Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A physicist-and-chauffeur joke about surface familiarity opens this 45-minute session with Ven Jampa Gendun, setting up his recurring theme that real understanding differs from mere repetition. He frames the gathering around honest engagement with suffering and going for refuge as genuine inner reorientation, then broadens the motivation to include helping others — noting that suffering isolates us but is in fact universal. Two guided meditations follow: nine-round breathing with a plain sketch of the subtle body’s channels and winds, then mindfulness of breathing with counting and noting techniques and practical advice on returning a wandering mind without self-judgment. The session closes by introducing Tsongkhapa’s third principal aspect of the path — wisdom realizing dependent arising — via Gregory Bateson’s aphorism that the psychology of misery is the pathology of epistemology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 HMA 1997 07 23.mp3
UUID: 46fb8302-e18e-47eb-a6ad-1d5344dfa770
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-07-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~6,009
There’s a something of a joke. Something of a joke that if I can remember it. It seems that this physicist made a great revolutionary breakthrough in some kind of obscure area of physics and became world famous. As is often the cases, went on the lecture tour, began to was invited to speak at various places around the world. And she went on a speaking tour in the United States and rather than flying from one place to another, decided to hire a chauffeur.
And the chauffeur would accompany the physicists to the venue and sit in the audience and listen to the talk on this new theory that the physicists had discovered in physics. And this went on for week after week after week after week after, you know, lecture after lecture after lecture after lecture. And the physicist was getting pretty fed up with it, you know, giving the same talk night after night after night. The only thing that changed was the audience. And if the physicist was discussing this while they were driving with the chauffeur and the chauffeur said, Well, I’ve heard you talk so many times.
Why don’t you let me give it? And she said, Are you sure you can do it? Try me. And so the chauffeur began to talk verbatim exactly, giving the same details, the same explanation as the physicist herself had done. So okay, let’s try it.
So they went to the venue and the chauffeur took the physicist’s place. And the physicist sat in the audience in the front row. And the chauffeur went on to give this brilliant lecture on the latest breakthrough, this new theory in physics. And it just astounded everyone in the audience. But there was one exception that came up in this particular talk.
Someone spoke up and said, can we ask some questions? And this hadn’t happened before. And the impostor physicist, who was actually the chauffeur, said, Okay, but it has to be a very good question. I don’t want to waste my time with any ordinary questions. It has to be an exceptionally brilliant question.
And everyone in the audience murmured to themselves and finally someone had enough courage, I guess, to speak up. And they asked this most complex, far reaching, profound question that had ever been asked, ever been heard. And the pretend physicist that was giving the lecture said, why do you ask such simple question? Even my chauffeur can’t answer that. So I guess the reason that came to mind was we sort of gather here every Wednesday evening together and we begin with very much the same I begin at least with the same ideas and the same of wording to my talks.
It is as if over these times that we spent together you yourself could probably get the same talk much better than I could, I’m sure. And this is what we have to begin with at the beginning of each of our talks and here the beginning of a new term. This process of reorientating ourselves. We’re trying to remember why we’re coming to Buddha House where it’s just kind of something that we mechanically do. It’s kind of a habit.
Getting back in touch with some of the motivation that is going to help us to make it all worthwhile. It’s not particularly I don’t think I’m a particularly good speaker. I don’t have much to say of my own. I have been fortunate enough to have met with some people who do have a great deal to say which is worthwhile listening to. And maybe like that chauffeur some of it stuck and I can kind of repeat it after them and perhaps that’s worthwhile to listen to.
But however and over and above that it’s very much dependent upon each of our motivations, what we bring through this experience and our gathering here together, in our communicating together, creating kind of some kind of space where maybe a new pattern can arise, some kind of alternative way of thinking can be introduced in some kind of change for the better in our lives. That’s why we’re here, to change. To change for the better in our lives. So the reorientation, the redirecting of ourselves, You know, it all comes down to suffering, doesn’t it? It’s something that we’d rather not hear about or talk about, let alone think about.
But, that’s why we’re here or that’s why we should be here. Our own suffering but not only that, the suffering of others and trying to find some solutions to our sufferings. Out of that perhaps we can develop some skills to help others to do the same. It’s more than simply finding some kind of resolution where this particular problem has been brought to an end and we just go on as if there weren’t something more to the nature of our problems and one coming after another You know that we begin to you know we only see the trees and not the forest of our lives in terms of the nature of our problems. These compulsively occurring patterns which we experience as dissatisfaction, disappointment, and frustration.
