Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “A hammer only sees nails” — Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 46-minute talk by borrowing Maslow’s quip to make a practical case that mind-training is as necessary as food or sleep. Third in the “Our Ego Empire” series, the session turns to the wheel of life’s inner hub: a cock, snake, and pig symbolizing attachment, aversion, and ignorance. Gendun unpacks how a fundamental misconception of the self — treating a relative, dependent “I” as solid and independent — generates all afflictive emotions, illustrated by a ring-finger analogy. He covers karma’s role in propelling rebirth, then surveys the six desire-realm levels as both cosmological map and metaphor for habitual mental states. The session ends on the god realm: pleasurable cocoon-building that numbs awareness until the anesthetic wears off.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 OEE 1997 12 26.mp3
UUID: 0860f984-2d1b-4d05-978a-4ba2acb3f43b
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Our Ego Empire (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-12-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.2 minutes
Words: ~6,693
That’s the grabbing. That’s like craving. And then you’re actually going to put insert So, you know, we have to, you know, some kind of practical measure, some some practical way, make our own inner self development a priority in our life amongst all our other, you know, seemingly practical necessities of life, you know, in terms of our material welfare, our our social welfare, creating a the good life for ourselves and all that that entails, all that all that constitutes a good life for our ourselves, we have to consciously set aside some space, some time, some energy, make our own inner self development a priority in our life. You know, this is, I guess, what we’re very much concerned about here. You know, how are we going to shape a good life for ourselves?
And there’s there’s I think it’s Abraham Maslow, who was an American psychologist, said, if the only tool that you have is a hammer, then all your problems look like nails. And if if we need a variety of tools to find the good life for ourselves, to create a good life for ourselves. And amongst these tools that we need to develop is our own mind. You know, the mind is the measure of all things. With our minds, we can create a heaven or we can make a hell of our life.
And we have to make the development of our own minds in terms of our attitudes, in terms of our understandings, ability to love and to feel, and to open our hearts to others a priority in our life. It’s a it’s it is as much a necessity for finding happiness and eliminating our suffering as, you know, the eating of food or or sleeping or carrying on our our various dealings in our everyday life. It’s having that kind of priority around that. And, you know, in some kind of fashion, consciously creating the the the space in your life and putting forth the energy, making the time in the in in the practical necessities of everyday life. It’s it’s something that we have to do for ourselves, and it’s it’s it’s not something that our that our society as a whole puts any great value on, our own self development or developing ourselves as a person.
Quite more than that, we’re very much materially orientated, and how we value ourselves as a person and what we respect in the world is very much determined in terms of material standards, you know, how much we possess or control or own or have. But here, we’re talking about another order of standard, another another way we can determine whether our life has been successful or not in terms of who we are as a person, in terms of our ability to love others and to serve others, in terms of our our understanding about how our own minds work and our ability to to relate with the world in skillful fashion and with ourselves. So, you know, we have to we need some kind of information. We have to undergo some kind of training, you know, and it has we have to make some kind of commitment to this process. You know, commitment is a is a consistent choice of of the discipline that a particular context prescribes for ourselves.
The discipline of Buddhism prescribes has a very precise prescription about how we can help ourselves. And it’s a way that a way that we can begin to solve some of our problems, heal some of our wounds, and begin to actualize our own potential. You know, we call this, you know, going for refuge going for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma, and the spiritual community. But somehow we always have to make this relevant to ourselves, keep keep connecting up to something which is meaningful to ourselves, something about ourselves, something that we can identify about ourselves, which we can have some kind of faith, which we can which we can be our own aspiration about ourselves. You know, the fact of being having the potential to be an awakened human being or maybe just simply a happy, healthy, loving, tremendously sane human being, and that there is something about ourselves that lends ourselves to that possibility.
You know, when we talk about awakening, as I tried to emphasize, you know, simply, we’re talking about wisdom and knowing the way things are clearly without any misconceptions, without any wrong ideas or crooked assumptions, without any indoctrination or conditioning. You know, a a feeling quality about awakening in terms of a love and compassion, a burning desire that others be happy, that they not suffer, and the willingness to actually do something and to bring this about, in fact. And a sense of personal power, a a vitality, an an enthusiasm about our life, a mental and physical energy. And then the transformations of these in our everyday life and skillfully working with others and through skillful means and helping them to experience very much the same. So, you know, we’re talking about wisdom and love and compassion and personal power and altruistic activity through skillful means.
