Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute opening session of a four-week introductory course, Ven Jampa Gendun sets the tone with a five-part poem — a person falling into the same hole in the sidewalk again and again until, finally, they walk down a different street — as a concrete map of what genuine change looks like. He frames the entire series around one question: is your current refuge actually working? He unpacks the idea of refuge broadly, listing the many things people turn to — family, money, work, alcohol, sex, politics — before introducing the Buddhist alternative of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha in deliberately psychological rather than religious terms. He outlines the course format, explains why discussion matters as much as lecture, and introduces two types of meditation: stabilizing (holding an object in mind) and analytic (penetrating a subject to transform the mind itself). Aimed squarely at newcomers with no prior Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 ItB 1997 10 06.mp3
UUID: ae5a36ea-57f7-43c5-8232-999de52969d1
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Intro to Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-10-06
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~6,960
Teacher in Dharmashala a long time ago, went back in horse and buggy days. I guess it’s been about over twenty two, twenty three years ago. Jampa means love. It’s quite a common Tibetan name, a spiritual name, a Dharma name, and I think it’s quite a so I I use it all the time. I think it’s quite a quite a nice thought to be called love all the time.
We’re gonna be talking about Buddhism. I’d to welcome welcome you to Buddha House in it’s an introductory course. And we’re going to keep it fairly informal. We’re gonna cover quite a bit of material, But hopefully, in a way that will be of relevance to yourself and be you know, that it’d be something more than simply information or an academic study. I don’t think I mean Buddhism is can be studied from an academic point of view, from a a philosophic point of view.
It’s quite fascinating. It’s very profound philosophy. It’s quite intricate and expansive. But from my point of view and I think perhaps from yours, it’s more of what Buddhism can hopefully do for ourselves in terms of improving the quality of our lives. You know, whether we’re a Buddhist or not, whether we’re Christian or whatever, we are trying to work with our problems and perhaps in a more skillful fashion.
I think that’s what Buddhism essentially is, a resource for us to help find a more skillful approach to life and working with change. I’d like to I’m gonna outline what I’m going to be doing over the next four weeks. We’re going to in each session together, we’ll have maybe ten or fifteen minutes of what we call in Buddhism or or traditionally setting a motivation, that is to say beginning to orient ourselves. Perhaps, you know, we stop speeding, we stop acting, and we create the space in the mental situation whereby we can perhaps reprioritize, reevaluate, and what is important to ourselves. Have I gotten out of touch with what what is most important to me in terms of my what makes me happy, what is it meaning to me, myself, what makes me feel fulfilled, alive, worthwhile.
We oftentimes get out of touch over the course of our busy days whether out of necessity or seeming necessity in having to meet the practical needs of everyday life with our more deeper held values, those values and beings and principles that we would in our very in our better modes we would very much like to see our lives an expression of what we set aside for one reason or another or we lose sight of or we feel coerced into foregoing or we’re just too lazy to be bothered one reason or another. So, you know, it’s very from the point of view of Buddhism, again and again we’re gonna come back to the theme of the determinant of all things is our mind. The mind is in its place and its wake can make a heaven of hell a hell of heaven. It is the determinant of all things. And the quality of the mind begins with the quality of our motivation, the why, the purpose behind what it is that we’re going to do.
It’s very much, I guess, a premise or a central principle of Buddhism that it’s not so much what we do which is going to determine the outcome, is going to determine the quality of the result. And of all this blood, sweat, and tears that we’re expending over the course of our life, all our struggles and planning and worrying, which are going to determine the quality of what comes out of all of that, our emotion, our motivation, what goes into it. And why why do we do what we do? Or do we do it with a sense of indifference or not a real sense of clarity? Essentially, what we have to do in Buddhism, what it is asking ourselves of us to do, and it’s a great challenge, I I really admit that, is to change, to change our ways of thinking, ways of behaving to more skillful, more functional, more ways of thinking and behaving that can bring us more of what we want and help us to get rid of what it is that we don’t want.
That is essentially that can help us to become happy, healthy, loving, sane human beings and to help us to forgo, to get rid of, to begin to remove the suffering that we don’t want in our life in all its its various forms. So in that way Buddhism is simply a resource to help us to change. You know, it it outlines a path for ourselves. A path is is something that takes you from where you’re at now to where you want to get to, your goal. And so, you know, the essentially, the way that we travel a path is by taking small steps.
