Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with a verse by the eighteenth-century Zen monk Ryōkan — “Buddha is your mind and the way goes nowhere” — Ven Jampa Gendun reframes where practitioners should look for the solutions to suffering. In this 123-minute session, a parable of a king who binds leather to his own feet rather than carpeting an entire kingdom anchors the central argument: mastering the mind is, in effect, mastering the world. After guiding the group through breath-counting and a loving-kindness meditation, he opens Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path at its first line — “Homage to all the foremost holy lamas” — and explores why lineage and a living teacher cannot be replaced by books alone. He draws on the Jungian concept of “gold within the shadow” to explain why we resist acknowledging our own deepest potential. Suited to those with some Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 3 PA2006 08 17.mp3
UUID: 00b62cc5-e890-4ebc-b084-fc3243b54d62
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2006-2007 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2006-08-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 123.0 minutes
Words: ~13,575
And it’s very discouraging when when someone walks up to you and say, I didn’t hear anything that you said. Of course, on the other hand, there’s certain advantages when you say something something very stupid if no one hears you. Can you see okay? Do you want some light? Are you okay?
You won’t fall asleep? So we begin with adjusting our motivation. So, you know, this is very much the the orientation of Buddhism, I think. The orientation is towards your mind, and that’s what we’re going to talk about in terms of adjusting our motivation this morning. Trying to begin to understand in some way, and beginning to give that some kind of practical expression in our everyday lives that not only are the problems of our life to be seen in terms of our own mind, in terms of our world view, values, our thinking, our opinions, our beliefs, our attitudes, our skills, but also the solutions to those problems.
You know, it’s not so much the people and the things and the situations about us which bring us problems, but our skill or lack of skill in how we relate to those people and things and situations which are problematic, which causes the difficulties of our lives. So, the orientation that we have to come back to and we have to remind ourselves continually, you know, is that how is my mind creating my situation? How is my mind creating my experience? Where is the problem within my own mind? It’s not to say that we don’t make adjustments.
There aren’t practical issues of having to deal with the real world and people about us and and making the world over and situations over and into the way we think they should be. But the world doesn’t go away for a Buddha. You know, the people die. People situations arise which is conflict but they’re no longer a problem is that okay They’re no longer problems for a Buddha whereas they are for ourselves. And we’re, you know, we’re trying to integrate the world view of a Buddha.
Trying to you know, as I tried to as I mentioned, I I honestly don’t know what a Buddha is. I’ll be honest. I have a but I have a model of what I think is the potential of the mind in terms of of being a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. And that’s what I call Buddha. For now, that’s I have to be satisfied with that.
You know, I think reality is much stranger, much much more than we could ever hope to imagine. The more I learn, the more I study. Perhaps little bit more that I understand, the more mysterious I think reality is, in fact, is. And so I have to make allowances for something beyond the scope of my present understanding, even my present imagination. But it’s still I have to give these ideas and these these images some kind of concreteness so that I can relate with them, I can work with them.
When we concretize this idea, this notion of a Buddha, the fulfillment of the human potential in terms of its evolution. And we we develop some way of relating with that. And moreover, we try to look at the world as if we were looking at out of a Buddha’s eyes into a world which is no longer problematic, which is no longer experiences dissatisfactory or painful in some way or another, full of disappointment and frustrations in one way or another. Our worldview, and we’re going to talk about this this morning, isn’t something which is simply out there. It’s something that we’ve developed, that we’ve learned.
It’s problematic. It is of its very nature dissatisfactory within our present worldview. And by worldview, I mean, there’s complex systems of our attitudes and beliefs and ideas with which we presently have within our own mind, which for a large part you might not even be aware of that you possess. When you look out through that filter of your own ideas and opinions and attitudes and so forth, the world is of its of its very nature problematic. So we have to change our world view.
We have to change ourselves. And we use as a model something that we can work towards, some kind of direction that we can give to our mind Buddha. A Buddha’s world view, the way the world appears out of a Buddha’s mind. How a Buddha relates to all the things that we relate with, but in an extremely more skillful, more productive, and healthier manner. And then our life becomes a little less problematic, a little more easy.
We still, you know, people still give us a hard time. People situations arise where we have come in conflict with the world. But perhaps the difficulties aren’t experienced as deeply in terms of moments of depression or sullenness and sadness and so forth. Perhaps this depression doesn’t last as long. Perhaps we have some more resiliency, more flexibility of mind.
Perhaps we find more to be happy about in our lives, more more things bring us joy. We begin to change. Maybe, eventually, we actually become a Buddha. So the decisive heart searching is the beginning of the way in a man in a person’s life. It is again and again the beginning of a human way.
We’re talking about the path to awakening and the path is takes you from where you’re at now to where you want to go to. And we have to begin the path where we are each at. You know, we can’t look to the person next to you or in front of you. We can’t try to think of how where I like to be or where I wish I was. But somehow we have to begin to confront the reality of where we are right now.
That’s where our path begins. You know, we have to begin to begin to ask ourselves some very poignant questions. What is what is of greatest meaning to myself? What brings my life fulfillment? What helps me to find a sense of being alive, a feeling of connectedness with others, with something beyond my own narrow ego.
So the path, this process of change, transformation begins with trying to make clear for ourselves what each of ourselves is about. You know, what kind of life do I admire? And the emphasis is on what do I admire? We can’t admire in terms of somebody else. What we wish that we admired, what we’ve been taught would be healthy to admire even what our teachers tell us would be a good thing to admire.
What do I admire? Within what we have to check up within our own lived experience. That’s where the change is going to come about. You know, what is what are my beliefs? It’s very difficult difficult to find out what it is in fact you do believe, I think, to be honest with yourself.
What essentially, they come down to something which is not mentioned much in Buddhism, don’t think, but I think has for me has a great heart value, effective emotional value. The idea of what is is sacred to myself, what is sacred to me. So much of our lives is spent in longing and a search for what we do not know. So many of our ostensible goals, so many of the things we think we want, turn out to be the masks behind which our real desires hide. They are symbols for the actual values and qualities for which we hunger.
They are not reducible to physical or material things, not even to a physical person. They are psychological qualities love, truth, honesty, loyalty, purpose, something that we feel is noble, precious, and worthy of our devotion. We try to reduce all this to something physical, a house, a car, a better job, or a human being, but it doesn’t work. Without realizing it, we are searching for the sacred. And the sacred is not reducible to anything else.
Sacredness is, in a sense, a feeling, but a feeling that goes to the very heart of life. It is the feeling of recognition directed toward what is great and high enough to give our own small lives meaning to put our personal journeys in a greater perspective. It is the feeling of reverence. What we call the sacred is ultimately a universe of meanings against which we measure our personal efforts, our personal lives, to see whether they too have meaning. So, you know, this this process that I’m trying to communicate, this this the the path begins with our trying to to find out just who it is beneath all of our many layers of conditioning.
All our our our social and cultural conditioning, our religious indoctrination, beneath all the taken for granted truths of our ideologies and all of our psychologies, all our unexamined shoulds which govern our lives, the ought tos which determine what we do to a great extent, beneath all our individual brands of self deception, our lack of knowing ourselves, what we’ve come to know beneath all of that which has conditioned our mind. There’s a tell me what you yearn and I shall tell you who you are. We are what we reach for, the idealized image that drives our wonderings. You know when sometimes if you go to a party or you just get together and you meet someone for the first time you begin to form some kind of judgment about them and begin to question, what do you do for a living? Where do you work?
