Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A hot dog passed hand-to-hand down a baseball stand — not yours to bite into — is Ven Jampa Gendun’s opening image for learning to let thoughts pass without grasping in meditation. After a brief breath-counting exercise using counting and noting, this 82.5-minute session moves to the series’ central topic: equalizing and exchanging self for others, rooted in Śāntideva’s Engaging in Bodhisattva Deeds. Gendun explains three grounds for unconditional positive regard toward all beings — they equally want happiness and dislike suffering, they each show unique kindness to us, and labels like friend or enemy are ultimately arbitrary. He then explores the paradox of individuality and relatedness, drawing on M. Scott Peck and Erich Fromm to argue that self-centeredness signals insufficient self-affirmation rather than too much, and that altruism is the most directly available remedy for psychological suffering. The talk ends with the Dalai Lama’s notion of wise selfishness: genuine care for others is the surest path to one’s own happiness.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 HoP 1990 08 21.mp3
UUID: 58e428a8-6ca5-4ac1-90d8-a9467b5962e6
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Heart of the Path (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1990-08-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 82.5 minutes
Words: ~9,330
A large extent, our lives are based upon these patterns of habit We use various techniques to help us in development of of of our meditation. Meditation, in this sense, is mainly concerned with the development of two factors of mind: awareness and mindfulness. Mindfulness is that which holds the object, like the hand holding the book. It holds the breath, or it holds a visualization, or it holds a thought before the mind. And the factor of awareness, that which knows.
In the development of these two factors, in the course of meditation, can make use of two techniques. The one is to help facilitate our mindfulness, we use the technique of counting. It gives us a grosser, coarser object to hold onto. Initially, it’s difficult for us to hold onto a very subtle or fine object. It’s like a baby trying to pick up a needle.
It doesn’t have the coordination. It’s clumsy. So, but if you give it a coarser, a more gross type of object, like a ball. You can pick that up. So likewise with the mind, we give it a coarser object than just the breath.
We give it, we count. We have to remember. Mindfulness is another way of saying memory. Recollection. So, we count the breaths.
We breathe in, and we breathe out. And we simply count mentally, not verbally. Mentally, one. And out two, and out three, and out four, and out five. Having gotten to five, we come back down to one through five.
Then through six, one through seven, one through eight, one through nine, one through ten. And to help us, a technique you know we can make use of to help us develop awareness is noting. That is to say, we mentally note whatever object our mind is involved in in the present moment to emphasize that fact, to know what we’re involved in. In mindfulness of breathing, ideally, we are knowing the breath. We are aware of the breath.
So the course of the noting may go in, out. Breathing in, we know that we’re breathing in. We note in. Breathing out, we know that we’re breathing out. We note out.
So now we have a combination of mentally counting and noting. In out, one. In out, two. In out, three. But definitely your mind is going to wander.
And the very moment that you become aware that your mind has wandered, simply note whatever the object was. Hearing the fan on the heater. Pain. Hearing, hearing, pain. Then return like the puppy back to the newspaper.
Like I mentioned last week about paper training a puppy. With gentleness and patience, return the puppy back to the newspaper again and again. Note whatever the object is, and then immediately bring the puppy, bring the mind back to the breath. There’s an art in this quality of letting go. You know, to a great degree, we can’t stop thinking.
You know, thinking has its rightful place in all our in all the various mental events which constitute our mental life. And we need thinking. We need to think clearly and use our rational process. But we also have to develop the ability to set it aside when it is not needed, or when it’s not appropriate to the situation. And most of us can’t.
Most of us for most of us, our thinking has become pathological. We cannot stop thinking. And one perhaps useful way to to view one’s thinking is the ability to let it go. To let it go. You know, we think we’re quite important, and what we think must be quite important.
But that’s not always true, the ability to to let a thought go. In the United States, where I’m from, we have one of the great you know, you have Australian footy rules, footy. We have baseball. And in the United States, during the course of a baseball game, there are these men who walk up and down I use American English. The stands, I think, in the bleachers selling hot dogs.
And they, they have long rows of benches where people sit. There might be thirty people to a bench. And if you’re in the middle and you want a hot dog, and you don’t You simply indicate to the man walking up and down that you want a hot dog, and you indicate what you want, mustard, mustard and relish, pickle, onion, ketchup, anyway, whatever. And then he puts it on. He hands the hot dog to the first person, and the first person hands it the hot dog to the second.
And the second person hands it to a third. And down the line it goes until it gets to you. And, you know, the situation could arise that you’re very intently watching the baseball game. The action’s very exciting. And someone taps you on the shoulder, and you look over, and they place this fresh, steaming, luscious looking hot dog in your hand.
And the instantaneous kind of temptation impulse might arise. You wanna take huge bite out of this hot dog, but it’s not yours. You know, if you want a hot dog, you can order your own hot dog. You just have to raise your hand as if by magic one will appear. But this particular hot dog is not yours.
