Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 47-minute talk with a programmer’s analogy: when a television viewer’s companion shows displeasure, the viewer changes the channel — but the more radical move is to exit the system altogether. The Buddha, Gendun argues, recognized cyclic existence as exactly such a system, characterized by suffering, impermanence, and selflessness, and pointed the way out. He then builds an extended scenario of a man and woman passing on a street to illustrate how karma and afflictive emotions operate as mechanical programming: reactions, desires, and fears fire without genuine choice, like two computers playing chess. He cites a psychologist’s account linking neurosis to avoidance of these three marks of existence, then closes by sketching how mindfulness and, eventually, Deity Yoga can begin to restore real freedom.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 1988 03 18 3PA.mp3
UUID: 6b909d4b-c902-4ef8-8c82-f66447c3ac43
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-03-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.8 minutes
Words: ~5,668
These various feelings, we can run away from them, this hopelessness and these questions, by ignoring them. We can cultivate purposely an awareness. Finally, we can stubbornly refuse these feelings, refuse our own feelings, our own truth, which is beginning to dawn on us. Or we can confront our suffering, the meaninglessness of our life. So this confrontation, this confrontation with the meaninglessness of our life, with our suffering, of this pain, and the tension it creates, which is aroused by this confrontation, this beginning of the spiritual path.
Suppose person A is watching television. 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 he tries to remedy it by exiting the present system. That is the television program. This is written by someone who is very skilled in computer programming.
So, you know, there’s person a, he’s sitting in a room, and person b walks in the room, and he shows displeasure, evident displeasure at the situation. So person a obviously is, well, you know, obviously he doesn’t like this program, so he turns the knob on the program. And flipping the channel knob, looking for a better show. Person B may have more radical concept of what it is to exit the system. This is computer talk, 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 governs many people’s lives, a system which had never been seen or recognized as a system before. Then such a person, then such people often devote their lives to convincing other people that the system really is there and that it ought to be exited from. So we have we’re involved in a system. The Buddha recognized, perceived a system which governs our lives. He called this system cyclic existence.
Samsāra, that’s a Sanskrit word, is usually translated as cyclic existence. He said it is characterized by three marks: suffering, impermanence, and selflessness. Therefore, it is dissatisfactory and should be exited from. Up to now, we’ve taken more or less our difficulties, our frustrations, disappointments, all our problems piecemeal, one by one, confront them, try to work with them, pass on to a new problem, work with it, confront it, resolve it either well or poorly, pass on to a new one. And we have been working very much with our life situation in this manner, as if these various problems which are arising were unrelated to one another, that there is no particular pattern to our problems.
So we have to develop some perspective, begin to step back, try to see the forest for the trees. So the Buddha, he said that there is some pattern involved in all our difficulties and all our problems, that they’re not merely random. There’s some type of cause, and more than that, these causes follow some laws, therefore they follow certain rules and patterns. He called these rules and patterns which bring about dissatisfactory states, cyclic existence, saṃsāra. And he said that such a pattern, such a system should be exited from, that we should try and make effort to go beyond this pattern altogether, to step out of it.
You know, the Buddha, I think on that wheel of life, on this far, on this left hand wall, my left hand wall, right there on the left hand wall, there’s a Buddha with the wheel of life, he’s pointing, you know, he’s pointing this way out, the exit. He said, you know, this system is dissatisfactory by its very nature. Nowhere within it will you find fulfillment, will you find complete happiness. It is to be exited from. It is totally to be gotten out of.
Any sort of happiness that you may experience is simply a low level of suffering, and moreover, it’s impermanent. It is not going to last long, and more A worse type of suffering is going to arise in its place. He wasn’t being cynical. He was trying to describe the way things as accurately as he could as he saw them. This was his experience.
This is what he saw. And he tried to convince other people that this system did in fact exist and it’s governing their lives. Whether you want to admit it or not, it’s still You know, we don’t have to believe in karma. We don’t have to believe that saṃsāra or cyclic existence exists or not. It still is there.
It seems to be the reality of the situation. We have to investigate it and see for ourselves that we, in fact, do exist with these compulsive reoccurring patterns within our mind. And anything within these reoccurring patterns, anything within the fantasy world of ego, is going to be, by its very nature, dissatisfactory. So he described these particular patterns, this particular system, as having three main characteristics or marks. Some of you are familiar with what are called the four seals of a Buddhist doctrine.
