Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 87-minute session, Ven Thubten Dondrub explores how the untrained mind becomes captive to its own thoughts, and what we can actually do about it. He begins by assigning practical homework: recalling moments of anger or desire to observe their texture without re-triggering the emotions themselves. The core teaching centres on a simple but transformative meditation—watching thoughts arise and dissolve like clouds, without identifying with them. Dondrub stresses a crucial insight: most of us are controlled by our thoughts because we believe we *are* our thoughts, yet it is entirely possible to develop the part of the mind that observes what is happening. He illustrates how feeding negative thoughts with attention gives them intensity and power, while learning to witness them creates space and choice. The talk closes with practical encouragement to distinguish between observing a thought and becoming it, grounded in the understanding that this capacity to work with mind is the foundation for genuine inner change.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 02 12 DBMind&itsPotential Dondrub week5 12022013 MP3.mp3
UUID: 692474ca-af5b-4543-a217-0ead9f6e3346
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Mind and its Potential (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-02-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 87.6 minutes
Words: ~840
Okay. Just before we dedicate the merit, if you’d like to join in, which is on page eight. In the homework, I’m asking people just to do a little bit of meditation on looking at their own anger attachment and just try and sort of recall you know, think of those times when you got angry. There was a lot of desire or attachment and try and just try and see what that felt like and also some of the effects of it without getting caught up in the story and actually getting angry again and things like that. You don’t wanna do that.
And the other one is to to actually I’m sorry. I don’t have enough time to to explain it properly. No. I never do. That’s why we need to retreat.
But another meditation, which is extremely useful, very simple, but very powerful meditation to do is just a meditation of watching your thoughts where you focus again and just start on focusing the breath. But then when a thought comes, you just try and observe it in in as objectively as possible again without getting caught up in the thought, you just try to sort of watch that thought as simply as something that is arising in your mind, just like a cloud comes into the sky and sort of then starts, you know, changing and dissolving and fading away. So just it it’s in one way, it’s very simple, but it’s not that easy to do. But it’s extremely helpful to just try and observe that process and and also try to get that sense that because this is the problem that we all experience, especially people who have no idea that they’ve got a mind and they can work with their mind is that most of the time, for most of us, when a thought comes into our mind, we identify with it. It becomes us.
You know? And we’re controlled by it. And I I I a friend of mine who’s a psychologist and counselor once told me how they were talking to someone and explaining how you could do this meditation and how you could learn to control your your thoughts. And this person, for them, it was just an absolute revelation to understand that you could control your thoughts. Because at the which is amazing actually to that this person had no idea that you could control your thoughts.
Because in fact, most of the time our thoughts are controlling us. That’s the problem. Because they arise in our consciousness, but we’re not conscious that they’re there. They are a process of knowing, but we don’t know that they’re going on. And it’s so important to to develop this use that aspect of the mind that knows what is happening in the mind.
And to not not to identify with any negative thoughts, but just see that that you know, there it is. If if you feed it, it takes over the mind. If you pay attention to it and you feed it, it takes over the mind, and you become that thought in the sense that when anger arises, there there isn’t you and anger. You are angry. You are an angry you know, we become an angry person.
There’s not this nice person who’s wearing this suit of anger. You know, we are. We are the anger. We become the anger. So it’s so helpful to be able to learn to just see how you know?
And and don’t expect some miraculous, you know, being able to sort of watch like a television set precisely. We’re just training. We’re just starting just to try and be able to get some sense that thoughts arise and then they fade away. And if you pay attention to them and identify with them, you feed them, and they get this incredible intensity, which then becomes very hard to control. And, of course, when the good thoughts arise, it’s good to encourage those.
Good to identify with those, but not the the negative ones. So just try that one as well. And there’s a couple of other ones which you’ve you’ve done hopefully before. So that’s it. Oh, that’s it for tonight.
Thank you very much. I hope there was something that was interesting, useful, thought provoking, stimulated your mind or your brain or something. And so we can dedicate those positive that positive understanding, positive imprints. May they become a cause for us to really discover the true potential of our mind, not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of all kind, suffering mother sentient beings. So page eight, if you’d like to join in, we’ll just do this in English.
Due to the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious bodhicitta not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline but increase forevermore.