Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A cat watching a mouse hole — completely absorbed, its whole being aimed at one point — is Ven Jampa Gendun’s central image for purposeful meditation. In this 98-minute session, he opens with the paired roles of mindfulness and awareness in breath practice, then reviews Tsongkhapa’s three principal aspects of the path before turning at length to the Four Immeasurables. He shows how love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity form a self-correcting unit: each counteracts the tendency of the others to degenerate — love into clinging, compassion into despair, sympathetic joy into self-indulgent vicariousness, equanimity into apathy — and how together they guard against spiritual materialism. A story of two doubt-struck Christian hermits in the Egyptian desert illustrates how accepting responsibility for another draws on reserves one wouldn’t otherwise find. The session closes with a long guided meditation radiating goodwill outward from self to all sentient beings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1988 06 24 3 P A P.mp3
UUID: f6282494-d372-4d4a-815a-a02d03f7c496
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 1987-1988 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-06-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 98.0 minutes
Words: ~10,036
Peacefully, breathing and smiling with awareness, we are our true selves. We have sovereignty over ourselves. When we open ourselves up to a TV program, we let ourselves be invaded by that program. Sometimes it is a good program, but often it is just noisy. Because we want to have something other than ourselves, interests, we sit there and let a noisy program invade us, assail us, destroy us.
Even if our nervous system suffers, we don’t have the courage to stand up and turn it off because if we do that, we have to return to ourself. Meditation is the opposite. It helps us to return to our true self. Practicing meditation in this kind of society is very difficult. Everything seems to work in consort to try to take us away from our true self.
We have thousands of things like videotapes and music which help us to be away from ourselves. Practicing meditation is to be aware, to smile, to breathe. These are the opposite side. We go back to ourselves in order to see what is going on because to meditate means to be aware of what is going on. What is going on is very important.
I talked about I gave an analogy about the factors that we’re cultivating, making main use of, any type of meditation, be it mindfulness of breathing or tantric meditations and all the gamut of meditations between, is the factors of mindfulness and awareness. And I mentioned that mindfulness was like remembering that you’re carrying a bowl of water on your head and awareness was watching the situation as you walked along the road. We have to have both together, otherwise we’re going to spill the water. I think another useful meditation, another useful analogy is the analogy of holding a glass. Mindfulness just means memory, recollection, holding an object of meditation, whether it’s a breath or whether it’s a visualization or a thought, some analysis.
And so we’re just holding this glass. And we can hold that glass with various intensities of strength or we can actually become unaware of it completely and let it drop. Likewise, mindfulness is just simply holding the glass. Awareness tells us how we’re holding the glass, whether it’s being held too tightly or whether it’s being held too loosely or possibly not at all. So in this way we can begin to understand that we’re working with two factors: mindfulness, which is holding the object, and awareness is which is telling us how we’re holding the object or if in fact we’re holding the object at all.
When we meditate, for example with mindfulness of breathing, we’re just meditating for about five minutes. And in that period of time, it’s important that there will be some real purposefulness in your meditation. If there’s some real intensity and purposefulness, it’s going to go very well. You’re going to train your mind very quickly. And what I mean by purposefulness is using another analogy, perhaps not a very good Buddhist analogy, but anyway it’s meaningful, of a cat watching where a mouse is coming out of a hole.
It’s completely one pointedly watching. Its whole body, its whole intention, its whole being is concentrated where that mouse is going to come out of that hole. And likewise, we’re simply watching our breath, holding it with mindfulness, but there has to be this factor of awareness. We’re sitting there breathing. We’re noting perhaps in, out, one, in, out, two.
Then maybe a mental image arises. For example, a visual image. You can just note it instantly. Like that cat which is standing at the hole of the mouse, instantly note. You can use any type of notation you want.
Imaging, imagining, seeing if you like, internally seeing with the mind’s eye. So you’re going in, out. And at the very first moment that some visual image appears, seen, and go back to the mind, go back to the breath. Thought arises, and go in, out, one, in, out, two. You’re that cat watching that hole.
You’re the awareness watching the breath, which is being held by mindfulness. The moment the thought arises, thinking, come back to the breath. Hearing, you know, hearing the fan on the motor, the heater. Hearing, if your mind were to wander to that hearing, come back to the breath. So it’s like this cat.
This is completely absorbed watching at that point where this mouse is going to come out of that hole with this entire being. It’s very purposeful, a great deal of purpose involved. Likewise, during a short period of five minutes, we can maintain such an intensity of awareness, of purposefulness in our meditation. It’s going to have a really far reaching effect on your meditation rather than having perhaps even longer periods but more lackadaisical, more kind of less attention, less alertness. In some ways, I use the word awareness.
This term can also be translated just as easily with the term alertness, watchfulness, being awake in that sense. So for five minutes we can watch the breath, hold it with our mindfulness as best we can, but always with this purposefulness, very intense alertness, watching, whatever comes up. If our mind wanders off the breath every five seconds, it doesn’t matter particularly. If we’re training ourselves in awareness, if we know when our mind has wandered off, and we keep simply bringing it back in again and again, just like the cat watching that the mouse hole. So let’s try that for five minutes.
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, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections, may attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until enlightenment, and the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections.
May I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. This is a little book written by a Vietnamese Buddhist master. He’s talking about taking refuge in the Buddha, for example. The root word buddh can you hear from the word buddha? The root word buddh means to wake up, to know, to understand.
