Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 44-minute session with an unexpected parallel: he has just attended a course in narrative therapy — the idea that our lives are shaped by the dominant story we tell ourselves — and maps it directly onto Buddhist practice. Buddha becomes the preferred life outcome, Dharma the practices that enact that story, Sangha those who witness and authenticate it. He then turns to the session’s central theme: the disadvantage of self-centeredness and the liberation found in widening concern for others. The session closes with a guided meditation moving from compassion for a friend on the fringe of one’s intimate circle, through mindfulness of breathing, then through increasingly difficult figures — stranger, unattractive person, the impoverished, an enemy — cultivating the recognition that every being wants happiness and freedom from suffering.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 HoM 1993 05 05.mp3
UUID: 8870f26c-0d69-4f7a-88bb-fd38db223c48
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-05-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.7 minutes
Words: ~2,847
So we begin by redirecting, reprioritizing, getting back in touch. This week I’m attending a week long intensive course in a particular type of therapy called narrative therapy, sometimes called reauthoring therapy. And it’s talking about the stories by which we lead our lives. Is the quality of our life is very much determined by the story that we tell ourselves about the type of life, who we are, our concepts about ourselves. Quite often the stories that we have about our lives are impoverishing or subjugating.
And so the intent of reauthoring therapy is just as the name would imply, beginning to find a subplot within the dominant story of our life and to begin to reauthor our lives. To begin to I think very much that in this process of redirecting, reorientation is a way that we are seeking to reauthor our lives. You know, we try to get in touch with a preferred plot as it were. And to a large degree our lives are self fulfilling prophecies. The ideas and the concepts that we have about ourselves and the way we relate with the world.
And I think as I’ve often emphasized that, you know, quite often we discount those preferred outcomes we may those outcomes which we may prefer. As I’ve talked about many times, we all have some wisdom no matter how faint and obscure that wisdom might be. We all have some love and compassion no matter how exclusive or how limited that loving compassion might be. We all have some energy no matter how unrefined or unspontaneous that energy might be. That is to say, if these are our preferred outcomes, if these are the qualities which we would be expressions of a type of life, a story that we would like to live, then they’re all there as it were.
And so in this redirecting process, remotivating ourselves, it is, as it were, rededicating ourselves to a preferred outcome. Metaphor of the outcome of a preferred life we’re calling Buddha. You know, each of us has to determine what is worthwhile for ourselves in our life. What is positive, what is negative? Where we would like our lives to go?
What types of qualities would we like to imbue? Relationships we’d like to enter into? And the quality of being we like to express in the course of our life. That’s sort of the consummation of a preferred life story is metaphorically termed a Buddha. And I think the Dharma is are those practices which contribute to performing our preferred story.
The type of person I want to become, the type of life I want to lead. Those practices which contribute to this preferred way of life. It is simply that it is a preferred way of life. We make a choice. This is the type of person I’d like to become.
Because I have experienced moments of this in the past and I have found it a very self validating experience, a self authenticating experience. I have found it worthwhile, positive. And so we try to enlist practices which are going to facilitate bringing that story to bring the dominant plot of our life. And then there’s the spiritual community. You know, those individuals who contribute to and authenticate our performance of our story, of our preferred story in our life.
You know, who have like preferred qualities, like preferred outcomes that they are seeking. And they are willing to authenticate. They are willing to, you know, we perform a certain way of being and it is authenticated in our relationships with others. It is attested to, it’s witnessed by others, and they contribute to our performance in all the various manners that we’ve listed over the course of our times together. You know by inspiring one another, teaching one another, guiding one another, being there for one another.
You know a very unique collection of individuals who are contributing to the type of person that we are choosing actively to become. Like minded stories, outcomes that we’re all seeking. You know, many of our dominant plots are stories that we’re living are subjugating and impoverishing. And you know, if we can begin to tell ourselves another story because we have that potential. You know, if we look back within our history, the history of our lives, we can mark out another plot which may have been overlooked.
