Why We Get Into So Much Trouble

Venerable Thubten Semkye gives a short talk and leads a guided meditation to identify the causes that stimulate our disturbing emotions of attachment, anger, and so on, so that we can address them and act from a place of peace and calm for the benefit of ourselves and others.

Transcript

Good evening everybody.

Let's first start with bringing our awareness into the space that we are in right now this evening.

Letting go of the day as best as we can.

Working with our body and mind in this space.

And then using our breath as the focal object for a little bit of meditation here.

First of all,

Doing a quick body scan to see if you've got any sort of fatigue or stress or tightness from the day.

If there are places in your body that need some attention,

Then by gently inhaling and exhaling,

Imagine that place softening and loosening as you breathe in and out.

Just feel the body letting go.

The breath helping that along.

And then we gently turn our attention to the breath itself.

Watching inhalation and exhalation at the rising and falling of our belly.

And to try to give the mind the opportunity to just have to pay attention to just one thing.

Any thoughts,

Feelings arise,

Anything from the environment.

Take your attention away from your breath.

Just gently bring it back.

A lot of ease and warmth.

And then we'll take a moment to set up motivation or an intention for being together.

Taking a moment to have some deep gratitude that we've met the Buddhist teachings in this life.

There are 7 billion plus people on this planet,

Not including all the countless other living beings.

Of those human beings,

How many of them have met the Buddhist teachings?

About many.

And out of those that have met the Buddhist teachings,

How many of them are at this moment thinking about the Dharma?

Try to bring it into their lives in a personal and real way.

So let's really rejoice that we are doing that together right now.

Using the Dharma to cultivate all of our good qualities and to really help us to figure out the ones that aren't helpful,

Subdue them,

Eventually eliminate them.

Because in the short term,

It brings a lot of peace,

A little bit more clarity to our minds in the long term,

Helps to create the causes for many,

Many good things to come in the future.

It also really opens our heart to be of great benefit to the world on whatever level that is for each and every one of us.

So let's really rejoice at our opportunity that we have right now to share the Dharma together.

I like this month's topic,

Dealing with strong emotions.

I mean,

Who doesn't have them right?

And I mean,

It's part of being human,

It's part of being a being in Samsara.

And what happens,

I've been thinking about this as I kind of offered to do this tonight,

Is that when we're overwhelmed by really strong emotions,

It really sometimes feels like our minds and our hearts get hijacked with these really powerful thoughts,

These really powerful feelings that they kind of just take us away,

They take us down the river,

They overwhelm us.

And what happens is that,

At least my experience is that they compel me to do things so much of the time that isn't very skillful.

But when I'm overwhelmed with really strong emotions,

My mouth moves,

My body moves.

And that's where I was thinking about how much trouble we can get into when we're under the control of these really strong emotions and afflictions.

So now lucky for us,

We have the great fortune to have met the Dharma in this life.

And that it's really in some ways,

It's an extremely powerful medicine,

Because when we're under the control of these very strong feelings,

I don't know about you,

But I feel like I've got some kind of mental illness.

You know,

I'm just not thinking clearly,

I've had all sorts of stories and preconceptions and dramas going and proliferating thoughts going on in my mind,

That I can't handle myself.

So I really feel that I'm under some kind of mental illness.

So luckily for the Dharma,

We have our daily practice to help us to kind of use the Dharma as a preventative medicine.

And what I have found over the years is that the more,

If I keep a daily practice goal,

Which is something we do with the Abbe here all the time,

I become,

Or there's a familiarity that happens with our minds,

That we begin to start taking care of them to figure out,

Well,

What these strong emotions,

When we start exploring underneath them,

We start figuring out perhaps there are some causes and conditions for these strong emotions that we're not even aware of.

Because one of the things that I've discovered about the strong emotions that come up for me is that they've got some red flags.

I mean,

It may not seem to be apparent when you're getting overwhelmed by the red flag,

The strong emotions,

Because they seem to sometimes come out of nowhere or they come up,

They're somebody else's fault.

But when you practice the Dharma on a daily basis and you start becoming familiar with your mind,

You know,

How we think what we think and how we feel what we feel so that we learn slowly to discern what are the feelings and the thoughts that are helpful.

What are the feelings and thoughts that bring some sort of happiness,

Some sort of peace,

Some sort of sense of satisfaction,

Connection in our lives.

And then over time,

We get to discern them from the thoughts and feelings that aren't helpful.

The ones that tend to disturb us and agitate us,

Bring us into some different kinds of thinking that aren't helpful and that really disconnect us.

So we get,

You know,

Use Dharma as a daily practice.

As time goes on,

We start seeing more and more as they become familiar with their minds,

That there are these subtle,

Sometimes even unconscious red flags that start to wave before these really strong emotions start coming up and started rising.

