Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A divorce he didn’t choose and a move to California during the Vietnam-era counterculture — Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 91-minute public talk with his own story of discovering that escaping social pressure still left him enslaved by anger and jealousy. He argues that motivation, the quality of why we act rather than what we do, shapes every outcome, then introduces going for refuge as an ongoing reorientation toward Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. The session’s heart is Buddha nature: he deploys Asaṇga’s similes — gold in a trash heap, a future king in an ugly woman’s womb — and the parable of the rabbi’s gift to make the case for trusting basic human goodness. He closes on precious human life, urging listeners not to waste the rare inner and outer conditions for change they already possess. Accessible to complete newcomers.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 1993 02 07 Anger and Tolerance.mp3
UUID: 6b8b2f18-f486-46f5-9235-e7f51186941c
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Public talks 1988-2010 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-02-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 91.0 minutes
Words: ~9,891
Is there anybody in the kitchen that I’m sure they’re nice. What do you think we should do? Just ignore the interruption. Interrupted. Okay.
I think it’s outside, actually. It’s fine. My my position. Comfortable? So I think is everybody here?
Okay. So as, you know, as I’ve tried to emphasize last week and I’ll be emphasizing each week, it’s not so much what we do but why we do. What we do which determines the quality of the outcome. And the it’s depend very much the result is very much dependent upon the motivation, our intentional quality that we bring to whatever act it might be. I think whether, you know, it doesn’t have to be some very special esoteric activity like listening to talks on the Dharma or meditation, with respect to our life in general, the quality of the cause is brings about a specific concordant type of result.
So we try to adjust our intention, our motivation, why we’re doing what we’re doing, to ensure that the we can begin to achieve the quality of a type of result, and our preferred type of result. And we have a our life is very much lived out of certain stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. And the dominant story that we have about ourselves very much determines becomes, as it were, a self fulfilling prophecy about the outcomes, future outcomes, future outcomes. And if we don’t particularly prefer the story that we’re telling ourselves, And we we can we can begin to take some kind of control. We can begin to reauthor our lives as it were.
You know, rather than being passengers, having this sense of passenger hood that we can begin to take control. We can develop some kind of intentionality, agency. We become agents active in determining the quality of our future life. What we the story that we like our life to play out. And, you know, this is this process of redirecting, reprioritizing our values, getting in touch with perhaps certain guidelines, certain principles which we have found important to ourselves, which have we have found meaning, have been meaningful to ourselves within our own lived experience, and getting back in touch, reorientating ourselves toward these values, redirecting the getting back in touch.
You know, out of practical necessity, quite often, we get out of touch with what is actually most important to myself. What works for me? What has meaning for me? What brings myself happiness? What I can believe in?
What so it’s necessary to, I guess, to take time to reflect and to get back in touch. And this you know, last week I introduced the notion of going for refuge. But, you know, the idea this this process of redirecting, getting going for refuge to to something within ourselves which can our resources, our ability to solve our problems at a very basic level. And this quality of awakening, know, whatever however we may conceive of it, in terms of simply becoming the happy, healthy, loving, sane human being that perhaps we’d all like to become that preferred story, this metaphor that we have about our life. You know, the Buddha is a metaphor of of the preferred outcome of our life.
Our our most in our most exalted moments. We call that Buddha. And, you know, those practices which would facilitate this reauthoring of our life to achieve that in what we call Dharma. And those who assist us in implementing these practices, those who authenticate are reauthoring these preferred stories of our life, our spiritual community. So they, in a way, become like our refuge, that we continually reorientating ourselves in those directions.
And we talked about what this quality of awakening and this consummation, you know, simply most the outcome of our most preferred story. In terms of Buddhism, we call this awakening. We can give it other names. It’s not particularly important. But what qualities it might entail?
What qualities we might begin to look for and necessarily develop, no matter what our particular preferred story, unique story might be. And these were the qualities of wisdom. And it’s simply a knowing quality, knowing things directly without mistaken notions, without prejudice, without bias, without preconceptions, a direct knowing of the way things are in and for themselves, a quality of love and compassion, a an involvement in her own life, and involvement in lives of others, the sense of caring and communication. And then the quality of energy or enthusiasm about lives and some vitality that that we intensity that we bring to the experience of life. So, you know, trying to orientate our stories to so that they begin to embody and develop these themes, these qualities of what we might be an awakened way of being in life.
And, importantly, beginning to recognize that within our own lived experience, the moments in which we have expressed these same exact qualities, these awakened these glimpses of awakening, these these qualities in our awakened way of being this this the and the qualities of wisdom, for example, that, you know, within within every one of us, there is this knowing quality of knowing things very directly beyond misconception, beyond preconceptions, beyond mistaken ways of knowing. No matter how obscure and faint our wisdom might be, we all have some wisdom. We all have some love and compassion. No matter how exclusive, no matter how limited that love and compassion might be, it’s still there. We all have some energy, some creative physical, mental, spiritual vitality, no matter how unrefined, no matter how unspontaneous the energy might be.
