How to Meditate Weekend — 2005-02-13

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

About this talk. In this 151-minute weekend teaching, Ven Sangye Khadro begins with a specific visualization: breathing in beautiful light representing positive qualities—compassion, wisdom, courage—while breathing out negative emotions as smoke. This serves as a gateway to the weekend’s focus: practical meditation instruction paired with an extended teaching on forgiveness rooted in dependent origination and karma. She guides an analytical forgiveness meditation, addressing both self-forgiveness and forgiving those who’ve harmed us, exploring why holding anger damages primarily the holder, not its target. She weaves in stories of transformation—a Vietnam soldier-turned-monk, a woman who forgave her grandfather’s abuse—and teaches on impermanence and the absence of a fixed self. Pitched at practitioners new and returning to meditation.

File metadata (for organising)

File: 04 2005 02 13 MW.mp3

UUID: 840ec5f6-7237-47d3-b72e-baf97a379761

Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald

Collection: How to Meditate Weekend (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)

Date: 2005-02-13

Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide

Duration: 151.2 minutes

Words: ~15,138

Sounds very loud. So good morning. Good morning. Thanks for coming back on this beautiful Sunday morning. So I thought that, we could start by doing some meditation.

And I thought we could start with a slightly different kind of meditation a meditation that also involves the breath, using the breath but a little variation of that. Some of you may have encountered this one before, but if not, it’s not very complicated. So it involves focusing on the breath and with the inhalation of the breath we imagine we’re breathing in like very beautiful blissful light and that represents all good qualities such as love and compassion and courage, wisdom, patience. So all the positive qualities that are beneficial for our own mind and also beneficial for others. And if you are able to accept the idea of Buddhas, the existence of Buddhas enlightened beings, beings with, you know, perfect compassion and wisdom and so on and that they’re out there.

So you can imagine, you know, we’re we’re breathing in their positive energy, their positive qualities. Or you can just think of all the good energy that exists in the universe. It’s out there, all around us, and we’re just breathing that in, and it takes the form of this very beautiful blissful light. So imagine taking that in with with our inhalation of breath and it fills us up and then with the exhalation of breath we think of any negative energy that might be in our mind such as negative thoughts, bad thoughts, or even just disturbing, distracted, agitated, unpeaceful thoughts, and that we’re breathing those out. They go out of us with the exhalation of the breath.

You can imagine it in the form of sort of smoke or fog or pollution, know, just something kind of yucky going out. And and when we breathe it out, you shouldn’t worry about polluting the environment. Or, you know, this negative energy causing problems for anybody else. So just imagine that it disappears. It just becomes nonexistent once it goes out of you.

Don’t worry about where it goes or what happens to it. Just imagine it. So it’s just a sort of psychological trick we’re we’re playing on our mind to, to just imagine we’re letting go of or getting rid of negative thoughts, negative feelings, negative energy and taking in positive energy. Because actually we do already have positive energy inside of us, sometimes we don’t see it, don’t recognise it, we may not have confidence in that energy. Yeah?

So so it’s sort of a trick to imagine we’re taking it in and then sending out our negative energy. So this this this meditation can be done for a little short period of time before we do other meditations as a way of getting our mind in a in a better state for other meditations. But you could also just do it for a whole session if you wish. If you so it could be done on its own or as a preparation for the meditations. So I thought we could do it, you know, for maybe five minutes or so, and then just go on to do the normal breathing meditation as we were doing yesterday.

Okay. So first of all, check the position of your body. Check your back because that’s the most important thing to keep your back straight but let your shoulders relax. Let all the other parts of your body relax. Let all the muscles in your body relax other than the muscles you need to keep your back upright.

Have your chin tilted downwards a little bit. Mouth and jaw relaxed. Ideally, we breathe in and out through our nose when we’re meditating if you can, if your nose isn’t blocked. So your mouth can be closed And have the tongue, tip of your tip of your tongue touching the roof of your mouth behind the upper teeth. Then try to have your eyes open a little bit to allow some light to come in.

Have your eyes looking down on your lap or on the floor in front of you. So that is to help prevent sleepiness. If you but if you find it uncomfortable or distracting trying to keep your eyes in that position, then it’s okay to close them. You can have your eyes closed, but just be aware if you start to feel sleepy, start to nod off even. If that happens, then it’s good to open your eyes a little bit, let some light in to help you stay awake.

Let your mind relax if you notice any thoughts in your mind that are not related to the meditation that we’re doing. So if there’s any thoughts about things that happened in the past, which can mean this morning before you came here or yesterday or any time in the past. So put aside those thoughts. Or if there are any thoughts about what you’re going to do later today or tomorrow or any time in the future, again, put aside those thoughts. Remember that we’re here in this place and here in this moment.

So just let your mind be right here and not in some other time or some other place. Then generate a positive motivation for doing meditation and also for being here today for however much time you’re able to spend here today. So if you are able to accept and feel comfortable with the idea of enlightenment, the possibility of attaining enlightenment to be of benefit to others, and you can feel comfortable with the idea of working for that goal. You can think that that’s why you’re here today. You’re doing meditation, learning about meditation in order to become enlightened, to be helpful to others.

But if you’re not comfortable with that idea, then you might feel comfortable with the idea of meditating in order to work on yourself and develop yourself so that in your encounters and interactions with other people, in your relationships with others, you’ll be less likely to do things and say things that will be hurtful to others and more able to do and say things that will be helpful to others and be able to bring more positive energy to others. So that’s another motivation you might bring into your mind as your reason for being here. But if you you may feel that you’re really not capable of helping others at this point in time, you have a lot of work to do on yourself, your own mind. And you might feel more comfortable with the idea of meditating in order to work on your own mind and bring about a more positive transformation of your own mind, decrease negative thoughts, feelings, energies, and increase positive ones. So then you can think of that as your reason for doing meditation.

So so have one of those medi motivations as your reason for doing meditation and being here today. So now imagine that when you inhale, you’re breathing in very beautiful, blissful light, and this light is all the positive energy and positive qualities that exist in the universe. So that can include things like love, loving kindness, compassion, generosity, patience, wisdom, courage, helpfulness to others, unselfishness, and and so on, and any other positive qualities you can think of that you would like to have as part of yourself, part of your mind. You can imagine this positive energy flowing from enlightened beings, Buddhas, saints, those who have wisdom and compassion and are working to help others. Imagine their positive energy coming into you or just imagine taking it in from the universe.

So imagine it coming into you and flowing into you into every part of your body. Even down to the tiny parts of your body like the cells, atoms, subatomic particles, all the parts of your body get filled with this very blissful, pure, radiant light. And when you exhale, imagine breathing out negative energy such as negative emotions, anger, hatred, resentment, greed, selfishness, depression, anxiety, and so on. Also any negative or disturbing thoughts that invade your mind when you’re trying to meditate, distract your mind, make it hard for you to concentrate. Imagine all that negative energy going out of you when you exhale.

You can visualize it as smoke or pollution or whatever is helpful for you to imagine getting rid of, cleaning yourself out of this negative energy. Again, don’t worry about polluting the environment or disturbing any anyone else with this negative energy. It just disappears once it leaves you. So you can continue to meditate like that. Imagine breathing in the light of positive energy, breathing out the smoke or fog of negative energy.

So if you like doing that, you can continue to do so or you can switch over to the meditation we were doing yesterday where you just watch the breath coming in and going out and count your breaths if you find that helpful. Just being aware, being attentive to what’s happening in your mind. And when you notice thoughts or hearing sounds or other experiences happening in your mind and your mind being distracted by those. So each time your mind wanders away from the breathing, bring it back. Remind yourself that what you’re supposed to be doing is watching the breath and not thinking of other things.

And you can remember that those other thoughts or other experiences are like clouds that come and go in the sky. So our thoughts and memories and other experiences are not solid and they’re not permanent. They arise or occur in our mind and pass out of our mind, so they’re just temporary coming and going. And they’re not solid and have no power of their own to harm us or disturb us. So we can see them for what they are and learn to detach ourselves from them and let them go, then they will go and won’t bother us.

