y Robina Courtin — 2016-07-28

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

About this talk. Ven Robina Courtin invites practitioners to hear familiar Buddhist concepts with fresh attention. In this two-hour talk, she establishes that Buddha nature—the capacity for enlightenment—belongs to everyone because our mind is not fixed. Delusions (anger, jealousy, attachment, depression) are not inherent to us but adventitious: misconceptions rooted in the illusion of a separate self. Using vivid examples—how Fred looks different when you’re angry versus attached to him; a cake appearing delicious when hungry but repulsive when full—she demonstrates that delusions are lies that vanish once you see the truth. She proceeds through karma and dependent arising (mind as the source of all phenomena), the acorn-oak-tree metaphor for human potential, and practical instruction in calm abiding and analytical meditation on emptiness. The Q&A addresses handling reactive emotions, remembering past lives, and the meaning of Buddhist ritual. Direct and conversational, pitched at practitioners with Buddhist background who seek understanding through logic rather than faith.

File metadata (for organising)

File: 08 E 2016 07 28.mp3

UUID: e4dab770-f538-4e76-894f-f11f491caa41

Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin

Collection: y Robina Courtin (Ven Robina Courtin)

Date: 2016-07-28

Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide

Duration: 112.6 minutes

Words: ~19,435

All right. So we’re going to be here for a bit together. We’re going to listen, think about, try and hear it freshly, and then maybe we’ve heard these things a thousand times. Is that on? I presume it is.

Where are we, Matthew? We’re organised. Even though you might have heard this stuff a million times, I want to hear it freshly, you know? Freshly, as if we’ve never heard it before. And why?

So we can take some tools from it to help us to become this amazing person that Buddha says we can all become. Like, it’s mind blowing actually what he says we can all accomplish. What is our natural potential? Maybe we’ll talk about that tonight because that’s because of emptiness. Why?

Because it’s who we are, it’s our becoming who we really are, if you like. Why? In turn, even so that we can be of benefit to others, because we all live in this insane asylum together. And having the Bodhisattva attitude, you have to have the attitude, If I don’t help, who will? That’s the courage of the Bodhisattva, you know, that’s their job.

So thinking like that, with that in mind, we’ll send out our prayer. So one of the things we hear in the Mahāyāna teachings is that, you know, everybody possesses Buddha nature. So every one of us can have a different kind of take on that, and we can be very weird and wacko about it too because we don’t talk like this. So what does it mean? Well, a really simple way, it’s referring to is they talk about this conventional Buddha nature and your ultimate Buddha nature.

When your ultimate Buddha nature, the way they talk, how they talk, get used to the way they frame these words, you know, because our mind is empty, because our mind is not set in stone. The opposite to empty is set in stone, frozen, stuck, concrete. This is how it is, you know? Because our mind, like everything else that exists, because according to the Buddha, remember every phenomenon, every object of knowledge, every existent, every thing that exists, whatever exists necessarily is a dependent arising, which means it’s necessarily lacking an intrinsic nature. It’s not set in stone.

So it’s very encouraging, actually, to hear about our mind like that. Let’s just discuss that a little bit tonight. I think it’s kind of encouraging. Because if we look okay, this is the thing, if we look at how we feel about me, you know, even if no one ever told us that our mother and father popped into bed, we came a few months later. Even if we didn’t even know that.

Even if we had no concept of a creator. We look at how we feel, how the I feels. We feel like this big lump of something kind of plodding through life, isn’t it? You know? And somehow we seem we seem kind of disconnected and isolated and sort of the big fat world out there.

Things happen to us. They seem to be utterly random. You know? Because the sense we have of our eye is unbelievably miniature. We’ve no idea why things happen, and that happens to be reinforced by our scientific models that don’t have any explanation for why bad things happen to good people or why in fact good things happen to bad people or anything else for that matter.

We’re looking at lots of things, you know, but we don’t have an explanation. So we didn’t even hear about these things. The feeling of being I, we can feel it, not as emptiness teaches us this, it’s kind of fearful, bit miserable, plodding along. Things happen, don’t know why. Good things happen, don’t know why.

Bad things happen, don’t know why. Really the crucial one is it doesn’t feel like it’s got much to do with me, does it? Very much everything is out there. Out there, you know? So we just kind of naturally feel ignorant.

Nothing seems very evident. Suddenly things happen, you know. You break your leg, car runs over you. Know, things happen, you get sick one day, headache the next. We don’t seem to see any causes for it.

Well that’s how ego works, that’s how ego is. Feel always needy, always feel like we’re missing something. People are mean to us, get upset very easily, no one has to teach us to get upset, know how to do it very well. No one has to you know, when someone punches in the nose, you don’t look at your mouth and go, how am I supposed to respond to you? I’m supposed to be angry.

Oh, okay. No. No. No. It comes naturally.

We don’t need to be taught. This is how ego works. And fear is its nature. It’s also utterly actually so fascinating at this point alone. You know, I can mention the story of Lama Zopa drowning.

He was said to be the reincarnation of this previous yogi, he recognized when he was a little boy, but as he said at age eight when he was drowning, the thought occurred to me the person known as the Lawudo Lama — he’d been formally recognised as this reincarnation of this previous lama the person known as the Lawudo Lama is about to die, but there was no fear. I didn’t know anything about emptiness, he said, but there was no fear. This is something again that’s inconceivable. It seems utterly natural. Fear is natural.

So we look at this Buddhist model of the mind, you know, all the delusions, all the neuroses, all the things that we totally think are totally normal, not as it teaches us, anger, jealousy, depression, anxiety, worries, arrogance, you know, we know all this stuff, it’s instinctive within us. It just seems that we therefore call it natural, which is why in our models of the mind, in our culture, we assume they’re natural, which means we give equal status to them along with love, compassion, intelligence, concentration and all the rest. We just assume these are normal parts of an ordinary human being. In fact, so normal, isn’t it, that you’d be considered completely abnormal if you didn’t have anger, fears, jealousy, depression, you know, that type of thing. That’s how entrenched our views are about it.

But like I said, no one has to teach us this stuff. We feel it naturally. So all of these neuroses, the Buddha’s view, the Buddha’s take on it, and the Buddha’s model of the mind, is that they are in the nature of fear, because they’re all the voices of this root neurosis, well you know, we’ve been discussing, known colloquially as ego grasping, the most primordial. So primordial that it’s at the level of utter the sense of a separate, bereft, fearful, unhappy, dissatisfied, lonely, neurotic little me. The sense of that one is so utterly natural to us that we take it as a given.

We’d never question it. All the other delusions, the attachment to get what that eye wants, the anger when it doesn’t, depression, all the dramas. These are the voices of this neurotic little eye. And they’re all connected, all utterly linked. If you didn’t have this neurotic sense of an eye in the first place, there couldn’t possibly be attachment, there wouldn’t possibly be dissatisfaction or neediness.

Your mind will be naturally blissful. We do not have this way of talking in our culture, in our models. It’s very simple. The words are so cute and simple and very familiar love, compassion, generosity, anger, jealousy, oh yeah, we know all that stuff, But Buddha’s take on this stuff is so specific and utterly different from ours. Because the crucial point that Buddha’s making, which is pretty insane to us, that all these neuroses all the way down to ego grasping, as they say in Buddhist psychology, they are adventitious.

I mean, I don’t use that word much in my life, but get my dictionary out, you know? It means they’re not at the core of our being. This is Buddhist point. Such a shock to us to hear this. It doesn’t feel like that.

And who else but people like you and me created our models of the mind? So of course we take it for granted, know? It’s natural. And then this thing called, know, instinct for survival, I would really think Buddha would like that term to refer to ego grasping. The sense of desire, the deepest delusion that’s underneath it underpins attachment and anger and all the rest.

It only really rises, we know, in this primordial fear is when we’re attacked or offended or hurt or insulted. You know, the hubby leaves us for the younger version, you nearly get caught, you nearly get knocked over or something, you know? When something very dire happens, and this sort of sweeping lion awakens, and there’s this panic. Or we have our panic attacks. Instinct for survival, I think ego grasping, great word for it.

That’s exactly what Lama Zopa Rinpoche, we can deduce logically had annihilated from his mind by having it in his past life, we can deduce realized emptiness. Seen nakedly, the absence. Seen directly, experienced nakedly, directly, nakedly, therefore irreversibly, the absence of this fantasy independent eye. Therefore there was no fear. It’s too shocking for us.

We don’t find possible. You’d be considered mentally ill, deeply disturbed. Lost the plot, you didn’t have fear. And that’s what this is really quite shocking because, you know, we hear these words, in Buddhism we read about, oh mindfulness and blah blah blah sounds so holy, you know? But we really hear what he’s saying is it’s pretty radical, I tell you.

So then don’t believe it. We’ve got to look at the logic. This is what we can do to discuss tonight. We’re spend the rest of the day just on this topic. The logic.

Buddha’s logic for why he says these neuroses, including ego grasping, are adventitious, are not at the core of our being. Don’t just believe it, you know, like we think of religion. The only way we’re going to comprehend that is to understand that all these neuroses, all the way down to the primordial ego grasping, the misconception that clings to the self, They are at their core conceptual elaborations, conceptual stories, opinions, viewpoints. This is pretty shocking. And the point is, so are the virtues, they’re concepts as well.

So we’ve got two things: we’ve got feelings, which we mean by our body. When it hits the body, we’re really into feelings. Think they’re like the King of England. Feelings are everything. As Lama Yeshe says, we make the body the boss.

And our problem is, we only notice we’re feeling good or feeling bad when it hits the body. That’s why it takes longer to notice you’re depressed than when you’re angry. When a person is angry, it’s pretty obvious, you know, their body’s shaking, the words are shouting, eyes are wide, spits coming out the mouth. Pretty clear. But depression, you don’t realize you’re depressed until you can’t get out of bed one morning.

Oh, must be depressed, you know? Because it hits the body finally. Because we’re as sick as posts, basically, because we don’t pay attention much to our thoughts. If we do, it’s only the very gross tip. This is the thing to understand in Buddhist psychology: that these conceptual stories go to unbelievably subtle levels.

Do not underestimate conceptuality. We notice that with the tip of the tip of the grossest tip of the iceberg, which is when it hits the body, and we’re addicted to the body, so that’s all we pay attention to. In fact, we even go on, in our culture we go, Oh, it’s only in the mind. I mean, it’s beyond shocking. I remember a few years ago, I looked in my iPad, my news, I read in the New York Times.

And I remember reading a story about this woman in Brooklyn who got into her husband’s computer and discovered that her husband was part of a cannibal group and they were going to kill and eat her. She was quite surprised. She didn’t call the police, she called the FBI, something that seemed more serious, you know? But the point is, his defense lawyers, they kept saying, but it’s only in the mind. They’re allowed to think this.

