Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun — an English teacher to adult migrants — grounds Lama Zopa’s text Utilizing Happiness and Suffering in the Mahāyāna Path in strikingly ordinary life: a workplace repainting dispute, a cold alarm at 6am, running out of milk before work. She walks through four points from the text: suffering and happiness arise from the mind; desire and attachment generate daily friction; problems can be willingly embraced as growth; and thought transformation removes our disturbance by problems, not the problems themselves. Her language-teaching background supplies a clean analogy — coerced, instrumental, and integrative motivation for learning — applied to compassion practice. The session closes with Śāntideva verses, a passage from Sogyal Rinpoche on taking-and-giving, small-group reflection, and a meditation on self-centeredness as the root of suffering.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 HoM 1993 08 04.mp3
UUID: f034126d-49a3-43d3-9068-ceb24ad823c8
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-08-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.1 minutes
Words: ~6,480
Okay. Well, I’m happy to be getting this daunting process underway. We’ve been basing this, this day on a text, by Lama Zopa called utilizing happiness and suffering in the Mahāyāna path. And we’d hoped to have the book here that so that you could, read it yourselves. But, unfortunately, it’s being reprinted and not available just at the moment.
But we will give you some excerpts from it to take away at the end of the day. So what I what I did this morning was read through that short text and pick out some of the points that, I thought were important for me to think about and to think about in terms of, what I was trying to do, how I was trying to change at this point. And I was looking at it in terms of the, threefold process of, first of all, reading or listening to something and then reflecting on it. And I think for me, that’s the biggest part of it that, the reflection is, takes a lot more time than than the other two. And then thirdly, meditating on it.
But I find that when I I’ve been reading and listening and practicing Buddhism for several years now, and I can read through this text and think, Suff you know, I read suffering and happiness come from our own mind. Oh, yes. Of course. I know that. And I’ve heard it so many times that it’s a very it’s become a very familiar, thought to me.
But, in fact, that’s very it’s very superficial, and it does me no good at all just to read through it in that way. So I try every time I when I’m reading something and I come across something that seems important to me, I try and go back and read it afresh as if I’m reading it for the first time, as if I’ve never heard it before. So what I’m going to do first is just to, pick out some of those statements and just talk about how I thought of them in terms of my life at this moment. And a lot of what I’m going to say is going to be about my working life because it’s been preoccupying me a lot lately. I’ve been I feel it’s a very demanding job.
It takes up a lot of my time and my energy and my thought. And I’m aware that I’m that I have to put it more in perspective and try and get some more balance into my life in that area. So the first thing, was that suffering and happiness come from our own mind. And Jampa’s already talked about that this morning. But I, I was thinking about it.
At work, we’re being repainted and recarpeted at the moment. And it was supposed to be done at Christmas time, and we had to pack up, everything we have. I thought I probably should say that I I teach English to adult migrants, and I have where I work, I have a desk, and I have some bookshelves with full of books, and I have a filing cabinet that’s with every drawer full of files and papers. And we had to pack up everything, before Christmas and put it into boxes. And when we came back after Christmas, it hadn’t been done, so we unpacked everything again.
Then a short time ago, we were told that it was going to be done again, and we had to pack it up. We have to do this while we’re teaching and, while we’re doing all the other thing extra things that have been put upon us lately. It was kinda interesting for me to look at how different people, including myself, reacted to what was being asked of us. And a lot of people, became very angry. You know?
There were meetings about it. You know? We can’t we put it off till, you know, some other holidays? Can’t we do this? Can’t we do that?
And it’s gonna cause us so many problems. And reacted to it, and the whole thing became a very painful process, and there was a lot of unhappiness. But some people, probably the people who are don’t work full time and don’t aren’t quite so involved in it, saw it as, you know, a great thing. You know, last, were going to be repainted. New carpet.
You know, the old one is terrible. Clearing out all our desks and files means that we can throw away all the rubbish that we’ve been accumulating over many years. So some people saw it in a very positive light. And it brought home to me, you know, the same how the same situation can seem so different to different people and was really a great cause of suffering to some. And to others, it was wasn’t really important.
And yet to others, it was seen as something positive. And I think I went through all all three of those. And so but we’re still in the middle of it at the moment. The second thing that I read in here was that anger and desire and attachment cause us suffering, and we can have no peace while we’re under the influence of these emotions. And I thought, well, you know, I’m not a very I don’t have a lot of desires and attachments.
