Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The talk opens by challenging spiritual materialism — sitting cross-legged changes nothing if meditation merely feeds the ego’s familiar patterns. In this 96-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun explains the five hindrances to meditation, then presents mindfulness of breathing as a method for opening space between the observer and arising emotions. A personal story about finding a vine-covered stone Buddha alone in a Sri Lankan jungle leads into an extended reflection on Buddha-nature: the mind as clear and knowing, unlimited in potential, like clay that practice can shape into any form. He then introduces Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path and explores two of the four transforming thoughts — appreciating our potential and confronting impermanence, the latter illustrated with a Katherine Mansfield story of a child begging her grandmother never to die. The session ends with a guided loving-kindness meditation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1988 02 26 3 P A P (2).mp3
UUID: 8e7744ef-3640-4615-9eb2-9b7b087b0466
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 1987-1988 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-02-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 96.0 minutes
Words: ~9,239
Of our ego. That would be what we might say is spiritual materialism. Just because we’re sitting in a cross legged posture, meditating on some holy object, doesn’t mean it’s a spiritual practice. It depends very much on our attitude, on our motivation for doing it. What we call meditation, can be simply a way of supporting our neurotic patterns.
Meditation is to solve our problems. If it doesn’t solve our problems, then we have to begin to examine. We have to begin to check out. Perhaps meditation doesn’t work at all. Perhaps meditation in general doesn’t work at all.
Perhaps that meditation is inappropriate for you at that present time. Or perhaps you are misapplying, you are not applying the meditation correctly. So we have to check up for ourselves and judge for ourselves whether our particular meditation is worthy of pursuing, whether it works for us at that present time, and if in fact we’re applying the meditation correctly to ourselves. Are we getting some results? Meditation is the direct method to transform our mind.
As we talked about last week, there are many methods, both direct and indirect. Indirect from the point of view of the type of work we do, devotional practices, right livelihood, exercises, yoga, tai chi, chanting, rituals. Meditation should be the direct method whereby we’re transforming our mind, solving our problems. For example, we break up with our spouse, our boyfriend or our girlfriend, and immediately, in order to eliminate the pain of being separated, we join up with another spouse, another boyfriend, another girlfriend. But have we solved our problem?
Or have we more or less given ourselves a morphine injection to numb the pain? The problem is still there. It’s been submerged, for the moment at least. We have to finally begin to confront these problems and work with them rather than trying to avoid them, suppressing them, administering anesthetic morphine in order to numb ourselves. All the various difficulties that confront us in our meditation, there’s said to be five hindrances to meditation: desire, hatred, restlessness, anxiety, taken as one.
Sloth and torpor, taken as one. And doubt and indecisiveness, taken as one that makes five. It’s said that the absence of these five hindrances denotes a meditative state. Therefore, can say that meditation doesn’t necessarily have to occur when we’re sitting cross legged. Meditation can occur time when we’re out walking, when we’re riding on a bus in a car, when these five hindrances are not present.
And we have to ask ourselves, Why do we have all these problems in our meditation? Why do we have these five hindrances? For example, desire, the first of the five hindrances. We have to come to the emotional decision that we want to meditate. This is why it’s necessary before meditation to have some understanding of the practices and the path where you’re going to, so that you have some confidence, some inspiration, some motivation, some determination to meditate.
Otherwise, you may intellectually decide, wouldn’t it be great to be able to sit there in bliss for hours on end? You may think that intellectually, but emotionally, you don’t want to meditate because you don’t believe in the practice. You have no reason to believe in the practice unless you’ve studied it well, you’ve analyzed it, gone through it, cleared up your doubts. Therefore, the very fact that you have desire shows that you’re not serious about meditating, that you still see the objects of sense desire as more rewarding than the possibilities of meditation. Therefore, though you have your eyes closed, you have your ears closed, you have your mouth shut, there’s no sense stimulation, you’re going to create objects of desire within your own mind.
Fantasies, dreams, memories are going to come. It’s a product of this ongoing process for trying to fulfill sensed desires, because you haven’t decided in your mind, I have to meditate, I have to transform my mind, I have to cut through these neurotic patterns which are governing my lives, which are bringing me dissatisfaction, disappointment, and frustration. With this determination, this will automatically lessen the hindrances, will automatically lessen your desire, because you’re getting sincere about what you’re doing. But we have to have some reason to meditate. We have to have some study, some analysis, listening to the teachings, thinking about them, and seeing that they probably do work.
At least some intellectual decision that meditation can in some way reasonably bring about a lessening of my problems. It can solve some of my difficulties. So you have to know where you’re going. What does it make a very great demand upon us? It demands that we are intelligent, which we probably try to avoid as much as possible.
It also demands that we take responsibility for ourselves, that we judge what is best for ourselves. So we have to know what we’re doing when we meditate, where this meditation is supposed to be taking me, and after some period of time being able to decide for ourselves, Is it going where I want to go? Is it creating more problems for me? Is it actually solving my problems? Are my desires lessening?
Am I becoming less angry? Do I have more energy, more creative actions in my life? And ultimately, do I have more wisdom, compassion? We should be able to see some transformation in mind because it should be working. There should be a growth through the process of the motivation, through the process of meditation.
