Changing From Our Default Victim Mentality To The Winner’s Mindset

Dhammarato: Well, guys, welcome. This is Saturday morning in Thailand and Sunday, excuse me, Friday evening in the States. And Ivan has asked a very typical question that basically he says that when he starts to practice, or he tells himself that he feels good, then he immediately has an unwholesome thought. “No, I don’t feel good.” And that’s just another unwholesome thought. We have unwholesome thoughts over and over and over again. Even when we have a wholesome thought, it’s almost always followed by an unwholesome thought. If we have a thought to remember, to start to practice having wholesome thoughts, we will immediately have the unwholesome thought of, “oh, I should have already been practicing having wholesome thoughts.” And so we continue to have unwholesome thoughts over and over again. And we do this ignorantly, mindlessly, stupidly.

Not listening to what we say. And one of the ways that it could be stated is that when Ivan says, “I’m okay”, that thought that comes up, “no, you’re not.” Or he calls it “resistance to practice.” What that means is that you’ve already got the underlying victim’s attitude that you’re not okay. So we can look at not only the word “I’m not okay,” but we can also look at the attitude “I’m not okay” and begin to change that. That in fact, that position of, let us say, resistant to practice. I don’t want to practice right now. Remember that I. That I don’t want to practice is not a permanent I. It’s just there because that’s the habit, and we can change that habit. So, Ivan, are you okay? I mean, really, are you okay?

Ivan: Yes, I think so.

Dhammarato: All right. Well, you were telling me that you were thinking that you don’t think so. And so let’s talk about not only the thoughts of the thinking or the verbiage, but also the mental attitude, the attitude that are you okay? Because there’s where the resistance to the practice is coming from, is in the attitude that, “well, why bother? I’m already not okay, and I can’t change.” And yet you’re changing all the time. You just changed several times in this conversation already. And yet people get the attitude. Part of the attitude of I’m not okay is that I’m so not okay that I can’t change. So you can actually, when you’re alone and start to practice and say, I’m okay, then when that thought comes up, “well, I’m not really okay. I don’t really feel it. Or when you would say the word I can be joyful. I can be happy. And then the thought comes, “no, I can’t be happy. I’m not okay.” You can see that. You can have a dialogue with yourself about whether you are okay or not. The resistance to the practices, the underlying position or the attitude that I’m so not okay that I can’t even change. And you know that that’s a lie. Everybody knows that’s a lie, right? When we say that I’m so not okay that I can’t change, why bother? You’re lying to yourself.

David, do you recognize that? When you have resistance to practice because you think you’re not okay and it’s not going to work, that I really am not okay. Do you see that you’re lying to yourself?

David: I see it.

Dhammarato: Dylan, when you have resistance to practice and when you say, I’m okay, and then you say, no, I’m not okay. And that that not okay is almost kind of a permanent thing that you feel so not okay that you can’t change if you ever had that kind of thing.

Dylan: yeah, I have.

Dhammarato: Do you know that you’re lying to yourself when you do that?

Dylan: Sometimes, yeah.

Dhammarato: The reality is, is that you’re okay. So, Ivan, what I would suggest is that you stop lying to yourself. Let’s get some truth of the matter in there. And the truth is, is that you are okay. I mean, look at it. You’re already a grown man. You survived. You didn’t cut yourself to death when you were three years old. You didn’t cut yourself to death when you were 15 that you’re still around, congratulate yourself for having been able to survive. Isn’t that enough? Yes, I think Ivan you’re okay. I mean, you’re not not bed bound. You’re not in the hospital. You don’t have a team of doctors fussing over whether they can save your life or not. You’re just sitting at home doing your thing and feeling not okay. Having the mental attitude I’m not okay, when in fact you are okay. The reality is you’re okay.

Ivan: Yes.

Dhammarato: Is that right? You are okay, huh?

Ivan: Yes. And I think the unwholesomeness is because there’s a part of me inside that’s like, oh, I want more. And that one thing cost me dukkha.

Dhammarato: Wait a minute. First off, you said that you want more. Or recently you said you wanted more. But before that you were saying that you’re not okay, which means you’re bound and for sure that you’re not going to get what you want.

Ivan: Yeah.

Dhammarato: Now you’re saying you want more, but you’ve already got the attitude you can’t have it.

Ivan: Yes. Mm hmm.

Dhammarato: So you’ve gotten yourself into quite a catch 22, huh? You’ve already decided you can’t have it, and now you want it. You want more. You already got the attitude that you can’t have it. What’s the next statement? Oh, poor me.

Ivan: Yeah. It’s a victim’s way of thinking that it just comes in different shape and size.

Dhammarato: Yes. So our actual work to do is to remember to look at the mind well enough to be able to see how much of the time we spend in a victim’s attitude. And naturally, with the victim’s attitude, you’re going to have victim’s thoughts. As I’ve said so many times before, every one of us is born as a victim. Every infant is a victim. You can’t get born without being born as a victim. In fact, before you were born, when you were in the wound, you were still a victim. You didn’t have any choice.