Oh, where do you live? Oh, you live in Burnside. And we begin to how many children? And we begin to form a judgment about this person, who they are. But all of those outward trappings are tell us very little, in fact, about who that person actually is.
If you were to say, ah, what is it that you yearn for? They would look at you pretty strangely and probably say, it’s been nice meeting you and walk off. But that would tell us more about who in fact they are, and it tells us more about who in fact we are beneath all of these social conditionings, all of these religious indoctrinations, all the religious indoctrinations, the shoulds and ought tos of our lives. You know, we have to begin to ask ourselves for ourselves. Isn’t it?
We’re not trying to please anyone else. Trying to come up with some of these answers for ourselves. So we begin to understand ourselves beneath this lack of self knowing and self deception. Each of there’s a there’s a it’s one of my favorite verses. It’s by an old friend of mine.
He was think he was an eighteenth century Zen monk by the name of Ryokan. The reason I say he was an old friend of mine too. Some I I I usually say that and, What what do you mean? You know, do you remember your past lives or something? It’s not it’s not that.
I don’t mean that. I I lived for quite a number of years in India. And sometimes during that period, I was a debater. I was a debater. I was a debater.
I was a monk, and I went to this the Buddhist School of Dialectics, is in Dharmasala, India. It used to be called the Buddhist School of Dialectics, actually. It used to during debate, it became rather dramatic. Anyway, and sometimes I would come home at night and I’d go into my room and it was a pretty solitary situation, feeling very much alone. And quite often I would reach for this book of verse by Ryokan, and he would kind of bring me some kind of solace, ease my mind, bring me some kind of comfort.
So I used to look upon Ryokan, this this Zen monk, as a as an old friend of mine who I would who I could talk to at night in the in the the quiet of my room. He said, Buddha is your mind and the way goes nowhere. Don’t look for anything but this. If you point your cart north when you want to go south, when will you ever arrive? So, you know, as I tried to get across, you know, Buddha is your mind, the way goes nowhere.
But what is a Buddha? We can say, no. We don’t know what a Buddha. I’ve never met a Buddha. Have you met a Buddha?
I mean, Lama Yeshe used to say that quite a lot. Oh, you super believing Westerners. If you’ve never seen Buddha, why do you believe in them? You know, it’s but we can begin to have a sense. The Buddha is what I’m yearning for.
It’s the idealized image which drives all my wanderings. This is what I’m reaching for unknowingly. This is why I can’t be satisfied with insanity. There’s a certain sanity. There’s a certain sanity always at work, a certain basic intelligence, certain goodness about ourselves. There’s a certain direction ality to our lives which perhaps for most of us is rather weak and we get lost.
You know, the Buddha represents the lived solutions of life’s fundamental problems. It it is the Buddha represents the the realization of the sacred in our lives. So the the Buddha stands for the the the finest story we could ever possibly hope to tell ourselves about ourselves in terms of what I could do or who I could be. That’s a Buddha for me. That’s my Buddha.
All that we could realistically hope for ourselves in our lives, we get that some kind of concreteness. Buddha is a metaphor for the sacred, for the realization of our greatest and finest potential, who we might be. We call that a Buddha. And this you know, essentially, a a Buddha is someone who experiences unremitting peace within and out of compassion, skillfully and fearlessly works with others in order to help them to experience the same. So, the fundamental solution to all our problems, the basis of all of our mental and physical well-being, and the finding of the sacred in our lives is our own mind.
The Buddha is our mind, our own inner Buddha. This is the reached-for image that that is driving all our wanderings. You know, a Zen monk once said, and it’s really quite a violent statement in a way, if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him. Don’t tell me who said that. You know?
Well, I don’t know quite what that means, but I’ve sort of inter I I was taken with that, and I tried to interpret it, tried to come to understand it. And my understanding of that is that if we if the Buddha is in fact the living solutions to our problems, and we see that the solutions and we see our problems outside of ourselves, and therefore the solutions outside of ourselves, then we are looking for in the wrong place. If we see the Buddha outside of ourselves, which stands as a solution to our problems, we’re never going to find the solution to our problem if for no other reason that we’re looking in the wrong place. We have no no choice but to begin to find the solutions to our problems and therefore the Buddha within our own mind. Don’t look for anything but that.
You know, we can’t we can’t legitimately ask the world that it give us something which it is incapable of giving in terms of our present world view. It’s not possible. We we try. We try. You know, we expend all this blood, sweat, and tears over the course of our life.
And but in fact, has the quality of our life changed very much over the course of our lives? So, you know, no matter how difficult, how challenging, at times seemingly insurmountable the obstacles may be, we have to look for the the the solutions to our problems within ourselves. There’s really no one else we can look to. Nothing outside of ourselves which we which we can rely upon to end our suffering, to help bring ourselves, bring our minds to peace. You know, for I think for I think for most of us, there’s nothing new in this.
And intellectually, rationally, I think we we would all agree in one way or another with what is being said. But it, you know, more or less appears as as an obvious factor of life in one way or another. But but that’s not the way that we practically live our life. In fact, we live our life in a very much different fashion. You know, we live our life, you know, very much very much like a person who has lost their keys along a very dark street.
And though they’ve lost their key along this very dark street, they decide I’ll search on the corner where there’s a street light because I’ll be able to search there that much easier. No matter how, you know, no matter how difficult the search might be, we actually have to look for the solutions where they’re to be found. And then no matter how, you know, looking on the street corner where the light is, sure your search is going to go easier there, but there’s no realistic hope of ever finding what you’re looking for because you’re simply not looking in the right place. We have to look in the right place of where we are, realistic hope to find the solutions to our problems. So likewise, this Buddha who is the the this like this the metaphor image of the solutions to our problems is can be found nowhere else but in our own minds.
So the path path leading to Buddha, you know, this path leading to all the the ends of our suffering, the end of all our wanderings in the beginning of the of the experience of finding some kind of peace and fulfillment and meaning in our lives, the finding of the sacred in our lives begins and ends within our own mind. Don’t look for anything but this. Buddha is your mind, and the way it goes nowhere. Don’t look for anything but this. You know, there’s a story which which in a way I think begins to get this sense across.
It’s a simple story, but I think it has meaning. It’s about it takes place in ancient times, as many of these stories do. And it’s the story of a king who was walking about his the countryside in his kingdom, and he stepped on a thorn, and it hurt. So he went back to his his castle, his palace, and he called together all his ministers. He put his royal foot up on the table and said, Look at my foot.
It hurts. Now you have to find a way whereby I can walk about my kingdom safely without the threat of harm to myself. So all the ministers, they thought, they thought, they thought. And then one of the clever ones spoke up and they said, have an idea. We’ll cover all the robes in your kingdom with leather.
And that way, the king’s feet will be protected from thorns and rough objects and so forth. And you’ll be able to walk about your kingdom safely without the threat of hurting yourself. Fantastic idea. Let’s do it. And that is as but it is often the case in such situations or in fact in reality, immediately the treasurer spoke up.
