The View of American Turmoil from the Other Side of the World | Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Guest Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, a renowned meditation master, discusses navigating global suffering and personal challenges like panic and boredom through Buddhist principles. He shares insights on cultivating love, compassion, and innate goodness, and guides a brief open awareness meditation.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Introduction and Rinpoche's Pandemic Experience
Buddhist Concept of Prayer and its Impact
Recognizing Innate Goodness and Positive Qualities
The Practice of Appreciation and Self-Love
Love as the Fundamental Nature of All Emotions
Navigating Intense Emotions: Panic and Hatred
Separating Actions from Innate Goodness
Dealing with Boredom During Lockdown
Rinpoche's Personal Practices: Exercise and Gardening
Maintaining Relationships Amidst Challenges
Rinpoche's Choice for a Single Life
Insights from a Near-Death Wandering Retreat
Overview of Five Main Ancient Buddhist Subjects
Understanding Prajnaparamita and Innate Wisdom
Guided Open Awareness Meditation Practice
Unconditional Love and Acceptance as a Force for Change
7 Key Concepts
Buddhist Prayer
In Buddhism, prayer is not directed to a creator God but involves cultivating a heartfelt wish for the suffering of others to diminish, sending love, compassion, and virtues from one's own heart. This practice makes the individual calmer, more peaceful, resilient, and better able to help others.
Innateness of Goodness (Kata)
This concept, also referred to as 'original purity,' posits that all beings possess a fundamental, inherent nature of wisdom, love, compassion, awareness, and positive energy. Problems arise not from inherent badness, but from a failure to recognize and connect with these existing positive qualities within oneself and others.
Love as Fundamental Emotion
The underlying drive behind all emotions and actions, including seemingly negative ones like panic or the simple act of seeking comfort, is a fundamental desire for happiness and freedom from suffering. This inherent love can be distorted or 'filtered' by the ego or conceptual mind, manifesting as hatred, fear, or other challenging emotions.
Four Activities
These are four ways to act from a foundation of love and compassion, guided by wisdom: peaceful (patience, kindness), enriched (increasing positive qualities), magnetizing (inspiring others through role modeling), and powerful (forceful action when necessary, but still rooted in wisdom and compassion).
Five Skandhas (Abhidharma)
A framework from ancient Buddhist texts that explains how the mind works, comprising five aggregates: matter (the physical body), feeling (sensations from the six senses), conceptual mind (cognitive processes), habitual mind (unconscious, involuntary drives), and pure consciousness (the fundamental awareness).
Prajnaparamita (Beyond Wisdom)
A core Buddhist teaching emphasizing the discovery of innate wisdom, which is the self-luminous and illuminating clarity of mind. This practice involves recognizing this basic wisdom and moving beyond dualistic conceptual grasping, allowing one to perceive reality directly without the filters of ignorance or attachment.
Open Awareness Meditation
A practice of simply 'being' and letting go of all efforts to do, try, or control. The mind is allowed to rest like the sky, with thoughts and feelings (like clouds) arising and passing without altering the sky's fundamental nature, thereby revealing one's perfect and unconditioned self.
11 Questions Answered
Buddhist prayer involves cultivating a heartfelt wish for the suffering of others to diminish, sending love, compassion, and virtues from one's own heart, rather than appealing to a deity.
This practice helps the individual become calmer, more peaceful, resilient, and resourceful, enabling them to better help others from a place of love and compassion.
Start by appreciating simple things like breath, senses, and being alive, then extend this appreciation to people and the world around you. This opens the heart to see the inherent 'lovable' quality in others and oneself.
Underlying panic is a fundamental desire for well-being and freedom from suffering, which is a form of love and compassion. The conceptual mind often filters and exaggerates this, making it appear as fear, but the core intention is self-protection.
Practice by separating a person's actions or egoistic mind from their fundamental innate goodness. Recognize that hatred itself is an uncontrolled emotion stemming from ignorance, and direct compassion towards the suffering within the person rather than hating the person themselves.
