Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 69-minute session, Ven Robina Courtin dismantles the Western assumption that the mind originates in parents and biology, offering Buddha’s liberating alternative: you brought your own mind, shaped entirely by past karma, and you can change it. She establishes the foundation—minds are beginningless and non-physical, causation operates as natural law, suffering is removable—then moves into practical psychology: delusions are not just disturbing emotions but misconceptions and exaggerations about people and objects. Anger, attachment, and jealousy distort reality. Effective practice means becoming your own therapist, observing your own mind rather than blaming others. She maps three practice levels: controlling body and speech to stop creating negative karma; developing concentration to see how the mind actually works; eventually practicing compassion for others. Irreverent and humorous, pitched at practitioners beginning serious engagement with Buddhist psychology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2011 09 10 – 01 – session1.mp3
UUID: 5ef92469-91c0-40b0-9b24-cbb6a87ffad5
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: z Robina Courtin 2011 – too hard (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 2011-09-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 69.5 minutes
Words: ~12,719
That’s a good start. That’s already started with merit, isn’t it? Good. So let’s think we’re going to sit here for a while together. Listen to some of Buddha’s ideas, sort of channel through the Tibetan style, channeled through the holy beings, his holiness and the lamas, who are my teachers.
So hopefully passing on to you some of their knowledge, coming right back to the Buddha of how to bring this stuff into your daily life, how to make it real, how to bring it down to earth, how to get it out of the sky, how to get it out of belief, how to get it out of mystical and fear and guilt, you know? How to make it practical tools, as practical as eating and sleeping and all the things that we do see as practical. This is the point, you know. Then it becomes real for us. So we’re gonna listen to some of these ideas, take some stuff away from us with us so we can implement these tools in our lives, so we can cultivate our amazing potential.
Buddha is outrageous in what he asserts is the potential of every one of us. Just hear it again practically. Astonishing, you know, for our sake, of course, so that we can then be of use to others. This is why we’re listening. So I’m doing all the prayers back to front, never mind.
The next little one we’re going to do is an offering. We’re going to offer what’s called a mandala, and all that is is all that is is it’s from Buddhist cosmology. You’re you’re imagining offering the contents of the universe. So of course it’s kind of weird for us, you know, holy cows and goddesses and we got a blue sky, guess what, because it’s reflecting off lapis lazuli. We didn’t know that, did we?
So you know, if you wanna buy into Buddha’s cosmology or if you’d rather have our cosmology, think of what’s in Myers and David Jones, all the lovely things and the stars and the moon and the delicious food and the gorgeous restaurants and the lovely cafe lattes. All the objects are the senses. That’s all the world is, is a bunch of objects are the senses, isn’t it, that beings use. So we see we just imagine using your creative imagination, daydreaming about wonderful things, but instead of just for yourself, you’re imagining offering to the Buddha as a request for the teachings. It’s so auspicious.
It’s auspicious to offer something in order to receive something. So we’re gonna kinda like offer to the Buddha as if you were here a magnificent mandala of the marvelous contents of the universe as a request for the teachings. So just visualize, imagine, daydream. If you know the proper one, otherwise just imagine lovely things. That’s it.
And then now as you do this little sec final mantra, you imagine all the Buddha blissfully receiving it. And now we’ll do the next one, the seven-limb prayer, which is a very essential summary of some main points of practice, appropriate attitudes in the mind that prepare us to, you know, do a practice, listen to the teachings, whatever, the seven limbs. The first one is we prostrate. We’ve done that. We greet the Buddha.
Then we we acknowledge our negativity. We make offerings. Next one. We’ve done that. Then the next one, acknowledge our negativity.
Next one, crucial. We acknowledge our virtue. We delight in our virtue. The next two, really crucial, requesting the holy beings to teach, requesting them to never leave us. We need their presence in our lives.
And then finally, dedicating the merit. Okay. So basically, you know, Buddha is really simple in what he’s saying, you know. He’s saying there are minds. Minds are not physical, there are continuity of mental moments because everything is a beginningless continuity of mental moments because you don’t have a creator, no need for a creator, there’s an unnecessary addition, an unnecessary embellishment because everything has its own entity, comes from a previous moment, which comes from a previous moment, which comes from a previous moment, whether it’s a cup, a lid, or my mind.
Check it out, the simple logic of cause and effect. Whereas as His Holiness says, big bang, no problem, that’s not the first big bang, that’s all. If you the simple principle of cause and effect is if you posit something, a clock, a lid, a moment of mind, a pencil, a flower. What caused it? The moment before.
The second before. It’s a chain of mental moments. And what caused that one? Guess what? The moment before.
So you check logically, how can you find a thing, anything in the universe, anything that didn’t have a previous moment. In other words, if you think there is something that didn’t have a previous moment, in other words if you think there’s something that had a first moment, that implies it’s not the effect of anything, because how can you have an effect from no cause? It’s a simple thing, just get your head around, it’s like mathematics. Get your head around that logic, and that logic proves beginninglessness. So mind, non physical, we take that as a hypothesis, therefore beginningless.
My mind, first point. Second point, the law of karma, the law of cause and effect, Buddha calls it karma in relation to minds, you know, the law of cause and effect also applies to clocks and toilets and tables. Actions as well, minds, thoughts, feelings, emotions, is a law of cause and effect. And he says that’s what runs minds, that’s what plays out in minds, the natural law that whatever a mind does, whatever a mind thinks, and whatever the body and speech do as the servant of that mind, let’s face it, it is an action, a karma that will bring a reaction that leaves a seed in the mind, an impression in the mind that will will continue in the mind, and will ripen in the future as an experience or a tendency or some as as a result of that. It’s a simple concept, know, a five year old could say it.
It’s just that it’s so different from our dualistic view of the world, you know, that we currently hold. So these two, this is the basis of all of Buddha’s practice, teachings, esoteric, simple, whatever. This is the essence of it, mind and karma. Everything comes into this. Everything.
Everything. Simple. It’s not complicated. So then Buddha says, minds in their nature are clear and pure. We have to think about this because it doesn’t we don’t believe this because we think the mind is up here, it’s a brain, and mommy and daddy gave it to us, and we come programmed with mommy and daddy’s junk.
You know, that’s what we think. I mean I think that’s the most depressing view, we all should kill ourselves immediately if this were true. If this were truly true, no wonder we’re all mad, no wonder we’re having mental breakdowns, we know we know why do we blame everybody. I can’t, it’s just for me the more I think of the Buddha’s view, the more this seems the wackiest idea I’ve ever heard. That our mommy and daddy literally created us, like Frankenstein created his monster, know.
And like I say, if they really did, you should sue them. You are correct in blaming your parents. The instinct we have is that they are to blame, then we feel guilty when our therapist tells us we have to change and stop blaming and start growing up. No, I disagree. I truly truly really sincerely disagree.
If it is actually true that your mother and father actually created you, and this is the view, because it’s the second before the egg and sperm got together, you didn’t exist, did you? There’s no nothing of you that according to the materialist model, there’s not a fraction of you that existed the second before conception. You’re this brand new person that they created. So if they did create me, it’s true I didn’t ask to get born, you’re absolutely right to feel like a victim. I mean because how dare, excuse me, this is my conclusion from the materialist view, how dare two deluded people make another deluded person?
