Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun uses the Tibetan Wheel of Life as a psychological map in this 88-minute public talk, arguing that each of the six realms describes an emotional state we cycle through in a single day. He opens by framing the ego as “the mind’s misguided attempt to secure the self in space and time,” then traces the three root afflictions — desire, hatred, and ignorance — before describing each realm with pointed psychological detail: the god realm’s numbing cocoon of absorbed routine, the demigod’s paranoid jealousy and endless comparison, the hungry ghost’s insatiable consumerism, and the hell realm’s self-recycling aggression. He closes on ignorance as the seed crystal driving the entire cycle, illustrated with a comic-strip story about a C-grade student unable to escape a self-fulfilling identity. Accessible to newcomers curious about Buddhist psychology as a map of everyday emotional life.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 1990 11 19 Ego Empire.mp3
UUID: 45daa00b-6eba-4b6a-9e98-fdd988745ddd
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Public talks 1988-2010 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1990-11-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 88.3 minutes
Words: ~10,379
Now we’re going to talk about the ego, whatever that might be. It’s rather indeterminate, intangible kind of thing, try to discuss it in a way that come to some feeling about it. Ultimately, we want to transcend the ego. You know, it’s the basis of all our problems, all our difficulties and dissatisfaction. And so if we’re going to and that is the essential, the ultimate use of a spiritual method.
You know, we don’t if you’re hungry, you just eat food. You don’t need to practice Buddhism to fill your stomach up. You know, you have some pain from thirst when you drink a glass of water. You don’t need Buddhism to alleviate your thirst. But so spiritual practices, growth practices, psychological methods, they have their proper function.
And we have to make sure that we’re using them correctly so we simply aren’t falling into some sort of spiritual materialism. So making our practice of a spiritual path just another one of our many activities, amongst all our varied activities, something which is simply not going to exacerbate, complicate, support our ego problems, our attachment problems, our hatred problems, our anger problems, our spite problems, our jealousy problems, our eighty four thousand types of problems. So this is all very much dependent upon our motivation. Why it is we’re doing what we’re doing? Not so much what we’re doing.
That’s important if our intention is correct. But why it is we’re doing what we’re doing? We have to check up. What is my motivation? Is my reason simply another means of supporting my problem, complicating my life?
We don’t need any more problems. We don’t need any more pain. We need to come up with some solutions to our problems, our pain. And that’s the prob that’s the appropriate purpose of practicing practicing the spiritual path, not to please anyone outside of yourself, but to please this person who’s trying to alleviate their suffering, quite rightfully so. This all comes down to the point of motivation.
No matter what we might do, even if it’s giving a crumb to a bird, it can become a spiritual act, a transcendent act if it’s done with the correct motivation. So this becomes in Buddhism traditionally we talk about going for refuge. And as I mentioned last my public talk last month, the idea of going for refuge isn’t something particularly Eastern. We’ve all been going for refuge our entire life whether we use the terminology or not, whether we called it that or not. You know, we go for refuge to what?
To other people, things, jobs, money, distractions, sex, drugs, politics, something whereby we feel that we’re going to offer some protection. It’s going to be we’re able to use it as some method to alleviate alleviate some of our our more basic problems. Here we’re going to we’re we’re going for refuge in the sense that we’re committing ourselves to some real solution, a workable, realistic method to deal with our problems at perhaps a level that we normally don’t work with them with, not on a superficial level but on a more basic, more profound perhaps level. Now we come to the idea, that sense that ultimately it’s my attitude, my own mind which is going to be the determinant of my happiness and my suffering. You know this is the most basic reorientation that is necessary to begin to make to some degree or other.
Then quit blaming other things and other people for my problems and begin to look at the source, the real base of your problems, where the real source of your difficulties are coming from. Know, I think I used this but I think it’s worth repeating. The idea if, you know, we lose the key to our the front door of our house and we lost it in the backyard but the grass is very we haven’t mowed the back the grass in the backyard for some time. It’s quite long, and we just mowed the grass in the front yard. So obviously it’s going to be much easier to look for the the key in the front yard.
But no matter how much effort we make, no matter how long we look, we’re never going to find that key in the front yard because that’s not where we lost it. No matter how difficult it may be, no matter how long we must try, we have to look for it at the place where we lost it. Otherwise there’s no hope. There’s no solution. So beginning to look at the real you know, as long as we see the problems outside of ourselves, then there’s no hope for any solution.
So no matter how difficult the task may be, no matter how much we have to make in this reorientation process, how much delving, how much awareness, how much introspection, how much examination, investigation we have to go through to begin to make this effort towards seeing that basically it is our own mind which is the source of all our happiness and the source of all our suffering. We are our saviors and our own enslavers. We also enslave ourselves. and we also free ourselves within our own mind. So this recommitting oneself is reprioritizing one’s values. You you develop some type of autonomously derived values out of one’s own experience, not the way of life that you’ve been taught, what you think is best, has been laid on you by your religions, by politics, by your teachers, by your parents, but from out of your own experience and autonomously derived values, you come to a decision of what works for me as a unique, self actualizing individual. And then you commit yourself to that path which is going to help you to actualize, that person that you feel can solve your problems.
No one else can solve their problems. There’s Buddha inside yourself. In Zen Buddhism, they talk about if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him. If you see the solutions to your problems outside, you’re looking in the wrong place. There’s only one Buddha which is ever going to help you to solve your problems.
It’s the Buddha with inside yourself. Basically, becoming a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. That’s what we have to do. That’s the way we’re going to be happy. That’s the way we’re going to find peace.
That’s the way we’re going to be of use to others and help them to find peace. And to this continual recommitting oneself to the path of becoming all that you can be, all that you should be. Two basic reasons why we make this consistent commitment to a path of heart, making the inner goal of our life Buddha. I talked about the first cause last public talk. The first cause was faith.
