Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “Two wings of a bird” — Ven Jampa Gendun’s image for why wisdom alone cannot reach Buddhahood — runs through this 102-minute session in a long-running Three Principal Aspects series. He completes his survey of the six perfections: meditative concentration (calm abiding — effortless, blissful focus on any chosen object) and the three types of wisdom, explaining how the first five perfections fuel wisdom to cut the subtlest ignorance. A guided imaginative meditation — identifying with qualities admired in others, then in oneself — leads into the Wheel of Life. The treatment of hatred is unusually precise: Gendun separates the Buddhist definition (the wish to harm, nothing more) from assertiveness, fierce compassion, and protest against injustice, which Buddhism does not prohibit. Ignorance is then unpacked as active misknowing — the belief in an absolute independent self from which all other afflictions arise.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 20 3PA 2007 08 27.mp3
UUID: 95091956-af9b-4328-8f33-2bce12c17015
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2006-2007 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2007-08-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 101.7 minutes
Words: ~9,641
How is everybody? Good. Good. Good. Good.
We’ve been talking about the six perfections. The primary activities which, you know, a Bodhisattva, someone who has awakened their heart. I guess what, Someone who is an extremely caring individual and wants to do the best they can by others. And so they realize that if something more than having good intentions which is a great deal in itself but it’s not sufficient, we have to actually develop ourselves if we are going to fulfill our wishes of benefiting others.
We actually have to do something. The more we are, the more we have to give, the more we can actually do in practical ways. So the Bodhisattva actually begins a process of training and primary activities, primary trainings that he or she takes up are the six perfections or the transcendences. That’s pretty difficult to say I guess. Generosity, you know, going beyond this self referencing tendency that we always have in terms of how we relate with others, what we do for others, and so forth.
An unwillingness to let go of what is mine, my territory, my knowledge, my whatever. Ethics, aligning ourselves with our basic sanity, not indulging in our dysfunctional patterns of mind as best we can. Patience, they need to develop the skill of reframing the situation such as such that even though the external events remain the same, our perspective, attitude toward them is somehow transformed and what was difficult to bear previously becomes workable. We find finds a natural resolution simply by shifting our attitude toward them. Joyous effort in developing some kind of enthusiasm, some degree of perseverance, but importantly, you know, becoming skillful in terms of finding joy in what we do.
It’s just not a drudgery. It’s just not a burden. One finds a great deal of happiness in helping others. And then we’re going to look at the fifth and sixth of the six perfections. The fifth is that of concentration in which the This is the way, you know, I guess, essentially that we can stay focused on what it is that we want to.
We can begin to avoid our normal distractions, mind wandering to here and there almost uncontrollably. You know, we can begin in in one way of looking at meditation is that we try to capture a new experience, generate and develop and hold that new experience. Some maybe some insight into reality, some new feeling of compassion, whatever. And like like taking a walk on a on a misty morning, unbeknownst to oneself, imperceptibly, your clothes start to become damp and almost soaked just to walking through this mist. So, likewise, our minds become absorbed what it is that we’re focusing on.
There are experiences, there are feelings and our mind begins to become the nature of our mind. We change in the, you know, we can begin to experience other other realities and therefore begin to change our minds. So meditative concentration is included in a class of meditation called calm abiding, know, śamatha. Abiding means that we are able to abide for as long as we desire on any particular object that we choose, and it’s our mind is calm, that is no longer running around, no longer distracted toward external objects.
So the mind is effortlessly able to abide on any particular object that we choose. But importantly, it’s accompanied with the mental and physical bliss of mind and body. So the the Bodhisattva cultivate what’s called a supra, not super, supra mundane. That is something supra mundane concentration. For the Bodhisattva, meditation is a way he or she can develop the mind as a tool in helping others.
Not meditation is not a, an escape from the world, know, the difficulties and the problems, kind of going off into one’s own blissful self indulgent little world that we could develop for ourselves. But on the contrary, it’s a way of being able to benefit others even in a more skillful manner through the development of their own minds and this by means of concentration. And then finally, the sixth of the sixth perfection is wisdom and there is various types of wisdom. In general, wisdom is a type of consciousness which is able to go beneath the superficial appearances that we usually get stuck on, that we usually dwell in. It’s able to penetrate to a deeper nature of the objects.
Within Buddhism in general there are three types of wisdom. There is wisdom of conventionality which is these are usually termed the five sciences. There is the logic, medicine. I’m gonna have to read these. I haven’t developed this wisdom yet.
Linguistics and philosophy. That’s not too hard, is it? And then there is this that’s only 4c. Got me confused already. Medicine, art.
I forgot art. That’s interesting, isn’t it? It’s a kind of wisdom. Medicine, art, logic, linguistics, philosophy. Then there’s wisdom that understands what is to be adopted in finding happiness and what is to be rejected in terms of avoiding suffering.
So you know, knowing, being skillful about what is going to bring you happiness and what is going to bring you problems. That kind of discriminating wisdom. And then finally there is the wisdom which we normally talk about in terms of wisdom that is say which understands the deeper nature of reality. So these are the six perfections. Through the merit or the positive potential of the practice of the first five of the six perfections, generosity, ethics, patience, joyous effort and concentration.
