Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 100-minute Discovering Buddhism session with a group exercise — participants pair off to define the mind and explain why they came — before using a five-part poem about a person who keeps falling into the same hole in the sidewalk to ask why we repeat the same painful patterns. He introduces the Dhammapada’s opening verse (“We are what we think”), argues that the Buddhist path rests on the universal desire for happiness and aversion to suffering, and uses a parable of a king who wants all roads covered with leather to show that working with the mind is more tractable than controlling outer circumstances. The session ends with a guided mindfulness meditation introducing the “naming” or “noting” technique, closing with the question “What was it that was watching?” Suited to newcomers on the Discovering Buddhism course.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 MP 2011 07 09.mp3
UUID: 8e1b707b-d43b-4c13-97a4-e5ecf3d38481
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: DB Mind and its Potential (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2011-07-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 99.8 minutes
Words: ~9,875
Jampa? I Okay, good. Thanks George. Some of you know me. Surprised you’re here, but anyway.
Will overlook that for the moment. I was at Buddha House for many years. I think I was here about from ‘eighty nine to ‘ninety six, and then seven years in Italy. And then I came back two thousand four, five, something like that. And then I was here for about three more years, I believe.
I moved to near Sydney about two years ago. It’s been about two and a half years ago. So, know many of you, some of you I don’t. I hope to get to know you better. My name is Jampa, and sometimes it’s especially when it’s mentioned that my name is Jampa Gendun, it sounds like you’re going to meet a monk or something exotic like that.
I’m sorry to disappoint you. I was a monk at one time. I think my good karma ran out or my delusions got the best of me. Anyway, I’m no longer a monk. I hadn’t been a monk in about twelve or thirteen years, a long time.
Anyway, that’s another story. Won’t go into that. It’s not particularly interesting. Jampa means love, in case there’s another teacher coming, another ex monk, Jampa Yingchen, the same Jampa. So, when you become a monk, quite often you’re given a lineage name, a name that your teacher was given by his teacher when he became a monk.
There’s a lineage of Jampa. I think it’s kind of nice to be called Jampa. I kind of held onto that even though I’m no longer a monk. Many people knew me by that name, even after I took off my robes, and they continued to call me that. So, it seemed easier to kind of hang on to that name.
It’s nice to be called love, I think, even if people don’t know what they’re calling me. Sometimes I think they’ll probably think they’re calling me something else. Anyway, we’re going to be talking about the mind. I think it’s rather for me it’s rather a mysterious subject. I have to confess that right at the beginning.
I’m not quite I’ve been working with it for a long time. I’ve had this mind for years now, and I still haven’t figured it out. I don’t think we operate our minds very well because we don’t know how they operate, and perhaps we haven’t really looked at our minds as such. And we’re going to be talking a lot about the mind. But I like to have it more we can have a lot of open discussion as we go along.
If some of the things that I say aren’t clear or aren’t confusing, by all means stop me and we’ll go from there. If you’d like to have some if you know some information that you’d like to supplement what I’ve said, please by all means add that. I think there’s a lot of fascinating work that’s being done in neuroscience today in corroborating many of the ideals and doctrines which Buddhism has with regard to the mind. And I think it serves only to clarify some of these issues that are quite difficult. The mind is rather, even though it’s probably the most intimate object of our experience, it’s probably one of the least known, least understood, both in terms of our own experience, but also in terms of Western science.
You know, they don’t even have a working definition for mind, but they know a lot about it. They’ve broken it down into lots of parts, but they still don’t have a grasp around it. But I like to begin with just kind of getting to know each other, if you don’t mind. And I thought if we could do this, we won’t take so long with it. If you would, go along with me on this.
If you’d pick somebody that you don’t know, a partner, And if you just tell them what your name is, why you’re here, would you like to get out of this weekend? Or if you’re doing this as part of a larger course called the Discovering Buddhism course, Why did you What’d you hope to get out of the Discovering Buddhism? So, more or less, you know, kind of formulating your own mind. What would I like to get out of today? What would I like to know?
What would I like to go away with? And then you can help me out by answering this third question, What is the mind? That should be interesting. And if you would explain to your partner as best you can these three questions, the answers to these three questions, and then your partner will give you an answer to the rest of your group or introduce you to the rest of the group. Okay?
So we’re going take some time to get to know each other and get to know why we’re here and what normally think about mind. So if you choose a partner that’s someone that you don’t know, and we’ll take about ten or fifteen minutes. You guys know it. Good. Shiny tradition.
So if you’ve only gone one way, would you switch back and go the other way as well? So don’t Well, I’ve I’ve I’ve come off not So take another minute, please. Kind of wind up your conversation. Another take another minute. Okay.
If you could wind up your conversation, please. I’m sorry to interrupt you. Excuse me. I hope I’m not interrupting anything. I wondered if you could introduce your partner.
We just go around fairly quickly. Just give me their name and what answers they gave to each of the questions, why they’re here, and what they think mind is. Okay, please. Great. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. That’s great. Yeah. No no right or wrong answers here.
Okay. Thank you. This is Jenny. And also came to Buddhism through interest in meditation Uh-huh. For similar but slightly different reasons to myself, more relating to depression and interested in how Buddhism and meditation can help with those challenges.
And what is mind? Well, Jen’s here, I guess, to sort of further find out, what mind is as we all are. Okay. Fair enough. Thank you.
