Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “Hell is the suffering of being unable to love” — Dostoevsky’s line from The Brothers Karamazov anchors this 47-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun, in which he works through a central Buddhist psychological distinction: self-affirmation versus self-centeredness. He argues that self-centeredness is not too much self-love but too little, and uses the archetype of sacrificial self-denial — the mother who gives everything for her son — to show how apparent altruism can mask unresolved ego. He then traces a reorientation from identifying with “who I have been” toward “who I can be,” grounded in Buddha nature, and shows why cherishing others and genuine self-affirmation are finally the same movement. A verse by Khunu Lama Rinpoche, the master whose death moved the Dalai Lama to tears, closes the doctrinal discussion before the session ends in a guided loving-kindness meditation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 3 PA 1989 11 04.mp3
UUID: f06c2fb9-ec06-4041-b997-0840b46ecc11
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-11-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.7 minutes
Words: ~4,425
I think you hear that quite often, I don’t need anybody else. Then on the other hand, to a large extent women have been encouraged to cultivate their relatedness to the exclusion of developing their uniqueness and their own personal freedoms. And this is most what do you say, typified by, you know, the the Jewish mother syndrome, you know, who the mother Jewish mother who who has given her life for her son. I’ve given you everything I sacrificed my entire life so that you could go to college and become And then it just goes on and on and on like this. She’s given everything, complete self denial, her own personal freedom and her own personal uniqueness for the benefit of her only son.
In each of these instances, the people have been, to a large extent, they’ve been victimized by their premise that the self is, after all, an ego cut off from the world. Once we cut the ego off from the world, we see that we don’t exist in relationship with others naturally, then we’re going to be confronted with a choice of either affirming ourselves or affirming others. Either having a reference point of self centeredness in our dealings with the rest of the world, or the adverse, that is self denial, sacrificing self denial of ourselves in favor of the world. There’s like a boundary here, that it has to be either or, once the ego has grasped at it as being isolated, unchanging, independent substance. But if we really look at our life situation, whether it’s male or female, our life is constituted out of our own uniqueness and individuality, and at the same time, our relationships with others and the way we relate with others.
We were talking about this analogy of a swimming pool, where our past experiences influence and determine to a certain extent our present situation, our present circumstances. In coming to recognize our past, we begin to see them from our own perspective, for our own purposes. We begin to interpret, to synthesize everything that is going by our past history into something unique, which is unique to ourselves. We become unique individuals. This becomes your conception of who you have been.
This is the person I have been. I’ve interpreted everything that we’ve experienced in the past, working with it, interpreting it, synthesizing it, we come up with a conception, This is who I’ve been. Most people are attuned in this way to the past person, that is, who I have been. Who I have been. They’re more or less enslaved to the person of who I have been.
This is their identity, who I have been. They’re much bound by these past roles, by their inheritance, by their history, and they keep repeating the same patterns of who they have been. So, Buddhism, it’s asking that we make what is called maybe a paradigm shift, a shift in a model, in our reference, in our frame of reference. You know, we begin to reattune ourselves away from identifying with who I have been and we attune ourselves to what I can be. We are very much identifying with who you have been, with your past, with your experiences, all the various particularities of your past history.
This is who you have been. In clinging to that, identifying with it, you simply are going to project it further and further into the future. Buddhism is saying, Let’s reorientate our identity for the present. Let’s begin to attune ourselves to who I can be. Know who I can be both personally and in my relationships.
The future person exists within the present in the sense of not yet actualized potentials. We’ve been talking about this when I talked about refuge, the potentials that we all possess, wisdom, love and compassion, inexhaustible energy, whatever. The person who we can be exists in the present as yet unactualized potentials, who I can be. They talk a lot about self affirmation. We can talk about self affirmation from a Buddhist perspective.
It involves simply or not so simply, but profoundly Deeply recognizing our potential, our as yet unactualized potential. Ultimately, within the Buddhist context, our Buddha nature. Who I am in the present and freely deciding in dependence upon that, who I can be in the future. So we cease identifying with who I have been, We begin to identify with who I can be by beginning to deeply recognize who I am now, and that who I am now is my as yet realized, cultivated, actualized potential, essentially my Buddha nature, that I can become a Buddha. Deeply recognizing that, we begin to attune ourselves to set our direction, to be able to make consistent choices.