They weren’t going to do it. In other words, we really believe in our culture that it’s in the mind, it stays in the mind. In other words, we don’t realize there’s a connection between what we do with our body and speech and our mind, which is pretty unintelligent, wouldn’t you think? But that’s what we think in our world We know perfectly well, it’s very fascinating we know that when you learn to play music it starts with learning very elaborate and very precise conceptual thoughts, isn’t it? Called musical theory They’re in the mind, they’re thoughts They occupy the same space as anger and jealousy but we don’t call it we put these here anger and jealousy are here and thoughts are up here rational thoughts like musical theory or like mathematical thoughts you know so they’re thoughts They’re thoughts.

And we know they’re going to be accurate thoughts because we know that what is in here starts. Your fingers will only play the notes that are in your head. We know there’s an utter relationship between what you play on the piano and the thoughts in your mind. It’s kind of a no brainer. But when it comes to what you say with your speech, or whether you cut your wife up, and what’s in your mind, oh no no, it’s only in the I mean, it’s you’ve got to admit that’s kind of unintelligence.

That’s how we think, and we think we’re so intelligent. It’s actually beyond shocking. And how we distinguish it as we call them emotion, something special, you know? Or even the way why are you good at piano, Rubina? Well, I’ve worked damn hard for ten years.

What do you think? You can thank Mr. Steinway for the piano. You can thank Mr. Bach, let’s say, for the music, you can thank your music teacher, but you know your hard work is the main cause.

Pretty obvious, you own it, you’re proud to own your hard work. Why are you angry, Rubina? Oh, that’s not my fault. My mother did it to me when I was little and my daddy did this to me and my husband did that to me and my boyfriend did this to me and the next door neighbor said that to me and blah blah blah. That’s just some response that I have no control over.

But yes, it’s in your mind, but sorry, I didn’t put it there. I mean, it’s very weird. You gotta admit it’s kinda odd. There’s no logic. It’s kinda peculiar.

We have this very weird world, what we call feelings, you know? Buddhist says they all come down to the same thing. They’re all thoughts. Finally, until we get that point, we won’t know how, what he means, we won’t understand why you can change your mind, you can rid the delusions from your mind, or even why you can get enlightened, or why you’ve got Buddha nature. It would make no sense, it just sounds like religion, you know?

And the logic is this: that the negative thoughts, the negative emotions, the neuroses are at their core mistaken, deluded concepts. So I am mad at Fred and I’m crying. What’s wrong, Rubina? What I’ll proceed to do is speak a lot of words to you. Now we know that words are expressing thoughts.

So those thoughts are called How dare Fred do this to me? He is evil. He is the cause of all my suffering. It is not fair. I did not deserve it.

Are they not thoughts? So obvious that they’re thoughts. We’re so caught up in the feelings of it that we we mystify them, we romanticize them, you know? Very bizarre, actually. Feelings are real, of course, fits the body.

But they’ve got to be based in thoughts. If you didn’t have thoughts, you wouldn’t be able to have anger. How could you have anger? We think anger, we think the feeling comes first and the thoughts after. Well for the Buddha it’s the other way around.

We don’t notice the thoughts until it’s out the mouth vomiting. It’s really fascinating and we only notice that when we start getting single point of concentration beginning even to get some focus. So you start listening to the ragings in there. We’re going on something like what’s the name of your football ground here where the Crows play and the Port Adelaide play? Where do you play?

Adelaide Oval. Adelaide Oval. And how many people do you fit there? Fifty thousand. So on any Saturday, who’s playing this week?

They did it already. Adelaide and who? Oh okay so let’s say fifty thousand people if you’re a mile away from a couple of kilometers away what you hear is a roar don’t you? You hear a sound a big a roar don’t you like a sound a big sound and you know it’s fifty thousand voices all shouting simultaneously, right? You know that, because you know it intellectually, we know that, don’t we?

Now there’s fifty thousand individual voices, isn’t it? All saying fifty thousand thoughts, each of their own thoughts, right? Would you agree? Well, it’s like a roar, isn’t it? Well, that’s our mind.

Just this quiet roar underneath. They say they’re like a thousand thoughts a second, door racing along. Things that we’ve been programming for countless lives, programmed inside us, never stoppingly talking, but way deep down. And with this gigantic soup of emotion, you know? So we only notice the thoughts of some of those when it’s like one voice is louder than the other fifty zero.

Come on the Crows or whatever you know. Down with the Swans. Whatever you are, Power and Crows, isn’t that right. So, you understand what I’m saying? We’re on autopilot, because we’re programmed, it’s instinct to walk here and do this and go there, drive the car and get this and smile and talk and put the food in the mouth and go to the toilet and do this and whatever we do without thinking because we practiced doing it.

But this thought process has never stopped. Like in other words, you’re chatting away and you just go like that. That was a complete action of killing a mosquito in one millisecond. That means that you recognise as an object, there was recognition, there was an intention, I will kill the mosquito, there’s a version that propelled you to do it, there’s the thought to do the action, and there’s a recognition that it’s splattered, it’s dead, all in one millisecond without even blinking. That’s slow.

It’s constant, the thought’s never stopping. This is why the Buddha’s view of the mind understanding from the back of these amazing Hindus is absolutely mind boggling, the subtlety to which we can go to our minds. There’s nothing like it in our culture. And the Buddha came out of that and continued in his own way, going even more subtle. The level of subtlety of conceptuality is absolutely unbelievable.

The level to which we can absolutely, utterly, completely and totally control this mind of ours is like insanity in our culture. There’s nothing remotely like it. It’s beyond belief, what we can do, the level to which we can access our own mind and unpack and unravel it. This is a point Buddha is making. So what we’re going to see is all these trillions of conceptual elaborations, conceptual stories.

So even the virtues are also based on conception. Love is may you be happy. You feel it when the tears come and your heart beats. It’s just your body, know? It came with the thoughts first, the feeling of affection, which is expression of the thoughts.

So the negative ones, Buddha’s saying, and this again is unique to the Buddha’s view, They’re all thoughts, but the negative ones are lying thoughts. They’re not accurate, they’re misconceptions, they’re not accurate. That’s the simple point about them, which seems so abstract to us, because when we say angry we think of feelings, we don’t think of a lie, you know? We don’t think of exaggeration. So when we can understand that, even theoretically get our head around this idea, the negative states of mind are thoughts, like the virtues, that come along with their physical component because of practice and habit, The negative ones are liars, that’s what they call delusions, a great word in English, delusional.

When you’re accused of being delusional, you’re very offended because the person is telling you that you’re not in touch with reality. That’s totally and utterly and completely bullseye for Buddha. That’s exactly what he’s saying. When we get angry, don’t think we’re being delusional. When we’re jealous, we don’t think we’re being delusional.

Maybe when you call yourself paranoid, you’re delusional. But we’re all delusional. It’s just question of degree. It’s not kidding. So we get this point that they’re all delusional, and we start to recognize that.

How attachment, which is so emotional, over exaggerates Fred’s divineness. That’s an obvious level of attachment. How anger over exaggerates Fred’s ugliness. Know, over exaggerates. And we can comprehend at least intellectually how they’re misconceptions.

Buddha is saying the simple reason we can remove these thoughts from our mind utterly and irreversibly is because they’re misconceptions. You know, a simple level, you know, if you say, I say, what’s that color? You say, what’s that color? I say it’s blue. Then you go, no, no, it’s yellow.

Oh, yes, sorry. Of course it is. It’s yellow. Well, first of all, would you agree that that is blue is a thought, isn’t it? It’s a thought, very simple.

And it’s got equal status with a thought that’s yellow. They’re both thoughts. They’re equal in being thoughts. But the simple point is one is conventionally valid and one’s not. It’s pretty simple.

Conventionally, we call that yellow. We don’t call it blue. So then you go to me and then you tell me you fix my mistake and I go oh yeah, of course, yellow, of course, you’re right. So then what happened to the thought? It is blue.

What happened to it? Simple, it’s gone isn’t it? And what this is the point what made it go? What made it go? See the truth!

The truth! It’s hardly a no brainer the truth! If you go oh I’m not sure is it yellow? No they’re not sure yet But of course you’re right, of course it’s yellow, I’m convinced, I’m clear, I see the truth. That’s what made the lie disappear into a puff of smoke.

And that’s what happens when we get rid of all the delusions. That I am inherent, that there is an inherent I, there is an inherent this, there is an inherent that. That thought deep in our bones, totally primordial, the most subtle, the most primordial, that underpins all the other thoughts. When that is uprooted, when that is seen for the first time to be a lie, and that’s what the realization emptiness is, quote unquote, that’s the beginning of the end of saṃsāra. That’s it.

You can’t fall back after that. Eventually, remove all else from the mind, all those levels of delusions, until eventually you’ve also added bodhicitta to the mix, and you remove all the delusions completely, and you become an enlightened being, a Buddha. It’s literal. It’s meant to be literal. It’s real.

It’s not from religion, you know? It’s literal, and it’s all about the mind. Thoughts. Thoughts. That’s Buddha’s expertise.

Thoughts. But subtle subtle subtle subtle subtle subtle thoughts. It’s like almost a joke to call them thoughts, you know? Because they’re so instinctive. Because we’ve been thinking them for eons.

So understanding this intellectually gives some courage, patience, instead of just cross your fingers and hope for the best, you know? Because how we tend to think about spiritual kind of cross your fingers and hope for the best. No. It’s a job to do. Clearly, even attachment is easier to see, if we compare with ego grasping, this is the hardest to see.

We can see that attachment makes the cake look more delicious than it really is. We can see that anger at Fred makes him look more ugly than he really is. We know that. Because he looked divine yesterday. And it’s only a day since yesterday, and he hasn’t got any more gray hair or got fatter.

We know. It has to be the mind, although we never believe it is. We’re suddenly sucked into our picture, and we’re he’s evil today and he’s divine yesterday. You forgot, you know? Then he’s he’s beautiful again.

I mean, we’re we’re mad. You know? We’re nuts, aren’t we? We keep and that’s because of the habit. We believe whatever story is coming to our mind.

We’re as mad as that is, you know? That’s why we least understand their thoughts leading us, you know, like a puppet on a string. We’ve been grabbing that and catching that, and as I was hoping to stop believing the way things appear to us. That’s pretty profound, I’ll tell you. This is a massive step forward, having the awareness of our mad thoughts, leading us from between pillar and post, grasping at every story like it’s the truth, instinctively.

Having awareness of this is like a miracle, it’s like so grown up, if we can do that, you know. That’s what keeps us sane. Even though the cake is looking so divine to you. Know if you’re attached to food, it’s just a typical, simple, obvious, gross example. An ordinary lie.

We know yesterday you ate too much, and we looked at it while we were too full, it looked repulsive. Here I am again today with my empty stomach and I forgot, I’ve forgotten yesterday. It looks delicious again, and I believe it again. Shove it in again, you know? What looking for happiness again.

Oh, drat. It happened again, you know? I mean, you gotta people come it’s embarrassing how stupid we are. Because this just shows the habit, that’s all. And even as you’ve made the decision to be on your diet, you know, and you’re saying, not gonna eat anymore cake and your hands going out and you’re watching part of me is like you’re half asleep watching, you know, I’m just strange.

