Session Three: Nothing Special: Stop Activating Karmic Aftermath

Dealing With Our Feelings and How We Respond

To stop activating the potentials for the karmic impulses we need to deal with our feelings and how we respond to our feelings. Whether it occurs in a sequence or not, we have the basis of a body and mind, that’s the fourth link, and with our cognitive sensors we are aware of objects, whether they are sights, sounds, tastes, thoughts, or memories, some sort of perception, and we distinguish within our mental landscape or what we are seeing or hearing and so on. We experience that contacting awareness as either pleasant or unpleasant. This is going on all the time, experiencing pleasantness, unpleasantness, or if in deep meditation, a neutral feeling. We get a feeling of happiness, unhappiness or neutrality. This is something that we can learn to recognize in each moment, even on a very low level.

The question is how do we respond to the feeling of happy or unhappy? There is a useful and effective strategy to introduce that I have termed “nothing special” after an expression that the reincarnation of one of my teachers, Serkong Rinpoche used. We used to call him the “nothing special” Rinpoche when he was young. No matter what went on, it was “nothing special, no big deal.” His predecessor, the old Serkong Rinpoche would say the same but not exactly in the same words. Once, when traveling in Europe as his translator, people took us up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and his response was that we get up here and now we just have to go back down. What is the big deal?

This is a very helpful attitude to have when we are feeling happy or unhappy. There is nothing special about that. We tend to project exaggerations onto how we are feeling and our moods, don’t we? If we are feeling a bit sad, or as we say in English, “a bit blah” when we don’t feel like working or getting out of bed and we make a big deal out of it. Because we make this big deal, it makes the unhappiness even worse. Or, on the other hand, we’re with someone and we say, “Aren’t we having a great time and isn’t this great?” It tends to ruin it, actually almost instantly.

When we are feeling like this, what we want is to eliminate the thirsting or craving, as explained in the eighth link. For example, we don’t want this happiness to end and we have to have it: we have to have the unhappiness end or the neutral feeling not to decline. We don’t want to activate the karmic impulse, and the way to accomplish that is to regard what we are feeling as nothing special. If we don’t feel like getting up in the morning, so what? We get up anyway. If we don’t feel like working, we work anyway. If we don’t feel like getting up in the middle of the night to feed our baby, it doesn’t matter at all. We get up anyway and feed the baby. 

The Nature of Samsara 

This comes from the insight that the nature of samsara is to go up and down. Life goes up and down and our moods go up and down. That’s just the nature of things. Sometimes we feel okay and happy, not necessarily dancing-in-the-streets happiness, but okay. Other times, we don’t feel okay. It will go up and down all the time, and the main thing is to not make a big deal out of it. It’s nothing special. Now we feel unhappy; so what? This is a very essential insight to have. Of course it’s nicer to feel happy. We want to bring about the causes for happiness. We are not negating that. For instance, we bang our foot. It hurts and we’re unhappy about that. We miss the train and are really unhappy about that. But that happens. There is nothing special about that. 

There isn’t really too much more to say about that. Perhaps, think about that. How do we deal with our moods? Isn’t it the case that our moods go up and down? It is certainly the case with our practices. Sometimes it goes well; often it doesn’t go very well. Again, the attitude is that it is nothing special. It didn’t go well today, that doesn’t mean that we think it doesn’t matter. The attitude of “nothing special” is different from “whatever.” “Whatever” means we don’t care. We do want our practice to go well, but if it doesn’t, it’s not the end of the world. Of course, naturally some days it will go better than others. We don’t get upset. This connects with having no expectations, and therefore no disappointments. We just continue and go ahead with the practice. This is called armor-like perseverance that protects us, like armor. It doesn’t matter how difficult it is, or some days it’s not going well, because we recognize that it’s beneficial. 

It’s the same thing with our moods. Regardless of feeling happy or unhappy, we just continue to do what we need to do in life. We don’t make a big deal out of it and exaggerate it. With our projections, we turn it into something so important. The more that we avoid making a big deal out of things in this way, the less compulsive behavior is activated. We can be feeling so miserable and make a big deal out of, and then, to use a silly example, we go and stuff ourselves with chocolate; or we get drunk, or cling to a friend who is supposed to make us happy, or distract ourselves with surfing the internet or our Facebook feed. That’s compulsive behavior activated by this craving or thirsting. We feel bored and not very happy and are really thirsting to get rid of it. How can we get rid of it? We look at our phone again. 

