Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Śāntideva’s device of speaking in the voice of someone you look down on, compete with, or envy forms the heart of this 46-minute session by Ven Jampa Gendun. Beginning with a guided meditation in which participants exchange places with four people and look back at their former selves, Gendun moves into the exchange-of-self-for-others practice from Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. He works through three dialogues — each voiced by someone we see as inferior, equal, or superior — showing how pride, rivalry, and jealousy can be redirected toward bodhicitta. The practice is then applied to family, coworkers, the destitute, and the famous. The session closes with Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem “Please Call Me By My True Names” — about a young boat refugee and the sea pirate who attacked her — as a demonstration that genuine understanding, not sympathy alone, is the root of compassion.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 HoM 1993 05 12.mp3
UUID: f27631b9-4b51-423f-a957-e97248ab1f9a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-05-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~4,355
Imagine that person in front of you. And try to put yourself in their place. Try to see the situation, the problem, from their perspective out of their eyes, taking their thoughts, feeling their feelings. And express what it is that you feel, what it is that you see to your former self. So you have different feelings for each of these four individuals, and they appear very different to you.
From their own side, they all want to be happy. None want to suffer equally. So just with the sense of unbiasedness, wish them well, wish them happiness equally. And then come back to the breath. Just easy, gentle, in and out flow of the natural breath.
Then slowly in your own good time, becoming aware of your body, becoming aware of your surroundings. So we’re looking at the, tradition of exchange and equalizing self with others as a method for developing the awakening heart. Beginning with developing a sense of equality between and amongst between oneself and others and amongst others. Most basically that everybody wants to be happy, that no one wants to suffer. Everyone’s exactly alike in this in this point of view, in this sense.
And then looking at the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of of other centeredness, beginning to see within our own experience in terms of our relationships and how we experience our social experience. When are those happiest moments? When do they come? And when are we most miserable in terms of others? Beginning to see that our self centeredness, which has been our habitual way of relating with others, the context in which we relate with others, has been self defeating.
It hasn’t been working. And perhaps looking at those, focusing and becoming aware of those instances in our life when we’ve been most happy in terms of relationships with others, And the quality of those relationships was a sense of going out to another, a sense of going beyond one’s constant preoccupation with one’s own self, but moving toward concern of others seems to be a context in which we experience a greater happiness, as greater moments of meaning in our life. And then now we’re looking at the actual exchange of self rather. In the actual exchange of self rather, we’re beginning to exchange the focus of our concern. There is a gradual shift from self centeredness to other centeredness.
Normally, they’re the object of our cherishing. So we began to talk about this last week. Rather than, you know, completely being caught up in cherishing only ourselves, being completely concerned and wrapped up, absorbed with our own self concerns, we are trying to cultivate an attitude which is more and more other centered and cherishing others. And this is not to say that we forgo our own real needs and our own wants, but perhaps we begin to see that there’ll be a change, though we’ll evolve a change in what our needs are conceived of as, what we actually want will be more and more in terms of a social context. Our needs and our wants will be conditioned and influenced in terms of our social awareness.
Beginning to find a greater place for others in our life as it’s beginning a central part of our life. Normally, our self centered attitude leads us to classify people into three groups. Those who we conceive of as inferior to ourselves in some way, towards whom we generate a sense of self importance, superiority, pride, those who we consider as our peers toward whom we develop a sense of competitiveness and toward those we, in some way, think are superior to ourselves. Maybe in just some particular quality that they’re richer, happier, more beautiful, more high more highly educated, more intelligent, but in some way. And out of this, generally, we develop a sense of envy and jealousy toward them.
So all of these states of mind cause both immediate and long term problems for ourselves. So the source of this meditative tradition is Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. Śāntideva shows us how we can use these natural tendencies of the mind, perhaps unskillful tendencies of the mind, to train ourselves in developing an awakening heart. So beginning with, someone we feel in some way superior to that is to say, we look upon them as being inferior. Considering you know, looking at these three types of beings, Śāntideva says, considering lesser beings and so forth as myself and considering myself as other in the following way, I should meditate upon envy, competitiveness, and self importance with a mind free of distorted concepts.
