Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 45-minute session by distinguishing neurotic anxiety from existential anxiety — citing a seminar by M. Scott Peck — to argue that a reasonable fear of repeating life’s problems is itself a genuine spur to growth. He maps the eight ego preoccupations (pleasure/pain, gain/loss, fame/blame, praise/notoriety) as the mechanism that keeps practitioners trapped in reactive cycles, then draws a secular parallel between a men’s group and the Three Jewels. A guided mindfulness-of-breathing meditation follows, built around the memorable image of training a puppy: patient, gentle, non-judgmental, returning the mind again and again without frustration. He then leads a contemplation on the disadvantages of self-centeredness, inviting listeners to trace conflict and loneliness back to a hidden “I versus the world” agenda. The session closes with an introduction to the two truths — conventional and ultimate — using a table and a mirror reflection to show why emptiness, not stress management, is the path to genuine liberation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 OtE 1991 09 11.mp3
UUID: a84d39ec-edab-4c9d-b413-d6683642f6f4
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Opening the Eye of New Awareness 1991-1992 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-09-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.4 minutes
Words: ~4,172
This process of redirecting ourselves, getting back in touch with our priorities, reorientating our direction, which is traditionally called going for refuge. And I’ve said that it has two causes, the first being anxiety, fear, and the second being faith. And it’s perhaps important to differentiate between two types of anxiety neurotic anxiety and existential anxiety. There are perhaps certain things which are worthy to be feared. That is to say that there are reasonable fears.
On the other hand, there are unreasonable fears. So reasonable fears, we can say, are existential fears. They’re very much bound up with the nature of our existence. Neurotic fears, unreasonable fears, are not. And they have to be worked with.
I attended a seminar last week by an American psychiatrist by the name of M. Scott Peck, and he was talking about fears. He made an interesting comment that I’m talking about neurotic fears. Find out what your neurotic fears are and then try to decide what it is that you would do if you didn’t have this fear and then do that. So this is kind of a good piece of advice, I think.
And this is what’s very much going for refuge, this idea of reorientating ourselves. Our life is run very much on the basis of hopes or expectations and fears and anxieties. There are said to be eight principal preoccupations of ego. Our hopes of pleasure, our fear of pain, hopes of gain, fear of loss, hopes of fame, fear of blame, hopes of praise, and fear of notoriety. And we aren’t able to function in terms of our wisdom, in terms of the values that we’ve created for ourselves.
But simply under the control of what we see as painful, we turn away with. We’re continually turning toward that which we hope is going to bring us pleasure. Pleasure here is setting one’s priorities in terms of enhancement of ego. So there’s no real freedom. There’s no real choice.
So this process of realigning our allegiance from a life based upon hope and fear to one which is based upon wisdom and choice in the light of our own experience, in the light of our own reason and intuition. It seems if there are two causes for making this decision to grow. And one of them is fear, anxiety. But it’s an existential type of fear. And it’s as if we’re never going to give up our neurotic fears and our existential fears are greater.
That is to say, and as one begins to see, develops anxiety, to see the patterns of one’s life, that the same problems, the same difficulties, the same frustrations, disappointments, dissatisfactions are going to continually reoccur cyclically through the course of your life unless you do something. And you develop a fear and anxiety about this continued reoccurrence of problems. And this is reasonable because they will continue to reoccur unless you do something, unless you grow. And so if this sense of anxiety about the reoccurrence of problems and the fear which arises out of this or the sense of anxiety is strong enough, that fear is going to help us to overcome the fear of neurosis and the neurotic types of fear. The fear against confronting legitimate suffering.
The fear of working with neurotic fears are our various afflictive emotions, hatred, anger, desire, spite, jealousy. We’re going to cease avoiding difficult situations. Though we might not like to be in them, we might not like to confront our difficulties, we might not like to put ourselves in positions where we voluntarily take on difficulties, the fear of not doing it is greater than the fear of doing it. Existential anxiety becomes greater than our neurotic anxiety. And this becomes one of the components of change, a sense of anxiety, a reasonable anxiety, something which is based in fact in reality.
You know this problem of solving, the process of solving problems is painful. Life is difficult. And we’re never going to accept this legitimate suffering as long as we have, as it were, sworn allegiance to our hopes, our expectations, and our fears, our neurotic fears. So in this process of reorientation, this process of continually redirecting ourselves, the inner principle, the internal principle of growth. This becomes a central factor in our lives.
And this is represented by the paradigm of Buddha. This is the model of sanity that we take as internal principle of the principle of growth, which we’re dedicating a significant component of our life to. And it becomes important to us. I’m part of a men’s group and we talk a lot about men’s issues and we try to act upon men’s issues. And it becomes very inspiring to see men confronting the issues surrounding men and trying to work with those difficulties as best we can and do it together.
