Stop Letting Your Thoughts Control You 🧘‍♂️ Inner Calm Teachings

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Namo Buddhaya.

[00:00:01]Welcome to another video.

[00:00:04]In today's video, let's talk about how to control our negative emotions and how to control our mind.

[00:00:13]Well, the nature of our mind is it always likes to wander in negative emotions and negative thoughts.

[00:00:22]Negative thoughts like anger, desire, or lust, or then jealousy, maybe resentment. And these are the negative thoughts that our mind likes to wander in.

[00:00:35]So, how can we control it?

[00:00:38]Well, our great teacher supreme Buddha introduced us a gradual training where you can practice this controlling of negative emotions or negative thoughts in your mind.

[00:00:50]So, without any further ado, I'm going to introduce them [music] to you. So, first and foremost, before getting into these steps, there is there is one thing that you have to practice. And there is one thing that you have to master. And that is awareness.

[00:01:05]If you are not aware of what you are thinking, if you are not mindful about what you are thinking, then you cannot control it.

[00:01:14]So, you have to totally understand and you have to totally be aware of what you are thinking.

[00:01:21]Okay? So, whenever you find when you whenever you become aware of what you are thinking, then you will have that power to control it. So, here comes the first step. Buddha says, whenever you become aware of your mind is wandering in negative thoughts like anger or lustful thoughts or or resentment or jealousy, the first thing is to shift your thought pattern to something wholesome. There are some wholesome thoughts in your mind which makes you peaceful. Maybe like thinking of something that you have done in the past, like maybe you helped someone.

[00:02:00]Whenever you think that thought, your mind becomes happy and peaceful. So, what you're going to do is whenever you become aware of your negative thoughts, we're going to shift our thought pattern to something that is wholesome, something that makes us peaceful.

[00:02:18]So, that is the first thing that Buddha says, shift your thoughts to wholesome thoughts.

[00:02:23]If that first step did not work out, then what do you have to do? Go for the next step. What is that? Buddha says, think about the disadvantages of thinking negative emotions.

[00:02:36]Right? If you're constantly having angry thoughts, then you have to think, these thoughts are hurting myself and others.

[00:02:45]If I take actions according to these thoughts, it will hurt myself and the others. Remember, it may be a little thought of anger, but if it grow up, what will happen? It will be destructive.

[00:02:58]So, what do you have to do?

[00:03:00]Think about the drawbacks or disadvantages of thinking these negative thoughts.

[00:03:06]Then, whenever you see these disadvantages, your mind will tend to stay away from these negative thoughts.

[00:03:13]Most of the time, we are not aware of these disadvantages.

[00:03:17]Okay? So, what do you have to do? Think.

[00:03:20]If I keep on thinking these negative thoughts, it will not going It is not going to help me. It will disrupt my peacefulness.

[00:03:29]Right? That is the second step.

[00:03:31]Then, as the third step, Buddha says, pay no mind, pay no attention.

[00:03:38]If the second step did not work out, go for the third step to not to pay any attention to that thought.

[00:03:47]Right? See, whenever we give so much attention to something, maybe a thought, it grows again and again. It grows more, right? For an example, if you became angry with someone and if you keep thinking about him again and again and becoming angry, that anger will grow more and more. So, what do you have to do?

[00:04:10]We have to let the thought be a thought without paying much attention, right? When you just stay away from giving attention, then it will fade away from your mind. It's something like this. Have you seen little babies when they fall down, they start to cry, right? If the parent or or the mother or father see that it is not a big deal of falling, if mother or father did not give any attention to that baby, what does he do?

[00:04:42]He just get He just don't care about that. He He will stop crying. Same thing goes with our mind. If we did not pay any attention to that thought, right? If we did not care about that thought and just let it go and let it pass away from our mind, then it will fade away.

[00:05:00]That is one way of doing that. If the third step did not work for you, then the Buddha says, go for the fourth step to relax your thought process, right? Now, remember, when you think negative thoughts, your mind becomes so much busy, so much rough and distracted.

[00:05:22]So, what you're going to do is you're thinking, why am I thinking these distracting thoughts? These uh negative thoughts that are making me so much busy and making me distracted, right?

[00:05:38]So, what are you going to do is you're relaxing your thought process to something very soft and subtle.

[00:05:45]Maybe like loving-kindness, maybe like compassion, right? Maybe like gratefulness.