They could be a particular state of mind.

They could be different cooperative causes and conditions that unless we were practicing daily,

We wouldn't become aware of them because some of them are extremely,

Extremely subtle level.

So daily practice helps us to keep track of ourselves.

That's part of the preventative medicine of the Dharma.

And that the Dharma becomes the medicine to connect us to ourselves when these red flags start to wave,

That that unsettled mind starts to arise.

So we can go to the,

Go for the remedy because if we don't practice,

Those strong feelings and emotions really do feel like they're coming out of nowhere or they're coming from somebody else.

Somebody else is causing me to be really pissed off right now,

Really jealous,

Really angry,

Really craving and clinging because we haven't taken the medicine,

Which is our Dharma practice daily to figure out what's going on in our minds.

So prevention is the best medicine,

Not just in our physical world,

As far as taking care of our bodies,

But the Dharma is a prevention as well for our minds.

And the Buddha taught many,

Many ways on how we can take care of our minds when these strong emotions take over.

And one of the things that he has taught us is how to find out and discover and uncover what are some of the ways in which these strong emotions are fueled,

How are they fed underneath the surface as we go through our day,

Sometimes not even noticing what are the things that we sort of dismiss,

What are the things that we sort of suppress,

What are the things that we sort of minimize about our experiences in our life?

So the Dharma and the Buddha's teachings really help us to become very,

Very aware of some of the things that might be fueling,

Might be feeding and nourishing these very strong outbursts of emotions,

Which I don't know about you,

But many times,

My strong emotion doesn't coincide with what's going on on the outside.

It could be something very small.

And suddenly I'm over the top with my anger,

I'm over the top with my grief,

I'm over the top with my fear,

My anxiety,

And I'm looking at what's coming from the outside and it's not that big of a deal.

So something's been stewing,

Something's been stirring up underneath that emotion that's sort of exacerbating the reaction that's coming up.

So there is a practice that we do here that's part of the Lamrim Chenma,

It's a beautiful checking meditation that gets us to start exploring what could be some of the causes and conditions in our lives that could be fueling these strong emotions,

Something to look at in some form or another a few times a week,

Maybe even once a day.

So I wanted to share these with you because I find it extremely helpful for me.

This is part of my preventative medicine.

The first one that the Buddha talks about is what he calls these predispositions of disturbing attitudes.

So every time we get angry,

Every time we're proud or we don't tell the truth,

Even though those states of mind might dissipate,

According to the Buddhist teachings,

They don't go away.

Those destructive emotions play some sort of potency,

Some sort of potential in our mind that given those right conditions,

The right factors,

Those things just sort of like you're watering a seed that they just arise,

They come out,

They just boom,

They just show up.

So these predispositions,

These potencies of the strong afflictions.

And if you believe in any type of karma or rebirth,

You figure we've got a lot of these potentials in our minds for countless lives.

Okay,

So that's the first thing to think about.

The second one to think about is what are the objects?

What are the people?

What are the situations that are our triggers?

Now what are the aversions?

What are the attachments or the cravings in our mind that tend to get us stirred up?

They could,

There could be socially acceptable ones,

Or they could be not so socially acceptable ones.

They could be attachments or versions of technology to food,

To shopping online,

Extreme sports,

Intoxicants,

Gossiping,

Talking about people behind their backs,

Obsessions with how we look or how somebody else looks,

Our rivals having strong aversions to people that we feel that we compete with,

Obsessions about our bodies or maybe other people's bodies.

There are these objects in our life that when we come in contact with them,

They stir up a lot of these unsettling states of mind.

The third one that the Buddha says that we need to look at is what he calls detrimental influences.

And these are really hard to look at because these are our friends,

These are our family,

These are our classmates and colleagues.

The folks that we hang out with,

How do they influence us?

When it comes to our dharma practice,

When it comes to our personal integrity,

When it comes to our values,

In regards to our practice,

Do the people in our life support us in virtue or are relationships to them very conflicted?

Because when we're with them,

Do they tend to distract us from our practice?

Do they tend to take us away from the things that are meaningful and purposeful in our life?

Maybe not so much in just unhealthy ways,

But sometimes just in really frivolous,

Useful,

Useless things.

They don't really matter in the long term as far as what we really aspire to do in our lives to accomplish.

So this is a really hard one because these are our family,

These are our classmates,

These are our colleagues.

But we've got to take a peek at like,

You know,

What kind of people do we have in our lives that have influences?

And I have really noticed as the years have gone on practicing the dharma that sometimes the more that we engage in dharma practice,

Sometimes there's kind of this attrition that happens with our friends,

That we spend more time with our dharma friends and then some of the friends just kind of naturally kind of go by the wayside.

