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 opens with a guided meditation — evoking an emotional situation, or even approaching a cliff edge, to catch the “I” as it tightens into appearance. He then works through the first three of four essentials for analysing selflessness: identifying the object of negation (a solid, partless self that appears independent of causes, parts, and conceptuality); establishing binary logic — if this self exists, it must be either the same as or different from body and mind, no third option; and beginning to test the sameness claim. Along the way he reframes the two truths — conventional truth as literally “truth for a deceiver” and ultimate truth as what holds only for wisdom consciousness — and sketches three levels of dependent arising. Suited to practitioners already working with Madhyamaka analysis of selflessness.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 HMA 1997 10 01.mp3
UUID: 72d5ba84-ff67-4a8d-bd66-caa5054a5ec1
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-10-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~5,066
And the way I’m going to fulfill my responsibility, my commitment to you is through my meditation. If I can develop myself, gain some insights, if I can reduce my ignorance, thereby my attachment and aversion, if I can become more skillful at working with my own mind, then I can develop some real abilities in helping you to do the same. It can be of real, practical, significant benefits. So somewhere down the line, what I’m doing now is going to be a benefit to you personally, to all of you. And then bring your mind to the breath, easy, gentle, in and out flow of the natural breath.
If it’s helpful using the techniques of counting and noting the breaths. And we want to identify the way the I appears to ourselves in an emotional situation. So gently begin to, through either memory or using your imagination, evoke an emotional situation as we’ve described. And then as it proceeds, at a certain point begin to analyze, figure out how the I appears to you. If nothing appears, then calm your mind again and begin to evoke the emotional situation again.
Just a small portion of your mind, try to get a sense of the I which is afraid or the I which is happy. What does it appear to you like? So calming the mind and then gently and easily to evoke an emotional situation experiencing your mind. And then bring your mind back to the breath. And then becoming aware of your body, perhaps your posture, physical sensations.
And slowly, gentle and relaxed manner, just become aware of what’s going on about you. Just take your time. There is a tradition of in order to to identify the object or determine the object’s negation to some yogis would go to in India, they would sit at the edge of a a well and look down in the well, lean over the well, sit at the feet of elephants. There’s a there’s actually a practice called, means cutting. And you go to cemeteries, and you you tell all the demons and the wrathful, you know, malevolent spirits to come take your body to eat you, you know, to get an idea what the object of negation looks like.
So, you know, if you have some opportunity, you know, to see on the near edge of a cliff, just go, you know, as you approach it, some something tightens, something arises for you, fear, and take take that opportunity, And that’s a to to experiment, look into your mind, try to get a sense, figure out who is experiencing that fear. The I, the the experience, the emotional experience. Or if you’re, you know, if you’re experiencing a great deal of craving, who is it, you know, to get a sense of that? So using these experiences to help you get a feeling, a sense for that I. You know, our sense of I comes with almost any motivation, you know, to we experience various sufferings and happiness, and there’s a motivation to continue the happiness or to relieve ourselves of the suffering, and there’s an I.
There’s a sense of I that goes along with that, and this is quite instinctive and not necessarily problematic. But when we develop develop a stronger sense of I, then there’s a there’s a strong demarcation between self and other, for example, or there’s there goes on we go on to develop a sense of I and mine, and what is not mine, and what is mine. And through this strong sense of self demarcation and strongly this sense of what is mine, you know, beyond you know, it’s it’s interesting to note in this way. I mean, we have, like, legal definitions of what is mine, don’t we? This is mine, I have a deed, this is my house, I have I have a mortgage, I have a deed, I can show you all the all the paperwork on it.
So there’s a legal definition. So we have there’s a there’s a convention about what we mean by mine. That’s not yours, that’s mine. You know, we even in everyday life we have a notion, but there’s something that goes beyond that. That’s mine, which is a little bit more than that.
And so the stronger sense of I and mine become becomes problematic. Out of this stronger sense of I and mine with a strong demarcation between what is not I, what is other, and what is mine and not not my and and not yours. It feeds attachment and aversion, hatred, and all the other afflictive emotions. So the sense of I in itself is not problematic. It’s it’s, you know, it’s it’s generated out of a stronger sense of of self, which is accompanying is is the is generated through the arising of ignorance.
