Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The cow-in-a-big-pasture analogy for working with restlessness is one of many concrete images in this 89-minute session, where Ven Jampa Gendun works through the five hindrances to meditation and their antidotes. He describes the felt quality of each — desire’s magnetic pull toward imbalance, hatred’s sharp self-righteousness, restlessness’s refusal to settle, torpor’s slide from fuzziness toward sleep, and doubt’s comfortable avoidance of any conclusion — then gives the specific remedy: balanced perception for desire and hatred, patient acceptance for restlessness, bliss earned through faith and effort for torpor, and decisive commitment for doubt. The session then turns to the second of the three principal aspects of the path, opening to others, with commentary on Tsongkhapa’s verse about beings swept by four powerful currents. It closes with a guided loving-kindness meditation that moves from self-forgiveness outward through strangers and enemies to all of Australia.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1988 05 20 3 P A P.mp3
UUID: 3fffb826-e573-4921-a5c3-d581da7f57d2
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 1987-1988 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-05-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 89.0 minutes
Words: ~9,396
Two. Anger. Anger is three. Attention. Okay, think we got them all good.
So we’ve been talking about the five hindrances: desire, hatred, restlessness, anxiety, sloth and torpor, doubt and indecisiveness. That’s right. Okay, we’ll get a feeling for what these are about, to be able to recognize these minds, these conditions, states which arise. Desire, I think we’re very familiar with that problem. The thing is, these are always arising, aren’t they?
Desire, hatred, laziness, whatever. But we never are aware of them. We identify with them. There’s quite a big difference between having a particular state of mind and being aware of its nature, isn’t it? We quite often, after you finish a meal, if someone says, What did you just eat?
Quite often you wouldn’t even know what you just ate. Your mind was somewhere else. Your awareness was somewhere else. It wasn’t knowing the condition of what was present in front of you of your actual meal. So this is one thing we’re learning just through our meditation.
I’ve been talking about the fact that the hindrances aren’t hindrances unless you see them as obstacles to developing a higher state of consciousness. So we can work with the hindrances as a method, become aware of its qualities. So this first, the quality of the hindrance of desire. So there’s something which is attractive. We’re going to get a feeling tone for the various hindrances.
The object has some sort of alluring quality. There’s a movement of the mind towards an object, towards the object of desire. It’s like you’re being drawn to it, like being magnetized, this kind of quality. So the object appears to be extremely desirable. When you walk down the street and you’re walking in the city, for example, and there’s all the nice things in all the store windows, And there’d be all these suits or all these dresses or I don’t know, whatever.
One of them kind of Out of all these suits maybe, all these mannequins, one of them kind of stands, want them to say, kind of brighter than the others. It’s kind of saying, take me, come. It’s kind of inviting you. There’s something about it which is attracting you, like magnetizing you. And you sort of go into a trance.
You’re sort of like being drawn away. This quality of desire. Again, we talk about this quality. We lose our ability at this moment to discriminate the quality of objects. You know, with all the various afflictive emotions in general, there’s a loss of discrimination.
We no longer see the object in a balanced way. We’re always accentuating or depreciating, exaggerating or dismissing some qualities of object. We’re filtering out, in the case of desire, we’re blocking out the bad qualities, the undesirable qualities, and we’re exaggerating the desirable qualities. So there’s always some kind of mental imbalance. And this will come up when we talk about the actual methods to overcome the hindrances, how we can work with the desire and all the afflictive emotions in general.
Know, desirable objects are very exciting objects as if they only had good qualities. A lover only has good qualities, something like that. Then the quality of hatred, the hindrance of hatred. So there’s a, you know, it’s associated with aversion, anger. So there’s a feeling of wanting to take revenge, of wanting to destroy, of wanting to cease contact, not repeat contact with the object.
You know, get rid of it as soon as possible, wherever the object. So this becomes it sort of gives your life some sort of direction. At least you’re doing something. Before, perhaps your situation was rather boring. So it’s very exciting.
Becoming angry is very exciting, which for some people is a very desirable state. You feel very alive, very sharp. Hatred is a very sharp, clear mind. There’s also perhaps a feeling of self righteousness associated with hatred. But there’s no patience.
There’s a feeling of wanting to hurt. You only see the negative qualities. These are kind of desire and hatred as we talked about are like a pair. They both are craving. Craving in one sense to bring an object toward you, to own an object, to possess the object, and the other sense of craving that the object cease to exist or craving that it be dismissed or that lose contact and not repeat contact.
So it’s a very exciting quality. The last of the three of the five hindrances are much more subtle. They’re very kind of boring. They’re not quite as interesting as these first two. They become actually perhaps more difficult to work with.
So the first, was restlessness and anxiety. So it’s mental and physical agitation. It’s this idea, this sense that you want to get up and do something besides what you’re doing now, especially meditate. The mind wants to do or feel something else than what it’s feeling at that particular time. It’s not content with its experience in that present moment.
It wants to cease what it’s doing and move on to something else, impatience. You know, they’re like impulsively shifting around, for example, without giving it any thought. So this is like the quality of this restlessness and anxiety. Anxiety in the sense of some subtle fear that we perhaps can’t get in touch with. It’s some kind of subconscious, unconscious fear, uneasiness.
