Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 91-minute teaching, Ven Robina Courtin frames Buddhist practice as steadying the mind—”the little boat”—beginning with detailed posture instructions and breath-focus meditation. She then lays out core doctrine: the preciousness of human life as fruit of past virtue; karma (that circumstances arise from our own actions, not random events); and enlightenment as the ultimate goal—omniscience, infinite compassion, and perfect capability to benefit all beings. She stresses that rigorous logical analysis, not blind faith, bridges intellectual understanding and experiential realization. She challenges the Western victim mentality, urging practitioners to take full responsibility through the karma view—recognizing that how others treat us reflects our own past actions—rather than blaming external circumstances. The Paris, France analogy illustrates holding a long-term vision while practicing each step.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 1998 10 31 StB.mp3
UUID: 45d63748-0090-416c-b4a5-716e31bbecec
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Steadying the Boat (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 1998-10-31
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 91.3 minutes
Words: ~16,622
We start with trying to steady this little boat then, this little mind we have, which is what we’re working with. As one lama said, Lama Zopa, the lama at the center, he said that the workshop is in the mind. It’s what we’re learning to become familiar with if we’re trying to use Buddhism, even a tiny percent of Buddhism, one percent of it in our lives, then the point of it is to become familiar. This is the meaning of the word, actually, gom, meditation in Tibetan. We’re familiarizing ourselves with our mind, and then if we’re looking at Buddhism, with Buddhism, with Buddhist views, and Buddhist understanding, and Buddhist methods, and then making those oneness with our mind, this is what we’re doing.
Seeing as that is the job, let’s just start with a simple little mindfulness meditation. I talk about meditation, the ways you use it and the types, but this first type will do just a little tiny taste of the first mode of meditating, which is called stabilizing or concentration meditation, as the word suggests, we’re trying to stabilize. You close your eyes, you try to get to sleep some day. There’s just this crazy energy, isn’t it? Just constant, like a train, just going, Forget about control.
We all experience that. What all Buddhism is saying is we have the capacity to work with this, to slowly harness this crazy energy, to get to see more clearly what’s there, and then to learn to recognise the negative part, the part that makes us miserable, the positive part, the part that brings us what we want, which makes others happy, and to slowly develop something, slowly grow our enormous potential. This is what we’re trying to do. Let’s just get your body as comfortable as possible. If you’re sitting in a chair, even just for this little five minutes will do, this five minutes of stabilizing, against the wall, don’t lean against the wall or against the chair, hold yourself up.
It’s somehow really important. We’ll talk more about this in a minute. If you’re sitting on the cushions, be as comfortable as you can. They say the best, the most conducive position for a good meditation is to be in what they call full lotus position, which most of us aren’t built that way, so sit whichever way is most comfortable. Like I’m saying, the crucial thing is to have your back straight.
Almost you’re putting some tension, actually, back into your body. Don’t just think you’ve to really relax, because that you can do just by lying down and going to sleep there’s no effort needed for that. We’re trying to train the mind to be a certain way, you know, but it needs some kind of effort, and almost some tension. So the muscles are relaxed, but your back’s real straight. Imagine your spine is like a pile of coins that you’re holding up very carefully.
Hands we have in this sort of, if you can see me, left underneath, right on top, thumbs touching like this, resting in your lap, and again the significance to all of these parts of the posture. And your head slightly tilted forward, chin tucked in a little bit, eyes looking downwards. Actually, it’s best to have the eyes open, but for most of us that’s quite distracting. So have your eyes lightly closed, but your eyes should be looking down as if you’re looking at your nose. Your jaw relaxed, lips apart, and the tip of the tongue behind the top teeth, just near the palate, resting there.
Breathe through your nose. So what we’re going to do is simply focus, choose something to focus on, focus the mind on, focus all our awareness on, and then with effort and constant, you know, as much as we can, keep the mind on that. And every time it wanders off, you bring it back to it. Just like you’re trying to walk on a tightrope. In the beginning it’s hopeless, isn’t it?
You’re saying, Oh, I’m walking on a tightrope, but ninety nine percent of the time you’re on the ground. Do you know what I mean? Because you’re not trained yet. So you’ve got to pick yourself up every time you fall off. If you just space out and stay on the ground, then you’ve missed the point, you know?
So it’s like that. Every time you wander off from the breath, which your mind will do most of the time of those five minutes, the real skill is catching it and bringing it back. That’s how you train it to stay there, not just to space out and relax and just sort of absorb into an empty space. That’s not meditation at all. With strong determination, as clear as you can, simply have all your awareness on the sensation of the air at your nose as you breathe in and out.
That’s the focus, just on there. Every time it wanders off, bring it back, and that’s it. That’s the job to be done. Just bring your mind back to the breath. Just keep the mind on the breath clear and sharp.
Just a breath. Okay. One way you can say, really, what you’re trying to do as a Buddhist is really deal with the emotions we have. We use the word in the West, emotions. First you have to learn to see them.
I mean, we kind of all know we feel things, you know, we feel them. But often what happens, isn’t it, and I think we don’t realise this, we feel it. It’s like once it comes, you know, the boil bursts. The real job, the long term approach, is to be able to see well before things are coming, before it gets anywhere near getting to the point of erupting, the emotions, the pain, the feelings, the problems, the dramas. To really learn to know our minds well.
This is the job, you know. As one Lama Yeshe said, You don’t have to believe anything. Just learn to know your own mind, learn to see how desire arises, attachment, anger, the rest, understand the evolution of them, and already from this so much peace, so much satisfaction, so much contentment. Like you can say, in the Buddhist path there’s a bigger, broader view than that, there’s much more, it goes beyond that, but this is the principle. The mind is at the heart of all the practice that you’re doing as a Buddhist, and the mind is what’s inside you.
This word, we use it in a broader way in Buddhism. It doesn’t mean the intellect. It doesn’t refer to something physical. Mind or consciousness, it’s whatever’s inside you. And, okay, in the Buddhist terms, in the long term, we’re trying to access very subtle levels of our conscious being that in the West we wouldn’t even posit as existing.
This is where we get into what we call the mystical spiritual realm that seems beyond ordinary. But in Buddhist terms, it’s part of the deal, part of the continuity of one’s own consciousness, in other words, our mind, our consciousness, has potential way beyond our imagination. I don’t mean in a magical mysterious way, but just that we have astonishing potential for extraordinary wisdom and clarity and joy and love and compassion, all the qualities, actually, that we all know about, they’re all ordinary qualities, there’s nothing mysterious in fact, what Buddhism is saying, we have the potential to be enlightened, to become a Buddha, and all that is, in a simple way of saying a Buddha, or fully awakened being, a person like you and me, who has fully developed these qualities that Buddhism is asserting we all possess, you know, and a simple way of saying that is a person who is completely enlightened, as it were, is completely full of compassion, full of wisdom, sees everything as it is, sees all, you know, is full of joy, full of clarity, all these qualities that we can call just utterly developed. Now in the West, you know, we don’t there’s no such concept like that, is there?
There’s no such concept that you can be completely free of attachment, completely free of jealousy, totally full of love and kindness. It’s not a conceivable thing for us. Well, this is what Buddha’s saying. This is what saying. The potential of every living being is quite remarkable, and that our job is to develop that potential, and we won’t be happy until we do so.
Sort of like that, really. It’s something that’s very important too, it’s something very practical. We’ve been talking this the last few days in different ways. It’s a very practical thing. It’s a very practical thing.
It’s not sort of the way we think of it as being a religious thing that you ought to do because somebody said you should be good or something. Don’t tend to think, we think of something like religious, we don’t think we have a reason, there’s no logical reasons. But the Buddhist approach is we have to be very practical, you know? And it is a practical thing. Practical meaning it’s for your benefit, first of all, not to mention the benefit of others.
The reason to look into our mind, the reason to see more clearly the suffering, the reason to change our mind, the reason to develop our potential is because that is what our potential is, so clearly it’s for our benefit, It’s clearly for that, and the broader purpose is to become a person who’s beneficial to others. We look into our lives. We want both of these. We want to be happy, and we look around, and in our relationships we want them to be useful, we want them to be practical, want them to work, don’t we? We want to be useful to others.
We all have this wish. One of the first things for us, the traditional way when they present the teachings in Tibet. This is how the teachings here are based on the way it’s been practiced in Tibet for a thousand years. There are different ways of presenting. It’s all very laid out.
It’s all very laid out and very structured, which again, for our minds in the West we tend to be puzzled by that, sort of think spiritual is beyond that, that’s what you do when you study science or something, but to sort of have something very structured and laid out and step by step, we don’t tend to associate that with spiritual, but this is the Buddhist approach, you’re learning to do something, just like you are when you learn to be a carpenter, or you learn to be a musician. You need theories, clear, structured courses, you need understanding of where it all fits, you need to know you’ll accomplish this after you accomplish this, so then you get to grade four, then you get to grade five, it’s all laid out. This is how we learn. It’s exactly the way it’s taught and learned in the Tibetan monasteries. It’s not meant to be lessening it.
