Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using the image of searching for a lost house key in the freshly mowed front yard — easy to search — rather than the overgrown backyard where it actually fell, Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 45-minute session by arguing that our deepest longings cannot be met by external things or people but only by looking inward. He frames Buddha as a living symbol for the finest life-story we could tell about ourselves, then explains the Tibetan word for meditation — gom, meaning to habituate rather than to mystically transcend — through a supermarket-of-recipes analogy. The session turns to practical instruction on the awakened heart, the second of the three principal path topics, introducing two meditative traditions and beginning with equalizing self and others, drawing on Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. It closes with a guided imagination exercise aimed at loosening the rigid self-conception that limits what we believe we can become.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 HMA 1997 01 29.mp3
UUID: d96a2f0c-0cb8-4e03-bce7-809482f0ce8f
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-01-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~6,241
Continually involved in. We what is important to each of ourselves, and not what is important to your partner your parents or the person next to you, but has a very unique self actualizing individual. What, you know, what brings meaning to your life, a sense of authenticity, fulfillment. This begins with a heart searching. They’re confronting and pointedly asking ourselves just what it is that we want and what is it uppermost that we want for ourselves and our lives.
What what is important for each of ourselves and that we’ve we oftentimes get out of touch or perhaps more than oftentimes, most of the time. You know, what what is it that resonates with ourselves at a deep level of our being that helps us to find some kind of purpose, helps us to feel alive and whole? What brings us a sense of peace, a sense of well-being and of connectedness with others. So I think very much the practice, whatever it might be, or the path in general begins with just this process of clarifying. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah? Yeah? With just this process of clarifying for ourselves, you know, what what it is that we’re about, what it is that we believe in, what are our priorities, priorities, what is it that we value most, what is it what is it that is of ultimate worth. You know, it’s said that spirituality is concerned with what is of ultimate worth, what is of ultimate concern to ourselves. That’s what it, I guess, separates it from the mundane or the the secular.
You know, not what is important, but what is of ultimate importance. Spirituality is the means to bring about some kind of ultimate transformation, and it’s working with our problems on a more fundamental level. Now what is what is sacred for each of ourselves? So much of our lives is spent in a longing and a 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 mask behind which our real desires hide.
They are symbols for the actual values and qualities for which we hunger. They are not reducible to physical material things, not even to a physical person. They are psychological qualities, love, truth, honesty, loyalty, purpose, something we can feel is noble, precious, and worthy of our devotion. We try to reduce all of 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 of 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, high enough to give our small lives meaning, to put our personal journey into a greater perspective. It is a feeling of reverence. What we call the sacred is ultimately a universe of meaning against which we measure our personal efforts, our personal lives to see whether they too have meaning.
And then the very much the practice of the spiritual path, this path of change and ultimate transformation begins with trying to find out just who it is that we are. Now what who it is that we are beneath all of all of our layers of cultural, social, religious conditioning that we’ve been through, all the all the shoulds and ought tos of our life, all the indoctrination, you know, beneath all of our our each of our particular brands of self deception and self ignorance. Tell me what you yearn for, and I will tell you who you are. You are what we reach we are what we reach for, the idealized image that drives our wanderings. You know, what is it that is driving our wanderings?
The the what is it that we’ve been ever ever trained to reach? What is it that each of us yearns for at the in our heart of hearts? You know, what image arises in your mind when you begin to conceive of the good life and how it might be for you, the type of person that you would have yourself be ten years from now, twenty years from now, a lifetime from now. I think it’s terribly important to ask these questions of ourselves. You know, ask ourselves just what it is that is important to ourselves.
And it is just it is through just such positive picturing in imagination that the journey very much begins. Know, the world that we come to know, each of our individual worlds and our various experiences when within that world begins with just such wishes, wishes within our own mind and picturing within our own imaginations. You know, all the various ideas and that we hold within our mind. The world that we come to know very much begins with our own minds. I guess the most fundamental precept of all of Buddhism.
Buddha is your mind in a way it 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? You know, Buddha I think we can look at in various ways, at various levels according to our understanding where we’re at, our various needs. But one way, and I think a very useful and meaningful way, is that Buddha is can be seen as a living symbol, you know, the the personification of the solution, of the fundamental solution of each of our problems, our fundamental most problems, and the real realization of the sacred in our lives.
