Author: Lama Ole Nydahl

How can we avoid jumping into every disturbing emotion and instead use them in a meaningful way?

Lama Ole’s answer:

New ideas come to my mind all the time for this. At the moment, I think the most meaningful method is to consider disturbing emotions as half-finished products. If something in the furnace is still burning, dirty, or botched, then don’t take it out yet. Instead, wait for the completely polished, chrome-plated product.

We can deal with disturbing emotions in the same way. We become aware that anger is the preliminary stage for the experience of mirror-like wisdom. Why should we forgo this radiant experience and indulge the anger? That would be stupid indeed. It is better to wait until the berries are ripe; otherwise they give you a stomachache. If we truly know that every disturbing emotion is the precursor for an enlightened state, then we just wait until the fruit is ripe instead of picking it before.

So if you are angry you can think, “As soon as it is over, I will be extremely insightful, so I will be patient now.” And if you are proud you think, “Very soon I will see the world as exceedingly rich.” Then you won’t act in an angry or proud way. If the attachment is strong then tell yourself, “Soon I will be able to distinguish everything clearly, so I won’t spoil that by acting now.” Or with jealousy you can think, “I will soon be able to recognize many connections into the past and future, so I won’t give in to the emotion now and make a scene.” If you feel stupid, don’t take it seriously—thinking, “I’ll never learn anything”—but instead wait until the clouds of confusion dissolve again, and you will then shine stronger than ever.

This way, everything complements everything else, and there is a lot of development. One has to realize that each disturbing emotion is a kind of wisdom in its true nature, and then wait until this wisdom shows itself.

What are the antidotes against disturbing emotions?

Lama Ole’s answer:

If anger is the biggest problem, then we should really force ourselves again and again to wish all beings everything good and to develop compassion.

If attachment is strongest, we should always remember that everything is impermanent, that we can’t take anything with us, and that instead we should let all beings take part in our joy.

And if confusion is strongest, then we should rest in whatever is there—we should go beyond concepts and simply rest in our center.

If pride is strongest, we should look at how everything is conditioned and falls apart again.

And if jealousy is strongest, we should go through with the experience completely to see that it is actually like a stream of awareness, like a stream of water in the ocean.

I used to be rather calm, but since I started meditating, all kinds of strange feelings have come up. What does this mean?

Lama Ole’s answer:

Always think that everything you experience is for the benefit of all beings. Then whatever comes up is useful. There are people who have three times as many thoughts as you; but by learning how the traffic moves, you can help them. As my student, you can always tell yourself, “Everything pleasant is a blessing! Everything difficult is a purification—a liberation that teaches me to help others!” With this, you are always on the right path.

Also make it clear to yourself that the problem wasn’t there before, that it is changing constantly now, and that it will dissolve again later. Then you can look at it with inner distance and develop compassion for those who take problems like that seriously.

I experience my physical needs very strongly as attachment and as really unpleasant. How can I deal with that?

Lama Ole’s answer:

In the Diamond Way, we practice as lay people and yogis because we see disturbing emotions as the raw material for enlightenment. This distinguishes us from the Hinayana or Theravada level of monks and nuns.

The good thing is that one can open up to the Buddha with everything, even with our sexuality. The Buddha teaches that the body is a temple with 72,000 energy channels. The female parts are a lotus flower and the male parts a diamond. Everything experienced is seen as pure, as full of wisdom and meaning. And if we ourselves feel pure, we can open up to the Buddha and learn from him; we can work with these energies. In everything that happens, purity, excitement, and freshness appear in every moment.

It is a real obstacle if one has been raised to see the body as an enemy and everything below the belt as bad. Often a Catholic education is the cause. In my opinion, a lot of Catholics need therapy to restore a reasonably healthy relationship with their bodies.

It is important to open up to the buddhas completely, also with our desires and feelings. This way we can ask them to reach out to us, especially if it is about love. Women are more aware than men in this regard. They understand the importance of love much better than men do.