He said, can’t do it. Can’t do it. First off, there aren’t enough cattle in your kingdom to produce that much leather. And even if there were enough cattle, it would bankrupt the treasury. It’s not practically possible.
So the the ministers fell silent again, and they they were thinking and thinking and thinking. And as as often the case in these stories, there was a wise old minister who spoke up. And she said, I propose propose that we cut out two pieces of leather in the shape of the soles of the king’s feet. And we take these two pieces of leather and we bind them with thongs to the bottom of the king’s feet. Then the king could walk about about his countryside without the threat of stepping on thorns or rough objects and could walk about his countryside without any threat and complete safety.
So this story is meant to illustrate an obvious, maybe two things. One is obvious, but we quite often, sometimes the obvious is overlooked in life. We can’t control the world. We can’t realistically order the world about us to conform to our wishes, demand that it somehow run according to our particular needs, expect that it meet somehow accommodate each of our personal agendas. But we do.
And when we do, we either experience a sense of rage because the world doesn’t run to our orders, it doesn’t meet our accommodate our specific needs, or we experience a sense of powerlessness and emptiness because we can’t do the impossible. How many of us are trying to do the impossible and feel powerless because we can’t? But there’s a there’s a there’s a another less obvious moral to be gained from this story, principle with that this story contains. If we could control our own minds, it is as if we control the world. If we can control our own minds, it is as if we control the world.
The only thing that we can really think every hope to control in our life is our own minds. And that, as it turns out, is enough. It’s more than enough to be happy, to fulfill, to be satisfied within the world. So the mind is the measure of all things, the determinant of all things. The mind is in in its place, in its way, it can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
It’s not the, you know, the in a very real sense, the various things about us, the people and situations are neutral. You know, they’re like like for example, maybe a knife. A knife in the hands of a surgeon can enhance life. Life. It can give life.
It can be constructive, productive. It can bring happiness. That same exact knife in the hands of a thief of a murderer can be destructive. It can bring misery to other people and oneself. The knife is is the same knife or scalpel.
So it depends upon our our how we make use of these people, things, the situations about us, our skill or lack of skill, our understanding of how we’re to relate with them, our expectations, our hopes around them, which are going to determine whether they become a means, instruments for our happiness or for our suffering. It is the mind’s skill or lack of skill. It’s understanding. It’s world view, which is going to determine all that. So, you know, point of what I’m saying is what I mentioned in the very beginning was this process of trying to remind ourselves of some of these ideas which I’m trying to relate in my own fashion that and beginning about this reorientation.
Where where where is it that we see our problems and where is it that we see our solutions? We have to begin to see the solutions in terms of our own mind begin to see the problems and therefore the solutions in terms of our own mind, in terms of the ways of our thinking and behaving. So the path begins with our questioning of the present direction of our lives. In ours is a world where people really don’t know where they’re going, yet they seem to be go they seem to be willing to go through hell to get there. You know, where is it that you want to go?
You know, if you’re pointing your cart north when you want to go south, how are you ever going to get there? And if you keep going the same direction you’re going now, you’re likely to end up where you’re headed. And it’s where you’re headed where you want to go. So you have to stop. Stop distracting yourself.
Stop numbing yourself and begin to confront yourself. Where is the overall patterns of my thinking and behaving taking me? Is that where I want to go? Or does some kind of change some kind of change necessary? Is the way I’m my tools that I’m working with to find happiness, are they sufficient?
Are they working for me? Is there a payoff? You know, it’s dealing with the pragmatics of our life. The Buddhist taught two things, suffering and the way to stop suffering. You know, whether there’s a whether there’s a god or not or nature of the universe and all that, is perhaps not so important to us.
But the question of suffering is important to everyone. The practical necessity of dealing with it and how we deal with it. So where the path begins with kind of a bedrock question, does anything matter to me? Is is there anything I really care about? And if nothing matters to you, can I find something that that does matter to me that, in fact, I do care about?
And then in the light of these answers that we’re able to evoke out of imagination, that we’re able to no matter how vague and confused and fallible these answers might appear to us at present to be, begin to form a different future for ourselves. We have to give ourselves a chance to be somebody else, something better. We have to give ourselves that opportunity to create to open that space to other possibilities, give ourselves a break. In other words, to take these these these these these life bestowing images out of our hearts so they’re not lost to us, so they don’t rot there and never to be found again. You know, we we’ve all dreamed in some way or another over the course of our life, and we have to begin to build solid foundations between beneath the dreamed of life that we’ve all built somewhere dreamed somewhere in our life.
To put the solid foundations beneath the castles of the dreamed of life that we’ve all imagined, the person that we’ve all hoped at one point, moments of awareness, glimpses of who we might be, and begin to commit ourselves to the process of this change of, you know, taking the these are difficult questions. I think change is difficult, if we’re honest. I think necessity is the mother of change. When we have to change, we will if there’s no other choice as it were. But if we live our lives intelligently, maybe we don’t have to go to the very bottom like an alcoholic.
They only give it up when the choice is death. But maybe even perhaps even in a deeper sense finding answers to these difficult questions is is not the point. The point is to begin to ask the questions. You know, to to these questions can be our greatest teachers. They they help us to find our way toward what is sacred for me, what is of value and brings meaning to my life.
Then they are the opening of a way in a person’s life, showing us our beginning to reveal our path, beginning to utilize our own wisdom, our own basic sanity, our decency and goodness about ourselves. Perhaps, you know, in asking these questions, we will gradually, gradually, without even noticing it, live our way into the answers. One day we find ourselves awake. We find ourselves a Buddha, unknown to ourselves. So in this process, the the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha.
The Buddha inside of ourselves, which we have, which we we make use of the Dharma, the techniques, the trainings, the truth of things as a means to actualize that Buddha, to give it some practical expression in our daily lives. And this all occurs within the social context spiritual community, the Sangha. Those who who validate our Buddhist story. And but we we don’t stop there. We we try to raise again and again the level of our motivation, the why behind, and the reason for our going for refuge to Buddha Dharma Sangha such that we do it not just for our own welfare alone, not for our own limited needs and narrow self concerns, but out of an ever widening circle, bringing about the the the welfare of an ever widening circle of others.
Ultimately, we go for refuge to the Buddhadharma and Sangha in order to perfectly awaken ourselves for the sake of all living beings. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness in the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from the joy that is without sorrow.
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for some and aversion toward others. Meditate. Would you like to stand up for a minute and stretch your legs? Remember, I have something for you. Okay.
So as our basic meditation, we’ve been making use of mindfulness of breathing. So maybe I can mention a few things about meditation in general and then a few things about mindfulness of breathing. We can we can begin to build on that. And we’ll meditate on loving kindness as part of a meditation session. I think meditating together this way is really productive over a long period of time.
You know, we it’s very useful to gather more and more information together, but it’s also useful simply to begin to Meditation is like practicing it or putting it putting it to work, actually, in the way that we integrate some of this information. So enjoying it with others, I think, is quite useful. It’s quite helpful to do this together in this way. Talk about posture. You know, you can you’re welcome to either sit on the floor or as many of you do, sitting in a chair, whichever, you know, what works for you.
