Are your thoughts the same as your mind or different from your mind? Where were they before they appeared in mind? Where do they go after they leave mind?
Our mind functions like an eye. We can see everything outside, but we cannot really see ourselves. We know everything about the phenomenal world, but we don’t know who it is that is experiencing happiness or suffering. This basic ignorance is the cause of every kind of pain, every problem, and everything that brings suffering in the whole world and to all beings.
Mind is essentially space, all-pervading, containing all beings and all things. If we are not able to see this, then awareness itself, that which is looking through our eyes and listening through our ears, will think, “I,” and that which we are aware of will become “you” or “the others.” This is a mistake. If we look for an “I” or a “me” or a self somewhere, it cannot be found.
It cannot be found in the body. The body is just a lot of atoms and molecules pushing each other around. For instance, consider a glass of tea. When it’s in the glass, it’s not me, but then after I drink it, it becomes me, and then it will leave my body again, and it won’t be me anymore. So there’s no lasting “me” in the body, just a lot of processes that change all the time. And if we look for a kind of “me” in the thoughts and the feelings, there’s nothing there which stays either. It’s all flowing.
Looking for a “me” or a self is like looking at a river. If we look from far away, we think, “Oh, there’s a river.” If we go and look really closely, then we see that there’s no river; there’s just new water all the time. In the same way, we have this illusion of a “me” or a self, but if we look for something personal that could be a “me” or a self, it disintegrates. It isn’t there.
We are a flowing stream of new impressions, conditions, and former impressions, and it is moving all the time—the only thing that’s really there is not personal. The only timeless qualities are things we all share: space, which makes things possible; awareness, which can know and understand; and the fact that this aware space is without any limit or stop.
This is what is really there. This is the same in you and me. The mirrors are the same, but the pictures and all the dust on them are different. In the ocean, the waves are different, but the ocean is the same. All the objects of our minds, the outer and inner experiences, are different, but that space which makes it possible, that awareness which can know it, and the unlimited quality which permits all things to happen are the same in everybody. So the idea of an own, lasting, real self, a me, a person, soul, spirit, or whatever else, is an illusion. The same basic awareness pervades all beings. We all have this potential radiant space which is looking through our eyes and listening through our ears. So, what’s looking stays, but what’s being looked at is moving all the time.
This inability of mind to know itself means that the awareness nature of mind, that which is looking, begins to think “I” even though there is no “I.” That which is seen is experienced as being “you” or “the others”, even though you are also just a series of impressions which come and go, and no own personal self or ego exists in you either.
When this separation of a “me” and a “you” appears from ignorance, then different disturbing feelings appear. Attachment arises for what we want, and aversion against what we don’t like. From the attachment comes greed because what we like to keep, we want to have tomorrow too. From aversion comes envy because we don’t want to see the people we don’t like happy. From ignorance appears the stupid kind of pride, which is the type of pride in which one thinks, “I’m better than everyone else.” Of course, this is an exceedingly stupid feeling because it means we’re always in bad company. It means we always have to check how bad everyone else is. It’s the clearest way to make our lives unhappy and miserable and without inspiration. This stupid kind of pride is not useful because it creates separation. It freezes everything. It makes it difficult for us to develop, and we have to think a lot and always evaluate all kinds of things. It’s not very nice as a feeling either, not really joy-bringing. There also exists another kind of pride, which is the inclusive kind of pride. We just think, “Look at all of them! They know so many things and had so many experiences I didn’t have. Look at them, at how exciting and how interesting they are.” This kind of pride means that one gives the best that one has. It means that others feel accepted and begin to trust their potential. Everybody gains with this kind of inclusive pride. Everybody sees new aspects of their potential. So we all become richer than before.
So these six basic feelings are ignorance moving into attachment, aversion, confusion moving into greed, and envy. These go into many, many different combinations. The Buddha said that 84,000 different combinations of disturbing feelings are possible. Twenty-one thousand based on attachment, 21,000 based on anger, 21,000 based on confusion, and 21,000 based on the inability to see the basic purity and meaning of all things.
