Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 90-minute public talk, Venerable Thubten Dondrub challenges the materialist view that mind is merely the brain, arguing instead for mind as a formless, knowing entity independent of physical matter. He begins by emphasizing correct motivation for dharmic study—cultivating bodhicitta to benefit all beings—and guides the audience through a brief breathing meditation. He then explores what mind actually is: formless, uncreated, and indestructible, analogous to space but with the crucial quality of knowing and experiencing. Dondrub presents mind’s fundamental nature as the desire for happiness and freedom from suffering, and argues that perfect lasting happiness is achievable because mind has unlimited potential to know things completely and clearly. He explains how confusion and ignorance distort this innate wish into attachment to temporary external pleasures, creating the cycle of dissatisfaction. The remedy is meditation: gradually calming and clarifying the mind to access its pure nature, which naturally gives rise to wisdom, compassion, and love. Pitched at those new to Buddhist philosophy, with extensive Q&A on the continuity of mind across lifetimes and the relationship between consciousness and the physical brain.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 1998 02 17 The Nature of the Mind.mp3
UUID: 305cf2c3-c712-4b48-9ec8-5c61fbe6b85e
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Public and Sunday Talks (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 1998-02-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 90.1 minutes
Words: ~9,691
One thing that is really emphasized in the Buddhist tradition, particularly by the teachers I’ve had, is that for any action that we do to have a worthwhile effect, or any effect, depends on the strength of the motivation that we have. So if we have a very strong motivation for something, then the effect, the result that comes from it, is very strong. If there’s a very weak motivation, then the result is going to be very weak. And if we have a positive motivation, a good motivation, some kind of wise, skillful, virtuous type of motivation, then the result is of the same nature, that is happiness. When we listen to the Buddhadharma, the idea is to try as much as possible to have a really strong and positive, virtuous motivation for listening.
Maybe in some more detail, when we first approach the Buddha’s teaching, of course, the idea is to check the teachings from the point of view whether this teaching has some validity, something that I could practice in my life, to bring some happiness in my life. This is the basic approach that we have. Is it something that I can really trust? This is what we need to think about when we are trying to follow a spiritual path, because, following spiritual paths are it’s quite a tricky thing, quite complicated, can be quite dangerous, because we have to give our whole heart and soul, generally speaking, to this process. We have to give everything to it.
So therefore, in order to give ourselves completely to a path, then we have to really trust that. We have to really know that it’s something that we can work with and that will benefit us. It won’t cause us harm in any way, if we follow it correctly. Right? So this is what we have to do at the very beginning.
And then having checked out the teachings for some time and then conviction that the teachings are something beneficial for myself and others. Then when we listen to the teachings, the idea is that we listen to the teachings again and again in order to understand them more and more, so that we can practice them more and more. That’s the basic reason, the final reason, why we listen to the teachings in order to practice them. So our motivation for practice should be not just for some temporary benefit, some temporary pleasure, some temporary benefit, or to gain some interesting information that one can impress other people with, or entertain ourselves with, but the idea of listening to the teachings is in order to practice them in order to transform one’s mind, one’s heart, one’s whole being away from whatever harmful qualities that we may have to completely let go of those and develop all the positive qualities that we definitely all have. And the motivation is to do that not just for this this life, but for all time.
And, even more than that, we can try and generate a motivation, which may be something new for many people. Even the thought to work for happiness for many lives is something that may be a new idea, but anyway, I’ll just mention it. But more than that, we can have the motivation trying to work for the happiness of all living beings, to develop our mind, our life, our heart, for the benefit of everyone, not just ourself, because that’s our true nature. That is the nature of our mind, which we’re going to discuss. So we try to have that motivation at listening now, wanting to listen in order to develop one’s mind perfectly, not just for one’s own sake, but for the benefit of everyone.
Because this is the reason the Buddha also gave the teachings. He appeared on this earth to show people that they had an amazing potential within themselves, within their mind, that very few people know about. Because we don’t know about it, we don’t develop that potential. So, in order to develop this motivation, this pure motivation of wishing to benefit all people, is very difficult. But even admiring that aspiration and trying to work towards it is something very powerful.
So to act as a basis for trying to generate that kind of thought, what we can do now just for a few minutes is just to sit quietly and do a few minutes of one or two minutes of breathing meditation, where we just try to place our mind, our awareness, on the breath coming in and going out. Just trying to feel, be aware of the sensation of the breath at the nostrils, the sensation of the nostrils as the breath comes in and out. And by doing that, trying to concentrate on that in a relaxed way, we establish a neutral mind, neither positive nor negative, and on the basis of that we can try generate a really positive motivation for listening. So, we can just sit quietly now. I won’t go into all the details of how to sit if you don’t know, don’t worry about it, but just try to have the body relaxed, try to keep the back straight.
That’s the main thing. But relaxed, and just observe the breathing of the body. Don’t try and change it in in any way. Just observe it, and observe it particularly by being aware of the sensation that the breath creates as it enters through the nostrils and leaves. Just try to focus on that sensation.