So what what from the point of view of Buddhism, we’re saying is that we all have the seeds of the solutions to the all problems, or perhaps stated in a more positive fashion, that we all have the the necessary elements within ourselves to bring about our most preferred story that we would like to live in it in the course of our life. And that we what we call a Buddha. Someone who is simply is experiencing inner peace and out of compassion, works skillfully in the world to help others to do the same. This happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. That we all have these seeds of awakening, that we all have the seeds of becoming a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being with inside of our self.
You know, this is not something that we need to to pray for, that we need to go out and that we need to seek outside of ourselves, that we have, you know, the basic solutions to all our problems with inside of ourselves. And to beginning, you know, beginning to perhaps begin to trust in these seeds. You know, we’re going to talk later on tonight about Buddha nature. And I think it’s tremendously important that we that we develop some confidence in ourselves and trust in ourselves, our own basic goodness, and our own basic ability to solve our problems. So then we can become sincere about change and serious about solving our problems.
And feeling that we can do something, that I’m not helpless, helpless, that I don’t have to remain a victim. So this continual reorientating process. You know, the I think I don’t I don’t know if I mentioned last week. I I gave a little bit about my my autobiography when, you know, having been born in in Ohio. Did I mention that?
Ohio. Oh, yes. Ohio. Ohio is a great place to be from. But, you know, I didn’t leave it by choice.
I left it. Well, I did. I went through a divorce, and it wasn’t divorce that I would have chosen to have gone through if I would have I didn’t have any say in the matter. It was kind of thrust upon me, and it was a very painful period in my life. And I dropped out of university, and like many people do when they go through these little deaths in the course of their life, these little these radical changes of lifestyle, they go to California.
It’s kind of an American thing to do. And so I dropped out of the uni and went to California. And like this is back in the days before most of your times. Around the Vietnam protests and around time of Haight Ashbury and the Flower Children and the Grateful Dead, and Janice Joplin, and all these kinds of people were very prominent in those days. I never, you know, they had a when I got to California, I discovered this great this great thing, which I had never we didn’t have back in Ohio.
They had this great idea. It was do what made you happy. We never heard about this back in Ohio. You know, people in those days, you know, people were talking about, oh, society is laying a trip on us. It’s really repressive, you know.
We I gotta be myself. I gotta do my thing. And and thought I was the one doing my thing, you know. I didn’t what’s all this social pressure business that people keep talking about? But I began to you know, I wasn’t aware.
Let alone to the extent of the oppression that I was living under. I didn’t even wasn’t even aware that it was there. And so in California, I began to become aware that, well, you know, that I was living my life according to not my own values, not my own thinking and beliefs, but according to values which have been more or less thrust upon me, external values which had which I had been recruited into. And so I thought, like, you know, like like most of the people back then, I gotta be free. You know, I gotta drop out.
Why they turn on drop out? So I grew long hair and a beard and lived up in the mountains of California. And then, you know, I had a busy patch, you know, the whole trip. It was great. But and I thought, I’m free.
This is it. I’ve arrived. But I began to notice that there were times when when I became angry. And I didn’t want to become angry because it it made me suffer. It made me unhappy, but I had no choice in it.
There were times when I became jealous. I didn’t want to become jealous because it made me unhappy, but I didn’t have a choice. There were times when I would had attachment. I didn’t wanna be attached, but I didn’t have a choice. It made me unhappy.
So I began to think, well, you know, know, dropping out of society, running off into the mountains, and being free of these external pressures is not real freedom. And if you real freedom extends far beyond that, becoming free within your own mind, be for free from all these oppressive reoccurring compulsive patterns which exist within her own mind. I think who my my idea of what freedom was all about began to to develop to something. And I began to see that if I was ever really going to be free, it was in terms of my own mind. That I to be free is to be able to get in touch with what is a meaning, what touches you at a very deep level, what what authenticates you as a a very unique, self actualizing human being, and be able to pursue those preferred stories about your life, the way you like to live.
And I couldn’t because these these compulsive neurotic patterns in my mind wouldn’t allow me. They they were as if controlling my life. And if I think the real revolution there that takes place is revolting against the this the inner oppressor of our own mind. So this becomes like the orientation of you know, the the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha. That is the preferred outcome of our of our life.
And the way we begin to actualize that is through the practices which which facilitate this way of life. You know, it’s like overthrowing the the oppressor, the tyrant, which exists within our own mind if we’re ever going to be free. And and reorientating ourselves toward those elements which are going to bring about this overthrow, this revolution of mind. And going for refuge, taking a direction toward those elements, those practices. Those our basic nature, those factors within our own mind which are going to we can begin to enlist in our project of our life, in our own wisdom, our own love, and our own vitality, our own energy.
And enlist those about you, the spiritual community who support you, who authenticate you, and those individuals who who facilitate this process, who like minded individuals who you can share, who teach you, who inspire you, who you can be a guide to and who guide you, and whatever it takes to help another person to their their particular unique story, their preferred story. So this becomes our our orientation. And we continually orientate in ourselves, continually getting back in touch with what is important to me, what has meaning for me, and beginning to develop the to encourage ourselves, inspire ourselves, and arouse the energy to pursue our story. This is our life. You know?