Give me anger, give me jealousy, give me depression, give me lying and stealing, which is what we all say. How dare I mean seriously, you’d be sued out of court if you did this in the world. Ordinary, you know, you create some monster, you create some poison thing, you create a multi murderer, you create a depressed person, like popped up with it today, know. My God, it’s outrageous. And then I’m told I’ve to grow up and take responsibility.
I’m sorry, you’re wrong. My mother and father are to blame. Now okay, if you think God created you, we don’t like blaming God, but Italians love it. Any Italian Catholics here? They have the rudest words, you can’t believe.
Lama Yeshe was in hospital visiting one of his friends in Italy thirty years ago, and all the Italian boys in the ward were were were translating the rude things all the Italian men were saying about God when things go wrong, I mean they they call our lady a whore, Mary, know, the Madonna. Then they say God is a pig. Can you imagine? I mean I was an Irish sort of Irish English Catholic, we would faint at the thought of God being a pig, wait for God to come to the ceiling and attack you. But Italian Catholics are great, so they do blame God.
You know this is very fascinating. So anyway, Buddha says it’s no one to blame anybody, babies. We created ourselves. We are the fruit of our past actions. This is the simplest simplest simplest point, but it’s mind boggling to us because everything in our being, all our delusions, all our fears, all our schizophrenic dualistic me, you, not fair, poor me, I’m the blame, you’re the blame, it’s or or I’m the blame if it’s guilt, it’s the same deal.
Just blame yourself instead of somebody else. All this dualistic or as Lama Zopa as he politely puts it schizophrenic view of the world is actually a product, Buddha says, of of this this holding this misconception of grasping at self-existence. This is Buddha’s philosophical way of presenting, you know. So he says it’s just a mistake to think that your parents made you. Actually, I don’t even I don’t even think of you such as that existed at Buddha’s time.
I think everybody created there was always some spiritual view. So we’ve really become degenerate, know. We’ve got all chucked all the spiritual out and got to the point where it’s only physical. The good side of that, of course, is it’s it’s the scientific one, which is exactly Buddha’s view anyway. You check things up.
You don’t just swallow it whole. You know? So basically, we’ve got mind, the beginningless, which is my mind, my mind, and everything in it. I brought it with me. Think about it.
Everything in you today, you know perfectly well it came from yesterday. If you played piano for ten years and you wake up today, you can play the piano today. Guess what? Why? Because you brought all your practice with you, and you woke up with it.
Unless, of course, you lose your memory, isn’t it? And you forget. But we bring everything from yesterday. That’s why we wake up exhausted. All the anger, all the misery, the memories of the mean hubby and the ugly kid.
I mean it’s always better if we lose our mind sometimes lose our memory sometimes, isn’t it? But you think whatever you do yesterday, you bring with you today. You look anything we’ve ever learned, mathematics, music, everything, this is cause and effect, this is karma. You do that yesterday, you create the habit, you come today, you do it better. Guess what?
But we get this when it comes to music. Why are you good at music, Rubina? Well, I have practiced for ten years. What do you think? And you’re proud to own responsibility, aren’t you?
You you don’t blame Mozart. You don’t blame your piano teacher. You don’t blame Steinway for the good piano. You don’t say, oh, it’s their fault that I’m good at music. But when someone says, why are you angry, Rubina?
We do blame. It’s my mother’s fault, it’s father’s fault, it’s her fault, it’s his fault. We don’t want to take any accountability. The good stuff we just take for granted, but we should take account, we should be accountable for that as well. Why you’re loving today is because you’ve been loving before, it’s a habit.
So basically Buddha is saying everything we’ve got now is the result of what we’ve done before, and crucially, obviously everything we do now will produce experiences in the future. So the fundamental level of Buddhist practice, you know. All of Buddhist practice really is about morality, but there’s a different level or virtue, or creating merit, quote unquote. This is the term they use in Asia, in Tibet, that’s all. Don’t mystify it.
Basically, the Buddha’s if you understand the way Buddha talks about the mind, the mental consciousness, we’ve got two levels of mind. Okay? Well, one way of saying. We’ve got the sensory consciousness, and then we have the mental consciousness. Now like Lama Yeshe says, we make the body the boss, but it’s wrong.
The senses are like dumb animals, but we give so much power to our body, so much power to the senses. And as this is a sensory realm, we live in a desire realm, Buddha says, created from eons of attachment. Attachment. We get born with this body which has got a bunch of five holes that demand feeding, don’t they? And this world we live in is a bunch of five senses.
You think about it, the objects of the senses. The senses crave the sights, the sounds, the smells, the touch, and the whatever the fifth one is, isn’t it? That’s it. This is the world. We occupy in this dualistic way, this world that we crave to put to ingest.
That’s why Buddha says it’s a desire realm. It’s a junky realm, basically. We’re junkies and we have to get the get the objects of the senses every day. So the senses are massive for us, but they’re liars, they’re they’re like dumb animals, they have no power actually. The mental consciousness, as Lama Zopa puts it, that’s where the workshop is, that’s what we have to learn and become familiar with, that’s what does the meditating, that’s where all the causes of happiness and suffering.
That’s where we keep that’s where the if you like the broadly speaking, the karmic imprints, our habits are stored. This is what we have to know deeply and profoundly. And what Buddha is saying, this marvelous point, his outrageous radical point that no other model of the mind would dare even remotely say, is that this mind is in its nature clear and pure because it’s not physical, and it can be perfected. This is a simple principle of Buddha’s teachings, the simplest one. Again, a five year old could learn it.
Buddha’s fundamental point takes a while to really think it through and see the logic of it. Let’s see if we can do this a little bit today, which is the key to the one of purifying the mind, creating merit. These terms that Buddhists use. So when we understand that the mind, the mental consciousness where the workshop is, there are three levels of states of mind, three states of mind, three categories. That’s it.
There are positive states of mind, negative states of mind, neutral states of mind. That’s it. There’s no fourth category. It’s simple. Buddha’s model of the mind is so simple, it’s embarrassing.
Positive, negative, neutral. The neutral, let’s forget. Who cares? Neither here nor there. The positive and the negative, they’re the ones we’re concerned with.
So the Buddhist point, and he states this basically, it’s sort of implied in the third noble truth. That mind in its nature is clear and pure. Now this doesn’t mean you’re clear and pure once and you got naughty and lost the plot. It doesn’t mean that. It means always a potential for perfection.
Even more simple, let’s keep it really simple, because this is the essence of understanding what creating merit is, and it’s the essence of understanding what purifying the mind is, which is what Buddhist practice actually is. The actual practice of Buddhism is pulling out the negative seeds and growing the positive ones. It’s a simple way. You know, you pull out the weeds and grow the flowers, and when you’re fully developed, you’ve grown all the flowers and the seeds and the weeds have all gone. That’s a simple analogy.
And Buddha says that’s the potential of all minds. So the meaning of the word Buddha. The word in Tibetan, the equivalent of the word Buddha in Sanskrit. The first syllable implies the absolute the complete removal from the minds of all the causes of suffering, all the delusions. Because the delusions are the main causes of suffering.
Our negative states of mind are the cause of all suffering. And the second syllable, implies the complete development of all the goodness. Because Buddha says the goodness is at the core of our being. Virtues, good qualities are at the core of our being. They are what define us.