Dhammarato: So mom plays modesty(edit) or classical music. And you don’t have a choice about that. Or maybe she’s taking drugs and you don’t have a choice about that. Or maybe her husband kicked her in the stomach and you don’t have any choice about that. You’ve got no choices when you’re in the womb and when you’re born, guess what? You still have no more choices. You just got no choice.

The old joke is that there I was in that hot tub. Everything was nurturing and feeding. I had all of mai tais that I wanted the best music in town. And all of a sudden, the earthquake happened. The bottom dropped out, all of the water gushed out. And the next thing I know, doctor Young has got me up by the heels, beating my ass.

Well, I let out a yell so loud that I didn’t even stop yelling till I was about 35 years old. And I finally stopped yelling when I got to Wat Suan Mokkh

The question is, Ivan, are you going to stop yelling about being a victim?

Ivan: Yes.

Dhammarato: Because after we’re born, we’re still a victim. You don’t have a choice about whether you’re going to be on the maternity ward or on the old geriatrics ward. You don’t have a choice. They’re going to put you in whatever ward. And if some daddy comes in and picks up the wrong baby, you don’t have a choice. So you go home and mom loves you, or she hates you and you don’t have a choice. Then when you have the diaper change, you don’t have a choice. You either sit with the dirty diaper. Or you get it changed. But it’s not your choice. We start off as a victim. We’ve got no choice. And then we grow up and you got a choice here.

All along the way. We have no choice. Going to school. Let me ask you this. Everybody raise their hands if you had had a choice when you were going into the first grade, would you have chosen not to go to school? I would have chosen not to go to school. I would rather play it at home. Everybody has no choice. They’ve got to go to school. It’s the law. And mom obeys the law in a way. She has no choice. And so she puts you in your little suit and sends you to school, puts you on a bus or takes you herself. You can’t even get to the school by yourself. In fact, I was kind of lucky I walked to school because the school was only four blocks away. But now, six year olds can’t walk four blocks. They’ve got no choice.

And in the first grade, you’ve got no choice about what they’re teaching. Okay? So look how much that victim’s mentality has been ingrained into you over the years. You are strongly, strongly raised from babyhood to childhood to teenage years into adulthood, and you got no choice. Your choices are very limited. Often, in fact, you don’t even have a choice about what university you’re going to. If you apply to Harvard and Yale, and you get accepted at Yale and not at Harvard, you don’t have a choice about going to Harvard. They’ve rejected you.

And so look at about how much our choices are limited, especially out in the world. Well, as we grow up, we see that the world controls us and we have no choice. And therefore, we learn to feel about not having any choice from our parents. Because we see how they react when they have no choice about the outside world. And so we learn how to feel about having no choice from our parents, our teachers. And everyone does not like not having a choice. But they have no choice because they won’t give themselves a choice. Now, here’s the point, is that all along we have a choice inside of our own mind, especially as the mind develops. But we never took that. So, Ivan here you have been trained to have no choice about what attitude you’re going to have. You’ve got no choice about what you feel. You have no choice about the thoughts that you have.

In fact, that almost all the thoughts that we have are the thoughts that we have been given by someone else. Luckily, a lot of the thoughts that I have, I’ve gotten from Bhikkhu Buttadasa, Ajahn Poh, and some other good teachers, but they’re not my thoughts. Okay?

But I know that, and I relish which one of those thoughts I’m going to have rather than having the thoughts that I got from my mom and my dad and the teachers and whatnot, because they were all ordinary people having all ordinary, unhappy thoughts. But now that you’re practicing Annapanasati, you have to, moment by moment, remember, you got a choice. You do have a choice. And so when you say, I’m okay, and then you say, oh, you’re not okay, can you see that you just told yourself with a mental attitude of a victim that you’ve got no choice. Can you say, “hot dog?” “I see that!  hot dog!”

“I see that victim come up. I am a victim only so long as I continue to allow myself to be a victim. But I can change that. I can change my attitude into being a winner.”

Ivan: Yes.

Dhammarato: All right, now go ahead.

Speaker C: I was just thinking, like, what if something like, oh, I should feel happy right now. Isn’t that also kind of indirectly, a bit too attitude, like? Cause when I say I should feel happy, it means I just, like, indirectly, I’m saying I can’t be happy. Like, I don’t know.

Dhammarato: Your microphone is distorted, and so I’m having trouble understanding you. Michael, can you help me out again?

Michael: He said something along the lines of, when you have the thought, oh, I should be happy. Right now, that’s also an ignorant attitude.

Dhammarato: Yes. And guess what part of the brain that comes from. Do you hear the word should? I should feel good.

Speaker B: All right.

Dhammarato: That’s almost like an order. That’s like a law, like a rule.

