Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with the image of a child raised in an abusive home who accepts harm as normal — because no other life is imaginable — Ven Jampa Gendun uses this to illuminate the third level of suffering: all-pervasive conditionality, the existential vulnerability we are too habituated to notice. This 42-minute session begins with a brief meditation on the “noting” technique, silently labeling thoughts as “thinking” to observe them without suppression or indulgence. The main teaching then works through impermanence as the second mark of conditioned existence, distinguishing three forms: the changeability of life stages from birth to death, the inevitability of separation, and moment-by-moment disintegration illustrated through a candle flame and an ocean wave. He closes by reframing the central problem: impermanence itself is not the obstacle — our grasping at permanence is.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 18 HMA 1996 12 11.mp3
UUID: 27940df4-1a0d-49d9-9931-6ef90ff36dac
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-12-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.2 minutes
Words: ~6,142
You know, we we can we can they are impermanent. They arise and they abide and they will cease of themselves. We’re going to talk about that tonight in terms of impermanence. If if we can take a position of observership simply by maintaining an awareness, we without either indulging in, that is being being lost in the scenario, the story, the thought, the feeling, or trying to repress. You know, in order to repress, that requires more thought, and it becomes an infinite regression.
We we have to have we have to use more thought. You know, the very energy that we expend to to repress thinking rebounds back at us and our mind becomes more and more agitated. But if we can simply begin to watch thought without either with without either indulging in it or repressing it, the thought will begin to cease to themselves. We can begin to identify the underlying nature of the mind itself, you know, beyond the images, beyond the thoughts, that there’s a medium in which all this is occurring, And beginning simply and we can do this by maintaining the observership, and the way to do that, the way to cease identifying with the content of the mind is by is by maintaining awareness. And this can be done most effectively.
One technique that we can use is noting. It helps you to create that space so you no longer identify. It it it reminds you that this is merely an object of the mind. It’s not who I am. That it is only a thought and I am not that thought.
It is an object of my mind. So thinking or is only a feeling. Feeling. But don’t discriminate because that would that would tend to provoke the conceptualizing processes. So we want to keep our our noting down to a minimal, a minimum, you know, not thinking about, oh, this is a good thought, future thought, past thought, good feeling, bad feeling, none.
Just think think, just use that one, you know, it’s very simple minded, but it’s it’s enough. Think, Thinking. Try to keep going You know, your mind’s going through some noise outside. That’s the focus of awareness, as in in the case of the breath, is now the mental consciousness. Thinking.
Thinking. Thinking. If you get confused if you get confused, come back to the breath. You know, sometimes you you you can’t figure out what am I doing, you know, what and you get caught up in that thought. You know, it’s very inter yeah, okay.
You know, it’s only a thought. Generally, you know, there’s only we take our thoughts very seriously because we take ourselves very serious or solemnly, I guess. And I guess it’s good to take yourself seriously. But, you know, we we if you can, in this practice, you know, even the thought, oh, I want to quit meditating, will come up. Good thought.
It’s only a thought. sinking. Like, you know, it’s interesting. Or I want to stop. sinking.
sinking. sinking boring sinking, you know, feeling good sinking. We don’t have to I think you can develop the ability not to have to react to every thought that comes up in your mind. You can begin to begin you know, it’s not that we don’t thought is very useful by all means, but a great deal of our thinking is pathological. It’s of no use, it’s counterproductive.
And perhaps we can begin to choose which thoughts we’re going to follow and develop, and those we’re simply going to let go of in a way that we can you know, we don’t have to identify with every thought that comes up. We don’t have we get hooked onto like, sometimes I use I’ve used this image of a you know, when I when I was a kid in the States, sitting along the railroad tracks, and and the the the various boxcars would be, you know, different there were many different train companies in the United States, and and different it’s different states, you know, you’d have one boxcar that, you know, ride the ride the Redding Railroad or something like that, ride the B and O, Baltimore in Ohio, you know, the Pennsylvania, and all these different trains. And so you’d be you’d be, you know, checking out where all these boxcars were coming from all the various states, and then the passenger trains go by, you know, and just watching the train go by, you’re watching the train go by, and watching the train. And I want you to find yourself on the train watching the countryside go by.
You know, you’re you’ve gotten on the train as it were, and now this whole trip is unfolding, the scenarios is developing and you find yourself in some kind of story, maybe in a place where you’d only want to be in terms of you of where you’re at in your mind. So, you know, we can let the train just simply go by, you know, thinking thinking without having to get on the train and be taken away against our better judgment. So thinking, thinking. Okay? So let’s try that.