Try to take interest in that to the exclusion of everything else, not forcing everything away with a kind of tight mind, but just not taking interest in anything else, not taking interest in external sounds or thoughts going on in the mind or any other sensations in the body. Just allow the mind to be aware of the breath coming in and going out. So then with this more calm, peaceful mind, use that mind to to generate this thought that I wish to be really free of all my disturbing thoughts, all confusion in my life, and be able to develop all the my good qualities, and not just temporarily, but to develop them perfectly so that I can achieve lasting happiness and achieve that happiness not at the expense of other people, but in a way that doesn’t cause harm to anyone else. And even more than that, to achieve a a perfect peace within me that can radiate out towards others and actually benefit them and benefit them not in a just a temporary, superficial way, but can benefit them in a perfect, long lasting way. And with that wish, then I’ll listen to this this talk, check its value, analyze it, and if it makes sense, then I need to apply it in my daily life for my own benefit, the benefit of all living beings.
So for those people who have some refuge in the Buddha’s teachings already, tend to help that thought, we can imagine in front of us Śākyamūni Buddha as our object of refuge, our source of inspiration and guidance. Think of ourselves surrounded by all living beings who only want happiness but, in fact, only experience dissatisfaction. And we can try and generate the thought of refuge in bodhicitta. The subject of tonight’s talk is the nature of the mind. To talk about the mind is an extremely difficult topic.
It’s one of the most subtle subjects in existence. It is fundamental it is probably the most fundamental assumption of all the Buddhist teachings that there is mind. We all talk about the fact that we have a mind, right? Everyone says, I have a mind, but we don’t know what our mind is. In our culture, generally speaking, if the existence of mind is acknowledged, usually the mind is considered to be something connected with the brain, that it either is the brain or it’s somehow a product of the brain.
So if this is the case, this is the materialistic view that is existing and is developing more and more in this world and taking over, then this view, I think, personally, is the most disastrous view, the most horrific view in existence, the most dangerous view existing in the world today. It’s much worse than any other thing on the planet, including all the threats of wars, pollution, AIDS, cancer, all these things. If one has this view and if it develops more and more that the mind is just simply the brain or a product of the brain, then this is the ultimate materialistic view. That means that we are just things, that human beings are just things that produce some kind of electrical impulses and blips. The thing that produces these electrical impulses that make us move around and have various thoughts, that thing wears away after some time, because the brain is part of the body and the body definitely dies.
There’s no doubt about that. So the conclusion is, if mind is just the brain or a product of the brain, then there is nothing else. There is just this life, and there’s just, looking after this body. That’s all. And there’s no real meaning to life whatsoever.
And it means that there is no sense of responsibility whatsoever. If one takes this view to its logical conclusion, because in fact it is really quite a new view, or at least it has existed a long time, but it’s always been the view of a very, very small group of people wherever it appeared. But now it’s becoming, on this earth, the dominant view more and more. If you take it to its logical conclusion, then there is no reason to be kind to people at all, because they’re just things, and there is just this life, and there’s just me, and I’m just a thing, and all I can experience is a little bit of some kind of physical pleasure, so I might as well get as much as I can, you know, in any way I possibly can, by using people in any way I possibly can, because there’s just this life, and we’re basically just soft robots, squashy robots. With robots, at least you can fix robots up.
You can put new arms and machine bits and pieces, computer chips in them, and they’ll go longer and longer. They’re quite useful. But a human robot, blech! It dies useless. What’s the point?
Actually, if you really think about this view that is being perpetuated more and more, it is really the most pessimistic, disastrous view that has ever been developed by humanity. It’s a very inhuman view. The vast majority of human beings at all times, in all places, in all cultures did not hold this view. All other cultures at all times, including our own culture, most of the time up until very recently, held the view that life has meaning, that there is more than just this life. And because there’s more than this life, our actions we are responsible for our actions because they have effects that go beyond just this life.
And that human beings aren’t just robots. They actually have feelings which are not just electrical impulses. So there is basic assumption in Buddhism that the mind is not the brain. It is something completely else. But what the mind is is very difficult to prove.
So all I can try and say is a few points about the nature of the mind. Many of you have heard these before, old Dharma students. All I can do is remind you about them and to think about them. I really urge people here, particularly those who haven’t thought about this point point before, that there is great meaning in the nature of life and our own individual life in deciding what mind is. Is it just the brain?
Is it just a function of the brain? Or is it something more? Is it something quite different? Because that really determines the whole nature of life and the meaning of one’s life. If there’s just the brain, then there’s just this life, and you don’t really have to worry about anything.
You can just go around, kill, rape, steal, whatever you like, and get as much as you can. What the heck? Doesn’t really matter. That’s the logical conclusion of that view. And many people would say that’s not the logical conclusion because there are many people who don’t believe in religion.
They have a humanistic view. But this humanistic view, where does it come from? I would argue that it’s basically come from all religious views that have existed before. But if all the religious views of the world were to die out and there was only the materialistic view, you would end up with this robot view. The Buddha said that I don’t know if he actually said this that the mind is not the brain, but the mind does exist.
It is not something physical whatsoever. It has none of the characteristics of physical matter, but it does exist. So physical matter is something that you can either see, hear, taste, smell, or touch. Something that can be perceived in some way by one of the five senses. But mind is not something physical according to the view of the Buddha.
It is something formless. It is without shape, color, touch. You can’t see it. You can’t weigh it. It has no dimensions.
It has no real location because it is formless, but it does exist. So how does it exist, And what is mind? So the definition of mind in Buddhism is it is that which is clear and knowing. That’s all. Mind is what is clear and knowing.
