachment has all these masses of energy of expectation, always looking for something, always craving, hankering out there for something, and then when it finds it, then this attachment makes it look more delicious than it really is, then all the masses of expectation that you had better fulfill my expectations and make me happy, etcetera, etcetera.

It’s also but it’s also simple, it’s also subtle, it’s just going on there spontaneously. And then anger and panic attack when it doesn’t get what it wants or it gets what it doesn’t want. It’s kind of interesting. So the key point here is that our mind is ours and it’s not set in stone and it is a bunch of viewpoints and we have to learn and listen to them and think about them and change them basically. This is what brings courage, this is what brings sanity, this is what brings stability Because if we could change the outside world, I think we, you know, we’ve got the most genius methods in the universe these technological days.

I think it’s fairly evident we can’t make the outside world the way we want. We try really hard. But we can see it’s not stable, but we can change the mind. So even to have confidence that’s what I can do is already incredible. For me I was always good to use extreme examples.

You know, worked with people in prison for many years. Gabe mentioned, you know, back in ninety six when I was based in California, I was editing the magazine of this organization and I got a letter from a young Mexican prisoner from Los Angeles who’d been in gangs since he was eleven, prison since he’s twelve, and he’d read a book of Lama Yeshe, a lama, and he was moved by the talk of compassion, so he started to write and read all his teachings and things. So what I learned pretty quickly, because, you know, he started writing and then within a year I had forty people writing, I learned pretty quickly that, you know, certainly in the States prisons are pretty intense, pretty extreme, the sentient beings is unbelievable, the conditions are unbelievable. I remember one American guy who’d been arrested in Adelaide was in his cell, and he got back sent back to America. He was in a state of shock.

He said in Adelaide, he had twelve dollars he got twelve dollars a week or a month or something, he only he was able to keep his own guitar, got his own bread and marmalade and something and and his own bed. When he got back there, was chucked into his cell with a grey blanket on the concrete floor, there’s never been for him, and it was just like he couldn’t believe, couldn’t get a pencil. Some of the prisons in the States, I tell you, unbelievable in comparison. Here, sure, everywhere, there’s gonna be bad ones. So anyway, was very moving for me to listen to these people writing who couldn’t change the outside world.

That’s the point. When you can’t change even one thing, you are the two things. You go mad, and that’s really common in prison, believe me. You go mad or you change your mind. So I found over the years, you know, the way we worked with people in prison, we’d send books, we’d take their phone calls and we would visit them, and they would have letters and they’d have mentors to talk to and listen to and read, you know.

So the key thing we tried to give prisoners was these techniques, these ability to know their own minds, you know, to learn to know you can change your mind. So for me extreme examples are often very good. So I was quoting this story about this one woman, I didn’t know this woman, I read about her. I read her memoir. She was this hippie wife, hippie husband, three hippie kids, you know, hitching in Florida.

They got a lift in a car, like, from two blokes, and the blokes got stopped by the coppers. The blokes killed the coppers and blamed the hippies. So they’re cop killers. They’re in prison on death row. You can’t imagine the nightmare.

In the beginning, you think it’s just ridiculous. Of course, we’ll get out, you know. But after years and years, she realized, as she said, that you can’t only imagine the process she went through. She lost the kids, he even got executed, they were completely innocent. She got out after seventeen years.

And she said at some point, finally, I realized I couldn’t change anything, but they couldn’t take my mind from me. So I decided, I’m not a prisoner. I’m a monk. I’m not in a cell. I’m in a cave.

I mean, that sounds so poetic. We kind of move by it. But if you think it through, then you only conceive of the nightmare. We look how we react when the smallest accusation, the tiniest intimation that maybe we didn’t do or made someone happy or they thought we did something, it’s like a nightmare for us. Everything in us is desperate to see to make ourselves be seen to be you know, to defend ourselves.

Can you only imagine something like that? And that’s so common, so common, when the the situation is so dire. And yet, you know, we tend to feel we can change things. Our lives are free in comparison. But we can see actually we live in our lives, we can’t.

But we keep bashing our hands against a brick wall, living in the fantasy that, oh, maybe it’ll change, maybe it’ll change, maybe it’ll do this, maybe it’ll become better. So we keep hoping and hoping with that much kind of intelligent work on it. And that means we totally forget that I can change. So we put up with relationships that are just crummy relationships. We put up with jobs that are horrible, we’re miserable.

We we feel paralyzed. We feel as if we can’t change, not just anything, but not ourselves. It never occurs to us to change ourselves, to change our thoughts, to make a decision, you know. So one of the the deepest, you know, the reasons for this in the Buddhist psychological view, and this is quite subtle, know, they quite deep inside us, is this they talk about attachment. This is so this constant neediness, this constant sense of lacking something so therefore constant hankering after something to fill up the hole.

But the deepest one so the obvious level is like the senses, you know, it’s pretty clear food, maybe people, you know, attached to bodies and things. We can see this one pretty clear, it’s right in front of us. But the deeper one that we don’t really begin to see until we start to see our minds, you know, is this and this is since we’re born. Because of this kind of the way Buddhism would talk, this kind of a sense of a disconnected fractured sense of a separate self, then this attachment is this massive neediness to be seen and approved of, to be seen in a good light and approved of by others. So this is something that just runs in the mind a long time.

Since we’re born, we’ve internalized daddy’s views, mommy’s views, god’s views, this views, the next door neighbor, they, the judge, the police, society, everybody’s constantly getting a sense of what everybody else thinks is right and then trying to live up to that one by being a good girl. So yes you do, you did a good job, Robina. Oh good, so you keep listening to what people expect. Our main attachment then you can see and it’s hard to see it because it could look like a virtue is to is to do is to be seen as a good person, which is why we desperately try to hide our naughtiness because we’re craving all the time praise and people’s people a good reputation, basically. We know look how we feel.

Look at this the pain if we think someone doesn’t like us. It is that’s enough to make people go mad. Look at the suffering in relationships. You know, in the beginning it’s all gorgeous, you know, they think you’re like the person thinks you’re the most divine thing since sliced bread and that the bliss of being seen as beautiful, being heard by somebody is so special. And then after a while, you know, you start looking boring to them.

That’s the worst pain. You just like becoming visible person. So this is this is reiterating this point that Buddha is making, this deep neediness, almost as if we the only way to feel I’m a valid person is to be validated by others, to have myself kind of reflected back to myself. But but, basically, the Buddha is saying we’ve to become a whole person ourselves. We are all there.

