Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A corrective clarification opens this 46-minute session: Ven Jampa Gendun points out that selflessness does not mean the self is absent — the problem is that we misconceive its nature, attributing permanence and independence it does not have. He then moves through the Four Noble Truths in sequence, tracing suffering to ignorance and karmic conditioning (likened to information encoded in a flower seed), and arguing that uprooting ignorance — the linchpin — dissolves all other afflictive emotions at once. Individual liberation through the three higher trainings is contrasted with the Mahāyāna path, which adds the awakened heart alongside wisdom. A Q&A extends into emptiness, illustrated through the shifting value of money and cross-cultural beauty standards, and into ethics as a pragmatic foundation for inner peace rather than a moral absolute. Pitched at newcomers with no prior background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 ItB 1996 10 13.mp3
UUID: b33f9845-969e-45a2-a4ab-ef8a34898772
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Intro to Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-10-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.7 minutes
Words: ~6,850
Selflessness is not a problem. A Buddha has a self. You know, a Buddha has an I. You know, we I exist. You know, the I which is talking, you know, the self which which eats, which which walks, which talks, which studies Buddhism and does all these various things, this self is not a problem.
You know? Neither is selflessness a problem because due to the force of ignorance, we’re going to look at, we misconceive the nature of this I, this self. We attribute qualities to it which it does not possess, qualities such as being permanent, such as being independently existent. It is this misconception as to the nature of the I, the self, which is problem, which causes us suffering. So, you know, we this is the truth of suffering, and this is what we’re to recognize, And we recognize suffering in all its various forms, suffering as as suffering, suffering as change, suffering as pervasive conditionality.
But also the quality of impermanence, our grasping toward that which is impermanent as permanent, and the quality of selflessness, grasping that which is without or lacks a permanent independent self as having such a self. Seeing this, the quality of our existence in this way of approach to our life as being as predisposing ourselves to suffering. Then we have to if we look at that, if we look at the actual quality of our experience and we begin to recognize and appreciate it, we’re naturally going to be led to ask the question, you know, well, what’s the cause of such a way of existing? You know, what’s the cause of our present dysfunctional approach to life? And this leads us to the second of these four noble truths, the the truth of origins.
The what? Truth of origin. Or Yeah. Or sometimes the, you know, the true the true sources or truth of the sources of suffering, the the truth of the origin of suffering. So this the source of all of our suffering, all of our problems, whatsoever, can be included into karma and afflictive emotions.
Broadly speaking, what we mean by karma are karma means action, work, mental, physical, verbal activities. You know, all of the activities which shape, which form the being of who we are, that that, you know, the the internal conditioning factors which which make us what we are and and what we experience. This includes all the latencies from all our various past actions, our our genetic coding, our our life in the womb, our parental and social and cultural conditioning, all of these factors and our interaction with them. Specifically, you know, when an action we create actions. You know, my picking up a glass glass is an action.
My thinking is an action. My speaking is an action. And these are our conditioning, our consciousnesses. Our consciousness are simply not blank slates, but have in a manner of speaking, our our entire evolutionary history encoded within them. All of our actions are in some way are encoded within the mental continuum.
You know, when when an action ceases, it leaves a latency, a residue upon the consciousness. The consciousness carries this. And just like, you know, like, we can use an analogy like like a flower seed. A seed is a carrier of information, essentially. You know, when when you when you place a seed in the earth and you you bring together all the appropriate objective conditions, it begins to activate a sequence of reactions to its environment.
The the the due to the, you know, the genetic code within that seed, it begins to react to its immediate environment in very specific fashion. It begins to draw certain molecules of moisture and nutrients from the soil into itself and begins to structure them in a particular way, and it begins to grow into a very specific flower, a specific plant or whatever. Likewise, with respect to the the the encoded information within our mind, what are what are called karmic latencies. So our past ways of thinking, our past ways of behaving leave a residue or a latency within our mind, which are very which we can call karmic seeds, and they they have a notion of karmic information. And when they meet the appropriate objective conditions, just like the the flower seed and the and the green plant on the earth, they begin to react with their environment in a very specific manner.