Clear in a sense that the mind is something formless, and it has the yeah. It is it is something formless with it is not solid, and it it and its function is to know. There are many ways to know. At the moment, our mind knows in a very, very limited way. The way we know now is mainly in a very intellectual way through concepts.
But when we know something, real knowing has the quality of experiencing. Knowing and experiencing are the same thing, and in every moment of experience there is feeling. The nature of experience is to feel something. You either feel pleasure or pain, Happiness or unhappiness is the feeling quality of experiencing. When you know something, you feel something.
This is what the mind is. Only mind knows. So mind is not, from the Buddhist point of view, is not a physical thing. It is an activity. It’s an ongoing activity.
But it does exist, and it’s a little bit like space. So I’d like to talk about space for a little bit, short time, which may seem very abstract, intellectual and confusing. But if one can understand what space is, then one can get some feeling for the mind, I feel. The definition of space in Buddhism is the mere lack of obstruction. The mere lack of obstruction.
Now because there is a mere lack of obstruction, things can occupy space. Physical matter can be where space is, where there’s a lack of obstruction. Physical matter is obstructing. So where there is wherever there is physical matter, there is no more space there. Obstruction.
But the fact that some physical matter can occupy a particular place is because there is space there. There is a lack of obstruction there. The fact that this wall can be here, this obstructing wall can be here, is because there is space, the lack of obstruction where this obstructing material can exist. And because that obstructing material is existing there, called a wall, then you can’t put anything else there because there’s no space left there. So the point is also that space is not something you can see or touch, smell, carry somewhere.
You can’t take some space somewhere, move it around. It’s just everywhere. It’s all pervading. The mere lack of obstruction is all pervading. It’s everywhere.
It has no dimensions, no limits, and it’s something uncreated. You can’t create space. It’s just there. It’s just existing. It’s just the mere lack of obstruction.
You can’t create that. It’s just there, and it’s always been there, It’s not just an intellectual concept, as anyone who keeps rabbits, chickens, or cows would know, because cows, chickens, and rabbits know about space. When they find a lack of obstruction in offense, they’re out. They’re out of there. They’re out of there quicker as possible.
Yeah. So space exists. It’s not just an abstract concept of human beings. It’s something known and experienced by animals because it exists. It’s there.
It’s just there, everywhere. But sometimes, it’s occupied by this obstructing stuff. But when the wall is there, the wall hasn’t destroyed the space. It’s just occupied it, utilizing it. If you destroy the wall, the space is there.
Not new space, just space. So it’s there. It’s a real thing. So the mind is like that. It’s totally intangible, and like space, it’s something uncreated.
It was never created originally. It’s just always existed, and like space, you can’t destroy space. It’s just utterly impossible. It’s not something physical that you can destroy, and so mind is also like that. You can’t destroy mind because it’s formless.
But the thing the wonderful thing about the nature of mind is that mind knows. Space doesn’t know. It doesn’t experience. It doesn’t feel. But mind is like space, but it knows, it feels, experiences things.
For example, this table is made of organic matter, I hope, I think, probably. This body is made of organic matter, this one here. Basically, there’s no difference between this body and table, right? Scientifically, no real difference. It’s just organic stuff.
But if I hit this table, it doesn’t know being hit. It doesn’t experience being hit, and it has no feeling. Yeah. But if I hit this body, there is a knowing going on. There is an experience of being hit, and there’s a feeling about that.
Many feelings. Yeah. So that that knowing, experiencing, and feeling isn’t done by the body because the body is just no really no different than this. What knows and experience and feels that is is the mind, one’s mind. The mind that is connected with this body, dependent on this body, operating through this body, but is not the body and is not any part of the body, such as the brain.
It is not the brain. At the moment, it works through the brain dependent on it, but it is not that. It has a completely different nature, and it didn’t originate with this body and this brain. It came before. It’s the cause of this body, in fact.
When this body fades away, the mind goes on because it’s just using this body. It’s just temporary housing, just temporary accommodation. So the body doesn’t know anything. Not a thing. But the mind working through this body know can know knows, experiences, and feels.
That is the nature of mind. Nothing else knows. Computers have lots of information in them and can regurgitate it, but they don’t know anything. They don’t know single thing. They don’t experience a single thing, and they don’t feel anything, because only mind does that, and you can’t create mind.
It’s just existing, existing, and each of us has got one. And the trouble is we don’t know about it. We hardly know anything about our mind. We don’t know its nature. So why should we know about our mind?
Because it’s the source of everything. It is the very source of everything. As you’ve probably all heard before, if you’ve been coming to Buddha House, the Tibetan Lama who teaches here probably says this regularly, and I always say it regularly because all my teachers say this regularly, so I’ll say it once more: One’s self, myself, and every living being just wants to be happy. Right? We just want happiness, and we don’t want any kind of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, pain, worry, fear, boredom, guilt, depression, depression, agitation, all these things.
We just do not want any of that. Yeah. And we just want something called happiness, this very mysterious thing, as mysterious as the mind, which we call happiness, which is something to do with peace, inner peace, inner contentment, and a sentient beings. It’s not about smiling and giggling and having wild parties. That’s not happiness.
Happiness is about contentment, inner contentment. Yeah. Alright. That actually comes from a freedom from suffering, freedom from confusion, freedom from worry, and a sense a deep sense of connection with things, that one has meaning, that one’s life has meaning. Yeah, that one has purpose, that life has purpose, and everyone else has a purpose.
