Robina Courtin 2011 – too hard — 2011-09-11

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

About this talk. In this 100-minute session, Ven Robina Courtin directly addresses why establishing a Buddhist practice feels so hard—the resistance, laziness, and habitual patterns that derail even well-intentioned practitioners. She dismantles the Western prejudice that Tibetan Buddhist rituals (water bowl offerings, prostrations, visualization) are mere superstition by exposing their psychological logic and karmic power. Buddhism, she teaches, is practical psychology: pulling weeds from the mind and growing flowers. Robina walks through a complete daily practice structure (morning and evening bookends), explains the two essential types of meditation (concentration and analytical insight), and demonstrates how to transform ordinary sensory life—eating, pleasure, sex—through offering and emptiness awareness. This is engaged Buddhism, not renunciate: how to live fully while purifying the mind.

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File: 2011 09 11 02 – Teaching session1 highly distorted.mp3

UUID: bc1ac904-b959-4799-b403-d6c9d528d8f3

Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin

Collection: z Robina Courtin 2011 – too hard (Ven Robina Courtin)

Date: 2011-09-11

Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide

Duration: 100.0 minutes

Words: ~20,253

Okey doke. So we carry on. Is anybody here I don’t know? We’ve all met before? Okay.

Oh, you’re you’re new. Well, I mean, I’m I’m new to you. Welcome. I can see you right there. Okay.

Okay. What was the topic of this morning? I better get it right, hadn’t I? That’s that one. Okay.

So we can just carry on. Were any was anybody not here yesterday? Oh, I see. Okay. Okay.

That’s cool. Well, then do okay. Well, let me just ask a couple questions then. You see, what I was sort of thinking I do today is, like, all the practical advice about how to set do water bowls and prostrations, that kind of thing. Because yesterday was sort of like a prelude, but if most of you weren’t here today, then I’m not quite sure.

Yeah. So let me just do a bit of market research here. Okay. Do some of you all of you come here sometimes and take some teachings. Is that right?

And you don’t? Okay. What, darling? So some of you come to the med okay. May I know just to get a feeling where I can gonna be here?

So you come to the meditation, and that’s it. Okay. So who knows what I’ll do today? You think? Well, for you some of you might be completely boring and irrelevant, then I’m very sorry if it is.

But for some of you, it might be what you what is relevant. That’s the only chance I’ve got left. I’ve got no time left now because we’re leaving. I’m leaving on Monday, aren’t I? Okay.

Well, just to summarize briefly the point that I was getting at yesterday, because I realized I thought yesterday’s topic, you see, was today’s topic, and I was raving on all morning thinking and then they reminded me halfway through that actually they didn’t think I was on the wrong track, did you? Just thought I was getting there. Well, I was getting there, so I had to then shift gear. You know? Okay.

But it’s sort of the same. All we heard yesterday is much the same. So the whole idea, the essence of what we’re trying to I think what this is the essence of it. The essence of what we did yesterday, the essence of the Buddhist path is that you’re pulling out the weeds from your mind and growing the flowers. Honestly, that’s a simple cute way to put it, but it’s a nice way.

Because if you think of the idea of seeds and fruits, then karma is this. karma is Buddhist saying, as we know, as we’ve talked, everything we think, do, and say is a karma, is an action, will bring a reaction in our mind. The essential point, you know, as we’re talking all this week, whatever, is that Buddha is saying we’re not created by somebody else. Mommy and daddy didn’t make us. It’s not somebody else’s fault.

We made ourselves. So maybe the idea of reincarnation still is a bit weird for some of us, but you take this as your view as a an idea, a hypothesis. Your mind not physical, not coming from God, not coming from mommy, daddy, and can’t come from nothing. That’s nuts. So you’ve got to posit this continuity as weird as it sounds to our minds.

We just get used to the idea. So the Buddhist idea is we come programmed by our own past stuff in this life. It’s not just it’s not complicated an idea, actually. It’s just that means we have to shift our assumptions. You know?

We come programmed. And the experiential point of this, the implication of this is that we we have inside us our own qualities, which our happiness and suffering come from. So it’s up to us to change it. So it empowers us. That’s the real point I like about it.

When I first heard the view of karma, I was really delighted. It seemed like it was empowering me. I’m the one. I’m not some victim that gets happiness dumped on, and they get suffering dumped on. It’s up to me.

So in that with that as a context that our job is logically given, hey. I don’t want I don’t want suffering, and, hey. I do want happiness. We’ve gotta be very realistic. First step.

Remember junior school, first stages. Definitely, that’s true. So what am I gonna do about it? This is the idea. So the idea is that and this brings us to what practice is.

So practice is working with your mind. Practice is you start some meditation. You get some object. You step back. You get some focus.

You’re able to sit back. You’re You’re able to observe what’s going on inside you. And then if you like more, you like to listen to Buddha’s teachings, his explanations of things like we went through some of it this morning. You apply that in your mind. And the result from this has to be that you’ll make some changes.

You’ll do some shifting. You know? That’s the that’s the idea. So, of course, as we’re saying, Buddha is saying we’ve got this extraordinary potential, but negativity is not at the core of our being. Big surprise.

We all assume it is. And this gives us real courage to not totally identify with the rubbish inside us. It’s there. We have to own it, taste it, go knee deep into it, but it does not define us. This is the point.

But the positive stuff does. This is our potential. This is essentially the stuff the Buddha is saying. So this is where we get now to the job, pulling out the weeds, growing the flowers. The day so like we said yesterday, the day to day actual hands on job of being a Buddhist is being your own therapist, being your own psychologist.

That’s the actual day to day job. But our minds are so addicted to the rubbish. Our habits are so deeply ingrained that it’s not such an easy job to do. Technically, listen to the thing. Technically, it is easy.

It’s not as if it’s complicated, but it’s difficult only because it’s absolutely opposite to our habit. That’s all. And it feels difficult. When you’re in the midst of that depression, when you’re in the midst of that anger, it feels almost like a joke to think you can change, doesn’t it? And you know what?

Look at when you’re feeling this way, it’s almost like you don’t want to change. We’re running. We’re propelled by the force of that stuff. You know? We could see it, and then we pick ourselves up later reeling from it.

Oh my god. Same thing again. So we can see we’re very deeply habitual, and that’s one meaning of karma. It’s just a bunch of habits. You know?

So you gotta have courage, knowing it’s possible to change, and then applying the techniques day after day after day, being your own therapist. But like I said yesterday, and this is where it can sound now while we’re getting into the religious area, the rituals, and this stuff. But let me really explain clearly. We’ll try and open our minds to it and see the logic of it. This is the thing that’s most important for me that always since I’ve been a Buddhist, I wanna see the reasoning, the logic of it.

That’s the Buddhist approach. Let us swallow it whole. Let us believe it. Let us see it as an empty ritual. Let us see it as superstition.

Let us see it as a belief. That’s awful. We can’t do this. You know? And, again, like I said yesterday, because you see a Tibetan Buddhist packaging, anyone, Zen one, whatever, they’re so foreign to us because it is literally another language, another culture.

But if you don’t go past the meaning of this, it can become superstition. And I think the major point for me is to see this. And like an example I used yesterday, if you’ve never seen anyone shake hands, for Tibetans, they don’t shake hands. It’s not their thing. So when you put your hand out to a a person, they kind of limply hold because they’re a bit confused.

You know? What do you do with a hand? So we think, oh, what a weak handshake. We can we we kind of, you know, we interpret it because a handshake should be like this, and we know it has great meaning. It’s for me, it’s a simple example.

It’s just a ritual, but because it’s got meaning for us, we think it’s, you know, oh, yeah. That’s normal. But it’s just a ritual. There’s this great set of ads that HSBC Bank does. I don’t if you’ve seen them.

They have three or four I’ve seen Qantas do it on there when you go to the plane. Maybe maybe it’s HSBC. You have different what the same thing in four different countries. In one country, it’s seen as really the worst thing you do. In another country, it’s seen as the best thing you do.

So it just proves this proves emptiness, but nothing has an inherent nature. We for example, one example, in our in our culture, if you go to a really posh event and you have your high heels and your stockings on and everything, your best earrings and your cocktail dress. If you take your shoes off, if it’s really a posh event, you consider it very rude, aren’t you? But Tibet is considered really rude if you keep your shoes on. So it just proves there’s nothing absolutely right or wrong.

It’s just a question of how you see it, isn’t it? And that’s the point about, like, this religious stuff, you know. And because we used to think of religion is ritual and belief, and we see these weird Tibetan paintings and these strange Tibetan habits and ringing bells and prostrating. Bloody hell, we think. You know?

So let’s get past that that superstitious idea and see the actual practical psychological meaning, which there has to be, and if there isn’t, you don’t do it, believe me, of these things and the benefit, the way that traditionally the Lamas would talk. And the thing is what we’re gonna discuss this morning, and like I said, if some of you, I might be boring for you. I’m sorry, but this is what we have to talk about this morning. This is the stuff that a person if you get more involved in Buddhism, you decide to take refuge, and you start getting more involved, you have a daily practice, you begin to add these little components to your practice. When you start, the first thing is you watch your breath, you know, start getting a bit mindful.

Good enough. Then you add pieces to it. Like you would in anything. You start music all your boring little scales, your little grade one songs. Then you start getting more complex and all the different extra things, and it really becomes you add pieces to your structure.

So this is what we’re doing here. Okay? And you find, you know, that when you start to add these things to your practice, because we are people that have form, we need form and shape and structure and timetables. We do need that. We all know that.

We need that badly. You know? Look at your house. You just don’t walk into one big square space, and then you decide to go to the toilet in that corner one day, and then you pee in the corner the other day. You decide to eat your breakfast here over that morning.

No. You like the the sort of the the rhythm of having a kitchen where you go for your meals, and a bathroom where you go to the toilet, and a, you know, and a bedroom where you sleep, and a room where you meditate. We need this structure. Now the disadvantage of that is we get very concrete about and attached to it. But the skill is to have that without getting attached to it.

That’s the skill. Giving up attachment doesn’t mean you chuck the baby out with the bathwater and have a room where there’s no bathroom and no toilet. You get my point. You keep the stuff, but you don’t get attached to it because we need the rhythm and time and shape. We need this discipline.

We know our minds are chaos. So if you have structure and discipline, that’s the channel through which you you you you you channel all your energy. It just makes sense. Right? So these formalized practices have that aspect, but they have in themselves great meaning doing them.

You know? It’s a way to put shape to your practice. So like I said, the fundamental day to day practice, the actual job, like I said, getting the ball through the big sticks, you know. Oh, the Swans won last night. I watched Saint Kilda.

Saint yeah. Of course. Well, I did. I turned it off at some point, didn’t I, Lindy? When it got too close, when Saint Kilda was starting to win, I thought I can’t cope with this, I turned it off, you know.

Then I went to the last quarter when Swans were kicking goals like crazy, so I can relax. So then I watched it. They won by about five goals. So they’re gonna play at the MCG next week and play Hawthorne who got thrashed by Geelong. So we’ll see.

Okay. You know, and I see the advertised. Betting is on every single one now. Betting is everywhere. You used to have to ring up the SP bookie, didn’t you?

When my father did it, was the SP bookie. It was illegal. But now right on the telly, right there it says, you know, tab blah blah. It makes it all romantic looking. You just put your bet in.

