Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
The speaker is introducing a workshop on letting go of self-limiting beliefs. They will cover the topics of the nature of the mind, karma, and wisdom realizing emptiness. The speaker emphasizes the importance of practical application and encourages attendees to come back for further teachings if they don't fully understand. They discuss how we lack choice due to our lack of understanding and are bound by the chains of karma. The speaker highlights the significance of Buddha's teachings in breaking free from this predicament. They also mention a study about the lack of control over our thoughts. Oh, I remember those lights. Morning, everybody. Can you hear me? Yeah? Thanks for, it'll take me a few minutes to get used to these lights. OK. They're very bright. Have you ever sat here? That's so bright. Did you get used to them? I did get used to them last year, if I recall. So it's lovely to see you. And thank you very, very much for coming out here this morning and this afternoon, the whole day, because we have an opportunity to spend some time discovering how to let go of our self-limiting beliefs. That's what it says on the publicity. So resilience, I just thought I'd begin by reading the blurb. You remind me, really. No, I know what I'm doing. Don't worry. So it says, discover how to let go of your limiting beliefs and increase your inner resilience in the special day workshop. So it says, Kadam Lucy, that's me, I think, will delve into the interconnected web of cause and effect that explains how every action determines your current and future experiences of life. It's already a huge topic. And I'm not going to tell you every action that leads to every effect, because we'll be here forever. But it's already a huge topic, right, Karma? What else am I doing? To understand the true nature of reality. Oh, that as well. You can begin to gain freedom from, whose idea was this, of course? Yeah, big topics. Big topics. In fact, my plan today is to touch on, I suppose, three pretty big topics. One is the nature of our mind, because it's not possible, really, to understand Karma without understanding what our mind is, and what it does, and how it creates reality. So it's kind of first thing we need to get some, we're going to do some meditation on our mind and see how it creates our reality. So that's already quite a big topic. Then we're going to think about Karma, which is an enormous topic. And then we're also going to think about the wisdom realizing emptiness, which is a vast, extraordinarily huge topic. And we have all day. We've got hours. We've got at least three and a half hours to do all that. So I will start off by saying that I'm going to try and make it practical, not just philosophical, but practical, because what's the point? Otherwise, we can impress people at parties, but that's about it with the philosophical stuff. But make it practical. But also, I am going to say, as you already know, that anything that is, if it's new to you, or you don't understand anything, that's great, right? Because there's always a first time to learn all this stuff. And that's what the center is for, right? It's to learn stuff, amongst other things. But it's really about learning stuff. So if there's anything that you find interesting today, but I'm only able to touch on it a little bit, not able to kind of drill too deeply into everything in one day, that's great, because that, hopefully, will just be encouragement for you to come back and receive teachings from Jen Legma, who's a brilliant teacher, as I don't need to tell you. So really, that's my caveat. Is that the right word? It's my excuse, I don't know. One or the other. If you don't understand something, great. Come back later and find out what I was actually talking about later. OK? So I'm going to start with that. So I'm just going to say a few things, and then we'll get started with our first meditation. And I was just thinking, on my way here from, well, I suppose, most immediately from London, just up the road, I walked past a big sign. I think it was outside a school, and it said, you choose. So it's a big sign saying, you choose. And I thought, that's very interesting, isn't it? Because we like choice, in theory, at least. We like the idea that we can choose, because choice and freedom go together, don't they? If we can't choose, then we're not free. Do you agree? And Buddhist teachings are about freedom. They're about choice. They're about learning to master our minds, so that we have choice over the way we think, and over the things that we do, and over the outcomes of those actions. But I was thinking that, at the moment, do we choose? And I would say that was debatable, because we don't have enough understanding to choose. We can't choose unless we know what's going on, and what the choices are, for that matter. So I was thinking about Jetsun Kapa's verse in three principal aspects of the path, where he says, swept along by the currents of the four powerful rivers. He says, living beings like me, and I, and like you, if you are a living being and not a Buddha, I don't know, but if you're a living being, and you're in samsara, cycle of uncontrolled life, impure experience, then you're swept along, we're swept along by the currents of the four powerful rivers. I don't know if you've noticed, but one of them is birth. We're swept along by that. We're all born out of control, crying. And then sickness, getting sick without choice, physical sickness, mental illness, over and over again. None of us choose this, do we? Don't remember checking that box for this life. Would you like to get migraines? Oh, yeah, great idea. Thanks, check that box. Would you like to die of a stroke or cancer? Your choice. Oh, thanks. Yeah, I think I'll choose cancer. We don't get to choose, do we? Sickness, no