So just be aware of the arrival of thoughts and other experiences in your mind. Do your best to not be bothered by them or distracted by them and let them go and go back to watching the breath. So that’s the most important thing is paying attention to the breath, bringing the mind back to the breath whenever it wanders away. So before we conclude and open our eyes, make a mental dedication of the meditation that we just did. Remember the motivation we had at the beginning.

And if you had the motivation to meditate for the benefit of others, then remember remember that and dedicate the meditation. Dedicate the positive energy created by doing the meditation, that it will be helpful to others as well as to ourselves. And if you were thinking that you were doing the meditation to develop your own mind, to make your own mind more positive and less negative, and dedicate it that you will be able to do that, that this meditation will help you go in that direction, and your progress in transforming your mind will increase. And then you can slowly come out of the meditation, relax, open your eyes. So it’s good if if we can, remember to do that whenever whenever we do a meditation on our own or any other sort of spiritual practice or spiritual activity that we do.

If at the beginning, we can remember why we’re doing it, have a positive reason, a positive motivation for why we’re doing it. And then at the end, at the conclusion, to dedicate what we’ve done in the same way that we motivated at the beginning. Dedicating at the end is the way to ensure that the positive energy we generated during the meditation or during the practice won’t be lost or wasted but will continue to bring us in the direction that we want to to go in and and, help us achieve the goals that we want to achieve such as enlightenment and so on. So yesterday, in the afternoon, there were some questions that came up about anger and anger against someone who has hurt oneself or anger in the case of injustice if if someone or some people are doing something that that that we feel is unfair or unjust. I don’t know if all the people who asked those questions yesterday are still here today.

It looks like they’re not. I was I was thinking more about that last night and this morning, and I I remembered this there’s a meditation on forgiveness in this book, Jack Kornfield, called The Path with Heart, which maybe some of you have read. It’s a really beautiful book. I really recommend it. It’s it’s your book.

I found it in your drawer. So Jack Kornfield is probably one of the earliest or first Americans to go to Asia and start learning meditation. He was a monk in Thailand for five years and did a lot of meditation, had a lot of interesting experiences, and then went back to America. His life became a lay person, got married, had kids, became a psychiatrist or psychologist, but continued teaching meditation. So he’s had a lot of different experiences in his life and a lot of experience teaching meditation to Western people.

So this book talks about some of the problems, pitfalls. It says a guide through the perils and promises of spiritual life. So it’s very good for Western people because, you know, we come from such a different background, different culture, different worldview than people in Asia, for example. And so their way of approaching Buddhism and meditation and so on is quite different than ours. And so there could be some gaps there.

And so there’s some very helpful things in here, so I recommend it. There’s also this really nice meditation on forgiveness, which I thought that that we could do together because I think this is something that’s beneficial for all of us. I think we probably all have people that we find it difficult to like, to forgive. We may hold on to anger, hatred, resentment towards them for things that they’ve done either to ourselves directly or to other people that we care about and and so on. And as I was saying yesterday, if we if we hold on to feelings of anger, hatred, resentment, and non forgiveness, then it’s it’s it’s very painful for ourselves.

Yeah. He actually says that in here. It’s it’s very painful if we hold someone out of our heart, if we close our heart to someone. So that’s actually painful for ourselves. And if we could realize that, then I think that would be very helpful helpful for us to do what we can to overcome that.

One lady told me that she realized this on her own, I think, without having to be told by anybody. But she had this experience of being angry at someone, being in a conflict with someone that previously she was friends with. So this you know, she and this other person were angry at each other and stopped talking, stopped communicating, stopped seeing each other completely. And and and she continued feeling angry at this person. And after some time, realized that the anger that she had towards this person wasn’t really harming the other person at all because they they had no contact, no communication.

So the other person was off somewhere else, and here she was, you know, just having all these angry thoughts and angry feelings towards that person. And then she realized that the anger she had was harming herself. It wasn’t really harming the other person, it was harming herself. It was causing her own mind to be uptight and unhappy and closed and painful. Like, when we’re angry, when we have anger, you know, our our wish is is for the other person to suffer, isn’t it?

We want that person to suffer. They’ve been so bad. They hurt me. They should suffer. So so so that’s what we want for the other person to suffer.

But then we may not realize that we’re actually making ourselves suffer by holding on to these negative feelings. So she realized that and she realized, wait a minute, this isn’t right. So that realization helped her to work on her mind and work on overcoming and letting go of those negative feelings. Yeah? Does that make sense?

So that’s part of what’s involved in forgiveness. But forgiveness doesn’t mean that we condone the other person. It doesn’t mean that we condone the wrong actions or wrong behavior of the other person. It’s still completely okay to have this idea, this attitude that what that person did was wrong, was harmful, was not correct. Yeah?

So we can judge the action that the person did as wrong. But forgiveness is about, you know, letting go of the anger, the hatred, the negative feelings, the resentment towards the person. Yeah? So we can we can do that while still regarding the action that the person did as wrong. And I think it’s also very important for us to be honest and acknowledge what’s in the mind because we may sometimes, you know, we might think that we have forgiven someone and let go of our negative feelings, but we may still be hanging on to them in our heart.

You know, we may actually make expressions with our words or through writing. We may say, you know, I forgive this person. I’m I, you know, I accept this person as they are. So so we may sort of on the surface say that we’re no longer angry or that we have forgiven. But if we are very honest with ourselves and we look very carefully, you know, into our mind, into our heart, we may find that, you know, we haven’t really done so.

We are still holding on to negative feelings. And and so it’s important to be realistic, to to to to know what’s really going on in our mind and in our heart and not be in denial. Yeah? Because being in denial doesn’t work. It doesn’t help.

Right? And actually difficult to detach, to disassociate a person from her heart or her or his heart. Difficult. Yes. Yes.

I think that probably takes some time to think about it, to contemplate it, to meditate on it. In Buddhism, we have this this expression inter interdependence or dependent origination. I don’t know if you’ve come across that before. It sounds complicated. It’s not really though.

It’s it’s actually something quite simple. What it means is that that everything depends on other things. Nothing exists totally in isolation, totally separate, totally by itself, independent of all other things. So whatever there is, whatever exists, always depends on other things like this flower, for example, these flowers. Yeah?

So they weren’t always in existence, but they came into existence in dependence on other things. For example, there was a seed that gave rise to the plant with, you know, roots and stem and leaves. And so out of that, the flower grew. And other other things were needed such as water. If there was no water, then they wouldn’t have been able to grow.

If there was no soil, if you just put the seed on the carpet, it’s not gonna grow into a flower. It needs soil. It needs the right kind of soil with the right nutrients. Also, light sunshine, the right temperature if it’s, you know, fifty below zero or something, it’s not gonna grow. So all those various causes and conditions need to come together in order for the flower to grow.

If any of those causes and conditions is missing, then the flower will not grow. Okay? So that’s a pretty simple example. I think we can understand that. But everything else also comes into in dependence on causes and conditions.

And the same is true for, let’s say, an action, an action that somebody does. So let’s say an action like committing a murder. Okay? You have a person who commits murder, who kills another human being. Right?

So that’s a pretty serious, pretty heavy negative action. But we can also look at that in terms of the causes and conditions that gave rise to it, that that brought that into existence. Okay? So so we have the the murderer, the person who committed a murder, and that person is a combination of so many things. Right?

All the physical things, the cells and atoms, you know, of their body, and that came into existence from their parents, their mother and father. Right? So we can look at how that person came into existence in dependence on their mother and their father and all the food they ever ate and all the air they breathed, and all the medicine they took when they were sick, and so on. So their body came into existence in dependence on those factors. Then the person’s mind, their consciousness, is something according to Buddhism, it didn’t come from their parent’s mind, but it came from a previous life.

