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 challenges a seductive misconception about spiritual growth: that it resembles a “psychic tune-up” — adjusting one faulty section of the self while leaving the rest unchanged. Using the image of a young man who learns to drive and thereby becomes a different person in a different world, he argues that cultivating love and compassion transforms the whole person irreversibly — there is no going back. He then distinguishes blind and misguided faith from the kind grounded in valid reasoning and direct experience, explaining why only the latter can actually redirect a life. The session closes with practical meditation guidance: a cake-baking analogy for creating the right conditions without obsessing over results, and the image of relaxing like butter melting in the sun.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 19 HMA 1996 07 03.mp3
UUID: 39133bfd-5bb8-4666-acd0-954845a46ef8
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-07-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~6,304
So we begin as we usually do in terms of this process of reorientating ourselves, getting back in touch, reprioritizing. It’s easy to get out of touch, I think, with what is important to ourselves, what is of ultimate concern, you know, what is it that we’re about? What would you like to see our life as a statement of who we would like to be? And we were talking we’ve been discussing this process in terms of going for refuge. You know, it’s not, as I tried to emphasize, it’s not anything particularly Buddhist or Eastern or it’s not particularly foreign to any of us.
It’s maybe the terminology is, but the the concept is something that we’ve all been involved in in one way or another all our lives, going for refuge and beginning to to take stock, to to reflect upon our lives, to take a look at where we’re headed, whether our refuge is is working for ourselves. And I think Buddhism places great faith in our mind, in our own Buddha nature, as we’ve been talking about and discussing in the Three Principal Aspects of the Path. There’s a certain basic sanity about ourselves that if we are willing to clarify issues for ourselves and to work through our self deception and our lack of self knowing and present, you know, more or less the facts of our situation, then perhaps no more need be done than that. And the mind will begin to direct ourselves toward those ways of being and those goals which are going to find we find in some way a greater worth of more of what we might want out of our life. But, you know, this requires some effort on our part, creating the space and the time to begin to expose or at least begin to question, to call in question, you know, what it is that we’re doing and where it is that we’re going.
Is it working? Am I finding, you know, what it is that I want out of my life? Am I a happy person? However, you know, might constitute happiness for you. Know, am I simply going through the same repetitive patterns, just with different partners or with different places or with different situations, pretty much the same plots?
You know, if we if there’s a certain native intelligence about ourselves that if we can take recourse to it, it can it can work on our side. You know, our mind can be our best friend. You know, we’ve always wanted a friend to help us out in life, and maybe our mind is just that, something that we can begin to depend upon in all the various situations, all the vicissitudes that life brings us. And you know one way that we begin expose a lot of our self deception or a lot of our lack of self knowing is by this process of looking into the quality of our life and developing a sense of anxiety. I simply don’t want to keep it going the way I’m going.
It’s not as if we have to put our ourselves in some kind of straight jacket or tyrannize ourselves into being Buddhist. You know, the Buddha was not even Buddhist, let alone that we have to be Buddhist. Rather than being Buddhist, should be Buddhist. You know? That would be a that would be a more worthwhile goal.
And this requires that we begin to to clarify the issues of our life and begin to look at where our life is going and perhaps develop some justified anxiety, you know, we could even call it fear, about what are the possible scenarios, what are the possible outcomes if I if I don’t change in some manner, if I if I don’t begin to adjust or reorientate, redirect my life, what can I expect? Perhaps, probably more than not, more of the same. You know, one of the characteristics of neurosis is that it is in its compulsive repeating of patterns. You know, the the unknown, the unaccustomed is never explored. Thus, we keep going into the same circles, experiencing the same general outcomes again and again and again.
But also it’s just we have to have some faith. You know, if we had but the faith of the mustard seed, maybe we could say that the neurosis in our mind, that mountain of neurosis in our mind, it would be gone. And it might be gone. But we are in the middle of faith, I think. And it’s not just that you know, we can work at faith.
We don’t have to wait for grace or adventitious causes to suddenly sweep over us to to it probably won’t happen if you’re anything like me. You know, it’s we have to take responsibility and begin to create the type of life and the type of person that we want to be. You know, we can’t wait. We’ve been waiting most of our lives, all our lives, something or someone. You know, I think to to come up against that wall and to realize what responsibility means is a great in itself realization that somehow we avoid actually feeling the the the the full meaning or the import of what responsibility means, you know, in terms of every day of our life.