And there is something about ourselves which, you know, which we lose sight of, which is necessary to keep bringing back our attention to and to focus upon ourselves, that we all have some wisdom. And no matter how obscure and faint that wisdom may be, we all have some knowledge from time to time of the way things actually are, direct knowing of the situation or the thing itself. We all have some love and compassion. No matter how exclusive, how limited our love and compassion may be, it’s still there. We all have some personal power no matter how unrefined, how unspontaneous that energy might be, it’s still there.
We all have some skill and means. No matter how imprecise or clumsily we may apply our skill in working with the with others about us, still it’s there. So all of what we’re talking about is simply a development of a potential which we all now possess. It’s it’s not something otherworldly. It’s not something completely theoretic or abstract.
It is practically relevant to each of ourselves. So all we’re talking about is creating the conditions by means of which we can develop potentials which preexist within ourselves at present. And we have some methods to work with in these trainings. And if we consistently choose these trainings and work with the discipline, then we can feel assured that we will begin to solve some of our basic problems. We’ll be of greater use to not only ourselves but also to others.
Know? So there’s this process that we’re very much involved in, but we have to make some kind of choices. We all have that freedom. It’s something that we you know, freedom, I think, is very much like having money in the bank. You could it’s nice to to sit back and find some kind of sense of security in having money in the bank, but you’re not actually using it.
It’s it’s not being applied to any practical purpose. It’s not being of you’re not really getting anything out of it other than some sense of satisfaction and security. You know, freedom is the the the awareness of alternatives and the ability to choose. And Buddhism is trying to present us with some alternatives, and we all have the ability to choose if we exercise that choice. So the then the choice we are seeking to make is to consistently choose, in the Buddhist context, the Buddha, Dharma, and the spiritual community.
That is to say, the Buddha with inside of ourselves, to choose to actualize these potentials of wisdom, love, and compassion, and personal power, and transform them in our everyday lives and working with others through skillful means and helping them and serving them. And this is the way that we choose Buddha in our everyday lives. And we have to do something. We have to work with the methods, the trainings, the techniques, the teachings whereby to actualize this Buddha, and this is the Dharma. And this is what we mean by making a priority of of our practice, creating that time, putting forth energy, and making the focus of our life, the development of this Buddha, of our potential, by by implementing these teachings within our everyday lives in very practical and effective, efficient means, effective means.
So that’s the Dharma. This all process occurs within, you know, what are we doing here together? It’s the social context of the spiritual community, you know, the way that we can that we we can share the human dilemma, the way that we can help one another, that we can assist one another, the way that we can act as teachers, as guides, as inspirations, as spiritual friends, as fellow travelers, doing whatever is necessary to assist another human being along their journey or wherever they might be, to help them to find their goal. And these are very practical and relevant means to help us to begin to solve the problems of the human dilemma at a very basic fundamental level. But we to do this in some sense.
I think, if we’re ever to find any peace in our own minds, in our own lives, if we’re ever to feel any sense of contentment and fulfillment in our own lives. We cannot keep denying our conscience. It will it demands to be heard in various ways. It erupts into self awareness and we have to listen. Our wounds are like mouths trying to tell us something about our lives and we have to listen to these truths about ourselves and that we have to try to raise the level of our motivation, you know, why we’re involved in all of this process.
Otherwise, I think we can short circuit the process. Our entire lives have more or less and probably more than less been dedicated to one end and one end only, and that is our own selves, own happiness, the elimination of our own problems quite often at the expense and the exclusion of others. Buddhism would go on to say is that this is a self defeating approach to finding your own happiness, let alone being able to be of service to others. Why are you unhappy? Because ninety nine point nine percent of everything you think and everything that you do is for yourself, and there isn’t one.