Your job is simply to pass the hot dog along. And likewise, maybe it might be useful to think of much of your thinking that a big, huge, luscious looking thought comes along, and you wanna take a huge bite out of it. But you don’t have to bite into it. You can simply pass it along, say, this is not mine. I’ll order up my own thoughts when I want them, and just leave it go by, pass it on to the next person, and go back to the breath, that we don’t have to take bite into everything which rises in our mind.
We can begin to be selective in how we use our mind and what we direct it toward. Thinking that way, maybe that will be useful. So if you take a comfortable, firm posture, and we’ll spend five minutes mindfulness of breathing. In talking about setting some kind of a direction, we traditionally refer to as going for refuge. And what we you know, that if refuge is to have any meaning, it must be something real.
It can’t be just an abstraction or something which is some type of fiction. But it must be something which actually helps us to solve our problems or what we’re doing serves no purpose. And it just adds further complications to our life, already complicated lives. And the taking as a possible real solution to the difficulties of ego based existence, the inner principle of Buddha, one’s own Buddha, one’s own awakening. And what that might mean in some kind of relevant practical terms for ourselves.
As far as the development of some awareness, some knowledge of knowing the way things are, in fact, divorced of our pre preconceptions, our misconceptions, mistaken ideas, wrong assumptions, although there is our worldview, which may in some way be out be out of kilter with the way things actually are. Knowing the way things are, in fact, as a therapy, as way of solving our problems, that the truth has this ability to help us solve our problems, that the quality of love and compassion has the quality of helping to solve our problems, and the quality of mental and spiritual energy, spontaneous activity. These three qualities constituting an awakened mind, which becomes inner goal of our life as a way of solving our problems, a direction which we can recommit ourselves again and again during the course of our everyday life. Wisdom, simply means knowing the way things are, trying to get at the truth of the thing, committing ourselves to love and compassion, and the generation of skillful, appropriate action activities in the world as a way, pragmatic way, of actually solving our problems. And the means to do that as Dharma, the techniques to develop Buddha within the social context of a spiritual community, Sangha.
And this is the direction which we emphasize within the context of Buddhism. The inner principle of awakening within ourselves, each of us for ourselves, through the methods, the truth of Dharma, that which raises the level of one’s consciousness from attachment to openness, from hatred to love, from ignorance to wisdom, And through the supportive community of, fellow fellow journeyers who inspire us, guide us, teach us, support us, whatever it takes to facilitate our growth, to nurture us. And the fact that this is not simply an abstraction, something divorced from who we, in fact, are. But all of these qualities of wisdom, love and compassion, and mental and spiritual energy are within each of us in some germ form, some seed form within us now. It’s not that we need to go outside of ourselves to seek these, but we all have some wisdom no matter how faint and obscure that wisdom might be, that we all have some love and compassion no matter how exclusive, no matter how limited that love and compassion might be.
We all have some spiritual mental energy no matter how unrefined, unrefined, unspontaneous that energy might be. It’s all there within us. So the seed, the the basic cause to solve our problems is within us. The seed of Buddha, of awakening, is within us. The solution to our problems is within us.
And this is where we commit ourselves to solving our problems. Now where this idea of enlightenment, this idea of awakening, where does it come from? Okay. Maybe it’s a workable solution, this idea of awakening. And we’re talking about something which is relevant to our lives, not something which is some abstract notion which has been dreamed up by some men living in caves, which has no practical application to what is happening to us on on the street, but some some some workable method to help us ease the burden of suffering, which we all experience every day of our lives.
Where has this idea come from? You know, it has come from history itself, that there have been an infinite number of women and men who have actually achieved this state, who have solved the difficult problem of what it means to be a normal human being, which is categorized which is characterized by dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration, whether we wish to admit that or not. That’s up to, you know, each of us, whether we want to confront that issue in our life or not. That that is the way it’s characterized. They actualize these qualities within themselves, which are germinal within ourselves, each of ourselves.
Know, trying to discover some element which preexists within ourselves, which we are continually externally orientated. So Buddhism is calling us back to ourselves to look for the solution to our troubles within ourselves, to constantly take up the process of evolution for ourselves, of evolving ourselves. I was in Sri Lanka about I think it’s been about eighteen years ago. And then it was like almost a paradise. I’m afraid it’s as as everything does, things have changed there for the worse.
And during the course of my visit there, I visited many Buddhist ruins. Many were neglected, overgrown with weeds in the jungle. And one day, I was out just walking through the bush, and I came along a broken down stone wall. And I came around the other side of that wall. And there, covered over with weeds and vines and bushes, neglected, probably unseen for many, many years.
Obscured was a stone image of a Buddha sitting, you know, not unlike the one on the altar here, made of stone as if it you know, it gave me the impression of having been sitting there for, I don’t know, hundreds, thousands of years, to hundreds of thousands of years if I want to be poetic. As if it had been waiting from beginningless time with extreme unimaginable patience waiting to be discovered, sitting there quietly with this beatific smile on its face, waiting to be rediscovered. And it occurred to me later on that Arthur C. Clarke, who was the author who wrote the movie script of two thousand one. I don’t know if you remember that movie.
