Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 42-minute teaching, Ven Thubten Gyatso examines how disturbing emotions like anxiety, jealousy, anger, and paranoia all stem from a single root: a mistaken, grasping view of self. He traces this from infancy — when a baby cries and learns that demanding attention works — through adolescence, relationships, and adulthood, showing how the illusion of a solid, independent self drives endless suffering. Using the analogy of a wave in the ocean, he explains why searching for a concrete “I” within body and mind yields nothing; we exist only by label, not by intrinsic nature. Rather than wait for full realization of emptiness, he offers immediate practical steps: shift focus from self-image to others’ needs, cultivate generosity and patience, overcome anger and attachment, and develop enthusiasm despite repeated failure. This is grounded Dharma teaching pitched at practitioners new to Buddhist thought and those struggling with everyday emotional turbulence.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 DE 1995 10 21.mp3
UUID: e48eed1e-3ad7-4b32-950a-e1a5606fdb90
Teacher: Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman
Collection: Dealing With Disturbing Emotions (Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman)
Date: 1995-10-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.5 minutes
Words: ~4,782
I wanted to try and explain the development of disturbing emotions, and they begin with the what I call self consciousness. Now in our usual terminology we have the expression to be self conscious, which usually we talk about somebody being self conscious when they through some excessive sensitivity or awareness of self, they do or say becomes influenced, perhaps becomes hindered by a heightened self consciousness. Now, that is indeed a universal problem. Within the Buddhist context, self consciousness carries a little more flavor than that. According to the Buddhist teachings, the very root of all of our disturbing thoughts and our unhappiness is due to a not only a heightened state of self consciousness, but to a preoccupation with our self image, grasping and clinging at our self image, this sense of self.
And then fundamentally, our sense of self is flawed in that it’s mistaken, that we think ourselves to be something which we’re not. And not knowing that, not knowing that the way the sense of I operates in our mind, we never question that what appears to our mind when we think I, me, or you, him, her, and so on, you we relate to the selves of others. We never question the the fact that perhaps there is some mistake in the way we see each other. And there is a mistake. There is an element of mistake.
And that is the root of all of our problems. So if we can identify the error that occurs in our experience of self and of others, then we can remove all of the more gross disturbing mental emotions that arise from that root error. And that indeed is the entire message that the Buddha taught, that herein lies the solution to problems. And obviously, it’s a personal problem. We can’t just grab somebody and hold them by the shoulders or by the throat and say, You see yourself wrongly.
This is how you are. Can’t just inject that awareness, that understanding into somebody’s mind, each of us has to come to our recognition, personal understanding of the flaws in the way we see ourselves in the world and then overcome that flaw. And because the mistake is extremely subtle, it’s not something we can do overnight. We have to work on it very much, but eventually there is success as was demonstrated by not only by the Buddha himself, but by so many of his disciples when he was teaching in India and since then who have generated the realization of the emptiness of these false projections about how we and how others exist. That’s called the door of liberation.
And therefore the ignorance or the confused mind, what we call the self grasping mind, is a barrier to liberation and it’s the cause for unhappiness. Now, not talking about this sort of root mistake, but at a more superficial level. Indeed, we are all preoccupied with our self image. Whatever we’re doing in society, in our family, relaxed with friends or even maybe at an important meeting with others looking on and whether we’re teaching or listening or whatever we’re doing, there is this sense of self. Our mind is acutely aware of our self image.
Now, in general, with our self image we can either see it in a negative way or we can see it in an exaggerated way. What I mean by negative is a self deprecating manner. We can put ourselves down. Or the other extreme is we can exaggerate ourselves and see ourselves to be much more inflated, much better than we are, and to believe in that as being true. And also individuals fluctuate according to the situation.
Sometimes we see ourselves, we put ourselves down. Other times we see ourselves in an enhanced way compared to others. When we put ourselves down, we have the experience of shyness, embarrassment and maybe anxiety, to worry about whatever we’re doing and what people are going to think about us. I’m not doing this right. When those thoughts are manifesting, then naturally we tend to make mistakes or we do things incompletely or we don’t do things at all.
