How to be with our Kamma and Clarifying a Few Points

How to Transform Kamma

Being with the Feeling

Don’t be Afraid to Every Part of Yourself

Questions and Answers

(Discourse Given on an Advanced Vipassana Retreat 2012 looking at how to approach the purification of the conditioning in our unconscious mind.)

How to Transform Kamma

A few observations:

Most of you, when you’re working through the various experiences that arise within your Vipassana practice are working through the charge you have created in reaction to the things that have happened to you, and less so the charge around the things you’ve done. You’re inclination when reviewing past experiences is to spend more time looking over things that have happened to you that have had an impact on you. We have to understand that what happen to us in the life is the fruiting of past kamma (past causes producing present effects). How we react to the the things that happen to us is the producing of new kamma that will fruit in the future (present cause producing future effects). So with regards to practicing Dhamma, we must learn to see all our experiences as our teacher, and our challenges as our invitation to evolve.

Of course it is important to review past experiences and release the karmic charge we are carrying around them. That’s very important. But it’s also important to look at the charge around the things that we’ve done that were rooted in ignorance, aversion and greed, and feel the charge that we didn’t even notice then. One of the things we have to do is reach the point of right view that sees things done in the past were unwholesome although we might not have recognised it at the time. We have to break down the wrong views and ignorance that allowed us to sanction actions and behaviour that will produce suffering in the future, looking at the lack of insight that made it ok at the time.

It is the letting go of the charge we are holding around past experiences and actions that allows us to purify kamma through our practice of Vipassana.

Normally, unless we are practicing Vipassana, our kamma gets purified only when it fruits. For example, perhaps you experienced some misfortune or disappointment in the past, and you’re trying to work through how you feel about it now. But the point here is to understand that the latent kamma that you were carrying before your misfortune has now fruited and you have gone through it. That kamma is now cleared. The new kamma we are carrying now is the charge around how we have reacted to that experience (mental kamma), and the actions that are prompted by it (action kamma). Do we understand this? It is an important point with regards to our broader understanding of kamma.

When things fall apart in our lives, this is the result of past causes (kamma) producing present effects. By passing through our challenges with openeness discernment and acceptance, our unwholesome kamma is being purified in its fruiting. Through the process of us being with our challenging kamma as it fruits, our very experiencing of it purifies us. It is helpful if we can see things in these terms. In the past, when we did not have insight into dependent origination and kamma, we didn’t see things this way. Instead, we think; “Oh dear, why is this happening to me?” and we reject the experience and react strongly to it with aversion, so it doesn’t purify us. More often than not our misfortune becomes the ground for our creating all kinds of new kamma. For example if we become bitter and resentful about our past misfortune we may find ourselves acting out of resentment and anger, and sewing the seeds for more suffering in the future. But it we can allow our misfortune to be our teacher, it washes us of our past kamma. The attitude is one of grace, and humility, and it elevates the quality of our mind.

Now I am also asking you now to review your past actions throughout the life, to see where we might have caused suffering or been an inconvenience to the world and those around us. We must investigate the charge we have created with our selfish actions. Because this is also kamma. It’s really important to let that go or transform it into a higher state, and to experience it. Much of the unpleasant charge and discomfort, both mental and physical, that you experience in your meditation, is the kammic charge we have created around our past actions. Although it might at times be very unpleasant, it is through experiencing it now with equanimity that it is released and transformed. Some of you will experience little bliss in your meditation on account of habitual unwholesome actions and speech. There is little point trying only to seek bliss through practicing concentration, because this discomfort will continue to arise whenever our ordinary mind appears.

We have no other choice but to work it through in our practice and see it gradually transform over time. It in the past we have harboured intense ill will, or greed, or if we have been dishonest and lied often, then every time we feel angry or greedy or when we lie now, our past stock of karma associated with these things arises again through bhavanga and we experience the suffering of those things as mental and physical suffering now. But if we review our past actions of body speech and mind with honesty and discernment, we can let go that frustration that we feel around our current suffering, and start to meet it with acceptance and equanimity. This is the only way to purify it.

When we experience hardship in the daily life and we must keep our head down with humility and patience, gradually we get through it, and that is the cleaning our past kamma. Although it feels like a storm at the time, it makes you brighter afterwards. Even though it might leave us a little bit more worn, it also leaves us wiser and lighter, because we are not carrying that kamma as a latent charge in our unconscious mind (bhavanga). Before this misfortune happened to us, it was sitting as a charge somewhere within us. After it has happened, it is not sitting as a charge anymore. It’s happened, it has passed, and the kamma has fruited. It’s an experience that’s been gone through. But what we may still be carrying now is the new charge we created in the way we reacted to it as it happened.

