Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun reframes “going for refuge” as something every human being already does — to romantic love, money, vegetarianism, alcohol, politics, sex, or sport — then asks the blunt question: is it actually working? He traces the recurring patterns of boredom, dissatisfaction, and disappointment that return no matter how often we change partners, jobs, or cities, and the vague waiting for some unspecified “factor X” to finally fix things. From there he introduces Lama Tsongkhapa’s short text the Three Principal Aspects of the Path as the series framework, focusing on the will to awaken — the honest confrontation with one’s own dysfunctional patterns that must precede genuine compassion for others. The session closes with guided loving-compassion meditation and nine-round breathing practice. Accessible to newcomers; regular students will recognise the series already in progress.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 HMA 1996 10 16.mp3
UUID: 10410877-00df-4f51-bd6d-341db8b0e81b
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-10-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~6,735
It’s been a long time. This is the Buddha House. My name is Jampa, and we’re going to talk about Buddhism just in case you some of you forgot. Because I noticed there’s lot of new faces. So maybe we’ll have to go over our format a little bit, sort of reacquaint some of the new people.
Can you hear me okay? Okay. A louder. A bit louder. So, you know, we we begin with the process of reorientation.
I don’t know if you noticed, but in my case, I quite often get out of touch with what is important to myself and, you know, what is of real value. Yeah. I think we get caught up in, you know, what we deem to be the practical necessities of our everyday life and and lose sight of a deeper meaning of what our life could be all about, what the type of life we might like to live, what we the principles and guidelines that we might very much like to see our life and expression of if we were conscious and aware. So, you know, this process of reorientation or redirecting ourselves, reprioritizing what is very important to each of ourselves, I think it’s in all of what we talk about, I think it’s it’s quite profound and quite difficult, if we’re honest. So it’s a real challenge.
But I think it’s a worthwhile challenge. I think there’s a real significant payoff for for living up to the challenge and and confronting the issues of our life. Basically, we’re you know, this is traditionally described as going for refuge. This reorientation process, re redirecting ourselves. It’s not particularly Buddhist.
It’s not particularly Eastern. Now whether we’re aware of it or not, whether we’re conscious of it or not, whether we call it that or not, all of us in one way or another had been going for refuge in our entire lives. You know, basically, the idea of refuge contains the notion that that there’s someone or something that we can call upon, that we can prevail upon, that we can avail ourselves of, something that we can that we can do, some direction that we can take, some course of action, something that’s going to afford us a measure of protection, help us to assist us in solving our problems. Bring bring us whatever it is that we’re we’re looking for, You know, the good the good life as as each of us might uniquely define what is really worthwhile to ourselves. You know, bring us what it is that present we are basically searching for.
So the idea of going for refuge is isn’t particularly spiritual. It’s a it’s a very very pragmatic way that we approach our life. It’s trying to find meaning, purpose, trying to find happiness, trying to solve our problems, get rid of our suffering, overcome our pain. So, you know, we we all are refugees in some way or another. You know, some people go for refuge to to their family or the important people around them, the people that are close to them.
Some people go for refuge to money, to to material things. Some people go for refuge to power, to fame, to status. Some people go for refuge to romantic love, to music, to art, to to sports, to their work, to politics, to religion, to hobbies, sex, drugs, food, alcohol. There are all kinds of possibilities that we can go for refuge to. You know, some people take refuge in vegetarianism on the one hand, and other people take refuge in eating as much meat as possible on the other.
Some people go for refuge to celibacy on the one hand. Other people go for refuge to having as much sex as they possibly can on the other. Some people go for refuge to putting all their money into a bank, maybe stocks and bonds. Other people go for to spending more money than they earn. Some people go for refuge to abortion clinics.
Some people go to in vitro fertilization programs. Some people become activists. Some people drop out. Some people become world travelers. Some people become hermits.
Some people become presidents, lawyers, doctors, nuclear physicists, secretaries, plumbers, saints, criminals, artists. And some people try as best they can not to do any of the above. Try to do. So, you it’s the idea that we’re all trying in one way or another to construct or fabricate some zone of refuge for ourselves, some kind of protectorate, some sanctuary where we can find some peace for ourselves, where we can, you know, be out of the ways of life’s slings and arrows, you know, of outrageous fortune. You know, that way we can begin to lay our burden down if only temporarily.
