Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Wrapping up the first of the three principal aspects of the path after a year-long series, Ven Jampa Gendun uses this 89-minute session to complete his teaching on the determination to be free from cyclic existence. He opens by contrasting the mind’s unlimited Buddha nature with the ego’s self-imposed limits, then introduces the first antidote to the five hindrances: simply recognizing them as hindrances. He walks through the two causes for going for refuge — fear (reasoned, not emotional) and faith — and distinguishes causal from effect refuge. The heart of the session traces the three marks of existence — dissatisfactoriness, impermanence, and selflessness — showing how frustration and neurosis stem from relating unskillfully to these realities. The session closes with a guided loving-kindness meditation that begins with self-forgiveness and expands outward, gradually, to all beings everywhere.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1987 11 27 3 P A P.mp3
UUID: 928e2fee-9669-4926-b7b9-3d3d805b540d
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 1987-1988 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-11-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 89.0 minutes
Words: ~8,542
Its clarity knowing has no limit, it’s unobstructed. We can simply increase our compassion, increase our understanding without limit until we reach a state what we call omniscience. So it has no inherent limits. Now we, by what type of image we grasp to,, however we imagine ourselves to be, we acknowledge certain limits, we place certain limits upon ourselves, but these are purely our own ego projections upon ourselves of who we think we are, what our potentials are, what our characteristics are, my particular type of intelligence, my particular type of ability, but in fact this is not a reflection of how the real nature of our mind exists. The nature of our mind essentially is unlimited, but we limit it with our misconceptions of who we are.
Usually we have a very negative self image. It’s based upon the fact that we sense our own confusion, our own suffering and we take these as a sign that there’s something wrong with us. Because I am suffering, because I am confused, that means there’s something wrong with me. Therefore we tend to have a very negative image of ourselves. I don’t quite have what it takes.
I should be happy. I shouldn’t be confused, shouldn’t be suffering. So we begin to set limits upon ourselves. We begin to appreciate the very fact that our mind has no limits, that we have no limits if we’re willing to work with the proper methods. That is, we can work with our Buddha nature.
So the mind of ourselves is clear and knowing. The mind of a Buddha in its nature is clear and knowing. There’s no difference. Same nature. The mind of a Buddha is clear and knowing.
The mind of ordinary people like ourselves is clear and knowing. But there’s a difference, isn’t there, between a Buddha’s mind and an ordinary person’s mind, our own mind. So we’re talking about these patterns. So what is the difference between a Buddha’s mind and an ordinary person’s mind? You know what?
It is the presence of these unskillful destructive patterns, tendencies in the mind or the absence of these destructive defile tendencies within the mind. Unskillful patterns. So we say that when all the unskillful destructive patterns have been eliminated, all the constructive, skillful patterns have been established, that’s what we call Buddha mind. Until that point, it’s the mind of an ordinary being, that’s all. That’s the simple difference.
It just depends upon the skillful, unskillful, constructive and destructive patterns of mind. Essentially the mind is the same in the nature, it’s simply clear knowing. So we’re willing to duplicate the process which a Buddha has gone through in eliminating all the unskillful, all the destructive tendencies and patterns within our mind, develop all constructive, all the skillful patterns, then we can duplicate a Buddha mind because there’s no difference whatsoever. So even in small ways, you know, in our daily life, Each time we make some effort to begin to correct the negative states of our mind, the unskillful patterns, the destructive tendencies of our mind, even in a small way, just a moment’s effort, then we’ve taken a small step to developing Buddhahood. This is the process, So each time we do this we’re walking the path, employing methods to become Buddha.
You know, that we take that much step, we come that much closer to real happiness even if it’s only thinking about oh I shouldn’t perhaps, I shouldn’t be angry, just that thought is taking a step towards real happiness. So wherever there exists mind, there exists the possibility for Buddhahood because the potential, the seed of Buddhahood is there. However you may conceive of enlightenment, of Buddhahood, you know whether you might think of enlightenment as maybe your teacher or the Dalai Lama or Mother Teresa or Jesus Christ or Lao Tzu or Buddha, however you might conceive of it, the potential is there to duplicate any of these minds, any of these beings. None of these states are beyond our reach. They went through a process of development and we can duplicate that process.
It’s not how somehow that they were born that way. It’s not somehow that the Dalai Lama or Mother Teresa has something to do with the molecular chemistry of their mind. Know, somehow the atoms in their mind are different than ours. That’s the way they were born. If I could just readjust the organic molecules in my mind and I could be like them, but that’s something I can’t do and there’s not much I can do about it.
We would like to think that because that’s kind of a way we can cop out on developing our mind. It’s a purely materialistic approach. Somehow I’m not like that and there’s no chance for me to be like that so I’m not even trying to be like that. So considering the fact, coming to a deep appreciation that we have this potential, it kind of means we have to make a commitment, doesn’t it? It means we have to begin to take responsibility because when you’re suffering and you realize it’s your own fault that you’re suffering it’s not a very pleasant experience to fall into our childish patterns and waiting for someone to take our suffering away from us.