In the course in this movie, it it plotted the evolution of of humankind through the various stages that it went through. And in each of these great leaps in the evolutionary journey of humankind, there was always present this large, I’ll call it, stone pillar, monolith. From from from those stages of being like eight persons to the stage of being more humanoid, to stage of becoming, I don’t know, a child of the universe. It was always marked with the presence of these large stone pillars, these monolith. And I remember that Arthur C.
Clarke had written the screenplay two thousand and one while he was staying in Sri Lanka. And it occurred to me that perhaps one day that, like myself, he had been wandering aimlessly through the jungle and had rediscovered one of these stone monoliths, one of these stone images of Buddha had been waiting to be discovered. And they’re calling us back to ourselves, the to taking up the difficult task of consciously evolving ourselves. The was I don’t mean I won’t I use the term man, not hopefully, not in too over overly sexist way or overly sexist way. The Buddha was a man, but he was not an he was not an ordinary man.
He was born a human being, but he was not He became an extraordinary human being. He became an awakened being. You know, the living embodiment of everything of what I have been talking about in terms of knowledge, in terms of unbounded love and compassion, in terms of inexhaustible energy. He was not born an extraordinary human being. He became one as a result of his own human effort.
He actualized in himself everything which is in potential within each of us now. The same is true for all of the Buddhists, all of these awakened individuals, whether male or female. For example, Tārā. Tārā is an important awakened being, one of the first radical feminists who we look to. But there have been infinite number of individuals who have awakened by means of actualizing their own potential.
But that same potential, which is no different than any of our potentials. This enlightened being is regarded as the highest being in the universe. We take this being as a paradigm of sanity, a model. And the models that we take are quite important to us. We have models, whether we constantly acknowledge them or not.
And the mind will, as I’ve been trying to emphasize, is quite dynamic in its nature. It’s always moving. It’s not static. And it moves toward that which we value. There’s a term, cathect, that which we imbue with power, that which we imbue with energy, that which we hold high.
Now, if this is Rambo, then your mind will naturally tend toward that. You’ll begin to manifest Rambo like qualities in the course of your everyday life. If it’s, I don’t know who, Kylie Minogue? I don’t know. Bob Hawke?
So whether we whether we acknowledge this collecting of models or this acknowledging of models, this empowering of people, individuals, things, we do it anyway. So we are trying to cathect an awakened being as our model of what it means to have actualized the fullest potential of a human being, of what it means to be a happy, loving, sane, healthy human being. And this whether there are other individuals in the universe who are higher or not, perhaps is we can leave that to theologists. But this is we’re we’re taking something for us to work toward, which is important for us, which gives our mind some direction, which we could affect. Our mind will be able to naturally direct toward that.
You know, the enlightened person, the awakened person, is regarded as the highest being in the universe, this paradigm of sanity. And it’s for this reason that we respect and we and we revere the Buddha. He’s reversed he’s revered. He’s worshipped out of a sense of gratitude for setting an example for setting an example, for showing the way, for demonstrating to us what we all too can become. In other words, the Buddha is worshiped as a teacher, as a guide, as an exemplar.
Buddhahood is our birthright. We see in our pain, our confusion. We generate a very negative self image of ourselves. A concept of ourselves of wishlessness, of insufficiency, that there’s something wrong with me. And we relate with the world on that basis, and this is what the type of world that we experience.
Informs our perception. However we may conceive of ourselves, whatever identity we may hold to, that’s not who we are. That’s simply our present self conception, our present self image of who we are. You know, in our blackest moments, when, you know, we’re completely discouraged, disgusted with yourself, repulsed by yourself. And you think that the mud puddle out on the road there is is higher than you are.
That that that very mind, that very awareness is a Buddha mind. It’s saying, look look at you look at where you’re at. Look at where you’re going. You know, to to become aware of our ignorance is to become wise. That’s the birth of wisdom, is to acknowledge, to become aware.
It’s saying, Be happy. Don’t keep on going on the way you are. It’s compassion, compassion for yourself, the loving of yourself. And saying, don’t go back to sleep. Stay awake.
That’s energy. So at that very moment, at those darkest, most discouraging moment, all the qualities of a Buddha mind are present. So rather than being discouraged and depressed, when you become aware of your shortcomings, your negativities, you can rejoice in knowing that your basic sanity is beginning to operate. That’s just some kind of breakthrough. With respect to mental illness, one of the greatest difficulties in treating psychotics is that they cannot acknowledge or they’re not aware of their illness.
One has to become aware of your illness is the first step in becoming well again, that there’s some inappropriateness about the way you’re acting. And that that shows there’s some element of sanity awareness which is being brought to the situation. So we have to, you know, we have to believe in ourselves, perhaps in spite of ourselves. We have to try to use our wisdom, try to use our love, use our creative energy, and that becomes our ultimate refuge. Buddhism is saying this is the way to solve your problems.
Ultimately, to use your wisdom, to develop it, to develop and use your love, to generate and use your energy. This is the continual redirecting, recommitting ourselves, which going for refuge constitutes. And we try to try to raise the level of this this committing ourselves And talking about the evolution of individuals, simply most, to grow. But what is this force that pushes us as individuals and as a whole species to grow against the natural resistance of our own lethargy. We have already labeled it.