This takes a bit of thinking because it’s so profoundly different from the view we hold of the mind being the brain coming from mommy and daddy, you know? Where we say we’re all anger’s normal, you know, it was born this way, what to do? So all the models of the mind in the West assume assume the normality of anger, depression, fear, ego grasping, all the other junk. They assume that’s normal. All the models of the mind are based on the assumption of that stuff being normal.
It’s a very different view the Buddha has. His view is his view of Buddhahood, enlightenment being the natural state of all minds, potential, is based upon the assumption that negativity is not innate. It’s not at the core of our being. Well, the word they use in Buddhist psychology, one has to look up the dictionary to find this word, I would never use it in my daily life. They say in Buddhist psychology the negative states of mind are adventitious.
I think it means they just don’t belong there, therefore they can be removed. This is the fundamental point Buddha’s making. Don’t hear it as a holy religion you believe in, you know, and cross your fingers. It’s mind boggling if we take it seriously. It’s the basis of why you want to practice, because if it is true, again think, if it is true as the materialist world says, as the models in the mind of the mind in the world say, that negativity, anger, jealousy, and fears, and depression are natural, meaning at the core of our being, meaning you’d be an unnatural person if you didn’t have them.
That’s what we mean. You think about it. We give equal status to negativity and positivity in our culture. We think that’s a normal person. A normal rounded person has a bit of anger, of depression, bit of jealousy, bit of ego grasping, and a bit of love and compassion, hopefully kind of fairly stable.
That’s what we think as a normal person. It’s like depressing view. In other words, you’d be unnatural if you didn’t have anger. That’s actually what we think. Actually what we think.
So it’s a very different view. You think about it. Buddha’s saying that those states of mind are not at the core of our being, that goodness is. So let’s analyze this. Think about the meaning, the logical meaning.
Because the point about all Buddha’s teachings is if it’s not logical, if it cannot be proved, it doesn’t exist. This is Buddha’s absolutely clear point. Not a question of believing. Buddha is a person like you and me who came to these conclusions. So if he can do it, we can do it.
We’ve got to see the truth of this, you know. Take it as your hypothesis, work with it, and establish, verify it and experience it for yourself, just like you do when you learn maths or music or anything else. You hear the theories, you go home, you practice it, and then you discover that it’s true from your own direct experience. And if you discover it’s wrong, then Dalai Lama says you must give up the Buddha if your discovery is wrong. We’re the boss here, you know.
Just belief system being all holy, bending over with nice hands in the prayer mudra and being mindful watching your boring old breath, better than nothing. It ain’t being a Buddhist, believe me. Okay so okay, So let’s look at this. So this mind, the job then, okay. The job then, if Buddha’s true Buddha’s assertion in the third noble truth is that we can be free of suffering, we should be weeping in happiness, and someone even dare to say it.
He actually says it, you know. I haven’t I don’t hear somebody else saying, okay, other religions say it, but happiness is what you get when you go to heaven, isn’t it? That’s fine, nothing wrong with that. It sustains people who have a creative view. You know you’ll get happiness when you die, better than nothing, better than the materialist view.
At least you have faith in God, you don’t kill yourself. You know there’s happiness coming. Better than nothing, believe me. The materialist view, there is there is no you ask a person who’s got the materialist view, the scientific view, where anger is natural, jealousy is natural, depression is natural, fear grasping a natural, natural meaning unnatural not to have them, is there a possibility to be free of suffering? Don’t be ridiculous.
I mean, what a depressing view. Now what is called a nihilistic view? This is from the the Buddhist point of view, there are two extreme philosophical views that he says are completely contradictory to truth. The truth for him he labels it the middle way. It’s not something he made up, it’s a word that has been used to refer to the way things are.
The one extreme view is a nihilistic one that chucks the baby out with the bathwater. That when we hear about emptiness, we we misconceive as nihilistic. It’s an instinctive view we have because we have ego grasping, where nothing matters, nothing’s important, it’s just material you die and there’s nothing. That’s the nihilistic view. That’s our scientific view, people.
Now why do we get depressed and kill ourselves? This is the point. It’s a view, you know. Everything’s a view for Buddha. The other view is the eternalistic one, creator, you know, that that over exaggerates things.
These are two extreme views the Buddha says are natural in our minds because we have because we have this ignorance, this this grasping itself, which he says is the fundamental misconception that has to be annihilated by the insight into emptiness. That’s liberation. And he’s talking real here, psychological, practical, doable, incremental procedure. And he lays out all the methods, you know. So the positive states of mind, Buddha is saying, this is his point, are at the core of our being.
Hear the meaning of this, and the negative ones aren’t. So for me, a little a nice analogy that sort of works is that it’s like water. We say the word water. What do we mean by water? It’s h two o, isn’t it?
Two bits of h and one bit of o. That’s water. But we know it can be polluted, don’t we? But we know even without being scientists that water in it hear the words in its nature, h two o, is not h two o p twenty seven. In other words, water isn’t two bits of h, one bit of o, and twenty seven bits of pollution.
That’s not what we mean by water. We know that the p part is an additive. It destroys the water, but we know it’s not at the core of the water, and therefore you can remove it. Such a simple concept. So then that’s what makes us excited when we see the pollution.
We we don’t mind wading in knee deep in the stinky stuff, because we know we have to identify the pollution, the cause of suffering, first noble truth, so that we can remove it, and then we can have to learn more fundamentally what are the causes of the pollution, the causes of suffering, second noble truth, so we can do the fourth one, which is remove it. Practical, logical, simple. That’s Buddha’s deal. So if it’s true that the negativity is at the core of our being, Buddha is a complete waste of time. Don’t bother with him.
His fundamental proposals are are completely faulty. Therefore, everything built on that is faulty. So say goodbye, Buddha. Thanks a lot, mate. See you later.
We’ve got to think about what he’s saying. Get some confidence, you know, not just holy belief, wasting your time, intellectually lazy. So okay, let’s look at these positive states of mind for a second, let’s label them, we all know them really, they’re so simple. And let’s look at the negative ones, which are the pollution, and see it’s hard, it’s a tough one, it seems a bit intellectual, but it’s really tasty. How they are not at the core of our being logically.
This is all a bit of this nuts and bolts stuff first, know, and then we can simply look at therefore how we cultivate the positive ones, how we kind of enhance the positive ones, and how we rid the mind of the negative ones. Pull out the weeds, grow the flowers, purify the mind, create merit. That’s the meaning of being a Buddhist. It’s the meaning of being Buddhist, and it’s psychological. It’s you’re working on your mind.
Your nose doesn’t purify. Your eyelashes don’t. It’s not your toenails. It’s your mind, people. Ain’t your brain even.
It’s your mind. Your brain will do what your mind does. That’s why they’re proving these days, you know, stick a few wires on a couple of meditators brains and who just sit and think about compassion. They’ve seen the brain has changed. They’re calling it the greatest the greatest finding of the twentieth century in science, you know.
Well, thanks. We’re now catching up with Buddha. Okay? You’ve been telling me for twenty five hundred years we can change our minds. We’re finally seeing the evidence.
It’s mind boggling for the West, because they there was a belief, absolute assumption in science that you’re you’re stuck with the brain you’re born with. They’re now seeing simply by thinking about compassion, you actually configure your brain, reconfigure your brain. Great. Proving it. How wonderful.
