Public Talks — 2005-02-11

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

About this talk. In this 116-minute public talk, Venerable Sangye Khadro teaches how to work skillfully with disturbing emotions—anger, fear, depression, jealousy—using Buddhism’s middle way: acknowledging them without either suppressing them or acting them out destructively. She establishes that the mind’s true nature is pure and clear (compared to clean water and open sky), while negative emotions are temporary contaminations rather than permanent traits. She walks through practical tools: recognizing emotions’ impermanent nature; understanding that others experience the same struggles; cultivating mindfulness to catch emotions as they arise; developing courage, wisdom, and self-compassion. She includes a guided meditation examining a disturbing emotion and addresses extensive Q&A on habit patterns, guilt versus regret, mental illness, and Buddhist purification practices. Suitable for anyone new to Buddhist approaches to emotion.

File metadata (for organising)

File: 2005 02 11 Public Speech.mp3

UUID: 1e8127e0-49c2-43c8-b2fc-cc8e74c4df2e

Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald

Collection: Public Talks (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)

Date: 2005-02-11

Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide

Duration: 116.6 minutes

Words: ~14,874

To wish you a very good evening and a warm welcome to this public talk tonight. I have the greatest pleasure in introducing venerable Sangye Khadro or Kathleen McDonald, who she’s known to some. She’s well known to us here in Adelaide. She was a resident teacher at Buddha House for a couple of years, many years ago, and we were all youngsters. And remember her with great fondness.

She’s a wonderful example to all of us of a Western practitioner who’s made the decision to take ordination and devote her life for the benefit of others. A lot of you ‘ve probably been to Buddha House would have either seen or read the book How to Meditate, which Venerable Sangye Khadro wrote, and it’s a classic. It’s a best seller and has been a wonderful guide. I know particularly at Buddha House for anyone who’s either learning to meditate or has guided others in the practice of meditation, particularly the new students. I’m not going to go on.

I think, you know, she will you’ve come here to hear her, obviously. But I hope that everybody is Well, I hope you’ve got your hearing because what she’s got to say will be invaluable. It will be recorded. And also, there are some books at the back if anybody’s interested in following up and getting either a copy of Sangye Khadro’s book or any other of material that they feel that they would be beneficial for them, you know, please please go and have a look at the table at the back. So please join with me in offering a very warm welcome to venerable Sangye Khadro.

Thank you. I might need to hold this. My voice is rather soft and I want make sure everybody hears me. Can you all hear me okay in the back? So I thought maybe to start with just a few minutes of sitting quietly to get our minds more calm, more settled and in a more positive state before we start the talk.

So just make yourself comfortable but try to sit with your back straight because that helps the mind to be more focused and clear. Take a couple of deep breaths, breathing in slowly and deeply as much as you can comfortably. Hold for a moment, then let the air flow out slowly. Imagine as you’re breathing out, you’re letting go of any tension that you may have in your body and in your mind. Then just continue breathing in a natural rhythm.

But continue to be aware of your breathing coming in and going out. That can help our mind to settle down. So especially at this time of the day, after being busy all day, there can be a lot of thoughts in the mind. Thoughts about things that we did during the day or conversations we had, things that happened to us and so on. So try to let go of or put aside all of those thoughts.

And just let your mind be right here in the present, present moment, present time, present place. Let go of all those thoughts of the past. And also let go of any thoughts about the future, can include plans for what you’re going to do after we finish this talk tonight or tomorrow or anytime in the future. Again, just let your mind be right here in the present, being aware of your breath, the gentle rhythm of your breath coming in and going out. And then before you open your eyes, take another few moments to bring into your mind a positive, beneficial attitude about being here tonight.

What we’re looking at here tonight is some material from the Buddha’s teachings. And when the Buddha himself taught, he did so out of compassion. The wish to help people and living beings to have more peace and happiness and less unhappiness unhappiness and confusion. So he shared what he had learned with that wish that it would benefit others. And many people over the centuries have found his teachings very beneficial for their minds.

And so see if you can have in your mind as your reason for being here tonight the wish to learn something that will help you to have a more peaceful and positive and joyful mind and life. And if on top of that, you can also feel that you’d like to be more helpful to others, the other people in your life, and also people you meet and interact with. If you can feel that you’d like to learn how to have more positive energy in your heart and bring into interactions with others so that you’ll there’ll be greater chance to be able to help others and not bring more problems and suffering to them, but be able to help them to find more peace and happiness in their lives. So see if you can have that thought as your reason for being here tonight, wanting to learn something that will be helpful for yourself, and on top of that, helpful for others. Okay.

So you can relax and open your eyes, sit in whatever way is comfortable for you. So what I’m going to be talking about tonight is how to work with emotions. And I’ll talk for a while and we’ll do a little bit of meditation on some of what I’m talking about. And then I’ll leave some time at the end if you have any questions. I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

So, again, what I’m talking about is from the Buddhist point of view, and in particular, Tibetan Buddhism. This is the tradition of Buddhism that I’m most familiar with. So, first of all, I’d like to give a bit of explanation about what are emotions according to Buddhism? What exactly are we talking about when we say emotions? So according to Buddhism, emotions are part of our mind.

They are aspects or experiences that occur within our mind. And so then we need to understand what is the mind? What is meant by the mind according to Buddhism? Because we use the word mind, but that word can mean different things to different people. According to Buddhism, each of us, each person, each human being is basically made up of two things, a body and a mind.

Our body includes, you know, all the physical parts of us, our skin and blood and bones, and at a subtler level, cells, molecules, atoms and so on. So all the physical parts of us, the things we can see and touch and take apart and dissect and so on. And then, this other aspect or this other part of us that makes us up is our mind. And according to Buddhism, our mind is not any part of our body. It’s not the brain, as some people think, or any physical part of us.

So it’s said to be a non material or non physical kind of energy. So it’s something we can’t see, we can’t touch, we can’t deal with in any of the usual ways that we deal with things. You know, like taking it apart and dissecting it and trying to figure out how it works. So that’s one thing about the mind. And in that way, Buddhism, I think, is quite different from Western science or Western medicine, psychology and so on.

And that it asserts this idea of a mind or consciousness which is totally non physical or non material. And another thing about the mind is that it is that part of us that knows or experiences things. And there are different ways that our mind is able to experience things. One way is through thoughts. So we all know how to think and also, we probably also know how not to think because our mind is always very busy thinking about things even when we try not to.

So all of those busy thoughts that happen in our mind, probably millions of thoughts every day in our mind. So all those thoughts that happen, that we experience are our mind. They are part of our mind, aspects of our mind. So that’s one way that our mind works. One way our mind experience things is by thinking or conceptualizing.

Another kind of experience we have in our mind would be just the raw sensory experiences like seeing, hearing, smell, taste, touch and so on. So when we have any of those experiences, like right now at this moment, most of you have your eyes open and you’re looking at me or looking around the room. So all the things that we see, that experience of seeing, it’s actually our mind that sees. It’s not our brain, it’s not our eyes. But according to Buddhism, it’s our mind that is experiencing, seeing shapes and colors and so on.

And same with hearing. Right? When we hear sounds, when we smell odors, when we taste things that we put in our mouth, when we feel experiences in our body like pain or cold or hot or hunger or thirst or tiredness. So those experiences are the mind, according to Buddhism. It’s not actually a body that’s experiencing them, but it’s our mind.

And then, mind also includes emotions. And there’s a whole variety of different kinds of emotions, such as happiness, unhappiness, anger, love, fear, jealousy, and so on. So according to Buddhism, emotions are part of the mind. They’re not something separate, which I think in the West, people sometimes talk as if intellect, thinking, and emotions are like two completely different things. But according to Buddhism, they’re not completely different.

They’re all part of the mind. Different aspects of the mind, different types of experiences within the mind. Different aspects of the mind. Different types of experiences within the mind. So it would not be correct to have an an idea of the mind as being some sort of solid thing that’s inside of us and having all of these experiences.