This is why we’re doing it. We should expect something from it, not just calm states, ways to hang out for a while. We should expect, we should have expectations from meditation over a long period of time. We should see a difference in our lives. We’re talking about the technique of mindfulness and breathing.
It’s a technique to help us transform our mind. And we were using the counting method to help us develop mindfulness and awareness. Breathing in, breathing out, noting mentally. When you breathe in, noting. In.
When you breathe out, noting out. You can use a counting technique. In, out, one. In, out, two. In, out, three.
Up to five. Come back down to one. Go back to six, then seven, then eight, then nine, and ten. Does anybody know where this meditation is going to take them? Does anybody know the benefits of doing this meditation?
What do you think, Peter? Pardon? Enlightenment. That sounds very good. So someone has some idea of where he thinks this meditation will take him, so after a while he’ll have to check up.
But at least he’s not doing it mindlessly, you might say. He’s made some determination for himself. So the ego, the nature of the ego is that it’s always seeking entertainment. It’s always trying to maintain these various neurotic patterns. Neurotic patterns are what we call ego, in a way, this process of securing itself in space and time.
And we can begin through this simple discipline of mindfulness of breathing to cut through these neurotic patterns because we no longer are entertaining the ego. Bring to our meditation a sense of nowness, that we just want to know what’s happening now. We’re not going to submit to the dreams and fantasies and the memories of ego. We’re just going to know something very simple in the present, that when I’m breathing in, I can know now that I’m breathing in. That’s what’s happening at this very moment.
Likewise, when I breathe out. And we can create some space by space. Usually we identify so strongly with ego that the very thoughts that occur to us, the very feelings, the decisions that we make, all these various processes that are going on in our mind and also our body, we think this is us. There’s a one to one correspondence. When you think the thought, I love, then you regard this as being in a state of love.
There’s no space between you and that thought, for example. There’s no space between you and that feeling. There’s no choice whether to go along with that thought. There’s no choice as to whether to go along with that feeling. This particular emotional state arises.
There’s no space between you and that emotional state. There’s a oneness with it, identifying so closely with the mental processes that are occurring. By simply becoming aware and mindful in the meditation of mindfulness of breathing, we begin to create a space between ourselves, this awareness, and what is going on, these various mental processes, so we can begin to determine, do I want to go along with this thought, this train of thinking? Do I want this emotion, for example, anger begins to arise? You can actually watch an emotional state of anger arise, and you don’t necessarily have to identify with it.
Up to this point, you’ve never questioned it. When the emotion anger arises, I am angry. We’re the same as this emotion that’s arising. But now you’re beginning to create some space between the observer and this emotion. And you can begin to have some influence, some choice in your life, whether you want to identify with that emotion, that thought, that feeling, or not.
It gives us some degree of freedom before we transcend ego altogether. We can have some choice. We can decide from the point of view of what is to be practiced and what is to be abandoned. We can think, This is an unskillful state of mind. It’s not going to take me anywhere.
Anger has never benefited me in the path. It’s not going to benefit me now. It’s not going to benefit me in the future. Therefore, I’m not going to have anything to do with this anger which is arising in my mind. You short circuit it.
Generally, we either try to repress it or we feed it. Either way, we’re going to energize it. And then when you try to suppress something, the energy is going to bounce right back at you. In this way, we merely observe it. And because it’s merely an impermanent phenomenon, it arises, abides momentarily, and ceases.
If we aren’t feeding energy by either suppressing it or supporting it, it will go away of itself. We don’t have to do anything except cease identifying with these positive, with these various states which are arising, with these various feelings, with these various thoughts. This all comes from the simple practice of mindfulness of breathing, creating space, ceasing to support the neurotic patterns of the ego. So let’s meditate for a few minutes on mindfulness of breathing. Make some determination in your mind.
At the moment, I become aware that my mind is strays from the object, meditation that is breathing, I’m going to bring it immediately back. Without the second thought, I’m going to bring it immediately back. Bring your mind back to the breathing. Recite the verse of refuge To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. To the merit I create by practising the Dharma, I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings.
So there’s an asterisk at the third line, a substitution. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. To Through the merit I create by talking about the Dharma, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by talking about the Dharma.
May I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. So we go for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. Buddha in the sense of our own clarity, our own wisdom. And Dharma, the methods whereby we can develop that wisdom, that clarity, and the Sangha, whereby this process of attaining wisdom, of attaining enlightenment takes place to the supporting community of fellow pilgrims. We’ve been talking about, in conjunction with going for refuge, the qualities of enlightenment.
When we say, What is my refuge? What does that mean? What are we going for protection to? In the sense of the qualities of enlightenment, the qualities of awareness and knowledge, qualities of love and compassion, and of creative spontaneous actions in the world benefiting others. These are our refuge.
It’s very qualities, the qualities which constitute enlightenment. And we talked about the fact that whether these were natural to us or were we really trying to impose some sort of romantic, noble sentient being upon ourselves. That in fact we do have these very qualities, at least in a seed form at present. That the germ of knowledge and awareness is there, No matter how faint or how obscured, it’s still there. That the germ and the seed of love and compassion is still there, no matter how limited or how exclusive our love and compassion may be.
