Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A Thomas Merton quote on how love demands an inner death — not of the everyday self, but of the self of exaggerated self-concern — opens this 41-minute commentary and leads into Śāntideva’s practice of exchanging self for others. Ven Jampa Gendun reviews the equalizing foundations from the prior session before mapping the core shift: the movement of psychological gravity from self to other. A lost-keys metaphor makes the point that blaming circumstances for unhappiness means looking in entirely the wrong place. The Four Noble Truths serve as a practical diagnostic: recognizing dissatisfaction, tracing it to self-centeredness, and affirming that the mind’s basic purity persists beneath afflictive emotions. The session closes by reading Śāntideva’s key verses and previewing a role-playing exercise — inhabiting the perspective of those seen as inferior, equal, or superior — to be continued the following week.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 HoM 1993 05 19.mp3
UUID: 2d789865-6061-4d78-a20e-9f408487952c
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-05-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 41.1 minutes
Words: ~4,974
We’re never more miserable than when we’re trapped in a claustrophobic world of self centeredness. And never more fulfilled and happy when we begin to open out to others. And bring your mind back to the breath. And then gently, in your own good time, become aware of your body, aware of your surrounding. We’re looking at the tradition of the equalizing and exchanging self with others as a means for the development of an awakening heart.
We’ve looked at the equality of self and others in terms of their own side. Okay. So we’ve looked at the equality of self and others. Is that okay now? Is that better?
A little bit more. Is that better now? More and more? We’ve got more. Would you like it louder?
A little bit more. Okay. Is that better now? Okay. Great.
Equality of self and others in terms of conventionally from their own side, that everyone wants to be happy, that no one wants to suffer, no matter what the superficial different appearances may be, however different they may appear. In fact, everyone from the from the most evolved realized being down to the the littlest insect. They are they all are sentient. They all express approach and avoidance in their behavior. They all want to be happy.
They don’t want to suffer. From our own side, we can coming to some feeling that everyone is in the equality of others in terms of their kindness. That is to say, they’re not kind in the same ways, but each in their own unique way is contributing to our temporal and ultimate well-being. Both all three of our friends, which are generally quite apparent, because that’s why they are friends,, because of their kindness, but also to those vast majority of beings we feel unrelated to, that that everything we have, that everything we will become is very much dependent upon them. And we can begin to determine the quality of our response to their relating to us in terms of a good sense of gratitude, a sense of thankfulness that we have everything that we have, that we have this affluence, that we have material prosperity, and that we have a chance to grow, to self actualize in dependence upon the vast majority of beings who we presently feel indifference toward that we will never meet, that we will never know of personally in the course of this life.
And to that more difficult category of beings, our enemies, those who who who, in all apparent appearances, seem to be hindering, seem to be obstacles to our happiness. But in fact, if we perhaps we’ll be able to look deeper in a more profound manner that they may be, in fact, bring the most the greatest contributor to our ultimate happiness in terms of helping us develop those qualities which facilitate our most preferred story, that of becoming a sane, healthy, loving human being. It is our enemies who most facilitate. So each in their own unique ways contributing to our temporal and ultimate well-being equally. And from the ultimate point of view, that friend, enemy, and strangers are simply the labels of friend, enemy, and strangers are are arbitrary, easily changeable.
And they ultimately, these people are not the labels that we apply to them, that that we’re caught up in a very in a dualistic puzzle of relativity. Without enemies, we cannot have friends. Without friends, we cannot have enemies. That these apparently self existent, objectively existent enemies that we generate hatred toward do not exist from their own side, but are a product of our own projections. And so as likewise our friends and strangers, that they’re all equal in this regard.
On this foundation, is a sense of equality at these various levels and in these various ways, developing a sense of unconditioned positive regard. Unconditioned by our habitual sense of hatred and attachment positive in that we seek we begin to recognize their kindness, that we have some involvement, some feeling of relatedness to them, and we regard them as such. So we have a sense of unbiased sense of participating in the lives of others, a sense of relatedness. And it’s a very positive way of sense of relatedness. Upon this being, we begin to look at the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness.
