Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute talk, Ven Robina Courtin dissects attachment through everyday examples—anger when cut off in traffic, cravings for chocolate cake, romantic entanglement—revealing the mechanism beneath: neediness rooted in the sense of personal lack. She distinguishes genuine love from neurotic dependence, shows how thwarted attachment produces anger and despair, and uses relationships as a practice ground. A memorable story of her friend Sheila—whose compassion transformed her relationship with an abusive husband—illustrates when to stay and when to leave. Robina also addresses depression as internalized aversion and the importance of acknowledging difficult mental states. Her central argument: understanding our own minds is the gateway to helping others, and the practice is learning to be happy without getting what we want.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 Unknown.mp3
UUID: 43600c93-b49d-49a0-ab19-8432c79bbd54
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: 44.7 minutes
Words: ~9,483
Pain in a state called happiness and joy. That doesn’t mean, again, like with a cake, it doesn’t mean you have to be attached to it. Like we said, there’s nothing wrong with liking chocolate cake. No one’s saying attachment is liking, I’m making that point very specific. But right now attachment and liking completely go together like milk and water, we can’t see the difference.
So there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy, Buddha says. It’s perfectly valid to want to be happy because it’s our natural state to be happy. He just says we’re using the wrong methods, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy. Wanting to be happy is not attachment.
There’s a complete difference. Attachment is a neurotic state of mind, it grasps at something, you know, do that first more and you might hear what I’m saying, you know. So the other characteristic of attachment, there’s many, many, right? So multifaceted, so huge. One word we all really understand, when we say oh my god, he’s so needy, don’t we all understand that?
That is attachment. It says, and what is neediness? You check neediness, a very good phrase in the West. What is neediness for something? Why is a person kind of needy for something?
It’s obvious, because they think they lack something. Do you agree? They lack when you really feel like you lack something, you kind of yearn and hanker after something, don’t you? Well that energy is attachment energy. The major energy of attachment is this one, at first it exaggerates and makes it look more gorgeous than it really is, then you hanker after it, thinking about it all the time, wishing you had it, the logic being that when I get it then I’ll be happy.
But it’s this thing at the end of the rainbow, it doesn’t exist, you know? Why we just looked at it, one of the reasons Buddha says the happiness we get now from what we think brings it, doesn’t bring happiness, it just brings the yearning for even more things. So when we’re bottomless pit of neediness, we can have a hundred people loving us every day, can have a thousand chocolate cakes, we will still be needy, we’ll even be more needy. We can all see it, know, we can see it, but we don’t quite get it, you know? So attachment is neediness.
Because why? Because you feel you lack something, that’s the irony of ego. You know? Attachment is the main voice of ego. Irony of ego is we’re lonely, separate, bereft, cut off, miserable, locked in this pinhead big sense of self, you know?
So then we have naturally, it gives rise to this massive I need something out there that when I get it, I’ll feel full, I’ll feel content. We all know, like our mums told us, the more we get, the more we want. Which is why Buddha saying the happiness we get now is suffering, actually. Using attachment to get it. So being attached to something is being neurotically dependent upon it being there, and unless it is, you’re nothing, you fall down and collapse.
Look at us, you know? I mean, not trying to be mean, I’m trying to get us to see, that’s all. It’s needy, it also causes to manipulate. Look what we do, how we manipulate each other frantically. People sometimes are so manipulative, or we say so controlling.
That’s exactly a function of attachment. Okay, attachment’s different, it has many sort of facets and manifests in different ways in different people. So one person, let’s say, who’s got massive attachment to being seen as important, that will combine with say enormous pride and arrogance. So that person then is very manipulative, very controlling, you know, really cunning and all these different qualities to get what they want in order to be famous and important or whatever. Another person could just be attached to cake.
You understand what I’m saying? Just kind of eat and eat and eat and eat, we all know ourselves. Another Another person is attached to love, being loving, being loved by somebody, being needed by somebody, being around somebody, the thought of being on their own is like death. So they’ve got to have a relationship, got to have a person. Other people are attached to sex.
I mean you can be attached to a multitude of things, attachment is endless in its invention of different objects, you know. The disease is the same, the attachment, it just manifests in different ways in different people. But it’s what these characteristics of of feeling like I’m lacking something, therefore needing something. It causes, if it combines with say anger and pride, it combines becomes a very fierce and outrageous person. If it combines with kind of low self esteem and kind of depression, the person’s really quiet and unharmful to most people who have hurt themselves, you know?
It manifests in many, many, many different ways. So what happens is this huge neediness that causes to manipulate, that causes to control, you know? That causes to kind of expect hugely, that’s the major one, the more you feel you need that person in your life, in the needy, in the neurotic way, okay, I’m not talking virtues yet, please hear me, in the needy neurotic way, the more we need them to be there in our lives, it is obvious, the more we expect them to do precisely what we want, the more we are going to be devastated when they don’t. I mean look, even they’re ten minutes late coming on a date, know, apparently got mental breakdown already. Why?
Because you’ve got this massive neediness, massive expectation, so then absolute panic when something goes wrong. I mean, it’s obvious the suffering of attachment. It’s obvious that attachment causes incredible suffering, you know? It’s obvious, but we don’t think of it like that. Anger, if you like, a response when attachment is thwarted.