This is Jen. And Jen did the She’s been studying. I did actually look up my notes to see if I left. I can tell. Sorry about that.
Was changing. This is Linda, and Linda’s doing is what actually propels us, isn’t it? What drives us? Drives us. Yeah.
It’s it’s not an entity, but it’s the thing that I can’t explain it. It’s the thing that makes us do what we do and take what we do. Good. That’s a thing that makes us do what we do and think what we do. Yeah.
Okay. Good. Thanks for that. Good. Thank you.
Lee? This is Kathy. She wore a Jampa here today, so she’s very important to today’s in today’s teachings. She I’ve asked she asked her two definitions. We got two different definitions each.
West definition of mind is west definition of mind is conscious is is consciousness. Buddhist definition is heart and consciousness together. So she believes it’s both. K. This is Lee.
He’s been a student of us for life. He’s also a fan of Jampa. And, he’s actually been studying psychology, so little professional here. Similarly, he says that while psychology talks about surface of what it might use, consciousness, ego, ego, all those things, that the Buddhist understanding is a much deeper kind of perception of of the how and why it goes on, of how things actually occur. Yeah.
Okay. Good. This is Craig. Craig. He’s drunken monkey.
The drunken monkey. Is that a good way to describe a mind? Okay. But then again, if that is what you can quiet, what is then being aware that that part is quiet? Okay.
What happened to her? Okay. This is Jenny. She’s also doing a discovery Buddhism and got into Buddhism through mindfulness and described the mind as an angry monkey. We just discussed that there can be a calm space that can observe the mind.
What’s that calm space? Yeah. Okay. Is it a Buddha mind? Okay.
Fair enough. Thank you. Hey. This is Kerry. Hi, Kerry.
Kerry’s doing doing the discovering Buddhism course as well. And, happening around us, and we can go anywhere with our mind, just depending on how we use it. And mind and consciousness, so we have to go together. Okay. Yeah.
Good. Thank you for that. And, that mind is a combination of consciousness and awareness together working together. Uh-huh. Okay.
Good. Thank you. Interesting. Please. Mind is everything.
Thank you. Covers a lot. I’ve got a little bit of a cold. This is Ganesh. Hi, Ganesh.
And And he’s born in India and told you six years ago. Uh-huh. And he’s got a family background of Hinduism. And Thank you, Ganesh. Good.
Thank you. Thank you. And she is coming to Okay. Thank you, Anna. Thank you all.
Can I take that with everybody introduce? Are you warm enough? Cold enough? A couple? So there’s lots of different probably reasons for coming, various motivations and so forth, and lots of conceptions around what mind is.
And maybe I wouldn’t hope to satisfy all your curiosity around mind. Hope I don’t even, but I don’t think I could even if I tried. It’s good. I guess in way that mind is a lifelong subject of study, I think it’s central to my spiritual endeavors, we could say especially with regard to Buddhism. I think in talking about why we’re here, it’s useful just to spend a couple minutes in beginning toyou’ve already begun to explore it in terms of our motivation.
You know, one of the fundamental notions of Buddhism is that it’s not so much what we do, but why we do what we do, which is going to determine the outcome, you know, the why behind and the purpose for. The outward activity, you know, the form our actions take is important, but what is more important is what’s driving it. You know, there’s a collection of verses or sayings by the Buddha which comes from the Pali Canon. There are two collections of or there are many collections of the discourses of the Buddha, but most fundamentally there’s a collection in Sanskrit and one in the Pali language, which is probably closer to what the language which the Buddha actually spoke, a dialect that he spoke in Madhya, which is preserved in the Pali Canon. And it’s a collection of his sayings, which is called the Dhammapada.
Probably many of you are familiar with the Dhammapada. And he said there he says, We are what we think, with our thoughts all that arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. And this has very profound implications, both in terms of how we bring forth our particular world version, the world that we live in, but also in terms of how we go forward, the kind of world that we’re continually creating for ourselves. And so our motivation for whatever you do is considered tremendously important.
There’s a correlation in terms of the ethical quality between why we do what we do, our motivation, and the quality of the outcome, how we actually experience the result of that particular activity no matter what it might have been. And I think we have to open ourselves up to explore why it is what we do what we do. I think it’s terribly important. Think some of you have heard this. It’s mainlywe’re just talking about motivation, which is central in terms of understanding the mind.
And it’s a biography or an autobiography, if you like, somebody’s story about themselves and how their patterns, their repeating cycles of the way that they approach life evolve over time. So it’s in five parts, okay? First part, I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in.
I am lost. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. Part two. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I do not see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I’m in the same place, but it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.
Part three. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in.
It is a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.
Part four: I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole on the sidewalk. I walk around it. Part five: I walk down another street. You know, I guess at some point in our life we get sick and tired of being sick and tired, you know, and we begin to acknowledge an undercurrent of anxiety or uncomfortableness about the reoccurring patterns in the way that we approach our life.
We keep missing or dismissing the life that the lessons that life is continually bringing us in one way or another, or we forget those lessons that have been once learned. And we keep going down the same street, keep making the same mistakes again and again. We don’t seem to be learning. And there’s an undercurrent of anxiety or some uncomfortableness about the continued reoccurring patterns of our life. You know, the scenery changes or the costumes change, but it’s very much the same recycled episodes that we’ve seen many times before in one way or another.