There is actually no problem with these feelings if we can see them for what they are: a bad show in the cinema or a zoological garden leaving us. There wouldn’t be any problem if we looked at them that way. We’d look from time to time and say, “Well, I’m lucky I don’t have to look all the time.” If we felt that something was really leaving us, then if it was a hard time, then we’d say, “How wonderful. I’m seeing the behinds of all these animals, not their faces. I’m getting rid of something. My mind is freeing itself. It’s something I’m moving through, like washing.” If you wash something and the water stays clean, you don’t know if the soap is working. If you wash something and the water is really dark right afterward, then you know the soap was good. In exactly the same way here, the fact that we have these experiences and so on really shows us that our minds are being cleaned of things, that we are really getting rid of different things.
However, if we don’t do that, then we will usually react to a difficult experience. We will think it’s someone else’s fault. We’ll do something against the people we blame, and we will start an energy wheel which comes back to us as more problems in the future. So, this is how the conditioned world operates. The basic inability to understand subject, object, and action as being interdependent and parts of the same totality brings about disturbing feelings based on the feeling of separation. The disturbing feelings bring about the different clumsy actions and words, which make more difficulties, and from that again appear more negative results. We feel bad inside, or the outer world shows us that we are not popular. This cycle is called samsara in Sanskrit, or khorwa in Tibetan, meaning “the wheel of conditioned existence.” Our reactions are all based on misunderstandings or harmful feelings. We are constantly in situations we cannot quite fathom. We are struck by things, and we don’t quite know where they come from, so we react shortsightedly. If we react like that, after a while, the impressions come back to us, and then again, we find ourselves in a difficult situation we cannot fathom, and again, we react. This way of moving is conditioned existence. This is the state we are in.
The Buddha gave different kinds of help so that we can get out of this wheel of conditioned existence. If you look at Buddhism as a totality, he gave what you can imagine is a cupboard with nine drawers, three pillars or columns vertically and three layers horizontally. The first pillar, of course, is information. We have to know what’s going on. If we don’t know how things are, then we don’t know what to do. It’s like being in a foreign country without a map and without knowing the language. We have an idea that somewhere there are diamond mines and somewhere else there are crocodiles, but we don’t know where those things are, and we may accidentally find the things we don’t want. So, information must be there, and it should always be verified and thoroughly checked. Knowledge is what makes our life rich, which puts us a horsehead in front of everybody else, and which makes us strong and capable.
Here then, for that reason, whatever was understood to be real and important on the level of consciousness, we have to take from the head to the heart—take it from a thought or an idea and make it into an experience, on a conscious level. This is the second pillar. This is the pillar of meditation. The first was information, always with questions, never accepting dogma, never accepting anything that cannot be understood or recognized. Once something has been understood to be real, important and meaningful, then the second pillar is using the methods to take it from our head to our heart and make it into a part of our lives as quickly as we can.
The third pillar, then, is, of course, holding the level. If we go up and down like a yo-yo, we don’t impress anybody. We don’t impress ourselves or anyone else. So, the third thing is whichever level has been reached, to solidify and then to hold it. Then we can move on from there to the next level, and the next, and the next, so that we are always well-balanced, secure, and solid in whatever is going on. So these are the three pillars: information with questions, meditation, and holding the level.
Now we come to the three levels through which we work with the disturbing feelings. If we want to have happiness and want to avoid suffering, then we can start with causality. Actually, one can only really use Buddhism if one is willing to believe that we create our own lives. If we think our problems are caused by an angry god, or there is no causality, or other people are the cause of whatever happened, then we can probably become very happy in some other religion, but we cannot practice Buddhism. The basis of Buddhism is that whatever happens to us has something to do with us, meaning that cause and effect works on us too. So this is the base– otherwise, we cannot do anything. If we are at the mercy or the whims of a god who likes us or doesn’t like us, or if there is no causality, then we will never be able to move. It’s only if we go from the basic understanding that we do create our own lives, then things can be done.
