Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun argues that the determination to be free — the third of Buddhism’s three foundational path themes — must first rest on believing change is possible. He introduces Buddha nature as the ground for that conviction, drawing on Asaṇga’s similes of hidden treasure (gold in a trash heap, a statue wrapped in dirty rags) before reading a parable called The Rabbi’s Gift, in which a dying monastery revives once its monks begin treating each other as potential Messiahs. Gendun then examines how ego-patterning locks us into self-confirming stories, and shows that our sense of being fundamentally flawed is relative, not absolute — illustrated by a Chogyam Trungpa verse: a crow is only black because the lotus is white. Accessible to newcomers.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 1993 08 02 ItB.mp3
UUID: 674ef514-0e5a-438f-881a-c73e74781cce
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Intro to Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-08-02
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.2 minutes
Words: ~6,417
And then bring your mind back to the breath. Just gentle, easy, and now follow the breath. And then in your own good time, slowly becoming aware of your body and your surroundings. So in the course of the introduction to Buddhism, we’re looking at, among other things, the three fundamentals of the path. The path is what takes you from where you’re at now with all your problems, your hang ups, with all this richness and possibility to perhaps the outcome of your preferred story where you might want to go to.
And this path has three fundamental themes or facets or aspects, principal aspects. The awakening heart, the awakening mind, and the determination to be free. So the awakening heart is most essentially or most simply put, the development of love and compassion. The awakening mind is wisdom. Ultimately, the wisdom which understands the nature of the self, which understands the nature of the world about us, the reality, its ultimate truth, its ultimate nature.
And there are I don’t know if Sometimes if I repeat myself, you know, just kind of wave like this or something. I don’t know. You know, there are two I think I might have said this last mentioned this last week. I hate to repeat myself. In terms of There are two With respect to the self, there is the the the Our experiential self, our private self, that part of that self which is inaccessible to others.
And there is the self which is our public self, our social self, that self which exists in relationship to others. So in coming to in the development or the growth of self, we must take into consideration both of these facets or aspects. The development of the social self is in terms of love and compassion, in finding an appropriate way of relating with others. That mental health cannot is not a matter of simply developing realizations in isolation from others. But the very nature of of who we are demands that we that we make the effort to to find an appropriate way, a skillful way.
And the most skillful and appropriate way is love and compassion. The awakening heart. The awakening heart is the the seeking of the development of one’s fullest potential in order to be able to help others to do the same, to develop those skills and those abilities to be able to to skillfully lead others out of their problems, the awakening heart. If, you know, if this would only be a sublime ethic, Though no matter how noble it may be, if we didn’t have wisdom, then we can never really Help others in a profound sense to solve their problems. There’s a saying in Buddhism that that wisdom without love is blind, but also love without wisdom is lame.
In either case, we don’t get very far. You know, that we have to develop the wisdom understanding the nature of the mind, the nature of the self. You know, it is a profound it is the most the fundamental premise of Buddhism is that all of the the difficulties that we’re experiencing, all of our problems, whatever they may be, are arising on two fundamental errors, epistemological errors, wrong ways of knowing, the rules by which we use to make sense of our world. First of these is self centeredness. The second of these is self grasping.
Self centeredness we overcome by developing the awakening heart through the love development of love and compassion. Self grasping is grasping, you know, as put simply, at a concrete solid self, a permanent unchanging independent self, an isolated unit which we conceive of itself, In which it becomes our our lifelong preoccupation to guard and to protect and seeking to enhance based upon ignorance. So the only way that we can actually find liberation, true freedom, freedom within our mind and freedom without is by removing ignorance. And the only power, the only method, the means by which we can remove ignorance is the wisdom realizing selflessness. The nature, the actual nature of the self.
That’s the awakening mind. So we’re going to look at both of these. But as a prerequisite to change. You know, change is is an expanding of one’s horizons outward. And and a deepening of in-depth of one’s understanding inwardly.
We’re never going to take up the difficult task of change, of growth, unless we have strong determination. And as I mentioned, unless we get sick and tired of being sick and tired, we’re never going to change. At best, it will be it will be an intellectual curiosity. It would be something like pouring oil on water. It never quite mixes.
It’s never integrated into our being, into who we are. One has to want to change. One has it is, you know, the necessity is the mother of change. When it becomes deep when you see within your own lived experience that I have to change, then change will occur. That very seeing is change.