So we decided to explore other possibilities. And this is, you know, we opened up. You know, I think this is what it means to really begin to learn in terms of a spiritual sense when you are open genuinely open to other possibilities. Sometimes we’re curious or there’s some kind of idle speculation or, you know, there’s some kind of wanting to gather some new information. But perhaps we’re not really all that open in terms of needing to find out, looking at other alternatives.
Only when we see that our particular methods really haven’t gotten us as far in our life as we might like, or we haven’t gotten any further in our life as we had hoped to, we begin to think, well, maybe I can begin to explore other avenues to walk down. So we actually begin to genuinely open up, that’s the opening up to a path. And a path is that which takes you from where you’re at now to where you want to get to. And you have to begin to determine where is it that I actually want to go, and what are the methods I can work with that will take me to that destination that I’m looking for in some way. So that’s why think that’s why we’re here, and we’re working with perhaps learning some new skills and new understandings in order to help benefit ourselves in working with our problems at probably a more fundamental level than we normally work with them.
But we can sort of begin to expand our motivation, the why behind and the purpose for it, to begin to, you know, include if only one other person. You know, you can think about somebody at home. You know, it could be a partner or a child, a parent, or somebody that you’d like to be there for in a more, perhaps, more significant way than you’ve been able to be in the past. You know, a little more patient, a little more kind, little more loving, little more understanding. Some more significant way be more present for them.
And wouldn’t it, you know, for that person, not only for yourself, but by all means for ourselves as well, But beginning to step out of you know, one of the I think of our one of the human problems, of our human tragedy is that we’re so wrapped up in our problems to the exclusion and expense of others. And how do we begin to step out of that kind of pattern that we worked out for ourselves, the strategies that aren’t perhaps working all that well in our life? Maybe we can begin to, in some genuine fashion, begin to include even if only one other person. So at the end of the day, and even if Jampa doesn’t know what he’s talking about, which could very well be true, but nonetheless, according to my motivation, maybe there’s something I can learn, maybe there’s some kind of information I can go away with, a new insight that I can be there not only if which will help me in my own problems, for sure, but also for this one single individual. You know, rather than thinking about some abstraction, all sentient beings, is quite often mentioned in Buddhism.
You know, I don’t know all sentient beings. I’ve never met all sentient beings. I can think about one person, and my mind can kind of get around that idea, that conception, you know. We wouldn’t want to become one of these persons who says, you know, I love humanity. I just don’t like people.
You know, something like that. We have people. There are none who aren’t individuals. There’s no this general mass called people or humanity, aside from these all these little individuals with all their pimples and their obnoxious habits and, you know, the things that we don’t like about them, how they get on our nerves. These are the only people we can learn to love.
There aren’t other people other than these kinds of people. And so this one person, can you, you know, can I learn something a little bit more? Can I be a little more patient, a little more loving? Just for you. You know, you kind of make it personal.
You make it kind of real for yourself. What I’m doing, I’m doing for us. You know, there there you know, I mentioned this this sort of evolution in this person’s approach to the way they live their life in this five part autobiography. And there’s a there’s like a supplement to this or in which, you know, there’s the same situation where somebody’s fallen down into a hole. And there, you know, this hole that they’ve been into many times before, and they’re down in the bottom of the hole and they’re yelling up, Help, help, help, help me out!
And all these people walking by. After some time a doctor walks by, and the man yells up, Help, help, help me out! And the doctor comes to the edge of the hole and peers down, and the man yells, Help me up, help me out! And the doctor takes out a pad of paper and writes out a prescription for an antidepressant, wads it up and throws it down, the whole one walks off. And then after some time a clergyman walks by and hears the man yelling from the hole, and he walks to the edge of the hole, he peers down, and the man yells up, Help, help, help me, help me out!
And the clergyman takes out a little plastic prayer that’s written on it, know, covered with a sheet of plastic and drops it down the hole. And he walks off. Then finally this man’s, this person, his friend comes along, and he hears his friend in the hole and walks to the edge of the hole and he peers down, And the man yells, me out! Help me out! And the man immediately jumps down in the hole.
And his friend says, Oh, it was really kind of you to jump down in here with me, but now we’re both in the same place. And the man says, Yes, but I’ve been here before, and I know a way out. So, you know, we don’t you know, as we work through our wounds, as we heal our wounds, as we work through, you know, what Buddhism calls the afflictions, as we work through these dysfunctional patterns of our ways of thinking and behaving, that learning that goes into bringing about the ends that we’re looking for, the healing, the improvement of the quality of our life, the ways of bringing about better changes for the better in our life. That learning can be used to apply to others. And so what we’re doing, can expand the sense of why we’re doing, the purpose for, beyond just ourselves.
And this myopic vision about what mental health is about, to include even if only one other person. I’m doing this not only to find some answers for my own problem, but also as well for you, in a very practical way. I read I was reading a collection of I don’t know what you call them essays or stories, short stories perhaps, by a woman who Indian American. Her name is Rachel Remen, and she has a book called My Grandfather’s Blessings. And she works with she’s a doctor, but she works she does therapy with cancer patients.
