Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Drawing on M. Scott Peck, Carl Jung, and Einstein as much as on Buddhist teaching, Ven Jampa Gendun uses this 33-minute session to reframe the eight worldly preoccupations — pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and criticism, fame and notoriety — as a psychology of avoidance. He argues that ego-based existence keeps practitioners cycling between neurotic hope and fear, and that genuine growth begins only when existential fear of compounded suffering finally outweighs the fear of confronting problems directly. He then widens the frame: recognizing that suffering is universal rather than personal, and expanding one’s circle of compassion, is itself part of the solution. The session closes with guided instruction in breath-noting and choiceless awareness meditation. Well-suited to practitioners who appreciate a psychologically fluent approach to Dharma.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 OtE 1991 12 04.mp3
UUID: eaec07d8-58bf-44dc-b64f-593eaaf92dd9
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Opening the Eye of New Awareness 1991-1992 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-12-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 33.1 minutes
Words: ~3,835
Adjusting our motivation, this continual process of what I call realigning our allegiance away from our usual values which are based upon hopes and fears to those which are based upon growth. A way of life which is a style, thinking, acting, behaving, is moving away from ego-orientated existence to one which is based on growth orientated existence. I talked about hopes and fears. It’s as if we’re tossed between the two waves of hopes and fears and finding expression in what is called the eight worldly preoccupations of ego. Our hopes of pleasure, our fears of pain, our hopes of gain, our fears of loss, hopes of praise, fears of criticism, our hopes of fame, fears of notoriety.
And a way of life which is based upon these is simply a life based upon hopes and fears. It’s not possible to see things in the light of one’s own wisdom and to respond out of one’s own wisdom, one’s basic sanity. There’s a quotation from Scott Peck, an American psychiatrist, talking about fears. Fearing the pain involved, almost all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, attempt to avoid problems. We procrastinate hoping that they will go away.
Hope and fear. Hoping that our problems will go away by themselves, fearing to have to act upon them. We ignore them, forget them, pretend they do not exist. We even take drugs to assist us in ignoring them so that by getting ourselves to the pain, we can forget the problems that cause the pain. We attempt to skirt around the problems rather than meet them head on.
We attempt to get out of them rather than suffer through them. This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness. A life based upon values which are expressed in terms of hopes and fears is characterized by mental illness. Since most of us have this tendency to a greater or lesser degree, most of us are mentally ill to a greater or lesser degree, lacking complete mental health. Some of us will go to quite extraordinary lengths to avoid our problems and the suffering they cause, proceeding far afield from all that is clearly good and sensible in order to try to avoid, in order to try to find any easy way out.
Building the most elaborate fantasies in which to live, sometimes to the total exclusion of reality. In the succinctly elegant words of Carl Jung, neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering. But the substitute itself ultimately becomes more painful than the legitimate suffering it was designed to avoid. The neurosis itself becomes the bigger problem. True to form, many will then attempt to avoid the pain and this problem in turn building layer upon layer of neurosis.
Fortunately however, some possess the courage to face the neurosis and begin usually with the help of psychotherapy to learn how to experience legitimate suffering. In any case, when we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we avoid the growth of problems demand from us. It is for this reason that in chronic mental illness we stop growing, we become stuck. So as long as our neurotic fears are greater than our existential fears, we’re going to remain stuck. We’re simply going to keep cycling in terms of hopes and fears.
We have this hope that things will get better. This hope has a sense about it over and above having to do anything, over and above having to that things follow a certain process of cause and effect, that things will get better, that things will change for the better without our having to take any initiative, go through any difficulties, try to solve the problem, confront the difficulties, that somehow we hope things will go better, things will get better, and things never get better, the pain never goes away. And we have a fear of confronting the issues, confronting the problems. But as Scott Peck points out, the consequences of avoiding legitimate suffering are that we experience far greater pain in the end. So when our existential fear, that is the fear which is based upon the reality of our situation, That unless we solve our problems, our problems are going to be compounded.
