Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 95-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun draws on a Thai monk’s two-word refrain — “begin again” — to link personal retreat narrative with the doctrinal heart of the evening: a philosophical case for rebirth built from Western physics. After defining meditation as choiceless awareness (noting whatever arises without reacting, neither indulging nor suppressing), he turns to two principles — the conservation of mass and the rule that like causes like — to argue that mind, being non-physical and knowing, cannot arise from matter. Each moment of consciousness must therefore trace to a prior moment of mind, making the mind-stream beginningless and every sentient being, over infinite rebirths, literally one’s mother. This grounds the sevenfold cause-and-effect method for developing bodhicitta before a guided loving-kindness meditation, expanding outward from self to all of South Australia, closes the session.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1988 07 08 3 P A P.mp3
UUID: 212b1b5e-2679-4f9e-a990-6632953cf37a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 1987-1988 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-07-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 95.0 minutes
Words: ~9,377
In the West, the word meditation brings much misconception. Sometimes people interpret meditation as squeezing oneself. Others interpret it as spacing out. Both are misconceptions. If you space out, will become completely distracted.
If you squeezed, you are completely selfish. Meditation is very simple. Close your eyes. What is happening? Your awareness radiates like a sensitive machine.
It is like radar. If there is any kind of signal or vibration, you notice it. You are aware. Similarly, when you are aware in meditation, you are very sensitive, totally awake, aware of what is going on. Communicating, that is what I call meditation on consciousness.
Meditating does not mean, oh, there’s a light, There’s blah blah blah. We’re not having a conversation. Suppose you’re meditating. You’re aware of your surroundings, the sky, trucks passing by. You’re aware of everything.
Yet you do not make conversation saying, all these trucks must be very nice trucks full of cheese or juice on the way to the market. That type of conversation you should not do. Although you’re aware, you need to be in control of not making conversation by meditating your learning control and eliminating the uncontrolled mind. What makes you uncontrolled? By making conversation.
She’s like that. She she says this. He says that. I don’t like. I like.
You’re constantly reacting. Control means not reacting. If somebody says you are a bad guy, you do not react. You do not say, he called me a bad guy. My ego is hurt.
This is reacting. It is uncontrolled mind. It is also a mind that is obsessed. My interpretation is that the obsessed mind has two objects, either an object of beauty or hate. Obsessed means you cannot get away from thinking about the object.
Do you understand what I mean? Obsessed means you’re not free or peaceful. Instead, you’re always thinking this, this, this, this. This is being obsessed. So the mind of hatred, jealousy, or craving desire is too obsessed and disturbed.
That is why meditation is to teach you the habit of not reacting when you are obsessed, when obsessed objects arise. So in our meditation, we simply by being mindful of the breath, noting whatever arises but we don’t react. We neither indulge nor suppress. We simply note a particular emotion, particular thought, feeling, worry, whatever, doesn’t make any difference. Sound, sensation arises.
Simply note it’s not necessary to react either by indulging or repressing it. In this way we begin to gain real control over our mind. We create space between ourselves and the objects of our consciousness. We begin to have some choice over when and how we wish to react in situations and we just simply aren’t reacting when our button is pushed, having a reflex action. That way We gain control, we gain choice in our lives. There’s a certain degree of freedom by creating a perspective in space.
So this may seem like a very simple meditation, but I don’t think it is. We’re simply noting whatever arises without having to react as we habitually do. It’s a retraining process. We’re gaining control, we’re gaining some choice in our lives. At the end of about five minutes, we’re constantly being mindful of the breath.
Keep it returning to the breath, our mind will be distracted, wander. We note whatever it is, whether it’s an object of the ear consciousness, a sound or a thought arises or a feeling, and then we bring it back to the breath. But after five minutes, just try to be aware. Whatever the mind is attending to, it’s like a choiceless awareness. Just allow the mind to go to whatever object is most stimulating for it, but be aware, always noting.
If it goes like the sound of someone closing the bathroom door just a second ago, I’m hearing, or maybe you’re sitting there, and thoughts arising, thinking, thinking, and the pain arising in knee. Sensation, sensation. Just let the mind be directed choicelessly, but never lose awareness. Don’t bite into the hot dog. Don’t get on the train or however I’ve described it, whatever makes sense to you.
Let’s try that for a few minutes. And just allow the mind to akin to whatever object it’s drawn to naturally. But maintain your awareness by noting what it’s looking at, what it’s hearing, what it’s thinking, what it’s doing. And we’ll recite the verse of refuge. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened.
Through the merit I create by practicing the Dharma, May I attain the Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened through the merit I create by practicing the Dharma. May I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened, through the merit I create by practicing the Dharma, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. A few years ago, I spent a year in Thailand.
Most of that time I spent in retreat, meditation. Living in an isolated situation, in retreat, you get in touch with the various parts of your mind that normal daily activities perhaps you don’t get in touch with. You sort of go unnoticed, somewhat untouched in our daily life. Now in doing this experience, during this most beautiful experience in retreat, that you experience both the beauty and the light of your own mind and you experience the ugliness and darkness within our own mind. Can you hear me okay?
