Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A verse from Nāgārjuna — the person caught in afflictive emotions is called an ordinary being; free of them, a Buddha — opens this 105-minute session by Ven Jampa Gendun on the mind’s nature and potential. He works through two aspects of Buddha nature: the evolving kind, the mind’s innate wakefulness and drive toward wholeness, and the naturally abiding kind, its original purity presently obscured — illustrated by Asaṇga’s similes of gold within filth and a statue wrapped in rags. A retelling of “The Rabbi’s Gift” then dramatises what shifts when we treat others, and ourselves, as potential Buddhas. The second half reframes the teaching on precious human rebirth through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, an ant unaware of a nearby meadow, and a wordplay on “appreciate” — to value something, and thereby increase its value. Suited to practitioners with some Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 MP 2011 07 10.mp3
UUID: 6f4095f4-9bfc-40b9-8140-029017f5312a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: DB Mind and its Potential (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2011-07-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 104.8 minutes
Words: ~9,323
Integrating this these teachings. How do we access them? How do we make them relevant to ourselves? I think that’s that’s really the real challenge to ourselves as individuals, but as teachers as well. And I feel somewhat inadequate at times around this.
That there is no inherent difference between our nature and that of Buddhas. And our Buddha nature is as as any Buddha’s Buddha nature. And there was one of the great masters of Buddhism. And sometimes the Dalai Lama refers to Nāgārjuna as his being within the tradition of Nāgārjuna. He points to Nāgārjuna as one of his main sources of teachings.
Sometimes Nāgārjuna is referred to as the second Buddha. And one important text that he wrote was called In Praise of the Dharmadhatu. Dharmadhatu is like a code word for emptiness, but anyway, that’s another story. And he’s talking about the fact, you know, here’s a great master, tremendous logician, great scholar, philosopher. He could split a hair twenty different ways, you know.
And he’s talking about something which is very personable, personal to him. It’s not an abstraction. Emphasizing that the difference between ourselves as ordinary people, as whatever that might mean, Buddha as an extraordinary person is one of, is only relative, not absolute. And I think in a way this is another, you know, I guess I expose myself when I teach, when I talk this way. I reveal my own doubts and my own struggles, I’m working within myself.
And when I say that we have a sense of the difference between what we mean by relative and absolute. You know, sounds like a philosophic abstraction, but I think it’s very relevant and very personal to how we live our lives. You know, just by way of analogy, and not an even that’s not very easy analogy, trying to have a sense of what the relative, you know, you’re over there and I’m over here. We’re two different people, Separate. Relatively separate.
Not absolutely separate. Relative I mean it’s like high and low. High exists in dependence upon low. Low exists in dependence upon high. Short exists in dependence upon long.
Long exists in dependence upon short. If short didn’t exist, long wouldn’t exist. If long didn’t exist, short wouldn’t exist. You you say for example, is my ring finger is long or short? Or in and of itself, it’s neither.
It’s not absolutely short, it’s not absolutely long. Relative to my little finger, it’s long. Relative to my middle finger, it’s short. It’s relatively long or short, but not absolutely. If it were absolutely, we wouldn’t have to compare it with anything else.
By its very nature, it would be one of the two long or short. Are we kind of following along here? So I realize it sounds a bit of an abstraction, but I think emotionally it’s not. I think we see ourselves, for example, in terms of ignorance, as being absolutely separate from you. You’re over there.
There’s like a thick black line drawn around me. And there’s there’s me over here looking looking out through the windows and there’s you over there and I’m trying to drag whatever I see as beneficial or enhancing my existence over onto my side of the looking glass. And I don’t want people to invade my territory over here. So there’s an absolute demarcation between you and me. But in reality, that distinction between you and me is very delicate.
It’s not in any way the way we normally conceive of it to be. It’s just a matter of way of speaking. You know, self depends upon other. If there were no self, there would be no other. If there were no other, there’d be no self.
They’re interdependent. This is their way of talking about it. From your point of view, you are yourself. From my point of view, you’re other. This is the point of view.
It’s very subtle. Okay, I went through all that explanation. That gives you some insight in how I wrestle with these kinds of things. So he’s talking about here the difference between ourselves and Buddhas. Now, I realize that, you know, I’m not a Buddha, okay?
But I think we have a sense of Buddha. We have a sense that like the Dalai Lama’s of the world, the Mother Teresa’s of the world, the Nelson Mandela’s, the Martin Luther Kings, that they’re somehow qualitatively different than ourselves. They have compassionate electrons in their heads, loving protons and altruistic molecules. They’re like them from a different planet. I know that doesn’t sound reasonable or rational, but I have a sense that’s the way I’m emotionally relating to them.
That’s why I keep emphasizing the distinction that we sometimes have to make between how we emotionally relate and how we rationally think about things can be quite distinct. And sometimes it’s almost surprising. But I think we have to admit that to someone. I couldn’t be like him, like the Dalai Lama. I’d have to pretend.