This is some of the most important insight of all. We really need to understand and see this for ourselves. We have to not just understand this because it is explained to us. We have to observe this mechanism at work within in us through our deep meditation practice. This is right at the heart of Vipassana. Then, when we really see it like this, everything becomes our teacher; everything that happens to us allows us to evolve in some way. This is what I mean when I say there is nothing to reject.

We just embrace everything that happens to us and find the resolution within it. It’s our perfect teacher all the time. We ask ourselves what is the lesson we need to learn here? We look closely at what's going on with discernment and openness. And the lesson will be right there in front of us. When we can meet our challenges and suffering like that, we have learnt their lesson. That's our evolution. And not meeting it and transforming it and learning from it is the cause for our wandering on. This is how we should see that ignorance (not seeing correctly) is always at the beginning of the causal chain behind our suffering. This is how we roll around in our stories through out the whole life, blaming them for our not moving forward in life. In this way not only do we multiply and prolong the suffering they cause now but we renew the ground for more suffering in the future. And so we keep going through the same stuff time and time again, because when our teacher comes along we don’t see the lesson in it. And so it has to come and give us the same lesson again and again. That’s what Samsara is, the endless wheel of wandering on. Until the time comes when we turn around our whole attitude towards it and we see it - “ok, it is what it is, fair enough, I’ll shall be with it.” In the being with it - that’s it - it passes away without remainder. There’s no wandering on of that kamma. There’s no carrying it with you. There’s no carrying your past and what’s happened to you with you. It’s been met at the moment of its arising, It comes to cessation at the moment of its passing. No wandering on.

Now, this should be our attitude towards reviewing how we are still reacting, behaving and acting out on account of the things that happened to us. And we also need to let go the behaviour and attitudes that we have perhaps justified on account of the things that have happened to us. Because although these things may not appear as suffering to us now, they may well be the cause of the present suffering of others. And they will also be the cause of our own future suffering. Remember, kamma does not fruit immediately. If it did I am certain humanity would not live and behave the way it does. Again. It is because we cannot see the real effect of that we do, that we do many of the things we do. Again ignorance is the cause of suffering.

Being with the Feeling

Now, wanting our misfortune to go away, or wanting our physical and mental suffering to disappear is not enough. We have to actually be with and pass through the experience of it. And this is why I keep emphasising how important it is to 'be with how it feels'. When I say that you are fruiting kamma, while you sit on the cushion, that really IS what you’re doing. You want to see it like that. So if you spent half your life as a bounder and a drunkard and a reprobate, and goodness knows what other kind of mischief you got up to, because of the chaos you produced and misery you produced in other people on account of selfish behaviour, there may be a lot of discomfort and mental turmoil you need to be with in your meditation. The volition and the ignorance and the greed or the aversion or whatever has prompted such behaviour, that is action energy, it is kamma. We often over fixate upon what has happened to us, “oh, my mum left me out in the garden all day long when I was a kid, she forgot me when it rained, she doesn’t love me etc etc etc..,” for example. But what about the things we have done? What about the stuff we have done that has caused suffering to others, that was prompted by ignorance, aversion and greed? This charge when it comes up within us is our dukkha, or suffering and by being with the unpleasant feeling associated with it, that is the fruiting of it, it is the cleaning of it.

So it is not enough to just sit there wanting the unpleasant experiences that arise within us to go away. They are our teacher, and by allowing ourself to be with them we accept the teaching, learn from it and ascend to a higher state of understanding. And in this way we purify our karma before it fruits as more suffering in the future. And that dust isn’t with you anymore. The fog within us, around us, the heaviness, the denseness, the grossness, even the pain and discomfort, that sometimes we might feel smothered with, this is all the kammic charge around our past actions, speech and thoughts. All our selfishness, all our negligence, all our inconsiderate behaviour, our blind pursuit of our desires, having to have what we want and stamping our feet if we don’t get it creates a massive charge. Of course I am not suggesting we are always like this, but when you do behave badly we create a massive charge in our body and in Bhavanga. It is the volition that is driving our actions that creates that charge...That is what kamma is.. Whatever it is, our craving, our greed, our anger, our lust, our jealousy, our lies and deceit, our dishonesty and manipulation, all of it...It is kamma.

