Archive Result

16

20110416GRCHHP

Transcriber Hartmut

00:00:00Thank you so much for having me here. Thank you for the introduction. [not transcribed thank yous to individual people].

00:00:32

Today I was requested to talk about habitual patterns and how to overcome them. We all know ourselves and our usual habitual patterns. Each and every one of us has to think how our mind functions every day. How do we deal with our life every day? There are certain emotions that we entertain. Sometimes it is not even entertaining. It just comes out and almost overtakes us. I have been talking here yesterday the whole day about that. That is the fear and we are deeply very afraid of everything. We are not to be blamed. We are very much afraid that when we get up we hit our head and if we sit down we are going to hit our butt. That’s what we are really afraid of. So it is not our fault. We have been beat up so badly by hitting our heads and butts in life after life. I am coming from the background of reincarnation. It has been so many times and that’s why we are afraid. We don’t know where the fear comes from. Our life is dominated by fear. That’s why it becomes so easy for us to get angry, so easy to develop hatred - actually nobody has to really develop hatred, just get occupied by it – as well as obsession. We see something nice that somebody else has and we must get it, “I must get it, because it is me.” “I must have it. Why should he or she have it? I should get it, because it is me.” All that comes without any effort.

04:23

It is automatic. Every good thing has to be for me and every bad thing has to be for somebody else. “Why me?” we ask all the time when something bad happens to us. We never say that when something good happens! This shows our habitual patterns. All this anger, hatred, jealous and so on is what we are addicted to. People get addicted to substances, lets say just even to cigarettes. Actually, nowadays cigarette smoking is much less. That’s one good thing that’s happening in America. Cigarette addiction is going down. When I first came to the United States in the mid eighties, a huge amount of people were addicted to cigarettes. Then the laws came in that people can’t smoke inside rooms any more. So you could see them standing out there in the cold winter, shaking, but still smoking. That is what addiction does. If you sit in a nice warm room with the people and you are not allowed to smoke, because people are bothered, then no matter, although it is cold you have to go out and shake and shiver, but still have to keep popping out. That’s what addictions do and they are habitual patterns, actually.

We do the same thing with our mental addictions. The emotions of anger, hatred and jealousy are like that. We don’t have to go to school to learn how to get angry, how to be attached, how to get jealous. Even for little kids jealousy is automatic. They want to be the center of attention. We don’t have to learn how to blame other people. We don’t have to learn how to lie. They just do it. We have to put in efforts telling the kids that lying is not good. You don’t have to put in efforts teaching them how to lie. They lie anyway, many of them. Many also don’t – because their elders have overcome their negative addictions and that affects the kids. That’s how it is. How di the elders overcome them? Somehow there is an awareness and understanding that lying is not good. You call that person a liar. And we agree that’s not good. So the understanding develops in that way.

That awareness develops in society. We know that lying is not good. People do have that understanding. But if there is a group of people who lie all the time, then among them the awareness that lying is bad is not there. These people are not going to pick up the understanding that lying is not good. They don’t have that awareness. So recognition, awareness, is the first step.

If you don’t know how to acknowledge that you are wrong you will never correct it. In other words, being in denial will give shelter to the negative patterns of our behavior. We don’t want to deal with it; we don’t want to talk about it or think about it. “That’s not my problem – it’s somebody else’s problem.” That’s how we act. I am giving you just the example of lying. But it is the same thing with hatred. It’s the same with jealousy and anger. What happens is when you deny you don’t recognize that as a problem, as I said earlier. And the group of people who is lying all the time will even learn how to lie better all the time. Maybe politicians know that. (laughs). They do that, right? I don’t mean all politicians lie but people who lie do it all the time and they get very good at it. They will let you know the truth also only very little by little, so that people don’t get shocked or something.