And as we’re trying to begin to get some kind of idea when we talk about the ego empire, these twelve links of dependent origination, it all evolves out of ignorance, most basically ignorance with regard to the nature of the self. And it is through self centered, supported by ignorance, that all of our various problems arise, that most of our attempts at solutions become part of the human problem itself. We’ve expended out of all the blood, sweat, and tears that we’ve expended over the course of our life, where has it gotten us? Have we gotten any farther in finding happiness that we’re all seeking? Have we really solved any of our fundamental problems, even though we work so hard?
We’ve tried every possible method. We’ve used others and manipulated the world and the environment about us. Has any of it worked? Has it brought us fulfillment, the contentment, what it is that we were looking for in one way or another? It probably hasn’t.
Maybe there are alternatives, and we have to begin to choose them. We have the ability to choose. So in this process, the inner focus of our lives becomes Buddha. That means we have to do something. Wishful thinking is not enough.
Sincerity, though important, is of itself not going to bring about what it is that we want. We actually have to do something. We have to actually practice. We have to make use of the Dharma. And this process occurs within the social context of the spiritual community.
And again and again, this is our magnetic north that we keep coming back to. All the vicissitudes of life that life brings us, all the ups and downs, all the variations, changing scene, the different actors come strutting their parts upon the stage and the scenery changes. But at some point we have to create some kind of consistency in our lives in what we choose. And this we can do in contrast to this continual flux about us. We can have some kind of consistent choice in the direction of our lives in choosing Buddhadharma and the spiritual community.
And we begin to choose this not just for our own sake, just not for our own exaggerated self concerns, trying to achieve our own ends, but out of concern for an ever widening circle of others. And then we can have some kind of assurance that things will be well, that things will go well for ourselves, that our life will have greater meaning, greater purpose, We will pass beyond certain difficulties and new possibilities. We’ll begin to open themselves up to ourselves, and that somehow I think the world will begin to appear a more benevolent place, a place which is supportive to our ends. We we begin to find a home in the world by, you know, creating the world becomes our home, and all others become would become a limb of this great being of sentient life. You know, Śāntideva, in his book Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, and he talks about the fact that, you know, if some when somebody steps on a thorn and it’s sticking in their foot, the hand doesn’t say to the foot, that’s your problem.
That’s not mine. Why? Because the hand and the foot share the same body. And so instinctively, the hand reaches down and pulls the thorn out of the foot. And Śāntideva asks us, Why cannot we all become, as it were, limbs of this great being of sentient life?
And wherever there is pain, instinctively remove that pain. Since nobody wants to suffer, everybody wants to be happy, why do I concern myself only with my own suffering? Why do not take the pain of others as seriously as I do mine? So maybe this is an alternative. We were talking about becoming aware of alternatives, another possibility of a way of leading our lives.
Maybe this might work. I think it’s worth the experiment. I think it’s worth thinking about and reflecting upon. And beginning to if it sounds reasonable and we gain some experience in terms of it, and when we begin to solve some of our problems, even at the most minor and insignificant level, then we generate some kind of inspiration for ourselves. We become our own source of inspiration and we develop a greater and greater degree of trust in what we’re doing.
And the style of our life begins to change and our orientation, our priorities naturally begin to reflect what it is that we’ve come to experience for ourselves, what we now believe for ourselves. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha by means of which we actualize, by means of the Dharma, in the social context of a spiritual community, and again and again trying to raise the level of motivation, you know, the why behind it all, the purpose, the motivation, such that we’re doing it not just for ourselves but for an ever widening circle of others. You know, we we can we can listen to this talk. We can speak together. We can discuss with that motivation.
You know, just one other person. You know, somebody beside yourself. If I can, you know, to put it most simply, if I can just maybe gain a little more understanding about the nature of the human dilemma, my own mind, how it’s operating, how my how problems evolve, how I there were some kind of workable antidotes to my difficulties, if I can become a little more peaceful within myself, a little more patient, a little more caring, if only for the sake of one other person, maybe it’s my partner, maybe it’s my parent, maybe it’s my child, then all of what we do is tremendously worthwhile. We’ve gone that little bit much further. We aren’t going in circles as we have been for the most of our lives, but maybe some kind of spiral begins to evolve and our life begins to take some kind of direction and we simply keep repeating that same process again and again and again till at some point in our life we find that we have lived our way into the solution unbeknownst to ourselves.