It is love. Love was defined as the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. When we grow, it is because we are working at it, and we are working at it because we love ourselves. It is through love that we elevate ourselves, and it is through our love for others that we assist others to elevate themselves. Love, the extension of the self, is the very act of evolution.
It is evolution in progress. The evolutionary force present in all life manifests itself in humankind as human love. And we’re learning to love ourselves and to love others as the necessary force to take up the difficult task of constantly evolving ourselves to help us to solve our problems and to put us in a position to best facilitate, to best be able to help others to solve their problems, and to take refuge in an awakening heart. Buddhism, again and again, is trying to tell us that we are unimaginably more than we had we can imagine, that we could ever hope to be. So, you know, we have to try to remember that.
You know, please remember that, that you are a Buddha to be. And we can recite the verse at Hone for Refuge. 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 to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. And 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, and the highest assembly. And 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’m talking about the method for the development of an awakened heart the two traditions, the the tradition of the sevenfold cause and effect method, and the second tradition, the tradition of equalizing and exchanging self for others. Discussing the latter of these two, equalizing and exchanging self for others, which has its source in the lineage from Śākyamūni Buddha to Mañjuśrī and then to Śāntideva. And the main source text was written by Śāntideva called Engaging in Bodhisattva Deeds, which is translated into English.
It begins with the development of equality of self and others. Equality of self and others. And this is done from both the conventional point of view and the ultimate point of view. And essentially, by equality of self and others, I mean the unconditional positive regard. Unconditional positive regard.
Unconditional positive regard for all sentient beings. From the conventional point of view, from the side of others, coming to the understanding that all sentient beings want to be happy, don’t want to suffer exactly like myself. No difference whatsoever. Exactly the same. That is to say, we begin to take others’ difficulties, problems as seriously as we take ours to that same degree because they’re equal and wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer.
But we simply can’t stop there. We want to develop a positive regard. Within the sevenfold cause and effect method, the basis is equanimity. It is a type of equanimity which is common with the lesser vehicle equanimity, which is within this four immeasurables. Immeasurable love, immeasurable compassion, immeasurable joy, and the fourth of these, immeasurable equanimity.
And this type of equanimity is the not to hold some close and dear, not to hold some others close and others far. That is to be divorced from attachment and aversion. Simply by being divorced from attachment and aversion, one develops a type of equanimity. But it’s not it could constitute an indifference. Whereas here, we’re talking about a positive regard.
That is I use this word again, that we empower all individuals. We value them. To love an object is to value it, to give it importance. And we do this by seeing the kindness, by realizing the equality of others from our own side and seeing that all beings are kind to us. It’s not that we want to relate with all beings simply as equally, but they, in fact, are positively equal.
So we begin to see how all sentient beings are kind to us. But importantly, not kind in the same way, but in their own unique way. The person who our friends are not kind to us the same way that our stranger would be or that our enemies would be. But each of them, in their own way, is kind to us in contributing either to our temporal, our immediate, or our ultimate happiness. And this is their kindness from their side, equally.
And we develop We value that. We cathect them. We imbue them with importance. So it’s something, it’s a very Beings appear to us to be very pleasant. You know, like a lover is an example of cathecting.
Just to see her makes you feel happy. It gives you some sense of joy, pleasure. Just that’s how much energy, power, value you’ve put in that object. Just to see her or him or whatever. This is the quality which we’re trying to develop toward every individual.
So not only do we develop a sense that they want to be happy and not want to suffer exactly like ourselves, but they’re equally kind to us. And we develop an unconditional, from the third point of view, the ultimate point of view. That understanding that these labels of friend, enemy, and stranger are arbitrary and changeable. That they’re not ultimate. They’re not absolute, but relative to one another.
And so we develop an unconditional. From their side, whatever may appear to us, it’s simply a process of our labeling. And we can begin to understand that this labeling process is arbitrary, and we don’t have to accede to that appearance with our habitual attachment to our friend, aversion to enemy, and indifference to the stranger. We develop an unconditional positive regard toward all sentient beings. Sounds difficult, doesn’t it?
Sounds like quite a task. And we we began to talk last week about the second of of these five methods for the development of an awakening heart in the tradition of equalizing, exchanging self with others. Beginning to look at the second and third of these, the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness, and trying to see that within our own experience, we’re never more happy than when we’ve gone out of our habitual narrow self. That most of our most ecstatic, joyful moments are those when we’ve we’ve escaped this this prison, this boundary, which we usually confine ourselves to, whether it be can being carried away by beautiful music, being joined in union with the beloved, finding some universal ecstasy and truth and beauty. And we’re never more miserable than when we’re completely wrapped claustrophobic, narrow, self pitying self.
And, you know, it’s like completely surrounded by clouds. My problem, my want. And we can there’s no possibility for a ray of light, a ray of wisdom to break through this cloud. But the moment that we become aware of others’ difficulties, instantly, in that very moment, we are released from a great deal of our problem. That our problem isn’t compounded by our claustrophobic quality in which we’re trying to view the problem from.