This is an example of a practical application of understanding the twelve links. What is really crucial is how we deal with our moods of happy and unhappy. We need to be able to not overreact. It doesn’t really matter that we are happy or unhappy; we still need to do our work, take care of our families and get out of bed in the morning. How do we actually deal with our feelings, especially when we are feeling unhappy or bored or don’t feel like doing anything? We need to understand that when we crave or thirst to get something or get rid of something, in making such a big deal out of it, we activate our compulsive behavior. We need to make that connection, the cause and the effect. If we want to get rid of the effect, stop the cause.  

Take a few minutes to think about that.

This is quite delicate and not very easy to put into practice. If we are enjoying something, and are relatively happy, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying something. However, we need to have the understanding that it’s not going to last. Of course, if we have too much of something, it will turn into suffering in that we get tired of it, bored, we get full. If we eat any more, for example, we would get sick. If our friend visits and stays for too long, he or she will get on our nerves. There is a delicate balance. There’s nothing special instead of exaggeration of how we are having the most fantastic time; however, we don’t want to negate it completely. We want to relax and enjoy something for what it is, as long as it lasts, and it lasts without incorrect consideration that something impermanent is permanent. It is also incorrect to consider something that will eventually turn into boredom and suffering as ultimate happiness. That is what is so delicate.

If we are unhappy, if we don’t like doing a certain task or are bored with it, maybe there is another task that needs to be done. We don’t have to necessarily push to do that particular task at work at that time. It depends on the circumstance. If we need to take a break, take a break. If we tend to instantly go to our Facebook feed or the news, put a limit on that. Don’t exaggerate it, or think it will ultimately make us feel better. Of course, it won’t. But we feel we need something. Start to apply gentler methods first; in this case, going to some distraction like a Facebook feed, limit the amount of time and recognize it for what it is, a distraction intended to make us stay there, hoping the next posting we read will be more interesting. Of course, it won’t. Again, recognize reality.

The most effective thing to apply at this level is “nothing special.” It’s nothing special that we feel bored or not like working. We know that at this level of where we are at, we need a break or a bit of distraction. So, just take a break and don’t make something special about it. However, don’t go to the extreme of treating ourselves like babies. Gradually, we can lessen these distractions by understanding more and more that distraction, like looking at our phones, isn’t going to solve anything. Understand that everything that is arising is dependent on many causes and conditions. The situations that we get into, the so-called ripened result of whatever life form that we have, man or woman, being at whatever stage in life, old or young, these are all arising dependent on causes and conditions. Perhaps we are old, the memory is going, our joints ache, the hearing is going off or, as I have noticed, the aggregate of distinguishing gets weaker. In a restaurant with lots of people talking, it’s harder to distinguish what the person I am with is saying from all the background noise. This is age reacted. But there is nothing special about that. What do we expect? 

Don’t make a big deal out of things and don’t exaggerate. It is what it is. That is a very profound statement. It’s reality. I have an older sister, and her husband had a form of dementia and inability to walk. Eventually he died. What she would always say and try to remind herself about is that it is what it is. Sadly, he was in a nursing home, and she was unhappy about it, but it is what it is. Accepting reality is a part of the attitude of “nothing special.” It’s a sad situation but it is what it is and there is nothing special about feeling sad. Don’t wallow or get stuck in it. It will pass.

What ripens from karma is the life form that we have, our repeating patterns similar to what we did before, experiencing things similar happening to us again, our environment and so on. It is significant that what our feeling of happiness or unhappiness is also ripening form karma. In fact, the feeling aggregate is defined as how we experience the ripening of our karma. It is what differentiates us form a computer or a machine. When a program crashes, the computer doesn’t feel unhappy about it. We feel unhappy; the computer doesn’t. When we are feeling happy or unhappy, whatever happens, we have beginningless lifetimes. We’ve acted destructively and that causes unhappiness. We’ve also acted constructively and that ripens into happiness. Unless we are doing something specific to try to generate a happier state of mind, it will continue to go up and down. If we want to feel happier, do something constructive.

