y Samsara — 2011-09-03

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

About this talk. In this two hour forty-one minute talk, Ven Robina Courtin uses chocolate cake, a cheating boyfriend, and ordinary objects to illuminate how the three root delusions work and cause suffering—ignorance, attachment, and aversion. She begins with the rarity of human birth, then explores how attachment makes a cake appear deliciously self-existent, how anger turns infidelity into unbearable betrayal, and how ignorance projects inherent reality onto things that are fundamentally empty. She explains why removing these mental lies brings both wisdom and happiness naturally, and offers practical methods: meditation instruction on watching the mind, guidance on seeing dreams as dreams, and daily practices for working with reactive patterns. Accessible to those with some Buddhist knowledge.

File metadata (for organising)

File: 02 S 2011 09 03.mp3

UUID: 7876e5cd-1ca7-44df-bf0e-cac49a6954c4

Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin

Collection: y Samsāra (Ven Robina Courtin)

Date: 2011-09-03

Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide

Duration: 161.3 minutes

Words: ~21,534

Yes, sir. I was just reading the liberation section in the booklet. Yeah. Anyway, he said to take great joy when someone sees you. He’s done that clears your negative.

Right. But from my Mahāyāna point of view, how can you take great joy when that will then cause the other? Sure. I mean, that sounds like a good question. You’re on the one side.

Yeah. Of course. You’re delighted that you cleaned your own karma up, but you have compassion with the person who hit you because then you you they create negative karma. Of course, you know, there’s a compassion, you know, as well. Okay.

So, basically, it’s sort of come. It’s not part of the topic, but it’s fine. I don’t care. That’s sort of come and how it works. Really rough and smooth.

Okay? Basically, you could say well, we use the word choose literally. It’s only the most highly advanced people who weigh beyond being being rushed about by karma, who really got control of the process, who realize extraordinary levels of realization, who actually control over the death process and can actually choose their future life. That that one choose actually is true. For the rest of us, it’s not choose.

It’s simply you sow the seeds and you get the result. Because we all lose our memory, because it’s quite a dramatic, you know, which is why we don’t remember past lives. I remember one time I fell off a horse when I was a kid. I didn’t like the horse riding. Was four horse must have freaked out because I didn’t like it.

And I suddenly find myself on a green field in the middle of a field waking up from being from obviously falling off a horse, the horse, but I had no memory of anything. I lost my memory for several minutes. So I think the shock of just that was what cut your recollection of everything. Well, go through the death process because your mind goes you go this package called you. What’s your name?

Pen. All the package called Pen was just it was everything that the Pen is is a result of past actions. You sow the seeds and the fruit is called Pen. Her experiences, the things that happened to her, the the bubble of her life, who she likes, who she doesn’t like, in Australia, her politics, her music, the whole entire elaborate story that is one’s life. You understand?

So as you die, this bubble just bursts and it just gradually all just dissolves. By the time you get to stop breathing, you haven’t even got a clue who you are anymore. You’ve lost literally all the memory of all of those things that you were in your life completely gone. And then your mind keeps getting more subtle, more subtle, more subtle until eventually, there’s just what they call the very subtle consciousness. And there’s no longer any sense of Pen, human, female, Australian, or anything else.

Well, it’s just this relative package that lasts for a certain period. So all that is left in this mind is all the influence of all things that you did, plus all the influence of things you’ve done in the past that you don’t remember from countless lives. It’s just programmed there. That’s all there is left. You know?

And so at the time of death the death, the karmic the main karmic seed, which is the one that causes you to go to another human mother as opposed to a dog’s mother, you know, is this accumulation of lots and lots of morality based upon probably as long as over says keeping vows of morality in a spiritual path, which gives up a real boost to that karma that makes it very strong. So that karma ripens even before you stop breathing. So even as the past person is dying, this karmic seed ripens that is the cause for you to go to Pen’s mother’s womb in whenever, you know, however many weeks it is before you go there. That’s already determined. And then, of course, all the other karmic seeds will be your personality, It’ll be your conditions and your experiences similar to the cause and the environmental karma.

All these other seeds are ripened. So this little package, just the seeds for it, are all ripening as you die. And there’s just programming. You don’t see it all. You don’t even you don’t you don’t plan it.

It’s just the result of the part of the actions that you’ve done, which are all right thing at that time. So then you just die, and you your mind is on autopilot. There’s no volition. By the time you leave your body, because, you know, your conscious mind is very subtle, and it’s just programmed. You just literally programmed, and your mind finds its way after the intermediate state, after the bardo state, and then suddenly the new parents are having sex and boom.

You wake up and then, you know, you’re in your mommy’s fallopian tube. So Is this good for the recording? Yes, darling. So is it just to do with timing? The time of death and the time of conception?

Only timing. Timing as in when you die, how long after. Oh, okay. It’s usually they say in the forty-nine days. Usually, never longer than seven seven or so weeks.

Very rarely. They say, like, never more than, not more than seven weeks before you find another rebirth. That’s what they’re Yeah. That’s the experience of the yogis. And that, you know, of course, if you’re gonna be born a human, if you just look at the numbers, if we can make this assumption that turn the volume up on the bottom there.

Yeah. There you go. If we can just you know, if you think about it, the Buddha would say, there’s not an end of a space where you won’t find minds. And so minds take forms. Minds always take some kind of form.

You know? As long as you’re in saṃsāra, you’re propelled by this motor of ignorance. You gotta keep finding some kind of rebirth. So it could be rebirth in an animal. It could be rebirth as a human, as gods, as these as subtle beings called spirits, as hell beings.

There’s a whole spectrum of possibilities. And not even that there’s there’s true I mean, if you look at the numbers, if you can assume there are countless sentient beings, when you look at humans, it’s just a few billion. It’s nothing. You know, at any given moment, even now, it’s a few billion minds. And if you think of it, this in the backyard out here in one summer, look at the number of mozzies.

We’ve got seven billion mozzies in one summer, you know, or one week of one summer. So you can imagine, if you look at animals and creatures and insects, they’re all sentient beings. The word in Tibetan for sentient being is, mind possessor. They’ve all got mind consciousness. But due to their karma, they’re born as an insect.

They’re born as a a mosquito, as a bird, as a giraffe, as a dog, as a lion, as a fish. Who knows? But you can see just the animals. There must be trillions, countless trillions of these if they’re all minds. So then if we even compare just with animals, it looks like you win the lottery to get a human birth.

It’s only seven billion humans. It’s like nothing in comparison. So we can deduce from this if all is right, but it’s harder to get a human birth because it’s just and, you know, it it it makes sense when we look at the numbers. And that’s not even including the vast majority, which they say, we can’t see our spirits or hell beings. These other beings.

You know? Okay. It’s it’s important. Let’s try and forget. Let’s just try and think about what it means even realm or even human or animal.

We’re so concretizing these. But if look at them all, they’re just minds. They’re just states of mind. A dog is a state of mind. An animal, a a human, they’re just particular states of mind with certain capabilities.

So with with that in with that then, if we can if we look at a dog, with all respect to dogs, and we adore, you know, the dog is a bit thick. We can see their paw thing. They’re a bit bit thick. You know? You can tell dogs certain things, but they’ve got they’re kind of intuitive, they’re a bit sensitive, and they’re very kind sometimes.

They’re very attached, but they’re not very intelligent, not very bright. You know? So it’s like if you can see, and then they’ve this thick, furry body with its claws, and they kind of you give them a bad you know, they’re very they get paranoid very easily. They get I mean, they’ve got masses of attachment. So you can’t do much as a dog.

You know? If you’re a giraffe I mean, I often say, you know, you wanna you wanna have a really long neck. It’s really best to be a giraffe. I mean, you get that’s the best one. Nobody can beat a giraffe with long necks.

If you wanna be very tiny, be a little tiny insect. If you wanna run very fast, be a panther. If you wanna be have really kind of a lot of aggression, be a lion. You know? If you wanna work on intelligence and compassion, maybe best be a human.

So getting a human birth, it’s sort of like you see? Okay. One.. Buddhist psychology refers to all living beings without exception. It’s not just human states.

All so all the Buddhist model of the mind that we’re describing, ignorance with attachment and anger and the rest, you look at monkeys. You look at dogs. You look at you can see the evidence of exactly those states of mind among all the animals we can see, especially the ones not that are not as tiny as insects. But like a dog was almost like a real personality like monkeys and apes. We’re we’re completely the same.

We have attack. We have anger. We have jealousy. But you can say maybe with respect. There’s not that much compassion.

There’s not that much wisdom in most of the animals. You put animals in a difficult situation, Oh my god. It’s hard to make the good choices. But the miracle of the human mind is we’ve got a few more options to choose a few more states of mind.

We’ve got access to compassion. We’ve got access to intelligence. We’ve got access to wisdom. We can see this. If you’re fortunate, most humans, we don’t use it.

We’re just running on autopilot with misery and depression. You know? But if we’re fortunate, we can use it. We’ve got access to that part of us. For all sentient beings have all the potentials.

All sentient beings have a good nature, but don’t have access to to the good parts that you need. You know, they’re they’re sort of buried under the weeds of their attachment, their aversion, their fears, and their jealousy if you’re an animal, let’s say. You know? So what did you say? What was the question?

Sorry. Okay. Good. So therefore, you’ve got all these different minds pervading space. And Buddha would divide them into different categories, into different realms of existence.

So we talk about a human realm. Yeah. Okay. If we take our materialist physical view and we look at the scientific evidence of planets and suns and moons, it looks pretty accurate with our eyes. We can see them.

So that’s the Buddhist way of saying it without sounding cosmic. That’s just the appearance of everything to us. We’ve got this world, this galaxy, we’ve got the air, we’ve got this, and we’ve got all the scientific stuff when we describe the world. That’s a reality in a conventional sense. You know?

So it doesn’t follow, though, that’s the only human that’s the only place where a mind that’s like a human is existing. The Buddha would say there are countless realms of existence, and, I mean, that that is could be you get where you can have what’s called a human mind or an animal mind. So in in in using our terminology, the only place to be born, you could say, no. It’s not the only human planet. But it doesn’t follow that if you go travel long enough, you’ll find another human planet.

It’s different karmic. You understand? If yeah. There would be countless more. Yeah.

That’s what they’re saying. That’s what they’re saying. That doesn’t follow that they’re in the galaxy in the world that we occupy. In the same way that, you know, they talk about hell beings existing and spirits existing, but you can’t they’re not necessarily there could be beings who are called spirits where we are right now, which some people can see, but who don’t occupy our realm, if you like, in the sense that their appearance and everything is so radically different that they might experience certain things with us. Like, there’s they say that okay.

Buddha says there’s no space where you won’t find sentient beings. So throughout this flower, in the clock, everywhere there is matter, it’s just pervaded by minds. Trillions and trillions of minds everywhere. So there there’s yes. There’s lots of places where there’d be human minds and other kinds of minds.

This is not what it says. Something like this. What else? Any more questions here? What’s your name?

Kenneth. Okay. Absolutely. Yes. Habit.

You know, habit. Habit. Full habit. So it’s like, let’s say, you know, Mozart, who’s good at music. He’s obviously got some strong tendency. It can’t be as simplistic as saying he must have played the piano before, but he’s got strong tendency, strong attachment to sound.

So he’s got that for a start. And then along with that, you see, a lot of people have attachment to sound. Apparently, deer are incredibly attached to sound. But a deer can’t write music like most of us can. So along with that attachment, he’s got attachment to sound, but he’s also got intelligence.

And then with that intelligence, he can then because he’s got brilliant attachment to sound or connection with sound, he can manipulate sound and write what we call music. He can you understand? He can what attachment does, it embellishes something. And so the creative part of us is very much a function of attachment, but you add intelligence to it. So if you’ve got a person who’s got a lot of attachment to sound plus a lot of intelligence plus, let’s say, morality, the music they will create will be very pure, what we call spiritual, like, say, Bach or somebody or Mozart.