We have to solve our problems. But if we can put them in some kind of perspective, then our problems become workable. And we’re automatically released from the additional compounding factor of our lack of perspective. And we’re going to, you know, begin to You know, last week, I tried to emphasize the fact of, again and again, calling to mind, seeing within your own experience, using your reasoning, your intuition of how you’re self centered approach. By self centeredness, I mean to seek happiness only for oneself at the expense and exclusion of others.
It’s not that we aren’t to seek happiness. This would be foolish. No one is saying that. But to seek happiness only for yourself at the expense and exclusion of others is self defeating, and trying to see this within your own experience. And whereas other centeredness may be a real workable direction to help you solve your problems, you know, with validating this with one within one’s own experience.
You know, we it’s as if we have two selves, two aspects to the self, the social aspect, the public aspect, that side of ourselves which exists in relationship to others, and our personal, private, experiential self. You know, we have a have a feeling of being connected with the world and a feeling of an individual self, self worth. You know, essentially, we are related to other people. And at the same time, we are essentially self directing unique individuals. And it almost seems like a paradox.
We are connected with the world. We exist in interdependence, in relationship to others. But at the same time, we are self directing, unique individuals whose actions and concerns are valuable in and of themselves, for ourselves. And these two ways of being are not in conflict. But they’re just two aspects of our everyday way of being, everyday way of existence.
You know, from the the viewpoint of the of the great vehicle, the holistic viewpoint of the great vehicle, the lesser vehicle, the Hīnayāna, is seen as falling to the extreme of individualism. It’s an imbalance which fails to take into account that essentially we are social beings, that we exist in interrelationship with others, that to become a happy, healthy, sane human being, we must not only make effort to find inner peace, but we have to find a way of appropriately relating with others. We have to find some appropriate relationship with others. We have to do that, because we are part of ourselves exist as social beings. We exist in interrelationship with others.
So we have to find some appropriate, skillful way of interrelating. We can’t avoid that, which our very existence demands that of us. We cannot consistently try to make, to find happiness for ourselves alone, find inner peace for ourselves alone, that we have to find some way of some skillful way of relating with others. That we cannot find happiness in isolation from others, that mental health is a social phenomena. A quotation by one American psychiatrist by the name of M.
Scott Peck. I’m talking about this dual quality of our nature, these two aspects of our selves. So we are called to wholesomeness, simultaneously, to recognition of our incompleteness, called to power and to acknowledge our weakness, called to both individualism and interdependence. Thus, the problem, indeed, the total failure of the ethic of rugged individualism is that it runs with only one side of the paradox, incorporates only one half of our humanity. It recognizes that we are called to individuation, power, and wholeness, but it denies entirely the other part of the human story, that we can never fully get there, and that we are of necessity in our uniqueness, weak and imperfect creatures who need each other.
This denial can be sustained only by pretense, because we cannot ever be totally adequate, self sufficient, independent beings. The ideal of rugged individualism encourages us to fake It encourages us to hide our weaknesses and failures. It teaches us to be utterly ashamed of our limitations. It drives us to attempt to be super women and super men, not only in the eyes of others, but also in our own. It pushes us day in and day out to look as if we had it all together, as if we were without needs and total control of our lives.
It relentlessly demands that we keep up appearances. It also relentlessly isolates us one from each other. You know, we given our image of ourselves as isolated substance, it seems that in order to affirm oneself, we have to deny the world, or in order to affirm the world that somehow we have to deny the self, that these two are mutually contradictory. And these are the two extremes of self centeredness and self denial. You know, a human life, it’s not some static event.
It’s an ongoing stream of experiences. And this stream is both related to the surrounding world and uniquely, in our own individual way, we freely synthesize the worldly influence. Individuality and relatedness support and nurture one another. It’s true that we are called to wholeness. Again, Scott Peck.
But the reality is that we can never be completely whole in and of ourselves. We cannot be all things to ourselves and to others. We cannot be perfect. We cannot be doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, farmers, politicians, stonemasons, and theologians, all rolled into one. It is true that we are called to power, yet the reality is that there is a point beyond which our sense of self determination not only becomes inaccurate and prideful, but increasingly self defeating.
It is true that we are created to be individually unique, yet the reality is that we are inevitably social creatures who desperately need each other, not merely for sustenance, not merely for company, but for any meaning to our lives whatsoever. You know, often in a patriarchal society, men have been encouraged to cultivate their uniqueness and personal freedom at the expense of their relatedness. That is to say, they become the ethic of patriarchal society for men, is rugged individualism, or what we call macho, the individual who doesn’t need anybody. I can take care of myself. I got it all together.
I have everything that I need. On the other hand, women have been encouraged to cultivate relatedness at the expense of uniqueness and personal freedom. And this is, you know, for example, the you know, one of the — I went without for you. I did I get my day to day and night, I thought only of you. And now look what you do.
Look what you do in return. This quality. In either case, they both have been victimized. Know, people have been victimized by the premise that the self is, after all, an ego cut off from the world. But but a human life, whether it’s male or female, is both unique and contributed by relationships to others.
