Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun anchors this 46-minute session with a guided equanimity meditation — placing a friend, a stranger, and an enemy in the mind’s eye, then deliberately swapping the memories associated with each to show how quickly appearances shift. The exercise introduces the session’s central argument: that categories like friend, enemy, Muslim, or Serb are social constructs we reify, mistaking our mental maps for the actual territory. Drawing on child psychologist Jean Piaget and physicist David Bohm, he traces how bare sense perception is immediately overlaid with a mental image, and how treating that image as inherently real generates the karmic reactions that sustain dissatisfaction. He closes on the Madhyamaka view that all phenomena are merely imputed by language and concepts — and that directly realising this ends conceptual proliferation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 HoM 1993 10 27.mp3
UUID: 352123cd-e3c1-4bf8-8c55-d4fe55dbe1c4
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: ~3,633
The outcome of our preferred story about our life, the type of person that we want to be. And we we actualize, we we perform this story through the Dharma, that which facilitates, which which then helps us to realize Buddha within the social context of the spiritual community, those who support us, who authenticate us, who ask us to be everything that we know and they know we can be. And working at the means of widening the circle of concern, Why we do what we do to ultimately include all living beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect, by practicing giving any other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving in other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all. So we’re going to meditate in in development of our of our motivation, beginning with someone that we in developing compassion and love, using as an object to cultivate these attitudes with respect to someone that we love quite naturally, that we like, someone of the same sex as ourselves, taking that individual and trying to develop this attitude toward them.
And then we’ll meditate on mindfulness of breathing. And then, believe it or not, I will meditate on equanimity. Okay? So this idea of taking, you know, thinking of someone that you like, a friend, imagine them on your right to your right side, in front of you. In the middle is is a stranger.
On your left is someone you don’t like, an enemy. And we’ll work we’ll work with those feelings. And just it’s an experiment. And try to observe, try to be aware of how the appearances of these individuals change, how arbitrary your categorization, how how comfortable your sense of friend, enemy, or stranger these these categorizations feel once we begin to work using different memories, different ideas toward them. And we’re trying to develop a sense of even mindedness, an open and fluid way of relating with all of these individuals, not holding to these categorizations as permanent and unchanging and having necessarily the associated emotions of attachment and hatred and indifference, that these are just ways of speaking, distinctions that we make which are useful in the world and communicating and thinking about things.
So let’s try that. So if you take a comfortable posture. Beginning, by thinking of someone that you that you like, that you love, someone of the same sex as yourself, and imagine that person in front of you. And begin with a simple friendly thought. It would be wonderful if you didn’t have any problems.
You’re free of all dissatisfaction, suffering. I would like that. May you be free of problems and difficulties. I’m going to help you. I’m going to commit myself to working with you to solve your problem.
It would be wonderful if you were happy. I would like that very much. May you be happy. I’m going to commit myself in helping you to be happy. And the way I’m going to express my commitment to you at this present moment is through my meditation, by developing my skills and my abilities, my wisdom and love, then eventually I can be of real, practical, significant benefit.
I can really help. Then bring your mind to the breath. Just stay gentle and easy in an outflow of the natural breath. It was helpful using the techniques of counting and noting. We’re going to meditate on equanimity using the three individuals, friend, enemy, and stranger.
So think of someone that you that you like, that you feel close to, a friend. Put that person on your right. Someone a stranger in the middle, someone you feel indifferent toward, and someone you don’t like, an enemy on your left. You can’t see them. It’s not important just to feel that these three types of people are there in front of you.
And look first toward your friend and try to build up your sense of closeness. Remember, you know, all the times that you shared together the happiness that this person has shown you, the kindnesses, everything that they’ve done for you. Try to remember how this person appears to you, how you feel toward them, how they look to you in your mind’s eye. And begin to consider some of the the undesirable things that they’ve done to you in the past, the times when they’ve perhaps hurt you or been insensitive, uncaring to you, said unkind words to you. If you can’t remember an actual incident, then just make up the possibility.
