How To Give Up Worrying

This talk is part of a series on 'How to overcome five hindrances' and it focuses on the hindrance of anxiousness and worry and how to let it go.

The five hindrances are different types of dullness, distraction, and disturbance that cover and suppress our mind preventing us from experiencing clear, beneficial, and peaceful mental states. When we understand how they function as negative mental states and learn the skills and methods to let them go, we can reduce their intensity and eventually abandon them completely and be free from their negative effects.

Length: 58 minutes

Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Lifetimes of Learning,

Production at the Buddhist Education Centre,

Which is a part of Buddhist Discussion Centre Australia.

In our podcast series,

We will be discussing the wisdom and teachings of the Buddha from 2600 years ago,

Which can help improve our happiness and lives at a deep level in this modern era.

In this podcast,

We will cover a talk on how to give up worrying.

Wherever you are,

We invite you to bring your attention to the present,

Smile and listen to the teachings of the Buddha.

So last week we saw how each of the hindrances has their own logic system,

That within that logic system,

The hindrance makes sense to that mind,

That consciousness.

So anger feels justified,

Seems like a perfectly reasonable response to the mind that's got anger.

It doesn't really see that there's,

It doesn't recognize that there are other options.

The mind of anger doesn't really see that that's just one of a whole range of possible ways of dealing with the situation.

It only sees the options that are in the angry mind for dealing with the situation.

It doesn't see that it's possible to put that mind down and find a better mind so that we don't respond with anger.

So this is the way these minds are.

They're kind of myopic.

It's like they see within themselves what makes sense,

But they don't have any wisdom.

So they don't see that there's another option or another way of doing things.

They certainly don't see that this is unwholesome and it makes negative karma because they're so,

You know,

They're so eager to react,

To be,

To yell back or to put the other person down or stop them in their tracks.

That's their mission.

So that's also the problem because each of the hindrances is very short-sighted.

It doesn't understand that these actions that are coming from the unwholesome mind make negative karma and mean that in the future we'll experience the pain associated with that negative karma.

None of the hindrances are aware of this because the hindrances don't have any wisdom.

They don't even have the first idea of wisdom.

They're based on ignorance.

So that's difficult because if you're in them,

It's very difficult to find a way out or to even know that there is a way out.

So the Buddhist practice is firstly to be able to recognize what mental states we have,

To be able to identify when they arise.

Is this wholesome or unwholesome?

Is this beneficial or not beneficial?

Is this conducive to my well-being and the other's well-being?

And then,

If it is unwholesome,

What's its name?

What is it?

Because if you know what it is,

Then you're better equipped to be able to cut it,

To see the stickiness of it,

To be able to put it down.

So to some extent we need to be familiar with the characteristics of each of the hindrances so that we're alerted to them when they arise.

If we know the characteristics of flurry and worry,

Then when it comes up we're likely to be able to say,

This is flurry and worry.

And then I know it's unwholesome and I know to not use it.

So I was talking to Misha about this flurry and worry last weekend and she said that she gets flurry and worry.

We all seem to get flurry and worry.

But she said one thing that she'd noticed is she can be really worrying about something one night,

So she's lying in bed and can't put it down and just seems to be stuck in a loop of this flurry and worry.

But then the next day,

The idea of what she was worried about can come up in her head and she can go,

Oh,

That's not a problem,

I can deal with it.

It's the same thing that she's thinking about.

But one mind takes it as a problem and gets caught up in it.

The other mind says,

Ah,

It's all right,

It's not a big deal,

I can manage.

Well that's the difference between,

That's the way the flurry and worry mind is,

That it doesn't have a very good perspective of the things that it latches on to.

It blows them out of proportion.

So it's like saying that the flurry and worry mind is really good at worrying and it gets the data from outside and it's like food to that mind.

And then it chops on it and it can keep you awake.

So I'm describing it to,

We're talking about its characteristics so that means that when it comes up,

We're kind of alerted to it.

If we know what its characteristics are,

We can be more aware of it.

So another element of flurry and worry that is,

It doesn't operate in the present.

It's worrying about something or it's agitated about something that's yet to arise or it's agitated about something that's happened in the past.

So you can bet that when flurry or worry is there,

You're not in the present.

The mind's playing with the future,

Which is an imagined future,

Because all the things that I've worried about,

In some respects,

They've all been resolved.

Where are they now?

They're not a big deal in my world anymore because it's imagined that worry mind is dealing with an imaginary problem and it's dealing with it with the wrong method because worry is not a good method for resolving problems.

Like if you've got a problem,

No one will say,

Now just sit there and worry about it because that's how you'll fix it.