And he or she who wakes up and understands is called a buddha. It is as simple as that. The capacity to wake up, to understand, and to love is called Buddha nature. When Buddhists say, I take refuge in the Buddha, they are expressing trust in their own capacity of understanding, of becoming awake. The Chinese and the Vietnamese say, I go back and rely on the Buddha in me.
Adding in me makes it very clear that you yourself are the Buddha. So we go for refuge to the Buddha, our own wisdom, our own clarity of mind, even in its present germinal form, because that’s where we’re going to really solve our all our problems. We go for refuge to the Dharma, the means by which we’re able to develop what is now merely a seed, where it’s going to growth and develop and actualize to its fullest extent. And we go for refuge to the Sangha, which is the social context in which growth takes place. Growth doesn’t take place in isolation, in a vacuum.
It requires cause and it requires a special type of environment. We have to have both the causes and the various conditions. So we’ve been talking about a very short text by the fourteenth century yogi scholar, Tsongkhapa, whose image is just in front of those two framed photos on top of the altar. He is the founder of one of the four main sects of Tibetan Buddhism, the Gelug sect, which simply means something like the virtuous tradition. This is a very short text, but it contains the essential entirety of the path.
So we’ve been talking about the three principal aspects of the path: developing the determination to be free, opening to others, and seeing deeply into the nature of reality. And just as a way of review, in order to develop the determination to be free, we describe several meditations and attitudes which need to be developed. For example, first we have to appreciate our potential without appreciating the fact that we have the seed of Buddha within us or the seed of Christ or whatever we want to call it, Buddha nature. We’re never going to really become sincere about developing ourselves. It will be either a matter of curiosity or an intellectual pastime or it will be simply very short lived over simply a period where we’re perhaps very depressed and we’re willing to try anything.
And then when the sun shines again, we forget about the moments of difficulty that we just had and we turn our back on our practice because we take this as being the best that we’re going to ever experience, even no matter how mundane and mediocre such a state might be. At least it’s not gross suffering. So we have to begin to appreciate our potential and appreciate the fact that we have all the conditions and circumstances necessary, both outer and inner. We pointed out we have to go through this very thoroughly, understanding how special we are, in fact. It’s not a matter of pride because pride represents an inflation.
It represents some adding on something which, in fact, is not there. But this is simply looking at our actual situation realistically and appraising it realistically in a very balanced point of view and seeing that we’re very fortunate in the world to have all the circumstances, material, physical, health, all the necessary endowments and leisure to practice the Dharma, to practice a means of growth. It’s a very rare circumstance, but it’s not going to last forever. It’s definitely going to die even though we would rather not think about it, even though we keep putting it off and thinking it’s going to be in some big distant future. We don’t have to worry about it now.
This is in fact not realistic. It’s simply a defense mechanism that the time of death is uncertain. And in fact at the time of our death what is going to be of any benefit to us? You know, all the various possessions that we’ve worked our lives to accumulate, whether they’re videos, cars, homes, the status that we’ve worked so hard to gain that has cost us so much, and even the people who sincerely love us and that we love, and even this own body, our own body which we take such good care, which we take such pride in. At the time of our death none of these things can be of real benefit to us.
Only the degree we have cultivated, we have developed our mind. Only the skillful actions which we have implanted on our mind stream will be of any benefit to us in the future. But what kind of actions of body, speech, mind have we actually created during this life? What are the overwhelming tendencies of our mind? Are they in a positive direction or a negative direction or simply indifferent qualities?
You know, is our life predominated by positive skillful actions such as faith and love and compassion, wisdom, or are they predominantly emotions of desire, attachment, anger, spite, jealousy, miserliness and pride. So we can check up for ourselves. And looking at this, we can come to some understanding of what the future is going to hold for us. So it’s definite that we’re going to die in the moment of our death is uncertain and that the only thing which can benefit us is the type of life we are leading now every day of our life. This is the only thing which can benefit us.
And we looked at the nature of the possibilities of suffering, of dissatisfactory states, of any state which is bounded by ego from the very most intense physical pain of the hell realms where beings are completely bound up and unremitting pain to the absorptions of the celestial gods and all the various possibilities in between, that they all are marked with dissatisfaction. That there’s nothing within cyclic existence that is within the realm of ego, within the actions, the securing actions of ego, the boundaries of ego, there’s nothing worth becoming or having within this entire realm because they’re all marked with dissatisfactoriness through the various three types of suffering. The suffering of pain, mental and physical, the suffering of change, the very fact that we can never hang on to anything, that in fact there’s a perpetual having to keep running after new happiness, this new experience because the old are seen as pleasurable only relative to the past sufferings. And once we forget about what the past sufferings were like, we lose our reference point and we lose the feeling of pleasure we’re now experiencing. So again, we have to work to find new, more extreme types of pleasure.
So it’s like a built in catch-twenty two in our lives that we can never hold on to happiness. We’re always like a rat running in circles. You develop a relationship and at first it’s very beautiful. And then after a while you forget the beauty of and it becomes very you develop neutral feelings. It becomes somewhat boring and unexciting.
And then it becomes a source of suffering, so you decide to move on. In view of your suffering that you can remember, a new relation seems to be very pleasurable. But as you forget these past sufferings, then this pleasurable relationship becomes boring. And again, it turns into displeasure, unhappiness, and you move on. And we go through our lives, in our jobs, in relationships, and within ourselves, how we view ourselves, always having to watch over ourselves and feelings of guilt and constantly never finding any peace within ourselves.