We withdraw from venturing into doing something we’re actually capable of doing, but it’s this shyness or this self consciousness that is the limitation, the barrier. At extreme levels, if if we become too preoccupied, too unsure of ourselves, too anxious, then we we gravitate into depression and we we almost become paralyzed with a sense of inability to do a certain thing. Then the extreme state of mind that we can fall into is probably the extreme of feeling paranoia. Paranoia is actually a misused word very much in our speech. We tend to any sort of fear as paranoia, but that’s not true.
The real meaning of paranoia is where our mind invents a false threat or invents a threat coming to us either from people or even from the environment or from television or whatever. Something which is plainly false but we believe it to be true. We’re fixed. Don’t have this delusion thinking that, you know, they’re out to get me. So it’s me.
It’s the this self conscious attitude which is the basis of that. Always strongly concerned about me, what they’re saying about me, what they think about me, what they’re doing to me. It’s clear if we see somebody who’s experiencing paranoia. But actually we all have this heightened sensitivity, great concern of me, me, me and how I am coming across, what they’re thinking about me. And that is such a constraint that that gives us no freedom to talk, to think, to express ourselves in in a creative way, especially especially it makes us incapable of of loving and having compassion and kindness and really opening our heart to others because we’re too preoccupied with self.
So that’s sort of a negative way that our self image can affect. On the other side, the exaggerated way in which the self image can interfere with experiencing happiness is when we generate pride and arrogance, where we have this inflated self opinion. We become very opinionated and we have this attitude of superiority. And that also takes us away from being able to communicate and to relate to people. If we sort of close-up with shyness and so on, then we can’t communicate.
The same thing, if we feel superior and arrogant and put others down, I think that we’re much better. Then also we are separating ourselves from communication, from being able to be with people. We can recognize that somebody has an attitude of superiority towards us. And I’m sure that you know that in your own mind that as soon as you spot it, you throw out your defenses or you become antagonistic. It’s not easy to feel very fond of somebody who is acting in a very arrogant, superior attitude towards ourselves.
So we should check up when we have pride, when we feel arrogant because we all have it. We’re not free of pride. It’s one of the root sort of disturbances in our mind. Also, perhaps in this group of over exaggerated self, opinions, maybe the emotion of jealousy. Jealousy is that, you know, state where we can’t stand somebody doing well or somebody being better than us and we feel that we’re actually superior, we’re better.
So jealousy is really a very disturbing state of mind. And that leads to resentment and then that can lead to anger. So many disturbances in our minds come from this self consciousness. Either putting ourselves down or exaggerating our self image, they both lead to a state of loneliness, a state of isolation. More and more as we become trapped in these disturbing mental attitudes we become isolated.
We become isolated from people at work, friends, even our family. And that is a result which we don’t want. None of us wants that. We want to have friends. We want to communicate.
How often do we seek help? We go to other friends, maybe doctors, counselors, whatever, communication problem. I can’t can’t get things to work with with the relationship or with my children or with my parents. You know, it’s going both ways. And there are many factors, of course, are many factors in our communication, our problems with communication.
But the one we can deal with directly is the selfishness in our own heart. So we’ve got to recognize our part in the miscommunication. And that we can deal with. So it’s the best we can do. We can’t manipulate and change the other person’s opinion if we’re not even, you know, they’re wrong.
There is still some something internally that we can deal with. That’s our responsibility. That’s our primary responsibility. To get our own mind as clear as possible and free of distorted thoughts. Then it’s not going to be perfect because there’s the other people as well that we don’t communicate so well with.
But it’s going to be better. It’s going to be better. And that little improvement may jolt something in their thoughts that the other side argument can slowly begin to change. And so we can grow. We can grow and improve our communication and then experience more and more creative relationships, the sort of things that we want.
It’s not going to be perfect. And Buddhism is not like a social code of saying that everybody will be living like this, they’ll all be practicing loving kindness and compassion, there won’t be any anger or selfishness. That’s unrealistic. Such expectationism has never been achieved in human society in the past. It didn’t occur the time of the Buddha, so it certainly won’t occur now.
But individually we can make inner peace. And from that we can then, when we’re peaceful, we can benefit whoever may come in contact with us. So that’s our role. That is our role. That’s our purpose in this life, in society, to have stability and peace.