You know, both the peaks and the valleys of our own mind. Practice in time, the peaks perhaps aren’t so hot and the valleys aren’t so low. There seems to be a gradual leveling out process where there seems to be a gradual ascent over some period of time. But still there are moments when all you can see, your mind is only filled with your shortcomings, your own inner ugliness, failings, limitations. Or at least this is the way we those moments when we conceive of ourselves like this.
That where we conceive of ourselves as being petty, insufficient, you know, full of hypocrisy, lazy, stupid, not a very nice picture to see of yourself. There’s moments when you lose sight of your goal, of your own self worth, if you like, of our own divinity. All we see is lots of blackness and our minds are just completely beset by doubts and conflicts. This is like the long dark nights of the soul. So in such a time that I experienced, you call into question everything that you’re doing.
Is it of any worth? Is of any use? What is all this about? What is this thing called Buddha? What is enlightenment?
What is freedom, liberation? Does it make any sense? What does it mean to become a Buddha? Is it just some romantic idea to try to love all sentient beings, to dedicate your life to alleviating suffering of others? What does it mean to try to become like a Christ or a Buddha?
What does the mind of, for example, Mother Teresa, what goes through her mind? What does she think about? Or what does the Dalai Lama think? What kind of mind does he have? Am I wasting my time, you know, Sitting here halfway across the world from everything that was familiar to me, from everything that I had grown up with that felt like a home.
Sitting in a cave, literally, eating out of a begging bowl once a day. So you have to this period where you have to sort of battle with the various demons within your own mind, you might say. So during these periods, at this monastery where I lived, I lived on an island. Was a monastery with three monks, not a very big one. There’s lots of little monasteries in Thailand.
Two of the monks were They were both Thai, the two other monks, and one of them spoke almost no English, the other one spoke reasonably good English. And so I used to talk with him. I don’t think he understood everything that I was saying to him. All the various details of what perhaps I was going through, all my ups and downs and conflicts and doubts and worries and frustrations. But anyway, it didn’t really matter.
He used to say whether things were going well or whether things were going badly, begin again. Whatever I’d say, said, Okay, begin again. It’s perhaps nice that he didn’t understand so much English. He kept things at a very minimal level, simple and straightforward. Start again, start over fresh.
Again and again, auspicious beginning, whether things are going well with it, whether things are agreeable, dissatisfactory. You just begin again. It’s like beginner’s mind. You hear this expression a lot in Thailand, especially amongst the meditators. Start again, beginning as if nothing had happened up to this point and just start anew, start fresh.
So we all have our histories. We all have our various experiences, our various biographies, and the various circumstances and causes which help to shape who we are at the present moment, which made us what we are now, more or less. And it seems to me that we have some choice in this matter of who we are. Choice either to remain the victims of our past or to use our past as a source of learning. We may actually have some choice in this matter to use our history, our experiences as a source of growth.
Choice to whether simply acknowledge our pain and what we’ve experienced in the past or whether we’re going to indulge it and carry it around like a burden, like a bundle of thorns on our back for the rest of our life. So it’s just as in our simple meditation that we’re doing now, we begin each Friday evening with. We have a choice whether to react to it, repress it, indulge in it, or simply acknowledge it. Admit that it’s there and try to learn from it, but not let it control our lives. By learning, by growing, by learning, I mean something more than merely accumulating more information.
We all have enough information. It’s the age of information. We don’t need any more beliefs. We probably all have enough beliefs. We all probably have enough ideas.
And it’s not enough simply to change the conception of who you think you are. I think real growth is an openness and a faith in yourself and allowing yourself to become all that you can be. Some faith in your basic sanity, some trust and confidence, and the goodness of yourself and the goodness of the possibility of life. That the qualities of wisdom and compassion can be trusted And if we have within us some wisdom and compassion, no matter how limited, no matter how unrefined, no matter how mixed with attachment, there’s something there which we can trust. And that getting in touch with our wisdom, our compassion, trust that they can take us where we want to go, that they have the power to transform our lives, and that all situations are workable and that we can solve our own problems, That everything can become a potential for growth no matter what the circumstances are if we’re willing to bring to bear the clarity of our own mind.
I was in the area many years ago, about sixteen, seventeen years ago, was in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka there are many Buddhist ruins. I wasn’t particularly interested in Buddhism at that time when I first went there. And I was just traveling around with my girlfriend and we were of We were interested in the Buddhist ruins just simply from more or their beauty. So we were visiting all the runes.
And one time I was walking by myself in the jungle, near the forest, and just traipsing through off the path. And I came upon some ruins. There are many old Buddhist ruins scattered all over the island of Sri Lanka. There was an old stone image of a Buddha completely overgrown with weeds and vines, almost hidden. And we’re sitting there.
You know, if you see a Buddha, there’s a certain quality of timelessness. It’s as if I saw this Buddha, it was like he’s been sitting there since the beginningless time, waiting very patiently, with infinite patience, sitting there amongst being overgrown by the weeds and the vines, waiting to be discovered in this jungle. Sri Lanka is where Arthur C. Clarke, he lived. He wrote two thousand and one, which depicted the evolution of consciousness.