You know? You understand? That’s how deep habit is. One of my friends in prison, he he he was quite well off family and everything, he was he was addicted to stealing. Of course, world doesn’t believe this.

I think he’s a liar. But he saw he said, Robina, I watch myself. Like like it’s almost like you’re schizophrenic. I watch myself going to this house to steal a television. I didn’t want a television.

We don’t believe it, you see, but that’s how it is, it’s like addiction. That’s all it is is addiction. The attachment is addiction, that’s all. But he happened to be addicted to stealing, he didn’t need things. He said, I watched myself, I don’t want television.

We understand this. This just shows habit, it can make us very humble, not fed up with ourselves, because it shows how deep the habit is. So we have to have this awareness, developing the awareness to notice those thoughts. That’s the skill we have to develop. We have to be critical, you know, and listen to them and be brave enough to own them and not make excuses and believe our ridiculous propaganda.

It’s not my fault and all that rubbish. So we can see the attachment, we can see the anger, can see the obvious grosser levels of these neuroses, but to see the deeper one, to hear that this is the hardest part. That’s why when we hear about how there is no inherent I we go, Who cares? Who says there is in the first place? It’s not like Buddha telling us there’s no U Baa.

What the hell is an U Baa? You know? Because we don’t notice we think there’s an U Baa. We don’t even think we think we grasp at an ‘I’. We can see the sentient beings of it.

The sentient beings of it are fear and panic and drama and not fair and poor me and I I I I obsessed with I, you know? With the sentient beings, so at least observe the sentient beings. So the Buddha is saying, you know, is that we all possess Buddha nature, meaning the subtlest one is meaning because our mind, simply is not set in stone. It can be changed. And the Buddha would say basically, the way they say it, that everything exists because of emptiness, Because things are interdependent.

The real point is things exist interdependently, that’s why they’re empty. Got to used to the language. Empty means shorthand for lacking an inherent nature. Then we go, well, do you mean inherent nature? Well Buddha says, sorry guys, you’re clinging to an inherent nature.

You don’t realize it but you’re believing there’s a sort of inherent intrinsic little me in there or thing in there. So even so in everything it’s like this but the one of me is particularly powerful, you know. So because delusions are delusions are adventitious because they’re misconceptions. And a misconception can be removed from the mind by seeing the truth. Well, facts.

Truth sounds a bit religious, you know? The truth. Facts. Basically facts, you know. Buddha says the fact is, finally, everything exists interdependently, and you can’t pin anything in isolation down.

You can’t find anything that exists in isolation. We know these terms. And even finally the one that seems most abstract to us, this really does sound cosmic. The very belief in the existence of our separate I, the actual experience of our being a bunch of separate I’s, is also the final thing that goes when we’ve removed all the delusions from the mind. Now this sounds really cosmic.

Meaning, when you’re an enlightened mind, your mind is enlightened, Buddha would say this is the potential of every being naturally, just naturally. Your thoughts, your mind, your consciousness, your awareness, your consciousness, utterly removed of all delusions, would be literally pervading wherever there is existence. Your mind it’s not possible that it can’t be wherever there is existence, which means everywhere. As a Catholic, used to love the idea that God is everywhere, same here, same idea, just the same. Because consciousness is not physical, remember?

The only reason our body is now stuck in this body, which it is, this sense of a separate I, literally a separate I, It causes these delusions, you know, over eons of practice. We’ve created karmically this being, this body, all this business, you know, quite ridiculous. So when you’ve removed all the delusions and you’re finally a Buddha, your consciousness, which is not physical, pervades whatever there’s in existence. Because, you know, you think about it, how can I be confined by space or time or matter? I think that, you know?

The delusions are gone completely. There’s nothing holding it back. It has the wisdom that sees all minds perfectly, all things, all phenomena perfectly, as they are, This is natural Buddha says, which means you see all the minds of all beings perfectly. And then because the ego is utterly gone and because there’s infinite compassion, there’s no sense literally, You are no longer a separate sense. There’s no sense of a separate I.

Everybody else is separate and thinks you’re separate too, but there’s no you no longer have a sense of a separate I. It’s as if your I is encompassing all beings. It’s a it’s a way of saying it. Vast is the universe. Infinite empathy, infinite compassion, no sense of a separate eye, and infinite power to help sentient beings.

That’s a Buddha. A Buddha says that’s our potential. So that’s Buddha’s baseline. Perfection is Buddha’s baseline. Everything less than Buddhahood is we’re mad.

Insane. So it sounds pretty abstract to have no sense of a separate I. Uh-huh, you know because it’s the one thing we all believe is distinct. The center of all our psychology is the separate I, you know. So it’s kind of weird.

This is what Buddha said. So these delusions starting with the ego grasping, giving rise to attachment, giving rise to all the others, are the cause of why we have this sense of separate I, and why we have bodies, and why we have lives, and suffering, and this and that, and rebirth, and all the rest. It’s a way to go. Don’t hold our breath. But the Buddha would say, this is natural and this is the potential.

Every sentient being possesses this potential, this potential, to be a buddha. The Sanskrit buddha, the Tibetan equivalent, sang gyé. The etymology is very tasty. Sang implies the eradication, utterly, of all the neurosis, and gyé implies the development to perfection of all the goodness which is at the core of our being. Naturally, sang gyé, rid of the rubbish, full of the goodness.

That’s Buddha is saying. That’s our opportunity. So the key then has to be to understand the mind Buddha’s view. Absolutely have to understand what a delusion is, have to know how to distinguish it from a virtuous state of mind, have to know how to develop a concentration and all these other mechanical bits, which is why you have to do concentration. These technical things, you know.

Then we have some confidence. It doesn’t matter how long it takes then, rather than just cross our fingers and hope for the best, which is how we think of spiritual stuff. Because there’s no concept in Buddhism about it’s Buddha’s law and we have to have faith in it. Faith plays a big role. Of course it does.

You have faith in your doctor, don’t you? You’d better have, otherwise don’t go to them. But based on your noggin, based on intelligence, based on experience, that is not blind faith. And for many Christians, and I’m not criticizing, that is the key, the faith. You can even argue with Buddhism, when you have the wrong devotion and the more advanced teachings, talk about devotion, It’s massive, it really is massive.

But it starts with this, you know, it all comes down to the practical aspect of our own mind, sorting out our own mind. We’re the boss, we have to do it, you know? Do it. Once we understand it intellectually, even theoretically it doesn’t matter, then you get more confidence. It’s like you’ve a map, you just plod along one step at a time.

What’s the next step? Okay. What’s the step? Okay. Where am I on the map?

Where am I on the map? Okay. Next step. Reasonable, you know, instead of panicking. So we all possess Buddha nature.

So what that means technically, because we don’t speak like that. If you saw an acorn, I like the example of an acorn, we all know because we’ve learned it, because you don’t know because of looking at it, you have to learn it. It’s a potential oak tree, isn’t it? We wouldn’t call it that, we call it a seed. But if you put it in the soil, give it quite a bit of time and water and this and that, it’ll become an oak tree.

We know that. This is a good point. I like this example. You can’t tell by looking at an acorn, can you? That it’s going to be an oak tree unless you’re taught it.

Do you understand my point? It’s not evident, is it? The little acorn doesn’t go, I’m an oak tree, I’m an oak tree! No, it just sits in a little round thing with a hat on it, you know? Or whatever the shape is.

But we learn that that thing there began with this. So it’s sort of a dumb analogy, but I like this analogy. So we’re right now, we’re walking around, we’re little acorns, okay? And our view in the materialist world is we believe in acorns we’re only an acorn we don’t see having it we have no sense that we have a potential so we become the best acorns we shine ourselves up and change our hats every day and try to keep the wrinkles out, you know. Do you understand my point?

We don’t see we’ve got potential to be an oak tree, we just see the acorn. I’m human, know, bag of bones. Then when you die, you die, you shrivel up and die, know, that’s it. A bit limited view, Buddha would suggest. He says we’re all acorns, yes, but we’re potential oak trees.

It’s a simple example, you know. We all don’t we agree that all acorns possess oak tree nature? We don’t talk like that. What a perfect statement. We’re all minds by definition all sentient beings by definition.

By definition. All minds all mind possessors. The term in Tibetan for sentient being, mind possessor. It’s a great term, I love it. Sentient being is bit weird, you know?

Mind possessor, wow, so direct. All mind possessors, by definition possess the potential to be a Buddha. It’s the natural state of a mind. An acorn by definition is a potential oak tree. As long as it’s an acorn, it’s a potential oak tree.

That’s it. That’s idea of Buddha nature. So it’s kind of tasty. Wow. Okay then.

Let’s look into it. That’s why in the more esoteric teachings, in tantra, there’s one of the which is just the most sophisticated psychology, that’s all I would suggest in Buddhism. It’s the whole attitude of identifying with being the oak tree. Because right now, in this earlier stages of our past, we’re trying to sort out the acorn, get the dirt off so we can start to grow it and become an acorn, become an oak tree, you know? So we’re bit stuck in our acorn ness.

Mean, why the hat doesn’t work and, you know, it’s a bit dirty and do you understand? A bit sort of like a joke. But when you start the other practice of actually identifying with being the oak tree, you identify they say that when you’re visualizing, imagine yourself as a Buddha, you’re bringing the future result, the oak tree, into the present. Psychologically, identifying with that becomes a cause to become that. It’s like, you know, what we call positive thinking.

You watch you know, Serena Williams play tennis, and you imagine you’re just like Serena. You imagine you’re like Serena. You imagine. Well, it’s very powerful. It’s not just wishful thinking, it’s part of a cause of becoming it.

Identify with your potential, you know, it’s very powerful. And it’s a a marvelous antidote to self to depression and hopelessness and low self esteem, which is the dirty acorn, you know. I’m just an acorn. No. You’re not.

You’re a potential Buddha. Remember it. It’s very powerful. Psychologically, it’s very powerful. So by definition, every mind has the potential to be as vast as space, to see that which exists, and to have infinite empathy with all beings, and to have effortless ability to manifest all over the universe as to benefit sentient beings.

That’s a Buddha. That’s our potential. And the cause of it? Knowing your mind and reading it of delusions. As simple as that.

The psychology, this is becoming a Buddha is a psychological practice, that’s it. Don’t think of it in any other way. Literally, Buddha is talking to the mind, you know, literally. Therefore psychology, literally. Just he has a radical view of the mind, that’s all, and a very, very different view of potential.

And the point is, the mind, the Buddha says, is the creator of everything. This is where it really does sound cosmic. The more we understand karma, the more this makes sense. Look at us, we’re all sentient beings, we have, like we discussed maybe in the karma teachings, there are four ways of our past actions, starting with thoughts. Intention is the first step.

Intention is the mental action. Everything exists on the tip of the wish, Lama Zopa says. It’s the first step. My walking out that door, the first step is not my legs, it’s my thought. I will walk out the door, then my legs carry me.

We know that. Everything starts with a thought, just that we don’t know it’s a thought, because it’s so fast. Intention. Intention. So, every action we do, every millisecond of whatever we do, every millisecond of every day starts with a thought, and then some of them are carried out by body and speech, aren’t they?