So that person’s mind already existed even before they were born and was in another life, another person, another being, and before that another one, and before that another one. So a long, long, long history of that mind or that consciousness. And so that mind or that consciousness lived many, many lives and probably did many things, probably killed before. I think we’ve all killed before. We’ve all committed murder before in our other lifetimes.

We’ve all been soldiers and fought in wars. We’ve all been murdered ourselves. So they say in Buddhism, we have done everything. We have experienced everything already. And so lots and lots of experiences from past lives, lots and lots of imprints of different kinds of actions, different kinds of anger, hatred, love, compassion, being hurtful, being helpful.

So a whole variety of different experiences that left imprints on that person’s mind or that person’s consciousness. So according to Buddhism, when a person is born, when a baby is born, it’s not that that mind is totally blank, totally empty, like a blank slate, which is what some people in the West believe. It’s actually full, full of stuff, full of, you know, past experiences and emotions and ideas and yeah. Just lots and seeds, lots and lots of stuff in that mind. And so you have this person, they’re born, they grow up, they have experiences, different kinds of experiences in this life.

Maybe they watch violent movies on TV, played, you know, violent computer games, read books about murder and so on. So in this lifetime, they probably had imprints, more imprints on their mind about violent kinds of behavior. And then at some point in time, that person finds themselves in a situation. There’s another person over there, and that person may do something they don’t like or say something they don’t like. Maybe the person was drunk, which causes the mind to be, you know, out of balance and confused and so on, irrational.

So I’m just saying, you know, there’s lots of different factors, of different causes and conditions that come together for this moment where the person picks up a knife or picks up a gun or just with his fist, you know, does something to kill that other person, that other human being. Yeah? And so if we if we think about it in that way, it it gives us a different perspective rather than the perspective of only seeing a person committing a murder, you know, and then thinking, oh, this person is a murderer, this person is bad, this person like, they’ve been that way always, and they always will be there. Some some some sort of permanent person who is a murderer, who has done that negative action. Do you see what I’m saying?

That’s what we normally think. We you know, it’s almost like there’s this permanent real person who did that action, and that is the truth, the reality for all of time. Yeah. They’ll always be that way. They will never be different.

You know what I’m saying? So that’s how we normally think, and that’s why it’s so hard for us to sort of let go and feel forgiveness. I I attended a very, very beautiful talk given by a monk, an American Buddhist monk who is in the Zen tradition. And he spoke about how when he was eighteen years old, he volunteered to go and fight in Vietnam. That was during the time of the Vietnam War.

And so when he was just eighteen years old, he found himself in Vietnam. And he said as soon as he arrived there, he knew it was wrong. He knew that this wasn’t the right thing to be doing, but it was too late. He couldn’t go back. So he had to stay and serve as a soldier.

And he said during his time, he was he he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. So you can imagine, the mind of such a person. And he didn’t sort of tell the whole story, didn’t tell all the details, but I imagined that when the war ended, as was the case with many soldiers, many vets who survived, there was a lot of trauma, a lot of, you know, pain, a lot of suffering in the mind because of what they did and because of what they saw, all those experiences, those horrific experiences they had. So I think he was in a lot of pain. But he encountered Buddhism meditation, think, originally through Thich Nhat Hanh, who did a lot of work with Vietnam vets and helped a lot of them heal their mental wounds.

And so he started practicing meditation and eventually became a monk. And the way he spoke about his experiences, could see that there was there’s no guilt, no kind of, you know, bad feelings about what he had done. Not that, you know, I I don’t think he he was concerned about the people killed and so on, but but he spoke about how he could see that whole situation, that whole experience as a result of so many different causes and conditions. His father was a soldier. His grandfather was a soldier.

So it was already in his family, you know, to go in that direction. His country was at war. There was probably a lot of, you know, publicity about this war and how wonderful it was and how young men should, you know, join up and go off and fight and so on. So he was in that situation with all those causes and conditions. He probably had karma from past lives.

Was probably a soldier before. And so, know, karma repeats itself. We tend to react or reenact things that we’ve done before. So all those different factors, those different causes and conditions came together. So he found himself in that situation.

And it seems quite clear he he didn’t really enjoy, you know, being a soldier and killing when it was actually happening. But, you know, it happened. So it seemed to me, my understanding was that by looking at all the different factors, the causes, the conditions, the circumstances that came together for that situation to happen, for him to be in the position of being a soldier and killing these people, he was able to see it in a different perspective, to see it in a way that he could forgive himself. He could let go of the pain, the guilt, the, you know, the suffering of that. Yeah?

So So in some things like that, what is a part of responsibility? Yeah. Well, I think it’s a tricky thing. I think that we do need to accept responsibility. But I think that, as I was saying in the talk the other night, we have this tendency, and it’s not just we Westerners, it’s a universal thing.

It’s it’s something instinctive and intuitive in us. This tendency to believe in a kind of real person, a real self, real permanent I. Yeah. We believe in a self, an I, a me that is somehow permanent, fixed, always there, always the same, not changing. Yeah.

This is something Buddha said, all beings have this. It’s it’s our our kind of intuitive feeling about our self. We feel like we have a permanent self. And in reality, there is no such thing. In reality, what we are, as we were meditating yesterday, we’re a combination of a body and a mind, and our body in turn is a combination of many, many parts: skin and blood and bones, cells, atoms, tiny particles moving around, changing.

Right? So that’s what our body is. It’s just this like a process of constantly changing parts of matter. And then the other part of us is our mind, our consciousness, and that also is made up of parts. It’s not just one solid fixed thing, but it’s a flow, a stream of different experiences coming, going, thoughts, memories, emotions, perceptions, you know, all these different experiences coming and going, coming and going.

So that’s also like a process constantly changing, not just one solid fixed thing. So that is what we are, that is what a human being is. But we have this delusion or illusion where we think that there’s something more than that. There’s some kind of real I, real me, real person in there somewhere. We don’t really know where or what it is, but we just feel it.

It seems like it’s there, and we just go through life believing in it, believing there’s a real permanent me or self or I, whereas in fact there isn’t. It’s just a kind of hallucination, a kind of illusion, because the reality of ourselves is that we are just this process of physical and mental parts that are constantly changing. So with this idea, this mistaken idea of a permanent real self or I, then when we do some negative action, like committing a murder, for example, or telling a lie, or getting angry at our mother, or whatever it is, we feel, oh, this permanent real I has done this bad deed. And that means, you know, I’m a permanently bad person. You know what I mean?

Yeah? It’s like we we we hang on to that negative deed that we did as if it’s sort of left a permanent stamp on us and we’ll always be there. We will always be that bad person who did that bad thing, which is not true. I mean, we did do a bad thing. There was a moment in time when this, you know, mass of physical and mental parts said some bad words or picked up a knife and stabbed somebody.

I mean, that definitely happened. But the next moment, everything changed. The next moment after that, again, everything changed. You know, there’s just this continuous change of things. There is no permanent fixed self or I that, you know, doesn’t change, that just continues on and on and on without changing.

Now, so we have to bring in according to Buddhism, bring in the idea of karma. So if I did a negative action like murdering somebody, okay, the next moment that action is already over, you know, I’m a different person. The person who has been murdered is also a different person, has already gone off to another life. So everything has changed in the next moment. But every action that we do leaves an imprint on our mind, our consciousness.

Right? So there’s an imprint or a seed for everything we’ve ever done left on our mind, our consciousness. And And that action, because it was a negative action, it caused tremendous suffering to another person and other people as well. And also to myself, every time we do something negative we also harm ourselves. So that was a negative action.

And so the imprint left after that action, by that action, is going to be the cause for suffering and problems that I will have to experience in the future. Yeah. And and so it’s not that, you know, there’s there’s zero responsibility. Yeah. I did do something that caused suffering to others, and I did do something that caused suffering to myself.