Then things can make a difference to us. So we have to develop the determination to be free. This this third fundamental. And this is what we’re what we’re beginning to look at and we’re going to work through tonight, you know, and then we’re going to over the next few weeks, and then we’re going to go into the awakening heart and finally the awakening mind. We have to somehow we have to overcome our sense of deprivation, sense of insufficiency, our sense of that we don’t have quite what it takes.
At some level of our being, we don’t believe we can change. I think. I don’t know. You have to check out. You know, sometimes I feel like I’m projecting a lot of my own material on other people.
But so you have to validate. You have to give me some feedback once in a while. You know, but Yeah. That’s not I never believe that. You’ve got your own problems, buddy.
Don’t put them on me. But I think that. I think that. I don’t know. I don’t think I’m so I don’t think we’re so much different is what I’m saying.
And this is what I feel about myself and having tried to to to be in the light of a little awareness that I have about what goes on inside of myself, and my motivation, and how my mind operates, is that at some level I don’t think I can change, or I want to hold on to what is known. And change is a little bit frightening, isn’t it? It’s an unknown quantity. We can’t quite predict what it might be like to be somebody else. So we have to, at some level, believe at a very deep that we can change, that we have a basis of growth.
That something something about us suggests that we can change, that we can grow. And this now we can put this in many ways. It’s traditionally term Buddha nature. That every living being from cockroaches up to geniuses have Buddha nature. All living beings, what’s whosoever.
But however we want to put it, whether we want to call it Christ nature or divinity or basic goodness, some kind of basic sanity. There’s something right about ourselves at some level and beginning to to believe in that at some level. It’s very important that we develop this sense of confidence in ourselves. It’s a very potent force in our life for change, to believe we can. So talking about this possibility and who we are is is the subject of, you know, Buddha nature, the subject of that we have this basis of transformation to work with.
Pardon? No. I’m never even when I look at my notes, I’m not quite sure sure where I am. I I kinda trust in something inside myself. You know, we’re somehow stepping beyond our all our hopes and fears, the ups and downs of our of our thinking process, and holding on to this constant reference point that we have about ourselves, that we continually manufacture.
You know, each of us possesses the essence of Buddha. You know, I’ve I’ve suggested this in terms of that we all have some wisdom, no matter how faint or obscure that wisdom might be, that we all have some love and compassion, no matter how limited or exclusive that love and compassion might be, that we all have some energy no matter how unrefined, how unspontaneous that energy might be. You know, beyond all the various conceptions that we may have about ourselves, all the all the ups and downs of our life, all the all our moments of confidence, all moments of uncertainty, all the moments of self affirmation, the moments of self denigration. You know, that we somehow trying to remember our essential nature, our original face, sense our basic goodness, our basic sanity, that we have this power intelligence to solve our problems. You the stuff of mind is is like like like clay.
We can make of our minds. It’s open ended. We Depending upon our skill, depending upon our effort, we can make of our minds a magnificent Madonna and child like Michelangelo or the Rodin sculptures, which are at the museum at present. We can make up our mind an ashtray. You know, that it’s like that’s the basic stuff that we have to work with, the mind.
And according to our skills and our effort, can shape of it whatever we want, whatever we wish. It has that potential, that open endedness, that quality about it. Each of us knows and I remind you of this that he or she is really a good person. You have been told you’re not and in the presence of fresh criticism you get the feeling you’re not. But in your hearts of hearts you know that you’re a good person, that you’ve always done the best that you could and that this is true.
Each of us knows that he or she is much smarter than he or she often shows. That he or she has a lot of intelligence that doesn’t come out in the tension of final exam or the upsetting situation. And this is true. I now tell you that what you know of yourself is also true of everyone else. This profound knowledge that you’ve hidden to escape the ridicule, that you’re a good person, that you always do your best, that you’re much smarter than you sometimes act or than people think this is true, not only of you but also of everyone else.
The idea, you know, we have to appreciate our own basic goodness but the basic goodness inherits in all people. That’s such as something tremendously sane about our dreams. You know, when we talk about basic goodness, it means some kind of natural goodness and not a contrived goodness, not something that we have to fabricate, a goodness which is not conditional, which is not dependent upon on being in any particular way. You know, trying to it’s not some kind of stance or some kind of belief that we take. In every every posture, every belief that we adopt, that we identify with, it creates some kind of inner division in ourselves.