That way, our our the problems of our life are set aside if even only for just a moment. You know? And our particular refuge is very unique to ourselves, to each of ourselves, according to our our unique belief system, our guidelines, these principles that we have, world view. But whatever we do, I think it’s intelligent. I mean, it’s quite necessary to if we’re going to live our lives intelligently and sensitive to our own actual lived experience, which I think is a challenge in itself.
It is to say, if we’re going to live our life in the light of our own wisdom and what it is that it is that is actually happening to ourselves, we’re forced to ask ourselves whether our particular refuge is working or not. You know? Like checking up and evaluating from time to time. Are my ways of finding happiness, my methods of solving my problems, my value system, my particular worldview, my refuge? Is it working?
Is it delivering the goods? Are my refuges solving my problems? Are they bringing me the happiness that I’m seeking? Simply, are we more or less basically happy people? And however, each of us might uniquely define what what constitutes happiness for each of ourselves.
And it’s very unique to each of us as, you know, as we’ve gone through all of these various refuges in terms of celibacy, in terms of, you know, tremendous sexual appetite, in terms of having wanting to have children, in terms of wanting to avoid children. All these possibilities which might serve as refuges as a means for solving our problems, helping ourselves to find happiness that are unique and particular to our circumstances and our value system. Whatever it is, isn’t working. That’s all. You know, most you know, everybody has problems of one sort or another.
And whether they they be major tragedies or or just minor petty annoyances. You people die. Our loved ones leave us. We ourselves or someone close to us get sick, has an accident. We ourselves or someone close to us is that the same price?
I feel like I took a shower. Does anybody have a cushion? Okay. Just the, you know, the actuality of our lived experience. What is actually going on for ourselves in terms of the major sufferings that we experience, but also, the minor petty problems that we often overlook, but are still there in one form or another.
We ourselves or someone close to us loses their job, we ourselves or someone close to us, their their business fails for one reason or another. And maybe the maybe it’s just the hot water system breaks down, maybe a car doesn’t start. What a hassle. Or maybe you spill soy sauce on your shirt, your brand new shirt that you just bought. Anyway, the point is we’re not so much looking at all of the the all of these many individual particular instances of desirable and undesirable experiences over the course of our life.
But what is the overall quality of our life? You know, what is the feeling tone, the texture, the patterns and the themes which run through our life. You know, not merely as in in, like, the the individual trees, but, like, the the dominant species of forests of our life. Trying trying to get an overall perspective, a sense of feeling. What is the the really felt tone of my life, the themes and and the patterns running through my life?
What is the felt impression that we’re left with when we reflect upon the lived quality of our life? Does my life afford me meaning? Does it does it have a sense of purpose, a sense of fulfillment? You know, do I have anything that I sincerely believe in? Do I have a feeling of connectedness with others, of belonging, a sense of being some a part of something greater than myself, of being loved and and of being lovable?
Do I feel challenged or I and excited about life? Are there moments of of awe and wonder, an element of sacredness in our life. And these are the qualities of life experiences that we’re concerned with here. Not so much whether, you know, whether Buddhism is going to help you not to spill soy sauce when you’re sure it cannot. It probably won’t help very much.
Maybe you’ll be more mindful if possible, and you’ll be more careful when you eat. Or it’s not going to help people your loved ones not die. Maybe it’s going to help you in terms of your attitude, how you’re going to turn up the the sound. Can you hear okay? It’s still a bit soft?
That’s That’s An obstacle. Sooner or later, you know, life asks us or forces us in one way or another to confront the reality of what it is that we are doing, what it is that we are about, and and where this is all taking You know, it it kind of it hurdles the question at us. You know, what is this thing called life? What is it all about? Is life just a bitch and then we die?
You know? Or is that As Buddhists might have it, you know, his life is just a bitch and then you’re reincarnated. And really, I guess, what we call existential questions. I’m not quite sure what that means, but it sounds good. And a very a very profound depth.
