Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Two parallel quotes — Christ’s instruction to love enemies because “he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good,” and the Buddha compared to “a cloud, shedding its waters without distinction” — open this 46-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun on equanimity as the foundation for the awakened heart. He distinguishes karma (the genuine pleasure we draw from relationships) from attachment (a projected add-on), arguing that non-attachment does not diminish love but clarifies it. The Bosnia conflict illustrates his key point: to kill a Muslim is to act on a mental projection, not a flesh-and-blood person. He then guides a three-person visualization — loved one, stranger, enemy — showing how shifting selective memories dissolves the emotional charge each label carries. The talk connects these insights to the philosophy of emptiness and closes with Lama Yeshe: “Meditating on equilibrium is the best way of producing good mental health.”
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 HoM 1993 10 27.mp3
UUID: f5bbb78a-7fbd-472d-9d0f-2a32a21679b2
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-10-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~6,343
Usually do in terms of redirecting or, reprioritizing, getting back in touch with some of our more deeply cherished values as ways of beings and guidelines that we’ve we’ve established for ourselves over the course of our life, meanings which we hold value and that we get out of touch with in the seemingly practical necessities of everyday life. We lose sight of the person that we would like to become, our preferred outcomes, the way we would like to be in the world. And, you know, we we usually redirect ourselves in the form of In terms of the inner focus of our life being the Buddha, in terms of the inner Buddha with inside of ourselves, this metaphor for an optimum mode of being, our preferred outcome of what it might be to be a happy, love loving, healthy, self-actualizing human being, and redirecting ourselves toward the methods, the means, the means through which we are able to actualize Buddha, And we were redirecting ourselves to some sort of commitment to those who who, facilitate this process of actualization, the Sangha or the spiritual community, those who who support us, who authenticate our preferred story, who who help us to perform, to become the person that we might like to be.
And we’re continually trying to raise the level of our motivation, trying to widen the scope. You know, we think of this or talk of this in terms of of, why we do what we do for the betterment, for the welfare, for the purpose of aiding an ever widening circle of others. And so this brings us to a problem, an ever widening circle of others. And, you know, we’re talking about the the development of our motivation in terms of the awakened heart. And we will never develop an awakening heart unless we’re able to consistently widen this circle of concern for others.
And beyond are those individuals who we see as directly benefiting ourselves, directly enhancing our welfare, Somehow, only those you know, we can we will only consider those who who are improving the quality of our life. Those who are not or those who are, in fact, seen as threats to our quality of life, it becomes very difficult for us to even consider their welfare, especially working for their welfare and trying to develop ourselves for their sake. These people, enemies and strangers, people we have aversion for, people we feel indifference toward. So the foundation for the development of an awakened heart toward this profound motivation practice is equanimity, an even minded attitude, an even minded regard for others free of aversion and attachment. It’s on this basis, just like the evening of the foundation upon which we can build the edifice of the awakening heart.
It’s I think it’s difficult to develop equanimity because our habit of discriminating people in terms of the categories of friend, enemy, and stranger are so deeply ingrained. But, you know, it’s necessary that we work at it. We work with what remains in the tools and methods. And we do, we we cling to our friends. We have aversion or hatred.
We reject our enemies. And we have indifference. We turn a blind eye to the vast majority of people in the world. Those individuals who neither seem to be helping us or harming us in any way. It’s as if they don’t exist.
Their existence doesn’t affect our life. So, you know, this quality of equanimity, this even minded attitude, is not simply an intellectual concept. It’s it’s a specific type of awareness, a quality of awareness that involves a transformation of our present basic attitude toward others. Now this quoting from both the Christian source and from the Buddhist source and this the attitude of equanimity. But I say unto you, love your enemies and pray for them that persecute you, that you may be the sons of your father which is in heaven.
For he maketh his his son to rise on the evil and the good, and send us his rain on the just and the unjust. And from the Buddhist sources, the Tathāgata. So the Tathāgata is an epithet for the Buddha. The Tathāgata recreates the whole world like a cloud, shedding its waters without distinction. He has the same sentient beings for the high as for the low, for the wise as for the ignorant, for the noble minded as for the immoral.