It’s inconsistent with this understanding that it’s our own responsibility and that in fact we can change if we’re willing to commit ourselves to a path of change. So we’re perpetually grasping for some inferior type of identity. Looking for superficial pleasures of our ego instead of seeking some real fulfillment and some real peace. More or less we’ve been consistently making wrong choices. We’ve chosen to live in the ego’s constructed fantasy world with our desires, our hatreds, our delusions.
We have consistently chosen to take self-cherishing as the basis of our lives. And we have to ask ourselves, where has it all gotten us? Where has all this struggle, all this worry, all this seeking possession, all this grasping at partners, falling in and out of love a hundred times, all our anger, all our planning, know, where has it gotten us to this point now? You know, we’ve done all this to be happy. Everything that we do is dedicated toward that one end, to be happy.
All the struggle, all the worry, all the planning of our life. You know, whatever we do, some people some people give up sex in order to be happy. Some people have as much sex as possible to be happy. Some people are vegetarians because they think that’s the way they’re going to be happy. Some people eat a lot of meat because they think that makes them happier.
Some people become secretaries, waitresses, nurses, teachers, criminals, prostitutes because they think it’s going to make them happy. That’s what we’re all trying to find is happiness. We’re doing the best we can to find happiness. What, you know, we have to begin to look what are the dominant themes of our life. Have we found the happiness that we’ve been looking for, that we’ve been struggling for all this time?
What attitudes are associated with happiness? Look within our own mind, within our own experience, within our own lives. Those moments of satisfaction, of peace, what types of attitudes were they associated with? And those moments of our greatest depression, our greatest suffering, our greatest pain, what types of attitude of mind were they associated with? So we have to see these things for ourselves.
If desire, if hatred, restlessness and worry, anxiety, sloth, torpor. If indecisiveness and doubt, if they brought us happiness, if they’ve been associated with undesirable states. Have they benefited us in any way or have there been obstacles to our happiness? And specifically, how are these states, how are these hindrances obstructing the process of change that is our meditation, the process of transformation? Have any of the small and great goals that you set yourself over the course of your life, have they brought you the happiness that you expected from them?
You know, whatever it is, your degrees, your husband, wife, children, house, jobs, travel, possessions, all the good things of life. Without the correct attitude, none of these things will bring you happiness. They all become meaningless and can actually become sources of suffering no matter how much we work to attain them. I always say to Buddhists that the question of obtaining enlightenment will come later. There is not much hurry.
But in day to day life if you lead a good life honest, with good love, good compassion, less selfishness, then automatically it will lead to enlightenment. Whether you believe in God or not, it doesn’t matter. Whether you believe in Buddha or not, it doesn’t matter. You must lead a good life. Good food, good clothes, good shelter is not sufficient.
A good motive is needed. So that’s by the Dalai Lama. So we have to develop a good motive. We have to develop some positive states of mind, some skillful states of mind in our life. And if we’re ever going to be happy, we’re not talking about enlightenment, we’re talking about future lives.
If you’re ever going to be happy now, in this life, you’re going to have to transform your mind to some degree. Going to have to develop positive states, skillful states. This is the purpose of meditation, to transform our minds, to transform ourselves. Without changing our minds, the quality of our life is not going to get better. It will probably get worse.
When most of us are now facing the deteriorations of our bodies, for example, the deteriorations of our mind. Facing the suffering of the death of parents, the death of spouses, Ultimately we’re becoming closer to confronting our own death. So unless we begin to transform our mind, begin to improve our quality of our life, it’s probably going to worsen. Therefore it’s quite necessary to meditate in order to develop these attitudes, to develop a better quality of our life. And the obstruction to this meditation, transformation, develop these qualities, these states are the five hindrances that we’ve been talking about.
But even you temporarily let ultimately, you know, talking about enlightenment, even the quality of relating with others of being open to situations, it developed and dependent upon developing skillful states of mind, non desire, non hatred, peace, non confusion. So if we think deeply about the afflictive emotions in general, and particularly about these five hindrances, we simply aren’t going to put up with them any longer. We can’t afford to in a way. We have to change. We have to improve the quality of our lives.
In order to do that, we have to have effective meditation because meditation is the direct method to induce skillful states of mind. There are other methods, more indirect methods, but it’s meditation which is actually dealing with the real root of our problems. So seeing that we have the potential to change, to become anything that we want, and realizing that we have to change and that the obstruction to change, that is the obstruction to the transforming process of meditation, are these five hindrances, is what we have to realize first. This is the first antidote, the first way of overcoming the five hindrances, Realizing that these five hindrances of desire, hatred, sloth and torpor, restlessness, anxiety, doubt and indecisiveness are hindrances. We have to recognize hindrances as hindrances.