So please don’t just spend all of your time going over the thing that you found really difficult, “When my mum and dad split up” or “When my grandfather died” or “When I was robbed.” It’s understandable to go over all these things but that’s not really the issue here. The issue isn't what has happened to us, but what we have done, and the way our mind has habitually behaved. Now, I’m not suggesting that we’ve spent our entire life behaving badly. Of course not. I like to think we’ve spent most of our lives behaving thoughtfully and considerately. But where ever we haven’t, we need to go into that experience and look at what was driving us and look at the charge around these things.

If you are sitting there asking yourself, “Why does my body just hurt?” or “Why do I feel like I’ve got a lump of lead in my head? Why do I feel like my solar plexus is a washing machine?” It’s because of the powerful drives of ignorance or lust or greed or anger or jealousy or worry or doubt that prompts our most inconsiderate behaviour. So try not to just sit there wanting it to go away, because that’s not going to make it go away. Try to sit and really be with it, because however unpleasant you think it is while you’re sitting here on the cushion dealing with it, it’s nothing like as unpleasant as if it produces its effect in the daily life, and turns everything upside down for you.

That’s the attitude we should have towards our practice. This isn’t some kind of self-flagellation or some kind of punishment for something that we think we’ve done wrong. There’s no judgement in it at all. It just is what it is. There’s no shame, there’s no guilt, there’s no blame apportioned. There’s just seeing now what I didn’t see before. And when we don’t know what we’re doing, that’s the ignorance. When you see the ignorance, you understand, “Well ok, fair enough, that was then, but I’m not ignorant now,” and that’s when we make our stand and start to change the way we are.

No one says we have to keep the five precepts, its not a law that we will be condemned for if we don't uphold it. But the mind is simply gladdened, consciously and unconsciously, with the knowledge that we didn’t make a nuisance of ourselves one way or another, that we didn’t bring inconvenience, hardship, suffering or pain to other people. And when your mind and heart are innately virtuous, the nature of your heart is gladness. That state of consciousness, its nature is gladdened and full of joy and love. Why? Because its not weighed down. So we can see it like this. What we are sitting here doing is letting go of things that weigh us down so that we can be full of joy and love again. I’m not suggesting that we are not already but we can be even more full of joy, happiness and love. And the love and joy we couldn't find before, now we can find it. This is the way to find it.

Perhaps you don't realise how significant this is. Such deep healing is happening here. Because it’s opening the door for you to be happier, freer, lighter, more easily satisfied with your life and gladder. So it’s really great stuff when you sit and you keep going. You so easily could say, “do you know what, I’ve had enough, I’m going to go and chill out by the beach for a week, I’ll feel a lot better after that than I do here.” But the work that you do on the cushion, particularly during times of deep retreat like this, makes tremendous inroads into lightening the stuff that burdens you. Although sometimes we haven't even noticed that we’re carrying this stuff, we certainly start to notice when we are free of it. And that becoming free of it, in stages, is being free in stages of suffering.

Don’t be Afraid to Meet Every Part of Yourself

So don’t be afraid to meet yourself. Every part of yourself. Just be there with it. Stop thinking about what you want it to turn into. That’s not the exercise. It’s about just being completely there, utterly with yourself. And if it’s really tough sometimes, if it’s utter misery for a moment, it’s ok. Do you remember what I said the other day when someone said, “I’m feeling utterly terrified?” I said, “That's ok. It is because at the moment you haven’t got the courage to go to that place, but you’re about to find it.” That is the nature of the path. Of course when we start of we lack some of the most noble qualities, but it is through doing our practice that we find them.. When we meet our suffering, at the time at which we first see it, quite likely our tendency is to get up and run away and pretend it’s not happening. Of course we have to work gently at our own pace. Finding courage as we go. But by the time we’ve been through it and it’s passed, we’ve found those qualities we were previously lacking.

That’s really how it happens when you accept everything as your teacher. There it is. I’m not going to try and hide or bury myself in this or that distraction anymore, I’m going to sit with it. And then everything is ok. Nothing isn’t ok. It might not be pleasant but we have found a way to be with it.

So, have the right attitude to what you’re doing here, and so much powerful healing can happen. If you can have the attitude that says; “There’s nothing I’m not willing to try to be with,” then even if you may not have that courage yet you’re just about to find that courage. It’s all about the right attitude: total non-judgement, complete willingness to be with whatever.

Questions and Answers

Student: So there are two types of charge you carry with you, there’s the kammic charge, and then there’s the charge of things that have happened to you that’s not kammic charge.