So you check. A common response when your attachment is thwarted is to be angry. It’s like even you go into the cafe and you’ve got a real neediness, attachment to chocolate cake. Yes, you also enjoy it, that’s fine. Yes, it is a good chocolate cake, that’s fine.
But you have attachment to it, you want, you need in a desperate way to have your chocolate cake. You don’t think of it like that, you just think, oh, like chocolate cake. But actually it’s attachment. There’s neediness for it, so you build it up in the mind. So then what happens when carrot cake comes?
How I ask for chocolate cake, know? These people, who do they think they are? They don’t even listen, you know? God, I’m not gonna come here again. That’s called aversion, that’s called anger.
Now if you weren’t so attached to chocolate cake but you merely enjoyed it, then when carrot cake comes you’d go, oh it’s cool, I can enjoy this too. So that means didn’t have attachment for it, it means you merely enjoyed it but you’re prepared to have something else, you’re not freaking out. So we can see, our day, you check at our day looking more subtle now, not at the gross objects, at people and cakes. You check just the day to day level, this is where you can say attachment is the default mode of your mind. We don’t think we’re walking around attached to getting what we want, but basically we are.
You check, you’re driving on the road, thinking you’re being all kind of friendly and friendly, looking at the sky and all happy, and suddenly a car swerves in front of you. You’re getting angry. That means because the attachment was automatically in your mind, it was like the default mode of your mind, it was just there. But you didn’t notice, because it’s just how you are all the time. And that’s a perfect sign to show when the anger arises, that indicates attachment was there in the first place.
If attachment weren’t there, and a person drives in front of you, you say, oh please, come on, welcome, you relax, you be patient, it wouldn’t matter. So it indicates. So attachment, when it’s in the mind, is very hard to see, but when you don’t get what you want, that’s the perfect time to see your mind. That’s the best time, you know. So okay, in a relationship, it’s not just attachment.
If there were, you’d be a vampire and you’d eat them for breakfast. You’d suck them dry. Right? If it were just attachment, obviously there’s love there as well. So what’s love?
That’s defined in Buddhism as the wish that you be happy, the delight that you be happy. It’s the one that’s connected, that’s interdependent, that isn’t disturbing and is not a liar. It’s more in touch with reality, actually, the virtues. Because reality in Buddhist terms is that everything is interdependent, from my of saying it. So we can see when there’s friendship and there’s love for a person, there’s a delight in them, there’s a wish they’d be happy, you want to help them, you want to and that’s marvellous, that’s virtue, that’s fantastic, the more of that the better, please.
But the trouble is, it’s polluted by the attachment. And some days we can see, maybe it’s seventy percent attachment, thirty percent love, which means big trouble. Some days it’s seventy percent love, thirty percent attachment, which means no trouble, less trouble, you know? So it’s all a question of seeing the degree of it, but we can’t right now because we assume it’s all the same thing, we just can’t see the difference. We don’t ever think therefore it’s possible to change, you know.
So the delusions, the unhappy states of mind, we have to learn to recognize them. Because if Buddha says you can’t be happy till you get rid of attachment, you better know what attachment You can’t just kind of vaguely guess and chuck out the baby with the bathwater, which is what we often do, know. It’s not appropriate at all. So it takes much looking, like I said, Lama Yeshe can tell you about it for a whole year, he said. You won’t begin to understand until you really build something up in your own mind by looking at your own self.
Looking looking deeply in the mind, you know. I mean, does seem almost impossible to us to think of having a relationship, especially a love relationship with a person where there’s no attachment. And it is virtually impossible for us right now, but once we understand it’s possible, once we understand what attachment is and what it’s not, once we understand that it’s not love, then we’ve got somewhere to go with it, know, then we can begin to practice. That’s why, for any of us who, you know, who have these relationships, it’s all wonderful, grist for the mill. Fantastic.
Be brave, you know, go for it. But that means learning every second about your own mind. Every minute. Knowing that if you’re suffering, it’s not because of what the other person is doing, and I don’t care what they do, it is not because of what the other person is doing. It is because of your attachment, your anger, your pride, your jealousy.
This sounds tough, but when we can begin to understand this, it is this is like I said, is the key to freedom, the key to happiness, the key to sanity. I’m not saying it is right that people harm us. Of course I’m not saying that. But until we can cut ourselves off from this object, from the blame mentality, we will never ever ever be free. We’ll only ever suffer.
What darling? When someone swerves in front of you in the car, yep. What is it exactly that you’re attached to? Okay, that’s the point. Attachment is like this primordial state of mind, you know, we often think of it in terms of an object, but it’s just this attachment to getting what you want, attachment to be happy.
And that means attachment, attachment to being happy. It’s not only that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be happy, but it’s this attachment to having a good feeling, and then all the assumptions in the mind that a good feeling is getting what I want, when I want it. So you think of the day, know, we just as long as we’re driving on the road, we’re getting what we want, we’re being unhindered, aren’t we? Every time the green light comes, we’re doing what we want, we’re continuing to go, we’re kind of propelled by this attachment that is moving us forward, moving us forward. It’s very subtle, that’s why we don’t notice it as a problem.
