Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A colorful verse comparing hollow spiritual practice to “a parrot squawking” anchors this 46-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun. He opens by examining the eight worldly preoccupations — hopes of pleasure, gain, fame, and praise, fears of their opposites — arguing that genuine practice means abandoning these as life’s governing standard and acting instead from deeply held values. He draws on a desert fathers’ image of aspirations rotting like clothes stored away unused to press the point: noble intentions must be translated into action. The second half turns to emptiness and the misconceived self: through a rope-mistaken-for-a-snake analogy, he explains how projecting inherent, independent existence onto the “I” generates all afflictive emotions. The session closes with meditation instructions on evoking strong emotional states — anger, fear, elation — in order to identify and examine that distorted sense of self. Suited to practitioners with some Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 H and M of B 1992 12 02.mp3
UUID: ea723fa4-6e94-442f-a24b-ab3970ab96a5
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-12-02
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.0 minutes
Words: ~6,354
Begin by adjusting our motivation, redirecting ourselves, reorienting ourselves, getting back in touch with some of our most deeply cherished values. Those guidelines that perhaps we’ve set for ourselves over the course of our life when there’s moments of great clarity, great wisdom, when we felt inspired, when we felt the need to act out of a very authentic part of ourselves. A part which perhaps we don’t fully comprehend but which is, which would give meaning to our life. And then we get those parts of ourselves and those values and those guidelines that we’ve established for ourselves which we get out of touch with over the course of our busy lives, having to deal with all the practical necessities of taking care of oneself and others in a very practical sense. And generally I talk about this reorientation process very much is on one level is moving away or a shift in our attitude of how we’re going to determine the standards which are going to determine our actions, our thinking, the way we speak, the way we behave.
Normally whether we’re aware of it or not, a great proportion of our actions, what we do, what we say, what we think are defined in terms of hopes and fears. We move away from those types of any types of actions which will bring us which serve as a threat to ourselves, which we see as in some way diminishing ourselves. We move toward those which enhance, are thought of in terms of the priorities of ego, which simply perpetuate most of what we have known in the past, you know, out of the fear of an open fluid way of relating in the present moment. So these are these hopes of pleasure, fears of pain, hopes of gain, fears of loss, hopes of fame, fears of notoriety, being badly thought of, Hopes of praise, fears of of ridicule, being put down. These hopes and fears, they determine very much what we do, what we say, and what we think.
So and out of this we lose touch. There’s no freedom. There’s no working out a very this deeply out of our most deeply held values. There is only the deadening process of repetitive actions in order to secure the self, secure our self identity. So this process of reorientation very much is a commitment to redetermining the standards we’re going to live our life by.
That we’re going to live out of this authentic cherished values, these guidelines that we set for ourselves, that we’re going to make as the primary standard determining factor in discriminating what actions we’re going to involve ourselves in. Growth, awakening, To move away, to realign our sense of allegiance away from a life passively based upon hopes and fears to one which actually actively chooses growth in all the various situations that life presents us, and to actually express this in our everyday life through our practice. In this regard, I’d like to read a quotation. It’s from a teaching that one of the great twentieth century Tibetan masters gave on this very subject that we’re covering called the subject of the three fundamentals of the path in terms of the developing determination to awaken, the awakening heart and the awakening mind, and the necessity to practice what we’re learning. It doesn’t matter who you are, great sage or saint or master or meditator.
And no matter how profound the practice you are imagining you are doing it is all hollow sham if it’s mixed with the eight worldly thoughts. What I call the eight worldly thoughts, it’s the eight preoccupations of ego based existence. So it’s these very hopes of pleasure, fears of pain, hopes of gain, fear of loss, fame, notoriety, praise and ridicule, that these are the primary walls of the prison in which we have bound ourselves in. We find this truth in the world of in the words of YanGompa, a disciple of the victorious Götsangpa, so he’s quoting from another teacher. It doesn’t do any good that we that the teaching is the holy and secret great completion.
