Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “The Rabbi’s Gift” — a story about a dying monastery revived when its monks began treating one another as a potential Messiah — anchors Ven Jampa Gendun’s 46-minute Easter Retreat talk on trusting one’s own basic goodness. He explores Buddha nature through Nāgārjuna’s image of an uncontaminated underground stream running through a garbage dump, and Asaṇga’s nine similes — a gold nugget in dross, a statue wrapped in dirty rags — to argue that the mind’s intrinsic purity is obscured, never absent. The second half turns practical: karma is explained as encoded information that shapes perception, and the four opponent powers for purifying negative karma — regret, reliance, antidote, reversal — are introduced. An Indian restaurant food-poisoning anecdote illustrates the difference between healthy regret and self-punishing guilt. The session leads directly into a group Vajrasattva purification practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 ER 1993 04 10.mp3
UUID: ae23b1bb-a9a3-42f6-ad01-c17aef0ba6c2
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Easter Retreat (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-04-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~6,290
Purification practices. So you can rest easy. Help is on the way. Kimball, one of the senior students at Buddha House is going to lead that practice. But prior to that practice, I thought talk a little bit about two subjects.
And I first one is extremely profound and I can’t explain it, but I’m just gonna touch on it. The second one is extremely profound. I can’t explain that either. I’m gonna touch on that also. The two subjects being Buddha nature and the four opponent powers or the four counteracting agents.
Rinpoche mentioned this afternoon, the application of the four opponent powers is the means by which we can purify negative actions that we’ve created. But it’s there’s there’s a relationship between these two. The negative actions on the one hand and our basic purity on the other. That is to say, our basic goodness, our basic sanity, our brilliant wisdom, our our Buddha nature. You know, with there were two There is there is a more there is a more basic ground to our being than ego ground.
You know that we our constant anxiety, constant our ceaseless activity created out of all of our hopes and fears is is world. That’s what constitutes our world. It’s our life. And if we are going to to give up this world, these hopes and fears, It means if we’re going to give up this world, it means to give up these hopes and fears. But we never will unless we cease identifying with these patterns as the real me, you know, that which I really am.
We have to see that there is a more basic ground to our being than ego’s ground. We have to believe in ourselves, that believe in our own basic goodness, that there lies within the vortex of ego, within this this ongoing confusion of basic sanity, brilliant intelligence, some kind of unconditional love and exuberance for life, Buddha nature, our basic goodness. And we have to become aware of our potential and that we have to actually have the opportunity to actualize it. I think it was can’t remember. Anyway, it’s a beautiful verse I like very much.
It’s by an English poet. Doesn’t matter. To see to see if we will poise our life at last. To see if we will now at last be true to our own true deep buried selves, being one with which we are one with the whole world, or whether we will come once or whether we will once more fall away into some bondage of the flesh or mind, some sloth of sense or some fantastic maze forged by the imperious lonely thinking power. You know, it’s trying to step beyond all our our hopes and fears, the ups and downs of our thinking process, and we can just be without holding on to any constant reference point that the mind manufactures.
Manufactures. But what are we to be if I am not these patterns, if I am not this these constantly shifting patterns of our hopes and fears which we have up to now habitually identified with, that which we conceive of as constituting our identity, who we are. You know, how what am I supposed to become? How am I supposed to improve myself if I’m not if I’m here and I want to be there? What am I supposed to do?
How do I get to where I want to get to? You know, it it we always see we never have the sense that maybe that we are sufficient at even at this moment. That maybe it is not a matter of learning more but unlearning our confusion, unlearning all the skillful patterns that we’ve developed over time. Beginning to cut through these our confusion, cutting through our inability to appreciate who we’ve always been. It’s you know, this unconditioned goodness, Buddha nature, is is not something that we that needs to be gotten.
It’s not something which needs to be improved. It only needs to be discovered self existing with inside of ourselves, with inside of our own mind. And Nāgārjuna, who was one of the one of the greatest of all Indian Buddhist masters, emphasizes the difference between ourselves as ordinary beings and Buddhists. This difference is only relative. It’s not absolute.
