Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Can the self be identical to body and mind? Ven Jampa Gendun frames this as the central question of this 38-minute session, the third in a series working through the four-point analysis of selflessness. He first grounds the inquiry in the pervasion principle — the binary logical commitment that anything must be either same or different, with no third option — then works through what follows if the self were truly identical to body and mind: there would need to be as many “I”s as there are bodily and mental parts, personal memory and continuity would become impossible, and “my body” would be a meaningless phrase. He closes by distinguishing the inherently existent self being negated from the conventional, dependent self that validly functions without problem. The fourth essential follows next session.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 18 HoM 1993 11 24.mp3
UUID: a9e18fb8-b2f0-4594-95b0-6239fc2b67da
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-11-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 38.6 minutes
Words: ~4,423
And then bring your mind back to the breath. And slowly becoming aware of your body. In a gentle and relaxed manner, becoming aware of your surroundings. There’s no hurry. We’ve been discussing the four essentials, sometimes called the four keys or the four point analysis.
Using this method, we won’t make any errors. We won’t go off into some unproductive sidetrack. It’s a very safe and exacting method whereby to go about understanding selflessness, emptiness. So we’ve discussed the first of these four essence points or essentials. The essential of determining the object of negation.
Now we’re going to go through the remaining three. The second of these four essentials is the essential of determining the pervasion, ascertaining the pervasion. Sometimes the word pervasion, sometimes they use the word entailment. Pervasion. It’s a commitment to binary logic or the law of excluded middle.
What that means is if something is A, then it is not not A. If something is a glass, then it is not, not a glass. It has to be either glass or not a glass. If it’s a glass, then it’s not, not a glass. There’s no alternative.
It’s binary logic. There’s only It’s excluded middle. Either A or not A. If it’s A, then it’s not not A. Whatever existence that we may wish to examine, it is necessarily included in either of two categories: either it is singular or plural, no matter what it might be, either it is one or many, either it is the same or different.
There’s no third possibility, no matter what object we may take. Glass, table, people, universes, they are either one or many, singular, plural, same or different. These include all existences. For example, you know, a glass is one. An army is one.
A universe is one. A glass and a bell many different. Joe and Jerry are many, plural, different. Anything that we take is either going to be one or many. It’s going to be singular or plural.
It’s going to be the same or different. It has to be one of those two categories. There’s no third way that an object can exist. I mean, this might sound simple minded, but we have to become convinced of this fact. It’s worth going over and looking at various objects.
Is this book one or many? It’s one. This microphone in this book, are they one or many? They’re many. Are they the same or different?
They’re different. They’re not the same. And we can just go through all the possible examples. There are always going to be either one or many same or different, singular or plural. You know, someone might object and say, Well, maybe we’re going to be looking- we’ve identified the inherently existent self, the self defining self in the first essential.
We know what it looks like. And we’re going to analyze whether this identified self is the same or different than the body mind. It appears in this vicinity. And now we’re going to go on to examine to see is this identified self, this I that we’ve observed in the first essential when we had these emotional experiences. We tried to identify a particular type of self which appeared to us.
Now we’re going to look for it. We’re going to search for it. Where do we search? Where it appears. Where does it appear?
It appears in the vicinity of the body and mind, around here. Now I don’t look for myself kitchen when I’m sitting here. That’s not where it appears to me. It appears to me somewhere over here. That’s where we’re going to search, around the body and mind.
So what we want to know is, is this identified self, is it the same as the body and mind, body and mind over here? Is it the same as the body and mind, or is it different than the body and mind? It has to be one of those two. If it’s not the same, it must be different. If something exists, it either is the same as the body and mind, or it’s different than the body and mind.
There’s no third possibility. You know, some people might say, well, it could be a mixture. This self could be both the same and different than the body and mind. But this is not a real possibility. If two things are not the same, how can they be both the same and different?
You know, like, for example, sugar and chili. Sugar and chili. A mixture of sugar and chili is definitely not sugar. It’s not the same as sugar. A mixture of sugar and chili is not the same as sugar.
It’s different than sugar. Otherwise, don’t add sugar to my coffee for me. It’s different. It’s not the same. So everything must If it exists, it must be either the same or different.
Becoming convinced of this fact. If this inherently existent self which we ascertain or we determine in the first essential exists, then it must exist as inherently the same or inherently different than the body and mind. There’s no third alternative. Alternative. It must exist in one of these two ways.
If it doesn’t exist in either of these two ways, then it doesn’t exist. We have to become very convinced of this fact. If the inherently existent self which we identified in the first essential exists, then it must be inherently the same as the body and mind, or it must be inherently different than the body and the mind. If, upon analysis, we find that it’s neither inherently the same as the body and the mind nor inherently different than the body and the mind, then we are forced by our commitment to logic that, in fact, it doesn’t exist at all. Because if it did exist, it would exist in either of these two ways.
