Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 31-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun completes the fourth of five meditations on exchanging self and other, reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem “Please Call Me By My True Names” — in which the poet identifies equally with a twelve-year-old refugee and the pirate who raped her — as a lived illustration of how inhabiting another’s perspective dissolves envy into compassion. He then argues that self-centeredness is a prison precisely because we cannot change what we cannot first imagine, connecting this to the Tantric principle of taking the fruit as the path: mentally inhabiting the bodhisattva’s way of being as the cause of becoming one. The session ends with a conceptual preview of Tonglen (taking and giving), describing its minimal prerequisites and its essence — the fearless willingness to absorb others’ suffering and give away one’s own happiness. For practitioners already following the series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 22 HMA 1997 03 26.mp3
UUID: 6b0cd9e3-f613-455c-a1b2-56bb89ece74a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-03-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 31.4 minutes
Words: ~4,383
But I shall not let anyone hear of any good qualities you may have. Also, I shall hide all my faults. I will be venerated, but not you. I will find a great deal of material gain. I will be honored but you shall not.
For a long time I shall look with pleasure at your being made inferior. You will become the laughing stock of all, regarded amongst everyone as an object of scorn and derision. You know, we can begin to, in meditating this way,, can begin to make use of our natural tendency to compete with others to their detriment as a means to increase our effort to make others happy by transposing this sense of I and you. And then finally, I’m going through this rather quickly, but it’s there in the text. Trans exchanging ourselves with someone who who we feel to be superior to ourselves in some way.
And then we look back at our former selves. It is said that this deluded one is trying to compete with me, but how can you be equal with me in learning intelligence, form, class, or wealth? Thus, upon hearing of my good qualities that have been made well known to all, I shall thoroughly enjoy the satisfaction of pleasing, tingling sensation that occurs. Even though you have some possessions, if you are working working for me I shall give you just enough to live on and by force I’ll take the rest. Your happiness and comfort will decline and I shall always cause you to harm for hundreds of times in this cycle of rebirths you have caused me harm.
So, you know, imagining what’s going on in the minds of someone else that you may feel to be superior to yourself helps in turning our envy into compassion. It it begins to counter our, it also begins to counter our, the laziness of self denigration. You’re thinking that people have no problems and it’s just ourselves have problems, that I’m the only one with a problem and this person who has all this wealth and fame and beauty or whatever, they simply don’t have problems. But you begin to and you’re naturally envious of them. But by exchanging, putting yourself in there, perhaps you begin to realize that it’s not so great being where they are at anyway.
And therefore the envy begins to lessen and you begin to have compassion. So the idea is to work with as many classes, categories, various types of people as possible. We’re very much by seeing everyone and everything from one exclusive point of view to a large extent, our own. Or you might say more accurately from the point of view of the self of self centeredness. And if in training, in actual exchange of self for others, we develop a more universal perspective.
So the very context context of our being in the in the world instinctively instinctively includes others. I think this is an important point or an important point. Automatically taking into consideration the needs and the wants of others in what we do and how we do it and what we don’t do. You know, being sensitive, being empathetic, readily and naturally identifying with how how we might be affecting others. You know, we understand others because more and more we’re able to see the world out of their eyes.
We’re able to set aside our own agendas, own issues. How the world might be for them. Perhaps we can begin to see them for themselves rather than what they how they are, what they have to offer ourselves only in those terms. You know, exchanging places with all the various types of people that you might come across across in the context of a normal day. This whether it be, you know, as we did in our meditation, whether it be a loved one, someone you’re very close to, someone just friends, just acquaintances, work colleagues, trades people, you know, whatever.
And putting, you know, habituating oneself through in one’s meditation such that it becomes quite automatic in the course of our daily life to to put ourselves in other people’s places to to to have some understanding of what it might be for them. Exchanging place with all types of various levels of people and even finally our enemies. All these various categories. So we begin to understand people more and more. There’s a beautiful this coming to understand.
Thich Nhat Hanh talks about understanding is another name for love. Love is another name for understanding. If we understood ourselves, what in our difficulties in life, what we’re up against, and how we have treated ourselves over the course of our life, we would have great compassion for ourselves ourselves, I’m sure. We would grow to love ourselves if we only understood ourselves more. And the same holds true for all others, I’m sure.
You know, we’ve out of our present we we view everything everyone from the vantage point of our self centeredness. And we’re unable to see the world out of other people’s eyes and identify with them. So the world is perceived, assessed, and responded to exclusively exclusively in terms of self self centered, you know, which we feel is is we feel very deeply is worthy of our absolute commitment. And it’s like the self the self god that we created for ourselves. And we we lay everything and everyone upon this altar of our own self-centeredness.
