Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this two-hour session by reflecting on a visit to a small United Church in Verdun — an experience he found unexpectedly humbling — before introducing a Śākyamūni Buddha mantra practice new to this group: a guided visualization in which white then golden light flows from the Buddha’s heart, fills the meditator, and radiates out to all beings. The doctrinal portion focuses on the second of the four opponent powers for purifying negative karma — the power of reliance — explaining how recommitting to the Three Jewels repairs harm toward the Buddhas, while generating love and compassion repairs harm toward sentient beings. A vivid fishing-vow example illustrates how ethical commitments carry practitioners through moments when wisdom and motivation fade. The session closes with an extended Q&A on right speech, the distinction between assertion and aggression, and M. Scott Peck’s definition of love as the willingness to extend oneself for another’s well-being. Best suited to practitioners already following the series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 3PA 2007 06 04.mp3
UUID: db373107-9c10-4a54-95f7-f4472e7c0241
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2006-2007 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2007-06-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 123.0 minutes
Words: ~9,909
Can can you hear me in the back okay? Yeah. Becky, no. Yeah. No.
You’re saying you’re not we really don’t mean that yes, do you? Is that anyway, that’s the best we got. I’ll just have to talk louder. Everybody? Good.
That’s nice to see so many friendly faces, even people I haven’t met before. We do as we normally do in terms of adjusting our motivation. It’s a good thing to do, I think. In, you know, not treating it mechanically or simply as a ritual or something that we are to be doing. You know, we can sort of take the time and pause and perhaps gain some perspective on our busy lives.
We lose touch, don’t we? Out of the perhaps the seeming practical necessities of everyday life we might lose track of what is really important to ourselves or not maybe in terms of what, readjusting our priorities. Was, yesterday I went to, Carolee was kind enough to invite me to give a talk at a United Church in Verdun? Verdun. Verdun.
Okay. And it was humbling experience for me in the sense that, I mean, it’s a one room church out in the hills. And it has a lay ministry. And it’s like a shoestring operation, I think. People come together and they try to help themselves, help each other along their path.
And I found that very humbling. I found it very touching. You know, it’s like, you know, we come together. I think it’s really a wonderful thing that we do Sharing together as we do. I think it’s terribly important.
It’s kind of, sometimes the world isn’t so nice, even when it seems to be nice, it perhaps distracts us and we get caught up in it. We lose sight. So we come here together and we share this space together and we share some parts of our spiritual selves together and we educate ourselves together and we maybe make some inroads into these crazy minds of ours together. Maybe take a few steps holding each other’s hands along each of our paths together. You know, it’s something that we do together as a Sangha, as a spiritual community.
I think we should rejoice and appreciate what we do together and each of ourselves who participate. And it’s terribly necessary, isn’t it, to keep coming back, to keep reprioritizing, to keep checking up. It seems like it’s almost an ongoing process, but at least we can do it once a week or whatever we can in terms of our daily practice. If we can, know, maybe I guess many of you are more insightful than myself, more mindful than myself. So, you know, this is my way of reminding myself in terms of my personal life.
Say teaching is the best way to learn, and that’s why I appreciate what I do. I’ve got a lot to learn. And I appreciate your patience and your indulgence when I go on and on. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m saying, to be honest. But that’s okay, in a way, as long as I’m not boring.
So we come together to inspire one another and to share and assist one another. I find that most remarkable. As I said, it’s very heartwarming. And having shared my experience yesterday with Carolee and the people of the church in Carolee’s home and I found that they have something very real, very nourishing. I think part of our purpose here is to educate ourselves, isn’t it?
But also, part of it is to go away with a feeling. Perhaps to get in touch with feelings and carry a part of that away with ourselves, to share those feelings with each other. I mean, it’s not very tangible, isn’t it? Some kind of spirit. I don’t know.
I think that’s a very important part of the process. It’s not all rational or mechanical or reasonable. It has a lot simply to do with the heart. And we have our teachers and we’re extremely fortunate to have them, their guidance and their inspiration. We also have each other.
That’s the third of our three refuges, isn’t it? So, in this process the inner focus of our life is Buddha. You know, this Buddha, this Buddha. And asking yourself, what does Buddha want me to do? You know, I’m not necessarily the historical Buddha.
The Buddha’s out there, but your own wisdom, your own sanity, your own basic goodness. Trying to take these treasures out of our hearts, these possible other ways of being, and see how we can practice them, try them on for size and see how they transform us, make us into the person that perhaps in finest moments we’ve always wanted to be. We felt in our finest moments that we could be. I know that I guess it’s quite unusual to talk this way in especially in Tibetan Buddhism, think. In terms of asking yourself, what does your Buddha want you to do?
But somehow over the years, I’ve I’ve become to pay less attention to what what is tradition and try to, in some small way, be a little more authentic what I feel in my own heart. And in some clumsy and small way, try to communicate that if it’s worthwhile to you, to others. It’s not just a matter of intellect gathering more information or even knowledge. It’s becoming one with our own Buddha nature, if you like. It sounds a bit abstract, but I think it’s something which can become very real for ourselves if we allow it to be.
We can become our own teachers, our own masters. Who else can be our master in the end? Our teachers and the Buddhas themselves can only give us some kind of guidance and guidelines. In the end, we have to rely upon ourselves in terms of our own wisdom and our compassion. Yeah.
If you hit the right button, the right hand side button and you lower it a couple of degrees, or you can actually turn it off. Is it getting warm? You can go outside and just press that off button. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the 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 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. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, and mind. I present clouds of every type of offering that is actually arranged and imagined.