Everything that I am is in me. We all know the words. It doesn’t matter what people say. It’s more of a duck’s back. Our mummies taught us this.

But look how it’s not. We don’t believe it, you know. We we almost we define ourselves in terms of how we’re seen by others. Success in our world, what does it mean? Other people think you’re good.

It’s like we have to look in a mirror to even know we even exist, you know? And mirrors are other people. That’s why we’re so the the easiness to know, even you’re driving on the road and there’s a bloke who looks too close to you and he’s tooting, you’re having a panic attack. He’s a stranger. He’s showing he doesn’t like you.

We have a panic attack. We think it’s normal because our poor sense of self is so fragile, fragile, so easily upset because people aren’t approving of us, you know. It sounds strange maybe, but you look at us living with people, we’re constantly assessing, we’re constantly reacting to whether people are seeing us seeing in the right light. If you’re doing the dishes, you want to be seen to be doing the dishes. You’re in the car, something weird happens, you can’t wait to get home to tell somebody.

And then when you’re lonely, what does lonely mean? Lonely means I’ve got no one to talk to. It means we don’t think our thoughts are valid until someone else hears them. I mean, we should be crying with sadness for ourselves because this is the this is the deepest way the Buddha talks about the suffering of ego. It’s like we’re fractured, you know, don’t have a sense of who we are until I’m told it by someone else.

They call it attachment to reputation, which sounds rather silly, you know, but it’s very deep in our bones. And this is what throws us every minute. This is why loud noises can freak us out because we’re sort of like so unstable inside, the smallest thing can upset us. So if we can make the world perfect, please go ahead. Make the lights green whenever you want, make all the cars go away, make the ugly husband behave nicely.

If you can, hey, give me the methods. But if you can’t, change your mind, change your thoughts, change your view. It sounds so simple that it’s the hardest job, but it is a a job that we can do. It’s a doable job. And this for the Buddha this is the source of sanity this is the source of sanity what do you think?

Ask us your question You mean this terrible suffering world that we live in where people are being harmed and tortured and brokenhearted? Yes. We live in this world then. Go on. I mean, that that is the thing that I find the hardest to deal with.

I understand. People, red lights, know, stuff like that. I mean, that happens, but it’s that massive can you speak to That’s it. I hear you. The same answer.

If you if we can’t I mean, if we can’t bear a red light while you use simple examples, then how are you gonna bear being put on death row when you’re innocent? How are you gonna bear the suffering in every country you read about every day? Because if this is not stable, if we’re not clear about this, if we attachment wants everything to be nice, it’s something we don’t think about in our culture. The way Buddhism talks in-depth about this this mental illness called this bottleless pit of neediness for things to be the way I want them. This is the source of our instability.

This is the source of our fractured sense of self and why we get angry and unhappy and and depressed when things go wrong. So it’s just reiterating even more the same point. You’ve got to do the wisdom wing first, which is check become realize we can stabilize what’s in here. We can lessen the neurosis and grow the the confidence and the courage and the compassion to never give up, and then we can be of benefit to this earth. And then we will notice we can’t change most of it, but we won’t lose our minds, and we will do what we can every day, you can’t do more.

It starts here. Can you see my point? Yes, I can see your point. But what’s missing for you? Is seeing their okay.

It’s imagining. It’s in my mind. Yes. Imagining other people’s suffering, know, living with bombs, you know? Yes, yes, yes.

Falling apart. I understand what you’re saying. So go on. No. Does that mean?

So what in what I said, what did you not hit what so then so what I said was what do you think I said then? Because I I answered that point in my opinion so it’s really helpful so tell me what you think I was saying what you think you heard me say. When? Just now when I answered before. What am I suggesting to you?

I can’t remember. Probably. Okay. Yes. My words are needed.

Yes. Because I asked you that question. You said the go inside. What? You said, you know, be centered within I didn’t say those words ever once.

Okay. Said deal with our own neurosis, our own up and down like yo yo, our own anger, our own fears, our own jealousy, our own because if you see the world through those filters, you can’t help a dog. If you wanna help others, change your own mind is what I’m saying. The point is the compassion wing. The point is to be out there and help the world.

That’s the point of all this. But how can you if we’re fractured and broken and depressed and can’t deal with red lights and can’t deal with the smallest thing and up and down like yo yos a thousand times a day. How the name of God can you help the world? Is what I’m trying to say. Gotcha.

That we see the world. The world the more depressed we are just say the more tendency we have to be depressed, the more monstrous the world looks, the more the tendency I have to be angry, the more vile the world looks. So we see everything through the filter of what’s in here. You know yourself, if you’ve got a person who’s paranoid every day, look at their view of the universe. So what Buddha is saying is, and I think it’s obvious, the way the world even appears to us is through the filter of our neurosis.

So if we remove the neurosis, we have much more clarity and then we have much more empathy because there’s no longer a barrier between self and others. There’s only this confidence and contentment in yourself but now a constant awareness of other suffering and an ability to do what you can, where you can, without giving up. That’s the point of all this. Are we communicating now? Yes.

Thank you. Dalai Lama often says, you know, got the wisdom wing and the compassion wing, there’s a nice analogy, a bird needs two wings. The wisdom wing is what I’m talking about here. Put yourself together. But the Dalai Lama, the compassion wing is the point.

But as he said, but compassion is not enough. You’ve got to do the wisdom wing first. Not totally first, but you the more I put myself together and become stable and clear and less neurotic and less fearful, the more I’m able to help others. Do you see the point of this? That’s the basis of this discussion.

So it’s for our sake and the sake of others. Do you see what I’m saying? Okay. High to say that. Just keep it simple.

Alright. Keep it simple. It’s okay to say it, but what do you mean, Buddha? Okay. Well, what I mean is I’ve heard people say divine discontent that we’ve heard this divine discontent within never heard that phrase before me, don’t So I’m wondering if we are sort of looking or or wanting to find that wooden nature within.

I don’t know what you mean by these words. You’re gonna have I don’t talk like that. I can’t conceive of it. Oh, So can you try and say what you mean by that? I can’t communicate.

The the special part within us So it’s just called the good qualities. I wouldn’t talk about it that way. It’s really simple. The the the good part of you is called love, empathy, kindness, forgiveness, compassion, wisdom. That’s what I’m talking about.

They’re the characteristics of a Buddha if you like. So you don’t try to look for those, they’re there. You try to grow them. You don’t try to look for your music, you practice music and it’ll come out. Yes.