The plot which is typified with moments of great wisdom, typified with moments of great compassion and love, and caring, and giving, generosity, and tolerance, and ethics, joyous effort, wisdom, great energy, enthusiasm for life, a vitality, basic goodness, grand wisdom, intelligence. We can see all those. It’s not These are not things that are outside of our present story of who we actually are. But, you know, it is if we are so focused upon the predominant story that we tell ourselves about who we are that we miss these subtle details which are continually arising over the course of our lives. So one of the goals, I guess you’d say, of reauthoring is to begin to bring to prominence these subplots which are preferable by our own choosing, we found worthwhile for ourselves as very unique self actualizing individuals, and make them the predominant story of our life.
So that, you know, we begin to have agency in our life. Agency means that we are no longer passengers in life. We’re no longer being taken for a ride by our life, but we take control of our destiny, our life, the person that we want to become, and we actively choose. So, getting back to how we been traditionally looking at this process of realignment, of reorientation, of redirection in terms of the realignment of our allegiance from a life passively. You know, that is to say as a passenger, as a victim.
Passively led on the basis of hopes and fears to one based upon actively choosing to grow. Actively choosing to put into practice, to put into practice those means which we can begin to perform our preferred story of life, which are going to lead us to the unique outcome of who we can be, who we want to be. You know, it is our preference. And there’s no one who can force us to make this choice. There’s no Each of us has to see for ourselves and decide for ourselves the person that we want to be and become.
What we haven’t been able to achieve up to now we can determine to become. You know, the future is open ended. We can extend those subtle moments where we have learned a preferred way of life that we would like to give more and more expression over the course of time. You know, beginning to actively choose to become the type of person I want to become, to take that control, to empower ourselves to no longer remain the victim, a passenger of life. So in this way, the main focus, you know, we begin to emphasize the main focus of our life becomes Buddha.
That consummation of our preferred story, of who we all can become. We implement, we actualize the story of who we wish to be, who we prefer to be by means of the Dharma. You know, those practices which facilitate the realization of the preferred plot of our life. Speaking in strange terms, aren’t I? And those individuals who authenticate, who witness and support and assist us in this performance of our preferred life story and becoming that person we want to be, that unique outcome which we see as positive as being worthwhile.
That which facilitates growth, the actualization of Buddha, the Sangha, the spiritual community. And we try to raise the level of motivation such that we’re you know, that we if we can somehow live the life, the good life, the good life as we have dreamed it to be, you know, having you know, we we can act as as a beacon, We can act as an inspiration just by who we are without having anything to do anymore. And if we can, you know, actively seek to develop ourselves, to begin to see as our most preferred outcome a way of life which is more and more concerned with others. And this in itself is a liberating experience. Now we’re going to be discussing the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness And beginning to see that one of the subjugating qualities of our present way of life is our complete submission to our own self centeredness.
Know, laying everything and everyone upon the altar of own ego, and how this is impoverishing our life. How this we’re as it were subjugated, enslaved. And there’s no freedom, there’s no real love. There’s no going beyond the confines of our the prison, this isolation, and this alienation which we have created for ourselves. So, you know, trying to invoke this process of reauthoring our lives, not only for oneself but for an ever widening concern for others.
And this becomes a central theme of our story, a central part of our life. Refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. And the virtues 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, the highest assembly.
From the virtuous merits that I collect by practicing giving in the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. On the virtuous merit that I collect practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha, to benefit all sentient beings. So, we’ll begin with meditation, and we’ll cultivate love and compassion, and choosing as an object toward whom to cultivate our love and compassion someone who is who you feel close to but not you’re not intimate with, not one of your primary circle of intimate friends, but someone just slightly on the edge of that boundary with who you like and likes you. And then we’ll cultivate practice mindfulness of breathing, and then we’ll practice quality of self and others, first from the side of others.
So we’re going to move through different individuals, trying to overcome our habit of making others into objects, trying to avoid dehumanizing others, trying to see that whoever this being may be, they are a feeling being. And trying to that they have essentially the same feelings as ourselves, that they just like ourselves want to be happy, that they just like ourselves don’t want to suffer, that beings, sentient beings, are primarily feeling beings. Trying to see the essential equality of themselves and us. So in the case you’re first working with someone that you’re quite close to, someone that you love, And this requires that you perhaps see them afresh, anew, setting aside your old agendas. Generally there’s a sense that, you know, if they’re happy this is going to make you happy.