I disclose all my negative actions accumulated during beginning this time and rejoice in all the virtues of superiors and holy beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of Dharma for migrating beings. I dedicate all virtue, my own and that of others, to the great awakening. So, I thought maybe we could, we’re going to follow our usual pattern of meditation beginning with mindfulness of the breath and I thought we would do a practice that we’ve never done before. We’re going to recite a mantra together.
The Śākyamūni mantra. Last Thursday was an auspicious day, Last Thursday. It was the birth and enlightenment anniversary. And it’s we we in the Thursday morning class, we we did this practice and I thought you might find it useful enjoyable a little bit different. So we’re going to recite the Śākyamūni Buddha mantra and it’s quite simple and I’ll repeat it to you and then we’ll use it in the course of the meditation practice.
So, we’ll do mindfulness of breath and then at a point in the mindfulness of the breathing. Just before we begin, I’ll mention that we’re going to begin the practice, and then you might want to visualize. It’s going to involve a visualization practice, and you might want to take a look at the painting to your left Śākyamūni Buddha. It’s as if you’re trying to memorize all the design, the details, colors, shapes. And then having examined it carefully, just cause it to arise to your mental eye in your imagination as a visualization.
But whatever arises in terms of your visualization, just be satisfied with that. Maybe nothing appears. Maybe a little gold color. That’s okay. In a way, the visualization is secondary.
The feelings are important. Moreover, in practicing visualization techniques, We should first develop stability and then clarity. If you continue trying to press, to squeeze, trying to make the image clear, you know, I want to see more, I want to more vivid colors. I want the whole thing. I want more.
This is going to scatter your mind. It’s going to agitate your mind, and you actually lose the visualization. It’s self defeating. So, in visualization, it requires memory, the factor of mindfulness, and simply causing it to arise with you. You know, everyone in this room, if I say, Visualize a McDonald’s hamburger.
Okay, it’s there right now. There’s cheese and a couple of slabs in there. I’m not vegetarian. Even I can do it. It’s no mysterious process.
Holding a visualization requires some skill. So, I’m first suggesting that you examine what you’re going to try to remember, and then you cause it to arise in your mind’s eye. But be satisfied. Just hold that. Even if there’s nothing there, just pay attention attention to as if it were there.
As I was trying to emphasize, the feelings are most important. And we’re going to, this is Śākyamūni Buddha. Think of it in terms of, I guess I was emphasizing this on the Buddha which exists with inside of ourselves. This is translating it into some crystallizing what is an abstraction into a visible form. This is whatever you hold as valuable, whatever is meaningful, the positive qualities, all that you could hope to be.
This is kind of, we’re giving you some kind of visual image, personification, an embodiment. You know, we don’t have to even think it as separate from ourselves. In a way, the Buddhas in our own Buddha nature aren’t inherently separate. It’s kind of a mysterious thing, but they aren’t. This is you’re giving so, this is what you aspire to, but this is also the fulfillment of something that you already are.
And, it gives us an opportunity to relate with something which is more concrete rather than simply an abstraction, something which is maybe in the sky or some, the depths of our mind that we can’t quite conceive of. We can at least have something to relate with. And we’re going to recite the Śākyamūni Buddha mantra seven times together. And imagine that from the heart of the Śākyamūni Buddha visualized before you, a shaft or a clear white tube of light extends down to the crown of your head. You can imagine Śākyamūni Buddha maybe at one hand in height, approximately an arm’s length in front of yourself or whatever is comfortable, perhaps larger.
That might be easier, but whatever is comfortable. If you can’t see it, it’s okay too. Imagine this shaft of light, and through this shaft of light, white nectars and lights flow through to the crown of your head, completely filling your body from the bottom upward. Brilliant. You know, it’s like a light, a dark room, flip on the light switch.
Instantly, the darkness is dispelled. All the negativity, all the heaviness, all the sense of insufficiency, poor me, is gone. Simply clear purity. Identify with that clear, pure aspect of your mind and body. Completely, these white brilliant nectars and lights, completely filling your body.
Most important is the feeling, a sense of purity, of clarity, of lightness. And then, again, we’ll remain in that state, and then again we’ll recite the mantra seven times. But this time, imagine from the heart of Śākyamūni Buddha, a shaft of golden light, a tube. And through this tube flows golden lights and golden nectars, again filling up your body. This is simply not a physical substance in any way.
It is all everything that is positive in this universe, everything that is of a spiritual quality is worthwhile in the nature of wisdom, nature of love and compassion, and personal power. You know, whatever you can imagine that qualities that you would like for you to be an embodiment of, this light is in that nature. And filling your body and beyond, you know, beyond your conception. You know, sometimes it’s quite important rational mind is useful. Our reasoning powers are useful.
And sometimes we have to be able to set them aside when they aren’t appropriate beyond all our conceptions, beyond our senses of limitation, existing in the state of being of knowing, a sense of having fulfilled these qualities, a sense of divine pride as if you really were a Buddha. And then, you know, remaining in that state, again, we’re going to invite the Buddha, and we’re going to become union, oneness, to the crown of our head. The Buddha dissolves into golden light, dissolves into us, setting aside all your limitations, your feelings of insufficiency as best you can. I’m a Buddha. You know, whatever that might mean for you.
I’m a happy, healthy, loving, human being. You know? Just for that instant. Beyond all your hesitations, your reservations, reservations, cynicism, skepticism, just leave that all behind just for a moment. Just be open to the possibility of another way of being.