Around the time that Moses came down with the Ten Commandments at Sinai, the Buddha gave different kinds of advice. What the Buddha offers is always advice—never anything forced. It’s never anything one has to do. He also gave it in ten different installments, or ten different points, because people have ten fingers everywhere. Because the Buddha is very wise in psychological matters, he gave three recommendations for the body, four recommendations for the speech, and three recommendations for the mind: to do things that will bring future happiness and freedom or avoid things that will bring trouble, constrictions and difficulties in the future.
Here, he advises consciously thinking about our body as a tool to protect other people, and to give them love, unless we happen to be monks or nuns, and then it doesn’t apply. Otherwise, the body is seen as a tool for showing others that we love them and bringing them happiness. Also, we don’t have this idea of a sinful body in Buddhism. The body in Buddhism is strictly a tool; it’s strictly something you work with, and you can use it in such a way that it brings benefit or harm. It’s only what the mind does with it, nothing else. It’s not that there’s a good body, bad mind, or something like that. The body is the way the mind is, as we see it. So here, then, the advice is to give protection instead of killing, give love instead of abusing sexually, and be generous instead of cheating and abusing people. These three things are really essential.
Concerning speech: the idea is to speak truthfully so people can understand the world and not to cheat them or lie to them so they get into trouble. It’s to speak kindly and not roughly, so they feel they can handle their world and don’t get afraid and feel blocked. It’s to talk nicely, mentioning the good things about others so that they’re able to work together, expand in a good way, and avoid harming each other. It’s also not gossiping or saying things with no meaning but trying to stay with important points.
Finally, of course, the mind is most important because what we think today, we’ll say tomorrow and we’ll do the day after. Here the main thing of the mind is to wish everybody something good instead of hating them. We share in the good things that they do instead of envying them and think clearly, which is the opposite of being confused.
So these are the ten different pieces of advice that Buddha gives, and they are really the basis for working with the disturbing feelings in outer and inner situations. Even if we have the highest and most philosophical and spiritual explanations, if we still harm beings, or cheat them, and do other things that are not alright on a basic, everyday level, then we will be building the house of our spirituality on sand, or on ice. When the first storm comes, or when spring comes, it will fall down. So it’s really important to be straight on this level. So this is the first level of working with cause and effect.
It’s also very important that one never tries to be politically correct in any circumstance. If we are politically correct, then, in the end, we will become like a worm trying to move through everything, and we won’t have any spine or conviction or anything else like that left. So it’s really important to be honest and stand up for what one thinks is right, and not just try to say what everybody wants to hear, which benefits nobody.
Of course, if we work with cause and effect, it’s not so easy. We can learn a lot of things, but habits are strong. Speech habits can be especially strong. Even if one would open a complicated window to let a fly free, and would never consider violence or something like that, then still one may often just say something that is hurtful or unpleasant or meaningless or something like that. There are a lot of habitual energies caught up in one’s speech center. So in order to get a distance, so one can see if a comedy or a tragedy is on its way, then there’s this simple kind of meditation we can use. We keep some distance by holding the mind with one thing, like the breath at the tip of the nose, so that one can see the thoughts and feelings appear in mind, play around in mind, be known by mind, and disappear back into mind again. When one has seen that, one begins to get a protective distance, and more and more, one will be able to choose what kinds of feelings and situations that one wants to be involved in. That’s a big thing. It’s a big, big state of freedom and something wonderful.
On this level, of course, one has to limit one’s exposure to difficult things as well. If we want to work with cause and effect and create a distance, we also have to watch out for our environment. To avoid these difficult things, people may become monks or nuns. This is where one cuts all the things out of one’s life that could be disturbing: sexuality, possessions, all-night parties, all the things that give us more intense experiences, but where we are also in a more vulnerable position. One can be hurt in those situations. So, this is the first level, which is the basis.
Then, people discovered something that makes the world much easier. Instead of having to think of all the ten good and the ten harmful actions of body, speech, and mind, we discovered that body and speech behave quite reasonably and quite nicely if one has the right kind of motivation. The first level with cause and effect is like learning to bicycle, to move, to keep from falling, to move forwards, to avoid obstacles, and stuff like that. After a while, we take that from the brain, push it down our spine, and then we can bicycle. So the next thing is learning where to go. That’s the second level.
