Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 53-minute talk, Ven Thubten Gyatso offers practical Buddhist guidance on transforming suffering and happiness into spiritual progress. He opens with a personal reflection on his father’s struggle to find happiness through relationships, then pivots to the Buddhist analysis: happiness arises from how the mind engages with experience, not from external conditions. He explores neuroplasticity and habitual thought patterns, explaining how rumination on difficulties breeds anxiety and how recognizing mental causation—rather than blaming circumstances—is the foundation of all practice. The second half covers concrete methods for converting problems into the path: developing renunciation by understanding the futile nature of cyclic existence; cultivating compassion by recognizing shared suffering; and sharpening wisdom about selfhood and karma. He emphasizes that the mind has no inherent limitation and can be trained toward enlightenment through love, compassion, and mindful examination of destructive patterns. The talk concludes with a brief Q&A touching on personality change, past-life memory, and rebirth choice. Suited for anyone new to Buddhist psychology or familiar with core concepts seeking practical integration.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 2010 02 09 MLM.mp3
UUID: f2094098-1a12-4584-8600-8aa64e020c0b
Teacher: Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman
Collection: Misc teachings (Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman)
Date: 2010-02-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 53.6 minutes
Words: ~6,286
The profound teachings, seeing very close similarities in the old testament. And, but when I suggested that he start putting some of these into practice, Oh, you can’t teach an old horse new tricks. I can’t change. I just believe that and made, well, did change actually, although he verbally protested, he did mellow out over the years. I think people saw that inwardly he was practicing to a degree.
When he saw that I didn’t go crazy by becoming a monk, which was his maybe, you know, I mean, a lot of people thought that that, oh, you gotta be crazy too in this day and age to to give up everything which everybody else believes is a source of happiness. But when one thinks deeply about the teachings, one can see that the real source of happiness is internal. It’s not this doesn’t lie in outer objects, in possessions, in relationships, in you know, even in families or career or power or reputation, you know, or possessions, you know, vast collections of possessions. All the people are investing their whole lives in pursuing believing that this will establish peace and happiness in their mind. It’s very evident that it’s a lie.
I mean, there are so many examples, need I quote of those who have far greater wealth, etcetera, possessions, attainments that we have, and yet their lives, the inner lives are like a living hell. So it becomes very personal. I mean, I couldn’t say to my father, you think I would be really happy with a relationship, but he was living alone because my mother had died relatively young and he was so intensely miserable in a state of loneliness, maybe living in a state of regret of not having done the proper things with his wife, my mother in the past. And so he’d lived many years of, I think great suffering. I said, and that was like a relative relationship or at least they stayed together.
But even if it had been a perfect relationship, a great relationship, then still when one of the partners dies, the loss, the dependency on the other person gives rise to such a sense of loss that the pendulum swings to the extreme of sorrow and unhappiness and misery to as much a degree as the degree of happiness. So anyway, I couldn’t point that out to my father. I couldn’t say. Look at your own life. Are you happy?
Are you peaceful? He clearly was not. And it’s just difficult to point it out. And Buddhism is very forthright. It does point out, says, life is miserable.
Life is a state of uncontrolled suffering and you’ve got to get your act together and start opposing the cause of suffering and cultivating the cause of happiness. Right? So with this neuroplasticity, if we recognize that if I allow my mind to dwell in its petty dislikes, that’s only going to cause suffering. Even if I identify it with me as my personality, it’s going to make me unhappy And I can start worrying and being unhappy even without the problematic event happening, just my fear of it, my worry about it causes inner pain and lack of peace. So this point is the basis of the whole practice.
When he says, he continues, When the power of this repetitive experience increases, it’s aversion to pain. After a while, most of what you perceive will become the cause of actually attracting unhappiness towards you and happiness will never have a chance. You know, if we talk about the extreme level of paranoia, you know, somebody is very self conscious and they start to worry about everybody is doing something to hurt me. And a friend of mine, a psychiatrist, he once sort of jokingly but realistically said the definition of paranoia is when you’re at a football game or a cricket game and the players go into a huddle, here at the MCG and the players go into a huddle and you think they’re talking about you. So this self consciousness leads towards that.