It's just the worry mind can't resolve things because it's not interested in resolving things.

It's interested in worrying about things.

It doesn't have an agenda to fix the problem.

It doesn't fix problems.

I don't know if you like to recollect when you've had things that worried you.

Did the worry mind actually come up with a good solution?

I know in my case,

The answer is it definitely never does because it's job isn't to come up with solutions.

The worry mind comes up with problems.

That's its function.

That's how it operates.

So if you walk around in the world with that mind,

You'll pick up things that that mind can get worried about.

It doesn't put them down.

It doesn't know how to put them down.

It just knows how to worry.

So it's like it's got one thing it's really good at and it can worry.

So therefore,

If you start to consider this mind,

You can start to see the futility of it,

The limitations of it,

And the danger of it because it can't find a way out of its own loop.

So it causes a lot of agitation,

Causes a lot of mental disturbance.

It can keep you awake for hours.

And also with flow and worry,

I'm really talking about the worry part of it.

The flurry part of it is called agitation or it's almost like a fear.

It's like anxiety about something that might be going to happen.

It's very similar in the sense that it mainly relates to an imagined future that hasn't arisen,

That might arise.

It's got trepidation about this possible thing that might happen.

So that can be the flurry.

So we'll go around and see how you're going with it.

Does this resonate with you?

Is it something that you're familiar with?

And what do you know about this sort of stuff?

Jenny,

You got any?

Very familiar with it.

It's good to have it sort of mapped out in that way,

In that sort of framework.

It makes a lot of sense.

Because we want to be free of it.

Yeah,

Yes.

So we have to be able to know what it is that we're,

To know its shape,

To know its dimensions.

Because we don't want to be conned by it.

And so this is how we get the thick.

Yeah,

Definitely familiar with it.

And worry and thinking,

Overthinking.

Yeah,

Playing things in the loop about what could go wrong and having fear about the things that could go wrong.

Or regretting something that happened bad in the past.

So it doesn't want to stay in the present.

Yes.

It can't stay in the present.

Because if it really was in the present,

It couldn't,

It would just stop worrying.

Because the present,

Generally the present's not too bad.

I mean,

If you're lying in bed and you're trying to get to sleep,

No one's beating you up.

You're not hungry.

You know,

Your life's not threatened.

There's nothing particularly there.

In the present,

Everything's pretty good.

But the worry mind doesn't cognate that.

It's more interested in some other imagined scenarios.

So in a way,

Is it one of the manifestations of how mind could play or come into a form?

Is that.

.

.

How mind could play or what?

Come into a form,

Manifest into a form of this worrying mind.

So it's the same mind that we have.

So it's not a different part of the mind that we have.

But it turns into that.

.

.

When you say it's the same mind that we have,

What Buddhism says is that there's not one mind.

There's many minds,

All types of consciousness.

So it's not that we have this mind and it experiences different content and different reactions and different behaviors.

If you have the consciousness of hate,

You can't turn it into something else.

It's not transformable.

You can't make a hate mind love.

You can't make it do something else.

It's like a dog is a dog.

You can't make it be a cat.

In this situation with these different mental states,

A hate mind can't be fixed up.

It can never be taught something about not being a hate mind.

So in Buddhism,

What we're trying to do is give up the consciousnesses that we know or we can recognize are unwholesome or unbeneficial,

Because you can't fix the unbeneficial ones.

So the best thing is you just drop it,

Get off it,

Recognize it,

And switch to a different mind.

So in the case of hate,

If you recognize it,

You have the possibility of sending loving-kindness or developing patience with the thing that you don't like.

You have other options that aren't the hate consciousness.

Okay,

So in short,

It's not the content of the consciousness itself,

But it is a separate entity.

It's a type of consciousness.

Correct.

Yes.

How are you going with this?

Yeah,

Good.

Thank you.

It's good to have you sort of map out how it looks like because we experience it,

But because we're so close to it,

We actually can't see it for what it is.

And I definitely had foreign worry coming up this week.

And I think my strategy was to quickly notice it and tell myself,

These are not the truth,

And I'm not my thoughts,

And I'm not my feelings.

And then I take refuge.

And then I had a more wholesome thought.

That sort of cut it off.

But there's a lot of momentary things that comes up,

And then you know how much your mind's like to turn on unusual things just to make stories out of something.

Yeah,

It's very useless what it's trying to do.

It makes no sense what it's trying to do anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good.

Okay.

Connie?

Yes,

I can resonate to that.

To me,

If I need to catch a flight the next day,

Or I have an interview the next day,

Or a presentation,

I know that day before I always don't sleep well.