We we have become that person that we’ve always been seeking to become. We are the goal of the path. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of the Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge into awakening.
Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech, mind and present clouds of every type of offering, those actual and imagined. I disclose all my destructive acts accumulated since time without beginning, and rejoice in the skillful actions of holy and ordinary beings.
Please remain until cyclic existence is ended, and turn the wheel of Dharma for living beings. I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others to the great awakening. So we’re just we’re just gonna meditate for a short period. We have to explain the entire universe tonight. So if you’d like to take a comfortable, firm posture, we’re going to meditate on mindfulness of breathing.
So first, let’s get in touch with our bodies. Noticing any tightness. Is there any? So last week, discussion of the the ego empire, ego empire part two, you know, generally called the wheel of life. So trying to, you know, depicting the the driving force, the mechanism, and the the psychophysical outcome of the mind’s misguided attempt to secure the self in space and time.
So essentially, all of what evolves out of ignorance. And it’s pictured iconographically in various concentric circles, we began to describe those last week. The inner hub of the wheel of life is there’s three animals symbolizing the first is a cock, a snake, and a pig. The cock symbolizes attachment, desirous attachment, The snake, aversion, hatred, hostility. And then finally, the pig, ignorance, bewilderment, confusion.
So this is kind of the driving force behind. This is what keeps the wheel of life circling, keeps us continually turning within cyclic existence. Essentially attachment at the basis is ignorance. Through this entire discussion, especially when we come to the twelve links of dependent origination, which describe the mechanism, how ourselves and this particular environment of saṃsāra evolve. We’re going to see that at its root is ignorance.
And it’s not so much that we’re seeking to understand the nature of ignorance, but just trying to appreciate the role that ignorance plays in the evolution of our problems, in the evolution of our of our dissatisfactory or dysfunctional approach to life. That is the prime mover, the instigating source of all of our problems most essentially. There are primarily two levels of ignorance. There are, on the conventional level, ignorance with regard to the outcomes of our actions. That is to say, ignorance with regard to karma, actions as causes, and the quality of results that correspond to those particular types of actions.
But here we’re talking about a more fundamental type of ignorance, ignorance with regard to the nature of the self and with regard to the nature of all phenomena in general. We have some mistaken conceptions about the nature of the I, the self. Now in all of this, I guess it has to be emphasized that we’re not calling into the question whether the I or the self exists or not. The I exists. The self exists.
You know, I’m sitting here and you’re listening to me and this I which walks and talks and practices Dharma and does all the various things that eyes do is not particularly a problem. What is a problem is when the misconceived eye, the eye as it’s misconceived by ignorance, It is on this taking this as a premise, and this is the fundamental supposition, the fundamental dysfunctional pattern of our mind, that we have a mistaken notion as to the nature of the eye, a very we have very solid, concrete, independently existing I or self. That’s kind of the fundamental premise in which all of our thinking operates on the basis of, on this very premise. This is the way the ignorance is conceiving the I to exist. This I, a concrete, solid, independently existent I, does not exist, but under the force of ignorance we conceive of it to in fact exist.
When in dependence upon the misconception of I, a misconception of other arises. You know, I and other do arise. I and other do exist. They exist relative to one and another. in dependence upon self, there is other.
in dependence upon other, there is self. But due to the force of ignorance, we misconceive of what does what in fact relatively exists to absolutely exist, as if I existed independent of other and other exists independent of self. What is merely a convention or a relative existence becomes absolutized, become concretized, reified into there is now an independent existing out there of others and an independent existing over here of self, and there’s there’s an absolute demarcation between the two. You know, it’s like, You know, if we were to ask is your ring finger, is it short or long? Well, the question in itself has no meaning.
If we say relative to your little finger, the ring finger is long. Relative to your middle finger, it’s short. So its longness or shortness exists, but only relative to something else. I only exists relative to something else. It only exists relative to other.
Other only exists in relative to the I or self. High only exists relative to low. Short into long. Good to bad. Light to dark.