Gosh. Interesting. Okay. Where was I? Thank you for what I was practiced.

So the actual yeah. Like I said, the actual job of being a Buddhist, you’ve got to understand this point. Don’t get confused. Once this is clear, you really know what you’re doing. You know, the act if you think being a footballer means running up and down and and and and and what do you call doing all those, you know, grabbing each other and kicking the ball and marking it.

If you think that’s football, you’re kind of sort of right. It is part of football, but the point of football is what? Getting the ball through the big sticks. You get my point now? So you’ve got to go off and do your your jogging and your walk look at them all.

I mean, Lindy said she did some quitting with them one time, quitting smoking. They’re all these gods, these tall young blokes with these smooth big muscles and no fat, you know, like these big tall people looking totally gorgeous. Right? You said? Gods.

Like gods. Yeah. So there they are, all these young blokes with their tough big muscles, you know, running and jogging and doing meals and diet, and if you’re Bred, you do yoga and you do things on the beach. Or if you think that’s football, you’ve missed the point, haven’t you? You haven’t got to the point.

All of that, think of it carefully. What’s the purpose? To get the big the ball and the big sticks. That’s the bottom line of football. So the bottom line, the day to day job of being a Buddhist isn’t to do prostrations, isn’t to do water bowls, isn’t to walk slowly by the silly with a silly grin on your face.

Do understand? It’s not the point. The real job is to be your own therapist. Deal with your mind. Pull out the weeds, grow the flowers.

This is the actual job. There’s other stuff, the stuff we’re gonna talk about, the ritual so called rituals and the practices and the water bowls and the prostrations. These are the things that support and enable you to do it well. That’s the function. You might see the immediate benefit, you know, but one has to think about this.

Are you with me people? Okay. So first of all, I mentioned this briefly, but I’ll go into more detail now. Like I said, we need shape and form. So a typical a daily practice, you know, at least minimum, I think of it as like two bookends that hold up your day, the morning and the night, when you get up and when you go to bed.

Because a a person’s day consists of, you know, we have a sleep, we wake up, come back into consciousness, we’ve been unconscious for a few hours having a rest, you know, and then we wake up and come back into the world, isn’t it? So that’s the second you wake up. The second you come back into consciousness, that’s when you should start your practice. And throughout the day, there’s ways of doing things, and then you finish it with a formal and you have a formal practice in the morning, and then you finish it as you close your eyes and go to sleep. You know?

If you can structure it this way, then you can just relax, and you do one day at a time. You don’t panic. You don’t get confused. What is practice? What do I do?

Where do I go now? You know, up and down like a yo yo. You just keep going one day at a time until you’ve got it. That’s it. You know?

Keep it simple. So what is the components of a daily practice? Well, you could say from the Tibetan Buddhist point of view, there are various components in a daily practice. You could say the from the you you need some concentration component to train your mind to be focused. You know, some of this.

You need some some of these some some in your meditation, certainly, some in okay. In meditation practice, you’ve got the concentration component. You’ve got the stuff we did this morning. Like that, you know, the nine round breathing isn’t actually concentration. You’re using concentration, but it’s a nice little simple visualization purification technique.

Did you enjoy that one or not? And you can do that. You can see if you’re having a freaked out time at work, you sit on the toilet, you lock the door, you do a couple of nine round breathing, you know. Calm yourself down, get rid of your attachment, breathe out your anger. It’s just your mind working, but you’re using a physical technique to help you stabilize it.

You understand what I’m saying? It’s a really nice little practice. You can, you know, have got some kind of component like that maybe, which is utilizing if you like thinking or visualizing. You know? Concentration doesn’t utilize thinking, But actual concentration, you watch the breath, and you’re not you’re you’re you’re there.

You’re you’re attempting not to follow all the crazy thoughts, aren’t you? You’re not trying to make them go away. You’re trying to stay focused on one thing like your breath, which helps okay. Let me just talk okay. We’ll go back to that.

There’s that. Then you’ve got your other types of ones like the nine round breathing, a nice little technique. Then you’ve got particular also like we did this morning, did this Tārā one make sense? Did you enjoy doing that? Could you get the idea of it?

Psychological the psychological benefit. Some of you didn’t like it. You’re you’re allowed to not like it. Some of you didn’t like it. Okay.

That’s interesting. Okay. Because if you see if you look at those that that practice, it’s called visualization. Oh god. I can’t do that.

Excuse me. It’s sinking. And all you do some people have a bit more visual, and they can picture it. You know? If you’ve good concentration, you can visualize.

But you think it first. You start sinking. And in the end, when you remember the one of karma, every thought sows a seed. Then every bit of that sinking this morning, you know, it might have been sudden busy, you do all thinking this and thinking that, and lights here, lights there, blah blah, but it’s these incredible powerful seeds you’re sowing in the mind. So marvelous, you know, so fantastic.

And that kind of meditation, which is kind of proactive, can really when you’re miserable sometimes, when you’re feeling depressed, it’s a wonderful one to do. You better sit watching your breath all the time, you can get more depressed because it can be very nihilistic. So you gotta add these other pieces to it when you feel. It’s like a little tool cap a cabinet. You know what I call it?

Tool your tool shed. And you take out the tools that you need when you need them. You know? You need some focus sometimes. You need some nine round breathing, that type of thing, you know, out the anger, you know, out the attachment.

You need the You need the visualization sometimes. You’ve got compassion. You’ve got this one of Tārā called Powerful. You’ve the Śākyamūni one. You’ve got the medicine Buddha.

We did a real brief last week. You know? You’ve got so many of those, and they come as and when slowly you’re ready. You know? Do you do those meditations at all here at Lindy?

What do you do then? What are those notes? Okay. Okay. That’s good.

Okay. Okay. And what’s and what sadhana do you use? I see. Okay.

Great. Okay. Good. Because I think the way we did it this morning, which is just taken straight from the llamas, but I elaborated a bit more, really thinking about all the you know, you understand. You didn’t listen to it, but it’s really very tasty sometimes to add.

That’s straight from Lama. You know? He’d really talk about it a lot. That’s just sometimes just say, oh, you visualize all your happiness. You visualize all your purification, and you you think you add a bit more to it like we did this morning.

It’s very, very helpful for the mind. Okay. Okay. So the the main components of meditation, concentration, then the stuff that where you utilize the other kind. There’s two kinds okay.

There are two kinds of meditation, people. Millies of techniques, two kinds of meditation though. One kind is called simply broadly concentration, which is the first kind, and it’s known in terms of its result. It’s called strictly speaking, calm abiding, which is the name of the result of that meditation, which refers to a state of mind way more subtler than we would ever posit as existing in our material as cultural views of the mind. It’s way beyond the conceptual and the sensory.

If you were to see a person who’d actually accomplished this, they would look like they were dead. Okay? Their mind has gone beyond the conceptual and the sensory. Quite a sophisticated level of realization. That’s the end result of that technique.

But one can, you know, one needs to do it. And so the the benefit of that kind of meditation, the goal is concentration at a profound level, like access the microscope of your mind. So why? So that you can now go to the second mode, which is where you do the actual work of transforming your mind, of doing all the gardening, pulling out all the weeds and growing in a way. That’s really where and and what that’s often it’s refer okay.

The name of that type of meditation, the second kind, this is very traditional Buddhism. It’s called special insight. Insight meditation, Vipassana. So there’s a style, as you know, of Vipassana meditation. It’s coming straight from the Buddha that’s been cultivated over the centuries.

It’s now uniquely just called Vipassana. There’s a very particular style of meditation, and I’ve never even done it, but it’s straightly from Buddha. It’s where you, you know, you you deal with different experiences of the body and that kind of thing. People have done those mediteachings? That kind of thing.

So straight Buddhism. Just in the Tibetan tradition, is Mahāyāna, they’ve taken different parts of the practices and have cultivated certain ones. So the key approach in the Tibetan tradition in the part in the type of meditation called insight is where you’d the the the method you use to get insight, because insight is the result, is called analytical meditation. But it’s just they’ve used funny words in the you know, in Tibet. They use different words.

So sorry. Funny words. It’s a fancy term for the verb to think. So it’s not complicated at all. But it just means based on any so what you do is you go to your session, you get some concentration.

You just been to the teachings, let’s say, karma or emptiness or bodhicitta or anything at all. So the really good practitioner would go to their room, you do your focus, you get your mind focused sharp to the degree that you’ve gone in your meditation. Then you get it to the level you’re ready for. Now you go to the second mode, you take what you’ve heard, that’s the substance. You take that, and you do a really and if you do it well, it’s a very sophisticated level of of, like, analysis of this.

You’re doing your internal sinking it through. You get my point? It’s not complicated. It’s actually how we learn everything. It’s just that we don’t call it concentration meditation, and we don’t call it analytical meditation.

We just call it you know, like, if you think I’m not kidding now. We mystify these things so much. You go I I went my little girl went to school, and they told me that one and one was two. Well, miss Holton, my little teacher, miss Holton at the convent, I always remember she had this lovely perfume. I’ll never forget her.

For some reason, I remember her. She engulfed me one day in her big black cloak and gave me a hug. I must have been feeling very needy because I never forget that hug. You know? She had this bright pink lipstick and this lovely perfume.

I’ll never forget miss Halton. Then the other nuns in their black cloaks and no perfume. You know? Anyway, whatever. Miss Halton told me that one zero one is two.

So what did she say? She said she said, Narabina,, I want you to go home. I want you to do your concentration meditation first, and then I want you to go to your second type of meditation and do some analytical meditation and get the experience of one on one is two. Basically, that’s what she’s telling me, isn’t So guess what I did? Now, first you go home.

So, of course, if you don’t know how to focus your mind, you can’t add up one on one is two because you say one plus, and then you forget what you’re doing, you’ve lost the plot. So you’ve got to have some focus first. Now no one teaches us that, unfortunately. Imagine how helpful that would be to have some focus first. You focus your mind.

Then I want to go on to the second mode where I do the actual work because concentration is only the beginning. It’s where you sharpen the mind as a tool to do the actual job of changing the mind. Do you understand what I’m saying? That’s really important point. Immense benefits come from concentration.

Many people even think that’s all Buddhism is, just getting the mindfulness because a lot of benefits come from it. It’s very blissful. It’s very clear. The mind is very calm and very blissful. That’s fantastic.

But it’s only the beginning. You now use that sharp mind to go to the second mode where you sort out the mess and pull out the rubbish from the mind and see reality. You get my point? So here, like in my mathematics, what I would have done with my clear mind, I’d get my pencil or you get your blocks, whatever things you need, and I would think it through. I’d go one.

I have to know what one is. I’ve got to know what plus means. I’ve to know what equals means. So I had all the facts. You know?

But I’ve gotta put them together. Right now, there’s just theory for me. karma, Buddha says this. The mind is this. It’s all nice theory.

This and this, and delusion is this, attachment is that. It’s just words like the music. It’s just little funny weird don’t notes on the paper, isn’t it? But what you gotta do is you gotta internalize that, don’t you, and discover your music. You gotta internalize the this one plus one equals two.

It’s just abstract theory at the beginning. So what do you do to internalize it? It’s very obvious. You think about it. You do so-called analytical meditation.

