Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A Dostoyevsky passage — “Hell is the inability to love” — anchors this 46-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun on the psychological and spiritual roots of self-centeredness. He traces isolation, frustration, and conflict back to this single cause, then draws on the Dalai Lama’s concept of “wise selfishness” to argue that altruism is not heroic renunciation but the most pragmatic path to happiness. Moving through Western psychology and Mahāyāna teaching, he shows why rugged individualism fails — it runs with only one half of our nature, denying essential relatedness — and carefully distinguishes self-affirmation from self-centeredness, noting that “we have to become somebody before we can be nobody.” The bodhisattva ideal emerges as the resolution of the self-versus-other dilemma, illustrated by three classical images of aspiration: the shepherd, the oarsman, and the king. Accessible to thoughtful newcomers, though particularly resonant for those exploring Mahāyāna motivation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 16 HoM 1993 05 26.mp3
UUID: cc98b204-f73b-4817-891a-eae5bdad3de7
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-05-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.0 minutes
Words: ~5,170
Completely divorced of how we may feel about them, what we might think about them from their own side, their reality, the fact that their life is they all want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer just like yourself. All of those people you just imagine, exactly the same. Just like yourself. Just give them a just wish them happiness.
Wish they’re not they they not have any problems just as you would for yourself. And then bring the mind back to the breath. Stay easy, gentle, in an outflow of the natural breath. And then slowly become aware of your body, your surroundings, gently in your own good time. So on the basis of equality of self in others, we begin to look at the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness.
Setting aside all our philosophic theories, our abstract intellectual ideas, whatever dogma, whatever doctrines, trying to see whether or not within our own whether or not our self centered self centered attitude, self centeredness, our self-cherishing, our exaggerated self concern is, in fact, the cause of all our confusion, all our frustrations. You know, all we have to do, I think, is to look within our own experience. You know, all our various feelings of of of isolation, of loneliness, of frustration, of conflict, of defensiveness, of competitiveness, feelings of being unloved, feelings of being unable to love, all stem all stem from this root cause of self centeredness, This sense of exaggerated self concern. You know, there’s no space for others in self centeredness. There’s no love for others in self centeredness.
There’s no communication. There is no touching of others or being touched by others in self centeredness. You know, just this sore spot with a big iron fence around it. And it’s it’s like a, you know, at least a huge black hole which sucks everything into its nothingness. I think it was in Dostoyevsky in the brother brother brothers Karamazov.
It there was a one of the the elder teachers in the monastery was dying. And his students gathered around him. And he said, brothers and teachers, I ponder what is hell? Hell is the inability to love. And in self centeredness, there is no love.
And there’s no going out of oneself to another. And self centeredness is hell. It’s the basis of our hell. It’s the basis of all our problems, all our dissatisfactions, all our paranoia, all our feelings of alienation and fragmentation, all our ill peace, ill health and disease. For a man to be alive, he must exercise not only the acts that belong to vegetative and animal life.
He must not only subsist and grow, be sentient, not only move himself around, feed himself and the rest. He must carry on activities proper to his own, specifically human kind of life. He must, that is to say, think intelligently. And above all, he must direct his actions by free decisions made in the light of his own thinking. These decisions, moreover, must tend to his own intellectual and morals and spiritual growth.
They must tend to make him more aware of his capacity for knowledge and for free action. They must expand and extend his power to love others and to dedicate himself to their good. For it is in this that he finds his own fulfillment. You know, the the Dalai Lama once said that the the cherishing others concerning ourselves more and more for others is like being wisely selfish. We we are quite naturally selfish.
You know, that is to say we want we’re determined to find happiness for ourselves even at the exclusion of others. So, you know, if we’re going to be selfish, let’s at least be wisely selfish. It is by being wisely selfish. The more that we can concern ourselves for others, the more happy we ourselves will be. This is what I think the Dalai Lama meant by being wisely selfish.
You know, more happiness, more peace, more more fulfillment. Our mind becomes and our life becomes less problematic. It becomes more fulfilling, more healthy, and we become a loving, sane human being. So this is, I think, very much the eternal message of of every spiritual tradition, you know, above all the exotic practices that the various mystical traditions might have, is simply to go beyond our self centeredness, which is the highest goal, can bring about the highest good, both for ourselves and for others. It may not be very exotic, but it’s perhaps more in touch with the reality of our situation.
Whatever joy there is in this world, all comes from a desiring others’ happiness, desiring others to be happy. Whatever suffering there is in this world, all comes from desiring myself to be happy. But what need is there to say much more? The childish work for their own benefit, the Buddha’s work for the benefit of others. Just look at the difference between them.
