Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A physicist-and-chauffeur joke opens this 46-minute session before Ven Jampa Gendun turns to two drivers of genuine practice: dread of life’s repeating patterns and a three-stage faith illustrated by a thirsty traveler finding a brook over a sand dune. He argues that Buddhism works only when rooted in lived experience, not imposed as doctrine, and that recognizing suffering as universal — rather than a personal failing — is itself liberating. The session then advances the series’ four-point emptiness analysis: after reviewing the first three essentials, Gendun introduces the fourth — whether the inherently existent “I” is unrelatedly separate from body and mind — and closes with a guided meditation in which practitioners mentally dismember body and mind to search for that “I.” Best suited to those already following this ongoing series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 19 HoM 1993 12 01.mp3
UUID: 0e0b1ee4-9c19-40dc-992a-b69d9bd65015
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-12-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.2 minutes
Words: ~6,154
What? I’m going to quiz you. I’ve been talking this way for a few years now in terms of redirecting. And I thought, you know, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but quite often I don’t know what I’m going to say before I say it. And so, get up here and I say, Well, let’s begin by redirecting ourselves, reorientating ourselves, which I think is quite necessary.
I think it’s quite useful and necessary. But I’ve been doing this a number of years now. It reminded me of a joke. This idea that you should be so familiar with the procedures that we have adopted that you should be able to come up here and as it were almost take my place. Well, that would be great I think.
There’s a joke, maybe I’ll share it with you. This world famous physicist. Few of you have heard this joke, so just bear with me. A world famous physicist just came up with this miraculous new discovery, something that which hadn’t been known before and became published a paper and became world famous and was invited to all the various great universities and institutes of learning around the world. And he was she.
I say she. No, we better we’ll say she. Okay? She was was doing a tour of the United States of America. And rather than flying from one venue to the next, from one city to the next, decided to drive and hired a chauffeur to drive her around from city to city throughout the course of her lecture tour.
So, city after city, venue after venue, this world famous physicist would get up and explain this revolutionary theory that she had just discovered and gave the same talk night after night after night, you know, university after university institute after institute. And so as the case was, they were driving to another city, and the the physicist remarked to the show chauffeur, you know, I’m I’m really getting bored. I I’m giving I give the same talk every night, every night, night after night, and I’m really getting tired of it. I’m really getting fed up with it. And the chauffeur, being a woman, said, well, why don’t you let me give it?
I’ve heard you give that same talk so many times, I could give it verbatim. And the physicist tested her, and lo and behold, she could give the talk perfectly, almost better than she herself could give it. She said, okay. Let’s give it a go. Let’s try.
So they come to the next city, and they go they go to the next venue. And now the chauffeur takes the podium and gives a brilliant lecture and spot on about this latest discovery in in physics. And the crowd were just astounded, they clapped. But something unusual occurred. One of the members of the audience jumped up and said, I have to ask you a question.
I I can’t leave this this audit the the auditorium without getting the answer to this question. So the chauffeur said, okay. If you have to ask but if you’re gonna ask me a question, you better make it a good one. I don’t want any simple questions. I want a good question.
And so the the the audience member went on to ask this terribly complicated, profound, deep, complex question about physics. And the chauffeur listened with great patience and finally said, that’s such an easy question. Why do you bother me with such an easy question? My chauffeur can answer that. So, you know, Night after night or Wednesday after Wednesday, I get up here and I talk about redirecting, reorienting.
And maybe maybe you can do it for me tonight. So what do we do now? You know, I’ve talked about this continual process of this reorientation, This, you know, continually getting back in touch with what is important for us. And I think this is terribly important. You know, we are the real authorities on our own life, you know, beyond all the prescriptions whether they be social or religious in terms of how we might we should be acting with various codes of conduct, ways of being which specify how, what is acceptable, what is the doctrine of the accepted line, I’m thinking.
We have to actually get in touch with how we feel, what we what works for us, what brings meaning to my life, what makes me feel good about myself and what I’m about and and the way my life is going, the course of my life, and finding some connections with other persons. And I’ve talked about this in, you know, in many different directions, hopefully. You know, trying to come at it from various possible angles that we can somehow, you know, trying to discover some kind of key, something which moves our mind. Ultimately, we have to move our mind. We have to change our mind.