So you go one, and you work it out plus, and you think. And slowly, suddenly, what’ll happen? You go, oh, I get it. Won’t you? That’s an insight.

That’s insight. When it gets inside, when the penny drops. So don’t mystify insights. Not some special religious thing. It’s just the it’s the in it’s the in experiential knowing of something.

In the beginning, it’s kind of tentative. You forget, but you keep doing it. You keep doing it until eventually you’ve perfected it. Do you get my point, people? This is the process of becoming a mathematician, of getting enlightened using these two methodologies.

Please, it’s not mystical. It’s just they use different words, and then we see it as a religion, we mystify it, and we don’t get it. You know? It’s so grounded, so reasonable. So what you’re doing is you get some concentration, you take what you’ve learned that day, you go home, and you sit in your mind, and you work it through.

So, of course, you’ve gotta have a pretty focused mind to do that because we know our mind is berserk right now. It’s all over the place. We can’t have two decent thoughts in there because it’s just uncontrolled. We’ve never controlled it. We’ve never disciplined it.

That’s why you’ve gotta have the first one. You’ve gotta have the concentration. You’ve gotta have that method where you focus the mind. You train it not to follow every berserk thought. This is already, like I said, so much benefit comes from this, but it’s not the end result.

You with me people? So then you go through and you think it through. So people can do that while you’re driving. You can do it at different levels. If you’re driving, you got a really sharp mind, you like driving.

I like driving. I like doing my thinking while I’m driving, you know. As long as something’s moving, I’m happy. If I’m not moving, kinda get all like this, you know. You understand?

As long as something else is moving, I can sit behind the wheel of a car for six hours without a break, without blinking, and my mind is focused. It’s kind of interesting. You know? So I can do my analytical sinking then or when I’m teaching. This is my med this is my analytical meditation.

So thank you for coming. I’d look pretty dumb talking to myself, wouldn’t I? So thank you for giving me an audience. Now really, it gives me this opportunity to focus because this is a because even as I’m talking, I’m processing it. You know?

Oh, that’s interesting. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Oh, wow. There’s a good point.

Honestly, I’m not kidding. So I’m so grateful. You know? Gotta do this job. But it’s using your intelligence, using your mind in a focused way to think about like you do with your maths and your music, what you have learned.

That’s the point. You know? That’s what you’re doing. And then and what happens from this? Clarity comes.

It gets deeper inside you. You understand it more. It becomes your experience, not just theory. You start to experience the meaning of impermanence, experience the meaning of karma, experience the meaning of emptiness, and it just takes time. So you just don’t do it, like I said, on your cushion.

That’s a good way to do it. It’s up to each person’s mind where you’re at, what you need. Like a friend of mine says she cannot, she has to process on the cushion. Other people don’t have to process on the cushion. It’s up to us.

In the long term, we’ve got to be on the cushion because you got to get the mind to a very subtle state, and you can’t be in a subtle state of mind driving a car. So eventually in the long term, you get my point, we get genuine realizations of it, genuine insights. That has to be on the cushion in a retreat mode, but we go to the level we are able to go. Okay. Are we communicating?

This is the approach, you know. So you like I said all the time saying, take all these ideas of Buddhism, the ones you want to study, as your hypothesis. You don’t squeeze it in and try and digest indigestibly swallow it whole. You don’t believe in it fearfully. You don’t blindly reject it.

You have enough courage to think, well, that’s an interesting concept. Never thought of that before. Let’s let’s give it a go. Buddha says the mind is this. Don’t believe it, but think if it was so, this this this this and this are the consequences.

That’s how an intelligent person, a decent scientist would think, not grasp onto your own ideas and be fearful about other ideas. Because Buddha might be wrong. You gotta give it a go to find out, you know, so be relaxed about it. So you can’t so your meditation in the morning, a classic meditation would be you get some you you know, you’d okay. This is how you’d start.

This is how you’d start. Wake up in the morning Before your eyes are even open, you’d notice. Wow. I’m still alive. Now why do we not think that now?

Because because we have in our minds, the bones of our being, this deep misconception of permanence. The deep misconception that grasps a permanent me, which as Lama’s over puts it. This is a deep misconception, a deep lie in the mind that we all have. We grasp at things as permanent. When things are a certain way, we think that’s it.

You know, when we’re when everything’s happy and blissful, we think now I found happiness. We think it’s permanent. When we’re completely depressed, we think now it’s gone. We can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. We think it’s permanent.

So as you wake up in the morning, you counteract that instinctive view of permanent me, and you go, well, this is interesting. I’m still alive. My petrol tank of morality hasn’t run out yet, which is why I’m still alive. I’m gonna make the most of today. Why not?

It energizes you. Like I said yesterday, at least you know notice your mind. Maybe you wake up depressed. Maybe you had weird dreams. Just check.

Sort it out. Just a dream. Okay. Might be a bit depressed, but I’m not gonna follow that. I’m gonna get out of bed, make the most of today, blah blah blah.

And you bring yourself into the direction you want, not blindly following your feelings. That’s how we get up and down like yo yos. We’re just blindly following whatever we’re feeling, but we can be the boss. You can decide. I’m not gonna follow this feeling.

If things are good, I’m awake. I’m alive. My life is okay. I’m gonna get out of bed. I’m do some practice.

I’m at breakfast. I’ve gotta go to work. I won’t fight with that person today. You make a few little decisions in your mind. You keep yourself upbeat.

You know? That’s all. It’s positive thinking. Or people talk about having affirmations. You know?

It’s good. You gotta think positively. You’re the boss. It’s so important. You you know, if you I mean, there’s a particular little prayer I say as soon as I wake up.

It’s renews my refuge and my body’s heart for vows. Each person could do what they like. Do something. And the more you have it in your mind memorizing things is very helpful. You’re just spontaneous, and you’re training yourself to go in that direction.

So then you hop out of bed. Now if you’re you know, I like this is me because I’ve got a Buddhist practice, and, you know, it depends on where you’re at. I like I as I said in my a letter I wrote to the prisoners years ago, which I still use as a basis I did use when we used to advise the prisoners. And even now, I’ve got this letter as a way to set up a daily practice, and I can send it to people if you want it. I can send send you a thing about how to do the water bowls.

I can send you a thing about how to do food offering. These different things I’m gonna talk about now how to do in your daily life. Lindy has to have you’ve gotta have all these classes. You have a little ritual thing. Maybe Namgyal, when he’s here, can get him to do this, have classes of how to do these things in detail.

It really just helps. You know? It’s just tradition. This is a tradition, and you can take it on board and then make it your own experience. You know?

But I what I like to I think of it, as soon as I wake up, I make my first thoughts my dharma, you know, remind myself. Then I make my first physical action dharma. When I hop in the bed, I do three prostrations. This is my thing. Saw someone else do it, and I was very impressed, and I do that.

That’s my my my decision. There’s no law that says you should. I like the idea of it, reminding me, you know. Then you go pee, wash your face, whatever, and you don’t rush to the kitchen and put the kettle on, which is usually the first thing we do with thinking I. So like I said, from my thing because I’ve got a teacher, I’ve got a Lama, I’ve got this practice.

So I think of myself, think the Lama is open just knocking on the door, so I let him in and I sit him down. And of course, because he’s my guest and he’s my teacher, I’d offer him a decent cup of tea, would I not? So this is the one about making offerings. And one of the biggest things of Buddhists I see, you know, they give up making their offerings. You give up making your offerings.

So now I’m gonna get personal about the center. Does the center make offerings every single day here, Lindy or George? Well, I’m heartbroken. I’m bursting into tears, and Lama Zopa would be heartbroken as well. May I just say, I think it’s unbelievably auspicious that you have somebody every single day to make beautiful beautiful look, this is heartbreaking.

So all the week up in here, there’ll be no offerings. Not water bowl offerings. I know. So George George should be telling you off for not doing it. So I’m gonna George is behind you.

Now I’m being real bossy, know, aren’t I? George should be telling Lindy Lindy Lindy Lindy, George behind you is the boss. He should be telling you off for not doing it, so we have to blame George. He has to take the fall. He’s the boss.

Because all I know is I’ll tell I’m talking to George. You’re the servant here. George is the boss. Yes, George is the boss. Now I’m being real bossy, aren’t I?

That’s right. Now, anyway, the point is all I know is, all I can tell you from my experience, from hearing the teachings, from thinking about it myself and doing it in my own life. And, again, it gets right back to karma, you know. If you understand okay. Okay.

They say karmically, the cause of getting a human life is the accumulation of morality karmic seeds, which minimally is the intentional refraining from killing, lying, stealing, and non harming others, and the actual proactive actions of benefiting others. That’s the actions of morality, the actual actions of morality, it’s called. Not harming, and then benefiting. And then done, as Lama says, in the context of a spiritual practice, in the context of keeping very potent vows of morality. That is the cause of simply getting a decent human life.

But you would not have one grain of rice to your name if you didn’t have a an accumulation of generosity karmic seeds. Generosity. Generosity. Giving. Giving.

Makes a big deal of this. You know? And so if he’s my teacher and he’s showing me by his actions what I should be doing. So offering, giving is unbelievable. When I was running the prison project, you know, someone gave me some money, and they were selling their house in Perth.

And she wanted Rinpoche to write a little mantra on this crystal she had to put it in the house to help it sell. And Rinpoche said to her, this has become my motto for the different projects I do. He said, do not think of receiving. Think of giving. So this is a massive one in our daily life, in our ordinary thing, in the Dharma center, in everything.

Call it a practice, but it’s something incredibly practical. It’s the first of the six perfections. Tsongkhapa says it’s the the basis of the activity of a bodhisattva in the in that it develops a selflessness and undaunted courage to lead sentient beings to enlightenment. And it’s the cause of your good reputation throughout the world, which is interesting. You need that if you’re a bodhisattva.

So some other one of generosity, if we look into our minds, because we have lots of attachment, therefore lots of fear of not having insecurity, we don’t like to give. We don’t like to give because we think if I give, I won’t have. We just or we just get lazy. You know? We just get lazy, especially when it comes to the formal practice in in spiritual terms.

It’s an unbelievably important practice. I cannot describe it for centers. You know? I mean, sometimes the centers have struggles with their money, they lose money, and things go wrong because not enough generosity is happening. Not enough actual emphasis on practice of generosity, practice of giving, which is the cause of receiving.

Let me tell you this, George. When I was at international office working for Mandala, we were always struggling for funds. It was when Harvey was the director. This is sixteen years ago. And then one the year I joined and started, we we rEvamped Mandala and did the magazine.

We got a donation of a million dollars over five years, something like that. No. I forget. Five hundred thousand, whatever it was. And it was the first time there’s funding for years.

It was that’s why we did mandala. We had some funds for it. And this is what Rinpoche said. He said the the the cause of receiving this money was Harvey, who was a director, his mandala offerings. That’s it.

The main cause, he said, of receiving this offering is Harvey’s mandala offerings. I’ll never forget that. That’s just Harvey’s own practice. He did a retreat on mandala offerings, the main cause of receiving this donation. So the giving one is unbelievable in your own life and certainly the center.

