Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 98-minute commentary on Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a story about Lama Yeshe’s enigmatic advice — “Whatever makes you happy, dear” — as an entry into whether we genuinely know what brings happiness. He completes his survey of antidotes to the five hindrances: applying specific counterforces, contemplating consequences (a stray pizza craving escalating into an unstoppable drive illustrates how afflictions build), and non-identification with passing mental states, illustrated by a baseball-stadium hot-dog analogy. He argues that concentration is skill rather than willpower — like tuning a stringed instrument. The session then pivots to bodhicitta, surveying two classical methods for cultivating it — the sevenfold cause-and-effect instruction and the exchange of self for others — before closing with a guided loving-kindness meditation that extends outward from self to friend, stranger, and enemy.
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File: 1988 06 03 3 P A P.mp3
UUID: c05ad068-3fa7-4022-93ff-7e67ce6889da
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 1987-1988 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-06-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 98.0 minutes
Words: ~9,836
Meditation is to be aware of what is going on in our bodies, in our feelings, in our minds, and in the world. Each day, forty thousand children die of hunger. The superpowers now have more than fifty thousand nuclear warheads, enough to destroy our planet many times. Yet the sunrise is beautiful, and a rose that bloomed this morning along the wall is a miracle. Life is both difficult and wonderful.
To practice meditation is to be in touch with both aspects. To practice meditation, Please do not think we must be solemn in order to meditate. In fact, to meditate well we have to smile a lot. One of my teachers, my most influential in the way of influencing my practice or my path personally. Lama Yeshe, Lama Thubten Yeshe whose picture is on the right hand side on the top of the altar who founded Buddha House was the inspiration behind the FPMT.
He used to puzzle many people. They would go to him and ask for his advice and he would say, Whatever makes you happy, dear. And they would go, What do you mean by that? What he meant was, you know, if we’re probably doing something right, if we’re happy, but we have to make sure are we really happy. You know most of us are quite unaware of what is going on within our own minds and how we’re relating to the world.
And I think if meditation helps us to develop this awareness and it carries over into our everyday life, and what does make us happy is probably the thing we should be doing. And he used to emphasize this to people a great deal, to do what makes you happy, but know what makes you happy. And most of us probably don’t. We’ve sort of lost touch with ourselves. So meditation is a way of giving us the chance to get in touch with all the aspects of ourselves, both the beautiful parts and the ugly parts.
So meditation is an openness to whatever is there and becoming aware of it. Maybe talking about the I just emphasized this fact about meditation. It doesn’t need to be a solemn experience. I think I’ve mentioned that before. Actually, it should be not should, but it’s going well if a happy experience.
It will go better, we’ll say, probably, if it’s a happy experience. Much of the time that I’ve been talking about meditation I’ve been going over the five hindrances and this can sound too I have the tendency to sound very artificial or academic, as if we have a job to be done and it’s rather grim work we’re involved in and let’s get at it. It’s kind of a hard handed attitude, heavy handed attitude that we usually bring to the things that we do. But I don’t think it necessarily should be that way or it’s preferable that it be that way. It’s a good chance to relax and have an opportunity to get to know yourself.
And with sort of that attitude I think it will go well and it will sort of reinforce itself. You’ll like to do it. It won’t become another job amongst all your various other tasks that you have to perform in the day. So we’re talking about the antidotes to the five hindrances and the fact that they’re not hindrances unless we have some real conviction that there is something to be attained. If there’s no real conviction that there’s anything other than the mundane mentality that we usually have, Then these various hindrances desire, hatred, sloth and torpor, and anxiety and worry, doubt and indecisiveness aren’t really hindrances.
They’re just various states of mind which are of no particular significance other than perhaps are rather uncomfortable. But desire and hatred are rather exciting. Perhaps we find those are more desirable than boredom. So we might cultivate those in a way. But if we see that these are actual hindrances, that there’s an obstacle to higher states of consciousness and these higher states of consciousness where we can really begin to solve our problems in a real significant way, not in a stop gap measures, but in long term begin to break up the patterns which these particular instances are simply an expression of, then we’ll begin to become sincere about it and begin to want to overcome, to do away with these hindrances.
We’ve been talking about some of the methods we have to work with as antidotes for getting rid of the five hindrances. The first was just what I’ve just said was recognizing the hindrances as hindrances. Probably the most important. Otherwise, of course, there’s no motivation to work with them. So within our own experience, even if we have some moments which we all from time to time experience where we enjoy or come to know a higher state of mind.
Maybe it’s for some people maybe it’s a walk in the woods. For others it’s a beautiful music or a painting or a flower. Somewhere where our mind is opened up to some of the beauties of life and sometimes even atrocities can move our mind to where it opens up to a more profound depth of life, all the good and bad things of life. And we have a feeling that there’s something much more meaningful, much more purposeful way of life as possible, a more authentic, more profound way of living. Then it becomes having this conviction, developing this confidence that there is more authentic way of living, less mechanical, more spontaneous, more meaningful, then these hindrances can begin to be seen as hindrances and we’ll begin to have some enthusiasm and motivation to overcome them.
So the first is that seeing the hindrances as hindrances and the second was developing the specific antidotes to the particular hindrance. For example, in general all the afflictive emotions are imbalances and specifically desire, hatred, They all exaggerate either the negative quality or the positive quality of the object. In order to bring the mind back to a balanced state, we simply meditate or contemplate the opposite quality that the object in fact does have. We’re not making up something that the object doesn’t have. Another thing, you know, some people are quite afraid to develop a balanced state.