In all of these dichotomies, they all exist only relatively, relatively, not absolutely so. But due to the force of ignorance, we misconstrue the nature of the relationship between, for example, self and other as to be absolute, as if the I existed independent of other, as if other exists independent of I. So now we have a world out there, existing out there, independent of myself. Out of this there arises attachment and aversion. Attachment on the premise of an absolutized or concretized self, attachment arises.
How? When we exaggerate the nature of the object in terms of its attractiveness, its agreeableness, its appealing quality. It it may sound strange, but the objects of all of our afflictive emotions, attachment, hatred, desire, jealousy, spite, ignorance, do not exist. They do not exist the way they appear. The object of attachment appears to only have positive qualities.
The mind is experiencing a temporary imbalance. It is filtering out any of the negative qualities, any of the unattractive qualities, any of the undesirable qualities. It is only focused upon and what is appearing to that consciousness at that moment are only the attractive qualities, and moreover, those attractive qualities are being temporarily temporarily exaggerated. Those qualities exist out there independent of myself, independent of my own mind, conceiving them with such. There is a sense of wanting to bring that into my territory, to appropriate, to incorporate that into my self identity over here.
It’s out there and it’s absolutely out there as independent other and I want to bring that and make it a permanent part of myself, to enhance myself, to foster myself, to bring happiness, eternal bliss to myself. Attachment desirous attachment arises. On the other hand, the opposite occurs with regard to attachment with aversion or hatred or anger, hostility, aggression. The mind only sees the negative qualities of the object and moreover those are exaggerated. And moreover that negativity quality is seen as existing inherent within that object itself, independent of myself, independent of how I’m thinking about it, how I view about it, my values, my understandings, my belief, my opinions about the object.
It is by its own nature unattractive, threatening, and therefore I wanna make it a permanent not part of myself to exclude it. It’s somehow depreciating me. It’s it’s a threat to my well-being. And so I develop aversion. I develop hatred or aversion of seeking to destroy the object.
So but the premise, the fundamental premise in which all this is operating is the misconception as to the nature of the I, the self, and these qualities about the phenomena about us. This is, you know, this is like the ground in which all of the afflictive emotions arise. Remove ignorance and the afflictive emotions cease of themselves. This misconception, you know, when we have I can’t stand you. I I hate your guts.
I there’s a sense of a very concrete something. You know? We we haven’t it’s it’s it’s unthinkingly assumed that there’s something which needs to be protected, something which is under threat, something very solid and concrete within, but we don’t we don’t really consider it or reflect upon it. It’s just a premise that we operate on the basis of. And out of this comes all the various other, dysfunctional patterns of mind, all based upon ignorance, the fundamental prime mover of the entire ego empire.
The next concentric circle, and we’re just repeating some of the ideas that we went over two weeks ago, are that out of ignorance, a misconception as to the nature of the I or the self and with misconception to the nature of phenomena, All of our activities which are based upon this are in some way inappropriate. They don’t quite fit. They are inexact with regard to the ultimate nature of the object which we are relating with. We involve ourselves in actions. We create karma.
karma simply means actions. karma is the quality is a sub set, is an explanation of the general law of cause and effect. That dependent upon this, that arises. If this doesn’t occur, that will not occur. But here, rather than being external out in nature, we’re talking about the continuity of cause and effect internal to sentient beings, internal to minds, to ourselves.
We as the creator of an action, as the agent, will experience a result of that action. So an action imprints a potency upon the mind, some kind of latency, a residue, a predisposition upon the mind. The action once created does not cease, that there is some kind of residue which is infused in the consciousness. When the appropriate conditions aggregate, then just like a seed being placed in soil, water, a result, a product, will arise. Likewise, having created an action, having left an imprint upon our consciousness, when appropriate activating conditions are met with, a particular type of result will arise in terms of our experience.
This is what is occurring for these beings here. Half of them are in the light, half of them are in the dark. So this is saying that at the moment of our death a particular type of karma will be activated. Now here we talked about two types of karma. There are varieties of karma.
Here the categorization is in the two, propelling karma and completing karma. At the moment of our death, our consciousness are like a storehouse of seeds of possible outcomes, of potentials. One of them will be activated. That will throw us that’s where the idea of impelling karma comes from. We will be thrown into a particular type of rebirth.
