Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of stubbornly clutching a burning coal — Lama Zopa’s metaphor for self-cherishing, cited here by Ven Jampa Gendun — anchors this 45-minute session on the exchange of self for others, the core practice within the second principal aspect of the path. After a brief refuge recitation and a recap of renunciation, Gendun turns to Śāntideva’s method of equalizing and exchanging self with others, drawing on Thomas Merton’s observation that love demands a kind of death of the self-cherishing identity, and on Dostoevsky’s line that hell is simply the inability to love. He then maps how self-cherishing automatically sorts people into three categories — inferior, equal, superior — generating arrogance, competitiveness, and jealousy respectively, and sets up the exchange practice as a way of turning those tendencies around. Suited to practitioners already working through the Lamrim framework.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 3 PA 1989 11 11.mp3
UUID: 291df1e4-aec2-4d55-9362-5e04cd2d7bb8
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-11-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.6 minutes
Words: ~5,791
And if it’s not too late. A few minutes of mindfulness of breathing. Just a few words. But I think it’s quite necessary to remind ourselves to consistently reorientate ourselves to where in fact our happiness lies. What is a real actual working method to help us to solve our problems? It’s quite easy in the course of our busy lives to get caught up in superficialities or to be distracted from perhaps what are more important things of our life, what in fact are going to bring us deeper sources of happiness, and what in fact are our experiential ways in which we can in fact bring us the fulfillment and contentment that we’re all looking for.
We get pretty busy. And so, simply taking the time to repeat a formula is like getting back to yourself, coming back, waking yourself up from perhaps the sleep that you’ve been in for maybe a few days, few weeks, you know, perhaps longer. Getting in contact with some of your more essential values, getting considering some of the deeper causes of happiness and suffering. And, you know, what is a real type of refuge? What is actually going to You know, if this has any meaning at all, if the fact of refuge and protection is not simply some fiction, some kind of romantic idea, then it has to be expressed, it has to be reflected in our everyday life.
And so, we can look in taking the time to say, I go for refuge to the Buddha, I go for refuge to the Dharma, You know, reflecting that I go for refuge to my own wisdom, my own You know, that I have some innate intelligence to be able to solve my problems, that I’m not hopeless. I don’t have to be a victim. I don’t I can begin to reorientate myself towards my potential. And, as I mentioned last week, that many people are caught up with that identity which is completely attuned to who they were in the past. So, in taking refuge, we’re reorientating ourselves to who we can be, who we will be in the future.
And that person who we can be in the future is potential right now, if we’re willing to tap into that source of our own basic sanity, our own love, our compassion, which we all have to some degree, and this ability to go beyond our self centered ideas, then we’ll start working to benefiting others too, at least to some degree in our lives, as a real means of happiness. And we all have these potentials within us presently, if we’re willing to reflect upon that fact and see the necessity for going beyond the superficial causes of happiness and go beyond the superficial methods for resolving our problems and really get to the actual source of the problem, get to the actual source of our happiness, which is our own wisdom, our own love and compassion, and working in the world to some degree, as best we can, to benefit others. And this can be borne out in our own experience, which it should be. Otherwise, it’s just an intellectual trip perhaps. It’s academic and it probably is of no practical use.
Again and again, to reorientate ourselves away from being the victim of who we once were, to get in touch with the possibilities of who we will be in the future, and to take refuge in our potential at present, in the present moment. We can visualize, for example, the Buddha, we can visualize Jesus Christ, anything, a symbol of something which is transcendent, something which goes beyond, you know, the mundane plane, which embodies what you can become. It’s like getting in touch with a part of yourself which, at the moment, is perhaps only in potential, is dormant, and trying to awaken it. And we can rework through visualization and through reflection and through words. However we can activate, however we can go deeper within ourselves, We can, again and again, consistently set the determination.
As I said again and again, when we talk about refuge, we’re talking mostly about setting our direction. Setting our direction toward happiness, who we want to become, and reminding ourselves, this is the type of person I want to be. Who do I Who do you want to be five years from now, ten years from now? What qualities do you want to be? You know, usually, we say, I would like to have a house, would like to have this type of husband, this type of wife, I would like to have this type of job, this type of salary, this type of degree.
