Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 55-minute talk, Ven Thubten Gyatso explores the nature of mind and self through Buddhist philosophy and its practical implications for living. He begins by defining mind through three characteristics: clarity, awareness, and mere—distinguishing these mental qualities from physical processes and explaining why consciousness cannot be reduced to brain activity alone. He then addresses the concept of self, arguing that our everyday experience of an independent, controlling “I” is a misconception that fuels desire, anger, and attachment. This false sense of self, he explains, is the root of all human suffering and conflict, from personal relationship turmoil to terrorism. The core teaching focuses on liberating ourselves through wisdom: recognizing that there is no truly independent self, only a body and mind with a merely-designated “I.” He concludes with practical guidance on mind training, emphasizing that we must actively work to dismantle ego-based thinking and cultivate compassion, patience, and love as the foundation for both human happiness and spiritual progress. The talk includes substantial Q&A, addressing concerns about nihilism, the relationship between mind and decision-making, the role of debate in Buddhist study, and the speaker’s own journey toward monastic ordination.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 2010 02 02 M&N.mp3
UUID: 662e5da9-85ed-4d89-b367-0cd5c6c4def7
Teacher: Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman
Collection: Misc teachings (Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman)
Date: 2010-02-02
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 55.2 minutes
Words: ~6,220
Okay. Like like sound is, you know, music, it’s just vibrations in the air. And these vibrations hit the eardrum and they’re transmitted to the brain and we gain often we close our eyes and we concentrate on the music and we gain so much awareness. This sound image of the music is our mind, is clarity of the mind, right? The experiential function of consciousness.
Awareness is a quality that mirrors mirrors don’t possess. In a way, can reflect images of visual objects, you know, colors and shapes. They can’t reflect an image of sound, etc. You can’t see an image of sound in the mirror. Awareness is the activity of apprehension or cognitive engagement, like knowing.
Knowing the object that is observed. So we’re not passive experiencers of colors and shapes like a mirror is. We gain so much knowledge through the generation of a visual image. We know a lot. We know that just from what we’re seeing that there are real people here Or we’re not in a room full of wax dummies.
We can see movement and we can see that there are living people here. There is so much knowledge. We hear music. We can know what instrument is producing the music. We know the composer.
We know so much about that music that is appearing to the mind. So, this is awareness. This is the cognitive knowing quality. And mirrors don’t have that. Video cameras don’t have that.
They record images, but they don’t have that knowledge. So, the very knowledge awareness. This is mind. I’m not saying it’s a property of mind. It’s a function of mind.
It is a defining characteristic of mind. Knowledge. Knowing. All of our most sophisticated instruments, you know, that the Hubble Telescope is completely dumb. It has no idea what it is recording.
But our mind knows so much. Alright, So, those qualities, sure, of course, they’re dependent upon a properly functioning brain and physiological support of the brain and etc. But they are mental qualities, they’re not physical qualities. When the scientists measure the electrical impulses in the brain, they’re not measuring knowledge awareness. They’re measuring the physiological support of awareness, which indeed involves physical activity.
Alright. So, those are two defining characteristics: clarity and awareness, mere, the third. Mere. Mere is added to the definition of mind, you know, mere clarity and awareness, because firstly, excludes the need for any significant strength of comprehension of the object. Like, in deep sleep, we’re not aware that we’re in deep sleep.
So, don’t but we are aware. What are we aware of? We’re of ongoing darkness. But we don’t know that we’re in deep sleep. So, what mere means that mind can still function at a very subtle level where we don’t actually know what we’re experiencing.
If we’re a meditator, we can be aware of what’s happening at that point. Meditating. Well, I’m not anyway. I don’t have that awareness. Also, the term ‘mere’ is very important.
It excludes an independent, self reliant ‘me’ or mind within the head that is an agent controlling the experience. So important. We’ll automatically think that I will direct my mind towards that. I am going to watch a movie. I am going to write a book.
I am going, you know, do this, do that. Somehow, we have this sense of an agent. This time, not necessarily outside the body, but a true real me, the agent who is I am experiencing happiness, I am unhappy which is internal within the body and mind. Mere and that agent can be either a self or mind itself. Mind as a substantial entity that exists in its own right inside the head.