And I talked about the three types of conceptions that we can have with regard to the I. The I is all everything, not just the I, the self, the tables, whatsoever, is always appearing to truly exist at all times. We’ve never seen we’ve never experienced anything other than that inherently existent or all these various terms that we use, objectively existent. So that is to say the basic problem is at the perceptual level, the way things actually appear. They appear to be exist independently of my mind, independent of causes and conditions, independent of their parts.
That’s the way they appear. So actually the the the more deeper problem is that it even begins at the perceptual level. But, and this has to be eventually dealt with, even for someone who has abandoned ignorance. For example, an eighth level bodhisattva, if we can imagine what that might be like, kind of, they have abandoned ignorance from their mind, but still things appear to truly exist. But they no longer but ignorance no longer assents to that appearance, rests in that appearance as being true.
You know, it is interesting in this way. What what, you know, we talk about we really haven’t discussed it, but it’s a very important area of Buddhism, the two truths, conventional truth and ultimate truth. And the word that’s the way this is usually translated into English is conventional truth, but the word that’s is being actually being translated is better translated as truth for deceiver. That is to say, there is truth for a deceiver. What is the deceiver?
The deceiver is ignorance. True existence is, you know, this this way that things appear independently existent is true for ignorance. It’s not true for wisdom consciousness, it’s false for wisdom consciousness. So ignorance is a distortion of the mind which which takes this appearance as being true, and that as a found, and taking that as a foundation of all our further thinking. On the basis of taking those appearances to be true, then aversion and attachment are internally logical outcomes.
If those appearances were in fact true, then aversion and attachment make sense in terms within that context. It is a display of intelligence. There is, you know, I mean, you know, there’s nothing stupid about ignorance. There’s nothing stupid about attachment or aversion except in terms of wisdom, because in terms of intelligent, more skillful viewpoint, we can see how they’re going to cause this problem. But with in terms of themselves, they they make great a great deal of sense.
If these appearances were true as they are being grasped at by ignorance, then it makes sense to have aversion and attachment. Uh-oh. Yeah. None of you can leave until we’ve identified this piece. So and then what we translate as ultimate truth is more literally, it could be translated as that which is true for a wisdom consciousness or that which is true for We could just say wisdom consciousness.
The only thing which is true for wisdom consciousness is emptiness. So that that which is true for ignorance, there’s two levels of truth, that which is true for ignorance and that which is true for wisdom. There is only one thing which is true for in this way for wisdom, that is emptiness. Perhaps we can talk more about that. I what the point that I’m getting at, I’d like to get at is that, okay, there’s a there’s a certain pattern of our mind, a certain way of of relating to all of these images and objects which appear to us, which which takes their appearance and grasps at them as being accurate, descriptions of reality.
That’s the way things are. That which grasps in that manner we call ignorance. Taking that as a premise, I mean this becomes an operative basis for the mind to continue on, you know, certain emotions will now flow out from that that kind of platform, taking that as a premise that these appearances are true, grasping that those appearances is true, then certain types of thinking will naturally flow out from that, that that basis, that understanding, that way of viewing the world. That has ramifications. In terms of emotional life, anger and aversion, jealousy, pride, attachment, all of these what we call afflicted emotions, they all arise upon that fundamental way of viewing the world, that grasping at these appearances to be true.
And by that by that I mean is by those appearances, as we’ve talked about this, those appearances as if things existed independently. And everything eventually we’re going to talk about maybe dependent arising. Everything is a dependent arising. I am a dependent arising. This table is a dependent arising.
Everything and everyone from form to omniscience is a dependent arising. And there are various ways of interpreting what we mean by dependent arising, and there are more we could say three levels of dependent arising. That things, products, results arise dependent upon causes and conditions. This glass, myself, you know, I was I’m a I’m a product of my parents having sexual intercourse of the a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm and coming together of of my food and my culture and my, you know, everything that is take my my my past continuum of mind, everything that has made me what I am. I am a product of all that.
So I’ve risen in dependence upon that, but I don’t appear that way. There’s there’s something which which appears as if there’s there’s a model of myself which is which is infiltrated with the characteristic of the self to be independent of cause and conditions. Something solid and concrete that’s always been as it is now. It’s it’s never been arisen. It somehow brought itself into existence, and it’s always been there.
That that I’m I have a model of a self which of which that is a characteristic. Another type of dependent arising is that things are dependent upon their parts. This table is dependent upon its top, upon its sides, for its existence. But the same holds true with the I. The I is dependent upon its parts, for example, the body and mind, or we could refine that and we could say the five aggregates, but essentially the body and mind.