You know, we are, in at the same time, unique individuals and social beings existing in relationship to others. You know, while, for example, past experiences influence the present, they do not entirely they are not entirely determining it. In your present moment of experiences, you know, you feel the past occasions in your own way, from your own point of view, from your own perspective, for your own purpose. And thereby, you synthesize the past into patterns unique to yourself. We can have very similar histories, but the way we make use of that history, synthesizing that history, can be quite different.
We’d be very uniquely different, which makes us, each of us, very unique. You this is a you know, you have a conception of who you are. You know, most people are attuned to the past as this is who I have been, and they’re very much fixated on that. Who I have been. You know, Buddhism is asking us, let’s let’s make a paradigm shift, to who I have been, but to what I can become.
You know, a change in perspective so that we don’t have to necessarily be victimized by the past any longer, you know, rather than being enslaved by the past to what you have been. Now what who you are now is what you have done. What you do now is what you’re going to become. And I tried trying to go beyond our past roles. You know, with this continual repeating of past patterns, this is the problem.
If we don’t make a choice in our life, if we don’t exercise our will, if we don’t use volition, our past patterns will repeat themselves. We will remain victims of our history. This is cyclic existence. We will keep repeating the same thing again again and again. The way these patterns are perpetuated, and that we focus on those, we gain a security out of perpetuating our past patterns.
We actively perpetuate our past patterns. We take the line of least resistance in which we react, we enact our past patterns. We focus upon those events which validate, which are consistent with our past patterns. We forget those events which contradict our past patterns. We discount anything which we see as contradicting our past patterns.
We create situations which reinforce our past patterns. We develop relationships which reinforce our past patterns. Most of our whole life is simply invested in recreating what has gone before to give us a sense of security, to give us a sense of permanency, of reliability. That we we A way of avoiding problems. The problem of growth, of change, of accepting them.
You know, the I heard something I liked very much. Neurosis. You know, we have to we’re trying to overcome our neurosis, you might say. And to do that, we have to grow. We have to grow out of our neurosis.
We are neurotics, to some degree. We’re trying to grow out of our neurosis. And neurosis is the unwillingness to the avoidance Neurosis is the avoidance of legitimate suffering. Legitimate suffering. To to think that following a spiritual path is the skillful avoidance of suffering would be to make a big mistake as people who did the Nyungne retreat last last week and will testify to, and which was both fasting and prostrations.
It’s very difficult. I found it very difficult. But still, I think it’s legitimate suffering, and I think it will help me to grow. It’s by avoiding that suffering that I think I’m going to be stuck in my past patterns, dissatisfactory, which I don’t want to perpetuate any longer. You know, Buddhism is is asking us that we make this shift to reattuning ourselves not away from who I have been to who I can be, both personally and in relationship, both personally and in relationship.
The future person consists of not yet actualized possibilities in the present. Self affirmation, affirming who I can be. Within the context of Buddhism, the Buddhist perspective is consists in a deep recognition of our potential. You know, when I talked about recommitting ourselves, going for refuge, believing in yourself, and you’re and you’re a very deep recognition of who I can be. Ultimately, our our Buddha nature, our basic sanity, our brilliant wisdom, our instinct toward wakefulness.
Acknowledging who I am in the present. That is that’s who I am in the present. I have those qualities, you know, which I talked about in developing a motivation. Who I am in the present and freely deciding to become who I can be. Making this choice.
This choice seems terribly important to me, to exercise one’s choice. If one does not exercise choice, then there’s a I don’t know what the word is. The default path the default program becomes operative. You know? On a computer, if you don’t it has a default parameters.
I don’t know much about computers, but if you don’t specify something, it’ll fall back to a base a basic program. So you have to be active in a or it’ll always fall back to this make an active choice. Always fall back to the default, some basic program, some basic method of working with a problem. If we don’t make active choices, we’ll fall back to our default programs, which simply are perpetuating our past history. There’s no growth.
Who I can be, to freely decide, to make that choice, a matter of will, volition. To will, to love you, to will to love yourself. You know, that was definition of love, to the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. A will, a matter of choice to choosing to love myself in spite of myself. But Buddhism asked us, you know, to go further than than simply personal affirmation of of what I can become.
But it tries to show us that personal affirmation is intimately connected with, I don’t know, world relatedness, world affirmation, other affirmation, that one’s personal becoming we’re all involved with some kind of personal becoming must be integrated in becoming in relationship to others. That is to say, these two, personal becoming and becoming in relationship to the world, self affirmation and other affirmation are two sides of a single coin. You know, The bodhisattvas are motivated to achieve enlightenment, which is their personal fulfillment, their personal affirmation, for the sake of all sentient beings, which is their other affirmation, their acknowledgment of their relatedness to the world. By the achievement of Buddhahood, they achieve their own welfare and the welfare of others. There’s an integration of their personal affirmation, personal potential, and their potential for their relationship to the world.
And everything that they do, it’s a complete integration. Too And it’s acknowledgment of the fact that what we do somehow has to help us to skillfully relate to the world, at the same time of fulfilling our personal, experiential needs. You know, Buddhism is saying that essentially, on a conventional level, there is a self. There is me, and there is you. These exist.
