Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The question of what the word “I” actually refers to runs through this 46-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun. He distinguishes direct perception from conceptual thinking, then argues that misknowledge — the Tibetan ma rig pa — is not passive ignorance but an active distorting process projecting a fabricated self onto persons and objects: a self that has never existed, like green snow seen through tinted glasses. Selflessness means the absence of this fantasized self, not denial of a conventional functioning “I.” He explains his choice to work at the Hearer school level rather than the highest Consequentialist view of emptiness, and closes with a practical exercise: notice every use of the word “I” this week, especially under strong emotion, and ask what it actually refers to.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 OtE 1992 02 26.mp3
UUID: fe801c22-40bc-4c55-9d50-c46f8f8d1aee
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Opening the Eye of New Awareness 1991-1992 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-02-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.1 minutes
Words: ~5,088
Symbols,, language, models of things about us. And we can think about things, we can know things that we can’t know directly. I can think about what Moscow might be like. I have all these various images, symbols, concepts in my mind and I can put them all together and have some understanding of what a red square might be like. But I’ve never been there.
It’s not readily accessible to me. Generic images. Generic means general, in the sense that I’m not knowing a particular. You know what I think about? I think about children.
And I can use that symbol, that image and I can do a lot of it’s quite useful. There are three children next door. There are thirty children at this particular school. But it’s no particular child. It is a generality of a child.
It’s quite interesting how we come up with these generalities. Would be another whole process. Whereas direct perception knows the detail, the richness, the specific characteristics whereas concepts, conceptual thinking knows the general characteristics. So there’s a difference. Way of the mind, the direct perception, that means to know things directly without the medium of concepts, and then thinking process.
They both have their advantages and disadvantages. In general, in thinking we can know things which aren’t directly accessible, which we cannot see, which aren’t present physically before. I can think about things on the other side of the world and understand them, but I can’t know them in their full rich vividness, their specific characteristics. Whereas direct perception I can know things in their specific characteristics, their actual vividness, their reality. But they have to be directly in my physical presence.
They have to be accessible to my senses. The wisdom realizes ultimate reality by way of meaning generality, by way of mental images is one type of wisdom. Then there’s the wisdom realizing conventionalities. There’s the wisdom and skills in the five sciences. So Buddhism lists five types of sciences: linguistics, logic and epistemology.
Epistemology being the way we know things. The third is arts. Fourth is medicine. And the fifth is inner sciences, the way in which our minds are operating. So these are called the five sciences.
So there’s this wisdom of these scholastics, this body of knowledge. Then there’s the wisdom of realizing how to bring about the welfare of sentient beings. This refers to knowing how to achieve the present and future welfare of sentient beings without impropriety. So there are these three types of wisdom. His Holiness goes on to say that amongst these three types of wisdom we must achieve the most important of them and that’s the wisdom realizing selflessness.
So all our problems, all our neurotic patterns have as their source, their foundation, misknowledge. I like the word misknowledge. Generally it’s used in English the term ignorance. Ignorance has some other connotations, I think. Actually it’s more in keeping with the Tibetan word, ma rig pa.
Means knowledge, is a negating particle. It’s a misknowledge. It’s more active. It’s an active misdistorting, not simply a passive not knowing. It’s an active distorting process.
It’s a misknowledge, wrong knowing. It’s just simply not a passive not knowing. So this misknowledge is a misconception in particular as to the nature of the self and the two types of self which His Holiness is presenting. The self of persons and the self of phenomena. The self of persons and the self of phenomena.
And it sounds rather strange to talk about the self of phenomena, but it won’t be perhaps when we come to an understanding of what this self means. By phenomena, why do we make this division? Why is this division made? All things whatsoever are included in these two categories: persons and phenomena. By phenomena it simply means everything, every object which is not a person or we should say sentient beings, or living beings, it’s easier to say persons.
It’s more meaningful for us to say persons. But when we say persons it should be understood that we mean living beings. So there is the category of living beings and then there’s the category of phenomena which are non living beings. And this call simply phenomena. So there’s the self of living beings, the self of persons and the self of phenomena.
And it’s the misconception with respect to these two categories which is the source of all our difficulties and problems, all our neurotic compulsive patterns which govern our lives. So due to ignorance, due to this misknowledge, we superimpose attributes upon ourselves and upon things about us which they do not possess. Due to the factor of the influence of this knowledge, this distorting quality, it is a particular mental factor in our mind. There are fifty one secondary mental factors. Misknowledge is one of those.