You can see that. The body and speech are like the servants of the mind, you know? And everything we do with the mind programs the mind. Whatever the mind does programs the mind. Woodward would have liked that phrase.

They say sow seeds. Program is great. Program or sow seeds. And those seeds will necessarily ripen in the future as a type of rebirth, as our tendencies, as our experiences, and as an environmental result. This is really interesting because as Lama Zopa says, in the Kālacakra tantra and the teachings, the Kālacakra teachings, these extensive teachings in the esoteric teachings, they describe this intimate relationship between internal and external energy.

For the Buddha, external energy is the four elements. This is how we used to talk back in the middle ages, our people, isn’t it? Our mob. Now we talk about other elements, don’t we? Mr.

McGarlow and that lot. Don’t talk about the elements. Buddha’s model still uses the same. The physical world is the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. They’re described in great detail, great complexity in the Buddhist literature.

Of course, this is the basis of Tibetan medical system. All these tantras they talk about, tantras are very much dealing with, the intimate relation between the internal, which is mind, and the external, which is the physical elements. They say in this model that every mind there are trillions and upon trillions trillions of minds. There’s not an atom of space. You won’t find minds.

Our body is a walking zoo, we know this. Wherever you look and turn, everything’s pervaded by sentient beings. So, all these minds, they’re all intimately linked to their own set of the four elements. This is just the way it is said to be, this is the observation of the great beings, the yogis, coming from the experience of the yogis. This is just how things are.

None made it like this. It’s just the way things are. Whatever the mind does impacts upon our own set of the four elements. That in turn, as I’m as they say, when the mind is negative, that impacts upon the subtle wind energies that are utterly connected to all these different states of mind, coursing through our subtle nervous system in our body. This is what the Tibetan medical system uses when they feel their pulses, this what the tantric model talks about.

We’ll discuss this in more detail on the weekend when we talk about death. Whatever your mind does, it impacts upon those wind energies, so when the mind is very virtuous, it purifies the wind energies. That’s healing. Karmically, in turn, that results, if it’s virtue, purifies the wind energies that in turn causes you to have a healthy body. Health is one of the karmic results of virtue.

Not in the sense of punishment and reward, it’s a natural law. Negative states of mind pollute the wind energies that they’re connected to, which in turn is what causes ill health. And then in turn, karmically over a long time, and as well as group karma, the negative energy impacts upon the external elements and causes earthquakes and floods and stinky and pollution, or peaceful and lovely like Adelaide, walk around Adelaide, there’s lovely trees and all your streets and everything. Such a lovely city was the part I’m staying in. It’s all the fruit of our past virtue, because we don’t see it like that.

Due to our past virtue, we’re living in an environment that’s peaceful and harmonious and sweet and the air’s nice and the things are lovely and things grow and there’s flowers and there’s veggies and delicious that make you healthy. This is the karmic result of our actions. No god has made it, and it’s not just coming from his own side. This is emptiness as well. All explained little bit this teaching.

Everything comes from mind. Mind is the source of all of this. That’s how come you can have different realms of existence. All sentient beings minds are connected to their own centre of the wind element, the four elements. Then what’s a dog, a lion, a zebra, you know?

What’s an ant? What’s a spirit? What’s a god? What’s a hell being? They’ve got the different physical energy, their mind conjoined with it, having, as they say, having appearances of certain experiences.

So if you’ve got a lot of virtue, you gonna wake up in a life where things are peaceful, you’re very sweet, you’re harmonious, you’re not paranoid, people are kind to you, and other people living in torture, in their own mind, other people delusional, being brutalized, being harmed, being lied to, being raped. This is due to past actions. We are the creators, Buddha says, of everything. External, internal, experiences, everything. Mind is the source.

That’s Buddhism. All of this is based on emptiness. That’s interdependence. And interdependence is how things are conventionally, which proves that ultimately they’re not set in stone. Therefore nothing has an inherent nature.

Things aren’t the way they appear. It’s one of the biggest trips that Buddhists say. Things don’t exist the way they appear. But all the lies in our mind by informing everything we see, everything we hear, and then we believe it. As long as it’s bad enough that things appear wrongly to us.

But the worst thing is we believe it’s true. That’s the killer. That’s the killer. That’s the killer. So at least not believe in the karmic appearance.

You know when you’re angry when your husband’s left you for the younger version, despair, angry, jealous, freaked out, there’s nothing, there’s not a millimeter of space in our mind to believe anything else is there? Than the story that our mind is telling. Not a millimeter of space. It seems like a joke to think that it’s a story I’ve made up. It seems like cruel joke.

The scene of mosh hopping, when someone punches you in the nose, to think that you’ve made up something. This is proving emptiness. For eons of time, because we’ve got ego grasping, and over all the countless lives of animals and humans and animals and humans and animals and humans continuously having been harmed and harming, that we’re so addicted to calling it that. Calling it bad. Now listen, it’s really easy to prove.

If do karate, you go to karate, someone will punch you. You’re not going to freak out and and sue them, are you? Said in fact, I was taught in karate that I should apologize if you punched me because I got in I I didn’t get out of the way in time. It’s it’s my responsibility. So straight away, that is proof.

That is proof that being punched isn’t in this nature bad. It proves it right there, but we just can’t stand it. Right there. If it were, we’d all be all the karate people be suing each other for the last seven hundred four hundred years you know. But they’re not.

Oh so sorry, whoops hit you. Oh how’d you feel? Not bad. Just right there what do think’s changed? It’s just your view of it.

You’ve called it something different. It’s so obvious. It should we should get enlightened right now. Hearing that should blow our minds. But we know it’s true.

That’s proof of emptiness. Meaning there’s no inherent punching is bad. It’s a fact. It’s a fact. It’s a fact.

It’s too hard to hear, though. Everything in us holds on to our right to think it’s bad, therefore you’re bad. Therefore I’m allowed to be miserable, then I’m allowed to be angry, I’m allowed to sue you. We’re ridiculous. It’s not easy.

Because of emptiness, Bodhisattva, Śāntideva said, some level of body sufferer, I forget what level. For him, the action of cutting off his hand and feeding it to a starving animal is inconsequential as really falling off a tree. Now that sounds pretty insane, but it’s because things don’t have an inherent nature. It’s because for eons we’ve been attached to this body more than anything. More than anything.

And it’s attached to this body that’s the worst suffering at the time of death. Worst. The one thing I don’t care anything else, even the husband’s gonna leave me, but give me my body. Keep my body, please. Even mosquito.

As I’m as nervous, it only wants one tiny, tiny drop of blood. But look at the panic attack when it takes my one tiny drop of blood. Isn’t it? When you just cut yourself slightly, you have a panic, oh my god, I am cut. What piece of me is missing, you know?

It’s clearly the most powerful attachment because his mind is conjoined with his body. Just habit. Habit, that’s all. Habit. So the body’s habits change their habits.

They realise emptiness, their own hair and I in the first place, and they’ve got this infinite empathy for sentient beings. So who cares, you know? There’s a whole piece of fifteen, know, twenty, hundred, whatever kilos, whatever I am, not hundred, whatever I am, kilos of meat, there’s starving animal, well hey babe, have the other hand as well, wait a minute, you know? Because the body suffers. And the difference between that and me is their view, the mind, the interpretation.

There is no other difference! Compassion is a viewpoint! Attachment is a viewpoint! So if you freak out, it’s because of attachment. That’s it.

So simple. It’s too shocking to hear this! We just go, it’s natural, you know? Natural means set in stone, which means you can’t change it. Rubbish, bollocks.

It’s all made by the mind, eons of habit. As one lover said, we’re like children who draw a lion and then become afraid of it. That’s how we are. We it’s it’s not meant to be just yogi talk. This is literally over eons of time.

Habit, practicing. This is what we mean by instinct. Attachment to sex, food, the body, you name it. Just habit, that’s all. Just habit, habit, habit.

And we get stuck in our ways. That’s it, we’re very stuck in our ways, definitely. So it’s up to us to interpret it differently. One way you can say the entirety of Buddhist practice is seeing things differently. That’s it.

As this Holiness said one time, when people ask how to apply emptiness in daily life, was so sweet how he answered, so profound. He said, Oh, that’s so difficult. You just attempt to see something from another point of view. In other words, have compassion for the animal and give him the other hand. That’s definitely not a point of view.

Slowly, slowly, don’t go ahead of yourself, give the blood first, that’s a good start, one drop of blood will do, starting, okay? So it’s realising that everything is informed by the mind, not just a few things, but everything. And that’s the meaning finally of merely labelled, the subtlest understanding of emptiness. There’s nothing, there is nothing that doesn’t come from the mind. There’s no meaning that isn’t made by the mind.

But, as Dharmakīrti says, nevertheless it functions exactly as we established. It never annihilates the thing. So there’s not a single atom of an enlightened being from their own side, but nevertheless they function exactly as an enlightened being would. They pervade the space, they benefit sentient beings. But the tricky part is we have to hear how emptiness is meant to be imbuing everything should be imbued with this view, that everything is like an illusion, as they say.

So just practising, hearing these words, healing them, tasting them, and then slowly experiences come. This loosens the grip, loosens the grip we have of this view we have about the world. Me, you, I think. To keep unpacking and keep stripping away the assumptions, taking nothing for granted, you know. This is the job.

This is applying emptiness. Questions? People? I was going do some more of a Heart Sūtra, I never did. We can still do that.

Any questions? Questions? Anything you want to talk more about? Any of that? Don’t care.

How about what type of thing we can do when we get caught up in that story or we get caught up in where our, you know, our heads and our thoughts take us and we’re aware of it and go, okay, this is a thought. How can we kind of get out of that story? When our heads take us away with a thought or a story and we get caught up in it and you know the pain that might be attached to it or how can we relieve that suffering I guess when we become aware that okay I’m getting caught up in a thought or a story now, how can we bring it back? It’s not that simple, it won’t go away that easily. All this is part of what practice is every day and the level to which we’re caught up in stories is pretty subtle, know, So our trouble is we only notice it when it’s a full blown story, when it’s a strong emotional one, isn’t it?

Every second of the day we’re leading our life, unconsciously we’re completely believing in stories every second, every second, every second. So, you know, The only answer really is like anything, it’s a bit like asking if I’m going one hundred and twenty kilometers along freeway and I’m about to have an accident, what else should I do? In a sense you’re asking me that, aren’t you? Yes. So then the answer has to depend on how much work you’ve done, how much driving you’ve done, and how many tools you have in your toolkit.

So if you haven’t done much driving before, the answer is the best is damage control, because it’s a bit late to be asking what to do about it. That’s our problem. So that’s why in a sense it’s like back to basics: if Buddhism is meaningful to us, we’ve got to practice watching our mind, doing our meditation, reading things, thinking about it, doing some purification. Every day, that’s the practice driving every day, driving every day. So then when you’re on the freeway and the drama happens, you’ve just got more ability to deal with it.