I don’t mean in the dramatic moments when we where we might work ourselves up in some kind of heroic gesture of a meaning and purpose in our life. But I’m talking about the mundane, the insignificant, the everyday events of our lives when we have to actually gain control and take responsibility for what types of thinking, what type of emotion, what feelings are going through our minds. And on a very mundane pedestrian level, on everyday level, we can need to work at the quality of our lives there because more than that, that’s where our lives exist, not in these rare dramatic moments, but in the insignificant the everydayness is where our practice should be emphasized. And that’s where our real practice exists. So developing a faith.
You know, in trying to grow, we are trying to constantly direct ourselves along the course of change. We don’t want to change. I think it may be useful to examine that and begin to gain that sense and perhaps omit that if you find that in fact is the case for you. In trying to grow, we are trying to essentially to change. You know, it would be a great mistake.
And I think most of us make this in some way or another and we would lose sight even if we’ve had some insight into the actuality of our situation. That it would be a great mistake to think that somehow the process of growth was maybe the materialistic notion of a mere accumulation of more and more information or the acquisition of more and more self improvement techniques, you know, which you know, we’re all very sophisticated middle class Westerners here, and I’m sure we’ve we’ve gone the route in one way or another. We made the rounds. It’s the notion that becoming a Buddha was like getting twenty PhDs, that kind of notion of accumulation or maybe some kind of mechanistic notion of growth, like the implanting of a mental health device into ourselves, you know, that secretes some kind of growth hormone periodically making up for any kind of deficiencies that we might find about ourselves. You know, something that acts upon ourselves, but more or less, you know, maybe changes certain dysfunctional aspects, something we don’t like about ourselves, something that we would like to see improved, some segment of ourselves, some part of ourselves, some character, some quality about ourselves.
But more than not, on the whole leaves the rest of ourselves quite alone and intact, unchanged. You know, we’ve sort of undergone some kind of a psychological servicing, you know, maybe some kind of a psychic tune up where we can get back on the road as good as new. That kind of notion about ourselves. A rather mechanistic materialistic notion about what growth might entail, what it might mean. I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.
And it’s not because the mechanism is working wrongly that I am ill. Am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self. And the wounds to the soul take a long, long time. Only time can help. And patience and a certain difficult repentance.
Long, difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistakes, and to freeing oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake. You know, the the endless repetition, you know, the a pattern of mistakes is is a call to change, not to accumulate, not to acquire, not to supplement, not to adjust or repair some part of ourselves, some section of ourselves. Growth is characterized essentially by change, and moreover, change of the whole person, our thinking, our feeling, our behavior, our world changes. We don’t stand apart from this change. The therapeutic transformation of the entire system that we’re involved You know, some kind of the development of awareness, of our total relationship, you know, to the world, you know, learning about other alternative possibilities and beginning to integrate and embrace them into our lives.
You know, the the the you know, why I I why I’m trying to why I’m emphasizing this fact of change. You know, I’ll give you an example to exemplify the importance or the nature of change. For example, within Buddhism, there’s a great deal of emphasis placed on the development of altruistic qualities, you know, like love and compassion. You know, they are seen as a means to the goal and as a goal itself. Know?
But even if we were to set aside, you know, any type of religious thinking, any type of Buddhist thinking, just in a in a very mundane secular sense, the qualities of love and compassion are quite necessary even to to lead a semblance of a good life, of some degree of happiness and connectedness with others. So in speaking about when we talk about qualities of love and compassion in these ways that we do, we can easily come to think of them as some kind of isolated factor of the mind, some kind of independent functions of our mind, which we can make effort in cultivating. You know, like growing a particular variety of flower, you know, maybe in the gardens of our mind. There is an unexamined presupposition that we can stand apart from change itself, you know, that we can stand apart from the growing of these mental flowers in our own mind. You know, we can cultivate them and eventually we can pick their beautiful blossoms and decorate our homes and give them to our best friends on special occasions.
You know, we can can make use of these wonderful qualities that we’ve developed within our own mind. But we ourselves remain pretty much the same. There’s a sense that we can cultivate love, can cultivate compassion while remaining relatively the same person just as we can. We remain relatively the same person no matter how many flowers we might grow in our garden. We don’t change we don’t change appreciably from who we were before.
There’s a mistaken notion that we can stand outside of the course of change. Example, A young man who learns to drive a car thinks differently, thereby feels differently, when he meets a pretty girl who lives fifty miles away. The encounter carries implications he could not have felt as a bus rider, as a bus driver. We may say then that he not only drives a car, but he has become a driver. Such a this person, this young man, has not just acquired another skill.
