Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 46-minute session with a passage from Macbeth — a doctor telling the king that the patient must minister to himself — to frame his central argument: our deepest dissatisfaction and its solutions both lie within our own minds. He identifies two forces that can redirect attention inward: dread born from seeing life’s patterns recur regardless of outer circumstances, and faith in our capacity to change. He distinguishes false hope — passive expectation of improvement without inner effort — from legitimate hope backed by real work, citing Jung on neurosis as the avoidance of legitimate suffering. The session closes with guided meditation: compassion toward a stranger, mindfulness of breathing, and a walk through the selflessness practice — searching the five aggregates for the solid independent self we have always assumed was there, and sitting with the unsettling sense of loss when it cannot be found.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 HoM 1993 08 25.mp3
UUID: 9ba22b5b-9254-4ab4-a981-f8cc4eb259f0
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-08-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~4,678
So reprioritizing, reorientating. It’s a never ending process. We have to begin again and again and again. I read something I’d like to share with you. It’s perhaps many of you have heard it before.
You know, this idea of the nature of the orientation that we’re working towards in terms of seeing the source of our fundamental problems and therefore the solutions within our own mind as opposed to the usual approach, which is to see the sources and the causes of our difficulties outside of ourselves. I’m speaking of our more fundamental basic causes of our feelings of dissatisfaction, frustration, disappointment at the more profound level. And it’s from a it’s a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where Macbeth is is speaking to physician, to a doctor about the about mind, where he says, canst thou canst thou not minister a mind diseased pluck from the memory a root sorrow, a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote, cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs heavy upon the heart. And in reply to Macbeth, the doctor answers, therein the patient must minister to himself. So the idea of the necessity to take responsibility to to begin to seek the solutions to our more fundamental problems within our own mind is not something particularly Buddhist or is it something particularly new age.
It’s been around for quite a number of hundreds of years in West. Perhaps we haven’t really begin to take it seriously. And we’ve all had the experience, quite often we miss or dismiss the lessons, and we keep making the same mistakes. And there’s a Zen master once said, if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him. And I think Zen masters are sometimes quite violent people.
But anyway, what he might might have meant by this statement was that if you see the Buddha, that is to say, the personification of the of the solutions to our most basic problems, you know, this metaphor for what it means to to live out our preferred story of life. If you see that outside of yourself, then you’re looking in the wrong place. If you see the the the solutions to your most fundamental problems outside of yourself, you’re looking in the wrong place. If we’re going to find a Buddha anywhere, we’re going to have to look within our own mind. It’s it’s only that Buddha which can solve all our problems.
It is only the Buddha with inside of itself which we can rely upon in all the various situations. That life is continually bringing ourselves. So, you know, this it seems if you know, this is I think it’s quite good to to again and again speak in this way because I think it it reverses the the natural trend of the conceptions which are current in our society, seeing all the goodies outside of oneself, all of the good life outside of oneself, and all the problems and sources of difficulties outside of oneself. Everything becomes very much externally orientated, very very much in terms of materialism and manipulation and owning. We, to a large extent, conceive of our our sense of self worth, our own identity in terms of having, owning, manipulating, using.
We we have lost the ability simply to be. We’re reading our sense of identity and and being as opposed to becoming or having, owning. We keep keep reminding ourselves. Think I have a sense that if we keep thinking about these things, that some kind of change will come take place. And we might not be able to conceptualize it.
We might not we might not have any bright lights flash off in our in our minds at some time or another. Perhaps we will, all the better. But some kind of change begins to creep into our life as we’re some kind of I know sometimes I have this sense of living in when I lived in Dharmasala in during the monsoon, sometimes you’d go for weeks and sometimes even months without seeing the sun that you’re always living in the clouds as it were. And you and as you walked around, even though it wasn’t raining, slowly the moisture in the air would begin to permeate your clothing. And imperceptibly, your clothing, you know, became wet, saturated with the atmosphere around you.