The great completion is a very usually considered a very advanced type of teaching. It doesn’t do any good that the teaching is the holy and secret great completion. The person himself has to become holy and secret great completion. We see a whole pack of cases where the way a person describes his spiritual practice, where the way a person describes his spiritual practice, it would buy a whole herd of horses, but the person himself isn’t worth the dog. Religion, this is Tibetan, semblance here, religion that’s all words and never gets put into daily practice is all the same as some talk of a parrot.
It is all the same as some talk a parrot. A parrot’s been taught to squawk. The person in the practice are miles apart. His mind and his religion never quite mix into one. There’s a lump of flour that never dissolves in the batter.
Babbling on about spiritual practice and never letting it sink in, leaving it bob around on the surface while like some uncooperative vegetable in a soup is missing the whole point of spiritual practice. I tell you all what I teach as the crux of all practice is to give up on this life. And as we talked about when we were going through Tsongkhapa’s teaching on the three fundamentals of the path where he says to deemphasize the attachment to this life, that is to say, what does it mean to give up this life? It means to give up these very standards, these eight principle preoccupations of ego which determine our thinking, speaking and behaving or acting the way we act. To give up on hoping for pleasure, fearing, or pain.
You know that we this is what it means to give up on this life, to give up these as the standards by which you determine how you’re going to act, speak and think. That you determine that no matter what the situation may be may the determining factor how I’m going to discriminate what to do in terms of what is going to help me grow beyond my fear, beyond my hope, beyond the priorities that I’ve said that my ego is trying to compulsively perpetuate in my life. May I be able to work against these, work through these, work go beyond my hopes and fears and simply to awaken. And this becomes the inner focus of our life, the state of awakening which is personified in Buddha. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, and the Buddha within ourselves.
And it is characterized by wisdom, knowing the way things are, without preconception, without misconception, divorce of all our exaggerations and superimposition, love and compassion, and the burning heartfelt desire that others be happy. And finally the a sense of inner strength which determines to take responsibility translate that love and compassion into actual fact, to work in the world and expend one’s mental and physical energy in helping not only yourself, but helping to bring about the welfare of others. And this is a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being, someone who has solved their own problems at a very fundamental level, experiences unremitting peace within themselves, and compassionately work skillfully outwardly in helping others to do the same. And this this becomes our our refuge. This becomes our orientation that what we keep reminding ourselves, redirecting ourselves.
You know, as I as I talked about last week, we don’t have to be superhumans or saints. But we have to try, we have to respect ourselves, we have to act out that very deeply felt part of ourselves. We have to heed this inarticulate whispering of our own heart. We have to begin to translate into fact and some kind of reality beyond these these no matter how noble our thoughts may be, we actually have to put them into some kind of practice. You know, I think I perhaps mentioned this last week, but I’ll mention again that the the one of the sayings of the desert fathers, the Christian hermits of ancient Egypt, where they compared these noble aspirations that we all have from time to time with these thoughts which transcend the usual boundaries of our habitual patterns, the ways of thinking, ways of looking and viewing the world, which by which we’re somehow touched by something very deeply.
And we were raised up to a very high level of order of being. That unless we act upon these, they’re very much like clothes, which have been stored away in a box. No matter how beautiful those clothes may be, how how elaborate, how fine the material may be. If they’re not taken out and worn at times, then they’re going to rot. And likewise with these noble aspirations within our heart, our aspirations to to be another person, to to be all that we feel that we can be at some very deep level, to be a little more caring, little more able to communicate, little drawing a little bit closer and bringing about concerning ourselves a little more with others.
And that’s where we begin to translate the very meaningful and self authenticated ways of thinking, as we begin to translate them, practice them, then they’re going to rot in our own heart. And they will never they will no longer be able to move our minds. They will slowly they will be they will fade away like a mist when the sun rises. We’re going to lose contact with a very important side of ourselves. And then we’re in darkness and then it’s very difficult.