That was the main theme of the movie. I think perhaps he saw something in the jungle there. Every evolutionary jump, conscious evolutionary jump that occurred in the history of mankind, there was always this monument, some kind of I don’t know what you call it. In the movie, was just some kind of huge black marble slab, highly polished. Whenever this was present, there was always this leap in the conscious evolution of mankind, womankind, humankind.
So I had the feeling that this image of a Buddha waiting with infinite patience overgrown by weeds and vines, to be discovered as a catalyst to help us get in touch, to bring about some evolution in our own mind, our own consciousness. Whether this statue, whether this image is a Christ or a Buddha, it doesn’t matter, But there is this within each of us, whether it’s the image of God, whether it’s our Buddha nature waiting to rediscover amongst the overgrowns of vines and weeds. There’s a — maybe this — T.S. Eliot, I don’t know if I have this. Through the unknown, remembered gate, when the last of Earth left to discover, is that which was the beginning. At the source of the longest river, the voice of the hidden waterfall, and the children in their apple tree not known because not looked for, but heard half to heard in the stillness between two waves of the sea.
Doesn’t matter. There’s something, what I call the inarticulate whisperings of our hearts. You know, in Christianity they sometimes talk about many they use the phrase many are called if you are chosen. So within inarticulate whisperings of each of our hearts we’re calling everyone here. But it’s in full conscious awareness that we choose, choose to become everything that we can be.
To begin again, make some effort, We have to make some effort. I knew Lama Yeshe. This picture on the right. I quite often read from just what I read about meditation was by Lama Yeshe. He was like a poet.
His grammar was atrocious, and many people couldn’t understand a word he said, but that was their karma. I’m sorry to say. And if for me, He could inspire me more and bless me more than probably any teacher I’ve ever had. And he would talk about trying to communicate within his broken English. And he would say, I’m trying my best.
I have something over here which I’m trying to communicate to you. And maybe my English is no good, which it wasn’t very good. And maybe it’s difficult for you to understand, but I’m trying. I’m trying. That’s the best I can do is try.
You know there was a movie that I saw on a video a couple of months ago called One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I think it was Jack Nicholson. It took place in mental institution. And in this mental institution there was in the bathroom area. I’m not quite sure what it was.
I think it was a washbasin. Anyway, it was very heavy. It was made out of marble or something heavy like that. Some kind of huge washbasin. And it was extremely heavy.
And he was saying he was taking bets on if he could pick it up. And he knew that. And they were all, you know, making fun of him. He said, come on, come on, let’s bet. So he was taking all these bets.
And so he got under this huge washbasin. Really straining. Every muscle in his body to pick it up. And he tried again. You could see that it was really hurting, almost hurting himself.
That he quit. Then they all laughed at him and they were poo pooing him. Then finally he said, No, at least I tried. That’s all we can do. The results will take care of themselves, but we have to make some effort.
We just have to try from our side. If we try from our side, then we can respect ourselves. Then we’re fulfilling our potential. Without respecting yourself, without making effort, there’s no way you’re ever going to be happy either now or in the future. So at least from our side, we can make some effort.
Whether we gain the results, whether there is a future existence, whether there is Buddhahood, it doesn’t matter. We have to try. If you make effort and you fulfill the innermost desire of your heart, then you’re satisfied there’s some contentment and peace in your life and that it’s worthwhile to try. Whether you achieve or not, it doesn’t matter. When we make this innermost effort our desire is at peace and nirvana is there.
There’s some peace and we can live with ourselves. So it doesn’t matter whatever path you follow, whatever direction you may take, whatever method you may use in your growth, we have to keep questioning, we have to keep examining, exploring, and searching for the essence of whatever it is we’re doing. Taking essence, seeing for ourselves what is the value, what is true. But there is no certain way that exists permanently. There is no way set up for us.
Moment after moment we have to find our own way. Some idea or perfection or some perfect way which is set up by someone else is not the true way for us. Each of us must make his own true way. And when we do, that way will express the universal way. This is the mystery.
When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything. When you try to understand everything, you will not understand anything. The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything. When you try hard to make your own way, you will help others and you will be helped by others. Before you make your own way, you cannot help anyone and no one could help you.
So we have to make our own way. We have to make our own discoveries. And everything that the Buddha realized, everything that Christ experienced, we must discover for ourselves and duplicate that same experience. But we’re at an advantage. We have some methods.
We have some inspiration of the kindness of teachers. Often we mistake some information, some knowledge for experience, mere intellectual understanding of experience for actual experience, mere words for emotions. We think of repetitive patterns as certainty. Simply by repeating the same thing over again, we lull ourselves into a sense of security that we know what we’re doing. What we have to do is try to find the essence of whatever is doing.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Buddhist, a Christian. You know, the object of Buddhism is not to become good The object of Christianity is not to become a good Christian, it’s to become a Buddha and a Christ. It’s to be able to develop compassion and wisdom so that you’re able to dedicate your life to benefiting others, not to become good Buddhists or Christians. There are enough of those in the world. You know, it’s to become a happy, healthy, sane human being able to love and be loved and able to benefit others.