They’d be more sophisticated, not so sensory. But you might have another person who got attachment to sound, also intelligent, but a lot of gross sensory attachment. So the music they will write will be very low level music. You get what I’m trying to say? So there’s attachment to sound is one thing, and that’s habit.

Completely habit. A person who’s got something will have incredible addiction to food. I mean, genuine, serious, serious. We’ve all got attachment to food. For some people, it’s a chronic illness, you know, like attachment to sex or something.

So they’ve got attachment to sex. So that is a habit of a certain sensory activity. Yeah. Attachment for killing. I mean, there’s always an example I use of how karma works, and we can discuss this one.

A friend of mine, her little boy, from the moment he saw fishing, he ran like a magnet. He became a professional fisherman. He fished all his life. So you could say he had first of all, he had the karma from the past of killing. Due to the killing in the past, he’d been born in the lower realms.

That karma got exhausted because it got used up, But he hadn’t purified this is why purification is so important. We’ll talk about this. He hadn’t purified all aspects of that killing by regretting the killing, by vowing never to kill again. So that the main karma of killing had finished and like a miracle again, a virtuous karma right, and he got a really good human birth. He got very good the second kind of karma, lots of good tendencies, kind and intelligence, but one of his tendencies was to kill.

And in this case, it was fish. He he, what, born in the river, saw the fishing, ran like a magnet. So then he also had good experiences similar to the cause, that karma, good family, good environment, lots of good karmic results, but he hadn’t finished the killing. So what happens is that’s a very strong tendency in his mind. He just sees the water, and she said she didn’t like fishing.

She never went fishing. She hated it. But he he it’s like it’s like how the works. I’m tiny. You see that object again, in this case, fishing.

It it instantly appears. It’s like it like it triggered his memory, not that not that he remembered it, but it instantly triggers that habit in his mind. It then he runs like a magnet to it because he it’s like he remembers it. He runs like a magnet, like what’s up with his music. You know?

Runs like a magnet to the to the fishing. And the thing you you think about, the thing you run like a magnet to is something that looks good. And why it looks good is because you’re attached to it. Whatever looks good is what whatever you’re attached to looks good to you. So for him, killing fish looked good.

Therefore, he he wanted to keep doing it because it triggered a good feeling. So the karma for the past habit mixed with attachment equals continuing to fish because it it gave him a good feeling. Many people who are fishermen take talk about fishing and how marvelousness and its nature and all this, you know, but it’s just a really strong habit. So attachment along with the habit, which hadn’t been purified. So in someone else’s case, I’ve been to the example of my friend who’s a little boy crying with compassion for the lice.

Remember I mentioned that story? As another example, he wasn’t attached to it, but he he had the habit to not kill, the habit to have compassion. So even the lice in his own head. His mother’s pulling out the lice, he’s crying with compassion to the lice. Mommy, mommy, don’t hurt them.

He’s there, honey. Leave them alone. You know? So his So he just lies in his own head. He couldn’t bear the thought of killing it.

You know? So it’s whatever the habit is. Mozart attachment to sound and plus intelligence plus all the other things ends up being very brilliant at doing it. You know? Attachment to fishing, he keeps fishing.

And then so whatever habit it is, it look always looks good to you. So, you know, you can give some examples of people, think, of, like, serial killers or torturers. We don’t have to think about it. They they sound evil to us. We can’t explain it to the west.

We’re gonna whine in this way. The mother knows she can teach her boy to torture people, for god’s sake. I remember reading about one serial killer who used to torture and, you know, do the most appalling things. He said since he was a tiny boy, he just was profoundly attracted to torturing the creatures. He said he knew his mother didn’t teach him this.

He didn’t know why, because he doesn’t know why. The fishermen didn’t know why fishing looked good to him and why not for someone else. We don’t question these things. But because it feels good, we assume it is good, so you wanna keep doing it. Then it see, this is how attachment works.

Attachment then it it what it does, attachment, elaborate embellishes everything, makes it a really dramatic story. You know if you fall in love. Already you’ve written your entire life, especially if you’re really craving for a a partner. You’ve already written this novel, the whole story. You see it all.

You’ve made this vast drama. That’s what attachment does with so hungry and needy. It writes a big, big dramatic story about it all. You understand what I’m saying? Well, that’s what the fisherman must do.

The fisherman, he, you know, became almost romantic about it. I remember reading about one guy who was he was an art critic, actually, a Time magazine, an Australian fellow called Robert Hughes. And he always loved fishing. And when he talked about fishing, he he was talking about it almost mystical terms. When he first went trout fishing, he talked about it was the most cosmic experience of his life.

It everything appeared really extraordinary and special, and everything stopped in space. And that’s how intense attachment is. Attachment makes something really vibrant and delicious. So, of course, it was attachment to to have sex with somebody that feels amazing. It was even food.

You you you you talk to people or really people who are really attached to food. Well, let’s say, especially chefs and people. They talk about it in cosmic terms just about. You know? So attachment makes things look so special.

We almost make it like a cosmic. Almost I mean, not being rude, but the Christian teaching say it’s a special gift from God for God’s sake. You know? Because it has such special experiences, like sexual union, you know, those kind of things. So attachment has this really dramatic effect on us that it makes things appear so special and so dazzling, which is why it’s impossible to resist them.

That’s why we’re such junkies for pleasure, especially if it really something really intense. So for the people who are addicted to killing, addicted to torture, this I’ve been reading another torture. He spent it just this elaborate way he dramatized the whole thing. So elaborate, so so extraordinary. He got his he got all his pleasure from this.

So we don’t get this, but this is just from habit. And if you look at animals, there’s a spectacle creatures in the animal realm. Look at the way they talk to each other. Look at how they they they brutalize each other. But even and we bring out common tendencies with us, you know, they’re programmed with so many tendencies.

And they say the human birth is so degenerate now. We do many things that are similar to animal activities. Sex is an animal activity. Food, sex, the things that we do are coming from animal rebirths. We’ve just got tendencies to do.

And when you reverse that, you look at some animals, some creatures. You see, every single thing anyone does or says or thinks leaves an impression in the mind. You’re programming your mind every second. So if you don’t think of a west like, in our culture, a person who’s very intelligent, very brilliant mind, therefore, inevitably, but also with massive attachment to their activity, whether it’s their scientific activity, whether it’s their music. That attachment is actually what causes animal birth or even spirit birth because it’s just craving and grasping.

But you don’t lose all those intelligent inputs. So if you look at all these clever ants and clever insects that do these amazing things that no one can believe, it’s just the imprints of being architects and engineers to pass life. You know? Because everything you do, you you don’t lose it. So if you end up with attachment to it, you’re in big trouble.

What do you think these birds are who’s who spend nine hours dancing around trying to get a partner? What do you think that that are still clever birds that build houses? They’ve got clever kind of music and architecture and engineering skills as humans, but the attachment causing to get human animal birth. And so you keep having these instinctive habits. You know?

Everything we do is karma. Animals are just karmic imprints, karmic habits. We’re all just karmic habits. You know? The lot of people are human, but a little bit of access to some intelligence, some kindness, some forgiveness, and some ability to get some wisdom, which is the miracle of the human life, fortunately, if we know.

But if we don’t have a view of karma, the biggest thing in our culture is no one knows why people are. No one knows why torturous. We don’t know why. We say we’re looking for the answers. We haven’t found it yet.

So we keep looking into the genes and the DNA and the brain cells and like this. Well, the Buddha says you’ll never find it because they’re not there. You know? These house there’s just these these bodies we occupy, these realms we occupy, whether it’s a lizard or, you know, giraffe or human or ant. They’re just like these physical houses that we’ve created that suit that kind of mind.

So you end up doing the aggression and killing and this and that. Don’t be surprised if you program your mind to go from a human birth, and you’re gonna be born as a lion. It’s a perfect little house. It’ll suit you perfectly. You got claws to kill for a stuffed body.

You can run fast. You you’re exactly ready made. There’s the house waiting. A new mummy birth ready for you. A lion birth, you know, to suit your mind.

They’re all just minds with a physical level, you know, with a physical a level of physicality that suits that mind. These well little disguises we’ve got, you know, all created by karma, created by the actions of that being, not made by a superior being and not just physically created. There is a physical being. There is physicality there, but the shape and form of it is due to karma. So mind is finally for the Buddha.

Everything comes out of mind doing actions, and that’s the process of karma. Doing actions based upon what’s in your mind. You know? That makes sense to you? Okay.

So back to the negative states of mind, the ones that Buddha says are the source of our suffering. So like I said, the root one, the mother of them all in this hierarchy of Buddhist psychology when it comes to the negative states, The root one is simply called ignorance, ma rigpa, unawareness. And it’s this primordially, instinctively programmed ignorance in the mind. So so primordial, you know, it’s inconceivable it’s even it’s it’s extremely hard to even see its functioning. It’s hard not to see attachment.

So this one is the root upon which attachment is based. If this one is removed, there is no attachment. If attachment is removed, there is no anger. They can’t be. So like I said, this is structured.

It’s hierarchy of them. So the main function of all these divisions, like I’m saying, is that they exaggerate what’s there. As long as Lama Zopa says, what these delusions do is decorate on top of what is there layers upon layers of characteristics that simply aren’t there. The Buddha’s deal across the board, like I said, everything in the mind is a view. But his thing is to see reality as it is, to see things as they are.

He says the delusions of the mind don’t see things as they are. They embellish. They exaggerate. They distort. They’re deluded.

They’re liars. And so the key job, you could say, being a Buddhist is to get to remove the neurosis from the mind, and there are two results of this, one’s own happiness and contentment and clarity, wisdom, seeing things as they are. This is. So how is attachment a liar? Like you’re saying, how is attachment a liar?

We’ve talked about this. Let’s use a simple example. I like to use a simple example of just this chocolate cake, you know, looking at all the different parts of our mind, hundreds of different parts of our mind, all working beautifully together to produce the experience of chocolate cake. So let’s just look. Well, first of all, there’s your sensory consciousness.

And already this is really helpful to see how ridiculous we are. You know? Your sensory consciousness, in this case, it would be your nose consciousness, smells it in the kitchen, And your then eye consciousness that sees that shape and color. And then your taste consciousness when you put it in the mouth. And you can say tactile as well if you you touch it with your hands.

You know? But the only thing you don’t do is hear it, isn’t it? We see it. We taste it. We touch it, and we snuff it.

So so what’s going on So there’s these senses first. And in a way, like I said, the senses are like just these dumb animals. And all if you like, the senses are our doorway into our experiences because we’re self growth. We need we first go through the senses, and then we have an opinion about that thing. So first of all, we make the mistake of thinking when the cake is on the plate and our stomach is empty.

All the conditions are in place, and we’ve got the habit of enjoying chocolate cake. Therefore, the habit of being attached to chocolate cake and they’re separate states of mind. We then think what we see with our eyes as a divine delicious chocolate cake. Wow. Look at that divine delicious chocolate cake, we will say.

Well, strictly speaking, that’s incorrect. The objects of sensor the objects of eye consciousness are only two, shape and color. It’s very limited in this capacity for cognition, the eye consciousness. But we think we see more than that. We think we see this divine gorgeous thing there, don’t we?

But we don’t. Technically, what’s happening is this. Eye consciousness cognizes shape and color, and then within a minute of a second, it triggers the mental consciousness, which is where the computer is, which is where all the memories are. It triggers the memory of having a a chocolate cake. You kind of in an instant, you you call up the label chocolate cake because you’ve seen it before.

You remember it. There’s no there’s no there’s no space. There’s no sort of checking up on Google. What’s this brown triangle looking it up? Oh, there.

This is called. We know instantaneously it’s. Don’t we? Because the habit is strong. We don’t have there’s no there’s no there’s no time between like, you know, you forget people’s names.

