Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The hungry ghost who tries to consume a sunset — photographing it, rehearsing descriptions for others, wanting to possess the experience rather than simply have it — is one of the sharpest images in this 109-minute session from Ven Jampa Gendun’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path series. He opens by reframing going for refuge as small daily choices toward patience and wisdom rather than recitation counts, then leads a guided mindfulness meditation through breath, body sensation, sound, and thought. The session’s core is a psychological tour of the Wheel of Life’s six desire-realm levels: the god realm’s pleasured escape, the demigod’s jealous comparing and shoulding, the human realm’s restless craving, the animal realm’s blinkered rule-following, and the hell realm’s self-recycling hatred. He closes on the twelve links of dependent origination, using a scarecrow analogy to show how wisdom — finding no independently existing self upon investigation — can displace ignorance as the root cause of cyclic suffering.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 22 3PA 2007 09 10.mp3
UUID: 185a6003-970c-4f47-83c5-e30ba046c82e
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2006-2007 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2007-09-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 109.0 minutes
Words: ~10,284
K. Can everyone hear me okay? Yeah? Okay It was raining very hard, wasn’t it? Was it?
Yeah Just now, wasn’t it? Sound like it No? So we begin by adjusting our motivation. Last time, I think last week, talked about what we mean by, or some of the possible interpretations of what we mean by going for refuge, and we talked about it in terms of a commitment, you know, what is important to ourselves, what is of value to ourselves, and I guess clarifying our priorities for ourselves, and making some kind of commitment so, you know, what might be something of an abstract idea begins to find some practical application in our everyday lives. You know, some consistent choice of the discipline that the context of Buddhism prescribes, You know, to become a the the the commitment in Buddhism is that of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, and what that Buddha might represent for each of ourselves.
And probably is very unique to each of ourselves if we could set it out and explain it in how we can presently conceive of what it means to be a successful human being. And it is the possible story that we could hope to tell ourselves about ourselves and what we could do with our life. And so, you know, how are we going to translate that from some some noble idea into something which is actually expressed in our everyday life. And that’s our going for refuge, I think, more than, you know, trying. And all the various little choices, insignificant choices, seemingly insignificant choices that we’re making most every day of our lives.
Perhaps using a little better judgment in terms of our understanding, trying to find out how our wisdom would find expression in this particular present situation. How our love and compassion, just simply caring, how how would that be rather than relying upon some of our our old patterns which really haven’t gotten anywhere. How would patience work? How would that look in this present situation? Simply being mindful, being present.
So in all these various little ways that we begin to express our our our developing Buddha in our everyday life. And this is, I think, more than not a real substantial way going for refuge. Maybe reciting a hundred thousand I go for refuge to the Buddhadharma and Sangha, you know, that might be good in some ways, but maybe it might not bring about the kind of changes that we’re seeking, that we actually want to implement in our lives. We actually have to do something. We have to try to be the Buddha we want to be in some small ways.
You know, the the way that we act every day has to be consistent to the person that we want to become. Otherwise, there’s some kind of disparity. You know? Otherwise, there I mean, there has to be continuity of cause between who we are now and the result that we want to achieve. And, you know, we have to implement these teachings as best we can.
These trainings, you know, work with them and make them our own. No. We can’t we can’t look to the the Buddhists cannot transfer their realizations to our own minds. If that were possible, they would have done it a long time ago. We have to go for all these little steps all these trainings for ourselves, and work it out for ourselves, work out.
As the Buddha said, just very soon prior to his passing into parinirvana or passing away, to work out our salvation diligently. We really don’t have anyone to look to in a way. We have our Sangha who can assist us in some real substantial ways, realistic ways, through through teaching, through advising, through inspiring, and being there in one ways or another. But to a large extent, it’s it’s up to ourselves, our own ourselves, our own willingness to do the work or or not. Whether we’re successful or not is very much depends upon our own initiative.
But, you know, in this process of implementing these teachings and becoming the Buddha and relying upon the Sangha, you know, it’s whether we’re successful or not is going to be very much dependent upon our motivation. You know, whether we become a Buddha or not, it’s perhaps secondary. It’s the trying that’s important and the trying in in a way which is which is skillful, which is going to support what it is that we’re trying to achieve. So we have to implement in such a way that we’re not simply using the teachings in our practices in such that they simply might support reinforce a lot of our, perhaps, dysfunctional ways of being with ourselves, some of our habitual patterns which haven’t worked for ourselves in the past. And one way we can feel fairly assured as a motivation behind our practice that what we’re doing is going to bring about some positive result is if we can begin to widen our widen purpose for what we do, to include others.
This seems to be one of the essential qualities of the path. One of the, you know, I guess, the operational basis of Buddhism is compassion, developing compassion for ourselves, sincerely wishing ourselves to, you know, go go and be go beyond all these dissatisfactory cycles that we’ve gone through in this life and probably many, many lives, developing some love and for ourselves, you know, wishing ourselves well, sincerely, that we are worthy of our best of intentions, that we are worthy of our caring. But importantly, understanding that others are in the same situation that we ourselves are in. You know, that there are superficial differences amongst ourselves, you know, differences in in genders and difference in education and culture. But to a large extent, these don’t go these differences don’t go very deep.
You know, what is universal about us all and what is profound about us all is that we’ve all want to be happy. None of us want to suffer. So if we can develop the motivation, and even if only for one other person. And I don’t think I think we have to be realistic and we have to be practical. We have to begin with from where we’re at now.
There’s no other choice to be made. We might like to be somewhere else. We might like to think of ourselves differently. But one of the important, I think, necessities for implementing the path in such that it actually touches, it it hits the point where so we have to evaluate, you know, what actually moves my heart? What actually touches me?
