Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “Tell me for what you yearn, and I’ll tell you who you are” — Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 46-minute session with that provocation, asking listeners to look beneath cultural conditioning and reactive patterns to discover what they truly hold sacred. Drawing on a verse by the Zen poet Ryokan (“Buddha is your mind, and the way goes nowhere”), he reframes Buddha not as an external figure but as a living metaphor for our own highest potential: unremitting inner peace combined with compassionate, skillful engagement with others. Three parables — a lost key, a drunk searching under a streetlight, and a king who wants to leather all his roads — make the case that seeking fundamental solutions outside the mind will always fail. The commentary then turns to karma’s four modes before naming the four counteracting powers (repudiation, reliance, refraining, and antidote) as practical tools for interrupting the grip of negative karmic patterns.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 HMA 1996 10 30.mp3
UUID: f5229852-5d04-41ad-ba8a-baf16c2e9fb8
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-10-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.7 minutes
Words: ~7,465
Back in touch with what is uniquely important to each of ourselves, what what makes us feel good about ourselves, what makes us feel good about life, brings us meaning and sense of of connectedness with others, purpose in our life. It’s the process of heart searching. It’s very much the beginning of the way, and beginning with ourselves and confronting ourselves and asking ourselves just what it is that we want, what is it that we want uppermost. I think quite oftentimes we lose sight, and we get caught up in the superficialities, perhaps the necessities of life, but what we deem the practical necessities of life. But nevertheless, we often lose sight of the deeper meanings in our life, what within our own experience has had been the most meaningful moments of our life, between the those principles and guidelines that we would very much like to see our life lived out of, that we would like to see our life as an expression of in one way or another.
You know, that something which helps us to feel alive and whole, which which brings us a sense of peace, a sense of well-being. So clarifying for ourselves and taking the time creating the space and looking at the issues of your life perhaps from a from a more lofty perspective. You know, what are our priorities? What do we value most? What is what is of ultimate worth to ourselves?
You know, what is sacred for each of ourselves? I think it’s quite a beautiful word, isn’t it? I think it’s difficult, isn’t it? I mean, most a great day of our life, even when we begin to question what it is that we want, what it is that we are looking for, is very much simply in reaction to. Perhaps perhaps in reaction to a lot of our dysfunctional patterns of our minds, neediness, our a sorrow which is preoccupying ourselves at present, a hurt, some anger, some grudge.
And we base our life and our life decisions and our behavior and thinking in terms of those more than not superficial patterns of and we we never explore what it is beyond beneath the neediness, what it is beneath the dysfunctional patterns, what beneath the superficial hurts and the sorrows that we may be holding on to for one reason or You know, what is of greater meaning to ourselves? What is of ultimate meaning to ourselves? And I think there we begin to explore what is sacred to ourselves. So much of our life is spent in longing and search for what we do not know. So many of our ostensible goals, so many of the things we think we want turn out to be the masks behind which our real desires hide.
They are symbols for the actual values and qualities for which we hunger. They are not reducible to a physical or material thing, not even a physical person. They are psychological qualities. Love, truth, honesty, loyalty, purpose, something we feel is noble, precious, worthy of our devotion. We try to reduce all this to something physical, a house, a car, a better job, or a human being, but it doesn’t work.
Without realizing it, we are searching for the sacred, and the sacred is not reducible to anything else. Sacredness is, in a sense, a feeling, but a feeling that goes to the very heart of life. It is the feeling of recognition directed toward what is great and high enough to give our small lives meaning, to put our personal journeys in a greater perspective. It is a feeling of reverence. What we call the sacred is ultimately a universe of meaning against which we can measure our personal efforts, our personal lives, to see whether they too have meaning.