And the very quality of having an ego, the pervasive compositional suffering of us compared to carrying a bundle of thorns on our back. There was always this watcher watching over everything that we do, always having to guard our territories, always having to see others as threats, always having to reestablish our self image, establish our credentials again and again, and it becomes very tiring and weary. There’s no time just to be authentic, no time just to be ourselves and let go and relax and find some peace. So within any state bounded by ego there’s no real peace. So there develops a unity, a longing to transcend, to go beyond the bounds of ego.
And this is the determination to be free, to emerge out of any egoistic state. But we’re not alone. As I pointed out, we have two overriding aspects to ourselves, the self or the personality, and that is our experiential self, our private self, and our social self, the self which stands in relationship to others. And without taking into consideration the social self, the self which stands in relationship with others, any type of growth would be an imbalance. It would be probably more than not simply a perpetuation of our own egotistical desires and therefore can never really take you to where you want to go, to a source of peace.
It’s only by taking into consideration our relationships with others that in fact others are exactly like ourselves. They want happiness and they don’t want to suffer, and that I’m one person and others are many. It’s only the isolating boundaries of ego which make us feel separate from others. It’s not that there isn’t an I and that there isn’t others, but these are not ultimately existent. They’re not as solid and concrete as we feel them to exist.
We pointed this out through the reference to Śāntideva’s engaging in the bodhisattva’s deeds where he pointed out the fact that the hand removes the thorn from the foot even though the hand is not suffering because they’re part of the same whole, that’s part of the same body. And likewise, all living beings, all humanity is part of something greater than each individual. And it’s only the ego boundaries by which we conceive of our separateness. And in this separateness we only experience isolation and loneliness and more suffering. So if we’re ever going to really find peace or if we’re ever really going to grow, the thrust of our practice, the thrust of the causes for our growth are found in others and taking responsibility for others’ happiness.
This is kind of, I think, kind of a revolutionary thought in accordance with a cultural predominant thinking. There’s the word bodhicitta which literally means mind of enlightenment, mind of enlightenment or sometimes we translate it as awakening heart, mind of enlightenment, the aspiration to achieve enlightenment. But there are two types of these aspirations to achieve enlightenment, two types of bodhicitta. bodhicitta is a Sanskrit word. There’s ultimate bodhicitta and relative bodhicitta.
They both represent a revolution the transformation of consciousness, but they’re working on two different levels, one on the conventional level and the other on the ultimate level. The ultimate level we speak of or we’re going to talk about when we discuss seeing deeply into the nature of reality. But ultimately, the revolution in consciousness is that we don’t have a concrete solid identity, a fixed being which we grasp to as I, as our ego of who I am. Seeing through this is a revolution, complete transformation of our way of relating to ourselves and others, of our entire being. This is on the ultimate level, seeing that ultimately such a type of self does not exist, though we in fact, to the depth of our being believe it does.
But conventionally, working within the relative world as we conceive it to exist, There is an ego, there is an I, there is a self. So we are trying to transform this ego, this I, this self through skillful means. Not saying that it doesn’t ultimately exist, but transforming it by developing it. If we’re going to be stuck with an ego, let’s have the best possible ego we can. Let’s be the most skillful that we can.
So this represents a revolution on the conventional level. But actually these two work together. It’s said that in order to attain enlightenment, it’s like the two wings of a bird. A bird needs the wing of method and wisdom in order to fly. The method is conventional bodhicitta, this aspiration to benefit others, to develop one’s own skills and ability so that you can be of greatest benefit to others.
And the other wing is the wisdom, seeing the ultimate nature of reality, the ultimate nature of the self, the I, the person. And they complement one another. As we develop a sense of going beyond conventionally of the ego, taking more and more responsibility for others, going away from our self-cherishing, our self centeredness, our exaggerated self concern, our selfishness, this diminishes the influence, the power of ego on the conventional level. This mere diminishing of the power of ego allows for a greater degree of wisdom to arise and seeing the transparency of the ego on the conventional level allows us to develop the wisdom that in fact it ultimately doesn’t exist at all. By ultimately seeing it doesn’t exist at all through the wing of wisdom, the ego lessens in its power and in its strength.
It becomes more attenuated, transparent, and this allows for a greater growth of love and compassion for a diminishing of self-cherishing of selfishness. So these two are working together. These two bodhicittas, these two ways of revolutionaryly transforming the mind. One is conventionally diminishing the influence of self-cherishing and selfishness, which removes obstructions to seeing the ultimate nature of the ego. And by seeing the ultimate nature of the ego, this diminishes its power.
Our ego centered ideas, ego centered actions promotes actions of cherishing others, of loving others. By loving and cherishing others, this diminishes the influence of the ego enabling more and greater wisdom to rise. So these two are sort of reinforcing one another conventional bodhicitta and ultimate bodhicitta. These are the two wings. So in order to actualize our full potential, these two wings of this bird which is going to fly as enlightenment are absolutely necessary.
So in some way we have to make this effort to open up to the needs of others. So I was In opening to others. I spoke about the two main systems of meditation which we’re going to discuss, by which will ultimately lead to awakening mind or this conventional bodhicitta. And one was the sevenfold cause and effect instruction, The other was exchange of self for others, these two lineages, two systems of meditation. But as a foundation for those, I’d like to talk about what are called the Four Immeasurables.
The Four Immeasurables are common to both the Theravadan tradition and the various great vehicle traditions, the Mahāyāna traditions, whether it’s Tibetan or Japanese, Korean, they all have this in common, this practice of the Four Immeasurables. And we’ve been practicing it probably unknowingly all along every Friday night. Sometimes the four immeasurable is our term, the four sublime abodes, four sublime abodes of Brahma Vihara. Or sometimes the four immeasurable great catalysts for growth. So the four immeasurables, immeasurable love, immeasurable compassion, immeasurable sympathetic joy, and immeasurable equanimity.
