Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The counterintuitive claim that hope itself obstructs change anchors this 128-minute session by Ven Jampa Gendun. Drawing on Thich Nhat Hanh, Krishnamurti, and Macbeth, he argues that waiting for life to improve on its own substitutes for present-moment responsibility — and that only genuine inner change, not time’s passage, constitutes real cure. He then examines Buddha nature from two angles: as primordially pure awareness (like water needing no new clarity, only freedom from mud) and as a seed requiring cultivation through practice. A guided imaginative role-play meditation and refined breath-noting instructions follow. The session closes with the parable of the Rabbi’s Gift, in which a dying monastery revives when its monks begin treating one another — and themselves — as a potential messiah.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 3PA 2006 09 04.mp3
UUID: 2fb0558a-1334-4ed2-8706-c907443c1246
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2006-2007 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2006-09-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 127.6 minutes
Words: ~12,892
From seven thirty to seven fifteen. I thought it might be hopefully, it’s more convenient for you. Yeah. I thought that’s what it’s a bit it’s a well kept secret, actually. We’re going to have special teaching, which is only for the select few.
So I forgot to announce it last week. So would somebody remind me to announce it again? Do you think seven fifteen is more convenient? We’ll end earlier. Nine nine nine fifteen.
Okay. If that’s okay with everybody. Does anybody let’s take our time in the beginning. Okay? If you don’t mind.
Does anybody have any questions? Five minutes of questions or something. Anybody? Yeah. Well, I was gonna ask you.
I’ve been coming for a few weeks now and a lot of people are doing prostrations. And I understand it’s obviously some top specs. Yeah. Sure. I’ll tell you what I can.
But so prostrations are are showing respect, reverence toward is a manner a way in which we can empower the object, but we also so we empower the object toward and we’re offering the prostration, but also in terms of ourselves. It’s a matter of overcoming pride. So taking a humble you know, you’re saying, I don’t. I have some problems. I’m not I’m not a basket case, and I have some resources, but I could use some help.
So it’s a way of one of the main obstacles to to learning is pride. You know, if they say pride is a sense that one is already filled up. There’s nothing there’s no room to put any new understanding, any new knowledge or information in in that vessel that’s already filled up. So within within by offering prostration, you are sort of taking a one down position, at least temporarily, and you say, well, you know, I’m open to maybe I’ll hear something that I can put into use and it’d be worthwhile to help me with my problems, and as a matter of overcoming one’s pride, but also in empowering the object. And we generally, as the hands are placed together with the thumbs inside, in India, the Hindus, you know, they generally position their hands something like that.
And in the Buddhist Tibetan Buddhist tradition, put our fingers inside. So that’s to be thought of like a jewel. So one is holding a jewel, one is making offering that jewel, and placing the hands on top of the crown, at the throat, the crown, forehead, throat, and heart. So this has can be understood in in as, you know, the three ways in which we can pay respect, mentally, verbally, and physically. So one is paying or paying homage with the body, and then with the speech, and with the mind.
And this also is said to implant predispositions for if you notice on the crown of the Buddha, there’s a what’s called the uṣṇīṣa or crown protrusion. So this is said to implant the predispositions to eventually attain that mark of a Buddha. This is the there’s a hair curl in the center of the brow of a Buddha. This imprints the the predisposition to achieve that hair curl in the speech of the Buddha and the mind of the Buddha. So one is one is touching the crown, the forehead, the throat, and the heart as a way of, paying reference through body, speech, and mind.
And then there’s short prostration, which we normally do, and then there’s full length of prostration. This is our prostration. You know, even just bringing your hands together like this is a sure sign of reverence. So it’s it’s really more of a mental attitude, but there’s physically it’s probably of some significance to actually hold yourself lower than the object to whom you’re paying respect even physically. Keeping the fingers together as a predisposition is to it said between the Buddha’s fingers, there’s a webbing.
And this is a helps this not only is one mindful, but it it plants the predispositions to to develop this the some various marks of a Buddha, in other words. So it’s more of a, you know, you you feel coerced in any way or feel that you’re that if that anything that you’d rather not. I remember when I first went to Dharmasala, I that’s where I was first introduced into Buddhism. And all they saw, all these people prostrating. Thought, wow, these people, and how can they do that?
That’s, you know, that’s the I I I really thought they were really brainwashed. You know? I thought they were just they were on some kind of cult trip. You know, that’s what it looked like to me. So I had a lot of resistance to to that, but maybe maybe part of that was not only a matter of lacking information, but also a matter of pride.
So, you know, if you feel like it, then fine. If you don’t, then it’s fine also. I don’t know if that helps any. Mhmm. Yeah.
You wanna mention I’ve got that’s Yeah. Yeah. It’s a good book. It’s an excellent book. Pabongka Rinpoche was one of the leading masters of the Tibetan Buddhism in the twentieth century and early in in Tibet itself.
He’s the lineage guru, the lineage Lama that we’ve talked quite a bit about. Many of our teachers, Khensur Rinpoche and, indirectly, Lama Zopa and so forth. So he’s been quite influential, and it’s quite he’s he’s quite it’s quite readable. He he was, you know, it’s kind of put in the in the plain talk. For simple for he was kind of a country person.
So he talks in a very straightforward and simple words, and it’s quite it’s quite accessible. So it’s it’s a good read, in other words, and it’s quite useful. Okay. Okay. So we begin as we normally do in terms of adjusting our motivation.
And, you know, we’re last week, you know, within in the last few weeks we’ve been talking about our motivation. There was there was mentioned or I mentioned that we have to somehow get get unstuck. And there’s a there’s a certain inertia. Inertia means a body in motions tends to stay in motion and less act upon by an external force, but also a body at rest tends to remain at rest and less acted on by an external force. I think we’re kind of stuck.
We’re kind of at rest, and it’s hard to get us moving. You know, the idea that we’re all waiting for something, waiting for, you know, like I mentioned, I think, last week or the week before, waiting for a phone call, a knock at the door, a letter in the mail announcing that the life that we want has arrived. We’re all waiting for some magic X, some it, which is going to bring us the type of life that we want. It’s going to turn things things around for around for us in some way or another. So continuing with this idea with with this idea, and what kind of what keeps us stuck?
What what causes this inertia? One one of the forms in which this this resistance to change expresses itself or is in terms of our hopes and fears. To lose good days that might be better spent, to waste long nights in pensive discontent, to speed tomorrow, to put back today, to feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow. You know, we cling to our hopes that things are going to get better. And here what I mean by hope is hope is a good thing in a way, but there is another type of hope.