And these steps in the terms of Buddhism are both effective in terms of feeling emotion, the development of love and compassion, and cognitive in terms of development of wisdom. So we want to develop loving hearts and wise minds. We want to begin to integrate those two, to develop wise hearts and loving minds and to unite them as as an approach to life, as a way of being in our life. And this is what Buddhism is essentially trying to lead us to. So, you know, it’s No matter what I you know, whether I have anything to say or not, how I present it, it’s very much what you’ll get out of the introduction to Buddhism.
It’s very much what you put into it in terms of your own heartfelt motivation, the why, the sincerity and the genuineness that you that you listen with and that we discuss some of the issues of Buddhism, some of the ideals that I’m going to present. In in that way perhaps they’ll bring about some kind of change. Maybe, you know, I can read you something that’s a it’s a very concise kind of synopsis of a life. It’s a it’s an autobiography in five parts. It it describes someone’s life in in the process of change and what we what we’re getting at in terms of the development of of Buddhism and the following of a path.
So it’s in five parts. I walk down the street. There is a deep hole on the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost.
I am hopeless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. Part two. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole on the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I’m in the same place but it isn’t my fault. I still take it still takes a long time to get out.
Part three. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in.
It’s a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.
Part four. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. Part five.
I walk down another street. So, you know, maybe there’s kind of an evolution in what in this person’s approach to the way they’re living and the way they’re conducting their life. And, you know, the the idea is that there are certain alternative possibilities for us. It’s interesting that I don’t know what your schooling was like. I’m from the United States.
But I did they never told us much about life. I guess they either expected that we knew it all or it was kind of a well guarded secret that we had to find out for ourselves that no one quite teaches you how to live effectively and efficiently and confidently and skillfully and functionally. Functionally. You know how it is to find happiness in life. We’re we’re all somehow expected to know all the answers and how to go about finding and getting what it is that we want and being rid of what we don’t want.
So somewhere on the line, we we’ve perhaps been living our lives in some dysfunctional fashions. I don’t know about you, but I’ve that’s been my experience. Maybe there are alternative possibilities. So it’s like a sharing of resources, isn’t it? You know, beginning to say, well, let’s look at our situation.
You know, I think the Buddha, the historical Buddha Śākyamūni who lived about twenty five hundred years ago, twenty six hundred years ago, was noted for just pointing things out. He said, you know, why don’t you just take a look at this, examine this, investigate this. Things that taken for granted truth, there’s things that go overlooked or haven’t been really looked at carefully enough. And we call into question some of our assumptions, of our premises, our beliefs on which we operate. And maybe they aren’t effective, maybe they aren’t bringing us what we want.
Maybe we have to begin to look at alternatives. So hopefully, you know, Buddhism can present us with some alternatives and by all means none of this is to say that we have to become Buddhists. That’s not the point. I don’t even think the Buddha was a Buddhist. What we can do is take some of the ideas that we’re sharing, some of the methods, the techniques, the trainings, and use them if they’re relevant to ourselves if we find them that they work in our everyday lives.
That’s all that I think that I think that would be worthwhile in itself, more than worthwhile. I think that would make our gathering here together worthwhile and your spending your time and energy to come here worthwhile. And and therefore, you know, if there would be some kind of positive result together, a great deal of information about Buddhism may be interesting but it’s probably of not much use in itself. It’s if we can integrate it and help us to change our minds and thereby the quality of our lives to make them more livable, more adequate, more of what we might want of them. So we’re going to I’m going to talk a great deal about these resources, how they are set up, what the goal of Buddhism is about, how we achieve that goal, how we how we and some of the practical issues about Buddha house, meditation.
As I said, you know, we’ll spend about about ten or fifteen minutes just talking about the introduction or the the developing a positive motivation, adjusting our motivation. To put a You know, we have to become a little more skillful perhaps with our minds. Have to create the inner ecology, some kind of which conducive to some positive change. And it’s just not a matter of putting in more information, but it’s a matter of change. And change requires very special conditions, both externally but more importantly internally to ourselves.
