GP Class Outlines

• Understanding Karma
• Introduction to Karma and purification
• The powers of regret and promise
• The powers of reliance and the opponent force
• Introduction to Vajrasattva practice
• The Power of Love
• 1st Class - Introduction to our love
• 2nd class - Compassion and the practice of Taking
• End of Year De-Stress
• End of Year De-Stressing
• How to Stop Overthinking
• 1st Class
• 2nd Class
• 3rd Class
• 4th Class
• The Inner Warrier
• 1st class - Who are our enemies
• 2nd Class - Don the armour of patience
• 3rd Class - Shielding our self with love
• 4th Class - The Sword of Wisdom
• The Habits of Happy People
• 1st Class - Introduction
• 2nd class the habit of not fighting the inevitable
• The New Meditation Handbook
• Karma part 2

Understanding Karma

Introduction to Karma and purification

Below are some key points that will go with you throghout the whole course. Feel free to return to the points you are making in this class in your other classes because it will create repetition

You don't need to talk about all these points(you can if you wish...)

Introduction - basic Buddhist view: Purification is done in order to liberate the self from the experiences that are the results of previous activities.

So we need to know something about

1. The self
2. About Karma
3. About purification

1. Who we are

• what is the self?
  • contaminated basis of imputation
  • uncontaminated basis of imputation
• our basic aspiration
• what are our real problems
  • what is suffering
  • what is happiness
• where do they come from
  • mind is the creator of everything

2. What is karma?

• what is the purpos of Buddha's teaching about karma?
• what is karma
  • what are the four characteristics of karma
• what misconception might people have with regards to karma

3. What is purification.

• What do we purify
  • negativities in our mind
  • where do these negativities come from?
• Why do we purify
• how do we purify
  • the four powers (you can introduce them briefly and in the next two classes we shall explore them in more depth)
    • reliance
    • regret
    • opponent force
    • promise

The powers of regret and promise

Briefly

• what is karma
• what are the four results of one actions
• what do we purify

How do we purify

The four powers

The two powers - regret and promise, as explained in the book The Bodhisattva Vow:

The first opponent power, the power of reliance, purifies the potential for the environmental effect, and also functions to subdue negative karma in general.

The fourth opponent power, the power of promise, purifies the potential for the effect that is a tendency similar to the cause, and also prevents us from repeating the action.

• The power of regret

  • Clarifying the difference between guilt and regret.

  • In Joyful Path (power of regret) Venerable Geshe-la says:

  • We develop regret by remembering all the dangers of our negativity.

    this is practical but hard so need to approach this gently

  • The stronger our regret, the stronger our restraint.

    This is an insight for the importance of regret

• The power of promise
  • exploring the act of promising - what helps us keep a promise, what may be the reasons we break promises

From the dictionary

guilt (ɡɪlt) n

1. the fact or state of having done wrong or committed an offence
2. (Law) responsibility for a criminal or moral offence deserving punishment or a penalty
3. remorse or self-reproach caused by feeling that one is responsible for a wrong or offence
4. archaic sin or crime

From chatGPT

Regret is about wishing something had been different — an event, a choice, or an outcome.

Guilt is about feeling responsible for harm — it carries a moral or ethical weight.

For example:

• You might regret missing an opportunity to visit a friend before they moved away.
• You might feel guilty if you promised to visit but didn’t, and your absence caused them pain.

Re-stated

• Guilt is the emotional weight of feeling responsible for a moral wrong — “I have done harm.”
• Regret is the emotional reflection of wishing one had acted differently — “I wish I had not done that.”

So guilt carries moral judgment — the sense of having violated a value or duty. Regret carries emotional sadness — a yearning for what might have been.

These kind of insights can help us understand why people do not like guilt. But if we think about it guilt is not necessarily as "negative" as most people feel it to be.

It might be that our capacity for taking responsibility for incorrect moral behaviors is manipulated by others to make us behave in a particular way. This is of course problematic and make cause a lot of resentment.

