Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a striking image: the eight worldly dharmas — chasing pleasure, avoiding pain — as the perimeter walls of a prison we have built and grown nostalgic for. He argues genuine spiritual life begins when those priorities yield to a willingness to endure whatever helps growth, illustrated by a mind-training prayer willing to request illness or death if that serves awakening. After a compassion meditation extending goodwill equally to loved ones, acquaintances, and strangers, the talk turns to emptiness and selflessness. Gendun walks through the first of four analytical steps — forming a clear picture of the inherently existent “I” before searching for and not finding it — using a rope mistaken for a snake to show that without a precise target, the analysis cannot succeed.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 HMA 1997 10 24.mp3
UUID: 77f1b118-bfba-4338-a1f7-490fae2ec4e3
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-10-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~6,181
Very much determine our choices that we make in our lives. There are others. You know, this is just, I think, an abbreviated category You know, there’s the pursuit of security, the avoidance of insecurity, the the pursuit of success, the avoidance of failure. You know, these are the rules of how to be a model prisoner within cyclic existence. If your choices are driven by these eight principles, then you are a slave.
You aren’t free. And moreover, you’re going to keep you’re going to remain a slave And these these eight patterns, these eight principles by which we determine our conduct, our choices are very much like the like the boundary walls, the perimeter of our prison that we’ve created for ourselves, that we’ve constructed for ourselves. And they limit our freedom. They limit our choices. We never take risks.
We never take chances. We never are willing to involve ourselves in what might be a legitimate suffering if we’re constantly preoccupied with only pleasure and at all costs avoiding pain. There’s a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever lived, who have ever been born on the earth, that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try get comfortable. You can see this even in insects and animals and birds. All of us are the same.
A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet. To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms. To lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what it is and what the what this world is, how we tick and how the world ticks, how the whole thing just is. If we’re committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain, we’re going to run. We will never know what’s beyond that particular barrier or that wall or that fearful thing.
So these eight worldly dharmas or these these eight principles by which most of us live our lives become a tremendous limiting factor in our lives. The unknown is never explored. We never go beyond outside of the familiar, what we’re accustomed to. And then we live in these prison cells which we have a tremendous nostalgia for and all of the the prison routine which we which has become so familiar to ourselves. And however miserable it might be, it’s at least it’s home.
And the we’re not willing to there’s no thought to liberate ourselves even though it might be dissatisfactory by its very nature. So I think it’s good to acknowledge or to get in touch or to become aware of what our priorities actually are, which are determining the way we live our life, which are determining most of our thinking and the choices that we make. And understanding them perhaps begin to intervene, to begin to not allow them to have as much control over yourself because where are those standards, those principles by which you making those choices taking you? You know these are the operational principles of our life and perhaps they aren’t working. You know, the compulsion to always be comfortable at all costs means that we aren’t willing to involve ourselves in the difficult, to take risks and chance, to involve ourselves in constructive, suffering which, you know, going beyond old patterns might necessarily involve, perhaps necessarily involves.
And so things remain pretty much the same. So you know, the the priority we have, this is what this initial adjusting of our motivation is all about, to reprioritize the principles by which we would like to lead our life. You know there is a prayer. It’s in the it comes from the a genre or a category of Buddhist teachings which is called mind training. And it’s a prayer for growth.
And it’s a prayer to whatever is going to help me on my spiritual journey, that’s what I want. Whether it’s pleasurable or painful, that’s what I want as long as it’s going to help me on my journey. Because in the end, that’s the only thing that we can really trust in. If it’s better for me to be ill, I pray for the blessing of illness. If it’s better for me to recover, I pray for the pray for the blessing of recovery.
If it’s better for me to die, I pray for the blessing of death. And so, you know, it’s a prayer for growth beyond all of ego’s patterns, with its preoccupations, with all of its hopes and fears, I pray for whatever will help me to grow, to become this happy, healthy, loving, sane human being that I am struggling to become, that’s become a priority in my life. You know, I think this is this is maybe the real beginning of spiritual life when one goes beyond these eight worldly dharmas as the priorities of your life and begin to look to other values, other standards by which to determine what it is that you want and what what you’re willing to pursue. You know, so we we we call this you know, we we take as a priority Buddha. We set that as a priority in our life.
