Handling Strong Emotions

0:00:00 Thank you. When the seed of anger in us is touched, and when it becomes manifested on mental consciousness as energy of anger, we have to be aware of it right away.

0:00:56 We have to produce mindfulness in order to be aware that the energy of anger is coming up. That is the practice of mindfulness of anger. Breathing in, I know I am angry. Breathing out, I know that anger has manifested itself. And you continue to follow your in-breath and no-breath, generating the energy of mindfulness in order to embrace your inner life. Or you may like to do walking meditation. Because these kinds of practices can help you to continue to generate the power of mindfulness, another kind of energy that you need in order to recognize the energy of our hunger.

0:02:01 Breathing in, I know I am angry. Breathing out, I know I have to take good care of my hunger. When your house is on fire, the most important thing to do is to go back to your house and try to put down the fire and not to run after the person you believe to be the arsonist. This is a recommendation made by the Buddha. You go home and you take good care of your anger.

0:02:49 And that is why it is recommended that you do not look at the other person. You do not continue to listen to the other person. You have to go home to yourself and begin to attend, to take care of your anger. You may like to sit there practicing mindful breathing or you may like to go to the meditation hall. Because in each home, it is possible for us to set up a small room... to take refuge every time, it doesn't feel very stable. Or to go out for the practice of mindful walking...

0:03:37 in order to take good care of our own. And this is the exact recommendation that I would like my friends to follow. And if you follow exactly these proposals, you will be able to deal with your anger and transform it. Don't say anything. Don't do anything in anger. This is a very important proposal. That does not mean that you have to suppress the anger. No, you don't suppress the anger. You recognize the anger. You allow it to be.

0:04:19 And you embrace it. But you do it with the practice of walking, mindful walking or mindful breathing. You should be alone in these moments. Solitude is the bigger, the environment you need in this difficult time. And this is a natural tendency also. Remember, when you suffer so much, you don't want to be with other people. You want to look around to be yourself.

0:05:03 and this is a natural tendency in us. So every time you get angry, follow that natural desire, withdraw to yourself. Practice mindfulness of breathing or walking, and take good care of your hand. Not to do anything, not to say anything. And you have to sign with yourself a treaty. You are determined to do so. It's very important.

0:05:47 And then, in 24 hours, within 24 hours, we have to let the other person know that you are angry, that you suffer, that you want him to know it. According to this practice, you should not hide your suffering. Sometimes, you are too proud. You say, "Angry? Why do I have to be angry?" But in fact, you are very angry.

0:06:34 It's like the people who are drunk, "Drunk? I am drunk?" *laughs* So, if possible, you tell him, you tell him, but with a condition, using calm speech, loving speech, in order to tell him. And you have to do it before the nightlife, 24 hours, because it's not healthy to maintain your anger more than ten-four hours.

0:07:20 And if by that time you don't feel calm enough in order to tell him or tell her, you use a piece of paper, we call it a piece of note, and you write it down. There are only three small lines. The first line is like this: "I am angry, I suffer, and I want you to know it." That's the first line. This is very bad, this is simple. And since your commitment with the other person is deep, you have the right and the duty to tell him or her that you suffer.

0:08:05 It's not only your right, but your duty. Because you have promised to share everything with him, all with him. The second moment, you're right: I am trying my best. It means I am trying my best in the practice that I have learned from the Buddha, from my teaching. So that will inspire respect from the other person. You have to be practicing really mindful breathing, mindful walking, embracing your anger and look deeply into the nature of your anger. By doing so, you might discover that your anger has no foundation, that your anger is based on a wrong perception.

0:09:01 Then you can get out of that anger easily. And you can tell him that, "Sorry very soon." "Sorry, that was the wrong perception of my partner." But if the other person plays a certain role in making you suffer, And then you will have to practice looking deeply in order to understand why did he, has he done it? There must be a reason. And some reason, maybe the reason is from us. He has said that, he has done that, because he may have been irritated because about something else I have told you or I have done.

0:09:56 So the practice of looking deeply is to find out a part of responsibility also. First of all, the practice of deep looking can reveal, may reveal to you that it is a wrong perception on your part that has created your misery. It may be that you have been responsible for this anger to some extent. You can see your part of responsibility.

0:10:40 You have reacted, you have said, you have done something that make him or make her react strongly against you and make you suffer. The third kind of insight you might get is that the other person is victim of wrong perception. he might be, she might be a victim of wrong perception. And if she or he is a victim of wrong perception, well, it is not punishing him that will help him.