Unless we confront our difficulties, our difficulties are going to become compounded, extending far beyond what they are now. And it’s difficult, isn’t it? Many of our most difficult areas are in human relations, dealing with others. And I know from my own experience it’s not easy to confront conflict, difficulty, issues. But if we look at what how the consequences of not dealing with them in our own experience we can begin to see that it doesn’t make sense in the light of our own understanding and experience.
But we don’t use our common sense, we don’t respond to our wisdom, we base our behavior on the basis of neurotic fear at any cost to avoid difficulty, to avoid problems. Hope that things are going to get better. Or hope for pleasure or fear of pain, that things aren’t going to get better. This is the growth orientated existence that I was talking about as opposed to ego-orientated existence. ego-orientated existence is that which reinforces these usual desires of basing all our decisions, our behavior, thinking in terms of hope and fear.
Avoid, that is to say avoiding fear and the hope that things will get better at by themselves without having to go through the difficult process of solving the problem, of working with the situation in some way. And nothing changes, we’re stuck. So I think what I would mean by growth orientated existence is acknowledging this plain fact in our lives. Most of our behavior, especially in our dealings with other people, is based upon hopes and fears, neurotic hopes and fears. And in light of our own experience and understanding, developing an existential fear that if I don’t confront this issue, it’s going to get worse, it’s going to be compounded.
And out of that existential fear and anxiety which is based in the reality of our situation, then taking a course of growth, confronting issues, trying to work through the problem, which is difficult. It requires some kind of courage. It requires that we exercise our wisdom. But it is just this which makes us wise, the exercising of our wisdom. Like begets like.
The more we use our intelligence, the more we use our courage, the more courageous we are, the more wise we are. It’s not an entity which is somehow inherently existent that doesn’t need in itself to be developed, it needs to be exercised. And this is the occasion that we can apply it. I don’t know, I know in my own experience, in my own life. It’s really I have faith in growth, that over and above all the trappings, the material trappings of a good life, I know if I grow that things will be well, that will go well for me.
I don’t know what how they will quite end up, don’t know what material possessions I may have in the future, where I may be living, what type of home, who I might be with. But I have this confidence, this conviction that if I use my wisdom and my innate sanity and I keep trying to overcome my fear, my neurotic fear of not dealing with situations, not confronting my problems, not relying upon the hope that things are going to get better without my having to work with the situation. But if I actually actively go beyond my present limits, various patterns which constitute much of my behavior and my thinking. That if I keep going beyond this then I’m going to become healthy and in this health things will go well. The particularities, how it’s going to be expressed in my future life, in the course of my life.
I can’t say, it’s quite uncertain, but I sort of have this confidence that it’s going to go well. And so I have to keep reminding myself that the most important element in my, in the quality of my life is that I keep growing over and above all of the other components which prove to make up a good life in terms of home, material possessions, family, relationships, position, job, location, hobbies, interests, creative activities, entertainment, all which are quite useful and necessary and not to be shunned in any way. So I guess what is it? It’s having faith in the possibility of goodness, the possibility of my own sanity and finding and the possibility of my own divinity and the gold that’s within me, finding some way to begin to express itself more and more in all of my various activities, my way of thinking, in my life, To become an authentic human being who is able to respond to others, to the needs of others, and is willing to express one’s needs and have others fulfill those. So this continual reorientation process which I have to keep bringing my mind to because the tendency is to maintain the status quo, to become stuck in these reoccurring compulsive patterns again and again.
We’ve all had the experience but we missed the lesson. Unless we use our experience to help us to energize us, to help us to get unstuck. And the way we get unstuck is to move beyond our patterns, to move beyond our fears and hopes. To grow, and to grow essentially in terms of outward and inner horizons, broadening our sphere of relationship, deepening them and internally in a sense of getting to know oneself more and more in a more profound and deeper way, understanding how one’s own mind works and being able to develop the ability to direct it, To try to experience that quality of life which is an expression out of one’s own inner peace and fulfilling relationships with others. And this becomes a prime value over and above the values, our normal values of fear and hope.