Various trains of thought, various emotions, various ways of seeing and relating with their environment begin to occur. So, you know, to a large extent, we are governed by these reactive patterns, these these emotional, mental, and physical reactions which are catalyzed by our these karmic seeds within our mind. So the notion of of karmic seeds or latent seeds is that they have a potential, they have a potency to whereby they begin to organize our experience and our reactions to our experience. You know, as I mentioned, our minds are simply not blank slates of pure consciousness, but are conditioned by our histories, you know, of individual and collective past actions that we’ve committed in the past. These potencies, when activated, will predispose us to react and to experience our environment in a very specific manner.
The other main truth of truth of origins is emotions. So, you know, by and I mentioned what I meant by afflictive emotions such as, you know, attachment and hatred and spite and jealousy. But the chief of the afflictive emotions, the root of all our afflictive emotions, therefore all our problems, is in fact ignorance. And ignorance, you know, has various levels. One ignorance is simply ignorance with respect to the law of cause and effect in terms of inner karma as causes and the types of results which are experienced due to the potency and the power of our previous actions.
But at a deeper level, and this is what is being gotten at here, as ignorance as a misconception as to the nature of the I, the self, the nature of the world about us, all the various things, the phenomena. The the ignorance is a basic distortion of the mind, misconceiving the way that we ourselves and all phenomena exist. Ignorance conceives of a fantasized way of existing, you know, a fantasized way of existing. This fantasized way of existing has various names. They all get at the same thing.
Sometimes this fantasized way of existing is called true existence, sometimes independent existence, inherent existence, intrinsic existence, existence from its own side, objective existence. All of these various terms are simply trying to get it at the same notion. Most basically, when we talk about ignorance in the various subtleties, various levels of understanding that we can apply here, that I myself am an independent, unchanging, unitary thing or fixed identity. You know, this is what I mentioned previously in terms of this I which arises very much becomes apparent in emotional experiences when we get angry, for example. Know, I can’t stand you.
I can’t there as at that moment, we’re grasping at an independent, fixed, unitary, unchanging self or I. This acts as the basis for all the various afflictive emotions to arise. On the basis of ignorance, attachment arises. On the basis of ignorance, hatred arises. Pride arises.
Jealousy arises. You know, one of the optimistic notions of Buddhism is that we don’t have to weed out all of these afflictive emotions one by one. We don’t have to weed out, you know, jealousy and pride, attachment, hatred one by one at their various levels and various instance and types. If we can remove the linchpin of ignorance, then all of the rest will of themselves disperse, that they will dissolve of themselves. It is what maintains ourselves in this problematic approach to life, this very factor of ignorance.
There is an internal logic to ignorance. You know, some people say ignorance must be stupid but it’s not — it’s terribly intelligent. You know, if things were independently existent, you know, if things did have inherent blissful quality or desirable quality, then it would make sense to become attached to them, to hold on to them, to cling to them. If things did have an inherent intrinsic repulsive quality, you know, that person really were a bastard from his own side or her own side, independent of my thinking, independent of the way I think about them, of the way I relate with them, that something about them, you know, if you took this person to world court they would say, yes, this person is a bastard, know, objectively so, divorced of my conceptions about them, my ideas, my beliefs, my views about them. You know, the things do not have an inherent existence.
It is very much thinking makes it so. So but we forget, you know, the the notion, the simple notion that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. We have a sense that beauty is somehow in the object itself by its very nature and we want quite naturally to hold on to that, to make it a part of ourselves, to incorporate it into our territory, our ego existence. And that makes sense if in fact that beauty, that desirable quality were intrinsic in the very nature of that object itself. It would make sense to hold onto it, you know, to carry it around in your pocket.
Every time you wanted some bliss, you just take out a bit of beauty and snack on it from time to time. But we know that’s not true, you know, it’s very much thinking makes itself, That, you know, what what was beautiful yesterday, the same object or relatively the same object, maybe we conceived of an entirely different way. That is very much dependent upon our own minds, our own thinking. So we have to but there’s one other difficulty, you know, in terms of our problematic approach to life, the dysfunctional pattern of our mind. And this is self centeredness, sometimes referred to as as self-cherishing.
And this is what prevents us from some from being of maximum benefit to others and to realizing our greatest potential, our complete potential, that is to say, to becoming, you know, a Buddha. You know, self centeredness is a deeply ingrained self referencing tendency of our mind, whereby others in the world are perceived or assessed and responded to not as they might exist in and for themselves, but as they exist for me, for my purposes. You know, what is in this situation? What is in this person? What is in this thing in terms of what I can get out of it?