There’s a certain resistance to change and we have to begin to recognize that. There’s a tendency to repeat compulsive patterns. This is one of the hallmarks of neurosis in general is compulsion to repeat past patterns, ways of thinking and behaving. And we have to acknowledge this fact, become aware of it, and become skillful in bringing about positive change because essentially that’s what we’re trying to do. And there’s going to be some resistance.
So creating the the as best we can the internal conditions whereby our mind will begin to change and avail ourselves of our own basic sanity when we begin to recognize truth, when we hear it, when we begin to validate our own thinking, our own experience. And there begins when we begin to undermine some of our wrong thinking, some of our mistaken ideas and false premises which we’re operating in our lives and beginning to make corrections. You know, the whatever has been learned can be unlearned and no learning can take its place. And that’s very much what we’re doing. We’re becoming it’s like a class in the school of life trying to learn a more skillful way of living.
So, you know, trying to readjust our motivation in that way for about ten or fifteen minutes. And then we’re going to meditation and we’re actually going to do some meditation. I’m gonna explain some of the simple not simple. The types of meditation that you might we can are quite workable for for ourselves initially. There are other more complicated types of meditation which probably aren’t more very relevant to ourselves or of great use to ourselves.
So types of meditation which are gonna be of some kind of immediate benefit to ourselves. So I don’t want to use the word simple because they aren’t simple. Helping us to become more skillful in how we operate our minds by getting to know our own minds, how how our minds operate. And then we’re going to then I’m going to talk about some various subjects of Buddhism and the way, you know, such as the four noble truths and what is called the graduated path to awakening. And within that there are various subjects that we’ll take up.
For example, karma and whatever that might be. We’ll talk about that. And the development of love and compassion and development of wisdom, what we call selflessness or emptiness in essential doctrines of Buddhism talking about that. And then we’ll we’ll save a great deal of time at the end for for questions and answers where we’ll just talk things over. I think it really I have found in my experience that most a great We need some information, but a great deal of learning actually takes place in the context of discussion.
You know, I lived in Dharmasala, India, which is in northern India in Himachal Pradesh where the Dalai Lama had and the Tibetan government in exile have their headquarters. And I attended a school called the the Buddhist School of Dialectics, the Buddhist Institute of Dialectics, think they’re called now. Used to call it the Buddhist School of Dialectics. The reason we call it dialectics is because almost about two two and a half hours each day we would debate, a very formal debate. We would have a each day we’d have a lecture and then we’d go out to the debate court and there’d be someone who would be the respondent and there’d be the questioner and there’d be this fierce debate in a very formal manner.
I questioned everything that we were taught, trying to create doubts, trying to to check it out, to examine it as thoroughly as possible. And sometimes it got quite dramatic, these debates, with lots of yelling, screaming and jumping up and down, lots of ego got involved. Anyway, that’s that’s why sometimes it was called the Buddhist school of dramatics, I think, because it was quite dramatic at times. Anyway, so but and our our principal of our school, the lecture the main lecturer, he often said that of, you know, the the learning that was taking place and about twenty five percent came about through self study and their homework. You read the text and you think about it and reflect upon it.
Twenty five percent came about through attending of lectures, the teachings. But fifty percent of the learning, actually coming to some sort of understanding for yourself, some kind of self knowledge, came about in the context of these debates in terms of discussion, dialogue, question, answering, you know, creating doubts and having them clarified for ourselves. This I think and I have found that that quite true. So setting aside quite a bit of time just sharing our ideals and and clarifying some doubts and and allowing time for lots of questions. And then we’ll we’ll we’ll dedicate.
But there’s a there’s a so there’s a there’s quite a lot of information that we’re going to to work through. And it’s And, you know, I know almost nothing and there are aren’t There are four sessions pressed together. So that’s a limited amount of time. So given those two factors, not knowing anything to begin with, and and maybe it’s maybe it is fortunate that we have such limited time so I won’t be able to confuse you so much. I can’t do that much damage in four sessions, I figure, to mislead you too far.
Anyway, that’s what we’re going to do. So there there’ll be a time for where we’re going to go through an introduction introductory part of the session together, adjusting our motivation, talking about what we call going for refuge and what that might mean, the idea of refuge and why Buddhism, know, why practice the spiritual path at all? What’s the purpose? What’s the use? Why are we here?
