Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with the observation that habits determine fate more than possessions do, Ven Jampa Gendun uses this 45-minute session to ask what kind of person each listener is becoming, holding Buddhahood up as a personal “magnetic north.” He unpacks awakening as the integration of wisdom, love and compassion, and personal power, and shows how the historical Buddha Śākyamūni demonstrates that this is achievable through human effort. He then works through what going for refuge to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha means in daily life, citing a verse that “every word we say is said for bliss, every ant runs blindly toward bliss.” The session closes with guided meditation using four figures of varying emotional resonance to examine self-centeredness versus other-centeredness, framed by a Thomas Merton quote on love requiring “a kind of death” of the self-cherishing mind.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 19 HMA 1997 03 19.mp3
UUID: a633ded1-3325-41d2-8570-6746053878f5
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-03-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~6,225
So we have to as we usually do, this continual process of reorientating ourselves and getting back in touch. Can you hear me okay in the back? Okay. A large extent, I think we are habits. And to perhaps, I don’t know, if I’m just projecting myself upon a on you.
A lot of my habits aren’t what I might like myself to be, and and very much our habits determine our fate, these deep personal structures of ourselves. And so it seems as if, you know, there’s an almost a default pattern that which we we consistently normally fall back into unless we’re conscious, unless we’re aware, unless we’re mindful of what it is that we want. Let’s see perhaps some of the changes that we’d like to bring about in our life, the directions that we would like very much to see our life take, who would who we’d like to be. Five years from now or ten years from now, a lifetime from now. I probably mentioned many times over and over again, but and I think it’s borne out in each of our experiences that we come if we stop and think about it.
But it’s not so much what we receive or what we may own or come to possess, which is the reward for all that we do, all the blood, sweat, and tears that we expend in our various ways to get it is get what it is that we want, but who it is that we come become by it, the person that we are for having done it, you know, the question of being. So, you know, this is something that we all have to struggle with and keep coming back, you know, who it is that we want to be, what qualities we would would we like ourselves to imbue with the the nature of our life and how we’d like to see it lived, who we’d like to be. I’d like to be a Buddha. That’d be a nice thing to be, I think. So that’s my kind of orientation.
That’s kind of my symbol, my my magnetic north that I could keep coming back to. And I we we get lost, don’t we? Sometimes being, what, first on your exam or being a general manager, being maybe even a perfect mother or a perfect parent or being a perfect student or being something other than what it is that we could most be. You know, what it is what kind of the outcome to our preferred most story that we are telling ourselves about ourselves. You know, whatever we call that whatever we call that outcome of this of our spiritual story or our Buddha story, we can we give it various images and various names, but we can subsume it under the under the image of a Buddha, you know, this a happy, healthy, tremendously loving, kind, sane human being and all that that might entail in terms of the quality and the adequacy and the coherence of our life, the livability of our life.
So, you know, we keep coming back to this, what is important to each of ourselves, what makes me really happy, whatever constitutes happiness uniquely for each of ourselves. You know, perhaps there’s no generality that we can make about what is the good life. I mean, by that is, your good life might be quite something different than my good life. And we each have to determine that very much for ourselves. But determine it, I think we should, and try to live it as best we can, as authentically and as well as we can.
But we have to keep reminding ourselves of that fact and trying to, again and again, establish what is the good life for each of us because perhaps it changes our values and beliefs, undergo transformations as we you know, they like all things are impermanent in the various ways. So this orientation in terms of, you know, what is it that we have faith in? What are we where are we placing our treasure? Where are we directing ourselves? Where we point our our court, our our cart, you know, the unless we change that direction, we’re likely to end up where we’re headed, and where is it that we’re headed.
So this is subsumed under the the images of a Buddha. Now this is what we have faith in. Within the context of Buddhism, we have faith in the Buddhadharma and the spiritual community. These are what we call objects of our refuge, that that they have some power to protect us, that they have protect us from the anxiety associated with the reoccurrence of these dysfunctional patterns, the pathological themes which very much permeate our lives and our suffering. That the Buddhadharma and Sangha are somehow able to act as reliable resources for ourselves for achieving what is of ultimate concern, what is of ultimate value for ourselves.