But rather, in the Buddhist text, the mind is compared to a river or a stream. If you think about a river or a stream, if you’re sitting by the side of a river or stream, you know, you see the water moving by. And we know that river is made up of molecules, atoms, little particles. So it’s not just a solid thing that’s continuous and permanent and unchanging. But it’s like a flow, constantly changing, made up of little parts that are constantly moving and constantly changing.

So, it’s said that our mind or consciousness is similar to that. In that our mind is made up of all these different experiences such as thoughts and emotions and perceptions and sensory experiences, seeing and hearing and so forth, memories and so on. So it’s a mass of all of these different experiences and it’s constantly moving, constantly changing. It’s actually not the same from one moment to the next, but every single moment, every single nanosecond, in fact, it’s changed. It’s different.

And this is something we can experience for ourself. Some of you have probably had some experience with meditation. And when we practice meditation, what we try to do is to get our mind to slow down and calm down. And also, we try to become more aware of what’s happening in our mind, what’s going on inside. And if we’re able to do that, then we can see for ourselves how it’s changing all the time.

The different thoughts, different feelings, different experience coming and then disappearing, going. And also, even if you haven’t had the experience of practicing meditation, but if you just think about a thought that you had sometime today, maybe there was some really interesting thought or really strong thought or some kind of thought that happened in your mind earlier today, this afternoon or this morning or when you first woke up this morning. So we’re able to remember that we had that thought. But if we ask ourselves, Where is that thought right now? At this very moment.

We’re sitting here and it’s now eight o’clock at night. So where is that thought now? The thought that happened in your mind earlier today. Where is it now? Is it still there in your mind?

Yeah? Is it is it kind of stuck to your mind like a piece of wallpaper? You know, stuck to the wall? Is it sort of permanent and fixed there in your mind or has it passed? Has it already gone, faded into the past?

What do you think? Do you think it’s still there in your mind? How many how many think it’s still there? You think it’s still there? Yes, it’s true.

You can remember having that thought, but is remembering the thought the same as the thought? If you remember, Oh, at two o’clock this afternoon, I had such and such thought. So if you remember it now at eight o’clock, is it exactly the same? You think? It’s a memory of a thought.

And we can regenerate that same thought. You know, we can try to, you know, rethink that same thought that we had at two o’clock. But is it still exactly the same as the thought we had at two o’clock or would it be a little bit different? Different, yeah? Yeah.

So this is something we can just think about and check out for ourselves. What happens to the experiences that we have in our mind? Whether it’s a thought or an emotion or hearing a sound or smelling an odor. What is the nature of that experience? Is it something permanent?

Something that’s always there in our mind? Is it something that kind of flashes or like a like a blip on a radar screen? You know, just kind of appears and then it’s gone. Something to check out for yourself. But according to Buddhism, this is what the Buddha himself experienced and others who have been practicing this tradition.

They see that the mind is always changing and experiences that happen in the mind come and go rather than being things that are sort of fixed and permanent and always there. So that’s a little bit about the mind. Actually, in Buddhism, there’s a lot of information about the mind. It’s a big subject. And people in monasteries, for example, will study for years to learn about the mind.

And not just study, but also meditate to look at their mind and try to understand their mind. So it’s a very important subject. It’s also not an easy one. You know, I feel like in my own case, I’ve been doing this for thirty years and I feel like I still don’t understand the mind. Still trying to figure it out.

It’s quite amazing, but also very interesting. Okay. So the mind then is this non physical energy that experiences things. And it’s like a river or a stream, and then it’s constantly moving and changing and flowing. And also, within the mind, another way we can talk about the mind is that it has, or within the mind, are different kinds of experiences in the sense of some are what we could call positive experiences and some are what we could call negative.

And I’ll explain those terms. Positive, when we say positive, that means an experience that is pleasant and joyful and what we want to experience, like we’re all looking for happiness and joy and feeling good, feeling comfortable and feeling satisfied and so on. So anything that happens in the mind, any kind of thought or emotion that occurs in the mind that is conducive for, leads to feeling happy, feeling good, you know, the way we want to feel, then that’s what we call a positive experience. Positive thought or positive emotion. Then, on the other hand, we talk about negative ones.

So negative thoughts or feelings or emotions would be those that have the opposite sort of effect. They make us feel unhappy uncomfortable or troubled, disturbed, confused. It’s sort of the opposite to what we want. Yeah? Because nobody really likes to feel unhappy or confused confused or worried or Right?

So any of those kind of experiences are are the ones we want to avoid. So whatever happens in our mind that that leads to that kind of experience, feeling unhappy or disturbed or confused or, you know, not the way we want to feel is what we call negative thoughts or negative emotions. So we make a very general sort of discrimination there about different kinds of experiences, positive and negative. And so we all have this. Everybody’s mind has a combination, a mixture of both positive and negative thoughts and emotions and other kinds of experiences.

But another thing that’s taught in Buddhism about the mind is that it’s possible to work on the mind and bring about a transformation of the mind in the sense that it’s possible to make the mind completely free of all negative experiences, all unhappiness, all confusion, all pain. So all the kind of experiences we don’t want, that we don’t like, that we want to be free of. It is possible to do that. And it’s also possible to work on the positive experiences so that we’re able to be in a positive state all of the time. We’re able to have happiness and love and compassion and all the right kind of experiences that we want to be in that state all of the time.

So according to Buddhism, the real nature, the true nature of our mind is basically good and pure and clear. And not mixed with or oneness with negative kinds of thoughts and emotions. The painful ones, the unpleasant ones. So those things I think an analogy that is helpful for this is if we think about water, like here’s a glass of water. In you don’t know what water looks like.

Anyway, it’s helpful to have something a little bit concrete because we’re talking about the mind, is non physical, so it’s a little bit abstract, hard to get a picture of. So So the mind can be compared to water because the nature, the real nature of water is that it’s clear. Like when water comes from a spring. It’s pure, it’s healthy, it’s uncontaminated, it’s good to drink. You know, you can take it right out of the spring and drink it.

You don’t have to filter it or anything. So that’s the real state of water, the nature of water. It’s clear and pure. But water can sometimes become polluted. If if it’s in a river and it’s running through fields, farmlands, then it may get dirt and fertilizer and chemicals and detergents and other kinds of things in it.

So then the water becomes polluted or contaminated and impure, unhealthy to drink, not fit to drink. But the contamination that’s in the water isn’t a natural part of the water, but it’s something that’s been added in. And it’s also something that can be taken out. It’s possible to run the water through filter system and remove all the contamination and then end up with, you know, very clear, clean, pure, healthy water again. Isn’t it?

So so our mind is similar to that in that the real nature of our mind is clear and pure, like clear water. But our mind has, a temporary sense, these negative kinds of thoughts and emotions such as anger and greed and fear and worry and jealousy and confusion and so forth. So these are things that are like pollution or contamination in our mind. And they kind of mess up our mind and make it unhealthy, make it sort of toxic. But these things are not like a permanent fixed part of our mind that are going to be there forever.

And is possible to work on the mind and remove the disturbing and negative painful aspects of the mind so that then the mind is restored to its natural pure state, which is very clean and clear and pure. So just as we can purify water that’s been contaminated, we can purify our mind and make it free of all the things that are painful, that are disturbing, that are negative in the mind. And that’s actually the real purpose of Buddhism or the essence of Buddhism. I’ve heard His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, say that a number of times that this is what Buddhism is all about. The whole purpose of Buddhism is learning learning how to work on our mind so that we can free the mind from the aspects, the thoughts, the feelings, the experiences in the mind that are negative, that are painful, that mess mess up our mind and our life and keep us from being really happy and clear and positive.