Somehow we think if you make something practical on the ground like that it of lessens it, especially spiritual. It’s meant to be beyond words, we think. That’s just superstition in Buddhist terms. That’s ignorance. So the way it’s presented, different ways, but there’s one in Tibetan Buddhism, the way Buddhism is practiced and has been practiced in Tibet.
There’s one packaging, there’s various packaging, you like, packagings of Buddha’s teachings. And one package is known as the steps on the path, sort of like a putting together of all the major essence from the major texts of all of Buddha’s teachings, putting them into a nice, orderly, kind of graded course, quite literally like that. So when you have an overview of this course, you don’t just learn it. This is the point here. Like any theory, when you learn music, the theory is very clear, it’s on a piece of paper.
Then you have to internalise it and you practise it and it comes out through your fingers onto the piano, so you can distinguish very different easily between theory and practise. You can’t pretend you’re a musician unless you can actually practise it with your hands on the piano, but with something like Buddhism, because it’s a spiritual path and because you’re dealing with the human mind, the human consciousness, the theory and the practise are both in the mind, so it’s more difficult for us to really distinguish between theory and practice. In other words, we can know the Buddhist ideas, and we can make the mistake of thinking that by knowing it, we’re practising it, but there’s a difference, you know? There really is difference. And that’s where it’s much harder to see, it’s much harder to really make it go from theory to practice, because you’re doing it in the same part of yourself, it’s in the human mind, but the different parts, you know?
And finally then expressed through the mouth and the body. So for example, the way it’s practiced, the very first point to learn about, the first thing to learn about and then meditate on, because this is how you approach this whole graded course, you first listen to the theories, and then through meditation you incorporate those initially first that are concepts incorporate them and sort of they become something tasty. As Lama Yeshe would say, you digest them. The words then slowly filter down from your head to your heart and become reality, become your experience, become how you see. So it’s really very simple, we understand this, something mysterious.
You hear about the word love and you hear about people being in love, and you’ve never been in love yet. So you can hear all the theories, you can hear all the words, people can explain to you, they can tell you how you go about doing all the things, what you do when you’re in love, you understand what I’m saying? And then suddenly one day, boom, what happens? You fall in love. Suddenly, the theory becomes practiced, doesn’t it?
Well, it’s kind of like It’s a good example, actually. In other words, if you’ve just heard the words, you know it, you hear it, but there’s a gap between you and it, isn’t there? But then when you feel it, you go, Wow, that’s what it means. Well, this is all practiced. So all Buddhism is, is a presentation of Buddha’s view of reality.
Things are impermanent, he’s saying. Yeah, that’s very interesting, big deal, you say, What do want to know that for? Well, he’s saying the extent to which we don’t experience things is impermanent, extent to which we have a fantasy that in fact they’re permanent because we have a big vested interest in that, and we’ll talk about that, is the extent to which we’re miserable. So we’ve got to get it, not just here we know it here we know, for example, we are impermanent, that we’re going to die at some point. What Buddha’s saying is we cling, we have a bunch of wrong ideas in our mind for various reasons, which we’ll discuss, that causes us to cling to a fantasy in an intuitive sense that really aren’t permanent.
That’s why we freak out when we get older, when the wrinkles come, you know, when you’re told you’re going to die it’s the most traumatic thing on earth for any being, isn’t it? It’s profound, the effect that it has on us. It’s like you didn’t realise it before now suddenly you realise the truth, which is that you’re impermanent. You’re always impermanent. You’re always going to die.
Someone now tells you you’re gonna die maybe more quickly than you thought you were gonna die. So this enormous experience comes, isn’t it? So that, in Buddhist terms, is proof that we didn’t realise, we only knew intellectually the words were impermanent, but experientially we hadn’t got it. But when you start to get it, that’s the way. So what happens, the implications of that, in Buddhist terms, there’s a big story to this, you know, is that then you start to use your life in a beneficial way, not just waste it, not just walk through this bubble, this fantasy bubble that we’ve created, living in a fantasy of permanent me.
We know we’re impermanent, but when you get it, it’s very different. It’s like knowing about love and then being in love. The difference is profound. Then, of course, the difference is when you know here that you’re impermanent, then you’re going to completely change your life, completely not waste it any longer, you would not want to be you’re just misusing it, you’d want to use it as much as possible for your benefit and the benefit of others. This is an example, you know.
So it’s all words impermanence is words you don’t do anything with your hands Practising impermanence doesn’t mean you change something with your hands. Practising impermanence in a sense is by recognising here that, yes, I’m impermanent, then you act differently, you think differently, and that’s the point. So what Buddhism is, if you like, is a philosophy. It’s a very detailed, profound presentation, Buddha’s take, in other words, Buddha’s take on how reality is. Buddhism is definitely a psychology, deeply talking about the human mind, great detail about this Buddha’s model of the mind, very precise, very laid out, and then the practices that you’re doing to transform that mind.
It’s certainly a religion. You ask any Tibetan, for sure. Some people say it’s not a religion, in a sense it’s not a religion because we seem to think that religion means believing in a creator god. That seems to be almost the definition of something. If it’s religious, you believe in a creator god.
Well, in that sense, Buddhism isn’t that, because it doesn’t discuss a creator god, you know? But it’s religious in the simplest sense of being the spiritual path, dealing with the inside rather than the outside, in that broader sense. Of course, it’s a religious path, you know? But the point of all of it, the point in Buddhism, is that it’s all got to come together in experience, in practice. The philosophy, the psychology, it all comes together, it all intersects perfectly where you put it into practice.
It has to be experiential. So, you know, when we study philosophy in the West, this sounds like a bunch of interesting concepts about reality. We go study it, and you learn this philosophy and this one and this one and this is that one, and you learn all these theories, and there’s these interesting ideas, aren’t they, all sitting in books there? Very fascinating, and we all discuss them. But as for practising them, that almost seems like you’re making you become an inferior person if you start practising it.
It’s just meant to stay in the realms of the head, isn’t it? Which is kind of bizarre if you think about it. It’s like cooking, getting to the point where you just have these different types of cooking and they’re all just in books. You never make a cake. Oh, you wouldn’t do that, it’s too subjective.
You’ve just got to have these concepts. Well, that’s how we are when it comes to philosophy. It’s insane, isn’t it? Buddhist philosophy is simply Buddha’s way of saying, This is how reality is, but I’m sorry, because you’ve all these mistakes in your mind, see it this way, so you’re constantly suffering. So there’s a point to him presenting why he thinks what is what you see you know, Jesus Christ has a philosophy and then there’s Marxist philosophy then we’ve got our own philosophy, maybe a mixture of all of them then we’ve got Buddhist philosophy, all these different ones well here we’re talking like Buddhas, you know.
And so when you’re a Buddhist, what you learn is how Buddha sees reality, and then you try it through working on your own mind. You start to you attempt to bring that, what’s called Buddha’s way of seeing reality into your own mind, to make it your way of seeing reality. You choose to do that, you know? You’re not forced to. He’s not saying you have to.
And like we’ve been talking the last few days, the reason to want to even listen to the way Buddha says things are impermanent. He says, you you get it wrong, you think they’re permanent. Says things happen as a result of cause and effect karma but we in fact think they happen from no reason out there. Not fair. I didn’t do it.
It happened to do with me, you know? He’s saying that’s a mistake. He’s saying it’s to do with cause and effect, that everything that we experience is a result of something we have done. This is the view of karma. It’s a philosophy, but when you bring it into your life, the experiential implications of it are quite profound.
This is the point. This is the whole point. The whole point of all of it is to bring some radical change in our own way of being, for our sake and the sake of others. This is the point of it all. This is what practice is.
So it all has to be practical, as it says in the Buddhist teachings, as Lama Tsongkhapa says. There’s no contradiction between scripture and practice, the teachings, in other words. Everything is meant or another way of saying it is there’s not a single word that Buddha uttered, all of Buddha’s teachings, all of Buddha’s philosophy, all of the psychology, of the methods, all of the rituals, all of the meditations, the teachings, the point of every single bit of it is to be taken into us as a method for transforming who we are for our sake and the sake of others, this is the point. If there’s something in the Buddha’s teachings that can’t be practiced, then it’s a waste of time, chuck it in the bin, don’t listen to it, it’s useless. The point of all of it is like, if there’s anything extraneous in that cake recipe, clearly you’d have to throw it out because it’ll mess up the recipe, isn’t it?
If you can’t make the cake, then don’t bother, throw that sheet away do you see my point? You’ve got to be able to turn it into practice otherwise useless. It’s just a bunch of rubbish in the head. There’s enough rubbish there as it is. So one of the first points.
I mean, what Buddha is saying basically, very many things. And I talk pretty fast, so I’ll try and fit it all in. Okay. So, all right. So we have this human mind.
We have this consciousness. We have these thoughts, these feelings, these emotions, which we know we all know about. And what he’s saying is by, you know, learning to change them, and in a simple way, and it sounds very weird sometimes to us, but let’s look at that. By changing the way we think. It really is like this, by changing the way we think, by changing the way we see reality, by changing the way we experience things, we will become happy and will be much more beneficial to others.
This is really a way of saying what we’re trying to do, which sounds weird, changing your thoughts. Why would I change my thoughts? Oh, that’s pink? I’m sorry, no, it’s not, it’s blue. That’s why I’ve changed my thought.
