Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening the first of a four-week series on bodhicitta, Ven Jampa Gendun frames this 82-minute talk around a persistent puzzle: why, if nearly everyone wants to be loving, do so few actually choose to love? He maps the two classical lineages for awakening the heart — the sevenfold cause-and-effect method and Śāntideva’s exchange-and-equalizing tradition — then commits the series to the latter. The foundational practice introduced here is equality between self and others, developed through a pointed redefinition of love as an act of will rather than feeling, a wartime cattle-car image where rich and poor face identical terror, and a hospital analogy for cultivating gratitude toward strangers. He also shares a rueful personal story from Calcutta’s Home of the Dying, where a beggar’s complaint about his toenail-clipping technique exposed the gap between service and ego.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 HoP 1990 08 07.mp3
UUID: 243d348b-faed-4f21-a9b0-4ad06d635ec8
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Heart of the Path (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1990-08-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 82.3 minutes
Words: ~9,797
Most of you know the basic technique. Just naturally breathing, watching the breath, the tactile sensations associated with the breathing process in a calm, relaxed manner. If it’s helpful, you can use the techniques of counting breathing in and out, counting one, and out two, and out three, and out four, and out five. Come back down to one through six, one through seven, one through eight. And then again, the technique of noting.
Simply, mentally, not verbally noting in your mind whatever it is your is the object of your awareness. Ideally, it’s the breath. But in which case, breathing in, want to emphasize the fact that we know that we’re breathing in and we note in. Breathing out, knowing that we’re breathing out, acknowledging, noting out. So we in, out, one, in, out, two, in, out, three, mentally, not verbally.
And then if you when your mind does wander, the moment you become aware that it has wandered, bringing your attention immediately back to the breath, simply noting what it was that you were involved in, hearing, thinking, pain, smelling, whatever, and then bringing it back to the breath. So we’ll spend five minutes. There we go. Recite the verse of refuge. With it, In a Buddhist context, it’s not so much what we do but the quality of mind that we bring to an action, our intention, our motivation, which is going to determine the outcome, whether it simply acts as a means to extend, support, to compound our lives, our our ego problems, the problems of attachment, the ego problems of hatred, anger, spite, jealousy, miserliness.
Whether the action is going to be a benefit to us in the ultimate serving of our needs to bring ourselves happiness, to eliminate our problems is purely dependent upon the quality of mind, not the action in itself. So again and again, readjusting our motivation, trying to understand the quality of mind. And if it’s in a negative state through mindfulness of breathing, bringing it to a neutral state. If it’s in a neutral state, seeking to bring it to a positive state. And we’re trying to solve our problems in whatever we’re doing.
And that’s essentially what we want. And beginning to understand the nature of our problems and the and their evolution. We all have our particular conception about what is going to make us happy. How we’re going to go about solving our problems and beginning to look within our own actual experience as to whether our particular method is working. We talk about religions.
Perhaps most simply religion is one’s world view and we all have a world view. Even atheists have a world view. And sometimes atheists can be just as dogmatic as some who espouses religious dogma. And be beginning to be honest with oneself and confront one’s difficulties and to see whether one’s particular world view, the way one approaches this problem of ordinary ego based existence is working. Whether you’re finding satisfaction that we’re all seeking.
You know, we’re all very much in the same situation. That’s what we’re we’re going to be talking about for the next four weeks. How to begin to open our hearts and understand that in fact there’s no difference amongst us as to the nature of our problems and that we can by confronting them each of us and then opening our hearts to others we can solve our own and help others to work with their problems, to solve their problems. You know, the sometimes I oftentimes quote the verse by a Zen Zen monk, Ryokan, a Japanese, I think, seventeenth or eighteenth century monk. In which he says, the Buddha is your mind and the way goes nowhere.
Don’t look for anything but this. If you want to go north and you point your cart south, how will you ever arrive? The Buddha is your mind and the way goes nowhere. So, we begin by reorientating the our world view in the sense that we no longer see that our problems as lying outside of ourselves. We could quit blaming others for our unhappiness and our difficulties and begin to see that the root of our problems is within our own mind.
And therefore, the solution to our own problems is within our own mind. And then within the world view of Buddhism, the solution to our problems is Buddha. But it’s not a Buddha outside of our own self. The Buddha, you know, Śākyamūni Buddha or the infinite number of Buddhas who have who have arisen since beginning of this time cannot solve our problems for us. It is something that we actually each do for ourselves.
So each of us has to rediscover everything that the Buddha themselves discovered and beginning to reprioritize our values. What is most important to me as a as a unique self actualizing individual and not what I think. Not what I have been taught is important, not what I think is important, should be important, but what I actually experience as being worthwhile, fulfilling, meaningful within my own actual experience. And, you know, if and beginning to continually redirect ourselves, reprioritize ourselves, you know, day by day. So we don’t lose sight of what is meaningful for us as unique individual.
Because to a large extent, our society is trying to make us everybody else. And it’s a difficult battle to to be yourself and to determine your own values. That is to say, determine your own world view, your own religion, discover it within yourself. Within the the context of Buddhism, you know, the this reprioritizing, this setting one of one’s direction is traditionally referred to as going for refuge. But ultimately, you are your own refuge.
No one else can be your refuge. There’s a verse that the Buddha said, that the Buddhists do not wash away sins with water, nor do they remove sufferings by their hands, nor do they transfer their realizations to the minds of others, but by the showing of the truth, all will be made free. But we all have to become that truth. We all have to discover that truth for ourselves. They can merely point it out to us, but it’s up to each of us to discover it self existent within our own mind.
