Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Robina Courtin explicitly contrasts Buddhism as an integrated science of mind with religion as belief system, a framework shaping this 87-minute session. She examines how consciousness encompasses thought and emotion, with mental consciousness generating opinions or viewpoints that feel like feelings. These divide into two categories—neurotic (attachment, aversion, anger, depression) and positive (compassion, clarity)—that drive all suffering or flourishing. She focuses on attachment as a junkie state turning to aversion the moment it doesn’t get what it wants, manifesting as subtle frustration or clinical depression. She presents meditation and introspection as hard psychological skills for listening to the conceptual stories beneath emotions, and argues the Buddhist goal is radical: eradicate all neuroses and develop infinite wisdom and compassion. Stories from her twenty years working with prisoners illustrate how people can fundamentally reinterpret their circumstances.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 E 2016 07 23.mp3
UUID: 3477fdaa-76f0-4354-b9ee-907ea6625878
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Robina Courtin (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2016-07-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 87.2 minutes
Words: ~15,877
Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to Buddha House. Some of you may not have been here before, but you are very welcome. If you want to know any of the meanings of some of the things that are around, please just ask somebody around you and they can help to explain it to you. First of all, I need to acknowledge the Traditional Owners, the Kaurna people on whose land we meet today, and we pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.
And I also need to say to you that programme has had to change. Unfortunately, Lian King, the psychologist who is going to form part of our speaking panel today, has been unable to come. But You’re stuck with me for three whole hours, I’m really sorry. No discussions. The big win is that Venerable Robina has agreed to speak for the entire time, is just fabulous for us.
I’m sorry. There’s no break. So for those of you, I’m sure many of you know a lot about Venerable Robina, but just to fill you in briefly on her background. She’s raised in Melbourne as a good Catholic girl some time ago, and she’s been ordained as a Buddhist nun for thirty eight years. Some oh, something like that.
Yeah. And she’s she’s lived all over the world. She’s probably best known for her work with prisoners and she founded the Liberation Prison Project. But she’s also taught all over the world on a variety of topics including depression and anxiety, and she’s probably renowned for saying you need to be your own psychologist, so perhaps it’s just as well that Lian is not. Out of a job.
Just to let you know, the format of today, Venerable Robina will speak for however long she feels is right. If you want to ask her some questions, can you please just hold them until a bit later or when Venerable Robina indicates that it’s okay to ask her. Is that alright? Yeah, absolutely. And it could be quite quickly, feels to me.
We’ll see how it goes. But for me, the conversation is the main thing. And then we’ve got a fabulous afternoon tea, which you might have seen as you came in. So we’ll break at some stage and have a cuppa, and then come back and have a more informal question and answer session or discussion session afterwards. We’ll see how things go.
Thank you so much. Thank you everybody. Well at the risk of sounding too holy, don’t think of it like that, I’m going to say a little tiny prayer, but it’s got some meaning obviously because a prayer is words and words are thoughts and Buddha’s deal is the thoughts, Buddha’s deal is the mind. Say, and it’s not joking, to say that the mind is Buddha’s expertise. This might not be so evident to us, you know, because the packaging of religion is quite strong.
Mean, at this room, you know, dripping in, holding up, isn’t it? So it’s sometimes initially surprising to hear that if you really get to the crux of the Buddhist approach, it’s about the human mind, about the mind. These little prayers, prayers in Buddhism often are really just like aspirations, stating a purpose, you know, stating thoughts, really aspirations. So there’s two parts of this little prayer. The first two lines are for anybody in the room already who already, say, relies upon Buddhist techniques.
It’s reiterating this reliance. And the second two lines can be for all of us, it’s like stating our purpose. Let’s just make it a broad purpose, like maybe an altruistic one. So there’s a nice saying in Buddhism, I’ll go into this, that a bird needs two wings, wisdom and compassion. So the compassion wing is the long term result, know, but the first one is the wisdom wing which means putting ourselves together, knowing who we are and becoming this marvelous person that the Buddhist view would say we’ve got the potential to become.
Enough chairs for everybody? People coming in. So this prayer is just saying we’re going to listen to these ideas, have a discussion, think about the meaning, really to see if there’s any tools we can take from it. And there might well be not one tool and that’s completely okay. I like to say it in earnest, you’re the boss, not Buddha.
But here we’ve had an idea to take some tools from this to help us do what? Develop, as I said, our amazing potential, so that in turn we can be a benefit to others because we all live in this crazy world together, don’t we, you know? So think of it like that. This expresses this idea. So as I mentioned, know, it’s really true, you could say that the mind, the mind and how it works is Buddha’s expertise.
And like I said, this is a bit surprising to us because, you know, it looks like religion, sounds like religion, I’m a nun, look at it, you know. So it’s surprising to think that these two fit together because we tend to in the world very clearly, there’s religion here and there’s mind and consciousness there, mind and psychology. And that’s certainly in our culture, you know, since the time of the Christians and the medieval times when the Catholics ran the show, there was no separate body of knowledge about mind or consciousness. That all was in the context of religion, in the context of the Christian teachings. So it was only gradually, wasn’t it, that the whole scientific so called secular thing gradually grew and now we have these two distinct, completely distinct models.
There’s the secular world which is scientific, the brain, neuroscience, all the amazing findings, all these brilliant thinkers, and of course psychology, and then you’ve got this, you know, sometimes weird wacky bit over here which is called religion. And so we tend to think, isn’t it religion as a belief system? Because obviously the things that we mostly know about are based on the concept of a creator. And then we think of science, psychology, kind of rational, clear, intelligent, provable, this kind of thing. But they’re quite separate.
What’s kind of interesting to hear that Buddhism, certainly the way it’s been in Tibet and coming from the previous traditions of Buddhism in India of course, going back two thousand five hundred years to Mr. Buddha, it’s still completely integrated, you know? There’s no contradiction between the so called scientific approach and the so called religious approach. So it’s kind of interesting that. So the thing is, as I said, if the Buddha’s expertise is the mind, it’s really important to understand what he means by the mind.
So I’m just going to say a few little bullet points, and then we’ll look into kind of the experiential approach to all this, you know, and the point of all this. So the Buddha so first of all, okay, for the his mind, he’s not referring to the brain. It’s a big surprise to us, you know? Because if we think religion, think soul or spirit, and we think psychology we think mind, you know? But for the Buddha he doesn’t have a term like soul or spirit.
He uses the word mind or indeed consciousness and these are used synonymously, you know? But his view of the mind and what those words cover is probably radically different. Maybe you could even argue that those words cover what we might mean by soul or spirit as well. So we’ve the intellect, mind. We’ve got the feelings, we point here, mind for the Buddha.
We have unconscious, subconscious, instinct, intuition, this entire spectrum of our inner being. For the Buddha, this is covered by the word mind, and the word consciousness is used broadly speaking synonymously with the word mind, you know? First point, big difference. Second, and this is just out of interest and we might go into this, we’ll see what happens, but the implications of this next point are kind of tasty. For the Buddha, it’s absolutely fundamental that this mind of ours, all these thoughts and feelings and emotions, and that includes our love, compassion, our kindness, our fears, our neurosis, our anxiety, our psychosis, our whatever you want to call it.
The entire spectrum of from good to bad, happy to suffering. Not one atom of this comes from mummy and daddy or indeed comes from a creator. This again is quite a shock to us because we have these deep assumptions. If you’re in the religion model, comes from you’re produced by God. If you’re in the materialist model, you’re produced by mummy and daddy.
So certainly in the materialist model, the assumption there the assumption which is very deep in our bones is if mummy and daddy made me then when it comes to the crunch they’re kind of the blame. Isn’t it? I’m not being horrible here but it’s a natural logical thing. I mean if you make something and it doesn’t work obviously you’re the blame. So clearly it’s a bit like if mommy and daddy made me, gave me a brain, gave me a mind, gave me genes, DNA, gave me anger, gave me psychosis, gave me love and kindness, then obviously they’re the ones we have to turn to.
And that’s how we tend to think in our culture, and I think we don’t really question that. So the Buddha doesn’t argue that it’s really not helpful. He says of course it’s useful to look back into your parents and to what happened when you were a child or the events of the world to understand yourself more deeply. He doesn’t argue. But in I think in a materialist world, because that’s the view we have, that you’re made by your mummy and daddy, therefore we’re also there to look, you know?
And the way they’re the product of our external conditions, we only tend to look there, you know? So the Buddha’s view is kind of more nuanced actually, and just the implication of this idea that you’re not the handiwork of your mommy and daddy and you’re not the handiwork of a creator. So first, the point is, who are you the handiwork of then? Where do I come from? Well, the Dalai Lama points out the whole Buddhist view of karma is a kind of self creation, which is a of a shocking idea, but just say it for what it’s worth here, it will go into it if it if it comes into the discussion, you know, because it has deep experiential implications, not just implications, not just some intellectual interesting philosophical view.
