LTF 24: Avoiding Distraction by the 8 Worldly Concerns

We start with Verse 27:

[27] (So,) for the sake of seeing the deepest (truth), make it a habit to pay attention to phenomena correctly. No other preventive measure exists at all that has such good qualities as that.

This is referring to the antidote to distraction. The way in which the outline is constructed here, it organizes avoiding distractions by these eight transitory things by discussing, first, the antidote and, then, the instructions on specifically what to give up. 

Here, Nagarjuna says that to see the deepest truth, we need to make it a habit – namely, by meditating – to pay attention to phenomena correctly. That means to pay attention to phenomena in terms of things not having truly established existence, not having any essence at all. “No other preventive measure exists at all” – in other words, no other Dharmic teaching –“has such good qualities as that.” This is referring to voidness. We have many verses from Shantideva that follow on this idea. Looking at this text, we can very easily notice what a strong influence it had on Shantideva and how most of the points in this text are things that Shantideva elaborates on in Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior. So, here, Nagarjuna is saying that meditation on voidness is the best Dharmic measure, the best preventive measure for preventing suffering and all the various things that come with samsara and that nothing has such good qualities as that. 

Shantideva says in the ninth chapter, Verse 54:

Voidness is the opponent for the darkness of emotional and cognitive obscurations; (so) how can someone wishing for omniscience quickly not meditate on it?

He also speaks specifically about how the understanding of voidness is the actual opponent to getting upset or all excited about these eight transitory things in life. He says this very clearly toward the end of the ninth chapter in Verse 151: 

With all phenomena devoid in that way, what is there that would’ve been received; what is there that would’ve been taken away? Who is there who’ll become shown respect or contempt, and by whom? 

And he goes on:

What is there, from which there’s pleasure or pain? What is there, to be disliked or liked?

“Disliked or liked” is referring to hearing good or bad news. “What is there, from which” to gain “pleasure or pain?” – referring to things going well or things going poorly. So, he clearly indicates the eight transitory things in life and shows the way to overcome them

When we apply voidness in terms of gaining or losing things, he says, “What is there that would’ve been received?” So, we meditate on the voidness of the object that one could receive and also on the voidness of the person who could receive it. “What is there that would’ve been taken away?” – referring to losses. “Who is there who’ll become shown respect or contempt, and by whom?” – referring to praise and criticism. Who’s being praised, and who’s being criticized? If we realize that the conventional “me” is just imputed on the ever-changing moments of the aggregates, we see that there is no solid “me” that we can identify so strongly with, as in: “I have been praised. I have been criticized,” and so on. 

The same thing when thing go well or go poorly: “What is there, from which there’s pleasure or pain.” Again, we need to analyze and see, “Well, what actually is it made up of? What does it mean that things are going well?” It’s just various moments that are arising with many, many components to them that are ripening not only from our karma but also from the conditions of other people’s karma ripening. There is nothing solid about it, whether it is going well or not well.  And “what is there, to be disliked or liked,” which is referring to hearing good news or bad news, is the same type of thing. 

This is very, very important to keep in mind when things happen, like, for instance, when I recently had my laptop computer stolen. Obviously, that situation is a good candidate for one of the worldly dharmas to arise. But there’s no point in being upset. Situations arise dependently on various karmic things. The whole idea of it being my computer, my thing – that also is something that arises dependently. Things don’t exist from their own sides in that way. Also, when things arise and happen dependently on karma and conditions, then a new situation that could remedy the situation can also arise, based on karma and circumstances. So, there’s no reason to get upset and no reason to get excited. 

Atisha, in The Bodhisattva Garland of Gems, also gives a similar type of idea here. He says in Verse 16:

Whenever an object of attachment or hostility arises in any situation, let me regard it like an illusion or a projection; whenever I hear unpleasant words, let me regard them like an echo.

So, this is the same idea. When we hear good news or bad news, regard it as an echo. When something that we are attached to or something that we are adverse to arises, whether it’s praise or material things that we’re attached to or something that we don’t want, like criticism, loss, and so on, regard it like an illusion or a projection. It only appears to be some solidly existent situation – that is a disaster and so on. That’s just its appearance; it’s not sitting there like some monster. This is the point of what the actual opponent is, the actual antidote, to these eight transitory things in life. Obviously, if we are very upset by them – whether very excited or very depressed – that is going to be an enormous distraction when trying to gain concentration. Any questions or comments on that?

Most of you have been here for quite a few years, and we had a lot of discussion on voidness. Have you been able to actually apply it to situations where these eight transitory things come up? Do you find that you get as easily upset or excited as you did in the past? Think about it. Anyone? What’s your experience been? Like when you miss a train or get a train to the wrong place or something like that – do you get very, very upset or do you just deal with the situation? 