There’s just this assumption that I will get what I want, that I will hear the nice sounds, see the nice things, smell the nice things, have people praise me, have people respect me, have people love me, give me things when I want. This is just what we assume are the causes of happiness, it’s very deep inside us, you agree? Well, the second any of that is thwarted, then obviously what arises is irritation, or depression, or anxiety, or anger, or jealousy, you name it. So this is where it’s very hard to see. It sounds very cruel because we don’t know what it means to be happy unless we get what we want.
And if you we define happiness in our culture. You know, when you have a nice house, this is why I’m happy. When we have nice food, that’s why I’m happy when we have people smile at us, that’s why we’re happy when people praise us, that’s why we’re happy when people like us at our job, that’s why we’re happy when people love us at home, hello darling, welcome home, that’s why we’re happy and the thing is, to be happy is wonderful Please be much more happy, Buddha says, we can be happy. But the only way we know to get it now is by getting what we want. So this is why the most amazing practice is to practice learning to be happy when you don’t get what you want.
Learning to be happy when the red lights come. Learning to be happy when the person is mean to you. Learning to be happy when the person leaves you. Learning to be happy when you get the carrot cake. That’s what the practice is.
Amazing, unbelievable level of practice, you know. Because this is the point now, we don’t believe happiness is what we can we don’t think we can get happiness unless we get what we want, it’s the logic of our society. It’s the logic of saṃsāra, Buddha says. Ants are the same, dogs are the same, you name it. Because it’s this disease we’ve got, we’re junkies, you know.
This is the point. So we have to learn to realise by hearing this, first of all, say, that happiness is not coming from what you get when you get what you want, happiness is a state of mind. And even when you do get what you want, what you are experiencing is happiness, and it is your state of mind, we make the mistake of thinking it’s the chocolate cake that caused it. It triggered it, definitely. Just like the person punching me triggered my my anger.
But when we can begin to separate ourselves from the experience and realise that the happiness is mine, the anger is mine, and I can learn to go against it or to have it, whether I get what I want or not. This is this big miracle to separate ourselves from the external world that at the moment we’re completely in the thrall of, you know. Do you see what I mean? That’s why it’s so difficult. It’s a very subtle job to do.
She’s wondering where this starts because you have a little kid. How’s your child? And how does he act? Does he get upset when he doesn’t get what he wants? Yes.
Okay, that’s it. Exactly, that’s right. So we tend to think, that’s just a kid, he’ll grow up, you know? But it’s not. Some children, we can see, some kids are very content, they’re very spacious, that means, yes, it has to do with karma, that’s the actions similar to the cause, he’s got his own little personality that due to past habit has brought certain habits with him, you know?
And so we can see the seed of them already in tiny children, you know? Not to be depressed about it, that’s why if we’ve got an understanding about our own mind ourselves, we can understand theirs more and actually help them learn, you know? That’s the point. And so as a parent, that’s my role too? Absolutely, Absolutely.
And the fact is, this is how if you don’t know your own mind, how can you know his? So that’s why the best way to be the best mother is to practice on your own mind. Learn your own mind, you know? Really, really practice on your own self. Understand your own mind so well.
Isn’t it? Sort of obvious. If wanna, you know, learn if your child is a good musician or not, the only way you can really know is if you’re a musician, you know? And you recognize very subtle levels. This is why the best first step is to, you know, to help others, we gotta first work on ourselves.
That’s why, you know? And also having the Buddhist assumption is not that it’s my child that I made, but it’s your job to be like the nurturer of this child who has his own personality, he brought his own stuff with him, you know, and therefore have some objectivity that it’s his mind to be very objective, not just kind of blown out by attachment, isn’t he so gorgeous, the poor darling, oh, look at him, he’s just chucking a wobbly, know. But seeing that that’s called anger, not to be mean about it, by helping him understand, you know, training gently, gently, not giving lectures, but even by you being a certain way. I mean, children are very we know that they learn so much by just the experience around them, you know. So by our being a different example, already they can kind of sort of seep it in through their bones, you know.
Isn’t it? Someone else? Absolutely. I understand. So this attachment we have to security, for example, especially in the world where it’s changing so much.
So is there a language of living in the moment in Buddhism? Yes, it’s one that’s been adopted, especially in certain traditions like Zen, know? But it’s actually accomplished, when a person has really gone beyond these delusions to a very profound degree, you could very easily say they’re really in living in the moment. They’re not, you know, one of the signs of attachment, which sounds so insane, because we’re all like this all the time, one of the signs of attachment is when we’re thinking about something that isn’t there. So you know, we can see our mind when we’re kind of we’re either living in the past, our fantasy mind is so active, we’re living in the past, or we’re living in the future, constantly constructing these castles in the air, you know, and that’s what we do, that’s how can we even achieve anything.
So there’s nothing wrong with constructing something in the air and thinking I want to get it. But when it’s attachment, when it’s fantasy, there is a big big problem, big big suffering. That’s why we end up bitter and depressed at the end of our life, you know? So the real key of a person living in the moment is a person who’s gone truly beyond attachment, who’s a very sublime being. They’re not just sort of narrow minded, but they’re really in dealing with what is the reality now, and not living in a fantasy about what could happen and maybe happen, if only happened, why not happen, if I’ll be happy then blah blah blah, you know?