Oh, who would that get? We we forget people’s names. Right? We don’t forget the name of chocolate cake yet. You get my point.

We know what it is. Instantaneously. So at the same time, instantaneously is triggered the memory of having had it. The same time instantaneously has triggered the memory of having enjoyed it. All of this is cool.

So you’ve been quite intelligent. Chocolate cake, it’s a brown triangle. Chocolate cake, had it before. Know what it’s like. Know how you make it.

You’ve got all this knowledge about chocolate cake because of familiarity with it. Now the killer, which comes now instantaneously, that completely colors the entire whole experience is attachment to chocolate cake. Even the memory having liked it before, that’s cool. So it’s cool to like chocolate cake. It is a chocolate cake.

You’re gonna assess it and maybe say it’s a good chocolate cake because you’re a professional. You know? All this intelligence is working your way there. None of this is a problem. The problem is attachment.

Because of this neediness, this this sense of not having enough, this craving, because of the ego grasping, all you’re set up for disaster. You know? So that immediately, because of habit and then because of attachment to chocolate cake, you then imagine you seeing a divine delicious chocolate cake such that when you eat it, it will definitely give you happiness. That’s the name of the thing we’re seeing on that plate. We’re not seeing just chocolate cake.

We are seeing divine delicious chocolate cake that will make me happy. And look when you’re really attached to something. Oh, if it’s food, you’ll know what I’m saying. But if it’s alcohol, if it’s sex, it’s like almost makes you ill to think of not getting it, isn’t it? It’s so painful to think you can’t get it.

This is attachment. It’s so desperate to get that object. That’s where really insane attachment you read about. You know? I remember my own life.

You’re obsessed with this person. You get killed to get this person. The thing that people do, we can hear it. The intensity of attachment is unbelievable. And so we see this just for the chocolate cake.

Desperate. It’s and it’s so easy. It doesn’t even you don’t there’s no there’s no weight between these happening and then attachment. It all comes, boom, like this in one instant. So it’s you wish to get that in the mouth is so strong.

So all so already, this this attachment is taking over the whole experience and is lying to us completely. The cake that we think we see that looks objectively true on that plate is a complete fabrication of our mind, of our. Cake in particular. So this doesn’t mean there’s no cake there. There is something on a plate in front of you.

You can’t lie. But the cake we think is there is not there. That’s the tricky part. The cake that we think is there, the divine, delicious, vibrating deliciousness cake is begging me to eat a cake. It’ll make me happy cake.

It’s the best chocolate cake in the world. Not all of that is not there, and that’s what’s hard to see. Because it looks like it, it smells like it, it feels like it, it tastes like it. And this is completely programmed into our minds. That is just a tiny, simple example.

You know? This is what runs us every second. The part of why it’s so painful to go against attachment is because it does trigger the good feelings. That’s the part that makes it so painful. It triggers good feelings in the body.

And that’s why Buddha calls we are living in a desire realm, he says. Meaning, this is in a way the the third kind of suffering or pervasive suffering, where we are born in the first place due to karma into a form that is made up of these five holes that desperately, like junkies, crave satisfying. So we are in a desired world. Our very existence depends upon satisfying the senses. So it’s like it’s like so hard to go beyond the story these senses tell us.

These and that this attachment lies to us about. It’s it’s like giving up being a gut feeling, giving up tackling. And this is the basis. On the basis of not getting it, then anger rises. All the harm, all taking things through to each other is based on anger.

Forget attachment based on anger. I mean, forget the fishing. Fishing harms others, but it’s based on attachment. But the harm that most beings do is based on aversion, which is anger, not getting what attachment was. What do you think?

You know? That’s why people kill, lie, steal, frantically trying to get what my attachment was. This is the suffering of saṃsāra. Based on attachment, there are no attachments. There will not be anger.

It is impossible. Therefore, you could not harm others. If there’s no anger, you wouldn’t harm others. It’s so simple. So all the suffering.

Buddhist it sounds so cute and simple, you know. But it is true. If it’s true, it’s really simple. It is simple, but so outrageous. Two main causes of suffering.

Past action that programs your mind, that cause you to meet that person and you get that object again, and then attachment, grasping what I want, and then due to habit, seeing that thing, continuing to do it, whether it’s harming others or whether it’s stopping taking it out. You know? At least if you stop taking it out, it’s harming yourself. But if attached to fishing, you’re, you know, you’re attached to harming others as well, and that’s really awful. Mhmm.

Yes. Okay. Turn the mic. Turn the mic off. Yes, sir.

Do you even fucking get the person in the? So that’s the tricky part. You could say in the beginning, virtually impossible, which is why the classic approach in the Buddhist training is in junior school. The only way to give up Sansara is to give up sex drive and rock and roll, become a monk and go to the mountains, and have one meal a day and think and see it as. At the first level of practice, the the the the first level of practice is to remove yourself from the object.

And then eat this is why in the classic kind of, you know, you become a monk, then you have one meal a day. And you you eat it slowly and you eat it mindfully and you think of it as shit, basically. You can’t afford to allow the mind to have pleasure because you’re trying to learn to transform the sense. It’s a print that’s an intensive way to practice. You know?

There are ways in the Mahāyāna approach where you utilize the Mahāyāna. We’ll discuss this later. But if you’re really trying to work on the mind, there’s virtually no chance of eating without attachment if you’re just looking at just that. With the Mahāyāna, you’re adding lots of positive ways of thinking about the food like we did before. We saw it as empty, and we saw it as imagining offering it to others.

So what you’re doing there is you’re creating lots of virtuous karmic seeds in your mind, which will help counteract the attachment ones. But if you gotta deal at the very first level of practice, the Hīnayāna level, you’re dealing just with that attachment. And so you try and ask an alcoholic to give up attachments to alcohol while continuing to drink alcohol. Impossible. You’ve got to give up the object.

That’s the first level of practice. If you’re really focused on doing this, you’d basically, you know, get up six hundred and month and a go to the mountains. Of course, ninety nine percent of us won’t do that till we do our best and control. And then this is why the Mahāyāna attitude of seeing it differently and imagine offering it to others puts very powerful virtuous seeds in your mind. You understand?

That kind of redeems. Not so much redeems it, but at least you create some virtue out of it because every thought you have is is is a karma. The thinking well, it’s always says just imagine offering all sentient beings is an inconceivably virtuous karmic seed to live in your mind. So how marvelous to think that before you shut the food in. You understand?

That’s a skillful means to help you redeem your attachment. But working at that level of attachment itself, the only way is to be aware like a hawk every second and, you know, control. That’s all. That’s the only way. Do understand what I’m saying?

Which is tough work, and it sounds a little bit kind of fundamentalist, but it’s it’s very marvelous, and one can then even learn still to have pleasure. But because strictly speaking, pleasure and love, for example, who’s come along with the fact that the people on top of peace, they’re they’re virtuous. They’re good. Sorry. Enjoying something isn’t its nature good, but it’s loving somebody.

For example, wanting you to be happy. That’s a truly virtuous thought to have. And so usually, if I have a relationship with you, I have I have that. That’s marvelous. But the thing that drags it down that cause all the problems that we’re talking is the attachment to you doing what I want.

And right now, I’m prepared to love you as long as you do what I want. Better than nothing. But it’s a tough one. You know? So cake strictly speaking, liking cake is not the same as attachment.

It’s just a habit. Australians like chocolate cake. Australians like Vegemite. Tibetans like their yak cheese. You know?

It’s it’s just culture. It’s habit. Certain things trigger a good taste. Good taste is not a delusion. It’s certainly the senses having an experience.

But because we’re all junkies, we can’t have it without attachment. You know? So it’s that’s why I’ve gotta watch the mind like a hawk and learn to at least apply the mind out of techniques by thinking of offering it to others. It makes it marvelous. You know?

And for yourself, attempt to just use it as an example of looking at your mind. Every time you eat something, all this stuff, all the Buddha’s explanation of the mind, how it functions, these delusions, virtues, all you can do is how how I can describe this process even a little bit is only because I’m attempting to do it myself. You know? That’s all. So then we do our best.

We do our best. That’s why at least we can do is discipline and not have five pieces. You know? Control the attachment. Have one, and then don’t have two.

That’s helping attachments weaken. That’s the best we can do. And, of course, for the objects that are really intense for us, best to remove yourself from them because they make you deserve. We can even see this with people. Some people have intense relationship because of such attachment.

They probably kill each other. It’s best to leave that relationship. It’s foolish to speak around because you’ve got such karma with each other. It’s too intense because you’re not capable of dealing with it. We’ve gotta really be so cautious and give ourselves appropriate conditions that allow us, you know, to be reasonable in our lives.

Because the thing is you don’t blame the object, but you know very well if your attachment is so strong or your anger is so strong, it’s foolish to keep sticking around an object. You’re just being ridiculous to yourself. And this is where we really are crazy. We don’t have any understanding. That’s why I was saying last time, I think we’re so crazy in our culture.

We all live in these houses together in the same bed, the same room with people that forty can’t afford a big house with a room each. So nobody gonna go crazy with each other because you’re each other’s faces every day. How can you sustain love and compassion when people are fighting and being ugly and ordinary inhuman with smelly breath? I’m just being ordinary here. You know?

You gotta have a really high mind to love that person when they all looked all gorgeous and painted up and beautiful and handsome on the first date. You know, when you’re suddenly naked and looking all fat and with farts, it’s not so easy to love them anymore. You get it’s not fair to humans. You know? So I always think you had a separate house.

You can all dress up nicely. You always see each other lovely. You appreciate each other better. I mean, we’re so foolish. We expect this romantic notion to exist in the most difficult circumstances.

It’s just not fair to humans. You know? You understand what I’m saying? We’re we’re too we we we’re so foolish. We expect too much of each other.

We expect much of ourself. You get my point, please. Okay. We can’t afford it. Let’s have trouble because housing is too expensive.

You know? Actually suffer. Oh, all that’s true. Yeah. So it’s all about for people’s needs, the other creatures suffer.

That’s right. Exactly. But it was really a carrot. Thousands of creatures die. Yeah.

It it comes down down down. Of course. And all the time. And we’ll see okay. What that’s all about?

The Buddha says we can see this if we use it as a model. This is part of really all pervasive suffering, but just our being these sensory creatures, living with these bodies, having attachment in this world that we will share with each other, suffering is just inevitable. Just by your very existence, you cause suffering. You breathe, taking things in. But in living in our bodies, whether we mean to harm them or not, even as we eat the nicest food, it might distress one of the creatures in our bodies.

Just by our existence, we harm each other. It because of the nature of this gross physical world we occupy and because of past karma, we just by existing, we karma. So even if you are you know, the fact that doctor just pointed out, the fact that you have to eat because you’ve this body, and that’s the only way to sustain it is to put gross food into it, you know, like the four elements in the form of carrots and potatoes. Well, then, you know, who lives a creature’s died right there? Just to pick a potato, you you put the water on it, the creature’s died.

You drive it to the supermarket, the creature’s died. Do understand? It’s just the way the universe is. It’s in the nature of something. So what to do with this is first recognizing that and then know it’s through the past harm that we exist in this world that is in the nature of something.

We just can’t help and harm each other. So then at least what we can do, which is the very first step in Buddhism, is is to cultivate the intention not to harm. The best we can do is this. The best we can do. So he’s got a little checklist of ten.

Don’t don’t kill, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t this, don’t that. At least we can start to sort of use that as a beacon to guide us out of this insane saṃsāra. At least an intention this is a meaning of karma, actually. The word intention is equivalent to the word karma. So to intentionally decide, I will not kill.

I will not steal. Even though it’s by my presence, I’m harming others. At least that way, I’m cultivating my mind in this new direction of non harm. You know? That’s the beacon that gets us out of saṃsāra.

The the best we can do is this. We it doesn’t mean I will never harm others. Just by my presence, sweetheart. Can’t help it. Can’t help it.