We’ve created a kind of prison for ourselves. And we are continually torturing ourselves in our constant struggle to find to figure out what is the secret of happiness. I mean, that’s what we’re all trying to work on. It’s like a puzzle we’re trying to solve. Never seen that it is this very struggle for our happiness alone which prevents us from awakening our hearts to others and thereby finding real happiness.
So in this regard, there’s a beautiful poem by Thich Nhat Hanh which I think expresses very well this idea of exchanging self and other in a very practical way. It’s the poem that’s called Call Me By My Real Name. Take that time. Perhaps some of you aren’t familiar with him. He’s a he’s a Vietnamese monk, peace activist who has a, a community in France.
I have a poem for you. This poem is about three of us. The first is a twelve year old girl, one of the boat people crossing the Gulf of Siam. She was raped by a sea pirate and after that she threw herself into the sea. The second person is the sea pirate who was born in a remote village in Thailand.
And the third person is me. I was not in the boat. I was tens of thousands of miles away. But because I was mindful, I knew what was going on in the Gulf. I was very angry of course, but I could not take sides against the sea pirate.
If I could have, it would have been easier, but I couldn’t. I realized that if I had been born in this village and had lived a similar life, economic, educational, so on, it is likely that I would now be that sea pirate. So it is not easy to take sides. Out of suffering, I wrote this poem. It is called Please Call Me By My True Names because I have many names, And when you call me by any of them, I have to say yes.
Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today, I still arrive. Look deeply. I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird whose wings are still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly, metamorphosizing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly. I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond, and I am also the grass snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself upon the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones. My legs are thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the twelve year old girl, refugee on a small boat who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. I am the member of the Politburo with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his debt of blood to my people dying slowly in a forced labor camp. My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom. My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true name so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and my pain are but one. One. Please call me by my true name so I can wake up and so the doors of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. So we’ve now completed four of this series of five meditations. Then there’s a fifth, which is going to bring all of these four together into a visualization technique called taking and giving.
All sentient beings without exception want happiness, do not want to suffer. You know, just like ourselves, just like each of ourselves individually, you and I. So, you know, if we were to look in any of our eyes, if we were to look in anyone else’s eyes, we would see ourselves looking back at ourselves. You know, we would see ourselves staring back. Those eyes, you know, behind those eyes is someone who wants to be happy, someone who doesn’t want to suffer, you know, regardless of any superficial difference that may, you know, that may distinguish ourselves.
This is the basis. Having trying to understand that deeply and therefore feel it. You know, we’re feeling refusing to acknowledge and to maintain this awareness of this basic fact of ordinary human existence. We conduct our lives as if we were the center of all things. As if we were as if we alone in this universe I mean, this is not rational, but we don’t conduct our lives on the basis of rational thinking.
We can we we conduct our lives as if we were the center of the universe as if we alone are all beings in this universe uniquely wanted to be happy and that we don’t want to suffer. That that the single entity called I is is the most important entity, the most important point of being in the universe. A thing about which we almost know we know almost nothing except this continual demands for gratification and our continual struggle to gratify this I of self-centeredness. This meaning, my mind. So, you know, a life based upon this self-centeredness is a life dedicated to the cherishing of this I.
In the course of complying with the constant demands of this self, of self centeredness, we don’t see others as essentially feeling beings. We can’t. But we see others as insentient objects. We devalue them. We exploit them.
We manipulate them in some fashion, some way or another. We see we look upon it as possible resources, as sources of pleasure for ourselves in one way or another. We we are always competing, conspiring, comparing, and then struggling in one way or another. This is this is what arises out of this attitude. It comes it comes it’s expressed through such a mindset.
In other cherishing we acknowledge others as feeling beings. So we’re building up. Others have said, we acknowledge that the fact that everyone in this room is a feeling being, that they simply aren’t insentient objects. But there’s something much more than that. They’re not just like this table for example.
Very different type of phenomenon in the universe. Terribly different. Very distinct and unique because they have feeling awareness. They are of intrinsic worth. Something that a table does not have in and of itself.
And so, you know, we acknowledge that the essential feeling property of of human beings, of all living beings, and affirming their own intrinsic worth. So, you know, in in the a great deal of how we relate with the world about us is a reflection about how we feel about ourselves. You know, if we can begin to to to look upon others as intrinsically worthy of our care and consideration, perhaps we will begin to extend that to our ourselves. We’ll begin to look upon ourselves in that same way. In the actual exchange of self for others, we psychologically identify with others.