No such thing. Mere excludes that. There There is no such thing as a mind existing in its own right separate, not even a self, but a mind that exists independent of the body. A subject, right back here, that’s doing the experiencing. Mind IS experience.
Right? It IS awareness. This can be we think about this as so important, because we place so much value on I saw this, I did that, I didn’t see that, oh, I’m useless, and I own this, they love me. You know, this constant self reference self reference. All mistake.
There is just body and mind. There is experience happening. That is what a human organism is in reality. There’s nobody at the wheel. The decisions come from behavioral patterns, which are mind.
They come from just habit. Sometimes we don’t know where they come from. Oh, intuitive. Whatever. But, you see, we have a degree of wisdom, a degree of knowledge.
And we have a degree of stupidity and anger, uncontrolled emotions. These are what are pushing us through life. These are what are connecting us to pleasant or unpleasant experiences. They’re in the mind. It’s scary.
We’re not in control. There is nobody to control. It’s not that we’re not in control. We don’t exist as an independent entity from the mind. But, life goes on.
Scientists talk about animals as being totally, what is it, you know, without, they say, which I don’t believe, they say animals have no sense of self and animals are purely automatic. They just do things in response to stimuli. Well, they do have a sense of self, but which is wrong! Just as we have a sense of self, which is wrong. But we too are just our behavior is a response to stimuli.
But not just external internal stimuli, to the accumulation of knowledge. And what we have the advantage over animals is our very intelligence. Animals can learn from experience, but so can humans. And humans can do much plan the future and they can do so much more. But it doesn’t mean that animals’ minds are stupid.
It just means that their brains are not capable of allowing their intelligence to manifest. Are you with me? Am I sort of We’ve got quite a few controversial points coming up. Now, just some extra things to add that I’ve put here. When we’re aware of something, clarity and awareness of a particular object occurs simultaneously.
These two defining characteristics of mind, clarity and awareness, they occur simultaneously. It doesn’t mean that we generate an image of something and then we start thinking about it. They’re occurring simultaneously. The next point is that mind is like I think it’s been established. Mind is the continuity of awareness.
The stream of consciousness, continuity of awareness. Now, this continuity of awareness cannot be extinguished. Like if we have a candle flame, we can put it out. We can, you know, blow it out or squeeze it out or it can just go out when the wax is all gone. It will cease.
But mind is a continuity of awareness that cannot be extinguished. The present moment of mind gives rise to the future moment of mind, and that gives rise to the future moment. And so, our stream of consciousness, we all have a separate stream of consciousness, is flowing through time, and it will continue forever into the future, and it has no beginning. There was never a first time when our mind was created. This is what I said to Lindy.
Your mind is beginningless. Wow. That’s the only thing about it. According to Buddhism, no beginning to the universe. There may have been a big bang, but that was the start.
That was just the start of the present universe. And the minds of sentient beings pre existed. And they were in some other state, and then as like planets, like the earth evolved, which could support animal and human life, which we are accustomed to, then those minds were born in such bodies. And so we got life as we know it was continued. And this universe will will perhaps come to an end, but it will only be the beginning of the next universe.
And so this is an endless sequence. I think His Holiness the Dalai Lama said, well, I don’t know. He said, I don’t know whether the big bang as described happened, but if it did, it wasn’t the first one, you know. It wasn’t the beginning. It was just another step in the beginningless continuum.
Well, look, there’s a lot here, but it’s going to take a lot too much to talk about. So, what I want to do is try to What I’ve already begun explaining is that, if we can see our mind in this context that I’ve been talking about, we can see that we can’t trust our present experience of things because there is subjective labeling, there is subjective distortion of a reality or subjective elaboration of things which are not there. And that’s in relation to our self and in relation to others, in relation to every experience we are projecting things which are not there. And this is the cause of all of our problems. The root elaboration is the belief, the conception in a true real me, a true real me who exists in my own right.
And either, as you’re out here, the controller, the owner, the possessor of the body and mind, or more subtly, internal, part of the body. So, you know, so often we see our face as me. How do I look? You know, we ask someone, oh, you look a mess. You better get a hairdo.