So we’re all seeking that, that experience, all the time. What is seeking that is, in fact, the mind. There’s a and one of the one aspect of the mind, its its fundamental nature is to seek happiness and not to seek suffering. It is just natural for the mind to want to know and experience and feel happiness and not to want to know, experience, and feel suffering or confusion? If you think about it, how could it be any other way?
Why would there be any wish to to to experience suffering? To know suffering. Since it’s the mind which knows and feels and experiences, how could the mind possibly want to feel and experience suffering, dissatisfaction, pain, worry, fear, and all those endless negative things? There is no way knowing mind wants to know that. It’s it it seems obvious that the nature of the mind is only wishing to experience happiness, contentment, inner peace.
That is fundamental quality of the mind, an inborn quality of the mind, inescapable. Yeah. Every living being has that wish because every living being, sentient being, has mind. Mind is that which knows and feels and experiences. Sorry if I keep repeating this, but this is my technique.
Sorry. I can’t get away from it. Stuck. Yeah. And so there’s there’s only one way although there’s many levels of knowing, but there’s only one way of knowing.
You just know. There’s just knowing. There’s just experiencing and feeling. There’s only one mind in one oh, no. There’s not just one.
But there’s only one nature of mind. Every being has a mind, and the nature of every being’s mind is exactly, exactly, exactly the same. Now mind just knows. That’s all. It has that nature, buster, simple, just that.
And in just every sentient every being who has a mind, every sentient being has mind, and that mind of every sentient being just wants happiness and doesn’t want suffering. And it wants exactly the same thing. Every living being innately, inbornly, for all time has always wanted the same thing. Right? This because this is the nature of mind, just wanting to experience happiness, knowing happiness, knowing perfection.
I can’t prove this, and maybe this is not very logical, but it works for my simple mind. If you think about it, and this is how I think about it, maybe you can pull pull this argument apart, but mind is what knows. And if you let the mind know something, that which knows, if you let it do that function without any interference, it just knows. That’s its function. So if you let it do it, if you let it perform its function without any interference whatsoever, then the mind knows and knows and knows and knows more and more and more.
So it seems to me logical that mind has, as its very nature, the potential to know everything perfectly if we just let it do its job, which is to know. Not to unknow, not to be confused, but mind is what knows. For example, if you come into a room and you look at something newly for the first time and you only look at it quickly, then you can only know a very little about that thing. Therefore, you have a very limited, limited experience of that and a very kind of unfulfilling feeling related to that tiny little bit of knowing. But if one looked at that thing for a longer period of time carefully, with concentration, you would know it more.
You would know more about it. Any any mind would would know more. Alright? If you look at something and allow you you allow the mind to perform its function of knowing, there’s no one there’s no way if you allow the mind to perform that function by looking at it something, experiencing something more, you would know less. Right?
The more you experience, the more you know of the thing. The more you experience it, you don’t know less, you know more. Right? Yes? Yes?
That’s the way the mind works. That is its nature. That is the pure nature of mind, is to know things perfectly, completely, and that is the potential for perfect happiness. When we know things completely, how can there be any fear, any worry? You know things perfectly, completely, how they actually are.
One knows oneself completely. One knows every person completely, all phenomena completely. How could there possibly be any hate, jealousy, pride, doubts, fear, worry, confusion, depression, agitation in a mind that knows things perfectly all the time, experiences everything completely as they are all the time, and therefore has a complete deep feeling with that knowing all the time. Yeah so it is actually of the nature of the mind to have the qualities of love compassion equanimity wisdom Right? That is the actual nature of our mind.
These potentials are there all the time. They haven’t been created by anybody. They just exist as the very nature of mind. When mind knows things perfectly, which it has the potential to do, it knows it in a state of love, compassion, and wisdom. There’s no way the mind could know things in any other way because hate, fear, worry, jealousy, and pride are false ways, confused ways of knowing, incomplete, fractured, distorted ways of knowing in fact they’re not real knowing at all So this potential of our mind to know things perfectly, completely as they really are is called our Buddha nature, our Buddha potential, our potential for omniscience, actual omniscience, to know everything perfectly all the time without mistake, because mind simply knows.
And if you if it is free to know, it knows perfectly. So this this wish of the mind for perfect happiness is is something natural that goes with the nature of the mind, and it’s something that can be accomplished because of the nature of the mind. When the when the mind is allowed to to perform its function without any hindrance, it can know perfectly. And when that knowing is established within the mind perfectly, since the mind continues forever because it’s indestructible, it’s formless and indestructible, once that perfect knowing is established, the mind continues to know things perfectly with perfect wisdom, perfect compassion, perfect love, equanimity continuously. So maybe to go back a bit.
So this is perfect happiness that we want. Now, I I just many years ago, was Lama Yeshe gave a talk. I I don’t remember where it was, but when I first met him where he said to imagine him as a great magician. So I’ll just repeat this, what he did, because it’s very simple, but I do this all the time. But I found it very effective for my mind, just going back to this point about wanting happiness and not wanting suffering.
So he said to imagine him as a great magician, so I would like to ask you to imagine that I am a great magician. The greatest magician in the world can bring you anything you want. So you just have to tell me what you want, then I give it to you. Right? Just like that.
So to make things simple, I know that you want happiness. Right? I’m not gonna beat around the bush too long. So then okay. So what kind of happiness do you want?