So Buddha’s point in the third noble truth is that these positive states of mind, that the mind is innately pure. What does this mean? You know, we don’t think this way. It seems so abstract to us. But look at how we’re gonna look at the logic of it.
So if you wanna think about the mind in a simple way like this, but the the h two o of the mind, in other words, the substance in a simple conventional way, the very substance of mind is the virtuous states of mind. These that’s why Buddha says that the core of our being. So h two o is the core of water, isn’t it? Think of the meaning now. Without h two o, there’s no water, is there?
So what water is is h two o. So what the mind is is the virtues. When the mind is fully developed, there is only virtue. There is only love, compassion, wisdom, joy, bliss, contentment, blah blah. This is the very nature of mind.
This is who we really are, Buddha says. This is who we really are. Therefore, the development of this is the goal because it’s our natural potential. Not because he said so, not because you’re a naughty person if you don’t. And the reason for us at the very beginning, you know what, is because we don’t wanna suffer.
We’re sick to death of suffering. Because the Buddha says the contents of the mind that is the pollution, the negative states, this is the cause of suffering. In the second noble truth, he’s so simple. He narrows down the causes of suffering to two main things. As far as we’re concerned, there are a thousand things, it’s mommy and daddy and the world, and the pollution, and the bad food, and the lousy noise, and the red lights, and God knows what.
We’re endlessly finding causes of suffering and trying to eliminate them, we’ll never end because we’re looking in the wrong direction. Gotta look in here dear, Buddha says, you’re going out there instead of this way, heading south instead of north. He says the causes of suffering are two, narrows it down to two, past karma, past action done by your mind, intention, the word intention is equivalent to the word karma, which means action, which is kinda tasty, when you learn Lo Rig, you know, when you learn the model of the mind in Buddhism, which is coming from the, you know, Indian texts. You learn that the word intention is equivalent, this is wonderful, to the word karma. I’m sorry, not in America, I don’t have to say karma, do I?
If I say karma, they haven’t got a clue, you know? I’ve gotta say karma, you know? Or I’ve gotta say, when I want my hot water in the restaurant. I go, can I have some hot water please? What?
I beg your pardon, ma’am. But I gotta stop and I go, hot water. Then they get me. Because I do a well do I do a good accent Americans? Hot water.
Okay? So here I can say karma. Thank you very much. I’m very glad. Okay.
karma. Okay. It’s equivalent to the word intention. So the the main the first cause of suffering, you know, George punches me in the nose. Why are you suffering, Rubina?
We’d say there’s one cause. George punched me in the nose. That’s why I wanna sue him, kill him, put him in the prison, divorce him, you know, punch him back, whatever. And you look at that. We can deduce from the from the world’s behavior that this is the philosophy of the world, isn’t it?
That out there is the blame. It’s a simple one, the dualistic one. Buddha says mistake. George does play a role. His punch definitely brought blood.
No question. But that’s not the main cause. It’s a secondary cause. That’s always a catalyst. George is a catalyst for my suffering.
It’s a simple way of putting The main cause, Buddha says, is your past action, and this is speaking simplistically now. Two and a half lives ago, you punched George in the nose. I mean, simplistically speaking, it is more complex than this. But the general principle that if you if you experience if you have if the fruit is there, if you have an experience, if it happens to you, it’s like a fruit, you must have sown the seed. This is a simple principle of like a garden.
If if there’s a weed in your garden, whether you like it or not, I do not care. If it’s in your garden, you sowed the seed. It’s simple. If something this is the logic of karma, if it happened to me, if I got the punch, I caused it. It’s a very interesting concept.
But listen, wait, if you get the kiss, you caused it. If you get the hundred dollars, you caused it. We never we never we agonize, why do bad things happen to me? We never agonize. Why do good things happen to me?
This is the same reasoning. The same logic applies to weeds and flowers, isn’t it? So if it happens to me, I must have caused it. This is the one we have to get used to. This is the we have to practice thinking in our daily life to to reinterpret our experiences.
This is what being a Buddhist means, you know. Reinterpreting the way you interpret rethinking your interpretation of the event. So the the first the main cause is the past action of mine, which left the seed in my mind, which I clearly haven’t pulled out, because now I get the punch back. So first cause is karma, but the second cause is delusion, and they the two subsumed down to the one, delusions. This is the main cause of suffering.
So the reason I punched two and a half lives ago is because I had attachment to getting what I wanted, and then anger when it didn’t get what it wanted, so I punched or whatever, Which left a seed in my mind which I didn’t pull out, so which seeds, you know, ripen, seeds grow, and one of the consequences of an action is one of the ways that it ripens is as an experience similar to it. They call it experiences similar to the cause. So the delusions, the karma is the first one, but delusions is the is the main is the second one, but it’s the main one. They two the two come down to the one. Because karma is as a result of delusions, negative karma as a result of delusions.
So actually in relation to these two main two causes of suffering, as Lama says, the most there are two okay. Obviously, from the practice, there are two levels of practice in relation to the two causes of suffering. But as says, the most urgent immediately, right now, right in our daily life, every second, is to not respond to the harm. That’s the first one, because at least for this way you protect your mind and don’t sow more negative seeds. And we can see in daily life, this is full on.
Just this alone is full on. Now this is where we get into practicing virtue, you know. Being aware of, you know, first step in Buddhist practice, junior school, first scope of the Lamrim, it’s a nice graded course, nice like school, as his holiness says, and I like to call it that too, junior school is the first scope. I mean who says first scope, know? Lower scope when you go to it just means the scope of the capacity of that mind, which is junior school.
Very first level of practice in Buddhism, don’t even worry about your mind yet, zip your lip and keep your hands to yourself. Control your behavior. Be a nice person. Behave nicely like your grandma tells you. That’s the first level of practice.
That’s why bought his checklist of ten don’ts. The first three are the body, the first four the next four of the mind of the speech, and then the last three he gets us to begin to look at the mind. We’ll discuss this in a second. This is the basic first grade one junior school grade one level of practice. Get this checklist of don’ts and use this as a basis of your life.
And this is where you’re beginning to, you know, don’t kill, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t bad mouth, don’t don’t cheat on your partner, don’t don’t steal, all the rest, you know, the actions of body and speech. This is the responding to the negativity. This is really where you look at the second noble the second cause of suffering, the mind, the delusions, you refrain from harming the person when they kick you in the teeth, from lying to a person when they do something wrong, from stealing when you see something you don’t like. You control your behavior. You keep your hands to yourself.
Zip your lip. This protects you from at least creating more negative karma, sowing more negative seeds. Because that’s how the samsaric wheel keeps working. You know, I harmed in the past. I left the seed in my mind.
I meet the object again, George pops up in my life, can’t stand the sight of him before I oh, he can’t stand the sight of me before I know, doesn’t know why, just can’t stand that ugly, I’ve got none, punch in the nose, boom. Then I get angry, how dare he punch me in the nose? And this is the point of the philosophy we have, I don’t deserve to get I don’t ask to get born, it’s not my fault. I’ve never met this man before, how dare he punch me? I’m allowed to punch him back.
Boom. This is the philosophy of the world. This is the samsaric philosophy based upon the assumption of I didn’t ask to get born, it’s not my fault. You unpack all our our actions, and you can get to the fundamental assumptions that we hold, know. Mistake Buddha says, not like that.