Participant: I do apply this. I do think about this sometimes. For example, when I lose an object that I like, it’s like, “OK, It’s not so solid.” I don’t feel I lost something essential. Yet, I recognize that when I am very attached to something, it’s much harder to do – for example, with a person. But, I also try to apply this and think about why I feel this attraction or these attachments and how it depends on so many factors. It’s really not something very solid coming from the side of the other person. I think about the other things that it depends on and it becomes something lighter.

Dr. Berzin: Well, that’s good. 

What I find is that, having thought a lot about voidness and so on, in actual situations, getting terribly excited or terribly upset doesn’t even happen. It’s not even a matter of having, at that time, to actually apply it. If I do need to apply it, it’s just a matter of remembering it. That, I think, is the direction that it’s going in – that in the beginning you have to apply it. However, once you’re feeling a very strong disturbing emotion, it’s much more difficult to dissolve it. What you really want to do with the Dharma is to use it as a preventative measure, which is how I translate the word “Dharma.” “Preventive measure” comes from the etymology of the word “Dharma.” It’s what holds you back from suffering. So, the Dharma prevents suffering; it’s a preventive measure. It’s something that you do that you are so familiar with that it prevents you from getting upset. 

Participant: You gave a nice example at the beginning of somebody missing their train. I notice how some people get completely upset by that. Their reaction is very disproportionate. It shows that these people are seeing it as something very, very bad, when it’s actually just a temporary situation.

Dr. Berzin: Right. 

Participant: Sometimes, it’s probably not that some people are able to meditate on voidness. It’s just that if you’ve missed the train a hundred times, in the end, you are more relaxed about it – tranquilo. So, it’s not always that when you are tranquilo, you understand voidness or that you have already meditated on it. You get older, and you get more used to the fact that things break. You just don’t get upset if the sandcastle collapses. So, it’s not always a sign of deep understanding of how things are.

Dr. Berzin: It’s very true that we could not become upset when things happen, like missing a train. And not being upset doesn’t mean that we have any understanding of voidness. It could be for many other reasons – that we just don’t care, or that it’s not so important, or that we are just very familiar with things like that happening in life. 

However, I think all of that is based on not taking the situation so solidly. It might not be a terribly profound understanding of voidness, but I think it’s going in that direction because it’s not making a big deal out of the thing. When you are making a big deal out of something, you are giving it truly established existence. But as it says here, the actual opponent, the deepest opponent, is the understanding of voidness. There are many opponents that one can use that are less strong, and we’ll see that a little bit later in this text. 

Shantideva says quite clearly that when we are about to get very excited or very depressed or anything like that to remain like a block of wood. There is also that method of just realizing that this is not a very good trip to go on – getting so upset – and just stopping yourself from doing that by using self-discipline. That, also, is a temporary way of dealing with the situation. “This is just going to get me more upset. It’s not going to make the train come back and pick me up. So, what’s the point?” 

I think that one aspect of understanding voidness is accepting the reality of what has happened. That is not always so easy to do. When you lose something, particularly when you lose a person – let’s say, they have been killed in a war or in a car accident – to accept the reality of that is not very easy at all. That’s especially so when it’s your child or something like that. 

One always starts to ask the question: does this mean that when you have equanimity in these situations, you don’t feel happy, and you don’t feel unhappy? I don’t think that is necessarily the case. It’s an interesting thing to analyze. A Buddha doesn’t feel our ordinary happiness or our ordinary unhappiness. A Buddha just has untainted, blissful awareness – whatever in the world that could possibly be.  It’s hard to imagine, but whatever it is, it’s not our ordinary happiness or unhappiness. 

But what about when we are still in this samsaric situation? I think that, here, we have to look a little bit more closely at the divisions of happiness and unhappiness. There is what is called “tainted” happiness and unhappiness and “untainted” happiness and unhappiness. Actually, the terms “tainted” and “untainted” are usually just used with happiness. They are not used so much with unhappiness. In any case, “tainted” means something that arises from and is accompanied by unawareness, or ignorance. If one doesn’t have much ignorance and grasping when experiencing happiness or unhappiness, then I think it’s not as – what shall we say? – disturbing. But then, I think that the level, the intensity, of the happiness and unhappiness is much less. When we’re really upset and really excited, the happiness and unhappiness is very dramatic, whereas, when we’re tending more towards equanimity, the happiness and unhappiness are mellower.

Participant: Once I was reading a book, and this guy also said that if you realize emptiness, you still feel something, still have feelings. He said that he thinks or  believes – or maybe it’s his experience – that you have less fear than before. There is still unhappiness and also anger or even sadness. The difference is just that it’s more open; it’s not as solid. This is the way he was explaining it. Somehow, it made sense to me to say that because I have less fear. It just happens, but it’s OK, somehow. I don’t stick to it for years and years.”