Burgs: Think about it like this, there are these two aspects to the unwholesome aspect of sankhara (volitional formations). There are bad reactions in your memory (latent kamma that arises from time to time), and negative habit patterns of your mind (producing new kamma each time they arise). Negative habit patterns of the mind is the volition that’s prompting you to react, and do the things you choose to do in the pursuit of what you want acquire of or avoid, and the bad reactions in the memory are how you behaved when various experiences came your way in the past, which were the fruiting of kamma.

Now I would not give this teaching as directly as this, so don’t sit here thinking, “How could I possibly explain that to my kids or my father or my mother?” You can’t, you can’t speak as directly as I’ve just spoken to you to other people. You can’t. You can’t say to people “that challenge has come as your teacher,” you can’t say things like that. It will really upset them. I’m saying it to you because your insight is mature enough now that you see that to be the case. But you do not go around talking like that to people, please. But if you see dependent origination, you have to be willing to see it at work in every aspect of our experience. There isn’t anything that isn’t that. And you understand that this is the case.

Student: So let’s say that in this lifetime you’ve committed certain negative kammas, is it possible to purify that and at the same time as purifying that fall into negative habit patterns?

Burgs: Yes, you’ll feel it within you. Listen, when you do something, let’s say you’re really cruel to an animal, while you’re being really cruel to that animal that cruelty volition that prompts you to act registers in your heart base while you’re doing it. That is the charge of that kamma upon which that kamma in the future that is associated with that cruelty to an animal will fruit. This is unpleasant, it produces unpleasant feeling in the body. Now, the only way you can fruit that prior to whenever the condition for it arises and it fruits as some unpleasant experience in the future, it’s by being with the unpleasant feeling that you produced within yourself, allowing it to be there instead of somewhere hidden, waiting for a chance to rear its head. A small impulse of your kamma will fruit in this life normally. Maybe you get bitten by a dog. Mostly you won’t see the effect of your kamma from this life in this life, it will fruit in a future life. What you’re experiencing in this life is your kamma from a previous life. So you won’t find why it is that you got bitten by a dog when you were a kid and got sceptic legs, simply by reviewing past actions in this life.

You won’t see it,. Instead you will wonder “How does that happen?” You won’t find it because the kamma fruiting in this life is from previous lives. What you do in this life, very little of it fruits in this life, most of it will fruit in the future when it arises back out of bhavanga in the future life.

So, the only way you can clear our stock of past kamma, it is by doing what you’re doing here while practicing vipassana. Going deeply enough into the impulsion and feeling its charge upon you and being with it and transforming it. It’s not pleasant, but you’re gradually letting it go.

Student: Can you just clarify, with your example of being cruel to an animal, are you trying to recreate in yourself the feeling behind you being cruel?

Burgs: Not recreate it, but to allow it's charge to emerge out of your unconscious and surface through Bhavanga as a disturbing impulsion and feeling right now. In that way that you can review the experience for the karmic charge within it, the way that you review a memory. You review that experience and you see the cruelty within you, or the greed, or the aversion, whatever it was that you were doing, you see what ignorance you were smothered in while doing it and you’ll experience it within you, in the same way that at the right time, when you set it up right, you experience the trauma of losing your mother in the shopping mall and running around like a distraught and afraid when you thought you were lost. You re experience how you felt at the time; you can feel that arise within you as you meditate. Same process. At that point you sit with that and you watch it and you look at the ignorance that prompted that action or that justified that action, or the aversion or the greed, you watch it. You wouldn’t have seen it as wrong at the time. Or maybe you already knew it as wrong but your desire or aversion was so strong that you surmounted that and did it anyway. When we practice Vipassana correctly with insight and wise attention, we see the experience and what constitutes the experience 'as it is'. You experience the mind as it was when it was smothered in ignorance at the time. Witnessing that, you’ll feel all that aversion energy over you and in you, and it won’t feel very pleasant. It will feel unpleasant. But in the being with the unpleasant and allowing it to arise and pass away, we purify the karma associated with it.

Normally, without enough discernment, we would have said “phew, I’ve done enough meditation for today, I’m going to give it a break.” But with insight you just sit with it with equanimity. Not white-knuckling it, not just gritting your teeth and forbearing it. No; you just go deeply into it. And here we have to be careful, it’s not a judgement, it’s just experiencing what is. We’re carrying this stuff with us all the time.

Student: And the shame and guilt?