So, we identify with our body as me. Or we identify with our mind as ME. And we are convinced that there’s a real true ME, either owning or part of the body and mind, and we become so self conscious, so acutely conscious of our self image and we’re worried about how it appears in the eyes of others and this dominates our behaviour, our self consciousness. And it’s in terms of basic pleasure seeking, it is the I that wants pleasure. And so whenever there is pleasure or the promise of pleasure, there is desire, clinging, I want that.
And if we get that, I don’t want to separate from that. That’s MINE! And so this possessiveness, this longing desire, powerful, disturbing emotion, it’s not love. Love is purely desire for another’s happiness. Wish for another to be happy.
When we say we love somebody, we’re actually saying, You make me happy. I love you. But as soon as they stop making us happy, I hate you. I mean, mommy doesn’t give let the child do what the child wants to do. Mommy, I hate you.
Mommy doesn’t care because she does what she has to do. Or sometimes she might feel it, but we’re children like that. Our emotions just come and go. It’s totally self centered. Of course, adults, we modify our childlike loves and hates, but it’s really attachment or aggression, anger towards that which displeases me, which I don’t like.
So, you see, this self consciousness, this grasping at the concept of a self, which doesn’t exist at all in the way we think it does, is the source of longing desire. It’s the source of anger. It’s obviously the source of pride and jealousy. Oh, they’ve got that, oh, I wish I had that. I don’t like them because they got that.
All of the disturbing emotions. And these then, within the mind, they become the motivating forces for so much of our behaviour. And behaviour is unskillful. We hurt others selfishly. We hurt others because we want ourselves to be pleased, to be happy, free from problems.
And this takes me back to my time in the psychiatric hospital when I saw that, yes, people have low self esteem but the strengthening of one ego always occurs at the expense of somebody else’s ego or somebody else’s self image. We’re vicious. We’re hurting others in order to try and be happy. I mean, the whole the psychology of of the terrorist, of the suicide bomber, is to to bring happiness to the world. And that’s why they’re doing it.
They truly believe that their enemies are the source of suffering. And out of some misguided sense of duty or love they want to kill as many enemies as possible. The mind can go to such extreme wrong distorted views, and such extreme behaviour. All based upon this misconception of self and others and the causes of happiness and causes of unhappiness. So, hopefully we’re not going to get involved in terrorism.
And we’re not going to cultivate hatred. What we need to understand is how people’s minds are functioning in terms of this self centered belief, in these wrong views, and have compassion. See how they’re hurting themselves. Instead of going to heaven, they’re going to have such incredibly suffering karmic results of killing others, believing they’re making, bringing happiness to the world. Totally wrong idea.
We can only have compassion. We must have compassion. If we have hatred, if we want to kill and eliminate and think that by killing all terrorists we’re going to bring peace to the world. Wrong idea. Wrong conception.
Anger and hatred only bring about perpetuate themselves and they only cause disturbance. Even talk about the karmic result of killing out of hatred and anger but just in the very here and now, this life, anger and hatred are so destructive to peace, whether the victim or the perpetrator, it is a useless, destructive emotion that needs to be because it comes from this ignorance of self. So, what I’ve really wanted to say tonight is that we have to change our vision of ourself. We’ve got to just see that there is a body and mind. And just as the body needs feeding and looking after and cleaning and medicine etc.
In order to function properly, it needs exercise etc. So does the mind! The mind needs a bit of cleaning up. It needs to get rid of these wrong ideas. And it needs to replace anger replace it with love and get, you know, replace miserliness with generosity, eliminate the disturbing self centered emotions and train the mind in the positive, constructive emotions which bring inner peace, inner happiness, because the disturbing emotions die away and they give us the capacity to give peace and happiness to others, to actualize love, to actualize compassion, and to be really constructive in relationships, in family.
We need it. And we know the turmoil turmoil of relationships and of families and at work. Wherever you get two humans, you can have some sort of conflict. There’s gonna be turmoil. And it’s not good enough to run away from the conflict or get angry or just block it out and pretend it’s not happening.
With wisdom we can just let go of all the I’m right! You’re wrong! Yeah. And just relax and start to work with the mind and say, look, we’ve got so It’s hard to do with just two people. If they’re really skillful and know what they’re doing, of course they can do this psychological transformation together.