And she what struck me with many of her essays that she writes are quite moving, but the one thing that she struck me within she often works with cancer patients in groups of about eight. And sometimes it’s not so much it’s like the fit between two wounded people. It’s not as if we have to get our lives totally together before we can begin to help others. We have to have our Bodhisattva certificates before we’re actually qualified to help others. But even sharing our pain can somehow fit with another and can bring about that fit between, you know, an advanced psychologist or a charismatic spiritual teacher might not have been able to bring about, have touched that person at that time where they were at as compared to this person who understands and is the same place as this other person and understands where they’re coming from and what their problems are and the difficulties that they’re having to confront in their life.
And that healing that can take place simply by knowing that someone is listening, someone understands where we’re coming from. And we can do that. You know, we don’t have to be Buddhist to do that. We don’t have to be bodhisattvas to do that. We don’t have to be some some distant place along the spiritual path to do that.
We can all do that today, now. So it’s not as if we you know, this is not applicable. And it is not we’re always thinking about maybe tomorrow when I’m better, when I’ve got my act together. That day will never come. We can do it now in one way or another.
And what we learn here, we can we can determine to share in whatever small ways that we can. And then, you know, then I think what we do and what we learn together, our studies, and whether I have anything to say worthwhile or not is beside the point. It all becomes worthwhile, because it’s helping us to change one of the dysfunctional pattern, primary dysfunctional patterns of our life, that is being completely absorbed in our own patterns, own difficulties, our own me first, I’m number one center of the universe approach that we normally bring to all our endeavors, even our spiritual endeavors. Okay. So that’s a lecture.
I’m sorry. Okay. I thought we’re going to do some meditation. Maybe I’ll talk little bit. How’s everybody doing okay?
Okay. I’m going to be covering I’m going to be talking about mine, strangely enough. And as mentioned in the beginning, I find it’s not so easy. I mean, it’s a one way we understand things is through by way of metaphor, you know, analogies. This is like this.
And then by understanding what it’s like, you can understand the thing itself. Life is like a bowl of cherries. If I understand what it’s going to it’s very sweet and so forth, then you can understand what this person means by life. So we all but there’s no metaphor for the mind. It’s rather a singular phenomenon.
It’s unlike any other phenomenon in the universe in a way. And so I think because of that we can’t you know, you could say it was like a computer. Doesn’t intuitively, that doesn’t feel very satisfying. Mean, some would I think some artificial intelligence experts would probably argue that it’s just a very complicated computer. But it doesn’t really say much about our subjective experience, of how it feels to have a mind, what it’s like to experience, this feeling of subjectivity.
Love just an electron flowing through one neuron to another, or one circuit to another? It doesn’t feel like it. I don’t know. I mean, it’s kind of weird to even think about it in those terms. We’re going to talk about mine from various points of view.
And one way I wantthere’s a number of ways I want to talk about mine, which I think will be pragmatically beneficial. I mean, that will be of use. You know, we can talk about, we can approach the subject of mind from an intellectual point of view and so forth, experiential point of view, but also in terms of what would be some information that I could go away with, some some ways of viewing my thinking and how I’m using my mind, which would actually help me to to maybe to operate my mind a little more functionally, a little bit better, that would help me, some way to help solve my problems and my life in general. You know, I think that’s it’s said that the Buddha taught only two things. I mean, are all these values, said the Buddha there are said to be eighty four thousand bundles, collections of teachings of the Buddha.
He taught for forty five years after his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya. Historically said that he was enlightened at the age of thirty five. He I usually use the word awakened. I find that much more. It’s more of an evocative term.
Anyway, that’s beside the point. And he you know, he spent his career forty five years until was teaching every day of his life, probably a number of hours every day. It’s a huge line of teachings. That it said if we were to distill everything he taught, he taught two things: suffering and the way to end suffering. You know, it’s interesting from that point of view that the Buddhist criteria, you know, he wasn’t a philosophic investigation as such.
He wanted, he was interested in the question of suffering. Is life a bitch and then you die? Is this all there is? So it was more in terms of our actual experience, not in some kind of philosophic speculation that he pursued, that he investigated the nature of mind. He based on he based his approach to his in delineating his spiritual path on the practical assumption that everybody wants to be happy and no one wants to suffer.
You know, we can talk about whether past and future lives exist, or the nature of God, or whether the nature of the universe till the cows come home, you know, we can argue back and forth, speculate on it. But I don’t think I think everybody would have to agree that we all want to be happy. You know, however each of us might uniquely define what happiness is. You know, for you, your happiness might not be my happiness, but nonetheless that’s what you define as happiness and that’s what you want for yourself. And nobody wants to suffer.
So we’re pretty much agreed upon that. And that was the criteria that the Buddha used in laying out his path. So with regard to our problems, Buddhism is saying that as has a conviction that although we are basically healthy, intelligent, caring peopleand I want to come back to this, that we are basically intelligent, caring people. Many of the beliefs upon which we are basing our approach to the way we live our lives are distorted and are in conflict with the actual way things are. There’s a basic notion within Buddhism is that there is our belief system on the one hand, and there are the ways that things actually exist on the other.
And the disparity, the discrepancy between how we view things, how we think about things, our belief system, our ideals about the world, and the way the world actually exists, that discrepancy is experienced as dissatisfaction, frustration, disappointment, basically suffering in all the ways that we do. That we have no choice if we’re going to live our lives intelligently, based upon our own actual experience, but begin to accord our way of approaching our life, our way of thinking, our beliefs, ideals, our views of the world in accordance with the ways things actually are if we ever hope, realistically hope, to find peace, to resolve our basic fundamental problems of what it means to be an ordinary human being. We have no choice. It’s a difficult notion to I don’t know if registers with you. But I know sometimes I say these things and they don’t even quite register with me.