As I mentioned, I think, existentially, looking at the nature of who we are, the self, there is there are two aspects to our self, that private aspect of ourselves, that part of our self which is inaccessible to others, which is lived out through our own unique inner experience. On the other hand, there is our social aspect to our self, and that part of our self which is lived through our shared relationships with others. To be essentially a self directing unique individual actions and concerns are valuable in and of themselves. And at the same time, to be a social being, essentially related to other persons, are not conflicting ways of being. But two mutually necessary aspects of our very existence.
Somehow, we have to find we have to resolve this tension between concern for other and concern for itself. And this resolution takes place in altruism and going beyond self centeredness. You know, from from the viewpoint of the holistic approach of the universal vehicle, the Mahāyāna, the great vehicle. The the you know, there within Buddhism, there are two overall vehicles or traditions. One is called the universal vehicle or the or the great vehicle, the Mahāyāna, and the other is the lesser vehicle or the individual vehicle, the Hīnayāna.
From the the the from the viewpoint of the holistic approach of the universal vehicle, the lesser vehicle, the individual vehicle, is seen to be falling to the extreme of individualism, an imbalance in its emphasis with regard to these two aspects of the self. It doesn’t take into account that essentially we are social beings. human beings are social beings. That if we are going to become happy, healthy, loving, sane human beings, we we not only must make effort to fulfill our inner experience of well-being, but we must find a skillful way of relating with other, of necessity. Our very nature demands it of us, that rugged individualism simply doesn’t work.
Mental health is not something which can be found in isolation from others. So we are called to wholeness and simultaneously to recognition of our incompleteness, called to power and to acknowledge our weakness, called to both individualism and interdependence. Thus the problem, indeed, the total failure of the ethic of rugged individualism is that it runs with only one side of the paradox, incorporates only one half of our humanity. It recognizes that we are called to individuation, power and wholeness, but denies entirely the other part of the human story, that we can never fully get there, and that we are of necessity in our uniqueness, weak and imperfect creatures who need each other. This denial can be sustained only by pretense, because we can never be totally adequate, self sufficient, independent beings.
Independent beings. The idea of rugged individualism encourages us to fake it. It encourages us to hide our weaknesses and failures. It teaches us to be utterly ashamed of our limitations. It drives us drives us to attempt to be superwoman and supermen, not only in the eyes of others, but also in our own.
It pushes us day in and day out to look as if we had it all together, as if we were without needs and in total control of our lives. It relentlessly demands that we keep up appearances. It also relentlessly isolates us from others. You know, given our the image our image of ourselves as being isolated substances. In a sense that I’m over here and you’re over there.
Absolute separation between myself and others. Given that sense of being in an identifying ourselves as isolated substances, it seems that in order to affirm ourselves, we have to deny the world, that we have to deny others. In order to affirm the world, somehow we’re going to have to deny ourselves. Thus, you know, it seems as it always seems that we are constantly being perched between these two extremes of self centeredness and self denial on the one hand and other centeredness and self sacrifice on the other. And it’s this ongoing struggle between self and other.
Going, you know, setting aside what we perceive as our own needs in order to help another, or fulfilling our own needs and and having conflict about not fulfilling the need of other. You know, how many instances with our own experience does this arise in the course of our daily lives? Continually rising the the conflict between self interest and the interest of others. How are we to resolve that? That’s a human dilemma, I think.
A human being, a human life is an ongoing stream of experiences rather than a static fact. And the self as being some kind of isolated substance. It’s, you know, this idea of an ongoing stream of experiences. And each of our experiences in this stream is both internally related to our surroundings, to our environment, to our social context, but also uniquely individual in the way that we interpret it, in the way that we synthesize, the way that we punctuate it, that we look at the world and its influences. So individuality and relating to support enhance one another.
You know, often in a patriarchal society in which we live, men have been encouraged to cultivate a sense of uniqueness, a sense of personal freedom at the expense of their relatedness. On the one hand, you know, this this is the ethic of rugged individualism. The the idea, know, exemplified by the macho who doesn’t need anybody, who has it all together and can take care of themselves. This this this way of identifying oneself on the one hand. It also encourages women to cultivate relatedness at the expense of their own uniqueness, their own individuality, their own personal freedom as exemplified by the by the, you know, the sacrificial Jewish mother who lives for her children, who doesn’t have a life outside of them.