And as much as people are able to use, to benefit from our attainment, then that’s our feedback, that’s our joy, that’s our payment, that’s what we’re after, to be able to radiate. Okay. So you shouldn’t have high expectations in terms of, all the problems are going to be resolved. All they have to do is meditate and do this and that and the problems will be resolved. They keep coming.
And I’m sure those who didn’t put their hands up, those who have been coming over to Buddha House for a long time. You might wonder, well, why? I’ve been doing this but still problems are happening. Even at Buddha house problems are happening. Right in the heart of it all.
How come? Every sense is the same. I’m not picking on you. And it’s because each individual needs to work on his or her mind and then just grow from that point. And don’t be, how do you say, don’t be critical about this.
Say, Why aren’t you practicing? You’re supposed to be Buddhist. Why aren’t you practicing loving kindness and why don’t you go there and work when I have to do all the work or something like that. If we feel like that, then we’re missing the point. And even within the family we have to realize that there is a lot of responsibility.
That we are going to relationships take effort and they can take continual effort. They don’t reach this point of floating along on their own. That will always require effort as long as our minds have this distorted self image, this self consciousness, as long as our minds have anger, and as long as we have attachment, our relationships are always going to require work to maintain compatibility, to maintain communication and to grow mutually. It’s difficult, but it’s possible. Don’t be a perfectionist.
The most important thing is to be relaxed and not to be too serious. That’s my survival motto. Don’t get too serious about yourself, about others. Have to learn to to let things go. And just as in our mind, sometimes the afflictions of anger and attachment, jealousy, they just sweep over.
And we do and say and think stupid things and so do others, so do those close to us. Now, if we collect every sort of arrow that they throw at us and we have this whole collection of arrows that we carry around, then every time we move those arrows are going to stick into us and they’re going to hurt. Better throw them away. It doesn’t mean that we have to let ourselves be a doormat and to be used and abused and hurt. But we have to use wisdom and love and compassion.
So love and compassion especially when somebody is harmful towards us. So when a child, a small child, we say it’s time to go home now, so they scream and kick and yell and maybe even throw stones at us or whatever. We don’t sort of react with anger and resent them and score it up and say, I’ll get even with you. Similarly, when adults scream and then kick and confuse, we shouldn’t have a scorecard and generate resentment and I’ll get even. We should have compassion and love and realize it.
But what’s going on in their minds is like a sickness. So with compassion, just to let it go and then actively help with love. Much better. Not easy. Yeah, sounds alright.
Yeah, sounds quite logical but I know it’s not easy to practice. There’s no other thing to do. This is the way to make our lives at least peaceful and happy. If we take them to court, that doesn’t make them friends. It becomes very expensive and antagonism grows and it makes it almost impossible to communicate.
That’s being very serious. But I’m just talking very general. There’s so many different situations and different factors to take into consideration. I’m just sort of giving a general idea to approach the problems that we all experience because of our disturbing emotions. So let’s get back to the root.
Right? The root of our problems is this mistaken view of the self which we grasp and cling to and we accumulate the self image. Now, it begins, well, even before birth, but let’s say we’re born with this mistaken view of the self. Even when we’re in the mother’s womb or after we’ve been born, the baby has a sense of I. There’s a strong sense of self.
And when this sense of I, of me, appears to the baby, what appears is that there is an intrinsic self, like there’s a solid concrete person who is the basis of all the experiences. It’s the same me that is going through time I’m the same person. And of course we don’t even question this appearance of unchanging self, the person who experiences pleasure and pain. More than that, not only is there the appearance of the self to be unchanging, but we feel, how do you say it, it’s like we exist as an individual independent of of anything else. There is a this, what we call, self sufficient or intrinsically existing I.
A me who exists am I right? I possess this body. I possess this mind. I am experiencing this. I am doing that.
Tomorrow I will do such and such. The next day I will do When we think I in the context of those thoughts, what is appearing to our mind is a rock solid concrete I unchanging existing in my own right. So that we call the false appearance. The false appearance of of I, that when we think I, such a concrete solid appearance is really false. Because if we if there were such a concrete self, an intrinsically existing self, if we search for the person, right, locate the I, locate the individual, then the more we search, the closer we should come to discovering the person who exists in his or her own right or from his or her own side.
No. Independently of anything else. The actual person. Now, if we analyze the basis of the person, the body and the mind, and we try to identify the person who exists in his or her own right. Well, don’t come up with anything.