Yes. Good. First step is get rid of the neuroses, and then that’ll help you grow the goodness, won’t it? Yes. I’m I’m just wondering if that’s that makes us unhappy.

Makes us which makes us unhappy? Not having those not experiencing experiencing those good qualities consistently. Well, check the last time you were depressed, angry, fearful, low self esteem. You weren’t happy, were you? No.

You agree? Yep. Check the last time you were feeling empathetic, kind, generous. There was some semblance of joy and happiness there, wasn’t it? Yes.

Yes. Well, was hardly a no brainer. This is Buddha’s view. He says the more we get rid of neurosis, the more loving and compassion we become and the more happy we become. It’s a simple method.

For him, this is the method for doing it. You see what I’m saying? Sounds easy, it’s a hard job, but are we talking about the same things here? Or not quite? Probably not, but your your version your version is simpler than mine, I guess.

I’m I’m thinking of it, you know, being consistent all the time, and we just can’t. Be consistently happy. Be who? Be consistently happy all the time. Well, it’s hard until we got rid of the delusions.

Buddha’s view is if you’ve got attachment and misery and jealousy and depression and low self esteem, even a small amount, then you can’t be consistently happy. But he would say one of the characteristics of a person who has achieved this state, this goal, not some state in heaven, a state of a person’s own being, that you could only ever be happy because there’s attachment and fears and jealousy that make you unhappy. Even though you’re in a world of terrible suffering, you wouldn’t unstable and depressed. You’d have confidence and and compassion and you’d never give up being a benefit to others. So the the benefit the source of happiness for the Buddha is is ridding the mind of neurosis.

It’s really almost so simple. It’s embarrassing. Can you hear me? Yes. Are we talking about the same things now?

Yes, I understand. So don’t look for something mysterious in you darling. Do you have to do that? Every time you get irritated, tell yourself to shut up and or give you a little argument and get your good roommates out, your good your kindness and your patience and argue with your irritation, argue with the depression and start buying into the good voices inside you, which is your wisdom and your kindness and your forgiveness and those things. It sounds always too simple sometimes.

It is difficult, but it’s not complicated to speak it. Do you say okay? Yes. Thank you, Alright. Over here please.

Do you think the heat is on? You’re okay. Yes. Yes. Thank you, Robina.

I have a very dear aunt. I have a very dear aunt who has always been wonderful, amazing person, and she’s become very sad in the last year. And I wonder how I can help her. Sad. She moved from her farm to a smaller house on the very sad now because she’s not where she loves to be anymore.

I mean, is the thing. Isn’t it such simple things? It’s such simple things. I mean, we could be theoretical about it. Let’s be theoretical like as if it was you and you’re asking me advice, you know, we’re talking here, try and change our views.

If we can change the situation, then we can do it. So you not being mean about your art, just let’s just use it as a little example, you know. You could say that they had to move because they were getting old I suppose, is it right? Maybe too costly or whatever, too difficult to maintain. So then was there mutual see, okay, we can go into it and be all psychoanalytical but don’t worry.

So we can, you know, it’s like we can see one of the things would be she’s sad, she’s feeling missing this, she’s missing something, right? Well, brings sadness, and that’s speaking technically, that’s attachment not getting what it wants. So then that’s the skill, that’s the skill. You can’t give her lectures. You can talk about these things, you know.

If you can change something, try and change it. It sounds so easy and almost like too too clinical sometimes. But, you know, just she trusts you and loves you, you can talk about these things. Ask her to see if she’s it’s possible to change her mind because if she can’t, then she’s just going to get sadder and sadder, isn’t she? And you see, there are of course all these underlying things.

I mean, maybe the hubby makes all the decisions and she feels like frustrated because she had say in it. I mean, who knows all these things? They’re all there probably too, aren’t they? But in the end, does it stress you out seeing what she’s sad? Yes.

Because she has always been an incredibly resourceful person. She’s she’s the she reminds me of you. She’s she’s a very strong person, and she’s very she’s the last person in the room to feel sorry for herself. I understand. So this is a very unusual thing.

Husband and She what? She has a great husband. Okay. She talks to you about this? She does.

And she’s angry with herself at being sad because she thinks it’s pathetic and weak. No. And that she has so much to be grateful for. Well, sometimes seems to me without me having to analyze somebody or get them to be analytical, you just you know, I’m not trying to sound like Pollyanna, but you be optimistic and kind and loving and and just supportive of her and just ease her pain a bit. I mean, what else can you and the other thing is too, we have to see, and this is the point here, you know, it’s like as if you have an alcoholic brother.

Everyone talks about him behind his back, well, you wish the alcoholic brother would get better, you keep giving him methods to get better, we wish he would because it upsets us things an alcoholic brother. Our own attachment can’t bear other person’s suffering. So that you can work, if you know this as much as anything, let’s say you do what you can in yourself and not be upset by her upset because we can’t make things change sometimes. So for you to be content with that and love her for who she is do you understand what I’m saying? But if in the end she can’t change, she can’t change.

It doesn’t mean you become cruel, it doesn’t mean we don’t care, but we often mix attachment which gets all kind of dogged a bone, chewing on it, always trying to fix it. Sometimes we’ve got to just let it be, you know? Also, respect the person for who she is, not buy into that story so much, maybe love her for who she is, be optimistic, be kind you understand what I’m saying? Does that make sense? Because we want so badly to make it better.

From our side, we want the alcoholic brother to get better. We want our auntie to get better. Do understand what I’m saying? We can’t sometimes. Have to be practical, you know.

I mean, I’m not really answering your question, just some ideas, isn’t it? Yeah. Go on. Somebody else? Any questions about anything?

While it’s while it’s down here, can I just ask you a bit about motivation? Motivation. What can I about motivation? Well, in this case, what I was thinking was that with your very extreme example of the woman in prison, she had that great motivation of either changing her mind or going mad. It was very clear to her.

So she would’ve had great motivation. If she thought there was the solution, it was worth working hard for. Yeah. And I’m somebody who, like the person at the back, cares quite a lot about what’s happening in the world around me. Yeah.

But I remember getting halfway through my life and thinking I’ve been trying to fix it from there out, and I hadn’t done much for anything. Yes. Exactly. But then one can get used to having some pet neuroses or, you know, things that you’re comfortable with. So in our life, we can be quite comfortable with this sort of, like, being half awake and half asleep.

