Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A story from the film Catch-22 — a bomber pilot who rows away to Sweden rather than choose between prison and a hero’s parade — opens this 47-minute talk as Ven Jampa Gendun asks whether we ever take the third option beyond the endless swing of pain and pleasure. He reframes the refuge prayer as going to one’s own wisdom and sanity, then uses Śāntideva’s image of a hand pulling a thorn from a foot to challenge the assumption that each person must solve their own suffering alone. The session reviews the three levels of dissatisfactoriness — pain, change, and pervasive conditionedness — with grounded examples: a new car’s mounting anxieties, alternating sun and shade at altitude, the ego’s constant need to guard its credentials. It closes by introducing impermanence as the second characteristic of true suffering, setting up the next session.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 1987 07 31 4 NT.mp3
UUID: 870d89f7-c5a8-4e70-a7f7-43acd8049aea
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Four Noble Truths (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-07-31
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.7 minutes
Words: ~5,663
Example, if you aren’t used to the practice of just simple mindfulness of the breathing, you could just count on the in breath very casually, relaxed manner. One, two, three, four, five. And then the pause after the inhalation. One, two, three, four, five. Exhalation in a relaxed manner.
We’re not doing pranayama, we’re just relaxed breathing. One, two, three, four, five. The pause after the exhalation. One, two, three, four, five. And just a relaxed manner.
Hopefully, we try to listen with a positive state of mind, but we can begin by developing a neutral state of mind just through watching the breath. So you’ve had a hard day. You know, you’ve had your work to do, and now we’re still gonna leave all that outside, all your problems for a while. We’ve created some space. We’re going to try to create positive states of mind to benefit ourselves and others.
And we can do this by simply beginning with a neutral state, just by watching the breath and relaxing. You’ve had a hard day. So there’s maybe some kind of tension in your shoulder, in the base of your neck, and just feel a relaxing, and the energy is just kind of flowing out, all this tension. And just relax. And just very in a relaxed manner, watch your breath for a few minutes.
And then we’ll recite a prayer. We’ll recite the refuge prayer. And we’ll substitute where the asterisk is, the third line, we’ll substitute. Okay, so, we won’t watch our breath for very long, so don’t get impatient, if you feel impatient. Okay, just a relaxed manner.
You can’t hear? Yes. Okay. Well, I’m just going to breathe for a while, so not much to listen to. To the Buddha, Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened through the merit I create by practicing the Dharma, and I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all loving.
To the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, the spiritual community. To my own wisdom, my own sanity, I go for refuge. The Buddha said, If I am not my own master, who can be my master? By being my own master, I will be free. In the Dharma, the methods of the techniques whereby we can realize, actualize actualize our own wisdom, our own sanity consistently throughout all our problems and difficulties.
And the spiritual community, you know, who support me physically, morally, encourage me, share my problems, share my joy, share my aspirations. A sense of community, a communal effort. Mental health is a communal effort. There’s no there has never been an individual who who attained mental health. By individual, I mean someone who felt he was isolated from those around him.
It’s contradictory. The things we go for refuge to are very much determined by our conception of our suffering. You know, if you think of your suffering as being, well, I’m broke, you know, that’s my problem. If I wasn’t broke, everything would be okay. So, go for refuge to money.
Money becomes the answer, the solution to our problem. You’re lonely. You go for refuge to your friends. You see, you’re all the answers to your problems and your friends. So how we conceive of our suffering determines on what we go for refuge to.
You know, in the Tibetan language, what we call Buddhist, can also be translated as an inner being. An inner being, one who sees, one who dwells within himself. That means that we begin to see our problems existing within ourselves and answers existing within ourselves. We quit pointing, we quit blaming others for our difficulty, other situations, other people. We take responsibility.
We begin to reorientate ourselves from external solutions, external problems, to seeing the actual source of our difficulties, the source of our solutions, our own wisdom, our own truth, and our own spiritual community. The source of all our problems, attachment, hatred, ignorance, miserliness, selfishness, self-cherishing, exaggerated self concern are all within our own mind. This is the beginning of Dharma practice. This is when you become sincere and serious about changing your mind. And the fact is, you have to change.
You could try to take the Dharma and make a thing out of it, as you do to most things, and add it on to your list activities along with pottery making, tai chi, or computer programming, whatever. That could be another thing to do amongst our many things that we do. That’s a way to approach dharma. But it’s not a very effective method to actually find happiness that we’re looking for, because you are looking for happiness. I know I’m looking for happiness, and that’s the reason I’m trying to practice Dharma.