So we do what we can to avoid suffering, to avoid causing it. The best we can do. But it doesn’t mean we won’t harm others. It’s not possible. But we and the basic one in Buddhism is don’t kill.

The main one. It means don’t harm as well. Like, punch, don’t kick, like that. You know? But the main one is at least don’t kill.

You see a living being, what you think is a living being, try not to kill it. We’re killing all the time by our existence. But at least if you see a living being, try not to kill it. This way, at least, we cultivate those seeds in the mind, which will help get help us get out of this saṃsāra, get out of this insanity. You understand my problem?

Yeah. Yes. Giving up attachments. Okay. First of all, what you’re giving up when you when you do the monk mode, you’re giving up the objects of the mainly objects.

You don’t have any sex. You’re controlling your attachment to sound by not listening to much music, Control your attachment to food by having just one meal a day, and you preoccupy you’re you’re cultivating meditation. You’re cultivating this awareness in your own mind, and you’re slowly purifying your mind. That’s the ideal scenario. Okay.

So finally, the attachment that you’re discussing. Yeah. The gross level is the sense as we start at that level. Okay. But the the attachment that is the most intense, and I talk about this a lot in the Mahāyāna teachings, is the attachment to reputation, attachment to ourself, to how we’re seen by others.

That’s the deepest attachment of all. And, you know, in our own way we are in daily life, while we all crave partners and crave people to praise us, because we it’s almost like with the depths of this attachment, It’s like we don’t even think we exist. We don’t think we’re valid until someone else says it. You check how we are. That’s attachment to reputation.

Yeah. That’s the worst one. How can you give that up? Because as soon as you, say, then you start trying to be admitting when you do things wrong, but then that can be seen as a. It is there until the deep the highest level.

Don’t get get a bit of ambitious circle thinking that way. You’ve just got to be extremely skillful, and this is where awareness of one’s mind comes in and this clarity we need in this clarity and depth of analysis about what we’re seeing in the mind. Because, basically, the mind is made up of thousands of different thoughts. That’s it. And those thoughts, some of the thoughts cling to the sense of self, some of the thoughts crave cake, some of the thoughts that get angry.

The jealous thoughts, angry thoughts, clinging thoughts, ego grasping thoughts, and the skill is to learn to identify the character of each of those thoughts and the object that it has. And so one of us has to cultivate that and not get too caught up and go around in circles, you know, do the best we can until eventually we’re so excellent and so sophisticated that this inner psychology that we’ve now even able to actually eliminate even the grasping of the self. And that’s when we realize emptiness. We we keep working the best we can and delighting in our progress. Okay.

Okay. So we’ve got this gross the root delusion called ego grasping. Okay? Then on the basis of this, which is the grasping of the set of an independent inherent self, we’re gonna go to this. Then on the basis of this, the main force of this is this one of attachment to getting what this I wants.

Because the irony of it is we don’t the irony of ego is we feel bereft and empty and nothing. The irony of it. So that’s why masses of attachment to get that thing and and, you know, the objects of the senses, which is the grossest level, and then the subtler one, you know, attachment to praise, attachment to reputation, attachment to praise, attachment to those things. As if that it kind of validates that I exist in the first place. That’s the depth of attachment.

And then the second it doesn’t get what it wants, anger, depression come in any personality. And then on the basis of these, jealousy, arrogance, and all the other variations of delusions. You know? This is like the hierarchy of the delusions. And this is what saṃsāra is.

These are the negative states of mind, and these are the sources of suffering. So right now, they’re highly complicated. It’s a highly complicated conceptual construction in there. Elaborate. Each one based on another assumption, based on this assumption, based on that assumption, based on this.

So it’s quite complicated, the the conceptual construction, and quite hard to see all these assumptions in our mind. So it’s this gradual process of getting concentration, purifying the mind, understanding the way the mind works, listen to all these teachings, and then applying it in this observation of what’s going on. And then this this a lifelong process, you know, and every day we get better and better and better and better. What about when we don’t? But you we are.

Well, if you stop practicing, you’re not. You’re either practicing piano or you’re not. So if you forget to practice piano, you’re not getting better. You’re sliding back to not knowing piano. But if you are practicing piano every day, you might feel sometimes you’re not making progress.

But if you are actually practicing every day, you’re making progress. It just doesn’t feel like it. If you actually stop practicing, then you’re not making progress. So if you actually stop working on your mind and stop taking responsibility, which means you start to blame others and believe in the depression and believe in the attachment, then indeed you stop practicing, which means you do fall back. But if you are doing your best everyday working on yourself, it can feel like we’re getting worse.

It’s just a bit of coming out, what I said. So you have to know the difference between working on your mind and not working on your mind. That is a very big difference. That’s that’s really hard. So the general approach the general way these delusions work at their bare bones level is that they embellish.

They exaggerate. So like we talked about the attachment. You know? Now let’s look at anger. How it embellishes?

How it exaggerates? And this is where it’s really hard with all of them to to extract the facts from the fiction. So, you know, we’ll say, Ganesh is this. I hate Ganesh. I say he was my boyfriend, and now he’s gone and cheated on me or something.

Now I hate Ganesh, let’s say. So then we know ourselves. You when you see I say his name, you can’t stand him. It’s painful. It’s like it’s like stabbing your heart.

You think of what he did to you that harmed you. It it’s so painful. You know? So you’re angry with him. You can’t forgive him.

And then you’re so jealous of this other girl he’s got, and you wish and pray that you’d meet him every day. You know? So you got attachment, which got thwarted, which brings anger, and then jealousy. But we know these so well. We know and we know this we can hear this story.

It’s so fast in the mind. If you wrote it all down, you’d have a novel full, wouldn’t you? All these things. So let’s try and see what is it about anger, as Buddha is saying, that’s incorrect. It’s not a cop-out.

What’s true and what’s not? What’s in the what’s on that plate and what isn’t? What’s true and what isn’t? It’s extracting the facts from the fiction, and this is what is so hard. So I wanna analyze the experience.

Well, what’s truth here? Truth is Ganesh did cheat on me. You have to say that. He did. He went sneaked behind my back and slept with my girlfriend.

This we can prove. It’s a fact. That’s it. It is a fact. So that’s not a lie.

But the Buddha says the rest of it is the mistaken part, and that is the angry interpretation of that action. So there are there are facts there. You can even say relatively, you know, it’s wrong that he did that because we had a vow to commit to each other. We’ve made a commitment, and he broke his vow. So we can say he did that.

He broke his commitment. We could say that. So we can see some facts there. But the rest of it, the emotional part, the painful part, that’s my own projections based on attachment, based on anger. They are the stories of of attachment not getting what it wants, which turns into anger.

So if, you know, we wrote down all the things that I’m feeling, if I go to my own therapist, I write down becoming my own therapist, or I go to my therapist, and we we write down all the things that I’m thinking. It’s like, again, what I was saying before, go do this analysis and look at each sentence and look at what it’s saying, discover if it’s true. Can you you know? Because what true means and so there’s a very interesting point. What what is saying?

Is that all thoughts, all things in the mind are thoughts. They come down to thoughts. That includes the emotions, everything. They come down to being thoughts. As I said before, being a viewpoint about something.

And he says, some of those thoughts in our mind are valid viewpoints. They are accurate assessments of what’s happening, and some are not. Some are liars, and they’re the delusion. So there is a thing called reality. So conventionally speaking, it’s easy to prove something conventionally.

Not a problem, he says. Well, first of all, you you have to have a name, a definition. You know? A cup. And a name for something, and then you define it.

A flat bottom container that holds my tea. And then if you can prove that it does, in fact, fulfill that definition, then you can say validly, conventionally, there is a cover. Very simple. Leave it right there. That’s enough.

So we can say here, there’s some facts. Ganesh was my partner. That’s a fact. Partner means agreeing you wanna cheat on each other. You can say that we had an agreement.

Then we can check that he did break that commitment. And these are the things we can prove as facts based on upon our conventional agreement. The rest of it is my opinion about that, which is based on my anger. You should not do this. How dare you do this?

You are wrong. I hate you. You are the cause of my suffering. I will now sue you. I will not give you the money.

You can do this. You you understand? All the rest of it is the pain and hurt of the attachment in me, which is frantic like a vampire to get him to do everything I want because my attachment believes he is the cause of my happiness. The second he doesn’t, then the anger voice takes over, and now he’s the cause of my suffering. So to unpack all those emotions, to unpack all the thoughts in there, all the stories, all the assumptions, they all come down to being anger based on attachment, based on finally the assumption of the self existent inherent I, which is the hardest one to see them all.

So it’s in that sense, Buddha says, that they are not valid states of mind. They’re real. We all feel them. We understand why we feel them, but they had no objective basis. And that’s what’s really hard to see because we feel righteous in what we think.

He is, you know, he is the cause of my suffering. And this is what’s fascinating again. This is a fascinating point. If I’ve got masses of attachment, masses of neediness, which is mine, my neediness, okay, then even the smallest thing Ganesh will do. Right?

Just look at another girl accidentally. You understand what I’m saying here? Because of my neediness, his action will look like he just look it’ll look monstrous, won’t it? And so because my feeling is bad, I assume his action was that bad. And that’s what we do together all the time.

We project our own stuff onto that person. Now he might need to literally done anything You see, his eyes glanced on a girl, but he’s actually thinking about me. But because I am so sensitive, I am so fragile, I am so needy, I assume the level of my feeling equals his action. And that’s what we all do each other. They’re terrible.

It’s shocking. You know what I’m trying to say? Another person, I have no neediness and just and completely even if he does look like another girl, it doesn’t matter to her because your neediness is not so bad. So we you know, so if I my anger is very strong, then the smallest thing he does, I assume his action is equal to my anger. But it’s just not true.

It’s obvious. You can see some people have got masses of anger, and the tiniest thing upsets them. Well, they think that tiny thing is like Mount Everest. And someone else who does so much anger, the biggest thing doesn’t harm them. So it’s so clear that it’s our mind that makes things.

It’s so clear that what we’re doing is interpreting everything and then saying it is that and then not get up not believing anything else. That’s what satire is. Not exaggerating. So the fact is, there’s a million other things. Maybe Ganesh really is a cheat.

Maybe from his side, he’s very deluded. He’s negative. He lies to me. He’s you know, you understand. Maybe he is all that.

That could be also we can also prove that validly. But still in the end, that’s his problem. And what I’ve got to see is my fantasy, my attachments, my newness, my jealousy, they are my problem. And if I’m prepared to live with him, because we’ve got some kind of connection, then I’ll be at my job is a word of a given. You know?

Or to see it and then decide, okay. It’s not valid in a reasonable or in a relationship. That’s not a valid thing to do. Don’t blame him. You say, see you later, Ganesh.

I’m leaving. That’s reasonable. So that doesn’t mean you’re you’re deluded. That’s that’s common sense and practical. Because to have a fantasy expectation that you should behave better than you can, that’s foolish on my part.

They still like thinking he’s an alcoholic and you keep upset because he keeps drinking alcohol. That’s just who he is right now. Don’t have a fantasy expectation of him. Be reasonable. So say, see you later, mate.

Don’t don’t blame him. That’s just where he’s at. My problem is my problem. But it’s kind of tricky because our emotions are so caught up. We’re so based up and so confused about what’s mine and what’s his, what’s right and what’s not.

You know? We we can’t get part of it. And that’s why people do years of mediation, talking, and counseling, still can’t get past it because we don’t know how to look at our stuff as opposed to his stuff. You know? It’s very.

Never mind. No. There might be some there’s a. There’s nothing more frustrating than hearing this no noise in the background than my answer without the question. I found it very helpful last night when you’re talking about family.

And, I mean, in the case of relationship, yes, you can’t walk away from it. You have family. One can’t walk away from it, and I think that’s from it, and I think that’s neutral. Well, you were talking about Well, a good example of what you can’t walk away from. I think you were giving the example of perhaps another that this is the way she is.

