July 7 1991
On the series of talks we have been giving, the point of refuge in Buddhism
is termed as turning one's mind to a more spiritual path, a path that brings
more meaning to one's life, the most important thing is one's own mind. It is
one's mind that will establish how one experiences things. To take for example
the immediate situation we are in right now, if one has a positive motivation,
one will obviously acquire positive energy by being involved in it. If one has
not as clear a motivation, then the results of one's activity will not be clear.
For one's self generally, one should always try to motivate in the most positive
way that one can so one will establish the relationship with whatever one's
experiences are which cultivate a certain positive quality in one's self. So
mind is of paramount importance, and the motivation is important too. Not just
wishing for personal happiness, not just wishing for some temporal release of
tension such as stress management, but one should try to motivate that one becomes
a more spiritually evolved person, not for working for personal gain. Developing
such qualities as generosity, kindness, patience, enthusiasm, meditative skill
and wisdom are beneficial, but if one looks at those qualities, they are inner
qualities related to the mind and attitude we have, so we should motivate with
the most positive motivations we can rather than benefits for one's external
existence in the outer world.
Regarding the object of taking refuge this is important in all the events we
become involved with, the motivation. We have covered the qualities of the Buddha,
teachings and spiritual community, but mostly that is for inspiration. So it
comes back to one's own mind, it gains some conviction or stability in what
it is drawn towards, therefore the mind develops itself, it has an interest
to learn.
The most important thing in development, is that the person really looks at
oneself. In the world we always look external in saying, I have a headache,
where is the aspirin, I have a bad situation, where is my car so I can go for
a drive. We do things like that. Always looking to external problems and look
for external remedy, which is not always wrong. But we should always look at
the principle cause of what we are experiencing. And if we were able to say
it is always external causes and circumstances, then we should look to external
remedies such as eliminating all of our enemies, destroy everything that is
unpleasant for us, then we would have a wonderful world. But, that is why all
wars happen, thus external remedies are maybe not the correct solution in all
cases.
When we have problems arise for us, the main teaching of Buddha dharma is to
look within one's own mind and one will find the causes which make our life
miserable. We should be more conscious of that and make that the principle object
of the teaching. So refuge is identified as not taking refuge in external philosophy,
the philosophy is establishing a mirror in which you look at your own mind and
realize your own creation of yourself and how you create the situations and
different types of experiences for yourself. In this way, if we have that mirror
in place, we can start to recognize where we make mistakes, how we set ourselves
up in negative positions and therefore create a lot of suffering. Or, when we
set ourself up in a position which is in reliance upon delusions versus reliance
on clear vision. Because we rely on delusion, we create an incredible amount
of suffering for ourselves and for others around us.
So we should look at how the mind is functioning, and recognize that when we
have various delusions establish their positions or to take up being the principle
way we are going to look at things. For example anger. When the world does not
conform to our expectations of how we would like it to be, we often resort to
aggression and anger. We get angry and pissed off, we ventilate about how things
are not going the way we would like them to go. Well, that is our mind becoming
completely consumed with anger. Therefore we suffer. We feel unhappy, the world
around us becomes a very unhappy place, the world becomes ugly, and then we
ventilate a great deal, become violent verbally and physically. So anger obviously
doesn't always work. One of the nicest sayings in Buddhism is, if you can do
something about it, why get angry, and if you can't do anything, why get angry.
Sop we should look at our mind and ask what we could do which is positive. If
this situation is rather unpleasant, and if I can do something, I should try
to do it in a way that is positive, creative, cultivate understanding or whatever
is necessary. If I can't, I should accept it with patience because I have no
control in this particular situation.
Or we could look at jealousy. Jealousy is where we look at someone else as winning
more things and therefore we become jealous of that person, looking at them
with a nasty mind, saying, they are getting what I would like to have. Because
of that emotion, we become very bitter with what we are seeing around us. So
we are bitter to the person we dislike, and we ventilate our bitterness, and
even to the object that we want, sometimes we become very nasty or sarcastic
in relationships where we look at someone else with jealousy and we start to
allow that to become a predominant thing within our mind. With jealousy, we
should recognize it as one of the worse things we could possibly allow ourselves
to become involves with. It only makes ourselves unhappy and it makes everyone
else around us unhappy. So it will never accomplish what we would like it to,
it only sends everyone away. Therefore it is a bad thing to rely on for gaining
success and happiness, and only makes our life unhappy and miserable.
Attachment. This is clinging desire, thinking that if we get one more thing
or have the objects of our desire, that we will be happy. But if one has awareness,
one can see how acquiring new toys and things to satisfy our desire, it never
makes us satisfied. A Tibetan expression says, if one has great desires, one
will never know satisfaction. One will always be yearning and wishing to be
somewhere else or involved in attaining something new. So we should try to realize
inner contentment and not have rampant desire for all we are trying to attain,
desires which are maybe out of proportion. Certainly we need some aspiration,
but we do not need to make it as a satisfaction for our central desire.
With delusion we can make a lot of suffering for ourselves. So we need to look
at our mind. The teachings are like a mirror before oneself, and one then can
see one's own face and in that way understand what one is doing with oneself.
The meditative technique is to develop tranquillity where one is able to observe
without becoming involved with particular delusions which arise at different
times. An immediate meditative technique we could develop is learning how to
relax ourselves, not been grossed or caught by delusions which become generated
within us. The easiest way is to work with awareness of the breath and use a
simple statement such as things are impermanent to allow ourselves to go past
or through a delusion which is arising for ourselves.
For this evening, the meditation will be on the conscious awareness of our conscious
breathing. All we have to add to that is the awareness that all phenomena in
the universe is an impermanent nature. Because they are impermanent, why should
I cling to any one particular viewpoint which for example a negative perspective
clings to entities as being very real and truly existent and never thinks of
them as impermanent. If you have strong attachment for a person, that attachment
might have nothing to do with reality, it is more a grasping or craving, whereas
when we get the object, we realize that the object does not meet our expectations
and therefore we feel let down.
The most important thing for ourselves is to try to develop detachment from
delusions when they arise. So when a delusion starts to arise, we should be
aware of our breathing. Just that awareness in itself relaxes the mind. But
we need to develop awareness which makes ourselves stay there, not fly off into
thought patterns and such, but come back and be aware of the breathing. As we
develop that as a good meditative stable base, we can add to that an awareness
of impermanence, just as my body and breath is impermanent, therefore this object
captivating my mind is also impermanent, therefore why should I cling to any
one thing. We are mature enough to realize that objects of attachment in the
past are gone, so to cling to any one thing is ridiculous. We have gone though
many attachment scenarios.
Jealousy. We have to go into a few times we have let ourselves get jealous and
realize how miserable we are when we allow it to become the predominant thing
in our mind. The last thing we want is to have jealousy. And we can work in
a more powerful way by stopping death. It is a good way to stop jealousy in
it's tracks. To realize we are going to die one day, do I want to die a jealous
person, and you can stop jealousy very well with death.
Finally, anger, then ask why my expectations are the most real ones above everyone
elses. We have to realize the world will still exist even if my expectations
are not met. In that we can use awareness to allow our mind to shift into a
position where we have stability and the ability to go through and beyond what
is deluding our mind.
This is fundamental for the Buddhist teachings. So in our meditations we should
try to work in this way as best we can. We will only help ourselves become a
more happy and fulfilled person, certainly more in control of who and what we
are.
Meditation:
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