Because there are many kinds of happiness, so you have to let me know what kind of happiness you want. Again, so to simplify this, I’ll let you know that I have three main kinds of happiness you could have. So the first kind is a happiness that has some problems in it. From time to time, there will be some problems, some physical pain, some mental pain. Sometimes it will last for some time.
Some Sometimes it will just be for a short time. But there will be these problems pain, worry, a little bit of fear, sometimes some big fears, some little fears, things like that in it. But it’s basically happiness, and it’s really very good. So you can have that one if you like. Or, if you don’t like that, I have another kind of happiness which only has just occasional problems, flaws, an occasional worry, an occasional fear, an occasional physical pain, an occasional mental pain, twinge of fear, regret, doubt, worry, guilt, a few things like that from time to time.
But don’t worry, they’re just just occasional, don’t last very long. So you’re either that kind of happiness, or I have perfect happiness. Yeah. The real thing. Not at the slightest flaw whatsoever.
One moment of worry, pain, fear. Not at all. Just bliss. Perfect bliss. Yeah.
So which one would you like? Because I’m claiming to use, I’m also claiming to be a magician, you want the third one. Right? No one, if if if it was possible, would want the first or second. Some people say, oh, I’d like the second one because the third one sounds boring.
But the point is the third one isn’t boring because it’s perfect. And boredom is imperfection. Right? So this is perfect. It doesn’t have any boredom in it.
It is perfectly enjoyable all the time. Yeah. Continuously. So this is what you can have. Right?
So you want that one, this perfect happiness. Right? So then the next question is, how long do you want it for? You’re a dear, You know, you can have it for one day, a week, a month, year, ten years, a lifetime. If you believe in future lives, two, three lifetimes, ten lifetimes.
If you believe in forever, you can have it forever. Or for however long you can conceive that you can see that you exist, you can have this blissful happiness. Okay. How long do you want it for? Anybody for one day?
Ten years. Well, the answer is that if we could have it, we would like it for however long we conceive that we exist. Right? Forever. However long forever is for us.
We want perfect lasting happiness. Who wants that? What wants that is our mind. It is the innermost wish for our mind. And that wish, every living even if you’ve never thought about that before, you have that.
Each of us has that within our mind, because it’s the nature of our mind to want that. The mind cannot want anything less. This wish is perfectly, completely natural. It has always been there, and it never goes away, and it never will go away because the mind just naturally wishes that. We we were born with this wish.
When we’re in the in the womb, we had this wish, this thought, this thought. Sometimes it operates, know, as a gross thought, but there is this instinctive desire, wish for this happiness all the time. And the question arises then, is this perfect lasting happiness that we wish possible, or is it just a fantasy? And the Buddhist answer the answer of the Buddha is that is perfectly possible. It is definitely possible because of the nature of the mind.
It is the mind which wishes this happiness, and it is the mind that can achieve it. Because the mind has that inner potential. Because mind is what knows. And if we just allowed our mind to know things perfectly, we would have this perfect happiness. And since mind is indestructible, once that happiness is established, it will last forever.
So it is crucial to understand our mind because our mind, the Buddha said, is the key to our happiness. It is the key to everything. So how come we don’t have this happiness if the mind wants it and the mind has this potential? And the Buddha says our mind has always existed. How come we don’t have it?
We don’t have it basically because we don’t allow our mind to function properly. We obscure our mind again and again with all our disturbing thoughts. Because although we have a wish for this perfect happiness, which is always there and motivates all of our actions twenty four hours a day, every day of all existence, of all time. That wish for perfect happiness gets distorted by our ignorance, our not knowing our true nature. It gets distorted into just chasing after external happiness, external temporary pleasure.
Sorry. Because at the moment, although our mind has this nature to know things perfectly, the potential to know things perfectly, our mind that potential isn’t allowed to function because our mind, at the moment, that pure nature of mind, is obscured by ignorance, by another mind, another level of mind, a more confused level of mind that doesn’t know things perfectly. And because there is this mind not knowing things perfectly, completely, that that innate wish for happiness gets distorted into chasing for things, for happiness in the external world, because that’s where it appears to exist to our confused mind, the mind that doesn’t know things correctly and completely. Our mind has a wish for real happiness, but but it out of confusion, it gets attached to something which is limited and imperfect. Believing happiness is an external world and chasing after that again and again, because that’s what our culture and our society tells us we should do, and that is what appears to our confused mind to be the situation.
To our confused mind, happiness does seem to be out there to some extent. Right. Happiness does seem to come from having meeting the right people, the people that one can love and who loves us in possessing beautiful objects, living in beautiful places, being in nice situations, in beautiful, comfortable situations. Some happiness arises, so we get attached to that. We get dependent on that.
And our confused mind tells us this is happiness, or this is the most happiness that is possible. So one settles for that and gets attached to that and dependent on that. So in that process, all we ever experience is just momentary pleasure that comes and goes. And when it goes, what replaces it is something far less dissatisfaction. When some temporary pleasure comes to an end, there can only be dissatisfaction that replaces it again and again.
And because of that dissatisfaction, which is an experience of our mind, a particular way of knowing things, dissatisfaction is a way of knowing things, of feeling incomplete. One has something, but it’s not. It doesn’t bring real satisfaction. So one is dissatisfied. One feels incomplete.