And so you go and see that person through and give totally for that Oh, I see. Yes. No. I do understand your point. Yeah.

But remember that I you know, some people, they simply can’t cope with seeing their mother. And so it is not wrong for them to say, I will stop seeing even though the mother’s heart breaks. You know? You can’t you have to sometimes. Part of it, the trouble why people say you never can is because of maybe guilt and shame.

You know? But, I mean, it’s like for example, I mean, extreme example, for god’s sake. Extreme example, a friend of mine is that she’s a Buddhist, intense suffering at the hands of her parents. Yeah. Wait.

Hundreds of times. This tiny girl by the father, the father’s brother, the Alsatian dog, next door neighbors, visitors that they pay. I mean, really the most intense abuse. I’m using extreme of examples. Okay?

This one, she left a body and became a multiple person. Be more. But she doesn’t have any answers. Very multiple personalities and having therapy and get try to fly out windows that she could afford to see those parents. It’s not possible.

You know? That’s the real work. But she you know, her heart is completely forgiven, and that’s the real work. When we’re ready and able to do this, then we will get tired. And then we need to get tired.

We need to have compassion. We need to know that he’s all about this other thing. Has to see. But that’s extremely because they feel they can’t leave. It’s just that’s not true.

It’s just not true. Whereas my feeling is if you really do realize you can’t leave, then you have to make it your decision if you’re gonna stay rather than feeling victimized. Everything changes. For example, She’s a quiet dog. He drinks himself for a movie every night.

She made a decision years ago to give up expecting him to change. The kids have gone away. She made a decision that she’s gonna live with him until the day he dies. It’s good for him, she said. But she has her own life.

She has her own feet. So when you make that when you just don’t feel like a victim to it, you make a decision like you’re in prison. My friends in prison, you’ve made the decision. This is where I live rather than thinking I was trying to get out. They’ve completely transformed their mind.

You make it your choice, then it’s really empowering. You understand? But to be the victim of it and then and then also mean you feel you can’t leave it, that’s when it’s like a nightmare. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I’m talking about now.

If you can, no. Don’t don’t okay. I don’t agree with that. I’m not saying you should leave them, but I don’t think there’s anything that’s impossible if it has to be done. I mean, I don’t think it’s possible.

It’s all a question of some wisdom. We mostly don’t do these things out of wisdom. We mostly do those attachment His wife, that’s his king. That’s his king. You know?

They probably they really criticize him, but he had this long term perspective. You know? And he was able to help them even more. And I think even from that perspective, the biggest one that stops us from this this family is such an intense kind of attachment But we’re we’re terrified of bad reputation. We don’t wanna we say, I don’t wanna upset people.

Really, what we mean by is this we’re too scared to make a decision because we we can’t bear being criticized. We can’t bear it. It. I think often what holds us back from making this decision. You understand what I’m saying?

Yeah. Probably use the mic, right now. Yeah. Down in the. I mean, I think it’s the difficulty for me with a family is my attachment perhaps to Buddhahood or what I perceive Buddhahood and the responsibility Sure.

That that brings. So I’m not sure whether that’s attached or not. I know. This is where it is so tricky. It is just so tricky to be able to distinguish in our minds between a virtuous thought and a non-virtuous one.

Is it and and we can’t be perfect at it. We just can’t do. We’ve gotta do our best. But at least we’re have the wish to want with the wish to always do what’s most beneficial. The wish to make the right decision.

You know? All we can do is this. We have the courage to see it slowly. Because the point is, right now, we don’t have any of our virtuous states of mind without attachment. Attachment just poisons all of them.

As long as if you have one moment of pure love, then another moment of pure attachment, it will be easy to distinguish them then. It’s like you look at a garden where the all the weeds and the herbs are all overwhelming. They’re all mixed together. You can’t see one from another. So the more so we so we can’t expect to be able to see it easily.

It’s really bound up and especially with families because it’s such an intense kind of relationship, intense history you have with children and people in the core family, you know, really strong karma. So it’s very hard to have clarity. All you do is try every day and have the wish to do what’s beneficial and the wish to have wisdom to do what is right for those people. I’ll start I want to talk about ignorance. Okay?

Ignorance, which is the root delusion. So very often, you can see in all the teachings, there’s this whole extra special way of talking about emptiness, which is the opposite to this ignorance. And it sounds like some special unique approach. But if we really analyze it, the delusions all function the same way. They all lie to us.

Just that they all got a different lie. Anger has its one story. Attachment is another story. Ignorance, the root delusion, the ego grasping has its own very particular story. So they all embellish.

They all exaggerate. They all distort. They’re all delusional. They’re all liars. They’ve got their own flavor.

That’s what I’m trying to say. So attachment okay. So how they all work together is like this. The three main delusions we’re talking about. The three root delusions is ignorance, which functions in a day to day way as like this gross kind of indifference.

And there’s attachment and aversion. These three. And in relation to sentient beings, we have the objects of attachment are called friends. The object of aversion is called enemies. The object of indifference or ignorance are called strangers.

There’s no fourth category. You know? In terms of ordinary things every day in our lives, we either had things we’re attached to, things we have aversion for, or things we don’t care about. They’re the three main delusions. And if you want to even look at the three kinds of suffering, the first level of suffering is related to anger.

The second level of suffering is related to attachment. The third level of suffering is related to ignorance, the root delusion. But they’re all so connected. You know? So how does the root delusion lie?

What is its projection? So if we look at a cup, it’s real simple. You know, attachment to the cup. You know? So you look at the cup, you see this, you know, eye consciousness looks at shape and color.

And right away, because I you know, certain things appeal, so I use yellow to cut to me. You know? So I can see already I’m seeing shape and color. But already, I’m embellishing my attachment to my mind because it likes you know, this yellow is appealing. You know, this gray and little color.

Okay? The yellow, I find appealing the shape. So straight away, not really the color and design. Think I’m always analyzing everything I like or the kind of life. You know?

Everything. All the typing books and finding and the design of things that type face. I think the same thing as I need typeface. Know it’s a nice logo. It’s not very nice binding.

This is my thing. You know? I look at everything. That’s nice up there. Always analyzing, you know, the shape and the color of things, coming to design and stuff.

That’s my life. So this I go straight away. Oh, you know, it attracts me. Oh, that’s nice. Oh, I love it.

No. That’s so tasty. You know? So then straight away, the bare bones is a cup. My eye consciousness sees shape and color.

It triggers my mental consciousness. It recognizes this cup. So far, so good. But then straight away, attachment comes, and it suddenly makes it look more exciting than it is. A kind of gravity.

You know? Oh, that looks nice. It magnetizes. That’s attachment. So that attachment is lying about certain aspects of it.

It’s seeing certain aspects of it more delicious than it really is objectively. Now let’s say it’s a cup. Okay. Let’s say this one. This is ugly.

You know? I’ll go so I see the shape and color. So pretend there’s a cup too. Little cup. But there it is.

This brass kind of moldy and dirty. You know? So my attachment is really offended by that. So aversion arises in my mind. So I see the shape and color.

I recognize it as cup, but aversion takes over. Because my attachment wants a nice shape and color and is offended when it gets an ugly shape and color. So I go, yeah. I don’t want that. You know?

So straight away, my aversion, based on my attachment, my expectation to be energized is offended so that it pushes it away. You know? So that attachment exaggerates the deliciousness. Because of attachment, I want there to be a nice one, and that is offended so that aversion arises and therefore exaggerates the ugliness of it. But the ignorance, which is the root of both of these, the ma rigpa, what it’s doing is how it functions is it functions under the aversion to see a self existently ugly cup, and it functions under the attachment to cause me to see a self existently beautiful cup.

So self existent cup is the root mistake, and it sounds pretty abstract to us, and we’re gonna describe it. That’s the root lie of all. That there’s an intrinsic delicious cup there, an inherent intrinsic in and of itself from its own side out there delicious cup. And over here, there’s an intrinsic self existent from its own side out there ugly cup. So ignorance is completely other two.

They’re the they’re the they’re the they’re the result. They’re the outcropping of the ignorance. So ignorance is always there, always there in everything you see, even in the compassion. So I say, I love I have compassion for Ganesh. That’s based in ignorance.

There’s an assumption of a self existent I having compassion for a self existent Ganesh. So ignorance is in all. It infuses the virtues as well as the non virtues. It’s always there until we realize emptiness. Are you with me, people?

This is the root mistake, and it’s completely there all the time. So even when you’re full of love and compassion, which is fantastic, there’s still the assumption of an I who is loving and compassionate, who loves you, who is selfish and intrinsic. The sense of separation, sense of distinction, sense of separate. They say that’s one of the main consequences of delusion. There’s always a sense of a separate eye, a separate view.

You know? What Buddha is saying about why he calls this It’s because there’s a different delicious chocolate cake. Believing is gonna make you happy. You shove it in, but four pieces later, it looks disgusting. Disgusting.

That’s what he means that’s what he means literally by the suffering of change. What we think is delicious and beautiful and causes happiness, if you have it, it eventually turns into suffering. That’s what he means by the suffering of change. I’m just So okay. That’s gonna be I okay.

The way I’m just saying the way Buddha describes why he calls it the suffering of change, which is what you’re implying. So I believe you can give this answer your question. But first of all, we see the delicious cup. We get all excited. Oh, there’s a new beautiful cup.

I’m so loving this cup. It’s such a nice cup. I’m excited with this cup. You know, you see a new one. This new red cup is so beautiful.

Oh, yellow cup. So it turns into an ugly cup. You’re sort of saying that because it’s not as if one day you say it’s beautiful and the next day you say it’s It doesn’t work this way. You build up a story of beautiful cup. Now if it keeps going that way, you build up more and it’s permanent and it’s mommy’s cup and it’s grandpa’s cup and it’s an antique cup, and you’ll keep getting massive attachment for it.

And then you’ll be devastated. But the normal one is the cake, you think it’s delicious, you think it’s gonna make you happy, you shove it in, and it changes into something ugly. Therefore, that’s the suffering of change. So that’s what they were describing. That’s the way to say it.

Because it’s not as if one day it’s good, then it’s not, then it’s good again. It doesn’t work this way. Because we’re up and down. That just means you’re very unstable, I’d say. You never know what you like.

I would say that. This is how it works. You know, the beautiful new handbag. After two months, if you really got a lot of attachment, it won’t even last day before you’re bored and want another handbag. You’re beautiful.

You’ll you’ll keep wanting more babies. My sister, Mary, who’s got seven babies, she said even when she gave birth to her six, she’d just given birth. They’re pulling it out, cleaning it. You know? And there she is in a ward.

There was a mummy next door that’s suckling her baby. Said, already I had a craving for another baby. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m not criticizing her. She had seven kids.

She’s great. But she had this attachment to babies. That’s how attachment works. It always even people that you think you read about people who are talking to sex. Even as they’re having sex with one person, they’re already thinking of the next one.

That’s when it’s really extreme. Already you’re already dissatisfied even before you finish the object. Already you have the cape. Already you think it’s disgusting. You want something else.

It’s from attachment to aversion, attachment to aversion. That’s why it’s called the suffering of change. Okay. So it sounds like it’s the stories we tell us like. That’s what I’m telling.

That’s what I’m saying. They are they are store all they are are stories. But because you believe the cake or the new person or the new handbag will make you happy, you’re all excited, looks all dazzling. Within a few days, it looks boring and depressing, doesn’t it? It’s already turned into an object of aversion because it isn’t what we’re thinking it is.

And then the picture disappears, the bubble bursts, now it looks ugly because it’s we’re bored by. Now boredom is indifference. There’s only attachment, which makes it all look delicious. Aversion, which makes it look ugly or indifference makes it look boring. So you either wake up one morning and the the the beautiful new boyfriend you’re attached to looks ugly or boring.

There’s only two options. Boring is a result of ignorance. Ugly is a result of anger. Delicious is a result of attachment. And we’re going between history all the time.

