Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven Thubten Dondrub explores karma, attachment, and genuine love through extended dialogue with the audience. Beginning with a spirited debate on the Buddhist law of cause and effect — its role in dependent arising, its relationship to emptiness, and how it grounds responsibility rather than victimhood — he then shifts to the psychological mechanisms of attachment in relationships. He diagnoses the common confusion of love with attachment: both rest on unmet inner needs, both generate heavy expectations, both deny people freedom to change. He illustrates this with examples from family and romantic bonds, then proposes a path forward: developing inner worth through recognising buddha nature, concentration and analytical meditation, and cultivating genuine affection grounded in self-worth rather than desperate dependence. He closes with practical strategies: avoiding triggering objects early on, meditating on loving-kindness, and using sustained contact with difficult people as an opportunity for insight into the suffering caused by expectation and exaggeration. Suited for practitioners seeking depth on mind and emotion.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11.mp3
UUID: 9b1f100a-bd93-4f19-88bb-07b50b323ddd
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: z done but no sheet no info (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~4,279
They’re experiencing an effect dependent on the causes, their own actions in the past. Wonderful people. Well, this is this is another huge topic I, you know, I talked tried to but according to the Buddhist teachings, everything depends every effect depends on causes. If you experience a result, you create the cause. That’s how you because a plane drops out of the sky.
karma is not so nebulous. I mean, it is a very subtle subject and not easy to understand. There doctrine of and no and no Sir, I shouldn’t be debating that. Sure. Can debate it, but I’m not quite sure what point you’re saying.
It’s charging is charging the karmic way. It’s Yes. But on the but the Dalai Lama has come after the teachings in the Buddha. I mean, the the Dalai Lama is not the central fact of Buddhism. karma and the teachings on rebirth weren’t developed to somehow justify Dalai Lama’s.
Sure. That’s absolutely true. But then It’s it’s it’s a doctrine of necessity. It isn’t No. No.
It’s not because the Dalai Lama’s came long after people believed in these teachings, and the central teaching of Buddhism is the teachings of emptiness. This is the most profound part of the Buddhist teachings, and the law of cause and effect is an essential part of those teachings. Well, I agree with you then. Well, you don’t have to, but I’m I’m trying to say that this is what we’re in the Buddhist teachings, what we’re trying to develop finally is wisdom, the wisdom that realizes emptiness. That makes good sense.
That liberates people from those things in fact. So is karma, because karma is an integral part of and the way you realize emptiness is by understanding dependent arising, and and the law of cause and effect is a fundamental aspect of dependent arising. I’m not quite sure what your point is. Maybe what what is pointed. You just said that there is the cause and effect, then you say, why bring in the cause and effect?
I don’t understand. It doesn’t change it. I agree with you. But if the doctrine wasn’t there, it would quite change the structure of the Buddhist. It wasn’t Well, there wouldn’t be Buddhism without the law of cause and effect.
It’s not a necessitating doctrine. It’s It must essentially, that’s not but I’ll agree with you. It’s it’s there’s there’s good reason. There’s a sound reason Because deserving has got nothing to do with the law of cause and effect. Well, have well, I bet I’m mistaken, and I don’t understand it for you.
You’re a what? I don’t understand it. Right. Then because it’s a very subtle thing. It’s very complicated.
There’s subtlety involved. I I Well, I tried to talk about it for a couple of hours, couple of nights ago. I I I can’t go into it now. But I didn’t I didn’t But it’s it’s not it’s not related. Ten because I I Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I think if you if you understand it, it makes complete sense. Much, much more sense than anything else, especially if you understand the relationship between physical matter and mind. Then if you understand that, if you study something about cognitive science and if you study something about emptiness, if you combine those, then the more you know something about that, the more you can understand about the law of cause and effect, how it really makes sense. Yes.
But it’s yes. Not even that simple. Who knows who the Tibetans who were suffering were or when they they may have created that the cause for that ten billion years ago, ten billion lifetimes ago. Yeah. Well, if you have that idea of Buddhism, then it’s not worth following.