The germ and seed of these creative actions are still there, that this energy is still there no matter how unrefined, no matter how unspontaneous it might be of present. So we have determined what we mean by our refuge, that is enlightenment. We’ve determined that we have these qualities, at least in a seed form at present, that it’s natural to us. It’s not something we’re trying to impose upon ourselves. It’s not something artificial.
But where does the very fact of enlightenment come from? And where does the idea of human enlightenment, of Buddhahood, come from? No, it comes from life itself. And it comes from the history of humankind, humankind, of mankind. There have been people, many, many people who have actually achieved Buddhahood, who have achieved enlightenment, who have achieved these precise qualities to the fullest degree of knowledge and awareness of love and compassion and create spontaneous energy acting in the world for benefit of others.
Was, many, many years ago, I was in Sri Lanka, and I was on a, I guess unknowingly, I was on a pilgrimage. I was a tourist at that time, to the very many Buddhist ruins. Most of the Buddhist ruins were in neglect, a state of neglect at that time, and they were overgrown with jungles, with vines and trees and bushes. And I remember just walking through the jungle, the forest. Alone, it was very quiet.
And I came upon the figure of a seated Buddha, very similar to my right, in stone. And I got the impression, in this solitude, this quiet place, with this stone Buddha sitting there, overgrown by vines and weeds in the jungle. That he had been waiting there for thousands and thousands and thousands of years to be discovered. We’re patiently waiting with infinite compassion, with infinite patience, to be discovered. I think, who was it that wrote two thousand and one?
He lived in Sri Lanka when he wrote the movie two thousand and one. And if you remember, it had much to do with the evolution of humankind. These bursts of advancement in the evolution from the more of an ape like person to a humanoid to a child of the universe. And somehow I had the feeling that perhaps he came upon the same setting that I had come upon. In the movie, there were always these large stone pillars, I’ll say.
Stone, very flat stone, rectangular shapes, which represented in some way a leap forward in the evolutionary consciousness of these beings. And somehow I got the feeling that Arthur Clarke perhaps came upon one of these stone images of Buddha in the jungle. And it serves in the same way. Somehow it served as a catalyst to raise the level of consciousness of the various beings who came in contact with it, that the idea of Buddhahood. That I think very much the Buddha has been waiting patiently, with infinite patience within all of us, waiting for us to wake up and recognize our potential, waiting for us to take the evolutionary step into our own hands, consciously and begin the long process of becoming all that we can be, becoming enlightened.
I think Buddhahood is our birthright. We all should be Buddhas. You’re seeing our pain and our confusion. We take this as a sign of our limitedness, our insufficiency, our incompleteness. And therefore we often, more than not, develop very negative images of ourselves, negative identities, on who we think we are.
But this has nothing to do with who we actually are. We are neither who we think we are conventionally or ultimately. You know, even in our most depressed moments, even in our darkest, blackest moments, when perhaps we look up, we look out through this garbage mind of ours, We might think that we’re the lowest thing in the world at that very moment. At that very moment, the mind which is aware of that, which is aware of where we’re at at that moment, is Buddha mind. That very mind which understands that we’re the lowest must have some conception that there’s something better, there’s something higher, that that very mind has knowledge.
That very mind which is seen in our position, said, I should be happy. It’s a Buddha mind because it’s saying, I love you. I have compassion for you, even towards yourself. You should be a Buddha. You should be better than this.
I want you to be happy. And that very mind is saying, Don’t go back to sleep. You wake up. Now that you’ve woken up a little bit, don’t go back to sleep. That’s energy.
That’s the Buddha mind. So even in our lowest moments, the mind which sees ourselves as being in our lowest states, which sees all our faults, all our negative aspects of ourselves. It’s a Buddha mind because there is knowledge, there is love, and there is energy. So rather than becoming discouraged at that moment, depressed, really relying upon your shortcomings, your negativities, you should rejoice in the fact of this awareness, realizing that this is your brilliant sanity beginning to break through, recognizing. More than not, we lead our lives as hollow men and women, more or less as automatons, you know, robots.
So the mind which sees us where we’re actually at, even if it sees us as being only in our negative aspects, only in our shortcomings, is knowledge, is love that’s trying to wake us up. That very mind is the potential of Buddhahood. So I think we’re very much unimaginably more than we think we are. We are all Buddhas to be. I think it’s important to remember that.
We will all someday be Buddhas. It’s just a matter of whether we take our evolution into our consciousness, into our own hands, and use the methods of Dharma, those methods which raise our consciousness from desire to openness, from hatred to love, from ignorance to wisdom, and apply themselves to ourselves consistently so that we can become all that we know that we should be, that we should all be Buddha. We’re talking about a way to become a Buddha. It’s called The Three Principal Aspects of the Path by Tsongkhapa, a fourteenth century yogi scholar of Tibet. The Three Principal Aspects of the path: developing the determination to be free, opening to others, and seeing deeply into the nature of reality, into the way things actually are.
We are examining first of these three aspects developing the determination to be free. Now, we’ve already covered this aspect last year, I’m afraid. So, I’m not going to go into it in detail, but I will go over it roughly. So, last week I mentioned there were four, what are called the four reversals, or four transforming thoughts, whereby we can develop this determination to be free. First, we have to begin to become aware, and then appreciate our potential.