The mere collection of information is simply not enough. We have to actually there has to be occur some some transformation at some level. It’s trying to and that requires some some you know, the Buddhism Buddhism supplies us with methods for assisting us to experience other versions, another version of who we might like to be. The it has the ideas and the practices. But we can’t make it into some kind of universal truths, which forces into kind of a kind of mental gymnastics, which we can might simply tyrannize ourselves.
You know, that it can be another ism. Buddhism can be made into something which can be oppressive just as science, just as any type of ism. If it if it isn’t doesn’t if it doesn’t find its roots within our own living experience. You know, the goals that we set for ourselves never work if they’re split off from the unfolding of the nature of people’s lives. That somehow what we see as the possibilities for change are an extension of someone something we already begin to recognize, even if only faintly within ourselves.
It’s not otherworldly. It’s not unbridgeable gulf. It’s not purely theoretic. But something about ourselves suggests a possibility of an alternative in terms of and a more preferred way of being in our life, another another outcome. You know, and using the methods, using the techniques and the knowledges of Buddhism in conjunction with our own knowledgableness, our own skills, our own imagination in order to actually bring to actualization those other possibilities, preferred ways of being.
You know, I talked about the fact that, you know, we have some wisdom. We know things. Sometimes we act with we think, we feel with all the wisdoms of the Buddhas. You know, there’s a there’s a a Zen saying, at times, a hundred foot golden Buddha is equal to a blade of grass. And other times a blade of grass is equal to a hundred foot golden Buddha.
These things aren’t they don’t exist absolutely, but sometimes we have exist with all the profundities of the Buddha and what we’re able to understand. Other times we might be a blade of grass, but we’re not always a blade of grass, something insignificant, something which limited, unworthy, insufficient as we might conceive of ourselves usually to be, that we have some wisdom, we have some love. No matter how exclusive or limited that love might be, our compassion might be, We have some kind of energy, some kind of vitality, zest, creative and spiritual, physical, mental energy. Some kind of exuberance for life. So this is what constitutes a Buddha more than not, you know, what constitutes the possibility of a version of ourselves in terms of a happy, loving, healthy, sane human being.
You know, however that might be expressed in our own uniqueness, in our own particular way. There’s another saying that, you know, one Buddha will not suffice, will not hold you in all situations. A wooden Buddha will not pass through fire. A stone Buddha will not float across the water. That we are all very unique And the way we express our basic sanity, the way we we find ways of expressing our love and our compassion and our exuberance, our energy is going to be very unique to us.
But we the point is not how it’s expressed, but to express it, to find some authentic motive, finding out who we are, beginning to live the life that that we feel we can in some way. You know, getting in touch, this continual reorientation, you know, reprioritizing our values, getting back in touch, honoring our better judgment that we have about ourselves. And we we we try to enlist. No, we have to do something, think, take responsibility. And this is where the dharma finds its use.
You know, the it supplies us with thinking tools, which in combination, again, with our own knowledgableness, with our own skills, our own imagination, can assist us in bringing about our preferred outcomes. So we get in touch with our preferred outcomes and then we do something in the world to realize what it is, the type of person that we want to be. And that we we, you know, whatever assists us in this process as dharma that we can make use of. And within the spiritual community, you know, those people who acknowledge and authenticate our preferred claims about our life, who assist us, who facilitate this expression of our finest part of ourselves, the noblest elements of our being, who ask that, but also are willing to expend the energy and the time and whatever is needed to facilitate, to assist. Need one another.
human beings are social beings. We is we exist in our healthiest ways in in interdependence upon one another. So, have to overcome our isolation from one another, which our suffering entails, which has brought about, and begin to reach out and assist one another in becoming all that we can be. And this very helping of others will result as as a byproduct in one’s own growth, in finding one’s own authentic voice, in becoming one’s own authentic being, in one’s own Buddha, this happy, healthy, sane human being that somehow we’ve continually striving for, you know, which is somehow a basic a sanity of our basic sanity, an expression of our basic sanity. The very fact of our of our dissatisfaction, our pains, our longings, our frustrations is an expression of sanity.
That is, you know, that to be normal is not good enough. To simply cope is not good enough. To be numb is not good enough. So we have to feel and we feel pain and that pain is ultimately going to be the catalyst for change. It will be ultimately the source of our bliss.
I talked about the two causes, why we involve ourselves in this continual process of redirecting. You know, what can bring about this reprioritizing in our lives continually. One of them is a sense of dread and the other is faith. You know, the idea of dread or anxiety or fear, you know, one gets sick and tired of being sick and tired. You’re beginning to see the reoccurring compulsive patterns which are dissatisfactory, the themes which keep repeating themselves over the course of your life.