And it’s only after, you know, sometimes I, you hear things and you kind of shake your head, but it doesn’t, you don’t get the, it doesn’t have the impact of that there’s a basic truth. You know, I’m not saying what I’m saying is true, but what it what the implications of having said that mean? It means that we might have to change some of our beliefs, our views, our ideals about the world, how we’re going to get what it is that we want from it. In fact, is it capable of giving us what we want from it? We’re really going to have to do a research project on this.
You know, there’s a story. So basically, we’re working with I can do it. I didn’t touch it. We we we’re looking at that how you know, Buddhist the orientation of Buddhism is not so much how we can change what’s out there. Because, you know, as I get older, one thing that’s becoming more apparent to me is I don’t have all that much control about what’s out there.
I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that, you know. We suppose we do in our planning, our emotional life, and thinking that we have a greater degree of control than I think we actually do, in fact. And this is what I just talked about. This is why we experience so many frustrations and disappointments and anxieties in our lives, because we don’t. But what we can begin to have some kind of degree of control is our own minds in terms of our beliefs about the world and our ideals about the world, our view about the world.
That we do have a greater degree of control, and that’s the place we can do the work. So there’s a story which kind of illustrates something of this. You know, it’s one of these stories about what happens in ancient times. Okay? Once upon a time, a long, long time ago.
One of those kind of stories. There was a king, and this king used to he enjoyed a great deal walking about the countryside in his kingdom. And one day the king was out walking and he stepped on a thorn. And it was quite painful. It hurt.
And he went back to his castle and he called together his ministers. And he put the royal foot up on the royal table, and he said, look, look, you’ve got to figure out some way whereby I can walk about my kingdom without the threat of stepping on thorns and sharp rocks and rough objects and things of that nature, then I could walk about my kingdom safely. So the ministers, they thought, and they thought. And finally, one of the cleverer ministers spoke up and said, I have an We’ll cover all the roads in your kingdom with leather. And that way, you know, your majesty will be able to walk about your your the countryside of your kingdom in complete safety without the threat of stepping on thorns or sharp rocks and things like that.
Fantastic idea. Great idea. Let’s do it. But there’s always one person who ruins the best of ideas. I don’t know if you’ve ever been served on a committee, maybe especially on the Buddha House committee.
Don’t know. There’s there’s always this one person that, no, can’t can’t be done. First off, there aren’t that enough cattle in your kingdom to produce that much leather. And moreover, even if there were, it would bankrupt the treasury. It’s not practically possible.
It won’t work. So the minister, they went back to the deliberation of thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking. And finally, as is often the case in these kinds of stories, there was an old, wise minister who was there, who was present. And she spoke up and she said, I propose that we take a piece of leather, and we draw out the shape of the soles of the king’s feet, and we cut these pieces of leather, then we bind these two pieces of leather to the soles of the king’s feet with leather thongs. And this would serve the same purpose, as if all the roads in your kingdom were covered with leather.
The king could walk about the countryside of his kingdom in perfect safety without the threat of thorns and sharp objects and so forth. So this story there’s a moral in this story. Maybe there’s something which is fairly obvious that’s meant to illustrate. And that is we cannot control the world. You know, we cannot realistically order the world about us that it somehow conform to our wishes, demand that it run according to our particular needs, that it kind of fit in, accommodate our particular agenda.
But nonetheless, we do. And when we do, we experience either a sense of rage because the world doesn’t follow our orders, you know, things should be other than the way they are, or it doesn’t accommodate our particular agendas, doesn’t meet our needs as it should, or we experience a sense of emptiness, a sense of failure because we can’t do the impossible. But there’s another, so that’s one of the morals, but there’s another more subtle moral to the story. And that is, it is not so obvious fact of life, is that if we can control one thing, our own minds, it is as if we control the world. And that, in a way that’s all that we can rule.
I’d say the inner kingdom of our own minds. And that, as it turns out, is enough to be content, to find some kind of peace in our lives, some kind of meaning, some kind of purpose, whatever it is that we’re some fulfillment in our life, whatever it is that we might be looking for. The mind is the measure of all things. The mind that’s in its place can make a heaven of hell a hell of heaven. And in some ways, in a very realistic way, the things and the people and the situations about us are neutral.
It’s like a knife or scalpel in the hand of a surgeon, a skilled surgeon, can be life enhancing. It can bring about our welfare. That same exact knife, that same exact scalpel in the hand of a criminal could be terribly destructive. It could bring lots of pain to ourselves. It’s just a matter of how it’s in what way it’s used.
So the people that we interact with, things that we make use of, the circumstances that we find ourselves in, each in its own way, has the capacity or the can act as a source for our happiness or it can act as a source for unhappiness, depending upon our understanding of it, that person, that situation, how we make use of it, our attitude toward it, our skill or lack of skill, and how we relate with it. There’s nothing good or bad that thinking makes it so. So, but, you know, we’re always looking to someone or something or some situation outside of ourselves to bring ourselves our happiness that we’re looking for. I think that to a large degree we have to admit that. And we’re always blaming or holding in account someone who’s or something or some circumstance or another that we see as bringing ourselves some problem or suffering that we don’t want for ourselves.