I should. It should be this way. Guess what? When you use the word should, that means that you’re automatically in the victim’s position. Now you’re a victim to the rule I should feel good. If you go around school and tell the kids you should feel good, you think they’re going to do it? No, they’re going to rebel. They’re going to rebel just like kids rebel against anything. And there, that child inside of you is rebelling to feeling good. I know you did because you use the word should. Now, can you turn that around into I like feeling good? Yes, rather than you should feel good, because you should feel good is already a failure. You’re applying to a rule already to a rule breaker. Guess what? You don’t apply rules to people who are obeying the rules. You apply rules to people who are already breaking them. So when you say you should feel good, the whole point is that you don’t. So we need to do two things then. One is to change the rule or drop the rule that you should feel good. And then the other one is to get into that child point of, “I can do it. I can feel good. I do feel good.”

You see, the psychology. The Buddha didn’t have this. He just had experiential. But now that modern psychology has done a lot of research, they’ve come to the conclusion that there are more than one mind. We have at least three minds. One is the reptilian brain, where all of the feelings and all of those attitudes come from. And then we have the mammalian brain, the temporal lobe, which. Where we store verbiage. And this is also where all the rules are stored. And that’s when you say, I should feel good. You’re just acting like a parent to yourself that Eric Byrne talks about parent, adult and child. And so what we need to do is to come out of that parent ego state of telling ourselves what we should do and begin to work with the nurturing part, that it’s okay for you to feel good and allow yourself to feel good.

And then the adult state will give you permission. Well, you already are good. Why don’t you feel good? The reality is that that’s what the adult in the brain goes for, is the actuality what’s real. Have you ever heard the expression, especially when they’re talking about the white house as having an adult in the room? You know what that means? Somebody they can see really, what’s going on. So, Ivan, can you bring your adult into the room?

Ivan: Yes.

Dhammarato: The adult is that you can see. The reality is that you’re okay. The reality is that you’re already okay.

And so you can come into the reality of it, rather than passing that rule again, of you should feel okay, because you already do. In fact, when you say you should feel okay, that’s back to the lie. Because the should feel okay is based upon the premise of you don’t feel okay and you should feel okay. And the reality is, is that you’re already okay. Why don’t you feel that way? All right, so what I’m talking about this with the parent, the adult and the child here is for you not to just get it as didactic information. Oh, I’ve learned a little bit of psychology about Eric Byrne and Sigmund Freud from Damarato. That’s not the point of this. The point is, can, when you are making parental judgments, can you see that you’re making parental judgments when you see the child or when the child is saying, “I’m not okay, I don’t feel okay.” Can you see that? That’s just a feeling of the child. And then can you come into the adult? Can you bring in Sati and do an investigation to recognize you are okay? Because when we come into the adult state, we’ve already, in the process of that, coming out of the unwholesome, out of the unwholesome attitude of the child into the reality of the parent, from unwholesome to wholesome. So we could actually then go so far as to put it, is that the child is sometimes wholesome and sometimes not wholesome. The adult is always wholesome and the parent, the laws, the rules, the shoulds, the woulds, the goods, all of that is always unwholesome.

That in fact, the reason why we have this, you know, in the Christianity have the ten commandments and then they got all the rules of the church and the government has all of these laws. And you have English common law, and even in Buddhism, they have the five precepts. We give children the five precepts. We give the children the five precepts because they’re not wise enough to figure it out for themselves. However, if we are unlucky and unfortunate, we turn these precepts of things, good ideas, into rules, and we set them up as standards to live by.

And we put a whole lot of other standards in there, like how taller you are, whatever, how ever high you are, you’re not the right height. You should either be taller or shorter. Whatever age you are, it’s not good enough.

You should be a different age. How many of you have ever lied about your age? Yeah, everybody lies about their age. Why do we lie about their age? Because we’ve got a rule in there that we’re breaking. When we’re the right age, the 17 year olds want to be 18, especially the girls. So I’ve heard the 14 year old, he wants to be a drinking age.

In fact, when we’re young, we want to be older, and when we’re old, we want to be younger. Whatever age we are, we’ve got a rule saying you’re the wrong age. And so we tell a lie to try to match our rule rather than matching reality. So look at how we’re doing that. If you can actually begin to tell the truth about how old you are, can’t you also tell yourself the truth about the reality of the situation, that.

You’re okay, you live in a paradise.

Everything is hunky dory, everything is already all right.

The Trap of Judging Good Or Bad and The Story of Adam and Eve

This actually goes back to the, the story of Adam and Eve, that they were the, they call it the, the original sin, and that everybody that has been, let us say, raised in human society has that original sin. Actually, we’re not born with it the way that the Christians would talk about it, but rather we’re given the result of that sin in childhood when we have no choice. And what was the sin of Adam and Eve? They ate of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil and from restoring that. I’ve heard they were told not to do that by some God.