Then we have to realize that this chance that we have to grow, to make use of our potential, isn’t going to last forever. And then there’s the discussion of the law of cause and effect, karma. Finally, understanding that all states bounded by ego, bounded by reoccurring compulsive patterns, are dissatisfactory. That we shouldn’t really accept them as being the ultimate consequence of what it means to be a human being. Those are the four reversals that we’re going to take a look at briefly.
Now in his text, this is a very short text, it’s only about fourteen verses long by Tsongkhapa, he first pays homage to the Lama, homage to the foremost holy Lama. So I’d like to say just a few words about spiritual teachers, lamas, gurus. Lama is a Tibetan term. It’s a translation of the Sanskrit term guru. Somehow we have to get a feeling for what it means to practice a spiritual path.
We have to get a feeling for what it means to relate properly with a spiritual teacher, a spiritual master. You have to develop some feeling. So when coming to the teachings, to a spiritual path, we’re faced with the problem of how to relate with a spiritual teacher. Your people always come to the practice with preconceptions. Preconceptions of what it means to practice, preconceptions of what it means to grow, preconceptions of what the teaching should be like, how they should relate with the teacher, what they expect from the teacher.
Very much this developing of a feeling for the proper relationship with the practice and the teacher means a giving up of almost all our preconceptions, the ideas we had before we met the path, before we met the Dharma, what it means to practice the Dharma. You know, the very thought that we are going to get anything from our lama must be given up. You know, we expect him to give us happiness, we expect him to give us peace, wisdom, whatever we think we have to even give up this preconception. It’s one of the most difficult preconceptions for us to give up. The process of receiving teachings is very much bound up with giving something in return.
It’s not like an academic setting where you merely pay your course fees and then you receive the teaching. There has to be something more than that. The student has to give something in return, something more than just material. Ultimately he has to give up his has to be some sort of psychological surrender. This is not to say that one becomes a mindless being.
On the contrary. But it’s necessary to make a gift of opening to the teacher. You know, even when we have a Dharma talk, generally there’s a prostration which is made to the teacher. One gives up one’s pride. One gives up the notion that one knows it all.
One lowers oneself before the teacher as a way of surrender. Stating, making a statement to yourself, not to the teacher, I don’t know it all. Perhaps this person has some answers. I’m going to try to open up to the possibility that he can give me some answers, that somehow he can connect with my mind and invoke some answers from my side. So even in a very mundane sense, the sense of making a prostration before a dharma talk, we’re surrendering, we’re giving up something, even if it’s only our pride, our closed mindedness that we have all the answers.
If you sit there with a closed minded attitude, it’s very doubtful that there will be any benefit whatsoever from sitting through a Dharma teaching, a talk on the spiritual path. So there’s a process of openness, honesty involved in relating with the teacher. We don’t try to make ourselves that we’re a worthwhile student. It doesn’t matter how much you’re willing to pay for the teachings, how correctly you behave, how clever you are saying the right things. It’s not like having an interview for a job or buying a car.
If you’re having an interview for a job, if have good manners, if your shoes are polished, if you’re clean and neat, and you speak well, there’s a good chance you’ll get the job. Or if you’re out buying a car, if you have credit, then you’ll get the car. But presenting ourselves, working with the teacher, working with the Dharma is not quite like that. There’s something more which is required for us. We have to make a real commitment to being open with the teacher, to exposing ourselves.
You know, we have to begin to be willing to give up our preconceptions, to give up our games, to be honest. If going to communicate directly with the teacher, we have to give up our self deception, our pretenses. So it’s a relationship of real communication and working together to achieve a goal. If we’re consistently trying to present ourselves in some respectable, some clever, intelligent manner to our teacher, to impress him. There’s never going to be a direct communication.
There’s never going to be a working together possibility. So, it’s a very humbling experience to expose yourself and become vulnerable. The process of relating with the spiritual teacher or practicing the path is a continual process of abandoning our preconceptions. What it means to grow, what it means to practice Dharma, what it means to relate with the teacher. So this abandonment that’s usually going to occur is experienced as disappointment.
I heard about this happen just a few weeks ago. For example, we have a preconception of what we’re going to get out, what the experience of marriage and having a baby is going to be. But as many women will tell you, it’s not like they thought it would be after the first child comes. And they have to abandon completely what their preconceptions of what it was going to be like. And there’s a feeling of great disappointment that I think many women experience when after their first child it’s not quite like what they thought it would be.
Now they have a choice. This is the reality of the situation, how it is now. It didn’t meet their expectations. Now if you’re willing to accept that disappointment and not run away from it, And we can begin to appreciate and really work with this situation as it is, not how we would like it to be, not how we would dream it to be or desire it to be, but in fact how it’s actually unfolding. And then we can possibly have an experience which goes beyond even what we preconceived, which goes beyond what we could have imagined it to be.
After you’ve had the baby, it’s very doubtful when the experience of having that first child is going to be as you preconceived it would be. So you can either dwell in your disappointment, in your loss of your expected happiness, bliss, joy, and see it completely from a negative point of view, completely indulge in your disappointment and your lost expectations, where you can begin to accept the situation as it is and see its richness and see its workability and begin to see its positive aspects, its positive qualities. Perhaps your joy and happiness that will arise out of that, out of really seeing and getting in touch with the situation, be far more than you had conceived before. Likewise, the same process goes on with the spiritual teacher. How a spiritual teacher is supposed to act, how he’s supposed to be related with you, how that Dharma practice is supposed to go, we have to begin to give up all our preconceptions, and this process is a disappointment.