We immerse ourselves in their world, you know, their qualities, their hopes, their fears, what’s going on for them, all their various life experiences. And we view our former selves from their perspective, out of their eyes. So gradually the psychological center of gravity begins to shift from self to other. Apathy begins to grow into sympathy. Sympathy begins to develop into Empathy into actually beginning to identify with others.
You know, to a re identification of the object of overriding concern, you know, from self to others. That others become more important in our life in other words. So this entire process of awakening our heart is it finds consummation. It’s all brought together in this single practice of taking and giving. This final practice.
Imaginatively taking upon ourselves the suffering of others and imagining giving away our happiness to them. It’s a technique. It’s a training. It’s employed in order to help us to overcome our hesitations, our fears around actually getting involved in the lives of others. The happiness and the sufferings of it.
What’s actually going on for the the nitty gritty of other people’s worlds. You know, open our hearts to the world even though it hurts. In many ways, we’re we’re going to look at in great detail when we come to the awakened mind, the third of the three principal aspects of the path. Reality is imagination. It has its roots in imagination.
You know, who we are and the reality that we that we perceive are very much dependent upon images and ideas within our own mind. That they’re upon the images and the ideas within our mind. These things that people this the world about us does not stand independently. It does not exist from its own side independent of our own mind. It’s very much a product of our present ways of thinking and the images contained within our mind.
This is a very fundamental notion. So, you know, who we are and the way we relate with and experience the world are to a great extent the product of the images and ideas within our mind. You know, our beliefs are composed of these images and ideas. And the our beliefs inform our perception. And if we we see our world through a glass darkly, if you see about you a world of pathology, it is because your ideas about it are pathological.
Your beliefs about it are some way dysfunctional, not healthy in some way. You know, each of us has a a particular self image of ourselves. An idea about ourselves. Who who we conceive ourselves to be. And we And we have some idea about the world and how we’re going to relate with the world.
You know, we have some premises from which we’re operating. So these images, these ideas, these premises premises contribute to how we actually perceive and thereby experience. And they are self reinforcing. Somehow it all fits together. You know, our our what we actually perceive and experience in turn reinforces our particular versions of ourselves.
You know, the world and the way that we’re relating to it. Somehow being correct that the way I relate with the world is I have a sense that there’s no other way to relate. Within this context, I’m trying. Maybe I have to try harder. But somehow it’s I can’t I can’t it seems to be the only only realistic way to approach life, the way I’m doing it at present, really.
I mean, there’s something at a very basic level that’s the feeling we have. That I I I just I I’m just having to make some kind of adjustments to get it get what it is that I want. But no other radical approach that that that somehow the world keeps reinforcing my particular version of the way I think things are. The, you know, and what all we end up doing more than not is simply juggling, manipulating the people and the things and situations in order to, you know, the givens that we have in life in order to find a good life for ourselves. That is nothing other than the given.
There’s no other possibility. So ignoring the role of imagination plays in bringing forth our lived world, we take take as literal truths the feedback that the world keeps giving us, sending back to ourselves. You know, I am this way. The world is that way. There’s only one realistic way to therefore, there’s only one realistic way to relate with the world because given that I’m this way, given that the world is that way, it’s only sensible to relate in this way.
And it it only makes sense. We can’t that we we we take we take things literally when in fact they’re what we are experiencing are simply metaphoric expressions of our own mind. You know, however dysfunctional, however unworkable our life seems to be, there seems to be no alternative really. That it seems that there seems to be obviously but one realistic, one way to deal with the world. You know?
We’re talking here from the context of our present approach of struggling for happiness for ourselves alone. Everything that happens to us seems to confirm our view of ourselves and of the world, reinforcing a particular pattern of the way that we’re relating with the world. It seems to be only valid. So in other words, it seems it becomes difficult for us to be able to change. Why?
Because we can’t even begin to imagine ourselves as being any other way, as a world being in any other way. And if we can’t imagine it, it can never be. It all begins in imagination, having some insight into other possibilities. Having an image of an alternative within your mind to begin to work from. So the, you know, what the fact is whatever we can imagine, whatever we can imagine has the potential to be.
This building was simply an idea in an architect’s mind at one point. They implemented and gave expression, material expression, and now we’re sitting in this building. Through imagination we can re image our self image. We can construct a new image of our ourselves. We we can transform the ideas about ourselves in the world and how we’re going to relate with the world.