That means it’s it’s important to us and you’re willing to pursue that end even if it involves risk, insecurity, legitimate suffering, some kind of pain, displeasure, discomfort, which it will. You’re willing to do that because this is a priority in your life. It’s important to you. So, you know, the inner focus becomes Buddhahood. I think this is for us to have that sense of clarity about where it is we want to go.
So we’re we’re just not continually, you know, tossed here and there by our fear of pain, our attachment to pleasure. You know, so we begin to take control of our life. We begin we begin to kind of make a commitment. And we try to We have to do something if Buddha is a priority in our life. It’s it’s not enough that it simply be a sincere wish.
We have to actually make some kind of real choices and take some kind of action. We have to do something. And that is our practice, the means by which we actualize, that we live up to these priorities that we’ve set for ourselves. That is the Dharma. And making a commitment to the the spiritual community, those who are going to assist us and whom we assist in turn.
And trying to raise the level of our motivation, the why behind it all, and including within, the scope of our priorities others, you know, some someone else besides our solitary self, as the reason behind what it is that we’re doing. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddhahood by which we seek to actualize by means of the Dharma within the spiritual context of within the social context of the spiritual community. And as best we can with in our own limited and halting fashion, raising the level of our motivation, the why behind this process, this commitment that we are involving ourselves in to include an ever widening circle of others. And even if only one other person, in my meditation or discussion here this evening, if I can just develop myself that much more, perhaps become a little more peaceful, a little more have a little greater understanding about the nature of who I am, a little bit more clarity around the nature of my problems, and therefore be able to understand others that much more and be able to be of that much more benefit for them, then that’s worthwhile. You know, that’s a significant part of the spiritual path.
It’s not insignificant. It’s not to be discounted or dismissed. Without those kinds of small steps, we’ll never get anywhere. 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. 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 offering that is 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 the wheel of dharma for living beings. I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others to the great awakening. So in adjusting our motivation, developing our love and compassion, perhaps we can expand the object toward whom we’re trying to develop these attitudes, these feelings. See if we can work with these three types of individuals, someone that you’re very close to, that you care a great deal about, someone who is outside of that immediate circle of significant people in your life but still you have a good relationship with them, that you find them as very attractive people, very pleasant people.
And then thirdly, someone who you feel indifference towards, just neutral. They’re neither particularly attractive nor unattractive. You have no particular significant with them. So in a sense that there is these three categories of people, normally we would have different feelings for each each of them. But we’re going to try to take them as our object and in our imagination try to see if we can arouse these feelings of love and compassion directed toward these three categories of people taken together as a group.
Essentially they are exactly alike. And from the point of view of wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer, there is no difference. From their side there is no difference whatsoever. We make discriminations on one basis or another but more closer to the reality of the situation is that they are all equal. And so they are all equally deserving of our love and compassion.
Though we don’t normally operate that way, normally our our feelings of love and compassion are mixed with attachment or to some degree or other. But maybe we can begin to kind of like removing the the wheat from the the the chaff. Like when you in India, when they throw it up in the wind and the wind blows the chaff away and you’re left with just the rice, for example. They keep the rice. And pretty soon, they’re just they’re left with just rice.
All the the chaff has been blown away by the wind. Likewise, maybe we can be left with nothing but compassion and love for these people, divorced of, you know, of the usual motions of attachment or aversion or indifference that we that they may be mixed with. And then we can just practice the nine round breathing meditation and then mindfulness of breathing for some time. So if you take a comfortable posture assumptions is that our experience is reliable, that most of the time the way we see things is the way they really are. We subscribe to a philosophic tradition without knowing that we are doing any such thing called naive realism, which says that our perceptions is in general a direct picture of the way things are.
We are brought up to take our experiences for granted, so that when we feel that things are unpleasant or problematic, we then have to act, to do something extra to try to get them right. We try to use the computer program to correct its own faults. We are not inclined to inquire into how we came to construe the situation in that way or whether there might be alternative points of view we could adopt from which things might look completely different. Part of our common sense is to treat perception perception as unproblematic and therefore of not much interest in itself.