That really is the answer. There’s no quick other, quick fix answer, there’s no shortcut answer. But it’s the skill of learning more and hearing these words and knowing that we’re driven by thoughts every second and we’re ninety nine percent on autopilot. Catching ourselves all the time in small events don’t wait till the drama happens. Deal with how to drive when you’re going quietly, 25kms an hour, not 120kms.

Then you get better at the skills, really I mean that in daily life. That’s why if you do study Buddhism, I don’t know if you do or not, hearing about the teachings about karma, hearing about emptiness, hearing about these things and slowly these become more the way we use to interpret the world. That’s all part of it, it’s ongoing every day you know. Jonathan, every day. But I think the biggest one is it is slow, it is constant but the one answer to what you’re asking is also no matter how bad things are, even though you’re in pain, even though your heart is breaking you can’t believe it another part of you some wisdom in you are saying it’s cool honey it’s okay this is so one of the applications of one of Buddha’s teachings is it’s impermanent.

One of our worst sufferings when it’s good Finally I’ve found happiness! We believe it’s permanent, right? It’s so blissful. Finally I’ve got it! Finally I’ve got the best job, my body’s the best, everything’s wonderful, life is great, we instantly then grasp at it and we make permanent.

So then we love that kind of permanence, but then when it gets all shattered and the bubble bursts and he leaves you or something happens, then we also now think that’s permanent and that’s one of the killers. So one of the things is even when it is torture and you can’t make the pain go away, one part of us is saying every second, It feels like a nightmare, it feels like permanent, but it’s not. It will change, and that gives us confidence. Otherwise we will kill ourselves. Why do you think we kill ourselves?

Because we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel! That’s what seeing things as permanent is. So this is a massive teaching. So also not be afraid of it. Not be afraid of it, it’s okay it’s just my thoughts, it is pain, it will pass and so you just sort of keep moving, doing things, speaking positive thoughts to yourself, little tiny little voices way back tucked away you know while the pain is overwhelming.

But when we get sucked into the overwhelming story of the pain and can’t see anything else that’s the nightmare. So being courageous in the face of the dramas is a massively important thing because it will change. Another way is that this is not who I really am. We don’t believe it when it’s in the midst of the pain. It’s like you’ve a headache, you can’t believe it’ll go away because it’s so horrible.

But we just have to know that and say that and this part of our wisdom has to be saying these things cause we’ve got to be saying them to ourselves. And that keeps us going, that keeps us optimistic, that keeps us moving one step at a time. This is incredibly important. Because one of our biggest problems is we panic. We can’t stand the pain, we can’t stand the panic, we can’t stand the anger, we can’t stand the problems.

That’s the word. In other words, I say to myself often, it’s bad enough having a headache, it’s bad enough having your husband leave you, I don’t have one of them anymore, do you understand? It’s bad enough, but why be miserable as well? So what I say to myself, you know? Bad enough being depressed, why be miserable as well?

Why be depressed about being depressed? Bad enough being angry, why be angry with being angry? We keep adding layers, you know? So part of us has to be perky and ridiculous and kind of optimistic. Little corner, don’t deny the feelings, lie in fetal position and cry like a baby, I don’t care.

But have some part of us optimistic, it’s not the whole story, it is okay, it will pass, that keeps us sane and that’s applying emptiness. Do you understand? This is unbelievably important having courage in the face of the problems. And then the other point is because here it is coming, the anger is there, the depression is there, attempt to have a part of your wisdom watching and observing the way the depression works, what it’s saying, analysing, trying to observe quietly the hurt, the grief, the loss, the self pity, the jealousy, try to hear them you know? So it’s a good example to see how it works.

Do you understand? This is what you’re using your suffering experiences for practice rather than just wishing it all go away. Then we really can get strong. This is the important part. Do you understand?

I do, thank you. Because our junky thing is we want to make it go away. And that’s half the time why we even go to meditate. Oh, hear that meditation works, you know? Like in other words, we wanted to make stuff go away.

It’s like we’re addicted to that view. That’s not the reason you meditate at all. It’s like a joke. We should be glad to to see our shit. Know?

As one of my friends said, a therapist who’s also a Buddhist, practicing like this is having your hands in your own shit. So we’ve got to have the courage to see it, the courage to hear it, to be glad there’s an opportunity. This is really powerful, I tell you. Our whole life will be different when we can do that. Rather than being a two year old who’s just having a panic attack and wishing it would all go away, that’s just attachment and it’s very powerful.

Do you understand? Then your life is really meaningful, then you’re learning from it so much. This is incredibly important. What else? Last Tuesday we talked about when we feel fear rising in us, that’s an ideal time to look for the eye.

Right. You just through that again, please? Yeah. Okay. This is really quite a subtle point, it’s quite difficult.

And until we’ve done a bit of study and done this, this just seems a bit abstract stuff. Pabongkha Rinpoche’s teachings in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, in the section on developing wisdom, which means realizing emptiness. He says the classic technique that’s taught is the four point analysis. I mentioned this, and he mentions there in this book, that this is the easiest method. Like I said, we’ll give that some context and remember who he’s speaking to.

He gave this Lamrim talk in the 1920s and his six hundred monk audience had been studying this stuff for thirty-forty years, some of them. Easy for them, yeah! So we’ve got to remember. So it is quite abstract. And I remember even when I first edited that book back in the 90s and then I read it again later now, it’s still unbelievably kind of rich and you get something out of it every time you read it.

So the point is this, okay? The point is this. What they’re saying is refrain. Like we said before, we used the example of the grosser level of ignorance is that we really believe this ignorance causes us to believe that among all these millions of parts of of body and mind, among the nose and the hands and the muscles and the atoms and the toenails and the anger and the love and the compassion, all the bits and pieces of our mind and body, which as we all agree are the components of a person, this person, we all believe utterly, primordially, totally instinctively that there is a part, as my friend Pende Hawter says, walking hand in hand with all the other parts, but it’s like the boss part called I. In other words if we looked we’d find we can identify a knee, can identify the nose and we’ll identify the eye.

That’s what we’re saying. So the fact is there’s another option. Basically Buddha is saying I’m sorry guys, there isn’t one. It’s easy to hear, but we’re believing in it. We’ve been believing in the presence of this independent I for eons.

So we can hear there isn’t one. We can even have the intellectual logic to prove it, which is already a good step. Don’t underestimate it. But the experience of it is another discussion. So we’ve got to do this rigorous thing.

Basically, Buddha is saying, basically if you know you’re convinced like say let’s say you’re convinced there’s five you’ve left your five dollars in this room let’s say you’re convinced or your lounge room make it smaller so there’s only two options isn’t there It’s either in the room or it’s not. It’s pretty simple isn’t it? So there’s no benefit in just believing there’s five dollars there. You do believe it, you’re very convinced there’s five dollars you’re convinced there’s five dollars there but there’s no benefit in believing it. You’ve got to look for it don’t you?

There’s only two options. You’ll either find the five dollars, which means you were right, or you will find what? Absence of five dollars won’t you? You’ll find that there wasn’t the five dollars But the only way to certain, what would you have do? To be certain, what would you have to do?

You’ve to look completely until there’s nowhere else to look. You’ve got to uncover every cushion. You can’t just vaguely look and say, Oh, I think probably not there but you’ve got to absolutely look until you’re exhausted until there’s not one option left that makes logical sense doesn’t it? And then you can be convinced. Do you understand?

It’s pretty reasonable but it sounds so peculiar because what Buddha is saying is well excuse me guys what you’ve got to do is look for the eye and this sounds hilarious to us. I know when I first heard Lama he said I could be infuriated. What are you on about? Do you understand? So part of the biggest problem is this we’ve got no bloody idea what our eye looks like.

The one we’re supposed to search for. I mean I’m thinking get you really here. So there’s no point in going oh where’s the eye? And what we do like oh where’s the eye? And then the ears are in my heart?

Where’s the eye? I don’t know what it looks like so what’s the point of looking? It’s like oh where’s the five dollars what’s five dollars a go oh I don’t know what’s the point of looking? So the first job number one point is to establish clearly a clear picture a confident picture, the way they put it is, of how the I appears to us. So ninety nine percent of the time, it’s just there as an assumption.

Right? We’re just acting on the assumption of the presence of an eye that does this and gets up and goes here and he’s hungry and does that. It’s it’s not special. But the only time the feeling of it arises is when the hubby leaves us. When you get run over by the car, when someone insults you.

Do you understand? That’s obvious. In other words when fear arises that the fear is the indicator of the waking up of this lion you know. So keep remembering there is no I just keep remembering the words but the belief in the I is very vivid. The belief in the I is really vivid and that’s why all the time we’re acting as if you’re like you’re driving on the road you’re doing this doing that all the time there’s the assumption of the I getting what it wants which is attachment but the millisecond the red light comes or the car goes the wrong way or someone says the wrong word kind of like smash up against it isn’t it?

I know this one isn’t it right? We have this strong feeling of an I. So the point is, every time that happens, what happens for us, because we’re so caught up in the story, the second you insult me, If I’m really wanting to understand to look for my the fantasy eye, I’d be so glad that you insulted me because it’s the opportunity to grab it. But most of us, I go, who do think you are? How dare you?

And then I’ve just bought into attachment which is the which is the servant of the eye, and it’s too late, I’ve missed the opportunity. Because the eye is like sneaky, like a thief he says. The second you catch it goes away. I’m really meaning this, the first of the four steps is called identifying the object to be negated. The five dollars, the I, the inherent If there were an inherent I, we’ve got to get a vivid feeling for how we think it manifests.

And this is really subtle. You’ve got to understand the meaning of if it were independent or not or this or that. And these are the words we have to know first, you know? We’ve to get a sense of how the I appears. So even if we’re not sure even the meaning of these words, when the bad thing happens, before launching into the self pity, grab it and try and catch.

But even that’s not enough. You’ve to be much more articulate about it, you know? Much more articulate about that. So then the next step is this: once you’ve got a sense of how we think the I is, and that’s quite subtle, it really they say the hardest job is to identify the object to be negated. This is why all the Buddhist teachings have different levels.

There’s a Hindu one, there’s a this level, and that level, this level, and each of them is more subtle than the next. And the final one, this one, the subtlest one, which we haven’t talked about yet, is the merely labelled I. The subtlest object to be negated is an I that exists without depending on anything, in particular the mind calling it that. So this is so abstract, but trying to get a handle on how you even think that inherent I appears to you is extremely subtle. They all say once you’ve got that, realising emptiness is easy.

This is the hardest part. It’s like learning to identify what five dollars is, is the hardest part. Because it’s only then you decide to search for it. That said, so the next step, having identified the object of negation, is now that you’ve got to establish the possibilities of where that inherent I exists.

There’s only two options. The second point is establishing these two possibilities. It’s either a separate phenomenon a knee, a nose, anger and an eye. Notice that? It’s like a separate phenomenon.

It’s got its own in these parts, it’s got its own entity. Conventionally we know that’s a knee, this is a thumb, we know that conventionally. So at this conventional level, if we’ve got to establish that if we’re looking for the thumb, you know what a thumb looks like and then you search for it, which shouldn’t take us too long, there’s a thumb, you know? So we assume there’s an independent eye, but ourselves is not! That’s not helpful to know.

