Abandoning, Transforming, Transcending - Mingyur Rinpoche - 15/11/2025 (2/3)

Antidotes

The antidotes of ignorance are the meditations on impermanence and on the twelve links of interdependent origination.  Let’s say you never have seen a dog, and you heard different stories about them: some tell they are gentle, others that they are bad, scary, cute… but you don’t know what is the truth.   One day you visit a friend that owns a dog.  You don’t know how to react.  All a sudden the dog barks at you and that ends your relationship with the dog.  You created an imprint in your unconsciousness (alaya) [1st link, ignorance; 2nd karmic formation].  One day you hear a barking and that creates a contact [3d, consciousness; 4th name and form; 5th, sense organs; 6th, contact] with your senses.  You feel unpleasant, fear [7th, sensation].  Not only hearing, also seeing a dog now generates a similar experience. That provokes aversion [8th, craving] and you look for the causes of aversion [9th, grasping] and you decide to put barriers to not be disturbed by dogs. Then the cycle repeats [10th, becoming; 11th, birth; 12th, old age and death]

[Holding a branch from the flower bucket] Do you like it, don’t like it, or don’t know? [people vote] You replied to the question, out of a pleasant, unpleasant or neutral sensation that comes from a past imprint.  To solve our imprints, we must use analytical meditation.  Whether we find the cause of the imprint or not is fine.  All the imprints are based on ignorance, because we perceive things as single, independent and permanent.

• “My experience will be forever” (permanent)
• “This is me” (singularity)
• “This is the worst problem” We experience the emotion as if it has its own entity (independent).

For example, if you are in the queue for the bathroom and someone cuts your line, you get upset because you attribute a continuity to the line (permanent) and you think the other person is not respecting you (singularity), and you feel bad because you don’t control the situation (independent).

Meditation

• Relax your body and mind.
• Feel whatever suffering or klesha you are experiencing at this moment (attachment, aversion…).  If you don't experience anything, you can bring a memory from a past disturbing experience. 
• What belief or perspective do you have about it? “It is difficult to change.  It is a big problem. When I meditate on it, it becomes worse.  I tried some meditation, but it comes back.”
• What is the sensation in the body? Burning, hurt, pain, numb… Maybe you feel aversion.  Or you are afraid of the problem.  Or you are questioning, “How I would get out, or solve this problem?”
• And then we will restart the cycle.  To cut through, you can apply two ways :

1. Realizing the ignorance [1st link]: permanent, singular, independent
2. Being with the sensation [7th link]: we feel pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, and before the craving we rest on it so we don’t need to fight or look for anything, being with the sensation as it is.

• Relax mind and body together.

For example, if you go in a car driven by your friend and he has almost an accident you think, “If I was driving it will be safer.”  Or, if you support a sport team and it wins you would think, “We deserved to win.” But if it loose, you would think, “There was something suspect in the competition.”  This is pride arising from singularity.  It can also manifest as low self-esteem.

The antidote of this is to practice equanimity, see that others, the same as you, want to be happy and don’t want to suffer.  Therefore, we wish that all may be happy and don’t suffer (immeasurable love and compassion).  Joy practice can also help.  To deal with jealousy, we must rejoice on others’ virtue.  Being happy of whatever good others have.

Self-antidote

In this practice we will make that obstacle becomes solution, poison becomes medicine, obstacle becomes opportunity.  We call it self-antidote.  We transform the klesha using our awareness, loving-kindness and compassion, and wisdom, or visualizing a pure form.  In this approach we don’t run away from kleshas, because we need them.

Right now, you may have a problem, pain or klesha.  First, we must recognize whatever we are feeling.  For example, some of us when we are sick don’t want to go to the doctor.  That is a manifestation of some inner fear.

Second, we must practice compassion for others.  Other people when they are sick, may also be afraid or reluctant to go to the doctor.  Therefore, we can wish, “May they be free from suffering and its causes”.

Third, (putting anger or hatred as example), when we breathe in we can imagine that we are taking the anger and hatred of other people into us, and we can reflect that by doing that we are making our own anger meaningful.  Our anger becomes representative of all the anger.  Doing that, our anger becomes loving-kindness and compassion, poison becomes medicine.

Meditation

•  Sit in open awareness, letting your mind rest as it is.
• Now feel your anger (or whatever klesha you experience at this moment).  If you don’t experience any klesha now, you can remember a past event that made you angry.
• Recognize that when you experience anger you are unhappy, not in peace, like burnt by a fire, feeling hurt… The same is for other people.  Like you, they also feel unhappy, and deep on them, they want to be happy and not suffer.  When we follow our anger, we create causes of suffering.
• Wish that all beings become free of anger and hatred and its suffering.
• Now, we will take all beings’ anger into us.  Imagine that all the anger takes the form of dark smoke and as you inhale, it dissolves into your own anger.
• When you breathe out, you wish that all beings become free of anger. [repeat a few breaths]
• Rejoice that your anger today represents all beings’ anger.  We are transforming it into love and compassion without fighting nor following.
• Open your eyes and relax your mind in the natural state.

This practice is very powerful.  It can even remove your karmic imprints associated to singularity.  Usually we care about us, but not others. This practice dissolve this strong self-grasping.  Although we are taking all the negative, it will not harm us because we are transforming the negative into positive.

Can we take others’ suffering into us? We cannot remove karma from others, but the practice can help them indirectly due to our karmic links.

Visualization (practice using imagination)

We visualize the image of a Buddha in front of us in the form of light.  Now, we feel everything as solid, but the light of the deity can dissolve the imprint of solidity.  Not only dissolve it but enhances it with love and compassion.  The nature of the light is love and its radiance is the awareness of our true nature, the nature of all the enlightened beings.

Meditation

• Rest your mind and keep your back loosely straight.
• Imagine in front of you the light of the awareness, love and compassion and wisdom of all the enlightened beings, and our true nature (like a fire that irradiates light and warmth).
• A beam of light radiates on you, and it is like the sunlight melting the frost.  It melts our solidity imprint, it melts our anger, transform our anxiety, fear, sadness.  Our body becomes full of light of awareness, loving-kindness, and wisdom.  All our experience becomes that of light.  All our imbalances get cured, and we feel the sensation of awareness, loving-kindness, and wisdom in our body.
• Then we radiate this light into ten directions reaching our family, friends, and everybody.  All transform like us, feeling awareness, loving-kindness, and wisdom in themselves.  Everybody becomes peaceful and aware of their innate qualities.
• Open your eyes.  All you see is infused with the light of awareness, loving-kindness, and wisdom.