Due to this distorting factor of our awareness, we attribute characteristics, attributes to phenomena in ourselves which they do not possess in reality. We imbue them with a sense of, as Grant mentioned, some sort of solidity or concreteness which they don’t possess. Is a reifying tendency. I think it may be a good word. It means to make something solid which is in fact insubstantial, to give something more substantiality than it actually has in fact.
This reifying tendency of misknowledge. We project, what do we mean by self? We project a fantasized way of existing. We project. We impose.
Superimpose means to attribute, to put for example, would say, you saw somebody with a frown on their face. And he said, Oh, you aren’t happy with me. What did I do wrong? And, Oh, that’s just a projection. I have a headache.
There was a basis, a frowning face, and we projected something, a motivation, had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual situation. We superimposed, for one reason or another, an attribute upon that which didn’t correspond with the actual situation. This person wasn’t angry at us but we projected on them as if we supposed that they did. So we are projecting upon objects something that they don’t have, something which isn’t in the actual situation. And this is a fantasized way of existing.
This fantasized way of existing is what we mean by self. Fantasized way existing is an imaginary way of existing. Things exist and they have a way of existing. And we impose due to this influence of misknowledge a type of way of existing which in fact they don’t have. And this is what we mean by self.
So in the text it talks about selflessness. So we have to know what is less something. Less means a lack of, an absence of. And it is absence of a self, a type of self. Have to begin to distinguish here.
In the term selflessness that self refers to fantasized way of existing. There is an absence of a fantasized way of existing. There is an emptiness, if you like, of a fantasized way of existing. That objects do not have, that objects are selfless. They do not have this way of existing.
They are empty of that fantasized way of existing. They lack that imaginary way of existing. So when we use the term selflessness, we don’t mean there’s no self. I, me, persons, that objects do not have their own identity, that I don’t have my own identity. In fact they do.
This self specifically refers to a fantasized way of existing which we call self, a type of self, a very concrete and reified self. And objects do not possess that. They lack that. They are empty of that. So it’s a yeah, and we use this term selflessness.
It’s especially important to keep this in mind when we’re referring to the selflessness of a person. It does not mean that the term selflessness does not have anything to do with a morality. You should be more selfless. It doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that we have a self, or we don’t have a self. I can’t deny that I have a self.
I have a self. Self, I and person are synonymous terms. They’re interchangeable. Self, I and person. In general when we’re talking about people, animals have a self.
They have an I. All living beings have a self. Buddhas have a self. So when we talk about selfless, that doesn’t mean that we say we’re denying that you have a self. We’re saying that you do not, you lack a specific way of, a fantasized way of existing.
And I exist. I eat, I talk, I drink water. I’m happy, I’m sad. I have a self which each talks. The self is happy, the self is sad.
The self exists, but exists in a particular way. And we have to begin to understand the way it doesn’t exist. Therefore, come to understand the way it does exist. So what is being referred to in the term selflessness is not the conventionally existent self which is able to carry out all of the various functions. You know, there is a conventionally existent self which wakes up in the morning, brushes his teeth, eats breakfast, goes to work, lays around the house like I do.
And then in the evening, he eats lunch, etc, comes home, plays with the kids and goes to bed. That self is a functional being that’s able to carry out that particular function. And this is what we mean by conventionally existent self. It’s able to carry out all of the various functions which we attribute to people, to the self, to an eye. And this is the conventional existence.
So what is being referred to in the term selflessness is a totally fabricated self, a type of self which has never existed, does not exist now and never will exist. It doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist. It’s very tricky because we talk about ego lessness.
And I think this is not so good because ego exists. I mean we can’t talk about ego lessness. We’re not saying that we’re trying to get rid of something that once existed or we should get rid of it because it does exist. It’s never existed. There’s nothing to get rid of.
It’s completely imaginary fabricated self. It has never existed. If something exists it cannot be refuted. All we can refute is the false belief that something exists. And this is what we’re doing.
And we have a misconception. This fabricated self only exists for misconception. It only exists for misconception, for a valid conception. For a valid mind, it doesn’t exist. It only exists like when you’re wearing sunglasses and you go out in the snow mountain, you see green snow.
There’s no such thing as green snow. But it appears. Snow appears for a person who’s wearing sunglasses, green snow exists for that particular person. For a nondistorted awareness that has seen the actual fact of the color of the snow, green snow doesn’t exist. So the self appears to exist for a particular awareness.
And that awareness is this knowledge, misconception, wrong, invalid awareness. For that type of awareness the self exists. But by refuting, by contradicting that misbelief, that misconception, we refute its object. It’s not as if we’re trying to get rid of something that actually exists. That object of misconception that green snow doesn’t exist, it never has existed and never will exist.