Maybe to begin with one other person, maybe we can stretch that to two or three, your family, your immediate those immediately around you, those you care about. And developing in this ambition, this aspiration, you know, that I want to become this better person in however you you know, whatever ways that you define it in terms of, you know, wisdom, love, and compassion, developing some kind of inner strength. But I I I would like for it not to be just myself. You know, that that that this myopic vision of what it means to be a successful person really hasn’t helped me much in the past. Maybe I can begin to broaden my scope of what a really good life is all about.
Maybe I can begin to sincerely wish that we can talk about the Dharma this evening, we can meditate and discuss, then somehow maybe it can be a benefit to others. I would like that. You know, even if only one other person, a parent or a partner or your child, a friend, somebody who who needs you at present in some way. And maybe I can be there a little in little more significant ways for them, a little more understanding, a little more caring, a little more patient. However, it whatever way, whatever the the occasion calls for them, can I can I live up to that that necessity in a greater way than I have been able to in the past?
And then, you know, I think, I think that creates the space. I think, you know, we talk about renunciation, we talk about, you know, these three principal aspects of the path. And they’re all kind of creating some kind of space in our mind, allowing for something new to develop. You know, it’s like we’re it’s like there’s there’s the seeds of a Buddha with inside of ourselves, but there it’s almost as if it’s choked off by the weeds of our afflictions and our past predispositions and so forth. And those seeds never get to feel the warmth of the light of day.
You know? And so, you know, I think creating that kind of space in our mind develop I think it frees and creates the space for maybe some new ways of being, some new possibilities. And we simply just don’t go through the same cycles again and again. There’s some introducing some difference in the way that we’re approaching our problems. Creating some space where maybe some more skillful ways, more skillful patterns of thought can be developed, you know, like pushing the parting the weeds and creating that space.
And I think love and compassion, I think these qualities of the determination to be free and wisdom, they’re kind of creating that space where our very nature has a chance to thrive, to develop, and grow. Maybe that’s enough in a way. And then we can take refuge in something that that we are the final transformation of, something that’s already preexistent with inside of ourselves, but that we have to create the conditions to allow it to flourish. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, but we we have to do the work. We have to translate that that that intention into something practical, and we do that by means of the Dharma.
And this all occurs within this culture which fosters growth. This laboratory where we experiment with other possible ways of being, where these shoots of our growing aspiration and our wisdom and love and compassion can begin to take root and develop. And again and again trying to raise the level of our motivation, the why behind and the purpose for. So checking up and adjusting within your own minds just for that one other person, you know, visualizing, imagining maybe two other people or three other people. Imagining, maybe two other people or three other people.
However many of the scope of your your mind will allow you to sincerely take into consideration. I’m doing going to do this for you. You know, I’m committing myself to becoming a better person so I can be there in a little more significant ways for you, for you and you and you. And, therefore, in in as a means of practically implementing that commitment, I’m going to, you know, listen to this talk, do some meditation, discuss these ideas to become a better person for you, then I think we can be assured that something good will come out of this evening, something positive. Uh-huh.
Maybe we could close the door. Yeah. Should we try that? Yeah. A bit of a problem.
They may not. They may have finished for the evening. I go for refuge until I am 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 am 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 of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings never be separated 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, mind.
I present clouds of every type of offering, those actually arranged and imagined. I disclose all my negative actions accumulated during beginningless time and rejoice in all the virtues of superiors and ordinary 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’m going to meditate.
I thought we would just practice with our mindfulness. So we’re just going to begin with as we normally do, just relaxing the body progressively working through the body then the six part breath exercise and then we’ll begin with mindfulness practice. And we’ll begin with mindfulness of the breath. And then after some time, then we will transfer our attention to the body, noticing the various sensations in the body, any discomforts in the body, whatever what’s going on with your body. If if you feel some discomforts, you know, being aware of those discomforts, you can you can as if it were we might meditate on the sound, actually.
Well, we’ll do that’s part of the meditation. Breathing in and as if breathing into those areas and, soothing those areas, comforting those areas that you feel some kind tension or tightness or discomfort. So becoming aware of the pressure of your buttocks on your cushion or on your seat, your hands in your lap, know, the feeling of your facial features, all these various sensations become the focus of our attention. If there’s any discomfort, breathing into those areas of discomfort and feeling discomfort dissolving, soothing, the body becoming comfortable. And then we’ll move to sound.
The sound can be within your body, but we’ve got a great opportunity to meditate on sound outside the body. Come to the sound as if you’ve never heard sound before. Don’t know quite Sound is just a matter of pitch and frequency and volume. You don’t know what what meaning it has, but it’s simply sound and being aware of sound. You can if it’s useful, you can note it.
Hearing. Hearing. Just noting sound, bare sound. And then we’ll come to our mind. And with regards to the mind, you know, the objects of mind are, to a large extent, the various thoughts and emotions occurring, feelings, which are objects of mind.
So the various thoughts, just recognizing thoughts as thoughts, not getting caught up in your thoughts. They’re just mental events like clouds moving through the sky. We can simply note them, thinking, thinking, without without getting caught up, without indulging. Whether they’re good thoughts or bad thoughts, they’re simply thoughts, whatever emotions might arise, acknowledging them, naming them, noting them, and simply abiding with objects of the mental consciousness. Just as if you’re watching on a stream and sitting on the banks and all these various leaves and weeds floating down on the surface of the water and just letting them pass by.