I am always worried I am never going to get this. This first five, this sixth perfection, that wisdom is transformed into a perfection of wisdom. These first five of the six perfections empower that wisdom, like I’ve talked about in terms of the fuel of a rocket, that which enables it to penetrate deeply into the nature of things until it’s it’s able to remove the most subtle levels of ignorance of the mind. There, you know, we’re going to talk a great deal about this a little bit tonight and more and more in the future. The different levels nature of ignorance.
And there are these these it’s many layered levels of ignorance. And there’s only by means of the power of the first five perfections. And most importantly, essentially, activities activities motivated by compassion and love empower that wisdom consciousness to remove the most subtle levels of ignorance. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Wisdom alone will not help you to reach Buddhahood.
And necessarily, we must also have activities motivated out of compassion and love, the awakened heart. But again, on the other hand, it is only by means of the awakened activities of a Buddha or a Bodhisattva. Know those activities motivated by loving compassion when they’re conjoined with wisdom. And here we’re talking about the wisdom which understand the deeper nature of things. For example, when they when a when a Bodhisattva practices generosity, they they’re they’re not only giving, practicing the the generosity of giving, but that giving and this is motivated out of compassion and love and so forth.
But it’s also conjoined with wisdom, knowing that the giver of the gift, the activity of the giving, and the recipient of the gift all lack true existence. You know, it’s like almost as if one’s giving in a dream in a certain respect, in a certain way. And it’s by means of having these activities conjoined with the wisdom aspect that a Bodhisattva can literally give away all that they have, all their body, their all the personal power that they’ve developed, their positive potential, all their possessions in limitless ways over limitless time to limitless sentient beings. Without that wisdom there would be no way this would be possible. So it’s interesting that you know in order to, we need two, it’s like two wings of a bird in order to fly.
Wisdom without without method, that is say activities motivated by love and compassion, or method without wisdom wouldn’t be sufficient. You know, we we we need need both. We need wise hearts and loving minds. We need integration of both our affective and cognitive abilities in order in order to be of the greatest benefit to others. We need both wisdom and compassion.
So, you know, we have to work at both of those even at our level. So, you know, the outcome of this process, you know, we call it Buddha. But, you know, we perhaps can make it more most relevant to ourselves. And trying to lead a meaningful life, a life with some kind of purpose. The goal of our life as far as Buddhism is concerned is to fulfill not only our own welfare, but the welfare of others.
So, you know, this is like the best possible way that we could lead our life. We want to bring about our own inner experience of peace, you know, go beyond all these afflictions and all our problems, disappointments, frustrations, all our difficulties. That’s for sure. And as His Holiness the Dalai Lama is repeated often enough many many times that we have we have every right to pursue that goal. That the purpose of life is happiness but still that’s not quite sufficient that others are just like ourselves, everyone in this room and everyone outside of this room.
You know, there are quite a few superficial differences. There is differences in gender, differences in ages and educations and occupations and so forth. But you know if we scratch beneath the surface what is universal to all of us is that we all want to be happy and none of us want to suffer. We’re all equal in that regard. So from the point of view of Buddhism, that this understanding, we we if it’s felt deeply enough, we could never be quite satisfied by simply withdrawing from the world and being lost in our our own isolated peace, oblivious to the pain and suffering around us.
That’s not really an option. That if the most successful way that we can lead our life, the greatest purpose we can give our life is to not only to bring about our own welfare, but to create a balance in terms of how we’re going to bring about the welfare of others also as well. And the more that we are, the more that we have to give. This is why the Bodhisattva practices these six perfections. So the outcome of this, the culmination of this process we call Buddha, a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being.
And in terms of wisdom and love and compassion and personal power and how these are skillfully and fear fearlessly expressed in an individual’s everyday life. But as the Bodhisattva, as we’ve just described, has to do something, we actually have to. It’s it’s not quite enough, though it’s a lot to awaken our hearts. We have to go about changing our minds as well. So we practice, and we practice the Dharma, you know, the various trainings, the meditations and teachings, these activities, these six perfections, and so forth.
And most basically, want to understand the truth, the deeper nature, the way things exist, and develop that wisdom which understands this. And this whole process occurs within the social context. Those who assist us in this process to, you know, do whatever we can in aiding another on their journey along their particular path. Giving advice, sharing our understanding, sharing whatever material assistance we can or just being there for another just another shoulder to cry on if that’s what’s necessary. And we try to to raise the level of our motivation.
And, I guess we can we can try. It’s a I think it’s a really a lifelong struggle and something that we have to keep reminding ourselves of. That that there are other people who, aside from ourselves, who are suffering just like ourselves and to make that that mindfulness a part of our everyday experience. You know there’s there’s an old saying I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet. And it does hurt to have no shoes and we we should do something practically to alleviate that difficulty that that’s that pain.
But part of our practice is not to forget that there are other people who not only do not have no shoes, but also have no feet. And make that awareness, you know, not blotting that out, not becoming absorbed in our own self centeredness, our myopic vision of what the good life is about, but open to other possibilities. Even if and only one other person that maybe you’re your parent or your partner or your child or your some friend or other. That maybe, you know, when we go home tonight on time, maybe nine thirty, something like that, that we can say, well, maybe I can be a little more loving, caring, a little more understanding, a little more patient. I can be there in some small and almost insignificant way in a greater way for that that person, for that my parent, my partner, my child.