Every day, you know, Rinpoche has an entire room and the whole house. He has one nun for years now, different nuns, six hours a day making offerings. So if that’s not an example to us, you understand that. It’s not just because Rinpocheet needs it, it’s a practice that he’s showing us that we need to do. So from the center side, I’d tell you, you this is a major one just to be generous, you know, to be to to have somebody every single day come into the center.

You have a roster of it, different volunteers. You have a whole team who are the water bowl offering team. You could have that. Easily, could do this. And people would it’s a wonderful ritual to do.

You really like to do it. So let me explain that practice in a second, but everyone who ever does it says it’s a wonderful practice to do. You enjoy to do it, you know. It’s a very extraordinary practice. It’s sort of the practice of offering this pure water, you know.

It’s just something people say who do lots and lots of these. It really helps sort of help clarifies the mind in a subtler way. It’s very interesting practice. And it is just a ritual, quote unquote. It’s formal, but it’s got wonderful, wonderful meaning.

And it’s just some precious thing. I mean, you’ve got all these surfaces. Look. All these surfaces. This hole should be full of water bottles.

It’s half an hour job every day. And if you have a team, I bet you have some of your volunteers, and it’s a great vehicle to learn it, and it’s so beneficial. I can’t just emphasize enough. Surfaces look beautiful water bottle offerings. So though, I mean, I have very few things that I carry around in my life, but one thing I have is my set of pure silver.

Now silver is really up in prices, I’ve heard. Pure silver water bottles that I bought in Kathmandu, you know, because of them and, you know, I’ve had them for fifteen years. You know how silver when it’s silver, it it it tarnishes. Solid silver, I have never cleaned them once. Fifteen years.

Every time I just wipe them out, they’re getting shinier and brighter every day. It’s the most beautiful offering. Best to have gold, of course, for the holy beings, the most powerful offering, but even silver. That’s the one thing I carry around with my stupa is my silver water bowls. And even though I don’t do many other practice, Lindy can tell you, I do my water bowls every day.

Don’t know, Lindy? She can see me, you see. So I just find it a very auspicious practice to start the day by giving. So what are you doing in religious terms, in in Buddhist terms? What are you doing when you do this?

What you’re doing is, you you know, there’s this particular ritual set of offerings that was Tibetans are into this one. It came from India like all the Buddhism did. And what did you there’s a certain it’s coming from tantra, of course, and it’s the eight sense offerings, it’s called. And the each each and it’s really based on it’s based on a re on when on having a guest. When you receive a guest, the first thing you do is Indian style.

You’d offer them this water for drinking. What nectar, it’s called. The first one is water for drinking. You’d offer them a drink. Then you’d offer them water for and you’d wash their feet.

That’s their style. You know, that’s what they do. Then you’d offer them a garland of flowers, it seems. The next one is flowers. The next one, you turn the incense on and make the environment lovely with the smell of incense.

You know? The next one is you put the lights on. Maybe it’s evening by now. You put the lights on. The next one is lights.

The next one is perfume. Now we’re getting all exciting, you know? The perfume comes out. Then the food, you bring in the dinner. And then the final one is you bring the dancing girls out, now you got the music.

This is my way of saying it. You got the eight sense offerings, water for drinking, water for washing, flowers, incense, light, food, music. So Atisha, what people used to do was have these offerings on their altar, offering to the Buddhas. I’m gonna explain what that means in a minute, offering to the Buddhas, why you do this. But the offerings themselves, Atisha, when he came to Tibet, this great Indian scholar and saint, he said that, you know, to save getting attached to your lovely things, oh, there’s my beautiful this and my beautiful that.

I mean, I can see with my bowls. I’m attached to my beautiful bowls. You know? Gotta be careful. To save getting attached to them, you you he said the water in Tibet is so pure.

You could use water, and then you visualize each of the offerings. You with me? So the eight bowls, maybe well, you don’t make them. You probably never see them here. The eight cents offerings is eight bowls.

You know, it could be a glass. It could be crystal. It could be any beautiful thing. Often because the Tibetans only had access to brass and things, people in the West tend to think you gotta have brass. But it’s ugly, horrible stuff.

It’s all crummy and dirty. You wouldn’t even offer to your pet dog, you know. I remember one time Song Rinpoche, this really heavy duty Lama, so serious. It used to scare the life out of me. He when we were in our center in England in the seventies, he he looked at our different offering things and our ritual things and the different things you use in food, and he says, you people have better things in your kitchen.

Well, he’s right. The best design this and the best elegant coffee makers, you know, we do have, and we use our crummy old brass bowls on the altar. It’s awful because we’re not thinking about it. You know? So having anything beautiful that you like, beautiful china, or you can have crystal, you can have wine glasses, it doesn’t have to be a bowl.

It’s a container that you put this offering in. And the more beautiful it is, it makes your mind happy, and then you’re making you’re offering something beautiful to the Buddhas. And I’m gonna still explain that part yet, what what the benefit of that is. But the offering itself, you know, you learn how to do this. And there’s no okay.

I can send this document to very briefly explaining it, but I think you need to have classes, you know, to explain these different things, to really go through it, show people how to do the offering, just passing on the lineage and how it’s done, how you think when you do it, how you bless the water, how you do the incense, how you put it down, how you clean it, all these things. It’s a lovely thing to do. And it and because we are beings of form and shape, it’s you’re doing it, it’s something you’re using your body and your speech to do, not just your mind. You know? So you it sort of feels like action, and then you have this lovely you have a nice altar with nice images on it.

It just it’s it’s a pleasing thing for your mind, and this is important. So, you know, what’s the function of an altar then? Is it not it’s because it’s just where you have the representations of the body, speech, and mind of the enlightened beings. And the body is represented by a statue, a picture, the picture of your guru, the picture of the Dalai Lama, or a picture of your of the Buddha, a statue, whatever you like. It’s an image.

It represents enlight it represents enlightened body. It represents the form, which is what it’s a reminder of what you can become. That’s the idea. Then you have a representation of speech is the words, you know, a book or something. And the representation of the enlightened mind is usually a stupa.

One of those little reliquaries. You got one here? You got a little one there. Yeah. You can have a picture of one.

But if you have a book published by Wisdom Publications, you killed two birds with one stone because their logo was a stupa. Okay? You can be practical. So they’re just all these formal all these external things are are reminders. Don’t get them all concrete like a a statue, an image.

They’re just reminders because we have form, so we need sensory reminders of things. If you have a beautiful picture framed nicely, you’d always frame it nicely on your mantle piece of your family, your loved ones. You know it’s not your loved one, but it reminds you of them. We need this. You know, we need this.

We’re just human beings. That’s what the meaning of these images is, not some superstition. This is a reminder not even of them, but of what you can become. And so it has meaning. Body enlightened body, speech, mind.

You have the enlightened mind like we talked this morning, but then you have to have the body and speech, which is what benefits others. You know? So you have representeachings of body, speech, and mind. Then then this one of offering is just a practice for you. So if you analyze it, an enlightened mind to say if there’s such a thing as a Buddha, they don’t need an offering.

Of course they don’t. They’ve got enough. They’ve got an enlightened mind. But it’s a practice for us. So you all you can see it yourself.

You know, I remember as a little girl, I made something for my mother, and it was crummy. It was really ugly looking object. I did I I was so dissatisfied and sad about this little thing, but I want to offer it to my mommy. Now of course my mommy was blissed out, wasn’t she? She pretended it was so nice, and she thanked me, and she was happy for me because she see my little heart reaching out giving her something.

That’s the real beneficiary. So the beneficiary of giving, guess who it is people? This is the point. This is the whole point even when you give a present to someone else, you’re a beneficiary because you’re reaching into your pocket, and you’re thinking about someone else, and you’re giving something. So you can see the benefit of giving.

So karmically, given that we could create our entire universe and our whole life from our own past actions, there’s not a single thing we have access to. You’ve got to remember this. That is not the result of your past giving. Just take it for granted. Aren’t I lucky born in Australia with nice things?

If you don’t realize how much generosity in the past, how much unbelievable conscious intentional giving you’ve done and non stealing, that is the cause of you being born in a good country with a beautiful environment and nice things and money in the bank, and you get credit from the credit card companies. Why people are homeless isn’t isn’t because they’ve got debt. Excuse me, we’ve got more debt than they have. But we’ve got credit card people who trust us and give us money. That’s from generosity.

So don’t take it lightly. And if we realize that receiving comes from giving, you’d be sad not to give every single day. And so that’s just plain old giving to ordinary people. But here we’re talking about giving as a practice, and you’re using your mind, you’re visualizing. Don’t underestimate that.

We tend to think of it as not giving a physical thing to a real person is wasting time. This is again Buddha’s emphasis on the power of the mind. But when we visualize the food, visualize giving to all beings for lunch, it’s not just your mind and therefore nothing. Everything in your mind is a karma. It leaves an imprint which will bring results.

It’s so powerful. So just imagining offering to others is is indescribably powerful for your mind. You’re leaving those imprints in your mind. Because then don’t be surprised one day if you think of giving every day that your hand will actually reach out in your pocket. Of course, it will, and you’ll actually give as well.

Amazing. So don’t underestimate the mind. So this practice then is giving to the Buddha. So the way all the lamas say, and one has to think about this, but I think this kind of logic in it, we can see it. That the the the any actions we do in relation to enlightened beings, the Sangha, the Buddha, the Dharma, the stuff that represents enlightenment, because of the power of that object as they say, because of the power of what that is and what it represents.

The karma we create is hugely more powerful because of the power of the object. So I’ve got a feeling if you think about it, if let’s say there’s a dog and the Dalai Lama running across the road. Not because you think the Dalai Lama is because he’s, you know, and you have to only save one. If you think of it, they both they both want to be happy, they don’t don’t want to suffer, they both got you know, a little human mind or whatever. Well Dalai Lama said to be a Buddha.

But let’s just say if you have to decide which one to save, I would in my case, we’ll think about it. We probably would say the Dalai Lama, unless you’re attached to dogs more, Because why? You think about it. If you think, who would have more benefit in the world if they stayed alive at this moment in time? We all know the Dalai Lama because he’s a nice guy, and he help he helps millions of people.

So for that reason, you even though it’s painful to have to not save the dog, you know there’s a bigger benefit to your saving the Dalai Lama. You get my point? So in that sense, that is sort of like that. There’s more power in that object at this moment in time than in that little doggy waggy, although he suffers just as much. There’s a reason behind why you do it to the Dalai Lama.

It’s sort of like that, but he’s more potent and more huge because he has more benefit to the world. So I remember Lama Zopa saying, it could be a bit shocking to our minds. He said, you can give food to everybody on this earth, which is unbelievable. But you could help even this is another way of talking now. But he said there’s the generosity also of giving advice.

In the in the six perfections, they talk about the generosity of giving things, then there’s a generosity of giving advice, which is said to be superior. So you could give food to everybody. Nothing. It’s incredible. But if you give one piece of spiritual advice to one mind, that helps that mind which helps them continue on their path, and they can eventually benefit countless more people.

But the food only helps the body even though it’s a good thing. So you gotta sometimes you just got to see there’s different levels of we’ve to do all of it, but there’s a there’s some reasoning behind it. So the action of generosity to the Buddha, to the enlightened beings whom you’re imagining in the house, in the presence, or by in you’re represented by your altar is a very very beneficial practice, very potent karmically. So delight in that because we have to create good karma. Don’t think you’re being selfish.