So, you know, I think the path very much begins, the spiritual journey very much begins with trying to find out who it is we are, what it is that we desire most. You know, beneath all of the of the the layers of cultural conditioning or social conditioning or even our religious conditioning, beneath all of the shoulds and ought tos that we’ve learned over the course of our life, beneath all our various brands of particular brands of self deception or self ignorance. There’s a there’s a quote which says that, tell me for what you yearn, and I’ll tell you who you are. We are what we reach for, the idealized images that drive our wanderings. Now what is it that drives your particular wanderings?
What is it that you, you know, that you really are forever reaching for? What are the images that arise within your mind when you begin to ask yourself, what is it that I really want? You know, at least taking the time and creating that space and beginning that process of questioning. Where would you have yourself go? What is it that you wish for most?
And ask yourself. I think it’s very important. You know, the path begins with just a a such a a positive picturing in your mind, in your imagination. You know, the world begins with our mind. Each of our worlds begins with just such types of wishes, just such types of images within our own minds.
There’s a verse by Ryokan. Ryokan was a, I think, a seventeenth century Zen poet. We used to spend a lot of times together, he and I, when I lived in Dharamsala. There’s a very beautiful book of his poetry. And quite often at night, I would read Ryokan, and there was kind of an affinity with his feelings and his thoughts.
He says, Buddha is your mind, and the way goes nowhere. Don’t look for anything but this. If you point your cart north when you want to go south, how will you ever arrive? So, you know, Buddha is your mind. Beginning to question, beginning to look at, well, what do we mean by a Buddha really?
I mean, is that a Buddha? That’s a representation of a Buddha, that’s sort of a picture of somebody’s thought of what a Buddha might look like? But it’s not a Buddha, is it? Anyway, now where is Buddha? And where Lama Yeshe, who was the founder the original founder of Buddha House, used to say, oh, you westerners, you’re you’re super believing.
You believe in Buddha and you’ve never even seen him. You have no idea who Buddha is at all. What are you praying to? What are you wishing to? You know, Buddha is your own mind.
Buddha is you know, we can begin to get a a sense, a feeling, some kind we have to create some kind of image for ourselves of what a Buddha is for us, if it’s to have any meaning at all in our life, if it’s to have any significance, any if it’s going to have any influence over our behavior in helping us to solve our problems. You know, who is the Buddha for you? Who who is Christ for you? Who are any of these great beings to ourselves other than historical figures such as names on, you know, on pages of some books that we never read. You know, Buddha can begin to be seen as a as a living symbol.
You know, the personification, that means to making into a personality of a person, of the solution to each of our most fundamental problems and the realization of the sacred in our lives. We can say that is a Buddha, someone who has solved the most fundamental problems of the human dilemma, the the dilemma in which we all share in one way or another. Though our our situations and our difficulties might be superficially unique to each of us, at a deeper level there’s not much difference. We’re all very much the same in sharing into the human condition and the quality of most of our experiences in terms of dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustrations, loneliness. You know, this it’s all very much the same.
Just the the just the details are are different, but the fundamentals are equal. We all share in that. So, you know, the Buddha is like a metaphor, and a metaphor is what stands for our experience, what it is that matters to us most, what it is that we most care about, what it is that we are actually yearning for, you know, what it might look to be a tremendously happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. We call that a Buddha. Know, something somebody who’s leading leading a profoundly meaningful life, a purposeful life, you know, that they have found the secret in their life.
Simply, you know, what it is that we might most wish for ourselves, that unique answer to all of these questions that we might be putting to ourselves, what is of value, what is of meaning to ourselves, what is what brings us a sense of of connectedness. You know, what is it that where is it that all our wanderers are taking us? A Buddha as a metaphor that stands in for our experience of the outcome to the to the most preferred story that we could ever hope to tell ourselves about ourselves. And in one way or another, we’re all living a story that we’re telling ourselves. We live out a narrative, and we all have our particular story.
You know, physiologically, biologically, we’re not much different even amongst between the various sexes. Psychologically, we all are quite similar, but our stories, these narratives that we tell ourselves are quite unique to ourselves. And what is the finest story that we could ever hope to tell ourselves about ourselves? You know, if you someone woke you up in the middle of the night and before you had a chance to to censor your thoughts or your your your what you what in fact you you replied. And they say, what is it that you want most?