This second level then is working with motivation. Here, there are two kinds of motivation which go very deeply and can be on a very high level. On a very practical level, one will understand that we are all basically in the same situation. We’ll understand that we all get born, and after some years, we get old, sick, and die. While we are here, we try to get what we want, avoid what we don’t want, hold on to what we have, and arrange ourselves with whatever we can’t avoid. For all beings, this is the general human comedy or tragedy, depending on the level one sees it from. So seeing that this is the same for everybody, we will develop wisdom. We will stop feeling like the target and instead will say, “Oh, after I am born, then old age, sickness, and death follow. Because I have senses, I want to get the things I like and avoid things I don’t like.” So one is not the target anymore, thinking, “It’s a conspiracy. They’re all against me,” Now we’ll just say, “Yes, but it happens to everybody. We are in exactly the same situation.” Once the personal factor is out of it, this is a gigantic help.
Also, we will understand that the world is very much like a dream. All these things we consider so real when we experience them through our senses are, of course, in a constant state of change. Everything changes, moves, goes somewhere else. Sometimes it’s winter, then spring, then summer, then autumn, and then winter again. The trees have leaves, green first, and then many colors, and then they have no leaves again. It’s just moving all the time.
So, understanding this shows us that there is no solidity in things. We can see the world as a kind of collective dream. At the same time, we also see that we are looking through different colored glasses. We are not seeing the world the way it is. When we are happy, everything is wonderful. When we are unhappy, we see a lot of faults and mistakes everywhere. If we talk to other people on a day when our world is rosy, theirs may be dark, and when ours is dark, theirs may be rosy, and so it becomes clear that we are not seeing the world as it is. We’re seeing our own projections of the world. So when this becomes clear to us that we all go through the same things and that we are all inside the same dream, experiencing it through different colored glasses, what results from that is that we actually become compassionate. We start being kind because we see we’re just one being; the others are countless, and they all want happiness, so we have to be kind. We have to help them. We’ve got to be as nice as we can.
So that is the second level. Through compassion and wisdom, we actually become able to benefit beings, and then body, speech, and mind will behave in intelligent, meaningful, and kind ways. Also, here, there’s a meditation to develop this. First, we wish to become enlightened so we can benefit everybody because if we are confused ourselves, we can’t do much for others and then the last part of the meditation is sharing the good feeling.
Finally, how do we avoid falling down from this good, warm inner feeling of meaning and oneness and completion? We do that by avoiding anger. It’s not that anger is the only disturbing feeling, but we can solve or work with most other feelings. For instance, if we have a lot of desire, we can find partners with the same hormone levels and spend a lot of happy time in bed (and hopefully, we share the happiness with other beings afterward). Also, with jealousy, we can simply wish the people we’re jealous of so much of what we are jealous of that it becomes like a fairy tale.
Anger is difficult though. Here, the Buddha actually advises three different approaches we can try. There is the minimalist approach; we avoid situations where we would say or do something harmful. Instead, we go down and buy cigarettes, or go walk the dog, or whatever else, because it’s easy. So that’s the first level, seeing that the trouble is there and avoiding it. The second level is more heroic. That’s where we stay in control. We see that the feeling wasn’t there before. It’s changing all the time and soon it will disappear again. Here, we have a better distance and more protection from what’s going on. We can think that, “I’m together with this man for ten minutes, and it’s a tragedy. The poor man is together with himself twenty-four hours every day.” We develop compassion by imagining being somebody who produces so much unhappiness and disturbing feelings all the time. We think of how seriously unpleasant that must be. Then if we don’t develop compassion, we’re a hard case. So here we have the tool of compassion and wisdom, seeing that it does pass. It isn’t real. It’s just impressions that come and go.
The third level is actually the highest level of working with disturbing feelings, and the Buddha calls this “letting the thief come to an empty house.” And what do I mean by that? It means you give the feeling no honor, no strength, no respect, no anything. The most you say to the feeling is, “Here’s the water. Now make yourself a cup of tea. I don’t have time.” Here, one learns to see the feeling as a strange thing on the television screen or as a zoological garden leaving us, and one just feels relieved that the things go by. One knows one’s subconscious is emptying itself. It’s like after a bad party, where one tells the unwanted guests, “Don’t come back. Please don’t come back.” We understand that we’re seeing the behinds of the animals, meaning that we’re really getting rid of something. This is actually very, very effective.
