Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 27-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun focuses on identifying the object of negation — the emotionally powerful sense of an unchanging, single, independent self — before any formal refutation begins. He draws a key distinction: most people can rationally accept the self is a changing composite of mental and physical events, yet emotionally they behave as if they were fixed and autonomous; that gap, he argues, is precisely where suffering originates. A rope-and-snake analogy anchors the argument: wisdom realizing selflessness dissolves suffering the way light reveals there was never a snake. He also shows how everyday language and childhood praise quietly reinforce the illusion of a solid, independent actor. The session closes with a brief Lamrim-style reflection on precious human rebirth and karma before a dedication. This class sets the target clearly — establishing what must be refuted — before the detailed analysis begins in subsequent sessions.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 3 PA 1989 06 16.mp3
UUID: 22b35b03-9e69-46b7-9987-5048a63ff3b8
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-06-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 27.1 minutes
Words: ~2,616
Unchanging, single, independent self that is our constant preoccupation to protect and foster. You know, it is an unthinking habit. Most of us would normally not even question it. We would not even seek to explain it. However, all our suffering is associated with this preoccupation of trying to protect and foster this self.
This unchanging, single, independently existing self. All loss and gain, pleasure and pain arise because we identify so closely with this vague feeling of selfhood that we have. It’s very unclear, this vague feeling of selfhood. Identify with it. This is who I am.
You know, we’re so emotionally involved in this self that we we take it, you know, for granted unquestionably. So, you know, as it was previously, you know, as we, as I mentioned, it becomes extremely important that we identify it if we’re ever going to go beyond it and not all that it entails. So, you may argue that you don’t think in this way. That you don’t think of the self or the I as an unchanging, single, independent existing self. I don’t think that way.
Therefore, I don’t have this problem. This simply misses the point. The self, the I, as such I try to emphasize, is no problem. You know we can analyze the self, the I quite rationally into their constituent parts. You know within the Buddhist context, Buddhist analysis, we can talk of the five aggregates.
We can talk about the twelve sources, the eighteen constituents. There are many rational methods for analyzing the self and the I into the parts that make up the I. So, the question is not whether the self or the I is changing a composite train of events conditioned by complex factors. Know, we’re not trying, you know, rationally analyzing the self we can come to quite easily understand the self is a changing composite train of events conditioned by complex factors. We can make an analysis quite easily.
You know, you can easily show that this is in fact the case. But the question is why do we then, you know, do we behave emotionally as if we were unchanging, single, independently existent? Rationally we can come to this understanding that I am simply a changing composite train of mental and physical events influenced by complex factors. But I behave, my emotional life is such that I exist as if I were a single, unchanging, independent existing self. So, when we’re looking for the self, the nature of the self, it’s important to remember that it’s an emotional response that one is examining.
When we, we respond to events, it is as if one had a self. For example, when you are hurt, when you are offended, we should ask ourselves who or what exactly is feeling hurt, is feeling offended? This is the way we begin to analyze, you know, to begin to identify, you know, what we’re calling the object of negation. You know, If you’re not convinced that you behave emotionally as if you had an unchanging, single, independent existing self then it’s important to begin to address yourself to this issue. Think carefully about your pain and suffering and ask yourself, Who or what is suffering?
Who is afraid of what is going to happen? Who feels bad about what did happen? Why does death seem so threatening? And you’re you’re going to find other and if you sincerely ask these questions and try to think it through clearly, that your thinking is probably full of many contradictions, inconsistencies, and paradox, This is quite normal. So you know in actual meditation when a meditator begins to take these things under consideration, begins to address themselves, himself, to what or who the self is, he can’t find it.
Gradually, very gradually, it begins to dawn on him that the reason he can’t find this self, and we’re talking about a special particular type of self, and in this case a single, unchanging, independent existing self, the reason he can’t find that self is because it has never existed It does not exist presently. It simply doesn’t exist. It never did. As a consequence of this inability to find what one has always conceived of to exist since the beginning of this time and based one’s entire emotional and mental life upon. There’s a tremendous emotional release of tension and suffering.