You know? So so Christ admonished us to love our enemies. He doesn’t say that we that we should like our enemies. And our enemies are people that we probably don’t like to be around, that we don’t feel comfortable with. Perhaps we don’t have any, feeling of connectedness with them.
But but it’s not necessary that we hate an individual who we don’t feel comfortable with, who we see as a threat to somehow our quality of existence. We don’t have to necessarily like them, but we can begin to love them. And our crisis is to love your enemy. I don’t think he was particularly romantic. I don’t think he was a fool.
But I think he saw it as a tremendous powerful method to grow. We are not compelled to hate our enemies. Simply because we don’t get along with someone doesn’t mean that we should wish them ill, that we should wish them pain and problems as we do an enemy, generally. That we that the the categorization of enemy is associated with aversion, with hatred, with, wanting to, in some way, destroy. You know, Christ says that we, there’s no particular moral reason for for our loving our enemies except for the fact that this is the way of nature.
You know, following nature because the sun rises on the on the on the evil and the good, and the rain falls on the just and the unjust. And this seems to be the natural course of events. You know, we have, various varying karmic relationships with different individuals. Some individuals, we have an almost instant feeling of connectedness and affinity with. Some people you can talk to for five minutes, and you feel closer to them than other people you’ve known for years.
Some people you can have two minutes’ conversation. Just a few words from you can bring about can profoundly influence them. Others you can talk at them for hours, And it’s it’s it’s like water off a duck’s back. It has no effect whatsoever. So we have different karmic relationships with others due to our past relationships that we have built up.
So, you know, the different tendency, different predispositions, different affinities, we relate to people differently. Relate differently to different different types of people. So this is natural in terms of this is a natural outflow of karmic causes that we’ve created in the path. But it’s of previous ways of thinking and behaving. So it’s not merely based upon ego projections.
We have to accept our present karma and work with work with it and within it and the context it presents us with. But in doing so, it’s necessary to distinguish between our karma and our afflictive emotions. We have to accept our karma, but we have to work against our afflictive emotions. The fact that men and women, they usually drive some kind of pleasure from one another. Usually.
Yeah? It’s a product of their karma. That is to say yep. There’s some more cushions. Okay.
So comfortable? Quite often I mean, men derive and women derive pleasure from one another and through their relationships. And this is a natural consequence of their previous ways of thinking and behaving together with one another. The pleasure that they experience with one another is a result of the way of the way their two karmas fit together. You know, it’s the way they they they there’s a karmic relationship.
One acting as a necessary cooperative condition, you know, for the for the other to experience pleasure. You know, the afflictive pattern of desire, attachment that usually accompanies this way of relating with one another with the pleasure that men and women get out of, that experience with one another, has nothing, in fact, to do with the pleasure that they’re experiencing, the reality of the other person at all. They are merely products of our own misconception and are distorting projections. You know, suppose suppose someone came up to you and, you know, gave you a piece of chocolate. And we as a result of eating that piece of chocolate, you experience some kind of pleasure.
So that pleasure is is experienced as a result of previously created karma actions, which predispose you to experience pleasure when this particular object of a condition is met with. That piece of chocolate is the cooperative condition, the main cause for the karma that you created in the past. So the pleasure that one derived from eating that piece of chocolate had nothing whatsoever to do with desiring chocolate or being attached or not attached to chocolate. So the the the you know, I think the simple but difficult point, which is I’m trying to make, is that the enjoyment and fulfillment and meaning that we derive from our relationships with other people does not in any way depend upon our attachment to the other people. The the the the enjoyment, fulfillment, meaning pleasure that we drive from relationship is the outflow of previously created ways of relating with these particular individuals.
Whether we have attachment for them, whether we have desire for them is simply a projection in the present moment. It’s not it in in no way contributes to the pleasure, the fulfillment, the meaning that we find within the relationship. In fact, you know, in develop we’re talking relating it back to equanimity. Developing equanimity or some kind of nonattachment toward a friend, someone for for whom you feel very deeply, will not cause you to feel any the less for them, enjoy them any the less, have any the less of a feel a fulfilling relationship, a meaningful relationship. It will not harm your relationship in the least.