0:11:29 But to show him that he has a wrong perception, that is the loving way of supporting him, of helping him to get out of his suffering or his anger. Or if you practice looking more deeply, you may see that this is a happy energy that he has received while he was a little boy or a little girl. And it was stronger than him. And when he begins to understand like that, anger subsides within us. So first of all, generate the energy of mindfulness. Certainly, recognize anger, embrace anger, and thirdly, look into the nature of your anger in order for the insight to come.

0:12:28 So during the time you practice mindful breathing, mindful walking, you practice these kind of things. That is meditation. Stopping, calm, concentrating, and looking deeply. So you wrote, you write to me the first line: "Darling, I suffer, I am angry, and I want you to know it." The second line: "I am doing my best." It means I am trying to practice according to the instructions I received from my picture.

0:13:19 And if you want to do better, you add a third sentence. Please help him. Because when you get hurt, You want to show that you don't need him. You want to prove that you don't need him. That is why the third line is very important. It will appease a lot of your anger. And that is really the language of love. Love is possible. It's still possible with the anger. It's still in you as a woman.

0:14:06 Why? Why love is still possible with anger still existing? Because anger is there, but something else is also there. That is your mindfulness. Your mindfulness is capable of everything. Recognizing your anger, embracing your anger, looking deeply into your anger and using your speech in order to convey your feelings to the other person. The other person might be your father, maybe your saha, your daughter. The other person might be your partner. And we do exactly the same. Please remember the three sentences.

0:14:49 The next time when you get angry, please cry and you'll see. The first line, "Darling, I suffer, I'm angry, "I'm so angry and I want you to know this." "This is all only love." "So I am doing my best." It means please do your best too, just for me. And third, please help me. I think there will be a change of attitude in the other person after she receives the message.

0:15:45 Make sure that the sheet of paper gets it. And after you have handed him this little piece of paper, you can already feel like that. And if the other person asks for a discussion, don't accept right away. You say, "I need some time to practice and to look more deeply into the matter." Because when you are too angry, and if you engage in the discussion, your anger may take over and push you to say things that you will regret later.

0:16:42 That is why you have to practice. And when you may propose Friday evening, for a meeting. Because if you can solve a problem by Friday evening, you'll have the weekend for your pleasure. And usually, this is not a discussion. This is an opportunity for the person who suffers to express himself, or himself.

0:17:28 And the other person only listens, not himself. This is the practice. Because this is a very deep practice that we have to train ourselves to do. That is the practice of deep listening and the practice of loving speech. You are expected to tell the other person everything you feel with only one condition, using calm and loving speech. You can tell him all of your suffering, but in the kind of language that can help him to receive and understand.

0:18:20 Otherwise, you will say, "Excuse me, despite the evening, I'm not ready. Please allow me a few more days to practice." Make sure that when you have a chance to pull the heart out, you can do it with all salient. This is a real training. The other person has to practice deep listening, compassionate listening. Compassionate listening is to listen in order to give the other person a chance, to express herself, himself, and that will result in a great relief from him or from her.

0:19:16 So listening here is not listening in order to judge, to criticize, to analyze. But just for the sake of listening, listening here is to give the other person a chance. to speak out. And therefore, you have to train yourself in order to do so. In the Buddhist circle, we used to bow to the Bodhisattva, Avalokiteshva, because that is a person who has the capacity of listening with compassion.

0:20:26 Quan shi yin, quan thang, is the name of the Bodhisattva. It means listening to the suffering of the world. And because you have compassion within yourself, you can sit very still and you listen to everything that the person says. Even if he says very wrong things, even if he is very angry, if he condemns you, and judges you unjustly, you are still capable of listening deeply and with compassion. Because you know listening like this is to help him, to help her, to get a relief.

0:21:15 Psychotherapists are supposed to learn the art of compassionate listening. They used to call that kind of listening emphatic listening. I don't know how our friends the teleprisers practice. How deep, how successful they practice in the art of deep listening. But this is really their fundamental practice. They have to be able to sit there and listen.

0:22:01 And while listening, they have to maintain their compassion alive. Because if you listen to a person like that for one hour, you will relieve a lot of pain and suffering from him or from him. Many psychotherapists I know, they cannot listen very deeply Because within themselves, there is still a lot of pain and sorrow. And when they listen like that, they may get lost in their urban suffering and sorrow. And the effect of listening is not great. You have to be very mindful, very concentrated.

0:22:51 You have to grab a lot of energy of compassion in you, in art, in order to listen in the style of avalukiteshma. And if you can listen like that, the other people will have a chance. The other person will feel whether you are really listening or not. You cannot pretend to be listening. You cannot pretend. The other person will not. This is something that if all of us therapists or non-therapists we have to do it ourselves.

