Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this two-and-a-half-hour session — day one of an Emptiness Weekend retreat — with a map-and-territory analogy: mental models can correspond to findable reality or, like Tolkien’s Middle Earth, point to nothing real at all. He uses this to frame the central question: is our habitual sense of a solid, unchanging, independent self a valid map or a fiction? A lemon thought-experiment (participants salivate at the imagined fruit) and a wartime hypnosis anecdote illustrate how the mind mistakes mere appearance for reality. He then identifies three features of the fantasized self — partless, unchanging, independent — before leading a guided meditation in which participants search for the “I” through the six elements of body and mind, dismembering each in turn, and arrive at unfindability. The session closes with group debrief and a preview of day two on dependent arising and the conventionally existing I. Well-suited to curious newcomers; no Buddhist background assumed.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 EW 2011 03 05.mp3
UUID: a00af6d0-b88c-4994-bd2a-6af2a1abdba2
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Emptiness Weekend (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2011-03-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 155.2 minutes
Words: ~14,176
Territory. Yeah. So, you know, we we can use a map, you know, we can to get us where we want to go. Know, drive it well, make a left here, make a right here, and so forth. It can we can understand things.
We can it’s very useful. It’s functional. But but you can’t drive on those little black lines and little you know, there’s no restaurants in those little blue dots. The map is not the reality. The map is not the territory.
We have mental maps which we use to navigate our life. Some of those maps correspond to a findable reality. You know, for you know, which most of our maps, you you you have in your gut compartment, you know, oh, there’s a there’s a rest you know, there’s a there’s a restaurant coming up. And you can or if you got the anyway. GPS.
GPS. You you there’s there’s something which corresponds it, which is findable in reality. You know? There’s some maps which don’t correspond to reality, like, you know, like, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. You know, if you if you if you look at his book, there’s a map of Middle Earth.
No matter I I suppose in the middle how much you search, you’re never never gonna find all those really fantastic places which Tolkien is describing. There’s a map, but it doesn’t correspond to anything definable reality. There are maps which correspond to a definable reality, and there are maps which don’t correspond to a definable reality. We have so there are representations, there are models which correspond to a definable reality, and there are models representations which don’t. There is a model, a representation of very apparent basis in which we have a sense of unchanging, partless, independent I as a model.
And we identify that. We re using it as a basis of how we re going to relate with the world. Many types of emotions and various types of attitudes rely upon that particular model. They’re dependent upon that, you know, otherwise they don’t make any sense. When we search, we have that model, but when we search, we can’t find those restaurants.
Can’t find Middle Earth. There’s nothing which corresponds to it. The model exists. We grasp to it. That which is doing the grasping at the reality, the truth of that, we call ignorance.
All conceptual consciousnesses, and what I mean by conceptual consciousness, are consciousness which understands objects by way of an idea, by way of a model, by way of a map, by way of representation. They don’t understand the object by the force of the object itself but by our idea about the object. Okay? All this is for this reason that Buddhism would hold that all conceptual consciousness are mistaken consciousness. Why?
Because we mistake the appearance for the reality. Okay? It’s not to say they’re not valid. I know this sounds confusing. How can a mistaken consciousness be valid?
It’s mistaken in the sense that we take the map to be the real thing, but it’s valid. Why? Because I I can use that map to find that actual city or that actual street. If I if if it corresponds to some findable reality, it’s valid. Some of these models correspond to a findable reality.
So Sorry. I guess you could call the ego the map, because you still need the ego, you know? That’s the like, you could compare the map with the ego. You still need the ego to get to the place, but Okay. Do you know what I mean?
When we were talking about the ego is necessary at times, even though it’s not the reality of who we are, but we still need the ego to find a way in life sometimes. So, yeah, this psychological structure? Yeah. That does thinking, planning, discriminating, all these that’s yeah. So when I’m saying you could compare the ego almost with the map, you know, the ego playing the map in that sort of analogy The map is an idea.
The map is not the reality. It’s not the thing itself. So I don’t know if we can compare it. We can say the ego is a model. I don’t know if we can say the ego is a map or an idea.
The ego finds you — helps you navigate your way in life sometimes? It does navigate it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That’s true. That’s true. That’s true. Okay. Thought what I’d like to kinda bring this home and just try a thought experiment.
So this will take this experiment will take about two minutes. Okay? So, just maybe just close your eyes. Okay? This is a little thought experiment.
And, imagine that you’re in your kitchen at home and you get out the cutting board and a a knife and you set it on the counter there and you there’s a bowl of fruit and so forth and there’s a lemon there. And reach over and pick up the lemon and notice it’s how it’s yellow color, its dimples. You bring it, you know, the hardness, the coldness of the peel skin and bring it to your nose and just imagine inhaling that lemon y scent. It smells very pleasant. And then you put it down on the cutting board and you pick up your knife and you begin to cut that lemon in half.
And the juice begins to squirt out and you slice it in half, there’s juice running along all over the cutting board and so forth. And you pick up half of that lemon, you put it in the palm of your hand and you lean your head back and you squeeze that lemon. You feel the drops of lemon trickling down your tongue to the back of your throat and squeezing the lemon juice into your mouth. Okay. That’s okay.
I just wanna I just wanna check the how many people in the course of that saliva flowed? Yeah. I swallowed. I swallowed it too. Yes.
Okay. So why is that? We know there’s no lemon there. Part of us knows there’s no limit there, but part of us believes there’s lemon in there, and we react physiologically as if there was an actual, in fact, limb in there. How do we know that part of us believes that the existence of a lemon?
Because of the physical reaction. We salivate. So we take what is merely an appearance, what is appearing to imagination. Part of us has taken it to be reality. It’s for that reason that even though we can dismiss it in our minds, oh, I just imagine there was a lemon, part of us believes it’s reality.
It’s for that reason that all conceptual consciousnesses are mistaken. Part of us believes the reality of what is merely appearance. But if in the case of these maps and so forth, if we can’t find anything in reality, not only is that conceptual consciousness mistaken, it is also a wrong consciousness. So in fact, ignorance, ignorance, hatred, attachment, pride, jealousy, they’re all wrong consciousnesses. There is nothing which corresponds to the object which is appearing to us while we’re in the state of these emotions.
That object and it sounds strange, I think, to say this, but the object that you’re angry at does not exist as it is appearing to you. You know, at the moment, you’re like, I can’t stand you. As that person is appearing to you, they don’t exist. Just you you won’t be able to find that person as they’re appearing to after their reality. There’s always an exaggeration of some sort or a depreciation.
There’s imbalance of mind. We’re not seeing the object as it actually is. Yeah. So this is what we’re trying to get at here. There is a model of an unchanging, independent self.
We can’t deny that. It appears to us. We grasp that model as being real, as being true. That part of our mind which is grasping at that model to be true, to be real, we call ignorance. Try we investigate that object to see whether we can find it, just like in the case of the snake.
The snake appears. We can’t deny that. There’s an appearance. But what we can begin to investigate is whether there’s anything which corresponds to that appearance in reality. Is there in fact a snake there?
One of our most fundamental beliefs is a belief in a self. Our experiences are laden in the theory of a self. Our experiences are conditioned by a belief in a self, contain our beliefs. Experiences are constructed on that. I’ll just read a a so that’s it’s easy, but it’s somewhat of a long quotation.
It’s just describing something, I think, which kind of brings this home, this notion of how we construct a reality and in dependence upon this belief in this type of self. Several years ago, when I was moderating a seminar of psychiatrists and clinicians, the real dimensions of this affirmation process were brought home in a very simple and powerful way. When we were discussing the use of hypnosis in therapy, at some point during the discussion one of the participants began to speak in a manner that riveted everyone’s attention. He was a psychoanalyst, the oldest and most respected member present. Only once in my life, he said, did I ever use hypnosis with a patient.