So we remove those and then we work on the positive aspects of the mind, develop those, perfect those to the state where our mind is like just totally positive and there’s not even a trace, not even a moment of any kind of negative experience. So according to Buddhism, this is possible. And it’s possible for everybody, not just certain special people, but everybody, everyone who has a mind, everyone who has this consciousness that thinks and feels and so on, it’s the potential of that mind to become clear and pure. But we have have to work on it. It’s not something that’s just going to happen.

You know, we just wake up one morning and suddenly we don’t have any more negative thoughts in our mind. So it’s not going to just happen, you know, automatically. It takes some effort. We have to do some work on it. But it is possible.

And just that itself is quite an amazing thing, I think. Because I think there are some people who are aware that there are things in their mind that are painful. You know, they’re aware that they have anger and that they have depression and that they have anxiety and so on. And they’d like to be free of these things, but they may think it’s not possible. They may think, well, this is the way I am.

And I’ve always been this way, and I always will be this way. There’s nothing I can do about it. So I’m just stuck with you know, I just have to kind of learn how to live with myself, Get by with life. But according to Buddhism, that’s not true. We don’t have to just, you know, be stuck with ourselves the way we are, or with our mind the way it is.

But we can work on it. We can bring about transformation of it, a complete purification of our mind just like we can purify contaminated water. And it’s worth doing this. It’s worthwhile doing this because if we can free our mind from the negative thoughts and emotions, those are the things that disturb our mind and make us unhappy and also mess up our life and our relationships with others and so on. So if we can decrease those, you know, gradually reduce them and eventually get to the point where they’re not there anymore, then we won’t have all those problems that we have in our life and in our relationships and so on.

So it’s a good thing to do if you wish to do it. Of course, you don’t have to. But if you want to do it, if it sounds like something appealing, then it’s definitely possible to do. Then, within Buddhism, there’s lots of material about the mind, as I already said, explaining what the mind is. But then there’s also lots of very practical methods or tools that we can use to work with our mind.

To work on our mind. To decrease the parts of our mind that are negative, disturbing, painful or toxic, we could say. I think it’s very popular these days to talk about toxins and getting rid of the toxins in the body. Right? All these products on the market and these fasts and diets you can do to get rid of the toxins in your body.

But we also have toxins in our mind. Yeah? Mental toxins. Things like anger and hatred, jealousy, anxiety, stress, depression. So these are like mental toxins that poison our mind and make it impossible for us to be really happy peaceful.

So we can detoxify our mind. So in Buddhism, there are these different methods, these different tools that we can work with to We can’t just, like I say, immediately get rid of the toxins in our mind, but we can gradually reduce them and eventually get to the point where they’re not there anymore. We’re free of them. We’ve totally eliminated them. So this is a big subject, and I only have an hour or so to talk about it.

So I can only give some ideas, but I can also point you in directions if you want to learn more. So there’s a number of different steps in the process of working on the mind and decreasing or reducing the disturbing or toxic aspects of the mind. Now, in general, the sort of approach or attitude to take towards these mental toxins is one we could call the middle way. Buddhism is often called the middle way in a sense that we try to avoid extremes. You know, we sometimes go to extremes.

Like in the Buddha’s own life, in the early part of his life, he was very wealthy. He was born as a prince. He had, you know, the best of everything. He was spoiled and pampered and lived a very comfortable life. And then he decided to follow a spiritual path and he left all that behind and went and just lived in the forest without even a roof over his head and he hardly ate anything or took care of himself.

So he kind of went to, you know, the extreme of hardship and deprivation. And then he realized that, you know, that wasn’t the right way either. And so he adopted the middle way, which is, you know, not too soft and not too hard. Not too, you know, comfortable, but not too tough either. And he said that’s the best way, to be sort of balanced and not going to extremes.

So when it comes to our mind and our emotions, especially these sort of disturbing negative emotions, we also need to have a middle way, which avoids two extreme, unhealthy ways of working on our mind or working with our emotions. So one of these two unhealthy ways is suppression or denial. So we all have negative emotions. We all have these negative, disturbing emotions that come up in our mind sometimes. But sometimes we may be in denial about the existence or the presence of, you know, something like anger or fear or depression.

So it may be there in our mind, but our attitude about it is pretending it’s not there. Pretending it’s not there. I’m okay, you know. I’m not angry. And so we’re not being honest.

We’re not being realistic about that. And it’s quite understandable that we would do this because these negative emotions can be quite painful. Know, we don’t want to experience the pain of them. And also, they can be quite powerful. If we sort of give in to them, we may find ourselves just overwhelmed by these emotions and kind of out of control with them.

Also, it could be because of conditioning. In our family or in our society, we may have learned as a young child that certain emotions are okay and other emotions are not okay. For example, a woman once said to me, she grew up in Germany, and she said, you know, in her society, it was considered okay for boys to get angry, for men to get angry, but not okay for girls to get angry. So she felt as a child growing up that, you know, it wasn’t okay to show anger, so she had to hide it and suppress it. So we may get those kind of messages as a child, and that would cause us to suppress deny certain emotions that are there in our mind.

And maybe for boys, they get another kind of message like, you know, it’s okay for girls to to be sad and cry, but not okay for boys to do that. So, you know, if you’re a boy and you ever feel sad, you feel like crying, you think, oh, I can’t, you know, I have to look strong and tough and okay. Then you may suppress that or fear, another one, you know, it’s okay. It’s not okay to show fear. You’ll be ridiculed if you show fear.

So sometimes because of the environment, the people around us as we’re growing up, we may feel that we have to deny and suppress certain emotions that are happening in our mind. So it can be interesting to look at that, to ask yourself, is this something that I do? And if so, why? Why do I do it? What’s the reason for suppressing or denying emotions?

So we can learn a lot about ourselves by looking at that. But then, this habit of suppressing or denying isn’t helpful because painful emotions don’t go away just by being suppressed or denied. Yeah? So it’s not really a skillful way of handling them. They don’t go away.

And if we make a habit of this, if we keep suppressing denying certain disturbing or negative emotions, then they could sort of build up in us and then lead to other kinds of problems like physical sickness or even mental illness, having a nervous breakdown. Yeah. So it’s not a skillful way, not a helpful way of dealing with them and it can actually be harmful or damaging in the long run. So this is one approach to disturbing emotions that we should try to not do. And then the other extreme is acting them out.

So for example, when we get angry, if anger comes up in the mind, then we just totally get angry. Let ourselves get angry and and just do what we feel like doing and say whatever we feel like saying. So we just get totally caught up in it and act it out in our behavior, in our words and so forth. So people may think that that’s a healthy thing to do because it’s not healthy to suppress and deny. So what you should do is when you feel some emotion, just get into it and let it all out.

But from the Buddhist point of view, that’s also not a healthy or helpful way of dealing with disturbing emotions. For one thing, it can be very damaging. Yeah? Like, especially with anger. If we just let ourselves get angry and express our anger through our words and our behavior, we can hurt people.

Yeah? We probably have done that in our life. We’ve probably hurt people with our words and our behavior and maybe even destroyed relationships. Right? If somebody gets hurt enough, then they say, forget it.

I’m leaving. And we may even damage ourselves. You know, if we get totally caught up in some very strong emotion, we may even inflict harm on ourselves, or get in the car and drive too fast and end up in the hospital. So it can be quite dangerous and damaging to just let ourselves go with an emotion. But also, another thing that happens is that it becomes a habit.

It becomes habitual. So every time we feel feel angry, for example, if we just let ourselves get angry and express it, you know, with our words, with our actions, with whatever, then instead of decreasing the anger, it actually increases. It becomes a habitual thing. We find ourselves getting angry more frequently, and maybe the anger even getting stronger. Yeah?

So some of you may have experienced that, that just acting out an emotion just makes it more persistent, more habitual. And when it becomes more habitual, it becomes more difficult to work with, more difficult to deal with. So, from the Buddhist point of view, that is also not a healthy, helpful way of working with emotions. So the middle way in Buddhism of working with negative emotions would be to acknowledge their presence, their existence. Yeah.