I quite a mistake. I mean I digressed myself. So I’m sorry. Yeah. It’s okay.
What? What? To use. Well, it can be. It can be, sure.
Sure. Whatever we experience, it depends to some extent on others, but for that experience to come, the principal cause comes from ourselves. It’s exactly responsibility. Well, that’s what it leads to. But it was it’s not like it’s it it was invented to make us be responsible.
It’s it’s a perception of of how thing how the mind actually works. Yeah. Since your experiences are your mind, so for your mind to have an experience, the cause lies within your mind. Maybe we can leave it because it could go on quite a bit. Sorry.
If there is something more on what I’ve been saying about it. Yes? Well, of course, once you have responsibilities, you can’t give up your responsibilities. That’s that’s irresponsible. Right?
Well, he you mean Śākyamūni? Yeah. Well, if you yeah. Because he he knew what he was doing and what the result would be, I think. Also, if you check up with the life of the Buddha, he he he gave up his he abandoned his wife and child and all his family and everything, but his wife became a nun and she became one.
At arhats, his son became an arhat. All the most of the concubines in his harem became nuns and became arhats. His father became an arhat. Because so because of doing that, you know. But we’re not at that level.
So, of course, you know, everyone has their different types of responsibilities that we have to follow. And But again, all one can do is try to see them in the context of the real meaning of life and fulfill those, but give some time for other things, the important things. Don’t know what else I can say specifically or something particularly worries you. Sure. Partly what’s emphasized in the Mahāyāna tradition is to try to do things, to change your motivation for doing things, and to try and motivate that everything you do is done for the benefit of others, not just for yourself or just for your family, but that this becomes a cause for developing your mind in a very expansive way.
You can use the practice of working with your family to develop greater qualities for sure. By practicing patience and trying to develop actual real love for your family rather than just attachment for your family, which is pretty it is difficult. But, I mean, we have to do. We should do. And, yeah, I mean, one one thing I I I haven’t got around to saying, but maybe just take the opportunity now to say that, again, one of the faults of attachment is particularly in the situation of relationships with other people.
One of the things about attachment is that because of all the things I already mentioned, that we have we have this sense of of something lacking within us, and we try to find that outside among other people and other things, and particularly with people, of course. And and then we seem to find that, and we become dependent on these people, are very attached to them, and because they are making me happy, feel fulfilled and so on. And that happens, and we call that love, but much of that is attachment, and it has this quality of attachment to people and things, has the quality of expectation. Right? And this is a very insidious kind of thing, especially in relationship to people.
That because we’ve developed this relation, you have made me happy, therefore I love you, and blah blah blah, and it goes on. With attachment, which is not love, with attachment, you then expect this person to behave continuously in a certain way because this particular behavior makes me happy. Yeah. And we call this I love you because you make me happy while you do this, I love you because this makes me feel good. And so in a in a when in a situate relationships with a lot of attachment, there is a lot of expectation.
Also, the more insecurity one has oneself, a sense of lack of worth, and you find that in someone else, the more expectation you are expecting this person to make me happy, perfectly happy, all the time. And this is an incredibly heavy burden to put on anyone. We call this love, but in fact, it’s not it’s not loving the person at all. You’ve placed this huge burden on this other person to perpetually make you completely content and happy and solve all one’s problems. Can we make sure we can?
But maybe if I could just carry on for a little while. Sorry. No. No. I don’t think so.
No. Oh, I lived here a long time. Yeah. That’s the choice of our mind. Yeah.
No. And yet and yet, you’re saying wonderful national anthem that they’re about to be free. No. They were not free. No.
Sure. Whatever is. Sure. We are not free politically, socially, and especially we’re not free in our mind, but this is this is where we can this is where we can this is where we can achieve freedom. This is the most important one.