And a lot of people think that, that God is a controlling God and he doesn’t want us to have any knowledge at all. But if you look a little closer, what that actually means is the aid of the fruit of the knowledge, which means that if you know something, you got to put up with the results of the fact that you know it.

And if you know something, then you have to manage the results of it. Now, what was the knowledge that Adam and Eve had was the knowledge of good and evil, which is basically nothing but the judgmental mind. We judge things as good or bad. Now, if you live in a paradise, the paradise is just a paradise. Heaven is just heaven. Hell is just hell.

The reason why people don’t like hell is because they don’t like it. And the reason we talk about heaven as being a nice place is because we like it. We’re already in a paradise, and that’s a real place.

But when we judge it as good and bad, we destroy that paradise. That’s what happened to Adam and Eve is they destroyed the paradise by deciding some of it was bad and other parts of it were good.

And what happens with that is that if we judge this as good and this is bad, we throw out the bad, keep the good, and we’re still in the habit of judging. So we take that big good that we had in the first place and divide it in half, and half of it is good and half of that is bad, and we throw it out, and we keep dividing the good part into half and throw half of it out and we’re left with very little good and a whole great big pile of it ain’t good enough. That’s what the human mind does if we judge. So the right thing to do then is to be careful, to be mindful, to be in the adult ego state of deciding our good and our bad. Otherwise we’ll wind up having a whole lot of bad that’s actually good. So you’ve decided, Ivan, to judge yourself as not good and by doing that you’ve destroyed your paradise.

The reality is you live in a paradise, but you destroy it.

Ivan: It almost sounds like the moment the judgment comes out, then Dukkha is just a moment away. That as long as there’s judgment, then there’ll still.

Ivan: Can you hear me? Sorry.

Dhammarato: Can you help me with that, Michael?

Michael: He said that the moment that there is judgment, there is dukkha.

Dhammarato: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Why? Because that judgmental, that’s the critical mind. That’s the the parent ego state, the one who set standards, the part that does the judgment, sets it against the standard, compares it against the rule. This is where the shoulds, woulds, coulds and oughtas come from. It ought to be this way. But in fact, people who they… you’ve heard the word idealistic. The people who are idealistic are often the most miserable people because things are never up to their standards.

So the right thing to do is either to become wise to the standard moment by moment, or begin to and perhaps eventually stop having standards, just live in reality the way that it actually is without having judgments about it. Now, one of the things that I have heard many, many times, in fact, a lot of western Buddhism is based around an ordinary point about buddhahood and enlightenment is a long way away and you’re making progress. And what we want to look at is the fact that you’re already in paradise, you’re already a Buddha. You just don’t believe it. You don’t know it. But when you change right here, right now, when you come to the point of saying “I am okay” and actually believe it because you’ve got the attitude that you’re okay, then you’ve already arrived. So imagine that there’s a Buddha station someplace and you just got to that station. Let’s say it’s like a train station. You just got off your travel train and now you’re at the station. Are you going to stay there? Are you going to move on? You’re going to get back on another train and go off someplace thinking you’re getting more that this buddhahood this station is not good enough. And we keep wanting more and more because we’re in the habit of wanting more and more.

And can you see that habit of wanting more and more and come back to the point of this is good.

Enough that you’ve already arrived.

There is no progress. You’re either doing it, or not doing it. So if you can think of progress this way, it matter of how often are you going to see yourself okay? And the more often you see yourself okay, I guess that’s what they mean by progress. But there’s really no progress. You’re either feeling I’m okay or you’re feeling I’m not okay. And you’ve gotten into the habit of feeling not okay a lot. You were trained that way. You were trained to be not okay, and you were trained by people who already had the opinion that they weren’t okay. But when you come back to the position with anapanasati of seeing in the reality that you are okay right then and there, you’re already enlightened. Right then and there, you’re already a Buddha. Right then and there, you’re fulfilling the entire teachings of the Buddha of Dukkha, Dukkha Nirodha. When you come out of your dukkha, when you come out of your dissatisfaction and being in a state of satisfaction, right then you’re a Buddha, right then you’re awake. That’s what the word Buddha means, by the way. It doesn’t mean some airy fairy dude that’s sitting in the lotus posture flying through the air with the greatest of ease with a slight smile on his face like these statues appear. That’s not what it is. It all is a matter of can you be okay? Can you be satisfied? Is this good enough? And when you’re not good enough, can you see that you’ve got the attitude and the words that go with that attitude of, oh, I don’t believe it. Oh, I don’t. You should feel good, but you don’t. If you can see that, you can drop it immediately.