It’s sensible. It’s sort of like getting a hundred percent of your the thousand percent return on your investment or ten percent. Stop. It’s it you know, if you got it’s just a thousand percent better than ten percent. Thank you.

Go for that one. How sensible. And because we got we got so little time to do practices, we’re not up in the mountains day and night. We have to select practices that in themselves are more potent, more tasty, that will help us purify our minds and grow some virtuous in us. This is the way you think about these things.

You so you select certain things you do. Like I said yesterday, you could sit and watch your breath for one hour a day. Fantastic. You do three minutes of thinking about the Buddha, imagining light coming, imagine and to say the mantra, and benefit all sentient beings. There’s more potency in those thoughts, therefore more powerful karma than one hour of watching your breath.

Are you kinda getting my point? Does it seem logical? Don’t think of it as superstition. Don’t think of it as religious. Try and see the reasoning behind it.

Of course, we all have to do all. But we’ve given that we’ve got little time, we select the practices we do, and we make the ones that are most tasty that will help me purify my mind in the best way and help me grow lots of virtuous karma in the best way. It’s just common sense, you know. You’re being skillful. You make you make priorities like we all do in everything we do.

You know? So the one I’m offering, and it’s just a nice thing to do. I like every morning to do my water bottle offerings. I think, you know, I just there’s a way to do it. You can learn here, you know.

I’ll send you this document, but Lindy can help you work sort out some programs to really do it nicely. Is there? Good. You use the good. So you can use that as your basis.

You can have these classes on how to do the offerings, how to do the seven limbs, how all these practical stuff. I think Namgyal’s coming very soon. There’s another month, so he can come and he can teach you all this stuff. It’d be very nice. And it gives you structure.

You really and it’s nice to learn the lineage, what people do. It’s like to learn how to do it like you learn how to knit from your grandma. You pass it on. You know, you learn the style. The you get the oral tradition.

It’s great. You know? It’s so tasty. And then you feel like you’re doing something. We need to feel like we’re doing something sometimes.

We don’t feel we’re achieving much. And this way, gives a feeling of accomplishing something. It’s really helpful. Very tasty. And you make it very beautiful and clean.

And it reminds you you see, often what happens is we just sort of think, oh, yeah. The Buddha. Offering to the Buddha. Oh, yeah. The Buddha is a nice person to Buddha.

But we don’t we don’t really think what it means. If you really think about it, you’re doing this offerings and you’re imagining the presence of enlightened mind right in your house, you imagine this manifesting. He it gives it it’s a reminder. You know? I mean, is really for me.

I tell you, I was a Catholic. This is not much different from thinking about God and Jesus and all this. It’s the same. I believe believe me, it’s the same. But the difference is the relationship.

It’s not like the creator or something. So it’s up to each person. Some people don’t like this stuff. It’s your call. You know?

But some people really like. So it’s up to you guys to take what you need from all of this. So the offering I’d say then once you before you do your own cup of tea, you do your offerings. Then go have your breakfast. Nothing wrong.

Or have your cup of tea. Depends on your schedule, but I think it’s incredibly important to have a disciplined scheduled practice in the morning before you go to work, before you do other things. It it honestly really is. It starts it puts your whole day in the right direction if you do your practice first. But you need discipline.

I’m sorry. We all are lazy. We give it up after a week, after three days. Oh, well, we put we do the one of procrastinating like we talk yesterday. I’ll do it tomorrow.

I will do it later. I’m too busy. We lie to ourselves because it does take effort, especially if you don’t get all exciting experiences from it. It was just this boring discipline like hopping onto the, you know, it’s like getting onto the gym machine. You get to buy your nice running machine a week later sitting there empty.

I’ve never seen anybody in their houses use their machines after a while, you know, because you get all excited, you start it, then you give up. We give up because we run to our attachment office. We run to our old habits. We run to the job and the breakfast and this and the that and the telly. So you gotta have discipline.

So that means don’t have big idealism about one hour a day. Start I swear to you, do offerings if you did just this much alone. And if you’ve taken refuge like some of you did recently, you stand there after you’ve done your offerings, and you just take refuge three times. You do your little little thing. I take refuge blah blah blah, or a little prayer.

You do this much, you’ve done an amazing practice already. I tell you, you have. Be content. But if you want to, you can then sit down on the and do five minutes, ten minutes of something where you do first some breathing, and then you’d motivate, and then you have a little sadness. Good to have some prayers in front of you.

You know, it’s good to have the refuge thing and and the and the seven limb prayers. Very, very auspicious. And I think when comes, you can explain all these. It’s really helpful to give some put some meat on the bones and make it tasty. You know?

There’s real benefit in those things because you’re connecting to the Buddhas. You’re reminding yourself of different things. And then you can sit down and you can do, like, a little visualization of Tārā or Chenrezig or Buddha, whatever you like, or even just some mantras. Whatever you wish, you know, whatever you wish. And then a little dedication.

Five minutes, ten minutes, nothing wrong with that. It’s got all these rich tasty components in it. You know? You can add another component of analysis. You can, you know, have a book in front of you that you go through over slowly over the year or the months.

You could open it up and you start one paragraph. You just read it, and then you chew it over. That’s the analysis part. That’s fantastic as well. You take like one like you’ve been doing on these Sunday mornings, a topic every time.

But you you follow through. You have one book, and you go through. It could take you a year to cover it. Don’t just read we often read things greedily because we’re very intellectually trained. But just read it and then chew it over slowly.

Get the feeling for it. Get the taste of it. Bring it up in your mind and analyze it, and then sort of then absorb in the experience of it for a few seconds, a few moments, you know. That’s really nice. Then you get up and you do your job.

You watch, and then throughout the day, you’re utilizing, you’re cultivate, you’re using this skill that you’re slowly developing to focus, to observe your thoughts. So you’re watching your thoughts on the road as well as watching the road. You’re watching the thoughts when you’re at the work with your ugly boss. You’re watching your mouth before it vomits out the rubbish, you know. So you’re controlling your thoughts, therefore controlling your body and speech, not getting into too much trouble throughout the day.

And then you finish the day before you go to bed, and don’t do it till very late because then you get sleepy. I’ve been making a mess of my practice while I’ve been here. I’ve up until, you know, late in the night and getting all sleepy. You you know, even if you can do it before you have dinner. Again, it needs discipline.

You gotta do it. And this is and this is why this is why it’s so important in your house. The trouble is we’re not rich, so we don’t have spare rooms, you know. But if in your house you’ve got a little spot, like you’ve got your toilet spot, your kitchen spot, your sleeping spot, you have your meditation spot. Because every time you see it, you go to it, and you close that door.

It’s ideal to have your own room. Luxury, of course, if you haven’t got it. Have your own corner, a little spot that’s yours where your altar is, you know, all your dharma books on top. It’s very clean and nice. It’s appealing.

Whenever you see it, it appeals to you. That’s how they say to do a retreat. I remember one time I did a retreat in our center in Melbourne. Three months, very strict. And it was in Brighton.

Nice big old Victorian house. The lamas had been there. They say a place that’s been blessed by the presence of the holy beings is the best place to do retreat. And I had this lovely room, and I made it beautiful. My sisters all there, and they gave me a nice blue this and a carpet here and a chair there.

It was really lovely. I had the pictures of the Buddhas all framed beautifully. It was a very pleasing environment. That’s perfect. If you’re millerapist and can live naked, great.

But when most of us not, so you make it lovely. So every time I close that door, it was so pleasing. I was happy to be there. And that’s what you need a little meditation spot to be, not some little kind of fundamentalist cushion in some corn looking board. Make it very pleasing, a lovely altar, nice things on it, lovely flowers, a pleasant seat to sit, a chair, cushion, whatever makes you happy.

You know? And it’s your little private place where you do your private thinking. It’s really important to have this. It’s so important because you just want to be there. Then you your discipline’s easier.

It’s very important to do this. So you do some practice. You do and that’s the four opponent powers, which we’ve all been through. Like, this is the one. That’s all you need to do at night.

It’s got everything in it. And it’s not just rushing through it and doing a few madras, like, the mantras mindlessly. You think through the four steps like we talked, you know, the Wednesday night talk, which we’re gonna which is Linda’s gonna have transcribed, isn’t it? Yeah. That one, you finish the day with that.

And then as Lama Yeshe says, you go to bed with a happy mind. That’s a day’s practice, people. And then you as you continue your practice, you start to take initiations from the Lamas, and you’ve got an actual formal practice. Then you have a commitment to do this and a commitment to do that. Then you can add the prostrations or the thirty five Buddhas, and then this one and that one.

You keep adding pieces as and when, like with music, as and when you’re qualified, as and when you’re ready. You know? So that’s an overview. Any questions? People?

Yes, darling. Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. No. Of course.

It’s you don’t have to do it the don’t do it the last moment. No. No. Because then you’ll just get too tired. It’s better to do it in the in the evening.

Then you go back and do something else. Yeah. That it’s better because you’re more awake. It’s better this way, actually, but you need discipline to do this. But if you’ve got your little place to go and you can close the door and be peaceful for half an hour, twenty minutes, it’s excellent.

Absolutely excellent. Of course, when you go to sleep, it’s really nice to have a few mantras in your mind or have a little prayer like you’ve memorized your refuge, and you just you know, that’s important. That’s great to do. So you just remind yourself before you put your head on the cushion. That’s fantastic to do.

Yeah. Anyone else? Yes, darling. Oh, yeah. That’s fantastic.

Brilliant. No. That’s an excellent part of your practice with with the way yeah. Of course. That’s excellent.

If you you’re in your own place and you turn it on, instead of reading it, you listen. Good. You can have Yes. Oh, no. All of this is all of this is a great thing to do with our technology now.

Mean, I have my little iPod, know, my little here, little shuffle, look. It has several hours of it, you know, my prayers and my and then different teaching. So you yeah, it’s a good thing to do when you’re driving, when you’re walking. Yeah, absolutely. It’s a fantastic way to do it.

It’s a fantastic thing to do. It’s excellent. Yeah, absolutely. There’s no question. Yep, no question.

Yes. Yes. I see. Okay. It’s a bit busy then, isn’t it?

It’s awful. That’s very heavy feng shui. That’s a you’ll never get focused. Covered. Yeah.

Yes. Well, darling, I know. But if you think about it, if you wanna sit there and do a meditation and concentrate and have your own private space, but you you got your meditation room in a hallway. Oh, I see. So when other people there, they walk through.

Oh, I see. No. That’s I get your point. So when you’re in the house, it can be private. But you is it so is it sort of like to one side, and the the side of the room is the hallway?

How So can I ask you is how’s the is the doorway in the middle of the room or to the side? So the doorway into the sunroom is in the middle of the room. The doorway from the house into the sunroom is I see. So and then one corner of it is where you have your altar. Right.

Literally next to it. You don’t I see. That’s not yeah. Yeah. No.

Of course it is. No. Of course. That’s okay. No.

That’s not a problem. I’m only thinking walking through with other people, but if you’re on your own, there’s no problem. No? Okay. No.

That’s fine. They’re seeing it as no. Seeing it is fine. It’s more the point of its being a private space where you can close it. Like if you had a therapy session, wouldn’t have it in an open doorway.

You’d have private so not that you’re having a therapy session, but it’s your it’s giving a feeling of retreat. That’s all I’m saying. So if both of you do it together or each of you do it individually, but you’re not disturbing each other, but maybe, you know, it can you you can’t even close it off with like a screen or something. It just wouldn’t work, you mean. No.

It’s okay. But got the cupboard. Yeah. That’s nice. That’s good.

No. Of course. That’s right. And you keep it private. That’s good.

No. I understand. That’s good. That sounds great. Sounds perfect.

I mean, the fact yeah. It sounds perfect. It sounds perfect. See, the thing is it’s like in Tibetans, I think it I see Tibetans, the ones who are bit richer, they have a shrine room especially. Those who are poor, they’re they’re alters in their kitchen.

The mother does the offerings first thing in the morning. It’s up way high in the altar, and you just see it there. It’s just in the kitchen. You know? They might might might not even do much meditating.

Yeah. That’s fine. That’s fine. It’s totally fine. Yours sounds perfect as well.

Great. Absolutely. But the whole point of it is, like, it’s a place where it attracts you. You gotta attract it to go there. That just makes it sensible for yourself.

You know? And it reminds you. It’s a reminder, like you said. Someone else? Anything at all?

Oh, that’s yeah. That’s right. Sure. That’s right. That’s right.

That’s right. That’s true. And the one of keeping it clean and having everything beautiful is because you value it. You know, the thing you keep dirty is what you don’t value. If the things get all dusty, it’s because you don’t pay attention to them.

So it’s a very it’s an interesting sign, isn’t it? No. It’s important. That’s a good point. Yeah.

Anything about anything at all, practice or anything? Yes, darling. Yes. And the other one is is called insight, which refers to the end result. But the method you use to get the insight is this analysis, this focused kind of analysis that then okay.

Let me say a bit more about that one, actually. I ran off a bit. Yeah. It’s called insight. And they’re both called in terms of the result.

Calm abiding is the end result of the concentration when you got the single point of concentration. And then the other one is called insight, which refers to the result of having accomplished direct insight into emptiness. That’s the final one. So the methods that are used to trigger insight, like with your mathematics, you gotta have some focus, and then you do the thinking. You you do your analysis, and what happens?

Like I said, it it triggers. Oh, I get it. That’s the insight which has come as a result of the thinking, isn’t it? That’s clear, isn’t it? No.

I haven’t quite finished. I’m just talking to you. But you’re getting what I’m saying. Okay. So what now now I’ll get to the point.

So what happens is this in your meditation or like, again, I have to use ordinary examples which brings it down to earth force. If you’re playing the piano, and you’ve learned a piece, you all know the first time, isn’t it, when you get it right without a mistake. It’s just great. You get so excited. You did it without or even when I did my kung fu, the first time I did that form without making a mistake, you get it.

But you didn’t you get and got it perfect. You gotta keep practicing and practicing until you got it perfect, don’t you? Until it’s literally spontaneous, second nature. That’s the same here. So the first moment in in that particular day’s meditation, you and even as you isn’t isn’t that we’re listening to teachings?

You go, oh, I get that. You heard it before, but suddenly the penny drops. So every time you hear it, and I’m seeing this with having to speak it, every time I say it, the same thing, it goes a bit deeper. It goes a bit deeper. And until they say, this gets to the very subtle level where they have they say it’s direct insight, which is a level of your mind we don’t even touch.

It’s really quite subtle where it’s now a direct, they call it direct non conceptual insight into it where it’s now your actual experience, and it’s really quite profound. But even then, you have to perfect it. So in your meditation, you’re in let’s say in your one session. If you’re really doing serious retreat, you’d have your concentration, you’d go to your emptiness, and you do you think about dependent arising, which is one of the main methods to trigger the insight into emptiness. You think about dependent arising, and then it would trigger the insight.

So you’d what you do is you stop the analysis, and you hold the insight. Right? You hold that, and you you go back to the first mode of meditation, which is focus, but you focus on that insight. You hold the feeling. You get my point here?

And this it might last for a second. It might last two. If it wanders, you go back to the the analysis, and you keep doing it until eventually you get single point of concentration, and it will unwavering for hours. You know, that’s when you get it perfectly. So you just keep growing, and this is how you bring the two types of meditation together.

You’ve got to have the concentration. And in itself, it’s already great, but it’s the only the tool where you really then do the analysis, and it triggers the insights, and you keep getting a deeper deeper deeper. Do you understand what I’m saying? That’s how you use both. Well, if that works for your mind, sounds perfect.

It’s a good image. Use images whatever works. That’s perfect. Nothing wrong with that. Someone else?

Anything? Do you want me to tell you about something else? Okay. Who had a question here? Go, darling.

No. You think of it like an offering. Think of it as an offering. You look at the Tibetan monasteries. I mean, they’re offering jewels and God knows what they love.

It’s an it’s an idea of offering. It’s an offering to the Buddha. In fact, the Tibetans, you know how we’re in the West, we tend to like like naked statues with nice wood or brass, but the Tibetans paint them and put their face, they put clothes on them and jewelry because they see it as offering clothing like robes to the Buddha, which is really auspicious, you know. It’s got a great meaning. And you think of it this way, it’s wonderful.

Nothing wrong. Put all your jewelry there and your, you know, your cups of tea and your biscuits, you name it, whatever you like. Yeah. Okay. What else?

Other practices you wanna talk about? Yes, sweetheart? Yep. It’s what works for your mind. Yeah, for the Tibetans, color is a big deal.

Their monastery is as bright as buttons. They’re full of color and shape and, you know, energizes. Yeah. Whatever works for your mind. Whatever works.

Yes sweetheart. Oh yeah, okay. Okay. Oh gosh. No, darling.

It’s perfect. No. Perfectly fine. Okay. Let’s talk about that practice.

Don’t know if anybody’s familiar with that practice, the thirty five Buddhas prostration practice. Let’s talk about the benefits of prostrations now for a second, seeing as you brought it up, and I’ll answer your question eventually. Okay? This is where it really looks like religion is in bloody hell, these prostrations. Mean, even as Catholics, we do these what we call genuflection, and you had the short one and the double one.

Remember when the god was out of the monstrance, and you had to do double genuflection, didn’t we? Very similar, tell you, at least straight from the same source it sounds like to me, you know? It’s very interesting. But anyway, prostration, again, you think about it, we have a body, we have speech, and we have a mind. The point is the mind.

You gotta purify the mind. You gotta grow the mind. That’s the point. It’s the boss. But let’s face it.

We create karma with our body and speech, don’t we? The body and speech are the servants of the mind. They do all the harm, and they do all the good. So that’s pretty tasty. So because we’ve got three, and because we have created karma with them all, we need to purity use them all to purify, and use them all to create merit.

So it’s fine to think of offering even more marvelous to put your hand out and do It’s very tasty because then it’s vivid for our minds. You know? We’ve used our bodies. If you think about it, most of us might go around raping and killing, but we kill countless creatures. We’re killing ants and rat.

We don’t mean to, but we’re killing all the time. And even if there’s no intention, there’s no heavy karma, but it’s a very old habit we’ve got. So how marvelous to make an effort to do something with our body in relation to the the Buddhas. You know? So says, and that’s what also and I’m gonna talk about that and give commentaries from Rinpoche and everything then beyond this.

But, you know, because the mind because, again, the power of the Buddhas, the enlightened beings, I know Rinpoche says things like even just saying the word Buddha because of what it represents. The meaning of the word Buddha is removing all the delusions and growing all the other virtues. You know? It’s it’s got meaning. Every word in Tibet has meaning.

We no longer have meaning in our we used to have meaning once in our words. Now there’s no meaning in names and stuff. But there’s actual meaning in that word. So just to say it leaves that imprint in your mind. Well, it makes sense because everything you think, everything you do, everything you say, everything you see, everything you hear leaves imprints in the mind, leaves an impression in the mind.

It’s unbelievable. It makes sense, you know. So doing using doing a practice where you’re reciting the names of different Buddhas, Rinpoche says the most power is in the names. If you just did prostrations without the names, it’s okay, but you just it’s physical yo Aslami said to me to try and hook me into doing it, it’s good physical yoga, dear. He knew I was doing karate, you know, it was my first practice.

Good physical yoga, dear, said. And it is. Oh my god. It is. Is it not?

I remember I used to do two hundred every morning. Now I’m totally lazy. I did two hundred every morning in six minutes. No. Twenty.

I do I do one set in five minutes when I’m really doing fast. Now I’m completely lazy, believe me. But I I was so fit. I do them naked as well because I get so sweaty, you know. You get so fit.

You know, really do it properly. You get really good pecs. It’s great. Great practice, I tell you, if you want a good physical practice. But then you mix it with the spiritual, saying the names, and you’re visualizing all the purifying.

So it’s a really potent practice using your oh, that’s fine. Names is perfect. I don’t even know them in English. Don’t know them in Tibetan. You do you’re using your body, your speech, your mind.

It’s a really integrated, wonderful practice. And because we are bone lazy and don’t like making effort, it’s a it’s a tough job to go all the way down on the ground, your face in the dirt, and all the way up again, you know. And so of course, you can’t help but notice it’s sort of got to do with pride. I mean, to put yourself flat on the ground is a pretty intense thing to do, isn’t it? You know?

So it’s a wonderful practice. I love prostrations. There you go. No. It is a great practice, and you can have the tape recording on with the with the with the words.

You can say it yourself. But you see, you can do it fast. I like to do it fast. So I mean, I can now when I’m really lazy, I know this sounds shocking. I’m gonna really sound shocking.

I’m really lazy now. When I do one set, I can do it if I’m really if I’m tired at night or something. I always do it both morning and night. If I’m really lazy, I will do the entire thirty five Buddhas in three prostrations. I’ll say it that fast, which is a bit naughty.

But you can say it like, it’s okay. Better than nothing. You know? But there’s nothing wrong with doing it fast. Nothing wrong with doing it fast.

You have to be slow and say it all slowly and holy. You can go fast if you like. It’s good. Gives you energy as well. So it’s perfect.

It’s perfect. The main benefit, if you can’t do with your shoulder, it’s absolutely brilliant to just sit there and concentrate and visualize. No reason. Oh, you can do that, but there’s no reason. Just sit sit down and do the things with your hands if you like.

Just have your hands here. Good enough. It’s okay. And you say the names. Yeah.

But your body and speech also makes a big difference. But if you can’t do that, certainly the mind is important. Say the names is perfect. Sitting there just and concentrating the visualization is important. That’s very beneficial.

The picture, wonderful, darling. Fantastic. So good. How wonderful. Good.

Time to do it again. Namgol can do it. Fantastic. That’s so good. That’s a brilliant practice.

It’s the prostrations to the thirty five Buddhas. It’s it’s a sūtra. I remember doing it in a Vietnamese monastery in Los Angeles. They do complete they do it standing up and just talking, but it’s an old sūtra. And this is just the way the Tibetans have cultivated doing it, you know, straight from India, ancient old sūtra.

It’s called the Sūtra of the Three Heaps or something. I wonder what it’s called. I can’t remember. That’s right. But it’s a great practice.

Yes. So much in it, isn’t it? It’s wonderful. I know. It’s fantastic.