And, actually, the law of cause and effect enables us to have that freedom. But just going back to this point that our attachment, not our love, puts a lot of expectation and burden on the people we so call this that we love, so called. Yeah? So this is really not a very fair thing, and it creates a lot of conflict because each person is expecting so much from the other, expecting one’s inner lack of fulfillment to be fulfilled. And that’s that’s why there’s so many difficult relationships, because there’s so much expectation.
Also, one does that with children. You expect them to be like this. My children have to be like this. My children will provide my happiness and security and this and that. But children have their own lives.
People say, I want to have a baby, so it’s their own personal possession. But when you have a baby, you’ve got a little body with an ancient, ancient mind. Yeah? It’s not your baby at all, in a way. It’s it’s it’s own being.
And yet, expect this child to do this, this, and this, behave like this, this, this, and this. I mean, to some extent, of course, we have some responsibility to encourage our children to do certain things, but we have so much expectation which we put on people that we say we love, but it’s just attachment. It’s not love. It’s not being kind to people to expect them to to to make me perfectly happy. No nobody can do that.
One’s children, family, all of it together, can’t do it. It’s just not fair. It’s not right to do that. It’s completely unwise, unskillful to do that. Yeah.
So which doesn’t mean we can’t love our our family and enjoy our family and give time and energy to them, but we should try to be free of the attachment that’s involved, that dependence and the expectation that comes with that dependence, because that kind of really destroys everything. What goes with that, which I try to point out, that the more we have this sense of inadequacy within ourselves, the more we desire something out there. And the more we desire something out there, the more we’re attached to it, and the more we expect something from it and demand something from it. And also, you know, attachment has this quality of living in the past. You you were like this before, so you always have to be like this.
There’s no there’s no space for someone to change and or and for oneself to change. So one of the of overcoming attachment is trying to see that we have this value. We really do have it. Mean, we do have our negative qualities. We have to admit to those.
We do have our limitations. We have anger and pride and jealousy and so on that arise in various ways at various times. Definitely, have those, but this is not our true nature. We shouldn’t identify we make a mistake when we identify with those things as being me and as being my true nature. Pardon?
I took an ego trick just I don’t know about that. No. It’s okay. No problem. Yeah.
That’s okay. Sorry. Wasn’t able to answer your questions very well, but we’ll try. No. But That’s our karma.
This is just our karma. I haven’t made the choice. I’ve been I’ve I’ve made the choice coming here. Good. So we can we can change our karma.
So we can change all of this. Yeah. We can change all of this. Sure. That also is our karma, that is ours, and it can change.
One can be it on oneself, too. Yeah, definitely. So maybe just to continue this point a little bit first, okay? This is the point I tried to make at the very beginning of the day, is that in the process of overcoming our attachment, because our attachment doesn’t go away overnight, we have to reduce our attachment, minimize it, particularly to particular people and things, but still we have the tendency, the potential for attachment all the time. We can try to modify individual attachments step by step Since our mind is colored by attachment to some extent, then when we try to reduce our individual specific attachments, there can be this sense that we’re going to suffer, we’re going to lose out, and maybe in one way, very temporary, maybe we do.
Because it’s some hard work to give up our attachment, there’s effort and pain, you think, oh, I failed and I’m not working, and we torment ourselves with all this kind of thing. So there is some difficulty, but we have to have the confidence in the long run it really does work and that a state of non attachment is better than a state of attachment. It’s more satisfying. So we have to, on the one hand, work on that, but on the other hand, we have to develop some sense of our inner worth, yeah, to find this this satisfaction within ourselves and just basically develop this confidence that we do have this basic goodness. It’s always there, despite the fact that there are these other dark clouds that sometimes hang around us, our negative side.
But below that and always there is this basic goodness that we can take refuge in, deserves happiness, that has real value, that we are worthwhile people, and that we have what we are really seeking inside ourselves. If we really develop that awareness and like a continuous awareness of that, sense of that, to some extent in our life, then the more we keep in contact with that, then there’s no need for attachment. There’s less need for attachment. There’s no there’s never any need for attachment. Sorry.