We’re trying to, as I just mentioned, that we’re never more miserable than when we’re completely caught up and trapped in our own claustrophobic, narrow world, my needs, my wants, at the exclusion and expense of others. And we’re probably never more fulfilled, never more deeply living alive than those moments of communion, of going out from this this prison of self centeredness and beginning to experience a more, you know, higher truths, higher ways of being, a greater sense of belonging to to all that there is, this world of this this universe of living beings and feeling an integral part of it, not this isolated being who we always imagine ourselves to be. On the basis of this, we then go on to the actual exchange of self for others. That’s what we’re going to talk about tonight, the actual exchange of self for others. That quote by Thomas Merton, who is a Trappist monk in the United States.
It is hard to really love another. It is hard to really love others if love is to be taken in the full sense of the word. Love demands a complete inner transformation. For without this, we cannot possibly come to identify ourselves with our brother. We have to become, in some sense, the person that we love.
And this involves a kind of death of our own being, our own self. No matter how hard we try, we resist this death. We fight back with anger, with recrimination, with demands, with ultimatums. We seek any convenient excuse to break off and give up the difficult task. So I can only speculate what Thomas Merton was getting at when he said that this involves some kind of death, a death of a self.
The death which I think he is speaking of is a death not of our conventional self, and of a self which comes and goes with each which eats and sleeps, does all the various things, gives talks and listens to talks. The self of self centeredness listens to self that dies in the course of love and and beginning to identify ourselves with our brothers and sisters. You know, but this self of exaggerated self concern, of self preoccupation. But, you know, the but with with with every death, there comes a birth. The birth of, in this case, other centeredness, of concern for others to the same degree that we’re we’re presently concerned with ourselves.
You know, it we redrawing of our boundaries, a re identification process, rEvamping of the map of who we conceive of ourselves to be in our place in the world and the universe. We begin to exchange ourselves for others. So the exchange itself for of the of the present object of our cherishing ourselves for the cherishing of others. And this is what leads to an awakening of our heart. So in the exchange of self for others, what is exchanged?
It is not so much that you become me and I become you, but we exchange the object of our cherishing, of our concern. There’s a the the shift of our center of psychological gravity. The center the center of our psycho psychological sense of gravity from completely absorbed in this this beam over here to movement toward other. K. The the center begins to move outward.
So this is, you know, the giving opening our hearts to others, this awakening of our hearts to others. Beginning of opening, you know, we can begin to cease torturing ourselves. And we can begin to ourselves, and we can begin to go beyond the isolated confines of our narrow world and open out to a broader. We come you know, take our place in this as an integral part of a benevolent universe. This is what’s going to help us to awaken.
Now and again, I think going back to what Lama Zopa said in terms of you know, these these may be fine and noble words, the idea of awakening, enlightenment, Buddhahood. But even if in a very practical sense, in a very mundane, everyday sense, if we want to be happy, if we want to find some contentment, some peace, if we want to develop a smooth mind rather than seeing everything as problems, as everything becoming problematic, then we need to, in some small way, make this effort, follow along this path some short distance. Give ourselves over a little to that. Expend a little energy, a little time in these ways of thinking and development of these attitudes. Just, if you want just a little bit more contentment in your everyday life.
What to say of enlightenment or awakening, perhaps, these more abstract ideas that we sometimes make use of as if we understood what they might mean. But just to be a bit of a happier even tonight and tomorrow and the next day. You know, people, can like, spend expend all their time and energy, money searching for happiness. You know, they exhaust themselves. They cry tears.
They kill. They steal. They they make plans. They worry. They go to rock concerts.
They attend teachings. They they they go to universities, get degrees, they travel, all because they are. It’s going to bring them happiness. At least that’s what they’re hoping for. And we have to ask ourselves, are we happy?
Basically happy? Are we content? Fulfilled? You know? Everybody has problems, difficult periods in their life.
But they’re talking more of the overall quality, the theme, the tone of our life. So first, we begin to under we begin by understanding our own problems, you know, our our self-cherishing problems, our hatred problems, our confusion problems, our anger problems, our pride problems, our jealousy problems, our ego problems. Then we begin to extend the same understanding to others. Understanding ourselves is the beginning. And then we begin to you know, understanding that others are just like myself, we can begin to to interpolate.
We can begin to extend that same understanding we have for ourselves in in developing a love for ourselves and willing to extend ourselves to to solve our problems, to take ourselves seriously, not to remain victims, and to choose and take control of our life, the type of story that we want to live, Understanding the nature of our situation, we can begin to understand others in that same fashion because they are just like me. They’re super they’re only superficial differences between us, among us. This is I’ve probably read this quote before, but I enjoy this quote a great deal. It’s a quote by Thich Nhat Hanh, who’s a Vietnamese monk now living in France. Suppose we have a son who becomes an unbearable young man.