But mostly, we have to do it as individuals. Even not tell anybody. We better don’t tell anybody because you’re training your mind in generosity and love. I say, oh, give me. Of course that can be helpful.
I’m training my mind in patience. I’m never going to get angry. I’m sort of holding up a sign saying, ‘Kick me!’ or, you know, ‘Test my patience!’ which is quite good, if we can practice patience. But it is a personal What I’m saying is tonight, each of us has to take a long, sincere look at our mind and judge for ourselves whether we are selfish, whether we cling to preconceived ideas, and whether these perhaps are maybe wrong. And we’ve got very fixed ideas about others.
But, look, melt it down a bit. Take an honest look at the you see yourself and others and see that the real value in life is mutual togetherness and peace and love. And what better situations, a relationship, a family, people you meet every day? These are the objects with whom you interact, with whom you can gain peace and joy from each other. You don’t have to seek love.
If you love sincerely, you don’t have to worry about trying to make others love you. They will love you back. We can’t help but love somebody who is warm and kind and not imposing themselves on us. Without it, we’d have to give gifts, etc, to prove our love. If love is radiating from our heart, they will know it.
We know it. We know when somebody they may be they may be smile and they’re saying nice things, even giving us gifts. But we know if they dislike us, we can pick it up like that. And we can pick up their love if it’s there. So, why don’t we do it?
Why don’t we? We need to actively train our mind in dismantling the whole wrong foundation of ego. Now, to do this we need, of course, we need confidence. We need self confidence. But self confidence based upon wisdom.
Self image based upon wisdom rather than the self image based upon ignorance, wrong perception of what I am, or wrong idea of I am this, you are that. Because we also have these wrong projections on others, you know, we see them as intrinsically existing identities. And we see all the negative characteristics as intrinsically belonging to them or the person to whom we’re attached. We project project all these desirable qualities onto them. But actually these are elaborations, they’re exaggerations of attachment or of anger and they’re coming from our mind.
So, it’s not that we have to give up our self image and our self esteem and become a doormat for everybody to walk over us. In fact, we become so much stronger. Wisdom gives confidence. That’s why knowing reality gives great confidence, great capacity, great courage to communicate with each other. And that’s what life’s about.
human life at the moment. Alright? Now, you can do more. You can enter the spiritual path and you can become a Buddha. But this is the foundation of living happily and it’s the foundation of the spiritual path.
So, are there any discussion in what’s come up already? Yeah. Right. Alright. So you see, if we try to say I’m not angry, I’m not I’m going deaf with my old age.
I didn’t quite get it all. But I think what, I’m trying to say in working with the mind is that we’re not if we have anger, we have to recognize it for what it is. And we have to admit it. Yes, I AM ANGRY. This IS ANGER.
Oh, interesting! And observe, observe the anger. Observe what it does inwardly and how it changes one’s voice. One of the best things to do when we recognise that we’re angry is to go and look in the mirror. It makes the face so ugly.
So ugly! And that alone is good enough to ‘Wow! I’ve got to get out of this!’ So definitely not suppressing or ignoring or pretending it’s not there. It is admitting that it’s there and then applying the antidotes. Yes.
That’s right. So, the wisdom comes first recognizing there is anger and there’s a problem. And then, why am I angry? And then, using the wisdom to, where is it, the base of it is, ME! Somebody has said this about me or done this to me, you know, and by letting go of our whole fortress of self image.
Yeah. Oh, thank you. I mean, I accept completely what you say that what I’ve been talking about tonight, the emptiness of self, can lead people into a very dangerous state of nihilism that nothing is real, nothing exists properly and great fear and can lead indeed. It can lead to a very disturbed, mistaken state of mind saying all is not real, nothing is real. I know people, well not that they studied Buddhism but they studied Western philosophy, who have actually fallen into such states.
And indeed it is a Bodhisattva vow not to talk about emptiness to people who may be in danger of falling into that state. Yes, that’s right. I hope that everybody here is able to follow what I’ve been talking about. I hope I haven’t been breaking my vow and threatening you with such a say. But indeed, you’re right.