But like anything, know, things can be twisted. Ideals are definitely unstable, and the better the ideal, the more volatile it is. That’s because only the better ideas turn into dogma. And it’s this process whereby fresh, stimulating, humanely helpful ideas are exchanged into robot dogma. The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea, but with the people who are attracted by it, who adopt it, who cling to it until their last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and most importantly, sense of humor to maintain it in the spirit in which to is hatched.
Ideals are made by masters, dogma by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road. The Buddha is always killed on the road. You know what? I think I know what that means. I think it’s a Zen expression from Zen Buddhism that if you try to look for the Buddha outside of yourself, you’re looking in the wrong place.
If you see him outside of yourself, then kill him because you should be looking inside yourself. So we have to begin our journey, cease being victims, and choose to grow. Find a path with some heart and follow it with heart. I’m not selling Buddhism. I’m not trying to put shorts on the natives.
So in this journey, this process of growth, there’s bound to be disappointments. You should expect that. There’s bound to be struggles, to be moments when everything is meaningless, everything becomes a farce. But it would be a tragic mistake to think that following a path of growth is simply the skillful avoidance of pain. So there’s going to be moments when there’s long dark nights of the soul.
And then again, you have to begin again. It’s a never ending process of beginning again, I think. I think it’s easier if you begin to understand that ultimately you have no choice. Once you begin, you sort of have to finish the job. You become a little bit awake, so there’s no stopping.
There’s no setting aside and you say, okay, let’s have a recess. Let’s forget about it. It will always come back to haunt you, the unfinished business. So you begin again, understanding that you have no choice but simply to make effort, just to keep trying in a healthy context of some self discipline without expectations, knowing that there are going to be difficulties. And I think this makes it a little bit easier.
You can relax a little bit. So we’re talking about three principal aspects of the path. Developing the determination to be free, opening to others, and seeing deeply into the nature of reality. We’re going through two systems, two traditions of initially developing, opening our hearts to others and finally bringing it to its fullest culmination in the awakening heart, which is seeking to develop all the skills and abilities whereby you can be of maximum benefit to all sentient beings equally. In other words, that you can become a Buddha, a healthy, sane, loving person who has the skill and able to help others to accomplish that same feat, to be free of their suffering.
So these were the sevenfold cause and effect instruction and exchange of self for others. Now I think, as I explained before, I briefly mentioned, in the sevenfold cause and effect precept there are the two traditions. Perhaps the latter tradition, exchange yourself for others is more applicable, appropriate for Westerners. Since the sevenfold cause and effect instruction, as we’re going to find out tonight, hopefully, necessarily have to have a strong conviction in the existence of past lives, which we do not have as we’re not raised in that culture. We’re raised in a materialist culture which does not accept the existence of past and future lives on the whole.
So we may have some feeling for it. We may have some intuition where we can use reasoning, I’m going to go through to some extent. But we may not have a really strong conviction. Nevertheless, that it’s useful to go through this particular system because there are parts of it which will be of great use to you even if you can’t make use of the entire process of developing the awakening heart. Also there individuals who have the temperament which would be a great benefit, great use, who have conviction.
Perhaps they even have memories of past lives. Anyway, I’m going to present it. And we presented it as a preliminary with equanimity, like the foundation, the smooth foundation upon which we can begin to build edifice of the sevenfold cause and effect instructions, the awakening heart. So the equanimity was an unbiased attitude towards all sentient beings. We begin to have an equal regard, equal concern for all sentient beings.
A type of an attitude which is divorced, separated from attachment, aversion and indifference. It’s not indifference. Equanimity is not indifference. There’s a sense of even-ness. Essentially it’s an insight based upon seeing that the labels of friend, enemy and stranger are arbitrarily assigned and they quickly change and easily change.
This is what we went through last week. We habitually label this person friend, this person enemy, this person stranger. In response, having once labeled in response to the friend we develop attachment, to the enemy we develop aversion, to the stranger we develop indifference as a response. Yet these labels are completely arbitrary and they’re easily changed. We begin to not hold so tightly.
The insight of equanimity is such that we no longer hold so tightly to the validity of these labels that we’re projecting. We begin to see them as labels, as projections, that they in fact, they aren’t truly existent enemies, they aren’t truly existent friends nor strangers. And so we develop a more fluid, open attitude towards others, and we don’t cling to these labels. We understand that these labels are arbitrary and can quickly change. If we don’t do that, if we don’t create this space, then there’s no way that we can develop love, I mean a pure type of love unmixed with, for example, attachment.
Our way of relating with others is in such a way that we do not hold the individual as intrinsically valuable. They’re only valued to the extent that they either enhance or threaten our ego, our existence. Those who enhance our ego, oh that’s my friend, come here. Those who threaten your self image, your well-being, as enemy. You push them away.
So they’re only valued from this self centered egoistic point of view. They’re not valued for who they actually are, for themselves. And love becoming aware of the intrinsic value of the object of our love, that for themselves they are worthy of our love. Just as you yourself are worthy of love, you don’t have to do anything to deserve love, to deserve happiness. Just by being, you’re worthy of being loved.