So take a firm, comfortable posture. So we’re looking we’re almost finished with the means of developing a will a will to awaken. Now we’re at the nature of a a way of life which is under the influence of ignorance, karma, It’s like taking existence. And that such an approach to life is character characterized by three marks: suffering, impermanence, and selflessness. And we’re looking at suffering, trying to see the truth, the reality, I guess, the actual nature of our experience, and I’m trying to say, does this accord with what I’m actually going through?
It’s it’s being pointed out to us, we have to evaluate for ourselves whether this is corresponds to our own experience in some way. So, you know, suffering. And within terms of suffering, we’re looking at three levels of suffering. The suffering of of pain and misery, mental and physical suffering, the the feelings of pain that we go through almost every day of our lives, or or in fact do go through every day of our lives. You know, that describes our actual experience of suffering in terms of feeling, and the level of the suffering of alteration.
This is the trying to describe the psychological quality of even our happy experiences, that they are in fact not real happiness, they’re not complete happiness, all that we might want in terms of happiness, that that they too are flawed in some way. And they are very much all our happiness is in are very much bound up in the experience of suffering, that they’re viewed relative to suffering, that they’re inextricably bound up in suffering, therefore aren’t complete happiness, all all that we might want in terms of happiness in our life. Now we’re going to look at the third level of these these three levels of suffering. The suffering of the suffering of universal conditionality, sometimes called the all pervasive suffering. And this, you know, this is trying to describe even our experiences of of neutral feelings, and trying to gain some perspective on the actual quality of our existence.
And they they Even when we’re not experiencing when we’re when we’re experiencing neither pleasure nor displeasure, still there’s a dissatisfactory quality to our existence. That somehow it’s still flawed, it’s still problematic. And they’re trying to gain their perspective that and it makes it quite difficult to begin to begin to appreciate it, that we are vulnerable creatures, that we are susceptible to forces beyond our control. You know, we are like an infant at the mercy of those about it. You know, know, that to to the vicissitudes of life, the contingencies of life, the vagaries of life.
I was thinking of an image of, you know, like a young child who is in an abusive home situation. What is what can they do? You know, they for them, the abuse is normal, is normality. They know no other way of life. It might be physical abuse, emotional abuse, perhaps even sexual.
But they don’t take it as as being unusual in any way, except they’re still being hurt. They’re still experiencing the wounds and will have to grow up with the scars of what they’re going through. But it’s that’s their normality. They can’t there’s there’s no thought of another alternative. Or even if there was, you know, how how to actually make it workable, you know, how to extricate oneself in this situation.
So, you know, we are we take abuse as normality. You know, that’s our situation, that we are being abused, and we don’t even know it. We aren’t even aware of it. And this is this is the subtlety which I think Buddhism is trying to point after us. You know, there was a Previously when we talked about death, there was a quote about a grandmother was speaking to her granddaughter.
The little girl’s name was Kezia. They were talking about dying. I just want to repeat just a few lines of that quotation. So Kezia, the little girl, was talking her grandmother. Does everyone does everybody have to die?
Everybody. Me? Kesya sounded fearfully incredulous. Someday, my darling. But grandma, Kesya has waved her left leg and waggled the toes.
They felt sandy. What if I won’t or not ask Kezia? She said sadly. And no one asks us if we want to die or not. And no one asks us if we want our parents to die or not or our children to die.
And no one asks us if we want our if we want to have an accident, or if we want to to to to have cancer, or if or if we want to watch all our possessions burn up in a fire. No one asks us if if we want our our partner, our lover to stop loving us or not. No one asks us if we want to lose our job or not. If if we want no one asks us if we want it to rain if it we want it to rain continually on our vacation, on our holiday or not, or if we want our car to break down or not. You know, we’re not asked.
No one asks us if we want to get angry, if we want to become attached, if we want to get jealous, or whether we’re just simply tired of it all or not. karma and afflictive emotions simply don’t ask. What it is that we want, where it is that we want to go with our life. We’re like winds, we’re like leaves blown around by the wind, or like know, the winds of karma or like waves or like, you know, some jetsam on the on the ocean tossed by the waves of afflictive emotions. That no one asks us what it is that we want.