But if we stick with it, if we work through it, then it’s been my experience. The joy and the happiness and the satisfaction is more than I had ever expected. We have to stick with it and work through the disappointments which are bound to occur. There’s no growth without disappointment. Coming again and again out of the fantasy world of ego and in touch with reality is an experience of disappointment.
It’s an experience of growth. It’s an enriching experience. So the Dharma, the practice of Dharma becomes a rather mundane affair. It’s not as glorious as we had thought it would be. There are no brilliant lights, If we think about it, what we want to do when we first approach the Dharma is have our ego attain enlightenment, isn’t it?
Our ego wants to be there and celebrate the attainment of Buddhahood. So at first we’re very entertained by the whole process, all the rituals, all the meditations, the inspiration. It’s very fascinating. Buddhism, the philosophy. And so, this isn’t a period of spiritual materialism where the ego is sort of fantasizing.
Someday when I have all my disciples around me, when I attain Buddhahood, I’m leading all sentient beings, and they will all look up to me, and we can all sing and dance together, and we can drift off into into the sunset with beautiful music. But there reaches a point where there’s a disappointment. It’s not like that. Where the ego begins to realize, catches glimpses of the fact that it’s not going to be around at the moment of enlightenment. Nobody really attains enlightenment, especially at the ego, that this is serious business, that there’s nothing in it for the ego.
The spiritual path, it’s ultimately the death of the ego. There’s a dying process that goes on. This rationalization, You sit down, you say, Oh, I’m not feeling too well. Maybe I’ll skip my meditation. And you go ahead and meditate.
And the ego says, Well, I don’t have too much time. Maybe I should skip it. Maybe go ahead and meditate. You’re beginning to cut through all the rationalizations, all the prevarications, all the excuses that we have for not meditating. You simply quit listening to this idle gossip, this constant spinning of dialogue.
The ego is constantly turning out. Likewise, there reaches a point when we realize we’re disappointed. We realize it’s not quite how we thought it would be, how we preconceived it would be. Still, there’s some wisdom at work which thinks it’s still worthwhile. It’s worth my time.
It’s not as glorious, perhaps, as I thought it would be. I’m not going to make as quick of an advancement as I preconceived I would. What else is there to do? I have to consistently work at it. There’s no other choice.
There’s a song, some dharma rock and roll song that says something like, There’s nothing else to do, I might as well cultivate. Something like that. You have no choice If you see that all your problems, your dissatisfactions are coming from your own attitudes, your own mind, you have to change your mind. It becomes senseless to return to the external world and try again to manipulate it, to try again to reestablish your ego identity, to find the right spouse, to find the right job, to find another degree, whatever, the best house. That in fact, when you see the basis suffering, of all your happiness as your own mind, then you come to bare basic fact, I have to change my mind.
Even though my ego doesn’t want to, I have no choice. Ego doesn’t want to change. It resists change because it works in patterns, in habits, in memory, in the past. Present. They cannot be open or fluid to what’s happening now, to change, to grow.
So the process of disappointment, the process of really beginning to practice is a very grounding experience. We give up all our preconceptions about what it might have been, the glorious possibilities, and we get in touch with the actual situation that it is. We become very grounded. And the practice of Dharma, the practice of the spiritual path becomes a very ordinary thing. You know, change the baby’s nappies and then you meditate on emptiness, and then you pay the gas and electric bill, and you meditate on developing the altruistic aspiration to achieve highest enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.
And then you go out and you mow the lawn or you go to your work and you come home and you sit and you watch your breath and everything is done correctly, everything is done properly. There’s no long any division between your worlds, my practice and the rest of my life. It all has to be done correctly, it all has to be done properly. It’s all practice. It’s all a source of growth.
Each isn’t as important as the other. It all has to be done right. And this is the way we grow. There’s nothing special about it. It.
We have to learn how to make a proper cup of tea before we can achieve enlightenment perhaps. The person who says, One moment is saying, Oh, I must achieve for the sake of all sentient beings. And the next moment they think, Oh, I hate myself. I can’t stand myself. It’s foolishness, isn’t it?
It makes no sense. There’s no connection. There’s no relating between these two thoughts. They’re deceiving themselves. They have begun to ground themselves in their actual reality.
We have this complete past history that we’ve built up. We can use all this manure that we have as fertilizer for this flower of Bodhi, for this enlightened mind. All our negativities, all our hang ups, all our desires, hatreds, if we’re willing to look at them and learn from them and accept them. We can become our own best friend. We can become our own best teacher.
In our past history, it’s our own best textbooks from which we can study and grow, but that means to accept and become grounded. We become very ordinary people doing something very ordinary. And it’s very ordinariness is very extraordinary. We aren’t trying to see things in a special way anymore. According to our preconceptions, we cease projecting upon the world and other people and other things how we would like them to be, fantasize them to be.
We get in touch with reality. And in this way, everything begins to communicate with us. Because everything is a source of the teachings. Everything is reality. Everything becomes our teacher.
