COURAGEOUS COMPASSION

HOW TO TRANSFORM PROBLEMS INTO HAPPINESS

CHENREZIG INSTITUTE EUDLO, QLD

APRIL 28–29, 2012 WITH VEN ROBINA COURTIN

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Contents 1. Understanding “Transforming Problems” in the Context of Lord Buddha’s Teachings 5 2. The Eight Verses of Thought Transformation 9 3. Unravelling Our Negative Emotions 21 4. Bodhicitta 29 5. The Illusory Nature of Things 35

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These teachings have been published for students attending FPMT’s Chenrezig Institute for the course by Ven Robina Courtin, April 28–29, 2012. chenrezig.com.au Thanks to: Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive for “Eight Verses of Mind Training”, a commentary by His Holiness the Dalai Lama given in Dharamsala, India, in 1981; “Bodhicitta” by Lama Yeshe; and “The Illusory Nature of Things”, teachings given by Lama Zopa Rinopche in Sydney, 1993. lamayeshe.com Wisdom Publications for “Understanding ‘Transforming Problems’ in the Context of Lord Buddha’s Teachings” from the Editor’s Preface in Dear Lama Zopa, 2007. wisdompubs.org Cover photo of Chenrezig in Palhalukup Cave Temple, Lhasa, Tibet; courtesy Diana Pisani.

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1. Understanding “Transforming Problems” in the Context of Lord Buddha’s Teachings By Robina Courtin WHAT IS THE MIND? For Buddha, the word mind refers to the entire spectrum of our inner experiences: thoughts, feelings, tendencies, personality traits, perceptions, intuitions, dreams.

It functions in dependence upon the brain, but is itself not the brain, not physical.

Not only that, our mind didn’t come from our parents, nor from a superior being.

Our mind, or consciousness, is our own. It’s not created by anybody else; it is its own entity. A river of mental moments, we can track it back and back to the first moment in our mother’s womb, and back before that into countless past lives.

The job of a Buddhist is to delve into this mind of ours—“the workshop is in the mind,” as Rinpoche puts it—and unravel the complex web of our innermost feelings by using Buddha’s sophisticated psychological techniques, known as meditation.

First we need to identify what’s there, then understand it, and finally—this is the crux of the matter—change it. In fact, Buddha says, we can change our mind to point where we have rid it entirely of the neurotic emotions, the delusions, such as attachment, anger, self-hate, and jealousy; and filled it full of the positive qualities such as kindness, intelligence, and altruism.

For most of us, the pursuit of this perfection, this buddhahood, does not come easily. But, as with the cultivation of any skill, we necessarily get better with practice. We all know that “practice makes perfect,” or, as the Tibetans would say, that

“nothing becomes more difficult with familiarity.”

We usually give equal status to our neuroses and positive qualities and assume that the delusions are innate, that we’re stuck with who we are. Buddha disagrees fundamentally. He says we can change, and this is because our neuroses are like additives, pollution: they simply don’t belong in the mind, and thus can be removed.

On the other hand, the positive qualities are at the core of our being; they define us; they are who we really are.

As we rid the mind of the delusions, the positive emotions naturally arise and grow. This is a natural, psychological process.

But merely believing this, Buddha says, won’t help. We need to verify it for ourselves by engaging in the practices. What practice is, in fact, is the investigating of these assertions of the Buddha and making them our own experience, thus proving them to ourselves.

WHY GOOD AND BAD THINGS HAPPEN: KARMA The power that propels the mind isn’t outside it. Buddha calls this power karma. It occurs naturally. It wasn’t revealed to him, nor did he make it up; like a scientist, he observed it to be so.

Karma is the natural process of cause and effect occurring in the minds and lives of all living beings.

Every thought and feeling we have, along with what we do with our body and say with our speech as a result, is a karma, an “action,” that necessarily brings a reaction in the future. Just naturally, like seeds, all positive actions ripen later as happiness (pleasing feelings and experiences), all negative actions ripen as suffering (painful feelings and experiences).

Karma is a natural law. There is no other person involved in this process,

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punishing and rewarding us: there is no such concept in Buddhism.

Contrary to our deeply held assumption that people and events outside us are the main source of our experiences, that whatever happens to us is someone else’s doing—God created us, our friends create our happiness, our enemies create our suffering—Buddha is saying, in effect, that we are the creators of our own experiences, our own very selves.

Our mind comes into this life fully programmed by our past actions, which, like seeds, ripen as our tendencies and experiences. We are propelled by the force of our own past karma, from moment to moment, from life to life.

From moment to moment, we create ourselves.

A common mistake is to think that karma relates only to the bad things and to use it as a big stick to beat ourselves with. But all the good things—our human life itself, our health, our friends, our ability to get a job, our good qualities—are the result of our past actions as well.

There is nothing we experience, good or bad, that isn’t the result of our own past actions.

We’d be amazed and delighted if we realized just how hard we must have worked in past lives to simply be who we are now.

All of Rinpoche’s advice is based on these assumptions about karma.

So, how to I apply karma, cause and effect, in my life?

Remembering that my suffering and happiness are the result of my own past actions, I become empowered: If I’m the main cause of who I am, then it follows I’m the main cause of what I can become. My life is in my own hands.

It’s up to me. I’m the boss. Given that I don’t want suffering and

do want happiness in the future, it follows that I must sow the seeds now: I need to abide by the law of karma: Don’t harm

others, try to help them, and remove the delusions from my mind.

This is the practice of the Buddha.

HOW TO WELCOME THE BAD THINGS: TRANSFORMING PROBLEMS INTO HAPPINESS Rinpoche’s advice is also based on the advanced practice called transforming problems into happiness.

Suffering happens to all of us. It seems to come without warning, no matter how hard we try to avoid it. We assume it is bad, that it’s not fair, and do everything we can to push it away, and when we can’t we suffer even more.

What we need to do is interpret suffering in a different way. First: by understanding that everything we experience is the fruit of our past actions, that we are the creators of our own reality, we can greet the problem without panic, without self-pity or blame.

If we can change it, we do so; if not, we accept it. Just this changes our experience of it, lessens the suffering, calms the mind, gives courage.

Not only that. Second: we can even feel good about the problem, be glad it’s there.

As Rinpoche says, “The thought of liking problems should arise naturally, like the thought of liking ice cream!” We realize that the mere experiencing of the problem finishes the karma we created in the past that caused it: when a fruit ripens, the seed is finished.

Even more than this, Third: we can actually use the problem to our advantage, see it as a challenge, use it as a method for achieving our goal of developing our amazing potential.

When it comes to achieving our ordinary life goals, we are full of admiration for the athletes, the businesspeople, the artists, who never give up in the face of incredible obstacles. We understand that their courage and perseverance in conquering the obstacles

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is what actually helps them accomplish their goals; it’s a method in itself.

But when it comes to emotional problems, we don’t have such courage. The moment the problem comes—the unkind word, the illness, the abuse—we feel victimized, angry, anxious, depressed.

It seems almost perverse to think that these problems could be good.

But with karma in mind and never losing sight of the goal, it’s an approach that develops our own qualities and hugely opens our hearts to others.

This approach is at the heart of the practice of the Buddhists of Tibet for the past thousand years.

The view of karma and responsibility for their own experiences is deep in their hearts; it’s natural to them. It’s exactly why His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his people are able to deal so well with their suffering at the hands of the Chinese Communists since 1950. They are not angry at their oppressors, they don’t wage war, they even have compassion for them.

When we’re clear about our goal—the fulfillment of our own marvelous potential and the capacity to benefit others—welcoming our problems and transforming them into happiness is without doubt the quickest path to success. It’s the most difficult practice, the most radical, but the most rewarding. COMPASSION: WORKING FOR OTHERS Practicing in this way, it’s inevitable that we open our hearts to others. We realize that we’re all in the same boat: everyone is experiencing the fruits of their past actions and creating the causes for their future experiences.

And this includes the people who harm us. Many of the letters in this book are about the suffering that people experience at the hands of others.

It’s almost shocking to think that we can have compassion in response to this harm, but that is what Rinpoche

repeatedly advises. As we are suffering now because of our own past actions, so too will they suffer in the future as a result of their present actions. How could we not have compassion? Like a mother for her destructive child, we can see that they are harming themselves.

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2. The Eight Verses of Thought Transformation By His Holiness the Dalai Verse 1 Determined to obtain the greatest possible benefit for all sentient beings, who are more precious than a wish-fulfilling jewel, I shall hold them most dear at all times. We ourselves and all other beings want to be happy and completely free from suffering. In this we are all exactly equal. However, each of us is only one, while other beings are infinite in number.

Now, there are two attitudes to consider: that of selfishly cherishing ourselves and that of cherishing others. The self-cherishing attitude makes us very uptight; we think we are extremely important and our basic desire is for ourselves to be happy and for things to go well for us. Yet we don’t know how to bring this about. In fact, acting out of self-cherishing can never make us happy.

Those who have the attitude of cherishing others regard all other beings as much more important than themselves and value helping others above all else. And, acting in this way, incidentally they themselves become very happy. For example, politicians who are genuinely concerned with helping or serving other people are recorded in history with respect, while those who are constantly exploiting and doing bad things to others go down as examples of bad people.

Leaving aside, for the moment, religion, the next life and nirvana, even within this life selfish people bring negative repercussions down upon themselves by their self-centered actions. On the other hand, people like Mother Teresa, who sincerely devote their entire life and energy to selflessly serving the poor, needy and helpless, are always

remembered for their noble work with respect; others don’t have anything negative to say about them. This, then, is the result of cherishing others: whether you want it or not, even those who are not your relatives always like you, feel happy with you and have a warm feeling towards you. If you are the sort of person who always speaks nicely in front of others but badmouths them behind their back, of course, nobody will like you.

Thus, even in this life, if we try to help others as much as we can and have as few selfish thoughts as possible, we shall experience much happiness. Our life is not very long; one hundred years at most. If throughout its duration we try to be kind, warm-hearted, concerned for the welfare of others and less selfish and angry, that will be wonderful, excellent; that really is the cause of happiness. If we are selfish, always putting ourselves first and others second, the actual result will be that we ourselves will finish up last. Mentally putting ourselves last and others first is the way to come out ahead.