one chooses sickness. I mean, literally no one I know has ever thought, whoopee, I'm sick. None of us like it. And yet we all experience it, without exception, sooner or later. And many, many times, even not just in this life, but in life after life. Sickness, we don't have much choice over that. We don't have much choice over dying. If you haven't noticed, again, people keep dying. And we can't stop them dying. Can't stop ourselves dying. No one likes dying, particularly. Again, it's not a particularly popular thing to do. I don't remember ticking that box either. Like, would you like to die? Yeah, great idea. No, I didn't check that box. How much choice do we really have? And then rebirth again. Did I miss one out? Aging. Oh, aging, sorry. Forgot the whole aging business. Does anyone actually like aging? Quick market survey. Who in here loves aging? Okay, not one of you. Not even one of you. Come on, there's got to be some exception to prove the rules. So we don't choose that either, right? Or all the stuff that goes along with aging. So that means we actually are not choosing right now, in any important way. Why? Because we don't understand our mind, how it creates our reality. We don't understand karma. We don't understand emptiness. So we can't make these choices. Also, within that verse, Jetsun Kappa says, We're tightly bound by the chains of karma. So hard to release. Tightly bound by the chains of karma. So hard to release. So we're swept along, this is part of the same poem, already being swept along on the four rivers of suffering, battered around like some little boat or something, I don't know how you envisage it, but we're being swept along on these rivers constantly, being battered around and we're tightly chained. It's not like we're swimming freely. We're actually tightly chained by the chains of karma at the same time. So we're being tossed around and tightly chained. Not a lot of freedom in that either. Right? And then what's the next line? Ensnared within the iron net of self-grasping. So we're in a net as well. It's quite funny. If it wasn't horrifically unfunny, it would be very funny. So there's that. Oh, and meanwhile, it's not like a bright sunny day. It's like, you know, it's basically, what's that last line? I'll put you on the spot. Pitch black darkness of ignorance, completely enveloped by the pitch black darkness of ignorance. So it's pitch black on this river, bound by chains of karma and in an iron net of self-grasping. And then this sign is saying, you choose. Well, the point is, right now we're not choosing, but that's why we're here, because Buddha understood that we weren't choosing. He understood we didn't have choice, because we didn't have control. Therefore, we didn't have freedom. And as you know, all his 84,000 teachings explaining how we can get out of this predicament, this existential predicament in which we find ourselves. So it goes deep, right? Because we've been doing this since beginningless time. Getting out of these chains and so on is a huge job, basically, because we've been doing it since beginningless time. So we can't expect to get free overnight. But Buddha's teachings are immensely powerful and liberating. And because he has such extraordinary, profound understanding of our mind and how it works and how we create our reality and how karma works, we have every chance in this life of finally breaking free. So that's kind of like the context in which we want to think about these subjects. No, not just because it's an interesting day. But because it has very significant implications for our lives. Very significant as an understatement for our lives and everybody else's lives as well. So that's one thing. And basically also just on a day-to-day basis, we don't have much choice over our thoughts. I think last year when I was here, I was last year. I don't remember which month, but I was here. I felt it was funnier. What time of year was it? It was... I was here anyway. And I think I explained this study that I'd read about where... You're nodding your head. You don't even know what I'm about to say. I'm always coming up with studies. All right, but there's this one study that they asked everybody out of ten thoughts... Did I explain this last year? I won't bother explaining it again. Okay, all right, quickly. Out of ten thoughts... And I'm going to ask you this question because this is just a regular study, not a Buddhist study. It wasn't like a Buddhist designed the study that they could have done because it's brilliant. But they asked a whole bunch of people like us out of ten thoughts that you have, how many of those do you feel you don't choose or, if you like, you don't control? Out of ten thoughts. What's the answer? Gosh, you've got some honest people down in Southampton. Ten out of ten. Any improvements on ten? Ten. Nine. Most of them. That's interesting, don't you think? Most of our thoughts... The answer that they got from this big group of people was nine. Average, average. Most of them, in other words. By my maths, that's 90% of our thoughts. It's all thereabouts. We don't choose. They're out of our control. And typically... Again, I don't know if you would agree with this, but typically those thoughts... The study asked people, what are these thoughts that you're having that you don't choose? What kinds of thoughts are they? Happy thoughts, unhappy thoughts, peaceful, unpeaceful. So what would you say? Basically negative. Anxiety. Illumination, worrying about things. Anger. Craving. Fear. Jealousy, etc, etc. The kinds of thoughts we don't want are delusions. I just found this study very interesting because Buddha explained how we suffer from delusions. We suffer from delusions. These are the source of all our pain, all our suffering. It's the source of why we're swept along the four powerful rivers, tightly chained by the