And I guess I’m just the motivation for addressing it, when you’re putting in an altruistic view that some of the work we’re doing on waking ourselves up can be a benefit beyond ourselves. Does that make any sense? Yes. So then the point is? Well, I think in my own mind, because I’ve spent a lot of time trying to help other people, sometimes taking time to work on myself feels selfish.

No. I understand. Okay. Okay. And I’m working my way around the motivation for doing and the motivation for being and finding a balance amongst them.

I understand. Yeah. Yeah. Well, first of all, I wanna say about the world in prison. And this always seems to get too simple because we we we we’re much more complicated in our analysis of things psychologically, think, our culture.

I would say she was a person who didn’t have much anger. So this is, for me, stunning, you know. So a person like, there’s another another story I heard at the same time about a I’ll get to your point in a minute. Okay? This I I read at the same time about this man on death row, also innocent, was found to be innocent later.

But he went completely mad, completely insane, out of his brain for years and years raging every time he could whenever he could speak he was screaming I did not rape and kill that woman. So he went completely out of his brain. So what I’m getting at is it seems so simple to say this right, oh, he was angry and she wasn’t, but I think you can say that, you know, and a non angry person would also get depressed instead because he but she seemed to have this kind of a practical mind where you’ve realized the bare bones shocking fact she must have tried so hard, and she didn’t give up changing because she eventually got out. So she didn’t ever give up trying to change things, but she didn’t lose the plot. And that, I think, is a phenomenal type of being because we just go mad, especially when you’re innocent.

And then in our culture we think we’re right to be angry, we hold on to our right to be angry, and that’s what causes literal insanity. So that one of the so this is not your point yet, but one of the points the Buddha is making is so obvious. Forget about all the nobility and not or the morality, oh, you shouldn’t be angry, you shouldn’t be jealous. Don’t hear it that way. Buddha’s point is, if we could just see by looking into our mind, maybe this is part of it that my attachment, my neediness, my discontent, my my wish to be seen as a good person, my wish to be seen as a, you know, a good person who helps others, my wish to get what I want, my jealousy, my fears, my depression, my anger, that they are what break my heart.

We’ve to say it with kindness to ourselves, not beat ourselves up mercilessly, even thinking that looking at yourself is selfish. This is a commonest misconception amongst in spiritual practice. Spiritual is all about compassion. The Buddhist one, it is about compassion, everything’s leading to that. But if you don’t know yourself well and don’t realize that your suffering is unbearable, the suffering of attachment and fears and jealousy, It is mental illness.

Wouldn’t we all like that phrase? Until we have some softness towards ourselves and realize I’ve got to put myself together if I want to help others. That’s my point here, why we have to speak about it twice because it’s hard to hear it. It’s like if you want to go and be, you know, be a surgeon, you’ve got go study for seven years of your nose in books while all the people are dying. But if you don’t study those seven years, how can you help anybody?

It’s obvious. What are you doing putting your head in the books for seven years, Ramina? Well, I’m I’m learning how to help people. I’m sorry they’re dying now but I can’t help them, but if I don’t do this I can’t help anybody. That’s the bodhisattva attitude.

You’ve got to put yourself together otherwise you’re useless. You can’t help anybody else. So you can’t help everybody. We can’t make the world perfect and that’s our attachment of it. Like the alcoholic brother, we never stop talking about it, boys behind his back worrying about it, if only this is only there.

It sounds like compassion, but it’s our own neurosis that we don’t like the bloody alcoholic brother because he’s making our life upset. Do you understand? So to have this wisdom which sounds can be cruel is mean you’re not neurotic. You love your brother who he is. Don’t speak to his alcoholism all the time.

Don’t try to make him better all the time. It’s up to him. If you if he wants advice, I believe he will ask you. Don’t talk about him as being an alcoholic. Talk about the nice qualities.

When you speak to him, speak to the better part of your brother. That’s what optimism is, and that won’t come until you’ve got it yourself. That means you won’t and you won’t have that till you work on yourself. This is like the retreat mode. So many of these meditators, you know, these domestic ones or western people, often twenty year retreats.

Oh, that’s pretty selfish. Well, they’re getting ready to be able to benefit people. And of course, Buddha talks about countless lives, so you’ve long term long term goal here, you know. You understand? So the long term purpose is that one, but it maybe means a fierce amount of work on your own neurosis.

But the other point I’m making, we’ve to stop seeing that moralistic heavy way. I’m like, you’re not saying this. I’m saying this. We put ourselves down like you you are. We have this default mode, this is the irony of ego, to put ourselves down.

Ego is preoccupied with a negative, and our own negativity first and foremost is like cruelty to ourselves. We’ve got to stop it. It’s just terrible. Then, just by identifying with our goodness is what my point here of it, by identifying with our goodness, that’s more optimistic. It’s more positive.

It’s like positive thinking, you know? And it’s kindness to ourselves because we’re all on the same boat. And then, you see, then you can afford to have compassion because often the only compassion we have now is for the people who are being abused by the naughty people. And the compassion we have for the innocents, to that extent we have anger towards the naughty people. Well, that’s not compassion.

It just twists our compassion. It pollutes our compassion. The Buddha says the more we know our own mind and our own neurosis and our own fears, the more compassion we’ll have for everybody. Because that’s what motivates the pedophile and the terrorist and the and the and the incestuous father or whatever. It’s their own neurosis.

So until you know your own or we’re in the same boat here, we can’t help anybody. We won’t have much compassion or to speak, it’ll be mixed with anger, righteousness, you know. It’s heavy duty. All these prisoners over at you know, we used to send them a newsletter and they’d know about each other and they’d read Lama Zopa’s teachings and things, and they’d write to him, and Lama Zopa was very kind, he would write these eighteen page letters to these prisoners, and he commonly would say to these people in prison this is Arturo, this first one there he is in his cell, I don’t know, I used to still use figs, I lived in Maitreya Institute for twenty years. I’ve done about eight meters.

Eight foot by ten foot, you know, a small room. Smaller than many of our toilets our bathrooms, you know? Not American bathrooms. I see we all go to the bathroom now in Australia. We don’t go to the toilet anymore, do we?

We go to the bathroom. Not the bathroom yet, the bathroom. So anyway, a small bathroom with a bathtub and a toilet unit. There’s these cells, they live in these, so there’s these prisons where they’re in their cells twenty three hours a day, it’s called permanent lockdown. They’re allowed textbooks but no hardback because you can whack your cellmate.