It’s a mistake. He’s not saying it’s right to punch me. He’s not saying that’s a mistake. No, it’s wrong to punch. That is not a mistake.
He agrees. But what he’s looking at is why in the first place I get punched. I find this is a very fascinating point. You know, the suffering we have in the world, because we have the view of self existence, because we have the materialist view, because we have the nihilistic view, because we have the victim view, therefore, because let’s say ego as victim as Lama Yeshe calls it the self pity me, because that is the view we hold deep in our bones without question. Now I forgot what I was gonna say.
I’m sorry, it’s old age, it’s so terrible. The sentence was too long and I lost the beginning of it. What was I saying? God, it’s embarrassing. What was I saying?
What? Yeah, zip your mouth, shut your lip mouth, the punch, the king, really lost the plot. Say it again? Yeah, that’s right. That was all part of the long sentence that caused me to lose the plot.
I said that for a reason because I had the first thought that I went off on a tangent, and then I the ten non virtues, okay killing my instinct, refraining, then I was looking at how them, yeah, they’re not responding to the negative karma, not responding to the punch. I know I really have lost it, never mind, my stupid clever smarty pants mind, but needs a good editor basically. Too many thoughts all at once. Okay, are we communicating so far people? Are we on the case?
Alright. Okay. Let’s not look fresh then. The delusions, okay. The virtues.
Oh, the first stage of practice. The first the very first stage. Oh yeah, all of it’s morality. Okay? Buddha all of practice really one way of talking about what you’re doing as a Buddhist is practicing morality.
One way of saying it actually is this. And there are two levels of morality, people. One is refraining from harming. It seems passive, but it’s already marvelous. That’s junior school grade one.
You don’t kill, you don’t lie, you don’t skill. You know, and this is really excellent. This is the first level of practice. You gotta hone your behavior first. At least refrain from harming others first.
And this is already it sounds passive, it sounds sort of abstract, sounds passive, but it’s profound. Can you imagine the world if we didn’t harm each other? Don’t even talk about benefiting, merely not harming. Can you imagine? It would be total bliss.
So this practice level of practice is already incredible. So what we did yesterday, you know, people took refuge and took the vows to commit not to kill, not to lie, not to steal. It’s blissful. It’s unbelievable. It’s incredible, I tell you.
Then the Bodhisattva vows, actually committing to benefit others from life to life. It’s unbelievable. But the very first level is don’t harm others. Once you’ve controlled your body and speech, you go to now, you go to high school where you actually really do the nitty gritty of really being a Buddhist. You’d be your own therapist as Lama Yeshe puts it, be your own psychologist Because it’s in the second scope.
And we talked about this last week, saṃsāra nirvana, where you learn to be deeply know the mind and how it functions, and you deeply get involved here, not with the positive states yet, with the negative. That’s getting that’s wading in knee deep into the pollution because you’ve got to identify their nature, how they’re causing suffering, and then you can get to the get to actually removing them from the mind. This is what practice is. It’s so sensible. You know?
Then you get to university, the Mahāyāna wing, the compassion wing, and now you start to create practice the other level of morality, which is to benefit others. But your ability to benefit others has to be based on some wisdom which you get from junior school and high school, and the controlling of your body and speech. At least you start not harming, and then you add to it. You enhance it by actually benefiting others. The proactive level of morality.
You benefit others. You continue to practice working on your mind, you’re never stopping this all the way to perfection. But there’s different levels of the practice of morality. And this is again, pulling out the weeds is one level, the very first level. The first first stages of practice, the culmination of the first scope or junior school is abiding by the laws of karma, which is not harming, not killing, not lying, not stealing.
Mainly the emphasis at that level where it’s taught, it’s about not. It’s the don’ts, which protects you from creating more negative karma. Which is where Lama Zopa says the most urgent level of practice in relation to the delusions is you don’t harm others. You don’t you don’t respond to the negativity. You don’t respond to the criticism.
You don’t create more negativity as a result. And then of course in relation to this the other cause of suffering, which is karma, the main practice there is to, of course, the purification practice. The purification practice, which is you you you you weaken the seeds you’ve already planted to prevent them from ripening as more suffering. You gotta get ahead of the game, which is why Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, we are insane not to do the purification practice every day. So when we understand this whole approach to Buddhist practice, this practical that it’s practical psychology, it’s knowing your own mind so well.
It’s controlling your body and speech, knowing your mind well, and then learning to deconstruct and unravel your own mind itself, becoming so familiar with its contents. Based upon listening to Buddha’s teachings about the negative states, understanding their their function, how they how they are, learning to look into your own mind, observing them, seeing how they break your heart, and slowly slowly changing them, slowly slowly lessening them, weakening them. This is Buddha’s practice, full on. It’s an internal job. Practical.
It’s practical. This is what Buddha’s saying. He’s Buddha’s, you know, your greatest therapist you’ll ever find. I’m not kidding, you know. We’re supposed to hear it in religious terms.
We don’t get the point. You’d be anybody this you can see why we’re so suffering in the West because we don’t know the mind. We don’t have any any introspective techniques. We think the mind is the brain. You see it under a microscope, you know.
Then we wait until everything goes mad until we then have to find a therapist because we’re having a mental breakdown. What a way to live your life. We don’t run our cars, our computers, our houses, our anything. We maintain things. We we, you know, we maintain our health by eating well.
We maintain our computers, and we have all these systems to maintain our things so they don’t break down on us. We we we what is the word preventative? With our minds, we have no methods. We just get born dragged into life and assume I’ve gotta just be happy, you know. No one gives us methods.
We don’t know how to look at the mind. We don’t even know we have a mind. We don’t even think our mind plays a role, as Lama Zopa says. We think everything else out there plays the role. So then what happens you have a you know you get depressed and want to kill yourself, want to kill other people, I better go to a therapist you know.
Then then it’s then it’s kind of it’s like you’re driving on the highway at a hundred twenty k’s an hour, and you’re about to crash, and you discover you can’t drive. That’s how we are in life. We we crash into people every minute because we don’t know how to navigate our way through life. Why? Because we don’t know our own mind because we don’t even think it plays a role.
That’s how insane we are in our culture. Honestly, it’s heartbreaking. We should be weeping in tears for ourselves daily. The Buddha’s got such intelligent approach to life. I mean, who am I saying he’s intelligent?
It’s very rude of me. It implies I’m intelligent, I can recognize him. Excuse me. So okay. So before we keep going, just a few overview points there.
Any questions? Just a few about so far. Said a few things here, okay? You want to ask me some questions before we continue? If not, it’s cool.
You can see I’m happy to chat. Everything’s alright? Okay. So I’ll keep going. Okay.
So summary. Third noble truth, you can be free of suffering, people. Your mind’s pure in its nature. Negative is adventitious. Mind is beginningless.
Mind is not physical. It doesn’t come from creator, doesn’t come from mummy. It’s yours, and it’s endless, and it can become perfect. First cause of suffering is suffering. The first cause of first cause first noble truth, there is there is suffering.
There is pollution. Your water can be de polluted. There is pollution. You’ve got to recognize. You’ve to wade in knee deep.
You’ve to get your excuse me, again, swearing. As my friend, the therapist, who’s a Buddhist says, practicing is getting your hands in your own shit. You’ve got to to taste it, to see. I like to say tasting your own vomit. That’s my way of saying it.
