Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute teaching, Ven Robina Courtin examines attachment through an addiction metaphor: we all function as ‘junkies’ dependent on external objects for happiness. Working through the chocolate cake, she shows how attachment—a deluded state—exaggerates the object’s qualities and drives endless grasping; the more we eat, the more we want, until satisfaction collapses into disgust. She distinguishes liking from attachment, explains how delusions distort through ‘rose-colored spectacles,’ and separates sensory experience from mental consciousness where craving actually arises. When a participant raises love, Courtin applies the same logic to relationships, arguing our suffering stems not from what others do but from minds that lie to themselves. For Western practitioners wondering if Buddhism requires abandoning the heart, her answer clarifies the difference between virtue and delusion.
—
## Flags
“`json
[
{
“category”: “title”,
“severity”: “medium”,
“description”: “Title ‘y Unknown 1988 9 Cassettes — 09 Unknown’ is malformed/placeholder text. The leading ‘y’ appears to be a typo or system artifact, ‘1988 9 Cassettes’ uses unclear phrasing, and ’09 Unknown’ looks like a cassette/track number rather than a descriptive title. No actual talk title is provided.”,
“evidence”: “Title field contains only unhelpful placeholder text with no descriptive content about the teaching topic”
}
]
“`
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 Unknown.mp3
UUID: b8dec38a-91c6-4320-ab67-97f3ba527905
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Unknown 1988 9 Cassettes (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 1988 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~8,637
What we all live in. The polite Buddhist way to say it is dualistic. Lama Yeshe says schizophrenic. It’s like this sense of a split off sense of separate self. So the irony of this kind of ego, ego grasping, is that it is that, that we’re alienated, separated, cut off, lonely.
So then, of course, this gives rise to this huge main delusion, which is effectively the default mode of our mind every day to day, from day to day, is one called attachment, desire, attachment. It has many many facets. And again, could spend months just talking about this one. But as Lama Yeshe says, I can tell you about it for one whole year, attachment. Unless we begin to look deeply into our own minds, being our own therapists, We will never begin to learn it, know, about it, really how it functions, it’s quite subtle how it functions.
Anger, anger or aversion, is the response when attachment doesn’t get what it wants. But the primordial, kind of almost, effectively from day to day, the main cause of our suffering is attachment. Now this is very curious, because we can’t see this at all, it’s evident to us, we don’t look at it deeply. So let’s look at this one, because this one, attachment, is the cause of this first noble truth, the second kind of suffering is called the suffering of change. And that’s, like I said, is what Buddha calls, what we call happiness.
So let’s look at this, okay? I’ll need some tea. Alright, so the best analogy to use for how what we call happiness is nothing other than suffering, is the one of being a junkie. And we’re trying to be personal, please, okay. Just hear it.
And it’s a good example because in our world, in our ordinary Samsaric world, when we know a person’s like a junkie quote unquote, whether it’s alcohol or drugs or whatever, know, that serious state of suffering mind of grasping and neediness for something, and so locked into it that you, like you’ve got no choice, right? And we can see this, that actually what Buddha’s saying is we literally are all junkies, he’s not joking, it’s just a question of degree, that’s all. It’s just a question of degree, and it’s a question of the severity, the strength of the object. And Buddha’s not joking when he says that. This is the way they talk, know.
So how is this so? This kind of sounds awful. Well, is what attachment is. So let’s use the analogy of the junkie and we’ll see, according, I mean I’m just not being personal, just using it as a kind of a cliche, you know, a cliche kind of understanding. In general we can see the strong and the strong grasping for something, the logic is this, isn’t it?
That when I get it, I will get happy. And that it’s the cause of happiness, the thing, object, let’s say the heroin, or the alcohol, let’s face it, the cake, the chocolate cake, the handsome body, you name it. The logic, absolute logic of it is, when I get it, I will get happy. Isn’t it, so clear? And then the logic of that is, when I don’t get it, I’m unhappy.
Now even this alone we can already see in our life, but it’s so totally what we think happiness is and how you get it, we never actually question. We never question our assumptions, you know? We can see that it’s true, we can somehow see that the more we want something in a needy way, the more delight and joy we get when we get it, but the more we go crashing down when we lose it. But somehow we all think, well that’s just the way life goes, what can I do? That’s what you get for loving somebody.
You gotta have the jealousy, you gotta have the anger, you gotta have the grief, you gotta have the loss. We just assume. Do you see my point? We just assume. We just assume, don’t we, that that’s that’s just the deal of getting happy.
You just gotta have the suffering to come with happiness. And that’s why Buddha’s saying we’re insane. To think that that’s the only way to get happiness. And it’s sort of obvious that’s how we get our happiness, whether it’s a simple chocolate cake, or the most divine romantic relationship, or the cigarettes, or the junk, okay, indeed you can see some objects are more powerful than others, it’s very obvious, a little bit of heroin can really deal, indeed do much harm. But so one of the reasons Buddha says, for example, that why the happiness we have now is nothing other than suffering, he says, because the objects we depend upon for that happiness are contaminated, meaning they poison you.