And therefore we’re going to tell the willingness to put forth the effort, make the determination to overcome them. This is the first antidote. We’ll talk about the other antidotes as we go along. Mid next week, we’ll finish the antidote. So now we’re going to meditate on mindfulness of breathing.
I think most of you are familiar with it. So you have to make the determination in the beginning to make the decision that you’re going to meditate, that you’re going to, in this case, the object of meditation is the breathing. That when you realize that the object of your mind is not the breathing, whatever object it is, then you immediately bring it back to the breath. You make this determination because you see the necessity for developing your mind. You see the necessity for meditating, to becoming skillful in meditation.
So you can just become aware of the general breathing of the in and out, knowing when you’re breathing in by noting mentally in, and when you’re breathing out knowing that you’re breathing out by noting mentally out, then counting. In out, one. In out, two. In out, three. In out, four.
Up to five. Back down to one. Up to six. Back down to one, seven, eight, nine, ten. And then come back down to five again.
So we’ll meditate on the mindfulness of breathing. Is that the verses going for refuge? To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge and time enlightenment Through the merit I create by practicing the Dharma, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beingss. Through 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 am enlightened Through the merit I create by practicing the Dharma, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all being.
So if we go for refuge in the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha, we’ve been talking about the causes for going for refuge. Last week we talked about one of the two causes. The two causes for going for refuge is fear and faith. And this first cause is in many ways what I’ve been talking about in these first few minutes of this talk, that we have specific or particular styles of suffering, that we’re all very much patterned in our existences. We have our particular programs, styles, And these patterns are going to continue.
They’re reinforcing themselves. Things aren’t going to get better by themselves. That when we consider the nature of our situation, the dissatisfactory quality of these patterns that we’re stuck in, that in fact they’re not only going to continue but there’s more than likely that these patterns are going to become more dissatisfactory, more negative. In other words, our suffering in fact may increase. I’m not even talking about the sufferings of future existences, but if we look at our life the way it’s going now.
You know, I just mentioned about the fact that as our body deteriorates, our mind deteriorates, we’re going to undergo suffering, physical and mental suffering, just simply through the aging process. The people we love, the people who are near to us, are endeared to us, going to begin to die, are going to suffer. And ultimately we have to confront the prospects of our own death. And if we look at our daily actions, what part of our day is spent in any sort of constructive actions? Constructive actions in the sense of actions which are going to bring happiness, which are going to bring the goals that we want, contentment, peace.
How much of our day is spent involved in destructive actions of our body, speech, mind? Yet all of our various actions have ethical consequences. They all bring some sort of suffering. They all have effects. You know, all states of mind, all products have a cause.
When we say suffering, we say it has as its cause a negative state consciousness because there’s a similarity between in types. A negative state, a negative action, in a negative karma is in itself suffering, killing, stealing, lying. These are all associated with disturbed states of mind, unpeaceful states of mind. And they have an effect which is similar to themselves. That is an peaceful state of mind, a disturbed state of mind, a suffering state of mind as their effect.
We can see this throughout nature, that there’s always a similarity between cause and effect, similarity in type. Causes are always giving rise to effects which are similar in type to themselves. You know, an apple seed gives rise to an apple tree, it doesn’t give rise to a peach tree. So if we look at our lives, the actions that we create, most of our actions are destructive actions. They’re going to create suffering as they’re affecting the future.
So we’re creating the causes now for future sufferings and we’ve created the causes for suffering in the past and as we’re going to experience old age, disease and finally death. Just simply limit it to this life And we can talk about future existences. What type of future patterns are we going to become involved in? You know, the patterns of paranoia, anger, hatred, where you you know, the more you become the more your hatred that you express, the more you find it needs to be hated. The more paranoia that you see, the more you see as enemies until you see the entire environment as being hostile.
This is the hell like mentality. Everything is attacking you and everything is hateful, and your mind is burning. And this is a pattern that you’ll grasp at when you die. And this is the pattern that you’ll be stuck in in the future, or the pattern of consumerism of always constantly desiring, never being content, never being satisfied. This is a pattern which you’re going to find in this life.
But in the future, it can be expressed as taking rebirth as a hungry ghost, never finding any contentment, never finding any satisfaction, constantly running, running, running, alone and lost. Or the quality of ignoring, ignorance, manipulating others, using others as objects like an animal. We do that in this very life. We have that pattern. In the future, we can grasp at that pattern and actually express that physically and take on that energy pattern of an animal and take rebirth as an animal and undergo the sufferings of an animal.