If we could say Buddha, and that and that would that would encompass all that we could ever hope to be, all that we could ever hope for our life. We call that a Buddha. A story about a constantly caring, intelligent, powerful, creative human being. The outcome of our our Buddhist story. And how however we might entitle our story or narrate our story, whatever, you know, however we want we want to describe it, here we’re using the the term Buddha, somebody who is awake.
So, you know, essentially from from the Buddhist point of view, a Buddha is about someone who experiences unremitting peace within and motivated by compassion, skillfully and fearlessly works with others to help them to experience the same. And if you think about that I mean, you know, we we all are, you know, we all maybe want a a better car. I know I my car is not running very well at at the present. But is all of that so important? You know, we all want to improve our relationships, maybe a better job, more meaningful type of occupation perhaps, better pay, clothes.
You know, okay. All of these things go into making up a good life. Over and above all of that, if we if we, you know, if we if we look at the forest of our life and not get caught up in the trees, what is it that we might want most for ourselves? A Buddha is someone who experiences unremitting peace. That is to say, no matter where they go, what they do, who they encounter, whatever situations they undergo, their mind remains at peace.
It’s never disturbed. It’s not to say they’re apathetic or indifferent. It’s that their mind is never disturbed, it’s always in peace. And moreover, they are motivated. They you know, it’s not a matter of passively withdrawing from the world in in some kind of isolated some kind of in their own realm of of individual peace, but in fact, they they they are they’d be in the world with others, interacting with the world of others in a compassionate manner, in a fearless manner, and importantly, a skillful manner in order to help them to experience the same.
You know, every question, well, what more could you want out of life? And if you thought about all that, someone who experiences unremitting peace, tremendously compassionate, working in every possible way at all possible times, spontaneously, skillfully, and fearlessly to help others to experience the same. And it was like the pinnacle of human existence, all that we could ever you know, like the the outcome of our evolutionary destiny as human beings. That’s what we’re calling the Buddha. This is what we’re trying to begin to reach for, trying to develop image in our mind, what what we might yearn for, and thereby begin to find some kind of expression in our life.
You know, these positive images that we begin to generate in our mind are very much going to determine the direction and directionality of mind, where we go with our lives, our thinking, our our the way that we speak, and the way that we act. You know, the world begins with imagination, and we begin to take out of imagination, begin to try it on for size, to to express it in some kind of reality, some kind of actuality. You know, the Buddha is your mind. You know, there’s a there was a Zen master who said, if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him. Perhaps I mentioned that before.
It’s it’s quite a you know, generally people think of Buddhists as being quite gentle kind of people, non violent kind of people. So it’s quite a radical statement to say that, isn’t it? If you see the Buddha on the road on the road, kill him. If you see the solutions if you see your problems outside of yourself and therefore your solutions to those problems, you’re looking in the wrong place. You know, the Buddha has a living solution to all our problems.
If you see that solution outside of yourself, then you you know, that is where you destroy that that perspective, that that way of that orientation, because we’re looking in the wrong place. You know, if we’re ever going to find a Buddha, that is to say, we’re ever going to find and realize the the good life for ourselves, if we’re ever going to solve our problems, we have to begin to look within our own mind. And the way goes nowhere. Don’t look for anything but this. And so, you know, the the when a man experiences, or a woman experiences, a fantasy of ultimate peace and wholeness, he needs to understand his fantasy as a statement about what he can achieve within himself.
But usually he will project but usually he will project his image of paradise on a woman, or a man, or a god, or the company, or or the organization or or the Buddha, some material thing, I’m constantly asking him or her or it to bring it into some physical actuality to deliver to him. We cannot legitimately ask the outer world that it give us what is incapable of giving. You know, there’s a certain dishonesty that’s demanding the world be other than the way it is, and that they give us something which in reality can only be found inside of ourselves. And this is almost the almost one of the almost the fundamental principle premise principles of Buddhism. This notion that our mind is the solution to our own problems as a self healing system.