Again and again and again, the same outcomes. The cast may change, the costumes and the scenery may change, but the plot remains very much the same. We keep falling into that same hole again and again and again. So we determine at some point in our life to try another avenue, take another an alternative route if we’re listening, if we’re in touch. But also, you know, simply that is not enough.
We have to have something to aspire to. We have to have a have some realistic appraisal that change is possible, that there is some kind of alternative. Life is simply not a bitch and then you die. Or that as a cartoon says, life is a bitch and then you reincarnate it. That we have to, you know, have some kind of faith in the in the three levels of faith.
In terms of first, getting some kind of clarity around our problem, beyond our usual superficial level in which we evaluate our difficulties. Going beneath that, trying to see our difficulties on a more profound level. That to be an ordinary human being is to suffer. We don’t want to hear that. We don’t want to accept that.
But that’s, I think, is very much in touch with our reality. It’s not pessimistic because there’s the there’s the qualification to be an ordinary human being. That is to say, to be an ego-orientated human being, or that is to say, to be an ignorance-driven human being. Suffering is not integral to humanity, to life itself. Simply to to being an ordinary human being, ignorant driven human being, an ego-orientated human being.
So there’s great hope if we begin to understand that this the nature of our situation, that begin to gain some kind of clarity around our problems, know, all the various levels of our problems, trying to see them at a perhaps a more fundamental level. And I think that this does many things. Now it is said that Buddha taught two things, suffering and the way beyond suffering. And all the rest is speculation, you might say. We can leave it to the philosophers or the theoreticians, the theologians.
But no one can argue. We can argue whether there’s God and God exists or not, the nature of the universe. But no one can argue about the existence of pain because that’s our own immediate, real, lived experience. And nobody wants that experience. That’s what we mean by pain.
Something a feeling that you don’t want to repeat and you want to break off contact as immediately, as soon as possible. That’s what we call pain. That’s what we label pain. That’s the basis of the definition of pain, these kinds of feelings. So, I think this very acknowledgement.
You know, I think pain isolates people one from the other. They they withdraw into their into themselves. And I but to talk about pain and the the that pain is pervasive to the human condition. It’s quite liberating, that there’s nothing wrong with me in particular. Uniquely, somehow, I haven’t gotten together.
I’m a defective person. There’s no and we can it can relieve a lot of self blaming, a lot of blaming of one’s parents or one’s family of origin or whatever. There’s a lot of a historic pain. No matter whether we had good a good childhood or a bad child, there’s pain as long as we’re an ignorant driven human being, and everyone is experiencing that same pain amongst us. You know, the the the, the superficiality is the the idiosyncratic way it’s expressed might be very different according to particular situations.
But the pain is still there very basically. It’s common. It’s our shared humanity. And I think that is quite liberative. You know, we’re talking about liberative means in Buddhism, ways of thinking which have a liberative quality about them when once they begin to be integrated as one’s natural way of being in the world and thinking and communicating and acting.
But over and above that, I think I have great faith in Buddha nature, our basic sanity. That there is something about us which some element in our being, if it’s shown the reality of our situation, we’ll quite naturally tend toward dissolution, a higher order of self correction. You know, if you’re sitting in in a chair and it becomes uncomfortable, one doesn’t have to, you know, to to cogitate, to go through a lot of reasoning processes. One simply spontaneously shifts your position in the chair to relieve that that suffering, to resolve that tension. I think if we avail ourselves of the information which is being presented and think about it and try to make it relevant to our life and see how it exists within our own experience, then our very basic sanity is going to help us to find solutions, even perhaps beyond the intellectual level, the rational level, that we we have been solving problems every day of our life, unknowns to ourselves.
You know, they didn’t even come to conscious awareness. They were being solved at a much more subtle level, an unconscious level as it were. We I think therefore, I think talking about suffering in this way is of tremendous use. Becoming clear about what our problems are. And then we begin to search, you know, as this this metaphor that that I’ve used in the past.
You know, this individual who’s out on the desert and is in pain, and they’re not quite sure why perhaps. But and then finally, it becomes clear that the pain is from thirst, and they develop some clear faith. And then they they begin to search for they have, they’re not quite sure what it is that’s going to alleviate their pain, but at least they’re moving. They’re beginning to investigate their their environment to see if there’s a possible solution at hand. There’s an overcoming of inertia, apathy, a closed mindedness, a kind of smugness that one has all the answers, an arrogance of self sufficiency, an opening to some possibility of solution.