So don’t worry about the next life or nirvana; these things will come gradually. If within this life you remain a good, warm-hearted, unselfish person, you will be a good citizen of the world. Whether you are a Buddhist, a Christian or a communist is irrelevant; the important thing is that as long as you are a human being you should be a good human being. That is the teaching of Buddhism; that is the message carried by all the world’s religions.

However, the teachings of Buddhism contain every technique for eradicating selfishness and actualizing the attitude of cherishing others. Shantideva’s marvelous text, the Bodhicaryavatara [A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life], for example, is very helpful for this. I myself practice according to that book; it is extremely useful. Our mind is very cunning, very difficult to control, but if we make constant effort, work tirelessly with logical

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reasoning and careful analysis, we shall be able to control it and change it for the better.

Some Western psychologists say that we should not repress our anger but express it – that we should practice anger! However, we must make an important distinction here between mental problems that should be expressed and those that should not. Sometimes you may be truly wronged and it is right for you to express your grievance instead of letting it fester inside you. But you should not express it with anger. If you foster disturbing negative minds such as anger they will become a part of your personality; each time you express anger it becomes easier to express it again. You do it more and more until you are simply a furious person completely out of control. Thus, in terms of mental problems, there are certainly some that are properly expressed but others that are not.

At first when you try to control disturbing negative minds it is difficult. The first day, the first week, the first month you cannot control them well. But with constant effort your negativities will gradually decrease. Progress in mental development does not come about through taking medicines or other chemical substances; it depends on controlling the mind.

Thus we can see that if we want to fulfill our wishes, be they temporal or ultimate, we should rely on other sentient beings much more than on wish-granting gems and always cherish them above all else.

Question. Is the whole purpose of this practice to improve our minds or actually to do something to help others? What is more important? ! His Holiness. Both are important. First, if we do not have pure motivation, whatever we do may not be satisfactory. Therefore, the first thing we should do is cultivate

pure motivation. But we do not have to wait until that motivation is fully developed before actually doing something to help others. Of course, to help others in the most effective way possible we have to be fully enlightened buddhas. Even to help others in vast and extensive ways we need to have attained one of the levels of a bodhisattva, that is, to have had the experience of a direct, non-conceptual perception of the reality of emptiness and to have achieved the powers of extra-sensory perception. Nonetheless, there are many levels of help we can offer others. Even before we have achieved these qualities we can try to act like bodhisattvas, but naturally our actions will be less effective than theirs. Therefore, without waiting until we are fully qualified, we can generate a good motivation and with that try to help others as best we can. This is a more balanced approach and better than simply staying somewhere in isolation doing some meditation and recitations. Of course, this depends very much on the individual. If we are confident that by staying in a remote place we can gain definite realizations within a certain period, that is different. Perhaps it is best to spend half our time in active work and the other half in the practice of meditation. Question. Tibet was a Buddhist country. If these values you are describing are Buddhist ones, why was there so much imbalance in Tibetan society. ! His Holiness. Human weakness. Although Tibet was certainly a Buddhist country, it had its share of bad, corrupt people. Even some of the religious institutions, the monasteries, became corrupt and turned into centers of exploitation. But all the same, compared with many other societies, Tibet was much more peaceful and harmonious and had fewer problems than they.

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Verse 2 When in the company of others, I shall always consider myself the lowest of all, and from the depths of my heart hold others dear and supreme. No matter who we are with, we often think things like, “I am stronger than him,” “I am more beautiful than her,” “I am more intelligent,” “I am wealthier,” “I am much better qualified” and so forth – we generate much pride. This is not good. Instead, we should always remain humble. Even when we are helping others and are engaged in charity work we should not regard ourselves in a haughty way as great protectors benefiting the weak. This, too, is pride. Rather, we should engage in such activities very humbly and think that we are offering our services up to the people.

When we compare ourselves with animals, for instance, we might think, “I have a human body” or “I’m an ordained person” and feel much higher than them. From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha’s teachings and are thus much better than insects. But from another, we can say that insects are very innocent and free from guile, whereas we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this point of view we have to say that we are much worse than insects, which just go about their business without pretending to be anything. This is one method of training in humility.

Verse 3 Vigilant, the moment a delusion appears in my mind, endangering myself and others, I shall confront and avert it without delay. If we investigate our minds at times when we are very selfish and preoccupied with ourselves to the exclusion of others, we shall find that the disturbing negative minds are the root of this behavior. Since they greatly disturb our minds, the moment we notice that we are coming under their influence, we should apply some antidote to them. The general opponent to all the disturbing negative minds is meditation on emptiness, but there are also antidotes to specific ones that we, as beginners, can apply. Thus, for attachment, we meditate on ugliness; for anger, on love; for closed-minded ignorance, on dependent arising; for many disturbing thoughts, on the breath and energy winds. Question. Which dependent arising? !His Holiness. The twelve links of dependent arising, or interdependent origination. They start from ignorance and go through to aging and death. On a more subtle level you can use dependent arising as a cause for establishing that things are empty of true existence. Question. Why should we meditate on ugliness to overcome attachment? ! His Holiness. We develop attachment to things because we see them as very attractive. Trying to view them as unattractive, or ugly, counteracts that. For example, we might develop attachment to another person’s body, seeing his or her figure as something very attractive. When you start to analyze this attachment you find that it is based on viewing merely the skin. However, the nature of this body that appears to us as beautiful is that of

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the flesh, blood, bones, skin and so forth, of which it is composed. Now let’s analyze human skin: take your own, for example. If a piece of it comes off and you put it on your shelf for a few days it becomes really repulsive. This is the nature of skin. All parts of the body are the same. There is no beauty in a piece of human flesh; when you see blood you might feel afraid, not attached. Even a beautiful face: if it gets scratched there is nothing nice about it; wash off the paint – there is nothing left! Ugliness is the nature of the physical body. Human bones, the skeleton, are also repulsive; a skull-and-crossed-bones has a very negative connotation.

So that is the way to analyze something towards which you feel attachment, or love – using this word in the negative sense of desirous attachment. Think more of the object’s ugly side; analyze the nature of the person or thing from that point of view. Even if this does not control your attachment completely, at least it will help subdue it a little. This is the purpose of meditating on or building up the habit of looking at the ugly aspect of things.

The other kind of love, or kindness, is not based on the reasoning that “such and such a person is beautiful, therefore, I shall show respect and kindness.” The basis for pure love is, “This is a living being that wants happiness, does not want suffering and has the right to be happy. Therefore, I should feel love and compassion.” This kind of love is entirely different from the first, which is based on ignorance and therefore totally unsound. The reasons for loving kindness are sound. With the love that is simply attachment, the slightest change in the object, such as a tiny change of attitude, immediately causes you to change. This is because your emotion is based on something very superficial. Take, for example, a new marriage. Often after a few weeks, months or years the couple become enemies and finish up getting divorced. They married deeply in love –

nobody chooses to marry with hatred – but after a short time everything changed. Why? Because of the superficial basis of the relationship; a small change in one person causes a complete change of attitude in the other.

We should think, “The other person is a human being like me. Certainly I want happiness; therefore, she must want happiness, too. As a sentient being I have the right to happiness; for the same reason she, too, has the right to happiness.” This kind of sound reasoning gives rise to pure love and compassion. Then no matter how our view of that person changes – from good to bad to ugly – she is basically the same sentient being. Thus, since the main reason for showing loving kindness is always there, our feelings towards the other are perfectly stable.

The antidote to anger is meditation on love, because anger is a very rough, coarse mind that needs to be softened with love.

When we enjoy the objects to which we are attached, we do experience a certain pleasure but, as Nagarjuna has said, it is like having an itch and scratching it; it gives us some pleasure but we would be far better off if we did not have the itch in the first place. Similarly, when we get the things with which we are obsessed we feel happy, but we’d be far better off if we were free from the attachment that causes us to become obsessed with things.

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Verse 4 Whenever I see beings that are wicked in nature and overwhelmed by violent negative actions and suffering, I shall hold such rare ones dear, as if I had found a precious treasure. If we run into somebody who is by nature very cruel, rough, nasty and unpleasant, our usual reaction is to avoid him. In such situations our loving concern for others is liable to decrease. Instead of allowing our love for others to weaken by thinking what an evil person he is, we should see him as a special object of love and compassion and cherish that person as though we had come across a precious treasure, difficult to find.

Verse 5 When, out of envy, others mistreat me with abuse, insults or the like, I shall accept defeat and offer the victory to others. If somebody insults, abuses or criticizes us, saying that we are incompetent and don’t know how to do anything and so forth, we are likely to get very angry and contradict what the person has said. We should not react in this way; instead, with humility and tolerance, we should accept what has been said.

Where it says that we should accept defeat and offer the victory to others, we have to differentiate two kinds of situation. If, on the one hand, we are obsessed with our own welfare and very selfishly motivated, we should accept defeat and offer victory to the other, even if our life is at stake. But if, on the other hand, the situation is such that the welfare of others is at stake, we have to work very hard and fight for the rights of others, and not accept the loss at all.

One of the forty-six secondary vows of a bodhisattva refers to a situation in which somebody is doing something very harmful and you have to use forceful methods or whatever else is necessary to stop that person’s actions immediately – if you don’t, you have transgressed that commitment. It might appear that this bodhisattva vow and the fifth stanza, which says that one must accept defeat and give the victory to the other, are contradictory but they are not. The bodhisattva precept deals with a situation in which one’s prime concern is the welfare of others: if somebody is doing something extremely harmful and dangerous it is wrong not to take strong measures to stop it if necessary.

Nowadays, in very competitive societies, strong defensive or similar actions are often required. The motivation for these should not be selfish concern but extensive feelings of kindness and

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compassion towards others. If we act out of such feelings to save others from creating negative karma this is entirely correct. Question. It may sometimes be necessary to take strong action when we see something wrong, but whose judgment do we trust for such decisions? Can we rely on our own perception of the world? !His Holiness. That’s complicated. When you consider taking the loss upon yourself you have to see whether giving the victory to the others is going to benefit them ultimately or only temporarily. You also have to consider the effect that taking the loss upon yourself will have on your power or ability to help others in the future. It is also possible that by doing something that is harmful to others now you create a great deal of merit that will enable you to do things vastly beneficial for others in the long run; this is another factor you have to take into account.

