Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 8-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun introduces the practice of exchanging self for others through a memorable framing borrowed from the Dalai Lama: because we are naturally selfish, the wisest strategy is to transfer that intense concern onto everyone else — making them the “I” who matters most. He walks through the sequential steps: working with attitudes toward friends, enemies, strangers, and those we rank above or below us; then the tonglen visualization of breathing in others’ suffering as black smoke that destroys a black egg of self-cherishing at the heart, and sending out white light of happiness and possessions in return. He closes with unusual candour, acknowledging he has only theoretical knowledge and positioning the session as useful groundwork for when students encounter a fully qualified teacher.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 17 3 PA 1988 09 30.mp3
UUID: 5d573bb5-7c43-4125-8002-79ed6c0894ac
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-09-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 8.3 minutes
Words: ~1,190
And we replace it with other. And we replace other with I. We’re beginning to exchange our attitudes. And then a habitual pattern of with other, holding our self precious, we begin to take those same minds, but we switch the object while the ego is not looking. And we put other in the eye place, and I in other place.
And we begin to work with that. Until the point arises where we spontaneously cherish others, and aren’t particularly too concerned about ourselves. You know? Just by exchanging the object of this mind which already exists. As the Dalai Lama said, we’re naturally selfish.
You know? So why not be wisely selfish? That is to say, place others happiness first, then we’re going to get all the happiness that we ever wanted. So this is being wisely selfish. We have a selfish mind which is always conceiving of I am the most important.
So if we can simply begin to transfer this association of I onto others, then everybody out there is a bunch of I’s who are more who are most important. So this is this mystical practice of exchanging yourself for others. Looking at, you know, we can do this by, you know, taking various categories of people, friend, enemies, strangers, inferior people who we feel are inferior in some way to us, people we feel are equal to us, people who we feel in some way that are superior to us. And, you know, working with our attitudes toward them, beginning to see the world from their perspective, looking at the situation from their eyes, you know, people you love, people you hold dear, putting yourself in their shoes, and looking at yourself in the situation with how you relate with them. You know, broadening our perspective, opening our minds, going beyond our our petty self-cherishing.
Then the final practice is giving and taking. So, you know, based upon understanding the advantages of cherishing others, we we actually visualize the visualization technique of someone else. We begin with someone that we have some natural love for. We imagine them to be going to undergoing some suffering. And to respond to this, we cultivate compassion.
We develop the wish, may they be separated from that suffering, that problem. And then understanding that it is our own self-cherishing which is the root cause of all our problems. We imagine this self-cherishing to be in the shape of a black egg at our heart. And we we say, oh, this thing, I wanna beat you self-cherishing once and for all. And I’m fed up with you.
And we I’m gonna take on all this suffering. I’m gonna I’m gonna lay into you. So we take on upon all the suffering of this person in a sense of in a context of compassion in the form of black smoke, bringing it into our nostril, taking it down, and it begins to eat away at the black egg of self-cherishing at our heart. And we look at this person, and though they’re not suffering, still don’t have the happiness that they want. And so we develop a love that is a simple wish that you’d be happy.
And we understand that cherishing others is the really is the most skillful way to find happiness that we want. And with the sense of going out to this other person, understanding that they’re just like us and the happiness that they want. We give away all of our possessions, all our positive energy, even our body in the form of white radiant light which goes out from our heart, rises up and goes out of our nostril, and transforms into whatever object that would make this person happy. And they’re presented with whatever object it is, no matter what they might want. We give them that.
Whatever makes them happy, in this sense, makes us happy. We rejoice. So this visualization technique of giving and taking, taking on the suffering, giving away our happiness. So this is like a training ground, you know, like the like the military. They have training practices.
They use toy bullets and things like that. This giving and taking is like a training an experiment, a training ground. So where maybe someday we can actually use real bullets. Mhmm. Really take on the suffering of others and give away our happiness.
So we’ll be discussing these practices. These practices of equalizing ourselves and others, the disadvantages of self-cherishing, the disadvantages of self-cherishing, the advantages of cherishing others, the actual exchange of self for others, and the giving and taking. So, you know, I have to bring up one problem even though the time is going by. And you’ve been sitting patiently a long time. There’s two problems.
Is the problem Two problems in in respect to someone like myself presenting such types of teachings. The first is that, you know, I only have a little theoretic knowledge of these teachings. I have no experience, practical experience of them. And so that’s one drawback. And then the second problem is that so if they are to be more any more than simply intellectual curiosity piece, You know, if they’re actually in some way, you know, we have to have a sincere desire to train in them, some aspiration, at least a thought that that would be great, that would be nice.
Some, you know, some aspiration towards that end. This requires the blessings or, you know, we might say the inspiration of a compassionate spiritual teacher. So, you know, we don’t have that at the moment, I mean, its relationship to myself. So but still, I feel that it’s worthwhile because, you know, if you’re fortunate enough in the future to to again receive teachings on these subjects, then perhaps, you know, from it will be you know, if you receive them from a fully qualified teacher, from a qualified teacher, then there’s the acquaintanceship that you make that we can make together in discussing these these methods of awaken our hearts. Then maybe there will be then this merely just this discussion will be of some benefit when you do actually meet with a qualified teacher who has not only the vast theoretical knowledge, has the actual experience and can actually awaken within you the seed of the awakening heart, which is in with all of us.
You know, through the through the the warmth and his kindness and the and the rain of his wisdom can actually cultivate these seeds, awaken them in your heart. Then then, you know, as our present teacher, who just arrived last week, is able to do. Then even our discussion, even though we’re, you know, I have no understanding and no compassion, I think it’s worthwhile. Just an acquaintance that we build up. And you know you’ve heard the words before.
So then I think it’s meaningful. It’s simply a benefit. So that’s all I wanted to say about that. So we’ll we’ll meditate on loving kindness. Alright.
Would you like to stand up for a minute? You must be tired.