All that is contaminated is suffering, all products are impermanent, all phenomena are empty, nirvana is peace, beyond sorrow is peace. These are the four seals of a Buddhist doctrine. If anything which is said or written is in accordance with these four seals, then it’s said to be in accordance with the Buddhist doctrine. It can be said to be Buddhism. So these three marks are coming from these four seals.
So that is suffering, impermanence, and selflessness. These are the qualities which make cyclic existence dissatisfactory. So we have to begin to see these within our own experience, these three marks of our not just cyclic existence, but these are the three marks of our lives. These are what are governing our lives. These are the qualities of our own ego within our own mind.
They aren’t outside of ourselves. So when follow a path, that is, take up spiritual practices, this involves a resolution between the tension, between the awareness and acknowledgment of these three marks. The three marks of existence on the one hand, and the struggle against their awareness on the other. It might seem remarkable to you that we are in fact struggling against seeing the way things are. But as I was speaking about before, it’s very much the situation that we’re in.
In order to find security, we are quite willing to put up with and to hide, to put up with reoccurring, dissatisfactory situations, simply because we’re afraid to change. We’re afraid to look at the reality of the situation. You know, if you if you begin to look at the truth enough, I mean, it forces you, doesn’t it, into a choice. Either you’re to close your eyes or you’re going to have to change. There reach a certain flash point, a certain tension in your mind, where you’re either going to say, okay, I choose ignorance.
I choose to be blind. Or you change because the tension builds up and builds up, and you can’t stand it any longer. So you’re going to do something. You make a choice. To a large degree, we’re making small choices all the time.
We’re choosing against growth, against enlightenment. We’re choosing to resecure ourselves over and over again into habitual patterns which are dissatisfactory through fear, fear of change, fear of the unknown, and the death of the ego ultimately. So this is a cultivated ignoring, cultivated unawareness, stubborn refusal to accept reality. So we have to make a lot of effort over and over again, try to see these three marks as they’re acting out in our lives. It doesn’t have to be a painful struggle, but it has to be a consistent and disciplined one.
I don’t think that, you know Buddhism is very much against asceticism, for example. But it seems to that it’s necessary to accept some small voluntary suffering, to go beyond suffering altogether. In a way, don’t have any choice. If we don’t accept suffering voluntarily, we’re going to continue to suffer. If we do voluntarily accept suffering, some types of suffering, if we voluntarily take them on, then this can act for us to go beyond suffering altogether.
If we can really get realistic about the situation, we can do a little, can’t we? We can take a little bit of suffering, a little bit of self discipline. It perhaps doesn’t feel so good to wake up fifteen minutes earlier than is necessary in the morning to sit and do breathing meditation. At present, it seems to be some sort of suffering, and perhaps you question why you’re doing it. So you’re going to have to find out for yourself why you’re doing it.
Ego is not going to supply you the answers. You’re going to have to use a part of yourself, your own wisdom, which is willing, which sees the situation you’re in in a broader perspective. You know, it is the nature of the ego that it can’t think in long term goals. You know, in Buddhism, we we talk about goals which are lifetimes, millions of lifetimes in the future, for example. You know, the bodhisattva being willing to work as the Buddha did for three countless eons in order to attain enlightenment.
That’s beyond the ability, beyond the conception of ego to work with. I think, you know, even in very practical everyday life, we notice that when we talk about mature people, some people, you know, they can’t they have inability to have long term gratification. They only have short term gratification, that they have to have their goals met almost immediately. And therefore, they achieve very little in life, either materially or spiritually. For example, you know, they’re going to school, perhaps in high school, what do you call secondary school, and they want they want some good things in life.
They want a stereo or they want a car. So suddenly drop out of school and perhaps they get their stereo and they get their car. But in economic terms, they’re really cheating themselves, aren’t they? Because their earning capacity is going to be much less as compared to someone who finishes high school. But they don’t have the maturity to put off achieving their goals for a certain period of time in order to achieve a greater goal.