Many of these things, these ideas are like the word sword. They have a positive and negative aspect to them. We have to begin to differentiate between that. Here, mean, unfounded hope that things are going to get better all by themselves. In good time, things are going to change.
So, you know, time passes and we’re left with more or less just so many unfulfilled hopes. And I think we all know this. Or maybe we tend to forget or we ignore. We’re just left with we have so many high hopes for a future. And then we’re all we’re left with is the same in our lives.
You know, with with with hope, this unfounded hope, you know, this wishful thinking, there’s really no need for us to actually change. There’s to decide it’s time to change, change my story, change my life. I believe that sometimes you just have to decide. Decide to stop feeling bad about yourself. Decide to stop wanting what you do not and apparently cannot have.
You must decide to stop believing that your real life, the life you were supposed to have as opposed to the one you do have, this one in which you have been feeling unfulfilled, unappreciated, and unloved, is elsewhere. Having come now to this realization, I like to think that I have accepted it gracefully. Neither searching nor waiting brought me to the romantic happy ending I had in mind. I see now that neither regret nor anticipation served me well. Now I tell myself that what I am living is my life, and I had best get on with it.
So, you know, clinging to our hopes in one way or another prevents us from getting on with our life in one way or another. You know, that somehow things are going to get better of themselves or we can simply wait for something that it, that x, which is going to change our life for the better. And nothing really changes in our life except what it is that we’re currently hoping for in one way or another. There’s in in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the doctor. Macbeth asked the doctor.
I wish I like this verse. Macbeth Macbeth asked the doctor, canst thou minister to to a mind diseased, raze out the written troubles of the brain, plucked from the memory a rooted sorrow, and with some sweet oblivious antidote, cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart. And the doc the doctor answers Macbeth, Therein the patient must minister to himself. You know, it’s I think it you know, much of what we’re saying that you would actually you would probably intellectually agree with. But there’s quite often a great disparity between our rational thinking, our intellectual understandings, and what it is that we actually feel, what it is our how we actually experience the express emotionally our life.
You know, we we we are both the doctor. We are we we are both we have both the illness, but we are also the doctor. We are both the patient, and we are the physician who can make ourselves well. You know, it’s it’s if it’s never quite clear to ourselves, even when it’s clear to ourselves, we quite often lose sight of our suffering and our happiness are our own responsibility. You know, that they are arise out of our own ways of thinking, our own ways of behaving.
And if in if in fact, the source, the fundamental root of our problems is with inside of ourselves in terms of our own thinking and behaving, who else can take responsibility for our suffering? Because it is only ourselves who can take responsibility for the ways that we think, the ways that we behave, only ourselves. So, You know, this is connected with, in a way, it’s mentioned here in terms of therapeutic relation, a relationship with a psychologist or but it also has very much we can also apply it to the way that we might relate with a Lama, with a spiritual teacher that we’ve been talking about. One delivers one’s ailing body with the abscess or tumor or broken bone into the hands of a surgeon. And his most elementary information and skill will trace anything the patient need no.
The patient must cooperate one green capsule three times a day, keep the leg elevated, force fluids, but need not understand how or why. The responsibility lies with the surgeon. The problem is his. His the accountability for failure, the credit for success. Many patience go to psychiatrists as if to surgeons, and many psychiatrists regard themselves as psychic surgeons.
When such a patient comes to such a therapist, a relationship of considerable length may result, but little else. For the job can be done, if at all, only by the patient. To assign this task to anyone, however insightful or charismatic, is to disavow the source of change. In the process of personality change, the role of the psychiatrist is catalytic. As a cause, he is sometimes necessary, never sufficient.
The responsibility of the patient does not end with free association, with being on time, paying his bill, or any other element of cooperation. He is accountable only to himself, And this accountability extends all the way to the change which is desired, the achieving of it or the giving up on it. The, you know, our hopes for someone or something to bring us that better tomorrow, more often than not, it comes as substitute for taking responsibility for bringing about that today. You know, for getting on with our lives. With most of all of our hopes are hopes for the wrong thing.
They are they become our hopes can become an integral part of the pathology of our life, of what keeps it functioning in the way it still goes. It prevents us from change. It’s an essential element in this equation of our continuous suffering. And there’s a quote by Thich Nhat Hanh in talking about hope. You know, normally, I we think of hope as being a very positive mental state, mental mental factor.
But here we’re talking about hope in which it prevents us from changing. It acts as a substitute for taking responsibility for getting sincere about the moment and doing something about ourselves in the state of affairs. Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. But that is the most that hope can do for us, to make some hardship lighter.
When I think deeply about the nature of hope, I see something tragic. Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment. We use hope to believe something better will happen in the future, that we will arrive at peace or the kingdom of God. Hope becomes a kind of obstacle. You know, with with with great hope, we can face almost anything except what is before us and the truth of our own experience.
With hope, we can face almost anything except what it is that we’re actually experiencing, what is true for us. You know? As long as we have hope for the future, we won’t become serious about the present moment. And we only have you know, the future is only exist in imagination, the past only in memory. The only time we can act is in the present moment.
But hope takes us away from acting in the present moment. It holds out for something better in the future, and nothing really changes. For as long as long as there’s hope, there always remains the alternative to change, to taking responsibility, and that’s just another hope. We can just simply continue to hope in one shape or another, one form or another. The only thing that ever that ever changes is simply what we’re currently hoping for.
And the only thing that ever really changes in our lives is is the name of what we’re calling for in terms of our hope, what it is that we Nothing more than that. Only when things have become hopeless is the situation become workable. There is a this is a verse by quotation by Krishnamurti. There is the personal sorrow and the sorrow of the world. There is a sorrow of ignorance and the sorrow of time.
This ignorance is the lack of knowing one’s self, and the sorrow of time is the deception that time can cure, heal, and change. Most people are caught in that deception and either worship sorrow or explain it away. But in either case, it continues, and one never asks oneself if it can ever come to an end. You know, the you know, we we talk about time heals all wounds, that things will get better better in time. But but the the deeply the deeply rooted and chronic sorrows and the perpetual recreation of our dysfunctional patterns are never going to go away, are never going our wounds are never going to be healed by some mere lapse of time no matter how long.
And we’ve all been recruited into the fiction of time. The time heals, that things will get better in time. But but healing and getting better is not about time. It’s about change. We all have been recruited into the fiction of time.
