Projections

In Buddhism there are so many practices that deal with how things appear, which actually help us to understand projection, and this is very helpful. I am sitting in front of you and I could be frightened, for example. I could think, “All of these people are looking at me; they are judging me,” and “What are they going to think of me?” I could become very nervous and this could become a very torturous event for me. What is the problem here? The problem is that I’m just thinking in terms of, “me, me, me,” and everything is all revolving around “me,” and what you think of “me.”

It is true that I am sitting here, and most of you are looking at me, but so what? Now we are talking about projection. Rather than looking at you as people who are judging me and probably don’t like me, or who think that I am an idiot, I can change my attitude. Buddhism always speaks about changing our attitude to a more positive, helpful one. I could look at you as my best friends, as my brothers and sisters, like my parents or my children, and I am explaining to you with as much concern for you as I would have for my best friend. Then, I am really concerned that you understand, and there is a great deal of at least friendliness, if not love. Further, I am not going to pretend something. How can you pretend something with your brother, your sister, or your best friend? Thinking like that, with that change of attitude, then I am very relaxed; this is a very enjoyable evening.

What is involved here? It is projection, isn’t it? In actuality I don’t know any of you, I mean, one or two I’ve gotten to know a little bit, and Claudia I know from before, but I haven’t met most of you before this evening. So, that’s not true that you are in fact my best friend, at least not in terms of this lifetime. In Buddhism, we speak of previous lifetimes, so at some long-ago lifetime you could have been my best friend, sure – that is the basis for thinking like this. But what I am projecting – your being my best friend – is not completely unreasonable. In Buddhism, we speak of everybody having been our mother in a previous lifetime; however, if that is not comfortable, then we can think that everybody has been our best friend. Everybody has also been our worst enemy in some previous lifetime by that logic, but that doesn’t help.

Maybe you are sitting there and judging me. So what? If you want to judge me, you’ll judge me. The problem is not whether you are judging me or not. That’s not the problem. The problem is my being focused on “me,” and worrying about “me,” “What do you think of ‘me?’” I am worried about “me” because I want everybody to love “me.” I mean, everybody wants everybody else to love them, don’t they?

Then, we remember that not everyone liked the Buddha, so, “If not everybody liked the Buddha, then why should everybody like me?” That’s very helpful, but if that is a little bit too distant, then, “Not everybody likes His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Look at the Chinese, they don’t like him, so what am I going to expect? That everybody is going to like me? So, if you don’t like me, if you are judging me badly, well, that’s OK.” Here is the point. The point is that, initially, we understand that so much of what we experience is based on projection. When we understand that, then we can change the projection. Rather than project something that’s going to make us miserable, like, “You’re all judging me,” we project something that is helpful, for instance, “You are all my best friends.”

Then, eventually, we don’t have to project anything. Each of you is an individual person, and you may judge me, you may be a close friend, or you may be an enemy. Fine, no problem. However, as His Holiness always points out, everybody is a human being – well not everybody, a dog is not a human being – but anyway, everybody wants to be happy and nobody wants to be unhappy. So just speak to everybody as being equal, and then no problem.

I think this illustrates the fact that there are stages of how we can work with projection in order to diminish and eventually stop any suffering, stop any problems. However, for both types of projection – helpful and unhelpful – we have to understand that what is causing me to be miserable is thinking, “me, me, me,” “Everything is all about me,” and “What does everyone think of me?” That’s the problem. 

Nevertheless, here we are in an interaction. And even if I understand that this projection of you as being my judges – “You don’t like me,” and “You’re not going to love me,” and so on – is garbage, and I don’t believe in that anymore, but still my mind is projecting. That’s the way our minds work: they project. So, I might as well project a more beneficial thing, like, “You are all my best friends.” That allows me to help you to a certain extent, but not to the fullest. Why? Because maybe you are judging me, and maybe you in fact don’t like me.

Now, in order to really help you, I need to be able to deal with that reality. Not just, “Everybody loves me; everybody is my best friend.” Once I am no longer afraid of you and no longer just focusing on, “me, me, me,” then I am ready to do away with these “nicer” projections and just really be open and deal with the reality of each person individually. Some may not like me, some may like me, some may be a close friend, some may be distant, whatever it is; then we just deal with it, whatever it is.