It doesn’t exist. So we’re not trying to get rid of something, like a growth, a cancer, which is bad to have. Let’s get rid of it. It’s never been there. So there’s a conventional self.
Upon this conventional self, which is quite difficult to understand, it’s actually more difficult to understand the nature of the conventional self than this fabricated self as we are finding out, just by thinking about it. The nature of the conventional self is very subtle. It’s easier to come to an understanding of ultimate truth than conventional truth, even though all of these things about us are conventional truths. But anyway, so upon this conventional self we impose a fantasized way of existing. We reify, we solidify, concretize the self into a type of self which in fact doesn’t exist.
We impose misconceptions upon it. So the description of this fantasized way of existing that we project on objects becomes more and more subtle as we move up through the philosophic system. And within Buddhism there The Buddha gave innumerable eighty-four thousand bundles of Dharma. He didn’t teach one truth. And he didn’t teach in one way.
And he didn’t teach at one level. Because this would have shown his lack of skill in being able to lead a particular disciple at that particular time. But he taught in keeping with that particular person’s disposition, capacity, where that person was at, at that particular moment. So he would teach A to this person, B to that person, or not A to that person and not B to this person. If he thought it would be a benefit to that person in leading them along the spiritual path at that particular time in their life.
He even taught to some students that there existed a concrete solid self, which is totally the opposite, totally the opposite of his final view. But this was necessary at this particular time for this particular disciple, this student. So all this huge body of system of teaching, they began to categorize. They formed — he didn’t do this. His various students later on began to systematize his teaching.
And they began to see that there was a graduated subtlety in moving up with respect to reality, the ultimate reality. First he presented here different coarser presentations on the nature of reality. Then he presented more subtle presentations, more subtle, more subtle. And finally he presented his final view which he said, This is definitive. This is it.
I have nothing more to say. This is my final view. The others were skillful means to get you to this state like moving up the rungs of a ladder. Unless you step on the first rung, it’s hard as hell to get on the second rung. And it’s impossible to get on the third.
So he wanted to bring his students gradually to his final view. The final view would have freaked them out. There’s no way. There’s no way they could arrive at him. I know this is the case.
We would freak out if we began to get a glimpse of the ultimate view of emptiness as presented by the middle way school. Our minds wouldn’t be prepared. It would just be too big of a shock. We have to sort of, What would we have in there? What would be good analogy?
So we have to be of led along like children through the various levels so we can accustom to and our mind expands our ability to think more deeper and be able to have the personal power to be able to tolerate the possible fears and insecurity which arise when reality begins to get little shaky. Things aren’t so hard and solid as they appear. And we start with the view of naive realism. Things are out there solid and hard. And don’t bug me.
I want some kind of security in my life. I want something to hold on to. That’s where most people are at. So even in modern contemporary particle physics, things aren’t quite as solid. This table which appears to our consciousness to be so very solid because it’s actually just a mass of whirling energy, electrons and atoms.
It’s just not all that solid. It gets a little shaky even at that level. But we’re quite sophisticated. We can kind of accept that. Can you imagine a peasant in an Indian village two thousand five hundred years ago?
He starts talking about this isn’t so solid after all it’s made up of atom, element. They don’t sleep as well at night. It makes you feel insecure. You want the world to be in its proper place and solid. That’s why we invent ego.
That’s why we invent ourselves. Because we’re afraid of an open fluid way of relating. We want to secure the self in space and time. We want something to hold on to. So there’s this graduated system, what we call tenets.
And there’s four main tenets, four main philosophical categorizations of the teaching, one being rung to the next one being more subtle than the next until you come to the final view of the Buddha, which is called the middle way view. For the middle way view specifically within the Middle Way view, is the Autonomy Middle Way view and Consequentialist Middle Way view. So even this Middle Way view, there’s a coarser and a more subtle presentation of the nature of reality. You know, there’s some degree of difference within even this particular final school, the highest school. There is no difference with respect and I’m bringing this up because His Holiness points it out, there is no difference between the subtlety of the selflessness of phenomena, glasses, this is the phenomena, glass, books, tables, houses, and the subtlety of the selflessness of the person, people, dogs, cats.
There’s no degree in the subtlety between the selflessness of a person and the selflessness of phenomena. But it is said it is easier to come to an understanding of the selflessness of a person than it is to come to an understanding of the selflessness of phenomena. Why? Because we’re more familiar with the self of person. It’s a very immediate experience.
