Feelings don’t lie

Recently, on Friday nights, Venerable Chodron has been teaching about the mindfulness of feelings and following in the Buddha’s footsteps. I’ve been thinking about feelings and trying to monitor my feelings, and it is quite a practice of self-acceptance and compassion. My feelings, and I think yours do, too, really tell me a lot about my practice—the thoughts I have, the attitudes I hold. They really tell all. And feelings don’t lie. They show you exactly what you’re thinking about situations, about other people, about yourself. So, I thought to share some examples of this and ways to turn the mind. 

So, first, the feelings tell me a lot about how I conceptualize about other people. Here are two examples. One is I see someone doing virtue. They’re doing some virtuous activity. They’re setting up the altar, or they’re meditating, or they’re doing prostrations. And immediately, there’s an unpleasant mental feeling. Well, how interesting. That is very curious. I wonder what that means? So, I investigate. It’s not that difficult to discover that I have jealousy. I have competitiveness. I’m comparing myself with them and thinking, I should be doing that. Why aren’t I doing that? Of course, we all know the antidote to this is rejoicing. When I can get there, rejoicing brings a pleasant mental feeling.

The Second example is when someone walks in a room, and I have an unpleasant feeling. I might hear their voice. I might see them. Or I might even kind of get a feel for how they’re walking, and I know who it is. And there’s an unpleasant feeling. Then I investigate that, and I see, Oh, I’ve been holding resentment towards this person. I’m holding a grudge towards this person, and I’m afraid of them giving me criticism. Again, that’s interesting. It’s very good information. As I said at the beginning, I have to really have a lot of self-acceptance and compassion when doing this practice. So, I think differently, like maybe they might give me some helpful feedback, maybe their intention is not to bring up unpleasant feelings in my mind, maybe they have an altruistic motivation. I could just remember that they’re a monastic, that they’ve devoted their life to virtue. So, maybe they don’t want to harm me—maybe.

Then I was investigating feelings in regards to engaging in various tasks. We do a lot of offering service here, and I was even doing offering service before I came to the Abbey, for the Abbey. Sometimes, before I even start a task, there’s an unpleasant feeling as I’m thinking about that task. When I look at it, oftentimes, this is coming from stress, from overwhelm. It’s coming often from the thought, I have too much to do. There’s too much to do. My list is too long. I can’t get it done. So, of course, that brings an unpleasant feeling. But when I can really think about it, when I can I take the time to think, What a wonderful opportunity I have to do something meaningful, to contribute to someone’s life, to protect the Abbey from fire, for example, then my feeling changes.

So then, during activities, when I’m working on a task, there’s an unpleasant feeling. Sometimes this unpleasant feeling is because an obstacle has arisen. I was really fixed on getting that task done, and something or someone is in my way. Right there, I see I’m conceptualizing this situation or this person as an obstacle. If I didn’t conceptualize it in that way then I wouldn’t have an unpleasant feeling. They’re simply asking me a question. They’re simply telling me some information. Yeah, maybe it’s not the best time, maybe I would rather them say it at a different time, but I can change how I interpret it, and that changes the feeling.

One thing I noticed even before I moved to the Abbey—I would finish some task that I was doing for the Abbey when I was in my apartment, and after I finished, I had this really intense, pleasurable feeling. But it wasn’t a kind of pleasant feeling from rejoicing. It was the pleasant feeling from relief. From, Oh, thank goodness I’m done with that. I can go on to doing something more fun. So, I really have to watch for pleasant feelings when I finish a task. It could be virtuous. I could be rejoicing how wonderful I did this task, or it could be non virtuous: I’m so glad I got that checked off my list, and now I can go do what I really want to do. And it’s important to watch: Well, isn’t what you really want to do what you were just doing? And if it wasn’t, how could you change your mind so that what you really want to do is what you are doing?