Now, I don’t mean in a literal sense, but in a sense that’s true, no they do, they poison you. Now you analyse this, we think, well excuse me, heroin poisons me, but not carrots, not handsome bodies, excuse me. Well I’m sorry, you’re wrong. It’s just a question of how many you have. We all know that if you keep taking heroin, you don’t need much of a dose to kill you, it’s very obvious.
It pollutes you, it destroys you. You’ve gotta eat an awful lot of carrots, but as you analyse it, it’s really true what I’m about to say, You keep eating carrots. Now I mean don’t stop and go to the toilet, keep eating carrots, okay, unceasingly. What would happen? You’d vomit and die, right?
So conclusion, carrots are contaminated. So therefore, what a simple thing is, what sounds outrageous to us, that external phenomena cannot cause you happiness. It is not their job to cause you happiness, they are contaminated. There’s a proof. You think of the most divine body you have ever had contact with.
I’m sorry it’s the same thing as the carrots. You know, you have contact with that handsome body, and you think it’s gonna bring the greatest bliss on earth, it does, the best we know. But what do you do? You stop, you go to sleep, and you get hungry again, you have more. Well, you think of having continuous contact, and I mean continuous.
You’d become exhausted and you’d die, wouldn’t you? This is logic, it sounds ridiculous, but this is Buddha’s point, we’ve gotta see that all the things that we depend upon now for our happiness are contaminated. So another reason therefore it leads to it, the more you have it, the more suffering it becomes. The heroin is fairly easy to see. The cigarettes is easy to see.
The chocolate cake is easy to see. We believe that chocolate cake, when I get it in here, will bring me happiness. Just as if, somehow as if your mum put a spoonful of happiness along with the recipe, you know? Isn’t it? That’s the logic of attachment, it believes that.
So, hang on, so we eat the cake, right? With this incredible expectation that happiness will come. So you know, you eat the first mouthful, and you haven’t got satisfaction yet, you’re still so excited because your stomach’s empty still, you can afford to have more. This joy is kind of you’re waiting for it to come at the end of the rainbow, you know. So you have another mouthful, you haven’t got satisfaction yet, you’ve still got not an empty stomach, you’ve still got more to come, still delightful.
You have another mouthful, but gradually your stomach starts getting full, it’s really painful, right? Because you know you haven’t got satisfaction yet. Which attachment absolutely believes it’ll get. So you have another mouthful. And the only reason you stop is because it becomes disgusting now, doesn’t it?
Do you understand my point? This thing that attachment so believed is the cause of happiness, painfully we have to face the fact that it’s now looking disgusting to us. Right? We all know this experience. Or this is a tragedy, this is Buddha’s point, sorry.
The happiness we get now is so miserable in comparison, where it sounds kind of religious, with the state of mind that we can actually experience, which is innate within us. This is what’s hard to hear. The happiness Buddha is talking about, our capability that we’re capable of having, is really, the analogy’s like the water, it’s a very simple one. Let’s say the water’s polluted, and the pollution is the delusions, right? This is a simple example.
Then what Buddha’s saying is, we all know that if you remove the pollution from the water, what are you left with? Okay, what are you left with? Pure water, right? And that’s the very nature of what water is, it’s pure. You don’t have to go around searching for pureness and inject pureness back into the water, do you?
It is just what’s left when you remove the pollution, right? Well, it’s almost so simple, but we can’t hear it. The Buddha is saying, one of the characteristics of consciousness is that it’s like pure water. It’s pure in its nature. And all you’ve got to do to get blissfully happy all the time, unceasingly, forever, and he’s not joking, is simply remove the pollution.
Simply remove the delusions from the mind, because that’s the pollution. So we have this incredibly schizophrenic view, so strong, that happiness is something you have to search for like a needle in a haystack, right? So we feel we’ve got to find it to put it in us. But you don’t have to find water nests to put into water to make it water, it is already water. You just have to remove the pollution.
I mean, it’s almost so simple, we can’t hear it, we can’t hear it, you know, it’s so simple. Because we’ve got this wrong view so caught up, what happens isn’t where it comes from. So Buddha’s just saying that actually, the joy and fulfilment and wholeness and contentment, and you name whatever word you like, that we have the potential for experiencing right now, it’s in our mind right now, is something that is stable, is incredibly blissful, is completely natural, it is our real nature, and it never changes. It’s impermanent in a subtle sense that it changes from moment to moment, but it will never cease, it won’t run out. It won’t run out because it’s the natural state of your mind.
This is what boredom means by nirvana, that’s all. It’s a state of mind, it’s psychological. And the method for getting it is by giving up being a junkie. Giving up attachment. And that means giving up all the absolute, the stories that our mind is riddled with.
