Real Enemy

Your real enemy, who steals your happiness is the one inside your mind. Throw him out and never let him back in.
~ Lama Yeshe 👺

"You know how angry you get if you’re looking forward to a good time and your friend stands you up. You feel cheated: “That’s it. I never want to see him again.” But he’s only cheated you once. The two departments of ego and attachment have been cheating you longer than you can imagine—days, nights, weeks, months, years; all your life; countless lives—and you still want to be friends with them. That’s like locking your house with a thief inside.

You must recognize that your real enemy, the thief who steals your happiness, is the inner thief, the one inside your mind—the one you have cherished since beginningless time. Therefore, make the strong determination to throw him out and never let him back in. But be careful how you approach this analysis. Don’t feel emotional or guilty; simply recognize your situation with wisdom.

If somebody was to beat you up every day and you never did any-thing about it your friends would think you were crazy. “Are you stupid? Why don’t you hit back,” they’d ask. But that’s what we’re like. Our two departments, especially attachment, beat us up day and night, month after month, year after year, and we completely ignore them. If we check deeply, we’ll feel really silly. It’s so true, however, that running after your ego’s illusory projections and following attachment is really, really silly; much sillier than running after yet another man or woman. That’s nothing.

The biggest cheater is inside, not out. Isn’t there an expression, “Nobody cheats you but yourself”? It’s not a Dharma teaching but nevertheless, it’s very true. However, if you interpret it psychologically, it’s actually quite tasty. You see? If you have wisdom, even common expressions can have a strong impact on you. Normally you interpret such sayings very superficially and don’t give them much thought, but when you begin to investigate your internal world, even things that ordinary people say can have deep meaning. Whatever you hear can become a teaching. Instead of bringing you down, even negative experiences can produce wisdom. Why? Because you understand where everything comes from and why it arises.

You probably think things are pretty good in your country and when I come along and say that this is wrong and that is wrong, you feel, “What’s this silly lama talking about? We don’t have any problems. He must be talking about his own problems. Don’t bring the problems of India and Nepal over here.” You’re definitely going to think something like that. But if you’re honest, when I explain what problems really are and how they arise, you won’t be able to contradict me. Of course, anybody can argue anything. In Tibet, we have an expression: “The son who kills his father always has a reason.” He can give you a reason for why he killed his father but that doesn’t make it right.

The samsaric gods of the formless realm have no gross suffering. Their situation is completely different from ours. They have no gross body, only mind, and their enjoyments are purely mental. They don’t have problems like getting a job, going to work, shopping at the super-market, cooking food and so forth. Therefore it’s impossible to teach them Dharma; they have no comprehension of suffering and agitation. While they’re in that state, they can’t be helped. Similarly, some people in the West think that their lives are perfect and feel extremely proud that they have everything. But it’s not true; they don’t have perfect enjoyments. They have no real control over their conditions and no true freedom.

Therefore you should decide once and for all to stop bowing down before attachment. “Although I think I’m very intelligent, I recognize now that I have always blindly followed attachment to objects as seen by my ego. I’m not intelligent; I’m silly. I’ll never again be ruled by attach¬ment or bow to that destructive mind.” It’s as if somebody was threatening to kill you with a knife and you were prostrating to that person in gratitude. Just as that would be silly, so is being nice to your attachment.

Do you understand? When you experience the feeling of equilibrium you experience an incredibly universal spaciousness. Your tight, narrow mind becomes completely open because it has come in from the extremes of thought to the middle way. Your mind feels very comfortable and, for the first time, you become truly mentally healthy. This is not just some theory; it’s living experience.'