So, you know, this is why we’re here. You know, this is why, you know, we’re going for refuge. There was some kind of discussion in the publication by the FPMT, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahāyāna Tradition. And there was a discussion a couple of issues back around people becoming giving up their robes, better to say. They were once monks and nuns and they gave that up.
And it was interesting that someone else, someone wrote and they were from the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order in the letters to the editor column. And they thought that the decisive moment in a Buddhist life is when they decided to go for refuge. And the way this article or this letter to the editor was written I thought was quite insightful because that’s what Buddhism is all about. I mean, that’s what defines a Buddhist in determining what it is or who we go for refuge to. And it’s a it is a radical reorientation, a redirecting.
You know, most now where are most of our refugees? Where do most people take refuge in? What is it in? And we’ve talked about this. And we have to ask ourselves, where does my treasure lie?
Where do I expect to find happiness and expect to find the solutions to my problems? For most of us, most of the time, it’s something outside of ourselves in some form or another whether it be a person or a situation, some material object, you know, whatever unique to our particular situation, our values, beliefs. But it’s usually something very much outside of ourselves in some form or other. But the whole determination of the Buddhist practice revolves around seeing that it is only through change of our own inner attitudes that we are ever going to solve our internal problems. There’s basically no other way.
There’s no hope other than that. It’s like when you’re up against the wall and you finally decide to try something else. Nothing else has worked, you know, and then you go for a refuge. And we define that refuge in terms of the Buddha Dharma and the spiritual community. And what that means is going to evolve over your career as a Buddhist or whether you’re a Buddhist or not.
As your understanding increases, as the nature of the profundity of what it is that you go for refuge will correspondingly increase. A greater vision of what it might be to take refuge until we become the refuge ourselves. We become what it is. We become the solution. We we be the solution.
We become Buddha. We are Buddha. That is our ultimate refuge ourselves. So in this process, you know, the it seems as if, you know, we’re are very much creatures of habit and we have to keep coming back to some kind of reality check continually or we go through years and eons as it were in some kind of trance, almost asleep. And the only thing that seems to wake us up is some kind of acute suffering, some real trouble in our life that we begin to question, and we begin to probe for other possibilities.
Otherwise we fall back asleep. And hopefully we’re more intelligent than that. We’ve gone a little further than that. That we might go to sleep, go into some kind of trance for weeks at a time, you know, over the breaks. But it’s time to wake back up.
It’s time to come back to some kind of reality that you’re going to suffer unless you change your mind. However your present situation may be, no matter how comfortable, how satisfying and, you know, the kind of the self complacent cozy niche that you’ve carved out for yourself. It’s going to it’s not always going to be like that. And to come back to the reality of the absolute necessity of change in our mind to work out the ways in which we’re going to do that and to dedicate, to commit oneself to that method, that is to say the path, you know, those trainings and ways of being, the truth of things. And also, you know, realizing that we’re not alone in this.
It’s amazing how often we forget how we’re very much alike. That sometimes we think I must be the only one who doesn’t have it together. No one else can be suffering like I am. Somehow I’m unique in what I’m experiencing. You know this isolating effect of suffering that it has upon us all.
But that’s just another one of our deluded perceptions. In fact, we’re all very much the same in this no matter what the superficial differences of the appearances may be. We all have our own type of inner hell that we go through and we have to appreciate that about one another, that truth about one another and to help one another as best we can with whatever abilities and capabilities that we have. That, you know, assisting one another in the process of change and actualizing our Buddhahood by means of the Dharma. That is to say, making some kind of commitment to our Sangha, our spiritual community.
Those who are going to help us and those who we help along the way. Process of change, this process of growing and solving our problems is very much a social process, a social awakening as that word. And we try to raise the level of motivation, you know, the why behind this. You know, the why behind the why I’m trying to I’m coming to Good House. The why behind I’m listening to these teachings and perhaps the why behind I’m meditating and trying to practice, trying to change my mind, trying to live a more ethical way of life, more open hearted way of life, more generous and patient way of life.