That we believe about chocolate cakes and handsome bodies and this and that and good and bad and getting what we want and getting the green lights and getting the nice weather and getting the nice food, you name it. Buddha says we’re actually living in a desire realm, it’s like you’re living in a junky realm, the only things you can ingest are junk and your senses in their nature need junk to exist. This is the third kind of suffering actually, or pervasive suffering they say, by being born as this kind of being, with this kind of senses and this kind of mind, that demands satisfaction from the sensory objects, we are caught up in suffering. So to go against it, to start obeying, to go against the rules of attachment is hugely deep, hugely difficult, very painful. So the happiness we get now is the happiness is inferior, that’s all.
We do get some happiness, there’s no question we get happiness. Even when you taste the cake, a little bit of pleasure comes, isn’t it? That little bit of pleasure is happiness. But what all Buddha’s saying, just like with a junkie, when you’re no longer a junkie and you look on, you see, what is that bit of happiness worth all that suffering? Do you see my point?
Is that happiness that you get as a junkie worth the torture? That a person who gives it up is a person who realizes it’s not. Well a person who looks at a saṃsāra, Buddha says, and sees that the happiness we get, which is all we know right now, is inferior because we’re depending upon an external object, we can’t guarantee we’ll ever keep it, we can’t guarantee that person will continue to love us, just look at the world, we can’t guarantee the chocolate cake will continue to be the way need it, even if it is there, the more we eat it, as our mothers told us, our secret Buddha’s mummies, the more you get, the more you want. So one of the reasons the happiness we have now is nothing other than suffering is because it doesn’t last. Attachment thinks it will, reality is it doesn’t, so we’re always disappointed.
Because the objects are contaminated, we can see that, it leads inevitably, as you keep having contact, it leads inevitably to disgusting and suffering. And finally, actually causes you to even want it more, because the more you get, the more you want. So we can see all these reasons, we can see it. And Buddha says, this is the attitude we have to everything, so you don’t to be just smoking cigarettes or having junk to be like this, it’s everything. People, things, sounds, smells, getting what you want every day, getting the green lights, getting everything just nice.
Because the addiction of attachment is, when I get everything just so, then I’ll be happy. I mean look at us, we know all this one. And then we fail, then we think we’re miserable, we think we’re terrible, we think we’re failures, because we didn’t make it right, because the person left us, I must be a failure. Excuse me, it’s saṃsāra, what do you expect? Everything’s impermanent, you know.
So really we’re demanding so much more from ourselves than is ever possible because we’re using the wrong methods, Buddha says. We do have, he says, the capability of being blissful and joyful, content, fulfilled, you name it. But the method, I’m sorry, is cold turkey, Giving up attachment, therefore giving up anger, giving up jealousy, giving up pride, giving up all the neuroses that we totally take for granted, that we totally identify with, you know. This is a tragedy. Tragedy.
So we’re of locked into this system that we’re so used to. Buddha says from eons of practice. So maybe some questions about all that. Does it make sense? It makes sense, she said.
The analogy works. Okay, the chocolate cake and heroin, okay. Then, good, then gone. If we’re talking about love. Right, yes.
Yeah, yes, right. Harder to come to terms. Of course it is, yeah. So we have to, so she’s saying it’s much harder to come to terms when we start talking about love and relationships and family and attachment. That’s the point.
But the principle is identical. So this is the point, keep remembering this, which is hard for us to hear too. Because when we say attachment in our culture, especially in this western culture, so very different from the way they use it in the Buddhist terms, as soon as we hear attachment, we hear happiness, we hear love, we hear good things, don’t we? But when Buddha uses the word attachment, he’s by definition referring to a poisoned state of mind. So even if you want to use another word, please do.
But he’s not referring to virtuous states of mind. So now let’s look at this one, this is very important. This is unbelievably important, this is really the essential point in being your own therapist now. It’s to realize, okay, Buddha says there’s ways of dividing up our mind, there’s different ways of looking into what the mind is in the consciousness, we’ve already looked at some aspects. Another way of looking at it is in terms of, we have two things, the sensory consciousness, sensory, you know, the capacity of mind to be aware of shape and color through here, sound through here, taste through here, and so on and so forth.
Now first of all, Buddha would say, as we’ve already made the distinction, but we really get it clear here, that body is not mind. This already is confusing for us, because the body and mind is such a kind of interdependent complex, and everything happens also spontaneously and altogether. We can be easily forgiven for thinking it’s all the same. Do you see my point? But when we start to analyse it, we can really see that it’s not the same.
And once we start to see this, we have great power to help change our minds. For example, as Lama Yeshe said, you people, it seems to be a Tibetan way of talking when they’re being wrathful with you, they say you people, you know. He said you people, it means us in the West, you people think that attachment has got something to do with the senses. Desire. He said, and this is shocking, he says desire, attachment, and it’s meaning the same thing, have nothing to do with the senses.