So using the power of our imagination, the power of our empathy, being able to identify with others, we exchange places with those we consider lower than ourselves, equal to ourselves, or higher than ourselves. And from this new perspective, we look back at our former selves just as we did in the course of our meditation. And we will generate if we are able to actually involve our mind in this completely, we will develop emotions of self importance, arrogance, superiority, pride, a sense of haughtiness, a sense of competitiveness, a sense toward the equal, and toward that person we see as superior as that. Know, sense of envy, jealousy, sense of discouragement, sense of insufficiency. So then Śāntideva in his text goes through this a number of verses and he actually he transposes I, which we normally refer to ourselves.
He transposes this I to the other person. So he’s thinking of this person who’s some way lower than himself. And he begins to conceive of this person as I and his former self as you or he in this case, actually transposing the I which is generally applied to this over here, to that over there. Know, conceiving of someone that we look upon as inferior to ourselves, such as in education or wealth or prestige or talent, whatever, and identify with that person, as we did in our meditation, as completely as possible. Having done this, we look back upon our former self.
And this is the actual dialogue that Śāntideva has in his text. So this is the person who we are conceiving of as inferior to ourselves in some way, talking back to our former self. Okay? So talking so this person’s over here talking back to me. Right?
He is honored, but I am not. I have not found wealth such as he. He is praised, but I am despised. He is happy, but I suffer. I have to do all the work while he remains comfortably at rest.
He is renowned as great in this world, but I am inferior with no good qualities. So putting yourself in their position, just as we did in our meditation, how do you feel? You know, were you ever aware of how this person might have been viewing you all this time? How they had felt? Were you ever aware that they might have been feeling in some way inferior to you?
That they might have been feeling somehow insufficient? That they might have been feeling jealousy toward you, envy toward you? And we we know we’re also we’re completely caught up in seeing things from our own viewpoint. We forget that they too have a viewpoint, that they might actually have been jealous of us, envious of us, feeling inferior to us, feeling insufficient around us, feeling uncomfortable around us, wanting something, some kind of confirmation from us, affirmation from us about their worth, that they’re in some way worthwhile people. You know, we might have overlooked that all this time.
And have you ever, you know, thought you might have many of the things that this person might want, that you have that this person might look upon you as being somebody they would they would like to be like, or that you have some kind that you’re a healthy person, and they’re really envious of your health or your beauty or your intelligence or your position or your money. They’ve been feeling this way towards you in some way. Then in order to overcome any sense of discouragement that we may, that may arise in identifying with this person. Śāntideva goes on to say, But what do you mean I have no good qualities? I have all good qualities.
Compared to many, he is inferior, and compared to many, I am high. You know, additionally, usual feelings of self important, are they really justified? With all that we have, all our affluence, do we really ever do anything for anybody else without some type of ulterior motive to get something back, without expecting something in return. You know, how what gives us the right to be able to look down on this person, to feel so arrogant, to feel this great self importance that we generally have toward this person in terms of this person? So the Śāntideva goes on.
So this is this person talking back again to her former self. The deteriorated state of my morals and views is not due to me, but due to my disturbing conceptions. In whatever way he is able he should heal me. Willingly I shall accept any discomfort involved, but I am not being healed by him. So why does he belittle me?
What’s the what are what use are his good qualities to me? Although he has good qualities, he does not benefit me. With no compassion for the beings who dwell in the poisonous mouth of evil realms. Externally, he is proud of his good qualities and wishes to put down the wise. Now, what gives us the right to these feelings of arrogance that we may generate in terms of this person that we look upon as in some way inferior to ourselves.
Do we ever really help anybody else? Most of us talk perhaps about spiritual growth like myself and love and spiritual practices. But do we really do anything? And there in thinking in this way, examining what we are about, we can begin to diminish our smug our smugness and our our arrogance and our complacency about what a fine person I am. And I feel good about myself and what I can do for you because do we ever do anything for this person?
You know, what gives us the right to feel this sense of superiority when, in fact, we do nothing to help them. Now, going to exchange places with someone who is our peer, someone who we feel is equal to ourselves, somewhat at the same level as ourselves in various ways, equal to ourselves, so strongly identifying with him or her, labeling that person I and looking back at our former self. And generally, we’ll have a sense of competitiveness with our peers. And again, there’s a dialogue Śāntideva sets out. And again, it’s exchanged I which is looking back at our former self.
In order that I may excel, he who is regarded as equal with me, I shall definitely strive to attain gain and honor for myself even by means as verbal dispute. By all means I shall make clear to the entire world all the good qualities I have, but I shall not let anyone here have any good qualities he may have. Also, shall hide all my faults. I will be venerated, but not he. I will find a great deal of material gain.