It is our story. And we are the only ones who can live it. And helping others to live their story as they would prefer it. So this becomes our motivation, a direction, some kind of intentionality behind our actions to facilitate this process. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, the Buddha within inside of ourselves, is actualized by means of the Dharma in the social context with spiritual community.
And we try to to raise the level of our motivation such that we’re not doing this just for our own self, for our own solitary peace, for our own solitary welfare, but try to expand our concern to an ever widening circle of others. You know? I can do this for you, and I can begin to do this for you, and you, and you, and many more more and more others. And this becomes our way of life. So this is the reason that we do what we do here, here, and in anything that we do, Getting back in touch to make something meaningful is simply not an academic pursuit.
It’s simply another not a gathering together of more information as if it didn’t have anything to do with one’s life and how it affects one’s life. But it is done because it affects one’s life, because one wants to affect one affect one’s life. To ensure that it does is determined by our motivation, why we’re doing it. So we’re going to we’ll do some meditation together. Okay?
So if you’d like to take a firm but comfortable posture, we’re gonna begin with mindfulness of breathing. And then I’ll I’ll lead you through a a meditation. So I think, you know, you’re all familiar with mindfulness and breathing, just, focusing upon the natural breath without trying to adjust it in any way, and continually bringing the mind in a very gentle, patient manner back to the breath even though it continually wanders, even though it’s continually being distracted. Just like bringing the puppy back to the the newspaper when you’re paper training the puppy. Bringing it gently, very great patience, back to the paper, bringing the mind back to the breath.
Again, again, listen. And then to develop the determination that the moment I become aware, I’m gonna bring my mind back to the breath, but do it without any sense of judgment either as to the content of the of whatever the distraction was or without judgment as to oneself. And if it’s useful using the techniques of of noting, using techniques of counting, and then we’ll do a a I’ll lead you through a meditation together. Okay? Now think of a female who you who you admire, that you respect.
And what is it about her? What quality do you admire and respect so very much? So think of a woman that you admire, that you look up to, that you respect. And what is it about them? What quality?
What characteristic? And then imagine that you yourself have the same quality to the same degree. And imagine to create a situation where you express this quality. So you’re going to play a role. You’re going to assume this quality, this characteristic, and you’re going to express it in an imaginative situation.
Try to feel and express that same quality. And then think of a male who you admire and respect. And what quality, what characteristic about them is it that you admire and respect so much? And then imaginatively assume that quality. Imagine that you yourself have the same characteristic and create a situation where you express, where you feel and express the same quality.
Now think of a significant female in your life, someone who’s important to you. And what is it about you do you think they value? What is it about you that they like so very much? What is important to them about you? And then imagine that this quality that they admire in you, that they value in you, is many, many, many times developed, fully blown, and, again, create a situation where you express this fully developed quality about yourself.
Then think of a male in your life. And what is it about yourself do you think they admire, that they value, that they like about you? What is it? What characteristic? And then imagine this quality is many, many times more developed than at present.
Fully developed. And create a situation where you express this fully developed quality. And then finally, pick up something that you like about yourself, some quality that you admire in yourself. Create an imaginative situation where you express this quality, but now it’s many, many times more developed, fully developed. And feel that and express it in an imaginative situation.
And then bring your mind back to the breath. An easy, gentle, in and out flow of the natural breath. And slowly become aware of your body and your surroundings. Does anybody have any questions about what we covered last week? Do you remember what we covered last week?
Anybody have any questions about that? You know, talking about in terms of practice, the way we can begin to pursue our preferred story from the point of Buddhism at least. And it involves the development of the three fundamentals of the path, developing a determination to awaken, to grow, the awakening heart, opening our hearts to others, cultivating love and compassion, essentially, most simply, and the awakening mind, the, the wisdom, understanding the nature of reality as ultimate, the way things ultimately are, the things about us, ourselves, the person. So the prerequisite, the the starting point is to develop the determination to awaken, to develop some enthusiasm to get unstuck. And this is based upon a deep conviction that we can get unstuck.
As I’ve just mentioned in terms of our Buddha nature or our basic sanity, some kind of some basic goodness about ourselves, some divinity about ourselves, whatever. And so the path begins with developing a faith in ourselves. From the point of view of Buddhism, this is this the working basis for growth, for this process is called Buddha Nature. Some kind of unconditioned goodness. So we’re going to I’m going to talk briefly about about Buddha nature.
As I mentioned previously, Buddha nature is not something which needs to be gotten or needs to be improved. It only needs to be, discovered itself existing within our own minds. You know, the, the only difference between ourselves and a Buddha is that we have certain dysfunctional patterns, certain neurotic compulsive patterns within our mind. Other than that, there’s no difference. If you if you remove these these adventitious patterns from our mind, the patterns which are causing us problems, then we are Buddhas.
There’s no qualitative difference between ourselves and them. You know, the there’s a you know, we have a we have a sense of who we are as being rather perhaps quite insufficient. We don’t have quite what it takes. But this is merely our our conception about ourselves. And we are not our conceptions.