And the method which resolves this seeming conflict between myself and others, this unusual sense of antagonism between myself and others, which we usually feel, sense in some way, that the most skillful way of relating, of overcoming this antagonism, this dualistic conflict between self and others is altruism. There is no greater method for us immediately available to eliminate our psychological ills than altruism. Altruism is the most available remedy for all our psychological ills, for all our psychological problems, to find to help us to find peace and love, which we all want, to find mental health. You know, as I pointed out last week, it’s unrealistic, but even compellingly practical that we should develop a natural, rational, powerful altruism. This isn’t some kind of it’s not particularly a complex, philosophic abstract theory, but a very simple statement about our life.
And we discussed that ego identification takes a long time in infancy, that an individual can recondition to incorporate others, whether that other is one’s mate, whether it’s a family, whether it’s one’s religious community, ethnic community, one’s country, that we can expand this sense of identification, this sense of identity to include all beings as if limbs of the great sentient being of life. Single body of life. We can open our hearts to others. There’s a quotation by Albert Einstein. A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space.
He experiences his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is kind of a prison for us, some restricting us to our own personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. But, you know, the present actuality of our our love, of our way of relating with the world is quite less inclusive. You know, most of us feel that that others are somehow alien.
Others are something other than myself. Perhaps we think others are something which should be conquered, something which should be dominated, manipulated for our own ends. We have some way of viewing others. Some in some sort of antagonistic way. Some there’s a sense of separateness between us.
You know, in talking about the the awakening heart as a as a way of solving our problems. And the the it is a part of the solution to the problem. As it’s put by Erich Fromm, American psychoanalyst, who died some time ago. He asked this question, how can we overcome the suffering, the imprisonment, the shame, which the experience of separateness creates? How can we find union within ourselves, within our fellow man, with nature?
You know, to one degree or another, we experience aspects of the world as if we were cut off from them by the boundaries of our skin encapsulated ego, as if we were isolated egos. I’m locked within a body. And this is the feeling that we have, the sense of isolation, the sense of an unrelated substance of who I am. Out of this arises this sense of antagonism, of alienation, of separateness, isolation, unrelatedness, unconnectedness. You know, it’s as if this person that we think ourselves to be was some kind of autonomous object worthy of ultimate commitment, an isolated self ego, which must be served at any cost.
So this becomes our frame of reference. This is our world view. This is self centeredness. Everything that everything that we experience is seen in terms of this self centeredness, of this sense of isolated self. Everything is evaluated out of this sense of self centeredness.
People and things are felt not as they might exist in themselves, for themselves, but rather as they exist for me. And what value are they for me? What worth? How can they help to enhance my existence for my purposes? People and things are devalued, are externalized into objects, either of actual or possible use to me, possible dominance.
It’s like a collection of resources. Everything is sacrificed at the altar of our own ego. How does that affect me? What is its significance for me? What does the Gulf War mean to me?
All the petrol prices went up. We should do something. This is our frame of reference. How does it affect We don’t see people in and of themselves, but how their existence is somehow going to affect me. How can I make use of them to enhance my position, my status, my well-being?
So the self centeredness is the taking of self affirmation in an unhealthy sense, to the unhealthy extreme. It is self centeredness. It is taking self affirmation to the unhealthy extreme. It is shortsighted and fails to see that other affirmation is the other side of the coin of self affirmation. Affirmation.
To put it perhaps more succinctly, self centeredness, this egocentrism involves thinking the self absolute, holding the self as absolute, unrelated, holding the self as absolute at the expense of the world. And because we exist in relationship to the world, it’s self defeating. If we simply use the world lay it at our own altar, the altar of our own ego, we are defeating our own purpose since we exist in relationship to the world. It’s an inappropriate way of relating with the world. It’s unskillful.
Perhaps it’s important to to distinguish between self centeredness and self affirmation. And the it’s quite an what do we mean by We have to take care of ourselves. We have to affirm ourselves, don’t we, somehow? But how are we going to avoid the problem of self centeredness? How are we going to distinguish between self centeredness and self affirmation?
Eventually, essentially and most simply, self centeredness is expressed as seeking happiness for oneself alone at the expense and exclusion of others. Self centeredness is often mistaken for self assertiveness. Just as aggressiveness is sometimes mistaken for assertiveness. So in fact, self centeredness is probably a sign of a lack of self affirmation, that we don’t have enough self affirmation rather than that we have too much self affirmation. You know, on the way to ego transcendence, you know, before we can be nobody, perhaps we have to be somebody.
You know, before we can transcend the ego, maybe we have to have a sound, healthy ego, a sound, healthy self image about who we are. A realistic idea of ourselves. Before, you know, if we’re constantly caught up in trying to reestablish our identity, affirm who we are in the sense of out of a sense of insecurity, then we’re never going to be able forget ourselves, which seems to be necessary if we’re going to be concerned with others, if we’re going to transcend our own ego, if we’re going to find a proper way of relating with others. There has to be some sense of self forgetfulness at those moments. There has to be some sense of self confidence in that things are going to take care of themselves.