[00:05:52]When you think those thoughts, when you think more positive thoughts, your mind or your thought process becomes so much relaxed. And then, if the fourth step did not work for you, then it comes the final step.

[00:06:09]This is something that we have to do with a great care. I do not recommend for everyone to do this. This should be done with a great experience and a good uh practice, right? And that is to crush your thought with awareness. Right? You have to be totally aware of your thinking pattern and have a good determination to your mind that I'm not going to think these negative thoughts. Right? But this should not be done by everyone, right? Some may be not good at this, right? If you keep on becoming aware and if you keep on forcing this mind, it will grow more and more these negative thoughts. So, if all those four steps did not work for you, then you have to go for the final step. Right? So, it is much better to practice these four thoughts before doing the final one. Okay? So, practice these things. When you practice, you will feel and you will understand that your negative emotions are fading away little by little.

[00:07:15]Remember, this is not going to happen overnight.

[00:07:19]It will take a long, long time to do this, but you have to keep on practicing. Keep on doing it. Make it a habit, and then you will become a master of it. So, practice this practice and make your mind a place where free from negative thoughts.

[00:07:41]Namo Buddhaya.

[00:07:43]To be happy is every living being's right in this world.

[00:07:48]Everything that we do, everything that we say, why we are doing them, we do that to be happy. Just ask from yourself, "Why am I doing what am I doing?"

[00:08:01]You will You can answer to yourself. You will find that the reason why I do everything in life to make myself happy.

[00:08:09]If I ask from you, "Why do you wake up early in the morning and just prepare some food and go out to work?"

[00:08:16]To make yourself happy and to make others happy, isn't it?

[00:08:20]Yes.

[00:08:22]You gain happiness by making others happy as well. That you have to remember.

[00:08:26]Right? So, there are two types of happinesses in this world.

[00:08:31]The first type of happiness is called the material happiness.

[00:08:36]Right? And also, the other type of happiness is called the spiritual happiness.

[00:08:42]To call it a good life, to call it a perfect life, one must achieve these two types of happinesses in his life.

[00:08:52]One must experience these both of these happinesses in their life.

[00:08:56]Right?

[00:08:57]So, from this video, I'd like to share a wonderful teaching from the Buddha that explains about what are the types of happinesses that a person who is living in a household life, a family life must achieve.

[00:09:12]Now, according to Buddhism, there are two types of lives.

[00:09:16]The first type of life is called the household life. That means the people who are living in a family life, right?

[00:09:23]Maintaining a family, living in a house, you know, engaging in material pleasures and all this stuff.

[00:09:29]Right? A household life. That means you.

[00:09:32]Right? And also, there's this There's this other type of life. It is called the monk's life, right? Which we can call them the homelessness life. That means we leave our houses, we we leave our families and become monks, right? So that we no longer own a house. We no longer own a family. We no longer maintain a family, right? So the ones who renunciate the household life, the ones who leave the household life, they seek a higher kind of happiness.

[00:10:05]Right? That doesn't mean that they don't seek any kind of happiness.

[00:10:09]We [snorts] as monks, why we become monks is to seek the spiritual happiness.

[00:10:15]Now, when you become a monk, it doesn't mean you totally deny seeking the material happiness, right?

[00:10:22]But for a monk, there should be there must be a limit for seeking the material happiness because as living beings, we can't totally deny seeking material pleasure. As living beings, we must consume some sort of material pleasures in this world. But that that seeking that consumption of material pleasure must not disturb the peace and the spiritual happiness that a a monk is seeking, right? So for monks, there are limitations for material happiness.

[00:10:55]Okay? But it is less of the material happiness and more of the spiritual happiness.

[00:11:02]So in this teaching of the Buddha, the Buddha focuses on household life, a household, a person who is living a family life.

[00:11:12]To to call at that life a a perfect life, a good life, the Buddha says that there are four types of happinesses that one must a household must achieve in their life, right? The first type of happiness, the Buddha called it atthisukha.

[00:11:31]What is it?

[00:11:32]Atthisukha.

[00:11:33]Atthi sukha can be translated into English as the happiness of ownership.

[00:11:40]Now, what do you mean by the happiness of ownership?

[00:11:43]Buddha explains the happiness of ownership as one must work hard, put his time and energy and strive and earn money righteously in the correct way.

[00:11:56]Right? He must earn money.

[00:11:58]He must earn wealth in the righteously.