Then, you know, what good does that do to me? But that’s what my point, what Buddha is saying is, for example, one about impermanence, one of Buddha’s tenets, a basic tenet in Buddhism, there’s many teachings on it describing it, that everything is in the nature of impermanence, everything changes moment to moment, things come into being, they grow into a peak, and they disintegrate and finish, you know? This is the nature of things. Now, every one of us knows this, it’s something completely simple, it’s totally evident, we see flowers, we see people, we see everything, but as we can also see, like I’ve been saying, we have this huge resistance to it, isn’t it? We freak out when our lovely cup breaks, we’re miserable, you know?
And we think, we make the mistake of thinking, and all this is thoughts, this is the point, it’s thoughts, you think about it. We think it shouldn’t break, don’t we? We think, that’s why we’re miserable. Think we’re unhappy because it broke. What Buddha’s saying is, no, you’re unhappy because you had a misconception in the first place, but because you’re attached to it, it shouldn’t break.
That’s why you’re unhappy, but its nature is to be broken, its nature is breakable. You can’t avoid it at some point, it’s going to have to disappear out of your life, you know? Facing that reality, in other words, simple way of saying it, changing getting rid of the stubborn instinctive grasping at it as being something that ought to be there all the time because I want it, because my happiness depends upon it, by changing that we become happy then whether it breaks or not, it doesn’t have so much effect you’ll still enjoy it when it is there you might be a bit sad when it isn’t there but it doesn’t fundamentally change anything. This is a simple, simple example. So it is changing thoughts, but all Buddha is saying is the misconceptions we have in our mind, which really are the negative, the suffering emotions we have attachment, anger, jealousy, pride, grasping at something that’s permanent because of attachment, all of this, they are simply thoughts, but they’re so packed full of emotional content, they’re so ancient in us, we brought them with us from so many lives, Buddha was saying, they’re so deeply ingrained within us that it’s way beyond our imagination.
Think they’re way beyond mere thoughts, but they’re, like, deeply ingrained, deeply ingrained. I mean, if you think of a person, let’s say, who’s a fascist, you know, or some kind of whatever you want to call, who hates blacks or hates Jews or hates this group of people or hates whatever the race is, these people, this is some example well, you analyse what that person or you analyse, if you read their words, they write their book about what they think it’s just a bunch of thoughts, isn’t it? It’s a bunch of concepts about something, it’s their philosophy, and all of these is a bunch of thoughts about something, isn’t it? But you check the person when they’re saying those thoughts, they’re speaking loudly and they’re passionate about it and they freak out if anybody disagrees with them well, all the same, but just check. So obviously, it is just thoughts, but when we say it’s mere thought, we tend to think, Oh, it’s just intellectual, it doesn’t have much emotional component.
But what Buddha’s saying, and this is where it’s very different from the way we tend to think in the West, that it’s all thought based, but the emotional part, which is what we think they really are, we think it’s an emotion when you see somebody all excited, that’s not just thought, we’ll say that’s an emotion. So we think thought is here and emotion is here. We make them forever separate. Actually what Buddhism is saying is it’s true, there is this huge emotional component there, and we seem to have this big vested interest in holding those thoughts as being right. That’s what it is, isn’t it?
That’s how you have wars, look at this stuff that’s happening with the Palestinians, with the Jews, in Kosovo, wherever it is, you know, people with a certain viewpoint, a bunch of thoughts: this is reality, this is what I think is right, and another person with another bunch of thoughts and they don’t match, so what happens? Is saṃsāra. That’s what Buddhism means by saṃsāra. We’ve all got these different concepts, and because we’re so ingrained in them, because they’re so deep inside us, stuck in these grooves, then all the emotional part comes along with it because we have this massive vested interest, and because we see our thoughts as right, isn’t it? That’s how we think, isn’t it?
So we can see why we suffer. So then learning, so when we think, you mean I’ve got just give up all my thoughts? That’s often what some people think, that’s completely nihilistic. Or we’ve to just think any old thing, or everything really is right. They’re all just nihilistic views, there’s not a question of that.
What’s interesting is what Buddhism is saying is that there is a way to think that actually is in sync with how things are. This is a Buddhist approach, to learn to see reality as it is. So it’s not giving up thoughts, it’s learning to change the thoughts, and then slowly, by changing the emotional part, by harnessing that energy, slowly learning to develop these new grooves, and the way to think, and a simple way of saying it, is the so called thoughts which become the new emotions we have are called love, kindness, patience, wisdom, clarity, all these things. Well, it sounds sort of strange speaking about it this way, you know, but this is a practical way of saying. So what you know, the term they use in Tibetan Buddhism is called mind they say, practicing is like mind training, it’s a term, lojong, mind training.
It sounds quite insidious, isn’t it training your mind, you know, brainwashing? Well, in one simple sense, that’s what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to brainwash yourself from being angry, neurotic, miserable, depressed, to being loving and compassionate and kind. That’s the simple way of saying it. So the very first thing to know I think especially in our culture we need to know this, we need get a feeling for this, know, what Buddhism is saying is that we have enormous potential. Every one of us, inside us, sitting here, right now, within our own mind, our own being, our own thoughts, our own emotions, we are possessing phenomenal potential.
And this is what we’re trying to do, is uncover this extraordinary potential in each one of us. So, even getting a feeling for this already brings some kind of self confidence, I think what we seem to lack in our culture is so called confidence in ourself, you know? Because we’re so convinced that everything is out there, aren’t we? Life is out there, you know? Lovely, wonderful things are out there, and I’m this sort of empty vessel walking around trying to fill myself up with delicious life.
So it’s almost as if we already have an assumption that we’re kind of these worthless things, you know, trying to fill ourselves up with delicious people and delicious objects, then we’ll be worthwhile. In fact, we have all the potential within ourself right here, right now. And by developing that potential, this is what the practice is, is developing this potential that’s in us. You don’t get it from outside and inject it into you. So the very first thing to understand is, in a way, is to have this because that’s what gives us the energy.
It’s like if you recognise you have the potential to be a musician, you’re gonna have the courage and the perseverance to keep working at it, aren’t you? If you don’t believe you can do it, if you don’t believe you can be a musician, you’re not gonna persevere through all the struggle and the effort and the six hours of practice every day, even the one hour of practice, you won’t bother, will you? So you’ve to have some energy, and you’ve to have a vision of what your potential is, will carry you through, which will make you persevere. So I think on the human level that we’re talking here, we have this enormous potential to be less angry, less jealous, less mean, less depressed, less hopeless, less anxious, more kind, more loving, more compassionate. This is what Buddhism is saying.
Most simply, this is what Buddhism is saying. It seems to me just this is already amazing. If we can have some sense of this, that within ourself we really know by working on our own mind we can become more happy, more kind, more blissful, because this is fundamentally what we want, isn’t it? It’s so kind of fundamental to every one of us. So one thing, what Buddhism’s saying is in order to even want to do this job what we’ve even got to contemplate, and this is where this presentation of these stages of the path are put down, you know, one of the things we have to think about to even give us the energy to even want to do something is to contemplate what sounds again very odd to us, to contemplate the preciousness of this life that we possess right now.
This body, this condition, this situation. I mean, is always very this is a shocking idea to us, again, in the West because we tend to think, well, I’m just hopeless and life’s a drag anyway, I didn’t ask to get born, and what’s it all about? You don’t have any sense that we have something precious right here, right now, like a miracle. So to contemplate this, to get some kind of energy, or we often, in other words, when we have something, when it’s good, we don’t tend to appreciate it. It’s often when we lose something that we then appreciate what we did have, isn’t it?
So what we’re saying here is to try and appreciate what we’ve got, who we are, who we actually are, this package, this mind, this body, this opportunity that this gives me. So what does all this mean? How do we get energy from contemplating this? We’ve been talking before, but the Buddhist approach is that this body that I have, this mind that I have, is no accident, that I must have worked unbelievably hard in a past life to create the causes, to sow the seeds that have now ripened as me in this body with these opportunities, this life, this leisure, these friends, this support, this reasonable amount of money, this amount of this, a little bit of this, and the only way to get this feeling because, as I was saying, what we tend to think of, we either got created by God, or we just think we’re a bit of material that our mother and father produced, right? But the Buddhist approach is that we created the causes by working very hard on morality and patience and kindness and generosity, in part probably practising a spiritual path in a past life, and that they karmically were the causes for me to become who I am, that it’s not as As we’ve been talking, there’s no accident.
This view of karma is there’s nothing random, there’s nothing accidental. So if I even compare We can even compare ourselves with the rest of the human race without sounding arrogant. You can see your life is fortunate. You’re not living in a war zone right now. You’re not living in a place that’s starving to death right now.
You’re not overwhelmed. Mean, you know, even where I live, in California, you know, the number of prisons, the amount of violence in that country is unbelievable, unbelievable in comparison, you know. So even that. You’re not living in one of the, you know, the one of the, you know, one of the prisons somewhere. You’re not somewhere where you’re you know, you’re so poor, you’re not somewhere where nobody dis where where you’re disrespected all the time and seen as just a load of rubbish, you know.