They come and they go. They just come moving along the surface of the water, and then they move off into the distant as the stream vanishes off into the distance. And while you sit, simply observing on the bank of the stream. Okay. So we’ll try that.
So taking a comfortable, firm posture. So take, you know, it’s a sense of a of a mountain firm, grounded, extended upward. Grounded, extended upward, straight and tall. We’ll begin by relaxing the body starting at the crown of the head, scalp, the forehead, feeling the wrinkles in your brow beginning to smooth out. The pressure in and around your eyes diminishing.
The muscles of your face softening, relaxing. Your jaws relaxed. Moving to the muscles at the back of the neck, perhaps gently turning your head to each side a few times. Just very gently loosening, stretching the muscles at the back of the neck. Relaxing the muscles of the throat.
Moving down to the upper back and shoulders, perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times and allowing them to drop to the sides comfortably. Moving all the way down to your hands. Your hands are relaxed and soft, loose. Relaxing the lower arms and the upper arms. Your chest is at ease.
Relaxing throughout the heart area, the lungs, in the central portion of the back. The stomach. Releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles is allowing your tension, your belly to go soft. Relaxing throughout the abdominal cavity and the lower back muscles, buttocks, Upper legs and thighs. No lower legs.
Your feet. And bringing your awareness to your body in general, noticing any tightnesses, any tensions within the body, any areas of discomfort. Discomfort? Focusing upon those areas and breathing into them, conscious relaxing, softening, feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen, the discomfort dissolve, body becoming comfortable and 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 then bring your mind to the breath, just the easy gentle in and out flow of the natural breath. So we can meditate on the sound. Using the sound as the focus of our attention.
As if you don’t you’ve never heard sound before. A sense of curiosity and openness. Using the sound as the primary object. Keep coming back to the sound, noting hearing. Pay attention to the sound.
You’ve never heard it before. If you react if you react emotionally to it, note that, then come back to the sound. Watch your reactions. Never heard sound before. It’s a new experience.
Listen very closely with curiosity and interest. Now we’ll focus on the sensations in the body, whatever might arise, various feelings, twitches or pressures, feeling your buttocks against the cushion, tightness of your face. If there’s any discomfort, breathing into the discomfort you’re feeling it dissolve. Be aware of all the feelings and sensations continually rising within the body. Breathing with the body.
Then we’ll shift our focus of attention to the objects of the mental consciousness. Like sitting on the banks of a stream, watching all the debris go floating by. Thinking, thinking, just watching what goes by. Just observing. Steady and strong and firm.
Just thinking, thinking. Sitting on the the back back of the stream, stable and firm, simply watching. Just watching. Just observing. And then bringing your mind back to the breath.
And getting in touch with your body, the sensations and feelings within the body. In an easy and relaxed manner just slowly becoming aware of your surroundings, taking your time. So we’re going through the wheel of conditioned existence, the wheel of life, a life lived under the control of karma and afflictive emotions. At its root is ignorance. Due to the root cause of ignorance, we generate all the various afflictive emotions of hatred and attachment and so forth and all our various actions motivated by that as a result creating karma, the second concentric circle.
In accordance with that karma going on to experience various results which accord with that type of karma, both negative and positive. And the way in which this karma finds expression is in terms of these various realms of existence. We talked about cosmology, the, desire realm, the form realm, and the formless realm. We talked briefly about the form and the formless realm, how those are, created by the force of our meditative concentrations. Created by the force of our meditative concentrations.
And we ourselves exist within the desire realm. And the desire realm, there are six levels. So we’re going through a description in a kind of a, maybe a metaphoric way, though I think these are real actual places, as real or as actual as as our human level and the animal level, which we are which we are you know, we take for granted, which we know so well.
I think there are other levels of these realities which exist as well as our own. But we can talk about them in terms of of metaphors and and that we as human beings move through each of these six levels of being in the course of a single day, though we are predominantly rooted in one overall attitude, which these levels are like a a solidification or giving some kind of physical reality to. We talked about the the first of the the highest level within the desire realm, and that was that of the god realm. Mhmm. You know, the orientation is toward extreme mental and physical pleasure.
You know, they become that’s the they become that’s the orientation to to dwell on all these kinds of seductive goals, health, beauty, you know, riches, fame. It’s always pleasure orientated in one way or another, and they become absorbed in these in the struggle is temporarily at abeyance. They lose track of their their hopes and fears, and they find create some kind of pleasurable escape for themselves. They’ve they’ve they’ve created some kind of niche outside of this this constant struggle and conflict which constitutes most of our lives. But this doesn’t last forever in a karma which created these this particular level is eventually exhausted.
It comes to an end. This cocoon that they’ve built finally starts having cracks in it. And there’s demands made upon them in some ways. They can’t maintain that that level of way of being. So they move on.
So we’re going to begin to talk about the second level of these six levels, the level just beneath that of the gods, and they’re called the demigods. Here, the the general over all over attitude. So we’re talking about these in, like, in a in a metaphorical way in terms of what we might experience ourselves these ways. So there it’s it’s the the main emotions are those of jealousy, and there’s a great deal of conflict in a way. You know, the the at the level of the demigods, they’re preoccupied with comparisons.
You know, they’re caught up in a constant struggle to to to achieve. They’re very ambitious in in the demigod realm. You know, our others and ourselves become like standards of measurement. They come like fixed points of reference against which we can determine how we’re doing. Am I doing okay?
Am I doing enough? Am I falling behind in my life’s venture and how far I’ve gotten in my life, or haven’t I gotten far enough in my life? We determine whether we’re getting what it is that we should be getting. Everyone, including ourselves, becomes like an opponent. It’s like we’ve developed this game, and we are struggling to win.