We never stop to think, what type of person would I like to be like? What qualities? Would I like to be a loving person, a gentle person? You know, a person who had some wisdom, some skills to be able to benefit others. Is that wife or that husband, that job, that degree, is that the answer to your problem?
Or are there something the sources, the solutions to your problems on a much more deeper level? So, if we keep reminding ourselves of the person who we want to be, and again and again again and again, we orientate ourselves, redirect ourselves towards that direction, at least point ourselves in the correct direction of who want to be, then there’s a better chance of us getting there. So this is simply what taking refuge is about, simply redirecting ourselves, reorientating ourselves and practicing activating, getting re get in touch again and again with the sources of with our potentials, which are the means to actually solve on a very deep level our problems and to find the happiness that we all want. To the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing the Dharma, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings.
To the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I’m enlightened. Through the merit I create by talking about the Dharma, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened through the merit I create by talking about the Dharma. And I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. So, we’ve been talking about the second system or tradition whereby to develop an awakening heart, which is the second aspect of the three principal aspects of the path.
First, we developed the determination to be free, to go beyond the bounds of ego, beginning to understand that any state which is within the bounds of ego, any state which is conditioned by grasping at itself, which exists permanently, unchangingly, independently through time and within space, is by its very nature dissatisfactory. You know, it’s always bound up in one of the various types of dissatisfaction of conditioned existence, whether it’s a very gross type, that is to say, mental and physical pain, but even down to the more subtle types, which require some reflection, such as the dualistic nature of our conception of pleasure, of our conception of pain, that we’re always on a constant treadmill, that once we achieve some type of happiness we can’t hold onto it because it’s related to our past memory of pain. And as our past memory of pain begins to fade, our present pleasure begins to fade because it’s only pleasure in contrast to our past pain, our remembrance of past pain. And this is the condition, this is the situation we’re in, we’re trapped in. As long as we remain within the bounds of ego, we can never go beyond this condition.
We’ve always continually happened upon the struggle to reaffirm our pleasure, to regain our pleasure. It’s always slipping out of our fingers like sand. And then there’s the very subtle types of dissatisfactory quality, the basic quality of anxiety, which permeates our entire existence, the basic quality of the burden of ego itself, the self consciousness that there’s always somebody watching us. And there’s the loss of feeling of spontaneity, there’s the feeling of isolation, loneliness, purposelessness, unfulfilled qualities of our existence. So, you know, we develop the determination.
I want to go beyond this. I want to go beyond I want to grow. And I call it the determination to be free. Even if it’s only a little bit, to want to become a little more of the person we think we can be. I think, in a way I think what Trungpa Rinpoche talks about this, you know, it’s better not to begin because once you begin, you can’t stop or it always comes back to haunt you.
I don’t think This occurred to me the other night. I was having a discussion that, in a way, we don’t have much choice in our trying to develop ourselves, trying to grow. We’re pretty much stuck with this type of attitude. And we might as well accept it and go along with it to the best we can. You know, if it’s your innermost desire to go beyond your self centered attitudes, it’s your innermost desire to begin to realize who you feel very deeply who you are, then you’re never going to be satisfied, at least until you’re making some fully qualified effort in that direction.
You’re never quite going to be content with yourself, never quite going to find peace. But once you do, then you’re at peace with yourself. Then nirvana, in a way, is there, in its own way. You become one with your innermost drive, your quality that’s always seeking to evolve itself. If you’re a little awake, then you have no choice.
You can’t go back to sleep. So it’s best just to accept responsibility for yourself and for your evolution and to grow and to make the determination to make some effort in some way over a consistent time toward emerging, toward growth, and develop this determination. And dependent upon that, we begin to see the necessity quite reasonably. It’s not particularly an emotion, yet it’s not an intellectual trip. The quality of developing an awakening heart, opening our hearts to others.
In the two traditions. There’s tradition of the sevenfold cause and effect instruction and the tradition of equalizing and exchanging oneself for others. We’re talking about the second of these two traditions, the one which is based mostly upon the works of Śāntideva, mainly Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds, where he outlines the method for developing an awakening heart. That is the, you know, aspiring to develop oneself, develop ones skills, ones wisdom, ones compassion, in order to more and more benefit others. We base this upon the quality of self in others.