This is, from a Buddhist perspective at least, how we begin to affirm our identity, self affirmation, I have Buddha potential. You know, whether we want to say, I have had the nature of God, or I’m made in the image of God, whatever. Buddhism, I think, even goes further than This is like a personal affirmation. We’re talking about in the context of cherishing others and beginning to see the disadvantages of self-cherishing. If we can begin to see that personal affirmation is intimately connected with other affirmation, Affirmation of the world.
World affirmation. That our personal affirmation must be integrated, that our personal becoming must be integrated with other affirmation, with other becoming. We cannot affirm ourselves, value ourselves, find ourselves of great worth even for themselves unless we are willing to see that same quality in others. If we cannot affirm others, we cannot affirm ourselves, is essentially what I’m saying. If we cannot like others, we cannot like ourselves.
If we cannot love others, we cannot love ourselves. These two, this personal becoming, becoming that which we can be and becoming in relationship with the world, that is to say, in this context of benefiting others, developing skillful ways, effective ways of relating with others. This self affirmation and other affirmation are two sides of the same coin. There are two aspects of a single way of being. We talk about the bodhisattva.
The bodhisattva is simply someone who has developed an awakened heart, who has opened his heart completely to others. A bodhisattva, all his actions are completely motivated by his desire to achieve enlightenment for the sake of enlightening others, for the sake of liberating others. All his actions, everything he does with his body, speech and mind are motivated by the desire to achieve enlightenment, his own personal affirmation, his personal becoming, for the sake of enlightening others. Other affirmation, other becoming. In his single action, he’s completely integrated these two aspects of the social and experiential private self.
Essentially, Buddhism is saying on the conventional level, in fact, self and other do exist. The method which resolves the antagonism, the conflict between self and others is altruism. Altruism is the most available remedy for all our psychological ills. Altruism, love and compassion, is the most available remedy for all our psychological problems in order to find peace and love, in order to bring about mental health. That for most of us altruism is the way, the most effective, the most potent, the most available means to become a happy, healthy, sane human being.
As I pointed out last week, it’s not unrealistic to begin to seek to identify with the other’s situation. This idea of the advantages of cherishing others, the disadvantages of self-cherishing, but to begin to identify with the difficulties, the problems, the suffering of others. But it becomes compellingly practical that we should develop a natural, rational, spontaneous, and a powerful altruism. Again, it’s emphasized that this is not a complex philosophical argument. This is a simple statement about our life, which is trying to be how we can be, in a very practical manner, happier people, more authentic people, more fulfilled people.
Buddhism is saying that the means which are most available to us, most potent and effective is altruism. Last week we discussed that this ego identification, it doesn’t come around, it doesn’t happen instinctually. It takes a long time to develop during childhood, to begin to individualize ourselves, to begin to develop an isolated identity, independent qualities, which are unrelatedness. This ego identity can be reconditioned, that we can actually reverse the process. It happens quite normally in various situations.
People become identified with their mate, with their family, with their organization, with their country. They’re willing to die for their country. They’re willing to identify with their family to the extent as if something happened to one member of their family, it’s almost as if it were happening to them. In fact, for a mother, perhaps, the pain of her child might be greater for her than it is for a child. That this re identifying of our ego territory happens quite naturally.
So we can begin to restructure our identity, our ego identity, and we can begin to expand our sense of identity to include all beings. All beings, as we talked about this analogy of all beings, like the limbs of a body as being part of a greater whole, identifying ourselves with the greater whole. This is the quality of beginning to open our heart to others. But, you know, if we look at our present situation, if we look at the present actuality of our hearts, of our love, and our way of relating with the world is quite very much less inclusive. Most of us, I think we feel that others are very much alien to us, and it’s very much outside there.
There’s a feeling of isolation. I’ve never really been able to connect up, connect up. Communicate. Others are something other than ourselves. In a way, often view others as not consciously.