I will be honored, but he shall not. For a long time, I shall look with pleasure at his being made inferior. He will become the laughingstock of all, regarded among everyone as an object of scorn and derision. Through through meditating in this way, we can we can make use of our natural inclination to compete with others to their detriment as a means of increasing our effort to make others happy. Actually, you know, as I as I’ve talked about previously, self identification occurs as a process over time.
It is a learned conditioned attitude to identify this I with this particular complex of body mind. If we can actually begin to recondition our sense of I and begin to apply it to others. So our natural habitual way of thinking in terms of I want the best, I want to be happy, I’m going to get everything for myself can actually be we can recondition ourselves such that the I can be identified with other than whom we normally conceive of presently as self. And then for these natural and these natural thoughts that I’m going to be I’m going to make myself happy, We begin to think of that I in terms of what is now presently conceived of as other. And so we this this habitual selfishness working for happiness for this particular self over here, actually becomes transformed into working for the selves over there because we begin to see that self as I.
And we we we begin to work more and more to make others happy on the basis of our own selfishness. Then finally, we we change places with someone who we feel is superior to ourselves in some way. And we look down upon our former self. So again, this exchange takes place. It is said that this deluded one is trying to compete with me, but how can he be equal with me in learning intelligence, form, class, wealth?
Thus, upon hearing of my good qualities that have been made well known to all, I shall thoroughly enjoy the satisfaction of the pleasant tingling sensation that occurs. Even though he has some possessions, if he is working for me, I shall give him just enough to live on, and by force I’ll take the rest. His happiness and comfort will decline, and I shall always cause him harm. For hundreds of times in this cycle of rebirth he has caused harm to me. So imagining what may be going on in the mind of another person, someone else we feel is superior to ourselves helps us in turning our envy into compassion and to counter our sense of laziness or discouragement.
You’re thinking that somehow we think that these people have no problems and are just somehow better than myself. And this is a dream. You know, sometimes we see others as famous people, rock and roll stars, movie stars, rich people, powerful people. Somehow they they’re happy. And it’s very difficult to develop compassion for these people.
The rich, the famous, the powerful. But if we if we really take the time to put ourselves ourselves in their places, we can understand that many of them are going through more mental turmoil than probably ourselves. If we do take the time to to exchange places just for a while to see how it really might be to be that person, And rather than superficially, in an unanalyzed fashion, this could be taking for granted that it must be great to be rich, a rock and roll star, a president of a country. And in fact, it’s probably more of a hassle than anything else if we really took the time to investigate, if we really put ourselves in their places. And this is what we’re doing, trying to understand, going beyond our unexamined preconceptions about the world and the people about us, and beginning to actually investigate and get in get get under their skin and trying to feel what it may be like to live their life.
So it’s a natural tendency of self centeredness to measure, to classify and compare ourselves with others with the resultant emotions of self importance, rivalry, enmity. And with such feelings, others simply become either an object for our struggle for domination or objects of our fear. We’re either seeking to dominate them or we have a sense of fear of being dominated by them, This ongoing struggle, this conflict between self and other. In either case, is no real love. I compare myself with the saint, the master, the great musician, the man who knows, the man who has arrived.
In this comparison, I find myself wanting and insufficient. I have no talent. I am inferior. I am not realized. I am not, and that man is.
So out of measurement and comparison comes the enormous cavity of emptiness and nothingness. And the flight from this cavity is fear. And the fear stops us from understanding this bottomless pit. Do you know what it means to live without psychological comparison when all your life you have been conditioned to compare at school, at games, at the university, and in the office? Everything is comparison.
To live without comparison, do you know what it means? It means no dependence, no self sufficiency, no seeking, no asking. Therefore, means to love. Love has no comparison, and so love has no fear. You know, we we are stuck in in seeing everything from only one point of view, our own.
In this exchange of self for others, we develop a flexible perspective, a flexible point of view. We’re able to view situations from a multifaceted point of view, from a more socialized point of view. We understand others because more and more we are able to set aside our own agendas, own issues, and look out of the world over their eyes, feel their feelings, think their thoughts, experience their circumstances, their situations, and see the world as it might appear to them. And this as, you know, to understand to understand another person’s world and to understand is to love, understanding ourselves and understanding others, loving ourselves and loving others. So in training, as we’ve been doing in the course in our meditation that we began the session with, in actual exchange of self for others, you know, we should use all the various categories and varieties of people that we know of.