And we go for refuge. Somehow, our refuge, our method has to be something more than fiction, more than fantasy. It has to be some realistic workable means to solve our problems. And within the Buddhist context, we we traditionally term these objects of refuge the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha. We go for refuge to Buddha, Dharma, and the Sangha.
And it does that You know, what That has to have some meaning for us. Otherwise, simply the reiteration of some meaning meaningless formula which perhaps is of no value to anyone. You know, we go for refuge to awakening, Our own awakening. What does that mean? Essentially most, we go for refuge to wisdom.
Simply most, the quality of knowing how things are without misconception, without mistake, without distortion. That the truth is therapeutic if we can get to it. It’s going to heal ourselves. It’s going to help us to solve our problems. This is a real refuge.
It’s wisdom. The wisdom lying within our own mind. We go for refuge to the awakening mind in the sense that it’s made up of the feeling quality of an awakening mind, of love and compassion. This is how a healthy, happy, sane human being feels, a sense of an overflowing of first love for themselves flowing out to others, a taking of responsibility for others. And then there’s an experience, a state of creative energy, spontaneous actions, responding to the needs of others.
So this is you know, when we talk about awakening, when we talk about enlightenment, a Buddha mind, a healthy, happy, sane human person, This is what we can begin to orientate ourselves towards. These qualities within ourselves of wisdom, knowing how things are. Getting in contact, touching reality, not the fabrications of our own ego, our fantasy dreams in which we continually perpetuate, but the way things actually are. Development of love and compassion, going beyond our own self centered version of reality, and beginning to develop a shift in the center of gravity from self centeredness to other centeredness. And the development of energy, like an environmental generosity, radiating undifferentiatedly to all sentient beings equally.
This is this is Buddha, the Buddha mind. This is your own mind. This is a possible solution to ego based existence, the the sufferings, the dissatisfaction, the frustrations, the disappointment. We go for refuge to the Dharma. In anything which has We’re trying to We have to move our mind.
Our minds are very tough. They’re very stuck. Somehow we have to get our minds unstuck. We have to raise the level of our awareness, raise the level of our consciousness, and this that which has this potential, this power, we call Dharma. And a leaf floating down from a tree teaching us impermanence is Dharma.
Anything which has the capacity to raise the level of our awareness, to take us from hatred to love, from attachment to openness, miserliness to generosity, from ignorance to wisdom, that is worthy of refuge. That is to say, it has the ability to solve our problems. It has that potential and we make use of it. We take it as a means, a method. We go for refuge to the Sangha, the spiritual community, The Those individuals who who take the qualities of wisdom, love and compassion, you know, the goal of enlightenment principles within their lives, who freely associate together as a means of supporting one another, and fostering a social context in which this enlightenment takes place.
Place. And we go for refuge to Buddha, which is the ultimate solution to our problems within our own mind. By means of the Dharma, the methods, the techniques, the teachings, the truth within the social context of a spiritual community. You know, Buddhism has has faith in this thing that we call awakening because it has faith in ourselves, in each of us. We have to have faith in ourselves.
We have to we have to trust ourselves and begin to trust ourselves more. To trust our basic sanity, that we are good people. The basic goodness about us and the basic goodness of life, the potentiality of life. You know, Buddhism very much doesn’t ask us to believe in anything, not even Buddhism. But just take these principles of wisdom and love, compassion, and spiritual and mental energy as central guiding principles within your life, and to make that experiment, To see if this is a possible solution to your problem.
To create some type of shift in your world view. To help you solve your problems, and help you to be able to solve the problems of others. So, in going for refuge, we are resetting our direction. We are trying. Who doesn’t just say, let’s make this experiment.
Let’s try. And going for refuge is the way we we mind ourselves to try. And in going for refuge, we’re trying to reclaim our dreams. We’re trying to to take back our power that we’ve lost along the way. And very risk realistic way to solve our problems and to be all that we can be, all that we should be.
So there’s a verse, verse three. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by listening to the teachings, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by listening to the teachings, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by listening to the teachings, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. So we’re going to be discussing it for the next four weeks. One of the two meditative traditions for the development of an awakening heart. bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment.
There are two main traditions for its development. One is called the sevenfold cause and effect method, and the other is exchange and equalizing self with others. With respect to the first, it has a transmission lineage from Śākyamūni Buddha to Maitreya, to Asaṇga, Atisha, and down through the various masters to the present day. It has seven causes and one effect. Based upon equanimity, we recognize all sentient beings as our mother.
We remember their kindness, develop a sense of gratitude which seeks to repay their kindness. We develop pleasant love, great compassion, exceptional resolve, and finally develop the fruit of that meditative process, the awakening heart. The second of these two traditions has a transmission lineage. Again, from Śākyamūni Buddha to Mañjuśrī, Śāntideva, down to Atisha, and again, the various spiritual masters to down to the present day. And it’s the latter of these two methods that I’m going to be discussing, trying to explain.
It’s an actual way in which we can open our hearts to others. We can awaken our hearts. You know, we’re talking about the develop development of love and compassion. And I I came across a very what I think is a very good definition of love. So, you know, it really helps to make sense of what we’re talking about.