There is no freedom everywhere you see enemies and it’s very difficult. As he says, happiness will not have a chance. So if you don’t recognize that it all depends on the way in which your mind develops that habit, and if you put the blame for your unhappiness on external objects alone, then the flames of suffering of negative karma, aggression and so on will spread like wildfire without end. This is what we call all appearances and perceptions arising as enemies, you know, as a threat to my happiness and the whole world will appear hostile. He says you should thoroughly understand that the whole reason why sentient beings this degenerate age are plagued by so much suffering is all to do with this weakness of their discriminating awareness, not knowing what to cultivate in their minds and what to abandon.
So discriminating awareness is another term for wisdom. It is the wisdom knowing the nature of our mind. What is, what to do with our minds, how to make our minds the foundation of happiness and to prevent our minds being the foundation of suffering. We don’t have that wisdom. So all the problems in life come back to our ignorance of our mind, how our mind functions and therefore not knowing that we can do something with our minds.
We always tend to put the blame on external things or it’s the government, it’s the weather, it’s the sickness, it’s the environmental pollution, you know, it’s this, it’s that, or it’s my body, you know, always, it’s my husband, my wife, my children, you know, we’re always blaming something else for our inner unrest. And we’re trying to do things to manipulate the outer conditions to be happy but it doesn’t get very far. Of course, the external conditions are associated with pleasure and pain but they’re not the root cause. The root cause is in our own mind. So instead of all this energy we’re putting into trying to change the world, which is impossible, I mean humankind has been trying to change the world since the beginning of this time to make it a happy place.
I mean, the terrorists are trying to make the world a happy place. And those who want to kill the terrorists are trying to make the world a happy place. We’re going downhill rapidly. The way to make the world a happy place is to make the mind a happy place. Each one of us is responsible.
That’s what we can do. To combat world terrorism, defeat your own anger, your own ignorance, your own hatred, increase your own love, your own compassion, your own wisdom. That is the best thing that any one of us can do to overcome not just world terrorism, but help the pain in our own lives. And it can be done. If enough people do it, society, human society will go through a period of peace.
We are in a period of decline or degeneration but within that progressive decline there are little ups and downs. We collectively we can work to at least start an up period of peace and happiness. And what better country than Australia to really begin this because we are relatively at peace. We’re not experiencing what so many other countries are experiencing but not yet. They say in the newspapers, the terrorists are going to strike in Australia and it’s going to happen soon.
When? Exactly when? They don’t know but it’s going to happen. And that because of the collective ignorance. But if we have enough wisdom, it’s possible to even change world politics.
As Holiness the Dalai Lama pursues this point again and again and again, constantly pushing disarmament, communication, talking violence only brings violence. It cannot bring peace. It may eradicate temporarily, you know, an overt enemy, but underneath it’s not going to create a true foundation of peace for any one country or for the world. Right. So he says, therefore not to be hurt by the obstacles created by enemies, illness or harmful influences, the external things, does not mean to say that things like sickness can be driven away and that they will never occur again.
Rather, it simply means that they will not become obstacles in our way of practicing or training our mind on the path to enlightenment. And they can assist training our mind in the path to enlightenment. So as I said, the way we can help ourselves in the world is to train our mind in wisdom and compassion, the path to enlightenment. So we need to know how to transform problems into that training to direct them in that way. And it says, in order for this to happen, you need to first get rid of the attitude of only seeking personal freedom from suffering.
And secondly, you need to cultivate the attitude of actually experiencing joy when suffering arises. Joy, because you see this, I can make this situation useful in training my mind on the path to enlightenment. So the first step, rejecting the attitude of just not wanting suffering for oneself. He says that from your own experience, convince yourself again and again of the uselessness and the pain involved in seeing suffering as something purely harmful, purely undesirable, purely to be free from and recognise how much energy, nervous energy and anxiety you experience through simply not wanting pain, through having a problem about painful things happening. And at the same time, train yourself to have great courage by reflecting again and again from now on, whatever suffering I face, I will not become anxious.