Perhaps even sometimes others are something to be conquered or manipulated, you know, for our own ends, something to be owned. To one degree or another, we experience the world as if it were cut off from us, you know, by the boundaries of our skin, you know, the skin encapsulated ego, as if we were isolated ego locked within this body, this feeling of isolation, this feeling of unrelatedness, that there’s me and the rest of the world. You know, it’s like being a point of light in the blackness of space, something like that. This sense of aloneness, unrelatedness. So this is all based upon a delusion.
Know, if have the dependent upon this delusion, we have this attitude, bring a certain flavor to our life. As if our self, the person who we are, was somehow an autonomous object, worthy of ultimate commitment. There’s some object, some autonomous object, this person, this self, which is worthy of our complete sacrifice, our ultimate commitment. Everything should be laid at its altar. This isolated self, this ego, you know, is something which is to be served at all costs.
And this goes unquestioned. This is our frame of reference. This is what we call self cherishment. Everything is seen within this I talked about this seeing the world with jaundiced eyes, seeing a snow mountain as yellow. We see everything.
We evaluate everything. We perceive everything out of these jaundiced eyes of self-cherishing, as if everything should be committed, everything should be laid at the altar of our own egos. People and things are felt not as they might exist in and for themselves, but rather as they exist for me, for my purposes, my wants, my needs. People are devalued and they are externalized into objects of actual or possible dominance as collections of resources. Everything is being sacrificed to this ego god of who we think we are.
We’re talking about self affirmation and other affirmation. self-cherishing is the taking of self affirmation to an unhealthy extreme. Basically, we’re talking about self centeredness, aren’t we? Self centeredness. It’s like short sightedness, which fails to see that other affirmation is the other side of the coin of self affirmation.
If we’re going to devalue others, we’re going to devalue ourselves. If we’re going to manipulate, if we’re going to objectify others, we’re going to manipulate and objectify ourselves. So, in this egocentrism, it involves making the self absolute, you know, paramount above all, at the expense of the world, at the expense of others. Because we exist in relationship with others, then this is all simply self defeating. By using others for our own ends, by hurting others, by devaluing others, we’re defeating ourselves since we in relationship with them, even though we don’t feel that way.
It’s important to distinguish between self affirmation self centeredness. Self affirmation on the one hand and self centeredness on the other. Essentially, perhaps most simply, self centeredness is experienced as using others, seeking happiness at the expense of others. Self centeredness is essentially, most simply, seeking one’s own happiness at the expense of others, at the expense of the world. Self centeredness is oftentimes mistaken for self assertiveness.
Self assertiveness. Just as sometimes aggressiveness is often mistaken for concern, being concerned about someone else and also empathizing with someone else and being aggressive in invading someone else’s territory. But in fact, self centeredness is not so much that it’s probably a sign of not enough self affirmative that we haven’t affirmed ourselves enough, and therefore we’re self centered. We don’t simply value ourselves enough, and therefore we react with devaluing others and becoming self centered. It’s not too much self affirmation.
Self centeredness is not too much self affirmation. It’s probably too little self affirmation. We’re talking about how we can transcend this quality, how we can transcend the ego in this road to becoming somebody. We have to become somebody before we can be nobody. It seems as though we need to develop a healthy ego, healthy self identity, a healthy self image before we can begin to forget about ourselves, before we can begin to transcend ourselves.
You know, we sort of have to follow our own road, our own direction, until we reach a point when we see it’s necessary to begin to forget all about ourselves. And begin integrating our relationship with others, our becoming with others. So, you know, a bodhisattva is someone who is genuinely self affirming, genuinely self affirming. He or she does not need to make a god out of themselves. They know who they are.
They are assertive without being aggressive. They are confident without being arrogant. They are strong without being domineering. And all these possibilities, they accept their own good qualities, and over and above that they also accept the good qualities of others. And perhaps they also acknowledge their own lacks while being willing to affirm that others have these qualities which they lack.
Essentially, the bodhisattva is continually focused upon the fundamental Buddha nature of all sentient beings. Therefore, he is always affirming his own worth and the worth of all sentient beings. So, this self affirmation of the bodhisattva reaches its cOmination in affirming others, and finds its expression in seeking enlightenment to fulfill the fulfillment of his own potential. He is seeking enlightenment, which is a fulfillment of his own potential for the sake of others, which is the fulfillment of their potential. Self affirmation and other affirmation aren’t two things.