The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing oneself or another spiritual growth. You know this word love has been has caused a great deal of confusion and there are many different types of love and we use the word in many different ways. And our language affects our world view. It affects our feelings and it often causes a great deal of confusion. We have diff we use the same word love with respect to many different types of emotions.
You know, our love for our parents, our love for our children, our love for our spouse, our love for our country. The same word, but vastly different emotion. And and even the term falling in love is vastly different than love, isn’t it? To be in love. To love.
We’re trying to create love. We’re trying to be love. The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. One’s own. So, will.
Love is not a feeling. Love is a matter of will. We choose to love. And everybody wants to be a loving person. Almost every I’m sure everyone in this room desires to be more loving.
But most people aren’t loving. So we ask the ask ask the question, Even though most people want to be loving, why aren’t we loving? Perhaps we don’t simply choose to love. It is a will. It is one’s choice.
We have to choose to love consistently to make that choice. It’s a very difficult choice. It’s a painful choice. The process of spiritual development, this process of spiritual growth, the process of following a spiritual path should should never be thought to be the skillful avoidance of pain or difficulties. On the contrary, it is voluntarily accepting difficult situations, confronting them, voluntarily putting yourself in difficult situations, yourself in difficult situations, experiencing pain voluntarily, which is the hallmark of a spiritual path.
To be to have courage when there’s fear. To you know, to grow means to extend oneself. It means to change. The change is very painful. We begin with ourselves.
Beginning to love ourselves. You know, we choose to love ourselves. This, I don’t know, maybe that sounds strange to say that. But I choose to nurture my spiritual growth. You know, in spite of my feelings of unworthiness of being loved, you know, in spite of my all my negative conceptions about myself, in spite of all the faults that I see, I choose to love myself.
I choose to foster my own spiritual growth. I choose to heal myself. I choose to be happy. And the way I think I can become happy is through a spiritual practice. Through psychological growth.
Developing a determination to be free as a foundation. Beginning with oneself. If we can’t learn to love ourselves when we know our own difficulties, our own pain directly, then how can we ever develop a sincere love for others knowing their difficulties and their pains only secondhandedly, vicariously, indirectly. As Śāntideva has said in one of the main texts, which is the source book for this particular meditative tradition, if one has not sought to put an end to one’s own suffering, even the aspiration, I must put an end to the suffering of others. How can you ever sincerely develop that thought toward others?
You can’t. So we begin by deciding to love ourselves, to nurture ourselves, to learn about our needs, and begin to meet those. It begins with appreciating the fact that we have a basis for transformation. That we have there’s something basically good about ourselves. There’s the potentiality.
You know, traditionally, we call this Buddha nature. Some sort of brilliant sanity about us that we can understand. That we have this unlimited. That we all have the ability to change. That we have You know, the very fact that we recognize our suffering.
This is Buddha mind. You know, a psychotic person, one of the most difficult problems in dealing with them is they don’t recognize that their behavior is inappropriate. That somehow it’s self defeating that they in fact aren’t happy people. It’s only when one begins to recognize that my world view is mistaken. It’s causing me problems.
That the way I’m relating is unskillful. Is there a possibility to change? And this is experienced as pain. Your pain is our kind of truth. It’s a expression of our intelligence.
It’s saying there’s something wrong. Dealing with There are two ways that we can deal with the psychopathology of our experiences. One is that pain is an obstruction. It is to be gotten rid of. It is an interruption to our happiness.
And the other is that it’s it’s an intelligence which is telling us what we are to do next. What is our problem? And we are what what we are to learn? What skill we need to develop. In one sense, it’s simply an obstacle.
In the other sense, it’s a source of learning. It’s a source of knowledge. It’s pointing the way to the next step. We all have this basic sanity about us. We all have the the beginning to appreciate ourselves and that we have the circumstances both external and internal, the conditions necessary to develop, to become Buddha, to solve our problems.
But this opportunity is not going to last forever. It’s different than we’re going to die, and the time of our death is uncertain. And what is of any benefit at the moment of our death? Yeah. Right.
But again, during the course of our life, you I I have someone had said that that death is a radical change in lifestyle. And we go through these radical changes of lifestyle numerous times in the course of our life. And how are we going to confront these situations when our whole world is turned upside down? When we don’t know what has any meaning or perhaps we see no meaning in life. We find that we have no values.
We we have nothing to cling to. We have nothing we can understand. Everything is in total flux. There’s a there’s a gap. There’s there’s an ending of something and then not yet that the that which to begin has not yet begun.
And what is what is going to help you during this period? Are you going to enter into these situations voluntarily? Or Are you going to try to cling to the old? Trying to recreate what has been? Perpetuate the the patterns which have constituted your life up to that point out of fear, insecurity?
Or are you going to confront change? You’re going to welcome change? Whether it’s the big changes at the end of this life, the time of death, or the small changes. Whether we go through them involuntarily, or are you going to voluntarily welcome them? Put yourself in those situations in order to grow, to learn.
What types of attitudes are you developing? What types of patterns are you instituting within your mind? Can you could you die with confidence that everything’s going to be okay? That you’re going to land on your feet at the other side? Do you have that confidence, that conviction?
You know, all of the possessions that you’ve worked so hard to gather together, whether at the time of the big death or these numerous small deaths are of no value at this point. No matter whether you live in a mansion or a slum during these periods, they’re of no it’s of no value. It can’t it can’t support the mental anguish which is occurring. It can’t move the mind. It can’t create confidence.