And then the sloth and torpor. So this is the mind that’s just simply bored with its object. It’s not interested. It’s not stimulated. So we begin with some slight lack of clarity.
And this is the most subtle type of sloth and torpor as far as torpor is concerned, the mental aspect of these two. Some slight lack of clarity. Notice as this is going to progress, it’s going to begin to degenerate. The mind is very dynamic in its nature. It’s not static.
It’s not going to hold to any one particular state for long. It’s going to either degenerate or it’s going to improve. If we create the causes for it to improve, it will improve. If we don’t, it’s going to tend to degenerate by the force of habit, our tendency toward increased states of torpor, increased states of lack of clarity. So we begin with the simple state of lack of clarity.
You have some object, whether it’s a visualization, whether it’s the breathing, whether it’s a thought thinking about some subject, then it’s not quite a little bit fuzzy, it’s not quite so clear. So it begins a little more fuzzy. And this leads to mind becomes cloudy. It’s like, you know, like your mind is made of cotton. You’ve got some cotton wool in your head.
Something like that. And this leads to stupor, this leads to drowsiness, and this leads to sleep. Very heavy and we just sleep down and this is kind of carrying this idea sloth to its fulfillment. We just fall asleep. We become unconscious.
And then there’s the hindrance of doubt and indecisiveness. So this is the thinking mind. It’s this churning out thoughts. And there are questions. Am I doing alright?
How am I doing? You know, it’s constantly checking up. You know, I don’t know if I can really do this or not. Maybe there’s another type of meditation which I should be doing at the present time. Maybe another tradition.
I’m not into Buddhism really. I think maybe the Krishna people I don’t know. Can women become enlightened? Can men become enlightened? Is there really such a thing as enlightened?
So your mind is constantly churning out all these questions. And it has the quality that even when you come up with an answer the mind says, Yes, but and it carries on. So it’s a state which can never be satisfied with any type of answer. It’s an uneasiness, a not knowing, some conflict within the and it’s unable to come to any firm decision. So it’s not as if we could come to any firm decision.
It’s a state of mind which has the inability to come to any firm decision. There are some healthy doubts, skepticisms, which are quite useful, we should cultivate in our path, in thinking about Buddhism and thinking about spiritual path in general. It’s good to question, have doubts. When I studied in India at our school, we spent about three hours a day debating. And part of this was the intention of creating doubts, questioning everything that we were taught that day, just trying to raise doubts, beginning to understand what we didn’t understand.
You know, there’s no use in pouring like oil on water. You know, it doesn’t mix with your mind. It doesn’t mix with the water. You want the teachings or whatever is being said to mix with your actual experience, how you actually see with your own intuition, your own reasoning. So in way, in this respect, doubts are quite useful.
They’re desirable. But this doubting mind, in the sense of indecisiveness, is an obstacle to understanding since it has an inability to come to any firm decision. And there’s even a tendency to look in the other direction. It’s like the mind is stuck and it’s content to be stuck in this questioning position without even seeking any resolution to any answers. It doesn’t want to come to any conclusions.
To come to conclusions, just in life in general, forces us to some degree to act. And acting is very decisive. It becomes very clear about who we are about and what we are about. And many people would rather remain in potential. I mentioned one time about the schizophrenic mind.
One of the marks of a schizophrenic mind that it always seeks to exist in potential. And never commits itself to the objective element. It can remain omnipotent without ever having to do anything. But once it acts, then it realizes its limitations and it doesn’t want to be limited. Once we do something, we actually try and you realize you can’t do everything that you thought you did, that you in fact have some limitations.
Then we have to get a more realistic impression of ourselves. We can’t sort of exist within some fantasy illusion of who we might be, who we think we are. So this indecisiveness, this doubt is quite often promoted. Therefore, because we don’t have to act, we don’t have to commit ourselves to the objective element, we really don’t have to begin to realize what limitations we do have where we need to work on ourselves. It’s a very immature approach.
So these are these five qualities which hinder raising the level of our consciousness. Five hindrances. So last time we talked about the first method of overcoming these hindrances in general, and this simply is recognizing the hindrances as hindrances. We have to believe that we have some potential. We have to appreciate the fact that we can develop.
If you feel that, if you hold tightly to the usual negative limited conceptions that we have of ourselves, that I, you know, I can’t do anything. I really I just don’t I haven’t made I just don’t have what it takes. And that’s what my mom used to tell me anyway, and she always told me the truth. Somehow, we’ve been very influenced and taught to have a very negative conception of ourselves. And we’d be we it’s very difficult to appreciate the fact that this conception of ourselves is not in fact who we are.
You know, we talked about, for example, in last Saturday we had a multi faith seminar on the various religions. Every religion, every spiritual tradition says we are more than we had ever hoped to be, that we are greater than we can ever conceive of ourselves. You know, in Christianity they talk that man, woman is created in the image of God. In Buddhism, we talk about Buddha nature. These are our actual potential, who we can be, not how we conceive of ourselves to be, but who we are beyond our conception.
So we limit ourselves, We have to get in touch with the fact that we are more than our conception of ourselves. That our conception of ourselves, no matter how they may be, are not who we in fact are. We can develop beyond our greatest imagination of who we think we are. If we appreciate this fact very deeply, then we’re not going to allow ourselves to be limited by these hindrances. We simply will not tolerate any obstacle to the raising our level of consciousness.