Our thinking and our behaving, all our stories have to change. Unless these change, we will never really draw out the lesson that our sorrow, that our problems, that our difficulties are trying to teach us. You know, we will we will never really unless we change, we will never experience anything that can be rightly called cure. Things will be remain pretty much the same. Nothing less than change is cure.
Everything else other than change is just another name for another empty refuge, in other words. Just just another false hope. So, know, in this process of trying to change, trying to find some real refuge, we the inner focus of our life becomes better. Now we set our we give our ourselves a direction in life. We we we we become serious about the present moment.
We forego forego our hopes that things are going to get better in and of themselves, and we begin to take refuge in something real, something that we can we can validate within our own experience. We take refuge in something which can actually bring about the types of changes that we’re looking for to make our life the way we would want them to be. We we take refuge in wisdom, in love, and compassion, and a personal power, and how these are fearlessly and skillfully expressed in our everyday life. And so we begin to orientate ourselves in that direction, you know, and try to live in our everyday life in a way that is conducive, that is supportive of that overall direction that we’re trying to give our lives. And we can begin to examine even the insignificant minor choices that we’re making over the over the course of our life to see even if only in some insignificant way whether they take us in the direction that we want to go or whether on the contrary, they’re taking us where we have always been, which hasn’t brought us what it is that we want.
We take refuge we we we have to do something. We have to simply overcome the the the paralysis and the inertia of hope and begin to act. And the way that we can The way that this is is realistic or practically expressed is by implementing the Dharma. There’s something that we can do for ourselves. We can involve ourselves in these trainings, these techniques, these meditations.
We can try to find out the truth of ourselves and the way things are. And then we also look to others in this process. Our Sangha, those who who support us, who assist us in implementing the dharma in our in our life, who keep us there, who remind us of the direction where it is that we might like to go. And we try to raise the level of motivation, the why behind and the reason for what we’re doing. We’ve been talking a lot about Buddha nature, and we’re going to continue to talking about Buddha nature.
But one of the most realistic and practical ways that we can begin to cultivate our Buddha nature is by cultivating compassion. One of the most practical and realistic ways that we can begin to overcome a lot of our suffering are are unnecessary. The types of suffering which are of no use to ourselves is by cultivating compassion. And this compassion which wants to be a better person, to be something more so that we can be a benefit to others, which in trying you know, even if it’s only one other person, you know, we come here and it’s probably pretty much much our motivation might be selfish. It might be indifferent.
But so it’s our responsibility to change that even if it’s only for one other person. And that’s like we were talking about prostrations and showing respect and reverence and so forth that we can change our mind, that we don’t have to leave them the way they are. And likewise, in terms of, you know, the the reason that we do what we do, we have a choice with inside of ourselves that we can do what we do. We can continue as we’ve been doing before just for our own self, our own piece of chocolate cake, and our own limited needs and narrow self concerns. And it really hasn’t done much for us.
It really hasn’t served us well. Or we can change. We can decide otherwise. If only for another person, one other person. And then you’re you’re you’re a parent or your child or your partner.
It doesn’t make any difference. That if I can be a little more understanding, a little kinder, a little more patient, a little more helpful, In some way, if I can help them to lessen their problems, their difficulties, then it’s worthwhile. My listening to this talk, my involving myself in this these practices and meditation, We can be sure it’s worthwhile. It’s going to benefit ourselves. We can have some kind of trust in that.
We can have some kind of faith in that. We can take that as a seems, and I just share this thought with you, that throughout all my exposure to the teachings of Buddhism over the last, what, thirty years. And then all of my teachers in one way or another keep saying very much the same thing. The way that we can help ourselves the most, the most effective way, the most efficient, the most profound way is by developing compassion. Simply the wish that others might not suffer and if only one other person.
Well, I think some some point, we have to take that seriously, don’t we? I don’t think our teachers are just saying that just to hear themselves talk, just to sound profound or just to be romantic, abstract, I mean, in a very practical way. You know, we go out to make money. We eat food. We we wash.
We buy we buy our necessities. We do all those things because we think it’s going to help us to find happiness. It’s going to be a means to help solve our problems. But equally so, we have to put some kind of priority in the development of caring for others. It has to be high on our list and finding ways that we can do that and keep turning our cart the direction that we want to travel in that way, in that direction.
And I just keep reminding ourselves. This is this is an important priority in my life to be a to develop in my caring and compassion and my love even if only in some small ways, insignificant almost. I think it’s important. I think that’s what our teachers would would want us to do. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
To 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 am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity in the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings.
May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from 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. Would you like to stand up for a minute?
Stretch your legs. So we’ll we’ll continue with mindfulness and breathing. We’ve been using the techniques of counting and noting the breaths. And you might at some point In noting, it’s useful. We are trying to develop an attention.
Attention is the voluntary focusing of the mind upon an object. Here we are focusing or placing the mind on the breath, and we want to develop a continuity of attention. You say, you know, from moment from from moment to moment to moment. Mindfulness is an ongoing systematic process of placing of being aware of our experience from moment to moment to moment to And to help us with that, you can we can refine your noting or what your attention to the breath. And, you know, breathing in, there’s actually we can begin to divide rather than simply being in.
We can divide it up in three parts. There’s the beginning of the in breath, the middle of the in breath, and the end of the in breath. There’s a gap, and then there’s the beginning of the out breath, the middle of the out breath, and the end of the out breath. There’s a gap. So you can actually note these.
Perhaps you’re counting the breaths, in out one, in out two, rather than simply in, beginning, middle, in, beginning, middle, in, one, beginning, in, beginning, middle, end, two. So it’s a matter it shouldn’t become a mantra or it shouldn’t it’s actually you you actually the noting helps you to focus what it is that you’re knowing, what it is that you’re actually experiencing. It emphasizes what your mind is focused on. Sometimes it’s not obvious to ourselves or to our mind. So we we we note we note the beginning of the breath.
We’re experiencing the beginning of the breath. We note that in beginning. We do we are experiencing the middle of the breath. We we want to emphasize that. We note middle and the same within.
So you can you might you might try that. This helps to to refine one’s attention to make it to develop more continuity. Also, we’ve we’ve been meditating, you know, there in general, there are two types of meditation, stabilizing meditation, analytic meditation. And and especially in Tibetan Buddhism, but there’s equal emphasis or not equal emphasis, both are extremely important. And we’ve been working with various analytic meditations, know, thinking about things, contemplating things, and we’ve been meditating on rejoicing rather than not noticing or discounting or dismissing the good that we and ourselves that we ourselves and others do.