chains of karma and so on. It's because we have delusions, especially ignorance, which underpins all the others. And the definition of delusion is an unpeaceful, uncontrolled state of mind that arises from inappropriate attention, as I like to put it, faulty thinking. So in other words, what these people in the study discovered was what Buddha has been saying for a long time, that we are under the influence of delusions. We don't choose. If we could choose, then we would choose happiness. We would choose freedom, wouldn't we? Peace, kindness, love. We would choose to think the thoughts that we want to think. So all this is to say that understanding the mind and understanding how karma works starts to, if you like, put us in the driver's seat of our own experience. So right now it's like we're locked in the boot or something of the car of our life. You know, we go through life with this vehicle of this body and it's kind of like the steering wheel's not working. Do you ever get that feeling? It's like one of those dreams when you're driving along and the steering wheel stops working. Is that just me? Like, what the heck? And then the brakes don't work either. And then you realize you're actually locked in the trunk or the boot. You're not even driving this thing. So that's a bit like an uncontrolled mind, uncontrolled life. We don't have much choice. So if we understand the mind, if we understand how we create reality, understand emptiness, we understand karma, this is what gets us into the driver's seat with a functioning steering wheel and functioning brakes and indicators. They're useful too. A functioning, yeah, a functioning mind. So in How to Transform Your Life, which I'm sure a lot of you have got or read or started reading, Geshe-la says happiness and suffering are parts of the mind. The former is a joyful feeling, the latter an unpleasant feeling. Since happiness and suffering are parts of the mind, if we want to avoid suffering and find true happiness, we need to understand the nature and functions of the mind. That's fair, isn't it? If you want to fix something, you have to understand it first. If your car engine is playing up and you don't have a clue that you even have a car engine, then you're going to be in trouble. You're not going to be able to fix it. Someone else may be able to fix it for you, but in the case of our mind, only we can fix our minds. If we don't understand them, we're not going to be able to fix them. We all want to be happy. Everyone wants to be happy. Everyone wants to be free. But it's never going to happen if we don't get to the bottom of things. So, that's the first thing. And then he says at first, this might seem to be quite straightforward since we all have minds. I think so. And we all know what state our mind is in, vaguely, don't we? Feeling happy, feeling sad, a bit confused, whatever. We have some... We sort of know what state our mind is in. However, if someone were to ask us what the nature of our mind is, how it functions, we're probably like, I don't know. Let's go and have a cup of tea. Do you know what I mean? We don't really know what our mind is or what it does. If you've been coming here for a while, then you do. But generally speaking, we have all sorts of weird ideas about what our mind is, like a squidgy thing in our brain and stuff like that, even though our mind is consciousness, awareness, formless, vast, limitless. These kinds of things we don't learn at school. And if I had more time, I'd explain how this wrong view materialistic worldview arose, but I'm not going to because this is actually just a day and I've got to explain my karma and emptiness. Okay, better keep going. So, if someone were to ask us what our mind is, what it does, we'd probably not be able to give a precise answer, Venerable Geshe-la says. This indicates that we do not have a clear understanding of the mind at this point. So what I'd like to do in our first meditation is meditating on the nature of our mind. So the way we're going to do this is we're going to relax, settle, do a little bit of breathing meditation. I'm explaining it, then I'm going to guide you. And then get into our heart and oh, yeah. So there's going to be two analogies in this meditation. One is our mind is like a boundless sky. Now, I know that's tricky in England. I live in Colorado where, you know, I say the mind is like a boundless sky. And they go, yeah, yeah, obviously, obviously. Because, you know, there's a boundless sky every single day. It's crazy how big that sky is, right? Always sunny. It really is. You can come and live there if you like. And then over here, it's like the mind is like a boundless sky. Is it, though? Is it? And it is. And you know, because you've been in aeroplanes, you know what it's like. You go above the clouds and then you realize, oh, the mind is like a boundless, clear, goes on forever. Anyway, that's our mind. And the clouds are just the weather in the mind. Right? The clouds of thought, I should say, are just the weather in the mind. Okay? So, what we're going to do in this meditation is settle our mind a little bit for a little bit of breathing meditation. Let some of those clouds, as it were, subside into the clarity of the sky-like mind. And then we're just going to spend a little time watching our thoughts, whichever thoughts remain. Whether it's lots of thoughts or a few straggling cloud-like thoughts, doesn't matter. We're just going to watch them. And we're going to watch them come. We're going to watch them go. So whatever comes up in our mind, just going to observe it, with our mind, obviously. We're going to observe whatever cloud-like thought comes up without following it, without reacting to it, without judging it in any way. Even if it's a really interesting thought, we're going to just let it come and let it go. If it's a really scary