And then, you know, beginning to investigate, to look, to search. And as in the case of this metaphor, this individual comes to to in the desert to the side of a sand dune. And over the on the other side of the sand dune, there’s a there’s a running brook, a creek. And it you know, he he hears the sound of water, and there’s something which sounds right about it, and something which connects up with his his present understanding of his problem. You know, he hasn’t experienced the resolution of his problem, but it sounds right.
There’s some something reasonable, rational. It it it resonates with something within him or her. The, you know, the idea of longing faith that develops, you know, one hasn’t really touched the solution yet, but has heard about it. And so that develops a longing to want to to integrate, to incorporate the possibility of that as a solution in one’s life. So going over the sand dune, coming to the other side and bending down and actually drinking of the brook and feeling some, say, you know, your pain is resolved, your thirst is satiated.
And then one becomes convinced, hey, this was the answer to my problem all along. You know, actually gaining some experience of moving toward one’s own preferred outcomes. One begins to see in one’s life, I’m a better person, I’m a happier person, I’m of more use to myself and to other people. One begins to see that there’s some kind of growth that’s going on, that there’s some kind of movement. One becomes convinced of what one has been about, this convincing faith.
And this acts as self encouragement to go even further. And one drinks again and again and again, and then it becomes irreversible faith. So, we we you know, trying to have faith in ourselves and the possibility of solving our problem. We have to take a broad view. We have to have expansive visions.
We have to have noble aspirations. These are very meaningful in our life. And some kind of consistent application, some kind of practice, taking responsibility, becoming sincere about solving your problems. So, in this process, the the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, trying to actualize the Buddha by means of the Dharma within the social context of spiritual community. And we try to raise the level of our motivation why we’re doing this, why we’re on this search, why we’re journeying along the path to include an ever widening circle of others, to be able to facilitate their journey, to assist them in realizing their Buddha.
And then I think our life becomes meaningful. There’s some kind of direction, there’s some kind of evolution. Both in the present, we can feel something good about ourselves, But also we can be we can have some assurance, some confidence that things will go better, things go well in the future. We can begin to relax. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma in the highest assembly.
From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. And the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
So we’re going to, you know, as we normally do, usually do, we’re going to meditate. But before our meditation, I’d like to talk a little bit about what we’ve been discussing thus far in terms of awakening our minds because I like to for us to continue our meditation, and make that a part what we’ve been discussing a part of our our meditation together this evening. So I’m going to teach a little bit, and then we’ll go back and we’ll meditate. Okay? Because it would be useful, I think, if we had a chance to actually try to look at it in our meditation before we end.
And we’ve been talking in these four stages of coming development of awakened mind, understanding the nature of reality. We’ve been working our way through four stages. And we’re on the fourth stage, the Consequentialist Middle Way stage. And within that particular method, we’re working with to understand emptiness, the four-point analysis, the four keys. And we’ve discussed the first three of these, Ascertaining, the essential — or the four essentials — the essential of determining or ascertaining the object of negation.
Yeah. That was the first. So this is the the most difficult and the most important. And we’ve talked about this in terms of, we’re setting up a target, and we’re going to shoot our arrow of analytic reasoning and observation. You know, if we don’t know what we’re looking for, if it’s not clear, if we have no object that we’re searching for, then its non findability will have no impact.
It will not be It will not be able to in any way weaken our belief in the existence of the object of negation. The object of negation is a self defining self, an inherently existent self, an intrinsically existent self. We can say a, unitary or a singular, homogenous, unchanging, independent self. A self which arises most vividly in the course of emotional experiences. The self exists, a conventional self exists, a type of self which is dependent, dependent upon what, the body and mind.
And then we’ve used the example of the baby being born and in dependence upon that body and mind, we impute the person John or Mary, whoever. John is dependent upon causes and conditions, dependent upon parts, but also and most significantly at this level, upon the perceptual process itself, dependent upon language and concepts, terms and our conceptual thinking which thinks in this way. You know, John, John’s existence, this person, this actual flesh and blood person who we call John, this John is a human being. This person, John’s existence depends upon the term John and my thinking of him as John. If if there’s no term John, if there’s no thinking of this person as John, John doesn’t exist.
Neither does. And the same applies equally to his body, to his mind. So we’re not just talking about some kind of telephone directory of people. We’re talking about every object in the world, every object in universe, table, glasses, whatever. They all depend upon all products, all things depend upon causes and conditions.