It was in the Second World War when I was in the Swiss Army. There was this poor soldier in front of me and for some reason I decided to test whether or not he would be susceptible to post hypnotic suggestion. I easily brought him into a trance and simply by way of experiment I suggested to him that after he awoke he would stamp his foot three times whenever I stamped my fingers. All perfectly standard procedure. After I brought him out of the trance state and we spoke for a while, I dismissed him And just as he was about to leave the room, I snapped my fingers.
He immediately responded and stamped his foot according to my suggestion. Wait a minute, I shouted. Tell me, why did you stamp your foot? His face suddenly turned beet red. Damn it all, he said.
I’ve got something in my shoe. The speaker slowly puffed on his pipe and his face became extremely serious. The rest of us could not understand why he seemed to be making so much fuss of what was a well known phenomenon, a post hypnotic fabrication. But he maintained his silence, staring somberly down the length of his pipe. No one else said a word.
It was obvious he was trying to formulate something that he took to be quite important. Then with his face suddenly as open as a child, he looked up at me and said, Do you think the whole of our psychic life is like that? Do you think, he said, that every moment we make, every word we say, every thought we have is like that? Could it be that we are always fabricating in a very sort of low grade hypnotic haze. Because there’s one thing I am quite sure of, though only now I am certain do I begin to see its importance.
The moment I asked the soldier why he stamped his foot, there was a split second when he realized that he had not done anything at all, a moment when he realized the fact that was simply that his foot stamped the ground all by itself. By asking him why he had stamped his foot, I was in effect suggesting to his mind that he had stamped, that he had done something. In short, I was still hypnotizing him, or rather I was playing into the general process of hypnosis that is going on all the time with all of us from the cradle to the grave. The contradiction made him blush and the true facts about the foot stamping were blotted out of awareness. So the decision informs the perception.
Believing that such a self must exist, we perceive its existence. Most of what we take as indicating a self merely indicates a belief in a self and cannot be used as proof or evidence that such a type of self exists. The mere sense or appearance of a self cannot be used as evidence for the existence of a self. This is in the case the mere appearance of a snake cannot be used as proof of the existence of that snake. The power of thought enables us to construct symbols of things apart from those things themselves.
With this, we can construct a model of an I, a self, and we view the world through these representations by way of these models. So thus far it’s not a problem, but what can happen is we learn to identify what is in fact a model, a construct, a very complicated idea. The model seems much more stable, secure than the actual reality. It’s hard to keep track of who I am, in fact. Know, one morning I wake up, I’m thinking this way.
Another morning I’m thinking that way. We want some kind of consistency. We want some kind of dependability and reliability in knowing who we are, what we feel, and what we believe in. You know, the idea of a constantly changing self, which is moment by moment undergoing different attitudes and ways of viewing and thinking, like, all these competing forces in our mind, this committee of mind, you know, all these voices sitting around this table, all vying with one another. You know, it’s hard to deal with.
We would much prefer some kind of reliable, concrete, dependable, secure sense of who we are. So we we we grasp on to that. This is who I am. This is why it’s so hard to change. One of the reasons it’s so hard to change.
These are symbols that we’re making use of. I think it it feels to me like it’s harder to keep that up, keep propping all these things up. It’s just it’s It’s harder than It’s not hard, but it’s hard. It’s damn hard. We’re just a constant struggle.
There’s no peace. Nothing. We’re even having to defend or confirm ourselves constantly to keep keep keep this thing going. But I agree. But I’m not sure if it’s harder.
Well, I found it harder. I think Yeah? Harder. That’s a good one. Than rolling with change.
And rolling with change. It’s harder to prop up this imaginary self, if you like. Yeah. And keep away the stories going, you know, rather than rolling with change, if you like. Understand??
So you you roll with change? Well, I roll more with it now. Yeah? How does that play? Fluently, but it seems to work better than trying to prop up the illusion.
What do you mean by wanting to change that? Just sort you change every single day to the events of your life, or how do I understand what you mean by wanting to change? I suppose not being attached so much to very interesting question. Yeah. But didn’t understand what you were saying at the moment.
Well, I’d say believing You say, like, would I do the thing? Oh, I’m not so much No. I’m saying, like, your own positive affirmations. Well, you know, who I thought I was before Yeah. Just it’s too hard to prop up.
It doesn’t really So it’s a more easy going to life that way? If you like. Yeah. It doesn’t really exist. I’ll let go of that.
The more free you were. Yeah. Okay. Good. Yeah.
It’s it’s you know, even in a very kind of a mundane well, at the practical level, I would you know, we have ideas about what it is to be a man, what is to be a woman, what to be a mother, what it is to be a father, and that we and we we feel bad about ourselves when we don’t quite live up to these stories in one way or another. And we it’s hard to, you know, to to let go of those stories, to see that they’re just a learned way of being. They’re just models in our mind. So we’re talking any other comments about what we’ve been talking about thus far? I would say I don’t know how to say this very eloquently, but I’ll just say just briefly from what I heard that gentleman saying there.
I think that in in our spiritual searches, we sometimes reach a point where we actually do have breakthroughs that we come and listen to people talk about how to see more truth in ourselves Mhmm. And being open to that. Sounds to me like a breakthrough. Mhmm. Anyway, sorry.
Didn’t wanna. I just wanted to to kind of affirm that. Yeah. No. It’s That’s great.
Oh, it’s great. Yeah. I feel a hell of a lot more balanced, if you like. Yeah. Yeah.
It’s hard to explain. Are actually Buddhist now? Or I I just noticed this may have done it this way. You actually have a Jesus Christ around your neck. Is that sort Oh, it’s not.
Okay. That’s why I I suppose probably Yeah. It’s not. No. My friends that are doing Buddhists and some Christian views, three or four mates have got three different versions of their mind that make up their own truth and some Christian stuff, some Buddhist stuff, some other sort of spiritual stuff, and that goes, that’s fine.
It’ll do some fine dandy. So what I’d like to do is talk about so we we we want to get a sense of the model, this appearance, this representation of a particular I that we identify as who in fact I am, this cell. And then we subject that to analysis, just as in the case of the snake. Is there anything which corresponds to that snake in reality? Can we actually find it?
So we have to develop a very so what what I’m doing is is simply suggesting, and when I talk about a partless unchanging, independent self, I’m simply pointing out some of the prominent features of this very basic notion or idea, this model that we have of a self. Self will have many, many more qualities than that. You know, we have many, many selves that we grasp onto, but the foundation of those various selves is this self which has the most prominent features of being part less, unchanged, and independent. So I want to be able to identify that. And then we would subject that to analysis.
Can having identified that self, can I actually find it if I if I look, if I actually search? Does that make sense? Want to understand selflessness. We come to understand the non existence of that self. We have to look, we have to know what we’re looking for, and then we search for it, and we I guess I’m telling you what you’re going to come out with, but we search for it, and when we are unable to find it, what we find is its nonexistence.
We find the bliss of selflessness. So what are these three qualities? I’m just going to describe them. This is the hardest in the discussion of selflessness or emptiness, which we’re going to elaborate on, move on to. It is the most difficult of developing an understanding is what it is we’re really looking for.
You know, we can Intellectually, I can talk about the partless unchanging independent self till the cows come home. But we want to develop a sense, a feel. What does that look like? What does it feel like? How do I actually experience it?
I can’t stand you. You know, normally when we and most always when we have a strong emotional experience, all of our attention is directed toward the object of the experience. I can’t stand you. You. You.