But beyond the superficial, mundane, the everyday occurrences, what is the deeper meaning of our life? What is the quality of our experience? What shall I do? What shall I do? I shall rush out as I am and walk the street with my hair down so.
What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do? The hot water at ten, and if it rains, a closed car at four. We shall play chess we we shall play a game of chess, pressing ruthless eyes and waiting for the knock upon the door. And, you know, beginning to question, is there nothing more than this, just the experience of life as as simply a series of events, one event after another, just filling in the gaps between birth and death.
And even, you know, over the course of our of our everyday life, maybe, you know, we begin to these reoccurring dysfunctional patterns and pathological themes of our life become more or less perhaps apparent to ourselves, if only vaguely. And you begin to get some kind of perspective. You begin to see the writing on the wall. If only for brief periods at a time, we we, you know, we find a new partner, we we a new wife, a new husband, a new a new guru, a new therapist therapist maybe. Or we try going in alone for a while.
Or we change our jobs, we change our employers, we change business, we change careers, or we take a work a break from working life for a while. And we move to a bigger, a smaller, a newer, an older, a cheaper, more expensive flat house in the city, in the suburbs, in the country, in another town. You know, we we we just give up our home altogether and we travel for a while. Or we we take up a new hobby, some kind of new sport, some kind of creative new creative interest interest, a new leisure time pursuit where we we have another child, we have another facelift. We have another affair.
Or we’ve had enough of it all, we can’t quite figure out what to do next. You know? At least for a while until something else comes along. You know? Another always another project, always another new something around the corner, another particular that we can become absorbed in, that we can distract ourselves with, lose ourselves in in one way or another.
It’s in the stream of the endless doings of human of human beings. So, you know but in spite of all of this, all of these doings of human beings I don’t know why they’re called human beings. We don’t be very much. We are doing more than not. But in spite of all these auspicious beginnings that we’re continually making, we we inevitably, the same problems seem to always return.
And perhaps wearing a different mask by a different name, different people, different superficial circumstances, but a deeper level of the same pattern, the same story keeps repeating itself, keeps reoccurring over the course of a life, keeps coming back to plague us in one way or another. These themes of dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration, you know, boredom, insecurity keep finding a way back into our lives one way or another, the sense of meaninglessness in our lives, a sense of alienation, a sense of inauthenticity in one way or another. They keep creeping back into our lives almost imperceptibly at the borders of our awareness, but still there to some degree, some some felt experience, however vague and faint it might be. The same feelings of unmanageability and of passengerhood in our lives, as if our lives were being led out of our control in some way, as if we were just being taken along for a ride in one way or another, of the feeling of merely coping, of not belonging, you know, a life being lived in a kind of quiet desperation, you know, waiting for the knock at the door in one way or another. Maybe this is, you know, the idea is to to perhaps to help us to stop and think, to to take stock, to evaluate, so we don’t go on mindlessly and lose the opportunity which which our human freedom affords us in beginning to take control of our lives, beginning to make choices, finding refuges which actually might work for ourselves to bring us what it is that we want in some way or another.
So it’s important that we talk in these ways. It’s necessary that we talk in these these ways. You know? And though at some level, we know it’s you know, when these these reoccurring themes of dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration, boredom, insecurity, these feelings of inauthenticity, these sense of unmanageability of a life, you know, we know whenever these begin to reoccur, reoccur, whenever they they begin to they begin to impinge upon our consciousness to break into our awareness when we have to admit them to some degree, Even though at some level we we know it’s going to depress us and make us more more discouraged and make us feel even more guilty and despise ourselves even the more, we habitually resort to the same dysfunctional dysfunctional patterns of thinking and behaving when these bad feelings, know, uneasiness, depression, fear start coming in the hopes that they’re going to make us feel better, knowing deep down that they never have and probably never will, and resorting to the same ways of thinking, the same habitual ways of behaving. You know, we kind of persist in the struggle to manipulate the people and the things and the circumstances about us in the hope of shaping some kind of permanent refuge for ourselves.
But it it never quite seems to work, at least not for long. You know, people are always letting us down in one way or another, abandoning us in some way or another. Things never quite live up to our expectations. And even when they do, you know, eventually they’re used up or they wear out and they have to be replaced. We have to find something new to take its place.