There’s not the there’s less there’s less kind of this desperate need, which is desire attachment. Right? Which doesn’t mean we we stop being affectionate, kind, loving people. In fact, when we have this inner sense of value, it means we have love for our valid love for ourselves, which we have to have. And when we’ve got that, we can actually love other people.
We can if we appreciate ourselves for what we are and our potential, then we can appreciate other people, which is love. If we can wish ourselves happiness by giving up attachment because following attachment isn’t being kind to ourselves. It’s not being loving to ourselves following attachment. Because it’s just a source of suffering and limitation. In developing this understanding of what we what our inner quality really is, and therefore developing love for ourselves, real appreciation for ourselves, this acts as a basis for genuine love for other people, not affection not not attachment for people, but real affection, just appreciating them for what they are, wanting them to have happiness.
Just that. That’s what love is, just simply wishing happiness for oneself and for others, and it has to begin with oneself. If you don’t love yourself, if we don’t love ourselves, we can’t love other people. We can only have attachment for other people. Yeah.
But if we have some real affection for ourselves, we can have real affection for others. Yeah. And then we can give them space in that to to be themselves, to change, and go their own way because all we want is for them to be happy. We’re not demanding something for ourselves because we feel inadequate. Of course, this can only be done step by step, but it can be done.
It definitely can be done. This can be done by thinking about our Buddha nature and our precious human rebirth, the situation that we’re in. Just these simple things about what we did at the beginning. We try this breathing meditation or any kind of concentration meditation where we concentrate on something, by doing that, our mind becomes calmer and clearer. And that that is a reflection of what we’re looking for anyway.
It’s it’s some glimmer, some hint of what we’re actually always seeking out there, but which is in us all the time. Just by a little bit of meditation, one gets some calmness and clarity, some peace. That’s a good state of mind. It’s a very nice state of mind. It’s a virtuous state of mind, or it can lead to all virtuous states of mind.
When the mind is more focused, calm, and clear, then naturally the positive potentials in the mind can develop one’s patience, love, affection, sensitivity, equanimity, wisdom, compassion. They all can develop from that basis because they’re already there. So if we create that situation, then we can start to experience something, some glimmer of our our Buddha nature, of our basic goodness. Yeah. And then we can feel real affection for ourselves because we have this good stuff inside us.
We really do. And it’s always there. It’s always there. Right. I mean, one of the things that Lama Yeshe used to say many years ago, he discovered about Westerners, is we have such a low opinion of ourselves.
Even if we’re very arrogant, proud people, deep down, we have such a low opinion of ourselves. Yeah? And that’s why we need so much stuff to make me feel good. Yeah? If I have all these things, then I am something good.
But having and being are very different things. But but, actually, there is this good stuff there, but we never allow ourselves to experience it. If we ever look in our mind, all we see first is confusion, which is usually what does happen. When we sit and meditate, Most people complain, I don’t bother to meditate because I can’t concentrate. When I try to meditate, all I get is lots of thoughts, so I don’t bother meditating.
This is a really strange way of sinking, because of course there are all these strange thoughts, all this thought going on. It’s always there. It’s actually always there. It’s just when you sit down and try to meditate that we become aware of it. But it’s going on in our mind twenty four hours a day, nonstop, out of control, with no awareness.
I think you have to work on it. I mean, there’s some potential for them to arise, particularly if there’s some strong past imprints, but basically we have to work on them. Yes, yes, because particularly in this tradition, the Gelugpa School of Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, this center follows, was founded by Lama Je Tsongkhapa. He explained that there are two main kinds of meditation. One is concentration meditation, which involves focusing on one point and subduing thoughts, which is what most people think is meditation, but it’s only one kind.