And this, the insight to be gained is to seek to work towards others’ happiness to the same degree that one works towards one’s own. And the basic insight to be gained through equalizing self and others. And dependence upon that, we begin to investigate within our own experience the disadvantages of self-cherishing and the advantages of cherishing others. And now we’re going to begin the third part of this meditation, this tradition. That is the actual exchange of self for others.
And there’s a quote by Thomas Merton. It is hard to really love others if love is to be taken in the full sense of the word. Love demands a complete inner transformation. For without this, we cannot possibly come to identify ourselves with our brother. We have to become, in some sense, the person we love.
And this involves a kind of death of our own being, our own self. No matter how hard we try, we resist this death. We fight back with anger, with recriminations, with demands, with ultimatums. We seek any convenient excuse to break off and give up the difficult task. So, you know, he’s talking about a type of death and this is brought up quite a bit in Christianity.
And, think there’s a there’s a line from the New Testament, and that’s the An ear of corn fall into the earth, it bears no fruit. So, they talk about death quite often. And I think the death here, that Merton, who was a Christian monk, is talking about, is the death of the self. But the self here is self of self-cherishing, you know, of our self centeredness, of our exaggerated self concern. In order to really love another, we have to begin to decrease the force, the influence of the self of self-cherishing.
Otherwise, there’s no way we can identify with another human being, which is, you know, the condition, which is to love another person. We can never really understand anyone else. We only see ourselves reflected in other people. We only see our own needs, our own wants. So, out of this depth, out of the death of self-cherishing comes a birth, and this birth is the birth of cherishing others, of other centeredness, of simply concern for others.
So, this involves initially the redefinition of our ego. I talked about how we don’t naturally cherish ourselves. It’s not a quality inherent in beings. It’s a learned process that the child develops a definition of who he is over a long period of time, defined, Who am I? And then we talked about when we and the and cherishing others, the advantage of the possibility of redefining our ego identity such that we can identify with all of humanity, with all of sentient life.
And people do this quite often, not to this degree, but they identify with a group, they identify with their country. Many people are willing to give up their lives. They go beyond their supposed instinct of self preservation, and they give up their lives for their country. They redefine their sense of identity. We can do this with all sentient beings.
It’s a practical possibility. We begin to exchange. What are we exchanging? I don’t slip into your body and you don’t slip into mine. When we talk about exchange of self or other, we’re talking about the exchange of our present self-cherishing for the cherishing of others.
There’s this quality of cherishing, of holding dear, quality of concern, commitment to, which we presently direct only toward ourselves. But we exchange the object of that commitment, of that concern, of that cherishing, and we make it other. Simply, we begin to make others more important than ourselves. And this leads to an awakening heart. This leads This is the opening of our hearts to others.
You know, it’s an awakening heart which carries us to enlightenment. And I’ve talked about, you know, very basically what I mean by enlightenment. We can simply say it is an awakening heart which carries us, like a vehicle, which carries us to becoming a happy, healthy, sane human being. Or in other words, by which we can become happy. You know, people expend all their time, all their energy, you know, all their money, searching for ways to be happy.
You know, that’s our that’s our main occupation in life. You know, they they exhaust themselves. They cry, they kill, they steal, they worry, they plan. Some do meditation courses. Some get degrees.
Some travel. Some go to rock concerts. You know, some even go to the Grand Prix. But still, they they haven’t found happiness. You know, are they happy?
Now, we’re not talking about I’m talking about the overall quality, the tone of their life. You know, are we basically happy? Are we basic basically content? Are we fulfilled? Is our life meaningful?
So, you know, everybody has problems from time to time. But what is the overall quality of our life? We have to ask this, we have to confront this. So, first off, we have to begin by understanding our own problems. You know, our own, you know, our self attachment problem, our ego problem, our anger problem, our confusion problem.
These are some of our problems. Maybe you haven’t recognized these problems yet. We have to begin to confront our problems. When we talk about an awakening heart, it’s actually born out of an awareness. It’s born out of a wisdom.
And you begin to begin to see your problems. You know, where where where are my problems coming from? What are my problems and where are they coming from? You know, each every day of your life. And in looking at our problems, asking where the source of our problems are, what are they, we try to go beyond the superficial level that we usually deal with.
You know, he’s my problem, or she’s my problem, or my fat is my problem, or my ugliness is my problem. I don’t have enough money. That’s my problem. I have too much money. That’s my problem.
