Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A parable about a king who steps on a thorn — and the minister who proposes covering his feet in leather rather than all the roads in his kingdom — anchors Ven Jampa Gendun’s central claim in this 75-minute introductory session: we cannot order the world to meet our needs, but controlling our own mind amounts to the same thing. He explains how suffering arises from the gap between our beliefs and reality, surveys the two broad vehicles of Buddhist practice (individual and universal), and briefly sketches Buddhism’s arrival in Tibet and its four main schools. He then distinguishes analytic from stabilizing meditation, explains the Tibetan term gom as “familiarisation,” and leads a short guided breath session with body-relaxation warm-up. A lively Q&A covers the mind’s natural state as peace, relative versus absolute happiness, and whether every individual mind stream will eventually attain Buddhahood. Pitched squarely at newcomers with no prior Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 IB 2007 03 03.mp3
UUID: f7d4b889-3881-4f9b-9abc-e39cb0f01a7a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Intro to Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2007-03-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 74.9 minutes
Words: ~8,693
And that that you know, Buddhism is a is a is a personal resource for for as a means of exploring other alternative ways of approaching your life. It’s a lifestyle, and it’s not a particular amount of information. I’m not sure if there’s such a thing as a Sunday Buddhist. Could be. Maybe a Saturday morning Buddhist.
I don’t know. Anyway, it’s a it’s way that we begin to change how we look at our life, how we approach the problem of finding the happiness that we want and solving our problems and improving basically the quality of our life. So central or fundamental to Buddhism is this conviction that basically, fundamentally, in spite of the stories that we’re telling ourselves, in spite of appearances, we’re caring, intelligent, decent people. But we’re making some mistakes. And they aren’t huge mistakes, but they’re enough to cause us a lot of suffering.
You know, in in terms of our beliefs about the way things exist, the way the best way to find happiness and how the world operates, it’s simply it is the disparity, the discrepancy between our ideas. You know, I talked about the beginning, our opinions, ideals, attitudes, and beliefs, and so forth. That discrepancy between our beliefs about the world and how best to find happiness in the world and the actual nature of things. That discrepancy experienced as dissatisfaction, as disappointment, frustration, suffering in all its various forms. Does that not make a mistake?
I mean, it takes a lot of work to correct a mistake, but it’s not the situation is workable. That’s the that’s the the message that’s being gotten out here. It seems as though this is the suffering is the price that we pay in terms of our experience, our felt experience, when our beliefs do not accord with reality. There’s a simulation of a suffering experience. So there’s the basic fundamental notion underpinning all of Buddhism is is the mind.
The mind is primary. The mind and its way can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. And and I like you know, I I have a problem sometimes with with talking. I I get I get carried away, and I oftentimes don’t get in we don’t get through the material that we’re supposed to get through. I’m not a very good time manager.
Anyway, there’s a story. It’s about, you know, which kind of illustrates this notion of the Buddhist attitude toward our problems in the way that we can most effectively deal with them. And it’s it’s a nice story, I think. It’s about a king in in ancient times. And this king was walking about his kingdom, as kings sometimes do.
And he stepped on a thorn, and he hurt his foot. So he went back to the castle, to the palace, and he called together all his ministers, and he he put his royal foot up on the table. You know? Look. Look.
Look at my foot. You have to figure out a way whereby I this won’t happen again. You have to come up with some plan whereby I can walk about my kingdom safely, where I won’t hurt myself. So all these ministers, they thought and they thought and they thought. And finally, one clever minister, he spoke up and said, I have an idea.
Let’s cover all the roads in your kingdom with leather. That way, you’ll be able to walk safely about your kingdom, you know, free from the danger of rocks and thorns and all kinds of sharp objects. But immediate and the king said, oh, great idea. Fantastic. Let’s do that.
But immediately, as is often the case, have you ever been on committee? The treasurer spoke up. Said, it can’t be done. First off, there aren’t enough cattle in your kingdom to supply that much leather. And even if there were, you would bankrupt the treasury.
It’s not practically possible. So again, all the ministers think, think, think, think. And then it’s often the case in these these kinds of stories. A wise old minister spoke up. And she said, I propose that we take a piece of leather, and we we we shape two pieces of leather to exactly fit to the feet to the soles of the feet of the king.
And then we bind these pieces of leather to to the soles of the king with leather thongs. And this would serve the same purpose as covering all the roads in your kingdom with leather. You could walk about safely throughout your kingdom, you know, free of any danger of rocks and thorns and sharp objects and so forth. So the, the, this story is meant to illustrate first, it has, it illustrates two things. One of them is very obvious, but it’s quite often overlooked in our daily life when we get emotionally caught up in our life, is we cannot control the world.
You know, we cannot realistically order the world to conform to our wishes, demand that it it run according to our particular needs. We know that sitting here calmly, rationally, thinking it over, that that’s the case. But in our emotional life, that’s not in our everyday life. That’s not the case. That’s not how we actually that’s not what we actually do.