All this is being reflected back in ourselves. You don’t see others as worthy of being loved, you’re never going to see yourself as worthy of love without having to earn it, without having to go through guilt trips. Despite our existing, despite your existence, you’re worthy of being loved, worthy of my wishing you happiness, and so am I. So on this basis, this foundation of equanimity, we can begin to relate with others in the deepest and purest level of love. The model that we’re taking as the purest and deepest type of love is the love of a mother for a child.
This is the first of the sevenfold cause and effect instructions. Recognizing all sentient beings as one’s mother, Remembering their kindness, developing a wish to repay their kindness, developing affection, love, great compassion, developing exceptional resolve. These are the six causes which lead to the seventh effect, awakening the heart of bodhicitta. On its basis of equanimity, of equal regard for all sentient beings, now we’re going to not leave it at that. We’re going to begin to relate with others and use it as a model for the relationship that we want to develop, a model of a love of a mother and child.
We want to begin to see the literal fact that all sentient beings have been our mother at some time or other. It’s not symbolic. It’s quite literal. So in order to do that, obviously, we have to have a conviction in past lives. Because in this life you had one mother, right?
To see all sentient beings as having literally been your mother in past lives, we have to begin to have a strong conviction in existence of past lives. So we have to go through I’m going to give a talk, I think, in August on rebirth. So I’m going to go into it in little more detail, but I’m going to go through it to give the possibility, just to give a feel, to open the mind, some type of reasoning. We can establish rebirth by recall, either spontaneous recall, deliberate training, some type of recall, perhaps hypnotic regression. There we can have someone else who recalls past lives remember us from a past life.
Or we can establish rebirth from the point of view of simple reasoning, logic of rebirth. So first, in developing the reasoning behind rebirth, we have to have some background information, sometimes a little bit of geological tools to work with. Two concepts. One is the concept of substantial cause and cooperative cause. That’s one concept.
And a cause, that which creates, There are two types of causes. I’ll explain what they are. Cooperative cause or cooperative condition, I’ll call it cooperative condition and substantial cause. We’re going to work with this. The other concept is similarity of type.
Let’s take an example. Take an example of a clay pot and it has two causes, two basic causes. One is the substantial cause. That is the lump of clay. The potter takes the clay, throws it on the wheel.
This lump of clay is the substantial cause of the pot. But also there’s another cause, the potter who forms the pot, the tools that he use, the wheel. These also create the pot. They’re also causes of the pot. But there’s a difference, isn’t there, between these two types of causes?
In the substantial cause, the clay is actually itself being transformed, its shape. It’s becoming part of the product. It’s becoming part of the effect. It’s being transformed into something else. In the case of the potter and his wheel and his tools, they cause the pot, they cooperate in the production of the pot, but they don’t become part of the pot.
They aren’t transformed. At the end of the day, the potter takes off his apron, turns off his wheel, goes home, he’s got all his pot sitting there. And his wheel is still sitting there pretty much as it was when he began the day. So there’s been no transformation of the substance of the pottery or his wheel. So there’s these two types of distinctive causes.
One is the substantial cause, the lump of clay, and the other is the cooperative condition, or I’ll say cooperative cause. Cooperative condition, the potter and his various tools that he used. All products, everything that is a result, table, paper, you, me, this building, the world, all products have these two types of causes, cooperative conditions and substantial causes. Another example, if you plant a flower seed, you can have a seed. I think they have found seeds of wheat in the Egyptian pyramids, and they’ve probably been in there for five thousand years.
They take these seeds and they put them in earth and add a little bit of water, They’ve actually sprouted wheat from these seeds. But these seeds, they lay dormant for five thousand years. Now the seed is a substantial cause. It’s what is actually going to be transformed into the sprout. But without the cooperative condition, no effect is going to arise.
You have to have both the cooperative condition and the substantial cause. In the case of this seed, if it’s not placed in the earth, no matter how long it sits there, it’s never going to sprout. It’s never going to produce an effect. Once its cooperative condition is present, like the water, the earth, sunlight, warmth, then the effect comes about quite naturally. So we can see how these two work together, but we must have both.
No matter how much nice soil you have, no matter how much water, warmth, sun, if there’s no seed, you’re never going to get a flower, you’re never going to get any wheat. So you have to have them pull cooperative cause, substantial cause. Okay, so that’s the idea. That’s one tool we’re going to work with, substantial cause and cooperative condition. The other idea is similarity of type.
Within nature, we can look around this. There is always a similarity of type between a cause and effect. Similarity of type. For example, if you plant a sunflower seed, you get a sunflower. You don’t get an apple tree.
No, you don’t get a rose. You get an effect which is similar in type to your cause, that is this sunflower seed. Ice comes from water. It doesn’t come from wood. So there’s always some relationship between cause and effect, some similarity of type.
So this is another tool that we have to use to bring to this discussion of rebirth. So it’s the view of the materialist that the mind consciousness arises from the body or more particularly from the brain, the nervous system. Therefore, the body dies, the mind ceases, The consciousness ceases because the mind is continually arising from the brain, for example, the nervous system. And the body simply returns to its natural elements, you know, rots or whatever, and the mind consciousness more or less disappears like a rainbow, just fades away. Therefore there’s no future life.