But if we don’t appreciate it, then it doesn’t matter really, You can never be anything better than what you are now. So why bother? Why bother taking the trouble? Because it is some trouble. It takes an effort, for example, to overcome laziness, stupor, indecisiveness.
It takes some commitment and effort. And this only comes about by appreciating who we can be. In the Korean tradition of Buddhism, they spend many years just on this very fact of meditating on Buddha nature. Is sort of the energizer, the motivating force behind their entire practice of coming to a real sense of our vast potential, really believing in it deeply and committing ourselves to actualizing it. It’s not a matter of curiosity, a matter of making cosmetic changes in our personality to make life a little more tolerable, but really believing to the depth of your being that you can be a happy, healthy, sane, loving person and help others to become the same.
Believing that to the depth of your being. If you believe this, you can imagine what that can do for you. You just would not tolerate any obstacles to actualizing who you know who you are. So this is the first of the methods for eliminating the five hindrances, recognizing the hindrances as hindrances. Great.
And the second, we cultivate the specific antidotes to each of the five hindrances. So as I was saying, all afflictive emotions by afflictive emotions I mean desire, hatred, spite, jealousy, miserliness they all have one of their main qualities a lack of discrimination with respect to their object. There’s an imbalance of the mind. There’s always some exaggeration or depreciation of the object. You know, it’s very difficult to believe that, that the object as it appears to us does not exist the way it appears to us.
It just doesn’t exist that way. You know, we can take a simple example. You you have your best friend and you say, wow, he’s a great person. You know, I really like him. He’s got all these wonderful qualities.
You know, he’s kind and lovable. He’s he’s generous. He’s got a good sense of humor. She’s got a good sense of humor, whatever. And you can just see all these qualities about them.
They really objectively exist. They’re there for everybody to see. But you have another person, you mean another person on the bus perhaps, and you begin to talk about you comes out that you have certain friends in common, and one of these is this good friend of yours. And but and you don’t mention that he’s good friend. You just begin talking about him.
And this other person says, oh, what a louse, you know. Can’t stand the guy, can’t stand the woman, whatever. You know, he’s got a terrible sense of humor, he’s always very angry, and he just goes down the list telling all the terrible qualities that this person has. Who’s right and who’s wrong? Which is it this person?
And one person is filtering out all the positive qualities. The other person is filtering out all the negative qualities. Due to this imbalance one of them develops aversion, hatred, anger. The other develops attachment, desire. So there’s always this indiscriminate imbalance, not seeing the object as it actually exists, seeing as it appears and holding it that’s the way it really exists.
And therefore all the afflictive emotions are dependent upon this indiscriminating quality of the mind to see things in an imbalanced way. Not that we’re trying to do away with our friends. Some people, think, are very much afraid if they begin to lessen their attachment that somehow they won’t like people anymore, for example. There’s no question about that. You can still like people, enjoy their company, but there’s a lessening of attachment, of having to needing to hold on to a person.
That beginning to see that this particular person isn’t uniquely endowed with these positive qualities that you see. That it’s a matter of your own mind, you know, seeing these qualities in others. And if one controls one’s own mind, one can see these qualities in everyone. And therefore, why do I have to hold on to this person so tightly? I can begin to enjoy everyone in the same way that I enjoy this friend, because everyone has positive qualities.
I took a course at Cope a couple months ago, and we had to sit there. They do this exercise called strokes. Know, the other person sits there in front of you and you have to tell them good things about them. You know, first you tell them something you like about their body. Know, they have nice hair, they have pretty earlobes or something.
And you could always find something nice to say about someone, no matter who it is, no matter how ugly. Think Vincent van Gogh, one you know, he wasn’t a very looking good looking person from what I understand. And I think one woman said, Oh, you have pretty ears. That was the only good thing she could see about his physical appearance. Of course, I already cut it off and gave it to her, but that’s another story.
Anyway, so we can begin to accentuate the positive qualities, but we don’t have to but we still maintain a balance by understanding that every individual has both positive and negative qualities in all the various objects, you know, whatever. And therefore we can lessen our attachment, we can lessen our aversion, likewise with hatred. So we’re talking about attachment, desire, this hindrance of desire, simply bringing the mind back to a balanced state by looking at the undesirable qualities of the object. You know, many people have, for example, sexual fantasies during meditation or out of meditation for that matter. But in meditation, just to bring the mind back to a balanced state, we can simply think about some of the not too pretty aspects of sex or the sexual object.
And this will automatically cease the attachment, the desire, the lust, by bringing the mind back to a balanced state, by accentuating for that particular moment the negative aspects of the object of lust. This is the way we can work with desire, whatever type of desire. Also the same holds true for hatred. This quality of only seeing the negative aspects of the object. So again, seeing the object in an imbalanced way.
So specifically with regards to sentient beings, with people, we cultivate love and compassion, especially love. This is wanting them to be happy. Know, hate wants people to suffer, essentially. It wants them to be hurt. So we cultivate the antithesis of that.
The antithesis to that is cultivating love, wishing them to be happy. These various states of mind are like hot and cold water. As you increase, for example, love, then the mind, the thought of hatred has to diminish. It’s like a balance beam. As love increases, hate decreases.