You compare just with, you know, you’re not overwhelmed by being a junkie. Maybe you have been, maybe you are, whatever, but generally speaking, we’re not overwhelmed by that. We’re We’re not overwhelmed by the wish to steal or lie or kill. Just you compare, just do a little market survey on the human race, and you’ll come to the conclusion that we are enormously fortunate but if we think God did it, we have no big deal, okay, God did it, maybe we have some we think our mother and father did it, well, that’s not a big deal but if you ever get a sense that you did it, which is a very surprising thought, but this is the Buddhist approach we created the cause for this life. You’re hearing this now, let’s say we are Buddhist, and we know about this stuff, we’re saying, Yeah, alright, yeah, nothing’s moving, nothing’s shifting, nothing’s changing, and if we haven’t heard it before maybe it’s a surprise.
But they say that when you really realise this one, when it’s gone from just knowing the words to knowing it in the heart, it gives you so much energy, it makes you wish to not waste a single fraction of this precious life. So precious do you know that it is, you know? So how do you get to this? How do you get from knowing the word love to being in love? Well, the approach here is by contemplating it again and again, by thinking about it again and again, until you actually start to realise you are enormously fortunate.
Now, what comes from that is not some kind of arrogance, but is then this incredible wish to not waste this life. So what does wasting this life mean? Well, in Buddhist terms, wasting the life is being caught up in anger, confusion, hopelessness, jealousy, no good, attachment, just following our feelings, just sort of floating along, bit of this, and kind of basically using up the precious fruits that we have created from past morality, past generosity, past virtue. It’s like using up the money in the bank, and you end up with nothing, because the whole view in Buddhism is this one of karma, cause and effect. So you get the energy to want and not waste, to actually use it.
So what’s using this life skillfully? Well, given in Buddhist terms that we have this continuity of consciousness, given that nothing happens randomly, that whatever we’re experiencing is a result of what we have done before, before, before, and that we’re continually experiencing the fruit of that, and given that everything we do now is sowing seeds for more fruit in the future, future, and given the Buddhist idea, and we’ll talk more about this, that positive energy of kindness, compassion, love, generosity are what sows the seeds that bring happiness and good things, and negative energy of attachment, jealousy, anger, confusion, lying, whatever, all the other so called negative stuff, which we all know about, sows the seeds for suffering in the future, given all that, then it’s logical. Using this life means, you know, changing attachment, anger into kindness, love, compassion, and using it for our sake and the sake of others, making use of this life, because it’s like a precious resource, this life is a precious resource. So just to use it, as they would say, to eat, sleep and go to the toilet, which is essentially what mostly we do the same as ants and dogs, but ours just looks more sophisticated, that’s all.
We dress it up and make it look nicer and have bedrooms for doing it and nice kitchens with good modern design things, whereas ants just do it on the ground, you know? But essentially it’s the same. I’m not trying to criticise ants or us, but So to make more use of this life, and this is what it is, why we sit in a place like this, why we even come to something called Buddhist, is because we have all these aspirations in our hearts, don’t we? There’s something in us kind of feeling there must be something more than just eating, sleeping and going to the toilet, which is what most of our lives are, and therefore that purpose: sustaining ourselves so we have a nice house, we can buy a nice meal, so we can eat the food, we can go to the toilet, we can eat again the next day, so we can stay alive. So what are we alive for?
You know, most of our lives are so busy just sustaining the body that we forget there’s a purpose to the body itself, to the mind. It’s not just to keep sustaining itself, which is what we tend to do, you know, because our lives are so fraught and so busy and so, you know, so complicated. So there has to be something more, isn’t there, to the use of this precious human body, this precious human life. You know, we have these yearnings, and because we’ve got this precious life now, this life of leisure, we’re not in a war zone. If you’re in a war zone now, forget about the luxury of listening to your inner aspirations, you’re just struggling to survive, struggling you know, retain, you know, kind of lessen the paranoia, the fear.
If you’re living in a place now where you’re starving to death, there’s no time to think about your inner aspirations. How absurd, you know? You can hardly even think of anything but that next grain of rice if you’re lucky, if you’re in prison, you know, if you’re living in one of these outrageous conditions of some of these people that I’m writing to, these ex gangsters, you know, quite a few prisoners in my life these days. Then, you know, your life is just sustained just by you’re watching your back every two seconds, you’re so full of paranoia and fear, so full of rage and hate, so involved with the next war, I mean, this is how it is in these prisons in California, know, these gangs. Forget about the leisure.
Forget about the luxury of listening to your inner aspirations. What a miracle, you know? I mean, we just have to look around the world and see, and the Buddhist approach is there’s no accident. Nobody’s in a situation that they haven’t created in the past. This is karma.
It’s not just a random series of events. We just didn’t all get plonked here for some weird you know, because of some god deciding something, or just some random events and no one knows why. In Buddhist terms, we each of us created the cause to be who we are, to have the situation we’ve got, to have the body we’ve got. And that’s just comparing the human life, not comparing with ninety nine point nine nine percent of all other living beings, in Buddhist terms are in other realms of existence, like the animals and the spirits and the other beings, you know, whose lives are far worse. I mean, you know, an ant hasn’t got any space as an ant to do anything but be an ant, rush about, you know, like a maniac morning, noon, and night.
You’re not an ant, Helen. Don’t even think, I mean, it’s absurd to even have that thought, and if you do have that thought, then galvanise yourself to not waste your life, to not be like an ant, that’s great, but you’re not like an there’s no way, you know. Lama Zopa has said, one lama has said, if you knew the mind of an ordinary dog for two minutes, just knew the experience of an ordinary dog’s mind, you’d just weep at the thought of wasting another fraction of its life. That’s a dog, not even an ant, you know. Mean, this is an interesting view.
I mean, we don’t think like this in the West either. So somehow to get the energy to realise that what you are right at this moment, the precious opportunity that you have got, you have created by working so hard in a past life that you would weep at the thought of how much you must have done, how much spiritual practice, how much virtue, how much kindness, how much generosity, how much patience, how much hard work you must have done to set it up that you are sitting here at this moment with this body and this mind. They say that contemplating this again and again gives you the energy to not want to waste this precious life. It’s like anything you have, if you suddenly open your drawer and you’ve got this drawer full of I was going to say green paper but it’s green in America. Money, it’s this coloured plastic stuff here, isn’t it?
All this coloured plastic stuff in a drawer, and you see it, you have no concept of its you don’t know what it means, you’ve never heard of money, this stuff. It’s a bit strange looking, you don’t like the design much, you think the colour’s kind of boring, so you kind of tear it up and you use it for this and you use it for that and you use it in the toilet. It’s sort of like if you don’t understand the nature of something, the purpose of it, the meaning of it, the use of it, then you waste it, don’t you? And then one day you start to learn that it has incredible it’s a resource, it’s this miraculous stuff that you can transform into marvellous things. These bits of plastic, if you give that amount to this one, you get that.
Wow! You’ve realised it’s a resource, it’s got energy. Do you understand my point? It’s a resource. We don’t look at ourselves like that, we just look at ourselves as a useless piece of blue plastic, you know, it’s got no meaning, no essence, what am I here for, what does it mean, what am I, we don’t see anything to do with cause and effect, we don’t understand that we create the cause to have this body.
It’s quite an outrageous idea. This is the Buddhist approach, you know, that we created the cause to have this body with this life and this mind. It’s a product of our past hard work. You know yourself when you do understand the value of money at the relative level that you’ve worked hard to get it. You wouldn’t even waste one single dollar, would you?
It would be criminal to have one dollar and just to throw it down the ground. Of course not. Even fifty cents you’d pick up, shocked, with the thought of wasting it, because you recognise automatically you’ve worked for it and it’s a resource. Well, that’s the approach to have to this life, this body, that it’s a resource. You yourself are a resource, so you have to learn to know what you’re a resource for.
Well, the very least, in Buddhist terms, is for more of the same. It’s a whole interesting way of looking at things. We don’t have this view at all. There’s no concept like this in the West, you know. What’s that noise all the time?
Is that me doing something? Is it? Okay. So this is something that the way they present the teachings of Buddhism, this comes sort of first, but in a way it’s kind of interesting because what do do? Automatic.
You mean you’re not doing anything? Good, okay. So this is an interesting idea. We don’t think we created the cause to be who I am, and it seems an odd idea. So it’s quite sophisticated to get to this point, if it is, you know, if something does But the Buddhist approach is the only way you’re going to get this is by thinking about it every day until suddenly something starts to hit, and there’s an energy comes from that, to not want to waste your life, you know, to use it skillfully, to use this resource skillfully.
And the very minimum use of it is to at least create more fruits of a similar nature, because Buddhism would say that consciousness, mind, is a continuity of energy. It didn’t begin at conception and won’t end at death. This is just a temporary packaging, you know. The consciousness is beginningless and endless, and it’s continually experiencing the fruits of its past actions all the time. There is nothing else, there’s no other opportunity, there’s no possibility of anything else.