That’s the way that that’s the way that you do it. You might want to experiment with different ways, but but eventually coming to some idea or feeling what what what what you find best for yourself. And we can’t look to others within your own experience. You being you have you are the authority about yourself, and you can depend upon that to a large degree. So sitting so there is a a an idealized posture, we can say, and we it’s called the the sevenfold posture of Vairochana.
Vairochana is a particular lineage of Buddha in whom the you know, is the image of in terms of the physical presence. So we emulate that posture that, that Vrachana takes and has seven points around it, seven aspects to it. And we, we can duplicate that in our, our, as a meditation posture. And as I, as I mentioned, you know, the mind is dependent upon the body. There’s an interrelationship.
So by developing a, a firmness, stability, a purposefulness in terms of our posture, this will reflect in the quality of our mind. There’s an interrelationship between the mind and the body, and they both are each other’s cooperative conditions. So, here we can begin to work, we can begin to work with the mind through the body, through adjusting our bodily posture. So, going through these seven points just very quickly, then we set them aside. Okay, generally we can sit, if you’re sitting on the floor for example, generally your buttocks should be raised.
In Tibet they would actually have a platform where the back of the platform would be raised. We generally sit on a cushion, so in some way your buttocks is raised, and this will help you to keep your back straight rather than slumping over. If you’re sitting in a chair, might want to move your buttocks to the back of the chair. Maybe if you’re sitting in a chair, your feet flat on the floor in terms of sitting on the floor. Okay.
Either the Either the Some Okay. Sometimes people sit in the vajra posture, with both feet on each of the two thighs. Sitting in a half larger posture with one. Okay. Or you can just cross your legs.
Or you can But anyway, I’ll show you the idealized posture and then you can work from there. Most important, I think, and I think it’s really useful, and in the course of your meditation you should come back to this, is keeping your back straight. Alert. So amongst all of these aspects of a correct posture, think maybe you might want to be most mindful of this one. You know, like the vertebrae stacked like coins, one on top of another, a column of coins.
Sometimes, I know in the Zen tradition they talk about as if a hair was being pulled upward, kind of stretching upward, stretching the vertebrae and your spine upward, keeping your back straight. So, you know, in the course of your meditation, you might you know, you might have attended this louch. So, it’s good to be, to have that mindfulness where you come back to it again and again, and you straighten up again and again. You want to be able to take a posture which is comfortable, which is firm, but in which you can hold for some length of time without moving. Moving will distract.
It will cause an some even a subtle agitation in your mind. But we don’t want it cause any pain to ourselves, unnecessary pain. There might be initially some discomfort with new body position, but nothing that would harm you in any way. We don’t want that. But sometimes you have to work through some some areas of discomfort and taking new positions, some of the cartilages in the knees and so forth, and opening the pelvis takes a while to get used So, you know, if you’re watching television you might want to sit on the floor and watch television.
You know, just begin to open up your hips and so forth. But it shouldn’t be, it’s such, you have to begin to make a distinguish between healthy pain and unhealthy pain. I had a yoga teacher who used to talk about that. Knowing which types of pain you should work through and which types of pain you should step back from. The same with this bodily posture.
And then the mouth and the jaw. The jaw should be relaxed with the mouth closed. Teeth should not be clenched. The tongue is placed at the back of the teeth where the hard meets the teeth. The tip of the tongue is placed there.
The shoulders should be level. Many people have a tendency, and I do too, to begin to raise their shoulders up. And there’s a lot of we carry a lot of tension in our back, in our shoulders. And we can begin to release that tension by keeping the shoulders level, your nose in line with the navel. Then there’s the question about the eyes.
You know some traditions teach you to close your eyes. Some teachings, meditative traditions tell you to keep your eyes open. And by eyes open, it’s meant simply allowing a slit. You know, the upper lids almost come to rest on the lower lids so there’s a slit of light which helps keep you alert. There’s a little bit of that’s coming into the mind in that way.
I use both, so I’m not much help to you in that way. Certain meditations I close my eyes. Most other meditations I keep my eyes open. Anyway, so I’m going let you work that out by yourself. Tsongkhapa, in his great exposition of the stages of the path, he suggests an eighth aspect and that is mindfulness of breath.
And that’s what we’re working with. So in terms of mindfulness of breath, I mentioned that it’s a natural breathing. We don’t adjust our breath in any way. We don’t make it longer or deeper or shorter. Whatever breath is there, that’s the one we’re working with.
And I mentioned that the focus of our awareness, where we’re placing our attention, is on the physical sensations associated with this natural breath. You know, the breath is something we can’t see, but we can feel tactile sensations of the abdomen rising and falling, you know, as we breathe, the cloth, our clothing rubbing against our skin, the air rushing in and out of our nose and not up on our upper nostril, up on our upper lip. I’m suggesting now that you begin to focus upon a smaller area of sensation. You can either, and this is your choice, either focus upon the rise and fall. This physical sensation associated with the rise and fall of the abdomen as you breathe in and out.
Or the physical sensation of the air on your, rushing in and out of, in, in, in, in, your nostrils and within your upper lip. Even with the mustache you can feel it. There’s a sensation here. Okay? So that becomes the object of our focus.
We focus upon that sensation. And then I’m suggest two techniques. I’m going to mention one of them today. The technique of counting. This is simply a support technique to support this practice.
It’s only a technique. If it works for you, make use of it. If it doesn’t, then set it aside. It’s not important. You might use it sometimes and not another depending on the quality of your concentration and so forth.
But there are two main factors we’re working with in meditation: mindfulness and awareness. So mindfulness is memory, recollection, you know. It holds objects like my hand holds this stick. Mindfulness holds the breath, or the sensations associated with the breath. It holds telephone numbers.
That’s all it is. There’s nothing mysterious about it. We all have it. So, one way we can, our mindfulness might not be very powerful at present, so we have to train it. One way we can help train it, the technique which supports that training, is counting the breaths.
So, in, breathing out, counting mentally, not verbally. I’m going to say this verbally. This would be done mentally. A gentle counting, breathing in, breathing out, counting one, in out two, in out three, in out four, in out five. You get up to five, come back down to one.
One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. You know, this isn’t the spiritual Olympics. Okay? We’re not trying to it doesn’t matter.
And in some, there’s many wonderful people have never gotten to five. You know? There’s no problem there. If you if in the course of counting one through five, your mind you find your mind has been distracted, your mind’s wandered, simply bring the mind back to the breath and begin the sequence of counting over again. Okay.
So, we’re going to do about ten minutes of mindfulness of breathing. Then I’ll lead you through a meditation on loving kindness. So, taking a firm comfortable posture, keeping the back straight, and we can begin with relaxing our body. So, beginning at the crown of your head, with the scalp and forehead, feeling the bringing your awareness to those those areas and feeling the lines in your brow beginning to smooth out. Your facial muscles beginning to relax, to sag.
Down to your neck, you might want to turn your head gently to the side a few times, just loosening and relaxing. Coming down to your shoulders, perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times, feeling the tension, the burden begin to move down and out of your body, body becoming relaxed, at ease. Your hands are soft. Your lower arms and upper arms relaxed. Your chest.