They cannot exist simultaneously in the same mind. So we can accentuate the positive states and this will automatically decrease the negative states of mind. In this case, we accentuate, we purposely meditate on developing love for a person and this will automatically begin to decrease the hatred we have for this person. So with restlessness and anxiety, ways to work with those. A difficult one.
We have to cultivate patience. That’s exactly what we don’t want to do. We don’t want to be patient. So we have to have a willingness to abide with unpleasant sensations and situations. You know, in our meditation, we have to have a willingness to abide with restlessness, to kind of stay with this restlessness.
So this becomes very much of a matter of accepting the agitation instead of running away from it, instead of trying to suppress it. Then suppressing only would exaggerate it, would feed it energy, increase it. So we have to be willing to bear the discomfort, both the mental and physical discomfort. So, you know, obviously, you know, the antidote to restlessness is a calm mind, but we don’t have a calm mind. So we have to so this requires patience.
This patience of training the puppy again, bringing the little puppy back to the newspaper. Again, I have gentle patience. Again and again, puppy runs off and you bring it back again and again. It runs off, you you bring it back, and it runs off, and you bring So this requires a gentle patience of accepting So we can also bring the mind down. So there’s this quality of agitation, excitement, anxiety.
We can bring the mind down through analytic meditation. We can, for example, meditating on death, meditating on suffering. We can go to a darkened place. And in some way the mind is heightened, it’s in a very agitated energetic state, and we have to bring it down. We have to find some method to calm it, to bring it down.
So we can use these within other types without this meditation, without this accepting. We can actually develop apply the antidotes of meditating on death, kind of sober up the mind to think about death, meditating on suffering, going to a darkened place. So these are ways we can work with. And the main thing is this accepting patience, gentle patience. Accepting the agitated state and let it wear itself out.
It’s like a cow. Mine is like a big cow in a pasture. And when it first gets out there, the first thing it looks for is a fence. So it has this energy, it’s running around. So the Japanese Zen masters have a saying that the best fence is a big pasture.
Without any fences to be seen, accepting is what I mean by not having any fences, it becomes purposeless for the cow to keep running around. There’s nothing which is stopping it. It can run anywhere it wants. So pretty soon it becomes the whole idea of agitation becomes senseless and the cow just starts to settle down, eat the grass, and pretty soon it falls asleep. Hopefully you won’t fall asleep in your meditation.
But after a while, if you don’t suppress it with fences, trying to close it in, in which case there’d just be this energy reflecting back at you, rebounding, creating more agitation, you know, getting the cow more uptight than it actually is at present. If you’re willing just to accept, create a big pasture for it and bear with it, then the cow is going to settle down. Your mind is naturally going to calm down. And there’s the fifth hindrance of sloth and torpor. So the mind is in a very dark state.
It feels very heavy, depressed, lazy. So we have to somehow uplift the mind. We have to energize it. We have to lighten it. We have to strengthen it.
So the main antidote the main antidote specifically to sloth and torpor, but the main antidote to almost all the afflictive emotions, all the hindrances is bliss. It’s a good antidote, isn’t Bliss is very desirable. I don’t think I have to tell you that. If we’re willing to work through these hindrances, we’re going to reach a point where our mind is going to become happy in meditation. There’s some real happiness in the mind, some real contentment.
We actually will enjoy meditating. So this is one of the main antidotes in general and specifically for laziness, for sleepiness, drowsiness, sloth and torpor, is the fact of bliss. To create this, in the Tibetan tradition, in the development of calm abiding, which is a very concentrated state of mind, to overcome laziness, is considered one of the five obstacles to development of a calm abiding, this concentrated mind. There’s four opponents. The first is faith.
Faith, I have been talking about in the sense of recognizing the hindrances, is hindrances when we appreciate that there are higher states of mind. We have faith in this fact. We have some real conviction that there are higher levels which I can take my mind to. So this faith, what is that called? It brings its inspiration, which is the second antidote.
So we begin with faith, some conviction. This inspires us to work with these hindrances, to work through these hindrances. In dependence upon this inspiration we make effort. Third antidote. And on making effort then we actually generate bliss, which is the actual antidote to laziness, to sleepiness, to sloth and torpor.
It comes back again to appreciating the fact of who we are and what we can achieve. Having faith in that, this brings us inspiration. Through this inspiration we develop, we work, we make effort, and by this effort we attain bliss. We enjoy meditating, and this acts as the method of removing the obstacle of sloth and torpor. So there are other ways we can work with sloth and torpor besides. For example, we can visualize light.
Just think of light, try to see light within your mind. To wake up, we’re trying to wake up, lighten. Lighten up the mind. Brighten up the mind. Or we can imagine, for example, our mind shooting out the top of our head and becoming one with space.
It becomes one with limitless space, quality of lightening expanding, opening. That’s another possibility. Another possibility we can do some sort of conceptual thinking. We can think about our spiritual teachers or someone just who you feel a great deal of admiration, who inspires you. This will help uplift your mind.
Or we can think about, as I said, how fortunate we are, begin to appreciate our potential. And we can sit up straighter. So we’re trying to sort of enliven the mind. If you usually close your eyes and open your eyes slightly to stimulate your mind, You can actually look at light, physically look at light to lighten up your mind. And if none of this works, you can actually get up and walk around, go to some light, bright place, wash your face, take a shower, and then try again.