Two types of faith. There are many different classifications of faith. One classification is into reasoned faith, and the other is trusting faith. And I’ve talked about what those meant. This is one of the two causes for making this consistent commitment to one’s own internal development.
The other which I didn’t talk about was in anxiety. And I had hoped no one worried about the fact that I skipped that last week, last month. So, you know, the second cause for making this commitment, committing oneself to a path of growth, anxiety. You know, generally in the face of anxiety, anxiety is something very vague, isn’t it? It’s not like fear.
Fear I can have a fear of of walking outside at night because someone someone might rob me, fear of losing my money, of being killed, robbed, whatever. You know, we can have specific objects about fear. But anxiety is is sort of a vague undercurrent. It’s like water flowing beneath ice. It’s anxiety.
Anxiety. And it’s pervasive to almost our entire waking life, probably our awakening life also. And out of this anxiety there arises flight. And this is takes the form of absorptions into particular responses to anxiety, that we become absorbed in particularities as a response to anxiety, that we become absorbed in distracting ourselves from confronting this issue of anxiety, from confronting our own basic fears, this undercurrent of feelings of dissatisfaction, of loneliness, of isolation, of self consciousness, of having to seek union with oneself, with others, with nature, having to prop up oneself image before oneself and others, continually having to prove oneself, continually having to guard one’s territory, protect one’s ego identity. This consistent theme of anxiety which pervades our lives.
And this becomes the second cause of going for refuge. And this requires that we stop running and confront our problems, as basic quality of anxiety. And this will act as an energizing force, a motivating force, to make a real commitment, not simply superficial, an intellectual a temporary commitment, but beginning to see that the basic necessity of having to change out of confronting the issue of anxiety in your life. This coupled with faith, reasoned reasoning, one’s own rationality, one’s own intuition, one’s own experience, the ability of the methods trusting faith, though one cannot understand the particular methods which are being taught, which are being explained, one has faith, has confidence in the person who is explaining because they seem to be an expression of what is being taught, though so temporarily taking confidence, taking recourse to that method, though perhaps you don’t understand it completely, fully at that time, though you’re going to try to, but temporarily having trust in the person who’s presenting it. So either one of these types of faith, and hopefully we can develop both types of faith which is born out of one’s own intuition, experience, and understanding.
These two causes, faith and anxiety, confronting one’s own difficulties and ceasing to flee into absorptions into particularities, other people, things, objects, jobs, power, money, sex, politics, drugs, whatever, and confront the issue. What type of person do you want to be five years from now, ten years from now? Are you becoming that type of person? If you keep going in the direction that you’re headed, where are you going to arrive? Is your life satisfactory?
Know, asking perhaps some basic questions that we normally, rather than confronting, we flip on the television set and distract ourselves once again from having to confront some of the more basic issues that we’d rather not deal with in our lives. Out of this comes a sense of necessity, urgency of having to change. We won’t change if there’s no necessity. There’s a certain inertia about it. We are have a resistance to change.
We will seek the status quo to maintain it. It’s not a matter of there’s an agent working against us. It’s simply a matter of repeating compulsive patterns which govern our lives. To break out of a pattern requires some energy. Some positive feedback system has to be set up.
Otherwise the loop is going to be recursive. It’s going to go on and on and on without end, and becoming somewhat distressed by this. So we begin to develop orientation to make the inner goal of our life Buddha. That is to become a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being by making use of the Dharma, that which is able to raise the level of our consciousness no matter what that might be, that which is able to take us from from desire to generosity, from attachment to openness, from hatred to love, from anger to compassion, from confusion to wisdom, anything. A leaf falling down from a tree can give you a teaching on impermanence or even a book, believe it or not.
Or perhaps even, I don’t know, a teacher might be able to help you. That’s even possible too. Anyway, Anyway, the Dharma. And we do this in the context of a spiritual field, in the context of a spiritual atmosphere. We call it the spiritual community, the Sangha.
Mental mental health is very much a social phenomena. It’s not something which occurs in isolation. That basically we’re a social being. And in the context of this social sphere, this social field I like to call it, in which one becomes an integral part. One social welfare begins to be nourished, and the seeds of a happy, healthy, sane, loving human being are nourished and can grow.
And making this commission is going for refuge. Trying trying this experiment. Taking the as a central focus of your inner goal of your life, Buddha, by means of the Dharma in the context of this social community, the spiritual community. 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 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 from 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 perfection, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. We’re talking about the ego empire.
The ego you know, I could string this out and give it another talk. The ego empire strikes back. One, two, three. Keep on going. Anyway, I’d like to read a quotation.
This is the ego empire. A special machine that took this photograph, a special X-ray machine. Or suppose Person A is watching television. When Person B comes into the room and shows evident displeasure with the situation, Person A may think he understands the problem and try to remedy it by exiting the present system and flipping the channel knob looking for a better show. Person B may have a more radical concept of what it is to exit the system, namely turning the television off.
Of course, there are cases where only a rare individual will have the vision to perceive a system which governs many people’s lives, a system which had never before even been recognized as a system. Then such a person often devotes their lives to convincing other people that the system really is there and that it ought to be exited from. So, you know, the Buddha was a systems analyst. He recognized a system which had hitherto up to his time gone unrecognized, and he gave it a name in Sanskrit, saṃsāra. cyclic existence.
These reoccurring compulsive patterns which govern, which constitute our lives. And he said that this system had three marks: suffering, impermanence, and selflessness, and therefore was dissatisfactory and should be exited from. You know, normally, you know, as I’ve in a way emphasized, we simply turn the channel to a new program whenever the present program becomes dissatisfactory. Another version of reality, a different a different style of saṃsāra occupation. Another another version, another way of mental and some new mental and physical pattern.