And I could recognize the pattern,

But I didn't lay it out this way.

I just feel like,

Oh,

Yeah,

You just worry about being late,

Worry about not being performed at the level that I expect.

I feel like I accepted that this is the pattern.

But once you said that,

I think there is a way to change that.

Yes.

Good.

Simon,

Have you got any comments you want to make on particularly this one,

Flurry and Worry?

I mean,

Generally,

You can say that the five hindrances distort our view of things.

So what Flurry and Worry does is it makes it look like there's not enough time.

It makes it look like I need to speed up in order to be able to get it done.

It makes it look like we're behind.

It makes it look like it's not going to be possible,

Which tends to give you this idea that things are not.

So it comes back to things are not moving in the way that they should be,

Or things are not going the way that they should.

And so it gives us this sense of wrongness,

This sense of things are not right,

And this is why we can't actually see the situation for what it truly is.

So the hindrances distort our view on the way things actually are.

So like all of the unwholesome minds have a problem with reality,

That they're not able to deal with reality with clarity,

And they're not particularly sane in the way they deal with reality.

So say if we had the expectation that reality always did what we wanted,

That people always treated us well,

That things don't go wrong,

That we can't lose things.

You would say that that's unrealistic,

But actually that's how the hindrances feel,

That's how they think.

So when somebody says something that's not particularly nice,

There's this something in our mind that says they shouldn't do that,

They can't talk to me like that,

Who do they think they are?

It's like the mind doesn't believe,

Or it doesn't accept,

That that people can say unpleasant things,

And if something breaks or something gets lost,

The mind's sort of,

Oh bloody hell,

It's like the world,

That doesn't happen in the world,

Somehow these weird things just happen that normally would never happen,

I lost something.

Our mind has this sort of unreal view that it should always be gain,

Everything should be coming my way,

There should always be good things happening,

I shouldn't have the bad things,

And people should be nice to me,

And it should always be working out.

So all of these minds flaring worry,

Is worried about,

It's like thinking,

It's like it doesn't deal with the normal conditions of living very well,

It worries and worries about something that's coming,

And yet this is just our normal life.

Our normal life is such a mixed bag,

Of so many ups and downs,

Roundabouts,

Good things,

Not so good things,

Things working out,

Things not working out.

We need an operating system that deals with life as it really is,

Not something that gets freaked out every time something doesn't work out right.

We need to be able to deal with reality in a clear way,

Not in a way that we're kind of get beat up by our worry or anxiety or annoyance.

We're the ones that are getting beat up by those things.

So this is the basic thing of Buddhism,

That the unwholesome minds do not deal well with reality,

And they don't understand reality,

Because they have expectations that reality shouldn't do all of this stuff that it just does.

So we need minds that understand the conditions that the Buddha talked about,

Which is the world is unreliable.

Everything is unreliable.

Feelings are unreliable.

Certainly the outside world is unreliable because we can't control it,

But our inside world is unreliable,

Because feelings come and go.

We can't say,

Just give me all the nice feelings and all the negative ones stop.

We don't control that.

We don't control a lot of our internal world.

So how the Buddha is explained to manage this is to go for wholesome minds,

Because wholesome minds can deal with reality well.

So wholesome minds include things like flexibility of mind,

Pliability of mind,

Lightness of mind.

So if you've got pliability and flexibility,

You can roll with the punches.

You know,

Something goes and doesn't work out,

You just say,

Okay,

I've got to figure out another way of operating.

I've got to find something where I can manage this,

Right?

So you sit down and you work it out,

You come up with something and you do it.

The worry is redundant in that.

Wholesome minds actually are very good at dealing with the way the world is.

Warts and all,

That's all it ever is.

It's always a mixture of good and bad,

Up and down.

So you can see flurry and worry is particularly bad at that,

Because it gets really caught up on things and just gets stuck on them and just goes around and around and around,

Beating itself up,

Because it's not able to resolve even little things.

It's just like a loop of not resolving,

Not resolving,

Not resolving,

Over and over and over and over.

That's worry.

So we understand flurry and worry is not our friend.

But still,

When it comes up,

We get caught by it.

We don't see the enemy that it actually is.

We see it somehow.

So the first thing is,

Our default,

If we do nothing,

Our default is we'll probably get caught up in our flurry and worry minds.

But we don't want to be operating on that.

We want to have wisdom.

So we need some sort of process or some sort of way of not getting caught on something that is very sticky.

So the first thing is,

We need to live in the present,

Because if we're in the present,

We can see what's arising much better.