It may be hard for us to love him. That is natural. In order to be loved, a person should be lovable. If our son has become difficult to love, we’ll be very unhappy. We wish we could love him, but the only way we can is to understand him, to understand his situation.
We have to take our son as the subject of our meditation. Instead of taking the concept of emptiness or some other subject, we can take our son as the concrete subject for our meditation. We don’t blame our son. We just want to understand why he has become like that. Through this method of meditation, we find out all the causes near and far that have led to our son’s present state of being.
The more we see, the more we understand. The more we understand, the easier it is for us to have compassion and love. Understanding is love itself. Understanding is another name for love. Love is another name for understanding.
As we begin to this process of of loving and understanding, through understanding our own problems and learning about ourselves and how the nature of our problems, we begin to love ourselves, And we begin to have some compassion for ourselves. And we look at our problem, you know, where they’re coming from, how they evolved. And we try to, in this examination, try to go perhaps beyond the superficial level perhaps that we examined, that we’ve normally made use of in analyzing our difficulties. You know, that he’s my problem or she’s my problem. I’m fat.
I’m ugly. I don’t have enough money. I don’t have the right clothes. I don’t have the degree I need. You know, if we remain if we continually remain at this level, then there’s no real solution to our problems, only the exchange of one problem for another at best.
And as the this level of looking at our problems, I use the the metaphor of of, you know, if you’ve you lost the keys to your house, and you and you lost them in the backyard, but you just mowed the front lawn. Yeah. So the grass is much shorter there. And so you think, well, I’ll I’ll look in the front yard. It’s easier to look there, isn’t it?
It’s true. It’s easier to look because the grass is so deep in the backyard. But the the situation is such. The circumstance of the nature of the predicament is such that though it might be easier to look, no matter how long you may look, you’re never going to find your keys there. You’re never going to find the solution to your problems there because that’s not where the solution lies.
That’s not where your keys lie. You have to look at the place no matter how difficult it may be to perform the examination, to to work with the with the with the ideas and the nature of the situation. You’re going to have to look where the solution lies, where the source of the problem actually lies. As long as there’s a problem, there must be a solution. These two solutions and problems are mutually interdependent.
Without solutions, there’s no problems. Without problems, there’s no solutions. If you have a problem and you begin to understand the nature of that problem, that very understanding promotes the solution to emerge. As long as we look, we know what the problem is. If we deal with the wrong problem, then it’s we’re never going to solve the real problem.
So likewise, a very beginning to look at in spite of the fact that throughout our persistent efforts, in spite of all the blood, sweat, and tears that we’ve expended over the course of time, have we the overall quality of our life significantly? Or is our life very much marked still with the quality of dissatisfactoriness? If it is, then that should be a sign. You know, the the our wounds are the mouths which are telling us the truth about our lives. It is necessary for us to listen.
That should be a sign that we have been looking for the solutions to our problems in the wrong places, that perhaps another way of being, another way other attitudes are necessary if we’re ever going to find what it is that we’re looking for, if we’re ever going to find that key in fact. You know, we it’s a sign that we have not really identified the true cause of our problems, and therefore, we have been unable to come up with the real solutions. So, you know, this is not some intellectual exercise dealing with, you know, the abstract nature of happiness, but it’s concerned with all the various problems that that we experience every day of our life. And the very first teaching that that Buddha Śākyamūni gave upon his awakening was a teaching on the truth of problems, the nature of the human dilemma that we find ourselves in. It is problematic.
It is, by its very nature, dissatisfactory. And he but he he didn’t stop there. He went on to begin to explain about the evolution, the sources, the causes of our problem, of our dissatisfactions. So, you know, it it is very much necessary. And the the teachings of the four noble truths were set out in terms of an inquiring mind, a curious mind, a mind that’s seeking to really understand.
At first, confronting the nature of our actual lived experience. It’s this satisfactory quality. It doesn’t say the truth of suffering. True sufferings are to be recognized, are to be made aware of. And then once one does that, a naturally curious investigative mind will begin to ask, you know, how’s this coming about?
Where is it what is its cause? And that naturally leads to the second of the four noble truths, true sources, the various afflictive emotions and within our own mind and the negative and the negative karmas that we create out of them. And having begun to recognize, the nature of the causes of our situation, beginning to further question, well, is it possible to actually remove these causes? Can I are are they inherent in life? Is life a bitch and then you die?
