Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute opening-of-year session, Ven Jampa Gendun takes Heraclitus’s “character is fate” as his pivot: our habits, not chance, shape the life we experience. Part of his Heart and Mind of Awakening series, the talk argues that meditation — the Tibetan gom means habituation, nothing mystical — is the practice of becoming who we want to be. He grounds the universality of suffering using a Japanese monk’s inscription (“what joy when I found there’s no happiness in life”) and Castaneda’s image of a lone dog barking into a desert night, insisting ordinary human pain carries no particular shame. The session closes with the seven-limb prayer, a brief introduction to Je Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path, and a guided breathing meditation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 HMA 1997 01 15.mp3
UUID: 0cc51d06-cd63-4d77-9c70-07d19f19410e
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-01-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~6,482
Sometimes we’d rather we we probably rather not hear about or we’d rather not deal with. We’d rather ignore or deny. Many of you just had a maybe a happy Christmas, lots of holidays, or at least a change of some sort. And now we come back having to deal with the same old problems of our life in one way or another. You know, these continual cycles of dissatisfaction or disappointment, frustration.
It’s not particularly pleasant to to talk about or to listen to probably, but it seems to be quite necessary. And this continual process of reorientating ourselves, redirecting ourselves, getting back in touch, and we have to change. And the only way we’re going to do that is to see the necessity at the at the level of pleasure and pain. And we pleasure and pain very much take priority in our lives over our logic, our rational thinking, our intellectual thought. We have to have have a gut felt necessity.
Otherwise, we probably won’t change. We’ll probably very much go on just as we have. So, you know, I hate to be a bummer for you all and talk about suffering and dissatisfaction, but there’s great hope. It’s not pessimistic. You know, that if we’re willing to confront the real issues of our life, then there’s a real possibility of working through them, coming out on the other side, another way of being, other possibilities, another approach to life, another way of experiencing.
Now I read over the Christmas period, read a quite an interesting book, and one of the chapters in the book was was on fate. Fate. You know, fate not in the sense of predestination where, you know, our our our lives, our story is pretty much laid out. It’s just going through the motions, but fate in the sense of using an, like, an idea of a Greek philosopher by the name of Heraclitus, who said that character is fate. Character is fate.
It’s quite a quite a thought provoking idea. And by by character, maybe something like the the the deep structures of our personality, those which are more or less unchanging, relatively so. And more or less our habits. Our habits become our fate. You know, it’s not to say that a loving person, an angry person, you know, couldn’t walk out of Buddha house this evening and get couldn’t get hit by a bus.
They both probably could. But it’s to say that the habit of being a loving person, the habit of being an angry person will naturally evolve a different way of experiencing life, different types of relationships, different ways of being with others and being in the world, that this is the quality of fate, the very nature of our personality, our character, our habits. And, you know, beginning to determine, you know, who is it I want to be, You know, this this process of reorientation, redirecting ourselves, actually becoming aware of our our of where our present direction in life is taking us and beginning to question, is this where I want to go? Is this am I now presently the type of person that I want to be? Would I always like to be myself as I am now and be experiencing very much the same or would I rather change?
And making a habit of the person that we want to be. And I I was thinking that that the the Tibetan word for meditation is gom, and gom is is you know, it’s not a very mystical word. It’s not a it’s pretty mundane. It’s this simply has the idea of of familiarization, accustoming, getting used to this idea, almost like simply habit. It’s very much related to a similar term, which simply means habit.
So meditation is the way we come we become the person that we want to be. Practice is the way that we become the person we want to be. You know, continually making a habit of the person that we want to be, the type of world that we want to live in, and what we want to experience in our life. Bringing that to conscious awareness and practicing it, performing it so that it becomes part of our nature, our personality, our fate. So, you know, this is this is what we have to do again and again and again and remind ourselves and the necessity to do it because we aren’t very aware to a large extent.