But there is another kind which is equally, if not more important, which is what is called analytical or checking or contemplative meditation, where you think about specific things in a controlled way, having developed some degree of concentration and having subdued the negative thoughts, the confused garbage thoughts we usually follow. On the basis of that, one then develops one’s positive thoughts. There are systemized meditations that one does to increase the thought or that enable the potential for love to develop by thinking about it, that enable the potential for compassion to develop by thinking in a certain way about suffering of oneself and others, that increases one’s little bit of compassion. The virtue of calmness, necessarily. It’s good to do both together.
Just developing this calmness from our tradition, the way most of the Lama say, this is a little bit of a trap. Because this calmness meditation is so pleasant, you get trapped in it. It just becomes used to call it’s one aspect of what he used to call spiritual materialism. I have no idea that it’s Yeah. That it’s a very nice state of you know, you feel very nice and spiritual, but you get stuck there.
You don’t develop. And that itself isn’t so any great achievement on the path because just that kind of concentration with some calmness and clarity, that doesn’t eliminate the causes of suffering. But it’s definitely something, a method, that if you use it with the right motivation, with the right understanding, is very important. But the trap is if one hasn’t developed the right motivation and the right understanding, one can get just stuck there. Yes.
I don’t know. Not familiar I’m not familiar enough with the tradition to to know how they do it. Yeah. I don’t really know. Yeah.
Could you give us the book titles? Book titles. On. Book titles about attachment, I don’t know of any just on that subject that I can think of offhand. But of course, this topic, this subject of attachment comes up in many parts, in many Buddhist books.
On the nature of the mind also, what is there? There’s this book by Kalu Rinpoche called Luminous Mind, but that’s not just about the mind. Mhmm. Okay. Alright.
Well, they’re in many lamrim books like Pabongka Rinpoche’s Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. Also, it’s a book by the commentary by his holiness Dalai Lama called the path to bliss. Yeah. I haven’t read it. I’m just yeah.
I have to read this one. Yeah. The biggest selling Buddhist book, and I haven’t read it. I’m kind of a bit ashamed about that. There are too many good Buddhist books to read now.
But some of these things, you you get from here and there. It just comes from reading and thinking about many different points. Any other questions? Yes. This is kind of difficult.
It’s a lot yeah. Well, in terms of objects, not people, but in terms of objects, one skillful thing to do is to avoid the object. I was saying the reason any delusion arises, any afflicted thought arises, is because firstly there’s the potential in the mind, but then there’s the meeting of the object. So the easiest thing to do in the beginning, as a beginner, is to avoid the object. As soon as you know this kind of thing produces this kind of thought in my mind uncontrollably, then the first thing to do is to try to avoid the object.
But of course and then you’ve got some space to work on that delusion. But that is the main thing to do, is to use one’s mind to work on the delusion because we can’t always avoid the object. But of course, while one is in contact with the object, it’s very difficult to reduce the delusion. That’s the way it works. The more frequently you’re in contact with object, the more the delusion arises.
But then on the other hand, if you have some wisdom and you’ve thought about it, then by being in the contact with that object and you can see the nature of the suffering that comes from relating to that object with attachment rather than just appreciation or affection or love, then you’re forced, because you’re always in contact with the object, to change. It gives some kind of opportunity to to change and to see that what is causing the problem is my attachment, which means I’m exaggerating something here, some big exaggeration is going on. Also, quality of holding on to the permanence of something and the expectation and the dependence. Right? So these things we can try to reduce step by step.
And at the same time, to gain some inner confidence, some inner refuge. Especially if one has that bit, then it’s easier to overcome the attachment, the dependence, the expectation. And also just to meditate on loving kindness, that I want this person to be happy. Right? Not not just I want them to be happy so they’ll make me happy, which is attachment, but really, how can I make this person happy?
And not just superficially happy, how can I entertain their ego and so on, but how can I give them some real inner peace? How can I create? I can’t actually give them that, but how can I create the causes, conditions for that for them? Right. How can we relate that way?
This I mean, in traveling around, I’ve seen some people who have some amazing relationships with with each other like that.