We’re not quite sure what the game is all about and why we really want to win or not, but that’s beside the point. This is a world of shoulds and ought tos. Maybe some people can identify with this kind of world. We’re continually shoulding on themselves. There’s ourselves who needs improving, who we need to be fixed up in some way.
There’s something wrong with ourselves. We should be doing better than what we’re doing. And we ought to be achieving more in our life in some way than we have. And there’s a competition in some way, even with ourselves. In this mentality, everyone becomes a potential threat to our well-being in some way.
They might get further than ourselves. You know, there’s this you know, we we need to be, as it were, on guard, even even with regard to ourselves. We we we really cannot trust others. You know, what’s happening? We we we ignore the actual situation.
You know, we refuse to learn from what it is we’re that’s going on for ourselves. You know, the universe ought to be other than the way it is. Things shouldn’t be like this. There’s a basic dishonesty demanding that the world occur according other than the way it is at present. It should be following our agenda according to our particular needs and so forth.
And it becomes our lifelong struggle to make it do just that, to go according to our preconceptions, plans, on how the world should be operating, what people should be doing, how I should be achieving, what I should be doing with my life. You know, in the world, I don’t know if it It’s not very clear in the drawing. In the paint in the painting, it’s quite clear. This this is the god realm. Okay?
This is called the demigod realm and it’s it’s nice because there’s this tree and the thing about this tree is it’s rooted in the in the realm of the demigods Its roots are down here, but it grows up, up, up, and up. And finally, it bears its fruit in the gods realm. That’s just not fair. It’s I mean, this root this tree is in my territory. It’s in my why should they be getting the fruits of what is in fact mine?
It’s not fair. Something ought to be done about that. You know? It’s the world’s not running the way it should be. Things should not be like this.
So the gods are forever jealous, and they’re always in perpetual conflict with the gods, trying to rectify the situation, trying to make it right. So that’s kind of the overall attitude of the of the the demigods. Then there’s ourselves. No. We can’t this is this is side right right there.
Well, maybe Adelaide. You get get these funny whether that you know, they have that one program on Google or something you can focus down on. We can focus down on ourselves there sitting in Buddha house karma. So the make the major occupation, the the preoccupation of the human level is that of desire. So there there is a the acute sense of separateness.
You know? The pleasurable objects are out there, and there’s a sense about ourselves of insufficiency, you know, or a sense we have a sense of loss about ourselves. We only feel that pleasurable objects are able to bring us the the security, the contentment that we’re looking for in our life. We we we’re comfort orientated. We want to be comforted.
And we see that what brings about that comfort is out there in the things and situations and people about us. We feel, in ourselves, we don’t seem to have what it takes to find contentment, to make our brief life worthwhile. We feel an inadequacy about ourselves. We feel that we have to go out and appropriate these things, you know, make these journeys out into the outside world and kind of drag these things back into our territory and make them mine in order to get a sense of feeling of security, of comfort, of making all these good things of life my things, this desire. They become part of our territory, our domain.
Everyone has their own standard, their own styles. We all have our styles, don’t we? Styles, don’t we? The way we do things, the way we go about things. And and we we criticize those who don’t meet our standards.
You know, why don’t they get their act together? You know? What what are they doing with their life? What a shame. And and we admire those who have our same style but are much better at it.
You know, they’re able we admire those who achieve within our within our particular style of achieving. And we we we are fascinated by what we lack. You know, they are significant, and we are not. They’re famous, and I’m just this poor schmo. They’re doing doing it so much better than myself.
Wow. What what I wouldn’t give to be like them. Wouldn’t life be wonderful? So continually comparing and selecting brings this kind of this never ending procession procession of desires and and ambitions. So in in the human level, the the intellect is most active.
You know, the the mind is always planning, is always formulating, magnetizing, fantasizing, dreaming. The mind is constantly searching for ways to improve the situation, manipulating, trying to invent new possibilities, new ways that I can manipulate and reorganize. You know, there’s there’s this constant restlessness, you know, a discontentment with whatever whatever it is that we have. There’s always this hunger for something more. You know?
There’s always this great hope that that of something better just around the corner. You know? And but maybe but coming with this great hope that something better is just around the corner, that something bigger, better, more is just out there waiting for me, that’s going to solve my life’s problems, that’s going to bring me the happiness that I want, is this undercurrent of anxiety that maybe it won’t. It hasn’t in the past, but maybe it never will. And we really don’t want to take a look at that possibility, so we distract ourselves.
So continually involved in ambition and desire and looking for what’s just around the corner and achieving, making mind, the animal the human realm. The the animal level. So here, the the animal level. Yeah. The mentality is is one ignoring, stubbornly pushing forward to some kind of predetermined goals that we set for ourselves.
We look directly ahead, move straight ahead, very sincere, very serious about what we’re doing. This is serious business. You know? Life is serious. We have we’re very earnest about life.
We keep adjusting. We keep moving on, adjusting the next situation to conform to everything and everyone conforming to what is the way we think they ought to be, to conform to our expectations. Everything should fit in with our plans. It’s associated with stupidity and insensitivity. We prefer blindly to play by the rules of the game.
The rules are important. You just can’t make up the rules as you go along. You just can’t do whatever you want in life. There’s certain ways that you should act. I mean, everybody knows that.
It’s kind of a reactive mentality as opposed to a creative mentality. It doesn’t matter who or what is destroyed in this process as long as the rules are followed, and as long as, you know, the letter of the law, the letter above the spirit of the law. You know, it’s like a it’s like a bureaucracy. You know? Just fill out the forms.