We begin to notice it, pay attention to it, value it, give us some significance to help us to change the this type of story that we’re telling ourselves about ourselves. Another way we can do that is by using our imagination and playing a role. And here, you know, if you can’t imagine something, you can’t be it. The the world as we come to know it begins within imagination. It’s just not some abstract compartment of our mind.
It’s tremendously has a very practical relevance on our everyday life, what it is, how we use our imagination. So here, we want to we’re going to imaginatively put ourselves in various roles, and we want to feel these qualities, these characteristics that we’re going to look at, you know, to to we create an imaginative situation. For example, this we’re going to go through this in four parts. The first one which will be, well, we’re going to imagine a female who we admire, that we respect a great deal. Okay.
So come up with someone in your mind. What is it about them? What characteristic do you admire that you that you look up to, that you respect so much, that you value so much? And then we ourselves are going to put us we’re going to put ourselves into a magical situation where we ourselves have the same exact quality to the same degree that this respected person has. And we want to we want to, you know, actually feel and live out in our imagination how it would be to express that, to feel that quality, and to express it in an imagined situation.
We we become that quality. We take on we live out that quality, creating some kind of space for that quality to find expression which within our own being. So we’re going to do this in four parts. Okay? So taking a firm comfortable posture, posture.
Mainly and most importantly, keeping your back straight. And we’ll begin with relaxing, starting at the crown of the head, the scalp, the forehead, and then the wrinkles of the brow beginning to smooth out. Your eyes softening and relaxing. Facial muscles softening. Jaw relax.
Moving down to your neck, perhaps moving gently, turning your head to the side a few times. And shoulders. Just rotating your shoulders a few times, relaxing, feeling the burden, the tension, lifting off your shoulders, moving down into the ground. Your hands. Your forearms and upper arms, relax.
Your chest at ease. Your belly is soft. Your pelvis area and the buttocks. Relax. Your upper legs.
Lower legs. Feet. So bring your awareness to any to your body, any tightnesses, any tensions, and consciously soften, relax. Feeling the solidity, the tightness loosen and disperse. Tightness loosen and disperse.
Your body becoming comfortable, at ease. Bring your mind to the breath. Just easy, gentle in and out flow of the natural breath. If it’s helpful, using techniques of counting and noting the breaths. Now we’re going to play an imaginary imaginary role, and we’re going to begin by first thinking of a female, someone that you admire, that you looked up to, that you respect.
And what is it about them? What quality do they possess that you admire so much, that you respect so much? And now we’re going to create an imaginative situation where we ourselves have the same exact quality to the same degree, And we feel that and express it in this imaginative situation. So we’re going to play a role in our imagination. We’re going to feel as if we have the same quality that Wade Meyer to the same degree.
If I create a situation where you express it and feel as if you have it, then you’re expressing it. Put yourself in that role. We’re going to do the same again. At this time, think of a male who you respect, who you admire. And what is it about them that you respect and admire so much?
And create an imaginative situation where you yourself have the same exact qualities and same degree. And feel it and express it in this imaginative situation. Now, think of a quality that you now possess, some quality that you admire, that you like about yourself, that you respect in yourself? Something you like about yourself, some quality. Now we’re going to create a measure of situation where that same quality is many, many times developed, fully, completely developed.
Create the situation and feel this developed quality in yourself and express it in an imaginative situation. And then finally, think of some quality, something about yourself that you don’t like, something presently you don’t like about yourself. And now imagine that you have the exact opposite of that same quality that’s contrary. You create an imaginative situation where you feel and express this opposite quality completely and fully. And then bring your mind back to the breath.
And then get in touch with your body, noticing any feeling sensations in the body. And then slowly in an easy, gentle, relaxed manner, become aware of what’s going on about you. So we have been talking about the inner teacher, the inner lama. We said devoting ourselves to the outer Lama, that the devotion to an outer Lama is a is a skillful way of helping ourselves to cultivate our own inner Lama. Cultivating our qualities of our basic intelligence and caring and decency.
And we we talked a little bit about Buddha nature. This is the the basis within ourselves of the path. There is both a beginningless wakefulness about ourselves, this which is evolving Buddha nature. This is the fundamental quality of the wakefulness, these qualities of intelligence, caring, and decency. And there is also the natural purity about ourselves, about our our minds.
This is it’s termed naturally abiding Buddha nature, that we are not our minds are not the dysfunctional patterns. In other words, we are not the problem. And that the problem is not intrinsic to our minds. That the minds are our minds are open ended. They’re malleable.
They can be changed. That we can bring about transformation of awakening. The outer basis of the path is the spiritual teacher who who gives us the method where whereby we can carry on a successful practice to whereby we can bring about change. But the inner basis is our own good in nature. And it’s necessary that we begin to, at some deeper level, begin to open up, begin to recognize and create the space where we can express our own basic nature, our own space where we can express our own basic nature, our own basic goodness.
That the very fact that that that we’re not content, that we feel a discontentment with the way our life is presently going is an expression of our own Buddha nature, expression of some sort of of wisdom. It’s a it’s a way that we care for ourselves. It’s a way that and it shows a real basic sanity about ourselves that that we’re healthy people, and we want to be even more so. We recognize that, and I think, I mentioned last week, that to be to be normal in a in a society is not to be very healthy. And we’re we’re healthy enough to admit that we’re a little bit sick, that we acknowledge that about ourselves, that we have pain and confusion about ourselves.
We began to talk about the fact that the starting point of the path is, is positively, is to relate positively to both the sun and the clouds. You know, the, at first the clouds are most predominant, most obvious to ourselves. When the, at first, when we start dealing with our pain and confusion, these, these entanglements, the first thing we experience is some kind of entanglement. That is to our and confusion are most apparent to ourselves, most obvious to ourselves. So, we have to understand that this is the first step toward wisdom and true happiness.
To begin to become aware of and acknowledge that we need, that we have problems. We stop ignoring, we stop evading, we stop denying, and we, we, kind of some, you know, in a humble but healthy way, begin to, acknowledge the reality of our present situation. We would rather it be otherwise. It’s kind of embarrassing, actually. We might even feel some somewhat ashamed about the state of affairs, but that’s our reality nonetheless.
That’s the beginning of the path, having to deal with the clouds. That this this pain and confusion, these difficulties that we’re actually what we’re experiencing are like a kind a kind of mouth, and we have to listen. They’re trying to tell us something about the way that we’re living our lives. We’re somehow living our lives in ways that are not appropriate, not skillful. We’re sick and it’s time to get better.