They’re quite afraid of the fact of detachment. It would be just as wrong, for example, for even a monk to develop an aversion toward a female body as have attachment toward it. But that would constitute another imbalance. So we’re not trying to say, You should give up sex, for example, since most people are quite interested in sex. There’s no problem with sex.
Sex has never been a problem. It’s our attitude toward it. It’s our attachment, perhaps our overestimation of its capacity to bring us happiness and solve the misuse of sex, we’ll say, to solve our neurotic problems. This is what we see is going to cause us problems. This is what we’re trying to overcome, not the pleasure of sex.
That’s not a problem for anybody. So to have either attachment or aversion is an imbalance. The various antidotes are used to the five hindrances to simply bring the mind back to a balanced state using the specific antidote. In the case of hatred, try to see the positive qualities of the object and develop a feeling of love and closeness, of caring for the object and so we’ll neutralize. This brings us back to a balanced state.
Where we’re actually seeing the object as it actually is, It’s always coming back to simply knowing the way things are even if it’s only the breath. Neither adding nor detracting, neither filtering out trying to overlook negative qualities, trying to see only positive qualities. And again, I don’t think even if it’s your lover, whenever you say your lover, as I began to say, some people are afraid of detachment because they equate detachment with indifference. And I think there’s a great deal of difference between detachment and indifference. Indifference is a confused state.
It’s a state which is unable to decide whether to approach or avoid the object, whether to go forward toward the object or run away from the object. It’s a confused state. It doesn’t know the object, whereas the attachment actually knows the object. And the fact is you can have a detached attitude towards someone if you have a very close, meaningful, loving relationship to them. Once you understand the actual reality of the relationship, that it may be an impermanent relationship.
It may be changing constantly. And so there’s no holding on, grasping, which is quality of attachment. So we can enjoy someone’s company. We can have a meaningful relationship, a very deep relationship, and not necessarily be attached but in fact be detached from them. And probably our relationship will be deeper because we’re allowing each other the freedom to be ourselves, not having to manipulate the person to be as you would like them to be nor because of your attachment wanting to maintain the relationship acting in such a way to promote this person liking you.
As there’s Fritz Perl, is what he said, I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine. If we meet, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped. So that’s not a cynical attitude, but it’s a very realistic one that as far as we can we have to be authentic to our present values and allow other people to do the same. And this requires some feeling of detachment, but not necessarily a feeling of indifference.
On the contrary, when you allow people to be themselves and they allow you to be yourself, there’s probably a feeling of closeness, of comradeship, of appreciation of the other person for what they really are and not how you would appreciate them for what you would like them to be. I know many people when they meet someone who, for example, a teacher, a spiritual master, some spiritual teacher, they’re quite often very equanimous. They treat many of their disciples quite equally. And this is very difficult for a lot of their students. Someone who’s been a student and been serving them for five or ten years and another student walks in and just came in out the door, out the the street and this teacher’s treating this person exactly the same way he’s treating this older student, you know, as if they were completely the same.
And a lot of students can’t quite handle this and it’s quite a lesson for them. It’s quite a teaching in the quality of So that’s the second of the antidotes we can use against the five hindrances, generating a specific antidote. And I went through these antidotes, specific antidotes for each of the five hindrances last week. The third is developing the understanding if I allow this hindrance to continue, what will happen? Considering the consequences of allowing this hindrance to continue, allowing this fantasy to go on, for example, or allowing this hatred to build up, whatever, any of the five hindrances.
So we can talk about from the point of view of specifically meditating, sitting on our cushion, being completely lost in one of the five hindrances, completely lost within desire or hatred or sloth and torpor. Now obviously from the point of view of achievement of trying to raise the level of your consciousness, you’re wasting your time aren’t you? Not only are you wasting your time, which perhaps is a loss but not that great of a loss, If you allow hindrances to remain even though you’re aware of them, you’re going to develop a habit. If you allow fantasies to continue, you you want to finish your shopping list or you want to finish how your next holiday is going to go while you’re sitting on your meditation cushion, not only are you wasting that meditation session in itself, but you’re forming a habit of not bringing the mind back to the meditation object. This is going to become an extremely difficult habit to break.
At the time you may actually become sincere about trying to meditate, you’re going to have more obstacles than if you had never meditated at all. You know, as if you were more obstacles than if you were a beginner. You’re not only wasting your time, but you’re actually causing yourself a great deal of harm, you know, from the point of view that someday you may actually really want to meditate. So this is the consequence of simply allowing the hindrance to continue when you’re aware of it. You waste your time on your cushion and you’re forming the bad habit which will eventually, if in fact you won’t become sincere about meditating is going to make meditation all that more difficult.
But just in general if we talk about, for example, desire or hatred, what are the consequences of allowing a negative state of mind to continue? It’s going to continue. It’s not only going to continue, it’s going to build up, it’s going to grow. I think you all know this. When you begin to begin some slight memory of some past, something somebody did to you in the past and you begin to mull over it and churn it in your mind and roll it over in your mind again and again and begin to really get the feel of all the various the texture of it, the quality of it, all what a nasty person this person really is and how the injustice of it and all that, I guess they grow and grow and grow and it not only makes you uncomfortable at that time, at that moment, but you know I remember when I read in the newspaper about it’s a rather tragic thing one man who killed his baby in a moment of anger and the whole course of his life of course was changed.