We’re always becoming absorbed in one program or another out of a fear of an open and fluid way of relating. We take security in our patterns. Take security in neurosis. At least I know who I am. I may be neurotic, but better to be neurotic than not to know who I am.
So this wheel of life, the wheel of saṃsāra, is an iconographic representation of the driving force, the mechanism, the an outcome of such a a way of life, a life governed by ego. Listen, some of you saw the blurb for this talk tonight. The mind’s misguided attempt to secure the the self in space and time. The mind’s misguided attempt misguided attempt to secure the self in space and time. And this is the action of securing yourself in space and time.
This beginning this compulsion to turn the dial to another channel, a different projection. It’s something other to put on the screen. And all of these are in the nature of a program mentality and materiality program to suffer. So beginning to describe the situation which we’re involved in and how it’s operating, the mechanism by which it operates, and the outcome we can expect. I know you can’t see this, but I’ll describe it as best I can.
There’s a there’s some concentric wheels, circles, and at the very hub is the driving force of this which propels this continual reoccurring recursive loops, compulsive pattern, this treadmill which we find ourselves on. This is basically desire, hatred, and ignorance. And it’s depicted by the cock. The bird is desire. The snake is hatred, and the pig is ignorance.
Depicting those three basic root afflictive emotions: desire. It’s a craving to possess objects of sensory cognition which you would like, which you want to incorporate into your ego identity, to make them a part of as if a permanent part of one’s territory, of one’s domain, of one’s self. There’s a sense there’s a sense of security that can be gained if I can make this object, which I find pleasurable, which I find likeable, if I can make it a permanent part of myself, then I can gain security out of out of knowing that I have permanent happiness in store for myself. You know, it’s the it’s the tendency to expand one’s territory, to incorporate desirable objects, pleasurable objects. There’s a there’s a sense of of poverty about oneself, seeing all that is good outside of oneself, all that would make one happy and comfortable is outside of oneself, and having to incorporate that into this this territory, this domain, this over here, people, things, objects, the environment, whatever.
And then there’s this entire ensuing struggle to appropriate one’s all of one’s attention. One’s energy, one’s planning is all directed toward this this eventual making a permanent part. Again and again having to regain it, again and again having to seek to secure it, to guard it, and see it lost eventually. Desire, trying to make to gain security out of having pleasurable objects, a permanent part of one’s own ego identity, one’s own territory. Hatred.
Just the opposite. Again, it’s it’s a fearful and angered repulsion. There’s some object that we don’t like. We find displeasurable. We wish to break off contact and not to repeat contact again in the future.
We we we we are seeking to gain a sense of security out of having this object a permanent, what would you say, as a not a a part a permanently not a part of our ego identity, out of our ego territory, to have it excluded from our domain, the sense of self, the sense of of encapsulated ego, to have it permanently externalized than the ensuing struggle. You know, that one feels as if having this apart, having this in contact with oneself is as if violating oneself, is is depleting oneself, is devaluing oneself, depreciating oneself. Depreciating oneself. And then there’s the ensuing struggle to make it a permanent part, to make it a permanent what would you say? Permanently outside of oneself, even though it seems to be continually seeking to overwhelm, seeking to penetrate, to violate oneself, one’s territory.
Hatred, fearful and angled repulsion, seeking to eliminate out of one’s ego territory. Desire, seeking to incorporate into one’s ego territory one’s identity in order to gain its security out of having a permanent part of oneself. And finally, ignorance, depicted by the pig. Stubborn, closed mindedness, to learn anything about oneself in one situation which may threaten one’s security. Know the keyword that keeps coming up, the idea of security, to secure, to make solid, permanent, concrete.
This is our attempt. This is what the you know, there’s nothing there’s no agent behind this action. There’s no one running the show as it were, but there is simply this tendency to seek to concretize, to make permanent, to to isolate the self, the person, our identity. This seeking to secure the self in space and time to make that which is constantly changing into something which is not changing, to make that which is dependent into something which is independent, to make something which has many parts and is diverse and polymorphous into something which is singular, homogenous, partless, something monolithic. It’s huge.
You know, it’s struggle to can you imagine the ego filling the entire universe? That would be the ultimate goal of ego, to solidify, to concretize itself as being the universe. That’s the struggle. That’s the tendency that we’re working against in in development of a spiritual path. You know, this idea of ignorance, stubborn, close mindedness about about learning anything which would you feel would threaten your ego identity, upset your sense of security, is grasping at a grasping at a unitary, single, unchanging, permanent self.
And all that that entails, all that that quality energizes, the motivating force. We call this this perpetual necessity to reconstitute, reestablish, reconfirm one’s identity. Cyclic This is the energizing force behind these neurotic compulsive patterns. Once ignorance is eliminated, the patterns dissolve. There’s nothing to support them.
You know, someone once said that death is a radical change of lifestyle. We go through this radical change of lifestyles quite often during the course of our life. So we’re not talking in terms of something quite otherworldly when we begin to discuss the wheel of life. We don’t have to talk about it in terms of rebirths and past and future lives but the various rebirths that we go through in the course of our life. Those radical changes of lifestyle.
Now whether we accept these voluntarily voluntarily or whether we’re dragged into them unvoluntarily. This second concentric circle, it begins to it shows the intermediate state. You know, death represents a gap. Something has ended. The new the old is dying.
The new has yet to be born, and there’s a gap. And there’s an intermediate state. Another something that and this this this taking of rebirth, whether it’s in the course of this life or in future lives, is not haphazard. It’s going to follow along strict variables. That is to say, it’s going to be determined by our karma.