I’m a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. Whatever that feels like, that’s what I am. But then remembering that others are in the same position as ourselves. There’s a world out there. We’re not alone.
And that they are suffering. They’re having difficulties just like ourselves. And remembering this and developing some degree of compassion. They wish, oh I wish they weren’t suffering, are the way they are. I wish I could help them in some way.
And developing the sense of love. It would be nice to see them just like myself happy, satisfied, content, warm, comfortable. And from your body, you know, rays of light, white rays of light extending in all the directions of space without limits. Imagine all these various sentient beings in all the realms of all the universes of existence. Just by the touch of these rays of light, they too are awakened.
They too attain Buddha. And then your job is complete. There’s nothing, while we’re reciting the reading out these lights of love and compassion, transforming these beings, we’ll recite again the Śākyamūni Buddha’s mantra seven times. Then your work is done. There’s nothing more.
You’re experiencing ultimate peace. All that lives has been brought to ultimate peace. We can simply rest in that, imagine all the beings of the universe and the environment dissolving into your own body and your own body dissolving upward from the top downward and from from the bottom upward. And then there’s simply infinite vacuity of limit of space and the profound feeling of peace. That’s all there is.
This infinite vacuity of infinite space and this profound inner peace. Just abide in that. Rest in there. Rest your mind. Take it easy.
Okay. So we try that. Oh, I want to give you the mantra. Okay? So let’s say.
Thyata. So can you repeat? Thyata. Thyata. Tayata.
Om. Muni. Muni. Maha. Muni.
Muni. Yeah. Svāhā. Okay. Om means it goes like this.
It is thus. Om has many meanings I think, but it’s like the entrance way into the mantra. Muni means the sage or subduer. Śākyamūni Buddha. Muni is sage of the Shakyas, a particular clan or family in which the Buddha was born in Northern India.
Maha means great. So it’s in praise of the great sage, Śākyamūni Buddha, the historical Buddha, but also Buddhahood itself. Svāhā, so be it. So I’ll go through it two more times. Okay?
Muni. Yeah. Svāhā. The Tibetans say Svāhā but okay, might hear Svāhā. In Sanskrit it’s spa.
Let’s do it one more time. Muni, maha, muni, ye, svaha. And we’ll say it together so you won’t relax. Okay. Okay, let’s try that.
So taking a comfortable firm posture. We’ll begin with relaxation of the body. You know, we move through the body, minimally just try to be present in these various areas as we go through. If you can can imagine that what is being described is being experienced even if only in your imagination when it’s suggested that this area is relaxing. Imagine it’s relaxing.
The imagining of it will actually act will be conducive to the actual experience of the relaxing. Even if it doesn’t feel like it’s you’re experiencing the relaxing or the blessing of attention, if you just begin by imagining that this will act as a conducive condition where some kind of relaxation will begin to take place. Meditation is very much about relaxation, both in body and mind. So starting at the scalp, the crown of the head, the forehead, feeling the wrinkles in your brow, smoothing out. The pressure in and around your eyes diminishing, the muscles of the face relaxing, softening.
Your jaws relax. In the back of the neck, gently turn your head to the side a few times. Just gently stretching, loosening. And relaxing the throat muscles. The upper back, the shoulders, rotating your shoulders a few times letting them drop comfortably to the side and feeling this burden, weight we normally carry around in our backs moving down through your body into the ground.
Your hands are loose and soft. Relaxing your lower arms, your upper arms, Your chest is at ease. Relaxing the heart area. The lungs. The central portion of the back, Releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles allowing the belly to go soft.
Relaxing throughout the abdominal cavity. Holding your trunk erect, relax your lower back muscles. Your buttocks. The upper legs and thighs. Lower leg.
And your feet. Bring your awareness to your body in general. Notice any tightness, any tension. Focusing upon those areas. Consciously relaxing, softening.
Feeling the tightness diminish. The body becoming comfortable, at ease. The sense of physical well-being pervading your body. It feels good to be in your body. And then bring your mind to the breath.
It’s natural, easy in and out flow of the breath. If it’s helpful, use the techniques of counting and noting the breath. Now, we’re going to do the Śākyamūni Buddha practice and begin by examining, looking carefully at, memorizing. Looking looking at the painting, the figure of the Buddha. Moving your eyes around it, relationships, the colors and so forth, the different parts of the body, the figure.
Now we’re going to meditate causing that appearance to rise within your mind to your mental consciousness not your visual consciousness not your eye consciousness but to your mental consciousness And what this represents the crystallization of all these various qualities in the visual form, embodiment of wisdom, love, compassion, power. Like an extension of yourself which is inseparable from all the Buddhas. And as we recite mantra together imagining from the heart of the Śākyamūni Buddha visualized before you, white tube extends down from the heart to the crown of your head. These brilliant white nectars and lights begin to flow and fill in your body Eliminating all the darkness, all the negativities, the heaviness, all the feelings of insufficiency. Identifying it with complete pure clarity.
So just let go to a sense of complete purity and clarity. If thoughts arise note them, then come back to a sense of purity. Again, we’ll do the same from the heart of Śākyamūni Buddha, the shaft, a tube of golden lights and nectar begin to flow down to the crown of your head, filling your body with wisdom and love and compassion all the excellent qualities all these wonderful qualities. Your body and mind completely filled with the golden rays and nectars of all of this wonderful quality. So beyond all words, concepts, intellect, a sense of knowing, a sense of love and compassion and power.
