ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Venerable Chris Roberts is a Tibetan Buddhist Nun and has1

been studying Tibetan Buddhism since 1980. She has been the
resident Teacher and President of the Australian Institute of
Tibetan Healing Practices since it was founded in 1992 by her
Teacher, H.E. Khejok Tulku Rinpoche. Venerable Chris is his
oldest non-Tibetan student.
As a Buddhist Teacher in a medical and healing Institute, Ven-
erable Chris recognised that she would be teaching Buddhists
and non-Buddhists alike. Consequently, she also saw the need
to study Western problems and their causes and to explore the
most appropriate solutions for Westerners. She studied West-
ern problems and the use of spirituality for healing for two
years while she held classes in the Uniting Church, Ashfield,
where the Rev. Bill Crews ran a benevolent organisation. She
then moved to a club on the campus of University of Technol-
ogy, Sydney for four years where she continued her investiga-
tions of Western mind and problems. After six years of inves-
tigation, she began to write courses for Westerners.
Venerable Chris has represented the Buddhist community on
the Women’s Interfaith Network. She has given guest lectures
to a diverse range of organisations, extending from attitudinal
healing groups through to universities, hospitals and commu-
nity groups. She has taught to doctors, nurses, social workers,
rehabilitation specialists, counsellors, and the physically and
mentally ill. She has also taught many groups from all the ma-
jor schools of Buddhism (embracing the whole spectrum of
Buddhism), as well as other religious and philosophical organi-
sations.
Venerable Chris has not studied Western psychology, psychia-
try or therapies, nor has she watered down the Buddhist teach-
ings to suit the Western mind. Instead, she has solely applied
Tibetan Buddhism to developing teachings, approaches, tech-
niques and methods that are powerful antidotes, specifically
designed for the Western mind and Western problems.
2
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No Problems Publishing Incorporated

4
First published in 2003
Second publication 2004

Copyright © 2003 No Problems Publishing Inc. (NSW)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by

any means without prior written permission from the publisher.

Front cover illustrations © No Problems Publishing Inc. 2003

Photograph back cover © No Problems Publishing Inc. 2003
Tibetan Symbols © by Pauline Stirzaker 2003

Printed and bound by Queensland Micrographics, Australia

ISBN 0-9751059-0-6

For more information please contact:

The Australian Institute of Tibetan Healing Practices (Sydney)
website: www.buddhanet.net/tibetan-healing
email: noproblems@primus.com.au

Tibetan Buddhist Healing Practices, North Queensland

(Townsville)
email: truian@beyond.net.au

Disclaimer
This book has been prepared by No Problems Publishing Incorporated for personal
use. The information and exercise protocols contained therein are based on current
knowledge and similar practices as at the date of publication. They are intended as a
general guide only. The author and No Problems Publishing Incorporated accept no
responsibility for the contents of the book or for any consequences of applying or
using the information and exercises. Application and use are entirely at your own
risk. Each person is different, and the way each person reacts to a particular exer-
cise may be significantly different from other people. If you are unsure how you
might react to a particular exercise, it is important that you speak with a Mental
Health Professional to advise you on your specific situation.
 5

SPECIAL THANKS

EDITOR Beverley Weynton

ASSISTANT EDITOR Helen Tobler
PHOTO BACK COVER Trish Brownett
LINE DRAWINGS INSIDE Pauline Stirzaker

AND

Jeannie Kasis Robert Hamilton

Leanne Perdriau Queensland Micrographics
Pauline Stirzaker Venerable Stuart Osborne
Tim Hoogwerf Carol Odell
Suzanne Mildren

Thank you to all the others that helped

SPONSORS

Dr Jeanette Hughes Moya Hicks

Robert Hamilton Pauline Stirzaker
Tim Hoogwerf Leanne Perdriau
Roy Dundon Monica Hicks
Ian Judd Thirani Thevar
Jeannie Nevin
Tibetan Buddhist Healing Practices, North Queensland
6

Dedicated to

H. H. the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

H.E. Sermey Gyalrong Khensur Ngawang Thekchog Rinpoche

H.E. Khejok Tulku Rinpoche

May this book benefit and bring happiness to all

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CONTENTS

Prologue...Venerable Stuart Osborne.................................... 11

Introduction...Helen Tobler................................................... 14
Questionnaire........................................................................ 18
Foreword............................................................................... 23

PART ONE
Chapter 1: Finding Buddhism............................................... 27
The Early Years................................................... 28
Chapter 2: The 1970s............................................................ 31
Chapter 3: The Sandshoe Era................................................ 43
Chapter 4: The 1980s............................................................ 49
Chapter 5: The 1990s............................................................ 63
Chapter 6: Choosing Your Path............................................ 71

PART TWO
Chapter 7: The 1970s Part 2................................................. 85
Chapter 8: The 1980s Part 2................................................. 95
Chapter 9: The 1990s Part 2.................................................111
Chapter 10: 1992-1995.........................................................117
Chapter 11: 1995..................................................................123
Chapter 12: 1996..................................................................133
Chapter 13: Standing on the Edge of Happiness ................137
Chapter 14: Being Realistic……………………..................145
Chapter 15: Healing Through Love and Compassion..........169
Chapter 16: Healing the World.............................................177
Chapter 17: The Future.........................................................185
10

EXERCISES

Exercise 1………………………………….. 55
Exercise 2………………………………….. 55
Exercise 3………………………………….. 58
Exercise 4………………………………….. 58
Exercise 5………………………………….. 74
Exercise 6………………………………….. 78
Exercise 7………………………………….. 78
Exercise 8………………………………….. 103
Exercise 9………………………………….. 140
Exercise 10…………………………………. 141
Exercise 11…………………………………. 142
Exercise 12…………………………………. 154
Exercise 13…………………………………. 155
Exercise 14…………………………………. 155
Exercise 15…………………………………. 158
Exercise 16…………………………………. 158
Exercise 17…………………………………. 162
Exercise 18 A………………………………. 164
Exercise 18 B………………………………. 164
Exercise 19…………………………………. 165
Exercise 20…………………………………. 170
Exercise 21…………………………………. 171
Exercise 22…………………………………. 173
Exercise 23…………………………………. 176
Exercise 24…………………………………. 176
 11

PROLOGUE

I have been with Venerable Chris now for more than seven
years and I can say that it has always been interesting.
When I first came into the Institute, as far as I was concerned,
I was a scholar and a yogi. But now that dream has been
blown out of the water and I’ve never been happier or more
grateful. The more I grow, the more I appreciate what a re-
markable person she is.
Like many people, when I first met Venerable Chris, I was
loaded down with trust issues and preconceptions. My own
ego had made me almost completely blind to the qualities
that she has developed. Because she was dyslexic and jum-
bled up her words, I mistook this as a sign that she didn’t
know what she was talking about. Her humility I saw as a
lack of confidence. Her humour I saw as undignified. I
couldn’t help but love the classes, because there was so much
truth in them. But I kept my “you know that stuff, but I know
this stuff” attitude handy if her teachings got too close to the
bone.
As I grew, I began to see past some of my own prejudice. As
I let go of some of my fear and preconceptions, I saw that she
was unaffected by what people thought. She was compas-
sionate and dedicated and as straight as an arrow, with no
pretences. What you saw is what you got. She was also very
insightful and quite unselfconscious. This was everything I
was not, with all my airs and graces and my clever rhetoric.
12

Then I started to notice that she would know when a student

was upset or going through something, and would call them
straight away. It didn’t matter where they were or what she
was doing or how sick she was. She was always right and al-
ways gave them just the right advice (maybe not what they
wanted to hear but certainly what they needed to hear). She
would have dreams and describe something, and sure enough,
it would come true. One day I saw her tell a student’s boy-
friend that his mother was sick because she had a big electricity
transformer outside her bedroom. As she lived in America and
he hadn’t been there for a while, he said he couldn’t remember
but rang up and checked. Sure enough, there was a transformer
outside his mother’s bedroom window.
When I heard this I thought, “Hang on. There’s something
amiss with my knowledgeable mind. I can’t use my mind in
this way”.
All these things I had observed about Venerable Chris are not
that important in themselves but it showed me that I was look-
ing at her very superficially. It was some time before I let Ven-
erable Chris talk to me about me. I was very afraid, but when I
did let her in it was quite a surprise. She was very gently tell-
ing me my past. The things I had long forgotten. She was
making things click one after another, it was the strangest
thing. Parts of my life were being laid out before me and I
could see the source of much of my pain and the coping
mechanisms that I had developed as a result. This left me in
tears but it was very healing and for once in my life I could see
a light on the horizon. It was the first time that I really had the
smallest glimpse of what it would be like to be happy, truly
happy, not a jumbled-up mess of reactions and coping mecha-
 13

nisms. It was not an abstract concept of enlightenment gleaned

from a book but a real direction. It was then that I realised
what she was doing, and that’s what really impressed me. She
wanted me to undo everything, to leave no stone unturned, no
little tricky cover-ups and fudged solutions, no “putty and
paint, she’ll be right mate”. She was going to make me do this
the right way. So we started.
I’m not saying that I have achieved anything. I have got to be
the lumpiest clay any teacher has ever had to try and mould
into shape. But now, when she points something out to me
about myself, it might still bite but I understand and know that
it’s the best thing for me (OK, mostly in hindsight but I’m
working on that). But she has something … an ability to cut to
the chase, to get to the elusive “root cause of the problem”. In
the beginning I was deeply insecure and afraid. Despite this or
more precisely, because of this, I thought I was a very
“spiritual” person. There was no way that Venerable Chris was
going to let me go down that road of insecurity and fear and I
am eternally grateful.
Later, through years of close contact with Venerable Chris, I
would learn that she not only has tremendous strength of char-
acter (as you will appreciate when you read about her ordeals),
but she knows how to teach others to develop the same quali-
ties. In this age, and in our culture of confusion and distrac-
tion, she has opened up boundless opportunities for her stu-
dents. It is only up to us to take the baton and run with it. This
is a truly spiritual endeavour. This is why I have stuck with it
and why I respect her.
Venerable Stuart Osborne
Resident Monk at the AITHP
14

INTRODUCTION

It’s not often that a journalist interviews someone and, as a re-

sult, ends up interviewing themselves for years afterwards.
I first went to the Australian Institute of Tibetan Healing Prac-
tices in late 2000 to interview Venerable Stuart for an article on
Buddhism. I had to write a profile of a young Buddhist for The
Australian newspaper, and found out that Venerable Stuart
would be perfect “talent” for a story and photo: he was an ex-
punk rocker with tattoos who had left the wild life behind to
become a Monk.
Another journalist was originally going to write the story but I
took over, believing I was more qualified to write about Bud-
dhism. After all, I had spent many hours in various lounge
rooms discussing the topic with people who had read Buddhist
books, or at least with people who knew people who had read
them.
Despite these sessions of intellectual theorising, I didn’t really
know what to expect when I got to the Institute. I thought Bud-
dhist Monks and Nuns generally lived in monasteries secluded
from everyday life, wore robes, and did a bit of meditation and
chanting. I was puzzled as to how exactly they would do all
this in suburban Sydney.
As it turns out, I came away from the interview with more
questions than I had when I arrived. When you read this book,
try not to approach it the way I approached the interview, with
all my preconceptions and judgements. By keeping an open
 15

mind, the book may allow you to see things you haven’t no-
ticed before. As everyone will get something different out of
this book, the best way for me to describe the teachings is by
explaining the changes they have made to my life.
Over several hours at the Institute, I listened to Venerable Stu-
art talk about what they did in the Institute and then Venerable
Chris talked about Buddhism. Venerable Stuart told me how
he came by chance upon Venerable Chris’ classes, and once he
learnt he could find lasting happiness by permanently removing
problems, he had to know more.
I could have treated the interview as just another job, written
the story and left it as that, but what I heard struck a chord
within me. I left their house and went to work, wondering how
on earth to condense what I’d learnt into an article, while mull-
ing over what I’d heard. My mind felt as though it had been
cracked open. For weeks and months afterwards I could not
get the ideas of this “mind science” out of my head.
I realised I had everything I had wanted for years – a stable re-
lationship, a job in journalism, enough money to live comforta-
bly – but I still wasn’t happy. I was sick of reacting to every-
thing and being a slave to my reactions. I realised that to be
happy I had to change myself, and it was a huge relief to know
that finally I had found a way to do that.
When I began going to Venerable Chris’ classes it was the first
time I’d set foot in a Buddhist centre, and didn’t realise she
was teaching in a radically different way to other teachers. Yet
if it wasn’t for this user-friendly approach I would not have
kept going back. She wouldn’t let us intellectualise about Bud-
dhism, so we couldn’t come to the next class more expert than
16

the other students. We didn’t learn any neat little sayings that
we could later repeat to others and feel clever and wise.
The teachings were fascinating, but my enthusiasm was damp-
ened when I realised that they came from Tibetan Buddhism
with its traditions and rituals. It looked a bit too much like
“religion” to me and I didn’t want anything to do with that,
having been brought up a devout atheist. At first I put up with
it in order to get to the good stuff – the teachings – until I learnt
that I had an aversion to it because it seemed scary.
Slowly, through Venerable Chris’ unlimited kindness and pa-
tience I learnt to face things that I found scary or too hard. Her
uncanny ability to know things about me that even I’d forgot-
ten enabled me to work out the causes of problems I’d had for
years. I’m learning to deal with physical pain and illness, and
know that anything I might be going through, Venerable Chris
has gone through far worse. Not only has she survived, she has
worked on herself to be able to help other people.
Even though it all seemed too hard at times, by following the
teachings and Venerable Chris’ advice, work became less
stressful, my relationship was saved, I got along better with
people, and I didn’t get as upset over my illness. When I sud-
denly ended up in hospital with blood clots in my lungs, it hit
me: we don’t know what’s going to happen to us next and we
don’t have forever. And after everything I had learnt through
the teachings, being in hospital was not nearly as scary as it
could have been.
This is not a book you can read from cover to cover and know
it all straight away. Nor is it to be read intellectually. It takes
re-reading, and each time you read it you will read it in a
 17

slightly different way because you will be looking at yourself

differently. After my experiences, I’m sure this book will
touch a few nerves among those who read it, and change their
lives for the better.
Helen Tobler
18

QUESTIONNAIRE

PLEASE NOTE

This book is more than a life story, it is an educational experi-

ence. Before reading further, it is strongly recommended that
you take a few minutes to consider and complete these ques-
tions and read the following commentary. Through taking a
little time to reflect on and answer this questionnaire, you will
be preparing your mind for the journey to come.

1 Is your intention in reading this book to:

find out information and facts? Yes/No
or
find out about yourself? Yes/No

2 Do you try to find happiness:

through having material possessions? Yes/No
through having certain people around you? Yes/No
through looking a certain way? Yes/No
through having a certain job or career? Yes/No
within yourself? Yes/No
 19

3 Do you have a tendency to:

label and categorise information? Yes/No
learn through concepts? Yes/No
learn through experience? Yes/No

4 Do you want to read an inspirational book Yes/No

or
Do you want to read a book that teaches
you how to be happy? Yes/No

5 Do you ever experience:

anger? Yes/No
depression? Yes/No
worry? Yes/No
fear? Yes/No
hatred? Yes/No
guilt? Yes/No
problems letting go of certain people, such as a
partner, people dying and so on? Yes/No
problems letting go of things that happen to you? Yes/No
20

problems letting go of certain things such as

your possessions being damaged or lost? Yes/No

6 When you are confronted with a difficult situation

do you:
try and get away from the difficult situation? Yes/No
or
try to face it and learn from it? Yes/No

7 When you examine how much you actually know,

do you examine:
what you already know? Yes/No
or
how much more there is to learn? Yes/No
 21

ANSWERS

1 In Buddhism we learn to find out about ourselves and our

minds, so we can learn how to be happy.

2 Happiness is a feeling that arises within us and permanent

happiness doesn’t come from the world around us. If we
need and want certain things for our happiness we will be-
come unhappy when we lose them.

3 In Western education, we have a tendency to learn intellect

ually and what we know is examined on an intellectual
level. However, in Buddhism the aim is to learn to change
yourself. Consequently it is essential to learn through your
own experience and learn to go beyond intellectualising,
which allows changes to take place on a very deep-seated
level.
When studying Buddhism we must always try to avoid our
cultural tendency to intellectualise. We should try not to
categorise, label and gather information, thinking we know
and understand. If we do this, we will be blocking our abil-
ity to develop clarity, insight and understanding of the
teachings and ourselves.

4 This book’s main purpose is to help the reader find happi-

ness by transforming adversity. It is not designed to inspire
superficial feel goods. When we look at finding happiness,
we have to relate the information to ourselves and who we
are, so we can change and learn to be permanently
happy.
22

5 If we were never in a negative frame of mind we would be

happy all the time. From a Buddhist perspective, if you
answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions or if you experi
ence any negative reactions, there is more for you to learn.

6 Difficult situations can be liberating. If we face difficult

situations rather than run from them, we can change for the
better and grow through experiencing them. Facing a diffi-
cult situation can reduce fear but if we run from difficult
situations it will increase fear.

7 If we examine how much more there is to learn and what

we don’t know, it will allow us to get down to the underly
ing root cause of the problem, solving the problem perma
nently so we can be happy. Also, what you know depends
on what your mind is like, not on the intellectual knowl
edge that you have learnt.
 23

FOREWORD

I have always had a resistance to the idea of writing a book,

maybe it’s because I am dyslexic. However, after repeated re-
quests by my students to write about my life, I decided to
quickly write a book. I thought three weeks would do …
twelve months later I finally finished it.
This book is not intended to be a criticism of Western society
but rather to point out the differences between Western and
Buddhist approaches to learning and problem solving. It is in-
tended to help the reader open up more understanding of an
ancient system that can provide healing and a path to happi-
ness.
In Buddhism we try to find individual specific solutions for
individual problems, rather than using formulae or categories.
We try to take into account all the individual causes and condi-
tions.
If you know how to solve a problem skilfully, by solving the
root cause of the problem, the problem will not manifest in
some other way and will never return. Therefore, the more
problems we solve permanently, the fewer problems we have
and the more happy we become.
In mainstream education, finding the root cause of the problem
or finding individual solutions other than using categories and
formulae is often thought too hard or even impossible. How-
ever, the Buddhist approach of training the mind enables this to
happen.
24

This book is not a complete story of my life. I have, however,

used some of my own experiences to illustrate a few points.
Part One and Part Two are two different perspectives of the
same period of my life.
Repetition is needed so you can learn and change. It is recom-
mended the book be read first from beginning to end and then
read slowly, with reflection on the topics.
25
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 27

CHAPTER ONE

People think that being a Buddhist Nun is to hide from the

world and lead a restricted life. I feel it is the very opposite of
this. It is a life of investigating and opening up awareness of
the world and oneself. It is a liberating existence where I am
not chained to the menial restrictions of a normal life.
When old friends contact me from the past and ask what I am
doing now, I really don’t know how to start. If I say I am a
Nun, most would think, “You haven’t changed, still a joker”.
I feel I should inform them of the series of events that changed
me, to enable them to come to terms with what happened and
to help them understand why I became a Nun. However, they
28

are liable to go into shock when they hear my story and feel
sorry for me.
I see everything that has happened to me as a good thing, a
fortunate life where my karma has led me to the Buddhist path.

I was born in Sydney, Australia in 1949. When I was a few

months old my father decided to build a fence around the back
verandah. It was a fair-sized verandah, so it took him a while.
The day came when the verandah was finished and my parents
could finally let the baby outside the back door, without too
much worry. My parents put me down and I crawled straight
to the fence, climbed over it and was off down the road. My
father decided the verandah fence was a waste of time and
pulled it down.
This was pretty much an indication of things to come. My
poor parents! I was walking and talking at the age of eleven
months and made so many escape attempts to see the world,
that my mother formed a sort of “Neighbourhood Chris
Watch”. The neighbours would ring my mother to warn her,
“Chris just passed on her dinky heading north”.
When I was a young child my father left the disciplining up to
my mother and often when I was difficult, she would com-
pletely lose it with me. These days I feel sorry for what I must
have put my mother through.
The neighbourhood I grew up in was a happy and vibrant com-
munity. All the children and parents living in my street got
 29

along well., the children were allowed to wander in and out of

each others’ houses at leisure.
When I was nine my parents moved to the country and rented a
house on a farm. Leaving my neighbourhood was like leaving
my family, I was an only child and found, for the first time in
my life, I had no other children around me.
Despite feeling lonely and isolated, I really loved living in the
country and when I started at my new school, I quickly made
friends. They taught me how to ride a horse and from then on I
spent most of my time with my friends riding horses and swim-
ming in the river.
At fourteen I asked to be sent to boarding school because my
friend had gone to one and I wanted to go as well. However, I
was sent to a different school to that of my friend but this did-
n’t seem to matter. I loved every minute of my new school,
Tara. These days I often reflect back to the wonderful atmos-
phere and the caring nature of my fellow students and how liv-
ing in a nunnery must be something like my days at Tara.
As a teenager I thought I was very confident. When I was sev-
enteen I left school and continued to live in Sydney away from
my parents. At the age of nineteen, I decided to move back to
the country to be with my parents for a year so I could save
money to go overseas.
30
 31

CHAPTER TWO

In early 1970, at the age of twenty, I went overseas for a few

years. It was the time of flower power, love and peace, and
was the perfect time to hitchhike around Europe. I did this in
the summer and financed my trips by working in London in the
winter. I had a wonderful time.
I returned to Australia at the end of 1972. At that time my par-
ents’ house was a happy place where my friends often took ref-
uge. Sometimes my mother became angry with me but I dealt
with her anger by laughing at her and ignoring it. It seemed
reasonable at the time but now I realise this wasn’t good be-
cause I was blocking out understanding, and laughing at her
was not a compassionate attitude.
32

By the time I was twenty-four, I felt as if I’d lived a lifetime

already. I had been there and done that. I had a career, was
studying, and was living in Sydney. Everything was ‘rosy’ but
in hindsight I still had negative states of mind that I didn’t
really recognise and I didn’t make the connection that they
would cause me harm.
By the mid-70s I would often hear the murmurs of, “Chris is
going places.” It was little wonder I was confident, but my
confidence was based on having a good job, travelling and peo-
ple respecting me.
When I was twenty-five, I stepped into a public telephone box
to ring a friend. It was when I put the phone down that I had a
very strange experience. I don’t really want to mention it, but
it was through this experience that I found Tibetan Buddhism,
so I will briefly describe it. It was like flicking on a light
switch, that lit up the darkness of my mundane existence. It
was like walking through a one-way door, never to return. Try-
ing to explain it is difficult, because any description is limited
and only leads to confusion. It is like trying to describe a col-
our to a blind person … all I can say is the experience was
earth-shattering.

In that single moment, in a flash, I changed.

I ran home and I tried to write down everything that I’d real-
ised. For months I tried to hold the memory of that moment
and as a result I wrote books and books on it. The experience
was nothing to do with the world around me, there was no
point of reference and no logical thought or feeling from my-
self, in relation to the world. It was a non-conceptual experi-
ence, therefore I experienced difficulty in placing the informa-
 33

tion.
From the moment of this experience, and from then on, I be-
came interested in the mind. My life changed because of the
change in myself and I was happier and my relationships with
others improved. I even found a job that involved skilful com-
munication and was often asked to mediate between manage-
ment and the factory workers.
I now had extreme confidence, I thought I knew all the answers
and from there I jumped to the conclusion that the world was
my oyster and nothing could hurt me. This was such a big mis-
take. I didn’t think, “I’m better than others”, I just thought I
was rather cool and I knew this stuff, but that was not a good
state of mind at all.
I didn’t understand the dangers of false pride and ego, and that
when we suffer from false pride and ego, we are inclined to
make invalid judgements and decisions that have dire conse-
quences.
At that time, I was living with a really strong guy. When he
did the gardening for my mother, it took only five minutes for
him to break her big garden fork. He just had a natural flair for
breaking things, so it was just sheer stupidity when I decided to
trip him up.
We had this playful routine where I used to tease him. “I’m
going to take my glasses off and teach you a lesson if you keep
that up,” he used to say.
“Yeah, yeah,” was my standard reply, “you’re actually afraid
of me”.
34

Then one day he took his glasses off.