I can take care of myself. I don’t need to be continually caught up in self consciousness to make sure I don’t goof. I don’t mess up somewhere. You know, the bodhisattva. On the other hand, talking about the other possibility, the extreme of the extreme of where we take the unhealthy extreme of other relatedness, and we take it to the extreme of self denial, self sacrifice, you know, in the case of the Jewish mother, for example.
You know, this is actually just another case of self centeredness, self denial, self sacrifice. But it’s self denial in a more socially or religiously acceptable, guise form. You know, for example, the bodhisattva deeply recognizes the fact that by fulfilling the needs of others, he or she is fulfilling their own needs. By bringing about the welfare of others, their own welfare is being brought about. In affirming others, evaluating others, working for others, they are affirming themselves, valuing themselves, working for themselves.
As I mentioned last week about the House of the Dying in Calcutta, When the volunteers leave there, as in my case, I left the sister who was in charge, said, We don’t thank people who come here to work for us. We know that they receive more than they give by working here. By giving, they receive more than they have given. So the self denial which arises out of self centeredness is like a compensatory mechanism for lack of self affirmation. In the face of, you know, the social and religious conditioning.
This is a in an extreme especially true of women who have come who are constantly or unconsciously falling into the role of self sacrifice or self denial. And in self denial, we have to ask, which of which of the two selves are we denying? The self of self affirmation or the self of self centeredness? So it’s not a question of of moderation, of our concern for others. But from where is the motivation coming from?
And if we if we we properly understand and apply affirming the value of others in and of in and for themselves is to affirm our own self worth, to appreciate ourselves, is to really to appreciate others. You know, if if we are divine, then all sentient beings must be divine. You know, if we have a Buddha element within ourselves, then all beings must, too, have a Buddha element in them. If we are worthy of our own commitment, then everyone must be worthy of our commitment. So the question of self centeredness and other centeredness, of self-cherishing, other cherishing comes down to which are we going to affirm, our divinity or our egos?
And to cherish others, to concern ourselves with others is to to choose my own divinity, to make that choice, to choose my own to nurture my own Buddha potential, my own awakening, to choose to solve my problems, to transcend my ego. That’s an affirmation, true affirmation of oneself. You know, beginning to you know, liking yourself, you begin to like other people. And What can come out of this, perhaps, is that cherishing others is simply a heroic act. It is heroic, but it’s not heroic in the sense of suffering hero heroic to make this leap.
It’s simply a way we can begin to become kind to ourselves and quit torturing ourselves. Cease you know, to begin to cease comparing ourselves to others and defining ourselves wanting and insufficient, inferior, and guilty. The more that we we can develop the sense of other centeredness, the more that we move away from our own self centeredness, the more that we can develop an awakening heart, We’re going to cease laying everything and everyone at the altar of our own ego. We can begin to go beyond these feelings of isolation, of loneliness, of frustration, of conflict, of competitiveness, of defensiveness, of dissatisfaction. And we can begin to love.
We can begin not only to love others, but to love ourselves. And to love is to grow, where you can begin to evolve. You know, this word love is like to love oneself is determined to grow, to make that choice. But if you if you love something, you value it. You want it to be well, to be happy.
And if you love yourself, you want yourself to be well and be happy. And you’re willing to overcome your laziness. The entropy of our own inertia of perpetuating these past patterns, that you’re willing to take up the difficult work against those to grow, to evolve yourself. Because you love yourself, you care about yourself, you’re determined to grow, to nourish yourself. And loving yourself, I don’t think we you know, there’s there was there used to be a saying that we can learn to love every we can learn to love all people by learning to love one one person.
Through loving one person, we can learn to love all people. But in fact, it may be the other way around. If we can learn to love everyone, we can learn to love one person, ourselves. We can’t we can’t really make that distinguishment. If we can’t love others, then we can’t really love ourselves.
Really, I don’t know. Constant self examination, duty, responsibility, neo-Puritanism, they might call it. Call it what you will. Genuine love with all the discipline that it requires is the only path in this life to substantial joy. Take another path and you may find rare moments of ecstasy joy, but they will be fleeting and progressively more elusive.
When I am genuinely loving, I am extending myself. And when I am extending myself, I am growing. The more I love, the longer I love, the larger I become. Genuine love is self replenishing. The more I nurture the spiritual growth of others, the more my own spiritual growth is nurtured.
I am totally selfish human being. I never do something for somebody else, but that I do it for myself. And as I grow through love, so grows my joy, ever more present, ever more constant. Perhaps it’s I am a totally selfish human being. I never do something for my for somebody else, but that I do it for myself.
And perhaps this is similar to the type of wise selfishness that His Holiness the Dalai Lama talks about, and that we’re naturally selfish, why that we should be wisely selfish. And the way to be wisely selfish is to concern ourselves more about the welfare of others than ourselves, and we will experience more happiness than we could have in any other way. And then being wisely selfish, in the end, perhaps, we can go beyond the selfishness and just be wise, that way solve our problems. So we’ll stop there. The dedication of the positive energy that we create.
May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to enlightened realms 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 more and more. Welcome to Buddha House, all those new faces.