Something I want to talk about – something I talk about, but it’s good to remind ourselves of this repeatedly – is that there’s the outside world and then there’s our mind.
The very way delusions work – the very way this neurotic I and the attachment and the fears work – is that when things are going relatively well, we don’t question things: we just relax and we take everything for granted. We wake up, “Oh, another day,” the car’s there, the boyfriend’s there, you know? We just plod along and we become very unconscious.
Then what happens is something changes, and we have a complete panic attack. There is always an event out there: the car collapses, the boyfriend leaves, you know, the rain comes, whatever it might be. This is the point I’m getting to now, a particular point: there is an event out there, but then there’s our mind interpreting it.
In other words, as soon as these painful things start happening like Lorraine losing her car or Brad losing his partner – so dramatic for us – the deluded interpretations, the stories, start to take over: we paint a very terrible picture of that external event, the picture of anger, of blame – and the worst thing is we don’t realize that we are painting a picture.
This is the major point to see, and it’s massive if we can get it, it’s really huge if we can get it. This is the essence of what Buddha’s saying. There’s the outside world, and every second of the day – we know that – things are happening: there’s a person walking across the street, there’s the car, there’s the weather, it gets light, it gets dark, winter comes, trees grow. There’re a million things every day going on in front of us, and the way this all exists for us is totally dependent upon the way we interpret it – but we don’t think we’re interpreting it: we think it’s objective fact!
There is an event happening, but what happens is the crazy ego starts running rampant and writing an elaborate story, and then we can’t tell facts from fiction, and this is why we go crazy, you know?
In other words, what we say in the West is we have all these projections about somebody: you did this, and you did that, and you said this, and it is this, and it is that. We are convinced that our interpretation is an assessment of the facts, and it’s absolutely often not, and that’s the part to look at. It’s very, very hard to do this.
Everybody in the world has an interpretation. Within three seconds of reading the newspaper, watching the television, hearing about something, we have an interpretation, and we always assume that our interpretation is an accurate depiction of the facts. And this is the point: it’s not.
Our interpretation is distorted by our attachment, by our aversion, by our arrogance, by our low self-esteem, by our depression. Whatever’s going on in our mind colors the event, but we don’t realize that.
Once we start to realize that, then I swear to you we are really practicing Dharma: we are really practicing knowing our mind and realizing that things don’t exist the way they appear.
As Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, “The way the outside world appears back to us is according to what’s in our mind.” If your mind’s full of anger, let’s say, then the outside event, the person will appear so ugly to you, and you will believe one hundred percent they are that.
We’ve got to factor in our mind when we look at the outside world. It sounds almost too obvious, but as Lama Zopa says, and it’s very shocking to say it, but if you analyze it, it’s true: “The vast majority of human beings on the planet have no idea that what goes on in their mind plays any role at all in their lives.”
This means the outside world is fixed to us, set in stone, and however it appears to me has got nothing to do with my mind: it is an objective reality. That’s how we live our lives, and no wonder we all have wars and kill ourselves and everybody else, you know?
Our mind is the main player and it interprets the event – and all we talk about is the event. We all do the same: when Lorraine talked about her trauma she talked about the car, the thing she’d lost, the external event, not her mind, her attachment, her hurt – her interpretation; Brad talked about the partner leaving, the external event.
The practice we have to do is learn to look into the mind, look at and assess your interpretation – is it valid or is it not? – and that’s the part that’s hard.
It’s not an easy job – it’s very, very intense – but it’s a very powerful job to do, and this is the work that we have to do.