We value growth. And in little ways keep reminding ourselves to confront our difficulties and our problems and things will go well. We will develop the skills even if perhaps we aren’t so skillful at the present time in dealing with them. It’s a learning situation. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom.
They create our courage and our wisdom. It’s only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. The moment the mind experiences pleasure, it becomes superficial. It’s only a deep awareness of suffering, of dissatisfactoriness that the mind becomes profound, begins to be moved. All great art, probably, I don’t know, but I think all great literature is probably born out of a profound awareness of suffering.
It’s not a morbid attitude, but it’s all that even from the amoeba upward, evolutionary trend has been in terms of irritation, of distress. It is a response to an imbalance in situation which requires a response, requires a new adaptation. And this adaptation is on a higher level, either on the physical plane or in the physical or the plane of being. Now when we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit we challenge and we encourage the human capacity to solve problems. And just as in a school, a teacher deliberately sets problems for the students to solve.
So it’s through this pain of confronting. The end is not the pain. Buddhism is not concerned with the pain itself or as an end in itself. But the awareness of pain as a stepping stone to go beyond it, to confront it rather than as we usually do, seek to avoid it. You know, it’s through the pain of confronting and solving, resolving problems that we learn.
Benjamin Franklin said, Those things that hurt instruct and we would rather probably avoid the lesson. But if the lesson comes along we should at least be aware of it and try to learn from Life is quite difficult. It’s difficult for me and it’s difficult for you. I know this. I am learning it more and more.
It’s something that we haven’t you know, we are raised many of us have been raised on television and we see all these people drinking Coca Cola on the beach and running. And it seems that perhaps we’re the only ones who are suffering, there’s something wrong with me in particular. So it takes a while to begin to realize that others are very much in the same situation that we are. Basically, there’s no difference. Have your different particularities of how your dissatisfaction, frustrations and disappointments are finding expression in your life.
But these have been around for thousands and thousands of years, they just changed the outward manifestations. Basically the difficulties of sentient life have been very much the same. All the various classifications that Buddhism makes of suffering have been around and will remain around until ego based existence is completely eliminated. And we’re all, I would think, I don’t know, caught up in an egocentric existence and all of these ways of life based upon hopes and fears. Most do not fully see the truth that life is difficult And I’m not accepting this.
Shouldn’t be surprised by difficulties. It shouldn’t take us unaware as it was. Quotation, instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly about the enormity of their problems, burdens and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voiced their belief noisily or subtly that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be And that has somehow been especially visited upon them or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race, or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.
As I mentioned before, we base our lives on many assumptions and beliefs and many views. And amongst these is that somehow life shouldn’t be like that. It shouldn’t be this difficult, but it is. And somehow we have to it has to dawn on this that life is difficult. That is to say, not this thing about life, but the way we are living our lives.
The basis upon which we are approaching this thing called life. This experience that we’re and I think it was Robert Ben Johnson maybe, it doesn’t matter, said that life was learning to play the violin while you’re giving a performance. You know, we don’t have time to we can’t say, oh, let’s start over. I wanna get right this time. You know, we’re thrown up on the stage, not by our choice, and we have to learn.
And some don’t play very well. They make a lot of bad notes and they keep making the same mistakes. Some learn from the bad notes and they learn how to avoid those difficulties again by confronting them. But anyway, the situation is such that we’re all there’s a commonality of difficulties amongst So the point is that in our growth, somewhere along the line, have to become aware to go beyond our own egocentric demanding and become aware that others are in the same situation, that they share our same difficulties, same problems, and and and grow outwardly in our relationships with others. And somehow it seems as if this in itself is part of our solution to our difficulties, part of the solution to our self centeredness, which is the basis to most of our difficulties.
But it’s also a way we can learn. Somehow we can learn from others if we acknowledge that we’re all very much alike and if we share in what we know and what we each of us have learned. You know, the there was a a man about two thousand five hundred years ago and he had an experience. He called it enlightenment, whatever it was. And it sort of revolutionized his way of looking at the world, relating to it, and how he experienced it.
