Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a striking image — the house slave who has eaten well enough at his master’s table that he forgets he is not free — to illustrate how even comfortable lives can lose sight of their own subtle dissatisfaction. He works through the eight worldly preoccupations (pleasure and pain, gain and loss, fame and obscurity, praise and blame) as the habitual grooves that keep that unfreedom in place, then argues that deliberately widening attention to others’ suffering paradoxically lightens one’s own burden and activates inner resources. The second half is a guided analytical meditation on selflessness: practitioners generate a vivid emotional sense of the “I” — using memory of fear, humiliation, or elation — then scan the entire body and mind element by element, consciousness by consciousness, looking for anything that matches that solid, singular, independent self, and finding nothing that does. Suited to practitioners ready to begin the four-point analysis of emptiness.
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File: 11 OtE 1992 03 04.mp3
UUID: af26204b-77b6-478a-88ef-1180d9a434ab
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Opening the Eye of New Awareness 1991-1992 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-03-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.7 minutes
Words: ~3,676
We begin by adjusting our motivation. Can you hear me okay? Can you hear me okay? Had a busy day, out of practical necessity we had to externalize ourselves, we had to deal with situations as skillfully and as effectively as possible. And in this process, this externalizing process, we oftentimes get out of touch with what’s going on within ourselves, inside of ourselves.
We oftentimes act on the basis of premises and beliefs and ideas which aren’t perhaps those which we would like to lead our lives dependent upon. The way we think and behave is often not a reflection of our real wisdom, sanity, reflections of how caring and loving people we actually are. Bringing back to some of our more basic values, some of our own principles that we’ve developed through our maturity and the blossoming of our wisdom and the development of our love. Just getting back to some of our basic sanity and using that as a basis dependent upon which we deal with ourselves and the people around us in the various situations that we have confronted. This continual returning to our more basic, our more fundamental beliefs, those beliefs which we have derived in our finest moments, in our more noble moments, in our moments of great clarity and mental health.
This process of reorientation, of redirection, reprioritizing what’s important to me as a very unique individual, aside from all the various hopes and fears that I get caught up in during the course of my everyday life. The hopes of pleasure and the fears of pain, hopes of gain, the fears of loss, fame and obscurity. Praise and criticism or blame, the eight worldly preoccupations of our usual way of existing, our usual habitual mode of acting and thinking. And what is important to me? Getting back to perhaps some of the qualities of the unsatisfactoriness of our life.
Someone the other night said, we were talking about suffering in the introduction to Buddhism class, and someone said that I’m not suffering. And that’s nice to hear. I thought about it today, I was thinking it reminded me of the slave in the master’s house, who eats the crumbs off the master’s table. For example, in southern United States, well, not too long ago, say one hundred and twenty five, one hundred and thirty years ago. And looking at the ones who have to work in the field and the ones who have to slave away, as it were, they feel like it’s okay.
That is to say, they can even lose sight that they’re still slaves, that they aren’t free. And so, you know, it seems to be okay not to be free. One forgets that even in the best of situations one is not free, and that in itself is dissatisfactory. So to keep reminding ourselves until we are free, free of these compulsive patterns running our lives, Until we are free to make each moment of our lives a creative spontaneous reflection of our love and wisdom, we aren’t free. Until then, the quality of our existence is in some way greater or lesser dissatisfactory.
And so this perhaps constantly reminding ourselves and redirecting ourselves that though the sun might be shining, and it’s nice to see that it’s shining at present, and that there are going to be times when things are going to be difficult again. And so through the course of our lesser or greater degrees of dissatisfaction, in keeping an eye on the necessity, keeping in mind the requirement that we consistently make a choice to grow. And this choice to grow is to make the Buddha within ourselves the central focus of our inner life. And we achieve, we actualize the Buddha within ourselves by means of the Dharma. And this is done within the spiritual context, spiritual community, and the environment, the atmosphere, which nurtures the seed of our own Buddhahood, our own Buddha lineage, our Buddha nature.