And even when we find some moments of respite, you know, out of the wind, when there’s a law and the drama of our life, it’s just that. It’s just a moment of respite. Soon the wind is going to pick up again and will be carried off again. And we not quite know where. No one asks.
No chooses to suffer, but we do. Nobody chooses to be born, but we are. No one chooses to grow old, but we do. And no one chooses to become sick and to die, but in fact we do. You know, we like an exposed raw wound.
You know, it’s maybe it’s not painful in itself, but it’s always vulnerable to being brushed up against. Know? Have you and it’s like when you when you walk in a crowd and you have a a sore somewhere, you always have to be concerned that somebody’s not going to accidentally brush up against it and cause you pain. In other words, maybe just become some kind of infection from within ourselves. So this this governed this ignorance governed existence, karmically driven existence, is is described as if we carry a bundle of thorns on our back.
No matter where we go, what we do, we’re always being stuck, right, in one in some way or another. You know, the the we are aware of reality to the extent that our survival makes it necessary that much and no more. So in this regard, it’s said that that for us, this level of suffering, this suffering of universal conditionality is like taking a hair and putting it in the palm of your hand. You don’t even notice it’s there. But someone who begins to have an appreciation, you know, for the for the quality of this human dilemma, of of being at the mercy of forces over which we have no control, of being abused and not even being aware of it.
Someone who begins to appreciate that fact. It’s as if they take that same hair and put it in their eye, and they can’t stand it to be there any a moment longer. They’ll do anything to get rid of that hair out of their eye. They’ll do anything. They’ll even get rid of ignorance from their own mind.
Are they determined to do it? You know, the so this this the mark of suffering constituted of pain, alteration, and universal conditionality. You know, it’s not as if they can be mastered. You know, we can get the upper hand on them. Somehow somehow we can control them as if they were objects extraneous to who we are or they’re not like a tumor.
And this materialistic notion is somehow we can take a pill and shrink it, or we can have it surgically removed. But they’re in the very fabric of our life. Our life is not something other than these sufferings that we’ve just described. It’s only a change of life which can remove them, which can know, which by which they can be we can go beyond them. We can never master them.
We can only transcend them. You know, it’s not you know, we can’t they are our mind and the quality of our mind. So we have to change our mind. So, you know, the the the pain, alteration, universal conditionality, they have to be first to be recognized and confronted within our own experience as a necessary first step to transcending them. You know, to to actually to begin to disengage ourselves from this particular approach to life, to these particular patterns of mind, which bring about such a experience.
To, you know, to to actually develop the will to the will necessary to go beyond them, to actually get this hair out of our eye, which we can no longer stand. You know, developing that kind of determination that this will to awaken. You know, but but we try, you know, but we don’t do it. You know, we keep going back to the same methods which haven’t worked for ourselves in the past. Again, you know, we we we try and we try all our struggling, our sweating, all our trying, you know, to make the world over into our image of the way we think it should be, you know, demanding of the of the world that it that it conform to our hopes, that it that it accommodate all of our various fears in some way or another.
And all the while all the while, we’re denying our own truth, our own conscious about what our own actual experience is trying to tell ourselves. You know, if only, you know, we had a sense that only we could arrange things, all the desired elements of the world into some preconceived ideal, permanent, unchanging constellation of all the goodies of, you know, the right person, the right people, the right job, the right house, the right car, the right suburb, and in the right weather, if I could only arrange them in some perfect constellations, some preconceived order, and freeze them, and keep them that way, then I would be under I would I would I would be able to control my destiny. I’d be I’d be the master of my my life, the captain captain of my ship. And that’s the basic assumption that we’re working on. And we’re continually struggling to bring that about in fact, to create this perfect situation and freeze it in some way, to make it always so.
But in reality, all things are impermanent. You know, all things are in a constant process of change. What whatever it is, that too has to pass. This is the second mark of conditioned existence. Even if we were able to to perform this superhuman task of getting all the goodies about us in the most desirable constellation that we could imagine, The very nature of the situation is that the catch is, that all of this is impermanent.
It too is going to pass. Impermanence refers to the fact that there are no permanent things to be found anywhere in the universe, No permanent material objects, no permanent thoughts, ideals, or perceptions, no permanent laws of nature, and no permanent beliefs or systems belief. All without exception is changing. We see this wherever we look around us or inside our own minds. The weather changes, the trees and flowers change and decay, our loved ones are constantly changing, our our own bodies are changing, growing and decaying.