It doesn’t exist in either of these two ways. Therefore, it doesn’t exist at all. So this is the second essential, determining if the inherently existent self, which appears to us, in fact, exists, then it must either exist inherently the same as the body and mind or inherently different than the body and mind. The fact that all things are either the same or different. Then over the remaining two essentials, we’re going to test each of these possibilities in turn.
To this end, we make a decision by committing ourselves both to reason and experience, by analyzing, respectively, whether the inherently existent self is inherently the same as the body and mind or inherently different than the body and mind. Okay? Good. Then the third essential. So the second essential is the essential of determining the pervasion.
Pervasion means If something pervades something else We use the term like the atmosphere was pervaded by heaviness or something like that. I mean, it’s infused with this quality, that these two qualities are inextricably mixed with one another. You know, for example, a product is pervaded by being impermanent. Whatever is a product is necessarily impermanent. Whatever is impermanent is necessarily a product.
They pervade one another. These qualities are inextricably intermingled, as it were. A table is pervaded by being matter, being made up of atoms. If it’s a table, then it’s pervaded by being matter. There’s no tables which are not matter.
So one quality infuses, pervades completely another. So the essential of determining the pervasion, the pervasion is that if something exists, then it is infused, it is pervaded by the fact of either it must be same or different. It has that quality pervasive with it. And the third essential. Now we’re going to actually begin the analysis.
So we’ve identified what we’re going to look for in the first essential, this solid concrete self. And now we’ve determined that if this self in fact exists in reality, it must be inherently the same as the body and mind or inherently different than the body and mind. So these represent the third and fourth essentials. The third essential being the essential of ascertaining or determining the lack of being the same. We’re going to check out whether this identified self is the same as the body and mind, the third essential.
We begin with: if the I, the I itself is synonymous. We can use either term. If this I or self that we identify were the same as the body and mind, certain problems would immediately arise as a consequence which contradict our experience. And if we had a certain experience in terms of observing this self, its qualities, and then we can go through some logic, which that if the self existed the way it were the same as the body and mind, then certain contradictions would immediately arise. The first of these is there would be at least two selves.
You know, we’re going to have to think about these contradictions to our experience because they’re not immediately obvious. The first contradiction which arises, the first problem which arises is that there would have to be at least two selves or two eyes, a physical I and a mental I. The eye appears. In going through this, in a very traditional manner, and I don’t know if it’s ever been done in fact, but at least in theory, that a teacher might give you this first essential and say, Go away now and meditate on the first essential and report back to me once in a while. And not go on to these second, third, or fourth essentials.
According to what you reported back would determine whether the teacher would then present you with these second, third, or fourth essentials, identifying the object of negation. Here there’s a certain assumption that you’ve identified it fairly well because we’re going to continue talking as if you’ve identified it, and maybe you haven’t at all as of yet. But at least maybe you have some intellectual ideas around it. So the first problem which would arise if the identified self were the same as the body and mind is that there would have to be at least two I’s, two selves. Why?
Because the I, the self, which was identified appears partless. It appears to be a partless unit, a homogenous, partless unit. I can’t, you know, I hate you. I hate you. That I, that subjective aspect experience, it appears to be it doesn’t appear to have any parts.
It’s a big mass, a unit. And we’ve talked about this before. It’s something which has mass. It’s homogenous, partless. That’s the subjective sense that we experience.
I hate you, I, that I. It doesn’t appear to have parts. It appears to be partless. If it were the same as the body and mind, then there would have to be at least two I’s. Why?
We would have to have two eyes to account for a minimal material component of the body and the mental component of the mind. You know, there would have to be at least two I’s to account for these two parts. You know, if the eye doesn’t have any parts, then there is a unit eye which can only stand for the body. There is a unit eye which stands for the mind. One I couldn’t stand for both body and mind because it has to be partless.
If it if it stood for body and mind, then it would have two parts, but it appears to be partless. Is it make am I making I don’t know sometimes. Fact, there would have to be as many I’s as there are parts, as many as there are parts of the body, the limbs, the organs, the bones, all the parts of the body. There would have to be as many eyes as there are parts of the mind, the feelings, the perceptions, the emotions. Each eye could only stand for one part, as if because one part is a solid whole unit without having one eye is a solid unit without having any parts.
So there would have to be as many I’s as there were parts because one I could not have parts. It is partless. One I can, one I can only account for one part. The I being singular and being identical with all the parts necessitates an I for each part, But this doesn’t accord with our experience, with the conception that we have of ourselves as being only a single person, except in the case of maybe multiple personalities. I don’t know.