In Buddhist tradition, there is a belief in 'original purity' (kata), meaning people are not inherently impure. Bad news is exciting because negative actions are not normal; the vast majority of human experience and potential is rooted in goodness, though often overlooked.
Boredom presents a great opportunity to look inward, explore oneself, and discover the 'great treasure' within. It's a chance to engage in creative activities, study, or deepen family connections.
Accept impermanence and that nobody is perfect ('Mr. Okay and Mrs. Okay'). Continuously learn from each other, explore new things together, and engage in creative activities to keep interest alive and deepen the bond.
They are Abhidharma (how the mind works), Vital Cognition (logic and reality analysis), Madhiyamaka (middle way, interdependence, emptiness), Prajnaparamita (wisdom, stages of meditation experience), and Vinaya (rules, discipline, ethics).
The mind beyond concept is always present, like the ocean underlying waves. By letting go of 'doing' and simply 'being,' one can discover this fundamental nature, which is pure awareness, clarity, and luminosity, without the grasping of the conceptual mind.
No, acceptance is not resignation. By transforming oneself through practices like unconditional love and awareness, one develops a powerful influence that can be 'contagious,' leading to positive change in the world.
19 Actionable Insights
1. Recognize Innate Goodness
Recognize the great innate goodness, wisdom, love, compassion, awareness, skill, and positive energy within yourself and others, rather than focusing only on the negative. This helps you see what is truly there, which is often overlooked, and is the basis for real love.
2. Practice Open Awareness Meditation
Practice “open awareness meditation” by simply letting go and being with your mind, like the sky, allowing all feelings and sensations to come and be without trying to control, create, or avoid anything. This helps to discover your fundamental perfect nature, leading to deep relaxation and acceptance, and fostering unconditional love and forgiveness.
3. Be With Uncomfortable Feelings
When experiencing uncomfortable feelings like panic, hatred, or the thought “I can’t do this,” simply be with the feeling without trying to control, fight, or follow it. This allows you to see the underlying love and desire for happiness, and it’s a process of purification, like cleaning a dirty cup.
4. Recognize Innate Wisdom
Recognize that you are perfect right now and possess an innate wisdom, which is like a lamp that is both light itself and illuminates things around it. This helps to discover the basic, innate wisdom within, moving beyond conceptual mind to a state of clarity and luminosity.
5. Recognize Self-Care as Love
Understand that the desire to free yourself from hatred or to be happy, even if it manifests as self-hatred, is a form of love and care for yourself. We often don’t recognize these capacities within ourselves, but they are present as a fundamental wish for well-being.
6. Cultivate Compassionate Prayer
Cultivate the wish for the suffering of other beings to be diminished, sending love, compassion, and virtues from your heart. This makes you calm, peaceful, gives energy, makes you more resilient and resourceful, and helps others by changing how you act.
7. Begin with Appreciation
Start by appreciating simple things like your breath, senses, being alive, and the people around you. This practice allows you to see things you never saw before, appreciate more, and opens your heart to love by recognizing the sweetness in others.
8. Allow Mistakes and Imperfections
During meditation or in life, allow yourself to feel you are making a mistake, cannot relax, or are imperfect, without trying to control or suppress these feelings. This act of allowing is itself a form of relaxation, acceptance, forgiveness, and unconditional love.
9. Separate Person From Action
When you feel hatred or anger towards someone, focus on hating their actions or egoistic mind, rather than the person themselves, believing in their fundamental goodness. This helps you avoid being controlled by hatred and allows you to act from a place of love and compassion.
10. Change Yourself, Change World
Instead of trying to change the world directly, focus on changing yourself. Personal transformation can be “contagious” and is a more powerful way to create a better world.
11. Engage World Sanely
After developing inner peace and acceptance, engage in the world to help others from a sane and grounded perspective. The world needs people who are sanely trying to help others, and personal transformation enables this effective engagement.