We can see things arising in our mind,

And we can maybe recognize them,

What those things are.

If we're in the present,

If we're not in the present,

If we're not mindful,

We're not going to be equipped to recognize these things that can just sort of envelop us.

They don't not come through the front door.

They come around the back.

Right.

So if you're in the present,

You can actually start to be aware of the arising of,

Say,

For example,

Flurry and worry.

I mean,

Even if it's there for a little while,

Maybe it hasn't built up too much strength yet.

Whatever the mind focuses on.

So if the mind focuses on something it doesn't like,

The thought thinking will produce the negative consciousness.

The thoughts that you focus on will arise a negative consciousness too.

Once the negative consciousness is there,

It's much more difficult to abandon.

So the more you think about someone that pisses you off,

The more hate comes in your mind.

The thinking is the precursor to the hate.

So it's like we're triggering our own hate by our thoughts and by our memories of thinking about them.

So the idea is,

Firstly,

Be in the present.

And then the next thing is we say,

Okay,

I can see this thing that's arising is not wholesome.

It's disturbing.

I can see it's a disturbing thing that's arising in my mind.

So it's unwholesome.

If something's disturbing,

It's unwholesome.

So you try to consider,

What is this thing?

What is this thing that's unwholesome?

If it's unwholesome,

And I play with it,

I'm going to get caught.

And I might be an hour entangled in this unwholesome mental state.

For hate,

An hour would be sometimes short.

You can go for a day,

Being pissed off about something.

So the first thing is to recognize there's an unwholesome that's arisen.

And I don't want to get caught by this unwholesome because this unwholesome will cause my mind to experience disturbance.

And it'll block any wisdom or clarity.

It'll make my mind more dull and confused.

It's a hindrance to me being bright.

It's a hindrance to all the things I want to be.

If I want to be happy,

This unwholesome mind is a hindrance to that.

So it's about distancing yourself rather than being immersed in it.

It's to be trying to step away from it a little bit and call out what it is.

So there are various antidotes that you can use,

But basically they amount to,

We're trying to shift off this unwholesome consciousness.

We're trying to get onto another one that's okay.

We're trying to leave this one alone.

We're trying to drop it.

We don't want to.

Once it's on us,

It's like we're in a dye of that color.

It's hard to get that color out.

If it's anger,

It's like red.

And then you've got all this red to wash off.

It takes ages.

So it's better if you try to shift to another type of consciousness.

So what you'll find is that everyone will find out for themselves what works for them.

There are basic antidotes that we can talk about,

But my experience is that certain things work best for me.

What will work for me?

So for example,

One thing I've found is if I chant,

There's a few things I can chant that direct my mind away from that consciousness.

So if I chant the qualities of the Buddha,

In Pali we say iti piso,

I just chant that,

Iti piso,

Even if I'm in bed.

Sometimes I've woken up with flurry and worry.

I went to sleep,

I didn't have it.

I woke up in the middle of the night,

And there's something that had come up in my mind,

And I get up,

Go to the toilet,

And the next thing I'm sitting there and I've got this flurry of worry about something that happened,

Or something that's going to happen tomorrow.

And so I've got to have something to put in its place.

So I could chant iti piso and just keep chanting.

I could chant the metta sutta.

That works.

That's very helpful.

So you just chant that through in Pali,

If you know Pali.

Other things I've chanted are the names of the 35 Buddhas that we do prostrations to.

That's really cleansing and calming.

Any of these things are really wholesome cleansing things that you can bring into your mind.

The difficulty is that flurry and worry is very noisy,

And it's not easy to go from something's noisy to silence.

You're trying to get off flurry and worry,

It's so noisy,

And you say to your mind,

Okay,

We're going to let it go and just be quiet.

So flurry and worry is still making the noise.

How do you do it?

Because it's occupying your attention.

So if you find something to put in its place,

That's very clean and wholesome.

So in Buddhism,

We learn these chants.

And so any of those three,

I've found are really good.

The other thing is,

If you recognize that flurry and worry is hopeless at solving problems,

It's the most,

The worst equipped mind for solving problems that you could find.

Because its job is to worry,

Or get anxiety or anxiousness.

That's what its business is,

That's its core business.

So you're trying to get it to stop doing that,

It's not going to do it.

And you're trying to get to solve the problem,

It's no good for that,

It's the wrong tool.

It will only exacerbate the nature of the problem,

Because that's what it does.

So maybe another option would be,

You say,

Okay,

I'm not going to fix this problem lying on my pillow here.

It's the wrong time.

It's the wrong situation.

This isn't the right time to fix any problems.