I could pretend for a couple minutes. I in myself, as I am, am not enough. Maybe if I really work hard, couple thousand lifetimes, sweating and putting all that blood, sweat, and tears, I can get there. Maybe. So, anyway, having prefaced this quotation from Nāgārjuna.
Just as water in summer is called warm and that same water in winter is called cold, the person ensnarled in a net of afflictive emotions is called an ordinary being. And when that very person is free of them, he is called a Buddha. So, what is, you know, we make this huge distinction between ourselves and Buddha. This happy, healthy, loving, saintly human beings. These are ourselves and Dalai Lama and so forth.
But it’s simply a matter of the presence or absence of certain patterns of mind. Reoccurring emotions such as the afflicted emotions. Okay? That’s all. There’s nothing more different than that.
It’s not all that big of a difference is my point. That difference is workable. We can diminish that difference. We can slowly diminish the force of those afflictive emotions from our mind. And then there’s no difference at all, at all between me and the Dalai Lama or whomever I want to talk about.
There is another teacher, sometimes you might be familiar with contemporary or fairly contemporary. He died a number of years ago, Chogyam Trungpa. Many you probably have heard of Chogyam Trungpa. Teacher, he was a Tibetan teacher who taught in the United States. He was quite a great communicator and quite a great, had a lot of influence on many students in America.
And he’s getting at the same idea but from a kind of a more modern contemporary point of view. A crow is black because the lotus is white. Ants run fast because the elephant is slow. Buddhas are profound. Sentient beings are confused.
So, the blackness of a crow only has meaning relative to the whiteness of a lotus. The quickness of an ant only has meaning relative to the slowness of an elephant. Our confusion only has meaning relative to the profundity of a Buddha. If there weren’t any Buddhas we would not be confused. Relative to a Buddha I’m confused.
Absolutely I’m not confused. I don’t know if that has any sense or that make. Only comparatively, relatively am I confused. But we have this sense that somehow I’m inherently confused. This is my very nature.
I don’t know if I’m getting across my sense of, yeah, it’s only relative to somebody who’s clear sighted, who’s tremendously loving, that I have problems. My problems aren’t, there’s just a way of talking about these difficulties I feel about myself and my experiences. I call them problems relative to they exist relative to those who don’t have such problems. But they are not absolute. If these people who didn’t have problems didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have any problems either.
There’d be nothing to call problems. It wouldn’t have any meaning, that type of term, that way of speaking. I couldn’t call myself confused because there wasn’t anything to be compared with. It’s only I can only call myself confused relative to the clarity or the profundity of Buddhas. That’s all.
So, that confusion is simply it’s much more that term we try we hold onto these terms and we take them as we talked about thoughts yesterday, didn’t we? Some kind of reality which stands apart from the way we think about them. Then somehow this is my very nature. And it becomes difficult for us to conceive of ourselves as being any other way. But if we can hold these terms lightly, these metaphors that we use, holding a butterfly very delicately, then it has meaning.
And we can talk in this way. We communicate, but we give it a reality which they do not possess and cause ourselves problems. The only difference between ourselves and Buddha is the presence or absence of mental afflictions and obscurations. Nothing more than that. Nothing.
Nothing more than that. Aside from these, there’s no difference. We can talk about Buddha nature. It refers to the wakefulness, the intrinsic nature of wakefulness. So there are two types of Buddha nature that I’d like to talk about.
One is the mind’s intrinsic nature of wakefulness and the other is the natural purity of the mind. So this, what’s called the wakefulness aspect, is technically called evolving Buddha nature. Fundamentally, we are intelligent, caring people. It is only our dysfunctional patterns of our minds which obstruct the continuous expression of our intelligence and caring. The mind by its very nature is wakeful.
It’s awake. It’s purposeful in its urge toward integration, wholeness. This is we’re on a journey and we might not be conscious of why we’re on the journey, but nonetheless we’re trying to involve ourselves moving there’s a word teleological, which sounds like a very strange word. There’s a purposefulness. We’re moving in some kind of direction.
We might not even be aware of why. There’s a tendency of mind toward integration, wholeness, toward the dissipation of tension, fragmentation. It’s a natural tendency within nature. The mind by its very nature is awake and purposed in its urge toward that to manifest a complete awakened state. The mind naturally seeks wholeness, integration.
You know, it’s not this is the intelligence of the mind. This is what is to be developed, evolving Buddha nature. There’s another aspect to our Buddha nature, and that is the natural purity aspect. And this is called naturally abiding Buddha nature. Is that we are not our dysfunctional patterns in mind.
We never had been. We are not the problem. The problem is the problem. I am not the problem. The problem is hatred, jealousy, spite, all these eighty four thousand problems.
No question I have problems, but I’m not the problem. We have to begin to identify the problem. And this is helpful even in a very mundane sense. It helps us not to be so problem saturated. If I’m the problem, in order to solve the problem I have to go out of existence because I’m the problem.