You know, we re going to have an emotional resistance to this realization so it takes a long time to break through but when it does, there s this release of tension and suffering. The cause of it has gone. The cause of it was this mental attachment to something that was never there. The cause of all our tensions and suffering is our mental attachment to something which has never existed. When you are clinging to this idea of an unchanging, single, independent self.
Is like clinging to the idea that a piece of rope is a snake. When the light is turned on, one sees that there is no snake. All of one’s fears is suffering that arose from clinging to it as if it were real, dissolved immediately once the lights turned on. The snake never did exist at any time. It was simply one’s clinging to the idea that the snake existed that caused the suffering and the fear.
If you believe, conceive that a snake exists in this room when it’s simply a rope, then it’s only your idea that it exists which is causing your fear and suffering. The snake in fact doesn’t exist. It’s simply that your idea is bringing you this pain, is bringing you this fear, this tension, your belief. Nothing else. There’s no snake whatsoever that’s causing you that problem.
So the wisdom that realizes selflessness is like the light that revealed that the rope was not a snake. So we, you know, we have, you know, we’re going to, we’ve looked already briefly at one type of misconceived self, a separate persistent autonomous self. How even on a superficial examination the existence of such a self cannot be maintained. We can’t quite hold that belief. Now we’re going to begin to, in the next talk and thereafter, to go into the heart of the Hearer school’s explanation of selflessness.
We have to begin with the identification of an unchanging, single, independent self. That’s the object of negation. And we’re going to involve ourselves in a detailed analysis of just how to go about refuting such a type of self. How we can really become certain in our search for such a type of self that in fact this snake, this self does not exist and has never existed. And develop a certainty without any possibility of doubt.
And we need to develop such a methodology of searching that there can be no doubt that I’ve left no stone unturned. Maybe it’s there. I really didn’t look too well there. Or maybe there’s some way I haven’t found that it could be in this method analysis. So in order to end one’s own suffering there is nothing more important than to realize that when one acts as if the body and mind constituted an unchanging single independent self, one unthinkingly attributes to them qualities which they simply do not possess.
When you identify with the body and mind as if it possessed, as if the body and mind possessed the qualities of an unchanging single independent self, you’re attributing qualities to the body and mind which they don’t possess at all. You’re trying to put something there which doesn’t in fact exist. You’re trying to hold on to something which in fact never existed. Nothing in the whole stream of mental and physical phenomena that constitute our body and mind has the quality of an unchanging, single, self. Nothing that we’re going to be able to find within the mind, within the body, outside of the body and mind.
We’re never going to be able to find that unchanging, single, independent self, though we believe from the depth of our heart that in fact it’s there. And based upon that, we engage in all of the various unskillful actions and create our own suffering, create our own prison. You know it’s the grasping, it’s the persistent effort to treat the body and mind as if they were an unchanging single independently existing self which makes the body and mind a constant stream of suffering. So we’ll begin analysis in the next talk. Any questions about what we’ve we’ve gone through so far?
Any questions? I understand everything. And I you know, this idea of selfness. Trying to you know, how we do emotionally respond as if we had a certain type of self. We have to begin to try to get a feeling, a sense, begin to identify what the self looks like.
We’re setting up the target. If you’re going to shoot an arrow, we need something to hit and the arrow is our analysis. You know, and we need the target. We know what we have to know what we’re looking for in order to understand whether we find it or not. If we don’t know what we’re looking for, we’re never going to become we’re never going to gain certainty that it doesn’t exist.
If there was a thief in this room when we didn’t know his or her identity, then though I could look in this room all day long, I couldn’t say for sure whether that thief existed in this room or not. I haven’t identified that thief properly yet. We have to be able to identify what this self must feel like, what does it look like, within our own experience. You know, Buddhism is not asking you to believe in the self or not the self, But it’s just asking you to take a look at the way you emotionally respond to life. It is as if there is a single, unchanging, independently existing self.