That what we are is the product of what we’ve done before, that our consciousness Buddha says, think of it like a river of mental moments. It goes back and back before conception, way before, and indeed will continue after we die. So even just as a concept here, that’s not such a difficult concept to think about, to actually go into it and analyse it and eventually prove it to be true, that’s another discussion. But to take it as a simple hypothesis, which is what I certainly say as a Buddhist that I’m doing, is not too complicated. It’s just that it’s very different from the view we tend to have.
So the key experiential implication of that idea, obviously, is that then it’s my I come with my own mind. So then that’s the Buddhist approach. If we can take on, we can learn to recognize yes, Fred punched me in the nose, yes, daddy was horrible, yes, mommy was very kind or whatever, we can certainly look at our lives in this way, look at the events and see how they play an immense role in our lives, in who we are and how we function. But the Buddha’s key point, and it’s a practical issue, not a moralistic one, you know. Basically the Buddha’s point is that this mind of mine, this anger, this jealousy, these fears, this love, this compassion, this depression, this anxiety, this psychosis, whatever you want to call it, all the words we’ve got in the West, or indeed my capacity to play music or football.
They’ve got equal status in Buddhism as being tendencies in my mind, and they’re mine, Buddha says. The simple way of saying it is where do they come from? Well guess what, I must have done them before. You know, so it’s not too much of a complicated concept, but the crucial point, and I find certainly as a person who’s attempting to put my money where my mouth is and apply this stuff that I’m talking about, it has slowly slowly over my life, has a very powerful influence on me that when I recognize that the anger is mine, the jealousy is mine, the depression is mine, the being good at music is mine, rather than what is the cause of why I’m like this? Who is, you know,, we sort of look into the past a bit like a needle in a haystack?
Looking for the cause of why Robina is so angry and the cause of why she keeps, you know, choosing ridiculous boyfriends or the cause of why she keeps getting sacked from her job or whatever. We tend to have that default assumption I think. So what I’m getting at is Buddha is not saying it’s not Of course it’s useful to do that, because we are products of our conditions, but like I said, it’s more nuanced for him. The point is, we can learn to look at the anger itself, the anxiety itself, the love and compassion and the tendencies themselves. And that’s a massively different point, know?
So it’s a bit like, you know, where’s Jan? Let’s say Jan’s my mean sister and she punches me in the nose. You know, or I say Jan’s my psychologist and my mean sister punched me in the nose and I come to Jan and tell me about your experiences Robina. Well in the beginning I will talk about, I will go to detailed description of what my sister did she did this, she this, she said this, she did this and we know about that. And then when I’m ready Jan might say to me well now that’s fine Robina, you’re describing your sister but how about now telling me about your suffering, telling me about your anger?
And I’ll say well excuse me I just did but I didn’t. What I did was give a detailed description of the event and we can’t tell the difference. You know, if I’m really happy and excited and in love with Fred and Jen asked me to tell me about what’s going on, I will describe Fred in intimate detail as this most divine, most perfect thing, isn’t it? And that he is the cause of my happiness. But for me to actually go into my mind and observe what I’m actually thinking and experiencing, that we can’t we don’t even distinguish, we can’t see the difference.
So it’s quite a subtle point, and it’s not an easy point. So this is where the Buddhist psychological model comes in, it’s so fascinating actually. But it is difficult to do. So the Buddha is saying, you know, in the Buddhist model of the mind, and this by the way comes from these Indians, I mean that they’ve you know gone over variations and changes over the last two and a half thousand years since Buddha came along, but he came out of this amazing system of you know these Indians three hundred five hundred years before that. I remember the Dalai Lama recently saying it was these amazing Indians more than three thousand years ago who were the ones who began this extraordinary investigation into the nature of self.
Now I think in our modern Jewish Christian, you know, world, we know nothing about the Indians. We track back to the Greeks and the Romans. We think they’re wonderful, and nothing wrong with them. But we know zero about Indians, Indian philosophy, Indian culture, Indian psychology, and this is not kidding. These extraordinary beings, they were the ones who created, who invented this technique that’s the basis of what’s known broadly these days and practiced among so many Westerners called mindfulness meditation.
The actual technique that this is based on is this extraordinary psychological skill invented by these Indians five hundred years before Buddha that enables a person to develop astonishing clarity and precision and subtlety of their own cognitive process, the actual mind itself, that enables us to go beyond the conceptual and the sensory, which is all we posit in our materialist world, and to access these more subtle levels of consciousness. We, like I’m saying, that we don’t even posit as existing in our world. So they’re really quite remarkable. But as soon as we say you know, like like if you were to see a person let’s say who’d accomplish this what they call single pointed concentration, this state of consciousness, this state of subtle mind, nothing mystical. They would look like they were dead.
Now that completely sounds mystical, doesn’t it? Like insane. You talk to a scientist about that, it does not fit our model so we put it in the too hard burner or we just say it’s weird and wacko and religious, you know? But this is fitting with even the Buddhist views. The Buddha came out of this remarkable tradition and he diverted his own direction, specifically in relation to the way the mind works and the nature of self, who we actually are fundamentally.
So in the long term, as a person taking Buddha’s tools, you’re learning to utilize these skills so that you can investigate your own actual being. And I don’t mean your brain. I’m not describing this. I’m not arguing with neuroscience. We’re discussing the actual cognitive process itself that is not the physical.
And we’re discussing here not using the microscope on the brain, nothing wrong, you know? But we’re discussing developing the microscope of your own mind itself, the cognitive process itself that we to use in the long term to identify, to investigate, to unpack and unravel this complex emotional soup in here, you know? Which for us we just tend to take for granted is mysterious and strange and unconscious, who Lord knows what it’s all about but that’s Buddha’s expertise. And this is what we’re talking long term here. And it’s an intensely difficult job because when we look at the way we talk about our mind we’re describing, like I said before, we describe the external condition.
It’s very hard for us to describe the actual mental experience. We almost can’t distinguish it, know. It’s very fascinating. Okay, so moving towards anxiety, depression and all the rest of the rubbish we’ve all got in our poor little heads, you know? Join the club here, it’s alright.
The Buddha’s idea is, the Buddhist model of the mind, and this again is based on these Indians, but it’s developed over the centuries, and this is studied in great depth in the Tibetan Buddhist Monastic University System, the system that we’ve been educated in, you know, and is the source of every word I’m saying in this room, which tracks itself back to the time of the Buddha in India. According to that model, this model of the mind, we’ve got two ways our mind works. We’ve got the sensory consciousness and we have mental consciousness. Okay? And this is already really interesting.
I think I might have mentioned this last week if some of you were here. We’ll go into this here, but we’re getting to the point. Okay? Identifying these states of mind we won’t go into detail about, the ones that causes so much pain and suffering, you know. So first of all we’ve got the sensory and the conceptual.
Sorry, the sensory and the mental and it’s already very interesting. So just quickly, you know, if I were to say to you what a pretty cup that is. We did this last week if you were here what a pretty cup! So we can all be forgiven couldn’t we for thinking that that’s my I consciousness cognizing a pretty cup. Buddha says don’t be silly.
Or if I say wow Fred is unbelievably handsome. Right? You don’t say anything but you just can’t believe I can see such as you know because you know he’s as ugly as sin. Let’s say. You understand?
But you know so as our mummies told us beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s a profound statement actually. So what’s going on is this. The Buddha would say don’t be ridiculous your eye consciousness is like a dumb animal. All it can cognise is two things shape and colour.
So where does what a pretty cut from from? This is a really powerful point. Well, I’m not kidding, but I mean it. Quicker than Google, what’s happening is this quicker than Google. The millisecond my eye consciousness lands here, what’s happening is my mental consciousness and Buddhist point here interestingly, is immediately accessed.
And this is like where the computer is, this is where the workshop is as the Lama says, this is where all our emotions, all our memories, all our are all stored. The Buddha would say nothing goes astray. Everything we experience through our senses or with our mental consciousness, it’s imprinted in our mind, imprinted in our consciousness. Nothing goes astray. So quicker than Google that’s all access and up comes this opinion Oh what a pretty cup!
The opinion Fred is so divine. So this is the point I’m getting at now let’s look into this because what Buddha is saying is in our mental consciousness, in our mental consciousness which is where the workshop is, this is where all they’re all basically opinions. This sounds so peculiar. So these viewpoints opinions you know viewpoints or opinions many of which are totally instinctive because we’ve done them for so long Buddha says and indeed Buddha would say we come program with this stuff from the first second of conception. This is what we mean by instinct.
Almost, the habit of having had this for so long. This is the background to it, know? So much of the stuff that’s in here, we never think of as an opinion. I don’t think, well that’s really fascinating, see that particular shape and that’s called Fred and I know he’s ugly, you know I know he’s Mary’s former husband and she thinks he’s an absolute creep, but as far as I’m con I don’t say and as far as I’m concerned he looks quite handsome. I will just say excuse me, he is handsome and anybody who disagrees with you, you’re an idiot.