As it says in the Bodhicaryavatara, you have to examine, both superficially and deeply, whether the benefits of doing a prohibited action outweigh the shortcomings. At times when it is difficult to tell, you should check your motivation. In the Shiksa-Samuccaya, Shantideva says that the benefits of an action done with bodhicitta outweigh the negativities of doing it without such motivation. Although it is extremely important, it can sometimes be very difficult to see the dividing line between what to do and what not to do, therefore you should study the texts that explain about such things. In lower texts it will say that certain actions are prohibited while higher ones tell you that those same actions are allowed. The more you know about all of this the easier it will be to decide what to do in any situation.

Verse 6 When somebody whom I have benefited and in whom I have great hopes gives me terrible harm, I shall regard that person as my holy guru. Usually we expect people whom we have helped a great deal to be very grateful and if they react to us with ingratitude we are likely to get angry. In such situations we should not get upset but practice patience instead. Moreover, we should see such people as teachers testing our patience and therefore treat them with respect. This verse contains all the Bodhicaryavatara teachings on patience.

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Verse 7 In short, both directly and indirectly, I offer every happiness and benefit to all my mothers. I shall secretly take upon myself all their harmful actions and suffering. This refers to the practice of taking upon ourselves all the sufferings of others and giving away to them all our happiness, motivated by strong compassion and love. We ourselves want happiness and do not want suffering and can see that all other beings feel the same. We can see, too, that other beings are overwhelmed by suffering but do not know how to get rid of it. Thus, we should generate the intention of taking on all their suffering and negative karma and pray for it to ripen upon ourselves immediately. Likewise it is obvious that other beings are devoid of the happiness they seek and do not know how to find it. Thus, without a trace of miserliness, we should offer them all our happiness – our body, wealth and merits – and pray for it to ripen on them immediately.

Of course, it is most unlikely that we shall actually be able to take on the sufferings of others and give them our happiness. When such transference between beings does occur, it is the result of some very strong unbroken karmic connection from the past. However, this meditation is a very powerful means of building up courage in our minds and is, therefore, a highly beneficial practice.

In the Seven Point Thought Transformation it says that we should alternate the practices of taking and giving and mount them on the breath. And here, Langri Tangpa says these should be done secretly. As it is explained in the Bodhicaryavatara, this practice does not suit the minds of beginner bodhisattvas – it is something for a select few practitioners. Therefore, it is called secret. Question. In the Bodhicaryavatara,

Shantideva says: “…if for the sake of others I cause harm to myself, I shall acquire all that is magnificent.”9 On the other hand, Nagarjuna says that one should not mortify the body. So, in what way does Shantideva mean one should harm oneself? ! His Holiness. This does not mean that you have to hit yourself on the head or something like that. Shantideva is saying that at times when strong, self-cherishing thoughts arise you have to argue very strongly with yourself and use forceful means to subdue them; in other words, you have to harm your self-cherishing mind. You have to distinguish clearly between the I that is completely obsessed with its own welfare and the I that is going to become enlightened: there is a big difference. And you have to see this verse of the Bodhicaryavatara in the context of the verses that precede and follow it. There are many different ways the I is discussed: the grasping at a true identity for the I, the self-cherishing I, the I that we join with in looking at things from the viewpoint of others and so forth. You have to see the discussion of the self in these different contexts.

If it really benefits others, if it benefits even one sentient being, it is appropriate for us to take upon ourselves the suffering of the three realms of existence or to go to one of the hells, and we should have the courage to do this. In order to reach enlightenment for the sake of sentient beings we should be happy and willing to spend countless eons in the lowest hell, Avici. This is what is meant by taking the harms that afflict others upon ourselves. Question. What would we have to do to get to the lowest hell? ! His Holiness. The point is to develop the courage to be willing to go to one of the hells; it doesn’t mean you actually have to go there. When the Kadampa geshe

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Chekawa was dying, he suddenly called in his disciples and asked them to make special offerings, ceremonies and prayers for him because his practice had been unsuccessful. The disciples were very upset because they thought something terrible was about to happen. However, the geshe explained that although all his life he had been praying to be born in the hells for the benefit of others, he was now receiving a pure vision of what was to follow – he was going to be reborn in a pure land instead of the hells – and that’s why he was upset. In the same way, if we develop a strong, sincere wish to be reborn in the lower realms for the benefit of others, we accumulate a vast amount of merit that brings about the opposite result.

That’s why I always say, if we are going to be selfish we should be wisely selfish. Real, or narrow, selfishness causes us to go down; wise selfishness brings us buddhahood. That’s really wise! Unfortunately, what we usually do first is get attached to buddhahood. From the scriptures we understand that to attain buddhahood we need bodhicitta and that without it we can’t become enlightened; thus we think, “I want buddhahood, therefore I have to practice bodhicitta.” We are not so much concerned about bodhicitta as about buddhahood. This is absolutely wrong. We should do the opposite; forget the selfish motivation and think how really to help others.

If we go to hell we can help neither others nor ourselves. How can we help? Not just by giving them something or performing miracles, but by teaching Dharma. However, first we must be qualified to teach. At present we cannot explain the whole path – all the practices and experiences that one person has to go through from the first stage up to the last, enlightenment. Perhaps we can explain some of the early stages through our own experience, but not much more than that. To be able to help others in the most extensive way by leading them along the

entire path to enlightenment we must first enlighten ourselves. For this reason we should practice bodhicitta. This is entirely different from our usual way of thinking, where we are compelled to think of others and dedicate our heart to them because of selfish concern for our own enlightenment. This way of going about things is completely false, a sort of lie. Question. I read in a book that just by practicing Dharma we prevent nine generations of our relatives from rebirth in hell. Is this true? ! His Holiness. This is a little bit of advertising! In fact it is possible that something like this could happen, but in general it’s not so simple. Take, for example, our reciting the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM and dedicating the merit of that to our rapidly attaining enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. We can’t say that just by reciting mantras we shall quickly attain enlightenment, but we can say that such practices act as contributory causes for enlightenment. Likewise, while our practicing Dharma will not itself protect our relatives from lower rebirths, it may act as a contributory cause for this.

If this were not the case, if our practice could act as the principal cause of a result experienced by others, it would contradict the law of karma, the relationship between cause and effect. Then we could simply sit back and relax and let all the buddhas and bodhisattvas do everything for us; we would not have to take any responsibility for our own welfare. However, the fully enlightened one said that all he can do is teach us the Dharma, the path to liberation from suffering, and then it’s up to us to put it into practice – he washed his hands of that responsibility! As Buddhism teaches that there is no creator and that we create everything for ourselves, we are therefore our own masters – within the limits of the law of cause and effect. And

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this law of karma teaches that if we do good things we shall experience good results and if we do bad things we shall experience unhappiness. Question. How do we cultivate patience? ! His Holiness. There are many methods.

Knowledge of and faith in the law of karma themselves engender patience. You realize, “This suffering I’m experiencing is entirely my own fault, the result of actions I myself created in the past. Since I can’t escape it I have to put up with it. However, if I want to avoid suffering in the future I can do so by cultivating virtues such as patience. Getting irritated or angry with this suffering will only create negative karma, the cause for future misfortune.” This is one way of practicing patience.

Another thing you can do is meditate on the suffering nature of the body: “This body and mind are the basis for all kinds of suffering; it is natural and by no means unexpected that suffering should arise from them.” This sort of realization is very helpful for the development of patience.

You can also recall what it says in the Bodhicaryavatara:

Why be unhappy about something !If it can be remedied? !And what is the use of being unhappy about something !If it cannot be remedied?

If there is a method of overcoming your suffering or an opportunity to do so, you have no need to worry. If there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, worrying cannot help you at all. This is both very simple and very clear.

Something else you can do is to contemplate the disadvantages of getting angry and the advantages of practicing patience. We are human beings – one of our better qualities is our ability to think and judge. If we lose patience and get angry, we lose our ability to make proper judgments and thereby lose one of the most powerful instruments we have for

tackling problems: our human wisdom. This is something that animals do not have. If we lose patience and get irritated we are damaging this precious instrument. We should remember this; it is far better to have courage and determination and face suffering with patience. Question. How can we be humble yet at the same time realistic about the good qualities that we possess? ! His Holiness. You have to differentiate between confidence in your abilities and pride. You should have confidence in whatever good qualities and skills you have and use them courageously, but you shouldn’t feel arrogantly proud of them. Being humble doesn’t mean feeling totally incompetent and helpless. Humility is cultivated as the opponent of pride, but we should use whatever good qualities we have to the full.

Ideally, you should have a great deal of courage and strength but not boast about or make a big show of it. Then, in times of need, you should rise to the occasion and fight bravely for what is right. This is perfect. If you have none of these good qualities but go around boasting how great you are and in times of need completely shrink back, you’re just the opposite. The first person is very courageous but has no pride; the other is very proud but has no courage.

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Verse 8 Undefiled by the stains of the superstitions of the eight worldly concerns, may I, by perceiving all phenomena as illusory, be released from the bondage of attachment. This verse deals with wisdom. All the preceding practices should not be defiled by the stains of the superstitions of the eight worldly dharmas. These eight can be referred to as white, black or mixed. I think it should be all right if I explain this verse from the point of view of the practices being done without their being stained by the wrong conception of clinging to true existence – the superstition of the eight dharmas.

How does one avoid staining one’s practice in this way? By recognizing all existence as illusory and not clinging to true existence. In this way, one is liberated from the bondage of this type of clinging.

To explain the meaning of “illusory” here: true existence appears in the aspect of various objects, wherever they are manifest, but in fact there is no true existence there. True existence appears, but there is none – it is an illusion. Even though everything that exists appears as truly existent, it is devoid of true existence. To see that objects are empty of true existence – that even though true existence appears there is none, it is illusory – one should have definite understanding of the meaning of emptiness: the emptiness of the manifest appearance.