And karma simply means action, the causes which are going to determine the type of outcome. These states, you know, we can begin to think of these states as as frozen projections. How are we going to relate with this reality? You know, one of the most important hallmarks of Buddhism, the ultimate foundation of its liberational quality is that objective reality does not exist. There is no object to reality.
And this is very difficult to understand. But everything else flows out of this, all of Buddhism. The understanding of karma, the understanding of the possibility of liberation, of going beyond suffering altogether, and how we are creating from moment to moment the type of reality that we experience. Whether it’s from we’re going to talk about this whether it’s from the blissful absorption of a God down to the paranoid suffering of a hell being. It is simply a version which we are creating out of our own mind, creating our own reality.
In physics they would call this a participatory universe. Śāntideva in Engaging in the Bodhisattva’s Way says, who created the guardians of hell? The Buddha said it was one’s own mind. That there’s no there’s no agent. There’s no force operating upon us which which forces us to go through these various experiences.
It is only our own actions, our own karma. These predisposing patterns which are we are continually impressing, imprinting out upon our mind. These habit patterns which we keep continually reinforcing. So the gap between the old and the new and whether what type of reality we are creating for ourselves. There’s this period of flux.
And then the next circle is the that’s divided into six sections six sections. In Buddhist cosmology there are three realms. There’s the realm of desire, form realm and formless realm. The form and formless realm are attained through meditative concentration. The desire realm, this is the realm that we are living in.
It has six levels. And so they are all developed out of one’s karmic tendency. Now these are even even the form and formless realms which are which are characterized by greater and greater degrees of bliss are dissatisfactory because they are at best temporary. When one’s karma is exhausted to maintain that state, then one necessarily has to take rebirth in another. So the six realms of the desire realm, the six levels of the desire realm.
There’s the hell realm. You know, we can talk we’re going to talk about these. The hell realm, the hungry ghost realm, the animal realm, human realm, demigod realm, and the god realm, the demi-god realm. You know, we can think of these as actual physical places where one can be reborn. But but also, additionally, we can see them as as emotional attitudes toward our environment, as states of mind that we will pass through during the course of one day.
Generally, we’re we’re predominantly rooted in one realm, one particular predominant attitude toward our environment, one one particular way of relating with the world around us, our particular world view. But it’s possible to pass through all of these, experience all of these in the course of one day, you know, from the pride of a god to the paranoia of a hell being. Each has their particular version of reality. This is the particular channel that we turn to in our flight to avoid confronting a more fluid open way of relating the possibility of another mode of being. Different styles, different versions of reality, different attitudes towards ourselves, our environment, other people.
The first is the the god realm, celestial realm. So this is characterized by extreme search for pleasure, mental and physical pleasure. That’s that’s its predominant qualities. It’s pleasure orientated. All the way it attempt to dwell upon seductive goals.
We’re talking in terms the psychology of the celestial realm, of the God realm, the attempt to dwell on selective goals of all kinds, whether it could be health, wealth, beauty, fame, virtue. The approach is always pleasure orientated. One is to a sense of this is the way we are a means of maintaining the ego, the maintenance of the ego. It’s characterized by we begin to lose track of all our various hopes and fears, and we become we become absorbed in the task itself. Becomes what we are doing becomes in in in itself.
We become completely absorbed. This idea of absorption, of loss, of orientation. We forget why we’re doing what we’re doing. The repetitiveness, the security, the sense of of There’s a certain attractiveness not to have to consider what to do next, to take responsibility. One is when the in what one one is doing now becomes attractive simply because it almost becomes effortless through absorption.
We begin to lose track on why we’re doing what we’re doing. It becomes in itself. You know, this could you know, you’re absorbed. Sooner, you know, you’re you’re let’s say you win some some something which you do repeatedly. You know, every Thursday, you go shopping.
And there’s a sense of you don’t even have to think about it. It’s something that you becomes comfortable, a way of being, a program. But something always comes along to shake your nice absorbed blissful state that you’ve achieved for yourself. This nonthinking numbness which which you take take recourse to to find some sort of security. Something always seems to come along to shake you.
You feel there’s a sense of being cheated, disappointed. Someone disrupts your routine for example. Something that you relied on is taken away from you. You know, you you what happens? You win the win the lotto.
Oh, you fall in love. That’s a very nice one. Ah, yes. And just in a division of your lover’s faith. Completely absorbed in it.
But then after a while maybe you see a pimple on her face. There’s something that kind of shakes, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s a perfection of what you were experiencing previously. Or maybe you won the lotto and all these millions and completely absorbed in the expanse of possibility. And then your relatives start calling you up and then people start knocking on your door asking you for donations to this or that.
And and your your nice cocoon, the security, this fantasy, this absorption which you had developed for yourself is shaken. And and it’s very disappointing When you strike out with anger at whatever or whoever has disturbed your neat insulated cocoon, and we all have these developed these cocoons even if they’re only minute moments in the course of our day. And we don’t want them to be disturbed. And when they are disturbed, we we strike out with we we experience disappointment and strike out with anger, with recrimination. And having struck out, we we are no longer able to maintain that state, that absorption.
And we have to move on to another way of relating with the world. We have to move on to another realm. We move on to the god realm. Here. So the god realm.
Oh, the demigod realm. demigod means they’re against the gods. The the gods and the demigods, they’re always struggling against one another. The the dominant characteristic of the demigods is jealousy and paranoia. And in this this painting, it’s interesting because this is the god realm, and this is the demigod realm.
And there’s a tree. And it’s too bad that the situation is that this tree has its roots, is growing, is planted in the demigod realm, but it grows up and its fruit, its branches and its leaves are all in the the god realm. So the gods are able to enjoy the fruit of what is planted in the demigod realm. And this makes the this makes the demigods very, very angry people, very jealous. You know, here are the trees growing in their realm, their domain, and they don’t even get to partake of its fruits.