I think it’s good to know. It makes it more effective if we’ve clarified that in our own mind some degree. I think it’s an ever deepening reason why we’re here, but we have to get begin to analyze it for ourselves if we haven’t as of yet. Then some meditation and we’ll meditate I’ll I’ll explain some meditation methods, and then each week we’ll we’ll meditate on a different area, and I’ll explain what what Buddhism how Buddhism sees meditation and its the part that it plays in this transformation, this change that we’re trying to bring about in terms of our mind. And then the the presentation and then question and answers and then we’ll stop.
We’ll dedicate. Yeah. There’s a prayer which is quite often recited at the beginning. I’ll I’ll I have a tendency I’m not a very good time manager. So I I tell you I forewarn you.
I usually I have this, you know, this like a like a a plan of what the material that I like to cover, and I never cover. That’s I don’t know why I bother making these plans. I always get I go off into some kind of tangent. Used to be a very quiet person before I started studying Buddhism. I used to be I used to be about four feet tall and quiet.
Now I’m almost six feet and I speak I can speak at I can speak quite a lot, I think. I’m not sure if it makes any sense sometimes, but anyway, I keep talking. There’s a verse that that we often recite at the beginning of a teaching or at the beginning of a meditation session. And our it’s it’s like a way of formalizing why we’re doing what we’re doing. We’re trying to develop a skillful motivation behind the action to ensure that the quality of the result is what we want.
And you know, there’s a notion of going for refuge, But, you know, that might sound very foreign to you, and but it’s actually it’s not. Going for refuge is not particularly Eastern, it’s not particularly Buddhist. We’ve all been going for refuge our entire lives whether we called it that or not, whether we were conscious of that or not. We all are seeking to create some kind of sanctuary for ourselves, some kind of haven out of the storm. We all avail ourselves of some person or thing or idea, something which we hope is going to help protect us from our problems, going to help us to solve our difficulties and and bring us what it is that we want.
That’s the only deal behind going for refuge, you know. And what there’s there’s a a tremendous variety of possibilities of what people do in going going going for refuge. I mean, some people go for refuge to their families, to their friends, to those near to them. Some people go for refuge to money, sex, power, and drugs, politics, hobbies, work. Some people go to refuge to alcohol.
You know, we we all take refuge in something, don’t we? And we have to begin to question you. I think it’s worthwhile to question. Is my refuge working or not? If it is, fine.
We probably don’t need Buddhism. I don’t think you’d be here if your refuge was working, to be honest with you, but that’s something for you to question for yourself. Is it delivering the goods? And we put a great deal of time, you know, blood, sweat, and tears and energy into creating to seeking happiness. We have to question, well, you know, does is my method working?
Maybe we have to begin to to look for some kind of alternative types of refuge. And and within Buddhism, there is a refuge which we call Buddhadharma and a spiritual community. But it doesn’t have to be, you know, all of what we’re about, I hope it doesn’t become too overly religious, You know, in a sense that I hope it’s always something workable and relevant to yourselves. But the the the idea of of going for refuge, you know, people take take refuge in vegetarianism. That’s how I’m going to be happy.
Gonna I’m feeling people eat as much meat as possible. That’s how I’m going to be happy. And some people, you know, go for refuge to celibacy. Some people try to have as much sex as they possibly can. You know, some people take refuge and put in all their money into banks.
Some people spend as much money as they have or more than they have. That’s their method. Some people go to abortion clinics. Some people go join invertor fertilization programs. Everybody’s got their methods that they think is going to bring them happiness.
They hope it’s going to solve their problems. Some people become world travelers. Some people become hermits. Some people become artists or musicians or laborers or psychiatrists or criminals or you know, or some people try to avoid all of the above as much as possible. So these that is to say all of us here have some sort of refuge, something that we are using, availing ourselves of to help us to solve our problems, to find happiness.
And that’s what’s driving us in some form whenever everything that we do is is indirectly or directly directed toward that end of finding bliss, of relieving suffering in some form or another. We can make that general statement, I think it will be true. So the point is, you know, that we’re all involved in some kind of ongoing struggle, you know, to create this this safety zone for ourselves, this this kind of sanctuary. There’s some place that where we can rest our head, you know, if even just for a while. And according to our own each of our individual unique beliefs, our our value system, our circumstance, we we we’ve developed our method of living our life.