So there’s possibilities of the sufferings of the continued dissatisfactions and increase of sufferings in this life and even the potential of more dissatisfactory, greater painful patterns in future lives. So there’s some reason, some basis for fear in such states that we don’t want to go through this, that we simply don’t want to repeat the same sufferings that we’ve been through up to this point nor do we want to have any possibility of increased sufferings in the future. There’s some basis for fear. This becomes the first cause of going for refuge, simply fear. It’s not an emotional fear in the sense that it’s not mistaken, it’s based upon some reasonable possibility which actually could occur and probably will occur unless we do something about it.
And therefore we go for refuge, we go for protection, we go for some way to resolve the problem, some method. So if we go for refuge to the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha of spiritual community, the second cause of going for refuge is that we have to have faith in the object of refuge. The faith as it’s used in the sense of Buddhism, in the sense of the Dharma, is an aspiration. It’s a longing to obtain what it is, that object, to become that object, to obtain that object. When you have faith in the Buddha, there’s a tendency to seek to become that object, to become Buddha.
We do this all the time in the sense of what we respect, who hold up as your model, what you have, what you see as being worthwhile. If the children, if they see Rambo, if they see whoever, if they see these as their models, they see that they have respect, they’re naturally going to tend toward these. Quite naturally, mind will begin to flow toward this direction to emulate those same characteristics. So if you begin to have faith in the Buddha, begin to have faith in sanity, in love, in wisdom, mental health, then your mind is going to naturally begin to flow in that direction away from anything which would prevent that. So we develop faith based on our experience, our reasoning, and our intuition.
But we have to know what it is we’re actually going for refuge too. So we can talk about the objects of refuge, how to develop faith in these objects of refuge. We can talk about two types of refuges. One is called causal refuge, causal refuge, and the second is called effect refuge. All of tantra is based on effect refuge.
That is, ultimately, the source of our own protection, of our refuge, is our own enlightenment. That’s where all our problems are solved. That’s where all our suffering comes to an end, and therefore, is our ultimate refuge. So but what does that mean? You know, we talk about enlightenment.
Enlightenment. So we can talk about it being characterized with three qualities. First, it has a quality of directly, non mistakenly realizing reality, the way things are, correct perception of the nature of things, both conventionally and ultimately. You want to know how things really are. You want to step outside of the fantasies, your dreams, your fabrications of a constructed world, and get in touch with the way things actually are working.
How am I relating to other people? What is actually the nature of other people? What is the nature of myself? What is the nature of reality? So enlightenment has this quality of actually knowing the way things are.
And it has the quality of an overflowing, burning love and compassion, like the love of a mother for her only child, which seeks to place all sentient beings in enlightenment in a state of also knowing the way things are and ultimately beyond suffering. So that’s the second quality of a burning love and compassion which wishes to benefit all others. Enlightenment has a third quality of spontaneity, of inexhaustible mental and physical energy, an opening response, environmental generosity. So these are the qualities of which we can talk about of the Buddhist mind, of enlightenment, of the effect refuge. And this becomes an actual method, something for us to go to, which is going to solve our problem, which is going to find me rid any possibility of fear because there’s nothing to be afraid of once we’ve achieved that state.
And we go from refuge to the Dharma, which is anything which is going to take us from desire to openness, from hatred to love, from ignorance to wisdom, anything which is going to raise our consciousness, methods, the means to realize our own Buddha potential, to realize enlightenment. And we go for refuge to the Sangha. That is the spiritual community of individuals who come together, support each other, act as examples for one another, teach each other, advise each other, have a shoulder to cry on when necessary. Work together, inspiring one another to achieve this goal of enlightenment. We can also talk about the causal refuge in the sense of we can talk about the Buddha.
The Buddha is our teacher, as our guide, as our exemplar. He is worthy of our refuge. He was an ordinary being and through his efforts, through his discovery, he became an extraordinary being. And so he is worthy of our refuge in the sense of being our teacher, our guide, and our exemplar. And we can go for refuge to the Dharma in the sense that we go for refuge to his teachings, that is the methods whereby he made his discoveries.
Our teachers, those who know the way things are, they can advise us from their own experience without any sort of intellectual conjecture, know, well maybe it’s this way, maybe it’s that way. They know because they’ve experienced it. So we can begin to develop faith in these two types of refuges, causal refuges and effect refuges. We can see from our own experience positive states of mind, knowing things how they are, love and compassion, and our fellow practitioners, how they actually begin to lessen our suffering in a very real way in our own experience. And we can see them reasonably, and we can understand it intuitively.
And also the Buddha as the extraordinary being, and the methods, his teaching, the doctrine, and those are teachers, those who have direct insight into the way things are. So we can develop real faith, and then we have some direction of our life, some safe direction. Our mind isn’t like a yo yo anymore, going up and down, up and down. It’s not like a leaf blowing around in the wind. We know what we’re doing.