I’m not a very materialistic person when I look around at what I see on TV and what I see around. But when I thought about just one morning from getting up and going to work, I could see how, my desire for things and my attachment to them caused me quite a or could cause me quite a lot of unhappiness. So when I I get up and my alarm goes off at six o’clock, and I didn’t you know, sometimes don’t get to bed till pretty late, and I it’s cold, and I don’t want to get up. And all I want is just to be able to stay in bed another half hour or fifteen minutes, you know, turn over and go back to sleep. So I have this torment of having to get out of bed in a cold and go and, you know, get on with things.
Or alternatively, I can, you know, turn over and wait till somebody comes in and says, you know, time to get up. And in that case, I get up, and I’m rushed and, you know, have to get school lunch is ready, and I don’t make a very nice lunch, or they have to make it themselves or they have to take money because we’re too late. And I set off to work feeling, me and everybody else, feeling rushed and busy and really not in a very good frame of mind to start the day. Or I might get up and make a cup of tea, which is the first thing I do, and there’s no milk. So it can ruin my whole morning if I can’t have a cup of tea.
And then I go, and the toothpaste has run out. So I how can I go to work without cleaning my teeth? You know? All these things, maybe I’ll buy some on the way to work or, you know, why didn’t so so get it at the supermarket? And then I go to put some washing on and to wash some clothes, and I find that I can’t get the washing machine to start.
And, you know, again, look. This stuff has to be washed because it’s soccer practice for the children. They have to have their clothes washed, and what’s gonna cause me another series of headaches. So although I’d never you know, I got be tired, and they won’t be able to do anything properly. They go to school so that they can learn things, and they’ll be able to be much more effective and get a good job and to help the rest of society.
And I thought that if he’d asked, a group of adults that, you know, we would have had lots of glib answers, and we might have come up with the same answer, but we may not have actually thought through it for ourselves. The other thing that came to mind when I was thinking about this was being a language teacher. There are said to be three types of motivation for learning a language. The first one is because you’re made to. That would be learning French at school.
You’re told to do it. You have no choice. You would never do the homework if you weren’t going to be punished in some way for not doing it. And there’s no pleasure in it. It it’s just a very it’s very artificial.
There’s no deep knowledge. It’s just question of parroting off answers because you have to. And the second type of motivation is called instrumental, and that is if you need language to accomplish something. For example, a businessman who wants to do trade with other countries, or you’re going to Japan for holiday and you want to be able to say a few words of Japanese, or you want to read Buddhist texts in their originals so you learn Tibetan language. And the third type of motivation is called integrative.
And that would be, for example, a migrant coming to Australia who knows very well that if they don’t learn English and learn it very well, indeed, they won’t be they won’t be happy here. They won’t be able to get a good job. They won’t be able to make friends with Australian people, and in particular, to make, you know, deep friendships. They won’t understand the culture. They’ll find things around them very confusing.
They won’t be able to understand jokes and all the things that make life rich and meaningful. So I thought this could be said in the same way for helping others, that we have been told, know, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal. We’ve told that if you do this, there’ll be punishment, like, come going to hell or, in the Buddhist texts, you know, that you’ll be reborn in the hell realm, and you’ll suffer the experiences yourself in the future. And it’s not a very, say, a very authentic way of, being kind and compassionate. Or we can see that we should be benefiting others because it’s going to get us somewhere.
That, it’s said in Buddhist teachings that if we behave with compassion, we will receive kindness in return. If we are generous, we will, in the future, get the benefits of that generosity. But I thought the the third motivation somehow when, the thought of benefiting others becomes so much a part of our being that, like learning a language, we don’t just go to the class and go home, pack our books away and leave them. We take every opportunity to enrich our lives through language and to learn the language, and that we can take every opportunity to think of benefiting others, to do what we can, and to integrate it completely into all of our thought processes, into all of our words and into all of our actions. And that can be a very, enriching and meaningful experience and really imbue our whole life with meaning.
So the next statement that I thought about was that we should generate the thought which likes experiencing problems. We should want to have problems, and it seems a bit contradictory. But I thought, in fact, we do this anyway, although we don’t realize it. We, all of us, take what are what could be considered as problems voluntarily. And I think if, when we decided to have children, we want think we’d like to have a baby.
If we thought about all the problems and the difficulties that we were going to experience, we’d probably never have one. You know, if we thought about the sleepless nights, the worry and the heartache, You know, the going over to your baby’s cot and peering over to see if they’re still breathing and that kind of heart stopping moment when you think they might not be. And all the times throughout their childhood when they’re a bit late at home or they’re sick or they’re going through a lot of difficulties at school. But we take on these things voluntarily and with joy. We don’t see these things as a problem.