They depend upon their parts. They depend upon terms and concepts. Nothing exists independently. But we have a very strong belief. We have an innate belief and probably an acquired belief, which would probably be below the threshold of our present awareness in the existence of an independent self.
We believe in an independent self, and we believe that there is a referent object to this belief of an independent self. That is, we have a concept of an independent self. That concept makes use of a mental image of an independent self. We believe that so an independent self appears to us, but more than that, more than simply appearing to us, we go on to assume that there is a referent to that image, that something in fact exists corresponding to what is a symbol, a representation. You know, we talked about the map and the territory.
The map is a representation of the territory. The map is not the territory. Some maps refer to actual realities, places you can drive on, streets. Some maps are completely fiction, like Tolkien’s map. They don’t refer to anything in reality we can find.
We have a mental image of an independent self that appears to us. in dependence upon that appearance, we generate, we we assume that there, in fact, does exist an independent self. in dependence upon that belief, which is ignorance, we go on to develop attachment, hatred, miserliness, jealousy. We do we absolutize ourselves, and then we go on to reify others. We go on so that others are thought to exist independently, that our environment is seen to be exist independently.
We draw a big thick line about everything and everyone, And our lives become adversarial. Our lives we don’t see the interrelatedness of ourselves and others in our environment and our world. So we have to identify this appearance in our own experience. We have to be able to see it. This is determining the object of negation.
What is being negated is not this appearance. This appearance exists. We can’t say it doesn’t exist when something exists. But what has been negated is the referent object that this refers to something in reality which we can find. We believe it exists, that that referent object.
Just like Tolkien’s map, Some people might believe that you can actually travel and find those various places. They have that belief. It’s a mistaken belief. We have a belief that this appearance, this mental image, refers to something we can find. in dependence upon that, we we generate the various types of emotions.
So we have to identify what that appearance looks like. If we’re then we’re going to search. If we don’t know what we’re looking for, we’re never going to be sure whether we found it or not. So, the very first of these four essentials is, ascertaining — taking a long time going through — determining the object negation. Okay?
So remember, we we we we calmed our mind, and then we we, using our our memory, using feelings, imagination, trying to evoke an actual vivid emotional experience, some kind of fear, some kind of great joy. And then a very small portion of our mind like a spy. One part of the mind is going to watch another part of the mind, like a spy trying to identify how does that eye look, that self. I’m I’m I’m scared. That eye.
You know? I can’t stare at you. That eye. I can’t do this. That eye.
You know? What does it look like? It’s it’s not easy, but we have to we can begin. We can begin to try to identify to look find out what it looks like. We talked about this process, in the last few weeks.
The second essential, determine the the pervasion. That, okay, so we’ve identified this I, what it looks like. Now, if it exists, where does it appear to us? What place? It appears to us in the vicinity of the body and mind.
So if that I in fact exists, it must exist in either of two ways: it must either exist the same as the body and mind or different than the body and mind. There’s no third alternative. We have to become convinced of this. That something exists, it is either identical to the body and mind or it’s not identical to the body and mind. That is, say, different than the body and mind.
There’s no third. There’s no mixture of the two. Something is either one or many, singular or plural, same or different. Pervasion. Then last week we went on, the essential of determining the lack of being the same.
We looked in terms of analysis. What would be all the dialectical tests, the faults, which would arise if this identified eye was exactly, in every single characteristic, identical to the body mind? What kind of faults would arise? You know, if the I appears to us to be singular yeah. But, you know, what I mean by singular, you know, these are you know, when when we say, I can’t I hate you.
There’s a sense there’s a sense of massive whole, homogenous, not distinct parts. Doesn’t doesn’t sense doesn’t feel like having parts. Just some kind of a massive like, it’s a sense it’s like if you were laying on on your bed at night and picture dark and you had a sense that something was looming over your bed, indistinct mass. You can almost reach out and touch it, but it has just a sense that there’s something, a homogenous whole mass, a unit. And if that were the way the eye acts if that were identical to the body mind, then there would have to be as many eyes as there are parts of the body, because each, if the eye is singular, then there only one eye could stand for each part of the body.
An I doesn’t have parts. Therefore, there would have to be as many eyes as there are parts of the body. So we went through various ways of finding fault with the possibility that the eye is identical to the body mind. Now, tonight, if I get to it, the fourth of these four essentials, the essential of ascertaining the lack of difference. So we’ve identified an I.