In fact, it will enhance your relationship. You know, through the non attachment equanimity allows you to value the other person in and for themselves. Divorced of your expectations of them. You know, divorced of how we you know, exclusive of of of what they can do for you. It allows for greater freedom for the other person to be more authentic, to be themselves, to be able to relate with who the other person really is, divorced of our own projections, our own needs about them.
You know, there’s a certain anxiety that if I if if I if I meditate on equanimity, if I try to diminish my attachment toward my partner, toward those who have close relationships, somehow it’s going to diminish the quality of our relationship. But the point is the attachment has nothing whatsoever to do with the enjoyment, the fulfillment, the contentment, the meaningfulness of that relationship. It is simply a a you know, that is an outflow of our way of relating with this person from the past. We’ve created the causes to be able to experience this way of relating with this person, from our previous ways of thinking and behaving in relationship with this person. The attachment is simply altogether added on in terms of our afflictive emotions.
It has nothing to whatsoever to do with our our present experience of that person. Likewise, in terms of developing non hatred or the equanimity toward an enemy, means that we have we don’t have to invite our enemies over for supper every night. You know? That but we can begin to to it means that we can begin to gain some kind of flexibility of mind, some to be able to develop a caring attitude toward this person. This person who we presently feel have a feeling of aversion for.
You know, we cease relating to that to them on the basis of our own ego projections and with respect to the stranger, you know, instead of relating with them on the basis of indifference, the feeling in a confused manner. The feeling of indifference is compounded of a sense of confusion about, I’m not sure whether I should have aversion for this person or I should have attachment for this person. There’s a there’s a certain degree of confusion which is experienced as an attitude of indifference. It doesn’t matter. It’s sort of a new neutral state.
Out of this, we simply shut these people out of our life as if they didn’t exist, as if they didn’t matter. So developing equanimity for them means that we remain open to the potential of a meaningful relationship, you know, without any preconceptions of as to the nature of that relationship. So, you know, developing equanimity doesn’t mean that we become kind of unfeeling robots, mechanically reacting to other people. Some people are will continue to bring you pleasure. Others will you will experience displeasure toward.
And still others will you will experience neither neither displeasure or pleasure. But we are creating the space to relate with other people in terms of themselves, in terms of whether not in terms of whether we we view them as enhancing or diminishing or distracting or threatening our well-being. You know, we are preparing some kind of even psychological ground in order to cultivate love for all others, you know, on the rough terrain of our attachment and our aversions, which we presently possess. You know, because most people’s love is mixed with attachment, your your your partner, you have you have some genuine love, wishing them well, wishing them happiness, willing to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing their well-being. But it’s also mixed with attachment.
You know, attachment has the has the attachment has the connotation of wanting to maintain contact with this object, wanting to repeat contact with the same object again in the future, not wanting to break off contact, wanting to hold onto that object. Aversion has the opposite connotation. Experience has a sense of wanting to not to break off contact, not wanting to to maintain relationship with this object, not wanting to repeat contact again in the future. So, you know, because we have a sense that because our love is mixed with attachment, there’s a sense that if our if our attachment diminishes, our love will diminish, or we don’t differentiate between the two. So, you know, we can actually, the opposite is true.
We may be able to care for them for the first time rather than relating to them on the basis of attachment images and and which are projected upon them. You know, we’re trying to you know, the the idea within within equanimity is is to begin to see that these categorizations, these categories which we project onto individuals, friend, enemy, and stranger, are arbitrary and quick and can quickly change. They are a social construct. You know, this is tying in with what we’re going to continue to talk about tonight in terms of the Consequentialist school and coming to an understanding of the awakened mind. That, you know, the the the the the map is not the territory.
We these are useful ways of communicating. This is my friend. This is my enemy. But but what we do but these let us say, we project mental images, ideas, concepts upon individuals. And these can be useful as long as we don’t forget that these are simply ways of speaking, manners of of distinguishing.