0:23:44 You are not a therapist, but if you do not the art of compassionate listening, And if you can listen to the person you love, you become the best therapist in the world for him, for her. And you are motivated by love, by the desire to make himself less. That is why you sit there, concentrated, mindful, and maintain your compassion all right, and peace. In the talk, there may be a lot of bitterness of condemnation, of unjustness, and yet you are still capable of listening.

0:24:33 Because it is possible for you to maintain that awareness of life. I listen like this just for one purpose: to give him a chance to speak out. This is a very important practice. And if you bow to the Bodhisattva one year, and if you chant a name, that means you want to practice. How to practice? The practice of deep listening, the practice of compassionate listening. It is like the practice of loving speech.

0:25:17 Mindfulness is the energy behind. If you do not have the energy of mindfulness, then your listening will not be deep listening. Your speaking will not be loving speech. That is why contemplating the energy of mindfulness is the basic thing. in the practice of meditation. And in a retreat, you stay in a practice center for 3 weeks, 5 weeks, 3 weeks is to learn, is to train yourself in the art of mindful listening, compassionate listening, deep listening, and also using known speech, mindful speech.

0:26:16 Because if you can speak mindfully, you can get lean, you can bring a lot of joy and live to the other people. But with un-eyeful speech, you can create a lot of suffering, and brings a lot of despair and complex to the person with heart. And we know that the essence that units your practice of deep listening and the practice of loving speech is the energy of mindfulness.

0:27:01 That is why mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful sitting, mindful doing the daily things are very essential for the generation of this energy. If communication has become impossible, if communication has become difficult, You know that all of mindful, deep listening and loving speech can destroy it. Nowadays, we see families where father cannot talk to mother.

0:27:55 Son, love, cannot talk to mother or father. Because everyone is full of anger and suffering. Everyone has lost his or her power, her capacity to listen and to use the local speech. I cannot listen to you because your language is full of bitterness and anger which makes me suffer so much. That is why I have the tendency to run away from you. And if I try to avoid you, you think that I am trying to bonkot you, and you become more angry, and that's fair.

0:28:50 In fact, I do not want to walk out to you, but I have lost my capacity of compassionate listening. Because listening to you in a few minutes, I become mad myself. I suffer a lot myself. That is why I try to avoid you. That is the feeling of the son towards his father. that is, the feeling of a wife vis-à-vis her husband and vice versa. The fact is that many of us have lost our capacity of listening to each other and to communicate with each other during the speech.

0:29:45 We live in a time when techniques of communication are very sophisticated. We need no time at all to transmit information from this end of the planet to the other end of the planet. We have facts, we have e-mails, we have everything. And yet, among us, communication has become so difficult, even impossible. That is why all of us should train ourselves in order to be able to communicate again. If communication is still possible, things are not so good. Restore communication is our practice. And therapists, as well as other people, have to train themselves in this art and transmit the art of communication to the people we want to have.

0:30:54 A retreat might help us to train ourselves in using loving speech and looking deeply. Looking deeply, I realize that the other person has made me suffer. But I also know that I have played a part in making him suffer. Usually, we don't see our part of responsibility. We think of ourselves as the victim of the other person.

0:31:44 But the responsibility is never on the side of one person above. We have not been mindful enough. We have not been skillful enough. We have ourselves made mistakes. We have to recognize them. Of course the other person out of anger, hatred, has made our life miserable. But what have we done in order to help the other person? Because the other person is deeply unhappy. When we first began to live with the other person, he was not like that.

0:32:39 He was fresh. He was smiling. He was using the love of speech that made us very happy. But how come that he has been transformed into such a difficult person? His speech is now full of bitterness and angela. That is because of him, of society? Yes, maybe. But it has been like that because, partly because of us, because we have not been able to take good care of our flower.

0:33:28 And that is why our flower has turned into a piece of rubbish. Now it is our practice to turn rubbish back into the flower again. And the practice of deep listening and loving speech is very important. After a few days of practice, of looking deeply, you see your power of responsibility in it. You go home, you come back to Him, calm, sweet, mindful, with compassion within yourself, compassion for yourself and compassion for Him.

0:34:16 You sit close to him and you say, "My husband, I know you have suffered a lot during the past many years. I have suffered and that does make me suffer also. I know that I have not been skillful. out of forgetfulness, out of skillfulness. I have made you suffer. I did not take care.

0:35:01 I have not taken good care of you. And I am now alive. So please allow me a chance to begin anew. Please tell me what is in your heart, your suffering, your confusion. Because I have learned how to listen to you. If you want to help me, please tell me what is in your heart. I am ready to learn because my intention, my deep intention is to make you happy, that will help you to stop suffering.