And likewise, if a person goes through a university or takes some sort of training and is willing to forego his present needs, present goals, for long term goals, he’s going to realize a greater type of happiness, a greater however you may conceive of it. Likewise, if we’re able to develop the perspective of a long term practice, of cultivating our mind over longer periods of time, of actually slowly training our minds. In this life, and if we can begin, which is difficult, to begin to conceive of our practice over many lifetimes, then we’re willing more and more to accept voluntary suffering, even though we don’t want it. No one wants to suffer. Ascetics don’t want to suffer.
They find it necessary for one reason or another. It seems to be that we have to have some consistent self discipline in our practice, and this goes against our grain. It goes against our natural, perhaps laziness, and therefore it involves some suffering. But if we can begin to see that maybe twenty years down the line, if I can just cultivate a little bit each day, by then, you know, I’m going to be a much happier person with a greater sense of fulfillment and be able to help others to a greater degree. I’ll be that much more skillful.
And if we can think of it in vast lifetimes, then what’s one lifetime? It’s not to say that you somehow don’t seek happiness at all or you reject happiness, but you begin to not emphasize the necessity of temporal happiness as much, but begin to see your happiness in longer and longer term goals. And you begin to set your goals higher and higher until it becomes Buddhahood. You’re willing to do whatever is necessary for however long in order to attain that goal. In order to do this, to develop such determination, we begin to see that, in fact, our present situation is dissatisfactory, that we’re involved in patterns which have three marks, three characteristics, suffering, impermanence, and selflessness.
I’m talking about these three marks. I think that we’ll see that every psychopathological phenomena has as its roots a particular relation to these three marks of existence. So he’s talking about from a very contemporary psychological point of view. This is written by a PhD in psychology, in terms of psychopathology. We could trace every psychopathological form, system or complex, everything that we call severe neurotic or psychotic disturbance back to a highly sensitive and meaningful encounter with one of these three basic truths.
The attempt to cover up the acknowledgment of these very simple facts has led to a lifelong struggle into one form of psychopathology or another. We will find that each psychopathological form, such as obsessions, hysteria, phobia, depression, and various characteristic aberrations contain within it a denial, rejection, or struggle against the recognition of the texture of existence. It is like someone who refuses to accept the summer changes into fall. Autumn. They dress inappropriately, and they become ill.
We simply won’t accept the way things are, and we act inappropriately, and we suffer. That’s more or less the bottom line of this situation. The way things are are these three marks of existence. So if we’re willing to confront our situation, the nature of our situation, becoming more and more aware of it and to acknowledge it, then we’re going to be able to more and more deal with it. We’ll be able to work with it, and we can develop the means to be able to relate more and more skillfully.
You know, if you misunderstand your situation, the object you’re working with, another person. If you don’t understand them, you’re not going to deal appropriately with them. You’re not going to be able to deal skillfully with them. Is often the difficulty when people go to a foreign country. They don’t realize they’re dealing with someone of a different mentality.
They deal with them as if they were one of their fellow countrymen. They don’t deal very skillfully with them. They have lots of problems. You see, I saw this all the time in India. People didn’t have the flexibility or the awareness to realize that they’re in another country, a foreign culture, and they thought everything should run just as it did in the West.
And when it didn’t, they become frustrated, disappointed, and many times they freak out. But if we can understand who it is we’re dealing with, what is the situation, be aware of it, then we can be able to realize with it skillfully we know how it works. So we begin by recognizing the system, the system called cyclic existence. Traditionally, the cyclic existence is described as the compulsive taking of rebirth under the influence of karma and afflictive emotions. Or by instead of rebirth, we can say the compulsive taking of contaminated aggregates under the influence of karma and afflictive emotions.
So we are the aggregates, more or less a body and mind, but a type of body and mind which is programmed, which is predisposed to suffering. We don’t have any choice in this matter. We are being driven compulsively. This is the feeling that we have to begin to develop in our lives, this lack of freedom. If there is no awareness, there is no freedom, there is no real choice.
These reoccurring patterns. So this idea of program, of choicelessness, If a woman were walking along the street in a shopping center, for example, and just looking through the windows, looking at the windows, various things in the windows, At that moment, probably not conceiving of herself as a woman. She’s not conceiving of herself in any particular way. That is to say, we can talk about this in a sense that she has yet to take rebirth. She’s in an between state.