But anyway, normally we think of ourselves as being a single person. I. I’m sitting here. I’m a single person. But if that I is partless, there must be as many I’s as there are parts of body and mind, to account for all those parts of body and mind, if they’re exactly the same.
If the eye and the body and mind are exactly the same, identical in every aspect, in every detail, in every way. There would have to be as many eyes as there are parts. On the other hand, if we look if we come at that same problem from the other direction, then the body and mind would be one, indistinguishably one. Because we experience a single I, partless, and that partless single I is identical with body and mind, then the body and mind must be one because the I is one. And the I and the body and mind are identical in every way.
Since there is one I, self, there must be one unit I, partless. There must be a one unit I, partless body and mind. But the body and mind are parts. They’re different. They’re distinct.
Also, if the eye and the body and mind were the same, and by same we mean identical. You know, like book and book are identical, aren’t they, in every way? We can’t distinguish between the two. Book and book, dog and dog. Exactly the same.
We’re saying that this I and the body and mind are exactly the same, in that same way, in that identical way, indistinguishably the same. And every detail and every quality is the same. So if the eye and the body and mind weren’t the same, every detail were exactly the same, identical in every respect, then the eye would be material. It would be made out of matter. It would have extension in space.
It would have qualities of color and shape, as does the body. But that’s not the way that we experience the eye, as having matter, being made up of matter. The eye which says, I can’t stand you. That eye doesn’t appear to us to be made up of matter, to have color and shape. This contradicts our experience of the eye being immaterial.
The eye appears to us to be immaterial, not made of matter. It appears to be shapeless. Also, because the eye depends upon causes and conditions for its well-being and ill health, the eye too would depend upon causes and conditions. So the body, because this eye is identical in every way with the body and mind, the body depends upon causes and conditions for its well-being, its health, or its illness. If that were the case, then the eye also would depend upon causes and conditions.
But the identified eye appears unchanging. It appears it doesn’t depend upon causes and conditions. It appears unchanging, independent of causes and conditions. I’ll say further, and this is what we talked a little bit about this in our discussion group last week. It would be senseless to say my body if the I, the self, were exactly identical to the body and mind.
It would be senseless to say my body or my mind because how could that which is identical with the body possess the body? And likewise, that which is identical with the mind, how can that which is identical with the mind possess the mind? You know, the owner and the owned must be different. The experiencer and the experienced must be different. They’re two separate entities.
They cannot be the same. You would not only be senseless to say, I am angry or I am happy, it would be wrong because the I could not possess mental states. You know, we couldn’t even say, I am thinking, because the I is the thinking. There is no agent standing behind the thinking. There is only thinking because the I and the thinking are identical.
Also, there would be Okay. It’s necessary to go over these in a relaxed manner and play with them. I’m quite aware of that. So I hope you can do that sometime in the future. It sounds strange, I think, when you first hear it.
I can identify with that. I can sympathize with that. Okay. Well, anyway, I’ll continue. Also, if the I were the same as the mind, we could have no conscious memories or remembrances.
You know, there would be no I to connect up experiences as being within the same continuum. We have memories. I did this such and such yesterday. Day before, I did this. There is a continuity, a continuum of I, in which we are able to attribute these experiences, which has these various memories.
Now, the I appears to us not to exist in relationship to anything else. It appears to us to exist independently. Now, when something appears to exist independently, independent existence means that it does not exist in relationship to something else. If the I of today, if appears, if it’s independently existent, it does not exist in relationship to the I of yesterday. They’re two separate totally different entities.
They don’t they they don’t there’s no connection. There’s no relationship between them because they’re independent of one another. So there would be no I which could serve as the basis for this continuum of I went to the store yesterday. I could have a memory, I have a memory of an I going to the store yesterday, but that I that went to the store yesterday and the I which is doing the memory today would be totally unrelated. We couldn’t have a remembrance of I went to the store yesterday as if it were related to the I which is doing the thinking presently.
Because these two I’s, the I that went to the store yesterday and the I which is doing the remembering at present, are totally unrelated with one another. It would almost be my friend went to the store yesterday. We you know, the I appears to us to be an isolated solitary entity, isolated with a huge black line drawn around it, unrelated to anything. Its environment, causes and conditions, its conditioning, also with the previous continuum of eyes. There’s no continuum of eyes.
You know, the eye that was born, the eye that grew up in such and such a country, moved to another country, the eye that came here. There’s a continuity, one eye related to another, giving rise to another. There’s continuum. There is a relationship. But the I appears that we’ve identified as if it were independent.
Something which exists independent cannot exist within a continuum in relationship to anything else. So there’s these moments of independent I’s unrelated to one to another, another problem which arises. If the I so if the I, the self, were identical with the body and mind. You know, we’re talking about every single aspect. We can’t distinguish between the two.