Then there are feelings in relationship to my own actions, and this has become very clear. Like, for example, I make a mistake. Maybe it’s when I’m leading meditation or giving a talk. Immediately, there’s an unpleasant mental feeling. When I look at this, there is aversion to a bad reputation. There’s fear of blame, criticism. So, that’s not virtuous, right? It’s not like I was thinking, Oh, I feel badly because I misspoke, or I said something that was not quite correct. I don’t always have an unpleasant feeling towards that, but I always have, or many times have had, an unpleasant feeling when I make just a mistake. 

That says something, right? I have more unpleasant feelings sometimes when I’m making a mistake, and sometimes it’s even a pleasurable experience, or feeling, when I say something with a little bit of a charge, or I want to get back at someone, or that really icky kind of satisfaction. And so instead, when I make a mistake, I could think, as we’ve been taught in the thought training teachings, How wonderful, great, my reputation went down a little bit. That’s great, I really need that. This is helpful because I have a real problem with perfectionism, and I want to let that go. And so how great that I just made this mistake, and everyone sees it so clearly. And it’s recorded for all times. How wonderful. I’m not there yet, but I’m trying.

So, as I was saying, it’s important to really check, why am I having this pleasant feeling towards speaking, for example, badly of others? Right? When I elevate myself just a little bit, in comparison to others when speaking to someone? Right? That’s not something to rejoice in. That kind of pleasure is poison. Rather we can think, Oh, this kind of action really should be causing an unpleasant feeling of regret, of remorse, of wanting to do better, wanting to really change how I speak about others, right? 

As I’ve been exploring this and looking, it’s like your feelings really tell you a lot about where you are in your practice. So, there’s growing humility, just looking at the feelings telling me I have nonvirtue in my mind. The most important thing is whether I have nonvirtue in my mind or virtue in my mind. The most important thing is not whether it is a pleasant or an unpleasant feeling. I can say that intellectually. I think this will take a lot of time to practice and to integrate. But it’s important to really ask myself, why am I happy right now? Is this happy virtuous happiness or non virtuous happiness? Instead of just chasing pleasant feelings, running away from unpleasant ones, I really want to train to really investigate where is this coming from? What does this indicate about how I’m thinking, about how I’m conceptualizing? 

Of course, I want pleasurable feelings all the time. There are many ways to change these feelings that we have, right? The one I’m most familiar with is tweaking my environment. Fortunately for us monastics and those who live in monastic environments, we have a a more limited capacity to do that, which is a very, very helpful thing. The other thing we can do is we can change the primary cause of feelings, which is said to be karma, in the teachings on karma. It’s that karma ripens in feelings. We can change those by engaging in virtue. If we want pleasant feelings, then engage in virtue. And if we don’t want unpleasant feelings, to do purification. That’s what we can do. Another thing we can do is we can change the conditions by changing how we think, as I was illustrating in these examples. There’s always a different way of looking at a situation. We just have to first remember it and apply it and do it repeatedly, right? And we can. We can change our feelings by changing how we think.

Audience: I think you’re saying that when you see the mistakes you make, especially when it’s something where you haven’t lived up to your integrity, that that can actually be sobering, but you can feel good about it. I’ve had that experience of just being able to say to myself, Wow, I wasn’t living up to my integrity then. And it is sobering, but it wasn’t unpleasant because I was happy that I didn’t feel shame and happy that I noticed it. It’s kind of like when you bring your mind back to the object, you know? That’s a really important part of the introspective awareness that’s developing. To me, this is a little bit like that. Like there’s this part of it that can be positive because I’m not beating myself up anymore. I’m not going over the edge in self-discrimination. I’m just seeing it as a mistake. And it does feel sobering to me, but it also feels good because I can be honest with myself and say, I didn’t live up to my integrity in that moment. So, I don’t think it has to be an unpleasant feeling. Maybe there’s some and I’m just not seeing it, but overall, the experience, I think, can be kind of sobering, but good.

Venerable Thubten Ngawang: For sure.

Audience: Does that make sense?

Venerable Ngawang: Yes, absolutely. Thank you. There are times when I make a mistake and I only beat myself up for five minutes instead of for five days, you know? There’s growth. It’s slow.