The Buddha nature is the main cause of our sanity, of potential to be happy, loving, healthy, sane human beings. The Dharma and the spiritual community are cooperative conditions, cooperative causes. Just like the seed and adding water and fertilizing sunlight and a flower grows. And likewise, this potential that we all have within us, that whoever we might be of solving our problems and developing, actualizing our noblest dreams. The seed is with noblest and requires the conditions of the Dharma, the practices, the techniques, the teachings, the truth.
And additionally, need others in this pursuit that mental health is a social phenomena. And we try to raise the level of our motivation such that what I’m doing, I’m doing for the sake of others and myself. This is the force which will help us to overcome our inertia, overcome our fear, overcome our stagnation, the force of love as real power in our life. So we have to understand how each of us are suffering and confront that issue. And then if we are able to understand that in very intimate way, then it becomes we have to understand that others, that we aren’t unique, that we may have peculiar circumstances, we may have our own idiosyncrasies, but the fact of our suffering is universal.
The deeper, the more subtle types of suffering are experienced by everyone, everyone in this room and everyone that you’ll meet during the course of the day. The outward manifestations and the outward appearances and superficial aspects may be quite dissimilar, but you can be sure that they all share in the basic dissatisfactions of ordinary existence, that we aren’t somehow unusual, that our particular subtle types of suffering are peculiar to ourselves. That’s just not the case, they’re universal. And this is understanding how we have to grow, how we have to, otherwise we’re going to continue to experience dissatisfaction and the great fears and the great terrors which lie within our own minds that we experience from time to time. Likewise everyone else is in the same position.
And perhaps even on the grosser types of suffering, even in worse positions than ourselves, that we are fortunate materially, and we still suffer and others suffer. That’s the nature of our situation. So if I can develop myself, if I can know how to cure my own suffering, then I can know how to help others to cure their suffering. And by knowing how to work with our own problems and dealing with them, beginning to be able to solve them, and practically we’re going to be able to help others to do the same. Until that time, perhaps we have a great sincerity to help others, but our ability to help in a practical fashion is very limited at best.
We may actually create more chaos, though we have the best of intentions. So it’s imperative that we develop ourselves, and it’s imperative that in the course of our development that we also keep in mind that others are just like ourselves, going through the same difficulties and same problems, but perhaps not as fortunate as ourselves. Perhaps not as endowed, as free. Having this leisure, this freedom, and the opportunity to develop oneself, and having the teachers and the teachings to foster that development and the spiritual community as conditions for our growth. Not everyone has these, we’re very special.
And so with that special, becomes a responsibility, And the compassion in the universal sense, the universal vehicle, is a matter of responsibility. And responsibility entails, in order to take responsibility, it entails the ability to respond. We cannot take responsibility until we’re able to respond. So if we’re going to have real compassion, we have to be able to respond to others. Developing the ability to respond is the best way that we can help ourselves.
Therefore taking responsibility for others is the best way that we can help ourselves. And the moment that we go beyond our own claustrophobic, our own myopic vision of my problems, my difficulties, and we begin to open ourselves up to the difficulties around us, That very instant we’re able to put our difficulties and our problems in some sort of perspective. And at that very instant there’s sort of a burden lifting off of our shoulders. When we gain some sort of when we put our problems in a range of other people’s and the problems of the world in general. And though we have to confront our problems, they don’t seem so overwhelming.
We can get some kind of handle on them. We can see that others are in a much more difficult situation than ourselves. And do I have to confront my problems? Do I have to deal with them in a realistic way? Still I shouldn’t let them overwhelm me.
I shouldn’t let them throw me off balance. Because look at these other people trying to work with their problem, how they’re dealing with their situation. Now when we get this myopic vision, we get completely wrapped up like a cloud, completely indulged by a cloud and there’s no hope of any wisdom of our sanity, light shining through. But the moment we become aware of others difficulties, then there’s a possibility for a solution because we’re getting in touch with our resources for solving our problems. We might not be aware of it, we might not be conscious, we might not be able to articulate it, But there’s a part, a, you know, all of who we are is not on a conscious level.