Now imagine that the figure the Śākyamūni Buddha visualized before us, the embodiment of awakening, comes down to the crown of your head facing in the same direction as yourself, dissolves into a golden light, enters through the crown of your head, transforming you into union oneness with all the infinite Buddhas of all infinite time, of all infinite space. You are a Buddha beyond words and concepts. That there is a still suffering. My work is not complete. Just remember the suffering of others in all its unimaginable forms.
They all want to be happy. All these infinite beings. They’re reciting the mantra again, this golden and white rays radiating out in all the directions of space, in all the realms of existence, touching every being without exception, completely eliminating all their negativities, bringing forth all their excellent qualities, they too become Buddha. Now there’s no suffering. Your work is complete.
Nothing more needs to be done. Imagine all the beings in all the realms of all the space dissolving into one another, the environment, into yourself. And you yourself dissolving from the top downward from the bottom upward. Until finally there is only infinite vacuity of infinite space and profound peace. There’s only infinite vacuity of infinite space and the experience the profound peace.
And then bring your mind back to the breath And then get in touch with your body, the sensations and feelings in your body. And then in a gentle and relaxed and easy manner, just slowly become aware of your surrounding. Did you all come back? So we’re fortunate. We have some methods to work with, the ways to help ourselves so that our aspirations simply don’t remain just that.
We can begin to translate them into some kind of reality, practical and concrete for ourselves. Way of doing this amongst the various methods that we’re working with, educating ourselves and developing our practice is purifying the various or eliminating the various negativities that we’ve created over the course of time. The residues of these negativities have left their traces in our mind in the form of karmic seeds, both positive and negative. But with regard to these negative karmic seeds, when they meet with the appropriate activating condition, there’s going to be some kind of experiential result and because they are negative and because there is a certainty of karma in terms of the correspondence between the type of result and the type of cause that from negative causes come negative results. We’re going to experience some level of negativity in all its various forms and these types of four results of karma in terms of frictional results or frictional results or the result which is corresponds in terms of the action by way of behavior, by way of experience, but also the environmental result.
So, there’s various ways in which these negative karmas that we created are going to find expression both in terms of our inner experience but also in terms of the outer world as we relate to it. So, but we don’t have to leave it at that. We don’t have to, you know, the past comes up to the present. There’s no predestination. With awareness, we intervene.
Otherwise, there’s a determinacy. Within the present moment, situation is workable. So, we can work with these negative karmic seeds within our mind, and we can begin to weaken them. In fact, we can completely purify them from our mind. We have that ability, we have that choice to make, and we’re educating ourselves in the way in which to take advantage of that chance, that opportunity.
So, we’re going through the four opponent powers. And we talked about the first power, the power of repudiation. Most simply, we have all of these various negativities whether we can remember them or not. I suppose from our past lives we can’t, most of us can’t remember them. But we can remember all the various negativities or many of the negativities that we’ve accumulated in the course of this life and I think just as a means of general psychological health, it’s a useful technique.
It’s a useful method. What to say with more profound benefits? And just kind of cleaning up our minds a bit. Getting over these feelings of regret and guilt and so forth we have about some of the things that we don’t feel so good about that we’ve done. And working through them and feeling a sense, okay, I can move on.
I can leave that behind me. I don’t have to carry it around like a weight my shoulders anymore. So developing a healthy sense of regret around the past negative action that we created. You know, I made a mistake, okay. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person, I’m a defective person, there’s nothing particularly wrong.
I added one and one and came out with three. No matter how drastic or catastrophic the consequences, I made a mistake. I was confused, was jealous, I was attached, was angry. Lots of reasons. I’m not justifying it.
I’m not saying it wasn’t, it was right. I’m not trying to avoid taking responsibility for it. I’m just being realistic and recognizing my own limitations and my own imperfections. I’m sorry it happened. Something like that.
So, the second of these four powers is the power of reliance and we do this a lot, almost every evening together. Involves, you know, this process, always bringing up for us and it’s reevaluating our priorities, getting back in touch with more deeply cherished values, you know, recommitting ourselves. We get out of touch. We’ve got to get back on the path. What is important to us is growing, developing ourselves and our mind, benefiting others.
These are important. There are said to be two objects toward whom we can create negativities, the Buddhas and sentient beings. So by sentient beings it means everybody else who isn’t a Buddha, and so that leaves the field wide open. Buddhas and the rest. Okay, so you know, we’ve all experienced it.
Sometimes, and we, you know, we we act with the clarity, with the wisdom of all the Buddhas. Sometimes we know. Our mind is clear, it’s not confused. We have some precision in our thinking, we have confidence in what we’re doing. Other times we’re completely confused, we’re obscured, we lack certainty, we don’t know what we’re doing, than not the great deal of time we’re overcome with habitual preoccupations with the eight worldly concerns.
These are our criteria in which we’re deciding our courses of action, what to do next. Our preoccupation with the pursuit of pleasure, the avoidance of pain, the pursuit of gain, the avoidance of loss, the pursuit of fame and the avoidance of notoriety, the pursuit of praise, the avoidance of any type of criticism. This is what runs most of our life. It’s not a very good criteria, standard of way to determine your choices. I’ve got an immediate gratification.
Know, if it feels good, that’s what I’m going to do. If there’s any problem, if there’s any challenges, if there’s any pain involved, I don’t want anything to do it. There’s no growth. There’s no going beyond what you want to earn. There’s only this continual circling.