We know who we are. We’re the boss in any situation. We have some principles and themes around which to integrate our lives. And this becomes a real source of refuge, real, becomes a real basis for living a very fulfilling, worthwhile life which brings not only yourself happiness, but that exists the real possibility of benefiting others. So those are the two causes for going for refuge, fear and faith.
Now we’re talking about Tsongkhapa’s teaching on the three principal aspects of the path. Three principal aspects of the path: developing the determination to change, to grow, opening to others, and seeing how things really are, the three principal aspects of the path. We’ve talked about the first path. As a preliminary there’s the developing the appreciation of our potential the fact that we have all the necessary internal and external conditions to realize that potential, that we’re not lacking anything. This is a preliminary to all the teachings, the teachings of the graduated path to enlightenment or transformation of mind, the mind training teachings.
It’s also the preliminary to the three principal aspects of the path: developing appreciation for your potential and realizing that you have everything that you need to realize that potential. It seems as if it’s necessary to develop a very stable image of oneself before one can transcend it, one can go beyond it. In developing this, we can make use of, as I’ve just mentioned, the fact that whatever particular image or conception we may have of ourselves, this is in fact not who we really are, that we have unlimited potential. This is in fact who we really are. This is our actual nature.
This is our Buddha nature. And this is going to help break through any sort of negative images that we may have of ourselves. It’s going to allow for the possibility of change, knowing that you can, believing it very deeply. And now you have all the necessary conditions to bring about that change, but it’s not going to last forever. It’s definite that you’re going to die, and you don’t know when.
And it would be a shame if this opportunity went by unused. It would be like having found A ticket to a really great rock concert. And you had the time to go, you had the transportation, but you fell asleep and you missed it. And the ticket was worthless the next day, something like that. You just didn’t take advantage of the opportunity just through your own laziness, your own lack of initiative.
We looked at karma, that at the moment of death the only thing which is going to be of benefit to us is how much we’ve developed our mind, what kind of constructive actions that we’ve created during this life, that all our possessions, all our loved ones, and even our body at the moment of death are of no benefit. Our mind is going to leave all these things behind and go on alone. And the only thing which it can have as its companion is its karma that is created in this life. The constructive and destructive actions that we’ve engaged in. And now we’re talking about suffering, that we have to look into suffering, we have to recognize suffering.
Nirvāṇa is peace, that’s the third of the four seals of Buddhism. That is, nirvana is simply the elimination of suffering, that we don’t have to construct our happiness. The nature of our mind is in fact happiness. The nature of ourselves is peace. We simply have to eliminate suffering.
In order to eliminate suffering, we must investigate suffering. We must investigate in order to realize the causes of suffering. Once we understand the causes of suffering, then we can see that we can eliminate the causes of suffering. Once we see that we can eliminate the causes of suffering, then we’re going to develop the enthusiasm to employ a method to eliminate the causes of suffering. So it all comes down to acknowledging our suffering rather than running away from it, suppressing it, trying to overlook it.
We have to acknowledge it. It’s not that we indulge in our suffering. It’s not a matter of self pity, but it’s in fact becoming reasonable and looking at our suffering in a very reasonable fashion. And we looked about at our suffering from the point of view of three marks of existence, dissatisfactoriness, impermanence, and selflessness. With respect to dissatisfactoriness, we talked about the dissatisfactoriness of pain as simply physical and mental pain and the nature of suffering.
In the fact that as long as we stay within the duality, as long as we strive for pleasure, then we’re going to have to accept pain. We can never have pleasure without pain. Just as we cannot know what short is without knowing what long is, what far is without knowing what near is. We cannot have a conception of what other is without having a conception of what the self is. These are all pairs of dualities.
As long as we strive for pleasure we are going to have to experience pain. That’s the only way we can recognize suffering. That’s the only way we can recognize pleasure is by comparing it to what we experienced before as pain. But there is something, there is a peace which goes beyond this duality, beyond pleasure and pain. This is nirvana, peace, real happiness, unconditioned by duality.
So that’s the dissatisfactoriness of pain, then it’s the dissatisfactoriness of change, that even in the first moments of what we call pleasure is the first moment of suffering, Then most of our pleasure is simply the cessation of a deprivation or the cessation of an earlier pain, we call that pleasure. You know, like when we warm ourselves at a fire, it’s very pleasurable for the first moment because we’ve just experienced the sensation of being cold, a cold feeling, and we experience that as pleasure. But if it was an actual fact in the nature of pleasure, it should always be pleasurable. But in fact, it’s in the nature of suffering. Why?
Because if we simply maintain that stimulus, that fire, we’re going to experience the suffering of heat. That very first moment of pleasure, of warmth, is in fact the cause of suffering is present in that very moment. The cause of the suffering of heat is present in that very moment. So it’s dissatisfactory. In a sense, there’s something better than that.