It’s like a hot potato. If you see that potato is hot, you can throw it down and say, “No, I am okay.” But we have to practice that over and over again because we’ve gotten in quite a habit that we’re not. So it’s not a matter of making progress on the path, because the path is, there’s a lot of people think that the eightfold noble path is actually a path, a destination that you can make progress on. And it’s not a path, it’s a method. Imagine that all you need to do is just to open the door. Open the door and step right into your paradise. A lot of people have the idea that that door is a long way away. A thousand miles, maybe 100,000 hours of sitting practice, and then they’ll be okay. And the answer is, is that that door is right in front of you. All you have to do is practice the right method. The Eightfold noble method is not a path. It’s a method.

And what is that method?

Buddhahood Here and Now

Number one, to wake up.

And number two, the big one is to look and to see exactly that you’ve got the attitude of, “I’m not okay”. And then you can make a change. You can make a change when you see that that’s just an attitude that you have. And that attitude is not who you are. Who you are is not the rules. Who you are is not your feelings. In fact, you don’t even know who you are. And that’s the good thing. Because whatever you thought you were, you’re not that. You’re not your feelings, you are not your attitude, you are not your thoughts. Most of the thoughts you have, you learn from somebody else. Most of the feelings you have, you learn from somebody else. Most of the attitudes you have, you learn from somebody else. But you do have a choice to change those, because that’s not who you are. At best, you can say, I’m a moving target. I don’t know who I am, because in the process of defining who I am, I’ve already moved. But when you tell yourself, “I’m not okay”, “I want”, “you should”. Can you see those shoulds, can you see those I wants? And then they can say, “hot dog, I’m already okay. I’ve already got everything I need.” Then we can be satisfied. “I’m okay. I got no worries. I got no problems. I got no feelings. Everything is fine.”

This is all there is to it. It’s a very simple process. The question is, at any particular moment, are you okay or are you not okay? Are you awake or are you asleep? Are you telling yourself the truth of the reality that you’re okay? Or are you lying to yourself because you’ve heard those lies so many times? This is what buddhahood is really all about, is just being real, marvelously real.

And you’ve got a choice at any moment. Are you a Buddha or not right now?

Michael, are you a Buddha right now?

I see by that smile, David, are you a Buddha right now? Are you awake?

David: I’m awake. I’m a Buddha.

Dhammarato: And notice that much of Buddhism is going to go say, “oh, you’re not a Buddha yet. You’ve got to work, you got to strive. You got to get rid of all them defilements, and then you’re a Buddha.” Well, when you’re right now, you’ve got no defilements. You might get some back again. Can you see them and throw them back out again? So sometimes you’re nuts, sometimes you’re not. Sometimes you’re a Buddha, sometimes you’re not. Most of the people, most of the time are asleep. They’re lying to themselves. But now you’ve got an opportunity to, once in a while, you can wake up. And, in fact, these calls is a good opportunity for people to wake up and be a Buddha right here, right now, have a big smile on your face.

“I’m okay already.”

“Everything’s all right.”

“Everything is fine.”

And then we forget and go back into the habit of lying to ourselves…

“Oh, you should be a Buddha.”

“Oh, you should be a good…”

“oh, you should do this”

and “you should do that.”

Or even worse still, in the child position, the victim of, “oh, I want to feel good, but I can’t. But you should feel good.” “I want to, but I can’t.” And the reality is, you said you’re already okay. So we’ve got those three things. One is, I don’t believe it, because I’m in the habit of being a victim. And number two, you’ve got all of these rules, and then you have reality. Guess what?

This is actually in the suttas. One of the places that you will find it is in sutta number 24. And in 20.

And in sutta number 24, we talk about the three fetters. Also in suta number two, we talk about the three basic fetters…

One is the personality view.

The second one is siva bhatta paramasa.

And the third is the eradication of the doubt.

And when we get these three things, when we get these three fetters kind of under control, that’s what they mean by being a sodapan.

The first step of enlightenment is to see the personality, which is the child. I like it. I don’t like it. Oh, poor me. The victim.

And then the second one, the second better is the seal of Bhatta Paramasa. That’s all the rules that you put up about how you should be.

And then the third one is the eradication of the doubt by seeing clearly.

So you there, you got the child, the parent, and the adult. And if you can stay in the adult, state that means that you’re free from doubt about that you’re okay. So the Buddha knew all about this. He just didn’t have the same language. But he talks about them as the three basic fetters. I find that quite amazing. I mean, talk about psychology. And they laud all of these super psychologists. Sigmund Freud. And the Buddha knew this 2500 years ago. And if you put it into context, he had psychology wired. He didn’t know about the three parts of the brain. But the neuroscientists have figured out that these three aspects, this parent, adult and child, actually have regions of the various cortex. So can you come out of your rules about how things could be? Can you come out of your desires and wants about how you want it to be and come out of your doubts so that you can see the way things really are? Because the way things really are just fine. Everything is already okay. The planet earth is a paradise, if you will see it that way, see it as reality. But you have to keep remembering to look. You have to keep seeing these thoughts. See you later, Michael. I saw you was smiling and eating lunch. All right, does anybody have any questions about this? Leonardo, what do you think?