And obviously there are many different levels we can work with our problems on. For most it’s a matter of seeing the problems external to themselves. If I only had the right partner, if I only had the right job, enough money, the right house, the right car, some material possession one way or another, if I was only more beautiful, if I only had a better education, another degree. I think then perhaps we become a little more sophisticated. Well, maybe I have to begin to change my attitudes.
You know, if I were a little more loving, little less angry, or a little more tolerant, little less impatient, maybe my life would go a little bit easier. Things would be less little less problematic. But it’s very rare, and I think this is one of the geniuses of the Buddha, that he took the the nature of our problem all the way down to the level of perception. And he said, take let’s take a look at this. Even down to the the notion of are taken for granted, notion of or take it for granted, the notion of I, the self, or this world about us, just at that at the most primal level.
You know, there’s no more basic level that we can go to than to the level of our own perception that somehow at the very initial interaction with the world, there’s already the seed of a problem. There’s already the the the source of our suffering is already there. And I I don’t think any of us would ever I mean, it really takes a real genius to see something that that’s that subtle and that hidden from you know, to take to, you know, people talk about these days and one of the buzz words is deconstructionism. You know, the to to try to see through taken for granted truths. Well, the Buddha was the ultimate deconstructionist, wasn’t he?
You know, this world about us which we hold to truly exist, he deconstructed and said it’s not. So this is the level we’re trying to work at in awakening our minds. At the very level of perception, there’s something already mistaken at even in terms of the way things appear to us in our everyday taken for granted reality in the world we conceive of to be out there. There’s already the the seeds of our problem have been sown and which manifests in the problematic way of life in a dysfunctional approach to living and suffering. So we’ve been working with this.
We’re working at the at the level of the Prāsaṇgika-Madhyamaka school. And one of the method that we’re going to actually use in analyzing and coming to an understanding. And, you know, it’s not a matter of coming to some profound, earth shaking, dramatic turning about in the very depth of your mind. It probably won’t happen. Or maybe I’m just projecting my own hang ups on you.
Maybe it will happen for you. It’s never happened for me. I think there is a gradual shift, almost imperceptible perhaps, but over time there is a gradual accustoming one’s sense of I and the world and just the things aren’t quite as solid and out there as we once held them to be. And I think you become things become a little more fluid, a little more open. We become a little a little less fixed in our in our ideas and opinions.
The things are more open to interpretation and we have we make greater allowances for people having different perspectives and viewpoints on the same subject and understanding that it’s that it’s just very much a point of view. That things out out out aren’t out there fixed and solid in in existing in and of themselves, but are very much a a rise in dependence upon labeling, interpretation. Interpretation. You know, this to some sense, is in a very practical way. We’re talking about the world is interpreted the way it is.
And we each have general rules of interpretation which which bring about a common shared reality, but within that common shared reality, we have our very unique and idiosyncratic interpretations which we have to make allowances for because there’s simply simply no objective world out there which we there’s no substratum by which we can measure. There’s no standard where we can compare right and wrong and true and truth and falsity. It’s only in certain contexts in relative ways, nothing absolute. So then I think your mind becomes a little more fluid and open, a little less this velcro mind. Some of the the hooks get kinda worn down or something.
So we’re working with a method of analysis. Wisdom is an analytic consciousness. It’s it tries to penetrate beneath the surface of things to see things in in a deeper a deeper way. And we have to we are trying to make use of a very methodical means of analysis, you know, really systematic. We’re trying to undercut, undermine a misconception.
You know, we conceptions are our thoughts, patterns of mind which make use of symbols and language and which make use of models. And some of these are characterized by distorting. They aren’t they don’t act accurately depict reality. They don’t they’re not accurate representations of the world. If you base your life on those misrepresentations, those inaccurate representations of the world, Somehow there’s going to be your actions are going to be inappropriate.
There’s going to be some kind of discrepancy. There’ll be some kind of dissonance, some kind of conflict. Your your actions won’t quite fit right. This disagreement between our actions, the the way that we view the world and the way the world world is in its actual nature is experienced as tension, as disharmony, ultimately as in the level of suffering. We have no choice in the matter.
We have to the world is the way it is regardless of our ideals about it. And if we can’t make up a world, I guess we could try. I mean, some people do. That’s what we call psychosis, don’t But it’s not a very satisfying perhaps way of life. And at best, even that is only temporary escape.