Everything and everyone becomes our lama. This is the universal lama, the universal guru. This is our ultimate guide. There’s a Zen saying that in the beginning, when people first begin to practice the Zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. But in the middle, when you’re practicing, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers.
But in the end, when you’ve consummated the practice, rivers again become rivers and mountains, again become mountains. Things become very ordinary, as they were before. There’s a line from T. S. Eliot.
Exploration, and the end of our exploring will be to arrive at where we started and know the place for the first time. We come back to something very ordinary. It’s very extraordinary because we’re seeing things, the reality of things for the first time and not through the fantasies of our ego. So this becomes our teaching, our mantra, the root of the path. We’re talking about the four reversals, the ways we’re going to transform our mind, we’re going to develop the determination to be free.
The first one was to become aware of our potential, which I’ve been talking a great deal about, even up to this point. And once becoming aware of our potential, seeing that we have a chance, the opportunity to actualize this potential. We can talk about human nature. It’s kind of a catchy saying. human nature is no nature, and no nature is Buddha nature.
This is our ultimate nature. Our ultimate nature is Buddha nature. So we have no inherent qualities of our mind, of ourselves, neither bad nor good. The mind is simply clear and knowing. When we say mind, this is what we mean.
That which is clear, clarity, and knowing. It has no particular inherent characteristics, either of ignorance, of wisdom, love, hate, none of these. It’s simply clear in knowing. This is the essential quality of mind. But we assign it temporal qualities.
You know, intelligence. I’m an intelligent person. I’m a stupid person. I’m a loving person. I’m an angrily person.
I have an angry mind. I have an intelligent mind. These qualities are not an inherent quality of their mind, but they’re adventitious, temporary qualities. We can compare it to a polluted river. The nature of the water is pure.
The nature of the water can never be polluted. There are temporary defilements, temporary pollutions in the water. We can use a method whereby to filter out, to purify the water. We can separate out all the pollutions, all the pollutants, and have pure, clear water once again. This is likewise the nature of the mind.
Our mind is at presently defiled, polluted, adulterated, whatever. We can use methods, techniques in order to filter out the various defilments and get clarity and knowing of the pure mind. This is very much what we mean by Buddha nature. This ability to know is our essential quality. And this ability to know is unobstructed by nature.
It’s clear. Therefore, simply removing the hindrances, removing the pollutants, the obstacles, defilements, there’s nothing we cannot know. There’s no qualities we cannot develop. There’s no person we cannot become. You know, this doesn’t make any difference whether you’re a man or a woman, whether you’re stupid or intelligent, is to have Buddha nature.
You have, each of us have at this very moment, a quality of clarity and knowing. This is what we mean when we say mind. Each of us have a mind, therefore each of us have clarity and knowing. Each of us have Buddha potential. We have a mind which can be shaped into any form that we direct it using the skillful means, methods, we can direct the mind into any lines that we like, into any direction that we like.
But we aren’t stuck how we conceive of ourselves to be, this identity that we have, that we can change. We generally grasp that we have a permanent identity. This is who I am. I’ve always been like this. I’ve always been a little bit slow.
Even when I was a kid, I was a little bit slow. My mom used to tell me she used to tell my friends, give him time. He’s a little bit slow, but he’ll get it. And I’ve always been in school, I was a little bit slow, and then even after I graduated from university, in my job, I had to get a job which I didn’t have to think very fast because I was a little bit slow. This is part of my identity.
This is who I think I am. This, in fact, is not who I am, because this quality, conception, lack of intelligence, for example, is not intrinsic to the mind. The mind can be changed. This particular defilement, this particular quality can be transformed, it can be filtered out, just like filtering out impurities in a muddy river. Generally, whatever qualities, whatever states of mind are predominant, or whichever we focus upon, we think that’s who I am.
So if I have have a predominance of angry qualities, or if I simply focus on that spectrum of all the possibility of minds that arise in the course of my day. Even if, in fact, they may be a minority, I think I’m an angry person. And I hold onto this very tightly. Watch out. Don’t get me angry.
I’ve a temper. And we walk around with this mentality. This, in fact, is not who we are. It’s merely a predominant qualities of states of mind which are arising. Minds are continually arising, ceasing, arising, ceasing.
We can develop positive states, loving minds. And once loving minds have become a predominant state, then we become a loving person. It’s quite that simple. There’s no intrinsic identity, no inherent qualities to the mind. It’s like we have this medium, we have this clay, and we can shape this clay into anything that we want it to be, something grotesque and ugly, or something very beautiful and fine.
It’s up to our technique, our skills, and our confidence and consistency in trying to apply the methods to shape this clay, this mind that we have. So the main obstacle to actualizing this potential that we all have, our Buddha nature, is our tendency to ignore and to devalue ourselves, our situation. This quality of ego contracting in on itself, isolating patterns of ego becomes lost and absorbed in its own fantasy world, out of touch with the reality of the situation, both internal and external. We’re We’re completely living in a world of fantasy, in a world of patterns, in a world of a display of ego. We’re completely out of touch with the way things really are, the reality of situation and ourselves.
We are not the display of ego. We are not the identity that we conceive of ourselves to be. We, in fact, have unlimited potential. We in fact have all the possibilities, the chances to actualize that potential. You know, we can look at our situation in reality.