It’s said that the distinction between these two from the point of view of, for example, Theravadan Buddhism, that is the type of Buddhism which is practiced predominantly in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia. And the great vehicle Buddhism, which is mainly practiced in the northern countries of Nepal, Tibet, China, Japan, Mongolia, Korea. One system of the four immeasurables and the other system of four immeasurables is that within the great vehicle not only do they practice as they would in the Theravadan countries but they also emphasize that all these Four Immeasurables, these measurable, for example, love, compassion, are directed towards all sentient beings, not just a great number of sentient beings, but the feeling that all sentient beings without the exclusion of one single sentient being, without saying I wish all sentient beings except my old girlfriend and the Russians to be happy, something like that. We work with as many vast categories of sentient beings beginning with one sentient being and working with categories of sentient beings, of countries and nationalities, categories of people we like, people we have no feeling for whatsoever, and people we don’t like at all. So we make it a point to work with as many categories until we feel as though there’s not one type of sentient being, even hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, we’re directing these immeasurable thoughts, feelings towards all sentient beings.
That’s said to be one difference between the types of practice. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s perhaps not a very it’s important from the sense that we shouldn’t exclude anyone from these wishes that we’re trying to generate. That’s for sure. The feeling of lots of sentient beings or innumerable sentient beings and all sentient beings probably not so important.
But there is the quality of responsibility within generating the four immeasurables within the great vehicle tradition. Not only do we think, May all sentient beings be happy, which is a measure of a love. We go on to say, I will make them happy. Okay, we’re working with the words at the moment, okay? But we have to begin somewhere, so we work with words.
But there is the intention, at least the root beginning of some idea, not only that may they be happy, you know, we can walk away, oh, it’d be nice if you’re happy and then walk away, but we say, I’m going to make you happy. We’re just carrying it quite a bit further, just the willingness to take responsibility, to enact these feelings, these thoughts, these wishes out to actualize them in reality. So we’re going to look at the four immeasurables briefly, but it’s important to see how they’re interrelated. Why are these four immeasurables exist as a unit? How they complement one another, how they counter possible negative fixations which may set in.
That is how ego the ego is quite clever, it’s very intelligent How it can incorporate our best intentions into something which will just make it bigger and better. Ego is this is called spiritual materialism and how the four immeasurables guard against spiritual materialism. So the four immeasurables. Now generally, on this sheet, there’s four immeasurables. So this is, May all sentient beings have happiness and the cause of happiness.
This is the usual terse in a very short and abbreviated form of the four immeasurables. But as I said, there’s also the quality of the willingness of taking responsibility. So this is emphasized in most of the practices, for example, in this practice of Chenrezig, who is the personification of compassion. It’s a practice involved in making use of it, identifying with compassion itself. And in this, there’s a practice of the four immeasurables.
Over here it says limitless thoughts, immeasurable, limitless. But it goes on not just to list them as it does on this other sheet, as you will see, may I do this? For example, how wonderful it would be if all sentient beings attain equanimity, free from attachment and hatred, holding some beings close and others distant. May they attain equanimity. I myself will make them to attain equanimity.
Please, Guru, Buddha, bless me to be able to do this. And it goes on like this. How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings attain the true cause of happiness and true happiness. I myself will make them to attain it. So it’s sort of carrying the idea very much further than simply stating, may you be happy.
It’s very much like a mother. Sure mothers, they want their children to be happy. But the mark of a mother is that she’s willing to bring that about in reality. So there’s something much more than simply a simple wish. So these are also termed the four catalysts or the four immeasurably great catalysts of growth.
I’ve talked about growth, especially in terms of the first path developing this determination to be free. So as I said, growth takes place if necessary to have a cause and does not take place in isolation. It has some kind of condition or context, circumstance. So the initial catalyst, as we mentioned just before, And then we have to actually confront our difficulties and recognize them. Recognition of the general unmanageability of our lives.
For example, recognition of the problems which are we keep reoccurring in our lives. So I mean without this, without confronting and some recognition of problems as problems, then there’s going to be no motivation. There’s going to be no catalyst to develop ourselves. There’ll be no necessity. And in many ways, just as they say, what is it?
Invention need what is the need is the invention of this what is it? Need is the father of invention. Is the father of another. Okay, chauvinism. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Likewise, if we sincerely see it the necessity to grow, that recognition is the mother of growth, I think. But without seeing that recognition, without having that recognition, without feeling it very deeply, then there would be no growth. We might be able to make some cosmetic changes, get rid of a few wrinkles here and there, add on a little makeup, But there will be no basic change because there’s no need for change. Change only takes place when there’s a real need. This is the aspect, the important aspect of responsibility.
When there is need for change, change will occur. So if we take such responsibility, which I’m going to expand upon a little bit, we put ourselves in a position whereby there is a great need, demand made upon us, then we’re going to change. We’re certainly going to be able to draw upon greater resources within ourselves, greater resources of wisdom, love, compassion, energy. We can sort of go beyond our egoistic limits when more and more demands upon it are made upon us within a healthy context. The initial catalyst is recognition, confronting and recognizing our problems as problems and accepting.
And next, it follows on from that, and this is simply the Four Noble Truths. It follows on from that and accepting of the causes of these difficulties as being within yourself and not outside of yourself. If you see the causes of your difficulties, your problems outside of yourself, you’re going to search for the solutions outside of yourself, and therefore there will be no growth. There’s only going to be frustration and a continuation of your difficulties. Because have for material problems, we can deal with them materially.