This is an introduction to just the general way of working with voidness and the garbage that our mind projects. Sometimes our projections are not beneficial; they’re not helpful at all. At other times, we project something that is helpful; however, eventually, we want to stop projecting at all. 

That gives a little bit of an idea of what we are talking about here. I think that this is enough for this evening. We can have some questions now, and then, starting tomorrow, we’ll speak a little bit more in detail about what is the garbage that our mind is projecting, and how we can we recognize and deconstruct it.

If we deconstruct so much, then won’t we deconstruct our good sentiments?

Well, no not necessarily. Voidness is not nihilistic. We are not asserting here that nothing exists, that there is nothing. What we want to get rid of are our projections of fantasy and exaggerations. 

Now, when we talk about greed, attachment, or anger, that is basically an exaggeration of either the good points or the bad points about something. However, the energy underlying the exaggeration of good points can be helpful. If our wish to have something is exaggerating the qualities of, let’s say, ice cream or money, then it is a very disturbing state of mind. However, if we get rid of that exaggeration, then we need that energy, which says, “I wish to achieve something,” like, for instance, “to help you.” This is simply the energy to strive for something, which, in this case, is positive and helpful, and we need that. So, when we deconstruct, what we’re deconstructing is the exaggeration, which is that “Whether what I do is successful in helping you or not depends totally on me. I am the only cause for your overcoming your problem and gaining happiness. If it works, then I am the greatest, and if it fails, it is my fault and I am guilty.” That, we want to get rid of. That is the exaggeration.

When we deconstruct here, we are still left with the wish to help others – love, the wish for them to be happy, and compassion, the wish for them to be free from their suffering. We are still left with them, but with a realistic attitude of them. It’s like, excuse me if you are a vegetarian, but if I can use this example, it’s like a piece of meat. You want to cut off the fat around it, get rid of that, and be left with just the nutritious part.

Do you know what I’m talking about? Like you have compassion for somebody, but then, if you get carried away, this is all the fat around it. Like, your child is hurt and you just, “Aaah!” and you scream, and you cry, and you yell, and you carry on, and you don’t do anything to help the child. This is just, “Poor me, I can’t deal with this.” Get rid of all of that fat, all that garbage. See, “Ah, my child is hurt,” and then just take care of them with compassion. Feeling compassion doesn’t have to be dramatic or melodramatic in order to be very positive.

It seems very difficult to distinguish between reality and exaggeration.

That is correct; it is very difficult to differentiate between the two. That is why we need to have a teacher. Just from reading in a book it might not be so clear. We need someone to answer our questions, to point things out. However, even if we have a teacher that works with us personally – which is rare – but if we have one, our mind has to be open. If we are not open, then Buddha himself could be there trying to teach us and it won’t help. To become open, we have to do – what is called in Buddhism – “purification and building up positive force.” There are a lot of practices that we can do to help us to open up and overcome mental and emotional blocks. Then, teachers can help us.

I can give you an example from my own experience: Geshe Wangyal, a great Kalmyk Mongol teacher. He died long ago, but he was tremendous. Mongols are quite different from Tibetans, but, in any case, a little bit more like what we imagine a classic Zen master.

Geshe Wangyal always had people build things for him, which he supervised very closely. He had one student, a friend of mine, who was helping to build a house for the students and Geshe-la to live in, and one day he was on the roof building it. Geshe Wangyal climbed up on the roof, went over to this friend, his student, and started yelling at him, “You are doing it completely incorrectly. You’re ruining the whole thing, get out of here!” My friend snapped back, “What do you mean, I’m doing it incorrectly? I am doing it exactly the way you told me to do it.” And then Geshe-la said, “You see, that’s the ‘me,’ the ‘false me.’ That is the projection you have to get rid of.”

Geshe Wangyal was the master at this. He was an old man when I knew him. One day a few of us were sitting in his living room, and this woman came in. She was very upset and wanted to speak to Geshe-la privately about some personal problem. Geshe-la said, “It’s OK, we are all friends here. You can just speak freely.” So, she told her story, and it was very, very emotionally difficult for her to get through it. When she finished, Geshe-la put his hand by his ear and said, “What did you say? I didn’t hear you. Say it again, louder. Hard of hearing.” Then, she had to repeat it and shout it word by word into Geshe-la’s ear. Sometimes he would make her repeat words two, three, four times, and by the time that she had finished, she herself realized, without Geshe-la having to say anything, that she was making too big a thing out of this and was exaggerating and getting too upset. She was then able to calm down.