So because of this experience of being incomplete, one has to chase out there for something to complete, this inner experience of being incomplete. So this cycle just goes around and around and around, and never allows us to discover that our that sense of completeness is there, the the for that, That’s a potential for completeness, for complete happiness, for complete satisfaction is actually within our mind all the time. We don’t have to make ourselves happy. We just have to stop making ourselves unhappy. Basically, we don’t have to do anything really new when you become a Buddhist, actually.
It looks very new and strange and peculiar, but it’s a process of stopping doing all the confused things that we do, or we have to undo things. We don’t have to do new things. We have to undo all our old patterns to take our mind out there and allow ourselves, allow our mind to experience its own nature. And in experiencing our own the own our our own true nature, the true nature of our mind, when we allow ourselves to do that, we begin to experience some more genuine happiness. And we were on the path to experiencing this lasting perfect happiness.
So when we sat down at the beginning of this talk and did a little bit of breathing meditation, probably none of us here, just speaking generally, were perfectly successful in this meditation. I hope someone was, but I wasn’t. But by trying to do it, even if one somebody who may have didn’t know what you one was supposed to do properly because it maybe never tried it before, but just by trying to do this, some something happens in the mind immediately. There’s some the mind becomes a little bit calmer and clearer, just naturally. Yeah.
That that calmness and clarity that one experienced or started to experience, even if it was just a tiny bit, wasn’t something you created. Something you created that wasn’t there before. It was always there. We just didn’t allow ourselves to experience it before, to know it before. We hid it.
We created all the causes in our ordinary life to obscure that, and it’s actually always there. So what we experience when when we meditate was just just a tiny, tiny, tiny itty bitty bit of the potential of our mind to be perfectly calm, clear, content, happy, free of confusion. We didn’t do anything spectacular, but something happened. We just allowed our mind to know something in a calm, clear way, and that’s what the mind does best. Yeah.
But because we’re not familiar with that process, it’s very difficult at the moment, and all the old habitual patterns of following our limited ways of knowing through all our thoughts sensations gets in the way. And we’re so habituated to wanting to know our thoughts and to know sounds and smells and shapes and colors, because they’re the things we’re familiar with knowing. So we like to keep on knowing those things, the same old boring things we’ve always known, but we’re so fascinated with them, so attached to them, so dependent on them that it becomes very difficult to allow ourselves to know our mind, but we can. This is the process of meditation. This is what meditation is, getting to know one’s mind.
First, when we get to know our mind, what happens is we just seem to know this very strange thing that produces all sorts of thoughts and physical pains and agitations and this isn’t that and worries and whatever. And we think, oh, I don’t wanna know this. This is really a disaster. So we give up. And and we think, now I know my mind.
My mind is a disaster. I don’t wanna know this anymore. Finished. Back to the wonderful external world. But the point is we have to it is not easy to know the deep nature of our mind.
It it takes a lot of hard work and a lot of skillful work because our mind is a very subtle and tricky thing. But one of the great beauties of the mind and one of its one of the the natures of our mind is that by the power of familiarity, we can know anything. And as I was saying at the beginning of the talk, when you first notice something newly, you you only know it in a very little in a small way. One’s not familiar with it, so you only know a little bit, and it’s very confusing. The the experience is very unclear, not very satisfying, fulfilling.
But through the power of familiarity, the mind can know more and more and more. So through one can know the nature of our confused thoughts more and more and more, see their illusory nature more and more and more, understand that they’re not the true nature of our mind more and more and more, that below this ordinary mind that we’re experiencing now, we can know if we allow ourselves to know that there is something much more subtle, pure, powerful, and incredible, and amazing. And that itself is the process of knowing, allowing the mind to do its thing, creating the conditions, sitting down quietly, and allowing the mind to do it perform its function. Traditionally, as you’ve probably heard a million times, again, I’ll repeat it, is that, it is said in the teachings that our mind is like a mirror. The potential of our mind is like a mirror.
The true nature of our mind is like a mirror, a pure mirror, a clean, straight, perfect mirror that can know everything. So we make the mistake of thinking our mind is like a mirror now, but our mind, as it’s functioning now, is not like a mirror, or at least it’s not a clean, straight mirror. Our our mind now is like a very wobbly, dirty mirror that completely distorts things and therefore doesn’t know things clearly and correctly. But the true nature of our mind, this more subtle level of our mind, that has the potential to know things perfectly, exactly as they are. All we have to do is kind of wipe the dust from the mirror.
And in this case, that dust is our ordinary thoughts, our disturbed thoughts that come from our confusion, our ignorance of not knowing who we are. If we just go beyond all those thoughts, then one can begin to reach these more subtle levels of mind that have this potential for perfect wisdom, perfect understanding, perfect experience. It is that mind that has the potential, because it is able to know things perfectly, to experience perfect lasting happiness. So this is what all the Buddha’s teachings are about. When we take refuge in the Buddha, we take refuge in the Buddha’s teachings.
When we take refuge in the Buddha’s teachings, they are leading us to experience our own true nature, to take inner refuge, refuge within ourselves, to trust in ourselves, not as we are now, but in our inner potential. The term for in Tibetan is nangpa, which means an inner being, which I like this term much better than Buddhist because Buddhist sounds something very limited and kind of sectarian. But an inner being is someone who is looking for happiness inside, because that’s where it is metaphorically. Happiness is within our mind. It’s always there.