So if there’s anger in the mind, you acknowledge it. Doesn’t mean you have to go, you know, and tell everybody about it, but just to yourself. You yourself are admitting, acknowledging, being honest about the existence of that emotion in your mind. So in that way, we don’t suppress it or deny it. We’re being real about it.

And But then, to avoid the other extreme of just getting caught up in it and acting it out, we work with it. We work with that emotion within meditation, for example. Meditation is one way we can work with a negative emotion or disturbing emotion. Working with it in meditation is like the title of one of Lama Yeshe’s books, Being Your Own Therapist. You may have seen that book, Being Your Own Therapist.

And that can be a bit hard to do. You have to be fairly skilled to be able to, you know, just sit there and work with anger or with fear or with jealousy or depression. Just all on your possible to do, but for some people it may be difficult to do. So initially, some people may need help from either a therapist or a teacher, spiritual teacher or a good friend who has experience in doing this kind of work. Just to get some help, some advice, you know, pointers on how to work with that particular disturbing emotion.

I mean, you have go back and do it yourself. Nobody can do it for you. Nobody can take away your anger for you. Nobody can solve your problems for you. But you can at least get some ideas from other people that you can then work with on your own.

So anyway, working with the anger or the depression or whatever it is, working with it in our mind to transform, to make a transformation in our mind so that our mind becomes free of that particular disturbing emotion. And maybe even in a totally opposite state, like, you know, instead of being angry, having all this anger and hatred for someone, it may even be possible to to get to the point where you feel some some kindness, some compassion for that person that you were angry at. So it’s even possible to transform the mind into its total opposite from where it was before. So that’s the general idea in Buddhism. When you see some negative emotion like anger or whatever in the mind, you acknowledge it so that you don’t suppress it or deny it.

You acknowledge that it’s there. But then you don’t get all caught up in it. And instead, you work with it. And just do what you can. I mean, it may take some time to totally be free of some negative emotion.

Sometimes it can go away very quickly. Sometimes it may take some days or weeks or months or even years, you know, to totally free ourselves from a particular emotion. But the idea is to work with reduce it and eventually get beyond it and get to the point where you’re feeling something positive instead of something negative in your mind. So that’s the general idea in Buddhism. The general approach or attitude about general attitudes that are helpful and useful in doing this kind of work.

One is what we call in Buddhism mindfulness. Mindfulness means awareness, being aware of what’s going on inside of the mind. A lot of people are not aware of what’s going on inside of themselves. Their mind may be very turbulent, bubbling away with different kinds of disturbing emotions. And they just don’t really know what’s going on.

If you don’t know what’s going on, then it’s very difficult to do anything about it. So mindfulness is the ability to look into our mind, into our thoughts, into our feelings, emotions and recognize what is going on. Being able to say, oh, that’s anger, and that’s fear, that’s jealousy, that’s joy, that’s love. So being able to recognize, being able identify the different kinds of emotions that are happening inside of us. And that itself is very, very important.

It’s essential because if we don’t see what’s going on, then we don’t know what we have to do. So looking inside and starting to get some clarity, some awareness or mindfulness about what’s going on. And that’s something that we can do through meditation, practice of meditation. There’s lots of different kinds of meditations, different techniques of meditations. But generally, meditation involves working with the mind.

Using the mind to look at the mind, to understand the mind, to work with the mind. So you naturally become more aware, more sensitive to what’s going on inside of you through a regular practice of meditation. And then another quality that we need is courage. Courage here means courage to face the disturbing emotions in the mind. Sometimes they can be quite scary, like I was saying before.

Emotions like anger or fear or jealousy or depression can be quite powerful. And it’s quite understandable that we would be a bit scared of them. We may feel that if we acknowledge them or if we, you know, look at them, deal with them, they may be like a big tsunami wave, you know, that just sweeps over us and, you know, carries us out to sea, out to some unknown place. So courage is very important. And I think courage can come just by understanding the mind better, understanding what the mind is, understanding what emotions are.

You know, they’re really not things to be afraid of. It’s simply because we don’t understand them that we may be afraid of them. But this is, personally, what I found really helpful, learning about Buddhism. For one thing, just understanding that emotions and whatever else goes on in the mind are impermanent rather than permanent, which means that they come and they go. Like I was talking about earlier, if we look at thoughts or emotions that we had earlier today, and we ask ourselves if they’re still there in our mind now, then we can see that they’re not.

Also, if we see if we if we watch our mind, we can see that things come and go. They’re not sort of permanent, not always there, but they come and they go. So that’s the reality. That’s the nature of these experiences. So even a very strong emotion like anger, right, it comes and goes, doesn’t it?

It’s not always there. Right? Something that comes and goes, changes. So it’s not something permanent. Not something always there in the mind.

And also, it’s not something solid. According to Buddhism, our mind is non physical thing. It’s like energy, like electricity, you might say. It’s a sort of invisible energy. And so, our emotions, our thoughts, our feelings, they don’t have like arms and legs.

They don’t have a big scary face with fangs and they don’t have weapons that they can, you know, hurt us with. There’s nothing physical, nothing solid there. It’s just this non physical kind of energy in the mind. So from their own side, on their own, they can’t really do anything to harm us. They have no power, no ability to harm us or to harm anybody else.

It’s only when we don’t know how to deal with them, we don’t know how to work with them, that they can become harmful. Like, for example, if we don’t know how to work with our anger and we just let ourselves get totally caught up in our anger, then it becomes harmful, destructive. But anger on its own, by itself, can’t harm anybody, can’t do anything. Yeah. And if we learn how to work with it, how to deal with it, you know, we can just let it come and let it go.

And we can even transform our mind into love and compassion. So there are tools, there are skills, there are methods we can learn to work with these emotions so that instead of harming or, you know, being destructive or being problematic, problematic. They can actually become very positive and very beneficial. So there really isn’t a good reason for us to be afraid or to have fear about our emotions. With more understanding of our mind, more understanding of our emotions, and also more understanding of different tools that we can use to work with our mind, we can have more courage.

So that’s very important, to have the courage, the willingness to look at, to work with these emotions rather than being scared of them, being afraid to experience them, afraid to face them, afraid to try to understand them. I find it very fascinating, personally. I find it just amazing looking at the mind and looking at what’s going on in there and working with it. It’s just so wonderful. So interesting as well.

So courage is important. And another quality is wisdom. So wisdom is what I was talking about before, like understanding. Just having a correct understanding of the mind, of the different things going on in the mind, emotions, so on. So just knowing what they’re all about.

Their real nature and realizing that they’re impermanent rather than permanent. And they come and go. They’re not always there. And they’re not solid. And they really can’t harm me from their own side.

So all that is wisdom. And also, it’s important that we have qualities of compassion, kindness, and patience towards ourselves. And I’m saying this because people often have the tendency of being very self critical, self judgmental, hard on ourselves. Yeah? We can sometimes be very hard on ourselves.

So, for example, there may be anger, there may be fear or one of these painful emotions in our mind. And we may get into beating ourselves up. Oh, I’m so bad. I’m so horrible. I I shouldn’t feel this way.

I shouldn’t have this experience. So yeah? Does that sound familiar? Feeling guilty, feeling ashamed, you know, beating yourself up because of certain things that you see in yourself that you don’t want to be there, you don’t like. So that is something to be avoided.

That just makes things worse. Yeah? It’s like, if there’s this disturbing emotion in the mind, there’s anger or there’s fear or depression or whatever, that’s already painful enough. That’s already, you know, enough of a problem. And if, on top of that, we get into other attitudes like, oh, I’m so bad to feel this way.

I shouldn’t feel this way. I’m so ashamed of myself. Other people must think I’m horrible. You know, all this kind of business, which is all about being uncompassionate, being unkind, being cruel even to ourselves, beating ourselves up. So it just makes the problem worse.