So there there is this these I’m talking about Buddha nature in the ways we do. There is a natural purity about ourselves, primordial wakefulness. And it seems we can begin to have a kind of a puzzle, some kind of question with regard to Buddha nature in this in talking about it in just these ways. How can Buddha nature be at one time both naturally perfect, which doesn’t need any improvement, which is unconditional? But at the same time, Buddha nature still needs to develop.
We actually have to do something. We have to practice. We have to change. So, you know, the answer is one of which perspective that we take. From the perspective of the Buddha nature itself, Buddha nature doesn’t need any development.
There’s no evolvement of Buddha nature. That Buddha nature is faultless in itself. It’s unpolluted. That that here, we don’t we don’t look at Buddha nature from the point of view of a seed, which needs cultivation. But it’s more like the the the opening of a lotus revealing some sort hidden deep within it.
There is an unchanging, awakening state of being, which is at the core of our being. So that’s from the point of view Buddha Nature itself. From this perspective, there’s nothing that needs cultivating. There’s nothing that needs to be improved upon. Only the making manifest of a dimension of our being, which is naturally whole, complete, and pure, which presently is hidden to ourselves, just like the image of a Buddha within a decaying lotus.
Although there has been a fundamental transformation at complete enlightenment, nothing has undergone any actual change. How is this so is demonstrated by this analogy. For example, intrinsically the sky is just pure, but it is not considered so when it is clouded by fog, which are adventitious to it. When it is free of fog and so forth, then it is thought of as pure. The purity is not originated.
Rather, the purity is just newly seen when it has become free of what prevented from being seen. The fact that the sky is newly perceived to be pure does not mean it should be taken as something which has undergone change. Likewise, gold exists simply in its own splendor. But when its luster is hidden by adventitious stain, one does not perceive the splendor. And when it is freed of that stain, its splendor is perceived.
That is all. By perceiving the splendor of a gold, one is not creating it. Similarly, water exists simply in its own sparkling clarity. But the water, through its association with mud, is not perceived as clear, and when freed from the mud, it is perceived as such. That is all.
Perceiving it as such does not the substance of water, which has been continually present, to generate clarity, nor is that clarity created. One should not take the water to be something that has undergone a change just because because one newly perceives its clarity. So awakening, we when we we think of it in terms of the of the unfolding of a lotus, is not is not a matter of the linear process of cultivated and coming to some kind of ripening fruition. It’s it’s the it’s like a sense of potentiality going over to actuality, realizing some kind of potential. But here, the idea, the way we can think about Buddha Nature is in terms of a revealing of an an always present possibility, you know, as this primordial or some kind of beginningless purity of being which lies hidden with inside of ourselves.
So this is one way. You know, we’re talking about we’re trying to come at this from two different viewpoints. One from one from the viewpoint of Buddha nature itself. That there’s nothing that needs to be improved upon, nothing that needs to be cultivated. We simply have to remove all the barriers, the the obscurations which prevent it from actualizing, the purity that it has always been, this awakened state of being.
But if but if we regard that that Buddha nature from another perspective, from the perspective of ourselves as ordinary sentient beings, as ordinary persons, we we we possess a seed of awakening. And here it’s more of the idea of a potentiality. And though there is no qualitative difference between ourselves and Buddhas, we’re not the same as Buddhists. They’re different than ourselves. But that difference is only a matter of degree.
It’s only a matter of taking what is potential with inside of ourselves. Our wisdom, know, the seeds of wisdom, consummate wisdom, love, and compassion, and the power of a Buddha. The seeds are present within us right now. And cultivating those seeds by various practices and maturing them. And eventually, they develop into grow into the consummate Buddha.
So we all possess this Buddha nature that and it’s just simply the eventual flowering of these seeds that we all have within us now. And this has a parallel in some respects, and it’s interesting in that way that in terms of the Buddha’s own enlightenment or awakening, awakening, you know, there are there are different points of view. And one of the one of the two major differences in points of view as to the Buddha’s awakening is in terms of the individual vehicle and the universal vehicle, or the Hīnayāna and the Mahāyāna. According to the individual vehicle, or the Hīnayāna, Śākyamūni Buddha, Gautama Buddha, Siddhartha, was not a Buddha until his very last lifetime. And this happened about twenty five hundred years ago.
The historical Buddha who achieved enlightenment at Bodh Gaya. He there there was a point early in the morning, you know, when the sun was just rising at Bodh Gaya, when he was when the Buddha was about when about thirty five that this man, Siddhartha Gautama, achieved Buddhahood, became awake. That’s from the point of view of individual vehicle. That is to say, through his through the Buddha’s own great effort as a bodhisattva. And then twenty five hundred years ago, bringing all of those bringing that potential, having traveled the path to fruition, and he became a Buddha.
But from the point of view of the universal vehicle or the Mahāyāna, we get to picture that the Buddha was already fully awake. That when he was born into that life twenty five hundred years ago, that he was he in in his incarnation, the historical Buddha went through this these various deeds as a as a like a like an actor showing the way in which it’s to be done, but in fact, already a Buddha at that time that he practiced. He left home. He practiced austerities for six years and then finally found the middle way and became became awake. That that he at the whole time, he was simply manifesting the deeds of a Buddha.
So from from the point of view of sentient beings, he appeared to attain awakening through through tremendous effort. But from a transcendental from a transcendent perspective, it would appear that he was awake through the course of his apparent all the entire journey that he displayed in the course of his incarnation in in our realm. So it becomes a matter of perspective. From one perspective, you know, we are absolutely precious because we possess Buddha nature. And from another perspective, we are vulnerable because we are confused and in pain.
So we have to we have to we have to consider both of aspects of ourselves, of our present selves. On the one hand, we have to be gentle with ourselves. We because we are confused and in pain, we have to care for ourselves. But from another perspective, we we have to respect ourselves. And moreover, we have to have some courage.
We have to push onward, push the envelope because we all have Buddha nature. We are all Buddhist to be. So, you know, we we’ve always tried in some way or another to be the person that we thought we could be. And what we haven’t achieved up to now, we can determine to become. And ultimately, to be yourself is to be a Buddha.
But, conventionally, conventionally, we have to develop a coherent, stable ego. We have to create that before it can it can be transcended. We have to work with the clouds before we can work with the sun, before we can appreciate fully the sun. We have to be somebody before we can be nobody. So, we have to appreciate who we really are in a very mundane sense.