Burgs: Ok, so then that comes up. Now you’ve got to find forgiveness for yourself. You know “Ok, what I did I shouldn’t have done, I certainly won’t be doing that again.” You and at that point we let it go.

Student: And be with the shame.

Burgs: Yes. You didn’t have shame at the time of doing it. The shame arose subsequently. That’s another thing. Now you let that go. It is what it is. That’s why we have to go far enough to see that it was ignorance. Sometimes we’re not ignorant. We absolutely know we shouldn’t do something but we’re so driven by anger or we’re so driven by greed, we go and do it anyway. That is being ignorant of self as the conditioning factor. In such a moment we smother the wholesome quality of the mind which is the fear of wrongdoing. Our craving or our aversion becomes so strong that we do it anyway. So you’ve got to go back and feel all of that. Let it go. The point is, it’s all about forgiveness. It’s not to get to the point of judgement. Letting go is forgiveness. Jesus didn’t carry with him when he died that “How could you possibly do that to me?” He forgave completely, he didn’t carry any of it with him. He certainly wouldn’t want to come back and help beings out of suffering if he hadn’t forgiven them, would he? No.

You have to be able to see, “Well, I might not be able to forgive myself yet, but if I had that insight then I would be.” So at least you know that the continuing to judge yourself is only on account of your insight not yet being mature enough. You haven’t yet seen that it’s just ignorance. It’s hard, but that’s how insight transforms us. How ‘seeing into’ transforms us. It brings a deeper understanding that allows us to be with things as they are.

When you die, whatever your misdeeds were, you’re not judged by another being. You meet yourself, and you can either be with it or not. The only thing that judges you is yourself. That quality of your mind when you meet yourself is what determines how you wander on. Exactly the same thing you’re doing here. That quality of mind when you meet yourself determines how you wander on. You don’t necessarily get to meet yourself as completely but you’re certainly getting to meet yourself. It’s to teach us how to transform it into love. Not so we can transform it into guilt or shame. So we can get beyond that and transform it into love.

You see for yourself, it’s only suffering, it’s only confusion. Look at it, look how it wanders on. There you were, you were neglected as a kid, nobody really loved you, you behaved terribly, nobody loves you, you spend your life acting really selfishly, mum and dad won’t love you next time because there’s something in you they don’t like! Mum and dad don’t love me so why should I care? And nobody likes you, you see? It just rolls and rolls and rolls while we keep playing out our story until we stop it in its tracks.

Vipassana insight stops it in its tracks. And the only response with equanimity, love and compassion. Only love. And in this way we are able to get over it. And that’s the end of it. It doesn’t go anywhere after that. You stop acting out that prompts aversion towards you in others, people stop disliking you, and it’s over. And that’s the only way it’s over. We let go the charge that creates aversion in us and prompts aversion in others. It goes on forever otherwise. It goes on and on and on. And we don’t get it and we keep not getting it. Honestly, that is the heart of the Dhamma. Learning to see our challenging experiences as our invitation to evolve and transforming the negative tendencies of the mind when they arise.

Student: It would have made a much smaller book though.

Burgs: It could have saved an awful lot of paper. But remember it has taken you many hundreds and thousands of hours on the cushion to be able to see this insight clearly for yourselves. All the rest of the Dhamma is preparing us to be open enough to come to this insight for ourselves. So we need to keep stripping it apart and asking “what actually do I need to do?” That’s it. You can get so lost in the Dhamma without seeing the medicine. And then equally you can see the medicine and not take it. As soon as you take it, it makes you better.

Do you get it? I’m trying to simplify it. Sitting there trying to break your experience down into five aggregates, asking yourself what does he mean by dependent origination? all of that... Well this is what it means, basically.

Here’s another very important point: Mental kamma. Most of your misery is actually mental kamma, just turmoil in your mind. Isn’t it? So don’t think it’s alright to think loathsome things and not act them out because it’s not. That just makes mental turmoil kamma. We keep our five precepts, ok that is important, but mental kamma, what you think about other people, what goes on in your mind, this is mental kamma, that’s what you experience all the time. And most of your suffering is mental kamma. So it’s not just about restraining yourself in action. It’s about properly changing your mind.

When somebody appears to be living their life well, they don’t break their precepts, they look alright, but they’re going through hell, misery, falling apart internally- that is mental kamma. They have to investigate what is going on in their mind? Not only look at their actions and appearances.

Your inner world is what you spend most of your time with. Even though it doesn’t appear to be falling apart outside. It can be falling apart inside. So don’t just wait for misfortune to come your way. You won’t feel good if your mind isn’t clear and bright and you’re going through mental suffering.