All these possible trainings that we can work with in making ourselves better people, that we’re doing it not just for our own own needs alone. You know? Just opening up the possibility of the motivation of helping one other person is revolutionary in terms of our usual egotistical approach to life. Just to be a better person so that I can help one other person if only in a limited way, a limited time. Then I think we can be assured, can have some kind of confidence that all what we do is going to be worthwhile.
We may not know all the outcomes, the specific expressions of the results of these causes that we’re creating but we can have some kind of surety that it’s going to be for the better. Our life is going to be for the better. We are going to be better people living in a better world. And this becomes a way of life. This becomes our refuge.
It’s something which is really practical and workable, you know, we will have we can look back and see some kind of positive change in our life for the better. And I think that’s, you know, the Dalai Lama has said that the purpose of religion is to be happy. And then we can be assured that we are practicing because we will be happier. 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 into 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, 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 is ended and turn the wheel of Dharma for living beings. I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others to the great awakening. That was pretty good. So we’re gonna meditate.
I would you like to stand up? Just stand up a minute and stretch. So we’ll do the nine round breathing meditation together. First, you know, if you wish to actually block the passage, you can block your begin by blocking your left nose. Now imagining feeling that they’re there, these sort of these channels.
There’s a in a Buddhist explanation of the body. Said that there are three levels of body. In degrees of subtlety there’s the gross body of flesh and blood, bones, a gross body. But there are more subtle levels of body. The subtle body is made up of channels.
It’s kind of the psychic nervous system of the body and drops. Winds are the energies upon which the mind rides and drops like creative potency. And there is this extremely subtle level of body which is an extremely subtle energy and it’s upon this that the extremely subtle mind moves on to the future existence. This is what actually exits the gross body and moves on and takes rebirth. So in this subtle level of body made up of channels we’re imagining that we can actually or a bit trying to visualize it, just imagining that it’s there in some way and imagining though there said to be seventy two thousand channels throughout the body.
We’re trying to have a sense that there are three of them, the three main ones. There’s a central channel which has its opening about the mid brow and moves up inside the skull toward the crown and down in the center of your body just inside the spinal cord and down and goes and moves downward. And we’re going to visualize two side channels. They have their openings inside the nostrils moving alongside the central channel, down alongside, moving down and we imagine that the central channels, that the side channels move to about three fingers below the navel and then they curve upward and join into the central channel about the level of the navel. So this is something to work with our imagination.
And it’s said that this is a way that nine round breathing meditation is an excellent method for clarifying the mind, refreshing the mind, bringing the mind to concentration very quickly. So imagining blocking the left nostril, imagining a brilliant white light but we can add another dimension to that brilliant white light. It’s not just something physical but it’s the embodiment of what is ever ever of goodness of the universe, the blessings of the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas. Something which is very valuable for yourself and precious, something which is of a nature, something that’s sacred and you’re drawing it into yourself and drawing it into the right nostril and it comes down. Just imagine you’re following that brilliant white light down.
And for this part of the meditation, imagine that the right channel is hooked into the left channel. And as it moves over it begins to move upward and locking the right nostril and imagining all the negativity out. The left channel is associated with negativities especially those surrounding attachment and desire. Imagine that all of your negativities and obscurations, just in general, all your heaviness and all the burdens and cloudiness of mind are going off and removing being removed in a form of a thick black smoke which goes off into the distance. Imagine disappearing far off in the distance and doing that again breathing in right nostril, out through the left nostril, And in and out three times and reversing the process, breathing in through the left nostril and then in the form of thick black smoke.
And the right nostril is generally associated with the particular emotions of hatred, anger, hostility. And just generally all of the negativities and obscurations and heaviness of your mind and body going out in the form of thick black smoke. And then finally, you’re breathing in through both nostrils coming down. And imagine that again, here we’re going to imagine that it goes off through the black smoke, goes off through both nostrils off into the distance and disappears. The central channel is associated with the particular emotion of ignorance.
But just in general, know, heaviness and obscurations. Anything which is troubling you. Bringing clarity to your mind. And then we’ll work with this spectrum of individuals again that we’re going to develop loving kindness and compassion for. And working, we’ll begin with ourselves again.
So, you know, this is quite a revolutionary for many people to actually direct some love and compassion for themselves. But as best you can imagine yourself there in front of yourself. If you can’t see yourself, this is not terribly important. The important point is the feelings that we’re trying to develop. And these feelings are being directed toward this poor slob there.