0:35:47 When you are able to use that kind of language, you will be able to open the door of his heart to him. Train yourself so that you can speak that kind of language. Because a few years of practice can result in such a capacity. Because when you are awakened, when you are enlightened about the situation, when you have the capacity of doing the things that never before, you thought you can do, speaking with love, speaking with loving kindness, and recognizing our own mistakes.

0:36:43 you don't get hurt at all. You do it with love, for more. And he may not begin to cry because in the last many years you haven't talked to him that way at all. He may cry like an infant. And in that case you have to sit very still "And I'm telling you so, my dear husband, please help me. Please tell me what is in your heart. I really want to know. I know I have made mistakes. If you don't help me, how can I overcome this?" And then he will begin to tell me.

0:37:32 There would be a time when he was shocked. It could not touch me. And you have to sit right still. You may say, if you would, you may say: "I'm sorry." "I'm sorry you suffer that much." I have myself sit in a meeting where the person who couldn't serve me could not serve me well.

0:38:16 It was five or six monks, and he's sitting and ready to listen to the other person. But the other person, although he knows that this is a golden opportunity for him to tell the suffering within his heart. But he hurt me because of shocking. The pain is so intense. And sometimes you have to sit there and make it even way down for 15 or 20 minutes in order for him to be able to say another word. You need a lot of compassion and patience for your deep listening.

0:39:01 And if you can help the other person speak out, that would be very healing and transforming. So if we are determined to use loving speech, if we are determined to use deep listening, we will be able to restore communication and to transform the situation in the direction we want. There is a song I wrote that you might like to use in order to rullaby the blocks of sorrow and pain in you.

0:40:36 Your sorrow, your pain, they are there, maybe sleeping. And when they sleep, you feel that you can survive. But if they begin to emerge, You are afraid that you cannot handle them. If blocks of pain and sorrow accept to sleep quietly, And then we will have an opportunity to practice, to water the positive seeds, to plant new good seeds.

0:41:41 And we know that there are times when our sorrow and our pain, they accept to sleep quietly. And therefore, we have to be smart, we have to use these opportunities to practice, to increase the positive energy in us, so that when they emerge, we'll be able to embrace and handle them. This song I wrote in Vietnamese, But I will use the English translation so that you know what it is in it.

0:42:28 You might like to write your own song to sing to your pain yourself. It rains softly outside. And yet I feel the sadness and the sorrow coming up in me. Please go to sleep my little pain and let my in-breath and out-breath embrace you tenderly. I know you are there and I'll do my best to take good care of you. You know, I am trying to plant and water the seeds of harmony and loving kindness every day.

0:43:25 So the tomorrow from the soil of my consciousness, flowers of peace and joy and forgiveness will bloom for everyone. "Please go to sleep, my little knots, my little pain." With this practice, there will certainly be a transformation. And tomorrow we will be able to accept and love each other. The blocks of pain, sorrow, anger and despair They are here.

0:44:09 They may be sleeping in the depths of our store of consciousness. And we feel that we can survive if they accept to sleep there. But they don't want to sleep there forever, they want to emerge. and you have had experience of suffering every time they emerge. You are afraid that they will come up again and that you will not be able to handle it. You will be overwhelmed by it.

0:45:03 And there is a fear, and fear is also one of them. Many of us do not know how to handle them every time they manifest themselves here. And that is why we try to blockade. We try to prevent them from coming up with the techniques of occupying the mind consciousness. This is the basement of the house. This is the living room. Our policy is to occupy the living room so that these unwanted guests have no chance to come up.

0:45:59 Whenever we have we have time to be alone. We used to practice that kind of policy. If we remain of doing nothing, and then these kinds of... we call it internal formations. The Sanskrit word is Samyujana. Samyujanas are not only the pain, the sorrow, the despair, but also the grieving.

0:46:59 the cravings in us. The cravings once manifested in here, we will not be in peace. We have to run and to seek ways in order to satisfy it. Someone addicted to drugs has a samurana here. And the time when the samurana of drugs manifests, He will suffer a lot, body and mind at the same time. And our usual practice is to invite other guests to come and occupy the living room.

0:47:43 Like we turn the television on, or we pick up the telephone to talk. It does not matter who we talk to, But we've got to talk. We have to pick up a novel to read, even if the novel is not very interesting. There are many channels of television, and sometimes we find that no program is interesting at all. And the program we are viewing is not interesting. And yet, we do not have the courage to turn off the television because we are afraid.

0:48:29 If we turn off the television, we have to go back to ourselves and something down there will emerge. Or we might like to take out the car and to go somewhere. The destination is not important. What is important is that we keep busy. Many of us become workaholic, not because of the desire to produce more, but because we are afraid of staying there not doing anything. And therefore, our daily practice is to avoid ourselves.