If a man goes to a woman, he should open up to experience her wisdom and to understand the deep importance of love and the significance of openness.

How can I see beauty in being a mother?

I have a baby and I haven’t slept well for eight months. I am totally exhausted and the child is often sick. I want to give him love, but I am so tired that I fear I’ll drop from exhaustion.

Lama Ole’s answer:

I am also working up to my limits all the time. Often I arrive at some place, meet all my friends, and am eager to talk to them. But I know that if I don’t lie down for an hour first, I’ll give a very boring lecture later because I would tell the same thing again and again due to fatigue.

But it is also possible to use pain as a source of energy. Several times I have only made it through a lecture because I had pain as a driving force. I remember that once I extended a lecture a lot because the police were standing outside and wanted to talk to me about the car I came with. And since they didn’t want to interrupt the lecture, I extended it more and more until they left. I was so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open. But my boots were too tight and that pain enabled me to hold out.

I believe it was the actor Laurence Olivier who recommended always keeping a stone in your shoe when you have to learn something. This painful pressure was a point of reference for him from which he could gain strength. If your eyes hurt, then be aware of them and pull the energy of the pain out from them. If your back hurts, then be aware of it and use it as an energy source.

In your case, it would be best for you to use your motherly love as a source of strength. This is actually what two billion mothers in the world do in exactly the same way at this very moment. Try to draw strength from your motherly love and experience.

Always find whatever is strongest and get energy from there. Whatever thoughts appear, put them to use. Enrich yourself through your experiences. Start from a rich perspective and never from a poor one. We create our own lives; we ourselves determine what happens. Take the way of identification—it is the fastest and most direct.

On the outer level, avoid anything that could lead to difficult dreams and experiences. Avoid real hostilities and big problems, for example, by never borrowing a lot of money. Then, on the inner level, it is about developing compassion and wisdom. Compassion means thinking of others so much that one has no more time for oneself and that one also truly recognizes and experiences the wish for happiness for all beings. Wisdom means not taking things personally anymore: awakening to the fact that such things happen to everybody at some time.

And on the highest level, one identifies directly with the buddhas. All our meditations work in exactly the same way. After a twenty minute meditation, everything is not how it was before. When coming out of the meditation, one goes into a pure world: Everybody is a buddha whether they know it or not. Everything is inherently pure, with all qualities and possibilities. It is important to experience everything from a level of surplus. And that means not just meditating but also acting like a buddha as much possible. Also after the meditation, the partner is too chubby, the dog still barks, the children are still unruly, and the boss is still insufferable. But one experiences all this in a different way. It is important to experience a pure level when coming out of the meditation.

What can we do to avoid falling back into old habits again and again?

Lama Ole’s answer:

The mind is like a huge bowl of pudding: If you hit one side of the pudding, then it takes a while until the other side starts to shake. The impressions we store in mind need some time before they come out again. But you can watch these processes from the outset to train the attitude of wanting to benefit others with the wisdom you’re developing. This way you can help others while helping yourself.

In everything that happens, we can tell ourselves, “Such things happen to all beings. I want to get to the bottom of it all and apply my insights for the benefit of others.” In this way, your biggest difficulties can become your greatest strengths. If you think of yourself you have problems; if you think of others you have interesting work to do. It’s as simple as that! Whoever constantly acts for the best of all beings will be able to do more and more.

Some people are fine with very little sleep. Is this desirable or will it make you lack something in the long run?

Lama Ole’s answer:

Basically, sleep is ignorance. But it is also a very useful ignorance. If you haven’t slept for too long, then you put the firecracker into your mouth instead of the cigar, like the joke about the drunk on New Year’s Eve.

If one needs very little sleep, then one might have a slightly manic predisposition. One does everything too quickly and then has many ups and downs. Despite the many great yogi examples like Milarepa, who hardly slept for a very long time, my experience is that one depletes one’s own reserves.