Oh, that’s me. You deserve any of your own compassion. Compassion. You’re a sentient being who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like everybody else. You don’t have to earn that that right despite your very existence.
It came with the package. You’re worthy of your own compassion and love. You deserve happiness. You can you’re worthy of not suffering. So working with that toward ourselves.
And then we’ll just we’ll work with just mindfulness of breathing. I haven’t talked about that for a long time. I take it for granted you all are with great yogis and everybody knows very much what they’re doing. We’re just watching the breath. When we talk about mindfulness of breathing, the breath is the object of our focus is the breath.
The breath isn’t something that we can see. So we focus on the tactile sensations, the bodily sensations which are associated with the natural breathing. That’s important point. It’s natural breathing. We’re not trying to alter the breath.
We’re not trying to breathe longer or shorter in any way. We’re not trying to adjust the breath in any way. Whatever breath is there, that’s the one we’re going to work with. And we’re going to focus on tactile body sensations. Maybe your belly rises up and falls, maybe your chest lifts and drops, the muscles expand, you can feel the clothing rubbing against your skin.
Maybe you can feel the sensation of air rushing in and out on your upper lip, inside your nostrils depending upon the shape of your nose. So these various sensations taken together are the focus of what we’re going to hold the mind to. You know if you’ve been doing this for a while then you might try to rather than general sensation of tactile feelings begin to focus down to the sensation of the breath on the upper lip coming in out of your nose. And we’re working with two mental factors mainly in the course of meditation. These are mindfulness and sometimes called introspection or awareness, alertness of the mind.
Mindfulness is that which, you know, which holds objects. It has that function. This case, it’s the mind that mindfulness holds our mind to the breath. Alertness or awareness or introspection is a knowing quality of the mind. It tells us whether our mind is being held to the breath, what is the object of our focus, you know, whether we’re holding onto just like my hand holds the stick.
Mindfulness holds the stick. But it is awareness tells me how tightly I am holding it, whether I’m holding it loosely, whether I’ve lost the stick, whether I’ve lost the object of my focus and my concentration, concentration and it’s saying whether I’m off the breath or not. So that’s the function of mindfulness and working with these two mental factors, mindfulness and introspection. And there’s techniques that we can use to facilitate, to assist us until our mindfulness and awareness are well developed. And these are only techniques.
There’s nothing particularly mystical about them. You can make use of them or not as is whatever is helpful for yourself. In the case of developing mindfulness we give the mind a grosser object by counting the breath. So we breathe in, breathe out, we can count one, in out two, mentally. I’m counting verbally because you’d be counting mentally.
So breathing in, breathing out, count one, and out two, and out three, and out four, and out five. And because this isn’t the Spiritual Olympics, we’ll go back down to one. And we don’t want to become too ambitious. Otherwise, have to hide and see how far I can get. Come back down to one.
One through six. And out one. And out two. And out three. Out four.
And out five. And out six. Come back down to one. One through seven. One through eight.
One through nine. One through ten. And if you get to ten you get a certificate. I’m joking. And then as far as the technique to help us in development our awareness and introspection, I think it’s a very useful technique.
We use it in a different fashion. But I think we can begin to use it here and train in it. It’s the practice of noting. So we note what it is that is the object of our awareness. What is what is our mind focused actually focused upon?
Whenever I say that, there used to be somewhere on the radio, there used to be someone who said it’s nine o’clock, do you know where your children are? Or something like that. They don’t say that on the radio anymore, do you? Maybe it was the United States. It’s nine o’clock, do you know where your children are?
So it’s in at one. Do you know where your mind is? So what is your mind actually involved in? And we actually pay attention which is kind of the factor of awareness or or introspection. This alertness or paying attention to what it is that our mind is involved in.
And to help us to assist us in that noting, a gentle noting in the mind. If you’re breathing in we know that we’re breathing in we note in. Breathing out we know that we’re breathing out. Aware of that. We’re alert to that fact.
We’re watchful that we notice that. We note out. And then we develop a pattern in out one, in out two, in three, in out four. And during the course of counting and noting, most likely you’re going to, your mind is going to be distracted. Your mind is going to wander.