You know, what to say of a skill which he stands apart from? But he has become someone different than who he was before, and so has his world. He and his world are different than they were before. He cultivated, he acquired this new skill. And we are not these isolated egos cut off from the rest of our minds, from the rest of our person, from the rest of our world.
Though it is true that part of our practice, especially within universal vehicle of Buddhism, is that we purposefully cultivate love and compassion, these altruistic qualities, so that to become a part of ourselves, it’s more meaningful, and it’s more exacting to say that more than we develop these qualities as a part of ourselves, we become loving and compassionate people. We are aware of and we are concerned with the sufferings of those people in the world around ourselves. This love and compassion begin to permeate other areas of our thinking, other areas of our behaving. They color other qualities about ourselves. In some sense, they’re living inoperative even when they’re not manifested in their mind.
You know, they begin to pervade the entirety of our lives, of our being. They alter our perception, how we perceive the world and how we relate with it, and the way the world appears to ourselves. They alter ourselves and our world. That’s what change involves, the totality of who we are. Not just a part, not just a section of ourselves, as if we could stand apart.
We are the change. And the change is to change who we are. And to change who we are is to change our world. Now both are going to be different than they were before. You can never go home again.
We sense that. You know, you’re never going to be the same person that you once were, having cultivate love, having ultimate compassion. There’s a risk involved, isn’t there? There’s no going back. And both ourselves and our world will be different, will have changed in some fashion, some form, in some manner, some intangible or tangible way to a lesser or some greater degree.
So, you know, it’s going to have real world impact on ourselves. You know, the way that our self identity, our interests will change, our values will change, what it is that makes us happy will change, what it is that makes us unhappy will change, what it is that how we are in the world, how we invest our time, our energies, our various relationships, our work, our way of being in the world. Everything and anything that makes a difference to us will be affected in some way to a lesser or greater extent by this change. So the point in emphasizing change is that in cultivating qualities such as love and compassion we inevitably, to a lesser or greater extent, will be affected. That these changes will have real life impacts on ourselves in most of the significant areas of our daily life.
And though we may not be able to predict all the details of this impact, we may not be able to foretell all the changing circumstances, we may not able to pre vision all the evolving outcomes. Due to our faith in love and compassion itself, in the salutary nature, That is the beneficent, the useful, the life enhancing qualities of love and compassion itself. We have faith in that. Therefore, we’re willing to give ourselves over knowing the full impact that this change is going to have in our life. You know, it is as if we can take refuge in love and compassion itself.
You know, the newly evolving qualities of our relationships will be for the better, that the newly evolving type of work or the way that we do our work will be for the better, that the newly evolving interests, the values and ways of being in the world, our relationships to the world, in all these yet to be fully comprehended ways, will all be for the better, that our life will be enhanced, ultimately for ourselves, not only for ourselves but also for others. You know, we have a kind of faith in that. If you don’t have this faith, then you haven’t created the inner ecology of mind which creates the space and the fluidity for a change to occur. There’s always going to be resistance. There’s always going be imposition of neurosis which is simply going to retry its best to repeat the old patterns, way things were, the familiar that had which has gone before, no matter how unsatisfactory it may appear, no matter how much anxiety you may have around it or fear you may have of it.
Through through this to this creation of faith, you know, this entrusting of import, enhancing the quality of your life. You are creating the the the inner conditions whereby change can actually occur. You know, we have in terms of love and compassion, we can have faith in all of this. And it can’t be just a cursory faith. It can’t be just intellectual curiosity or speculation.
It must be something that that that touches you very deeply, that that touches you where you live, you know, in your everyday life, and see how it’s going to enhance your life. You must you know, you know, you have to become a student of love and compassion and examine all its advantages and disadvantages and all it’s possible that it could hold for you and what it’s going to cost you, what is its benefits and its nature. In this analysis, we’re creating faith, and thereby, you know, we’re not waiting for it to come, to sweep over somehow by grace or chance. You know, we we we’re willing through this faith, even in such a thing as love and compassion, you know, we can have faith in these qualities of mind and therefore have faith in becoming a compassionate person and thereby create the inner ecology where we, through training our mind, will actually develop these qualities, in fact. We have faith in all of this, and due to our faith we’re willing to make the effort.