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, this book was about how when one gets an understanding of voidness, there is no more fear or less fear. So, there is less fear when the emotions, the feelings, come up. So, they come more easily, and there’s no big deal about them. I think that is true, particularly in terms of feeling sad and crying. If you notice, His Holiness the Dalai Lama cries very easily. But he cries just for a few moments, and then it’s gone completely. Very often, particularly in men, there is a very strong block against crying, against expressing certain types of emotions, particularly in certain societies. That block would be certainly removed by having an understanding of voidness. 

But it is funny –  “same, same,” this whole idea of “same, same.” Like, if I get a big donation for the website or I lose my computer, it’s “same, same” in a sense. I find that I don’t get so unhappy, and I don’t get so happy. It’s just OK. That’s what has happened, and “What do we do now with that?”

You are right, Albrecht. Not getting upset and so on doesn’t have to come from an understanding of voidness. It can also come from understanding that whatever we’re experiencing is the ripening of karma. So, what’s the big deal about it? A lot of people could complain that this attitude takes away the colorfulness of life – that it’s much more colorful to get all excited and all depressed and so on. I’m sure people like my sister would say that. She is a very emotional person and gets really, really excited about things. So, I don’t know.

Participant: Maybe one could argue – like your example of His Holiness – that life is actually more colorful because the blocks are gone. You do cry and feel happy and everything else, so you are not restricting yourself by blocking certain feelings. This is more colorful.

Dr. Berzin: In a sense, you could say that when these blocks and fears are gone, for someone like His Holiness, life is more colorful. Also, I think that with someone like His Holiness, happiness is not dependent on what’s happening; it’s not dependent on whether the Chinese make some strong campaign against him or whether he wins the Noble Prize. His happiness and unhappiness are not based on that. It’s the happiness that comes from being free of the mental obscurations, basically. So, most of the time, His Holiness’s basic level of experience is happiness, especially when he meets another person, another being. He looks at that as, “Ah, here is another being with Buddha nature,” etc. He is the most delighted person in the world to meet anybody.

I think the main point of the eight transitory things is not so much the happiness or unhappiness. It has more to do with identifying a strong “me” and identifying that “me” with this strong thing that’s happening – gain or loss – and making it into a solid thing. And then on the basis of that, we have all the clinging, attachment, upset feelings, and so on. 

Anyway, that’s Verse 27.

(So,) for the sake of seeing the deepest (truth), make it a habit to pay attention to phenomena correctly. No other preventive measure exists at all that has such good qualities as that.

Then Verse 28 is on the advantages of applying the antidote – in other words, the advantages of understanding bodhichitta. Nagarjuna writes:

[28] Although a person may have a (good) caste, physique, and education, if he lacks discriminating awareness and ethical discipline, he’s unworthy of esteem. That being so, anyone having these two qualities is to be honored, even if he lacks the other good qualities.

Sakya Pandita, in his Excellent Sayings, repeats very often this same line. He says, “Even if someone has a good caste, physique, and youth, if he lacks good qualities,” referring to the good qualities of understanding voidness and ethical discipline, “he’s not beautiful.”

This is again referring to what the real good qualities are that make someone an outstanding person. It is not because they come from a good caste or family. It’s not that they have a good education. It’s not that they have a strong physique, or that they’re good-looking or anything like that. What makes them an outstanding person is that they have this discriminating awareness of voidness. This doesn’t just mean intelligence and that they learned a lot at the university; it’s that they have real discriminating awareness of voidness and ethical discipline. They’re an ethical person. So, if somebody has those qualities, then they are to be honored, even if they lack all other good qualities. 

It’s interesting, also, in terms of how we regard other people. What are the qualities that we consider good qualities, ones that we respect in other people? Mind you, there are further good qualities like love and compassion, but those are not mentioned here. But do we admire other people because they are good-looking? Because they have a lot of money? Because they have power? Or because they are more intelligent than we are? What is it that we regard as a good quality in somebody else? That is a very interesting thing to examine in ourselves and to see that, here, what Nagarjuna is saying is that the real good quality is an ethical person, someone having ethical discipline and discriminating awareness of voidness. In other words, it’s a person who sees reality. They may not have a full understanding of voidness, but they at least have something in that direction and are not always on a big ego trip and these sorts of things. 

So, let’s examine ourselves for a moment. What do you find that you admire in people? 

Participant: I admire others who do good things. For example, I was working on this project in Nepal, and the people who set it up, who started the whole thing, were working as workers, too. Half of the money needed for the project they had taken from their own pockets in order to start this kind of project, and that took them twenty-two years to do. When I met these people, I felt really deep, deep respect for what they were doing. It was really impressive.

Dr. Berzin: So: people who start very helpful social projects and who are willing to sacrifice their own money and so on to benefit others – this we find very praiseworthy and admirable. That’s based on ethical discipline. Remember, we have the ethical discipline to refrain from negative acts, to engage in positive things, and to help others – the three kinds of ethical discipline. So, that’s certainly ethical discipline. And discriminating awareness is not only the discriminating awareness of voidness but also the discriminating awareness of what is helpful and what is harmful. 