We see them as part of the whole joyful experience of having children. I I used to teach learners who came to Australia with, no English at all. And besides that, they were often not literate in, our alphabet and sometimes not even literate in their own language. And this made their progress very slow, and it demanded a lot of kind of nontraditional type of teaching. And I did that for several years, I became very, I think, quite skillful at it, and I enjoyed it very much.
And I got a lot of rewards from relationships that I made with those students, and it became quite very easy and very comfortable. But I decided to move to a different program and to move to a program which was students who already had a high level of English, who were very well educated, who came to Australia with, you know, very high expectations of what they were going to do. They just you know, they need to spend a bit of time learning English, then they could get back to their jobs and get on with their lives, you know, interesting, meaningful jobs. And, of course, that doesn’t happen, and there are a lot of frustrations and unhappiness. And the type of student means that they’re very demanding.
They know exactly what they want. They’ve had lots of education. They know what they expect, what they expect from a teacher, what they expect from learning a language. They’re desperate to improve their English immediately. So there is a lot of pressure.
It’s a very interesting structure to the programme, which is very demanding as well in terms of time and effort and developing materials and resources and methodology. So I decided to move to this program because because of the problems that I would, come across, because I wanted to develop my skills. I wanted a challenge. I wanted something that I would really have to think about and mull over. I knew there’d be lots of things that I found very difficult and that I would have to do much more work than I was doing before.
But I, you know, I wanted to do it very much, and I and I enjoy it very much, although it’s I do find it extremely demanding. And I think that this is the same as when we’re trying to work through the Buddhist teachings and put them into practice. Seem very it’s a challenge and it can be difficult at times. It means we have to make changes in our lives. It means we have to act in a different way.
But the growth that we expect from it and the difference that we know that it will make to our lives and that we can see it making to our lives as we practice, we don’t see it as a problem. We see all those things as something that’s part of a growth process and an enrichment. So I thought maybe I could try and expand this and try and think of other things, that I now see as problems in a different way, try and embrace them as challenges to be taken up as part of my growth. And the last thing that I thought a lot about was that by practicing thought transformation, we don’t stop experiencing problems. We’re just no longer disturbed by them.
And I could see that that had been happening to some extent in my life. Things that, you know, ten years ago would have seemed big problems now seem minor problems or not even problems at all. But I think that at times, have expected that thing that there would no longer be so many problems. And I’ve had to go through and remember that, developing and growing and changing doesn’t mean that the world is going to change. It’s just my mind.
And that when I change for the better, the more I change, the more I develop my wisdom, the more I develop my compassion, that the way I relate to the world will seem more interesting. There’ll be more joy, and there’ll be more feeling of satisfaction and peace. So those are the things that I took from the text and thought a lot about. So that’s my reading and then reflection. But and then when it comes to meditation, I think I need inspiration because, getting up at six o’clock every morning on these dark winter mornings is not always very attractive, and I need something to inspire me.
So I, I read quite a bit, and I read I have favorite passages that I that inspire me again and again no matter how many times I read them. And I’d like to read something that I like very much. It comes from the book, the Bodhicaryāvatāra. It has now just a few verses from it. May the pain of every living creature be completely cleared away.
May I be the doctor and the medicine, and may I be the nurse for all sick beings in the world until everyone is healed. May a rain of food and drink descend to clear away the pain of thirst and hunger, and during the eon of famine, may I myself change into food and drink. May I become an inexhaustible treasure for those who are poor and destitute. May I turn into all the things they need, and may these be placed close beside them. May I be savior of those without one, a guide for all travelers on the way.
May I be a bridge, a boat, and a ship for all who wish to cross the water. May I be an island for those who seek one and a lamp for those desiring light. May I be a bed for all who wish to rest and a slave for all who want a slave. Just like space and the great elements such as earth, may I always support the life of all countless creatures. And until they pass away from pain, may I also be the source of life for all the realms of varied beings that reach unto the ends of space.
So I find that, having some, special, passages that I read, particularly at the start of a meditation session, are very helpful to kind of switch me off from my, self grasping, self-cherishing attitude and to try and redirect my thoughts. The other thing is that, the practice that we’re going to be doing later called taking and giving. I come across a lot of a lot of, suffering. So I have there are people who, at the moment, who are coming from Bosnia and Serbia, and they’re arriving arriving here, having left all the troubles there, and having left behind family and friends still in that situation. And the suffering that they that they’re experiencing is almost, you know, beyond my imagination.