We can look at our mind in reality. What are the facts? The fact is that the mind is clear and knowing, has no inherent qualities, there has no permanent obstructions, that there are methods, techniques to reshape the mind, to redirect the mind, to actualize its fullest potential. This is the actual fact. This is the reality.
The world of ego is completely divorced, completely devoid of any reality of any fact. But this is the world we live in. This is the world we’re trapped in. What’s our problem? If we have such a potential, if we have good nature, if we have a mind that can be shaped into anything, why don’t we make use of it?
Why haven’t we become Buddhas? What’s our problem? Don’t we have the freedom to practice, to enact these methods and these techniques which can restructure, reshape our minds? What is the reality of our external situation? Again, we get in touch with the reality.
Are we beggars in the streets of Calcutta? I lived many years in India. The majority of people who live in India, if they don’t work that day, say twelve hours, their family doesn’t eat that day. That’s the reality of the situation. There’s no avoiding.
Are we in that situation? Are we starving in Ethiopia where we can’t even raise ourselves up from our bed? Are we in that situation? Are we fighting on the Iraqi Iranian border with hate in our hearts trying to kill the enemy or trying to save our own lives? Is that our situation?
Are we living in a country where there’s no religious freedom, where there’s no public gatherings of teachings, where there’s no books? Are we undergoing chemical therapy? We under We just had a serious injury. We’re laying in the hospital, doped up. We can’t properly think.
Are we psychotics where we can’t use our mind? Are we drug addicts, alcoholics? Is our family trying to discourage us from practicing religion as a waste of time? Why do go over there? Why don’t you do something worthwhile?
Is it it because you don’t have any spiritual friends? Is it because you haven’t met the teachings? Because you haven’t met teachers? Are you constantly caught up in material pursuits, status, power, money? Never time to rest, never time to think about what’s going on inside your own mind?
Are we in that position? Is anybody in this room in that position? We have the leisure to practice. We have time. So what’s our fortune?
And we talk in developing this appreciation for the chance to practice, we talk about leisures and fortunes, that we have the leisure. That we aren’t beggars in Calcutta, that we aren’t fighting on the fronts in Iran, that we aren’t starving in Ethiopia, that we aren’t drug addicts, that we aren’t alcoholics, that aren’t living in a country where they’re not allowed to meet or receive teachings, that we aren’t undergoing some kind of chemical therapy, that we aren’t psychotics. This is our leisure. This is the reality of our situation. There’s also fortunes.
So we’re human beings with intelligence, with some degree of loving kindness, compassion, some degree. We have a healthy body to a large extent. We live in a free country, you know, where we have religious, political freedom. There’s no political repression, no religious repression. You have a constant opportunity to pursue your creative intellectual interests.
All your material needs are met quite simply. I don’t think you realize how easily they are met. Perhaps you can get an idea by the example that I spoke of when I mentioned half of the population of India working thirty days a month, twelve hours a day, just to get enough rice to feed their family for that day. That you can work forty hours a week and have a very high standard of living. All your material needs can be met quite easily.
So you have the leisure and the fortune. You have the opportunity to transform your mind, the chance to transform your your mind, to actualize your potential. You have the chance, the opportunity to live a life of love and compassion and wisdom, freedom. So we have to begin to appreciate what we do have, rather than always focusing our attention on what we don’t have. That we have everything that we need immediately, right here with us now.
We have a mind which is clear and knowing. We have a potential which is unlimited. And we have the leisure and fortune by which we can actualize that potential. Everyone here in that room has those qualities. You have a to do something meaningful with your life.
You can do almost anything. So we have to keep thinking about what is important, always coming back to that, coming back to what is important. Is the way, thinking in this way, we begin to oppose the tendency of ego to ignore and to devalue ourselves, to ignore a situation, all our leisures and fortunes, all the positive qualities that we do have, and to devalue ourselves into thinking that I’m this limited, negative person who I conceive myself to be. In fact, this has no connection at all with reality. And we can begin to wake up from our trance by merely becoming aware of our potential, appreciating who we are in the situation that we have to actualize that potential, that we have a chance to grow.
But this chance isn’t going to last forever. Though you may think it is, it’s definite that we’re going to die. This is the second of these four reversals. Death. I’ll just touch upon him.
There’s a quotation from a book called Return to Meaningfulness. To live with the truth of life and death, which is really to live with the truth, presupposes an entirely different set of values. This vitally affects all aspects of our being, necessitating a complete transformation. For those who look death squarely into the eye when life is still flowing strongly, a strange paradox comes true, which is that to live gracefully and to die gracefully are one and the same thing. Don Juan talks about in his books about how we can make death our ally.
By taking up the issue of death, we begin to appreciate life that much more. The quality of our life begins to improve, begins to be more energized. We no longer take it for granted, but we don’t want to think about it. This is our tendency up to now. We don’t see the value in thinking about death, because we’ve never thought about the value of growing, of making use of our chance while we’re still alive, of making use of our life.
I’d like to read a little. It’s a little part of a story by Katherine Mansfield. It’s about a little grandchild talking to her grandmother. It’s a little child by the name of Kessia, and the grandmother’s sitting there nipping. The little girl asks, Does everybody have to die?
