Review
We are going through these stages of the path for expanding our spiritual motivation, which refers to the goal that we are aiming for and what is driving us to reach that goal.
The initial level goal is to continue to have better rebirths, more specifically precious human rebirths. We are aiming for that because we are really quite afraid of being reborn in one of the worst ones – for instance, as a goldfish in a bowl. If we are reborn as a goldfish in a bowl, there is not terribly much that we can do to improve the quality of our lives. It would really be quite awful.
The second goal is to get liberation from uncontrollably recurring rebirth altogether. We are driven to aim for that because we are completely disgusted with all the different types of suffering that we would have in any type of rebirth state. We want to get rid of all of that.
The third goal is to reach the enlightened state of a Buddha. We are driven to aim for that by love and compassion and the wish to benefit everybody and by the realization that the only way that we would be able to benefit everybody is to become Buddhas ourselves.
Initial Scope
We completed the discussion of the initial level, which concerns the precious human rebirth – understanding what it is, appreciating the freedom that we have from worse states, and understanding that it is only a temporary situation. It’s going to end when we die. Death will come for sure, there is no certainty as to when that will happen, and nothing is going to be of help except the positive habits that we have built up on our mental continuums, namely, having taken preventive measures to prevent a downfall in the future.
We looked at the terrible rebirths that we could have. We saw the suffering of the hell states, the clutching ghosts, and the animals, the creeping creatures. We certainly don’t want that. But we see that there is way out. The way out is to go in the safe direction of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha (refuge), namely, working to achieve a true stopping of the causes of these sufferings and the sufferings themselves. The Buddhas are those on whose continuums that stopping exists in full, and Arya Sangha are those on whose continuums that stopping exists in part. In order to attain this first goal of better rebirths, we need to avoid destructive behavior. Destructive behavior is the cause of worse rebirths, so we looked at all the variables that are involved with karma and behavioral cause and effect.
Intermediate Scope
Then, with the intermediate scope, aiming for liberation from uncontrollably rebirth all together, we looked at the specific sufferings of the better states of rebirth, those of the humans, the demi-gods or asuras, and the gods. We also looked at the sufferings of samsara in general. The better states of rebirth are pretty awful too, even though they might look enticing, because the happiness in those realms is only a temporary pleasure. Our ordinary happiness is not something that ever fully satisfies; it never lasts. And if we have too much of it, it turns into suffering, like when we eat too much of our favorite food.
Then we went into the discussion of the cause of sufferings of samsara in general, which are the sufferings experienced in all the various rebirth states. We saw that the cause was the disturbing emotions. Disturbing emotions are what activate karma, whether it’s the karma to have a worse rebirth or better rebirth. Of course, not all positive karma is activated by negative karma. However, unawareness, the unawareness of reality, will always activate positive karma.
We went through the root disturbing emotions. Just to list them quickly, there’s desire or attachment, anger or hostility, arrogance or pride, unawareness of cause and effect or of reality, and indecisiveness wavering. Then we looked at the disturbing outlooks. There are five of them. The most important one is a deluded outlook toward a transitory network with which we latch onto some aspect of our network of aggregates – body, mind, emotions, feelings, what we perceive, and so on – as a basis on which to project an accompanying conceptual framework, specifically that of “me” or “mine.” So, we’re always thinking in terms of “me” or “mine.” That’s a big problem. That activates positive karma as well as negative karma.
Disbelieving a Fact – 3 Forms
Then we started our discussion of the secondary disturbing emotions. We’ve gone through 14 of them. Now, we are up to number 15, disbelieving a fact. To quote the text:
- Disbelieving a fact is part naivety and has three forms that are the contrary of the three forms of believing a fact to be true: (1) disbelieving a fact that is based on reason, (2) disbelieving a fact, such as the Three Jewels of Refuge, such that it causes our minds to become muddied with disturbing emotions and attitudes and to become unhappy, and (3) disbelieving a fact, such as the possibility to attain liberation, such that we have no interest in it and no aspiration to attain it.