As His Holiness the Dalai Lama always says, compassion is the source of happiness. What does that mean? It means to stop thinking about “poor me” and open our hearts and minds to think about others. When we think about others, wishing them to be happy, that’s love; when we wish them to be free from unhappiness, that’s compassion. We can’t wish others to be happy and be unhappy because we’re focusing on happiness and generating happiness. By stopping our narrow focus on ourselves and our feelings on this level of craving and thirsting level, instead we open up and think of everybody else. In that way we can generate a bit of happiness. If we don’t do anything to generate happiness, it will just continue to go up and down. 

This is how we can work with the craving and thirsting link. We want to stop activating the karma. This goes together with the next link, the obtainer. We want to stop doing that as well. We have specified the two aspects involved with this link: one is focusing on the object that we are experiencing with happiness or unhappiness, and the other is the obtainer attitude, which focuses of the “me” who is experiencing the object. We aren’t just talking about sense objects. It includes the emotional state. All of this is suggested by the teachings on overcoming the eight worldly concerns.

Eight Worldly Concerns

We extend the method beyond just happiness or unhappiness but to the objects. With praise or criticism, don’t get overly happy when people praise us or overly depressed or unhappy when people criticize us. There are always going to be people who praise or criticize us. There’s nothing special about that. With hearing good news or bad news, for example, the stock market went up or down. Nothing special; of course, it goes up and down. It is what it is, reality. Things arise dependent on many factors so it changes all the time. This applies to gains or losses and things going well or things going poorly.

The term is literally translated as the eight transitory things in life. These are the things that change: praise and criticism, good and bad news, gains and losses, things going well or not going well. Our feelings toward these can be happy or unhappy. The attitude of “nothing special” in the eighth link is directed toward the feelings and in the ninth link it is directed at these transitory things. It’s nothing special with things going well or not going well. The computer works very well, for example, or the computer is slow and the internet is down. It’s okay; it happens. It arises from causes and conditions. When conditions change, it will go back up. Or be inventive and find different ways to adapt and make things work. Always have an alternative plan of how to deal with things.

With the obtainer attitude of throwing out the net of “me” and “mine,” there is this solid “me” – “I don’t want to be unhappy. I don’t like that the computer program crashed and I lost my data that I didn’t save.” We identify it as “my data” and “my program.” Again, we need to pacify the compelling impulse to swear at the computer. All that type of behavior is activating the compulsive impulses. For instance, we feel unhappy because the computer isn’t working or we no longer have a signal for our cell phone, and we feel “poor me,” and we identify with it. All of that then activates the compelling impulse to swear, get angry, yell, and whatever. 

We don’t want to activate that. The simplest way is with cultivating the attitude of “nothing special.” This happens; there’s nothing special about it and it’s not the end of the earth. It will pass. Then, just deal with it. 

This is the initial step that we want to take to break this uncontrollably recurring syndrome. It’s not just dealing with rebirth. There is a very practical application in terms of our daily lives. In our question session, someone asked for the most beneficial type of practice that we can do. It is this type of analysis. First we learn the teachings and, as His Holiness always advises, study Buddhism. We can’t apply the teachings if we don’t know them. Then, figure it out, put it together with other teachings as we have with the eight worldly dharmas, and see how it applies in our lives. This is equalizing awareness with which we fit things together. 

We can think about this in daily practice; what has been our experience yesterday or today or right now? Then we try to analyze, discern and see what we were doing that caused problems? What teaching would apply to avoid perpetuating that type of problem? Perhaps we interacted with this person, and got into an argument; or inspect how we handled a work situation, or how much time we wasted looking at the phone. That’s the practice, to try to look at our lives and how we deal with life. Are we actually using the Dharma? What Dharma teaching will fit and apply in this situation? How many different pieces of the Dharma puzzle can we put together and utilize today, for instance, with our work.

This is the most beneficial. As Westerners trained with education to analyze and understand things, we need to take advantage of that and use that. We do need some concentration, but it doesn’t need to be perfect. We need concern for others and compassion, but that also doesn’t have to mean that we have to become a saint. As we apply the teachings in daily life, we will see how it is of benefit. With this, we build up more so-called positive force or energy that makes it easier to develop further insights and understanding so that eventually we don’t even have to think about “nothing special.” We won’t have to remind ourselves. We’ll just deal with the ups and downs of life in a very graceful type of way. For instance, with old age, aging without complaint and depression. It is what it is; nothing special. 