So I'm going to do a deal where at nine in the morning,

I'm going to sit down for 10 minutes,

And I'm going to fix it.

This isn't,

It's not now,

This is the worst time to fix the problem.

I'm going to fix it at this time.

And then you make it a specific appointment,

Where you're going to sit down and analyze the problem with an analytical mind,

Which is a totally different mind.

You're just going to analyze the nature of the problem and what your strengths and weaknesses are and what the opportunities are to deal with it.

And come up with a few options of,

Okay,

I could do this,

I could do this,

I could do this,

All of which are ways of dealing with the problem,

Rather than just getting lost in a fog of worry.

So sometimes that works.

The thing is,

Your mind is changing all the time.

Maybe there's not one solution that fits every situation,

But you need to build skills.

These are mental skills that are dealing with the things that cause us to struggle and have difficulties.

So you need to build a toolkit of resources that you can use to deal with the negative hindrances.

So that's one of them.

Another one is to consider the disadvantages of this mind.

Like,

Go through a checklist.

Okay,

This is the disadvantages,

It can't do this,

It can't do this.

I end up feeling like this,

This happens,

This happens.

It's just to give you some breathing space to step back a little bit.

You can get into the present,

Watch the breath.

If you're not in bed,

If it's something that's happened,

You can change the activity you do.

It's like you just change.

You change what you're thinking about,

You change what you're doing,

You change your posture.

Maybe you're sitting in a chair,

Worrying,

Worry,

Get up and go and put the rubbish out.

Go and clean your teeth,

Go and have a shave.

Interrupt the conditions that are happening when you're in the flurry,

Worry,

Change your conditions.

And there's probably,

You know,

I'm sure there's many other,

In fact,

Probably Simon,

You've got any that you could talk about?

Slow down.

I find that slowing down really disrupts that mind.

Because when I'm experiencing anxiety or flurry of worry,

It's all about time.

It's all about,

I haven't got enough time,

I've got to speed up,

I've got to go really quickly.

So one form of disruption is to slow down.

You can slow the breathing down,

You can slow your movements down.

I find that very effective.

Plus also,

You know,

You mentioned Metta.

I do that too.

But also I have it,

It's like a reassurance,

Like it's going to be okay.

Yeah,

That's very good.

Things are going to be okay.

Yeah,

Tell yourself,

Talk your way,

Talk yourself through it.

Don't leave yourself floundered.

Send your,

Send a life raft to yourself.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Because that flurry and worry mind doesn't know that.

No,

It has no idea.

It's,

You know,

100% on board with this is something I need to be worried about.

So it doesn't know that you don't need to worry about this.

Yeah,

It's a good,

That's a really good one.

So things are going to be okay,

You're doing the best that you can,

You know,

You're doing the best that you can at the moment.

So there's a thing where,

This is something from what Simon said,

There's a thing in Buddhism that said,

In some respects,

Our mind's like a baby,

In that it's like lost.

It's lost in all the unskillful mental states arise.

So it doesn't really know how to navigate some things,

Just like a baby does.

So you have to be the adult.

And you have to,

You have to bring an adult's understanding to that problem.

So this is the thing of talking to your mind and saying,

The flurry and worry doesn't think it's okay.

Absolutely.

It's convinced it's not okay.

So you've got to say,

It's okay.

It's a little baby mind,

That one's a baby.

You say,

Okay,

I know you're upset.

I know at the moment,

It seems like this is a big deal.

But believe me,

It's going to be all right.

It's not a it's okay.

Yeah,

There is a problem,

But it's not as big as you think it is.

You know,

A week from now,

You won't even remember what the hell it is.

So it's like you educate.

You can't actually educate it.

But it's like you,

You talk,

Talk to that mind.

And this is part of getting it,

Getting yourself to let go of that mind to,

To be able to move to a different position and different consciousness.

Yes.

Can I ask,

So you earlier explained,

So there's these thoughts that come up,

And it latches on to it.

And then what is it that is latching on?

Like,

Is it a consciousness?

It's grabbing.

What is grabbing?

Well,

The mind is grabbing.

See,

The mind,

The cause of the problem is grabbing.

When you say the mind's grabbing,

Is it the consciousness arising at that moment is grabbing?

So things come,

We grab them.

We're always grabbing whatever is arising.

So if it happens to flurry worries rising,

We're going to be grabbing it.

That's our ignorance.

Can you explain a little bit then?

Because for us to note and not grab,

You got to be mindful watching it.

Right?

Like when it arises.

So if you can,

I think what I experience is like,

I keep watching it.

And there's bound to be a moment that you get caught by it.