We’ve got to act as if. Because everything we do is on the assumption of this I. Everything is the wishes of this I. We have attachment, anger, jealousy and pride because of this I. The belief in this I.

Gonna establish the first point. The second establish the parameters. It’s either a separate entity or it’s one. There are only two options. It’s either oneness with all the parts, or it’s a separate part.

There’s only two options. The third step is to then do the analysis to prove how it can’t be oneness with. And the fourth one is to prove that it can’t be separate from. There’s a four point analysis. Are we communicating?

We did one example of a simple one, we did one example of how it can’t be separate because, you know, like I said, I can say I have a table, a clock and a thing. That’s a conventional statement. Simply speaking, to prove my words are true, I have to point out four separate independent phenomena. Four phenomena that are separate or independent of each other. I can point out Robina is here, the box is there, the clock is there, the transmission is there.

We can throw that away there, that away here, throw this away and throw Robina away. They’re four separate and independent phenomena In the simplest language possible, they’re four independent, separate phenomena. No problems. That’s how we think the I is. So when I say I have a nose, a hand and a foot, conventionally without going into the discussion, there’s a completely reasonable statement.

Nothing wrong. That’s how we all talk. And of course as we say it, we put the wrong meaning. As we say that, we think we mean a separate I who owns the knee and the hand and the foot. The nose, hand and the foot.

So that’s why Lama Zopa. You could tell he’d realise emptiness, could tell he’s had it in his mind, because he said the person known as the Laudo Lama is about to die. That’s the way we should practice in our own mind. We say I am Robina. Technically that’s the second argument of I being oneness with, and that just can’t be.

We did the first one that I is separate from. If I say I have a hand, a nose and a foot, simply speaking it has to be the same as that. You have to point out a nose, a hand and a foot, which are indeed separate, look, there they are. Now we’ve got to point out an eye that isn’t the nose, isn’t the hand, isn’t the foot, and indeed isn’t everything else. It’s infuriating because we feel there is, so that’s the first argument.

We’ve got to rigorously search to see what is this I that isn’t all the other parts. One good analysis, even a meditation, is to consciously put in front of you piles of all your bits, all the bits that you know about. There’s only the body and the mind for the Buddha, so all the piles of your thoughts until there’s nothing left, all the piles of your body. So then the Buddha will say, If there is an I there, you’ll see it. It’ll be left, it’ll be going, Hi!

You found me? This little naked little kind of self conscious little eye that’s just having found out. I thought I was hiding all this time you know, you’ll find it! If the five dollars is there you will find it! It’s clear.

And of course the conclusion from this would be if you really did it properly you’d realise there was no I, you’d find the absence, you’d get the shock of your life, you’d have a realisation of emptiness, you know. Now the other one is, the other option we think and we do this every day you know also also we either talk like an owner or we talk like all of me is I. All of me is I, this is me, all of me is me. Well you know, that if all of me is me why would I say I have a nose? Because if my nose is me, it’s like saying I have an eye.

Because if nose and okay, the point is this is where they are really rigorous in their logic they use, when they talk about dependent, independent, one and all these things. If I were the same as everything else, there would be one. There would be one, they’d be synonymous. When you study Buddhist philosophy, we studied this really long way back when you’re younger, then twenty seven years old you do your edginess teachings, you understand why you learned it way back then, you know? If there were really just one, if all of me is rubina, then my nose is rubina, literally, so why would I say I have a nose if all of me is rubina?

Why would you say it? Think of it, why would you say it? That means rubina has a rubina. Know to say it This is logical or it’s infuriating, sounds so silly to us because we just believe it, you know So one of the practices is, you know, you’re not I am not Rubina I am the person known as Rubina So of course, don’t as one of my lamas said, you know, you don’t get all kind of carried away when you’re trying to practice and then someone says, who are you? Oh, I’m the person known as Rubina Shut up, just say you’re Rubina, be dumb of them, you know?

And we’ve got not to buy into That’s why there he is drowning. Well, a thought occurred to me the person known as the Lawudo Lama is about to die. That was in his mind, you know? It was a clear recognition. So we have to look at the logical and this is the point about it, it’s not sort of searching like cosmic, but you’re using logic.

We’re using logic to prove initially, and that logic there are two types of meditation in Buddhism. Two types. Millions of techniques. These are taught in the fifth and sixth of the six perfections. So first one is single pointed concentration or calm abiding, and this comes from these amazing Hindus.

It’s a Hindu practice, not even Buddhist, but Buddha happily took it and they’re happy to share. Genius, brilliant, genius skill enabling a person to harness the energy of his mind beyond the conceptual and the sensory to go to these subtler, subtler, subtler levels, which is what we absolutely have to do. You cannot in a trillion years realize that you’ve got a single point of concentration. Absolute certainty. Because this is so much delusion.

We’ve got to get to the subtler level of our mind to use like a laser like level of subtlety, subtle conceptuality. First kind is calm abiding concentration. The second kind of meditation is known as Vipassana, and in Buddhism there’s many techniques, and indeed there’s almost like a separate Buddhism called Vipassana, you know? But it’s just these different techniques that Lord Buddha taught to help us gradually learn to identify what’s going on and understand. So many of the techniques that people use are like that one of the sensations of the body and stuff.

I’ve never done it, you know, but that’s one of Buddha’s techniques, a very popular one. So Vipassana or insight, it’s called insight. Here, in this tradition, the Mahāyāna one is insight specifically into emptiness. So it’s a conceptual process. It’s a conceptual process, not one watching the sensations of the body.

It’s a mental process, a more sophisticated level of insight. So the word in English is great. I go to other languages and it’s really good in very good word, insight. Some languages are these weird religious words they use, it’s so strange. Insight’s a great word.

We use it every day, don’t we? When you get an insight into something, you understand it. Insight, in seeing is perfect, a very good word. So in general, we’ve got to get insight into all this stuff. But it’s the same as when you’re learning anything.

You learn music, you go home and get some insight into your country, it’s obvious, you practice it, until the penny drops and you get it. Oh, I get it. We understand that. Well, these are the two modes of meditation. You’ve got to get your concentration, you’ve got to focus your mind, and then to the degree of any focus you’ve got, you go to the second mode, and now you’ve got to get insight.

Now, into what? The classic one is emptiness, but you could use this for anything that you’re studying in Buddhism. Go to the insight into karma, insight into impermanence, insight into bodhicitta by thinking it through. It uses your noggin, you’re using thoughts. By having focus, having concentration, makes your mind more subtle, even slightly, whatever.

Get some focus, then you go to the second mode, and let’s say, you know, you take whatever you’ve learned in class today, typically in the monastery is you do all your stuff and you go home and you focus on it, let out, you taste it, you know? So you get to focus, then you go to the second mode, whether it’s calmer or impermanence or emptiness, it doesn’t matter. You take the words you have learned, obviously. You know, if you’ve learned mathematics at school, or you’re doing a course on computer science or music, This is why this is a bit surprising to us because we kind of mystify these terms, you know? But if your violin teacher was talking like a Buddhist, what she’d say is, I’ve just taught you this Romina, today.

I want you to go home and sit down and do the first mode of meditation and get some concentration. Then I want you to go to the second mode of meditation and I want you to get some insight into this theory I’ve just taught you. We call that doing homework, don’t we? Nothing cosmic. We spend our lives doing homework and you memorise it, don’t you?

We have to memorise it, don’t we? And then the penny drops, doesn’t it? You learn the theory, then you get your violin, you start to play. Obvious. Well, we’re doing the same here.

But the thing here is, we get a bit confused because we hear about concentration, meditation, already getting a bit cosmic, you know? It just means focusing your mind. It’s a psychological skill. Communists can do it. It’s not religious in its nature.

Do not think it is. Second, the second mode, the goal is to get insight into whatever it is you’re supposed to be getting insight into. Theoretical music, the recipe, your mathematics, or karma, whichever one. So what is the method you use? It’s pretty obvious.

You gotta think it through, don’t you? You gotta think through the theories you just learned, it’s not cosmic. When you’re thinking it through and you’re kind of quiet in your room and you’re doing your studying and you’re doing your homework, you’re thinking it through and at some point you go, Oh I get it, won’t you? You’ll do that, won’t you? That’s called an insight, Don’t make it fancy, that’s how we learn anything.

Come on! What does it say you learn anything? It’s the same. So the thing that throws us, we all know being good doing Tibetan Buddhists, hear of a thing called analytical meditation, don’t we? And we kind of go, well, what’s that?

Well, first of all, the word meditation in Tibetan is very interesting. Quite a surprise. It’s the verb to familiarize. Please see it when they say to meditate they’re saying to familiarize. So they’ll say go and meditate on emptiness.

Well they’re saying go and familiarize your mind with emptiness. We don’t hear that do we? Oh meditate? Wow. You know like something cosmic.

Weird, we hear the word in the weirdest way. So what do they mean by familiarize? Well guess what? The method you’re using okay, you get your focus and you’ve a little bit of focus to the degree you’ve got it. You take the topic you’ve just studied.

You now go to the second mode and you will do what they call analytical meditation. That’s a fancy fourteenth century term for to think about it. That’s literally what it means. No more and no this. So we know that we do that every day you think about it but not you know we then think about we think thinking about something means kind of thinking about well I’ll think about this and I’ll think about that and I’ll think about my husband and I’ll think about that.

No! You’ve to think about it rigorously! The theories you did This means that means this means that. You’ve to use logic and focus otherwise you won’t remember it. You won’t pass your exam.

Pretty obvious. So thinking it through is using whatever you’ve heard in your class, thinking through the particular thing on dependent arising. You’ve got to get the words right. Now if you can’t remember the words, you’ve to open your book. You don’t just go emptiness, emptiness, emptiness, hoping for a bell to come or some special vision, you know?

Which is having finger meditation! It’s ridiculous! You get some focus, you go to your second mode, you take what you’ve learned and you think about it! That’s it! So no insight might come, don’t get upset.

It’s alright, but you have thought about it, you’re getting a bit deeper, and as you’re thinking, and the next time in class, something will go Oh I got it! And then it’ll go again, won’t it? But that’s the beginning of the baby insights, you know? So you go home and you get it deeper. More concentration, more insight.

More concentration, more words, more theories, deeper insights. Until eventually one day, who knows which life, you’ll get your first non conceptual, direct, experiential, tasty insight of emptiness. And from that second you can’t fall back. You’re climbing out of saṃsāra into nirvana. You haven’t got there yet, way to go.

But you can’t fall back after that. That’s what we’ve never had until now. A direct experiential, non conceptual insight into it, and it has to be at a subtle level of concentration. But we’ve got to start where we are. Are we communicating here?

And one step at a time. That’s why it’s so important to learn the words. Because how can you think through the theories of the violin if you haven’t got the words? It’s not going to help you. It won’t help you just having a violin here hoping it’ll work, you know?