And it might be totally dysfunctional, it could be, but it’s all that we know. But if we are to live our lives intelligently, you know, I did say in light of our own wisdom and lived experience, which is difficult, I think, ever to be sensitive to what is actually happening for yourself on the street in your everyday lived life. We’re forced to ask ourselves whether our particular refuge is in fact working. Does it deliver the good? You know, have our particular refuges been of real use in getting what it is that we want and within ourselves of what it is that we don’t want and what is it that you want?
I think that’s helpful to clarify yourself. You know, where you like, it’s like where where are you heading in your life? I think it’s good to whether you’re Buddhist or not, whatever, just to take stock once in a while. You know, there’s a Chinese saying, proverb, unless you change your direction, you’re you’re likely to end up where you’re headed. And where where are you headed in your life?
And is it where you would want to go? And it’s sometimes we simply don’t reflect upon what you know, by headed, you know, what is the overall theme as the patterns of your everyday life? Where are they taking you? What kind of person are you are you making of yourself? You know, who would you like to be five years from now, ten years from now, twenty years from now?
You know, not not own or control or but be. Who would you like to be? What kind of person? What kind of qualities? You know, for all the buts, all the struggle that we go through, it’s not so much what we get for it, what we receive for having done it, but the person that we’ve become and who we are for having done it.
You know, what what kind of felt impression do you have? Are you left with when you examine your life, when you reflect upon your life? It’s, you know, because I think it kinda the feeling tone of your life. You know, does my life afford me meaning? Does it does it have a purpose?
Do do I feel fulfillment, a sense of connectedness with others, a sense of of being a part of something greater than my own ego, a belonging? Do I feel challenged? Do I feel excited about my life? Do I are there moments of of awe and wonder in my life? And there’s moments of the sacred in our lives.
Sooner or later, I think we life asks us or forces the question upon ourselves to confront the reality of what it is that we are doing. You know, I think if we’re to live you know, quite often it’s it’s in the moments of great change in our life, changes which have been thrust upon us by circumstance in our life, maybe a death, maybe a divorce. Some huge upheaval in our life when everything is thrown into question. When we’re when we’re dragged we’re dragged that we’ve found some kind of security that’s taken away from us in one way or another. Anyway, those are usually the only times that we ever really question the direction of our life.
And I I think that’s a shame. I think it should be an ongoing process. And this is what this this time together in terms of readjusting our motivation. The you know, the patterns of our life, at the even even when they become more or less apparent to ourselves. And if for even if only for brief moments of time, you know, we find a new partner, we find another wife or another husband or and a a new therapist or another guru or we say we think, well, I’m gonna go alone I’m gonna go alone for a while.
You know? Or we we change our jobs or we we change our employer. We we change our business. We change our career. We we we take a break from working life altogether for you.
And we make we move to a a bigger house or a smaller house or or a flat or an apartment or in in the suburbs or in in the to another state, interstate. We take up a new hobby or a sport or some kind of leisure time pursuits and kind of interests. You know, we this constant change that we try to bring about. You know, we that we’ll this search, this endless search that we’re all involved in in one way or another. You know, we have another baby or we have another facelift or we have another affair.
Another you know, there’s always something down the line that we’re that is going to bring us what what it is that we want. It is going to help us to get rid of it rid of what we don’t want. Some another project. Always something just around the corner. You know, but it it but in spite of all these changes, you know, in the external world, has the does the quality of our life really change that much over the course of all these changes?
It seems that in spite of it all, and I don’t by all means, I don’t mean to sound a pet a pessimist or a cynic in what I say. But I think it’s a matter of realism, I think. I think so. In spite of all that we maybe have struggled to to achieve and all the constant searching that we’ve been through, in spite of all of that, eventually, inevitably, the same problems seem always to return in one form or another. The same themes of dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration, boredom, insecurity, you know, keep keep finding their way back into our lives in some form or another.