I myself am known for sleeping little. For weeks, I can function with three to four hours of sleep per night, but then I really lack something. If I get less than five hours per night for a week, then I sit there and know exactly what I want to say, but my vocabulary shrinks from fifty thousand words to five thousand. If you want to learn more, to really enrich things, and above all to work intellectually with words, you actually need six to seven hours of sleep per night in the long run. Otherwise you may achieve quantity but not necessarily quality—I have noticed this while writing books. The same holds for a body that is active, that loves, that jumps, that does things, that thinks, that usually doesn’t go to bed before three o’clock in the morning. Only those who stay in one place for a long time and don’t do much mental work can really reduce their need for sleep.

You are lucky if you manage to go to bed early from time to time—preferably before midnight. I myself have done this a few times during our book retreats. The dream phases one can go through then are pure luxury! But one shouldn’t sleep too much either.

You advise us not to talk about personal meditation experiences. Does this also hold for dreams?

Lama Ole’s answer:

There are different kinds of dreams. Serious dreams are messages from your subconscious, and there you should check it out a bit before talking about it much. With dreams where you see buddhas and bodhisattvas—these are something very special which you should not share so widely.

On the other hand, if you dream of something funny or interesting and it’s not too explosive, then of course you can talk about it. And if you are together with friends and someone shares about a dream with Karmapa, then this is actually a blessing for everybody. Everyone gets something good each time Karmapa is mentioned. Only if Karmapa tells you something in your dream that you think was meant especially for you, then you should keep it to yourself. Everybody who has dreamt about Karmapa can feel this.

Is it possible to remove bad karma through negative dreams, or is the dream only a mirror reflecting what happens in life?

Lama Ole’s answer:

Whenever body, speech, and mind are involved simultaneously, the energies built up and liberated are the strongest. If you have built up something subconsciously for a long time, then it might be confirmed to you in a dream.

Everything that you don’t have to live through to learn from is washed away by the power of the Buddhist refuge and your practice. The power of Mahakala steers everything. The blessing allows potential big dramas and suffering to be processed as smaller difficulties or as a headache. Since very intense things are also processed in this way, one can sometimes see characteristics of these processes in a dream. If one has gotten rid of something, then, for example, one can fly or one kills someone or is killed oneself. In this sense, we can experience different ego barriers falling away during the night, but the removal itself happens both day and night.

What is the meaning of déjà vu experiences in dreams?

Lama Ole’s answer:

There are two explanations for this. With short déjà vus that make little sense or are not related to anything, our consciousness gets the same message from two different channels: through the intuitive way of directly knowing, and a split second later through the different brain centers that also process the same impressions. This is then experienced as a sudden déjà vu.

But if you recognize the circumstances and places as a whole and you know what will happen next, then perhaps you aren’t completely within linear awareness with past and present, but a bit outside of this stream.

Consciousness can be seen as a limitless ocean or space. And in this space, past, present, and future run their course like streams or lines. And just as a wave or a stream in its essence is not different from the ocean, in the same way one can step out of this linear stream, which originated from personal attachment and expectations. This can be done through feelings like devotion or the wish for others to be happy. Then through the vibration of your molecules, through the space between your molecules, through the energy and clarity of your mind, you are connected to all things. This then is your constant experience, and suddenly your sense impressions plug into it too. You can easily see things that will come or have happened. I do this often when making divinations.

Some people also have this while dreaming. I would simply be happy about it if it is there—see it as interesting and go on cheerfully. As long as you cannot control this ability, it’s not possible to work with it. Only once you can hold and control it is it great.

If the bond between the teacher and student is sufficiently strong, is it possible to notice while dreaming when the teacher is in danger or when a very important situation unfolds?

Lama Ole’s answer:

One certainly can dream about that. This intuition of what is happening is much more developed than we usually think. Often our own issues cover up this feeling, so we don’t notice it.

An example is when Kalu Rinpoche died. During his last years, Hannah had a closer connection to him than I had. I drove him through Europe and we were great friends, but I wasn’t so enthusiastic about the people who stayed in his company. I thought they were too monastic and stiff. I didn’t want this kind of Buddhism with us. But Hannah had promised to work for him. So when he died, I had a vague feeling that something had happened with him. Hannah, however, who was closer to his power-field, thought of him in that moment, opened his book, and his picture fell to the ground. That was in Malaysia. It must have been exactly at the time when he died.

Before the 16th Karmapa died, all of us also felt, “It could be now.” And then, when we were told that he had actually died, it wasn’t so surprising because everybody was already tuned in to it.

What kinds of dreams do you have?

Lama Ole’s answer:

There are several phases of sleep. First, the often broken-up impressions of the day are processed once more. Everything gets checked again. In my case, these impressions are often protective states: the lecture halls, the experiences of the day, the old protector concepts like, “Be careful here, secure that there, how is he doing,” and so on.

Then there is usually a phase of sleep that I apparently don’t have at all. Here, some people have nightmares or something similar. I might have never had a nightmare in my whole life. People tell me about them and I have compassion, but I don’t understand it.

Then, every morning, there are phases where I can switch between dreams at will. I can decide, “Ah, now I want to dream about this—that would be exciting!” I have many action-movie dreams, where I fly, jump, and do such great things. OK, also a few prophetic dreams or memories of great experiences come up, like the motorcycle trip to Oslo. That was really fantastic! The colors and the light—everything was light green with a lot of birch trees.

Then I also consciously check different things in my dreams: “What signs are there? Does somebody want to tell me something?” If I see buddha aspects or hear mantras, it is very special. There of course I am immensely thankful!

In the moment I wake up, I then have a choice. Either I say, “Now you must remember!” and I am able to do so, or I say, “Now you don’t want to remember.” The dream was a completed thing, and with twenty letters waiting for me to answer, I have to be completely here and now. Most of the time I choose this option. Only if I really think there was a dangerous sign, then I must remember.

I know a woman who often dreams about things that actually happen later. Unfortunately, they are always negative things and she is quite unsettled by this.

Lama Ole’s answer:

This is actually difficult. Those mental abilities are signs that certain parts of the mirror of the mind have become clear. But it can also mean that one has reached a very high level in the calm-abiding meditation (shinay or shamatha).

If one has clear dreams of future events shortly before waking up, then one is in the role of a “Cassandra,” which no one likes. Cassandra said, “The Greeks will get into Troy—be careful with this horse!” But the Trojans only laughed. And then suddenly, the horse and the Greeks were in the city. This is difficult indeed.

While falling asleep, this woman should try to think, “May all beings I dream of be really well,” and then also incorporate this feeling into the dreaming process as much as possible and say some mantras. This way, she may even remove some of her suffering and dissolve something karmic. Otherwise, if one goes up to people and says, “Be careful! Don’t have a car accident today!” then perhaps they’ll take the tram the first few times, but at some stage they won’t listen anymore. It is not a blessing to have this ability, especially if you miss the target a few times; and this happens even to the best prophets. In the end, you only confuse people and make them angry with you. So add in good wishes and transform the situation. That would be my advice.

What do dreams of death mean?

Lama Ole’s answer:

The only thing that can die is the various ego obstacles, obstructions, and blockages. And if you dream of corpses, and so on, then it often means that you are currently achieving certain special abilities.

What is dying is the old incrustations—the stiff ideas and the habitual thoughts, the ego trips. And when those fall away, it is like cleaning a light bulb or a mirror: more and more of the light and the strength, which exist on the inside anyway, become visible. And after waking up, you feel good and are quite wise.

You said that dreams with a descending movement were bad. What is bad about them?

Lama Ole’s answer:

It is a bad sign for development because, in the dream phase, the energy is in the central channel—the energy axis through the body—and mostly at the throat or heart levels. Energy sinking in the body is often experienced as tightness, whereas if the energy moves upwards, one becomes clear.

Such a feeling of narrowness is a sign of energy movements that sometimes arise. One then can reverse this by saying, “I am a great bodhisattva and am going down to help beings.” This thought reverses it and makes it completely great.