Now this is outrageous, but let me explain it, okay? First of all, we have mental consciousness, and we have sensory consciousness. And consciousness, or mind, function is to be aware at whatever level. So when your consciousness is functioning through the medium of the eyeball, in Buddha’s terms it’s not the eyeball that sees, it’s your capacity to be aware, which is called consciousness, that is the part of you that functions through the medium of the eyeball. Consciousness, Ear consciousness that functions through the medium of all the little bits and pieces out here, called ear.
The consciousness part is not physical. The ear and the eyeball clearly are physical, but they’re just the external, okay? So we’ve got the sensory experiences. Now in terms of the chocolate cake, let’s say, we say, wow, I see this divine chocolate cake, we sort of faint this anticipation. Well, no, we’re not analysing quickly enough, it’s all happening in a spontaneous second, but what we’re not doing is analysing, so what Buddha is saying is this: eye consciousness, here, this one, sees merely, is aware of merely shape and colour.
That’s it, shape and colour, nothing more. It is not capable of seeing chocolate cake. Chocolate cake is the label given by mental consciousness that’s familiar with that shape and color, that recognizes it because you’ve got memory from the past experience, because you smell the smell and see the shape, so mental consciousness, which is really where all the intelligence is, which is where the computer is, boom boom boom, the sensory gives a trigger to the mental consciousness that then recognizes it and says boom, delicious chocolate cake. But it all happens in one second, so we assume it’s a function of all the same part of us, you know? But this is where we have to almost put everything into slow motion, to really be our own therapist, to really analyse the parts of us.
And once we can establish from this experience that the senses are just these kind of dumb animals that lead us to things, Then the rest of it, all the stories and all the energy is coming from the mental consciousness. So there’s a really interesting example to prove, this is interesting, to prove that attachment is not a function of the senses. So then we have to look at mental consciousness, and that’s what we can talk about, simply speaking, in the mental consciousness we can talk about the two levels, two ways that our mental consciousness is aware of phenomena. And one is called conception, and one is called perception. So perception, the term here, the use here, as far as our mental consciousness is concerned, is actually a very advanced and very subtle level of our mind which we virtually never experience.
So let’s just throw that out for now. So this leaves us only with conception. Now this is most interesting because that includes what we refer to as emotion and thoughts. Buddhism says it’s all conceptual, and I’ll talk about this in a minute because this is what’s most interesting. But as far as the general mental consciousness is concerned in terms of the cake, the mental consciousness, meaning the concepts, now we divide that, and that has two aspects.
There are two kinds of conceptual thoughts, two kinds of the mental consciousness in terms of conception, one is the positive states of mind, and one is the negative states of mind. By definition, Buddha says, the positive states of mind, and we all know those words, love, kindness, patience, generosity, forgiveness, blah blah blah, they are all the ones that come from a reasonable sense of self, a reasonable sense of an interdependent, connected I with you. We all know that if you and I are having a nice time together, and it’s reasonable, not kind of all grasping and fantasy, then I’m more aware of you for that moment, you’re more aware of me, I’m listening to your words, you’re appreciating me, there’s a nice sense of we there, you see my point? But you watch what happens as soon as you start getting angry, or jealous, or attached. Suddenly, you there, me here, you grasping, you pointing fingers, me freaking out, you know, I this, I that, you’re saying you, I this, I that, there’s a sense of very separate you and me, isn’t there?
So this is the point, the deluded states of mind are the ones that Buddha says are naturally suffering in their nature, if we see them in our mind, they’re not realistic, they’re coming from a wrong sense of not being interdependent, of being very separate and independent, which is not natural, which is not how things are, but the virtues are more natural, they’re more appropriate, because they’re coming from interdependence and a sense of openness and spaciousness and seeing others, and so those virtuous ones, gosh, we’ve got to develop those as much as possible. And in fact, if you want to say about the pure mind, our natural state, the h two o of our mind is love, compassion, generosity, patience, kindness, they are our natural qualities. So this pure mind isn’t some kind of abstract concept, it’s when your mind is full of all the positive states of mind, because Buddha says they are natural. The deluded ones are completely unnatural, even though they come more spontaneously because we practise them, but in their nature they’re poison, they’re deluded, they’re inappropriate, they’re not in touch with reality, they cause us so much pain and suffering, and they cause me to harm others.
That’s the stuff we have to get rid of. So Buddha’s saying, the one that’s called attachment is virtually the default mode of our mind from day to day. And it’s beneath all the others, know? And it’s really, so it’s got many many facets, which we’ll talk about after tea. After whatever, we’re gonna have at six o’clock.
When’s the next scheduled bit? Hang on, I know you want to ask a question. What’s that, another session? Okay. So maybe we should have a break here.
You’ve got a burning question, you have, what’s your question? Can wait? Okay. So is that okay if we have a break now? No, I’ll go into it more detail.
Yeah? Okay, have dinner. You can talk and discuss all this, okay? But again, like I said before, really make a conscious effort to stick to this stuff because it’s so tasty, and don’t just gossip about nothing, know, it’s wasting your time. Can do that when you leave.
Just stick to the subject. And if you don’t want to talk, don’t talk, know? But talk and make it useful. And you can laugh and be funny, don’t have to be serious, okay? Thank you very much.