“Oh,” I thought, “maybe this is not a good idea ... no, I can
handle this after all, I’m smart”.
Two hours earlier, I had been paying a friend’s bill at an ambu-
lance station and I began to chat to one of the ambulance driv-
ers. He had asked, “Are you in the ambulance fund?”
“No,” I replied, “I don’t need to be, I don’t get sick”.
“But you should be in the fund, just in case something hap-
pens.”
“Why should I? Nothing ever happens to me.” This was said
with absolute self-assurance.
He became upset with me and argued, “Don’t ever say that,
something will happen to you now”.
“What an old woman you are.” I laughed at him and went
home.
I really believed nothing could happen to me because I thought
knowledge could keep me safe. I had a vague notion about im-
permanence. I had noticed changes taking place in my life and
in the lives of other people. I had noticed people dying and
experiencing big losses but somehow I thought “I knew”,
therefore I was in control. Nothing could hurt me. My life was
going to plan, I had a career, a good job, nice clothes, a farm
and a horse stud in the country. I used to drive through poorer
suburbs and think, “Why do they live this way, why can’t they
get a good job like me”.
 35

I was twenty-six years old, and little did I know that I was
never going to be employed full-time again. I had no idea I
was standing on the edge of change.
So two hours later at home after visiting the ambulance station,
I was facing Joey who was telling me, “I could give you a hid-
ing if I wanted to”. This was too much for my ego.
“I can outwit him,” I thought. “I’m going to get in there and
maybe I can do some kind of judo throw.” The ‘great knower’,
however, knew nothing about judo or any other martial art.
“I’d better get in there and do something before he has time to
think.”
I wrapped my leg around his leg, and just to impress on Joey
that I knew what I was doing, I made a judo noise, “Hya!”
He tightened all his muscles to resist my attempts to throw him
and held firm without moving. We lost our balance and fell to
the floor. My leg took the full force of the fall. A pain shot
through my leg. I had trouble breathing. I was gasping for air.
My breath was rapid. My body had gone into shock. I never
knew pain could be so bad.
My friends, who were visiting, gathered around me, reassuring
me that I would be alright. I didn’t appear to have fallen heav-
ily, so everyone thought that I would recover quickly. The
guys lifted me onto the couch. We waited for my breathing to
settle and the pain to subside ... but it didn’t.
Finally we began to realise that I needed to go to hospital …
but I wasn’t in the ambulance fund!
The guys picked me up and carried me to a station wagon be-
36

longing to one of my friends. They slid me into the back and

we were at the hospital in a matter of minutes. At the hospital,
when the doctor asked me which part of my leg hurt the most, I
couldn’t tell him because there was no single point ... the whole
leg was hurting in the same way. The doctor called in an or-
thopaedic specialist but he didn’t want to examine me that
night because the hospital was on strike.
“You might have to stay the night,” said Joey.
As the porter was transporting me from casualty to my hospital
room, he wheeled me into the hospital lift and I found myself
staring up at the same ambulance driver I had argued with
hours earlier. We locked eyes.
“Sorry,” he said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen
to you”.
Bang, crash! The lift door opened and I was wheeled out be-
fore I had time to reassure him that he hadn’t caused the acci-
dent.
When I arrived at my room, I realised that we hadn’t had din-
ner, so I asked Joey to go and get some takeaways. When Joey
returned with the food, I looked at it and I thought, “I have to
eat”, but it was strange … I just wasn’t hungry.
The next morning I was woken by a nurse who had the manner
of a sergeant-major in the army. “We don’t have patients feel-
ing sorry for themselves here, you are quite capable of washing
yourself.” It felt like I was back at boarding school. She
pulled back the covers … and screamed. Was this part of the
ploy to reassure me?
 37

Maybe I wasn’t going home that day.

My leg was huge and black. It was so swollen that it was the
same size from the hip to the ankle. That afternoon I was
asked to sign a form that would allow the hospital to put me
under anaesthetic, so that they could x-ray my leg without pain.
I agreed.
When I woke up my leg was in plaster. “What happened?”
The doctor explained I had severed three tendons and damaged
the ligaments in my knee. He called it a ruptured knee … it
was just like getting a chook’s leg, twisting it, and pulling it
apart. They said that I had a one-in-five chance of the opera-
tion on my knee being successful, and I may not walk properly
again.
I was very disorientated and confused, the only question I
asked was, “Can I ride a horse?”
He replied, “Never again”.
“What do you mean?” I said.
The doctor said, “You don’t seem to understand that you’ve
had a major operation”.
“What operation? I thought I was going home today.” What
about work, my career, money? My confidence plummeted
and my mind went into shock.
At this time, I was working full-time, studying accountancy at
night and on the weekends working on my farm in the country.
Even though I was in hospital my mind didn’t appear to under-
38

stand. Thoughts kept popping into my head such as, “I must do

my assignment and get ready for work”.
It was Easter at the time and because I lived near the hospital,
all my friends decided to stay in my apartment so they could
easily visit me. Through the groggy haze of pain and morphine
I began to realise that my room was becoming a ‘happening
place’. It was full of people from early morning till late at
night and neither myself nor the hospital staff seemed to be
able to do anything about it. My friends would arrive every
day in a party mood with plates of food. As soon as a nurse
saw them (without my friends saying anything to the nurse) the
nurse would say, “She is in there”, and point to my room. Of-
ten I was so out of it I didn’t realise what was happening.
I can remember on one occasion, a friend searching for a nurse
to ask her for a corkscrew, but there weren’t many nurses
working because of the strike. I don’t think many nurses carry
corkscrews anyhow! She developed a method for opening the
bottles by banging them with a brick. I suppose it was spar-
kling wine and she was trying to make the wine froth up so the
cork would pop out. I vaguely remember that the brick was
outside my ground floor window and she was climbing in and
out through the hospital window, smuggling in open bottles.
Much to my embarrassment, I remember one of my friends
even put me on the pan once, because there were not enough
nurses around due to the strike. A year later I was telling a
friend at a party about this and she said, “Don’t you know eve-
ryone here helped nurse you and put you on the pan?”

“Oh NO!” I scanned all the faces staring at me … and wanted

to go home immediately. I began to realise that even being
 39

prudish can lead to unhappiness.

However, I was grateful for their company and for them com-
ing to my assistance and nursing me. Even though all my
friends were having fun, I don’t think they were inebriated or
disturbed others. On the contrary, it was an orthopaedic ward
where no-one was sick, but a lot of patients were confined to
bed and were bored. The atmosphere was of an on-going cock-
tail party.
I shared a room with an old lady who was blind, crippled and
partially deaf. She had come from a nursing home and was be-
ing treated for bed sores. She told my friends that her life was
a misery. She couldn’t hear me because I was unable to get out
of bed and talk to her up close but my friends included her in
the ‘happening’ and she had a wonderful time, chatting and eat-
ing hors d’oeuvres. Years later I would meet up with old
friends who would say, “That was the best party ever!”
After a week the physical pain began to subside but my mental
pain remained. As I lay in bed thinking, “Why did this hap-
pen?” It hit me between the eyes, I had caused this to happen.
My mind had caused this to happen. My false pride had
caused this to happen. It was clear, it was very clear … I real-
ised that false pride was so dangerous and so very harmful. If I
hadn’t had the telephone box experience, I would never have
hurt my leg.
I realised that just because I knew something, it didn’t mean I
knew everything, and just because I felt confident, it didn’t
mean I was confident. Just because I felt secure, it didn’t mean
I was. I only felt secure because I wasn’t in a situation that
brought my insecurity to the surface, that’s all it was.
40

As a result of the telephone box experience I thought I knew

something and I thought I was a bit cool, but this attitude
blocked awareness. Even if you know something, how do you
know what you don’t know? This not only meant I didn’t
know everything, it also meant there was something I needed
to learn about myself.

I began the search for answers.

If you are unable to make valid judgements and decisions, you
will be unaware of what harms you and what does not. This
can be very disturbing. If you don’t understand the cause of a
problem it leaves you feeling vulnerable, as if it might happen
again. We don’t recognise that often it is fear and underlying
bad feelings that propel us to find solutions immediately.
I recognised this, I also recognised I could not eliminate my
insecurity and bad feelings by appeasing the bad feelings or
using ego and false pride to cover them up. If my ego and false
pride had caused my problem then I needed to rectify this dan-
gerous problem within myself.
If I wasn’t a knower, someone cool, then who was I?
I had to avoid quick-fix solutions and reaching out for things
just to make myself feel better. I had to avoid thinking that I
was a certain way and trying to be a certain way and trying to
create a false self-image such as having nice clothes, a career
and trying to be someone I was not.
I didn’t want to manufacture a thought, feeling or view of my-
self just to try and make myself feel better. I didn’t want to
reach out for a coping mechanism such as trying to be impor-
 41

tant when I felt unimportant, trying to be worth something if I

felt worthless, trying to be superior if I felt inferior. I didn’t
want to reinvent myself in any way, I just wanted to be myself
and wanted to know who I was. I reasoned this was the only
way to feel secure.
I tried to avoid thinking that I knew this or that. Thinking I
was cool and invincible and not understanding myself had got
me into this mess in the first place. I had to learn to face and
accept my bad feelings, my insecurity, and learn how to undo
them. Even though doing this made me feel incredibly bad,
vulnerable and confused, it was obvious this was the only way
I could find valid solutions. As uncomfortable as it made me
feel, I recognised it was the only way to learn and that it was
saving me from a never-ending cycle of painful situations and
bad feelings that come from building castles in the sand.
I became very afraid of my false pride and ego and I tried to
keep an open mind that would allow me to develop and learn.
Consequently, I abandoned everything that I’d realised in the
telephone box, including the way I saw myself.
Underneath my false pride and ego, I found insecurity … lots
of insecurity!
This was the beginning of the sandshoe era!
42
 43

CHAPTER THREE

I had decided to dress down! This was easy because I lost my

job after my accident and therefore had no money. I dressed in
jeans and gym boots. In those days, they were not considered
trendy like they are now. Platform shoes, psychedelic mini-
skirts and flares were in fashion, not jeans and gym boots. In
other words, I looked like something the cat had dragged in.
I wanted to test the waters. Instead of thinking I was a certain
way, my life became an experiment to find out what I was
really like. I did this by observing my reactions and emotions.
When I met others, I noticed how their judgements influenced
the way I felt about myself. If I didn’t look nice and didn’t
44

have a job, they would often jump to the conclusion that I was
down and out and didn’t want to work. I never told people I
owned a farm and a horse stud or that I was studying accoun-
tancy part-time. I watched my mind as I observed the differ-
ence between people thinking “she is going places” and think-
ing, “what a loser”.
Sometimes people’s comments got to me but as time went on, I
found that if I didn’t react, I actually had more understanding
and tolerance of them. I began to realise that I had to acknowl-
edge all my bad feelings. If I didn’t face them, then how was I
going to address them?
When I was younger, I had thought happiness was travelling.
My travelling adventures had changed me and opened my mind
to many things. However, on returning to Australia I discov-
ered I wasn’t content, I thirsted for more travel and conse-
quently I had decided to study accountancy so I could make
money to feed my travelling habit.
However, now I realised this was a mistake. I was only happy
when I was travelling, but I couldn’t travel forever. One day I
would be separated from travel … then what would happen!
Even though travelling opened my mind and changed me a bit,
it didn’t supply profound answers.
After one year of trying to continue my studies in accounting I
gave them up and walked away from my career. The final
straw manifested in a class on ‘time and motion’. We were
studying research on how to produce more work from employ-
ees. As the course progressed, the manipulation of employees
became worse and I became more and more disheartened. One
particular case study was very unfair and really got to me.
 45

The case study had taken place in a factory in America. Fac-

tory employees on a set wage were changed over to a new sys-
tem of payment. They were paid per item they individually
processed. They were told if they worked harder, they would
make more money. Everyone began to work harder and the
workers began to produce more goods and make more money.
Then management put the employees back onto the old system
of a set wage, regardless of how much they produced. As a
result of the experiment, the employees worked harder than
before because they felt they were expected to work as hard as
they did when earning an individual rate per item processed.
I couldn’t take it. There was no way I could condone this phi-
losophy and write about it in an exam, so I quit.
As I let go of all my plans of travel and of a career, I observed
that sometimes I felt like I was a failure and a victim. I recog-
nised that part of the problem was my conditioning. Our cul-
ture tells us that we have to make plans and achieve our goals
on a material level to be successful. I recognised that the more
I made plans and tried to achieve things on a material level, the
more unhappy I became when they didn’t eventuate. This
helped me to let go and move on. Plans can always change,
success and worldly things can always be taken away from me,
but only through working on my mind, could I find lasting hap-
piness. I tried to ignore other people telling me, “You’re being
unproductive, you’re a failure”. I let go of wanting and need-
ing things and began to challenge everything around me, in-
cluding social conditioning. I began questioning: Why do we
do this or that? Why should things be done that way? Will
that attitude lead to happiness?

I did not want to look for some ‘thing’ to make me happy, I

46

wanted to learn how to be happy in myself.

After a few years of observing and working on my mind with-
out any outside influences, I had become more inquiring.
Questions led to more questions and I began to search for
more, however I didn’t realise I was looking for Buddhism.
I began to read various books and attended a couple of New
Age workshops but they were not what I was looking for. It
became obvious to me that the knowledge I sought was not to
be found in the West. I reasoned … go to the source, go to the
East, but I knew nothing about the East. I attended an Eastern
meditation course which I enjoyed but the course did not sup-
ply the answers I was looking for.
As I was crippled and had no money, it was difficult to go out,
so I spent a lot of my time at home by myself. I decided to put
this time to good use by investigating and examining my mind
and the world around me.
As time went on, I became more and more intrigued by my dis-
coveries. It was like a good book you couldn’t put down, when
you want to know what happens. The more I learnt the more I
wanted to learn, the more I learnt the more I realised there was
so much more to learn.

When we study Buddhism we all need to walk our own

path, but we need a Teacher to point us in the right direc-
tion.
I had identified some of my invalid judgements and the prob-
lems that had arisen because of them. I also had a tendency to
use a Buddhist approach for solving these problems, even
 47

though I had never been exposed to Buddhism. However, I

recognised I needed someone to help me place things, to make
it clearer. I couldn’t find all the answers without a Teacher and
instinctively I thought my Teacher had to be Tibetan.
Up until now, I had the attitude that I hear a lot, “I’m an in-
sightful person, I know what’s going on, I can work it out for
myself” or “I prefer to do it my way” or “You shouldn’t be an-
swerable to other people”. Now I decided to let go of all of
that.
Sometimes we feel threatened to admit we don’t know every-
thing. If we experience any negative state of mind, then there
is something we don’t know. What is the harm in opening our
minds to new advice? Even if we know something, a Teacher
can always make things clearer and open up new doors for us.
After all, if we didn’t have a Teacher we would never have
learnt to read.
For the next couple of years I began to request in my mind for
a Tibetan Teacher. I would have gone to India, but I still had a
smashed-up leg and no money.
These days there is so much information on Buddhism and eve-
ryone knows about the Dalai Lama, but in those days it was a
desert and at the time I did not realise that Tibet was a Bud-
dhist country. It didn’t click! I didn’t realise that if I was go-
ing to learn about my mind with a Tibetan Teacher that I would
be studying with a Buddhist Teacher.
48
 49

CHAPTER FOUR

One day in 1980 I saw an advertisement in a magazine. A Ti-

betan Lama was teaching an introduction to meditation. I
couldn’t believe my luck. How fortunate, I didn’t have to go to
India after all!
The class was in a public hall with no Buddhist trimmings and
it was very foreign and difficult to understand. Though we did-
n’t meditate, I liked what I heard, it gelled within me. I also
liked the fact that they didn’t charge money, and Bodhicitta
motivation really impressed me. (Bodhicitta motivation is
studying to become enlightened not just to benefit yourself but
so you can then actively benefit others.)
At the end of the talk, the Tibetan Lama, Geshe Loden, gave
me a book of the teachings. I was really blown away by this. I
50

thought how fantastic it would be if he could sign his name in

it, but I didn’t say anything. He just looked me straight in the
eyes and asked, “Got a pen?” and he signed his name in my
book.
“Wow!” I thought.
It was six weeks before someone told me the classes were on
Buddhism, silly as it seems! I had never read a Buddhist book
or been exposed to Buddhism before and because there were no
Buddhist trimmings, I had no idea … but by the time I found
out, I was hooked.
Often I am asked, “Why did you get into Buddhism?” They
wait, expecting profound reasoning. The look on their face
changes from respect to confusion when I explain that I didn’t
actually make a conscious decision to get into Buddhism. At
least I knew what I was doing when I became a Nun!
All the Buddhist teachings were fantastic, but it was the empti-
ness teachings that really blew me away. When I first heard
these teachings on emptiness, I became very excited and enthu-
siastic about them, and this feeling has never left me.
Instead of compounding problems by using cover-up solutions,
these teachings were exactly what I was looking for. They pro-
vided a permanent solution for ego, insecurity and fear.
Through these teachings I am still discovering more and more
things to question and negate, and this experience is very liber-
ating. As well as this, the meditative traditions, supported by
the unbroken lineages of Teachers, are so rich, so profound and
quite unbelievable.
 51

Geshe Loden was the first Tibetan Buddhist Lama (Teacher) to

reside in Sydney and he had not been in Sydney for long when
I came into the classes. Over the next few years I was very for-
tunate to be taught by some extraordinary Lamas, most of
whom have since passed away.
Buddhism in Sydney was not like it is today. Most of the La-
mas didn’t speak English at all and often we had untrained
translators or no translator, and we were as unfamiliar with Ti-
betan culture as the Tibetans were with ours. Consequently, it
was often really hard to decipher what the translators were say-
ing.
It wasn’t until I studied under a Westerner, Venerable Roger
Mier, that things became clearer. Venerable Roger Mier’s
teachings had a big impact on me because his experience was
as a Westerner, which I could relate to and understand more
easily. Venerable Roger Mier is now known as Venerable
Roger Kunsang and these days he is Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s
attendant.
In those days, even though the teachings were very important
to me, my approach was still what I call a ‘part-time Buddhist’.
I had my life, then I had Buddhism. Though I had made a deci-
sion to have a part-time job so I could work voluntarily for
Buddhist centres, if something really good came up or I felt
tired or sick, I didn’t go to class. I needed all these superficial
things that I regarded as important … then there were the
classes. I really didn’t apply myself 100 percent and in this
way, I wasn’t a very good student.
Then in 1985, I was asked to participate on a committee to help
bring His Eminence Khejok Tulku Rinpoche to Australia. I
52

was told Rinpoche was not only a high Tibetan Lama, he was
also a Traditional Tibetan Medical Practitioner. “Wow, this
sounds really great,” I thought.
I had become interested in Traditional Tibetan Medicine after
attending a lecture at the end of the 1970s. However, my inter-
est in Traditional Tibetan Medicine increased when my dog
was diagnosed with a very vicious form of cancer. The vet said
he had only six weeks to live.
My flatmate was going to Nepal and decided to pick up some
medicine for the dog while she was there. A month later she
arrived back with the medicine, which came with instructions
that “the dog should chew the medicine, and swallow it with
warm water before meals”. I don’t think the Traditional Ti-
betan Medical Practitioner had had much to do with adminis-
tering medicines to dogs!
The instructions were impossible to follow, so the pills were
given in his food. The dog was given the medicine for six
weeks and he recovered completely. A year later I thought the
cancer might be returning, so I acquired more medicine from
Nepal. The dog recovered once more and the cancer never re-
turned. The dog lived to an old age, finally dying from food
poisoning.
My friend also told me that while she was visiting Nepal she
became sick. While she was collecting the medicine for the
dog, she asked the Traditional Tibetan Medical Practitioner to
read her pulse. The Practitioner told her she had an amoeba
that was making her sick. She also told her she had contracted
a tape worm twenty-four hours earlier. My friend went to a
Western pathology lab and they confirmed that what the Tradi-
 53

tional Tibetan Medical Practitioner had said was correct.

The combination of Rinpoche’s qualifications as a High Lama
and Traditional Tibetan Medical Practitioner really appealed to
me. However he wasn’t actively practising Traditional Tibetan
Medicine.
For seven nights before Rinpoche arrived in Australia I had the
same dream … I was making a big mandala on the ground.
Years later I found out that it is a traditional welcome to draw
auspicious symbols on the ground when your Teacher comes to
visit.
When Rinpoche finally arrived, I found him to be everything I
expected and more so, but even after all that I had experienced,
I was still a casual Buddhist. I had been through all those ex-
periences: the phone box, I had requested to be taught by a Ti-
betan Lama … and then found the teachings I was looking for,
I’d had some great experiences with very high Lamas, and
there were the auspicious dreams before I met Rinpoche. Yet I
was still casual about applying myself to the teachings.
All these ‘special’ experiences didn’t mean a thing and didn’t
make me ‘special’. The only way to have a ‘special’ mind is
through effort, practice and learning.
I thought I had plenty of time to learn Buddhism and change
myself and I didn’t make the connection that if I put more ef-
fort into learning, I would be happier for it. On reflection, I
wasted so many golden opportunities to learn and develop.
However, my casual attitude immediately changed when I con-
tracted septicaemia.
54

The doctor gave me antibiotics but I had an intolerance to all

antibiotics. The doctor told me that things weren’t looking
good, it was a life-threatening situation and there was nothing
more that he could do for me. If the antibiotics didn’t kick in
and my health didn’t begin to improve within twenty-four
hours, all he could do was put me on a saline drip … and pray.
After fourteen hours, I had really slid downhill and I don’t re-
member much about what happened. I do remember my panic
in thinking I was dying. I remember the pain and also really
regretting that I’d completely screwed up my last six years by
being a casual Buddhist.
So I prayed, I really prayed. “Please, please, please, please,
give me another chance.”
A friend arrived and I asked her to ring Rinpoche. I didn’t
really know Rinpoche that well and I didn’t know his ability, I
just thought it would be nice to have some kind of spiritual
farewell.
The telephone call lasted an hour or two. I wasn’t really with it
but I am told I was given some Traditional Tibetan Medicine
that someone had given me as a present earlier that year. Rin-
poche went backwards and forwards from his room to the
phone enquiring about my condition. I didn’t know what he
was doing, all I knew was when the phone was finally hung up,
I had completely recovered. No more dizziness or illness, no
more pain. What a relief! I was going to live! I got out of bed
and had a late meal.
The doctor called it a miracle!
It wasn’t until I was actually forced to look at death head-on
 55

that I realised I was wasting my life, so I decided not to stuff

around any more. On that day I resolved to put the teachings
first and made changing myself the absolute top priority. I still
had a bit of the ‘I want my cake and eat it too’ mentality, but I
did go to every class and meditation session no matter what. I
became more dedicated to changing and improving myself. I
was really indebted to Rinpoche.
Studying death awareness and impermanence is considered to
be very important within all the Buddhist traditions. At first
some people think this is very morbid but as they open up
awareness of death and impermanence, they realise that it not
only prepares them for death, it also helps them to be more re-
alistic about life itself.
These days, if anyone talks about preparing for old age they
generally speak in terms of stockpiling money. If you want to
be a social outcast all you have to do is talk about death.