It activates some kind of opposite tendency in ourselves, the shadow, in Jungian Jungian terminology. It’s something that we’re going to have to repress. You know, if we if we if we try to be good, we will have to repress repress what we conceive of as bad. So basic sanity is not some kind of stance that creates some kind of shadow. It’s not a struggle.
It’s not a war between the good guys and the bad guys. It transcends all that. Rather, it’s more like, you know, like the radiance of the sun, which shines on everything equally, regardless, unconditionally, you know, beyond all our attempts to be good and all our attempts to be bad. Asaṇga was one of the of the great Buddhist masters of ancient India and trying to he he presented some similes in which he was trying to show what the nature of our basic goodness might be like. It’s it is as if it’s hidden from us at present.
A Buddha he’s comparing our basic goodness, Buddha nature. And he’s trying to In simile, he’s trying to express how it’s hidden from us. It’s not apparent to us at present. It’s obscured. A Buddha in a muddy lotus, honey covered by bees, grain in its husk, gold in a trash heap, treasure hidden beneath the earth, a bean in its pod, a statue wrapped in dirty rags, a future king carried in the womb of an ugly woman.
And we’re trying to get across this idea that that there’s something which may not be apparent at present to us. You know, one of the greatest obstacles for the mentally ill is that they do not see for themselves the inappropriate of their behavior. It is it is our basic sanity which begins to help us to see that being normal is not good enough, That being normal in an insane society is not to be very healthy. That it’s simply not enough to cope. It is our basic sanity which which makes us feel dissatisfied with not being all that we can we can be.
This in in in instinctive intrinsic intrinsic instinct toward wakefulness. You know, it’s kind of hard to imagine that is our basic sanity which makes us feel dissatisfied. But without this feeling of dissatisfaction, we’re never going to achieve anything. We’re never going to grow. You know, the wounds are a mouth and it’s necessary to listen to them.
They’re trying to tell us something about the way we’re leading our life. And this is an expression of our own basic sanity. You know the the the starting point of our of the path of where we’re at is our own confusion, our own pain. That’s our truth. It’s a statement about our life.
You know, to become aware of one’s ignorance is the first step toward wisdom. To become aware that our pain is a kind of intelligence. Our pain is our truth, a statement about who we are and the way we’re leading our life. It’s a statement about ourself and what it means to be a human being, an ordinary human being like ourselves. You know, it’s telling us that we aren’t acting in our own self best interest, that we are acting inappropriately, that we’re acting in some way unskillfully.
So, you know, we we we’re we’re precious because we possess possess Buddha nature. But additionally, we are vulnerable because we are confused. So we have to be gentle with ourselves because we are confused. But we also have to have some kind of courage because we are Buddhist to be. And it’s some kind of of consistent gentle, consistent determination to be that all all that we can be, all that we should be.
You know, as in you know, to be nobody else but yourself in a world which is night and day trying to make you everybody else is a difficult battle. You know, we we’ve tried our best to be the person that we thought we were. And what we haven’t become, we can yet become. We can determine it. We can determine it to become.
You know, ultimately to be yourself I think is to be a Buddha. To be authentic. To be true to oneself. But in the process of You know, I think for most of us, some kind of a coherent ego first needs to be created before we can transcend ego. Before, you know In other words, first we have to be somebody before we can be nobody.
We have to begin to feel good about ourselves and have confidence in ourselves and begin to trust in ourselves in our own basic sanity, our own basic nature. We have to appreciate who we really are at some very deep level. The main obstacle to appreciating ourselves is our tendency is the tendency of to ignore and devalue ourselves. Indeed, to contract inwardly on the displays of ego. It’s, you know, it we become it is if we’re in a trance.
The the the psychological constructs of ego is the primary delusion in which we live. That’s all we see and that becomes our reality. We are completely alienated from what who we really are, what reality is is in fact about. We cannot see that we are not the displays of our own ego. You know, I try to make this more clear.