So you have an investment in their happiness in terms of your own happiness. It’s kind of a self referencing wishing them to be happy. And someone that you live with, your partner, there’s a wish that they’d be happy because you know it’s going to enhance your existence somehow. That you have some stake. It’s like if you have investments on the stock market.
You hope it’s going to go up because it’s going to you’re going to profit out of it. But here, just from their own side. So it’s you have to see them from new eyes, in a new way, which is sometimes difficult because you have these old habitual ways of relating with them. So looking at your partner, a loved one, someone you’re close to, a parent or a child, and trying to see them in terms of that they’re aside from your present relation, they’re still from their own side. They’re a human being.
They want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer just like yourself. And trying to gain that insight that no matter who they might be. Then we’ll work with various types of individuals who we feel indifference toward. Work with members of the opposite sex from the point of view of a stranger, a man or a woman, a rich person, a poor person, an attractive person, an unattractive person.
Working with all these varieties of appearances. And for each one we generate different qualities of closeness or distance, different associations, different feelings arise in accordance with these different appearances. But over trying to see beneath all of these superficial emotional associations that we attach with these various appearances and trying to see that person on a deeper level beneath their richness and their poorness, their beauty or their unattractiveness, whether they’re male or female, that there’s a feeling being who wants to be happy, doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself, and then with an enemy. So if you take a comfortable from posture, we’ll work with that. So first, cultivating compassion and choosing someone on the fringe of your intimate circle of friends and loved ones.
Someone you like and they like you but you’re not intimate with them. Imagine that person in front of you. Beginning with compassion, a simple thought, it would be wonderful if you didn’t have any problems. Do you know dissatisfaction or suffering? May you be free of all your problems, all your troubles.
I’m going to help you commit myself to working with you and freeing you from all your dissatisfactions and troubles. Would be wonderful if you were happy. May you be happy. I’m going to commit myself to helping you to find happiness. And the way I’m going to express my commitment to you at this present moment, just now, is through my meditation, by developing my skills, understanding, compassion, all my qualities.
And eventually I can be a real significant benefit to you and actualize, fulfill my commitment to you. Bring the mind to the breath. So gentle and easy, get an outflow of the natural breath. If it’s helpful using the techniques of counting and noting. When you begin cultivating the equality of self and others, begin with someone that you’re very close to and that you care a great deal about.
Begin with a male. Imagine that person in front of you, a male that you care a great deal about, that you’re close to. And try to see them afresh that from their own side they want to be happy and they don’t want to suffer just like yourself. That’s their experience from their own side. That’s their world.
Divorced from your relationship,, they want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer just like yourself. And think of a female who you’re very close to that you love, that you like very much. Imagine that person in front of you. And again, try to understand that from their own lived experience, from their side, they want to be happy.
They want they don’t want to suffer just like yourself. And now think of a stranger of the opposite sex, Someone you have no particular connection with but of the opposite gender. Try to see that from their own lived experiences as a human being, as a sentient being. They want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer just like yourself regardless of their gender.
Now if you can think of someone who is unattractive in general terms, someone who is usually considered unattractive. If you can think of a real person who you might be able to consider. But if you can’t just imagine an unattractive person in front of you. And from their own side, within their own lived world, their own lived experience, no matter how they may look, they want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer just like yourself.
Think of a of a poor illiterate person, perhaps someone from a third world country. Just imagine what that person might look like, what they might be like, imagining them in front of you. No matter how poor they might be, no matter how illiterate they might be from their own side, within their own lived experience, within their own world, they want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer exactly like yourself. And then finally, think of someone you’re having some problems with, someone you don’t like.
Imagine that person in front of you. However difficult this person may be, whatever negative quality you may see in them, from their own side, within their own lived experience. They want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer just like yourself. Yourself.