Participant: I talked to him, and  he said, “It’s very simple when the only thing I want to try to do is just to take away all the suffering.” Very simple language, but…

Dr. Berzin: All they want to do is take away the suffering of others. That’s compassion. So, it’s discriminating what is helpful and what is harmful because it’s not just the wish be helpful and to take away the suffering from others but also to actually do something. So, compassion has to be combined with discipline, the discipline to do something, and the discrimination to choose something that actually will be helpful. This is very admirable. 

What about somebody who is a fanatic in following laws and rules? Do you find that admirable? Is that a combination of discriminating awareness and ethical discipline? There are many people in this country who are like that.

Participant: They are at least refraining from negative behavior. There’s a German guitarist and singer who uses the first paragraph of Straßenverkehrsordnung [road traffic regulations] as an ethical guideline for his life. He says it gives rules for how to behave in a nice way – not to cross the road in the wrong places, at the wrong times, etc. I also know some other people who find most of their societal guidance in this.

Dr. Berzin: So, you find that it is an admirable thing when they follow all the laws and rules, assuming that the laws and rules are good laws and rules?

Participant: Yes. I mean, at least living in Köln, I find it comparatively very admirable, actually, when people stick to that. 

Dr. Berzin: So, living in the neighborhood that you live in, you are very appreciative when people actually follow all the rules. However, since I don’t come from this culture, I sometimes find it very annoying when people are like that – when they are too inflexible. It makes me think of the need for the combination of discriminating awareness and ethical discipline, not just the ethical discipline and grasping onto that discipline as being solid, truly existent, and written in stone. 

The vinaya, the texts that discuss the rules of discipline and all the vows, always makes distinctions in terms of when to follow these rules, what the conditions for following them are, and when it is not necessary to follow them. 

There are times when “necessity overrides the prohibition,” which is the term they use. The keeping of vows is not an exercise in obedience; it is an exercise in discriminating between what’s helpful and what’s harmful, even in terms of the vows themselves. So, we even need be able to discriminate when a vow applies and when it doesn’t apply. You see this with the Tibetans – that they are very comfortable and very flexible with the vows. They respect them, but there are certain times when they – what shall we say – don’t act in a fanatical way. So, I find it quite interesting that there is this combination in the text of discriminating awareness and ethical discipline. It’s not just one. 

Now, of course, one has to apply a great deal of discriminating awareness to know when a necessity overrides a prohibition. The classic example is that a monk is not supposed to touch a woman. But if a woman is drowning, of course, the monk will give her a hand and save her. That’s the classic example. 

I think that these are very admirable qualities. It’s interesting to look at what it is that we admire. What is it that we respect in other people? What is it that we would like to become like? So, that’s this verse. It’s about what our values are, basically.

[28] Although a person may have a (good) caste, physique, and education, if he lacks discriminating awareness and ethical discipline, he’s unworthy of esteem. That being so, anyone having these two qualities is to be honored, even if he lacks the other good qualities.

If somebody is ethical, discriminates correctly, has good values, and so on but has no education at all and is very simple and lowly and does a very lowly type of job, do we respect them or not? I’m just talking about how it is from our own, individual experience. Let’s say that you are a very highly educated person, very intellectual, very intelligent, and you meet people who are really good people, but they didn’t even finish high school and just work as common laborers. Can you respect them? I think that if you can, that’s really great because it’s quite easy to be a bit arrogant and to respect the things that you put hard work into, like education, making money, and those types of things. That’s where the real test comes in. As Nagarjuna says, anyone having these two qualities, even if they lack the other good qualities, is to be honored. OK? 

Now, the instructions on what to give up are referring, first of all, to the eight transitory things in life, and now Nagarjuna lists them:

[29] O Realizer of the Transitory (…)

That’s referring to the king, who knows the transitory world. In other words, he’s a worldly person.

(…) don’t have as objects of your mind the eight transitory things of the world: namely, material gain and no gain, happiness and unhappiness, things nice to hear and not nice to hear, or praise and scorn. Be indifferent (toward them).

Be Indifferent – “Remain Like a Block of Wood”

This is the list of the eight transitory things, and Nagarjuna says to be indifferent toward them. Before, he was referring to the understanding of voidness as the antidote. Now, the simplest way of reacting is by being indifferent. We have many verses from Shantideva that are similar to this. He says in Chapter 5, Verse 51:

(When) my mind would desire material gain, displays of respect or fame; or desire the care of attendants and followers, or wish to be served, I shall remain, at those times, like a block of wood.

Here, Shantideva is listing many of these eight transitory things, like material gain, respect, fame, the wish to be served, etc. He is saying that in those times, like Nagarjuna says here, be indifferent toward them; remain like a block of wood. So, that is the temporary type of solution that we would follow.

Shantideva also says in his eighth chapter [of?], Verse 182:

Something getting furious at being belittled or something getting pleased at being praised – if it (…)

(referring to the body)

(…) doesn’t know to be either of these, for whom am I exhausting myself? 