There’s something wrong with me, basically. But I’m not the problem. The problem becomes workable. The problem stands apart from who I am. And therefore, I make some kind of correction.
I was trying to think of what they called that. I can’t remember. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s just the word. The mind is naturally free of problems.
It’s free of faults. It’s free of all the afflictions and so forth. We talked about this. It is susceptible to complete transformation. This aspect of our Buddha nature is to be discovered.
So, one aspect of our Buddha nature, that is to say the evolving Buddha nature, is to be developed. Intrinsic nature as intelligent and caring. The other aspect of our Buddha nature, the naturally abiding Buddha nature, the natural purity of the mind is to be discovered within ourselves. There are some teachings by Nāgārjuna, but maybe we don’t. I have this one another great master that many of you are familiar with is Asaṇga.
Many of our teachings have a lineage coming from Asaṇga. And I’m going to read a quote by Asaṇga where he’s presenting similes. Similes are, you know, metaphors. It’s like this. It’s like that.
And he’s trying to compare our Buddha nature is simply presently obscured. You remember, this morning, was trying to get across the idea that there’s something more to ourselves, the totality of who we are, than we probably are aware of or that we acknowledge in our experience. No conception of ourselves at present is able to accomplish the totality of who we are. And kind of getting at the idea through a set of similes. So, here he’s trying to compare how our Buddha nature is presently obscured by the various mental afflictions.
And he’s doing it with a set of similes. A Buddha within a decaying lotus, honey surrounded by bees, grain in a husk, gold within filth, treasure beneath the earth, the shoot of a great tree and a small fruit, the statue of a Buddha wrapped in rags, a future ruler in the womb of an ugly woman, a precious image within a clay mold. In just that way, obscured by the stains and adventitious afflictions, the element of Buddha exists in all sentient beings. You know, beyond this notion that beyond all the various conceptions that we hold about ourselves, all the identities that we we cling to over the course of time, you know, the ups and downs of our mind that sometimes we feel good about ourselves, sometimes we feel terrible about about ourselves. Beyond all of that, our essential nature, what they call in Zen Buddhism, our original face.
We are basically intelligent, caring people. Beyond, you know, how all the conceptions that we’re continually cycling through in our minds. Beyond all that, we are basically intelligent, caring people and that we have the resources to solve our problems, to change, to awaken. So, there’s saying in Zen Buddhism, human nature is Buddha nature and Buddha nature is no nature. Our minds are open ended.
That our minds are plastic malleable, if you like. We can make of the mind what we will according to our skills, our lack of skills, according to our effort and so forth, our understanding. So, we have to appreciate something about ourselves is basically good in spite of whatever conceptions we may presently be holding toward ourselves. There’s something good about ourselves, something tremendously sane about our dreams, our aspirations. We all know that deep in our hearts that we may not be able to admit it even to ourselves.
We find it as I’ve talked about this morning, we find it hard to acknowledge the weight of our own gold within the shadow. And again, quoting Chogyam Trungpa. Talking about basic goodness. I know it seems like it could be quite transformative for me. If felt beyond, you know, the ups and downs of my mind.
I’m basically a good person. I’m basically a caring person. I’m basically intelligent. I don’t think we’d get so swept away by these temporary conceptions, our identities that we And then we’d have something to anchor ourselves in, through all the storms that blow through our minds. By basic goodness is meant a natural goodness.
A goodness which is not conditional, which is not dependent upon being any particular way. You know, it’s interesting in our meditation this morning, that last meditation, when you don’t have to do anything. To think just being is enough, there’s a great relief. I don’t have to try to do anything. I can survive beautifully by doing nothing.
Know, temporarily we can lay aside this ongoing struggle to have to be somebody doing something in our life in order to justify our existence. I think, you know, there’s no you know I have a sense that, you know, I don’t know what a Buddha is like. But a Buddha is sometimes likened to a wish granting tree. You know, maybe no such a wish granting tree. It doesn’t matter.
It’s just an idea, a metaphor. A tree, it’s like a fruit tree that is continually by its very nature, continually producing fruit. And people can come along and according to their disposition, their karma and so forth, they can take their fruit and they can enjoy its flavor and they can be nourished by it. The tree is just doing its thing. It’s just producing fruit again and again and again.
That’s its nature. That’s what it does for a living. People come along and pick, fine. If they don’t, that’s fine. And to be nobody else but yourself in a world which is night and day trying to make you everybody else is one of the greatest challenges that we can face in the course of our practice.
And just that you’re enough. And to be able to be that basically in some very depth of your being. And I think that’s part of the path, part of the path that maybe isn’t all that greatly acknowledged. That a Buddha is just being him or herself. And there’s a natural outflowing.
There’s a natural benefit. But there’s no pretense. How am I sitting around trying to figure out it happens spontaneously? Out of this natural, believing in one’s own natural goodness, I’m enough. What I do is going to work.
The natural response is just right. It fits. It seems that would be a great freedom, a great, I don’t know, reward for just being alive. It is not a stance or a belief of any kind. It’s talking about basic goodness.