We we make demands upon the world. We have a sense that the world should run according to our agenda, should fulfill my needs. And when we do, we experience either a sense of rage because the world doesn’t follow our orders, it doesn’t fulfill our demands, or else we experience a sense of powerlessness because we cannot do the impossible. But there’s an additional moral to the story. It’s something else which isn’t so obvious, which his story illustrates.
If we could control one thing, what is that? Anybody? That sounds good. What is even if we go even a little deeper, do you simply say our mind? Yeah?
If we can control one thing, but you’re right. Our own mind, it is as if we control the world. You know? That’s all we can really do, realistically speaking, is control our own mind, our own inner kingdom. And this, as it turns out, is enough to be happy in life, to be fulfilled in the world.
You know, it’s like, you know, very much in a very real sense, the people, the situations, the things about us are like are neutral. You know, like like a knife, a knife in the hand of a surgeon can be life enhancing. It can be productive, useful. It can bring about an instance, acts as an instrument for well-being. But the same exact knife in the hands of a murderer can bring about misery, destruction.
So the people that we interact with, the the things that we make use of, the situations that we find ourselves in, each in their own individual way, have the potential to serve as sources of happiness for ourselves or suffering of, or sources of suffering for ourselves, depending upon how we understand them, our attitudes towards them, you know, our mind’s skill or lack of skill in how we deal with them. You know, if you are dissatisfied, don’t blame reality. It’s not to blame. It’s not, you know, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s not so much the people, the things, or the situations about us which cause us problems, but our attitudes, our ideals, our beliefs about them, which are are problematic. We can’t avoid sooner or later, dealing with our mind.
So in addressing this, how are we going to deal with our mind? It’s a great question, isn’t it? I’ll talk a few minutes, and then we’ll we’ll we’ll take a a couple minute break, and then we’ll meditate. Okay? So Buddhism is we’re making use of these methods that Buddhism is presenting to and how best to deal with our minds, how to work with our minds.
These methods, these teachings, that is the practices, what what we actually involve ourselves in doing to bring about change. Buddhism teaches two overall methods of practice, what is called the individual vehicle and universal vehicle. One of the main reasons I bring this up is perhaps you’ll hear this later on and you’ll have some background. You’ll know what this refers to. You know, the idea of a vehicle.
You know, the notion of you know, we have one way we describe our mental development is working with a path. A path is that which takes you from where you’re at now to where you want to get to, you know, in dealing with your your difficulties and finding happiness. So that which moves us along the path, we refer to it as a vehicle. Okay. It’s a in in Sanskrit, it’s called yana.
Yana simply means that which carries some kind of burden, some kind of weight. And there are two different vehicles. There’s one individual vehicle. Where will that vehicle take you to individual liberation, that you you can find some kind of peace for yourself. The means of doing that is by abandoning, getting removing from the mind ignorance.
And what that ignorance is, we’re going to talk a lot about. It’s not ignorance as we normally think of it. It’s it’s used in a very special way. But the the the universal vehicle, its goal is to as I’ve mentioned, is to complete the attainment of complete Buddhahood. You know?
We want to we want to become a Buddha. I know it sounds kinda strange. I’m just trying to get by, and what what to talk about becoming a Buddha. That’s our goal, to be to to not only find some kind of inner peace for ourselves to be in a but in be in a position where we can be of maximum benefit to others, that we can understand have an understanding of people, where they’re at, their their their each of their capacities, their predisposition. What would work in a it’s like a a therapist.
If they use this if they use the same therapy for every client that walks in that room, they’re not going to be actually addressing the needs of individuals. Likewise, a good therapist, a good Buddha wants to know how to work with each individual according to their specific needs, their particular temperament and so forth. So we want not only to find some kind of inner peace, but to be able to develop the ability to be of optimum benefit to bringing about the best possible conclusions in working with this particular individual. That’s what we call a Buddha. So this is this in this process, we have to abandon not only ignorance, which by which means we bring about inner peace, but also there’s some kind of traces left in the mind stream, even when this ignorance is moved removed.
And sometimes this is the image that’s used is like if you had a piece of garlic and you put it into a pot. Even if you take that garlic back out, there’s some kind of smell left in the pot. So we have certain obstructions within the mind, certain hindrances in the mind. We want to remove all of those hindrances and thereby become, you know, of best possible use to not only to ourselves, to others. So this is the universal vehicle addresses that that need, takes us to that goal.
Universal vehicle okay. Individual vehicle was in generally the teachings of the individual vehicle are emphasized in the southern countries, for example, in in Southeast Asia, you know, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, so forth. And those are the universal vehicle, the Mahāyāna. Those those teachings are emphasized in the northern countries of Asia, for example, in northern India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea, Vietnam, and so forth. And that’ll give you some kind of orientation about where these teachings and the the the overall difference in emphasis between these two variations of Buddhism.
