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Excerpt of a teaching on Living without Anger and Fear
by Ringu Tulku Rinpoche, Glasgow 2004.
Transcribed and edited by Corinne Segars
From a Buddhist point of view, it is understood that there is a way of liberating our thoughts and emotions, which is said to be very effective if we can do it in a direct way. This meditation - and this is what we actually call meditation - is actually a very important and deep way of learning how to deal with our mind, our emotions and our thoughts. Real meditation is learning how to let whatever thought and emotions come up. We let it come up. Whatever thoughts, whatever emotions come up, these are all momentary. A thought comes up and then it goes. A feeling comes up and goes. An emotion comes up and goes. Our mind is like that. It's manifesting and changing all the time.
So, to make our mind stable, what we have to learn is to allow whatever comes in our mind, in our thoughts, in our emotions, to manifest. We don't fight against it. We don't say, 'Oh, that experience (or that emotion) is no good, I should not have it.' When fear comes, we shouldn't react with: 'Oh, I should not have fear, no, no!' Whatever comes, we let it come and at the same time, we let it go. To give an example, when fear comes, if I don't react in a defensive way, with a great aversion, but if I let that fear come, see it as a kind of bubble in my mind and relax in that, then, naturally, it comes up and it goes away because I don't grasp it. If I don't grasp it, it comes and it goes. Then something else comes. It doesn't mean that fear won't come back again, of course it will, but if I can do that with that moment of fear, I've learned how to let come and go of one moment of thought and emotion and therefore, I've got a little bit of confidence on how to deal with my thoughts and emotions. Little by little, I will be able to do it twice, three or four times, then more and more and I will grow more and more confident about dealing with my emotions and thoughts. When a good thought comes, it's OK, very nice, I let it come and let it go. When unpleasant thoughts and emotions come, it's OK, I can let it come and let it go. If I can do that all the time, I've learned how to meditate. Basically, that is meditation.
And when you know how to meditate in this way, you no longer need to be afraid of your thoughts and emotions or of whatever experience, because you know that these things are coming and going, coming and going anyway. So there's no need to fight, no need to grasp or cling. It's like that. When we have that experience, we've developed what we call the stability of the mind, because we know how to deal with whatever comes. Whatever arises in our mind, whether good or bad, positive or negative, we can deal with all experiences and therefore, in a way, we have peace of mind. That is what we call peace. Peace doesn't mean that there is something very special, like a completely unworldly, ecstatic kind of feeling. It's not like that. It means that you know that whatever arises in your mind, whatever experiences you go through, do not really matter because you can deal with them. You have peace because your mind has becomes stable. And once you have peace, you also have joy because you no longer have fear. You don't have to fear because you know how to deal with whatever happens, and this is what we call transformation. Transforming thoughts and emotions is not about changing or getting rid of all the thoughts and emotions, it's about how to handle them, how to let them come and let them go.
-(c) Ringu Tulku Rinpoche, Glasgow, 2004, reproduced with permission
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