So, you know, maybe at some point, you know, the this, you know, the same sense of passengerhood in our lives as if our lives were being lived out of our control. Or even you know, even if we were to question our lives, even if we could do exactly what we want with our lives, we probably wouldn’t know what we would want anyhow. If we were in complete control of our lives, what would we do with our lives? So, you know, I think the point I’m making is that the reach is a point when we begin to see that the manipulation of the people and situations and things about us simply don’t work very well in terms of the of the lived quality of the experience of our life. And there’s a there’s a fundamental reorientation which needs to take place, which is very much the hallmark of Buddhism is.
And this is the reorientation from seeing what it is that we want outside of ourselves to beginning to see the necessity to change something with inside of ourselves in terms of our ideas, our premises, our opinions, our our our attitudes. It’s not so much the things and the people and situations about us which are problems, but our opinions about those people, things, and situations which are problematic, which cause us suffering, which need to be changed if we’re ever to resolve our problems, if we’re ever to find some kind of satisfaction, you know, what it is that that we want most in our lives. So this is the reason that we go for refuge. This is and we go for refuge to, and I’m gonna discuss these in greater detail. I’m already off my scheduled time allowance for the Buddha, Dharma and the Sangha.
And just essentially, now I’m gonna go into a greater detail with regard to these three, the Buddha Dharma and the Sangha for the spiritual community. But, you know, the Buddha is simply a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. And the Buddha that we’re seeking isn’t that we take refuge in isn’t so much something outside of ourselves, but it it is our own self as Buddha. Our own self as a happy healthy healthy loving and sane human being which we are seeking to take refuge in. Some kind of optimal mode of being.
Some kind of potential that we all possess that we can A resource that we all have which has perhaps been left that we haven’t really tapped into, that we haven’t availed ourselves in, some kind of basic sanity that we are intelligent, decent, caring people essentially. And to begin to exercise that and develop that and to begin to change the who you are and thereby your experience of reality, your experience of life. That is basic orientation. This is what we’re going for refuge to essentially. And the way that we actualize this this Buddha, this person that we all can become is by means of the Dharma.
And we’re going to talk about that, you know, the various teachings, the various trainings, the techniques, the truth of things. And it’s like truth therapy if you like. The the method of changing ourselves for the better. And this occurs within a social context, the spiritual community, those who assist us in this process, who act as guides, as teachers, as resources, as, you know, who who we help and who help ourselves. And mental health is a social phenomena and occurs within a social context with other people.
It’s not a matter of the solitary acquisition of realizations and isolations from the world, but it’s it’s much it’s very much a part of becoming integrated with the world in terms of both being assisted in our own development and assisting others to do the same. So, you know, these are kind of the what is seen as real workable resources, alternative possibilities for taking refuge over and above the ones that maybe we’ve we’ve been working with up to now. That was a lot to say, wasn’t So I’m gonna talk about some meditation. Maybe can shall you hold on? Maybe I’ll hold the questions still later.
You know, the meditation is is a tool within Buddhism. It’s it has a it’s kind of I think it’s very miss perhaps misunderstood in in the west about what what the purpose of meditation and the act and the actual what meditation is. And perhaps in talking about meditation we can clarify that and to Okay. Meditation is a particular activity, but it’s there’s nothing inherently beneficial about meditation. I’m sorry.
I have to tell you that. You know, the the act it is very much dependent upon what we bring to the activity just like anything else. There’s nothing inherently beneficial about Buddhist meditation. If it’s if it’s if it’s done incorrectly or with the wrong motivation, it can be not helpful. And who knows, maybe it could be even be harmful.
So in all of what we do we should try to do intelligently and trying to, as best we can, gather together correct information and then apply that information in in a correct fashion. So it requires information and the application of that information properly. So meditation is use this usually occurs with what is called a threefold activity of listening, reflecting, and meditating. So listening, we more or less gather the information together. It’s like studying or listening to to an actual teaching as we are here doing here tonight.
It could be reading a book. Anyway, it’s like getting to know all the various categories, the terminology, the structure of the teaching. And then you reflect upon what you’ve heard, which is a very necessary part of the process. There’s there’s not there’s no room for dogma within Buddhism. There’s no room for unquestioned acceptance in Buddhism.
Minds don’t change through dogma or unquestioned acceptance. You know, it becomes a it is like a matter of pouring oil on water. Somehow, you know, like, it it the oil just kinda floats on the water. It never quite mixes with who we are as a person. It it we may it may we we might be able to have all the right answers at at at our fingertip, make the right correct responses to certain questions which are put to us or stimulus.