So they’re always at war, always struggling, tremendous jealousy, tremendous paranoia out of this war, this constant battle that’s going on between the gods and the demigod. You know, there’s a in the demigod realm there’s a preoccupation with comparison. There’s this constant struggle to to gain security to achieve. In terms of the psychology of ourselves, we have about ourselves this constant struggle to achieve. Everything becomes a standard.
You yourself become a standard at which you can judge how well am I doing, Am I improving? You know, you become a measurement. Everyone and everything becomes a kind of a fixed reference to figure out how am I doing. Am I doing okay? Do I need to work harder?
Some everyone and everyone everything becomes a fixed reference point to which we can judge ourselves. You know, this idea of comparing. This is the realm of ought’s and should’s. You know, these tablets which are handed down to us from the sky, which everyone keeps alluding to but you’ve never seen before. You’ve got a same here.
One ought to do. One shouldn’t do that as if there was a rule book but no one showed you. That’s someone that they’ve all seen but you haven’t. So you know you Everyone in this mentality, this demigod mentality, basically what we’re talking about. Everyone becomes an opponent, even yourself.
This is this paranoid. One has to be even on guard with oneself, has to involved in a struggle even with oneself, let alone others. Everyone in is a potential threat to your well-being, to your security, so you need to be on guard. The idea of paranoia. You can’t trust others.
You can’t trust the situation. You can’t even trust yourself. You know, the the things should be some other way than they are, this idea. You know, talking about you know, you you ignore the actual situation. You refer you refuse to learn from it.
There’s an atmosphere of hostility about everything you do. Basically, there’s a sense of dishonesty. And dishonesty is demanding that reality occur according to your conception. This is the way it should be. Why isn’t it the way I want it to be?
The quality of an demigod. And is the human realm. So the major preoccupation in the human realm is desire. This is our major occupation that we’re most usually involved in. Some kind of some kind of desire.
There’s an acute sense of of separateness, acute sense of poverty. The pleasurable objects are out there. There’s a sense of loss about ourselves. They’re going to bring you comfort, happiness, and security. And all of these all of these pleasurable objects which are going to afford you that comfort, that pleasure, that security are out there.
You don’t feel and there’s this you don’t feel quite adequate that these things are naturally going to come to you. You feel like you have to have to go out there and drag them back into your territory. They have to things have to be appropriate. There’s a there’s a lack of basic trust in the bitterness of the universe that things will come to you as you need them. But you don’t have that sense.
You have to you have to cover all the ankles, all the corners to to make sure that you get your you know, everyone has their own own style, their own standard. Standard. So we criticize those who aren’t up to our standards, who don’t meet our standards. And we are impressed with those who have our own style and are able to achieve a higher standard than we are. You know, we’re very caught up with what we lack.
We’re very impressed with those who are superior to ourselves in achieving according to our style in terms of our standards. You know, you want to be like that person. You begin to we’re very fascinated with what we lack. There’s a sense of that they’re significant and I’m I’m insignificant. So this is continually comparing, continually selecting.
All of this comparing and selecting brings a never ending procession of desire. In in the human realm, the intellect is most active. You know, we’re always fantasizing, dreaming, planning, hallucinating. The mind constantly churning out ideas, searching for ways to improve, to manipulate, to magnetize the situation. So this this is constant dissatisfaction born out of ambition.
You know, it’s very painful to be hum up in desire, ambition. There’s no peace in such a state. Next realm, hungry ghost. Let’s go a segment here.
The realm below the human realm, Looks like the animal realm. The human human realm. So here the mentality is one of ignoring stupidity, stubborn stubbornly pushing forward towards predetermined goals. Kind of a a very serious, very sincere attitude about oneself. You know, the idea you know, animals don’t quite laugh.
They just behave. The kind of the attitude of looking straightforward, straight ahead, very sincerely with great earnestness, moving straight ahead towards one’s goal to the next situation and adjusting everything that does not conform to your expectations, to your preconceptions about the way it should be. So it’s associated with stupidity, with preferring to to blindly plot along rather than learn about the situation. Know, one wants to play by the rules. One is deadly earnest about rules.
It’s kind of a bureaucratic mentality. Bureaucrats make good animal mentality. Doesn’t matter who or what is destroyed along the way as long as the rules are stuck to follow. It’s very brutal. Do know with with this ignoring quality?
There’s no concern with truth. Just the rules. You’re always going to find some way of justifying yourself, some kind of rationale to keep up your self respect in front of others, even in front of yourself. Very clever, one able to rationalize very well, but basically dishonest. Basic.
Not in the spirit of the situation. You know, you don’t see. You don’t you don’t see your environment, only your goal. And you invent all kinds of excuses to prove that you’re right in doing what you’re doing. So the essence of an animal style is to get get what you want with extreme bluntness, extreme sincerity, extreme seriousness.
Yeah. It’s like a very sincere pig, you know, which is this puts its head down and goes straight along like a tank rolling over everything that’s in front of it. It’s very very brutal. It doesn’t matter what it rolls over, what it crushes in its way. The hungry ghost realm, the mentality, the the quality of mind, the attitude.
So the the principle preoccupation of the hungry ghost realm is consuming, consumerism. Fundamentally, you feel poor. There’s a sense of inadequacy about you. You know, you’re constantly using the the things about you, the people about you to prop up your your self image, but there’s never quite enough. You know, the the people in the hungry ghost realm are are depicted as having extremely small neck, almost like a needle, and stomach as huge as an mountain.
This is the this is the this you know, these these realms, I said they’re physical realm. They are an expression of of a mentality which is which finds material expression. You know, it’s like if an artist has an idea, he can he can transfigure that idea into a physical reality. The mind has that potential. The quality of being a hungry ghost.