So in each in each of these instances, whether it be the rugged individual or the Jewish mother, the sacrificial mother, in each of these instances, people have been victimized by the premise that the self is, after all, an ego cut off from the world, existing in isolation from the world. But the life of every human being, whether it’s maybe male or female, is both uniquely unique in itself and constituted by its relationship to others. You know, while our past experiences influence the present, they are not entirely determining. In in your present moment of your experience, you you feel these past occurrences in your own unique way. You you have from your own perspective, for your own purposes.
And you thereby synthesize them into a pattern, some kind of story unique to yourself. You create your own punctuation. You begin to to see your life in terms of your own purposes. You synthesize, create a theme, a plot, a story of your life. Your life was made up of many series of events.
But we we select, we choose a plot to begin to identify with as a character in our story. And this is very much the our own unique choosing, the type of story, the type of character that we’re creating for ourselves in our own personal story. And this is the conception of who I am, who I have been. You know, people are very much attuned to the past person, who I have been. They are, to a large extent, enslaved to the past.
You know, this is why, you know, perhaps at the very beginning of this evening’s discussion, talking about resurrecting preferred stories in one’s life rather than being a victim of the dominant story that has been imposed upon us about our life. You know, we we’re very much victims of our past roles. Who we conceive of ourselves to have been the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves, our inheritance, these these repeating patterns. So I think Buddhism is asking that we make some kind of shift in this respect. You know, a reattuning of ourselves from who I have been to who can be.
Both personally and in our relationships. You know, the future person consists of not yet actualized potentials in the present moment, possibilities. The idea of self affirmation from a Buddhist point of view, from a Buddhist perspective, consistent to a large part of a deep recognition of our potential. Ultimately, our Buddha nature. You know, who I can, who I am at present, and freely deciding to become who I can be, appreciating at a very deep level who I am, what potentials I, in fact, do have, and deciding to actualize those potentials, to live out my preferred story, to perform the way of being that I hold most high, because I have that potential at this present moment.
So tuning ourselves to a future possibility, as opposed to being enslaved to past roles, circumstances which have already been determined, which can never be changed. But the universal vehicle goes further than simply personal affirmation. It tries to show us that personal affirmation is intimately related to other affirmation of other, our relationship with the world. That it is connected with world relatedness, you know, with other affirmation, that our personal becoming must be integrated with our becoming with others, our relationships with others. That, in fact, these two, personal becoming and becoming in relationship with others, with others, with the world, where self affirmation and other affirmation are two sides of the same way of being, two sides of the same coin.
You know, very much what we see in others, what how we feel about others, is a reflection about how we see ourselves, how we feel about ourselves most basically. In all the actions of a bodhisattva, someone who has awakened their heart to others are motivated by an aspiration to achieve highest awakening, to become a healthy, loving, sane human being. That is her personal becoming, to become a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. But they do that for the sake of liberating all living beings, for helping them to become happy, loving, sane human beings. And that become that is their becoming in relationship to the world.
So they’ve they’ve integrated their being. That their one single motivation serves both their own actualization of their own inner potential, their own unique inner lived experience, becoming a happy, healthy, sane human being within themselves. And that very act serves to as a way of becoming in relationship to the world. To as an expression of loving in the world. Both fulfilling the aspect, the potentiality of the social being, that part of the self which exists to others, but also the the private self, that uniquely in lived experience and finding peace within.
The very it’s you know, they they have resolved that conflict between self interest and other interests. It does no longer exist for them. There’s a resolution of the basic one of the most basic of human dilemmas. This constant conflict between my interests, my needs, my wants, and the interests of others, the needs of others, the interests of others. The seemingly impossible dichotomy that we’re that most of us are trapped in.
Know, Buddhism is saying that essentially on a conventional level where self and other exists, In fact, they do exist. That the method which resolves this dualistic antagonism, this conflict between self and others, between our self interest and concern for others, is altruism. In altruism, this conflict, this struggle, this duality finds resolution. It no longer exists. We don’t have to figure out a way of conflict mediation, having to, find, some kind of compromise in our stance between whether I’m going to fulfill my own interests or the interests of others on all all the various numerous occasions which are continually rising every day of our life because they don’t they no longer arise.
We’ve worked at a very we’ve worked at the problem at a very basic level. And therefore, the the specifics of conflict, of struggle, of antagonism no longer arise. You know, we are we are selfish people but we can try to be wisely selfish in our our seeking to cherish others. We can we can begin that. We can we can direct ourselves to that.
It’s not as if we have to fake it. It’s not as if we have to be somebody else. We can simply begin to direct ourselves toward that end. You know, it’s not I think this has been mentioned, but it’s not unrealistically it’s not unrealistic, but even compellingly practical that we should develop a a natural, rational, instinctively powerful altruism, the beneficial intention toward others. You know, if if we don’t have to fake it as it were.