Just by listening and discussing and thinking and reflecting upon what we’re sharing together. If that’s your motivation for being here, you know, then I think it can only be worthwhile no matter what this blah blah blah, you know, that I had to say over the course of the evening. You know? From by the force by the power of your motivation, you will have come that much closer to being able to fulfill that wish. And that’s one thing I think perhaps we got out of karma.
That karma is we can’t judge an action by it in and of itself. It’s the motivation behind the action. You know, the why we’re sitting here. It could be for various and it probably is for a variety of reasons. But hopefully we can go beyond even a neutral motivation to something positive.
And if it’s only for one other person, then that’s a significant significant and meaningful motivation and something good will come out of it. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha through my practice of generosity and other perfections. May become a Buddha for sake of all 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 and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering 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 offering those actually arranged and imagined and those in all the negative actions accumulated during beginless time and rejoice in all the virtues of superiors and ordinary beings. Please remain to 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.
We’re going to meditate and we’ll begin with the process of progressive relaxation of the body. Just bringing awareness to this various parts of the body as we go through and imagining or actually feeling the process of, you know, the loosening of the tightness or the diminishing of tension and so forth. And then we’ll practice the six part breath meditation, meditation, just simply a comfortable normal breath inhalation and but on the exhalation, prolonging the exhalation, having a sense that you’re completely emptying all the stale, use the air out of your lung. Again, breathing in normally, comfortably, again, prolonging the exhalation and doing that six times. And then when meditate on mindfulness of the breath.
And, you know, I thought we going back to some of our past meditations to familiarize our self and one of the ideas which I find useful in my own thinking about my life is how we story our lives And this this ongoing narrative, which which we it’s kind of a a loop of self talk that that keeps going in our mind telling us about ourselves and who we are and what we can expect of our lives. And and therefore, much acts as a measure of what we do and do not achieve in the course of our life. You know, we we we can play a role in our imagination. The the the I think it was Albert Einstein who said who was no small intellect, but he said imagination is much more important than than knowledge. And our life, our imagination plays a great role, a great part in our life and we can begin to imagine another possible story about who we could be and to we can do that by playing a role in our imagination, giving ourselves an opportunity to experience other aspects of ourselves, other possible ways that we could be.
And here we’re simply going to work with different qualities, different ways of being. We are going to first choose a female who we admire that we respect a great deal and thinking, what is it that I admire, what is it that I respect about her so very much. And then imagining that you yourself have the same quality to the same degree. And it’s not so much and we act out in imagination that the role as if you were that in creating the imaginative situation where you relate on this basis. But it’s not so much that we’re trying to figure out how would I be if I were compassionate like the Dalai Lama or I was compassionate like Mother Teresa, how would I be?
It’s as if we we imagine ourselves, we are that compassion and we simply act out of it without trying to figure out how we should be or how we might be, but we allow ourselves simply to be that and express it. Identify with that quality as much as we’re able in our imagination. And it’s almost like almost like a physically felt sense, feeling as if whatever, whoever the individual, whatever quality, that you are that quality and feel it and not necessarily thinking about it, intellectualizing around it, and how you would relate, creating an imagined situation in which you are that quality and you that quality is naturally expressed. It kind of just is the normal way of relating without trying to have to adjust the situation to fit that particular preconceived notion about what it would be to be a compassionate person and so forth, how you should be if you were compassionate, which is seeing how you are compassionate. Okay.
So we will try this. Okay. So take a comfortable, firm posture. So take a dignified posture, purposeful, firm. We begin by relaxing the body, beginning at the crown, the scalp, the forehead, feeling the wrinkles in your brow beginning to smooth out.
The pressure in and around your eyes diminishing. The muscles of the face softening. Face is relaxing. The jaws relaxed. Coming to the muscles at the back of the neck perhaps gently turning your head to each side a few times, just very gently stretching, loosening, Relaxing the muscles of the throat.
Moving down to the upper back and shoulders perhaps, rotating your shoulders a few times and letting them drop comfortably to the sides, feeling this, this burden, this weight that we carry around on our backs moving down through your body into the ground. And coming all the way down to the hands. Hands are loose and soft. Relaxing the lower arms, The upper arms. The chest is at ease.
Relaxing throughout the heart area, the lung, the middle part of the back, the stomach, releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles, allowing your belly to go soft. Relaxing throughout the muscles of the lower back. And the buttocks. Throughout the upper legs, the lower legs, The feet. And bring awareness to your body in general.
Notice any tightnesses, any tensions, discomforts within the body. Focusing upon those areas, breathing into them, consciously relaxing, softening, feeling the tightness loosen, the tension diminish, the discomfort ease. Body becoming comfortable, at ease, a feeling of physical well-being pervading your body. It feels good to be in your body. Just be with your body.
And we’ll practice the six part breathing exercise. Breathing in comfortably normally, extending the exhalation, breathing out all the stale air. Again breathing in normally, extending the exhalation, and doing this six times on your own. When you’ve completed the six breaths then bring your awareness to your breath just easy gentle in and out flow of the natural breath. If it’s helpful you can use the techniques of counting the note in the breaths.
Bring your mind back to the breath. Now we’re going to meditate on playing an imaginative role and beginning by thinking of a female that you admire, that you respect a great deal. Someone that you look up to, Someone that you look up to? What quality? What what about it about them, About her?