That’s no problem. If you’re hungry, the best thing to do is eat. That’s a straightforward way to solve your problems. But for most of our difficulties, at least mentally, our attitudinal problems, our view of unskillful way of relating with ourselves and others. So no matter what changes we may make on the outside, if the attitude is basically mistaken, misconceptions, if it’s unskillful, we’re not going to change anything except the type of suffering.
If suffering is going to remain, the difficulty is always going to be there because the basic cause has not been worked with, and that is the mind itself. So this involves an exploration with our own reasoning, within our own experience and with intuition. And we’re willing to explore what are the possibilities, the means to solve our problems. And this leads to this exploration relates to discovery, a more skillful, more productive, more satisfying, meaningful, authentic ways of relating. I think especially one of the hallmarks of Buddhism that I appreciated most was the necessity, almost the demand that’s placed upon you to explore.
Know, dogma is anathema, antithetical, antithetical, antithetical to Buddhism. There would be no value. There would be nothing to be gained out of simply accepting something. We might accept something provisionally because we don’t have the capacity at that moment to analyze it properly and we don’t have perhaps the time. So we can make a provisional acceptance of some statement that the Buddha made or something our teacher said, some doctrine.
But ultimately it’s going to be necessary for us to explore it and discover that same exact truth. If it in fact it is truth, we have to discover it for ourselves. Know the Buddha said when he was passing into, when he was dying, he said, Do not accept my doctrine out of respect for myself, but test it and assay it as if it were gold, it, putting some kind of chemicals on it. Only then, once you’ve found it useful and true, accept it. So there’s no problem with Buddhism about, you you hear something, people don’t perhaps you don’t like it, perhaps it’s not appealing to you, perhaps it’s not of any value to you at that particular time.
You can set it up on your shelf. You don’t just taking what is of value to you, what is meaningful, and what works benefits you because we’re not trying to please anyone in particular. We’re just taking, for example, wisdom and love, compassion and benefiting others as a foundation for relating with the world and experimenting from that basis and trying to see whether that brings us the happiness that we’ve always been looking for or not. So it’s very experimental and exploratory. And I think it’s very much only through exploring are we ever going to discover anything.
The willingness we have to have a willingness to explore and experiment. I think some of you might have been here the other night when the Jesuit priest, Father Ama, I think, who had he was a Catholic priest and he went to he received this permission to go to Japan to study Zen Buddhism. And he completely immersed himself in the practice of Zen Buddhism. And at that talk that he gave there were many Catholic nuns, Catholic priests, and he was saying to them, You have to experiment. If your faith, if your relationship with God and Christ is such that if it’s real, you have nothing to fear.
It’s only if you have doubts, if only you’re afraid that such an experiment could not bring any benefit. But if you have real conviction and have a real relationship with God, Christ, then this exploration into other possibilities, other avenues of approaching the same problem, approaching the same concepts through other avenues can only enrich your experience. There’s really nothing to be afraid of if in fact your faith is real. If it’s not, then it’s better to find out than to just kid yourself or not confront. So it requires, I think, some real inner strength, a high degree of self determination because there’s always some resistance to growth.
Old habits are hard to break. Overcoming stagnation, inertia of a way of being which is continually being reinforced by memory and by our situation, our environment, other people, and the fear of change, fear of an open fluid states, and the longing for security of our cocoon, a closed minded ignorance which perpetually recreates our basic patterns of thought and behavior all the time, the same basic patterns. We find our security in this, so there’s a resistance against change. We a vast reservoir of possible potentials, of qualities about us, and we divide off, we create a boundary very artificially. That part which we begin to identify with, we call this ego and we begin to fixate upon this small section of all this vast reservoir of potentials of who we are.
And we cling to this as this is I, this is me. So any change, any sort of going outside of this boundary is fear because this feeling of I’m a concrete solid cell. And to go outside of this boundary, we begin to lose this feeling of your concreteness and solidity. And so there’s a resistance, there’s a fear against going out to other possibilities, identifying with other qualities which in fact are there. So there’s a resistance to change.
There’s also resistance to going beyond ourselves even on a conventional level. This is more the ultimate level when we begin to break down the boundary fixation of ego. But even on a conventional level of trying to escape from the cocoon of our ego, You know, the attraction to our cocoon, our selfishness, and we’re afraid of selflessness. An authentic response to the needs of others also to our own needs. But within the confines of our own needs, we can only hope for limited and partial growth.
But the needs of others are unlimited. And they’re very differentiated. In this sense, fulfilling responding to the needs of others, then we can hope for unlimited growth and universal character developing all our qualities in which responding to the universal needs of the differentiated types of sentient beings, of all the possible needs that sentient beings may have. So this is how we can actualize all our potentials by responding to all the various needs of all the various sentient beings. We are forced to actualize all our various potentials.
Within the realm of our own individual ego, the needs are limited and exclusive, only partial. In fulfilling those needs, in fulfilling our own limited needs, we’re only going to develop, grow to a limited and exclusive fashion, only partially. We’re fulfilling the needs of infinite number of sentient beings with all their various possibilities of needs, of wants, then we’re going to have to call upon a complete reservoir of potentialities within ourselves. So this is the way we can make a leap onto fresh ground. Responding to the needs of others is the way of overcoming our cowardice, the fear of change, this resistance to change.