You have to follow the prescribed procedures. That’s what’s important. So with this with this ignoring quality, there’s no concern with being truthful. You know, we find a way to justify ourselves, you know, some kind of rationale to keep up our self respect, that we can feel okay about ourselves, even in front of ourselves, but also in front of others, to justify ourselves, to keep up front even for ourselves. You know, we don’t really we don’t see others.
We don’t see the environment. Only our goals. That’s what’s important. So we invent all kinds of ways, all kinds of excuses to prove that what we are doing is the right thing. We can rationalize almost anything to prove that what we’re doing is the best way, that it’s justifiable.
We can achieve what it is no matter what the cost. But somehow, we can always keep up. We can make excuses. We can always justify. We can keep up our self respect.
We can always somehow keep up a good conscience about ourselves and what we’re doing. So the essence of of an animal is to get what they want with extreme honesty, sincerity, and seriousness. You know? It’s it’s like a very sincere pig. You know?
You know? It it it there’s no humor. There’s no openness. It’s like it’s like a tank. It’s oblivious to everything.
You know? Pig a pig just puts its head down and goes snuffling along. You know, like that. You know? Like that.
It doesn’t matter what it runs over, what it destroys. It doesn’t see its environment. It doesn’t see others. It just sees what’s in front of its nose and keeps on going. So that’s kind of the that’s kind of the animal mentality.
I don’t know if you know anybody like that, but Anyway, hungry ghosts. hungry ghosts, hungry ghosts. Boy these drawings aren’t they good? When you try to really look at them they’re very difficult. The major occupation, preoccupation at the level of the hungry ghost is consuming.
Know, fundamentally, we feel poor. There’s pervading sense of inadequacy about ourselves. We continually use the things and the people around us to prop up ourselves, to prop up our self image so that we can feel Okay about ourselves and we’re doing. But there’s never quite enough. It’s like there’s a big black hole sucking everything into its nothingness kind of mentality about the hungry ghost.
An angry ghost is depicted, and it’s not as I was saying, it’s not very clear in this drawing. And usually, yeah. It’s I think it’s on your left hand. The the the left hand lower here in your drawing, it’s here. This painting, it’s here.
Anyway, it’s hard to tell, isn’t it? We need to zoom in closer. You know, the the hungry ghosts are depicted as extremely small mouths, sometimes like like a needle, as big as a needle. But they have these huge stomachs, like big as a mountain. And so they are insatiable.
They’re involved in a constant struggle to satisfy their hunger. You know? And this struggle is extremely painful. Our, you know, our hunger might be for love. It might be for friendships.
It might be for wealth. It might be for beauty. It might be for clothes. It might be for status. It might be for virtue.
You know? But there’s always this, you know, there’s never enough. And, know, even when we and what happens to hungry ghosts is even when they what they’ve even when they find what they’ve been looking for for years and years and years, they’ve been searching, searching, searching, even when they find it, when they go to consume it, it it turns into fire. It burns them. Like, they find some drop of water or something, and it turns into molten lead and burns their insides.
Our hunger their hunger is never satisfied. There’s a mentality of poverty about them. You know, the people and the things about them, you know, for for the hungry ghost mentality, everything becomes a consumer item. And even you see a beautiful sunset, and you want you you you want to take a photograph of it, or you want to do a painting of it, or or to make or to write a poem about it, or you rehearse some kind of dialogue in your mind so that you’ll be able to repeat it to others what a blissful experience it was watching that sunset, how vivid, how wonderful the experience was. And even as you’re watching it, you want to eat that sunset.
You want to make it your own sunset. It’s not enough just to experience it and let it be. We want to make it our own, to fill up this hole inside of ourselves. When we eat, we go beyond our comfortable level of what’s comfortable for ourselves. A, it’s like, this could be our last meal.
You know, I better make sure I eat as much as possible. I never know when I’m going to eat again, this kind of attitude. So we we have this constant hunger for entertainment, for example, for New Age spiritualism, for sports, for arts, for education. But after a while, all become boring. We find something, but it doesn’t work for long.
It becomes downright painful after a while, and we have to move on. We’re kind of scraping the last morsels of goodness out of the things as we go along. The road of our life is littered with the people that we’ve made use of over the path of our life, all these wrappers of the goodies that we’ve made use of, and it’s littered with what really hasn’t brought us satisfaction in the long run, everything that we’ve encountered thus far. There’s few meaningful encounters that we’ve had that we find along the road of our life, kind of littered with empty shells of people and wrappers of the goodness that we’ve consumed along the way. So there’s always a need to keep moving on.
Nothing quite stays. Nothing quite brings that contentment that we’ve been looking for, what it is that we actually feel we need to feel happy, to feel okay about ourselves, to feel rich enough to be satisfied. You know? So we keep moving on. You know?
Maybe just around the corner, just up ahead is what I’ve been looking for. You know? We’re suspended in unfulfilled desire in some way. You know, the next book or, you know, the next teacher, the next retreat, the next course, the next you know, all these auspicious beginnings until beginning becomes an end in itself. And you really don’t care much about what you do just so you can begin.
It’s kind of this perpetual dissatisfaction that we experience. So it’s a driven search for satisfaction and never quite finding that satisfaction or never finding it for long. It’s quite painful to be suspended in unfulfilled desires. So that’s kind of the hungry ghost mentality. And then finally, at the bottom of the sixth level is what’s called the hell realms.
So the hell realms are pervaded by aggression, paranoia, hatred. You know, it’s based upon the perpetual condition of anger, hostility. You know, we built up this complete environment of hate. And and we we no longer even know what what it is that we hate. We’ve lost the object of our hate.