Now this is like, these are the perimeter walls of the prison in which we’ve constructed for ourselves, these eight worldly concerns. But we’re also, you know, more than not to a large degree controlled by our afflictions, these eighty-four thousand afflictions. Jealousy and attachment and hatred and confusion. Now we don’t always use a good deal of judgment essentially in what it is that we do. You know what we’re capable of, what we might like to do in our finest moments when we have this sense of clarity, when we feel noble, we feel good about ourselves in what we can do.
There’s some kind of wisdom at work which we can trust, but sometimes we can’t trust because our wisdom isn’t operating, because we’re unclear. So, you know, when we lose sight of our priorities and so forth. You know, for example, you know, maybe, and we’re going to talk more about the area of ethics. Know, for some time, you know, just a simple example, sometimes for various reasons, you know, which moved you very deeply, you know, that you saw in some deep manner, some moving manner, that maybe all sentient beings, they don’t want to suffer. They all want to be happy.
That’s their reality. More than not, we see our fantasy projected on them. That it’s it’s okay to hurt them. Saw this in a very profound way. It weighed upon your conscience.
And finally, you came to some kind of resolution in your mind, which is a good thing to do once in a while. How can I justify, rationalize, for example, fishing for sport? Those fish, they want to be happy, don’t want to suffer just like myself. How can I just simply treat them as an inanimate object without feelings? Just like this table.
How can I go on like that if I’m really sincere about what I’m about and benefiting others and not harming others? At least I have to begin to think about not harming others just for my own pure pleasure. Maybe thinking in that way. I’m just using it as example. I’m not prescribing what you should think or do.
So you make some kind of determination, some kind of resolve. Doesn’t have to be formal. It could be. But just with in terms of a commitment with in before your own inner wisdom, your own inner Buddha, your own inner witness. Or maybe it is in a formal sense.
Maybe you do go to a spiritual teacher in a formal ceremony, and you commit yourself. You say, I’m not going to maybe you can’t say I’m not going to kill intentionally. Maybe you can say, I’m not going to kill intentionally for sport, just for my own pleasure. I’m going to give up fishing. Okay, that’s a good beginning.
The journey journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. That’s a step in the direction that you want to go. So you make that kind of commitment and you feel good about yourself and where that’s taking you. And a few days later you get a telephone call. It’s a queen’s birthday.
It’s a holiday. And your good friend calls you up and said, it’s a beautiful day. Fishing’s great. Let’s go. And you say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And all these seductive images of getting out there with your good friends, having a couple beers, you know, fishing, and catching lots of fish and taking them or frying them up. It all sounds pretty good. It’s quite seductive. So but but something catches. You don’t quite fall in.
You’re not completely carried away or completely captivated, infatuated as you were once. You made some kind of resolve and it comes to mind. You say, no, no, no, no. Listen, let’s do something else today. Let’s get together.
I’ve decided to give up fishing. For ordinary people like ourselves, the reality is that we, more than not, it’s almost impossible to keep our understandings always fresh before our mind’s eye. You know, the noble ideals that we would like to live out of, the values that we would like to express in our life, in all the various situations that life is continually bringing us where we lose sight of or we’re forced to compromise or we forget what we’re about in one way or another. So, you know, we get caught up in the moment, know, we get caught up with the pursuit of pleasure, we get caught up with the pursuit of gain, and that becomes our criteria for our various actions normally. So, vow or a commitment, whether in a formal sense or an informal sense can help us, can see us through these moments.
Know, wait a minute now, I made a commitment. I’m not going to fish for sport. Know, it’s like maybe you’re not feeling that reality of that the fish doesn’t want to suffer. You’re not feeling that reality of I want to benefit sentient beings at that particular moment. Encapsulated in this vow, this commitment that you made and we do remember your commitment.
So though these insights and these understandings and these aspirations aren’t always alive and manifest in our mind, we can be mindful of the fact that it once was and that out of that we made some kind of resolve in our mind, a commitment, either in a formal or informal sense. Took a vow or we made a promise. And these have force in our mind carry us through these moments when we lose sight of what it is that we really want to be about. So this is the importance of, one of the many importants of commitments and values that we can and do take to carry us through when our wisdom isn’t operating, when our love and compassion isn’t operating, when we’re not fully aware of what we’re doing. Helps us to become aware.
It helps us, reminds us of what our deeper goals are, what we’re about. For example, to give a more within, there are many are called lay precepts that are often taken, not to kill and so forth. And amongst these is some lay people take, and I’m not suggesting that you do, I don’t have this balance, is not to take intoxicants. For some people, you know if they drink too much alcohol, for example, they lose their ability to discriminate. They get drunk, don’t they?
And they do things which they normally might not do. They hurt themselves and they hurt other people. So, many people drinking, not everyone, not in moderation, but for some it is a problem and it is because it is a problem they try to help themselves, know, if they to help them work through this problem so they don’t end up hurting themselves and others. So, people see drinking as an obstacle to their own clarity of mind, to their ability to think clearly and to, as an obstacle to their practice. So, they make a choice not to drink.
So, having, you know, they’ve chosen another path. And taking a vow is a method of supporting what it is that you decide, the choices that you make. We can always keep our reasoning and understandings and feelings alive. So, it’s like a shorthand notation of some decision that you’ve come to in the past, of a choice that you’ve made, and the vow assists you in supporting that choice that you made sometime in the past. Either in terms of a formal vows or in terms of like for example the five precepts, the formal vow of not drinking alcohol.