They’re useful. But we we begin to see them as something more than that. We the these mental images are are complex patterns of interconnected ideas and emotions, concepts, attitudes. So what we do, there’s with the categorization of friend, for example, projecting that onto a particular individual. It also has within that that complex the associated emotion of attachment.
And we can have a friend without being attached to that friend. Once we begin to to understand the nature of that category and mental images, we can have an enemy without having aversion toward the enemy, without having hatred toward the enemy. You know, that that necessary that associated emotion of attachment and and aversion aren’t a integral part of that mental image of friend and enemy. That these are simply social constructs. But, you know, what’s going on in in Yugoslavia and Bosnia?
You know, as I mentioned, you know, they they aren’t killing flesh and blood people. They’re killing Muslims and Bosnians. That is to say, they are killing categories, projecting categories. And these categories have are complex images, which which have associations of which have been built over history over many hundreds of years, associate and emotional associations, connotations with these images of hatred. And so when they see when a when a Croatian or Serb sees a sees a Muslim, they see someone who is worthy of hate.
They don’t see flesh and blood people. They are seeing their own mental projections of Muslims, which are intimately related with the emotion of hatred. It’s like that. It’s a whole complex, which is what what Muslim means to them, and they project it on this individual. A real flesh and blood individual with hopes and dreams and aspirations and who is a mother, is a who is a husband, who is a child, who is a grandmother.
You know, people only want to be happy and don’t want to suffer. That’s the real flesh and blood person there. But upon them, they’re projecting this mental image of Croatian or Muslim along with all these this complex of associated emotions of hatred, hostility, of cruelty, you know, whatever. So we relate with the world in terms of our projections, and we relate with all of these categories categories of individuals in terms of the our projections. You know, rather that there are Muslims in the world, aren’t there?
There are Serbs. But but there’s no reason a Muslim isn’t inherently hateable. But this that’s but these individuals, to the Serbs and the Croatians who are using these these mental images, they’re part of that mental image is bound up with the associated emotion of hatred. It’s part of the complex. Mental image is usually a complex of images, ideas, assumptions, beliefs, emotions that are interconnected into a single image like pattern.
We project this around the world. And as we’re going to discuss tonight, we lose sight of the fact that we divorce these projections from our own mind as if that that Muslim with those particular characteristics that serve with those particular qualities exist from from their own side. And then we’re talking about this in terms of emptiness, aren’t we? So rather than this understanding that Muslim is a social construction, particular people of particular religions are termed Muslims. People from particular areas of Yugoslavia are termed Serbs.
It’s a useful term. I’m a Serb. You’re a Muslim. He’s a Croatian. But we go on beyond that.
And we believe that all of these the images and ideas and and association and connotations and the emotions which are interconnected with that image also reside with that person and are simply not a social construction but inherent quality of that person, that this person is hateable, is repulsive, is to be destroyed. And likewise, when we relate with individuals in terms of the categorizations of friend, enemy, and strangers, There are friends. There are enemies, and there are strangers, but we don’t have to associate those those mental images with anything more than a social construct. We don’t have to associate them with, I must be attached to my friend. That attachment does not necessarily have to be associated with the image that we project upon an individualized friend.
The emotion of hatred does not necessarily have to be connected with the with that categorization of individuals who we project as enemy. So we can we can still relate with individuals. These are useful distinctions, but we we can we don’t we can divorce them of the unskillful and dysfunctional patterns, emotion of emotive patterns which we we relate with these particular types of categories. If we don’t, then we’re never going to be able to awaken our hearts. We’re always our our caring will only be confined to a very exclusive, small group of individuals who we can safely label as friends, as caring for us in some way, as enhancing our our well-being in some way, or those around us who we care for in some way.
We’re never going to be able to extend, our motivation for help and caring to those who we now conceive as and as strangers, what to say of enemies. There’s no way. You can’t love someone you hate. So in the actual meditation that we we begin by imagining in front of us three different individuals on on in our visualization on the right side, someone we we have a natural caring for, someone we love, we feel close to. In the middle, a stranger, someone we have a sense of feeling of indifference.