Or living in the past with all the regrets and stuff like that, which is how we spend much of our life. So absolutely, yeah. That’s a definite result, but it’s a very profound state of mind. Absolutely. Somebody else?
Yeah. If you’re for If you’re planning for the future, yes. Yep, very good point. Absolutely, yeah. So if you’re planning for the future, how do you know it’s fantasy or if it’s realistic?
Well this is the key, we have to first establish what to begin to distinguish between attachment and just simply, you know, a term that we would use called aspiration. So in this sense too, it’s not as if attachment is not is trying to not want anything, that’s insane, you just become a vegetable. That’s ridiculous. There’s nothing wrong with wanting, in other words, someone could say, would you like some chocolate cake? And you say, oh yeah, I’d love a piece.
You wouldn’t say, if you’re giving up attachment, you wouldn’t say, oh, don’t care, know, would you like sugar? I don’t care. Coffee? Oh, don’t care. That’s called indifference, that’s horrible, know.
Do you want to be a carpenter? Do want to be a you’ve to know we live in this relative world, so if we remember the two wings of the bird, you know, if we think like this, we really get this kind of clear in our minds, the one is compassion and one is wisdom. So that means really, are two reasons to do anything. Using this view, there are two reasons to do anything. Two, only two, they cover everything.
One is the wisdom wing, which is to say that the reason you do something or want something in the future, doesn’t matter what it is, or want something now, is because it will help you develop your qualities and lessen your neuroses. Or two, it will help another person. That’s the entire universe, isn’t it? So that’s the way to use to think. So when it’s attachment, this is what we have to do, we can’t just it’s hard to see the difference, but that’s what we have to do by meditating and looking and thinking and analysing and looking and listening to the teachings again and again and thinking again and again and distinguishing between attachment and wanting to do something.
So attachment, you know, the key to attachment is, like I said, when you don’t get it, when it’s thwarted, you freak out. Well, I mean, we can see almost everything’s attachment right now, or it’s polluted by attachment right now, know, it’s very hard. So we have to go slowly and carefully and learn from our experiences all the time, you know? Richard? Exasperation, did you say?
Or aspiration? Aspiration. Could also be what? Attachment. Very easily, and it very commonly is right now for us.
So putting it like this, we can see now in general, we very rarely love a person we’re not attached to, and we very we’re never attached to a person we don’t love. Very rare, isn’t it? So they come together for us. So when we can begin to separate them, then we can have healthy love. So of course, right now, we’ve got these huge kind of codependents and strings attached like crazy, you know, so we yearn for a person to be happy, and usually that means attachment, because we’re so scared and we see them do the wrong thing, we’re running around trying to make them happy, because we can’t better see them, they’re miserable, because we take it personally.
So it is manipulative now, and it’s really coming from attachment. So to want a person to be happy is just a genuine, clear aspiration. And then when you have wisdom, because love and compassion are this side, know, the delight in you being happy, the wish that you’d be happy, just very kind of no strings attached is what it is, really. And then the wisdom is to know if I have a job to do this, how to do it. But the way when it’s motivated by attachment, it feels so amazing and love and incredible, but it’s really you remove the attachment from it and the love will collapse most likely.
That’s the problem. So we have to keep learning, just keep looking and learning all the time. And that’s why in a relationship, we start to really, let’s say, we start to try to change to develop our own qualities, it can be very scary when it’s a really normal kind of attachment relationship and the other person isn’t on the same wavelength, because they’ll start to think that you’re rejecting them, know, because you’re not playing the same ego games any longer. I mean one doesn’t do it in a cruel way, but it can be very, because with attachment relationships, we’re both like kind of laser beams at each other all the time, checking every single, I’m checking every single thing you’re doing and saying and thinking, constantly assessing where you’re at, and that you’re continuing to feed me and feed me and feed me, you know, and you’re constantly checking me. So when that starts to shift, this can be very scary.
Absolutely. That’s why it’s not an easy job. Somebody else wanted something before. Yeah, where? You.
Who? What, You’re not going to say it now? Okay, that’s no problem. Yep. Just in regards to learning about your own attachment and the concept of retreat and in your own practice, do you keep the chocolate cake there?
I understand. Or do you take the chocolate cake away? Absolutely, so learning to look at your own attachment and going into retreat and understanding how it functions and all that, right? Do you keep the chocolate cake there or do you remove yourself from it? Well, that’s all a question of how attached you are, isn’t it?
So it’s like, we use examples like alcohol for example, we obviously can see that a person, because of the power of the object, we can see that a person who’s attached to alcohol, we call it alcoholic. No one would expect a person to give up attachment to alcohol by continuing to drink alcohol. It’s too powerful an object, right? You agree? So it depends on the object, that’s why it depends on us, we have to look and check.
So we can see even with anger, with aversion of somebody. But say we have a relationship that’s really intense, really heavy and it causes us lose our brain all the time, you know. Maybe it’s best to remove yourself from that person, don’t blame the other person, but know that because of karma, you have strong connection with that person, if it’s gonna make you wanna kill them, best to keep back off please, remove yourself from the object. So we have to know ourselves what we can and can’t handle. So that’s why it’s sometimes, I mean I’ve the kind of mind, the personality, that it’s so much easier to say no to it, to cut it off completely.
