Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 47-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a guided loving-kindness meditation, extending care outward from oneself through a friend, a stranger, an enemy, and finally to all living beings across the world. He then frames the Wheel of Life as a map of ego, using the analogy of a television set whose channels we compulsively switch — each program dissatisfying, none ever truly exited. The three hub poisons — desire, hatred, and ignorance — are explained before he works through all six realms of the desire realm, treating each as both a literal rebirth destination and a recognizable daily psychology: god-realm bliss, demigod jealousy, human restlessness, animal tunnel-vision, hungry-ghost insatiability, and hell-realm aggression that feeds on itself. Accessible to newcomers, with concrete everyday examples throughout.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 WoL 1988 09 25.mp3
UUID: 1be11884-e6f3-4416-bf5c-1fcb426f0e6f
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Wheel of Life (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-09-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.9 minutes
Words: ~4,731
It lasts about ten minutes. Just try to to find some key so that the words can be transformed into an actual experience. In a way we use words to induce a particular state of mind. So initially we want to get in touch with our feelings of dissatisfaction, some of our problems, And the fact that we want to be happy. No matter what you may have done in the past, what mistakes you may have created, you can simply regret them and determine as best you can not to repeat them again in the future.
You can begin again. And however you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold, you can change, you can become anything that you want to be. For the present we want to try to become friends with ourselves, all the various parts of ourselves, even those parts we don’t like. Be gentle with ourselves, have some compassion for ourselves, and wish ourselves well. So simply direct some positive feelings towards yourselves and kind gentle thoughts.
May I be happy. May I not suffer. May I grow. Wish yourself well. Wish yourself all the things that you could ever want.
Be kind to yourself. And think of someone that you like, that you love, someone of the same sex. And imagine that person in front of you. If you can’t see them then it doesn’t matter. Just feel that that person is there.
And recall all the good times that you’ve shared, the kindness that this person has shown you, the happiness that you’ve had together. Begin to direct the natural warm loving feelings which arise. The feelings of wishing happiness, of caring. May you be happy. May you find everything that you’re looking for.
This kind, caring, warm feelings. Direct them toward this person. And think of someone that you neither like nor dislike, someone you feel indifference towards. Imagine that person in front of you. We want to try to go beneath the superficial appearances that we usually judge people by, that we usually cling to whether they’re male or female, young or old, rich or poor, educated, uneducated, ugly or beautiful.
Try to go beneath all of that and try to see the essence of that person that there’s someone there who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer exactly like yourself. Just as we wish our own self happiness, we begin to wish this person happiness because it’s very much a reflection about how we feel about ourselves deep down, how we relate with this person since essentially we’re exactly alike. So the direct warm caring feelings wishing happiness towards this person. Now think of someone who you have some problems with, someone who disturbs your mind, an enemy. Imagine that person in front of you.
This person wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. Perhaps their method of finding their happiness, eliminating their suffering, has come in conflict with your method of finding your happiness, eliminating your suffering. It’s just a conflict of self interest. You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past to find the happiness that you were looking for, and this person has done the same to you. And just as you have to forgive yourself for making mistakes, you have to begin to forgive this person.
So just for the present moment, set aside your hurt, your grudge, your anger, and try to see someone very much like yourself, someone who wants the best they can to find happiness in life, who’s very confused about how to go about it and makes many mistakes along the way and wish them happiness just as you would yourself. Imagine all four of these people together, yourself and these three others. And though you have different feelings for each of them, though they appear differently to you, Try to see them from the point of view that they’re all equal and wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer. Essentially there’s no difference. Without any feelings of bias just radiate out some warm, caring feelings to offer equally.
All the people in this room, people who are taking responsibility for their lives, their happiness, searching, investigating, exploring, trying to find a path, a means, to find satisfaction and fulfillment. Just wish everyone in the room that they find what they’re looking for, that they find happiness, whatever it is that they’re looking for, whatever brings them happiness. Wish them that. And all the people on the block watching television, cooking, eating, whatever they’re doing, whatever they’re saying, they do it because they think it’s going to bring them happiness, it’s going to eliminate their suffering. So radiate out the wish touching everyone on the block, wishing that they find their happiness, that they become separated from their suffering.