You know, we we tend to perpetuate our patterns which actually which actually keep us stuck in them. We we tend to notice and dwell upon data which reconfirms who we conceive of ourselves to be. Or we we we tend not to notice or we we forget, discount, dismiss anything which contradicts our conception about who we are. Anything which disconfirms our notions, our our fixed identity that we have set for ourselves. You know, for example, someone who who thinks of themselves as being unkind, who thinks of themselves as being bad, would would quite naturally focus upon those times when they let somebody down, when they hurt others.
But even when they when others might remind them of times when they did act kindly, they did act in a caring, thoughtful manner, when they went out of way for others, somehow they would able to be able, in their own minds at least, be able to discount those those those inconsistencies in their patterns. Somehow they would be able to think, oh, that’s not really me. Oh, I did that only for myself. Somehow they they would they would they wouldn’t have any weight, they wouldn’t have any force, they wouldn’t be able to interrupt this conception, this pattern that they have developed for themselves. They wouldn’t be able to notice it and feel it at any level.
And also we we like we’re likely to misinterpret data to fit our patterns of who we conceive of ourselves to be so that so that our patterns of our perception of ourself are continually being confirmed, reconfirmed. You know, for example, someone who with a nobody likes me pattern is consistently interprets others’ behavior to fit this pattern. You know, for example, they can see that the other person is act is seeing them in a disapproving way when the other person is frowning even beco even though they simply have a headache. They’re being disapproved of. They can see that.
That is to say, they’re interpreting their situation to confirm with what they already believe of themselves. You know, it’s like five hundred years ago when they when people saw the sun revolve around the earth. And no one saw the sun revolve around the earth because the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth. But there was no interpretation of that event and it was a misinterpretation. But that’s what they said they saw.
Also, you know, such a person is likely to surround them with people who who agree with their patterns, who confirm their patterns. You know, it’s it’s all your fault tends to be attracted to it’s all my fault, isn’t it? Or or I’m no good is really intrigued with you’re not much, are you? You know, they fit those two patterns. So, you know, we are attracted to those persons who who confirm our patterns.
We’re there’s some kind of confirmation, some kind of security in in knowing who I am. It may not be much, but at least it’s home. And I feel secure and cozy and comfortable even though it might be dissatisfactory at some level or stuck. And also, we we set up situations which which seemingly confirm who we are. You know, there’s a a cartoon which shows a it’s taking place in a psychiatrist’s office and and and the client is is lifting himself off off the couch and shouting at the psychiatrist across the room.
Know? What the hell is the matter with you? I said, I can’t understand why nobody likes me. What do you have, wax in your ears or something? And the very very situation confirms or they will bring about the confirmation of what they expect by the by creating a type of situation.
So, you know, we we in a way, we’re like a a person standing in in the rain, wondering why they’re wet and cold and not quite not quite unable to understand why. The world begins and ends within the limiting conceptions of our ego in isolation from the reality. You know, in other words, it’s difficult for us to even feel. And I mean this quite sincerely. It’s difficult for us even to feel that we that there’s another way of being, another possibility, that we could really be happy in a very profound sense.
You know, we maybe we’re open to some cosmetic changes, you know, a little dab of dab of makeup here and there. But no no no real change. No real transformation. That’s we can’t even begin to feel, to sense, to imagine, to open up to that possibility. Lama Yeshe, perhaps I mentioned him last week, he was the founder of Buddha House about ten years ago.
He’s pictured to your left hand side, one of the photographs at the at the the base of the image of the Buddha. You know, talking about this, where this is taking us, this this conception that we have about ourselves and how it is limiting, how it keeps us stuck, how it keeps us prevents us from real change, real growth. The main dealing, the problem. What is the problem? It is the ordinary recognition that I am a poor man, poor woman.
Do you understand? Perceiving, holding as poor one, poor object, poor quality, and perceiving also such poor acting ugly, having lower opinion of our body, lower opinion of our quality. This is the worst symptom to be healthy, to be liberated. That is the main dealing to eradicate, to cut. And as long as you decided, having preconception that I am the self pity one, you decided.
You already decided that you were the bad guy. You you decided already. So so when you decided you’re a bad guy, you always do bad actions. Anyway, I’m worthless. I’m a bad guy.
So I do bad one. Of course, that’s the way it is. That’s true. And our life becomes a self fulfilling, self defeating prophecy because of the story that we have about ourselves. We already, you know, we know the outcome of our story already.