We look through the body, all the parts of the body and there is nothing which is specifically me. And then we look in the mind, try to analyze the various thoughts and feelings and emotions and knowledge and memories. So there are all these different parts of the mind. But they’re just sort of mental sensations, mental experiences. They’re not the person, they’re not the experiencer, the one who’s possessing those experiences.
So if we try to find a concrete self existing experience then, we run out of places to look within the body and mind or separate from the body and mind. If it does exist concretely, it should come clear when we look for it. But there’s nothing there. Now, this does not mean that there is no person, but it means that there is no person existing as we appear to ourselves, as the sense of I appears. Nevertheless, we grasp that appearance to be true because there’s no alternative.
We’re born with this strong appearance and we naturally grasp. So as a young child or as a baby, we’re born with this false view, this mistaken view of concrete independent self existence, which is an illusion. There is just a body and mind which is labeled I. For example, if we can look at the ocean, then a big wave comes in. And we can all say, look at the wave, there’s a big wave.
So we watch it break and so on. So there’s a wave, there’s something concrete there. This wave you can have fun riding down or it can dump you and drown you or it can look very attractive with a beautiful crest. There’s a wave for sure. But within that object that we call wave, there’s no wave.
There’s just water. And in dependence upon the causes and conditions of the wind blowing, the energy coming from some storm out in the middle of the sea, this appearance that we call wave has come. But it’s just water shaped into a particular shape we call wave that will soon dissipate. As it breaks, it will completely dissipate. Gone.
But there was a wave and then it changed into something else. Maybe became another wave. Similarly, all the elements of our body are, if you look at it in a broad perspective, vegetables growing and fruit growing in the garden and whatever we have to eat and drink and even the air we breathe just coming together and creating this form of this body which is like a wave and we call that I. But just as there’s no wave to be found in that thing on the ocean, you know, existing from its own side, similarly in the body there’s just this wave or this temporary accumulation of atoms molecules into a human body that we call I. But actually, actually there is no self to be located within the body.
The same with the mind. Mind means awareness. The meaning of mind is consciousness or awareness. So that’s nonphysical. Awareness is a nonphysical phenomenon, but it exists and it can be happy, unhappy, knowledgeable, dumb, not knowledgeable, it can do many things.
It can have love, it can have hate. There are many qualities, positive and negative of mind. But all the qualities of consciousness too. I’d like the consciousness which is associated with this body is also dependent upon causes and conditions. You can’t have consciousness without an object.
You can’t have human consciousness without the functioning nervous system and the sense organs. So it depends. Our consciousness depends upon the physical shape. But within consciousness or mind there is no person. It is just a label, awareness, that we put upon this phenomenon of awareness.
Temporarily there is consciousness and body functioning and we call that the person. But we just label person on top of that combination. Within the combination there is no person. No person that can be found. Okay, so that’s how we do exist.
How? By the label. The mere name. The mere, how do you say it, labeling of I upon the basis of the body and mind. Now we don’t know that.
And the ignorance, the root problem is that we what appears to our mind is that there is a concrete I here. A real me. The center of everything. I’m the same always. And when we’re babies, there’s this strong sense of I and just I want pleasure.
I want to be free from pain. And we make known to our parents when we’re hungry or cold or afraid and we cry very loudly. And we usually we receive the comfort. We receive the warmth. We receive the love.
We receive the food that we demand. And so we’re quite pleased with this and our sense of self is reinforced. And our sense of other, our sense of mother and father and, you know, brothers and sisters becomes very strong, very strong individuals. So with this sort of strong sense of self need, we don’t even have to manipulate our environment. We just have to shout and our requirements just come.
Then as we grow older we learn that what we want doesn’t necessarily come just with a cry. And so we might, in fact sometimes we might get a smack instead of the kiss or whatever it was that we’re after. So we learn to modify our behavior to get what we want. But we still are driven by this overwhelming self consciousness of I, I want this, I need that. Mummy, look at me.
We’re playing in the school yard. We want everybody to pay attention to me, me, me. And then when a brother or sister want to play with our toys or the kid from next door, there’s this strong sense of mine. And so you can see the root of the rivalry that develops is this overwhelming sense of I and me and I want and I don’t want. So, starts to lots of problems start to appear now because of our desperate need for pleasure and our desperate need to be free from pain.