I have to have you. We’re beginning to have a sense of what does the subject look like of this experience? The eye which can’t do the standing, the eye which has to have you, what does that eye look like? So normally we’re completely involved in the objects of our awareness, but here we’re trying to get a sense of how that subject of that awareness appears. So this isn’t easy.
It is the most we’re trying to identify that snake. In the case of that, it’s maybe fairly easy. But identifying the subject of these various emotional experiences is not easy. Why? Because we’re habituated to directing our attention toward the object of our emotional experiences.
It’s you that are causing me all these problems. If it weren’t for you, I’d be happy. You know, not the I who’s the one who’s angry. So you’re observing the thinker of We’re observing the subject of that experience. So there’s in all conscious states, there is subject object.
Consciousness is a subject. It is aware of an object. More than not, our complete attention is directed toward objects. Here we have to begin to have a sense of what the subject of this conscious state appears like, what does it look like, and we’re giving ourselves some kind of hints or indications. Yeah?
One of these is that it appears partless. Now I know this this is not easy to do. You’re gonna say, well, I really don’t feel that way. You know, like, when you I can’t I can’t stand I. What does that eye how does it appear to you?
There’s like an eye in it encompasses both our body and mind with without any distinctions, without any features, homogenous, featureless, singular mass. I. I can’t stand you. The I is beginning we’re getting a sense of how the eye feels, how what it looks like. It’s like, you know and these are just things that I play with in my own mind.
You know, it’s like, know, you’re laying in in and it’s pitch black in your room. And you have a sense that there’s something you know, you’re lying on your bed. There’s something out there looming over you. You know? It’s like you can’t there’s nothing distinct about it.
You just have a sense of something as if you could reach out and you touch something. So there’s a sense of some kind of mass, homogenous eye unit without any particular features. I don’t know. These are I find this hard to talk about. Getting that I can’t stand you.
I can’t that’s you know, I guess the best I can do is try to communicate a feeling, a sense, rather than it’s very articulated and described in various detail, what we’re trying to get a sense of. The second part was is unchanging. This I unit, it encompasses the entirety of my life in an unchanging manner without any distinctions in the stages of my life. You know, I was born in such and such a town. I moved to such and such a city.
I went to such and such a school. I got married, and I moved, and then I will eventually grow old, age, and eventually I will die. So there are all these various stages that we go through over the course of our life. This I doesn’t seem to be undergoing those various changes. There’s a thread of I ness.
There’s always an I ness involved in my experiences, and this sense of I ness never changes. It’s always there, constant, steady. It’s like and this is just another sense that I these are examples which may be of use. It’s like, you know, an old an old woodsman’s axe. Yeah?
He’s even though this axe has had three new handles and one new blade, to him it’s been its constant companion over the entire life. You know, is the axe where which I chopped my first tree down seventy five years ago out in the woods in Tasmania. You know, I wouldn’t trade this axe for anything in world. There’s a notion it’s always been there, unchangingly so, even though in reality it’s had different handles, different blade. But still, it’s always been there as its constant companion and he’s very attached to it.
So there’s this sense, this I is not undergoing any changes. It’s permanent. It’s always there. Constant, fixed, static. I’m just trying to think of other words.
Has to be cruel on you. Okay? Getting to feel, sense. I and then finally, independent. And body.
It appears not to rely upon mind. You know, like when I said, you know, I’m the best thing that ever came to Adelaide. You know, am the best thing. You know, when I say that, I’m not referring to my mind. You know, this is the best mind that ever came to my head.
Like, maybe Well, this is the best body that ever came to head. Some people say that. I don’t know. I couldn’t say. But I am the best thing.
There’s something that’s there’s something which is set apart from the body and mind, which I’m identifying with, which doesn’t depend upon my body and mind, which is the best thing that ever came to have it. That I, which exists in dependence upon body, mind, independent of causes and conditions, my society, and so forth. Sometimes I have a karmic which I couldn’t find. It’s about anyway, maybe I can describe it. It’s two boys walking home from school.
It’s three boxes. It’s a cartoon. And in the first box, you know, they’re both walking together and he’s showing he’s got his report from his exam. He’s got his exam result. And he’s saying to the other boy, he said, You know, that new teacher really did a number on me.
In the second box it says, I thought I’d get a B on that report, and he gave me a C. In the third box it says, How did he know I was a C student? Now, you know, there was a new teacher who came, and he figured, hey. This teacher doesn’t know who I am, really. I can I can pull the wool over his eyes?
I can pretend to be somebody else. I can pretend to be a B student. But this teacher was too sharp. He saw through that that masquerade, that pretense. This kid’s a C student.
They’re deaf about it. Know? Some kind of scene is kind of oozing out of his skin. Know, he’s to go on to find a C grade wife and have C grade children, teach them how to be C grade people. There’s something inherently by its very nature that’s seamless about them, and anybody with any experience could say, obviously, the kids see.
So that’s the sense we have, and this is a very kind of mundane example. But regardless of, you know, who, you know, the standards of our society, you know, where do I, in this context, I’m a B, maybe in this context I’m a D, we have a fixed notion. I’m this much beautiful, I’m this much intelligent, I can expect this much out of my life. It’s pretty fixed, in dependence upon our conditioning, in dependence upon the social setting, the context, but also independent of body and mind. A fixed, independent sense of self identity, which doesn’t really which we hold on to as fixed, unchanging.
This is who I really am. I can’t be any other way. You know, it’s like it’s like you know, we have this notion when we describe just now that the leaves are beginning to change, and we describe the change of the color of the leaves. There’s a leaf hanging from a tree, we well, first the leaf was green and then it turned red, then it turned yellow, then it turned brown. In talking this way about this change in leaf, it’s as if there could be a leaf hanging from that tree without any color.
Like, if we scraped away the color, there would be a substratum at the core, which would be a leaf without any color. There is something which is unwilling to change. There’s some core. You know, it’s not as if the leaf is the change. That you know, it’s like I remember when I was a kid you guys you guys won’t remember this.
This is when they had horses and buggies. But but, anyway, they used to have these you know, nowadays, they have all these I don’t even know what to call them. These these gangs. Yeah. When I was a kid, we used to have potato men.
Oh, And and you get this you get this sack full of different plastic parts, and and you get yourself a big potato, and you stick a head on it, and you stick some arms up. Thank you. You know? And this was the core. This this this was the core.
And and you would you would apply a different, you know, a smiley face or you could apply different attributes to it, but there was a core to who it was. And in essence, there’s a core to who we are, unchanging, fixed, and we apply different attributes, you know. I now have a BA in psychology. That’s one of my attributes. I’m able to run a twenty kilometer marathon.
That’s one of my attributes. So it’s still the same potato. We’re just applying different features to it. Just like that leaf which is undergoing these changes, but there’s some kind of substratum which is always there to which these colors are you know, if you scrape away the colors, there’s the core of the leaf. That’s the notion that we have about ourselves.
There’s something at the core of our being, and we’re just changing the cosmetics. You know, we add a little lippy here and a little glossier and mascara there, but the core of our being remains pretty well fixed, and we try manipulate some the grosser qualities about ourselves. But on the whole, we’re pretty much fixed in terms of who we, at the depth of our being, in fact are. We exist independent of our body, independent of our mind, independent of all these various causes and conditions. So the basic notion here is in order to stop our suffering, and I’m going to come eventually, I’m going come around to your question.
I thought ignorance There is nothing more important than to realize that when we under the influence of ignorance, we think and act as if the body and mind constituted or possessed a part of this unchanging independent self, we are attributing qualities to them to the body and mind which they do not possess at all. It is nothing but diversity. Now, when I say partless, we’re made up of many parts. We’re made up of body and mind, but we’re also in terms of our mind. How many different personalities do we have?