Just imagine that these events occurred. Try to see how the appearance changes, your feelings change. And look on your left to this enemy and all the reasons why you dislike this person, how they’ve hurt you or treated you unkindly, said hurtful things to you, taken things from you. And then either through memory or through imagining, think of some kindness as this per this person has shown you, that they give you some that they gave you something or said something nice to you. Some way in some way enhances your existence.
Be aware of how this person’s appearance changes, how your feelings, attitudes toward them change. And finally, look toward this person in the middle, stranger, and get in touch with your sense of indifference. You just don’t care whether this person exists. This person doesn’t affect you in any way if you’re unrelated, unconnected. I imagine this person does something kind to you, says something pleasant to you, give you something.
Try to become maintain awareness of how your feelings change, how the appearance changes. Try to look upon these three individuals together. They’re just simply different categories of people that you’ve discriminated for an enemy and stranger. And try to have a sense of equanimity, equanimity, you know, not holding some close or others distant. Just an even minded sense that these are three human beings, and you making use of categories.
Distinguish them simply on that basis. It’s not necessary to hold one close and the other distant. Just even minded regard. They can easily change one into the other. And then bring your mind back to the breath.
Slowly becoming aware of your body. Gently, in your own good time, become aware of your surroundings. So I have to have to apologize. The awakening mind. We’re looking at the the Consequentialist view, Madhyamaka stage.
The final view that we are trying to move toward is understanding that phenomena are not self defining, that they do not intrinsically or inherently exist. And I think this in working with these categories of friend, enemy, and stranger, I think this is a relevant application of this understanding. The nature that these categories are simply social constructs, handy ways of distinguishing. Croats do exist. Muslims do exist.
Serbs do exist, But they do not inherently exist. They are not self defining. Moreover, they are free of all our various conceptual elaborations which we associate with those labels, those categories. According to the child psychologist Jean Piaget, a child first constructs a concept related to the world, then projects it out into the world. The concept is externalized so that it appears to be independent of the subject’s own mental activity.
And this is just exactly what we’ve been talking about in terms of friend, enemy, and stranger. These these categorizations appear to exist out, you know, we we could these are constructs. They appear we we project them, externalize them, and then we divorce them from our own minds as if they came from the side of the the object, as if this these the objects were self definingly friend, enemy, and stranger. As we can see from our own experience, the phenomena that we perceive in the external world appear to exist independent of our perceptions and conceptions. Here is perhaps the most fundamental reason for believing in an objective universe independent of all consciousness.
That is simply how the world appears. But it appears that way due to the process of reification. Reification is simply the, the the, overestimation of the, the qualities which objects possess in this context of a solid concrete mode of existence, independent existence. We give them a status which they in fact don’t possess. We reify them.
You know, we have, you know, the first moment of we we have five physical sense perceptions, sense consciousnesses eye, ear, nose, tongue, body sense perceptions. And the eye sees colors and shapes. The eye consciousness sees colors and shapes. The ear constantly hears sounds. So the eye consciousness perceives, you know, a bell.
It perceives color and shape. There’s one moment of bare perception where the eye consciousness is simply seeing color and shape. That induces a mental consciousness which organizes that visual perception and projects a label. And the color and shape act as a stimulus for which causes causes us to, certain reactions. We we project out certain patterns upon that color and shape.
And this what we talked about previously in terms of karmic formations, the way that we organize the data, the way that we interpret it and give it meaning, where you’re predisposed. You know, we have memory. We have karmic latencies, tendencies to to view, to interpret, to organize, and to attribute certain meanings to the things that that stimulate us. These act as objective conditions, setting off these these patterns, reacting, organizing them in certain fashions. So what we see the problem is So from the very second moment onward, our perception is mixed with a mental image of the object, our ideas about the object, our mental image of the object.
As I’ve emphasized, our mental images are complex interconnected patterns of assumptions, ideas, emotions. You know, like, you know, when if you take, certain certain if you take the idea of of what? A Jew. Yeah? Now we have certain assumptions about Jews, don’t we?