Now we’re going to see if it exists, if it is it doesn’t it’s not the same as the body mind, now we’re going to check out to whether it’s inherently different. Now the idea of inherently different is important to understand that unrelatedly different, You know, that means different in every way, unrelatedly different, not just different. You know, like, like, the person I was yesterday and the person who I am today, they’re different. I think everyone would probably accept But they’re not unrelatedly different, are they? You know, like like, like this vase and this glass.
I can destroy the glass, and the vase is going to remain. Their existence, they don’t depend upon one upon the other. They’re different and they’re unrelated to the different. But, say, for example, The yellowness of the flower, the color of the flower, the color of flower and the flower, color of the flower and the flower, they’re different, aren’t they? The color of the flower is yellow, the flower is something physical, we can smell it, We we can put it in a box.
So the color of the flower the color of the flower and the flower are different, but they’re not unrelatedly different, are they? They exist in relationship to one another. If I destroy the flower, I destroy the color of the flower. If I take away the color of the flower, I destroy the flower. They’re different, but they exist in relationship to one another.
Okay? So here we’re looking at this fourth essential, trying to see whether this I is totally unrelated, just like a glass and a vase in terms of the body and mind. Totally unrelated. The I and the body and mind are different, in fact, but they’re not totally unrelatedly different. The eye is dependent, is related to the body and mind.
But here we’re going to we’re investigating in this fourth essential, seeing are they inherently different? And by inherently different, it means totally separate, unrelatedly separate in all ways. So what is some okay. First first first some of the reasoning that we can come to conclude that the body and mind are not inherently that the I which we’ve identified in the first essential, the object of negation, that I which we identified, is not inherently different than the body and mind. We can first use some reasoning.
The first is if the I appears if it’s an isolated entity, unrelated to anything else, then it doesn’t if it doesn’t exist in relationship to the body and the mind, then what happens to the body and mind that doesn’t happen to happen doesn’t necessarily happen to the eye. You know, the body could become sick and the eye is unaffected. The mind could be happy, the eye is unaffected. What happens to this glass doesn’t happen doesn’t happen to happen to the vase. What happens to the vase doesn’t happen to hap isn’t necessarily happened to the to the glass.
If the eye was an isolated entity, unrelated to the body and mind, then the body could become sick, but you wouldn’t become sick. They’re not related, the eye and the body. Or you could have happy thoughts, but you wouldn’t be happy because they’re unrelated to the mind and the eye. So we’re talking about the way the eye appears. It appears to be an isolated entity, not related to anything other than itself, anything outside of itself, self contained unit.
If that were in fact the way it exists, then we could become sick, and I my body could become sick, I wouldn’t become sick. You know, the I wouldn’t suffer old age, disease and death, wouldn’t become angry, wouldn’t have joy or sorrow because it’s unrelated to what what the body and mind experience. Sometimes We can you know, we’re going to actually search for the eye in the course of our meditation. Sometimes the eye can appear it appears okay. So we’re going to see whether it’s separate, totally unrelatedly separate.
There’s two ways that things can be can they can they can appear to be separate. You know, like like a shepherd and his sheep, They’re they’re separate, and they’re different entities. A shepherd is a human being. Sheep are animals. So they’re not only separate different, but they’re also different entities.
Sometimes but there’s another way that things can be different. They can be the same entities, but be different. In terms of, like, salespeople and a head salesperson. They’re all salespeople, but they’re different. One of them is in charge.
One of them is the is the head person. So we’re going to actually search. And since there’s these two ways that the eye can exist in terms of being different, it can exist like a head salesperson amongst other salespeople mixed in. So therefore, we’re going to look within the body and mind. Or it can appear to be of a different entity altogether.
Therefore, we have to look outside the body and mind, you know, just like the the the shepherd and his sheep. You know, what we’re going to do is first look throughout the body and mind. We know what we’re looking for because that’s what we identified in the first essential. Then we’re going to very systematically work our way through the body and mind So we find that it’s not within the mind. Then we’re going to look without the mind and body.
That is, we’re mentally going to begin to dismember our body and mind. You know, take a cut off your arm and look at it and check it out. You know, and set it aside. Do the same with the leg. Put over there.
Then we dismember our mind bit by bit. We’ll go through this process, mentally dismembering our mind. If the I was a different entity, we’ve said it, you know, if you had, let’s say you had a