The inside of a pen because you you might stab your cellmate with the hard part. Food like you can’t even imagine. It costs sixty to a hundred thousand dollars a year for the taxpayers to keep them in prison, and they’ve got the biggest numbers on earth. So there’s this guy, and the noise you can’t imagine, twenty hours a day, violent screaming, violent screaming, like bedlam all day, like a rock concert all day, they say. So it’s like hell, you know?

So there’s Arturo, and he’s in this nightmare of an environment, and, you know, they’re in their cells twenty three hours a day, and they might never get out of this, maybe they’re there for the day they die. So he writes to Lama Zopa, and Lama Zopa says to him, and this is common, this is shocking initially, it sounds very patronizing to us he said your prison is nothing in comparison with the inner prison of ordinary people but ours. This is shocking. And then he said attachment, the prison of depression, the prison of anger, the prison of pride, the prison of low self esteem, whatever, whatever. Nothing cosmic about it.

So when we really do begin one of the first signs of success when you start to really and we all know that if you go and done therapy. As soon as you start going to a therapist, all the vomit comes out, that’s it. You think you get them a million times worse. It was the same here. When you start to look at your mind and want to take responsibility and know you can change it, you can’t believe the mess in there.

We think we’re getting worse, it’s a good sign. It’s like when you go to the gym. You felt quite nice the day before. You come home with muscles you’ve never used before. But we know it’s a good pain, and that’s a really good point here to work on our minds.

And as well as Oprah says, it’s really true. It’s quite this is the basis of real compassion. The vast majority of all humans have no idea that what goes on in their own mind plays any role at all in their lives. It’s all out there. It’s everybody else’s fault for the happiness as well.

You know, attachment is a junkie to get the good things because that’s why I’ll be happy, and then angry is the violent response when you don’t get it. This is just a normal human human condition, you know. We’re all Buddha saying is we can change it. Anyway, blah blah. Who else?

Yes. Hi, Robina. Hello. Again. I was wondering about with regards to changing our minds, about working on positive perpetuating positive emotions versus working on neuroses.

I mean, because we have a tendency to be negative Because what? Because we have a tendency to be negative Uh-huh. You know, I sort of wonder whether sometimes I wonder whether it’d be better off, you know, trying to perpetuate the positive or would you sort of suggest it’s a bit of both or I understand what you’re saying exactly. So you gotta you gotta you gotta do a bit of weeding and you gotta grow the flowers. And sometimes you grow more flowers and sometimes you gotta do more weeding, depends on the day and the time and the situation.

Know, do know what I’m saying? But sometimes, yeah, I mean they’re both methods of work. Sometimes, you know, one day if you’re always feeling fearful and worried, you just got to be optimistic, you got to try and activate the optimism. You can’t make the negativity go away, and the more you feel into it, the more you’re trying to work it out or push it away, it won’t. So one of the ways I talk about oh, this is my analogy I use for my own mind.

You know, I think of all my meetings and roommates, they’re all my, you know, my virtues and my delusions. So there’s kindness and goodness and clarity and confidence and and then there’s jealousy and anger and all forty seven variations of all. They’re all in my head. Right? Well, we can see the main voice as soon as the smallest thing can upset can bring out the bad guys, bring out the neurotic the the rubbish ones, you know, the maniacs, and they sometimes run the show.

So then we buy into that, and then all the good parts all under the cupboard and in the wardrobe and under the bed, they’re scared to come out. So sometimes we’ve got to learn not to make all the negative ones go away, not to put them down, you know. So what happens is anger comes out and then another anger comes out and gets angry with that anger and it just multiplies because we’re never endingly criticizing ourselves. So sometimes we’ve gotta you know, these delusions, the way Buddha talks, will be a long time before they go. They will eventually, but hey, don’t hold your breath.

Meanwhile, we’ve to learn to recognize them, learn to know their character, listen to what each one is saying, open the door, greet them welcome, come on anger, and learn to hear what they’re saying, not be afraid of what’s inside us. Well, we have two modes in our world, vomit it all out or suppress. This mode is welcoming these parts of ourselves. Know that anger is destroying me, but don’t hate the anger. I’ve got to welcome the anger.

It’s a real tricky balance, know, and recognize that’s part of me, and don’t abuse myself. But know it for what it is like a crazy kid in the house, you learn to have him under control, he’s gonna live there for a while, he’s not gonna leave yet, but you have to learn to welcome him and work with him so he can be more subdued and the good guys can run the show. So part of the job here is to learn to live with these other parts of ourselves and not all the time put ourselves down for having them. I’m not I mean, you’re not saying exactly that. So sometimes the welcoming of them and the understanding, the more you hear the way jealousy is talking, the more you hear the story anger is saying.

This is really powerful. And then you have to argue with them sometimes, you know. Let’s say, you know, I live with Fred and I’m jealous, and then Fred’s late. Within ten minutes, I’m having a mental breakdown. I don’t know, like I’m completely freaking out, completely convinced all the girls and what he’s doing, and he comes home and I scream and shout at him, believing a hundred percent in my jealousy roommate’s viewpoints.

And then it’s established after a long time that it wasn’t true. Whereas, if I’m working on my mind and hearing jealousy go go nuts, you know, the opposite to jealousy will argue, calm down, leave it alone, let it be let’s find the facts first. You gotta really work hard to do this kind of inner talking. We do this. This is nothing cosmic.

But we’ve got to do it and not buy into the story that ranges to the surface. Keep it quiet, then find the facts, then come to a decision. Ways to get another different It’s hard work because when these strong emotions are there, we believe whatever they tell us, don’t we? There’s some trouble here. So it depends on the time.

Do you understand? Yeah. Thank you. Another question that’s a little bit different. Sometime mean, I know this is kind of wrong according to the path of Buddhism, but sometimes I feel guilty that I don’t wanna go and sit in a cave and work on myself, you know, because I do wanna I do wanna help the world, and I wanna be my best self.

You’re feeling guilty about what? That I don’t wanna go and sit in a cave for twenty years. Who says you wanna sit who says you should sit in a cave? Excuse me. He’s breaking up a problem.

It doesn’t exist. What are you talking about? No. But I mean that I perhaps I’m working harder on Listen, honey. Shut up.

There. Shut up. This roommate’s going nuts already. Tell him to shut up. Listen, we make up we make up problems.

Just think I’m guilty because I don’t wanna go away for twenty years in a cave. God almighty. Give yourself a break, please. I mean, please give yourself a break. You can make up, it’s like that’s called dissatisfaction.