We’re willing to implement and give ourselves over to the means and the process. Now what does it mean to give ourselves over? You know, can you give yourself over to love compassion in the process and the means and the ends? Or is there in fact some kind of resistance? You know, you want to maintain control, you know, just like what we said of Buddha nature, and you want to be able to take it out of your pocket once in a while, when it’s convenient, when it’s safe, when it’s okay to express your Buddha nature, your basic being.
You know, there’s always this on guard, a certain defensiveness, a certain resistance so we don’t change. While there is expectation, while there is a necessity to control and manipulate, there will only be more of the same. But if we can prevail upon our basic sanity by showing us, by allowing it to allowing that intelligence to work upon these alternative possibilities, And then we can have faith in that itself that it’s going to take us in the direction which will enhance our well-being, in some way direct ourselves to the good life as we might want it to be. You know, we can become inspired. We have the courage and the vision necessary to overcome our hesitations, that we act in spite of our fears, that around these unfamiliar grounds, these not yet fully understood consequences of change.
You know, we don’t know what it, you know, what it might mean to be a loving, compassionate person, I mean, in a in a in in radical sense. We want to control it at best even if, you we we all, I think everyone here, in some way, we like to be more loving and more compassionate. And I think that’s terribly admirable. It’s, you know, it’s like a star during the day. It’s something which is very rare, and we need more of that.
But but but even more and over and above that. And that to we we need those who are willing to to occupy themselves to to give their lives over to these qualities of wisdom. You know, there’s a certain I don’t mean to speak abstractly or in a new age sense, but a certain surrender which seems to be necessary to these qualities. And by all means, don’t surrender to anything that you’re unsure because you can’t. There’s no sense of even trying.
That there seems to be you know, we can’t fake it. There’s no pretense. If we want to become loving and compassionate people, then we must develop faith. If we want to become Buddhas, we must develop faith in Buddhas. And if we want to if we want to develop and change, we must develop faith in the means of change, for example, the Dharma.
There’s no other way. We can disguise our practice from ourselves and whether it’s actually working for ourselves or not. There’s a lot of inauthenticity and of self duplicity where we can deceive even ourselves. But in the end, this isn’t helping ourselves. This isn’t solving our problems.
It’s not getting us what we want. You know, we have to practice and we have work at this in intelligent manner as best we can. I we’re always empowering, continually empowering people, things, ideas, symbols about us, such as they have the capacity to exercise an enormous influence over our minds. And I think I mentioned this. You this is, you know, I think this is the way that we are.
I think, you know, we’re describing something that we do every day in one way or another. You know, like I think I’ve mentioned this example of, you know, the slight turning upward or downward of a lover’s lips, you know, can send some people into bouts of ecstasy or depression, you know, just a little movement of muscle, you know, or or, you know, some people see their flag waving in the breeze and tears come to their eyes and their heart leaps. You know, some some deep inner feeling wells up. Some people’s lives are consumed with service and helping of others. You know, just these ideas, these symbols, these people, the influence that they’re able to have, that they’re able to exercise over ourselves.
You know, if you think Rambo or Madonna is the best thing going, then you know, if that’s a model of the way to be in the world, then you should not be surprised when you begin to quite spontaneously express Rambo or Madonna like qualities in your everyday life. You know, you’ve empowered these individuals such that they in turn are able to influence our own mind, our own behavior, the direction that our minds are going to move toward, move in. You know, on the other hand, you know, you empower, if you think highly of and revere and respect individuals like Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama, then obviously your life and the quality of your mind are going to move in quite different directions. So, you know, whether we’re religious or not, whether, you know, whether we think of spiritual you know, walking a spiritual path or not, we all, whether we’re aware of it or not, are involved in this process of empowering. So we all have more or less some kind of faith in something or somebody.
Somehow what we have faith in is going to enhance our well-being, is going to help us to solve our problems, our goals in themselves. There are various types of faith. Each of these various types of faith has its own degree of stability and its own strength and its unique ability to influence ourselves and our behavior, whether it be for better or worse. Know, faith isn’t necessarily always a positive quality in this way. You know, there’s blind faith, for example, where without any solid reasoning or any evidence.
Or there’s misguided faith which is based upon, you know, mistaken reasoning and false evidence. But these types of faith are continually being undermined by valid reasoning, by our own reliable experience. And these are easily lost in the face of contradictory logic or contradictory experiences. You know, moreover they can only at best exert a superficial influence over our mind. Now why isn’t that we don’t change?