Where he says, just as water in summer is called warm and that same water in winter is called cold, the person ensnared in a net of afflictive emotions is called an ordinary being. And when that very person is free of them, he is called or she is called a Buddha. So you know, the only difference between us and a Buddha, the only difference between us and a happy, loving, healthy, sane human being are a few afflictive patterns. You remove those patterns from our mind, we are a Buddha. There’s no difference.
There’s no absolute difference. It’s only relative so. You know, the only relative to context. We are not absolutely confused. We are not in any way inherently deficient or insufficient.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. That the the only difference between us and the goal is simply the removal of unskillful patterns, these afflicted emotions from our mind. Nothing more than that. The basic nature is already buddha and our basic nature is exactly the same. So buddha nature, speaking quite roughly, refers to the primordial intrinsic instinct toward wakefulness.
This where does this longing to grow come from? Where does the fact of dissatisfaction come from? The fact that we are dissatisfied, that we is an expression of our Buddha nature. You know, one of the one problem with the extremely mentally ill is that they’re not aware of the inappropriate ness of their way of relating. And therefore not aware of that it becomes very difficult for them to develop, to improve.
It is only when we begin to see that somehow way of relating is not appropriate, it’s not in our self best interest. It’s somehow counterproductive. When we become aware, you know, the first step in the development of wisdom is to become aware of our ignorance. What is it that shows us that? What is it that’s knowing that?
It’s an expression of our basic sanity. The intrinsic wakefulness. There are two types of Buddha nature. One is intrinsic wakefulness or another way, more technically, evolving Buddha nature. Is that fundamentally we are a decent, gentle, compassionate people.
And it is only because our patterns obstruct the manifestation of our basic goodness. It is only the patterns which obstruct the expression of our basic sanity. It is this ability to be able to know. Marvelous quality that we all have. The simple fact of being able to know something, to understand something.
We can know anything. That is the quality of our present mind. We have obstructions from knowing many things like Rinpoche was talking about. You know, like, you know but the the we all have the factor of of being able to know. That’s that’s really kind of a wonderment, you know, this ability to know something.
And we if we move the obstructions, we can know anything. If we can know one thing, we can know all things. This intrinsic wakefulness. And then there’s the the natural purity of the mind, which is the natural abiding Buddha nature. It is that we are not our patterns.
We never have been. I am am not this confusion. I may identify with it but that’s a misconception. But I am not I am not any of my afflictive emotions. I am not the patterns which which obstruct me.
Nāgārjuna again compares this intrinsic wakefulness, this ability to see things clearly to uncontaminated underground water. In verse where he says, as the water which lies beneath the earth is uncontaminated, likewise the exalted wisdom which lies beneath the afflictive emotions is uncontaminated. So it’s like an underground stream going through a garbage dump. You know, the stream remains pure. And within our within this this garbage dump of our mind, there is this pure stream of Buddha nature, self existing, has never been impure.
It can never be made unpure. It’s always been there and will always be there. It just needs to find expression. And he goes on to compare the natural purity of the mind. The natural purity of the mind is the mind’s emptiness.
It’s empty of any inherent stains. He compares it this way. Just as precious lapis lazuli lapis lazuli is a semi precious stone. Just as precious Lapis Lazuli always shines bright though when encrusted with dirt, its brightness is not apparent. Likewise, though the element of qualities, the emptiness of the mind, though the element of qualities is extremely pure, within cyclic existence its brightness is dimmed by the afflictive emotion.
But upon passing beyond sorrow, its brightness becomes more and more apparent. So what perhaps they’re getting at, I can only assume, is that each of us possesses the essence of Buddha, The essence of this happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. Beyond all the various conceptions that we may have about ourselves, our ups and downs, our our moments of of confidence, our moments of of uncertainty, our moments of self affirmation, our our moments of self denigration. Trying to remember to hang on to that our essential nature, our original face, our basic goodness, our basic sanity, and that we have the power of intelligence to solve our problems and to change and to awaken, you know, to become whatever it is that we want to be. You know, our minds are are as if open ended, the stuff of the mind.
And I use the analogy that it’s it’s like clay. We can we can take up clay and make whatever of it we will according to our our efforts and our skill. We can make of the clay of the mind a majestic sculpture of Michelangelo, an abstract of Henry Moore, an innocent child’s figurine, or we can make of that an ashtray, whatever skill we might have. So this stuff of the mind, we can shape it and mold it according to our abilities, to our skill, and the effort we make. It is open ended.