No material factor can. Even the people who love you sincerely want to help you during these difficult moments or at the time of death, even if they hold your hand. Can they give you a feeling of trust, security, a feeling of, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m sure it’s going to be okay? They can’t. No one can give you that assurance even if they love you.
Only the types of attitudes, the patterns, and we’re talking about karma that we’re laying down, actions, mental actions, the types of the habitual states that we’re developing? Do you have confidence in the overall predominant quality of your own mind? What type of future are you creating for yourself? And then beginning to constantly determine what you want to experience in the future. And going on from there, I’m beginning to say that any state which is bounded by ego is dissatisfactory by its very nature.
Sure. You know, I I I I’m creating some goodness for myself. Some stability for myself. But anything beginning to look at our problems perhaps on a deeper level than we’ve been accustomed to up to this point. You know the purpose of a spiritual path is not to alleviate this particular difficulty to solve this particular problem.
But to begin to we have to begin to look at the very at the motif of our suffering. The the overall theme of our life. And begin to see try to develop a sense of of the reoccurring patterns of our problems. You know, no matter where I go, what I do, whether I a new job, new spouse, new geography, new house, the old patterns still the old difficulties still keep recurring. The old difficulties keep coming back.
Understand that I have to change my mind. But any type of pattern existence, you know, the the very most subtle difficulties within our existence of simply having the burden of an ego, the feelings of fragmentation, alienation, isolation, fragmentation, The feeling of always seeking union with yourself, with nature, with the world. The lack of spontaneity, the lack of freedom. Developing the determination to go beyond all patterned modes of existence altogether, to go beyond our reoccurring compulsive patterns, our neurotic cycles which govern our lives, to love yourself. I’d like to make this decision, to foster one’s own spiritual growth as an act of will in spite of myself.
This is the foundation, you know, beginning to just understand oneself. You know, love in some respects is an understanding. To understand is to love. I I read a quotation by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk who now lives in France. Suppose we have a son who becomes unbearable, who becomes an unbearable young man.
It may be hard for us to love him. That is natural. In order to be loved, a person should be lovable. If our son has become difficult to love, we will be very unhappy. We wish we could love him, but the only way we can is to understand him, to understand his situation.
We have to take our son as the subject of our meditation. Instead of taking the concept of emptiness or some other subject, we can take our son as a concrete subject for our meditation. We don’t blame our son. We just want to understand why he has become like that. Through this method of meditation, we find out all the causes near and far that have led to our son’s present state of being.
The more we see, the more we understand. The more we understand, the easier it is for us to have compassion and love. Understanding is the source of love. Understanding is love itself. Understanding is another name for love.
Love is another name for understanding. You know, understanding ourselves. Beginning to choose to love ourselves, to cure ourselves, to heal ourselves, to cease being victims of the past, and to take a direction toward growth, towards solving our problems. But, extending that and beginning to solve, to understand others, and this is the process of opening your hearts to others. Know, opening your hearts to others, the development of an awakening heart, this will to awakening, this altruistic aspiration to achieve highest enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.
It is not something which is merely a sentimental nostalgic emotion or a romantic notion. It’s it’s based within it can be based within our reasoning, within our experience, within our intuition. And a quote from Lama Yeshe, who was the founder of Buddha House. In talking about that there’s a reasonableness. Eventually, I’m going to talk about the advantages of other centeredness and the disadvantages of self centeredness because we have to understand that it is in our own best interest to open our hearts to others.
It’s simply not If we’re going to be healthy, we have to make this effort. We have to choose to do this. It is not simply a romantic notion, something that it would be nice to do. Because ultimately, for at our level, pleasure and pain take priority over logic. We will do, as I said, according to our concept of what makes us happy, how we’re going to solve our problems, our particular world view.
We’re going to act in accordance with own self best interests. In accordance with the principle of pleasure and pain. We have to see through reasoning, through intuition, and through our own experience that it is in our own best interest on the basis of pleasure and pain to open our hearts to others. It’s not simply a matter of romantic notion or theoretical knowledge. But it’s at the gut level of pleasure and pain.
This is where we’re operating from. And so, you know, it has to become very internalized integrated with your own experience or it won’t work. You have to see for yourself how in your experience, through your intuition, and through your reasoning. Then your own basic sanity is going to help you. Because you you naturally tend toward that which you conceive of as bringing happiness.
And you naturally veer away from that which you see as the source of difficulties, of suffering. You don’t need to force yourself to be happy, to seek happiness. You don’t need to force yourself away from pain. What you can see that is pain. So, to a great deal, you know, the the traveling of a spiritual path is becoming aware of and contradicting our misconceptions, our basic, wrong assumptions, our crooked ideas that we have.
If you conceive of putting your finger in a flame as happiness, you shouldn’t be surprised if you’re continually being burnt. This is what we’re continually doing. We’re trying to modify, transform our consistent worldview which is experienced as happiness, as satisfaction, as fulfillment, as authenticity, as love, as compassion. There is no objective reality. Buddhism presents a worldview, an internally consistent way approach to life.
It’s self authenticating through its experience. It is consistent. It’s never contradicted by reality. And it brings about the solution to your own problems and the possibility of helping others to solve their problem. Seen opening our heart from the basis of reasonableness, then from intuition.
When some people first hear about bodhicitta — bodhicitta is awakening heart. They confuse it with sentimental, highly emotional state of mind. Oh, how I want people to be happy. I can’t stand to think of their suffering. They feel so overwhelmed by the needs of others that their mind becomes depressed.