His life would never be the same again. And you know you have to sympathize with him. One moment of losing your anger, losing control of yourself simply by allowing emotion to build, build, build up into a completely overpowered mind. And this is the final consequence which is possible for example from anger even though we might not consider it to be so Or in the effect of desire, you’re sitting there comfortably watching the television, reading the book and then this thought pizza passes through your mind and it just kind of darts through your mind and you kind of watch it as it goes straight and the hook gets hooked on like that. And you could let it go at that point.
You could just acknowledge it, pizza. And then you start start rolling it over your mind and get the smell of the pizza, know, pepperoni or cheese. And then you remember how to be stick on pan fried pizza and there’s one just down the corner and it’d be hot and get some Italian salad with it and and you know it begins to build you begin to build up this whole wide image, this fantasy about this pizza before you know it you’re driving down the street in the car or you’re on the telephone calling up, what do you call it, Dino Pizza? So you end up going into more or less a trance and you act out. The affliction, the hindrance completely overpowers your mind.
You’ve lost complete awareness. You don’t quite know what you’re doing. So these are the consequences of allowing the affliction or the hindrance to continue. This can be another antidote that we can use. If I allow this, if I keep mulling this anger over my mind, where is it going to leave me?
What good is it going to do? If I hook onto this desire, do I really want a pizza? Maybe I probably don’t. I’m comfortably sitting here. Why should I go driving out in the cold for a pizza or whatever?
It’s going to completely capture your mind. You’re going to be captivated by these afflictive emotions. They’re going to grow to such a force where they’re going to overcome your rational mind or the mind which can take in sort of a balanced way. So another antidote to the hindrances, this is the one we’ve been practicing all along. It’s called passive resistance.
Simply not identifying with the hindrance whether it be desire, hatred, sloth or torpor. I’ve used the, what would you say, analogy American baseball game when they’re sitting in the stands in the bleachers. You call them bleachers? Okay. You’re in the stands, sins.
You’re in the you’re in the stands watching watching the the baseball game and you know there’s twenty people on each side of you on these long rows, these seats and you’re watching very intently, you know, what’s happening, and somebody taps you on the shoulder and come over and you pass you this hot dog. And it’s really a fresh bun, it’s really got this mustard and relish on it and hot steaming and maybe you really wanna take a bite into it, you know. But you didn’t buy this hot dog. You didn’t order this hot dog. This hot dog is just for you to pass on down the line.
You know, if you wanna order up your own hot dog, you can do that. So you just sort of, you know, you may you may want to bite into it, but you don’t have to. You just sort of pass it on. And if you want to order up a hot dog for yourself, you can do that. You may just raise your hand and the guy will pass you down a hot dog for you yourself.
So this is just like our various thoughts, emotions, feelings which arise in our mind. We ordered most of them up, and we don’t have to bite into it. We don’t have to bite into by bite into, I mean identify. We don’t have to identify with this feeling. The feeling of desire, hatred, sloth, torpor, anxiety, worry, indecisiveness, doubt.
We don’t have to bite into that particular emotion, that particular feeling, happiness or unhappiness. We can pass it along. We can just just like this hot dog. We don’t have to bite into it. But on the other hand, you know, thinking is quite useful, you know, using the rational mind.
And if so, if we want to order up a hot dog, want to order up some some thought patterns, something to think about, that we want to plan something, that’s fine. That’s not a hindrance. That’s not a problem. It’s these hot dogs that we haven’t ordered up that present a problem to us, but they don’t have to be a problem if we don’t identify with them, if we don’t bite into them. So that’s another possibility.
This is what we’ve been doing all along. When I say acknowledge, simply being aware and not biting into, returning back to the object of meditation. In our usual case, the breath. So all these thoughts, these feelings are going to come and go. It’s like the mind is often compared to a sky in which clouds cross over from time to time.
And these clouds have various shapes. Can see the dragons in the clouds and all kinds of animals. You can become very fascinated with all these shapes in the cloud, but you can’t just acknowledge the fact that the cloud is there and allow it to pass without trying to hang on to the clouds. Through this process of the cloud passing over the sky, the sky remains unchanged. It’s always there.
It’s always clear. That’s its nature. Likewise, we can identify, we can understand that simply that these are passing clouds, these thoughts and feelings and emotions and the mind and self is remaining clear and just allow them to pass without biting into them, without identifying with them. In the practice of meditation the way to be daring, the way to leap is to disown your thoughts, to step beyond your hopes and fears, the ups and downs of your thinking process. You can just be, just let yourself be without holding onto the constant reference points that mind manufactures.
So we can just let ourselves be without having to create new identities with our particular emotion that’s passing or our particular thoughts or feelings. We don’t need to keep reestablishing our identity. We can just let ourselves be, and the way we let ourselves be is simply acknowledging and allowing whatever it is to pass, whatever it is desire or hatred. We simply note, feeling, thinking, remembering and allow it to pass. And the fifth, so that’s four possible methods for working with the hindrances or in general working with any afflictive emotions.
The word afflictive emotions I simply mean desire, hatred, jealousy, spite, miserliness, any type of emotion which afflicts the natural peace of the mind. The mind is naturally at peace. We don’t need to make it at peace. It’s always been at peace and always will be at peace just like the clear sky. It doesn’t need to be made clear.