They’re rich, they’re they’re powerful, they’re intelligent, And this is part of our mental image. Whenever we meet and say, hi, I’m Jewish, automatically we’re working not with that person, this individual specific person we just met, but with our mental image of what a Jew is. We project this on the person with all these various assumptions, associations, maybe emotional hostilities, maybe whatever. So from the second moment onward, as long as that object is an object of our awareness, we are we are relating with that object in terms we know we aren’t able to see the object in and of itself, but it is understood through the medium of our mental image, conception about that object, our conceptual elaborations around that object. All conceptual consciousness are mistaken with respect to their object, which appears to them.
They apprehend the object not through the power of the object itself, but through the medium of a mental image, our ideas, assumptions about our mental images about the object. Our models, our representations of the object. You know, human beings are model builders. We build we build representations of the universe. And that’s the way we understand the universe through our models.
But we have to remember that old saying, keep coming back to it. The map is not the territory, but we think it is. We mistake our maps for the actual territory, and we relate with real people as if they were our mental images of these people. We relate with the territory as if they were, in fact, the maps that we have about the territory. Our representations that we our our concepts, our assumptions about them.
Whenever we think about an object, it appears as though we are apprehending the object itself. That’s the way it appears. But in fact, we are apprehending our concepts, beliefs, our ideas about the object projected onto it. As physicist David Bohm says, Since our thought is pervaded with difference and distinction, it follows that such a habit leads us to look on these as real divisions so that the world is then seen and experienced as actually broken up into fragments. Due to the very nature of ignorance influenced thinking, the world appears to be broken up into isolated concrete units, chunks out there in the world, chunks of things independent of ourselves, independent of each other.
That’s the way it appears to us because that’s the nature of our thinking process. And we see things, the world around us, through the medium of our thinking, our thoughts about the world, our representations. As if things had possessed an intrinsic identity, that they they define what they are in and of themselves. Out of this these appearances, this is the way the world appears to us. And these this as if things exist at their own intrinsic identity, there are chunks, distinct things out there, independent of ourselves, of our perceptual process.
These appearances are then acceded to. We think that’s all, yes, that’s the way they exist. They not only appear that way. Remember the magician’s illusion that we used? There was the appearance to the aud there was the appearance of a horse and an elephant to the magician.
But the way he saw them, he didn’t accede to them. He he knew that that it was just conjured up. It was just a magic trick. There’s not really a horse and elephant there. But the audience not only saw the horse and elephant, but there’s a they fell for it.
They were captivated by it. There really is a horse and elephant up there. And they reacted with either aversion or attachment toward if they like horses and they like elephants or if they don’t. So these appearances of things out there intrinsically existent, this appearance is acceded to. That is to say, that they exist the way they appear.
And then all the various dysfunctional reactive patterns of attachment and aversion are set into motion. On the basis of acceding to disappearance as things being intrinsically beautiful, not my mental projection of not my representation being projected upon them, as things being intrinsically repulsive, intrinsically from their own side, independent of my mind, that we’re that there’s something intrinsically, by its own nature, inherently repulsive about the object, not in terms of my mental representation about that object, but in fact from its own side. Once that once we accede to those types of appearances, then dysfunctional reactive patterns begin to operate. We begin to have aversion and attachment toward those things which we see to exist out there independent of our own mind. Once this precipitates action, a way of relating in terms of attachment and aversion.
karma. We begin to create karma. And this karma, moreover, is inappropriate with respect to the final nature of those objects. We aren’t seeing the objects in fact the way they actually exist. We’re not relating.
Our actions are inappropriate because we’re seeing them in mistaken fashion. So the traces of what are now misguided actions, the karmic formations, these predispositions, they predispose us as a result to select and organize our perceptual field in such a way that we continually experience the world in terms of one degree or another of dissatisfaction, of suffering rather than peace or some kind of continual contentment. You know, the fact hold we they predispose us to conceive of ourselves in one limiting or limited identity or another rather than as a potential Buddha. So the only way that we can begin to bring it into this process of conceptual elaboration conceptual elaboration is the is the tales that we tell about the world, the fantasies which we make up about objects, this process of reification, this process of seeing things as if they were as we conceive of them to be. In terms of you know, there are Jews.