Because my opinion is very fixed and I believe I’m right don’t I? This is how all our opinions are so let’s look at the opinions here there are two categories of these opinions, okay? Some are called negative or neurotic or deluded or exaggerating or distorted or disturbing or afflicted. There are lots of terms for these in Buddhist psychology. And some are called valid, virtuous, positive.
So what’s an example of some under the neurotic heading? They’re called anxious, they’re called depressed, they’re called anger, they’re called arrogance, they’re called low self esteem. What are some under the positive heading? They’re called self respect, you know, confidence, kindness, generosity, love, compassion, forgiveness. Now we know these words upside down and back to front, but what’s shocking to hear is that they’re viewpoints.
They’re conceptually based viewpoints. This is a key point the Buddha’s making, and we’ll go into this in more detail. Because at the moment, because these are also habitual, we think of them as feelings. We have this special category in the West called feelings and that’s when it hits our body. Because we make the body the boss, Lama Yeshe puts it, we make the body the boss.
The body for us is everything. This is why, when let’s say a person like me when I was a little girl, anger was a natural, was a strong tendency in my mind, which means I came fully programmed with it, my mummy did not have to teach me, I had it down, I promise. You know I only recognized anger and it didn’t take long because it vomited out my mouth right there. But one of you maybe, you know, because you don’t vomit out immediately you don’t know you’ve got depression until you can’t get out of bed one morning. It’s only then that you notice because that’s when it hits the body so really what I’m getting at is we only notice what we’re feeling when the Vesuvius is about to explode.
This is why we all get nuts because we don’t have methods in our culture which even though there’s marvelousness Mr Freud and Mr Yorn and all those great people have come along. We have incredible methods in our world now, amazing wonderful therapists, wonderful psychologists helping us deal with our own neuroses, dealing with our fears and our dramas, you know? It’s fantastic what’s happening the last hundred something years, when would Mr. Freud start? When was Mr.
Freud? Eighteen hundred and something. Something, whatever. So then, but the thing is here, you know, we give such power to the physical feeling, the physical experience. But the trouble so that’s, I think, reiterated in our materialist model which talks about only the physical.
Only the physical, the brain and so on. Although there’s lots of wonderful discussions these days about maybe how that’s not so, you know? I mean there’s this wonderful book I read recently called The Undying Brain. It’s not about zombies. We’re going to go into this in more detail next weekend when we discuss the whole business of death in Buddhism.
It’s this American medical journalist, he’s an atheist, a materialist, you know he’s done masses of research in America about now all the contradictions coming up and the confusion about exactly what is life, what is death, when does begin, what is a consciousness? So he’s done masses of reporting all on the basis of all the stuff that’s coming up now as a result of harvesting organs, you know? People coming back to life, this kind of thing. That’s fantastic this discussion is happening. One of the doctors was quoted as saying I can say now with certainty that consciousness is not a function of the brain.
I haven’t got a clue what it is, but I can say that much. It’s great, I think, that people are looking at these things, and these incredible conversations between the Dalai Lama and his mob the last thirty, forty years actually, with some of the best brains in the West on exactly these topics of the brain, consciousness, what is life, what is this type of stuff. And all that stuff’s been published. There’s a wonderful organisation called Mind and Life. Mindandlife dot org, you see their website.
Amazing conversations, incredible findings, some of the best brains in the West have really some of the fun and even some of the fundamental findings now that are coming as about neuroplasticity. One of the greatest findings of the twentieth century is one scientist said that you’re not stuck with the brain you’re born with. Well, Buddha’s been telling us very politely in his quiet way for two and a half thousand years that we can change our mind, you know? So it’s kind of wonderful what’s happening these days. So the crucial point that the Buddhist view is taking, and this is not easy to see, I tell you, it’s not easy to look at, you know?
Is that when we begin to use these psychological skills called simply mindfulness meditation, concentration meditation, a dead easy technique and we’ll try, you know, we’ll do it, it’s as simple as falling off a log. The technique itself is so easy it’s ridiculous. Success at it, that’s another discussion don’t hold your breath. And I’m not kidding there, watch your breath and don’t hold your breath. So the point is once we start to develop this skill to focus our mind immediately what we’re beginning to do is step out of our head aren’t we?
And so we’re starting to notice the chaos that’s there, this unceasing constant raging on, these endless conversations that are going on quietly much of the time in the background because we’re mostly on autopilot doing just just doing our typical things getting up breakfast this, go here, drive the car, there, blah blah blah. We’re just focusing only on the tip of the iceberg. So it’s only when the emotional stuff is cooking and cooking and cooking underneath and something triggers it that it explodes to the surface and then we notice it. But the fact is, the Buddhist point is very clear, we could spend the rest of the day just on this one topic. The emotional component is when it hits the body, that’s the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg.
That in fact all that is is the indicator of what’s going on at a deeper level cognitively. The actual that actually all these emotions are viewpoints. That anger, depression, anxiety, surprisingly, shockingly, actually the emotional component is absolutely there but they’re underpinned at a deeper level by elaborate conceptual stories that we are completely instinctively caught up in, that we don’t even notice the stories but we totally believe in them. And they are what feed, inform, you know, underpin the emotional component. So for us emotions and feelings are superior.
They’re more deep somehow. Well it’s kind of ironic, the Buddhist view is almost the other way around. But actually they’re underpinned by, at a subtler level, these subtler conceptual stories that are so automatic, so automatic, so deep in our bones, you know? And that’s what’s hard to get into, that’s what’s hard to see, but understanding this even as a concept is kind of powerful. Kind of powerful, you know.
I’m not communicating here? Do you understand what I’m saying? So then it’s really a shock to hear when you saw me as a little girl screaming in anger shouting and yelling and beating on the ground and tears coming and spit coming out their mouth and eyes wide like saucers that that’s conceptual. You think what a joke you know? And the same with depression you can’t get out of bed one morning you’re inert!
But fundamentally, and this is why it’s so interesting we speak the rest of the day just on this now I’m going to talk about, this is the manifestation to some people of what’s called aversion. In my case, my aversion responds violently, punch and kick yours goes internally until eventually you can’t move because you’re so inert, utterly full of despair and not wanting to kill people, you know? So this aversion, we have to understand that, there’s a cute word aversion sounds so peculiar you know, I have aversion for carrots. We don’t use that word even, but this is fundamental in Buddhist psychology. Fundamental!
Such cute words. We’re so used to the kind of complicated terms we use in the West now like bipolar and personality disorder and schizophrenic and all these new fascinating terms we’ve made up. The Buddhist view hasn’t changed in two and a half thousand years, he uses these ordinary boring words: anxiety, compassion, attachment, anger boring words, almost kind of cliched. This is the stuff that Buddhist psychology deals with, you know. So to understand anger even, to understand depression, to understand anxiety, in Buddhist psychology we have to understand a state of mind called attachment.
And this again we could spend the next month. Lama Yeshe said I can tell you about it for one whole year. We will never begin to understand this until we start looking deeply inside, unpacking and unraveling, doing this job of being our own psychologist as Jan quoted me quoting Lama Yeshe, you know. So in the Buddhist model of the mind you’ve got the neuroses, the afflictive emotions, the painful ones and we’re so used to hearing these if you know we were good Catholics like I was, we’re used to hearing them as sins, you know the seven deadly sins. That’s why we have so much guilt and shame about them, I’m criticizing them, I love my Catholic upbringing.
But the Buddha would say if we really understand these states of mind, the neuroses, the attachment, the anger, the jealousy, the fears, this stuff, we should be crying in compassion for ourselves, not feeling guilty. And this is part of the problem, this guilt just completely gets in the way because we beat ourselves up, we’re our own worst enemies, my mother used to say to me, you know? What’s the irony of it? It’s the irony of ego actually. So there’s like a hierarchy of these neuroses.
Now the root one, we might not even go into this one, that’s so primordial, we don’t even name for it in our culture, is a completely mistaken neurotic fear based sense of a separate unhappy little I. Completely instinctive. Now on the basis of this unhappy little I we have this thing called attachment and this is massive, utterly massive. And we’ll go into it. Now, on the basis of that attachment, okay, this attachment is multifaceted.
Its first fundamental energy level beyond intellect that’s so practiced in us is a feeling of dissatisfaction. Deep in our bones there’s this utter sense since we’re born, and depends on how strong it is for each one of us because we’re all different, of never being enough, never having enough. Therefore no matter what I get it’s never enough, no matter what I do it’s never enough, no matter what I achieve it’s never enough, no matter how much love I get it’s never enough, no matter how much praise I get it’s never enough, no matter how much money I get it’s never enough depending on the object. So this energy is what drives the next level of attachment which is therefore the craving for something and the very first level of it is the stuff out there such that when I get it it’ll fill up that gaping hole and make me satisfied. So the next level of attachment is this, and we call that neediness.