Whatever identity we may hold to, we are not an idea. However however accurate that idea might be, Yours the totality of who we are still extends beyond that. Each of us knows, and I would like to remind you of this, that he or she is really a good person. You have been told you’re not. And in the presence of fresh criticism, you get the feeling you’re not.
But in your hearts of hearts, you know that you’re a good person, that you’ve always done your best. You could. And that is true. Each of us knows that he or she is much smarter than he or she often shows. That she he or she has a lot of intelligence that doesn’t come out in the tensions of the final exam or upsetting situations.
And this is true. I now tell you that this is what you know about yourself is also true of everyone else. This profound knowledge that you’ve hidden to escape ridicule, that you’re a good person, that you’ve always that you always do your best, and that you’re much smarter than you sometimes act or than people think. This is true not only of yourself, but of all others as well. You know, this beginning to believe in ourselves and beginning to believe in the in the goodness of others has a very practical outcome.
And I’d like to read you quite a very beautiful story I like very much. It’s called the rabbi’s gift. The very practical outcome of beginning to adopting such an exceptional attitude towards ourselves. The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order as a result of waves of anti monastic persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth century, all its branch houses were lost and had become decimated to the extent there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house, the abbot and four others.
All over seventy in age, clearly, it was a dying order. In the deep woods surrounding the monastery, there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. Through the many years of prayer and contemplation, the old monks had been become a bit psychic so that they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. The rabbi is in the woods. The rabbi is in the woods again.
They would whisper to one another. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery. The rabbi welcomed the abbot to his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. I know how it is, he exclaimed.
The spirit of has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore. So the abbot and the old man wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things.
The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years, the abbot said. But I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me?
Is there no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order? No. I’m sorry, the rabbi responded. I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the messiah is one of you.
When the abbot returned to the monastery, his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, well, what did the rabbi say? He couldn’t help. The abbot answered. We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say just as I was leaving was something cryptic, was that the messiah was one of us.
I I don’t know what he meant. In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monk pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words. The messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one?
Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes. If he meant anyone, he probably meant father abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant brother Thomas.
Certainly, brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly, he could not have meant brother Elred. Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right, often very right.
Maybe the rabbi did mean brother Elred, but surely not not brother Philip. Philip is so passive, a real nobody. But then almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Philip is the messiah.
Of course, the rabbi didn’t mean me. He couldn’t have possibly meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet, supposing he did, supposing I am the messiah, oh god, not me, I couldn’t be that much for you, could I? As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the messiah.
And off on the off chance that each monk himself might be the messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect. Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to get to go into the dilapidated chapel meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently, to picnic, to play, to pray.
They began to bring their friends to show them this special place, and their friends brought their friends. Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while, one asked if you could join them, then another and another. So within a few years, the monastery had once again become a thriving order. And thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.
So we have to appreciate our own basic goodness and the basic goodness you know, inherent in all people, that there’s some goodness about ourselves, something tremendously sane about us, tremendously sane about our dreams, about who we can become. We all we all know that deep in our hearts of hearts, though we might be afraid to admit it even to ourselves. And the idea about a basic goodness is meant some kind of natural goodness. That that is to say, a goodness which is not conditional, which does not depend upon being any particular way. You know, taking some kind of position, some kind of stance.
It’s not any kind of belief of any kind. It is not something we can contrive to be, not something that we fabricate. And every stance, every posture that we and every belief that we take, that we adopt, identify with, creates some kind of shadow, some kind of inner division in who we are. You know, if we decide to be very good, then we’re going to have to be on guard against being bad. You know, we activate the opposite tendency, as it were.
So this basic goodness is beyond that division and and beyond any trying to be good. This this idea of basic sanity is not a particular stance that creates a shadow. It is, you know, more like the the radiance of the sun, which is unconditional. It shines on everything. You know, beyond all our attempts to be good, beyond beyond the the shadow these attempts create.
Asaṇga, one of the great Buddhist masters, in talking about basic goodness, our Buddha nature, used a series of similes trying to you know, it’s not apparent to ourselves at at present. You know, we we we find it difficult to even imagine who we might be aside from those short glimpses, those possibilities, You know, describing these similes, describing basic goodness. A Buddha in a muddy lotus, honey covered by bees, grain in a husk, gold in a trash heap, treasure hidden beneath the earth, a bean in its pod, a statue wrapped in dirty rags, a future king carried in the womb of an ugly woman. So, you know, trying to get across the idea, trying to you know, that our basic goodness, our brilliant intelligence is often is obscured due to these reoccurring compulsive neurotic patterns, these afflictive emotions within our mind. You know, the It’s very important that we try to appreciate who we really are.
It’s not that we begin to trust in ourselves and our own basic sanity. You know, we cannot, as it were, possess our own basic goodness. We can only act out of it. We can only express it in our life. You know, the the one of the great the great limiting factors of our life is the story that we have told ourselves about ourselves in our life, the limited conceptions that we have about ourselves.