And other people, they noticed something special about this individual. And they said, what happened here? And he would just explain try to communicate as best he could, interpret it and try to communicate it. He was sharing his experience of of how it came about and what it was like. And we all have had some experiences, we all have some wisdom knowing things directly as they actually are.
Each in our individual unique idiosyncratic way. We all have some love and compassion. We all have some spontaneous energy, creative activities. And somehow we have to share this with all of the all of that what we have, all of that what we’ve learned with each other. This in itself is helping us to solve our problems, this process of sharing, this creation of, you know, as I’ve mentioned before, and I’ve mentioned everything I’ve said before many times I’m sure, that mental health is a social phenomenon, that it occurs, that arises in relationship.
And creating these types of relationships is the way we help solve our own problems and help others to solve theirs. A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe. A part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion and embracing all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. This is by Albert Einstein. The necessity to begin to see ourselves as something greater than this individual being. I think it’s almost like a cancer, our isolation, our exaggerated individualism, that we can’t see ourselves as part of this great sentient being of life. So in readjusting our motivation and reorientating our direction, we make the inner focus, the inner principle of our life Buddha.
This awakening awakening to our own potential, awakening to our own experience, our own basic sanity, but also awakening becoming aware of our own difficulties and the nature of our difficulties, but trying to go beyond that to understand that others are in the same situation as ourselves and sharing in their difficulties and learning from their difficulties and helping them to learn from our wisdom, our insights. And we raise the level of our consciousness through the dharma, which is the means, the technique, the way we can skillfully solve our problems. It’s like a tool and we can take recourse to. And then within the social context of the spiritual community, we will be coming together and sharing some degree of humility both our sufferings but also our insights. Thereby learning from one another and being comforted by one another.
And we raise the level of our motivation such that what we’re doing, our growth, is simply not for myself, but it’s for this great sentient being of life, which I am an integral part of. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. From the virtuous merits that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a 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 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. Begin with mindfulness of breathing and if it’s helpful using the techniques of noting and or counting and trying to begin with taking a firm, purposeful but comfortable posture. And in the process of your noting, if you find it helpful, you can become a little more detailed in your noting with respect to the breath. Generally we simply note in and out, but you can also begin to note the end of the in breath, the beginning of the in breath, the end of the in breath, the beginning of the out breath, and the end of the out breath.
So beginning, end, beginning, end. So it’s something a little more you have to watch for, you to be a little more aware of. Trying to watch and you can note it. You can use the abbreviated notation of ‘B’ end. ‘B’ end, ‘B’ end, Knowing when the breath begins to be inhaled, knowing when it’s stopped being inhaled, knowing when it’s beginning to be exhaled, noting, knowing when it’s being stopped, exhale.
And then we’ll practice, as we’ve been doing, choiceless awareness, where you don’t direct the mind, you just allow the mind to become any object that it naturally tends to, whatever it might be. But maintain your awareness and you do this. What will be helpful in doing this is the technique of noting, simply noting whatever the mind is involved in. If it’s an internal object like thinking, thinking, feeling, pain, pain, thinking, sensing, hearing, the external object, seeing, hearing, seeing, sensing, hearing, thinking, feeling, hearing, pain, pain. Just allowing the mind to become involved in whatever object it tends toward, but moment by moment you maintain your awareness.
And then we’ll focus on the mind itself, these various pictures that appear in the mind and the various thoughts which cross through the mind. And we’ll note those in seeing or thinking, thinking, thinking. So if you take a comfortable position, it will be good. So there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do for the next few minutes. If you have some worries or any lists or things that need to be thought about, they’ll still be there when you’re finished.
You can take them up then. This is just for yourself, just creating the time and space to get to know yourself, to rest your mind and body. So begin with the body, noting, becoming aware of any tensions, tightnesses, knots, especially around the neck, shoulders. Carry great burden on those shoulders. And consciously bring your awareness to those areas and relax them, soften the muscles.
Almost the physical sensation of the tension moving down and out of your body. Your body becoming soft and comfortable. It feels good and relaxed.