thought, we're going to let it come, we're going to let it go. We're not engaging in these thoughts. We're not going to even think these thoughts. We're just going to watch them come. And because we're not thinking them, they're going to go away again. And our job is just to watch that. Just to observe the arising of the cloud-like thoughts and their dissolution. And we'll do that for a while. And then we'll ask ourselves a few questions. And through that, we're going to allow the cloud-like thoughts to dissolve away. At this point, the analogy may change. I'm not sure yet. But it may change into our mind being like a boundless ocean. So don't get confused. These are just analogies. So we're going to think like our thoughts are like waves from a boundless ocean. And we let them all dissolve back into the... It's just slightly different analogies. Because when we think about clouds, you can imagine sitting in the park on a day where there aren't too many clouds and just lying on the ground and watching the clouds go over in this beautiful big blue cloudless sky. Can you imagine that? You can. I know. I'm only kidding. It's always sunny in Southampton. You're just watching the thoughts come and go. Like if you're watching clouds in the sky, you're not following them across the sky. You're just seeing... They just materialize and they dematerialize and make interesting shapes and they change into different things. Just watching without getting stuck in them in any way. Staying connected to the clarity of your skylight mind. And that's... So that's a useful analogy for that. And then it becomes more useful then to think of our mind as an ocean with waves for various reasons that I won't explain now but that will come up in the meditation. So I don't really need to explain anything more, I think, about the meditation. I think we can just get straight into it. So please begin by sitting comfortably. The main thing is that your back is straight. Your shoulders relaxed. Your head tilted a little forward. Eyes and mouth lightly closed. Eyes and mouth lightly closed. Your hands resting in your lap or wherever is comfortable. Take a few moments to settle into this position. Become aware of how you're sitting. Relax. And simply feel happy to be here doing this. You have a chance now not only to experience some inner peace but to get to the heart of things, to understand more about who I am and how I can break free, how I can choose happiness and freedom thanks to Buddha's teachings. So just feel very happy to be here doing this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We feel this happiness at the level of our heart. Feel as though you've dropped from your head into your heart. Very center of your chest. Spiritual heart. You start to sense that your awareness, your mind, is empty like space, like a boundless clear sky. Starting to feel the clouds of distractions beginning to dissolve away. Starting to feel the clouds of distractions beginning to dissolve away. This boundless quality of our mind is also pervaded by peace, just naturally. Always had a source of inner peace inside us. Always had a source of inner peace inside us. Help us absorb more deeply into our heart. Please imagine now that everything outside of this room melts away into the clear light of your mind in all directions, infinitely. The walls of this room melt away. Everything in this room, outside of your body, dissolves into the empty sky of your mind. Everything in this room, outside of your body, dissolves into the empty sky of your mind. Everything in this room, outside of your body, dissolves into the empty sky of your mind. Everything in this room, outside of your body, dissolves into the empty sky of your mind. Everything in this room, outside of your body, dissolves into the empty sky of your mind. Just your body remaining suspended in empty space. Everything now, up to this moment in time, dissolves away like last night's dream upon awaking. The past no more real, no more substantial, no more substantial than last night's dream. It's completely gone. What has passed cannot be seen again. So let it go. So let it go. Everything after this moment in time, likewise dissolves away. There is no future other than our thoughts about it. You let this go. As we are in the present moment, here and now, enjoying the peaceful clarity of your mind and your heart, even the seeming solidity and heaviness of your body now fall away. Your muscles relax. Your body melts into light, becomes completely hollow. Think, my body is like a rainbow body. I could pass my hand through it without obstruction, and it's weightless like air. Think, my body is like a rainbow body. I could pass my hand through it without obstruction, and it's weightless like air. My mind is like clear light. My mind is like clear light. So feeling as though you are abiding in your skylight mind, please now simply observe whatever thoughts, ideas, images, are passing through. Whatever appears like a cloud in the present moment, and then disappears again, you are simply observing this without reacting to it, without judging it or following it, without indeed even thinking it. Thank you. Thank you. Watch each cloud-like thought come and go to be replaced by the next one, and the next. Thank you. Now you can ask yourself, what are these thoughts? And where are they? Ask this within your own experience of observing them. What are they? Where are they? Where does each thought come from? Where does it go? What is that space between the end of one thought and the arising of the next? You can observe that every thought arises from a deep inner empty space, clarity, and it dissolves back into that clarity. It has nowhere else to go. Thank you. You can observe that the nature of these thoughts is formless awareness, not physical, not material, empty of form, invisible to the senses. You can now think that, like waves, all our mental activity subsides back into the ocean of our root mind at our heart, the ocean of our K-like mind that is as vast as space. Thank you. Thank you. You focus all your attention on this root mind, this K-like mind, perceiving that it is empty like space. It can never possess form. It has no shape or color or size. It has no boundaries. Thank you. You are meditating on something that is empty like space, vast, limitless, boundless, my mind. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This clarity is also like an immense mirror capable of reflecting everything that exists. The mind is the basis for perceiving objects, for appearing objects as in a mirror, a mirror that is currently covered by delusions and other obstructions. For now, we can feel that our mirror is unobstructed, that our mind is capable of reflecting everything. Meditate on this for a little while. Thank you. Thank you. I can think that my mind, its function is to know, to understand, to perceive and even to create. Buddha called the mind the creator of all. With our thoughts, we create our world. With our karma, we create our world. Thank you. In the last couple of minutes, please meditate on peaceful clarity of your mind. It has the power to create everything. Let all wave-like thoughts dissolve away. Just abide in this peaceful clarity in your heart. Thank you. Based on this experience, you can think, I am a peaceful person, boundless potential. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Peace is connected to the enlightened peace, the omniscient wisdom. The omniscient mirror, if you like, of Buddha, my spiritual guide. He is now appearing in my mind, reflected in my mind as Buddha Shakyamuni. He is in my mind, in my life, and in the space in front. Spiritual guide appearing to me in my life, to show me how to understand the mind, how to choose freedom. I follow his teachings and become exactly like him. So as we do the liberating prayer, we think, not only are we praising Buddha's good qualities, but also expressing our own future good qualities. Precious treasury of compassion, bestower of supreme inner peace, you lovable beings without exception are the source of happiness and goodness, and you guide us to the liberating path. Your body is a wish-fulfilling jewel, your speech is supreme purifying nectar, and your mind is refuge for all living beings. With folded hands I turn to you, supreme unchanging friend. I request from the depths of my heart, please give me the light of your wisdom to dispel the darkness of my mind and to heal my mental continuum. Please nourish me with your goodness, that I in time may nourish all beings. With an unspeaking banquet of delight, through your compassionate intention, your blessings and virtuous deeds, and my strong wish to rely upon you, may all suffering quickly cease, and all happiness and joy be fulfilled, and may bodhidharma flourish forevermore. of the mind that you just got. I'm going to say a few things more about it. Geshe-la says some people think that the mind is the brain or some other part or function of the body, but this is incorrect. The brain is a physical object that can be seen with the eyes. Not right now, obviously. So our brain is a physical object, it's part of our body, it's a squidgy thing in the head, and you can't see it, you can't touch it, I mean you can if you open your head up, sorry, you can see it and touch it, and you can operate on it in surgery, you can take photographs of it, draw pictures of it, take physical pictures of it, and so on and so forth, right? But our mind is not like that. The mind that we meditated on is utterly unlike physical form. Our awareness, our consciousness is formless awareness. It doesn't have any color or shape, as I said, in the meditation it's invisible to the senses. Can't see it, smell it, touch it, can't sit on it, can't operate on it, can't photograph it. If you try photographing a thought, for example, of your mother, or a thought of love for all living beings, our mind is utterly unlike physical form. And we know this from our own experience. So, you know, if we, in general, we still say, even though the materialistic view did away with matter, no, did away with everything but matter, I should say, we still know, just from the way we talk, that we understand the difference between our mind and our body. If we don't learn these wrong views at school, I think my mind is my brain. For example, when we think, my body, we have a sense of, well, some kind of meaty thing, right? Maybe not, some gorgeous thing, I don't know what you think of. But your body is definitely something physical in shape and size and weight and blah, blah, blah, right? But when we think my mind, my memories, my thoughts, my ideas, my opinions, it's very different, isn't it? Thinking my body. And we don't actually think, when we think my mind, we don't think squidgy thing in brain. We just don't. We think, I had this great idea, this lovely thought, I feel warm inside, I feel unhappy, whatever it is. And there's nothing physical about it at all when we think about my mind. So we already know the difference between body and mind. We always have. We learned all the materialistic stuff at school. There is a relationship between some types of mind and the brain, for sure. But it's a relationship, which means there's two things, not one thing. Relationships require two or more things, do they not? So one example is that my brain is like into a car and my mind like the driver. Or we can think my brain is like a radio and my mind is like all the radio waves that go everywhere. So there can be a relationship between parts of our body, the brain, and parts of the nervous system, what have you, and types of mind, formless awareness, but it doesn't mean they're the same thing. So, you