And the grandmother answers, Everybody. Me? Sounded fearfully incredulous. Someday, my darling. But, Grandma Cassius waved her left leg and wiggled her toes.
They felt sandy. What if I just won’t? The old woman sighed again and drew a long thread from the ball. We’re not asked, Cassius, she said sadly. Sadly.
It happens to us all, all of us sooner or later. Kezia lay still thinking this over. She didn’t want to die. It meant she would have to leave here, leave everywhere, forever. Leave, Leave her grandma.
She rolled over quickly. Grandma, she said in a startled voice. What my pet. You’re not to die. Kessia was very decided.
Ah, Kessia, her grandmother looked up and smiled and shook her head. Don’t let’s talk about it. But you’re not to. You couldn’t leave me. You couldn’t not be there.
This was awful. Promise you, you won’t ever do it, grandma, pleaded Kesya. The old woman went on knitting. Promise me, say never. But still her grandmother was silent.
Kessia rolled off the bed. She couldn’t bear it any longer. Inlightly, she leapt on her grandma’s knee, clasped her hands around the old woman’s throat, and began kissing her under the chin, behind her ear, and blowing down her neck. Say never, say never, say never. She gasped between the kisses.
And then she began very softly and lightly to tickle her grandma. Kessia. The old woman dropped her knitting. She swung back in the rocker. She began to tickle Kessia.
Say never, say never, say never, gasped Kezia. While they lay there laughing in each other’s arms, come, that’s enough, my pet, my squirrel. That’s enough, my wild pony, said old Mrs. Mansfield, setting her cap straight. Pick up my knitting.
Both of them had forgotten what it never was about. So meditate on loving kindness. Think about your difficulties, some of your problems. Get in touch with it. And the fact that you want to be happy.
No matter what you’ve done in the past, no matter what mistakes, We can simply regret them and determine not to repeat them again in the future. However you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold, you can change. You can begin again, start anew. For the present, for the moment, we have to become friends with ourselves, accept ourselves, be gentle with ourselves, quit torturing ourselves, and wish ourselves well. Have some compassion upon yourself and wish yourself happiness because that’s what you want.
May I be happy. May I grow. May I be well. Wish positive feelings towards yourself? Think of someone you like, of the same sex, someone you love.
Imagine that person in front of you. Get in touch with those positive feelings that you feel towards this person, thinking how happy they make you. And radiate out these positive feelings towards that person. May you be happy when you find everything in you that you’re looking for. Now think of someone you neither like nor dislike, a stranger.
Imagine that person in front of you. Try to go beneath the superficial appearances that we usually dwell upon. Appearances of sex or age, color, beauty, status, economics, education, intelligence, personality. Try to go deep down into that person and see someone who wants happiness and doesn’t want to suffer exactly like yourself, no difference whatsoever. Just as we wish our own self happiness, we have to begin to wish this person deep down happiness.
How we feel about that person deep down is very much a reflection of how we feel about ourselves deep down. So wish this person happiness. Radiate out positive feelings towards this person. Now think of someone who disturbs your mind, who you have problems with, an enemy. And imagine that person in front of you.
This person wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. There’s no difference whatsoever. In trying to find that happiness, Their methods have come in conflict with your methods of finding happiness. There’s just a conflict of interest. You’ve hurt others in the past either intentionally or unintentionally to find the happiness that you were seeking, and this person’s done the same thing.
And if we’re ever to forgive ourselves, we have to begin to forgive this person. So just for the moment, set aside your grudge, your hurt, your hard feelings. Look deep down into that enemy and see a person just like yourself, confused and lonely and trying their best to find some happiness in your life. And wish them happiness. Now imagine all four people together, yourself and each three others.
Just feel that they’re there. And see them at the level that they all want happiness, not want to suffer exactly the same. There’s no difference whatsoever. Whether friend or enemy, a stranger, from that point of view, they’re exactly the same. Radiate out positive feelings equally to all four without any bias.
And all the people in this room, all the people who are seeking some way to take responsibility for their lives, for their happiness, for their means of transformation. When you find the happiness that you’re seeking, find the way that you’re looking for, Simply wish everybody in the room happiness, positive feeling. And everyone on the block, whatever they’re doing, whatever they’re saying, watching television, cooking their meals, eating, whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it and saying it to find happiness. Radiate out these positive feelings touching everyone on the globe. They’re just like us.
And extending out further to all of Adelaide, people who are driving in their cars and buses, in their homes, offices and shops. Extending out further, radiating out these positive feelings to all of South Australia, all the people, animals, insects. Further, Perth and Darwin, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, over the entire country. Extending out further. New Zealand.
Entire southern hemisphere. Just slowly enveloping the entire world in your heart, positive feelings and your caring. All the people are black, white, red, yellow, all the animals, all the insects, everything that lives. Extending out further and further. Infinitely without any boundaries, without any centering, pervading all the space.
May all things be happy. May all things be happy. Dedicate the positive energy that we’ve created. Through these merits, I soon attain the enlightenment state of Guru Buddha, and I lead every migrating being without exception to that state. May the precious bodhicitta mind not yet born arise and grow.
May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore. Thank you. Please, everyone, have a cup of tea and make yourself.