Do you admire and respect so much? Now imagine that you yourself have the same quality to the same degree. Completely identify yourself with this quality and create an imaginative situation where you are that quality and that quality finds a way of expressing itself in your relation. Just give yourself over to identifying with that quality and be it And that quality finds a way of expressing itself in how you relate in an imaginative situation. Now we are going to do the same again, this time thinking of a male that you admire, that you respect, that you look up to.
Again, what quality, what is it about them, about him that you admire respect so much. Imagining that you yourself have the same exact qualities to the same degree and creating an imaginative situation where you completely identify with this quality, you are that quality and see how it expresses itself in relating to others in an imaginative situation. Now again, we’ll do the same, but this time think of a quality about yourself that you presently possess, that you like about yourself, that you admire in yourself, something you respect about yourself. But now imagine that that quality that which you now possess is many many times more developed, completely fully developed. Creating an imagined situation identifying this with this fully developed quality of yourself and see how it expresses itself in an imaginative situation.
And then finally think of a quality that you don’t like particularly about yourself. But now imagine that you have the opposite counterpart to that quality, the positive side of that quality. Fully developed and identify with that fully developed counterpart to that quality you don’t like about yourself. Fully identify with it and create an imagined situation where you see how that positive quality is expressed itself in an imaginative situation. Identify with the positive quality and be that quality and allow it to find expression in an imaginative situation.
And then bring your mind back to the breath. Get in touch with your body. Notice the sensations and feelings within the body. And in a slow and relaxed easy manner become aware of your surroundings taking your time there’s no hurry. So we’re looking at sometimes it’s called the wheel of life or the wheel of conditioned existence.
This self perpetuating cycles a way of life which lived the of karma, the conditioning factors in our mind set deposited there by our past actions and our afflictive emotions. And so there are four concentric circles which we’re going to work through in describing the nature of cyclic existence. At the hub, we began we began to talk about that last week. We said that this is what keeps the whole process going, turning, keeps the wheel turning. Three what are called the three poisons or the the three root afflictions, hatred, attachment, and most basically ignorance.
And we talked a little bit about attachment attachment last week. The, you know, the essentially the attitude of where we get stuck. We get fixated on an object or a person or situation, even ideas and so forth, we can’t let go. Compulsion, obsessive thinking with regard to something. And we made this distinction between attachment and non attachment, the opposite of attachment being non attachment, that is to say, an openness, spaciousness.
It involves, a it can it can very readily involve an engagement in the world, a way of caring about things, that things matter to us. We just don’t get stuck to them. That’s all. A free and fluid open way of relating, not a withdrawing, is not detachment, not a way of avoiding the world or things and people. That’s not what is meant by non attachment.
So the second of these three poisons is that of hatred. So this is, you know, the opposite mode of energy. It’s a fearful, angered repulsion. We want to get rid of the object rather than hanging on to it. It can be objects of the senses, you know, objects of the eye sense, shapes and colors and sounds, beautiful sounds and smells.
It can be ideas, be people and so forth. We find the object unattractive. We find it disagreeable. It we wanted to exclude it from our from our domain, from our from what we see as our territory, our territory, our ego identity. We want to hope in the hope of finding some security by way of having it permanently excluded, by having it not a part of our self.
There’s a sense that I’m under threat. Our territory is being threat being invaded. I’m being violated in some way. I’m being diminished. And then there’s a this ongoing struggle to to permanently exclude the object, to get rid of it, to destroy it if necessary.
Essentially, hatred arises from an unhappy mind. You know, we can talk about the various, you know, and qualities and conditions which bring about the emotion of hatred or anger or violence and aggression and so forth, all these various equivalents. But essentially, it’s the mind is distressed. It it it can’t bear with it can no longer bear with object, whether it’s a person or an event or even an idea within one’s own mind. We want to get rid of it.
We have difficulty tolerating it, bearing with it. The mind is unhappy. The mind is distressed. We don’t want to we’ve identified some object which we see as the source of our distress, the source of our unhappiness. And if only we can remove that object from our from our territory, from our visual field, from our way of thinking, from experience, then we could return to normality.
Everything would be okay if it wasn’t for you. I’d be alright. You know, I’m so angry I could punch you. We want we want to hurt the object. We want to, as if, destroy it.
We wish to harm. Essentially, that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about hatred or anger, aggression, violence, and so forth. And just as an attachment with respect to all the afflictive emotions, there is an exaggerated factor involved. With attachment, the put the the the attractive nature of the object exist is exaggerated and the unattractive aspects are filtered out or overlooked. Hatred, it’s exact opposite mode.
The unattractive aspects, the disagreeable aspects of the object are exaggerated and whatever positive qualities, whatever attractive and agreeable qualities it might have, those are filtered out. Those are overlooked. The mind is imbalanced in some way. You know, essentially, hatred refers to those attitudes of the mind which involve the intention to harm, the wish to harm. So the the so when when when the focus the focus of Buddhist teachings on hatred is essentially is trying injunction not to harm.
And that’s what we mean by hatred, by anger and so forth. And this this applies equally to all the various terms which are used in the Buddhist teachings and their translation into English. They more or less are equivalent. Hostility, anger, aggression, violence, they all are fundamentally attitudes of harmfulness. So the goal of of Buddhist intervention with regard to harmfulness is to diminish it and ultimately to remove it altogether.