It is clear from the beginning. The mind is peaceful from the beginning, but due to the presence of afflictive emotions, which such as desire, hatred, etc, the natural peace just like a still lake being churned by the actions of the wind creating waves, the natural peace of the mind is disturbed by these afflictive emotions. So we can use these antidotes for all the various afflictive emotions. So the last resort, the fifth of these methods for working with hindrances or afflicting emotions in general is repression, simply not allowing that state of mind to arise, changing the direction, the attention of our mind. In the West, think in Western psychology they talk about repression as being negative, that’s going to cause you problems, difficulties.
I think in Buddhist psychology is based on the understanding that the various patterns of mind, the various emotions are simply patterns, reoccurring patterns of mind. Complex, just like a complex wave pattern that just reoccur in the mind for various reasons, one of which is karma coming into contact with certain conditions, a pattern frightens in our mind. That by allowing these patterns to express themselves, this reinforces their occurrence again. Therefore, anger is never going to be overcome by expressing anger. By expressing an emotion, any emotion, it’s going to come more frequently and stronger in the future.
Therefore, from this point of view it becomes quite important to the less desirable emotions, to express them less frequently to the point of actually repressing them, to the point where it is said for example in the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, rather than expressing anger you should become like a stone, like a piece of wood, unfeeling, unthinking rather than express anger. It not only harms you at that moment, it will harm you again in the future. You’re not only creating negative karma, but the anger will come much easier in the future. In the last session, last talk we talked about facilitation, in actual neural pathways of the brain and the nervous system that as a nerve impulse passes over a particular, what do you call, synaptic junction, the connection between two neurons, two nerve cells, there’s what’s called facilitation and it becomes easier to pass that junction again And so you develop neural pathways. Electrical charge will begin to take the path of least resistance.
And likewise our mind will begin to take the path of least resistance. If probably a certain situation arises, it’s more difficult to be patient than to express our anger, of course we’re going to express anger again and again and again. So we have to at some time begin to break up these patterns, begin to diminish their strength and frequency. The most unskillful way to do this is simply to become unfeeling stone, to repress or divert your attention. But this in a way is talked about by some teachers as being it can be used in a skillful way in the sense of when you’re depressed, when you’re unhappy, pretend that you’re happy, for example.
Just jump around and sing and laugh for a few minutes. You don’t have to identify with that. You sort of divert your attention and try to identify as best you can with a more positive state of mind, a happy state of mind, and quite often this can work. But no matter with desire and our fantasy is coming up, hatred is coming up, simply divert your attention and not allow yourself to think about it or if necessary just become a piece of wood. So in our meditation, willpower is not going to willpower in itself is not going to bring us enlightenment no matter how much willpower you may have.
Willpower in itself is not going to make you a good meditator. You have to become skillful. You have to become skillful with your own mind, just learning, like learning how to play a musical instrument. It’s not a matter of sheer willpower. For myself that was my original thinking when it came to meditation was in the development, for example, of a very strong concentration.
I thought it was just a matter of willpower. If I was strong enough in my mind I could make myself stay on that object. This is simply not true. You’re never going to develop a powerful concentration or Samādhi or calm abiding, tranquil abiding simply by willpower. You must become skillful with your mind just like tuning a musical instrument, know a stringed instrument, you know to get the right tone, you must cannot be too tight or too loose.
It doesn’t matter how hard you hit yourself against the wall, you’re hitting. This is my thinking that I thought if I just hit my head against the wall hard enough I’m going to develop concentration and this is misunderstanding the nature of concentration. Actually by concentration, they talk about people having very powerful concentration. It means their mind is very calm. It’s the same way of making the same statement.
You know when the mind is calm it takes very little effort to concentrate the mind or for the mind to attend to any object. It’s just a matter of resting the mind on a particular object if the mind is calm. No calmness and concentration almost become the same term looking at it from two different aspects. So I think it’s important to think in terms of calmness, bringing the quiet in the mind, of allowing it to return to its natural state. I just talked about how the natural state of the mind is peace.
We don’t have to force peace onto our mind. We just have to remove the hindrances to this natural state of peace and this takes skill. You’ve gone through possible skillful antidotes that you could apply. So in our meditation we can think about that, that we’re bringing the mind to its natural state. We’re not trying to force it to do anything unnatural.
We’re not trying to put a straight jacket on it. There has to be a feeling of purposefulness and meaning in what you’re doing. Try to understand what we’re doing and what we’re trying to achieve. The world can be explored. It is workable wherever you go, whatever you do, but I would like to plant one basic seed in your mind.
I feel that it is absolutely important to make the practice of meditation your source of strength, source of basic intelligence. Please think about that. You could sit down and do nothing. Just sit down and do nothing. Stop acting, stop speeding.
Sit and do nothing. You should take great pride in the fact that you have learned a very valuable message. You actually can survive beautifully by doing nothing. It’s not too easy to do nothing. It takes a lot of work.
So we’ll try that for a few minutes. Try to do nothing. Recite the verse of refuge. In Buddhism, ordinary existence, by ordinary existence we can read existence which is bounded by these compulsive reoccurring patterns of the ego. Ordinary existence is viewed as being fraught with suffering, fear, misery, and pain.