0:12

Just look at the unfortunate accident that happened at the Fukushima reactor in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami. It is terrible. They cannot hide anything that happened in the tsunami and earth quake. But they can hide what is happening at that nuclear reactor site. I am quite sure that the so-called experts knew on the very first day how bad it was. But they couldn’t tell. So they said, “Everything is okay; there was a little bit of an accident. Then a few weeks later it goes down, then again it goes down and so on and now they are saying that it is as bad as Chernobyl, stage 7 out of 7. I don’t whether that was a lie or not, but they don’t tell you straight away. It becomes an art and skill. So even the bad, negative things also have their art and skill. We have seen it. President Clinton was good at it. First he was wagging his finger, denying everything and then gradually everything comes out. It becomes that way.

But here I want to say that the negative emotions come in without any effort. The moment they come in you have to acknowledge. That does not mean you have to accept that you are guilty. No, you don’t have to. You can say, “I was angry” and that’s fine. But if possible, you should be able to say, “I am angry”. Then you can say “I know it’s not good.” Then next you say, “I am going to correct that.” That’s how you catch up with your problem. Our problems are directly known to us. It is like I am looking directly at you and I see you. Just like that. We see our own problems directly. There is nothing secret or hidden. It is only our own mind that is trying to hide that, making sure that nobody else can detect that “I was not happy” that “I was upset.” We hide that from ourselves. Otherwise it is direct knowledge. When you directly see it, recognize it and let it be. If you can change at that minute it is wonderful. But even if you cannot, let it be. Let the awareness acknowledge. Then switch it off your mind. Think of something else like a beautiful flower garden. It will be funny. You are angry, ready to kill the person and then you think about a beautiful flower garden (laughs) – or something. You are trying to divert your mind from thinking about the anger. When you do breathing meditation you are focusing on the breath. Why do we do that? If your mind is in a negative state it will take away from that. If you are fed up with life or overwhelmed or angry or maybe very angry with your mother-in-law or whatever it is – you divert that thought and take your mind away from entertaining those negative thoughts of hatred, anger or obsession. You bring the attention to the breath and give yourself a little relief. A lot of you are so busy with work. It is overwhelming. You are rushing here and rushing there, trying to keep this deadline and that deadline, trying to finish this, entertain that, manage everything. In the middle of that just think something else. Take a little breath. That gives you physical relief as well as mental relief. You are drawing your attention away from in the midst of all this and getting it over to focusing on the breath.

Sometimes we have so much noise in the house. The TV is yelling at you. We get caught up in some kind of program and live in that program and it is yelling at you. Then suddenly, if you turn it off – haaa, there is relief. That’s exactly how our life is functioning. We don’t notice because we justify every busy-ness that we engage in. So relieve that and take your mind to the middle ground.

0:20

When you get your mind to the middle ground, then you switch it over to positive emotions. If you try to switch from horrible anger to a beautiful flower garden, that’s difficult. Then if you have to switch from horrible anger into something very positive like compassion or love or faith or something, then that’s not going to happen. It is much more difficult to make that switch than making the switch to thinking about the flower garden - unless you are tortured with pain and don’t know what to do and then somebody says “compassion”. Then you may think “Oh, yes, compassion.” You may accept it then. Other than that the mind will not accept. That’s why first you try to shift to the middle ground, sometimes closer to positivity. I purposely chose the flower garden. If you are very angry, try to think of a beautiful flower garden, like the one in Holland, the Keukenhof, where all the tulips come out about this time of the year. If you have to switch from great anger at somebody, try to think of Keukenhof. That’s going to be very difficult. But if you try to think about positive things it will be even more difficult. That shift is what you can do.

Many people tell me “I can’t do it, I can’t shift. This is bothering me so much and giving me so much pain.” But that’s not true. You can focus, concentrate on pain. So you have the pain constantly. The other day a friend of ours in Michigan told me, “My life’s over.” I said, “What happened? It is not over.” He said, “Yes, yes, I blew everything.” I said, “Oh, not a big deal.” So he said, “Yes, Rimpoche, you don’t understand what I went through in my childhood.” I said, “Yes, I am aware what you went through in your childhood. But just – can’t you forget?” He said, “Believe me, I am trying to forget this every day, all the time.” I asked, “So you do you relive that every day?”