Whatever you think, do and say leaves imprints or seeds in your mind that will bring a fruit of some kind of experience as a kind of life and as experiences within that life. So an ant, in Buddhist terms, is the product of its own past energy. Its consciousness from a previous death went into the egg of the mummy ant, and its little new consciousness formed into the shape of an ant body and ant mind, and so then it has the experiences of an ant. So we are the result of our past energy. Our consciousness went into our mummy’s womb and formed into this new shape with these possibilities, these human possibilities, with the human options and the human way of seeing reality, with the human options, the human choices, which is one of the miracles of having a human mind and a human body.
So for most of us, the thought of even having been anything else at all in the first place is already odd, not to mention the possibility of being an ant, it’s the most odd idea, or that an ant is the product of its own energy. This is the view of karma, which is pretty central to Buddhism. And as all of this stuff, you know, this is Buddhist presenting Buddhist philosophy, basically. And what you do with this if you’re attempting to be a Buddhist, try to bring this from here to here, to move something in the heart, to recognize experientially that you are the fruit of what you’ve done before. And then by evaluating what you are and comparing it with others, you can come to a conclusion that it’s a pretty good fruit and it has pretty good opportunities.
And then you have this wish to use this to create more fruits of a similar nature, at the very least, not to mention using it to completely become fully developed. Does this have any meaning to anybody? Has anybody not heard these things before? Does it sound strange? To the next level, somebody else is worrying, if we don’t, our karma is bad, do we go down and become an ant?
Buddhism is saying that all, yes, that all ants can become humans and we can become ants, because all of them are just a result of past actions. But how does the ant have that sort of capacity when you just describe Yes, exactly. Absolutely. Well, it’s got in its mind stream, like you have, Buddhism would say, countless imprints from other past lives, that when its ant’s karma runs out, by some coming together miraculous conditions, those past morality karmas can ripen into another human life, for example, human life, a life where they have more option, more choice. Every being has that potential, it’s just sometimes when you’re in an ant groove it’s harder to get out of it.
Sort of a way of saying it like that. But it’s the hierarchy in the sense that What can an ant do to elevate its status? Not much as an ant. All it can do is wait for its ant karma to run out, and its other human imprints in its mind waiting there latent for them to ripen due to various conditions. So there is a hierarchy and that’s the human being?
Is that what you mean by hierarchy? You mean some are higher and some are lower? Well, the human is here and an ant is here. Yes. Well, the way of saying that in Buddhism is that are some types of rebirth that are more useful than others.
To be born in an ant body is the result of negative karma, yes, and is a suffering life, and is fairly limited. To be born as a human is the result of positive karma, and if we use it well, can bring good results. But obviously, let’s look around us, we don’t often use it well. But the fruit to be a human is the fruit of past virtue. But you can use a human life to get very to not necessarily get another human life.
I mean, look at the way humans mess up, and we murder and kill and have Hitlers and have attachments and anger and killing creatures and do appalling things as humans. If we use our human life well, one of the miracles of the human mind, isn’t it, if we just observe, is that we seem to have choices, you know? And that means we don’t keep coming back, as you said? Well, it’s one the reasonable life Buddhism would assert to have in order to keep practicing, to eventually go beyond any kind of rebirth. This is, I mean, is the way of saying it, you know.
There are many possibilities of rebirth in Buddhism. They have this sort of rough kind of overview of what they call the god realms, which is the result of enormous virtue. But in a way those realms are so blissful, where they result in enormous virtue, enormous morality, enormous generosity, a being creates very much positive karma you can be born in what they call a god realm where you have a light body, very blissful, very radiant, lasts for eons but in a sense there’s not much use because you’re such a state of bliss and everything is so perfect you don’t do much with it, is how they say it. Then the result of a human life is sort of down the spectrum a bit, that’s the result of virtue. But we have enough suffering in this human life maybe to not get so caught up in thinking life is just that wonderful, so we can start to really look at the human mind and do something with it.
Then there’s the animal realm, all the creatures and the elephants and the dogs and the ants and the fish and the tiny little beings, and that’s the result of negative actions, suffering, because it’s great suffering to have that type of mind. Then there’s the spirit realm, far more occupied than the animals, which is very, very suffering. These beings are disembodied as well, but they’re hugely suffering, hugely grasping beings. Then you’ve got the hell realms, which are the most suffering of all. All of these beings, in Buddhist terms, are not put there by anybody, there’s no such concept in Buddhism.
God isn’t doing it, there’s no such being as God. I mean, there is no such concept in Buddhism as a superior being like God or Buddha pulling the strings and saying, You now do this and you now do that. We are all the fruit of our own past actions. Every living being is continually creating the causes for its own experiences. Our own actions themselves produce their own results.
Where do you go? Who’s you? In your next mind. Oh, I have no idea. Probably it should become an aunt.
I have no idea. I mean, I’m not clairvoyant. I can’t tell. All I’m trying to do is create What you’re saying. Yes.
What you’re using, and I’m presuming that that’s what you’re doing. Well, don’t presume. I mean, I’m you know, don’t there’s no point in presuming. Murder somebody tomorrow and sit here and say what you’re say? Pardon?
What you’re espousing to in this group, that one would presume is part of your life. Yeah, I’m trying to practice. That’s exactly right. So you continue to practice? Yes.
And kind of tick off all the columns. Where do you go to from there? Well, the whole point of the Buddhist approach, like I’m saying from the beginning, our potential is to be an enlightened being, our potential is to be completely free of suffering. Buddhism is saying, that’s our potential. That you have that potential, every living being has the potential to become a Buddha, a being who is totally free of all delusion, totally free of all suffering, and completely full of all the perfect qualities, love, kindness, compassion, but limitlessly, I mean way beyond our imagination, developed to an extent that we wouldn’t normally think possible.
That’s what a Buddha is, and that’s what person who’s labeled a Buddhist is attempting to achieve. That’s the vision of the potential that you’re holding and going towards, and what practice is, is trying to develop that potential. In a simple way, means by knowing your own mind, understanding the nature of attachment and delusion and all the other stuff, and eliminating that and growing the opposite, and eventually you become that. Well, that’s you, me and everybody else, as the Buddhism say. So that’s where you, eventually.
So you get to a point, this word nirvana in Buddhism, you can say that it just simply refers to the state of mind of a person who, through doing this work, eliminating their delusions, has achieved cessation of suffering, the freedom from suffering, no longer any delusion, no longer any anger, no longer any attachment, finished completely, therefore no longer any suffering, therefore blissful, clear, compassionate, amazing, extraordinary person, a being who’s quite remarkable. That’s what nirvana is, you know? A person who has achieved this has cut the seeds and doesn’t need to be reborn, wouldn’t create causes for more rebirths. But if you’re continuing also to practice alongside this enormous compassion and the wish to benefit others who are in the same boat as you, then you would take a rebirth, rebirth but this time not out of delusion, but you’d choose, very consciously, to take different rebirths simply in order to benefit others. This is how they talk about it.
When you’re fully developing that whole job you become what they call a Buddha. Again, is a word that refers to a state of being of a person who’s fully developed wisdom, fully developed compassion. It’s important to hear it in a sort of psychological way rather than some kind of holy religious way. This is what Buddhism is saying. This is Buddhist picture.
Very similar to what Paul Davies is. Who’s Paul Davies? Tell me. He’s a scientist. Right.
And he in the valley you’re talking about. I understand. Right. Okay. That’s good.
So that’s what he’s someone you know, mean, somebody you study or something? Yes. I see. I I find a lot of what he says in his life. I understand.
Okay. I mean, that’s it, isn’t it? So I understand. Well, I don’t know. You think about it.
It’s like if you’re heading on a journey to Paris, France, that’s your goal. It’s clear, it’s sensible to have your final goal in your mind, and then all the steps that you get on the way. In other words, if you only just set your whole plan up, whole journey to get to Melbourne, and you get to Melbourne and you’ve to start again, go to a travel agent, get another ticket, do all your journey again, think about it, then you get only to Sydney, you’ve to start the whole thing again. Why not aim and get to Paris, France all the way and then anyway you’re going pass through all the steps? So why not have the big picture?
It’s just common sense, if the goal is Paris France, it’s common sense to have that as your goal and then you’ll pass through all the other steps anyway it’s just intelligent now if it’s going to confuse you, okay, maybe you only think of just getting to Melbourne first and that’s enough for you then you have to retrench and have a holiday and then you get to the next step. It’s a question of your mind, you understand. But if you can hold it in your mind, the whole journey, it’s very sensible. It makes it much smoother. Well, that’s the Buddhist idea.
So what Buddha’s saying, Buddha’s the Buddhist deal is that what he’s articulating is that our potential is this one, which is actually, if you think of it in psychological terms, it’s far more radical than most western psychologists. What he’s saying is you can be absolutely free of all attachment, all anger, all jealousy, all pride, to the to the nth degree beyond which it is an impossibility to ever get it again, and that you can be absolutely full of all the positive qualities and we label them wisdom, kindness, love. So to be utterly full of those. So wisdom in Buddhist terms is called omniscience when it’s completely developed. Now we think in terms of, well, that’s God, you know.
In Buddhism, you can become omniscient, it’s your potential, not just one person, you know. Every living being can become that. So omniscience means you see everything as it is. You see the entire universe, you see all universes, see all minds of all beings, all their present, all their past, and all their future. There is nothing you don’t see.