Goodbye. Reminding ourselves that we might think, yes, I want to become a Buddha. That might seem a bit abstract to us but we can definitely realize, definitely think that yes, I want to be more happy, more wise, less neurotic, more in control of my life. And certainly in my relationships and in the world around me, I do want to be more useful. Even this much we think.
How nice it would be. Of course Buddha is saying that we’re capable, you know? We have far more potential in fact, but even this much already that’s amazing to wish to do that. So for this reason I’m sitting here listening to the teachings, meditating, to bring me one step closer to my amazing potential. Let’s continue about this presentation of the mind.
And we can finish off with a meditation using the four opponent powers purification. So as I said, the first scope of practice, based on the preliminaries of looking at the mind and finding a teacher and knowing how to meditate on these points to increase realizations of these various points of the path, as well as thinking about this perfect human rebirth, we then begin to do the lower scope practices of contemplating impermanence, particularly in relation to one’s own death in order to energize us to want to not waste this life even more. We contemplate the suffering of the various realms of existence, the lower realms, in order to give us a healthy revulsion of that kind of experience. We turn to Buddha for refuge, he gives us the methods. And then we begin to practice.
And so the minimum requirement, the minimum level of practice in Buddhism, if you think of it this way, the minimum level, but it’s like central to the entire path, is really like a level of playing safe. Given that our consciousness is a beginningless and endless continuity, and that whatever it experiences at any given moment is necessarily the fruit of past actions, then it’s reasonable to know that because we don’t want suffering and do want happiness, and that we don’t know when we’re gonna die anyway, then it’s reasonable to want to begin to abide by the laws of karma, practice morality, avoid creating negative karma. The principle is quite simple really. It’s the question of thinking of it in this way, you know, and then recognising the need for this and wanting to do this for one, and we’re not even discussing it for the sake of others, we’re looking at one’s own sake. We need to see this first.
This is the first part of the first scope. And in terms of these two birds as the wings of the bird, it’s the first part of the first wing, the work we do in our own mind. When we expand our mind further, we begin to see that even this life is in the nature of suffering. The Buddha says we have even more potential than merely having a better rebirth, we can actually go beyond suffering altogether. The mind can be in a state of freedom from suffering.
Buddhism means by this, too, Buddha means by this that we’re also free from having to be reborn. So even if we think of reincarnation, if we think of life, we think of reincarnation, it’s still life. But if we actually think of achieving the state of mind known as nirvana, is freedom from suffering, which is a state of great joy and bliss, which is the natural state of our minds, Buddha says, and then to realize that that means once we’ve completely removed the delusions altogether, removed the gross delusions and achieved the state of nirvana, then we don’t even need to be reborn at all. Seems a bit kind of boring, doesn’t it? Hard to kind of get the mind around that one to get excited about that one.
But nevertheless, this is the point. The Buddha is saying that all these states of mind, these deluded states of mind, are the cause of why we suffer. And the root delusion, as they call it, which I referred to before, known as ignorance, this fundamental unawareness of the true nature of how everything exists, is the main reason that we’re propelled. It’s the motor that propels us from life to life, from moment to moment in our experiences. So it’s finally the removal of that one completely, by the realization of emptiness, as they say.
If we were to complete the wisdom wing and complete the path of the Hīnayāna teachings of the Buddha, we would meditate upon emptiness again and again in order to remove all the delusions and eventually remove the ignorance from the mind. So in terms of the Four Noble Truths, this state of freedom from suffering or full of joy and happiness that Buddha says we are capable of because it’s in fact our nature. Just in terms of the wisdom wing is when we have accomplished, when we have removed the various delusions from the mind, removed even the imprints, the seeds from the mind that are the cause of suffering. That state of freedom from suffering is this third level truth. The first one is what is suffering?
So we learn to look at what is suffering, the different levels of it. So we’ll look at this little package just briefly of the three kinds, the first level is regular, ordinary, everyday suffering, that every single sentient being has to one degree or another. And the freedom of this kind of suffering is obvious, that we no longer have a need to have a life, you’re free from this one completely. The second level we talked about is the kind of suffering that we actually call happiness. So I wanna talk more about this one to get more clear, especially in relation to relationships.
And the third one is called more pervasive suffering, which is being born with these type of aggregates that demand the contaminated objects that we depend upon and that attachment believes completely are the cause of happiness, that in fact the actual cause of suffering. What happened, you all moved back or something? Did you all tidy up or something? No, you did? No?
Your chairs, oh I just got extra long sightedness. I’ve struggled with you all to move forward this morning, you’ve all gone back again, I’m sure. No, no, no, don’t. It just seems like suddenly you look further away. It’s okay, with all this space in front of me.