You don’t have to pop a Valium or whatever the anti anxiety pill is now. Nowadays, sure that they can reduce the symptoms of anxiety, but the way to stop, to overcome an anxiety neurosis or just an anxiety state is to train your mind, I will not become anxious in the face of that situation. And we have, I mean, in psychiatry, have behavioral therapy where we actually do this. We teach those who do have a particular phobia or anxiety state to face up to their threatening situation and train their mind to, I will not allow this to overwhelm me. And you can win.
It takes time, but you can do it. You can overcome alcohol addiction by training your mind. See the uselessness of alcohol out is a poison destroying my body and mind and reaffirming that I will not enter into that path of seeking solace or whatever it is happiness from a drink. It is the mind has the power to overcome even such strong physiological habit or conditioning of the nervous system to the point of addiction. That was created by the mind and it can be resolved by the mind.
There is no mental condition that the mind itself cannot cure itself from. Know this, decide to do it. He said, have the courage to train your mind, to transform your mind into happiness. So first think of the uselessness of seeing problems as something purely harmful and desirable. And the simple formula is repeated again and again in Buddhist teachings that if something has gone wrong and that we’re miserable, we’re unhappy, then think, can I solve that problem?
And if the problem can be solved, then we say, what’s the point worrying about? What’s the point of being miserable that it’s happened? It could be solved. The misery is just pouring salt into the wound. Let it go.
If the problem cannot be resolved, if it is irreversible, again, we talk to our mind. Don’t think your mind is you, it’s not you. Your is Your body is not you. Your mind is something you can talk to. They won’t put you in the white jacket or straight jacket and take you to the hospital.
They might, but say, listen mind, give me a break. You’ve been giving me so much problems. This thing that has gone wrong can’t be fixed. So why are you worrying about it? Why do you continue to bellyache?
Why do you keep bringing it up again and again and again? That cannot help. It can’t be reversed. Let it go. Just let it go.
Tell your mind. Often we give this advice to others, don’t we? I mean, we see family members and friends who so ridiculously cause themselves so much anguish about their worry of all things and we say look let it go, come on get on with life. Now start saying it to yourself Because we all suffer the same ridiculous mental habit of living within self inflicted mental anguish of worrying about problems. So it’s useless.
It’s useless to engage in this type of worry going over and over again. Secondly, anxiety creates so much pain and stress. He says, if you don’t become anxious, then the strength of your mind will have will the strength of the mind that you have will make it simple and you’ll be able to bear the greatest suffering, which will feel very flimsy, like insubstantial, like a piece of cotton wool. But if your mind is dominated by anxiety, even the smallest pain, the smallest problem becomes absolutely unbearable. I mean, the example I always give is that there are some children who have no fear of needles having an injection and there are some children who have a huge fear of having an injection.
The one who has no fear, they go into the surgery, gets the injection out finished, nothing, pinprick. The one who has fear, the misery starts well before leaving home, you know, and then on the mother driving in the car to the doctor’s surgery, already there are tears and there’s wailing and there’s incredible misery. And then from the car park into the surgery and then everybody is stressed, mother, nurse, doctor, everybody’s totally stressed and the child is absolutely in agony. And the pain is experienced by the child is huge coming from the mind, completely coming from the mind. So he gives an example, not the needle injection, he says, if you think about a beautiful person, somebody you’re physically attracted to, then desire, longing desire is seen as a problem in Buddhism.
So if we are entering the path of trying to abandon longing desire, but the more we allow our mind to think about that attractive person, we’ll never get rid of desire. No way, we have to stop the fantasy of, Oh, wonderful. This person is so beautiful. I want that person. So he says, similarly, by concentrating intensely on the painful qualities of suffering, you will not be able to develop any patience or endurance.
So when you recognize that your mind is getting upset, getting disturbed by fear of suffering, Let it go and practice in meditation. One of the fundamental meditations in Buddhism is to watch your breath, to make the mind still and then focus upon the natural stillness and peace of your mind. This is not something that you create through meditation. It is the natural state of the mind is very peaceful and still. So if you’ve been meditating and you’ve been able to gain some glimpse of the natural peace and stillness of your mind, when you recognize that you’re getting disturbed by anger or attachment or any disturbing emotion, See that as it is as ridiculous and just bring your mind back to its natural state of peace and stillness.