This is one of the the definitions for religion is that is that which is able to bring about what is of ultimate value and concern to ourselves. It it is concerned with ultimates, not the superficial or or the temporal, but what is of final what has final meaning to ourselves. You know, faith is a primary investment of some kind of energy. It’s a crediting of importance of our refuge to our life. It gives it’s this crediting of importance which gives Buddha and the Dharma and the spiritual community some kind of gives it substance, some kind of reality.
Yeah. A reality that which may not be presently accessible to ourselves, but but nonetheless is worthy of our attention. It’s worthy of our life energies, and it is what is playing a predominant role in the shaping of our thinking and behaving. And so in in practice, the idea of going for refuge is working with our problems at a deeper level, at a more fundamental level than perhaps we might normally work with them. You know, it’s the working with the goal of realizing our full human potential.
And maybe this is more than what nothing other than what we mean by going for refuge. You know, the it’s a trusting and a dedication to our own basic goodness, you know, believing in ourselves, and not only our own basic goodness, but the basic goodness of life in general, that there are real possibilities for ourselves in this thing called life, perhaps that we haven’t experienced up to now, but trusting that they’re out there nonetheless, that they’re inside of ourselves nonetheless, and trusting ourselves to something of which we are the final transformation, and that we ourselves will be our final refuge. So the the faith of Buddhism, and these are the these are the two components, the two basic causes which bring about change in our life, that and constructive anxiety. The faith in Buddhism, you know, this all of this investment of our of positive significance, trust, of energy, our commitment, our going for refuge is directed primarily toward these three objects, the Buddha, Dharma, and the spiritual community. So they are seen as ultimate resources for solving our fundamental problems.
And we, as I’ve mentioned, I think we should work it’s intelligent to work with our problems at various levels according to the in reference to the level of the problem, we we make use of a various type of antidote, the various type of we can avail ourselves of a various resource. I mean, this makes a great deal of sense. And I think We can work with our physical problems, our physical needs. We can work with psychological problems, psychological needs, using psychological methods. But those of ultimate concern, ultimate ultimate in nature, need a spirit some kind of spiritual method, and this is the level that we’re discussing here.
We’re working with that here. It’s not that we can’t neglect any of these three levels, but we we shouldn’t confuse the three. And these the Buddhadharma and Sangha are seen as means to help us to work with our ultimate problem at the most fundamental level. The the what it means to be an ordinary human being that we are. You know, we, as ordinary beings, we we suffer.
It’s there’s nothing particularly wrong particularly wrong with any of us, uniquely dysfunctional about any of us. That’s the nature of the human dilemma. That’s the nature of ignorance governed existence. So we avail ourselves to go beyond ignorance governed existence, to go beyond the human dilemma. Simply most, we look upon these refuges, these spiritual resources as means whereby we can bring about basic changes for our lives for the better.
So Buddhadharma and the spiritual community, Buddhadharma and the Sangha. So, you know, what does that mean? It has to have some has to go beyond fiction. It has to go beyond some abstraction. It has to have some practical for our lives, something that we can touch.
We can get some kind of taste in our tongue, some kind of experience of. You know, a Buddha is someone who is awake. That’s what a Buddha that’s what Buddha means in Sanskrit. Someone who who is aware of things as they actually are. You know, the actual true nature, the way the world about us and the way ourselves and everything else is.
You know, divorce of our fantasies, our overlays, our illusions, our mistaken conceptions about it. So this is how an awakened mind sees the world with with a wisdom and a knowledge that understands things clearly and directly, free of all misconceptions, free of all wrong thinkings, indoctrinations, conditioning, prejudices, free of all any kind of obscurations. To be awake means an intense overflowing love and compassion. Now this is the affective quality, the emotional aspect to awakening. It’s exemplified by a parent’s love and compassion for their only their only child.
This is kind of the image which is made use of to give us a feel what it must be like to have an awakened heart. That the that this sense of desiring that others be free, that they too go beyond their suffering, and this sense is carrying this concern extended equally to every living being without any discrimination, without any feelings of biasness. This is how an awakening heart feels. And it is deep and burning desire that all living beings be free of suffering, that they find peace, that they too should grow, and that they too, like ourselves, should eventually awake. To be awake has there’s an experience of personal power.
It is the an inexhaustible mental and physical vitality to our being. Some kind of intensity of being, you know, a presence about ourselves. And finally, to to be awakened means to creatively be in the world, to to respond to the world, and to act freely and purposely in participating in the lives of others, you know, through our wisdom, our compassion, our love, and our own personal power, finding creative expressions as skill and means in leading others beyond their suffering, leading them to awakening themselves. And it was like an inexhaustible generosity extended spontaneously and continuously extended to our living beings. So when Buddhism talks about awakening, you know, it has some meaning for ourselves.