We’d like to see usually we identify with a dominant personality. But I know I have this critic in me. I know I have a parent. I know I have a hurt child. I know, you know, I have this adult, very mature and healthy.
You know, there are all these different sub personalities. They’re always vying within my own, within my mind. I usually identify more strongly with one that this is more or less who I am. But in fact, we’re a diversity. We’re not a single I unit.
Yeah? We’re not partless. I am not partless. I’m changing. You know, we’re we’re undergoing constant change, you know, both physically and mentally from moment to moment.
We try to hold on to the stories, this biography that we have about ourselves, but that’s just a fantasy about I’m this much or I’m that much, much and I have this quality. We try to secure ourselves in some kind of permanency, but in fact there’s nothing to hold on to. One day we’re well, one day we’re sick in terms of our body. Our body ages and so forth. One day we’re happy, another day we’re unhappy.
One day we’re, you know, we’re we act with the wisdom of the Buddha. Next day we act with tremendous stupidity. You know? Constant change involved. And independent.
You know? I’m I’m dependent. I’m dependent upon you know? When when we when we when we meditate this morning, how do you prove you’re sitting on the cushion? What reasoning?
How do you establish that? Why? Because I’m sitting on the cushion. Why? Because my body’s sitting on the cushion.
I’m dependent upon my body. Whatever my body does, I say I do. If my body if my toe is hurt, I say I am hurt. If my mind is happy, I say I’m happy. I’m dependent upon body and mind.
Yeah. I’m dependent upon causes and conditions. If I eat well, I’ll probably be healthier. If I don’t, I’ll probably be sick. If I, you know, if I meditate, I’ll probably be healthier.
If I don’t, I’ll probably not. So we’re dependent upon all these various changing causes and conditions, both mental and physical. We’re dependently arising, but we don’t think of ourselves in that way. You know, it is our persistent effort to treat our bodies and minds if they were something more than just this constantly changing, diverse, dependent mental and physical events that makes our body and minds a constant stream of suffering, the struggle that we’re always involved in one way or another. Does it make sense?
It’s a little bit disappointing, though. I’m sorry. You can go maybe you should go back. It’s been a little messy. Go ahead.
Because I like to think that there is something to hold on to. Why do you need that? Why do you suppose you need that? Now it’s a good it’s a good point. I’m not I’m not trying to debate that.
Just, anyway, explore it. Why do I need that? Why why why yeah. I don’t know why I need it. I just I don’t know why I need it.
Well, it’s less scary, though. Yeah. The devil you know, perhaps. The devil you know. Yeah.
That’s supposed to come back to fear and wanting to know something. Wanting to know the meaning of something in a way that’s reassuring. What would reassure you in this idea? What would it be that would reassure you? You’re looking in a way that’s reassuring.
Well, what used to reassuring to me was the things about my identity that I thought were important to society. Okay. But as I’ve meditated, I don’t know what I’m anyway, I’ll just answer your question. But Yeah. As I’ve meditated, what I realized about myself, what I believe I’m learning is that what is most important about myself is my ability to love.
Great. That’s great. So that’s that’s that’s what my my understanding of my point of the point of this. The point of being, you know, the point of trying to grow, trying to learn is trying to how do I how do I become a more loving, compassionate being? And that’s different to the identity, I think, that I had when I was a younger person Yeah.
When I was much more impressionable. Yeah. And it? And and I I recognize something inside myself that needs to know that needs to know and hang on to something that’s that’s true. And I, you know, I’m talking to No.
I think I think what you’re getting at is I think it’s terribly important. I want it. You haven’t talked a lot about spiritual growth, but I I know that’s not what your talk is about. Your talk is about emptiness. My my, I suppose, one of the things that motivated me to come here today, because I’m very interested in spiritual growth, and a lot of the things that you’ve talked about been very helpful in learning about spiritual growth.
But you’re talking you’re you’re very you’re talking about terms that are new to me. So I’m very interested to know more about about that whole kind of world of terms. And also, I’m interested to know, you know, here I am. I don’t know a lot about Buddhism. I don’t know I’m trying to learn more about emptiness.
And I’m trying to understand what you’re saying about the core not existing, the core of the self not existing, because there is something inside all of us that this this self that we want to be certain about. Yeah. I appreciate it. Yeah, I was what you’re saying remind me of a book that I read last month. It was it was titled on being authentic.
And the the idea of authenticity was always something that was quite important to me. And there was a notion that underneath underneath it all, there was some real me, and that for various reasons, maybe out of fear or some kind of need to be loved or to please and so forth, I would pretend to be somebody else. And I’ve always felt I was a pretense. I was I was there was a performance. So this idea of authenticity has always been fairly important to me.
And in his book, pointed out something very, very interesting, that what this the the notion of some core being who I really really am, well, I I don’t think we’ll ever find that because it may, in fact, never exist. We are what we do. Yeah. What we can do is make a commitment in terms of our way of being in this world. We can in terms of the values we can getting in touch with certain values which we feel are important and committing ourselves to enacting those values in our everyday life.
And this author, this is what this author would describe as being authentic, deciding the kind of person that you want to be and doing just that. It requires a kind of courage in the sense that, know, really want the easy way out. We want to be swept away by love, where we don’t have to make decisions, we where things our love becomes easy. But to choose to love consistently, to make that kind of commitment, is not easy. And there’s no there’s no core that we can rely upon to do that.
There’s an ongoing choice that we’re continually making, and you you that and this is the way that we lead our lives. There’s nothing at the core of our being which is going to make it easier for us, we can just say, I could just be myself. We create ourselves. Every day, day by day. Yeah.
So you direct yourself. Who do I want to be? You want to be a loving person. Well, the way you do that is to do is to express love in all the little decisions, the the the pathways of our daily life. And then that’s the way you create a loving person.
Maybe there’s no inherently Maybe we have to responsibility for that. I don’t know. I’m getting on thin ice here. What do you think? I think that sounds beautiful, and I think that I think that I think that we are inherently loved by our Yeah.
Creator, for want of a better word. And I think that we can’t actually step outside of our beloved identity. I think our core identity is beloved. And so with what I have read bits and pieces of Thomas Merton and Buddhism Yeah. I I I hear that reflected, and I’m I’m probably reducing it and simplifying a little too much.
But it it I find it very helpful, and it is true to me. And I I suppose what I’m struggling with is I don’t wanna do I believe that because I want to believe that or do I believe that because it’s true? I do have this firm belief that we are beloved and and that we do as we as we grow spiritually we actually reflect qualities, the divine qualities that are part of our basic goodness. That’s just my my view of the world Yeah. And and who I am and who people really are.
So I I believe that there is a core identity, and that that that is that we’re beloved. And we’re beloved. Yeah. I I think you may in fact be right. Yeah.
Well, that’s good to know. Yeah. Perhaps, you know, all of what we’re saying in the development of wisdom is simply preparing us to be able to actually experience that even at a deeper level, to get many of hindrances out of the way, of actually being that and feeling that. And I wisdom is just another way to learn how to love, to be loved, I think. The, I think the, you know, the core of spiritual life is is compassion, is love, and wisdom is can assist us as a way of realizing it more and more, I think.
Any other? I thought shall we shall we meditate? I want to Just to we’re going to play around with this idea in the meditation so if you’d like to stand up and take a stretch and then we’ll sit. Okay, shall we give it a go? Now, you know, there’s one of the meditative methods to kind of carry out this investigation that we’ve been talking about as to the nature of, you know, working with the eye and coming to a realization of selflessness is called the what are called the four essentials.