Student: But if something happens and you feel angry, surely it’s a good thing to allow it to arise?

Burgs: You cant stop the anger from arising, it is a conditioned process. What I’m saying is, it’s not enough to package up what goes on in your life tidily for the purposes of appearing that everything is ok. That doesn’t constitute no suffering. Remember all suffering actually is in the mind. Even though misfortunate things happen in the life, the impact they have upon us is in the mind. Ok, we get bodily affliction as of course, but most of our suffering is mental suffering, it is mental kamma.

Remember, what we’ve got in our lives right now, this is the effects of past choices. So you have to be with it until the conditions change and it’s not in your life. You make choices now, maybe you can choose, maybe you can’t. The things that you can’t choose to change, you have to be with. That’s when it becomes your teacher. At least by embracing it as your teacher you’re growing through it. By rejecting it and resisting it and wishing it wasn’t there, no only do we multiply the suffering caused by the unpleasant but we don’t grow.

Student: How do you transform the mental kamma that arises, seemingly unprompted, in aversion for example, is it enough to go “that’s aversion?” It’s already come up, it’s already running its story. Don’t you have to engage with it?

Burgs: You just be with it. Ok, I got angry with that person. Ok. It’s not the anger that’s the big issue. It’s the ill will that’s the big issue. If someone’s being really foolish and stupid and you ask them not to do something you can be angry with them. Speak strongly. If there’s only love behind it, it’s not an issue. It’s when wishing ill on someone is what’s prompting you, this is really the one you want to watch.

Student: So it’s more about being mindful, really.

Burgs: It’s more about allowing things to be what they are so you don’t have so much to say about them.

Student: What about avoiding situations, basic things like if I go to Oxford Street I’ll end up completely full of aversion.

Burgs: This is another thing it’s about choices. You have to choose to turn away from the gross. You can’t live with the gross and remain receptive and open. We come here on retreat, we create an environment that’s very pure. It’s unlike our home environment, and I don’t expect that we live like this at home, but we clear the space and make it pure enough and something really sacred and divine is close to us. Now if you want to live like that, you’ve got to choose to turn away and give up what is gross.

Your heart won’t be open enough to feel it otherwise, or it’ll be very rarely that you do. So your thing about going down to Oxford Street, these things are disturbing. So it’s not avoiding. Don’t fill your head with all of that noise if you want to keep your serenity. When you meet someone who is suffering, then your heart will be open enough for real compassion to arise within you towards them, and you help them. And if it produces some challenge to you then that’s fine, you carry that because that’s what compassion is. But don’t unnecessarily expose yourself to the gross when it doesn’t achieve anything but makes you feel dismantled. Life is about choices. Once you embark on a spiritual path that transforms you into a higher state of consciousness, you have to guard that well and take care of it. Or you’ve got to also be willing to live in the absence of it because it won’t be with you when your mind is disturbed by the gross. So you have to be equanimous to the gross when it does arise. It is all choices. That’s why one of the precepts is not to get intoxicated. Because when you are smothered with ignorance like that, there’s no subtlety to your consciousness. You can’t feel deeply.

So you keep yourself clean. I mean, that morning out there this morning, it doesn’t get better than that. Beautiful crystal like frost over everything, bright but low sunlight reflecting off everything, you won’t find a more enriching moment than just sitting there enjoying it. And it was there for nothing. It was free. Everyone was invited. You’ve got to be able to turn up though. Everyone says “Oh, I go home and I practise and I’m good for a couple of months and then I can’t keep it together.” It’s choices. Discipline. We’re not living in the deva realm, we’re living on Earth, as a human being. It’s beautiful enough, you don’t have to keep yourself at such a high vibration that you can’t do anything. Unless of course that’s your wish, and then you go and find a quiet place. But you live in an environment that resonates with your aspirations and you honour it. You maintain it. And then you can be at peace. And happy. Set your life up so you’re happy with it, because it is your life. You’ll usually find it’s an exercise in simplifying rather than making more elaborate. And then you won’t be a burden to other people.

Student: I’m a bit confused between anger and ill will. Is ill will when you are so cross that you wish somebody harm?

Burgs: Well we can experience anger without ill will. Ill will is either not wanting to delight in other people’s good fortune or wishing harm on another, or not wishing good fortune for other people. Or, at its worst, wishing harm for others. I’m not suggesting that anger’s great. It’s not. It’s messy. But ill will is messier.