In itself, there’s nothing negative about drinking alcohol. It’s not negative. This is a problem for some people and therefore they choose not. So, in having, in the context of acting in contradiction to a vow that you’ve taken, you know, especially in a formal ceremony, it is as if we are turning our back on what it is that we really value. What it is that we decided the way that we want to be.
What we want to uphold it. You know, what do we want our life to stand for? When you act in contradiction to your higher values, it’s like turning your back on your own Buddha or the Buddha’s or your spiritual teacher who is representative of the Buddha’s or the Buddha’s who before whom you imagine taking this now. So, this is what I mean by we can create a negativity with respect to the Buddhas. We can contradict the vows, kind of commitments that we’ve made.
Also, said that we can commit negativities with regard to the Buddhist through various wrong views saying well, you know, there is no such thing as the Buddha and the teachings of Buddhas are nonsense. You know, coming to that decisive conclusion as we’ve talked about in terms of wrong views, that’s sort of another way that we can create negativities to Buddhas. So, you know, applied, so when we talk about the power of reliance with regard to having committed negativities with regard to the Buddha’s, what do we do? We recommit ourselves to our higher values. We commit ourselves to what it is, the direction that we want our life to move, you know, toward awakening.
No, sometimes it almost doesn’t make sense to talk about Buddha outside and Buddha inside. But anyway, we do. We make that distinction. Whether, you know what it is that are to awakening. So, we take, so the power of reliance with regard to having created negativity with regard to the Buddhas is that we go for refuge in all that we’ve talked about in all the various ways.
Recommitting ourselves to Buddha and the means to awakening the Dharma and our spiritual community, those who support us in our practice in achieving this end. But, you know, Even without commitments or without any type of vows and so forth, to perform a negative action toward a sentient being is to turn our backs on loving them. That’s important. I don’t mean I think yeah. I I actually mentioned this in in church yesterday.
There was a passage in which one of the leading disciples of Buddha asked of the Buddha, would it be quick to say that part of our training is directed toward the development of love. And the Buddha answer is no, it is not true to say that part of our training is directed toward the development of love. It is true that the whole of our training is directed towards the development of love. You know, I’m not saying this in a romantic sense, you know, the qualities of love and compassion. Know, I guess the best, you know, we’re going to go through this a great deal in the future when we come to the awakened heart, the development of love and compassion.
But, one of the best definitions, the definition, the definition that I use because it makes sense to me. It was, I kind of adapted it from American psychiatrist, strangely enough, M. Scott Peck. He said, It’s the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing one’s own or another’s well-being. The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing one’s own or another’s well-being. And, I mean, I’ve modified his definition, but that’s approximately his definition of love.
And the will to extend oneself. To extend oneself is to go beyond our comfort zone, these limits that we set for ourselves. It is work. What you’re saying is I’m willing to work for you. I’m willing to work for myself also to bring about your welfare.
That’s love. Loving yourself. I’m willing to do the work necessary to develop myself, to bring about my happiness. To do the work, that’s the way we express our love for ourselves. It’s just not a kind of a warm, cozy feeling.
It may involve some pain, some difficulty, some challenges. That’s how we express our love for ourselves. But it’s also how we express it for others. We’re willing to go out of our way for others. Now that’s what we mean when we say, I’m your friend.
I’m willing to walk that extra mile, to go to bit of trouble for you because I love you. You know, that’s the way that’s love in that’s in operation. Mhmm. It can’t be something. You know, if we we keep talking about love, love, love, love, and we never express it, we have to begin to question, well what exactly do you mean by love?
If it’s never expressed in our everyday life in some form or another. So, I’ve gotten way off, haven’t I? So, this is to extend oneself. The more that we love, the more we will find a way to express that love in real terms. Because, you know, we can’t because there especially with regard to compassion, there is almost an unbearability about real compassion.
And if it wasn’t for the bliss that Bodhisattvas experience, they could not bear the pain of others. You know, pain is compassion in a way is an inability to bear the sufferings of others. It’s not a it’s not a very pleasant feeling. You you you’re moved. You have to do something.
And for a bodhisattva, someone who is awake in their heart, that something is to become the best person they possibly can so they can remove that person’s suffering. That’s the expression of their compassion. They become a Buddha for that person, for all sentient beings, but for that suffering person. So, it is, you know, when we hurt people, we aren’t loving them. At least temporarily, there’s no love.
There’s no compassion. You want to harm. You’ve turned your back on love and compassion. At that moment, at least. If there’s we are, in effect, prolonging the unawakened state that much longer.
Every time you commit negativity toward a sentient being, every time you harm another sentient, every time you harm yourself, awakening is just that much farther away because we aren’t loving. The more that we love, the more that we develop in our compassion, the closer we will come to enlightenment. It is the force which will move us there. It is the energy behind the path. So, when we harm others, we are, you know, if there’s one evil in the world, it is simply prolonging the unawakened state.
And we do that when we harm others. So, in implying the power of reliance, we do just the opposite. We stop harming others and we love them. So, we generate love and compassion for others. We take them back in their hearts.
We commit ourselves again. You know, this is our aspiration at this level, but at least we can begin to see where it is we’d like to go. The benefiting, stop harming. That’s what we’re about. In applying the power of reliance we’ve committed either negatively with regard to Buddhas or sentient beings.
With regard to Buddhists we generate refuge and all that that means commit ourselves to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha in all the various ways that we’ve talked about quite a lot. Having committed a negativity with regard to sentient beings, we generate love and compassion. We stop harming. We develop the intention to benefit them as best we can. So, it’s like somebody who falls down on the ground, you know, what do we mean by, how do we mean reliance?