No, it doesn’t. You’ve got to learn the theories, then slowly your hands will do the job. You learn the theories of the cake, and you slowly make the cake. The theories of emptiness, and you’ll slowly think it through. So what you could say is the two truths.

Dependent arising. Emptiness. A way to say it is that what you think about in your meditation is dependent arising, and what it triggers is the insight into emptiness. It’s like emptiness is the conclusion you come to having thought about dependent arising or whatever analysis you’re doing. The emptiness is the insight, you hold it.

So if you’re doing your two types of meditation, you’ve got your concentration first, you go to your second mode, you take whatever you’re thinking about your karma, your impermanence, your dependent arising, you think it through, think it through, tastily, quietly, think it through. Then you get a feeling for it and you stop right there, and you focus on that. You hold it. The deeper your concentration, obviously the deeper the insight, the longer you can hold that feeling, until eventually it becomes non conceptual. That’s when you get a genuine realisation.

Do you understand? It’s a very practical process. So be patient with it, humble with it. That’s why it’s so important to study it. That’s why I’m really encouraging Judy, where’s Judy?

She’s not here. Oh, there she is. Really encouraging. We were discussing programs for next year and everything, what you guys can do. Hopefully if you have the Geshe come, we can start studying the more advanced program.

You’ve got to do them the context of study. You’ve got to encourage each other and get groups and study and get your certificates otherwise we’re just bone lazy. We all know we’re bone lazy. We’re lazy. Some of us have been practising this stuff for thirty years and still can’t tell you where karma is in the Lamrim and what’s this mean and what’s that mean in one ear and out the other.

Until we start remembering it, what’s the point? Do you understand? It’s so important. Then you get enthusiasm for it. It’s really really important, I tell you.

Anyway, are we communicating? But that chapter in Pavongka Ruche is very tasty, you should look at that. Very very very tasty for this one. It’s in the section on wisdom, how you realize through four-point analysis. It’s very very very helpful.

Any other questions? In relation to karma, you’re saying about past lives, why is it that we cannot remember about past lives? Because why is it you can’t remember? Okay, what time do you get in the morning? Five o’clock.

Why isn’t it by six o’clock that you can’t remember ninety percent of what you did in the last hour? You can’t can you? So what the hell are asking about a past life for? You can’t even remember what you did the past hour. We can’t remember ninety nine percent of it.

Do you notice that? If you had to sit down for that hour and take account of every second of what you did, You couldn’t, could you? Because conceptuality is not capable. We’re as thick as posts. Our conceptual mind is grotesquely, grossly, grossly, grossly limited in its capacity for cognition.

The only way we can learn to remember a past life, not to remember your past childhood, is accessing the subtler levels of your mind where it’s beyond conceptual, that level can cognise the past. So all the methods are there, but conceptual mind is not capable. Literally, that’s the answer. Do you hear me or not? You look puzzled.

Don’t you understand my answer? Of course they do, lots of people can, flashes of it, that’s right exactly. But they’re just random, know, part of an accidental. But there are methods there, you get single-pointed concentration, you’ll remember your past lives. It’s all there, all Buddhist techniques are all there.

You know how to do it. Do you understand? Very often, I remember one time I read about one English girl, an American girl, who tried to kill herself, and she had this very moving experience, two parts to it actually, most fascinating. But she was always very depressed because her mother left when she was a child, had to take care of the children, had to take care of the daddy, then she got married, then she had babies. She seemed like a quite nice person, always got depressed, so she decided to kill herself, right?

So she said she had this vividest of vivid and we’ll talk about more of this on the weekend, the death. The vividest of vivid experience, vision, literally, crystal clear. And what that is, is your subtle consciousness. In this model we’re going to describe the death process, which is from Tantra, you’ve got gross consciousness, how we function day to day, the sensory and the conceptual, which is extremely limited in capacity. Do you understand?

And that’s how we live normally, with all these busy crazy thoughts, but no clarity, you know? So then when you go to your dreams, that’s your subtle consciousness. Now many people have these types of experiences in their dreams. They have visions, they see the future, they see things, and people can even leave their bodies, and that’s what the subtle mind is. People, when they go out of body, that type of thing, that’s your subtle consciousness.

So depending on how well you’ve trained it, is how well you can do all these things. She had this experience. It was interesting, but two parts. Called it vision of every major event in her life, crystal clear, from the time she was born. She could remember, crystal clear.

So that’s the capacity. Other words, Buddha’s view is very fascinating. There’s not a millisecond of anything we ever have experience of through any of our senses or our mental consciousness doesn’t there’s not a millisecond of any of it that goes astray. It all gets stored in our mind. Everything is there for us.

It’s all there for us, we have to learn to access it. Why she could remember that is because it was all stored in her mind, because everything we do leaves an imprint in the mind, it’s just that we forget because our minds are so stupid. Do you hear me? So we can learn to do it. She happened to do that because, you know, she tried to kill herself, which I would recommend that.

Get concentration instead, because it’s all there clairvoyance, crystal clear awareness of the past and the future and the minds of others, etc, is no big deal. We’ve had countless lives, says, it’s all part of the Buddha’s practice, it’s all there. It’s from the Hindus too, they found this as a result of this single point of concentration, which enables you to access these subtler levels of the mind. We have the capability, it’s all there. Do you understand?

Say, Buddha says really until you start having clairvoyance, can’t really help people, you know? We of see we just see this much, you know? Smaller. Pinhead. That pinhead big we see.

It’s amazing when you survive, I think. Any questions? Hi. You’ve been talking a lot about the subtle mind. Then you were talking about accessing the subtle mind.

That’s right. It’s really interesting. Could you please elaborate on, like, you say access the subtle mind, but what’s actually being accessed? Your mind. Subtle levels of your mind.

Could you maybe elaborate? Subtle levels of your capacity for cognition, subtle levels of awareness that can see, that can cognise phenomena that the sensory and the gross conceptual can’t, like the minds, the thoughts of others, like the past, future, like things in a long distance. This is all accessible to us when we have learned through single point of concentration to access these subtle levels of our mind. Our dream mind is a subtle level of our mind, but it’s usually weird and strange, and we don’t we can’t really handle it, can’t we? We don’t want to do that.

Mhmm. Do you understand? Mhmm. Mhmm. That’s yeah.

We’ll probably discuss more of it at weekend when we discuss the death process. Okay. Thank you. This is why it sounds cosmic to the West, you know, because we just determine it’s the brain, isn’t it? You know?

Mhmm. So this is why these and these Hindus are the ones three thousand years ago who first really developed these amazing techniques that Buddha then used. They’re remarkable. Because in our culture, we know nothing about them. We just know about the Greeks and the Romans.

We think they’re the top dogs, don’t we? Or whatever, you know? They’re pretty incredible, these Indians, I tell you. What else, people? Quarter to eight, twenty to eight, ten to nine?

I’m actually just wondering the significance of the bowing. Who? Frustrating? Yes. Oh, it’s just very polite.

It’s sort of like a bit like an elaborate handshake. It’s just Indian, it’s just Tibetan, it’s just Asian. You mean why do you do it? What’s it look like to you? How do you interpret it?

What does it look like? Well I guess every other part of looking into Buddhism has fascinated me because it’s very practical and scientific and psychology and there’s something like that that for me is just like why are you doing that? So what does it look like you’re doing? Say it in your words, what does it appear to you, how did you interpret that action? Remember we all have ways of describing things, so what’s your description of that action?

If you went home and told somebody, what would you say? Rupina did? Be honest, what would you say? You kneel down and touch the ground and bow and stand up again. Whom?

What does it mean? It’s obviously it’s off In that direction. So what’s on the what’s on the direction here? What’s on this table over here? All all the Buddhist Pictures and statues of Buddhists.

Right? Symbolism. Symbolism. Yeah. What’s symbolism?

So if you have a photo of your auntie on a pic a picture, would you call that symbolism? What’s the why do you have a photo of your loved ones? Why would you have a photo of your loved ones? Do them? Do you call them symbolism?

Would you say it symbolism? I might have symbols of them as in like a vase or something. Yes, reminds you of them, doesn’t it? So let’s say you’re really trying to be Serena Williams, you’d have pictures of Serena wouldn’t you? You’d watch movies of her Why?

Remind you of what you can become Totally Yes, that’s why, these ones So all this made sense to me, didn’t know if there was It’s a very polite greeting. Very Asian, very polite. Extremely polite. Extremely polite. When you walk into your party and you prostrate three times, I don’t think so, you know.

It’s a very polite greeting. That’s all it is. A very polite greeting, that’s the meaning of it. So what you’re doing in your mind is, of course it’s completely Asian, know, it’s like, but I mean handshakes, it’s a symbol isn’t it, you know, if you meet a Tibetan who’s never met a Westerner and you stick your hand out beaming at them, you know, they go I don’t know what you do, you grab their hand, they’ll keep you all kind of wimpy, you think I want a pathetic hand shake, they’re gonna hurt a handshake! Do you understand?

Or they might if you meet somehow, like you know, lay bonk heads, Like, meet your grandmother, your grandpa, very polite, or a Lama, you’d bump heads like this. You’d probably flinch, they’d be aggressive, you know, bump your heads with me. It’s just everything is just culture, isn’t it, really, to think about. I agree, this is a pretty insane culture, I agree with you. I mean, look at the pictures, It’s like outrageous, you know.

It’s not how we do it. It’s not how our stuff. But in the end, is culture. But everything’s culture, isn’t it? Shaking hands is culture, you know, picking our nose in public.

Like us, Tibetans, for example, if you stick your feet out, you’re considered like the worst luck. It’s like exposing your bottom. It’s so rude. But I was at the teachings at one time in one of the monasteries, and they’re the Tibetan boys in front of me. This shows how it’s all culture.

They’ve never stick their legs out. You’d never do that. But he had his what do you call those things you clean your ears with? Come on, cutie. There he was.

The Dalai Lama seating. That’s not considered bad manners. So it’s kind of everything’s culture, isn’t it? You gotta you know, just look at this ridiculous clothing I’m wearing, forty century Tibetan, for God’s sake, isn’t it? It’s culture.

So when you understand that, you sort of, I’ve decided to buy into it because I’m called a Buddhist nun. But it’s just the way people do things in certain cultures. I’m sure eventually in Australia, come we’ll have Australians in board shorts or something, I don’t know what. Who She knows that. So it’s got meaning, and it’s up to whether you buy into the meeting.

And it’s important that we don’t get I mean, of course we see it as superstitious because it’s not our culture, you know? You understand? But there is meaning, and that’s the meaning. Does that make sense? So in a sense it is also psychological, because everything has to do with your mind, isn’t it?

What you do with it, you know, what you’re doing, why you’re doing it. Well, if I put my hand out because I’m gonna give you some poison and stab you, then I’m not being friendly. So everything is in your mind, depending on what you do, isn’t it? Handshakes are a friendly thing to do you know bonking heads is friendly because you don’t understand. Okay?