However, you have to be a really great master to be able to do that, to know who you can do that with and who you can’t. For some people, it would be helpful; however, some people would get very upset. That’s why somebody needs to be open and ready, and then, with the guidance of a skillful teacher, they realize themselves what their exaggerations or projections are. It is very difficult to really know, as a teacher, who is ready for a method and who isn’t. That’s why one really needs to get rid of projections, especially about people we are trying to help. However, it is very difficult to differentiate between our projections and reality because the projections feel so real, and not only that they feel so real, we react very emotionally to them.

If I were to think that everything is a projection, that might be dangerous. I could become careless, taking possible dangers for projections.

That is why I used the example of the scorpion. We stop projecting that it’s a monster, but the thing is dangerous and so we are very careful. As I said – and I think this is very important to repeat over and over again – voidness doesn’t negate or do away with everything. What we are getting rid of is the projection of what’s unreal, what’s impossible.

Realizing all the trouble associated with projections, particularly in relationships, I can try to reduce them on my side, but the projections of other people are still there. Somebody might say, “You are the worst person I know,” but even if I don’t project “poor me,” and realize “This is their projection,” how to deal with that?

I think that it was Buddha who said, “If someone wants to give you a present, and you don’t accept it, who has the present?” The person who is offering it still has it in their hand. We haven’t accepted it; it’s still theirs. If somebody projects something onto us, it’s very difficult to get them to stop projecting; but, at least from our own side, we don’t accept it and don’t react that way.

Let’s use an example, rather than speaking theoretically. Suppose we are in a relationship and the other person says, “You don’t love me.” Now, that may be true, I mean, maybe we don’t love them, but let’s say that it’s not true. Now we can say, “But that’s not so.” However, we can say that based on being really upset, or we can say that based on being more calm about it. 

If, on the basis of being very upset, we deny not loving them, we get angry with the other person, we feel insecure, or whatever. That is we want to get rid of. What we want is to respond without getting upset. There are many ways of dealing with this accusation that we don’t love them. If we are very calm about it, then we examine, “Is there a basis for this? Am I ignoring the other person, or what is it?” And if we think the person is rational, we can discuss it with them, see maybe there is some part of it that is true, maybe some part that’s not true.

Just as an aside, something very helpful in this type of situation, whether they are projecting onto us or we are projecting onto them, is to think in terms of the analogy of different currencies of money. For instance, they want us to pay them in a certain currency, let’s say euros, and we say, “I’m sorry, I don’t have euros, but I can pay you in dollars.” Like each person can pay someone in a different currency, each person shows love and affection in a different way, “Maybe I can’t show you in the way that you like. I can’t give you the money in euros, although that’s what you want, but I can give it to you in dollars. Like that, this is the way that I show my love and affection.” We point out, “Well I do love you. I’ve been doing this and this and that, and that’s how I show love.” Or the other way around, if we want payment in dollars, but our partner is giving it in euros, we need to recognize that they are paying in a different currency. That’s very helpful. They only have rupees or lira, which is no longer a valid currency, but this is all that they have.

The point is not to get emotionally upset by their projections, like the projection that we don’t love them. We don’t accept it, but rather we deal with it because this is what they are projecting. This is what they are feeling, so we deal with it, but in a more rational type of way. However, sometimes we have to deal with the other person like they are a small child, for example, when we have a two or three-year-old child and we say, “It’s time to go to bed,” and the child says, “I hate you, I hate you.” This is a projection, obviously, but do we take it seriously and believe, “Oooh! They hate me?” We just say, “It’s time to go to bed.” 

Sometimes it’s not the time to discuss something further with the person if they are really upset; we need to wait until the next day. In such situations, we say, “Look, it’s a very emotionally volatile, strong moment now. Maybe this is not the best time to discuss it. Let’s wait until tomorrow.” In that sense, we put the baby to sleep and discuss it when the person is more calmed down.

If, through the understanding of voidness, the “I” collapses, then who understands voidness?

It is not true that the “I” is collapsing. What is collapsing is the exaggeration of how the “I” exists.

So is there an intrinsic existence of an “I”?