Yeah.

So how do you kind of have a distance,

But then still mindful of it.

So you're not too close to it.

Well,

The thing is,

If you're passively observing,

See,

It depends on it's maybe there are times where you just see it.

And you just know this is what it is.

And you just leave it.

And hopefully,

You know,

It's a passing grade,

Hopefully,

Your mind doesn't latch onto it.

And,

And it'll just subside or,

You know,

Other things will happen and you'll get get past it.

But often,

It's not like that.

So it may not be sufficient to just passively observe.

So you might be in the present,

You might be seeing it,

But maybe that's not enough.

So that's why I think the Buddha says,

Change what you're thinking about,

You've got to take some sort of remedial action.

So these are some of the things that we were just talking about these methods of do some chanting,

Get up,

Walk around,

You know,

You're not gonna have a shave,

But put the rubbish out,

You know,

Direct your attention to something else,

Basically,

Because if you just sit there passively,

And it's,

It doesn't go,

You got nothing else to look at.

It's just there.

Yeah,

You can easily get sucked into it again.

So you got sucked,

You didn't get sucked into it the first time or the second time or the third time,

But yeah,

The fourth time gotcha.

So you don't have to sit there passively.

You can,

I think the whole idea is to abandon the unwholesome that's risen and to promote the wholesome.

So promote the wholesome means you have to generate a wholesome.

You have to with volition,

Produce a wholesome mental state in place of or instead of the unwholesome.

So the unwholesome is coming unprompted by itself,

Right?

You didn't start it,

It just arises,

But you can prompt the volition,

A wholesome.

So you use your volition to put something else there.

But you know,

It's not a battle.

Like if you,

It's,

There's a bit of subtlety around this,

Because if you've got anger,

And you're trying to suppress it,

Probably that's,

That's not what I mean,

Right?

Because you're better off to direct your attention to something else than trying to conquer the anger.

Conquer the anger,

You end up,

You're covered in it,

You jumped in with it,

And you're,

You and the anger are in the same room.

You're trying to shift your mind away from it,

To something else,

Abandon it,

Find a different object for your mind to look at.

That hooking,

You know,

Like it's like it hooks,

It is,

I find it is so hard,

Like the power of it is enormous,

Like,

You have to keep thinking about this,

You have to keep ruminating,

Like,

That's,

That's the script,

She's saying that,

But that's what that's underneath is the script is not gonna let go.

And even though you know,

It's absolute senseless.

Yeah.

It's to not believe it is just so difficult.

And the mind says,

If you're not gonna worry,

Who's gonna worry about it?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

And in lots of ways,

That's the mind's making it real to,

You know,

This is,

This is totally something that I need to worry about.

Yeah,

You know,

This is very important.

Yeah.

So we did things like,

There,

This is something you can try,

Right?

It's where it does work.

So say someone,

And you can do this with worry and worry as an example.

So we would say to somebody,

Okay,

On average,

How many times do you get caught on that flurry and worry mind each day?

So on average,

I mean,

Every day is different,

But okay,

Let's say,

So you say,

Oh,

Probably maybe three or four times mildly,

And maybe twice,

Really a lot.

Okay.

Or whatever it is,

However many.

So okay,

You say,

All right,

Well,

I want you to reduce it to half.

So let's say it's 10 a day.

I'll say to you,

Okay,

Well,

You can,

You can only have your flurry and worry mind five times a day.

That's it.

That's the limit.

You got to figure out how to do that.

But that's your target.

Okay,

Given that you can't just stop things in their tracks,

We don't have that power.

But you can moderate things,

You can reduce the,

You know,

You have some capacity to,

To,

To reduce and weaken these difficult mental states.

So say,

All right,

Well,

Reduce it to five times a day.

So the next week,

That's it five times a day.

So that's 35 times you can,

You can have your flurry and worry mind this week,

Which is better than 70.

Do you see?

Yeah.

And then each day,

You just track it.

Just being aware,

God,

That,

Okay,

That's one,

I've only got four left.

And you track it through the day.

Now,

Believe it or not,

People have done this fine,

And it helps a lot.

In fact,

One guy is he started with 20 a day.

Yeah,

He got it down to one.

And it wasn't like he wasn't beating himself.

He wasn't really struggling with that.

It just this process of keeping tabs on it,

And being aware that there's a limit,

Right?

It's not open slather,

That mind can't beat you up 20 times a day.

There's like,

It's got that.

So you give it this limit.

And then so he was using beads,

He would every time he got angry,

Put a black bead on his altar.

And then he ended up he got it down to like one a day.