[00:12:02]Now, what do you mean by in the righteously way is by you should earn money without harming anyone.

[00:12:10]Without harming yourself and without harming the other people, without harming the society.

[00:12:16]Right? If you earn money without harming anyone, that is the righteously way of earning money.

[00:12:22]Now, Buddha said, as a householder, you must be happy and you must enjoy earning money.

[00:12:28]Right? Buddha was someone who did not say that you should not pursue happiness. You should not pursue material happiness.

[00:12:38]The Buddha said, if you are a householder, you must do that. That is your duty. Right? So, the Buddha said, strive hard, work hard, put your time and energy to what you're working on and earn money righteously. That is a happiness that you can gain.

[00:12:55]Right?

[00:12:56]And you have enough money to utilize, then you can be happy about thinking that I own this wealth.

[00:13:03]This This is my wealth. That is sort of a happiness that one can gain.

[00:13:08]Right? That is the first type of happiness that Buddha said a householder must achieve in their life at some point in their life.

[00:13:16]Right? That is the first one.

[00:13:18]The second type of happiness that Buddha taught for householders to achieve is called bhoga sukha.

[00:13:26]The bhoga sukha can be translated into English as the happiness of enjoyment.

[00:13:33]Now, first you earn money, right? Now you spend money and enjoy it in the correct way.

[00:13:41]Right? You have to The Buddha says that you have to spend money in a way that you should not harm yourself and you should not harm the other people as well.

[00:13:52]In the righteous way.

[00:13:54]Right? So that when you enjoy, when you spend money doing good things like helping people, helping your parents, you know, with your money, with the money that you righteously earned.

[00:14:06]And when you spend that money on the people who you love, right? To make them happy, it gives you a happiness.

[00:14:13]Right? It is a great happiness that one can achieve.

[00:14:16]That you have to achieve in that in your life.

[00:14:19]Okay? So the second type of happiness that Buddha taught to achieve is called the Bhogasuka. The happiness of enjoyment.

[00:14:28]The third type of happiness that Buddha taught us to enjoy in the life is called the happiness of freedom from debt. That we called Ananasuka.

[00:14:39]Ananasuka is the happiness of freedom from debt.

[00:14:44]Now when you are free from debt, let's say you don't have any loans or any debt to pay, right? You're financially free.

[00:14:54]Then how much freedom that one can feel, right?

[00:14:58]You feel freedom, you feel a happiness that I'm no longer in debt to anything.

[00:15:04]Right? I don't have any loans to play I pay I don't have any debt to pay. So I'm financially free.

[00:15:10]That is a happiness that a householder must achieve in their life.

[00:15:16]Right? That is a great happiness that one must achieve.

[00:15:19]The freedom, financial freedom. Right?

[00:15:22]This is the third type of happiness. And then, the fourth type of happiness. This is the most important thing. This is the most valuable happiness that a householder must achieve in their life, according to the Buddha. Buddha said, "The fourth type of happiness is called anavajja sukha."

[00:15:40]Anavajja sukha means the the happiness from blameless life.

[00:15:45]Now, what do you mean by a blameless life?

[00:15:49]The Buddha says that you have to do things, you have to say things, you have to live your life in a way that you do everything with a good heart, with a good mind, with a wholesome heart.

[00:16:01]Right? When you spend your life as a good-hearted person, as a good person, as a wholesome-hearted person, right? It gives you a a bigger happiness, bigger enjoyment thinking about who you are.

[00:16:17]That is the most important thing, because all the other material happinesses, right? All the other three material happinesses, it can give you happiness, right? Doesn't say I don't say that it cannot give you happiness, but if you did not have this happiness, anavajja sukha, if your heart is complaining who you are, what you do, right? If your heart is regretting about who you are, then the other things doesn't matter.

[00:16:45]Right? What matters the most is how you live in this life.

[00:16:50]Right?

[00:16:51]At the end of our life, the most important thing that we can be happy about is how we live this life, [music] how much love we gave to other people.

[00:17:02]Right? How much we helped to other people.

[00:17:05]How righteously and how correctly we lived our life.

[00:17:09]So, the Buddha said, "You must achieve this happiness as well."

[00:17:13]Right? So, these are the four happinesses that a householder, one who is living in a family life, spending a family life must achieve. So, I hope this video and this teaching from the Buddha gave you a little light to your life. So, I wish you all may all of you be able to achieve all of these happinesses in this very life.