I’m not smart enough. I’m too smart. You know, we try to go beneath the superficial causes that we usually attribute to the source of our problems, being the source of our problems. Usually, these lie outside of ourselves. Because, you know, if we don’t find the real source, the real cause of our problem, then there’s no solution.
There’s no hope, no matter what you do. If you haven’t identified the source, the cause of your problem, there’s no possibility of solving your problem. You know, it’s like losing your, you know, your house keys, all your keys. You lose them in the front yard, and you look in the backyard to find them. And you look in the backyard because the grass is shorter there.
And because the grass is shorter, therefore, it should be easier to find them. But you didn’t lose them there. You lost them in the front yard. So that’s where you have to look, even though it might be more difficult in tall grass, in the weeds, because that’s where you lost them. No matter how short the grass is, we’re never going to find our keys.
No matter how seemingly apparent the cause of our suffering is, if it’s not the actual cause, then we’re never going to find a solution. Likewise, you know, the very fact we haven’t been able, up to this time, been able to find a consistent, fulfilling contentment, peace, is a sign that perhaps we haven’t found the cause of our suffering. Up to this time perhaps the overall quality of our existence has been dissatisfactory. It’s a sign that we haven’t identified properly the cause of our problem and perhaps what our problem actually is. Maybe we’ve been looking at the wrong place, the key to our happiness.
This looking is not simply an intellectual process. You know, but it’s very much concerned with our, you know, what’s happening to us every day, even what’s happening to us right now, the everyday problems of our lives. You know, people say to me, you know, I have this problem. I have this problem. I have that problem.
Now, what the solution? Is the solution? Even the Buddhist can’t give you the solution to your problem. You know, the Buddhist said, Lords of seers do not wash away sins with water, nor do they remove sufferings with their hands, nor do they transfer their realizations to the minds of others. But by their showing of the truth, all were made free.
That’s all they can do. You know, kind of point things out, help you along a little bit in that way, show you the truth. Show you And what was the very first truth that the Buddha taught? You know, this very first teaching was the four noble truths. The truth of problems, the truth of the cause of problems.
The very first teaching, the very first thing he showed to others to help them to be free. You know, if we’re ever really going to solve our problems, we have to first confront them and begin to identify them and discover their cause. Only then can we come up with any real lasting solution. So, in this way, if you’re constantly checking up in your everyday life, the course of your everyday business, your activities, you know, then there’s a real possibility to solve your problems. There’s a real Everything can become a source of growth.
You’re really learning something. Otherwise there’s no hope. You only make yourself tired through all your efforts. So, again, when we talk about an awakening heart, you know, it’s not an emotional trip, it’s a wisdom. You know, it’s a wisdom born out of awareness.
You you see the equality of yourself in others. That others want happiness, just like myself. That others don’t want to suffer just like myself. No difference whatsoever. And you see that in all your problems, all your difficulties, all your conflicts arise due to self attachment, self centeredness, self-cherishing.
That this exaggerated self concern of yours is in fact your worst enemy. That it has destroyed all your chances for happiness. You know, you see this in your You know, this isn’t academic. It’s not something which needs to be read or can be understood through reading or listening. It’s something you experience in your everyday life.
You look. And you have to begin to see, Where does my real happiness come from that I experience? Where do my real moments of joy, real moments of fulfillment that we all have from time to time? What are their causes? What is associated with those moments?
You see, you know. You don’t have to take anybody’s word. You are aware. There’s probably If there’s nothing more in Buddhism, if there’s no single message other than you need to be aware, And that seems to be the way that we can really develop ourselves, that we can really solve our problems, that we can find the happiness that we want, simply by being aware, being awake. You know, Buddha means the awakened one.
He knows what’s happening. He isn’t fooled, he doesn’t go to sleep, he’s aware, and she’s aware. And likewise, if we’re going to become happy, healthy, sane human beings, we have to begin to create the causes which are in harmony, which accord with the type of results that we want to achieve. To be awake, you have to begin by being a little bit aware. You know, in the course of your everyday life, when you’re experiencing happiness, where did that happiness come from?
Where did this source, this cause come from? Where’s my depression coming from? You know, my discontentment coming from? An awakening heart, you know, is not some extreme emotional trip.