Our minds will reassociate with a particular set of aggregates or forms or body. We are like leaf being blown by the wind. We are blown by the winds of our karma. Which of those potencies are activated at the moment of our death? They can be they can send us in to a predominantly favorable, fortunate type of rebirth as depicted by symbolized by the light or an unfavorable or unfortunate type of rebirth symbolized by the darkness.
But either way, we’re going to experience some type of rebirth, a radical change of lifestyle, if you like. Then okay. That’s what we covered approximately last week, two weeks ago, very roughly. Now the third concentric circle depicts the psychophysical outcome, the six levels of the desire world or the desire realm. And according to and I think I I mentioned this very briefly last week, according to Buddhist cosmology or, you know, the the study of how the makeup of the universe, it’s it’s constituted of three realms, desire realm, form realm, and formless realm.
The form and formless realm are achieved through meditative concentrations. They are achieved through what is called unmoving or non fluctuating karma, a particular type of karma which is generated through meditative concentrations. The reason it’s called un fluctuating karma or unmoving karma is that these karma can only ripen or only bring about a result in these two types of realms, either a formless realm or a form realm. They are absorptions. They they characterized by more and more subtle states of peace.
But but because the karmic tendencies to remain in these states will eventually be exhausted, They are not ultimately satisfactory. They are only temporarily so. You know, there is a great deal of peace. There is a cessation a greater and greater degree of cessation of suffering as you move through these higher absorptions, through through the form realm and through the formless realms. But they are only temporary cessation of suffering.
They are not ultimate. As long as there is ignorance in the mind, there will always there’s potential for future sufferings. So then what is being pictured here is the third of these three realms, the desire realm. And within the desire realm there are six levels and that’s what’s being depicted by these pie shapes, the six levels of the desire realm. The level of the gods, and by gods here it means like celestial beings.
It doesn’t mean a a deity. It’s just the term that’s been been used, that of a god, a celestial being. The gods is the is one of the first level is the highest level within the desire realm. The demigods, the humans, the animals, the hungry ghosts, and finally, the hell beings. So these are the six levels within the desire realm.
And we’re going to, you know, talk about these six levels. But we have to, you know, we have to these are are actual physical places, but we we have a tendency to you know, even our present embodiment is like is a a metaphoric expression of a state of being or a state of mind. You know, it it our embodiment tells us something about our own mentality. In the Tibetan tradition, consciousness is pictured as a physical reflection. What a human being is inside is the same as what he he or she is outside in the physical realm.
A human being is the embodiment of his consciousness. A person’s characteristic behavior patterns, his obsessions, his dullness, his unhappiness or his feelings of great fulfillment, are all manifested on the physical level. So trying to get the sense that somehow our physical embodiment is an expression of mental state, and it’s very appropriate to what we have thought in the past. It is in fact a product of our karma. The notion that was touched upon last time, The central assertion of Buddhism is that knowing is an organizing into the known.
Knowing is an organizing into the known. That there is simply no concrete, solid, objectively existent world out there independent of our own minds. And if the the hell realms are are just as real or or for that matter just as illusory as as this human realm, which we take much so much for granted at present. You know, that that no matter how real a hellish state may seem to be to those undergoing it, it comes into being solely on account of the self destructive elements within one’s own psyche. In the fifth chapter chapter of his book, a guide to the bodhisattva way of life by Śāntideva, Śāntideva asks, who intentionally forged the weapons in hell?
Who constructed the burning iron floors? The Buddha taught that all such things arise from an evil mind. So the Buddha taught that all three realms, the the desire realm, form realm, and formless realm arise are merely mind. Merely mind in the sense that they all are all are are a product of karma. And it is our minds which create karma.
Therefore, the three realms are all a product of our mind. So that’s not to say that they are just hallucinations. You know, thinking it so makes it so. That’s not the case. All of these realms, though conventionally real and existent, can also be seen as metaphoric expressions of our habitual attitudes towards ourselves, towards our surroundings.