It’s okay, as long as you’re happy and content, then I’m happy. Let’s look at more of this one about the very good points that you made before about it’s easy enough to talk about attachment to cakes and things, but it starts getting complicated when it’s people. Because it is indeed people that we have the big problems with, which we do indeed have problems with chocolate cake, but they’re minor, aren’t they, in comparison with people. So let’s look at this one, and look at how we work with this one. So first of all, as I was saying, we really need to be very, very clear about the way the mind works.
So we looked at how, first of all, sensory is not conceptual. First of all, sensory is not mental. When you see the cake, it’s your eyes seeing it, your tongue tasting it. They’re the doorways to the experience of the cake. So yes, the senses have huge power right now, but we give them power they really don’t possess.
As Lama Yeshe says, we make the body the boss, but in fact the mind is the boss. So we were discussing how actually attachment, desire, is not a function of the senses actually. So how is this so? We can see, you have the sensory experience of it, then almost virtually simultaneously, the mental consciousness is accessed, the memory of chocolate cake arises, we recall the name of it, we recall the experience of it, then we recall the pleasure that it gave us, so then all that occurs, like computer of our mind, all goes boom boom at the same time. There are different parts of the mind doing their job.
And then, it arises a memory of the pleasure. So because of this, then this state of mind called attachment then arises. So looking now just at our mental consciousness, we can say, in the functioning, the way our mind functions, we either have positive states of mind, or negative states of mind. There are sort of ones that are called neutral, let’s forget about those, okay? The real ones are the positive and the negative.
And the positive ones, ones that I said, generally speaking, if you’ve got a more spacious and more relaxed and more connected with others or with things, there’s no sort of real sense of separateness, and sense of grasping, or anger, or all the fearful neurotic stuff. When we feel like this, that’s a sign that delusions are in the mind. So these are the ones that are mistaken. They’re mistaken in the sense that they are in, this is a very curious way to say it, attachment for example is a mistaken state of mind, it’s a deluded, it’s a liar, is a way of saying it. Attachment is a liar.
It’s accurate to say that it’s chocolate cake, that’s a conception and it’s accurate, it’s completely accurate. It’s accurate to say that it’s a good chocolate cake, even relatively speaking, you can deduce because you know mum’s a good cake, and you see the cake, you’re oh, she did a really good job this time. Even from the relative point of view of good and bad cakes, you can still say it’s a really good, delicious chocolate cake, that’s not a wrong statement. You can even say that I like chocolate cake, that is not wrong, that’s not a delusion, there’s nothing wrong with liking something. Pleasure, joy, liking, in terms of just cakes now, we’re not even discussing people yet.
There’s nothing wrong with that, that’s a completely valid state of mind, given that we’re a human with a body and a tongue and a mind and all the rest, to like something, enjoy something, whatever, you know? There’s nothing wrong with that, not at all. So if that’s the case, then where’s the problem? Why do we shove three pieces in? Why do we get miserable?
Why do we get fat and think? Why do we kind of get hungry for it and get all not just hungry in the stomach, it’s nothing wrong with having a stomach, in this relative sense, okay? So where does the problem come? Well that’s when the delusions come. You know, they all come at the same time, like the senses and the mental consciousness, boom, all together, like that, one second.
So all these different kind of states of mind all come zapping together in like one split second. This is why it is so hard to analyse our minds, to really look at how our minds function, to really discriminate between, this is the essential job of being your own therapist, what I’m getting down to, it is extraordinarily difficult to discriminate between virtuous states of mind and non virtuous, because they all kind of almost like come together. And we mix them all up and confuse them and give them the wrong names. So that’s why we have do much analysis and be very precise with our own minds. But first we have to know the theories.
We have to know the botany before we can start doing the job of pulling out the weeds, you know. So what is attachment then? What causes the suffering? What causes us to want to shove three bits in, four bits in? What causes us to grasp at it a bit anxiously?
What causes us to wish that the other person doesn’t get it? What causes us to get kind of, oh god, I’ve eaten so much now, feel miserable, you know? What causes us to get only a full stomach and no happiness? What’s the cause of all that? That’s attachment.
So okay, there are these positive, like I said, positive states of mind and negative ones. In relationship to this, the valid, or appropriate, or positive, or reasonable states of mind are to say I like chocolate cake, are to say I enjoy chocolate cake, there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s completely human. The unreasonable, the neurotic state of mind, is the one that’s called attachment, which at the moment is completely mixed with liking and the pleasure, as if milk and water were mixed together. So that’s why we can’t discriminate. And that’s why we hear Buddhists say, You can’t get happy till you give up attachment.
And we go, as Lama Zopa says, Oh, you mean I’ve gotta give up my heart? I’ve gotta give up chocolate cake? I’ve gotta give up pleasure? No, we just don’t see it more precisely enough. We can’t discriminate.
So like I said, there are two characteristics, I haven’t said it, I’ll say it now. There are two characteristics of so called negative states of mind, which imply of course, implies there are two characteristics, the positive ones. There’s a particular way of looking at them. And these are what we have to learn to recognise. The two characteristics of the negative state of mind, for example attachment, much harder to see, it’s like a honey covered razor blade.