We’re more than not only aware to the degree that the level of survival demands of us, and not much more. So we have to talk about suffering. And it’s kind you know, this is the beginning of the year. We have to begin again. We always have to be beginners at this process.
Keep continually reorientating ourselves, redirecting ourselves for that person that we want to be and that type of experience that we want to to know in the future. And it seems that this suffering which which makes us think. You know, I I probably have mentioned this a number of times, you know, how many of us ever look, you know, pleading pleadingly to the sky and, you know, with with our arms wide open, looking up and say, why me, God? Why am I so happy? Why does everything always have to go right for me?
I I I I can’t go on like this any longer. I have to understand what I’m doing so right. You know, none of us. You know, if one is unhappy, then we want to know why. What’s the reason?
But it never occurs to us to ask why we’re happy. You know, therefore, it’s unhappiness more than not rather than happiness which makes us think, which which causes us to reflect upon the condition our condition. You know, it’s it’s unhappiness or moments of unhappiness that that that we may at at such moments that we may be momentarily deflected from our habitual attitudes, other habits which aren’t taking us anywhere to the type of person that we want we want to be. You know, they take us away from our usual focus of attention, different ways of think that are going to help us to foster different ways of thinking, different ways of viewing, and to help us to think about issues that seldom if ever concern ourselves. It’s suffering or maybe more accurately, the the unawareness of suffering.
You know, we we all suffer, but very few people are aware of the nature of their suffering. Animals suffer, but they don’t have the capacity in their particular state to be aware of the nature of their suffering. So it’s not just suffering, but an awareness of our suffering, which makes us stop and think, makes us question, can lead us to change. You know, the deeper and more sustained this awareness, the more profound and far reaching the change will be. And above all else, if Buddhism is about anything, it is about change.
It is about becoming a Buddha, this happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. You know, talking about suffering and this, so perhaps sometimes it can be thought of that Buddhism is rather preoccupied with suffering, that maybe it’s pessimistic, it’s rather cynical, you know. It’s not to suggest that we shouldn’t concern ourselves with happiness or or not to appreciate it when we do, in fact, find some in our lives. It’s just that happiness is not the problem, and suffering is the problem. And that, you know, if that in our constant denial, our our rejection, our struggle against the recognition of the basic truth of suffering in our life.
I think this is really hard if we’re if we’re really honest and if we’re we’re aware of where we’re at. We we we don’t want to it’s difficult to acknowledge or to become aware or to penetrate that level of seeing the the nature of our way of existing, our style of life, and what it is bringing us overall. There’s a certain resistance and denial. We don’t want what would it take? What would it demand on us if we begin to really see that that our approach to living is dysfunctional.
It doesn’t work. It’s only causing us more and more suffering. What would it call what would that entail? You know, all of our values would have to be called into question. Our belief system, our our our attitudes would have to change.
Our whole world view, That’s a lot. But Buddhism is asking that a lot. You know, it’s necessary that we begin to at least acknowledge the extent of suffering in our life. You know, I mean, not to say that we’re basket cases. I don’t mean that.
But there’s a certain dissatisfactory quality about our approach to life, and we’re never going to trans cend that. We hope we will. We have great hope. And in the end, that’s all we’re ever left with is our hope and a lot of suffering. So it’s necessary very much to face that first.
As ordinary human beings I I think this is a liberative thought that ordinary human beings, we suffer. I I a number of years ago when I was visiting Thailand and I lived off a on on an island off the southeast coast called Koh Samui. I don’t know. Maybe some of you have been there. It’s quite a tourist attraction.
At the time, I wasn’t a tourist. And there was another island which is further on. If you take the boat, you can go on, and not many people visit there. And there’s a there’s a small monastery or Wat. As the Thai people call their monasteries.
And there had been a Japanese monk who had lived there for some time. He did a lot of he died there, a matter of fact, and he he did a lot of painting. And he used to write inscriptions on his painting. And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Ajahn Buddhadasa, one of the foremost masters of Thailand who just died a few years ago, who had a monastery on the mainland near by. And he actually collected these paintings of the Japanese monk after his death and and built a small gallery at his monastery, at his watch.