And because we all understand that we have to change. We have to change as individuals but we also have to change as a society of men for the betterment of everyone. And so we all have within this group some understanding amongst ourselves that it’s important that we grow. And this getting together is sort of affirmation. Now here, the paradigm is not Buddha.
But it is a growth. It’s to be a healthy, healthy human being. But that’s a Buddha, isn’t it? And to be a healthy, masculine human being. So that’s like going for refuge to Buddha.
But we don’t use that word. It doesn’t have any of the trappings of Buddhism or religion about it. It’s just people trying to work with one another and trying to use their intelligence in a group effort to promote productive change, healthy change. And we go for refuge to the Dharma, the various methods to bring about this change. And we go for refuge to the spiritual community.
And these are, like in this men’s group, those who assist us in this change. And then it’s a real possibility to solve our problems. That the quality of our life will change or become that much better. We can have faith in that. And if we can raise the level of our motivation such that we’re doing it for others, we’re never more miserable than when we’re completely concerned about our own welfare.
And if we’re in touch with our feelings, we’re never more happy than when we’re concerned about the welfare of others. But that’s a difficult lesson to learn. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly.
From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing, giving, and the other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. We’re going to meditate and we’ll begin with the meditation on mindfulness by breathing. Observing the natural breath of various bodily sensations associated with the breathing process.
If that seems to be going well, then you can focus upon the sensation here at the upper lip or inside the nostril. See if you can use that as your object to focus, the object of your mindfulness. We’re developing two mental factors, that of mindfulness, which is the mental factor which holds objects and the factor of awareness or introspection, that factor which knows if the object is being held or how tightly it’s being held or if it’s been lost, if it’s not being held at all. And it would be a matter of attitude. The attitude that we bring to it is probably even more important than the fact of watching the breath itself.
And I’ve sort of been emphasizing the bringing some sort of sense of dignity, of being, of the fullness of being within the present moment, making a statement of your life at that moment. But also, we have to have a sense of gentleness with ourselves. Many people are very hard on themselves. I guess especially men, but it’s true. It’s just a matter of degree.
It’s also true of women. And so, it’s very much like the training one analogy that I use is that of the training of a puppy. And the approach to mindfulness of breathing is just like a puppy, that the mind is intelligent, but it simply doesn’t know what you want it to do. It doesn’t know what you want of it. The puppy’s not out to give you a hard time, not trying to cause you trouble.
It simply doesn’t know. And it’s intelligent. And you respect that intelligence. And you respect its feelings. So if you’ve ever paper trained a puppy, you can put down some paper and you set the puppy on the paper.
And it doesn’t have the least idea why it’s on the paper. It’s not even aware that it’s on the paper. So naturally enough, runs away. And you very gently, patiently, you bring it back to the paper. And again, it walks off.
And again, you bring it back to the paper. And again, it walks off. And then you bring it back to the paper. In this process, when you get uptight, then the training is not going to go well. The puppy is not going to like the training.
You’re not going to be happy. And you’re going to develop a very difficult relationship. You’re going to quit. On the other hand, if you can simply gently, with great patience, keep bringing the puppy back to the paper, finally the puppy, one time, pees on the paper. And you say, oh, nice puppy.
And the puppy, oh, there’s something good about that. There’s an association that begins to build up which is very pleasant in this training process. So it enjoys being stroked. It enjoys being happy. It enjoys when the training is going well.
So it wants to please you because it will be happy if it pleases you. It begins to learn that, that pleasing is part of being happy. So it’s going to make more and more effort to please you. And the relationship that you build up with the puppy will be one of mutual respect. And it’s going to go well.
So likewise with our mind and placing it upon the breath, is definitely going to walk off, not run away. It simply is not trained at present. And we have to be gentle with ourselves, with the patience, and simply without judgment, without getting uptight, thinking, you know, I can’t do this. Everybody else in the room is blissed out and I’m the only one who’s having a hard time. There’s something wrong with me.
Really, I think there’s something wrong. I’ve always known it, but now I’m for sure. It is simply without this mental flagellation beating yourself, simply bring the puppy back, bring the mind back to the breath. And it goes off. Okay.
Puppy, mind back to the breath. Mind back to the breath. And it begins to learn. And if you’re gentle, it’s going to find it a very pleasing experience. And you’re to develop a comfortable, healthy relationship with your own mind.
Then we’re going to meditate on the second of the parts to the technique of exchanging self with others, a means for developing an awakening heart, the mind of enlightenment or bodhicitta, this mind which seeks to become healthy for the benefit of others, for the sake of others. And this process involves first, we cultivated last week, developing a sense of equanimity or equality, that others are just like myself. They want to be happy, They don’t want to suffer just like myself. And this may sound rather simple minded. But a great deal that Buddhism teaches is quite simple minded.