But true bodhicitta is not like this. It has nothing to do with such an upset, paralyzed state of mind. Instead, it is clear, easy going, possessing a calm wisdom as well as deeply felt compassion. It is an attitude of opening our hearts completely and leaving it open as much as we can. And within our own experience.
Again, from our own experience. So often, we make such fuss of insignificant events in our life that we turn minor difficulties into major problems. As we develop the universal view of bodhicitta, however, these small concerns become unimportant and no longer bother us. As this burden of self concern drops from our shoulders, we experience a small taste of the complete freedom that comes with full spiritual fulfillment. Experiences like this are encouraging because they demonstrate so convincingly the practical day to day value of training and transforming our mind.
The Dalai Lama has said, you know, we’re naturally selfish. Let’s become wisely selfish. To become wisely selfish. And to become wisely selfish means to become concerned with others. To shift our center of concern from our self to others.
In doing so, we’re going to achieve more happiness than we have ever could have achieved in being solely concerned about our own welfare. Then, from the point of view of, know, maybe intuition, Something perhaps with the idea of awakening to develop oneself to benefit others resonates with something deep within our hearts. And a verse by Shelley, the poet. For when the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul requires no other heaven. So, this this awakening, this awakening up our heart, opening our heart is is a a real revolution.
It’s completely it’s almost totally removed from our our everyday consciousness. Our sense of our usual habitual self centeredness, exaggerated self concern. You know, we we look at people like Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, in recent times Mahatma Gandhi, and we think, these people, they were born that way. You know, they they have some kind of spiritual molecules in their brain. You know, they have loving electrons whirling around.
And somehow somehow they’re different. That’s how we feel. And therefore, never take up the difficult task of loving others. We never choose to love others. But though you may not be able to conceive of yourself as imbuing such a quality of mind, the fact is ten years ago, you couldn’t conceive of the thoughts you were presently thinking.
And this is over the course of haphazardness in your direction. But what to say if we begin to direct our mind, You know, put a rudder on this ship of consciousness and direct it, over this ocean of problems toward, the shore of awakening. Yeah. Why not? If we consistently make this choice of the path with heart, there’s no reason why ten years from now, fifteen years in from now, you would not be able to recognize who you are.
You can conceivably change that much. There’s no reason why you can’t. The possibilities of mind are limitless. Our only limitations are those we acknowledge. There’s There’s one American teacher by the name of Robert Thurman.
I’d like to read a quotation, paragraph. He’s talking about the awakening heart, the will to enlightenment. The magnificent conception of this will to enlightenment is a central moment in the evolutionary career of a living being. The moment in which a new spirit of love and compassion pervades its whole life destiny and its further evolution becomes a purpose of creative progress. From this moment a living being becomes a worthy of honor by gods as well as humans.
Śāntideva states that as soon as a being conceives the spirit of enlightenment, he or she becomes at once a son or daughter of the Sugatas, a Buddha child. He or she rejoices in the new found fruitfulness of their existence. This spirit is a kind of spiritual gene, a DNA molecule of universal evolution life after life. Once one possesses it by conceiving the will to attain Buddhahood, the perfection of wisdom and compassion for the sake of all living beings, the quality of one’s experience and even one’s biological continuum is marked forever onward. There is no nobler thought that has ever been conceived in the in the within the human mind than this.
To develop oneself for the benefit of others, to dedicate oneself totally to the welfare of all sentient beings, and to develop an awakening heart. You know, it’s not merely the wish that that all things be well with others. But it’s taking sole responsibility to bring that about in fact. You know, one resolves systematically to attain Buddhahood. The state in which one really can accomplish the benefit of living beings.
The monks and lay people were embarrassed, so they built an extremely high throne, and there were no steps up to the throne. There came the day of the teaching when he was going to address his gathered throng of students. And he walked up to the throne and he began to float up in the air and he settled softly on his seat. And he began to give the teaching on what later became known as the guide to the Bodhisattva’s way of life for engaging in the Bodhisattva’s deeds.
And as he approached, as he began to teach the ninth chapter, which is on the nature of reality, emptiness, he began to of float off into space slowly. Everybody kept on listening. Finally, the tenth chapter, no one could see him. They just heard this voice speaking from the sky and he was never seen again. So that is the story of Śāntideva.
Equalizing, exchanging oneself for other. It begins with, first of all, I should make an effort to meditate upon equality between self and others. I should protect all beings as I do myself because we all are equal in wanting pleasure, not wanting pain. The techniques, steps which we’re going to discuss and which ultimately are to be reflected upon and meditated as a means of integrating, is first developing a sense of equality between ourselves and others and amongst sentient beings in general, others in general. Then we’re going to look at the disadvantages of self centeredness, the advantages of other centeredness, then the meditative technique of the actual exchange of self with others, and then a visualization technique called taking and giving, after which we develop an exceptional resolve.
This leads to the actual development of the awakening heart. It begins with the foundation of a sense of equality, equanimity, and even mindedness, both with regards to oneself and others, but also amongst others. When we look superficially For example, when we feel rich people, famous people, powerful people are happy. Somehow, they don’t suffer, and therefore it’s hard for us to develop compassion for them, to arouse a sense of caring for them. This is just dreaming.