This may sound rather strange, but stay with this idea. She’s walking down the street, she’s looking at the dresses or whatever at the in the windows, and she’s not she’s just simply aware of dresses and store windows. She’s not aware of herself as being a human being, as being a mother, as being a woman. Any of these particular labels, she’s not grasping onto them at that very moment. But she is associated with a particular energy pattern of materiality.
Remember last week I talked about the body being a particular energy pattern. The body is a particular energy pattern. She’s associated with a particular energy pattern. This particular energy pattern we call the female body. This will force her, without her choice, to relate with the world in a certain way.
She has no choice. I have no choice. I’m not picking on women. This is predetermined, you know. So she compulsively grasps at a particular energy pattern, which is going to predetermine the way she is going to relate with the world.
Okay, we translate that into English. When she died in her last lifetime, she grasped for a female body. She was born in a female body. Having a female body means she is going to relate with the world from the standpoint of being a female. Okay, there is a man walking down the other side of the street.
He is also in the same situation. He has grasp for a particular energy pattern of male body due to the previous tendencies of his mind, of karma. These tendencies of mind which begin expressed, which find fulfillment or quiescence in having grasped this particular pattern. He is also forced, without choice, to begin to relate with the world in a certain manner. He didn’t choose to take this body.
He is not going to choose the way that he is going to relate with this world from the standpoint of being a man. He is forced to. There is no freedom. His worldview, his values, and even his future tendencies, which he is now even creating, are going to be developed in the context of having a male body. Her worldviews, her values, and her future existences are going to be developed in the context of having a female body.
So everything that she does is going to be filtered through this association with the female body, whatever she sees in the world, how she views the world, how she looks at the world, and just as importantly, how the world looks at her and how she thinks the world is looking at her. This is further going to determine how she’s going to relate with the world. So she’s getting feedback from the world. She grasps for a particular type of energy pattern in the female body, and she’s going to begin to relate with this world from the viewpoint of being a woman. The world is going to look at her, begin to relate with her as having a female body.
She’s going to begin to see how the world is relating with her, And this feedback is going to further determine how she is going to relate with the world. So it’s interaction between the world and her. There is no choice involved in this. She is being forced to begin to interact with the world from a particular context. So the man sees the woman.
So the woman’s body acts as a condition to activate certain latencies in his mind. Certain urges we talked about karma as being certain urges or impulses are going to be activated. This woman’s body, he sees her across the street, this acts as the objective condition to activate, acts as the cooperative cause to activate certain urges, impulses within his own mind. It’s like sticking a program in the computer. No choice.
There’s not going to be any choice in any of this. Completely as if mechanical processes were taking place, causes and effects. So this brings into play certain tendencies. Urge happens, certain tendencies in the mind, certain trains of thought will now begin to occur. Now, if he had practiced mindfulness and breathing, perhaps he could take a choice at this moment.
But this fellow hasn’t practiced mindfulness and breathing. He’s going to bite down on this hot dog. Train of thought, he’s going to bite into that hot dog, that train of thought. He’s going to develop compulsive patterns, a program. He’s going to accept this program.
So he’s not aware at all that he’s being programmed. He’s not aware of the ensuing interaction of his program and what is going to occur with this woman, that this whole situation which is arising, which is being generated, is purely conditioned by past tendencies, past habits, by his culture, by his social values, by how he conceives of himself, how he conceives of the world. There’s all these forces working, operating in own mentality, own materiality, which were determined by past influences, by previous actions, his karma. So there are all these forces at work which are determining this situation. There is no freedom at any point in this situation.
There’s no control. There’s no choice. There’s only conditioned reflexes, mechanical processes, reactive patterns. He’s totally unaware of them. So the program is inserted, put the program in the computer.
As if in a trance, the man walks across the street to the side where the woman is walking. And what happens? The woman sees the man. Okay. Now her program is being inserted.
So she could have some choices. On conceiving this object walking across the street as a man, she is born as a woman. This latency, this train of thought, which is the thought of conceiving herself as a woman is activated, she will grasp to it. She will bite into the hot dog of being conceiving of herself as a woman in response to seeing, conceiving that person walking across the street as a man. As she could have just seen shape and color walking across the street, possibility.