It is not something we contrive to be. We don’t have to try to figure it out. How can I be in this situation? Every stance, every posture and belief we adopt and identify with creates an inner division activating an opposite tendency in the shadow. If you try to be good, you’re going to have to be on guard that you’re not bad.
If we try to be good, we will have to repress what we can see by our bad side. Basic sanity is not a stance that creates a shadow. Rather, it is more like the radiance of the sun itself, unconditional, because it is beyond both our attempts to be good and the shadow that these attempts create. So, okay. Going to move on from this subject.
I just want to make a short comment about how we might be practicing. The starting point of the path is to relate positively to both the sun and the clouds which obscure the sun. When we begin the path, first the clouds are more predominant. They occupy most of our attention. When we try to untangle ourselves, the first thing that we experience is entanglement.
Our confusion and our pain are most apparent to ourselves at present. We have a sense that we’re trapped in them. They take up the predominance of our attention. They are the clouds which are presently dominating our perspective. But to become aware and acknowledge our pain and our confusion is the first step in freeing ourselves from them.
To become aware and acknowledge our pain and our confusion is the first step in wisdom and true happiness, true caring. So, such an awareness and acknowledgement is in itself a kind of wisdom and caring. Our confusion and our pain are a kind of truth about ourselves, you know, a statement about what it means to be an ordinary human being. Our wounds are like mouths and they’re trying to tell us something about ourselves. How we need to take care of ourselves.
How we need to be types of changes that we need to bring about in our lives. We can do better. So this awareness and this acknowledgement of our confusion and pain is a sign of our basic sanity. I know that sounds that might sound strange. To become aware that things aren’t okay is an expression of your intelligence.
You know, if we’re healthy enough to be sick and to be aware of it, if we weren’t healthy enough to be sick, we would die. Not only a physical death, but an existential death as well. We wouldn’t feel at all. And that’s why many people, to a lesser or greater degree spend their lives. Not quite feeling at all.
But there’s kind of a puzzling question which kind of arises in all of this. How can our Buddha nature be at one time both naturally pure and perfect, and yet at the same time it needs to be developed? Many of you are probably familiar with the Japanese Zen teacher who lived in the United States for many years and founded the San Francisco Zen Center by the name of Suzuki Roshi. He he one time, he said to his students, you’re already perfect just as you are, but you could use a bit of training. You know, I think if you could hold on to that, and You’re all imperfect just as you are, but you could use a bit of training.
So it’s just a matter of perspective. From the perspective of Buddha nature itself, our Buddha nature has no need to evolve. From the point of view of the awakened Buddhas, it is already faultless. Awakening viewed here in terms of the perfection of an awakened state of being which already exists inside of ourselves. It’s viewed not in terms there’s two ways that we can conceive of a path.
I talked about the path is from where normally conceived of where path is what takes you from where you’re at to where you want to get to. One of the ways that we we use metaphors to think about things. It helps us to organize or understand abstractions in a more concrete way. One of the ways that we can think about a path and our journey along the even to say journey along the path or even the same word path is a metaphor, isn’t it? It’s in terms of a seed, the cultivation of a seed, nourishing the seed.
And that seed eventually transforms into the fruit, the result. But there’s another metaphor which describes the journey or the path, our practice. And that is that a lotus and the blossoming of that lotus which reveals a perfection which has always been, which needs no improvement at all, which is perfect and flawless from the very beginning, primordially so. And I think we and so we’re working with two types of metaphor. And sometimes one metaphor is gonna be more applicable and more useful to ourselves and where we’re at.
From one perspective, there’s nothing that needs to be cultivated. Nothing that needs to be improved upon. Only the making manifest of a dimension of our being that is naturally whole, naturally pure, naturally complete which presently lies obscured within ourselves. From another point of view, there is work to be done, isn’t there? We have to involve ourselves in all the trainings of the path.
And that is to say, we have a potentiality, which is a seed. The nature of a seed is that it has a certain potency. But it has to be activated, it has to be nourished, it has to be cultivated so that it goes over into an actuality. So this is the two ways that we can hold onto these two natures of ourselves. And I think, you know, very how do I say this?
We have to from one perspective we are absolutely precious because we all possess Buddha nature. And from another perspective, we are vulnerable creatures because we are confused and in pain, because we haven’t reached our goal of Buddhahood. So, at one time, one and the same time, we have to have compassion for ourselves, be gentle with ourselves, because we are confused and in pain. But at the same time, we have to respect ourselves and we have to have courage because we are all Buddhas to be. You know, some way or another we’re trying our best.
However you might conceive of your efforts. And what we haven’t been able to bring about in the past we can bring about in the future. Like I said this morning, who we are now is what we have done. It’s gotten us here. And what we do now we can become.
I’d like to there’s a simple story that I think maybe in a kind of a simple way illustrates what this perspective can mean for ourselves. Acknowledging our basic goodness of ourselves but also the basic goodness and basic sanity of others. It’s called the Rabbi’s Gift. It’s little bit long, but it’s a simple story. It’s called The Rabbi’s Gift.