So we have to cherish these these moments of great aspiration, these great moments of clarity, of love and wisdom. And moreover, not leave it there, but actually try to put them into practice. Try to, in some small way, to express them even if it’s going out of your way to smile. Do not think that’s something. Something that’s been some kind of movement, some kind of change.
Conscious demands to be heard. We can either choose to run away or we can summon up the courage to to live our truth. These most deeply held values to to express an authentic way of being in the world and be one with ourselves in this thing called life. And we have to act in it. It is the act that has a certain truth.
No matter beyond our beliefs, beyond our this ratiocinating thinking process. As our act which tells most about who we are and what it is we’re actually believing, what standards have, which determine what we value most in the world. So to put these, you know, the practice of Dharma, the practice of the spiritual path is not the mere accumulation of knowledge no matter how important that may be. It’s not the matter of getting twenty PhDs. It’s better to practice one thing well than to do many things.
We can all do one thing a little bit better. And then that we can build up on that. And then slowly we’re not the same person every once were. Merely to think about practice is not sufficient though it’s a beginning. That it’s important that we express that aspiration in concrete terms in our everyday mind.
And, you know, if we don’t do anything else than to cease harming others. You know, the crux of the Buddha’s teaching, the crux of any religion is compassion. And compassion at the minimal level is to cease harming. And if we can help, then whatever we can do, but if we can’t help, at least try not to harm. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, the Buddha within ourselves, which each of us here is trying to act upon.
Trying to solve our problem through wisdom, through love, through development of our inner strength. And we actualize Buddha by means of the Dharma. The truth is the various practices, the techniques, and whatever is able to help us to gain expression, to actualize our potential, to change our mind, to move us from attachment to openness, from hatred to love, from self centeredness to other centeredness, from the ignorance to wisdom, and whatever has that ability that has that acts as a key to open up the potentials of our mind. And this is all done within the spiritual within the context of a spiritual community, a social context, that we are primarily social beings. human beings are social beings, and that we exist in interrelationship with others, interdependence with others, and to begin to acknowledge this fact and find an appropriate way of relating with others, which is very interdependent interdependence entailed.
That simply because we feel isolated does not mean that this is our primary mode of being. This is a deluded way of being we experience, the sense of being separate from others. And to begin to, on a conventional level, overcome the sense of separateness from others, beginning to expand one’s area of concern to include more and more individuals as best we can moving in that direction. These are all matters of direction. You know, the journey of a thousand miles begins with but a first step.
And we can at least make that effort in some small way to translate these aspirations and these resources, these directions into some kind of practical reality and trying to raise the level of our motivation such such that we’re not doing this only for ourselves. We’re trying to do this for others, not just myself, not just this single person, but as many others as we can. I’m trying to develop myself, trying to solve my problem so I can be of that much more benefit, so that I can be of that much more skillful in helping others to solve their problem. And then our life is purposeful. It’s created.
And whatever we might do, whatever jobs we may look at, whatever family we may have, that we are going to be better people. We’re going to have a higher quality of life and we’re going to be I’m more useful to others in a very significant way. And I think this is something worth our effort. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. And the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving in the other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. There’s nothing that doesn’t become easier upon familiarization.
That no matter what, however we may conceive of ourselves at present, whatever identity we may hold to at present, whatever patterns that we may predominantly express, there’s no reason that we can’t change. We can direct this change. We can become anything that we want to be. This is the nature of our situation. That’s the actual fact of our reality.
The fact that we think of ourselves as not being able to change, we hold on to a particular specific identity as if it were the only possible way that we could be is our delusion. We can change. We can direct that change. We’re talking about the third of the three principles or the three fundamentals of the path. That is to say the awakening mind.