That’s like you got twenty million dollars and I feel so bad because I haven’t got twenty one million dollars. Know? Or like this poor girl, know, extreme examples. And you know one of those shows about extreme examples of unhappy people? There’s this one little American girl, and she’s like little, and she’s obsessed with her breasts, and she’s got like a hundred and twenty triple Z breasts, and I’m really not joking.

She goes and no one will give a surgery anymore. The millisecond she gets the next enhancement, she wants more. She it’s like she’s ill. It’s like carrying massive weights around. She’s abs I mean, that’s called dissatisfaction, darling, and I suggest that’s what that is.

So tell yourself to be quiet and aspire and go one step at a time and meanwhile be happy with where you’re at, rejoicing your good qualities, and relax. And I’m not joking. Saying that if you are listen. If you are and listen. If you are lazy and aren’t doing enough, don’t be guilty.

That’s just not taking any responsibility. Guilt is just a wank, know? Tell yourself to shut up and do more. And if you aren’t doing enough, tell yourself to shut up and make a start. My mother would say it.

We are our own worst enemies. Please. Guess guess that’s the crux of what I’m asking, like, you know, knowing what what is enough because I’m obviously trying to function in in the western world, run a business, so forth. You know, like, you only have so many hours in the day. You’re giving yourself your own answer.

Why can’t you have the courage to be content with it? Maybe you gotta ask yourself that. Whereas always that’s what attachment is, always thinking I should do more and thinking it’s a virtue to be guilty about it. Well, guilt is is not taking responsibility. Guilty is internalized anger, which loves to find fault.

It’s alright darling, you’re like everybody else, you know? What you do is you do what you’re capable of. If you were learning if you were at the gym, you’d know well where your level, wouldn’t you? And you wouldn’t freak out because you can’t carry weights that Arnie Schwarzenegger can carry. You’d be content with your level, but you aim to be like Arnie.

So you gotta know where you’re at and then aim to go to a cave, make it your aspiration every day. When I’m ready, I will go, and you will then get to the cave. But thinking I should be being like Arnie right now, I’ll go kill myself because I can’t carry those weights. It’s irrational. But that’s how we all are.

It’s the addiction and the irony of ego, never to be satisfied. Okay. Thank you. Are we communicating? Yeah.

Absolutely. Thank you. Good. I don’t think that very often, by the way, But you did confess it because you opened yourself to this tirade. Anyone else?

Yes. Thank you, Robina. Where are you? I can’t see you. No.

I see you now. Yes. Okay. My question, I heard you say earlier, I think, something along the lines of the virtuous states of mind are more in sync with reality Yes. Than the non virtuous.

And I wonder if you could expand a bit Okay. I will. Very happily. It’s a very interesting point, actually. Well, this gets us to the real crux of where where, you know, finally where everything is where all this is leading us to for Buddhism.

The bottom line Buddha is saying is, what he’s found to his own experience, that in reality, things exist a certain way. So he has got a very clear view. Are you are you got a Buddhist view? Yes. Do.

So you know what I’m saying? Okay. So Buddha is talking about how things do exist in a certain way, and it seems abstract when we think about it. There’s an there’s an ultimate way of talking, but a conventional way. So the conventional way of describing reality as we know is that everything is interdependent.

Everything is dependent arising, isn’t it? That’s conventionally. Ultimately, Buddha talks about emptiness. Don’t go there now. But, conventionally, the flip side of that coin is that everything exists in dependence upon this and that.

So if you think about so that’s reality. Speaking simply. Okay. Let’s say you and I are friends. We’re having a chat, and you’re telling me about your headache and I empathize with it, and you laugh at my jokes, and I tell you about my kids, and I tell you about my knee ache, and people looking on, if we’re being accurate using Buddha’s view here, we can say that there’s this love and compassion prevalent in this little communication.

Would you agree with that? Yes. Now look at the experience. Would you not agree there’s a sense of real connectedness? Yes.

That there’s almost a we there, isn’t it? And that’s pleasure, the mind is light, the mind is joyful, but what’s happening is the virtues are prevalent. Now look what happens when you fight. The millisecond I say something mean, suddenly the we is cut in half, the ego’s having a panic attack. Your ego is having a panic attack.

All you everything’s jagged and unharmonious. So that means when we’re in the delusions, they are completely out of sync with this sense of interdependence. They’re they’re not in sync with reality at all. Fantasies, there’s a rigid vivid sense of a non independent me, you know, very independent miserable me and a definite me and ugly independent you. That’s when delusions are in sync with non reality, but in the simple way we can see when virtue is prevalent.

Do you see what I’m saying a little bit? It’s kind of colloquial. Can you see? Yes. Yes.

I said, yeah. So they are not reality yet. Until you realize emptiness, there’s still a sense of inherent me loving inherent you, but we’re getting a step closer. Yes. Do you see what I’m saying?

Yes. They are and that’s why the Buddha would say he has found it to be true that when you finally realize emptiness and rid the mind utterly of all the neuroses, what is left is the virtue. They they’re indestructible. They’re at the core of our being. They are natural, utterly natural to us.

Does that make sense? It does. It does. Okay. Good.

Someone over here. I mean, you’ve got to extrapolate that. They don’t say it that way. But when you would you did you understand? Yeah.

Just yeah. Yeah. Do you think that anger can ever be useful or is it always negative? Anger. Anger.

Okay. We have to define our terms before we begin to discuss, and this is the crucial point, you know. What a psychological might view is that by definition these delusions, and in this little scenario I just described here, you’re familiar with what I meant. You heard what I was saying, didn’t you? So what anger is, is a very powerful, extreme, deluded viewpoint that over exaggerates the ugliness of that person, let’s say, and really believes they’re the cause of my pain.

So that can’t be useful to anybody. But we could say, if you look at an angry person, I can see myself, I’m just as active and speedy as I was when I used to be more angry. I’m much less angry now, but I’ve I’ve retained the action energy because you look at any angry person, they’ve got a very critical mind. This is no good. That is this.

This is this. Well, you can channel that. You can make that useful. That’s not in its nature negative. It’s the frustration and the exaggeration and the and the neurotic eye based aspect of it that makes it so destructive cause it wants to harm the person.

Whereas if you have this critical mind, retain that, and this action energy, that’s productive, that can become compassion. How can I help? So it’s very it’s a subtle point, You know, just don’t chuck the baby out of the bathwater. Because when you think of giving up anger, think you become passive. And that’s just That’s nihilism.