And Buddhism is not homogenous, you know, just like Christianity. All kinds of variations in Christianity, aren’t there? The same is true of Buddhism. Each country that Buddhism went to, there were certain principles that that remained unchanged, but they adapted to the local culture, to the local needs of the people, you know, what worked for them. So Buddhism evolved, took on different forms as it moved from different country, from country to country to country and so forth.
So there is variations within different types of Buddhism, but these are the two two overall variations. Buddhism came to Tibet in about seven seventy in the common year, and there’s some information on that, mentioned that the three most important individuals in the coming of Buddhism to Tibet were Padmasambhava, who was a great a great adept. He he, yeah, he was kind of a fearsome kind of guy. I guess he had to to be one of the first people to go to Tibet. Didn’t he ride on a tiger or something?
He might have ridden on a tiger. Think his stories about Yeah. Which he is And then the other two were Shāntarakshita, who was a monk, he introduced the monasticism into Tibet. And then Atisha, who there was a period when the when Buddhism degenerated or was almost wiped out, not not so much degenerated, but almost wiped out by one particular king. And she entered and Atisha went back to Tibet and reinvigorated Buddhism.
There are within Tibetan tradition of Buddhism, there are four main sects. Right? You know, there’s all these different streams of Buddhism. And maybe you’ve heard of some of these, and maybe this meaningless to you is Kagyu, shakya, Nyingma. And the fourth is the Gelug tradition.
And the Gelug tradition was founded by a fourteenth century scholar yogi. And on the top, on the sidewall and the back wall, all of those pictures are depicting events in the life of the founder of the tradition, which is mainly followed at Buddha House called Tsongkhapa. And it is his tradition in which we, his teachings, which his interpretation of the Buddhist teachings, which we try to put into practice here. So, anyway, I give you some oh, yeah. There’s a nice photograph of what he looked like.
I don’t know what he looked like. Yeah. The the books the Tibetan book of the dead and the book of living and dying, is that intimately involved with this path? It would be the hierarchy from here. Is this tied in there, or is that from a different sect?
So the the the book Tibetan living the book of living and dying, yeah, by Yeah. He is a Nyingma teacher. When sorry. He’s he’s not within this predict particular tradition, but he’s within the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Buddhism.
Yeah? Yeah. Okay. I think you guys have listened to me enough. Let would you like to stand up and stretch?
Just an apology from the office. The air con’s been switched off because there’s a leak into the library. So we beautifully for such a long time. I think you’re just watching us all the time, actually. It’s good that people make me aware of that.
Some of these unusual terms that we use and one of the terms that I used was sentient being. And what does that refer to? Trying to develop oneself for the benefit of all sentient beings. So a sentient being means any being that has mind. And by being that has mind, this would include not only people, but animals and insects, cockroaches and Aw.
Ants. They also have mind. They also have Buddha potential. They want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer just like ourselves.
So they ultimately, they would be included in the scope of our of our motivation to benefit others. Okay? So we’re going to do some meditation together and then then we’ll take then we’ll have a discussion, a general discussion. Meditation. Maybe.
Okay. I think people have come to meditation with a lot of preconceptions, especially if they haven’t heard about what it is, they have some kind of ideas about what they’re going to get from it and how and how they’re going to experience it and so forth. Think probably the the general notion of meditation as it’s been perceived in the West has very little to do with actual meditation. And so maybe we have to work through some of the our misconceptions. Meditation is not about, spacing out or going into a trance or simply trying to feel good.
There are a lot of reasons to meditate, a lot of motivations. It can be simply to help us to relax, to relieve tension and stress and forth. That’s one level. And, you know, that’s a legitimate use, I think. But that’s not the only that’s not the only usage.
To a large extent, that has become meditation has become a particular technique used by therapists and so forth. And they use it to help people deal with the stress in their life. And okay, that’s fine. But that’s not its own use. I wouldn’t take into consideration the full scope of the potential of meditation.
And as I said, tried to emphasize that we’re trying to change our minds. And meditation is is the direct way to change our minds. It’s like, you know, we create we go into laboratory of our own minds. We’re busy people. We’re externalized to a great extent.
We have to deal with the everyday problems, the family, the work, transportation, getting by and so forth. But here we’re going to say we’re creating some kind of space for ourselves, we’re setting aside the time to explore our own dimly lit inner world, trying to understand how our mind is actually working, how it operates, and how best to begin to operate it more skillfully. So I think this is more of the notion which I would suggest that meditation is about. Though I think, Okay, it’s fine to make use of meditation to relieve attentions and so forth. But that’s not all that meditation is about.
So it’s like this laboratory. We experiment with other ways of being, other ways of being with ourselves and understanding. The word meditation, what we call meditation English language, Sanskrit is, comes from the root, means to be. It’s a way of being, how we learn different ways of being with ourselves. And interestingly, and this is probably the reflection, very much a reflection of the Tibetan Buddhist attitude toward meditation is.