And availing ourselves of this tremendous amount of information and experience that we have, all of this becomes available to us. The more expanded our vision, the greater our horizon. And then, you even very practically speaking, that very moment we become aware of other people’s difficulties, at that very instant our own become that much less. And we draw upon resources to be able to solve those problems. And how in developing the ability to respond to others, we solve our own problem as a byproduct indirectly.
I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. From the virtuous merit that I conduct by practising 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. And 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.
And the virtuous merit that I collect by practising giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. Meditation. I thought we’d first want to mindfulness of breathing, but then we can meditate on what we’re discussing. We’re going to do a meditation on the nature of the self. So we’re going to perform an analysis.
And as is going to be explained tonight, in performing an analysis we have to know what we’re looking for. That is the object of negation. Ascertaining the object of negation is the first point of the four point analysis or the four ascertainments, which we’re going to begin to go through. So in meditating on selflessness we can do this both intellectually and we can do it both experientially performing the analysis. But either way, we want to know what we’re looking for.
So what we’re going to do is generate the object negation. We’re going to generate The Buddha discovered that there is always a strong attachment to the self associated with suffering. So he turned his attention to the nature of that self in order to come to an understanding of the nature of suffering. Now, in any emotional situation there arises a particular model of an I, a self, of who I believe myself to be. And it is based upon this model that all the various afflicted emotions arise, anger, hatred, pride, jealousy.
All of the eighty four thousand afflicted emotions arise on the basis of a misconceived model of the nature of the self. Misconceived nature. And so we have a belief about the nature of the self. Based upon this, generate the various afflictive emotions. Buddhism is very optimistic in the sense that we don’t have to remove all the eighty four thousand afflictive emotions one by one.
What we can do is remove the linchpin, that which holds all these eighty four thousand afflictive emotions in place, that which is the very root, that which is about very foundation, pulling the carpet out from underneath them all, and they all fall down like a pack of cards. They’re all supported by the basic factor of the misconception as to the nature of the self, misknowledge, ignorance. So if we’re able to remove that ignorance, that misknowledge, then we remove all the various products which arise from that as a cause. These products being the afflictive emotions and down the line suffering. But we have to, in order to refute that model, we have to know what it looks like.
So we have to, in our meditation, generate a sense of this I. So we begin with an analysis with a very calm mind. So for example, we can do mindfulness breathing to calm the mind. And slowly we begin to generate a sense of the eye using our thoughts, using our feelings, using our memory, our imagination, whatever it takes, using our emotions, developing a subtle emotion within yourself, within your mind. Then, for example, you can use your memory.
Someone called you, hey, stupid, or you’re ugly, or the time when you were just about to have a car accident, the time when you were afraid. It could be a positive experience, the time you won the Nobel Prize, the time when you were the beauty queen, the time whatever. Some very vivid emotional experience. Use your memory or just make one up, like you pretend like you’re jumping out of an airplane, imagine that. There will arise an I, a sense of who you believe yourself to be in the context of strong emotions.
So then we’re going to use part of our mind to observe another part of our mind. There’s a part of our mind which is holding on to this sense of I, and we want to observe how this I appear. How does the I appear to be solid and concrete, existing objectively, permanently? So what color is it, what shape is this eye that’s afraid, just about to have an accident, or that’s so angry, or that’s so full of pride at having won a beauty contest. So generating a sense of an I, emotional experience, working with yourself.
So part of our mind is going to observe. It’s going to be like a spy. Part of the mind is observing the other part of the mind like a spy. Now if the sense of I does not arise, they calm the mind and begin again in a relaxed manner. Generate a sense of I, I’m happy, I’m tired, I’m worried, I’m sick.
And quietly observe. Try to get a sense of what that I feels like. We’re going to Once we’ve observed that I, we’re going to look for it. We’re going to try to find it. We’re going to There will arise a sense of I.
We want to get a sense of what it feels like, what it looks like, how does it appear to me. A part of your mind is going to be observing acting as a spy during this emotional experience. Then we’re going to perform an analysis, we’re going to look for that I. And as it’s going to become, we’re going to explain later, the place that we look is where that it’s seen. It’s seen somewhere around the body and the mind.