But there is there is a model of a self which I’m working with, which has has been infiltrated with the characteristic of as if the I is independent of parts, solid, isolated, concrete in and of itself, a unit entity, unrelated to anything outside of itself. Another meaning of the word dependent arising is that things and persons are dependent upon being merely imputed by terms and conceptuality. That is the thing. The thinking process itself draws forth objects into existence. But that’s not the way the eye appears.
I have a model of a self which is infiltrated with the characteristic that it’s not it’s independent of the of the knower, of the conceiver, of language. So there’s a model which is it appears to me in that way, the way things exist. Ignorance then then grasped at that model to be a truth, to be the reality and the way in effect exists. Wisdom says no. That’s false.
The wisdom the wisdom consciousness if the wisdom consciousness is present, there were no our our entire thinking process is no longer based upon that premise that this appearance is true. On the contrary, we’re operating our life, our thinking on the basis that appearance is false. Though it appears, though the eye appears that way, I no longer am being captivated, pulled in by that, and therefore I’m going to operate in the world in quite a different manner. Moreover, all of these dysfunctional patterns cannot arise. They all arise in dependence upon the assumption that this appearance is true, or the grasping conception that this appearance is true.
So there’s there’s a wisdom consciousness which sees this appearance as false. There is a ignorant consciousness which sees its appearance as true, grasping at there as true. And then there’s a a type of consciousness, our everyday mundane consciousness, which is neither wisdom nor ignorance, there’s a very low sense level sense of I. You know, I’m talking. I I know, woke up this morning and I did such and such work.
I did this. I did that. But the moment so this there there’s no so there’s no there’s no particular level there’s no strong sense of I, neither in terms of it being true or false. So there are these three levels, three different ways we can conceive of the I. It is this first one, the I under the influence as conceived of by ignorance, as being grasped at as ignorance, which is problematic.
The mental the mental processes which evolve out of this assumption as to the truth of that appearance are problematic, are dysfunctional, cause suffering. So we’re trying to undermine that taking as true this appearance. So we have to identify that appearance and begin to understand its faults. This is that appearance is the object of negation. If we don’t and if we don’t see it well, we’re never going to be able to understand its falsity.
We instinctively grasp for its truth. So that’s the first object essential, these four essentials: ascertaining the object of negation. We’ve talked about it intellectually, and this isn’t quite important to build up this this information, we’re in this sense of this context in which this exploration is taking place. But we can we’re trying to work with it even in terms of our experience and our meditation. Okay.
That’s the so there are the four essentials. The first is the essential of determining the object negation. What does that model look like? By you know, what are we negating? We can’t negate we can’t negate the appearance.
What we’re negating is that that appearance has a reference in reality. You know, language, words, symbols, they are all the the mental maps that we use. They refer to something, if they’re valid, they refer to some findable object in reality. If I say, you know, would you bring me the would you bring me the apples I bought at the supermarket today in my refrigerator? You could go in my room and you could bring me back an apple.
You know, I’m using the I, you know, I I spoke to you and you with using terms and concepts, and you something and I would have the sense that, you know, if you came back five minutes later with an apple, I would say, oh, you understood what I what I was talking about. We communicated. So we had certain parallel symbols within our minds. Somehow we they they corresponded about what apples are and what refrigerators are and all that, and it worked strangely enough. We can’t communicate sometimes.
And but if I said, oh, and also bring me the pears that I bought today. I don’t care how you know, you can look all day long, you’re not gonna bring me a pear because I didn’t buy any pears today. But but so I can use propositions, I can think, I can use symbols, and I can put them together in a very, in a in a in a grammatically correct order. I can, you know, with but they have no truth value. They don’t correspond to anything in reality, but they make sense in my mind, I can talk to we can talk about them, but they don’t refer to anything, in fact, in reality.
So we have a model of a type of self, and it make we can we use it, we talk about it, we play with it, but it doesn’t have any truth value. It doesn’t have any it doesn’t refer to anything in reality, findable. And we have to come to know that. Then we then we begin to see that this is what we mean by illusion. And this is often misunderstood what Buddhism is getting at by illusion.
This is not an illusion. This is I’m not an illusion. It’s like an illusion. It’s like an illusion. Illusion has the the notion of appearing one way and existing another.