Like, I need sometimes the necks are even tied in knots. The necks are like a a needle in the inside, a huge mountain of stomachs. There’s this constant struggle to satisfy one’s hunger. This is your principal preoccupation of your life. This struggle is very painful. You know, your this hunger might be for friendships, for wealth, for for clothes, for sex, for for religion. But, basically, there’s this there’s mental sense of mental poverty about you. You know, such a chronic pattern can never be satisfied. Some people need love so much that if the world even if the entire world were to turn their attention and love them, it would not be enough.
We can only transcend chronic patterns. They can never be fulfilled. There’s no hope. All the things and people around you become consumer items. Something to be even even a sunset, you want to you you you write a poem about it.
You take a picture of it. You want to eat the sunset, make it a permanent part so you can always go back to it and get the same pleasure that you’re experiencing at this moment. You can’t leave it to itself. You can’t let it be. You don’t feel adequate enough.
It may never happen again. You may never have this chance to experience this pleasure again the rest of your life. I want to hold on to it. You want to eat it to make it part of yourself. So all of this hunger for new entertainment, for religion, for tai chi, whatever, you know, painting.
There’s always this having one will always become bored and have to move on. One’s hunger is never satisfied. Satisfied. There’s this constant need to keep moving on to something new, auspicious beginning. It’s just over the horizon, again having to move on, again and again, never quite having your thirst quenched, never having your hunger satiated.
No. Continually searching for satisfaction, a way of life. It’s very painful to be suspended in unfulfilled desire. And then last but not least, the old hell realm. This is a hell realm is pervaded by aggression.
It’s based upon a perpetual condition of hatred. You you begin to you build up a complete environment of hate, and you’re you’re not even quite sure what it is you hate any longer. It becomes unobjectified hate. There’s just this recycling of hate. It’s just like a crocodile eating its own tail.
The more it eats, the more it’s nourished, and the more and the more its tail its tail grows. The the tail becomes continually recycled. Now hatred, we begin to churn it over and over in our mind, and it keeps recycling itself. And we’re not even quite sure what we’re what it is that we’re hating anymore, but we keep churning it over in our mind. It just simply grows, and there’s no end to it.
The more that you destroy, the more that you see needs to be destroyed. The more that you hate, the more that you see needs to be hated. Your environment becomes completely hostile, aggressive. Completely. Everything needs to be destroyed.
Everything is aggressive, including yourself. You need to be destroyed. You begin to aggress against yourself. You begin consumed with aggression. Everything is fire.
You yourself are fire, and it’s characterized by continuous physical and mental pain. So all of these, you know, these physical same all these same sort of occupations are and behavior patterns are expressions of ego’s struggle to secure itself, to maintain itself, to solidify itself, to secure itself in space and time. And all of these states are experienced as one degree or another of suffering. They all have that mark of suffering, impermanence, and selflessness, These three marks. All of these.
This ongoing struggle of ego to secure itself. You know, our realm is our particular way of suffering. No matter matter who we are, we each have our particular style of suffering. I don’t know. Maybe that sounds pessimistic, cynical.
I’m we aren’t basket cases for the that way. Okay? Things could be better. No matter who we are, we all we all have a particular style, and we cling to this style like a friend. You know, it’s as if our life depended upon my style of suffering because in in a way it does.
The life of our ego, the life that we have come to be habitually that we habitually cling to. These habitual patterns which we gain security out of. This a fixation on some particular mode of version of reality. At least I know who I am. It may not be much, but at least it’s something.
Better to be this than than know nothing at all. We just can’t imagine imagine another mode of being, another possibility. The tragedy is tragedy is not that we don’t get what we want, but that we do get what we want. And then we’re stuck with it and very often we find it’s not what we wanted at all. So how does this situation evolve?
What is this evolution? What is the operative mechanism? The machinery behind the creation of these realms. And this is depicted by this outer circle in these twelve links of dependent origination. This is what this is the way the that’s essentially the way the ego is continually being reborn, recreated.
This is how we keep recreating our versions of reality, this fantasy world of ego. And we do this in a fantasy, in a world of our own making. Fantasy world. Ego in its fantasy. I think maybe we could do it.
It could rock group, I think. Ego in its fantasy world. So it begins with basic ignorance. Basic ignorance. It is depicted iconographically as a blind a blind man.
So we’re going to go through these twelve links of dependent origination. The the the explanation how the how the the ego is continually maintaining its existence, continually recreating its particular motif of suffering, its style or version of reality. The first is ignorance. All of this is coming together out of the under the influence, the driving force of karma and afflictive emotions. karma, simply actions.
Easier way, more useful way of thinking of that habitual patterns. karma is the sum total of our evolutionary history, both past and present. That which we have enacted the various actions, bodily, verbal, mental, imprinted, registered upon our mind stream, our all of the various occurrences which occurred during the course of this life, our social conditioning, conditioning, our culture, it’s our belief systems, everything which which seeks to influence the direction of our mind, the expression of our mind. It is who we are. It is our life, karma, the sum total, and our afflictive emotions.
By afflictive emotions, there are said to be eighty four thousand afflictive emotions. The the should we count them? Basically three. You know, there’s desire, hatred, ignorance, the jealousy, spite, miserliness, you know, on and on and on. The driving force behind all of this, the the lynchpin which is holding this entire mechanism in place, is the first link of the twelve links of dependent origination.
Ignorance. Ignorance is depicted as a blind man. It’s an absence of precision. It’s a lack of clarity, a cloudiness, a confusion. It’s experienced as confusion, as in a sense of bewilderment.
What? It’s like you’re walking. It’s a beautiful sunny day. You’re on a grassy cliff side, and you’re you’re walking near the cliff, and you’re just experiencing the pleasure of being. But then you notice you’re near the cliff.