That’s the meaning of omniscience. Buddhism says that’s your Paris France, on one side. Side. On the other side, your potential is to be absolutely full of infinite compassion, or absolute empathy with every living being, as if they were you. There would be no separation.
You have the wisdom to see all their minds perfectly. You have this complete empathy with everyone. And thirdly, you have, you know, omnipotence, I was going to say emptiness, omnipotence. Okay? You have the power to do whatever needs to be done effortlessly, for as many eons as it takes, in many, as many universes as there are, to benefit every one of these beings perfectly.
For example, when you have this omniscience and this infinite compassion, you can manifest your own consciousness into infinite numbers of forms as you wish. So this is what Buddhism is saying is the goal. This is your potential, it is innately who you are, this is what you can become, and every living being, if they exist, every ant, every dog, every human, every spirit, every hell being, every whoever exists in this universe, or these universes in Buddhist terms, possesses innately this potential. So that’s your Paris France, so you aim for that, and then your path is the steps that you take to aim, and it doesn’t matter if it’s fifty two lives in advance, it doesn’t matter if it’s going to take you an eon, that isn’t the point. If it’s your potential and you aim for it, you set up the journey, then every step on the way you’re heading towards it, you know, and you do all the right steps to get you there, and the big perspective is important.
So that’s what your job is, and that’s the Buddhist approach. So that’s why, certainly in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the emphasis in the monasteries, the emphasis in the way, is to listen to the whole, to get as much as you can of this whole path, to understand the whole journey, to understand the goal. I mean, the Four Noble Truths in one packaging of Buddha’s teaching is the presentation of just this, it’s the whole deal. It’s the goal, it’s the explaining of it, it’s the path, how you get there, it’s showing you the obstacles, the things that you’ve to get removed to get out of the way, and then once you get all that knowledge, it’s first, but like anything, like any recipe, you slowly put it into practice. And the more you have the overview, the more big mind you have, the more patience, the more skill, the more confidence, the more perseverance, and you’re continually practicing that, putting that into practice, and that’s what it is, you know.
So the Buddhist emphasis, especially the Tibetan one, the Dalai Lama really stresses, it’s so important if you say you’re a Buddhist, to have the Buddhist picture, to have Buddhist teachings, because they tell you how to practice, they show you the steps to take to get to this goal, which is your innate potential anyway, rather than just stumbling along thinking it’s kind of just being a nice person. It’s sort of like, well, gonna get to, you know, well, you know, maybe try and get into the city first, you know, I’ll try this road here, then you’ll meander along and six months later you get to Adelaide City. I mean, you can always do it in a more skillful way, and have a more big picture, you know, it’s just a question of intelligence, it’s an intelligent approach, really. And I think often with spiritual practices we don’t think of it like this. We think of it as all sort of airy fairy, and you get blessings and insights and miracles happen, you close your eyes, and I think we’re a little bit superstitious sometimes.
Would it require the rectangle? That’s a very interesting point. The Buddhist approach is, Buddha is saying don’t believe a single word I’m saying, and he means by this, don’t just believe. You just don’t have to believe. So, okay, think about it like this, let’s say there’s something called enlightenment, let’s say it is a possibility, let’s say it is true that you have this potential, just like, let’s say, there is a place called Paris, France.
So, the way we tend to think about belief is, Oh, I believe in Paris, France! Then? Great! So? How does that change you?
You’ve got to get there, babe, and have the experience of it. That’s what will change you. So that’s the point in Buddhism, believing in something is a means to an end, having you having confidence or belief that Paris France exists, there’s a very good point to that. It’s not the end in itself, it’s what we tend to think of as religion, it’s the thing that will give you the energy to bloody get there. But then you verify that by checking up, reading the books, listening to the tour guides, then you follow the paths to get there, but you have to have the confidence that it does exist, don’t you?
And that’s belief. It’s not just, you see the point I’m making, it’s not just, Oh, I believe in Paris, France, and you sit here twiddling your thumbs. That is useless to you. But yes, I believe in Paris, France, I’ve checked it out, but I’ve checked it out. I’ve read the books, I’ve listened to people who have been there and I want to go there too please so you use your belief in Paris France as the means to get to Paris France to finally get the experience yourself that’s the difference, that’s the Buddhist approach you’ve got to have confidence in something and belief just means confidence The way we tend to think of it in religious terms is simply, I believe in God, that’s enough.
Sorry, it’s more than that, know, you’ve to put your money where your mouth is. Powerful, you know, do you see my point? So yes, there is faith, but it’s based on wisdom. So I can tell you, I’m not clairvoyant. I cannot see past or future lives.
No way. But the thinking that I’ve done so far, you know, on karma, on the different things that I say Buddhist the Buddhist things, So far, I can say I have some confidence in the steps that I have taken because what they’ve told me, if you do this, this and this on this journey to Paris, France, you’ll get to Melbourne, you’ll get there, or maybe I’ve gotten to the next suburb from wherever we are. What’s it called, Foolishen. Foolishen, okay? So then so far so good, I’ve got some confidence, because so far, the steps that my tour guide told me has got to me where they said it would get me.
So I have confidence, so far, that it’s working. That’s good, that’s faith. So prepares me to take the next step. You’ve got to have an open mind, but then got to use intelligence. But listen, can you hear the point I’m saying?
If you don’t believe Paris France exists, do you believe in Paris France? You see my question here: do you believe in Paris France? It’s not a catch question, it’s a simple question What is your belief based on? Come on! And what have you known about?
Where have you learned it? Through books and people who have been there So you do believe in Paris but it’s like I just say to you oh, some place called Gobbledygook exists and you say oh, I believe in Gobbledygook what’s your proof? Oh, I don’t know, I just believe it that’s what I’m saying the difference is you’ve got logical reasons to prove your belief in Paris France is a valid belief that’s all I’m saying. It’s not just a blind belief, that’s the difference. A belief in that sense is an intelligent one, that’s all.
But we’ve got this meaning of blind faith as some kind of just I believe in Gobeluga, somebody told me. I’m sorry, you’ve to check up. That’s the Buddhist approach, you’ve to check up, validate, then when you validate it, you’ve got some strength in what you’re doing and it gives you methods to get there, which is finally the point of your belief in Paris France. It doesn’t help you to believe it exists. Nothing in you has changed.
You’ve got to go get the taste of Paris France. You’ve got to experience it. That’s the point. Do you see what I’m saying? Then there’s some energy behind it, you know?
This is what Buddha is saying, reality He’s not saying you have to believe his view of reality, he’s saying, from his experience, he has discovered that reality is this, this, this and this, that everything is impermanent, result of cause and effect, that it’s all to do with karma, that consciousness is beginningless, that it’s endless, that your potential is enlightenment, all Buddhist philosophy, what Buddha is saying is, this is what I have discovered from my journey, from my experience, and he’s written his tour guide. He’s been to Paris, France, he’s described it, and he’s told you the path to get there, and he’s laying it all out. He’s saying, excuse me, honey, if you want this too, this is how you do it. The onus is on you, don’t have to believe it, you don’t have to believe a word I’m saying, don’t check it out, you know, check it out. Using intelligence to check it out one step at a time, and then you if you feel you wanna have this one, then you try it out for yourself, you do it.
That’s the approach. Just like we think of as we say something called science, you know, on. Whereas we tend to think of religion as something superstitious, you just gotta believe it, and that’s enough, you know? Or do it because somebody said. This is just not the Buddhist approach, that’s all.
And then it’s got more energy I mean, it’s got energy to it, you know, then. Because then you verify it for yourself and you take responsibility, you don’t blame other people somehow. This is the Buddhist approach. Do you see what I’m saying? Yeah.
I mean, so I can say there’s an enormous amount of confidence and faith that’s needed. I haven’t got a clue about past lives. Have not even an inkling of even one moment of a past life, even some people have, you know, I have not. But I’ve done the reading, I’ve read the tour guides, I’ve read the books, I’ve spoken to people, I’ve listened to teachings on people who have supposedly been to Paris, France, you know, To so far, the explanations they’ve given me, for me, in my mind, what I can say for myself as a Buddhist, you know, they’re about the least unintelligent of the ones, the most consistent as a package of reality that I can find, that seems to my mind to be, so far I can say so good, you know? So in my own life, using the explanation of karma, that everything is a result of what I have done before, that, you know, I don’t meet you in a random way, that the fact that you punch me is not some random event, that I must have punched you in the past, that causes me to take responsibility, it causes me to bring it back onto myself, and it’s saying to me that if I created the cause for this to happen, do I want this to happen again?
No, don’t. What do I do? Don’t punch back. It’s a simple philosophy. It’s a very powerful one for helping you transform yourself.
And I can say for me, I’m working with it, attempting to work with it, and it seems to work. So all you can do is finally, if something works, and you know, you look back on your life and you see that maybe you’ve got a little bit less angry, little bit less unkind, a little bit more kind, more patient, more spacious, more whatever, then so far so good, you This is my approach. Does that make sense what I’m saying? In other words, it’s got to be experiential. You’ve got to be constantly bringing it down to earth, relating it to your own life, and then tasting it and then checking it out, and then if it works, you keep using it as a method.