It has some relevance for ourselves. It means, you know, whatever we want to call it, awakening or enlightenment or Buddhahood, all of these various terms that we can make use of. What is meant most essentially is a consummate state of wisdom, love, personal power, and the creative transformations, the creative expressions of these states in our everyday life and bringing about the welfare of others. So to be awake is to awaken from the sleep of ego, the sleep of, you know, ego’s fantasy or the ignorance’s illusions. To be awake to the true nature of the way things are, to the totality of who we are.
So a Buddha, this this awakened person, is someone who has completely integrated these these archetypes of wisdom, love, and compassion, personal power, into their consciousness and creatively lives them out in unconditioned freedom, in the in the vibrant and sustaining bliss of unlimited being. So amongst those who have achieved such stature was an individual who was born about twenty five hundred years ago in in along the present day Indian Nepali border at a small village called Lumbini. So he would this is the historical figure, Buddha Śākyamūni. He is the ultimate source for these present teachings of of Buddhism that we are now studying. Śākyamūni was a person, but, you know, though he was a human being.
But though he was a human being, he was not an ordinary human being. He was an extraordinary human being. You know, that is to say, was an awakened human being, which made him extraordinary. You know, the living embodiment of all of what we’ve just talked about in terms of what awakening is, you know, living embodiment of wisdom, love, and compassion, and personal power expressed in in skillful means, skillful activities, and working about bringing about the welfare of others. So but importantly, Buddha Śākyamūni, the historical Buddha, was not always such as he became.
That he was not self existently an awakened one, an extraordinary individual as he became. He became an extraordinary person as a result result of his own human effort. And the to make to actualize within himself that same potential that each of us have, thereby becoming a Buddha to to his own human effort to make actual in himself what is the potential within us all. So, you know, the awakened person is regarded as the highest being in the universe as far as Buddhist is concerned. You know, it’s like a model of sanity, a model of what we could become, a paradigm of another order of being.
This is we take this, and it gives us something to work with, something more tangible than simply the thought of growth and what it might be like. Perhaps this is very much what is missing in the growth psychology of the West, that there’s there’s no there’s no embodiment, something that we can is a tangible goal that we can work toward of what the good life is, what mental health is all about. And it’s something that we can direct all our energies and attention and our efforts toward, something beyond some kind of abstraction or some vague notion. So though Śākyamūni Buddha was a human being, He was an extraordinary being. He was an awakened being.
He he’s like the outcome of our spiritual story, you know, that each of us is in fact telling ourselves a story about ourselves and about our life, and our life runs very much according to that story. And we’re trying to to take the story into our hands consciously and begin to tell ourselves another story, a Buddhist story, if you like. And this is the outcome of that Buddhist story. It it is for this reason that that Buddha Śākyamūni is is revered, is respected so highly that that he was an example. You know, he set ourselves he showed us the possibilities.
He he for he’s respected for demonstrating to us what is possible possible and what we too are capable of becoming. In other words, Buddha Śākyamūni Buddha is respected, is revered for as a teacher, as an exemplar, as a guide, you know, as an ever present reminder of what is each of our birthrights, the awakened state of being. And what we have faith in is what we will naturally go for refuge to. You know, like we’ve said, where our treasure lies, so there too will be our hearts. So the essential significance of Buddha Śākyamūni as a jewel of refuge is that as the central object of Buddhist faith lies in his having experienced the same path that we too are seeking to follow.
And having experienced that same path for himself, he becomes a reliable guide for showing others the way. You know, having become an authority with regard to that path, you know, we can have some kind of trust in the path itself. That’s simply not a matter of speculation or hypothesis or theory, but someone’s actually experienced it themselves. And not only that someone of the historical Buddha, but a great number of ordinary human beings just like you and me have become extraordinary human beings, have solved the basic fundamental problems of of human existence, suffering, have experienced the fulfillment of their potential in terms of wisdom and love and compassion, a person of power, and expressing these and working with others to help them to do the same. So the Buddha Śākyamūni Buddha has a refuge.