And one of the paintings said, oh, what joy when I found there’s no happiness in life. It’s, you know, the fact that there’s you know, like, suffering is like a like an open secret, isn’t it? And somehow, we’re quite ashamed, and we we feel that there’s something peculiarly wrong with ourselves, something idiosyncratic to our particular mentality. There’s something there’s some flaw in our ourselves which other people don’t seem to be experiencing. There’s something wrong with me in particular, but it’s simply not the case.
And I think, you know, when we begin begin to see this, then we begin to share a bond with all other ordinary human beings who are just like ourselves. And it’s not you know, there is it’s not peculiar to ourselves, and therefore, there’s nothing to be particularly ashamed of or feel guilty about to the fact that we do suffer, that the quality of our life isn’t all that we would have it to be. And then there’s I think there’s something more than hope. There’s something there there is a realistic possibility of changing things because we begin to think, well, is life just a bitch and then we die, or can we actually do something? And then perhaps we begin to actually become realistic about changing things.
But we have to come up against the necessity. You know, I think it’s hard to as I’ve said, because I think it demands of us a great deal when we all our values, all of what we’ve been taught, conditioned to believe in. You know, the all that’s all the goodies which have been held out in front of ourselves, which are going to bring us to good life. And I and I I perhaps you know, I grew up in the fifties and the sixties, and those were the in the United States. And and there was the World War two World War two had ended and prosperity was coming then.
Every if you you know, there was the there was the the ideology that if you did the right thing, you know, if you if you went to the right university, right, and you married the right wife, or you married the right husband, and you you got a job with the right company, and you bought the the right type of split level house, and you had one and a quarter children, and one and a half dogs, and and, you know, if you did all the right things, then you would be happy. That would be your reward for having done the right thing. And a lot of people were disillusioned. A lot of people were cheated in the end. They did all the right things, and in the end, they were left with nothing except a hollow life, having lived other people’s values, you know, another person’s other people’s ideology.
They had bought a bill of goods, and it hadn’t delivered. It hadn’t gotten what they had hoped. So maybe, you know, we can we can begin to think for ourselves in terms of our own experience. Suffering blocks, you know, it’s sometimes we want to discount our own own suffering. How can I think about my suffering when when there’s all there’s all these people in China suffering?
And and what’s going on in the Middle East, Rwanda, Bangladesh. How can I and there’s almost a sense of guilt and shame to have to consider, you know, our suffering relative to to some of the the horrors which are going on even now? Starving blacks of Biafra scrounge for roots, fight each other for rats. Vietnamese children with melted flesh wander homeless, orphaned across a lunar desert. Many of us have never known this kind of misery, have never felt a lash or a club, never been shot at, persecuted, bombed, starved, yet we suffer too.
Wealth and intelligence and good fortune are no protection. Having had good parents helps but guarantees nothing. Misery comes equally to the high and low, comes with the gold spoon to princes and princesses, to ladies in waiting, to grooms and gamekeeper, to the mighty and the humble. It is part of being human. We differ from one another only and more or less.
A few tranquil ones with little conflict suffer less. At the other extreme stretched to despair to some dreadful cracking point, one goes berserk. In between are the rest of us, not miserable enough to go mad or jump off a bridge, yet never if we are honest to say that we have come to terms with life or at peace with ourselves and that we are happy. You know, perhaps the the exact form our our suffering takes. And I hope I’m not not being too heavy handed about all this.