The way that we determine whether two things are identical is in terms of thought. Do they appear different to thought? I don’t know. Maybe I’m belaboring this issue. The Tibetan word for book is dep, dep.
So is it dep? It’s book. Is it dep and book? Are they are they different or the same? Is dep and book different or the same?
Anybody want to take a wild guess? Same. Same. Do they appear different to your thought consciousness? When you think of dep and when you think of book, does the same image arise in your mind?
So they’re different. We’re done? So things are different. They’re different to our conception of them. Book and book.
When we think of book and we think of book. That sounds simple minded. Don’t know. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We think does it does something arise is do they appear different to our conceptions, book and book?
So they’re the same. That’s the test. I mean, sounds like a simple minded test, but anyway. So is to say, when we think of something, when I think of dep and I think of book, I’m using two different generic images, mental images, conceptions, the different emotional associations, different they refer to the same object, but I have different ways of thinking about them. Like, can conceive of myself as a man, as a monk, can conceive of as an American.
They all refer to the same person, but they obviously have tremendously different emotional connotations, different legal connotations, you know, but they refer to the same object. But when I use these different mental labels, these mental images, and thinking about myself, I use them for different purposes. They have different all kinds of different associations. They’re a different complex of all the various components of which these mental images are made up of. They’re not identical.
Jampa the monk and Jampa the American are not identical. They refer to the same object. But to thought they’re different. To thought they’re different. So another problem which arises if the I and the mind are the same, identical, in every way is whatever are the states of the body and mind would necessarily be a state of the I.
Whatever happens to the body and mind must happen to the I because they’re identical. Right? So, for example, as the body grew, I would grow. On the other hand, if I had a limb amputated, the I would be diminished. If the I would also change according to my mental states, but the I, when I’m happy, when the mind is happy, I’m happy.
But this I doesn’t appear to change at all. It appears permanent, unchanging. How it be identical with the body and mind when the body and mind are constantly changing and this I appears to be unchanging? How can it be identical? Also, when a yogi directly refutes the existence of this I which appeared, then our body and mind would disappear.
Why? Because this I which appeared to us, the object of negation, if it’s refuted, if it’s proved not to exist, then because it’s identical with the body and mind, then the body and mind must become nonexistent. So there are all these various dialectical tests that we can make which demonstrate that the I and the body mind are not the same. So we have to test of these consequences what its ramifications are for us. What kind of significance does it have for us?
Does it move our mind in any way? Does it act as a key to begin to create some kind of doubt, some kind of questioning in our mind? Does it shake our beliefs that the I is the same as the body and mind? That the I lacks being the same as the body and mind? This is the third essential.
So And next week, we’ll look at the fourth essential, determining whether the I, which has been identified, is different, inherently different, the body and mind. So I guess it would be useful if we spent a minute and just went over the fact, reassured ourselves that I exist, that you exist. That’s no problem. Here we’re talking about an I which appears to exist these emotions during the course of these emotional states and depends upon which these emotional states arise. The I which exists for ignorance is this misconception.
There is an I which validly exists, which imputedly exists. We’ve discussed this in terms of in dependence upon a particular body and mind. We label I. Self, Jampa, American, male. And in dependence upon that basis of imputation, body and mind, imputing the term, the language, Jampa, male, American, and the conception which conceives of that object, I, Jampa, American come into existence.
That self validly exists. It is able to function, more or less. It’s able to carry on all its various activities. No problem. But the nature of that eye is that it is a dependent arising.
It dependently exists. How does it depend? It depends upon causes and conditions. It depends upon parts, body and mind, for example. It depends upon an imputing consciousness, conception.
It depends upon language and concepts. It’s a dependent arising. This table is a dependent arising in the same way. Everything is. All phenomena are dependent arisings.
They do not exist independently of these causes and conditions. They’re parts or the process of perception, imputing process. Here we’re talking about an I or self which does not depend upon anything that we’ve identified in this first essential. And this is the one that we’re trying to negate. The empirical, conventionally existent, nominally existent, imputedly existent I exists.
That’s no problem. It’s able to function, and it’s not a problem to anyone. It’s an object of wisdom consciousness. In dependence upon such a type of wisdom consciousness, afflictions do not arise. Attachment doesn’t arise.
Hatred doesn’t arise. Jealousy, spite, miserliness, all the afflictive emotions do not arise dependent upon that conception. They do arise dependent upon the conception of an independently existing I, a self defining I, an I which appears to exist as a unit, a solid, concrete entity, unchanging, permanent, solid self. That’s what we’re trying to come to an understanding of. So we’ll stop there.
Dedicate the creative potential that we’ve accumulated through this process. 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 more. So those of you who would like to remain for discussion, you might like to get a cup of tea. Thank you.
Good night.