So let’s talk about something more simple, like anger, or like aversion, let’s say when you’re stuffed full of chocolate cake. Aversion for the cake. There are two states of mind. The first one, when aversion is in the mind, sort of even when it’s mild, like for a chocolate cake, not anger for a person, just aversion, because aversion is the basis of anger really, isn’t it? The state of mind is aversion as opposed to attachment.
When they say aversion is in the mind, oh God, I can’t stand chocolate cake, I’d say like that. Then there are two characteristics, one is, and it’s very obvious, and this is indicated by the term that Tibetans use to refer to these states of mind, there are several terms to refer to them, and that is disturbed emotion. The term is disturbed emotion. So clearly it’s indicating that when that’s in the mind, to whatever degree, the mind is disturbed. Now we know this feeling, we know it a thousand times a day when we’re disturbed, when jealousy is there, when anger is there, when depression is there, when stress is there, when anxiety is there, when attachment is there, when we really see it.
The mind is disturbed, it’s not peaceful, it’s not content. But because it’s so normal for us and we just assume this is ordinary, everyday human life, what can I do about it? Then we take it for granted. It’s like we only ever know that, so we don’t really see it starkly, and that’s why we have to look carefully into our mind, because remember what is saying we don’t need to have it. The second characteristic of all these states of mind, which is much harder to see but which is incredibly necessary at some point without a deep analysis, being our own therapist, is again indicated by another term that’s used in the translation of the Tibetan term, it’s like a synonym, used in a different way to refer to these negative states of mind, and that is delusion.
I’ve used the word many times already. The word delusion. Now we don’t normally think this term, it’s sort of odd, know? Or for example, we would never think we’re delusionary, would we? I mean it’s only a person who’s really wacky, who’s delusion, my god they’re just living in delusions, they’re really living in a world where, basically where they’re seeing things that don’t exist, right?
That’s what delusionary means, right? Well, again, sorry to say, Buddha says we are all delusionary. It’s again simply a question of degree. And what he means is this, that these states of mind, I’ve been sort of indicating it already, but I’ll spell it out, these states of mind that Buddha says are the source of our pain, that are disturbing to us, that therefore cause us to harm others, and that keep us suffering in saṃsāra because we continually follow them because they’re deeply habitual in us, that they actually have this characteristic of being liars when they’re in the mind. So it’s like when you’ve got attachment in the mind, example, it’s just like our secret Buddhist mothers told us, you’ve got your rose colored spectacles on, haven’t you?
So we all know when you’ve got your rose colored spectacles, everything that you see through them looks more delicious than they really are. Do you see my point? We all know this experience when it certainly comes to being in love with somebody, when it comes to the delicious chocolate cake, when your stomach is empty and you like chocolate cake and all the conditions come together, delicious chocolate cake and your stomach empty and you and your strong neediness for it, your attachment, then you’ve got your rose colored spectacles on. And so you then believe, so this is the point, the cake looks, this is really hard to see, cake looks more delicious than it really is. In In other words, our rose colored spectacles, our own eyes, our own mind itself, the attachment itself, when you have your attachment spectacles on, it causes the object, that is to say the person, the cake, the weather, whatever the object is, to appear more marvellous, more fantastic, more delicious, more perfect than it simply is.
That’s one aspect, one aspect of attachment, just one. And we know this experience. And this is why it’s called delusion, because it causes us to see something in a way that it simply isn’t. And this is what is so hard to see, unbelievably hard to see. Then once we look at attachment as one example of a delusion, one of the major major ones, the source of all the others, we can then look at all the other characteristics and some of these we will then recognise.
There’s a whole series of characteristics, these are the two essential ones, they’re disturbing in whichever way is unique to that particular delusion, you know? I’m sorry, I started saying aversion for the cake, didn’t I? So aversion is the same, aversion, I hate chocolate cake, when you’ve your aversion spectacles on, the cake looks disgusting. Second, your mind is disturbed, the mind is like, oh, hate that, the mind is agitated, disturbed. So whatever the delusion is, it’s disturbing in its own particular way, and second, it’s its own particular liar.
This is interesting, it’s not hard to see, but this is really the major cause of suffering. Because then what happens is, because we’re so addicted to seeing it in a certain way, We believe it, this is the problem. You’re used to having your rose colored spectacles on for a certain period. So then you believe, you get sucked into believing that that’s what the cake is. So we look at people, my goodness, we can really see this.
But then we think, well that’s fantastic, when I’m really in love and he just looks so divine. We think it’s great, it’s just so marvelous. And the thing is, what’s interesting, it does trigger very good experiences. Buddha is not denying this. It does trigger wonderful experiences, which we call very nice happiness.
But the trouble is, this is the thing that sounds very interesting, Buddha is saying we can have very nice experiences without leaving ourselves up garden paths about the object. So the tragedy is when we, like I said before, the only way we know how to get happy is through the medium of attachment, to get all this excitement that brings the happiness with the contact with the object, whether it’s the cake or the person, but we don’t know how else to access the happiness within us, we only know it through the medium of these objects. And part of the function of this delusion is to exaggerate their deliciousness, so we grasp at them all the more. So the belief is when we get them, we’ll be happy. We believe the happiness will last forever.