It’s not saying suppress the thought. It’s just saying let go of the thought. And it’s not suppression. It is just not adding any more energy into that neural pathway and from its own side, it will fade away bringing back, mind back to peace. So this is the beginning of how you can start to work with your mind.
By seeing the ridiculousness of having fear and anxiety related to suffering. Now the next, remember there were, he said there were two things to do. One is to stop having fear and anxiety of suffering. The second is now to cultivate the sense of joy and happiness when problems arise in life. But by seeing that there is an advantage that can be taken from this problem.
So he says, Practice cultivating a sense of joy by seeing suffering as an aid to the path. Whatever suffering arises, if you do not have a virtuous practice to apply each time and one that fits the ability of your mind, then it will be very difficult to succeed. So what he’s saying is we need a virtuous practice. We need to a virtuous means constructive, positive state of mind. We need to be able to deal with every problem in a positive constructive way by taking some advantage out.
We can’t stop the problem happening, but instead of reacting with self pity and misery and anger, etcetera, we can react with wisdom and compassion in a constructive way. So he gives a whole list of different virtuous practices to according to our familiarity with the practice and our ability, we use whichever of these we find useful. The first is the very foundation of the Buddhist path is renunciation. Renunciation refers to the the state of mind, which no longer pursues and grasps at the the thought of self happiness, pursuing one’s own personal happiness and is completely involved with the thought of sorry. And no longer pursues the thought of me being free from suffering, but renunciation as he said in his praise to Avalokiteśvara in the beginning, he’s one who renounces both his own happiness and his own suffering.
Let’s go of that obsession which dominates our whole society of me and my happiness and me and my freedom from suffering. Let’s go with this, of this pervasive need to seek those two goals. So that’s renunciation. So renunciation is not just letting go of that obsessive compulsion to seek happiness and be free from suffering, but it is also changing the direction. It is letting go of the ordinary direction of life and it is looking towards a spiritual goal.
So there are three levels of spiritual attainment. The simplest level is to work towards a happy future life. So to reborn, to not be reborn in hell, but to be reborn in heaven or to reborn as a human. So this is from the Buddhist point of view a valid spiritual goal but it is a temporary, it is not a complete, it’s not a final spiritual goal because even if we go to heaven we can still fall because if we haven’t eliminated ignorance, we can fall from that blissful state and be reborn in hell or as animals or human in some great suffering state. So temporarily it’s a valid goal, but the next level is a permanent solution.
And that is the pursuit of nirvana, personal liberation from the wheel of life. That is irreversible because the attainment of nirvana is dependent upon the actualization of the wisdom seeing reality which extinguishes the root ignorance, the cause for all suffering. So, but even nirvana is not a complete goal in as much as one’s own suffering indeed comes to an end because one destroys the cause of one’s own suffering. But others are still suffering. And so the supreme spiritual goal is full Buddhahood or enlightenment.
Where as a Buddha, a Buddha also has achieved nirvana, but a Buddha on the other hand has accumulated a great power, a great potential to work for others. And this power and potential has arisen as a direct result of universal compassion directed towards all living beings. So if you haven’t generated that universal compassion, you achieved nirvana, you have no means, you don’t have the power, you don’t have the method to help others. You still have to continue your spiritual path to become a Buddha and that’s what happens. But if one aspires to achieve Buddhahood first or without sidestepping towards nirvana, one immediately can put one’s great compassion into practice by being a guide and showing others.
So this is renunciation. The best renunciation is the thought of abandoning self centered pursuit of happiness and freedom from suffering and through great compassion, the mind directed towards enlightenment. So now how do we use problems to increase our renunciation? Well, ways. We should acknowledge that for as long as we wander in the wheel of life, powerless and without any independence, no freedom of choice of where we’re going to be reborn.