It is a danger. And we haven’t gone into it too deeply. The subject of emptiness, of non self, is something very profound and needs to be approached delicately. So, I’ve introduced it maybe to some and maybe others have heard a lot about it in the past. So, take the information and think about it and look for more instructions.
Especially, you can read almost any book by his holiness, the Dalai Lama. He is so skillful in presenting these subjects. I refer you to the vast spectrum of books that have come out by the Dalai Lama if you are worried or if you want further information. Okay? Yeah.
From the definition that you gave for mind, what I got was that there is no ‘I’ who supervises or observes or controls the mind. And if I look at the relation between mind and behaviour, because there is no ‘I’ who decides and who chooses to do this or do that, so I can say that all behavior is the result of what we have in our mind as exactly mere clarity and awareness, the knowledge. So we cannot say that I decide not to get angry or I decide not to tell a lie because there is no I. I cannot make a decision. There is a mind with a knowledge.
This knowledge knowledge is everything which is in mind with the result to what I’m doing. So if I want to change my behavior, I cannot make the decision to change that behavior from, you know, now or tomorrow. I have to learn or unlearn what I have in my mind and change this total, this mind as a total, to get the result that I want to get. So, is it right? Yeah, that’s what I’ve been talking about.
But there is one thing, because you went from saying there is no I to saying that I have to do this, etc. Now, there is an I. What I’m saying is that there is no I, no independent I existing in its own right, either separate from the body and mind or as some sort of part of the body and mind. No controller or separate experience mental functions, etc. But there is an I, there is the mere I, the merely labelled I.
This is the I that exists. You exists. When you think I, that I is just a thought, a label given to your combination of body and mind. So, basis of the label ‘I’ is the combination of body and mind. That is valid.
That there is an I established merely by thought, merely by designation of a name or just the thought I related to the body and mind. So, whatever the mind does, the ‘I’ does. When the mind is happy, it’s correct to say, ‘I am happy’. When the mind thinks about something it’s going to do tomorrow, it’s correct to say, I am going to do this tomorrow, as long as we are aware that the ‘I’ is just labelled upon this body and mind. The actual decision to do something tomorrow is coming from mind, from our whole inner collection of knowledge and, you know, understanding and motivations and all of these are mental qualities.
So, there is the impulse, the mental impulse or idea arises to do this tomorrow and so we can validly say, I’m going to do it tomorrow. As long as we believe, as long as we recognize that the I is just labeled upon the body and mind. And even it’s valid to say I am sick when the body is sick. As long as we let go of our clinging to the idea that there’s this separate, true, real, independent me that is the poor thing, poor me, I’m sick. Just body’s sick.
So what? Bodies get sick. Mind is unhappy. So what? Minds get there’s a reason why this mind is unhappy.
Not poor me. Oh, they said this about me. Evolution of self centered self pity worry worry worry this all is focused upon the wrong conception of I. It’s so liberating to not identify with the body as truly me, the mind as truly me, but to see them as fallible, mistaken, you know, because they’re mistaken, there’s ignorance and there’s confusion and wrong conceptions, they’re imperfect! It’s very liberating to recognize the reality of imperfection of body and mind.
But then, decide to do something about it. As I said, we can’t make the body perfect, but we can make the mind perfect. And even if we don’t complete that job in this life, whatever we do in terms of gaining perfection of morality, wisdom, compassion, love, etc, because it’s mental characteristics they will be passed passed on to the future life. So, the future life will inherit the mental qualities of this life, good or bad, and therefore the future life will be spiritual path. Indeed, the spiritual path takes many lifetimes, many, many, many lifetimes to gradually wear away the intense conditioning that we have inherited from beginningless past lives.
Beginningless past lives, we’ve been absorbed in self centeredness, in desire, in anger, in jealousy, and pride. No way are those intense emotions going to be extinguished overnight. We have to be very patient and recognize it’s going to take a long time. And when we’re trying, we’re trying trying to deal with our anger, deal with our attachment. Don’t fall apart.
If you find you’re getting angry or attached, say, Yeah, this is the mind. Alright. I blew it. I’ll try again tomorrow. But never give up.