And on our left, someone we have we feel hostility towards, someone we don’t like, an enemy. So, you know, as usual, it’s not important that we see these individuals clearly. But with the the what’s most important that we develop these feelings and work with the feelings around these people, feel that they’re there. So each of these three individuals is going to evoke some kind of of, different feeling. They’re going to appear very different to you.
And we begin to focus. Now, again, we’re not trying to diminish our love for toward our friend, But we are trying to to disassociate the the motive the emotion of attachment, which goes along with this categorization of friend. This is your friend. He or she will remain your friend, your loved one. But we we can begin to not have to be attached to our loved ones.
We we you know, why do we love this person? We we begin to question. Perhaps because, you know, when we see them, there rises with some kind of within a sense a sense of warmth, a sense of of caring, you know, affection, a sense of closeness. You know, thinking about allowing this feeling to come, to rise, to get stronger. You know, all the feelings of all the the the good times that you share together, all the various kindnesses that this person has shown you, that you share.
Something about them touches you very deeply, and you want to care for them. You want to you want to protect them. You want to be with them. You want to make them happy. You want to see them happy.
You know, it seems as it seems as if they’re they’re coming from their side, that they exude some kind of goodness, some kind of beauty, a lovable as it were. You know, all everything that you like about them seems to to glow from them that you find so attractive. It’s they it seems to be inherent quality of them, a permanent quality of them, and who they are. But if we begin to analyze these these feelings that we have for them and this appearance, what is the basis of these feelings that you what why is it that you care so very much for this friend, this love this loved one that you’re visualizing in front of you? Probably because they they have helped you or they they praised you.
They’ve cared for you. They’ve given you something. They’ve made you happy. Or they’ve cared for someone that you love. They’ve made someone that you love happy.
They’ve given something to someone that you love happy. Something like this. I mean, we and it would be very specific to each one of us, but just in general, these various types of these kind of qualities or reasons. So we have to ask ourselves, you know, the are not these reasons arbitrarily remembered. You know, the the memory is not photograph is not a photographic plate.
It’s very selective in what we remember. When we remember a a an experience, it’s always colored in some way. We we are always memory is selecting out, coloring, shading what is being remembered. And if if you honestly searched in your memory, you almost certainly could find instances where where this person has treated you unkindly, coldly. You know, when you felt that they didn’t didn’t like you at all, when you felt perhaps abandoned or rejected by this person.
So if you continue to reflect in this way, observing this particular friend, then person in front of you now no longer quite fit so comfort comfortably in the category you put them in. They no longer quite touch your heart as they once did. They no they don’t have that glow of inherent lovability that they did previously. Some kind of it’s somehow dimmed slightly. So the person in front of you has not changed in the least, but your feelings about them have.
You know, attitudes toward them have. So simply by focusing shifting the focus of our awareness, remembering contradictory past instances with that we’ve excluded. They no longer appear quite the same way to ourselves. This demonstrates that our how arbitrary and changeable our feelings and attitude toward them are. We’re going to project a different categorization.
We’re going to project a different way of viewing. They’re going to appear differently to us. Now appearance has I guess, this is the way the the object is casting itself upon your own mind. And it it doesn’t appearance has that connotation rather than I’m projecting. So just we begin to see, you know, by thinking in this way.
It’s also you know, it’s a good way to help us to understand emptiness also, the lack of inherent existence. Appearances have the have the have the idea they cast themselves, cast their own image toward the mind, whatever it might be. On the other hand, projections have the idea of coming from the mind to the side of the object. And and this this lovability of this friend, it appears it appears that this this person appears to be lovable. They inherently so.
But when we when we think about so it shouldn’t the way we think about them shouldn’t affect their appearance. If it’s coming from the side of the object, if that level of lovability is being cast from the side of the object to our own mind, then no matter what we think about them should not affect that appearance. But we can see from this experiment that when we think when we begin to focus upon negative occurrence that we’ve experienced in association with this person, that they begin to appear slightly different. They no longer exude that quite that inherent lovableness anymore. We can’t quite comfortably put them into the categorization of loved one as we did before.