In addition, I realized that Danes have some slightly ironic but quite good anger management systems. For instance, many Danish people say, “Little dogs bark. Big dogs don’t need to.” They don’t need to because they’re bigger. Another statement that quite a few Danes would say or feel good about and agree with would be, “Strong men never have to be angry. They just do what they want.” Weak people are angry because they can’t do what they want. They allow themselves to be frustrated. Strong people just do what they want, so no reason for anger. So having this understanding is really useful. The Buddha really spent a lot of time advising people against anger. He said straight out that if we’re angry in this life, we’ll be ugly in our next life. It really seems you don’t get those harmonious faces that attract when anger is strong.
Then we can shift over to the highest level. At that point, we start working causally, building one level after another. Here we work consequentially. We work from the top and down. Instead of building the house, running around with the stones ourselves, having our friends help, and using interesting machines, we start from the level of identifying with enlightenment. We’ll understand that enlightenment must be all-pervading. We’ll understand that it must be here in everybody, that it can’t be big in one place but small somewhere else. Then we start by behaving like a buddha until we become buddhas. We really understand that highest truth is highest joy. We try to keep everything on the level of purity. The understanding of mind being indestructible, clear space, radiant, all-pervading, fearless, joyful, and actively compassionate in its true essence, this understanding falls from the head to the heart. Here, it’s a question of pulling the beautiful mask of enlightenment over our faces again and again until we really don’t lose that state anymore. It’s a question of doing many short meditations. When we come out of the meditation, we are always appearing in a pure land where everybody is a buddha whether they know it or not, where every sound is mantra, and where every thought is wisdom. We try to keep that level as much as we can, until we can meditate again, and again we strengthen that experience until it’s constant and it doesn’t go away again. Meditation and between meditation or after meditation, is as much as possible kept on the same level.
Here, we can recognize mind in three ways. It has three very strong handles we can turn. One handle is to use its energy, to hold the energy of the body, take it up and spread it out, and make space totally blissful. That which is between the thoughts, behind the thoughts, and which knows the thoughts is totally blissful and perfect and wonderful. Anything happening is exceedingly joyful and pleasant.
Another thing we can do is to calm mind. We stop shaking it until it begins to reflect things, like a cup of coffee that is not shaken anymore. When that happens, then we first get deep intuition. After that, then, we understand that the seer, the things seen, and the act of seeing are part of the same totality. Then, the Great Seal arises at that moment, which is a state where everything manifests mind’s unlimited potential.
Thirdly, there is the way of identification. That was my own way. My lama, the 16th Karmapa, was so amazing for my wife Hannah and myself. Being his close students for twelve years, we just totally trusted him, and we were able to go this way of identification. We saw him as an expression of the Buddha. We could really see his perfection, his bliss, and his compassion and everything. We were very lucky there because this was very, very useful. It was a great gift to be able to do that because with that trust, then you can just behave like a buddha until you become a buddha. So that’s the most central way. That’s where you always have the enlightened aspect with you. You think of the lama or the Buddha next to you when you walk. You have him on your head when you sit. You have him in your heart when you sleep, and so on. Your mind is always aware of its potential for enlightenment. It’s something very special. That way of identification is a very quick way. There are probably not very many lamas one can do that with, who will never make us feel really funny or do things that will disturb us. With him though—at least the way we could see him—it was possible. Here, on the highest level, this is to be able to see whatever happens as mind’s free play and its potential, and see the different things that mind does.