It illustrates the practical consequence of integrating this kind of exceptional attitude in our everyday lives. The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of anti monastic persecution of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth century, all its branch houses were lost and had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house, the abbot and four others, all over seventy in age. Clearly, it was a dying order. In the deep woods surrounding the monastery, there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage.
Through their many years of prayer and contemplation, the old monks had become a bit psychic so that they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. The rabbi is in the woods. The rabbi is in the woods again, they would whisper to each other. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the Abbot at one time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save his monastery. The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut.
But when the rabbi when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. I know how it is, he exclaimed. The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same way in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.
So the old abbot and the old man wept together. Then they read part of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. It’s been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years, the abbot said.
But I still have failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order? No, I’m sorry, the rabbi whispered. I have no advice to give you. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.
When the abbot returned to the monastery, his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, Well, what did the rabbi say? He couldn’t help the abbot. The abbot answered, We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say just as I was leaving, it was something cryptic, was that the Messiah is one of us. I don’t know what he meant.
In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words. The Messiah is one of us. Could he possibly have met one of the monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one? Do you suppose he met the Abbot?
Yes. If he met anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man.
Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not meant Brother Elred. Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right, often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred, but surely not Brother Philip.
Philip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Philip is the Messiah. Of course, the rabbi didn’t mean me.
He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did. Suppose I am the Messiah. Oh, God, not me.
I couldn’t be that much for you, could I? As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one amongst them might be the Messiah. And on the off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect. Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander some of the paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed an extraordinary aura of respect that permeated the atmosphere of the place.
There was something strangely attractive, even compelling about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently, to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place and their friends brought their friends. Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while, one of them asked if he could join them, then another, and another.
So within a few years, the monastery had become, again become a thriving order and thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of life and spirituality in the realm. So, you know, it makes a difference both to ourselves and others, how we think of ourselves most basically. And it can bring about changes that we can’t even foresee, both for ourselves and those around us. So, you know, finding some way to make, to access, to work through this seemingly deceptive appearance of ordinariness, insufficiency, inadequacy, all the layers of conditioning that have been placed upon us in one way or another. To have faith that there’s something beyond, some basic decency about ourselves, some intelligence and caring, something, some gold there in the shadow of the depth of our being.
You know, the after using the metaphor of cultivating a flower, we need to systematically nourish the seeds of wisdom and love and compassion and our own inner strength. And how they skillfully begin to fiercely express themselves in their daily life. But using the other metaphor, which is equally applicable, is that metaphor of the unfolding of a lotus. We need to just methodically remove the obstructions, which prevent the flow and continuous expression of a naturally occurring awakened being at the depth of who we are. Does that make sense?
We’re gonna go on. Do you want to make any comments? Do you have any questions about anything we talked about? Pardon? Oh, I think that’s what people think.
Think, you know, we can we can overlook. Maybe the Buddha was a great pointer. He said, take a look at this, take a look at that. So maybe it’s a matter of somebody saying, well, know, I can understand how you presently see yourself, but have you ever taken a look at this about yourself? And then kind of catching your attention and help sort of assisting you to notice something that’s already been there, that’s always been there.
And then maybe that kind of, that shaking of the system slightly, just the reorientation of our attention begins to augment itself. And you begin to confirm something other about yourself that has gone unnoticed and then takes on its own momentum. Don’t know. Any other? Sometimes I think that, yeah, okay.
But there’s also another area. And that is to not only do we have to appreciate our potential, but we have to overcome our sense that something which is equally important that we have all the conditions necessary to realize that potential. So we might indeed have, good nature. But, if we feel that something more is needed in order to realize that in our everyday life, then it’s as if we didn’t have it. Know, we have to come somehow, come to be aware that we have all the conditions necessary to realize our potential.
That we have a window of opportunity which our human life presents us with. So traditionally this is an area of the path which is called precious human rebirth, our precious life. Essentially what all it is it comes down to is counting our blessings. It’s nothing. Sometimes we overlook all that in fact we do have.
Sometimes we’re captivated by our lack. We’re fascinated by what we don’t have. That’s where our attention is continually being drawn to in some way, what’s not there. So this is kind of working against that process and acknowledging what the great, what is traditionally called the great, the freedoms and richnesses which we all possess. I’d like to read another quote, it’s a little story.
Often we do not choose, but drift into those modes which eventually define us. Circumstances push and we yield. We do not choose to be what we have become but gradually and perceptibly became what are by drifting into those things we now characteristically do. Freedom is not an objective attribute of life. Alternatives without awareness yield no leeway.
So now he’s going to present a rather graphic metaphor to describe this. I open the door of my car and notice in a quarter of my vision an ant scurrying on the smooth barren surface of the concrete parking lot, doomed momentarily to be crushed by one of the thousand passing wheels. There exists, however, a brilliant alternative for this gravely endangered creature. In a few minutes, a woman with a picnic basket and she and I will drive to a sunny hilltop meadow. This desperate ant has but to climb the wheel of my car to some sheltered ledge and in a half an hour we’ll be in a paradise for ants.