That the way you respond is a sign that you believe in such a self. And if that self in fact exists, let’s find it. If it doesn’t, then it’s best to know about it so that you can eliminate this mistaken belief. And therefore all these unskillful actions which are based upon this unskillful belief, this mistaken belief, and restructuring our model of who in fact we are. I mean there’s, know, due to the force of ignorance, but there’s two levels of ignorance, there’s innate and acquired, distinctive, unconscious and conscious.
And actually, we constantly are reinforcing the notion of this type of self even by our language for example. The nature of the very nature of our language reinforces the conception of the self and this type of I. There are these types of reinforcements. Someone, you do something, for example, a child does something well and it didn’t particularly make any effort to do it well, but the mother said, oh, aren’t you clever? And then and then it gets to the understanding that there must be something in it that that is clever.
So it reinforces the notion that there was an actor which was taking responsibility for this act, this cleverness that is that I just performed. And also the nature of our our language, everything is has to have an agent. I am eating. There’s there’s not just eating going on. There’s there’s an I which is doing the eating.
There’s a thinker which is doing the thinking. There’s a sitter which is doing the sitting. So this is built into our life. This concept is is continually being reinforced most of our life. So and it’s very little.
It’s very, very seldom that it’s ever been diminished. So and the quality of ignorance is ignoring, selecting out anything which would diminish this sense of I, this concrete feeling of solidity of the I. It ignores, it focuses out even if, you know, even when there are gaps in our conception and grasping in an I. Anything that ignores anything, learning about anything which would diminish its power, its its solidity.
It’s the the ignoring quality of ignorance. So it’s an ignoring it’s the obstacle of ignorance, various hindrances, and also being reinforced by various relationships and our language. So it’s quite a the tide is going the other direction. The stream is yeah. Yeah.
You know, as I said, it’s too much, the stone is thrown at you. You put up your hand. Yeah. You protect the body. It depends on what you mean by self preservation.
And we should preserve our body, for example. Self interest. Yeah. The fear of going out of existence. But you won’t.
Go ahead. You are not your ego. So we take a few minutes to do a meditation. I feel like I wanna stand up for a minute. If you have no necessity, then we’ll go straight into it.
So we are moving through the graduated path, the system of progressive meditation teachings. First beginning to appreciate who we are, that we have the basis for transformation. And upon that basis beginning to understand that we have also not only the substantial cause, that is our own wisdom, our own sanity, basic sanity, our seeds of love and compassion and spontaneity. But we have the conditions like the cooperative causes which like water and earth which we need in addition to the seed to cultivate a flower for example. That we have all the external and internal conditions necessary to make use of our potential.
That we live in a society which is free, very much free compared to most societies. That we have our material needs easily met. That we have the leisure time. That we have healthy bodies generally. That we’re free from many obstacles that many many people have.
That we have We have this basis of an internal basis of development of transformation so we have everything that need and we are to appreciate who in fact we are and what we have. That we are very fortunate people, very special people. Special people. That this situation is not going to last forever. It’s definite that we’re going to die.
Now whether this death is the big death, dramatic life-changing death at the end of our life or even those small deaths that occurred in the course of our life when we, our life is turned upside down when we have these tremendous tremendous upheavals. How we come down. You know, whether we we land on our feet is determined by the predominant patterns of our mind, our karma. You know, what types of minds are we we creating? So look at your, you know, your everyday life.
Now what what are the predominant patterns? Not the not the unusual events, but the tone, the style of your life. You know, feelings of insufficiency, lack of confidence. Are they are they patterns very much involved with caring for others or self centeredness? What’s the theme of your life?
What kinds of reoccurring problems do you have? We can either try to identify the the reoccurring patterns. How can you modify these patterns? So I think we’ll we’ll stop there. We’ll dedicate the positive energy that we create.
Through these merits, may I soon attain the enlightened state of guru, Buddha, and may I lead every migrating being without exception to that state? May the precious bodhimind not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline increase.