This refers, again, to another approach that is similar to the understanding of voidness, but it brings in this idea of being indifferent. It’s saying that when somebody praises you, the body itself doesn’t get pleased at being praised, and the body itself doesn’t get furious at being belittled. So, why do we exhaust ourselves trying to get all of these things? The body itself doesn’t get  pleased at getting good food – “I get pleased,” and “What’s the ‘me’?” There are all these sorts of thoughts that one can have that help us. 

Shantideva also says in the sixth chapter, in Verse 53:

Insults, cruel language, and defaming words don’t hurt my body, so, why, oh mind, do you become so enraged? Others’ dislike for me – that won’t devour me, either in this life or any other lifetimes; so why do I find it so undesirable?

Again, we think, “What’s the point of getting so upset when somebody says something nasty to us or criticizes us? How does that actually hurt us? Does it hurt our body? Does it hurt our mind? It can’t really hurt anything; it’s just words.” Like this, it helps us to be indifferent toward them. So, what do you think about that? 

Participant: I find it difficult, actually, to balance out the kind of worldly way of looking at things like criticism and the kind of Dharma way of looking at things like criticism. Of course, I can take it totally easy on the one hand, but on the other hand, I somehow have to find a way to deal with it. So, there must be ways to get the middle way somehow. This, too, I find quite difficult.

Dr. Berzin: Difficult to find the middle way when we are criticized between getting upset and just… 

Participant: Between taking it easy and actually dealing with it somehow, looking at it, and also maybe applying the critique in the sense of making changes within myself. You know, maybe I should apply it. Somehow, though, it’s difficult to get the middle ground. Somehow, you always get into the extremes.

Dr. Berzin: Of happy or unhappy.

Participant: Yeah.

Dr. Berzin: Yeah. It’s not so easy, especially with criticism. We have many types of teachings in the lojong material, the attitude training, for when others criticize us, like looking at them as our teachers and thanking them for pointing out various things that can help us to correct ourselves. Initially, we may feel badly about it. That’s true. If we are not immediately able to transform the situation and not get upset, then at least afterwards, we can try to apply this and to appreciate and learn something from the other person’s criticism. The thing is not to take it so personally in the sense of identifying a big solid “me” – that now I am being rejected. 

Participant: The same thing you can take to another level. I mean, it’s not on a physical level. If you are punished without any reason, don’t get upset. It could be the same when someone says very critical things to you without any reason, or someone punches you…

Dr. Berzin: Or throws you into a Chinese concentration camp…

Participant: Or sexual abuse or something like that. On one hand, you can say there is emptiness and stuff like that, but I think that then you suppress the negative emotions if you don’t really understand emptiness. You just put it very deep inside. That, I think, is not the right method to deal with these kinds of traumas.

Dr. Berzin: Well, when bad things happen to us like being wrongly punished and thrown in prison – for example, thrown into a concentration camp like so many Tibetans were – or being sexually abused, raped, and things like that, being indifferent and suppressing the anger, hostility, or depression is certainly not healthy. That’s for sure. But I wonder. This gets into the whole discussion of remaining like a block of wood that Shantideva repeats over and over again in terms of ethical discipline. Are we repressing the feelings if we don’t have the understanding of voidness? If we do have an understanding of voidness or an understanding of karma or something like that, we wouldn’t really be repressing them. But what about this advice to remain like a block of wood? 

Participant: It doesn’t refer to just remaining physically like a block of wood. If you can’t control your mind, it’s quite mediocre to just remain physically like a block of wood.

Dr. Berzin: Well, the question is: what does “remain like a block of wood” refer to? It comes in the chapter on ethical discipline. There, it’s referring primarily to physical and verbal discipline: don’t say anything, don’t do anything. Now, can you really remain like a block of wood with your feelings? Maybe you can with your thoughts, although that’s very difficult. But with feelings? You’re right. Trying to repress your feelings is like saying to yourself, “Oh, don’t be so stupid! Don’t cry; don’t be upset.” That is probably not very healthy, especially if you have no understanding of voidness, in which case, you are thinking of yourself as a truly bad person. But then, what to do in that situation? 

Participant: It might be good just to step out of the situation if one can. Maybe then, if one gets upset, one is outside the room and can shout, but it wouldn’t have that kind of negative effect. You would also be more aware of your anger, but you could try to deal with it in a separate context.

Dr. Berzin: So, you try to step away from that situation and deal with it in a separate context. Or it’s that – I think, Karsten, you were referring to this – the feeling just comes and goes very quickly. For instance, something terrible happens, and it just spontaneously comes out, “Oh, shit!” Then it passes – in a sense, without repressing it, but also without following it out and staying with it for a very, very long time. You just express it, but as you say, you try to express it in a way that is not harmful to others or yourself. You don’t have to punch your hand through a glass window. It’s interesting when you do that to observe your energy: your energy is very, very upset. It is very disturbed when you yell something. I don’t know that it necessarily calms you down. Does it make you feel better? I don’t know.