This is called the four keys. Yes. It’s, I think, four point analysis. Different different titles. But in this process, you know, we just as in the case of seeing the snake where there was a rope, there’s is the appearance of a snake, and then we investigate at that place where we see the snake to see whether in fact there is a snake there or not in reality.
An eye, a very solid concrete eye appears to us. So we, again, we do the same thing. We investigate at the place where that very solid concrete eye appears, investigating to see whether that eye exists in reality. And the vicinity where it’s appearing is around the body and mind. Yeah.
It’s appearing somewhere over here. So this is where we look. So in this four essentials, and, you know, we are this is would require quite a lengthy explanation, but I just want to give you a sense of one of these essentials. I just list them so that so that you’ll be able you know, you can have that information. The first essential is that I do what is called identifying the object.
It’s a rather technical term. Identifying the object negation. That is, say, we’re identifying how this appears. And as I mentioned previously, this is the most difficult but also the most important step in this process, that we’re identifying how the snake appears. Here we’re identifying how the eye appears, but not in general, but as an emotional response when we get emotionally upset in some way or another.
How does that eye appear? So we’re looking at the subject of our experience. That for whom this experience is happening, that for whom it’s being harmed or denied. The basic movement of the mind is in terms of approach or avoidance. Yeah.
The mind at peace is at rest. When it begins to engage, it either approaches or avoids. Then there arises a sense of an I who is involved in this process, is being impacted upon in some way, either negatively or positively. If it’s negatively, then it wants to avoid or it wants to remove the object, it wants to attack, get rid of. If it’s being impacted upon positively, it wants to approach, it wants to possess, incorporate, bring it into itself.
So anyway, we want to identify the object negation. In this case, partless, unchanging, independent self. It’s just the case with the snake. The second we say, Well, if it exists, if it exists, then if that I exists, it must be either the same as the body and mind or it must be different than the body and mind. Yeah.
It has to be one of the two ways. Yeah. There’s no other third possibility. You know, we’re trying to to to use a very precise process where the mind can’t kind of find a way out. It’s it’s going to be it’s going to have to make a leap.
It’s going to have to come to some kind of really definite conclusion. It can’t sort of say, well, if I had looked harder, I would have found it. Or if I had proceeded in a more detailed fashion, I would have found it. We have to come to the conclusion, if it’s there, I would have found it. I didn’t.
This is what begins to undermine ignorance, the surety in when we are unable to find the object that we’re looking for, that it doesn’t exist. If it did exist, I would have found it. I didn’t find it. Therefore, it doesn’t exist. If that snake would have existed, I would have found it.
I didn’t find it. It doesn’t exist. And that is, you know, it’s this surety, this conviction, and in order to have that, we have to have a method whereby the mind can’t sort of find some fault in our procedure. If only I’d looked further, I would have found it. If only I had looked differently, I would have found it, you know, the way we normally go through life, in one way or another.
So this is called the essential of ascertaining to pervasion. If it exists, it must be the same as the body and mind or different than the body and mind. This is where it appears. And then we actually investigate both of those. The essential ascertaining the lack of being the same.
We investigate whether this self is the same as the body and mind. Okay? Then we investigate to see whether this self is different from the body and mind. At the end, if we can’t find that self, we have to say, I know what I was looking for. I know it has to be either the same or is different than the body and mind.
I looked, it wasn’t the same as the body and mind. I looked, it’s not different than the body and the mind. If it exists, it must be either one of those two. It’s not either of those two. Gosh, it must not exist.
That’s weird. It’s something like that. Maybe not we’re going to play with this, okay? We’re just familiarizing ourselves with this procedure and we’re just going to play with one idea. We’re going to investigate in terms of whether we can find it within the body and mind.
We’re to go through a very detailed working through the body in terms of the elements of the body. In Buddhism, one way of analyzing the nature of the world is in terms of the six elements: earth, water, fire, wind energy, fire, space, and consciousness. So everything in the universe is a combination of one or more of these six elements, these six forces or principles. So it’s a simple it’s a useful way of breaking things down into the most simple particles, and we can investigate the nature of the self in terms of these elementary particles. So we’re going to proceed in that way.
We’re going work through the body. The earth element, the water element. The earth element are the solid, hard substances in the body like the bones and the teeth. So what we’re going to do is, first we’re going to try to develop a sense of how this eye looks. Becomes most apparent to ourselves under strong emotional it becomes most vivid and solid when we’re undergoing some kind of a strong emotional experience.
You know, I can’t I can’t stand you. You know, that that kind of sense. So what, you know, we get a sense of what that I must look like. Here we’re giving some hints or we’re giving some, you know, some features that it probably appears to be partless, unchanging, and independent. Okay?
Then once we’re to look for that, and we’re going to proceed through the body and mind, and we’re going to proceed through in terms of these six elementary principles or elements of the body and mind, the earth elements. So we, you know, we’ve got it like, you know, like, there’s wanted posters, you know, wanted for creating suffering, you know, known known to be dangerous. This is what I’m looking for. We begin at the top of our head with the hair. Now what we’re do is mentally, physically.
And is this the eye, the self? Yeah, I know what I’m looking for. Is this the permanent part of this unchanging cell? You know, all the hard elements, the solid, the teeth, the blood, the bone, the muscles of the body working through. And we’ll do this rather quickly.
But in fact in meditation session, you do this process extremely slowly. This process of observing, working through earth, water, the fluids, the flowing substance of the body, working through the blood, the lymph, the saliva, urine, all the flowing substance of the body. Is that the I the self? Earth, water, fire, the warmth of the body, the temperature of the body. Is it, you know, the vibration at a subatomic level, the heat of the body?
Is that the self? Yeah. Fire, wind energy, the energies which are flowing through the body. The breath moving in and out. Is that the eye?
Soul? What about the space element? That is, say, cavities. Not what’s in the cavities, but the cavities themselves. The mouth cavity, the cranial cavity, the lung.
Are any of those cavities, the spaces themselves, is that the eye? That’s first five. Then we go through consciousness. A little more abstract, obviously. Is the eye consciousness?
That which sees colors and shapes, is that the eye? Nose consciousness, that which smells odors, is that the eye? Mental consciousness, know, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, finding mental consciousness, that which knows thoughts, which knows mental images, which knows ideas. Is that the I? And then maybe none of those are the I.
So then we’re going say, maybe the I is different than the body and mind. So we’re going to mentally set aside the body and mind. Mentally, okay? So we cut off our arm. We look at it.
Don’t want to overlook it. Is there an eye in there? No, that’s not there. We cut off leg. You know?
Don’t don’t want to over send it over there. We got this we pile up our body over there. And we we also dismember our mind. Yeah. The feelings.
Pleasurable feelings. Unpleasurable feelings. Neutral feelings, discriminations. This the the types of thought, this is good, this is bad, this is a house, this is a chair, recognition, perception, that type of mental pattern, set that aside. All the various emotions, is hatred the eye, is love the eye?
That we’re looking for. We’re looking for a particular eye. Yeah. We know what we’re looking for. Is love the eye?
Is faith the eye? Is anger the eye? Is mindfulness the eye? There’s long list of different emotions and different mental patternings. We set those aside.
And finally, is consciousness the eye, which this various consciousness, that which knows sounds and knows hears sounds and so forth. Set those aside. So we’ve set aside the body and mind. If this eye is different than the body and mind, then it should be left sitting on the cushion. So we look on the cushion, there should be an eye left over to see whether there’s an eye which is different from the body and the eye.
And then we come to the conclusion, it’s not the same. I’ve checked that. It’s not different. I’ve checked that. It has to be either the same or different if it exists.
Maybe it doesn’t exist at all. And stay with that, that kind of, unfindability. I looked and looked and if it’s there I would have found it. If I didn’t find it, it must not exist at all. That is a wisdom consciousness understanding selflessness.