Styles never remain the same. Tastes change. And circumstances and situations change, and we or we simply go we we go bored with what it is that we have, and we have to move on, search for something new to take its place. So, you know, there’s no place that we can really rest our heads for very long. There’s no no permanent kind of of niche that we can carve out for ourselves, no no eternal state, no no identity person thing situation that we can take refuge in and find any kind of lasting security.
It seems like a difficult situation that we find ourselves in at best. At best, I think if we really confront the issue, we begin to look at the quality of our life, you know, in in the way that our life know, this extended drama of our life, you know, the all of the people and the the actors come up on our stage and they they strut their individual parts and they’re very you know, and as the drama of our life unfolds, you know, the the the scenery changes and the and costume changes and the props change. And but the plot remains pretty much the same, pretty much fixed. Every and except for the outward trappings, not much really changes in our lives in one way or another. We but but we persist, you know, we cling tenaciously to our hope, that our with this wishful thinking, you know, the unfounded hope that the dominant patterns of our thinking and behaving can remain the same, but there’s going to be some kind of surprise twist at the at the end, and some kind of unpredictable unpredicted outcome is going to occur at some point in the story of our life.
And if someone’s going to come along or something will happen to save us, bring us the happiness we want, help us to get rid of the pain that we don’t want. You know, perhaps, you know, a white knight or a beautiful princess. Something is going to appear, some some kind of miracle of divine intervention is going to happen. You know, maybe a breakthrough in scientific technology, you know, some kind of radical new therapy, some kind of a new wonder drug maybe, is gonna come on the market. But maybe just something we can’t, you know, something totally surprised we can’t even begin to predict.
And something completely unforeseeable is going to happen. It’s going to make better make our lives better, make our lives the way we would want them to be. Make the boredom go away, let the absurdity of our lives go away, make our lives better for ourselves. You know, so we wait. Mercifully we wait, we wait with anticipation for for for the letter in the mailbox, maybe, you know, the the knock on the door.
Somebody’s gonna call us. The phone’s gonna ring, and that person’s going say, yeah, the life you ordered has arrived. You know, do you want it delivered, or do you want to come down and pick it up? And somehow we’re always waiting. You know, what is it that that each of us is waiting for?
You know, what what is it for for you? You know, what is that special person, that that particular material something that I mean, it’s it’s like some kind of waiting for that transformative idea, that cause which is going to overwhelm you. It’s going to you’re gonna find some real purpose for your existence, for your life, or or maybe some kind of all consuming activity, you know, some kind of overpowering circumstance is going to come along. The one you’ve been waiting for, that right factor x gonna come along and make your life better for you, turn things around for you? What your refuge is gonna come.
You know, at least it’s going to maybe it’s not going to be the be all and end all of it all, but at least it’s gonna help us for a while until the real x comes, until the real it comes along. So we wait for the coming. You know, we we wait for something to come, but we’re never quite sure just what that what it really is we’re waiting for. It’s just kind some kind of vague feeling of desperation or some kind of despair or maybe maybe just the kind of feeling of a sense of a worry worrisomeness about it all, that that something must be out there, that it must exist. You know, that maybe, you know, this can’t be all there is to life.
Something is going to come along and make it all better. Maybe once you visit Buddha House, it’s gonna make it all better. Make the meanness go away, the hollowness go away, the absurdity, make things right, make things the way that we would want them to be, the way they were meant to be if only, you know, they were going as they should be. So, you know, and over the course of our waiting for these hope for tomorrows, one by one imperceptibly, these hope for tomorrows drift down into, you know, our disappointing todays. And and days imperceptibly drift down into the unlived, fade away into the forgotten, unremembered yesterdays of our life, and our our life just kinda creeps on at its petty pace.
And we just simply come closer to death, never really having lived our life. So, you know, I guess this is might be all rather depressing to sound painting a very big picture of a downer. But I think maybe it maybe it’s necessary to help us to become sincere with the moment and thereby not waste the opportunity. You know, I guess this idea of going for refuge is is is to help us not to fall into a mindless patterns of existence in which our lives we may cheat ourselves of the possibilities of life and what it could afford us in in terms of its adequacy, livability, and the and the quality of our life. Know, Buddhism simply holds out that that we are all capable of becoming tremendously healthy, loving, sane human beings, But it doesn’t come automatically.