The potential for it is always there. And when you’re an inner being, you know where to look, and you’re following the path that leads inside. One is taking responsibility for one’s own happiness, realizing it’s not out there but within one’s mind, that suffering isn’t out there. The causes of suffering and dissatisfaction aren’t out there. They’re within one’s own mind.
So I think I’ve, This is something about the nature of mind, some points about the nature of mind, some of the basic points that are very helpful to know and to to think about. Is it true or not? I can’t prove any of this at all. It’s very difficult to prove. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, says that there is, within the Buddha’s teachings, proof of the existence of mind and the nature of mind, but the number of people who can understand it at any one point in time is maybe a handful, because the logic is so incredibly complicated.
But I think there are some signs that I try to point out that we can trust in the nature of mind. Because also going back to this the question of the brain, if if the mind is just the brain, then there’s just this life, then this denies the experience of all the cultures that have worked with the mind in the past. People who experienced past lives, remember them, and have some clairvoyance into future lives or, you know, immediate future. Many people have these experiences. Many people, particularly as children, not just children in cultures that believe in past lives, have memories of past lives.
Many, many children, even in this country, have this experience. Because when you’re young, the mind is sometimes a little less confused. There’s some a little bit of clarity there, and the past life is very close. It’s just a few years ago. All the strong imprints and memories and involvement of this life hasn’t built up so strongly, so the potential of the mind to know things clearly is functioning better in some ways.
So some children have the ability, when they’re very young, to remember some some points of their past their previous past life. So there is a huge amount of evidence of this among very, very ordinary people. But the view that the mind is just the brain can completely rejects all this because it doesn’t fit in. It just doesn’t fit in. But there is enormous amount of evidence for it.
And then if we consider how the mind works, which I’ll be talking about a bit, as some of you have been considered, maybe have been considering, about the law of cause and effect of karma, then the actions of this life don’t really explain all the things that happen in this life. To some extent, they do, but if one investigates more and more, just an explanation that the things of this life produce this life don’t really seem to work. Indicating that there is mind and that there is a continuity of mind, and this continuity has always existed and always will exist. So I’ll stop there. If you have any questions, I’m happy to try and answer.
This is an extremely difficult question. Think, aren’t we talking about mainly, in this case, as ordinary people? One knows in this way, in dependence on on labels, on concepts. It’s a kind of no I mean, kind of knowing that you put me back back is beyond these sorts of things. Eventually, it takes us beyond this.
Yeah. Mind. It’s a direct You know I mean, you know conventional truth. The conventional truth is dependent arising, depending on causes and conditions, parts, and the labeling mind. This is the conventional truth, but the ultimate truth Can I say this?
That the ultimate truth is not something No. Sorry. I can’t really answer your answer your question. But, anyway, when you old when you know the ultimate truth, you’re you’re knowing that directly with completely free of concepts. No.
Neither have I. But this is the teachings that that the ultimate truth is known directly, because This is the potential of the mental consciousness itself, that we know things now through concepts. We don’t know things directly. Our eye consciousness can know things directly without concepts. In that first moment, is a direct knowing of shape and color with the eye consciousness.
But then our mental consciousness, you know, then knows that that shape and color that’s been experienced by the eye consciousness. It knows it through concepts, not directly at our level now, but we have the potential to know with our mental consciousness, to know everything directly, completely free of concepts. The ultimate truth is just knowing the nature of things. Can an ordinary being No. But you don’t have to be enlightened to know the ultimate truth.
You you have you you the wisdom of emptiness. You see yeah. Then you see the ultimate truth, the final truth of all phenomena, directly with your mental consciousness, unhindered. So it’s like the yogic direct Yeah. Awareness of such and such.
Yeah. But it didn’t really answer your question. Sorry. I think his holiness once said that if they made computers sophisticated enough, maybe it would act as a basis for a mind to enter into it. But I’m not sure for you how serious he was, and he may have been joking.
Anyway, His Holiness wasn’t saying that the computer would generate a mind, would create a mind, or would become a mind. His Holiness was saying that just I understood was that just as our mind, because our brain is something very complex, it acts as a basis for a mind to work through it. Then, if one generated computers that became as subtle, as complex as the brain, the physical brain, then a mind could work through it, perhaps. But it’s still something completely different, and it wouldn’t be created by the computer or even ultimately dependent on the computer. Yeah.
It needs a vehicle. While it’s confused, it needs a vehicle from a Buddhist point of view. While the mind is confused and ignorant, Our mind has through habit, through beginningless time, it has identified with a physical body. So it has this confusion and attachment to substance. But it doesn’t need solid substance.
The most subtle level of mind doesn’t depend on anything else other than a previous moment, its own continuum. Our ordinary mind now definitely works through this body. It knows things through this eye. You need an eye to have an eye consciousness. The eye consciousness works through this physical eye.
Our ear consciousness works through this ear structure, and the body consciousness works through this body. So the ordinary level of mind functioning now does work through this brain and nervous system, but it’s not created by it. It’s dependent on it. But it’s not the main dependence, because this gross mind that is working through this brain and this nervous system and this body is fundamentally based and dependent on the most subtle level of mind, which came from a previous life. I mean, this the mind that we are experiencing now, this gross mind, because it’s dependent on this physical body and brain and nervous system, that this body is gonna come to an end with death.