The way we can summon up the inner strength necessary to crawl out of our cocoons. One of my teachers in India, after he had been teaching at the Buddhist at the Tibetan Library of Works and Archives for about six or seven years, six days a week, three hours a day to these westerners coming, coming, coming to class, sitting there day after day after day after day. And he used to say, I’m waiting for one of you to fly away. He was talking he was giving a talk about bodhicitta, about this mind of enlightenment, waiting for somebody to crawl out of their cocoon, which we are so attached to and fly. This is brought about the most skillful, the most profound is when it becomes the innermost necessity to fulfill the needs of others.
We draw upon the necessary strength, which we would never realize within the bounds of ego, to really bring about a complete transformation, a real revolution in our lives. There’s a story about two Christian hermits in the Egyptian desert. I don’t know, probably perhaps in fifteen hundred years ago. And they both were very renowned for giving people would go to them and make confessions, and each one of the hermits would give very harsh penance. And those ones who were on a heavy guilt trip, they would go to that father, that hermit.
And the other one was very soft, very peaceful sort of fellow. And The ones who didn’t want to have to go through much penance, they go to this other hermit. And it so happened that about the same time, some doubts began to arise in their mind about their vocation, about the whole question about what they were doing, the whole meaning of their life. And so they began to disturb each of them in their own way. And they thought they had heard about each other from other people and they thought perhaps this other person sounds very wise.
Perhaps this other hermit, I should go visit him. And so they both set off at the same time to visit each other. And while they were traveling about halfway between their two caves, they both camped at the same place for the night. And one of their hermits began to speak to the other and say, you know, where are you going? And he said, oh, I’m going to visit a very wise hermit who lives in the cave not not far from here.
He said, why are you going to do that? He said, I have developed some doubts about I have been a hermit in my cave for many years now, but now I’m beginning to question my vocation, what I’m doing. And so the second hermit, he said nothing. He says, I’m that father you’re going to see. I’m that hermit you’re looking for.
Come back to my cave, and you can stay with me. So they went back to the cave and the second never spoke of the doubts that he had had. And a year went by and the first hermit would assist the second hermit in his practices, in his prayers, and he would also be around when the second hermit would take confession of the people who came. And after about a year, the first hermit came to the second and said, you know, now my doubts are completely cleared up after having listened to you, you know, in the you the way you’ve explained and your wisdom and and your real compassion and your knowledge, intimate knowledge of God. I have no doubts in my mind anymore, and I want to thank you.
And now I’m going to go back to my cave and continue my life as a hermit in solitude. And the second hermit said, You know, when we met that night on the desert, I was just like you, no different. I had grave doubts about my vocation, what I was doing, about the meaning of my life. In the first said, Why didn’t you tell me then? Why didn’t you let me know you were in the same position as I was?
In the second term, he said, At that moment, one of us had to be strong or we would have both been lost. So even though he was experiencing the same doubts, the same difficulties, One of them had to be strong for the other because they would have both been lost. They would have both lost perhaps their vocation. But by one assuming, by drawing upon some unknown reservoir of strength, and eventually they both found their way. They were both saved.
So this is very much in some way the situation that we’re in. And accepting, even though perhaps you aren’t able, accepting some responsibility for another, even though you’re perhaps in the same position, you begin to not only help in solving the other person’s problems, but you begin to draw upon some inner strength, some inner wisdom, which you would never have been able to draw upon had you not been willing to take on this burden, this responsibility of another person. And in this we begin to not only solve the other person’s problems, we begin to simultaneously begin to solve our own difficulties as as a byproduct of assuming the responsibilities of others. I received a letter from a Tibetan friend of mine who lives in Melbourne. He’s a translator there.
He had visited in, I think, February here in Adelaide. And he wrote back and he said, You know, sentient beings are like a wish fulfilling gem. This is very much of a Tibetan attitude. Now what does that mean? To the degree you’re willing to accept some, in a healthy context, some responsibility for others’ happiness to that same degree, you’re going to find your own happiness which you’ve always been looking for and which you have never really found.
In this way, sentient beings are like a wish fulfilling gem. It says in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, that engaging in the bodhisattva’s deeds, we depend as much upon sentient beings as we do the Buddhists to attain enlightenment. Why is it we respect the Buddhists and not sentient beings? In a way, sentient beings are more important. Of course, in dependence upon sentient beings, we can develop love, we can develop compassion, we can practice generosity, patience, ethics of helping others.
All the six perfections and all the various practices are all dependent upon the kindness of sentient beings. And it’s said that all the happiness in the world, in the universe that beings experience comes about through helping others, cherishing others, and all the suffering in the world, in the universe, which comes about comes about through cherishing ourselves, seeking our own our happiness to the exclusion of others. And then the tonight, just had a Guru Puja offering to the spiritual master. And there’s one verse in there which says, The Buddhas work only for the sole benefit of others, while the childish work only for their own benefit. Seeing the advantage of one and the failings of others, what need is there to say more.
So by accepting the responsibility, working for the benefit of others, we’re going to grow. We’re going to have to grow. You know, we said, need is like the father, the mother, the mother of growth. And the needs of sentient beings are so great that we’re going to have to grow if we accept that responsibility, if we accept that need upon ourselves. You know, it’s like I hear a lot about mothers.