It’s not a it’s not a real solution to the problem of suffering. Kind of a mistaken attempt. But people do it because they for probably good reasons nonetheless. But it’s perhaps misguided in terms of what it actually accomplishes. So this systematic procedure of how we’re going to perform this analysis to come into this understanding, to I try to undermine ignorance.
We have to, begin so that it no longer has the degree of influence over our perceptual process, the way we think and view the world. It it no you know, it’s still going to affect us slightly, then less and less and less. So we have to undercut it. We have to bring it into question and then begin to undermine it. It’s like undermining in in a in a kind of a perverse sense, undermining some, like, some some kind of faith.
You know, they say don’t don’t undermine my faith in whatever, you know, by calling into question what it’s based upon. It’s like we’re trying to undermine ignorance by calling into question what it’s based upon, its object, what it believes to be true. So there’s a a very systematic we’re going to work with this in a very systematic fashion. It’s quite necessary. So this is called the four essentials or the four point analysis or sometimes the four keys.
Whatever we call it, there’s four. There’s four points. The essential of determining the object of negation, the essential of determining the pervasion, the essential of determining the lack of being the same, and the essential of determining the lack of being different. So we’re we’re going to work these are the actual methods that we’re going to work with. You can’t the reason that this is instead of you make use of this method, you can’t go wrong.
There are lots of ways we can go wrong. Obviously, when we’re dealing with something as subtle as mistakes at the very perceptual level, we can fall into all kinds we can go off on the tangents which won’t be of any use to ourselves, which won’t help us to solve our problems. We won’t come to a correct understanding in the end of emptiness. It’s said that by making use of this method we it’s almost as it were foolproof. We’ll come to a correct understanding.
So the first of these four essentials, the essential of ascertaining the object negation. The object to be refuted. Object of negation, object to be refuted. Same meaning. To negate means to to do away with, to eliminate, to destroy, that kind of sense about it.
This is the most difficult and the most important. If you get this one right and it’s a matter of developing a sense of it over time, developing a concept, a picture, a model of what the object of negation is in your mind over time, playing with the idea, working with it, thinking about it, reflecting upon it. Then the rest is easy. The rest of the three points are just a matter of a process of following through reasoning and analysis and observation. We have to know what it is we’re looking for.
We have to be we have to it’s at this stage that we get a clear picture of the way that inherently existent self or I appears. We we we’re saying that due to the that that there appears an inherently existent self. And we’re gonna use lots of words to try to get at what this means because at this point, it probably doesn’t mean much for us, inherently existent self or intrinsically existent self or self defining self or objectively existent self or self existing from its own side. All of these different terms, we have to try to get a sense of what they’re getting at. What is that develop a mental image, a picture for ourselves, the way that this such a self would appear, the the the inherently existent self or I, self and I synonymous, no different in in in our usage here, does not exist, but its appearance does.
We have a mental image of it. Just like, you know, when there was a rope in the grass and we saw a snake. The snake doesn’t exist, but the appearance of the snake exists. We have a mental image of a snake which is appearing to us. The appearance of the snake exists.
The snake doesn’t exist, but the appearance of the snake exists. Likewise, the inherently existent I, the objectively existent I, the independently existent I does not exist. If it existed, we can’t negate it. We can’t do away with it because it exists. But its appearance exists.
Its appearance exists. And moreover, ignorance accepts that appearance as being true. It appears, and ignorance says, ah, yes, and that’s the way it exists. And we so we have to begin to undermine. We have a new cat here at Buddha House as you’re hearing.
We have so ignorance is it’s like the snake. Wow. Must be sound like you’re fighting over the territory. That arises out of this strong sense of grasping for a truly existent self of cats and mine, my territory. You’re in my territory.
Get out of my territory. You know, it’s just like when the snake appears and we accede to that appearance as if it’s not just an appearance, we think it’s a real snake. It’s not just an appearance. We don’t think, oh, there’s the appearance of a snake. We think snake, as if that were true, that appearance were in fact a snake.
But we have to begin to and there’s a belief that holds that. And from that belief, we we generate fear. We generate aversion. We have to but we what we would do is begin analysis and begin to undermine that belief that though it’s still appearing to ourselves, we begin to understand, well, maybe it’s not really a snake after all. Maybe it just looks like a snake.