Exercise 1
Next time you are at a party and someone starts talking about
superannuation, try saying, “There is more to old age than su-
perannuation, what about preparing for death, after all you will
die one day, do you ever reflect on your own death?” and ob-
serve what happens. If you find that this leads to social isola-
tion, it could be a good practice to test your insecurity.

Exercise 2
Try to observe how everything in the world around us is chang-
ing and in a constant state of flux.
Flowers grow and die, seasons come and go, things are con-
56

stantly changing, but if we are not aware of this we can become

upset when we experience a change because it can be so unex-
pected.

Generally we perceive things as lasting forever but they

don’t last forever.
In examining impermanence we become aware that imperma-
nence is not an opinion or a belief, it is just a natural part of
existence. In studying impermanence, we become aware that
anything can happen at any time and in fact we never know
when we are standing on the edge of a big change.
This might appear to be a bit scary, but if you are aware of
change, when change occurs in your life, you won’t take it per-
sonally and think, “Why is this happening to me?”

We need to learn to expect and accept change.

In fact, learning to observe and understand impermanence en-
ables us to accept change when it happens to us. This not only
gives us an ability to cope when things go wrong, but the more
advanced you become, the more unaffected you are by change.
You can learn to develop a mind that can remain peaceful and
does not go into trauma even in terrible situations.
At around the time I had septicaemia, I decided to organise a
hospice training course for Buddhists. On the second day of
the course, the trainers made an announcement that none of us
were suitable for the course because we were all in denial.
They said they had been observing us in the breaks and we
were all laughing. They went on to say that often when you
start examining death, people go into denial and because we
 57

were laughing they had concluded that we were in denial.

We tried to explain that examining death was nothing new to
us, but it fell on deaf ears. The workshop seemed to be falling
apart. Then the doctor who ran the hospice suddenly showed
up and began to listen to us. He not only understood what we
were saying, he was fascinated by it. It had never occurred to
him that you could train your mind to become familiar with big
changes, such as death and impermanence, so that when you do
experience a big change or death, it doesn’t cause you to be-
come traumatised and upset. The doctor’s understanding saved
the day, so the course was not a total disaster.
I have heard of people who were told they were dying, and in
preparing for death they changed and became different people:
less stressed and happier. Consequently, instead of dying they
recovered from their illness.
We all experience little deaths in our lives. We all experience
moments that will never return and often we are never trauma-
tised by them. For example, our last day at school was as final
and as absolute as death. Once our last day at school was over
we could never return to school as a child … it was over …
finished.
Just like death, when we finished school we didn’t know what
the future held for us or where we would end up. I think one of
the differences between death and the end of school is that we
never see the end of school as the end, rather we see it as a be-
ginning.
Death is just change and all changes lead on to something else.
I see my own death not so much as an end but a beginning to
58

my next life. When I make a decision or a plan, it is not just

for this life but for future lives. If you believe in reincarnation,
it can help to get things into a more realistic perspective. A
problem becomes not so big when you consider all the prob-
lems that have come and gone since beginningless time.

Exercise 3
If you want to extend your awareness of impermanence you
can try doing the following practice. When you wake up in the
morning say, “Life is like a shooting star, like mist, like a
flame, like a dew drop, like a bubble, like a dream, like light-
ning, like clouds”. Then click your fingers.
We live our lives based on a misconception: that the elderly die
and the young don’t die, but the time of our death is uncertain.
We live our lives expecting everything to go to plan, but
change happens.

Exercise 4
Examine your current plans in life. What are they? What plans
would you make if you were told you did not have long to live?
Would your plans change at all?
Plans generally improve and become more realistic when we
realise we could die at any time.
If things are difficult, then you can learn from this. Going with
the flow, going with what is meant to happen, is the best thing
that you can do because you are working with reality and not
caught up in unrealistic plans. At the same time, you shouldn’t
think that you can’t do anything and are powerless. You just
need to let go of being dependent on the plan and wanting your
 59

own way to make you happy.

In 1987, Rinpoche was transferred to teach in Brisbane. I
missed him a lot so I decided to go and see him, and drove up
with a friend.
On the way to Brisbane I pulled off into the bush for a pit stop.
As I got out of the car I heard a blood-curdling scream. A
white cat came tearing out of the bush and wrapped itself
around my friend’s throat. She yelled, “Get this cat off me!”
I prised the cat’s claws open and it immediately darted straight
into the car and peered out at us with a defiant look, half-mad,
half-desperate. It seemed we had a choice: walk to Brisbane,
which was still three hundred kilometres away or try and take
the car back from the cat. Walking to Brisbane was looking
good.
I pondered an old expression, “Possession is nine tenths of the
law”, it was now taking on new meaning.
“I think the cat is coming with us,” I said. My friend consid-
ered the consequences of taking on a half-crazed cat … and
agreed.
I gently held out my hand and even though the tormented look
on the cat’s face didn’t fade, it fell into my hand and started to
purr. The poor cat was obviously lost and had probably
jumped out of someone’s car. Its collar had half come off and
was imbedded under its front leg, creating a wound that had
become septic. It smelt really bad, and was dripping pus.
I wondered what the Brisbane centre would make of this!
60

When we arrived in Brisbane it was very late. I was worried

that maybe we had arrived too late to see Rinpoche. We had
lost time with the cat, having stopped at a service station where
we cleaned it up and fed it.
When we finally arrived at the centre, Venerable Loden Sherub
(Charlie) greeted us, “Rinpoche’s waiting for you”.
“Isn’t it too late?”
“No, no, he’s waiting for you.”
We went into the room, and I held the smelly cat out at arm’s
length. This is not exactly the way you are meant to greet your
Teacher; a smelly cat is not really what you are meant to give
as an offering.
Rinpoche gestured to bring the cat over to him.
“The cat smells and is covered in pus Rinpoche,” I said.
He said, “It’s OK”, he was sitting cross-legged on his bed. He
said, “It’s OK, I’ve got the towel”.
He had been waiting for me to arrive, with a towel already
spread across his lap … he already knew.
The cat recovered and found a good home.
That week I spent some time with Rinpoche. He didn’t speak a
lot of English so we had pidgin-English conversations. I didn’t
directly ask him to become my Teacher, but it was presumed. I
talked to him about becoming a Nun, did I have to wear robes
and so on. Then he said, “I want you to go and do these prac-
tices”. So I became his student.
 61

I made another trip up to Brisbane and then shortly after my

second trip, Rinpoche was sent to Western Australia. I didn’t
see him for a couple of years. When he finally returned to Syd-
ney to establish a centre, I couldn’t do much to help Rinpoche
because I was not well at the time. (I will explain more about
this in Part Two.)
Ever since the sandshoe era I had been deliberately going into
various situations to observe my mind. By 1989 I had been a
Buddhist for nine years and I was leading a much quieter life
than in the 1970s. So I decided to start going out nightclubbing
again to learn more about my mind and how it was developing.
I called this ‘pushing and pulling’ my mind, not just observing
but deliberately going into opposite situations to bring up reac-
tions.
I wanted to compare the kind of happiness I had found as a
Buddhist to the happiness I experienced in an excitable envi-
ronment.
Soon I made a new group of friends who spent the whole week
gearing up for the weekend to go out. I noticed that our happi-
ness depended on everyone being in a good mood and whether
things went to plan. When expectations were not met, people
often became upset in the name of finding happiness and hav-
ing a good time. As well as this, to really have a good time on
the weekend we had to part with a lot of our hard-earned
money and when things didn’t go to plan it only added to the
pain. This meant I had to work longer hours to make more
money to find this kind of happiness.
Soon the weekend would be gone and we all had to face an-
other week of toil and hardship.
62

I began to notice that nightclub happiness never lasted and this

fleeting, shallow kind of happiness always ended with feelings
of discontent. I compared it to the tranquil, calm, happy,
deeply supportive feelings I found in Buddhism.
Through doing this practice of ‘pushing and pulling’ my mind,
I began to long for the happy and peaceful life I’d found in
Buddhism, without the ups and downs of going nightclubbing.
 63

CHAPTER FIVE

Rinpoche founded the Australian Institute of Tibetan Medical

Practices in 1992.
I was a little bit stronger then and decided I wanted to return
Rinpoche’s kindness and do something for him. I spoke to him
about it and he told me to work for the Institute.
The moment I made a commitment to my Teacher to actually
work for him, all hell broke loose. Up until then, it had been
my life, I was in charge and I knew what I was doing and
where I was going. The Institute was opened and Rinpoche
taught for a few weeks, then he threw the first curve ball. He
was going overseas and he asked me to teach.
64

Oh no!
As I am dyslexic, I have a tendency to speak back to front and
because of this I was terrified of public speaking. At that time,
as part of my continuing education for my qualifications as a
financial advisor, I was asked to chair a meeting with four
other people present. I was so afraid of public speaking, I was
quite prepared to let my qualifications drop rather than chair
the meeting. These days, I don’t see public speaking as much
of a problem, but in those days I had never really been forced
to face my fear.
To actually teach was the worst thing Rinpoche could have
ever told me to do. I visited him with a list of suitable people
who could teach in my place. He just said, “No, you teach.”
I tried really hard to get out of it. Every time I went to see him,
I had another brilliant idea of who could teach in my place but
Rinpoche wouldn’t budge. I realised I was getting nowhere in
a hurry.
I’d been in the tradition for twelve years and had learnt enough
to know, “OK, Rinpoche is my Teacher, I’m in this position
and he’s given me a job to do and I’ve got to do it”. I was left
with nowhere to move and had to face my worst nightmare.
On top of all that, Rinpoche went overseas, leaving the Institute
and me. Could things get any worse?
The first night I taught there was a terrible thunderstorm. I
thought, “This is good, maybe no-one will come”. Three peo-
ple showed up … that was three people too many, as far as I
was concerned.
 65

I tried, I tried really hard and I had an incredible tussle with my

own mind. I realised that if I was going to do this then I’d have
to work on my own insecurity. I had to focus on the feeling of
fear that arose within me and negate my own insecurity rather
than look for approval from the people in the class. As I did
this, my mind slowly improved and I began to challenge and
undo one of my biggest fears.

Once you can challenge and undo one fear, it gives you the
confidence and know-how to face other fears and bad feel-
ings.
All the same, I hung out for the day Rinpoche would come
home to teach because I wanted to be a student not a Teacher.
I used to think, “How many classes before Rinpoche comes
back? One, two, three … that’s all I have to do, just a few
more classes, then it’ll be OK, I’ll be finished”.
Finally, Rinpoche came home and I requested him to come and
teach in the Institute but he only came for about three weeks.
This was not what I actually had in mind, and on top of every-
thing else, he threw another curve ball. He told me I’d be
working with people’s mental problems!
“What! What does he mean mental problems, I don’t know
anything about people’s mental problems. This is just getting
worse and worse. First teaching, now mental problems.” I was
so confused!
I thought that when I saw him again everything would be al-
right, but as I walked out of his house, it was like walking into
a black haze of confusion, as though the whole world was on
my shoulders.
66

Years later, when I was talking with some Western mental

health workers, one of the counsellors asked, “How long have
you been in mental health?” and I said, “Not mental health, no,
I work with mental problems,” and then the penny dropped
“Bing!” It had been about five years since Rinpoche had told
me I would be working with people’s mental problems and it
wasn’t until that day that I realised what he meant.
There is a distinction between mental health and working with
problems in everyday life. In the West, mental illness relates to
someone who suffers from psychiatric conditions and mental
disorders. In Buddhism, we understand that all sentient beings
suffer from mental problems (afflicted emotions). We all suf-
fer from negative emotions, thoughts, perceptions, moods and
feelings that arise from misconceptions and delusions. So
many afflicted emotions are so subtle that unless we are
trained, we are not even aware of them.
Our aim in Buddhism is different from mental health as well.
In mental health, practitioners are trying to help the person
overcome a mental dysfunction, but in Buddhism our aim is to
completely eliminate all mental problems, all negative aspects
of mind, on every level, and to realise all positive potential.
Rinpoche went away and left me to teach again, leaving me
feeling confused once more. The whole thing was not going to
plan.
The next year, Rinpoche came home and I requested him to
bring a Lama from India to come and teach at the Institute. He
said, “Why? You’re the Lama”. I couldn’t understand it … I
felt lost.
 67

My friends and family thought I was crazy, they thought I was

killing myself through overwork. My approach to administrat-
ing the Institute and making plans wasn’t normal. I wanted to
find the best way of doing things rather than the conventional
way, and because I was doing something that wasn’t the nor-
mal way of doing things, my fellow Buddhists thought I was
crazy as well. It was hard. It is very hard to stand up to people
when they all think you’re crazy.
It’s all very well to think you’re a confident, happy person, but
confidence is put to the test when you’re in a situation where
everyone’s criticising you and everything’s going wrong.
I had a golden rule: if I reacted, it was my reaction, my habitual
problem. Even if I felt as though someone or something was
doing it to me, I knew it wasn’t true, it was my mind that was
reacting. If I wanted to stop the reaction, I had to face it, ac-
cept my own self and learn to understand it and work through
it. If I didn’t do this, the same negative reaction and states of
mind would just constantly rise up to haunt me in similar situa-
tions, until I was prepared to face them.
This was a very painful thing to do, it caused many underlying
insecurities to arise but I was determined to follow Rinpoche’s
instructions. As I continually faced one reaction after the next,
I began to have a few breakthroughs. Nearly everything in my
life was challenged. Even my life was threatened by my ill-
ness, and it’s probably the best thing that ever happened to me.
This experience taught me about myself, more than any pro-
found experience, more than any book, more than being a part-
time Buddhist.
68

I discovered that there is a completely different way of doing

things when working with a Lama like Rinpoche.
When we have any kind of business meeting it generally results
in plans. Often we make decisions based on goals to do “this,
this, this and this” but I found Rinpoche’s approach was the
complete opposite. He would give me a direction and tell me
the future, then tell me to go and do it. For instance, when he
told me I would be working with people’s mental problems, he
gave me no instruction on how to do this, he was just telling
me what was going to happen. I think that’s very hard for peo-
ple to get their heads around. In this situation, the approach of
sticking rigidly to a plan was not going to work.
If we are dependent on a plan for our happiness, when it does-
n’t go to plan, we can become upset and unwilling to move on.
Generally, we think we are upset because the plan hasn’t come
together; we don’t recognise that it is our dependency on the
plan going our way that has caused the problem.
If you have a plan, you need to be flexible and you need to be
able to change your plans to work with what is best at that
time.
In Buddhism we try to do this, we try to work with reality and
not with goals that are inflexible and involve trying to make
things happen our way.
I’ve seen a lot of people in Tibetan Buddhism who think the
Teacher isn’t very insightful because they’re not planning
things the way they think they should be planned or the
Teacher’s goal seems unrealistic because it doesn’t appear to
be logical. Often, Westerners find it hard to understand when a
 69

Teacher changes their mind and doesn’t follow a plan the way
the students think it should be done. They think, “Well, why
can’t the Teacher do this?” or “The Teacher’s got it wrong,
they should be planning it like this”.
In my case, I had a plan, but Rinpoche wasn’t working within
my plan. Instead, he went overseas again, and it felt like he
was leaving me.
Even when I was ordained, Rinpoche asked his Teacher to or-
dain me and instead of Rinpoche being there, he was overseas.
It was actually a good thing to have Rinpoche’s Teacher ordain
me, but that’s not the way I saw it. I just thought that Rinpoche
had gone away and left me with a strange Lama to take this big
step forward all by myself.

These days, I realise Rinpoche was thinking of me. Thinking

that my Teacher was not thinking of me is about the biggest
mistake I’ve ever made. If a Buddhist Teacher appears not to
be thinking of you, it’s because they’re generally thinking
about what is best for you, not what you would like.
Rinpoche’s Teacher, H.E. Sermey Gyalrong Khensur Ngawang
Thekchog Rinpoche, became my Abbot. H.E. Khensur Rin-
poche is an ex-Abbot of Sera Mey Monastic University. He’s a
very high Lama, and it’s really something to have him as your
Abbot, but that’s not the way I saw it because it wasn’t work-
ing within my plan of what I thought I needed.
We’re always looking for nice experiences, nice thoughts and
nice perceptions to make us feel good about ourselves. We
have so many little plans, so many agendas, and so many little
70

things that we want and need. We want our own way, we want
holidays, we want friends, we want to be respected. For me, I
wanted medicine to help me with my illness. I had to give up
so many things. I had so many reactions, one after the other,
and because I was trying to learn about myself, I tried to face
each reaction and work through it.
As I began to let go of my underlying problems, I began to ex-
perience new inner peace and calm. I wasn’t so confined to
certain safety zones, certain situations, certain plans and agen-
das and so on. I was becoming more open to possibilities,
more open to people and more flexible within myself. I didn’t
have to be a certain way or worry so much about what people
thought.
Through all the pain and heartache, I began to find new free-
dom where I could rest a bit more easily, be more happy and
content without needing and being so dependent on people,
things and situations.
 71

CHAPTER SIX

We can find happiness in two ways. We can try to make things

go our way and have nice things, people and situations in our
lives. Alternatively, we can train our minds to be happy no
matter what happens to us.
Having things our way seems good at first. We are happy as
long as we have the things we want in life but if we are de-
pendent on these things for our happiness, what happens when
we lose them? We become upset. In fact, even when it ap-
pears that we might lose something, we can become upset.
We don’t realise that if we want and need something, we be-
come attached to it. This leads to an inability to let go easily
72

and this attachment leads to so many problems. We don’t un-

derstand any of this, we just think, “I want that because it will
make me happy”, we just don’t understand the danger.
For example, we might become attached to a plan, we might
become attached to going to the hairdressers, we might become
attached to eating chocolates, we might be attached to buying
new clothes, we might be attached to having a career, attached
to travelling overseas, attached to drinking alcohol, attached to
our ideas and opinions, right down to the very way we see our-
selves. Of course we can do all these things and have no prob-
lems as long as we don’t crave them and become dependent on
them.
As long as things are going ‘our way’, as long as things are go-
ing to plan, as long as we get what we want, we will feel
happy, confident and in control. But when things don’t go to
plan and we don’t get our own way, or we lose what we need,
we feel hurt, upset, insecure and even violated. We just don’t
make the connection between the two.
We don’t understand the dangers of attachment … even when
it is explained we generally still have a problem understanding
it. Then when we are forced to give up what we are attached
to, we become upset and are met with an unexpected wall of
painful feelings. Often we don’t even know why we feel this
way or how to let go. Even if we can let go, it can still be very
difficult for us to recognise the true cause of the problem.

Without understanding the problem, we often launch into

invalid solutions that create more problems for us.
Whenever something hits a nerve within us we become upset
 73

and launch into negative reactions, but often we don’t actually

perceive that the problem is coming from within us. We don’t
recognise it is our hurt feelings causing the pain. Instead, we
have thoughts such as, “I feel hurt, things are not working out,
why is this happening to me? The other person’s hurting me,
they’re not doing it right, they’ve messed up the plan, it’s not
me … it’s them”.
The more we become locked into needing and wanting things a
certain way, the stronger the reaction when things don’t work
out. This can cause all negative states of mind to arise. When-
ever there is a threat to whatever we are dependent on for our
happiness, we feel threatened and this affects the way we feel
about ourselves.
The moment our attachment is challenged, our underlying
negativities and insecurities rise to the surface and we react …
we feel challenged and wham! It feels so painful.
If we have a plan that we are attached to and someone else
says, “Well you’re not doing it the right way” or “No you can’t
do that”, wham! Generally we just react and blame our reac-
tions on situations, other people and even ourselves.
For example, if we decide to cook dinner, we formulate a plan
on how to do it. We decide it should be a nice dinner and we
will put some effort into cooking it so other people will enjoy
it. But if they don’t like the dinner, or if the dinner guests are
late, or we burn the dinner, we can often become upset and
launch into negative reactions.
The more dependent we are on the dinner working out the way
we want it, the more upset we become when it doesn’t work
74

out. Generally we don’t recognise that we are attached to the

plan and often we don’t even acknowledge the wall of pain we
experience and the insecurity it causes. We just think, “I’m
upset because the dinner hasn’t worked out … the plan hasn’t
come together”.

Exercise 5
Next time you become upset, try and recognise your upset feel-
ing. Remind yourself it is your feeling, it is coming from
within you. Then ask yourself, “What do I want and need,
what am I clinging to?” If you can recognise what you are at-
tached to, then try to completely let go, and if you succeed, ob-
serve how much better you feel if you can do this.
If it is hard to see the cause of the problem within your own
self, how can you find it? Negative reactions are sign posts.
If we acknowledge our reactions, only then can we begin to
understand and address the real problem.

If we change our attitudes … we change our lives.

One of my students had a job working with the public. Her
clients were slow in answering questions and they found it hard
to make up their minds. She often became annoyed with her
clients because they were not working within her plans and not
doing what she wanted. After starting the classes, she began to
change her focus from observing what her clients were ‘doing
wrong’, to observing what was happening within herself and,
consequently, she stopped reacting and becoming upset. Then
she noticed something strange. Her clients began to change
from being uncooperative people to nice people. Of course,
her clients hadn’t changed at all, what had changed was her
 75

attitude and the way she was seeing things.

If we want to thoroughly address our problems, we have to

address our underlying problems.
The less inclined we are to admit and work on our own under-
lying problems, the less we will know ourselves. We will be
more inclined to reach out for solutions that cover up our prob-
lems and get our minds off ourselves.
All too often, people think they are insightful or they are really
good at remembering facts or they might even think they have
had a profound experience. Then they think they know. They
might be able to sit and meditate just to obtain warm, fuzzy
feelings. However, until they are prepared to attack their un-
derlying problems, they won’t be able to really challenge their
attachment, their negative states of mind, their insecurities,
false pride and ego, and they won’t be able to develop their
natural self-confidence.

The bottom line is, it is our choice: we can examine our

minds and face ourselves so we can change, or we can keep
on trying to change the world around us … and never
learn.
If we try to fudge solutions and are not prepared to face
and undo our underlying problems, the problems will only
manifest again in some other way.
If underlying habits are not addressed, they lie dormant, wait-
ing for similar situations to occur that will spark off negative
habitual reactions once more. Habitual reactions will just keep
arising, swamping us in bad and insecure feelings that propel
76

us into making invalid judgements and incorrect decisions.