I know I have to change my own mind to do it. I know it has to be a consistent effort. Know, I can’t come here to Buddha House. And develop positive states of mind hopefully, develop some aspiration to change and walk outside and forget it all. All.
The reason we forget is because we forget our suffering. When the sun is shining, when everything is going well, we forget. Maybe that’s good. I don’t know. That’s like a protection.
Some people say if a mother remembered the suffering of childbirth, there wouldn’t be half the babies in the world that there are now. But when she sees her baby, she forgets, and she takes her baby in her arms, and the joy is there. So maybe it’s good in a way. But because suffering, we forget that suffering is going to come in the future. That though things are pleasant now, things are going well now, they’re going to change.
Now this isn’t a cynical, pessimistic approach, but it does accord with our own actual experience. I would like for things to be better. I would like for you not to suffer. But my liking for them to be different doesn’t make them any different. We have to act in harmony with the way things actually are.
This is what is going to finally bring us peace. So we have to begin to look through our mistaken emotions, to look at the actual nature of this situation we’re involved in, and very much we have to begin to investigate the nature of suffering, which was the first teaching that Śākyamūni Buddha gave two thousand five hundred years ago. So we go for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma, the Sangha. We go for refuge to our own wisdom, own sanity. But I don’t want to emphasize this notion of individualism.
Know, you think, my own sanity. I don’t need anybody. I don’t need anything outside of myself. There are beings who have gone beyond ego, if you like, transcended ego, the bounds of ego, the bounds of perhaps a present ability to understand the nature of their qualities. Within the bounds of the law of cause and effect, we can be benefited by other beings.
And we can benefit it on a very mundane level by our spiritual community, by the friends around us. They can be of real help to us, spiritual benefit. So there’s no reason why those who have higher realizations, who have purified their mind, gone beyond the bounds of ego, cannot help us in even a more profound and deep way. And we have to open up ourselves to this possibility of help. But it’s not a matter of omnipotence.
They must work within the law of cause and effect. If we do not create the causes to be helped, if we do not work on ourselves, if we do not make effort, there’s nothing that that the Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas, there’s nothing that Jesus Christ, Hare Krishna, or anyone else can do for us. We’re going to continue to suffer. We have to make the effort on our side. And I think there are beings who are making the effort from their side.
And this effort together is the chance to change and the chance to grow and a chance to find real peace. This is our refuge. Ultimately, we’re not separate. We’re not separate beings, but we think we are. Because we’ve built the balance of ego, which in fact separate us from one another.
But ego is just a phantom. It’s an illusion, and we can go beyond it. The second part of the refuge formula, through the merit I create by, as you said, listening to the teachings may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. As I said, there’s no one who’s ever attained mental health. What do I mean by mental health?
I’m asking myself these questions as I go along. I don’t have the answer at the moment. You know, it’s being able to love spontaneously. It’s not having to look at yourself all the time, guard your own territory. It’s a spontaneous expression of wisdom and skill and means.
You know, those are my ideas of what mental health might be like. And we can only bring that about when we begin to go beyond this prison of ego that we we’ve encapsulated ourselves in. We don’t see a reason to do it at this moment. You know, my happiness is my happiness. Dennis’ happiness is his happiness.
Paul’s happiness is his happiness. You know, we’re all taking care of our own happiness, but is it working? Is this a way of dealing with your life? Is it working for you? Is it bringing you to the satisfaction, the contentment that you’re seeking?
Know, Śāntideva, in the book called Engaging in the Bodhisattva’s Deeds, which is one of the most important texts within the Great Vehicle tradition, especially in the Tibetan tradition. There’s an argument between him and one other debater. And he said the debater was arguing that the sufferer, the person who’s suffering, it’s his responsibility to remove his suffering, right? I mean, surely the sufferer is responsible to remove his own suffering. That sounds rather sensible.
Śāntideva, he answers back away and he says, In that case, if the sufferer should remove his own suffering, then why does the hand remove the thorn from the foot? You know, you have a thorn in your foot. You get a tack in your foot. And it’s painful to the foot. It doesn’t hurt the hand at least.