It’s just like heaping more layers of painful thoughts, painful emotions on top of what’s already there. So it just exacerbates the problem. Makes it worse. And it’s not solving. That isn’t the way to solve the problem.

We don’t don’t free ourselves ourselves from anger by beating ourselves up for being angry. Okay? So that’s something to look out for. And if you notice yourself being, you know, hard on yourself like that, then realize that’s that’s not right. And instead, instead, we need to learn to be kind to ourselves, gentle, compassionate, patient with ourselves.

So those qualities are also very, very important. Okay. So those are qualities that are important in working with our mind, in working with disturbing emotions. And then, when it comes to the specific disturbing emotions, like anger, for example, there are specific methods or tools, practices that we can use for them. I don’t have time to go into all of this tonight.

But there are books available. There’s a number of books just on anger. A book by the Dalai Lama called Healing Anger. Another book by Thich Nhat Hanh, just called Anger. And I’m sure it’s not about how to be angry, but how not to be angry.

Another one by Thubten Chodron called Working with Anger. There’s quite a bit of material on anger. Isn’t so much on other emotions, but, you know, some the tools for working with anger could also be used for other things as well. So there are some specific tools for specific disturbing emotions. But there are some general tools that we can use with any kind of disturbing emotion.

Whether it’s anger, or depression, or fear, or jealousy, or pride, or whatever. So I’ll just share a few of these, and then we’ll do a little bit of meditation, so you can get get some idea about how to work with these. So one general tool is just to remind ourselves of the nature of our mind. As I was explaining before, how the mind is like a river, like a stream. It’s always moving, always changing.

And the different kinds of experiences, such as, you know, thoughts and emotions, both negative positive emotions. All of these different experiences in the mind come and go. They’re not permanent. They’re not fixed. They’re not solid, always there like a block of concrete.

But rather, they’re like the molecules that make up a river coming and going, you know, arising and passing. And also, to remind ourselves of the pure nature of the mind, how the nature of our mind is basically pure and clear, like, you know, the nature of water. And the disturbing or negative thoughts and emotions are not a permanent part of us. That are things that are, like, temporarily messing up our mind or contaminating our mind, but can be cleared away. So thinking in that way may not immediately make the disturbing emotion go away, but it makes the whole experience lighter, a bit softer, a bit, you know, more like a cloud, which is actually another analogy in the Buddhist teachings, the traditional teachings of Buddhism.

Another analogy for the mind is that the mind is like the sky. If we think about the sky like this afternoon, it was very, very clear here. There weren’t any clouds. It was just, you know, clear and pure and unpolluted. So the real real nature of our mind is similar to that.

It’s spacious and clear and pure. And then the thoughts and the emotions and things that go on in the mind are like clouds. Yeah. If you think about clouds, clouds are not always in the sky. They come and go.

And also, they are not solid. Right? We can go right through the clouds when we go up in an airplane. So there is nothing really solid there. So that analogy could be helpful.

If you think of your emotions or your thoughts as being similar to clouds that sort of pass through your mind and permanent, not fixed, not always there, but they come and go and also not solid. So reminding ourselves of that, of the nature of these experiences that are so disturbing or so painful, that they are transitory, temporary, impermanent, coming and going like clouds in the sky or like pollution in the water. And remember, you know, the clear, pure nature of your mind, is always there. Just like, you know, this when the sky is totally covered with black clouds and you can’t see a bit of blue or a bit of sunlight. But the blue sky is there.

Yeah? The clear nature, the clear sky is is is there. All you have to do is go up in an airplane high enough and it’s there. And so so even, like, in our mind when when there’s thick dark clouds of anger or negative thoughts or fear or worry or jealousy or whatever, that that doesn’t destroy or harm or take away the pure nature of our mind. The pure nature of our mind is always there.

Just sometimes we can’t see it. Those clouds will go away one day. We will see it. Then, another thing that’s helpful as a sort of general tool in working with disturbing emotions is to remember that we’re not alone in whatever it is that we’re feeling. Because what can happen often is that when we’re feeling some sort of painful emotion, we may feel cut off from other people.

We may have this kind of feeling like, I’m the only one who feels this way. Nobody else feels like I do. Everybody else is happy. We sort of look around and, you know, walk down the street, and we look at people, they all look like they’re happy and smiling and having a great time. We feel, oh, I’m the only one that’s suffering like this.

So we may feel sort of cut off from others, distant from others and very alone. And if we do that, it just exacerbates the pain. Yeah? Exacerbates the pain. Yeah?

It’s more painful if you feel alone in your pain. So it just makes the whole experience more painful. But also, it’s completely untrue. Yeah? It’s just not true at all to think, I’m the only one who feels this way.

I think quite easily. We can see that there’s lots of other people, millions of other people, maybe even billions of other people who have the same problem that you do. It may not be exactly the same, but similar. Yeah? Like, everybody gets angry sometimes.

Everybody gets depressed sometimes. Everybody gets worried and frightened or whatever it is. Whatever sort of painful experience we’re having, there’s lots of other people, even at the very same moment that we’re experiencing that. Around the world, there’s got to be other people. Probably lots of other people who are experiencing something very similar to us.

So, remembering that, reminding ourselves of that, will take away that pain of feeling alone. Feeling, you know, like, I’m the only one who feels this way. Lots of other people feel that way, too. Also, another thing that happens when we have this idea that I am the only one who feels this way. What happens is, not that we do this deliberately or consciously, but it’s just an automatic thing.

We tend to get obsessed with our problem. We tend to just do a lot of thinking and a lot of worrying about my problem. Oh, this is so terrible. When is it going to go away? It’s still here.

How can I get rid of it? You know, all this kind of obsessiveness about our problem. And so by doing that, the problem will seem much bigger than it really is. Like we have this expression in English, making a mountain out of a molehill. Yeah?

So this is actually what our mind does when we obsess about our problems. We sort of make them into huge mountains. And even if they are big problems, but we make them even bigger by obsessing that way. And so again, it can be helpful to think that other people have the same kind of problem. And also to realize that other people, there are some people who have an even worse problem than we do.

Yeah? Like, you know, depression. You may be feeling depressed, but there’s probably people on the planet who have even worse depression than you do. There’s some people who can’t even function. They can’t even get out of bed.

They can’t do anything. They’re just like catatonic. They’re so depressed. Possibly your depression isn’t that bad. Yeah?

So it’s like however bad our problem is, it could be worse. Yeah? It could be worse. There are people who have a worse case of the same kind of problem. So, by reminding ourselves of that, that there are others who have the same problem, helps us to not feel so alone and also helps us to feel connected with others.

And also, it can lead us to feel compassion. Compassion is empathy. It’s when we are able to empathize with others’ suffering. And actually, we can’t do that if we never experience any suffering ourselves. If we’re always happy, always blissed out, never have any problems, then it would be very hard for us to understand somebody else who’s not happy, who’s got problems.

Right? It’d be really hard to know how that person feels if we’ve ever anything like that ourselves. But when we do go through some kind of painful experience, feeling depressed or losing a loved one or just being furious with anger or whatever. When we have that experience ourselves, then when someone else is going through that same experience, we can empathize with them. We can know how they feel.

So that’s what compassion is, feeling with somebody else. Feeling with somebody else’s unhappiness and pain. Compassion is a very beautiful quality. A very precious quality, a very important quality for spiritual growth, for spiritual development, and also just to be a happy person. Then, going through some kind of problem actually helps us to have compassion.

It makes us a more compassionate person. So by reminding ourselves or thinking of other people who have problems, then we’re able to have more compassion for them. And also, we’re less obsessed with ourself. And so when we’re less obsessed with me and my problem, our problem won’t seem so huge. It will seem a bit smaller, a bit more like a molehill rather than like a mountain.