When a person falls down on the ground, they rely upon that same ground up, to push themselves back up straight. So we’ve fallen down with respect to our noblest ideas, with respect to our own Buddha, with respect to love and compassion. And the better ideas, the better part of ourselves and what what it is that we would our life would like to be a symbol of, what we’d like our life to stand for. We’ve fallen down, and we use the same objects. We use the, you know, the Buddha’s and Sangha, and we use sentient beings to pick ourselves back up by going for refuge and generating the awakened heart, generating love and compassion.
The power of reliance. The power of reliance, you know, we’ve talked about these four types of results and then particularly amongst these four types of results. The power of reliance is especially effective in eliminating result, this particular aspect of these negative actions, these actions, negative actions are going to express themselves in a variety of manners. One of those manners is the environmental effect in terms of the general overall environment and resources and possessions. So that’s the second of the four powers.
Shall we stop there and spend the rest of the time, if you have some questions or you know, some ideas or feelings that you’d like to share, know, this is a time of sharing together. Yeah. I do have a question. If you are actually expressing to somebody the way you feel, say say if somebody’s hurt you, say you’ve been hurt by Yeah. Somebody’s actions Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And you’re expressing that hurt to that person, is that creating that negative karma to that sentiment being? You know, like because you’re actually expressing to them because that could hurt them. Mhmm.
That could actually hurt them by hearing what my truth is. Sure. Sure could. Is that creating that negative impact? So in in lieu of not completing yourself, so in lieu of actually harming yourself, you’re not bound to complete.
If you feel that that’s Oh, I see. Complete. You have to complete to say to that person, it hurt me when you did blah blah blah blah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. What do people think? I like to I think the truth is the most difficult thing. Truth. Yeah.
Sometimes we use the term right speech. Yeah. But then, truth comes in. Think sometimes you’re always going to hurt, but the truth, real truth. Yeah.
I always thought there’s only one truth, but that happens in philosophy. It’s a slippery. Perceived truth, it’s the truth that you see that someone else doesn’t see. Yeah. But if you keep digging down deep enough, people that are seeking truth are not really harmed by others.
And I I think the intention with what the way you come up with the words, if you’ve seen that person sometimes say that kind of thing to other people, and you say it with love to help them rather you’re agreeing with Caroline? Yeah. Yeah. You said something about it yesterday as well, and that was oh, it was in the reading from that’s easy to see. Splintering?
Yeah. Splintering another your brother’s eye and not see the plank in your own. Assertion. Yeah, yeah. I mean, somewhere with this we would, I guess a week ago, up at the Barossa, someone, we brought up, we had a discussion around assertion.
Yeah, yeah. Praise and criticism and fame and notoriety or disrepute. Any other ideas around this? The hard ones. I think a lot of what’s been said is really useful information.
First off, checking what’s your motivation and then why do you feel so hurt? Is it because there’s some kind of truth to what they said, a little bit of truth? And then I think but having said that, then also, I mentioned right speech. The notion of right speech is that right speech isn’t necessarily, there are different components, different parts of right speech. One of them is factual, but that’s not all of it.
Just because you’re factual doesn’t mean it’s right speech. It also has to be beneficial. It has to be said in the right way, at the right time, in the right place. And so these all these taken together constitute right speech. But, I’m just going to give you my own opinion.
These are things which probably you have to kind of draw out of the, maybe this is my own interpretation, but I think we can talk about times when we are being treated unfairly. Ly. Because it creates a division between yourself and the other person. And it’s really helpful to be willing to go through the temporary tension and the difficulty of creating, opening up communication and getting and moving beyond that, what’s this difficulty. And especially if it’s some kind of repetitive behavior.
Yeah. And so I think if you have, so the problem is, so it has to be, you have to check up with your motivation. It has to be factual, but it has to be done skillfully, which is really hard. I you know, trying to create create the right open so the person simply doesn’t become defensive. You know, this may maybe my own stuff.
You know, when when sometimes when you do, I feel I feel hurt. You know? You’re owning what’s happening, and you’re not blaming them. I would like, you know, I’d like to get a relation, you know, I don’t feel so at ease and I feel discomfort in the way that we’re relating. And I’d really like to, this is my own side, I I’d like to get closer to you.
You know, that’s what you’re feeling, I’m not saying you should, this is some dialogue that you to memorize, probably won’t work. But as far as assertion, I think there’s a difference between, I’ve always had a problem with assertion and we mistake, there’s a difference in my confused analysis, we have to make a distinction between assertion and aggression. Know, aggression is coming from a place of anger, and many people, and the reason this came up last week, it was about a domestic violence situation. And the discussion came up, well, for a woman who’s in a domestic violence situation, it’s really good for her to get angry because then she can assert herself and get out of it. Yeah, well that’s, for assertion, want to harm the other person.
It’s not a matter that you want to get out of, you know that the relationship isn’t working. You may have to assert yourself, but it’s not a place of anger. You know, be assertive. Yeah, I think maybe you know, I don’t want to suffer anymore. You know, we do this when we talk about, you know, we admit it, we’re going to talk about suffering.
And you say, I don’t want this anymore. It arouses some kind of energy to act. I’m gonna get myself out of this situation. So, yeah, but it has nothing to do with anger in a way. I don’t think.