But the hand reaches down and pulls out the thorn. There’s no reason for the hand to do that because it’s not suffering. So the debater, he thinks about this for a while. Well, you know, it’s because they’re both a part of something larger, part of some greater whole, that it becomes the duty of the hand to remove the thorn from the foot. And Śāntideva says, Likewise.
You and I are part of something greater, part of something larger than our individual selves. Therefore it becomes the duty to remove suffering wherever it occurs. We are not isolated beings. We have the feeling that we’re isolated beings based on a misunderstanding, a misconception of the nature of the self, of the nature of the ego, if you like. By seeking to care for others, by seeking to go beyond the bounds of this ego, we can, in conventional sense, begin to break down the power of ego, the influence and control that ego has in our lives.
And when we begin to analyze the situation, we are going to see the ego is equal to suffering. Having to guard our own territory and always having to find your happiness to make sure you’re going to get yours. Constantly having to watch yourself, watch the situation, constantly using other people, manipulating, the constant battle of ego to maintain itself for identity, credentials. So we can begin, we can work on the problem on two levels. One is the ultimate level, that is by understanding the nature of reality, the nature of the ego, the nature of the self.
But again, can begin to work on the problem through the conventional level. Beginning to get in harmony with the way things actually are. That is, we’re not individuals ultimately, that we’re very much a part of something greater. We’re very much a part of something a whole a whole humanity, if you like, the whole of the universe of sentient life. And wherever there is suffering, it should be removed.
Whether we call it my suffering or your suffering, it’s simply suffering. No one wants to suffer. So if we can develop this feeling, you know, that I want to change, I want to end my suffering. We begin to orientate ourselves towards the problems, the real root of the problems, which are in our mind. And we have to gradually lessen the power of attachment, of hatred, of ignorance, selfishness, miserliness, spite.
Begin to gradually lessen their control in our lives. To that degree, we’re going to become happier, healthier, saner individuals. In order to do that, we have to change. There’s no doubt about that. We cannot make dharma another part of our list other activities.
We have to have a basic change of attitude. But I am not alone. I am part of something greater than myself. Just like myself, you want happiness and don’t want to suffer. Therefore, if I can change myself, then I can redirect my attention and help you to change likewise.
In bringing happiness to myself and bringing happiness to you. I fulfill what it means to be a human being. I am fulfilling we can use these big words my destiny, if you like. We’re all going somewhere on a spiritual journey and we have to acknowledge that fact. So with this motivation, some sincerity, some aspiration, then it becomes very worthwhile to talk about the dharma, to discuss the ways of change.
We’re talking about the four noble truths. The four noble truths. There was a young man two thousand five hundred years ago whose name was Śākyamūni. No, wasn’t. It was Prince Suddhartha.
And he had a crisis in his life. He wanted to know whether we had to suffer. People say, What are you going to do? That’s life. Some difficulty arises.
We have to fix the good and the bad of life. Śākyamūni wondered. Prince Siddhartha wondered. Do in fact we have to accept the good and the bad? Is this inherent to existence?
Does the fact that we’re human beings, that we’re living, mean that we have to suffer? We never call this into question after this point. We put band aids all the time trying to patch up our little difficulties or our little problems. And we never really considered, well, maybe we should just start all over. Maybe we don’t have to.
We could have a complete transplant job or something. We could, you know, have a radical revolution where we didn’t have to suffer at all. Do I have to suffer? We go from bad to good, from bad to good, pain to pleasure. There was a movie called Catch-twenty two.
There was also a book and a movie Catch-twenty two. It was fifteen years And anyway, the plot almost the plot of the story came to the the place where the star, who was a bomber pilot during World War II, I think it was based in Sicily. It’s been a long time. The situation came to the place. I’ll tell you why.
He went on a bombing run and every day they had to go on a bombing run. They had to bomb their target. If they didn’t bomb their target, they had to go back and do it the next day. But the next day the enemy knew they were coming, so they had all their anti aircraft guns working and they knew where to point them because they expected them. So, they went on a bombing run one day and they really they blew it.
They didn’t hit their target at all. So, the captain of this one bomber, he realized, If we don’t get it today, we’re going to have to come back tomorrow. And if we come back tomorrow, they’re going to be expecting us and we’re all going to get shot up. So, what he did, he turned his plane around and he went back over bombed the target. So it came out, and this was against Air Force regulation.