And then he wasn't getting angry as much as just being resentful,

Without the full blown.

It wasn't a full blown thing anymore.

It was like a lower level.

So then you've got to go back at that level and say,

Right,

How many times a day in my average,

Do I get resentful?

And you just work on it.

And you bring in the antidotes to help.

Yeah,

Well,

Your task is firstly to not allow the thing to come is to put a limit on it.

Yeah.

And then obviously,

When it does come,

You've got to work on those.

Yeah.

Using the methods that you can use.

Believe it or not,

It works.

I've found it works in people that I and that I heard it.

I heard it.

There was a proverb or an old saying or story about this where some little kid was getting angry.

And his dad said to him,

Every time I think this is from a Chinese,

Get angry,

Put in the nail was a nail.

Every time you get angry,

You've got to put a nail,

You know,

Nail into the fence.

So,

Okay,

Kid,

Whenever he gets angry,

He puts a nail in the fence,

There's lots of nails.

And then what happened next?

He said,

He said to take out the nails.

And then he so I think his dad said something to him like,

You know,

If you if you,

You don't want to be putting the nails in the fence so much,

Right?

So next time,

You don't let yourself be angry.

And then you don't have to put the nail in the fence.

And then eventually,

The kid got this idea that he didn't have to be angry all the time,

He could maybe manage it in different ways.

And then the number of nails was getting less and less and less.

And eventually wasn't nailing any nuts.

And then one day,

He said to his father,

So what happens now,

You know,

Like,

There's always nails.

And the dad said,

Well,

That's how much damage you've been doing.

Yeah,

All those nails represents the damage.

So now,

When you do something good,

You pull off a nail,

You take you remove one of those notes.

So the little kid got the idea,

Okay,

I'll do some good things.

And he started removing the nails,

And eventually they're all gone.

And he totally shifted his,

He'd retrained himself,

He totally shifted his self from an unwholesome to a wholesome.

And it wasn't that tough for him.

So anyway,

It's the basic same,

Same for these unwholesomes to get off.

Yeah.

Okay.

Any questions?

We got any questions,

But basically covered the territory,

I think pretty well.

This was very good.

Thank you.

Okay.

Simon,

You got any other?

So it's challenging.

What what the the process is challenging,

You know,

Like Jenny,

You were saying,

You know,

It's very,

It's addictive.

It's very,

You get lost in it,

It's very difficult to turn it around.

So it's very challenging.

So you can't,

It's sort of,

It's difficult to do.

So you need something a bit extra to be able to do this process.

Yeah.

And that is called merit.

Yeah.

So merit is,

If you've got a lot of really good karma,

This makes this process much easier,

Much easier,

Because your mind is elevated already.

So it's in a much better position to be able to do this kind of work.

Because when you've got a lot of really good karma,

These minds automatically are less intrusive.

Yeah,

True.

So instead of being like really just in your head,

And you just can't get rid of it,

They're just a little bit,

They're a little bit less noisy.

And the more merit you make,

These minds automatically start to reduce.

So this process becomes much easier.

So you've got more power.

So therefore,

Your practice gets better.

So you have to build a really vast store of very,

Very good karma,

Which makes this process much,

Much easier.

It's like,

You don't feel like you're alone.

You don't feel like you're lost.

So that's kind of one of the secrets.

Well,

There's a few things,

That's definitely one of them.

So this is kind of where Buddhist teachings give other elements of practice that support our mental health,

Really,

Is what you're talking about.

So in Buddhism,

It's like Buddhism 101 is to make good karma and not make bad karma.

And this is one of the reasons how that supports our mental health,

Because literally our mind starts to have some sort of natural protection against the defilements.

They're not as harsh,

They're not as loud.

They don't come up with as much strength or force.

And that's basically our merit is giving our mind some buoyancy,

And it's like a little bit out of the mud.

The other one is precepts.

Precepts are fundamental to mental health from the Buddhist viewpoint.

They are kind of like statements,

Which come from very wholesome mental states,

The precepts,

Which is no lying,

No stealing,

No killing,

No sexual misconduct,

And no intoxicants,

The cloud,

The mind.

These are actually to be practiced in several ways.

One is obviously to not lie,

To not steal,

To not kill,

But also understanding that these are ideas that are associated with very wholesome mental states.

Unwholesome minds do not have these precepts very much.

I don't know how much,

But I know that the unwholesome minds are the ones that break the precepts.

So it's like the wholesome minds and the precepts are all together.

They're part and parcel of each other.

The thinking that comes from wholesomeness is to not harm others,

Which is to not kill,

To not lie,

To not steal.