Have some patience and try again. So these are the ways we can work with sloth and torpor. And the last hindrance, doubt and indecisiveness. So this is this unwillingness to come to any conclusion. So we have to inability to come to any decisive decision to make up our minds.
We have to clarify within our own minds and determine exactly what we are doing and why. So you have to determine within your own mind whether you want to develop or not. Is it possible for you to develop? You have to cultivate some confidence in yourself, some conviction that you can and that you want to and that you know what you’re doing and this is the way to go about it. You have to come to some firm commitment, some decision, and this is the way you can overcome this doubt and indecisiveness.
I think I’ll continue the other methods. There’s some more methods that we’re going to use. I’ll continue this later. So now we’ll try. So we’re going to do I know there’s some new people perhaps.
I’ll just go over the meditation technique very roughly. We’re doing mindfulness of breathing. We’re just going to use as the object of our meditation the breath, just the general breathing without any type of control over the breathing. Just natural breathing, neither long nor prolonged in any way. And we just want to know when we’re breathing in and know when we’re breathing out.
So we do this to help us to do this. When we breathe in, we mentally note in, and when we breathe out, we mentally note out. So it’s simply noting in your mind, in, out, in, out. And to help us again, we use the technique of counting. So in, out, one, in, out, two, in, out, three, in, out, four, in, out, five.
We come back down to one, in out one, two, three, four, five, six, come back down to one, one through seven, one through eight, one through nine, and one through ten. Then if you continue past that, begin again one through five. And we’re going to use noting to help us develop our awareness, to know what our mind is attending to, whether it’s actually on the breath, whether it’s thinking, fantasizing, remembering, imagining, hearing, tasting, feeling pain. We want to know it, so we use the technique of noting mentally. You know, thinking, thinking, and go back to the breath.
Hearing, hearing, go back to breath, feeling, feeling, go back to the breath. So all these mental noteachings is simply to help us develop more and more awareness, knowing. We know what we know. Developing is knowing, and the mindfulness brings us back to the actual object, that is the breath. That’s what we’re holding onto.
So we’ll try that for a few minutes. Now we recite the verse of refuge. Make some of your habit. Make the substitution on the third line. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I’m enlightened.
Through the merit I create, 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. A Tibetan master who lived in the United States, Chogyam Trungpa, he died about two years ago. He’s talking about taking refuge and reciting what we just recited. There is ordinary physical level of just repeating the formula.
We just repeated the formula of going for refuge. I go for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. But this also involves a process happening within us. Regarding this inner level, we have the instruction to take refuge in something which is abiding, something which can actually offer refuge. We can only take refuge in something certain, otherwise taking refuge would be a pure fiction and would not provide the security we want.
So on the inner level, taking refuge means surrendering to those forces of which we ourselves are, so to speak, the last transformation. These forces have in a way become frozen in us. Taking refuge thus means to commit ourselves to a process of unfreezing so that life’s energy or whatever we want to call it, these forces that operate through us and somehow get blocked can flow freely. So this becomes a very profound way, I think, of taking refuge. There’s this entire process of reorientating of what it means to begin to practice a spiritual path.
Initially, and for the most part, what we mean by worldly person is someone who sees their happiness and the cause of their suffering outside of themselves, in the things and the people and the world around them. And they become lost in this world and there’s no way out. And it doesn’t bring the happiness and it doesn’t remove the suffering that they’re seeking. So the process becomes a disillusionment of some insight into perhaps it’s our attitudes more than anything which determine whether we’re going to be happy, whether we’re going to suffer in any particular situation with any particular object with any particular person. So at this reorientation towards seeing that it is with ourselves where the causes of happiness and suffering reside.
That within ourselves we have some clarity, some basic sanity, some wisdom if we’re only willing to cultivate it to get in touch with it. This reciting this, Buddhists are always reciting this quite often. All these various practices that we can cultivate, that we can work with. It just occurred to me earlier when we were doing this Tārā practice that we do on Friday evenings at six thirty. There’s a seed, say the seed of wisdom, seed of love and compassion, the seed of inexhaustible energy within us all.
And all these various practices are like beginning to cut away the weeds, the bushes of our limited conception of who we are, which don’t allow the sunlight, the sunlight of truth, the sunlight of appreciating who we actually are to get to it, this seed, and germinate it, cause it to grow. So by reciting a verse like this, if it’s done with some understanding, some sincerity, it creates some space, pushes aside the weeds just a little bit, pushes aside the bushes just a little bit and allows some sunlight to get to the seed of wisdom within ourselves, the love and compassion, inexhaustible energy within ourselves. It gives them a chance to grow. So this idea of re orientating ourselves toward our own potential, You know, this idea that it is our birthright to be happy, to be loving, sane people if I want to give myself the chance. So this is like recommitting ourselves to giving ourselves that chance to be everything that we should be, everything that we can be.
So I think this is the meaningful way to take refuge. It has some sense about it, some purpose. We’re talking about the three principal aspects of the path. Lam Tso Nam Sum, developing the determination to be free, opening to others, and seeing deeply into the nature of reality. We finished the first path, developing the determination to be free.