We just know that we have to hate. You know? That we don’t know what this hatred is even being directed against any longer. We’ve lost track. There’s there’s there’s just this recycling of hatred, you know, like this idea of an alligator or crocodile that feeds on its tail.
The more that it eats, the more that it’s nourished. The more it says nourished, the more its tail grows. This feedback loop of hatred that we’ve set up, the hatred just keeps recycling itself. We just keep thinking of more and more reasons to hate. The more that it’s hated, the more that we hate.
The more that we destroy, the more that we see needs to be destroyed. Until our whole environment becomes one of hostility, hostility, becomes aggressive. The more that we destroy, the more that we see needs to be destroyed, including ourselves. We can’t get away from what it is that we hate. We become one with our hatred.
You know, we are consumed with this aggression. Everything becomes fire. We ourselves become fire, one with fire. We are fire. We are our hatred.
We aren’t we don’t have hatred any longer. We are one with our hatred. And so at the level of hell, it’s characterized by continuous continuous mental and physical pain. So, you know, we can can we can see these we can see these realms as you know, the reason that I talk about them in this way because I think, you know, we can identify with some of these attitudes, if only slightly and if only from time to time, okay, in the course of our daily life. But as I mentioned, I think we’re probably rooted in more or less in one predominant attitude.
But imagine that the mind is set free from its anchor of the body. One is, I was talking to Jen today, who is the office manager. And she just had her appendix out about two weeks ago. And, you know, she was in great pain when they first brought her in. Her appendix had burst.
And that they didn’t want to operate till the next morning. And they wanted they were everyone was saying, we’ll give you morphine. We’ll give you morphine. But she didn’t want to take any morphine. But she took another drug.
She didn’t need something. And this other drug was more of a hallucinogen rather than simply a pain killer. And hallucinated. She began to hallucinate. She said she was talking to people and these people’s mouths would open up and these spiders would start crawling out their mouths.
And it was quite frightening for her in the sense that she never realized what was in her mind. And she didn’t realize that was all this murky kind of not so nice stuff in her mind. And we have to imagine, you know, that we what happens when the mind is no longer anchored with the body? You know, when we have a bad dream, we wake up. We come back.
We we come back to this body, which we’re so familiar with. We reinvent this particular reality, which we take so much for granted. But what happens if there’s no body to come back to? And your dream dream becomes your reality. And your reality begins translated into some kind of physical place that that that satisfies, you know, this mentality.
It, you know, It becomes an expression of a particular attitude that we have, that we relate in terms of subject and object. It becomes a little more plausible, these various realms, these levels of existence, what we what we might have in our mind, the karma that we’ve created, these tendencies. And when I talk about karma here, one way useful way to talk about karma in this particular context is how we’re continually organizing our mind, our our reality. You know? How you know, we have certain rules which we make use of in organizing your reality, in bringing, you know, this chaos chaos of the world about us, in organizing in some kind of recognizable experiences.
A tables are tables, and buildings are buildings, and there’s people, and I’m over here. You’re over there. And we take all this very much for granted. Everything’s out there very solid. But we don’t see the part that our own minds are playing in continually recreating this reality in which we take so much for granted.
The part that our minds and what is it what is it, you know, what is it that what what is it that determines the rules we use in organizing our reality? The karma of our own mind, the tendencies, the predispositions. We talked about that example of the way in which different beings could organize a simple, what seems to be an objective fact of a glass of liquid, a god seeing as nectar and experiencing it as bliss, a human seen as water and experiencing it as refreshing, a hungry ghost seen as pus and blood and experiencing it as repulsive, a mosquito seen as a place to lay its eggs, a fish as a complete environment to live in, hell being seen as molten lead and experiencing it as extremely painful. And what is it that causes us to perceive the way that we do, our karma, these predispositions, which we’ve implanted in our own mind. And so these predispositions find some way of our reality becomes begins to fit our mentality.
It seems you know, we live in a mental we live in a particular world because we have human body with a and we see it as out of a with a human like attitude. You know, each has their mentality, and that that that objective world seems to fit with that mentality. And the same holds true for hungry ghosts and hell beings and so forth. So we fixate upon a particular reality. We are more or less fixed of a kind of an open, creative way of relating.
We cling to our chronic fixations, which we deem to be what reality is. You know, our particular world version. World versions are built upon previous world versions that we’ve so we cannot even begin to imagine that there is that the ground of our being is more basic than ego’s ground. And that that letting go of an independent world out there and independent self in here does not in any way mean that our world and ourselves will somehow go out of existence or somehow will will will disappear, never to be heard from again. You know, you know, when we give up the struggle of you know, we can begin that we don’t the the struggle to that involved in grasping at a self and an absolute and an independent reality out there.
Mountains will still remain mountains. You’ll still have to go to work in the morning. No? It’s just that that that the struggle has gone out of it, you know, that the the struggle to maintain a fiction of ignorance, that there’s this fixed self in here and an independent reality out there, and that which we struggle to maintain that fiction, which, you know, which is unease. Giving up that fiction, we giving up ignorance, we experience peace.
We still live in this world. And there’s a there’s a deeper ground to our being than ego’s ground beneath this constant struggle to maintain this particular self identity and then to fixate on on this entity that we see ourselves to be. We don’t have to be involved in that struggle to get along beautifully in life and to to experience a rich and abundant world about us. So those are the six the six levels of desire realm. Okay?
We’re going to move on to the to the outer most concentric circle and this is the these are the depicts the twelve links of dependent origination. So this is, you know, we’re describing a process, aren’t we? You know, how this is all coming into being, how this all evolves out of basic ignorance. So the mechanism by which we perpetuate cyclic existence, conditioned existence, a way of life lived under the control of karma. karma is what?