Practice is tasting your own vomit. You’ve got to know your own mind well, know about your actions, be accountable. That’s knowing the pollution. You see then how it causes you pain. It’s not guilt, it’s not shame.
Your heart has to break for your own suffering. This is the whole point. What comes from what comes from practicing the first and second scopes, what comes from practicing the wisdom wing, the Hīnayāna part of the path, junior school and high school, before you even realize emptiness, is what they call, again, all holy renunciation. What we could we’d like to call it, I think, compassion for yourself. They don’t say say it that way, but it’s like compassion for yourself.
Honestly, I’m not kidding. What we get now having this neurotic ego is guilt. I’m a bad person. I’m guilty. I’m angry.
I’m jealous. I’m wrong. I shouldn’t be this way. I’m bad. I lie.
I steal. We wanna kill ourselves. Guilt is the wrong approach. You know? Accountability, the courage to own the fact that this is me and my mind due to past habit, and then due to my ridiculous delusions.
This is why I am suffering. So renunciation is where you really have come to terms with your own suffering. But there’s two components to renunciation. The first part is, I’m sick of suffering. Now everybody’s sick of suffering.
The second part is the problem. The world’s view of the second part, I’m suffering because of you or it or they or them. That’s the mistake. So that just reiterates suffering. But the Buddha’s point is this, first part, I’m sick of suffering.
You’ve to get that. But the second part is, now I finally know why I’m suffering. karma and delusions. My karma, my delusions. It’s accountability.
It’s ownership. It’s like mature. It’s like growing up. You take responsibility. The little girl in there, the little boy in there stomping her little feet, stamping her little feet, crying, upset, hurt, poor me, self pity me as Lama Yeshe calls it.
We’re making her grow up, you know. This is, you know, accountability. It’s painful for us. It’s just panic stricken thing to do. It’s not guilt, it’s not blame, it’s accountability based upon the logic of karma, based upon the logic that my mind is mine, and that I come fully programmed in this life with my stuff.
My mommy and daddy are just catalysts. They were lying there minding their own business, and I came along, you know. Don’t blame them. In fact, thank them. How kind they gave me a body?
How kind how kind they had some decent eggs and sperms, you know? How kind of them. I created a cause to go to them, so I’m accountable. I just think this view, the more I think of this view, the more I love it. I love it, I tell you.
I love it. I’m I like I’m a control freak. I like I’m I like being the boss. I’m the boss, Buddha says. This is a very it’s empowering, you know?
Because why? Guess why? Because it says if I, you know, if I created the cause for what I am, then I can change. If they created the cause for what I am, I have to kick and shout and yell and soothe them and make them change. Look at how exhausted we get.
So this is accountability, you know. This is what we have to have. It’s the first and second scope. Renunciation, I’m the one. And then from this, you think I must I’m sick of suffering.
Therefore, what do I do? I change karma. I change my mind. That’s the conclusion from this. So you become this as a result of this, you know, the realization of any kind of level of renunciation, you’re becoming this amazing, blissful, clear, confident, wise, courageous person, the person we want to be.
This is even just renunciation. Or as Lama Zopa puts it in his wonderful dramatic way, you’ve got renunciation when just the thought of another moment of attachment, remembering that’s our default mode, so way to go, baby. Just the thought of another moment of attachment is so disgusting. It’s like, here’s such graphic examples, here’s a couple. One of them is, it’s like using used toilet paper.
It’s so precise, know. Think about that. He’s such examples, you know. That’s when you’ve got renunciation. Can you imagine?
Way to go. I mean, we just swim in attachment. We adore attachment. We are in love with attachment. We live in it every second, so that’s way to go, but at least hear it.
That’s renunciation. And that means compassion for yourself because you finally know why you’re suffering. You’ve it’s not like you finally know why you you got these belly aches for forty years because that’s ridiculous food you’ve been eating. You’ve finally won the lottery. You’ve found the cause of it.
Now you can change. That’s the point. It’s liberating because you realize what it is that will make you happy now, finally. We gotta be we’re dragged to this kicking and screaming because we are junkies. You know?
We love attachment. It’s our default mode. We are complete junkies. So it’s painful to hear this. When we hear it more precisely and understand it more precisely, which we do when we listen to the Buddha’s model of the mind, you know, listen to precisely what attachment is, why you have to learn these, study a little bit more deeply, these things, you know, like this text called Lo Rig, Mind and Awareness.
You learn precisely what is the delusion, what is virtue, how do they function, how do you define this one. You have to be precise. We all know precision and clarity is what we need in science. Well, Buddha demands that same level of precision and clarity when you look into your mind. It’s not some vague wishy washy thing you have to do.
You know? Buddha is very precise about what a delusion is, what a virtue is. So by understanding these, which I now wanna talk about, this gets us to clearly understand why we suffer, how we can change it, and how the mind is nature is pure in its nature, and what a virtue is. It’s very clear. So let’s look at this.
So like I said, the the the the the mental consciousness, which is where the workshop is, as Rinpoche says. There’s positive, negative, and neutral states. There’s no fourth category. Let’s forget the neutral, we get down to the positive and negative. Let’s forget the positive. Let’s look at the negative because that’s the pollution.
That’s what we have to learn to identify. That’s what we have to wade in deep, get our hands into. Okay. So by understanding the negative states of mind, we can therefore understand the positive. There’s two main characteristics of the negative states of mind too.
One is and these are indicated by different synonyms for negative state of mind in Buddhist psychology. One of them is disturbing emotion. Sometimes it’s called afflictive emotion. I find that a bit abstract. I don’t use that term much.
Disturbing emotion. Disturbing. Check the last time you were guilty, depressed, angry, jealous. Who’s me, isn’t it? It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?
It’s like a nightmare, isn’t it? We know it’s disturbing. But remember, why do we think we’re disturbed? Because you did something. That’s our usual view.
We run to the blame, you know. So we know it’s disturbing, but it’s my you know, it’s his fault. That puts us off. That that prevents us from looking into it. Because you look at the simple dualistic approach.
Why are you suffering, I mean, I’m just so jealous, you know, because my boyfriend’s sleeping with another girl, and I can’t believe it, I wanna kill her, and she’s evil, because jealousy is linked to anger, remember? Very surprising. And my and I’m devastated because he’s sleeping with another girl, you know, and I hope that she’ll suffer in hell. I wish she’d leave him and make him suffer too. We know this suffering.
It is like a nightmare, isn’t it? We know it. But then, you know, well Buddha says you can change your Chenrezig. What do you mean? I’m allowed to be jealous, it’s not my fault, it’s her fault and his fault.
So that’s why we’re what we think jealousy is all that out there. We’ve got this vivid visualization of him and her. We think about them, we’re obsessed with the object, we analyze it, we think we’re gonna harm them. When we think of jealousy, we don’t think of our jealousy. We think of them.
You check. This is a dualistic method. This is our mode of life in in in our world. We don’t think of the jealousy. Tell me about your jealousy, Robina.
Aleka did this, John did that. No. No, Robina. Tell me about your jealousy. She did that.
We can’t even hear it. You get my point here. We are so schizophrenic, as Lama Zopa says, that we don’t even think that our mind is playing a role somehow. They are looming one hundred percent large in my life because they did it to me. This is we can hear this, you know.