know, if something impacts the brain, yes, it will impact certain ways of thinking and so on. But my mother, for example, I think her brain now is mush, to be fair. I really don't think it's working hardly at all, just to kind of keep the functions of her body going. And yet, I know full well, when I spend time with her, I know full well that she's still here in her heart. I can feel it. I can see it. I know that even though she can't talk or smile or anything, she still has stuff going on in her heart. I'm absolutely sure. And she's still dreaming and stuff. So, in deeper levels of awareness, our mind is not actually dependent on the brain functioning. She has, for example, from my lifetime of being physically active, for example, from my lifetime of being peaceful, quite a peaceful person and positive and kind and so on. That's still going on inside her. You can tell. It's still there. That peace is still there. She's not agitated. I would be in her situation. But she's unusually peaceful. You can feel that peace coming from her and all the carers feel it as well. So, do you see what I'm saying? So, the brain is not the mind. It's the body. And although there's some connection, they're not the same thing. So, why is this important? Because, you know, there's only so much you can develop your brain, isn't there? You know, your brain can't, you can't, like, inject something in your brain like universal love potion. Without universal love, you definitely can't inject enlightenment into your brain. There's only so many ways you can sort of stretch your brain, aren't there? Whereas Buddha's explaining that we can get rid of all our suffering permanently, all our delusions and attain the bliss of liberation and enlightenment. It's not going to happen with our brain, is it? And even if it did, our brain is going to be consigned to the grave with the rest of our body pretty soon. So, what was all that about? So, if we understand the formless nature of our mind, we know it's utterly unlike the body and that although this body is going to screech to a halt soon, within a few hundred months isn't it? Our body doesn't have much time left. Right? This life is short. Our body's made of meat and crystal and stuff and as I said before, we don't keep it in the fridge so it's amazing that the only thing that kind of keeps it going is the mind, to be honest. You know, the difference between a live body, as it were, and a dead body is enormous, isn't it? Like, in the time it takes for someone to die, you know, they're alive and their body's kind of alive and then, next thing, they're like, their mind is gone and their body is now just a lump of flesh. We've probably all had this experience around people who've died that their body is not them. You say, it's not them. And yet, if you weigh their body, it's the same weight. The brain is still there, actually. Okay? So, it's switched off and the rest of it. But, we know it's that that person was never their body at that time. They've left. We say they've left. Even people who aren't spiritual get the sense, oh, the person's left. This is not them. This is their body. Definitely not them. In fact, we need to get rid of this thing as quickly as possible. Even if we've been married to it for 50 years, right? So, ideally, you get rid of it as quickly as possible. Otherwise, it's weird. Because, just the body and our body is just made of me. And as soon as the mind leaves it, that animation, that life, that formless awareness, then the body just becomes like, yeah, it's just a corpse. So, pretty soon, that is our body. Our body's going to be like that. I'm not pointing anyone out. I'm looking at everyone here. I'm not putting a curse on you or anything. This is just the case. This body is short-lived. And, before we know it, it will be that our mind will have left this body onto the next body, next life. So, completely unlike each other. Yes, so there is nothing within the body that can be identified as being our mind because our body and mind are different entities. Here's an example. Sometimes when our mind is relaxed and immobile, like now, for example, our mind can be very busy darting from one object to another. I would say, it's not even just sometimes. These days it's pretty 99% of the time, isn't it? We hardly move. No, we do. But, you know, we sit a lot, don't we, doing things with our mind. So, this indicates that our body and mind are not the same entity. In Buddhist scriptures, our body is compared to a guest house and our mind to a guest dwelling within it. When we die, our mind leaves our body and goes to the next life like a guest leaving a guest house and going somewhere else. So, if the mind is not the brain nor any other part of the body, what is it? It's a formless continuum. It's a formless awareness but it's also a formless continuum that functions to perceive and understand objects. So, it's a continuum insofar as one moment of mind leads to the next moment, leads to the next moment. It never stops. Our mind never stops. It never switches off. Never. It's always going like a never-ending river. That's our mind. It's been going since beginningless time. And it will keep going. So, to kind of understand this, actually we'll come back to the continuum side of things. For now, let's think the nature of our mind is formless, non-physical. So, because the mind is formless or non-physical by nature, then it's not obstructed by physical objects. Our mind can go anywhere. I guess I'll give the example of the moon. Actually, today, isn't it? The eclipse. Okay, so, I think that's today. Have you heard about this eclipse? Oh, I thought it was Monday today. Sorry. You're absolutely right. It's Saturday. So, okay. Well, let's think about it. Let's just think for a moment. Close your eyes just for one moment and think about the moon. The moon on