And I think in talking this way, in a way that we do again and again, about having to take responsibility for one’s problems, beginning to see the problems and this and therefore, the solutions to these problems within our own mind. I think there is a shift in our orientation. I think we do begin to to look toward ourselves more and more for both our happiness and also to as the causes of our suffering within our own mind. I think there is a shift. And I think, you know, I’ve talked about the causes for this shift this redirecting, this reorientation, this reprioritizing in terms of the sense of dread as one cause and the other being faith.
And dread, you know, I’ve mentioned in the sense of one begins to become intelligent about one’s life and begin to discern some patterns which seem to be reoccurring, some themes which we keep again and again experiencing no matter how we seem to manipulate the world around us. Internally, we we go through many of the same experiences. And there develops a sense of dread, anxiety, a foreboding. You know, it’s as if it’s we’re on in this treadmill and it’s simply going to happen again and again no matter what what partner I might have, no matter what city I might move to, no matter what, material possessions I may acquire, still very much the basic problems keep reoccurring. And we’ve then we develop a sense of foreboding, a sense of uneasiness, of discomfort about future possible reoccurrences, and a sense of faith in the possibility of solving our problems.
And I think it is these two factors in terms of some kind of anxiety. I think this anxiety is going to help us overcome our hope. And generally, we think of hope as being something which is a positive state. Hope lives eternal. And, you know, in general, we can say it is.
It’s to have hopelessness is quite depressing, I think. But here I’m talking about a false hope or an illegitimate hope. Hope which has no basis in reality or any reason. A type of hope that somehow things are going to get better. You’re not quite sure how, that something’s going to come along and change at all.
Even though your mind remains much the same, even though all the rules which are governing our life and the rules of the game remain exactly the same as they were previously. That we’re we’re we’re hoping against the reality of our situation. That’s why I called it illegitimate hope. But still we hope that someone to perhaps by divine intervention, a white knight whisking us off, chance, Lotto, I don’t know. I mean, some people went today.
They had the hope of winning the Lotto and they don’t even enter it. But that’s kind of the position perhaps we’re in. And it is only this kind of dread that overcomes that false hope. You know, there is hope in terms of we actually do something. I think there’s a, an old Islamic saying, trust in God but tie your camel tightly.
And and we have to, as it were, do something for ourselves while while we’re trusting in God or whatever with whatever it is we’re hoping for. And then that’s a real hope. Then we can legit that’s legitimate hope. Things will get better if we’re creating the causes. Without the creating the causes, there’s no result.
That’s that’s the reality of our situation. We can’t avoid that. The Buddhist can’t avoid that. There’s no magical formula which which can transcend transcend the actuality of our situation. And I think the the faith, the faith in ourselves, in our potential, faith in the ability to change, to grow, I think overcomes our sense of fear, which we have.
Fear about taking up the difficult task of change, of going through some legitimate suffering. You know, as I’ve said many many times that the as Jung said, the the basis of of neurosis is the avoidance of legitimate suffering. And we have to have some faith that it’s worth going through the difficulty, that something better is going to come out, is going to happen on the other side of working through this problem. Otherwise, it’s, you know, you one simply involving oneself in masochism to do to do some of the practices, to involve oneself in retreats. And then why do it if it only hurts?
But one has some kind of faith that something good is going to come out of it. So one enters into legitimate suffering, overcomes one’s fears about change. And and some kind of change, in fact, does come about. So this process of, you know, we have to we’re we’re working with our mind. We have to keep as we’re keep creating some atmosphere around our mind so it begins to permeate.
So it begins to become Soaked in a new way of thinking, new possibilities, alternative modes of being another story, beginning to promote our preferred outcomes in our life. You know, we we want to change, we want to grow and we have to get unstuck. And then, you know, we we get this we get some kind of kind of energy, some kind of actual movement. The mind is changing. If we keep working with these ideas, the mind will definitely change.
Maybe we’ll it will be imperceptible as it is when the when the when the mist is absorbed in your clothing. But there is a point when you can actually see for yourself that something has occurred there. Something is different than it was before. One has gone perhaps unknowingly, unconsciously, there is something good has occurred. And then we begin to grow in terms of love and compassion and wisdom.
