Lama Thubten Yeshe
Only through active practice—mindfulness, meditation, ethical living, and developing wisdom—can one directly address greed, hatred, delusion, pride, doubt, and wrong view.
To enter the spiritual path, you must begin to understand your own mental attitude and how your mind perceives things. If you're all caught up in attachment to tiny atoms, your limited, craving mind will make it impossible for you to enjoy life's pleasures. External energy is so incredibly limited that if you allow yourself to be bound by it, your mind itself will become just as limited. When your mind is narrow, small things easily agitate you. Make your mind an Ocean.
Questions & Answers
What's Buddhism
We are studying ourselves, the nature of our own minds. Instead of focusing on some supreme being, Buddhism emphasizes how more practical matters, such as how to lead our lives, how to integrate our minds and how to keep our everyday lives peaceful and healthy. From the lamas' point of view, Buddhist teachings are more in the realm of philosophy, science or psychology.
What's An Unhealthy Mind?
From the Buddhist point of view, it's when we are caught up in the materialistic life; psychologically, emotionally, we're too involved in objects of attachment. <b>You're mentally ill!
Why Study Buddhism?
The Buddha's teachings reveal the inherent nature of human potential and the capacity of the human mind. When we study Buddhism, we learn about our true nature and how to cultivate it further. Rather than emphasizing a supernatural belief system, Buddhist methods encourage developing a profound understanding of ourselves and all phenomena.
Why Is It Crucial To Know Your Own Mind?
Whether you are religious or materialist, a believer or an atheist, it is crucial that you know how your own mind works. If you don't you'll go around thinking you're healthy, when in reality, the deep root of afflictive emotions, the true cause of all psychological disease, is there, growing within you. Because of that, all it takes is some tiny external thing changing, something insignificant going wrong, and within a few seconds, you're completely upset. Mentally Ill!
What Does The Buddha Mean By Suffering?
He wasn't referring simply to superficial problems like illness and injury, but to the fact that the dissatisfied nature of the mind itself is suffering? No matter how much of something you get, it never satisfies your desire for better or more. This unceasing desire is suffering; its nature is emotional frustration.
What Are The Emotional Frustrates The Buddha Describes?
1. Greed: The intense desire or attachment to pleasurable experiences, possessions, or outcomes. It leads to frustration when desires are unfulfilled or when the objects of desire are impermanent.
2. Hatred: Aversion, anger, or ill-will toward unpleasant people, situations, or experiences. It causes emotional agitation and conflict, amplifying suffering.
3. Delusion: Ignorance or misunderstanding of reality, particularly the truths of impermanence, non-self, and suffering. Delusion leads to confusion and misguided actions.
4. Pride: An inflated sense of self-importance or superiority, which creates frustration when one’s ego is challenged or when reality doesn’t align with self-perception.
5. Doubt: Uncertainty or skepticism about the Buddha’s teachings, the path to liberation, or one’s own potential. This doubt hinders progress and creates mental unrest.
6. Wrong View: Holding incorrect beliefs about the nature of reality, such as clinging to a permanent self or misunderstanding cause and effect (karma). This leads to frustration by perpetuating delusional thinking.
Context & Clarification
These six kleshas are derived from Buddhist texts, such as the Abhidhamma and Pali Canon, and are considered fundamental obstacles to mental clarity and liberation.
While greed, hatred, and delusion are often highlighted as the three poisons (the core roots of suffering), pride, doubt, and wrong view are included in the broader list of defilements that frustrate the mind.
These mental states are not just fleeting emotions but habitual tendencies that reinforce suffering unless addressed through mindfulness, wisdom, and ethical practice.
Why Isn't Belief & Faith, Not Enough?
"Buddhist psychology describes six basic emotions that frustrate the human mind, disturbing its peace, making it restless; ignorance, attachment, anger, pride, deluded doubt and distorted views. These are mental attitudes, not external phenomena. Buddhism emphasizes that to overcome these delusions, the root of all suffering, belief and faith are not much help: you have to understand their nature.
If you do not investigate your own mind with introspective knowledge-wisdom, you will never see what's in there. Without checking no matter how much you talk about your mind and your emotions, you'll never really understand that your basic emotion is egocentricity and that this is what's making you resless.
Now, to overcome your ego you don't have to give up all your possessions. They're not what's making your life difficult. You're restless because you are clinging to your possessions with attachment. Ego and attachment pollute your mind, making it unclear, ignorant and agitated and preventing the light of wisdom from growing. The solution to this problem is meditation."
How Do I Meditate?
"Meditation does not imply only the development of single-pointed concentration, sitting in some corner doing nothing. Meditation is an alert state of min, the opposite of sluggishness; meditation is wisdom. You should remain aware every moment of your daily life, fully conscious of what you are doing and why and how you are doing it.
We do almost everything unconsciously. We eat unconsciously; we drink unconsciously; we talk unconsciously. Although we claim to be conscious, we are completely unaware of the afflictions rampaging through our minds, influencing everything we do."
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