One day we may be happy with a good family, a group of friends, sensible political and religious views, and a job. The next day, one of our children becomes seriously ill. Our political views are shaken by a revelation of corruption. One of our friends turns out to be suing us. We discover that we have suddenly lost heart in an artistic activity that has brought us joy for twenty years, or do we develop a fear of flying that means we cannot keep our job?
These are the vagaries of life, we say. Yes, but the mark of impermanence points out that there is nothing other than the vagaries of life. The idea of changing is not even the best way of talking of impermanence because this implies that there are things and those things change. The mark of impermanence says that the universe should not be thought of as composed of things that change, rather the universe in all its parts should be thought of as processes of continual becoming and decaying. At a very deep level, we do not accept the mark of impermanence.
We surround ourselves with objects that we feel are permanent, and we become attached to them. We hold to certain beliefs that we regard with certainty as true and unchanging. We seek permanent laws of nature and for a final theory of matter or human personality. All this is an attempt to fix an ever changing universe as if we could take a snapshot of it at this moment, and it would always be like that. And the trying to overcome our misconception that we now harbor, our misconception of impermanency, that in fact all things are in constant flux, all things change, all things are impermanent.
Trying to educate ourselves to what is real so that we’re not taken by surprise, by impermanency, and decay, and loss, and that we’re not taken unaware. Everything is changing. Everything is continually coming into being and going out of being, coming into being and passing away. And it becoming something other than it was a few moments ago, a moment before. There’s simply nothing that we can hold on to.
There’s nothing that that can remain fixed forever, unchanging. You know, nothing that can endure. That’s the reality. That’s the nature that we have to become begin to relate with in a more appropriate fashion. You know, it’s not it’s not in our nature for things to remain.
Everything that we love, everything that we hold dear, everything that that we have worked so hard to attain, to obtain is is moment by moment slipping through our fingers like like like like grains of sand in some way. And the all of the all of us, everything about us is eventually going to be lost. It’s going to be lost forever, never to return again. Whether whether it’s, you know, simply something as simply as a pleasant sunny afternoon or something, you know, in a in a a strictly interwoven with our life like our partners, our children, our own bodies. Whatever, whichever, it’s going to be lost someday.
We’re going to have to let it go. The mark of impermanence. You know, first off, in terms of impermanence, there’s the impermanence of changeability. You know, that there is, for example, the many states that we pass through over the course of our life. You know, what we’re going to do is we’re going to begin to cite different forms of impermanence, of changeability, you know, to be to to get our mind used to what is in fact actually occurring, to to acquaint ourselves with what is actually going on, to to to overcome our conception, our our unthinking, the assumption that things are frozen, fixed, and that and relating to the world on those basis, and thereby experiencing disappointment and frustration and hurt and loss.
And there is the impermanence of changeability that there that there is, for example, you know, all the passing states that we that we go through with the continuum of our constant changing lives, you know, from birth to old age and finally to death. You know, we begin as babies and then we become we become infants and then we become children and then adolescents and then and we become young adults. Later we become middle aged, elderly, and finally we die. And this is process that continually we we are part of that we’re working through. The form of the individual from birth to death is never in fact fixed.
It is always changing. We think about this process in terms of fixed forms changing one into another, like an individual frame of a movie. But this is not how it is in nature. In nature, there is only process and continually changing patterns. If we can understand process itself as fundamental, the forms being momentary appearances of this process of greater and greater and lesser duration.
And then from the second moment of our lives, the process of aging death begins. There’s never one moment when we’re not there’s not that you know, it’s not like we can take a time out from this process. You know, the king’s ex stop everything stops for a moment and it’s fixed and never quite occurs. That the process of our dying actually begins from the second moment of our after our birth. You know, in all the various inevitable changes that we’re going to go through through the course of our life.
And from the physical, you know, the you know, we pass through all these stages, you know, from the physical vulnerability of of of a baby and to the the innocence of a child, to to the to the physical strength of youth, to to the, you know, the all the fluctuating fortunes of middle age, and all weaknesses and dysfunctions and mental disorientation of old age, and then finally we die. There is only this change that we’re going through, that we’re a part of. We are that change. We are that process. We don’t stand apart from it.
We can’t freeze it. We are changed. And, you know, we we we might, you know, maybe now we’re we we we’re in our prime. Maybe you are. You know, beautiful and strong.