The suffering that arises is not something unjust and it’s not unfair, but this is the very nature of cyclic existence of rebirth under the control of one’s personal karma and one’s personal disturbing emotions. Also, so it’s not unjust. This bad thing’s happening to me. All right, what he’s saying is causative. There are the external conditions, but there’s an inner cause.
If I hadn’t created the karma for this to happen, it wouldn’t happen. Also, if it is so very difficult to bear even the little suffering and pain of the happy realms of rebirth, then there’s no point in mentioning the suffering of the lower realms. So this is what we’re telling ourselves. We think, look you, if you can’t handle this little problem here, how could you handle being burnt in the fires of hell or being an animal, you know, out exposed to the elements, the freezing rain, the boiling hot sun, starvation, being cruelly treated by humans, by being eaten alive by other animals. Why are you so upset about this mosquito bite?
Why are you upset about this hot weather or this cold wind? Let it go. I mean, many with all this reasoning, tell our mind to just stop bellyaching and get on with the spiritual path. Renounce, the reason you got this problem, you created the karmic cause anyway. So he says, Let a deep sense of sadness and disillusionment arise, disillusionment towards the wheel of life, towards death and rebirth by thinking, alas, the wheel of life is an endless and bottomless ocean of suffering and turn your mind towards liberation and enlightenment.
Then we can use problems to train our mind in compassion. They say, you know, or it is said that if you have a serious illness, you would seek a doctor who suffers from the same illness and go to him or her for treatment because that doctor will know your suffering, will have empathy because that doctor experiences the suffering and knows what you’re going through. So you get the best treatment. I think it’s true in a way. I mean, the medical texts talk about how many different types of illnesses but they don’t give, you get the intellectual knowledge but you don’t really get the feeling of the agony that the sick person is going through, the particular agony of particular sickness but if you have it yourself, you really know.
So when problems happen to you, okay, I’ve got cancer. There are so many people who have right this very moment, they’re being told that you’ve got cancer, you’ve got AIDS, you’re going to die. Now I know what they’re really experiencing just as I, my own, you know, my world has collapsed and there’s so much worry and unhappiness. They too are experiencing that unhappiness. Generate great compassion.
Use that very experience of your misery not to dwell in self pity, not to increase your unhappiness, your sorrow, but to enliven your mind with great compassion and think of how you can ease the problems of suffering of so many others who have the same problem as you. We read of this, we read it. People who do receive the diagnosis of cancer and their world falls apart for a few weeks and then they just pull themselves out of it and they start joining self help groups and helping others and establishing help groups for others suffering and they do so well and suddenly they’re not thinking of their own problem anymore. They’re thinking of how they can help others with the same problem and their lives become so fruitful, so worthwhile, so beneficial for others. So that’s a big example, but this is how we should, skillfully, however we’re capable, use our personal suffering, transform it into the great mind of great compassion.
Right? And you can see there’s such a difference. When people can just fall into worry and sorrow and unhappiness and even commit suicide or just fade away. But others can be energized, not just into developing great compassion, but also by generating love. I remember reading about, you know, there’s a man in Western Australia, in Perth who had cancer and he realised that, sure, death is coming, he’s going to die soon.
And so he realized the folly of all of his petty worries and grumbles and started to really love his family, his wife, his children and his friends, in a way which he’d never loved before and enrichment in his life. And he said that he thinks that the diagnosis of cancer is probably the greatest thing that ever happened to him. In the beginning he thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen, but then he changed his mind when he started making it positive and using this experience of death is coming in six months to enrich those six months in an incredible way. Alright. So just that there are many list of methods that we can approach problems in a positive way.
In the terms of wisdom, there’s wisdom understanding the ultimate nature of the self, wisdom understanding the relative nature of cause and effect of karma and so on. So again, if we experience a problem, we should reflect upon whatever we know about karma, karma cause and effect, whatever we know about the reality of how the self does exist because it is clinging to the wrong conception of self, which is the very source of anger, attachment, pride, jealousy and so on. So we use it as a wake up, we use this problem as a wake up call to reflect upon the ultimate reality that we’re empty of being what we’ve always thought we were. It doesn’t mean we’re nothing, but we’re empty of existing in a certain way that was wrongly believed from the time we were born. And also we reflect upon whatever we’ve learned about karmic cause and effect and we reaffirm our determination to abandon negative karma and accumulate positive karma.