That’s why I’m a nun. Well that’s not meant to be inferior, I’m glad I’m like that. It’s so much easier for me to remove myself from the usual attachments of relationships that I always found so intense, I knew it going crazy, you know. So it’s much easier for me to get some space from it, to focus on the positive parts of myself to try to develop my qualities in the freedom of not having that, you know, that’s very clear for me. The same even like recently, the last six or eight months, nine months, I’ve been on this special diet because I’ve got candida, right?
And one of the things I can’t eat at all is sugar, any kind at all. Sugar, fruit, any description. So I’m a sugar junkie completely, I just you know, have my hit every day normally, chocolate, cake, whatever. I mean, not as berserk as I might have been, but still, you can say it in the mind. I’m talking about the mind here, not the body, the mind.
Wanting something, kind of the sweet thing, having the hit. So even though now probably my candida is a lot better, could eat some sweet things again but it’s easier for me to say no completely. So much easier. It’s like freedom for me. All the time having to control, I just have a little bit you know.
But when you just have this kind of barrier between you and the object, even though when you see it, it doesn’t energise you. You’ve got freedom from it. Thank you, I prefer that. It’s easier, much easier for my mind. So it depends on the person.
We’ve to know where we’re at with everything, know. Do you see? Do you see? Yes. You’re talking about the mother?
Yeah, is that running away? Okay, so let’s say there’s a mother who’s got a junky kid, you mean is it running away if the mother wants to leave or have the child leave? Well this is again, it’s a question of the motivation and like I said, there are two main motivations. One is that the action of doing whatever you do will actually help you develop your qualities or will protect you from your own delusions which maybe are very strong, like the sugar one. Or it is an action that is genuinely of benefit to the other person.
So that needs a lot of wisdom to know. So you know, this is like the one of tough love, if a mother really has genuine love for that child and she can see the only thing to do is to force them out on their own because maybe they’ll grow up then. You gotta have a lot of I mean, especially if they’re junky, it’s a very dangerous one, but in not even just using the junky one. Because, you know, this is the one about having these relationships and loving ones, because it’s coming from a lot of attachment, like he was saying, Richard, especially with mothers and children, there’s so much attachment there that everybody else can see that the mother’s just giving in all the time to this kid’s needs and they’re not growing up at all. Because it’s not love, it’s attachment.
It’s easy, it’s the easy way out, you know? Because they’re darling boy, give them this, oh, you know because they really are scared to say no, And because there’s so much attachment. So we have to have the wisdom to really know what is best. Either it’s something that we just can’t bear ourselves, we can’t handle it. And know, and maybe you’re not brave enough, you’re not strong enough yet to be able to do the thing that’s really of a benefit to the other person.
Can only just handle it yourself, otherwise you’re gonna drown and die, you know? So then you must do that action. Even at the level of, let’s say, you you’ve this neurotic friend who’s all the time ringing you up and wanting to come over and go blah blah blah. And you can see it’s just they come, they’re just grasping at you and just wasting your time and wasting theirs. But you know, you really see that you don’t know how to help them.
You don’t know how to help them, but it’s making you crazy and you can’t handle it. So you don’t get all kind of noble and try and keep saying yes, come over and then make you go crazy completely because you haven’t got enough strength. It’s better, even if you alienate them, it’s better because it’ll protect you to say no, please don’t come, know, you protect yourself. But you’ve got to do it with a very pure motivation, not to harm the other person, but to know that you’ll drown if you don’t. And we find this very much in relationships, The person, let’s say, who’s very needy of us, very demanding, very bullying.
It mightn’t be the right thing for that person, but we’ve to first protect ourselves if we can’t do the most profound one, which is to really benefit the other person. So we do it for our own sake, but in a pure way, not in an attachment way, you know? It’s very necessary because half the time we stay in garbage relationships because we’re scared to leave, so we think it’s all being so noble. It’s not being noble at all. It’s just because we’re babies and we don’t want get out on our own.
So we stick around in a really lousy relationship where it’s full of all this co dependence or full of all this aversion and misery, not good for the other person, not good for ourselves, but we’re kind of pretending it’s okay because it’s security and all this stuff. That’s not true, we’ve got to be very brave, know, and say goodbye, I’m leaving. Time to grow up. Do you see what I mean? Does that make sense?
Yeah. Not easy to have this wisdom. So there’s wisdom and there’s compassion. The whole area, all we’ve talked, all the stuff at the moment about karma, and all the things of the mind, and the way the mind works, all that’s the wisdom wing. All that’s the first two scopes, that works that you do on your own mind, to put yourself together.
So even if you’re not looking at the compassion wing, the usual motive we have now is attachment. What we’re trying to develop is another motive, it’s also for our own benefit, but now it’s a clean one. It’s clean, it’ll help us develop our qualities, not just drag us down more into attachment, and it could even be painful. This could equally mean you would stay in a relationship that looks lousy, because you know this is exactly where you have to be to learn about your attachment, to learn about your aversion, and you can know that you can handle it, and you can go beyond it, and grow out of it. Fantastic, you know?