There’s a type of happiness which is not dissatisfactory, that doesn’t have this quality about it, whatever type of pleasure, it must have the cause present. There’s types of happiness which there’s no cause of suffering involved at all. There’s complete happiness. These are not complete happinesses. They’re not complete pleasures, therefore we call them dissatisfactory.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with them, it’s that there’s something better. If we look at that and we see that there is something better, our mind is naturally going to be directed toward our new conception of what happiness is, our new conception of what pleasure is, and what past pleasures are going to be seen as dissatisfactory, and our mind will naturally begin to drift away from them, and they’re going to fall away, and we will tend toward what is called the unconditioned nirvana, or real peace. We don’t have to, in fact, renounce anything. It’s just we don’t have to give up anything. It’s just that we grow up.
Our conception of what real peace is begins to mature and become accords with the actual way things are with reality instead of with our fantasies of how we would like things to be. So that’s the dissatisfactoriness of change, and then the dissatisfactoriness of pervasive compositional suffering, The very fact of traditionally illustrated by the five contaminated aggregates, that is aggregates of mind and body which are programmed to suffer. We have no choice in the matter, But we can talk about it from the point of view of ego. That the ego is like carrying around a bundle of thorns. Wherever you go, whatever you do, this bundle of thorns is on your back, always judging, always having to secure your territory, always having to reaffirm your credentials, always having to watch yourself judging others.
This constant process of the action of ego is very tiring, becomes very weary, is dissatisfactory. So this is the first mark of existence, of ordinary existence, that is existence as experienced by an ordinary person. So we can talk about the second mark, the mark of impermanency. The second of the three marks. The first mark is suffering, dissatisfactoriness.
The second mark is impermanency. So whatever is compounded Within the Buddhist doctrine, there are said to be four seals. If these four seals are present, then this is said to be in accordance with Buddhist doctrine. The first seal is all that is compounded is impermanent. All that is contaminated is suffering.
All phenomena are selfless, and nirvana is peace. So these three marks are actually simply restating the first three of the four seals of Buddhist doctrine. Usually these three seals are associated with Theravadan teachings, but actually, these four seals are also taught, so it’s not foreign to Tibetan teachings or Mahāyāna teachings in general. So anything which is compounded is impermanent. What we mean by compounded is that it’s composed of causes and conditions.
It simply is that there’s nothing we can hold on to, the significance of this impermanency. We can’t hold on to people. We can’t hold on to possessions. We can’t even hold on to our own body. Sooner or later, they’re all going to disintegrate.
They’re all going to be gone. All of our enjoyments, all of our pleasures, all of our sources of happiness are constantly slipping through our fingers. We keep having to renew them, and we lose them again and again and again due to this very fact of impermanence. They’re always, you know, falling out of our grasp. Then we try to hold on to them, but can’t.
So we can, Pleasure is attained either through adjusting existence to our desires or adjusting our desires to our existence. The first is impossible, the second is very difficult, That is adjusting our desires to the way things actually are. We can’t shape the world according to how we would like it to be, but temporally we can begin to adjust our desires to the way things actually are. That is we can begin to live in accordance with the reality of the situation and develop some wisdom that in fact things are impermanent and quit grasping at things as being permanent, as being unchanging. Otherwise, wouldn’t you be forever frustrated, disappointed?
But the problem is, and we talked about this before, it’s in the very nature of desire that it wants to maintain contact. That’s what we mean by desire, to maintain contact or to repeat the same experience again. So the very nature of desire is suffering because all that is compounded is impermanent. We cannot maintain contact. We cannot experience the same object again.
Desire is the source of suffering because all this compound is impermanent and it is acting against the way things actually are. It holds things to be permanent. It holds that we can maintain this contact, that it can re experience the same object over and over again when in fact it can’t. So desire can only lead to frustration, disappointment, and pain. If we relate to the world in this way, we’re going to suffer.
So we have to investigate this mark of impermanency and begin to adjust the way we relate with the world. So talking about this mark of impermanency, adjusting ourselves, accepting impermanence. It is not so difficult to accept this truth. You can change your way of thinking a little bit. It is difficult, but this difficulty will not always be the same.
Sometimes it will be difficult and sometimes it will not be so difficult. If you are suffering, you will have some pleasure in the teaching that everything changes. When you are in trouble, it is quite easy to accept this teaching, so why not accept it at other times? It is the same thing. So whether we like it or not, we have to accept it.
You know, it’s like they give the example of, you know, it’s a pitch black night and there’s a storm. You know, you’re outside, it’s pitch black and there’s a thunderstorm and there’s a moment of a flash of lightning. Everything is brilliantly lit up for just an instant. You know the trees, houses, cars, street. It’s just that moment you try to grab hold of those and hold on to all those appearances.
They’re just a flash of one moment they exist and then they’re gone. But we try to hold on to them and therefore we experience suffering. So if we relate with the world in that way, we’re going to continue to suffer. The third mark of existence, that is the mark of the way existence is experienced by an ordinary being, is selflessness, sometimes ego lessness, selflessness. So this is more or less insubstantiability of phenomena, insubstantiability of of all phenomena.