Leonardo: Well, you’re saying the same thing you’ve been saying before. We know this about reality. Nothing is static. Everything is changing all the time. Your mind is changing. You are getting born and dying mutual times every minute. If you go down to second by the blink of an eye. So, yes, I’m aboard.

Dhammarato: All right. Actually, it goes down even further than that. Here’s the point. You’ve heard about the scientists talking about the speed of light and how the speed of light has been a major, major issue for the past few centuries and exactly what it is. All right, here’s a question for you then, about that. What causes the speed of light to be the speed of light, when in fact, if it’s a wave, what causes it to go up and what causes it to go down? The cause and effect relationship, this Anita that you’re talking about is much, much faster than the speed of light. So it’s not a matter of microseconds, milliseconds or picoseconds. In fact, it’s so fast that we could not possibly record it because recording it requires a number of changes.

Imagine a camera. They can have a camera that can take a billion frames a second, but can you get a camera? Can they can record how fast the camera goes through its changes. Nope, because the camera is so slow. Because first off, the light hits the pixels in the charge couple device that creates a current that has to go down through a wire, which then gets into the circuitry to be able to recreate the pixels and put it into a pixel format that results in an image. And then that image has to be stored. So the cause and effect system is so fast that it couldn’t possibly be recorded. All the scientists can do is to guess. Is it ten to the minus 20th of a second? Is it ten to the minus 100th of a second? Is it a minus googleplex? We don’t know how fast it is because we cannot record it, but we know things are happening pretty fast. How long does it take for hydrogen and an oxygen molecule to become water? We don’t know because it happens so fast. So the whole point is, is that the change, in fact, the mind operates at an alpha frequency of about a 10th of a second. It changes. It’s not exactly as. It’s almost like a human mind is like a metronome. It bends upon how weighty it is. You can put the weight down to very little in the minds very fast, so you can put it up with a whole lot of weight at the top. And then the metronome is very slow, but the mind works with an alpha wave. But look how many hundreds of billions of actual changes had to happen for that one mental cycle. And so this is why the buddha says that the mind is fast.

It’s- The mind is so fast, o monks, that he cannot find an analogy for it. Well, he didn’t know. Modern physics, modern physicists know what’s faster than a mind. The chemical reactions, in fact, inside the mind are faster than the mind. But a mind moment is actually a very complex kind of thing. But it’s still so fast that you can’t catch it. But it can be trained. When you take the weights off, the mind gets really, really fast. Ivan, can you take the weight out of your mind so that when you have that unwholesome thought, it is slow enough that you can catch it?

Yes, lighten up the mind. Don’t make it so heavy. When mind is heavy, it goes slow, and then you can’t see anything. You can’t see these thoughts. But when your mind is light, then when those thoughts come up. Hot dog. I see that one. Hot dog.

“I can see that. Hot dog.” I can see my ad, my mental attitude of being a victim, which is where that thought of, “oh, I don’t feel okay: comes from.

So, Dylan, do you have something to say?

Dylan: I have a question, but it was sort of different topic, so I don’t know if we have time for it.

Dhammarato: Well, sure, go ahead. What’s your question?

Dylan: So, I noticed I’m usually present. What I think of the future, I pretty much never think about the past. And I also recognize experience as impermanent. And I think because of that, my memory doesn’t retain things as well as others because it’s like the wind. It doesn’t matter what’s happened in the past. And so I don’t know if that’s a side effect of these practices, but I feel like I’m not really retaining hard to recall things that have happened. Do you have any knowledge on that?

Dhammarato: Michael, can you help me with what he’s saying? Sorry, my ears are not all that great.

Dylan: Okay.

Michael: I’m not 100% clear here, Dylan, but it sounds like you’re saying that because you’re practicing being present, your mind is not able to retain as well information, and so your memory is lacking. Is that correct?

Dylan: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like my mind doesn’t give a shit about the past anymore, and so it doesn’t take any. Doesn’t try to remember it. It’s just. Oh, it comes and goes. It comes and goes. It doesn’t really matter. And so now it’s not putting any. Giving any, I guess, desire or any. Any energy into, like, actually remembering things.

Dhammarato: Well, if I hear what you’re saying correctly, you got it kind of backwards. Let me give you an example, is that when people are going around not being mindful, they will lose things like their keys. For instance, you just arrived at your door. You open the door with your keys, and now you take off, let us say, to go answer the phone. But those are old things. Maybe they need to have a cell phone kind of toilet so that you can take. You can do your toilet, but never mind. You open the door, and now you rush to the toilet, and after you finish with your bathroom duties, you come back, and where did you put your keys? The fact is that you set them down on the way, but you weren’t mindful of where you set your keys down, because you were too busy thinking about, can you make it to the toilet in time. So I understand if you are actually present, if you’re actually seeing what’s going on, instead of thinking about what’s going on, you actually have a much better, improved memory. People actually do get a lot smarter by practicing Annapanasati, because the mind is not so heavy. We can actually pick up and learn things much quicker. Quicker that your IQ score will go up after practicing anapanisati, almost everyone that I know will admit to that. How about you, Michael? Do you see that you’re actually smarter now because you’re in present mode?