0:49:20 And that is why we invite into our living room the kind of guest that we want to keep there for a long time. And the purpose, the only purpose is to prevent these blocks of pain and suffering to come up. What happens when you practice this kind of policy? Because the guests we invite to settle in our living room may be helping the blood of sorrow and pain here to grow bigger. If you look deeply into the nature of a television program, you may see that the element of craving, the element of fear, the element of uncertainty, the element of violence, of discrimination, of hatred are contained within the television program.

0:50:39 And while we entertain that guest, the TV program, we are helping these negative Samyajanas in us to grow. We continue to intoxicate our store consciousness. And we don't know. We allow our children to intoxicate themselves every day. we allow ourselves to intoxicate ourselves every day and we make the situation more and more difficult to us because of that policy of running away. Of course, there are good television programs And we say nothing against these beneficial programs.

0:51:41 But most of the programs are not like that. And they water the negative seeds in us. The seeds of craving, the seeds of despair. Remember, there was a time when you talked to a friend. Just a conversation. And after one hour of talking to her, or to him, you felt paralyzed because there was so much despair, so much suffering, so much bitterness in her conversation. We absorbed so much toxins in just one hour of talking.

0:52:25 And we could not even eat our lunch. So the so-called control items that we consume every day, many of them contain toxins within them, and we continue to consume them every day, and to ingest a lot of toxins into the depth of our small consciousness. And the situation becomes more and more serious every day. That is why mindful consumption is a very important practice. Before you consume something, ask yourself whether this has toxins in it, whether you are going to absorb toxins into your body or into your consciousness.

0:53:26 And it would be a good thing that the family around the table practice collective mindfulness meditation to see whether the food that are laid on the table they contain toxins in our body. And when we view a TV program, and when we are bound to read a novel, We should be mindful to ask the question whether this cultural product can bring into our consciousness a lot of toxins. Fear, hatred, discrimination, violence, despair are everywhere and they can be identified in many items that we consume every day.

0:54:19 The fifth of the mindfulness training is about mindful consumption. If we really want to go out, if we really want to protect ourselves and our family, now children, the collective body and consciousness of our family and society, the practice of mindful consumption is very essential. We have to practice as individuals, we have to practice as families, and we have to practice as nations. And the Congress has to be aware of this because a whole nation may be intoxicating herself.

0:55:14 And in the name of freedom, we allow the whole nation to be intoxicated. We allow our children, the young generation, to be intoxicated. We allow ourselves to be intoxicated every day. On every package of cigarettes in this country, there is an inscription: Beware! Smoking might be hazardous to your health. That is a victory of mindfulness. Mindfulness has become the law. Mindfulness got into legislation.

0:56:02 And we are thankful for those who come before us, who got the enlightenment about the danger of the nicotine, and who have worked very hard collectively in order to bring about the new awareness, mindfulness of consumption. And that is a big success. It is a delight for us today to sit in a non-smoking flight, national and international. Fifteen years before, we could not dream of that.

0:56:47 This is a step forward in the practice of mindfulness. In America, our friends are much more aware of the quality of food they eat. Health food has become a slogan. And we are much more aware of the content, the quality of our food. This is the progress of mindfulness. The younger generation consumed much less meat than 10 years ago. And we can find tofu in every supermarket. That is remarkable.

0:57:33 And if there were no people who are enlightened and who continue to work for this transformation, how could we inherit that kind of result? And we should do the same in other domains, like alcohol. You should try another, in the future. On every bottle of alcohol, there must be the same kind of sentence. Be aware, drinking might break up your family, destroy your life.

0:58:26 and caused a lot of accidents on the streets. In the state of Texas last year, 53% of the deaths resulted by car accidents are related to alcohol. 53% That's too much. And if you can do it for tobacco, why can't you do it for alcohol? Because alcohol has destroyed so much of our society, it has broken up many families.

0:59:15 And children growing up in these families, they look like hungry ghosts. And then alcoholism has destroyed much of our society, caused so much death. The number of American soldiers killed in Vietnam in 10 years was 55,000 people. And the number of people died because of accident in one year alone in America is exactly the same. 55, there is another war, a Vietnam war, every year here.

1:00:04 And every time a person dies because of a car accident, there are war veterans. The people who lost a father, who lost a mother, who lost a son or a daughter, the suffering is enormous. And that is why mindful consumption is very important. And that is why it is very important that we take up the five mindfulness trainings, receive them and live accordingly in order to protect our body, our consciousness and the collective body and consciousness of our family and our society. The five mindfulness trainings are the most concrete practice of mindfulness.