You see what I’m saying? You have friends, enemies, and strangers. Yeah. You have beautiful things, ugly things, and boring things. So our general job being a Buddhist, being our own therapist, is to begin to identify these neurotic states of mind.

First and foremost, see how they cause pain because that will give you great boost if you wanna get rid of them. That’s why you wanna get rid of them because they’re causing you pain. And how they cause pain is they lie to us and leave us up garden paths and end up being devastated and disappointed because we live in a fantasy. That’s why they cause so much pain. Not to mention the primordial level of the pain, which is a fear and panic.

They’re all based in fear. They’re based in fear. It’s unbelievable. So our job is to identify these states of mind and extract them, see how they’re love, compassion, kindness, wisdom, being reasonable, etcetera. In other words, distinguishing between the facts and the fiction.

You know? So that’s why before we get into this, that’s why it’s important to see the facts. Ganesh did cheat on me. He did sleep with another girl. He did lie to me.

They are facts. They’re not they’re not opinion they are opinions, but they’re they’re they’re they’re opinions that can prove as true. Everything’s an opinion. So they are objective facts based upon our agreement that he’d be my partner, his agreement that he wouldn’t cheat on me. They’re facts.

If we didn’t agree, if he’s not my own personal boyfriend, and he hasn’t agreed that he’d be monogamous, then there’s no benefit in my saying he didn’t cheat on me. That he didn’t cheat on me, did he? If he went out with a girl, just that I got jealous. That’s all. But he didn’t break the committee, so that’s not that’s not true.

That’s an exaggeration. But if he did agree, so he established the facts. You look at the, you know, in one country, you see a war. That’s a fact. People are suffering.

It’s a fact. The rest of it is your opinion about it. Perhaps you have that person drop those wrong times evil blah blah blah. All the rest of it is drama based on anger. You know?

So that’s what so nothing wrong. You’ve gotta see the facts, and then I make a decision what I’m gonna do about it. I I can make a decision. Sounds very simple, but it’s not. Do I leave him?

Do I stay? Do I ask him to do I go to therapy? Does he does he wanna be with me? Do you work out then what to do about it. And it might be hard work, but you gotta extract the facts from the fiction.

You know? This is the way to say it. Ignorance is the hardest one to see. It’s the hardest one to see, the lie that it tells us. We don’t even understand the words in our culture.

They say that there’s an intrinsic self existent existing from its own side out there, ugly Ganesh sounds ridiculous. We just don’t get it. Ugly Ganesh, that’s cool. We get that one. But self existent ugly ganesh, what?

Sounds so technical. Sounds so abstract. And this is a tricky part. You know? So how does ignorance lie?

What is it? What’s the way it lies? And what is empty? Is it what is empty of what? This word empty.

It’s just this culture. It’s just it’s just the way the Buddha talked. It’s the Indian way of talking, and then translated into the Tibetan way of talking, and now translating into our culture. It’s hard to hear these words because we already even if we translate them perfectly, we still mystify them hugely because we just can’t get our head around the meaning. You know?

So this word emptiness, you’ve all heard something about emptiness? Up at you? Okay. It sounds so sort of true to us, but it really isn’t. It’s just a very particular way of talking and it’s got real practical experience on me.

So let’s look at it. You know, if we talk about attachment, we can see there’s a line in there called attachment that embellishes the top of it. We all all that, can’t we? We all see how we make up a story. We understand that, don’t we?

So then you would agree, wouldn’t you, that that fantasy you created doesn’t exist. You’re read with that. So you we can understand the idea that what we’re seeing isn’t there. That so it’s it’s across the board like that. It’s like that.

So but it’s only they talk about emptiness in a particular way in relation to the root. We can equally use it according to this. We can say that fantasy doesn’t exist, isn’t it? We can actually say that. That fantasy of ugly cause of all my suffering, Dinesh, is not true.

It’s the it’s a story written by anger. It isn’t objectively true. There is a cup, objectively true. There is Ganesh who did cheat on me, objectively true. The rest of it is an embellishment of my anger, of my attachment.

So we can see that the idea that that that that projection is not objectively true. It doesn’t exist. So the way it what the the use of the word emptiness, which I use exclusively in relation to the ignorance to the root delusion, is again Buddha is saying what that ignorance is doing is projecting certain characteristics onto an object, ugly Ganesh, delicious cup, the whatever you think, and imagining certain things that are there that aren’t. So it too is writing its own fantasy. But the fantasy it writes is that there’s an inherent intrinsic ugly Ganesh, inherent intrinsic delicious cup, inherent intrinsic I, you, this, that.

And that, of course, is a lie that’s hard to see. We can see how we may exaggerate the deliciousness of something, but to exaggerate the very thingness of something, this seems more tricky. And that’s what this ignorance is doing. It’s a harder one to see. So this word emptiness, okay, has very simple meaning actually.

Just the way they talk. It’s just complicated. It makes it complicated. But if, you know, if you are sitting here and looking at this cup, you realize that you’re not color blind, that it’s not red. Don’t you agree it’s not red?

So you could say if you see red, you’re projecting a fantasy onto the cup, aren’t you? You’re seeing something that isn’t there. Just like you’re seeing delicious cup isn’t there. It’s the same thing. You’re projecting.

A part of you, in this case, your eye consciousness is diluted, and it sees red where, in fact, there isn’t any. So you’re gonna agree that you’re you’re fantasizing. There’s a fantasy. So you agree that red doesn’t exist, don’t you? Now let’s be a bit more abstract.

Do you agree there was an absence of red on this cup? There’s a quite way to put it. But you agree, don’t you? That on this cup here, there does put it this way, there does exist an absence of red. You agree with that, don’t you?

So I can say also we could use that word this way, but they don’t. I’m just trying to show that we could also say on this cup is an absence of delicious cup, isn’t it? It’s a fantasy attachment made. So attachment made of a story. So there’s an absence of that fantasy on this cup.

It seems seems an abstract, but it’s a really crucial point. So that absence, another word for that is emptiness. That’s all. So emptiness equals absence. It’s just a word they use.

Whatever the that that Sanskrit word or whatever it is, or something, which is translated as emptiness. It simply means absence. That’s all it means. It’s got no special meaning. But clearly, the the the thing is absence of what is the point.

Right? You with me, people? But the word emptiness, which is just shorthand, we make a big fantasy out of it, but it’s just a very practical thing. So if you could if you imagine you’re projecting red onto a cup where red doesn’t exist, then you also you can say, like I said, that there is on that cup an absence of red. It’s a bit abstract, but it’s very true, isn’t it?

So that’s so Buddha gets us to put it as a positive thing that we have to see. He he wants us to see the absence of inherent eye. So, okay, red is fine. We understand what red means. But inherent eye, that’s where we get complicated.

We don’t even know what an inherent eye is. So here, there’s an absence of inherent eye is like double trouble. So we can look at what an inherent eye is, but just think it’s the mistake that ignorance makes. Ignorance projects inherent eye, intrinsic eye onto the eye. There is an eye.

Here she is. She’s talking. But we like, there is a cup. There is a there is a thing. There is a person.

There is Ganesh. There is a thing that you posit, but the delusions decorate on top of it certain things that aren’t there, and that’s the tricky part. So the deepest delusion of all, like I said, is the one called ignorance that projects self existent ugly cheating Ganesh, self existent, divine, delicious cup, self existent, I, or whatever it might be we look at. We see ignorance in the mind projects inherent thing onto it, which indeed is us for us abstract. But never mind that part now.

I’m trying to describe the word emptiness first. Then we look at inherently, the meaning inherent. So Buddha wants us to cognize that absence. It’s a very vivid thing. The absence of something that isn’t there is a very vivid thing to cognize.

So you think, let’s say you’re rushing late and you know your keys are in the drawer and you run to get your car keys and you pull open that drawer and you go, oh my god. No keys. What did you see in that drawer? Absence of Absence of key, didn’t you? Isn’t that a very vivid experience?

In other words, the if I didn’t expect keys in that drawer and I opened the drawer, what would I see? Just an empty drawer. Boring. So the absence of the keys is a very vivid thing when you think the keys are there. You understand my point?

When you realize the mistake you make, it’s quite powerful. So be Buddha so why would I say to you, the cup is not red, Kathy? Why would I say that to you? Why would I say that to you? Why no.

Why would I point out to you this cup is not red? No. Why would I point out to you this cup is not red? Is it red? No.

So why if you I say to you, it’s not red, sweetheart. Why would I be pointing it out to you like that? Because you think it’s red. Stop. Because you think it’s red.

So that’s why I’m telling you on this cup with an accent, the Buddha is saying to us, sweetheart, there’s an absence of red here. You’ve got to see the absence of red. You’ve got to see your mistake. So why Buddha says, no, darling. There’s an absence of an inherent eye on you.

There’s an absence of an inherent flower. There’s an absence of an inherent clock. There’s an absence of an inherent cup. Why he’s telling us about emptiness? There is an emptiness of inherent cup on the cup because we think it’s inherent.

We think there’s an inherent cup there. So he points out our mistake. There is he doesn’t just say there’s no inherent cup there. He says, on that cup, there’s the emptiness of inherent cup. It’s the way he says it.

Are you with me, people? It sounds a bit abstract. Is it a bit abstract? Okay. Precisely.

But you know you’re listen. Okay. Another way to put it. It’s not odd if we understand the experience of the keys. If if if you if I think he cheated on me, let’s say, but he didn’t.

Let’s say he didn’t. But for years, I believed he cheated on me. You think about it. Every time I think of Ganesh, I’m bitter. I’m angry.

I’m hurt. I’m resentful because I believe he did something wrong. But if he never did that wrong thing, then you could say that I have to eventually realize the absence of that fantasy I have dumped on him. And let’s say one day it’s finally proved to me. It’s not just that I think, oh, well, no.

He didn’t do it. I realized the absence of that thing that I thought was there all those years. So the realization of the absence of something is very, very meaningful. It’s not just a question of, oh, there’s there’s no inherent cup after all. It’s mind boggling when you see the absence of that keys in the drawer because you so fiercely believe there were keys.

So you just don’t go, uh-oh. There’s no keys. Okay. Alright. You get a shock because of the strength of your belief in the keys.

So when they say you finally realize the absence of inherent eye, it’s an immense shock. It’s a primordial, universe rocking experience because for eons, you believe in the in the presence of the inherent eye. So to finally see the absence of it is quite path quite profound. Okay. Buddha says that things do exist conventionally.

You first have to establish that there is a cup. You label it. You define it, and then you check that it does function as you label it and you define it. And if it does, and there’s no one contradict no one’s valid experience of it contradicts that, then you can comfortably say that conventionally speaking, there is a cup. So now the Buddha says we’re not satisfied with that.

We then embellish on top of the cup an independent, inherent in and of itself, from its own side, independent cup as if it existed without depending on anything else. This is how things appear to us. It’s how the eye appears. It’s how we believe that everything exists. But he says that’s the complete fantasy.

There cannot be such a couple. Everything that exists exists in dependence upon something else. The first level of dependent arising is that a cup exists and depends upon all the many, many causes and conditions, and you can’t find the beginning of all of this. But there is no cup apart from those causes and conditions. You won’t find cup, nevertheless, among those causes and conditions.

The second lil, more subtle or direct, is most tasty is that I, couple I, no different fetish, I exist in dependence upon my parts. There is no I apart from those parts because I is nothing other than those parts coming together of those parts. But you won’t find the inherent, independent I that owns those parts, which is how we think. So we say, you know, we say a cup has a handle, has a base, has yellow, has clay sides. So the way we talk, it’s already deceptive.

We instinctively feel that in this cup somewhere, there’s a little inherent cup. There or there’s like an owner in there of the handle. There’s a cup apart from the handle. There’s a cup apart from the base. There’s a cup apart from the clay.