It’s a wonderful word in the West this incredible oh she’s so needy we’ll say it’s such a powerful word this is the energy of attachment and why would you be needy because you obviously feel like you’re lacking something it’s pretty obvious it’s clear Of course I’m needy, I’m needy for cake, needy for love, needy for handsome boys, needy for handbags, whatever because I feel I’m missing something, it’s sort of a no brainer and that’s the assumption we all have, I’m missing something and that manifests for many of us is this terrible low self esteem I’m nothing, I’m nobody. Isn’t it? We recognize this. And it’s an assumption and we don’t question it. Like I don’t question you know, Fred’s the most divine thing since sliced bread.
It’s like I don’t question that I must be a creep. We know this, you know, we’re convinced about these feelings which are actually viewpoints deep in our bones. So this sense of dissatisfaction which gives rise to this craving and of course the next level of attachment which is the neediness. The next level of attachment is it gets the object, the bread or the chocolate cake, whatever it is. And then this attachment this is the tricky part makes the object look so much more delicious than it really is.
So there’s incredible excitement now and anticipation to get the object. And then when it comes to Fred, the expecting and this is a killer the expectation, this vampirish expectation that he had better fulfill my fantasies because attachment is a fantasy and it’s really hard to see all this. I don’t think it’s a fantasy, think it’s the truth! And it’s also instinctive, we don’t even notice the conceptual process that’s going on here. And then the getting of Fred and the possessing of him.
All of this is a function of attachment. All of this is a function of attachment. So this is an obvious gross level of it. But the difficult part, and this is when the subtler thing of anxiety comes in, or indeed depression comes in, because these are more subtle emotions, you know? Anger is an obvious one.
Clear, isn’t it? This attachment is running the show. This attachment is, the Buddha says, the main source of all the pain we have in our lives. This is a shocking concept. So the first point you’ve to be super clear about here is remember the word we use when we say attachment is not what Buddha is talking about, you’ve got to realize that.
We know words are used differently, it’s very clear. You know? Like if I say that’s a flat table, you know precisely what I mean, it’s a geometric whatever you call it. But if you say you live in a flat, you get a bit confused if you don’t know it’s another meaning. Oh, I’ve got to live on a table?
You’d be utterly confused, but you’d go oh I see it’s a house another word for house, alright. Well you play something in B flat in music same word, same spelling, same sound three utterly different meanings. We get that with words, we’ll get that please with the word attachment. The way we use it in the West is completely different so cancel that one for this discussion because I’m not discussing that. We’re discussing a completely neurotic, you know, terribly painful, suffering, delusional state of mind.
Please hear my words precisely as I mean them. But it’s shocking to hear this. Attachment is like this little vampire in there. Attachment one of the ways of describing attachment and Buddha says I mean it’s massive again the way it’s dealt with in Buddhist psychology. It’s massive how it’s dealt with it.
It’s in-depth in literature. But attachment is this it’s like this another way of describing it, there’s like this junkie in us that is absolutely frantic to get what I want every millisecond. And don’t hear like some kind of monster there. Join the universe, we’ve all got it. But what’s fascinating, it’s harder sometimes for us to see this if we have got kindness and love and compassion and goodness because our attachment kind of pollutes our good qualities and we can’t see the attachment so clearly.
If we just had naked attachment with not much good qualities you’d be a monster. You’d be evil, I promise. But that’s why it’s harder to see it when we’re nice people and do practice humility and do practice patience and do practice compassion and love. It’s harder to see the attachment, but it’s there constantly and it’s polluting our good qualities. It’s really hard to see it.
This is why Buddha says we’ve got to use these techniques to get some focus, to step out of our head, to start to listen to these cognitive stories that are informing our emotions. It really is quite nuanced, it is quite subtle. We’ve got to be patient and humble in our job of doing this. So one way I talk about this attachment, this neediness, this expectation, this possessiveness, this exaggerating of the deliciousness of things, all this is a function of attachment, this motor that’s running us. One way of describing it, like I said, is it’s this craving, this frantic junkie that only wants what I want every second.
Or another way of putting it is, it can only stand the good things. Attachment only wants the nice things. It can’t stand the unhappy things, it can’t stand the bad things. So another way of saying it is that attachment which is like this motor that’s running us subtly, primordially, beneath everything else. The millisecond, and this is now really getting to the point, the millisecond it doesn’t get what it wants, which is a thousand times a day.
The response is called aversion. So attachment is this energy that is always anticipating and looking forward and thinking and kind of all perky and excited and looking forward to things and anticipating things and wanting things and getting things. It’s always kind of like you see a pretty thing oh that’s lovely that’s attachment energy. Aversion energy is oh my god that’s disgusting. So this you know a gross example is if you sit and stuff fourteen pieces of chocolate cake in your you know or the gross example is you’re completely in love with Fred that’s attachment full blown and then he leaves you for another aversion and you collapse into despair and now you want to kill him because anger has taken over.
That’s an extreme example of attachment fully blown and then aversion and anger fully blown and now he’s a monster. That’s an extreme example. But this happens at a much more nuanced level day to day underneath quietly. So polite words for aversion are frustration, annoyance, irritation, upset. How often do we say that in a day?
You know, you’re driving along and the red light comes, you sort of stop in your tracks, you get annoyed, you drop something, you get annoyed. A loud noise, you get annoyed, upset. Your husband doesn’t listen to you properly, you get frustrated. We use these words all the time. Now we don’t go rushing off to Jan as our therapist Jan, I got frustrated today, oh shudder, I’ve been to go home and deal with it, you know?
But this is these are all symptoms, are all indicators, these are all examples of attachment not getting what it wants and we should be listening to these at a deeper level. Don’t wait till you explode, don’t wait till you can’t get out of bed one morning, don’t wait till you want to kill your ex husband. And that’s what we do, because we don’t notice until it’s so severe. Then we’re going to go find our therapist and get some pills or get some therapy before we go nuts. Because we don’t pay attention at a subtle level to what’s happening underneath our day to day stuff.
That’s simply speaking what Buddha is saying we need to do. Don’t think of it as religion. It is not. It just means it’s developing a much more refined, much more subtle, much more subtle awareness of what the hell is going on in our head, second by second. And this is not easy.
But that’s the job. That’s the job. It’s not mystical, it’s just hard work and what that means is we’ve got to stop blaming the outside object. It’s the red light’s fault, it’s my husband’s fault, it’s the loud noises fault, it’s the cake’s fault. We blame the cake for making us happy.
It’s not my fault look at that delicious cake, it’s begging me to eat, it’s not my fault hey I can’t help it, that’s how we are you know and this is the way ego works the Buddha says, we’re like these victims, I’m not being mean here, well I always sound so intense when I say things, it’s probably anti mean, but are we communicating? Do we recognise anything I’m saying? Yes. It’s a nuanced job, it’s a subtle job, so we’ve to have real patience to do it, but it’s a possible job. It is self and when we say self awareness we immediately get all holy.
Don’t think of it as that! Introspection and awareness and accountability and responsibility a huge these are huge words and these are the key to success, you know. Just in general, that’s like an overview. So anxiety you could say is when attachment gets so berserk we just can’t handle it. That’s all.
It’s too much, you just can’t cope with all the balls in the air isn’t it? Is that not what exactly I mean broadly speaking is that anxiety? Use all the jobs to do, all the balls in the air too many things to wake up, all the worries and this and what daddy thinks and mommy and this and this she and the boyfriend and the girlfriend and the job and the boss and the thing and that, the bad things that happen, it’s like we can’t cope. Because all these things we’re not in a way you could say it’s so much stuff that we don’t know how to deal with it as it comes, it’s like you know Federer hitting forty two balls at you all at once. Can’t cope, you know?
So there’s many I mean anyway And depression really is internalised aversion. It’s thwarted attachment, but a thousand times a day. Thwarted attachment. Anger is thwarted attachment. Depression is thwarted attachment.
The common ground, the common thing is the state of mind that informs depression, that informs anger. Aversion. Go away. That’s aversion. Attachment is oh lovely lovely lovely.
Aversion is no no no. So when it’s you know even when you drop something, think about it. You drop something, you know, you drop something. Look and you get angry. Oh, well I shouldn’t have done that.
We say. Shouldn’t we do that? Or you shag somebody, you shouldn’t drop something. Where does it say you shouldn’t drop something? You’re a human being.
I mean, we get frustrated, annoyed. Baby things, baby things like that, you know? And I think what’s underpinning this is since we’re born, one of our deepest attachments and this is kind of advanced level of attachment, they don’t really teach it until more advanced stages the deepest attachment we’ve got, the deepest expectation, the deepest yearning, craving is to be seen as a good girl and a good boy. Since we’re born we’ve been assessing how to behave so we get the smiles, get the praise, get oh you’re a good girl, Robina. We’ve been craving this since we’re tiny.