Perhaps the, you know, the the exact form that our suffering takes is somewhere just short of tranquility and not quite the despair necessary to go find a bridge, you know, is is in any given instant unique for each of us, but its mere fact is not. Without exception, it applies to us all, all ordinary human beings like ourselves. There is for all of us, you know, we can list them, we can enumerate them, which we did last term, if you remember Ad nauseam, we got sick of listening to sufferings. And now we the suffering of being separated from that which you desire to hold on to, that which you desire to find, and the suffering of meeting that which you don’t want to meet with, the the suffering of not finding the happiness that you see, the suffering of being born of sickness and growing old. There’s the suffering of constantly having to maintain our self image, having to reestablish our our credentials, guard our territory, reaffirm our existence, you know, the the the very conception of ourselves as as separate entities makes us feel unbearably alone, imprisoned, lost, powerless.
You know, we maybe we can touch the what the words are can are a reflection of something that we have experienced ourselves. But it but it’s shared by us all. You know, the feelings of inauthenticity, of alienation, of guilt, of shame, of feelings of insufficiency, of unworthy, the, you know, the burden of self consciousness, the the loss of innocence, you know, the the suffering of perpetually having to struggle to find union, union with ourselves, union with others, union with the world in some way or another. And there’s the the fact the effect of meaninglessness in our life, the dread of death, and the the the underlying speed of having to continually rebuild this facade of who we think ourselves to be in one way or another. There’s a suffering of of attachment, of jealousy, of pride, of confusion, of hatred.
There’s a suffering of desperately wanting to be loved, and then the fear of losing that love once once you found it. And there’s the suffering of of a closed heart, and of the daily ache, you know, the daily eating away of of our lives by feelings of apathy or emptiness, emptiness. They’re not very pleasant thoughts either. But and maybe we have to exaggerate to some extent to bring our minds to to a point of genuine sense of sincerity in what we’re doing, you know, to to help us to redirect ourselves so we don’t lie on the superficial you know, on the surface of our life that we that we penetrate it, that we actually think about it, that we reflect upon it, that we question our life. There’s a quote.
This this little story that I like very much. You know, this is all what we’re doing is trying to get back in touch. You know, we to go beneath the surface and penetrate to a deeper level of our live real lived experience of our life to see it reflected back at us so that we don’t we don’t lose our life. We don’t allow it to to go by meaninglessly that we begin to determine to to live our life consciously by, you know, beginning to take control, to lead to examine our life. He paused.
So this is a a scene. I don’t know if you’re familiar with some of the works of of Carlos Castaneda. You know, he wrote a great deal about his his meetings and with Don Juan, who was a Yaqui Indian, a man of knowledge, maybe lived in Northern Mexico. So, you know, they’re they’re out on a desert. Evening is coming.
The sun is setting, and they’re on a short plateau, a level ground. And to the south is a village, and there’s a dog barking in that village some distance away. And the wind is is hissing, And Don Juan is is speaking to Carlos Castanada. He paused. The silence around us was frightening.
The wind hissed softly, and then I heard the distant barking of that lone dog. Listen to that barking, Don Juan went on. That is the way my beloved Earth is helping me now to bring this point to you. That barking is the saddest thing one can hear. We were quiet for a moment.
The barking of that lone dog was so sad, and the stillness around is so intense that I experienced a numbing anguish. It made me think of my own life, my sadness, my note, my not knowing where to go or what to do. That dog’s barking is the nocturnal voice of a man, Don said. It comes from a house in the valley towards the south. A man is shouting through his dogs since they are companion slaves for life.
Don Juan’s words had cut a most disturbing line in me. I felt as if he was speaking directly to me. That barking and the loneliness it creates speaks of the feelings of men, he went on. Men for whom an entire life was like a Sunday afternoon, an afternoon which was not altogether miserable, but rather hot dull and uncomfortable. They sweated and fussed a great deal.
They didn’t know where to go or what to do. That afternoon left them with only the memory of petty annoyances and tedium, and then suddenly, it was over. It was already night. So there’s the suffering and of an unlived life and of a life lived out in a kind of quiet desperation. And then there’s the suffering of death at the end of it all.