So the wholesome minds are harmless,

And it turns out they're harmless to ourselves,

Essentially.

So this is the difference between wholesome and unwholesome.

Unwholesome means actually it's going to harm us.

It's going to harm others too,

But it'll definitely harm us.

But the wholesome is not.

Wholesome is it causes our well-being.

So this is another one of these underlying fundamental things that Buddhism teaches.

The other thing is that we're also trying to get to a view about these minds,

A very particular view,

Which is,

I would never do that.

There's lots of things that you all know that you would have that you would never do.

Like Vince,

If I said to you,

Can you just pick up that chair and throw it through that window?

It's completely ridiculous.

You would never do that.

Do you know what I mean?

So we have to have the same view about sloth and torpor and the things that it wants us to do.

Which is one of the five hindrances.

Yeah,

We have to have the same view about flurry and worry.

As soon as you feel that anxiety,

It's like,

That's really bad.

You should not engage in that mind.

The problem is that we have acceptance of it.

It's sort of okay on some levels,

Which is what you're talking about,

About really seeing truthfully the disadvantages of those minds.

So we need to get to that position where I would never normally engage in that activity.

It's like a process over time.

We don't want to beat ourselves up.

True.

Giving ourselves a hard time because we've got sloth and torpor.

So we can't sort of see it as something where we're going to get down on ourselves about it.

But yeah,

Over time as we train and as we develop the wholesome and we get the skills in this,

It's true.

You get to a position where you say,

There's no way I'm going to do that.

It's like the complete opposite of what I need to be doing.

It's like eating.

It's like my mind's eating something that's basically poisoned.

So that's where your mind is really well protected.

Yeah.

That's when your mind's got a lot of power when it can see it like that.

Yeah.

So there is a point on this process that we're talking about where you have enormous,

Well it's really protection against the arising of the unwholesome.

They can come up but they don't stay or your mind is able to,

It doesn't have any belief in them anymore.

It actually sees that they're completely done and then they don't stay.

The stickiness is gone.

Yeah.

That's great.

Thank you for explaining that.

That's really good.

The,

Because I didn't know that.

So yeah,

That makes total sense.

What I noticed too on the unwholesome Chetta Sikha is regret.

When I saw the mind of regret is unwholesome,

Which is very comforting because yeah,

It can be very destructive when you get caught in that mindset.

Dead and futile.

Yes.

Yeah.

So from the Buddhist point of view,

Often Buddhist philosophy,

The mind of regret,

It's unwholesome.

We're not to go there.

So you sort of say the past's gone,

Like you can't rewrite that,

What you did.

Like we've all done some crazy stuff and we know stuff that we've done that we should never ever do,

Never have done.

But it's happened.

It's past.

We can't fix it.

So what we can do is say,

I'm not going there anymore.

That's it,

Right?

That's the end of that.

I'm never going to do that.

So you've got to move on by looking at how you need to behave and forgiving yourself because at the time,

That's all you could do.

That's the best we can do with what we had at the time.

It might be wrong,

But at the time we didn't have the resources to do better or be better.

So we don't have regret about it.

We just say,

Okay,

Well,

That's how it was then.

But now I know I'm not going to be like that.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

So I think we're done for the class.

We all good?

So it's four o'clock,

Actually four o'clock.

So we dedicate the merits and you can record this because this is the normal way to share the merit of the teaching and the consideration of what it takes to develop wholesomeness and to abandon others.

May the merits made by me,

Now or at some other time,

Be shared among all beings here,

However many they be.

May the merits made by me,

Now or at some other time,

Be shared among all beings here,

However many they be.

May the merits made by me,

Now or at some other time,

Be shared among all beings here,

However many they be.

May this merit accrue to my mother and my father,

May they be happy.

May this merit accrue to all my relatives,

May they be happy.

May this merit accrue to my teachers and my preceptor,

May they be happy.

May this merit accrue to all gods,

May they be happy.

May this merit accrue to all hungry ghosts,

May they be happy.

May this merit accrue to all enemies,

May they be happy.

May this merit accrue to all beings,

May they be happy.

May this gift of merits help all beings know the path,

Realise the path,

Follow the path.

May this gift of merits help all beings know the path,

Realise the path,

Follow the path.

May this gift of merits help all beings know the path,

Realise the path,

Follow the path.

May I be well and happy,

May you be well and happy,

May all beings be well and happy.

May I be well and happy,

May you be well and happy,

May all beings be well and happy.

May I be well and happy,

May you be well and happy,

May all beings be well and happy.

Sama Thank you for tuning to Our Lifetimes.

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