Based upon this, based upon developing this determination to go beyond all states within the boundaries of ego. But seeing all reoccurring, impulsive patterns that we usually exist within as being dissatisfactory, we make a firm determination. We energize ourselves, motivate ourselves to develop our capacity to go beyond the ego, to transcend these patterns and become everything that we can be. This is the determination to be free. But as I’ve talked about, this is only one aspect.
Based upon this as a foundation, we begin to turn our attention to others, not out of a romantic sentimentality, but seen as a basic necessity if we’re going to develop ourselves to our fullest potential. Develop both aspects of ourselves, not only the personal, experiential, private part of ourselves, but also the public part of ourselves, social self, that part of ourselves which exists in relationship to others. If we’re going to develop that which is an aspect of ourselves then we have to begin to develop more skillful ways with relating to others. And this accommodates into finally opening ourselves to others. So it becomes a spiritual necessity, a psychological necessity to take into consideration other people in our lives, even at a minimal level.
Even at a pragmatic level, if we just want to lessen our own problems, lessen our own dissatisfaction and suffering, we can do this very readily by concerning ourselves more and more with others. Our own problems, we can gain some perspective on them. They don’t quite seem so big as they did when we were completely wrapped up, surrounded by I, I, me, my problems, my ones, as if the world revolved around us. By seeing others’ difficulties, others’ problems, it puts our difficulties in a better perspective and we can deal with them more properly. They don’t quite have the same painful aspects as they once did.
So both from a very existential point of view, from developing ourselves to complete potential, also from a pragmatic point of view of helping us to reduce our suffering very immediately by concerning ourselves with others. It becomes a necessity to open ourselves to others. It’s not merely a sentimental romantic idea. So the idea, this opening to others, the altruistic intention to become enlightened, and I’ve talked about enlightenment and its qualities of supreme knowledge, of a burning love and compassion for other sentient beings like a mother for her only child, and its inexhaustible energy willing to work to alleviate the sufferings of others, to benefit others, the qualities of enlightenment. So this altruistic attitude of wanting to attain such a mind, such a state, it takes as an object of observation all sentient beings.
It observes all sentient beings, not just the people we like, not just the people we’re attached to, but all sentient beings. It has two objects. One is all sentient beings and the other is enlightenment, you know, sanity, you know, mental health. And it has as an aspect the quality, the feeling tone of such a mind, of such an attitude is great compassion, wishing to free all sentient beings of suffering and the causes of suffering. So in order to develop such a mind, it’s necessary to reflect upon how sentient beings suffer.
So this is we’ve done this through extending from our own experience. We’ve been reflecting upon within developing this determination to be free as a foundation. In developing this we consider our own difficulties, own dissatisfaction, frustrations, disappointments. And we simply begin to extend this to others, that others are in the same situation that I’m in, that I’m not so unique in the world. Others are experiencing the same pain, same frustration, the same loneliness as myself.
So unless we’ve actually developed this foundation and seen suffering within our own mind, we’re never going to be able to look to extend this feeling of compassion that we feel towards ourselves, to others. And by seeing the suffering we have within ourselves, we can actually develop some compassion for ourselves, wishing that we didn’t suffer. And we simply redirect our attention to others and knowing full well that I’m not unique, that others are undergoing the same experiences that I’m undergoing, we begin to develop compassion for others. So this determination to be free becomes a determination to help others to grow, to help others be free. So do we have a maybe we’ll is the actual text.
I’m not sure if there’s enough to go around. Three Principal Aspects of the Path by Tsongkhapa. I’m actually going through this, and I referred to it once in a while. I was just going to refer to it. At the bottom line.
So the next to the last verse, we’ve we’ve just finished. I finished that last week. It finishes, thus the intelligent should generate the supreme altruistic intention to become enlightened. Why? And how do we go about doing this?
All ordinary beings are carried by the continuum of the four powerful currents, are tied with the tight bonds of actions difficult to oppose, have entered into the iron cage of apprehending self, inherent existence, are completely clouded with the thick darkness of ignorance, are born in cyclic existence limitlessly, and in their birth are tortured ceaselessly by the three sufferings. Thinking thus of the condition of mothers who have come to such a state generate the supreme altruistic intention to become enlightened. So the first line, All ordinary beings are carried by continuum of the four powerful currents. So this line can be interpreted either of two ways. Either as the four powerful currents being birth, aging, sickness and death.
Birth, aging, sickness and death. These are like four powerful currents which are carrying us all our way, you know, we’re swept up in. We’re carried along in the wake of these. Or the currents can be thought of as sensuous desire, sensuous desire, desire for conditioned existence. By conditioned existence that would be any type of existence which is within the boundaries of ego.
This idea of different styles of suffering within the satisfactory quality of states within the realm of ego, conditioned by ego, conditioned by ignorance. Sensuous desire, desire for conditioned existence, ignorance. We can talk about two types of ignorance. One, ignorance is ignorance with respect to the law of cause and effect, karma. And then there’s ignorance with respect to the nature of reality, the nature of the self, of phenomena in general.
And then the fourth current are wrong views, sometimes called perverted views. Wrong views such as nihilism, eternalism, holding at wrong ethical codes or types of supreme conduct like sacrificing animals, things like this. Some people have the belief that these have beneficial effects, that you have this type of ethics or aestheticism, sleeping on beds and nails and things like that. These are called the four powerful currents. This is another way this line can be interpreted.