We believe the more contact we have, the happier we’ll get. Now all we have to do is look at all our experiences, whether it’s cake or people, anything at all in this universe that we’ve ever had strong contact with that we’ve been so attached to, we will all see that it’s simply not true. It’s just not true. It’s not meant to be some moralistic issue, a Buddha is trying to make you miserable and says you’re not allowed to have cake or sex or drugs, you know, he’s not saying that. He’s just saying we lead ourselves up garden paths because we misinterpret, because we exaggerate everything, know, distort.
The mind has lies to us. Our delusions, when they’re in the mind, lie to us. Another way of talking about what the function of these delusions is, let’s say you have aversion in the mind, your aversion spectacles. The way they say it is that the object, let’s say the cake. Say you hate chocolate cake, right?
Certainly people hate that person. Then when you put your aversion spectacles on, the object, in this case the person let’s say, appears No, they say it takes on the aspect of that particular state of mind, in this case aversion. Meaning, the person looks disgusting, don’t they? We all know that. The person whom you hate looks horrible to you, you can’t even bear to see them, you can’t even bear to hear their name, you can’t bear to be too close to them.
You You understand my point? And then so what happens is of course, the usual thing, the aversion’s in the mind for various reasons. We believe, don’t we? We believe one hundred percent that that is what the person is like. Even someone says, Robina, he’s not that bad, you start to dislike them just as much because they’re stupid, know?
Do you understand my point? Or you get everybody to kind of come along, you’ve got to kind of do this market research, get all the other people who hate him as well. Yeah, well they think so, and they think so, and they think so, which increases our logic for believing the person has to be horrible. Okay, this gets very complex because it’s all mixed with well they did bad things to me, Buddha’s not denying they do bad things to you. But the simple thing that we’re trying to see here by looking into our own minds is that when delusions, unhappy emotions, are in our mind, we’re not discussing whether the person is bad or good.
They could be evil, they could be very harmful, there’s no problem with that. This is where it’s quite shocking. Buddha is saying the main cause, one of major causes of your suffering, like we said already, the delusion in your mind. So then we say, but excuse me, this person raped me, killed me, harmed me, yes Buddha’s saying, I know that, but that’s not the issue here. I’m really paraphrasing here, But I’m getting the essence of trying to get really to the heart of what our personal practice is to be.
It doesn’t mean it’s easy, but this is all based on Buddha’s view of karma, and this is where the real liberation from suffering begins to develop, when we can learn to separate like this. And this is why you can have a person like these old Lamas who’ve been tortured for thirty five years, go in and be tortured, and come out more compassionate, more loving, more forgiving, more wise, more content. It sounds insane to our usual view because the logic we use, which is what Buddha says is samsaric, is the way we are now, and it’s absolute total logic for every being that most of us are like this, most animals, creatures, humans, everybody, you name it, is like this: if there is an object in front of me that due to whatever reason I find attractive, be it a chocolate cake or a person, then we say, well of course I’m gonna get attached, of course attachment arises, of course it’s delicious, of course I want to have it. What has it got to do with me? It’s there, vibrating deliciousness at me so powerfully that I am just forced to eat it, what could I do, you know?
Right? Isn’t it? We all know this. So we’re completely giving all the power to the object. We never think for a second that we can have control over our own mind, and really by understanding the nature of attachment, to eliminate the attachment, learn to remove the lies from our mind, so we see the object as it is, and don’t get seduced by it, you know?
This is the major suffering we all have, it’s like we’re victims. Now, the same with aversion. The logic is, when a person out there harms me, for example, you know, when a person harms me, we say, Of course I’ll be angry! Look what they did to me, what’s it got to do with me? I have no control over this, of course I’m angry.
No one ever doubts this. What Buddha’s saying is, nuts. Of course the person harms you, we know that, we can see, but it doesn’t follow, just like with the cake, that you need to be seduced by it, that you need to automatically grasp at it, it doesn’t follow that when a person harms you that you automatically get angry and hate the person. This is why Buddha says the cause of our suffering is our delusion. Of course the person punching me is a catalyst for it, it’s obvious, you know.
But this is where the real freedom, and I mean freedom, this word liberation from suffering is not a joke. This is the key to it, the absolute key. Why isn’t holding onto compassion and bliss, isn’t that another form of attachment? She’s asking if holding onto bliss and compassion. What do you mean holding onto it?
Explain what you mean. Well, attaining that and making that your focus. What would be wrong with having a mind full of compassion? How would that be causing you suffering? How would that cause you suffering?
No, it’s still discussing anybody else. We’re discussing ourselves here. We’re not discussing anybody else, we’re discussing ourselves. So the point is, what we have to do by analyzing all this is discover which states of mind