Other friends,

We find out that after a while the relationship doesn't fit as much as it used to.

Like we don't spend as much time,

We don't seem to connect with them as much.

What they ask us to do,

We kind of go,

Yeah,

I don't know about that.

So after a while,

We kind of have this natural reconfiguring of our relationships and some of the relationships we have to make some choices about.

So that's the other thing that the Buddha says that could be the fuel and the feeding of some of these very,

Very strong emotions is who influences us as far as our relationships.

The next one,

Which is I have seen a lot this year,

Is the verbal and visual stimuli.

You know,

The social media,

The internet,

The magazines,

The movies,

We know what this is,

Right?

How much media do we look at each day?

Now what do we do for entertainment?

What do we do to relax?

And how do these things shape our opinions?

How do they shape our ideas?

About ourselves,

About others,

About the world?

I mean,

Just look at this whole election season,

How much it's polarized a whole country because of the way people think and what their opinions are and how much they believe people's opinions is fact.

So to really start to examine how much of our time we really spend.

The next one is habits or emotional patterns.

Do we know what they are?

Where does our mind go when left to its own devices?

What is our default?

When something unexpected or unpleasant arises,

Where do we go?

When we get surprised,

What's our immediate response?

When we get something unpleasant that shows up without us even knowing it's there,

It just shows up.

What's our emotional response right away?

It's so helpful to know what are our triggers and what is our default?

And when our minds wander,

Kind of,

Where does it go?

These are emotional mental habits and we need to really examine those.

We're kind of like the well-traveled right in the middle of the road.

We go there,

We go there,

We go there over and over again.

And then lastly,

This is what the Buddha calls inappropriate attention.

And this is where we get in a certain state of mind that always start focusing on is all the negative aspects of our lives or the negative aspects of somebody in our life or something that we own or something that somebody's doing or a situation that's presenting itself.

All we can see is what's wrong with it.

And so what happens is that we have to ask ourselves,

Well,

How many biases do we have?

And how many opinions do we have?

Not opinions about others or situations that arise in our life based solely on what we think about them.

There's no particular basis of fact,

But how we basically bring our attention into a situation totally based on how we think about it,

How we feel about it.

And that really changes our relationship to that object or that person.

We jump to conclusions.

Do we have stereotypes about people?

I mean,

Gosh,

Have you just watched your own mind this year?

Start forming stereotypes and objectifying people in different parties and different perspectives,

Persuasions that and what they think and feel about our country.

It's amazing to catch our minds getting some kind of our knees locked.

This is the right way to think.

This is the right way to move our country forward.

So kind of as a summary is that these are the kind of questions that are worth asking ourselves because the answers will supply some very important information on what might be the causes and conditions that bring our strong emotions.

Now when you think because we are in the desire realm,

Our five senses are uploading so much outer worldly stimuli all day long that you have to believe that this affects our mind and our hearts,

Not just on an apparent superficial level,

But on a very,

Very deep unconscious level.

And that it's very important to identify the influences that try to balance them,

Try to decrease them so that when we have things come up in our lives,

That we actually feel that we have some choice,

That we have some say in what goes into our minds.

And as a result,

Then we have some choice and say that's what's going to come out of our mouths,

What's going to come out of our bodies in form of action,

And what's going to really be sort of our internal experience for who we want to be.

So it's so important to ask these very crucial questions on how do we influence,

What are the conditions that these strong emotions ride on,

That we can really take the Buddhist teachings to heart and use those to sort of counteract these strong emotions,

Use some preventative medicine so they don't overwhelm us and sweep us away.

Because this is where we get into so much trouble.

We can have a lot of mental suffering and externally we endanger our relationships to others because our minds are in such upheavals.

So what we're looking,

As we're looking out for ourselves,

We can better respond to the world in a very clear,

A very honest,

A very compassionate way,

Which is what we all really want to do.

So that really requires us taking this beautiful dharma that we have on our life,

That we've had the great fortune to meet,

And use it as a daily medicine to kind of see what's going on on the inside.

Because we really do want to be part of the contributing cooperative causes for the peace and the harmony in our world.

And this is one of the ways that I personally have through my past,

I don't know,

19 years now practicing the dharma.

This particular meditation and thoughts about these influences really helps me to get a lot smarter about what goes in to this person so that I can really send out into the world I truly want to send out,

Which is a lot of love,

A lot of joy,

A lot of wisdom.

So I have found this reflection very,

Very helpful over the course of time.

So I hope that that has been helpful because I think strong emotions,

They do get us in a lot of trouble.

Thank you.

Where do I begin?

Reviews

Very helpful meditation as are the other meditations from the monastery. Thank you very much for these helps

Gratitude for imparting with such wisdom. Needed this 🙏

So simply stated. Perfect and true.