You know, these are the solutions which are going to help us to find the good life that we all want, to help us to solve our problems that we that we all want to solve. These are the ways. There’s nothing there’s not something other than this to solve our fundamental problems, then compassion, the awakening heart on the one hand, and the awakening mind, wisdom on the other. These are the solutions. There’s not something other than those.
So, you know, having to get ourselves unstuck, to go beyond our present illegitimate hopes and our ill illegitimate fears, to have develop some kind of anxiety and to develop some kind of faith, which gets us, which develops the which energizes us, begins to open the line to change, to possibilities, to working through, legitimate sufferings, to enter into change voluntarily, to work, to to begin to think and orientate ourselves in another way, and then to begin to integrate the awakening heart and the awakening mind. And then there’s some kind of change or something, some kind of goodness comes about. And then we just do this. This is comes in, I think, a way of life, a kind of a style. Sometime, some energy, some part of our life is dedicated to this internal factor of of bringing about the type of life that we all want to live.
This realignment of our allegiance from a life passively led on the basis of illegitimate hopes and illegitimate fears to one which is actively based upon growth, choosing growth, and continually making this orientation, this redirecting of ourselves, and try and shifting the, the emphasis of our motivation for our practice, for this involvement, for for this style of life, for from one which is totally absorbed in ourself, in our own self concern, our own self interest, to one which is concerned with an ever growing circle of others. Another shift, another growth, another type of orientation. Our goals, the good life begins to be conceived in terms in the context of a social awareness, in terms of both the welfare of myself as an individual and also other in my relatedness to others. And this is that I think is the best of all possible ways to be in the world. So the inter inter the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha.
The Buddha with inside of ourselves, the Buddha which can we can rely upon in all situations, and all that may confront us. We can begin to trust him. We can take some kind of refuge in, which is actualized by means of the Dharma. You know, whatever raises the level of our consciousness, whatever helps us to develop in love and wisdom, whatever takes us from, from our total absorption in our own self concern to an opening of our hearts and the concern for others, including ourselves as another living being. And within the social context of a spiritual community, those who support us in this evolution.
And we’re doing whatever is necessary to facilitate the growth of another person, whatever abilities, whatever talents and resources that we might be able to make available to others. 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 the 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 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 am 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. So we’re going to meditate on first, development of our motivation in terms of developing compassion and love towards someone, a stranger, someone you’re not particularly related to in any way, but someone who you look favorably upon. That’s, they in some way, they look appealing to you or they they appear in some way appealing to you.
And then we’ll we’ll meditate. We’ll continue our meditation. Then we’ll meditate on mindfulness of breathing. And then continue the meditation on this, selflessness that we began last week. The first way we and which is the most difficult part of the meditation is to identify what is called the object of negation.
In this case, we’re we’re trying to get a sense, some feeling, some picture in our mind of what this the permanent unchanging independent self. How does it appear to ourselves? It’s appearing to us. It doesn’t appear to our eyes. When I say appear, we have a sense of it.
We have a it it it is a symbol, a self representation that we have in our mind that we’re making use of. We’re not we’re probably not conscious of it. More than that, we’re not. But we want to become conscious and become to some degree aware of what this self representation looks like. How what does it feel like?
Because it is based upon grasping at this self this self representation, this appearance of a singular independent unchanging unitary eye. And it depends upon grasping it as real, as as me who in fact I am. in dependence upon that due to the force of ignorance that the various other afflictive emotions arise. Misconceived in the eye, we develop attachment, We develop aversion, pride, jealousy, all of the other eighty four thousand afflictive emotions. So we want to be able to identify.
This is the most difficult part, but it’s also the most important. Trying to get a sense of what it might feel like. So where it’s most vivid, it’s most pronounced, it’s most apparent, strongest is during emotional experiences. So we have to become very skilled in our meditation to induce either through memory or imagination some type of emotional experience. You know, maybe you were, you know, if somebody called, oh, you’re so stupid.
And how do you know what what do you think about death? Oh, I don’t want to die. I don’t want that I, which appears very strongly at that moment. I don’t want that the eye doesn’t want to die. What does that I look like?