You know? We begin to introduce some kind of doubt as to the as to the validity of that appearance. That’s what we’re beginning to do. Even just that doubt is tremendously powerful. So we’re trying to undermine a belief in a particular type of self.
The first thing that in this process of, in in this process of undermining ignorance, the first thing and the most important thing is to find out what how does this eye appear? What does it look like? What image is arising in my mind? What model am I using? You know, I said, minds are model builders.
It’s quite it’s quite useful to think about the eye in terms of representation of the I. But this gives us a chance to make predictions, to talk and to communicate, to manipulate, to to gain some kind of control using models and representations of the world, to think about the world. But here we’re using a model which is has some kind of which is a model, number one. And moreover, it is has a characteristic which is mistaken, which the in fact, the actual eye does not possess. That is to say, for example, independent existence or inherent existence.
And that simple little flaw introduces an element which eventuates in cyclic existence, in suffering. So the first step is to gain a picture of what the I looks like and to ignorance, the inherently existent eye. So one of the keys to understanding emptiness, and here by emptiness, I mean an absence, a lack of, We should always ask when we hear the word empty, empty of what? That’s what the word means. It doesn’t mean nothingness.
It means lacking something. What what is lacking? What is absent? A lack of an independently existent way of existing, of a inherent way of existing, of true existence. All of these various terms.
The term selflessness, same meaning, absence, lack of, selflessness, same idea. There is a lack or an absence of a particular type of self, an independently existent self, a self which exists independent of mind and body, for example, independent of its causes and conditions, in dependence upon the perceptual process, language, labeling, conceptuality, independent of all that, that there is lack of that, that there is an absence of that, such a type of self. That’s what we mean by selflessness, the quality of an absence of such a type of self, which we want to understand. So the key one of the keys to understanding emptiness is unfindability upon analysis. Unfindability means you don’t find it when you look for it.
If we’re really going to search for something, the prerequisite is we have to know what it is that we’re looking for. The clearer we know what we’re looking for, the greater our conviction in its nonexistence when we don’t find it. We’re not, you know, we’re not gonna find what we’re looking for, but we this simply that is not gonna undermine ignorance. We have to there is something that ignorance is holding to exist. We have to find out what that something looks like.
We’re going to search for it. And then when and when we don’t find it, we’re going to begin to undermine ignorance’s grasping to it as existing. Wisdom will begin to undermine the conviction in its existence, that belief that this type of I exists. Because we know what we’re looking for, we look for it, we don’t find it, how can we continue in the same manner to hold that it does exist when we keep invalidating that belief continually again and again. We begin to wear down that ignorance’s power, its ability to maintain itself.
If this and this works for any type of consciousness. Consciousness arises in dependence upon their object. If we negate their object, we negate the consciousness. If we negate the object of ignorance, if we establish that it doesn’t exist, we negate the consciousness which is grasping to that object. It only arises in dependence upon that object or its belief in the existence of that object.
If we can demonstrate that that object in fact doesn’t exist, then we negate its existence and its belief in that existence, and we negate whatever the conscious might be, your ignorance. The way that we eliminate ignorance from the mind is by negating if the object to which it’s grasping to, it’s holding to. Therefore, we have to be able to if we’re going to negate that object, we have to know what it looks like very clearly, very accurately. There’s a there’s a verse from book, the Bodhisattva’s way of life, guide to the Bodhisattva’s way of life, where he says, without contacting the imagined existence, its nonexistence is not apprehended. Without contacting the imagined existence.
We imagine. We hallucinate, if you like, something to exist. Without knowing what that imagined existent is or that hallucinated existence is, its nonexistence is never understood. I mean, you you know, what what it is the imagined existence, we imagine some like like we imagine a snake exists Without knowing what it what it is that you’re imagining to exist, then we’re never going to understand its nonexistence. So if if we don’t clearly and this is we we have to emphasize this because this is the most important point and the most difficult point.
If we don’t clearly identify the self or the I, then analysis cannot proceed for the reason that there is either no actual object being searched for, we’re just going through the motions and looking around, maybe something will catch your eye along the way, or because we we we have such a vague and blurry image of it that its non its non findability does not possess the strength of conviction to overcome our deeply ingrained belief in its existence. We have to come we have to think, I know what I’m looking for. I know where if it exists, where it must be. We we go through an extremely detailed methodic methodological methodical search. We don’t find it.