If we’re living out of a sense of altruism, of concern, You know, we all have to some degree some love, some concern for others. We can simply build on that and do what we can. Know, altruism is the most readily available remedy for our psychological ills and the means to find peace, the means to find love, know, what we might call mental health. And so this, you know, is not some particularly complex philosophic notion, some kind of theory, or some kind of romantic flight into fantasy. But simply a pragmatic statement about life and about the way we can begin to solve the many problems in our life.
We’ve talked about the fact that self identification takes a long time in empathy to develop. And that the individual can recondition themselves to incorporate others within their identity of their selfhood, of who they conceive themselves to be. Others, one can incorporate one’s partner into one’s self identity. People incorporate their family. Their sense of general concern is extended to their organization, to their country.
We can expand our sense of identity to include all beings as other beings, the being of sentient life, the single body of life. We can open that is what is meant by opening our hearts to others, to open ourselves to the identification that we are all but limbs on one single body of life, completely open. But actuality of our present situation, the actuality of our present love, of our present way of relating with the world that is less inclusive, we don’t quite haven’t gone quite that far, perhaps. You know, most of us feels that feel that others are something alien, something other, something suspense substantially different than ourselves, something foreign, even perhaps something to be conquered, something to be used, something to manipulate manipulated, an object for our own ends. That’s perhaps the way that we conceive of others, that we look upon other.
In one way or another, to some degree or other, we are experiencing aspects of the world as if we were cut off from them by by the boundaries of our skin encapsulated ego. There’s me over here, and there’s the rest of the world over here, alien, cut off, separate from myself. You know, it’s it’s as if the the the self, the person was some kind of autonomous object worthy of our ultimate commitment. Some kind of isolated self, ego, whatever, which has to be served at all costs. You know, this is our frame of reference.
This is how we look upon everything and everyone, all the events which occur about us. What’s in it for me? How does it affect me? In way do I in what way does it relate with myself? How does it concern me?
This isolated, autonomous entity over here is not is not a part of my occurrence. It’s not a part of my life. But I want to find how it’s going to affect me. It’s not a part of my inner lived experience. You know, This is our self centeredness, in terms of which the world is perceived and evaluated.
People and things are felt not as they might exist in and of themselves, not for any intrinsic value and worth which they might have in and of themselves, but what they can do for me. How what what I can get out of them. How how does their actions, their way of being, their existence relate to my welfare, enhance my existence? People and things are just are depreciated and objectified, externalized into objects of actual or potential use, dominance, in our collection of resources. Everyone and everything is sacrificed at the altar of our our ego.
This is the way we live our life. This is the way we relate with others. This is the social context that we’ve created for ourself. Self centeredness is the taking of self’s affirmation to its distorted extreme. In a way, it involves making the self absolute at the expense of the world.
And because we exist in relationship to the world, it is self defeating. Self centeredness is self defeating. Because we are social beings, we exist in relationship to the world. Self centeredness is unable to see that other that other affirmation is the other side of the coin of self affirmation. You know, it’s important to distinguish between self affirmation and self centeredness.
You know, most simply, self centeredness is expressed as seeking happiness and eliminating our suffering at the expense and exclusion of others. Self centeredness is a sign of not enough self affirmation rather than too much. You know, perhaps on the road to ego transcendence, we have to become somebody before we can be nobody. That is, we have to perhaps become healthy, loving. We have to have a coherent, healthy ego before we can go beyond it, before we can really begin to diminish our total preoccupation with ourselves in integrating our becoming in relationship to others.
You know, we have to we have to be somebody before we can be nobody. We have to we we have to be somebody before we can begin to forget about ourselves and begin to concern ourselves with others. So, you know, a bodhisattva is someone who is genuinely self affirming. You know, they don’t need to to make a god out of themselves. They are they are they are, I don’t know.
You know, they’re assertive without being aggressive, confident without being arrogant, strong without being dominating. The I’d you know, they acknowledge their own good qualities. But at the same time, they acknowledge the good qualities of everyone else. They’re continually focused upon the Buddha nature of everyone else in the foundation of sanity, this intelligence of all living beings. So the Bodhisattva’s self affirmation culminates in their affirmation of others and finds expression in their seeking complete awakening.
Know, seeking complete awakening is the way is the fulfillment of one’s own potential for the sake of others. That is to say, assisting in the fulfillment of their potential. So this self affirmation and other affirmation are not viewed as separate entities, but as two aspects of bringing to fulfillment the potential latent in all living beings. On the other hand, self denial is the taking of other centeredness to a distorted extreme. It is self centeredness in a more socially or religiously acceptable form, acceptable guise.