So they don’t appear quite as inherently lovable. Their appearance has changed. Therefore, we we can begin to understand that that appearance is not divorced from our mind. It’s not independent of our mind. But in fact, in terms which we’re going to be looking at in terms of the Consequentialist school is merely a projection of the mind.
It’s in terms of everything is merely labeled, designated by the mind. So, you know, we and these appearances, these designations are quite changeable and flexible. They’re arbitrarily. They’re arbitrarily assigned according to some basis of whether some idea that this person is enhancing my existence at some time in my life. But we hold tightly to these labels, and we we continuously relate with them this person in terms of of all our beliefs and ideas and emotions associated with this friend.
So this prevents us from seeing this person in a balanced way, in a realistic way. It prevents us from valuing and appreciating them in and of themselves, but only for what we have made out of them. You Now with this, it brings unrealistic expectations and inevitable disappointments and frustrations and friction, conflicts between ourselves and others. Now we do the same thing with the enemy, and we try to to gain the feelings that we have toward this enemy in terms of all the feelings associated with this person, all the coldness and distance that we may have, all the resentment and hostility that we may feel toward this person, the hurt. Your enemy appears to exude some kind of repulsiveness, radiate a quality of unlikableness.
Something, you know, this quality of almost oozing out of their skin, something you don’t even like to look at them. It’s repulsive in a way. Now if when we analyze these feelings, why do we feel this way? What is the what is the basis for these feelings? Is when we think about them, we selectively focus upon those instances where they’ve hurt us, where they’ve been insensitive, where they where perhaps they took something from us, that somehow they put us down.
They did they they threatened our well-being. They diminished the quality of our life in some way or or those toward we hold dear in some way. But could you if you honestly search within your own mind, could you find instances which are contradictory, which are the opposite, they enhanced your welfare, where they they promoted your your happiness or those that were that were near to you. Or if you can’t, then imagine a situation where where somehow they did. And it is a gesture of kindness.
They give you a gift. They say some nice words to you. And then watch how their appearance changes. They don’t quite exude that that repulsiveness out of their skin anymore as what as they did previously. You know, though though our feelings toward others and how others appear to us can easily change, we are constantly trying to relate to them in terms of permanent categories and fixed labels, which which oftentimes contradicts our our own actual experience.
You know, if if someone gave us a gift yesterday and today slapped us in the face, and another person slapped us in the face yesterday and gave us a gift today, you know, we would have we would selectively, through the process of memory, through selective memories, have different quite vastly different feelings toward each of them. But in fact, objectively, when they’ve both given us a gift, they both have, slapped our face. They’ve done objectively, they’ve done related with us in exactly the same way. But because of a the selective quality of memory, we’re going to relate with them in a very different way. And again with the stranger, focusing upon, you know, why do I feel indifferent for this person?
Because this person has neither helped me nor hurt me, hasn’t done it doesn’t affect my life, for that’s the way at least it appears to me. And and then simply imagining if this person says something kind, gave you a gift, smiled, somehow enhanced your your day, enhanced your welfare in some way, and how they would appear differently. They would they would look more lovable, a little bit more beautiful in your eyes, a little more more appealing. It’s almost as if they physically change in their appearance. We’re talking more of the appearance to mental consciousness in terms of our feeling quality of their appearance.
So we we we we proceed in this manner of meditation, substituting other types of other friends, other enemies, other strangers. And we should include all of those individuals in groups that we feel are you know, the idea of on my side, our family, our neighbors, our our club, our religion, our country, our race. And we have all these various categorizations. People who are on my side. And then there is the other side.
People who are against me. That category of individuals. You know, the blacks might see the whites. The whites might see the blacks. Management might see labor.
The labor might see management. Hippies might see, you know, rednecks. Rednecks might see hippies as the other side. You know, the conservatives and the liberals, right and left, black, whatever. There’s always these categories.