The quoting from Lama Yeshe, who was the founder of Buddha House, and talking about the limited conceptions that we have about ourselves, the main delusion, the problem. What is the problem? It is ordinary recognition that I am poor man, poor woman. Perceiving wholly as poor one, poor object, poor quality, and perceiving also as such poor acting ugly, having lower opinion of our body, lower opinion of our quality. That is the worst symptom to be healthy, to be liberated.
That is the main delusion to eradicate, to cut. As long as you decided, having preconception, that I am the self pitying one, you decided, you already decided that you are the bad guy. You decided already. So when you decided you’re a bad guy, you always do bad actions. Anyway, I’m worthless.
I’m a bad guy. So I do bad one. Of course, that’s the way it is. That’s true. So in this way, our life very much becomes a self defeating, self fulfilling prophecy.
We overlook, we forget, we discount anything which might contradict the predominant patterns, the predominant identity that we hold about ourselves. We set up relationships which seem to confirm our conception of ourselves. You know, someone who has a pattern of I’m not much good is attracted to someone with a pattern, you’re not much good, are you? Or, you know, something like, it’s all my fault type of person kind of is intrigued by someone who has the pattern of it’s all your fault, isn’t it? So it seems as if reality is continually reconfirming who we conceive of ourselves to be.
You know, we we we interpret our reality to reaffirm the sense of identity that that we hold about ourselves. And it’s just like, you know, not too many hundreds of years ago, the people saw the sun revolving around the earth. That’s what they saw. That’s but in in fact, that’s not what they saw. They called in fact, the sun does not revolve around the earth.
But they saw that. That was the belief. And dependence upon that belief, they interpreted their experience to conform with that belief. And they as if saw the sun revolving and bound on earth. And if we interpret all of the preceding actions about us in on the premises of certain beliefs about ourselves, you know, someone who you meet someone and and perhaps they frown.
And it’s not because they have a headache. It’s because disapproving of you. There’s something wrong with myself on the basis of one’s belief about oneself. You know, we we we set up situations which seem to reconfirm ourselves and who we are. There’s a cartoon about the a psychiatrist’s office, and the patient know, getting up off off the off the psychiatric couch and yelling at the at the psychiatrist.
And he’s saying, you know, I can’t understand why nobody likes me. What the hell is the matter with you? You got you got wax in your ears? You know, the way we relate, we can we set up the situations which we confirm our perceptions about ourselves. It seems to affirm the conceptions that we have about ourselves.
So, you know, Buddhism is not asking us to believe in some kind of dogma. It’s but it is asking us to be open to the possibility that we could be mistaken about ourselves. I mean about the basic quality of who or what I am. I am not my self image. I am not any or all the concepts that I have about myself.
I compare myself with the saint, the master, the great musician, the man who knows, the man who has arrived. In this comparison, I find myself wanting and insufficient. I have no talent. I am inferior. I have not realized.
I am not, and that man is. So out of measurement and comparison comes the enormous cavity of emptiness and nothingness. And the flight from this cavity is is fear. And the fear stops us from understanding this bottomless pit. And to a large degree, we have found ourselves wanting, somehow insufficient, unworthy.
All our neurotic needs and dependency patterns arise and we hold to the self image that we have created of ourselves, that we have an has an absolute identity of who we are. And we begin to see ourselves as unable to change. At best, we can make some kind of cosmetic adjustment. But, basically, I am who I am. I don’t quite have what it takes.
And we we are unable to see that that there is the the very basis of changes within our own mind. And the and as I tried to point out, I think it was last week, that that we can begin to to whatever skills that we have and whatever effort we can make, we can begin to shape the nature of our mind, which constitutes our life, that we can make of our mind a majestic sculpture of Michelangelo or we can make of our mind an ashtray. That’s its potential. And we can begin to if we can begin to identify moments in our own lived experience which which are expressions of our own basic goodness, then perhaps we can begin to trust in those more and more, and we we can begin to to live out of those moments. Moments.
But this chance that we have, you know, if we have we have a working basis for transformation, it simply isn’t going to last forever. You know, we’re beginning to appreciate the chance that we do have, that we have all of the external and internal conditions necessary. You know, we have the working basis. And not only do we have the working basis, the main cause for solving our problems, but we have everything that we need, both internally and externally. These are The fulfillment of human life cannot be measured by anything that happens only to the body.
Life is not a matter of physical vigor or health or the capacity to enjoy oneself. What is life? It is something far more than breath in our nostrils, the blood beating in our wrists, the response to physical stimulation. True, all of these things are essential for a full human life, but they do not themselves constitute life in all its fullness. A man can have all this and still be an idiot.
And one who merely breathes and eats and sleeps and works without awareness, without purpose, without ideas of his own is not really a man. Life is life in this purely physical sense is merely the absence of death. Such people do not live. They vegetate. For a man to be alive, he must exercise not only the acts that belong to vegetative and animal life.