I think that in the West, we tend to view disbelieving something more in terms of denial, being in a state of denial. When we don’t believe something, we deny it; we don’t want to acknowledge that it’s true. That’s one aspect. We could also just not be convinced that something is true. But not being convinced, I think, is indecisive wavering: we are considering the truth of something, but we are not convinced. Here, we have made up our minds: we don’t believe it.
Disbelieving a Fact That Is Based on Reason
What would be an example of the first one, disbelieving a fact that is based on reason?
Participant: Not believing that there is a fire behind the hill.
Dr. Berzin: You mean that where there is smoke, there is fire. We smell smoke in the house, but we don’t believe that there is a fire; we don’t take it seriously. Or we have a pain in our chest or our arm, and we don’t believe that we are having a heart attack. So, we are in denial of that. Would these be examples? The test comes out that we are HIV positive or that we have cancer, but we don’t want to believe it. We are in denial. Why would we be in denial? Why would we not believe it?
Participant: It doesn’t fit our expectations.
Dr. Berzin: So, it’s a surprise. What else? We don’t want it to be true.
Participant: In the case of serious things that might happen, like having cancer, there are psychological phases one goes through. One of those phases is denial.
Dr. Berzin: Is that considered a healthy phase? Is it a normal phase?
Participant: It’s from Kubler Ross.
Dr. Berzin: This is what most people experience, but it doesn’t mean that it’s healthy.
Participant: Kubler Ross doesn’t say that it has to happen.
Dr. Berzin: But it frequently happens.
Participant: Or that it should last a long time.
Dr. Berzin: That’s not the point. The point is whether or not this is a disturbing emotion, a disturbing state of mind. It is a disturbing state of mind because we don’t take action. We don’t take action in terms of dealing with what’s happened.
Participant: It depends on whether you look at it from a Buddhist or a psychological point of view.
Dr. Berzin: We are looking from the point of view of how to avoid suffering.
There are many emotions that are involved. This gets into the second type, disbelieving a fact that causes our minds to be emotionally upset. I think that fear is involved in the second type. We don’t want to accept that something is true because we’re afraid of the truth – that we have cancer, for example – and we don’t want to deal with it. We’re in a state of denial.
From an ideal, Buddhist point of view, when we hear the news, we say, “OK, now what do I do?” We find a way to deal with it. Same thing when we go to the airport and find that our flight has been canceled or delayed for five hours. A lot of people say, “I can’t believe that it’s been canceled!” Is that just a saying? Or does it mean that they really can’t believe it?
Participant: It’s just a saying.
Participant 2: It’s also a feeling.
Dr. Berzin: What kind of feeling? When we say it like that, there’s certainly an emotional tone behind it.
Participant: Why did this happen to me?
Participant 2: It’s a way to deal with the situation. It relieves a bit of tension.
Dr. Berzin: But what about, “I can’t believe it,” or “I don’t want to believe it”? I have an example. I was catching a plane from Delhi to return to Germany. Fortunately, I checked the flight on the internet at the home of my friends in Delhi. The plane was supposed to be at two o’clock in the morning, but it was delayed until eleven o’clock the next morning. So, I stayed at home with my friends and didn’t go to the airport. But there were a tremendous number of people with connecting flights to Delhi who had arrived at the airport at about nine o’clock at night or close to the time when the flight was due to leave. They didn’t have the money to stay in a hotel. Their luggage had been checked through in any case. So, they’re sitting there, and even though they know the plane won’t come until eleven o’clock the next morning, they still say, “I don’t believe this is happening!” It’s a strange state of mind, isn’t it? We don’t want to believe it.
Participant: Before, you felt safe with your plans, and then due to everything changing, you have to sit there.
Dr. Berzin: So again, it’s worrying about a “me.”
Participant: What about when we hear of an assassination?
Dr. Berzin: I was alive when Kennedy was assassinated. I was at university. People just couldn’t believe that he had been killed, even though the news had been announced and it was on the television.
Participant: It’s like the classic Kubler Ross phase of denial that’s connected to the death of someone.
Dr. Berzin: When I heard that Serkong Rinpoche died, I found it hard to believe. I had to go up to his household and check. Even then, it was hard to accept. We don’t want to accept it, so we deny it. The question is, even though it might be a typical psychological response, is it the best response?