You know, this is this is the the habitual perspective by which we’re evaluating the world and the people in the world. What’s what’s in it for me? Not in for themselves, you know, people evaluating people and and the things in nature as being intrinsically worthy of of appreciation in and for themselves, but what can they do for me? And it’s this this kind of restrictive self absorbed perspective of self centeredness, and it functions as the root of all activities, what we call unskillful ends and means. It’s all it’s it’s the source of all conflict in the world.
You know, from the viewpoint of the of the the holistic aspect of universal vehicle Buddhism, and within Buddhism there are two overall vehicles. There’s the individual vehicle and the universal vehicle. And the individual vehicle is seen to fall to the extreme of individualism, you know, that the, you know, the the to understand that to be a human being is to be a social being, that essentially as human beings we are social creatures, that if we are to realize our fullest human potential, then we have to make not only make effort in finding peace and happiness for ourselves, but we also have to have to find we have to make some effort in finding a meaningful way of relating to others, to being in this world with others, which are interdependence with others’ demands of ourselves. That we have to find, you know, that our some way of connecting with others, some skillful way of relating with others. That mental health is not something to to to be found in isolation from others, but is to, you know, some kind of solitary acquisition of realizations for ourselves.
But it is that mental health is a social phenomena. We have to find a skillful way of being in the world with others because we are social creatures. You know, that is not just a romantic notion, it’s not just a sentimental notion to develop love and compassion for others. It is it is basic to being a sane human being, to being healthy, to finding happiness and peace in our life, to go beyond our self centeredness and find to some degree other centeredness in our lives. It is through the great compassion, you know, the trying to work through this origin of our suffering.
So, you know, if we begin to look at our origin of our suffering as basically karma and the afflictive emotions, these the truth origins are to be abandoned. And we we’ve looked at the nature of our our situation and and we’ve looked at the cause of our situation. And we have to ask, well, can I actually go beyond karma? Can I actually remove the afflictive emotions from our mind? And this brings us to the third noble truth which is the truth, true cessation.
Is the you know, true cessation are the removal of the afflictive emotions from the mind. You know, afflictive emotions, you know, like hatred and desire, attachment, etcetera, they only arise occasionally. They’re not intrinsic to the nature of the mind itself, therefore they can be removed. A cessation is the removal of an afflictive emotion along with its seed, you know, such that it is never going to return again. And so then we go on to say, well, if I can remove these afflictive emotions, if I can remove go beyond karma altogether, how do I go about doing it?
And this leads us to the fourth noble truth, true paths, the actual means to liberate ourselves from our problematic approach to life, these karma and afflictive emotions. There are many ways in which the path can be explained. You know, a path is essentially that which takes you from where you’re at now to where you want to get to. It’s the means we can the methods that we can make use of. And this means has many ways of being described.
There’s one method one description is in terms of the eightfold noble path. For example, action, right speech, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration, right thought, right understanding. So these are generally spoken of in terms of the Theravadan tradition of Buddhism, that type of Buddhism which is mainly practiced in the areas of Sri Lanka and Burma and Thailand, Cambodia. Within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition these eight are usually condensed into what are called the three higher trainings, the higher training in ethics, higher training in concentration, and the higher training in wisdom. But as I try to emphasize, if we look at our problems in a very broad perspective, we’re going to see that not only are we to seek to find peace for ourselves, but if we are really to be healthy in broadest definition of mental health, we have to go beyond our own self centeredness.
And this is what the universal vehicle is mainly all about. And therefore its path is very much concerned with not only finding peace for ourselves but also trying to be of maximum benefit to others. And therefore the path is usually described in what is called the three principal aspects of the path, renunciation, the awakened heart, and the awakened mind. If we can develop the wisdom which understands that you know, I I talked about ignorance. If we can develop the the exact opposite understanding, the the exact opposite reoccurring mental pattern of ignorance, Ignorance is misconceiving the nature of the I, of the self.
It conceives of the self to exist independent, solid, concrete, permanent, unchanging. If I develop the wisdom which understands that this is in fact a misconception, if I can take off the glasses, the sunglasses of ignorance and see the nature of the eye as it actually exists, then in fact the eye exists as interdependent, It is dependent upon my body and mind. As changing, it’s not permanent. As having many parts, it’s not simply a unitary fixed solid object. If I can increase that wisdom to the extent where it’s able to remove ignorance completely from the mind then it’s never going to return again.