I think we do that. So, know, the path, by path I mean that which takes us from where we’re at now to where we want to get to. And I think we have to begin to kind of envision where it is that we want to get to. Where is it that we want to go? Begins with this basic reorientation in terms of seeing are the fundamental problems of our difficulties of our life.
And therefore, you know, there’s an old Zen saying. It’s, you know, don’t tell any of my teachers I said this, okay? You know, it’s rather it’s rather a violent some violent notion, but some Zen people. The Zen is a type of Buddhism which is primarily practiced in, for example, Japan and Korea and parts of Vietnam. If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.
That’s another violent notion. You know, what what is a Buddha? I you know, I don’t know what a Buddha is. I’ll be the first one to admit that. I have some notions about what a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being might look like.
And that’s my Buddha, okay? Maybe somebody like the Dalai Lama. But the Buddha, more than that, represents the fundamental solutions of what it means to be an ordinary human being. We call that a Buddha. Okay?
A happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. And if you look for that outside of your self, you’re looking in the wrong place. If you’re looking for the basic solutions to your life’s difficulties outside of your self, you’re looking in the wrong place. The only place that we’re going to find those basic solutions are in our own minds itself. Not in any other person, not in any other thing, not in any other kind of situation.
And if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him. If you see the solutions to your fundamental problems outside yourself, you’re looking in the wrong place. And if we ever hope to find any peace and fulfillment, you know, all of what a good life might look like to ourselves, a successful life, we have to begin the basic work of working with our own minds. So that’s why we do what we do. That’s why Buddhism is so much concerned with mind.
Some people call it navel gazing. But it’s a lot of introspection is both. So I’ve been talking a lot. I thought we’d just do a bit of meditation. I’ll have you stand up before.
I just want to check. How far, you know, how much you talk about meditation. Don’t I think all of you are old yogis, aren’t you? I’m presuming that some of you I know are kind of floating off your cushion. I just wouldI’d like to just talk about one particularwe’re just going into mindfulness of breathing, okay?
But I like to many of you might use this, what I call a technique. And it’s only a technique. There’s nothing particularly holy about it or sacred about it, you know. A technique is simply temporary prop, something to assist you. Like, if you twist your ankle, it’s useful to make use of some crutches temporarily.
When your ankle’s healed, you don’t keep carrying around the crutches with you. It becomes an obstacle, a hindrance. It’s no longer serving its use. So you know, when ankles heal, you set your crutches aside. And likewise, there are some techniques for meditation which are that temporarily assist in facilitating some whatever the meditation is working with.
But at some point, a lot of these techniques become hindrances, you know. They can be set aside. And you are the final author of your life. You are the final you know yourself the best, and you can use your own good judgment whether to make use of them or not make use of them. So therein mindfulness meditation, which I think is a very skillful and useful meditation, and we can just work with mindfulness of breath.
There’s one technique, and the reason I’m going to introduce this, I think in and of itself I think it’s useful, but also we’re going to be talking about in terms of the mind. And that is the technique is called naming, or sometimes called noting, where we, in a mindfulness meditation, we can say in general mindfulness, but mindfulness meditation especially, is always asking a question, What am I experiencing now? You know, it might sound like a simple minded question, but it has profound implications. We quite often live we don’t know what we’re doing now. But more than not, we live in the future in terms of our imagination, our fantasies, or we live in the past in terms of our memories.
But if you, you know, you have to begin the question, well, you know, sometimes people come to me and say, Oh, you know, life is kind of dull and it’s lifeless, no vitality. That’s what we call, there’s a term for it, we call it ennui. I don’t know. It’s not a very you don’t hear that term very often. It’s kind of a lifelessness about it.
And if you talk to them, you begin to see that you know, when do we have do we actually live our life? I mean, that sounds like a strange question to ask. The only time we have to live our life is that thin interface between the past and the future, what we call the present. That’s the only opportunity that we have to experience life or experience anything. And the future is yet to come.
The past is no longer existent. The only time we actually live is in the present. But how many years how much time do we spend occupying that space? Very little. And so mindfulness is helping to, What the hell?
I’m trying to think of a word where the Hastings is this word. To take back the streets. Yeah, they’re like, the people are going to take back the streets, we’re going to take the space back, the present moment back or something like that. Anyway, you get the idea of what I’m getting at here. So Buddhism is always asking us, you know, what are you actually experiencing now?
And this has profound implications. And one of its implications is in terms and I’m going to talk about this this afternoon or this morning, I think this morning is in terms of our conceptual thinking, our thoughts. Thoughts are very seductive. Thoughts are very important, but they can be problematic if they’re not related to in a skillful way. humans rely a great deal upon thinking, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
It’s just that we have to become maybe a little more skilled in how we use that faculty of mind, that ability to actually what we call conceptual thought. And I’m going toI want to go into this. One of the problemsone of the problematic aspects of our thinking is we take thought as reality. Yeah? So one way we can begin to understand that, to become aware of what the present is, especially in terms of thought, but this is with regard to all of our experiences, is simply giving a name.
So naming our experience helps clarify, emphasize what am I actually experiencing now, so it’s no longer confused, it’s no longer vague, and it brings us back to the present moment. So for example, you know, you’re meditating and you’re watching your breath, and okay, are we pretty familiar with all this? Just watching the breath, you know, but you canwherever the sensation associated with the natural breathing is most clear and obvious. The breath is very clear because it’s always there. If it’s not there, you don’t need to learn how to meditate.