It doesn’t have the inherent qualities that we may assume it does at present. Each of us knows, and I would like to remind you of this, that he or she is really a good person. You have been told you’re not. And in the presence of fresh criticism you get the feeling you’re not. But in your heart of hearts, you know you’re a good person, that you’ve always done the best you could, and that is true.
Each of us knows that he or she is much smarter than he or she can often show, that he or she has a lot of intelligence that doesn’t come out in the tension of the final exam or the upsetting situation. And this is true. I now tell you that what you know about yourself is also true of everyone else. This profound knowledge that you’ve hidden to escape ridicule, that you’re a good person, that always do your best, that you’re much smarter than you sometimes act or than people think. This is true not only of you but of other people as well.
And I like to the I like to take the time to read a very beautiful story. It’s called the rabbi’s gift. You know, when we begin to what what kind of very practical effects can such an attitude taking toward ourselves and others have in our everyday life? And I think it’s beautifully portrayed in this short story which is so it’s about a page and a half long, so if you’ll bear with me. You know, what the outcome of adopting such an exceptional attitude.
The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of anti monastic persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth century, all its branch houses were lost, and it 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 years of 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 his hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation, the old monks had become a bit psychic so 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 such time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery. The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut.
But when the abbot explained his purpose for his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. I know what it is. I know how it is, he exclaimed. The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town.
Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore. So the old abbot and the old man wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other.
It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years, the abbot said. But I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me, that will help me save my dying order? No, I am sorry, the rabbi responded. 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 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 meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one?
Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes. But if he meant 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, Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly, he could not have meant brother Elrod. Elrod 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, Elrod is virtually always right.
Often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean brother Elrod, 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 have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet, supposing he did, supposing 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 monk the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And then 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 they were situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its 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 this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate 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 asked if he could join them, then another and another. So within a few years, the monastery had once again become a thriving order, and thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm. We to so, you know, this is we have to appreciate our basic goodness and the basic goodness inherent in all peoples. You know, there’s something good there’s some goodness about ourselves. You know, something which is tremendously sane about ourselves.
Something sane about our dreams. You know, we we all know in our hearts of hearts that we are afraid to admit it, even to ourselves. You know, we we find it difficult to bear the burden of our own divinity. And this idea of basic goodness, basic goodness, it’s just not goodness. By basic goodness it’s meant a natural goodness.
Know, goodness which is not conditional, which which does not depend upon being any particular way. It’s not it’s not a stance or any type of belief. If we adopt a stance or or a belief and we identify with it creates some kind of inner division with inside of ourselves. You know, if we if begin to activate the opposite tendency with inside of ourselves, the shadow. You know, if we try to be good, we will have to repress that which we conceive of as bad, our bad side.
So our basic sanity is not a particular stance that we take, that it doesn’t create a shadow. It’s like, it’s more like the radiance of the sun. It just shines on everything. It’s unconditional because it’s both beyond our attempts to be good and the shadow which attempts to to which that attempt creates. You know if I try to make if I try to make myself into a good person I’m going to have to be always watchful about what I can see as my bad side coming out.
And this creates a schism inside of ourself. So this is beyond all It is a nature which is beyond all good and bad. Now, Asaṇga, probably another one of the greatest of Indian Buddhist masters trying to describe this Buddha nature, this basic goodness, this sanity which we all possess, using a set of similes. You know, our buddha nature exists, preexists withinside of us but it is obscured, hidden from ourselves. And he’s trying to get across the idea in terms of similes.
A buddha in a muddy lotus, honey covered by bees, grain in its husk, gold in a tray of dross, treasure hidden beneath the earth, a bean in its pod, a statue wrapped in dirty rags, a future king carried in the womb of an ugly woman, a precious object buried in the ground. So, you know, all our our this this jewel of our Buddha nature is obscured by our afflictive emotions. It it we no. It is if we we can’t it’s not apparent to us. So we almost have to trust in what is not apparent.