So we’re going to perform an analysis of the body and mind, looking very closely, analyzing in great detail if we can find it. So we’ll begin with mindfulness of breathing and then we’ll go on to generate a sense of the eye. Try to get a feeling for this model, this image of an eye that you possess, which you believe in to exist, in fact. And then we’re going to analyze, we’re going to look for it. So take a firm comfortable posture and begin with mindfulness of breathing.
Reducing your imagination, memory, feelings, try to generate a sense of I. Imagine a situation, maybe the strong sense of I. And at the corner of your mind, try to observe how that I appears. Okay, let’s try to analyze. We’re going to observe.
Search for the eye. We’re going to begin with the body. We’re going to begin with the earth element, all the dense, solid parts of the body, the various organs, the bones, the muscles. So begin at the very top of your head with the hair, working your way down through all the hard parts, the tissues, the muscles, the bones, the teeth, the nails. Looking at each of them one by one, is that the I which appeared so solid and concrete?
Now look at the water element, all the fluids in the body, the blood, urine, lymph, saliva, Begin at the top of your head and working down through your body, looking at all the fluids, the watery substances. Are they the I, the self? And we look at the fire element, the warmth of the body, the heat of the body, the heat of the body itself. Look at the wind energy on it, the flow of the breath, the respiration, the energy moving out and through the body. Are they the I, the self, the various energies and the winds in the body?
And then the space element, the cavities, the hollow parts of the body, the various spaces within the body. Working through the body, are those spaces, those empty parts, are they the I, the self? We’re going to look at the consciousness element, beginning with the sense consciousness. Is the eye consciousness by which we see shapes and colors? Is that the eye itself which appears so solid and concrete in an emotional situation?
The eye consciousness, is that the eye? Ear consciousness, that which hears sound. Nose consciousness, that which smells odors. Tongue consciousness, that which tastes flavors. Body consciousness at which experiences the touch of tangible objects.
And we’ll look at the mental consciousness, beginning with feeling. Pleasurable feelings, unpleasurable feelings, neutral feelings. Are any of them the I, the self? Your feelings. And perceptions that which discriminates.
This is big. This is good. This is the table. This is that. Is that the I, the self, that discriminating quality of the mind?
Mental constructions, all the various emotions, love and compassion, anger, pride, jealousy, are they the I which appears so solid and concrete? The emotions, various thought patterns. And the pictures, the mental images which arise in our mind. Is that the I, the self, the picture, the images? And the mental consciousness, that which is aware, that which knows mental images, that which knows thoughts, Is that observer of these images, is that the I which appeared so concretely and solidly?
The knower, mental consciousness. Is there anywhere else to look in the mind and body? So try to generate a sense that what you thought was there you couldn’t find. You believed it was there, but when you looked you realized it wasn’t. So a sense of not being able to find, a sense of loss.
You thought it was there, but you were mistaken. You couldn’t find it. It’s not there. It’s not there. So did anyone find there’s a there’s a reward being given.
The premise that this type of meditation operates on is that there is nothing within the whole stream of mental and physical phenomena that constitute our experience of the body and mind, which has the quality of, in this case for example, an unchanging, singular, independent self. Everything that we’re able to find within the body and mind that constitutes our experience of body and mind. If we were to look and look for days upon days upon days upon days, all the various experiences that we go through. If we were to be able to maintain our awareness and constantly be analyzing and looking, we would never be able to find anything which was equivalent, which corresponds to our model of who we conceive ourselves to be in these emotional situations. In a coarse, unchanging, singular, independent self.
We have that model, but it doesn’t correspond to anything in reality. It doesn’t correspond to anything that we can actually experience in fact. It doesn’t have any correspondence. We have a model, we have a belief, a network of beliefs which form this model. But they have no correspondence.
They have no reference in fact. And it is our persistent effort to treat our body and mind or within our body and mind that there is such an element, that there is something which corresponds to my beliefs that makes the body and mind a constant stream of suffering. So it’s necessary to look. And the way we carry out this looking, this searching, is by means of what is called the four essential ascertainments. This is the way we can carry on our meditation, through these four steps.
And in this way we will be quite accurate in our approach and there is no danger. And the conclusions that we come to will have some force and possibly be able to alter our beliefs.