Participant: I think it really depends. You could just be perpetuating the tendency of, for instance, yelling, but you could also be discovering for the first time – like with sexual abuse – that you actually have been very angry at your step-father or whomever. And when you let yourself feel it, getting completely upset and angry, and you do it in a separate context, it can help you, actually, to overcome that anger. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. So sometimes, when there’s been repressed anger for a very, very long time, like somebody having been sexually abused as a child, then later, in their adult life, to actually bring it to the surface and express it can be helpful in a therapeutic context. I must say, I don’t really know. I think that one has to look at the individual circumstance. It’s an interesting topic – repression. What is repression, really? 

I remember my mother used to do this (my mother was a very wise lady). When she would get upset about something, she would go into the bathroom, look at herself in the bathroom mirror and give herself a lecture. She would say to herself, “Come on, don’t be so silly.” It would help her to calm down. I wonder if that really is a wrong way. I don’t think so. It’s not really repression; it’s basically giving yourself a lecture. “This is ridiculous. Why am I getting so upset? It’s not going to help. It’s just making feel worse, so stop it.”

Participant: It’s like she encouraged herself by turning to herself for the solution.

Dr. Berzin: Right.

Participant: In the end, she was not stuck in one direction. She found another direction for solving it. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. She found another solution. And she used a very nice way of doing that – looking at herself in the mirror and talking to herself, “Come on, you’re being ridiculous. This is silly.”

Participant: It seems she was really aware of her anger and everything. I don’t know, but probably, if you’re really into questioning things, you might not even be aware of it, but you might be able see it on a very subtle level.

Dr. Berzin: Well, also, it depends on what type of emotion it is. My mother was also a chronic worrier, and I don’t think she was able to deal with her worries that way, at least not in the beginning. Actually, she grew quite a lot as she got older. And even with some of her worries, she was able to be more tranquil, which was very good. 

So, what is repression? 

Participant: You got closer to what repression is, no? Repression could be when you totally look for an alternative. Because there are things that are absolutely ridiculous, it’s not repressing to recognize that what you’re thinking makes no sense and that you just have to drop it and lock it out. But you sometimes have to push for an alternative solution that you’re comfortable with. For instance, when you are upset with someone, you could talk to the person or find a way out of the situation rather than just repress it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Repression is when you don’t find any other alternative, and you just keep it inside and don’t deal with it in some kind of way. Here, I am thinking particularly of many women who get very upset and cry a great deal. I think that a good way of dealing with that – needing to cry – is go into your room and cry by yourself rather than make a big scene in which other people feel very uncomfortable and don’t know how to handle it. In other words, express the feeling, but express it in a situation that’s a little bit more of a controlled environment, one in which you can just let it come out. 

Participant: It just means to be like a block of wood in the sense that you don’t act out anything negative. If you are actually confronted with something negative, like being in prison or whatever, it’s just to be mindful of what you can do and to find ways to handle it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. “Remain like a block of wood,” then, would refer to not doing anything negative.

Participant: It’s a very wise way to calm down war or things like that. If people were really able to let their past subside, at the end, it would be really healthy.

Dr. Berzin: Right. In a war situation and so on, if people were able to just stop and calm down, they might see other alternatives of resolving the difficulty. That’s true. So, we have all these different ways, then…

Participant: I wonder, though, about anger. I think there are quite a few aspects to it. If you just keep it completely inside, it might develop into stomach cancer or something like that, or you could go out like a maniac, like Rambo, and just make everybody miserable. Maybe you could also use that energy to find a creative solution. There’s this impulse of the energy. So, maybe you could try to do something with that energy because maybe that situation calls for an action…

Dr. Berzin: So, if there is a lot of pent-up old anger, one possibility is to try to use that energy in a more constructive way. It’s not so easy to find a constructive way of doing it. I think that if we are into the Dharma, the only productive way of dealing with this is to try to understand voidness more and more deeply. 

I’m thinking of somebody that I know, a student of mine who is very angry about things that happened in his childhood. He wasn’t actually abused, but his sister was. And then there are all the consequences of that in the family, and being the younger brother, it affected him very much. So, he’s very angry. This, he discovered as a young man. That anger has been kept inside since childhood, and it has affected a lot of things. He’s gone through so much therapy and this type of thing, but it hasn’t helped at all. I really think that the only thing that can help in his case is an understanding of voidness. “This is past; whatever happened has passed. It arose from various causes, dependently. The situation is now different, and you have to let go.” 

Participant: There are also other Dharma tools one could work with, like forgiveness, forgiving.

Dr. Berzin: Well, forgiveness in this person’s case didn’t help. He forgave the relative that abused his sister, but he’s still angry. He’s not angry with the relative that committed the abuse; he’s angry with the situation. 

Participant: Can you be angry with a situation?