It will die. So the mind that is arising in dependence on that will also cease completely. But that doesn’t mean that everything stops because the mind that is dependent on that body will shut down. But then when that stops, then a more subtle level of mind will arise, which has always been there, and which is the actual basis for, this gross mind. Which is a space like mind.
Yeah. It’s not space, but it’s this space like mind that had that came from a previous life, that that caused this this body to arise, and that will continue moment by moment into a next next life, which is, what is a life? It is an experience. It is a knowing. When you get down to it, what is my life?
It’s knowing many things. So you have different lives. So and depending on the body you’ve got, you know things in certain ways. If you’ve got a male body, then you you experience things in a male way. You can’t you can’t help it.
And if you have a female body, then you experience things in a female way. There’s some difference, not a big difference, but some difference. Just because of having a body, the mind operates through that. Operates through that. So this life, our life, if you think of it, is just experiences, many different big, small, good, bad, wise, stupid, all sorts of experiences.
Even this physical body is an experience. This is another whole area we didn’t get into, but the Western view is that matter came first. There was the big bang. There was then matter, bonk, and then maybe mind come came afterwards. If mind does exist, it came a long time after matter.
It’s a byproduct of matter. This is not the the Buddhist view. First, there was mind, then came matter. And in fact, it is very difficult to distinguish mind from matter. Even the great, you know, atomic physicists of the nineteen twenties discovered that, and only modern science is only starting and popular science and popular awareness of science is only starting to realize this, that this body seems like something very concrete and solid and real.
But when you get down to it, the only way this body exists and all solid matter exists, this whole world exists, this whole universe exists, is an experience. It’s just an experience. It’s just mind. It’s just knowing. No experience, if you don’t know something, doesn’t really exist for you?
Sorry? No. No. This is the mysterious thing. It just it’s just like that.
Mind knows, and it has this it has this ability to know. This hasn’t been created. It just simply exists. No. Not exactly.
You can’t say that. There are discrete, separate minds. When I experience something when I yeah. But when I experience something, you don’t experience it. But but a Buddha a Buddha has a correct view, has got rid of this wrong sense of I.
So there are Buddhas existing. They are existing in a state of pure bliss, compassion, wisdom. Right? Or maybe because that’s the potential of our mind. So when that’s developed, these beings exist.
Yeah. There are these Buddha minds existing. I’m not experiencing that. I’m not Buddha. I’m not experiencing Buddhahood now, but I’ve got mind.
I have the potential to experience that, but I’m not experiencing it now, whereas other beings are experiencing their Buddha potential as Buddhas right now. This indicates that there is some difference. There are discrete entities. There are Buddha minds. There are different minds.
They have the same potential, same nature. Yeah. Do minds need vehicles, our bodies and things? Why why can’t these subtle minds just all flow around? They can.
That’s what enlightenment is. But through ignorance, one has identified with this solid matter. If that happens, then could you have sentient beings just going around gross minds and no subtle mind? Could they No. No.
The the the two go together. You can’t have a gross mind without a subtle mind. The subtle mind your very subtle mind is the basis for the gross mind. But at the moment, the gross mind works through this physical body. But why this physical body arose in the first place is because of the subtle mind.
It’s a very complicated subject. It’s not something you can just kind of put together and do But the important thing to think about is, Do I have a brain, or do I have a mind? This is an incredibly important thing. I would like to make this little point, that many people say Buddhism is an extremely negative, pessimistic religion. Actually, Buddhism is the most wonderful, optimistic view of all, because Buddhism says there is mind, and therefore there is everything, and meaning exists.
And because of mind, one can experience enlightenment, bliss, perfection, and you can give that to others. This is the most optimistic, wonderful view existing in the universe. But so instead of that, what we have is suffering. What a shame. How ridiculous.
It doesn’t have to be. At a certain level, we can. When the mind gets more becomes more clear, it is able to draw on those experiences. Consciously, obviously in fact, we are already, but we don’t know it. The reason in this life we learn certain things easily is because we’re drawing on imprints from a past life.
Life. The reason it’s difficult to learn other things is there’s nothing to draw on from a previous life, or very little to draw on. We do that, although we’re not aware of that. But as we develop our awareness, the clarity of mind, we are able to consciously become know our previous experience and and develop it more and more. Indeed, you don’t have been there suffering.
Yes. Yes. Just like ordinary memory is a function of a clear mind. If the mind becomes more and more clear now and you already have a clear If you experience things with a clear mind, the memory of it is very clear. It’s also easier to remember it, because the imprint, the ordinary just talking at an ordinary level, you experience things with a lot of awareness, so the memory is very strong.
If we go through life in a very kind of obscured way, then our memories of what we did are very obscure like most of mine. It’s difficult to remember things. The more we obscure our mind, the more difficult it is to remember things even in this life. But then if you start to make your mind more clear again, then you can remember things more and more. If that continuum goes into the next life, you’ve got to start all over again?
Not all over again because there’s there there just we have memories of this life that we can build on, then we have karmic imprints and knowledge to build on, especially as we develop our mind more and more in the right way. Not developing the mind in sense What we do as ordinary people now, we develop our minds with intellectual information. But this doesn’t really develop the mind. It isn’t transformative. You can read the Encyclopedia Britannica and whatever and memorize it back to front, but this will not transform the mind.
Whereas real knowledge, real knowing, real experience transforms the mind. No. I think within mind itself, there is the quality of itself of directing.