But this option, unknown, unknowable, yields no freedom to the ant who is doomed. And the only irony belongs to me who observes, who reflects that options potentially as meaningful to me as this one is to the ant may at this moment be eluding my awareness. So I too may be doomed. So, you know, don’t if you’ve ever had a bird fly into your house, and the bird is completely in confusion, it’s panicked. And it begins to fly here and there.
They’re flying, crashing into the walls, hurting itself. And you open all the windows in your house. And you’re trying your best, a sense of compassion, to shoo the bird out the window. But it’s in fear. It’s in confusion.
It’s still hurting themselves. But there’s an opportunity, if only it could recognize it, to be free of the situation, of all that fear, of all that pain, and all that confusion. There’s a window of opportunity open to itself, but it doesn’t recognize it. It goes unnoticed to the bird. And likewise for ourselves, we are in a difficult situation.
We have our own confusion, our own fear, and we fly around. And we crash into walls and experience a great deal of pain in all our various ways. But the Buddhists, you know, they got all these windows open for ourselves. And out of their compassion they’re trying to, the best they can, to say, This way out. But the opportunity goes unnoticed to ourselves.
And we continue to circle around within our confusion and experiencing pain. So, you know, this is what we’re trying to work with here is to simply become aware of that there is this opportunity that presents itself throughout the there is something that we can work with, something that can be done. This is I don’t know. I always kind of there are different ways I don’t know, different ways. As I said, I always I try my best to present or think about these things in ways which are most meaningful for myself.
And then I kind of share them with other people. Maybe they’re lucid or not, I’m not sure sometimes. But you know there is what we might call a traditional way of presenting this topic of the precious human life. And sometimes it’s spoken of as the ten freedoms and the eight richnesses. You know, trying to recognize from a negative point of view what we’re free of, and then from a positive point of view what in fact we do have.
Counting our blessings in this context. But, you know, I could talk about that in that way. I sometimes wonder if know to say, Well, I’m free of being hell being. I don’t know. Does that resonate with you?
I’m free of that. And does that kind of, do you have appreciation for that? Or is it just kind of, that’s very doctrinal, that’s very traditional? What do you think about that? Not sure.
You know, way that we can begin to talk about our freedoms and richnesses, there was a psychologist who lived in America and lived in California. I think he died back in the 70s by the name of Abraham Maslow. And he was one of the first psychologists and he led a movement in psychology toward rather than looking at what was wrong with people, what was right with people. You know he looked at what healthy, he studied healthy people trying to understand why they were healthy which was something quite new. And he developed what we called hierarchy of needs.
It’s like a pyramid. Maybe some of you are familiar with. So as our priorities on a lower level becomes are satisfied, those on the next level can take precedence. We can begin to concern ourselves with other areas of our existence that we couldn’t normally concern ourselves with. For example, once our physiological needs are met, once we have enough food, enough water, we have shelter, once those are adequately satisfied, then we can begin to concern ourselves with higher needs, for example, safety and security.
Once we feel safe and secure, once those needs are adequately satisfied, then we can begin to be free to occupy our attention. And the key word here, what we occupy our attention with, what are free to pay attention to, that reality, is we can begin to look at higher needs. For example, belonging, love, fulfillment, You know, there was I remember listening to I don’t know if you’re familiar with the American jazz singer back in the thirties and forties by the name of Billie Holiday. And she had there was one song that she used to sing, Don’t preach to me while I have an empty stomach. You know, first you have to have your stomach full.
Then you can think about God and these other bigger issues. But a lot of people are starving. There’s no sense in talking about Buddhahood or freedom or fulfillment or meaning. They just need to have their stomachs full. So, this is the kind of situation that we find ourselves that we have in this pyramid.
We’re quite blessed in this country, aren’t we? Sometimes we take our blessings for granted. We don’t appreciate them. There’s a close connection between the recognition of a fact, seeing a fact and valuing it, and its relationship to action. If recognize a fact and value it, then you might be moved to act upon it.
Know, there’s an old saying, We don’t value something till we lose it. You know, it’s like your eyes, for example. We totally take them for granted. Almost totally. But, you know, what would happen if you went, you know, God forbid, you should go blind today?
What you what you how would that you know, you you would you probably you just wish from the depth of your heart, I wish I could just see my child just one more time. Really look at them so I could have that memory in my mind. Or I could just see a sunset just one more time. Just once more. How much you would value something once it’s lost?
So the trick is, how can we value it before it’s lost? Because if you value it, you’re going to be moved to do something, to make use of it, because it’s valuable. You know it’s worth. It’s going to have some consequences in your life. You’re not going to take it for granted.
So we have to what we’re trying to do here is recognize the fact that there are options open to us. And then we have the ability to choose those options and to achieve them. You know, we might not be you know, we have to value our human life. Like something we don’t even think about problems. If we’re not to take it for granted.