That is all it is, a shape and color walking across the street. She could have seen a human being, just simply a human being walking across the street. But due to her previous tendencies, she conceives of that object walking across the street as a man. This impulse, this train of thought arises, and she grasps onto that train of thought. There’s been no choice.
It’s purely mechanical. As if in a trance she crosses over to the other side of the street. So both of these people are being driven by karma and afflictive emotions. There’s no choice and there’s no freedom in this entire, you know, this small interplay between them. It’s like, two computers playing chess.
One chess player makes a move, and the other chess player consults its file, program, it makes a move. Sooner or later, one one chess, one computer will win the game. But there’s only Then there’s a slight pause, and another program is inserted, another game starts. Later this day, this same woman will be reborn as perhaps a secretary or a nurse or a homemaker, as a mother, as a wife, a lover. So each of those rebirths will have their particular suffering, their particular pleasure.
This may sound like a rather radical idea. That if you were to conceive of yourself as a woman, then you wouldn’t suffer the sufferings of a woman. That you enjoy the pleasures of a woman, that’s true. If you were to conceive yourself as a mother, you wouldn’t suffer the sufferings of a mother. You wouldn’t have the pleasures of being a mother.
But we have no choice as long as we’re bound to these patterns. Each of these rebirths is associated with a particular mentality, associated with a particular type of suffering and pleasure, a particular style of pleasure, a particular style of suffering, a particular style of self punishment, a particular style of self reward. You know, all these various values associated with this particular mentality. They all have these all these associations which go along with being a mother, all these associations which go along with being a woman, a man, a father. This whole script, this whole role goes along with all their sufferings, with all their pleasures, all their responsibilities, rewards, punishments.
There’s no choice involved in this. So as long as we identify with that particular conception, with that particular role, then we’re going to identify with all the sufferings and all the rewards, the pleasures that go along with it, never knowing quite why. You know, even within this particular role of being a mother, of being a woman, of being a father, of being a husband. Even when we play that role out successfully, we enact out all the preconceptions of what it means to be a mother, what it means to be a woman, man, father perfectly. There’s still a feeling of hollowness, of dissatisfactoriness, of unfulfillment, because it’s still a role.
We haven’t chosen the role. It is a role that we’ve taken through the force of afflicted emotions and karma. No matter how well we play that role, it’s never satisfactory. But we can ask the question, okay, I have to play out these roles. I’m being driven by the power of afflicting emotions, desire, hatred, miserliness, spite, jealousy, whatever, and karma, my past actions, the latencies that I’ve created.
And by society, by my physical relationships. But in these roles, if I play them well, isn’t there I experience some kind of pleasure. I experience some kind of happiness. Isn’t that really happiness? Isn’t that pleasure happiness?
So each of each of these various roles, no matter whether it’s within this existence of being a mother or father, whether it’s in the various realms of existence, such as role of being a hell being, the role of being a hungry ghost, you know, the paranoia and fear associated with a hell being, the consumerism of a hungry ghost, ignoring quality of of an animal. They all have their associated pleasures and their associated sufferings. So we have to ask ourselves, are these really pleasures or not? Now the driving force behind this compulsive taking of roles, this compulsive rebirth in this existence and within the various realms of existence, is ignorance. And it is a confused mind, a mind which grasps at the self or the I to be solid, concrete, independently existing.
Though in fact it’s merely a collection of tendencies, of mental and physical tendencies, mental and physical events taking place. We have the feeling that there is something within us which is permanent, something which endures through all the days and changes of life. We see us struggling to make sure of the permanence, continuity and safety of this enduring core, the center and soul of our being which we call I. For this we think to be the real man, the thinker of our thoughts, the feeler of our feelings, and knower of our knowledge. So, all these various compulsive patterns, these programs, these recurring dissatisfactory qualities of our existence have as their root ignorance, this confused mind which misconceives the nature of the self.
You know, if an object enhances the self, then we wish to maintain contact, we wish to repeat contact, we develop desire attachment. If somehow the object threatens the self, we want to cut off contact, we want to destroy that object. So we develop anger, we develop hatred. In developing this desire, attachment, hatred, anger, we commit actions, karma, which leave latencies on the mind, predispose us to reenact again and again these same particular patterns. There’s no freedom at all involved in this process.