Your belly is soft. Your pelvis and buttocks. Your upper legs, lower legs, your feet. So just get in touch with your body, noticing any tensions, any tightnesses within your body. Bring your awareness to those areas and soften.
Feel ing the solidity of that tension beginning to dissolve, disperse. The body becoming comfortable at ease. Just imagine a sense of physical well-being and comfort in your body. It feels good. It’s not supposed to be.
And then bring your mind to breath. So gentle, easy, natural, in and out flow of the breath. Yeah. It’s helpful using the technique of counting breaths. Now we’re going to do mind we’re going to do loving kindness meditation.
We’re going to begin with ourselves. So imagine yourself in front of yourself. If you can’t see yourself, doesn’t matter, just feel that all of what you’re directing is directed toward you, yourself. Whatever we may have done in the past, the various mistakes that we may have created, can simply develop a healthy sense of regret and begin again. Whatever identity we hold to, however we conceive of ourselves, can change, we can become anything what we want to be.
But just for this present moment, we want to set aside the past and the future and simply get in touch, befriend this person who we are at present, this vulnerable person who only wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer. Wish yourself happiness that you want, that you wish yourself that you didn’t suffer. May I not suffer. May I grow. May all that I desire come about.
May I be happy. May I be happy. Wish yourself well. Wish yourself all the good things of life. Now think of someone that you like, that you love, that you naturally care about.
Imagine that person in front of you. Again, it’s not so important that you see them, that’s in your imagination, but feel that they’re there. Remember all the good times that you’ve shared together, all the many kindnesses that this person has shown you. Begin to direct out, to radiate out toward this person the kind, caring feelings which naturally arise when you think of this person in this way, wishing them that they did not suffer, wishing them that they were happy. Send out direct out kind, caring feelings towards this person.
Now think of someone that you neither like nor dislike, a stranger, someone you feel indifferent to. This person wants to be healthy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. And because you don’t know their story of their life, they don’t matter to you. But their story is essentially just like yours. They want to be happy.
They don’t want to suffer just like you. So simply, out of the basic kindness of your heart to a fellow human being just like yourself, of the rich generosity of your heart. Wish them well. Wish them happiness, just as you do for yourself. Now think of someone that you don’t like, somebody you have problems with.
Imagine that person there in front of you. Perhaps this person’s method of finding their happiness, solving their problems, become in conflict with your methods of finding your happiness, solving your problems. It’s just a conflict of self interest. This is you want to be happy and don’t want to suffer. They likewise don’t want to suffer, they want to be happy.
So we have to find some way to begin to forgive just as we have to begin to forgive ourselves for our mistakes. Begin to forgive this person for this. At least don’t put them out of your heart and for the possibility of another way of relating with this person. And just for this present moment, just for this moment, suspend your grudge, your sense of hurt, the injustice, and have it your own Buddha nature, your own basic goodness. Wish them well.
Wish them happiness. Now imagine these four people together, yourself and these three others. They’re all exactly alike. They all want to be happy. None of them want to suffer.
No difference. Wish them all equally that they’ll be happy if they find whatever difference they’re looking for, that they not suffer. Direct out a wish of caring and well-being to all four equally. And all the people in this room, people who are trying to grow and to take responsibility for their lives, to change, wish everyone in the room that they find whatever it is they’re looking for, whatever would make them happy, wish that they had it. Love, peace, money, realization.
Wish that they had it, that they’ve not suffered. We laid out the wish of caring and well-being to everyone in the world. And extending this wish out further and further to all the Fullerton people in their houses, people in their cars, on the streets, wish that they had happiness, that they didn’t suffer. Extending this wish out further to all the Adelaide offices, and factories. Further and further.
All of South Australia. Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney, Brisbane, Alice Springs, Darwin, Perth, entire country. Further further, New Zealand. North, East Timor, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and Africa. North and South America.
Take the entire world into your heart. All the people, black, white, red, yellow, the animals, all the insects, everything that lives on earth is touched by your wish that they’d be happy, that they’ll not suffer. And direct this wish out in all the directions of space. Further and further. Without any limits or sense of limitation.
Till finally, without any center, without any boundaries, simply the wish may all be happy. May there be only happiness. May there be peace. And then bring your mind back to your breath. Easy, gentle, and don’t flow with your natural breath.
And then get in touch with your body, feeling sensations within the body. Gently, slowly become aware of your surroundings and sounds and so forth. There’s no hurry. Just take your time. So, we’re going to begin the text.
It’s a very short text. We’re going to use it like a framework around which we can discuss many of the important elements of Dharma. In actual text, the three principal aspects of the path, there’s a prologue. So the actual text by Tsongkhapa is divided into parts. There is a prologue, or the preliminary, which leads into the composition of the text.
There is the actual main body of the text. And then there is an epilogue, or conclusion. The, within this first overall division, this prologue or preliminary, there is the preliminary of offering a praise. There is the preliminary of a pledge to compose. That means I’m going to write this text no matter what.
And then there’s a strong encouragement to ourselves to it well, to actually put it into practice. So we’re going to begin with the first of these three preliminaries, the preliminary of praise. And the preliminary of praise is mentioned in the very first line where it says, Homage to all the foremost holy lamas. So this is going to be a difficult area. We’re beginning with one of the more difficult points of Buddhism, think, in Dharma especially.
Okay. But anyway, we’ll try to do the best we can around this. Homage to all the foremost and holy Vamas. Tsongkhapa’s purpose for paying homage, a sense of reverence or respect, in the beginning is to accumulate the merit necessary to ensure that he is able to bring his composition of this text to completion. Merit is in itself a very difficult point.
He’s happy. You know, think I can’t even begin to have an idea of what merit is, but I can It has many facets. Many of these points of dharma are tremendously profound. They have many different levels and they have many different perspectives of where we can look at them. One, in terms of merit, you know, sometimes another word for merit is is positive potential.
And it was like, in the way that in this context where he’s he’s trying to create enough positive potential to ensure that he’s able to complete the composition of the text, it’s the the image that comes to my mind is like a boulder on top of a mountain which is rolling down. And that boulder has a certain momentum or inertia. It has some kind of potency about it, some energy. And it won’t be easily deflected. The larger the boulder is, the more speed it has, the more momentum, the more inertia it has.
It will it will continue in the same direction. Small trees won’t deflect it. So likewise, the more merit that we have, the more positive potential, the fewer obstacles that we will have in our life. And even those obstacles that we do meet will not be insurmountable. So we can we can with the merit, we can we’re more easily able to achieve our goals.
We’re we’re not distracted. We’re not sidetracked. We meet with fewer fewer hindrances, interruptions to what it is we’re trying to do. And this is all on account of this positive potential that we build up in various ways. It has, I think, many facets of ways we think of, you know, one’s will of mind, in a way.
But that’s just one aspect of it. So, anyway, one of the reasons that this is one of the most effective ways that we can build up positive potential is through the admiration and respect and paying reverence to our spiritual teachers, our Lamas. So, this is one of the reasons that Tsongkhapa is doing this at the beginning. In order to ensure that he has the positive potential to bring his composition to conclusion. You know, it’s said that holy beings, when they make a pledge to do something, it’s like written in stone.