The Tibetan word for meditation is gom. Gom means to accustom, to familiarize. So it’s the notion of accustoming ourselves, or that is to our mind, to more skillful, more productive states of mind, states of being. We again and again direct our mind in the development of various specific states. It might be love.
It might be compassion. It might be various types of wisdom. There’s a whole array of, like almost a supermarket full of meditations, all directed toward developing particular understandings, insights, and so forth. And then we accustom our mind to those new understandings, again and again inducing those new understandings, those new states of being. Being.
And they actually become our second nature. They become our primary nature. We change. We grow. We become somebody else because we’ve changed our mind.
So we’re directing our mind along a course of change. And the most the most direct means of bringing about is within the context of this laboratory of meditation. Okay. Another point which maybe most Westerners have the idea that meditation is like a trance or what we might call single pointed meditation focused upon a single object. But in fact, there are two overall important types of meditation.
One is called analytic meditation. The other is called stabilizing meditation. So analytic meditation, we actually that may be more akin to what we call in the West contemplation or reflection. But in Tibetan Buddhism, they refer to this as a type of meditation where we use lines of reasoning, where we we draw upon our own experience. You know?
And how do we can act sometimes I think we we people like Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama, somehow, we think that they were born the way they are, that whatever qualities of wisdom and love and compassion that they have were somehow inherent to their nature, who they were. And we aren’t that way, so what can we do? That’s the way we approach it. In a way, that’s a kind of laziness, but that’s another story. Like Mother Teresa, Dalai Lama, they have kind of compassionate electrons running around their brain.
But in fact, the state of compassion, the state of love can be developed. We can actually, using a specific method, just like a recipe, baking a cake or whatever, add two eggs and flour and water and so forth. Well, we can do the same in producing compassion, love within our mind. We can induce a loving state within our mind. And we try to hold on to that.
So that inducing of that state, that insight, we use analytic meditation. We penetrate using our experience, our reasoning, our creativity coming to that. And then what we’ve come to know over the course of our life specifically aimed at developing that quality. And then we develop a moment of compassion, and we try to hold on to it. Therefore, we use what is called stabilizing meditation.
We worked hard to induce a particular state or a particular insight, and we tried to prolong that as long as possible. That’s where we use stabilizing meditation so that our mind, like a dry sponge, can be exposed to this moisture and begin to absorb it, begin to actually change. So an overall meditation program or practice would employ both analytic meditations using this whole array of methods for generating particular specific skillful states of mind, and then the stabilizing meditation, which we want to fix the mind on that particular understanding, to prolong it and hold it as long as possible. So we’re going to begin with stabilizing meditation, but that is not the full range of meditation by any means. And what we’re going to work with is object.
A useful object is simply meditating on the breath. And over the next today and the next additional three weeks, we’ll be talking about the posture, what is most conducive. The mind and body are interdependent, are interrelated. So we can begin to approach. We can begin to have some kind of effect.
We can influence the mind through the body. In many ways, we have greater control over the body than we do the mind. And so we can begin to create you know, I talked about the environment. This is our physical environment, which is conducive to particular states of mind. So we try to fix up a particular environment skillfully, which helps us, which supports what it is that we want.
Likewise, we can concentrate that same idea down to the body. We try to create a particular physical posture which is also conducive to the states of mindset we want. So we’re going to go through the various physicals, physical postures, are most conducive to meditative states. For now, I just like to say I just point out one or two things. Okay?
In your physical posture, you know, our physical posture is like making a statement about who we are, what we stand for. You know, people, they talk about body language. And they’re like, a student came to his teacher, and before to ask a question, before before the student could say a word, the teacher said, who you are speaks so loudly, I can’t hear a word you’re saying. And very presence of the way we present ourselves physically is making a statement. We’re communicating.
You know, they say, what, ninety percent of communication is nonverbal. I don’t know what percentage is, but I’m sure there’s some. So we’re making a statement with our body and how we sit. So above all, we want to have a sense of purposefulness, a sense of stability, a sense I’m in charge. I’m taking control of my life.
You know, I’m tired of being like a leaf blown around by the wind. You know, I’m making some kind of stand on this cushion, even if it’s only for five minutes. Okay, we can do that. And we can become we can make that a habit. And this habit isn’t isolated to just our cushion.
It begins to permeate the rest of our lives. It begins to carry over into the rest of our lives. What we do here isn’t isolated from who we are as a person in our everyday lives. So we can experiment, even with our body. So taking a firm, comfortable comfortable, you know, but purposeful posture.
So I’m talking about the attitude of the posture, aren’t I? And we’ll go through the actual physical posture itself, but I can just suggest for now, you’re welcome to sit on a chair. That’s fine. You’re welcome to sit on a cushion. Some people use a sitting bench.
We have one bench. You might want to Can I just demonstrate that? Because I found that very useful when I was starting. Thanks, It just looked weird to me until somebody showed me how easily it is. Remember.