Alright. In other words, we just want to say if it’s not psychological don’t do it, it’s crap. So this is also psychological. Tārā, this female one, she represents power, it’s a visual language, she represents power, confidence, action energy, it’s depicted as female. Another one’s got a sword, that represents wisdom, cutting through ignorance.

It’s got meaning, you know? But it’s just a question whether you learn the meaning, isn’t it? That’s all that. And whether you buy into that meaning, it is up to you. Do you understand?

Does that make sense? Yes. Alright fine. What else? Who?

Anyone else? This is the point about emptiness. Let’s say you’ve never been to the footy, you know when you’re being cynical, you look at these silly blokes kicking around a piece of leather. That’s what it is, literally that. But you know when you put the meaning into it, it’s more than that, isn’t it? Everything we give that, everything’s got meaning.

So shaking hands, prostrating, know, bonking heads, karate, it’s got the the Buddha’s point is, it’s only got the meaning that we’ve given it. There’s no meaning in itself, that’s the meaning of edginess. But we forget that, do you understand? We forget that we gave it the meaning, we drew the line, we forgot, now we get afraid of it. That’s the world.

Time to go home, five to nine? What’s that? Yes, please. Yes. Was just wondering, is the mind isn’t that just the self, isn’t that just the, is there a field of self that everyone sort of shares?

Not the Buddhist way of saying no. No, that’s, what view is that coming? That’s not the Buddhist view. No, like the, like the overall consciousness. There’s no view like that in Buddhism.

I don’t know what view that is, but it’s not Buddhist view. I just made it up. You might have made it up. Maybe. It might be right.

You better check on it. The Buddhist view is okay. The Buddhist view is all these individual minds. But when you have become when you’ve purified your mind and become this vast marvelous realized mind and I have purified my mind you could argue there’s only one you could argue then because we both know the same stuff Which we all share No, not like that, that’s not what I’m saying At the moment, is your mind doing your trip? So when you play the piano, I don’t get the result, do I?

I don’t sit there and play the piano once you’ve played it. You’ve got to play the piano and you get the result, or I play the piano and I’ll get the result. So whatever you do in your mind, you’ll get the result. But when you’ve purified your mind the way we’re talking here to the degree that you can, and let’s say I have two, you could argue we’re in the same mind then, you could argue that. There’s a way of saying it.

But right now we’re very separate, and your anger makes you unhappy and my anger makes me unhappy. And if I practice kindness, don’t get the result, I mean we’ll enlightened by now if that worked like that would be easy, you just practice piano and I can play piano, wow thanks. Do you understand? There’s enough? What else?

People? Enough thoughts for tonight? Go ahead. You, Jessie. Robina, all this symbolism, all the Buddha’s pictures, the the merit field up there.

Do we get to that point eventually where and I don’t mean any disrespect by this, but I often think about this. I’m so afraid to ask this. Don’t worry, I’ll ask in a moment. Eventually this will all be emptiness too because of that. Do you mean by that emptiness too?

What do you mean by Because all this is dependent arising, but I’m trying to do we get to a stage where we realise all this is dependent arising as well? As well as what? As well as everything and then What do you mean darling? What are asking about this lot of stuff for? What’s this got to do with the price of fish?

Why did you ask about that as opposed to a peanut or a clock? Oh, You said eventually. You start learning about it when you get into Buddhism. You start learning about it About what, darling? About the symbolism It’s not symbolism.

It’s just pictures. It’s just Buddha’s depictions of Buddhas which represent different psychological qualities that’s what this stuff is. You learn about it, you learn about everything, like you learn about mathematics, learn about cooking, learn about that. Then? So then the question is?

All right, question is: you eventually get to a point where you realise this could be emptiness too? Everything! But that’s whether it’s a peanut or a person or your boyfriend or your pain in the bum or your constipation? Question is say it again. Let’s ask it again, darling.

Question is that once you get to the point of even realising that all this, everything, is emptiness, So what do you think that means a bit? Say what do you mean? Unpack a bit. What do you mean by that? You realise emptiness When you have any thoughts or perceptions about things or No.

I’m sure what emptiness is at all. All right. The absence of all of this. Absence. It must be some sort of state of mind or some point in the mind.

Is then the total lack of thought or the total lack of perceptions? No. Nothing like that. Okay. I’m thinking about this for a long I understand darling, so I understand.

So can you say some more? I mean this is why words are important to get them clear isn’t it? Sort of like we’re discussing maths, we’d we’d be in trouble if we didn’t know the definitions of one and seven and fourteen and multiply and divide, isn’t it? Yes. You’re struggling to use the words, know, and I can’t quite get what you’re saying.

Yes, I am. So just keep it simple. Right. Try and keep it simple. Tell me what you think the implication of emptiness and dependent arising is.

What do you think it means? I think it’s the absence of ‘I’ or the lack of ‘I’. No, Would you agree that there are millions of things in the universe, millions of different phenomena? Pictures and things and paintings and girls, know, pee pee and kluck out and knees and noses and fringes. There’s trillions of different phenomena, right?

Agree? And we all give a name and then define, we communicate, then we agree, we know what a fringe is. We say you have a fringe, we know what it means. We say there’s a foot, we know what it means. We have all these things and our world consists of all of these, you understand?

Buddha is saying that we think all of these things somehow exist out there from their own side. They’ve got this status, and that’s how they are. Why are they that way? Well, don’t know. We think that they’ve got nothing to do with us.

Okay, the biggest, the simplest way, the deepest, simplest one is this: Buddha is saying that everything that does exist whether it’s an I or a fringe or a cardigan or whatever you want to posit and it’s all the same it doesn’t all come down to the I I is just one example of one phenomenon isn’t it? I meaning a person. You’re an example of an I. There’s your glasses, that’s a chair, that’s a microphone. They’re all equal in being phenomena.

And what Buddha is saying is this: that we think they’ve got a status that has nothing to do with us, that’s there, or there’s a delicious cake. And we somehow feel the delicious cake is in the cake having zero to do with your mind seeing it. Like the Lama says we’re like children you draw we make the cake we make the cake delicious we make it look delicious we think we think it’s got nothing to do with me. Well, look at this delicious cake out there just begging me to eat it. Know, it’s not my hey, it’s not my fault.

Isn’t it? Do you remember do you see what I’m saying? Like, it’s nothing to with me. Meaning we don’t realise we’ve got these billions of stories in our mind that is what we think the cake is. And what Buddha says is the more you start searching that cake you will not find one atom of anything in the cake that doesn’t come from your mind!

That’s what he’s saying, finally. But things still exist, it is a cake, it does taste delicious when you taste it but there’s no cake from its own side. Everything finally is created conceptually by the mind but we forget and we give it this ontological status and then we give the I this massive ontological status and that’s why it causes which we don’t see why there’s so much fear and drama attachment and anger and hurt and jealousy because we forget that all of this is coming from us. We it’s like our lost dear ones. We forget that we’ve created everything.

We don’t think we’ve created everything. We come into this life fully programmed with our past habits, Buddha says. You know so then you know like you’ve killed in the past so you wake up in this life and you see fishing and you fall in love with it you know you would never thought for a million seconds you’ve ever killed before but it looks so delicious to you and you believe it’s delicious because it looks so divine to you Wow amazing mom I want to go fishing it looks so delicious you never even realise this from many many times this life whatever that you’ve created this habit and it’s so imprinted in you and it looks out there. That’s why we feel that’s schizophrenic. It’s like Lama Zopa Rinpoche calls the ego schizophrenic.

This poor little miserable little sad little lonely bereft poor self pity pathetic with a knee here. We’re looking for all these things out there to fill us up, aren’t we? This is the worst suffering of ego. We are all literally schizophrenic, like demented. We’ve made up shapes and bodies and sex and this and that and blah, so we run around all bereft and lonely because we have this belief and this pathetic lie in here, which is miserable, and then we’ve got to stuff all these things inside us to get full again.

So it’s completely nuts. We’re all mad as snakes. I don’t say that in the teachings but you know. And all this is because we give this status to things out there having nothing to do with me. That’s a way to say it, that’s the deepest one.

Like know, not what a pretty couple will say. We don’t realise we made up pretty. We say it in the West, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That’s so profound. You’ve got your rose coloured specks on.

Got your angry specks on and what Buddha is saying is everything that appears to us is appearing actually to the filter of all these dramatic layers of stories in our mind and then we keep searching and searching and searching for something out there that doesn’t come from the mind and Buddha says you’ll find nothing but it doesn’t mean there’s no cake as the lama says once you realise this it’s as if there’s no cake but there is, but this is so subtle so it’s a really tricky one of thinking that emptiness doesn’t mean there’s nothing. It’s an extremely subtle point. Buddha was saying literally everything is made by the mind. He means it over eons of time too. And then that’s what karma is, to past actions because you’ve lied in the past, wherever you go, people don’t believe your words.

You’re shocked, just speaking the truth. The one track of your karma, because of past habit, you’ve programmed your mind relating to certain people and they think you’re lying. This is due to past karma. karma is from the mind. Everything is made by the mind, Buddha says.

Universes, happiness, suffering, it sounds cosmic. We’ve got to unpack it and analyse it logically using this model, which is quite different from how we talk. So that sense was nothing from its own side, it’s interdependent, it’s dependent on my mind seeing it that way. That’s what I mean about karate. If punching wasn’t really that bad, then why how come I don’t sue my partner?

In other words, if punching were innately bad, if it were bad without me calling it bad, then I’d get upset. But I know karate, I didn’t mind getting punched at all. Because why? Because my mind called it something different. That’s the point, that proves emptiness.

There’s no inherent bad punch. It’s because you call it bad, then you suffer. You call it good, you don’t suffer. That’s proving nothing has an inherent nature. So whether it’s this or a peanut or kaka, there’s no difference.

Well, is, because we don’t think about this stuff, you know? Not even. He says we’ve got to think about this stuff because this is the way the world is, you know? It’s up to us. Like anything, you get used to it, though, isn’t it?

Luckily. Well, so it’s time to go home I’d say. So what have we got left this week? What have we got on, Judy? Oh is it?

What are we doing? Oh, are we? Oh, I’m leaving, am I? I see. Death.

All about death. Death and we’ll into more detail about karma, about the death process, about how to help people, about how we get reborn. We’ll do it. Yeah, okay. Good.

All right. Good okay thank you so that’s good so we think okay all these thoughts we’ve been here since two hours or whatever fourteen hours as long as it is. Buddha says it’s not one millimetre of whatever we see, hear, taste, touch, smell or think about that goes astray, everything gets stored in our mind. Which is how come we can’t access it and have memory of it in the past? That’s what we had to learn to do.

How marvellous, you know? May all these seeds we planted, may we nourish them from this moment forward, developing our marvellous potential, one step at a time. Whether you become Buddhist or not, I don’t care, you know, never give up on your mind, never give up on your potential, never give up on developing your qualities, never give up on helping others. Use whatever methods work. Never giving up is the main thing.

Okey doke. Thank you very much. See you all. Oh, this is chocolate. I’m going to sit here and eat my chocolate.

Okay? Looks like they look like homemade chocolates. Wow.