It’s difficult enough to get an understanding of what we mean by the self of person in the term selflessness. It would be even more difficult to come to an understanding of what we mean by the self of the table in the term selflessness. What do we mean by the self of the table? So then in His Holiness presentation, his explanation of selflessness is primarily based upon the presentation of the Consequentialist Middle Way school. The consequence of middle way school represents the final thought of the Buddha on the nature of reality.
There was no more subtle, there was no more profound, there was nothing further to go. There was nowhere to go. This was the end point of his realization, his final thought. But I thought I think it would be much more useful for the present if we were to discuss selflessness in terms not of the Consequentialist Middle Way school but on the selflessness of what is called the Hearer school stage and supplement that whenever appropriate with the differences in accordance with the consequence of Middle Way school. So we’re going to be proceeding with the same analysis that His Holiness uses, but we’re going to use a slightly different coarser description of the fantasized way of existing.
There are four discernible stages in coming to an understanding of the nature of reality. There’s what’s called the Hearer stage, the mind only stage, the autonomy middle way stage, and the Consequentialist Middle Way stage. So as I said, these are like rungs of a ladder. We can supplement with a higher, but I thought it might be most useful and I think it’s much more accessible and relevant initially to work at this Hearer level, this basic stage. Then once we know the method of procedure of analysis in further teachings it will be quite useful and you can kind of plug that in.
But also I can’t go into it very deeply but we also have to disclose it roughly, the important points, but hopefully, relevantly, but it will be somewhat rough. But I can’t go into it in detail. I don’t have the scope to understand it. I think Geshe-la Rinpoche is going to teach next term he’s going to teach a particular text, a short, what’s called a sūtra, a discourse of the Buddha called the Heart Sūtra, which is one of the most important sūtra, even though it’s only one page long, in terms of describing the ultimate nature of reality. And he’ll be teaching that, so that would be quite valuable.
Then you won’t be misled or confused as you will be with me. Well, I’m sure each school could explain it in terms of themselves, but it will be explained in terms of the Consequentialist school. Each school thinks they’re the cat’s pajamas. They think they’ve got it all. They think they have their final thoughts.
And they can put up very forceful arguments of why they think they are. It’s not easy. I mean these people aren’t stupid. They’re quite brilliant, even at these lower tenets. Some of the greatest minds of Buddhism held the views of the lower tenets.
So it’s not, you know, people want to jump to the best, the highest, immediately. And then you may gather information but you probably haven’t, as was mentioned at the very onset of tonight, you haven’t figured it out for yourself. And it doesn’t. There’s no movement in the mind, nothing as much has changed. It’s just a collection of more information.
It’s quite difficult, I think, to figure out things for yourself. It’s not something that we’re culture and society doesn’t put too much emphasis or weight or importance in our examinations in universities and etc. As long as you’re able to regurgitate the right answers at the right time then you are said to be competent. So I think in very much of Buddhism, it’s not held to be of great value. Shucks.
We didn’t get very far, did we? So one thing I guess we could think about over the next week. The type of self we’re going to be describing in terms of the hearer stage is a singular, unchanging, independent self. Another word for singular is homogenous, unitary, unchanging, independent self. That’s the self we’re going to be looking at.
And this is seen. This is the fantasized way of existing that we’re going to be looking at. We have a belief due to this misknowledge which is unconscious at present. We have a model of a self, a symbol. The mind is using languages in terms of symbols to represent something.
Now the thing about symbols, just like on a road map, a road map. The little lines, the red lines and the black lines are little circles. Those little circles aren’t cities. There’s a little circle. But they stand for cities.
They represent cities but they are not cities. The map is not the territory. And these little lines, you can’t drive on those little lines. They never fit. They aren’t made of bitumen.
But they stand for it. They represent something. They correspond to a reality, something which exists physically. So language, words are just like the lines on a map, these circles. They stand for something.
We often mistake the word. We often mistake the map or the territory. We mistake the word for the reality. So when we say I, that I stands for something. It has what we call a referent.
When I say the glass is on the table, it makes sense. Glass has a referent. Table has a referent. And I can juxtapose those symbols in my mind and I can come up with some meaning which is valid. If you tell me, know you say, go get my book which is on the table in the next room.
I can go in there and lo and behold, I bring back a book. It’s very mysterious but I do. These symbols that you communicate to me have some meaning for me and they have some correspondence to reality. But not all symbols correspond to reality. We believe and they do.
So there is an I, I say, I wake up in the morning and I eat and I prepare a talk and I give a talk. I has a correspondence in reality. There is an I, a person. But there’s another I which I use in the same way. I hate your guts.