Dr. Berzin:  Sure. It’s unfair that he had to suffer as child because of this thing that happened to his sister.

This is an interesting thing. Now I can bring in the experience of my psychiatrist friend in America who deals with very, very difficult cases of inner city kids who were abandoned, who were out on the street as teenagers, were prostitutes, drug dealers, and the whole bit. What she does with these young people is basically to acknowledge to them that what happened to them was unfair. “You got a bad deal in life. You were born as a child and everybody” – this isn’t terribly Buddhist, but in any case – “everybody deserves to have a good loving family, a family in which they don’t abuse you and in which you have all the opportunities and so on. So, what happened to you, being in such a difficult, violent situation your whole life, is really unfair.” Look at the kids growing up in Baghdad or Lebanon – that isn’t really nice to grow up like that. 

The problem then is that, once you have grown up and you acknowledge that your childhood circumstances were unfair and that you did deserve to have a better deal, now it’s finished. She said that the example she uses is with getting a coupon. Everybody gets a coupon for a free orange juice (she uses very simple examples). But the coupon for the orange juice is only valid up until a certain point, and now it’s run out; it’s not valid anymore. So, what do you do? Do you shoot the person at the cash register who would have given you the orange juice? What do you do in that situation? So, she has them think about that. You have a free coupon for being treated lovingly as a child, as a baby, but it ran out. You’re not a baby anymore. You’re not a child anymore. So, OK, how do you deal with the fact that it’s run out, that it’s no longer valid? Having them consider this often helps them to accept the present reality. The present reality is that it’s not going to help them to get angry with it. You acknowledge that it was bad, and say, “OK. Now let’s go on.” All you can do is to acknowledge that this was a shitty deal, that it was terrible. What else can you do? You can’t change it. 

So, without getting into the technical side of karma, without getting into a technical discussion of voidness, it’s nonetheless going in that direction. What’s the point of keeping the anger? It’s not going to help; it’s finished. Just to express the anger and so on doesn’t seem to solve it. Maybe it helps in some cases, but I don’t think it goes deeply enough. What she finds to be very helpful is to acknowledge to these kids that they have a right to be angry… they had a right to be angry. So, you give them support. You don’t say, “You’re bad for getting angry.” 

Participant: But to express it is the first step. Isn’t it what you always say – that first you have to see the enemy…

Dr. Berzin: Well, there’s a difference between seeing the enemy and expressing it. Does a child like that have to go and rob a bank and shoot somebody in order to express their anger? I mean, we’re talking about juvenile delinquents – criminals. The way that they express their anger is with terrible violence.

Participant: Oh, I see. I thought that psychologists’ methods, like expressing your suppressed anger…

Dr. Berzin: Well, psychologists’ methods for helping people to express their suppressed anger might work in situations that are a little bit more, let’s say, civilized. She deals with the criminal element in the inner city, with kids that go around robbing and shooting, engaging in gang wars, and the whole bit. These are extreme cases. These are cases like the ones of the terrorists in the Middle East and so on. 

Participant: Then it sounds like the first step is what you said. But in the end, you do further work with them. I think that in the end, they have to pinpoint what the problem is.

Dr. Berzin: But how do you – this is a real issue – work with these Palestinian refugees who have lived in refugee camps for their whole lives and their parents have lived there for most of their lives? They are treated terribly there. They are angry. They deserved to have a better deal, but they got a rotten deal. And they express their anger and frustration with suicide bombs. 

Participant: It’s not solved in one week.

Dr. Berzin: No. But to allow them to express their anger is a bit dangerous.

Participant: It’s quite often the case, I think, that anger is just one layer of the emotions. So, if you start to work with them in a context where they can safely express their emotions, what might come out is that there’s tremendous frustration and sadness – just being hurt terribly. It’s like an onion. Somehow, one has to come to this layer of understanding. 

Dr. Berzin: Well, yeah. There are many layers of anger and so on.

Participant: You really have to go through them somehow and just get rid of them.

Dr. Berzin: Right. But I think that in terms of our text and our study here, what is more relevant is how we deal with our own anger, how we deal with our own getting upset when things don’t go well – like when we lose somebody or when we’re criticized – and how we deal with it when things do go well. The context in this discussion is that it’s a huge distraction in terms of trying to gain concentration. Huge distraction. 

Let’s say you’re at the university. You do well on an exam, or you do badly on an exam. Well, do you get all excited and then not study anymore when you do well? Do you get all depressed when you do badly on an exam and end up not being able to study or to concentrate? These are the types of situations that we are talking about in normal life.

Participant: I never got very excited when the results were good or depressed when they weren’t so good. It was rather one-sided. But to speak of nowadays, since a couple of days ago, I’ve had tinnitus, and I can’t hear very well. Since I got my tooth implant, I have had a lot of strange symptoms. At first, I thought that I could deal quite well with it. But after a few times of things not being so good, more and more slightly disturbing emotions started to arise. Now I find it almost impossible to remain with equanimity, to be calm, and not to get so down by this, despite having some knowledge of voidness. So, my mind is not very clear. Even trying to think about causes and conditions doesn’t help me to feel better about some things.