I think the bodhisattva is is is very much aware that by fulfilling the needs of others, he or she is fulfilling their own needs. There’s no self sacrifice involved. There’s no self denial involved. That by the more that he fulfills the needs of others, that she fulfills the needs of others, the quicker and the more powerfully their own needs will be fulfilled. So affirming others becomes self affirming.
You know, bodhisattva realizes that in working for others, they are working working for themselves. Bodhisattva realizes that in denying others, they are denying themselves. That in working only for themselves, there, they will never find the goal that they’re seeking. But in working for others and beginning to concern themselves more and more with others, they will find the goal that they’ve always been seeking. It’s rather paradoxical, isn’t it, in a way?
And there’s the verse, the line from the Bible where it says that the last shall be first. You know, there’s it said, with respect to the awakening heart, there are said to be three types. There’s a shepherd like, a kingly, and an oarsman. And the the shepherd like has the idea that I will achieve Buddhahood. And then, like a shepherd, I will lead my flock to the state of Buddhahood.
The oarsman, the oars-person has the idea we’re all gonna go across together, you know, get in my boat, and I’ll I’ll take you to the other shore with me. But the kingly is the idea that everybody goes first and then you first through the door. Every I’m going to I’m not going to achieve Buddhahood until everybody goes before me. And it’s said that this is rather paradoxical because the more you’re willing to be last, the sooner you’ll be first, the sooner you’re going to arrive. The the more willing the more that you’re willing to serve in order to bring happiness to others, the happier you will become.
It’s a difficult paradox to learn, I think, because we have many obscurations, the obscurations of our self centeredness, our exaggerated self concern, which due to which we find it hard to see that fact of life. There’s a prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi. Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. And where there is sadness, joy. Oh, divine master, grant that I may not that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. The self denial that arises out of self centeredness is in very much a a compensation, a compensation for the mechanism for the absence of self affirmation in the face of, some kind of social or religious conditioning. So this is especially true of women, I think, in our society, who have consciously or unconsciously fallen into the exclusive role of sacrificial giver, of nurturer. So the question is not a matter of moderating our concern for others and if I come into some kind of compromise between my needs and the needs of others. But always to be aware from where our motivation is arising.
In self denial, we have to question. We have to ask ourselves, which self is being denied? The self of self centeredness or the self of self affirmation? In self denial, we have to question which self is being denied. In self sacrificing, we have to ask ourselves which self is being sacrificed, the self of self centeredness or the self of self affirmation.
You know, if we properly understand, if we apply it well, then affirming the value in others in and for themselves is to affirm our own self worth. And to appreciate others is to appreciate ourselves. And to really appreciate ourselves is to appreciate others. You know, if we are divine, if we have Buddha nature, if we are truly made in the image of God, if we have the element of Buddha within us, if we are worthy of commitment to ourselves, then all beings must be equally worthy of commitment because they are just like ourselves. So the question of of other centeredness or self centeredness comes down to which are we going to affirm, our divinity or our egos.
To cherish others is to decide to be divine for transcendence, for affirmation of ourselves in all that we can be, all that we know exists or has a potential within us at present to decide, to actualize it, to live out your preferred story. You know, caring for ourselves we care about others. Caring about life and all that lives, having this unconditional positive regard for others without distinction is an affirmation of life and a way of life. And so, you know, in this, don’t other cherishing is not some kind of heroic attainment. It’s it’s a way we can begin to be kind to ourselves, quit torturing ourselves, cease comparing ourselves, cease competing with ourselves and others, finding ourselves wanting, insufficient, inferior, defensive, guilty.
And then more than anything else, it is an awareness of our of our interrelatedness with others, that we are not just this unchanging, independent thing that we have always imagined ourselves to be. And this is an illusion. And as long as our lives are dedicated to an illusion, as long as we seek to lay the world at the altar of an illusion, at the altar of our own ego through our self centeredness. There will only be isolation. There will only be alienation.
There will only be loneliness, frustration, conflict, dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction, and fear. So in seeking to diminish the force of our self centeredness and increase that of other centeredness, we are seeking to live a way of life which affirms our own self worth and that of all others. I’m trying to understand that that these two, self worth of ourselves and the self worth of others, our own self interest and the self and the interests of others are not ultimately different. They’re perhaps they’re the same. The interests of others and our own interests have always been one and the same and beginning to serve that interest.
And then perhaps for the first time, we can begin to to truly love. So we’ll stop there. Okay.