Michael: Yes. I’d also say my memory has significantly improved.

Dhammarato: And the thing I would point to with the keys example is that we’re carrying the present. You know, we’re paying attention to what is our hand doing right now? And then we’re doing that again. What is our hand doing right now? Okay, we set the keys down. What is our hand doing again? Okay, we let go of the keys. What is our hand doing again? You know, is it going inside of our pocket? Is it. We’re opening our mind to being aware of the present. So, you know, we’re not saying to care about the past, but to pay attention to what’s going on. And then the mind won’t struggle as much to remember things because it was paying attention moment by moment.

Dylan: Right. I think for me, I do pay attention, and I am mindful, but it may be that because I’m just like, it doesn’t matter. Like, so the feeling there could be, why bother remembering? Why bother caring, for example, at work, why bother remembering all this stuff? Because I’m going to be dead anyway or I’m going to leave this job. So even though I might be, well.

Dhammarato: That, in a way, is kind of a victim’s attitude. Can you see that? Can you begin to have the attitude? I see.

Dylan: I can see it.

Dhammarato: I see what I’m doing. I see where their keys went when I read something. I get it.

Dylan: Yeah.

Dhammarato: That’s the attitude that you can absorb data because you’re paying attention to it.

Dylan: Yes.

Dhammarato: But if you develop the attitude. “I don’t care about anything”, then that actually affects our attitude about observation. So the right way of doing it is to see that you’ve got the attitude of, “oh, I don’t care about anything.” In a kind of a negative way. Instead of “hot dog, I got this. I can see that.”  I’m watching what’s going on. I notice when people smile. I notice when they nod their head, looking for that feedback. I noticed your smile. All right, so this is the way. That we live our lives, is that we become present. We take in data. And when you’re taking in data, it actually registers so that you remember a whole lot more. This is what the Buddha meant.

Dhammarato: Go ahead. Go ahead. I’m listening.

Dylan: All right, so when I see something, like, I see you tomorrow, I see David wearing those headphones. Do I need to tell myself in my mind and note it? David’s wearing those headphones. You smiled. You did this to remember. Or does memory, does remembering happen automatically and there’s nothing that you have to do to make it occur?

Dhammarato: I would say that, yes, there’s a whole lot of kind of automatic stuff. In other words, if you take in data, it registers.

But if you’re not taking in the data because you’re already too busy thinking that nothing matters, then it’s not going to register, so. Well, yeah.

Speaker E: I think one’s attitude really affects your memory, too. If you have the attitude like, I don’t care about this experience, then you’re probably not going to remember it as much. If you have the intention to remember it, you know, your attitude will affect your memory. I think how you remember something.

Speaker F: We can also say that improved memory is an outcome of correct practice. It’s an outcome of practicing being satisfied here and now with what’s already happening and not worrying about, oh, yeah, I’m going to be dead someday, or what have you, but really practicing to enjoy and be satisfied with this moment, with what we’re doing with the people around us, this sort of thing.

Speaker D: Beautiful.

Dhammarato: Well said.

The Benefits of Being Present in the Now

So, Caleb, do you have a remark.

Speaker I: When I notice sometimes that, uh, my breathing will kind of go out of whack a little bit if the mind becomes perturbed. How exactly does gladdening the mind relate to, like, mindfulness of breathing practices?

Dhammarato: Oh, it’s directly related that in fact, one of the things that you would say that every time you even think about this stuff, it comes with a deep breath…

“Wow. I’m glad.”

“I’m okay.”

“Oh, I can relax.”

And you’re absolutely right that when the mind is disturbed, the breathing is disturbed, it gets shallow. When it gets shallow, we’re not breathing very well, which means we’re not getting blood oxygen very well, which means now the mind is not working very well, even though it’s just jointed. And so it gets even worse off. So if you can remember to breathe, that actually helps the blood chemistry, which means it actually helps the mental operations.

So if you can remember to take a deep breath on a regular basis, that taking that deep breath is also comes then with the thoughts, I’m okay.

“Wow. I’m okay.”

“Wow, what a paradise this is.”

I mean, all four go together, the body and the breathing. So that we eventually come to the point of having a body that’s relaxed and our feelings are also relaxed, where we’re happy and joyful and easygoing, and our attitude is relaxed out of being a victim into “I’ve got it wired”. And then our thoughts, this is the satipattana. Getting our body together, getting our feelings together, getting our mind together, and getting our thoughts together. And so whenever we’re changing the thoughts, one of the ways that we can change our thoughts is also by changing that breathing and taking a nice, easy breath.

Speaker D: Thank you. Mm hmm.