He must not only subsist, grow, and be sentient, not only move himself around, feed himself, and the rest. He must carry on activities proper to his own specifically human kind of life. He must, that is to say, think intelligently. And above all, he must direct his actions by free decisions made in the light of his own thinking. These decisions must tend to his own intellectual and moral and spiritual growth.
They must tend to make him more aware of his capacity for knowledge and for free action. They must expand and extend his power to love others and to dedicate himself to their good. For it is in this that he finds his own fulfillment. Man then can only fully be said to be alive when he becomes plainly conscious of the real meaning of his own existence, that is to say, he experiences something of the fullness of intelligence and freedom and spirituality that are actualized within him. You know, that we have to begin to appreciate everything that we have and not to take it for granted.
That We have all of the external and internal conditions where to to live a life to its fullest, to begin to actualize our potential. You know, looking at the world about us, we you know, everyone is special. But within those special people, we are we have exceptional freedoms and fortunes. And and there’s the effect of, for example, in a what if you were in a small village in in Bosnia, a Muslim, could you could we be gathering here in a relaxed manner, talking about these spiritual things? Now what kind of life would you be living if you were living in Bosnia?
What kind of life would you be living if you lived on the streets of Calcutta or if you were a farmer in India and had to work, you know, sixteen hours every day every you know, sixteen hours every day, every day of the week, every day of the month. You know, you come home and you would you be inclined to, you know, to meditate, to study, to to work in communicating and caring with others. What what if your what if your life was full of if if you were carried away with power, with all you know, that all you could think of was status or money, you know, bigger, better, more, that that your all of your energy, all of your time, all of your attention are simply directed toward gathering together more materials, material wealth, material possessions, to gaining power and status. If you were undergoing, in terms of inner possibilities, undergoing chemotherapy, undergoing where the mind was unclear, if you were an ad actively addicted to some alcohol, to drugs, if you had some kind of intellectual handicap. You know, that we are free of all of these these these obstructions, these hindrances.
And and there aren’t that many people in the world who are in such a situation. But if we look at it in a positive fashion, that we live in a a really free society where all our material needs are easily met, that we have a high affluent, you know, affluent society, that we have the pleasures and freedoms whereby we can pursue any of our intellectual creative interests quite easily and readily, that we live in a free society where we where we aren’t oppressed. We have we feel a sense of security and safety, that we can think about other things and their necessities. We have we have freedom from we all are generally healthy. We have some caring.
We have we’re intelligent, and we have some interests. So all of this taken together is extremely rare. And it’s important that we simply don’t take it for granted, that we have the working basis, that there’s something within us which can act as a basis for transformation, that’s basic goodness, and that we have all the external and internal conditions whereby to begin to actualize. That is to say, to begin to solve our problems and to be the type of person that we want to be. But this situation is not going to last forever.
It’s definite that we’re going to die. And, you know, whether we don’t even have to talk about the big death at the end of this life. You know, someone I don’t know if I mentioned this last week, but someone mentioned that has said that life is a radical change of life style. Death is a radical change of lifestyle. But we go through these these little deaths.
You know, maybe not the big death at the end of this life, but we go through radical changes of lifestyle due the death of a loved one, for example, or separation and divorce, loss of a job. There’s a lot of people going through a lot of radical changes in lifestyle. What that is the we begin to see whether we’re going to be passengers in life or whether they’re going to take control of our life. And whether we we are we life drags us into change or whether we invite change voluntarily. We enter into into change.
Other there’s going to be change. That’s the only constant in life, is change. And how are we going to relate with change? What type of attitude are we going to work with change? So It’s very much dependent upon the attitude, the karma that we’re building up, these belief systems that we’re working with.
So it’s definite that we’re going to die, but the time of our death is uncertain. We’re going to talk about this next week, beginning to appreciate our life while we still have it. You know, the idea of contemplating terminal issues, the ideas around death, is that we begin to make use of our life, that we don’t allow it to be wasted while we still have it. To begin to appreciate our life, we begin to look at death. We still have some time.
We have to, you know, begin to be the sequence of reflections and understandings around developing the determination to be free. First, developing some some belief in ourselves that we have the working basis for change, that we have all the external and internal conditions necessary for change, and that we have to begin to bring about this change because we’re not always always going to have this chance that we presently have. We’re gonna continue. Does anybody have any questions about anything that anything that we’ve been talking about or anything they’d like to bring up? Yeah.
Yeah. How did people in the cross family take were they going when you rejected some of their values? Oh, I know. Well, I mean, I I I went through a divorce and I moved to California. And then, yeah, and then as I mentioned, I began to think, you know, I I my own personal experience was that I I got to a point where I was either going to go back to the university or I mean, that option was open to me.
Didn’t know what I wanted in life. I began to think it was quite meaningless to go to the university and put all the time and energy into when I didn’t know what I wanted. So I thought, well, I’ll I’ll go to Europe. I’ll find myself in Europe, you know, find the meaning of life in Europe. So I went to Europe, traveled around Europe, traveled around North Africa.
And then I went to traveled overland to India and traveled, you know, just a tourist, around India and Sri Lanka and Nepal. It was quite in in in Sri Lanka. And this was about twenty years ago. Back then Sri Lanka was something of a paradise. It was a very special place.