You know? So this you know, all of what we described is simply a reflection of our own lived experience to a lesser or greater degree. None of this is unique to any of us. It applies equally to all of us in a description of what it means to be an ordinary human being, which we are. Now whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we accept it or not as part of the human condition or not, and, you know, call it what we will.
It is the truth about ourselves. It remains a difficult truth to deny about ourselves. It’s an integral part of of of our lives. No no difference for anybody else. No.
We’re going to talk about compassion and development of an awakened heart. Unless we can touch the the the the hurt in our own hearts, we’re never going to develop an awakened heart for others. And then we we have to begin to awaken our hearts for ourselves first, and then developing a very powerful compassion for ourselves first. And then knowing, you know, knowing our own experience immediately, directly as we do, then we can begin to to extend that to others, and we can begin to understand others, and perhaps have, for the first time, real love and compassion for others, and then knowing that they’re just like ourselves, and knowing ourselves, perhaps for the first time too. You know, we can there’s a lot we could do.
We could try to numb ourselves. We could try to distract ourselves. We could keep denying ourselves, but in the end, nothing will change. We won’t change, and the quality of our life won’t change. human understanding and suffering are reflexively related.
A certain level of awareness is a precondition for suffering, as well as its management, and awareness is enhanced as well as diminished by suffering. Because of these reflexive relationships, oblivion and the enhancement of understanding are two natural options for coping with suffering. Of these two, amelioration of suffering through understanding is the superior option. Temporary or partial oblivion is not without merit, but permanent or complete oblivion is indistinguishable from death. You know, a stone feels no pain.
It doesn’t feel anything at all at all because it’s not alive. We are we are on the other hand are alive. We are alive because we are aware. But as I said previously, we are only aware to that level that survival makes it necessary for us to be aware that much and no more. You know, that but it so it never it’s not surprising or it’s not there’s no great wonder that sometimes we often feel like a stone, you know, that that in our hearts, not not quite alive inside in some way.
There’s a sort of a an indifference of mind, a a blankness of our hearts, and there’s perhaps some kind of dreariness of life because we would like to make ourselves into a stone. It doesn’t seem they don’t we don’t we would like to become oblivious. You know, as long as we we lie upon a continuum of awareness somewhere between a stone and a Buddha, we’re going to suffer. We’re never going to go out of awareness. We’re we can never that we try, we’re never going to be quite a stone.
So there’s the only rational alternative is to become a Buddha. So, you know, after after the all after, you know, all the tears, all the the complaining, the blaming of some gene or germ or or some chemical or some individual, some group, society or or just pain know, just bad luck after all the self pity, self self denial, self deception, you know, all the bit after all the various means that we make use of to to to numb ourselves after they’ve been tried, you know, after the shame, after the the the anger, the confusion, the sense of powerlessness, the despair, fear have, for the moment, been, you know, sufficiently subsided. After the felt experience of pain, of of hurt, of grief, you know, when they no longer are consuming our attention, after all is said and done and felt, you know, and before this next oncoming wave of suffering and our habitual reactions to it washes over us and carries us off again. You know, just there’s some sometimes there’s a a lull between the two waves. Then we’re going to have to make some kind of a decision, try to come to some kind of understanding.
So just about what we’re going to do with suffering in our lives, and why we have the opportunity and the chance. And not about this particular instance of suffering, but about the truth of suffering, the basic fact of suffering in our lives. You know, the the the not about this particular wave of suffering, but the ocean of suffering in which we all exist. Now there have been individuals who have gone beyond suffering. You know, they went beyond the level of an ordinary being and became extraordinary beings.
And it was dependent upon their understanding and response to suffering. They too you know, all of the of our teachers, all of their teachers and back, all of the great masters of the path were no different than ourselves at one time. But at some point, they chose a different path than that path that we are habitually taking, a path of understanding, a path of confrontation. And it’s because of you know, that it was this a choice which made a difference, You know? And this is the choice, the reorientation.