So long as a person is bounded by ego, so long as there is suffering, so long as a person is controlled by attachment, has anger, confusion, there is suffering. No matter how rich that person may be, no matter how beautiful that person may be, no matter how much they may be laughing on the outside, that person, the nature of their existence is dissatisfactory. You know, again, when we look at poor people, needy people, if the basis of our way of relating to them is not in terms of equality of self and others, if that is not an essential basis of relating to them, then we can easily mistake pity for compassion. Pity is one part arrogance and one part sympathy. We have a tendency to devalue others and make them the object for our doing good.
When we lose sight of our commonality, the commonality of our experience, of our essential equality, we have a tendency to devalue them. Good done to another, as if to an object, is of little or no spiritual value. There’s a feeling of superiority. That’s the sense of self righteousness about what we do. You know, you’re saying, Oh, I feel better than you.
I feel warm and good about what I can do for you. I feel good about myself and what I can do for you. With such an attitude, beneath the superficial help that we may be able to give another person, we may, in actual fact, be encouraging them to feel more worthless about themselves than they already feel. They’re seeing us as good and themselves as bad. It’s difficult for someone in need of help to struggle against the pressing of attention of someone who is trying to do them some good, who is undermining them by doing them good.
You know, no one needs us to feel sorry for them. I remember Mother Teresa, who is an expert on needy people. And she said, on poor people, about poor people. And she said, the poor don’t want your money. They want your respect more than anything else.
They want you to feel to treat them as equals. That’s difficult. I remember my first one of my first retreats. One of my first few years in Dharmasala in Northern India after after having done a retreat. And it’s quite easy to when you do retreat because you’re in isolation.
Maybe maybe not too many problems come up. Many of our many of our problems arise in relationship with others. And when you isolate yourself from others, it’s quite easy to get the feeling that you’ve become a saint all of a sudden overnight. So I thought, Well, being a saint and all that, I’ll go down to the Home of the Dying in Calcutta, and radiate my saintlyhood to them. They can use it all, saintlyhood.
And so, I went down to the Home of the Dying in Calcutta. And I remember bringing all my saintliness to to my work there. And I was clipping the toenails of a small poor beggar who, you know, half, you know, half an hour before was laid in the gutter in the street. I thought, oh, what a great saint I am. Here I am, a sophisticated westerner.
I’ve come down here and I’m just clipping the toenails of this this poor wretch. And he didn’t like the way I was clipping his toenail. And he began to criticize And it was quite a revelation. You know, my reaction to his criticism, you know, just, how dare you? You should be grateful.
Know, really really wasn’t any thought of helping. Just perhaps feeding my own ego, my own delusions of grandeur at that particular time. You know, the nun, I think she died, the main assistant to Teresa. She said that when people leave here, we don’t thank them because we know that when they leave here, they’ve gotten more out of working here than they’ve given. So there’s no thanks that needs to be given.
Without seeing the equality of self in others, without understanding our common humanity, our common experience of life, then we are always going to remain indifferent to the vast majority. We’re never going to be able to see how our existence is bound up with the rest of life. How our life exists with interdependency with others. Never going to be able to acknowledge the quality of our, the fact that we are a social being. This isolation that we feel, that we experience, is the product of this optical delusion, somehow that we’re separate.
Focusing on this side over here, we have a feeling that we can satiate it, solve our problems. Going over the equality of self in others, what we’re going to try to do, the insight to be gained through the practice of equality of self and others is essentially that happiness and suffering of others is in no way different than happiness and suffering of ourselves. The meaning of meditating equality of self and others is developing the mind which seeks the happiness and the elimination of the suffering to the same degree that we presently seek to eliminate our own suffering and find our own happiness. You know, that we now work How much we’re willing to work toward our own happiness, gaining our own happiness, eliminating our own difficulties? We begin to develop that same degree of intention to eliminate the difficulties of others, to bring others happiness.
That is to say, we’re trying to develop an unconditional positive regard. The outcome of meditating equality in self and others. An unconditioned positive regard. Unconditioned. Unconditioned.
That is to say, it is not dependent upon how I might label that person out there, whether that person is friend, enemy, and stranger. It’s not going to condition the way I relate with them, and my relationship is not indifferent. It’s positive. Very much our egocentric approach is in conflict with reality. Rather devaluing, rather than objectifying others and seeing them simply as form beings.
This is the initial impression when you see someone. You see them as form. It’s trying to develop a sense of feeling beings. These beings are feeling beings. Everyone in this room is a feeling being.
As I mentioned previously, society very much forces us to take on perverted our world view. And we have to revolt against this. To see others as feeling beings, we can no longer use them for our own welfare, our own aggrandizement. I’m going to talk about self centeredness. And what I mean by self centeredness is the seeking of happiness at the expense and exclusion of others.
In order to do this, we have to devalue others. We have to make them into objects which we lay at the altar of our ego. And in that process, we have to dehumanize others. And in that process, we have to dehumanize ourselves. We make ourselves into objects.
We create a split within ourselves. So, the actual meditative tradition for equalizing self with others equalizing self with others. We approach it from two overall points of view from the conventional point of view and from the ultimate point of view. From the conventional point of view, we approach it from, again, two points of view. We approach it from the side of others and from our own side.
Equality of self and others conventionally from the side of others. Others want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer exactly like myself. No difference whatsoever. From their side, everyone in this room, no matter whether they’re female or male, whether young, old, rich or poor, uneducated, educated, beautiful, ugly, and all the various possible variations amongst the people in this room.