He’s looked upon as the source the source of refuge. Yeah. But the ultimate refuge, the ultimate Buddha refuge, the ultimate jewel of Buddha is the treasure of Buddha which lies dormant within each of our hearts and minds. And that is to say, our ultimate refuge is our own eventual Buddhahood, our own eventual awakening that we will each of us manifest, that each of us will actualize someday. It is only this Buddha and the Buddha with inside of ourselves who can help us in all situations, in at all times, in all possible ways.
So, you know, Buddha is is simply you know, if we if we say what does the Buddha stand for for ourselves in a bit most relevant and simple fashion, Buddha is a living symbol for the the solution to each of our most fundamental problems and what that might look like personified. You know, the realization of what is the ultimate value in our life, the sacred in our life. You know, someone who who who stands for our ongoing experience for this preferred most story that we could hope to tell ourselves about our life, the type of life that we might like to live, a life which is centered around wisdom, love and compassion, and personal power, and their expression in everyday life. You know, this is you know, I talked about the notion of change and how we have to you know, what it is that we go for refuge too. You know, it is if we if if we see that what the what the Buddha stands for in terms of their experience, if we then we begin to see what it is that we’re actually going for refuge too, or what is it that can, in fact, help us to solve our problems.
We’re, in fact, taking refuge in wisdom. We’re, in fact, taking refuge in love and compassion in the development of our own personal power and the development of our abilities to express these skillfully in working with others in our everyday life. You know, this is like the way that we’re actually going to solve our problems as our ultimate deeper problems, our more fundamental problems, and bring about what is of ultimate concern, bring about a realization of the sacred in our life. You know, trying to translate Buddha to something which occurs to us every day. We can be a little bit of Buddha in our everyday experiences if we seek to express our wisdom, if we seek to express our love and compassion, and our personal power to grow in these qualities, and to transform them in in working with others, then we are as if creating the Buddha.
We are almost as if we’re living the Buddha, and we’re we’re giving whatever it is, this potential that we all have to grow and to finally solve our problems to what can be of what is our the outcome of our evolutionary potential, a possibility to find expression in our everyday life. And then our everyday life becomes a way of going for refuge. Our refuge isn’t something other than our everyday life. The way that our style of living becomes our refuge and and becomes the means by which we ultimately will solve our problems, that we will we will become this happy, healthy, loving, sane human being that we’re all in some way working toward. You know, I I didn’t bring it, but I wish I had now that I I think about it.
There was a verse, you know, that all of it what we do, we do for bliss. That that it said that every word that we say is said for bliss. Every action that we do is done for bliss. Every ant runs blindly toward bliss. Every worm crawls toward bliss.
All the virtue that we do is done for the sake of bliss. All the non virtue that we do is done for the sake of bliss. This is a profound notion. And where is it that our bliss lies? I think it lies at Buddhahood.
I think it becomes a great responsibility to ensure that what we do do is, in actuality, a means to to bring about what it is that we want most deeply. And that this that it is a means to help us on this journey that we’re all on in some way or another. It is the means by which we’re going to realize our deepest potential. That is simply not just going to be another dead end, another source of frustration, disappointment, and dissatisfaction, another blind alley, another wrong path, another means to an another variety of suffering in one way or another. So this is why we study, and this is why we investigate and reflect and to make sure that we quit making the same mistakes that we’ve been making over and over again, to ensure that all of what we do is going to bring us the bliss that we’re all struggling to find, and it’s going to bring us the peace of Buddha and the ability to help others to do the same.
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 until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge into awakening.
Through the creative potential of my listening to Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech, mind and present clouds of every type of offering, those actual and imagined. I disclose all my destructive acts accumulated since time without beginning and rejoice in the skillful actions of holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until 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.
Actually, stand up and then we’ll meditate together. We usually do in the nine round breathing meditation. Then thank you. With nine round breathing. Did you see Jay or Jay Garfield this Sunday?
He’s walking walking walking back and forth with his glass of water and then doesn’t work for me. I don’t know. I thought maybe it would help. Nine round breathing meditation, and then we’ll, again, cultivate love and compassion. And, you know, we’re working with various objects and beginning to combine these objects.
Anyway, I guess it’s it’s kind of maybe to some people that are first hearing talking about people like objects. You know, it’s not to mean that we simply think of people as unfeeling beings, but we’re trying to evoke, you know, objects of our meditation and evoke feelings. You know, like, meditation is like a laboratory where we can experiment. It’s very difficult in your day to day life, in the heat of the moment or in the, you know, the rushing the way we do to be able to have the time and the presence of mind to to work with these methods and to make them part of our habitual ways of thinking and relating. But so this is very much what we mean by meditation.