Now once we put on these categories on individuals, we no longer see individuals, flesh and blood people. We see our own projections. And with and trying to emphasize the point, along with these projections, part of that mental complex of a mental image which we’re projecting on these these individuals and groups are associated emotions. Hatred, hostility on the one hand, attachment, desire on the other, indifference in the middle. And then once once a Serb sees a Muslim, he hates that person.
Someone he’s never met in his whole life. But because that that categorization which he’s projecting upon this individual has associated with has within that complex, that mental image, has it has a part of that complex is an emotion of hatred, hostility. Once that’s projected, then this person is the object of my hate. So what we are trying to understand in terms of equanimity is that our labeling, these categories of friend, enemy, and strangers, they don’t exist divorced of our own projections. And moreover, these categories, these labels are arbitrarily applied.
And moreover, they can quickly change. So the idea of equanimity, I think, most basically is that if we can develop an and a less we don’t hold so tightly to these categories. We develop a more fluid, open way of relating with others. That the friend that the that the enemy can easily can quite quickly open to the possibility that this person we now conceive of as enemy. Not only do we not have aversion for them, because we understand that this the nature of the of the how we’re projecting that quality upon them.
And it doesn’t necessarily have to have the connotation, the association of the emotion of hatred. But we’re they were open to the possibility of them becoming a friend. That they’re not permanently an enemy. That that label is not something fixed. It’s merely a way of distinguish amongst certain groups of people.
A a a handy, a handy reference, a manner of speaking. Nothing more than that. You know, Muslim, Jews, Christian, these are handy ways of speaking about people’s religions, group religious groupings. You know? But some people if you if, the if you say to a Jew, Arab, automatically, some kind of uneasy feeling, some kind of uncomfortableness arises in their mind.
If you say to an Arab Jew, some kind of uncomfortable feeling, some kind of hostility arises. That word, that that image has an emotional association with it. It has nothing to do with the real people or flesh and blood people. So the idea of equanimity is we begin to divorce these categorizations from these emotional associations that we have with. We still love our friends, but we don’t have we can no longer we don’t have to have attachment toward them.
And we can we still might not like to be with our enemies, but we don’t want to hurt them. And we’re open to the possibility of change. And we’re open for the possibility of a a a caring relationship for toward that vast number that vast majority of people we now call strangers, that they aren’t always going to be strangers. Lama Yeshe talking about equanimity. Meditating on equilibrium is the best way of producing good mental health.
Instead of paying a hundred dollar hundred dollars an hour to a therapist, meditate on equilibrium. Close your eyes and ignore all physical sensations. Abandon the five sense perceptions and allow yourself to sink deeply into intensive awareness of your mind’s experience of equilibrium. You will definitely become more balanced, open, and peaceful. After ten minutes of this type of meditation, you will come out in a different world.
The more we train ourselves to see the basic equality of everyone, having overcome our habitual tendency to stick them rigidly into categories of friend, enemy, and stranger, the more our hearts will open, increasing immeasurably our capacity for love. By freeing ourselves from prejudicial views, we will be able to appreciate fully that everyone without exception wants and deserves to be happy and wishes to avoid even the slightest of suffering. Therefore, from the basis of equilibrium, we will be able to cultivate universal love, compassion, and eventually, the fully realized full realization of bodhicitta. The open hearted dedication totally the open heart dedicated totally to the ultimate benefit of all. So I’ve gone into this rather extensively in terms of if we’re if we are going to talk in terms of of developing our motivation, if we’re not going to talk in terms of widening our circle of others, then we’re going to have to eventually go beyond the the narrow circle of those who we feel comfortable, who we feel good about, who are kind to us, who enhance our existence about this.
We’re going to have to begin to go beyond this this narrow category, which we have limited ourselves up to now quite naturally, and begin to take up the difficult task of actually opening our hearts to those we now conceive of as stranger, but ultimately even those we presently conceive of as enemy. Now this idea of trying, working toward the opening, enlarging our circle of concern, and to it encompasses all living beings. So the inner focus of our life is Buddha. The