Having removed ignorance from the mind completely then all the various afflictive emotions which arise on dependence of ignorance such as attachment and hatred are never going to arise again. We’re never going to be motivated into creating various types of karma, various activities motivated out of ignorance, and therefore we’re going to remove the true sufferings from our mind. We’re going to experience complete inner peace, bliss. But additionally, and this is the emphasis of the universal vehicle, that if we can begin to shift the center of gravity, the psychological center of gravity of our lives to that of from self centeredness to other centeredness. We can begin to go beyond our present limits of our minds to expand our minds to our greatest potential, and that is to say, to be of maximum benefit to all others.
So therefore, not only are we to develop wisdom, that is to say, the awakened mind, but we also seek to awaken our hearts, to develop the love and compassion of working in the world with others. But necessarily so these are the two of the three principal aspects of the path by means of which we’re going to actualize our maximum potential, our fullest potential, that we’re going to be able to solve our own problems but be in a position to be able to help others to solve their problems as well. We’re never going to do this. You know, the word path in the Pali language, it is simply patipada. Patipada simply means putting one foot in front of the next.
You know, compassion, wisdom, compassion. This is the way that we actually travel the spiritual path. You it’s not particularly mystical. It’s not something which cannot be spoken about and understood. It’s very practical and effective and we can work with very specific methods and and we can actually do this.
But we’re never going but to go beyond our present habitual patterns, we have to have some real strong determination. You know, we have to actually want to grow and finally to wake. You know, we have to want it actually very badly, or we won’t. There is always a tendency to maintain the status quo, to it takes a great deal of energy and determination to get unstuck from these reoccurring compulsive patterns which very much constitute our lives, our ways of thinking, our ways of being. We have to want to change and we have to want to change very badly.
And compassion, we’re not going to develop wisdom unless we see an absolute necessity for it. And we begin with ourselves, begin as we did in terms of true suffering, beginning to look at our own experience. You know, most of us are kind, decent, caring people and we want to be loving, we want to be compassionate with others. But, you know, how are we ever going to love others in a real realistic sense, you know, a real stable and powerful altruism altruism if we never loved ourselves, if we don’t have compassion for ourselves. If we’ve never wished ourselves happiness and to remove our own suffering, how could we ever realistically develop that attitude toward others, something beyond simple sentiment.
So we begin with ourselves. We develop a will to awaken. You know, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I want to change, I want to grow. This is the prerequisite, to all think it’s a truism to say that growth only occurs when there’s a certain tension, a certain anxiety, beginning to look at our lives and begin to gain some kind of perspective on our lives and see, you know, if nothing changes, what can I expect in the future? You know, I’m old enough now to begin to see some kind of patterns which are are being reoccurring over the course of my life.
And if I don’t begin to interrupt these patterns, what can I expect? Nothing but more of the same. Therefore, we develop a determination to be free, to go beyond these dysfunctional patterns in our lives. We develop a will to awaken. But we don’t simply stop there to seek our own happiness.
As I tried to emphasize, suffering is universal and that we’re not unique in our problems. Our problems might be peculiar, but the mere fact of suffering applies to us all. And if I can only develop myself to the extent where not only I solve my own problems but I am that much more effective in working in the world to solve others, then what greater way of being, what greater meaning could you bring to your life than that? So we develop the will to awaken not only for ourselves but for the sake of all others. We develop an altruistic attitude which seeks to awaken for the sake of all living beings.
This becomes the path, and this is the path of the universal vehicle of the Mahāyāna. These are the four four noble truths, the the the essential teaching of the Buddha. You know, all of the various teachings, no matter how esoteric, how exotic they may appear to be, how complicated, how how obscure some of them might appear to be, they all are contained within these categories. You know, we are to recognize true sufferings, the actual nature of our existence, our dysfunctional approach to life. And we begin to question, you know, how does this arise, what is the cause, and we begin to understand the true origins of suffering and we seek to abandon them.
But why? Because we understand that we can bring about an end to them, these origins of suffering. That suffering does have a cause, and if we remove the cause we can remove suffering. That removal of suffering is a true cessation, and there is a means, and true cessation are to be actualized, and there is a means to the way we can actually do it by means of true path. And essentially the true path are the three principal aspects of the path, the will to awaken, to go beyond these dysfunctional patterns of our lives and begin to awaken our minds to free ourselves from ignorance and these karmic influences, but not only for ourselves as well as others.