You know, we may not have a million dollars. Might not be in a position of great power. We might not have lots of things. But we have everything that we need to take the essence of our life, to be happy and fulfilled in our lives. And the more that we you know, in English there’s an interesting word.
I used to be quite interesting when I used to be an interpreter for some time. I couldn’t order a cup of tea in Tibetan anymore, but a long time ago I was a Tibetan interpreter. And I used to really get into words. I used to really like words. And I’m still kind of fascinated with words.
And this word, a couple weeks ago I was kinda came across thinking about this word appreciate. And the word in English language, the word appreciate has two meanings. One of them is to recognize the value of something. You know, like someone, a friend of yours did you a favor. You know, last week you had some problem.
They came over and helped you out. So, this week you say to them, Wow, I really appreciated your help last week. Yeah, yeah. It really helped a lot. Appreciating to value something.
But the word appreciate in English language has another meaning. It means to increase in value. Like your house appreciates and your house goes up in worth. We say your house appreciates. The more you appreciate something, the more you recognize its value, the more valuable it becomes.
This is applicable to lots of areas of our life. We just have to be discriminating about what we appreciate. Because we’re viewing objects and people and things about us all the time with value, empowering them, such that we’re able to influence ourselves. That empowering comes back to us and in some way makes a difference to ourselves. Here we’re trying to appreciate this fact of something which is more or less, more than that is overlooked.
That we are a privileged class in all the people of this planet. I don’t think we I mean it’s not a very nice pleasant thing to talk about, even to say. That we the fact that we are able to spend a weekend here together in relative ease, comfort, luxury only is very much dependent upon a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in people’s lives on this planet. Over a million, over one billion people on this planet go to bed hungry every night. We don’t.
The fact that we have this material prosperity, that we have all our needs easily met, is very much dependent upon those millions and millions and billions and billions of people. I mean that’s the system that we’re embedded within. I’m not saying you’re to feel guilty about it, but I think at least be aware of it. And maybe to acknowledge it. And maybe it can become to have a difference in your life.
That we are incurring a debt. That we in our with integrity, perhaps we have to at least make use of this life, if not pay back something. How can we make the greatest use of this life? And how can we begin to pay back our debt? I’m just a way, I mean, traditionally speaking, greatest use that we can make of our life is to become a Buddha.
But maybe we can just say minimally what can we do with this life to ensure that we don’t use this life simply to create future sufferings for ourselves. We create a platform from which we continue our practice so that we can build upon what we’ve already achieved. That would be a practical and worthwhile endeavor. To create, minimally not to create future sufferings for ourselves, but moreover to create a platform from which we can carry on a practice in the future that we can build upon what we’ve already achieved. Very practically, very practically, what’s stopping I’m going to talk about these freedoms, what I call freedoms and richness in a very kind of a way which, you know, very practical way, kind of a way which might be most relevant to our Do we lack the freedom to practice, you know, to transform our minds?
You know, what the reality of our situation? And it’s another matter of pointing out. It’s another matter of paying attention. What are we free from? And begin to look at the world about us.
Are we beggars on the streets of Calcutta? You know, are we cut up in the fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq? Are we starving in Africa? Do we have to work from sunset to from sunup to sunset in order to feed our family just for that one day? Are we living in a country where there’s no religious freedom?
You know, where we are persecuted for trying to practice? Where we couldn’t meet together as we are here today, where religious meetings and books are banned one way or another. Are we intellectually handicapped? Are we psychotic? Are undergoing debilitating chemotherapy?
Are we actively addicted to alcohol or drugs? Does our family or those about us, do they actively try to prevent us from practicing the Dharma? Do we have no access to qualified teachers, at least from time to time, to help us, you know, to teach us and inspire us and encourage. Do we not have spiritual friends who assist us and who can understand where we’re coming from, who encourage ourselves? The Dalai Lama said, If we realize I am a human being, a human being can do anything.
This determination, courage, and self confidence are important sources of victory and success. Without willpower and determination, even something that you might have achieved easily cannot be achieved. If you have willpower and reasonable courage, not blind courage, courage without pride, even things which seemed impossible at a certain stage turn into being possible because of the continuing effort inspired by that courage. Thus, determination is very important. You know, look at all the people about us in our society.
And the people that you meet on the street. Completely caught up in materialism. Completely involved in chasing after sensual pleasures, entertainment. Constantly running after money and power and possessions. Constantly reciting the mantra, bigger, better, more.
Bigger, better, more. They have no thought about what’s going on in their own mind. There’s no time to stop and think and reflect where they’re going. Is this where they’re headed? Is this really what they want to achieve in their life?
Are they happy? I guess that’s what all of Buddhism comes down to asking the question. Does it work? There’s a story about a Tibetan teacher who was traveling through France with his attendant, Nicole. And in France, they have these huge cemeteries, war cemeteries, and there’s crosses one after another stretching off into the horizon of the war dead.