But not quite who we are as a person. Somehow we have to mix the teachings or what we’re discussing, these other possible alternatives with our mind. That is we have to integrate them and we have to we have to create our own self knowledge, become something more than mere belief. And in in going to actual understanding, there’s certain steps of mind which necessarily must be passed through. And parts of these are the creation of first assumptions.
We get some ideas. We get some information, the teaching. But then a questioning process where we create doubt. Doubt is a precursor to true understanding. The the mind what we’re going to see is hopefully is unknowingly, we’re holding a lot of mistaken beliefs, a lot of mistaken premises, and we operate on the basis of those.
If you had if you if you if you thought you were going to live forever when in fact you had cancer, you would operate on that premise that you’re going to live, you know, I’m going to live for the next fifty, sixty years or something like that, seventy, eighty years. You’d make certain life decisions which certain life decisions, certain planning on on the basis of that that premise. But all along you might have cancer. That would be the reality of your situation. That would be a fact.
You had one year to live. If you knew that fact, you would plan much differently. You’d make different life decisions for yourself, wouldn’t you? Better or for better or worse, we won’t even won’t even bring that into question, but different at least on different premises of understandings and beliefs that we have. So but if if if some of our beliefs are are don’t accord with the way things are, you know, they don’t match reality, then all of our or any type of planning or thinking, any type of activity which stems stems from that misconception, that wrong belief, it’s not going to be quite it’s not it’s not going to fit quite correctly, properly with the way things are.
There’s always gonna be some some friction, some some you know, the way it’s described is like a wheel that grinds on its axle. This is this is what Buddhism means by the term dukkha. It’s I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this term before. It’s a Sanskrit term. Or and it it it’s usually translated as suffering, sometimes dissatisfaction.
But the way the Buddha originally used it, it was a term that was used when a wheel grinds on its axle. There’s a there’s a misfit. There’s kind some kind of friction, some kind of unease, anxiety, insecurity. That’s what we mean by this term dukkha. So this is what this misfit this is how this misfit is experienced.
One is never quite at peace. There’s always a sense of of not not having found one one’s place. There’s always a sense of of having to stay on top, a sense of struggle, of dis ease. That’s what we mean by that term. And this dis ease is the experience of this misfit.
And the way that we so we have to begin to see where our wrong beliefs are, where our misconceptions are. And this only comes about to the process of questioning. Really examine yourself and what it is, your values, how your mind is operating, how you look at the world, your attitudes, are they working, are they functional. And then beginning to question, to become aware, the process of reflecting. And then in in the context of having gathered together information, beginning to question that information, is it true?
Does it accord with my own experience? Is it internally internally consistent, logical? Then you begin to meditate on it. And here meditation means to put it into practice rather than simply thinking about it being whatever it is. And there there’s a tremendous series of meditations.
A great variety of possibilities in terms of a meditation which hopefully we will cover. But rather than simply thinking about a subject being that, you know, in terms of meditation, there are two general types. Two general types. There is what’s called stabilizing meditation and analytic meditation. Generally in the West we normally or the average person would conceive of this first type, stabilizing meditation, is what we mean by meditation.
You know this is when you simply fix the mind to an object. You know it could be the breath for example, it could be a visualization, it could be a mantra, a sound. But anyway, the mind is simply held holds that object. It fixes, stabilizes on that object. This is generally what, you know, concentration.
Generally, what is thought of as meditation. But there’s another very important class within this area of meditation called analytic meditation. And quite often, I guess in the west we would might call this more kind of contemplation where we take a subject and we try to penetrate. We examine it in great depth trying to, you know, for but it could be the contemplation or or the analytic meditation on love compassion. So when we’re when we’re meditating on love and compassion, we don’t want to stand outside of love and compassion.
We want to be to transform our mind into a compassionate mind. We want to transform our mind into the entity of love and compassion. But we take you know, we would take a subject. We could take equanimity. We could take equality of self and other.
And every every person in this room wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer. You know, it’s not maybe when we talk when we think about intellectually, you might agree, but how many times a day do you actually stop to think that this person and that person and that person are just like yourself. They they too want to be happy. They too don’t want to suffer. And more or less having going beyond