That’s rather the materialist point of view. So we’re going to analyze this point of view. I hope I’m not losing anybody. It’s getting too complicated. Within recent modern physics, they’ve come up with one hypothesis is the conservation of mass.
Conservation of mass. All this means more or less is that the sum total of energy and mass in the universe is constant. This is equation energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Anyway, that’s not important. Energy and mass are interchangeable.
Matter and energy are interchangeable. Their sum total is constant. It never increases or decreases in the entire universe. The universe is not losing mass, it’s not gaining mass or energy. These are interchangeable mass and energy.
So when I say mass, you can also think energy. Matter, we can just say matter. When I say matter, mean both mass and energy since they’re interchangeable. The sum total of matter in the universe is neither decreasing or increasing. So this is another piece of information we’re going to work with.
So all the infinite varieties of material objects in the world are simply transformations of previous material. This table maybe fifteen years ago was growing in a forest and someone cut it down and they made a table out of it. Pretty soon, don’t know. How long would Buddha House last? Twenty five years, it would maybe be thrown out in a rot to come fertilize.
Maybe another plant will absorb the nutrition from this table. All the material elements within the western science and perhaps one hundred and nine, I don’t know anymore, one hundred and nine different elements. It’s like recycling. All the various material in the world is simply being recycled, transformed. One thing is made or grows, it rots and decays and disintegrates, however, and becomes something else and that becomes part of something else.
So there’s always this continuum of this transforming of materials into something else constantly. So it’s just a recombining, recombination of the various elements, various material elements. Through all of this we can see that physical We talk about physical and non physical. That physical things do not arise from space, they do not arise from non physical things. For example, whatever we mean by non physical.
That they’re always arising from something which is similar and tight to themselves. In the broadest sense, something which is physical itself. Physical things matter, however it’s combined, always arises from some other matter. It doesn’t arise from non matter, something non physical. Likewise.
Now, we talk about what is the nature of mind. How do we experience the mind? Do we experience this as matter or non matter? Is love matter? Is it, for example, an electron whirling around?
It in my consciousness? Is it really some atom? I don’t know. It’s traditionally defined as that which is clear in knowing. The nature of mind is clear in knowing.
This word clear can mean for simply non physical, non material. The mind is non material and has the quality of knowing. It can know objects. So this is what we mean when we say the nature of mind, that which is non physical and knowing. So we begin to ask the question.
Now we’re going to start analyzing and then ask the question. Now, if in fact the sum total of matter and the energy is constant and if the mind is non physical, if the mind were to rise matter, from the brain, then there would be two contradictions perhaps. One, that there would be a dissimilarity in type, that something which is non physical is arising from something physical, And also there would be a decrease in the amount of matter in the universe because matter would be becoming non matter in the sense that it would be becoming mind, which is not physical. So there are two possibilities of contradictions. That there would be a decrease in the amount of matter in the universe, that matter would be going out of existence whenever mind arose because mind is non matter, And also mind would be arising from a cause which was dissimilar in type to itself.
In the case of matter, where did the first atom come from? Scientists are always talking about where the universe began. They talk about the big bang. They even have a time. They can tell you when.
One thing they never talk about is where the first atom came from. Did it come from nothing? Did all of it physical? One atom popped up in the universe. Actually there was, I don’t remember his name, I wish I had remembered.
There was a man, a physicist, an English physicist who was interviewed on television a couple months ago, a theoretic physicist, and he came up with the idea that the universe was beginningless, never had a beginning, which of course is what Buddhism has been saying for two thousand five hundred years. That in fact there is no first atom. There is no beginning to the material world. Every material phenomena, every material object always had to come from something which was material as its cause. There was always some cause which was material preceding it.
And so you can never find the first atom, the first material object, no matter how far back you go. Likewise, with mind, the quality of knowing, of clearness in knowing arises from that previous moment of mind. So we’ll go into that. If we look at the nature of our mind, this non physical and knowing quality of our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, states of consciousness, They’re experienced as non physical. Even now we can remember states of mind that we had when we were in our childhood, emotions that we experienced.
We can go back. For example, perhaps something happened to you at work today. Maybe something great, something bad. But anyway, it’s still with you. Can trace back.
You came in this door about an hour and fifteen minutes ago in a certain state of mind, and that state of mind is carried over to a present state of mind perhaps. Maybe some anger is still carried over. One moment of anger gave rise to the next moment of anger and so there’s still a lingering effect of the various states of mind. We can trace back maybe something happened to you yesterday and We can go back all the way to our childhood, certain events that happened, certain emotional experiences, and these have affected you down to the present day. There’s a continuum of one mind moment giving rise to another mind moment, emotional states giving rise to a succeeding emotional state.
There’s this long stream of mind giving rise to mind in a steady pattern. But where did the first mind moment come from? If we say the brain, maybe it’s organic molecules. Mind comes from some kind of molecule. That is something which is not knowing and which is physical.
So something which is knowing and non physical is arising from something which is not knowing and physical. So the mind doesn’t arise from nowhere. It doesn’t arise out of, for example, space. So it has to have some, you know, talked about substantial cause. It has to have both a substantial cause and a cooperative condition or a cooperative cause.