And the initial spiritual urge is expressed by the phrase going for refuge. Refuge then implied an abandonment of allegiance to ordinary criteria of what is meaningful. The abandonment of allegiance to ordinary criteria of what is meaningful. In this state of questioning, one entertains the possibility of awakening and derives inspiration from the fact of the enlightenment of Śākyamūni Buddha. Going for refuge means orientating oneself toward the attainment of enlightenment, taking refuge in the Buddha, orientating oneself towards wisdom, clarity, towards the methods, the techniques for development of this clarity, this wisdom, this love, spontaneous actions benefiting others orientating oneself toward the context in which it occurs, the Sangha, the spiritual community.
So I think that’s just simply a reorientation, reevaluating rather than leading a life in a reactive manner, we lead it in a creative manner. We derive our own values, what is meaningful to us, what actually brings ourselves happiness, what brings purposefulness, authenticity to our lives. This is going for refuge. No matter whether we say these words or not, going for refuge to Buddha, your own wisdom, your own clarity, to enlightenment, knowing how things really are, love and compassion, and inexhaustible energy of working for others, for the benefit of others, going for refuge to the truth, the way we can become free, the way we can help others to be free, and to those fellow pilgrims, to your fellow aspiring spiritual friends who act as supports, as guides, as examples, as inspirations. So no matter whether we say these words or this formula or not, if this is the way we conduct our lives then we’re going for refuge.
If we don’t conduct our lives in this way then no matter whether we say these words or not we’re not going for refuge. Where do you go to solve your problems? To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened Through the merit I create by practicing giving in the other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. We’re looking at the three principal aspects of the path by Tsongkhapa and then we pass out some copies of it. The three principal aspects of the path developing the determination to be free, opening to others and seeing deeply into the nature of reality. We’ve completed the first principal aspect of the path.
And the verse which begins at the bottom begins the second principal aspect of the path, their actual explanation. And I explained this for our last talk. All ordinary beings are carried by the continuum of the four powerful currents. So this powerful what is meant by four powerful currents could either be interpreted as birth, old age, disease and death or sensuous desire, desire for conditioned existence, I. E.
By that I mean desire for any existence within the boundaries of ego. Ignorance, that’s two. Ignorance with respect to cause and effect and selflessness, karma and the ultimate nature of reality. And the fourth is wrong views. All of these four are the causes of the former four that is sensuous desire, desire of a conditioned existence, ignorance and wrong views.
These four are the causes of birth, old age, disease and death. So these four powerful currents can be taken to mean either one of those sets of four. Are tied with the tight bounds of actions difficult to oppose. So these are the bonds of our karma, our habitual tendencies of mind. I just mentioned this.
karma has many effects. Among the various types of effects is the effect which is similar to the cause. That is we simply like or have a tendency or are habituated to repeat the same actions again and again and again. And these bind us. How difficult it is to quit smoking, that’s a very simple mundane example.
How difficult it is for us to forego self-cherishing, which is infinitely more difficult. And we’re bound in these. We’re tied by these tendencies of mind, our karma. Have entered into the iron cage of apprehending self. So we’re in a cage of afflictive emotions desire, hatred, desirous attachment, jealousy, miserliness.
These are like the bars of a cage and we’re trapped in this iron cage due to the apprehending concrete, inherently existing self independently unchanging the existent self which acts as the foundation for all the various other afflictive emotions. When we come to the third principal aspect of the path, seeing deeply into the nature of reality, we’ll go into that in some detail without understanding that there’s no way to go beyond the bounds of ego. There’s no way to get out of our cage. We can only make it comfortable at best. Completely beclouded with the thick darkness of ignorance.
So we’re led into all these afflictive emotions by ignorance. Ignorance has two properties. One, it causes to mistake the nature of reality and also obstructs, simply obstructs us from seeing the way things actually are. So it acts like a thick cloud from being able to apprehend the actual way things are, to apprehend the ultimate nature of our self, for example. So it not only obstructs but it also causes us to make mistakes.
It’s not simply the term in the Buddhist sense literally it means unknowing, misknowing perhaps, ignorance. It does not simply mean that we don’t know something. Know, I don’t know what’s in the next room, for example. It means something more than that. It means an obstruction to seeing the way things are and actually misinterpreting, misunderstanding the way things are.
So the next verse, Are born into cyclic existence limitlessly. So this is the final result from the thick darkness of ignorance is that the mind we are powerlessly forced to take rebirth. We have no choice in this matter. We’re powerlessly forced to experience old age, disease and death even though we don’t want to. cyclic existence, compulsive reoccurring patterns that I talked about this when we went through the discussion of karma, how simply upon meeting a particular condition, particular pattern which is in a potential form in our mind is activated, ripened and we act out that pattern. Someone pushes our button and we automatically react.
We do this choicelessly. We do not choose to do this. It’s as if we have no control. We went through some examples. For example, the very fact that you of having to undergo, for example, the mental suffering of a mother, of a father, the pleasure, the mental pleasure of a mother or father is due to a compulsive pattern in your mind.
By conceiving of yourself as a mother you’re going to experience the happiness and the suffering of a mother. If you did not conceive of yourself in that way then you would not experience these particular types of suffering likewise a female or a male. I explain this in the sense that the interplay of reactive patterns which constitute these tendencies of karma. A woman is walking down the street looking in the store windows enjoying the sight window shopping and she sees a man walking across the street. Now, if a condition is present, a situation occurs, automatically various reoccurring reactive patterns are going to become activated.