Our deepest sense of attachment is this one. So of course you drop something because mommy told you not to forty seven years ago. You still program this idea that it’s wrong to drop something so therefore you put you beat yourself up. Your internalised mummy’s criticising you but you forgot that she’s dead. She’s no longer there to judge you but now you’ve taken over you know you’ve internalised mum.
I think this is a massive one. We’re our own worst enemies. It’s not a joke to say it, know. You shouldn’t do that, you shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t get that, you shouldn’t be this, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t. So when you drop something, my thing is I’ll drop it again, look, drop it again, it’s all right.
She goes, it’s okay, drop it again, it’s alright. I’m sort of not kidding, know, it sounds stupid. But these are the baby things, this is what builds up. It’s not as if you’re working it’s not as if you’re being all peaceful and happy and then suddenly the red light comes and you have a nervous breakdown. It’s just the red light’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
But we’re just not noticing because we learn skills to pay attention to here instead of only here. That’s the thing that Buddha has to offer. By the way, Buddha doesn’t own this stuff, but how come we can all recognize this? He says this is just natural, the way the world is, this is just the way minds are, he doesn’t make it up, he’s not a creator, he hasn’t invented all this, he just happens to run with this stuff, he’s pretty good at it I’d say. Every word I’m saying here we recognize, this sounds like modern psychology, well this is classic Buddhist psychology, but I’m putting it you know in my words.
I’m not kidding here you know. So here, like I’m saying, he doesn’t own this stuff. The trouble is it’s very hard to hear Buddhist psychology in this kind of modern way because it’s, you know, it’s written like in fourteenth century Tibetan and not to mention two thousand year old Indian, you know? The culture is very different. I think it’s time for questions, come on.
Just open things up. Any old thing, start the ball rolling. Start the ball rolling Can you just go through again what the brain, the consciousness, the mind Okay I’ll put up the words, yeah I’ll just put the words Okay mind and consciousness these words in Buddhism are virtually synonymous. Okay? First point.
And the Buddha is not necessarily referring to our thoughts, feelings, emotions, unconscious, subconscious. You could even argue he’s referring loosely to what we might even refer to as spirit or soul, however each of us takes those words. But he doesn’t use words like spirit or soul. So the Buddha’s view of the consciousness, it’s got the grosser levels of conceptual and sensory, but these far more subtle levels of emotion and even more subtle than that. There’s even these subtle levels of our cognitive process I would say that’s the way of describing the mind is this cognitive process but at much subtler levels than we would posit as existing in our materialist models.
Are you with me here? Does that make sense? So the mind is thought, cognitive process? How do we use the word cognitive? How do we use the word cognitive in the West?
How would you say that? The word cognitive? Thinking. Thinking. Okay, that’s not the function in Buddhism.
The word cognitive is the capacity to be aware of something or to merely be aware, to be aware. So my eye consciousness cognises shape and colour. It’s not a conceptual way the word is used. It’s the bare cognition, it’s the bare function of consciousness or mind. That is to cognise or to be aware or to know something.
Do you understand what I’m saying? That’s the use of the word here. So consciousness is used in a very subjective way in Buddhism. It’s not referring to our brain or even like a little packet of memories or something. It’s everything that isn’t physical in us.
You know, the body Okay, it’s conceptuality, the thinking process, the intellect, the creativity in us, that’s consciousness, that’s mind. Emotions, anger, love, compassion, jealousy, fear, they’re also consciousness or mind. They’re also cognitions, and this is my point here. These cognitions, which are emotional, are underpinned by subtly held conceptual stories. That’s the key point that Buddhist psychology is making.
Does that make sense even intellectually? Can I give an example about this? May I know your name? Amy. Thank you Amy.
So can I just give you what I’m trying to get at? Let’s say you’re a person who doesn’t express their anger, you’re not volatile, but you might know if you know your mind well enough you’ve probably got some angry thoughts. Like most of us in this room join the club, know, how dare he do this, who do you think she is, I can’t stand that. Technically they’re called thoughts of aversion. When you go away from something.
So if you were to write down, let’s say, your angry thoughts and if you say another person who’s very volatile and has emotion of anger and transcribe their words. So I think you’d have two pieces of paper Amy who’s quiet and doesn’t express her violent anger and another person who does. So the behavior is very different, isn’t it? But if you look at the two pieces of paper, wouldn’t you agree that they’re both equal in being a series of words on a piece of paper, and anybody with half a brain could read them and go, Wow, these people are angry. Would you agree with that?
So those thoughts in your mind, assuming you Amy, I’m not trying be personal, they’re angry thoughts. How dare he do that to me? It is not fair. I did not deserve that. But you don’t express it in your mouth.
You don’t punch, you know? Whereas the angry person would. So what I’m getting at here, that volatile physical expression of anger is coming down to the thoughts in the mind. Wouldn’t you agree with that? That without those conceptual thoughts there would not be angry behaviour?
I mean it’s sort of pointing out an obvious point but would you agree with that point? That I wouldn’t punch you in the nose if there weren’t angry thoughts in my mind. Would you agree with that point? So then the point I’m getting at here is the behavior for Buddha, the behavior is like the servants of the mind. It’s sort of obvious.
You know? It’s obvious if my hand goes out and steals that fifty dollars there’s a thought in my mind first that I’m going to take fifty dollars it doesn’t belong to me. If my fist goes out and punches you in the nose, we can deduce some angry thoughts in my mind. But our trouble is I don’t know those thoughts are there because I’m not paying attention. So when you start with the Buddha’s view to get this concentration, even a little bit beginning to focus, then you’re stepping out of the head and you can’t help but hear more and more all this kind of uncontrolled raging on and that’s the Buddha’s view.
We’ve to start looking and listening to this stuff and unpacking and unraveling this stuff that we would assume is unconscious. But in fact we can make it conscious, but we have to get focused and go more slightly into it and unpack and unravel it all and we’re going to see that all that stuff is at the level of conceptual. They’re elaborate conceptual stories that inform the emotional component. Does that make sense intellectually? The brain is part of our body and it plays a role.
There’s no question. But the point I’m trying to make here is this information I’m telling you here is coming from the Buddha before they’d ever heard of a brain. They didn’t study the brain two and a half thousand years ago, never heard of it. Never heard of it. But this information is coming from Buddhist psychology, which is the common So even if you think there’s a brain, of course there’s a brain, but we’re so used to when we say how the mind works, we think the brain works.
But would you agree that you don’t have to have studied neuroscience to know that you get angry? Would you agree with You don’t have to study neuroscience to know that you get jealous. And you don’t have to study neuroscience to go to a therapist and they help you understand your thoughts and feelings. Would you agree with that statement? Well that’s the point I’m making here.
It’s just the materialist way of describing what the Buddha would describe as a cognitive process which is the actual thoughts and feelings themselves, but the way we express it in the West because we only talk about the brain in the West. We only talk about the brain. So it’s the internal experiential awareness of your thoughts and feelings is the Buddhist approach. It doesn’t mean you can’t study the brain. Are we communicating, Amy?
I’m not asking you to believe any of this or accept it, I’m just trying to explain. You think we’re communicating a bit, Amy? A bit. Thank you so much. Thank you.
I mean I’ve never studied the brain. I know left and right but I don’t even know what it means. I know left because I know it’s here. But don’t ask me what left brain and right brain means, I don’t know. But I can tell you with certainty over this last, you know, trying to be a good Buddhist, taking all the stuff on board, using this as my hypothesis only, it’s the only way I say it, that I’ve learned a bit about my own mind, own anger, my own jealousy, my own love, my own compassion and attempted to take responsibility and attempted to, you know, and that means is and then secondly knowing from awareness first step that I can learn to reconfigure these conceptual stories.
Buddha’s not a cognitive therapist. It’s a cliched way to put it. You see, I’m just talking to the Buddhist view here because I think it’s really helpful to hear it clearly. A lot of Buddhists these days, a lot of Westerners bring these two together and you talk about the brain. I can’t do that, I know nothing about the brain.
Brain. And that’s okay, I want to try and emphasise so then up to you guys to take You know some of my friends who are Buddhists love studying the brain and love finding the two how they come together and these discussions between the Dalai Lama and these Western people are doing exactly that. But I haven’t chosen not to do that for whatever reason, so for me I like discussing just the Buddhist approach. If there’s any help in this, then great. If not, then great also.
It’s up to you. Yes, another question. Where were you? Hello. Where are you?
Oh yes, okay honey. So from the Buddhist perspective where do emotions come from and are they always indicators of an underlying Yes, wouldn’t be there otherwise. Yes! So does that mean we can use our emotions to then identify the underlying Yes, of course! So it’s a good thing to be aware of the emotion so we can then work I mean we’re in trouble if we can’t, absolutely.