You sort of see what I’m meaning? So it’s it’s a difficult balance, you know? To because we’ve got to know our minds well, not to be all artificial and and end up just being passive aggressive. I mean, that’s monstrous, you know. So anger itself, all the delusions Buddhism calls them delusions.

And this is this is a quite a shocking point to Buddhist psychology. It’s not like that in our culture, that they are in their nature delusional and destructive and disturbing and liars and they only cause suffering. But when what I’m saying is, as I said, you can see a good quality, extract the anger part. Martin Luther King said one time, this is clear my mind, because if you look at him, he wasn’t an angry guy, he was very patient, you know, for a sweet nature. He said, it’s alright to be angry, meaning it’s alright, you must find fault.

You must say there’s racism, there’s sexism, there’s environmentalism or whatever, you must find fault. But then you say, what can I do to help? That’s how you channel it. That’s not anger, that’s intelligence. To think that giving up anger means, oh, well, everything’s lovely and be patient, that’s passivity and it’s horrible.

So it’s nuanced, you know? That we’ve got to know our minds well to see this point the Buddha is making how that anger in its nature is destructive, but not action energy is not destructive, that can be hugely positive. Are we communicating? Yeah, of course, yeah, understand. And the thing is with anger, and it sounds so simple, we make it so complicated when we see all the wars and the histories and people bringing centuries of their junk with each other, know, like the you know?

And so we think it’s simpler than that, but it’s anger. Anger is incredible. I mean, why I remember one like one time saying Yeah. People when you have wars, you go to war. Two people look at the relationships.

Two people have a war basically. They’re, you know, for years and years, and then all all countries have wars. But then eventually, you get exhausted and you bring in the peacemakers. Well, he said, why not bring in the peacemakers first? It’s a profound point.

It’s so hilarious, you know. Because anger builds up this massive story, completely believing I’m right and I’ve got to fight to the death for what’s right. It’s more extreme mental illness. Even more complicated when it’s anger for people who with people who harm people. That’s when we feel it’s noble.

Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s not it’s it’s it’s not as simple as it sounds. It is nuanced. Don’t ever give up wanting to make the world a better place. Don’t ever give that up.

Don’t ever give up wanting to make things better. But when you can’t change it, you’re relaxed and that anger is never relaxed. So when you have bitterness and anger, no matter what happens you’re still not satisfied. You know, people think when the person’s finally executed then I’ll get closure. Rubbish!

I’ll still be angry because the person’s, you know, the monster didn’t cause their suffering, it’s their anger causing the suffering. It’s hard to see this, when I really think it through carefully. It is nuanced. So I remember this one time in my friends at Gus Rowley, Kentucky, they told me about this old Catholic bloke who used to visit them and his daughter had been raped and murdered like thirty years ago, and he used to bring her rosary beads and share them with prisoners and talk and things. And he said, he said in an interview, that he was out naturally, his daughters raped and murdered.

So naturally, like most people, grief beyond bearing and anger beyond bearing. Rage. And often what happens, especially in situations like that, we feel it’s wrong to not be angry, like it’s giving up on your daughter. He was exhausted after thirty years, went back to mass, learned to forgive, and he said, I finally realized my suffering was not caused by the death of my daughter, it was caused by my own anger. It’s like torture in the mind.

That is what is suffering. But having wanting to make the world a better place, standing up for what is right and never giving up trying to make it better, not being enraged and wanting to harm, That’s the difference. That’s hard to see the difference because we think the action comes from the anger. It doesn’t. Dalai Lama was asked one time believe me, I’m talking as an expert expert in anger, right?

Believe me. So Dalai Lama said one time in an interview, the journalist said exactly what you said. No, he said, well, he said, anger looks like it’s really good, it’s productive, and you can see it’s true. But the Dalai Lama said, I know what you mean, but when it’s just coming from anger, this poison, never stopping rage, you go crazy, you go mad with it. He says, it doesn’t last when it comes from anger, But if it’s coming from compassion, which is the wish to make things better and that’s action and never giving up, then you never give up.

You never give up. Compassion, you never give up. And that takes time, I mean, because the compassionate Buddhist view is huge. It’s including all the wicked ones, the evil ones, and there’s all sorts of logical reasons in the Buddhist philosophical view about that, so it’s a pretty big point. But anger is a nightmare.

Anger is insanity. People go mad with anger, rage, and the way that they kill each other for. All these, you know, these things in the American I read the American press. You know, all these these black people getting killed by the coppers. You see it every time you see the video, and all you can see is anger.

If a person was patient, they wouldn’t do it, they wouldn’t kill somebody. It’s anger, ordinary human anger. You get angry because a person doesn’t do what you want to eat them because of the value you shoot them. It’s natural. It’s not surprising, you know.

So you can see I haven’t given an excited mind. People think I’m angry soon, but I’m not being angry, I promise. You see what I’m saying, people? Are we communicating here? Are we communicating?

Yes. Anger once it starts is a nightmare. A nightmare, you know. I can’t believe patient people. This woman on death row, she has to have been patient mind, which means, therefore, it means a mind that sees the pain, sees the bad.

She tried to change it, but she never lost the plot. She didn’t go mad, and that is an incredible quality. Oh, I have such admiration for that. So, again, know it, but don’t be scared. Don’t push it away and pretend it’s not there.

That’s worse. That’s that’s like passive aggression. That’s awful. Will make it make make you crazy as well. Yes?

You know, there’s there’s a bit of a dream to think that you know, where’s this world where everybody’s reached all the virtues within themselves? Whose whose dream is that? Pardon? Mine. Well, you’re living in a fantasy land.

But it’s like Why do you I just thought why do you want that? Well, why not? But why do you want it? We’re trying to reach virtues. So What?

We’re trying to have like, develop our virtues. What are we? And that’s to be happy. Yeah. But that’s but okay.

So wait. Stop. Stop. Okay. You’ve got to work on your mind.

Right? You can only work on yours, can’t you? Not the other seven billion humans and the other countless trillions of sentient beings. You can’t work on theirs, can you? Would you agree?

So you’ve got to work on yours, and then the consequence of that is you become more stable, more wise, and more compassionate. Then you can see all these other trillions, you know, suffering, then you do your best to help them one person at a time and never give up. But just think, oh, where’s I’m aiming for a world where everyone’s peaceful. That’s just because your attachment, your attachment, can’t bear the misery. But when you give up attachment, won’t mind.