If it doesn’t, I mean, I’d be foolish to be here after these years being a Buddhist still, know, mouthing these empty words if it’s not working, or I think it’s stupid, or I don’t really believe it, or I’m not sure, or I haven’t tried it, or something, you know? It just doesn’t make sense, does it? Yeah. No, sir. We’re not gonna end.
We’re we’re not That’s right. So then? I’m not just here now planning to go to Paris. I’m here now because I came from South America. Right.
And so if I can if I can feel or see Thank you, Audrey. Thank you for sharing, as I say in California. Sorry. There’s nothing wrong. Mean, is there any A way to think to help you get an understanding of what you mean?
Yeah. Understand. I understand. Oh, I see what you’re saying. No.
Think it can only help. Sure it can. It can only help. That’s right. That’s right.
Well, that’s where, you know, this is where, in the Buddhist approach, you’ve got to have some kind of clear thinking, because everything isn’t evident to the senses. What Buddhism is saying, as we’re saying, is that consciousness, your mind itself, is not evident to your senses. Your anger is not physical in Buddhist terms, it’s not something in your brain, you know, we think it, we talk about it like that. But Buddhist approach is that consciousness or mind, consciousness, the conscious part of you, the living part of you, the difference between you, your body as a dead one and a live one, the presence of your mind or consciousness is what makes the difference, and that consciousness is not something you can see, taste, touch or smell. There’s evidence of it because you move and walk and talk and feel warm, but in Buddhist terms, it’s the conscious part that is like the light that turns the switch on, that makes you living, is non physical.
So already this is mind boggling, already this is something hard to verify because you can’t You know, in Western terms, if you can’t see it, then you can’t talk about it. It’s just in the realms But that’s where you have, in the Buddhist approach, you’ve got to have a lot of logic to even try to analyze how there can be such a thing. So already, forget even about other realms, you’re talking about even the presence of your own mind, you know, to really look at the nature of mind and what it is and how it isn’t physical, and to show some kind of logical reasons about how come it isn’t physical, how come it didn’t come from mother father, how come it didn’t come from someone called God, how come it didn’t come from a previous moment of itself. You’ve to use logical analysis, it’s like the way we use logic now in mathematics, you know, it’s in this extraordinary realm of kind of intellect. That’s exactly the way the Buddhist approach, using that kind of logical analysis to show how mind can’t be body, can’t come from mother father, can’t come from God, how it can’t be physical.
So to really practice Buddhism in this way, for us, it’s not so much. Pursuit in our culture now is completely Okay. No problem. It’s to do with It’s in the realm of science now, not even philosophers, don’t worry, even philosophers are kind of a bit boring now, really, it’s the mathematicians who are the supreme. But, you know, back in the days of the eighth century in India, or even probably in the Middle Ages in Europe, the greatest thinkers were the religious ones, because it was there that you had the philosophy and all the great thinking.
Now the Tibetan monasteries, the extent of their logical analysis would blow our minds, with great respect to us in the West. Just my little bit of observation I had done of the Tibetan Buddhist system, that the level of the logical analysis, the refined level of the logic and the debate that they use is totally mind boggling, it’s remarkable, it’s marvelous, it’s extraordinary, you know. So I mean it’s really interesting that we link that back in our culture right now with spiritual. Most of us don’t even have the means to do that because you have to have a huge amount of knowledge to do that, that’s why they study for twenty five years in the Tibetan monasteries, you know. And what so it’s very I mean, I’m just chatting away now, you know.
But this is what is needed to really get some kind of clear, clear logical, clear, deep confidence based on what they call inferential knowledge of the existence of mind, of how it is in physical, the existence of past lives. This is exactly what they’re trying to do because it is something that isn’t evident to the senses. When something is evident to the senses, you don’t need too much proof, you don’t need much logic. And you’re talking about here an awful lot, and that’s why it has come from this extraordinary even in the seventh century, eighth century, in this great monastery in India, in Nālānda monastery, there were like ten thousand monks in this place, you know, they had this highly sophisticated level of debate, which is what they’re still using in Tibet. And they used to have debates, the Hindus, for example, and the Buddhists would debate, and there would be an agreement that whoever won the debate, whoever lost the debate, necessarily become the other one, because it was final proof, because the emphasis put on clarity of logic to prove something experiential was really profound, so there was enough of them.
If the Hindu lost, then obviously he made a mistake Buddhism is obviously correct, it’s valid presentation of reality. Presentation of reality. So it’s quite interesting we don’t think like that at all now with religion. Think it’s just this we’re completely coming to an area of utter superstition. So it demands an enormous amount of thinking.
So most of us don’t have that, and I think most of us, in Buddhist terms now, talking of karma, most of us are Buddhist simply because we’ve karmic imprints from being Buddhists in the past, and in a sense we’ve just got faith like everybody else, but it just flows along saying I’m a Buddhist, you know, because we’ve got some imprints. We’re just better than nothing. And they say to really, really get out of saṃsāra, to really discover this thing of reality, you’ve got to have a very profoundly deep mind, a very clear mind, way beyond delusion, to be able to meditate for years and years and years, and this also involves enormous intellectual clarity that then becomes experiential. Intellectual clarity in Buddhism is the stepping stone to experiential realisation. In other words, emptiness, you know, even just to study emptiness, the concept, the Buddha’s view of reality, of exist, of being empty from their own side and blah blah blah.
It’s highly refined, but it’s not just intellectual, it’s not just in the there’s no ego involved in it, it’s totally I mean, I’ve heard Lama Yeshe say, you can almost get realisations in the debate yard. In other words, conceptual clarity can be so extraordinary tasty, it can lead you to a powerful realization of it experientially. It’s very interesting. And most of us aren’t equipped with that. Most of us can just float along, you know.
If we are equipped, then incredible. We can get enlightened, you know. If that’s the case, Laveena, psychiatric conventions should be full of Buddhists. Why? Because they understand about human mind.
Yes, but they don’t, because according to the West, you just talk an airy fairy load of rubbish because it’s non physical. Psychiatrists and psychologists in the West are talking about the brain, aren’t they? There’s no meeting point. You’re talking about two different areas, you’re talking about talk and cheese. There’s no meeting point.
Which is why, there is, Dalai Lama in his great skill manages to find meeting points, and he’s highly impressed some of the neuroscientists and all these different people that exist in the Western stuff, and that’s why he finds it so important to have these meeting points. Many of those books are published, and he’s unbelievably skillful in how he has these meetings with these people. They’re marvellous to try and mimic, because I could visualise easily how these conversations go and how meditating for it. I don’t believe it. Right.
Try it. Yeah. It’s See what happens tomorrow. No. But, I mean, you you need twenty five years to really get the exalt.
It’s not enough, I think. I think it’s gonna be a lot of lot of angst before it happens. Where’s all this going? It’s interesting where all this is going. I have no idea all these things, they just go.
It’s all you people who are doing this, you see. What you’ve got to understand is you’re the ones determining the direction of all these things. I just sit here, you press my buttons and something happens. Really, it’s like that. It’s okay, we’ve got this human mind, this human consciousness, where in Buddhist terms every single microsecond we are experiencing the fruit of our own past.
We set it up and now we have headaches, we have anger, we have jealousy, we have paranoia, we have love, we have money, we have good bodies, we have healthy bodies, we have unhealthy bodies, we have people punch us, we have people love us, you know, we’re born in an ugly place and a beautiful place, we’re in jail, we’re not in jail, we got caught, we didn’t get caught. Whatever it is, you know, it’s our own, as Lama Zopa says, it’s our own karmic appearance, everything is our karmic appearance, you know. Now, I mean, this is a radical statement, sounds completely airy fairy, it sounds very mystical, because it isn’t at all how it appears, This is what Buddha is saying, that the fundamental delusion in our mind, this gross ignorance, this very profoundly ingrained unawareness, complete unawareness, ignorance of how things actually are, totally, totally obscures our mind from seeing things as they actually are. Because of this fundamental unawareness it causes us to have all these other misconceptions that cause us to see things in a completely different way from the way they actually are. So what are you saying fundamentally?
That is at many levels, you know. One level was the one of impermanence. The deepest level, the most pervasive, if you wish, the most profound, is this one that everything appears to be out there, separate from me, having nothing to do with me, nothing to do with cause and effect in the sense of my own mind and my own actions. It doesn’t appear this way to us, does it? When someone comes along and you fall in love two minutes later and you can’t believe this amazing person, you’ve never met him before, where’d they come from?
Just out of the blue, like from the sky, like a mushroom. It feels like, Of course it’s got nothing to do with me. This person just comes, they’re unbelievably handsome, I suddenly feel so blissful, I didn’t do it, they made me happy. Mean, is how it feels, isn’t it? All Buddha is saying is it’s a big fat rotten lie.
It isn’t like that, he’s saying. You just have ignorance, that’s all. You can’t see any. Your mind is at the grossest level, it’s merely conceptual, it’s only at the sensory and conceptual level. You huge levels of much subtler conscious awareness that if you were able to access those, you’d be able to see past and future, you’d be able to see all the cause and conditions set up by you in the past and this person in the past, and they went through all their meandering through these lives and you went all through these lives and then slowly, slowly, karmic energy ripen, you go boom!