Participant: I think it has to do with wanting to avoid the pain for as long as we can.
Dr. Berzin: But does that work? No. It’s a very uneasy state of mind, isn’t it?
Participant: Maybe it is healthy because it reduces the stress. We put off dealing with the reality for a while and then deal with it later.
Dr. Berzin: Well, I don’t know. Putting it off – that’s procrastination.
Participant: I think maybe it’s physically very helpful not to go into shock.
Dr. Berzin: It’s physically helpful not to go into shock, to be in denial? I don’t know. How do we avoid shock? Shock is surprise.
Participant: It’s instinctive behavior to just sort of go into a daze.
Participant 2: It might not be appropriate to deal with it because of where we are or what we are doing.
Dr. Berzin: Well, that’s an interesting thing. Let’s say we are busy doing something very delicate or doing some very important work when we hear bad news. We can’t just stop in the middle.
Participant: Like when you are doing brain surgery.
Dr. Berzin: Like when we are doing brain surgery and, suddenly, we hear that Kennedy has been assassinated. But is that really denial? Do we have to deny it? Can we just accept it? But what we are putting off is the state of mourning, the sadness.
Participant: Different cultures deal differently with death.
Dr. Berzin: Right.
But let’s say our child falls down the stairs. “I can’t believe that you fell down the stairs. How could you have done that?” We don’t want to be in denial there.
Participant: I think nobody would. I think that’s not the situation.
Dr. Berzin: So, what’s the difference between that situation and somebody dying?
Participant: I think if immediate action is needed, everybody will act. In other cases, we have a little time and space to process the terrible news.
Dr. Berzin: But can we take that time to digest the news without denying or disbelieving the fact of it? We can believe it and still have the time in which we digest it in terms of dealing with “what are the consequences?” and “what do I do now?”
Participant: I’d prefer to choose examples that are not quite as heavy.
Dr. Berzin: OK, please suggest one.
Participant: I have one that is more neutral. When the Berlin Wall was falling, I didn’t hear the news. I passed by the newspaper stand in the morning, and there in big letters was the headline, “The Wall Fell Down.” I couldn’t believe it. It was really a shock. I thought, “That is not possible!” It wasn’t a personal tragedy, but I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t.
Dr. Berzin: My point is that this is in a list of secondary disturbing emotions, disturbing states of mind. What we have to identify or try to find out is whether this a disturbing state of mind.
Participant: I have another example of when you are denying the effect. Sometimes I am in a hurry to leave home to go to work or to meet someone, and yet I still want to do something, like brush my teeth or whatever. I look at the time and see that I actually have three minutes before I should leave home. But then I just deny that fact and do this one thing that I want to do, even though I know that it will take more time.
Dr. Berzin: That’s a good example. Or we can’t believe that our one-hour appointment with somebody is up, but it is a fact that the hour is up.
Another example is this whole thing that’s been in the news about people not believing that Obama was born in the United States. Finally, he produced his birth certificate. But people still won’t believe it, even though they see it. But that’s politically motivated. We don’t want to believe what the other person says. But is this a disturbing state of mind? That is the issue: is it a cause of suffering?
Participant: In the case of the Berlin Wall, it might have been a joke. So, it was correct to check.
Dr. Berzin: Sure, we want to get corroborating evidence. We want to check that something is true. That’s fine; that’s OK.
Participant: But in the other case about just having three minutes to leave home…
Dr. Berzin: Right, “I can’t believe that it’s gotten so late. We were talking blah, blah, blah, and we can’t believe that it’s three o’clock in the morning already.”
The point is that any state of mind that is not in accord with reality is a cause of suffering because we are not dealing with fact. It causes us to lose self-control. In other words, we lose the ability to discriminate what needs to be done. Because we put it off, we don’t believe what the situation is; therefore, we don’t deal with it.
I have a great example. We are writing something on the computer, and we accidentally press the wrong button and lose three hours of work. It gets deleted. We don’t want to believe it. We don’t believe this has happened. What we should do is to write it again immediately, while it is still fresh in our minds.
Participant: Usually, it turns out to be better than what you wrote the first time.