We experience so many blocks that prevent us from opening up
awareness. We develop a resistance to looking at and address-
ing our underlying issues. Generally we are not aware of them,
we just grasp for the quick-fix solutions without further exami-
nation. Often quick-fix solutions are found in the fear and
panic that arises from past traumas. However, when we do be-
gin to open up awareness, we open up awareness of the bad
feelings as well. We tend to spend our lives running from bad
feelings rather than addressing them, and if we are going to
study Buddhism, we must address this problem. In the West
we can be totally consumed by bad feelings, consequently in
my classes, I spend a lot of time addressing bad feelings, guilt
and learning to open up awareness.
If you’re going to undo a problem you have to face it and this
is going to bring up bad feelings.
If we don’t want to feel bad then we have to examine what is
making us feel bad. If we want to feel good then we have to
examine what is preventing us from feeling good. If we want
to be happy then we have to examine our attitudes and habits
that are making us unhappy.
If we want to be confident, we can’t achieve it through ego and
false pride. Instead of reaching out for solutions that make us
feel better, we have to challenge our insecurities and the issues
within ourselves.
Often, when we feel bad, we come up with a plan – “I’m going
to think this way or be that way now” or “I’m going to go and
do that now, then I’ll be OK”, or we might even think, “I don’t
 77

have to put up with this, I’m out of here”, but all we do is re-
move ourselves even further from valid solutions.
We may try and be clever, use big words, become an expert,
develop an image so we stand out in the crowd, and try and be
someone to make ourselves feel better. But this is actually set-
ting ourselves up for more problems, for more threatened, pain-
ful and upset feelings. If someone challenges any of these
things it will cause more insecurity and bad feelings. For ex-
ample, if we try and be an expert and someone challenges our
expertise, we will become upset. If we try and be the best,
when something happens to infer we are not, it can cut us down
to such a degree that we may never get over it.
If we try to develop self-identities and convince ourselves,
“I’m like this, or I’m like that, I’m a blah-blah-blah and that’s
who I am”, then we have to live up to our own expectations of
ourselves.
It’s not realistic, so how can we live up to it? It’s a recipe for
disaster!
We’ll be continually letting ourselves down and feeling bad,
then we’ll have to have another expectation of ourselves that
will lead to another disaster.
We also need to learn to challenge our judgement systems of
ourselves. For example, we might judge ourselves by compar-
ing ourselves to others. We might think, “Oh, I’m a good per-
son because I’m better than them” or “Oh, I’m a terrible person
because I’m not as good as them”. This is not good because
you’ll swing from one extreme to the other, with no means of
really understanding yourself.
78

Opening up more understanding of ourselves, enables us to

change and grow on a deep-seated level.
Instead of thinking we know who we are, we can observe
our thoughts, feelings and perceptions in every situation to
discover what we are really like.
Exercise 6
Rather than ‘thinking’, “I am like this or that”, start observing
what you are like. For example, certain situations will cause
you to feel insecure while in other situations you will feel more
secure. If you try doing this, you will realise that just because
you feel secure in secure situations, it doesn’t mean you are
secure. It’s the situation that makes you feel secure. Things
are going your way and this makes you feel happy.
You will realise as you open up awareness that you can swing
like a pendulum from one extreme to the other, from insecure
to secure, from angry to calm, from happy to depressed, and so
on. We might in one moment block the world out and in the
next moment swing to taking on board everything.

Exercise 7
Try the technique of ‘pushing and pulling’ your mind by delib-
erately going into opposite situations and observing your emo-
tions and reactions. For example, go into situations which you
like and where you feel comfortable. Then go into situations
that you don’t like and where you feel uncomfortable and ob-
serve the difference between the two situations to open up
more awareness of yourself.
You can try to observe your mind when you are at a noisy
 79

function, like a party, then observe your mind when you are
quiet and by yourself or even meditating.
Try to get to know different states of mind and familiarize
yourself with the situations that cause them to arise. If we are
aware that we experience a negative reaction in certain situa-
tions, we can be more alert and mindful, watching out for it, so
we can nip the habitual reaction in the bud before it arises,
making it easier to attack the habit.
As we grow in ourselves, the extremes diminish, the pendu-
lum’s swing reduces, and we begin to feel more confident in
ourselves no matter what situation we are in. By reducing false
pride and ego we reduce insecurity and begin to feel a sense of
wellbeing.
When observing your mind you shouldn’t be overly tense, just
slightly observing, being aware but also relaxed. All these
methods are long-term projects but if you persevere you will
reap the rewards.
If it is too hard to address certain emotions, you will need to
learn how to address them first. In this case, you should back
off and slowly work towards understanding your bad feelings.
If this is the case, it is good to have what I call a ‘safe place’.
For example, a walk in the park, a comfortable residential
situation where you feel safe. A beautiful place to meditate
would be an added bonus.
Once you feel safe, start to push the boundaries when you ven-
ture out, going into more difficult situations so you get to know
your mind. If it becomes too much you can return to your ‘safe
place’ to examine what went wrong and leave it for another
80

time. When you feel more stable you can go back and push the
boundaries once again.
When you are bogged down in bad feelings, it is very impor-
tant to learn to work towards being gentle with yourself and to
promote gentle communication.
Try not to be disillusioned with yourself, it takes consistent
practice and effort to change.
When we first come into a Buddhist centre, we come in with all
our agendas, plans and our habits of judging and intellectualiz-
ing, often thinking that we are ‘special’.
We think people have a ‘special mind’ if they are talented,
creative, clever or clairvoyant, but all these ‘gifts’ often just
build up ego. Ego is just like a balloon that, when challenged,
is easily deflated, causing us to feel hurt and depressed. Just
because we are good at something doesn’t mean that we are
good people and it won’t lead to permanent happiness. We
cling to ego without understanding the harm it causes us. Only
by training our minds to eliminate it, will we free ourselves of
all attachment, fear and negativities, and find permanent happi-
ness and then be truly ‘special’.
Of course, if you can do something well without feeling
‘special’ and building on ego, then there is no problem.
The combination of false pride and ego, bad feelings and our
Western intellectual education system leads Westerners into so
many problems and misinterpretations of the teachings. If you
want to learn Buddhism properly you have to have an open
mind. Never think “I know this or that”. This is so dangerous,
 81

because a little itty-bitty thing you get wrong can lead to seri-
ous problems.
Watch out for the Western tendency to work on symptoms of
the problems instead of the actual cause behind the symptoms.
It can be extremely difficult to work through the confusion to
find the real cause of a problem. It is essential to have a
Teacher to help find and overcome underlying issues that are
so often overlooked, because they are too painful to face or are
just not recognised.
If you are fortunate enough to receive individual instruction
from a Buddhist Teacher that challenges your bad feelings, you
must always remember the golden rule: if there is a problem, it
is your problem. It could take many lifetimes and a lot of hard-
ship and suffering before you have another opportunity to rec-
tify this problem.
The reason for following the Teacher’s instructions is not to
blindly obey authority or to try to please your Teacher. You
should always remind yourself that you are doing it to try to
improve yourself and your mind; you are not doing it to benefit
your Teacher’s mind.
Through my own experience I learnt that when I was placed in
difficult situations, it enabled me to become more in tune with
who I was, not who I thought I was. It helped me face my in-
securities, my attachment, my false pride and ego-grasping
mind and negativities.
82
83
84
 85

CHAPTER SEVEN

Part Two follows parallel periods of my life described in Part

One, but examines it from a different perspective.
After hurting my leg, things just went from bad to worse. I lost
my job, my father was dying and my grandma was in a hospital
because she’d broken her hip. Bill, my partner in the horse
stud and farm, became sick and was told he could never do
physical work again. We had bought some sheep to keep the
grass down before I hurt my leg. Now I found myself in the
position of being a cripple with a farm to look after and no-one
to help and support me.
The farm needed work, the fences were in disrepair and I had
86 !

to go around on crutches trying to mend the fences. The pad-

dock was very rocky with a very steep hill in the middle. I was
unable to drive any vehicle, so I had to carry a chainsaw, a
crow bar, a shovel and my fence strainer on crutches. It was a
very difficult two-kilometre hobble around the farm.
I was now living part of the week in Sydney by myself. Joey,
who I had been living with, had returned to his home in Malta
to be with his father, who was dying. Joey ended up staying
there and marrying his father’s nurse.
I tried to run my farm and study in Sydney, which was five
hours away by train. Every week I made the painful train trip
to Sydney. Every bump hurt. I couldn’t bend my leg, so I used
to place my crutches in the aisle and rest my leg on them. I
spent about four days in the country working on my farm and
also attending physiotherapy, and three days in Sydney, where
I was still trying to study accountancy.
For half a day, four times a week, I attended physiotherapy,
which was located in a home for the elderly. Then I would
visit grandma, who was in another hospital down the road. So
I used to leave home, where mum was looking after dad, go to
the old people’s home to attend physiotherapy, then go to the
hospital to visit grandma.
I had two friends in physiotherapy who had also been in very
bad accidents. I can’t quite remember their names, but I think
they were Sam and Peter. Both of their stories were unbeliev-
able.
Sam had gone to the same school as me and, even though I did-
n’t know him well at school, we soon got to know each other
 ! 87

because we spent many hours together talking in physiother-

apy. At the time of his accident he had been living and work-
ing on the family farm. One day while riding his horse on a
remote part of the farm, his horse began to play up and threw
him off. He landed heavily and when he tried to stand up, he
noticed his leg was facing the wrong direction. His leg was
broken in two places between the hip and the knee. He could
do nothing but wait for someone to find and rescue him.
Sam lived in a very cold part of Australia where it snows in the
winter. It was winter, and he waited for hours in the cold, lis-
tening, waiting for someone to come. Finally, when someone
found him, he thought, “Thank goodness, all my troubles are
over”.
Then they began to move him to the homestead over very
rough terrain. With each bump, unbelievable pain shot through
his leg as the broken bones moved one against the other. He
gritted his teeth and thought, “It will soon be over when they
get me to the homestead”.
Finally, they reached the homestead where the ambulance was
waiting to take Sam to hospital. The trip took several hours
over a rough, dirt road. Again he gritted his teeth as the broken
bones moved with each bump. When he finally arrived at the
hospital he thought, “Thank goodness, all my troubles are
over”.
Sam’s leg had several pins inserted into the bone so it could be
placed in traction, which allowed the leg to be stabilised so the
bones could set. Consequently, his movement was restricted
and he could not get out of bed.
88 !

After a few months, he had only a few weeks to go before the

broken bones were mended and he could be taken out of trac-
tion. He was thinking, “Thank goodness all my troubles are
nearly over”. Then his leg developed an infection, so the hos-
pital staff took him out of traction to try and heal the infection.
When the infection was healed, they put him back in traction,
where he stayed for a few more months. With only a few
weeks of traction left he was thinking again, “Thank goodness
all my troubles are nearly over”.
Then Sam developed pneumonia. So once more the hospital
staff took him out of traction and treated the pneumonia and
then put him back into traction. All in all, he was in traction
for a year. Then he finally started physiotherapy but was still
an inpatient in the hospital because he lived such a long way
away and couldn’t travel home at night.
Sam and I always sat together, watching people come and go
through physiotherapy. We watched amputees trying out their
new artificial legs and walking within weeks of their amputa-
tion. There were times we wondered, why keep our injured
legs. Sam’s leg was particularly bad - it was just bone, with no
visible sign of muscle at all.
Both of us had farms and were dependent on riding horses on
our properties. Like me, Sam was told he could never ride
horses again. I felt really sorry for him, because running a
farm was all he knew. How was he going to manage? He was
only in his mid-twenties and completely unprepared for this. I
felt his life would never be the same again and wondered if he
would ever recover from the shock and the trauma he had been
through.
 ! 89

Peter’s story was even more alarming. He was riding a motor-

bike one day when he had an accident. The next thing he knew
he was alone in a room with no windows. He could not figure
out where he was or what had happened. Finally when some-
one came into the room, he asked them, “Where am I?” but
they said nothing. “Who are you?” but they didn’t seem to
hear.
Then he noticed the person locked the door as they went out.
He was left alone in the room once more. He couldn’t under-
stand it, it was very frightening and very confusing. What had
he done to be placed here? After a while he noticed the pad-
ding on the walls of the room and reasoned that he was in a
padded cell in a psychiatric hospital. He was correct.
Over the next few weeks, Peter tried to communicate with the
hospital staff but they just ignored him and treated him as if he
was insane. I think it took three months for the hospital staff to
realise that he had retained his faculties and he was, in fact,
quite sane.
Apparently he had been in a coma for a long time. When he
came out of the coma, he had brain damage and was mentally
unstable, so he had been placed in a padded cell for his own
protection.
In those days, counselling was not the norm for accident vic-
tims so we did not receive counselling. In fact, the mental side
of injuries was completely ignored. A close bond developed
between the three of us and we shared our experiences, our
mental anguish, and supported each other.
Peter, Sam and the elderly residents became permanent fixtures
90 !

in my world. I began to notice people in similar situations to

me and I began to relate to people who had sicknesses, suffered
accidents or who were old. We all hobbled along slowly, while
the rest of the world went on its busy way.
When I was back in Sydney, instead of being very popular, I
was treated as a bit of a nuisance. Transport was also difficult
because I couldn’t bend my leg. Most of my party-animal
friends, who were into having fun as much as myself, slowly
disappeared. I couldn’t afford taxis, I couldn’t travel on a bus,
and I had to do all my housework and carry my shopping while
I was on crutches. I couldn’t even afford a telephone. I be-
came isolated, and life was becoming a battle just to get things
done.
As well as still suffering from shock from the accident I had
begun to experience a subtle unfamiliar feeling that unnerved
me. After the moment of impact when I hurt my leg, I was un-
able to move at all. Now as I hobbled around doing my chores
in my apartment, I was aware that if I fell and hurt my leg
again I would be unable to move, and if no-one found me I
might die a painful slow death. This caused an unsettled, cau-
tious feeling that was always subtly present, which was very
disconcerting.
I examined my options. If I was to ignore these unsettled emo-
tions and distract my mind from them, they would continue to
influence my decisions and haunt me, whether I was aware of
them or not.
As well as that, I realised that if ever I was to experience an-
other accident, these same emotions would rise up once more
and I would become even more afraid because I had not learnt
 ! 91

to undo them. However, if I learnt to undo these emotions, I

wouldn’t be so afraid the next time it occurred because I would
have more understanding of them.

Rather than denying my emotions by thinking I was al-

right, I realised I needed to first understand my trauma so
I could then know how to heal it.
After analysing these unfamiliar emotions, I decided I couldn’t
understand them without accepting them. Consequently I tried
not to worry about them, and just observe them. I realised that
even though it felt disconcerting to acknowledge them, they
couldn’t actually hurt me.
A few months after my accident, the neighbour who lived next
to my farm showed up at my parents’ house and asked to see
me. I was in bed with a bad dose of bronchitis. He wanted to
build an adjoining fence to my farm and asked me which part I
wanted to build. I had a high temperature and was very weak.
I had sores in my mouth and on my body and I was having
problems using my crutches in this condition. I was feeling
miserable and very sorry for myself, and couldn’t be bothered
to discuss the issue, so I told him I didn’t care. Consequently,
he chose to build the easy section of the fence and left me with
the difficult section. This taught me a big lesson: never put off
facing a problem when it arises because if you put it to one
side, things can become worse.
I began to build the fence as soon as I came off my crutches
about seven months later. I carried most of the material up the
steep hill. I still had trouble walking and some of the wire was
very heavy to carry, so I crawled on my side through the this-
tles, pulling the wire for the rest of the way up the hill. I felt
92 !

really sorry for myself and very much alone, but now, reflect-
ing back, it was such a good letting-go experience for me.
I had always had people around to help me and had an image of
myself as ‘an independent person’ but I hadn’t recognised that
I was actually dependent on people to help me in these types of
situations.
It is so easy to become attached to something we think will
make us happy but generally we don’t recognise that we have
become attached and have developed a problem that will affect
us in the future. Often we only recognise that we have a prob-
lem when things do not go our way and we become upset.

We don’t understand that the more we want and need

things for our happiness, the more attached we become and
the less we will be able to let go when change occurs.
One night on the train going back to Sydney, I looked out the
window into the darkness. All that was visible was the moon
and as I gazed up at it I thought something I had never thought
before in my life: “I give up trying to make things happen my
way”. I noticed things improved for a while after that.
I noticed that when I tried to make something happen, I could-
n’t make it happen. In fact, things only became worse. I began
to feel as if I were swimming against the current, going against
what was meant to be. Whenever I refused to accept my situa-
tion, I felt like I was drowning. I likened it to a river; if I was
to survive all of this, then I had to go with the current, go with
what was happening. This helped me to cope, and things
seemed to improve.
 ! 93

So, all in all, it was a very hard time, but hard times can be
very liberating if you choose to make the most of them. Imper-
manence and suffering were all around me and I couldn’t ig-
nore it.
I began to notice that things always improved whenever I let go
of my plans, goals, agendas and what I wanted.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my sheep
developed lice. The Pastoral Protection (PP) Board served a
notice on me and said the sheep could not be moved until I
sheared and dipped them. I was going to use my farming part-
ner’s facilities but now I was not allowed to transport the
sheep. Because the farm and the sheep were quarantined, I
couldn’t sell them, so I had to build a shed, yards and a sheep
dip. I had no income. I was on sickness benefits and often did-
n’t have enough to eat as it was, so I had to be very creative
with building methods and the materials I used.
I actually managed to build the sheds, yards and dip and finally
shear and dip the sheep. Then the PP Board threatened to slap
another writ on me. This time it was blackberries growing out
of control on the property. So I had to spray them and that’s
when I used 2,4,5-T, which contained Dioxin (similar to Agent
Orange). Everybody said that it was safe to use. I used it for
five years without any protection; I even kept my cans of drink
in it to keep them cool. No wonder I ended up sick!
It was not my idea to own sheep - it was Bill’s idea - but now
that I owned them I did my best to look after them. I even
learnt to shear. One day when I had them all in the yards, I
bent down with my back to them to pick up something. When
I turned around I realised they were all looking back at me with
94

terror in their eyes. I put myself in the place of the sheep and
realised the terrible things we human beings do to them. It was
all too much for me - I wanted out. I had complied with the PP
Board and the quarantine was lifted, so there was nothing to
prevent me from selling everything.
After three years I had recovered enough to go back to work,
but couldn’t find a job as an accountant because Australia was
in the middle of a recession. No employer wanted to employ
someone with a bad limp, there were plenty more applicants to
choose from.
I began to work as a cleaner for a friend who had a contract
cleaning business. Even though I had difficulty walking, I con-
tinued to work as a cleaner, and within a couple of years I had
my own cleaning business.
Though I spent a lot of time staying with my parents and we
were very close, I hadn’t lived at home since I was a teenager.
My father had been very sick for many years and the day after I
made the decision to start my own business, he died. After his
death, I went into my shell and became quiet. Three months
later I made a joke in passing with someone at work. Once we
stopped laughing she just said, “It is good to have you back.
We have all been worried about you”.
I knew I had been withdrawn a bit but I hadn’t really noticed
how it had affected others around me. I decided to move on
and let go of my father.
 95

CHAPTER EIGHT

In 1980 I received my first Buddhist teachings. Around this

time, just about everyone around me died. Grandma died, my
cat died, my horse died, my aunty died. So many died that I
bought a dress just for funerals. The only three friends that had
stood by me when I hurt my leg also died, and this was a big
loss. I began to think, “What is wrong, maybe I am jinxed”.
Again I went through another experience of having to let go.
This was such a good lesson in impermanence for me.
One year later, my cleaning business was booming and things
were beginning to look up. Then one day while working, I felt
a sharp pain in my ribs. I gritted my teeth and finished the job.
96 !

While I was packing up my van, a fellow cleaner working in a

nearby building noticed I was holding my ribs. He asked what
was wrong. “I’ve hurt my ribs,” I replied.
He told me he thought I had dislocated a rib, as he had experi-
enced the same thing and had been unable to work for a year.
“No!” I thought, “I’ve only just got back on my feet”.
But he was right. The doctor said because I had been working
with a bad limp, my body was twisted and the strain from the
heavy repetitive work had dislocated my rib. He told me I had
to change my occupation, and my cleaning business fell apart.
Once more, I found myself in pain, with no money and limited
mobility, but this time it was so much easier for me. I was fa-
miliar with change and had put my experience from my injured
leg to good use. I had really tried to improve myself, so now I
was able to cope much better because I understood more.
There were, however, new territories that I had not investigated
and didn’t understand. The doctors prescribed anti-inflamma-
tory medication and this damaged my digestive system. As a
result, I was placed on a special diet which lasted for about sev-
enteen years. The first part of my diet was a sort of blended
porridge, which I had to eat for about three months, then I
graduated to baby food. I became an expert on baby food –
some baby foods are OK but others are awful. Poor babies, no
wonder they throw up and spit the food out!
Ever since I had injured my leg, I had been forced to look at
letting go of a lot of things that I had taken for granted. For ex-
ample, I had to let go of my family support, I had to let go of
 ! 97

eating well, having things, and I had to let go of some of my

closest friends and relatives. Now that I’d had another acci-
dent, which affected my health, I had to let go of wanting to eat
nice food. It’s all very well not having enough money to eat
nice food, but now I had to let go of wanting to eat anything
that tasted anywhere near reasonably nice.
I’d been shunned by a lot of people when I hurt my leg but I
had also learnt to deal with it. However, this new diet led to
more letting-go experiences. When I went out for dinner, I
found others saw me as a bit of a nuisance and waiters some-
times were very rude. One time, a particular waiter even asked
me to leave the restaurant and get a new doctor. I found this
hard to cope with. When I dressed down in the past it had been
my choice but, in this situation, it was not within my control.
Following the doctor’s advice, I went back to studying accoun-
tancy. I was relieved to discover that the course had been
changed and I slipped past having to study ‘time and motion’.
I decided that I could use this new career to work with the un-
derprivileged, so I became a volunteer bookkeeper with UNI-
CEF. A couple of years later, around 1984, I landed a job as an
accountant. Things were beginning to look up for me.
Then in 1985 I hurt my hand while studying for my final ac-
countancy exam. The doctors said I had developed RSI in my
hand and arm from working and studying too hard. They
placed my hand in a splint and told me to give up work, but by
this time I had learnt to work with my injuries. I had studied
muscles and exercise design and had learnt how to endure a lot
of physical pain at a physical education college I attended
when I was younger. So I designed exercises for my hand and
98 !

used meditation techniques to relax the damaged muscles and

focus on only using the opposing muscles as I worked in my
job. Within a year my hand was OK.
In the same year, one day on the way to work I was involved in
a car accident and suffered whiplash. I’d already started to get
headaches from the chemical exposure years before. I had
been exposed to DDT while living on the farm as a child, then
in the 1970s, to 2,4,5-T herbicide while working on my own
farm, as well as acids, caustic soda and other solutions I had
used in my cleaning business.
A year after the car accident, the whiplash began to affect me
and my headaches increased and became a real nuisance. Sud-
denly, I began to lose weight and I looked like a walking skele-
ton. It was a wonder I wasn’t declared a national disaster!
To top this off, in 1986, I suffered from seafood poisoning, I
had problems with giardia and it became very difficult for my
body to digest food. My doctor prescribed very strong antibi-
otics … they didn’t work. He doubled the dose … that didn’t
work. He tripled the dose … it still didn’t work. My digestion
is still affected by this.
As soon as I ate, the food would go straight through my body.
I began to bleed internally and lose the lining inside my bowel.
The headaches increased and became severe. I was never out
of pain and, as the pain increased, my sight and movement
were affected. I often looked drunk or stoned, so people would
shun me. Any kind of noise increased the pain, and I suffered
constant memory loss and disorientation. I developed food in-
tolerances and couldn’t eat most foods. Before I ate anything, I
would have to take slippery elm and drink a glass of blended
 ! 99

Aloe Vera plant, which was green and slimy.