Arisen in in dependence upon analysis. Yeah. That’s the antidote to ignorance. Shall we go? Shall we try all that?
Are you up for it? Okay. So we’re gonna take a comfortable firm posture. We’re going to begin with a few minutes of mindfulness of the breath. So focusing upon the breath, wherever it’s most clear and obvious to yourself, it may be at the maybe at the diaphragm, the chest, and maybe on the upper lip in the nostril.
Wherever it’s most clear and obvious to yourself, just pick that focal point and use that as a focus of your attention. Coming back in a consistent gentle manner to sensations associated with the natural breath. Or you can focus on the sound. Are you gonna focus all on the breath? Now we’re going to meditate on these four essentials, and beginning with the first ascertaining object negation.
This means we have to identify how the eye appears, especially how it appears in the course of a strong emotion reaction. So we want to generate an emotional reaction. We can use our memory or imagination. You can remember some time when somebody called you a name or somebody disappointed you and you felt very bad or you got angry at them. Or you can just imagine how if someone came in this room and said, Hey, you’re a thief or accused you of something.
And we want to pay attention not to the object of our experience, but the subject, the eye. How does that eye appear? So just kind of, as best you can without struggling too hard with this, just play around in a gentle manner with the idea of generating strong emotional experience. And once the experience has got underway, then as if spying, trying to get a sense of what the I, the subject of the emotional state, appears So now we have to come to a decision if that I that was so upset, that was so angry or disappointed or hurt, that I as it appeared, if if it’s something more than appearance, if it exists, then it must exist as either the same as the body and mind or different than the body and mind. Just coming to that decision whether that’s encased in fact.
It must be the same as that, identical with the body and mind, or it must be different? So we’re going to check both of these these two alternatives, those possibilities, beginning with the first. Let’s see whether that self, that I, that appeared so strongly and vividly, is it the same as the body and mind? And we’re going to examine the body, and we’re going to examine the mind, and we’ll examine using the categories of the elements of the body. So first we look at the earth element of the body.
So beginning at the crown of your head and just moving through your body and you come as you come across a bodily constituent, a component which is made of the earth element, the hair, the bones, the teeth, the muscles, anything which is hard and firm. When you come across something, looking at it, is that the body and mind? Are the teeth the body and mind? Or is my jaw the body and mind? Is my jaw the eye, the self?
So, though you may not be finished, we’ll go on to the water element, and again beginning at the crown of your head and working your way down through the body. And we’re looking at the fluid, the flowing substances of the body, so coming across the various fluids, saliva, the blood, the lymph, urine, anything that flows is at the eye which appeared. And we’ll move on to the fire element. This is the warmth of the body, the heat of the body. Is that the I, the self that appeared.
And then there’s the wind energy element. This is the breath, but it’s where all the energies moving throughout the body. Are those energies or the breath, are they the I, the self, which appeared? And then finally with the body, the space element. So these are the cavities, the hollow parts of the body.
Again, moving down through the body, come across any open hollow places, not what’s in the hollow places, but the hollow places themselves, the space, the cavities. Are any of the eye itself? Is there anything that we missed in the body? Have we covered every possibility within the body? So let’s look at the mind.
So beginning with feelings, pleasurable feelings, unpleasurable feelings, neutral feelings are the feelings, the I, the self, that appear. The feelings themselves, am I a pleasant feeling? I may have pleasant feelings, but am I pleasant feelings that appeared? That I that appeared? Is pleasant feelings that I?
And then the category of discrimination, sometimes called perceptions or recognition, the type of thought which recognizes this is good, this is bad, this is a house, this is a chair, I like this, I don’t like that, are those types of thoughts, those recognitions, perceptions, discriminations, are they the I, the self that appeared? Category of what are called compositional factors. These are the various emotions, both healthy emotions and positive emotions, negative emotions, love, compassion, faith, faith, anger, jealousy, pride? Are they the I? Are any of them the I that appeared?
And then finally, consciousness. There are various six types of consciousness. For example, the eye consciousness, that which sees colors and shapes. Is that the eye the self? That which sees colors and shapes?
Or that which hears sounds, is that the eye that appeared to us? That which smells odors? That which tastes flavors. That which experiences objects of touch. And finally, consciousness, that which knows ideas, thoughts, images.
So maybe this I exists separate from the body and mind. So let’s begin to set aside the body and mind, working through it. First, mentally, severing your right arm. So don’t want to overlook it so check out your right arm. Maybe it’s hidden away inside there somewhere, that eye that appeared.
And if you can’t find it there, just set aside that right arm and do the same with the left arm. And the right leg and the left leg and the trunk of the body, from the neck downward all the way down to the pelvic floor. Setting that aside and finally the head checking that out make sure you don’t overlook that eye that appeared to us. Setting that aside and let’s set aside the mental parts of ourselves. For example, the the feelings set aside the pleasurable, unpleasurable, neutral feelings, setting those aside.
And all our discriminations, recognitions. I like this, I don’t like that. This is a book. This is a house. This is big.
This is small. Those types of perceptions, setting those aside, and setting aside taking a look at your various emotional states, love and compassion and faith and so forth, anger, jealousy, pride and so forth, setting those aside. All the various emotions. And setting aside all the various consciousnesses, eye consciousness, nose, tongue. Taste, body, and mental consciousness, setting those aside.
So we’ve set aside the entirety of the body. We’ve set aside the entirety of the mind. If that I appear, exists, it must be left sitting on our cushion. If it’s separate from the body and mind, it must be left over. Is there anything left over on your cushion that you can identify as the I that appeared?
So if that I existed, if it’s something more than simply an appearance, it must be either the same or it must be different than the body and mind. I checked. It’s not the same as the body and mind. It’s not different than the body and mind. Though it appears, I cannot find it.
It’s merely an appearance. There’s nothing which exists in reality which is that I. That I does not exist. The I which appeared to me and that emotional reaction does not exist. In fact, And just stay with that sense of unfindability or openness.
Just to confirm that we do conventionally exist, Just ask yourself, who is meditating? Who is sitting on the cushion? There is someone there who is meditating, someone there who is sitting on the cushion. I am meditating. I am sitting on the cushion.
I exist. Just reconfirm your normal sense of everyday I. I am a male. I am a female. I’m an Australian.
I am a mother. I am a father. I’m going to go home and fix dinner later on. That awe. And then bring your mind back to the breath.
Just the easy gentle in and out flow of the natural breath. Everybody back? Did we lose anybody on the way? So we want think about before we take a break, let’s take a few minutes to kind of share if you like debrief around that what you might or might not have experienced how did it go for you any anybody want to share it? Is it possible that that I could go through the experience and not find this that I might not find the I, but that it might still be possible for it to exist, and I might not be able to find it.
It’s a theory. I’m sure it makes sense for you. So we have to always keep in mind, and one thing that needs to be emphasized, is we’re not looking for the I in general. We’re looking for the I which appears to vividly exist in the in the in the course of emotional experiences, an eye which is very solid and concrete. Oh, that’s yes.
Of course. So it is something that I normally perceive, isn’t it? Yeah. So that’s the eye we’re looking for. Nothing as we’re going to look when we when we talk about emptying, nothing can be found upon analysis.
This table cannot be found upon analysis. Yeah. And that’s not what we’re looking for. There is something which appears as if I search for it, I could find it. And that’s the way that’s the way it’s appear it appears if I searched, I would be able to find it.
It’s solid, concrete, it’s out there. But when we do search, we can’t. So it appears findable, but we can’t but when we search, we can’t find it. So we’re not searching for the eye in general. Yeah, we do.