You’re not allowed to do such. You’re not allowed to think for yourself, right? They had this flight plan and he went against the plan. So, didn’t know quite what to do with this guy. He succeeded in bombing the target, but he broke the rules.
It came to the place where they gave him a choice. He could either go to prison for disobeying orders or he could go back to the States and be decorated as a hero and given a parade, etcetera, because they needed heroes for public relations work. The war wasn’t going so well. So he thought about, Now here’s a problem which most of us, I doubt, would have any difficulty with. Obviously, be a hero is quite nice.
We aren’t going to go to prison if we have a choice of being hero. But he saw that, you know, life was out of his control. He got fed up with only being faced by what I would call reactive mind. That he is purely his values are being imposed upon him from outside. He has a choice between pain, pleasure, good and bad.
They’re always being imposed upon us. We never question whether we have any choice other than these two. So what did he do? He thought about it, he thought about it, you know. It was a dilemma actually for him.
He resolved the problem by getting into a little small boat and rowing away. Think he was from Sicily, he was planning he was rowing to Sweden where you could be a conscientious objector, I think. He tried to transcend the problem of pain and pleasure. He took the third possibility. The third possibility is always open to us.
If we’re willing to take the chance, if we’re willing to create our own value system rather than living within the confines of the values which are imposed upon us outside. Śākyamūni Buddha had a Siddhartha. He had a problem. He was a prince. I don’t know if he was a prince.
They say he was a prince, but anyway, it doesn’t matter. He was very rich, and he lived in upper class neighborhood with all the pleasure gardens with harem girls and good food. He never saw anything bad. They kept any disgusting sights away from him. So he knew material pleasure to a greater extent than we will ever experience probably.
But then he saw some signs. He saw old age, sickness, disease, death. And this bothered him. This disturbed him. So it presented a crisis of values in his life, and he decided to see for himself whether such sufferings were inherent to our life.
Why do we have to suffer? This was what he set out to do. So as we explained, and most of you know, he went out, he left home, he cut his hair in the manner of a renunciate, and he practiced with many of the most renowned masters of spirituality in his day. He went to a place called Uruvela. He practiced asceticism for six years, living on one grain of rice a day, etcetera, and nothing was working.
He wasn’t finding the answer. He wasn’t solving the problem of suffering. So then he sat down beneath a tree and Sujata, the shepherdess, gave him some yogurt and he felt strong, invigorated. And he said, I’m not going to get up from this seat unless I’ve solved the problem of existence whether or not humanity has to suffer. So, upon the morning rise of the morning star, it said that he saw the truth, the actual situation, the nature of the situation, the depth of our problems and the solution to his problems.
So, he proceeded from there after being asked to teach to a place called Sarnath at Deer Park near Varanasi in modern day India. And to his old friends who used to be his ascetic companions, he gave his first teaching. It was the first turning of the wheel of Dharma, the four noble truths. Now we talked a little about what this meant, the wheel of Dharma. The wheel has eight spokes, the eightfold noble path.
See if I get it right. Correct realization, correct view, correct speech, correct action, correct effort, correct mindfulness, samadhi. Is that eight? Let’s see. Correct livelihood.
Yeah. Correct aim. And he turned and the wheel has four rims, the Four Noble Truths true sufferings, true sources, true cessation, and true path. So, he turned the first wheel of the Dharma. We said that the Dharma means to hold.
It was used at one time really to indicate various phenomena like this cushion is a Dharma because it’s able to hold its nature. The Buddha used this term in another means. He said it means to hold you back from something that you don’t want to fall into, that you don’t want to become involved in. For example, suffering. And the various types of suffering that we how we conceive of our suffering, in that way our dharma will coincide with that until we reach the apex of the possibilities of dharma, and that is the dharma which holds you back from both the sufferings of what we call cyclic existence, repetitive patterns of dissatisfactory existence, and the suffering and the passive peace of nirvana, where one can no longer identify with the sufferings of others.
To a person who is practicing the great vehicle, both of these are seen as an extreme. Both are seen to be avoided. That is, we have to be held back from both of these extremes. Both of these are seen as problems. These are the various levels of Dharma.
And we talked about the two aspects of Dharma which were very important to understand. Theory and practice, wisdom and method if you like. That the world according to Buddhism is not a horrible, awful place where we have to get out of. It’s not a theory of Buddhism that food is bad, that we cannot love one another both romantically, physically, and spiritually, that there’s anything wrong with money. This is not a theory of Buddhism.