You know? We we we can call this going for refuge, you know, committing ourselves to other possibilities, other alternatives. So, you know, okay. All of this is leading up to kind of creating some opening. Choosing to become a Buddha and making that a habit so that we have that as our fate going for refuge.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakened. 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 acts of holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until cyclic existence has ended, and turn the wheel of Dharma for living beings. I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others to the great awakening.
Okay. We’re gonna meditate. So would you like to stand up for a minute? We’ll stretch your legs. Okay.
So I I there are few new faces. I hope I haven’t frightened you. Buddhists have fun too. We we we usually have a usual format that we follow in terms of adjusting our motivation and creating some kind of opening. Very much Buddhism is concerned with the motivation, the why behind what we do, probably more than what we do.
You know, what we can what we do can and the action itself can be very indeterminate. It can that, you know, what can various externals can be rather deceptive. We can deceive ourselves, but we can’t deceive ourselves in terms of our motivation if we’re honest with ourselves, if we’re aware. And so it’s not so much what we do, but why we do what we do. So motivation is considered tremendously important.
It’s going to determine the quality of the outcome Very nice, the intentionality. So initially, we we adjust our motivation. So, you know, creating we have to change our hearts. We have to touch something. Something we have to it’s not otherwise, it’s like pouring oil on water.
It doesn’t mix. There’s no integration. Nothing happens. Nothing changes. No.
It’s not a matter of gathering new information. It’s a matter of transformation. So and that’s very much dependent upon the why and the context, the the mindset that we bring to the experience, the listening, to the to the talking, to the meditation. So then we we do a meditation together, and, again, we adjust our motivation. And we we we do it.
We try to as best as best we can, you know. Maybe we just say the words. That’s the beginning. That’s, you know, pointing our cart in the direction that we want to go. That’s something that’s a lot.
Even just to say the words is can be a a a a new a revolutionary new way of responding, you know, which will open up other possibility. So we we work through a spectrum of individuals who are going to develop love and compassion as a motivation for our meditation. You know, as I said, getting that I think I think a loving person is going have a a different quality of life than an angrily person. I think we you know, I think that’s reasonable to say. I think we all we all know that or I’ve experienced it to some extent.
And I think the the life experiences of a loving person are more of what I would want for myself, and I it might be the same. So we make a we can make a habit of being loving, and thereby, we develop we become loving people. And that that love becomes the motivation behind what we do. It becomes part of our style, our character, and therefore our fate, the type of world that we’ve experienced and how we experience. So we practice being loving.
You know, sometimes we it’s you know, like, it’s Buddhism is saying there’s this stuff of the mind, like clay, and it’s workable, depending upon our skill and effort, how we apply ourselves. We we can shape this stuff of the mind into anything that we have the ability to make it. And we can make of our mind an awe-inspiring Madonna and child of Michelangelo. You know? Something which transcended in its beauty.
But we can make of our mind an ashtray. It’s other possibilities. It’s open ended. We we can practice to be the person that we want to be. And very much Buddhism would have us be loving people, caring people, compassionate people as the basis of our practice, as a basis of way of being in this world.
So we practice being compassionate and loving as best we can in a little ways, you know, make a habit out of it. So we work through a various spectrum of people, and it’s it’s not I mean, we we go through it. We can at least go through the motions, can’t we? We can try, make that effort, and there will be some change if we make the effort. You know, if if you make the effort, then you can be helped and you can help others.
If you don’t make the effort, no one can help you and you can’t help yourself. Nothing will ever change. No one can do it for you. You know, the Buddha said that that the subduer, which is an epithet of the Buddha, the subduer does not wash away sins with water, nor do they remove suffering with their hand, nor do they transfer their realizations to the minds of others. But it’s by their showing of the truth that all are made free.
You know, that’s all a can Buddha can do more than more than not, is point the way to facilitate our our own practice in some manner. So show us how the way to change, but the effort has to come from our side, and it has to be a joint effort as it were. We can reinvent ourselves as Buddhists, and we can begin to choose. And I think that we have the choice open to ourselves. That’s kind of maybe that’s really revolutionary idea in itself, that we can be other than who we are now if we so choose.