1:00:52 Mindful consumption helps us to become more careful in inviting these guests into our living room. Because the longer they stay here, the stronger the seeds in the store consciousness will become. That is the first inconvenience, the first danger of the practice of the blockade. The second danger is that if it continues to blockade like that, you will cause a situation of bad circulation in your psyche.

1:01:47 Because mental formations, they have to be able to circulate freely. It is in our blood. If our blood does not circulate well within our body, it will result in many kinds of diseases. If the blood does not circulate well in the mini vein in our head, we have a headache. So that is why we try to do massage to take the kind of medicine that can accelerate the circulation of the blood. And every time we have pains in our body, we do acupressure, we do massage in order to help the blood to circulate better and the pain will be less.

1:02:49 That is why it is so important for the blood in us to circulate freely and well. The same thing is true with our psyche. If you practice the policy of blockade and then you prevent that free circulation, and it will be resulted in mental illness. Many of us, because we are afraid, too afraid of the blocks of pain in us, try to suppress, to suppress them. And a few years later, we begin to see symptoms of depression, of fear, of panic, many symptoms of mental illness.

1:03:43 And when you have symptoms like that, you go to the doctor, you try to get pills, medicines, drugs. But that is not what we really need. What we really need is to allow the elements of our psyche to freely circulate. Therefore, it is very essential to remove the blockade and to allow these things to emerge when they need to emerge. But you are afraid. You are not capable of handling them.

1:04:28 They will overwhelm you. And you may suffer so much that you are tempted to commit suicide because you think that suicide is the only way to stop the suffering. But according to the Buddha and many of the practitioners, It is very possible that you generate the energy of mindfulness, the second kind of energy that you need in these moments in order to embrace, recognize, and transform the first kind of energy.

1:05:33 Yesterday, I spoke about anger and the practice of embracing anger, embracing anger, recognizing anger, taking good care of anger and look deeply into the anger. But every kind of afflictions in us, including despair, fear, depression, could be handled in exactly the same way. You allow itself to be there. You recognize it, you take care of it. And for this energy to be enough to serve the purpose, you have to practice.

1:06:36 You practice mindful walking, you practice mindful breathing, you practice living alone and doing things quietly, alone, mindfully. and the seed of mindfulness in you becomes important. And every time you need it, you just begin to practice mindful breathing, mindful walking, and you have enough of that energy in order to take care of the other kind of energy. It's like the mother taking care of the baby. Because mindfulness is you, but anger or fear is also you. The practice is not fighting, the practice is taking care.

1:07:22 When the mother hears the baby crying, the mother leaves the kitchen and when she goes into the baby's room and picks the baby up and embraces the baby in her arms. We practice the same. Every time a baby manifests and cries, we have to be present. "Darling, I'm here for you. I'll take good care of you." But the mother has to be there. It means mindfulness has to be there. That is a time of solitude, that is a time of practice.

1:08:11 and it needs a little bit of training. In the beginning, the mother does not know what is wrong with the baby yet, but the act of embracing the baby alone is already very helpful. The baby gets a relief right away because the mother is made of the energy of caring, and loving-kindness. So the baby feels that energy, the mother energy penetrating into its body. And the baby gets a relief.

1:08:56 It is the same here. When mindfulness is there embracing our pain, it does not know yet what is the true nature of the pain. But the fact that it embraces the pain is already very important because you can get already some relief. The energy of mindfulness begins to penetrate into the other zone of energy. It is like the sunshine penetrating a flower. In the morning, the flower is still not open yet. But the sun is already there, sending the light to the flower.

1:09:52 The sunshine, the sunlight, is not satisfied with going around the flower. The sunshine is made of a little particle called photon. And these photons try to penetrate into the flower. And if the sunshine continues to penetrate into the flower like that for one hour, two hours, the flower will open herself and show the inside of it to the sun. So in the beginning, mindfulness is practicing, is embracing the pain. Mindfulness has not known what is truly the nature of the pain.

1:10:44 But the energy of mindfulness already begins to penetrate into the pain. And that brings a relief. And if mindfulness continues like the sunshine, there will be a breakthrough. And sometimes, the flower has to open herself to show the true face inside. The blood of pain also, if continued to be embraced by mindfulness, will reveal its true nature. That is the practice of looking deeply. Because meditation is made up of two aspects: calming, stopping, concentrating, relieving is the first aspect.

1:11:33 And the second aspect is looking deeply. This is the first aspect of meditation, the first element of meditation, means stopping. This is a Chinese. If you go to China, you see on the street many signs like that. It means your car has to stop. We use exactly the same word in Buddhist literature. The Sanskrit word is "Shamatha". And it means several things: stopping, embracing, calming, concentrating.

