Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this guided meditation, Thubten Chodron leads practitioners through a rigorous examination of self-centered attitude and its destructive consequences. She opens by naming the central paradox many encounter in equalizing-self-and-others practice: the persistent conviction that others matter, but I matter more. She then walks through a reflective inquiry: tracing how self-preoccupation motivates harsh words and deeds toward others; recognizing how it generates personal regret and self-hatred; observing how it breeds oversensitivity, relationship friction, and fear rooted in imagined future harms. She connects self-centeredness to chronic dissatisfaction, interpersonal and collective conflict, and the creation of negative karma that binds us to suffering across lifetimes. The meditation concludes with a strong determination to recognize self-preoccupied attitudes as enemies rather than friends, and to actively oppose them when they arise. Suitable for practitioners already familiar with Buddhist psychology and the concept of self-cherishing.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 34 GM.mp3
UUID: 1dfbed76-4fa4-4b9c-937b-3bb6b235830f
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~884
In doing the meditation on equalizing self and others, we often confront a very strong feeling in ourself that says, well, yes, we’re all equal, but really, I’m more important. So it’s important to look at that self centered attitude and see if it’s realistic and see if it’s beneficial. As we do this, remember that we’re not our self centered attitude. Don’t identify with it. It’s just one attitude and actually one that clouds the pure nature of our mind so that we and our self preoccupation are not one in the same.
So as we do this reflection, seeing the disadvantages of the self preoccupation, remember that that attitude is not you. So we’re going to research and see if that attitude, which pretends to be our friend, actually is our friend or if it’s caused us harm. So begin by making examples in your own life of how your self preoccupation has made you act in ways that harm others. When we think more of ourselves than of others, it’s very easy to do this, to blame others, criticize them when we don’t get what we want. But remember that it’s our self centeredness that is causing us to inflict those harsh words or harsh deeds on others.
And so see that self centeredness as something undesirable. In addition, our self centeredness, that attitude which cherishes ourself more than others makes us act in ways that we later regret. And in that way, it causes us to have a lot of self hatred. So see that self centered attitude as the root of our guilt and of our own self hatred and think I must free myself of that self centeredness. It’s not my friend.
It’s an enemy that harms me. And our self centeredness makes us overly sensitive and very easily offended. We relate everything to the self. Everything becomes very important. And so we become very difficult to get along with because we take everything so personally.
Our self centeredness is also the basis for all of our fears. Because, again, if we look, all the fear we have centers around the self. So we project things. We make up stories of things that could happen in the future, how others will harm us. And all of this is just fantasy involving the self, but it causes us to suffer tremendously from fear.
And, also, by paying so much attention to ourselves, our needs, our wants, it breeds constant dissatisfaction. So we focus so much on I want this, I need that, and it becomes impossible to satisfy the bottomless pit of our desires. So it’s not really that we need and want all those things, but the mind just thinks like that because we overemphasize the self and pay so much attention to the self in an unhealthy way. So all that dissatisfaction simply a result of self centeredness. And then think of conflicts that you’ve been involved in and how self centeredness underlies all these conflicts.
It’s behind our interpersonal conflicts with other individuals. Self centeredness is what feeds the conflicts between groups or between nations because we all look at the situation only from our own point of view, ignoring the other and thinking that our viewpoint is right and thinking that our happiness is more important. So if you look at any conflict, it’s just the result of self centeredness, and it’s nourished by self centeredness. So what use is this mind of self preoccupation to us? Doesn’t bring us happiness.
It only makes us miserable. And self centeredness is also the thing that motivates us to create negative karma, and that negative karma is what brings us unpleasant results. So whenever we’re unhappy, whenever things don’t go the way we want, whenever we experience misery, it’s a result of our own negative karma, and that negative karma was created under the influence of our own self centeredness. So we can see that even though the self centered attitude claims to be helping us in the long run because it makes us act destructively. It only inflicts suffering upon us.
So all of our problems that we currently face are a result of our own past self centered actions. Actions. There’s no sense blaming our problems on others when in fact they’re the result of harmful actions we created ourselves. So in this way, we can see that anytime we have an unfortunate rebirth, it’s the result of our own self centeredness. And the whole fact that from beginningless time until now, we’ve wandered in cyclic existence, going up and down from one rebirth to the other, is also the result of our own self centeredness.
So this self preoccupation is a very major hindrance on our spiritual path, and it’s important to see this very clearly and make a determination not to follow that attitude when it arises in our mind. So to conclude, make a very strong determination that the self preoccupied attitude is not me. It’s something that inflicts pain upon me. And therefore, as much as possible, I’m going to try and counteract it whenever it arises in my mind. I’m not gonna let that self centered attitude continue to cause me and others pain.
I’m definitely going to oppose it.