But the usual criteria we use, you check. The usual criterion we use is if it’ll make me feel good right now. If it doesn’t, it must be a bad relationship, if it does, it must be a good one. Rubbish. The one that is the quick fix is the codependent relationship, as we call it, you scratch mine and I’ll scratch yours, you know, looking like it’s all lovey dovey, it’s just each feeding the other’s attachment, it’s not healthy.
And there’s very little love there, it’s just all kind of rubbish, know, it’s gluey and revolting. Then you’ve got the other one where it could look like a lousy relationship but you’re really working on your mind, you’re really working with this, the person maybe is mean to you, but you’re really working with it, you’re getting great strength from this fantastic relationship. Leave the first one, stay in the second one. But it’s not the way we usually think, you know, the usual criterion we use is it makes me feel good, it must be good. If the person’s mean to me at work, he must be a creep, I have to go.
Not true, not at all. Not if you’re trying to develop wisdom, and certainly not if you’re trying to develop compassion. Is it compassionate though to allow someone to be mean to you? I understand, to whom? The other person?
I understand. Is it compassionate to stay in a relationship where a person is being mean because it seems like you’re helping them create negative karma? It’s true, on the face of it it’s true, but it’s probably more complex than that of course. You know, there’s a strong karmic connection. Let me give you good example, always use this example, always use this one, which sounds shocking in our regular terms, you know.
My family is a bit we didn’t call it dysfunctional, we just thought it was our normal family, know, but now I know it was a dysfunctional family, like most of us, no doubt. So my mum, we were Catholics, we had this kind rubbish in the family, always fighting and shouting and yelling and stuff, and my dad and everything, and so then my mum had this best friend called Sheila, and Sheila had a dysfunctional family too, but because it’s someone else’s dysfunctional family, you don’t mind it so much, know? And anyway, she had six boys, so I used to like going hanging out with Sheila. Now Sheila’s family was insane, there’s all these boys, ridiculous, and all Reggie was a horrible, mean, old, ugly drunk husband, who used to do virtually rape her half the time. But Sheila was a Catholic, she loved God, I mean she had an incredible relationship with God, and she was this funny, wonderful, light, wonderful human being, that the stuff that she got from Reg, I swear to you, was water off a duck’s back.
And as a child, you don’t want to hang around with a person who’s miserable and depressed, don’t want to touch them, but I loved being around Sheila, she had this funny sense of humor, more than my mum, right? She had this wonderful sense of humor, she smoked like eighty cigarettes a day, she lived on bread and butter, she was skinny as a rake, endless cups of tea, right? And she had this creepy husband, who’s such a horrible person, you know? But Sheila had this incredible view that God was in everybody, and she meant it with the depth of her heart, was very, very spiritual, and that God was in Reg, and Reg was her husband, this was her life, and so she loved Reg, and she did, she was incredible. So what he did to her was sort of like this petulant child, it didn’t affect her at all, he was one who was so neurotic and suffering, was very clear.
So for me she was a really good example, now she was a Christian, I’m not talking she’s a Buddhist, but that was her reasoning. So therefore, because she had this strength inside her, and I really can see this, everybody saw it too, she was renowned for this, she didn’t fight with Reg, she didn’t get caught up in it, into all the dramas and anger and bitterness, victim, she was just funny about it, because she could see this silly boy, this man, and she just loved him for what he was, took care of him and loved him, and eventually he just adored her in the end, was like this little kid when he got older, out of her hand. That was just who he was, so that was Sheila’s view. So, okay, you could say, well, that was wrong for her to stick around because he created negative karma, but maybe you could say that if she’d left him, would have completely become a berserk alcoholic and gone around and killed people, because he would have been ten times worse. So if you have genuine compassion, which she did, I can see, then she wasn’t suffering, truly she wasn’t suffering.
And he somehow, because the karma was very strong between them, he ended up becoming docile and useless and not harming anymore, so it was really just all this kind of posturing, you know? So in the end it was kind to him. Do you see my point? So I mean it’s not easy to be this way, when we get so caught up, and then we think it’s the other person. So if Sheila had been angry and resentful and bitter, I mean then everybody would have said Poor Sheila, look at it, he’s causing all this suffering.
But people all saw that she wasn’t suffering, Not because Reggie was nice, he wasn’t. But Sheila was able to go beyond it, therefore she wasn’t suffering. So therefore it was quite a different story. So if you can’t, let’s say you have that kind of relationship, and it’s making you insane, really making you miserable and bitter and a victim, and you go and complain to everybody, and then you keep going home like a moth to a flame, know, that’s the kind of time you should either this is the point about the victim mentality, and I’m not criticising because people do get abused in relationships and they lose all their sense of what’s right and wrong, I know that exactly, but using the Buddhist reason for it, but like with the Afghani kid, you don’t go and tell them this, you know? But if we understand our own minds, that when we have this really extreme suffering victim mentality, we don’t know how to find our own freedom, but we’re not just being a nice person either, we’re full of hate for this person.
A person who’s a victim feels like they’re being beaten up, and it’s true they are being, but they have a lot of anger, lot of resentment and bitterness, but they keep going back. So one of the key things, this is the key thing, is to slowly, slowly feel that whatever it is that we’re in, we make it our choice. So as soon as we choose to be in that relationship, just like Sheila, it was perfectly fine. And that’s very brave to have this idiot as your husband, know, you can get much pleasure from him. Do you see my point?