So so there’s definitely some bad consequences that will result from that action. I may also go to prison and be beaten up in prison and have all these other horrible experiences in prison and so on. So there’s definitely some consequences, negative consequences, bad consequences from that action. Also, consequence of karma, there’s there’s a number of different results or consequences that come from the actions that we do. So one of those is that we will experience suffering ourselves.

I might be murdered myself one day or I’ll have health problems or I’ll be born in a place where there’s a lot of violence, lot of fighting, very unpeaceful. So there’s various kinds of suffering problems experience. But another consequence of doing a negative action is the tendency to do it again. Yeah? Like the thought to do it again can arise.

Having done it once, then I may again find myself in a situation where the thought comes up to murder somebody. So you tend to repeat the action again and again and again, which is said to be the worst result, the worst effect because then you get into this cycle. You perpetuate the same karma. You know, keep going in a cycle over and over and over again, very hard to break free of. But anyway, so so so definitely that was a negative thing to do, and it’s going to bring about negative consequences.

Like, there will be bad consequences, and also long term, there will be bad consequences. So so for the Buddhist point of view, we need to do something about that. We don’t just kind of walk away and think, oh, well, everything is impermanent, so that’s already over and done. I’m not the same person now that I was before. I mean, that may be true, but still there are these consequences that will come from that action.

So as a Buddhist, what one would do would be to do a purification, to clear up that negative karma and not have to experience the consequences. Also do what we can to make amends to the people that we cause the suffering to. So the person we murdered, could do prayers for. We could, you know, do some good deeds and dedicate the merit to that person, have a good rebirth, apologize to the family and friends of that person who suffered so much because of, you know, that person person being killed and and and so on. So so definitely things that we need to do to clear up that negative action that we’ve done.

Yeah? So I just wanted to ask, what about how does Buddhism see, like, accidents? Because, you know, some people say there are no accidents. Like, you know, somebody who runs over somebody on the road Mhmm. By accident.

Accident. You know? You know? Yeah. Yeah.

And that that does happen. We sometimes, like, do an act of killing not with the intention to kill, but accidentally. So when it comes to karma, there are different factors involved in each action and one of those is motivation like I was talking about yesterday. Motivation, what motivates you to do the action. So in some cases of killing, and the law recognizes this as well, it was intentional.

You know, you really did have the intention to murder that person. That was very clear, very definite in your mind. You wanted to murder that person. But there are other cases where there was no such intention. Yeah, you’re driving down the road and somebody suddenly suddenly runs in front of your car and you don’t have time to stop.

There was zero intention to kill anybody. So if so even though the act of killing took place, but it was without intention, it was unintentional. So there would be still some karma created as a result of that, but not it wouldn’t be like the full karma of killing. So with all the people that were sort of killed in tsunami and all the sort of suffering in Ethiopia and all those federal countries, is that your karma? Well, generally, the the the teachings on karma say that the experiences that we have are the result of our karma.

Things oh, I guess that’s partly what you were asking. Were you asking, like, for the person who gets killed, was that just an accident, or did they have the karma to be get to get killed? It Well, I I think I was just saying because, you know, sometimes people say therefore, there are no such there are no accidents. So Uh-huh. That whole idea of yeah.

In a way, it is karmic, suppose. Because I was talking more from the point of view of the person who did the killing, but from the point of view of the person who who was killed, who got hit by the car or swept away in a tsunami. From the Buddhist point of view, yeah, that wouldn’t just be an accident. That wouldn’t just be bad luck or chance, but it would be karma that they created in the past. But karma isn’t something just existing in isolation from everything else.

It depends on like, we all have a karma to die. We all have a karma to be murdered. Right? But you still need other conditions conditions for that karma to ripen and bring its result, come to fruition. So if other conditions don’t present themselves, other conditions don’t come together, just like a seed, for example, the seed has the potential to grow into a plant, into a flower.

But if it doesn’t meet with the right conditions, the water and the soil and the right temperature and so on, if you just stick it in the freezer and leave it in the freezer for years and years and years, it’s not going to grow. So it’s the same with our karmic seeds. We have these karmic seeds in our mind to have all kinds of experiences, but we still need to encounter the right kind of external conditions for those seeds to manifest and bring their result, bring their experiences. karma is very complicated. Well, I think that there can be different levels or degrees of anger, and they may not all involve actually wishing to harm.

For example, I think just feeling irritated, feeling irritated, feeling annoyed, feeling impatient. I think those are forms of anger, but they’re sort of low level, mild forms of anger. But if we don’t do anything about them, if they continue to build up, yeah, then it could get to the point where, you know, irritation could turn into murderous rage. So I think at a low level, there may not be the actual wish to give harm, but if that feeling grows, gets bigger and stronger, it could become that. Isn’t it?

I mean, we’ve all seen that. Right? Like a mosquito can be buzzing around our ear and at first, you know, we just feel a little bit irritated. But if it keeps going, keeps happening, then it actually lands on our arm and starts to bite us, then the thought, wanting to smash it, will come up. And I have this thing that happens in America.

I don’t know if it still happens, but in the past, road rage, where people would actually kill other drivers on the freeway just for, you know, cutting in front of them in traffic. So that probably starts off as just irritation, being stuck in your car for a long period of time and thinking about all the other things you’d rather be doing than being there and so on. Just, you know, those kinds of thoughts and those kind of feelings growing and growing and growing and gets to the point where it becomes violence, harmfulness. Well, according to Buddhism, we we have a mental factor called ignorance, and it’s because of ignorance well, there’s there’s a lot of different mental factors, but one is ignorance. And ignorance ignorance causes us to not see things in a realistic way.

They say it’s like being in the dark. You know, like if it was nighttime and all the lights were off in this room, then we wouldn’t be able to see the things in this room. Yeah? So they say ignorance is like being in the dark, being in darkness, not being able to see clearly what is there, what is reality. So so we have that in our mind, a kind of darkness, a kind of obscuration about what is real, what is reality.

And then on top of that we have another factor, another mental factor which causes us to actually believe that we have a real self, a real permanent identity or self or I. Which is also a kind of ignorance, but it’s a more specific kind of ignorance. It’s not just a general being in the dark, but it’s specifically confusion about our own existence. Yeah. So we, you know, we kind of are aware of our self as as a being, as a person and we don’t see the reality of our self, we don’t see how we are, just this process constantly changing.

And and so we get this idea, oh, there’s some kind of real me, a real I, a real person there. And then we just buy into that, we believe in that. Yeah? So it’s factors in our mind, mental factors. Confused, deluded, mistaken mental factors in our mind that cause us to believe in a real permanent self.

And also there’s habit, because we’ve been doing this in all our lives. You know, like every lifetime, life after life, we continue to believe in the existence of some kind of real self or real I. Even though each lifetime, you know, we have a different set of factors. We have a different body. We have different, you know, sort of well, our mind is the same in one sense.

It’s the same continuum, but it develops differently. Like, when, you know, we find ourselves in a new life, in a new body, new set of circumstances, new mom and dad, you know, when we come out of the womb, we pop out of the womb, there’s, you know, two new faces there that start talking to us and saying, oh, it’s Peter. So so then we develop this, you know, identity. I am Peter or I am Mary or whatever our name happens to be. And a language.

Okay? So we may be born in Africa and we learn Swahili or we may be born in Puerto Rico and we speak Spanish or we’re born in China and we speak Chinese, so we have a different language. And with the language comes a whole new set of ideas and concepts as well. And then the culture and our education and our experiences in life, So kind of our sense of self or I gets formed or developed around all of these conditions in our life, in our new life. The body that we have, the environment we live in, the people around us, especially mom and dad.

They are the most, you know, important influences on our ideas and our sense of self and so on. Language language, religion, culture, habits, and so on. So all of these kind of are added on to our sense of self, so our mind sort of develops a new sense of self in each life. But still, we believe there is a real permanent self, even though it’s a new one each lifetime, but we still believe it’s a real life. So it’s something very, very deep, very intuitive, very instinctive.