Why? In order to prevent ourselves harming others, in order to remove the immediate discomfort which anger in our mind, you know, an angry person is an unhappy person, an aggressive person is distressed. So one, to to remove the harm of to prevent the harming of others. Two, to remove the discomfort that we’re that the angry person, the aggressive person, the person full of hatred is experiencing at that present moment in their immediate experience. And three, to avoid the karmic consequences of activities motivated out of hatred in the future, sufferings.
So in the Buddhist context, these emotions are seen as unmixed with any positive feelings. So again, like we did last week when we talked about attachment, I’d like to bring it into, I like a discussion around how we see anger in our culture. Discussion around how we see anger in our culture and contrasting it to what the Buddhist presentation precisely is trying to get at. It sees anger, hatred, aggression, all of these various equivalents as being unmixed with any positive feelings and moreover they are most precisely a wish to harm. That’s what Buddhism is talking about when they say, if a teacher were to say, try to avoid becoming angry, teacher is saying, to avoid wishing to harm others and to express it of course.
So this is the Buddhist usage is confined to just that. In the West, when we talk about anger, it could have a much broader field of application. It has a wider range of meanings. You know, we can we can we can mean outright intention to harm. And this is very much what we’re talking about when we when it’s used in the Buddhist context.
You know, I’m so angry, I could punch you. Okay. That’s that’s what we would call that anger, both in the West and then in Buddhism would say, oh, that’s what we mean by anger. There’s a strong reactive dislike. When I saw you hit that child, I got I really when I saw him hit that child, I told him to stop.
Now there’s a strong I didn’t like what he was doing. There’s a lot of energy, isn’t there, behind that statement. That we could call anger but it doesn’t necessarily involve intention to harm, does it? So we’re talking about a wider range that anger applies to in the Western context. Beyond that, which is being specifically denoted by the term anger in Buddhism.
We when we when we practice assertiveness, you know, don’t use my computer without asking me. Okay. Sorry. We can talk about, you know, pro proclaiming difference. I’m different than you.
You know, I I you know, you you know, we went out to eat and and you ordered a meat meat pizza for both of us, and I’m a vegetarian. Okay, I’m different than you. Or we can have we can use we can create difference or independence. Sometimes I like to go for a walk by myself. I like to have a little bit independence.
Sometimes we talk about setting boundaries. You know, please knock on my door before you come in my room. Okay. Or we can protest injustices or wrongs. You know, I’m going I’m I’m I’m setting up a website to protest against the absurdity of the Iraqi war.
So all of those could have a sense of anger or sense of but none of them necessarily involves a wish to harm except for the first. They could have a sense to harm, you know, if, you know, if I, but not necessarily so. One could react with a strong dislike to the action of another. Somebody is hitting a child, if you hit that child again, I’m going to punch you in the face, you know, and of course then that reaction is mixed with wish to harm, then that’s what Buddhism would call anger, but you could say, you know, I told him to stop. You could have a sense of wanting to prevent the victim from being harmed, but you also could have sympathy for the perpetrator that they’re harming themselves in the process hurting that child.
You know, maybe some compassion for both. That’s possible. So there a positive feeling mixed in with that assertiveness. So we can’t we can’t unless there is a wish to harm, we can’t we we can’t call that there’s no proscription against that within the Buddhist context. There’s within the Buddhist context, there’s no proscription against assertiveness, claiming differences, establishing your autonomy, setting boundaries.
All of these kinds of emotions, you know, in these ways of relating. Only when the reaction mixed with the wish to harm does it is it prescribed within Buddhism or is there injunction against anger? And therefore, it’s to be avoided as best we can. You know, if you said, you know, if you use my computer one more time, I’m going to take all your CDs and throw them in the trash. You would be asserting yourself, but that assertion would be mixed with anger.
So assertiveness, proclaiming differences, reacting with dislike, setting boundaries can or may not be a case of anger as it’s being described within Buddhism. So we have to become a little more subtle in our discrimination. For example, protesting injustices, I mean, Dalai Lama has said that he doesn’t even call this anger when you see there’s an injustice and you protest against it. And there’s another term used in the Buddhist teachings, is called, fierce compassion. It’s like when a mother grabs her child who’s in danger, is crossing the street or something.
Don’t do that. Don’t ever cross the street. Teachers wouldn’t even consider that anger. You know, there’s nothing wrong with that kind of reaction. There’s no wish to harm, but it has a it has almost a violent appearance, doesn’t it?
And don’t ever run out in the street again. There’s no wish to harm. There’s no anger. It’s just this but the energy is very similar, but the motivation behind that energy is very different. So, you know, an emotion we have emotion words like anger.
This, it refers to an interpretation of the feelings and physical sensations that arise in response to to a particular event. Something Something happens and we have a particular feelings arise, have particular physical sensations arising. And then in response, we also go on to envision some kind of response to that, the sensations and feelings which are rising. So there are two aspects to an emotion. First, the event in the world, it triggers some or leads to some kind of perception.
There’s some kind of sensation, and there’s some kind of feeling. There’s perceptions, feelings, sensations. For example, you know, when I see a child being hit, I perceive the child as being harmed. That’s my perception. I I feel a tightening around my heart.
That’s my physical sensation. And I feel I have I have a strong feeling of displeasure. I don’t like what’s happening. So the the and then that’s the input, and then I respond to that. There’s a secondary reaction.