In the course of meditation, it’s quite fascinating for many people when they’re new. You know, they have all these preconceptions and great expectations about hearing maybe cosmic omens or seeing the brilliant colored lights and all kinds of spacey things that happen to them, know, having kind of mystical experiences. And so they’re very excited about it, enthusiastic about it. But after, you know, after a few minutes, nothing happened. Just the breath, know.
And then, you know, the ego gets kind of, well, what’s what’s what’s going on? Enough, enough, you know, enough’s enough. Know? There’s nothing happening. It gets bored.
My thoughts of breathing can be terribly boring. It’s kind of a rich boredom but it’s it’s still and the ego is beginning to freak out. I’ve had enough of this and I want, and I want, I need some excitement. And it begins to look back in the archive, it’s old films. It gets to rerun old films and old memories, start writing up in our minds from nowhere, you know, things that we haven’t remembered since we were kids.
Really strange thing. And, you know, we begin to play with images and begin to create new fantasies, future possibilities that we’re going to do sometime in the future. So we’re off into the past or into the future somewhere but not the present and not the in that one. That’s too boring. The mind’s going to wander.
It’s going to be distracted. Somehow it’s the present isn’t enough for it for some reason or another. So part of the practice is bringing him back to the present. You know, we have to forego these great, the old films and the great possibilities of the future. Whatever it might be.
And even if God is about to speak to you, you know, get back to you later God. Gotta get back to the breath. Whatever it might be. I think that’s extremely important, this determination. That the moment I become aware, I’m not going to finish the shopping list, I’m not going to finish the fantasy, whatever, however exciting it might be, I’m going to bring the moment I become aware, I’m going to bring my mind back to the breath.
In a very judgment nonjudgmental manner, in a very nonviolent manner, simply in a very gentle manner bring your mind back to the breath again and again and again. If you don’t, if you get in the habit of finishing the fantasy out, watching the old reruns, will never develop mindfulness and awareness. These factors will never be developed. You will never meditate. And moreover you will develop a great many bad habits.
And at some time in the future when you might want to meditate for some strange reason or another you’re going to have that much more difficulty than if you were just a beginner because of these past habits that you’ve developed along the way. So by all means, try to make this a quality time for yourself. You know, we don’t have much time to meditate, life in general. Maybe it’s only ten minutes or something. So make it a quality time.
You know, it brings to mind a story. This is a traditional Tibetan story that some of the Lamas would tell just in this regard associated with what we’re talking about. You know that merchant, Tibetan merchant, merchant was giving orders to his servants about he was going on a trip to India to do some purchasing and he was telling him what to buy and giving this long and this. And then I want you to buy ten rolls of this cloth and fifty pounds of tea. He said, okay, sometimes I’m not remembering.
Wait a minute. Ah yes. That’s how he spent his meditation time working out his shopping list. Anyway, maybe it shouldn’t be like this Tibetan fellow. The moment you become aware that your mind is wandering.
If you make this a habit, there’s a certain effort that you need to make initially. That there’s a point where it becomes automatic. You know there’s a certain difference between having to make effort and bringing your mind. It’s like you have to make some kind of judgment that my mind has wandered and then you have to make some kind of effort. It’s like moving a stone back to its proper place.
You know, some kind of work is involved. But there’s a point where the mind becomes the awareness alerts the mind that it’s moved off the object and the mindfulness automatically brings it back and it begins to adjust itself without our having to as it were consciously intervene without any particular effort. If you’re willing to work with it and have this determination to in the beginning bring your mind back to the breath. The moment you become aware that it’s wandered, that it’s been distracted. If during the course of counting one through five or one through six, your mind’s wandered, then begin that particular sequence of counting again.
You know, I think I, I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in this example. This is just an example. I’m going to verbalize this. This is how you might be sinking. And by all means, don’t use this as a model for meditation.
You know, you’re sitting there on your cushion like a Buddha, like you really know what you’re doing. And you’re not one. You’re not two. sinking. You’re not one.
You’re not two. Thinking, thinking. You’re not thinking. You’re not one. You’re not feeling. You’re feeling.
You’re not one. Boring. Boring. Sleepy, sleepy, in at one. That’s okay.
That’s fine. That’s really worthwhile. You you don’t have to get to five. There’s some really great wonderful people in this world who never got to five. And so it’s not a matter of having to live up to some kind of standard but you are training the mind.