But we we we can begin to intuit at some level that something is basically right about ourselves, that we have that sense of feeling and we’re trusting in that feeling, that there’s some purity there. So We we cannot we are we always there’s a tendency to to a great extent, our our identity is is rooted in in having, in owning, in manipulating, in controlling, in power, some kind of status. We cannot own our basic goodness. We cannot own our Buddha nature. That is, ego can never own our basic goodness, our Buddha nature, and we have to renounce the temptation to do so.
It is there, but we we can never possess it. We can’t make it as simply another object to add to our collection like like butterflies in a case, a specimen. So, you know, we have to live out of our Buddha nature. That’s we have to be our Buddha nature. You know, we’re giving up our localized approach of our habitual identification with the display of the patterns of ego and beginning to accept a greater world, a greater vision about ourselves.
You know, we can only be our basic goodness. We can only express our Buddha nature. It’s taking a chance, a risk on who we really are. If you believe you can, you’re right. If you So, you know, taking a risk, trusting in one’s basic goodness, and expressing that.
Find you know, the all of the Dharma is simply a means to help us to find expression, to bring it to fruition, so that we be our true Buddha nature. There are some traditions of Buddhism which posit in a way that we are already enlightened. It has it makes some sense. I mean, it’s technically, there’s some difficulty with it. But poetically, feeling wise, practice wise, it it begins it has some appeal.
The Dalai Lama has said this. Now we can debate upon these points philosophically. But but all of the practices are simply help helping us find a way to to make more apparent and to find means of expressing such that we begin to embody our Buddha nature which preexists within all of us. Get in touch with who we really are. So that’s all I wanna say about Buddha nature.
I wanna say a few words about Not about I I think we’ll talk about karma tomorrow morning. But talk about the four opponent powers in connection with the Vajrasattva practice that we’re going to do together. So the I don’t know about you but I’ve committed a few negative actions in my time and I’ll own up to it. So we probably and I have those latencies. I think we probably all have some latencies latencies of past negative karma that we’ve created.
These these you know, the karma our actions leave an impression upon the mind. Actions leave an impression. You know, like like some kind of like a like in a a cassette player, the the tape. Some kind of may I mean, this is analogy. Right?
Some kind of a magnetic impulse. The karmic impressions like an encoding of information, just like a DNA molecule. It is a carrier of information. When that information, when that gene, that molecule comes in contact with the correct environment, it begins to express that information by organizing the material about it in a very specifically organize it in a very specific fashion according to the blueprint which is being carried, the information which is carried in that molecule. It begins to interact with its environment and begins to manipulate and organize and it begins to, for example, to grow a cell.
It’s a carrier of information which has the potentiality to interact and to evolve specific structures, to interact in very specific manners. karma, these impressions, latencies within our mind, our encoded information, when they meet the correct conditions, they begin to interact and begin to organize. What do they begin to organize? One way I think it’s useful to look at is that they begin to organize you know, ties in with emptiness. karma and emptiness are quite the understanding of one facilitates the understanding of the other.
That the if the world does not objectively exist, that it is is brought into existence by the by the process perception itself. That we, roughly speaking, there if there was just this chaos, just colors, shapes, sounds, textures, And the mind is trying to organize this chaos into some coherent patterns to be able to identify, to to be able to gain some kind of control over the chaos. It’s it’s it’s going to begin to to organize this conceptual this this field of sensations along along certain lines. The lines that it’s going to the rules that it’s going to use in organizing the perceptual objects is determined by karma, this encoded information within the mind. There’s latencies.
So what do we mean when we say unskillful karma, skillful karma, always say there’s no moral judgment being made. There’s no one out to get us. The we we are not punished for our karma. We are punished by our karma. It is, you know, we mean by all we mean by a skillful action is a certain type of latency is implanted upon the mind.
A certain type of information is encoded such that it will, when it’s activated by the correct conditions, it will cause us, it will predispose us to organize our situational patterning in such a way that we will experience it as some degree of happiness. Unskillful karma, on the other hand, predisposes to organize the situation, to perceive it in such a way that we experience it as suffering. You know, for example, a very very simple mundane example is if you have a half a glass of water and and you say someone says, well, is that glass half full? Someone says, the glass is half empty. Someone says it’s half full.