And I guess most people go through life, you know, with never questioning, never even asking the question, do I really exist the way I think I do? Do things really exist the way I they they appear to? Yeah? Us a sense of security. Well, that too.

I think part of our sense of self is the wish for stability, the wish for security. We want things to stay the same. We want things to not change because change is sort of uncomfortable and threatening. And so there’s this, you know, wish to make things real and permanent even though they’re not. So we try, we go through life trying to do that, know, trying to have a permanent house, a permanent job, permanent partner, permanent family.

We try to make everything permanent in our life, but it doesn’t work because nothing is permanent. So things are constantly falling apart. Bits and pieces are always falling away from our this sort of solid reality we’re trying to build up. And then we try to get another thing to fill in for that one. And so we go through life trying to patch things up and keep things permanent.

And then finally, it comes to the end of our life, and everything is really falling apart. Right? In a big way. So so if, you know, if if we if we never questioned things during our life, if we just went through life, you know, these habitual tendencies of trying to make things real and solid and permanent around us, then we have a lot of trouble. People have a lot of trouble when it comes to the end and everything is really falling apart.

But if someone has, you know, developed other mental habits, has come to accept impermanence, has learned to let go of things, has has learned not to be so tightly grasping onto things and onto a sense of self and identity and so on, then, you know, the end of life can be quite okay and even quite pleasant. Well, my understanding is we don’t really have a choice. It’s not really a choice or decision that we have, but it’s rather our karma. Whatever they say the time of the time of death is very important. You know, the time when our mind is because death, according to Buddhism, is the point where our mind and body separate.

Like, while we’re alive, our mind and our body are, like, married. Yeah. We’re sort of in a in a union, interconnected. And and then there comes a point when they separate. Our mind separates from our body.

They have divorce. And so, I mean, that that just doesn’t happen all at once, but there’s a kind of process leading up to that. So during that process where our mind is making that separation from the body, so during that time, what’s going on in the mind has a big effect on what the next life will be. So they say that the time of death is very, very, very important, very crucial, and we should really try our best to keep our mind positive at that time, not let it get caught up in anger, in attachment, in fear, in worry, or, you know, any kind of disturbing thoughts, feelings, attitudes. Try to keep it clear, peaceful, positive.

Try to have positive thoughts and feelings such as love and compassion and non attachment, letting go, thinking of, you know, if you’re a religious person and you have faith in God or faith in Buddha or whoever you have faith in, then be have thoughts of, you know, those that you have faith in and put your confidence in them and, you know, pray to them for help and guidance and feel confident that they are helping and guiding you. So those are thoughts or states of mind that we could have at the time of death that would help our mind to be in a positive state and make that transition from this life into the next life in a positive way, and then that way have a fortunate next life, be born in fortunate circumstances. But on the other hand, if there are lots of disturbing or even negative thoughts in the mind, like feeling angry or feeling really unhappy about what’s happening to us or feeling a great sense of not wanting to leave, not wanting to leave behind friends and family and house and body and all these things. So there’s a lot of disturbing, unpleasant, unpeaceful thoughts and feelings in the mind at the time of death.

That’s that’s bad news because that that will cause because we have all these karma, karmic seeds in our mind, and it’s mainly our karma that determines our next life, which kind of karma will come up at the time of death and be the cause for the next life. So the general state of mind we have at that time is sort of like water, water on the seeds. So if our state of mind is is a positive one, then it will water positive seeds, good good karma, and that way we’ll be to be born in a good situation. But if on the other hand our state of mind is disturbed and negative, then that will be like water for bad karmic seeds to come up and cause us to have an unfortunate rebirth. I mean, it’s similar to what happens in our lifetime as well.

We we can see a similar process. We have all these different karmic seeds in our mind to feel happy, to feel unhappy, to feel angry, to feel love. And which karmic seed will ripen at any given time depends partly on external conditions, external situations, but also on our state of mind, our general state of mind. Like I was saying the other night, if if our mind is generally unhappy, if we have a lot of unhappy thoughts, if we see a lot of things that we don’t like, that we’re dissatisfied with, that we complain about. Yeah?

So if in general there’s a lot of unhappiness in our mind, then that state of mind is more likely to give rise to anger. We’re much more likely to get angry, to react with anger when things happen. Whereas, when when we’re able to have a more happy state of mind, we’re generally happy and content with things, with people, with the world, with ourselves, seeing things that we’re happy about rather than unhappy about. So when our general state of mind is like that, then it’s much more likely that we’ll react to things or respond to things positively rather than negatively. Do do you know what I’m saying?

Mhmm. So we can see that just in our life, in our day. Yeah? Like Lama Yeshe used to say, you know, we don’t have to think about other lifetimes in order to see how karma works. We can see it in this very life time.

If we wake up in the morning, we’re feeling in a bad mood, grouchy, unhappy, unsatisfied, everything looks kind of bad, so we’re in this really bad mood, bad state of mind. Then what kind of experiences are we going to have that day? Yeah? How are we going to see people? How are we going to interact with people?

What kind of things are probably going to happen to us? We’ll probably have lots of bad experiences, right? Lots of problems, of unpleasant things will happen to us. Whereas there are other days we wake up and we feel in a really good state of mind, really happy, everything looks good, the world looks good, we feel happy about ourselves and the people around us, and we’re just in a good state of mind. So with that state of mind then going through the day, what kind of experiences will we have?

So the general state of mind that we have, whether it’s a positive one or a negative one, a happy one or a miserable or angry one, determines the experiences we have. So that happens while we’re alive during our life, but it also happens when we’re making that transition from this life to the next one. Can I just ask a follow on to that last question? A lot of people die suddenly. They don’t have the opportunity to compose their mind and their thoughts and their attachment.

Is it just your calm event that propels you into the next? Yeah. I think even in the case of a sudden death because I’ve read some accounts of people who have near death experiences and they’re able to come back and talk about what happened to them. So it seems like even in a very, very, very short period of time, so a few seconds or a few minutes, a lot can happen in the mind. Yeah?

You’ve probably heard this idea how people see their whole life played out within just a couple of seconds. Yeah? Apparently, can happen. So so I think even if death happens very, very suddenly and unexpectedly, it’s still possible for a person, for example, a person who’s been a religious practitioner, practitioner, a meditator, a good person, someone who’s really done a lot of good with their life, to be able to get into a good state of mind just before the mind separates from the body. For example, I don’t know if this really happened in real life, but in the movie about Gandhi, he he you know, somebody just walked up to him and shot him, and he died with the name of God on his lips.

So, you know, again, the whole idea of meditation being making ourselves familiar. So if we make our mind familiar with positive thoughts, positive feelings, positive states, positive experiences, then those are the ones that are gonna be most likely to arise even when we don’t have a whole lot of time to prepare. It’ll just be a kind of automatic thing. And I had a little bit of experience like myself once. Was in a car with some family members and we were driving on a road that was covered with snow and ice and I don’t think we had chains on the car and driving fairly quickly and suddenly the car just started to spin.

And it was pretty scary. I think if another car had been coming, we would have had a pretty bad crash. And and I just found myself reciting Tārā mantra, the mantra of Tārā, who’s one of the Buddhist figures, Buddha figures. And there was no awareness of any thought that said, uh-oh, I should recite Tārā mantra. It just automatically I found myself saying it before I even knew it.

So I found that quite encouraging, you know, that I’d made myself familiar enough with prayer and, you know, taking refuge in Buddhas that that that was able to come up instead of just be you know, panic and fear and screaming and, ah, or saying some nasty word. Actually, somebody told me, this nun I met recently, she said she was in a car accident at one point, and she was driving the car. So when the accident happened, her she kinda went up and hit hit the windshield and went unconscious and woke up in the hospital. So she doesn’t really remember much about the accident, but her son who was in the car said that the last thing she said was, oh, F, the F word. And she said that’s what she said.