We don’t want to rush over this point. It is a very important practice, this practice of “nothing special.” Again, it is not the same as the attitude of “whatever,” or “it doesn’t matter,” or “I don’t care.” We just don’t make a big deal out of anything. For example, with Facebook and Instagram, look at what a big deal people make about how many likes, responses, or followers they get. It’s nothing special whether someone likes it or doesn’t like it. There will always be many who like something and many who don’t. So what? But if we identify with this, think that it’s “me,” throw the net of “me” onto what we post, then we take it personally and feel that “they don’t like me.” It’s silly, isn’t it? Although it doesn’t make us feel better, we want more. This is the suffering of change. Think about this for a while.

Dealing with Feelings

One objection that people might have is to question if it is unhealthy to ignore our feelings? Don’t we need to recognize that we are unhappy or in an unhappy relationship or an unhappy job? We shouldn’t ignore these issues. In this practice, we aren’t ignoring these feelings. It is important to be aware of them. The practice involves not making a big deal about what happens. When we exaggerate situations, it tends to paralyze us or make us act in ways that don’t improve the situation. We want to not overreact and with a clear mind, figure out what to do. We aren’t ignoring our feelings, but we are dealing with them with a clear mind without acting impulsively because we are freaking out and think it’s so terrible that we are unhappy.

This relates to the close placement of mindfulness on the feelings as being the true source of suffering. We focus on the feelings, what we are feeling now, happy or unhappy, or peaceful, calm and neutral – not necessarily in a super concentrated state but not wanting it to decline. When we do this, we understand that our way of taking that as an object is that if we overreact to what we are feeling, that will be a source of suffering and problems. With that understanding, it helps us to apply the teaching of “nothing special” to the feelings. They are just the ripening of karmic potentials. We’ve acted destructively and constructively so many times in past lives, so of course it is going to go up and down depending upon circumstances. There is nothing special about that.

If we want to stop these ups and downs, we have to stop planting more karmic potentials. This is coming from the first link, our unawareness or ignorance. That’s the next step. Before that, we want to manage somehow not to activate moment to moment these potentials by acting in a compulsive crazy ways.

Conceptual Thought and Conceptual Cognition

We talked about unawareness, impulses and feelings. It seems like the feelings come after the unawareness and the impulse. I wonder if the thoughts that we have come before feelings.

Feelings arise of being happy or unhappy and we don’t need to think about it. The thinking process comes in when we over-react to it. We think “this is so terrible,” or “this is so wonderful.” We want it to go away or not go away. That can be with or without thinking. What do we actually mean by thinking? Is thinking the same as conceptual cognition? This is usually called conceptual thought but this just confuses the two. Normally, in our Western way of classifying things, we regard thinking as a mental verbal process. We think with words and that is what we call thinking. However, that is only one form of conceptual cognition.

Conceptual cognition is with a category. We have individual items, all these things in front of us that we see, and we fit them into a category. These things in front of me right now would be in the category of people, or Norwegians. I am able to relate to all these colored shapes that I am seeing as being people or Norwegians. There is a bowl in front of me; and the category of apples, and they are all apples. There are individual items but there is some common characteristic that helps me identify them as apples or people or Norwegians. Then, we have words that are associated with it and designated onto them. 

Let’s use a more relevant example to what we have been discussing. We have different experiences and we have a category of happy and one of unhappy, don’t we? Every moment of experience is different. When we feel happy or unhappy, it isn’t exactly the same feeling. Additionally, what you or I experience is very different; yet, we have the categories of happy or unhappy and we fit all these individual experiences into them. When we experience these, we experience them through the category of happy or unhappy. The dog has that as well; we as humans associate words with that. However, we don’t have to have a word for these categories. Verbal thinking is thinking with the words. Conceptual thinking is thinking with the categories, whether we have words or not. These categories and the words are useful. Without them we don’t have communication.

Two Types of Categories

There are two types of categories. There are object categories, such as all these items are in the category of happiness or all these items are apples. The other type is the audio category. If we ask everyone in the room to say the word “happy,” all of those sounds are different with different voices, volumes, and pronunciation. How do we understand that all of these are saying the same word? It’s because we have the audio category of the sound and the word that we have associated with it. This is how speech works.

It’s absolutely necessary and we shouldn’t think that conceptual thought is something terrible. Buddhas don’t have it; that is true, however, a Buddha is able to communicate anyway. But, for us, we could not possibly have communication without these concepts. The problem is that we have all sorts of associations with these categories. We add on, for example, that happiness is the most fantastic thing in the word and we have to have it and it has to never go away. We add all sorts of qualities to it, such as unhappiness is the worst thing in the world. We can have a preconception of what we think all Norwegians are like, for example. Then we have problems from these preconceptions and prejudices. That is conceptual thought and it doesn’t have to be, it’s absolutely not always verbal.