So we can look at this from two points of view, one from the point of view statically and one dynamically. We can look at phenomena. Statically, that means if we look at phenomena, all phenomena are merely imputed, designated, labeled to their parts. Take an example, you have a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a very loving person, and you enjoy being around this loving person. And you have a feeling that this loving quality is somehow inherent quality of them, and somehow it’s in them, this loving quality which you enjoy and you like to experience this loving quality of this particular person.
Now if this person really was that way, that is to say if this was really an inherent quality, this loving quality, then we would always experience this loving quality whenever we met them. We would always see them as being loving. But this is not the case, is it? Sometimes they’re loving and sometimes they’re not. And if this was the case, we could just associate with loving people and everything would be fine.
Could just stick around with the right kind of people, but it doesn’t work that way. That in fact this loving quality is being created by our own mind and being projected upon this person, that there’s no substantial quality to this person, The various qualities that we see in this person are being created by our own mind. In the case of enemies, a hateful quality, ugly quality. There’s something that repulses you about this person. Get near this person, you wanna throw up.
You feel that way, don’t you? This is being created by your own mind. If that fact if that person were in fact like that objectively from their own side, then any person who came and saw that person would almost throw up. His mother probably loves this person. Always loves somebody, But it’s not the fact, is it?
That is not an objective quality, it’s being created by our own mind. It’s a projection of our own mind. There’s no substantial quality in that person, this loving quality. There’s nothing we can hold on to. Someone loves you, makes you happy, but you can’t hold on to that.
There’s no essence there to hold on to. That loving quality is insubstantial. We can’t take it and put it in our pocket and hang on to it, put it in a strong box. It’s just the nature of this particular relationship, this particular moment, the way we’re relating. But it’s insubstantial.
This isn’t one mark of ordinary existence. So we can talk about this insubstantiability from a dynamic point of view, that things arise in dependence upon causes and conditions. There’s no thing which is independent of causes and conditions. When the causes cease, the object ceases to exist. We try to hold onto an object, we try to hold onto our lovers, we try to hold onto our possession, to our own life, our own body, but when those causes cease, there’s nothing we can do.
It’s going to cease existing. They have no self, and there’s no essence, there’s no substance there we can hold onto. It’s just a collection of momentary causes and conditions coming together, and when that energy is spent, it’s going to go out of existence. There’s nothing to hold on to. Things are seen as like phenomena are seen as like bubbles.
They’re hollow. They have no essence, not lasting very long. Therefore, they’re said to be dissatisfactory. This is the third mark of existence as experienced by an ordinary being, the third quality of dissatisfactoriness. So what does all this we look at these three marks of existence, dissatisfactoriness, impermanent selflessness.
These three marks are the way ego is experiencing its fantasy world, its reality. If investigate these three marks rather than prolonging this way of relating with reality we’re going to begin to seek the unconditioned peace which is within our own mind. We’re not going to seek, you know we talked about cyclic existence, the nature of cyclic existence, the action of ego. We’re not going to seek anything within the action of ego, anything within cyclic existence because we’re going to see it as having these three marks and it’s therefore dissatisfactory. We’re going to begin to naturally tend toward the peace which is in our own mind, that is nirvana.
So all of our dissatisfaction, all of our disappointments and frustrations stem from an unskillful way of relating to these three marks of existence. All neurosis, all psychosis, whatever, is simply a matter of unskillfully relating to suffering, to impermanence and selflessness. So we have to this should be a basis for investigation. By misconceiving suffering as pleasure, we experience dissatisfaction, we experience disappointment, frustration, and we never seek real happiness. By trying to hold onto impermanent things as permanent, by trying to resist change, then we experience dissatisfaction, disappointment, and frustration.
By grasping at a self, some substantial essence of objects trying to hold on to that essence, that quality of inherent qualities, we experience dissatisfaction, frustration, and disappointment. So all our suffering contains within it a denial, a rejection, and a struggle against the recognition of these three marks of existence. This is the fourth reversal, developing the determination to be free, the first of the three paths. There are four contemplations or four reversals which act to energize us to break out of these patterns that we’re stuck in, these dissatisfactory compulsively occurring patterns. We have to develop the energy to be able to begin to develop first more skillful patterns, more skillful ways of relating with reality, and finally to go beyond all patterns altogether.