And if we’re ever going to solve our problems at its most fundamental level, we have to begin to look for the answers that Buddha with inside of ourselves and quit the our preoccupation with for looking outside of ourselves to these most fundamental solutions to our problems. You know, I’m not talking about the superficial solutions, you know. If you’re hungry, by all means, eat food. You don’t have to praise the Buddha. You know, mantras won’t fill your stomach.
That’s not the point. We’re talking about beyond the superficial, at the very depth of the nature of the human dilemma, what is it that can actually solve our problems. If we continue to look to the outside, we’re only going to experience frustration, disappointment, dissatisfaction in some form, in some way or another, you know. We’re just going to continue to hope, and our hopes are only going to continue to change their name, and they’re always going to remain unfulfilled in one way or another, and that’s the way we pass our life in one way or another. You know, no matter how how difficult the task might be, no matter how challenging, how seemingly insurmountable the obstacles may appear to be, we have to seek the solutions to our fundamental problems where they can actually be found.
If we ever have any warranted hope, any realistic hope of finding them. You know, we have to try, and we have to begin. You know, even the saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first footstep. We have to at least begin. And it’s we’re on we have to begin to perhaps look at our our life on a on a on a cosmic scale and and think the journey may not be finished in this life, but at least I have to begin.
I have to at least point my cart in the right direction. If I want to go north and I’m pointing my cart in the direction of south, I’m never going to get there no matter what I may do, no matter all the blood and sweat and tears I’ve expended over the course of this life and lifetimes to the contrary. It will be of no avail, isn’t it? It hasn’t done us any good. All of the worry, all of the calculating, all of the manipulation of others in our own minds that we’ve practiced over the course of this life really hasn’t solved our problems, has it?
We still suffer, and the names of the people in terms of who we suffer with have changed since we were younger. And then maybe we’re a little more sophisticated in the nature of our suffering. Maybe it’s a you know, we have, you know, like like politicians rather than playing with toy tanks. They now play with real tanks and destroy one another. But the game still continues.
The suffering still hasn’t been ended at all. Our hopes only keep changing their names. The vast majority of us live as if we lost the key to our house in the front yard. We just mowed the lawn in the front yard, and we’ve lost our key. And we think, well, I’ll look in the front yard because the grass is short there, and I can I can easily search for it there?
But but in actuality, we lost the key in the backyard, but the grass is long there. It would be hard to look there. It would be more difficult. So we we continue. We pass our time looking for the key in the front yard because the grass is shorter there.
But but the reality of our situation is that no matter how long we might look and how hard we might look for that key in the front yard, no matter how and no matter how easy our search may proceed, we you know, how few obstacles that we may encounter along the way, We’re never going to find what it is we’re looking for because we’re not we’re looking in the wrong place. You know, there’s another joke, there’s a which goes similar to this, you know, about the about the a man walks up to the drunk and there’s a light pole and there’s a street light shining down. And he’s looking and he’s looking and looking looking, and and the man says, what are you looking for? He says, I’m looking for my key. He says, where did you lose it?
He says, I lost it over there. And he said, well, why are you looking here? Because there’s a light here. It makes on one level it makes a bit of sense. The light does help, doesn’t it, to see, but he’s never going to find it even though the searching may proceed with fewer obstacles, it might go a little bit easier.
There’s no possibility. You know, we have to look for the key where it can realistically be found in our own mind if we’re ever going to find the Buddha. That is said, it’s the most far reaching solution to our problems. If we’re ever going to live a satisfied life, if we’re ever going to find self respect, some some feeling of dignity, feeling good about ourselves and what we’re doing with our life, and giving our life some meaning, some kind of direction, some kind of purpose. Buddha, you know, this must far reaching solution to what it means to be an ordinary human being that we are, you know, trying the best that we know how to find some happiness out of life, making many mistakes along the way, you know, being quite confused about how to go about it.