And we’re going to meditate on the awakening mind. And by the awakening mind, I mean awakening the mind to reality, the ultimate reality. We’re going to discuss it further, but I’m just going to give it say a few words in connection with our meditation that we’re going to that we’re going to do together, and then we’re going to expand upon our understanding of it. The nature of the self, you know, are many levels that we can come to an understanding of the nature of reality that as we’re going to describe there. You know, there the Buddha taught in accordance with the dispositions, the capacities, the level of understanding of each of the students.
He didn’t teach one teaching for all, but it was was was geared to the level of that particular of a particular student at a particular time at a particular level of their present understanding. And so these teachings were later formulated or systematized, and they were constituted into four schools. So in terms of the nature of reality, let’s say, the way things ultimately exist. By ultimately exist, the things as I’m going to describe a little bit later, we can very much what we’re looking for is going to determine what we find. We look at things at different levels in order to for various purposes.
And we can look at the table. We can look at it in terms of what the species, what kind of wood it’s made from, how it was made, the color, shape, its hardness, how much weight it’s going to hold. It’s made up of atoms, molecules. It’s made up of, you know, the probabilities of patterns of molecules and movement. There’s many different ways and levels we can begin to analyze the table, its nature.
But there is a very deep level, the deepest most level. That is to say by ultimate reality. We mean upon ultimate analysis, what will we find when we’re looking to try to understand how does the table exist? What way does it exist, if we penetrate deeply enough we will come to what is called emptiness. That is by the word emptiness I mean a lack, an absence, an absence of a particular way of existing.
This way of existing is a fantasized way of existing, an imaginary way of existing, something that we’ve totally made up in our mind that we’ve fabricated from beginningless time due to the influence of ignorance. Due to the influence of ignorance, we project on upon upon to all phenomena in ourselves a fantasized ways of existence of existence. This fantasized, imaginary, fabricated, made up way of existence, it has different names depending upon the context. Sometimes it’s called inherent existence. Sometimes it’s called independent existence, self defining existence, natural existence, existing from its own side, objective existence, many many different terms that are used in different contexts to help us to get a handle on this subject.
And this is a level of understanding that we’re working toward that things do not exist this way do they appear. Appearances are oftentimes mistaken. For example, he may be walking down a path and it’s late in the evening and it’s it’s somewhat dark. And what is in fact in the grass, laying in the grass is a is a coiled striped rope. But due to the darkness, it appears to you to be a snake.
And out of it, on the basis of that appearance, you generate fear, aversion, suffering. So in fact, there’s no snake there. In fact in reality. But there is the appearance. And dependence upon that appearance there’s certain reactions which take place.
So our appearances can be deceptive. You know, if you were to build up enough courage, would begin to, you know, you watch it and you don’t run away, but you you stand there and begin to notice what doesn’t move. Maybe it’s a dead snake. Maybe a little bit of doubt begins to arise in your mind, but you’re pretty sure it’s snake, but maybe it’s a dead snake. And you get a little bit closer.
No. It doesn’t have a head on it. Maybe it’s a maybe it’s a headless. The headless dead snake. Mhmm.
Can you go a little closer? And it well, it doesn’t have it’s just the same thickness all the way through. It doesn’t taper off like most snakes do. And a little bit of doubt about about what you have believed previously to be a snake begins to arise. Your surety that this is in fact a snake is beginning to diminish, begin to dissolve slightly.
And along with that, the fear and the suffering that was associated, that was dependent upon that misconception, upon that misbelief. And you get maybe you get very brave and get a stick and you poke and just It’s not a snake. It’s a rope. That moment, you know, the conception of being a rope, of a single object being a rope and being a snake cannot be maintained simultaneously in your mind. They’re going to negate each other.
So once the once the surety that it’s only a rope arises in your mind, you cannot maintain a perception that it’s a snake. It is like a balance beam. One rises the other fall. So with respect to that object, once we completely comprehend it, there’s an absence of snake. There’s a rope.
All the fear, all the suffering which arose in dependence upon what it was in fact simply a misconception, a mistaken idea vanishing. Likewise with the nature of the self, the world about us. We are continually objects appear to us a particular way. We call this way of appearing inherent existence. We call it self defining existence, object of existence, existing from its own side many terms which we’re eventually going to discuss in detail.