So that’s something else that can be helpful in a general way with any kind of disturbing emotion. So let’s just do a little bit of contemplation on some of these ideas. So you can get a little taste of how they could be helpful. So you may be feeling tired, but if you sit up straight, make sure your back is really straight. That itself can energize ourselves, our body and mind.

So we’ll get a bit more energy. And it might be better not to close your eyes all the way because if we do that, then it becomes much easier to fall asleep. So have your eyes open just a little bit, looking down on your lap or on the floor in front of you. And that way there’s some light coming into our eyes and that helps us to stay awake. So while keeping your back straight, relax your body.

Relax the muscles in your body. Put aside any other thoughts you may have in your mind, thoughts that aren’t related to the meditation that we’re doing. So now bring to mind some negative or disturbing emotion that sometimes occurs in your mind. So it could be anger, it could be jealousy, it could be depression or anxiety, something that you experience from time to time and is problematic for you. So just bring that to mind.

And now ask yourself, is this something that is always part of your experience? Like every single second, every moment, twenty four hours a day, is this particular disturbing emotion always there in your mind? Or is it something that is sometimes there and sometimes not? And also ask yourself if there are times when not only do you not have this negative emotion, but you experience something which is totally opposite to it? For example, feelings of love and kindness as opposed to anger and hatred.

Feelings of joy as opposed to depression. Feelings of courage and calmness as opposed to fear and worry. See if you can identify the opposite kind of experience to the disturbing one. Now, think again of the negative one, the anger, the depression, or whatever it is. Ask yourself if it’s something that’s solid.

Something that has material existence, material substance. And is it something that is to harm you? Does it, from its own side, on its own, have the ability to hurt you or harm you? And finally, ask yourself if you are alone in having this particular disturbing or negative emotion in your mind. If you’re the only one in the world that has it, or if you think there are probably other people who have it as well.

And if you do think there are other people who have it, do you think it’s possible there are some who have an even worse case of it than you do? See if you can feel compassion, understanding that just as your own mind is disturbed by this emotion and it also causes problems in your life and you’d like to be free of it, the same is true those other people. It is very painful for them, causes problems in their life, and they would like to be free of it. So you can feel how wonderful it would be if you and all those other people could be free from this painful, disturbing emotion. Okay.

So you can slowly come out of the meditation. Open your eyes. Relax. So I’ve said a lot. And maybe some of you have questions about anything I’ve said or anything I didn’t say that you wanted me to say.

Yeah. Well, think that emotions don’t usually just suddenly come out of nowhere. But they are preceding experiences. And if we can become more aware, more mindful of what’s going on in our mind, we’ll probably be able to notice their arrival before they just suddenly come like that. And also, there could be other emotions that may lead to those particular emotions.

Like for example, it’s said in the teachings that anger is more likely to come up in the mind if the mind is already unhappy. Yeah? So if there’s already already in the mind a sort of general unhappiness and dissatisfaction, when we’re in that state of mind, then something can happen and we just quickly get angry. So the anger didn’t just come out of nowhere, but it came out of an unhappy state of mind. Does that make sense?

Like, where does sadness come? Yeah. There’s probably already some sadness there in the mind that one may not be fully aware of. So it could be sadness about, you know, the loss of a loved one or a loss of some kind of loss or sadness just about the world or about yourself the way you are. So there’s probably already, you know, some sadness, sad thoughts, unhappy thoughts.

And then it’s like, you know, the last thing like they say, the straw that broke the camel’s back, you know, one last thing happens and it’s just like, you know, all that sadness comes out. So it’s probably not just that last thing that happened that caused the sadness but it was probably already there in the mind building up over some time. Again, if we’re more aware, more mindful of what’s going on in our mind, we can detect that. And one Another thing that’s interesting about the mind is the way the mind works or the kind of things that come up in the mind are things that we are most habituated to. The mind works by habit or by familiarity.

So I’ll just give myself as an example. This is what I’ve learned about myself. And I can see this going way back to my family, influences for my family. The tendency to always see the negative side of things and not seeing positive things. Yeah.

It’s just like this is a tendency in my mind and I’m sure many people as well, you know. When you look at people, you tend to see their faults and what’s wrong with them and what’s wrong with this room and what’s wrong with the food and what’s wrong with the world and what’s wrong with the government. You know what I’m saying? Yeah? You can see lots of things that are wrong that you’re unhappy about, that you’re dissatisfied about.

So And you don’t see many things that you feel happy about. Yeah? So some people’s minds work like that. And so that’s like a habit. Yeah.

I mean, it may go back like to your childhood. You may have been doing this all your life, but it’s habitual. But it’s possible to change that. I’m working on this. I’m working on like deliberately looking for good things.

Good things in people, good things in wherever I am and myself, the food, you know, like learning. I’m I’m trying to unlearn that habit of always seeing the bad things and really trying to see the good things. And it really makes a huge difference. Yeah? Because some people just seem to be naturally positive and cheerful.

Right? They’re just always seeing good things in people, always seeing things to be happy about. Well, we can learn to do that. Yeah? Some people may be like that naturally, but, you know, we can also become that way.

We can really put effort into doing that. It’s not that difficult. So what you need to do is just watch your mind and watch and and like notice this tendency to always see the bad things. Always see things to complain about, to be unhappy about. You what I’m saying?

So watch that and when you notice that happening, say, No. No, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to stop doing that. Deliberately, you know, look for good things. Things that are positive.

Things that you can feel happy about. They’re there. Yeah? It’s not that they aren’t there. There’s plenty of things to feel happy about.

But we just don’t make We just don’t have that habit of looking at them. Yeah? And this is really important because then your mind will be more happy. If you’re always looking at the bad things, things to be unhappy about, you’re gonna be unhappy, isn’t it? But if you look at good things, which are definitely there, then naturally, you’re gonna be more happy.

Does that make sense? So through mindfulness, watching the mind, watching what’s going on, getting to know yourself, you can start to see these habitual tendencies that you have. And once you see them, you can say, no, wait a minute. This one, this one just makes me miserable. It’s also not realistic.

And I’m going to change that. I’m going to work on changing that. And then you do that. It takes time. I’m not saying we can do this.

Like I said, I’ve been doing this for thirty years. I still have a lot of work to do, a long way to go. But I know it’s possible. I mean, I definitely have the experience that it is possible to work on the mind and bring about more positive ways of thinking and feeling and experiencing things. Is that helpful, what I’m saying?

Yeah. Isn’t that funny how we tend to be addicted addicted to these negative kinds of thoughts? Yeah? Well, I think one thing that’s very helpful is to just see very clearly how painful that is. Yeah?

I mean, like these I’ve talking about these negative emotions like anger and so forth. Problem in working with these is that we’re not fully convinced that they are negative, that they are harmful and painful. Do you know what I’m saying? You know? We still kind of believe that it’s good to feel that way.

There’s something a bit satisfying about, you know, having these nasty thoughts and taking revenge and, you know, we get some We think we get some satisfaction out of that. But that’s something to check, you know? Is this really the way I want to be? Is this really satisfying? And also check what happens if I let myself keep thinking like this.

What will be the result long term? Maybe one day you’ll actually say those nasty things or do those nasty things, like people who indulge in thoughts of murder, you know. The danger is one day you may actually do it. So if we let ourselves keep thinking in those ways, it’s quite possible that it’ll go beyond just the realm of thought in our mind and we’ll carry out those thoughts and you may find yourself in prison or something. So just just on your own.

I mean, not just because Buddha said so or your teacher said so or the books say so, but just check for yourself. What is what is it like if I let myself think that way? What does that experience do for me? What are the results of thinking that way? And is that really what I want?

Is that really where I want to go? Is that the direction I want to go in? And if you get to the point where you feel definitely that’s not what you want to do know what I’m saying? It has to come from your heart. It has to really come from a point of conviction.