Somehow, in our emotionalism, we don’t take advantage of our simple minded common sense. Common sense isn’t really very common, in fact. And the fact is that everybody wants to be happy. Nobody wants to suffer. And we have to relearn that.
We to have that to have some impact on our mind. When the penny drops. Ah, that’s right. And we have to drop it many times because we forget until it becomes an integral part of it. Whenever we see a sentient being, we see a feeling being and we intuitively relate with that being as if that being wanted to be happy and didn’t want to suffer, just like myself.
That would be the goal of this first part of this meditation. Then the next step is to begin to see the disadvantages of self centeredness. Self centeredness is the seeking of happiness for oneself alone at the expense and exclusion of others. You’re willing to cause others harm or you’re simply willing to exclude them in order to find your happiness for yourself alone. And this is what we have instinctively that we bring to almost all our activities, this self centered attitude.
And we want to overcome this. But it’s something that we can’t take as dogma, that it’s better to be other centered than self centered. We have to see it within our own experience. The disadvantages of self centeredness. So we’re going to actually examine some of our life experiences and see whether, in fact, what has made us happier?
Self centeredness or other centeredness? So we’re going to begin with self centeredness, taking a look at what results our self centered attitude has brought us. Has it brought us happiness or has it brought us suffering? And we can take advantage of the mind’s innate quality of seeking happiness. When it begins to see that other centeredness is a means of happiness, self centeredness is simply a cause of suffering.
It doesn’t have to force itself to care about others. It’s naturally going to be inclined in that way. That’s our basic sanity, our basic intelligence in operation. So if you take a comfortable posture, one that you feel grounded and feel firm, we’ll begin with mindfulness of breathing and then we’ll cultivate, meditate on the disadvantages of self centeredness. I’m going to look at self centeredness.
Seeking and trying to find happiness just for yourself alone, at the expense or exclusion of another. Think about some difficult relationship that you’re having, some conflict perhaps. Can you trace the deeper cause? Not the superficial cause, but can you trace the deeper cause of that conflict, that difficulty, to your own hidden agenda of wanting happiness just for yourself, even at the expense of the other person for just excluding them. Basically selfishness.
Think perhaps about your loneliness, your sense of isolation, separation. Get in touch with that experience, that feeling, and where is it coming from? It could be coming from your own sense of self centeredness, using other people, manipulating. Think about all the worry and struggle the energy of constantly trying to maintain your territory, trying to keep up the self image in front of others and yourself, trying to maintain your status. Maintain your credentials.
Constantly having to be on guard, watching out, taking care of your own, getting your This constant theme of my needs, my wants, I, I, I, I, I, I. Everything is always directed towards yourself, evaluated in terms of what it can do for you, how it affects you. It’s like a big black hole. It sucks everything into it. There’s no room for love, for caring, for going outside of your own needs.
There’s just I in the world. I versus the world. The lonely business is self centered. So we’re talking about the two truths, conventional truth. So as I mentioned last week, in connection with this discussion of these two truths, the Buddhist teachings of the Dharma relies on two realities the social, superficial reality and the reality of ultimate import.
There are such persons as Buddhists. They do not teach only one reality or one unreality. They teach two realities: a relative one that is superficial, lying on the surface, and a social, conventionally structured by culture, which shapes consciousness through language, and an ultimate absolute that is profound, transcendent, yet real, knowable, and hence of supreme import being ultimately liberative and transformative. So the Buddha taught in terms of these two truths, the relative, conventional truth, and the ultimate truth. The superficial, social reality, the type of reality which lies upon the surface, which is structured by our language, by our culture, all these various conditioning factors.
And he called this convention the truth. It’s simply a convention, agreement of the world that exists in relationship to language and our culture and all our various conditioning, our peers, what we can see, and so on. All these various things about it, this agreed upon reality that we plug into. And there is an unconditioned truth, a deeper reality, which is not conditioned by language, which is not conditioned by our culture, our various agreements. And we call this ultimate reality.
And talking about the role of language in structuring our world, Ignoring the role of language in bringing forth our lived world has serious practical consequences at the level of so called therapy. Almost all modern therapeutic systems ignore the fundamental role of language in creating the imaginary nature of false conception. Most therapies are in fact means of helping the patient to create a new inner dialogue and therefore a new imaginary nature rather than see through inner dialogue altogether. Thus the imaginary nature and the ego corresponding to it, it’s patched up and made to feel more harmonious. But the fundamental problem, the problem of language based false conceptions, is not met.
In other words, the teaching on conventional truth, as we talked about last week, help us to become well adjusted individuals. To learn about all the varieties and classifications of snakes and how to live with our fear of snakes. We can become very expert at it. It’s like becoming an expert on stress management. But in the end, life is stressed.