Here, it most meaningfully means our predispositions of ways of organizing a particular reality and afflictive emotions at the basis of ignorance. So this is the twelve links of dependent origination. The first link is called is ignorance. This initiates the entire process. This entire system of of way of being evolves out of ignorance, basic ignorance.
So how do we how are we continually recreating what is in fact dissatisfactory. We continually recreating this story about who we are and the world we live in and how we’re going how we experience it. When we understand how each link in the chain of causality gives rise to the next, then we can begin to see how we can intervene, how we can disrupt this process. Disrupt this process, how how and it’s all evolving out of ignorance. You know, the the twelve links of dependent origination all begins with ignorance.
You know, this is fundamental, isn’t it? This is what you know, when we talk about we’re talking about the three principal aspects of the path, aren’t we? And here we’re talking about developing the will to awaken. What does it mean to awake? It means to awaken from the the fiction, the the sleep, the dream of ego.
That’s where we’re we’re trying to develop the will, the determination to remove ignorance. We have to see it’s how part it’s playing in the struggle in our suffering in order to do it. Because we have a huge emotional investment in ignorance in maintaining this particular way of life. Even though it’s dissatisfactory, at least it’s home. I know pretty much what to expect.
I can take some kind of security in that. It may not be much. It may be full of pain and conflict and all the rest, but it’s all that I got. You know? You know, the ignorance is bliss from the point of view of ego.
So here in depicting the twelve links of dependent origination, the first link is ignorance, and it’s depicted by a blind man a blind man supported by a cane. So it’s it’s in your drawing. The very top to your right hand side. That’s that’s ignorance. So it says old man, old blind man supported.
Yeah, please. Old blind man supported by a cane. Please. Yeah. I think okay.
So at one level, the blindness symbolizes an absence of So the different levels we’ve talked quite often about ignorance lately for some reason. It’s the teaching we need at present. I don’t know. Ignorance symbolizes symbolizes an absence of precision and a lack of clarity with respect to the outcomes of actions. We’re thank you.
We’re ignorant with respect to the conventional. By the conventional here, it simply means, you know, what is it that brings happiness? What is it that brings suffering? We’re not clear about that. We’re often making many mistakes with regard to that.
Ignorance, essentially, with respect to karma. Okay. That’s one level of ignorance. But here, at a deeper level, ignorance is a basic distortion of the mind misconceiving ourselves phenomena to ultimately exist, to inherently exist. Ignorance obscures the realization of their true nature.
Ignorance nature. And it serves, thereby serves as the root of all the afflictive emotions, the creation of all karma, and therefore the basis of all our suffering. So here very specifically, ignorance, which is the first link of the twelve links of dependent origination, is a misconception with regard to the self of person. Self I. Self I person.
They’re all synonymous. Okay? We a misconception with regard to that. That is ignorance we’re talking about here. So the cause of cyclic existence is not knowing the nature of the I, the self.
As a result of that, grasping at a false conception of I, of self. Not not only does ignorance not know the self, but it it grasps at the conception of a self that is contradictory, contradictory, that opposes its true nature. You know, we talked about ignorance as simply not just not knowing. It’s an active misknowing. Yeah.
It is incompatible. It is contradictory to wisdom, like hot and cold water. So the antidote to ignorance is obviously wisdom, honest true understanding. What does it understand? It understands the meaning of selflessness.
Ignorance is the opposite of the understanding that the body and mind are simply imputed. Ignorance regards the body and mind as being a substantially existent I. A self or an I, you know, in a what is it how is ignorance operating? There’s many different levels. As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, we’re gonna come to that.
But, you know, we’ve we’ve talked about this. And here, we’re not so much trying to understand the nature of emptiness selflessness. That’s going to come later. But but we want to appreciate the part ignorance is playing in the evolution of our of our of our dissatisfactory experience so that we develop a determination to be free of it. And that will that will motivate us to begin to really look at the possibility of liberation and really develop a strong wish to understand to develop the wisdom, understanding, selflessness.
You know, unless we, you know, we have to create you know, I was talking about this idea of creating some kind of space. And unless we create some make some kind of crack, some kind of opening between, you know, which allows for that wisdom to develop. We have such a huge emotional investment in keeping the way things are. If we don’t first understand that the way things are isn’t very good, and moreover, there is an alternate possibility, possibility. And that allows us to create some kind of space for an alternative possibility, a different way of approaching our life to begin to evolve, a way of life that evolves out of wisdom.
Wisdom. This way of life has evolved out of ignorance. We have to create the the opening for wisdom to begin to function. First, by becoming disenchanted with this and understanding it’s how it evolved and then determining to realize its opposite, developing the wisdom, developing the determination to be free. Free of what?
We want to be free of this. What is the basis of this? It is ignorance. So essentially, we want to be free of ignorance. So the cane, the man is carrying, or, you know, the man is the blind man is being supported by a cane.
This symbolizes that ignorance is not able to be supported by the true nature of things, that it’s not based upon a valid cognition, it’s not based upon valid understanding. It’s not based in reality. The nature of truth is that the closer that you approach it, the more you examine it, the more obvious and apparent it becomes, the clearer it becomes. The nature of falsity is such that the more you examine it, the closer you come to it, the more obscure, the more diffused and unfindable until it vanishes altogether. So, you know, we want to this is how we can generate that this wisdom, by understanding how how ignorance is conceiving the I.
How does that I appear to ignorance? You know, it’s very difficult to identify. This is the the most difficult part of the process. Understanding it, then we begin begin to search for it. If that I exists the way it appears, it should be findable.