That’s that’s what they call Buddha. You know, the the as it were, a metaphor for what for what matters to us most. You know, some of the answers to these many questions that we’ve been asking ourselves. You know, the just what it is that we might be yearning for, what we’re our our wanderings are seeking to take us in one form or another, what it might look like to be a tremendously happy, healthy, and loving, sane human being. We call that a Buddha, you know, to realize meaning and purpose in your life and to find the sacred.
All of these we give all of these answers that we can draw from out of our hearts to these most important of questions, and we give it some kind of image for ourselves in which to relate with, in which to begin to to seek in a very real way, you know, to draw out of our unconscious what we have always been trying struggling to find in our life. Now a metaphor is something that stands for our experience. You know, it it is a substitute for the actual as it were. And and Buddha stands for our experience of the outcome of our preferred most story. You know, the finest story that we could ever hope to tell ourselves about ourselves and about our life.
You know, we we all are telling ourselves a story about who we are and what we can expect over the course of our life. Most of our stories are in some way or another self defeating, self oppressive. Here we’re talking about another type of story, you know, a Buddhist story, about a story about a constantly intelligent, caring, decent human being, you know, living a creative life. You know, this is the outcome of the Buddhist story. You know, how you know, how we might possibly begin to re re edit, create a new narrative by which to live by for ourselves.
Essentially from, you know, from the point of view of Buddhism, the Buddhist story is about someone who experiences unremitting peace within and out of their compassion, fearlessly and skillfully works with all living beings to help them to experience the same. You know, that’s that’s the good life as seen from the point of view of Buddhism. That’s the finest story that we could ever hope to imagine to tell ourselves about ourselves that we could ever hope to experience in the course of a life. And this this Buddha that we’re talking about, the story that we’re the central character of this story is our own minds. You know, it’s not something outside of ourselves.
The fundamental solution to to all of our problems, the the the finding of the sacred in our lives is our own mind, our own inner Buddha, not something outside of ourselves. You know, a a Zen master one a Zen master once said, you know, if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him. And I can only guess what, this particular Zen master meant by that. But I have a suspicion that, you know, if you see the fundamental problems that you experience over the course of your life outside of yourself, and therefore the solution to those problems outside yourself, you’re looking in the wrong place. And if you see your solutions to your problems outside of yourself, you’re projecting something outside of yourself which can only be found inside.
You know what? I’m talking about the deeper problems that we have, our fundamental problems. What is the ultimate concern? What are the the ultimate wounds that we have and the the means of finding some kind of ultimate fulfillment? You know, if you’re hungry, by all means, eat food.
You know, that’s that’s appropriate. That’s intelligent. And we have to deal with the more superficial difficulties and problems that we have in an effective and efficient manner and make use of the material world about us in an effective and efficient manner. But but with within all of that, within all of the things and the people and the situations about us, you’re never going to find. And some at some hopefully, at some level, we can begin to sense this, What it is that you’ve been most looking for.
What it is that we want most in our life. And beyond the superficial, beyond that which we are continually getting out of touch with. And when you when you you ask yourself these deeply probing questions about the real meaning of your life and what it is that you want from it. This answer, which we call a Buddha, can only be found within yourself, within your own mind. And it’s I think it’s difficult to put on this with ourselves, and I try to be honest as the best I can with myself to come to this.
Because we you know, our social conditioning and our orientation is very much conceiving of the good life as being the gathering together, the manipulation, the owning, controlling, affecting, being masters of this world about us in some fashion, some form or other. But and we struggle and we try, you know. And in spite of all the blood, sweat, and tears that we’ve expended over the course of our life, we haven’t found what it is that we’re looking for. We’ve never found the peace and the satisfaction, the fulfillment, the meaning, the connectedness that perhaps if we were to search in our hearts is what we are very much all, not so much different from one another looking for. But, you know, we still we try.
We try. When a man experiences the fantasy of ultimate peace and wholeness, women too. When a man or a woman experiences a fantasy of ultimate peace and wholeness, he he needs to understand his fantasy as a statement of what he can achieve within himself. But usually, he will project his image of paradise on a woman. Okay.