You know, the the the they’re like frozen projections, you know, chronic patterns of the way that we organize our experience. We are continually organizing our world into the known. The very act of knowing brings into existence the known world. It’s not as if the world exists and then we come to know it. The very in the very process of knowing itself, we are drawing forth a reality.
And and what is what is real is only the realization of one possibility. It is only one possible version of what could be. You know, in in the course in in in the course of a single day, as human beings, we we pass through we can experience the emotions associated with all of these six realms of existence. You know, from the pride of the gods down to to the to the hatred and paranoia of of hell being. The usually, we’re rooted in one.
We’re predominantly orientated in terms of one of these levels. So they represent our particular version of reality. You know, the particular channel I talked about how, you know, the idea of switching a channel. This is the the the particular channel that we that we’ve compulsively turned to and and become absorbed in in our reaction, our fear of non-being. And one of our most basic fears is of not existing.
You know, we would rather exist in one of these realms than not exist at all. They are kind of our unique style that we have a temporary temporarily adopted in our struggle to solve the fundamental problem of ego, you know, to be or not to be, to be to be some thing. You know, we we thingify everything, and therefore, you know, that what is process, we make into things, and therefore, we make them into something which is we we cling to as absolute and eternal on the one hand or not to be. Not to be if we aren’t a thing, then we aren’t at all. We are no thing.
We are nothing, which from the point of view of ignorance is annihilation. To be no thing is to be nothing at all. So talking about talking about these levels, know, sort of, I guess, overcoming our sense of thingifying or reifying. You know, the reifying is to to imbue with a a a to overestimate the concrete existence, to make to oversolidify, to to imbue with with with characteristics that which it does not possess. So, you know, we we there are these processes occurring.
We are continually shaping and forming our reality. Our karma is continually the way that we come to know the world is being influenced, is conditioned by our previous ways of experiencing and thinking about the world. How we organize and perceive and respond to our reality, how we interpret it, that the world doesn’t exist out there independent of our own minds, but it is a participatory universe in which we are very much involved in in a co creation. We are all involved in the creation of our human realm. This is an appropriate expression of certain mentality that we’ve experienced over time, what we’ve come to know as this world about us, as being human beings.
So in talking about the somehow we have to overcome our sense of a a solid objective world out there independent of our own minds, independent of and to cease thingifying, to overcome our our tendency to to reify, to make solid. So first talking about the level of the gods, and this is said to be the highest level within this desire realm, this this highest level, the level of the gods. It’s and what is it’s characterized by extreme mental and physical pleasure, and that this is what it’s about. You know? And we’re talking about you know, we all have these tendencies in our everyday life as human beings.
You know, it’s an attempt to dwell upon seductive goals, all kinds, whether it be in terms of health or whether it be wealth, fame, or beauty, virtue, Buddhism, religion, you know, the approach is always pleasure oriented, you know, in the sense of of some kind of maintenance of our own egos. It’s it’s it’s characterized by you know, we become absorbed. We we begin to lose track of our hopes and fears. Our our usual struggle seems to be temporarily at abeyance. You know, we we forget why we are doing what we’re doing.
We we we we found it extremely pleasurable occupation or some kind of preoccupation, and we become totally absorbed. We become addicted. We it it kind of consumes us. It takes us over. You know, the tendency is like you know, we all we all do this.
We it’s like we’re trying to regress to a womb state. You know, the the the to create a kind of a cocoon for ourselves, insulating ourselves from all the petty annoyances of the world in some way. You know, it’s there’s that we would rather we’d rather desensitize ourselves. You know, wish we we like to turn ourselves off in some way or another to to to we we we we’d rather go to sleep than to wake up. You know, these are the these are the the the the tendencies of which which which are expressed, which find some kind of physical expression as a god realm.
You know, there there but even within this god realm, there comes some kind of eventual disillusionment. You know, there’s some kind of disappointment occurs. Our pleasurable world becomes a little shaky. You know, the the womb goes into contraction, or, you know, our our our cracks begin to appear in this nice little cocoon that we’ve built for ourselves, that we found so so that we are able to insulate ourselves from the cold, harsh reality of the world. You know, the the the anesthetic that we have taken begins to wear off in one way or another.
You know?