She’s going to begin to conceive of that object walking across the street as a man. She then conceives of herself as a woman. She then conceives of memory and various images come into play and she becomes afraid, for example, and she crosses over to the other side of the street. This whole pattern she had no choice. The fear which arose is suffering.
She had no choice in this matter. It’s not that she chose to conceive of herself as a woman. She didn’t. It’s not that she chose to conceive of this object walking across the street as a man, she didn’t. These are all karmic consequences, tendencies of the mind to label particular objects in a particular way.
There was no choice involved in this whole process whatsoever. We’re powerless in this process without awareness and they’re tortured ceaselessly by the three sufferings. So we’ve talked about the three sufferings. We talked about them as I’ve stated only without a foundation of the determination to be free there’s no way we can generate the latter two paths. Without seeing our own suffering and developing the determination to be free beyond our own dissatisfactory patterns are we going to develop the determination or compassion to help others to go beyond their dissatisfactory patterns?
Without this determination to be free for ourselves there’s no way we can really develop real compassion. We can’t really want somebody else to be free, to want them to go beyond suffering unless we have wanted that for ourselves because compassion is simply a redirecting of our attention away towards others without having an intimate understanding of our own situation. There’s no way we can intimately understand what’s going on in someone else’s mind. So we have to see our own situation very clearly and understand the satisfactory quality of any state which is bounded by ego, of our present direction in life, of our present patterns of life and want to go beyond them, to grow, to emerge out of them. And we simply redirect our attention to others and understand that others in the same situation that we’re in exactly equal.
They want to be happy just like myself. They don’t want to suffer just like myself and this causes compassion to arise. So in a way there’s no difference between the determination to be free, renunciation, whatever you want to call it, and compassion. It’s simply a change of object rather than pointing your attention towards yourself and your own suffering, you point it toward others and others’ suffering and renunciation becomes compassion. So in developing this determination to go we investigated the three types of suffering, three types of dissatisfactory quality of ego states.
The suffering of pain, mental and physical pain, the suffering of change, that there’s nothing that we can hold onto, that things are constantly changing, and the suffering of pervasive compositional suffering, dissatisfactory quality of having to carry around the burden of ego wherever we go, whatever we do. It’s always there watching us on our back. It’s a very subtle kind of dissatisfactory quality, but it’s still there. So these are the three types of sufferings which we ourselves have to investigate and wish to go beyond. By extending our understanding to others then we develop compassion for them.
Having viewed others in the same way that we viewed ourselves, thinking thus of the conditions of mothers who have come to such a state. Now this, when it uses the word mothers, it means that quite literally. You know we’re going to talk about this maybe next week. It gets to the whole point of rebirth that our minds have no beginning and no end, the continuum of our mind. We have taken an infinite number of rebirths at an infinite number of places and in the vast majority of those rebirths we’ve been born from a mother.
So therefore logically we cannot point to any person and say this person has not been our mother, that everyone in this room has in a past life been your mother and has raised you in kindness again and again, just like the mother of your this life. So it literally means thinking of the condition of my mother. This is difficult to develop this conviction. It’s difficult to develop in rebirth, but we can go over some of the reasons, the reasoning next week. That’s quite necessary.
Taking thus and the condition of mothers who have come to such a state generate the supreme altruistic intention to become enlightened. So we have to ask ourselves, Can I even help myself? I don’t want to suffer. I don’t want to continue experiencing these dissatisfactory states, reoccurring patterns of my mind. Can I actually alleviate my own difficulties, my own dissatisfaction, let alone can I even begin to think about helping others in a really meaningful, effective way?
So in order to go beyond these dissatisfactory qualities of conditioned existence, existence conditioned by ego. We have to develop the knowledge, the understanding of the various means, the various paths, the various techniques. Not only that, have to actually experience, put them into use and experience their results. It’s only then that we can ourselves understand the methods for going beyond dissatisfaction and it’s only then that we can be of real effective benefit to others. So it becomes necessary for us personally to experience the results of the methods to bring happiness.
We have to understand what types of actions serve to support and maintain dissatisfactory patterns of the ego, what types of action perpetuate suffering and dissatisfaction, and which types of actions lead beyond to more positive states. Otherwise I think we’re very much the blind leading the blind. It’s not that we can’t help others. It’s not that we shouldn’t. We should do what we can, but we have to see that ultimately most of what we’re doing is alleviating temporary difficulties.
The basic patterns haven’t been changed. You can hold someone’s hand but you can’t always be there to hold their hand and sometimes holding the hand just isn’t enough. So you have to develop the skills and the means to be able to help others more effectively than merely holding their hand. It’s not to say holding your hand isn’t a worthwhile and meaningful thing to do, But there are other more meaningful and other more worthwhile means we can employ to benefit others to help them go beyond their difficulties. To get more at the root of their difficulties rather than a particular manifestation which they’re experiencing at that moment.
But there’s a problem, difficulty in this. If you want to solve the world’s problems you have to put your own household in order, your own individual life. This is somewhat of a paradox. People have a genuine desire to go beyond their own individual cramped lives to benefit the world, But if you do not start at home then you have no hope of helping the world. So the first step in learning how to rule is learning how to rule your own household, your immediate world.