The main obstacle to appreciating ourselves. You know, I think a great deal of the problems, in Western society are simply in this, this notion of ourselves not having quite what it takes, that there’s something particularly wrong with me, that that the feeling of insufficiency, of disparaging ourselves in various ways. It’s, I think, it’s really one of the main issues in psychotherapy, is how to change this, how to bring this about. If you believe you can, believe you can, or if you believe you can’t, you’re right. We have to begin to believe we can.
The main obstacle to appreciating our basic goodness our is in our, therefore, our ability to actualize it is our is our tendency to ignore and devalue ourselves. To to we we we contract in inwardly on the ego, and we can become completely absorbed. We’re completely lost in all the displays. The isolating patterns of ego. That’s that’s our that’s our primary reality.
And within that reality, our touch with the real world is very partial at best. We only know what reflection of our own ego bouncing back at it in that way. You know, the the psychological constructive ego is the primary primary delusion in which we live. And within that, it’s as if we are completely alienated from reality. It’s this it’s as if we’re in a kind of a trance.
So we cannot see that we are not the displays of our own ego, that that the that we cannot begin. It’s difficult to genuinely and sincerely and a deep level of our being begin to believe that that the possibility of transcending, of becoming something radically different than who we are at present. It almost we can’t fit it into our worldview at present. Or let’s say, ego cannot fit it into its worldview at present. We cannot see that ego is about a corner of psyche, that it is that it is not our totality, not all that we are.
We we only identify with a small portion of of who, in fact, we are. We can look at the geography of the psyche and understand the religious life in a new way. It is the same religious faculty, but approached with a different language. We can see that this ego, this so called conscious mind, is like an island in a vast ocean of psyche. Out there in the ocean of being outside the limits of the ego’s world, and beyond what it knows or can see are the missing parts of our total selves.
We are psychological beings. The greater portion of our totality is not physical, but psyche, and most of that is unconscious. Contrary to our popular notions of psychology, the unknown and unconscious part of our totality greatly exceeds the conscious parts. We are not our sense and we do not find our sentient beings, wholeness, or fulfillment within this tiny ego world. We sense there is more, much more out there, although we know neither where to look or what it is that we are looking for.
Now on the contrary, we we tend, you know, without being aware of it, we tend to perpetuate our patterns, which actually keep us stuck in them. We we we tend to notice and dwell on data that seemingly confirms our our patterns, and we tend not to notice or we we discount or we dismiss anything which is pointed out to us so that we notice ourselves, might in any way confirm, which might be contrary to the image that we’ve developed about ourselves. You know, someone who thinks of, for example, someone who thinks of themselves as bad, as unkind, would dwell on instances where they hurt somebody or they let them down. This confirms their own estimation about who they are. They would they would tend to notice those times when they when they they they would tend not to notice those times when they acted in a contrary fashion.
They would find some way to discount them, to dismiss them when they actually did something which was kind, which was generous, which was caring. You know, they would they would somehow be in their own minds, in our own minds, find ways of saying, for example, that’s that was an exception. I’m not really like that. I did that only for myself. That they could because it would be it wouldn’t fit in with their scheme of things and who they thought themselves to be.
We are likely to misinterpret data, you know, the the our their situation and and how we interpret it in terms of of, that fits with our patterns of who we conceive of ourselves to be and what we’re going to be able to do. The world seems to be continually reinforcing who we are, that who we are seems to be continually being confirmed by our experience. You know, someone who has a has a pattern of nobody likes me would would, for example, you know, would interpret somebody else who who had a frown on their face as meaning they’re being disapproved of. The fact that the person who’s frowning might have a headache would never be taken into consideration. It’s simply their frown fits in or confirms with their pattern of nobody likes me.
It’s it’s like, it’s like a few hundred years ago when people saw the sun sun circle around the earth. That’s what they saw, but actually they didn’t see that at all. The sun doesn’t circle around the earth. But that was not the reality of what they saw. It was merely their interpretation of the data, and it was a wrong interpretation.
Now we continually mistake our interpretation for reality. Now we we we we we surround ourselves with people. We create situations which which agree with our patterns. It’s like, for example, it’s all your fault. Somebody who has the pattern of all your fault is attracted to somebody who has the pattern of of, you’re not much, are you?
Or or I I’m no good is intrigued with, you have a lot of faults, don’t you? You know, the patterns fit together nicely. It’s comfortable in a way, even though it’s painful in a way. And we we we we you know, it’s like like we’d set up situations where where where we where our patterns are seemingly confirmed. You know, there’s there’s a there’s a I remember seeing a cartoon.
There’s a there’s a this patient is in is in a a psychiatrist’s office, and he’s he’s pushing it, and he’s laying down on the couch. And he’s he’s sitting up, supporting himself on his arm, and he’s yelling at his psychiatrist. He’s saying, I said, I can’t understand why nobody likes me. Why don’t you clean out your bloody ears once in a while and so you can hear others? You know, creating a situation where your expectations are fulfilled.
You know, we we we we we’re very much like the person who’s standing out in the cold rain crying and not being able understand why. What is the problem? How are they you know, not understanding why they are cold and wet. There’s a there’s a cartoon that I share with you. It’s a it’s a pretty simple cartoon.
There’s three boxes, and there’s two boys walking home from school. And, you know, one boy is carrying his, his his, test result. And he says, that new teacher really did a number on me. In the second box, he says, I thought I’d get a b on that test, and he gave me a c. In the third box, he says, how did he know I was a c student?
You know? The okay. We see it. So there was a substitute teacher. And the then and this this boy thought he could pull one off on his teacher.
Even though he knew he was a c student, he was going to pretend he was a b student. You know, he he was going to put one over on his teacher. And but that teacher could see through his disguise. He’s pretending. You aren’t really a b person.
I know that. It’s obvious. You know, it’s like some kind of scene that’s kind of oozing out of his skin. You know, that’s who he really is. I mean, you can pretend for a little while.
Maybe you could pull it off for just a little while. But once a person gets to know you, they really they can see it through your disguise, your pretense. You know? They know who you are. It’s obvious to both of you.
Yes. You know? And he’s going to go on to to marry a c grade wife and get a c grade job and raise c grade children. You know? And his life becomes a kind of a c grade self fulfilling, self fulfilling prophecy in that way.