We’re just kind of living out the different acts along the way. But we’ve already written our story. And some time or other, we have to begin to reauthor our story To begin to see that we can change the story. It’s not predetermined unless we leave it that way, unless we let it let it be that way. So you know Buddhism is not asking us to believe in some kind of dogma, but it is asking us to be open to the possibility that we could be mistaken about ourselves.
I mean about our basic quality about ourselves, about who or what we are. I am not my patterns. I am not my self image. I am not any conception that I have about myself. They your only conceptions.
They do not include the totality of my being. You know, the psyche, You know, we we have as if we’re demarcated a small corner and we’ve identified this is the me, this is I, this is who I am. And we build a boundary, an impermeable wall impermeable wall to get to gain some kind of sense of security to to secure the self in space and time. But there’s there’s a vast potential which lay outside of ego and its boundary within our own minds, within our own psyche, and it’s not accessible to us. Unless we we unless we first believe that it that exists, and then begin to trust in something other than the displays of ego, and then beginning to develop the wisdom which makes this world more and more permeable, more and more transparent, so that we can realize more and more the totality of our being.
There’s a, you know, the the a verse by Chogyam Trungpa who was a Tibetan master who lived in the United States and died about five years ago. A crow is black because the white A crow is black because the lotus is white. Ants run fast because the elephant is slow. Buddhas are profound. Sentient beings are confused.
The blackness of a crow only has meaning in comparison to the whiteness of a lotus. This the quickness of ants only has meaning in comparison compared to the slowness of an elephant. Our own confusion only has meaning in comparison to the profundity to the wisdom of a Buddha. Ultimately, absolutely, we are not confused. If there were no Buddhas if the wisdom of the Buddhas did not exist, there would be no confusion.
It only exists relative to. It’s not absolute. Our confusion, our our our present sense of limitations, all the qualities that we that we hold as being so inferior, as being so all these lacks, They only exist in comparison. They aren’t ultimate. You know, there’s no difference between ourselves and a Buddha aside from the removing of of certain destructive factors within the mind, these negative patterns, these afflictive emotions.
Remove those, there’s no difference whatsoever. So the only difference between ourselves and the and these Buddhas, these happy, healthy, loving, sane human beings, is simply and no more than removal of it’s only relatively so, not absolutely. We are not absolutely confused, only relatively so. Compared to others, we’re confused. Compared to others, we’re we’re wise.
So it’s only relativistic. But we have a sense of holding as absolute. There is something basically wrong with me, inherent. So beginning to overcome this sense that it is only a matter of relativity, that it’s not it’s that there’s something actually basically good about ourselves. Now I’d like to read you a very beautiful story about you know, it’s it’s called the rabbi’s gift.
You know, this this commitment to ourselves and this believing in ourselves, you know, we have a very linear way of thinking. We think in a very short steps between A and B. And if we don’t see how how and when we when we when we conceive of a goal and we we seek to implement that means, we don’t realize the myriad of conditions and causes and factors which are operating to bring about those ends. And if we make a commitment to ourselves I’ll read you later on. So it’s a a quote.
I’m gonna get off sidetracked, aren’t I? It’s a quote by Goethe. Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative in creation there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. The moment one definitely commits oneself, providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no person could have dreamed would have come their way. Whatever you can do or dream, you can. Begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Begin it now. The very fact of believing in ourselves and trusting ourselves brings in fortuitous events which support our growth, which we could never have foreseen, which we cannot rationally, think out, which we cannot logically determine, you know, due to our limited scope, our limited view, outlook, the way we usually operate. The very like believing in ourselves, trusting ourselves presents a context, an atmosphere, a rich earth in which things can begin to happen and grow. And I want to read this. It’s a very beautiful story.
It’s a very simple story, but it portrays in a very real sense what can happen when we begin to change the way that we view ourselves. I just have to find it. That’s all. Okay? Eleven twelve.
Okay. It’s called the rabbi’s gift. It’s a little story. The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of anti monastic persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth century, all its branch houses were lost and had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house, the abbot and four others, all over seventy and age.
Clearly, it was a dying order. In the deep woods surrounding the monastery, there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation, the old monks had become a bit bit psychic so that they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. The rabbi is in the woods. The rabbi is in the woods again.
They would whisper to one another. As they agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery. The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. I know how it is, he exclaimed.