Well, she made her choice. So when you really make something your choice, you are empowered, and the person cannot hurt you. As soon as you feel like a victim and I’m being forced to stay there, then you’re a victim, then you completely suffer, go mad, you know? And this is why even let’s say we don’t like our mum, because, you know, she’s this and she’s that and she’s neurotic and all these, whatever the reasons are, let’s say, and we dread, or anybody, we dread having to visit. But we go because we feel we should, you know, so we complain about it all the time beforehand, we complain about it all the time when we leave, we dread the next visit, and we keep going like a magnet back, know, thinking that she’s forcing me.
But it’s not taking responsibility, you know, you either go or you don’t go, either way make it your choice. But when you’re a victim you feel like the other person’s forcing you to do something, and then that same mind wants to then blame the other person. And that’s how we all are, we can see, so either way we never take responsibility. So this is the thing about a relationship, we have to start seeing, as it takes a lot of courage, that I have got a choice. I have got a choice, and if I’m gonna choose to leave, because it’s the best thing for my mind and I can’t stand this suffering any longer, then we leave, goodbye, with a good motivation, not blaming, knowing that I can’t bear it.
Or we choose to stay, we make it our choice, and then everything changes, you know, but that’s really hard, but this is the point, we do have a choice. Maybe if you’re in prison and the door’s locked, you can really see that you can actually physically say you don’t have a choice, then, which is how come many of the people I know are really practising, they’re making this their choice, you know. But what’s interesting, and this is why Lama Zopa when he wrote to one of these young guys one time, he sent him their twenty first birthday card to one of the Mexican ex gangsters, he said your prison’s nothing in comparison with the prison of ordinary people, the prison of attachment, the prison of pride, the prison of jealousy, the prison of anger, the prison of guilt, whatever, you know? That’s really true. You look at relationships, people, it’s like you’ve got a door locked they can’t get past, But it’s not, it’s our own mind, our scared, our fear, I’m not criticizing us, we’re all the same, we’re very suffering, you know.
So to really do the right thing is very profound, know. Interesting. I understand, I understand. So where does depression fit basically? Feeling is, haven’t had depression is one of my major problems, but I understand it because I’ve had it, I have it.
Depression, my feeling is, it’s aversion but for the self, and it brings like a heavy dullness, know, like a disconnection, doesn’t it? But it’s aversion for the self. Most of my aversion has been happily put on other people, know, so I haven’t had depression. Think, would anybody agree with this? When you look at it, it’s internalised aversion, it’s kind of complete and it becomes like thick and dark, and like a sense of separateness and like nothing happening, know, dull.
It’s not like that violent kind of against myself, cutting yourself up and everything, could even bring to that, mean I don’t if that’s connected with depression too, but it’s the state of mind as aversion and the object is self. What do you think about that? Does that sound right to you? Yes, exactly. That’s it.
And I think that’s the point about when it’s internalised, mean there’s a person I know, yeah, example, I think a person I know who I’ve known well for quite a while, and she like deep, deep depression was her mode, so there she was a very passive person. She never she would never think that she had any kind of aversion or anger in her mind, she’s not, she’s very quiet person, you know, but deeply depressed, so she would kind of and she also had all these anxious kind of habits of pulling her hair out and having panic attacks, just completely hysterical, or she would like sleep for twelve-fifteen hours, unbearable the thought of getting up, right? Just unable to face. Does it sound like depression? Okay.
So what’s interesting when I observed her working with herself and everything, and really learning to come in touch with her mind and certain things, know, she was working with a very strong person who’s used to activate this aversion in her, and slowly you could see the aversion started to get more volatile. And it was like she started to realise for the first time that she had aversion, because it started to go out, it started to be expressed out, and that’s a really good sign, because all the thickness was unraveling. Interesting for herself, she really began to see that it was a strong aversion, but she was the object. So as she kind of let go of it and began to have more self respect, she started to see the aversion more externalised to other people and blaming and things like that. So that’s a healthy sign, now she’s going even beyond that.
So I think that’s the common for someone like me in my life, always in my family I’m thinking of seven kids, and we all had our different ways of responding to our emotional chaos in the family. And it was like a parody, know, each of us was this ridiculous kind of example. I was the kind of when the moment there was trouble, I’d be there like a magnet, kind of provoking it to make it worse, just you know? My sister Polly would become catatonic, and Julie would get asthma, and Janet would run around controlling and go and vomit and, you know, be anorexic. Everybody had their own way of dealing with all the suffering, know, it was like insane.
But I was the one who was always the volatile one, I always seemed to provoke problems, as soon as I saw it I’d try and make it worse, provoke my father, all these things, you know? So I was the one who was evident, was angry, but you wouldn’t say, see one of my sisters, you would never call her angry, because she was the one who became catatonic, it was all internal, you know? But it’s still aversion, the state of mind is aversion, but the self is the object. So, okay, there is an advantage to that, I don’t mean advantage, it’s better to be that way, because at least with me, I harmed me with my anger, plus I harmed other people. At least when you have depression, don’t harm other people.