It’s been lost, I’m afraid, in the last four or five years. There and I remember there are many old Buddhist ruins in Sri Lanka. You know, I remember walking, and I wasn’t into Buddhism at that time. And I remember walking in in in the in the woods, coming in, you know, there was this old dilapidated wall wall and coming around the other side of this stone dilapidated wall. And then there was a stone image of of a Buddha.
You know, it’s quite broken with age. It was overgrown with vines and hidden partially hidden by bushes, but and it had this kind of quality about it. And I don’t know, just a common stone image, but it had a a timeless quality. Like, it had been there waiting for millions and millions of years, waiting to be rediscovered. It had terribly with great patience sitting there with its timeless patience waiting to be rediscovered.
And it occurred to me sometime later that Arthur C. Clarke, who was the author of first the first the the movie and then the the book two thousand one, which I had just seen. It was I think it came out in about nineteen seventy one, the movie two thousand one, had written the the the movie and, I guess, the book also, and while he was in Sri Lanka. And I don’t know if you remember the movie very well, but it it sort of traced the evolution of humankind through its stages, you know, from somewhat primitive beings, you know, ape like creatures through humanoids and outward into kind of a cosmic consciousness kind of quality of that. And in each of these great leaps in consciousness in the evolution of the humankind was associated with these large monoliths, these huge black pillars.
That one of these were always present when there was these great leaps in the evolution of humankind. And it occurred to me that I’m getting way off the subject on it. It occurred to me that perhaps Arthur C. Clarke and why he was in Sri Lanka came upon one of these stone images of the Buddha, you know, overgrown with weeds and hidden by bushes and vines. You know, it’s like and the notion that the the sense that it evokes in me is that, you know, that there it’s as if a Buddha was inside of ourselves that’s been patiently with infinite with infinite patience been waiting to be rediscovered.
And that it’s been overgrown with the the bushes of our attachment and the the vines of our hatred and the weeds of our of our jealousy. And all of these are very specific emotions covered over and to trying to to rediscover what has always been there, patiently waiting. So went So this was the kind of the image that presented to me. And there was never sort of an act of think an act of throwing off of values. I think it was just getting in touch with my own values.
I guess that’s the point I’m making. Something that that resonated with me rather than reacting to externals, beginning to respond to something inside myself, which Oh. So which became an important motivating force in my life. I guess that’s what I was trying to get at somewhere. I don’t know if that’s so there there I mean, by this time, I think my mother had died.
And my my father died when I was very young. So there was there was not much reaction from my family. There’s a verse by e e Cummings. To be nobody else — the greatest battle that we have to fight, and we have to fight it every day of our lives is to be nobody else in a world which is day and night trying to make you everybody else. So I think that’s quite true.
Trying to be something other than normal is quite a battle, to be nobody else but yourself. Because we’re, to a large degree, out of touch with who we are, what we feel. And this, you know, I said at the very initial part, the very beginning of of the talk, is what we do in setting our motivation, trying to get back in touch with what I want, what feels right for me. That seems like the not a very important necessity in life if if we’re ever going to lead to some kind of way of life to get in touch with what I really want. I mean, I I’m astounded how little I understand for myself.
You know? When I people sometimes people ask me questions. I can I say I can put together nice words, I think, quite frequently? And think it sounds very logical and legitimate, satisfying. But how much do I actually know of what I say?
And how much is my own experience, you know, working out of my own beliefs, understanding very little. Very little. And I think that’s part of our work is to find out what we actually know, whatever we actually feel. I don’t know. I’m digressing, I guess.
Sorry about that. Then I have a question or a comment. Is there anything that you’d like to share? India at present moment and how he actually was one person made the comment that we believe that in India a lot of the people are very poor people, materialistic. But then again they’re extremely wealthy as far as the spirit is concerned.
But when I look at all the various problems they have there, with Krishna and Hinduism and all the various problems, even going back to Mahatma Gandhi and further back from that again, they even brought Buddha and Akbar the Great, who was a mogul, started thinking on the Buddhist path about killing, etc. What I find very difficult is when these people are so spiritually minded and it showed a pilgrimage to river Ganges of a million people, roughly. Yeah. Yet they find it within themselves, even though they might spend their entire savings going on this pilgrimage. And they find it very hard to come to terms with accepting their fellow man in the name of whatever religion they happen to be practicing.
So is it that wealthy, really, to them, in spirit so to speak, as was written in this documentaries and this documentaries? I have a suspicion that this is the romantic notion that this document this person who made this documentary, and I don’t I I think it’s just romantic notion. I don’t think it’s true. Because you would have seen a lot of what was happening there. I don’t.
Yeah. People would like to believe that, but I don’t think it’s the case. Predominantly Buddhist. But, I mean, we we can’t I mean, yeah, we we it’s quite easy to go to another culture and romanticize it or have some ideas about it without actually looking at what is happening, I think. See, if that’s the case, looking at it politically, there’s a lot of killing and destructive destruction going on there.