Never give up the determination to continually improve your mind. Therefore, every moment of this human life is so precious. So precious. Because every moment, even if we’re terminally ill, our body may be wracked with pain. But it’s still, if we know how, it’s still an opportunity to cultivate love, compassion, renunciation.
We can do something with this mind whilst we’ve got this human body and this human brain. There’s no guarantee that in our next life we’re going to have such an opportunity. We can’t control our karma. We don’t know how we’re going to die. We may be an animal.
What can we do? Nothing. So, we shouldn’t think that it’s better to die rather than go through physical agony. With skill, we can use the death experience, even great pain, as a mind training exercise to train a mind in love and kindness and compassion. Always, we should see every moment, not just maybe terminally ill, when we’re not sick, right now, is when we should see the preciousness of every moment of this life.
Precious opportunity to put our wisdom into practice and to cultivate these qualities and not just indulge in selfish pursuits, Oh, pleasure. Oh, avoiding pain. Just, you know, non constructive entertainments. And our whole society is so dominated by entertainment, distraction. Distraction from inner mental development.
It’s really sad. So many times in Asia, doesn’t matter in Muslim countries or Hindu countries or Buddhist countries, I’ve had people look at me with pity and as a typical Western, slowly, slowly, just take it easy. Don’t pursue instant results. Just take it easy. Relax.
See agitation as being a big problem. Be calm. Be loving. And to be angry, to express anger in Asian countries is really shameful. They say, it’s crazy.
What are they doing? This is not what it’s about. But we, Westerns, we just we let our emotions hang out. We express them readily without any sense of I need to restrain my uncontrolled emotions. So, again, it’s up to each one of us.
We’ve got to have the courage, we’ve got to have the knowledge, we’ve got to know how to do it, but we must do it. We must work with our minds. Don’t rely on alcohol. Don’t rely on drugs or tranquilizers or all of the distractions which we use to try and establish inner peace and inner contentment and happiness. These are just external conditions and often quite dangerous and damaging to our body and mind.
The problem is in our mind. The cure is in our mind. That’s all. Any other questions? One occurred to me about Jung’s concept of collective unconsciousness.
I don’t I mean, I’ve read about it, I don’t exactly know what Jung was getting at. There’s an idea of some sort of universal consciousness, Buddhism says no. No, they’re individual consciousnesses. Otherwise, we’d all be Buddhist because our mind would be the same as Buddha’s mind. Yeah?
Of reality among Buddhists? Or has it been a matter of debate and discussion? Because I know that debate and discussion is a way that that people have to prove the themselves to become teachers, how does it arise and who agrees and who determines and does it change? Well, indeed there is a reality of the world, I mean, there are answers and it is a universal reality. It is not dependent upon Buddha or anybody else.
It is the world, the universe operates along a certain, in certain manner which can be understood. And it’s the way the universe operates. There is a reality. One constant unchanging reality of cause and effect in the world. And the Buddha called this the four noble truths.
There is true suffering, there is true cause of suffering, there is true cessation of suffering and the true path which leads to that cessation of suffering. So, is the fundamental reality taught by Buddha and that those fundamental truths are accepted in all, yeah, all I think all Buddhist countries. I’ve read some books published by Westerners talking about the Four Noble Truths which are so far off the mark that I’ve I’ve burnt I haven’t burnt the books but I wanted to. Completely wrong. So, So, just as that’s already happening in the West, indeed, throughout history there have been individuals who have misinterpreted the Buddha’s teachings and have written books and said this is reality’.
And so, indeed, there has been factions have broken off and this and that and people have zeroed in on particular teachings and ignored others. Indeed, that happens. But that doesn’t change the fact that there is a fundamental reality that the Buddha taught, which is the same now as when Buddha taught, and it’s always the same. Then, within the Buddha’s teachings, this subject of emptiness, Buddha indeed did teach it at different levels to different audiences according to their capacity to comprehend. And so, arose, based upon the Buddha’s Sutras, upon what they heard at that time.
And in Tibet, where she teach all the schools of various Buddhist thought taught by Buddha as a very important method to understand the final subtle presentation of reality. So, what students would do, would begin with the most general superficial presentation of emptiness and then they have to learn that exactly as taught and they have to defend it. In their debate, they have to switch places and then they have to attack it to someone else defending it from the point of view of the next level and the next level. It’s a wonderful way of growing because as you go through the levels getting to the most subtle presentation of emptiness, that gives you the capacity to understand the subtle meaning. So, there is debate from factionalism with wrong interpretations of Buddhism and there is debate incorporated with discussion of the different levels in which Buddha taught.