Practicle take away

Explore how can these two forces be practiced:

• In meditation
• During our daily activities

The powers of reliance and the opponent force

Briefly

• what is karma
• what are the four results of one actions
• what do we purify - the four results

How do we purify

The four powers

• The power of reliance
• The power of opponent force

Introduction to Vajrasattva practice

The Power of Love

1st Class - Introduction to our love

The classes in this course are based on the booklet Meditations for a Kind Heart.

The introduction section can feed all your three classes.

While the meditations are around cherishing others - they also are indicating the loving kindness. So please explain the two. We touch on wishing love in the third meditation.

We need to re-explain what are problems and why Buddhist say that cherishing others solves problems.

Emphasise the difference between theoretical understanding and experiential understanding. And how we need to experience the real meaning of love - experience of cherishing others -as opposite to desiring to possess them for our own selfish needs(read attachment).

In the first class, please cover the quote:

The meditations on this CD will help us to develop greater peace of mind, happiness, and to improve our relationships through learning to cherish others.
A kind heart is a special mental attitude that cherishes other people at least as mi as we cherish ourselves. It is grounded in the following commonsense thinking: 'Just as I wish to be happy, so does everyone else; and just as I do not wish for e the slightest suffering, nor does anyone else. From this point of view we are all e the same. Therefore there is no reason to consider my own happiness or my ou suffering to be more important than anyone else's.'

Discuss the objections or the difficulties in accepting the above quote.

Why does Venerable Geshe-la states it is common sense??

There are many other topics you can dig out from the introduction.

2nd class - Compassion and the practice of Taking

In this class we build on the common sense we've been introduced too -

Just as I wish to be happy and free from suffering so does everyone else. In this respect we are all the same.

We discuss how compassion is a natural outcome of cherishing the other person - people, and how without being careful our compassion can cause us a burn out because currently we are a limited person; meaning our ability to know what the other person needs is limited by our ignorance and our ability to work for the benefit of many people is limited by our self-cherishing and physical body.

Then we explain that the solution to the above obstacles is to use our imagination.

This imagination is the nature of an action which has as its main purpose the function of eliminating our self-cherishing.

Then explain the meditation and do it.

:-)

End of Year De-Stress

End of Year De-Stressing

During the festive season people experience various kinds of mental/emotional hardships which can be described as stress, anxiety, depression, melancholy etc

When we teach, we try to think about the topic from our own experiences. This grounds your teachings in a shared reality with the listeners.

I prepared a short lists of things which may contribute to people's stressed, anxious, etc experiences:

• Financial pressure
• Family and social relationships
• Loneliness and isolation
• Overcommitment and time pressure
• Lack of privacy
• Heightened expectations
• Seasonal and environmental factors

We help people De-Stress through discussing these points (and or any other points that you wish to talk about from your experience) and showing how we can use aspects of dharma to de-stress our self.

There can be two approaches of how dharma help to de-stress: a general and a specific approach.

General:

• Grasping: This is about the truth of the situation - usually it is because we do not understand the reality of the situation we're in that we develop stress etc:
  • permanence
  • samsara
  • external to the mind
  • Truly existent
• Perspective: this is when we do not have the correct perspective on the situation
  • Samsaric beings (body and mind) and situations will always be lacking satisfaction
  • Self-chirishing - by centring our self we skew perspective on the situation, causing problems

Specific

We need to be careful about how we address these specific causes of stress. This is because we do not know the actual situation people in the audience are in.

Pick any one of the specific causes I listed or any other causes/factors you can think about and show how we can prepare and use dharma to mitigate the strength of that particular factor.

Few examples:

• Overcommitment - we can look at why we overcommit; inability to say no? Wanting to keep some reputation? Etc - in which case we can use various kinds of dharma training
• Financial pressures - This is assuming people are not so poor they basically can't find money for food (which in some cases may be an issue) - change the meaning of festivity from just presents to preparing small but thoughtful expression of appreciation to the people we're spending time with
• Etc...