It’s born out of awareness. You know, some people would think, Oh, I can’t know, they become overwhelmed by the emotions, which they think believe to be associated with with love and with with compassion, with the qualities of of bodhicitta, aspiring to highest enlightenment for the sake of sentient beings. Oh, I can’t stand it, you know, all these sentient beings are suffering. I can’t stand it. I can’t go on any longer.
I have to work for the sake of all sentient beings. You know, something like that, maybe. That’s not very dramatic, was it? They’re completely, you know, on an emotional trip. There’s no there’s no it’s not born out of wisdom.
It’ll be there today and be gone tomorrow. You know, have to begin to see our own confront and see within our own situation, our own problems, the causes, and begin to understand that all sentient beings share in the same predicament that we’re in. This is simply derived through awareness. Begin to understand the evolution of our own suffering, the evolution of our own problems. Through this there naturally begins to arise more and more concern for others.
It’s not something we have to pretend or artificially create. Simply by making use of our native intelligence, our basic sanity, we can open our hearts if we look in the right direction and make use of our awareness. So this, you know, we begin to beginning to become more and more concerned about others. We begin to experience, you know, fewer problems for ourselves. You know, we begin less attachments.
We don’t get angry as often, less confusion. And this becomes a source of inspiration. It becomes a sign that maybe we’re on the right track, that we’re heading in the right direction. And we can begin, and it depends upon our own experience, not somebody else having to tell us, but on our own validated perception that we’re going in the right direction because we’re becoming happier, we have less attachment, less confusion, less anger, then we can begin to dedicate ourselves more and more to others. More and more to others’ happiness.
To take more and more responsibility for others, for the happiness of others. Others. To begin to concern ourselves more about the happiness of others. But this doesn’t mean all sentient beings right now, that would be totally unrealistic. That would be just a romantic know, a fifties movie script where we’re going to work to benefit all sentient beings right now.
You know, we’re limited at present in what we can do in our skills and our wisdom and our ability to help others. But we can do something. But over and above that, we can set ourselves in the direction of developing our skills, developing our wisdom, developing our energy. And that becomes our direction. And this is developing the quality of aspiring to become a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being for the benefit of others.
Let us say, this is the quality of a awakening heart. Simply thinking that I have to develop myself. And just in the same way that someone who knows first aid but is confronted with a situation which they can’t handle, This person needs a heart transplant. If they needed a splint I could handle the situation, but I can’t. Perhaps they see the necessity for training themselves further so that they can be of more benefit to more people at more times in more ways.
So it’s born out of our own experience. Our heart begins to aspire more and more to realize our full potential more and more for the benefit of others. Determining to develop ourselves more and more. This becomes more and more the working basis, the motivation behind all of our various actions. And it’s this motivating force which will carry us to enlightenment.
That is, happy, healthy, sane human being. The willingness to see the necessity to develop ourselves to benefit others indirectly, we will achieve all the happiness that we had ever hoped to gain. So in this, we begin to see the necessity of exchanging ourselves for others. This is the motivating force behind the actual practice of exchanging yourself for others, exchanging our self-cherishing for the cherishing of others. So as I said, it has its basis in the text by Śāntideva, Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds.
If I do not actually exchange my happiness for the sufferings of others, I shall not attain the state of Buddhahood. Even in cyclic existence, I shall have no happiness or joy, let alone what is beyond this world. By rejecting that method established in both foreseeable and unforeseeable joy, I cast magnificent delight completely aside. And then because of my inflicting misery on others and confusion, I seize hold of unbearable pain. If all the injury, fear and pain in the world arise from grasping at itself, then what use is this great ghost to me?
If I do not completely forsake it, I shall be unable to put an end to suffering, just as I cannot avoid being burnt if I do not cast aside the fire I hold. Therefore, in order to allay the harm inflicted upon me, and in order to pacify the sufferings of others, I shall give up myself to others and cherish them as I do myself. So this introduces the practice of exchanging self with others. And it’s interesting. Lama Zopa, this is a picture of Lama Zopa.
He I think two years ago, think, he sent a card to many of his students. And there was a line. I was just reminded of a line which Lama Zopa wrote, something to the effect. You know, if you don’t give up if you don’t let go of the burning coal, then you’re always going to be in pain. You know, this burning coal, as I mentioned, Lama zopa is the disadvantage of self-cherishing Lama.