Or you know, you’re jumping out of an airplane, just about to have an accident. There’s whenever there’s strong fear, strong anger, strong pride, There’s always a strong sense of self of this particular type of self, which is acting as its basis. So we have to identify that within our own experience. And once we identify that, get some because we’re going to search. If we don’t know what we’re searching for, how will we ever know if we find it or not?
So our search can only be effective to the degree that we’ve identified what it is we’re looking for. Otherwise, there’s always going to be some doubt as to, well, I really didn’t quite know what I was looking for because we’re going to search. Where does it appear? It appears somewhere around the body and mind. This is where we look.
Last week, we looked through the body in terms of the the elements of the body, earth, water, fire, energy, and space. So we’ll quickly do that again. We’ll quickly go through the body and see if we can find anything which corresponds to that appearance of this eye. Then we’ll go through the mind. And we’ll go through the mind in terms of feelings.
There are three different types of feelings in general. There are pleasurable feelings, unpleasurable feelings, and feelings of indifference. There are discriminations or perceptions. Discriminations are the types of thoughts which name things. This is good, this is bad, this is a glass, this is table, this is Buddha house, I like this, I don’t like that.
That kind of discriminating type of thought, that’s one type of thinking. And we’re making These are categories categorizations of types of thinking. So this is called the aggregate of discrimination or perception or recognition. This is good. This is bad.
I like this. I don’t like that. That’s short. This is tall. That that quality, discriminating quality.
Then we’ll look at the emotions. This is the fourth of the five aggregates. We talked briefly about the five aggregates. Mental constructions, these are very more complex types of patterns, ways of relating, all the various emotions. For example, faith is an emotion, love is an emotion, anger is an emotion, jealousy is emotion.
They’re very particular patterns of thinking. Patterns of thought. Are these the I, the self? You know, the the these five aggregates, the way they there’s an evolution. I think we’ve talked about this from from the first from the first, the primal dichotomy between self and not self.
Me and not me. We make an absolute division. That’s the beginning of the aggregate form. When we sit down to meditate, the first thing we become aware of is maybe, our body. It’s comfortable.
It’s uncomfortable. You know, the body. And then feelings from that, feelings begin to arise. And from that, emotions begin to arise. Discriminations begin to arise.
I like you know, if if you if you if you come across if you have a good feeling toward an object, that, pleasurable feeling, I like that. That’s discrimination. in dependence upon the the discrimination of liking, then an emotion arises, attachment, desire, and it arises in dependence upon that. And finally, the fifth aggregate, that all of the various types of that which fills in all the you know, there’s this way of there’s this relationship taking place between you and an object, and within in the context of particular motion, and that which fills in the rest of the scene, the scenario, all our thoughts about our plans, our dreams, what I’m going to do about how to get that object, what how I’m going to what what it costs, you know, how I can save up the money to get it, Maybe I’ll steal it. All of these this all this thinking process that’s always going on in the mind.
This is the fifth aggregate, the aggregate of consciousness along with the simple factor of awareness. So we’re going to go through systematically. First, very quickly, because we went through it in more detail last week. But again, going through the body, then we’ll go we’ll go through the mind. Trying to, you know, like I like I mentioned last week, I think, in terms, you know, you have a wanted poster just printed by the, the police, you know, this wanted for, for causing afflictive emotions, you know, reward.
You’re going through your body, you’re going through your checking it out, trying to identify. Yeah. Yeah. That is this is this the person that we’re looking for, looking through the body and mind. And then maybe maybe if it you know, like last week, somebody thought they found it.
I don’t know. Anyway, if you find it, let me know. We’ll call Dalai Lama and tell them to hold the press. We’re we’re we’re coming in. We found it.
Anyway, if if I have to re re print all the books, it’s gonna cause a lot of trouble, but I think it’ll be worth it. Well, maybe you don’t find let’s say, let’s just go on that. You really look. You you know, it’s gotta be there. It’s either you know, it’s like you have two boxes, and you’re sure you’ve got, you know, you put some very something very valuable in one of these boxes.
And you you definite is there. And one day you go get it, and you open the first first box. It’s it’s not there. It must be the other one. And you open the second box.
Oh my god. Yeah. And it’s you it’s real sense of loss. I know it was there. You know, I put it I know it’s there.
And there’s there’s a sense of loss. Something that you were you could you would have bet your life on is not there. And it’s like begins to undermine your son to some degree your sense of confidence. If this doesn’t exist, wow. Mhmm.
And you begin to question everything about you. So we look in the body, we look in the mind. We we look in the box of the body, we don’t find it. Look in the box of the mind, we don’t find it. And there’s a real sense of loss.
Something that I was so sure was there. It’s in fact, it’s not there. And we’ve taken it for granted our all our life that this eye that we’ve been basing all our thinking and emotional life upon is there. We’ve taken it for granted. We’ve never really looked at it.
We’ve it’s gone unquestioned. You know, it’s in in in the everyday world. It’s it’s not brought into question. It’s not it’s simply, there’s no reason to question as it were. The Buddhism isn’t in accord with most of the ways of the world in this regard.
It calls it in the question and we begin to see perhaps for the first time that what in fact you have taken for granted, what was basing what you unquestionably based your emotional life upon, in fact, never existed, will never exist, and a sense of loss. And just try to hang on to that sense of loss. There’s something that you thought was there, in fact, is not there. Okay. Let’s try that.
So take a comfortable, firm posture, and beginning with the new cultivation of compassion and love toward a stranger. But a stranger who quite naturally perhaps by their appearance for one reason or another appeals to you. That you they were quite easily, quite readily, perhaps you could like this person. Imagine that person in front of you. If you can’t see them, it doesn’t matter.
Just feel that that person is there. And by beginning with compassion and just developing the simple friendly thought, it would be nice if you didn’t have any problems. I would like that. May you not have any problems may be free of of all your dissatisfaction I’m going to help you. I’m going to commit myself.
They’re working with you to solve your problems, to free yourself from your difficulties. Would be wonderful if you were happy. May you be happy. I’m going to help you and to commit myself to working with you and finding happiness. And the way that I’m going to express my commitment to you at this at this present moment is through my meditation, by developing my skills and my abilities, developing my compassion and wisdom.
Eventually, I can be a real significant and practical benefit. Then bring your mind to the breath. A gentle, easy, in and out flow of the natural breath. So we begin our meditation on selflessness by identifying the object of negation that is the solid self, concrete eye. Using your imagination or your memory, try to induce an emotional experience, but a part of your mind is watching the eye which is undergoing the experience, the I which is afraid or the I which is full of pride or jealousy.
Try to get a sense just to feel what might how solid concrete it looks like. How to get a sense of it, the feeling for it. And now we’re going to just look for it, search for it within the body and mind. First, the body. And quickly working our way through from the top of the head to the tip of our toes.
First, the earth element. The dense solid parts, the muscles, the teeth, the tissues, the bones. It’s working your way down through as it’s behind the self. Very quickly working your way through the body. The water element, all the fluids in the body, the flowing substances, the blood, the lymph, the urine, saliva, working your way through the body and looking at the fluids within the body.
Are they the eye? And the fire element, the temperature of the body, the warmth of the body. And the wind energy element, the respiration, the energies moving throughout the body. The space element, the cavity, the hollows, the empty spaces in your body. More look in the mind.
Look at your feeling. Whatever you’re feeling at present. Feeling comfortable, uncomfortable, pleasurable, unpleasurable, indifferent, bored. Is that feeling the eye? Or recognition, discrimination, I like this, I don’t like that.
This is good, this is bad. This is a book, this is a table, this is meditation. Or your emotions? Love, compassion, faith, anger, jealousy, pride, whatever emotion you may be experiencing? The emotions behind itself.
And all the thoughts, the thinking process which all of these events are occurring in. I’m searching for the I, I’m look I’m doing this, next week I’m going to do something else. All this thinking is that the I of the self, this thinking itself is that the I? Perhaps it’s the eye consciousness, that which sees colors and shapes, that which knows colors and shapes, is that the eye? In your consciousness, that which hears sounds, that which knows sounds.
Nose consciousness, that which smells odors. Tongue consciousness, that which tastes flavors.