First one should be certain that all phenomena are empty of true existence. Then later, when that which has absolute nature appears to be truly existent, one refutes the true existence by recalling one’s previous ascertainment of the total absence of true existence. When one puts together these two – the appearance of true existence and its emptiness as previously experienced – one discovers the illusoriness of phenomena.

At this time there is no need for an explanation of the way things appear as illusory separate from that just given. This text explains up to the meditation on mere emptiness. In tantric teachings such as the Guhyasamaja tantra, that which is called illusory is completely separate; in this verse, that which is called illusory does not have to be shown separately. Thus, the true existence of that which has absolute nature is the object of refutation and should be refuted. When it has been, the illusory mode of appearance of things arises indirectly: they seem to be truly existent but they are not. Question. How can something that is unfindable and exists merely by imputation function? ! His Holiness. That’s very difficult. If you can realize that subject and action exist by reason of their being dependent arisings, emptiness will appear in dependent arising. This is the most difficult thing to understand.

If you have realized non-inherent existence well, the experience of existent objects speaks for itself. That they exist by nature is refuted by logic, and you can be convinced by logic that things do not – there is no way that they can – inherently exist. Yet they definitely do exist because we experience them. So how do they exist? They exist merely by the power of name. This is not saying that they don’t exist; it is never said that things do not exist. What is said is that they exist by the power of name. This is a difficult point; something that you can understand slowly, slowly through experience.

First you have to analyze whether things exist truly or not, actually findably or not: you can’t find them. But if we say that they don’t exist at all, this is a mistake, because we do experience them. We can’t prove through logic that things exist findably, but we do know through our experience that they exist. Thus we

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can make a definite conclusion that things do exist. Now, if things exist there are only two ways in which they can do so: either from their own base or by being under the control of other factors, that is, either completely independently or dependently. Since logic disproves that things exist independently, the only way they can exist is dependently.

Upon what do things depend for their existence? They depend upon the base that is labeled and the thought that labels. If they could be found when searched for, they should exist by their own nature, and thus the Madhyamaka scriptures, which say that things do not exist by their own nature, would be wrong. However, you can’t find things when you search for them. What you do find is something that exists under the control of other factors, which is therefore said to exist merely in name. The word “merely” here indicates that something is being cut off: but what is being cut off is not the name, nor is it that which has a meaning and is the object of a valid mind. We are not saying that there is no meaning to things other than their names, or that the meaning that is not the name is not the object of a valid mind. What it cuts off is that it exists by something other than the power of name. Things exist merely by the power of name, but they have meaning, and that meaning is the object of a valid mind. But the nature of things is that they exist simply by the power of name.

There is no other alternative, only the force of name. That does not mean that besides the name there is nothing. There is the thing, there is a meaning and there is a name. What is the meaning? The meaning also exists merely in name. Question. Is the mind something that really exists or is it also an illusion? !His Holiness. It’s the same thing. According to the Prasangika Madhyamaka, the highest, most precise

view, it is the same thing whether it is an external object or the internal consciousness that apprehends it: both exist by the power of name; neither is truly existent. Thought itself exists merely in name; so do emptiness, buddha, good, bad and indifferent. Everything exists solely by the power of name.

When we say “name only” there is no way to understand what it means other than that it cuts off meanings that are not name only. If you take a real person and a phantom person, for example, both are the same in that they exist merely by name, but there is a difference between them. Whatever exists or does not exist is merely labeled, but in name, some things exist and others do not.

According to the Mind Only school, external phenomena appear to inherently exist but are, in fact, empty of external, inherent existence, whereas the mind is truly existent. I think this is enough about Buddhist tenets for now.18 Question. Are “mind” and “consciousness” equivalent terms? !His Holiness. There are distinctions made in Tibetan, but it’s difficult to say whether the English words carry the same connotations. Where “mind” refers to primary consciousness it would probably be the same as “consciousness.” In Tibetan, “awareness” is the most general term and is divided into primary consciousness and (secondary) mental factors, both of which have many further subdivisions. Also, when we speak of awareness there are mental and sensory awareness, and the former has many subdivisions into various degrees of roughness and subtlety. Whether or not the English words correspond to the Tibetan in terms of precision and so forth is difficult to say. Colophon His Holiness the Dalai Lama gave this

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teaching in Dharamsala, 7 October 1981. It was translated by Alexander Berzin, clarified by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, edited by Nicholas Ribush and first published in the souvenir booklet for Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre's Second Dharma Celebration, November 5-8 1982, New Delhi, India. This teaching was published in 2005 in the LYWA publication Teachings From Tibet.

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3. Unravelling Our Negative Emotions  By Robina Courtin The Buddhist view is that we’ve all got extraordinary potential to cultivate our minds, our consciousness. It’s not some special gift that only some people have; it’s innate within all of us.

But potential for what? Not something holy, like heaven in the sky, or next life, but potential to eliminate entirely fear, depression, anxiety, neediness, low self-esteem and to fully develop love, contentment, compassion, clarity, courage and the other qualities we want so badly. That’s the meaning of nirvana.

It is something very earthy, so tasty, not something vague and mystical.

This potential exists, simply, in our minds, our consciousness. Therefore we need to learn how to access our own mind. Sounds simple enough, but it’s not a job we’re educated to do. It is not our habit to look inside, much less know deeply and well what’s going on there. WHAT IS THE MIND? From the Buddhist point of view, the word “mind” covers the entire spectrum of our inner experiences: thoughts, feelings and emotions, unconscious, sub-conscious, intuition, instinct, even what some might call soul – all of this is our consciousness. And this, as Lama Zopa Rinpoche puts it, is where the workshop is. This is what we have to become deeply familiar with in order to cultivate our marvelous potential.

Mainly what we’re familiar with, what we run to in order to understand our lives, is the outside world, the past – the people and events and objects – which we’re convinced are the main cause of our happiness and suffering.

This is okay, and necessary, but not enough. Our parents, our genes, the

boyfriend, the boss, the external environment – they are merely catalysts for our experiences, not the main event. The main thing is our own mind, our own emotions, characteristics, personality traits, tendencies: our own very being itself.

Investigating, unravelling, and transforming this is the Buddhist approach to psychological work. BEING OUR OWN THERAPIST According to this model of the mind, psychological states fall into three categories: positive, negative, and neutral. Leaving aside the neutral, the positive states, which are at the core of our being, are necessarily the cause of own wellbeing and happiness, and the basis of our capacity to benefit others. The negative, which are not at the core of our being and thus can be removed, are necessarily the cause of our unhappiness and the basis of our harming others.

The key job, then, is to develop the skill to look inside, to be introspective, in a clear and disciplined way, so that we’re then qualified to do the actual job of changing our emotions, of distinguishing between the positive and negative. To become our own therapist, in other words, as Lama Yeshe puts it.

Not an easy job. First of all, we’re not educated to look into our minds. Second, we only notice we’re angry, for example, when the words vomit out of the mouth; or that we’re depressed when we can’t get out of bed one morning. Third, even if we do look at our feelings, often we can’t tell the difference between the positive and the negative: they’re mixed together in a big soup of emotions – and a puréed soup at.

And one of the biggest obstacles is that we don’t think we can change them: they’re so concrete, so real: “I’m born this way, what can I do about it?” We so fiercely identify with the neuroses, believing that they’re the real me. We even

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think they’re physical. And anyway, who wants to look into their mind? “It’s not my fault, is it? I didn’t ask to get born! This is how we all are! What am I supposed to do about it?”

Everything conspires against our doing this job.

NEGATIVITY IS NOT INNATE To give ourselves the confidence to even start, we need to think about how the negative states of mind are not at the core of our being, they do not define us, they are not innate, and thus can be removed. This flies in the face of our deeply held assumption – one that’s reinforced by all contemporary models of the mind – that the positive and negative have equal status; that they’re natural; they just are who we are. If you ask your therapist for methods to get rid of all anger, jealousy, attachment and the rest, they’ll think you’re insane!

We can be forgiven for thinking the negative, neurotic, unhappy emotions are at the core of our being: they certainly feel like it! We identify totally with them, follow them perfectly, truly believing this is who I really am. This is the irony of ego. NEGATIVE STATES OF MIND ARE DISTURBING AND DELUSIONAL So, if the negative, neurotic emotions are the source of our pain and the positive ones the cause of our happines, then we’d better learn to distinguish them. This is the very essence of the job our being our own therapist.

What are negative states of mind? They have two main characteristics (which the positive ones necessarily lack) and these are indicated by two commonly used synonyms: “disturbing emotions” and “delusions”.

Disturbing Even though we can see that anger is disturbing to oneself – just look at an angry person: they’re out of their mind! – we fiercely live in denial of it; or we deflect it, so determined are we to

believe that the external catalyst is the main problem. My friends on death row in Kentucky told me that they receive visits from an old Catholic man who, after thirty years of grief and rage after his daughter was murdered, finally realized that the main reason for his suffering was his rage, his anger.

Delusional The other characteristic that these unhappy states of mind possess is that they’re delusional. We’d be offended if someone accused of that, but that’s exactly what Buddha is saying. The extent to which our minds are caught up in attachment, anger and the rest is the extent to which we are not in touch with reality. He’s saying that we’re all delusional, it’s just a question of degree.

In other words, anger, attachment and the rest are concepts, wrong concepts. It seems like a joke to say that these powerful emotions are based in thoughts, but that’s because we only notice them when they roar up to the surface as emotion.

Perhaps we can see the disturbing aspect of them, but rarely the delusional.

They are distorted assessments of the person or the event that we are attached to or angry with; they’re elaborations, exaggerated stories, lies, misconceptions, fantasies, conceptual constructions, superstitions. As Rinpoche puts it, they decorate on top of what is already there layers upon layers of characteristics that are simply not there. Bad enough that we see things this way; the worst part is that we believe that these stories are true. This is what keeps us locked inside our own personal insane asylum.