So if they are predominantly Buddhist, are they really practicing, so to speak? I do. This is another misconception, I think, that, you know, the popular the popular the the average Buddhist is no better than the average Christian. We just don’t happen to see the average Buddhist in this country. We see the atypical Buddhist.
And we don’t so, I mean, there’s a lot of nasty Buddhists in Thailand and Cambodia and the like in Tibet, you know. And, yeah, a popular version of the religion. So I I don’t think you can. Yeah. Yeah.
That’s the reality of the situation. The one thing perhaps I I would have to kinda amend that to saying that there’s never been a holy war fought in the name of Buddhism that I know of. No. So that’s one thing that’s one thing we can say in its favor. But the popular version of any religion is is not particularly doesn’t quite often doesn’t have any connection with the what would the actual teaching of of the founder of that religion.
Popular version of Christianity and how it’s used for political purposes and social control is not hasn’t had anything to do with Christ. I don’t wow. Yeah. Sure. It’s probably Tibetan Buddhism.
Tibetan Buddhism. It’s not too strained. No. I think the Buddhism of Tibet was it is quite well preserved. I think.
In a way in a way, we can it’s somewhat incorrect to call it Tibetan Buddhism because it is it’s Indian Buddhism. But it was preserved in Tibet. I think in my studies in India, all of our I went to a school called the Buddhist School of Dialectics for nine years. Sometimes it’s called the Buddhist School of Dialectics. We used to we would study a we’d have a lecture for an hour and a half each day, and then we would spend we’d have two we’d have two debate sessions, usually lasting about an hour and a half each session, where we debate upon the subject, we’d argue about it.
Sometimes these arguments would get very, very, rather dramatic. So that’s where it got us named Buddhist School of Dialectics. People would jump up and down and throw their clothes around and scream and shout. But the point I’m trying to get at is everything that we studied had its source. The source text, the original text was always an Indian text.
It wasn’t a Tibetan text. We would study commentaries, explanations, which were made by Tibetans about those Indian texts. But the root text, fundamental text that we were studying, whatever the subject was, was always Indian Buddhism, was always from India. So in a way, what is being presented here is the distillation of of Indian Buddhism as it was preserved in Tibet, and I’m westernizing it. Hopefully, I’m not losing I’m not misleading anybody in too much, but I think it’s trying to communicate to make it relevant.
I do that. I don’t know if that makes any sense. Yeah. So it’s it’s going through. It’s come a long way to get to here tonight.
Is is this what is everyone finding this somewhat useful? I don’t know. Mean, I I tried to make it transparent. I do, you know, there’s no expert knowledge. I don’t have any expert knowledge.
I have everyone has some particular knowledge which is we can share, which is quite useful. It comes out of their own experience and information that they’ve been exposed to. I don’t have any access to some kind of expert knowledge which you you don’t you don’t have access to. So there’s nothing there’s nothing which is going on which isn’t I’m not trying to make apparent. These are very you know, I I’m trying to explain things in in perhaps terms which maybe you can relate with, but there’s no Buddhism other than what we’re talking about as far as Tibetan Buddhism.
There’s not some this isn’t kind of a front for something else that’s going on behind. What you see is what you get or something something like that. I don’t know if that makes all makes sense. Don’t know. Because, like, sometimes I’m quite interested in psychotherapy.
And sometimes the psychotherapist will take a stance that he has some special knowledge that isn’t available to the client, and it becomes something of a power struggle situation. And this I don’t feel, is this isn’t doing justice to the client. So, likewise, I don’t feel that there’s no special knowledge that is being withheld, that somehow that you’re not one down. We’re just sharing information together. And these things I I have found useful in my life.
And I I mean, it’s I think the person presenting them should in my case, I don’t I know I don’t know very much, and I haven’t understood very little. I’ve understood very little, but someone like our teacher, Geshe-la Thubten Loden, his very presence, views what is being said with a certain power just by who he is and what he what he stands for. It’s just that it probably has more impact upon our minds. But still, I mean, I think it’s relevant and it can be of use to share this kind of knowledge in this way. Anything else you’d to talk about?
Okay. Let me Just to mention that next week, one of the senior students, Judy Perkins, will give a talk on women women in Buddhism. So I think you’ll find that very useful and and interesting. And so I even though it’s a holiday, we’re gonna have we’ll have a class anyway. Okay?
So everything women in Buddhism. So we are having developed some sort of positive motivation, hopefully, and then we some kind of activity of listening and discussing. And then we bring that kind of that act to consummation. We kinda bring it to an end by dedicating, giving it some kinda energy the positive energy, the greater potential that we develop, that power, some direction. And, you know, we we have various formal ways of dedicating.
But, you know, if each of us can, in our own hearts, dedicate some kind of the positive energy that we’ve created in gathering here tonight towards some sort of worthwhile end, I think that would be a good dedication. So whatever it might be, the peace in the world or or the or the well-being of a loved one, whatever it might be, something something worthwhile, just dedicating for a moment within our own hearts. Thank you. So see you soon. Okay?
Good night.