Now, according to practice, if we have attachment, if we have attachment to food, that attachment is going to cause you suffering. If you have attachment to another person, that attachment is going to cause you suffering. If you have attachment to money, that attachment is going to cause you suffering. Therefore, as a practice, not as a theory, but as a method, we employ means to bring the mind back to a balance. In the example of food, we meditate on its repulsiveness.
We say it in its disgusting nature. We emphasize that in order to bring our mind to a harmonious balance where we no longer have attachment to food. We eat the food, enjoy the food, ask for more, enjoy that, but we aren’t attached to it. If we don’t get the food, it’s okay. So, it’s a matter of always bringing the mind back to a balance.
It’s not a theory of Buddhism. He began by teaching true sufferings, the first noble truth. You know, true suffering. Sufferings are our immediate experience, and some can’t hear me. Can you turn up a little bit?
I’ll have to speak louder. Think. We can talk about whether God exists or not. We can talk about whether nirvana exists or not, past and future lives exist or not. We can argue and argue and argue, but we probably will not get anywhere.
But it’s very difficult to dispute, to argue about that we suffer. It’s our own immediate experience. It’s not an intellectual theory. And it is pleasure and pain which initially determine our behavior. You know, we always say, I know I shouldn’t do this, but I can’t help myself.
Intellectually, you may know something is bad for you. It’s going to bring you problems, or God doesn’t like if you do it, or it’s written down somewhere that thou shalt not do this or whatever, but you enjoy it. You know, it feels good. So, you do it. And this is where we’re at.
This is where we have to begin on the level of pain and pleasure and not on intellectual theories. So, we began with the problem of suffering. He said, Let’s talk about suffering. So, in talking about suffering, we have to face our difficulties, our problems, and confront them. You know, we live with pleasure.
We become totally involved in a moment of pleasure. We become one with pleasure. But the moment some suffering arises, we run away. We will not confront suffering. So we talked about the first noble truth, which is true sufferings.
True sufferings are to be recognized. We are to recognize suffering as suffering. A large degree what we call pleasure is actually suffering. I realize you might not like that. People don’t like to talk about suffering.
It’s a kind of dark, depressing subject. It doesn’t have to be. It’s what’s happening. If we understand the actual situation, this has a liberating quality to it. We don’t have to keep running from imaginary problems.
We can actually begin to diagnose and distinguish between what are my imaginary problems and what are the actual problems which I’m faced with. So we talked about suffering from the point of view of the four seals testifying to a Buddhist doctrine. You know, all products are impermanent. All contaminated objects are unsatisfactory. All phenomena are empty or selfless.
nirvana is peace. So we’re discussing true sufferings from the first of these three. Last week we talked about the first one. We took dissatisfactoriness first. Things as experienced by an ordinary being are dissatisfactory.
Over and over and over again in Buddhism, we’re going to be emphasizing the subject, the person who is experiencing. It’s not that anything out there is dissatisfactory, is suffering, is bad. It’s simply because we relate with these things unskillfully, that we have a mistaken way of relating with them. Misconceptions that they become sources of difficulty. If we relate with them skillfully, understanding their nature, not having exaggerated expectations, understanding their potential, there’s no problem.
We can derive a great deal of pleasure for all the things of the world and other people. We discussed the three levels of suffering, or what I call dissatisfactoriness. Dissatisfactoriness of pain, dissatisfactoriness of change, dissatisfactoriness of pervasive conditionedness. Dissatisfactoriness of pain is very evident to us, it’s obvious. We have physical pain, mental pain, headaches, stomachaches, toothaches, accidents, operations, physical pain, mental pain, fear, frustration, anxiety, dread, depression, sadness, sorrow, lamentation.
All experience these every day of our lives. And we went on to question some of the pleasures, some of the things that we call pleasure. Are they actually pleasurable? Are they inherently pleasurable? Pleasurable?
Much of our pleasure is simply tension reduction. Using the example of the idiot hitting himself over the head with a hammer because it feels so good when he stops. What we call pleasure is to a large extent less suffering than we had a moment before, but it hasn’t gone beyond the nature of suffering. And even those pleasures, you know, which we think of as complete pleasures, they always have some flaw. Now again, I don’t think I’m being cynical or pessimistic.