We already know. We’ve got it all worked out for ourselves. So the the the traditional analogy in illustrating this this quality of of in the context of of of the Buddha nature going unrecognized is that of of of a a poor person, a poor man living in a hovel and, you know, his shack. That’s all he has. That’s all he owns.
But beneath the dirt, dirt, beneath the floor and the dirt under the ground is a vein of gold. As so as long as he remains ignorant of that of that gold, of that wealth hidden there, his poverty will continue. Things will go on just as they always have been. He he he has to look more carefully at his own home to discover some richness that always been there or is present, unknowns to him. You know, our world begins and ends within the limiting perception of our own egos, in the isolating patterns of our own egos.
That that’s the only reality that we have come to know. And with within that reality, within that those patterns, those conceptions, those images, the story that we’re continually telling ourselves about ourselves, our touch with reality is very limited, very partial at best. To to a great extent, the only things that we that we come to know are the projections of our own egos reflecting back at us. Is In other words, it’s difficult to us to believe that we can change, that we could be otherwise, other possibilities. I mean, to really gain some glimpse glimpse of the real possibility that things could be radically otherwise than they are, that we can change most basically.
You know, we we we we can maybe, file off the edges or smooth down some rough spots, but to radically reach form ourselves is beyond our present conception, beyond our present imagination. We can’t even imagine it, what it might be like. This is a quote by Lama Yeshe. The main dealing, the problem, what is the problem? It is ordinary recognition that I am a poor man, poor woman.
Do you understand? Perceiving, hold holding as poor one, poor object, poor quality, and perceiving also such poor, ugly, having lower opinion of our body, lower opinion of quality, that is the worst symptom to be healthy, to be liberated. That is the main problem to eradicate, to cut. As long as you decided, having a preconception that I am the self pitying one, you decided. You decided already that you are the bad guy.
You decided already. So when you decided you are the bad guy, you always do bad actions. Anyway, I’m worth it. I’m bad guy. So I have I do bad one.
Of course, that’s the way it is. That’s true. Know, we we’ve got our thermostat set into some kind of comfort zone for ourselves. And it may not be much, but it’s home. You know, we we we want neither to be too wretched nor too wonderful.
We we don’t want to experience in the course of our life too, you know, too many failures, but we also don’t want to experience too much success. One would be almost as unbearable to to tolerate as the other. Now what would it mean to be something unimaginably more than you could ever hope to be? Could you could you bear with that? Could you tolerate that?
Even the thought of the possibility of possibility of that. How could that fit in with your world image? You know, it kind of shake your this this cocoon that that we’ve created for ourselves in which we’ve we’ve kind of find some kind of security in. You know? However humble it might be, however miserable, full of pain, and dissatisfactory, it’s home.
I know what to expect. I know what I can get out of my life. I have a and life, in that way becomes a self fulfilling, self defeating prophecy, which we’ve already worked out for ourselves. And this is an I I just found this quote. It’s it’s by Nelson Mandela.
Nelson Mandela, who I admire a great deal. Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? Yours playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel will won’t feel insecure around you. You were born to make manifest the divine within us. It is not just in some of us.
It is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we consciously give others, people permission to do the same. Now, Buddhism isn’t asking us to perform some kind of mental gymnastics, you know, twist ourselves, put ourselves in some sort of straight jacket, you know, twist ourselves around into some prescribed way of being. You know, we’ve done enough for that, trying to force ourselves into some kinds of molds in in one way or another due to the forces of our of our society in one way or another. We don’t have to tyrannize ourselves into believing something about ourselves.
But Buddhism isn’t us to believe something which is not the case. It’s at but simply trying to ask us to open up to the possibility that we might be something more than our patterns than what we have have until now conceived ourselves to be, that we that we might be mistaken about ourselves. Is it possible that I could be? And then kinda shaking the ground just a little bit. I am not my patterns.
I am not my self image. I am not anything or all the identities that I’ve held to, I’ve come to over the in these personalities that have changed over the course of my life from when I was a child until my adulthood. None of them is able to encompass the totality of who I am. Even if they were accurate, which they aren’t, they do cannot encompass all of who I can be. So this is a verse by Chögyam Trungpa.
He’s trying to get at the relativity and the mistaken nature of our conceived qualities, of how we conceive of ourselves, how we don’t give ourselves a chance, how we misconceive of ourselves, trying to point to something beyond, you know, our limited conception about ourselves, the relativity. A crow is black because the lotus is white. Ants run fast because an elephant is slow. Buddha was profound. Sentient beings are confused.
So, you know, the blackness of a crow only has meaning relative to the whiteness of a lotus. And the the the slow slowness of the only only has meaning relative to the quickness of an ant. Our confusion only has meaning relative to the profundity of Buddhists. If if there were no Buddhas, there would be no sentient beings. If the Buddhas were not profound, if there were no wisdom of the Buddhas, we would not be confused.
We are confused, but only relatively so compared to Buddhas. Absolutely, we’re not confused. Only in contrast to Buddhism. But we can conceive of our confusion as being absolute, as being intrinsic to our being, as being real in its own nature. That somehow we are of by our own nature, irrespective of anything else.
We are confused. That is our nature. There’s really no alternative open up to us. But but this is not the case. The profundity of Buddha the profundity of Buddha did not exist, our confusion would not exist.
One one only has mean in one only has meaning in contrast relative to the other. The existence of one, the two are mutually interdependent. Remove our mental afflict but moreover, remove our mental afflictions, and there’s no difference between ourselves and Buddhists. Remove our mental afflictions in the various obscurations, and we are Buddhists. That’s the only difference.
You know, with these Buddhists, these models of paradigms of what we might become, the only difference between these happy, healthy, sane, loving, caring human beings and ourselves is simply on only the presence of afflictions, distorted patterns of thought, and the obscurations which they create. Nothing more than that. Not there’s no relative absolute difference. It’s only a matter of kind degree. Absolutely.
There’s no difference. These these these Buddhas, these supremely, you know, healthy, loving, sane human beings are simply those people who remove these distorted patterns from the mind, the same patterns that we ourselves had. They they they did not cease to exist when they removed these patterns from their mind. They they on the contrary, they became alive. They became wise.
They became loving. You know, we we have found to we have found ourselves wanting and insufficient. We we think of ourselves as being unworthy, undeserving. And all our neurotic patterns, all our this dependency patterns arise to holding on an in a particular image of ourselves that we are that which we think of ourselves as being absolute. And that we identify those patterns as the real me, the real I.
This is the way I really am. I really can’t change. Just like this c grade student who has at the core of his being, this c grade sense of self. And it just exudes, and he can’t fool anyone. He can’t even fool himself.
