Due to our tendencies, we prefer chocolate cake, or, due to our tendencies, we prefer tall handsome men or short fat ladies or whatever it might be. We have viewpoints in our mind, particular views that we’re attached to as being good. Then as soon as things don’t meet our expectations, aversion arises, isn’t it?
What the Buddha’s saying is that, yeah, they’re habits in the mind, but the way we label those things is the problem, you know?
We assume, that that thing that doesn’t meet our expectations is bad – from habit, you know? Your attachment prefers chocolate cake, your attachment doesn’t prefer carrot cake – so carrot cake is labeled the “cause of suffering” and chocolate cake is labeled the “cause of happiness.” We can see this and we’re very fixed in these labels.
The more subtle way that things exist – and we can see this fairly easily and in a fairly easy way – we can see it – is how we label them. But we don’t like to think that, we don’t like to think that. We prefer to think that something is what we think it is.
We sort of know we call something delicious, but we think it is delicious objectively. We know we’re calling it “delicious” – we know that, we know we label it “delicious” – but we exaggerate the deliciousness: we make it objective deliciousness.
The way things exist is in dependence upon the way we call them. So if you call something bad it will cause you suffering, for sure – you will suffer. If you call it good you won’t suffer.
That’s why I like to use examples of my friends in prison. Conventionally, we can agree prisons are pretty ugly places: you’re sent there when you’re naughty, you can’t escape, you’re locked in, the food is rubbish. These things can be conventionally true – that’s conventionally true.
What we do is we then overexaggerate and make it absolutely true: in the bones of the prison, it is absolutely wrong, absolutely bad – that’s what we do. Therefore, a person who is in prison, because they’re in an ugly place, is going to think, “What do you mean I can be happy? What are you talking about? Don’t be ridiculous! I’m in prison, it’s ugly.”
But many of my friends in prison have become happy because they’ve changed the way they label it. And that’s the skill, that’s the essence of what Buddha is saying: we can do that! Not from any moralistic reason, but for a practical reason: it’s the method to get happy. If you can’t change the thing, change your mind, he says, you know?
We can see even conventionally this is what we do already – we do it already, we can do this. If your little child makes you a cup of coffee and it’s appalling taste, you’d never dare to tell her it’s appalling. You’d say, “Darling, it’s delicious,” and you’d even enjoy it. You change the way you see it, you change your label of it.
Conventionally, the coffee is cold. Typically, you like hot coffee – nothing wrong – but you change the name. You change the way you label it: you label it “delicious.” So it doesn’t cause you suffering because of that.
My friends in prison have learned to be happy by relabeling these garbage dump places, you know? That’s all Buddha means when he says that things have no inherent nature: it’s right there, empty of inherent nature – that’s what he means, simple way of putting it.
If prison were inherently bad, then you could never be happy in prison. If chocolate cake were inherently good, you would always be happy when you eat it, no matter how stuffed your stomach is. That’s the implication – and I think we can prove that’s not true, you know?
My friends in prison are happy! If your stomach is stuffed, eating chocolate cake will not make you happy!
What’s the advantage of changing the label? We have to see that. What’s the advantage? There has to be some benefit to doing this – it’s not a moralistic issue, you know? What’s the experiential implication of this?
It’s that if you’re more in charge of your mind and the way you label things, then you can stay steady no matter what happens: you can learn to deal with the dramas of life without losing the plot. It’s very practical, you know?
I can see that very clearly with my friends in prison, very clearly. One man on death row in Kentucky, for 40 years he’s been living in this garbage dump place – boiling hot in the summer, freezing cold in the winter, terrible food, dreadful surroundings, his senses are bombarded daily by noise and ugliness – and he’s a happy guy! It’s very clear – nothing dramatic, you know? He’s a happy guy because he’s changed the way he labels things: he’s changed the way he sees things, interprets things, analyzes things.
We know this is true, but we don’t really quite join the dots properly as a basis for real practice, you know? This is the method for getting happy! And it’s not as if you’re living in a fantasy land – it’s not like that.
One friend in prison, who was on death row and accused of murdering two policemen along with her husband, she had to deal with the most appalling suffering: living in a cell on her own for years and years, completely innocent, husband was executed, his head burst into flames, she lost her children, lost her parents. And she said, “Finally, I realized I couldn’t change anything, but they couldn’t take my mind from me. So I decided, I’m not a prisoner, I’m a monk. I’m not in a cell, I’m in a cave.”
Well, she’s not fantasizing, she’s not stupid – she knows she’s in a boring old prison. She’s not a Buddhist, she’s not a Christian, not particularly religious, she just had this ability, I think, to know she could change the way she saw things.
She became a happy human being, working on herself – tremendously hard. She learned to do yoga. She decided she could change her mind, she decided she could be in charge of being happy, she decided she didn’t have to be a victim. I mean this is an extreme example, but so clear, so amazing, so courageous, so incredible!
We understand these views. She’s not a Buddhist in particular – she’s not at all, in fact. Buddha doesn’t own all this stuff, he hasn’t got copyright on it, he didn’t make it up, but this is his expertise – this approach.
This is the core, the heart of practice, as a method for getting happy and stopping suffering. And then, indeed, on the basis of this, you develop an ability to have empathy for others and compassion to help them as well.