1:12:45 The practice of shamatha is very helpful. Whether it is our body or a feeling, we have to practice taking good care of it when it suffers. We can bring a relief. We become mindful of it, we embrace it, we bring about a relief. And then we begin to look deeply into it. That is vipasshyama, which means looking deeply, in order to get the insight you need.

1:13:33 Because that insight will be the factor that will liberate you from your suffering. That is why the practice of looking deeply is called sometimes the practice of insight, or insight meditation. Insight meditation means the meditation of looking deeply. But in order to be able to look deeply, you have to stop, to embrace, to calm and to concentrate. the mother, after having embraced the baby for a few minutes, find out what is wrong with the baby. The baby may be hungry, the baby may have a little fever, or the diaper is a little bit too tight.

1:14:22 And if the inside comes, the mother will be able to fix, to change the situation very quickly. So the purpose of the function of mindfulness is to do that for the block of pain that manifests itself. And the fact that you can recognize it and embrace it alone is already very helpful. Even if you don't have time and occasion to practice looking deeply, The fact that you are capable to recognize, to greet, to acknowledge that your pain is there is very tough for me.

1:15:10 And every time you can say hello to it, embrace it, recognize it, it will stay some time here and it will go back as being a seed again. That is a ceasefire, the time for a ceasefire. But if you know how to use mindfulness in order to embrace and to recognize the source of pain in you, that source of pain will lose some of its strength while going back to itself, the phenomenon of discharge.

1:16:06 We have a fear in us. We are fearful to face our fear. That is why the Buddha always advised the monks and the nuns to invite their fear up every day and to say hello to it. That is the practice of five awarenesses. If you are a monk, you are supposed to do it every day. I am of the nature to grow all. I cannot escape all ages. Everyone has a secret fear of growing all.

1:16:51 And we don't want to think about it. The Buddha said, "Don't be afraid, bring it up and smile to it." "I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape dying." "I am the nature to get sick. I cannot escape sickness." "All the people and everything I love and cherish today, I will have to abandon them one day." I cannot bring them with me. There are very hard facts that you don't want to think about it. But the Buddha advised you to bravely confront the reality.

1:17:39 Bring it, bring them up from the bottom of your soul consciousness. Look at it, smile to it. And the last awareness is: "When I die, I will not be able to bring anything with me except my action and the fruit of my action. What I have done, what I have said, what I have thought constitute my action, my karma. I cannot bring along with me anything except the result of my action." And you have to remind yourself of this and to smile to the hard fact that you are subjected to old age, to death, to sickness, to have to say goodbye to the person you love the most, to the things you cherish the most in this life, and to accept the fact that the only thing you can bring with you is your own karma, your own actions performed in your day, your life time.

1:19:03 So the Buddha was aware that we should not be afraid of the blocks of fear and craving and despair in us. And he advised us to invite them up, to look directly at them, to smile to them. Why? Because every time we greet them like that, they will lose some of its strength and go back a little bit weaker. And if you allow these blocks to come up like this, you'll be able to greet all of them, to say hello to all of them, you embrace them for some time.

1:19:53 And after that, they will go down, go back again, in the form of bijas. And if you are able to do it once, Namely, to say hello, to recognize and embrace at once. Then you have confidence, "I am no longer afraid. The next time it comes up, I will do the same thing, embracing, recognizing, smile to it." And you lose a lot of your fear. And the third advantage is that you restore the situation of good circulation of your psyche.

1:20:45 And a few weeks later, the symptoms of your mental illness will begin to disappear. And we can do this alone. Or we can do it with the support of a therapist, with a Dharma brother, a Dharma sister. If the other person is still afraid, we say, "Don't be afraid. I have enough energy of mindfulness to support you. Just sit close to me and we invite it to come up." And we'll be able to embrace it together and to recognize it together. And that is why we need, in the process of therapy, people who have a strong practice, who have a strong energy of mindfulness.

1:21:39 They are very helpful. That is why we need badly a Sangha for the work of healing and transformation. let us go back a little bit to our verses we are now on the 13th Whether it is a seed or a formation, it has the nature of inter-penetration and inter-being.

1:22:56 One is produced by all, and all is dependent on one. We know that a seed can be transformed into a formation. A formation can produce another formation. A formation can produce a seed, and a seed can also produce another seed. But all these seeds and formations have the nature of interpenetration and interbeing. These are two key words. Interpenetration means in one, you see the all.