Understanding this is the key to understanding our negative states of mind and, therefore, how to get rid of them. ATTACHMENT AND ANGER COME TOGETHER The delusion that runs our lives is attachment. It’s a profound dissatisfaction, neediness; a primordial sense that

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something is missing, of being bereft, lonely, cut off. It’s just there, all the time, in the bones of our being.

And this is where aversionx, anger, the exact opposite of attachment, comes into play. The split second that attachment is thwarted, doesn’t get what it wants – and that’s a thousand times a day – aversion arises. Then this is expressed externally as anger or internally as despair and depression. Attachment and aversion are utterly linked. Being a fantasy, attachment is not sustainable; the bubble has to burst, and it has nowhere to go but aversion (or ignorance, which manifests as boredom, indifference, uncaring).

In our never-ending efforts to keep the panic at bay, we hungrily seek the right sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, thoughts, words, but the split second we don’t get them, aversion arises, exploding outwards as anger or imploding inwards as depression, guilt, hopelessness, self-hate. DELUSIONS ARE LIARS At the root of this, as Buddha calls it, is ignorance: marigpa in Tibetan: unawareness: a fundamental unawareness of how we actually exist. The function of this “ego-grasping”, as it’s called, is to isolate and concretize this universe-big sense of self, a deluded sense of “I”, a totally fabricated sense of I, whose nature is fear: paranoid, dark, cut off, separate, alienated, and overwshelming.

This instinctive, pervasive sense of an independent, self-existent, real, solid, definite me-ness, totally pervades everything – there is not an instant when it is not there. It’s at the deepest level of assumption, beneath everything. It is always there, informing everything we think and feel and say and do and experience.

And the main voice of this I is “I want.” Why? The vivid sense of a separate, lonely I manifests as a deep sense of missing something, not being enough, not having enough. And that is the irony of ego – we

actually feel empty, bereft. And so that neediness, that bottomless pit of yearning, that hunger: that’s attachment. And it’s the main voice of ego, it is constantly there, moment by moment; not just occasionally there, but constantly there.

This attachment, this desire, being a misconception, makes the mistake of believing, a million percent, that that delicious person, that gorgeous taste, that lovely smell, that nice feeling, that idea – that when I get that, when I have it inside me, then I’ll feel full, then I’ll be content. That is what desire thinks.

This is so hard to see how desire is deluded. And it is not meant to be a moralistic issue. As soon as we hear these words we feel a bit resentful, “What do you mean – I’m not allowed to have pleasure?” That’s how we feel. But as Lama Yeshe has pointed out: we’re either completely hedonistic, and grasping and shoving everything in, or we’re completely puritanical. And the irony is that they are both coming from a misunderstanding of desire; they both come from ego.

Buddha is not being moralistic. He is not saying we should not have pleasure – the reality is he is saying we should have masses of pleasure, joy, happiness, but naturally and appropriately, and, incredibly, without relying upon anything external. This is our natural state when we’ve depolluted our minds of the neruoses, in fact.

Right now, because of the misconception that desire has, we have got the wrong end of the stick. Desire thinks that the delicious chocolate cake, that gorgeous thing is out there, vibrating deliciousness, demanding that I eat it – nothing coming from my side at all. We don’t think out mind plays any role at all. We think that it’s all happening from the cake’s side, all the energy is coming from the cake. OUR MIND MAKES IT UP

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And the thing is that we don’t see this process! The fact is we are making up the cake – attachment has written a huge story about cake and what it will do for us. It is a complex conceptual construction, an invention, an elaborate view, an interpretation, an opinion.

We’re like a child, as one lama said, who draws a lion, and then becomes afraid of it. We invent everything in our reality, and then we have all the fears and the paranoia and the depression and the grasping. We’re too much!

But we make up that cake, we make up the enemy – we made them up ourselves. This sounds pretty cosmic, but it is literally true. This doesn’t mean there is no cake there – there is. And it doesn’t mean that Fred didn’t punch you – he did. We need to distinguish between the facts and the fiction: that’s the tricky part.

It is hard to see this, but this is the way delusions function. And basically they are liars. What attachment is seeing is simply not true. What attachment is seeing simply does not exist.

There is a cake there, but what we think is cake and what cake actually is are hugely different. This is interesting. And because this is hard to understand indicates how ancient it is within us.

What we’re seeing or experiencing, what we are grasping at – delicious cake from its own side that will make me happy – is a total lie. It doesn’t exist like that at all. There is a cake there, it is brown, it is square: that’s valid. And this is what’s hard to distinguish – the correctness, and the incorrectness. What is actually there and what is not there. That is the job we need to do in knowing the way delusions work and therefore how to get rid of them.

ATTACHMENT IS THE VOICE OF THE VICTIM Another characteristic of attachment is that it is the voice of the victim. We truly feel we have no control – cake is this incredible powerful thing, and I just have to have it. What choice do I have? That is attachment talking. Attachment gives all the power to the outside object. Which is why we feel like a baby. That’s the victim mentality. And victim mentality, the one of hopelessness, the one of no control, that’s the voice of attachment. Literally. That’s exactly how attachment functions. Attachment is giving all the power to that object. It sees this truly delicious divine thing, which in reality our mind has made up, and then we believe it and then blame it. ATTACHMENT IS NOT A FUNCTION OF THE SENSES “We make the body the boss,” as Lama Yeshe would tell us. We totally follow what the senses feel. We assume the delicious cake is an object of the senses – of course, it is; but what we think we see isn’t what’s there. What appears to the sense of sight, for example, is not a delicious cake but simply the shape and colour of the thing. “Delicious cake” is a story made up by the mental consciousness, specifically attachment. This is a crucial point.

Let’s analyze. What is being experienced in relation to that cake? What are the states of mind? One of them is the senses indeed – we smell it in the kitchen, so there’s our nose sense. Then there’s the touch, the sight, we see the shape and color when it comes to the table; then we touch it, the hand feels it, then there’s the taste consciousness, the one we’re wanting the most. So four of the five senses are involved in the experience of that cake.

The senses are like dumb animals. Our tongue doesn’t experience the hunger for the cake, it doesn’t leap out of our face and grab the cake desperately; even our hand

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doesn’t, although it looks like it. The hand goes out to the cake, but not from its own side. So what does? It’s propelled by the neurotic need to get the cake in the mouth. The mental consciousness, in other words. The thought. It is the story about what is chocolate cake, and I need chocolate cake, all the stuff about chocolate cake that is chattering away in the mind. That is where the delusions exist. Attachment is not a function of the taste. It is simply not possible. How can it be? Our tongue doesn’t feel neurotic. Our tongue doesn’t feel grasping, our tongue doesn’t feel, “I want to have more cake,” it is just a doorway through which this bunch of thoughts, these concepts, this sense of “I” grasps at the experience, isn’t it? That is all. So the senses do not experience attachment. It is a logical fact.

WE ARE JUNKIES So of course for aeons we have had the mistaken assumption that satisfying the senses is the way to get happiness. So right now, we are totally dependent on sensory objects. We are all junkies, it’s just a question of degree. We can’t imagine having pleasure unless we get that fix. That fix is any one of the objects of the five senses. Which makes it sound quite brutal.

But unless we can start to look into this and cut through this whole way of working, we will never break free of suffering, we’ll never becomes content, satisfied, fulfilled. Ever. Which is why, the basis of practice, the foundation of all realizations, is morality. Discipline. It means literally practicing control over the senses. And it is not a moralistic issue; It’s a practical one. The aim is to get as happy as possible. This is the aim.

NOTHING WRONG WITH PLEASURE! This happiness, this pleasure, is not deluded. If pleasure were deluded, we might as well give up now. Pleasure, happiness, joy are totally appropriate.

So where’s the problem? Why do we suffer? Why are we frantic and anxious and desperate, fantasing about the cake before it’s even there, then shoving two pieces in when it comes, and then being depressed when we eat too much? Why all this rubbish? Because we have these delusions. Suffering doesn’t come from pleasure, it doesn’t come from the senses. It comes from neuroses in the mental consciousness. But right now it’s virtually impossible for us to have pleasure without attachment.

ATTACHMENT TO A PERSON It’s the same with people. Let’s look at the person we are attached to, the person we are in love with – even more dramatic. Again, this soup of emotions, which we never analyze, never deconstruct.

I can say, “I love you”. That means I wish them to be happy. Totally appropriate. Unbelievable, virtuous. The more of this the better. We will only get happiness if we keep thinking that. “I want you not to suffer”, that’s called compassion. Generosity, maybe you’d like to give the person something. Generosity, in its nature is a virtue, necessarily the cause of happiness.

So, love doesn’t cause suffering, compassion doesn’t cause suffering, the senses don’t directly cause suffering, happiness can’t possibly cause suffering – so what does? The cause of suffering is the attachment, first of all, the neurotic sense of an “I”, a hungry “I” that sees this person, grossly exaggerates their value to me, gives too much power, puts the power “out there” in that person, just like the cake, which implies that we are devaluing the power of ourself. We’re giving all the power to this person, like it’s all out there, this person, vibrating, so delicious, so gorgeous, this is exactly how it feels. So attachment is hungry and empty and bereft and lonely. And is completely convinced that having that person is going to make me happy.

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What attachment does is exaggerate the beautiful qualities of the person, it is exaggerating our sense of an “I” that needs that person, because attachment thinks that if I don’t get that person then I am not happy; because we don’t believe we can be happy inside, we have to have an object. Sttachment then starts to manipulate this person, expects massively that this person will give me happiness.

It’s the same with the person we loathe. We really believe that that person, from out there, from their own side, independently, definitely, is an awful person, as if ugliness is coursing in their veins along with their blood. We hear their name, it appears awful, we see their face, it appears awful. The discomfort in our mind is huge. We think the discomfort, the unhappiness, the hurt, the anger, the pain, we actually think and believe they are doing it to us.

But it’s a lie. It’s our own anger that causes the person to look awful, the anger that makes us so miserable. GOING BEYOND ENEMY, FRIEND, STRANGER Usually the only person we wish to be happy – that’s the meaning of love – is the person we are attached to. And the only person we are attached to is the person we love. So we assume because they come together, they’re the same thing. It is just not accurate. We need to start going beyond those limits, which is so scary. When we start practicing equanimity, we analyze: enemy, friend, and stranger – we try to cut through this narrow self-centred view of attachment, ignorance and aversion.