This is the natural mode we have now. Happiness is the same. We blame Aleka for making me happy. She gave me why are you so happy, Robina? Oh god, Aleka was so kind.
She gave me a thousand dollars. I can’t believe it. And why are you happy, Robina? Oh, Aleka, tell me about your happiness. Oh, Aleka gave me a thousand dollars.
No. No, Robina. Tell me about your happiness. We wouldn’t know what it means. We don’t even know how to describe our mind.
It’s this fascinating point. You look at our psychological models, you go to your therapist, and some of you might be therapists, because I’m not trying to criticize. It’s already amazing what we’re doing in the West these days with therapy, it’s fantastic you know. The first thing we do in our materialist models of the mind including therapy, because it’s based upon the assumption that mommy and daddy are out there and the brain and the delusions and the brain is the cause, mommy and daddy are the cause, and the people who do things to us are the cause. So the first thing we analyze with our therapist is the events of our life, because they’re the main cause, aren’t they?
We we go back to the past. We look back to what actions happened to us. Why has Rubina so angry? We look back at what mommy did, what daddy did, and what the Catholic nuns did. We try to find the cause, listen, of my suffering in the events of my life.
Now nothing wrong with that. This can be very helpful to remember the events. But the Buddha’s way of being your own psychologist is far more tasty. Don’t bother. Help the events are good, but what you look at is into your own mind itself.
Hear the difference, people. It’s profound. You don’t look into the event. You see this kid screaming and kicking, oh, he must have a mean mommy. You know?
You look into his mind. You look into his little boy. You see this person, this little child there, and you observe by his behavior that guess what? He’s angry. Well, you don’t think, well, why is he angry because mommy hit him?
No. He’s angry because he was angry before. And why was he angry? Because he was angry before. And then why was he angry?
Because you get back to the first second of conception, because he brought it with him. It’s his tendency. It’s his little mind. It’s his anger. You look into the mind itself, into your mind, into your tendencies, which you are owning because you brought them with you.
They’re yours. Fine. Look at the events, but look into the anger itself. And this is what Buddha’s so skillful about. His expertise is the mind.
You know? Buddhist psychology, you just simply which is what we’re describing here. So what is it about the negative states of mind? What is it I have to look at? How do I look at anger?
What does this mean? This is the point, you know. Simple. Just takes time. It’s like in the beginning, it’s like reversing the energy of a bomb because everything explodes out.
I’m obsessed with a lecker and my boyfriend. Isn’t it? Your mind day and night. We think, oh, I can’t concentrate. Oh, I can’t visualize.
Don’t be ridiculous. We’re concentrating and visualizing all day. So when you’re angry, I have single point of concentration, undistracted concentration, and I have perfect visualization of John and Alekka hurting me, and I build up this really elaborate plan to hurt them back. We’re excellent at this, aren’t we? That’s perfect concentration, and that’s perfect visualization.
So don’t say you’re not good at it, it’s just that when you do these other things we’re trying to visualize being good to others. How boring, you know? We are always the center of all our stories in our head aren’t we? So suddenly you know you’re acting you think of getting a gift, you love you concentrate and you love it. But think of giving a gift, unless they’re gonna like you in return.
It’s not very exciting. That’s why visualization is too hard for us because it’s about others, know, and it’s virtue. Anyway, the negative states of mind. Okay? So what is it about anger?
Let’s look at what anger is, And this gets us now to the absolute key to understanding Buddha’s view of what the mind is. Everything. Buddha says everything in the mind is a viewpoint, is an opinion, is an attitude, is an idea, is an assessment. It’s an opinion. And Buddha is saying this, some opinions, some viewpoints actually are accurate viewpoints.
They are in sync with reality. They’re called virtues. They’re called valid states of mind. And when you’re a Buddha, you only have those. Some viewpoints are liars, are delusional, are fantasies, are embellishments, are exaggerations, are inaccuracies, and they happen to have another component of being extremely disturbing.
Now for us, when we say anger, we think of the disturbing part, don’t we? We never think of the delusional part. This seems really abstract to us. Because what Buddha is saying is, surprise surprise, anger is is an opinion, is a viewpoint, is an attitude, is an assessment. Now you listen.
It’s obvious. It’s so clear. The fundamental state of mind beneath anger is called aversion. Aversion. And that is based upon attachment.
These are the two main states of mind day to day life, the default mode. We’re running between these two a million times a day. The the bottom line, the default mode, the one that effectively from the four noble truths causes of suffering is concerned, attachment is the cause of our suffering. It is the main delusion in day to day life. Of course, as we know from Buddhist psychology, it’s rooted in the root delusion called ignorance, called ma rig pa, known colloquially as ego grasping, which is eliminated when you realize emptiness.
But today to day cause of suffering is attachment. It’s the downfalls mode of our mind. We discussed this all last weekend. So this aversion, what how come? It’s surprising.
It’s a feeling. Wow. Angry, Rubina. We know we think it’s physical. These spits coming out the mouth.
The blood is racing. The eyes are big like saucers. You know, the tears are coming. Fist is out there. Words screaming.
Complete mental breakdown. Complete mental collapse for that few minutes. So we know the disturbing part is true, but for us it’s deeply physical, and we call it feeling. We call it emotion. Now all of that is there.
But if we look into the mind through meditation, through being our own therapist, by listening to Buddha’s explanations, we will start to recognize that when you get down beyond the emotion, you’re going into the mind itself. This is being your own therapist. You get down to hearing how it is at its bare bones. It is a an assessment. It is a viewpoint.
It’s an opinion. So let’s say I express my anger, and all my life I have. So it’s easy. Oh, Rabina’s angry. Look at her shouting and yelling, you can see it.
So you get your m p three player, you record me, and then you transcribe it, and you write down the words. Lots of exclamation marks, isn’t it? Lots of irrational sentences, lots of act you you did this, and I hate you, and we can see the words quite quickly, can’t we? And even without and then we have, let’s say, Aleka never expresses her anger, let’s say, but she’s got it inside her heart. Join the club everybody, we’re all like this.
Let’s say she looks into her mind, and she very kindly decides to transcribe her thoughts for us, which don’t come out her mouth, let’s say, she looks peaceful and quiet. Then you put those two pieces of paper together, you understand my point here people. You’re gonna see you’re gonna see exclamation marks and full stops and dot dot dot, and she this, and hate that, and evil this, and grunt. So in other words, what is anger? Finally, thoughts.
Do you agree? Thoughts. Can you hear my point? It is the the screaming and yelling. That’s why we think Alekka’s not angry.
Then when you see me shouting and yelling, Raveena is angry. But the the thoughts beneath those, that’s the source of anger. Do you understand my point? It’s sort of logical when you get down to those thoughts. Of course, with usual, you know, when you’re scrounging and yelling, you can’t get into your thoughts because you’re so involved in the story.
You finished. That’s why the first level is control your behavior. You’re with me people? That’s why. Then you can begin to look at your own mind when you’re being your own therapist, and the second level, second year of high school, when you start to hear the raging thoughts inside your head, and you begin to unpack them and deconstruct them.
But so the point is they are all thoughts, but more than a thought, it’s saying she is this. She now isn’t that an that’s an opinion, isn’t it? Is it like, oh, that’s a pretty cup. Isn’t that an opinion? You agree?