What will happen using all these methods? First, we should know that all the different disturbing feelings we have are the raw energy for different kinds of enlightenment. We may be from religions which say anger, jealousy, pride, and greed are bad, and that’s true in a way—in that form, they do create suffering. On the other hand, if we use that energy, we will see that those who have a lot of dirt can make a lot of compost. Those who have a lot of coal dust can squeeze out some very big diamonds. One can say that one can work on the Theravada, the southern level of Buddhism, if one has few disturbing feelings. One can work on the middle level, the Mahayana, the Great Way, Northern Buddhism, if one has some disturbing feelings. If one wants enlightenment very quickly and one wants to practice the Diamond Way, then one needs masses of disturbing feelings. That is the source of power. In the Diamond Way, we are riding the tiger, not just pacifying it with a few poison darts, but riding it by being aware in any given situation—in the freefall, in the moments of meeting—really getting every ounce of juice out of life like that, that is the way of the Diamond Way.
When we work with them like that, we will actually see that what used to be disturbing feelings will show different kinds of enlightenment.
We’ll see that where the anger returns to mind, we’ll have a state that’s clear like a mirror, which shows exactly how things are without adding or withdrawing anything (as long as we’re able to keep from breaking a chair on somebody’s head when we’re angry, but instead just see the feeling appear, play around, and disappear again.)
We’ll see something similar with pride. We’ll see that pride is in mind, but if instead of telling others that we knew better than them or that we knew all the time, we just basically relax. If we are able to let the pride disappear back into mind, then suddenly we’ll have an experience which shows all the many-sidedness, the composite nature of all things. We’ll see how nothing is anything in itself, but everything consists of many, many different aspects and potentials and possibilities and so on.
I’m a lay lama, and I wish everybody happy nights and good company, and I think there’s too little love in the world. At the same time, there may also be kinds of love that are not really needed or useful, or which are attachment, or which bring trouble instead of benefit. If that is the case, then we will see that where this returns to mind again, we will suddenly have the power to see things as single entities and as part of a totality at the same time. We’ll be able to discriminate. We’ll be able to see the different factors and know how they work together. This is an exceedingly feminine wisdom.
With jealousy, if we manage to transform that, if we really manage to understand that the people we’re jealous of might be dead tomorrow, then we discover that we should actually wish everybody all the happiness they can possibly have in life because they may have all kinds of troubles anyway. If we manage to transform jealousy, then we’ll suddenly see that we can tie many, many events to one another in a whole flow of historical processes, seeing how one thing leads to another the whole way through.
Finally, we’ll also see that if we leave mind in its natural state, confusion will dissolve more and more. Like a glass of muddy water where the mud settles, real intuition will appear in mind in its natural state.
So, these five disturbing feelings:
- Working with anger will make us like a mirror: radiant, showing how things are.
- Working with pride will give us the richness of seeing the shininess and newness of all situations.
- Working with attachment will make us able to discriminate and make us like a lotus flower that can hold and feed all things.
- Working with jealousy, we’ll become like a sword that can cut through and separate what doesn’t belong together.
- Working with ignorance and letting it disappear, we will become intuitive. We will know things simply because we are parts of the same totality.
So this is what we work with. We work with it on the level of information, on the level of meditation, and on the level of conscious living.
There’s one last thing. If we start working with our mind in this way, what will happen to us? You should also know that.
First, you will become what is generally called “onepointed.” That means that you are happy wherever you are. It doesn’t mean sitting and looking at one candle until you see many candles because your eyes get stressed out or something like that. It’s nothing like that. It’s actually that you have so many good impressions in your mind that you feel at home no matter what happens. Whatever happens, you feel good with it. So first, we just become really happy. The ancient Chinese called this the state where your mind stays where your behind is. That means that wherever we sit, we are just happy, because mind is so full of good impressions.
The next thing we get is called “non-artificial.” We stop playing games. We stop pretending. We stop trying to be something that we are not because we see what’s really happening is better than any daydream we can have.
The third thing is called “one taste.” That’s where the feeling of awareness, or of something experiencing, is never lost through all the experiences which come and go. Instead, there is this feeling that there is an awareness all the time, something which knows and understands.
The fourth state is actually Buddhahood. It can be called different things. Some say “rainbow body.” We usually say “non-effort” or “non-meditation.” What that means is that one is not seeing any separation between others and oneself. Depending on what beings need, one brings peace, one increases, one fascinates, and one protects.
So that was the round thing, the big theoretical frame for the explanation of these feelings.