There is no doubt that if you do so then the next step will come naturally. If you fail to do so then your contribution to the world will be further chaos. How can we really help others? Know, talking about this current, this stream of the four powerful currents, how can we save others from the swirling stream of their own mind? How can we rescue them?
So in order to be of real benefit to others, of significant effective benefit to others, then we have to develop skills ourselves and then we have to become extremely sane people, healthy people ourselves. Merely wishing to help others is not enough. There’s a saying by the Buddha where he says, The lords of subdueers. Lords of subdueers is an epithet for the Buddhas. The lords of subdueers do not wash away sins with water nor do they remove suffering with their hands nor do they transfer their realizations to the minds of others, but by their showing of the truth all will be made free.
So in the end it’s the truth and understanding the truth which is going to help us to go beyond our dissatisfactions and our frustrations and our suffering. By understanding the truth ourselves, by being free ourselves, then we are in a perfect position to help others understand the truth, to help others to be free. So this we have to develop this inspiration and this aspiration to make ourselves happy, healthy, sane, loving human beings in order to help others to do the same. It’s like we have to get our own act together in order to help others do the same. We all have to become students of truth.
We all have to become the truth in a way and thereby we’ve become a refuge for others. You know we’ve been talking about refuge quite a lot and every week I talk about refuge. Ultimately we all have to become a refuge for others. We take refuge in ourselves and we become a refuge for others so that they can become a refuge for themselves. We all have to become a refuge, a guide, an exemplary, and a teacher.
And then we call this the Buddha. A Buddha is just someone who’s experiencing unremitting peace within themselves and motivated by compassion works in the world to benefit others to help them find the same peace that he or she themselves are experiencing. You know if So our motivation begins to change somewhat, begins to take in more universal character, why we’re doing what we’re doing, the activities, actions, purpose for practicing, our purpose for meditating. If there’s no nobler thought that the human mind has ever thought, has ever considered, then to seek to achieve perfection for the sake of all sentient beings. No matter what we do in our lives at the time of our death, if we can look back at our lives and see our lives were completely meaningless, wasted, that we achieved nothing.
If only we can look back and for one minute we can remember that there was a moment when we actually aspired to perfect ourselves to become healthy, happy, sane, loving human beings for the benefit of others. If we can generate that thought for one moment and we can die remembering that if nothing else in our entire lives we had that one moment experience then we can die quite happily, quite satisfied that our mind was not wasted, that our life was not meaningless, useless. Just that thought alone. He’s talking about the awakening mind, opening to others, bodhicitta, awakening heart. It is the supreme ambrosia that overcomes the sovereignty of death.
It is the inexhaustible treasure that eliminates all poverty in the world. It is the supreme medicine that quells the world’s disease. It is the tree that shelters all beings wandering entire on the path of conditioned existence. It is the universal bridge that leads to freedom from unhappy states of birth. It is the dawning moon of the mind that dispels the torment of the afflictive emotions.
It is the great sun that finally removes the misty ignorance of the world. It is butter from the churning of the milk of Dharma. For all those guests traveling on the path of conditioned existence who wish to experience the bounties of happiness, this will satisfy them with joy and actually place them in supreme bliss. It’s said that by generating the awakening mind, there’s opening our hearts to others, awakening heart. This single quality and all the other qualities will naturally follow.
It will come automatically. We don’t have to worry about them. We don’t have to we can begin to not have to be so concerned about ourselves. We don’t have to worry that we’re not going to get the happiness that we desire. Simply by achieving this, developing this one thought, that all the happiness we could ever hope for will naturally flow towards us.
All the various realizations, all the various understandings necessary to achieve wisdom, to develop the higher states of consciousness, they will naturally come. We don’t even have to consider. We don’t even have to work toward them. They will just flow toward us. This is the power of this one thought, this altruistic intention to achieve highest enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.
In the next few talks I’m going to discuss the methods for actually cultivating, developing this awakening heart, the actual methods, the meditational techniques. There are two lineages, two basic methods, techniques. One technique is called the sevenfold cause and effect instruction. It has a lineage from Buddha Śākyamūni down through Maitreya and Asaṇga and then to Atisha. It involves five causes and two effects.
And here, first, we’re going to recognize all sentient beings as our mother. That’s why we’re going to have to discuss rebirth. Then we’re going to remember their kindness, develop a wish to repay their kindness, develop love, compassion. Those are five causes. This is going to produce two effects that is exceptional resolve, determining to become healthy, to become skillful, to develop all your qualities to their fullest extent so you can benefit others.
Developing this determination, this resolve And this leads to the seventh, which is the effect of the awakening heart, this intention to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. This is based on equanimity as a foundation, developing an unbiased feeling, a feeling of concern equally for all sentient beings. This is like the foundation, the platform whereby you actually develop these five causes and having as a result these two effects. The second method as a lineage comes from Śākyamūni Buddha again down through Mañjuśrī to Śāntideva and again to Atisha. It’s called exchanging self for others.
What is exchanged is that we don’t change places with other people. We exchange self-cherishing for the cherishing of others. So it begins with equalizing oneself with others. You know that all sentient beings, what happens just like myself, and those sentient beings just like myself once suffered. And then we begin to contemplate the negative consequences of self-cherishing, the positive consequences of cherishing others.