Monday. What it's going to be doing. It doesn't matter how vague your understanding of eclipses. Just bring it to mind and the sun for that matter. So, we're all watching the eclipse together right now. We can even be on the moon. Visit the moon. Look back at Earth. Okay, you can open your eyes. So, we did actually just visit the moon. The moon was in our mind and for that matter, we visited Monday which is the future. Our mind did that as well. You say, well, it's just imagination. True, but everything is just imagination. Everything's created by thought. Everything is experienced by mind. To exist, it must be experienced by mind. Point being, our mind can do these things. It can go anywhere. It can even travel in time. Our body can't do any of those things. Even to see the eclipse even on planet Earth, you'd have to get in a plane and go to America, actually, I think. Wouldn't you? Get those goggles and look at it and that's a lot of effort and time and I doubt any of you are doing that. I know some people are traveling. Maybe you are doing it. But it's going to be a lot of effort and time and money whereas our mind can just go there just by thinking about it. Our mind is not at all obstructed by money, by physical things, by time, by anything. It has its own obstructions. It has delusions and imprints of those delusions which are like the two cloths on the mirror that we guided in the meditation. One way to understand our mind is to think of this vast mirror enormous that is capable of reflecting everything in the universe and our mind is like this vast, clear mirror but right now it's covered by two cloths. On top of it is this thin veil and on top of that is like a thick blanket or just a thick cloth. So this is Buddha as an example. I'm not making this up. So that thick blanket we can understand it to be all our delusions, the darkness of confusion that keeps us swept along the currents of the four powerful rivers and self-grasping. All that stuff is like that thick blanket meaning that our mind right now is obscured, obstructed and although it can still go wherever we put it unobstructed by physical things, time and so on it is still obstructed by delusions so it's still suffering and it still isn't seeing reality correctly or directly. Right? But through training in these teachings especially in wisdom realizing the true nature of things we slowly but surely get rid of that blanket. And now all that's left is a thin veil which is analogous to the instructions to omniscience which are the imprints of the delusions that are left in the mind when the delusions have gone. It's a bit like analogous to the smell of garlic in a jar when the garlic is being removed. There's just still some obstructions in our mind that are preventing us from seeing all phenomena directly and simultaneously. Right? There's still a there's still an appearance of things existing outside of the mind. I'll come back to the inside-outside of mind in a minute but there's still this appearance of things existing out there if you like outside of the mind, outside of me. Inherently existent real, solid. There's still an appearance of that even though we don't believe it at this point because we actually our mind is liberated from ignorance. There's still some obstructions but when you move those through further meditation on the Buddhist grounds and paths move those obstructions from the mind then your mind becomes this omniscient mirror. The inner light of wisdom that is permanently free from all mistaken appearances that is able to bless and help each and every living being every day because now everything and everyone is now reflected in that mirror. You could argue they already work except the mirror was obstructed. All that separates us from enlightened beings' mind is these two obstructions. We have that Buddha nature that potential for omniscient wisdom and universal compassion. A Buddha's experience is that of omniscient wisdom and also this love and compassion for all living beings who he or she doesn't see as separate from themselves because they're mere reflections in their mind. This is a quick whistle-stop tour of omniscient wisdom. I've only got three sessions to explain the entire Buddha Dharma. Thank you again, Nekma. So anyway, you get the idea. Your mind's quite awesome, right? Deeper levels of our mind are utterly awesome. Incredible. Their potential is staggering, honestly. Our Buddha nature is just unbelievable. So, it's nothing. Our body really is not that awesome. It's useful. To be fair, it's useful. But that's about it. And it's nice when it's working. No doubt about it. But it won't work forever. But it's just a temporary casing for this mind. Temporary, one could say, a cage for this mind. Like when I look at my mum, I think, that body is just a cage now. It's not doing anything for her at all. Her mind needs to be free, you know what I mean? But inside there, her mind can be free. Same with us. Our body is not us, luckily. It's very fleeting. But our mind is going to go on forever and ever and ever. Not the mind that we're using right now, the gross minds, or the waking minds, if you like. They do all go away. Including the whole narrative of who we are, where we live, and so on. Personality of this life, the self we believe we are in this life. All that does actually go away. So we're not born in our next life. Oh, I'm back. Interesting body. Oh, my parents look a bit different. Oh, never mind. No, we don't even remember a thing because it all disappears. The objects, the waking world, and the waking minds all completely disappear. All the sleeping minds also. But our very subtle mind goes from life to life. I'll come back to that later. My point just is that our mind is extraordinary and can create everything. And in fact, does create everything. So, as Geshe-la says, if the mind is not the