Two aspects which find their fulfillment, which find their unity in cherishing others. In the bodhisattva, we are working to find enlightenment, to attain enlightenment for the benefit of others. Then on the other hand, we can talk about the unhealthy, or that is, the unhealthy taking to the extreme of other affirmation, the world affirmation. So this is what we talk about when I mentioned before self denial, sacrificial self denial. But this sacrificial self denial isn’t genuine.
It’s just simply another form of self centeredness in a more acceptable guise, in a perhaps more socially, more religiously acceptable, more spiritually acceptable. In the bodhisattva, he recognizes that by fulfilling the needs of others, he is in fact fulfilling his own needs. Therefore, there’s no feeling of self denial. He’s getting everything he wants by helping others. He very much aware of the real reality of the situation that he is existing in.
He is not deceiving himself, at least. He is not involved in some kind of quixotic romantic game, some idealism. In fact, he’s very much aware of the reality of the situation that by fulfilling the needs of others, he’s fulfilling his own needs. That self affirmation, other affirmation is self affirmation. That in cherishing others, he is bringing all the happiness to himself that he could ever hope to find.
That by affirming others, that by valuing others, by working for others, he is affirming himself, valuing himself, working for himself. This self denial which arises out of self centeredness is more than that. It’s a compensatory mechanism. Compensates for absence of self affirmation. I talked about this in terms of self centeredness as perhaps too little self affirmation.
Again, denial is a compensatory mechanism. It compensates for a lack of feeling of self worth, of not having confirmed our own value, our own in itself, our own worth. Not having to be or do anything other than who we are or what we are, that in itself that we’re valuable. In the face of social and religious conditioning, especially in many women have consciously or unconsciously fallen into the role of sacrificial self denial. In coming to terms with this quality of self denial, it’s not so much that we have to the question is that we have to moderate our concern for others.
Oh, I’m too concerned with others. I’m denying myself because I’m overly concerned with others. That’s not the question. That’s not the problem. But we have to ask, Where is this concern for others coming from?
In self denial, we have to ask, Which self are we denying? In self denial, we have to ask, Which self, in fact, are we denying? Are we denying the self of self centeredness or the self of self affirmation? We have our needs, our wants, which need to be fulfilled. If we deny these, are we denying our self centeredness?
That is, our sense of our egotistical sense, of isolation, of unrelatedness to others, of cherishing ourselves? Is that the self that we’re denying? Or it’s the self who has, in fact, actual needs, actual wants, who needs value, who needs to be affirmed, who has worth. It’s not if we’re actually concerned with others that we should somehow moderate our others when we see ourselves in conflict with others, that somehow we’re denying our own needs or our own wants. Begin to ask the question, Is the self that’s being denied the self of self centeredness or the self of self affirmation?
If we properly understand and apply affirming the value of others and of ourselves and affirm our own self worth, If we begin to appreciate others, we begin to appreciate ourselves. To really appreciate ourselves is really to appreciate others. We talked about perhaps we are a Christian tradition that we are created in the image of God, in the Buddhist tradition that we all have Buddha nature. In the tantric tradition especially, one is to view oneself as a deity, that is, to develop divine pride, to go beyond our negative conception of ourselves, our very limited self pity and attitude that we usually carry, we use as a basis for relating with the world. If we are divine, if we truly are made in the image of God, if we have the element of the divine within us, if we really are worthy of commitment to ourselves, then all beings must be similarly This question of cherishing others and cherishing oneself comes down to which are we going to affirm, our divinity or our ego?
To cherish others is to decide on divinity, to decide on transcending ego, on affirmation of self and others, upon liking yourself, liking others, liking life and all that lives. Developing this unconditioned positive regard which simply radiates out without distinction in including yourself. No limits. You just like including yourself. You are included in all this.
I remember when the abbot at the Zen monastery in Bodh Gaya once said, we meditate due to our compassion for ourselves, thinking that you are worth enough to go, that you have enough compassion for yourself to seek to become all that you can be, to realize some of your potential. Realizing your potential and having compassion and being willing to actualize it. So in this sense, cherishing others is not a heroic attainment. It’s simply a way we can begin to be kind to ourselves in a very gentle and simple minded kind of a way. You know, we quit torturing ourselves, we cease comparing ourselves with others, find ourselves wanting insufficient, inferior, alienated, feeling guilty.