Or can we do something? Or can we actually do something about it? So this leads us to the third noble truth, true cessation of suffering, that these afflictive emotions are adventitious, that they aren’t inherent in the mind itself, that our mind, by its very nature, is pure, that we are not our patterns, that we are not our anger, that we are not our hatred or jealousy or spite or any of the eighty four thousand, afflicting emotions. That that’s just like, you know, if we can if we can devise some method, some some technique whereby to remove the pollutants from the the, the rivers, then we we can end up with crystal clear pure water. That integrity of each dual molecule is never destroyed by no matter how many, you know, tons of garbage it may be surrounding it.
Simply removing the pollutants, What was always there becomes revealed. And the same way with respect to our mind. We are not our patterns. We are not our afflictive emotions. If we can devise various techniques and methods whereby to remove these afflictive emotions from the mind, then our own Buddha nature is able to find expression.
We can return to our basic sanity and peace, which has always been there, self existing within the vortex of our own whirling minds. And is there such a technique? You know, beginning to question. And that led to the fourth noble truth, true paths, the various techniques and methods whereby we can actualize our nature. So if we are ever going to solve our problems, we have to first confront them.
The very first noble truth, the nature of the human dilemma of what it means to be an ordinary person in a difficult world and begin to discover their causes, only then can we find any real lasting solution. You know, if we’re constantly checking up during the course of our day, that is to say if we’re aware, where are our problems coming from, their evolution, then we’re always learning. We’re always growing. We’re always, understanding more and more and more and loving. And more of it, there is a real possibility to find solutions to solve our problems.
Otherwise, there’s there’s not much hope. Otherwise, we probably just make ourselves tired with all our efforts. So an awakening heart is an understanding. It’s like a wisdom, some sanity. It’s it’s not a romantic notion, some wild emotion.
You know, it’s it’s a it’s a very clear fact that everyone wants to be happy. No one wants to suffer. And we see that begin to see that all our problems, difficulties, our complex arise due to our self centeredness. We see that with our own understanding. We don’t need to take anyone’s word for it.
We can begin to see that our biggest enemy is our own self centeredness. It’s destroying all our happiness again and again and again. And we see that the moments of real joy and fulfillment in our life are somehow in terms of others, in terms of going beyond this confines of our usual habitual self centered attitudes. And we see this with our own wisdom. I think it’s through this process we begin to experience fewer problems.
Through this process of growing in awareness and understanding, there naturally arises more and more concern for others. And the more concerned, the more involved, the more we’re aware of others, fewer problems that we will have for ourselves. You know, the we can be released from many of of our attachments. We have less anger, less confusion. You know, our own actual experience our own actual experience becomes an inspiration to dedicate ourselves more and more to others’ well-being because we begin to see it’s working in our life.
We become our own our lived experience becomes a source of our own inspiration to go further. And it, you know, becomes an amplifying effect, like a snowball effect. And we begin to take more and more concern with others’ well-being, to take greater and greater responsibility for the welfare of others. If you want to solve the world’s problems, you have to put your own household, your own individual life in order first. That is somewhat of a paradox.
People have a genuine desire to go beyond their individual cramped lives to benefit the world. But if you do not start at home, then you have no hope of helping the world. But so the first step in learning how to rule is learning to rule your household, your immediate world. Then there is no doubt that if you do so, the next step will come naturally. If you fail to do so, then your contribution to the world will be further chaos.
So presently, we are limited in one way or another in our ability to help others. And how can we help all living beings? We can’t. But we can we can set ourselves in that direction, in this continual redirecting process. We can you know, even if we just aspire to that, that’s sitting in that direction, Whether we can actually do it in fact is another question altogether.
You’re determining to develop ourselves more and more, grow in our love, grow in our wisdom, in our skills, in working with others. This attitude increasingly becomes the motivating force behind all of one’s activities, all of one’s actions. It becomes the motivating force which carries one to sanity, to being the actualization of one’s preferred story of life, to becoming this happy, healthy, loving, sane human being that we probably all want in one way or another, however we may conceive in our own unique way of what that means in actual fact, in our own how we would express it in our own being in some way or another. You know, it’s the this motivating force. So it’s with this motivating force that we that we begin the actual exchange of self for others.