So the only thing which can act as the substantial cause of mind is a preceding moment of mind. Just as the only thing which can act as the substantial cause of this clay pot is a lump of clay. The only thing which can act as a substantial cause to a wheat sprout is a wheat seed. Nothing else. No matter what conditions you may have, it’s necessary to have this substantial cause.
No matter what cooperative conditions, no matter how many potters, how many wheels, if you don’t have the clay, you can’t make a pot. No matter how much dirt, how much water you have, if you don’t have the seed of a wheat sprout, you can’t grow a wheat sprout. So it’s necessary to have a substantial cause, And the substantial cause must be similar in type to the effect which arises. So the mind, the effect which is arising is clear and knowing. So the substantial cause is similar in type, which must be clear in knowing, and nothing but the substantial cause.
Without this substantial cause, then it’s never going to arise. So each moment of mind requires a previous moment of mind to give rise to it, to act as its cause. So we go back and back and back. Had this present mind moment, this present state of mind. We could trace that back moment by moment if mindful and had a good enough memory to when you walked in the door, to when you got out of your car, to when you left your work, your home, to when you woke up this morning.
The various continuing mind moments, continuing consciousness, one moment rising after the next, rising after the next, each conditioning the next moment. Even from childhood, various experiences conditioning which who you are now. Remember I said we each have our past histories? This is conditioning who you are now, the various states of mind that arose when you were a child. You go back, back, back, back to a baby, to the moment of conception.
You know, the semen and the ovum, the sperm and the egg when they unite. There’s a mind there. From where did that mind come from? That’s the question. The whole question of rebirth comes down to that one point.
When there’s a union of the sperm and egg, the very first moment of mind, does it arise from the molecules or does it arise from another cause? If it arose from molecules, then it’s the idea that it would be a decrease, maybe a violation of the conservation of mass, there’d be a decrease of matter in the universe. Something which was physical would become non physical and he would be arising from a cause which is dissimilar in type to itself. That mind moment, the very first mind moment of this life, the moment of conception, arose from a previous mind moments. That mind moments is the last mind moments of the previous life.
And in that life, again, each moment of mind tracing back from that last moment of the life of that previous life rose from another mind moments, another mind moments, into each mind state arising, giving rise to the next mind moments, giving rise. It’s like a long stream. We can never point to any one moment and say, This is the first moment of mind, just as we cannot say point to any one moment of physical matter and say, This is when matter first began in the universe, the first atom. We can never logically find that point because matter always must be arising from matter, and mind likewise must be arising from a previous moment of mind. Logically, we can never point to that first moment.
Logically, the mind, the continuum of mind is beginningless. The continuum of matter in the universe is beginningless. The universe is beginningless. There wasn’t We can’t even say there was space because there’s no such thing as space without matter. It doesn’t make any sense.
Space is merely the obstruction, the non-obstruction, intangibility. And if there’s no tangible, it makes no sense to talk about intangibility. If there’s no obstructions, there’s no talk there’s no sense there cannot be space, which is the absence of obstruction. So had there simply was no beginning. So there’s no question about the mind being dependent upon the body.
The mind is dependent upon the body as a cooperative condition. You know, when you get sick, you can’t think clearly. Your mind doesn’t function properly. That’s when your body is well, does it? So there’s a definite relationship between the mind and body.
The mind depends upon the body. The body depends upon the mind. But it’s a relationship not of substantial cause but of cooperative conditions, just like the potter shaping, conditioning the pot, this piece of clay. Likewise, the body conditions, helps shape the mind. Due to the past actions, due to karma, we have become the mind has been associated with a particular set of parents.
It unites with a particular union of egg and sperm. Through this force of karma, there establishes that link with the association between this union of egg and sperm. The egg and sperm, the substantial cause of the egg and sperm, this union which will eventually become the body. It’s a substantial cause of the parents, isn’t it? So the substantial cause of our body comes from our parents.
We’re not bringing that into question. So due to the action of karma, the mind becomes associated with a particular body. When the force of this karma ceases, weakens, then there’s a diminishing of the bond, the link between the mind and body. The body simply disintegrates, returns to its various elements. The mind will continue on and become re associated with another body.
Actually, it’s always associated with a certain subtle energy which acts as its vehicle. So there’s this connection, there’s this continuum, connection between the mind and body. But this body is going to die, decay, the mind, when the link is broken, it’s going to become re associated. This re association of the mind with another union of sperm and egg is simply what we mean by rebirth. This process has been going on since beginning this time.
You know, we talk about in Western science, talk about one hundred, I think one hundred and nine, perhaps, elements. In Buddhism we talk about, as far as material elements, are four. Earth, water, fire, and air. Actually there are six elements which make up completely the universe. Earth, water, fire, air, consciousness, and space.
Now by elements, it’s not quite in the sense that we conceive of it in Western science. There are more factors or qualities than actual particles. We talk about, for example, the earth element is the factor of hardness. So the water element is the factor of cohesiveness. The fire element is the factor of heat, the air or way of putting wind, sometimes it’s called energy, is the factor of motility, movement.
Each of these in turn must come from a continuum of its own similar type. And all of the material universe is simply made up of a combination of these four qualities. But each of these must arise in respect to their own continuum. Fire element comes from a fire element. Heat factor arises from a previous heat factor.