Nothing has changed. The ground is still as firm as it ever was. Your legs are still as strong as they ever were, but there there arises some sort of panic. You’re not quite sure of your ground anymore. A certain bewilderment.
A certain there’s this feeling that the situation may over overwhelm you, overtake your certain panic, that that a certain sense of unmanageability in the situation. You’re not quite sure how to conduct yourself. A sense of having to to be on guard against an unknown element, not even quite sure what it is. The situation hasn’t changed, but this this element of panic, of bewilderment has been introduced. It’s not as if this has in fact been introduced at any one time.
It’s always been there. But this is the quality that we have about ourselves at present. And it there develops an ensuing struggle to have to maintain, to guard, to ensure, to secure what in fact doesn’t need to be guarded. It’s just maintain, secure. But in a sense it does.
There’s a fear. What would happen if I if I quit seeking to secure myself? Quit this struggle. Now what would it be to be have no ambition? What would happen to me?
Immediate thought I’d be a vegetable. They’d have to feed me intravenously or something. Yeah. Something some image like that maybe comes to mind. That you you just be a blob and people have to take some of this.
So this this sense of having to secure yourself, having to take care, to prop up, to maintain. All of it really requires a lot of energy. And it takes up all our time. We don’t have much left to do anything else, Enjoy ourselves. And moment by moment, it’s necessary to recreate the very ground that we’re standing on.
You know you want to make the best of the present moment, the moments that going by. We want to cling to this moment. We want to try to make the best of it. We ignore the ignoring quality of ignorance. We want to ignore the possibility that we could relax.
I think nirvana, beyond sorrow, is this one huge thought. I can relax. I don’t have to struggle anymore. Things are going to be okay. You don’t have to keep recreating the very ground that you stand on because there there is a there is a basic ground of being which is more fundamental than ego.
You will not go out of being. You cannot stop being. Even if you try, you can relax. You will always be. You can quit struggling.
That’s kind of the message. But it’s too painful to look at, the possibility. It’s too frightening. So you choose to ignore. So ignorance is bliss from the from the egoist point of view.
So we continue to struggle against situations of our own projections bouncing back at us. You know, we begin example, to selectively impose patterns and cultivate an unawareness toward anything which our environment, which our situations are telling us which might contradict our pattern in order to be able to predict, to gain some assurity. We we try to slow down the situation to freeze it so we can we can gain control over it. It’s going it’s going too fast. I want to slow it down.
Freeze it. Certain this bewilderment, this panic. And we would begin to divorce ourselves and and all the things in our our situation, our environment, and divorce them from the context of the situation as if they were isolated things. I’m a thing over here. You’re a thing over there.
My environment’s a thing over there. In order to be able to facilitate manipulating, ordering, controlling. So this is the is the most basic quality of ignorance. This this grasping that which is singular, that which is multiple as singular, that which is changing as unchanging, that which is dependent as independent. We draw this thick black line around everything and everyone in order to control, to gain security.
There’s this ideal of You know, one of the basic qualities which we are able to perpetuate our chronic patterns is we set up situations which reconfirm our patterns. We’ve set up relationships which experiences which reconfirm our patterns. We discount, forget those experiences which discount, which disconfirm our patterns. We’re constantly seeking to reconsolidate our identity, to freeze ourselves, to gain security. There’s a just a, you know, a a very simple simple way to look at this.
There’s a little comic. Think many of you have seen this comic before. I’ll explain it to you and maybe you’ll get an idea of what I mean about reconfirming our identity. The way that we habitually reinforce these patterns to gain a sense of identity and security. Security.
Two boys walking home from school, of them has just received his test result. And the first boy says to the second boy, that new teacher really did a number on me. In the second box he says, I thought I’d get a B on the test, and he gave me a C. In the third box he says, how did he know I was a C student? So what is he saying?
You know, it is as if he had some kind of about him, some this kind of like oozing out of his skin. And he tried to wash the day before, you know, this new teacher so the teacher wouldn’t recognize him. But he tried to pretend as if he were a B student, maybe even an A student. He tried to put on that show. He couldn’t keep it up.
And he knew he was pretended. He knew he was only a C quality person, only able to achieve C on those tests. And that teacher saw through his pretense. He couldn’t fool his teacher. His teacher was too sharp.
And what is he going to do with this zenith about him, as if his very being were marked with C. He was a C grade person. He’s going to go on to get a c grade job, maybe a c grade wife, have c grade children, teach them how to be c grade people, and perpetuate this this sense of fixed identity. And life becomes a self fulfilling, self a self fulfilling prophecy. We’ve pretty much mapped out the course of our lives.
Now we’re just kind of filling in the details. The plot, we’ve written out the plot, you know, like a a good author, and now we’ve just written some subplots along the way just to make it interesting. But we know how we know the we already know the outcome. We’ve got it worked out ahead of time unless you change. That’s your choice, maybe.
Some kind of fixed, permanent, unchanging, independent identity, independent of my culture, independent of my aggregates, independent of my peers. This identity, fixed, inherent, all kinds of words to be making. It’s truly existing, objective and existing, existing from its own side. Many synonyms. There is nothing within in a whole stream of mental and physical phenomena which constitute the body and mind, which has the quality of a singular, unchanging, permanent self.
Nothing. There is there is no thing there is nothing no thing which in the whole stream of the phenomena which constitute one’s body and mind which has the quality of being a singular, unchanging, independent self. It is our constant persistent grasping for such a type of quality, for such a type of self, which makes the mind and body a continuous stream of suffering. This is the basic quality of ignorance. It’s grasping at such a type of self which has never existed in the past.
It doesn’t exist now, and it will never exist. But this is what keeps this whole wheel turning. It’s grasping at such a type of self. And this is basic ignorance, the first of these twelve links of dependent origination, and I don’t think I’m gonna get through. Maybe we just go through them.