And anger and aggression start to manifest towards any person or thing that threatens what we want. And we have strong attachment and grasping and clinging to any possession or anything which enhances our self image. Our parents soon become maybe replaced by, as we’re growing up, they’re replaced by our peer group and we may no longer care about our parents and don’t look to them for support. We’re very conscious of how we fit in with our peer group, with a group of friends at school. And so there’s incredible competition to be considered a good person just for recognition, to be liked.
And this sort of desperate striving to be seen as a positive light on the points of others is based upon the self image, grasping at this self image. The clothes we wear, we may reject one aspect of society and we don’t wear that type of clothes, we wear this type of clothes. You can see how especially in our teenage years, we become slaves to fashion which is manipulated very well by the makers of consumer goods. And people are making billions and billions of dollars by recognizing our desperate need to be equal or better than our peers. In fact, our whole society I think, runs along that.
The consumer society runs upon the exploitation of that desperate need that we have in our minds, is born out of ignorance. Then, maybe later, so we grow up and we establish relationships, we get married and so even with our partner, in the choice of our partner, there’s this strong sense of self image and how this or that person will fit my lifestyle, how they will relate to me. And although, of course, there are many positive things in relationships, the negative things in relationships comes from this unfulfilled obsession with the self image of I and what I want. And so we start to put demands upon our partner and, you know, they replace our mother or our father, even our group of friends. And in our mind, we want them to give us the feedback.
We want them to give us the love, the recognition, the attention that we’ve always craved all our life. And so we’ve become burdens upon each other. We’ve become terrible burdens upon each other in imposing, even not necessarily consciously, even subconsciously, we are imposing tremendous burdens upon each other and so the relationship becomes very fragile because of this self centered attitude. So, I’m painting picture, but this is what the Buddha explained to the people in India two and a half thousand years ago. This is how your lives are.
This is the source of your problems, the self centered attitude. Now, just as it was true for the people in India at the time of the Buddha, it has been found to be equally true wherever the teachings have spread throughout Southeast Asia, North, Tibet, China and so on. And each new culture, this fundamental teaching has been thought about and contemplated and people thought, That’s right. That’s right. That is how things work.
And I think in the West also, a completely different culture, but still the fundamental truth of what the Buddha taught about the nature of the human mind, it fits. It fits our experience. And so recognizing that, then that is the first step in overcoming. Recognizing Recognizing the problem then generates the wish to overcome the problem. So as the root problem is this self consciousness based upon a mistaken view of the self, then obviously the first solution is to eliminate this wrong appearance, the wrong appearance of it, what we call a truly existing I.
That will ultimately, that will be the ultimate solution. Until we can reach that ultimate solution, in the meantime, we can overcome the problems of self consciousness by cultivating an awareness of others and their needs, the needs of others. By being, instead of in the morning thinking what can I do to be happy today, think how can I help others today? Make that the sort of dominant drive for our behaviour, this awareness of the needs of others and the wish to fulfil their needs. Thirdly, we need to overcome the most disturbing emotion which is anger.
Fourthly, the next most disturbing emotion, attachment. And then, we need to cultivate generosity, patience, morality. Enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, the great, you know, wish to really this, the courage and the determination to work on our minds despite the continual setbacks in life. The continual being let down by our own mind, not to mention being let down by others, we have to realize that there are many obstacles and each time we fall flat in our face we need the enthusiasm and the courage to get up again and carry on.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is definitely a light. But it’s a long tunnel. But it’s only what makes us longer, again, if we get too serious about it. And the way the support of doing all of these actions of generosity, patience, morality and enthusiasm, the support, generating concentration through meditation and wisdom Okay.
So we’ll have a break for tea soon. But before we do that, is there anything that you want to throw out? Any questions that are coming up in your mind? Mhmm. You may be able to categorize them in one or the other.
I didn’t really imply that all will be one or the other because I think some are both. So, no, it wasn’t a hard and fast discrimination. Just in general, we either put ourselves down or put ourselves up. But, yeah, it could be possible if you want to. Anyway, maybe it’s good to have break for tea and you can talk and then after the break then we can have time for any discussion.
So half an hour break is it the usual? So half an hour break for tea.