So it responds to that perception, the sensation, all those various feelings. I might react with afflicted anger, motivating the attention to harm. I might react with, on the other hand, I might react with compassion, both for the victim and the perpetrator. So part of that so so part of that overall emotion is very similar in terms of anger. The the the perception, the feelings, the body sensations, but there isn’t the the reactive wish to harm.
So it it would be we could it could even be motivated out of compassion to intervene in a situation like that. But the energy is very similar to anger. It’s like fierce compassion in a way, and stopping an injustice and so forth. But there’s no wish to harm. That’s the point.
And therefore, there’s no pro there’s no prohibition against it. So if the if the if the action if the emotion is not mixed with the wish to harm, then then it can it can be mixed with a positive feeling. And therefore, it can be quite useful, you know. You know, like we did when we talked about attachment. We have to make some kind of, you know, we have to develop some kind of perspective on some of these teachings.
So so we’re we’re trying to make them useful to ourselves. It’s important that we that we understand that the opposite of hatred is non hatred. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Non hatred is a positive feeling. It’s an affirmative feeling.
It’s a feeling of great caring, of involvement in a very positive way toward the object. Non hatred is not disengagement where the individual may lack any self assertiveness at all, any feelings about anything, unable to set any boundaries or the inability to protest against some injustice or wrong that’s going on. Non hatred is a turning away from harmfulness and wishing another well, a positive involvement engagement with that object. It is not becoming a doormat to practice non hatred. It doesn’t involve the lack or the ability to make a stand and respond in ways which are maybe sometimes quite assertive.
And I say this because it’s easy to allow ourselves to pervert these and when we talk about to avoid hatred and therefore to avoid ability, they can reinforce our inability for some people to unable to assert themselves at all. Their inability to assert themselves to stand up for what’s wrong and what the set boundaries and so forth becomes validated by misinterpreting the teachings as if this was a practice of non hatred, but in fact it’s not. They need some maturing around some of these dysfunctional patterns in their ways of relating and the teaching should not be used as a means of reinforcing what is in fact really what isn’t working for them in their life. So I just it’s kind of just making some kind of discrimination around this. Just remembering where Buddhism is coming from in terms of anger, of the wish not to harm.
Anger is the wish to harm, the intention to harm in one way or another. Assertiveness, setting boundaries, protesting against injustices, they can be powerful and positive emotions. Don’t necessarily involve the wish to harm, do they? Therefore, they are not proscribed in terms of anger. So you know, in putting the teach ings into practice, we have to be careful not to misinterpret them and to unintentionally misuse them and justify some of our dysfunctional, not so healthy qualities that we already have in ways of thinking and not allowing them to reinforce these qualities and not allowing the teaching to serve as validating them in some way.
Okay, third basic affliction or third poison is that of ignorance. So most generally, ignorance is an absence of precision in our thinking, lack of clarity. We’re talking about very roughly here. Okay? There’s different ways of presenting ignorance and different levels of ignorance, as I mentioned before.
In our thinking, there arises out of this imprecision in our thinking, this unclarity, there arises a complex network of mistaken beliefs, a whole system of beliefs, one built upon the next, about a network of mistaken beliefs and models about the nature of ourselves and nature about the nature of the world about us and how that world operates and so forth. We have lots and lots and lots and lots of wrong conceptions around that. Ignorance blinds blinds us to seeing the absurdity of many of our basic beliefs and however, you know, they can be invalidated again and again and again. It’s like water running off a duck’s back. Reality keeps running off ignorance’s back in a way.
We can, we invalidate these again and again through our reasoning and our own experience, but somehow it doesn’t quite absorb. It doesn’t penetrate to actually begin to perturb the system, to to shake up these beliefs. So ignorance is like almost like a stubborn closed mindedness about learning anything which would we feel might threaten our our security, our ego identity that we have, that we’re forming, that we feel helps us to feel safe about who I am and what the nature of the world is and what my place in it and what can I expect of my life and others? You know, we’ve got it pretty much fixed. And for most, you know, like, you know, they say ignorance is bliss in a way, isn’t it?
If it wasn’t so painful. So we simply misunderstand so with regard more specifically, with regard to ignorance, we can talk about ignorance ignorance is a misknowing and I want to talk a little more bit more about what we mean by misknowing. But just for now, we can just say that ignorance is a misknowing with respect to the conventional and the ultimate. When we talk about misknowing with respect to the conventional, we’re talking about, we simply misunderstand the deeper causes of happiness and the deeper causes of suffering. We, you know, we, and therefore not understand what are the, what is the nature, what it actually brings about happiness, what actually brings about suffering, because we have some misconceptions around that.
We are continually recreating causes of suffering for ourselves. We keep making the same mistakes again and again and again, not because we don’t have intelligence, but we’re operating on the basis of some level of ignorance. That’s with regard to the conventional, you know, the law of cause and effect. With regard to the ultimate, ignorance refers to a misknowing with regard to the nature of the I, the self, the person, Jampa. So with regard to here, it’s important to understand that ignorance is more than a mere not knowing.
This is, I guess, an important point to get across. Quite often the word ignorance in the English language, you know, I’m ignorant of what’s on the other side of that wall. There’s an absence of knowing what’s on the other side of that wall. I don’t know what’s on the other side of that wall. That’s quite often the way the word ignorance is used in the English language.