You know what forces us to become Buddhists? We have to want to and want to very much. And so it’s necessary that that we that we get unstuck, that we look at the quality of our life and confront issues of where, you know, these patterns of the overall tendencies of our thinking and behaving are taking us and trying to decide, is this where I want my life to go? Is this enough? If I were to die next week, you know, one month from now, would I have lived the type of life that I would have wanted for myself?
And if not, why not? You know, it’s only it’s very much up to you. So this is the, you know, the the motivating force behind perhaps looking at alternatives, other possible refuge than the ones you’ve been making use of up to now. In terms of Buddhism, we go for refuge to Buddhadharma in the spiritual community as resources for helping us to to solve our problems, to find the life that we might want for ourselves, you know, as real possibilities to solve our our fundamental problems. So, you know, we’re we’ve discussed this in the past, and we’ll discuss discuss it more in the future what we mean by Buddhadharma and the Sangha and what it means to go for refuge and why we go for refuge.
Because it’s very central to Buddhism. It is like stepping on the path of Buddhism, stepping on the path of change and growth and finally awakening. So essentially, the central focus of our life becomes Buddha. And this happens, but Buddha was inside of ourselves. And we begin to orientate ourselves toward this possibility of becoming a tremendously happy, healthy, loving, sane human being.
And we orientate toward we make use of, we avail ourselves of the methods, the Dharma, those techniques, meditation methods, the teachings, truth of things as a means to actualize Buddha, to become this person that we would want ourselves to be. And this occurs within the social context of a spiritual community, you know, those who assist us in implementing the Dharma in our lives, who authenticate our Buddhist story for ourselves, who who inspire us and act as examples, who who teach us and guide us, to do whatever is necessary to help each other along the path that we’re all seeking to travel. And we try to raise the level of motivation, why are we doing what we’re doing. You know, understanding that one of our central problems in finding happiness has been, up to now at least, our complete self absorption in finding happiness for ourselves alone, that most all of our solutions, seeming solutions to our problems, have simply perpetuated the problems themselves. That we seek to become this person that we’ve always wanted to be, not just for ourselves alone, not just for our own limited vision and ideas and needs, but for an ever widening circle of others, to ever widening circles of others.
And this becomes our orientation, our new direction in life. So there’s a verse that we that we recite in a formal sense, which kind of sums up in in some way what I’ve just been talking about. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening.
Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech, and mind, and present clouds of every type of offering, those actual and imagined. I disclose all my destructive acts accumulated since time without beginning and rejoice in the skillful actions of holy and ordinary beings.
Please remain until cyclic existence has ended and turn the wheel of Dharma for living beings. I dedicate this collection of actions and myself and others to the great awakening. So we’re going to meditate. If you let’s see. Okay.
What we what we normally do, the format that we usually follow, is that we we do mindfulness breathing. And then preceding that, we do we’ve been doing an adjustment adjusting our motivation in terms of, again, the development of loving compassion as as the the reason, the why behind our our our meditation practice. So and we’ve been working through various individuals. You know, we we work we work through loved one all the way down the spectrum to neutral individuals, to people, various types of neutral individuals, strangers, various ethnic backgrounds, nationalities, whatsoever, and then finally down to enemies. And then we begin to group them into more and more greater numbers until eventually, ideally, theoretically at least, we we are able to meditate.
What we do is for the benefit of, you know, for infinite number of sentient beings, all living beings. But, you know, we have to begin at the beginning. So again, tonight, we’ll begin at the beginning. We’ll begin with ourselves. Know, this is just the process of acknowledging the fact that that you, like everyone else, wants happiness and doesn’t want to suffer.
And it’s something that that perhaps we overlook. We forget that we too are sentient beings and that becoming conscious of ourselves as wanting to be happy. And perhaps reflecting upon the nature of our situation and wishing ourselves that happiness, wishing ourselves not to suffer very consciously. It’s quite a revelation to many people when they first do it. They never really thought of about themselves.