Radiating out further, extending out this wish to all of Adelaide, all the people in their cars and buses on the streets and their homes. Further and further, opening your heart, radiating out this wish to all of South Australia, all the people, animals and insects. Extending out this wish. Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, the entire country. Further and further radiating out warm, caring feelings, wishing happiness.
New Zealand, the entire southern hemisphere. Enveloping the entire world in your heart and your wish for happiness. All the people, black, white, red, yellow, all the animals, all the insects, Everything that lives is touched by a wish that they’d be happy that they not suffer. Radiating out in all the directions of space Without any limit. Further and further.
To finally, without any boundaries, without any center, pervading all of infinite space. I wish may all things be happy. May all things be happy. So we’re going to talk a little bit about what is called the wheel of life. And I was thinking, when I was setting this up, this easel, it reminded me of some of these World War II movies made about World War II where they are planning a bombing mission and they’re getting their flight instructions before the mission.
This is the target and this is our bombing mission. This is cyclic existence, map. It’s kind of a map of the ego expression, a pictorial expression. Can you hear me okay? Suppose person A is watching television when person B comes into the room and shows evident displeasure with the situation.
Person A may think he understands the problem and tries to remedy it by exiting the present system, that is the television program, and flipping the channel knob looking for a better show. Person B may have a more radical concept of what it is to exit the system, namely to turn the television off. Of course, there are cases where only a rare individual will have the vision to perceive a system which covers many people’s lives, a system which has never before even been recognized as a system. Then such people often devote their lives to convincing other people that a system really is there and it ought to be exited from. So the Buddha was very much a systems analyst.
He saw a system which governs our lives and he called this system cyclic existence. In Sanskrit, saṃsāra. And he said further that this system was characterized by three marks. That is dissatisfactoriness, impermanence, and selflessness and therefore it should be exited from. By its very nature.
It is dissatisfactory. It is in the nature of suffering. So, you know normally in our day to day lives and the way we express the cyclic existence in our usual patterns of existence, we simply change the channel amongst all the possibilities. You know we all live in a particular version of our own reality. We all have a particular style of samsaric suffering, particular samsaric occupation.
We all to a great degree each live in our own world which we’re constantly recreating. So this patterning is our Samsaric occupations, our particular style which we cling to. You know our habitual mental and physical compulsive reoccurring neurotic patterns. Are derived from a sphere of an open fluid state of relating. So this wheel of life is an iconographical representation of the driving force and the mechanism of operation and finally the results of these compulsive patterns which constitute ego.
You know the action of securing oneself in space and time, deriving some continuity, some solidity And this is what occurs, this is the result. It’s a beginningless compulsive patterns. We’ve been simply turning from one channel to another. Just a new program, a different mentality, physical materiality. And all these various programs never leave the realm of dissatisfactoriness.
So you know if we begin to diagnose the situation, investigate. So the hub of the wheel, this is the driving force of saṃsāra, cyclic existence. It’s the expression of ego. Is its action is ego. So the driving force is desire, hatred, and ignorance.
Desire, hatred, ignorance. It’s represented by desire is a cock, hatred represented by a snake, and ignorance by a pig. So in desire is a craving to possess objects of sensuous cognition, you know, which you like and try to include those in yourself, in your ego identity. And there’s a hope of getting a sense of security from having this part of you incorporated in your territory and making a permanent aspect of yourself. So it’s this desire, is this tendency to expand our territory?
There’s a it stems from this feeling of poverty, of insufficiency, of seeing all that is of value outside of yourself. And there’s an ensuing struggle. Through all of this we’re going to notice that there’s a conflict. The nature, the essence of cyclic existence, of ego, of any state bounded by ego is conflict whether it’s internal conflict or conflict in relating to situations in other people. There’s always a conflict.
There’s always a struggle. This is the very nature of egotistical existence. Maybe we can begin to see this. This is, you know, the ensuing struggle to appropriate and make these various objects a permanent part of self, a permanent part of one’s ego identity. So that’s the feeling behind desire.
Then there’s hatred. It’s fearful and angered repulsion. And we want to get rid of an object. We want to, you know, if we have an object that we dislike, we want to exclude it from our ego identity permanently, you know, in the hopes of gaining a sense of security by permanently excluding objects which we feel to threaten our identity which perhaps could actually destroy our identity. So there’s a sense of threat to one’s territory that territory is being violated.