I should be able to if I systematically, methodically search for it, investigate it in all various possible ways that it could exist, I should find it. We search. We search very methodically, very systematically with our own experience in every possible way until we never find what it is that we’re looking for. If it exists, I should find it. You know, if something if something exists, if you have two boxes, it must be in either one of these two boxes.
If you look in this box, you don’t see it’s not in that box. If you look in that other box, if it’s not in another box, you say, I was mistaken. I thought it existed, but in reality, it didn’t. There’s no other alternative. If it exists, it must either exist within the body or mind.
I couldn’t find it. Therefore, though it appears, it doesn’t exist at all. It appears for ignorance. Ignorance con conceives of it to be true, that it, in fact, exists the way it appears. Wisdom understand it is merely an appearance, but there’s nothing behind that appearance.
It’s like it’s like a, if you were walking along a road and there was a pile of rocks. And the rocks let’s say, let’s use an example. If you and your friend were walking through a field and you saw in the distance, you saw there’s a no. There’s a man over there in that field. Let’s get let’s get out of here.
No. No. No. That’s not a man. That’s that’s a scarecrow.
Scarecrow. You know? No. No. No.
That’s a man. No. No. No. That’s a scarecrow.
So I get back and forth. So what do you do? You you investigate the object closer. You both move closer. And then finally, you see the reality of what was there, that though it appeared to be a man, in fact, there was no man there.
It was empty of being a man. Yeah. He was, in fact, a scarecrow. And the and the the ability the mind could no longer conceive of that same object to be a man. That that understanding that it’s a a scarecrow is so strong that that that belief to be a a man cannot arise.
There’s no space in that mind. You’ve seen the truth of the object, and the false conception can no longer arise, and whatever that might have entailed for you. So that wisdom which identifies the object for its true nature, that person is wisdom. That person who’s identifying the mistake in a mistaken manner is ignorance. So they’re vying.
Right now, we see that object as being a person. In fact, there’s only a scarecrow in that field. And we react, we relate as if that were true. Ignorance does on that basis. So we have to begin to develop a this is like the cane of this blind man.
That position, that it’s a man, cannot be supported in reality. It’s not true. So we have to begin to look closer, if we can be actually supported by reality. We don’t need the cane, but ignorance does. When we search, just as in the case with the scarecrow, we find the absence of a man, the absence of the object as it is being misconceived by ignorance, by mistaken consciousness.
We find the we find that absence. We find the selflessness. When we talk about the term selflessness, we find the selflessness. That lessness means absence. The absence of a particular type of self.
It is not at all that the self doesn’t exist. The self exists. The self is not a problem. Self is simply, you know, in dependence upon a body and mind. We label.
We, we name I, self, person, Jampa, in dependence upon causes and conditions, it depends upon parts, body and mind, and depends upon language, conceptuality. Everything comes into existence in dependence upon those three factors, including the I, the Self. That Self exists. That Self can sit up here and cross legged, can talk, can eat, can walk, can enjoy life, can laugh, can make love, can do all the various things without ever having to conceive of itself as being something more than that, as being permanent, unchanging, partless.
And in the way, all the ways that ignorance is conceiving it to exist. That self would always exist without ever having to conceive of it in that way. You know, that it the self will continue to exist. It is no longer a problem. Our problems are is ignorance which misconceives the nature of that self to be something other than it is.
It so this wisdom which is able to remove ignorance sees the absence of a particular type of self as it’s being conceived of by ignorance. It sees the absence of that self. It sees the selflessness of that self, a permanent, partless, independent self. It sees the absence, the selflessness of that self. That’s what we mean by selflessness.
This is the wisdom, understanding that. Just like we’re seeing the scarecrow, when that wisdom becomes strong enough, ignorance can no longer arise. We cannot have two discordant ways of perceiving the same object at the same time. You cannot see an object as being if you see if you see the table as eye consciousness if you have a perception of table as red, that precludes seeing the eye consciousness the table as being green. Simple enough, I guess.
If you see the the we see the self as being dependent, having parts, changing continually, that precludes the ability to see it as being independent, partless, and unchanging. That that other consciousness is not is not able to arise simultaneously. It’s incompatible. Ignorance is incompatible with wisdom. When that wisdom becomes such that it never loses its strength, that it’s continually manifest, ignorance can no longer manifest.
It can never longer arise. It is it is completely removed from the mind. The eye is no longer misconceived. We no longer generate the afflictive emotions and all the various karma which arises from that. This whole process ceases.
We evolve a different approach to life, one which is constituted of peace and freedom, of liberation. So the present purpose in discussing dependent origination is not so much trying to understand the nature of ignorance, but rather we’re trying to appreciate the fundamental role that ignorance is playing in this process, within the mechanism of these twelve links of dependent origination. You know, it’s it’s part in how it brings about our lived experience. And then we’re constantly struggling in our everyday life with all the you know, trying to manipulate the things and the people and, you know, trying to get make a make a good life for ourselves. You know?
You know? Clothing and friendships and food and shelter. You know? Shelter, know, that’s okay. That’s that’s quite necessary.
You know? But that’s like a remedial way of approaching the problem of our existence. There’s a deeper there’s a deeper level that we can simultaneously be operating as opposed to the conventional be working at a at the ultimate level. You know? That within this context, you know, running around here and there, trying to make the best thing we can, we can we can step out of the entire system altogether.
Rather than trying to make our dream as comfortable as possible, we can wake up. In other words, that’s alternative possibility. Okay. Maybe we can stop there and have a cup of tea.