Nothing tasted good, but drinking the green, slimy liquid was
the pits. I often reflected on days gone by and how they used
to call me ‘Cast Iron Constitution Chris’. What happened?
Gruel tasted good compared to this. Again I was learning to let
go.
Then I had another car accident. The whiplash injury was so
severe it gave me concussion and my headaches became ex-
treme. My friends were now calling me ‘an accident waiting to
happen’.
In 1987 I became worse, so acting on Rinpoche’s advice, I
started a part-time accountancy practice from home. I had no
choice but to rely on family and friends to help me, and this
became a terrible strain on them.
It is not fun to be close to someone who is chronically ill. It’s
very difficult to have someone around you who has a very strict
diet, can’t go out, becomes sick when exposed to noise, so
can’t listen to any music, is always in pain and needs lots of
sleep, so everyone has to tip-toe around. Even if you are a
good-hearted person, it can get to you.
On top of all that, the doctors couldn’t discover what was
wrong with me. People often did not believe I was sick and in
pain. As a result, they began to react to me more and more.
As the pain increased, I looked really bad. People had their
own coping mechanisms, some of which were quite peculiar.
One friend used to punch me whenever she saw me, which
would cause the pain to increase and often completely cripple
100 !

me. Another friend would put on loud music to block me out

when I looked bad. The noise intensified the pain to such a
degree that it felt like I was being stabbed. I used to think, “If
they could only see the pain they are causing me, in terms of
blood and guts, they wouldn’t do it”, but I was relating to my
side of the problem, not their side.
Another person used to secretly put all the foods I wasn’t al-
lowed to eat into a blender and then she hid the mixture in my
meal. I’d be sick for three months every time this happened
and, unfortunately, I was in a situation where I had to visit her
on a regular basis. I can remember being at her place, on the
toilet, doubled over in pain after having a meal.
Unfortunately, everyone around me had some way of dealing
with my illness that led to more physical pain for me. Most
people called me selfish and lazy, which upset me, but I could-
n’t escape them. I was bound to them, because I couldn’t sur-
vive without their help.
When the illness and the pain were bad, the memory loss and
disorientation made it even harder for me to deal with the situa-
tion. My mind became foggy and confused. It was like being
drunk with a hangover, all at the same time. This made it diffi-
cult to think through problems. Meditation and learning to
concentrate helped me keep tabs on what the illness was doing
to my mind. My Buddhist training really helped me to under-
stand what was upsetting me and how to be happy in difficult
circumstances.
It was hard not to take on board others’ doubt of me, their criti-
cism and displeasure with my sickness. As well as that, I lost
complete control of my life. I lost control of doing the things I
 ! 101

wanted to do. I lost control of everything, I even lost control of

my health. I was forced once again to let go.

I likened facing my negativities, insecurity and each letting-go

experience, to peeling the layers off an onion. Each time I
learnt something I would remove another layer, which drew me
closer to the heart of the problem, opening up more awareness
of myself.

I tried really hard to stay on track. I needed to work to buy my

medicines. I put every bit of energy into working, and tried as
hard as I could to have a normal life, but it seemed the harder I
tried, the more people called me ‘lazy’.
Then one day when my family and friends were around me, I
noticed that everyone was trying to get me to act like a ‘well’
person. I suppose they thought if I acted like a ‘well’ person
then I was well. I realised I was trying to fulfil their expecta-
tions of what they wanted me to do, so that they wouldn’t react
and physically hurt me. The more I tried to appease them, the
sicker I became.
The day I realised this I was in tremendous pain. I took myself
into my room and thought, “I came into the world by myself
and I will leave by myself. I have to learn to comfort and sup-
port myself now. It doesn’t matter what people say or how
they treat me. Even if they cause me physical pain, it doesn’t
matter. I have to learn to look after myself and stop being de-
pendent on them, and I have to stop wanting them to under-
stand me. I shouldn’t be listening to others’ expectations of
me, instead I should be trying to become more attuned within
myself.”
102 !

I was experiencing a different situation compared to when I

had to look after myself on crutches and build all those things
on the farm, because these people around me could have
helped. They were capable and able to help relieve the pain,
yet they just didn’t want to. I had again found another depend-
ency that I was having trouble letting go of. I was dependent
on all these people to do the right thing by me to help me with
my sickness … and I expected it.
“How unkind,” I reasoned, “I would do it for them, so they
should do it for me. They are so uncompassionate,” I thought.
Wrong!
This realisation of letting go of expecting others to support me,
enabled me to become more independent, but that was as far as
I took it. I hadn’t completely accepted the situation, because
blame was still there.
Part of my realisation from the telephone box experience I had
when I was twenty-five was that I didn’t have to react. Instead
I could remain peaceful, calm and not upset and, no matter
what others did to me, I still liked them. I knew others’ reac-
tions arose from causes and conditions and were not as valid
and real as they appeared to be. Even if we hold onto our reac-
tions as very important, reactions are just states of mind that
come and go.
After I hurt my leg, I realised there was no benefit in hanging
onto an experience like the telephone box experience. It was
so intangible it was difficult to relate to it conventionally on an
everyday level. This made it difficult to embrace and take into
my life and relate it back to me. Even the slightest misunder-
 ! 103

standing can cause big problems to arise. I had decided to let

go of everything I learnt in this experience to enable me to
search out misunderstandings. Consequently, some of my old
habits slipped back, causing me to feel more vulnerable and
insecure in certain situations that sometimes sparked off defen-
sive attitudes and blame.

Blame can often be a line of defence, a wall to protect you

as well.
Sometimes, when we become defensive, we can mentally build
walls and shut people out. We might think, “Why are you do-
ing this to me … I don’t deserve this … I don’t have to listen to
this … it’s not my problem … it’s your problem … it’s not my
fault ... it’s your fault … I’m not going to get sucked into your
problems … talk to the hand”, but this is blocking awareness.

If we don’t want to take responsibility for our reactions, we

will blame others.
Exercise 8
If you discover you have a blame habit, check to see why you
blame. If you are in a situation where you are defensive and
blaming, then try and let go of it to see what happens.
This is not an easy thing to do but if you can do this you will
find an assortment of emotions underneath, even vulnerability
and insecurity. If you discover any negative emotions or vul-
nerability, use the situation to observe and learn about them.
You could try writing the experience down, which might help
you place things. Remember, if it gets too much for you, put
the wall up again and at a later date take it down and try again
104 !

when you feel more comfortable.

You might not know how to handle the bad feelings, but you
need to recognise that you have learnt something about your-
self that you didn’t previously know. Even if it is just opening
up your understanding, and realising there is more to learn.
We don’t understand that a false independence leads to feeling
even more vulnerable and insecure whenever we are out of our
comfort zone.

We respect independence but we don’t stop to investigate

what is independence.
Often we think we are independent when actually we are fear-
ful. Instead it is a coping mechanism that shuts out others, and
also shuts out understanding of our own selves. If we shut out
understanding, we will misjudge situations and reduce our abil-
ity to love and be compassionate. For example, we think we
are independent when we can get along without anyone else's
help but it can leave us feeling lonely and cut off from others.

True independence is being happy within ourselves, no

matter what happens.
If you become sick or have an accident, you have no choice but
to rely on others; you need people to look after you. If you
have the attitude that you only feel secure and happy when you
are in control, you will suddenly be faced with the pain of
learning to rely on others. You could also be faced with the
added problem of your carers abusing you.
At this time, I realised I had a self-cherishing attitude that cen-
tred around what people were or weren’t doing for ‘me’. When
 ! 105

we examine our self-cherishing attitude there is always a strong

feeling of ‘me’. ‘I’ felt my needs weren’t being met. They
weren’t looking after ‘me’ the way ‘I’ thought they should.
Poor ‘me’. “ ‘I’ am the sick one here you know, ‘I’ am the one
suffering, not those people who are running around after ‘me’.”
This is not the way to make friends and get along with people.
I was doing a good job of driving people away.
This self-cherishing attitude arises when we are attached to
wanting something our way. It produces every negative state
of mind, for example, “I’m angry because I want things my
own way; I’m jealous because you have something I want; I’m
worried because it mightn’t work out my way”, to name a few.

Pain gives you an opportunity to learn.

For many days I lay in pain, unable to move, see, or speak. In
this condition you become locked into your own mind because
there’s nowhere else to go and no distractions. I began to no-
tice that if you think of something other than yourself, and
other than your pain, it takes your mind off your own pain just
a little.
In my torment I began to reflect on the practice of Tonglen.
Tonglen means ‘taking and giving’ and is a healing meditation.
When you do the Tonglen meditation, you visualise all sentient
beings around you and meditate on their suffering. The aim is
to try and generate a feeling of compassion, a feeling that you
don’t want them to suffer. The suffering of all the beings
manifests in the form of black smoke, which you breathe in and
this takes away the beings’ suffering. Visualise your self-
cherishing forming into a tense knot at your heart and, when
you breathe in the black smoke, it smashes the knot like a
106 !

bomb exploding and releases you from self-cherishing.

As you breathe out, you visualise breathing out white light.
You send out the white light to all those beings you visualised
are suffering. You meditate on giving anything that would
make them happy. You even meditate on giving away your
happiness and the causes of your happiness. This feeling you
are trying to generate is the feeling of love.
You breathe in and out, taking on their suffering, giving back
in return. Breathe in the black smoke, feeling compassion,
breathe out the white light, feeling love.
This is a brief description of a very powerful healing medita-
tion which can be difficult to understand but there is sound
logic behind the practice. Sometimes students think that
breathing in someone else’s suffering is bad for you, that they
might physically take on board others’ problems, but this is not
the case. What we are trying to do is open up compassion and
love and reduce our own self-cherishing attitudes and negative
states of mind that cause us to have problems and illness.
At this time I felt like I was living in a separate realm from
healthy people. Even though we shared the same environment,
the healthy were in their space and I was in mine. When I
watched them move, they could move so easily and their bod-
ies didn’t seem like a lead weight and were not constantly in
pain. They could make plans, go out and do whatever they
liked. They could do so many things that I couldn’t do. It
seemed as though we lived in two separate realities.
As I began to reflect on this, I also began to reflect on those
beings who were sick and injured and I began to notice there
 ! 107

were many of them around just like me, in my realm. They

understood my realm. I began to think of them as my family,
as my brothers and sisters, who were sick, old and disabled. So
I spent quite a few years meditating on my brothers and sisters
and the common bond of suffering we shared.
I had developed a mentality of distinguishing between those of
us who were suffering and those that weren’t; of myself as
sick, and others who were well. This attitude was not good,
because I was becoming more and more upset with people who
were physically hurting me.
Then my friend - the one who turned the music up loud -
started to go to counselling. One day she told me that she had
found out why she tried to block me out. She said she was
afraid of me when I was sick. She had remembered that when
she was very young, something really horrible had happened to
her, and this caused her to be terrified of sick people. I began
to realise that you don’t just have to be sick, have an accident,
have a disability or be old to suffer, other people suffer in many
different ways as well.
I was mortified. I was becoming upset with my friend who
was afraid of me. This was just increasing her fear. How
could I have done this? I realised that becoming upset with
people who were physically hurting me was pointless, and was
driving them away. Without them, how could I survive? If
they hurt me, they did it out of ignorance, they were caught up
in their own stuff, not meaning to hurt me.
I began to realise that all the people who were unkind to me
had had something sad happen to them in the past. When peo-
ple began to treat me badly, I would become concerned for
108 !

them. Instead of seeing them doing it to me, I began to see

them doing it to themselves.
People who harm us are suffering too. They harm us because
they don’t understand the situation. If they don’t understand
now, how are they going to cope with adversity? If they don’t
understand, how will they find the solutions to their problems?
These days I realise it is very difficult to understand the world
of the chronically ill. People often feel uncomfortable, there
can be a feeling of “I don’t like it”, or not knowing what to do.
Sometimes people even go into rescue mode.
Through learning to let go of the things that I needed and
wanted, I was able to accept and deal more skilfully with my
illness and those people around me who were giving me a hard
time. Learning to let go of what I wanted also reduced my
negative reactions.
One day I was very sick at home in bed, so sick I couldn’t
move at all. I couldn’t even move my head because it intensi-
fied the pain. I lay in bed all day, unable to get a drink for my-
self, so I waited for my flatmate to come home from work. She
worked late that night. She arrived home at about 8.30 pm and
asked me if there was anything I wanted. At last, “Yes, a glass
of water please”.
“OK,” she said … but she never came back, she must have for-
gotten. This time I wasn’t upset. I understood her, and in un-
derstanding her I understood why she hadn’t come back and
brought me the glass of water. She wasn’t even aware of what
she had done!
 ! 109

Blaming others will only build on the habit of blaming.

I had let go of blaming but in doing this, I discovered that now
I felt extremely vulnerable and at the mercy of the world. I
was facing my insecurity head-on. I had to constantly remind
myself that things were not happening to me. No-one was do-
ing anything to me, the bad feelings were arising because I was
facing those afflicted emotions within myself. They were the
real enemies that were causing me all my problems.
Often, through lack of awareness, we hurt others and ourselves.
We are so caught up in our own little worlds that we jump to
habitual conclusions quickly, with little understanding of
what’s going on. Not understanding something won’t protect
you from being hurt or from hurting others. Even if you hurt
someone unintentionally, you still hurt them and this can still
cause a consequence.
As I learnt to face my insecurities and deal directly with them, I
not only began to feel better about myself, it enabled me to
judge more clearly, without as many negative reactions distort-
ing what was happening. It enabled me to understand others
more and to let go of being caught up in my own suffering, and
to understand that they were suffering as well, just like me.
We were in it together.
I began to stop thinking ‘they’ were doing it to me and feeling
sorry for myself. I began to stop being so afraid of my situa-
tion and worrying about what would happen and I began to
stop becoming upset. I had let go of ‘poor me’, I was more
confident, much more independent, much happier and less
stressed, and this definitely helped my health improve.
110
 111

CHAPTER NINE

Over the next five years I was always in pain and I was always
contemplating the nature of suffering. I tried to understand
others and work with others, understand myself and work with
myself.
Pain is a difficult thing to deal with, whether it is physical or
mental. Generally we are so afraid of pain we just want out.
The more we think something will hurt us, the more we will be
inclined to concoct a magnified sense of dread and fear. This
attitude causes panic and stress and consequently, more pain.
After a while I completely accepted pain, it was just part of my
life. This attitude helped me to be more relaxed and happier in
myself, and this in turn reduced the pain.
112 !

I began to notice that the pain was sometimes more severe than
at other times. When it was really bad, I used to reason that the
pain, like everything else, was impermanent. It could not last
forever. I just had to give it time and soon the bad pain would
subside and not be as intense.
In all the time I was sick I never took any pain-killers because I
had extreme reactions to them all and after they wore off, the
pain always became incredibly intense.
I also began to notice that the pain was there for a reason. It
was warning me about something, telling me something was
wrong. Instead of thinking, “I can’t do that”, I learnt that if I
was relaxed, sensitive and listened closely to my body I could
do more, and this was good for my morale. At the same time, I
had to be careful that I didn’t overdo it as this would cause my
symptoms to worsen. Often I would push myself and overdo
it, just because I wanted to do something. My mother used to
say I was like the ‘new rich’, spending all my newly acquired
money, or in my case, my new-found health.
It took me a long time to recognise when to stop and let go of
doing things I wanted to do. An interesting experience was
instrumental in recognising this. I went for a walk in a park
with a Chinese acupuncturist who kept on pausing and reading
my pulse. I thought this was a bit strange and that she was ap-
proaching her profession with a lot of gusto.
As we were walking along the path I was thinking, “I wonder
what’s around the next corner?” She suddenly interrupted and
said, “You have to sit on this bench and have a rest.”
“What!” I was becoming exceedingly suspicious. “No than-
 ! 113

kyou, you can sit on the seat”, I replied. “I want to see what’s
around the bend.”
I set off along the track once more and as I passed the corner, I
began to feel exhausted. So I decided to return back along the
track to where my friend was waiting.
I collapsed on the bench.
“I told you to sit on the bench. I knew that was going to hap-
pen”, she said.
“What do you mean?” I enquired.
She explained that she had been reading my pulse and could
tell that my energy was about to subside. That day was a very
important day for me. She taught me to listen more attentively
to my body so I could stop just before my health collapsed,
then sit, revive, and therefore do more.
As time went on, I reasoned that it didn’t matter what was
wrong with me, I had to work at building up my immune sys-
tem. I stuck to my diet like glue, including having a chemical-
free diet. Walking was the only exercise I could manage and
clean air also helped.
If you are sick or have an injury, check to see whether you are
capable of doing whatever it is that you want to do.

Remember, just because you feel OK in your mind, this does-

n’t mean your body is OK. You need to take time to investigate
your body as well.

When you are sick, it can be hard to let go and accept that
114 !

you shouldn’t do certain things, it feels like you have lost

control of your life.
If we are attached to people, things and situations, we will not
like things or situations that are not nice. We will make divi-
sions between ‘nice’ and ‘not nice’. Consequently, the more
we want and need things, situations, and people for our happi-
ness, the more aversions we develop. The more dependent we
become, the less inclined we are to let go of what we want and
roll with the punches, thus the harder it will be for us to cope
when things do go wrong.
This attitude often affects us when we become sick because we
will not be used to putting up with things we don’t like. We
will have an aversion to taking the medicine because it doesn’t
taste nice, we won’t want to do the exercises, or we won’t want
to stick to the diet. Instead, we will want to do what we want,
and because we can’t, we will be unhappy.
In 1991, I made a breakthrough in my health. The really,
really, really bad pain went and never returned. I was still in
pain, I still had trouble moving, seeing and thinking straight,
but because I couldn’t remember what it was like to be well, I
thought because I wasn’t in really, really bad pain, I was well.
At this time I went to visit a friend who was sick in hospital. I
couldn’t wait to tell her the good news. “Guess what, I’m
well,” I announced.
I was having trouble talking because of the illness and this also
affected my coordination. My face was paralysed on one side
so it hung down. I looked like I had just come back from a
massive operation at the dentist and was completely stoned.
 ! 115

But because I was able to get out of the house to the hospital to
see my friend, it didn’t dawn on me that I looked sick. Within
a few minutes, I had dropped a glass of water, knocked over a
stool and had to rest my head on her bed because I was too
weak to hold it up.
“Don’t be so ridiculous,” she barked in an irritated voice. “Just
look at yourself.”
I was faced with the harsh reality that she was right, but I still
felt like I’d made a big leap forward.
116
 117

CHAPTER TEN

!" #

In 1992, Rinpoche founded the Australian Institute of Tibetan

Medical Practices and His Holiness the Dalai Lama advised the
Institute not to charge money but, instead, to run it by donation.
I thought this was a fantastic idea.
At this time, sick people who were non-Buddhists began to
visit the Institute and sometimes their cure would require a
Buddhist practice because Traditional Tibetan Medicine and
Tibetan Buddhism are totally intertwined. I often found it dif-
ficult to explain traditional Buddhist practices to non-Buddhists
and this often had a negative affect on their recovery. I thought
a more user-friendly approach was necessary, something that
118 ! "

would provide Western remedies for Western problems in a

manner that Westerners could understand. I began to realise
that I needed to study our culture and our problems if I was go-
ing to do my job well.
My health began to deteriorate again but this time people didn’t
want to help or support me at all. I began to wind down my
accountancy practice because I didn’t have the time or the
strength to work. Money became very tight because the Insti-
tute could not afford to pay me or to reimburse my expenses.
Again I was placed in a position of being forced to let go.
I needed to take herbal medicine because I had intolerances to
Western medicine but I now had no money for the medicine. It
was very difficult, but Rinpoche had told me to keep on going,
so I kept plodding along. I was sick but I wasn’t in a situation
where I was allowed to feel ‘poor me’, just because I was in
pain. I still had to put others before myself, even if they didn’t
appreciate the sacrifices I was making for them, and generally
speaking, they didn’t even notice.
Even though running the Institute was very difficult, I found
teaching Buddhism tremendously rewarding and I had my little
golden rule: if I experienced a problem and reacted, the reac-
tion was coming from my mind.
During the next few years, the classes continued but nothing
much happened with the Traditional Tibetan Medicine. We
tried to do everything we could to bring it to Australia but
nothing worked – everything seemed to be going wrong and
everyone in the Institute was becoming very disillusioned. By
1994 the Institute looked like it might go completely under.
 ! " 119

One by one, my friends, my family and the students in the In-

stitute withdrew their support, leaving me to battle on alone,
isolated and sick. I think everyone thought I was crazy for fol-
lowing Rinpoche’s instructions. I was over-worked, working
seven days and six nights a week. I was often too sick to shop
for food, let alone cook, and my health deteriorated. I was liv-
ing alone, and had real problems looking after myself. My co-
ordination was often affected and things fell out of my hands
on a regular basis. Often I had to leave things where they had
fallen until another day, when the pain had subsided enough so
I could pick them up. My house became a mess … it looked
like a slum.
For a few years I had been nursing sick wild birds. When they
recovered I would release them but the pigeons not only re-
fused to leave, they used to bring their families to my place.
My backyard began to look like an Alfred Hitchcock movie!
The birds brought bird mite with them and as I was too sick to
do my housework, the mites reached plague proportions. I
needed to vacuum and clean my house as well as wash my
clothes and bedding every day, but I was too sick to do this. I
would sleep anywhere in the house where it felt like there were
not so many mites. One night, when I was in a lot of pain, I lay
on the floor with a towel over me and instead of feeling self-
pity, it just felt surreal … an unbelievable existence, but I was
OK in myself. If I hadn’t decided to learn from all my acci-
dents and illnesses, how would I have coped now? I was so
glad I had been through it all.

The more you learn to transform adversity, the happier you

become.
120 ! "

If adversity strikes we are given an opportunity to learn from

our own suffering and to learn to understand the nature of suf-
fering. This teaches us to prevent future problems and more
suffering.
Things were very hard for me, so I decided to devise a good
plan; if I could give up my work, I would have time to recover.
I put my plan to Rinpoche but the answer was, “No, it is good
for you to work”. How could this be good for me? I was con-
stantly in pain and becoming weaker and weaker. It was a
struggle to walk one block, and I thought that this time I might
die. I had a choice; give up the Institute and ignore Rinpoche’s
advice or continue on in one big mess.
I decided to abide by Rinpoche’s instructions and this meant I
had to not only let go of having a nice clean house, good food,
money and medicine, I was forced to look at the crème de la
crème of letting go … death.
I was always reflecting on Tonglen, thinking about taking on
the suffering of others and giving everything I owned and had
for the benefit of other beings’ happiness. It was the driving
force behind what I did and the way I saw things, it kept me
going, it allowed me to cope and enabled me to follow Rin-
poche’s instructions. It helped me put things into perspective
and helped me deal with my illness, so I didn’t feel sorry for
myself. It also helped me with my fear and negative emotions
that arose from my self-cherishing.
I didn’t realise what difficult times lay ahead for me and I think
if I hadn’t followed Rinpoche’s instructions, I probably would
have died from lack of support.
 ! " 121

I often thought that maybe Rinpoche did not understand what

he was putting me through and the conditions he had placed me
in … but Rinpoche always seemed to be right. Not just in un-
derstanding people’s minds but also their future, and after all,
he was a Traditional Tibetan Medical Practitioner, so he had an
understanding about the state of my health.
My insecurity caused me much confusion, so I never discussed
it with him until many years later. Then, when I finally told
Rinpoche of my sad plight, he just said, “Yes, but you have
learnt”. In just hearing those few words, everything fell into
place. He had placed me in this position to teach me.
One of the most efficient ways of learning is to be placed in
adverse conditions by your Teacher because it causes all your
underlying problems to arise. This enables you to identify and
undo the very cause of your unhappiness. However, you
should not attempt to go into adverse conditions without in-
structions and a Teacher’s guidance. The Teacher will only
place you in a situation that you can handle, and it is still your
decision to be there and learn. This is generally unlike real-life
adversity, where you have no choice and often you can’t handle
it.