You know. I’m sorry. Listen. But usually, he will project his image of of a paradise on a woman or a man, or a a god, or a Buddha, or an organization, the state, or some material thing, or other. Unconsciously asking her, or it, him to fulfill it, to bring to bring it into some physical actuality to deliver it to him.
You know, we we can’t legitimately ask of the world ask of the outer world what to give us what it is incapable of giving. There’s a certain dishonesty in demanding of the world that it’d be other than the way it is. That it give us something which in reality can only be found within ourselves. Within our own inner world, within our own minds. No matter how difficult, no matter how how challenging and seemingly how insurmountable the obstacles may appear at times appear to be, we have to seek the solutions to our fundamental problems with inside of ourselves if if there’s any to be if any if there is ever to be any realistic hope of ever solve solving them.
You know, if if our if our wanderings are ever to come to to an end, if this hunger that we all have is ever to be appeased, to be satisfied in some way or another. And then the the mass the vast majority of us live our lives as if we lost the key to to our house in in the you know, we’ve lost the key to our house. We we lost it actually, we lost it in the backyard, in the grass in the backyard. But but the grass in the backyard, we haven’t mowed it in a while. It’s quite long.
And the grass in the front yard, we just mowed that the other day, so it’s quite short. So we search for the key to the house in the front yard because the search will will go easier for us. We have less obstacles. We’re very we’re quite hopeful. But the reality is, you know, of our situation is that we’re never there is we’re never going to find just what it is that we’re looking for because we’re looking in the wrong place.
You know, no matter how how how difficult it might be and how the challenge and it is. I mean, to change your mind is probably the most difficult task that we can take up in the course of our life. You know, I think so. To to grow in love and compassion and wisdom. You know, we’re all climbing a mountain in some way or another.
But in a way, we have much we don’t have much choice. And and I think it was Krishnamurti who said, for the intelligent person, there’s not really much choice with what to do with your life. I’m not saying that one is to, you know, to forego all of the goodies, all of the you know, what all of the what makes up a good life, where you reach to find that in various ways. You know, the relationships with significant people and worthwhile work, interesting, beneficial, leisure time pursuits, hobbies, sports, you know, comfortable home, stylish clothes, good food. Yeah, why not?
I think these are all components of the good life, but they all exist within the context of the mind. They are they are all seen within the medium of the mind, where they are are viewed from out of the lenses of our ideas and our beliefs about them. And the mind is in its place, in its way, to make a heaven of hell hell of heaven. That if all of these good things that we’re struggling to gather about us, on these people and situations that we work so hard to create for ourselves, if if if we look at them in a dysfunctional manner, if we act in relationship to them in unskillful ways, then we really have wasted our time, all our efforts, all our all our struggles have been for nothing. And they really can’t bring us what it is that we in fact want.
So I guess the orientation that we’re trying to bring, that what is as an essential component, as an essential part of our life, to make growth a priority, to make actually the doing of of cultivating our minds. And concerning ourself with our inner life. Trying to write a Buddhist story or however you want to entitle your particular story, you can call it what you will, but the good life and the type of person. Trying to make a habit of the person that you want to be somewhere down the line. Becoming a better editor, rewriting the stories, becoming a Buddha.
So in this process, know, so this Buddha is the personification of all of what I’ve been talking about. Personification of the the essential character to this wonderful story that we would have our lives led by, to lead our lives, a way to lead our lives. And this becomes the inner focus of our life. You know, this is our orientation coming back again and again. We lose we lose our way.
We get caught up in some sidetrack. But for one reason or another, through the the through grace and the Buddha activities, through our own Buddha nature, we’re we’re awakened from this trance that we’ve been in, that we come back to some kind of reality of where we’re at. Sometimes it’s it’s caused by a great suffering, a great tragedy. Others times by a glimpse of the of the sacred in our lives and something transcended, an experience. But however, we we have to keep coming back like a magnetic north, and continually, you know, making that person that we want to be a part of our habits, habits, the way that we lead our daily lives, that’s that we become that person.
We begin to lead the life that we would have ourselves lead. The inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, the Buddha with inside of ourselves. We see in seeking to actualize that Buddha to to actually we have to do something, and it has to go beyond wish, the wishing state. And to actually, find the means to to adopt the methods and the the techniques, the trainings, whereby we can begin to express and actualize this Buddha in our everyday life, in our everyday thinking, the way we speak and relate with the world. And this entire process occurs within the social context of a spiritual community.
You know, the people who help co author our Buddhist story, you know, our teachers, our our fellow travelers on this path, They will assist us in various ways with whatever way they can and we in turn help them. And very much the spiritual life I think is is a process of giving. Giving to ourselves and giving to others. Giving to ourselves by transcending the bounds that we’ve set for ourselves and giving to others. Now, whatever it is that is maybe needed, responding in some authentic fashion.
Maybe it’s just a kind word. Maybe it’s a talk or teaching. Maybe it’s a material resources. Maybe it’s a shoulder to cry on acting as a teacher, as a guide, as a inspiration. You know, whatever it is we can do, and we can do something for sure to help someone else in writing of their Buddhist story, help someone else in traveling their path and trying to raise the level of motivation.
Now why we do what we do, why we’re involved in this process such that, you know, we’re not doing it only for ourselves. Because I think if we struggle only for ourselves, the spiritual path will become part of the problem. Yeah. This what could have been a solution simply becomes another complicating factor in our life, becomes another source of difficulty in our life. But I think we can almost be assured that if we have some altruistic intention behind what we do, that no matter what we might do, whether even if we do it wrongly, it will serve a good purpose that it’s going to help us along the path.
It’s going to bring something worthwhile. Perhaps, know, something that we can’t conceive of at present, but we could have some kind of confidence that it will, just by the solitary nature, the beneficial nature of altruism itself. 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? 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 the cyclic existence has ended and turn the wheel of Dharma for living beings. I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others to the great awakening. Would you like to stand up for a minute and we’ll meditate? So again, we’ll begin in terms of I think I probably mentioned this many times. I think everything I say I’ve mentioned many times by now.
And whatever I say is just repeating what my teachers have told me so I don’t I could be replaced by Yeah. We’re we’re going to readjust our motivation again and listen to this. I yeah. What I was going to say was that the word for meditation in Tibetan language is is gom. And gong, it it literally means something like familiarize or custom to get used to habituate.
It’s it’s not it doesn’t have the kind of mystical or otherworldly connotations that the word meditation generally is associated with in in the English language. We think meditation, all kinds of strange images begin to arise in our mind with, you know, what we can expect from it, but it’s pretty mundane, you know, just getting I’m not saying it can be terribly profound, I think. I haven’t experienced it yet, but I’ve been told. But aside from that, it is very much know, like, quite often I think of there’s you know, like, especially Tibetan Buddhism, it’s like they have a supermarket full of possibilities of meditation. And you you walk down the aisle and you say, well, today I need this one.
You know, I I feel like I this this, like, satisfies some kind of present need for me, some problem I’m having or whatever, some nutritional deficiency deficiency of the mind. And and you you take it off the shelf and you and you follow a recipe. It has it like a recipe book. You know, you add two cups of this and a half a teaspoon of that, a pinch of that, and you produce a particular state of mind. You know, it’s a very skillful means of of causing to arise very these very productive states.
And then we habituate to them. We we we we get accustomed to them. We get used to another way of another version of ourselves, other possibilities. So it’s like a very much most many of these meditation techniques we’re gonna be talking about that, you know, we’re talking about the two traditions for the development of the awakened heart, which are the two meditative traditions. And it’s simply a recipe on how to change your mind, how to cook this warm, loving heart, you know, and get used to it, such that it becomes a habit.
And we are our habits more than not, to a great extent I think we are. And with our habits, we create a fate for ourselves. We create, you know, these deep personality structure these deep structures of our personality become a fate. A loving person has a very has a different world, has a different melee, has a different different occurrences happen to them than than a hateful and anguish person. And so, you know, our as we change, our world changes, our quality of our life changes, habituating ourselves to other possibilities.
And so, know, it’s quite useful. It’s a tool, really a substantial practical tool that we have to work with. Otherwise, I don’t know what we can do. I don’t know what we can do. We we can read a lot of books and we can hope for the best.
We can take a lot of courses. But some time rather we have to work directly with the mind itself in changing this mind around wherever it is in here to become to change to make things change because that’s what we want. So we meditate. And I guess where I was leading that comment was leading to was that we again are cultivating love and compassion in this very spectrum of individuals. And simply, it just becomes a habit.
You’re able to begin become skillful. You you use your imagination, your experience, and find some key that opens up these feelings in the heart in the case case of love and compassion and is able to evoke these states. The mind becomes a loving mind with regard to different objects. This person, this person, this person, animals, sent all types of sentient beings. You know, it become it we simply have become habituated to evoking these feelings to a particular variety of individuals.
But there’s no reason that why we can’t expand that those that those varieties of individuals ultimately to include all living beings with whosoever. And then no matter what they may do to us, no matter what our we develop an unconditioned love. It’s possible. There’s no reason why it can’t be. So you you know, we developing finding the key, developing the skill of meditation to be able to evoke another feeling, finding how can you access that feeling and cause the mind to to be transformed into that entity of love or compassion with respect to these various objects that we’re supplying to ourselves and beginning to, you know, associate these feelings with a variety of types of persons.
There’s no we can habituate ourselves to that such that when whoever we say, we we a state a real authentic genuine state of love can be evoked, can arise quite spontaneously and naturally. It’s who I will it’s who I we are. It becomes a deep part of our personality and our fate. So, anyway, we’re working through the spectrum individuals. I think we work through we started with ourselves, didn’t we?
And then, you know, someone that you’re very close to. And choosing an individual that you know, work working with these feelings as best we can, as genuine as we can. You know, even, you know, as we as we get to the more difficult objects. So, you know, maybe I guess it’s not I don’t know. Is it politically correct to call people objects?
Don’t think meditation objects. Anything can be an object of meditation, even people. So anyway, even with enemies, we can we can think the we can think the words toward them. May you be happy, for example. That’s a hell of a lot better than saying, may you be sick.
You know, you’ve gone that’s even that. So this, can these meditation, know, many of the types of there’s different types of meditation, know, analytic meditation and stabilizing meditation. And within stabilizing meditation, like we’re going to do mindfulness of breathing, we just simply hold the mind to an object. We don’t try to analyze it in any way or examine it. We don’t try to penetrate it, understand it.
Just hold on to it. Just like we try to hold on to the breath. We don’t want to we’re not particularly analyzing the breath trying to diagnose whether we have asthma or something. Just want to hold on to the breath. But in the case of analytic meditations, there there are a variety of possibilities.
Some types of analytic meditations, we want to penetrate. You’re trying to think, for example, about impermanence or emptiness and selflessness, trying to come to some understanding. You know, you’re you’re examining an object, and you’re trying you’re trying to penetrate. Realize a deeper nature of that object. There’s the type of of analytic meditation where we don’t want to analyze, but but we do do use discursive thinking in order to transform the entity of our mind.
For example, when we meditate on love, we’re not interested in analyzing love, you know, the various divisions of love. And it’s you know, what is its function? What is it what is its nature? You You we could study that, but that would be another subject altogether. When we when we when we meditate on love, we want to cause the entity of our mind to arise in in the nature of love, to be a loving mind, to be loved.
So in this, we use discursive. I mean, we use words, don’t we? And we have we have to use something. And words words can be very powerful means. They’re tools.
They’re like fingers, you know, pointing. They’re pointing to a painting. But we try the best we can not to get hung up with the finger. Know, what the words are like arrows directing our mind to something other than themselves, you know, to the painting. That’s what we want to come to know.
So likewise, the word the words I love you are not love. Love is a state of mind, state of being, which is more or less ineffable or indescribable. But we can approach it with words. But we somehow, we have to we have to become very skillful. We have to use in all that all that we’ve experienced over the course of our life, the moments of love and the various loving relationships that we’ve had.
We use our imagination, you know, what what possible possibly could be, using our memory. You know, all of the use making use of all of our resources to be to make those words a living reality. When we say, you know, may you be happy, there is there is a feeling associated with that that you want to see a smile on this person’s face. You know, you want that you want this being to be experiencing happiness. There’s a feeling behind the words and trying to how how can you evoke those words?
Know? How you could we’re using you you probably can evoke it toward your partner at when you’re getting along well, you know? So that so you have a model to work with. And and and can you can you extrapolate from that? You know?
Can you can you access that feeling and then transfer it to another? Be able to evoke it toward another. So it’s a great challenge and we have to it takes skill, but we can do it. You know, we that’s not something it’s it’s we all have some love and compassion, you know, no matter how limited and exclusive our love and compassion, no matter how mixed with attachment our love and compassion might be. It’s there.
So it’s just a matter of developing the skill to evoke it in various other mental situations, relating it with a greater widening circle of others, creating the scope of possible expanding the scope of others toward whom we’re able to spontaneously or or contrived way, in an artificial way, evoke that feeling toward them. You know, it’s training. I’m trying to get across the idea that that it can be done. That’s a there’s a rationale there’s a rationale behind it, there’s a training process behind it, and a habituation, a meditative process behind it. So having gone through all of that, picking someone that you aren’t particularly Mhmm.
That’s not your What do you say? Your immediate circle of of of loved ones. Someone that you do care about, that you that you enjoy, that you like, that you you share good times with. So such a type of individual, not not your immediate circle of loved one, perhaps your family or Okay. And then we’ll do when we were a nine-round breathing meditation.
I think most of you are familiar with that right now. And then we’ll do mindfulness of breathing. I was going to actually do another meditation, but I’ve gone on for a long time. Oh, let’s do it anyhow. Would you like to do it anyhow?
Yeah. Yeah. It was it was connected with my some of my earlier words when I was talking about, you know, being perhaps beginning to to to investigate other versions of who we might be in in the stories that we have about ourselves. You know, the the image that we hold to about who we are and what we what we can do and what we can expect of our lives. You know, using the imagination.
Imagination is is plays a terribly plays a a very important role in, I think, in the path, especially in the path of tantra. But also here, we can make use of imagination. So I’ll I’ll guide you and do a guided meditation through, you know, beginning to perhaps imagine ourselves in different ways than we normally conceive of ourselves, you know, taking on different qualities and, you know, expanding, you know, break breaking out of this this rigid self conception that we have of ourselves, which is usually quite self limiting. Usually, we have a very poor self image. And this becomes a very tremendously limiting factor in our lives of what we actually achieve with our lives, what we actually seek, and what we actually come to experience.
This is, you know, as many of the stories we’ve and I’ve mentioned this before, are very much part of our self defeating, self fulfilling prophecy about ourselves. So maybe using the imagination, experiencing other possibilities, expanding our felt experience of who we might be, gaining some access and experiencing other possibilities of ourselves in in a very in a felt sense. So anyway, I’ll lead you through that. So if you take a comfortable, firm posture. And you’re getting first in touch with our bodies noticing any tightnesses, any tensions.
So we’re looking at the the second of the three principal aspects of the path. The first being developing a will to awaken, this determination to be free and ultimately to be free, to awaken from the from the sleep of ignorance. The second being what we’re going to look at is this, the awakened heart. How are we to awaken, having developed some kind of determination around that. We’re seeking to awaken ourselves both emotionally and rationally, both in terms of our hearts and minds, to develop an awakened heart.
In this to this end, are two meditative traditions that we’re we’re going to be discussing, the equalizing and exchanging self for others and the seven cause and effect instruction. So we’re just beginning the explanation of the first of these two, the equalizing and exchanging self with others. So So we’re going to work through a series of five meditations. Now we’re going to look at equalizing ourselves with others, most basically that all living beings, whomsoever, whosoever, all want to be happy, they don’t want to suffer just like myself. You know, perhaps intellectually that might be obvious to ourselves.
But we have to admit that we don’t act that way emotionally. There’s a great disparity between our emotional life and our rational life. We Emotionally, we relate with people as if they were more or less objects for our pleasure in one way or another. Therefore, at our convenience, for our convenience. So we’re trying to penetrate this notion down to the emotional depths of our being through our hearts, that all beings, whosoever, are just like my self, no different.
They both they want they too want to be happy. They too don’t want to suffer. And that’s the basis we’re going to have to work for. Then we look at the disadvantages of self centeredness, the advantages of other centeredness, and the meditation on the actual exchange of self or other, and then bringing bringing all of these these understandings, these insights that we’ve gathered together in a combination of a visualization technique called taking and giving, where we imagine so we give over our happiness to others and take on ourselves their suffering. So looking at the first of these, equalizing self and others, I mentioned that, you know, the the the main textual source for this teaching is a text called the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life by Śāntideva, and mainly the the eighth chapter.