There are Muslims. There are beautiful things, but these are no more than social constructs, handy manners of ways of thinking. The map is not the territory, but we think but we we spin tales. We have a whole mental fabrications, stories about these objects that are part of the mental image by which by means of which we think about these objects. And when we think about the objects, we think about them through these mental images, these these elaborate tales that we have about these objects.
And we take these tales, these these stories, these ideas and assumptions, feelings about those objects to be the objects. This is mental elaboration. You know, the only way we can finally bring it into this process of conceptual elaboration, which is the source of all our suffering, is to understand the part that language and concepts plays in the perceptual process, the part that language and concepts play in our perception and experience of ourselves in the world. All phenomena are merely imputed by terms and concepts. And that’s the bottom line of the Consequentialist Middle Way School.
All phenomena whatsoever are merely imputed by means of language and concepts. Once we directly realize that, just that as it is, you know, the the then the proliferation is further, then we won’t build up these stories. We won’t believe that the territory is the map. Once we understand just that, all the further, you know, conceptions cease. All these stories that we have about the object cease.
One and then one abides in a perfect peace and the obstructions to omniscience are eliminated from the mind. And then one is of, has the ultimate ability to be able to help oneself and others, and skillfully working with others. Sorry. I took up many We don’t have much time, do we? Or any time.
We want to talk about and get across the idea that phenomena do not in any way define themselves. It is minds which define them. But this defining process is simply is not arbitrary. It is done in terms of conventions, social conventions. The world has been communicated to us as it is.
The world truths are determined relative to those conventions which have been communicated to us. Shared reality are truths. And I think maybe just take a minute and then we’ll stop. The idea of just go back to this simple example of the of the of the Muslims and the Serbs and the Croats. You know, the hatred that they have for one another, which has been built over the centuries.
You know, the the the you know, the the they I’m I’m I’m supposing. Yeah. Serbs exist. Muslims exist. Bosnians exist.
Croats exist. These are social constructs. These are handy ways of thinking about certain geographical ethnic groups. Groups, certain types of peoples who come from specific regions have certain types of religious beliefs, and we can talk about them in a way it’s quite useful. The the rest is in terms of this you know, this is the like, bare minimum of but there’s a there’s a conceptual elaboration around our concepts of of what a Muslim is, what a Serb is, what a Croat is.
You know, that all of the history which has been associated with these different with these different groups. And the and part of these mental images, these maps that we have about Croats, Muslims, Serbs. And we we we begin to think about Croats and Muslims not as an ethnic group, not merely as an ethnic group, not merely as a religious group, which is all that that that social construct infers, but as something much more than that, something which has emotive qualities, something which has all various types of assumptions about what Muslims are like, what Serbs are like. And then every time we see someone who stimulates that labeling process, you know, someone who we think, oh, there’s a Muslim, we’re not seeing a specific flesh and blood individual who is simply a member of a particular religious order or grouping. We’re seeing someone who is we’re seeing someone through the medium of our mental image of Muslims with all those assumptions, with all those emotional situations, with all that history, with all those ideas and concepts about what Muslims are like or not like.
All the conceptual elaboration that we have around this simple category, which is very efficient in means of communicating called Muslim, specific simply type of religious grouping. We we have this tremendous tale, story that we tell about Muslims, which we associate and which we see. So when we see this individual, we are seeing our map. We are seeing our our mental image, conception about Muslims, which in which in a great many cases has the emotional within that complex has an emotional component of hatred, hostility. We see someone who is worthy of being hated.
We’ve never met this person in our life, but once we know that once we label them as Muslim, this person this person is worthy of being hated. They’re hateful people from their own side. Something about them is hateful. We don’t even stop to think about that.