We can be different. You know, we’re not talking about cosmetic changes. Imagine yourself as some other way. If we can’t imagine it, we can never be it. And this is one of the one of the is that the area of Buddhism referred to as Tantra.
And we and we we take this the essential one of the essential presuppositions of tantra is that we take the fruit. We take what it is that we’re striving to become and we we imagine that we’ve already attained it. We habituate ourselves to that state and that becomes a cause for its actual attainment. So imagination is integral to this process. We cannot ordinarily conceive of ourselves being in our way of relating to the world and others as being any way radically different than what it is now.
Limit limit within our own imagination limits what we can become. So we are limited because we do not imagine ourselves as being any different. If we can’t imagine ourselves being any different, we will never be any different. So in the practice of taking and giving, we train in just this, imagination. So it’s not simply a mind game, delusions of grandeur.
It means to to it’s a means to make real an alternative way of being, an alternative way of relating to to others. It’s we we are making real the possibility of being a bodhisattva. Someone this hero with respect to awakening. Someone who has awakened their heart to all living beings. You know, the way of someone who has completely opened their heart to all others.
Can I go in for just a minute? I say that every night, don’t I? So all that you need in order to do is the Tibetan word for taking and giving. Tong means to give. Len means to take.
Tonglen. Is to have experienced suffering and to have experienced happiness. Even if you’ve had only one second of suffering in your life, can do Tonglen. Even if you had only one second of happiness, you can do Tonglen. Those are the prerequisites.
In other words, you are an ordinary human being with pain and pleasure just like everyone else. However, if you were just like everyone else, you would take the good part and give away the bad part. Sometimes that makes a certain amount of sense. With this path, the path of the warrior is a lot more daring. You are cultivating a fearless heart, a heart that doesn’t close down in any circumstance.
It is always totally open so that you could be touched by anything. We can open our hearts to the point that we could enter into the hell realm, the hungry ghost realms, the jealous god realms, the god realms, any place. We could be there with our hearts completely open and not afraid. That’s the aspiration of the Bodhisattva. When we formally take the Bodhisattva vow, we are given we are given the Tonglen practice to do.
That means that we really wish to be fearless enough to help others. We are aware that we we ourselves have a lot of fear, but we aspire to have our hearts wake up completely to be like a Buddha in any realm that exists. If you start to think that you would be, what it would be like in some of those realms, you should just thank your lucky stars that you’re not in them. But if you were, you could still be there with an open heart. The essence of the practice is willingness to share pleasure and delight and the joy of life in giving and the willingness to feel your pain and that of others on taking.
That’s the essence of it. Like a Bodhisattva, and that’s what we’re struggling to become. This is a Bodhicharyavatara. It’s like a manual, training manual, how to become a Bodhisattva. We open our hearts to others.
We feel fearless and maybe you can’t imagine yourself to be a Bodhisattva. Maybe that’s the problem. Yeah. That’s what’s limiting ourselves. That’s what’s keeping ourselves stuck.
So we’re going to practice, you know, imaginatively as if we were. We fearlessly and with great compassion take upon ourselves the suffering of others. And with gladness and with with great love, we give away our happiness to others. Whatever all that we possess. You know, through this imagined technique of taking and giving, we transform aspects of our self limiting self image that we have of our ourselves, our way of relating with the world into those of the archetypal bodhisattva.
You know, who they are and what they how they relate with the world, how they relate to suffering, how they relate to to happiness for the world. You may be asking yourself, if I take in the sufferings of and the pains of others, won’t I risk harming myself? The one thing you should know for certain is that the only thing that Tonglen could harm is the one thing that has been harming you the most, your own ego, your own self grasping, self-cherishing mind, which is the root of all suffering. For if you practice Tonglen as often as possible, this self grasping mind will get weaker and weaker and your true nature, compassion will be given a chance to emerge more and more strongly. The practice of Tonglen is one that the mystic masters and saints of every tradition know and living it and embodying with the abandonment and the fervor fervor of true wisdom and true compassion is what fills their lives with joy.
So anyway, next week we’ll actually begin to describe the practice of taking and giving and and then the adaptation we can make use of in transforming our minds in even in the course of our everyday difficulties that we have. So we’ll stop there and we’ll we’ll dedicate and create a potential that we accumulated. And thank you for being so patient. Patient week after week after week. In the land encircled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being.
Powerful, remain to the end of cyclic existence. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual master and lead each and every living being to the awakened realm through these 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. Have a good two weeks.
Maybe I’ll see you at teaching. Maybe I could get a cup of tea.