Cynicism and pessimism are either taking away from something or adding something which isn’t there. We want to know how things actually are. We’re not trying to brainwash ourselves, manipulate our minds. We want to know the truth, how things actually are. This has the liberating quality.
You know, you buy a car, it’s a nice shiny car. You drive out of the showroom. I never have, but I’m sure some people do. And it’s a feeling that you feel good, feel good. But then, you’re driving down the road and some guy almost hits you.
You’re starting to worry about your car, you’re starting to hear a little sound in the edge, and it doesn’t sound right. Then you think, Well, the insurance payment, and then I got the payments, and then I got the it’s not quite complete happiness. There’s some flaw in it. We’re trying to recognize suffering in order to bring our wisdom to bear on it, our own natural tendency to go toward the most sane solution to our problems. If you have a choice between pain and pleasure, your mind will naturally go toward pleasure.
If we understand suffering as suffering, then we’re going to say we’re not going to go toward that direction. We’re going to go in what we actually experience as pleasure. But if we mistake suffering as pleasure, we’re always going to make the same mistake again and again. We’re always going to be disappointed. Right?
So then we talked about the second type of dissatisfactoriness. Dissatisfactoriness of change. We used the example of when you’re up in the mountain the is very thin and the sun is very harsh. And at first you’re out in the sun, and if you’re out there for a few minutes, it becomes very hot and you begin to suffer. So, naturally you go in the shade.
And if you’re up at ten thousand feet or something like that, when you go in the shade, first it feels good. Go in the shade, then it gets a little cold, chilly. And then it gets downright cold, you suffer. And you go in the sun, and you go back into the sun and then you’re hot after a while. So we’re not talking about the physical pain of being hot and being cold.
We can’t hold onto our pleasures. There’s something dissatisfactory about them. They’re always changing into something else. We have to be constantly on the go, running, trying to renew our pleasure. They’re not constant.
And then there was the third, the dissatisfactoriness of pervasive composition. Now this is traditionally exemplified by a body and mind which is programmed to suffer. It comes with its own disc and it’s already been inserted and it just meets the right circumstances and it reads out suffering, you know, prints out suffering. But if we look at the ego, it becomes wherever we go, it’s pervasive. It acts as a composition.
Why? Because it in itself is suffering and it brings us future suffering. That is a composite of present and future suffering, pervasive compositional suffering. It’s like carrying a bundle of thorns on your back all the time. The ego, as I said, have to guard your territory, watch yourself, having to constantly secure your identity, your credentials.
I am this and that. I’m going to present an identity over and over again to reassure yourself who you are and where you are in this world. Because if you don’t, you’re going to be swallowed up and you’re going to vanish. And this is a burden. It’s a very subtle burden, but it’s there and all the fears that go along with it.
So we make this an enumeration of suffering, not to depress ourselves, not to upset ourselves, but in order to change, to see the situation as it actually is. Now, the change takes place within your own mind. We don’t have to go anywhere to change. We don’t have to go to the Himalayas like I did in India and think this is the only place in the world to practice. Can change our minds, even in Adelaide.
If we continue to relate with the world as if it were inherently pleasurable, as if it were a complete source of happiness. Now, what do I mean by that? It means we have the feeling that if I can only manipulate all my possessions, the things around me, I can only manipulate the people that I want to manipulate, get away from my enemies, get all my friends together here and the neutral people I don’t care about, you know. If I can arrange everything in some sort of perfect pattern, I’m going to be happy. I’m going to achieve eternal bliss.
This will never happen, but this is what we try to do every day of our lives. We’re constantly trying to arrange our outside world in order to find happiness because we see pleasure outside of ourselves, outside of our own mind. If we continue to relate to the world and to other people in this mistaken way, we’re going to suffer. If we can so it’s not a fact that the things out there, you know, there’s an expression, Things are in the saddle and they’re riding me. You know, when you buy a car, you have to make sure that you drive the car and the car doesn’t drive you.
There’s nothing wrong as long as you relate to these things properly. So, talked about that brought us up to today. We’re talking about the second characteristic of true suffering. All products are impermanent. All products are impermanent.
You know, we can’t hold on to anything. You know, everything is always slipping out of our fingers, our possessions, our relationships with other people. This is a dissatisfactory quality. Now, again, we look at it from the side of ourselves, from the side of the subject. It’s not that because things are impermanent that the world is suffering.