So it’s always in the present, and we don’t have to create it, we don’t have to think about it. It’s there. So it’s a place to come back to. It’s like a refuge, it’s like an anchor. There is always a physical sensation associated with the breath, and maybe experiencing it in the abdomen, in the diaphragm, in the chest, in the upper lip and in nostril.
Where you I’m not so concerned with where you pick you know, people are different, they have different physiology and so forth. Where you pick wherever it’s most clear and obvious to yourself, that’s simply the focus. Okay? And knowing that you’re breathing in. So, you know, what am I actually experiencing?
I’m experiencing sensation which is associated with the in breath. I’m just going to give a name. You know, I could call it whiteboard, I could call it book, or I could call it house. I’m going call it in. That’s a rather clever name, isn’t it?
I’m caught in. Breathing out. What am I actually experiencing? I’m experiencing the physical sensations associated with the out breath. I’m to call it out.
In, out, you know. But, you know, our minds are going to wander. They’re distracted. That’s what they do for a living, you know, more or less. So, you know, you hear the your mind is distracted to the heater blowing.
And without being caught up in the content, simply give it a name, hearing. That’s what I’m actually experiencing, hearing. Okay? Hearing. Maybe some uncomfortable feeling in the body, pain.
Maybe comfortable pleasure. It happens. Okay. So you just note that. Give it a name.
Now, reason I’m bringing this out here is one of the areas that we normally become caught up in and we are distracted from whatever it is the present is thinking. Okay? So this could be a very useful life skill. And as I said, we’re going toI you to kind of experience it, and then we’re going to talk about it at length. So whether it’s a good thought or a bad thought, it’s only a thought.
That’s all it is. Quite often, more than not, we take it for reality. I said, I’m going to talk a little bit more about that. But for now, we simply want to name it. What am I actually experiencing?
A thought. I’m going to call it thinking. Okay? Thinking. I’m not I don’t want to get caught up in the content, whether it’s a good thinking or bad thinking, whether it’s I should be ashamed of that way of thinking in that way, or whether I should be proud of myself and thinking that way.
It’s only thinking. Okay? So just give it a name, thinking. Okay, what we’re going to do, we’re going to is that under is that clear? Just call it thinking.
We could elaborate on that, but it’s not necessary. And just give it a name. So we’re going to play around with this notion of expanding our focus of mindfulness. Initially it’s just on the breath. Then we’re going to expand outward, and we’re going to listen to sound.
And it’s helpful if you just gently, rhythmic noting. I’m going to say this with my mouth, but you would be thinking this. For example, hearing, hearing. Maybe just listening to the blower blowing out the warm air to the room, hearing. And we’re going to come back to the body and some other physical sensation within the body.
Maybe your pressure of your buttocks on the cushion or your feet on the floor. Feeling or sensing, feeling pressure, pressure, then we’re going to come to the mind itself. We want to get to know the mind. This is not to be able to become intimate with how our mind is working without getting caught up in its content. So how can we begin to get some perspective on how our mind is operating, how it’s working.
We have to be able to find some place from which we can begin to observe the operations, the workings of our mind without getting lost. If you’re lost, you this is the way we go about our life. There’s no learning taking place in terms of what’s actually the condition arising within our mind, how the processes of mind are unfolding. We have to be able to find some place where we can begin to, the skill where we can begin to actually begin to observe our mind and watch our mind and how the quality of minds unfold over time. They just don’t happen.
Anger just doesn’t happen. It’s not a solid thing. It evolves. And we can begin to see its evolution from its primitive, most subtle impressions that have been received, maybe through the eye consciousness. And there’s a cascading effect all the way, which has its culmination in, We hit somebody, but we miss something.
Have everything between those two, something like that. So we want be able to develop a diagnostic tool whereby we can begin familiar with our own minds, how it’s actually operating. Our minds are our best teacher. They can teach us all we need to know in a way. But it’s anyway, I thought we’d try that, and then we’ll take a break.
So if you’d like to stand up and stretch, and we’ll sit. Are there any questions about what I just said? Okay. Okay, shall we give it a go? So I’m just going to going to we’re going to take twenty minutes.
I’ll just lead you through a process of relaxing the body. And if you wish, you can follow along with what I’m saying. If you wish not to, you can tune me out. I won’t be offended. You’re welcome to do that.
Okay, but if you wish to go along, just try to feel what it is that I may be suggesting, even if it’s only in your imagination. Imagination is the forerunner of our reality, what we actually experience. So taking a comfortable, firm posture, just a posture that’s comfortable for you but that you can hold for some time without having to move. If you wish to move during the course of the meditation, that’s quite all right. Please do that.
But just do it slowly and quietly. So take in a comfortable, firm posture. I invite you to bring your awareness to the crown of your head, your scalp, perhaps feeling the wrinkles in your brow smoothing out, the pressure in and around your eyes diminishing. Muscles of the face softening, relaxing. Your tongue is soft.
Your jaw is relaxed. And bringing your awareness to the back of your neck and perhaps turning your head to each side a few times, Just very gently loosening, stretching the muscles of the back of the neck. Bring your awareness down to your upper back and shoulders, perhaps drawing your shoulders up toward your ears and circling them to the back and down and to the front and just circling your shoulders like rowing a boat a few times. Drawing them up towards your ears again and allowing them to drop comfortably to the sides. And with that feeling some kind of burden or weight that you may have unknowingly been carrying around on your back moving down and through your body into the ground, like like some kind of burden’s just been lifted from your back, some feeling of relief.