So therefore we seek to awaken our hearts to develop love and compassion, an altruistic way of being in the world with others, and awaken our mind, that is to to develop the wisdom which understands emptiness, the emptiness which is the antidote to our ignorance, and true paths are to be cultivated. It’s in you know, this is the the fundamental teachings of Buddha, the the the essence of Buddhism. So in just a final verse, the Buddha said, I have shown to all a path that severs the sorrows of this world. Those that have gone, let us say, the Buddhas showed the way. It’s up to you to follow it.
So that’s by way of introduction to Buddhism. I hope I haven’t confused you too much because it covered a lot of material, but maybe I stimulated some interest. All means if I have done that I hope you’ll pursue what can be gotten out of Buddhism. But I’m not here to missionize or as an advertisement for Buddhism, but more of the way of just stimulating some ideals in your own thinking. And whatever you may do and whatever path that you may travel, you know, I hope that you you you put some effort into it, that you that you do it sincerely, and that not only that, that you try to solve your own problems, but in some small ways over the course of our everyday life that we try to help others in the meantime.
This is the way that we can be, as his holiness, the Dalai Lama says, that we can be wisely selfish. Basically, we’re perhaps selfish people, but the way that we can be wisely selfish is that if in trying to help ourselves we help others, then we’re going to that will act as the means most effective means to to solve our problems. Whatever we do, you know, kindness is always appropriate. Caring is always an effective means to to be in the world. To solve not only our own problems but to begin to help others to do the same, you know, whether we believe in religion or not, whether we are Buddhist or not, whatever we may do.
And these notions may be difficult to understand in terms of selflessness, in terms of emptiness. Altruism, a sense of benefiting others, is probably the most most immediately available means to find happiness for ourselves. It’s the way that we can be wisely selfish. And to do that, we don’t need to be religious. We don’t need to follow any particular spiritual path.
Does anybody have any questions? I covered quite a lot of material. Any questions about what I’ve said or in general? Yeah. So in terms of developing in terms of achieving one’s individual liberation, liberation for oneself alone from one’s own problems, you make use of what are the three higher trainings, higher training in ethics, concentration, and wisdom.
Ethics, you know, what we are trying to do is to, in terms of one’s own individual liberation, is to find peace. nirvana is peace. The passage beyond sorrow is experienced as peace, the cessation of all our problems, of conflicts and tensions and sufferings within the mind. And we approach this in various levels, through various methods, initially through ethics. You know, it’s interesting that the practice of ethics is not simply a moral absolute.
It’s not simply notion that somehow we are to please some someone or something other something outside of ourselves, some god in heaven, or we are to be good boys and girls. The notion of ethics within Buddhism is that it’s the foundation of peace for ourselves. It is pragmatic. It’s utilitarian. You know, people go they spend hundreds, of dollars going to therapists, trying to find some kind of peace in their mind, you know, working with all the various psychological schools that are possible, forgetting that the very effective ethics is the foundation of peace.
It’s never going to be of much use if you’re cheating on your spouse and going to a therapist the next week to confess it all, how disturbed you feel about it. It all comes from my childhood, whatever, and however complicated you are analyzing your dreams about it. The word ethics in Sanskrit is Śīla. And Śīla actually literally means, the word that’s translated as ethics is Silla. Śīla literally means cooling, cooling the heat of our neurosis.
So the way that we’re trying to understand and gain control of our own minds, and we have to begin at the grossest level. And at the grossest level, we begin by controlling our behavior in terms of our physical and verbal behavior. You know, if you can’t stop killing, if you can’t stop stealing, you can’t stop, you know, committing, you know, having sexual relationships with outside of your your accepted accepted partner, then how are you ever going to find peace in your mind? If you can’t bring it again at these grosser levels, how are you ever going to work to those subtle levels of inter mental peace? You can’t.
So ethics acts as a foundation for any further spiritual work, how we’re going to relate with the world in terms of verbally and physically. On the basis of that, then we go on to develop concentration. And concentration is another way of deepening the peace. It is a way of integrating our internal emotions and being able to focus them upon one single object. The mind is no longer distracted, it is no longer split, it is no longer fragmented, it is becoming whole.