Addressing the specific and general causes of stress etc, you should now have more than enough to teach the following two classes

How to Stop Overthinking

1st Class

In the first class we establish

• What is overthinking
• How does it affect us
• What ways do people have to overcome their overthinking - do they work
• Since overthinking is a mental problem we will need to work with our mind to overcome it
  • This is going to take time - long time, which means people should not expect quick results

The practical aspect

• Developing clarity about the situation => leading us to a sincere heartfelt wish to end our overthinking
• Understanding the three difficulties -
  • Recognizing the times we are overthinking
  • Reducing
  • Abandoning This is of course to do with the topic from training the mind called the three difficulties.

For the time being we only think about the first two. And specifically we explain the improtance of recognizing when we start our overthinking process.

As a takeaway from the class - during the coming week just recalling the wish and training in alertness to catch our self starting the overthinking process.

Why is this important or how do these two work?

• Without sincere wish we will not put the effort needed - and we will need a lot of effort to undermine the real causes of overthinking (which we explore in the next class(s))
• The wish will help us to be alert to what's going on in our mind. Without knowing what's going on in our mind how can we ever stop overthinking before it grows and we can't do much about it other than

2nd Class

Starting with a recap

Roughly speaking we can divide the causes of overthinking into two:

1. external
2. internal

Changing externals such as environment, lifestyle, may offer some help but really we need to change the mind If you wish it may be helpful to explain a little about the mind vs brain and how with this Buddhist explanation of mind we have a chance to understand the situation in a simpler and clearer way that allows us to understand the mechanisim of overthinking.

With a basic understanding of the mind we can introduce delusions and how delusions are exaggerated imaginations.

With this we can show how at the bottom of much of our overthinking done through mental exaggeration I am suggesting few aspects as main factors in overthinking:

1. Inability to deal with uncertainty
2. Attachment to the fulfilment of our own wishes
3. Self-cherishing
4. Self-grasping

You can choose to talk about any or all of these three

There is also a need to touch on the nature of samsara which is the real context for everything. But this is diffcult for people to fully get to grips with.

The next class is about proactively prempting overthinking(which we understand as negative mental activity that repeats itself and causes us to spiral to an unpleasant mental space) and moveing the mind

3rd Class

In this class we are thinking of counter acting against our normal mental habits.

So we begin to develop ideas in our mind such as I am not the centre of the world My wishes do not and cannot realistically alway be fulfilled

4th Class

in this class we may consider two things that can help dealing with overthinking

1. karma
2. emptiness these two topics help with overthinking because overthinking is scrade from the uncertainty of life and overthinking creates in ourmind an appearance of the world which does not exist but we relate to it as if it does. becasue we relate to this inner appearance as if it is the reality we then experience all the painful issues associated with overthinking

The Inner Warrier

1st class - Who are our enemies

For the first class we explain the meaning of delusions, and how delusions are our real enemy. How we need to move away from seeing other people as our enemies. This of course is very difficult to do and we need to have very strong motivation to do so. Our motivation is to find the happiness that we look for. Pure and lasting inner peace. It may seem like we repeatedly return to this point. This is true, but only because people are not quite yet getting how important it is. We need to emphasize this. We need to encourage people to develop the courage to start leading a different life. To discriminate people situations and events in a different way.

• The Enemy: Self-Cherishing and the "Inner Enemies" (delusions in general).
• Training to become stronger: Two excellent trainings we can do
  • Recongnize our own faults in the mirror of dharma p.64 in 8 Steps(think why this is so helpful)
  • learning to distinguish a person from delusions 8 Steps p.76
• The Dharma practice - abandoning pride and developing humility.
• Daily practice: Noting when we are blaming other people. Studying what goes on in our mind at such times. The warrier discovers their real enemies.

2nd Class - Don the armour of patience

The enemies we wage war in this teaching are our anger and resentment Explaining once again what are delusions in general Explanation of anger can be found in many books Explanation of resentment is found in How to Understand the Mind

A warrier trains to deal with harsh and difficult situations. We train in the various kinds of patiences - volunterily enduring suffering, thinking about dharma, not retaliating When training in these three types of patience our mind will become very powerful. Elite warriers have the ability to survive harsh conditions and perform delicate dangerous work. Training in patience will strengthen our mind to the harsh conditions of samsaric existence and we can then do the delicate work of improving our self and benefiting others.