You know then that perhaps you or something that you identify with is being depreciated in value. And then there’s the ensuing struggle of trying to permanently exclude this object from yourself, from your ego identity. And then there’s ignorance represented by the pig. So ignorance is a stubborn closed mindedness about learning about anything which you feel might be a threat to your ego identity. We don’t want to know about it.
We cultivate an unawareness as to the real nature of our identity, for example, the real nature of the self. It’s like wearing blinders. So there’s a feeling that there’s something that needs to be protected and therefore there’s a necessity to exclude, to ignore anything which might force you to look at that which needs to be protected, to examine if in fact there is anything which needs to be protected. You know it’s grasping at a self. Now when I mean grasping at a self, a type of self which is grasping at a type of self which is unitary as opposed to diverse.
Let me explain this. Grasping a type of self which is unchanging as opposed to changing. Grasping a type self which is independently existing as opposed to dependently existing. So this is the action of ego, the expression of ignorance. So it’s the prime motivator of this entire struggle that we call cyclic existence.
It’s the prime motivator of the conflict, the basic conflict of ego. You know like cyclic existence is like ego’s insurance policy, you know the paranoid quality that’s trying to sustain its existence. So this is these three represent the driving force which keeps the wheel endlessly turning, which has been turning from beginning this time. We just you know these are different channels and we just keep turning the knob again and again and again to a new station, to a new program. But they’re all dissatisfactory.
They’re all bounded by the compulsive patterns of ego. So this second concentric circle, your right hand side is partly black. So this is simply, you know, beings either rising up or moving down according to their karmic disposition. And in accordance with their various actions that they’ve created, they move into the various levels of cyclic existence. You know this cyclic existence we’re trying to freeze our projection.
These are expressions of tendencies and we seek to freeze them, to create a concrete reality. It’s the basic nature of ego that is trying to slow down the situation and freeze it in order to gain control over it in this sense of fearing to relate to an open situation, bound by compulsive patterns. It’s trying to structure, impose its version of reality. So within this structure there is a complete variation with these individuals rising up or moving down according to their karmic disposition, the various actions that they have created. You know from the paranoia of the hell being who experiences predominantly physical pain up to the absorption of the bliss of the gods.
So this is always continual moving up and down, up and down through these various states. So then the this next concentric circle is a representation of the desire realm. Within Buddhist cosmology, the Buddhist universe, there is said to be three realms. Three basic realms. Desire realm, form realm and formless realm.
The form and formless realm are achieved, are attained through meditative concentrations. They’re characterized by more subtle and subtle states of peace. But even these are dissatisfactory in the sense that once the causes, the karmic energy to remain in these states is exhausted, then there’s nowhere to go but down. Therefore though they’re temporarily a state of peace ultimately they’re dissatisfactory. So within the this third realm, the desire realm, there are these six levels.
The six levels of the desire realm. Hell realm, animal realm, hungry ghost realm, human realm, demigod realm, and the God realm. So, you know, we can talk about these and see to get some feeling for what Buddhism is trying to suggest to us. You know these realms are actual physical places, but over and above that can understand them as states of mind which we constantly pass through every day of our lives. The various mentalities and materialities which we’re constantly taking rebirth in in the course of a single day.
You know these are in a way attitudes towards our surroundings, our environment, and ourselves. Different types of attitudes, different ways of relating. So, you know in the course of a day, you know, even as human beings, we may experience the all the emotions of all these various levels, but generally our sense of identity will be rooted in one particular realm. So these are all particular versions of reality. We all have our own unique realm that we exist in, but we have commonalities.
And so we talk about common realms, six common realms, but actually there’s an infinite number of realms. We all live in to a large extent in our own version of reality in our own little world. We have our own little particular program. We’ve turned to our own particular channel. We have you know, we turn to a particular channel and compulsively become absorbed in it and it becomes our world.
So we talk about, you know, the realm of the gods, the upper most realm. So this is characterized by an extreme characterized by a search for extreme physical and mental pleasure. You know, this type of pleasure can be of various kinds, you know, dwelling on seductive goals, health, beauty, wealth, inner fame, virtue. This constant seeking extreme mental and physical pleasure, seductive goals. So the approach in the God realm is always pleasure orientated.
That’s the basic guiding principle. In a sense, this is the way in which is the maintenance of ego, the way in which the ego is being supported. So it’s characterized by losing track of one’s hopes and one’s fears, you know, being completely caught up, absorbed in one’s pursuit, in one’s goal. You know, for example, we just, you know, the first moments of romantic love, you know the initial period of romantic love. Or maybe you just won the the lotto.