So, you know, the the the objective fact is that that it is both or it’s neither. This is half. But the one person takes a particular view and views it as half empty. Another person takes a view as half full. Why does one person have that particular way of of interpreting that same objective fact and the other different?
Perhaps it doesn’t make much difference, but it does when you come to your life view. Some people see the universe as supportive, as inherently good. Some people see it as threatening, as inherently evil, the same universe. This is their karma operating, the way they’re organizing their the attitudes that they bring, the way they’re organizing their environment, the way they they’re they’re looking at the situation. One one will predispose one to more dissatisfaction, the other more happiness.
But everything that is occurring is occurring along those same lines. The reason that we share this common reality is because we share a commonality of ways of organizing our particular reality. We’re all organizing our reality along common lines at this present moment. Therefore we share a common reality, a common situation. So we have committed unskillful actions.
We have left unskillful latencies within the mind. That is to say this kind of encoded information, when it meets the correct conditions, it’s going to begin to organize our thinking patterns in such a way that we’re going to shape and organize and interpret our situation in such a way that we’re going to experience some kind of level of suffering. We don’t want to suffer. I’m just getting around to the fact that we don’t wanna suffer in case you didn’t know that already. Therefore, you know, it’s simply a matter of time until we meet the necessary activating conditions to undergo some degree of suffering or another.
Unless And we haven’t These karmic seeds are not dissipated. They’re not lost. They will remain until they meet their correct conditions, and then they will be activated, then they will find expression unless they’re purified, that is to say destroyed, by means of what are called the four counteracting agents. So this is a method that we can make use of to to what would you say? To diffuse.
Defuse. To take away the potency. What is that? Neutralize. Neutralize.
Neutralize. Neutralize. Neutralize. Neutralize. What do you what happens when you squirt a seed and it loses its it loses its potential to germinate?
What would you Sterilize. I guess sterilize our problem. Anyway, that’s one of the one of the analogies is you take taking a seed and you scorch it. And the the seed is not burnt up, but the its potency is destroyed. It’s not able to be germinated, you know, even if you plant it.
So we can, through the application of these four opponent powers, the counteracting forces, whatever we want to call them, we can sterilize, neutralize, diffuse. Wow. That’s strange. Destroy the potency of these these karmic seeds just such that no matter what kind of circumstances arise, they can never be ripened. They can never express their that information which will bring us suffering.
So the four counteracting powers, and this is what we’re getting around to finally because we’re gonna use these in the Vajrasattva practice which Kimball is going to lead. There are are four counteracting agents. The first is the force of regret, and the second is the force reliance, Third is the fourth force of antidote, and the fourth is the force of reversal. So regret, reliance, antidote, and reversal. The force of regret involves developing a reasoned and healthy sense of regret, contrition toward the negative action.
So it’s important to distinguish between guilt and regret, isn’t it? I don’t think, you know, we can argue on what these terms mean, but we have a sense about what they mean, the word guilt and regret. Guilt you know, regret is simply it’s a healthy reasoned sense, you know, I made a mistake. You know, there’s no self condemnation. There’s no blame.
There’s no putting oneself denigration thinking, oh, this is just an expression about how bad a person I am. I added one and one to make three. I made a mistake. So we we rationally acknowledge our mistakes as mistakes, you know, and we experience a temporary loss of self esteem, temporary. You know, we quit denying the action ever happened.
We we are trying to justify it that somehow we were right. We we quit cease trying to practice self deception or that in we try to understand it we try to rationalize that it was in some way not wrong. So there’s no evasion. There’s no self deception. There’s no moral judgment.
We confront our past actions in the context of understanding ourselves and our realistic limitations, and we assume legitimate responsibility for what we did and the consequences for it. To illustrate it with an anecdote, what we mean by this idea of regret. For those of you who’ve been to India, this is understand this quite readily. You know, three people, they go into an Indian restaurant, really a cheap, greasy spoon Indian restaurant. And quite often, you know, as many of you know, if you have an Indian meal Indian meal, you share the same dishes.
You know, you you share you share various dishes and and you each you have chapatis or rice or something rather than having your everyone having their own individual service. So it so happens that these three people they go to a rest Indian restaurant and they they eat their meal and they come back outside. And immediately one falls over dead. And one begins to roll on the ground holding his stomach writhing in pain. And the third one, it occurs to him.