And there are people who have suffered, torture in their countries before they came here. There are boat people who had to cross the sea and go through all the difficulties of pirates and drowning, seeing their friends raped or drowned or killed. There’s somebody this week who said his mother had just died the night before over the other side of the world, and he was not able to to be there with her and with the family at this time. And I feel very inadequate, and I I just don’t you know, I I know that I don’t have, any way to express, my sorrow and my sadness that they’re suffering. But I find that if I, if I go home and I do this practice of taking and giving and thinking of a particular individual that I know at the moment is suffering, I find that the next time I meet that person, I’m much more able to be open to their suffering and to respond to them, in a, you know, in a more compassionate way.
And then I did have a very nice quote somewhere about yes. This is from, the book called the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. And he says, When you feel yourself locked in upon yourself, taking and giving opens you to the truth of the suffering of others. When your heart is blocked, it destroys those forces that are obstructing it. And when you feel estranged from the person who is in pain before you, or bitter or despairing, it helps you to find within yourself and then to reveal the loving, expansive radiance of your own true nature.
So that last thought is what I am aiming at when I practice, the giving and taking meditation at home and using it with very specific individuals. So that’s that’s all I have to say. If anybody has any questions now, or we could split straight into groups. I think it’s about finish the half hour. The questions that I thought, could be discussed in the in the groups were how do we at the moment take on problems willingly?
And maybe problems should be in inverted commas because we may not see them as problems. So how do we at the moment willingly take on difficulties and, yeah, difficult situations, knowing that it will be of benefit to us? And the other thing would be how you know, do we realize do we really know that problems come from our own mind, or do are we still are we do we blame everything outside of ourselves for what happens? So what do you think? Should we Yeah.
Split up? I think, anybody just, count off. It’s quite interesting that that we can how insightful everyone is that I found in our in our group around the nature of their problems. But it was also mentioned that having these insights quite often doesn’t translate in to the into practice in in actually in dealing with difficult situations and emotional emotion emotionally packed circumstances that we somehow all these theories kind of fly out the window. And then we end up with problems and suffering.
We don’t, oftentimes don’t act in our what we know is our, in our own best interest or how we might be able to deal with the problem situation might more skillfully from it. But I think sometimes we overlook the way we do impact upon situations in a in a really, a skillful way. We are for various reasons, we quite often focus on what we do wrong then as opposed to what we do right. And over time, I think it’s useful to to emphasize what what we are doing right, the skills that we are developing, and the way that we are changing. So we’re looking at, in terms of the nature of our problems.
And, I think becoming aware of them is the first step. I I think it’s quite necessary. And I think this awareness in itself, now I think there’s a basic sanity about this and, the very awareness of the nature of, of the reality of our situation helps us to to, avail ourselves of our resources, helps our basic sanity to bring to bear upon solving some of our problems. So I think, you know, even in our discussions, though they may appear somewhat theoretic, you know, we have to to see if they agree with our reasoning, but also within our experience. And I think this information, I think, is the first step.
As as Judy pointed out, in the process of change, I think the there’s a threefold method or activity. And the first of these is listening. So it’s simply, you know, getting some information, some kind of, new information that might make a difference in the way that you begin to view problems, a difference which begins to make a difference. And then beginning to reflect upon it, consider it for yourself. How does it relate to your own experience?
Is it true? Is my method of analysis? Is that, is that mistaken or is it true? Am I looking to the situation and these methods and the information I’m gathering together, in a realistic light? Am I or am I just looking at it in my old preconceived terms?
Am I, contaminating whatever it is I’m hearing? Begin to reflect in that on the in that terms. And then finally, which is meditation is actually doing what it whatever it is. The actual practicing, you know, rather than thinking about love being loving, we actually be love or, whatever it might be. thinking about, rather than thinking about seeing problems as a as a challenge, actually, experiencing them as challenge, you know, re the actual practice of reframing.
So in we’re looking at the one of our most basic problems is from the point of view, of you know, I I hopefully, I think Buddhism is is a description of a of a of a reality. But we have to check up on that. But from that, you know, we have two basic problems or two basic areas to the self. The the our experiential self, that privately inner world inner lived world, which isn’t accessible to others, but also, our social self, that aspect of our self which exists in relationship to others. And so if our whole life is spent in one way or another, whether it be even in terms of spiritual means, also in material means, simply trying to fulfill, gain some kind of pleasure for our inner lived experience, then we are missing this would be, at best, the falling to the extreme of individualism, seeing oneself as an isolated ego divorced from the world about oneself.