I mean, I feel very definitely. I feel But it’s taken me a while to get to this point. I feel very strongly that letting my mind get caught up in these negative kinds of thought is just so painful, so self destructive. And also destructive for relationships. And it’s just not what I want to do.

I don’t want to do it. And I know I have a choice. And I’m choosing to unlearn those habits and learn more positive habits. So it’s something you have to really come to, to a conviction of. Well, I do.

I find it really helpful to try to, you know, change the way of thinking. Like for example, if somebody is nasty to me, then I might think, well, maybe they just had a bad day, you know? Or I think Or I try to remember a time when I was nasty to someone and, you know, why? What led to that? Like trying to understand the other person.

Why they’re like that? What what You know, where they’re coming from and what could have led them to be that way. So that’s really helpful. You know, just try to have more understanding of the other person. Person.

Also understanding that they’re really unhappy. If somebody’s rude or nasty, that doesn’t come out of a happy mind. People who are really happy aren’t rude, nasty people. It’s people who are unhappy inside that are people who are unhappy inside that are rude and nasty or violent and aggressive, you know? So anyone who behaves that way is definitely not a happy person.

So they’re really suffering. So if you can really feel that and really think, do I wanna make more suffering for them? Do I wanna You know? If I say something nasty back to them, is that really helpful? So, yeah, I try to like, you know, look at it in a different way, look at it from different perspectives.

And also, just what does it do for your own mind to hang on to those kind of feelings? We can see that by hanging on to anger, resentment resentment or any of those kind of negative feelings that we’re actually harming ourselves. You know, like your interaction with that person just happened over a few minutes or something. Maybe you never see that person again. But if you keep carrying that memory in your mind and reliving it again and again, it’s like torturing yourself.

Do you really want to do that to yourself? Yeah. And do you realize that you don’t have to do that? You can do something different. Something that’s more positive and more healing and more satisfying than that.

That’s a wonderful thing to realize that we do have a choice. There is a choice. If you can really see how painful it is to hold on to anger and resentment and keep thinking over and over and over again these things that happen to us. If we could see how painful that is and realize, hey, I don’t have to do this. I can do something different with my mind that’s much more satisfying and enjoyable.

So why am I doing this? Someone else had a hand up over there? No. Yeah. There is an interconnection.

It’s not like our mind and our body are totally separate and unconnected but they do relate to each other. So when there is some sort of experience in our mind, that will affect our body and the other way around as well. Like something happening to our body will have an effect on our mind. So they do affect each other. But the What I’m trying to say is itself, the actual fear or the anger or the depression itself, that itself is a non physical thing.

But it does have an effect on our body. And why? Yeah. Well, the Buddhist explanation of that is that what comes up in our mind Like, before I said, what comes up in our mind is due to what we are most familiar with or habituated to. But another way of explaining it is I guess it’s the same, actually.

The arise of an emotion like anger, for example, or love. These arise because of what we call like seeds or imprints that were left in our mind by previous experiences of the same type. So so like if I get angry right now, if anger comes up in my mind right now, where that comes from is a kind of seed or imprint left by previous experience of anger. You know, it could have been yesterday or last year or even last lifetime, if you can believe in that. So it comes from experience of anger and then when the anger comes up in my mind, itself has One of the results or effects of it is that it creates a further seed for more anger to arise.

So it’s a bit like what happens with trees. Like a tree comes from a seed. That seed came from another tree and so on and so on. And then when the tree itself grows, it also produces more seeds which will fall on the ground and produce more trees and produce So like that. So that’s why or how certain emotions arise in our mind.

They arise because we have these seeds left by previous experiences of the same type of experience, whether it’s anger or love or whatever. So we have in our mind just lots of seeds you know, left from our previous experiences. So we have the seed to feel angry, we have the seed to feel love, we have the seed to feel frightened, we have the seed to feel courage. So we have just masses of seeds. And whatever particular emotion will happen to arise at any moment in time depends on various conditions such as just what’s happening around us, conditions such as just what’s happening around us, the person in front of us, something that happened earlier in the day, how we feel physically, the weather.

So all kinds of conditions. Just like with a tree, for example. You have a seed there, but for that seed to grow into a tree, needs water and it needs the right temperature. It needs earth, soil. So when those conditions are together, then the seed will be able to sprout and grow into a tree.

So it’s similar with the seeds in our mind. We have all these seeds and then when the right conditions come together in our environment, in our inner world and so on, then the seeds can arise. So it’s all very arbitrary and it’s not something we we have any control over. We don’t have the ability to control what kind of seeds are gonna suddenly sprout and produce whatever kind of emotion. So it’s certainly possible that we can feel the opposite kinds of emotions towards the same person.

I’m sure everybody has that experience, right? Yeah? One person. At one point in time, you can have the most beautiful love. Yeah?

And that same person, at another time, you can have the most intense hatred. Isn’t it? Yeah? See, everybody has that experience. I mean, is From the Buddhist point of view, is because we have all these seeds in our mind.

And depending on what conditions are present at any given moment, then any of those seeds can arise. So we don’t really have any control over what kind of emotions come up in our mind, but we do have a choice in how we deal with them when they do arise. So even if anger comes up, like this person that you just felt all these positive feelings for five minutes ago, suddenly anger comes up towards that person. So we If we understand the mind, we can say to ourselves, okay, there’s anger in my mind, but I know that anger is a destructive, harmful emotion, and I know it’s impermanent, I know it’s not me, and I know it’s not solid, so I don’t really have to buy into it. I can do something else with it.

And depending on how familiar you are with these different techniques. You can do something on the spot to make it go away. Or you might need to go away physically so that you don’t do something damaging to this person. Go away for a while and do some meditation before you come back and face them again. But anyway, there’s definitely things you could do with that emotion once it has arisen.

But in time, like with more practice, more work on the mind, we can get to the point where we don’t have The the arising of negative emotions just doesn’t come up as often. So there’s a decrease in the frequency that they arise. And eventually, it’s you know, you can get to the point where they just don’t come up at all. They’ve completely purified the mind, so you never feel anger. Like a Buddha, for example, an enlightened being would never feel angry.

Never a moment of anger or any kind of negative feeling toward anybody no matter who they are, no matter what they do. Nothing but love, nothing but compassion, nothing but the wish to help, positive feelings. We can do that too. We can just really work on our mind, get to the point where we just have positive feelings all the time and no more of the negative ones. You believe that?

But it takes time so don’t expect it to happen. Sorrow and grief. Well, according to Buddhism, feelings of sorrow, feelings of grief would be related to well, I suppose it could come up for different reasons, but probably the main main reason would be attachment, the feeling of attachment. When we have attachment, part of attachment is wish for things to be permanent, to not change. And, you know, the reality of things is that they do change.

They’re not permanent. Nothing is gonna be there forever. Nothing in this No person, no thing ourselves and so on are not going to be around forever. So the reality of things is that they’re always going through changes and, you know, passing away. So we tend to find that quite frightening and threatening and don’t really want to, you know, accept that.

You know, we kind of live in this world of wanting things to be permanent. And so because of not accepting the impermanent nature of wanting things to be permanent, so when things do change, like the loss of a loved one, or loss of a job, or loss of your youth, or your health, or whatever. So when we face a change, then there’s a sense of sadness, sorrow, grief. So it’s a non acceptance. Non acceptance of change.

Non acceptance of So one of the best methods for working with that is meditating on impermanence. In fact, this is really important meditation in Buddhism. Meditating on impermanence and just coming to see and accept that everything is changing. And if we can become more accepting of that, then it helps ease the sadness, the pain when we do face or we do encounter change. I mean, there’s probably still some sadness there, but it won’t be quite as bad and we’ll get over it more quickly.

So the more we can accept impermanence, the more we can be comfortable within the reality of impermanence, the less painful loss will be. You say for mentally ill people? Yeah. Their mind is also clear and pure. I don’t have a lot of experience with dealing with mentally ill people.