Like a surprise, you didn’t see it coming, you know? Just like I had yesterday, there’s a person on a mountain and they can see me driving this way and Helen driving from this way, and she can’t see me and I can’t see her, and suddenly she appears around the corner and we clash and I think, where’d she come from? But this person on the mountain can see it all perfectly, can’t they? You see my point? They can see it all coming.
Now if we had clairvoyance, we could see it all coming. We could see all the past and the future and where we’re setting up and all this is there, and I meet her and she sees this and I hate her and all this stuff, it’s all set up, it’s all coming from our past actions. I mean, it’s an interesting story, you know, it’s an outrageous one. This is what karma is saying, what Buddha is saying, that it’s called karma, cause and effect, that everything is due to what we’ve done before. Whomever we meet is due to having met them before.
How they treat us is how we treated them before. How they speak to us, what they do to us, whether we’re put in prison, whether people hate us, whether people love us, whether we’re healthy, whether we’re not healthy. All the teachings of karma explain in this kind of very orderly way, you know, these actions bring this result, this action brings this result, there are these kinds of results, like this, you know. So the sum total of this life that seems so random, floating along in life, waiting for something to happen, is the main experience we tend to have. It’s like an energy that seems to be nothing to do with us, isn’t it?
Things seem to well, that’s in a way the karmic one. We feel like we don’t have control most of the time, we don’t think we have, but it’s karma, we set it up. This is the Buddhist approach. So slowly bringing this way into our life starts to you get more sense of owning what happens to you, not feeling like a victim, owning it, taking responsibility for it. It’s very powerful, you know.
But if you put it, like, you know, if you like Arturo in prison in his cell and everything, you this, you know, this Mexican guy, my friend Arturo, in his cell twenty three hours a day, until the day he dies as far as they’re concerned, you know. Then this view of karma for him, two and a half years ago, starting to read about Buddhism in his cell because he didn’t have anybody to bash or shoot or knife any longer, had no reason to defend himself, no gangsters to have to fight because he’s in this cell on his own, so what happens? These imprints in his mind rise to the surface and he reads stuff about Buddhism, blows his mind, and now he’s taking this view into his life, accepting completely this this experience of being in his cell all day. Who wants that? Nobody, you know.
No human contact with any living beings. So he’s making he’s because he’s taking responsibility for it, recognizing it as it is karma, seeing the good in it, using it, so now his mind is happy. And this is the bottom line, you know. The victim mentality the which is the one we have, walking through life like it’s not my fault and I didn’t do anything and it’s not fair, you know. This is how we feel, isn’t This complete passive person, victim, a victim, self pity me, Lama Yeshe calls it the ego, you know.
It’s a very good taste, self pity me. It’s how we walk around, isn’t it? Passively, victim mentality, not having any sense that I have anything to do with anything that happens to me, never thinking that all my thoughts are constantly creating causes and imprints in my mind that were continually bringing more fruits in the future, more fruits in the future, you know, that attachment can only bring more suffering, that anger can only bring more suffering, Chenrezig, pride, manipulating, lying, whatever it is we do in our even little smile sort of ways, we’re not all Hitler, right? We’re constantly sowing seeds for poisoned fruits, for more suffering and more headaches and more negative lives and more misery and meeting more people who are going to continue to do more harm to us. We’re setting it up all the time.
We’re experiencing it now and we’re never learning from it this way. We just see it as poor me, it’s not fair, why do they do this, I didn’t create the cause, it is not fair, he this, he that, she this, she that, we bad mouth. And one’s talking here about us called Buddhists too, holy people are supposed to be trying to practice, we still bad mouth each other and criticize behind backs and believe the person is so mean. Everything we see, we believe it is true. She did this and she said that.
They did this, it’s not fair. Blah blah blah. We’re like these victims, like these children all the time complaining like it’s not fair. You know. That’s the babe that’s that’s the ego.
It’s kind of ironic. We think of ego as big. Forget it, you know, like a one year old. That’s ego, self pity me, not seeing any reasons for anything, not it’s not fair, know, all this superstitious mind. That’s what Buddha’s saying, so beginning to have this sense of karma, cause and effect, even intellectually accepting, Well, this is a result of my past action.
Already something profound is changing. Already you’re not a victim. Already you’re growing up. Already you’re taking responsibility, you know. Slowly, slowly what Buddha is saying is the more you do this initially, which is intellectual, you slowly, by developing your mind through meditation, accessing subtle levels of your mind, developing kind of clarity, clarity, you start to actually wake up the mind to see reality as it is.
Slowly it stops appearing to you as being self existent out there having nothing to do with me. Slowly, by practicing in this way. When you first start to practice the piano, you can never say you’re a pianist, it’s a joke, but you are practicing and you will become one. It doesn’t feel like you know, you see here that Bach piece being played and you’re at grade one, it seems like an impossibility, doesn’t it? But the only way to get there is by practicing the see major scale every day.
So like this, you have to practice. This is the Buddhist approach. Having checked up, having thought about it, having done the reading, having checked on your tour guides, having some confidence of this Paris France. You check on the methods again and again. You listen to the teachings.
You think about it. You you just do it intellectually. This is a result of karma. This is just my karmic appearance. You know, I’m grasping that this is impermanent as permanent.
This isn’t the way it is. Initially, it’s intellectual. Slowly, it filters from here to here, becomes experiential. That’s what practice is, and that’s why we have to have some kind of clarity about where we’re heading, because it’s merely intellectual. Or, again, another analogy, it’s like you’re trying to get fit and beautiful, your body’s floppy and overweight, and all the muscles are weak, so you’ve got to start somewhere.
You start doing the push ups. After one day all you get is more pain than ever. You can get better at all, there’s even more pain. All you’re sweating and your heart’s beating fast and you stink and it’s horrible, but you’ve got the vision of where you’re heading. You know this is a good sign actually, so you keep doing it, and slowly, slowly your muscles start to take a good shape.
It’s a slow evolutionary process. We’re talking here slow evolutionary over many lives maybe, so you’ve to have a big picture, as the Dalai Lama says, think in terms of eons, you know. So we’re not just talking about trying to transform yourself to become a slightly nicer person, we’re talking about something quite profound here. It doesn’t mean we have to accept it, doesn’t mean we have to even practice it, but if we say we’re Buddhist, then this is the big picture, you know. Then bring it down to earth.
You’ve got the big picture in mind, but you’re taking care of every step, so you’re involved with each step, and you start to see even now some progress. As Lama Yeshe says, don’t believe anything, just lessen your attachment, lessen your anger a little bit, understand the evolution of it. Already some results will come. You get the confidence from those results too. You don’t just have to wait till next life to get the results.
You can get results right now, that moment you give up attachment, that moment you lessen your anger, already some results. That’s proof of the pudding. You don’t need faith in that, that’s proof, you know, that’s your own experience. So two things here I’m saying: have the big picture, know where you’re going long term, understand all the listen to the teachings again and again, and then right here, right now, in your own face, just observe, watch, see what happens, see the result of lessening the attachment, increasing the kindness, stopping believing in the karmic appearance as a mean person doing something to poor innocent victim me, which is the way ego sounds, isn’t it? Automatically, that’s how ego feels, the self pity me.
And there’s not and then so to have the view of karma so then you if you have the view of karma and then the self pity me is rising, you have something to argue against it, don’t you? Come on, Robina. Shut up. This is, you know, karmic appearance. This is your own past karma coming back at you.
This person is not doing it out of a random, you know, blah blah blah. You’re using arguments to penetrate through ego, to lessen its dumb views, because basically what Buddha’s saying is the views we have now are completely mistaken. It’s not as if they’re morally wrong. You shouldn’t think that way, bad person, you’ll go to hell. Not like that.
What he’s saying is, the way we see reality now is simply a mistake, we’ve got it wrong. It’s an interesting way to hear it. I mean, we all want to get things right, so great, you know. He says, got it wrong, things aren’t impermanent, things aren’t permanent, things don’t exist out there from their own side. In fact, things are impermanent, in fact, things happen to you because you set it up, you created the cause.
It’s your doing, not that person. They’re part of the deal, but they’re not your business. What they’re saying, what they’re doing, they might be a monster, that’s not your business. Your business is the fact that they’re doing it to you, and the reason they’re doing it to you is because you’ve done it to them, so now you’re getting it back, so don’t blame them. Get out of their way, that’s cool, but don’t blame them.
That’s victim mentality, and that’s the one we all see in ourselves so deep. So it’s fine to say you’re a Buddhist, you know, but you gotta you gotta put your money where your is. We’ve got to stop blaming. We’ve got to listen to this. We’ve to use that as an argument every time the next person, you know, in the gompa and making wrong sounds when you don’t like it, or doing what you don’t like in the center, or, you know, that causes us to gossip, gossip and have these disharmonious views in our mind.
It’s all just garbage, you know. It’s all just rubbish. It’s all just baby mind. Little child, baby, stamping her feet. Mommy, mommy, he was mean.
It’s karma, you know. And actually, as the Dalai Lama says, when you’re really practicing this way