So there is a deepening of the potential and the control over the mind. So on the basis of ethics then we go on to develop the ability to concentrate the mind, integrate it into focusing its ability to remain upon an object. And it depends upon that and we we use the most profound methods, that is the wisdom, understanding, selflessness, which is to remove the the basic disturbing factor of the mind, which is ignorance by means of which we can find the deepest type of peace. So, you know, the the concentration is likened to, you know, hitting the same place on a root. You know, we’re trying to cut the root of of these reoccurring compulsive patterns, which is and the root is ignorance.
And the concentration is like hitting the same place on the root with a with an axe, and the axe itself is like wisdom. So each of these is dependent one upon the other. On the basis of of ethics, we develop concentration. In the development of concentration, we we then go on to develop wisdom. And this we do for is done for an individual liberation to find peace for ourselves.
But, you know, within as I, you know, try to emphasize, the way that the path so this wisdom is the same. We have to practice these, these three higher trainings. But the universal vehicle again and again and again emphasizes that wisdom is in end only a means to effective compassion, that compassion is the essence of life. And therefore begin to broaden our perspective that not only do I want peace, but everybody around me is exactly the same, we are all equal in that. Nobody wants to suffer, everybody wants to be happy.
And if only I can find maximize my ability, which is to be a Buddha, in other words. That’s what you know, a Buddha is simply who someone who experiences unremitting peace within and skillfully and compassionately and fearlessly works without in order to help others to experience the same. If only I can do that, then I can fulfill my own welfare and I can also help others to fulfill own. So this is you know, that we are trying to realize the highest potential of our human capacity and therefore the Mahāyāna, the great vehicle says, we have to go on to awaken our hearts. Not only wisdom in itself is not enough.
You know, if we are going to fly we need two wings, we need both wisdom and compassion, you know, like a bird. And these two together, we need need wise hearts and loving minds, the integration of both our emotional and intellectual capacities. And this is realizing the fullest capacity of ourselves. So they look at the rather than they do practice the three higher trainings of ethics, concentration, and wisdom, but these are combined within the three principal aspects of the path in developing the will to awaken the awakened heart, which is essentially loving compassion, the altruistic intention to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all living beings, and the awakened mind which is the wisdom. So it’s an additional categorization.
And that’s like the threefold contemplation? Oh, yeah, very much so. So in this process, the meditation is not within it’s part of a threefold activity, listening, reflecting, and meditating. It’s said that listening and reflecting without meditating is like having eyes but no legs. Or meditating without listening and reflecting is like having legs without any eyes.
In either case we don’t get very far. So meditation is not there is nothing intrinsically beneficial about meditation. I think maybe this is a good piece of information to go away with whether it’s Buddhist or not. Is nothing intrinsically beneficial about anything. It is the context in which we practice it, the wisdom that we bring to it, the intelligence and the understanding and our motivation behind what we do.
Meditation can be a terribly effective method for helping us to solve our problem. It can also be a method of helping us to confuse ourselves, to cause ourselves more difficult if it’s not used properly. So that’s why it’s that it’s to be a part of this threefold activity of listening to the teachings, trying to understand what’s being gotten at, reflecting upon them, contemplating, are these teachings valid? Do they actually reflect my own experience in life? Are they reasonable?
Are they logical? And then once one has come to some kind of assurance, some kind of self confidence in what one is doing and has a proper motivation and attitude toward it and is able to implement the means correctly, then meditating can be an effective, you know, terribly effective, essential means in working with our mind. Anybody having a question? Yeah. I wish I could.
Okay. Okay. Emptiness. When I when I say the word empty emptiness to you, what what comes to your mind? Space.
Yes. Nothing. Yeah. So so emptiness is not nothingness. So emptiness is an absence, an absence, a lack of something.
Like there like there’s there’s an absence of elephants in this room. There’s there’s a lack of elephants in this room. There’s an emptiness of elephants in this room. So what does that mean? You know, what what, you know, what does that matter to me?
You know? So there is an absence of something. And what is that something? It is a fantasized way of existing. So, you know, for example, you know, I had I remember let’s just take an example of I don’t know.
I don’t know. Know, I mean, people kill for that, don’t they? For for money. There’s a sense that it has some kind of intrinsic value, doesn’t it? And there’s a sense that if I have enough money I can be happy, It’ll solve all my problems in a sense.