Right now we assume it is normal that when a person is mean to me, I don’t like them. So we call them enemies. And we assume it is normal that when a person is nice to me, we call them friend. And when a person is doing neither, they are called stranger. That’s the reality of the entire

universe, isn’t it? We need to go beyond this one. WHAT IS ANGER AND WHAT IS ANGER NOT? A perfect question. And the perfect answer, which I heard from a lama, is: “Anger is the response when attachment doesn’t get what it wants.” But what is it not?

Anger is not physical. Anger is part of our mind, and our mind is not physical. It exists in dependence upon the brain, the genes, the chemical reactions, but is not these things.

When anger’s strong, it triggers huge physical symptoms: the blood boils, the heart beats fast, the spit comes out the mouth, the eyes open wide in panic, the voice shouts. Or if we experience aversion as depression, the body feels like a lead weight; there’s no energy, a terrible inertia. And then, when we boost our seratonin, the body feels good again.

But these are just gross expressions of what, finally, is purely thought: a story made up by our conceptual mind that exaggerates the ugly aspects of the person or event or oneself.

Recent findings prove what is explained in Tibetan Medicine: that what goes on in the mind affects the body.

Anger is not someone else’s fault. This doesn’t mean that the person didn’t punch me; sure they did. And it doesn’t mean that punching me is not bad; sure it is. But the person didn’t make me angry. The punch is merely the catalyst for my anger, a tendency in my mind. If there were no anger, all I’d get is a broken nose.

Anger does not come from our parents. We love to blame our parents! Actually, if Buddha is wrong in his assertion that our mind comes from previous lives and is propelled by the force of our own past actions into our mother’s womb; and if the materialists are right in asserting that our parents created us, then we should blame them. How dare

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they create me, like Frankenstein and his monster, giving me anger and jealousy and the rest! But they didn’t, Buddha says. (Nor did a superior being – but we dare not blame him!). They gave us a body; the rest is ours (including our good qualities).

Anger isn’t only the shouting. Just because a person doesn’t shout and yell doesn’t mean they’re not angry. When we understand that anger is based on the thought called aversion, then we can see we are all angry. Of course, if we never look inside, we won’t notice the aversion; that’s why people who don’t express anger experience it as depression or guilt.

Anger is not necessary for compassionate action. His Holiness the Dalai Lama responded to an interviewer who suggested that anger seems to act as a motivator for action, “I know what you mean. But with anger, your wish to help doesn’t last. With compassion, you never give up.”

We need to discriminate between good and bad, but Buddha says that we should criticize the action, not the person. As Martin Luther King said, it’s okay to find fault – but then we should think, “What can I do about it?”

It’s exactly the same with seeing our own faults, but instead of feeling guilty we should think, “What can I do about it?” Then we can change. Anger and guilt are paralyzed, impotent, useless.

Anger is not natural. Often we think we need anger in order to be a reasonable human being; that it’s unnatural not to have it; that it gives perspective to life. It’s a bit like thinking that in order to appreciate pleasure we need to know pain. But that’s obviously ridiculous: for me to appreciate your kindness, you first need to punch me in the nose?

Anger is not at the core of our being. Being a delusional state of mind, a lie, a misconception, it’s logical that anger can be eliminated. If I think there are two cups on my table, whereas there is only one, that’s a misconception. What to do with

the thought “there are two cups on my table”? Remove it from my mind! Recognize that there is one cup and stop believing the lie. Simple.

Of course, the lies that believe that I’m self-existent, that delicious objects make me happy, that ugly ones make me suffer, that my mind is my brain, that someone else created me – these lies have been in my mind since beginningless time. But the method for getting rid of them is the same.

What’s left when we’ve removed the lies, the delusions, is the truth of our own innate goodness, fully perfected. That is what’s natural. PRACTICE IS PAINFUL Real practice is painful – real practice. Until it is painful, it is not practice, we’re just playing safe. We’re just keeping our nice comfort zone. Practice has to threaten something – it has to feel painful. Just like when we are overweight, we decide we are going to get thin and beautiful, and we start doing push-ups. It has to be painful at first. We know that if the second we start feeling pain from doing pushups we stop, we will never benefit from doing them. We can always pretend “Oh I did my pushups this morning”, but if the second they started being painful, we stopped, we know that if our muscles don’t hurt, they will never get strong – it is logic. Giving up attachment is like that – it has to be painful.

Until then, we are just being in our comfort zone – we’re playing safe, thinking that being spiritual means smiling and being holy and having a pleasant manner. It is just not so. Until we stretch, until we go beyond our limits, we won’t get better at doing anything. We really get our body strong when we go beyond our limits every day. How do we become an accomplished pianist or anything? We have to go beyond our limits. That’s what spiritual practice is – we have to stretch our limits.

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This means we have to be facing our attachment every day, feeling the pain of it, seeing it. And then, the second we start to do that, somehow we become fulfilled, satisfied. That is what is interesting. When we start to give up being a junkie, we start to become happy. We begin to taste our own potential. As long as we continue to follow attachment, which is so deep, we will never be happy.

PRACTICE STARTS WITH MOTIVATION So how to begin? It all comes from motivation. We can start the day by deciding we will begin, be very courageous. It starts from the thought. We tend in the West to dismiss thoughts. We say, “It’s only in the mind”, we give no value to the mind, even though we are caught in it. We give no value to just thought.

The point is, that if we really understand this fundamental, and easily provable, truth that every thought programs us into what we will become, we would be so happy to have positive thoughts, and be content with them. Because of two things; first, everything that we do comes from the thought that we think. If I am going to get up and walk out the door, what is the first thing that has to happen? My legs don’t just jump up and walk out, my mind has to say “I want to walk out that door”. So what does that mean? How do we walk out a door? The first thing is to think “I want to walk out that door”.

So every day, you’re saying “I want to be compassionate, I want to be beneficial”. You’re aspiring, and then you’ll act. It is no mystery. That’s how we become pianists, footballers, a cook – or a happy, beneficial person. It starts with the thought, the motivation, the aspiration.

So we just start our practice with powerful sincere motivations. We are sincere, after all; we do want to be these things, loving, compassionate, etc.

Genuinely wanting, seeing the reasonableness of having a compassionate thought, seeing the reasonableness of turning around a negative thought. Not thinking that thought doesn’t matter. What we are is the product of our thoughts. It is simply a fact. This is what karma is saying. No one else made us into anything, we made yourself. As Lama Zopa says, we can mould our mind into any shape we wish.

Practice is, in the beginning, every day, is motivation, motivation, motivation. I want to do this, I am aspiring to that. When we start every day, we wish “May I be useful, may I not shoot my mouth off to too many people”, etc. Even this is so profound. We have to value the thought, value the mind, it is so powerful. Like the Dalai Lama says, we are then on the right track for the rest of the day. Don’t underestimate that. If we really got that, we would be so content, knowing we were sowing the seeds for future crops of happiness. It is like we had a big open field, and we are sowing seeds for the future. That’s practice. That’s how we start.

We shouldn’t fret, “I’m hopeless, I’m useless”. We are too concrete in our thinking. So we start with the motivation, start with the thoughts, and we go into the day, and bring that awareness with us. Watch our mind, be careful of the rubbish, try not to shoot our mouth off too much, try to be a bit useful, rejoice in the good stuff. At the end of the day, we look back, we regret our mistakes and rejoice in our efforts, and then go to bed with a happy mind. That’s one day of practice. One day at a time. It is organic, and it’s humble. We start one day at a time, and slowly, something develops.

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4. Bodhicitta By Lama Yeshe I think it is absolutely essential for us to have loving kindness towards others. There is no doubt about this. Loving kindness is the essence of bodhicitta, the attitude of the bodhisattva. It is the most comfortable path, the most comfortable meditation. There can be no philosophical, scientific or psychological disagreement with this. With bodhicitta, there's no East-West conflict. This path is the most comfortable, most perfect, one hundred percent uncomplicated one, free of any danger of leading people to extremes. Without bodhicitta, nothing works. And most of all, your meditation doesn't work, and realizations don't come.

Why is bodhicitta necessary for success in meditation? Because of selfish grasping. If you have a good meditation but don't have bodhicitta, you will grasp at any little experience of bliss: 'Me, me; I want more, I want more.' Then the good experience disappears completely. Grasping is the greatest distraction to experiencing single-pointed intensive awareness in meditation. And with it, we are always dedicated to our own happiness: 'Me, me I'm miserable, I want to be happy. Therefore I'll meditate.' It doesn't work that way. For some reason good meditation and its results—peacefulness, satisfaction and bliss—just don't come.

Also, without bodhicitta it is very difficult to collect merits. You create them and immediately destroy them; by afternoon, the morning's merits have gone. It's like cleaning a room and an hour later making it dirty again. You make your mind clean, then right away you mess it up - not a very profitable business. If you want to succeed in the business of collecting merits, you must have bodhicitta. With bodhicitta you become so

precious—like gold, like diamonds; you become the most perfect object in the world, beyond compare with any material things.

From the Western, materialistic point of view, we'd think it was great if a rich person said,'I want to make charity. I'm going to offer $100 to everybody in the entire world.' Even if that person gave with great sincerity, his or her merit would be nothing compared with just the thought,'I wish to actualize bodhicitta for the sake of sentient beings, and I'll practice the six paramitas as much as I can. That's why I always say, actualization of bodhicitta is the most perfect path you can take. The best Dharma practice, the most perfect, most substantial, is without doubt the practice of bodhicitta.