Now we have a problem of technical terminology, so I am not quite sure what you mean by “intrinsic existence of an ‘I.’” However, if it’s a belief in an impossible way of existence for an “I,” then when that is gone, we are left with what is known as the “conventional me.” I am sitting here, I’m talking to you, and you are asking a question and that’s still happening. I am listening to you; it’s not that somebody else is listening to you or nobody is listening to you. And you’re asking a question, and not somebody else or no one.

If the problem is the attachment to the “I,” and I believe in this conventional “I,” then I could become attached to the conventional “I” again.

Who is getting attached to the conventional “I”? Is it somebody else? Are there two people here: “me” and the conventional “I?”

If there is “I,” then I might be afraid of dying.

You see, what I was trying to point out a little bit in this introductory talk is that it is very, very important to study, to get instruction, to think a great deal, and to make ourselves open enough to be able to understand what really is the projection, what is it that is impossible, and what is it that is possible? If we don’t have a very precise, clear idea of what’s possible and what’s impossible, then the danger is that we negate either too much or too little.

We are dealing with very, very subtle issues. Just sitting here and trying to recognize our projections ourselves with no guidance, maybe we’ll recognize them correctly. However, the chances are that we are going to sit here for a very long time and not identify them correctly or go deeply enough. Nevertheless, if we correctly recognize the conventional “I,” and how it actually exists, and cut off all the “fat” of the exaggeration of what doesn’t exist, what’s impossible, then there is no reason to feel afraid of death. There is no reason to be attached to anything. The problem is gone. The cause of the problem is gone, and therefore the problem is gone. If we are still afraid of death, then we haven’t understood voidness deeply enough.

Then that’s why I am here.

Perfect, that means that you’re afraid of death. That’s a very serious fear that most people have, and one that is very important to deal with. It is very good to face that problem and try to deal with it because there are a lot of people who deny death and don’t want to think about it, and don’t want to deal with it, and then they are very terrified at the end of their life.

You say negative projections could be transformed into positive projections. But then, anyway there are projections. Is it not better then, to focus on intention and motivation?

Intention and motivation are important regardless of what method we use to deal with a problem. Intention and motivation are what we start with for dealing with a problem, but then we have to apply a method. We could come across somebody who has had an accident and they have fallen down on the street. We could have the motivation of compassion and the intention to help them, but that is not enough. We could also have the projection and attitude that, “This is too horrible and I can’t deal with this, and all the blood, it’s so awful,” and like that, we completely freak out. Although we want to help, we can’t because we get too emotionally upset and frightened.

Nonetheless, if we change our projection, “What if this were me that was lying there? I would certainly want somebody to help me, and not just freak out,” or “If this were my child, it wouldn’t matter how horrible it looked, I would do something.” However, as I said, that is not the deepest solution. The best is not to project anything. “I have the motivation, I have the intention, and then I just deal with it. I see what I am capable of doing, what am I not capable of doing, and maybe the best way I can help is to call a doctor.”

Let’s end here with a dedication. Dedication is very important at the end. The example that I often use is with a computer, as we are familiar with computers. We type a document and then we want to save it. The same thing is with building up some positive force. If we don’t do anything special, the default setting is that whatever understanding or positive force that has come from our discussion this evening will go into the “samsara” folder, improving samsara. That’s where it will automatically go if we don’t do anything at the end with no dedication.

What we want to do is have that positive force not go into the “samsara” folder. We want to press the button, with the dedication, and save it into the “enlightenment” folder: “May this act as a cause for reaching enlightenment.” But it will only do that if we dedicate the positive force like that. If not, it is just going to go into making, say, having a nice, interesting conversation about this with somebody over coffee. It makes a nice samsara, but it doesn’t lead to liberation or enlightenment. Dedication is to put the positive force in the “enlightenment” folder and save it there.

Our computer, however, doesn’t work by just a voice command; we can’t just recite the words, “May it act as a cause to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.” We have to actually press the button. So, we have to actually internally, very strongly, intend and wish that it goes toward enlightenment. There needs to be some movement of our energy; it’s not just, “blah, blah, blah,” only words. With that in mind, “whatever positive force…” 

This is, by the way, the way that I translate “merit.” “Merit” sounds like, in the scouts, we get a badge at the end, if we have enough points. I don’t like the word “merit,” but use instead “positive force.” “Whatever positive force and understanding has come from this discussion, may it act as a cause to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.”