Oh, that’s an ugly cup. That’s an opinion, a viewpoint, an assessment. Well, the Buddha says everything in our mind is one of those, which is really fascinating. But our problem is, you see, if I’m really committed to anger all my life, let’s say, I’m born with it, and you reinforce it, and everyone says it’s good, and I’m very ignorant and narrow minded person. When I’m angry and I say, a lady did that.
She slept with my boyfriend, and she’s evil. I wanna kill her. You don’t think you’re you don’t think there’s any you don’t think that’s an opinion. You think it’s the truth. Hear the difference.
You don’t think it’s an opinion. You think it’s the truth. There’s a big difference, and that’s what the that’s the view we all have now. We’re stuck in our viewpoints, and we don’t just we don’t even think they’re a view. We think, but I’m telling the truth.
It’s something objective. You’re my point. That’s why says we don’t even think our minds play a role. Are you hearing my point, people? So the the amazing first step we have to do is step back from our mind and actually begin to own our own thoughts.
And then see how see begin this is the point. Begin to establish what is a negative one, what is a fantasy one, what is a lying one, what is a delusional one, which is disturbing, and what is a truthful one. And this is such hard work, I tell you people. This is highly developed way of being living your life. It’s amazing, but it just takes time.
Because the strong emotions in us, because they are such habitual viewpoints, They’ve gotten to the point where as Lama Zopa says, bad enough we think, bad enough we see the person that way, bad enough we do that. The worst part is we believe it’s true, and this is what keeps us paralyzed frozen in saṃsāra. Are we are we communicating? So this is why it just takes a lot of humility and patience with yourself to slowly unpack this stuff. You know?
It’s a really precise job. It’s a difficult job. Like I said, it’s like reversing the energy of a bomb. So why so the key point here is if this is the second term, but remember the two two main characteristics of the negative states of mind. The first is which is implied by which is indicated by that term disturbing emotion.
But the second, which is what I’m talking about now, let’s get to this one, is the is indicated by the other term, which is used as a synonym, delusion. I love this word. I’ve noticed by going to different countries, France, in in Israel, Italy, Spain, Germany, there’s no direct translation of this word. But I think it’s a great loss because this explains this really expresses the very meaning of Buddhas in describing the negative states of mind, how they why suffering because they are liars. They are misconceptions.
They are delusional. You know, if you’re accused of being delusional, you’d be very offended. Right? Well, this is exactly what Buddha is saying. You’re all delusional people.
It’s just a question of degree. So we think a person who thinks they’re a Mozart, they’re delusioned. They’re delusional. But I’m normal. But if you’ve anger, attachment, jealousy, depression, you’re delusional because they are lie they are misconceptions in your mind that have this huge emotional component because you had them for eons of lives, and they are deeply misconceiving reality.
They are not seeing reality. So let’s see how that is true. Once we can see how that is true, then we can hear how we can change them. That proves we can get enlightened. It’s logical proof.
You know? So we, you know, get past all the emotional component. Get past you see, this is where you gotta sort out fact from fiction. Maybe John and Alec maybe, you know, John did cheat on me. Poor Aleka, she’s my example today, you know, of the good and the bad.
Let’s forget Alecke. But let’s say John did cheat on me. That’s not a lie. That’s not a delusion. You see my point.
You gotta work out the facts from the fiction. It’s not wrong. He did. People proved it. He did sleep with another girl.
So that’s not that’s not a delusion. But my opinion about that is is the problem, isn’t it? Which is my angry response. You understand my point? Let’s say I’m not in love with John, and I discover he sleeps he cheats on his partner.
I don’t care, do I? Oh, John slept with another person, you laugh about it. Right? There’s no anger, right? So you know, so it’s a fact that he did sleep, but that anger is the added component that you have because you’re involved in it.
But so how is that delusional? This is a tricky part. How is anger a lie? How is it how is it a distortion? How is it an exaggeration?
How is it an embellishment of the truth? That’s exactly the definition. I think of the definition exactly, but this is the meaning when you study Buddhist psychology in Lo Rig. A a delusion is a a conception that exaggerates certain aspects of the object. So that aspect, if I look at John, if I think of John, doesn’t he appear evil to me?
I see this monster, this evil person who hurt me. So that’s an exaggeration. Because let’s face it, I’ve known him for twenty years, and he slept with what, you know, slept with another person. Or maybe he’s punched me twenty times even. But if you add up the number of things he’s done bad, and then you get your list of good points, and you add up all things he’s done good, you probably will find he’s done more things that are good.
But we don’t anger doesn’t want that. Anger remembers that one thing, and then we paint the whole person with that brush of anger, don’t we? So the whole person appears evil from his head to his toenails based upon one action, or even twenty. You know? You understand my point?
This is what anger does. So you look at attachment, just the same. You adore John in the beginning when he’s all brand new and beautiful and shiny and bright. Doesn’t he look divine from the tip of his head to his toenails? Even his smelly socks are divine, know?
Isn’t it? Isn’t it people? The delusion there is called attachment, because the job of attachment, what it does, one of its jobs is, one of its functions is it, like it does, exaggerates certain aspects of the object. So attachment, this particular conception, state of mind, makes all of him beautiful, causes everything about him to be beautiful. It kind of dazzles us and blinds us, so we don’t see the real person.
That’s all. So these delusions paint a picture, you know, on top of the person. Or as Lama Zopa beautifully puts it, delusions decorate on top of what is their characteristics that aren’t. This is the job of delusions, and this is why we suffer. So in other words, the extent to which we have attachment, anger, pride, jealousy, etcetera, is the extent to which one, we suffer, but two, which is the cause of suffering, we’re not in touch with reality.
So we’re all delusional. We’re all mentally ill. Buddha would’ve liked that phrase. This is why we suffer, Buddha says. This is the reason we suffer.
This is the cause of suffering, these delusions. And on the basis of these delusions, we do actions with our body and speech that harm others. So karma delusion, second noble truth. So that the job the first job, you control your body and speech, and you purify negative karma. At least you calm the whole engine down, you know.
Then in the second noble truth, in the second scope of practice in high school, you become your own therapist. You get some concentration, you step back, and you develop this incredibly grown up intelligent approach to your own mind. You go deeply into your own mind. You see and hear the stories. You un you un right now, there’s just this great big noise inside, isn’t it?
It’s like a football field, know, you can’t when you hear a hundred thousand people shouting at MCG, you people you people at AFL sort of aren’t you? Well you know what I’m saying. There you go. Geelong beat Hawthorn last night. Sydney Swans, oh god, that’s my sister’s team.
I was thinking putting a bet on them. The Sydney Swans are playing tonight at in Melbourne, you know, so that’s my sister’s team. She’s been my sister’s a completely reasonable, intelligent, sensible person. She runs an art gallery, but when it comes to football, she’s like Jekyll and Hyde. She completely loses her brain.
I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m stunned. I don’t watch the football, I watch her, you know. It’s mind boggling to me. This maniac comes out, you know.
It’s astonishing. I can’t believe I’ve never seen anything like it in my whole life. Anyway, where were Attachment, delusions, liars. We’re communicating, right? Okay.
It’s quarter past eleven, do you think it’s tea time? I think it’s tea time. Okay, see you in fifteen minutes.