This is the nature of our situation. So the path leading to Buddha, the path leading to to to, you know, an easing of our suffering, and finally an ending of our suffering. Perhaps, you know, we we you know, it sounds outlandish almost to say to well, to end all our suffering. Maybe we can begin to think in terms of easing our suffering in a in a real way, that we don’t have to keep going through these cycles of suffering over and over again in some way. You know, that we can begin to, you know, have some kind of constant through our life, some kind of orientation.
That so that over time we will have learned something. We will have gotten somewhere in our journey. I mean, terms of maybe we’re we’re not quite as angry as we used to be. We’re not quite as attached as we once were. We don’t quite have as much pride, jealousy.
We don’t have the preponderance of dysfunction al patterns governing our life as we did once. Maybe just a slight lessening, but to that same degree there’s a certain degree of peace begins to pervade our life, a certain degree of fulfillment, that our relationships begin to improve, things go a little bit easier, our our work seems to go better. We begin to cheer up. The quality of our life has improved in some way. Maybe we can think in those lines.
Maybe that’s more realistic, and we can begin to identify with that. At least there’s something, some movement in terms of real solutions to our problems. We’re at least moving in that right direction. Our cart is at least pointed, if not moving slowly, in that in that direction. You know, there there is a there’s a I’ll just tell a story and then I’ll I’ll I’ll stop.
There’s The story about the king occurred in ancient times, and he was walking about his his kingdom as kings often times do. And he stepped on a a thorn. And it hurt a great deal, and he he went back to the castle. He called to go gather all his ministers. He put the royal foot up on the royal table.
He said, look, it hurts. We can never let this happen again. You have to do something whereby I can walk about my kingdom in safety, you know, free of danger. So all the ministers, they thought, and they thought, and they thought. Finally, one of the clever ministers spoke up, And he said, I suggest we cover all the roads in your kingdom with leather.
That way your feet will be protected from from thorns and stones and sharp objects, and you can walk about safely throughout your kingdom. And the king said, fantastic idea. Let’s do it. But immediately, as Joe would know, Joe is a Buddha House treasurer, the treasurer spoke up and said, no. It can’t be done.
In the first place, you know, there aren’t that there aren’t enough cattle in in your kingdom to to to make that much leather. And even if there were, it would it would bankrupt the treasury. Not possible. It’s not practically possible. It won’t work.
So they began to think, and they thought, and they thought, and they found it. And as as usual in such stories, there was there was an old wise minister there present at the time, and she spoke up and she said, I I suggest that we we take a piece of leather and we trace out the shape of the soles of the king’s feet, and then we cut out this piece of leather and we take them and we bind them to the king’s feet. And this would serve the same purpose as if we covered all the robes in your kingdom with leather. The king could walk about the roads in his kingdom in complete safety without any danger of stepping on thorns or stones or sharp objects. So the point is that that the we cannot control the world, that we don’t have the capacity.
Even Buddhas don’t have that capacity. If they did, we would all be liberated by now, and they haven’t been able to liberate us even though that’s what they their their whole existence is bound up in trying to do bring about that end. We simply cannot order the world about us to conform to our desires, but demand that it run according to our wishes, that it accommodate our particular agenda. In other words, we cannot control the world, but but we try. And when we try, we experience either a sense of rage because the world doesn’t follow our our orders, it doesn’t run according to our demands or our expectations, or we experience a sense of emptiness, a sense of powerlessness because we can’t do the impossible.
But but if we can control one thing, our own minds, it is as if we control the world. You know, we can put the leather on the bottom of our feet. We can’t put the leather to cover all the roads in the kingdom, but it serves the same purpose. All that we can realistically expect to control is one thing, our own mind. And as it turns out, this is enough, more than enough to be happy, to find fulfillment, to find meaning, to be of use to yourself and others in this world.
You know, the mind is the measure of all things. It can make a heaven of hell a hell of heaven. It has the potential. It is determined by the quality of our life. So they, you know, and kind of orient we’re trying to bring ourselves to this orientation, this perspective.
Sure we want to find meaningful relationships with other people and find material all the material goodies of the world, you know, and to have meaningful occupation that you that you feel good about, that you can take a sense a sense of healthy pride in doing, that you want to, you know, you want to walk about in a pleasant neighborhood, or you want to live in a cheerful home, all the you know, for for sure. But the measure of all of these things is very much our own mind. In a in a way, all of these things about us and these people and these situations are in some respects from certain points of view neutral, in the sense that, you know, like like a knife. A knife in the hand of a of a surgeon can be life giving. It can it can save life.
That same exact knife in the hand of a thief can be life threatening. It can can destroy life. It’s the same knife, but whether it works for our betterment or for our destruction is determined by our ability to use it, our skill or lack of skill, our attitudes, the way that we relate with these people, these situations, these things about us. If we have the skills, we have the understanding of their nature and how to make best use of them in order to find what it is that we want the most in our life, then they can be of tremendous resources in helping us to be happy, they can be sources of real pleasure and meaning in our life. On the other hand, they can destroy us.
They can bring us nothing but pain due to our unskillful ways of relating with them, our attitudes toward them. You know, more than not, things are in the saddle, and they’re right in us. So we begin this process of orientation, keep coming back to this. The inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, and we seek to actualize this Buddha, you know, this solution to our most basic problems by means of the Dharma. And this all occurs within the social context of a spiritual community, those who seek to assist us in bringing about this end and help us to live out our Buddhist stories, you know, to authenticate, validate our Buddhist story for ourselves.
And again and again trying to raise the level of our motivation, why we’re involved in this. Again and again trying to open ourselves up, you know, from our own, you know, narrow self limited viewpoint to the fact that everyone is exactly like myself. They too want to be happy. They don’t want to suffer. No difference whatsoever.
If I can find some means in my life to develop myself, for myself and others, what more could I hope for my life than that? To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Community, I go for refuge until awakening Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma.
May I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings? Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech and mind and present clouds of every type of those actual and imagined. I disclose all my destructive acts accumulated since time without beginning, and rejoice in the skillful actions of holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until cyclic existence has ended and turn in the wheel of Dharma for living beings. I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others to the great awakening.
Would you like to stand up for a moment, then we’ll meditate together? So we’re talking about karma, and how our our life is shaped by these conditioning factors within our minds, the latencies of our various past actions, ways of thinking, our ways of speaking, acting. And our minds are not simply blank slates, but they have this encoded information about various actions that we’ve created in the past. And when these karmic seeds, karmic latencies, just like a flower seed or when it meets the proper conditions, some type of reactive pattern process is set in train, these ways of thinking, ways of reacting, ways of looking at things, interpreting, assessing, evaluating, ways of experiencing. So we in the various ways of looking at karma from various points of view, karma simply means action.
And we’ve looked at it from the different types of results, the ripening result and the result which is in accordance with the cause functionally, the result which is in accordance with the cause experientially, almost lost it there, and the the governing result. Then we looked at at the now we’re looking at what is called the four modes of action. These are the, you know, beginning to bring the the theory of karma, which is an extension of the of the the overall idea of cause and effect into the dimension of its practical implications in our life. If karma has to have any meaning, it has to in some way alter, modify our behavior for the better. So there were four distinct modes of karma.
The effect of an action is invariable. That means there’s a invariable relationship between the quality of the action in terms of its being positive or negative, and the nature of the result. And from positive types of actions, skillful types of actions, constructive types of actions, positive types of results invariably are experienced in one way or another in terms of felt experience of pleasure, happiness, in terms of of having resources, having companions, and the type of environment, our various experiences that we have over the course of our life. The effects of actions are invariable. Then the second distinct mode of karma is effects of actions are increased.
This is that karma is even from insignificant, minor, negative, and positive karma or actions, significant results can arise. So the the third, the effects of an uncommitted action are not experienced. If we don’t create the cause, we will not experience the effect. It’s pretty straightforward, but it has some kind of implications in our life. We want to undergo if we want something in our life, we want to have a particular state, go through a particular type of experience, we have to ensure that we create the cause, is the you know, wishful thinking in itself is not enough.
We actually have to do something to create the causes which bring about that particular type of result. And then fourth one, the one that we’re going to finish off tonight that we’ve been looking at, is an action once committed is not dissipated. An action once committed is not dissipated. That means these karmic latencies, these linkages between our past actions and some future result, that which connects the two, these karmic seeds or potencies or latencies or predispositions or tendencies which are imprinted upon our consciousness. They aren’t lost.
Dissipate. They don’t rot. They don’t somehow dissolve into them, but they remain until they meet with appropriate cooperative condition. And just like a flower seed when it meets with water and soil, warmth, sun, sunlight, it germinates and some type of effect, some type of result arises. So we’re working with this in terms of we’ve talked about the fact that there are positive seeds, positive latencies within our mind of our past actions, and the fact that these can be weakened and destroyed by anger on the one hand, and by misguided regret, you know, having second thoughts and misgivings about something positive that we did in the past, that these can actually weaken or actually destroy these positive latencies that we’ve left in our mind.
So we talked about one, you know, if we’re we’re probably going to become angry again, we may have misguided regret again in our life, so we can begin to practice dedication, giving these positive latencies in our mind some kind of direction, and this helps to insulate them from the destructive effects of anger and misguided regret. Now we’re now we’re going to look at the other side of this in terms of for all of us, whether we’re conscious of it or not, whether we we we remember them or not, we’ve all created negative actions. I think so. I don’t know. Maybe we could take a survey.
But anyway, I think we’ve been pretty safe. And then maybe only minor ones, but if you’re like me, you really you created some pretty nasty negative actions in the course of your life, and and these are going to have an effect. It’s just the the reaction of those past actions simply don’t end with the immediate situation having been resolved. There’s a latency which has been left in our mind. And when that latency, you know, is like seed again, predisposition, it’s going to influence us somehow.
It’s going to influence in terms of how we experience. And there’s noted in the past, one the fundamental notions of Buddhism is that knowing is an organizing of the known, and it’s very profound. And if we understand that, we can we can it makes karma all the more meaningful. To understand emptiness is to see to begin to appreciate the significance of karma, the law of cause and effect. To understand the law of cause and effect helps us appreciate emptiness.
The two are very much complementary. Now why is it that we you know, why is it that two individuals can have very much the same experience objectively speaking, relatively so, but interpreted in vastly different ways? Two people can know the same person, for example, and think of them in in tremendously different ways, have different feelings for this guy, you know, one person sees him as as a really wonderful person, as a kind, loving person, the other one sees him as really hateful. You know, what is it about a paranoid? You know, what is it about an easy example.
You know, if there’s a puppy that’s been abused, you know, you can be the most loving gentle person in the world having only the best of thoughts, and you want to just reach down and and, you know, pet the puppy and bring it comfort, but it it it it’s instantaneous reaction due to the conditioning factors within its mind, it jumps away. It has great fear, doesn’t it? And it’s it’s been conditioned to see you as a threat. Why does it see you as a threat? Even though from your side you have only the best of intentions.
You only want to comfort comfort that little puppy. You just want to pet it, bring it happiness from your side, but it sees you as fearful, as a threat to its well-being. Do see these conditioning factors, the way it’s interpreting your gesture, for example, who you are. You know, a bird flies inside this room, for example. You know, it it has even though you might only want to release it, you know, you open all the windows and and you and you only want the best fit for that.
You don’t want you don’t want to see it fly into the wall and hurt itself. You have the best of intention, but it’s it’s terribly afraid of you. It tries to get away from you. It doesn’t know the way out. You know, it’s it’s due to these karma is such that it’s reacting in this manner.
It’s it’s in a fixed manner of reaction. It’s in fear. It’s in pain. It’s interpreting its environment in such a way due to these conditioning factors in our mind. This is one way to begin to look at karma.
The known isn’t organizing it known. What is it that is to say, what is it that causes us what causes us to interpret things in a particular way? Why why is it that a paranoid interprets everything that everyone does as being a threat to their well-being? That nothing that that they interpret some way they’re able to see that they’re doing this, ah, they want to get something from me, they’re after me. They want to hurt me in some fashion.
They want to use me in some fashion. Know? We’re all paranoid a little bit, aren’t we, in that respect? Why do we interpret that? Why don’t we have the opposite, seeing people as benevolent, supportive, as being basically kind, intelligent, warm, loving, decent people?
Why do because the way we’re organized, the way we’re interpreting, why do we interpret that way? It doesn’t come out of nowhere. It comes with these the rules by which we make sense out of our universe. What determines these rules are past conditioning factors in our mind. What condition is the past conditioning factors in our mind are past ways of acting, thinking, behaving toward others, towards situations, toward the world in general.
And we we and one of the types of results is that we sow very much what we have reaped in the past. So if we begin to have a sense that it make that we are the way we are, we see the world the way we we see the world for reasons, for causes, and these causes exist within our own mind, and they’re determined by our past actions. There’s a linkage between what we’ve done in the past and what we now how we now experience the world. There’s a linkage. There’s a relationship, and that relationship we’re calling the karmic linkage or karma, the action of karma.
So we have some negative latencies within our mind. What are these latencies going to do? They’re going to cause us to experience our our world in a negative fashion, in some way, in pain in terms of what happens to our our various experiences that occur to us over the course of our life, and we don’t want that. It’s part of our nature, the Dharma, it is the nature of the mind to be happy. It’s not desire to avoid suffering.
It’s what we mean by life, avoidance approach. We don’t want suffering. We want to happen. So it begins to make sense to to to intelligently begin to take control of this process, to begin to interrupt it, we have some method, and this method is called the four opponent powers or sometimes called the four counteracting agents. So this this is what we can do for ourselves in a very real way.
There’s no one here who can’t do this for themselves. It’s not as if we have to understand emptiness. It may be helpful to be able to it’s not as if we have to, you know, have a you know, be tremendously intelligent or tremendously talented or have a single point of concentration that we have to whatever. Anyone can begin in some way to make use of this and therefore begin to not to be a victim of their past actions, to take control of their lives in some way. This is something that we can do for ourselves.
That’s the point of karma. That’s the point of studying it so that we can exercise control over our experiences in the future, that we don’t have to be swept along like a by the simple like a leaf blowing in the wind at at at the mercy of these reactive patterns, these conditioning factors in our mind. So the four counteracting agents agents or four powers, we’ll call them. The first is the power of repudiation, and we’re gonna go through these each. I’ll just list them by name.
Power of repudiation. Secondly, the power of reliance. Power of reliance. Thirdly, the power of refraining. Power of refraining.
So the you know, this is my vocabulary. You’ll hear other names given to these same four powers. There are different ways of translating the same terms. For example, the power of repudiation sometimes is called the power of regret, for example. The power of reliance is sometimes called the power of basis.
The power and then this third is the power of refraining. It’s sometimes called the power of restraint or the power of reversal. Just various possible names. They they aren’t other than this. Just different names for the same thing.
And then the fourth power is the power of thorough application of the antidote or simply the power of antidote. Okay? So we’ll begin with the first of these four, the power of repudiation. So this involves developing a reasoned and developed sense of regret or contrition, remorse. The word regret, I think, is kind of doesn’t isn’t so emotionally laden with a lot of negative connotations as as we could.
But anyway