It’s as if, you know, this person’s always been around. You’d quite take them for granted as it were. And you you said, oh, yeah. I do wanna be happy. I never really really gain that kind of perspective to myself in that way that I don’t want to suffer.
Why not wish myself that? Why not extend love to myself and compassion to myself? You know, it’s Śāntideva who wrote what is perhaps the most important book within all of universal vehicle or Mahāyāna Buddhism, the Engaging in the Bodhisattva’s Conduct, the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, said, you know, if we’ve never dreamt of such an attitude, that is to say, more or less love and compassion for ourselves, how could we ever develop it in a genuine sense for others? If we can’t love ourselves, have compassion for ourselves, wish ourselves well, wish ourselves not to suffer knowing our own problems immediately through our own experience, how can we ever develop a powerful, stable, loving compassion for others knowing only at best the situation of their sufferings and problems vicariously, secondhandedly, by simply by inference at best? We can’t.
Now we you know, we’re going to what the text that we’re looking at is the three principal aspects of the path. And within that three principal aspects are the the aspects of the awakened heart and the awakened mind. But the prerequisite to those these latter two, three principles, is the will to awaken. And the will to awaken is the will to go beyond this dysfunction your own dysfunctional patterns of your life, you know, to go beyond your own suffering, to find happiness and peace for yourself. Having done that having done that in a very sincere and real and genuine way, then we begin to extend it to others, understanding that they’re all equal.
They’re just like myself in the same situation with the same problems as myself. If we don’t understand our own problems in a deeply in a in a in a profound manner, and and understand the nature of our own situation, and want us want ourselves to be free of it in a real genuine way, we’re never going to be able to develop that for others. And never having developed that for others, we’re never going to really solve our basic problems. We’re never going to realize our fullest potential. So it’s worthwhile.
It’s not only worthwhile, it’s necessary to begin with ourselves. It’s a very integral part of the path. We can’t skip that part. And even though we might like to be bodhisattvas, we have to, you know, take that first step and be kind to ourselves. So developing you know, imagine yourself in front of yourself, and and I’ll lead you through the three stages of development levels of compassion and three levels of love.
Then we’ll do what is called most of you are familiar with the nine round breathing meditation. So if if the older students will bear with me just for a moment just while I, you know, repeat this to some of the the new faces. You know, it’s simply a matter of of this is a way of doing it, just blocking the left nostril. Imagine that you’re breathing in, brilliant white light, and you’re breathing in through the right nostril. And this white light, you know, can be anything positive that you might wish it to be, anything that you feel have some real feeling for, you know.
Ideally, it’s the blessings and the all the of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, you know, all that is good in the universe, all that is positive and worthwhile, all that is constructive, valuable, and just having a sense that that there is some kind of something positive within the world and that this is taking the aspect of this brilliant white light, and it’s flowing into you, blocking your left nostril. It comes in through your right nostril, and imagining that it comes down as if there were very small tubes, three small tubes within your body running two running from the from your nostrils upward towards the crown of your head and down within, just inside the spine, running down below your navel, and then joining together just below your navel, curving inward toward the navel. And then there’s a central as if tube just made of light, not solid, not plastic or metal tube, but it’s just very delicate, made of light. And it runs from perhaps the this from the center of the eyebrows upward and down the central, just inside the spinal column and down to just below the navel where it joins into these these two side channels, right and left.
So breathing in this brilliant white light, it comes down, and it crosses over to the left and breathing out natural breathing, a black smoke. And it’s speaking of this black smoke, you know, trying to get give it a sense that, you know, all that is wrong with your life, all that is wrong with your mind, all the obstacles, limitations, all your negativities, you know, all your afflicted emotions like, you know, attachment, hatred, jealousy, spite, miserliness, pride. These are all going out and go off in the distance in the form of thick black smoke far off in the distance, and they fade away, never to be seen again. And doing this twice more, make making three rounds, In and then out. In and then out.
Three times. And then, again, breathing. This is mainly associated with the the, you know, ridding ourselves of of negativities associated with attachment and desire, but negativities in general. And then breathing in again, blocking the left nostril blocking the right nostril. There’s brilliant white light flowing in.