So what is happening is you are trying to forget it and so you are imagining the whole thing again and again. So it taking its toll on you. That incident might have happened 40 or 50 years ago. And still the effect is not going out of your system, because you relive it again and again – with the idea of getting rid of it. So you are reminding yourself every day, thinking “I am trying to get rid of it.” We do that a lot. But if you keep on reliving you cannot get rid of it. So you have to think about something positive. You can do that. It is our mind, our own mind. Every action we take, mental, physical or emotional, follows a thought of ours. Nobody just gets up and runs. People first think, “I want to get up, I want to go. I have pain, I can’t sit. I have got to get up.” Some thought comes and following that thought you act. Let’s say you sense discomfort in your stomach. Then the thought comes, “I must go to the toilet.” Then you move and go there. I am sorry to use that as an example. You don’t all of a sudden run to the toilet, unless there is a cause for it. So for every single act, whether we recognize it or not, a thought or idea went before. We are acting on that idea.

0:26

So who provides that idea? Ourselves. I provide that idea for me. Then I follow it. So it is me who is doing it. So are you. That’s where you have a place and opportunity. That’s where you have a choice whether you want to torture yourself or whether you want to have it pleasant for yourself. The choice is yours and this is the spot where you can choose. People do that. Some people are being physically tortured. And they can sometimes make the physical torture easier because of managing their mind. There are a number of stories from the Tibetans. Many were jailed by the Communist Chinese back in Tibet 20, 30 years ago. They were tortured. So every time the torture came they said it was a matter of how they chose to think. If you think, “I am going to be tortured, I am going to be killed; it is terrible” then you never have peace. On the other hands you can think in two ways, positive or negative. Both are ways to make it easier for yourself. The positive way is thinking, “I am here for democracy, for the benefit of the people and this and that.” The negative route is, “I have been caught by the enemy. They are going to torture me, but I am not going to give it to them. Let them to whatever. It’s because I was caught and overpowered.” With these thoughts your pain will be less. Both negative and positive thoughts can give relief to physical pain and torture. That’s because you can manage yourself – it’s not the positive blessing or the negative effect, it is your own mind that is making it. Knowing that; knowing that positive deeds bring positive results gives you the room to influence your mind - for your own benefit. You can develop positive thoughts like faith and love and compassion. If you keep adding up to that in your life, that will improve your life. Just as you can get addicted to negative emotions like anger, hatred and jealousy, you can also get addicted to love, compassion, faith. When you do that you shift your way of living from negative influences to positive influences.

0:30

When you do that your deeds will change, how you function, how you react, how you think. When that changes it effects your companion, your spouse, your kids, your mother-in-law. Everyone will feel that effect. When you feel that effect the reaction you get is better. There is a big surprise in life that you can get. This is nothing mystical. We always know that if we engage in violence that violence brings violence. Similarly, non-violence will bring non-violence. But it is harder to notice, because while you try to be non-violent, the other side will keep being violent for a while, because we are all addicted to that. We know nothing other than violence, honestly. Even though we are “committed” to human rights and environmental improvements and all that. But we always think deep down, “We will tell them, but if they don’t listen, we will attack them.” That’s what we have done everywhere. That’s how we are at war now in four places at least, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya. That’s what’s officially known. Unknown, you never know how many. Deeply we are good person and are committed to helping. But then we think, “If they are not listening we have to attack them.” That to me is violence. Also compared with the US administration a few years ago, today it is definitely much better. No doubt about it. But still, Obama tried to adjust and said, “If we don’t attack Libya today tomorrow they will kill 700,000 people.” That is a big excuse to me. Honestly. We are impatient. We just want to do it now and get it over with.

Look at our TV programs that are reporting on what’s happening in Libya. Immediately they look for a conclusive result. “Is Gaddhafi down? Is he going to be kicked out or killed? We bombed his palace. Did we miss him? What happened?” The television shows us how impatient we are. We are addicted. We want instant result, because we are used to that through our entertainment. It is our own personal addiction. Impatience is not good. Patience is virtue.