They won’t won’t rest. They won’t get sidetracked until they bring their whatever they pledge to do to its end. Homage to all the foremost holy lamas. All here. I feel very inadequate talking about this thing.
I think somehow they’re all very profound. All. The word all. All refers to Tsongkhapa’s immediate lamas. We use the word lama.
We can use the word, I think, spiritual master or spiritual teacher. We can think of it in that same way. Later on, we’re going to discuss a little bit more. So, all refers Tsongkhapa’s immediate teachers, but also his teacher’s teacher, and his teacher’s teacher’s teacher. You know, this long line of transmission all the way back to the Buddha.
This lineage is a continuum of a particular world view, which I mentioned at the very beginning. The way a Buddha looks at the world. It is a system of beliefs, of values, beliefs, of values, and it’s represented for us by our teachers. And they are like the living link. They have actually participated in this world view.
They’ve integrated this world view. It’s like living tradition. Every scripture, every meditation or technique, all the various trainings of mind are passed down from teacher to teacher, from their teacher to another teacher. And then they are internalized. And then they become integral part of the student.
And that student in turn teaches it to their students. So there is this transmission of a way of being, a way of looking at the world, all the way from Śākyamūni Buddha from two thousand five hundred years ago, without interruption. There is a continuity of his vision of the possibilities of humankind. It is transmitted in its entirety with great integrity in an authentic manner. So, it’s like a matrix, it’s like a particular worldview.
You know, we create, we are part of a lineage. It’s not a very successful lineage, what we call the mundane world. Our world is built, are indoctrinated indoctrinated into a particular meaning out of which we view the world. And the world reflects our vision of it. Through our culture, our society, through all of our various interactions, through television, we have learned the world that we live in.
This this this reality that we take so much for granted is an expression of our own quality of mind in terms of our beliefs, our ideas, ideas, our worldview. It’s not separate from our worldview. So we have learned this world, this reality that we see, which we take so much for granted. But there are alternative realities, alternative worldviews which are being transmitted. This process has been going on for twenty five hundred years, probably from beginning of this time, in fact.
So our teachers are there is like a community of of a world view, of a and this this our teacher is a part part of this community. And they’re inviting us to become part of their community, to become part of that lineage. Let’s say that a group of students decides, perhaps in their second year of college, that they want to be physicists. They take courses in physics. The experience of learning in this way is familiar to many of us.
First you hear new terms that you do not understand, but you leave your mind open and work with them. You perform the activities through the examples that exemplify the views and methods of the discipline. You do a lot of problems and still have the uncomfortable feeling that I don’t know what this is all about, but I am to do it anyway. One day suddenly you feel, Ah, now I understand what it’s all about. At that point you say, I have become a physicist now because the language is part of my system.
The way you become a physicist was by doing hundreds of examples until sufficiently you understood. A biologist or a medical student, an astronomer or a psychologist goes through the same process. Maybe it takes up to ten years to go through this process. And finally, one is a biologist or a psychologist. So, by actually participating in this world view which is being transmitted into us, we become the lineage.
We become that worldview. You know, we aren’t becoming psychologists, or we aren’t becoming physicists, and so forth. But we do share in this vision. We become the lineage of this vision, this community. We become an integral part of this community.
Maybe it takes a lifetime. Maybe it’s taken many lifetimes for this process, this awakened worldview. Then, finally, we are the lineage. We are learning a world of meaning. We have a world of meaning at present, but that that way in which that meaning is being expressed is problematic.
There’s another system of beliefs and ways of looking at the world. You know, the the world doesn’t go away if you become a Buddha. I don’t know what it looks like exactly for a Buddha, but I think there’s still this table in this building, still people. But out of a Buddha’s eyes, they’re no longer problematic. There’s a different vision of the world.
Think of a medical student attending a course in the x-ray diagnosis of pulmonary diseases. He watches in a darkened room, shattering traces on a fluorescent screen placed against the patient’s chest. And here’s the radiologist commenting to his assistants in technical language on the significant features of these shadows. At first the student is completely puzzled, for he can see in the x-ray pictures of the chest only the shadows of the heart and ribs, with a few spidery splotches between them. The experts seem to be romancing about figments of their own imagination.
He can see nothing that they are talking about. Then as he goes on listening for a few weeks, looking carefully at ever new pictures of different cases, a tentative understanding will dawn on him. He will gradually forget about the ribs and begin to see the lungs. And eventually, if he perseveres intelligently, a rich panorama of significant details will be revealed to him, of physiological variations and pathological changes of scars, of chronic infections, and signs of acute disease. He has entered into a new world.
He still sees only a fraction of what the experts can see, but the pictures are definitely making sense now, and so do most of the comments made on them. He is about to grasp what is being taught. It has clicked. Clicked. So at some point in this process of becoming our teacher’s lineage, suddenly we feel, ah, now I understand what he’s talking about, what it’s all about.
Maybe it’s only very partial and fleeting, quickly passing glimpse. Yet, you become a part of that lineage. And you link There’s a living link to a no way of being in the world. To to There’s link to a type of world, a way of being, which is beyond the one that you have habitually identified with up till now. This world is a learned world.
We’re habituated to see this world in this particular way. Through the transmission of another vision, we are able to see that there are other possibilities of looking at the same world. It occurred to us that there is another possibility. The Lama represents that other possibility of how one can be in this world and how one can relate with this world. He or she transmits that possibility.
There’s some crevice, a slight crack opening, and some kind of light or vision of an awakened possibility enters into our nervous system for the first time. We have a new vision of what we could be and how we could be in this world. So link to a Buddhist vision. That vision is being passed in uninterrupted transmission from the Buddha to his disciples, to their disciples, all the way down to our present teachers. It’s a it’s a vision a Buddha’s world view.
It’s a view of awakening. Something that we’ve never known before, we’ve never thought about. We don’t It’s glimpse of a whole total other way of being that we’ve never even considered before. So, this is So, we’re looking at what lineage and the significance of lineage. But, what Tsongkhapa is making reference toward this lineage of Lamas.
So, what does a Lama mean? And, I have to say, in a preface of what I’m going to say in lama, when I talk about spiritual teacher, I’m not at all It should be clear, but maybe it’s useful to make it clear. I’m not at all talking about myself. So, anything I say, I’m not referring to myself. Okay?
That should go without saying, but sometimes these things need to be said. So, the point of paying homage is, and this is, we have to use our intelligence around this, the point of paying homage is, in general, to help the reader understand that the realization of these Three Principal Aspects of the path is necessary depends upon a spiritual teacher, on a Lama. Okay? And not just dependent upon, but also upon the quality of our relation with a spiritual teacher, our lama. So, there’s a book that I mentioned last week, and we’re going to get some copies.
This a commentary by Pabongka Rinpoche, was one of the great masters of the twentieth century in Tibet. It’s his commentary to Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path. And in it he quotes an important figure in the history of Tibetan Buddhism, the Lama Geshe Potowa. So we’re talking about the necessity of depending upon a spiritual teacher in gaining realization. To reach liberation, there is nothing more important than a Lama.