You are training in the factor of alertness by all means. That you are aware during the course of this even if you never get the five. So there’s something worthwhile in all of this process if we make use of these techniques, if we make the effort and determination and try. Okay, should we try that? Okay, so taking a firm, comfortable posture.
And in terms of the Vairochana, you know, the kind of a model of physical posture, most importantly in terms of posture is probably the back and keeping the back straight and stacking the vertebrae one on top of the other like coins. A stack, a column and slightly bowing the neck and bringing the chin in with a slight pressure on the Adam’s apple. But sitting in a firm, comfortable posture. And first getting in touch with the body and noticing. Are you ready?
We’ve looked at we’re looking at the the text that we’re looking at, the three principal aspects of the Path by Je Tsongkhapa. We’ve looked at two of these three principal aspects and we’ve developed the will to awaken, the determination to go beyond these dissatisfactory compulsive patterns of our lives. And now we’ve determined to grow. The direction of our growth is outwardly in terms of developing a social awareness, in terms of awakening our hearts to others. But now we have to concern ourselves with our inward growth in terms of the depths of our understanding, coming to some deep awareness of the ultimate nature of reality.
We have to develop the awakened mind, the third principal aspect of the path. In his text, Tsongkhapa says, if you do not have the wisdom realizing the way things are, even though you have developed the thought definitely to leave cyclic existence, even the root of cyclic existence cannot be cut. Therefore work at the means of realizing dependent arising. So that’s what we’re going to be doing, working at the means of realizing dependent arising. It’s no small matter.
So in the first step, I hope we can make this lively and interesting and relevant, worthwhile. It it can it can become become fairly philosophic philosophical, abstract. So we have to keep somehow working with it to make it fit with where we’re at and make it useful for ourselves. But it does take some work, takes some thinking and thought that some of these ideas are what we’re going to be working. There was a time I’m told that when Albert Einstein first published his special theory of relativity there were probably five people in the world who understood what the hell he was talking about.
Now millions of people understand. They’ve actually probably gone beyond some of, in some ways, Einstein’s thinking and understanding. But it requires some working at it. And the same holds true here, I think. Above all, that’s not to say that I even begin to understand what I’m saying.
But that’s okay too. You know, the first step in the process of growth is to begin to challenge our self perceptions and our experience of reality. To the degree that our notions about reality don’t approximate, or they don’t correspond with what we deem reality to be, we’re going to experience, we’re going to, some kind of correspondingly we’re going to experience some degree of frustration, disappointment and dissatisfaction. The discrepancy between our ideas about the way things are and reality in itself, the way in fact they are. That that discrepancy, that incongruence between our beliefs and belief informed perceptions about the world and the world the way it is in itself is experienced as dissatisfaction, as frustration, as disappointment, some type of suffering in some form or another.
So the path is in terms of developing the awakened mind, is coming to understand the ultimate nature of reality consists in becoming aware of and exploring our erroneous and distorted conceptual models of reality. And we all have models about what we think reality is, whether these are, we are aware of them or not. They are there nonetheless. And once we’ve identified our particular model, the map that we’re working with, our idea about the way the world is, transforming these models into more accurate ones. Know ones which reflect the way things are in fact.
You know, we have to, and this is underpinning a lot, this has gone along throughout our discussions together, that we have to understand, we have to identify that we are holding on to dysfunctional views. We have some wrong ideas, mistaken beliefs. We have to we’ve been trying to identify them in various ways at various levels. We need to transform them. And finally, we’re trying to ultimately to transcend all views, all beliefs.
There’s a, I probably had mentioned this at times, this is an idea of a I think I got it. I can’t remember sometimes where I get this thing. There was an American anthropologist by the name of Gregory Bateson. He was a very popular like guru to many people in America in the fifties, sixties. And he came up with an idea that and I think it’s quite meaningful, and I’m not sure if these are his words, somehow I’ve formed these words over time, is that the psychology of misery is the pathology of epistemology.
It kind of rolls off your tongue rather. It’s like kind of catchy tune. I heard on Triple J the other day. That’s where I got it. The psychology of misery is the pathology of epistemology.
This is this is what do we mean by how? What does that all that mean? The psychology of our misery, the psychology, the inner dimension of our suffering. The the the mental aspect which is