Remember the story of the Kadampa geshe who saw a man circumambulating a stupa? He said, 'What are you doing?' and the man answered, 'Circumambulating.' So the geshe said, 'Wouldn't it be better if you practiced dharma?' Next time the geshe saw the man he was prostrating, and when he again asked what he was doing, the man replied, 'One hundred thousand prostrations.' 'Wouldn't it be better if you practiced dharma?' asked the geshe. Anyway, the story goes on, but the point is that just doing religious-looking actions like circumambulation and prostration isn't necessarily practicing dharma. What we have to do is transform our attachment and self-cherishing, and if we haven't changed our mind in this way, none of the other practices work; doing them is just a joke. Even if you try to practice tantric meditations, unless you've changed within, you won't succeed. dharma means a complete change of attitude - that's what really brings you inner happiness, that is the true Dharma, not the words you say. Bodhicitta is not the culture of ego, not the culture of attachment, not the culture of samsara. It is an unbelievable transformation, the most comfortable path, the most

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substantial path—definite, not wishy-washy. Sometimes your meditation is not solid; you just space out. Bodhicitta meditation means you really want to change your mind and actions and transform your whole life.

We are all involved in human relationships with each other. Why do we sometimes say, 'I love you,' and sometimes, 'I hate you?' Where does this up-and-down mind come from? From the self-cherishing thought—a complete lack of bodhicitta. What we are saying is, 'I hate you because I'm not getting any satisfaction from you. You hurt me; you don't give me pleasure. That's the whole thing: I—my ego, my attachment—am not getting satisfaction from you, therefore I hate you. What a joke! All the difficulties in inter-personal relationships come from not having bodhicitta, from not having changed our minds.

So, you see, just meditating is not enough. If that Kadampa geshe saw you sitting in meditation he'd say, 'What are you doing? Wouldn't it be better if you practiced dharma?' Circumambulating isn't dharma, prostrating isn't dharma, meditating isn't dharma. My goodness, what is dharma, then? This is what happened to the man in the story. He couldn't think of anything else to do. Well, the best dharma practice, the most perfect, most substantial, is without doubt the practice of bodhicitta.

You can prove scientifically that bodhicitta is the best practice to do. Our self-cherishing thought is the root of all human problems. It makes our lives difficult and miserable. The solution to self-cherishing, its antidote, is the mind that is its complete opposite—bodhicitta. The self-cherishing mind is worried about only me, me—the self-existent I. Bodhicitta substitutes others for self.

It creates space in your mind. Then even if your dearest friend forgets to give you a Christmas present, you don't mind. "Ah, well. This year she didn't give me my

chocolate. It doesn't matter." Anyway, your human relationships are not for chocolate, not for sensory pleasures. Something much deeper can come from our being together, working together.

With bodhicitta you become so precious— !like gold, like diamonds. You become the most perfect object in the world, beyond compare with any material things. If you want to be really, really happy, it

isn't enough just to space out in meditation. Many people who have spent years alone in meditation have finished up the worse for it. Coming back into society, they have freaked out. They haven't been able to take contact with other people again, because the peaceful environment they created was an artificial condition, still a relative phenomenon without solidity. With bodhicitta, no matter where you go, you will never freak out. The more you are involved with people the more pleasure you get. People become the resource of your pleasure. You are living for people. Even though some still try to take advantage of you, you understand: 'Well, in the past I took advantage of them many times too.' So it doesn't bother you.

Thus bodhicitta is the most perfect way to practice dharma, especially in our twentieth-century Western society. It is very, very worthwhile. With the foundation of bodhicitta you will definitely grow.

If you take a proper look deep into your heart you will see that one of the main causes of your dissatisfaction is the fact that you are not helping others as best you can. When you realize this you'll be able to say to yourself, 'I must develop myself so that I can help others satisfactorily. By improving myself I can definitely help.' Thus you have more strength and energy to meditate, to keep pure morality and do other good things. You have energy, 'Because I want to help

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others.' That is why Lama Tsongkhapa said that bodhicitta is the foundation of all enlightened realizations.

Also, bodhicitta energy is alchemical. It transforms all your ordinary actions of body, speech and mind—your entire life into positivity and benefit for others, like iron transmuted into gold. I think this is definitely true. You can see, it's not difficult. For example look at other people's faces. Some people, no matter what problems and suffering they are enduring, when they go out they always try to appear happy and show a positive aspect to others. Have you noticed this or not? But other people always go about miserable, and angry. What do you think about that? I honestly think that it indicates a fundamental difference in the way these two kinds of people think. Human beings are actually very simple. Some are a disaster within and it shows on their faces and makes those whom they meet feel sick. Others, even though they are suffering intensely, always put on a brave face because they are considerate of the way others feel.

I believe this is very important. What's the use of putting out a miserable vibration? Just because you feel miserable, why make others unhappy too? It doesn't help. You should try to control your emotions, speak evenly and so forth. Sometimes when people are suffering they close off from others, but you can still feel their miserable vibration. This doesn't help—others with even momentary happiness forget about leading them to enlightenment. To help the people around you, you have to maintain a happy, peaceful vibration. This is very practical, very worthwhile. Sometimes we talk too much about enlightenment and things like that. We have a long way to go to such realizations. Forget about enlightenment, I don't care about buddhahood—just be practical. If you can't help others, at least don't give them any harm, stay neutral.

Anyway, what I'm supposed to be

telling you here is that bodhicitta is like atomic energy to transform your mind. This is absolutely, scientifically true, and not something that you have to believe with blind religious faith. Everybody nowadays is afraid of nuclear war, but if we all had bodhicitta, wouldn't we all be completely secure? Of course we would. With bodhicitta you control all desire to defeat or kill others. And, as Lama Je Tsongkhapa said, when you have bodhicitta all the good things in life are magnetically attracted to you and pour down upon you like rain. At present all we attract is misfortune because all we have is the self-cherishing thought. But with bodhicitta we'll attract good friends, good food, good everything.

As His Holiness the Dalai Lama said recently, if you're going to be selfish, do it on a grand scale; wide selfishness is better than narrow! What did His Holiness mean'! He was saying that, in a way, bodhicitta is like a huge selfish attitude because when you dedicate yourself to others with loving kindness you get a lot more pleasure than you would otherwise. With our present, usual selfish attitude we experience very little pleasure, and what we have is easily lost. With 'great selfishness' you help others and you help yourself; with small it's always 'me, me, me and it is easy to lose everything.

Remember, Atisha had over 150 teachers? He respected them all, but when he heard the name of one—Lama Dharmarakshita—he would come out in goose-bumps. He explained this by saying, 'I received many teachings from many, many great gurus, but for me, Lama Dharmarakshita, who gave me the bodhicitta ordination and teachings on the method and wisdom of bodhicitta and the six paramitas, was the most helpful for my life'. This is very true. Sometimes techniques of deity meditation are extremely difficult, but bodhicitta meditation is so simple, so incredibly profound and real. That's why Atisha

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would shake when he heard the name of his main teacher of bodhicitta.

The main point, then, is that when you contact Buddhadharma you should conquer the mad elephant of your self-cherishing mind. If the dharma you hear helps you diminish your self-cherishing even a little, it has been worthwhile. But if the teachings you have taken have had no effect on your selfishness, then from the Mahayana point of view, even if you can talk intellectually on the entire lam-rim, they have not been must use at all.

Do you recall the story of Shantideva and how people used to put him down? They used to call him Du-she-sum-pa, which means one who knows how to do only three things: eating, sleeping and excreting. This was a very bad thing to call someone, especially a monk. But that's all that people could see him doing. However, he had bodhicitta, so whatever he did, even ordinary things, was of greatest benefit to others. Lying down, peacefully, he would meditate with great concern for the welfare of all living beings, and many times, out of compassion, he would cry for them. Westerners need that kind of practice. Fundamentally we are lazy. Well, maybe not lazy, but when we finish work we are tired and don't have much energy left. So, when you come home from work, lie down comfortably and meditate on bodhicitta. This is most worthwhile. Much better than rushing in speedily, throwing down a coffee and dropping onto your meditation cushion to try to meditate. It doesn't work that way; your nervous system needs time and space. You can't be rushing through traffic one minute and sitting quietly meditating the next. Everything takes time and space. It is much better to r have a quiet, blissful cup of coffee, And don't pressure yourself either; that too is very bad. Don't punish yourself when you are too tired to meditate: 'I should be meditating; I am very bad.' You destroy yourself like this. Be wise. Treat yourself, your mind,

sympathetically, with loving kindness. If you are gentle with yourself you will become gentle with others so don't push. Pushing doesn't work for me, that's why I tell others not to force themselves. We are dealing with the mind, not rocks and concrete; it is something organic.

In a way, bodhicitta is like a huge selfish attitude because when you dedicate yourself to others with loving kindness you get a lot more pleasure than you would otherwise. The Western environment offers lots of

suffering conditions that act as causes for our actualizing bodhicitta, so life there can be very worthwhile. For example, it is much better to subdue an adversary with bodhicitta than with a knife or gun. When attacked, you can practice loving kindness. We could also do this in the monasteries of Tibet, where there were often horrible monks. Don't think that Tibet was full of only holy people—we had unbelievably wild monks there that nobody in authority could subdue! If you would try to control them wrathfully they would get only more aggressive. But arya bodhisattva monks, people who had completely given themselves up for others, would treat them with loving kindness, and the wild monks would calm down completely. They would feel, 'This man loves me; he has great compassion. He has given up everything for others and has nothing to lose.' In that way aggressive people would be subdued, without authority but with bodhicitta. There are many stories about this kind of thing, but I'm not going to tell them now. Perhaps you think they're funny, but it's true—you can conquer your enemies, both internal and external, with loving kindness and bodhicitta. It is most worthwhile and there's no contradiction bodhicitta is the totally comfortable path to liberation and enlightenment.

In his text Lama Choepa, the Panchen

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Lama says, 'Self-cherishing is the cause of all misery and dissatisfaction, and holding all mother sentient beings dearer than oneself is the foundation of all realizations and knowledge. Therefore bless me to change self-cherishing into concern for all others.' This is not some deep philosophical theory but a very simple statement. You know from your own life's experiences without needing a Tibetan text's explanations that your self-cherishing thought is the cause of all your confusion and frustration. This evolution of suffering is found not only in Tibetan culture but in yours as well.