Alright, so I think this has given you a general idea of how to transform problems into the path, how to transform happiness into the path also. See, the problem with happiness, it is a problem, is that if we’re not skilful, we just use happiness to increase our attachment, our clinging to the object of pleasure and we want more. We never become satisfied. We want variety or we become even dissatisfied with this person if it happens, if a person happens to be the source of pleasure and we look at somebody else. And so through this desire, this craving more and more happiness, we create so much pain by rejecting one partner and going to another partner.
And then eventually we might reject that partner and go to another partner. So this, if we use pleasure and happiness to increase self centered attachment and craving, then happiness is a big problem. But we can transform it into the power by thinking this pleasure is a result of observing virtuous or positive karma in past lives. And therefore I must increase my practice of virtue and abandon creating non virtue if I want future happiness. So the story, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, my teacher at present and his attendant Roger, they were visiting Brazil and they were being hosted by a very wealthy Brazilian family.
And they went to stay in the family compound. I mean, they had a huge wall around because there’s great danger in Brazil of kidnappings of rich people. And they’re armed guards and they were ushered into this palatial mansion and they were left alone at the beginning for a short moment and Lama Zopa sort of whispered to Roger, be careful, we’re in great danger. And Roger was thinking, wow, yeah, this kidnappers is there’s some big danger. And he looked around and everything looked so beautiful.
He said, he asked Lama Zopa, what’s the danger? And Lama Zopa said, we’re burning up our good karma. So when we experience happiness, reflect that this isn’t just good luck. This is result. If you win lotto, it’s because you were generous in previous lives.
Generosity is a cause of wealth. As Lama Zopa also said to me once when I asked him for six numbers, He said, sure no problem and he did his checking up and gave me six numbers and I was really happy going out of the room and just as about to close the door he looked up and he said, you also have to have the karma. I didn’t have the karma. So when happiness occurs, look, remember cause and effect and redetermine to live in a constructive positive way and abandon negative actions so that happiness can continue in the future. So that’s a very short way of talking about happiness.
But the point is to be mindful as much as you can throughout your life of everything that’s happening and don’t allow your mind to dwell into habitual destructive patterns of thought. See them, see those destructive thought patterns for what they are and make the decision, I’m going to overcome it. And only you can do it. Nobody can do it for you. Each one of us has to be brave and determined to change our mind.
Now, we all want to be liked, loved and we work on our bodies a lot, but our bodies are limited, right? They have genetic limitation. We can’t all be the great athletes or the great beauties or etcetera, etcetera. Our bodies are limited, but our minds have no limitation. Our minds have the potential to be the mind of a Buddha.
And that’s realistic. That is actualizable. All of the other types of happiness that we are really seeking in this life, if we are honest with ourselves, there is no guarantee that we can get anywhere near them And even if we do, because they depend upon external objects, external objects are unreliable. Partners can reject us, can abandon us, wealth can be lost, the stock market can collapse, Our house can burn down. Our house can kill us like they’re witnessing in Haiti.
The very houses that people built in order to protect themselves are actually killing them, crushing them. So whatever it is that we depend upon in the outside world is unreliable. It’s not guaranteed. Even the medicines we take to cure ourselves from sickness can kill us. So the food we eat can kill us, is killing us.
So many people are dying from eating the wrong way. Even the air we breathe these days can kill us. But the inner growth of the mind, the spiritual growth of mind, wisdom and compassion cannot be lost. It can be perfected to the state of Buddhahood and we take it with us when we die because it’s the mind which goes on into the next life. So the mind takes all of its positive qualities into the next life.
We’re born well established on the path. We inherit, we mentally inherit, we inherit the mental qualities of the past life, good and bad. So it’s essential that we take responsibility for this future life and give that future baby the best start in life possible, a compassionate, a wise and peaceful mind, which can be the basis for further growth and spiritual life. So logical, this is the meaning, this makes life meaningful. There’s purpose in life.