There’s a we have it. We are the the nexus, the the interpenetration of freedom and determinism. We are the ground of both. We can and we can lead our lives driven by the force of our neurosis, of these reoccurring compulsive patterns which have governed our lives up to now, or we can begin to step out of those and begin to experience a sense of freedom and make choice in our life. That that we have that possibility if we have awareness, awareness of alternatives and make the effort, exercise.
You know, freedom is not something which is inherent. It is only manifest through choice. It’s not something like you can you know, it’s like putting money in a bank, and then you die, and that money is just left there. And it it was as if you didn’t have it. It was only some kind of of abstract ideal for you that made you maybe made you feel more secure in your old age as you go, I’ve got all this money.
Freedom is something that must be exercised and used if it’s to exist at all. It’s a matter of actually making choices actively. Okay. I’ve gotten going on quite a lot, aren’t I? I did a bit of a retreat over Christmas, and maybe I didn’t do enough I didn’t do any talking, or maybe I’m making up for it now.
Anyway, so we’re going to work with different individuals on the spectrum of you know, we’ll begin with ourselves, and then we’ve done we did this last last year, we’ll work through it again. Those who are closest to ourselves and working through, various levels of closeness and strangers working down to enemies, know, working with them, different context, trying to evoke these positive states and and get used to them, make them a habit toward a variety of individuals. And then we we what else do we do? We we did we did nine round breathing meditation. Maybe we’ll we’ll talk about that next week.
Time is so let’s we’ll we’ll do well, just our motivation in terms of cultivating love and compassion, and then we’ll just do mindfulness of breathing. And maybe just for tonight, I’ll assume that you’re all yogis and you know exactly how to do it. Okay? But just focusing on the breath, come continually coming back to the breath. Okay?
So take a comfortable and firm posture. The wind energy is dissolving. You experience it as being blown around in a hurricane. I thought I was dying for a moment. So we’re we’re looking at a very short text.
It’s in your red folder by it’s called the three principal aspects of the path by the fourteenth century fourteenth century scholar Yogi Je Tsongkhapa, who is the highest, most revered figure depicted in so he’s highly thought of, obviously. He’s also the central figure in this rather elaborate group photo. I would have put it there. Three principal aspects of the path. Now there there’s various ways that these can be translated or various terminologies.
So sometimes I I, you know, I make use of my own terminology. Sometimes, you know, the first of these Three Principal Aspects of the path, probably most general is the term renunciation renunciation. I used the term will to awaken, the will to awaken, or maybe the will to freedom, determination to be free. Something like that. Renunciation, renouncing suffering, the causes of suffering, renouncing whatever stands between you and other people from connecting with others.
And the second thing then is the will you know, having developed a will to awaken, what is the direction that awakening takes? And we awaken both our hearts and our minds, the second and third principle aspects of the path of the awakened heart and the awakened mind. And we completed the the first of these Three Principal Aspects of the path last year, the the will to awaken. You know, it’s developing a real determination essentially that I have to change at a at a very deeply felt gut level, the necessity. You know, you’re up against the wall.
There’s no alternative. There’s no hope. You know, when when things become hopeless, then there’s real cause for hope. There’s no alternative. Within the context of my present value system, my present belief system, my present attitude, I’m never going to find the quality of life that I really want for myself and that I’d want for others, I also, additionally.
You know, within ignorance governed existence, you know, when we talk about ordinary existence, we’re talking about, you know, not life in general, this thing. You know, Buddha has a life, our teachers have life, and but their experience of life is quite different than ours. And the it’s the difference in their approach to the experience of living. In in our terms, in ordinary terms, it is the approach is is under the control, under the influence of ignorance and self centeredness. Those are our two most basic dysfunctional patterns, our two most basic problems.
Under their influence, under their control, life is a