We think a cup has is made of clay. A cup has a handle. A cup has a base. So there’s an assumption even the way we talk that there is a cup apart from all this. And that’s especially how we think about I, I have a nose.

I have a foot. I have a head. You know? So when we talk, it’s deceptive. It’s it lies to us.

And what we think that means is that there’s an inherent I in there that’s independent, that’s like an owner, that’s like owns an I in there that owns a nose and owns a hand and owns a foot and owns a head. But the subtlest level of dependent arising gets us to see when we do the investigation to look for that in inherent eye in there that is the owner, we will find there is nothing other than the parts. And that I is a name we impute upon those parts. And that the I is not the parts. It can’t possibly be.

But nevertheless, I do exist. But conventionally, as causes and conditions, as a result of causes and conditions on the basis of parts and on the main imputed on parts. Perfect. When you discover this when you’ve seen the absence of that fantasy eye and you’ve realized emptiness, there is no longer fear. There is no longer attachment, no longer anger, no longer jealousy, no longer pride, no longer dramas is when you perfect this realization.

And no longer any of the neurosis, you become blissful, marvelous, happy, wise, kind, delicious person. Thank you very much. See you later. See you tomorrow. Thank you.

So that’s so the trouble is is that the question. Because right now, we might hear this as an interesting intellectual proposition. We don’t see any of the experience or implications of it. We see no relationship between that and why we suffer. And that’s what that’s just what takes time.

That’s just what takes time Yeah. But it’s all the same sound. It’s just how we grade it in our own heads that’s Yeah. You see, it’s it is yes. It’s but it’s even more than that because what that does, it tends to sort of annihilate everything.

The fact is still conventionally, we can agree that it’s a good piece of music. It’s often not this is not just taste. You still there are there are laws out there. There are sets of laws. Let’s say that’s a piece of rap.

There are laws, if you think about it, that have developed conventionally among rap writers that we can set up and say, this is certain basic laws of what what determines something to be good rap. So you can still have a test. You can go to the show and have the, you know, the blue ribbon for the best rap and the worst rap. It it sort of is taste, and it sounds like a bit like taste, but it’s not really so not really that way. You can still be a good piece of music.

But it’s a it’s a piece of music that doesn’t but it’s a it’s an empty good piece of music. You you see, it’s it’s not as if emptiness annihilates beauty and ugliness. It is only relative, but that’s how everything exist is anyway. It is only relative, and it is only in infused by the mind. But there still objectively is a beautiful person and an ugly person and a beautiful piece of music and an ugly piece of music.

There is still that. So don’t chuck the baby out of the bathwater. That proves that that the point is about that example, it does prove that music that it that everything does exist as imputed by the mind because one person can see prison as good and another person sees prison as awful. So that pro it just simply proves that it’s made by the mind, which is how everything finally does exist. It’s all made by the mind.

So it doesn’t annihilate and say all music’s equal, which is what you’re intending to say. It’s a slightly other subtle point. You can so objectively say, there’s a beautiful cover, ugly cover. I to discuss that. Because there are laws to make cups.

There’s laws of design. But the point is there’s nothing from its own side that makes it beautiful or ugly. It’s made by the mind. It’s the subtlest meaning of the horizon. The subtlest meaning of this.

There is nothing from the side of that music, not a single atom of anything from the side of the music that makes it even music, not to mention good music or bad But it’s it’s to do finally with the mind imputing good music onto it. And insofar as that occurs, there is good music. There is bad music. But the see two different views seeing it, that proves it’s empty. Because if it were from the side of the music, we’d all see it the same.

So by having different views of it proves it’s that there’s no inherent music. But nevertheless, you can still have good music in that. That’s not an. You with me? Okay.

Right. The notion that the two cups are different, one is ugly and the other one is good for me. You need to recognize the difference We first have to establish you know, in the Heart Sūtra, says form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. Form is nothing other than emptiness.

Emptiness is nothing other than form. And a simple way of saying that is that, you know, when we hit right now, what Buddha says, the two truths, the two ways that things exist, conventionally, ultimately. For the moment, we see them as extreme and as opposite. So when whenever we hear that something is empty, instinctively, we chuck the baby out with the bathwater and assume it means there’s no music from it. There’s no music.

There’s no cup. There’s no anything. And we sort of annihilate everything. We go too far. We’re nihilistic extreme.

Then the moment we say that there is a cup, depending on rising cup, instantly we ratify it and we grasp that and we make it solid, real, independent. So we we overexaggerate the cup, and then we underexaggerate the cup. We go to the two extremes. So the Buddha is saying, reality, a depend first, you have to establish that there is a cup, then you establish how it does exist. So you’ve got to have nihilism is impossible for a start.

There’s got to be something, and then you discuss how it exists. So we’ve got to first posit that there is a cup, then we analyze how it does exist. You gotta first posit that there is an I. This would have been a person here. Australian Buddhist nun, sixty seven, this one, that one, you know, whatever it might be.

The facts of the I, this relative person. We then have to look at how that person does exist. And this is what Lama Zopa says. Remember, two things. One, he says the delusions decorate on top of Rubina layers upon layers of characteristics that don’t exist there.

And he says, we finally and I’m now extrapolating what he said. Removing all those misconceptions from our mind that are projecting onto that person, by the time we really continue to remove all the projections, remove all the lies, see the truth, We finally see the reality of Robina. It’s as if there is no Robina. But there is. But what does exist is so subtle.

It is as if she does not exist. It is as if she is an illusion. So it’s a kind of tricky balance of these two. There being nothing from its own side, but there being something. As soon as we hear there is something, we over exaggerate it.

As soon as we hear there is empty from empty, we chuck the baby out of the bathwater. These are instinctively the two extreme things that we do. Reality of the middle way is that it’s actually these two mean the same thing. So when we finally realize dependent arising, we realize emptiness. And when we realize emptiness, we realize it means the pain in arising.

They actually mean the same thing. But right now, we hear them as often. So there is a cup. There is a beautiful cup. There is music.

There is good music. There is rap music. There’s that one. Anything you can name, you define it. If it fits that definition, then it does exist conventionally, but it does not exist from its own side.

Because why? First, it depends existing dependence upon many causes and conditions. Countless causes and conditions have to come together to culminate in that. Then you have to see the thing itself and see it only exists in dependence upon its parts, countless parts. And then finally, that leads you to seeing that it exists in dependence upon the mind, labeling those parts, imputing upon a valid base, the name, good music, bad person, fat Robina, whatever it might be.

So emptiness actually reinforces that which exists as opposed to annihilating it. This is the real point. Because it means dependent arising. So we gotta get dependent arising. There is something.

It’s labeled this. It functions this way. But then what we do is we dump on top of it things that don’t exist there. So what we have to get used to is the idea that depending on rising, there being a cup means there is no cup on the third side. There is a good cup.

There’s no good cup from its own side. There’s a bad cup. There’s no bad cup from its own side. It’s just it’s like all this stuff. It’s tricky, but it’s clear.

It’s doable, and it’s what profound, marvelous experience will mean. What is intellectual stuff? It’s the path to liberation. It’s like a new language. Like anything, one has to squeeze one’s brain to learn it.

And the more precise you can be, the more exactly you can be, the more likely you will get the result. Even if you make a cake that is so good. So there’s different ways of approaching all this stuff. The the okay. The broad part that we’re making all day, and this is the essential part of the Buddha’s, is it there is mind, it has thoughts, and that everything in the mind is a thought.

Everything in the mind is an opinion, is a viewpoint. Some of them are in sync with reality, and some are not. The ones that aren’t are the delusions. They’re the source of all pain. So therefore, we can rid the mind of it.

Thank goodness. And end up with a mind that is in sync with reality and therefore, happy. Where wisdom and happiness come together instead of ignorance come together. This is Buddhist.

You know? And I felt this to identify the neuroses in our mind, How they lie, what their story is, and what truth is. And this just takes time, but that’s the goal. So we’ve all day, we’ve been talking about this. You know, we’re projecting attachment is particular delusion that projects deliciousness under the cake.

Ignorance beneath that projects the inherent delusion. So relating to seeing the lie of this exaggeration doesn’t mean it’s not a good cake. It doesn’t mean it’s not a delicious cake that we’re seeing finally is an inherently delicious cake. Delicious from its own side. Delicious out there having nothing to do with my mind.

That’s the delusion. We think it’s just been dumped on me. If you can have dinner, delicious cake be there, what can I do except stuff it in your face? That’s how it appears to us. I was out there cake doing it to me.

Whereas in reality, I’m doing everything to the cake. I’m making up the cake. That’s the cosmic joke. But it exists insofar as I make it up. Don’t just think it therefore doesn’t exist.

That’s too extreme. There is a cake insofar as it is labeled by my mind. There is a cake insofar as I put the causes and conditions together. There is a cake insofar as has parts. There is a cake.

It does taste delicious, but not from its own side. It’s made by the mind. So everything exists finally. This is the cycle of dependent arising. Everything does exist insofar as it exists as labeled by the mind.

There’s nothing from the side of the thing that isn’t made by the mind. So in our culture, say, oh, it’s only in the mind to prove it doesn’t exist. Buddha says it’s it’s all in the it’s all in the mind, which proves it does exist, but it’s coming from the mind. Everything comes from the mind. Everything comes from the mind.

There’s nothing that exists out there that doesn’t come from the mind. Our mind make things. We create things. We make things, and then we call it that, and then it becomes that. And then we and the thing is we then believe it’s that.

Like as one mother said, we are like children who draw a lion and then become afraid of it. So emptiness reinforces existence. For as long as it says, when you realize the emptiness of the eye, it’s as if there is no eye. But there is an eye. But it’s so subtle.

What does exist, it’s as if it’s an illusion. And that’s a really tasty kind of tension to get. So if you think of beginningless mind, then it proved everything that comes from the mind. If minds go back and back and back and back and back back since beginningless time, endlessly creating things, endlessly having thoughts, endlessly creating anger and jealousy and fear and depression, which then impact upon the senses, upon the elements, which then create the next body, create the next universe, create the next experience. But everything is our own karmic appearance, as the lama says.

Everything is our own karmic appearance. Whatever’s appearing in front of us, beautiful, good, ugly, bad, up, down, just that, think, fat, good, bad, is created by our mind. So it does exist in so far as it is doing that, but not from its own side because it’s created by them. So things do exist, not from their own side. Ignorance thinks that it’s just from its own side.

Ignorance thinks it’s out there from its own side. This is the ultimate view of materialism that is dualistic. Me, you, separate. They say that the the main the final mistake is annihilated when you become a Buddha. This is no longer separate subject object.

No longer separate sense of self. Literally can make out of mind. Separate. Dualistic. When finally you achieve enlightened mind, you know, there’s no sense.

It’s no longer sin. No longer stop your. So all these delusions all these delusions, second noble truth, two causes of suffering, past karma, delusions. These are the causes of suffering. karma subsumes down to the delusions.

This is the root of all suffering. And therefore, the mind the mind, the virtues, is the root of all happiness. And the key point that Buddha makes is the delusions are not at the core of our being. They can be removed from the mind. And to and to understand how delusion is only in your in masses of package of emotions, finally come down to being conceptual thoughts, as we’ve been saying, stories.

And when we understand that, then we can understand how we can move them from the mind. So I’ve so how you know, how we’ve been talking all day? How about the delusions are liars? They’re seeing things on an object that don’t exist. So if you look on my table and you say there are two cups on my table, anybody who’s not you know, who’s you can see, you know, there’s one cup on my table.

So look. I say, there are two cups on my table. And you look so we we first have to establish we know what cup means. We know our numbers. We’ve all done our maths.

We know what two means. We know what cup means, and we know what table means. And then you know the table. So I say, there are two cups on my table. Now first of all, you agree that’s a thought, don’t you?

That’s a thought in my mind, isn’t it? There are two cups on my table is a thought. You agree? And we have to establish whether that thought is related to reality or not, don’t we? Because all thoughts have to relate to reality.