I feel I’m afraid of dying. I’m sad. I’m afraid of dying. There is an I which arises in response to emotional experiences, which is a symbol, just like the I that I make use of in terms of I’m going to the store. But the deceiving part of it is this I has no correspondence in reality.
It’s the same word. An unconscious symbol that we’re processing or making use of. But one of these eyes, these symbols for who I am, the model I have of myself has a correspondence with reality, the other doesn’t. But I hold that they both do. I don’t even distinguish between them.
And this is where we go wrong. Not all symbols, not all language has a referent in reality. No. I can say things which have horns on a rabbit’s head. That’s something which is used in Buddhist debating quite a lot.
Horns on a rabbit. I can say anything. It doesn’t mean it actually exists. It has any correspondence in reality. And he said, so I said you could think about something over the next week.
Think about your different uses of the word I. Especially the I which arises. We have models, a very complex symbol that the mind is using to process, to find ourselves in the world, to find our place in the world. And begin to think whenever you use the word I in your normal rational thinking state and also but especially in your emotional state, when you’re jealous, when you’re angry. You say, I hate your gut, or I’m afraid.
That eye, does that have any correspondence to reality? What is the nature of that symbol? Maybe you can begin to distinguish between the different usages of the same word. Anybody have any questions? Yeah.
So, how many eyes do you have? When you say, I’m walking to the store, do you feel like there’s a crowd walking to the store or just one person walking to the store? One. So is there an I which corresponds to the mind and an I which corresponds to the body? The I is physical and non physical?
Both physical and non physical? Aren’t those two mutually exclusive? Can something be both matter and not matter? In what way? Well, I mean, I had the conception of the real I, the conventional, as being the mind and the Sometimes you associate the I with the body.
I stub my toe, I’m hurt, I’m hurt. If the body is hurt, we say, I’m hurt. Sometimes we associate it with the mind. When happy thoughts are going on in the mind, say, I’m happy. So sometimes the I is associated with the body and sometimes with the mind.
Which one is it? Is it both? A different A different time. How about when there’s no awareness? Do I go out of existence?
When I’m asleep, do I go out of existence when I’m asleep? Deep sleep. Am I my body? I’m not my body. So is the I the body and the mind?
The conventional functioning of the body and the mind that the stream of the basis of things. So does the eye have a, the eye doesn’t have a body. I always say I have an arm. Is a legitimate statement? So I am not the No, no, no, Forget about it.
The fantasized I doesn’t exist. We’re just talking about the conventional eye. What do we mean by it? You say I am the body. I am my body.
I am the body. I don’t have a body. You know, in order to possess it has to be distinguished between that which possesses and the possessed. There has to be that distinguishment. So either, if I am the body then I cannot have a body.
So I don’t have a body. I do have a body. So I am not the body. I have a mind. I am not the mind.
So, there is one. What are you trying to say with I’m the body and mind? How would you answer your own question? It’s easier to come up with a question. That’s the trick.
You keep asking questions. Oh, time’s out. I am the we have, I, you know I cut this into parts. There’s the whole and there’s the parts. Are any of the parts the whole?
So none of the parts are the whole. How about the aggregation of the parts? Is that the whole? It’s simply the aggregation of parts, because no part is the whole.
Can we have a whole without part? Maybe a big whole right there. Are you anymore? What do you think? So are you brain processes and bodily functions?
You don’t have a sense that you’re more than that. But you don’t have a sense that you have two eyes, do you? There’s one eye which is physical processes and one which is mental processes? There’s not two eyes on them. There’s one eye which sort of subsumes mental and physical processes.
Well, guess my only point was that the eye is is imputed to, labeled to the body and mind. It is not the body and mind. That’s the basis. No, no, no. I get confused with terms of conventional and No, wait, wait, wait.
Of this entire conversation we haven’t been talking about the fantasized I. This is all empirical, conventional I, the I which actually exists, is merely imputed to the basis of the body and mind. And dependence upon body and mind, we impute Grant, I, person, pharmacist, man. Man. Yeah.
So that is the valid, the existent I. What’s the nature of the non-existent I? That which is not dependent upon the body and mind. That which has no relationship to body and mind. It has no correspondence in reality.
There’s nothing which stands for it, which we can find. If I say where’s Leslie? There’s something I can find. Stands for something. Leslie stands for something.
When I say the fantasize, there’s nothing which stands for it in reality. It’s simply a model which I’m holding within my mind. It has no correspondence in reality.