Dr. Berzin: That’s true. I was writing the sensitivity book, and I lost a whole chapter. I had to write it again. Another example: our computer crashes, and we hadn’t saved any of our data to a hard disc for three months. We lose three months of work.
[Participant comment]
Dr. Berzin: Right, if we have worked on ourselves, developed ourselves, we have developed the strength so that when we hear that somebody close to us has died, we immediately accept the reality of it and have the strength to be able to deal with the sadness, the loss and so on. But we accept the reality of it.
Participant: Denying something because we are afraid to accept the truth of it maybe protects us from overreacting.
Dr. Berzin: Well, denial is a type of overreacting, isn’t it? It’s underreacting, which is the other extreme. I don’t know. We can also say that we don’t want to deal with it now. We accept the reality, but we can’t deal with it now; we’ll deal with it tomorrow.
Participant: That’s why I wanted to have examples that are less heavy.
Dr. Berzin: Like losing all of our data.
Participant: Yes. I don’t know enough about the psychological things of dealing with trauma, but I know enough to assume that the Western psychological and Buddhist points of view are pretty different.
Dr. Berzin: Let’s think about it.
[meditation]
I think the main drawback of disbelieving a fact, not accepting the truth of something that has happened, is that we basically put off dealing with it. That, I think, causes suffering and problems. The examples that are used here, disbelieving a fact such as cause and effect and these sorts of things, are not so much about the fact of an event having happened.
For instance, we are getting old and no longer able to do what we used to do when we were young, and we don’t want to believe that. How is that? So often, we make fools of ourselves. Or we hurt our backs trying to carry something that we could carry when we were 20 years younger. Or we try to party all night and then go to work the next day on two hours sleep like we could do when we were 22 but can no longer so easily do when we’re 45. These are examples, aren’t they?
Participant: Also, it starts to become a psychological problem if the denial persists.
Dr. Berzin: We are 60 years old, but we don’t believe that we look like a 60-year-old, and we think we can still attract a 25-year-old.
[Participant comment]
Dr. Berzin: Let’s not talk about the high society where the 60-year-old is a millionaire and the
25-year-old would like to inherit.
Participant: Death will be much more difficult if we can’t accept the little things.
Dr. Berzin: Or we can’t accept the fact that we’re sick and that we can’t do our exercises or this or that today. We don’t want to accept it.
Participant: It can lead to overexertion.
Dr. Berzin: We don’t believe the fact that we’re overtired or that we’re overstressed, and we continue pushing ourselves until we have burned out. These are examples, aren’t they?
Participant: We are in a relationship with somebody who has a negative trait, a negative habit, and we don’t want to believe that they are like that
Dr. Berzin: That’s a perfect example.
Participant: Sometimes, the father doesn’t want the children to grow up.
Dr. Berzin: Or let’s say a child is gay, and the parents don’t want to believe that; they don’t want to accept that. Or a woman meets a gay man, or a man meets a gay woman. They don’t want to believe that the other person is gay, and they try to convert them, thinking that they will somehow change.
These are common examples. So, we have the first type, disbelieving a fact that’s based on reason.
Disbelieving a Fact Such That It Causes Disturbing Emotions & Unhappiness to Arise
The second type is disbelieving a fact such that it causes our minds to become muddied with disturbing emotions and attitudes and to become unhappy.
Participant: It makes you unhappy in the long term.
Dr. Berzin: I don’t know. Let’s analyze. We just read the definition. Short-term or long-term unhappiness? Let’s try to find an example.
Participant: We don’t accept the fact that we are going to die.
Dr. Berzin: That’s a fact: we are going to die. A lot of people are in denial of that, so they don’t make a will, or they don’t make cemetery arrangements and things like that. What’s involved with that? We are afraid of death, so we don’t want to face it.
Participant: So, my fear is the cause of the denial. The denial doesn’t make the fear.
Dr. Berzin: Let’s examine that.
Participant 1: The fear makes the denial.
Participant 2: Yes.
Participant 1: But the denial makes the mind uneasy. So, one doesn’t have to have fear. Fear is not the 100% reason. It could be anything.