Beautifully immaculate kept grounds. And the attendant said to the teacher, Isn’t it wonderful how the beautiful places they have to place the corpses in the west after their death? And the teacher said that they had even more beautiful places to place the corpses before they’re dead. That we all have freedom to change things, to practice, to make things better for ourselves, but also for others as well. So these are looking at it from a negative point of view.
But we can also look at it from a positive point of view. This This is termed our richnesses and sometimes it’s termed our fortunes or endowments or our opportunities and so forth. So, we are human. What it is that we need to appreciate in fact about us? We are human beings with an intelligent mind, a kind heart.
A relatively healthy body. Sure, get sick sometimes. We might have some disabilities in some ways or another, but relatively healthy. You know, we live in a country free of social and political persecution. There’s no religious repression.
There aren’t Sunnis, massacring what’s the other sect? Sunnis Shiites. It doesn’t happen here. We have countless opportunities to set goals for ourselves and pursue those goals. We can express our creativity.
We can do almost anything we want in terms of our intellectual interests. We enjoy a high standard of living, you know, without really having to work all that hard, comparatively so. You know, I think the vast majority of the people on the planet, I’m talking about those of the peasants of India and China and Pakistan. They work probably three sixty four days a week. Maybe one day off for a special ceremony and that’s all day.
And they live in the they live many of them live on the borderline of poverty even though their whole life is taken up with their work and so forth. We don’t do that. We have a chance to do almost anything and go almost anywhere. But all our material necessities easily met. And moreover, we’ve met with some real teachers.
The lamas here and there’s always the Dalai Lama and so forth. And we’ve had profound teachings from these individuals. And we have fellow practitioners who can support us understand what we’re about and what we’re doing. You know, looking at what we do have, looking at what’s right about our life, essentially. How blessed we in fact we are.
Quit feeling sorry for ourselves. Quit being so captivated by what we’re missing and What is not there. We each have all the complete freedoms and richnesses to bring meaning to our lives. To learn and to practice. To transform our minds.
Can take what’s called the essence of our precious human life. In other words, we have everything that we need right now to solve our problems. That’s not going to happen overnight. That would be unrealistic. That would only be setting yourself up for failure.
That would be an unrealistic expectation. But we can work toward that. Even that working toward that end, we feel a sense of respect about ourselves. We have a sense that there’s no longer an inner schism between something deep inside of ourselves and what we’re doing outside of that. We’re whole people.
We’re integrated around something purposeful and meaningful in our life. You know, we have to be mindful of the fact and value it so we don’t allow it to go to waste. If you’re mindful, you know, if you pay attention, you’ll value it. And it will motivate you to do something to make use of it. Just like with our eyes, You’ll see much deeper.
You’ll appreciate the sides around you that much more. There’s a quote by one of my old friends. His name is, he was an eighteenth century Zen poet by the name of Ryokan. The only reason I called my old friend is I’m not being mystical or anything like that. Mysterious.
When I lived in, I lived in India for about fifteen or sixteen years, something like that. And this one area was called, it’s converted cow sheds. I would, part of that time I studied at the Buddhist School of Dialectics. Sometimes called the Buddhist School of Dialectics, by the way. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen them amongst the debaters.
They get very dramatic. That’s what we used to do. Anyway, and you know, you go back to, I would go back to my room. It was cold and wet. There was no heating.
Feeling really sorry for myself quite often. And I would take out my book of poetry by Ryokan and he would, I would always find a bit of solace. I’d feel understood and comforted by what he had to say. So I always considered him an old friend of mine. He was a good friend back then.
Since I came to this hermitage, how many years have passed? If I am tired, I stretch out my feet. If I feel fine, I go for a stroll in the mountains. The ridicule or praise of worldly people means nothing. Following my destiny for this body I have received from my parents, I have only thanks.
So, you know, appreciating just how special our human life is and how useful it is and how rare it is and how hard it is to find. And, you know, in that, being moved to take and make use of it and not to take it for granted. We have everything that we need. I know it’s not easy. I’m the first one to admit that.
But nonetheless, it’s a journey is worth it. I mean we have to appreciate even the journey, let alone Strive you know having our eye on the goal. What do they what do they say? Somebody help me out here. Yeah, like that.
I think that’s important. Yeah, that sounds right. Thanks for that. Okay. So we meditate on this.
Would you like to get up and stretch for a while? Do you need to pee or anything? No? Okay. Okay.
So we take a Comfortable firm posture. So I invite you to simply to become aware of your breath, the sensations associated with the natural breath. And just lightly placing your attention upon the breath focusing the spotlight of your awareness on that sensation. And again you might want to make use of that technique which was mentioned yesterday. Simply naming, noting your present experience in the case of the breath, noting in, noting out.
When there is a feeling that arises, noting feeling or sensation, sound, hearing, or thinking, whatever arises in your awareness in the present, since you’re giving your attention, returning with great gentleness and patience back to your breath.