Q&ANirodha Insight Meditation in Finland Retreat4 Jun 2019
Week 2 day 4 group D — Self, Relationships, and Working with Strong Emotions
Sayadaw U Tejaniya · 1 hr 20 min
Original audio: Burmese · English interpretation
0:00−1:20:00
Uses compressed audio.
AI-written summary
This group interview covers navigating family demands, experiencing the absence of self, and handling intense emotions. The teacher also clarifies changing social relationships on the path, the pervasive nature of craving, and maintaining awareness when facing difficulty falling asleep.
Topics
Talks in this retreat
Nirodha Insight Meditation in Finland Retreat · 33 talks
- 1459 minWeek 2 day 2 group D — Recognizing Thoughts as Mind and Working with Judging Mind2 Jun 2019
- 1528 minWeek 2 day 2 group E — Maintaining Awareness and Observing Mental Habits2 Jun 2019
- 162 hr 6 minWeek 2 day 3 group A1 — Attitude Toward Experiences, Greed, and Reality3 Jun 2019
- 171 hr 46 minWeek 2 day 3 group A2 — Dangers of High Concentration and Right View on Thinking3 Jun 2019
- Viewing181 hr 20 minWeek 2 day 4 group D — Self, Relationships, and Working with Strong Emotions4 Jun 2019
- 1945 minWeek 2 day 4 group E — Being Aware of Thinking and Understanding the Heart-Mind4 Jun 2019
- 201 hr 42 minWeek 2 day 5 group A1 — Recognizing and Acknowledging, Existence of Objects, and Right Attitude5 Jun 2019
- 211 hr 55 minWeek 2 day 5 group A2 — Recognizing Conditioning, Right Attitude and Subtle Defilements5 Jun 2019
- 221 hr 23 minWeek 2 day 6 group D — Working with Restless Mind and Unpleasant Objects6 Jun 2019
- 2324 minWeek 2 day 6 group E — Agitation and Cultivating Interest in Practice6 Jun 2019
Transcript
English
My question would be something I struggle with in everyday life, and I, um, I'm guessing I will continue to struggle with. When I'm with friends, especially with family, I have multiple demands coming at me
English
at any given moment, especially with my family. Let's pick my family. And I feel
English
I have perfected the skill to absorb anyone's frustration and
English
try to relieve, like, try to be of use for them, but I end up disappointing at least one person at any given moment. So there are a lot of demands coming my way, and I'm unable to cater.
English
And I end up getting very frustrated, so, and I forget about my internal experience about anything that I recognize is only the frustration that I'm feeling about failing or disappointing someone. Oh.
English
And what about the people that you relieved? Well, one of them is happy, at least. Yeah. But, um, a lot of demands, and I feel like
English
I can't, uh, fulfill. Please everybody. Yeah. And it's creating a lot of frustration in me, and I can't even begin to focus on my experience. Mm-hmm. So you are two
[Burmese segment]
MY
Yeah yeah yeah
English
. When we deal with other people, whether family, friends, strangers, , we have to think of other people as, uh, a mental quality. Mental quality of ? Okay. Yeah. So, so they're bringing their mental qualities to us.
English
So we have to think of them as a, a mental quality. Okay? And he says, for us not to get, um, he says, and we're not supposed to absorb that mental quality. Okay? No, ma'am. Involve myself, but I'm still a good. Yeah. Don't get involved in their mental qualities. He says, you're supposed to recognize what's happening, and it's supposed to come and go, just like any other mental quality.
English
Right? And he says, in order to not get absorbed into the mental quality, into those qualities, , you have to, uh, stay very aware of yourself so that you're kind of fireproofing yourself, so you don't get burned by other fires. So the thing is to actually really be in touch with your own self, uh, and not pay that much attention to pleasing other people or making everything right for them.
English
In the end, , we want to help, and we do what we can. But whether they're pleased with it or not is not our business. That's up to them. , nobody can make you happy, and you cannot make another person happy. In the same way, nobody makes you frustrated, and neither can you make another person frustrated.
English
Okay? Each of us are building our own happinesses and frustrations by the way this, this stream of consciousness thinks and behaves and so on. . Right. So, so what's really important in bringing happiness to any mind is the right attitude.
MY
Right? When there is no right attitude, that mind that does not have the right attitude will be unhappy. It's the same for our own mind.
English
, you know, psychologists and monks and priests, they get a lot of this. Everybody comes with all their problems, and they dump all their garbage on you. And he says. Garbage like this. And, uh, they, they haven't, they won't come and tell you what's wha happening wonderful in their life. They'll come and tell you everything that's going, like, horrible in their life.
English
Yes. And he says then, he says, you have to know how to protect yourself, how to be aware of yourself, and how to see things in perspective so that, you know, you, you, you give them a listening ear, know your limitations of what you can do, and be able to accept that and let them
English
go. exercise . Yeah. So whoever we, like, um, you know, whenever we interact with people, we already have to be very careful, but we have to be particularly careful when we are interacting with our family and relatives. .
English
He says, who makes our mind the most frustrated? Who, I mean, who, who seems to trigger our minds the most? Family. Yes. Those we are close to. Right?
English
Yeah. And he says, you know, and we, we meet our family the most. He says, we, we meet strangers once in a while, and actually, we are more careful when we deal with strangers. You know, we're much more guarded, we're much more careful what we say and do. And then he said, with family, who we meet all the time, we kind of take things for granted, and we just let go, and it's not always well, it's usually not very wise.
English
. Yeah. Because when we're in close contact with people every day. . If we're in close contact with people every day, they become more sensitive to us. You know? They become more, yeah. . He says, you know, some people can be very, um, sensitive.
English
Like, if you don't smile at them once or greet them, they can get upset. Even though you see them every day. You know? People have these things. He got told a lot when he started practicing at home, and he, he stopped talking, talked very little.
English
And he used to be the joker. He used to go around, tease everybody, make trouble, you know, would, would, you know, make comments about everybody, annoy them to death. And then he became, you know, he started practicing and then got really quiet, and then some of his relatives would say he'd gone mad. I mean, right in front of him, he'd be sitting there, he'd be like, "Nuts."
English
Never says a word. No. So rude. Won't greet peop won't greet his elders. You know, things like that. Because he'd just sit there and be noting, be, be aware. . Yeah. Even though they knew that he was trying to meditate, you know, and trying to be mindful. Yeah. They just thought he was a bit over-absorbed in, in himself.
English
Yeah. So we do have to be more careful when we are with our family. He said.
English
Thanks.
English
Um, I can see the awareness is getting better day by day. And, uh, uh, I've been lo uh, investigating this right attitude, which I was talking about at last, uh, yeah, previous interview. So I told that it was so, um, quite hard to, to, um, accept and, and watch the, the hard feelings.
English
And so, uh, and so I, I, I started to do that work because, yeah, I realized that's the prime time for that. Yeah. Um,
English
I, I saw that it was maybe it, it's hard for that because sometimes when the hard feeling comes, there's something which trigger it. It's, it's very easy to see that there's some kind of object which reminds me something, and that, that, uh, then the feeling arise. Yeah. And the feeling, uh, it, it, it feels very, uh, um, intensive.
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Sayadaw U Tejaniya began his Buddhist training as a young teenager in Burma under the late Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw (1913–2002). After a career in business and life as a householder, he has become a permanent monk since 1996.…