That the force of that non finding has tremendous power. I know what I was looking for. I looked in the right place. If it exists, I I should have found it. I didn’t find it.
It doesn’t exist. You know, the mind becomes convinced through the procedure, through the methodology. Some kind of a new position begins to dawn. It has you know, this this understand this unfindability has some force on the mind, begins to undermine ignorance. So we’re trying to to bring to conscious awareness a presently unconsciously held model or mental image of a type of self which most of us most of our thinking and emotional life is based upon, and which moreover is the cause of all of our suffering.
Now as I said, we are model builders. I I say, for example, I’m speaking to you. I’m going you know, today I went to the city. I’m I’m using models of an I. That’s not necessarily problematic.
That’s useful. But it can become problematic when we begin if if the characteristics of that eye, that image, that model I’m making use of, that representation has some kind of flaw, has the flaw in this case of being held to inherently exist or truly exist, to independently exist. Whenever there’s a strong sense of I, what an emotional I arises, there will arise a strong sense of mine. And out of this sense of I and mine arises not-I, not-mine, other. And there will arise conflict.
There will arise attachment and aversion, in dependence upon this strongly held sense of I, emotional I. So what we we have to understand that, you know, just like in the you know, I talked about mental maps that, you know, by which we can understand the world. We make use of these mental maps, these models. And I talked about how but the the map is not the territory. But moreover, some maps do not refer to anything in reality, like Tolkien’s world, of the books that he wrote about the Lord of the Rings, for example, with all these detailed maps about the world, that particular world.
That world doesn’t refer to those maps don’t refer to anything in reality. Likewise, some of the maps we make are quite useful. They refer to the real world, and we can navigate our life. We can understand how to get along with the world very well using those maps because they are an accurate reflection of the world. Other maps are mistaken in some fashion.
They don’t refer they refer to they mistake they refer to in mistaken ways to the world and therefore we act inappropriately if we base our interaction in dependence upon them, or in some cases they don’t have any reference in reality at all. So we’re going to we’re trying to set a target for ourselves and we’re going to shoot the arrow of our our reason analysis. So the analysis is only effective to whatever degree we are able to identify within our own experience this appearance, this model that is created out of a network of wrong beliefs. We have a model we have correct models of selves. We have mistaken, we have wrong models of self.
Okay. By that, I mean, we’re not trying to identify what we call the empirical or the conventionally existent self, you know, the everyday self, the everyday eye. Sometimes it’s happy, sometimes it’s unhappy, that wakes up in the morning, struggles off to work, or gets gets busy around the house, goes through its daily activities, play you know, fixes dinner, eats, plays with the kids, watches a bit of television, goes to bed tired. You know, that eye is not a problem. It may it might seem that way, but that’s that’s the empirically existent I, the conventionally existent I.
You know, I’m speaking to you, you’re writing notes, you know, perhaps you’re listening to me, maybe you’re not. But anyway, that I, the I that eats and watch television, does all these various activities, is not the problem. And moreover, this I cannot be negated. That self cannot be negated because it exists. So we’re we’re not trying to to exist to negate or refute or destroy something that exists.
We can’t do that. What what appears to exist and in reality does exist will, upon analysis, become more apparent, will become more and more obvious to ourselves. This is like the nature of truth. The more you the closer you approach it, the more obvious, the more apparent it becomes to yourself. On the other hand, that which is that which appears to exist but in reality doesn’t, when you analyze it, when you when you approach it closer and closer, it becomes less and less apparent, less and less obvious until it disappears altogether.
Just like in the case of the rope and the snake. There’s a snake appearing to you. If you analyze, if you inspect the object which appears to be a snake, it will become less and less apparent that it is a snake, more and more obvious that it isn’t a snake until it disappears altogether and you see through that appearance and you see it’s in fact a rope. So in the essential this first essential of ascertaining the the or determining the object of negation, we’re trying to identify an I or a self which we wrongly presume to exist, which and the emotional I, which all of our emotional life is is is built is built around, is based upon in one way or another. And then we’re going to proceed to negate or refute it just as in the