But it this is it’s a fantasized way of existing. Objects do not exist in this way, but they appear to exist that way and we accede to that appearance. We believe, ah yes, it appears that way and in fact that’s the way it exists. Just like this the rope. It appears to be a snake and we think, yes, it is a snake and we react with fear and we end up with great aversion and suffering.
So on a very simple level, you know we talked about these different levels of teachings that the Buddha gave and the way they were formulated. We’re going to look at the nature of the self in our meditation. We believe at a very deep level of awareness that the self is unitary. By unitary I mean it doesn’t have any parts. It’s a homogeneous mass.
You know when we as an emotional response when we say things like, I hate your guts. That I — I’m the most beautiful thing that ever came to Adelaide since the Queen. You know, whatever. It can be good, can be bad. It’s just an emotional response.
That I, the way it’s appearing to us at that very moment. You know the human cognitive systems which the mind is are model builders. That is to say we use representations of the world and the things about us in order to think about them. But I want to think about I’m going to go shopping tomorrow and I’m going to buy myself a new pair of pants. So I have all I have many many different representations, models, symbols that I’m manipulating.
Tomorrow, department store, pants, purchase, I. And I I put these all in a particular order and it has meaning for me. Can if we have shared experience I can communicate these same symbols to you and you can say, oh I’ll go with you, or something like that. So that’s the way we come to understand the world by using representation models by means of which we can think about the world about us. We can organize it along certain lines.
Can create a type of conventional reality of conventions. Conventions are agreements, the way that we shared beliefs, social construction. So we think about ourselves. We have a model about ourselves. When I say I’m an American, when I say I’m a monk, I’m a champion, I’m thinking in terms of a model.
When I say I hate your guts, that I appears to us in a specific way. I’m using a particular model. What are the characteristics of that model? That representation of the eye. When I say, I hate your guts, I can’t stand it, get away from me, get away from me.
That eye, what happens to appear to us. If we could begin to discriminate through our awareness we would begin to see certain characteristics and this is what we’re going to try to do. The three primary characteristics of the nature of this eye at this present level of our understanding that we’re discussing the awakening mind. One of them is that it’s unitary. It’s homogenous.
It doesn’t appear to have any parts. Some kind of amorphous mass. I hate your gut, that I. It doesn’t appear to have a body or a mind. This is some kind of undefined ill defined, undistinct.
Indistinct. Indistinct. Indistinct. Indistinct. Indistinct, amorphous mass.
It’s just a vague notion, some kind of mass. I hate your guts. So it’s kind of unitary, amorphous, indistinct, partless. As always that’s the first part. I’m trying to give you a feeling for this.
Second one is unchanging. We’re going to go into this in great detail next year. This is for the purpose of your meditation. Unchanging. It doesn’t appear to be changing from moment to moment.
It’s static, it’s permanent, it’s not arising in dependence upon causes and conditions, it’s fixed. And then thirdly, independent. It appears the model the way this model gets characterized, the way it appears to us because it is appearing in dependence upon this model, we filter our perceptions through our models. We superimpose these models upon our perception in order to make sense of the world. We organize the data, the information about us that we’re receiving is in terms of our beliefs.
Our beliefs, our perception is belief laden. This is it appears to be independent. It appears to be it appears not to depend upon body and mind. That I hate you. Appears to that I appears to have nothing to do with body and mind.
That we you know, of course, you know, you may say, oh, I don’t think of myself that way. You’re being unitary, unchanging, and kind of but that that would you know, that’s the missed point. We’re not talking about, and I guess I should emphasize this point, the empirical conventional self. I. These terms are synonymous.
I, person, jampa, monk, self. These all mean the same thing. These all exist. As I mentioned last week, these aren’t the problem. The actual self which is imputed, which is designated, which is labeled upon body and mind.