It’s a way we can begin to become kind to ourselves. More than anything else, it’s an awareness of our essential interrelatedness. That I am not this unchanging, independent self, this ego existing, you know, without in my own cramped, narrow confines, in my own prison which I created for myself. That’s just an illusion. And as long as my life is dedicated to that illusion, as long as I seek to lay the world at this altar of my own ego, through my self-cherishing, which is kind of the mechanism by which we frame a reference by which we’re enacting, expressing this basic delusion, this basic illusion, then there’s only going to be isolation, there’s only going to be loneliness, frustration, conflict, competitiveness, defensiveness, dissatisfaction, fear, and no love.
Dostoevsky, in his book, Brothers Karamazov. One of the fathers in a monastery is dying, and he’s speaking on his deathbed to the monks who gather around him, and he says, I ponder what is hell. Hell is the suffering of being unable to love. This is all brought about by maintaining this quality of self-cherishing, of inability to affirm oneself and others, of inability to cherish others as all limbs of one life. Seeking to diminish the force of our self-cherishing and begin to increase that of cherishing others, we’re seeking to live a way of life.
I was talking about maybe this is all we can do is try to live a certain style, way of life directed toward a certain goal, a certain idea, and make small decisions along the way, make small choices. It’s like a style. It’s like the flavor of our life, the way we exist. A type of life which affirms ourselves and which affirms others and understands that the two are not somehow different, the two are not separate: others and self, other affirmation, self affirmation, the valuing of others and the valuing of self, cherishing others and cherishing yourself, having compassion for others, having compassion for yourself. And then maybe we can, for the first time, can truly begin to love others and begin to truly love ourselves.
This quotation from It’s a verse. There was once a He died This master, his name was Khunu Lama Rinpoche. He died about six years ago. He was one of the teachers of the Lama. I remember this was the first time upon his death they had a service in the main temple in Dharamsala.
It was the first time I had ever seen the Dalai Lama cry. It was because the Khunu Lama was the one who taught him the methods for generating an awakening heart. Therefore, he always held him in special reverence and always had great gratitude toward him, this great master. Each day during one year, he wrote a verse in praise of an awakening heart. This is one of the verses from that text, in praise of an awakening heart, praises of this opening our hearts to others.
The Buddha is reflecting with love upon all beings and wishing to help them ask, By what means might we help them? They see only this, the supreme awakening heart of opening to others. This is the It’s referred to in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, engaging in the bodhisattva deeds as the panacea which cures all ills. It’s been said over and again by all my teachers and all the various texts that I’ve ever read That is the way we can really begin to cure ourselves of all our psychological ills, to begin to really remove all our problems, begin to solve all the difficulties of a conventional quality of our ego by developing the attitude, developing the lifestyle of life, which, you know, in small ways makes the consistent choice of cherishing others and turning away from cherishing oneself. So, we’ll meditate on Would you like to stand up?
Consider some of your own difficulties, some of your problems, feelings of dissatisfaction, and the fact that you want to be happy. Whatever you may have done in the past, the various mistakes you may have created, you can simply regret them. And as best you can, determine not to repeat them again in the future. You can begin again. However you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold to, you can change.
You can become any person that you want to be. We want to try to make friends with ourselves, all the various parts of ourselves, and have some compassion for ourselves, be gentle with ourselves, and wish ourselves well. So just develop some positive feelings, some self affirming feelings, and direct them towards yourself wishing yourself happiness, wishing yourself well. You know, all the things that you’ve ever wanted, wishing that you could give them to yourself because you’re worthy of them. You’re valuable in and of yourself.
Wish yourself happiness. Think of someone that you like, that you love, and imagine that person in front of you. Remember all the good times that you’ve shared together, all the happiness, the kindness that this person has shown you. And begin to radiate out the direct positive feelings which naturally begin to arise, wishing this person happiness, caring about what’s happening to them, wishing them that they find whatever it is they want. Just wish them good things, positive feelings.
And think of someone that you neither like nor dislike, someone you feel indifference towards.