That’s back, isn’t it? And so you you just put your bottom on it. So really, all you’re doing is kneeling and then leaning on something nice and solid. So if anyone wants to try it, it’s very nice. It’ll be hard, but it’s very nice.
And you certainly don’t fall asleep in this thing. That one might be a bit high for most people. Anyway, It’s nice. That’s a possibility. Also, and many people, what you do.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s Helen is doing. Some people find it easier to actually put the knees back then forward. So you can I remember when George was doing the taping at the back, he used to use about five?
So he used to chew like crazy. And it doesn’t matter because, you know, it’s really so, basically, what he was doing was kneeling and then just leaning back. It’s very nice. And then as you get more stretch in the knees, you sort of come down and down and down until one day, you almost get like you do. You develop the stretch, and I have done Okay.
So whichever. I would just suggest for now, and we’ll go through more of the details of the posture, that you perhaps one important thing is to keep the back straight. And by straight, it doesn’t mean to hyperflex your back. Most people don’t know what a straight back feels like for one reason or another, so it’s just a matter of having a sense that the vertebrae stack like coins one on top of another. That and if you’re sitting on a chair, putting your buttocks to the rear of the chair, putting your feet flat on the floor.
And we’ll talk about the rest of the posture as we go along. Okay? But mainly now we’re talking about a straight back. I think that’s important. What we’re going to we’re going to begin meditation with a stabilizing meditation.
And what we’re going to use as a focus of our meditation is the breath. Okay? It’s a good object to make use of. It’s always there. If you’re not breathing, you’ve got problems.
Okay? Let me know if you stop breathing. By the breath, we can’t see the breath. This air moving in and out of our lungs and so forth. But what we can feel the physical sensation, which is associated with the natural breathing, emphasize natural breathing.
We’re not trying to prolong the breath or shorten the breath, work with it. We’re not trying to adjust the breath in any way. Whatever breath is there, that’s the one we’re going to work with. Okay? And you can feel the overall general physical sensations associated with the natural breathing.
For example, maybe some people are belly breathers, some people breathe from their chest, muscles relaxing and constricting, the clothes rubbing against your skin. So you can get the overall impression of these physical sensations, which are associated with the in and out of the breath, the inhalation and exhalation. And maybe you come to a point just below your nostrils where the air is rushing in and out. You know, was interesting. All these years I’ve been saying sensation on your upper lip.
And somebody just last week said, Well, isn’t this your upper lip? You know, this here. I never thought about that. When I’m talking here, I don’t know what to call it now. I used to just say, you know, the sensation on your upper lip.
And now I’m self conscious when I say that. Depending upon the shape of your nose there’s a feeling, a sensation just below the nostrils on this part of the flesh. I have to point to it or maybe inside your nose, maybe you have a hook nose. Anyway, if you can bring your focus down to that kind of specific point, that would be your point of concentration where you try to pick up the physical sensation of the natural breathing. Otherwise, you know, maybe you aren’t it’s too subtle.
You aren’t sensitive enough to that actual physical sensation, and you can you can take the overall impression of all the physical sensations throughout your body, which are associated with the natural breath. Okay? Now we’re going to make use of some techniques, and they’re just techniques. You can make use of them as you will, you know, whether no. Let’s let’s I always I know.
I always run out of time. Yeah. Maybe this is maybe this will be enough just for to get us acquainted with what we’re doing. Okay. So it’s it’s definite that your mind is going to wander.
I’m not definite, but probably if you’re anything like me. It’s it’s going to be attracted. It’s gonna be distracted. There’s the kleshas down there, all the noise and so forth. It’s thoughts, inner distractions, like different feelings, different thoughts arising.
Determine at the beginning of your meditation the moment I become aware that my mind has wandered, that it’s distracted. I’m not going to wait to see how the story finishes. You know, even if God is about to speak to me, I’ll say, You know, I’ll get back to you later, God. I’ve got to get back to the breath. Immediately, the moment you become aware that your mind has wandered, bring your mind back to the breath.
You might have to do this every two seconds, just keeping the mind back to the breath again and again and again. But make that kind of determination. Don’t get in the habit of following with your wanderings, with your distractions. If you do, you’re going to form bad habits. And then someday, when you actually want to learn how to meditate, it’s going to be all the more difficult for you to because you’ve developed these bad habits.
So determine the moment I become aware, not the second moment, the first moment, I’m going to bring my mind back sensations of the breath. So we’re to keep it quite simple for the moment, but we’ll have more meditation instructions as we go along. Is there any question about just that, what I explained just now? Is it clear? Everybody okay?
Okay. So I’m going to we’re going to meditate on our breath for ten minutes. No. I’m to take you through a relaxation technique of simply going through the body relaxing. That’ll take five minutes.
Then we’ll meditate on the breath for five minutes. So overall, it’ll take us about ten minutes. At the end of that ten minutes, I’m going to ring this bell. I’m not going to forget you. Okay?