But did you never see in the world a man or a woman of eighty, ninety, or a hundred years old, frail, crooked as a gable roof, bent down, resting on crutches, with tottering steps, infirm, youth long since fled, with broken teeth, gray scanty hair, or none wrinkled with blatched limbs? And did the thought never come to you that you also are subject to decay, that you also cannot escape it? And we may say, well, I’m healthy. You know, I’m I’m able to take care of myself. But did you never see in the world a man or a woman who being sick, afflicted, and grievously ill, wallowing in his own filth, was lifted up by some and put to bed by others, and did the thought never come to you that you are also are subject to disease, that you also cannot escape it.
You know, but now, you know, that we’re we’re I’m alive. You know, I’m I’m immortal, invulnerable. But did you never see in the world the corpse of a man or a woman one, two, or three days after death, swollen with blue-black in color and full of corruption? And did the thought never come to you that you also are subject to death, that you also cannot escape it? And the these images which are being pointed out aren’t foreign to us in the sense, you know, it’s not like we’re talking about Martians or some something far removed from ourselves.
It it is removed from our our our sight in in the context of our present society culture. But nonetheless, it’s just as real. It’s been hidden away, but it’s still it’s very much a part of our life. Then there’s the changing of all the various elements which which constitute our life, you know, our our our prosperity, our relationships, you know, our physical and mental well-being. You know, at times things go well for us, while at other times things don’t go very well, things go wrong for us.
At times we have plenty of money and all the material necessities of life. At other times there’s just simply not enough. You know, all the things we gather together are constantly wearing out and being lost. All our meetings end in separation. You know, our our our closest friends become our worst enemies.
Our our enemies should become our closest friends. At times we enjoy being with other people. At at other times we can’t stand being with other people. We simply want to be alone. Sometimes we experience pleasant feelings.
Sometimes we experience unpleasant feelings. Sometimes we experience neutral feelings. At times we are healthy and strong and excited about life. And at other times we we are full you know, we’re sick and worn and tired of it all. Sometimes we’re full of hatred and attachment and jealousy.
Other times we were filled with joy, love, and noble thoughts. Life is an ill-balanced, lop-sided struggle between your wants, the world’s offer you, and worse, the unbeatable slow machine that brings you what you’ll get. And it is the changeability of of all the things around us, you know, like of civilizations, of of, you know, are born. You know, they they then they die. Great cities arise, and then they fall into ruin.
You know, the seasons change one into another. Floods and droughts come and go. Flowers grow, and they bloom, and finally they wilt. And the trees tree is bare, then green leaves grow, and then the green leaves turn yellow, and then red, and brown, and they fall off the tree, and the tree is bare again. Mountains are worn down smooth.
Lakes become deserts. Wells run dry. mines are eventually exhausted. New cars eventually need repair, then they they begin to wear out, and finally, they get assigned to the junkyard. You know, dishes break, styles change, clothes become worn out, outdated songs, and all the various sorts of entertainment lose their popularity.
You know, things change. That’s the nature of things. There’s all these processes going on constantly about us, and we are we are part of this process. And there’s the impermanence of separation. And this is the that we are we are all like the fleas on the hot griddle of life.
Inevitably, the flea must jump, and the flea that jumps must must eventually fall. And the flea that falls must inevitably land, and the flea that lands must inevitably jump again. And then that’s the nature of our situation. And we’re constantly coming into contact and going out of contact, meeting in separation, you know, following one after another. There’s no, you know, there’s no lasting niche that we can that we can carve out for ourselves.
You know, we try. You know, there’s no place that we can that we can rest our heads for very long. There’s there’s no identity, no no realm of existence, no version of our reality that we that we create for ourselves that could be that could be sustained indefinitely, that we try. And we’re constantly having to move on to begin again and again. You know, this is the nature.
Even over the course of our life, let alone the course of life, the process of cyclic existence. Fire and the wind bright glittered on the moorland. Lone stood the house, long, built a palace in the wild. Now when the day dawns on the brow of the moorland, lone stands the house and the chimney stone is cold. Lone let it stand, now friends are all departed.
The kind hearts, the true hearts, that love the place of old. Spring shall come, come again calling up the moorland. Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers. Red shall the heather bloom over the hill and valley. Soft flow the streams where the ever flowing hours.
Fair the day shone on my childhood. Fair the day shone on the house with open door. Birds come and cry there, and twitter in the chimney. But I go forever and come again no more.