We have a choice to learn now. We should not waste a sin-

gle moment in our lives.
If we put off what we can learn now, who knows what tomor-
row will bring? We never know when change might happen,
we never know when we might die. If we wait for adversity to
strike it is generally so crippling that it can be too hard to work
through.
122
 123

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When things were at their worst and I thought I might die,

Venerable Stuart (in those days he was just Stuart) joined my
classes and began to help me in the Institute. However, even
with the extra help I was still burnt out and overworked.
Before the Institute started, I used to visit my mother in the
country on average once every three weeks but as I became in-
creasingly ill and burdened with work, I could only visit her
twice a year. It worried me that there was no other family
member to be there for her because I was an only child, so I
would phone her every night to see if she was alright and to
have a chat. Even though she was getting on in years, she had
a career as an artist and kept herself active. She often told me
that she never felt lonely, and this helped to console me.
124 "

The Institute had just begun to turn around, when my mother

rang one night to tell me she had fallen over and broken her
hip. She was taken to hospital and operated on the next day. I
drove to the country hospital early the next morning to visit
her. She seemed OK after the operation, then, as we were talk-
ing, she had a major stroke and lost consciousness. I watched
for any signs of life as the nurses tried to revive her. Finally
she came around, but she didn’t sound or look the same. The
doctor said that she mightn’t survive the night. Our lives had
changed in a flash! I stayed by her bedside until about 3.30am,
when the hospital staff suggested I go back to her place to get
some rest.
I walked into her lounge room. It looked like a crime scene:
strawberries and cream were strewn all over the carpet where
my mother had dropped them when she fell. The house felt
strange and empty and I knew things would never be the same
again. I cleaned up the strawberries, then sat down and medi-
tated and felt a lot better. As I climbed into bed I thought how
lucky I was to have my Buddhist training to help me through
when things like this happened.
My mother drifted in and out of consciousness for the next
week. When she finally came around, she began to make jokes
about the strawberries and how strawberries cause trouble. I
did my best to be there for my mother in the hospital. She had
been a carer for years; I had been sick for years, so we under-
stood each other’s roles completely and worked together as
carer and patient in unison.
After two weeks nursing my mother, I decided to make the
three-and-a-half hour trip to Sydney to catch up on my work in
my accountancy practice and to teach in the Institute. The next
 " 125

day, on my way back to the country, I went to visit Rinpoche.

“Your mother will not live,” Rinpoche told me.
“I can’t work, teach and look after my mother. I have to give
up work or give up the Institute, Rinpoche.”
“Give up work,” was his reply.
Yes, at last!
For the next six weeks I continued to drive to Sydney, stay
overnight, teach and work and then return to be by my
mother’s side in hospital. I was then faced with a dilemma
when the doctor informed me that the first two months of heal-
ing were very important for a stroke patient’s recovery. He
told me that the public rehabilitation hospital my mother was in
(like all other public rehabilitation hospitals in NSW) was go-
ing to be closed for a month over Christmas, and he thought
that this would jeopardise her recovery.
My heart went out to all those affected, particularly to a young
girl in the hospital who had brain damage from a car accident.
The head physiotherapist of the hospital informed me that the
young girl’s recovery would probably be irreversibly effected,
because she needed specialist treatment in that month. This
specialised treatment was not available in the general hospital
that she was being transferred to. At least my mother had had a
healthy life.
There is sometimes an apathy within our community towards
taking notice of conditions affecting the sick, disabled, disad-
vantaged and the aged. It is as though people think it will
never happen to them, they are never going to become sick,
126 "

have an accident or get old. People don’t seem to make the

connection between the decisions we are making now and their
future well-being.
My mother’s doctor was very supportive, and suggested I
transfer my mother to a private rehabilitation hospital in Syd-
ney, where he thought she would get better treatment over the
Christmas period. The staff at the private hospital had reas-
sured me that the hospital would run as usual over Christmas
but when I arrived there, I discovered that various departments
would be closed at this time. To make matters worse, on my
mother’s arrival at the hospital, I noticed that she appeared to
have had a minor stroke during the journey. I asked to see her
specialist to talk to him about this but he was nowhere to be
found. My mother didn’t receive physiotherapy in that month
and deteriorated greatly as a result.
However, the hospital staff kindly allowed me to live in the
nurses’ quarters in the hospital because I was too sick to travel
from my home to the hospital and back each day.
When the physiotherapists finally returned to work, they in-
formed me that I had to transfer my mother to a nursing home.
So I began to look for a suitable place. This is when I realised
that it doesn’t matter how much money you have or how much
superannuation you may have accumulated, when you become
old, it often doesn’t help. What we really need is compassion-
ate caring, not money. My mother had money but it didn’t get
her anywhere.
A few days later, the GP at the hospital (not my mother’s spe-
cialist) told me my mother had a blocked bowel and was dying.
Five weeks had passed since she arrived at the hospital and no
 " 127

matter how hard I tried, I had, as yet, not met her specialist.
My mother had been studying various religions for many years
and though she didn’t talk to me about it much, she did tell me
that this included Buddhism and practising death awareness
meditation. A couple of years earlier she had informed me that
she was not afraid of death. Before I had time to tell her she
was dying, she said she didn’t think she was going to recover
from the stroke. I agreed with her. She then said the best out-
come for both of us would be for her to die.
When the GP at the hospital made his rounds, she told him she
thought her condition was hopeless and that the best result was
for her to die. The specialist somehow was informed of what
my mother had said, and concluded that she had a mental disor-
der because she was talking about dying … even though she
was dying. He wanted her to see a psychiatrist and put her on
antidepressants. That night I pondered the problem and came
up with an idea. The next day, when I saw the GP, I told him it
was my mother’s religious right to talk about dying, and I
heard no more about it.
About five days after this, the matron asked to see me. “Do
you realise the doctor has prescribed high enemas for your
mother, twice a day? We feel that it’s not working and your
mother is going through a lot of pain needlessly.”
She suggested that I contact the palliative care hospital down
the road, which I did immediately. The palliative care doctor
came and examined my mother. She was shocked to see the
way the specialist was treating her. The ‘phantom’ specialist
suddenly appeared and was upset because there was a foreign
doctor on his turf. Then they began to argue. The palliative
128 "

care doctor wanted to prescribe certain medications and pre-

pare my mother for death. The specialist (even though several
doctors had told me my mother was dying) felt my mother was
just not trying hard enough, and this was preventing her from
making a recovery.
Nurses became traumatised, visitors became traumatised, pa-
tients and doctors became traumatised.
Watching my mother’s illness and suffering was difficult
enough, but trying to deal with the specialist and trying to pro-
vide my mother with the best available care possible was even
more difficult. I watched out for painful feelings that might
cloud my judgement and make it difficult for me to deal skil-
fully with the situation. I noticed that when a painful feeling
arose, it was often connected to a memory of my own illness
and abuse. I dealt with these painful feelings as a separate is-
sue from what was happening in the hospital. This enabled me
to deal with everything more skilfully and without trauma.
Every night I would return to the refuge of my own room in the
hospital and my meditation practice that always soothed and
stabilized my mind.
That night, when the doctor tried to force-feed my mother, I’d
had enough. I rang Rinpoche and explained the situation. Rin-
poche said this was a very difficult situation but he thought my
mother’s life had come to an end and her karma was to die. He
instructed me to try and stop the specialist from force-feeding
her.
When I returned to her bedside, the nurse was already force-
feeding my mother and within minutes she vomited and aspi-
rated. She was in terrible pain, but the nurses were not allowed
 " 129

to administer pain-killing medication without the specialist’s

permission. He arrived about four hours later and acknowl-
edged that she had only twenty-four hours to live.
This was the big moment. With the specialist standing next to
me, I told my mother she had twenty-four hours to live and
asked her if she was afraid to die. “No,” she replied. I looked
closely at her face, there was no fear, just a smile.
In the next 24 hours, as my mother lay dying, the nurses were
very supportive. They gave my mother a room to herself and
left Venerable Stuart and myself alone with her. During the
next day, friends and family came to visit her to say their good-
byes. In the evening, I left her room for a few minutes and met
a young girl who was in the same situation as myself. Her
mother had had a stroke and the elusive specialist was treating
her in the same way he’d treated me. She was not coping, and
wanted to talk to me about the situation.
Venerable Stuart put his head around the door, “Your mother
has just died, Chris”. I went into her room. She looked really
peaceful. I felt so happy to have had a mother who had studied
death awareness and had died without fear. This was a good
result.
Her best friend sat sobbing. As I put my arm around her, I
checked my mind to see how I was coping. I observed my own
emotions. I felt relief but was not quite sure what was going to
happen next. There was one last battle with the hospital to
come.
In Tibetan Buddhism, we understand that it can take up to three
days for the consciousness to leave the body and until that hap-
130 "

pens, the body should not be moved. As soon as my mother

died, Venerable Stuart knocked on the matron’s door. “I don’t
like arguments,” he announced, “but there will be an argument
if you touch Mrs Roberts’ body”.
The matron had been through enough trauma and was happy to
oblige. The elusive specialist was nowhere to be found to raise
an objection, however he finally arrived at about 1.30 am, pro-
nounced my mother dead, then disappeared.
Rinpoche has the ability to help people after they die, so I had
tried to phone him. He was in Hong Kong at the time and it
took four and a half hours to get through to him. Once I had
contacted him I felt at peace. All was complete, all had gone
really well.
Over the next few weeks I observed my mind carefully. I dis-
covered that whenever I felt sad about never seeing my mother
again, I would recognise it as attachment and immediately let
go. The pain would also immediately subside.
As the mind is developed in Buddhism, even intangible sub-
jects such as reincarnation and karma are understood from our
own experiences of them. These experiences are unlike ordi-
nary experiences and this can be hard to understand. When
you can clearly experience what a Buddhist Teacher has spo-
ken about, it is like being face-to-face with reality. Whatever
the realisation, there is no doubt about what has been realised.
I have noticed that when anyone has realised any part of the
Buddhist teachings they never abandon what they have real-
ised.
The mind can be developed to such a degree that it can not only
 " 131

heal and diagnose, it can go beyond this, and the sky is not the
limit. The mind can be developed to do things that most West-
erners would find very hard to believe. For example, Rinpoche
can communicate with the dead and can help them on their way
to a better place.
I have often noticed in the West that even though people may
have some kind of spiritual belief, they often think that when
people or animals die and take their last breath, that is it … it is
over. From my own limited experience I know this is not true.
The mind does not stop when we are asleep and just start up
again when we wake up. When we go to bed at night the mind
continues on in different states, including dream states, whether
we remember them or not. Hypothetically, a person who has
never remembered a dream could be difficult to convince that
they do dream. Death is also like this. Mind just doesn’t stop
at death because you are not aware of what happens after death.
My mother told me that as a child she used French words. To
give you an example, she called the cat ‘chat’, which is French
for ‘cat’. My mother was born and brought up in a country
town in NSW and had no exposure to the French language.
However when she visited Paris in the mid-1930s, it was very
familiar to her and she knew her way around without a map. It
was as though she had been there before. After this experience,
my mother thought she might have been French in her past life.
This was an unusual idea in the 1930s, as in those days reincar-
nation was unknown within most of Western culture.
On the other hand, my father’s approach to death was com-
pletely the opposite to that of my mother. His philosophy was
‘if you can’t see it, don’t believe it’ and so he did not believe in
life after death. When he was told he had a terminal illness,
132 "

Mum tried to talk to him about death and dying but he wasn’t
interested.
In the later stages of my father’s illness, he was admitted to
hospital and, while there, he suffered a heart attack and had an
out-of-body experience. He found himself standing in the cor-
ner of the room observing the hospital staff working on his
body, which was lying on the bed. His world was shattered!
After he was revived, he was very shaken up and my mother
seized the moment and began to explain about death, and life
after death. A week later my father died. At least he’d had a
week to think about it, which is more than some.
In the West we are so unprepared for change.
 133

CHAPTER TWELVE

After my mother died, I was burdened with the task of trying to

organise her complicated estate and medical bills. As well as
this, my business had been neglected, I owed money and was
forced to go back to work to catch up, and then try and sell it.
I really would not have managed if not for the aid of my stu-
dents. They all drove to the country on consecutive weekends
and helped me sort through my Mother’s things. Venerable
Stuart left his job and began to look after me, but even with his
help it was still a struggle. The bank froze my Mother’s assets
until the estate was sorted out. Food became a luxury for both
of us.
I was so tired I could hardly move but I didn’t have a mo-
134 #

ment’s rest. My body felt like a dead weight; I could hardly

walk a few yards. I felt as though I were close to death.
Finally I sold my business and thought I would ask Rinpoche if
I could have a well-earned rest.
“You will have to go to hospital,” Rinpoche informed me, “but
you will be alright”.
“Huh? There must be some kind of translation error,” I
thought. I wasn’t talking about going to hospital, so I dis-
missed it. A few weeks later I was diagnosed with thyroid can-
cer that had spread into my lymphatics. Rinpoche had been
right again.
After the operation to remove the cancer, a doctor came into
my room and told me he thought my cancer was caused by ra-
diation exposure and asked where I had been exposed to it.
“What?” I quickly scanned through my life. “ Maybe I was
exposed to radiation when I was on a ship that went near Mu-
ruroa Atoll in 1970.”
Before I had become a Buddhist I had been exposed to both
2,4,5-T and radiation. I had already hurt my leg, which led to
my injured ribs and digestive system problems. I didn’t realise
that I had these time bombs ticking within me that would later
go off, causing sickness and injuries. How would I have coped
if I hadn’t decided to learn from all my adversity?
I had intolerances to the food, and the air-conditioning in the
hospital made me sick, so my doctor advised me to move to a
hostel for cancer patients. I had to cook some of my meals in
the hostel, which was difficult because I was very weak, but I
 # 135

had my own room and no air-conditioning, so it was better than

being in hospital.
The doctors didn’t tell me they were preparing me for more
tests and draining my body of thyroid hormone. I became very
ill and weak and had problems looking after myself. One night
a fellow patient told me that all the other patients at the hostel
thought I had some kind of vicious cancer and I didn’t have
long to live. On top of this, a friend of mine came around to
see me and, between tears, managed to tell me that she thought
I should be in a ‘home’. But she neglected to say what kind of
home, and I didn’t want to ask for fear of the answer. If they
were trying to cheer me up they were not going about it the
right way!
However my reaction to my possible death was so much better
than all those years earlier.
Six weeks later I was given radiation treatment because the
tests revealed that there was still some cancer present. The
treatment for thyroid cancer is different to other cancer treat-
ments. I was given a radioactive pill and placed in a lead-lined
room for three days, with virtually no contact with the outside
world. They told me they had to do this because I was a danger
to the general public. My old school headmistress, I am sure,
would have agreed! It was lovely and quiet in my solitary
room, where I rested and meditated.
The prognosis was good.
Being able to face difficult situations without being upset gave
me confidence in myself and confidence to face similar situa-
tions. As we grow, our confidence also grows and it can inad-
136 #

vertently influence others as well. Often, changes flow on to

others and family members.
At the end of 1995 Venerable Stuart (then Stuart) had only
been in the Institute for a year when he went home to stay with
his parents on his annual Christmas visit. This time, when he
arrived, he didn’t stagger off the plane drunk and spend the
whole time stoned or inebriated. He had changed so much that
his parents, Trudy and Ian, were shocked.
Shortly after his visit, Trudy and Ian came to visit him in Syd-
ney. They had decided to come to Sydney on a holiday and
wanted to investigate what had changed him. After their trip
and finding out more about the Institute, they decided to travel
to Tibet with Rinpoche and, during this time, they asked Rin-
poche if they could start a centre in Townsville. Rinpoche
agreed. The centre is called Tibetan Buddhist Healing Prac-
tices. These days the centre is flourishing and they now have
their own premises.
During this year, Rinpoche changed the name of the Institute
from the Australian Institute of Tibetan Medical Practices to
the Australian Institute of Tibetan Healing Practices and told
me to continue teaching. Several years later, Rinpoche told me
that the Institute should discontinue with Traditional Tibetan
Medicine.
 137

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When we lock onto wanting something that we think will make

us happy, our mind becomes excitable and speeds up. It exag-
gerates and whispers false promises, telling us that ‘thing’ will
make us very happy, and will eliminate the feeling of discon-
tentment within ourselves. For example, we become excited
about getting a car, shopping, chocolates, getting a new house
or even a potential new partner.
This feeling of excitement can’t last and after it has passed it
leaves us feeling flat and always wanting more. We relate to
this feeling of excitement as happiness, instead it is the door-
way to discontentment and unhappiness.
138 $% &&

Locked into unrealistic expectations, our mind is never calm

and peaceful. It throws us from highs to lows on a roller
coaster ride of ‘feel-goods’ that leaves us feeling down and dis-
satisfied. Then, if we can’t have what we want, it plummets us
into even more bad feelings and negativities.
Attachment causes us to react, it causes us to become upset,
hurt, aggressive, defensive; it causes us to feel vulnerable and
insecure and it causes lifetimes of problems.
Every time we cling to something and become attached to it, be
it a person, a thing, even an idea – whatever it is, we won’t
want to be separated from it. Then when we are separated from
what we are attached to, it will always cause us pain.
Even attitudes that don’t appear to harm us can really hurt.
When we are faced with adversity, they can often arise unex-
pectedly and cause us distress and serious problems. For ex-
ample, we might be attached to making everything go our way.
When something doesn’t go the way we want it, we generally
become upset and even think, ‘I have a right to be upset’. In
these situations we often feel like ‘something or someone is
doing it to me’.
Often our solution is to remove ourselves from the situation
that appears to cause us distress. We leave the job or the per-
son or whatever. We become entrenched in these attitudes, but
when a big change occurs, like becoming ill, we find we can’t
remove ourselves from the adverse situation.
However, we will still launch into the same habitual reactions,
thoughts and feelings. When things do not go our way we will
again think ‘I have a right to be upset’, ‘something or some-
 $% && 139

one is doing it to me’. “Why is this happening to me? Poor

me, I’m the sick one here you know, I’m the one suffering.”
We will not only have problems coping, we will become frus-
trated and annoyed with others and drive them away.
We can even swing from being unable to accept the situation to
thinking we are completely powerless because we can’t make
things happen the way we would like it.

Attachment always leads to problems and pain.

Only if we become attached do we have to learn to accept the
situation and let go. So, if we learn to challenge attachment,
we won’t have to go through the pain of letting go.
When we begin to break through the distorted view our nega-
tivities have woven, we start seeing things as they really are.
We stop believing our afflicted emotions and start seeing what
is really happening, and we begin to understand that we are
OK. We can even start to learn to give and do constructive,
positive things.

We don’t need anything to make us happy … all we need is

to learn to be happy.
If we develop selfless, altruistic motivation and attitudes it will
produce positive results. If we learn to give unconditionally it
helps us to heal, it helps us to let go of ‘poor me’ the victim
and we begin to think of others. This can be hard for us to un-
derstand when living in a money-driven culture.
We are constantly told we need money to make us happy but, if
money makes us happy, why was Elvis Presley so self-
destructive? He had everything on a material level that our cul-
140 $% &&

ture tells us we need to be happy. If Elvis was content, why

did he have such strong cravings?
If we feel bad, insecure and wobbly, we will generally reach
out for something to make us feel better but this is a band-aid
solution. It doesn’t heal the problem, it only makes it worse. If
we don’t heal these bad, wobbly, insecure feelings they will
remain bubbling away underneath the surface, propelling us
along to want and reach out for more and more ‘feel-goods’.

Attachment leads to discontentment. The more we want, the

more we want. Habitually propelled by needing and wanting
more, it creates an endless cycle of trying to reach an unobtain-
able goal that promises permanent satisfaction.

Exercise 9
Think of all the things you want, all your dreams, goals and
plans. Then once you have done this, imagine that you have
achieved all your ambitions. Would you be satisfied, or would
you want more? What would you want next?
Keep on repeating this exercise until all your ambitions are ex-
hausted. Then ask yourself are you happy? Will all your
needs, dreams, goals and plans lead to lasting satisfaction and
happiness?
When we examine attachment, we find that the promised pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow is an illusion. It takes a lot of
investigation to really understand that attachment doesn’t really
make us happy. Instead it just leaves us thirsting for more.

When we want something it only leads to the habit of want-

ing more.
 $% && 141

Exercise 10
Try to find and assess the happiness that grasping and attach-
ment supposedly brings.
When we want something and become attached to it, ask
whether the happiness you obtain from it is permanent. Does it
feel calm and peaceful? Does it lock you into unrealistic ex-
pectations? Does it leave you feeling flat? Does it cloud your
judgement? Which part actually makes you happy? How long
does the satisfaction and pleasure last?
When I first began to study this subject I used to love to go out
for dinner. I used these outings to begin to open up more un-
derstanding of what was happening. The first thing I noticed
was that I looked at the menu and all the good things I liked to
eat. This got me more interested in the idea of eating and
sometimes I noticed, as my craving sucked me in, I would want
more than one meal on the menu. Often the dinner would not
satisfy me because someone else had ordered a meal I wanted
more than mine.
I would analyse each mouthful of my meal moment by mo-
ment, trying to find the actual moment of happiness. I always
kept the best bit till last, but when I chewed on the last mouth-
ful, it was quite unfindable. I began to realise that there was no
absolute, lasting satisfaction.
On top of that, I often found myself so caught up in conversa-
tion that I would forget to savour the last moment and would
swallow the food without noticing it.
Then at the end of the meal, I was given the bill!
142 $% &&

I observed the whole procedure repeatedly until it reached a

stage that when I saw a menu, I remembered the process of eat-
ing the food and paying the bill. I stopped being dependent on
going out for dinner as a means of finding happiness.
Studying attachment as I did in the above example enables you
to open up your understanding of it, so you can then eliminate
it. Attachment is an easy habit to form but very hard to elimi-
nate.

Exercise 11
Try and work on one or a few easier attachment habits, not eve-
rything at once. However, if you have a big craving and at-
tachment habit that is messing up your life, make addressing it
a priority. Try and make the connection between your negative
reaction and your attachment.
Like going out for dinner, there are so many myths about
where we will find happiness. For example, we are told, “To
be happy you must be successful”. I saw an interview with
Bob Geldoff the other day. He said, “Success is bollocks, it
doesn’t make you happy”. If success and money lead to happi-
ness and security then why is Ozzy Osbourne on antidepres-
sants?

We are told if we want independence, we need financial in-

dependence … but real independence is not being reliant on
anything for our happiness, not even money.
I live in hope that doing things by donation might teach people
to give back and also challenge our cultural methodology of
valuing everything by how much it is worth. These days, in
 $% && 143

our culture, if an item has no monetary value placed on it, peo-

ple do not see it as priceless and generally assume that it is
worthless.

We are taught to be motivated by a need for money, but

this will only lead to more grasping, attachment and selfish
attitudes.
Becoming locked into attachment, greed and selfish attitudes
creates so many problems, so much fear and insecurity. If we
are driven by these attitudes, we will not be interested in find-
ing valid solutions and working with the facts. We will want to
fudge the answers and we won’t want to know what is really
going on. Grasping, attachment and selfish attitudes will keep
us stuck in half-baked solutions that cause more problems.

Learning to give can also help reduce grasping, attachment

and self-cherishing.
Instead of thinking about what ‘I’ want, we begin to think
about others and we become happier and more realistic. How-
ever, when we do try to think of others and give uncondition-
ally, it often turns into rescuing others. We can become caught
up in trying to solve others’ problems as a means of escaping
from facing ourselves and working on our own problems.
Before we rush off and start trying to give, thinking we are be-
ing compassionate, and boosting our false pride and ego, we
need to be aware that if we are rescuing, we are doing this be-
cause there are unaddressed problems within ourselves.
Therefore, when we give we have to constantly check our moti-
vation and reasons for giving, to make sure that it is not to
144 $% &&

make ourselves feel good but to genuinely give with no expec-

tations and with no hidden, selfish reasons.

By learning to transform adversity we learn how to let go.