What will happen is we will we will perceive the I. The I will appear to us, but our wisdom consciousness will understand that if though it’s appearing, it doesn’t exist that way. It is false. The perception of this glass, the glass appears to me, but my wisdom consciousness begins to tell me that it doesn’t exist the way it’s appearing. So things so things begin to appear as illusions, illusory like.
They appear one way and exist another, and I’m able to hold both of those in my mind simultaneously, that appearance and the wisdom consciousness which is influencing my understanding of that object such that I I it appears to exist from its own side independently, but understanding it doesn’t. It’s false. It is like an illusion. So the the the self becomes begins to appear to one like an illusion. One is no longer captivated, and one is no longer drawn into all this complete scenario that and all that that brings in terms of our experience.
Ascertaining the object of negation. Then the second essential is the essential of determining the pervasion. Sometimes this is called determining the alignment, determining the pervasion. So this is simply what we call a commitment to binary logic, whatever that means, the law of excluded middle. If a, then not a.
If a, if a, then not not a. It can’t be both a and not a. If a, then not not a. So, you know, whatever so we this we have to go through this. It may seem rather obvious, but maybe maybe not.
But it’s something that we have to spend some time playing with because it’s it’s going to make a difference down further down the line. Whatever exists whatever existent we examine must necessarily be included in either of two categories. You know, it it must be either singular or plural. There’s lots of different words we can use for these. Singular, same, identical, one, And then on the other hand, plural, many, different, distinct.
Yeah. So anything which exists must exist in one of those two categories. There might be you know, there’s maybe an infinite number of objects in the universe, but they can all be subsumed in either one of these two categories. You know, whether it’s a person, a table, an army, a universe, it’s one. If if it’s plural, like a man and a woman, a Tom, Dick, and Harry, a table and a chair, it’s many.
Okay? Everything is either one or many. There’s no third possibility, that’s what we mean by excluded middle. If something exists, it must be either singular or plural, it must be one or many, it must be the same or different, It must be identical or distinct. So what we’ve done is, in the first instance, we’ve determined the object of negation.
What does this self appear like, this inherently existent self? Now now we’re going to analyze whether that this self which we identified in the first essential, whether it is the same as the body and mind or different than the body and mind. So, you know, there there’s no we have to become extremely clear in our mind and go through the trouble of playing with this that there’s no third possibility. Either this identified I is the object of negation which we determined in the first essential, that self, that I that we’ve we’ve identified very clearly for ourselves, right, well, it must be either one of two possibilities in regards to the body and mind. Either it’s the same, identical with the body and mind, or it’s different than the body and the mind.
There’s no other third possibility. You know, there’s some kind of strange way that these two could could exist. You know, somebody might might object and say, well, maybe the self and the body and the mind, maybe they’re both the same and different, which is really not to that’s that’s that’s not a real possibility. You know, if something is not the same, how can it be the same in both? You know, like, for example, you know, the mixture of sugar and chili mixture of sugar and chili is definitely not the same as sugar.
It’s definitely it’s definitely different than sugar. Or don’t ask me to have a cup of tea at your place. So, you know, mixture of sugar and chili is not the same as sugar. It’s different than sugar. So not everything.
So we have to play with this idea, you know, tables and a chair, Tom, Dick, and Harry, men and women, you know, the the labor party and the and the the anyway, they’re not much they’re not much different. Anyway, just going through all the various, and coming to a very firm conclusion, you know, it must be, everything must be either the same or different. If if, you know, what we’re going to do is if if this self exists, which we identified in the first essential, we’re going to see whether it’s the same or whether it’s different than the body and the mind. So we have to be sure if this self refers to anything in reality that we’ve identified, if this self exists, if it in fact exists, then it must be the same it must exist as being the same as the body and the mind, or it must exist as being different than the body and the mind. There’s no other way that it exists.
And if we go on from that, if we go on to determine, well, it’s not the same, it doesn’t exist, it’s the same as the body and the mind, and we go on to determine it doesn’t exist as the same as different than the body and the mind, then we’re forced to come to a conclusion, aren’t we? And that conclusion is it doesn’t exist at all. If it exists, it must be either the same or different than the body and the mind. I’ve determined that it’s not the same. I’ve determined it’s not different.
Therefore, it doesn’t exist at all. You know, we have to have this force of logic behind it in order to undermine the belief in it does, but in fact, does exist. You know, if you had two boxes and you had some valuable valuable possession, and, you know, if I if I have it, it’s either in this box or that box, and you and you you open the box and you search thoroughly through the first box, and then you open the second box and you search thoroughly through the second box. If I have it, it had to be in either that box or that box. I didn’t find it.