Hardness factor arises from a previous hardness factor. So it’s simply the material universe is again simply a recombination of these four basic material elements. The conscious element has its separate continuum. Space element, again, has its own separate continuum. They’re neither they condition each other, they’re working together, but they have each of them have their own substantial stream, their own substantial cause.
From beginning was time without beginning. The concept we can ever point to are one, the first moment of consciousness. Throughout these infinite re associations of mind with bodies, we have taken rebirth at infinite number of places, in infinite number of situations throughout the universe. There’s not one person who we can point to and say, This person has not been my mother. There’s not one insect, one animal, and say, This person has not been my mother.
For in fact, over an infinite number of rebirths, having an infinite number of parents, all sentient beings have been literally our mother. And our mother just like our mother, this life, no different, Born from her womb, no different. In fact, I think I’ll leave it there. I have that’s a little bit of the reasoning. And maybe you haven’t heard it before.
Maybe it’s quite new. I think there are many in logic, there are many reasonings set forth which try to establish rebirth. Some of them, I don’t think, have any effect on Western mind, particularly, even though from within their context they’re quite logical, quite reasonable. That’s strange. Mean, yeah.
But I think the things that I brought up, there’s a few valid points which you have to consider, which you have to, it should cause some questioning to arise in your mind, you know? Where did the first atom come from? That’s a basic question which no one has ever addressed. I think there’s some real area for inquiry, for analysis, that maybe there is this possibility of rebirth even presented from a logical standpoint, let alone from the point of view of people recalling it, reporting it in hypnotic regression or Edgar Cayce. There is people who have actually remembered, but it’s difficult to take their word on it, isn’t it?
Maybe they’re lying. Maybe they’re deluded. But at least I think I have brought up some plausible, something to question, something to work with that we can think about. It’s said that it’s very necessary to come to an understanding of the nature of mind. The nature of mind will and that understanding will convince you of the existence of past lives.
I talked a little bit about it. So let’s we meditate on loving kindness. Would you like to stand up for a minute? No? Okay.
I should have had a break. So just for the moment, get in touch with some of your feelings of dissatisfaction, problems that you have, difficulties, and the fact that you want to be happy. Whatever you may have done in the past, whatever mistakes you may have created, can simply regret them, determine not to repeat them again in the future as best you can, and begin again. You don’t have to carry it with you. However you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold to, you can change, you can become anything that you want to be.
You can begin again. Just for the moment, we want to make friends with ourselves. All the various parts of ourselves, even the parts that we don’t particularly like, they’re worthy of our compassion. Be gentle with yourself and wish yourself well. Wish yourself some happiness.
You’re worthy of being happy. May I be happy and not suffer? Now think of someone that you like, that you love. Imagine that person in front of you, someone of the same sex. Remember all the good times that you’ve shared, all the happiness that this person has shown you, the kindness.
Just simply begin to radiate out this natural feelings of caring which arise, wanting them to be happy, wishing them not to suffer. Just redirect the feelings towards them consciously. Now think of someone that you neither like nor dislike, that you feel indifferent toward. Imagine that person in front of you. We want to try to go beneath superficial appearances that we usually relate to, that we usually judge people by.
Whether they’re male or female, black or white, rich or poor, ugly or beautiful, educated or uneducated, go beneath all that. Try to see the essence of that person. There’s someone there who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. And just as we wish ourselves happiness, we have to begin to find some space to wish this person happiness. It’s very much a reflection about how we feel about ourselves deep down, how we relate to that essential person, to wish them happiness, to have good feelings towards them.
Now think of someone that disturbs your mind, that you have some kind of problem with, that 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. Perhaps their method of finding their happiness, eliminating their suffering, conflict with your method, finding your happiness, eliminating your own suffering, is just a conflict of egos, of self interest. You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past to gain the happiness that you were looking for, and this person’s done the same to you.
And just as we have to forgive ourselves for the mistakes that we’ve made, we have to begin to forgive this person for their mistakes. And just for the moment, aside your grudge, your anger, your hurt. See someone just like yourself, trying the best they can to get some happiness out of life, being confused about how to go about it, making many mistakes along the way. And wish them happiness as you would yourself. Radiate out some good feelings towards them.
Imagine all four of these people together, yourself and these three others. Try to see them from the point of view that they’re equal and wanting happiness, Not wanting to suffer, there’s no difference. Without any feelings of bias, wish them all well. Wish them all happiness. Radiate out good feelings to all four equally.
And all the people in this room, wish them success. Everyone’s searching for some happiness and some way to grow, some peace. Wish them all success. Wish them well, happiness. And hope that they find what they’re looking for.
All the people on the block watching television, eating supper, cooking, sleeping, They’re all trying to find happiness. So simply radiate out this wish touching everyone on the block, wishing them that they find this happiness that they’re all looking for. And all the people in Adelaide, people on the streets, cars, buses, homes. And spreading out, opening your heart, letting go, spreading out to all of South Australia, all the animals, insects, people. Further and further.
Just extending out, though, without any feelings of limitations. Alice Springs.