And bringing your awareness all the way down to your hands. Your hands are soft and loose. And relaxing your lower arms. Just however you might imagine that, however you could feel it. There’s no magic formula.
Relax in your upper arms. Your chest is at ease. Relaxing throughout the heart area, the central area of your chest. The middle portion of your back, stomach, And releasing the tension that we often hold in our stomach muscles, just allow your belly to go soft and throughout the abdominal cavity. And keeping your back straight, your trunk erect, consciously relax your lower back muscles.
Your buttocks, your thighs, upper legs. Lower legs, And finally, feet, soft, loose. Now we’re going to just roughly scan through our body once again, from the top downward. And just as we move down through the body, just noticing any tightnesses, any tensions which might remain in the body, any areas of discomfort. So just moving your awareness down through your body from the top downward, perhaps.
There may be some tension or tightness in the neck, the shoulders, the upper back, some discomfort in the abdomen, the lower back. And if you come across an area of tension, for example, just imagine breathing in and following that breath. And though, in fact, the breath might not go to that particular area where the tension is, imagine as if it does and following the breath and imagining that breath suffusing that area of tension and breathing out from that area. And with that breathing out, feeling the tension diminish. Breathing down into an area of tightness, wherever it might be in the body.
Breathing out from the area of tightness and with that out breath, feeling the tightness loosen. There’s some discomfort in the body, we don’t want to ignore resist it. Breathing in and down, surrounding that discomfort with a breath of kindness, like a mother cradling her child. It’s okay. It’s okay to hurt.
I’m here. I’m aware. Breathing out from that area of discomfort, allowing, accepting. Breathing into the tightness, the tension, discomforts of the body. Breathing out from these particular areas.
The body becoming relaxed, at ease. It’s a nice place to be in the body. Sometimes in the busyness of our minds, we forget about our bodies. So there’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing that needs to be done.
There’s nobody to please, not even yourself. Just for a moment, just rest. Just give up the burden for a moment. Just be just be your body, relaxed and at ease. Stay with your body.
Stay with your body. I invite you to become aware of your breath. And how are you experiencing your breath? What is the body sensation that tells you that you’re breathing? Invite you to just rest your attention on that bodily sensation wherever it might be.
Just a light touch. Focusing the spotlight of your awareness on the sensation of the breath. And you might want to use just to experiment the tech with the technique of naming your experience. The in, the out, and all the various distractions, thinking, hearing, feeling, a gentle, quiet noting in your mind from time to time. I invite you to now shift your focus to a bodily sensation other than the breath.
Perhaps your pressure of your buttocks on the chair, on the cushion, feet on the floor. Perhaps there’s some discomfort in the body. So resting your attention, your focus, and your awareness. And you might want simply to note whatever the experience is. It can be simple feeling, sensing.
It could be pain, pleasure. Just describing what you’re actually experiencing just in a short word. Staying with that body sensation. Invite you to to refocus your attention on sound. And noting, hearing, keep quiet, gentle naming of your experience.
Stay with the sound. Coming back to sensation of the body, Noting that experience, sensing, feeling pain, discomfort, pleasure. And now I’d like to invite you to become aware of your mind itself. You may be experiencing thinking, and you can note that thinking. You might experience an emotion, sadness, happiness, a mental feeling of pleasure, thinking, sad, happy, angry, bored, watching the mind itself, observing the mind itself.
It’s useful to note so you don’t get caught up in your thinking. Say staying with the content of your mind, observing, watching, just watching, watching. Now I’d like you for you to ask yourself a question. I was observing the breath, the body sensations, and sounds, thinking, thoughts, emotion. What was it that was watching?
What was it that was aware of what was going on? What was always consistently in the background that knew the breath, that knew the body, that knew the sound, that knew the thoughts? Can you identify that? What was it that was doing the knowing? And then bring your mind back to your breath.
Be easy, gentle, and then upon the natural breath. So, like, stretch if you like. So we’re we’re gonna take a break. But just before we do, anybody like to share their experiences? Have any comment on how their meditation went?
No? To actually tell myself to do something. You had an internal notice board? Oh, yeah. What is it?
And It’s quite strange. And what and how did you experience that? It’s a bit it’s a bit complicated, actually, because it was it was colors I wasn’t expecting, and it was trying to tell me. So you’re supposed to be listening for sound, and I’m watching a handwritten nose board. I’m hearing.
Yeah. All that kind of wonderful lack of control stuff. And did you have any reaction to that when you noticed that? I was at was, yeah, able to use the the notice to tell me to do something to it, and then I was able to do it. So that so that was quite useful.
So instead, I I guess it’s what my my mind must have done with your instruction. Sure. Yeah. That’s what minds do, don’t they? Yeah.
I think beginning a meditation session by grounding yourself in your body can help settle the mind. It’s quite useful. Any other comments or something I’d to share? Should we take a break? Okay.
Did you have him come in? No. Just yes. That’s a common. Okay.
Let’s let’s take a twenty minute or two. Let’s say a quarter after break. Okay. Yes. Actually, rim?
Riming. Riming. Yeah.