Everything becomes self reinforcing. So I think we’ll have to wait to find out what happens to the woman next week. Stay tuned. She crosses the street. She looks.
You know, she idea I’m trying to get across from this idea is how very much programmed, how very little freedom we actually experience, whether we call these influences external to ourselves or internal, then very much we’re acting out our lives very mechanically. This woman is going to generate a great deal of fear. You you may think it odd that I said that she conceives of herself as a woman, as if she had a choice. You know, I think, you know, there are many times when, you know, you’re sitting here quietly, and you’re not, I doubt, very much thinking of yourself as a woman or a man. It’s only when certain conditions arise, and you you become aware of your femininity, not your femininity, we’ll say, your masculinity or your masculinity.
And this is usually in connection with the member of the opposite sex, we’ll say, not always. So this opposite So But in order to for that to arise, you had to conceive of that person sexually in some way. That you had to it wasn’t just a person, it was a male person or a female person. And why did you do that? Why did you why couldn’t you just relate to that that being over there, as another fellow human being?
Why did you conceive of that being as a man, and thereby conceive of yourself in reaction to that as a woman? And therefore, you might consider that as a threatening man, and therefore, you’re going to have fear arise in your mind, you’re going to suffer. Why did this whole string of events start to take place, in which you had no control, just cause and effect, you know, reactive patterns? Why did you conceive? Why couldn’t you just let that person be a person?
Why did you have to conceive of that person as being a man? You had no choice. You were being driven by your afflictive emotions, for example attachment, and by urges of karma, these impulses. A particular condition arises, a particular urge, a train of thought, a tendency in your mind, you grasp onto that, that he becomes a man, you become a woman, he becomes a threat, you experience fear and suffering. No choice, just purely mechanical pattern acting itself out.
This is the point I’m trying to get across, that we’re caught in this system without any freedom, without any choice, and it’s dissatisfactory. If until the point where we begin to recognize it, develop awareness of it, and possibly begin to make choices. We can begin to make choices, little choices, as I mentioned in the beginning. With awareness if there’s mindfulness. We don’t have to bite the hotdog.
We’ll leave it there for now. Meditate on loving kindness. Does that make some sense? I don’t know. I it’s kind of a I don’t feel I was being very clear.
I don’t know. If you don’t conceive of yourself as one of those roles, then what would Buddhism or Buddha suggest that we conceive of ourselves? We want to go beyond our conception. Just We Perhaps, you know, we can we can begin to refine our conceptions, you know, for example. We can begin to refine our conceptions of who we are in the sense of being a worthwhile person, having potentials, you know, rather as opposed to having negative conception of ourselves, being limited, being not quite having what it takes to be happy.
So we can begin to work with our conception of ourselves in a very mundane way, that I’m not this negative limited person, but in fact, I have some real potential. I have the ability to change. I have a kind heart. I have some intelligence. I can work with that.
We begin to develop a better conception. We use Deity Yoga, for example, and Tantra to identify with the enlightened qualities which are within ourselves in a seed form at present, love, wisdom, and you develop the the divine respect, dignity. And you begin to conceive of yourself as a deity, not in a sense of, you know, I’m better than anyone else. In fact, everyone is a deity. You know, you begin to see everyone as having Buddha quality, as having deity quality.
So you begin to lift up your conception. But ultimately, you want to go beyond all conception, and you become what is like a wish granting tree. In Buddhism, they use the metaphor of a Buddha as being a wish granting tree. A tree is, you know, a fruit tree is simply there. It’s growing.
It’s always giving forth this delicious, nourishing fruit. And other people just simply come along and pluck it and and enjoy it and are nourished by it. The tree has no intention to grow fruit, delicious nutritious fruit. It’s just its natural way of being. It’s a situation it creates.
And people, by relating to it properly, are nourished and find pleasure. Likewise, with the Buddha. The Buddha has no intention of helping sentient beings. But its very nature is if we relate to it skillfully in such a way, then we are nourished and can take pleasure from it. He, by appearances, it’s as if he is trying to help us, but in fact, this is his natural way of being.
It’s just like a tree, a wish granting tree, a wish-fulfilling jewel? That’s sort of what really struck me tonight was you were pointing out that it’s not just negative things that trap us, but even sort of when we