You know, I think I’ve mentioned this many, many, many times that meditation in the Tibetan tradition is the word the Tibetan equivalent is the word gom, which has the same root as the word to habituate or to familiarize or custom. So we are in the laboratory of our mind in process of our meditation, evoking a very productive, skillful states of mind, love and compassion, the various states that all the various states that we work with, and directing them, trying to evoke them toward various objects such that they become they become we become accustomed to it or familiarize that it becomes easily evocable even in the everyday practical world. It’s not something which it’s to be carried over into our everyday life, but it’s like a preparation. So that, you know, the guess it’s like a how they tell the defense forces when they have a they play play soldier on weekends or, you know, as if they’re going to meet the real enemy, things like this. So so that when they the actual moment comes, there’s there’s almost a natural response.
They don’t have to think about it a great deal. And, likewise, we can work with that. We can bring about that same maybe different ways of thinking, but still the same notion with bigger in terms of our meditation. Now we can if we can evoke and if we can’t evoke these states in the course of our meditation, it’s gonna be very difficult to evoke them in the reality of the situations and the difficulty and all the hindrances and the obstacles which which might occur. So we get accustomed to being to being loving people in our meditation, and it carries over into our everyday life.
So we’re we’re we’re trying to evoke it. We’ve been working up to now with three people, now we’re going to add a fourth. So, you know, beginning with this, you know, this loving person that you’re really close to, you really like. Next to them, a friend that you that that you aren’t particularly intimate with, but you have a good a warm warm relationship. And then here is a neutral stranger.
You know, you you don’t have any particular relationship, but something about them, the way they appear, is their the general demeanor kinda predisposes you to think, oh, they’re they’re probably a nice person. I’d probably like them if I got to know them. And now a fourth person, you know, and, again, a stranger, but this type of person, for one reason or another, in in terms of their appearance, their demeanor, the way they present themselves, maybe some peculiarity about them and their appearance that you don’t particularly like, that you have, for some reason, some kind of instantaneous bias against them. But still, it’s not particularly strong because you really haven’t got to know them. There’s there’s still a possibility that you you could develop a liking for them, but you kind of your gut level initial response is, I don’t I’d rather stay away from that person.
So these four people, we’re gonna work with them. Then we’re going to do mindfulness of breathing. And then we’re going to as we’ve been meditating in the this tradition of equalizing and exchanging self for other, we’re going to work with the second of these five this series of five meditation. The first is equalizing self and other. The second and third are seeing the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness.
And so this is very much you know, I can I’ll just more or less prompt you through this. This is something that you very much have to work with in your own experience. You have to validate whether this is in fact correct or not. Is self centeredness are there disadvantages to it? Is it, you know and we have to begin to trace.
Well, you know, looking at many of our life experiences in terms of our of being in the world with others, even with ourselves, can we trace many of the deeper causes, not the superficial causes, but the deeper causes for many of our problems, our conflicts, our feelings of paranoia, defensiveness, mistrust, you know, all that we would like to be rid of in terms of the quality of the states of mind and the quality of our life. Can we trace it back to a fundamental cause of self centeredness, you know, this this exaggerated self concern, this preoccupation with ourselves alone oftentimes at the expense and exclusion of others, this feelings of self importance, this this constant self referencing tendency which is very much ingrained in our our patterns of relating, you know, seeing the world only out of my eyes eyes as it exists for me, as if everybody and everyone is simply there for my welfare in some way or another. The world is simply a a resource for my exploitation in one way or another. This this way of relating to the world, engaging the world. Is that in fact does that work?
I mean, that’s that’s that’s our orientation at present. That’s that’s kind of the way that we the mindset that we bring to our our relationships and our our interacting with the world from that kind of standpoint. Does that work? In fact, in your own experience, so looking through our experiences and see if we can trace some of the the deeper causes of our problems and our conflicts to the very fact of this way of approaching life and and relationship in terms of disadvantages of self centeredness. On the other hand, other centeredness, when we begin to enter this this shift in the psychological center of gravity of concern where we you know, our many we have to look at many of our happiest, most fulfilled, some of our peak experiences of life.