Consider introducing one or both of the following practices:

• Transforming adverse conditions 8 Steps p.141 - challenging our patience, love and other virtues.
• Offering the victory and accepting defeat(8 Steps p.149) - which acts as a basis for the more advanced practice of taking and giving out of love and compassion.

3rd Class - Shielding our self with love

The Armor of Love: Protecting the Good Heart

The Enemy: Attachment and Jealousy.

The Warrior’s Training: Developing the Three Types of Love (Affectionate, Cherishing, and Wishing Love) (p. 135).

The Weapon: Contentment and Rejoicing in others' good fortune (p. 43).

Goal: To build an unbreakable shield of cherishing love that views every living being as a "rare and precious treasure" (p. 121).

4th Class - The Sword of Wisdom

The Sword of Wisdom: Striking the Root

The Enemy: The Ignorance of Self-Grasping (the root of all other enemies).

The Warrior’s Training: Training in Ultimate Bodhichitta (p. 201).

The Weapon: The Wisdom of Emptiness and Conventional Bodhichitta.

Goal: To strike at the very heart of the ego by realizing the unfindability of the "I" (p. 216) and attaining the final victory of full enlightenment for the sake of all beings.

The Habits of Happy People

1st Class - Introduction

Introduction

Before we speak about the habits of happy people we need to think about happiness

For someone like me and maybe for many of you who are here - this term 'happiness' is regularly used. For someone who is for the first time here the idea of happiness might seem illusive, straightforward, impossible, whatever...

But for the conversation to be of real value and relevance we need to establish what is meant by the word happiness - this is in order to make sure we speak about the same thing so that you are not disappointed by what you hear here. Then you as a listener can decide if what i say suits you.

Happiness - Two Approaches

Generally if you search for what is happiness you will come up with two main ideas:

1. The feeling we get when we experience excitment

• this word excitment is interesting - but it fitts to be used both towards the imagination and the seneses

2. The feeling we have when we our life hes meaning purpose or growth - and this does not necessarily means pleasure or excitment in the manner expressed by the first description of happiness (the above point)

The above two approaches should be acceptable for most people. These two approaches are sensible and reasonable for anyone carring to think about this situation.

Happiness - The Buddhist Interpertation

The way Buddhist approach the idea of happiness is somewhat different.

Buddhism states that any living being has a basic aspiration having two sides - to be happy and to avoid pain. This aspiration is our basic aspiration and everything we do consciously or not is aimed at fulfilling this wish.

The fulfilment of this wish is the real meaning of human life.

It is important to remeber that in Buddhism fulfiling one's basic aspiration is the meaning of life and also the most important achievment.(particularly when contemplating the concept of precious human life and how fragile and short the precious human life we have actually is)

The idea of Hedonic Happiness - where pleasure and excitment are the real meaning of happiness, and these are achieved by the constant stimulation of the senses - this, on the Buddhist view is actually a source of pain. For Buddhist this can actually send the individual on a journey of torment. (we'll explain more about why this is the case later or maybe immediatly?)

The idea of Happiness through meaning - is more acceptable for the Buddhist view. Howeve, where or what you believe the purpose or meaning of your life is really important. Without identifying this correctly, if you find the sense of purpose and meaning only through things such as family, carrier, fame or reputation, the Buddhist view is that finally you will be disappointed.

The meaning of Happiness in Buddhism

In Buddhism happiness means peace of mind. That's it. These few simple words which might not sound like much have in reality most profound meaning in our life.

When spoken by someone who experience inner peace, these words are truly meaningful and the listener should learn to cherish them.