And in the end, it can’t work because we exist in interdependence with others. And that a holistic approach to the problem solving problems of life is in terms of both one’s inner lived experience, but also it has to be done these solutions that we come up with, the way that we seek to remedy the difficult situations has to be done in the context of a social awareness. How it’s how it affecting the people in the world about us, that we live, that, the ecology of the problem. And so, one of one of our obstructions to our social awareness, we, you know, where we completely close in our own problems, this claustrophobic narrow prison in which we usually confine ourselves in, is this quality of self-centeredness. The seeking happiness, seeking to solve one’s problems at the expense and exclusion of others.
Seeing others as mere things as as if we could as there’s a sense about it that we could we could find happiness completely for ourselves, and the others could be about us in could be in complete pain. And still, somehow, we could experience pleasure while the world about us was in turmoil, while the world about us was in pain. There’s a sense I mean, that’s the basic logic. It’s distorted logic, but there is a kind of logic to that. But in fact, it doesn’t work.
And beginning to see the disadvantages of our self centeredness, the advantages of others’ advantages of other-centeredness. And the important thing, and I think this was brought up in our discussion, is that pleasure and pain take priority over logic. Pleasure and pain take priority over our logic. And we can think intellectually, and it’s quite useful to do that, to consider these rationally, the advantages of, other centeredness, the disadvantages of self centeredness. But it’s quite necessary to see within our own lived experience where the payoff is, where the pleasure lies, where the pain lies.
If we don’t do that, then there’s probably never going to be at best, our understanding will bring about some superficial change. It will never begin to we are always acting in our own self best interests at some degree. What we hope is our own self best interests. And we have to begin to examine whether, in fact, it’s our methods are working, whether there’s actual payoff in our lives. We We want pleasure.
We don’t want pain. This is quite right. There’s nothing wrong with this approach to life. It’s just our methods that we’re implementing to find, to set our goals and to achieve those goals, are they bringing the payoff? Are they actually bringing pleasure?
Are they helping us to solve pain, to eliminate pain? Maybe there’s another way than the one that we’ve been using up to now. We we view everything and everyone in terms of how it relates to myself. I’ll read a quotation by Lama Yeshe. Know, look, trying to see within our own lived experience the disadvantages of self centeredness, the advantages of other centeredness.
So the, you know, if you present the reality of our situation clearly to one’s own mind then the very we don’t then the very nature of our of our situation, that our basic sanity is going to lead it. You know, we don’t have to force ourselves to be happy. I I think sometimes we are overlooked at. That’s It’s almost a simple minded thought that you don’t have to force yourself to seek pleasure. You don’t have to force yourself to move away from pain.
And even a single celled organism, amoeba, moves away from that which has approach avoidance reactions. So if we can if our conception of happiness, to the degree that our conceptions about happiness correspond with reality, to that same degree we’re going our expectations will be fulfilled. We’re going to find the pleasures and fulfillment that we’ve been looking for, to that same degree that our conceptions about what is pleasure and what are pain do not correspond to our to the actual situations, the actual reality in which we’re living. To that same degree, our expectations will never be fulfilled. We’re always going to experience some some disappointment, some fresh some frustration, some dissatisfaction.
So, you know, if we can if we can provide our our minds with the with what is representation, with, what is actually going on in the real world, this divorce of our misconceptions and and our our distortions about it, then our basic sanity is going to help us to lead it. We’ll begin to tend naturally toward those ways of being, those ways of interacting, those conducts, which are going to deliver the happiness that we want. And they’re going to move us away quite naturally in our behavior, in our ways of relating, in our ways of thinking from those ways in which we see as, against our self interest. We don’t have to this is a natural recognition process which we can rely upon. So beginning to see what works in my lived experience outside of beyond all dogma, beyond all doctrine, beyond all intellectual, conception.
What actually is making me happy? What actually is making me suffer? Seeing the recognition of our problems in our own unique lived experience, then our basic sanity can lead us to the solution, to a very profound solution. As long as we remain so tightly focused upon our happiness, whether temporal or ultimate, we will never experience the expansiveness of a truly open heart. The only way to achieve the total vision of complete enlightenment is to be free from the restriction of this narrow self-cherishing attitude In the teachings of all the highly evolved men and women of the past, it is clearly stated that this narrow self-cherishing habit of mind brings us nothing but spiritual suffocation.