She wasn’t even a Buddhist at that point in time, but she said, oh, I’m so glad I didn’t die. What kind of rebirth would I have had? So whatever we are most familiar with, most habituated to, is what’s going to happen. That’s why in Buddhism it’s said to be really, really important that we think about death, that we meditate on death, that we remind ourselves that we’re gonna die one day and realize that it could happen any day so that we really are keep ourselves on the ball, keep ourselves in a good state of mind as much as possible and not as much as possible, let our mind get caught up in in the negative kinds of thoughts because you just never know. Yeah?

You never know. Death could happen at that time when you’re completely caught up in anger or or one of the other negative states. So and that would just be so unfortunate to die like that. So so if we if we realize that, then I mean, it takes time. We think we contemplate these ideas, slowly, you know, our mind comes to realize how important it is to try to stay positive as much as we can and try not to be negative as much as we can.

And if all else fails, I mean, if we can’t keep our mind positive, if we have an object of refuge, they say if we can think of Buddha, pray to Buddha or or our spiritual teacher or God or one of the saints or some holy, powerful, loving, compassionate, wise being. If we can think of someone like that at the time of death, then that will enable us to avoid an unfortunate rebirth and have a good rebirth instead. So even if it’s hard for us to have a positive state of mind, we can at least think of someone more powerful than ourselves and call on them to help us, then definitely that will help us. So how like, what am I trying to say? That I read once where animals can be quite fearful at the time of death.

How how can one help animals? I’m thinking more of my own animals. Mhmm. But at that time, that, I guess, they can’t where they’re gonna be reborn an animal. But, you know, I see my dog is wonderful.

Mhmm. Dog that could be the most wonderful human being and be quite you know? Mhmm. And so I guess there’s there’s some connection that he probably wants to do that at his next time. But and I wanna be there with him when that time comes of him going on.

But in the meantime, what you know, at that time, what can be done to to maybe help them Well have a good reading. In Buddhism Well, they’ll say it to them sometimes. But Yeah. Saying prayers, saying mantras, even playing, you know, tape tapes of, you know, prayers, mantras, or teachings like Dalai Lama giving and teaching. So even if the animal isn’t able to understand, you know, what’s being said, it still leaves a good imprint, a good impression on on the mind.

And so it can help them it help because animals do have good karma. And if at the time of death there can be some sort of positive influence on them, then that karma can ripen and they can be born as a human being or as, you know, some more fortunate being. So so so if you are there at the time of death and you can I mean, of course, do what you can to make the animal comfortable and not in pain, but then also either recite or play a tape of some prayers and mantras? And my teacher does that all the time. Whenever he sees animals, he goes up and says mantras in their ears.

Was even a story. Once he was there was a place where there were some sheep and goats and horses or something in a field, and he set up a a loud speaking system, speakers. He was sitting like this so that all the animals could hear. Sorry? It mustn’t speak as if the slaughterhouse or something.

Aw. Aw. Yeah. Kinda just it’s So I I just think actually, I wanted to lead a meditation. We sort of got caught up in a question and answer session.

But how about if we take a break and maybe about twenty minutes break, and then we’ll come back and do some more meditation and have some more question and answer just so that it doesn’t become only talking today? So I thought to do a meditation on this subject of forgiveness. And so this will be, again, an analytical meditation and I’ll be talking you through it. And even if we’re not ready to really forgive, to let go of anger and hurt, but even even to be able to feel the wish to forgive, you know, that that that already is something quite good. Because sometimes people can be so angry, so hurt, and so angry at someone that has harmed them that they feel, I never want to forgive this person.

So yeah. So if you feel that way, you know, if you really feel you don’t want to forgive, then, of course, it’s impossible to to do anything about it. So even if we can recognize that holding on to anger and other kind of negative feelings is something undesirable, something we would like to get beyond. And even if we feel that it would be good to learn forgiveness, to develop forgiveness sometime in the future, that’s already quite positive, quite good. So so during meditation, I’ll I’ll be asking you to bring to mind someone that you do feel angry at, but I suggest that you don’t think of someone towards whom your anger is really, really strong or someone who has hurt you really, really badly because that may be too hard to work on right from the beginning.

Like usually they say when we’re trying to work on changing our feelings, it’s better to start with start with smaller kinds of problems or hurts rather than with the really big ones. So if we can get used to, say, forgiving people who have just offended us to a little bit of, little degree, if we can work on that gradually over time, building up to bigger and bigger ones, and eventually we can get to the point where we would be able to forgive people who have done really horrible things. But if we try to start that with that at the beginning, it it may be just too hard, too much. One one time I was leading a meditation. It wasn’t quite about forgiveness, but it was something about working on our feelings, negative feelings.

So I asked the people to bring to mind someone they were angry at and then, you know, talk them through a meditation about that. And after the meditation, this woman came up to me and her eyes were just you had just tears pouring out of her eyes. And she said that she thought of her husband, and she had recently found out that her husband had been having an affair with a woman, a young younger woman, and it had been going on for four years, and there was even a child. And she only found out about it recently, so she was really, really deeply hurt and angry and, you know, quite understandably so at her husband. So she thought of him, but because the emotions were just too strong that she just wasn’t able to really do the meditation.

She just got totally caught up in her anger and her hurt and this whole scene and so on. So that’s why I say it’s fair enough to, you know, think of some someone like that towards whom our feelings are just too strong and overpowering, overwhelming, and so on because then it would be hard to deal with kind of step back, get a little bit of distance from the feelings, the situation, be able to look at it more objectively. So it’s better to start with something that’s a bit milder. Do do you know what I’m saying? Yeah.

Does that make sense? A little little little hurt rather than the huge one. So let’s start with some breathing meditation so our mind can get more calm and clear and focused. And before we do that, let’s start with motivation. So once you have settled down and your body is in a comfortable position but with your back straight, Then think about why you’re doing the meditation and generate as positive a motivation as you can for doing it.

And then once you’ve set your motivation to do either the breathing meditation where just watch the breath coming in and going out, counting the breaths, bringing the mind back to the breath whenever it wanders away. Or if you want if you want, you can do the the breathing meditation where you visualize the white light coming in and the smoke going out. So whichever of those two you prefer, do that and just work on getting your mind settled, calm in the present, the here and now. So now bring to mind some negative thing that you did in the past. So you might be able to think of lots of things, but just choose one.

One thing that you did in the past could be recent, could be a long time ago, but that you recognize as being a bad thing, a wrong thing. And then analyze that action. Think about the various causes and conditions, circumstances that happened or that came together for that action to come about. Think about the things that preceded that, different events, experiences, situations. It all came together for that that action to occur.

And think about factors within your own mind that led to that action. So in our mind, we have certain ways of thinking, attitudes, conceptions, which are mistaken and even negative, things like anger, hatred, greed, selfishness, ignorance, and so on. Also, if you can accept the idea of karma, seeds, imprints, and a mind left over from our past actions. Let’s see if you can see that there are factors within your own mind, perhaps invisible on the scene by yourself, that also played a part in you doing this action. So it’s positive to feel regret for wrong things that we’ve done as long as our regret is an intelligent recognition and acknowledgment that we did something wrong and not kind of beating ourselves up and hanging on to sense of a permanent I who is a bad person, who did that bad thing, and continuing to hold on to that year after year even for our whole life.

So that’s guilt. Guilt is not helpful but regret is recognition that we did something wrong that led to harmful consequences both for ourselves and others. But it’s not correct to think of some permanent I who is a permanently bad person because of that bad action that we did. So we can start to change that idea by recalling good things that we’ve done, recalling times when we behaved nicely and did good things, and also bringing to mind good qualities that we have, like kindness and generosity and intelligence, helpfulness, and so on. So just spend some time thinking about some good things that you’ve done and good qualities that you have to realize that you’re not a permanently bad person.