So, I think assertiveness, I mean it’s really, it’s too bad we aren’t all trained in assertion. I think the world would be much, there would be a lot more clarity in relationships and there would be a lot less difficulties in the world if we didn’t have to, see I used to, because the reason I say this is I couldn’t get what I want unless I got angry. I had to build up on my mind to such a state that then I would get, I could stop what was happening or I could get what I wanted, but I can only do it from a place of anger, which doesn’t work very well. You don’t think very clearly, and it has bad consequences all around. But if you can assert yourself in a very skillful way, you can get to what you want, and it can be actually helpful for both, everyone.
Oh, might be an ego too, that’s about asking too much. It may be out of it. We’re just talking in pretty mundane practical terms. I don’t think we can be too idealistic. There’s lot attachment involved or some attachment, but maybe that’s okay to some degree.
I don’t know, what do people think? Perhaps when you’re dealing with situations which cause conflict, minor or major, you need an enormous amount of skills, and you have to choose which skills to use at that particular time because I don’t think any situation is the same. Angry people or emotional people behave differently. And so you just have to decide then which skills you’re going to use. Mhmm.
Yeah. And, I mean, I’ve in my work, I’ve had people that you can be passive without being a pushover. You can be very quiet, but you don’t budge from your you you’re you’re certainly assertive and very, very quiet Mhmm. Yeah. But firm way.
Yeah. Yeah. And the anger does wash over. I think people that feel loss of faith or pride will combat anger with forcefulness. And it’s in certain situations, you might because you are losing faith or you are losing faith.
But as long as you keep that that Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what comes to mind is very I mean, a bit complicated. It’s a bit political. Religious politics.
There was this controversy around, sometimes in one area of Tibetan practice there’s the practice of protectors who are various practices centered around certain types of beings which are seen as protectors and protectors of the Dharma and protectors and so. And so there’s lots of different protectors. Some of these protectors are said to be questionable. They have some, some perhaps are actually real beings who have some kind of powers. Some of them are not only just real beings but they might have worldly beings.
And the Dalai Lama was quite, and still is, he saw that this particular, this practice around this particular protector was destructive, but it was many, there were a number of people who were practicing, he said, I don’t want to. For example, he gives an empowerment. He said if anyone is doing this practice, please leave. So that’s, you know, that’s being assertive. This is not a good to do.
If you’re practicing, please leave. So I’m just giving that. I always would beg around that and it’s a complicated religious political thing. But anyway, think he was very I think that’s a social So I think, it’s too bad, I think in our schools, there’s all these different subjects that people study, but I think some of these social skills, assertiveness, and conflict resolution, these are really big. Life skills would be really useful to grow up with.
I don’t know. Way our education is usually very deficient. I mean, causes or solves a lot of problems. Yeah. The way to diminish the ego of the word assertive, I think, is to use the word confident.
Confident. The dialogue, so confident about. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
He has no intention of hurting anyone. It’s just clear that, yeah I agree, I agree. Yeah, confident. How’s that? Trust in yourself.
Yeah, trust, yeah. I think faith and trust, there’s one type of faith which trust in. Just like anger is to assertiveness. There’s overconfidence. That’s right.
Overconfidence. Does that look like? Overconfidence. Never easy. It’s dangerous, I mean.
Very good. It’s not respecting mystery and not not allowing yourself potential to grow further. That’s good. Everything’s so complicated. Complicated.
Minds are just Any other comments? Anybody? I’d like to share something. Is there a problem with Western culture particularly that we view of quietness and passivity as a weakness? Or is it perhaps the Western cultures that seem more to strength?
What do do He who knows who remains silent. Anybody else have a comment on? Leadership. Yeah. I mean, The alpha dog seems right.
The alpha dog leads the pack. And in corporate world, they’re always looking for alpha dogs in the top management positions because I know they’ve done the in the pack That’s good. I’ve always thought a good leader was someone who empowers others. You not even know who the leader is, but that’s a difficult one. That’s a good comment, distinguish between managers and leaders.
Okay. Maybe we can dedicate the positive energy that we’ve created. Male beings everywhere plagued by suffering 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 the 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 prosperity. May there be timely rains and bountiful harvest. 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 powerless 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 the awakened realm.
May the supreme jewel of the awakened heart that has not arisen arise and grow and may that which has arisen never diminish but increase more and more. In the land 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. Commercial announcement? Presenting the path.
So there’s a course called on Wednesday night called Discovering Buddhism and it’s set up in modules. And on June fifth, modules. And on June fifth, it’s tomorrow, the module called Presenting the Path will begin. So that’s last maybe, I don’t know, sometimes five or six sessions that will begin tomorrow. There’s an introduction to Buddhism by the nun, western nun who has recently arrived, Venerable Jamyang, will begin June the twenty third on Saturday, June the twenty third at ten o’clock.
The next mindfulness day, so I encourage you to come to the mindfulness day, is June sixteenth. It’s a week from this coming Saturday, I believe. It’s eight thirty in the morning till three thirty. So it’s a day long practice. And please bring a vegetarian lunch.
I like curry. A little bit. There’s a Guru Puja, many probably familiar with this particular ceremony. There’s one on June the twenty fifth at four p. M.
Everyone is welcome. There’s a Chenrezig practice. Chenrezig the embodiment of compassion at five p. M. Every Sunday.
There is a green Tārā practice. Female, you know, feminine aspect. I have awakening is held at six pm on the last Wednesday of the month. That’s a new every last Wednesday of the month at six pm. And next Monday is the long weekend, the Queen’s birthday.
So there’s no class next Monday, okay? No class next Monday. Be good till I see you again. Okay? Thank you.
Good night.