I know. Exactly. So that’s yes. What was that? A hand?

No. That was George with his camera. You, Jack. What would you say? What, sweetheart?

You’re scratching yourself. That’s very fine. So they got your water bowls, which is wonderful to do every day. And then the thing is normally in the monasteries, they would they would they would empty them and put them upside down at evening, and then you do it again in the morning. But there’s nothing wrong with keeping it, Rinpoche says, twenty four hours a day, and you empty them next morning, and you do the same set right there.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong. The eight offerings. Okay. The first one, I’ll give you the Sanskrit names for them as well and how you do it.

I’ll say a bit more because we’ve got time. So what the first one is water for it’s like nectar for drinking, and that’s called argham. Spell it as it sounds. I have no idea the right spelling. Argham.

They often spell it a r g h a m. Argham. Argham. Argum. Okay?

That’s nectar for drinking. The next one is water for washing. That’s padyam. Padyam, p a d y a m. Water for washing the feet.

Padyam. The next one is pupae, flowers. You can use p u p a y, if you like. Pupay pupay, flowers. The next one is dupay, incense, d h u p a y, if you like.

Something like that. Dupay, incense. The next is alok a light. Alok a Next one is genday. They often spell it, g h a n d a y.

Genday. Genday. Next one is that’s perfume. Perfume. Next one is food.

Nividay, n i v i d a y. Nividay. Food. And next final one is shapta. Shapta, s h a p t a.

Music. So okay. One more thing to add. This is from tantra. So the the essential that we do with our food, this is is a way of blessing.

We’re visualizing all the the energy of all the body, speech, and mind of all the holy beings melting into And and that’s represented by Om ah hum. So if you’re doing the Tārā meditation a bit more detailed, you would visualize Om here, white Om, the white light coming from the white Om at her brow, the red R at her throat, and the blue hum at her heart. You’d add that extra component. So which are three of the Sanskrit syllables in their alphabet, represents enlightened body, speech, and mind. So you’re imagining, as you do the the offering, I’m gonna explain all this if you don’t know it.

You’re pouring the water, and you’re going until it’s full. Then you go Like that. That’s how you use that’s how you’re blessing it, and then you’re imagining it as big and beautiful, whatever you like. You can use your creative imagination, you know. The more marvelous, the better.

The bigger, the better. That’ll do. What else? There’s only twenty five. What other things to talk about?

I don’t know. Anybody any other questions at all? Yes. No. Sure.

No. It’s a good point, actually. Yes. Because okay. Okay.

Kant is, as you know, Sanskrit it means action, and every single every and it is equivalent to the word intention. So everything we think and do and say, or everything we think or feel in the mind, good or bad, is an intention or a karma that leaves a seed in the mind that if you leave it there will grow and ripen as our various experiences in the future. So karma includes all the bad as well. So there’s good karma and bad karma. Put it this way.

So there’s virtuous karma and non virtuous karma. Other words for this is, you know, virtuous karma would be also equivalent. Creating virtuous karma is equivalent to creating merit. They’re just words. Creating virtue, doing virtuous things, thinking virtuous thoughts, being you know, broadly speaking, they all refer to doing good things, thinking good things, and saying good things that are based upon a wish to benefit others and a wish to grow yourself.

Anything that’s negative is based upon a delusion upon the neurotic eye and is harmful. So you understand? So the merit or virtue or goodness or doing good things, thinking, it’s just a word they’ve used in India and Tibet. That’s all. But it just means that.

Pardon? Not really. I mean, we use that word very loosely, But that it’s not in this case, you wouldn’t even bother using it. It’s not that. If you really get it to the mind, there is only the mind and the body for the Buddha, and everything is thoughts.

Everything is feelings, emotions. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, that’s all the mind. We can say energy, and it we get a bit wishy washy about it. You know? In tantra, when they discuss the more subtle physical energies, I even heard his holiness recently, instead of they they refer to the wind energy or the prana.

Sometimes he used the word energy there. But for the mind, just say mind is much better for us. It keeps it down on the earth. Everything is thought, feeling, emotion, which is all coming down to thoughts, and that’s virtuous or non virtuous thoughts or therefore karma. You understand?

You with me? Good. Okay. Yes, darling. Yeah.

All mind. Yeah. Consciousness okay. In Buddhism, broadly speaking, you see this differently in Zen. You know?

You see it different ways in Buddhism. But broadly speaking, the word mind and the word consciousness synonymous. Apps the different words like in Tibetan as well, but they are virtually synonymous, and those words refer to the entire spectrum of our inner experiences, thoughts, concepts, analysis, feelings, emotions, panic, fear, ego, you know, jealousy, depression, paranoia, you name whatever is in there, that’s mind. Everything. Different levels of mind.

The sensory consciousness, consciousness. The the eyeball is not what sees. The Buddha’s view is this part of one’s own consciousness that functions through the medium of the eyeball that enables us to have a cognition, shape, and color. But the consciousness part is mind. If that weren’t working, you have a very nice eyeball.

It wouldn’t you wouldn’t see anything. So ear consciousness is same. So consciousness is necessarily mind. All the feelings, all the emotions, depression, anger, low self esteem, paranoia, schizophrenia, hallucinations, mind. Mind.

Mind. Different levels of it. Do you understand? Mind. Everything that isn’t your body is mind.

Everything that goes on in your personality in your is is your mind. There’s only mind and there’s body. There is no other component. That’s the way of using the word. So I’ve got a much richer use here, you know.

You understand? And the like I said, so tasty, the word intention is equivalent to the word karma. So you could say every microsecond of whatever’s happening in this vast massive mind of ours, on top of every single thought. Well, they say one of the consequences of single point of concentration, which to us in our culture is inconceivable, impossible, but this is what Buddha says we can achieve. And this is from the Hindus.

When you got single point of concentration and you’re inordin you know, you’ve accomplished it through your retreat, you’ve gone to a subtle level of mind. You’ve absolutely, absolutely, and now effortlessly taking control of your thoughts. This seems insane. Can you imagine having a mind where every thought you you you choose to think, there’s no there’s no longer any uncontrolled. There’s no berserk.

There’s no confusion any longer. Can you imagine this? They say your body is completely blissful. Your mind is completely blissful. You’re light as a feather, crystal clear.

You have absolute effortless control over all your thoughts. Can you even imagine being this way? It seems inconceivable and impossible. The default mode assumption in our materialist views of the mind is it’s naturally chaotic. There’s naturally unconscious.

There’s naturally fear. There’s naturally jealousy and all this junk. But the Buddha says, basically, we’re in an insane asylum every day, and that’s it. We call it normal. And he says you can get to a point even without removing the delusions yet.

You haven’t removed the delusions yet. You just completely got this phenomenal control like walking effortlessly on a tightrope. I think of that effortlessly. Can you imagine this? Just this alone is unbelievable.

You can’t even imagine it. You still got delusions, but they’re so under control. You you know, even just a thought arises, you can turn it around right there. I can’t even imagine this, you know. That’s just single pointed concentration.

And Buddha says we have it. We’ve had it countless lives, but we’ve lost the plot. We lose it because we haven’t used it to realize emptiness. That’s the big one. That’s why it’s only the beginning.

It’s got phenomenal results. You’re also clairvoyant at that level. You’ve got clairvoyance. You see the minds of others. You see the past.

You have even got siddhis, powers. It’s got phenomenal results, but it’s still only the beginning. You now use that to effortlessly now deconstruct all the misconceptions and realize emptiness. That’s the it’s the tool you need to get the real insight into which is what gives you the realizations. But it itself is already stunning, you know.

Interesting, isn’t it? Can you imagine being effortlessly in control of your mind? I can’t believe it. I mean we just think chaos is natural, don’t we? It’s so depressing.

Oh my god. It’s unbelievable. So anyway, all these practices like we’re talking yesterday, these my my way of saying it is by doing all these practices, which does seem like religion, but if you look at them more deeply, they’ve got real psychological meaning. They work at a very deep level in your mind, sowing very powerful seeds, the fruits of which you might not see now, but certainly for the future. But also it seems to me sort of it cleans us up at a very deep level that enables us to better do the job of watching your mind every day.

That’s that’s their function. You know? It gives great power like a rocket boost to your daily job of dealing with your mind, which is the real work of changing your thoughts. You know? You understand?

Yes. Okay. No. Exact all of this. Okay.

Okay. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about that. Okay. If we think now what Buddha is basically saying for us right now for forget, you know, even if we just think forget, don’t think.

It has to be. We have to say here’s what he says countless lives. We are completely programmed, effortlessly, spontaneously programmed with the philosophy of saṃsāra, which is the philosophy that there is a self existent me, attachment, anger, depression, all the other business. But the main one day to day is the philosophy of attachment, which means I must get every second what I want. So everything in our daily life, even if we are being kind, we’re a mommy, we’ve kids, we’re looking after people, we’ve got a job, we do all these other things.

But mainly, the delusion that’s running the show is getting what I want. So if you come home at the end of the day and you’re a bit just distressed and stressed out, it’s only because you got attachment, not because you’re loving and kind or you’re working hard, it’s because you got attachment. We’ve talked about this. So that’s the default mode, the one that is the is the motor of all the rubbish. So much of the time we’re doing our ordinary things.

What do you know, we we get come up. I’m here I’m sitting here, it’s uncomfortable, I move. It’s not compassion that motivates that. It’s just spontaneous attachment because you want to be comfy. It’s second nature to us.

You walk, you got a headache, you take a pill. You you go here, you go to the shop, you see that food is more tasty, so you buy it. Every you even go to the shop because you need the food because we’re run by fulfilling the needs of this body, which is a which is a which is a basically an attachment body. This is the default mode, isn’t it? Don’t feel guilty or bad.

It’s just the way saṃsāra is. We have a body that demands taking care of. Do you understand what I’m saying? So every day, we’re just doing attachment things. And most, of course, most of us in the world, that’s what we think that life’s all about, getting what the senses want.

And if you don’t as long as you don’t harm others, that’s called a good life. Well, the Buddha says you’re just fulfilling attachment every second. You’re getting what it needs. You’re eating, you’re sleeping, you go to the toilet, you have sex, you go here, you have music. We’re constantly fulfilling the senses cravings, which is the way the world is.

It’s just life. That’s the samsaric philosophy. So in in strictly speaking, we look at karma, every one of those actions is negative because they’re propelled by attachment. They’re just naturally propelled by attachment, which will increase your grasping, increase your fears, increase your misery, increase your suffering in the future. It sounds quite heavy if we compare with ordinary we think, well, I’m just a nice person.

Don’t be so mean, you know? But this is the way saṃsāra is. So what we’re do then, given that we’re not gonna go to the mountains and give up sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and go into the mountains and get single point of concentration then realize emptiness, given that most of us won’t do that, then let’s find ways that we can transform ordinary life. And now this comes from the Mahāyāna. This is Lama Zopa’s big thing.

He spends all his time giving us these skillful ways, in other words, of changing our way of thinking. That’s all it is about food, sex, drugs, rock and roll, children, mommy, daddy, going here, driving, etcetera, which are all the days. And then given that every single tiny thought we have is a karma and every action we do with the body and speech creates a karma, then how sensible to use as much of our daily life to at least create a few positive seeds while we eat, while we have sex, while we do essentially attachment actions. You get my point here? So that’s where we’re bringing in then.