Quieting the voice in our minds is just a very difficult baby step. To overcome conceptual thinking in our meditation is only the first step. It also includes overcoming all these prejudices and preconceptions and expectations. It’s not verbal. When we activate our karmic potentials with craving, thirsting and obtainer attitudes, we are seeing these in a conceptual category of happiness, unhappiness or neutral, but then we are exaggerating and adding qualities to it. When we analyze concepts, conceptual thinking, we need to differentiate between conceiving the happiness or unhappiness we feel as a thing and what we conceive of as being the qualities of it. We make it into a thing, like putting a line around it and encapsulating it as if in plastic. It is a thing: now we are feeling happiness or now we are feeling love. 

There is a great example of this. How do we know if we love someone or like them? What is the boundary between liking and loving someone? It’s conceptual, isn’t it? Now, we have love, as a thing. In the context of it being a thing, we have all conceptual process of all the qualities, such as “it’s the most fantastic thing in the world and it’s going to last forever,” and all of that. First we have to get rid of that and then we work on making a thing out of it in the first place. 

Nevertheless, conventionally, we need words and categories to be able to communicate. It’s functional. Still, because of this process of activating the karmic impulses, we want to at least not make a big thing out of what we feel, even though we recognize feeling happy or unhappy. We need to stop the exaggerations about any of this being the most wonderful or most terrible thing in the world that we want to last forever or to never to end. We need to stop thinking “me, me, me,” and “poor me,” and all of that.

The conceptual process is there, but it certainly doesn’t have to be verbal and, in fact, most of the time it is not. Conceptual thought is with categories and putting things into boxes.

I can understand “nothing special” in relation to moods, but, if there is someone deeply psychotic or depressed, it would be very difficult for this person to say “nothing special.” I get stuck there because I wonder if there is a way to help this person with this process.

Yes, it would be inadvisable. From my experience and from what others have noticed as well, people need to be a bit emotionally stable and mature in order to practice the Dharma. When someone is really very disturbed mentally and so on, Dharma is too strong a medicine. That person needs professional help. With depression, it might be medication or whatever. Only when we are relatively stable, can we start to really apply Dharma methods. Meditation is not what we would recommend to someone who is clinically depressed. This is too much.

It’s the same thing in terms of the voidness or emptiness teachings. We don’t teach this to a child or young teenager. We can’t deconstruct the self before we have established the conventional self. Young people are developing this sense of being a conventional individual self, not just a part of the parents. Only when they have this sense of a conventional self can we then start to deconstruct the projections that they might have about the conventional self. If this is done prematurely, they are left with nothing and that is very psychologically dangerous. It can lead to feeling that “I don’t exist at all and therefore it doesn’t matter what I do.” 

It’s the same type of theory that we don’t apply the strong medicine prematurely when someone isn’t ready. The attitude of “nothing special” is not for someone who is really depressed. We are just talking about ordinary life, with ordinary moods going up and down, but we are fairly stable and functional.

Positive Force and Deep Awareness

In analyzing my experience to see if I am projecting exaggerations onto my experience, in regard to non-verbal conceptual cognition, I don’t think I could recognize or know to ask the right questions about the more subtle processes going on. My experience is that when in retreat and meditating more for several days, as things come up, I can more readily understand and see things in a different ways or flavor. This is without analytical questions. It isn’t logical sometimes; it just changes and I don’t have words for it.

Yes, this happens. First, in order to be able to apply these teachings on the twelve links, we need to hear about it, understand and learn it, think about what it means and become convinced that it makes sense and so on. We can’t observe the mental factors, for example, if we’ve never heard about them. That comes first. Then, in terms of insight, we always speak about what is usually called the two collections. I find this a bit misleading because it sounds like a collection of stamps when it is actually more like a network. It’s not merit in the sense that we collect points, but it’s a positive force. It’s like charging a battery. The other network is wisdom or deep awareness.