So if you don’t hear the bell, either the session’s not over, the ten minutes isn’t up, even though it might feel like it’s been a long time, or I fell asleep. I haven’t fallen asleep yet. Okay? So I’ll ring the bell. I’ll take care of the time.
You just enjoy it. It’s like taking a bubble bath. Just luxuriate in this opportunity just to set aside all these big problems of your life, all these big projects that you have going. Just be with yourself. Be with your breath.
That’s all. So take a comfortable, firm posture, and we’ll go through a progressive relaxation throughout the body. So we’ll start at the crown of our head, the scalp, the forehead. Just bring your awareness to those areas, Beginning to consciously relax, feeling the tension moving down through your body out into the ground, feeling the wrinkles in your brow beginning to smooth out. The pressure in and around your eyes beginning to diminish.
Your facial muscles soften, relaxing. Your jaw is relaxed. Move down to the muscles in the back of the neck and perhaps gently turn your head to each side. Just loosening, relaxing. The diminishing, tightness loosening.
Moving down to your upper back and shoulders, perhaps just rotating your shoulders a few times and letting them drop comfortably to the sides, feeling the burden that we carry on our shoulders beginning to move down through your body out into the ground. Relaxing your hands, just let them go limp, soft Your lower arms. Upper arms. Your chest is at ease. Release the tension that you hold in your stomach muscles.
Allow your belly to go soft. And holding your trunk erect, relax your lower back muscles. Relaxing throughout the pelvic area. Your buttocks. Upper legs.
Lower legs, And your feet. Let them go soft. Then bring awareness to your body in general. Notice any tightnesses, any tensions within the body. Focusing upon those areas.
Consciously relax. Soften, feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen. Your body becoming comfortable. Sense of physical well-being pervading your body. It feels good to be in your body.
And then bring your mind to the breath. Just easy, gentle in and out flow of the natural breath. The moment your mind wanders bring it back to the breath. Bring your mind back to the breath. Bring your mind back to the breath.
Now get in touch with your body, becoming aware of physical sensations and feelings in the body. And then in a slow and easy relaxed manner just very gently become aware of your surroundings. Just take your time. There’s no hurry. Okay.
So that was about approximately five minutes just to begin to withdraw your mind from just the external, getting in touch with your body, relaxing the body as a way of approaching, accessing, relaxing of the mind. And then we approach the mind. We spend about five minutes on the mind itself. So it’s useful initially to begin with quality sessions, short sessions rather than long sessions where you come habituated to distractions and your mind wandering. So just, you know, if you could do that every day to wake up a little bit earlier than perhaps normal and just develop some positive motivation for the practice and going through the body relaxation and then meditating on the breath.
I think even for five minutes, I think you’ll find that very useful and very beneficial. Even if you have some time during the course of the day, if you have a couple minutes waiting for a bus or whatever, you can spend some time just focusing, relaxing with the breath. Okay. Questions? Discussion?
Any anybody have anything they’d like to share? Anything they’d like to question? I see. That’s a that’s great. What do that’s a great question.
What do people think about that? Yeah. I I I would agree with what you just said very much. So right to happiness. And the fact that we have the natural state, I guess one one I always talk about fundamental notions.
Must be lots of fundamental notions. The The natural state of the mind is peace. Or we call it happiness, whatever word we want to give it. It’s not something that we have to fabricate. In it’s simply if we remove the disturbing factors from the mind, the mind can revert back to its natural state.
That’s why meditation is able to induce a very peaceful state. It’s simply because we’re pacifying all the disturbing factors within the mind. We don’t have to fabricate or create or construct some kind of happiness for ourselves, like going to the shops or something like that, which takes a lot of work to do all that. So in that sense, we have a right because it’s our innate nature, that peace, that happiness. And it’s so so it’s simply that being our innate nature, then we simply have to find a way to return to that state by removing.
The so we have a right to that. It’s it’s it’s our actual nature. No. We don’t have we don’t have to ask for it or beg for it or ask go outside for ourselves. So I I guess that’s the way I would use that sense of right.
But I think what you say is quite quite a good question. Yeah. We we can’t always be happy because things happen. I get tired of walking around. No, what you say is quite true on a remedial basis, think, a certain level of practice, what we keep coming back to, ourselves and, and, and, finding some kind of happiness within that inside of ourselves.
And we try to work more skillfully with the world so that our interaction with the world isn’t more is less problematic. But having said all that, it is, and we’re going to come to that when we go through the the four noble truths, which are the, like, the fundamental of you know, the basic outline of the Buddhist teachings. It is possible to remove all the disturbing factors from the mind such that they will never return again. That it is logically and reasonably possible to be to experience a continual state of peace within within your mind and still be exist within the world and interact with the world in skillful and beneficial fashions without the world in a that it isn’t to our to ourselves, you know, we’re very much influenced by the world and what happens to us. If somebody shouts at us, somebody doesn’t give us what we want, we get upset.