Dr. Berzin: OK. So, you have problems because of your tooth and tinnitus and so on. You try to apply the methods, but it doesn’t make you feel any better. I don’t think that the aim is to feel better. That’s not the aim. I’ll give an example. 

I came back from Russia a couple days ago. Inevitably, every time that I go to teach in Russia, I get sick. So, I am starting to get sick. I’m not actually sick, but I can feel that my body is fighting something – that something could come on. So, do I get upset about it? That’s not going to help. Am I going to freak out? This is this whole issue of remain like a block of wood. And I think that remaining like a block of wood is very helpful. I have a lot of work that I have to do, and if I start to go on the trip of, “Oh, I’m sick, and I don’t want to get sick,” and blah, blah, blah, it’s not going to help at all. So, remain like a block of wood with respect to that. I see that it arises from causes and conditions, take the various types of medication that I have for strengthening the immune system and sit down and do my work. If I really feel tired, I lie down for ten minutes and then go back to my work. And just do it. I think this is the way. It doesn’t make me feel better. I still feel as though my body is fighting something. So, OK, let it fight something. Hopefully, it will win and I won’t get sick. 

So, I think it’s a combination of remaining like a block of wood and applying some understanding of cause and effect and voidness – that it’s like an illusion; it’s no big deal. You don’t feel any better, but you’re not upset.

Participant: And you do what you can.

Dr. Berzin: And you do what you can. 

Participant: That’s really the problem. I have a lot of things to do as well, and I want to do them. But actually, I have to slow down and to slow down to the point where I have time to think. Yet, I don’t want to accept that I have to slow down.

Dr. Berzin: Well, you don’t want to accept that you have to slow down. Unfortunately, old age is going to force you to slow down. And if you can’t deal with it now when you are a young man, it is going to cause you a lot of suffering. 

I look at my aunt. She’s ninety-five and has to slow down unbelievably, which is very difficult for her. That is one of the most difficult aspects of old age – to accept that you have to slow down and that you get tired and don’t have the strength. You can’t even do simple things sometimes. In my aunt’s case, she can’t even walk around. Her eyes are no good, so she can’t even read. So, there is nothing that she can do. To accept that is very, very difficult. But it’s part of this whole thing of accepting reality, and, actually, it can help with renunciation. 

Participant: How is this?

Dr. Berzin: How is this? It helps with renunciation to see the nature of the body. Once, I had a wonderful experience that I found very, very helpful. I was in Russia. The center where I teach in Russia has rooms for children – a type of play center for the children of yuppies, Russian yuppies who have just made a lot of money. They’re young people, and they have young children. It reminded me very much of Mexico, actually, of the hotsy-totsy young people there who go around with their maids and so on. These little Russian children are dressed in ridiculously expensive clothes and so on. They’re like little dolls, little princesses and princes. So, you go to this place, and it’s absolutely outrageous. It’s colored with all sorts of fantasy Disneyland things, and the people working there are dressed as clowns and such. There are all sorts of games, and everybody is smiling with lots of pictures of big, smiling clowns around and so on. It’s like a hell because it is so unreal. How in the world does this prepare these children for life? Not in the slightest. They are treated like princesses and princes; everybody makes such a big fuss over them and so on.

This is excellent for renunciation because you think, “Oh my god, I do not want to be a child again and have to experience this garbage!” How absolutely boring and ridiculous… you know, these big, smiling hippopotamuses and giraffes and stuff like that. Aah! Then you think of old age as well, and suddenly, you think, “It would be wonderful to be able to continue to appear and help others but not have to go through this samsaric trip.” How that could possibly happen is yet something else.

Participant: Also, when you’re a child, when little things happen, you feel them as very important, very solid. Like, if someone takes away your toy, all the display of emotions comes out.

Dr. Berzin: Anyway, if you are in that situation, you need to somehow accept it – being old and having to slow down – and hopefully, as a child, not be subjected to a really ridiculous trip. I mean, there are two extremes: being a little prince or princess, and then being a child in Baghdad or Beirut. So, various extremes. 

That is in relation to Verse 29. To repeat: 

[29] O Realizer of the Transitory World, don’t have as objects of your mind
the eight transitory things of the world: namely, material gain and no gain, happiness and unhappiness, things nice to hear and not nice to hear, or praise and scorn. Be indifferent (toward them).

By realizing that the body can’t be harmed by these things, what are we getting so upset about? What are we getting so excited about? To just accept whatever the situation is and deal with it, I think, is the only way. Then, if we feel happy, if we feel unhappy – well, fine.  But don’t get attached to that; let it just happen and flow.

Well, that brings us to nine o’clock and, also, to the end of this section. So, why don’t we stop here for today.