So it’s okay to have emotions. Oh darling God Almighty, but the point is this okay, I love it. But first let’s look at the first part of your question, I like that a lot. Where does it come from? It’s a great question, we all have that.
So tell me unpack that idea a bit more. When you say where they come from, what do you mean by that come from? Sometimes when we have a strong emotion it’s almost like we feel that it’s taking us over. Absolutely. So is that it feels sometimes physical?
Honey, not feel, it is physical! That’s how we notice it, that’s what I’m saying. Physical. We only notice it, and that’s when it bubbles to the surface and it becomes like Vesuvius about to explode. That’s the point.
So is the emotion part of the mind? It’s not coming from an external Okay. What do you mean by that? Coming from external. Good point.
What do you mean by that? So that Fred punches in the nose. It’s not like an an energy that’s somehow we’re attracting. No. Darling.
It’s coming from within. Okay, we are all products, we are intimately connected to the outside world aren’t we? We’ve all got our own inner world and our outside world, we’re all part of the outside world aren’t we? And we’re utterly we function utterly interdependently. The weather’s slightly too hot and you sweat.
The weather’s slightly too cold, you know, and you shiver. I mean, you can’t almost separate the physical from the mental and that’s why it can always be forgiven, my way of putting it, you know, for thinking that we’re only the physical which is a materialist model. But the Buddhist okay so then here we are interdependently involved since the beginning with the physical world. We are the products of external conditions. We’re the product of mommy and daddy coming together.
We’re the product of parents and people and noises and sounds and smells and tastes and people. I mean, we clearly are interdependently existing. And we can so I would put it this way, the it seems to me, and I’m not trying to be cliched here or make it too simplistic, the materialist, secular, scientific view seems to be saying that my anger, my love, my happiness, my suffering, my kindness, my whatever, are the products of the outside, including the brain. And I mean that by the outside, because external and internal that way they talk in Buddhism they talk about internal and external internal is consciousness which is not physical which is your feelings and thoughts and emotions then the external is the physical which includes the brain, the body, includes mommy and deity and the noises out there. So the Buddha’s view is that yes we are products of the outside you can’t argue but we’re not only the products of the outside the key player is the mind itself.
So one way of putting it is, you’re my friend, you know, and we agreed to meet for dinner and you’re late, you know, you’re late. So I was sitting there having you know, what’s your name? Melanie’s late, here she goes, it’s not fair, Melanie’s late, oh then you can’t be well, so sorry Bina, I said, Melanie it’s alright darling, I still love you but I’m sort of thinking about it you know, getting angry, next time we meet you’re late again. So then slowly slowly I’m gonna start getting angry about Melanie, I’ll criticize Melanie, boyfriend, I’ll get mad in my mind about Melanie and I’ll be blaming Melanie for me being miserable basically. It’s not complicated but I blame Melanie for making me miserable.
Would you agree? Now if I’m in love with Fred and he strokes me and loves me and smiles at me and gives me things and does everything my attachment wants, I’m gonna blame Fred for making me happy and hear my word consciously. I said that consciously. So surely we would agree that our view tends to be without question that my happiness is the product of good things out there all going nicely and my suffering is the product of things going not nicely. In general would you not agree this is the default philosophy of all of us?
And it seems to be obvious the second a noise is too loud I get upset. The second the cake tastes really delicious I get happy. The second Fred smiles at me I feel pleased. The second you’re late, I get unhappy. We could be forgiven for assuming that the external world is the main cause of my happiness and the main cause of my suffering.
What Buddha is just saying is more nuanced than that. And the fact is we know it’s true, because we know if I’m really kind and I love Melanie, I can accept that Melanie has this one fault, but I point out to myself all her good qualities, and I know she’s a human being like the rest of us, and I stop expecting her to be perfect, which is just ridiculous, that’s my problem, and I have made a decision that she’s worthwhile to have as my friend, I put up with her being late and I forgive her. Now we know we can do that, that’s called changing your mind, that’s called defining you differently. So anger is one definition of you, how dare you, you’re the cause of my suffering, and the other one is more patient and humble definition of you. We know we can do that, so we can see we can change the way we interpret things.
Now I’ve got a friend in prison. Oh there’s one example, I always use this example as an extreme example. Extreme examples make sense. I like them a lot. There’s one woman, this was like thirty plus years ago in Florida, I read her a memoir, you know, because I worked for twenty years, as I mentioned, well twenty years ago, we started this non profit called Liberation Prison Project, and masses of communication, because people are in these dire situations, especially in America, you know.
So there’s this woman, she was hitching with a hippie husband, hippie kids or something, and they got picked up by two blokes, and then the two blokes got stopped by the coppers, and the two blokes killed the coppers, but the two blokes blamed the hippies. So they’re on death row in Florida, and they kill cop they’re cop killers, so they’re like evil monsters. So there she is in this utter nightmare. You can’t even conceive of the nightmare. Her husband even gets executed.
I mean, you can’t you can’t it’s too hard to bear. But at some point she said I realized I could not 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. Now we love to hear stories like this.
Is not Buddha doesn’t own this, we know this stuff, we do it every day. We know we can change our way we interpret things That’s all Buddha’s on about That’s all he’s saying He’s not saying Fred is right to punch you He’s not saying Fred didn’t punch you Yeah! And he’s not saying Fred is cool to punch you, of course it’s not cool! It’s terrible to be on death row when you’re innocent But all Buddha is saying is, if you can change it, hey honey, change it If I can get Fred to if I can get you to be on time, please I can ask you, but if you don’t, I’ve got a choice And that’s all Buddha is saying, it’s not cosmic. It’s just really hard if we’re addicted to believing you’re the cause of me suffering, even prison is the cause of my suffering.
And we should be forgiven for thinking it is, or the case is causing my happiness. That’s all, it’s a more nuanced point, that we can change the way we interpret something. And when we start to look at our mind, is an interpretation of you, attachment is an interpretation. It sounds like a joke to say it that way because it feels like emotional. Depression is an interpretation.
I’m not trying to make it easy, I’m not trying to blame us, I’m just trying to give a whole other way of looking at it so to see the implication of this if it makes sense you know. Am I communicating with people? Amy are we communicating? I’m going to ask you Amy to accept any word I’m saying but are we communicating? Amy?
Amy? Amy forgive me I’m so sorry I’m sorry Amy I know I’m sorry Are we communicating, Amy? Yeah, we are. Okay. I hear something in there.
I want to hear more. So this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t change the outside. It doesn’t mean I can’t ask you, Melanie, wait, I haven’t finished with Melanie. It doesn’t mean you can’t try to be, you know, it doesn’t mean we can’t negotiate, it doesn’t mean we can’t have a discussion, but as long as I believe you are the cause of my suffering or the belief that you should be the cause of my happiness, what manipulating is about, that’s what control freak’s about, that’s attachment. We’re gonna be in trouble and then when you and one day you’re not know, you don’t stay on you don’t stay on time and you promised you would, then I’ll have a mental breakdown again.
Whereas if I can change my mind, change my expectations, change my view of you, then I’ll be brave in the face of different things going wrong. We know this, we do this, you know. But we’re talking about this cognitive level at a subtle level, that’s where depression comes in. It’s a hard one to see, which we can talk about, you know? Are we communicating?
Melanie? I just having more questions. Just keep having more questions and more That’s okay, perfect. To answer your question where it comes from, which is a really fascinating question, know, it’s like why are you angry, Robina? Well the answer was because Fred harmed me, Fred did this, Fred did that, or deeply because Mummy said this and that, or my genes and my DNA.
So that’s how we would tend to answer, so we’re looking for this needle in the haystack back then. What’s the source of it? What happened? We tend to think this way. Now that’s not totally wrong, but the Buddha’s answer would be more simple.
Why are you angry, Robina? Buddha would say, Robina, I’m sorry darling, it’s because you’ve got the habit to be angry. Oh, but why have I got the habit to be angry? Well sweetheart, you must have been angry yesterday. Oh really?
Well why was I angry yesterday? Well I’m really sorry honey, you must have been angry the day before. But why was I angry the day before? Well you must have the tendency to be angry, but where did it come from? Well it came from being angry before.
But where did that come from? Well it came from being angry before. But where did that come from? It came from being and I really am meaning this. Which of course implies to the Buddhist view, we have to take this as a theory here.
I’m not asking you to believe reincarnation, but the psychological model would say I came programmed with it at the first second of conception in my mummy’s womb from having done it before. So you know recently we’re reading about this seven year old American girl who’s this genius classical musician. She’s been she she conducts orchestra. She writes orchestral music for sixty pieces of an orchestra. She plays the piano, the violin, she conducts, she’s seventh.
Excuse me, we go in the if you’re if you’re Christian, God made her, and I’m not complaining about that view. Perfect. The materialist view, there is no explanation. Because there’s no evidence Mummy was that good at music. Equally there’s no explanation for Hitler, if we look back at the genes and the DNA.