Even the simple things of this present life, with things that you can learn just by sitting down and watching someone, you can’t get anywhere without a person to show you. So how on earth are you going to get anywhere without a lama when you want to go somewhere where you’ve never been before and you’ve only just arrived from a journey through the lower rebirths? So here, Pabongka Rinpoche is quoting Geshe Potowa, but then he goes on to say for himself. He says, Therefore, you are absolutely going to have to go and learn from the Lama. Just reading dharma books is not going to work.
There has never been single person in history who gained his spiritual goals without a Lama just by reading books on Dharma. It will never happen in the future either. So we tend to feel that we can help ourselves purely through reading books if we read lots and lots and lots of books and by practicing by ourselves. That’s a notion that most of us harbor in some way. But the teaching from books are always open to interpretation.
We read them for our own purposes, with our own agenda. And quite often our own agenda is hidden in from ourselves. You know, the Dharma was never made to make us feel comfortable. Much of what is said at first sounds alien because quite often it contradicts many of our present principles and notions of how we’re going to find happiness. It seems contradictory.
Contradictory. It seems foreign in some way. If we practice in isolation, our practice may in fact only be a practice in our own imagination. We can’t be sure. There’s no reality check.
So in coming to the practice of Dharma, we are faced with a problem of relationship with the person we’re going get this Dharma from, a relation with a spiritual teacher or a lama. A real person who uncompromisingly communicates their lineage, this vision which is handed down to them. That’s part of their responsibility. So the vision Buddha doesn’t get diluted and degenerated, thereby lost. They have to be kind of a bit stubborn around this to maintain the integrity of the vision which has been passed down to them.
You know, people come to the practice of Dharma already with some fixed ideas in their mind. And one of those ideas is what they’re going to get and how they’re going to deal with the person who they’re getting it from. But the notion that we’re going to get something from the Lama, like whatever it might be, whether it’s happiness or peace or even wisdom, you know, whatever it is that we’re seeking is one of the most difficult preconceptions of all. The role of the Lama is not to transmit happiness, peace, wisdom. But the role of the Lama is to help us to believe in ourselves, that we can attain these things, that we can attain happiness, that we can attain peace, that we can attain wisdom.
The role of the Lama is to inspire us, to help us to gain confidence that we can attain them, to give us the methods whereby we can actually attain them, the necessary practices to actually achieve these ends. The lama is to represent for us a model of that achievement itself. So we know that it is in fact, in some way possible, a living example of someone who’s done it. It’s not theory. It’s not something that was told two thousand five hundred years ago.
But there are people who are actually realizing and experiencing what it is that we want. The final result depends upon the method and our effort. And our effort is preceded by faith. You have to have trust in the goal, you have to have trust in the method, and you have to have trust in the teacher who is presenting you that method. To change is very mysterious, to set out the course of change.
We have to bring together a lot. We have a linear motion, a notion of how things operate, you know. We’re very narrow in our interpretation. This cause brings about this effect. And we can only see this single connection between in this relationship.
But in fact, it’s a whole matrix of causes coming together with conditions, almost beyond belief, which bring about a whole matrix of results and conditions which are almost beyond our present understanding. But we think by simply creating this cause, I’m going to bring about that. I want this result, therefore I can bring about that. I just have to create that single cause. But in fact, it’s constellation of causes and conditions and variables.
We have to create the ecology of mind. The mindset from which these new understandings, these new these results that we seek to achieve can arise. Creating all the variable the various conditions which are conducive to what is that we want. We have to open our scope of what it takes to bring about what it is that we want. Part of that condition is faith.
We have to have because you have to be to change, you have to you have to understand that there’s a certain momentum in terms of our present habitual ways of acting and behaving and thinking and so forth. And we have to begin to interrupt those patterns. We have to create the conditions where they’re no longer seen as working. We have to and we have to more more over create some kind of space and openness for new ways, new patterns to begin to develop. And that requires some kind of trust.
That kind of open opening up to live with the tension and insecurity and the uncertainty while these new ways of being and new ways of thinking are forming within our mind. We require some trust that I don’t know quite what I’m doing but I have trust in this teacher and I have trust in this method and I have trust that I contain this goal. I have trust in myself. And we’re willing to bear with that uncertainty in the transition from one pattern to another. This is a quote by Lama Yeshe who is his picture is on this altar here as you face it to the left.
Lama Yeshe was a tremendous influence on thousands of people. You know, he changed people’s lives. He he founded the present the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahāyāna Tradition, of which Buddha House is a member. It is because of his kindness that we’re sitting here now. It shows what one person, the impact that one person can have, it’s propagating.
Even after his having died twenty years ago, what he instituted is still growing. He was a master of psychology in the way that he was able to relate with Westerners. We have to understand why it is both necessary and possible to abandon our ordinary limited view of ourselves and generate in its place the awakened self identity of a fully evolved being. We have to realize that our low opinion of ourselves, which keeps us trapped in cycles of perpetual dissatisfaction, only arises because we are ignorant of our essential By generating the prerequisite renunciation, the will to awaken, the bodhicitta, the awakened heart, wisdom, the awakened mind, and by delving into the clear nature of mind, we create the space in which true self transformation takes place. Yet it is not enough, really, to know why such self transformation is necessary and possible.
We must also generate the strength and confidence that will enable us to follow this radical approach to fulfillment. In other words, we need to be inspired. We have to know that the attainment of enlightenment, completion, Buddhahood, totality, or whatever we want to call it, is not only theoretically possible, but something that people like us can actually do. We can actually achieve it. Although it is true that the tantric teachings of Śākyamūni Buddha have been in existence for two thousand five hundred years, do they exist for us if we have not yet met a qualified tantric master?
Are they real for us or not? Despite the extensive explanations of such realized adepts as Naropa, Marpa, and Tilopa, can we say that Tantra is a reality for us before someone has introduced it to us? Of course not. And the same is true for the teachings of Sūtra as well. The fact that Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths a long time ago does not make them true for us.
They only become our reality once we have realized them. And this depends upon having met a Guru who can show us their truth clearly in a way that we can understand. If we do not have the living example and inspiration of an external guru, our inner wisdom will remain weak and undeveloped. So I just want to continue just a little bit more. I know it’s difficult to follow when somebody is simply reading.
Continue with this quote by Lama Yeshe, in terms of the Lama as a living example. The main reason that religion in both the East and West has degenerated so much nowadays is the rarity of meeting good spiritual examples. If people never meet highly realized beings, they have no way of knowing the limitless possibilities of their own consciousness. It is not enough that there are texts recording the deeds and accomplishments of past masters. By themselves, such stories cannot inspire us very much.
In fact, they may only increase our feeling of remoteness. Buddha and Jesus lived such a long time ago, we may think, and their purity belongs to another age. It is impossible for someone like myself living in this degenerate twentieth century to attain anything resembling their level of purity. Or we may reject these accounts as past masters completely, dismissing them as fairy tales fit only for gullible children. The only way we can lay to rest these feelings of doubt, incapability, and cynicism is by coming face to face with someone who has activated his or her highest potential.
Only then do we have an example of purity and spiritual evolution who we can actually see and relate to ourselves. Thus, the outer guru is of utmost importance. We need the example of someone who, while human like ourselves, has to develop beyond the bounds of what we presently think possible. When we see someone who has reached beyond selfishness, who has transcended the petty concerns of this world, who speaks and acts from intuitive wisdom, and who is truly dedicated to the welfare of others, then we can have faith and conviction that these attainments are possible for ourselves as well. Otherwise, if our only models are those of greed and aggression, our vision of what we are and what we can become will be sadly limited.