So we try to okay. So if you’re just practicing the first stages of practice, the Hīnayāna level, junior school, the wisdom wing, and high school, where you’re mainly focusing on dealing with your own rubbish, refraining from harming others, purifying your mind, being your own therapist. The main emphasis of that part of the practice is to refrain from harming others, watch yourself like a hawk, and don’t create negativity. That’s the main concern there. And in that, in relation to just that, which is the practice of the Theravadin countries, there’s not much way of there’s not much transforming.

There’s no concept like this. That’s why the monks have one meal a day. They walk slowly. You’re watching everything. Because everything you do is a karma that’ll increase, so you try to stop the karma, you know.

So with when if we add the Mahāyāna component, which is you you create virtuous seeds on top of the first level of practice. That’s what makes it very potent. Are we communicating here? You understand what I’m saying, people? Okay.

So Rinpoche gives us masses of techniques. He’s just so kind in help helping us do this. So for example, we do it when we have, you know, we stop for our lunch in the courses. And before we have the lunch, we think I like to say we call it blessing the food, but I’d rather call it thinking about the food differently. What’s the default mode of sinking food?

Attachment. You know, we we why do we walk out that door towards the table? Because we know the food is there. We’re not all being mean like animals and pushing over each other to get there. We’re polite about it now.

And when we’re little girls, we burst into tears if you take the last smarty, you know. But now we’re more polite. The little girls still in there thinking, oh, I wanted that smarty. You understand what I’m saying? We’re all we’re propelled by attachment.

The second we think of lunch, everything comes into place, all the programming takes over. There’s no other thought but get to the table and eat me lunch. I’ll do it politely because I don’t want you to dislike me, but it’s totally motivated by attachment. It’s just the way it is. So I’ve got to give up the attachment.

But given that that’s quite a long job, I can have other I can add other thoughts into my mind, which will create incredible virtue, and therefore will sort of like lessen. Not so much less, it will lessen the attachment eventually, but I’m training myself to think differently. So what do we do instead? Before we go outside, before you shove the food in the mouth while you’re at the table, you know, most of us is we forget this all the time because the food is there, you just can’t help but pick up the cup and put it in the mouth without thinking. It’s all automatic.

We’ve trained ourselves completely perfection. So all we have to do is retrain. We’re trying to retrain ourselves. So with food, because we have to have it anyway, how fantastic. You before you have it, you’re sitting at the table, you’re in the restaurant.

You don’t have to go holy when you do it, but you gotta remember. So I’m gonna send to there’s many ways of making offerings, and it’s all in these little booklets, but I wanna send you the one that is essential, different ones of seeing it as empty, seeing it as this, then that then you think this, then you think this, then you think this. It’s all numbered. It makes it simple. And it’s just a summary of the lama’s advice anyway.

But the first one to think, which is really profound, and to do it to the best of your ability, you’re just thinking it quietly. With other people, it’s a bit you get you get lost a bit, but you try and think. If you quietly on your own, it’s easier. You think first of all, well, this is empty, this food. What’s that mean?

That means it’s dependent arising. It means that people have made it. It means that other people have done this. The creatures have died when you pick the carrots even if it’s not meat. You think this.

It mightn’t trigger much first, but you think it. Therefore, it doesn’t exist from its own side. This is already profound. This cuts the root of saṃsāra. Then you think it’s just you imagine daydream as delicious nectar.

It’s like the Omahum business. You can use this as coming from tantra. And you imagine Omahum melting into it, if you like, and thinking it’s transformed into this delicious nectar blessed by all the beings of the holy beings. The next thing is the most important, as Rinpoche says, number three, is you now imagine offering it. This is unbelievable.

You just imagine. You daydream all the Buddhas, if you like, all the gurus, and all the sentient beings. You just think it. If you do it with Rinpoche, five hours later, you might get a meal. Believe me.

It’s too much. In Santa Fe one time, the director there, young guy I know, he invited his parents and Lama Zopa. Lama Zopa to have a meal with his parents. They began Rinpoche began blessing the food, this visualization at nine PM. Well, they started eating at two AM.

You know? Luckily, they didn’t mind. Rinpoche is too much. So you can just think, imagine all the people. And then finally, this is directly from tantra, but it’s very nice.

I like the meaning. They say the very meaning of offering is that you imagine all the recipients experiencing the pleasure of receiving. You see them all blissing out. I mean, is so sweet and so tasty, isn’t it? You think of it as empty dependent arising.

You think and that you think of the compassion one as well. All these kind beings who made it, cooked it, grew it, died for it. That’s really helpful. It’s depending on rising and compassion. You just remember that.

It’s not a self existent carrot, and that was made to order. You go to a restaurant, it’s an ugly little carrot. But if you can think of all the kind people who made it and cooked it, then it’s a different feeling, isn’t it? You soften, softer. So you think of compassion and emptiness first.

Very brief. Then you think, you transform it and bless it with all mahum, and it comes oceans of nectar. Then you think of offering it. You think of all these beings, the holy ones and the suffering ones, and then you think of them all experiencing pleasure having it. This alone, one minute of this, thirty seconds of this, look at the thoughts you just created in your mind, and every thought’s a karma so every one of those amazing thoughts, so vast, so big, absolutely opposite to attachment.

So you’re still gonna eat with attachment because we’ve very strong, but you just created one minute of phenomenal virtuous karmic seeds. Are you with me? This is amazing, you know. Now if you like to have sex, maybe some of you now, if you’re not too old and fat, you might still have sex with your partner. Well, who knows who?

The next door neighbor. I wouldn’t know. Maybe you like it, you know. That’s fine. Don’t feel guilty.

But before you start doing your trip, think beforehand. I’m not kidding. Think beforehand. Of course, attachment is the most intense attachment of all. I want to be generous and loving to this person.

Love them. Be kind to them. Think of them first. Imagine even offering yourself to them. Think of yourself as a little dakini all dressed up beautiful and smelling nice.

I’m not kidding. It’s so helpful for the mind. It really is. An act of kindness, especially if you’re married to each other and the one bloke likes it and you don’t, turn around and be nice to him. Okay?

Make it kindness. Because you see we don’t mind having sex or food when we have attachment to it. But if you don’t, you don’t want it. You say go away I’m tired. Excuse me.

So we don’t do it usually for our own needs. How about doing it for someone else’s sake sometimes? It’s incredible. That’s real generosity. Really thinking of the other person.

Okay. If they’re junkies sitting on top of you every day, tell them to back off, you know. It’s not good for them. You get my point now, please. People hear my point.

I’m a bit rude, aren’t I? You you don’t mind? Thank you very much. So it’s the same with any of your sensory objects, same with your music. You’re same with everything.

You remember it is empty. You remember it is on its own side, and that means you call it good. This is the real meaning of emptiness. You are calling it tasty and good. Your mind makes it good.

This is what they mean by, you know, merely labeled. So you remember all these things. Just remember. You don’t have to look all holy when you do it, sitting at the table with your hands like this. You don’t need to.

Just do it in your mind, you know. It’s very interesting. I remember when I was at Kopan first, and all, you know, you have your meal in the big dining room and a lot of the monks are there. And then all the Westerners, and we’re all brand new, we’re looking all so you see all the Westerners sitting up like this, you know, doing that doing our blessing. And all the Tibetans are kind of going.

They’re sort of pretending to be normal, but they’re saying their prayer in their mind. But you don’t look holy. It’s the rudest thing to do is look holy. They’re like they’re just being all chatty and scattered, but they’re doing their prayer in their mind. They’re doing it.

You understand my point? So you just be very natural. You have to look holy. It’s your own personal business, you know? But the point is to remember, and that’s the hardest part because we are programmed to eat and do all these things.

So when you, you know, when you have your food, any of your sensory experiences, unbelievably important to think the same way. You see a beautiful rainbow. You see a lovely thing. We go, oh, isn’t that beautiful? We crave it.

You know? Remember it’s empty. Remember to offer it. Remember all beings experiencing the pleasure of it. One time I always remember Rinpoche going down the plane to hum Kong at night with millions of lights, you know, and he nudges Roger, the attendant.

Roger, offer offer offer. Because we see lights because we’re craving for nice things. We kind of it’s a bit sort of painful feeling when you see lovely things because you wanna have it, you know. Just remember offering it, thinking of other thing just all you gotta do is visualize all the beings of the universe experiencing the pleasure of receiving it as well. This thought alone is inconceivable.

It opens you up to the universe, and it it lessens and weakens your craving for that thing, you know? All of this. All of this. All of this. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying, but even this this is from tantra two.

You offer the enjoyment. You have pleasure. You offer the pleasure. This is important point. This is from tantra, but it makes sense.

You think about it. You know, we when we’re trying to be nice people, being good Buddhists, and being holy, and do this, we get guilty having pleasure. This is the typical fundamentalist view. You either we are hedonistic and shove it all in, or we give it a lot and become all, you know, all fundamentalist. They’re both absurd.

So we got this is where Lama Yeshi was marvelous. In his book introduction to tantra, he teaches, he talks this way, and he was just so brilliant in the way he brought the tantric philosophy into ordinary life, the way to be a reasonable person, to have pleasure and and relax, you know, and enjoy. But the the one I’m offering, and therefore not being grasping at it, is what transforms it, is what lessens it. If you’re offering yourself and your pleasure to another person, this is this trans this is transformative. You know?

Of course, there’s attachment there. The food, the pleasure, all and because we are such junkies for nice sensory experiences, and we fill our houses with lovely things and nice smells and tastes, and we can get them easily. If you’re living in a poor little poverty stricken country like in one village in India where it’s like still medieval, there’s not much sensory pleasure, believe me. You know, in prisons, they are every sense is accosted daily. So for us, we are living in a pure land.

Don’t just eat it up mindlessly greedily, you know. Offer it. Offer it. Think of offering. See it as empty.

Imagine offering. Delighting. And then still have it, but remember these remembering these things every minute, but that’s what takes the difficult time. It’s so difficult because we are just brainwashed with attachment, brainwashed with getting what I want every second. You know?

For a person in their life? That’s very wrong. Now that’s fun. That’s really the so called perfections that we call it, but it’s actually really quite absurd. It’s it’s not it’s arrogant because you know, it’s how can you it’s like saying, oh, think I’ll learn to ride a bike, and you’re three years old, you hop on the bike, you see a picture of Lance going up doing the Tour de France when you’re five.

I’m gonna ride a bike, and you fall off. You don’t do it well. Well, I’m not gonna ride a bike until I can ride a bike perfectly. Excuse me. How will you ride a bike if you don’t do it badly first?

It’s fake it till you make it. It’s actually wrong view. It’s ignorance, darling. It’s not even virtuous. It’s actual ignorance.

You’ve got to get on the bike and make a mistake, and that will lead you to eventually be able to ride a bike. So you cannot do practice without practice. What do you think what what the word practice means? It’s actually wrong view. That perfections one is because we grasp at the self as as self existent.

It’s actual wrong view. It’s it’s plain ignorance, and it’s arrogance, and it’s laziness. We really gotta watch our minds carefully and be more humble. You know? Do you understand?

What time am supposed to finish? Now. It’s finished. We’re done then.