Dhammarato: Work with them together. As I breathe in, I feel good. And as I feel breathe out, oh, I’m so relaxed. And so, yes, the breathing is a major part of this is one of the quadrants, because if you don’t have the breathing, well, if you don’t have mindfulness of the body and know what the body is doing, it’s hard to relax. And having a relaxed body is part of the process of being okay. When the body is tense, it’s hard. When you’re uptight, it’s hard to be okay.

But when the body is comfortable and the body is relaxed, everything is easy to be. It’s easy to be satisfied when the body is comfortable. But when you’re holding your breath or not getting enough breath, then the mind gets scattered. You can say then that the breathing helps take the pressure off. The breathing correctly, helps lighten it up. Like that metronome that I was speaking about. When the weight is up high, then the metronome operates really, really slowly. But when we bring that the weight down, down to the bottom, where there’s very little weight on that metronome pendulum, then it tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tick, and you can see what’s going on. This is actually a part of a training that many, many different professional skills have to develop, but they only have it in gear when they are at work. An example of that would be sports that people can be really, really fast in catching the ball. They just can’t be really fast at catching their mind. They could be really fast in martial arts to deflect a blow, but they can’t be really fast at deflecting the unwholesome thoughts. But while they’re out there deflecting blows, their thoughts are focused. And after the fight’s over, that’s when they start to feel bad. So there are many professions like that. Music, sports, martial arts, a lot of professions, dancing. These kind of things require the practitioner to be in the here, now mostly in the body. Can we, as practitioners, operate with all four quadrants so that we can be fast in the body, fast with our feelings, fast with our attitude, fast with our mental thoughts, fast to be able to catch and see what’s going on and catch that unwholesome thought and catch that unhappy feeling and catch that mental state, catch that body and make it relaxed.

So operating with the breathing really, really helps to get the mind into a state to where everything is okay. And then you have arrived in that moment. And if you can remember to sustain that, then you can stay at that Buddha station. But our habits are such that this is going to put us back on that train and off we go.

 Do you have anything to say? Yeah. Well, come on. No, I know I’ve seen your thumbs up. Tell me something.

Speaker ?: Just thank you for, for everything. And it’s nice seeing everybody. That’s about it.

Dhammarato: Up in the corner. I see Anna. Anna, you’ve had your video off all this time. Do you have anything to say?

Speaker B: All right.

Dhammarato: And Michael, do you have. There’s another Michael on. Michael, can you turn your video on? Turn your mic on.

Speaker F: That’s Michelle.

Dhammarato: Michelle.

Speaker B: Okay.

Dhammarato: Hello, Michelle. All right, never mind. Okay, guys, does anybody have any last remarks, anything to say about speed of mind? Yes, go ahead Caleb.

Caleb: Is it a good practice to just be continuously aware of the breath 24/7 just noting, not like noting long or short do that.

Dhammarato: That would be a rule or a “should” to do it all the time. I’m quite against the word “all the time.” Instead, the better word, the operative word, is “when you remember.” So let’s remember often.

Caleb: Well, I’ve just, I personally noticed that it’s almost become a habit where there’s more times than not that I’m paying attention to my breath. It’s almost like a good, that’s cause.

Dhammarato: You can remember often.

That’s great. But don’t look at things as all the time, but rather in the sense of I can remember to do it and then you remember often.

But if you put the pressure on yourself all the time, I think that - that’s one of the problems with the way that Buddhism is taught. This has got this mentality of, “oh, you’re not a buddha until you can do it all the time.”

Speaker I: Kind of like people trying to stay in Janna 24/7 yeah.

Dhammarato: So let’s take “all the time” out of our vocabulary.

In fact, there’s several words we can take out of our vocabulary…

One is “sorry”,

another one is “try”,

another one is “hard”,

And this one is “all the time”

… we can take those four words out of our vocabulary because things are not hard. They’re easy. But I don’t have to do it all the time. Just do it when I remember. And I remember often.

Ivan, can you start to remember often?

Ivan: Yes.

Dhammarato: Yes, I will remember often that you’re okay.

Ivan: Yes.

Dhammarato: That resistance is there. Oh, I see that resistance. Remember to look at that resistance and say, “okay, I’m okay. I’m all right.” So, does anybody else have any comment?

Dhammarato:Go ahead, David, what would you say?

David: Keep sustaining that buddhist station.

Dhammarato: Yeah. Keep coming back to that Buddha station. Sustain it as best you can. But you’re going to leave, never mind, start again. Never mind, start again. Keep coming back and keep coming back and keep coming back and stay as long as you can. But you’re going to leave. No hassle if you leave and feel bad. Can you see that? Feel bad and come back. All right, well, thank you all very much. This has been a good talk. I think I’ve really enjoyed it. I especially like my hot tub story. Thank you. All right, we’ll see you guys. Bye bye.

Speaker E: See you next time.