Why is it that nothing influences? Why isn’t it that we don’t feel things deeply, that we that our minds very much rely upon the surface, superficial? It’s because I think of a lack of faith and never having research to look into, examine in a deep hearted sense through all of, you know, all of our various methods and means that are available to ourselves in terms of our reasoning, in terms of our own experience, in terms of our intuition. Some faiths, types of faiths, are based upon valid reasons. Some faiths are based upon correct experience.
There are faiths which are based upon sound reasonings and our own direct experience, are extremely stable and they can be extremely profound and exert a tremendous influence over our thinking, over our behaving, and what direction direction of our life. So in Buddhism, this is very much the type of faith which is emphasized. A faith based upon valid reasoning, a faith based ultimately with our own direct experience. That’s what all of Buddhism has come down to eventually, what it is that we experience for ourselves. You know, faith makes real what is presently maybe inaccessible to ourselves.
So the faith of Buddhism is directed toward three objects, you know, the Buddhadharma and the spiritual community. Something which is makes those objects very real, which bring which empowers them, which and in turn, by by means, through that process of empowering, they’re able to influence our mind, to influence our behavior, and to redirect our lives, to reorientate the process of change in our lives. So in this process, the goal of our life becomes Buddha. But not necessarily, but additionally. Additionally to the historic Buddha and those Buddhas who who are as represented through our teachers and our lamas are have been communicating a particular worldview, particularly communicating a particular truth.
Let’s put more the Buddha within of ourselves, that ultimate outcome of the process. That’s something that we ourselves are the final transformation of, and having faith in that, and being willing to give ourselves over to the process itself which is going to actualize that end, that goal, that is to say the dharma. And investigating the dharma, researching it, and thereby investing it with power such that it’s able to influence ourselves in turn, able to influence our minds. It has great meaning. And having faith in the spiritual community, in the social context, such that those around us, those who are like minded, fellow journeyers are able to assist us in real ways.
And we, in turn, assist them in trying to raise the level of our motivation while we’re doing what we’re doing, while why are we involved in this process as best we can even if only for one other person. Such that we’re able to step out of this manipulative habitual influence of ego. Such that, you know, everything can become perverted. Everything can become simply a matter of spiritual materialism, even the best of paths, even the most profound of spiritual practices. One way that perhaps that we can begin to ensure that what we’re doing simply doesn’t become another means of supporting our problematic approach to life is by stepping outside to some degree in terms of our motivation of our own exaggerated self interests.
And if we can just have some feeling that what I’m doing, I’m doing additionally, not only for myself but additionally for one other person, what to say about living beings, then maybe we can begin to short circuit the the usual process whereby what we do simply becomes a means of expanding the domain, the the skills and the and the techniques of ego and dominating our lives. And we begin to interrupt the patterns, this this habitual pattern of self interest in ourselves alone, in isolation from others. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, which we seek to actualize by means of the Dharma within the social context of the spiritual community in trying to again raise again and again raise the level of motivation such that I’m involved in this process. I’m working with these ideas. I’m trying to integrate them, not just for my own narrow needs but for an ever widening circle of others.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge and to 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 beings. Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech, and mind, and present clouds of every type of offering, those actual and imagined. I disclose all my destructive acts accumulated since time without beginning and rejoice in the skillful actions of holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until cyclic existence has ended and turn in the wheel of Dharma for living beings. I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others to the great awakening.
So we’re going to meditate. Would you like to stand up for a minute? Okay. So again, about meditation just for a minute. You know, maybe just a preface.
I am quite aware that what I say there’s there’s an old saying that you teach what you need to know. And so obviously, I need to know a lot. And what I’m saying, I’m quite in a way, I’m distracting it to myself. So I’m I’m quite aware of that. It seems to be something that I I need to remind myself of again and again to just in terms of this reorientation, we lose sight.
Our society isn’t particularly interested. Most of the people perhaps that we come in contact with in our everyday life aren’t particularly interested or they don’t have time or they set aside quite readily when we use one rationale or another. And that, you know, maybe it seems to be quite necessary to keep being reminded of what is important, to keep being reminded of the quality of our life and what’s important to me, the qualities of suffering and service, helping others as real ways to improve the quality of our life, not just in terms of materialism, not just in terms of finding that right partner, that right car, the right job, that right house, whatever it might be. That they in themselves are worthless unless we have the right attitude toward them. And being reminded that again and again it’s quite necessary for myself also.