This is in the case of this table. You know, if we search for the table, you know, is this the table, this leg? Is this leg the table? Is this top portion of the table? When we analyze, we find anything.
So we aren’t looking for objects in general. We’re looking for the objects as they’re appearing to ignorance, as if we could find them. I know know this probably all sounds very confusing. I’m sorry. I can’t explain it very well.
I see the I made up almost like an equation of different parts. So for these, the I equals the mind plus attachments, and the attachment is the body, you drive the instincts, and your sensory reality. So that’s your mind plus body, instincts, sensory reality. That’s the I. Now the mind, in my mind, is made up of two parts.
Emptiness and input consciousness. And that, all of that together makes up the I as we perceive this I. So obviously if you start looking for the eye, you won’t be able to find it because you’re chopping away at your body. But it’s not the eye is made up of your mind and your body, and your mind is made up of inherent emptiness, as a ceaseless, groundless motion of energy that makes up everything plus the input of consciousness. That’s what can say.
Okay. So the eye that we’re looking for is the eye that you describe, is that the eye that appears to you under these strongly emotional states or is this a theoretical eye? Is this the eye that’s appearing to you or is it a theory? You mean strong emotional states? Like I can’t stand you, get out of my life!
That eye! That’s emotions. That eye, they’re thoughts. But there’s a subject to that part. Yes.
So that I. We we have a model of an I, which is relating to the rest of the world, and we’re identifying with that model. Even that singular response like, I hate you or I can’t stand you. Okay. Will be made up of a body part of a reaction, it’ll be partly made up of your ego, and it’ll be partly made up of certain energy as well, which is your consciousness So it’s a whole mix of So that model of I, the model of I, does that have a physical component?
It has, as well as your body as well. But There’s a model of I. There’s mental your mental representation of the I. It’s linked to it. Well, maybe linked, but there isn’t.
Is something just of the mind? I mean, it just a mental image? Your real eye is just your mind, which is completely separate to your body. Real eye. Which one are those?
Because when we talk about an eye, we always obviously have a sense reality to it as well, which is part of our body as well. And our instincts and our drives and everything else that comes to it. That’s what we associate with our body. If you want to find the real I, you’ve got to cut all that off. And you find that your I equals your mind.
So your I is your mind? Yes. Okay. So your I doesn’t have a mind. Your I is your mind.
It doesn’t have a mind. Possessor and possessed, they have to be separate. They have to be different. So you don’t have a mind. You are the mind.
I don’t understand. Sorry. If your I is the mind, the I cannot possess the mind. Why does the I have to possess a mind? I’m just describing way in other words becomes the same as the I to me.
Don’t know how you define the eye then. What do you mean by the eye? Why does the eye have to possess? Cyclops. No, no, no.
We in common common every day parlance a language we say, I have a body and mind. I have a headache. I have a happy mind. So we say, I have a mind. Does that make sense?
But we don’t have a mind. You’re saying we don’t have a mind because I My mind is saying I am my mind, which is the I. If the mind is the I, it cannot possess the eye. It cannot possess the mind. It’s my consciousness saying I’m conscious of myself.
But when when we do okay. It does make sense what he’s saying. It does. But but but the feeling is that I am my mind, that my mind is me. First of we’re going off on tangent.
We’re trying to identify an I, just as in the case of the snake, appears. And some of the characteristics are that it appears partless, unchanging, and so forth. We’re not talking about the empirically existing I, the conventionally existing I. You’re talking about the I that that that expresses that hatred or jealousy or whatever. The subject of the of the emotional state.
That I I that, yeah, I would have agreed. What? Is is is the mental consciousness. That mental consciousness would would have been When you say, I can’t stand you, you’re not referring to the mental consciousness. It’s underlying my feeling.
We’re trying to identify that model that we’re using, we’re identifying with. And I guess if something there, it’s always there, isn’t it? If we’re saying there is an ‘I’ it’s always there, isn’t it? Whether you’re angry, whether you’re not? And I’ve found that without emotion there wasn’t actually an ‘I’ so it’s almost like the emotion created this little bubble and then when that emotion went, I almost couldn’t find well, really couldn’t find it.
So am I confusing or are we confusing the I with an emotion? Do you are you talking to me? Yeah. I’m talking to you? Yeah.
So I’m not being I don’t think I’m necessarily being emotional about it. I’m I’m talking that’s I exist. I am speaking to you. You’re using the faculty of language. In that sense, you’re just using the faculty of language.
Yeah. Oh, I I’m sitting on the cushion. How how do how do Using using language again. We’re only existing you’re existing with language, but we’re aware of the language. There’s a there’s an unaccountable awareness.
It it I just pops in your head, but you’ve gotta be aware of the I to to even say when you’re talking about the question of I, you have to be Well, then I think that’s the fact that The fundamental groundless thing is the awareness of it But in the context of a bad feeling, that feeling just comes with the eye. That’s that’s the one you’re basically Which comes first? The feeling or the eye? They come together. So The feeling under hatred and The feeling is right there, raw, and you just put the language off.
You that that raw, impulses of hatred, which is a feeling. And as a subject to You’ll just say, I’m I’m I hate you. But it’s that feeling that just comes in comes out as as an impulse. Okay. Isn’t isn’t the hate coming from the ego?
Isn’t that the ego that gets upset because of, you know Ego is simply this this psychological structure. Sorry? Ego is just part of the psychological structure. It has feelings and has thoughts, emotions and so forth. It’s not the cause It’s not It’s ego that gets insulted and gets upset when we get If someone does something, say someone says something rude to us, it’s the ego that gets offended.
It’s not the real self, it’s not the ‘I’ that we’re talking about here, the real ‘us’. We’ve been brought up conditioned that if people speak to us in a certain way, we should not like it, or if people do this, we should be happy if people do this So isn’t that part of the ego creating the emotion that, Oh, how dare you talk to me like that. I hate you. The ego is not an agent. I mean, in the sense that we’re talking about.
We have pride, for example. Yeah. Sometimes we use the word ego synonymous with pride. You know, if someone says, you’re stupid, you’re insulted, your pride is hurt, we say my ego is hurt. So there we just simply mean ego in a sense of pride.
Isn’t that where the emotion comes? Emotions come from that, from those sort of emotions, like getting offended, getting outhate you, that’s not the real self, because the real self, wouldn’t care about it. We would just be fine with that. Okay. Yeah.
So we’re talking about a type of self which is most apparent in strongly emotional situations, which is the basis for the emotion. These various emotions arise on the basis of ignorance misconceived misconception of the eye. Okay. Yeah. Is it you is it like you’re saying that we through ignorance, we identify ourselves with emotions, whatever the same way.
But We we there is an appearance of a particular type of eye, you know, it’s a map, an image, you know, just a model inside her, and we identify that as who in fact I am. And when this model is under attack we say I am under attack. That which grasps at the reality of that model as being who in fact I am, as being true, is ignorance. We have a conception about who we are, and we we have many models of ourselves, you know, but one of these is that a very solid concrete eye. When that’s and we identify this is who I am.
And when that model is seen to be under attack, it is we we react as if I’m under attack. And we react with anger, with hatred. Does that make I didn’t that make Well, during that meditation, I struggled to find an I. Okay. So, you know, that’s as far as I get, really.
That’s great. Get the feeling that there’s nothing really the core I me. You know? Nothing. No.
The only thing I found was identification. I what what what do you mean by that? Well, you get off of a story in your head. You know, off you go, and you’re really involved in it. And is it is it there a central character in that story?
Isn’t that story spun around somebody something or somebody? Yeah. It all happens to me. So but but that but, you know, I’m close to examination. I can’t it all happens to me, but which component is it?
You know, that that’s where I’m sort of I can’t find an I. And, you know Congratulations. Honestly. Yeah. Yeah.