It is absolutely essential to understand what is meant by having to build up enough merit to understand something. That’s true, but if we don’t get the correct terminology, we get the wrong impression and put it into the wrong category. It’s not that if we do certain practices, we will earn it because we’ve done 100,000 prostrations or whatever to earn an understanding. When we do constructive actions, the most general category being helping others and having kind thoughts to others, it builds up positive force. What is actually happening is that we are opening up our minds and hearts to more and more others and for more happiness and benefit for others. This has an effect. The more we open up like this, the more our minds open up to being able to understand things. We’re not locked into our preconceptions. 

I think it’s quite rational that the more positive force we build up by thinking of others and opening our minds and hearts that it will enable us to make progress and achieve more insights and understanding. Just sitting there with “me, me, me,” meditation and “I have to get this insight,” and “I have to get perfect concentration, and I have to get this or that,” is very closed and tight. It’s hard to make progress, unless we make equal effort into actually getting out there and helping people, developing more love and compassion and concern for others. If we are too focused on ourselves and “my” meditation and “my” progress and “my” mind, it’s very difficult.

There are two types of retreat. There is a meditation retreat and a retreat in which we help others.

Sometimes, we need to do that when we aren’t making any progress in our meditation. We need to put in an intensive period when we are actually helping others, and then go back. We usually discover that it will make a big difference.

Reflecting on the attitude of nothing special, a few things came up that I would like to share. I can see if I am in a bad mood, okay; no big deal and that’s how it is with ups and downs. But, on the other hand, it might be quite problematic in social life with communication with others. If someone is saying that they fell in love and now they are getting married and it’s so wonderful, and I answer that this is nice, but no big deal, I won’t make friends like that. How do we get along with this in samsara?

It’s all about how we apply these things. It’s nothing special that we are in a bad mood, but, if someone else is depressed, from our point of view, it’s nothing special, and we don’t freak out. We don’t think that it’s such a big deal that they are sad, and we don’t know what to do, and we can’t deal with it. We don’t tell the person that it’s nothing special. There is the expression “Man up!” This means be a man and take it. It can be said to a woman as well. That’s not skillful at all. This is applied only in terms of how we respond to the other person. For instance, it’s nothing special that the baby is crying. Babies cry; without freaking out, we see what is bothering the baby and try to remedy it.

“Nothing special” is referring to our own attitude about our own suffering or encounters. We take it seriously when another person is very unhappy. Often what others want is just someone to listen to them. A common attitude of men toward a woman crying is that it’s a leaky pipe and how do we fix it. In fact, a person crying just wants someone to listen to them and understand. They don’t want someone to fix it as if it’s a leaking pipe. If someone is unhappy, we listen to them without over-exaggerating it in terms of how we deal with it. “Nothing special” doesn’t mean that it’s not important for the other person. 

Also, if we are feeling unhappy, it will pass, so we take steps not to get lost in it or identify with it. We don’t think that it’s the worst thing in the world and that it will never change. We deal with it.

Clarification of Feeling a Level of Happiness and Unhappiness and Emotions

With the tendency in our culture to be intellectual and analytical, in a way it’s easy if things aren’t a big deal, in a way maybe it’s suppressing and becoming a bit cold. Maybe we won’t feel the emotions. There is so much technology and metaphors about us being like machines, heavy headed and non-physical and thereby disembodied and de-personalized. Not showing emotions is also becoming a trend here. It’s a pitfall to lose some of the juice. I was glad that you said grace and wondering about that. Is that the love and compassion?

The problem here is that the word “feeling” in English refers to both feeling a level of happy and unhappy, as well as the emotions. We are not talking about the emotions here. We are only talking about happy, unhappy, or neutral. That doesn’t block the emotions. When we have the attitude of nothing special about being happy, that doesn’t mean that we don’t enjoy things. We enjoy it for what it is. We enjoy listening to nice music, or a good meal. There is nothing wrong with that. The issue is with clinging onto it and not wanting it to end and getting upset about it. It’s the same thing with sadness. When we have a loss, for instance if someone dies, of course we feel sad. It is sad, but we don’t make such a huge thing about it. We grieve in a healthy manner; and we know that as life goes on we get on with our lives. This doesn’t block the emotions. We express our emotions when it’s appropriate, to the appropriate audience. We don’t tell our children, for example, that we are so miserable and feel so insecure and so on. A child is not the appropriate person to share that with. We need to use discrimination.