So see if you can feel forgiveness for yourself. You might even say to yourself in your mind, I forgive myself for that negative action, recognizing that I acted unwisely out of delusion, out of mistaken thoughts and ideas and attitudes. Let’s see if you can forgive yourself for that. And now ask yourself how you would like other people to view you, if you would like other people to see you as a bad person, identifying you with that negative action that you did and continuing to see you as this bad person who did that bad thing? Or would you like people to forgive you and see the good side of you and let go of anger and resentment towards you.

So now think of another person, someone towards whom you have negative feelings. So it could be someone who has done something hurtful to you or hurtful to others that you care about, or could be someone who just behaves in a way that you don’t approve of. Could also think of someone who’s more like a public figure, country leader like a president or prime minister or terrorist leader who has done things that you feel are really wrong, and you’re holding on to anger and resentment towards that person. So again, it’s better not to think of someone who’s hurt you very badly and towards whom your feelings would be very, very strong so that if you think of them, you would be overwhelmed, overpowered by them, and unable to really think clearly and objectively. It’s better to think of someone towards whom your negative feelings are are lower level, not overwhelmingly strong.

So when you bring to mind one person like that, And if you can have a mental picture of that person, visualize that person person to make it more powerful. Think about what that person has done that you’re angry about or hurt by. And then analyze those actions in terms of the causes, conditions, circumstances that led up to those actions that the person did. Also include attitudes in the person’s mind, delusions such as ignorance or wrong ways of thinking, wrong ideology, greed, selfishness, fear, anger, hatred, and so on. So now contemplate how this person isn’t completely, totally, and permanently bad because this person also sometimes does good things.

There are times, moments when this person does something that’s actually very good and very positive. And also there are positive qualities in this person’s mind and character. So contemplate that and see if you can see that the person isn’t totally bad and permanently for all of time bad. Now see if you can feel forgiveness for this person. And forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning, denying, overlooking the negative things the person has done or negative traits, qualities that the person has.

But it’s just recognizing that the person isn’t totally bad but has some good, does some good things. And also forgiveness is letting go of the very painful feelings of anger or hatred, resentment which cause your mind to be your heart to be tight, heavy, closed. And they’re so painful for you. It may not be painful for the other person but it’s very painful for you to hold on to these feelings And it’s also restricting, constricting your growth, your spiritual development, your happiness, your joy, fulfilling your potential. See if you can let go of or even start to let go of or even wish.

Feel the wish that you could one day let go of those painful negative feelings and feel greater acceptance of and forgiveness for this person. Okay. So before opening your eyes, mentally dedicate the meditation. Even if you feel you you didn’t do very well, you may have found it hard to concentrate. You may have found it hard to feel the feeling of forgiveness.

So don’t judge yourself. Don’t judge the quality of your meditation. Feel good about the fact that you did the meditation. You put the effort into doing the meditation and that this is something very positive. Even just trying to meditate is so good, so positive.

So feel good about that. Rejoice in what you’ve done. Then mentally dedicate this meditation that it will help not only ourselves but others, all other beings to be free of the painful feelings of anger and hatred and resentment and wish to take revenge on others. And so may it help all of us to find forgiveness in our heart and acceptance, compassion, patience, love, and all these very beautiful positive healing qualities. And may it help us get closer and closer to enlightenment, the fulfillment of our highest potential.

So then you can slowly come out of the meditation, relax, and sit comfortably. It can also be helpful to read about or hear about stories of people who have been able to forgive even if they suffered very much. Example, I heard of a a woman in America who was able to forgive the man that murdered her child. And I heard of another woman. I think she wrote a book about her experiences, but I didn’t read the book.

She was sexually abused by her grandfather when she was a little girl, and she was able to forgive him and even take care of him when he was old and sick and very much in need of care. So she was able to let go of any negative feelings for him and even, you know, take care of him very lovingly. And so stories like that, you know, just just to to know that it is possible that people are able to do it can can be helpful for us. And and there’s a book called The Wisdom of Forgiveness, which I think just came out last year. It’s written by Victor Chan, and he’s a friend of the Dalai Lama.

He first met the Dalai Lama in the early seventies, and they’ve had a friendship for many years. So the book is based on stories about the Dalai Lama, things that happened with the Dalai Lama and about the Dalai Lama, but also contains stories of other people who have been able to feel forgiveness. Like, there was a man in Ireland who was blind as a result of being hit by a plastic bullet when he was just a kid, like ten years old. And there was some fighting going on in Belfast between whoever those people are that are fighting, the Protestants and the Catholics. So a bullet, plastic bullet fired by a policeman got him in the eye, so he’s blind.

But he has no anger for the soldier that fired the gun and, you know, was able to forgive. And now he’s working. He started some association. I think it’s something called children in the crossfire or something. So it’s to help children in similar situations who are hurt or injured or orphaned or whatever by by violence like that.

And by the way, that monk I mentioned who was formerly a Vietnam soldier, he he works with prisoners. He goes into prisons and also into ghettos where there are gangs, where there’s a lot of violence, and teaches nonviolence. And and I think he’s he’s probably in a really good position to be able to teach that because he has been in such violence himself, been a soldier in in war and killed. And so he really knows what it’s like to be violent, and he also knows that it’s possible to be nonviolent. So I think, you know, his ability to teach nonviolence must be quite effective and quite powerful.

So, anyway, it’s very inspiring to hear stories like that or read stories like that. Can help us, you know, to see that there is a direction we can go in to be able to feel forgiveness and and let go of negative feelings and even transform painful experiences that we may have been through, where we have may have been hurt, and we can actually transform that whole thing into something positive and helpful for ourselves, but also helpful for others. And I’ll just read a little bit of what Jack Kornfield says about forgiveness. Forgiveness is one of the greatest gifts of spiritual life. It enables us to be released from the sorrows of the past.

Although it can arise spontaneously, it can also be developed. There is a way to cultivate forgiveness through an ancient and systematic practice. Forgiveness is used as a preparation for other heart centered meditations as a way to soften the heart and release the barriers to our loving kindness and compassion. Through repeated practice over and over we can bring the spirit of forgiveness into the whole of our life. Before you can do forgiveness practice you must be clear about what forgiveness means.

Forgiveness does not in any way justify or condone harmful actions. While you forgive, you may also say, never again will I knowingly allow this to happen. You can resolve to sacrifice your own life to prevent further harm. Forgiveness does not mean you have to seek out or speak to those who caused you harm. You may choose never to see them again.

Forgiveness is simply an act of the heart, a movement to let go of the pain, the resentment, the outrage that you have carried as a burden for so long. It is an easing of your own heart and an acknowledgment that no matter how strongly you may condemn and have suffered from the evil deeds of another, you will not put another human being out of your heart. We have all been harmed just as we have at all times harmed others and ourselves. For most people, forgiveness is a process. When you have been deeply wounded, the work of forgiveness can take years.

It will go through many stages: grief, rage, sorrow, fear, and confusion. And in the end, if you let yourself feel the pain you carry, it will come as a relief, as a release for your heart. You will see that forgiveness is fundamentally for your own sake, a way to carry the pain of the past no longer. The fate of the person who harmed you and whether they be alive or dead does not matter nearly as much as what you carry in your heart. And if the forgiveness is for yourself, for your own guilt, for the harm you’ve done to yourself or to another, the process is the same.

You will come to realize that you can carry it no longer. So are are there any questions about the meditation that we just did or this idea of forgiveness? This is gonna say often the hardest And I think that maybe our inability or difficulty forgiving others could be because of that, because we don’t really forgive ourselves. We don’t really know how to let go of negative things that we’ve done in the past that we’re still holding onto and still identifying with. So that’s why in the meditation, I had you first think about something you yourself had done and try to let go of that and try to forgive yourself for that.

Because I think if we can forgive ourselves, then I think it becomes easier to forgive others. What do you think? Well, like he says, it could take years. It’s you know, it doesn’t mean it has to be an instant thing because there could be different layers of attitudes, ideas, you know, things going on in our mind that that make it difficult. So we may have to work through those different layers to get to the point where we forgive.