If we truly wish to fulfill our highest potential, or even if we only want to achieve a certain mundane satisfaction in our daily life, then we must overcome the self-cherishing and dedicate ourselves as fully as possible to the welfare of others. This is the only way to achieve complete open heart, the only way to experience lasting happiness. Dedication simply means that having created a certain atmosphere of positive energy within yourself, you determine to share this happiness with others as much as possible. According to Buddhist psychology, if you do not have a dedicated attitude, to some extent, you will never be totally satisfied. Instead, you will remain bored and lonely.
As the Pänchen Lama says in his tantric text entitled Offering to the Spiritual Master, self-cherishing is the cause of all misery and dissatisfaction while holding all mother sentient beings nearer than oneself is the foundation of all realization and knowledge. Therefore, inspire me to change myself, cherishing into concern for all others. So, you know, what we’re what we’re talking about is not some complex philosophical theory. It’s trying to perhaps make a very simple statement about our life, about what it means, about what is actually happening in our lives. And to find some, even if only a slight crack in this, in the walls of our ego-centered cells that we live in.
You know, we have to if we can just create some inkling of a doubt that perhaps our self centered approach is not in our own self best interests. That we maybe we there’s a there’s a more wise way to be selfish, to get the happiness that we want. Quoting from the the book that Judy was quoting from Utilizing Problems: Happiness and Suffering in the Mahāyāna Path by Lama Zopa. However, the essential thing is whatever problems arise, to be aware every time immediately that all these problems come from your selfish mind. This problem is given to me by my self-cherishing thought.
Every time, immediately try to recognize this evolution. As long as you put all the blame outside, there is no happiness. As long as you put all the blame outside, there is no happiness. In reality, all the problems, the difficulties of life come from self-cherishing thought. All these problems are a result of negative karmas accumulated in the past out of self-cherishing thought.
Being under the control of self-cherishing thought, you allow disturbing thoughts to arise. Then you are motivated by this negative karma. These problems are not only come from the past karma accumulated under control of self-cherishing thought, but also come from your selfish self-cherishing thought in day to day life. So all these feelings, you know, whether, you know, to to a large degree, Buddhism is concerned with a-historical problems. That is to say whether we had nice parents or abusive parents, whether we had all the good things of life as we were growing up or whether we we had traumatic experiences over the course of our lives, whoever we might be, there is still certain themes which permeate everyone who is an ordinary being, their lives.
Know, feelings of isolation and loneliness, feelings of conflict, of defensiveness, of competitiveness, feelings of, being unloved and unable to love. These all if we look, if we if we see where where are these coming from, these feelings of isolation, these feelings of of conflict with others, of of having to guard my territory, of having to to reestablish my credentials, who I am, to all of these which are the constant ongoing themes, subtle themes of our life stem from self centeredness, exaggerated self concern, this preoccupation with ourselves. There’s no space for others in such a mind. There’s no love. There’s no communication.
There’s no touching the hearts of another. There’s no touching of your own heart by others in such a mind. So it’s this huge black hole which sucks everyone and everything into its nothingness. That’s what constitutes our lives. I have until twelve thirty.
Never do it. I have a problem. Fifteen I have fifteen minutes. Okay. For a man to be I’ll just we’re going to do we’re going to do some meditation.
I’ll just, share a few more thoughts and then we’ll meditate on it. Okay. For a man, this is Thomas Merton. Trappist monk who died a number of years ago and lived in America. For a man to be alive, for a man to be you have to excuse this sexist language, guess.
For for a man to be alive, he must ex exercise not only the acts that belong to vegetative and animal life. He must not only subsist, grow, be sentient, not only move himself around, feed himself, and the rest. He must carry on those activities proper to his own, specifically human kind of life. He must, that is to say, think intelligently. And and above all, he must direct his actions by free decisions made in the light of his own thinking.
These decisions, moreover, must tend to his own intellectual and moral and spiritual growth. They must tend to make him aware of his capacities 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. And lastly, just one last quote from, the book that Judy pointed out, the Bodhicaryāvatāra. Whatever joy there is in this world comes from desiring others to be happy.
Whatever suffering there is in this world all comes from desiring myself to be happy. What need is there to say much more? The childish work for their own benefit. The Buddha’s work for the benefit of others. Just look at the difference between them.
So, you know, opening this possibility that are taken for granted basic premise in which we are living our lives is not in our own self best interest, that there might be an alternative. And looking within our own lived experience to that to check this out, to investigate. And this there will be some evolution toward a new premise, a new way of interacting, a new way of relating. So we’re going to, look at the we’re going to meditate on this, this, you know, looking within our own lived experience. The disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness.