Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of a ring finger — long relative to the little finger, short relative to the middle — runs through this 44-minute session as Ven Jampa Gendun argues that friend and enemy are comparative labels with no absolute existence. He develops the first of five steps in the equalising-self-with-others meditation, drawing on Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life: first recognising that strangers and enemies contribute to our welfare just as friends do, then examining why the hand instinctively removes a thorn from the foot, then making a psychological case that self-identification is a learned habit capable of deliberate expansion. Quotes from Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa close the practical argument that self-cherishing is the root of all dissatisfaction.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 HoM 1993 05 05.mp3
UUID: 68828c6c-a739-48a7-beb8-1a600473a9e1
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-05-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.8 minutes
Words: ~5,300
So we’re looking at the the meditative tradition of exchanging and equalizing yourself with others as a means to develop the awakening heart. And within this tradition, the first of the five steps that is equalizing self with others. And this is from both the conventional point of view and the ultimate point of view. From the conventional point of view, from the side of others and from one’s own side. From the side of others coming to an understanding that everyone wants to be happy, no one wants to suffer, all exactly alike from their side.
So that’s the equality of others from their side, but also the equality in terms of oneself, in term that both all three of friends, enemies, and strangers have been equally kind to ourselves, each in their own unique way, each contributing in their own peculiar way to our ultimate welfare, our ultimate happiness. Trying to see that perhaps it’s obvious that our friends are kind to us, that’s why they’re our friends, but also strangers. The multitudes of people that we will never know, that we will never meet, that we will never see are contributing to our daily welfare. Without them we couldn’t exist and beginning to simply choose to appreciate all the kindness. Developing a sense of gratitude and appreciation for all this kindness which is daily being showered upon us by others. And additionally, even our enemies, Enemies who help us to learn tolerance, who help us to develop, go beyond our limits.
Move us from our from our maintenance of the status quo, who push our buttons, who show us what real love and compassion might be like, is probably our enemies who more than anyone else will help us to grow and therefore bring about our ultimate welfare. Then we looked at looking at the equality of self and others from the ultimate point of view. And we began as we’re looking in terms of the friend, enemy, and stranger exist as a product of the perceptual process itself, that they are a product of labeling. And moreover, these labels are arbitrary and changeable, And that reality of these people are not the labels that we apply to them. And we’re going to continue from the ultimate point of view.
There’s another the source text for the meditative tradition of exchanging self, equalizing exchanges of others is engaging in the bodhisattva deeds. The bodhisattva’s way of life or bodhisattva’s conduct by Śāntideva. And he has another text which is called Compendium of Training. He says, Both self and others are dependent like this side and that side. And then further on he says, If one does not establish the self, then in reliance upon what can other come about?
So this is very much a part of the insoluble puzzle of duality of relativity in which we are all embedded. Self and others are merely ways of speaking, handy references, conventionalities. They do not ultimately exist, just as in fact nothing ultimately exists. But we can begin to see it much more readily in terms of such dualities as far and near, long and short, high and low. The far exists only relative to the near.
It only relatively exists. It doesn’t absolutely exist. It doesn’t ultimately exist. If ultimate if if, say, the far existed ultimately, then no matter how close, how far we move toward the far, it will always remain far and unchangeably far because it was absolutely far. You know, we take the example of one’s ring finger.
Is the ring finger long or short? You know, statement doesn’t have a meaning in itself. It is neither absolutely long nor absolutely short. It is only relatively so. Relative to the middle finger, the ring finger is short.
Relative to the little finger, the ring finger is long. So it only has meaning in relationship to something other than itself. It exists within a comparative, in comparison to something else. Some kind of distinction, some kind of discrimination, compared to this, then this is that. So our friends exist in relationship to our enemies.
They do not exist that way. There is no such thing as an absolute friend or an absolute enemy. If we didn’t have friends, we wouldn’t have enemies. If we didn’t have enemies, we wouldn’t have friends. It is only a matter of discrimination, of comparison.
Compared to this person, this person is my friend. Compared to that person, this person is my enemy. Only relatively so. But we try to absolutize these labels which we apply as if they didn’t exist in relationship. It’s simply a matter of comparison, a degree or a judgment, some continuum of ways of relating, of qualities.
So in dependence upon an independently, absolutely existent friend, we generate independent, absolutely existent enemies. Enemies arise, labeling enemies. We begin to develop aversion. We develop hatred. Generate all the various afflictive emotions toward that individual, seeing them as absolutely as enemy.
Absolutely as friend, we develop attachment. Independently existing friend. Independently existing enemy. By grasping at an independently existing self, we conceive of an independently existing other. There is ourselves and there is others and then there begins to ensue all the feelings arising from that absolute border which we have created between ourselves.
Feelings of isolation, feelings of alienation, of defensiveness, of conflict, and all the unskillful ways that we relate with those things which are absolutely other. There’s things out there. There’s others out there. There’s self over here. And then once the self has arisen, there must be non self.
And then we absolutize this boundary between self and non self, between self and other. Here’s a quote, Why are you unhappy? Because ninety nine point nine percent of everything you do, everything you think is for yourself, and there isn’t one. So, ultimately, in universal vehicle, the question of who’s suffering does not even arise. Here we begin to see how wisdom can support compassion.
There is simply suffering. And because it does not ultimately belong to anyone, It is to be eliminated because no one wants to suffer. Everybody wants to be happy. To question who’s suffering is to miss the point. It is simply suffering, and suffering is to be eliminated.
You know, Śāntideva, in his text, Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, or the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Conduct or Deeds goes through a you know, there’s some goes through some debate with a protagonist, someone who’s going to argue against him in terms of why we should exchange our own happiness for the sufferings of others. The argument that we should dispel the suffering of others just as we dispel our own suffering. And just as we ourselves don’t want suffering, then we should rid others of their suffering. So, Śāntideva begins to, in his text, to work out an argument. The suffering that I experience does not cause any harm to others, but the suffering is mine because of my conceiving of myself as I.
Therefore, it becomes unbearable. Likewise, the misery of others does not befall me. Nevertheless, by conceiving of others as I, their suffering becomes mine. Therefore it too should be hard to bear. You know, we appropriate our suffering by conceiving of an I, in which it becomes my suffering.
Likewise, can begin to actually conceive I’m going to explain in terms of how our identity is cultivated over time. It’s not something which is instinctive. And that we have associated the sense of identity with has become the skin encapsulated ego, this boundary over here. All of the various pains over here I call my pains. That’s not my pain over there.
This is my pain. But we can begin to actually extend the boundary of our identity, of who we conceive of as I and its domain, its territory, such that the I can incorporate what is now other. What is now other’s pain can become my pain. Hence, I should dispel the misery of others because it is suffering, just like my own. And I should benefit others because they are sentient beings just like myself.
When both myself and others are similar in that we wish to be happy, what is so special about me? Why do I strive for my happiness alone? And when both myself and others are similar in that we do not wish to suffer, what is so special about me? Why do I protect myself and not others? So, a protagonist, someone who is going to argue with Śāntideva about this point.
But why should I protect them if their suffering does not cause me any harm? Śāntideva answers back, Then why protect myself against future suffering if it causes me no harm now? It is a mistaken conception to think that I shall experience the suffering of my next life, for it is another person who dies and another that will be reborn. But you know what Śāntideva is making the point here that Champa is not going to be around to experience the results of the various actions that I’m presently creating. Champa is at the end of his life finished and another continuum of another will arise, well maybe as a person, who knows, who will experience that result.
It’s not going to be Champa. So why should I care about what happens in my future lives? Because I’m not going to be around. So there’s some kind of argument about it. Even we can consider that over the course of this life.
Now why work so hard saving up money for retirement, putting away money in the superannuation fund? You’re not going to be around to reap the benefits of that. It’s going to be someone other than the person who’s actually saving up the money, who’s doing without it at the present moment. But it makes sense, does it, to go without a little bit at the present moment because you feel there’s some intimate connection between yourself and this person who’s actually going to enjoy the benefits of retirement plan. He’s going to be able to cash in their superannuation.
The protagonist says, Surely whenever there is suffering, the sufferer must protect himself from it. So, Śāntideva answers back, But the suffering of the foot is not that of the hand. Why does it protect it? Why is it that if we when we step on a thorn, the hand, which is not suffering at all, reaches down and pulls the thorn out of the foot? You know, why does the hand bother?
It’s not hurting in the least. But it does instinctively, automatically. It reaches down and pulls the thorn out of the foot. In the same way as the hand and so forth are regarded as limbs of the body, likewise why are embodied creatures not regarded as limbs of life? Because they are the hand and the foot are limbs of the same living being.
And whatever the living being is experiencing, each of the parts takes responsibility to eliminate that suffering. Or in the case of suffering, if the being is suffering, then all the parts of that being take responsibility for eliminating, alleviating that suffering. Being no inherent owner of suffering, there can be no distinction at all between that of myself and others. You know, the idea which Śāntideva is getting at here is that we can begin to re identify ourselves such that we begin to see ourselves as part of this great being of sentient life. And as long as that being is suffering in all its various parts, just like the hand removing the thorn from the foot, should seek to remove the suffering from the being of sentient life.
As long as there is suffering, it is to be eliminated. Whether it’s mine or yours, this distinction is meaning less. Thus I shall dispel it because it hurts. Why am I so certain that I shouldn’t eliminate the suffering of others? There is a I remember once the, you know, Dalai Lama was talking about one westerner who was going to go into a long retreat and he was talking to this westerner.
The westerner said, you know, was discussing true existence which we’re going to discuss when we in the explanation of the awakening mind. And this things that nothing truly exists. So the westerner said, I find it difficult to develop compassion because people don’t truly exist. Therefore, their suffering doesn’t truly exist. So this is what is being gotten at here.
But since neither the protagonist says, But since neither the suffering nor the sufferer truly exist, why should I turn away the misery of all? This is no ground for argument. For if I prevent my own suffering, surely I should prevent the suffering of all. If not, since I am just like others, sentient beings, I should not prevent my own suffering either. So whether we truly exist or not, when it hurts, we try to eliminate the suffering.
And this is the same as equally true for all others. And the Dalai Lama said to this western person, You haven’t quite studied enough. You know, from the ultimate point of view from the ultimate point of view, we are trying to break down this notion, this rationale that the partiality and the bias on the basis of which we relate with others is somehow justifiable. You know, take care of your own. And somehow in this rationale goes unquestioned because it seems like a truism almost.
That it seems like such an acceptable ethic by which are to live our life. This me first attitude or take care of one’s own charity begins at home. This biasness, this prejudice which we accept quite readily. That is, you know, the way I relate with a friend and an enemy are reasonable because they really are enemies. They really are friends, objectively.
I’m not creating them. They really are the way they are out there. And they deserve to be treated like that. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to treat them any other way. That kind of attitude.
Somehow we’re able to feel almost self righteous. Also, you know, the very fact of self and others is being brought into question. You know, using others at the expense at their expense is unjustifiable since neither ultimately exists. You know, without grasping at a self there would be no owner of suffering. And we’d be foolish to persist in creating more suffering.
So in this in equalizing ourselves with others, we are trying to feel the essential equality of ourselves and others. Just as we want happiness and do not want to suffer, likewise all living beings want happiness and don’t want to suffer. You know, we are all the same in this. So I identify with all beings equally and take all of their suffering as seriously as I do my own. In the same way that because I am simply because I’m used to identifying with all the parts of my own body, I take all of the various sufferings of all these various parts as seriously wherever the suffering might occur.
Whether they occur in my foot, whether they occur in my head, whether they occur in my hand. I take all of those various sufferings of all my parts equally as seriously. I have the same degree of concern for the pain wherever it occurs. So, you know, we can object and say, Well, this is unrealistic. You know, to expect this to automatically respond to the pains of others in the same way that we respond to our own pain in all the various parts of our body since we do not feel the pains of others the same way we do we feel our own pain.
So Śāntideva, he looks at this premise, this argument that we’re trying to put forth, and he argues that we only feel our own pain because we have appropriated it through the identification with our bodily parts. Have come to identify our bodily parts as our parts, and therefore the pain of those parts is my pain. The Buddha said, Suffering alone exists, none who suffers. The deed there is, but no doer thereof. nirvana is, but no one is seeking it.
The path there is, no one who travels it. When we are in the heat of emotion or under hypnosis, we cannot feel at all pain which may in normal situations be tremendously excruciating pain. Because under these conditions we are temporarily not identifying with the pain. We’re not identifying as our pain. So, you know, this shows that our own sensations are due to the habit of identification and habits can be altered.
It’s only my pain because I identify it as mine. We identify with that pain as mine and we can change. The identification process is a habit process and we can change our habits. You know one of the methods that’s now used in dealing and working with pain, in chronic pain, is to begin to distance oneself from it. That is to say to cease identifying with the pain as my pain.
It is simply pain. And one begins to disassociate with it. Know, adversely we can, through cultivation, accustom ourselves to identifying with the pain of others such that their pain becomes my pain, just as it is now with ourselves, in our own bodily parts. Then we can feel the equality of self in others. Śāntideva expresses this, the arbitrariness and hence arbitrariness and hence the expandability of our self-identification.
This process that we went through in developing this association as my body. Although the basis is quite impersonal, through constant familiarity I have come to regard the drop of sperm and blood of the other as I. So in the same way, why I be unable to regard the body of others as I, since it is not difficult to see that my own body is also that of others? So, you know, we did not begin as children to identify with our bodies automatically. We had to learn it.
We had to go through an accustomizing process. The semen of our father, the ovum of our mother formed a body which our consciousness entered into in the womb. If you were to find that same sperm and ovum on your sheets, you might find them quite repellent. But over time you became accustomed to substances which you might normally find repellent. To the extent that you familiarize them, that became accustomed to them as I.
You identify completely, this is who I am. These substances which came from other. So this self identification takes a long conditioning in infancy. Soldiers, athletes, citizens of nations, religious groups, believers in various religions, they can easily be reconditioned to expand their sense of identity such that they identify more with the group than they do with their individual selves. More powerfully with the group than they do with their individual selves.
This is proven by their willingness to die in battles, to die for national goals, to be martyrs for a religion, for some kind of ideology. So, you know, even cultural reconditioning can override our supposedly instinctive survival instinct whereby we’re willing to give over our life for a cause. Why cannot the conditioning of the awakening heart, awaken the heart to others, cause us to expand our identity to include all living beings as limbs of a single body of life. So the point that’s being made here is we have to accustom ourselves to what were once simply foreign matter, sperm and ovum, has developed into a sense this is who I am. Whatever happens to this foreign matter happens to me.
It is mine. And therefore what experiences is my experience. This identification process was a learned process. It came about through habit. So what Śāntideva argued is that we can begin to extend this self identification to include others.
We can actually include others in our present sense of I identity, such that their pain becomes my pain. Such that just as the various parts of the body, when they experience pain, it is thought to be my pain. When all of the beings of this great being of sentient life, when any of them experience suffering, it is my pain. Because I’m a part, I’m a limb of this great being of sentient life. Śāntideva explains, In the same way as the hands and so forth are regarded as limbs of the body, likewise why are embodied creatures not regarded as limbs of life?
You know, this kind of You know, that we I have a sense that, you know, on a I don’t know if it would be what in a way maybe cancer is like a metaphor, I don’t know. It is as if a few cells become tremendously self centered. And, you know, they no longer exist in harmony with the overall structure of the body. Perhaps, you know, they’re just like ourselves. And they can bring about the destruction, the ruin of the entire body.
And somehow, you know, that self centeredness is like a cancer. And if we can begin to this, take our rightful place to act in harmony with this great being of sentient life. To begin to open up our identity and sense of concern. Then the entire being can be made healthy. That this being exists interdependent upon each living part.
Through acquaintance has the thought of I arisen towards this impersonal body. So in a similar way, why should it not arise toward other living beings? It is not unrealistic, but even compellingly practical that we should develop a natural, rational, instinctively powerful altruism. For there’s nothing artificial about the hold hard fact. Cold?
Cold hard fact. It’s been a long day that everybody wants to be happy including me, and nobody wants to suffer. The psychology of the awakening heart is not something which is totally is not something nothing wildly otherworldly. It’s not something far beyond our normal call of human being.
You know, we can begin to look at the advantages of other centeredness and the disadvantages of self centeredness. In terms of it is evident looking within our own experience that human beings are never happier than when they transcend their narrow habitual ego sense. When they lose, in some small, when they go beyond their self confinement, to whatever degree that they human beings are never more miserable than when they are completely caught up in their own claustrophobic world of their exaggerated self concern. Now within our own experience, sense pleasures. Sense pleasure reaches its height when the experiencer loses their ordinary boundaries and are carried away by for example, by beautiful music.
All of these terms, of it always have this when we talk about the most exalted moments in life, it’s a sense of being carried out of oneself, of going beyond some kind of boundaries, some kind of limits, some kind of imprisonment that we dwell within. Emotional pleasure is never greater. For example, that between the love between a male and a female. When this this union of the self with the beloved, a going out of oneself. An aesthetic and intellectual joy can safely be defined as proportionate to the intensity of the degree that of the beauty or the truth or whatever it might be.
It takes one beyond oneself in some kind of expansive universality. You know, however we some kind of bliss, some kind we even use the word transcendence. Going beyond the narrow confines which we which we really usually feel entrapped. Our greatest joys, our greatest pleasures, somehow always associated with with the movement outward of opening, with transcending, with going beyond, these these confines that we normally live within. Lama Yeshe, I’m talking about disadvantages of self centeredness, advantages of other centeredness.
As long as we remain so tightly focused upon our own happiness, whether temporal or ultimate, we will never experience the expansiveness of a truly open heart. The only way to achieve the total vision of complete enlightenment is to free ourselves from the restriction of this narrow self-cherishing attitude. In the teachings of all the highly evolved men and women of the past, it is clearly stated that this narrow self-cherishing habit of mind brings us nothing but spiritual suffocation. If we truly wish to fulfill our highest potential, or even if we only want to achieve a certain mundane satisfaction in our daily life, then we must overcome this self-cherishing and dedicate ourselves as fully as possible to the welfare of others. This is the only way to achieve a completely open heart, the only way to experience lasting happiness.
Dedication simply means that having created a certain atmosphere of positive energy within yourself, you determine to share this happiness with others as much as possible. According to Buddhist psychology, if you do not have a dedicated attitude to some extent, you will never totally be happy. You will never totally be satisfied. Instead, you will remain bored and lonely. As the Pänchen Lama says in his tantric text entitled Offering to the Spiritual Master, self-cherishing is the cause of all misery and dissatisfaction, while holding all mother sentient beings dearer than oneself is the foundation of all realizations and knowledge.
Therefore, inspire me to change my self-cherishing into concern for all others. So, you know, this is not some complex philosophical theory, but a very simple statement about about life, about what it actually about what is actually happening to us. You know, we have to find some way to open up some small crack, to generate some doubt and begin to dismantle this wall of self centeredness that we exist within. And we have to create some inkling of that doubt that perhaps our self centered me first attitude doesn’t work, is not working. We’re not getting what we want happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction, peace, love, whatever it might be.
And maybe there is really another way. I think we have to validate it with our own experience because it’s such a revolutionary thought that we have to approach it very slowly and begin to see if it is in fact working. You know, think that by dedicating my life to others I’m going to be as a byproduct of that happier than I could ever hope to imagine. To actually begin to we can work toward that end, but we have to begin validate it, to authenticate that notion in our actual experience. Without overcoming the exact opposite trend within our own mind.
That is to say our self centered trend. That is to say we have a conception that the most effective way to find happiness in life is to use others, that we engage in activities at the expense and exclusion of others. That is me first, my happiness at all expenses, laying everything and everyone at the altar of one’s own ego. Through manipulation, through objectifying and making and using others as things, this habitual tendency that we all possess, this way of relating with the world, is the way to find happiness. And we have that habit but we’ve never invalidated it.
We’ve never looked within our own experience to see whether it in fact is working or not. I think we’re operating on that premise, the self centered premise, and it’s not working. So we have to examine with our own experience when it’s not working. And then we’re going to move toward a preferred story in our life. We’re going to move toward we’re going to begin to validate another way of relating, other centeredness.
And some kind of shift will take place. You know, we all everyone is trying to take advantage of somebody, to profit only for themselves. You know, almost the entire world is built upon self centeredness in one way or another, self attachment. You know, whatever it might be, racism, classism, sexism, big countries take over small countries. We can see that what’s happening in Yugoslavia at the present moment.
Big children, they take away toys from little children. Husbands take advantage of their wives. You know, I make friends with somebody because of what they can do for me, how they’re going to be able to benefit me. And so it’s the same with the rest of the world. Know, boyfriends and girlfriends, everybody wants something from somebody else.
Everybody has their hidden agenda. Everybody is using everybody else. However, the essential thing is Lama Zopa — there is a picture of Lama Zopa above the fireplace. Lama Zopa is the director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahāyāna tradition, a network of about sixty centers around the world of which Buddha House is a part of.
However, the essential thing is, whatever problems arise, to be aware every time, immediately, that all these problems come from your selfish mind. This problem is given to me by my self-cherishing thought. Every time immediately try to recognize this solution. As long as you put all the blame outside, there is no happiness. In reality, all the problems, all the difficulties of life come from self-cherishing thought.
All these problems are the result of negative karma accumulated in the past out of self-cherishing thought. Being under the control of self-cherishing thought, you allow the disturbing thoughts to arise and then you are motivated by this negative karma. These problems not only come from past karma accumulated under control of self-cherishing thought, but also from your self-cherishing thought in day to day life. So setting aside, you know, all the various possible philosophical theories, abstract intellectual ideas, dogmas and doctrines. To see whether or not our self centeredness is the cause of our confusion and frustration, all we have to do is look at our own life experiences.
And to see whether other-centeredness might be a preferable outcome, a preferable life story that we might want to enlist, be recruited into to develop in our life. We just have to look within our own experience. So it becomes imperative that we become aware and we begin to look at how we’re living our lives and how we’re experiencing, and from where does our happiness come from, and where does what is the source of all our problems. And then the basic sanity of our own mind will guide us along the right path. So I think we’ll stop there.
Okay? So, dedicate the positive energy that we created. It’s personal power. I think this process of listening and getting new information, you know, provoking thought, new provoking new ideas, new ways of seeing things, being stimulated to look into, investigate perhaps things that we’ve never considered before is tremendously worthwhile. And out of it comes something really positive.
And out of it comes some creative potential. And we can dedicate that creative potential to something really worthwhile. You know, beyond our own ego pleasures, beyond our self centered needs. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to the enlightened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakened heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase.
Thank you very much. So if you’d like to get a cup of tea, we’re in the discussion group.