And in the process, what are we doing? We’re cultivating love. We’re cultivating wisdom. We’re cultivating compassion. The happiness of this life will come whether we seek it or not because everybody loves a loving person.
Everybody loves a compassionate non selfish person and we’re not seeking recognition. We’re not seeking their love. It comes anyway as an automatic result of following the path. It’s the only sensible thing to do. I’ve been talking a bit too much.
I haven’t seen any hands come up, but I’ve had some questions. A few minutes left if you have any questions. Yes. Yeah. Well, I think it’s true.
It’s like we sort of identify our personality with our life experience and our life situation. I think the problem is that we see it as intrinsically me, naturally me, which isn’t true. It’s not naturally me. We are all individuals and we are not born with intrinsic personalities or intrinsic psychological patterns or types, but we have total potential to transform to change. And indeed, the thought patterns and the habits are deeply ingrained, but we can grow out of it.
Yeah. Yes. It’s strong indoctrination from parents, from society, from our own education, from our our circle of friends because we tend to associate with similar minded friends. That’s right, but we can break free, we don’t have to be caught. But indeed it’s difficult but it can be done.
I’m still working, I’ve been a monk for thirty four years and I’m still trying to break free from my habitual thought patterns. But at least I started and I’ll continue, I hope, in the next life. And it’s yeah, have courage. Yeah. A woman?
Oh, that I wouldn’t be happy, that I would give up having a wife and family and the whole catastrophe. As Zorba the Greek called it. He was concerned for my happiness, not his own, but for me, but misguided compassion because he believed that happiness comes from external objects. And I believe that happiness, that the root of happiness is in the own one’s own way of approaching life. Wherever he is now, he’s from I don’t know if he He might be accepting.
Yeah, the back. Sure. I see. Yeah. Uh-huh.
Sure. I didn’t say it’s impossible. In general, we can’t do it. Most people can’t remember past lives, and that’s just reality. But we can, we can all, the memories are there.
And there are two ways in which one can remember past lives. One is karmically, which is probably in your case, even young children. There are many reported events of children talking about past lives and how what they’ve said has been checked up and they’ve been able to identify previous family members and so on. So this is karmic. It’s sort of it’s not clairvoyance, but it is a heightened awareness through karma that certain individuals can indeed remember past lives.
Through single pointed concentration, Samādhi, one can gain very powerful actual clairvoyance where one can be aware not only of one’s own past lives but even the past lives of others through the mind reading powers that come with Samādhi. So that’s another much more powerful way and we can all actualize that. But there are nine levels to the attainment of Samādhi and I spent three years on Kangaroo Island not having any contact with the world whatsoever And I didn’t get past the first level. It’s not easy to achieve Samādhi. I won’t ask you why.
Even now, even we, through the power of meditation, one can actually control death and choose one’s parents. Now we can create virtue and like helping others with compassion, love in some way And in our mind, make a prayer through this virtuous action, may I be born as a man or a woman, whichever we wish in order to, in that body, continue my spiritual practice. And there may well be valid reasons to want to continue spiritual practice as a woman or as a man, it’s individual choice. So that’s what we can start doing by dedicating virtue towards that future result with a pure heart. Not because I want to be Yeah, well even as a monkey I’d have to do a lot of cooking.
Alright, well look, I’m sorry I blathered on a bit too long, didn’t give you more time for questions but thank you for devoting this Sunday afternoon, a hot day, to coming here today. I’ve been very pleased to be able to meet you and to talk with you and try and explain a little bit about the path and how to make life meaningful. We have created, whether we believe in karma or not, collectively we’ve created a lot of positive energy by this meeting and this discussion. So let’s now dedicate this positive energy that we’ve collectively accumulated towards all other beings by thinking that through this may I train this mind in the path of wisdom and compassion, become a Buddha in order to be able to fully guide others along the same path out of suffering and towards the place of enlightenment. So I’ll just repeat that in Tibetan, just a short period of Tibetan to dedicate the positive energy of this talk.
So thank you very much again. Hope to see you again.