You know when a baby is first born it doesn’t have a name. There’s a body and mind what you recall. Let’s call it Mary. It depends upon being designated, labeled, Mary. Mary comes into existence.
Mary is that being which is labeled to a particular body and mind. And so in dependence upon that body and mind, in dependence upon causes and conditions, in dependence upon the parts, in dependence upon being labeled, given a name, things come into existence. Mary didn’t exist before being given that name, before being labeled, before being christened, whatever. in dependence upon being given that name. The same is true of all objects and the same is true of the eye, the self.
So there is a validly existent eye, self. That self which is imputed, which is labeled to a particular body and mind. I’m sitting here, I’m wearing particular clothing. I’m talking. Those are all valid statements.
This eye is doing all of these various things. You’re listening there. You’re sitting there. I’m a man. You may be a woman.
These are all valid. But there are misconceptions with respect to that I, which we’re going to talk about a little bit more. Now when Buddhism talks about realization realizations are not the mere acquisition of more information. You know, as I said, as if becoming a Buddha was like getting twenty PhD. It is realization is the removal of our exaggeration or depreciation with respect to an object.
Objects have certain characteristics. If we exaggerate those characteristics or if we depreciate those characteristics, then we do not understand that object. If we superimpose our ideas about that object upon it we do not understand that object. So realization that is to say to come to an understanding of what the object is is to remove any impositions, superimpositions that we’re making. You know if I were to think, oh this is a pure, this is the finest crystal that was ever made.
It’s not, it’s just glass. So I don’t understand the nature of that glass. It’s not crystal. I’m superimposing my ideas about that glass. I don’t understand the nature of the glass.
So if somebody said no it’s not it’s not crystal, it’s just common glass and that by understanding I would remove that superimposition I’m making toward that glass. I saw it is, yeah you’re right, it’s only glass. I would come to a realization of the nature of the glass, this particular glass. So realization is removal. It’s not acquisition of more and more information.
The information is helpful to help us to remove. You know the reality is always there in front of our noses. And it’s always there. The ultimate reality is present in everywhere. It’s shouting at us, but we can’t hear it.
There are certain veils called ignorance which is preventing us from seeing and hearing what has always been there. So it is the removal of these veils of ignorance, the removal of this quality of exaggeration or depreciation, the removal of superimposition, and coming to see the way things are in and of themselves clearly without any of these distorting factors of the mind. So this is what we mean by realization. So there is the self. But with respect to the self, we depreciate it or we exaggerate it or we superimpose qualities upon it, Two to three of the primary qualities that we superimpose upon the self are that it’s unitary, that it is unchanging, and that it’s independent and existent.
So this arises. Now does that perhaps not make any difference to us. It’s not important, but it is important. Why? Because in dependence upon this mistaken model of the self, this misconception as to the nature of self, all of the various afflictive emotions arise. The very fact that we that we have the destructive patterns, the afflictive patterns or emotions of anger, hatred, spite, jealousy, attachment, miserliness, all arise dependent upon a misconceived model of the self.
Just as in the case when we were walking along that path and in dependence upon misconceiving the nature of that rope, there arose fear, there arose aversion. Likewise, in dependence upon misconceiving the nature of the self, superimposing qualities upon it which aren’t there just like we have superimposed a quality of snakeness on the rope which in fact there was nothing about that rope which was a snake. There arises all of these various afflictive emotions and out of these afflictive emotions from the creation of karma all our various suffering. So there’s nothing more important than we can that we have to do than begin to see through, to cut through these misconceptions as to the nature of the self. So this is I’m going to work around to our meditation eventually.
So we’re not looking When we’re trying to understand the nature of the self, the eye, we’re not trying to understand it in terms of its conventional nature, its empirical nature, in terms of body and mind. We can we can we can rationally involve ourselves with this type of analysis. We can we can rationalize we can analyze the self into its constituents of the five aggregates forms, feelings, perceptions, thought constructions, and consciousnesses. We can we can analyze in terms of the eighteen sources, eighteen constituents, the twelve sources. There’s all kinds of various ways that Buddhism has elaborate systems to analyze the actual nature of the conventional self.