So I hope you will tolerate, have the kindness to have patience while I keep reminding myself each Wednesday night what what I’m trying to do, what I want my life to be about. I know we’re talking about meditation. Again, maybe you know, I think almost every religious tradition that I know a little bit about Buddhism and almost nothing about the rest. But from what I understand, they all have some practice in meditation in some form or another. But quite often we don’t know what meditation is.
We don’t really touch it. We don’t get a taste in our tongue because we are habitually trying to figure out how to meditate. You know, we’re trying to figure out what our meditation is because we are we we we want to gain control out of it, over it. We want to to figure out the experience so that we can manage it so that in some way or another we can fulfill our preconceptions. We can match our expectations.
I read you a quote about meditation. You know, perhaps, you know, creating some some context for whereby there’s a higher degree of chance of possibility that meditation will actually have some taste of meditation on our tongue within our own experience. In the stillness and presence of meditation, we discover a pure awareness beyond the ordinary thinking mind and catch a glimpse, a view of our true nature, something we have long ago lost sight of amidst the busyness and turmoil of our lives. The core of the practice in meditation is releasing the heart and mind in deep ease and relaxation, where tensions are dissolved and we find ourselves connecting with a tremendous source of healing which we all have within us. For health is a state where all aspects of the body and mind are in balance.
So the essence of meditation is relaxation. Wherever there is expectation, wherever there is some type of compulsion or preconception, there will inevitably be some kind of conflict, and therefore there is no relaxation. Somehow we have to avoid making our meditation just another struggle. We all are experts in that. Just another battleground between ourselves and our mind, between, you know, me and my ego.
So, you know, we can begin to one way that we can approach meditation is simply by not taking a position. You know, I think it’s not that we aren’t to make effort. It’s not that we aren’t to direct our meditation along specific lines. We are going to, you know, we are and we are going to, that’s part of meditation. Meditation is very purposeful, very purposeful.
Has numerous techniques, ways to apply the mind. But we can develop the the the sense that I don’t have to concern myself with the result if I simply am skillful in creating the way I create the causes. You know, like, you know, if you were to bake a cake. I don’t know if I’ve ever used this example. You know, like, you know, you you know how you put the proper ingredients together in a proper manner.
And then you add in a flour and maybe some baking powder and eggs and what else? Some milk. Maybe some chocolate. Sugar. Oh, Good.
Good. See? I don’t think that in my cakes, obviously. And you and you and you put it in the right pan. You grease the pan, you know, or you put put that paper, the special paper in there.
And you put it in through preheat the oven to the right temperature. You don’t have to stand, come on, cake, rise. Come on, baby, rise. You you have to stand over it as if it’s success or failure was dependent upon your continued effort. Somehow you have to oversee the process.
You know, you’ve created the correct conditions and the right causes. The natural course of cause and effect, the natural outflow will take care of itself. There’s something wonder about in that way, isn’t it? That we don’t have to oversee. You know, if we had to oversee everything, we would be paralyzed.
So we don’t have to oversee our meditation in that sense. We simply have to concern ourselves with properly implementing the skillful causes and conditions. The rest will take care of itself. You know, don’t have to have preconceptions about the results or expectations about the results and try to manipulate our minds to gain those types of results. That’s not our concern.
The result will take care of itself if if we are skillful in bringing in in how we implement the causes and conditions. I don’t know. I think that’s useful, and maybe even in life, you know, concern yourself with the causes, the conditions, the results will take care of themselves. We don’t have to oversee the process. It’s a matter of dependent arising.
So, one way that so I would like to suggest that you another quote by this same author, this meditation master, When we remain in the natural when we remain in this natural wholesome state, our body still, our speech silent, and our mind at peace, then the mind settles. In this settling, all delusions evaporate like snow fallen on a hot stone. That’s not the one I wanted to read. Meditation is simply a question of being, of melting like a piece of butter in the sun. That’s a nice image, isn’t it?
Melting like a piece of butter in the sun. It has nothing to do whether you know anything about it. So, you know, I I one good image that I think is useful and and you might carry this sense. You know, you know, someone who’s worked a hard day. They’ve been out there struggling.
They they they worked hard. They accomplished their purpose. They’ve come home with a sense of fulfillment, a sense of satisfaction. Now they’re just putting up their feet. They’re resting.
There’s nothing more that needs to be done. It’s their time to luxuriate in having performed the task. Nothing more need be done. Nothing more need be