And the Panchen Lama goes on to say that we should look at what the Buddha did. He gave up his self-attachment and attained all the sublime realizations. But look at us we are obsessed with 'me, me, me' and have realized nothing but unending misery. This is very clear isn't it? Therefore you should know clean clear how this works. Get rid of the false concept of self-cherishing and you'll be free of all misery and dissatisfaction. Concern yourself for the welfare of all others and wish for them to attain the highest realizations such as bodhicitta and you'll find all happiness and satisfaction.

Bodhicitta is the most perfect way to practise dharma, especially in our twentieth century Western society. It is very, very worthwhile. With the foundation of bodhicitta you will definitely grow. You people are young, intelligent and

not satisfied with what you have in your own countries. That's why you are seeking further afield. And now you have found that most worthwhile of all things, bodhicitta.

But it is not an easy thing. Easy things bore you quickly. It is quite difficult, but there's no way you'll get bored practicing it. People need to be most intelligent to actualize bodhicitta, some, though, have

no room for it. 'Forget about yourself and have a little concern for others?' they'll ask. 'That's not my culture.' It is very difficult to change holding yourself dear into holding others dear instead—the most difficult task you can undertake. But it is the most worthwhile and brings the greatest satisfaction.

After practicing some meditations, such as impermanence and death, for a month you'll say, 'I'm tired of that meditation.' But you'll never get tired of meditating on bodhicitta. It is so deep; a universal meditation. You'll never get tired of bodhicitta.

You have heard of many deities that you can meditate on, many deities to be initiated into - Chenrezig and the rest. What are they all for? I'll tell you—for gaining bodhicitta. As a matter of fact, all tantric meditations are for the development of strong bodhicitta. That is the purpose of your consciousness manifesting as a being with 1000 arms so that vou can lend a hand to a thousand suffering beings. If you don't like to manifest yourself this way you can relate the meditation to your own culture and see yourself as Jesus. Avalokiteshvara and Jesus are the same: completely selfless and completely devoted to serving others.

Remember what happened the first time that Avalokiteshvara took the bodhisattva ordination? He vowed to guide all universal living beings to enlightenment from behind, like a shepherd.'I do not want to realize enlightenment until first I have led all mother sentient beings there first. That will be my satisfaction.' He worked for years and years, leading thousands of beings to enlightenment, but when he checked to see what was happening he found there were still countless more. So again he worked for years and years and again when he checked there were still so many left, and this cycle was repeated until finally he was fed up and thought to himself, 'For aeons and aeons I have

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struggled to lead all sentient beings to enlightenment but there are still so many left. I think it is impossible to fulfil my vow.' And because of the intensity of his emotion his head split into eleven pieces. Then Amitabha Buddha came and offered to help, and blessed him to be successful.

So I'm sure some of you people can be like Chenrezig. The main thing is to have strong motivation. Even if it comes strongly only once, it is extremely powerful. It is very rare to have this kind of thought. A mere flash is so worthwhile; to have it for a minute for a day...

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5. The Illusory Nature of Things By Lama Zopa Rinpoche Do not commit any unwholesome action or any harmful action, and to engage in perfect wholesome action or perfect, the complete beneficial action…

In order to eliminate the cause of all the problems, so these two verses why Buddha said, why the kind compassionate Omniscient One advised this way, that is not just to torture oneself. Not just putting oneself into prison, or rules, just to torture, not like that. That to free oneself, it's a means of freeing oneself from the problems of life and to achieve happiness, temporary, ultimate happiness, so for this purpose, to be free from undesirable, to be free from what one doesn't like, to be free from those things and to have those happiness, peace, desirable things, for that success, to achieve temporary happiness and especially ultimate happiness, for that purpose, Buddha, the Omniscient One, the kind, compassionate Omniscient One advised this, so that ourselves as sentient beings can be free from all undesirable things and can have all the desirable things, all the happiness, peace one is looking for, that one is wishing.

Then, how to do this? Then that depends on the mind. It has to come from the mind. Avoiding harmful actions and the actions which one does to become only beneficial actions, then that depends on subduing one's own mind. So, freeing one's own mind from all the harmful thoughts. Pacifying all those harmful thoughts, all those unhealthy minds, all those disturbing thoughts, that which is disturbing oneself and that which is disturbing towards all other living beings, the numberless living beings.

So enlightened, the Compassionate One said that "subduing one's own mind is the teaching of the Buddha." However, this

verse contains the four noble truths: the true suffering and true cause of suffering, the cessation of the sufferings and the true path. So it is one stanza which contains essence of the whole entire Dharma, essence of all the meditations. [Rinpoche chants in Tibetan.]

Look at all the causative phenomena: I, body, mind; friend, enemy, stranger; all the possessions, all the surrounding people; look at them like the star shooting: the star is there, then the next minute when you look at it it's not there. All these causative phenomena, including power, reputation and so forth, all these things, they are in the nature of transitory, like the stars, like the shimmering, for the defected eye senses, like shimmering. Appearing like this. Then like that, like the flickering light, flame, that which can be stopped at any time, like the flame flickering in the midst of the wind, that it can be stopped any time, so all these causative phenomena are like that, that it can be stopped at any time.

Like illusion. Like the water dew, those drops of water on the plant in the mornings or due to misty, so like that, that it can be dropped at any time. Those drops of water on the plant. So like this, these causative phenomena are in the nature of transitory.

Like the water bubble. The water bubble can be popped at any time. Can't trust that it can last for this many hours or for this many minutes, cannot trust. So similar: these causative phenomena, like a water bubble, that which can be popped at any time. So that these causative phenomena also that they can be stopped at any time as they are in the nature of changing within every second by cause and conditions, so that these causative phenomena can be stopped at any time.

Then like a dream: it happened and gone. Appearance happened but it's gone, finished. What we see in the dream, traveling or living with the family or all these things, having so much wealth,

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whatever, having party or whatever. So the appearance happened and it's gone, so like that, that these causative phenomena are like that. For a short time there is these appearances but cannot trust that they can last a long time. That these things can be stopped at any time, like the dream.

Besides the way that things are appearing to one's own mind as real one, it appears like as if it has nothing to do with one's own mind, the mind which sees objects, without analyzing according to our view, if you look at our view, we have the view that these objects, the way they're appearing to us, the objects that we see, the way that they're appearing to us is nothing to do with one's own mind, the mind which perceives the objects. The object exists from its own side without depending upon our perception, or our mind. So all these things are like dream, like illusion, that is not true, all are completely empty.

So all these causative phenomena are like the lightning. The lightning came and gone. It happened in one second and during that time, while the lightning is happening, suddenly you see many objects. One can see one's own human body and the surrounding people, the place, the materials, there's this appearance. While there's lightning there's this appearance for a few seconds, just happened but then again becomes dark. Again this bright appearance stopped. So like that. That these causative phenomena can be stopped at any time, like lightning.

Like the clouds in the sky. While we are looking at the clouds, they are changing. Constantly they are changing. Not only changing their shapes, changing within every second by cause and conditions. And while one is looking at it, changing shapes, it is disappearing. It is there, but while you're looking at it, it is disappearing. H/e, next minute when you look at the sky the cloud is not there. So like that all these causative phenomena, the nature of these causative phenomena

are like that, like the clouds in space, in the sky. All these are in the nature of transitory.

So, when we keep our mind in the awareness, being aware in the nature of these causative phenomena like these examples: that they do not last, that they're changing within every second by cause and conditions, because the existence of this depends on another cause and conditions, so the decay, change, also happens due to another cause and conditions. That these things get stopped, also by depending on cause and conditions. So this thing can happen any time to these causative phenomena.

So when we practice mindfulness in these things suddenly there's no reason, suddenly there's no place for confusion, suddenly no space in our mind for the confusion. Suddenly the confusion that we have in the life, suddenly it's stopped. When we practice mindfulness in this, when we remember this, when we keep the mind being aware in the nature of impermanence, it immediately cuts off the depression, the deep depression that one is going through, that due to some, what one expected, what attachment expected didn't happen, didn't succeed, so forth, what the self-cherishing thought expected didn't succeed, didn't happen. So then experiencing depression. It immediately cuts off the mountains of problems that one feels, that one believes, "I have a serious problem," one feels problems like mountains. That which suffocate oneself, which makes it even difficult to breathe, which squeezes oneself, one's own life. So that one feels, one is not free, that I'm not free. Almost that one cannot move. That one's life is sunk in the problems, like drowned in a quagmire of problems.

By remembering the nature of the phenomena, these: I, body, mind, so forth, life, belongings, friend, enemy, stranger, so forth, by remembering the nature of impermanence, immediately, as it is mentioned in the sutra, these verses, it

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suddenly, it immediately cuts off these problems, all these confusions. All of a sudden you are free from problems, those mountains of problems. The next minute it didn't make any sense. So by remembering impermanence, that one couldn't see any reason to create these problems. Before remembering impermanence, looks like there's serious problems in the life, but by remembering impermanence, next minute, you're free. One is completely free. One discovers it was nonsense. The way how one has been thinking, has been believing, by remembering impermanence, one doesn't see any reason, it becomes nonsense.

By remembering impermanence, which is the nature of these causative phenomena, there is great tranquillity in one's own heart, immediately there is peace in one's own heart, calmness. So when we do not remember the nature of these causative phenomena, the impermanence, that these things can be stopped at any time, then there's no protection to one's own life, there's no protection to us. There's no protection to our mind. So then delusion: anger, dissatisfied mind, attachment, ignorance, so forth, they take over. They defeat us. They take over our mind. Like the Communist Chinese took over Tibet, the delusions took over the mind. Invade the mind . Because as one does not practice mindfulness in the nature of the phenomena, such as impermanence, and emptiness, the ultimate nature: emptiness, so since there's no protection of these things, this mindfulness, the practice of the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment: renunciation, bodhicitta, emptiness, so the delusions took over our mind, then one becomes a slave. Delusion uses one's own body, speech and mind as a slave to work for them. So one becomes a slave to the delusions, and this way it doesn't give any peace in our heart. So just a short time, concentration, remembering, looking at the reality of these causative

phenomena as I mentioned before. That all these causative phenomena: I,

action, object, enemy, friend, stranger, all these things, the possessions, so forth, are changing within every second by cause and conditions; because of that, that these things can be stopped at any time by cause and conditions.