And just imagine it’s dead. You can’t see it. Just imagine that this process is happening. And following it down, it crosses over blocking the the left nostril. It’s breathing out naturally.
It goes out through the right nostril. Again, the thick black smoke, all the negativities and obstructions going off in the distance and disappearing. And then I was breathing in through both nostrils. Again, the brilliant white light comes in through the side channels down, and then breathing out naturally, coming up through the central channel. And this is mainly where the ignorance resides, the wind energy is associated with ignorance.
But imagine, again, the thick black smoke going off in the distance, ridding oneself of all the negativities and obstructions, all the heaviness and dullness, and then having a sense of purity and clarity, of brilliance, invigoration, and refreshment. Then we’ll do a mindfulness of breathing, just observing the breath. Maybe we can talk about that more in the future. But just for now, just natural breathing, not altering the breath in any way, not holding the breath in any way. So would you like to stand up for a minute and stretch, and then we’ll we’ll sit.
Okay. So just take a firm comfortable posture, you know, whatever whatever feels comfortable for you. But it’s it’s it should have a sense of stability about it. But but take a posture which is that you can hold for some time, but one that isn’t straining or causing yourself harm in any way, but one that you feel a sense of stability. And perhaps most important, you know, of the various features of the posture is that simply a straight back, you know, but like coins stacked one on top of another.
So the back is straight, and then bringing slightly bowing the neck. That’s it. So bending the neck slightly, bringing the chin in. So other than that, you know, just whatever works for you, whatever gives you a sense of confidence and sense of groundedness and stability. So a straight back, slightly bowing the neck and bringing the chin in.
And first, get in touch with the body, you know, noticing any tensions, any tightnesses in the body, perhaps in the upper shoulders. The text we’re looking at is called the three principal aspects of the path. It’s a text it’s a very short text. It’s in your Maroon booklet there. I think it’s about thirteen verses long.
But it is the essence of of the Buddhist path to awakening. It sets out the three principal aspects of the path, the awakened heart and the awakened mind, and then the prerequisite to those two, the will to awaken. And it’s by the fourteenth century yogi scholar, Tibetan master Lama Tsongkhapa. And we’ve, you know, we’ve worked our way up to the fifth verse where it says, if you think again and again about deeds and their inevitable effects. So, you know, we’ve looked at quite a number of subjects, essentially in terms of the three principal aspects of the path.
We’re looking at the way to develop this will to awaken. There’s a way to develop some kind of determination to change. We don’t want to change basically. There’s a great deal of resistance and fear and main that’s maintenance of the status quo. We just keep going in the same perpetual compulsive patterns, loops of behavior and thinking.
We have to get ourselves unstuck. It requires a great deal of determination. We have to develop a will to awaken, at least a will to to grow, to go beyond these dysfunctional patterns. So that’s why we have to look at our dysfunctional patterns. It has to be something more than a mere idle speculation or curiosity or go beyond the the level of intellect.
It has to be some kind of feeling level. You know, we we get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and we want to get well. So we begin to avail ourselves of the resources of our own mind as a self healing system to begin to solve our problems at a more fundamental level. We begin to appreciate the fact of who we are. We begin to look at, you know, we have of the nature of our potential, in terms of our Buddha nature, and in terms of all our circumstances.
There’s nothing missing. There’s nothing that we need to wait for to get on with our life and becoming the person that we might want to be, the quality of life that we might want to experience. It’s work. I mean, but it yeah. But the the tools are all there, the resources are all there in terms of our own mind, in terms of the external situation, in terms of our internal conditions.
We’re quite fortunate, and we have to begin to appreciate our great fortune and the opportunity that our human life presents us with. Or, you know, if you don’t appreciate something, there’s a great tendency simply to take it for granted. Taking it for granted, it goes to waste. Its potential is never really made use of, and this happens in everyday life. But here we’re talking about something tremendously more important than that, about the mundane things.
We’re talking about the possibility of what our human life affords us. And our freedom and great privilege that we all experience, especially here in the West. We’re very fortunate. We’re extremely special people in the world in terms of our affluence.