So I think we just have to keep coming back to the fact we’re not I I know it’s difficult to to make this distinction, but there is a con what we call what Buddhism terms, conventionally existent I or empirically existent I. The I which sits, asks questions, talks, attends weekend courses, is a father, is a male. This I exists. In conventional sense. Yeah.
We call it so we call that a conventionally existing I. But we and we can say, you know, do you need I’m going to the store. Can I get you something? That’s perfectly all right. We have three conceptions of I.
Maybe this will help. Maybe it won’t. One is a wrong consciousness. This eye misconceives the nature of the eye. It conceives of the eye of being solid, concrete, as being partless and so forth.
This is ignorance, misconception. We have another conception which understands that the eye is dependently arising as many parts is impermanent, constantly changing. That is a wisdom consciousness which conceives of the I. And we have another conception of the I which is unreflective, which is simply our normal everyday sense of I. I’m talking with you.
I’m going to the store. Can I get you something? I think next year I think I’ll go to Bali for a holiday. That I, that’s perfectly valid. It’s not a wisdom consciousness.
It’s not it depends of investigation, but nonetheless it’s valid. It’s not an ignorant. It’s not a wrong consciousness because that I will go to valid next year or the I is going to go to the store. So we have three distinct conceptions of I. So here we’re talking about this ignorance or wrong conception of I, and that I is the one we’re searching for.
Conceived of by ignorance, that model of the self which we cannot find. We can find nothing that corresponds it. We also, we have this unreflective sense of I, I’m sitting here, I’m going to go home and have dinner, we’re using a model, aren’t we? Whenever I use conceptual consciousness, I say I’m understanding something by a way of our ideas. So I have an idea of an I.
This I is, you know, just an everyday normal I, impermanent, is made up of body and mind, and so has parts and so forth, that’s perfectly valid. That model works in reality. The other one presents problems for ourselves, the one that’s being grasped at by ignorance. We have some mistaken models of reality and we have correct models of reality. That conception which is grasping at a mistaken model of reality in the sense of I is ignorance.
So we have to see that the model is there, the representation there, just like the snake. But there’s nothing we cannot find anything which corresponds to it. There’s a map there, but there’s no territory. It’s a fiction. It’s a fabrication of mind.
It’s a hallucination, but we believe it’s real. So this is the way we get by in life. We use we use ideas and models, representations, and we make sense of our world. We make sense of ourselves. But some of these models, some of these representations, these ideas, they’re they’re not in accordance with the way things actually are.
They’re false, but we believe them to be true. And this is what causes these problems. It’s identifying them and investigating to the extent that we no longer believe in their they may still appear to us, but we no longer believe that they’re true. They, like, become like phantoms or something like that. I had a nice meditation where I love chopping off the limbs.
That’s right. I was placing it all over there. Yeah. And then you had the eye on the chair. Yeah.
Did you? I found it really quickly, and it was, you know, my my interpretation. But as as we spoke, it disappeared. Yeah? Nothing.
Nothing there. What were you left with? Just just a piece. Just a piece. Yeah.
Kind of a wide open space. Yeah. Yeah. That’s very cool. Very cool.
I’m good. I’m glad for you. Thank you. I was trying to search for my eye in your orientation. I couldn’t find anything.
I was just in my mind, I was just down the beach. I was just there down the beach, just lying there, just relaxation, and I just found love. I just sort of found that love and compassion, love for all the beings. So thought, jeez, I’m off the wrong path because this is what I’m looking for. That’s that’s what I found.
I thought that’s what I thought. What if I was that? Doesn’t make sense. Yeah. And so I thought, well, there’s no real it’s hard to sort of try and explain what you’re trying to look for.
You can’t really understand it yourself, but I just sort of found love and compassion for being so I’m not really sure what that means or It was a good experience. It was a good experience. Enjoyed that. It’s something most nice. Yeah.
So I noticed in my mind What we we find? We find the non we find the absence of what we’re looking for. Selflessness, emptiness is an absence of a fantasized way of existing. We find the nonexistence of something that we had presumed exist all this time. And then there’s a release from having the struggle with that belief and all that, you know, the proliferation of all the problems that it causes.
Anybody else want to share? Do we take a break? Thank you, ma’am. Can I just ask, in here, is there something about the three types of I that you were just mentioning? No.
There isn’t? No. You didn’t write that down. So you’re the three types of I, three conceptions of I? Three conceptions, that’s right.
But who’s gonna take a break? Who’s gonna take you? I’m gonna take you. Maybe you want I I and I okay, I mean, we don’t think we can talk about how the eye actually exists, but yeah, we will. Yeah, so three conceptions of eyes.
One of them is ignorance, wrong consciousness. And one is wisdom consciousness, realizes the actual nature of the eye. And the third is our everyday non reflective conception of I. You know, I’m going to the store. Yeah.
It’s neither wisdom nor a wrong consciousness. Eye? So wisdom rises in dependence upon analysis. So we investigated the nature of that fantasized eye, and we see that it doesn’t exist. So it’s realizing the nonexistence of that fantasized eye.
Yeah. Think so. The ultimate is that which is realized upon ultimate analysis. So the outcome of analysis, we realize the ultimate or the ultimate truth, which is emptiness. The ultimate truth is emptiness.
So tomorrow we’re going to continue with going get some sense of how the what we’re calling the empirically existent I or the conventionally existent I actually exist. I which feels rather confused at the moment, so that one which actually exists. How, know, fact, nature. But we’re going to talk about that in the context of emptiness, what we’re going to talk about tomorrow, and extending this process of analysis and giving an interpretation about what we mean by ignorance to a more subtle level, that we not only have a degree of ignorance with regard to the I, with regard to, in fact, all phenomena at this table and this world about us in general, in which we’re going to bring in the talk in terms of the concept of emptiness and what a much more subtle interpretation, of what dependence means. You know, here we’ve talked about dependence in terms of depending upon causes and conditions, depending upon the body and mind and so forth.
It can be the word dependence can be interpreted in an even deeper sense in terms of language, as was mentioned. You mentioned language and conceptuality, that everything is dependent upon language, which is another level of interpretation. And we’ll talk about emptiness, and as I mentioned, dependent arising and the two truths. If it’s not confusing enough even to try to find the one truth, then I would say two truths. And then there’s four truths.
I might want to mention, and this will go into this in more detail tomorrow, Lenny mentioned during during the break that, you know, some of you might take the position, which wouldn’t be intended for you, that, you know, that the self just ends. The I, the person. Remember Remember I use these terms synonymously, I, person, and self. But there is the notion that the of a continuity from life to life, and what is it that actually goes on from life life. And we’re going to talk about that.
In order to understand that, then we have to have some sense of what we mean by the actual conventional nature of the eye, you know, the eye, not which is dependent upon the body and mind and what is it that actually goes on. So don’t die tonight, okay? Hang in there until tomorrow, and then we’ll give you something to work with. But I thought, you know, I thought I’d make you work, okay? So what I’d like for you to do is to divide up into groups of four and then just discuss what you learned today, if anything, and what were some of the points that you came to understand that perhaps you didn’t before, and some of the points that are still left in doubt and confusion.
And we’ll spend about ten minutes in these small groups, and then we’ll spend the rest of the time, if you could, someone could more or less, but not formally, but act as a spokesman for your particular group and tell us what all that you’ve learned in the course of the day and all that you are confused about. Okay, so to see we did it, could you just number off into, let’s say, fours, okay? Just count one, two, three, four, beginning with Lee. Two. Okay.
We’ll just group together as as you wish. What you what you learned today, Some of your new understandings, if any, and what you still have some questions about, what you feel confused about.