I think it depends on what kind of mental illness it is, how serious it is. I think some in some case, yes. I think a person, even a person mentally ill could work with their mind. But I think in some cases, if the mind is too confused, too imbalanced, I think it may not be possible. Well, it depends on Like I said, I don’t have a lot of experience with this.

But I think there’s always something a person could do. Know, meditation, for example. I think to be able to meditate, you have to have a pretty clear mind and the ability to direct your mind. If somebody had a very confused or mentally ill mind, and if they tried to meditate, they could actually get worse. So meditation isn’t recommended for just everybody and anybody.

But even if someone is unable to meditate, there’s other things they can do to change their because according to Buddhism, if a person is suffering from mental illness, well, whatever kind of problems we have, mental illness, physical illness, and so on, are due our karma, to our actions from the past. karma is something that can be changed. And so there’s things that we can do to improve our karma, to purify karma, bad karma and create good karma. So even someone who is mentally ill could still do some things to work on their karma. Like service work, for example.

If they are capable. Perhaps with medication. Medication can help them get to where they’re able to live in the world and function and so on. So if they do service work, doing helpful things for others, trying to live ethically, even doing things like praying or other sorts of practices. So I’m sure there’s always some practices that a person could do, even if they’re mentally ill, that could help to change their karma, possibly even become cured of their illness.

So talking about guilt in relation to certain things you’ve done, past actions? Yeah. So in Buddhism actually, my understanding is the there’s an actual word for guilt in Tibetan. I don’t know It seems like they don’t really have a problem with that. Seems to be a big problem in our western culture, feeling guilty.

But there is a word for regret, and regret is actually a very positive state of mind if we feel regret for things that we’ve done that have been hurtful or wrong, negative, and so on. So it’s good to feel regret. It’s recognizing you did something that wasn’t right. And it’s important to realize that so that we can change from now on. So it’s helpful to feel regret, but not to kind of Regret is more an intelligent, rational thing.

It’s like you look at something you’ve done and you can say, okay, I did that and I recognize that was wrong. I feel sorry for that. I want to make amends. I want to clean that up. But not to just keep getting obsessed with that, you know, thinking over and over and over, carrying it like, you know, this burden, like, I’m this Actually, a big I think the main reason for feeling guilty is because of thinking we have some sort of permanent self.

You know, like there’s this permanent I who did that thing twenty years ago and I’m still the same person now who did that thing twenty years ago. I haven’t changed, you know. So we tend to have this feeling of permanence about ourself. Yeah. And then also we think, well, I I can’t stop myself from doing it again.

So to realize impermanence, to realize that, you know, we’re not the same person. We’ve changed. Even from one moment to the next, we’re a different person. We change all the time because our thoughts are always changing, our emotions are always changing, our body is always changing, our cells are changing, our atoms are changing. So we’re actually not the same person even from one moment to the next or one day to the next.

So the person who did that action, even five minutes ago, is already gone. I’m a different person now. Now that’s not to, you know, say, Oh, it’s completely okay. You know, that person’s dead already, so doesn’t matter. It’s still good to recognize that something was done by this person who was the person five minutes ago, and that that was wrong, and that you want to change that.

To realize that you’re not the same person. You’ve changed, and you can also change Now, this is really important to realize that we can’t go back and change the past. Past is already done. We can’t change it, but we can change from right now. We can change this moment and the future.

So if I realize that that thing I did was wrong and I really wanna stop doing it, now I may not be able to completely stop doing it and never ever ever do it again, but if I can at least kind of cut down on There’s actually a practice we call purification, which is to clean up karma that we’ve created, bad karma that we’ve created. There are four steps. They’re called the four powers. The first step is feeling regret, which is rational recognition of something you did that was wrong. Then the second step is, called reliance.

And in general, what it means is reaffirming or renewing your sense of commitment to your spiritual principles or, you know, even if you don’t have any spiritual principles, I think everybody has some sort of principles that they feel, this is how I want to be, this is the path I want to follow in life. So reminding yourself of that and renewing your commitment to following, putting yourself back on track. The third one is called remedy, it’s doing something positive to kind of counteract the negative thing you did. So you could do something helpful or you could say some prayers or mantras or give a donation. You know, so there’s Yeah.

Something to balance out the negativity. And then the fourth step is making a resolution about what I’m going to do from now on. So in some cases, it was a really heavy, serious negative action, you could say, I’m never ever going to do that again. And you would be able to keep that. But if it’s something that’s like telling a lie, for example, or having bad thoughts in your mind that you just can’t stop doing, you know, you’ll probably do it again.

So they say, make a resolution for a short period of time like five minutes or something. I’m not going to do that for five minutes or one hour or Yeah. So Or just say, I’m really going to make an effort. Really try my best to not do that again. So you have to be realistic and in touch with what you’re able to do and not, you know, try to put yourself into a situation you wouldn’t be able to fulfill.

So anyway, those four steps, they say if we do those four steps, then we can purify any negative action that we’ve done, even murder, even doing something really horrendous can be purified. So, you know, it’s important to have trust, confidence in ourself that we can change. Yeah. To see that you are not that action. Yeah.

We are not our actions. Actions are manifestations of, you know, things in our mind and so on. But, yeah, to make a separation. Same with other people, you know. If some person does a negative action, we may have the thought, Oh, he is a murderer.

As if, you know, this is permanent for all of time. That person is a murderer. They never stop being a murderer. To realize there’s a person who murdered someone. There’s a person and an action that was done.

But not to equate the two as if they’re one thing, inseparably forever. So it’s the same with ourself. Know, we may have done a negative action, but we are not that action. Yeah? So to and as far as what other people think, you know, that’s something I mean, I think if there was an action that hurt somebody else, it’s good to try to apologize, to try to make amends, do something helpful to that person, ask for forgiveness and so on.

And it’s also important not to worry too much about what other people think because other people’s minds can be distorted and deluded as well. So as long as you yourself are really trying to work on yourself and really trying to change, and even if the other person is still stuck in this view, you know, identifying you with that action like, you know, you’re gonna be that way forever and ever. Well, that’s actually a delusion. So if they’re not able to accept that you’ve changed and forgive you and so on, that’s something they have to work on. But you just have to work on your own mind.

Okay. So I think we better stop there. It’s getting quite late. Traditionally, in Buddhism, when we do something positive like meditation or a spiritual talk like this, we finish by making a dedication of what we did with the wish to help others, that what we did will be helpful to others. So let’s take a few moments to do that mentally.

So we came together, made the effort to stay here and listen and learn and try to understand and do a little bit of meditation on this subject, subject which is all about how to work on our mind and make our mind more positive and less negative. So having spent this time in this way, we’ve generated some very positive energy. And this is the cause of happiness happiness and all positive experiences. So let’s mentally share this with others. Open up your heart and think about how everybody is just trying to be happy and doesn’t and and nobody really wants to suffer.

So just as we feel that way, everyone else feels that way as well. So mentally share this positive energy we’ve generated here tonight with others, with the wish that it will help not just ourselves but others, all beings, to find more peace, more clarity, clarity, more joy, and to be free of all kinds of suffering, physical and mental, and also to be free of the negative thoughts, negative emotions in their mind that are actually the cause of their suffering. So may this help ourselves and everyone else have more peace and happiness and less negativity and suffering. Okay. Thank you for coming tonight.

I hope you learned something here that will be useful for you. Wish you all the best in your life and your meditation. Thank you very much, Khadro. That was beautiful, so sweetly delivered as well. And I’m sure that we’ve all gained a great deal from the wise words that you’ve got say.

Very fortunately, Sangye Khadro is staying in Adelaide this weekend, and is leading a weekend workshop on how to meditate. So if anybody didn’t know and would like more information about where that would be and, details about time and that sort of thing, please see one of us at the back later on. So thank you so much. That was wonderful.