Dr. Berzin: The more that we are in denial, the more we don’t deal with our fear. So, fear could be a cause. We are afraid of death, so we deny the fact of it. But denying it doesn’t get rid of the fear. It actually just reinforces it and makes the fear worse and worse because we are not dealing with death.
Participant: It doesn’t have to be fear; it could be something completely different. For example, one does not believe in rebirth, so one denies that rebirth exists. There’s no fear there. It’s actually the opposite. One feels like, “Oh, I don’t have to believe in these things.”
Dr. Berzin: This is a good example. So, what will that disbelief cause us to do? It will cause us to act in all sorts of destructive ways and so on because we don’t deal with the disturbing emotions and because we think that there won’t be any consequences. That’s an example.
Or we are in a relationship with someone, and they break up with us. They say, “I never want to see you again.” We are in denial of that. We don’t want to believe it, which makes us want the person even more. Rather than accepting it and getting on with our lives, we keep on calling and trying to get back together, which just makes the whole situation worse. Is that’s an example?
Participant: It makes me unhappier and makes me act stupidly.
Dr. Berzin: It causes us to lose self-control and to act stupidly because we don’t want to believe that it’s over.
Now think of an example in yourself. How about Mr. Science here (speaking to a participant)? You are doing an experiment; you are working on a theory. The evidence is showing that your theory is wrong, that the experiment didn’t work, but you don’t want to believe it. So, you just get more and more unhappy and angry because you think, “How could I have been wrong?!” Is that an example?
Participant: That’s another very difficult thing that I think everybody who has done research has experienced. It’s called “confirmation bias,” which is that you deny any evidence that tells you your theory is wrong. You only accept things that confirm your theory.
Dr. Berzin: So, when you see evidence that disproves it, not only do you discount it and not believe it, you also get angry and unhappy.
Participant: There are people who disbelieve that it was because of a terrorist plot that the planes flew into the Twin Towers in New York. They believe that it was caused by the government. So, they have paranoia.
Dr. Berzin: But this is a different example. Your example isn’t one of simply disbelieving: it’s believing something that’s untrue. That’s a further thing. Well, believing something that’s untrue could make you… Ignorance is bliss: “I think I am going to live forever.” I don’t know. These are interesting things. The Buddhist point of view is that when we hear something, we immediately accept the reality of it, and “Now what? How am I going to deal with it?”
Participant: Your first response could be, “I am sad about it.”
Dr. Berzin: Well, no. “I am sad about it” would accompany dealing with it. It’s not that we would have to have a pause of doing nothing and feeling sad. We hear the news that something was canceled or whatever, and “OK, now what? Now, what do I do?” The train is not coming, so now what do we do?
Participant: But sometimes it’s difficult to really know what the effect is going to be, to really know that rebirth exists, to really know that the Twin Towers were not shot down by the government.
Dr. Berzin: Well, this is the thing. This gets into indecisive wavering and back to the whole discussion of how we come to a decisive conclusion. Why do we believe something? Just because the news says it? Is that a reliable source of information? That gets into a different issue. But that death will come for sure, that we are getting older – these are facts. Every day we’re getting closer to death. It’s a fact. There is no denying it, even though we might not want to accept that.
Disbelieving a Fact Such That One Develops No Interest in It
Let’s look at the third one. The third type is disbelieving a fact such as the existence of the possibility for us to attain liberation, and thus we have no interest in it and no aspiration to attain it.
“I don’t believe that I can succeed.” “I don’t believe that I am going to find a job, so I am not even going to try to find one.” We don’t have to think of attaining liberation, which is a very difficult thing to actually become convinced of. This is the thing that I am always saying, which is that if we don’t really believe it… You see, this is the thing: We are not convinced that liberation is possible, but rather than becoming convinced, we don’t even consider whether it is possible or not. We don’t really take the question seriously. We just think, “Well, they say it’s possible, but I haven’t really thought it out.” If we haven’t really thought it out and become convinced, it’s very difficult to have a strong, healthy motivation, a sustainable motivation.