Samsāra wasn’t made in a day. Maybe we’ll have to So this is the you know, there’s a sense of deja vu, a sense of rightness, appropriateness once we’ve established the starting point as ignorance. This is like a seed crystal out of which everything is going to proceed to grow out of. This is the first element in a series of related conditions culminating in a particular happening. I am a particular happening.
This is a particular happening. There are these are particular happening. These all evolve out of, grow out of this basic first element of ignorance. Everything is working. Everything is proper.
Nothing is inappropriate. You know, this is the first step. Ignorance is the first step on a journey toward perfect, complete, unsurpassed ego-hood. It’s like like the first part of a puzzle. Once you have the first part of a puzzle, then that’s going to determine the shape of the second part, which will determine the shape of the third part, which will determine the shape of the fourth part, which is going to determine the entire picture, how it’s going to come out.
Once you have that first part with a particular coloring pattern, with a particular shape, then the whole the rest is fixed. It’s just a matter of finding the proper fit. Everything fits together. Everything is appropriate to that first initial situation, foundation, and the foundation is ignorant, misconception, misunderstanding. To the degree that our you know, we have belief systems, we have ideas, we have assumptions.
To the degree that those are in accord with reality, we will experience satisfaction, contentment. Our expectations will be fulfilled. To the degree that our beliefs, assumptions, ideas are in discord with the way things actually are, to that same degree we’re going to experience disappointment, frustration, dissatisfaction. Once the seed is established, the first part of the puzzle is there. Everything will naturally fit in accordance with that.
And if it’s not in accord with the way things are, then it’s going to be in disharmony. And the qualitative disharmony is the dissatisfaction. Everything is, you know, this idea of dependence, of conditionality, of relatedness. Everything fits together very neatly. Nothing is happening that shouldn’t be happening.
Everything that happens is appropriate to what came before. You know, if you if you if you you throw a brick up in the air and you don’t move, you shouldn’t be surprised if you’re not hit on the head. That brick going to obey a law and no one’s out to get you. But there are certain laws of the universe which we have to become aware of and live in harmony with. And then things will go well.
We can begin to predict. We can begin to make use of our discriminating awareness. We can make use of our wisdom to develop and lead the type of life which we feel will be satisfactory, which will bring us fulfillment, contentment, and peace. But we we are forced to live in accordance with the way things are, and we have no choice. So it becomes imperative for us to learn about the way things are and therefore and therefore live in harmony with the way things are.
Otherwise, we’re going to be filled with nothing but either a sense of rage because things aren’t the way we want them to be or a sense of powerlessness because we can’t change what cannot be changed. There’s no alternative except continual dissatisfaction. Maybe maybe it makes it makes there is some sense in making effort in in a spiritual path. Makes sense to make some effort in meditation and all of these various practices. They are important because these are helpful, helpful ways about learning about the present situation.
Spiritual practices, meditation, they help us to become aware of the way things are, our own mind, the minds of others, the world around us, and the appropriate way of relating with those around us in our environment. They help us to become aware of the situation, And therefore, becoming aware of the present situation and being able to relate with it appropriately, properly. You know, it’s not that we we are trying we are seeking to perform perfect actions in a perfect world, simply appropriate actions in an imperfect world to make the best out of a lousy situation maybe, but it’s good enough to find peace and satisfaction and joy. There’s nobody organizing the situation for us. It’s a natural outcome of specific variables which we are continually recreating.
We are creating the type of future which we will experience. Who you are now is what you have done, and what you do now is what you’re going to become. And beginning to to make a choice out of the type of future which you wish to experience rather than remaining a victim of your past. The past only goes up so far. It only comes up to the present.
Past our present situation is determined. The future exists as potentials. All we those potentials exist within the present moment. That’s all we have to work with. We can’t the past is finished.
It’s gone. The future is yet to be. There’s only this moment that we can understand and make use of to determine the quality of our future life and future experiences. I am sorry I got very long winded. I think it’s better.
I’ll go through it just another time. Yeah. Part two coming up. Ego the ego empire part two. Don’t miss it.
Maybe have a few minutes for questions. If you have some comments. Okay. So yeah. I mean, traditionally speaking, these are they’re actual physical places.
This is real, this place. Yeah. I think that’s that’s Yeah. That’s the point of thinking in this sense because we have hellish mentalities about ourselves. We have hungry ghost mentalities.
And and in in the when the mind is becomes you know, when the connection between the mind and body is broken, this this kind there’s going to arise a great craving to for re-embodiment. And these these mentalities are going to find physical expression in an actual externalized environment. One of the most my favorite quote, teachings from the very first two verses of the Dhammapada, one of the important compilations of the Buddha’s sayings. We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with an impure mind, and trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox that drives the cart. We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow you as your shadow unshakable. I mentioned initially that one of the most basic foundations of Buddhism is that there is no objective reality. And when this becomes thoroughly understood in terms of the ultimate nature of all phenomena being emptiness, then anything is possible. And so we it is only perhaps out of our lack of knowledge that we discount the possibility for such types of realms to exist. Is there anything that we can imagine?
Have a comment? Okay. So, you know, this is initially adjusting our motivation. At the conclusion, we we dedicate the positive energy, positive potential, the skillful actions that we create. And we try our best to raise the level of our dedication that we simply don’t dedicate ourselves.
You know generally our lives are dedicated half heartedly, that we only partially, but trying to create a sense of integration in which we are completely giving ourselves to something which is worthwhile. That we don’t dedicate our lives for chocolate cake, that our goal becomes maybe something a little bit higher than that. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to enlightened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never decline, but to increase more and more. May I dedicate these habit patterns.
Can’t stop. Thank you.