Are tied with the tight bonds of actions difficult to oppose. So the you know, we’re we’re bound, you know, by our previous karma. So, you know, this is this idea of we’re tied, we’re bound by our actions and difficult to oppose. And difficult to oppose because of habitual tendencies. When we talked about karma, when we talked about the law of cause and effect, one of the effects of actions is that we repeat them, that we become habituated to them.
The more we enact any type of behavior, the easier it becomes the second time, the greater the tendency to repeat it, the more difficult it is not to repeat it again. You know, for example, or whatever. You know, this is even borne out by within physiology. I think it’s called facilitation. That within the neurons, the neuron junctions of the mind or the brain, the nervous system.
As an impulse goes over a synaptic junction, the junction between two nerve cells, the more it goes over that same path, the easier it becomes to go over that path again. So you develop pathways, tendencies, habitual patterns, and they become very difficult to break because it’s the easiest way for our energy to flow is along these patterns. So they’re difficult to oppose. I’ve entered into the iron cage of apprehending self. Due to observing the self, we misconceive its nature.
We conceive of it to inherently exist, to exist unchanging, independent. We grasp onto a fixed permanent identity, for example, the model of our self which isn’t related to anything, isn’t related to our culture, our society, our peers, our values. And because of that we’re drawn into the various afflictive emotions. You know we’re going to talk about this quite extensively when we come to the third path, seeing deeply into the nature of reality. It becomes extremely necessary if we’re going to develop any profound transformation to see the actual nature of our self, the nature of who we actually are.
Without this, without seeing deeply into the nature of our I, our person, it’s very difficult to bring about any radical change. We can make only some kind of cosmetic changes and make some nice makeup, make it a little more pleasant in a way. The ego conceives itself, you know, it it has a model of itself. You know, I’m this way. I’m this much intelligent.
I’m this much pretty. I’m gonna get this far in life. I have I’m this likable. It’s gonna has all its various measurements, all its various attributes, qualities, characteristics, and it develops a model of itself. That’s fine.
That’s our identity. No problem with that. But we have to understand that this model is simply a model. That it doesn’t exist independently of our value system, of our culture, our peer group, our society, of how we actually behave. But what ignorance does, it cuts off all this dependency.
It sees that this model of our self is somehow fixed, independent, existing apart from everything else. That this is who I am, independent of whatever I do, whatever I may think, however I may change, and holds onto this identity and holds it very tightly. It makes it very difficult to change. Why? Because we identify with this conception of who we are, this image of who we are as if we were that.
To change this conception means we have to die. If you think, if you hold, I’m a stupid person. I’m a stupid person. I’m a stupid person. To become an intelligent person means that a stupid person is going to have to die.
It’s a very gross example. To actually begin to conceive, I’m not so stupid, means that somebody has to die. That conception of yourself, that model of yourself as being such a stupid person. And we hold onto these models for our security, afraid of open fluid states. So we resist change and it becomes very difficult to change because of this fear of losing who we are.
By beginning to more and more understand that I am not this model, that this is purely a reference point, some identity useful, a convenient convention, then allows us to be more fluid, more open, allows us to change. I sometimes use the idea of I used to do a little bit of sculpture a long time ago. There’s a you know, if you do a sculpture with clay for example, if you let it sit for a while it becomes a little bit hard, not very hard, brittle. And it has to be worked all these various shapes, all the various features on the face for example if you’re doing a bust. It becomes very difficult to make any changes.
You almost have to chisel away the hard clay. It’s very difficult to work with it. But if you take that and put it back in water and let it soak in there, and you take it back out, it becomes much more pliable. You can work with it again. You can really mold it again.
So this becomes the idea of coming to an understanding of selflessness, of seeing into the nature of reality of who we actually are. It’s like taking our identity, model of ourself, and putting it and soaking it in the understanding that we are dependently existing, that we are constantly changing, that we’re not fixed. We’re placing the fluid of our understanding, of our wisdom, of selflessness, and we take it back out and we can really work, we can begin to really make some very positive transformations and radical transformations with our mind, with who we are. But for now we’ve entered into the iron cage of apprehending self. It makes it very difficult to work with.
Due to this, thinking I’m this way, we’re motivated toward ego-orientated actions. ego-orientated actions like contaminated actions, actions which are going to support, maintain, promote, enhance this model of who we are, of the ego. And this causes us to be swept away by the four powerful currents. Due to the action of ego we engage in actions. We engage in actions of attachment for those things which promote the ego.
We engage in actions of aversion, hatred for those things which seek to distract, detract from the ego. And with other things we act with indifference when there’s some confusion about how we should act. All these various actions bring about this quality of the four currents of birth, aging, disease, sickness, death. So this goes on to say that we are completely beclouded with the thick darkness of ignorance. This is root cause of all our problems, all our difficulty.
This is what causes us to misconceive the nature of our ego, causes to misconceive the nature of our self as if it existed inherently. As a final result, then we’re swept away by the four powerful currents. We’re caught up in dissatisfactory states. So I’m afraid I never quite get as far as I hope. I’d like to take time for commercial, commercial break next week.
No. I talk about I’m talking about now. About opening to others, developing this awakening heart. The thought to develop yourself, to develop the skills, abilities in order that you can help others to find peace and find peace within yourself. And all I can do very much from my side is just using a lot of words.