He’s a clever one of the bunch. He say, well, you know, we just came out of that restaurant. We all just ate the same food, and now this one’s dead and this one’s rolling on the ground writhing. I think my time is coming. And there there there develops a huge sense of regret.
About having eaten that meal. This person is in no way suffering. He’s feeling great, but he knows his time is coming. It’s just a matter of time. So this is the idea behind having committed negative action.
We’re in any pain from it, but we know our time is coming and we made a mistake and we develop a sense of regret. I wish I hadn’t done that. It’s Yeah. No matter what the terrible consequences may have occurred as a result of adding one and one to make three, it’s only a mistake. And there have been tragic results of adding one and one to make three.
I remember when first was writing about this that there was a show, a documentary or a movie on television about the New Zealand airplane that flew into the mountain in Antarctica. And it was very much to do with a computer misprogramming. A guy wrote a wrong program and his plane flew into the side of the mountain and killed a few hundred people. He made a mistake with tragic consequences but it was only a mistake. You know, it’s very sad but it was only a mistake.
It didn’t reflect anything about his nature, about who he was. So that’s our situation. We we deserve all the happiness that we get. We’ve created it it’s appropriate to us and that we’re not in anyone’s debt. And likewise, any suffering which we experience is also appropriate to what we have done.
However, you know, yeah, so the force of regret, developing this sense of regret. The important, this is the most important amongst these four. Without, they are only effective to the degree we develop a sincere, genuine regret for our negative actions. Otherwise, there’s no way to purify them. There’s you know, Buddhism, there’s no magic involved.
We created them and it is only we ourselves who can destroy them. And the most forceful of these four counteracting agents is this strong sense of healthy regret. Acknowledging our mistakes as mistakes, quit ceasing trying to justify them, saying they weren’t wrong. They were wrong. I made a mistake.
I wish I hadn’t done that. It’s the a force of regret. The second one is the force of reliance. So there are there’s there’s said to be two objects toward whom we can we can create negative actions. One is the Buddha and one is ordinary beings.
So we we we create negative actions against the Buddha. You know, for example, sometimes when you know, we always aren’t I don’t know if you’ve you’ve experienced this yourself, but sometimes we always aren’t thinking the best we can. We’re not always using our best judgment, being clear about our goals, about how to go about them. We’re not always as skillful as we could be. So but as an as an aid, it’s quite often useful to take a vow.
That is to say, sometime in the when you’re really clear about what you want, about the nature of your situation, the nature of of the context in which you’re you’re you live. You may think, well, it would be a good idea for me to give up killing because, you know, one thinks, you know, like, I how you know, all living beings, just like myself, they want to be happy, they don’t want to suffer. And if I go, you know, if I go sport fishing, you know, that’s just that’s tremendously selfish. I’m causing suffering to these things, and I know they don’t want to suffer. Well, I just think of myself some few minutes of good time.
And one thinks in this way in a clear sighted manner. He said, I’m not gonna do it anymore. You know? I’m gonna commit myself. Maybe make a formal vow.
I’m not gonna I’m not gonna go sport fishing anymore. I’m not gonna go fishing anymore. And then a couple days later, your friend calls you up and said, that’s it. It’s a holiday. Beautiful day.
Let’s go fishing. Say, yeah. Yeah. Let’s go fishing. No.
Sorry. Can’t go. A vow this this this commitment actually helps to interrupt our habitual patterns which would find expression when we aren’t thinking very clearly, which in our normal modes of behavior we automatically enact. A vow helps us to protect those times when we’re not operating from our wisdom, when we’re not operating from our love, when we’re confused, when we’re in anger, when we’re in attachment. That’s the purpose of vow.
If we always thought clearly, if we always had wisdom, always had love, we wouldn’t need any vow, no problem. We would always act appropriately in the best interest of both ourselves and others but we don’t act that way because we’re always not clear sighted, we always don’t have wisdom and love operating in our life. So vows help us to carry through this moment. So we take the vows in order to facilitate the expression. We’re trying to by breaking a vow, we are as if turning our back on Buddha, the Buddha withinside of ourselves.
To to