And perpetually, you know, cycling through all the mental and physical versions of our existence. You know, from the blissful absorptions of of the gods to to the to the paranoia and hatred of the hell beings, you know, and all the levels in between. They’re continually having to move on, to leave behind, and to begin again. And that’s this isn’t you know, this is what what what is being described is not extraordinary. It’s not atypical.
It is normality, the usual, to take it for granted. Now the the the you know, within the human realm, you know, the rich become poor and the poor become rich. The the the high become low and the low become high. The oppressors become the oppressed and the oppressed become the oppressors. You know, this wheel just keeps on turning in one form or another.
Then finally, there’s there’s the impermanence of disintegration. You know, this is subtle impermanence. The moment by moment arising and pass away, passing away of all that is compounded, all that is compounded by causes and conditions. And the things are such that when the appropriate causes and conditions come together, the the thing is produced. And that’s all that that’s all that you know, it’s like a a flickering, a moment, like a spasm in in the in the the process and a particular form momentarily arises.
And if in the next moment, there causes and conditions which sustain, which brought about that particular momentary rupture in this flow, this context. If if the same if the same cause and the conditions, the same similar type are not do not come together again, then whatever that thing was, whether it be something that is insignificant as a as a a blade of grass or an entire civilization will go out of existence. That’s the the same process occurs. If in the next moment, the same similar types of causes and conditions aggregate, then another moment that that that same phenomenon or similar phenomena will be reproduced again. And if and again in the next moment the same similar type of causes and conditions aggregate, then the similar phenomena will be reproduced again forming a continuum, a continuum that changes series, constantly changing from moment to moment.
If in the next moment, the similar types of causes and conditions don’t aggregate, then the phenomena comes to an end. That’s all it depends upon. If the cause and the condition do not aggregate in the in the next moment, the the thing is no more. The continuum has been cut, and this is gross impermanence. And you think, you know, like like a a candle flame, you know, which appears to be constant and fixed and unchanging, but is in fact, it’s being continually recreated.
Know? And if undergoing re recreation moment by moment by moment, you know, replenishment and then exhaustion coming into existence, one moment of the flame coming into existence and going out of existence being replaced by the second moment, that going out of existence being replaced by the third moment of the flame, and a continual replenishment, the same similar type replicating again and again forming a continuum of what appears to be a solid fixed flame. But it’s in fact a continuum of constant change. Or, you know, the or the notion of the image of of a wave moving across an ocean. You know, it looks like a fixed form moving across the water.
But in fact, moment by moment, you know, new elements of water are being drawn up and the old elements are being left in the wake, constantly changing moment by moment, form moving across the surface of the water, but it looks like a one fixed unchanging entity. And then finally, talking about these various aspects of impermanency, the impermanency of changeability. Changeability by nature. The simple fact that if something has not changed yet, eventually it will. That’s in its nature.
So I’m just gonna speak a more just a few more moments and then we’ll stop. This mark of impermanence. In itself, impermanence is not the problem. And that things remain impermanent even for Buddha. It’s not as if everything becomes permanent for Buddha.
But for Buddha, impermanence is no longer problematic. You know, the problem in terms of the mark of impermanence arises through our denial, our rejection, our struggle against recognizing this basic fact that things are impermanent. You know, expecting of the constantly changing that it remain unchanged, holding on to that which is doomed to decay as if it could last forever. You know, demanding of the impermanent that that it remain permanent. And it simply knows, it is our grasping to and clinging to the transitory and its pleasures which turns pleasure into pain, you know, which is the problem in terms of the mark of conditioned existence, of impermanence.
It is He who bends to himself a joy doth the winged life destroy, but he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise. So, you know, the the notion is if we become educated about the the truth of what is what is going on about us, and if we can begin to recognize that truth for ourselves, then we we’re no longer taken unawares, taken by surprise by when things do change, when there is loss and decay. You know, we we can begin to relate in a more appropriate and skillful and and functional manner. We we we we begin we begin to become less victims and gain control. So this will go on.
And I thought maybe we’d finish, but I talked a lot tonight. We still had the third marker of conditioned existence in terms of selflessness and then we’ll have to get off the wheel, to awaken. But then I’ll just have to say that for next week. So we’ll dedicate the creative potential that we’ve accumulated. Give it some kind of direction.
In the land encircled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful Chenrezig Tenzin Gyatso, please remain until the end of cyclic existence. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual master and lead each and every living being to that awakened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel, the awakened heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more. Thank you.
So if you’d like to get a cup of tea, we’ll have our discussion.