But how does how does what how does the the value of money come about? Do we is the value of money intrinsic to this piece of paper? You know, what happens if I remember after, like, after the second world war, you know, people were carrying around wheelbarrows of Deutsche Marks, you know, trying to buy a loaf of bread. You know, before, you know, people were killed for that pile of money, but now they can’t even buy loaf of bread with it. So the notion is that the value of, for example, this piece of paper with certain markings on it, with ink printed on it, is a social construct, isn’t it?
Within the society, our society designates this piece of paper as having a certain value. And I can take this piece of paper and I can go to the supermarket and I don’t have to say to the clerk, hey, I’ll sweep your floors for two hours if you give me a loaf of bread and a couple cans of beans. You know, they say rather than doing that, I’ll give you this piece of paper, you give me this loaf of bread. So, you know, so this is like a social convention that we’ve worked out. But in a so the value of the money is simply a convention, it is something that our society has agreed upon, and we designate this as having so much value.
But the value doesn’t come from the object itself, from its own side. It’s not inherent in the object itself. We could say that it lacks inherent value, that its value is merely designated, that it’s merely labeled. That our society says, well, if it’s got a twenty on there, we label it as having so much value, as so many working hours of value, for example. It’s empty of having inherent value.
Likewise. You know, when we see you know, like I remember I saw a movie of a documentary of Amazon people, native of Amazon area, and they they put these plates in their lips, you know, and they they had big huge lips. And I remember also a documentary on on women in Burma, some of the tribes, put rings around their necks and they stretch their necks very long. And these are taken to be signs of extreme beauty, you know. And I imagine this situation where, you know, you see some guy with huge lips, ah, look at beautiful lips on him, you know, or look at the neck on her.
Other societies would, you know, would would find that repulsive. They’d be repulsed. So so this gives us one society would find, you know, this this this physical quality as being terribly beautiful, as being attractive, appealing. Another culture could find it as being terribly repulsive, as being hideous. So we begin to understand that these values, these qualities of beauty, these desirable characteristics of objects, they don’t exist in the objects themselves, they don’t inhere in the object, they are not intrinsic to the object.
Our society imbues objects with desirability. Due to our culture we see things as being beautiful even in the latest fashions. I mean, I spent a great number of years in India, and I remember coming back to the West, and people were wearing clothing that they wouldn’t have been caught dead in ten years before. They wouldn’t have worn them on a bet. Here they were spending lots of money to buy them.
And so the styles changed, and the advertising agencies, they billions of dollars trying to convince you that this is beautiful and it works. You actually see it as beautiful after a while if been indoctrinated enough. So the beauty of an object, the desirability of an object, and also the repulsive quality of an object isn’t in the nature of the object itself. It’s not inherent in that object. It’s not coming from its own side.
We’re labeling beauty, labeling desirable, labeling repulsive, labeling hideous from our side. But it appears to ourselves, it appears that as if that beauty is coming from its other side. You know, something and you walk down the street and you look in a store window and you see this, you know, this beautiful suit or this dress, it seems to be like glowing, you know, it’s like, come take me, I can bring you bliss. You know, it’s something something which almost you almost go into a trance, you know, if only I could have that, then I could experience permanent bliss. It seems as if the nature of that beauty is coming from the side of the object.
It’s in its very nature, the side of your lover. There’s something about her, the way she walks, the way she holds her head, all of these. There’s something just in her very nature which is beautiful, which is appealing, which is attractive. And there’s something in terms of my enemy, something that is very quality, something repulsive, as if it oozing hideousness out of him, as out of his very pores. That’s how that’s how it appears to us, and we accept that appearance as being true.
We not only does it appear that way, but ignorance says, ah, that’s the way it appears and that’s the way it exists. But that’s simply a fantasized way of existing. That beauty and that repulsiveness doesn’t exist from the side of the object independently. It’s being labeled by the mind, but we think it does. So we say the object is empty of that way of existing.
It lacks that way of existing. There there is an absence of inherent beauty. There is an absence of inherent repulsiveness. There is an emptiness of that particular of that quality about it. It doesn’t exist independent of my mind, independent of my conception, independent of my culture, independent of my it’s a social construct.
So the ideal of emptiness is if we can begin to understand the part