But next week, there’s going to be a very a person who actually expresses in his life and in his very being what these words are trying to get at. His Holiness, Sai Baba, is coming Wednesday to Adelaide. He’s going to be here for one week. He’s going to give some talk Thursday and Friday evening, and then Saturday he’s going to give a daytime meditation course on the compassionate way of life. And you know we can use, we can talk, I can talk a lot about opening to others, developing love and compassion.
I can talk about it from various points of view, reasoning, experience, intuition. But it’s an altogether different model matter. When you see someone exemplifying what what I can only talk about, it becomes a real inspiration. You know, they talk about, in Buddhism especially, but in Buddhism in general, and I think in various all the various religious traditions, necessity of having a spiritual teacher, some spiritual guide, an exemplar, if you like. Someone who can, you know, not necessarily through words, but we have to know the instructions, we have to know the techniques, the methods, but by his very being, his very example, can lift our minds up, can inspire us, inspire us, which goes beyond in all the pettiness that we usually dwell in, all the various conceptions that we may work with in our mind, but you see something very real there.
You feel something very real. And without this, I think it would be extremely difficult to wholeheartedly devote yourself to a spiritual path, to be very sincere, to really believe, as I’ve been talking about, to some very deep part of yourself in the possibility of becoming a happy, healthy, loving human being. But when you see others actually doing it, manifesting all these qualities that I can only talk about, then you then you really get your real confidence and real conviction and real trust in the path. So this is just like a little commercial I’m making here. I hope you will take advantage of the opportunity of meeting and listening to a person who, in his very life, expresses everything that I would like to be and everything that I would I try to talk about in these Friday night talks.
So now we’ll meditate for loving kindness. Consider your own difficulties, your own problems, dissatisfactions, and the fact that you want to be happy. Whatever you may have done in the past, whatever mistakes you may have created, you can simply regret them and determine not to repeat them again in the future. You can begin again. And however you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold to, you can change.
You can become anything that you want to be. You can begin again. But for the present, we have to become friends with ourselves. We have to accept ourselves. You know, even the bad parts of ourselves, even the parts of ourselves we don’t like, we have to have some compassion for because they’re parts of ourselves.
So be gentle with yourself, be kind with yourself, and wish yourself well. And direct positive feelings towards yourself. May I be happy. May I grow. May I not suffer.
May I be well. Just wish yourself well. Direct positive feelings, warm feelings, kind feelings towards yourself. Now think of someone that you like, that you love, someone of the same sex, and imagine that person in front of you. Even if you can’t see them, it doesn’t matter.
Just feel that this person is there in front of you. And just remember all the good times you shared, all the kindness that this person has shown you, the happiness that you’ve enjoyed together. And begin to radiate out, direct the positive feelings of caring, of wanting this person to be happy, and naturally begin to arise. Just direct the positive feelings of wishing well happiness to this person. Now think of someone that you neither like nor dislike, a stranger.
Imagine that person in front of you. We want to try to go beneath the superficial appearances which we usually cling to, which we usually judge people by. Now whether they’re male or female, beautiful or ugly, old or young, try to go beneath this, beneath their economic status, education, intelligence, personality. Try to see the very essence of that person. That there’s someone there who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer.
Just like yourself. And just as you wish your own self happiness, begin to wish this person happiness. It’s very much a reflection about how we actually feel about ourselves deep down as to how we feel about that essential person. So direct positive feelings towards this person. This person just wants to be happy just like yourself.
Now think of someone who disturbs your mind, someone 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. And perhaps their method of finding happiness, eliminating their suffering, has come in conflict with your method of finding your happiness, eliminating your suffering. But it’s just a conflict of interests, yours and theirs. You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past to find the happiness that you were looking for, and now this person’s done the same to you.
And just as we have to begin to forgive ourselves for the mistakes that we’ve made, we have to forgive this person for the mistakes they’ve made toward us. So just for the moment, set aside your grudge, your hurt, your anger, and see a person very much like yourself doing the best they can to find some happiness in life, being very confused about how to go about it, making many, many mistakes along the way, and wish them happiness. Now imagine all four of these people together, yourself and these three others. Just try to feel it there. Usually we would have feel different feelings toward these people.
Some we would feel close to, others distant, and a third we wouldn’t care about at all. We try to see them with respect to their their essence, that they’re all equal from the point of view of wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer, or not wanting to suffer, that there’s no difference from this point of view. And without any feelings of bias, just radiate out good feelings to all four equally, wishing them happy, wishing that they not suffer. And all the people in this room taking responsibility for their lives, for their happiness, trying to find a real method to work with, to develop, to grow, Radiate out positive feelings to everyone in the room, wishing them happiness. May you be happy, find peace, and work to bring others peace.
And everyone on the block, whatever they’re doing, whatever they’re saying, eating, cooking, getting ready for bed, They’re doing it and saying it in order to find some happiness. So radiate out positive feelings wishing that they might find that happiness. Touching everyone on the block. Spreading out further to all of Adelaide, all the people in their cars and buses walking on the streets and shops, in their homes. Further and further, extending out, opening your heart, reading out wishes to all of South Australia, all the people, animals, and insects.
Further, opening your heart further to Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Hobart, the entire country. It’s really out good feelings stretching out all over Australia. Further, radiate out further. New Zealand.