When we learn to like things we don’t like, we let go of need-
ing and wanting things a certain way, and this challenges our
grasping and attachment. The more we learn to let go of our
dependencies and face the things we don’t like, the happier,
more content and independent we become.
 145

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When I was twenty-three years old, I was driving down a dark

country lane just after midnight. Through the darkness I spot-
ted something lying across the middle of the road. “It must be
a hay bale,” I thought, “what is a hay bale doing in the middle
of the road?” As I drew closer I realised it was a woman lying
in a pool of blood. I recognised her and remembered that her
husband had a history of serious violence. Then I noticed the
light was on in their house, which stood isolated in the narrow
lane. I thought her husband had caused her injuries and it
could be dangerous to get out of the car.
I did a perfect three-point turn and drove straight to the local
police station to report it. I was shaking and had trouble con-
146 ' (

trolling my stammering, but managed to tell the police where

to find the body. Only two policemen were on duty, and they
both ran straight past me and out of the police station, leaving
me standing there shaking, all by myself. I went home but I
couldn’t sleep, so I went around to my mother’s place. I was in
shock. I stayed there for weeks, afraid to go home, until I be-
gan to analyse what was wrong with me.
I realised that my mind had gone into shock because I was not
familiar with seeing a body lying on the road in the middle of
the night. The woman on the road was covered in blood and
this made me feel very vulnerable. It was unexpected and un-
familiar and, as a result, my whole world had become shaken
and wobbly. I reasoned that my shock was due to the fact that I
wasn’t familiar with death or blood and guts and that gruesome
sights are usually kept behind closed doors in our society.
Whenever there is a car accident, the area is cordoned off and
the media only televises so much. However, if you lived in a
country like India, you would be more exposed to seeing grue-
some things but you would not regard them as gruesome, you
would see them as a part of life.

If we are unrealistic, when we are confronted with adver-

sity it can bring on trauma and shock.
This can lead to serious mental problems that can be very hard
to undo. We can prevent this from happening by becoming
more aware of the world around us and ourselves.
Most of us live in a cocoon: we live sheltered lives, we are kept
away from viewing sudden change, trauma and death. Out of
sight is out of mind: no need for investigation. We just don’t
 ' ( 147

want to know because it’s not nice, but if we don’t want to

know and don’t know how to make valid judgements, this will
cause us problems in the future.

Understanding the World

Even in our daily lives we tend to go from knee-jerk judgement
to knee-jerk judgement without proper investigation. This
causes us much harm.
When we judge something we tend to judge through our habits
and reactions and blindly believe them to be valid. All too of-
ten we make a judgement and just believe it is correct. How do
we know if the judgement is valid? Without training and
studying we won’t know.
If we can’t make valid judgements, we won’t be able to find
valid solutions and know valid answers, therefore we won’t be
realistic. Even when we recognise we have a problem, we
won’t be able to identify the cause and how to correct it.
In the West, when we try and solve a problem, we are always
looking for new answers and new solutions. But how many
times do we go back and examine the original judgement that
all the answers and solutions were based on? Bureaucracy is a
good example of this; it is so good at churning out new solu-
tions, new rules, new ways of doing something.
We become so caught up in developing knowledge, but are we
developing real understanding?

We assess everything through how it appears, without tak-

ing the mind that is doing the assessing and how it assesses,
into consideration.
148 ' (

A true Buddhist Teacher doesn’t merely go through university,

learning objectively. Instead they have to embrace the actual
qualities that they talk about and have had to change in them-
selves.
All sciences, including the mind sciences such as psychiatry,
are based on hypotheses and theories and not on actually di-
rectly perceiving reality by developing the mind’s natural abil-
ity.
I have heard scientists complaining that often, when an original
hypothesis or theory is found to be flawed, there is a resistance
to addressing the issue because some colleagues might have to
let go of a career, status or material gain.
How many times do we question the original judgements, the
original hypotheses, the original theories that the knowledge is
built on?

How do we address the big picture?

If we examine problems and look for solutions and answers by
using subjects and categories, we will perceive reality through
tunnel vision, missing out on understanding the relationship of
one thing to another. We will be missing out on understanding
the interdependence and interconnection of all phenomena.
For example, bureaucratic organisations, such as social security
function on rules and classifications; if you have a situation
that doesn’t fit into their rules and classifications, you can be
denied access to services because there is no room for under-
standing the individual situation.
Even in education we divide everything into subjects, but the
 ' ( 149

moment we categorise and label things we lose understanding

of the whole view.
Another example of this can be found in Western medicine.
Symptoms are categorised into classifications and, for different
classifications, you are referred to different specialists. But this
limits understanding of the overall view and root cause of the
problem. Even mental illness is treated according to categories
and classifications. Appropriate remedies for different catego-
ries are applied, without being able to apply individual solu-
tions for individual problems.
In Tibetan Medicine they treat both the mind and the body, tak-
ing into consideration the whole body in conjunction with un-
derstanding the patient’s mental energies in relationship to their
illness. They go beyond the patient’s symptoms and try to treat
the root cause of the problem.

In the Buddhist system of education one develops the

mind’s natural ability to know and have understanding,
beyond intellectualising, categorising or conceptualising.
Buddhism is based on logic. It is the study of reality and mind,
it is the study of the way things exist. In Buddhism you are not
meant to blindly believe what you are taught. Rather, as Rin-
poche says, you learn to ‘check’ the information. This can be
difficult for some to understand. We have the tendency to ei-
ther blindly believe everything, with no means of checking the
information, or we don’t believe anything that we can’t physi-
cally confirm. Both approaches lead to limited understanding
and whenever there is limited understanding, there is danger.

We need to not only ‘check’, we need to learn how to check.

150 ' (

We can learn to ‘check’ through methods such as observing our

minds as we go about our daily lives and also using my
‘pushing and pulling’ technique, described earlier, as well as
being mindful, using analytical methods, contemplation and
meditation to open up awareness.

Understanding Ourselves
Our judgements not only influence our understanding of
the world around us, they also influence the way we per-
ceive ourselves.
When I was a teenager in high school, my grandfather, on
opening one of my science books, discovered that science in
the mid-1960s did not believe in water divining. As my grand-
father was a professional water diviner, he declared war on all
sceptics.
Any sceptic who came to his house was marched out the front
and made to stand over a water pipe that was under the road.
He would then place a stick in their hands and explain to the
person that they were now standing over a water pipe. As a
child, I delighted in watching these experiments and used to
stand in front of the person to get a really good look at their
face. They would stand there holding the stick tight with both
hands, with a gleam of, “See, I’m right, nothing is happening”.
Their face would quickly change as my grandfather touched
them. He could touch them anywhere on their body and no
matter how tight their grip was on the stick, no matter how
much they tried to prevent the stick from moving, it always
moved. The look on the sceptic’s face would go from “I know
everything” to one of alarm.
 ' ( 151

My grandfather would then march them backwards and for-

wards across the water pipe, still touching the person. The
stick would move up and down as they crossed the water pipe.
The sceptics had a very hard time with this. As they had hold
of the stick themselves they couldn’t deny what was happen-
ing, even though it was outside their comprehension. It was
not just a matter of conceding defeat, often it seemed to shatter
their very existence. This led to an interesting occurrence: an
unfamiliar feeling seemed to arise within them. This wobbly
feeling seemed to shatter the way they saw their own selves.
In the case of the sceptics, when their view of the world was
challenged, their view of themselves was also challenged and
this made them feel vulnerable. I noticed the more they held
onto their judgement or belief, the more troubled they became
when the stick moved.

The more we cling and become attached to our judgements

or beliefs, the more insecure we become when something
challenges them.
Even thinking that it is OK to hold onto an insignificant opin-
ion or judgement is a misconception that can cause us huge
problems. It can lead to invalid reasoning that can lead to life-
times of problems for ourselves and others. As well as this, our
invalid opinions and judgements can also lead to us feeling ex-
tremely exposed and vulnerable when we find that our judge-
ments are inaccurate. It can leave us questioning what other
judgements are invalid and what else might hurt us.
The more the sceptics grasped at their opinions and grasped at
‘I’ know, the more they saw themselves through what they
knew and the more they held a false self-image of themselves
152 ' (

as a ‘knower’. Consequently, when what they knew was chal-

lenged, it felt like their very existence was challenged.
I recognised that the sceptics who held onto ‘I’ know were of-
ten arrogant and egotistical because they lacked understanding
of themselves that resulted in feelings of insecurity. They used
ego and ‘I’ know as a false remedy to rectify their insecurity
but, holding onto ‘I’ know only made them more vulnerable
and easily threatened. In other words, there was a puffed-up
feeling that came with ‘I’ know that was easy to stick a pin
into.

Our judgements can affect the way we feel about ourselves

and our feelings can affect the way we judge.
When we examine our minds there is a feeling of ‘me/I’ that is
centred around ourselves. For example, ‘I’ want that, ‘I’ need
this, ‘I’ am upset, ‘I’ am not important, ‘I’ am important, ‘I’ am
inferior, ‘I’ am superior, ‘I’ feel wobbly, ‘I’ am afraid.
We believe this ‘me/I’; it appears to us to be solid, permanent,
and naturally formed. For example, when we are angry there is
a notion of ‘me/I’ that completely engulfs us and seems to pos-
sess us.
We instinctively grasp onto this exaggerated sense of ‘me/I’
and never question it. Instead we cherish it. We perceive this
exaggerated sense of ‘self’ as a real entity, existing inherently,
when in fact it doesn’t exist at all.
Grasping at this exaggerated sense of ‘self’ is called self-
grasping or ego-grasping. Self-grasping is so ingrained it is
very, very hard to recognise and understand at all.

We hold this exaggerated sense of ‘self’ as valid, but it only

 ' ( 153

removes and blocks us from understanding our real self.

Our minds, in fact, are pure by nature and this pure mind
is our true potential.
Once we become more familiar with this feeling of ‘me/I’ we
begin to notice it on more subtle levels as well. It is there per-
petually, influencing us, distorting judgements and decisions
that can create disastrous consequences.

Grasping onto feelings of ‘me/I’ gives rise to self-cherishing

attitudes.
We regard this exaggerated sense of ‘self’ as very important
and very special, leading us to cherish ourselves above all oth-
ers.
The stronger the feeling of ‘me/I’ the more we see ourselves as
the centre of the universe, and more important than others. But
if we were to let go of the feeling of ‘me/I’ and examine the
situation without it, we would clearly see that this view is in-
correct.
Cherishing ourselves becomes our prime objective, it is our
driving force and gives rise to the feeling of ‘mine/my’: ‘my’
house, ‘my’ car, ‘my’ clothes. This feeling of ‘mine/my’ will
cause other negative states of mind. For example, if someone
interferes with ‘my’ house, ‘my’ car or ‘my’ clothes we can
easily become upset.

This feeling of ‘me/I’ leads us to make divisions between the

way we see ourselves and others.
We develop a mentality of ‘me’ and ‘them’. This attitude ap-
154 ' (

pears to keep us safe, but in actual fact it causes us to feel un-

safe and insecure.
For example, if someone is criticizing what we are doing, their
comment hits a nerve within us, we feel they are threatening
‘me’, and this can affect our judgement. Suddenly they are not
our favourite person anymore. We make this judgement with-
out really checking what is going on. If someone doesn’t like
what we are doing, it can often hit an insecure nerve within us,
and we jump to the conclusion that they don’t like ‘me’. We
don’t realise it is our feeling of ‘me/I’ that is causing us to feel
threatened and upset.
If we are playing the guitar and someone says, “You are not
playing that well”, we can, quick as a whip, think, “Well ‘I’
don’t like you, either”.
We don’t realise that our judgement is inaccurate. The com-
ment could be valid criticism, and we could be missing out on
useful information to improve our guitar-playing, and friends
can be needlessly turned into enemies.

Exercise 12
Try to observe how your negative reactions cloud and affect
your judgment. Observe whether you feel hazy and whether
you think as clearly when you’re in a negative reaction? Once
the reaction has passed, do you see things differently?

The mentality of ‘me’ and ‘them’ leads to a sense of sepa-

rateness which causes fear to arise.
The moment we think ‘I’ want that, we become locked into
seeing the world and ourselves through the distorted view of
 ' ( 155

what ‘I’ want. Immediately we make divisions between those

who can please ‘me’ and those who can’t. This leads to so
many subtle little threats.
When we feel threatened, we think someone is threatening
‘me’. Because we don’t recognise that it is our feeling causing
us the discomfort, we don’t recognise that when we feel threat-
ened we are actually feeling fear.
If they threaten our self-image, we can react with fear, aversion
and aggression, but if someone pampers our self-image, we are
attracted to them. We are dependent on others to be nice to
‘me’, to respect ‘me’, acknowledge and understand ‘me’. We
expect it, and when they don’t, we feel threatened, hurt and up-
set. We don’t realise that if we want to solve the problem, we
should be learning to respect ourselves, acknowledge and un-
derstand ourselves.

Exercise 13
Observe your reactions when you see a horror movie. Do you
experience any fear?
When we view a horror movie there is actually nothing there to
threaten us, it is only a movie. The feeling of fear is manifest-
ing within us even though there is actually no threat at all.

Exercise 14
When you become upset try and recognise the feelings of being
threatened. You might even try and observe the feeling of
‘me/I’ associated with the threatened and fearful feelings.

When we learn to let go of this solid, exaggerated sense of

156 ' (

‘self’ that causes our feeling of separateness, we won’t feel

threatened, and will free ourselves of fear.
If we are not threatened or upset by others, we will naturally be
close and warm to them, and we will feel happy in ourselves.

Negative reactions cloud our judgement and we will find

solutions through threatened and upset feelings that are
always incorrect.
Even if we are afraid when someone attacks us physically, fear
will cloud our judgement and prevent us from thinking clearly.
If we are afraid, we will not be able to think through the prob-
lem as skilfully as possible and avoid physical harm.
On an everyday level, we experience misunderstandings and
subtle threats because we grasp onto these feelings that shut out
our understanding. How can we sort through our problems
when we take it so personally, when we blindly believe in our
negative reactions and this strong feeling of ‘me/I’ and judge
through them?

If we feel a sense of separateness, how can we feel happy,

safe and secure?
So we blame and see others as ‘the enemy’, as the source of all
our problems, and do not take responsibility for our side of the
problem. These days people are more often seeing others as
‘the enemy’ and are becoming more caught up in blame, anger
and resentment. For example, I saw a television documentary
recently, about road rage and how it is now spreading into
other areas such as mobile phone rage, queue rage and shop-
ping trolley rage.
 ' ( 157

Often the way we look at friendship and what we call ‘love’ is

based on a judgement of what others do or don’t do for ‘me’.
If they don’t measure up to what we want, need and expect,
then they are doing it to ‘me’. This is a self-cherishing attitude
and has nothing to do with love. This attitude quickly turns to
hate when others don’t do what we want. This is very evident
in a divorce court.

The more selfish we become, the more problems we cause.

For example, Sally really likes chocolates. Sally observes her
partner eating the chocolates too fast. So Sally becomes an-
noyed, thinking, “He’s so selfish and has no consideration for
‘me’, he’s eating those chocolates too quickly”.
She doesn’t recognise that she is wanting the chocolates for
herself, and this has sparked off her annoyance. She is being
selfish too, and by taking action through her upset reaction, she
is making more problems for herself.

The more you want something the more upset you will be-
come when you can’t have it.
For example, you want a coffee at work but your workmates
get to the coffee machine before you. You won’t necessarily
become upset, but if you really, really, really want a coffee
right now and your workmates get to the machine before you,
you are more likely to become upset because you are wanting
the coffee more and are forced to wait.
We generally won’t see our attachment, self-grasping and self-
cherishing as the cause of our reaction, instead, we think our
workmates are selfish and are to blame for our reaction.
158 ' (

We often think we should always look after ourselves first, be-

cause if we put others before ourselves, we feel vulnerable, we
feel like others might hurt us and take advantage of us or even
control us. We don’t recognise our judgement is invalid. This
mentality causes us to become caught up in reactions and con-
fusion and often, as a result, we withdraw from the world, feel-
ing lonely and isolated.
People often think Buddhists leave themselves open to manipu-
lation. This is not true. There are very skilful methods for
dealing with difficult people without being selfishly motivated.
But this can only be achieved through learning to identify the
problem, on their side and on our side. Generally, when we are
caught up in a negative reaction, even if it is just a feeling of
vulnerability and fear, it can be very confusing to work
through. So when we begin to look at our minds, we have to
focus on identifying our side of the problem and working on
that first. However, if you are forced into a situation where
you encounter a problem with someone else, you should al-
ways try and be fair and understand the other person’s point of
view.
It is important to do Exercise 15 before Exercise 16 because it
might give you more insight.

Exercise 15
Note how you see yourself.

Exercise 16 (Mirror)
There are methods that deal with negating ‘me/I’ and there is a
lot of technical literature already written on this subject, but
 ' ( 159

when we start we have to start at the beginning. This topic is

very profound and takes effort and a Teacher to gain any un-
derstanding at all. However, you might like to try a simple ex-
ercise I used to do as a teenager.
The purpose of this exercise is to avoid complicated instruc-
tions and to promote a feeling that opens up your awareness,
rather than gain a conceptual notion.

Please note: If you just read this exercise intellectually, with-

out actually doing and experiencing it, like all Buddhism, you
won’t be able to gain any insight.
Caution: This is an introspective exercise. If you suffer from a
psychiatric condition or mental disorder, don’t do the next two
exercises.
Stand in front of a big mirror and observe your reflection. Ob-
serve how the moment you look at yourself, it becomes per-
sonal: you are observing ‘me’. If you were examining Joe
Bloe’s reflection, you would not take it as seriously.
Now ask yourself, is that ‘me’ in the mirror? If it is ‘me’ in the
mirror, then who is observing ‘me’ in the mirror? If you iden-
tify both of them as ‘me’, which one is correct? The one in the
mirror or the one thinking?
There appears to be two separate ‘me/I’s: the reflection in the
mirror which is ‘my’ body and the ‘me’ that is thinking.
The reflection in the mirror is who others generally identify as
‘me’ but the person analysing this is who you generally call
‘me’.
160 ' (

If you put your tongue to the roof of your mouth, you can feel
it. You can feel it but you can’t see it and you can’t see the
thinking ‘me’ analysing it.
Can you notice more than one emotion or more than one state
of mind? You might even notice the same state of mind with
different intensities. Maybe you feel intrigued, confused, you
might think this exercise is stupid, you might even be fright-
ened or have a bit of a laugh. Are you always in the same state
of mind or is your mind in a constant state of flux? If so,
which one is ‘me/I’?
Think ‘I will move my arm’. Now move your arm. Continue
to move your arm. Think ‘I am moving my arm’. Does the
reflection in the mirror move its arm?
Ask which ‘me’ is moving your arm. The body which every-
one relates to as ‘you’ or the thinking ‘me’?
The thinking ‘me’ seems to be separate from the body ‘me’ and
it becomes harder to identify which ‘me’ is moving your arm.
Does ‘me’ exist anywhere else, other than in the mind or body?
While examining this question, think ‘I will move my arm
again’. Now move your arm. Think ‘I am moving my arm’.
Does the reflection in the mirror move its arm?
Now touch your face with your hand. There are now many
‘me/I’s. There is the thinking ‘me’, there is the ‘me’ feeling
the hand on your face, the ‘me’ touching your face and there is
the ‘me’ in the mirror. It becomes apparent there is no concrete
‘me/I’.
At this stage of the exercise I feel as though I am fading, feel-
 ' ( 161

ing lighter, even breaking up and not feeling as solid as before.

The solid ‘me/I’ begins to disintegrate.
If you experience this it might leave you feeling disconcerted
or strange in some way. Maybe you feel as though you don’t
know who you are or maybe you feel happy. If you feel wob-
bly, you need to remind yourself you still exist. It is still you
who walks away from the mirror. However, this naturally
formed, fixed ‘self’ that you instinctively believe in just does-
n’t exist.
At the end of the exercise, if you didn’t feel as though you
were fading and breaking up, try doing the mirror meditation
while someone else reads it to you or try doing it while listen-
ing to a recording of it. If this doesn't work, your approach to
doing the exercise may have been too conceptual and in your
head.
If you have a wobbly, insecure, fearful, confused, numb, fad-
ing, strange or happy feeling, from doing the mirror exercise, it
is arising because you are challenging your self-grasping. This
exaggerated sense of ‘self’ leads to clouded judgements, keeps
you locked in an unrealistic world and is the cause of all your
negativities.
Sometimes, while investigating the mind, you might experi-
ence a wobbly feeling and want to stop the investigation to
block out the feeling. If you feel really closed down, you can
give yourself space but you shouldn’t forget there is something
there you need to address. When you have recovered and are
ready to look again, remind yourself that you have to face the
painful, wobbly feeling.
162 ' (

If you don’t want to face yourself, you will also be blocking

out understanding of yourself, leaving no other alternative but
to grasp onto false projections, labels and misunderstandings.
The more we block out understanding of the wobbly, upset,
insecure feelings, the more threatened we will become by them,
and the more we will hang onto our false projections, labels
and misunderstanding. Generally, we are not even aware we
are doing this or that we have problems. Instead we project our
problems outwardly and perceive the cause of our problems as
coming from the world and others.
Blinded by misunderstanding and confusion, we don’t realise
we have the potential to be aware and happy way beyond any-
thing we have ever experienced.

Exercise 17
Try to compare how you see yourself in the exercise 16 (mirror
exercise), with how you perceived yourself in exercise 15. Is
there a difference?
We judge ourselves through labels, opinions, ideas and intel-
lect, to name a few. We paint a picture and conjure up a view
of ourselves without real understanding of who we are. We
can flavour and white-wash how we perceive ourselves and this
can be very difficult to see. When we do see it, it can be very
hard to acknowledge.
Once you gain a bit of insight you need to understand that you
are not going to change everything overnight, it takes a long
time. You need to have a slow approach, pulling the weeds out
by the roots instead of trying to mow the weeds with quick
fixes.
 ' ( 163

Even though I had an insight into doing this exercise as a teen-

ager, I didn’t understand what I was experiencing. The experi-
ence was quite meaningless, just like the telephone box experi-
ence, because I couldn’t place it. Consequently, I couldn’t
learn from it because I didn’t have a Buddhist teacher to teach
me and help me to place it. There is no point in trying to ob-
tain profound experiences or warm fuzzy feelings if you can’t
place them, understand them or learn from them. These exper-
inces won’t teach you to get down to the root cause of the prob-
lem.
You can reach out for a ‘cover up’ and a ‘false remedy’: go on
holiday, go overseas, get married, have children, build a busi-
ness, get a career, build a house, buy a car or move houses.
But, whatever you do, those unpleasant feelings will still be
there, still growing, until you are prepared to do something
about them. All those ‘escape plans’ won’t solve the problem,
they only lead to more problems, more wobbly, upset, hurt
feelings. You have to bring your understanding inward, and
get back to the root cause of the problem within yourself.

Self-grasping and self-cherishing is the enemy, the source of

all our problems.
The stronger the self-grasping and self-cherishing, the stronger
our emotions, and the more we become caught up in them. In
fact, we judge through all our distorted feelings and afflicted
emotions. We believe the judgements they project, and we act
on them.
Self-grasping and self-cherishing affect the way we feel about
ourselves, the way we judge, make decisions and solve prob-
lems. They affect our ability to know and understand, they af-
164 ' (

fect others, our environment, business decisions, government

decisions, scientific decisions and ourselves in everyday life, to
name a few.

When we face adversity we are presented with an opportu-

nity to become more realistic.
Through learning to transform adversity, we can transform our
understanding of ourselves and challenge our strong feelings of
‘me/I’ and our self-cherishing attitudes.