He can pretend, but only for a short while. There’s no room for an alternative possibility. There’s no you know, we have to create the space to find give our Buddha nature, this basic decency and sanity and intelligence and love and compassion, some means of finding expression. Pushing aside the weeds so the flowers can can begin to grow. Otherwise, they never the sun is never able to touch them.
We can’t own our basic goodness. You know, it’s not in we we want to. We want to incorporate it into or ego wants to incorporate into its own domain to make it another part of our collection, you know, like like a butterfly collection or insect collection. It wants wants to to make a thing out of it that it can control. So do the the there is a part of our ourselves which is not conditioned by all the passing patterns of our thinking, of our our minds.
It’s like the like the depth of an ocean beneath the constantly churning waves. This this this aspect of Buddha nature is is there’s analogy which is frequently used about it. It’s that this we’re looking at Buddha nature in this way, the sense that an unconditioned, which is not susceptible to to the to to the the effects of our current thinking, our our various images and ideas, changing personality, Is is likened to space. If space pervades every everywhere. And yet it remains unaffected by everything that encompasses.
Similarly, our Buddha nature pervades every sentient being without it in any way diminished. Just as there’s a second comparison. This is there are universes which are continually arising. You know, the universes arise and they pass away within space. Likewise, the the passing patterns patterns of our personality, you know, our various conceptions that we harbor about ourselves.
The ups and downs do not they arise within within this they’re encompassed freely within this space, within our Buddha nature. That that this Buddha nature allows for all of these passing notions that we have. And it in effect remains unaffected. Unaffected. And they’re just like space is never consumed by the elements like fire and water and so forth.
Likewise, our Buddha nature is never diminished or consumed or harmed in any way by by the qualities of the elements of aging, sickness, and death. So, we have a basic in this, And we have to you know, all all of these teachings, we need some kind of discipline. We have some kind of training. But more than that, we we have to begin to both see Buddha nature as something which is evolving, which is developing, which we have to do some work. But at the same time, we can, at times, know that beneath the churning waves, there is some kind of basic sanctity, something right about our aspirations, about ourselves.
That within the the decaying lotus is an image of Buddha. That, you know, we we cannot control our own Buddha nature. We cannot make a thing out of it, or ego cannot make it a part of its own domain. You think you can take a little pinch of basic goodness and keep it in your pocket so the ideal privacy begins to creep in. That is the point at which you need renunciation.
Renunciation is the temptation to possess basic goodness. It is necessary to give a localized approach, a provincial approach, and to accept the greater world. And we cannot own our basic goodness. Our ego cannot own our basic goodness. And we have to sort of forego the temptation to do so.
To transcend ego is to become awake, to become whole, to become integrated, and to fully become all that we are. Who we really are. I just One more story. It’s a nice story. I like this story.
And we’ll stop. It’s the story is called the rabbi’s gift. And it you know, this is the this kind of developing this confidence in one’s own mind, in one’s own ability to to as a one’s mind as a resource for change, that one has the potential to be otherwise. And basis. This is the inner basis of the path.
But even in a very mundane sense, this story kind of in a very practical outcome of integrating such an idea within your, an attitude in your everyday life. The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of anti monastic persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth, all its branch houses were lost, and it had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house, the Abbot and four others. All were over seventy in age. Clearly, it was a dying order.
In the deep woods surrounding the monastery, there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation, the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. The rabbi is in the woods. The rabbi is in the woods again. They would whisper to one each other.
As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the Abbot at one such time to visit the Hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might make that might save their monastery. The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. I know how it is, he explained. The spirit has gone out of the people.
It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore. So the old abbot and the old man wept together. They read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave.
They embraced each other. It has been a wonderful thing that we could meet should meet after all these years, the abbot said. But I still have failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order? No.
I’m sorry, the rabbi responded. I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you. When the abbot returned to the monastery, his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, well, what did the rabbi say? He couldn’t help.
The rabbi answered. We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving, it was something cryptic, was that the messiah is one of us. I don’t know what he meant. In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words.
The messiah is one of us? Could possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the Abbot? Yes.
If he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly, Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that.
Thomas is a man of light. Certainly, he could not have meant Brother Elrod. Gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Elrod is virtually always right, often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean brother Ehud, but surely not brother Philip.
Philip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Philip is the messiah. Of course, the rabbi didn’t mean me.
He couldn’t possibly have met me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did, supposing I am the messiah. Oh, God, not me. I couldn’t be that much for you, could I?
As they contemplated in this manner, the old man the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect. Because the forest in which they were situated was beautiful, it so happened that people occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of that place. There was something strangely attractive, even compellingly compelling about it.
Hardly knowing why they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to picnic, to play, and to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place, and their friends brought their friends. Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while, one asked if he could join them, then another, and another. So within a few years, the monastery had once again become a thriving order.
And thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm. And we have to have faith in our and commitment to our ourselves and working with ourselves through that part of ourselves which we is not apparent, but present to ourselves, but which we can trust in, and we can learn to trust in him more. We have to trust our own inner Lama, our own inner teacher. That’s the basis of the path. You know, using the metaphor of a flower, we have to cultivate and nourish the seeds of wisdom, love, and compassion, the personal power within inside of ourselves.
But using the the the the the metaphor, the image of an unfolding of a lotus, we have to we need to methodically remove the the obscurations preventing the continuous and unimpeded expression of our awakened being, the expression of our own Buddha nature. So, you know, we can do this. If you believe you can, and if you believe you or if you believe you can’t, you’re right. We have to set aside all the contradictions, all the contraries, you know, whatever we hold to the contrary and operate on the basis that we can as a working basis until we begin to experience some of that in our within our own reality. So do you have any you want do you want to oh, it’s almost done.
I’m sorry. We’ve so we’re gonna begin at seven fifteen. Okay? It’s a well kept secret. It’s my fault.
I didn’t announce it. I I thought it might work out better that people could go home earlier. So from now on, we’ll start at seven fifteen and we’ll stop at seven or nine fifteen. Okay. So we’re going to dedicate this, the merit that we have created, dedicating.
May all beings everywhere plagued by suffering a 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 on 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 posterity. 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 jewels of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path that have not arisen arise and grow. And may those that have arisen, may they not diminish, but increase more and more. In the land that’s circled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful Chenrezig, Tenzin Gyatso, please remain to the end of cyclic existence.
Thank you. Have a good week.