The spirit has gone out of our people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore. So the old abbot and the old man wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things.
The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years, the the abbot said. But I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?
No, I’m sorry, the rabbi responded. I have no advice to give you. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you. When the abbot returned to the monastery, his fellow monks gathered around him and asked, well, what did the rabbi say? He couldn’t help, the abbot answered.
We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving, was something cryptic, was that the the Messiah is one of us. I don’t know what he meant. In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words. The Messiah is one of us?
Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes. If he meant anybody, he probably meant father abbot.
He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant brother Thomas. Certainly, Thomas brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows Thomas is a man of light. Certainly you could not have meant brother Elrod gets crotchy at times.
But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Elrod is virtually always right, often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean brother Elrod, but surely not brother Philip. Philip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for always somehow being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side.
Maybe Philip is the Messiah. Of course, the rabbi didn’t mean me. He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet, supposing he did, supposing I am the Messiah, oh god, not me, I couldn’t be that much for you, could I?
As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one amongst them might be the Messiah. And the off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect. Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that the people still occasionally came to visit the monastery, to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling about it.
Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place and their friends brought their friends. Then it happened that some of the younger men began to come to visit the monastery and began to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while, one of them asked to join them, then another and another. So within a few years, the monastery had once again become a thriving order and thanks to the thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.
You know, we must appreciate our own basic goodness and the basic goodness inherent in all people. There’s something tremendously sane about ourselves. We can’t own our basic goodness. There’s a temptation to to take our goodness basic goodness and take it out whenever it’s convenient, whenever it’s handy, whenever it’s safe. We can’t own our basic goodness.
We can only live out of our basic goodness. We cannot control our basic goodness. We can only be our basic goodness. And that trusting in oneself. Oops.
So, You know, if you believe you can or if you believe you can’t, you’re right. So that’s, I didn’t get as far as I would like to have gone but anyway, that’s the basis of the path. Beginning to have a sense that beyond the obscuring veils of our afflictive emotions and our patterns and our preconceptions about who we might be, that there’s something very right about ourselves, something very sane, and beginning to to take recourse and trust in That part which we when we are one with, we are one with the whole world. But at present, perhaps, it only at times we can only intuit that we only glimpse at present. So I went I was gonna let, some time for questions.
Does anybody have any any comment or question? I know we’re almost actually, out of time. I talk more than I had wanted to. Okay. So next we will talk about, you know, this on the basis of because we have a basis of transformation and that becoming beginning to overcome our sense of of that things aren’t quite ready.
They’re not quite right. That that there’s something missing, something more that needs to be added before I can take up this difficult task of growth. That we are beginning to look at the fact that we have all the conditions, both externally and internally, to bring about this transformation, to to change, to grow, to solve our problems. We are going to look at the fact that this chance isn’t going to last forever. It’s definite that we are going to die, and the time of our death is uncertain.
And, you know, and even, you know, we don’t even have to talk about the big death at the end of this life, but we can talk about the small deaths which occur over the course of our lives. Those times when our when our whole life, you know, what we found security and and was able to believe in have been torn away from us. You know, when either voluntarily or or involuntary, we are forced into some kind of a transition. You know, the when the when the old has come to an end and the new has yet to begin. And how does one what gives one’s confidence and trust that that and to enter into change?
And leading us to the question of karma, actions, and the nature of karma. And then finally, the nature of cyclic existence, these reoccurring compulsive patterns, so that we develop the determination to be free. Then we’re going to look at the awakening heart, the methods of cultivating love and compassion, and the awakening mind, the methods of developing wisdom. The interval, we’ll have some talks by others on women in Buddhism, history of Buddhism, and Khensur Rinpoche, our teacher, will, give a general talk on Buddhism. Okay.
So, we’ll dedicate, you know, the positive energy that we’ve created in the course of our talk. You know, whatever we dedicate this energy toward, it’s like this creative potential that we that we have accumulated. It’s like the stuff of the stuff which forms the goodness of life. And we can we can take that make that goodness we can receive that goodness in in whatever terms we may wish. We can receive it in terms of chocolate cake, you know.
May I have a piece of chocolate cake? Or we can try to conceive of something beyond chocolate cake, something which perhaps is more profound, has more meaning. This kind of transcends chocolate cake. And so, know, each each and each and around