How Buddhism Understands The Normal Manner of Seeking Happiness

In Buddhism any attempt to find happiness that is outside the aspiring for a peaceful mind is regarded as part of ignorance. Here ignorance refers to simply not knowing. Not knowing what true happiness is leads to not knowing how to go about bring our own happiness => ignorance is actually suffering.

Beings Who Are Happy

This simple equivictation of happiness with inner peace then open the door to differentiating between different kind of beings

• those with permanent and complete inner peace - known as Buddhas
• those who are experiencing permanent but not complete inner peace - known as Bodhisattvas and Foe Distroyers
• those who experiencing inner peace that is changing according to the conditions of their life but believe that by using this life in a specific way humans can improve themselves and become closer and closer to the experience of inner peace - which are ordinary people like my self
• and those who do not believe that permanent inner peace is possible

Now the Practical Stuff

[]

2nd class the habit of not fighting the inevitable

Recap

We looked into what is happiness

• seeking happiness by pleasing the senses
• seeking happiness by finding meaning to life

the first type is totally deceptive - we are acquiting happiness with the pleasant feeling that we get when get pleasant sensory experienc or sensory gratification. Because the experience of pleasure via the senses - sensory gratification might be intense but they will fade out and they require great effort in repetition and escalation.

the second type is a little more difficult to understand because people may find meaning of life in power in fame in reputation or in good family life or good friendships or being good at something but these things are also deceptive because they too do not last. At such time you might be acquiting happiness with a strong sense of accomplishment and pride.

Of course since not everyone manage in become good at what they do or always satisfiy their sensory desires - finally making these things the meaning of life is deceptive.

The Buddhist take on all these things is that they are not the meaning of life. This is because the meaning of life is to fulfil our basic aspiration to be happy. Here the meaning used for the word happiness is inner peace And the seeking of inner peace and striving for inner peace is on the Buddhist view the wisest thing of all. The topic of inner peace runs deep. It can be understood on many levels. the ultimate inner peace is nirvana and enlightenment. For those who do not have the experience of inner peace it is hard to believe that inner peace is the meaning of life. This is so because a person experiencing inner peace have an altered understanding of the whole context of life. Because we have very little inner peace we cannot appreciate how the achievment of inner peace is the meaning of life. This is why at the beginning we have to work in a more logical way to show that experiences coming from sensory gratification or from acquiring power reputation or the enjoyments we get from gardenning or painting etc - these are shallow, fleeting and ultimately non-rewarding.

With inner peace the more you have of it the more stable it becomes, unlike the other types of 'happinesses' it never turns into pain or disappointment.

And so a person who has deep stable experience of inner peace is a genuinly happy person whose habits are worth while imitating

Cloud edited the above

Here are the misspelled words I found and fixed:

1. acquiting → equating (appears twice)
2. experienc → experience
3. satisfiy → satisfy
4. achievment → achievement
5. gardenning → gardening
6. genuinly → genuinely
7. worth while → worthwhile (spacing)

---

Recap

We looked into what is happiness:

• seeking happiness by pleasing the senses
• seeking happiness by finding meaning in life

The first type is totally deceptive — we are equating happiness with the pleasant feeling we get from pleasant sensory experience or sensory gratification. This is because the experience of pleasure via the senses — sensory gratification — might be intense, but it will fade out, and it requires great effort in repetition and escalation.

The second type is a little more difficult to understand, because people may find meaning in life through power, fame, reputation, a good family life, good friendships, or being good at something. But these things are also deceptive, because they too do not last. At such times, you might be equating happiness with a strong sense of accomplishment and pride. Of course, since not everyone manages to become good at what they do, or to always satisfy their sensory desires, ultimately making these things the meaning of life is deceptive.

The Buddhist take on all these things is that they are not the meaning of life. This is because the meaning of life is to fulfil our basic aspiration to be happy. Here, the meaning behind the word happiness is inner peace. Seeking inner peace and striving for inner peace is, in the Buddhist view, the wisest thing of all.

The topic of inner peace runs deep. It can be understood on many levels. The ultimate inner peace is nirvana and enlightenment.