And we actually begin to identify with others. We do role playing in a very skillful way. We empathize with others to the extent that we actually identify ourselves as them. This is the actual exchange of self for others, a psychological technique where we begin to shift the psychological center from ourselves to others, identifying with others. Then we practice a visual technique which is called giving and taking where we actually not actually in our imagination we imagine taking on the sufferings of others and giving away our happiness to others in return.
Becomes a real blow to the ego empire. Our ego doesn’t like it in the least. So in this whole process we’re trying to develop a sense of relatedness with others and an affectionate concern for others for all sentient beings to the extent that we simply cannot remain indifferent to the situation of others, to the state of others. Begins to penetrate. In India it becomes quite apparent how you must develop, you generally do develop a calloused state of mind.
You see so much poverty, physical stark naked suffering in front of you constantly that you almost as a protection, as a defense mechanism, have to become indifferent. And our ego develops this tough hide, this leather surface and it doesn’t allow things to penetrate, we’re purposely beginning to soften up this leather. You might question, Well, what the hell is the benefit of doing something like that? It’s only going to cause me difficulty suffering. You know, it sounds like it’s the opposite of what you should be doing or what might be desirable and why cause myself more problems than I already have.
It would be a great mistake to think that following a spiritual path is simply the skillful avoidance of pain and problems. What we’re doing now is trading in our egos for wisdom and compassion. It’s similar to trading in a pile of shit for the most beautiful things that you could ever imagine in the world. That sounds like a rather absurd analogy, but you can become rather attached to a pile of shit. Its feeling and its smell and its texture, It becomes very familiar, you identify with it.
It becomes rather comforting after a while. So to the extent that’s the situation that we’re in, we’ve sort of become familiar with with the ego to the extent that we find it very comfortable even though there may be other more exalted states. We rather turn our blind eye to it and remain with our pile of shit, with that particular pile of shit that we’re quite attached to. So Nāgārjuna, who is one of the greatest of all Buddhist masters and like a second Buddha, he says, If the rest of humanity and I wish to attain insurpassable awakening, the basis for this is bodhicitta, bodhicitta being an awakening heart, as stable as the king of mountains, compassion, which touches everything and pristine wisdom, which does not rely on duality. So he’s specifically mentioning compassion.
If we want unsurpassable awakening, if we want to be happy, healthy, loving, free human beings, we have no choice than to develop compassion, than to develop an open ourselves to others. For an intelligent person, when their mind is seen clearly, there’s no choice. Patrul Rinpoche said, the thinking person there’s nothing else to be done, there’s nothing else to do in life than to practice the spiritual path. It’s only when we’re confused that we see choices in front of ourselves. They’re only pure choices.
When there’s clarity, when there’s wisdom, then there’s only action. There’s you know your way. So we have to make some effort in some small way, you know, some intelligent effort. If it is your inmost desire to go beyond your ego centered life then you have to make some effort. So if we accept some pain voluntarily then someday our pain is going to end.
If we refuse then that whether we want it or not, we’re going to continue to suffer. Our pain is never going to end. This is the tragedy of self-cherishing. In a book called by Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, There’s a father, a Greek Orthodox father and father’s name was Zosima. Father Zosima is dying and his brothers, his students are gathered around his deathbed.
Fathers and teachers, I ponder what is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. So it’s difficult to constantly be loving and compassionate, but it’s even more difficult not to be. So we’ll meditate on loving kindness. So think of your own difficulties, your own problems 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. However you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold, you can change. You can become anything that you want to be. But just for the moment we have to accept ourselves, make friends with ourselves, all the various parts of ourselves, the good parts and the bad parts, have compassion for ourselves and wish ourselves well.
So just direct positive feelings towards yourself. May I be happy. May I grow. May I not suffer. May I be well.
Direct good feelings towards yourself. Think of someone that you like, that you love, someone of the same sex. Imagine that person in front of you now. And remember all the good times that you’ve shared together, the kindness that this person has shown you, the happiness. Begin to direct the feelings of concern, wishing happiness, that naturally begin to arise.
Radiate out positive feelings to this person, wanting them to be happy. May all your wishes come true and you never suffer. Now think of one you neither like nor dislike, a stranger. You feel indifferent toward. Imagine that person in front of you.
I want to try to go beneath the superficial appearances that we usually judge people by, that we usually cling to, whether they’re male or female, beautiful or ugly, young or old, whether they’re educated, their economic status, personality, try to go down to the depth of that person, to the essence of that person. Try to see the essence of that person, that there’s someone there who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. Exactly the same. Just as you wish your own self happiness, Wish this person happiness because it’s very much a reflection about how we feel around ourselves deep down, how we relate to this essential person who’s just like us. I wish them happiness.
Let’s radiate out positive feelings to this person. Now think of someone who disturbs your mind, who you have problems with, an enemy. Imagine that person in front of you. This person wants happiness 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.
It’s just a conflict of interest, yours and theirs. You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past to find the happiness that you were looking for. This person’s done the same to you. And just as you have to forgive yourself for the mistakes that you’ve made, you have to begin to forgive this person for the mistakes that they’ve made. Just for the moment, set aside your grudge, your hurt, your anger, and see someone just like yourself wanting to be happy, being very confused about how to go about it, and making many mistakes along the way, and wish them happiness.
Imagine all four of these people together, yourself and these three others, and try to see them as essentially equal in the point of view that they all want happiness, that they don’t want to suffer, there’s no difference. All essentially exactly the same.