Were they was it was they were they associated with a more of an under other other centeredness way of approaching life and interacting with others where we were concerned, like, you know, for example, you know, the the joy that a mother feels or a parent feels when they see their baby happy or their child happy, when they see a smile on their child’s face, you know, that that great sense of joy that they themselves feel, is that a product of other cherishing that we’re not? You know? And and beginning to check up on many of our most profound, moving, fulfilling experiences that we’ve all gone through at some point in our life and checking to see if we can trace them back their their evolution in some manner to a more other centered approach to relationship, interacting with the world. You know, we have to validate this with our own experience. If, you know, the the the the logic the pleasure and pain take precedence over over our logic to a great extent.
We don’t. So if we can begin to see that somehow this that other centeredness has in fact been a source of greater happiness, self centeredness has been a source of suffering for ourselves, then this development of caring and concern for others will naturally evolve of itself. It won’t be any great asceticism. It won’t could be any great heroic effort. We will it will be as the Dalai Lama has said, it will simply be a product of being wisely selfish.
We want to be happy. We don’t want to suffer. Maybe self centeredness is the way, but we have to check up and validate that within our own experience. Okay. So should we try that?
So taking a firm, comfortable posture. So, you know, first, we became aware of how we begin to understand our own problems. You know, this is where very much the spiritual path necessarily begins with confronting the issues in our own life, their evolution, how they evolved, and developing their determination to work through them at a more fundamental level. But then we we go beyond that. We don’t simply remain at that level.
We we expand the area of our concern, the the our scope of awareness, understanding that all others are very much like ourselves, that they too are more or less experiencing the same difficulties, the same problems as ourselves, the same feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration and disappointment as ourselves. Out of this, we will begin to there naturally arises more and more concern for the welfare of others just as it did for ourselves. And with this, we we ourselves begin to experience fewer problems. You know, we we are released just from that that shift in emphasis. Many of our our own problems are diminished in in their force and significant.
There are our our own attachments. We have less anger, less confusion. So our own experience becomes an inspiration for us, you know, to dedicate ourselves more and more to others if if this is in fact working in in this way for ourselves, you know, to to take greater and greater responsibility for the welfare of others in our life. So, you know, presently, we we are limited in one way or another in what we can do for others in our ability to help others. You know, how can we help all sentient beings?
We can’t. But we we but we can. We can begin our set our goal in that direction. We can begin to point our cart along those lines, know, determining to develop ourselves more and more, to grow in love and wisdom and all of what we’ve talked about in terms of our personal power and to have these skillfully expressed in our everyday life in the helping of others, to develop in our capacity to be able to respond to others in a in a skillful manner, to be able to take responsibility for them. So this attitude increasingly becomes the motivating force behind all of what we do.
It’s the motivating force behind our growth and our gradual awakening. You know, it’s with this motivation that we begin to practice of the actual exchange of self for others. So we’re moving through a series of meditations. First, gaining a sense of equality of self and others. Then seeing the disadvantages of self centeredness, the advantages of other centeredness.
And here we’re going to look at the actual exchange of self for others. So this is a this is a quote by Thomas Merton. Some of you might be familiar with his writings. A Trappist Monk. It’s hard to really love others if love is to be taken in the full sense of the word.
Love demands transformation. For without this, we cannot possibly come to identify ourselves with our brother. We have to become, in some sense, the person we love, and this involves a kind of death of our own being, our own self. No matter how hard we try, we resist this death. We fight back with anger, with recrimination, with demands, with ultimatums.
We seek any convenient excuse to break off and give up the difficult task. You know, I have never had a teaching by Thomas Merton. I’m not quite sure what he what he meant by death, by can only suppose that the death of which he has spoken is being spoken of here is the death of the self, but when he talks about the death of the self, it’s not the death of the self of our empirical self or our conventional self, you know, the self that that walks and talks and reads books and, you know, undergoes all the varied life experiences that we go through. So the self which is being spoken of here, the death of this self is the self of self centeredness. You know, the the death of the self of self-cherishing, the self of exaggerated self concern, the self which we are usually most self absorbed.
And in the case of, you know, of every death, there’s a rebirth. With the death of self centeredness comes a rebirth of the self of other centeredness. This is to say that our concern for others becomes of the same degree that we presently show only for ourselves. And there’s this this there’s a shift in the psychological center of gravity. And we begin to redefine our our our valuing of what it is that we cherish most in our life.
And this is expressed in the process, some kind of re identification, the the exchange of self for others.