Know, completely absorbed in in this peaceful experience. You’ve lost, you know, there’s there’s no longer a contact with the realities of the situation. You become completely absorbed in this realm of bliss, happiness. You know some people experience it in retreats. You know, a God realm.
So what will happen, you know, as we said about the absorption and the bliss of the God realms, is that eventually the state is going to somehow be shaken. You notice a pimple on your lover’s face that you didn’t notice before. It’s not quite as blissful as it was. Maybe you have your first argument and you become a little bit shaky. Relationship becomes a little bit shakier.
All your relatives start borrowing money from you and everybody can’t find a moment’s peace even though you just won this million dollars in the lotto. Or you aren’t quite the saint that you thought you were in retreat. You find that you haven’t really become the Buddha you thought you were. So, you know, there’s even our various routines of our daily life which we find security in, which we find some sort of solace. You know, if anyone disrupts those routines, you know, every Thursday night I go shopping, how could that person dare to come over on a Thursday night?
They know I go shopping on Thursday night. You know, all these goals in which we can completely lost, absorbed in. And then similarly there comes a little bit of shaking, some disruption, and of our self absorption in our own little trip. And our world is somehow a little bit disturbed. So as a consequence you strike back with anger, you know, at whatever or whoever disturbed your tight, neat little world that you developed, your insulated cocoon that you were living in.
And in reacting with this anger, you move on to another world. You’ve lost the abysmal absorption of the God realms. Then there’s the realm of the demigods. And this is they’re always fighting the reason they’re called demigods is because they’re always fighting with the gods. Their realm is characterized by jealousy and paranoia.
So an demigod mentality is always preoccupied with comparison. You know, it’s always a judgment discriminating. There’s always a constant struggle to gain security to achieve. You know, you yourself have to become standards of comparison. You know, your measurements, your reference points by which you can say and begin to understand, am I doing okay?
How am I doing? And everyone becomes an object, simply a fixed point of reference so that you can decide how you’re doing. If you’re getting where you want to go. Everyone including yourself, you know, becomes in a sense an opponent, someone to outdo. Everyone becomes a potential threat.
So, you know, to your self identity, to your sense of well-being, to your security. So you need this idea of paranoia. You need to be on guard even from yourself. You can’t trust others or the situations or even yourself. You know, you begin to ignore the actual situation, refuse to learn from it, and there’s an atmosphere of hostility about everything in the antigod realm.
You know it’s the realm of shoulds, ought, musts, comparisons, ambition, achievement. Then there’s the human realm. So the major occupation in the human realm is desire. There’s an acute sense of separateness, That pleasurable objects are out there. There’s a sense of poverty about humans, a feeling of loss.
You feel only pleasurable objects can bring you the comfort that you’re looking for. The happiness and security that you want. So you don’t feel adequate enough for these objects to come naturally to you, and you feel like you have to go out and drag them back to your territory. So in the desire realm, in the human realm, everyone has their particular style. And we, you know, their particular standards.
And we respect people. Example, we criticize those individuals who don’t meet our standards and we’re impressed by those who have the same style as us but do the same thing much better than ourselves. We want to emulate them. We want to be like them. There’s this They’re superior in achieving what we are looking for.
So you become fascinated with what you lack. You always Your attention is always being directed towards what you lack. You know, they are significant and I’m insignificant. So there’s this continual comparing, selecting which brings a never ending process of desire.
So in the human realm, the intellect is most active of all the various six realms, the six levels of the desire realm. So there is this constant churning out of ideas, of plans, of hallucinations, fantasies and dreams. The mind is constantly searching for some way to improve the situation, know manipulating, magnetizing. So there’s a constant dissatisfaction created out of ambition. And this is the characterization of the human realm.
Then there’s the animal realm. So this is the mentality of ignoring, you know, of pushing, you know, stubbornly pushing ahead to some kind of predetermined goals. It’s very serious. Know animals they look directly ahead, they are very sincere. You know with great earnestness they go straight ahead to the next situation they just simply adjust everything that comes up which doesn’t meet their expectations, which doesn’t accord with that, doesn’t conform to the way they think things should be turning out, to their expectations, to their goal.