But let’s use an easier example like, “I don’t believe I’ll ever find a job, so I am not even going to try.” “I don’t believe that I’ll ever succeed.” “I don’t believe that I’ll ever learn algebra or learn this subject at school, so I am not even going to try.” That’s quite typical, isn’t it? “I don’t believe that I can understand voidness or understand these teachings; they’re too complicated.” So, we don’t even try; we give up. How often do we do that?
[meditation]
Participant: I am almost 50 years old. I think to myself that I am too old to study this or that, that I am too old to remember and learn things. But then I realized that I can become very involved in television or reading a novel and that I am perfectly able to remember.
Dr. Berzin: That’s a very typical thing. We think that we are too old to do this or that, like “I’m too old to party and to go to work after only two hours of sleep,” which may be a fact. Also, “I am too old to change my habits.” I think that’s more common. “I am too old to change my habits. This is the way that I am.” As we get older, our short-term memory weakens, and it’s more difficult to change. But from a Buddhist point of view, we can always change our habits. That’s a good one to reflect on in terms of ourselves. Do we have that attitude? Are we talking about getting rid of destructive habits?
[meditation]
I was thinking of another example: “I don’t want to believe that the train is not coming.” It makes us unhappy in terms of the second variant. We get upset.
OK, all of these are really dealing with how we deal with reality. This has different levels, of course. There is dealing with conventional reality, disbelieving certain things about conventional reality, like “You are not coming tonight. You said you were going to come or at least to call me, and now you’re not.” We really don’t want to accept that.
Then, there is dealing with deepest reality, voidness. Take the example of guilt. For instance, we say something to somebody, and they get very, very upset. Let’s say that they even get sick because of it. We think, “I am the cause of that,” and we get very, very upset. We feel guilty, thinking, “I caused this person to get sick.”
Let’s say we break up a relationship, and the other person gets into a deep, deep depression and maybe even commits suicide. We feel guilty. If we analyze the situation, we can see that there were many, many causes for the person to get into a depression or to commit suicide. It wasn’t only because of the break-up. That was just one factor. Maybe it triggered it, but it was only one factor. The person’s personal history, previous life history, psychological profile, what might have been going on in other aspects of their life, and all sorts of other things were involved for them getting this depression. There is also a physical component to getting this depression. So, if we analyze, we can see that thinking that we are the only cause of it and that, therefore, we’re guilty doesn’t refer to anything real. That is grasping onto a solid “me” and so on. But that’s hard to really believe. We still feel guilty. So, this is a very delicate situation. We can go through all the logic of the voidness analysis. It’s very, very logical. It makes sense and is very sound. And yet it’s hard to really accept and not to feel guilty. We go through the whole line of reasoning, and at the end, nothing much happens. “Do I really believe this?”
Participant: That’s the beginning: you start to realize it intellectually.
Alex: You start to realize it intellectually, and then it gets emotional at the deeper level.
Discussion
What Does It Mean to Believe? Is an Intellectual Understanding Enough?
What does it mean to understand something intellectually? This is a very difficult question. We tend to categorize things that way, as intellectual understanding or intuitive understanding. Now translate that into Buddhist terminology. What is an intellectual understanding? Is it an understanding based on merely knowing the correct words?
Participant: Based on logic.
Dr. Berzin: Well, why does intellectual understanding based on logic usually not have a very good connotation.
Participant: It’s just based on reasoning.
Dr. Berzin: Why would reasoning not be enough?
Participant: It would be enough if it would sink in.
Dr. Berzin: What does it mean to sink in?
Participant: To get used to it.
Dr. Berzin: Habituation, meditation – we haven’t built up the habit. Would building up the habit make a difference emotionally? It should, definitely.
Participant: Also, there is a difference between emotional and intellectual.
Dr. Berzin: That’s what I am trying to say. What constitutes the difference? If we just have an intellectual understanding, does that mean that we don’t really believe it?
Participant: We can believe it, but somehow the reasoning must affect our emotions. Otherwise, it’s just in our heads.
Dr. Berzin: But what is reasoning?
Participant: I don’t know about the Tibetan word, but at least the Indian word citta doesn’t differentiate between mind and emotion.
Dr. Berzin: In both Sanskrit and Tibetan, there is no difference in terms of mind and emotion, no difference between a rational side and an emotional side. But they say that we can go through a line of reasoning and, at the end, develop compassion.