Life is difficult. That is to say, a life based upon an ego-orientated existence. The basic quality of ego itself is content, the stress that cannot be avoided. We can learn how to become stress management experts. We can learn how to deal with snakes very well, how to deal with our fear at best, therapy and through the conventional truth, that level of reality.
But we can never go beyond our fears, we can never go beyond all stress, we can never go beyond all conflict. That is because we cannot transcend our own ego within the conventional truth. And the teaching on ultimate truth helps us to become liberated individuals, not just well adjusted individuals, but liberated individuals, helps us to see the illusory quality of the snake and thus to transcend our fear. As long as we believe the snake to be real, the best we can do is stress management. The best we can do is fear management.
But the moment we see that the snake is an illusion, is like something rising in a dream, then there’s no problem. There’s no fear whatsoever. There’s nothing to be managed. And Okay, we’re talking about the two truths, conventional truth and ultimate truth. And what are these two truths?
As was mentioned last week, the two truths are objects. They are objects of knowledge. They are not concepts about beauty, aesthetics, truth, beauty. They are two categories of objects, two levels of reality. And the Buddha taught in terms of these two categories, all of his teachings were taught in terms of these two levels of reality.
So beginning with ultimate truth. An ultimate truth is an object. It is an object. It is a specific type of object. It is an object which is found by a reasoning consciousness analyzing for the ultimate.
So there is a reasoning consciousness. It’s trying to understand something. It’s analyzing. What is it trying to understand? It’s trying to understand the final, deepest, ultimate nature of its object.
That’s what it’s trying to understand. What it finds when it comes to an understanding of that ultimate, deepest, final nature of that object is the object’s ultimate truth. That’s the object that it finds. It’s not analyzing whether the object exists or not. It’s not analyzing whether this table exists or not.
We don’t need to analyze to do that. That’s on the superficial level. We’re not trying to find out whether the table exists or not. That’s apparent. It’s apparent to an eye consciousness.
We don’t need to analyze. We don’t need to delve very deeply at all to understand that table exists. But how does it exist? And we’re going to go into this at length when we come to the chapter on training in special wisdom. But here we’re just going to go briefly because we have to understand emptiness because emptiness is the ultimate truth.
The table exists on many levels. We can try to understand the way the table exists on many levels. It exists as a solid. It exists as wood. It exists as color and shape.
It exists as coarse and permanent. That is to say someday it’s going to rot or it’s going to fall apart for one reason or another. Somebody’s going to stand on it. It exists on the level of subtle impermanence. That is to say, it’s composed of atoms which are arising, abiding, and ceasing, constantly in movement, constantly changing on a subtle microscopic level.
These are all more and more subtle ways of viewing that table, the way it exists. The deepest way it exists is that it is empty of true existence. This is its ultimate truth. There is a consciousness which is analyzing. Analyzing, what color is this?
It’s red. That’s an analysis. It’s not a very deep analysis, but it is a reasoning conscious analyzing. It’s discriminating, distinguishing. What color is the table?
It’s red. What is it made of? Is it made of wood? Is it hard or soft? It’s hard.
We’re analyzing. But here the analysis is what’s the deepest way the table exists. And the importance of this, the significance of this, will become apparent. When it analyzes, when its reasoning consciousness analyzes for the final, deepest way the table exists, what it finds. Just as when my reasoning consciousness says, what color is the table?
What it finds is red, red color. When this deepest analyzing consciousness analyzes, investigates the way the table exists, it finds something, it finds an object, it finds emptiness. That is ultimate truth. So in Sanskrit, the word for ultimate truth is paramartha satya. In Tibetan, it’s don dam bden pa, if you’re a Tibetan freak.
So there’s three words, parama, artha, satya. And this can be helpful to understand what they’re getting at, using the etymology of the word. Parama means highest, supreme. Artha means object. Satya means true.
The supreme object which is true, is ultimate truth. So an ultimate truth is an object ultimate truth is an object because it’s an object of wisdom. It’s an object of this reasoning consciousness which is investigating. It becomes that consciousness object. So therefore, an ultimate truth is an object.
It is ultimate because it is said to be the supreme object, the highest object. It is also the object which is found upon ultimate analysis. When we go as far as we can go and we can go no farther, that is ultimate analysis. And that’s the object which is found. Therefore, it is an ultimate object.
And it is truth because the way it appears and the way it exists are in agreement. The way it appears and the way it exists are in agreement. For example, when we look into a mirror, there appears in the mirror to be a real face. There appears to be a real face. But we very seldom would conceive of that to be a real face.
We say, oh, that’s not a real face. Though what appears to be a real face is not actually a real face. So the reflection in the mirror is said to be false. Why? Because it appears one way and it doesn’t exist that way.
The way it appears and the way it exists are not in agreement, they’re not in accord. Therefore it’s said to be false.