I’m not a mother. But I can appreciate, especially when parents a very small baby, for example. And I know, especially in respect to the mothers, but also I’m sure with the fathers, mothers pushing themselves and parents pushing themselves beyond their preconceived limits of their physical and mental capacities in order to fulfill the needs of their children, the baby, who without your benefiting, without your comforting, without your help is going to die. You know, like a mother who has to wake up six times in the middle of the night to breastfeed her baby, Even though she’s tired, even though she’s just praying for a good night’s sleep, still she’s willing, pushing herself beyond her own egotistical, selfish limits to fulfill the needs of that baby. And this is a real area where most people are able to have some experience of selflessness with respect to their children or perhaps with respect to parents sometimes, or respect to anyone who you feel this bond with and you’re willing to put yourself out to some degree.
You go beyond what you might like to do. You know, it’s quite easy. And when the sun is shining and we love one another, to be compassionate, to say nice words, to help one another. But when things become difficult, when the ego says, No, I’ve had enough now, to go beyond that, then that’s real growth. Essentially, growth is going to be transcending either conventionally or ultimately beyond the bounds of our ego.
If we can go beyond the bounds of our self-cherishing, our selfishness, and this is the real way to grow, and the way we do this, the way one way we can do this is by filling fulfilling the needs of cherishing others. So in fulfilling the needs of others, participating in the lives of other people, participating means not only to receive others into our life, but to give our lives over to others. So the the four immeasurable immeasurable love, immeasurable compassion, immeasurable sympathetic joy, and immeasurable equanimity. Suppose we have a son who becomes an unbearable young man. It may be hard for us to love him.
That is natural. In order to be loved, a person should be lovable. If our son has become difficult to love, we will be very unhappy. We wish we could love him, but the only way we can is to understand him, to understand his situation. We have to take our son as the subject of our meditation.
Instead of taking the concept of emptiness or some other subject, we can take our son as the concrete subject of our meditation. We don’t blame our son. We just want to understand why he has to become like that. Through this method of meditation, we find out all the causes near and far that have led to our son’s present state of being. The more we see, the more we understand.
The more we understand, the easier it is for us to have compassion and love. Understanding is the source of love. Understanding is love itself. Understanding is another name for love. Love is another name for understanding.
So all these various four immeasurables are a way of understanding another human being, another sentient being. These are just understandings. The ego is based, is founded upon closed minded ignorance, misunderstanding, or un understanding. Misunderstanding, basic misunderstandings of ourselves and our relationships and other people. As long as we relate to people in terms of hatred instead of love, in terms of cruelty instead of compassion, in terms of jealousy, instead of sympathetic joy, in terms of attachment, instead of equanimity, there can never really be any deeper understanding.
No real wisdom. There’s no real growth, no real discovery. So separately, each of these four immeasurables is an antidote for a particular gross growth pattern of ego. Hatred, cruelty, jealousy, attachment, each of them separately. But there’s also an interrelation between these four as a unit whereby they reinforce one another.
They counteract the tendency for these to degenerate into the spiritual materialism, some negative fixation. So it can begin with the first, this immeasurable love. So love is an affirmation of another person’s worth, their value, in actively concerning ourselves about their happiness. This person is of value to you. You know, this person perhaps people have some intrinsic value outside of what they can do for you.
You know, this non non self referential, you know, that’s when it becomes egotistical. This is the possibility of a negative fixation of all of these. These various feelings, they love, compassion, they’re very strong affections. So they can turn into their negative counterpart. These very strong emotions, they can easily degenerate into something negative.
For example, love may turn into clinging. You know, we say love was holding the object of value and concerning ourselves that it’s happy. It can degenerate into simply seeing that value and referring it back to yourself of how that person is valuable because that person can make you happy. No longer hold them as valuable in themselves and concern ourselves with their happiness, but they only value to the degree that they can bring ourselves happiness. But this tendency is counteracted by compassion.
Rather than seeing people merely as objects for our own use, devaluing or simply valuing them to the extent that they can benefit us, we begin to focus on the fact that they’re suffering. So we know this acts as a counteracting agent and we develop the wish to remove that suffering. But compassion can turn into overwhelming feelings of helplessness and despair and there is so many so many suffering beings in the world, human beings, what say of all kinds of beings in the world. There’s suffering in so many ways, and I really can’t even help even the people that I know, that I’m friendly with, that I What can I do for all these sentient beings? This feeling of wishing sentient beings to not suffer can easily degenerate into feelings of despair and helplessness.
There’s just too much suffering. In order as a counteracting agent to this, we develop immeasurable sympathetic joy. We focus upon the happiness even though it’s only fleeting, even though it’s only limited. Still we focus upon the happiness that sentient beings do enjoy, the happiness that they do experience. And we share in this happiness.
When you see someone creating the causes of happiness, and you have a vicarious happiness, sharing in that happiness that they’re experiencing moment. And this counteracts this tendency of compassion to degenerate into despair and sadness. Okay, but there’s an even sympathetic joy and it has a negative fixation. It can degenerate into vicarious self satisfaction. You know, we’re simply focusing upon the happiness of others because it’s really pleasurable.
It’s a real trip for us to share in the happiness of everybody. We just begin to exclude other sentient beings who aren’t particularly happy at that moment. So we have to develop a counteracting agent to that and this is immeasurable equanimity. We begin to see that though this particular person might be experiencing happiness at this moment, but the predominant, the overwhelming situation of sentient beings is dissatisfaction. And even this happiness that this person is experiencing is fleeting.
It’s not going to last forever. And so we develop a feeling of equality towards all sentient beings. We develop a concern not only for those beings who are bringing us happiness, who are sources of happiness for us, but also for those sentient beings who are not sources of happiness for us, a feeling of equality, equanimity. But again, equanimity can degenerate. It can turn into simply becoming apathy, simply the unfeelingly without any feelings regarding all sentient beings as the same and becoming indifferent to them.