But the Buddhist view at least that says she must have done it before, she’s come programmed, Hitler’s come programmed, Mother Teresa’s come programmed, she came programmed, she came in programmed. So at least for me it’s a theoretical concept that at least is a theoretical explanation for how come I came into this world with a tendency to be angry or loving or kind or to kill or whatever. I’m giving the bigger picture here just as a concept, you know? So it’s simply a tendency. And that then helps me go, Okay, I can own that.
And then I can change it. But as long as it’s your fault, I’m not taking responsibility. And it’s not being heavy, it’s not blaming me, it’s kind of encouraging and powerful. So all these states of mind are the same, there are tendencies in my mind, from having done them before. It’s not a complicated concept, it’s just a bit shocking, that’s all.
Do you understand, Melanie? Yes, it’s fascinating. Yes, it’s not a complicated is really hard is recognising how do you recognise that you’ve Be closer. Sorry, how do you recognise that you’re depressed or you’re angry? Oh darling, I know, of course.
You know the way in the Buddhist cycle of the model this stuff is incredibly it goes to incredibly subtle degrees which I think it’s not trying to sort of sound fancy it’s more to give us the humility to know it’s a hard job but it’s a doable job That’s all. Because we, you know, they’re very deep habits. We’re programmed. I mean I think what we mean by instinct in our culture instinct is like second nature whatever it is a second nature isn’t it? I mean this is the stuff, and if we think of we’re tiny children, we even you know, of what we do is second nature.
My mother did not have to teach me to be angry. One of my sisters who gets depressed did not have to be taught to be depressed. Whatever the reason, whatever you like to think of as the reason, is instinctive. So to unpack this stuff at a deeper level is really taking time. So as long as we know it’s long term job, we’ll be humble and patient with ourselves.
There’s another whole level here, another whole level, we’ll go at that in a second though. And how do you do it? By introspection, by clear, conscious, developed, intensive, disciplined, focused introspection. Part of the problem here is, as soon as in the West we hear the word meditation, I think we lose the plot. We get all holy and mystical and immediately think of it as either an alternative to a pill or I’ve heard meditation works as if somehow it’s a method just to make you stop being miserable or it’s a way to make all the thoughts go away because we can’t stand the pain But actually what it is, is a method to help us listen more clearly and even to start bringing it all up.
Mean one of the signs of success, even in the ancient Tibetan Indian texts, one of the signs of success in this single pointed concentration meditation technique, which is merely learning to focus, is that you think you’re getting worse. It’s like going to the gym for the first time. You can’t believe you’ve developed, you’ve stubborn muscles you didn’t know you had. You’ve pain you’ve never had before but you know it’s a good pain don’t you? Because you’ve started the process now of changing.
So the same with knowing our being aware of our thoughts and feelings and emotions. It’s a massive job and it just takes time. But once we have a theoretical, once we have the confidence to know it’s possible, then it doesn’t matter how long it takes. It’s the ongoing process that counts, you know. There’s more to say about that in a minute and I will.
Are we communicating? Yes. Microphone here please. Where’s the microphone going? I don’t need, I can No, it’s good for everyone because they’re recording Over here first.
You speak, Jolene. You’re next. Would it be right to suggest if you become quieter then you step back a little and you witness the development and the habitual form of the emotions then you gain some equilibrium. Hopefully. Not everybody, everybody.
Some people have got a lot of chaos in there. But if you can do that then you’re more helpful to others, you’re more useful. Lovely theory, darling, well done. You’re a good theoretical statement, how could anybody disagree? That’s the point, yes.
Because if you get too introspective, you become too introspective, it’s just self centeredness. No, no, it’s not true at all. I disagree with that. So that’s the bridge of the learning? No, it’s not a question of bridge or not a question of anything, it’s a question of knowing what introspection means.
You’ve got a certain definition of introspective, you think it means too much involvement in your thoughts. It’s a question of what you’re being introspective about and why you’re doing it, isn’t it? If the reason you’re introspective, if the reason you sit there and put your head in a box for seven years and people think you’re being selfish and what you’re doing is studying how to be a surgeon so you can benefit people, then it’s not but if you’re doing it just to get rich, it depends on why you’re studying, so it depends on why you’re being introspective. So here the classic one in this Buddhist tradition is a bird needs two wings wisdom and compassion. So a compassion wing is the point.
But you can’t help a fly if you don’t know yourself So you need compassion to help compassion towards yourself? No I didn’t say that but your words that’s okay you can say that if you like but what you’re saying is helpful, thank you. I’ve said just now is that helpful? That it’s a question of why you’re being From what we’re discussing here, what would be the reason to be introspected? From what we’re discussing in this room, what have you heard?
What would be the reason for you to be introspective according to how we’ve talked so far in the last hour? What would you think? What are you hearing? What process, darling? Whose emotions?
No, whose emotions darling? Our own emotions. Thank you. So why would you want to know about your own emotions? What’s the reason?
What’s the fundamental reason you’d want to know more about your own emotions? Why would you want to do that? What’s the benefit? To gain more equilibrium. What’s equilibrium, darling?
What’s that? Do mean by that? What do you want balance for? What balance between what and what? Debate, they do debates in Tibet, do you mind debates?
She’s saying lots of words and we’re all saying words here but I’d just like to hear what she’s saying more What do you mean by equilibrium, darling? What do you mean by equilibrium? Stability meaning? Say more, I want to hear it, very interesting, I like it What are you saying? Stability between what stability?
Sit in a different for your mind to sit in a place of clarity place of clarity? A clarity away What’s wrong with your emotional state? You’ve just been describing that sometimes they’re not very helpful. That’s right. Don’t you want to get into them and understand them at a deeper level and then eventually get rid of them?
Isn’t that the way to do it that you’re suggesting? By listening to your You said you get a balance and equilibrium so you can help others. Well at the end of it, hopefully. That’s right. So the reason here we’re discussing in this room to unpack and unravel your own mind is so that you become less neurotic, less fearful, less miserable, less depressed, less angry, less jealous and therefore less harmful to others.
So then on the basis of this you become this marvellous, joyful, courageous, amazing human being who’s full of bliss and courage and nothing will disturb you, then you can really learn how to help others. But it’s a bit of work first. You’ve got to go to the gym honey and you’ve got to really face the pain, you’ve got to have muscles you didn’t know you had, you’re going to be exhausted, it’s going to be really hard. So as a friend of mine who’s a therapist says being your own therapist is having your hands in your own shit. So get to the shit pass first, not just the equilibrium, it sounds nice.
That’s what I’m getting at, it’s a really intense terrifying job. Anybody who’s done even a minute of therapy knows it’s a bloody nightmare because you’re dealing with your own junk and your own shit. So I think that’s important to say. Equilibrium all that stuff sounds great. That’ll come eventually darling but get the shit first and have the courage to face it.
And this is the next point I want to make, of our cause of attachment in us, this junkie that can only bear the nice things. Think one of our biggest misconceptions about why you’d be introspective. I’m not saying you sweetheart but you brought this up and said thank you, thank you. One of the biggest misunderstandings about meditation, about spiritual practice, you know, is that I’m not saying you now, I’m really not saying you, I promise. It’s a new chapter.
To make it all go away. You see attachment can’t stand, can’t stand the pain. And this is a shocking way to talk because attachment just sounds like a naughty I shouldn’t be attached. But you know, you have a person who has a particularly traumatic experience. Many people go mad, don’t they?
When their baby dies, when something so shocking happens. This sounds so cruel to say it like this. But the Buddha’s approach to understanding these states of mind, these unhappy states of mind, these voices of ego which are fear based and are neurotic in their nature and are the source of all our own torment. This attachment is why we lose our mind. So this one other person on death row that I read about at the same time as this woman.
He was also innocent and he went completely out of his brain screaming daily I did not rape and kill that woman. He became completely tortured. Now that we understand, that makes sense to us. He literally lost his mind, you know. So the Buddha’s view is interpreting these two people.
It’s not judgmental, it’s not kind of anything like that, just analyzing. You could say that somehow like a miracle, because she’d done it before, she had this courage, this intelligence, I would put it this way, and I really mean it, and it’s like a miracle. That she was able to see the fact that she couldn’t change anything. That meant she couldn’t change anybody’s mind. She couldn’t stop the people from lying who first blamed her.
She couldn’t change the police’s mind, she couldn’t change the prosecutor’s mind, she couldn’t change the judge’s mind, she couldn’t change the warder’s mind, she couldn’t change anybody’s mind and all the situation. She couldn’t, she faced that with such courage which you could argue means her attachment, she was able to not go completely out of her brain with aversion because aversion is this can’t be possible!’ It’s not John McEnroe this can’t be happening! This is what attachment is and that’s what that poor other fellow did. He could not bear this accusation. He went mad and that’s how we are.