But here, it means something more than that. Ignorance is actively knowing knowing wrongly. It’s actively knowing in a wrong way. Not just not knowing, but knowing wrongly. So, you know, the Sanskrit word for ignorance is avidya.
Means not, vidya means know, knowing, not knowing. In Tibetan exactly the same, ma rigpa. Ma means not, rigpa means knowing, not knowing. Strangely enough in English it’s exactly the same way. Ignorance comes from the Latin ignorare.
E means not, notus means to know. Same, it’s exactly the same etymology for all three of those. So the point is that ignorance is not a mere absence. It is more like an enemy. An enemy is not someone who is not just a friend, who is not how do I say it not merely not a friend, not merely not a friend.
An enemy is not merely not a friend. A stranger is not a friend, but they are not an enemy. An enemy is something more than simply not a friend. They actually are hostile to you or other than a friend. An enemy is something more than other than a friend.
Like a tree is other than a friend, but they’re not an enemy. An enemy is the opposite of a friend, not just not a friend, but the opposite of a friend. Someone who’s out to get you. Someone who is actively unfriendly is an enemy. So in the same way, we could take the word falsehood or untruth.
Falsehood is the opposite of true words. It contradicts the truth. So ignorance contradicts wisdom. Ignorance is the opposite of wisdom. It is incompatible with wisdom.
They’re struggling against one another like hot and cold water, and so it’s it’s it’s more of an active quality of a particular function of mind, which which is incompatible and contradicts coming to know the way things actually are. So the ignorance we are talking about here does not imply the mere absence of knowing. You know, a stone doesn’t know, but it’s not ignorance, you know. Ignorance is something that is contrary and directly opposing wisdom. Knowing.
Knowing wisdom. And what is this knowing? What is this wisdom? Knowing the true nature of things, the way things exist in their deeper nature. Ignorance is directly opposed to that.
Knowing that wisdom which knows, understands things in their deeper nature when we penetrate beneath the superficial. When we want to know how things exist, not whether they exist or not whether this table is red, not not not whether this table is made out of wood, how hard it is, how long it is, but the way it exists. It’s very nature. It’s deeper nature. Now not whether it exists, but how it exists.
Ignorance is opposed to that understanding of that. It’s actively contradicting that just like hot and cold water. So you know when we look at the way that we normally think and behave and react emotionally to life. And this is where we are looking when we try to get a sense of what ignorance, how it’s functioning in our everyday life. It is as if we believe that we are a partless whole enduring in an unchanging manner existing independent of our bodies and minds and all the conditions which make us who and what we are.
So we talk about what do we mean by ignorance? We mean a almost as a conception, a way of thinking, almost like a belief about ourselves, an idea that we have ourselves, a way of thinking about, a way of conceiving, a way of viewing ourselves in which we see ourselves as if we were partless whole, a unitary homogenous thing that is unchanging in its nature, fixed. It’s always that it’s always that way, and moreover, it’s it’s it exists not in relation to anything else. It exists independent of body, independent of mind, independent of my education, independent of my culture, independent of all other factors outside of itself. That core of our being, which exists somewhere, we’re not quite sure where.
So that’s the conception. That’s what ignorance is holding to. That’s who we who it sees who it sees that we are, the I, the self, the person, Jampa. This ignorance in turn serves as a basis for self centeredness. Self centeredness, you know, it discriminates between this self and other.
Is a self and other exists, but they exist relatively. They don’t exist absolutely. What do I mean by that? That without, without light we wouldn’t have an, we would be no notion of darkness. Darkness exists relative to light.
High exists relative to low. Big exists relative to small. They don’t exist absolutely. Is my ring finger long or short? Compared to my little finger, it’s long.
Compared to my middle finger, it’s short. It is neither absolutely long nor short, only relatively so. Relative to my little finger, it’s long. Relative to my middle finger, it’s short. So, can talk about it being short and long, but only in a relative fashion, only comparatively so, not absolutely.
What due to ignorance, there is the nature of the self is conceived to be absolute. It doesn’t exist in relation to other, just like high and low, you know, big and small and so forth, as if it was absolute. It existed. It was self independent above everything else, unrelatively so. There is other, you know, we draw we draw a big black line around the self, you know, with a big black magic marker.
There is got this skin encapsulated ego. That’s who I am. Everything else is other. I’m over here. You’re over there.
Self centeredness comes along and discriminates this distinction as being absolute, and what is I and mine is is seen as essentially distinct from everything else, you know, which is other. Once we have made that distinction, we we we develop attachment and we feel beneficial toward anything which we conceive conceive of as I and mine, you know, my friends, my country, and we develop hostility toward that which would end in everything that’s seen as other, you know, the other side, the enemy and so forth. So it makes this distinction a relative what is in fact a relative distinction between I between I and mine and other as absolute. And out of that arises attachment toward what is I and mine, that which is beneficial to myself, and develop hostility, hostility, hatred, anger, aggression toward all that is considered seen as other, absolutely other. And we also develop pride develops from, from grasping to the self as feeling as what is mine is superior to other.