People close to us. Exchange places with your husband, your wife, with your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your mother, your children, your father, and look back at your former self. And what do you see? What do you feel? When you are them, you know, do you feel loved?
Do you feel respected? Do you feel valued? Do you feel understood? Are your needs being met? Are your wants being fulfilled?
Trying to understand their lived experience from their point of view. You know, exchange places with someone you work with every day. How does it feel to be that person? To be in their situation, feel their feelings, thinking their thoughts. What do you experience when you look back at yourself?
You know, the feelings. Do you see it? Do you feel a sense of friendliness? Do you feel competitiveness, hostility? And you’re expressing to yourself how you feel, what you see, to your former self.
Exchange places with a destitute person, a poor person. And holding out your hand to your former self, what do you see in those eyes which look at you? Do you see pity, fear, compassion, haughtiness, arrogance, sympathy, indifference? Exchange places with someone you were having some different disagreements with. And as as we did.
And look at that situation out of their eyes. You know, how can how do you experience the way the way your former self is relating to that situation? You know, do you see hostility, defensiveness, closed mindedness, open mindedness, understanding, whatever? So presently, due to the force of our own self centeredness, we view everything and everyone from the vantage point of ourselves, our myopic vision that we have, that we look upon the world with, And we are unable to see the world as it is viewed by others, out of others’ eyes. We are unable to identify with them.
So the world is perceived and evaluated in terms of the self, our own self centeredness, which we feel absolutely committed to. That we feel it is we feel very deeply that it is worthy of our ultimate commitment. And upon the altar which we lay our entire lives, our efforts, everything that we have, our dreams. So, you know, this is the kind of prison that we’ve created for ourselves. And we are due to which we are continually torturing ourselves.
In our constant struggle to to figure out the secret of life. And we’re constantly trying trying to find the key, how to find that happiness that we’re always looking for. But we never see that it is this very struggle for our own happiness alone at the exclusion and expense of others, which is preventing us from finding the happiness that we’ve always been looking for. There’s a beautiful poem by Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Nhat Hanh, I think most of you are familiar with him.
The the French Vietnamese monk who now lives in France. I have a poem for you. This poem is about three of us. The first is a twelve year old girl, one of the boat people crossing the Gulf of Siam. She was raped by a sea pirate, and after that she threw herself into the sea.
The second person is the sea pirate who was born in a remote village in Thailand. And the third person is me. I was not on the boat. I was tens of thousands of miles away. Because I was mindful, I knew what was going on in the Gulf.
I was very angry, of course. But I could not take sides against the sea pirate. If I could have, it would have been easier, but I couldn’t. I realized that if I had been born in this village and had lived a similar life economic, educational, and so on it is likely that I would now be that sea pirate. So it is not easy to take sides.
Out of suffering, I wrote this poem. It is called Please Call Me By My True Names, because I have many names, and when you call me by any of them, I have to say yes. Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive. Look deeply. I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird whose wings are still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive. I am the mayfly, metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly. I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of the pond.
And I am also the grass snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself upon the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones. My legs are thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the armed merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the twelve year old girl, a refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.
I am the member of the Politburo with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his debt of blood to my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp. My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom. My pain is like a river of tears and so full it fills up the four oceans. Please call me by my true names so I can hear all my cries in my laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and my pain are but one.
Please call me by my true names so I can wake up and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. I think we’ll stop there. Okay? If would like to dedicate the positive energy that we created. I I oftentimes translate this term as creative potential because it is it’s something which can weaken — it’s like something out of which we can shape goodness however we may conceive of it.
And we can, make of it what we will. It’s like the stuff of the goodness of life that we create for ourselves. So we we we dedicate this stuff of the goodness of life. And if we’re if, you know, like Thich Nhat Hanh mentions in terms of, you know, it’s quite it would be easy to to become angry and become self righteous toward the pirate, that he was such a base human being, and to sympathize with the young girl. But perhaps were to live the the life of the pirate and have as Thich Nhat Hanh mentions, to have lived in his village and walked if we were to walk a mile or month in his moccasins, then how can we, how can we have hate for something that we understand?
Understanding this brings love. So, you know, in this trying to understand the people about us and what has made them who they are, and understanding our own situation that we want to be happy and that others are just like ourselves. And so taking this stuff of the goodness of life and sharing it about because one cares, one understands. 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 awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow.
And may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more. So if you like to get a cup of tea, we’ll have a discussion. Dear oh, sorry. Is that what you’re saying? That if we