So we shouldn’t expect. Yeah. It wouldn’t be right to expect that we can just instantly, immediately forgive. And then and, again, we may get into beating ourselves up because we can’t forgive. That’s another thing to not forgive.

Oh, I’m so bad because I can’t forgive myself. So so it’s it’s a learning process. So if we can understand that, that it takes time to learn and give ourselves time, you know, give ourselves time. One thing I find helpful and a kind of analogy, you know, the process of spiritual growth, the process of, you know, overcoming negative attitudes and developing more positive attitudes. So this is this is a process that that takes time, and it and it can be compared to, like, a child growing up and learning how to walk.

So I’m sure some of you have been parents. You’ve had the experience of bringing up a child, and so you know that, you know, you can’t force a child to walk. When a child is six months old or eight months old, you can’t say to the child, Come on, I’m tired of carrying you. You’re really heavy. Will you just stop start walking by yourself?

So that’s just not possible, and it’s also very uncompassionate. Sometimes you hear people say Come on, Paul. Yeah. I’m dragging this kid along while I’m sitting down. So the most compassionate thing to do is to just, like, encourage the child and give the child proper nourishment and but, you know, give it the the the space and the time to get to the point on its own when it’s ready to get up and walk.

It can’t be forced. And and it’s similar with our mind. We cannot force our mind to do something before it’s ready to. If our mind is not yet ready to feel forgiveness, if our mind is not yet ready to love somebody, if our mind is not yet ready to have compassion, we have to accept that. Our mind is like a little child, and, you know, we should take care of our mind, nourish it, nurture it, encourage it, keep trying to do these meditations and, you know, instilling ourselves with positive imprints, reading books, listening to spiritual teachings, doing meditation, like trying to put positive input into our mind, but not with that expectation that, okay, it’s gotta be now.

You know? I’ve gotta do this now. It’s just not gonna work. Just like, you know, the child isn’t gonna walk just because we want it to start walking. Yeah.

So just as we take care of a child lovingly, compassion, kindness, gentleness and so on. We need to take care of our own mind, own heart. And when our mind is ready to do something, it’ll do it. You know, as long as we’ve given it the right, you know, encouragement and nourishment and so on. Does that make sense?

We cannot force our mind to change. We can’t force our heart to feel something that it’s not ready to feel. I think something came up for me. It was just a reinforcement of how those things, if you say something or whack out something or whatever, can damage your own health because I could feel my gut tightening up. You know?

It’s one of my weak spots, and it just reinforced it again. But that was something a very long time ago that obviously needed to be looked at that came up at that point. So are you saying that you you were trying to force yourself to feel something? You weren’t ready to think about something that maybe you’ve you’ve done or this was something I’ve said, you know Yeah. Years and years ago.

And and I had my motivation why I wanted to to do that, but but I could feel my gut. It’s something I hadn’t thought of, but it was an unpleasant thing I said to somebody. I I feel my gut tightening up. Now that’s a weak spot of what happens. And you think, well, why do I keep getting these cramps in my in my intestine?

But, you know, it’s probably things over the years. It’s tightened up. And and and something you said yesterday about, you know, people getting sick and how we can turn things on ourselves. Well, I thought it was very weird that years ago that I was probably turning some, like, anger on myself. So, yeah, it’s came and it’s just a reminder that it’s good to do that because slowly by slowly, can probably release some stuff.

Yeah. And that’s too why if we pay attention to our body and things happening in our body that can sometimes give us clues to things that are going on in our mind, which the mind is kind of more subtle and harder to, you know, see what’s going on in the mind. It’s maybe easier to see what’s going on in our body. So through our body, through awareness of our body, paying attention to our body, then that can lead us to seeing something that’s going on in our mind. Have you been in a situation where you were quite harmed by someone, quite hurt by someone, and you’ve sort of shut them out of your life, and you have been feeling like you’re ready to start forgiving them, but they wanna come back into your life, and you’re not quite ready for that.

So how do you sort of reconcile that whole Well, I think you have to pay attention to your feelings. And if you really do feel you’re not ready for that, then I think that’s okay. I don’t think you should force yourself to do that because if you’re not ready for it, it may turn into another disaster, you know, if you did let that person in. So I think I think it’s perfectly okay to say, you know, I’ve I still have too much hurt, too much pain, too much anger. And you have to be real about what’s going on in your mind, not denial, not in denial.

So if you really feel that way, I think that’s perfectly okay to say that. But I think it’s also good if if you can think, like I was saying before, that I want to get to a point sometime in the future, maybe years and years away, I would like to get to the point where I’m I’m I’m comfortable with this person. I’m not I’m no longer, you know, hanging on to those feelings. So, like I said, even if you can have the wish to reach forgiveness, That’s already very, very positive. Could you get to the point where you forgive them, but you still still decide to not see them?

Well, yeah. I mean, he says that in here. It’s it’s perfectly okay to say, you know, I really don’t want to, you know, have contact with that person. Although I suppose karmically, from the point of view of karma, we probably will. Like, if there is some unfinished business with with a person, then we might meet them maybe in another lifetime.

But I think, you know, it’s it’s okay, you know, to be able to acknowledge that at this point in time, at this point in my life, at this point in my spiritual development, I just don’t feel it would be helpful, that it would be positive or that I am ready and able to meet that person to, you know, have interaction with that person. I think that’s perfectly okay to say that. There’s a hand up over there. You know, a situation where someone that lives in our lives, we can see that they are stuck in holding on to anger and hurt in the past, and it’s impacting on their lives. How can I, through my meditation, help that person?

I mean, obviously, that person’s journey, their own spiritual journey, but if part of that meditation is actually helping others, how can I do that in my meditation? So you’re saying the you think the other person is stuck Yes. And you’d like to help them get unstuck? Yep. Well, I think there are things we can do.

I mean, I think by working on ourself and helping ourself get unstuck, you know, going through that process ourself puts us in a better position to be able to help others who are stuck. Whether that help is direct or not, you know, even if, you know, without having to say anything to the other person, but just by ourselves being unstuck, that can benefit others. Then praying, If you believe in prayer, if you feel if you feel comfortable with prayer, that’s something you can do. You can say prayers for the person. Pray that they will receive whatever they need to be able to get unstuck.

There’s also practices where you kind of imagine light or energy sending that out, or you could imagine, like, enlightened beings, Buddhas, sending light, sending energy to that person, helping them to get unstuck. So there are things you can do on the spiritual plane, spiritual level. Like, there there are people who are healers, and they’re able to do, I think it’s called distance healing, where, you know, they can heal someone who’s far away even on the other side of the planet. So wherever they are, they’re doing meditation, they’re doing prayer, they’re doing a visualization of whatever, and that can actually be helpful to a person on the other side of the planet. So that is possible.

So, you know, even if But does that person have to be reading their spiritual journey to accept that? Yeah. Yeah. They have to have the right well, I guess, karma, we could say. They have to have the imprints, the karmic seeds to well, I mean, everyone does according to Buddhism.

Everyone does have the potential to change, to transform, to grow, to be you know, to become free of negativities, to become whole and positive qualities. Everyone has that potential that’s there. So our prayers, meditations, our imagining light and so on is a way of like watering, putting water on those seeds. But it still depends on their state, the situation they’re in, how ready they are, or how many layers of obscurations they have in a way. But it definitely helps.

I mean, it’s good to do it, but, you know, we shouldn’t have the expectation that it’s gonna happen at any certain point in time. It may take a long time. It may not even happen in this lifetime. It may be next life or some other life. So we need to be prepared for that, that we may not actually see results happening anytime soon.

Yeah. Okay. So let’s stop here for lunch, and we’ll have about an hour break. Come back again about, well, one twenty, one twenty five. So enjoy your lunch.