And very useful, very important. I mean, Buddha said, I mentioned this on Sunday, Buddha said said that as he was entering nirvana or parinirvana, he said, the teachers and the students were worried, what’s going to happen? And he said, Don’t worry, the teachings will continue, but they’re going to gradually decline. And after five thousand years they will disappear. But you’ll still have, there will be plenty of opportunity because they will be carried on by those of you who have not just understood, but who have actualised the teachings and will maintain the continuity of living tradition as well as the verbal tradition.
But they will gradually decline and disappear. And this decline will come from within. It’ll be the Buddhists who will you will degenerate the doctrine. Because this is human nature. So, he warned them.
But within that long period of time, many would be able to actualize. So, we do have to be discerning. We have to be very discerning if we’re looking into Buddhism, what we read. And I particularly warn about what Westerners say, particularly this stupid Westerner here who has very little formal education in Buddhism. So, I’ve tried to not diverge from the spoken teachings in what I’ve been saying tonight in what I’ve been saying tonight.
But be open minded, be critical in what you hear and what you think, but persevere. In my personal life, I have found that in the thirty-four years that I’ve been practicing, the pictures become clearer and clearer. And I’ve been totally encouraged by the Lamas and also by my own nature to question everything. I mean, I’ve been the devil’s advocate in so many ways. And I still question.
And it’s the only way to advance, is by questioning. As Buddha himself said, you must not accept what I say because of my reputation. You have to analyze and check up yourself and see if this is valid in your and see if this is valid in your experience. If it’s valid, okay, work with it. If you cannot find it valid, then let it go.
So, again, it all comes back to personal responsibility. This is our intelligence that we have to cultivate. It’s not something that we learn by rote and repeat it in an exam and get top marks. It’s got to be inner heart felt knowledge. Something we have to cultivate and I encourage you to go for it.
Don’t waste your life. Like so many, so many of us and myself have wasted so much of our time when we have this great mind and this brain that supports our mind. We don’t know how long it’s gonna stay. We don’t know we’re gonna be the next one with Alzheimer’s. Some of us are going to get Alzheimer’s.
And then we’ve got no chance. The brain loses its capacity to allow the intellectual faculty to manifest. So, right now, improve your intellects, hone your intelligence, hone your love and compassion. Get rid of anger, Get rid of selfishness and attachment. Easily said, but not easily done.
Any other questions? Yeah. Yeah, well it’s true. I, When I heard, I think I mentioned this on Sunday, when I heard the Lama’s teaching, the idea came to my mind, I thought, wow, if this is true, I’m going to have to become a monk. I don’t want to become a monk.
But if it’s true, the logical thing is to totally invest your whole life in this practice. So, I set about proving the Lama’s wrong in karma and reincarnation. Let me see what happens. It’s personal experience. I mean, I did a lot of thinking.
I received a lot of teachings, a lot of thinking about them and then before I decided to become a monk, did a three month retreat, built a shack in the bush near Coffs Harbour and had the teachings and the instructions of the lamas and saw nobody for three months and really meditated on this whole path. And at the end of that, I had had sufficient conviction in the reality of karma reincarnation to make the decision to become a monk. And, it’s the pattern. I guess, it’s the pattern. And again, as I said, it doesn’t contradict my scientific knowledge, in fact it enhances my scientific worldview.
I didn’t have any other religion. My worldview was just science. So, think about it, think of the alternatives. In the notes I have talked about the proof of reincarnation which is talking about the origin of mind. Mind exists, it can’t have come from our parents, can’t have come from our nervous system because it’s a different entity to the body.
It has to have come from a previous life. Can’t have come from anywhere else. Anyway, so, thank you all anyway for your good attention tonight. It’s been a pleasure to meet you and I’m sorry I blah blah a bit too much. But I hope we can meet again and I hope I’ve inspired inspired you to think deeply about these words in your lives.
Thank you.