12. Transform Boredom Creatively
When bored, view it as a valuable opportunity to look inward, discover your inner “treasure,” study, or engage in creative activities like gardening or inventing exercises. This transforms boredom into a chance for self-exploration and productive engagement.
13. Accept Impermanence in Relationships
In relationships, accept the impermanent nature of life, recognizing that feelings go up and down and no one is perfect (“Mr. Okay and Mrs. Okay”). This acceptance helps maintain relationships by fostering understanding and realistic expectations.
14. Keep Relationships Interesting
To keep love and relationships deep, continuously learn about each other, do new things together, and engage in creative exploration. This prevents boredom and helps love deepen by fostering continuous growth and shared experiences.
15. Study Mind’s Workings
Study how your mind works, understanding its different levels: matter, feeling, conceptual, habitual, and pure consciousness (the five skandhas). This knowledge helps in understanding oneself and the nature of reality.
16. Practice Analytical Meditation
Practice analytical meditation to understand the nature of reality, including concepts like interdependence and emptiness (meaning unborn and not going to die). This practice helps to see the true nature of self as unborn, luminous, clear, and aware, moving beyond dualistic grasping.
17. Embrace the Middle Way
Embrace the “middle way” by seeking balance in all aspects of life and understanding the concepts of interdependence and emptiness. This approach helps to see the nature of self as unborn and not subject to death, revealing luminosity, clarity, and awareness.
18. Engage in Regular Exercise
Engage in regular physical exercise, such as walking or creating your own unique routines like “jumping breath.” It’s part of maintaining personal well-being and can be a creative outlet.
19. Garden and Cook
Plant vegetables, garden, and cook for yourself and your family. This provides enjoyment, creates organic food, and can be a way to connect with family and contribute.
8 Key Quotes
If you have the best watch in the world, if you don't know that is watch, watch cannot tell you time, although the watch is the best in the world.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
The problem is we are not recognized. These are there within ourselves.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
The real meaning of love and compassion is something which is a benefit. And that benefit, whatever you want to see these others and wish to help and wish to free them within yourself and others is kind of the opposite of the selfish.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
So, if you want to hate that person, you should hate this hatred, this egoistic mind within that person. So, you have to separate the person from the person's emotion or the action of that person.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
If you love the world, the world loves your back.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
When you allow that you cannot relax, that means you're relaxing.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
If you want to change the world, then it will be chaotic, but you change yourself. Everybody want to change it themselves, world will become better place.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
When you know you don't need to change, that means you change.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
3 Protocols
Practice of Appreciation
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche- Begin by appreciating simple things you have, like your wonderful breath, your senses (hearing, seeing), and being alive.
- Extend this appreciation to people around you and the world, allowing yourself to see things you never noticed before.
- Recognize that true love comes from seeing the 'lovable' and 'sweetness' within others and yourself, opening your heart beyond mere empathy or sympathy.
Dealing with Intense Emotions
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche- Recognize that the underlying feeling of always wanting to be free, wanting to have happiness, and looking for something good is always present, as is the desire to avoid problems and suffering.
- When an intense emotion (like panic, hatred, or self-hatred) arises, just 'be with it' without trying to control, fight, or follow it.
- Allow the uncomfortable, embarrassing, or unbearable feeling to be there, understanding that this is a process of purification, like cleaning a dirty cup where the dirt becomes visible before it's removed.
- Discover the underlying love and compassion that is the fundamental nature beneath the emotion.
Open Awareness Meditation
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche- Keep your spine loosely straight and relax the muscles in your body.
- Allow whatever feelings or sensations arise to come and be, without needing to pretend to be anyone or act a certain way; just be yourself.
- Take a slow, deep breath in, then let go and just rest, just be.
- Understand that your mind is like the sky, and although thoughts and feelings (like clouds) may appear, they cannot change the fundamental nature of the sky; just drop everything and be with who you are.
- Allow any perceived 'mistakes,' feelings of inability to relax, or other discomforts to be present, recognizing that this act of allowing is itself a form of relaxation and acceptance.