brain or any other part of the body, what is it? Formless continuum that functions to perceive and understand objects, not obstructed by physical objects and so on. So, then he goes on to say, although we say, I know such and such, in reality, it is our mind that knows. We know things only by using our mind. And, then he goes on to say, normally we seek happiness outside of ourself. We believe that happiness and suffering come from things outside of us. You know, we have this grasping at a world that is outside of our mind, separate from our mind. And therefore, because we want to be happy and we want to be free, we have to manipulate that external world to get what we want. This is our typical view, right? Self-grasping view. Materialism hasn't helped. It's kind of wrong view on top of wrong view on top of wrong view. So, you know, whoever has most toys wins, basically. Prevailing philosophy. Zeros in the bank account. Careers. Things outside of us are what make life meaningful. Even though all of them are extraordinarily fleeting, temporary, and nothing to do with who we really are. Just trappings of this body, actually. But anyway, we are grasping at a world outside of our mind and we're seeking happiness by manipulating it and seeking to get rid of our problems by manipulating the external world. This is very unlike understanding that happiness and suffering for one thing depend upon our thoughts, depend upon our moods, depend upon our experiences, depend upon our perceptions, depend upon our opinions. That's one thing that we're missing when we try and get happiness from out there and get rid of our problems out there. Does that make sense? The other thing we're missing is the role that karma has to play in creating this reality that appears to us. I've just noticed that we're out of time already and I'm only halfway through the first session so this is going to be one of those kinds of days where everything drops off the end. As you all need your coffee we should say goodbye to be continued. Welcome back. Welcome back. We will go straight into a very short meditation going into liberating prayer just to prepare our minds. Actually, before I just wanted to read one thing before we do that. Just to reiterate we may think that our suffering is caused by elder people. Yeah, definitely. By poor material conditions or by society. So this is our natural view of course. But in reality it all comes from our deluded states of mind and also our negative karma. So this is kind of what we're trying to understand because until we understand this we'll be seeking happiness and freedom from problems outside of ourselves and we won't be getting it because that's not where it comes from. Happiness doesn't come from outside of ourselves. Freedom doesn't come from outside of ourselves. Choice doesn't basically come from outside of ourselves. So this is what we have to kind of like Buddhist teachings we're basically switching that around so we understand that happiness and suffering come from within our minds. And really all of Buddhist teachings are taking us to that understanding of the importance of mind and the importance of our actions. Okay. So yeah. And then that gives us actual freedom to be happy to be yeah to be able to have the lives that we want. Until then we're not going to. This is the basic Buddhism 101. Doesn't matter how hard we try it's never ever ever going to work out. This is samsara. Unworkable. Okay. So in our meditation we're going to just do like I said spend just to sort of absorb into our heart again and do liberating prayer and then do one also one little analogy. So please begin once again by just settling and feeling happy that you're here doing this. Feeling that happiness in your heart not in your head. Drop into your heart. Remember the open spacious quality of your mind. It's like clear light. Or like the vast mirror. As before you can allow everything outside seemingly outside to dissolve away in the clouds into the sky including the past and the future. So just feel that happiness in your heart that you're here doing this. Just imagine everything absorbing and dissolving into the boundless clarity of your mind. So just feel that happiness in your heart that you're here doing this. Just imagine everything absorbing and dissolving into the boundless clarity of your mind. My awareness at my heart is something that is empty like space. It can never possess form. There's no shape or color. No up, no down, no here, no there. I'm not here and I'm not there. No directions. No boundaries. No atoms, no molecules. Non-physical. Empty of form. The basis for perceiving or appearing everything is not here. It's not here. It's not here. It's not here. It's not here. It's not here. It's not here. There's nothing outside of my mind. Any more than the reflections in the mirror outside of the mirror. It's not here. It's not here. It's not here. It's not here. It's not here. It's not here. It's not here. It's not here. It's not here. The Buddha likened our root mind, the deepest level of our mind, to a boundless ocean. What are other minds like waves that arise from that ocean? All our waking minds and sense awarenesses and so on, for example, just like waves, arising and dissolving back into that ocean of clarity. All subject minds and object things, all minds and their objects, arise simultaneously from the ocean of the root mind, like waves arising from an ocean. The Buddha likened our root mind, the deepest level of our mind, to a boundless ocean. What are other minds like waves that arise from that ocean? All subject minds and object things arise simultaneously like waves from the ocean of our root mind. You just meditate on this, whatever this means to you, for a few moments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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