You’ll have to it’ll give you it’ll give you energy to wanna help, not, oh my god. I wish it would all go away. Because don’t hold your breath, don’t it? No. It’s not like wanting it all to go away.

It’s just Well, it is. You just said this dream of the world being everybody peaceful and loving. Is that too much to expect? Yes. It is.

Do have you noticed how hard it is to change your mind? Have you noticed how hard it is to not get angry, not be a bit upset, a bit fearful, bit lazy, a bit depressed? Have you noticed it’s hard? It gets easier. But have you noticed it’s difficult?

First step, have you noticed it’s difficult? Initially, yes. Good. So then have you noticed the world is quite suffering? Would you agree that humans are quite suffering and harming each other through terrible things?

Yeah? Would you agree with that? Yes. And so you would agree that that means they’re not working on their minds. Would you agree with that?

Yes. And then as others often would suggest, would you agree that most humans don’t even know that what goes on and it might place any role at all? So you’re hoping it all turns out that there are trillions of other sentient beings. Remember them? Buddha talks about them too.

So you’ve to look at why you try to visualize this little happy peaceful place, why you need to even think that. Bodhisattvas are prepared to jump in the deep end and never give up, living in this excuse me, know I swear this insane asylum, and having courage and seeing the potential and never giving up helping others, because that’s what you’ve got to do. There’s no benefit, I can’t imagine, to wish hope one day that place will be nice. You’ve to ask yourself, what for? I’ve not been saying be depressed.

I’m not saying that, but it’s just not helpful to you to think it. What good it do you? What’s the point of it? What can you do to make it happen? You can help yourself.

Start with yourself and help one person at a time. You can’t do more. No. I feel happy with the idea of it though. It helps me feel happy.

Well, gotta look at that, I said. Have a look. Good idea. Okay. I hear you now.

Someone else? Yes. Over here. For many years, I’ve been working on the subject matter we’re talking about to make life better for myself and other people. I’m finding it difficult.

I live a life. I have relationships. They fall apart. My finances screw up. Yep.

I work long hours. That’s right. So you keep doing it, it makes it a little bit more difficult to coexist with society in some ways. You become like the they they relate to you like you’re weird. I see.

Yeah. Like, on the construction site, twelve hours a day, new shutdowns. Understand. And yeah. No.

I understand. So it’s a tricky balance, isn’t it? So on the one side, it’s like anything, you know. If suddenly you start seriously wanting to play cricket, and you’re living in a non cricketer world, it’s very hard to play cricket, and you are weird, and you don’t have much feedback. But the more you play it, the more you become content with your cricket, and you won’t need to share it with everybody, and you don’t mind the non cricketers because you’re content with your own cricket.

So then the other one is another way to put it here, when you know, they say the sign of a really good practitioner is they act like a regular person. And because the more compassion you have, the more you are contenting yourself with your practice, but you realize some people are suffering, so you become very easygoing, you’re a nice bloke, you help people sweep the floor and wash the dishes, that’s the sign of success. You’re a nice bloke who acts friendly, that’s the sign of real success. And so if it’s hard to interact with others, maybe there’s too much talking, maybe you’re expecting too much, maybe you’re wanting others to like cricket, and that’s a problem. Do you see what I’m saying?

So we’ve to keep our mouth shut and be content with it, and then have empathy and compassion for others. Do you see? Alright. What else? I don’t have a question.

Just two statements. One, also, is to thank you for coming Good. To help teach us. And the other one is to thank you in particular for the reminder that the self improvement project is an ego trip. But it’s not.

That self improvement is an ego trip? Yeah. Right? Did I say it? Is this?

God in heaven. Have you heard that this whole night? What are you saying? What I mean is Would you what I mean? I’m having a heart attack.

What the hell are you telling me? Would you please start again? I’m having a that’s terrible. What I mean is What do you mean? No.

What I mean is that it’s it can be neurotic. Can be neurotic to be preoccupied with myself and my neurosis. So what do you mean by preoccupied with your neurosis? Do there’s two things. Do you mean reinforcing your neurosis, or do you mean recognizing it and trying to be less neurotic?

Which do you mean? One or the other? Which one? Are you trying to reinforce your nervousness? Didn’t quite understand the question.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Said the shocking statement that you’ve heard tonight that self help is an ego trip. So you said you said the words being preoccupied with my neuroses. You said those words, didn’t you?

So I’m asking you to clarify. There’s two options there. One is being preoccupied with your neuroses means you think about yourself the whole time and you keep reinforcing your neuroses. Or the other one is you recognize your neuroses and you’re trying to lessen them. Which is what are you talking about?

Well, I was talking about the first one, think. Well, then yes, you’re right. Yeah. You didn’t pre op well, join the club or something special. That’s not called self.

That is self help, and that’s typical neurosis. I’m miserable, I’m depressed, I’m no good, it’s his fault, it’s her fault, it’s not my fault. That’s neurotic and that’s self centeredness and misery. But knowing neurosis and seeing them and recognising them and taking responsibility and going, I can change them, that’s fantastic. It’s such a huge challenge in our culture to it’s such a different worldview to accept and allow the non virtuous emotions to have their expression and then to be still with them.

Said you have to express them? To experience them and identify them, acknowledge them. No. No. Not express them.

I didn’t mean that. But it’s your choice of business. You don’t do in public. You do it in your privacy in your own home, in your own house, with you with you in your practice. This is not a public thing.

You don’t do it on the bus with a microphone. No. No. Just I’m gonna find the right words here. It’s your own private business.

Good lord. Anything else? Tie for biscuits, I think. Yes? Okay.

We finished. I’ll sing one little prayer, and then you can go. Okay. So the little prayer is like I don’t think of it as bookends. The first one we kind of made the aspiration to see if there’s some tools here, and if there have been, I’m very happy.

If not, I’m sorry, but that’s okay. You’re the boss. I’m just doing blah blah. So the end here, we think, you know, and the Buddha would say this, that every millisecond of whatever we have heard and thought has gone in. We’ve stored it away.

Okay? So we think we’ve sown also, we’ve sown seeds, tendencies in the mind. So we think amazing. And we nourish these seeds, we plant this, the last ninety minutes with our effort every day, never giving up on our potential, please never, with kindness towards ourselves and courage and therefore ability to help others. May we never give up on this.

Two little prayers to express that in Tibet. Thank you everybody. Please enjoy the Biscuit. Thank you.