Even Buddha said, “There is no such difficult negativity like hatred; there is no such difficult virtue as patience.” We don’t have patience. We want everything to happen yesterday.

This is how we are driving our lives. Recognize that and give yourself relief and move to a neutral place. Then get into a positive place. Yes, everybody likes compassion. That is a catchy word. A lot of Hollywood people talk about it. Fancy artists talk about it. It is the passion of us liberals. Compassion is something for liberals, not for conservatives. Sometimes that may not be true. Some conservative people have much more compassion than so-called liberals.

I have a funny story. Years ago I was called to jury duty. It was a small, little case. Some guy was pushed over by some kids on ice skates. They hit the guy and broke his leg or something. He claimed to have some permanent damage from that. Maybe, maybe not. He happens to be a lawyer. The judge was almost saying to the jury, “Even if you are award the compensation this person is seeking you have to remember that the owner of the ice skating ring is not paying out of his pocket. The insurance company is paying” – meaning there is not so much to talk. The judge said, “In about 30 – 40 minutes you people are going to agree.” We went into the jury room. A couple of the jurors were teachers, very kind and compassionate. They said, “We should make sure he doesn’t suffer. We don’t want to set him up for life, but he should get okay.” Then we started arguing about how much fault the guy himself had percentage – wise. All these teachers were saying, “maybe it was 20 – 30 per cent his fault.” Then there were 2 business men and who said, “No, no, it was at least 50 – 50 percent his fault if not more.” They argued over that for three hours. Then the judge came in and said, “Well, I understand you people have not reached the conclusion. I have to leave. But my clerk will take your judgment and announce it.” They were not going to agree, because the teachers were arguing. I had to go too and catch a plane too.

I thought what would be the best way we could do it. So I said, “Let’s not talk about whose fault it was but let’s talk about how much we should award him.” Then the two business men suggested quite a huge amount and then the others said, “In this case it doesn’t matter whose fault it was, we can all agree on that amount.” Then in five minutes we were done. They wanted to be generous and kind – but that’s how you think. This is how our life is. This is the pattern of our thoughts. It limits us but it also gives us room to move.

0:41

That is how we have to overcome our limitations. The limitations come from anger, hatred, jealousy and especially from fear. That can be overcome by compassion – by compassion for yourself. A lot of people think that compassion means it is about other people. Language-wise it may be true, but in practice we must have compassion for ourselves. If we don’t have that then who is going to have compassion for us? Compassion is the most important thing to overcome all our negative patterns. But compassion without love is not necessarily that great. It can become pity and sometimes even looking down on the person. It’s all possible. So compassion must be based on live. Compassion without love is much weaker than compassion with love. I do give different examples. I don’t want to always repeat the same example. But if you are looking at somebody who has been hurt and if that person has something to do with you, your feeling is much stronger than if it happened to somebody who has nothing to do with you. You have compassion for all suffering people, but if the suffering person is interconnected with you, you feel more. It is the love that makes the difference not the subject of compassion themselves.

Compassion is great, but it must be brought through love. Love cannot be developed just by saying “I love you.” It must be based on appreciation of the person. You cannot appreciate the person unless you respect them. Sometimes people say, “I don’t like that person, but appreciate what she did.” It is quite rare. You appreciate and admire the person and then you develop love for them. Then your compassion will be very strong. That is how we switch from the negative patterns of jealousy, anger, hatred and doing something wrong to hurt that person to be compassionate, loving and caring and doing something good for one person, then expand more and more to all people. That’s how we can develop compassion for all living beings. If you can work on making that switch you are making your life worthwhile. This is not even just Buddhism. This is simply a matter of Buddha telling us how to manage our life, how to help ourselves. It is not even Buddhism, but based on ideas coming out of Buddhism. It guess that’s it. I have nothing more to say.

Thank you so much for being here. I am really grateful to you people because you are trying to practice. You are helping yourself and that is important. Buddha had shared something very very important. It is very rare and difficult to get. By chance you people have it and I am glad you are taking it. Thank you for helping yourself. That’s it.

49:35 Dedication