Participant: I might go through a line of reasoning and just have an intellectual understanding, thinking, “Well, it would be good to have compassion.” Or I might go through a line of reasoning, and something happens with my emotions.
Dr. Berzin: It might be good to go through a line of reasoning and to think that it would be good to have compassion, but you don’t feel anything. Does that mean you don’t believe it? If it affects our emotions… Well, what does it mean to believe something?
Participant: One believes it, even if it is just intellectual.
Dr. Berzin: “Intellectual,” meaning what? That it has sunk in? These are very difficult issues, particularly when we are trying to develop spiritually. As His Holiness always says, compassion based on reason is far more stable than compassion based on attachment.
Participant: This is also the difference between a scientist or somebody who is teaching Buddhism but who isn’t really into it and a teacher who is living it, really taking it to heart.
Dr. Berzin: What do you mean?
Participant: You go through a line of reasoning, and you believe it, but you don’t live it.
Participant 2: With voidness, for example.
Dr. Berzin: You look at voidness and at these lines of reasoning, and you think, “Yes, this makes sense, but….” I think the problem here is that we haven’t looked at the consequences of it, of voidness. For instance, our guilt is totally unfounded. Or being defensive in a relationship – well, there is nothing to be defensive about. What is it that we’re trying to defend? A little “me” that’s sitting in our heads?
Participant: Take the example that everybody is going to die, so am I.
Dr. Berzin: Everybody is going to die. Everybody who had lived before has died. We’re alive; therefore, we will die.
Participant: I know that in my head, but if I were to feel it in my gut, I might live a bit differently.
Dr. Berzin: We know it in our heads that death could come at any time. That’s even better: death could come at any time.
Participant: Everybody would agree.
Dr. Berzin: But do we really believe it? I would say that it’s a true statement, but not for me. I could die any moment, but not now.
Participant: Even if I accept that it will also happen to me, it still does not necessarily make an impact.
Dr. Berzin: It doesn’t necessarily have the kind of impact that will change our behavior. So, this issue: what does it means to really believe something? That’s a really difficult thing to identify.
As I say, if we really believed it, it should get rid of or diminish our disturbing emotions. If we disbelieved it, it should increase our disturbing emotions. If we believed it, we would be happy; it wouldn’t cause unhappiness. Death can come at any time, relax. That’s the old Zen koan. We have accepted it, so we’re at peace with it. But if we don’t accept it, we’re not at peace with it. So, denial is a state of not being at peace with reality. What do you think?
Participant: When it becomes unlabored, we don’t have to go through a line of reasoning. We just have it.
Dr. Berzin: Is it only at that point that we really believe it?
Participant: It sounded like that in these examples.
Dr. Berzin: From what you are saying, it sounded like that. But I don’t think that’s the case. Anyway, it is not an easy issue at all to believe in the truth of a fact and to become convinced of it. I think we see that we often – in fact, all the time. We are aware of reality. But even if we go through a line of reasoning to demonstrate what reality is, whether we are talking about conventional reality or deepest reality, we don’t really want to believe it. And that is a disturbing state of mind that prevents liberation. We’re never going to get liberated from suffering and samsara if we don’t accept the reality of it, the fact of it, and deal with it.
Let’s just have a final moment of reflection on that, and then we’ll end.
[meditation]
Another example is the fact that we’re overweight and that we have to lose weight. That’s something that’s very difficult for a lot of people to accept. They might accept the reality of it but not act on it. This will bring us to the disturbing emotion for our next session, which is laziness.
Participant: And then there are people who aren’t actually overweight, but who believe that they are, so they starve themselves.
Dr. Berzin: You are talking about anorexia? Yes, that’s also not accepting reality, disbelieving fact. It’s disturbing; it makes us upset and increases our disturbing emotions.
[meditation]
The more we think about it, the more examples come up. For instance, “In order to pass this course at school, I am going to have to stop partying and drinking. I am going to have to study every night.” Well, a lot of people don’t want to believe that and continue partying and so on, don’t they? That’s disbelieving a fact, so we don’t act on it.