You have the equal attitude toward all sentient beings, but you’re simply indifferent. It doesn’t matter. You feel unrelated to them equally. So this tendency is countered by immeasurable love, reaffirming their value, their intrinsic worth, and actively concerning yourself about their happiness. So in this way, these four immeasurables are not only specific antidotes to grosser negative patterns of ego.
But through their interrelatedness, through their interdependence, they do not allow these sublime thoughts, feelings, love, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity to be incorporated in the bounds of ego, to be negatively fixated, to degenerate into mere sentimentality and mere nostalgia, feelings which would be counterproductive to grow. So love in the Buddhist sense of the term is love which is really love only when it’s impartial, when it’s felt impartially for all sentient beings. That is when it’s felt with equanimity. Compassion is love in response to the suffering of others. Sympathetic joy is response to the happiness of others.
So they are all intermingling, supporting, sort of a unit, different aspects of one thing, and we break them up into four aspects. And in the West, it’s often said, I don’t know if it’s often, sometimes it is said that we can learn to love all sentient beings. Say, not all sentient beings. They don’t say that. We can learn to love people or humanity.
We can learn to love humanity by learning to love one person. And I think Buddhism would say that we can only ever really love one person when we love all sentient beings. But we have to begin somewhere. Now with our limited exclusive feelings of love love which were mixed with attachment, you know, that’s what we have to work with at the moment. That’s kind of our spark of enlightenment, enlightened thought.
So we work with this, we direct it toward a person we naturally feel loved toward, even though it’s exclusive, even though it’s mixed with attachment, and we begin to radiate it out to all other sentient beings. We work at this, refining it, developing it. So there’s Four Immeasurables. This is what we do more or less every Friday night, and this is going to be more or less the basis for these two systems of meditation by which we’re used to develop the mind of enlightenment, the awakening heart by which we open our hearts to others. These four immeasurables.
The others are just very skillful means of developing each of these four immeasurables in different ways, different avenues of approach. But ultimately it’s just one state of selflessness, of love, compassion, equanimity, and joy, in others happiness. So perhaps we can meditate on them for a long time. So first consider your difficulties and your problems. You have to confront these 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 the best you can 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 grow, you can become anything that you want to be, you can begin again. For the present, we have to accept ourselves, all the various parts of ourselves, even the parts that we perhaps don’t like, and become friends with those parts. And be gentle with ourselves and wish ourselves well, wish ourselves happiness.
May I be happy, may I not suffer, may I grow, find peace. Now think of someone that you like, that you love, someone of the same sex, and imagine that person in front of you. And recall all the good times that you’ve shared, all the happiness that you’ve enjoyed together, the kindness that this person has shown you. Indirect or radiate out the positive feelings which naturally arise, feelings of concern that they’d be happy, wishing them happiness. May not suffer.
May all your desires come true. May you find peace. Now think of someone you neither like nor dislike, someone you feel unrelated to, indifferent to. Imagine that person in front of you. And try to go beneath the superficial appearances which we cling to, which we judge people by, whether they’re male or female, rich or poor, educated, uneducated, beautiful or ugly, old or young.
Try to go beneath all those superficial appearances down to the very essence of that person. That there’s someone there who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer exactly like yourself. No difference. And just as we wish our own self happiness, wish this person happiness, It’s a reflection about how we feel about ourselves deep down. Since this person is essentially the same, may you be happy.
Now think of someone who disturbs your mind, who you have problems with, someone you don’t like. 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 way of finding their happiness, eliminating their suffering, has come in conflict with your way of finding your happiness. Eliminating your suffering is just a conflict of egos, of self interest.
You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past to find the happiness that you were looking for, and now this person has done the same to you. And just as you have to begin to forgive yourself for making mistakes, for hurting others, you have to begin to forgive this person for hurting you. So just for the moment, aside this anger, this grudge. Try to see someone just like yourself. Just doing the best I can to get some happiness out of life, being very confused about how to go about it, and making many mistakes along the way, and wish them happiness as you would yourself.
Now imagine all four of these people together, yourself and these three others, and try to see them from the point of view that they’re essentially the same in wanting happiness and not wanting to suffer. And from that point of view, radiate out without any bias, positive feelings equally to all four of these people. And all the people in this room, special people taking responsibility for their lives, for their happiness, caring people. I wish everyone in the room happiness. Direct radiate out positive feelings.
Wishing success and happiness to everyone in the room. And all the people on the block watching television, eating supper, cooking, reading the paper, getting ready for bed, whatever they do, whatever they say, they do it and say it in order to find happiness. We radiate out positive feelings, wishing them the happiness that they’re all looking for. And all the people in Adelaide, in the cars and buses, on the streets, in their homes, radiate out positive feelings to everyone in Adelaide. Spreading out, extending out further and further, radiating out to all of South Australia, all the people, animals, insects.
Further and further, opening your heart, expanding your mind. Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, the entire country. Further and further. New Zealand. The entire southern hemisphere, Enveloping the entire world in your heart is concerned with their happiness, their well-being.
All the people, black, white, red, yellow, all the animals, all the insects, everything that lives on the earth is touched by your caring. And radiating out into space in all the ten directions. Further and further without limit. Till finally without any boundaries, without any center, pervading all of space, the wish, may all things be happy. May all things be happy.
We dedicate the positive energy that we create from our practice. Through these merits, may I soon attain the enlightened state of Guru Buddha, and may I lead every migrating being without exception to that state. May the precious bodhicitta not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase furthermore. Thank you.