That’s kind of his nickname. He’s always going on and on constantly. If you ask him for one teaching, that would be the teaching he would give you, would be the disadvantages of this exaggerated self concern as far as finding the happiness that we want, as far as it being the source of all our difficulties, all our problems. Know, he compares it to stubbornly, stupidly hanging on to a burning coal and wishing the pain would go away, but not having the sense, the awareness, the intelligence, the wisdom to let go of it. So, you know, it’s not surprising that we don’t because we’re conditioned, aren’t we?
We’ve made this commitment to ourselves as being the absolute center of our happiness. You know, our complete frame of reference is based upon commitment to this self, the happiness of this self, to the altar of our ego. We lay all our energies, all our dreams, all our possessions, all our time, all our money. And even though it doesn’t work, we still stubbornly, we refuse to accept it. We have hope that things will get better.
So, in the exchange of self for others, the object that we’re seeking, we’re seeking to exchange the object of our cherishing Rather than as in our present situation, present cherishing only ourselves, we begin in some small way to accommodate others into our identification of who we are and what is going to bring us happiness, we begin to, in some way, begin to make them at least partly our object of cherishing, our object of concern. In some small way, can make that effort. It’s a real possibility. It doesn’t have to be thought of as some idealism, some romantic notion. You’re trying to cultivate attitude of cherishing others.
As Thomas Merton mentioned in that initial quotation, the necessity to bring about an inner transformation. We have to become in some sense the person that we love. We talked about when we discussed the advantages of cherishing others and the disadvantages of self-cherishing, how isolated we feel, you know, quite alone most of us feel. There always is boundary between ourselves and others. We can never quite touch another human being, never quite communicate.
What does that mean? It means we can never quite identify with them, with their situation, with their experience, with their feelings completely. Never can quite do that. We’re constantly always objectifying them. Why?
Because they are a source. They are simply an object of our manipulation. Another thing out there for our own aggrandizement. A source of our own self pleasure. Simply an object for our self-cherishing.
It’s only when we begin to transcend this quality, we begin to embark on this inner transformation and begin to cherish others more than ourselves Can we really ever begin to forget about ourselves and to begin to really identify with others and go beyond the confines of this prison that we’ve built of our ego? What can we really ever love? I quote again and again that line from Brothers Karamazov, where the father is dying, and he speaks to the various monks who are gathered around. And he says, Teachers and brothers, I ponder what is hell? Hell is the inability to love.
The inability to be confined for the rest of our lives to this prison which ego is constantly recreating for ourselves. So in order to love others we have to begin to, in some sense, begin to identify with others, you know, their needs. And this is the basis for the exchange of self for others, identifying with others a new perspective, a new way of looking at perhaps the same situation. Know, looking at the world, trying to see the world including ourselves out of another person’s eyes. Trying to identify with their feelings, you know, their situations.
You know, we put ourselves in another person’s shoes. You know, the American Indians have a saying, Don’t judge another person until you’ve walked a day in their moccasins. And until you walk in their shoes, do you know what their real situation is? Exchange yourself for others is like role playing. You know, normally our self-cherishing attitude causes us We tend to Because of it we tend to categorize people into three basic categories.
And we’re going work at this many different ways, this idea of exchanging self for others. First I’m going to present it as Śāntideva does in this text to actually give you the formal presentation, the possibilities. Then we can simplify it and perhaps adapt it to our needs more directly and make it a little more accessible. But normally our self-cherishing attitude leads us to categorize people in general into three groups: those who are inferior, those who are equal, or we could say our rivals, and those who we feel in some way are superior to us. In some way, they have some quality or some possession, whatever, but in some way we feel that these people are superior, better than us.
We’ve established these three categories: inferior, equal, and superior. In dependence upon these three categories we’re going to generate three types of mental states, three attitudes: arrogance toward the inferior person, competitiveness toward the person we feel equal to, jealousy toward the person we feel is superior to us, who we inferior to. You know, these states by themselves, these attitudes by themselves bring immediate dissatisfaction and serve as the cause for long range suffering, for pain. Śāntideva in his text makes use of three different attitudes and how we can relate to three different types of people and how we can work with these tendencies. We’re going to try to make use of these tendencies.
We’re going to try to make use of our natural self-cherishing and turn it back in on itself.