And quoting the source for this tradition of, equalizing and exchanging self with others, is Śāntideva, where he says, if I do not actually exchange my happiness for the happiness sufferings of others, I shall not attain the state of Buddhahood, and even in cyclic existence shall have no joy, let alone what is beyond this world. By rejecting the method that establishes both foreseeable and unforeseeable joy, I cast magnificent light completely aside. And then, because of inflicting misery on others, in confusion, I seize hold of unbearable pain. If all the injury, fear, and pain in this world arise from grasping at a self, then what use is that great grasping to me? If I do not completely forsake it, I shall be unable to put an end to suffering, just as I cannot avoid being burnt if I do not cast aside the fire I hold.
Therefore, in order to allay the harms inflicted upon me, in order to pacify the sufferings of others, I shall give myself up to others and cherish them as I do my very self. So what we are seeking in the practice of exchanging self for others is the change in the object of our cherishing. Rather than our present situation, rather than cherishing only ourselves, we are trying to cultivate the attitude which cherishes all others equally to ourselves. And this requires some kind of inner transformation. You know, as was mentioned, we have to become, in some sense, the person that we love to be able to sympathize, empathize, and completely identify with their actual lived experience.
We’re trying to develop a new perspective, trying to to see the world out of their eyes. How would it be to be them? You know, trying to identify with their feelings, their their situations. We put ourselves in another person’s place, try to experience another person’s lives. You know, as the the American native American Indians had the expression here, don’t judge another person until you walked a month in their moccasins.
And that’s what we’re trying to do is practice walking in other people’s moccasins to understand who they are and what they’re about. And normally, our self centeredness leads us to to classify people in either of three categories. Those who those who we see as inferior to inferior to ourselves in some way, those who are peers are equals, and those who we see as superior to ourselves in some way. So in dependence upon these three classifications, we go on to generate, self importance toward those who we see as inferior to ourselves. We develop a sense of competitiveness toward those we conceive of as equal.
And we develop a sense of jealousy, envy toward those we conceive of as superior to ourselves in some way. So all of these different attitudes lead to both immediate and long term problems. So through role playing, Śāntideva is trying to show us how we can use these these natural unskillful tendencies in the mind, these tendencies to classify people as a way of training and awakening our heart. He says, considering that so he begins with lesser beings. You know, We’re probably very all we’re probably very much egalitarians.
You know? Everyone is created equal, and we have that ethos, that way of relating with others. But there are if we examine our behavior and examine perhaps our our actual attitudes, we’re going to identify times and individuals when maybe not the overall quality of the being, but certain certainly, there are there are senses where I’m superior to this person in such and such an area. Maybe I’m richer than they are. Maybe I’m more talented.
Maybe I have a more powerful, a better job, better looking. So superior in some way or another. Considering lesser beings and so forth as myself and considering myself as the other in the following way, I should meditate upon envy, competitiveness, and self importance with a mind free of distorted concepts. So we’re in this process of actual exchange of self for others Using the power of our imagination and empathy, we exchange places with others who we consider lower, who we consider equal, who we consider in some way higher than ourselves. Ourselves.
And from this new perspective, we then look back upon ourselves, our former selves. And we generate the appropriate emotion of that previous self, you know, as a sense of self importance, a sense of competitiveness, or a sense of envy. So Śāntideva. Nine o’clock. Now if I were to put myself in your place, maybe we’ll stop there.
Okay. Yeah. We’ll begin, Śāntideva’s explanation of this system of role playing with these three different classifications of people and those we consider inferior, some way equal, and superior, and then looking back and upon ourselves. A way of using the natural tendencies of the mind to to actually train our mind, to understand others, and to actually help us to reduce our sense of self importance, our sense of a sense of pride, a sense and develop development of compassion. So we’ll go into that next Wednesday.
Okay? So dedicate the creative potential that we have, that we’ve created, accumulated. And so, you know, there’s there’s always this continual, emphasis and re reminding ourselves of of this process of moving out beyond ourselves, you know, seeking only benefit for ourselves, even in terms of our dedication. And it becomes a style of thinking, a way of life. Dedicated, you know, the creative potential that we’ve accumulated, even even there, not just for our own welfare.
You know, in in in some kind of intuitive belief, if if only at present, that the more we do this, the happier we will ultimately be. Going beyond habitual selfishness and self cons exaggerated self concern and seeking only happiness for ourselves. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to that 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.
So, all, if you like to remain, get a cup of tea, and we’ll have a discussion. Thank you. Good night.