Exercise 18 A
When you are in a negative state of mind or when the reaction
has passed, try to discover a strong feeling of ‘me/I’. Remind
yourself that this exaggerated sense of self doesn’t really exist.
It is a signpost indicating that your judgement is clouded, that
you are not being realistic and there are underlying problems,
insecurity, and something you don’t understand about yourself.

Exercise 18 B
If you discover a strong feeling of ‘me/I’, tell yourself that this
is the cause of your upset emotions. Liken the feeling of ‘me/I’
to an intruder in your house that is trying to steal your happi-
ness and is causing you to be upset. If you can let go of this
feeling of ‘me/I’ at all, you will find immediate relief and feel a
sense of liberation and freedom. You won’t feel so threatened
and afraid, you will feel closer to others and happier in your-
self.

Habits
Identifying habits helps us to be more realistic and perceive
 ' ( 165

things more clearly.

As we open up information about our habits we begin to under-
stand more about how they function. Rather than just trying
not to be negative, and trying to control our habits, we begin to
open up understanding of them, making it easier to reduce and
undo them.
When identifying habits you will find that similar behaviour
and reactions will arise in similar situations. On understanding
this, we begin to realise that the strong feelings of ‘me/I’, upset
feelings and negative reactions arise repeatedly in similar situa-
tions, causing us perpetual distress.
For example, every time a driver who suffers from a road rage
habit reacts to another driver, they will become upset and have
a similar response, have similar thoughts, similar upset feelings
and physical actions. Whenever they are driving and are
slowed down by a Volvo, they may think, “A Volvo driver is
causing ‘me’ a problem.” They might then honk their horn
every time this happens and even say the same thing every time
such as, “You shouldn’t have bought a Volvo if you can’t take
a joke! Did you get your licence off the back of a Weetie’s
packet? ” On top of that, another habitual response might be to
drive faster and more dangerously.

Exercise 19
Try and check for indications of habits such as similar patterns
of behaviour, similar thoughts, feelings and perceptions in
similar situations. Watch for similar reactions in similar situa-
tions. Also, watch out for similar experiences happening re-
peatedly, such as having problems keeping a job or partner. If
166 ' (

you do notice this occurring, more than likely you will find that
habits are causing the problem to arise and are distorting your
judgment.

Karma
I had thought about the connection between karma and habits
for a while, and when Rinpoche returned to Australia in 1990, I
put the question to him. “Is karma habits, Rinpoche?”
“Yes”, Rinpoche replied. This answer helped me to broaden
my understanding of karma.

What goes around comes around.

Karmic imprints are formed on the mind from actions of body,
speech and mind. Karma means action; it is a process, it is not
an entity.
The repetition of an action can become a habit. An imprint
links an action to its future karmic results. Consequently,
karma is the law of cause and effect, it produces the nature of
future results.
A virtuous action leads to happiness and a non-virtuous action
leads to problems and suffering.
Understanding karma is very, very difficult and beyond the or-
dinary mind but if you come to terms with it at all, it can really
help you to deal with difficult situations and adversity. You
begin to realise ‘they’ are not doing it to ‘you’, ‘you’ have
caused this situation to arise. The way you decide to respond
not only affects your happiness now but your future happiness
as well.
 ' ( 167

Until we learn to face ourselves and start to undo our negativ-

ities, the habits will just keep on growing and our negative
karma will increase, creating the causes for future confusion
and suffering.

Conclusion
The day you decide to try not to react and go with the habits,
but instead stand your ground, will be the day that you come
face-to-face with your own mind. It is so very painful and so
very hard. You have to constantly remind yourself that you
have to face the pain and the bad feelings if you want to undo
the problem. This experience can be so overwhelming that, if
you have not done enough work on opening up awareness, you
might not want to try it again.
Often we try to challenge everything immediately and then,
when we find we can’t, we think this is too hard and become
caught up in excuses. You have to understand that you should
work within your capacity, and you are not going to achieve
everything overnight. Rather, you have to have a clear direc-
tion and learn to work slowly but surely towards it.
As we slowly grow, we begin to open up understanding of our
own mind and begin to let go of becoming caught up in work-
ing the angles, manoeuvring, and looking after ‘me’. As we
open up understanding of our own mind, we begin to open up
understanding of the nature of mind itself and reality. We
slowly see the problem more clearly and we learn to let go of
attachment, negative reactions and strong feelings of ‘me’, that
lock us into an incorrect view. Consequently, we don’t feel as
insecure or threatened by others and we have a clearer under-
standing of what is really happening.
168 ' (

We begin to challenge our negative states of mind, our habits

and karma decrease, our future improves, our judgements and
solutions improve. We are more able to understand others,
work with them and what is really happening, rather than what
we think is happening. We experience a different sort of happi-
ness: it is calm, tranquil and peaceful. It enables us to be happy
and content no matter what happens to us.
 169

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Compassion is the key to healing.

When we have developed true compassion, it will spontane-
ously arise within us for all living beings, no matter who they
are or what they do. It is not just an emotional response but a
firm commitment based on reason. It is a warm, empathetic,
gentle feeling of concern for others’ problems and suffering. It
arises without upset, traumatised, anxious emotions interfering
with our ability to help others. It also enables us to accept
situations when we can’t help.
Therefore, if we want to benefit others, first we have to learn to
face ourselves, to love, nurture, accept ourselves, warts and all.
This will then allow us to open up understanding of ourselves,
170 % )* +&

of our own upset emotions and learn to be realistic so we know

what is the right thing to do.
Only when we have developed wisdom and know how to re-
move the root cause of our own and others suffering, will we
be able to truly benefit others.

Compassion is the wish that all beings be separated from

their problems and suffering.
Consequently, to be able to develop compassion and benefit
others, we have to understand the nature of suffering and it’s
causes.

Exercise 20
Try to open up awareness of suffering. All sentient beings are
suffering and it takes a lot of investigation and a lot of effort to
really understand this. Suffering is all around us, but generally
we don’t notice it. Every time you hear a siren, it generally
means someone is suffering. When you go past a hospital,
nursing home, or a vet hospital, think about all the people and
animals that are suffering. In funeral processions people are
suffering and grieving.
There is the suffering of birth, old age, sickness and death.
There’s the suffering of needing material possessions for hap-
piness and the suffering of people who are driven by greed.
There is the suffering of not understanding change and the fact
that we will all die one day.
There’s the suffering of not understanding attachment and the
pain it causes. Then there’s the suffering of selfish mind, the
suffering of insecurity and negative emotions and the suffering
 % )* +& 171

of not understanding ourselves. There’s the suffering of ego

grasping and false pride, of thinking we’re better than others in
some way … more intelligent, more creative, more attractive,
to name a few.
Physical and mental pain are such terrible things, they are so
shocking … it is unbelievable but often people are completely
oblivious to them. Even people who think they are not suffer-
ing are experiencing problems and will experience more prob-
lems and suffering in the future.
This exercise should not make you depressed, rather, when you
understand the nature of suffering, it is the ammunition that
drives you to change for the benefit of others.
We don’t understand that all our suffering is caused through
our attitudes, negative states of mind and past actions, and we
all have the potential to permanently overcome suffering. We
can achieve this by learning to eliminate negative states of
mind and the seeds they have sown. This allows us to open up
our potential to find permanent happiness, perfect clarity, in-
sight and compassion.

Exercise 21
Once you have developed more awareness of suffering, try and
promote a feeling of not wanting other beings to suffer. A
good method for generating this is through making compari-
sons. For example, compare how it feels when an ant bites you
to how a worm must feel with ants all over it. In this way you
can extend your experience of suffering to understanding oth-
ers’ suffering. However, we should always check our motiva-
tion to make sure we are not doing the practice to make our-
172 % )* +&

selves feel superior or to cover up a problem. If this is the

case, we will not learn anything.

We should watch out for self-cherishing attitudes and see-

ing ourselves as more important or ‘special’ than others.
When we suffer from self-cherishing, we think our happiness is
more important than that of others. Instead of being loving and
compassionate, we will be pushing others to one side for the
sake of our own self. When self-cherishing is present, it can
result in conflict and hurting others. If someone even looks at
us in a funny way, we can immediately view them as the
‘enemy’. If we have an attitude of ‘I’ve got my life’, if we
want to have our cake and eat it too, whatever the agenda is, it
will get in the way of love and compassion.

If we let go of self-cherishing, we let go of heartache.

If we begin to undo self-cherishing, it will help us undo the dis-
tortions and false projections our self-cherishing produces. We
will be facing the real problem within ourselves, instead of ha-
bitually reacting without true understanding.

If we make a sincere effort to try to develop genuine, unsel-

fish feelings for others, it will lead to a sense of well-being
within ourselves.
People like those people who genuinely care about others and
are concerned for others’ welfare. However, we do not like
those who are selfish and display negative attitudes.
Only through letting go of self-cherishing, learning to cherish
others and hold them as important and very special, can we
learn to develop true compassion and true love.
 % )* +& 173

Everyone wants to be happy, no-one wants to suffer and

have problems. In this respect we are all equal.
If someone does something to hurt us, they do it out of igno-
rance. They don’t understand the situation and the suffering
they are causing themselves.
As we become more aware, we will begin to realise that every-
one has problems and are suffering too. Based on this realisa-
tion, we can then sow the seeds of compassion by generating a
wish that we do not want sentient beings to suffer.
We can also sow the seeds of love by thinking how wonderful
it would be if all sentient beings obtained true happiness.
When we can truly practice this it will give rise to a special
feeling of joy and inner tranquillity.

Love is wanting others to be happy; it is not needing others

to make us happy.
If we rely on someone to love us, to make us feel good about
ourselves, we will expect others to live up to our expectations
of what they should be doing to make us happy. This attitude
is not love, and will only lead to relationship problems and
heartache. If we are attached to someone, what happens when
they die?

Exercise 22
When you look at ‘love’, do you regard some people as being
more important to ‘me’ and others not so important to ‘me’?
How do you feel about your neighbours, the people in the
street, on buses and trains? Do you feel love for people who
are rude to you, or criticise you? Do you love corporate execu-
174 % )* +&

tives working for multinational companies or people who write

viruses for computers?
Love should not be restricted to just a few people, it should be
generated for all beings. For example, animals, insects and
birds all have feelings - they feel fear, they feel pain and they
respond to love and compassion.
When I was nineteen I didn’t know much about this subject,
but I discovered as a vet nurse that if I sat near an animal that
the vet had said would die, and talked to it with gentle reassur-
ance, it always lived. Human beings respond to love and com-
passion in a similar manner and can be healed by it.
H. H. The Dalai Lama says it is easy to love a friend but diffi-
cult to love an enemy. We need enemies so we can learn love
and compassion. An enemy helps us to become aware of is-
sues within ourselves that block us from understanding love
and compassion.
We often become upset when others are unkind. In fact, it can
often be easier to identify when someone is being unkind to us
than when they are being kind.

Exercise 23
Try to identify others’ kindness. At first it might be hard to do
this but if we examine a situation, we begin to realise that oth-
ers have been kind to us. For example, we wouldn’t have sur-
vived as a baby without the kindness of others.

Exercise 24
Try to develop the feeling of love; think of someone you love,
 % )* +& 175

and generate this bright, warm, radiant feeling of wanting them

to be happy from your heart. Once you become familiar with
this practice, try and develop the feeling and extend it out to
others. Aim at going beyond loving discriminately, just for a
few individuals, and generate love out to all others, regardless
of who they are.
If we contemplate and meditate on love and compassion it can
completely change us and our relationships with others. If we
can truly take on others’ suffering, as in the Tonglen medita-
tion, it can open up our awareness of a whole new world. If we
visualise and think about giving away everything we own, let-
ting go of everyone in our lives, giving up our health, any meri-
torious actions, if we seriously contemplate and meditate on
this, it can be so liberating. It can open our hearts and fill us
with a feeling of joy and a sense of well-being. Tonglen can
change us right down to the very core of our existence because
we will be challenging our ego-grasping and self-cherishing
and all the negative states of mind they generate.

Practices that open up love and compassion such as Ton-

glen will teach us how to heal and transform adversity.
Rinpoche says, “Only through practice, can we truly under-
stand. What we all need is a good heart. We can buy just
about anything but we can’t buy kindness. Doctors can give us
a new heart but it won’t give us warmth of heart. This is some-
thing we have to learn to generate through practice for our-
selves”.
176
 177

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

&

Australia has its compassionate qualities. We have so many

volunteer groups such as St Johns Ambulance and Surf Life
Saving clubs. The most amazing one is the Bush Firefighters
who put their lives on the line, free of charge, to protect other
people’s properties and lives. We give blood freely, donate
money and household goods to people affected by disasters,
to name a few, however trends show, with each generation
this charitable attitude is being threatened because each gen-
eration is giving less.1

As our obsession with money grows there is a danger of

losing our compassionate qualities.
178 % ,

These days we are more inclined to value losses through dol-

lars and cents, not through others’ suffering. We are rapidly
developing a mentality of, “Think of today, think of me, don’t
think of tomorrow and don’t think of anyone else”. We need to
realise that when we develop self-cherishing attitudes we are
shooting ourselves in the foot.

We are becoming locked into grasping and attachment more

and more. The more we believe we need consumer products,
the more we need money and the more we will value things
through money. We’re constantly exposed to propaganda tell-
ing us we need certain things for our happiness. Next time
you watch television, check the ads for the indoctrination.

This affects us in so many ways. For example, our pleasures

and desires are being catered for through consumerism and me-
dia and this affects our ability to make valid judgements. We
judge by what is pleasurable and not by what is right. Even
our ability to perceive good qualities in others can be affected.
For example, if someone makes us happy, we tend to laugh, it
feels good, and often we like the person without further investi-
gation. On the contrary, if they don’t make us feel good, we
mightn’t like them … end of story.

Some of the American sitcoms such as Seinfeld, are an exam-

ple of this. People who watch the show see it as funny, some
even see it as cynical but we tend not to see the self-cherishing
behaviour in the characters as a problem. This behaviour af-
fects the viewers in so many subtle ways and this is then taken
into our culture and is seen as acceptable and ‘normal’.

SENSATION SELLS! We are bombarded by hype telling us

 % , 179

that negative behaviour is ‘normal’. We are always pushing

the boundaries of acceptable behaviour in the name of achiev-
ing fame or making money. Where is it going to end?

Marketing, advertising and media are influencing our youth.

They have been so successfully manipulated that they tend to
believe they need to look a certain way, be a certain way, buy a
certain product if they want an identity, self-esteem and happi-
ness. They don’t know that things were once different. This is
creating more attachment and insecurity, discontentment and
depression. No wonder such things as eating disorders are
growing.2 In 2001, 500,000 children in our country were diag-
nosed with mental disorders.3 Why?

I heard an interview with some school children recently. They

said, ‘You have to look after number one, it’s every man for
himself and you can do anything you like at school, except
break a window’.

Recently I was asked to teach two different classes at a school.

When I asked, ‘How do you find happiness?’ both classes re-
plied with the same answer, ‘Money.’

Even though the school had a good reputation, I found both

classes became easily distracted and they seemed to be undisci-
plined.

In both classes, when I asked, ‘What happens when your par-

ents tell you that you can’t have something that you want?’ the
reply was, ‘Well, you can always get around them or you just
do it regardless of what someone tells you to do’.
180 % ,

I walked out of the school in dismay, concerned for the chil-

dren’s future. They didn’t seem to understand that ‘no’ means
‘no’. If ‘no’ means ‘well maybe’, it teaches attachment, it
gives the message that we can get our own way and teaches us
not to accept situations and let go when we need to. Instead of
learning about impermanence, we are given the idea that ‘you
can always make it happen’. Consequently, when we experi-
ence a loss, we feel like a failure because we have been unable
to ‘make it happen’.

These days, children are sometimes pushed to one side as a re-

sult of parents wanting to have more and do more.

Later on in life, these attitudes we are teaching our children can

cause negative attitudes and even serious mental disorders.

We are becoming trapped in a cycle of never-ending grasping

and attachment. Statistics show that Australians have more
money than ever before4 but there are more lonely and de-
pressed people than ever before as well.5 Something is not
right!

When we approach problems such as anorexia, obesity, mar-

riage breakdown and drug abuse, we rarely look for the root
cause of the problem. When we question why Australia has
one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world6, we gener-
ally blame relationships, communication, unemployment, we
might even blame diets or lack of exercise, but we never chal-
lenge grasping and attachment.

We like being attached to what we want, we don’t want to give

 % , 181

it up … we don’t want to face the problem … so we believe

there must be some other way, a nicer and easier way.

The more we become locked into attitudes of attachment,

the harder it is to undo.

If we are sold something we like and we think we need, we

won’t want to give it up. We want problems solved but we
don’t want to give things up.

Marketing and advertising depends on us being insecure and

discontented, so that we will buy products in the endeavour to
make ourselves feel better. Unbelievable amounts of money
are being poured into research to encourage us to part with our
money7, such as examining people’s attitudes and behaviours,
shopping mall design and chemical smells that promote spend-
ing, to name a few.

But how much research is going into examining the influences

that this manipulation is having on us? As with all attachment,
it is hard to identify the dangers it causes. Are we becoming a
culture that is easily manipulated in other areas? These days
people are often left thinking, “But what can you do about it?”

Big business and governments develop goals and objectives

based on greed and attachment that create tunnel vision that is
harmful to people and the environment. We are becoming
more entrenched in seeing the world from only one perspec-
tive, seeing things from, “But we need to make money”.
Western society is a society of achievers … we have to
achieve at all costs. If we achieve something, invent some-
thing, discover something, create something, win something,
182 % ,

we will be acknowledged as successful. We believe that peo-

ple who follow their dream, achieve their goal, who have made
it, should be respected and showered with accolades. In the
West, achievement is closely connected with happiness.

Have we ever stopped to think about what we are achieving or

examine the motivation behind what we do?

We are in such a hurry to achieve progress, but what are we

actually progressing towards? What is the affect of all this
achieving? We are certainly not achieving peace of mind.
Why do we need to achieve? Why do we need acknowledge-
ment? Why can’t we just be happy within ourselves? Is it be-
cause we can’t acknowledge ourselves? Why do we need
somebody else to tell us we are OK?

What about others who are pushed to one side in the name of
achievement? What about the impact we are having on the
planet? What about the thousands of species that are being
wiped out and the effect progress is having on indigenous cul-
tures?

If we want to permanently heal problems we have to change

our attitudes. Our attitudes cause wars, recessions, environ-
mental degradation, mental problems, crime, drug and alcohol
abuse, eating disorders, obsessive behaviour, sexual violence,
domestic violence, family breakdowns, adolescent problems
and suicide, to name just a few.

Our problem-solving ability affects the world around us, but

before we try to solve bigger issues in the world, we need to
learn how to skilfully solve problems within ourselves. First
 % , 183

we have to learn to develop an altruistic motivation, and then

make valid judgements and decisions that are not clouded by
negative emotions. For example, if we want peace in the
world, we need to first find peace within ourselves and learn
what it means. Even in peace rallies people can become angry
and violent but all this does is cloud their judgement and their
ability to solve problems.

If we are peaceful within ourselves, a gentle feeling of love

and compassion will arise towards others, leading us to open
up more understanding of all points of view. This will enable
us to find better solutions.

We live in an age that is facing more and more decisions on

issues such as terrorism, stem cell research, DNA testing, clon-
ing, nano-technology and the use of genetically modified
foods. Science is growing at a phenomenal rate and, as it
grows, it demands skilful problem-solving. If we don’t make
the correct decisions now, what monsters will we create and
where will it lead us?

In Tibetan Buddhism and Traditional Tibetan Medicine there

is an ancient prophecy that talks about a time of great suffer-
ing, of violence and illnesses. This time will be caused by a
degeneration in people’s attitudes that will lead to greed and
wrong livelihood. These attitudes will cause degradation of
the environment and proliferation of pollutants and new ill-
nesses.

Rinpoche has told me that the prophecy states that three-

quarters of the planet’s population will die through an illness
184 % ,

that will arise in this age. He goes on to say that there is an 80

per cent chance that this illness is already here. But we still
have an opportunity to turn things around by changing our atti-
tudes and preventing environmental degradation.

We should not rest in complacency and think nothing will

happen to us.
Some people can’t see this degeneration of attitudes but, when
I was a young child living in Sydney, we never locked our
house up because the iceman, grocer, milkman and baker,
needed to get into the house to make their deliveries. Our
house was never robbed and my parents didn’t even consider
the option. This was the case with everyone in our neighbour-
hood.
In the West we put so much effort into encouraging people to
want and need things so they will buy more. Attachment and
self-cherishing attitudes are now being sold to the world and
this is contaminating other cultures. Consequently, a lot of
Western problems are now becoming international problems.
A native Indian from the Amazon rainforest summed it up
when he said, “The West is like honey, once you taste it you
want more, the problem is it makes you sick. Sick in your
body and sick in your mind, your body becomes ill and your
mind is filled with worry and fear”.
 185

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

When I die I want to be able to think that I have done something

with my life. When I was young I thought I was doing some-
thing with my life if I travelled, obtained possessions, had a ca-
reer, status and had lots of friends. However, all the hardship I
experienced has led me to having a much happier and more con-
tented life without needing any of these things.
The best thing I ever did was to become a Nun. I cannot express
how good it feels and how happy it has made me. I spent years
as a prisoner in my sick and injured body, but becoming a Nun
has given me a freedom that most people will never experience.
I don’t know what my future will bring. My health is still not
great, and I have had quite a few problems since my cancer op-
eration, but most of the pain has subsided. It is now seven years
186

since I had cancer and so far it has not returned.

The doctors tell me that because of the size and type of cancer
I had, it could return at any time. I think I am fortunate to have
this constant reminder that I could die at any time. This helps
me to lead a better life, to make better decisions, and to make
every moment more meaningful.
 187

NOTES

1. O’Keefe & Partners, Giving Trends TM in Australia Report, 2001, an-

nual report, O’Keefe & Partners, Sydney, reproduced with permission
by Australian Charities, 2001, viewed 29 August 2003,
<http://www.auscharity.org/givingtrends2001.htm>

2. F Stanley, Towards a National Partnership for Developmental Health

and Wellbeing –Family Matters No.58 Autumn 2001, workshop report,
Australian Institute of Family Studies, Melbourne, 2002, viewed 27
August 2003,
<http://www.aifs.org.au/institute/pubs/fm2001/fm58/fs.pdf>

3. P Ellingsen, ‘Drugging Away the Pain of Youth’, Issues 2001: Beyond

Depression, newspaper article, 12 March, The Age, Melbourne, repro-
duced with permission by depressioNet, 2001, viewed 26 August 2003,
<http://www.depressionet.com.au/archives/news_120301dat.html>

4. Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘1301.0 – 2003 Labour Level of earn-

ings’, Year Book Australia, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra,
2003, viewed 26 August 2003,
<http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/07A4693170A8DA
91CA256CAE00057FC4>

5. Australian Bureau of Statistics, 4364.0 National Health Survey - Sum-

mary of Results, Australia, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra,
2002, viewed 26 August 2003,
<http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/CAC1A34167E36B
E3CA2568A900139364>

6. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Social Trends 1994, Health

– Causes of Death: Youth Suicide, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Can-
berra, 2002, viewed 26 August 2003,
<http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/096839a3fd4d165aca256
9ff0017f15a?OpenDocument>
188

7. Australasian Promotion Marketing Association, Australasian Promo-

tion Marketing Association, Sydney, 2003, viewed 28 August 2003,
<http://www.apma.com/statistics.html>
189