The way we do this is through these four reversals, to develop the determination to be free. It is realizing our potential and our opportunity to change, that this change is not going to last forever, that this opportunity is not going to last forever, we’re going to die. Looking into the relationship between causes and effects, karma, You’re finally looking into the nature of our situation, the sufferings of cyclic existence. If having meditated thus, you do not generate admiration even for an instant for the prosperity of cyclic existence, and if an attitude seeking liberation arises day and night, then the thought definitely to leave cyclic existence has been generated. So within these existing patterns that we’re stuck in, within these compulsively reoccurring patterns, we see them as totally dissatisfactory that nothing within these patterns, nothing within the fantasized constructions of the world of ego allures us, that is to say that we see real happiness outside of the ego, outside of all these patterns.
If we develop the determination to be free and to seek, to get in touch with reality, to get in touch with a peace within our own mind, to develop nirvana, to realize nirvana, We have a consistent aspiration and we have developed a determination to be free, or as it says here, the thought definitely to leave cyclic existence, which is the first of the three principal aspects of the path. So we completed the first of the three principal aspects of the path. I think there was going to be one more talk in this series which would mean, so I’m not going to even begin to attempt to talk about the two, the second two of the three principal aspects of the path, that is opening to others and seeing into the nature of reality, reality, seeing how things actually are. So I’m going to leave the first principle of the path and then I’m going to continue the series of talks in next year. We’ll begin with the complete the talk on the three principal aspects of the path beginning with the second.
Next week there is a talk planned and I’m going to cover the remaining antidotes to the five hindrances, way to overcome the five hindrances and to meditation to transforming the mind. So we’ll stop there. We’re going to consider your own problems, your own difficulties. To develop some sincerity with the moment, to get in touch with the very fact of your suffering and the fact that you want to be happy. Whatever you’ve done in the past and whatever mistakes you’ve made, you can simply regret them and determine not to repeat them again in the future.
How whatever you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold, you can change. You can begin again and become anything that you want to be. You have the potential. But for the moment, for the present, accept yourself, forgive yourself, Quit torturing yourself. Be gentle with yourself.
Develop some compassion for yourself. You wish yourself well. May I be happy. May I grow. May I be well?
Develop some positive feelings towards yourself. Now imagine in front of you someone of the same sex, perhaps the same age, about the same age, someone you like very much, that you love, that makes you happy. Imagine this person in front of you. Remember how happy they make you, how joyful it is just to see them, and let the natural feelings, positive feelings arise. Simply radiate out these positive feelings to this person.
May you be happy. May you find everything that you’re seeking. Now imagine a person in front of you who you neither like nor dislike, a stranger, you feel indifferent to one. Try to go down beneath the superficial appearances, the superficial differences, beneath the beauty or ugliness, beneath the age, differences in sex, personality, economics, education. Go deep, deep down into that person, core of that person.
If someone wants happiness and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself, no difference whatsoever. That kind of thing. And just as you wish your own self happiness, Wish this person deep down happiness because it’s exactly the same. How you relate with that person deep down is the same way you feel towards yourself deep down. You can’t wish that person happiness, and you really can’t wish yourself happiness.
Exactly the same. Now imagine someone who disturbs your mind and your problems with an enemy, what you don’t like. Imagine that person in front of you. This person is just trying to find happiness, just like yourself. Perhaps the method of finding happiness is common conflict with your method of finding happiness, but it’s just a conflict of interest.
You’ve hurt other people in the past either intentionally or unintentionally to get your happiness. And if you ever forgive yourself, you have to begin to forgive yourself. Deep down there’s someone who’s lost and lonely and just trying the best of what they can to find happiness. So just for the moment, satisfy your grudge and your hurt, your anger. Imagine all four together, yourself and these three people, all exactly alike, all wanting happiness, not wanting to suffer, no difference whatsoever.
Exactly like, no difference. Radiate out positive feelings to all four equally. And all the people in this room, all the people taking responsibility for their lives, for their own happiness, the happiness of others, trying. Seeking to find a method, to find happiness. May you find all the happiness that you’re looking for, And all the people on the block, eating supper, watching television, getting ready for bed, sleeping.
They’re all looking for happiness, constantly looking for happiness. Radiate out positive feelings for everyone on the block. And everyone in that city, driving in their cars, in their homes, shops, factories, walking on the streets. It’s spreading out further and further all of South Australia, all the people, animals, insects. Extending out further, spreading Perth, and Darwin, Brisbane, Melbourne, Hobart, the entire country radiating out positive humans.
South, there’s humans. The entire southern hemisphere. Developing the whole world in your heart and your caring. All the people red, black, white, yellow, the animals, insects, everything that lives on the earth is touched by your heart. Spreading out for this.
Extending out further. So finally, without any boundaries, without any center, pervading all the space, I wish may all things be happy. May all things be happy. Dedicate the merit, the positive energy from our meditation, listening to my teaching. Through these merits, may I soon attain the enlightened state of real Buddha, and may I lead every migrating being without exception to that state.
May the precious bodhicitta not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline and increase forevermore. Tomorrow there is a please have a cup of tea. And tomorrow is a Tārā practice from one to four or to five. Everyone’s welcome.