So the Buddha’s view is these unhappy states of mine are the source of that. So this is what’s even more shocking. The Buddha’s whole experience from this two and a half thousand years ago and his own experience and his own years and years of whatever work he did internally, the point of being a Buddhist in the first place and I haven’t mentioned this one, this is one of the fundamental things about the mind which is the most shocking, the most radical, is his observation of the potential we’ve got. You know the Buddhist model divides these states of mind into these so called negative and so called positive, these simplistic seemingly judgmental moralistic terms, but they’re not meant to be, you know? The reason to do this job of unpacking and unraveling and identifying precisely these different components of our own mind is so that eventually we can rid the mind of all the rubbish.
Hear the word, rid the mind of all the rubbish. This is the long term goal of a Buddhist in Buddhist psychology. Now this is insane. If I go to Jan, a psychologist, and I ask her, let’s say she’s not a Buddhist, would you please give me methods to get rid of all ego, all fear, all nonsense, all attachment, all anger, all jealousy, all depression, utterly, completely, irreversibly? Methods to develop infinite wisdom, infinite confidence, infinite clarity, infinite love, infinite compassion all the time for all people.
She will think I am mentally ill and give me pills to calm me down. Because there is no concept in, I’d say our current psychological models that suggests such a possibility. All I’m saying is this is Buddha’s own experiential observation. Take it or leave it, it doesn’t matter you know. That’s what they mean by nirvana.
It’s not some place like heaven, it’s a state of mind. Because he has found these neuroses, delusional, disturbing, neurotic, exaggerating, afflictions, mental illnesses basically, he would have liked that term. They’re not at the core of our being, he has discovered. They are not at the core of our being. And that the virtues and the goodness and the clarity and the bliss and I’m not trying to be religious.
This is what defines us. This is at the core of our being. This is the Buddha’s view. Fucking long way to go. Don’t hold your breath.
But like anything you’re practicing, if you learn to play the violin, you just don’t look at grade one only. You’ve got the whole big picture don’t you? You see where you’re heading with violin. You see where you’re heading with tennis. You look at Federer, that’s where you’re heading.
So you’ve to have a goal where you’re going with all this stuff you know. You don’t just go on and you know play grade one tennis, you’ve got a big picture, you’re nowhere near Federer, you can’t even pick up a tennis racket but you see it’s possible and it gives you courage. So So this is the Buddha’s view, where you’re heading with all this stuff, where you’re going. The word Buddha actually, the Sanskrit Buddha, the Tibetan word, Sangye. The etymology is very tasty.
Sang implies the eradication, the utter eradication permanently from this consciousness of ours, which the Buddha would say is not physical, which the Buddha would say comes from before and goes after. All this stuff sounds so cosmic to us. This sang implies the eradication utterly of all the neuroses, which are adventitious, he says. Adventitious, they’re not at the core of our being. And the second syllable, gye, implies the development to perfection, literally, of all the goodness, the wisdom, the clarity, blah blah blah.
This is the stuff of Buddhist psychology. So clearly it’s not the stuff of Western psychology. You that’s all. Are we communicating? Yes.
Okay. So you’ve to have a goal, you know? So hang on. So one of my main points here, the big point, and this I can say to myself, you know, not saying I’m so advanced in this stuff, clearly I’ve got enthusiasm for it, it’s the model I’m using, it’s my hypothesis as I put it, this is the one I’m working with, I never say I believe in Buddhism, I never say that, it’s my working hypothesis. For me that keeps my mind open and stable and working with it every day, you know, working with it.
But I’ve got a goal I want to become like Federer please. It’s fun to have a goal and when you have a goal what that does is give you the courage to know what you can become and therefore the courage to observe where you are now and that means happy to have your hands in your own shit. You’re glad to recognize the shit. If you can’t see I want to stop using the root words if you can’t see that stuff inside, if you can’t feel those muscles when you come home from the gym or if you think oh my god this is wrong I shouldn’t feel in this pain oh I mustn’t go to the gym anymore. No, you’re glad you’re feeling that pain because now you know what you have to fix.
So you’ve got to be glad this is the worst part because attachment you see is this junky in us that can’t stand the problems. Just can’t stand them. We’ll do anything to make them go away. So part of the practice here, of the process is being glad to see your own mind, being glad to own the anger and the neuroses and the fears and the dramas and seeing them for what they are and having the courage to know this does not define me, this is not who I really am, this is not in my bones, I am not stuck with this, that I can change it. That’s what gives us courage, and I think that’s what brings us despair because we think there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.
So when attachment is full blown and everything is perfect, then we’re blissful. But the moment the bubble bursts and it does because we’ve made them a fantasy then we go crashing down to despair, don’t we? And now we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. That’s why we kill ourselves. Because we can’t stand the pain.
But if we know there is light at the end of the tunnel, that this pain does not define who we really are, it’s just a big bump on the road, isn’t who I really am, then we have the courage to face it like that woman in prison. I think she was stupendous, she wasn’t a Buddhist I don’t think. Was this amazing, brave human being who had the ability to greet the nightmare and know she could change the way she saw it. So she got out after seventeen years, what a bonus, you know? I find that such a powerful story.
Are we communicating? So I think the biggest part is having the courage to confront the depression, to see it, the anxiety, the anger. I think the worst part of the suffering is like bad enough being depressed but why be miserable as well? Bad enough being angry but why be miserable as well? And I mean that sincerely.
It’s like bad enough having your body full of pain after the first day at the gym but why freak out as well? It’s actually if you interpret it properly it’s a good sign you’ll be happy with that pain and I mean that. I think it’s time for tea. But your question first, come on darling. Just had a really simple question.
So you’re saying that Buddha and Buddhism and Buddha inherently thinks that our state of being is virtuous, our inherent core self is virtuous and That’s at the core of our being and can be grown. What is that conclusion based on? His own experience, what else? So if you read a cookbook, I know this is a very interesting point, thank you Wait, we have to say this first, if you read a cookbook where does that information come from? The chef The person who wrote the book?
Yes, sorry. So you have to assume it was her own experience, would you agree? Or they’re lying? Are they stolen or they lying or this is their own experience? Would you agree with that?
Mhmm Okay, now if you read Christian teachings where does that come from? God You have to believe it don’t you? I’m not being rude. No no. It’s from on high.
The Buddha’s not a creator. He’s a person who’s gone into his own mind and has observed this stuff so every word that if it is valid Buddhism has to be coming from the experience of the Buddha. Otherwise it’s meaningless rubbish If Einstein tells you about relativity where’s that information come from? Thank you, thank you, right there, same, same, no difference, identical But Einstein isn’t saying you better believe me baby he says here’s my methodology, go try it yourself, isn’t he? Would you agree with that?
Yeah. The cook’s the same right? Buddha’s the same, that’s the approaching Buddha, he’s not a creator. So that’s why it sounds shocking to us because we assume you can’t prove that your mind is not physical, we assume reincarnation can’t be proved. Of course not, it’s all there, Buddha’s methodology is all there either he’s wrong or he’s not we’re going to find out Can you hear that point?
That’s the approach, that’s for you to look into it and see That’s why I prefer to say it’s my working hypothesis And that’s I think the point, yeah, is that I don’t because you could also argue that our inherent state of being is is negative if you sit on the other side of the fence. No. You could argue. That we’ve to give you reasons. That’s right.
What I’m saying. That’s That’s what I’m idea of a working hypothesis is good because then you’re testing it and finding out something. You first have to see what he means by that. What’s his logic for that? It’s an easy word to say.
You’ve to look into deeply what and it’s quite extensive how they deal with it in the literature. Do you think? I do. Thank you. Let’s have cakes and tea.
Shall we? Can I just ask you before we me? Can I do an advertisement first? Yes. Can I do the microphone?
I don’t need the microphone. I want to do three advertisements, I’m so sorry. First of all, leave these pilgrimages and different things and one of them is a new one, it’s called Lhotse Trek and it’s a fifteen day trek up the mountains next year to Solo Kumbu to raise money for Lama Zopa’s projects. That’s in April. There’s cards out there.
There’s another one in October and again next year, which is the Pilgrimage to the Places of the Buddha in Nepal, a three week event, which is an amazing one. We’ve doing it since two thousand and that raises money for the prison project, the cards are out there. And the third one is Chasing Buddha, is a ridiculous film my nephew made years ago, it’s about me, I’m sorry, but it raises money for my Bodhicitta Trust. So then it’s my three advertisements, they’re all on the table out And if you don’t want to pay the twenty five dollars for the two and a half hour video, do video on demand for ten dollars It’s now ready online. I just say if you go out and have a cuppa and have something to eat, indulge in some cake happiness, and then when you come back you can bring your food and your drinks back in here if you like, and we will have some more questions and answers.
So how long have been to tea break? About twenty minutes, I think.