For those who do not have the experience of inner peace, it is hard to believe that inner peace is the meaning of life. This is because a person experiencing inner peace has an altered understanding of the whole context of life. Because we have very little inner peace, we cannot appreciate how the achievement of inner peace is the meaning of life. This is why, at the beginning, we have to work in a more logical way to show that experiences coming from sensory gratification, from acquiring power and reputation, or from enjoyments like gardening or painting, are shallow, fleeting, and ultimately non-rewarding.

With inner peace, the more you have of it, the more stable it becomes. Unlike other types of "happinesses," it never turns into pain or disappointment. And so a person who has a deep, stable experience of inner peace is a genuinely happy person, whose habits are worthwhile imitating.

What are the habits of happy people

Happy people are people with peaceful mind Their habits are not verbal or physical but mental. So we are looking at mental habits.

However it is worthwhile saying that out of their peaceful mind their verbal and physical actions are naturally pleasant and controlled. a point worthwhile mentioning is that when we see someone behaving badly verbally or physically we can be sure they are not very happy

To clarify and conclude - we understand that verbal and physical habits finally come from the mind. So while we can and do try to change verabl and physical habits to help us become happier the main and finally the real way of becoming happy is to develop good mental habits

There are many mental habits we need to let go off and many others we should and can develop in the next three weeks we shall be looking at:

1. Not fighting the inevitable
2. Letting go of our self-centred view p.1 - emptiness
3. Letting go ouf our self-centred view p.2 - abandoning s-ch and developing affectionate and cherishing love

The habit of not fighting the inevitable

One thing that we as humans find very hard to deal with is uncertainty. We rather certainty than uncertainty. But the reality is that our life is totally uncertain. As someone said we cannot be certain that we will see the sun rising tomorrow, we cannot be certain that we will live to see the next moment.

In here lies a clash at the very bottom of our being, existing, and it brings with it a greate mental termoil which if you are 'lucky' person you will be able to surpress. But sooner or later you will have to face the uncertainty of things.

The New Meditation Handbook

Karma part 2

Tonight we begin our study of Karma.

Karma is a word in Sanskrit - the acceptable meaning is action. In our Buddhist tradition it is used in with the meaning of cause and effect.

So in our Buddhist tradition Karma the topic dealing with causality or in other words why do things happen to me.

Now there are a lot of things to be said about karma. It is important to understand from the start that the exact connection between causes and effect only Buddha can see. This translate into the Buddhist speak - the expact connection between a specific action and a specific experience can only be seen by a fully enlightened being.

So Karma is about causality. Within causality we talk about causes and conditions Causes refer to substantial cause - which is the thing that is being transformed into the effec. Conditions refer to the necessary conditions without which the cause cannot become an effect

Within causality we can also talk about production. What is a product? How is something produced? What is a cause? What is an effect?

The above questions are very important for a number of reason. Especially later on when we study emptiness. The question of cause and effec, dependent related, and production are all fantastically interesting to contemplate in the context of what is reality and from where do things come from.

On the question of where do things come from - by means of a the most simple introduction I can introduce to the profound topic of production by encouraging you to think about the following question:

Where do things come from

And the Buddhist answer is that there can be only four alternatives

1. from themselves
2. from others
3. from both themselves and from others
4. from without a cause

Buddhist accept the 2nd option but, and I will not expand on it now, not in the way you think about it... :-)

You may wondre what is the reason for all this introduction? Well - the topic of karma is the topic in Buddha's teachings that where do my experiences come from? In Buddhist terminology 'experience' and 'feeling' means the same. So when you say 'I feel' you are simply say 'my experience' and in the buddhist presentation there are only three types of feelings/experiences pleasant unpleasant and neutral

So maybe you begin to understand how important the question of Karma is for Buddhist - because Buddhist want to know what is the true source of my experiences.

When you begin to think about this there are only two answers

1. from something out side of me
2. from something inside of me

So the big points to understand is

• Where do my experiences come from?
  • are they produced or are they permanent?
• What is the substantial cause of my experiences/feellings?
• What are the circumstantial causes