But in the end, that’s only dependent upon our attitude in terms of it’s only dependent upon our attachments or our aversions, our hatred, anger, and jealousy, spite, miserliness. It’s only dependent upon the these what we call afflictive emotions of the mind. And they they call afflictive emotions because they afflict or disturb their natural peace of the mind. If we’re able to remove the very source of the afflictions of the mind, which is ignorance, which we’ll talk a lot about, then these are these all these various negative states of mind, these afflictive states of mind, these disturbing factors in the mind can never arise again. They’re not in the nature of the fabric of the mind itself.
The mind returns to its natural state of peace. But nonetheless, it’s not as if we go off into some kind of cave or some kind of trance. We we can still operate in the world. And I I’m quite sure, even on a remedial even on a mundane basis, even that there are people people there are people who experience life as extremely much more happier and others who experience life as much more suffering than others. It’s all dependent upon not only external, but how but their their attitude towards what happens.
So it’s dependent upon the mind. I’m sure I think that, you know, if you just extend that to its ultimate conclusion, we can attain a state where you’re walking around all the time with a smile on your face. I don’t know if you want to, but people, you know, people probably wouldn’t like you. Don’t know. Who who are you?
Anyway, logically, reasonably, we can explain that it is possible. Yeah. It’s kind of a long term goal for sure. But maybe we can begin to take the edges off more immediately around some of our difficulties. I think yeah.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Is that what you were getting at? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I think so very much. You know, it’s the as the the I’ve I mentioned this line from the English poet, The mind itself in its way can make a heaven of hell, hell of heaven. And then he had some insight into the mind as the determinant of all things.
So we’re working with the mind as the basis for finding happiness. It seems like in a world where we’re increasingly pushed to make a decision between polar opposites, whether it’s heaven and hell or good and evil or two political parties. That’s a Democrat. Do you see happiness as having a counter counterbalance? That’s good.
There’s an opposite to happiness, is it source within the mind or external to them? Yeah, yeah. That’s a good that’s a very profound that’s a question that many Western philosophers have been wrestling with. Can we know happiness without knowing suffering? And this is we’re going to take this up in the Four Noble Truths.
It’s called the suffering of change. You can read about it. But what you say most what we call pleasure, everything we call pleasure, all these pleasurable feelings, good feelings, happy feelings, are only relatively so. They only are exist as happiness compared to suffering. It’s like, you know, like, there’s an idiot sitting in the corner hitting himself over the head with a hammer.
And somebody walks up. You know, why are you hitting yourself over the head with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop. So it does feel good. It’s pleasurable when he stops, but that pleasure only arises independent in in contrast with in comparison with a relief from previous suffering.
So that type of happiness is completely bound up with suffering. That if but but as I mentioned before in answer to his question, there is the fundamental notion that the actual nature of mind is peace once the afflictions are removed from the mind altogether. And this is not a relative happiness. It doesn’t have to be it is not experiencing contrast with some other state, such as suffering. But it is the natural state of the mind, which we call peace.
Some people call it bliss, whatever you want to call it. But that’s the natural state of the mind. So what we’re saying is if we can remove disturbing factors from the mind, we return to this natural state where the mind is no longer disturbed. We call it peace. And this is not a relative state.
It is the actual nature within the actual nature of the mind. So we don’t have to be concerned with whether it’s relative or it’s changing, whether we have to experience it in contrast to suffering or not. Yeah? So you’re aligning suffering with unhappiness. Oh, I see.
Yeah, I guess I just, in general, just throw them all in the same basket. Unhappiness, pain, disappointment, frustration. It always yeah. So when the great yogis mentor, you know, people who have done some meditation, and experience some physical pain or humor or, you know, some emotion comes up from the past, do they not label that as pain, or is it just is what it is? Is that how they deal with it, do you think?
Well, I mean, I guess you could talk about that on a number of different levels. One, even even ourselves, we can, you know, prior to feeling the pain is a unattractive sensation or a disagreeable sensation that arises in the body. Like you have some kind of, you know, this is even would be the case in Western psychology or Western. So you have some kind of throbbing in your knee, a sensation in your knee, and you label that pain, and experience a feeling of pain. If you were to go into that feeling of pain, you you would you could perceive that as simply as sensation, pure sensation, physical sensation.
Yeah. So, I mean, that’s the way we can do that. These yogis, they might see it as they might be physically, they might suffer, but mentally, they might think this is fantastic. And I’m working off all of my negative karma. And I’m really happy to have this pain.
So they’re physically, they could be in discomfort, but mentally, they might they remind their mind could remain happy. And we’re gonna talk about karma. The the negative con the consequences of negative karma is suffering. So this physic this physical suffering that the yogi is experiencing is result of some action that they created in the past, and now they’re experiencing the result, and it’s finished. Or even more so, they’re not even aware of their body.