What we want to overcome are the negative, destructive and disturbing emotions. This doesn’t mean that we bottle it up inside. We apply opponents to overcome being under the control of anger, greed, and so on. This deals with overcoming the attitude about the self and how we use all these mechanisms to try to make it secure. If we feel unhappy and make it into a big deal, as in “Poor me; I am so unhappy,” that really becomes a block to feeling love and compassion for anyone. If we don’t make a big deal about our passing unhappiness, but instead focus on the multitudes of other people feeling unhappiness with the hope that they will become happy, that actually helps us to overcome unhappiness. It doesn’t block it; in fact, it enables us to have these positive feelings regardless of whatever level of happiness or unhappiness we are experiencing. On the other hand, if we get too caught up with pleasure, then again we don’t think about anyone else.

Again, we need to differentiate what is meant by “feeling.” Even though the same word is used for emotions and some level of happiness or unhappiness, these are two very distinct things.

Understanding and Accepting Beginningless Time

Thinking about no beginning and no end; I don’t understand that. I can in some way relate to it, but can’t really grasp it. Even looking at the stars, I can’t understand that there is no end. 

This is a very complicated topic. What does it mean to understand something and accept something as a truth? We can understand, just from a logical argument that a nothing can’t turn into a something; and a something can’t turn into a nothing. If a continuity is progressing, there has to be prior and later moments. We have this in the law of conservation of matter and energy. It can’t be created or destroyed; only transformed. We can intellectually understand something, as the term is used in the West, but it’s not that difficult to understand the argument. However, to accept that it’s true is the problem. To understand that there are zillions of galaxies with even more stars and planets, it’s hard for our minds to encompass all of that. We can understand that is the case, but to really accept it and deal with it is more difficult.

What do we accept in terms of beginningless matter and energy? In other words, before the Big Bang, were there other universes in space and they ended and then there’s the Big Bang? If there’s a Big Bang, there has to be some circumstance that causes the Big Bang to start. Otherwise, we would have big bangs in every moment or just randomly. There has to be something before. If one posits God before that, then how did God start? It has no beginning. If we posit nothing before, when did the nothing start? It has no beginning. There is always no beginning. However, the problem is accepting it and the consequences. To accept this means to accept the consequences.

What are the consequences of accepting a beginningless individual mental continuum? It wasn’t created by somebody else; it didn’t come from nowhere, so whatever we are experiencing, we are responsible for. That’s the consequence. It’s not going to end when we die. It’s going to have further consequences. This enables us to take more responsibility. That is what follows from it. If what follows from it makes sense and helps us to lessen our suffering, it confirms why Buddha taught this. He taught it to help us lessening our suffering.

Understanding something is just one part of the process. That’s not so difficult if it’s explained properly, then we can pass the exam and spout back what the teaching is about. However, accepting it means seeing the consequences and how it affects our lives. This involves the entire analysis of the practical application of the teachings to actually help to lessen our problems. When it’s helpful, we can accept it more readily. This is the way to work with it. 

If we say, for example, that there was a beginning created by a higher power, then it’s not our responsibility. If we give up responsibility for our actions, how does that affect our lifestyles? These are the things to examine in terms of accepting the explanation. What are the benefits and what follows from it? Are there any disadvantages?

Rebirth

What transmigrates or travels from life to life?

What continues is the subtlest consciousness or subtlest mind with the subtlest energy supporting it. As an imputation on that, there is the conventional self. In the next session, we will discuss what that actually means. This includes the karmic tendencies and the tendencies of all the mental factors, such as concentration, anger, love, etc.

Can we call it a soul?

Can we call it a soul? Yes, in a certain sense. I was quite surprised recently because I hadn’t heard His Holiness the Dalai Lama use the word “soul.” I went to some teachings of his in Holland, and he used the word. However, the question is what the characteristics of the soul are. Whether we call it soul or self, it is a matter of terminology. The Sanskrit word is “atman.” There is a conventional atman, and the atman that is to be refuted, because it doesn’t refer to anything at all. But conventionally we are people, we are individuals. We are persons.

Is the number of souls finite?

It is finite. The word used to describe this is “countless.” It is finite in the sense that there are no new souls being created. That implies a beginning and there is no beginning. The mental continuum continues once enlightened. The word “countless” is a term for the largest unit in the Sanskrit way of classifying numbers. It’s ten, with sixty zeros after it. That is the word “countless.” I use the English word “zillion” for this, a very very large number.

Let’s end with a dedication for today. Whatever understanding and whatever positive force has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for everyone to achieve the enlightened state of a Buddha for the benefit of us all.