If we go to cut down to the core value, the essential quality about them, they want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer. And that wanting to be happy, that wanting not to suffer is in no way different than my own. To the same degree, they want to be happy. To the same degree, they don’t want to suffer.
Sometimes, as example in India, you You have to become numb to that fact. Develop a world view, if you like, an unconscious conception that the poor don’t mind us suffering as much as I do. That the people living with no clothes out in the cold, they don’t mind to be cold as much as I would, but they do. But we have to, as if, numb ourselves to that reality. Or otherwise, we would have to make a choice.
Either we’re going to remain hypocrites for the rest of our lives in light of our own wisdom, or we’re going to have to do something, take responsibility. It’s a difficulty. From conventional point of view, from the side of others, a possibility. I’m adapting this from a meditative tradition which was taught by the late tutor to His Holiness, Trijang Rinpoche. And he has a specific way of setting this out, various images.
But let me give you an image, perhaps, to convey this sense of equality of others from their own side, conventionally. You know, you’re It’s nineteen forty two in Germany. It’s two o’clock in the morning and you there’s a slamming, you know, the door is broken down. German troops come rushing in with guns, machine guns. Everyone out in the middle of the night and without any and just with the the few pieces of clothes that you’re wearing at that time, you’re you’re thrown outside.
And there’s other people being thrown outside of their home. And you’re put on the back of a truck, and you don’t know what’s happening. And people are screaming and crying. There’s confusion, terror. And then you’re you’re taken to a railroad siding.
You’re placed in boxcars. After few days riding, you know, cramped in boxcars, you arrive at your destination, and you’re let out. And you’re put in a line. And there’s this line of people and you’re a member of this line. And there’s all these infinite possible varieties, types, classes of people.
And some of them are some of them are rich. Some of them are poor. Some of them are are well educated. Some of them are perhaps can’t even read. Some of them are beautiful.
Some are ugly. Some are male. Some are female. All the possible varieties and types of people are in this mind. They all have the same commonality of terror.
And what is going to be your reaction? Who are you going to draw close to you and comfort amongst those various types of people? What is going to be your natural tendency? Do the poor need your caring any less than the rich? Does an ugly person not need a hug or a hand around the shoulder any less than a beautiful person?
Does a rich Does an uneducated person need caring any less than an educated person? But what is going to be your natural tendency? To draw those near to you, the beautiful, the rich, closer to you. But if you look into their eyes, there’s no difference. They’re all full of care.
And the line the door opens and the line shortens and they’re all going to their death. There’s no difference. You know, within their own commonality of the actual experience of what’s happening there, they’re all full of terror. They’re all afraid. None of them want to die.
They’re all confused. No different. And they all need your help in the same exact way. From their own side, exactly alike, no matter whether rich, poor, educated, beautiful, whatever. Exactly life from their own side.
They all want to be happy. They don’t want to die. They’re all confused. They’re all terrified. From our own side, you know, the equality of others from our own side.
Trying to see the equality of the kindness of others, that others are equally as kind to us. No different. You know, it’s easy to talk about the kindness of those who we like, who do nice things to us, our friends, our loved ones. Perhaps we don’t need to meditate on very much. They’re kind.
But how about to that vast majority of individuals who we are completely indifferent to? You know, strangers, those people who are as if don’t exist for us. Now, traditionally, talk about the fact that we’re able to sit here in this room, this building. It depends upon others, strangers who we’ve never met. The carpenters, the masons, bricklayers.
There’s this heat coming out of this heater, warmth. It’s dependent upon the kindness others. People that will never know, people that will never see. The clothes that you wear, the food that you eat, it’s all dependent upon others. The kindness of others.
We exist in interdependency with others. We can never survive in isolation with others. You know, perhaps that begins to register. Perhaps that begins to move our mind somewhat. But you, you you have to go on to question, well, okay, I need others.
I depend upon others. But it doesn’t mean they’re kind to me. What they do, they aren’t doing it for me. They’re doing it because they’re going to get paid for it. They aren’t doing it for me.
Then why should I have any gratitude? Why should I see them as being kind? Why should I be thankful when somebody simply has done something doing something which though it benefits me, they’re not doing it to have a sense of kindness, but just for monetary gain. So, look at a We develop a situation. Your child has just become mortally ill, perhaps just had an accident, whatever.
You rush your child to the hospital. Your total being is absorbed in one thing, the welfare of your child. Totally absorbed in one thought, may my child be well, may my child be well. That’s all that you want out of life at that very moment. Nothing more over and above that could you wish for at that very moment, that you want to see your child happy, smiling, running, laughing again.
That’s all you want out of life. I would give my life just to see that once more, just to know that once more. Your child’s taken into the operating room. I know you’re frantic with worry, constantly with this tremendous total absorption in a wish that made my child be happy. That’s all you want.
A few hours later, the doctor comes out, and she says, It’s going to be okay. Your child’s going to be well. How are you going to respond? You know, what would be a healthy, authentic, sane response at that moment? You could think, you could respond with a banking mentality, an accountant mentality.
Oh, I wonder how much this is going to cost me. Anesthesiologist. There’s a surgeon. There’s this possibility. But wouldn’t a sane, healthy, meaningful response be one of thanksgiving, one of gratitude?