[00:17:36]Namo Buddhaya.

[00:17:37]The sun rises from the east and without stopping it moves towards the west and it sets in the evening.

[00:17:49]It is also like our life.

[00:17:53]We were born to this world.

[00:17:56]And from that day onwards, without stopping, [music] we are moving towards the death.

[00:18:06]You and I are not dead yet.

[00:18:10]But we are dying.

[00:18:13]Without stopping.

[00:18:15]So, today, let's talk about this important topic that many people doesn't like to talk about the death.

[00:18:27]Well, most of us are scared of death.

[00:18:32]When you are in your families, when you are in your family with your family members, if you talk about death, what will happen?

[00:18:41]They will say that they will be offended first of all, and they will say no, you should not talk about death. Don't say that.

[00:18:49]So, for ages and ages, death has been considered as something [music] negative. Something that is pessimistic, or something that people think that it is making our life very sad and sorrow and suffering.

[00:19:06]But, in fact, the death is a very good teacher for all of us.

[00:19:14]And that is why the Buddha said, "Think about the death.

[00:19:21]Do not dodge that idea."

[00:19:24]Once our great teacher supreme Buddha said, "Whether you are a male or a female or a normal person or a monk or whoever you are, you have to think that you are a dying person.

[00:19:42]You are mortal and you are not escaped from death."

[00:19:46]That is what Buddha said.

[00:19:48]Why we should think about death?

[00:19:50]Why we should concentrate on our death?

[00:19:55]Well, is it making our life uh suffering or is it make our life very negative?

[00:20:02]No.

[00:20:03]It is not the death that makes our life suffering or negative. It is the perspective that we are holding on to death makes us negative.

[00:20:14]So, remember, we all should concentrate on our death [music] and think about it.

[00:20:21]Always we have to think that I am a dying person.

[00:20:26]Today, I I can face the death.

[00:20:29]There are many chances for that.

[00:20:32]So, when we think about that, Buddha said, "It says and it it tells you that death tells you that, 'Hey, you have an expiry date.

[00:20:43]You're not going to live forever in this on this world. No.

[00:20:48]You have a little time on this earth.

[00:20:50]So, before you meet your death, you have to be a good person.

[00:20:56]You have to cultivate more good qualities in your life.

[00:21:00]You have to spread the love and affection and compassion towards this world because that is why we are here for.

[00:21:09]So, in this limited time we have to do that.

[00:21:14]We have to cultivate more good qualities in our life.

[00:21:18]Right? We have to be a good person to this world. Because that we leave beautiful memories in the people's hearts.

[00:21:27]The Buddha said that people are intoxicated with their life.

[00:21:34]Right? People think that they are not going to die.

[00:21:38]We often do not feel that we are going to die.

[00:21:41]Do we?

[00:21:42]No.

[00:21:43]We think that we are going to live for the next day. And to the next day, we have so many plans in our life. Right?

[00:21:51]But from a split second, within a split second, everything >> [music] >> can change.

[00:21:59]Okay?

[00:22:00]So, that is why Buddha said people are intoxicated with life. And when they are intoxicated with life, what happens to you? You tend to do and you are going to do the bad things or evil things from your body, from your speech, and from your mind.

[00:22:19]But if a person was reminding >> [music] >> his death if a person who is reminding that to himself that I'm going to die one day he knows that at any time he can die.

[00:22:34]Right? So, he knows that I have a little time on this earth. So, before I meet my death, I have to add more good qualities to my life. So, that is what the death teaches us. So, do not be afraid to death.

[00:22:50]>> [music] >> Why? Because we all face the death one day in one way or another. No one can escape it. No one can run away from it.

[00:22:58]So, that is a reality. So, why not we think about it and make our minds strong to face that with a happy mind in a successful way.

[00:23:11]So, that is why the Buddha said to concentrate [music] on death. So, whenever you're possible and every in and every morning think that today I might die.

[00:23:23]So, >> [music] >> if if I'm going to die today, what are the things that I should do?

[00:23:29]I should give more love to my people around me.

[00:23:33]I should help them because at the end these materialistic things that you are holding on to is not going to help you.

[00:23:41]Only the good qualities will help you on your way.

[00:23:44]So, think about the death. Do not be afraid of it because when you think about the death, your life will be more and more successful.

[00:23:54]Keep that in mind.

[00:23:56]Namo Buddhaya.