Mhmm. Their concentration is such that it’s they have single pointed concentration. That’s just an an interesting point because I remember when I was going through childbirth that one of the I had an amazing little nurse. She was very young, and she just kept saying every time I was, she said, oh, it’s that’s a positive thing that’s happening because, you know, the baby’s And she had me to transform it all the time. And finally, you know, it’s just made it so bearable.
Yeah. I always think there was an innate wisdom. She was about sixteen. Yeah. And you taught me this innate stuff.
So it’s generally we compound our I mean, just in general life, we compound our physical suffering with mental suffering due to aversion. The mind experiences aversion, you know, and the mind becomes unhappy itself. Whereas we can begin to distinguish between physical pain, but the mind can remain undisturbed by it or it can actually be unhappy. Oh, my baby’s coming. You know?
That’s great. I’ve been waiting nine months for this. Wow. This is great. And it can transform your attitude toward the physical pain such that the mind doesn’t experience unhappiness just by what do they call it?
Reframing the situation. Anybody have any other comments? I used to have a teacher. I I lived in India for a number of years, and I went to a school in Dharamsala, India.
It was called the Buddhist School of Dialectics. Sometimes we used to call it the school of Buddhisto dramatics. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Tibetans debate. It’s very dramatic. They’re arguing arguing back and forth.
Anyway, my teacher, he said, you don’t have a question, you aren’t thinking. So I don’t want to put you on the spot. You said earlier about the the number of Buddhas that Buddhas. And so when we see these different Buddhas in different shapes, different Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Are they actually individual people or aspects That’s a good question. And I think there might be a might be yeah. No, we have individual mind streams. Your mind stream is a separate continuum, my mind stream.
They will not mix. So your mind stream will go on to remove all the obstacles from the hindrances from within it, all the disturbing factors, the hatred, attachment, so forth. It will go on to be awakened. My mind stream will not experience that awakening. I can do the same for myself.
I can go on to remove the hindrances and the the afflictive emotions, the attachment, and so forth. In my mind, what can be awakened. So you will you will be a Buddha, and and I hope you’ll remember me. And I’ll be here. I’m trying to become a Buddha, but eventually, I’ll become a Buddha.
And there’ll be another there’ll be two more Buddhas in the, you know, universe. So we’ll be separate mind streams. So there are the infinite numbers of Buddhas, I said. Buddha Śākyamūni is simply one. He is important because he is the source of our teachings.
But he is not unique in that way. It’s part of the Mahāyāna, the universal vehicle doctrine, that everyone in this room and everyone outside this room will eventually become a Buddha. It’s just a matter of when. And that when is up to you. That’s your responsibility.
Okay. So do your homework. You can read your handouts. Is this going okay for everyone? Okay.
I used to be a very quiet person. I used to be very short and quiet, and we haven’t gotten very far. Anyway, maybe it’s not so important. Anyway, this is what we’re going to we’re going to be basing our our introduction around. So if you read this yourself, this will help us, and you have some some of your profound questions that you’ve been coming up with.
And then if you can do your homework about meditating, minutes relaxing the body, and then five minutes working with meditation on the breath. Think Are you going to help us with our homework on Monday nights? Well, do you wanna talk about what you’re gonna do on Monday night? Sure. I’m a great fan of Duncan, aren’t you?
Monday nights. You mean three principal aspects of the path? No. The med aren’t you gonna take meditation at six o’clock? Yeah.
Yeah. Don’t be humble. Yeah. So if you would like, you know, this is like a I’ll be taking learn to meditate. Actually, Monday mornings seven o’clock here.
If you want to come, starting the day after tomorrow, Monday. Seven am. You can get a short nap with me, if you like, or you can come at six o’clock during the course of March. We’ll go through learning how to meditate. So it’ll be a little more expanded than what you’re getting because we don’t have so much time.
There we have an hour just devoted to meditation, so the session will be longer. And we’ll meditate on analytic meditations also. So anyway, by all means, you’re welcome to come to learn to meditate. Also, Helen’s being humble. She takes Learn to Meditate on Tuesday evenings.
So you’ve got seven am and six pm on Mondays, and Helen at six PM on Tuesday evenings if you want to delve more into some meditation. But these are these are ongoing all the time, so you can make use of them when you have a chance. Here’s here’s the real thing. Six o’clock Monday night, you know, has done many, many, many years of meditation. So I just I take my classes from him.
Yeah. Over yeah. No. Over one month. That’s yeah.
That’s right. Yeah. It’ll it’ll progress. So it’s like yeah. Over over the one month at six PM or seven AM, we’ll, you know, I’ll just very much what we went through here, but a little more expanded.
It’ll be next month. It’ll be in that cycle. Yeah. Because I think one hour is just too short to really learn how to meditate. So the basic meditation instructions are given over that one you know, they’re built up over a one month period, four weeks.
Yeah. So you’re welcome to that. Thank you for your attention, and have a good week. Have a good day.