This is that we can sit here very rationally, very coolly, and go through this reason analysis. This isn’t what we’re getting at. We’re looking at an emotional response when you become upset. That is whenever you are experiencing any great emotion, you are operating upon making use of a particular model of the self, which is not the conventional self, which is not the empirical self, but which is a misconceived model of itself. The very fact, you know, so we’re looking at the type of model which appears to us doing in great emotional situations.
I hate your guts. I love love I’m the most, you know, I’m fantastic. I’m not sure what’s gonna happen tomorrow. Maybe things will work out maybe I’m so worried. I’m afraid to I’m afraid of dying.
You know, I shouldn’t have done that last week. I’m so ashamed of myself. I’m so terrible. I’m so lousy. And if these types of emotional responses, that I is being considered in terms of a misconception.
A mistaken model. This is the I that we’re going to try to understand. We exist. There’s no problem. I exist.
But we want to understand the nature of the misconceived model of the I, the distorted I. And this will it most vividly appears as emotional response. So in our in our meditation, we try to imaginatively using our experience, using fantasy to evoke an emotional situation, emotional emotional state. You know, maybe, you know, somebody really did something terrible to you once. I’m gonna get mad about it.
I’m so damn mad. I I hate you. And I or thinking about you’re walking up on the stage to receive the Nobel Prize and you fell flat on your face. I knew about it. Or you jump out of a plane.
I remember the Dalai Lama’s brother once said that’s a great time to meditate on the nature of the eye. He was a paratrooper in the Indian army, and was jumping off the plane. He said the eye appears very vivid to you at that moment. That’s what part of what the Chöd practice, this practice that Chöd practice, this practice that Khenchen Tsültrim Rinpoche was teaching where you you go to graveyard and you invite the local, the malevolent spirits to come into your body and a little bit of fear, right? And you try to try to say, who is it that actually is so afraid?
Little portion of your mind like a spy is watching. Who is it that’s so afraid? Or, you know, the meditation masters would sit at the edge of a well or the edge of a cliff and they’d be sitting there kind of look over the edge and fear would arise. And they’d say, who is it that’s so afraid? What does it look like?
What does it appear like? Or they wouldn’t sit at the feet of elephants, you know, which is kind of a scary thing to do. Anyway, trying to trying to evoke emotional responses in which the I, this misconceived I will will appear naturally in trying to understand its nature. Then, and this is the most difficult. So coming to an understanding of selflessness.
The most difficult point and but the most important point, the rest is a piece of cake. The most important and most difficult point is to identify what is called the object of negation, the object of refutation. How does this eye appear? It’s like setting up a target. If you don’t set up the target there’s nothing to shoot at.
So we have to identify what the target looks at looks like very clearly to ourselves. This is the most important but also the most difficult to within your own experience trying to identify this model that you’re using during these emotional responses, this representation, this appearance of the self. How does the self appear during the course of emotional situation? Trying to determine its exact qualities. Then once we’ve identified the object, once we know what we’re looking for in terms of the target, then we’re going to look for it using our rationality.
We’re going to investigate. And the place where we look, once we’ve identified it, where where do we sense the self? You know, I don’t look for myself in the kitchen. I look for it somewhere over here. I’m not quite sure where, but on, you know, on this side of the looking glass.
Over here. That’s where I sense the eye exists. So that’s where we’re going to look. So we know what we’re looking for. We’ve clearly determined what the eye appears like during these emotional situations.
Now in a rational analysis, we’re going to see if that snake is really there or not or whether it was merely an appearance. We know that it appeared, but we’re not sure if it really exists. So now we’re going to perform an analysis and how we’re going to work through. Where we’re going to look? We’re going to look here.
We’re going to look in terms of the body and mind. We’re going to look through our body, see if we can find that