That’s a good thing, you should rejoice, okay? Truly, that you don’t harm other people, that’s fantastic, that’s amazing. Okay, you harm yourself, but my goodness, so did I, but it doesn’t look like I did. So for example, in my family, three of my sisters all in a row had breakdowns, complete mental breakdowns, you know? All the seven of us, this one psychiatrist my mother sent us all to, he diagnosed the seven of us as being manic depressive.
He was so happy to have this entire family case history, you know? So the whole seven of us were all diagnosed as manic depressive, and three of them all had mental breakdowns and he was kind of helping them heal, he was a very nice man. I didn’t want his rubbish medicine anyway, I was too proud. But anyway, it was like three of my sisters had mental breakdowns and the three who did were more kind of in control of their emotions, I was the one who was completely berserk, I never had a mental breakdown. Mean, other people had a mental breakdown, no doubt.
Because I expressed mine, so that was maybe one healthy thing for myself. But even one of my sisters now has a year out of her life that she just can’t remember, suppressed. So we all have these different ways of dealing, that’s why to look into our minds and to see that so why we have mental suffering is because of delusions, why we get angry, because of delusions, why we do this, why we have calm, because of delusions. So all of us is the same, it’s this question of how they manifest, because we’re all so different, you know? That’s why it takes a real lot of time for a person, so let’s say for a person who doesn’t express their aversion, the commonest thing is oh, I’m not angry, you know?
My friend who always have said that she wasn’t angry, but she had self loathing like you can’t believe, so that’s called anger, for goodness sake. So when it kind of got released, started to become more expressive, then she could see it more clearly. So for a person who’s like that, you’ve got to go through the process of first recognising it, going inside, not being afraid of what’s there, and many people who don’t like to express their aversion, we can see they’re terrified of it, So therefore you deny, you push it away, you call it something else, it manifests in these different ways. So that’s why being your own therapist is not an easy job, the mind is so complex, the ego has so many skilful methods to get us to avoid what is going on inside. It’s very interesting.
I understand. So basically the point is that if a person suppresses it, and I’m indicating that it seems like a healthy process for the person to let it arise and let them see it and even express it. So the key to this I think is, in itself, no, in itself, to express is not necessarily beneficial, the key is whether you see it and own it. So all I’m saying is the process for a person who’s always denied it, obviously you’ve got to start acknowledging it, and acknowledging it isn’t some interesting intellectual process, it’s very painful because it has to explode out, and for the person who’s working on their mind, and that’s the point, if you’re working on your mind, then it’s beneficial to see it. So that’s why we need a good therapist, forget about even being your own first, let’s find another good therapist who can help us unravel the complexities of our own crazy minds, and that’s the benefit, the purpose of a therapist is to this sounding board, this safe place for where we can actually express it, but if we’re just going to a therapist to continually express our anger, and then we believe in the story and don’t want to change, then indeed there’s no benefit.
That’s the key. There is benefit in expressing it, if you want to work on it. In and of itself, there’s not the therapy in Buddhism of just expressing somehow gets rid of it. No, the reason to express is because you can see it more clearly, and therefore understand how it’s causing you so much pain, and not to be afraid of it. This is the key one, and this is why there’s no contradiction between saying anger is destructive, but don’t be afraid of it.
So I can say in my life I had the arrogance to not be afraid of it, I was actually arrogant and thought I was superior, because I said what I wanted and when I wanted, and no one was gonna stop But there was also something healthy about that for me, because I somehow couldn’t help but see it, and also I continually got criticized, so I certainly got the suffering for it, know. I was always the baddie, always at school, in my jobs, I kind of was like this magnet for being as the bad one. So then I eventually start grow up from that, because I used to wear that as a big victim too. Poor me, no one loves me, don’t understand me, you know? So there’s all these different ways you have to look and the key thing is to know that all these states of mind, are locked deep inside, complicated, so constructed and all mixed up, know, we just have to learn to unravel them, and whatever methods we can use, and I don’t care, whatever methods we can use to see ourselves, please do them.
Go to ten therapists, meditate, go to the mountains, become a nun, not become a nun, do whatever you like, whatever it is that helps you get to see your mind and take responsibility and know that you can change, that’s the miracle. We’re reading the text, they go to Buddha House. Oh, go to Buddha House, yeah. Okay, yes, so are we communicating? The lady in white, we’re communicating, good.
Thank you very much. This is why Lama Zopa Rinpoche said one time, like I said before, just depression, anger, they’re just delusions. But if they’re arising in the context of practice, fantastic, there’s purification. And that is why, because again we have this puritanical view of being good and bad, know, we’ve got this dualistic view, that being kind of all hedonistic is all saṃsāra, so I’ve got give it all up and be all puritanical now. So when you start being all puritanical, say, anger’s bad, jealousy’s bad, no, I’m a good person now, and then of course, you start deceiving yourself, you go mad, and you beat yourself up, that’s not helpful at all.
So it’s almost like we’ve got to recognize what is poison and what is not, which is delusions, but with great kindness to ourself. Recognise it when it comes, and almost be happy, wow, now I can see it, what a wonderful opportunity. It’s just like, you know, when you’ve got a car that doesn’t work, and then someone says,