1:23:43 When you look into a flower deeply, you see the whole cosmos in the heart of a flower. You see the clouds, you see the sunshine, you see the rain, you see the earth, you see the minerals, you see the gardener, you see time, space, you see everything, the one containing the all. That is the teaching of the Avatamsaka Sutra. The deepest teaching of interconnectedness in Buddhism. It is presented by the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Sutra on the Decoration of the Buddha by Flowers.

1:24:51 So interpenetration, it means that everything penetrates into everything else. This idea, this notion is also existing in Christianity. The Father is in me, and I am in you, and you are also in me. the same teaching. The British nuclear scientist, David Bohm, he proposed the term The "explicate order", and the term "implicate order".

1:25:57 In the "explicate order", everything exists outside of everything else. Arabic exists outside of the rose. The table exists outside of the forest. You exist outside of me, and so on. The "explicate order". That is when you don't look very deeply. But when you practice looking more deeply into the nature of each so-called elementary particle, you begin to see deeply. The notion that you use in your daily life can no longer be applied in the domain of the infinitely small.

1:26:58 He said one particle is made of all other particles. One electron is made of all the other electrons. It means that in one electron, then you can identify the existence of all other electrons. So, the practice of looking deeply into the nature of an electron reveals to you the other aspect, the other dimension, which is called the implicate of that, but everything is inside of everything else.

1:27:42 That is exactly the diction of the Avatamsaka Sutra, a very beautiful sutra belonging to Mahayana Buddhism. The implicit order is equivalent to the ultimate dimension we talk about in Buddhism. And that explicate all of them is equivalent to the historical dimension. In the historical dimension, there is birth, death, beginning and end, this and that, being and non-being. But from the side of the ultimate dimension, there is no birth, no death, no beginning, no end, no this, no that, no being, no non-being.

1:28:37 That is the word interpenetration. Everything penetrates into everything else. So you are, you contain all the cosmos within you. You can touch anything in the cosmos just by touching yourself. You can touch Jesus, you can touch the Buddha, you can touch the sun, the moon, the galaxies, just by touching yourself. The nature of interpenetration and the nature of interbeing. It will be now about the word interbeing.

1:29:24 Nothing can be by itself alone. Everything from inter-is with everything else. To be really means to inter-be. This is because that is it. I am here because you are. The Father is there, that is why the Son is possible. The Son is there, it means the Father is there. And the sound contains the Father, the Father contains the sound. You cannot take the Father out of the sound. You cannot take the sound out of the Father. That is interleaving and interpenetration.

1:30:09 And we have to train ourselves to look in that kind of light. Alayya is neither same nor different, individual nor collective. Our natural tendency is to ask, "This is my Alayya or this is yours?" Because we know that my Alayya is made of yours. That is collective. The collective nature of Alayya is very obvious.

1:30:54 The way you think, the way you learn, the way you hate deflects the way of the collectivity and vice versa. That is why same or different is another pair of opposites. And the truth transcends, always transcends pairs of opposites. So you cannot say alaya is same or different. There are one alaya or there are many alayas, because one and many belong to another pair of opposites. I know it is very difficult to share the world thinking, but this is the only way.

1:31:42 If we really want to remove the suffering, the delusion we have to learn. Aravya is neither same nor different, individual nor collective, same and different inter-are. Same and different are not a pair of opposites. The same is made of the different, and the different is made of the same. Therefore, we transcend also the notion of same and different. Collective and individual gives rise to each other. If there is no collective, there is no individual, and vice versa. So, we will be able to touch reality without using patterns of our thinking, patterns of our categories of our mind.

1:32:50 Because our mind is a kind of sword. It has a tendency to cut reality in several pieces, separated from each other. And reality cannot be caught or be grasped by that kind of discursive mind. The word is "discursive mind", the mind of imagination, the mind of discrimination, the mind of discussion. And the 15th verse is the last verse about Alaya.

1:33:38 Before we go to the 16th verse about manas. When delusion is transformed, understanding is there, because delusion is the base for all wrong perceptions, creating a lot of suffering. And with the practice of looking deeply into the nature of inter-being, delusion can be transformed and prasna, understanding, is there. It is like when the darkness is gone, the light takes place. Star consciousness reveals a small liability to afflictions.

1:34:30 At this time, star consciousness is completely purified and reveals its non-liability to afflictions. Afflictions are mental formations such as fear, anger, hatred, discrimination, and so on. Its sensitive word is "Khalisha". The Pali equivalent is "Khalisha". It becomes the Great Mirror Wisdom. Now, after transformation, Star Consciousness will no longer bear the name Star Consciousness, but its new name is "Great Mirror Wisdom" because it reflects reality as it is, without distortion.

1:35:38 I think we have time to finish all the verses, tomorrow and after tomorrow. Thank you.