You know, you’re going to pay for that operation either way. Now, why should we be bound in our response to others by what appears to be their intention? Now, this wouldn’t be pragmatic as an approach to social condition of life, to have a sense of gratitude, of thankfulness, to feel that the universe is somehow supporting you, that it wasn’t alien from you, that this whole situation existed, brought you that everything that you wanted at that moment, your whole purpose was fulfilled by this surgeon, by the anesthesiologist, by the janitors, by the staff, by the people who built the hospital. It all came together and gave you what you wanted. The universe doesn’t quite seem so hostile to you.
It’s actually supporting you. What kind of attitude would you prefer to have, an approach to life, this thing called life? We’re not saying that somehow one is good and one is bad. No moral judgment, but simply on a pragmatic basis. What is the response of a healthy person?
Of a joyous person? Of a same, healthy person? This is, you know, a shift in a point of view and approaching in a way we relate to others. Beginning to appreciate rather than persisting in our feelings of indifference and unrelatedness to others. The world no longer quite seems so alien anymore.
But maybe it’s there for us, the benevolent universe, seeking to support ourselves. And then, that class of individuals, of enemies. You know, the Dalai Lama once said that we owe the Chinese a great debt. For, actually, they have been extremely kind to us. I’m sure all of you are aware of the great atrocities that the Chinese committed against the Tibetans and continue to do so.
But, the Dalai Lama said, we owe them a great debt. Actually, have been extremely kind to us. Due to leaving our own country, we had to become strong. We had to develop courage in facing all our various hardships that we’ve had to endure. The Chinese have been very kind to us.
They forced us to really practice the Dharma. So, in dependence upon the enemy, those people we don’t like, that we don’t get along with, we develop patience. There’s no one else that we have this opportunity opportunity to develop this quality with. We don’t need to develop patience with respect to people who are always kind to us or to strangers who we never enter into a relationship with. It’s people who give us a hard time who show us where we’re really at, who show us It’s difficult people who strip us of cocoons of our nice, sweet tit for tat relationship, the way that we normally relate in our superficial social etiquette.
You know, it kind of shakes us out of our stagnation We’re trying to hold on to some kind of status quo. For example, Christ didn’t say, Love your enemy. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who maltreat you because he was either confused or because he was aromantic. He saw it as a very powerful means of becoming perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. In other words, as a means to grow.
You know, you don’t have to like your enemy, but you can love your enemy. You can appreciate your enemy. To grow fundamentally means to enlarging and expanding of one’s horizons, a growth in the boundaries, both outwardly in perspective and inwardly in depth. Your enemy helps you grow. He’s helping you to solve your ultimate problem.
He’s helping you become a Buddha. To grow is Concomitant with a more satisfying, authentic, fulfilling way of being. In this respect, it would be a great mistake to think that traveling, as I mentioned, the spiritual path is the skillful avoidance of difficult situations and difficult people. Anything which helps you grow is kind. All of these different kindnesses are not the same, but each of these types of individuals, our friends, strangers, and enemies, are uniquely contributing to our welfare, are in their own unique way, are expressing a kindness toward ourselves.
Ultimately, it is through them that we’re going to develop ourselves, that we’re experiencing temporal happiness, and we will finally achieve ultimate happiness, that we’re going to change. Perhaps, ultimately, it is our enemy who helps us more than anyone else. Perhaps, more so than those who we hold dear. In this way, we can begin to develop an even mindedness, an even minded attitude toward everyone, toward our friends, toward our enemies, toward our strangers, understanding that each in their own various ways, they are all kind to us. We may still prefer to associate with our friends, but still, we can have an unconditional, positive regard for everyone.
We can appreciate how each of them is in their own unique way contributing to our ultimate and temporal well-being, to our happiness. And, just to finish, from Śāntideva’s engaging in the bodhisattva’s deeds. Just a final verse. We’ll talk about the ultimate equality. We can begin that with next week’s talk.
Just a verse. In cultivating the qualities of a Buddha, we rely both on the victors and sentient beings. Just as we pay homage to the victors, how can we not pay homage to sentient beings? That’s what Khensur Rinpoche, one night, said, No, it’s half and half. We need the Buddhas.
We need teachers, spiritual masters. We need instructions, methods, inspiration, guidance, and we also need to have a sentient being. Why do we respect our teachers and the Buddha and not respect sentient beings? So, I’ll stop there. And then, we can dedicate the positive potential that we’ve created.
The skillful action that we’ve created in this way. And just a word about dedication, another quotation from Lama Yeshe. Dedication is very important too. It’s not just unnecessary ritual or words. The meaning of dedication is that your meditation is not just for your own ego pleasure.
You are dedicating it for other beings. That way, you don’t become proud. Often, philosophically, religious people are proud. Religion and philosophy can become equipment to produce more problem. So in Buddhism, that is the reason for practicing dedication, very useful.
It’s not just a ritual. Buddhism teaches you complete liberation, how to completely free the mind from any problems of worldly existence. If you have a problem of attachment to Buddhism or Buddha, you are still deluded. You aren’t free. Buddhism tells you that you shouldn’t be attached to your own religion, to your own body, to your own nose.
Simple, isn’t it? Dedication is very useful. Normally, do dedicate our life, but in a limited way. Our goal is limited. That’s why in this dedication, we dedicate the merit of our meditation to benefit other sentient beings in order to discover enlightenment.
The purpose of our meditation is not only for getting chocolate, not only for getting cake. Our goal lies beyond that. That way it becomes transcendental attitude. Okay? Thank you so much.
Good night. So, verses eight to nine. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to that enlightened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase.