Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun anchors the session around a five-part poem about a person who keeps falling into the same hole in the sidewalk — until, finally, walking down a different street entirely. He uses it to examine why recurring dissatisfaction persists despite good intentions, then makes a counterintuitive argument: the vague, anxious feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with how we are living is not pathological but a mark of basic sanity, our own Buddha nature registering a real threat and generating the felt urgency that makes genuine change possible. Drawing on Carl Jung’s observation that every person carries an innate drive toward meaning, he frames going for refuge in the Three Jewels as the constructive response to that anxiety rather than numbing or wishful thinking. The session closes with a passage from Lama Yeshe on meditation as listening to inner wisdom, followed by practical instruction in mindfulness of breathing and the noting technique for working with thought. Accessible to newcomers who are drawn to Buddhism but want to understand why it engages so directly with suffering before offering a remedy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 HMA 1996 05 29.mp3
UUID: 579082ea-2840-440b-af8f-554839ba28bc
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-05-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.5 minutes
Words: ~6,165
Getting ourselves, reprioritizing what is important to ourselves, getting back in touch with certain ways of being and guidelines that in our final moments we might most like to live our lives out of to see it as an expression of who it is that we are. So you stop speeding and stop distracting ourselves from ourselves. And just for a moment get back in touch with what is uniquely important to each of ourselves and what works for ourselves, what brings our life meaning, gives us a sense of connectedness with others, a sense of the sacred in our lives. You know, we’re we’re trying to create the inner mental context whereby change is possible. I think it’s a very subtle necessary process.
You know, we’re talking about directing our minds toward an alternative refuge aside from those refuges perhaps that we’ve made use of up till now. But for various reasons, in one way or another, haven’t worked for ourselves as we might have liked them to work. You know, I’m not saying that the people and the things and the situations and all the goodies of the world haven’t brought us some pleasures. But if you notice, if you if you take the time and pause to look at the quality of your present existence, even through all those pleasures, our basic problems haven’t changed. They seem to continually be recurring, returning to us in one form or another in spite of the pleasures, in spite of our our great expectations and hope to the contrary.
So, you know, it’s not that we are to give up, you know, these significant relationships and all the goodies that a materialist society can bring us and all that may all that constitutes a good life. You know, these are important components. But the idea, the perhaps the insight to be gained is that these in themselves are not enough. They never have been and they never will be. That there’s something more fundamental that we have to be looking into and that is to say our own minds in terms of how we’re relating with these peoples and situations with these goodies of cyclic existence.
In terms of our attitudes, beliefs around them, our premises from which we’re working We have great hope. The hope, the going hope, that things are going to get better. And as we began to talk about last week, this type of hope, you know, the type an unfounded hope, simply wishful thinking is one of our great obstacles to actually changing ourselves. You know, we we when we look at it, you know, I don’t there’s a certain I don’t mean to sound pessimistic or cynical about all this. Maybe it’s a maybe it begins to get begin to sound a little burdensome.
Why is there noise going on about suffering? It would be nice if we didn’t have to look at it. I don’t particularly relish the idea of looking at it, all that goes wrong with my life. And but I think it’s it’s because we’ve distracted ourselves, because we haven’t looked at it, that in fact we’re continuing to suffer, that nothing much has changed. You know, though our lives may not be much, you know, we though we may be to some degree aware of just how much they they are not what we might want them to be.
How very much they are filled with dissatisfaction, disappointment, anxiety, loneliness, and on and on and on. Still, at least they’re home. You know, there seems to be some comfort in that, some degree of security, in that the familiar, you know, what is known to ourselves. And if there’s some kind of consolation, and at least we know who we are and what we can expect or we presume to expect from our lives. There’s some there’s a certain nostalgia for the slums of cyclic existence.
Ic existence. The you know, this is a it’s kind of a sentimental attachment to the to the dysfunctional streets that we grew up in, you know, pathological haunts that we’ve that we’ve visited so often, that is so familiar to ourselves, that we know so well, you know, perhaps for sure that we know better than ourselves. And it’s the it’s the neighborhood grew up in. It’s all that we’ve ever known. Be it ever so humble, be it ever so bare and painful, there’s no place quite like it.
It’s home. I don’t want it to go away. I don’t want to leave it. It makes me feel afraid. It makes me feel numb.
There’s a risk involved. Anyway, I’ve talked about how very much our lives are storied. And I I like to read you a poem which is a story about someone’s life. It’s an autobiography. It’s only in five parts, but it’s a story about change.
Part one. I walk down the street. There’s a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost.
It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. Part two. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I’m in the same place, but it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out. Part three.
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in. It’s a habit.
My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. Part four.
I walk down the same street. There was a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. Part five. I walk down another street.
You know, sooner or later, at some point in our lives, depending on just how sanely or perhaps insanely we’re living living them. You know, we get sick and tired of being sick and tired. That is to say, growing sick and tired of falling into the same damn holes time after time after time. If we are able to discern that fact within our own experience, if we’re if we’re willing to to stop speeding and stop distracting ours ourselves from ourselves and begin to a process of introspection to analyze the question, the quality, and the direction, and what our life experience has actually been. Not what we might have wanted it to be, not what we might have, in fact, assumed or believed or have been told it might be, but what is our actual experience within our own lived experience?
And we begin to get to discern if if only vaguely these reoccurring dysfunctional patterns and these pathological themes which which which very much constitute our lives. You know? And and and and in spite of the the obscuring self deception of our of our unwanted hopes, our our unfounded hopes, our wishful thinking, that something is going to come along of itself and by itself that begins to develop some kind of undercurrent, some kind of anxiety around the unending continuation of such a way of life. You know, there’s a hope that these holes are all are going to go away all by themselves. And why should they?
If they’re recursive loop within our own mind. They’re just going to remain there forever unless we begin to intervene. And the first step in intervention is diagnosis to begin to see the actual nature of our problem at a more fundamental level. The object of our of our anxiety is perhaps at present some kind of ill defined and more often than not some kind of difficult to find something. We’re not quite sure what.
There’s a background feeling to our experience, some kind of dread, some kind of foreboding. But something even though it’s vague and ill defined, it still feels to be a real threat to our well-being, to our sense of security. There’s a diffuse underlying unease or discomfort about what it is we’re not quite sure perhaps. There’s something wrong somewhere. Something something’s not right.
Something perhaps about my life itself, the way I be the way I’m living it. You know, these reoccurring patterns, these themes. You know, we we don’t seem to be learning. You know, we we we seem to keep missing or or dismissing the lessons that life is continually bringing ourselves. Or even when we or else we forget the lessons that we once learned.
And thus we keep making the same mistakes again and again and again, falling into the same holes again and again, even against our own better judgment. And thereby we keep experiencing the same more or less outcomes, the same general dissatisfactoriness again and again and again in one form or another. We keep going down in the same the same avenues, the same streets, and falling into the same holes again and again. You know, I it’s necessary to to relate this to yourself. It’s not a matter of of gathering more information.
You know, we have enough information. We have enough experience. We don’t need any more suffering. We have to make use of our own past experience in order to learn from it. If we don’t learn from it, we’re doomed to make the same mistakes.
You know? Ad nauseam. Ad infinitum. Again and again and again. That’s what you know, what we mean by cyclic existence.
We don’t learn. We ignore in one way or another. You know, at the back of our minds there’s some kind of feeling that our lives are are being lived as if out of our control. You know, a feeling of ineffectiveness, a feeling of of emptiness, powerlessness about what happens to ourselves. Things seem to just happen to ourselves.
You know? But more even if we even if we were in complete control, there’s a distressing recognition that that we wouldn’t know how to live our lives anyway. We wouldn’t know quite what to do even if we could do exactly as we might want to do in our lives. And so why aren’t we ineffective? Why don’t we feel in fact ineffective?
It only makes it makes logical sense in terms of the premises we’re working from. You know, this this anxiety is one of the two fundamental causes directing ourselves toward change. You know, you are changes have something more than mere speculation or curiosity or some intellectual intellectual notion about how grand it would be to change, how we might like ourselves to be different. It has to be have to some degree of necessity about it. Some degree of felt pain driving it.
You know, going for alternative refuge in our life. You know, it there’s some degree of extending ourselves, some degree of of bearing with the anxiety, with the fear of the unknown, of the unfamiliar, the unaccustomed. You know, from the point of view of Buddhism, this anxiety is constructive. Why? Because it’s directed what at what are in fact threats to our well-being.
You know, these these very holes in our lives which are going to keep reoccurring in our lives one way or another. This anxiety acts as an antidote to the to the psychological stagnation of hope, unfounded hope, unwarranted hope, our wishful thinking that the holes in our lives are gonna go away all by themselves, that we don’t have to, in fact, do anything about it. You know, the myth that time heals all wounds, that we’ve been recruited into, but, in fact, this has nothing to do with our actual experience in our life. You know, the this anxiety is indicative of our basic sanity. You know, people want to feel bliss.
They don’t want to feel uncomfortable. They don’t want to feel anxiety. But maybe our own Buddha nature, our own basic intelligence is telling us something. You know, we we you know, there’s we have to listen to our pain, to our wounds. It’s like a voice trying to tell us something about ourselves and the way we’re leading our life.
This anxiety is an expression of the mind’s intrinsic instinct toward wakefulness and its basic purity, our own Buddha nature, and an expression of the self healing potential of our own minds. And moreover that this anxiety is indicative that it’s beginning to find expression in our waking consciousness. In other words, our anxiety about the condition of our lives and our refusal to ignore it testifies to just how basically fundamentally sane we really are. You know, we have to admit that the most creative, the most talented, the many of the most intelligent people in our society have been terribly neurotic, have have felt the existential crisis in their lives over and over, have felt this sense of anxiety about the quality of their existence, and have struggled with the question, have searched their hearts for some meaning in their lives, and from some some way to transcend this experience. And in that process, most of them have found some answer for themselves.
You know, to be neurotically normal is not to be very healthy. There’s something very healthy in this pain that, you know, if we’re willing to to open up to to you know, I’m not this isn’t a testimony, you know, where one has to stand up and stand up and confess what one is experiencing, but within one’s own experience. If one is you know, we’ve been recruited into many truths about ourselves that to be healthy we should always be feeling good. And that’s not necessarily so, is it? That those who are willing to to explore their own pain, find great lessons, that our pain can be our greatest teacher.
In fact, it’s telling us where we’re going wrong, that in fact there’s something wrong with the way we’re leading our life. Carl Jung discovered that each person’s psychological structure includes an independent religious function. This does not mean that there is a need necessarily to follow a particular creed or dogma, but it means that each human being comes with an inborn psychological urge to find meaning in life. We all have an intuition that we could be that we could see ourselves as whole persons, see the ultimate meaning of life, experience ourselves totally. Jung saw that Westerners, although they constantly only believe in what is physical and rational, have dreams and fantasies overflowing with symbols of the of those very qualities that people used to seek in their religious life.
Symbols evoking a sense of wholeness and a vision of a world larger than ego. You know, if we didn’t if we didn’t possess the potential to go beyond our suffering, we wouldn’t be anxious about it. And thus, you know, our minds would not would not be never would never be turned toward its final end. There’s a verse. Those who do not possess the element of Buddha do not despair of suffering.
Thus, they neither strive nor wish nor resolve to attain beyond sorrow. nirvana. Anxiety goes with becoming aware. And if we have a choice in what to do with suffering, there are you know, I talked about the two alternative paths that we can take. We can numb ourselves, ourselves and perhaps in in certain cases this may be desirable.
It may have some temporary beneficial effect. But in the long run, it’s only by confronting the pain of our life, of an unlived life, that we can truly begin to to go beyond it. There’s no other way but to go through it. You know, the and there is you know, in becoming aware and I think Buddhism is trying to to point out you know, the Buddha was a great pointer. He’s he was forever pointing.
More than anything, he said, look at this and look at this and look at this. And some eyes, you know, come to some kind of conclusions for yourself. You know, trying to trying to cut through a lot of the taken for granted truths that we’ve been recruited in, but which in act in actual fact are another expression of our of the experience of our life. That’s why perhaps it sounds pessimistic and but in fact, it might be more honest. The fact is that anxiety goes with becoming aware.
The more you are aware, the more susceptible, the more sensitive to you are to your own pain and the pain around you. But this is a necessary process to work through. There’s no you know, the difficult path. Anxiety goes with becoming aware and assuming our potentialities. And going for refuge is the constructive use of this anxiety.
You know, potentiality goes over into actuality by through anxiety. You know, we’re never going to make use of our potential in this if we’re only aware of reality to the extent that our survival demands it of us. That and no more. And if our if our present level of well-being is not enough for us to go on to continue in this fashion, then we will begin to avail ourselves of the potential because of the anxiety of such a continued way of being in our life. We simply won’t allow ourselves to put up with it any longer.
We’re going to ask ourselves. Our mind is going to naturally turn toward our Buddha nature is going to direct us in toward an alternative refuge in our life. And and it occurs within the felt context of a sense of anxiety or fear in a way. And this can continue the re continual reoccurrence of the same quality of life forever into the future. This prospect doesn’t look very good.
We get anxious. You know, when we get this idea of getting sick and tired of it, getting sick and tired, then we’ll find a way to get well. You know, Buddhism places great has great faith in our own mind, in our own potential, in our own Buddha nature, our basic goodness, our our intelligence, our decency, our our quality of caring. I think we have to have some faith in in the basic quality of our own mind. And when we we we at some point, we decide it’s time to get better.
And it’s time to begin to seriously search out and explore other avenues, other streets that we can begin to travel down, other alternative ways of being. You know, just this process. I’m not saying by any means that that you this this demands that you change your jobs, that you leave your family, that that you take up an aesthetic way of life. You know, these are incidental. This would probably be just another trip, just another diversion more than not.
It it is but it it is becoming aware, exploring within your own minds and your experience. You know, these ideas that that we’re sharing together, you know, ideals aren’t just aren’t just something in the head which we can poo poo and say they’re just intellectual mind games. We see the world out of ideas. Ideals are the are the eyes out of which we see the world. And we’re we’re trying to to learn about new ideas and investigate their truth, their validity, and thereby begin to perhaps transform our ideas and then and thereby the way that we view and we relate and thereby how we experience the world.
Some new ideas around another possibility you know, about about rewriting these stories of our lives, you know, and finding some kind of place for the sacred in our lives. Find some kind of alternative refuge in our life. You know, this, I guess, is just a a way of educating ourselves. You know? I think mental hygiene is should be part of our curriculum.
It’s something that perhaps comes natural to ourselves. Now we we learn many subjects in in schools, but not how to live our lives. It seems to be taken for granted that we should know it. That’s a deception we don’t, really. It’s something we have to study.
To to study Buddhism is to study ourselves and begin to know ourselves. And begin to beginning to understand ourselves, perhaps beginning to find of of ourselves what it is that we want most in our life, you know, through ourselves. So in this process, this redirecting process, this reorientating process, the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha. You’re looking you know, there’s a Buddha with inside of ourselves. You know, the Buddha is a metaphor for something.
And if we’ve never heard the word Buddha, we’ve never heard the word sanity, if we’ve never heard the word mental health, perhaps we would never know that there’s another way of being, another possibility other than what we know. How how would we? This anxiety doesn’t make sense. But once we perhaps we get a glimpse, which we’ve all had, you know, of these peak experiences which, you know, though fleeting and though few, you know, when it was enough just to be alive, when nothing more was needed, you know, when just to feel and just to see colors and shapes, just to be with a friend, commune with the the beloved. These these moments of vast feelings, you know, where we get in touch with a deep mystery at the basis of life.
And if we and but we dismiss them or we lose them. We lose sight somehow. But we can call these experiences Buddha feelings or Buddha experiences just to give them a name so we we have some handles that we don’t lose them. So we can we can have we can orientate ourselves to some feeling that we’ve actually experienced some ways of being that have been known to us at some point, some time, if only a few, if only fleeting, momentary experiences. You know, they all point to something beyond themselves, something some kind of experience.
And perhaps that we can begin to have a sense that have a sense that there’s something more than just sense pleasure in your life. There’s something more than just eating nice delicious food. There’s something more than wearing really wearing stylish clothing. There’s something more than really having a good reputation or having some kind of power or status, having lots of money. That there is something much, much, much more of a different order than all of these.
Not bigger, better, more. There’s something that’s transcends that way of that mindset of how we value our life. What does it mean? What, you know, what the quality of experience. So just listen, you know, listen to these ideas that we share together, you know, and and maybe they resonate.
Maybe they they bring some they evoke some feeling in yourself, some some memory experience or some idea, and beginning to to stay with them, to let to let these ideas and feelings work upon ourselves, operate upon ourselves, practice upon ourselves, help allow them just to change ourselves. And perhaps unbeknownst to ourselves, you know, change will occur. We’ll begin to see ourselves in a different way, have a different values, and direct ourselves along different lines. So the inner focus of our lives becomes Buddha. Whatever totality, wholeness, health, how however each of us might whatever image whatever images it might be we might be able to make use of it.
Whatever images, it might be evoked by this this this quality of being which which we would which we can continue to be redirecting ourselves toward. And we we, you know, we it’s just not an idea, but it’s a it has to have some kind of, you know, connection with our own experience in our own lives. How does it fit? And how can how can I work with it? We try to you know, we we do something to help ourselves.
And this is the dharma, the various methods and various techniques, the truth of things, what we can work with in order to to more and more you know, I’m gonna talk about about some of these ideas later on. How we can align ourselves more and more with our own Buddha nature, with our own basic sanity. And maybe that’s all that Buddhism is more than that. You know, how can we give expression to something that’s already there within us? And we this this process occurs within the social context of a spiritual community, the Sangha, and those who assist us in the process.
You know, the, you know, the various ways that others can in fact help us in in substantial ways. And trying to raise the level of motivation, you know, why we’re involved in this process, why we’re doing what we’re doing. You know, trying to go beyond the narrow limits of our own egotistical concerns, you know, our myopic vision of what mental health might be like, you know, to try to gain some kind of well-being and realizations in isolation from others. But try trying in some limited way in terms of how much we can to feel that I’m doing it even if only for another human beside myself. I’m trying to be well, trying to be healthy and whole so that I can have the abilities to help another person if only in a limited way, only at limited times, in some real substantial way.
You know? Then I think and then we just don’t keep going around in circles. Then our solutions can solve our then what are what we’re doing can act as a real solution to some of our problems. Otherwise, you know, most of all of us of what we presume to be solutions simply become part of the problem again and again and again through our own self centeredness, through our own exaggerated self concern. So this is the type of motivation, you know, trying to to to evoke within oneself.
Then then whatever we do out of that, you know, with that intention can only serve as a means to find what it is that we’re looking for. And we are we won’t be deceived. We won’t be disappointed. We there’s no deception involved. 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 the 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 the Buddha for the sake of all living being.
Again, just to you know, if we can evoke some feelings again and again and again, you know, to accustom ourselves to ideas and feelings, you know, which are perhaps out of the ordinary, I very much we don’t give our ourselves a chance. We don’t allow ourselves the space and time. And then there’s some kind of, you know, simply that process of custody. Allows us to to to become acquainted with other versions of ourselves, who we we might be, and other other potentials of ourselves. And I’m going to be I get around to it.
I get I get I go off and digressions. Alright. We’re going to meditate. Okay? I’d like to read to you just in the way of of talking about meditation.
Now I’m gonna I’m gonna be talking about a very difficult subject, I think, later on. I don’t know if I watch the time I will. The lama or the spiritual mastery, I I I don’t talk about it very often. I’ll explain later why. Think it’s something which can be misunderstood and I’m quite reticent.
My limited understanding with also, sometimes yeah. It’s it needs quite a deal of understanding especially for us westerners who aren’t used to the idea of of a mentor or spiritual master or spiritual teacher, a lama or guru. But I’d like to read in terms of meditation, something about one of my spiritual masters who perhaps played a significant role in changing my life, my mind, even even even me with this tough ego of mine was somehow affected by this wonderful person. And it relates to what we’re going to be talking about. You see, you really you really should be careful.
I want you to understand. This is Lama Yeshe. There’s a picture on the wall to my right side. Lama Yeshe was one of the probably the founder or the cofounder of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahāyāna Tradition of which Buddha House is a is a part of. He was he was a terribly unusual person in his ability to communicate in ways that were meaningful to Westerners.
He changed a lot of people’s lives. You know, it shows what one individual can do in terms of now FPMT is a an association of about almost ninety, I think, the last count. Ninety Buddhist centers and and monasteries and nunneries and retreat centers around the world. All from one person grew out of one person’s idea and their their dedication to helping others. I want you to understand if if there is something you truly want to know, then you truly want to listen to your own wisdom.
You know, meditation is learning how to listen with your own wisdom so that you can see. I think why meditation is amazingly important is that somehow our unconscious world is much bigger. It is huge, universe, and we don’t understand that one. Meditation allows this world to be alight and knowable, understandable. That is why it is important.
Normally, we are totally robbed by the egotistic conventional mind, not allowing the fundamental mind to be functioning. That is why one should have confidence, truly, not only in a sort of fantasy ambitious way. To some extent, all of us have some experience already. This has to be noticed to digest into the wisdom, rather than neglecting and putting away in the darkness, shadow. Through this experience, by knowing this experience, its confidence in one’s spiritual journey.
So the meditation demonstrates how your concepts make you neurotic. Meditation Meditation is a teacher or a guru. Don’t think the guru is somewhere outside yourself. You are the guru. You are the wisdom.
To liberate yourself, that is what Buddha says. I think Westerners want sometimes too much to see the outside guru and not seeing the inner guru. Sometimes that also becomes concept, too concrete, and therefore becomes a problem. Lama Yeshe had quite his own unique use of the English language, which was quite often very poetic. I thought.
You know, the you know, if trying to, again, perhaps look at our meditation in terms of of in terms of our attitude, about a process of learning about ourselves, a process of experiencing other versions about ourselves, a process of contact, perhaps our own innate wisdom, of giving ourselves a chance to rest, of giving up the struggle, contacting some inner dimension of being which is which goes unnoticed in the the busyness of our life. And I think I know this being with yourself, And and temporarily, at least, giving up this habitual struggle, this ambition, this competitiveness, this acquisitiveness, this self surveillance, you know, that we normally bring to all our various activities. You know, just allowing yourself to be with yourself, befriending yourself, getting to know yourself is a very valuable experience in itself. It doesn’t have to go anywhere beyond that. The creative moment, the creative moment of being with yourself.
You know? All that we know in terms of our intellect, all that we know in terms of, you know, our our egotistical point of view isn’t all that we are, isn’t all that we’re experiencing, isn’t all that that are the that isn’t all that encompasses all the various processes which are operating every moment of our life. We we we we confine ourselves to as it were an island, and that’s how we think we are. But there’s a there’s a vast world of out there in the in the world of psyche, the ocean of psyche beyond what we presently conceive of ourselves to be. And perhaps meditation in one way is simply allowing ourselves to explore that vast ocean to be part of that vast ocean and not to control it, but just to begin to know it and to accustom ourselves.
So I’m gonna I’m gonna stop there. I want to we’re gonna meditate. Okay? Would you like to stand up for a moment, then we’ll sit? So if you like to sit and make yourself comfortable.
Anyway, I’m gonna talk more about the actual technique some more of the techniques of meditation. But there’s not enough time. I’ve talked about in terms of mindfulness of breathing, which we’ll practice using techniques of counting the breaths, just one through five, one through six, one through seven, etcetera, but also noting. And I think it’s quite useful to note. You know, people talk about, oh, letting go.
Letting letting go. Letting go of thought. Letting go of emotion. I’m not quite sure what that means, but if I were to be able to comment on it, that how can we let go? Know, we and then thoughts will arise.
Emotions will arise. Feelings will arise. The way that if we can take a position of equanimity toward them, you know, we’re neither indulging in them nor repressing them. And to repress a to repress a thought requires another thought, and that requires another thought to repress that thought. In the in the end, our our mind is only agitated more.
And, of course, if we indulge in our thoughts in a in the various scenarios and that come up in our mind, face fantasies, and of course we’re lost. But if we can simply create the space between ourselves and the thoughts, thoughts are simply phenomena of the mind. They are the objects of mental consciousness. They arise, they abide, and they will cease for themselves. Like all products, are impermanent if we neither indulge in them nor repress them.
And the way that we can do this, the technique, a little trick that we can make use of is simply to note them. Just to note them thinking. Good thought, bad thought doesn’t make any difference. It’s only a thought. We’re not concerned about the content.
Thinking. Thinking. Come back to the breath. This is the way that we can maintain some kind of poise, some kind of neutral position, an observership with respect to all of this this stuff, this constant agitation of our mind. Right?
Now we have to admit that a great deal of our thinking is is pathological. It’s unproductive. It’s probably unhealthy in a way. And if we want to use our mind, fine. Then use your intellect.
Use your thinking faculty. Use it efficient efficiently and effectively. But if but many times, it’s not it’s not appropriate. It’s not what’s needed. But we can’t turn the machine off.
It seems to be started, and it’s going on automatic. We seem to be it’s controlling us. We’re out of control, it would appear. If we can simply allow the mind to be, allow the thoughts to cease of themselves, the feelings, the emotions to cease of themselves, which they will, you know, just like this muddy pond, you see.
The mud will settle out of itself and because of the the actual nature of the water is crystal clear and pure. It’s simply it’s simply clouded by the agitation of the water. If we can simply allow it to be, it will clear itself. And likewise with our mind, simply think simply noting, thinking, thinking, feeling, anger, anger. Whatever the whatever the distraction distraction might be.
If it’s a sound, you know, dog’s barking, hearing. Maybe it’s an internal. Maybe it’s pain. Pain. Pain.
Pain. Hearing. Pain. Come back to the breath. Again and again, just coming back to the breath.
That’s that’s all you know, nothing more. There’s nothing no. For the next ten minute you know, I realize many of you live live busy lives. You have many demands made over you. You have lots of responsibility.
And I’m saying for the next ten minutes.