So the animal realm is associated with stupidity, with preferring to blindly play the rules of the game. It’s a reactive mind. It doesn’t matter who or what is destroyed in the process as long as the rules of the game are followed correctly. It’s a very brutal mentality. So with the animal mentality there’s no particular Concern with being truthful.
You find a way to justify everything that you do. A rationale to keep up your self respect and your own self image. To maintain yourself, to maintain image in front of others. You don’t see your environment, for example, only your goal, and you invent all kinds of excuses to prove that you are doing the right thing. So the essence of the animal style is to get what you want with extreme focus, sincerity, and seriousness.
It’s like a very sincere pig and it just doesn’t look to the right or the left. It just rolls along like a tank knocking over everything that’s in front of it. There’s no humor involved, no openness. It doesn’t matter what it runs over. So this is the animal mentality.
And then there’s the hungry ghost mentality. So here the major occupation is the preoccupation with consuming. Fundamentally, again, you feel poor. There’s a sense of inadequacy. You know, you’re continually using the things and the people around you to prop up your self image.
But there’s never quite enough. In the illustration of the hungry ghost realm, the hungry ghosts have huge stomachs and they have very needle like necks. They can never achieve satisfaction. There is always a struggle. They never quite consume enough.
There is always a hunger. So this struggle is very painful, these feelings of dissatisfaction. You know, you may hunger for friendship, for love, clothes, sex, virtue. Basically there is a mentality of poverty. So all the people and things about you become simply consumer items.
Even for example a beautiful sunset, you want to own the sunset. You want to, you know, you take a photograph of it or you write a poem about it. Somehow you want to consume the sunset. You can’t leave it be. You want to bring it into your territory due to your feeling of inadequacy.
So there’s a hunger for new entertainment, religion, Tai Chi, always moving on to something which will bring you satisfaction. There’s a constant need to keep on moving on to something new because these things become worn out and then there’s a constant movement, a constant searching for satisfaction. So it’s very painful to be caught up in unfulfilled desires and this is the quality, the mentality of the hungry ghost realm. Then there’s the hell realm. So this is pervaded by aggression.
It’s based on a perpetual condition of hatred. So, you know, you’re building up a complete environment of hate and you no longer are even quite sure of what you hate, what it is that your hatred is directed towards. There’s just a recycling of hatred. It’s like an alligator eating its tail. You know, the more it eats its tail, the more it’s nourished, the more its tail grows.
So it’s a perpetual feedback system. It’s hatred. It just feeds on itself and begins to grow. The more you destroy, the more you see that needs to be destroyed. The more you see that needs to be hated until, you know, the entire environment environment becomes aggressive and hostile.
You know, you become consumed with aggression. So everything is has the quality of fire. You yourself are fire burning. So it’s characterized by continuous mental and physical pain. So these are some of the mentalities which we tend towards, our particular styles.
And we can pass through, you know, various versions of these every day of our life. But generally we cling, we have a major preoccupation with one of these particular styles, one of these versions of reality. So these six realms are the outcome of the ongoing struggle of ego. You know, to try to secure itself in space and time. To solidify, to fix, to find, to secure itself.
You know taking what is merely patterns, repetitive characteristics, states as being a permanent entity. Taking what is a constant changing situation, environment, and trying to fixate it. And so this develops the sense of isolation, of struggle, of conflict. So, no matter who we are, we each have our own particular style of suffering. No matter who.
Our own particular version of reality. And we cling to this, you know, what is basically our own projected world, as if our life depended upon it because in a way it does. The life as we know it, the life of particular mode of being, of our particular style, of the ego. So, know, this is brought about through a a fear of openness, a fluid way of relating, and therefore we cling to our habitual patterns for security. So even though these particular patterns, even though our particular version of reality might not be particular particularly satisfying, but it’s better than nothing.
At least we know who we are, and there’s a high degree of predictability. And we just can’t imagine another mode of being. So those are some of the realms, the six basic realms of the desire realm. The outer circle represents the actual mechanism, the process by which the ego is continually reborn. Mechanism by which it’s continually recreating this reality.
The fantasy world of ego, the ego in its fantasy. You know there’s the ego and then there’s the projected world of ego. So it begins with basic ignorance. This is the first of the twelve links. Now these twelve links are called the twelve links of dependent origination, the twelve links of dependent arising.