I don’t have it. I’m sorry. I’ve lost it. So where does the where does the this self appear? What we’ll call the inherently existent self.
It it appears in the vicinity of the body and mind. So if if the the inherently existent self is something more than a mere appearance, if it re if this appearance actually refers to something findable in reality, If it in fact exists, then upon searching through the body and the mind, we should be able to find it. It should either be exist as same as the body and mind or different than the body and mind. So this is the this is the the the second of these four essentials. The essence of the second essential is determining that if the inherently existent self that we’ve identified in first essential, which appears to us, if it in fact exists, it must exist either inherently the same as the body and mind or inherently different than the body and the mind.
It must be the same entity, it must be identical to the body and mind, or it must be different than the body and the mind. If it’s neither of those, it doesn’t exist. So over the two remaining essentials, we’re going to go on to examine those two possibilities. We’re going to test each of them in turn. So so at this point, in terms of the second essential, we have to make a decision by committing ourselves to to both reason and observation.
You know, reason and observation by analyzing whether the inherently existent self is different or the same as the body and mind. So that brings us to to the third of these four essentials, the essential of determining the lack of being the same. So we’ve identified what we’re looking for in the first. We’ve decided in the second essential that it must be either the same or different to the if it exists to the body and mind. Now we’re going to go on to explore both of those two possibilities.
The third essential is the essential of determining the lack of sameness, the lack of identity, the lack of being one. Okay? So, you know, this is a very systematic, thoroughgoing process of analysis. So there’s no possibility of allowing our mind allowing the the sense that it probably does exist. I just didn’t know.
I just wasn’t looking right, you know, giving our minds a way out as it were. It didn’t exist here. It didn’t exist here. It doesn’t exist. You know, forcing the mind to come to a conclusion that it will not emotionally take, that under the force of unclarity of mind, of unreasonableness, irrational way of approaching the situation, it wouldn’t necessarily have to make this leap of understanding, this insight.
You know, what do we mean this realization? Realization? And what do realization mean? It meant removing the superimposition with regard to the way things are. We’re we we are we are imposing a sense that the the I exists this way.
We have to begin to remove that that superimposition to understand it doesn’t exist that way, to see the way, in fact, it does exist. So in at this point, we’re going to we’re going to analyze to see whether the identified I is the same as the body and mind. Okay. So immediately there are certain problems which arise if the identified I were the same as the body and mind. And at this point maybe you can only you know, they should what I’m what I’m going to say should be logical for you.
It should be reasonable. But but it will at this point, it will only be reasonable on the basis of an assumption that you’re going to make and that how I’m describing the I to you. You know, when I when I when I describe the I as as saying, for example, that it’s partless, that it’s a single unit, the way this I, you know, I can’t state you. I’m I’m I’m you know, there’s this at this point, you have to you know, what I’m going to explain, you will be working with, and I am working with, very much an assumption of how that I looks. You know, maybe we really haven’t clearly identified that I within our own experience.
We’re going to be presuming, as it were, and this can but this can be verified within your own experience, with with time, with practice, that this I is, for example, it appears to be a partless unit, the I. I cannot define it. It it’s it’s a vague unitary mass, homogeneous, partless, singular. You know, I don’t have a sense there’s a lot of I’s when I contemplate it. It’s there’s the singularity nor nor nor nor does it it doesn’t appear to have lots of distinct parts.
Why can’t I cannot grasp it, it’s just a a blob, a mass, indistinct, without any parts, without any particular characteristics. It’s a unity, unchanging. You know, it’s this there, set up by itself with as if it’s always been there. It’s never grown old. It doesn’t change.
It’s had it didn’t have a a beginning at birth. This is something in which itself instituted it. It’s always there, a unit mass. So these are the qualities. Okay.
If when we begin to, you know, identify the I in that way, this characteristic, is part of this model of the I that we’re making use of, it begins to that begins to that already begin to contradict the certain consequences which will contradict our experience. If the if, you know, if such an I were the same as the body and mind, certain problems would immediately arise as a consequence. So the first of these is that we would have to have at least two selves. We’d have to have at least two eyes. We’d have to have at least a physical I and a mental I.
Yeah? You know, the I appears to be partless, a partless unit. So if if this is the way it’s appearing, if this I were if this were in fact the case, then the then