So does it relate to reality? So what is what’s so what is the reality? There is one cup on my table. So I have a thought that is in from truth, isn’t it? I have a thought that’s that’s not an accurate assessment of reality.

This is saying we’re seeing a delicious cake, isn’t it? A delicious cake from its own side, delicious that’ll make me happy when I eat all the fantasy. That’s a lie. So and that’s a thought in my mind, isn’t it? That cake will make me happy.

It’s a it’s a lie, what it says. It is, I’m telling you. It’s a thought in my mind. So now you say to me, well, Bina, there’s only one cup on your table. Well, strictly speaking, you’ll say, no, Bina.

There’s an absence of two cups on the table. Then I’ll realize finally the truth and see the one cup. Never mind that. But let’s say you point out the truth to me. And because I have no vested interest in believing there are two cups on my table, I’m not that caught up in it.

I’ll go, oopsie, Daisy. You’re absolutely right. And I will then say, there is one cup on my table. Now what happened to the thought? There are two cups on my table.

What happened to it? More than that, what happened to it? Totally disappeared into thin air, nonexistent. You agree? Now what caused it to disappear from my mind?

The truth. The recognition of the truth. The absolute certainty of the truth. If I’m wavering and saying, are you sure? No.

Come on. I’ve got doubt. Then still I’m believing there’s few cups on my table. But if I see the truth, the absolute certainty of the truth annihilates the lie right there, doesn’t it? And the lie is gone from the lie for eternity.

That’s how you get in life. Don’t understand what I’m saying? That’s how you get in life. That proves you can get in life. Because all the emotions are they’re all liars.

They are assessments that have no basis in reality. And so once you’ve seen the truth that annihilates the lie, and that’s literally and the first step in that is the first realization, the first nonconceptual insight into the absence of the fantasy. That’s the first big paradigm shift. And then you keep affecting that seeing of the truth until it’s absolutely certain. And then the belief in the inherent eye and the belief in inherent everything else is gone, disappeared into thin air, never to exist again.

That’s how you get in mind. Their that’s why Buddha says they don’t exist. They don’t they’re not at the core of our being. Whereas the virtues this is interesting point. The virtuous takes in mind.

He says they are at the core of our being. No one’s just being a nice fellow. He says, literally, why? Why? Why?

I’ll tell you why. Because they are, relatively speaking, related to reality. Reality, thusness, they say, is the way things just are, is that they exist independently. Interdependence is the flip side of emptiness. Okay?

And Buddha didn’t make this up. He’s not creating it. He just says this is how things are. It’s it is just the way things Things are just interdependent there. Therefore, I empty.

So interdependence is how existence is. Now you check when I’m sitting there having a nice time with Ganesh, I’m laughing at his jokes, and he laughs at my jokes. And I smile at him, and I empathize with his constipation. He empathizes with my headache. So we’re having love and compassion here, right, which is the good qualities.

Now look at how it feels. When you’re feeling when you’re when you’re with a person having a chat, there’s a sense of interdependence, isn’t there? I’m listening to him. He listens to me. So there’s a sense of we.

Wouldn’t you agree there’s a sense of we there? There’s no vivid sense of I, this, and he, that. So when there’s a sense of we, you’re in touch to some extent with interdependence. That’s naturally, aren’t you? Look what happens when the ego comes when he starts to insult me.

Suddenly, we is cut in half, isn’t it? There’s suddenly mean old ugly Ganesh out there and poor unhappy Robina over here. You get my point? Well, suddenly, the we is now two separate eyes, all freaking out in their own stories. Well, that’s not reality.

Reality is independence. So the virtues are sort of in tune with it. It’s not even when you finally get our thank you that you’re really in tune with with independence. It’s just natural. You now see it as it is.

But relatively even the good qualities, even though there’s still a sense of an independent me, there’s a relative sense of interdependence, which is why the good qualities are at the core of our being. And when they fully developed, we are just naturally in tune with reality, which is that everything is interdependent. And you can’t cut that from the mind. That’s impossible. That’s impossible.

You can’t remove goodness from your mind. Impossible. Because it’s because it’s truth. That’s what we’ve got to identify with the goodness. The shitty stuff is there.

Causes all the pain, all the suffering, but don’t give it any power. It is not you. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

You will think of it as it’s the terrible irony of ego. I am bad. I am this. You know, we can see we identify ourselves always in those terms. I am jealous.

I am depressed. I am angry. I am this. I am that. This huge, big, fat, loud eye.

You know? And even if it’s the good stuff, we say, I am beautiful. It’s just arrogance. We’re over exaggerating the beauty. You know?

Whereas goodness, joy, and love, and compassion are not neurotic. They’re very sweet and peaceful because they’re in touch with their independence. You know? They’re not frantic. They’re trying to assert themselves.

It’s like the delusions that freaking out and over exaggerate the eye. It’s problem. It’s either I am so horrible or I am so special. You have the same problem. Mhmm.

It’s an over exaggeration of the eye. Therefore, an over exaggeration of all the things that I want, that I see, and I don’t, blah blah blah, all of that. So we have to see them what they are, but not be scared because they’re just and don’t have any expectations on what to think of this or what you think it isn’t or anything. You close your eyes, get your body straight, nice and relaxed, sit upright, and you just close your eyes and we focus with just a few minutes Okay? A few minutes with determination, and we simply imagine one part of our mind like the awareness part, the attention.

Think of it as the I that does the looking, the eye, the attention. And we’re gonna observe our mind, the rest of our mind, whatever arises in your mind, whatever comes up, a feeling of, you know, negative, positive, doesn’t matter what it is. Don’t label it. Don’t just just simply observe your thoughts, whatever comes up. Doesn’t matter.

Just if it’s a feeling in the body, meaning a sensory consciousness thing, whatever arises in your mind, just watch it. That’s it. Stay focused on your mind. Just watch your thoughts. Watch your mind.

You don’t know what it is yet because you haven’t done a job. What does it do? Oh, it holds my teeth. What is a knife? A long piece of metal with a sharp edge.

You recognize it immediately. But what does it do? It cuts things. So what’s the money? It’s it’s they say it’s clear or luminous.

This simply means it’s not physical. Don’t make it offensive. It simply means it’s not physical. It’s clear. Luminous.

And then what’s its job? It knows things. It cognizes. That’s its bare bones job. The job of mind is to cognize that which exists.

The mind has the potential to know that which exists, what it says. That’s its job. That’s its nature. That’s its function. Simple.

Simple. Right now, it’s full of rubbish that prevents it from cognizing that which exists. So right now, all the new delusions are seeing things that don’t exist. Divine cake on its own side. I’m being Robina in its own side.

They don’t exist. The things we see don’t exist. These delusions, as Lama Zopa says, decorate on top of what does exist, characteristics that don’t exist. They embellish. So our job is to distinguish between the facts of the fiction.

This is our job. You know? And that’s the development of wisdom that it is the method for getting happiness. Because the way our mind is now, full of all the misconceptions, seeing things that don’t exist on the things that do exist, they they had two two results. One, they cause us to be completely deluded and living in fantasy world, but two, they cause suffering.

So the the the result of the method for getting getting happiness is is to remove the delusions from the mind, which also brings you wisdom. Wisdom and happiness come hand inherently. This is a very interesting way to see it. Right now, we have delusions and ignorance and suffering. The method we’re getting happy, which is we can do, is to remove the lies from the mind.

So the clarified of the mind, to get it to be in sync with truth, brings wisdom, its natural state, and happiness, its natural state. So the way the mind cognizes, Buddha says, is like a mirror. The mind is like a mirror. When it’s clear, it cognizes, it reflect it reflects, and it reflects exactly what’s there without confusion, without mistake. So that body of water, absolutely crystal clear, reflects perfectly the trees on the bank.

But if the water’s turbulent, then the trees look crooked, don’t they? And then we believe in the crooked trees. So our mind is turbulent with delusions that’s reflecting back to us through the turbulence things that don’t exist. So I had anger polluting my mind so Aganesh appears ugly. I have attachment polluting my mind.

You know, my mind is turbulent with attachment, so the cake appears delicious on its own side. They’re lies, and we believe in what our mind sees. So, you know, we have to rid the mind of these gross delusions. So at least we can see that which is that which is existing as a reflection in the mind. The mind reflects that which exists.

And what does exist is anyway existing as labeled by the mind, as made by the mind, created by the mind. In that insofar as things are made by the mind, delusion is the main cause of suffering. Very simple answer. Second noble truth, there are two causes of suffering. One is the negative action we did in the past to get the imprint in the mind that we didn’t pull out, that is now rightfully as the present suffering.

The person harming me, the horrible situation, the pain in the neck, whatever it might be, the result of past actions. And the cause of that karma is the delusion of the mind. So according to this, there are two levels of practice. As Khensur Rinpoche says, the most urgent, the most immediate is to not respond in a deluded way to that suffering event, the mean person, the unkind word. Recognizing it is my past karma, we own it as ours and do not respond negatively to it.

Because normally what happens is you punch me in the nose, I’m innocent victim, I punch you right back. So I just finished that karma by having a punch, but I immediately sow another seed and I get more punches in the future. This is how we keep Sansaro going. So the first most immediate they would practice is not is to respond appropriately, but to respond inappropriately to the punch, the lie, the thing, the grasping, the delicious cake. See it for what it is and and control one body and speech, thus not sowing another negative seed.

Every second is our practice, ideally. And then, of course, in terms of the karma, the level of practice there is to remove the karmic seeds from the mind in the painted in the past before they write them as more suffering. And that’s the purification. That’s the four kinds of powers. Gonna do that on Wednesday.

Wednesday. Okay. We’ll do the purification practice and and purification. There are two levels of practice in relation to the two causes of suffering. In relation to karma, we have to purify or pull out before they ripen the seeds we planted in the past, and there are plenty of them.

And then second, in response to the suffering that does arise now, at least not respond and create more suffering. This is practice. This is all the practice right there in essence. Okay. So go home with a happy mind.

We’ve done a bit of gardening all day. Bucket loads of seeds, looking at things, analyzing, checking, maybe a few little pennies have dropped. Any pennies drop? Good. That’s amazing.

I like the pennies dropping. Good. So you keep having the pennies drop. Pennies drop for me as well because I have to do the talking, but Pennies will drop for me too. Thank you for your opportunity to talk.

For me too. Thank you for the opportunity to talk. So we just keep moving one day at a time, getting clarity, getting wisdom, having courage, looking into our minds, knowing that we are the boss, not Buddha. We are the boss.

Thanks, everybody. I know. In your bed tonight, you say to yourself, I’m gonna see my dreams as dreams. Okay? Say you have to learn to see life as a dream.

I’ll explain. So make a decision. You’re gonna see it means when you’re dreaming, you notice you’re dreaming. Very beneficial. Very auspicious.

And then when you wake up in the morning, if you wake up in the morning, okay, and we only think that’s a joke because we have a lot another lie in the mind was believed I’m permanent. But, of course, I’m not gonna die tonight. Don’t even give us a little sec. So we think, if I wake up in the morning, you remind yourself, the moment you come back into consciousness, you go, wow. Can’t believe it.

My petrol tank of morality didn’t run out yet, and I’m still alive. It’s like be amazed. Okay? We’re not amazed, and that proves the wrong view, another misconception that we believe I’m permanent. We just think, of course, I’m me.

I woke up. I’m me. No. No. We have not got clairvoyance.

We do not know how long our life is. The main cause of a long life is the amount of morality in our tank. And when that runs out, the breath stops. Young or old. Doesn’t matter.

So how miraculous if we do wake up in the morning. How marvelous. You see, my people’s fingers clicking, I’m guessing. I’m so pleased. Make the most of your day.

Hop out of bed and make the decision to come, and make the most of it. Okay.. Okay. Okay. Oh, okay.

Oh, actually, honey, I just wanted to hit stop.