So, I met a number of years ago in Adelaide. There was a was a visit, I think it was about twelve years ago, by a Jungian analyst, an American Jungian analyst by the name of Robert Johnson. And he gave a talk at the Jungian Society called Owning Your Shadow. And and the shadow is is that part of our unconscious personality. Represents the the the unknown or little known attributes of ourselves.
Usually the shadow is seen as reprehensible. That is to say, it has despicable qualities which we wish to exclude from our awareness. We don’t want to identify with them as part of ourselves. Robert Johnson, this analyst, he talked about how after you know, many years in analysis that people would eventually, after trust trust had been built up, they would begin to let the the skeleton out of the closet. They would begin to relate a number of qualities that Like, the sound.
Existed within their own shadow. That, you know, like and these qualities were often Here we’re talking about the negative qualities, you know, like, for example, unreal fantasies or love of money or possessions. You know, people, you know, when nobody is looking they sit there counting their money over and over again. Or this sense of laziness or sloppiness or bizarre imaginings in their own mind. Things that we don’t want to even know about ourselves, or admit to ourselves, let alone admit to others, and they usually get disowned.
They get compartmentalized, and they become part of the shadow. But part, he went on to say that after this trusting relation had been built up over years, that they would begin to let out the skeletons, and that they would put up a terrific fight before they would begin to acknowledge the gold within the shadow. That within the shadow are not only these reprehensible qualities, these negative qualities that we want to attribute to ourselves, that we don’t we wish to exclude from our ego identity, but within the shadow are also as well noble qualities, divine qualities. And within the shadow there’s an element of gold within the shadow. But we fight against acknowledging the gold within the shadow.
You know, to fully admit the gold, to get a glimpse and acknowledge that I’m something of the potential of being something much more than I had ever hoped, imagined I could ever be. It brings with it a tremendous responsibility to begin If we’re going to live authentically, and with integrity, to begin to live out the gold within our shadow. The responsibility to find that goes with growth. To develop what we know we can be. It’s very disquieting.
You can’t go back to sleep again. You can never go home again. You can never go back to the secure little cocoon that you built for yourself over the course of your life. That’s why we don’t want to get to know it. We don’t allow it.
That within the shadow, the darkest recesses of our mind, there’s also a gold, the divine, the noble part of ourselves. So, it is I’m sorry. I have to finish and again, I didn’t leave time for questions. It’s to bring the sacred out from out of our hearts and begin to live it. It’s a weight which most of us are unwilling to bear.
We need to be inspired by the Lama in order to bear that weight, to begin to practice and implement the methods where we can realize all that we, at times, know we can be. Even the talk about it is as if one is puffing oneself up full of pride, but that’s not the case. Pride is to attribute qualities over and above who you are and what you possess. But here we’re not talking at all about that. But in fact, a realistic reality of who we are and the qualities we do, in fact, possess.
So, it is the Lama who helps us to overcome our cynicism. It doesn’t do you any good. You know, the Lama helps to soften the tough ego leather of our hearts and helps us to become aware of and own. That is to integrate the gold within the shadow. Helps us to believe that we can do this.
You know, if you look at the Dalai Lama, you know, there’s a sense of, wow, there’s another way of being in this world. And if we can identify identify with that and be inspired by that and forego our our our our habitual sense of limitation, poor me, I don’t quite have what it takes. It’s something basically at fault with myself. That’s an easy way to get through life, but it’s also a suffering way to get through life. But to begin to open up to other possibilities is difficult.
We need to not only be opened, but to be inspired to to persist and open more and more. To You know, the the the the lama is like, you know, the the notion of a mirror. But this mirror of the Lama not only reflects what’s wrong with us, but also what is deeply right with us. You know, what is divine about ourselves. So, the role of the lama is to help to instill confidence in ourselves that we can change, that we can go beyond our perpetual cycles of dissatisfaction, that there’s other possibilities or other ways of being in this world which are fulfilling, meaningful, which bring about our own welfare and that is of others.
Helps to inspire us to work toward these ends. You know, we have an idea of other possible ways of being and being inspired to work toward those ends. I can do this. And to give us the skills whereby we can actually do it. But also to be a living reminder of the real possibility of actually achieving them.
It’s just simply not a theory. It’s a fact. But the effectiveness of the Lama in fulfilling this role is very much dependent upon how we relate with the Lama. So, we’ll talk about that more next week. That is, we need the Lama, and over and above that, her effectiveness is very much dependent, or her effectiveness is very much dependent upon the nature of how we relate with the Lama.
This ability of Lama does not exist from his or her own side, in dependence upon our attitude, what we bring to the relationship. So, I’m sorry. I’ll make sure. Okay? I’m a poor time manager.
I’m sorry. I’ll make sure to leave time next week. Okay? Because it’s important that we talk and I can clean up the messes that I’m always making. So we’re going to we’ve created some positive potential together and we’re going to dedicate that positive potential.
Male beings everywhere plagued by sufferings of body and mind attain an ocean of happiness and joy by virtue of my merits. May no living creatures suffer, commit evil, or fall ill. May no one be afraid or belittled with a mind weighed down by depression. May the blind see forms and deaf hear sounds. May those whose bodies are worn with toil be restored and finding repose.
May the naked find clothing, the hungry find food. May the thirsty find water and delicious drink. May the poor find wealth, those weak with sorrow find joy. May the forlorn find hope, constant happiness, and prosperity. May there be timely rains and bountiful harvests.
May all medicines be effective and wholesome prayers bear fruit. May all who are sick and ill quickly be freed from their ailments. Whatever diseases there are in the world, may they never occur again. May the frightened cease to be afraid and those bound be freed. May the powers find power and may people think of benefiting each other.
Through these skillful actions, may I quickly become an awakened spiritual master and lead each and every living being to that awakened realm. May the supreme jewel of the three principal aspects of the path that have not arisen arise and grow. And those that have arisen, may they never diminish but increase more and more. In the land circled by the snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful Chenrezig, Tenzin, Gyatso, please remain at the end of cyclic existence.
You. Have a good week. Okay. Oh, I’d like to make one important announcement. It’s the annual long weekend Buddha House retreat beginning on Thursday, the twenty eighth of September through the third of October.
That’s a Tuesday. This year it’s going to be held at Daitong Ling, which is on Kangaroo Island. And Geshe la will be teaching the three principal aspects of the path. You might have heard of that before. And he’ll be assisted by Venerable Dundrup.
So, it’s really a remarkable combination. A lot of conditions coming together. First, a wonderful accomplished teacher, Geshe-la. And then, Venerable is a highly qualified western teacher. He’s been a monk for, I think, at least twenty eight years.
So he knows what he’s doing, what he’s talking about. And then, it’s beautiful surrounding the situation on Kangaroo Island. So, if you can put yourself in that kind of environment, I think it would be a wonderful it would be extremely worthwhile. So I encourage you all to register for this retreat if you haven’t already or think about attending it. Have a good week.
Thank you.