In this way, all the various afflictive emotions arise in dependence upon basic ignorance, misconceiving the I as being absolute, independent, so forth. So, you know, the, the, for the vast majority of us it is ignorance as opposed to wisdom which is the primary shaper of our lives, which shapes our destinies. This is the outcome graphically, iconographically portrayed of the expression of ignorance in people’s lives, in our lives. It’s all has originates in dependence upon. This one little picture.
It’s not so bad actually. We could handle it. You know, all of our experiences are ripening of our karma. The basis of our actions. All of the karma is based is which is based upon the afflictive emotions of hatred, attachment, and most basically ignorance.
So all of what we experience has arisen out of ignorance, most basically. This is our world. This is where we live. This is Burnside. Anyway, so at, at the there’s a cock or rooster, a snake, and a pig.
Each have the other tail in their mouth. They, it’s kind of, they each are assisting each other in perpetuating this process. Keeps the wheel turning. cyclic existence. Yeah, let’s talk about the second concentric circle.
I think if we look on the second concentric circle, it is not in the painting, one half is blackened in. The right hand side is blackened, but it’s not in the drawing here. Anyway, the second concentric circle depicts beings moving out of one world and into another according to their positive and negative karma, which has been created, out of ignorance attachment and hatred most basically, and this gives rise to these various worlds. Now these these worlds and we’re going to talk about these things, these ideas in ideas in a little bit, metaphorical way or figurative way, more put sometimes in a poetic way maybe. Worlds which are frozen projections, you know, expressions of our tendency to organize and relate with reality in particular fixed modes.
Our worlds are experienced as primarily the physical sufferings of the hell realms up to the blissful absorptions of the gods. All these all these possibilities in between of our of our possible experiences. So the this is all the outcome of karma, and we’ve talked about karma. karma is simply karma means action, mental, verbal, and physical action. And these actions initiate a series of reactions.
The final culmination of which is that we will go we will undergo some kind of final experiential result in terms of feeling. karma is concerned with the relation between actions as causes and their effects as experiences. All of our actions will eventually be experienced with some type of result. So karma is, you know, just broadly speaking, karma is the, the, all the activities which shape, you know, we are like events. You know, we see ourselves as being as extremely solid and fixed, you know, and and independent of our environment and each other.
But in a way, we are we are, like, the the the intersection of a lattice work of complex network of causes and effects and conditions and so forth. Like little blips of of sensations and little blips of feelings, feelings, little blips of cognitions and so forth. And we we we organize these in particular configurations and think and think about them in particular ways, have a conception about ourselves persons and so forth. So all we’re we’re continually being shaped. karma means all the activities that are shaping the form of who we are.
All the you know, karma is the all that intricate, including the the the latencies of our past actions, life in the womb, our parental and social, cultural conditioning, you know, all of the sum of all of these forces, conditioning factors, which are continually influencing and, and, and bringing about and altering this configuration about who we are, our ways of thinking, ways of being, our physical being. karma is specifically is the action of intention. We’ve talked about that fact. The the an action of intention is the mental urge toward tendency to think in a in a particular way or focus upon a certain object. You know, it gives it gives directionality to our mind, some kind of orientation to our mind, which causes us to involves ourselves in various ways of thinking and various types of emotions and so forth.
When an action ceases, it can it conditions the mind, doesn’t it? It has it some kind of residue is left on the mind. When we think when we have a particular intention, I wish to help. I wish to harm, two very distinct intentions. They’re going to leave some particular footprint residue on the mind itself.
That way, that intention plus that residue, we call these karmic seeds. They both are what we refer to as karma. Okay? So our the continuum of our consciousness, you know, moving down through our life and through lifetimes carries that condition factor, carries these karmic seeds. When those karmic seeds meet with a particular activating condition, just like a seed placed in soil and water and so forth, is activated, begins to interact with this environment in a very predictable fashion, drawing nutrients out of the soil and so forth, beginning to shape them in a particular specific configuration, it begins to grow.
Likewise, these karmic seeds within our mind when they meet with the proper cooperative conditions, then that information encoded in there begins to find expression interacting with its environment specific ways and undergoing very specific experiences as a result. Upon our death, getting back to the actual drawing itself, there are two alternative two options which are open to ourselves in terms of, our future experiences. We can either going to experience a predominantly happy state, represented by this light half which is on, you know, if you look at the drawing your left side or you can, or you can, or one can experience predominantly suffering state represented by the dark side that are on your right side in which the beings are being led away. Know, like we don’t have any control, you know, like the the winds of karma blow like leaves uncontrollably being swept up and carried along where karma takes us. The Lord of death takes us as if tied and bound by the rope of karma and leads us to either one of these options and which of these two options is going to we’re going to experience is dependent upon which of karmic seeds at the time of our death is activated.
There are various, we talked about various types of karma, one type that we haven’t talked about yet is what is called propelling karma or projecting karma or throwing karma. We’ll talk about when we talk about these twelve links of dependent origination, but we have been planted within our consciousness a type of karmic seed which when activated at the moment of our death will give some directionality to our mind and dependent upon the nature that seed would depend upon which of these two directions our minds take. Which possibilities in terms of predominantly happy states or predominantly suffering states. Okay, so that’s the depicted by the second concentric circle and then we’ll talk about the actual outcomes in more specific details. The third concentric circle which depicts Burnside, Adelaide and so forth where we live presently.
I would like to get a cup of tea and then we’ll have a discussion around some of these ideas. Hi. How’s your dad?