Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of ego “treading water” — frantically reconfirming its existence moment to moment, too afraid to relax — gives this 98-minute session its distinctive emotional centre. Ven Jampa Gendun opens by mapping the tension between karmic determinism and genuine human freedom, using a baby-in-a-crib analogy and Viktor Frankl’s concentration-camp survival, then leads a guided contemplation on the eight freedoms and ten richnesses, asking listeners to imaginatively inhabit a refugee’s life in Darfur or an addict’s daily scramble. The main doctrinal work covers the first three of the twelve links of dependent origination: ignorance as distorted self-grasping, formative karma symbolised by a potter’s wheel (with a useful distinction between propelling and completing karma), and conditioned consciousness depicted as a monkey navigating the windows of a house. Suited to practitioners already familiar with the wheel of conditioned existence.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 23 3PA 2007 09 17.mp3
UUID: 00f2257a-6076-4bfe-befa-9061a069183a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2006-2007 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2007-09-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 98.2 minutes
Words: ~9,897
How is everybody? Good. Good. Good. Good.
You wouldn’t tell me if you weren’t. Keep it to yourself. So we, again and again have to pick ourselves up. We keep falling down, we’re adjusting our motivation, getting in touch with what is important to ourselves, reminding ourselves what is of value, what brings meaning to my life, purpose, makes me feel good about myself, what I’m doing with my life. Life goes by.
I am proposing a description of human beings as given motivation by new possibilities, goals and the ideals which attract and pull them toward the future. This does not omit the fact that we are all partially pushed from behind and determined by the past but it unites this force with its other half. It gives us a causality in which reasons why and purpose are united. The former is part of all human experience since all participate in the finite natural world. In this respect, each of us in making any important decision needs to find out as much as he can about the objective facts of the situation.
This realm is particularly relevant in the problem of neurosis in which past events do exercise a compulsive, repetitive, chain like predictable effect upon the person’s actions. Freud Freud was right in this respect that rigid deterministic causality does work in neurosis and sickness. But he was wrong into trying to carry this over to apply to all human experience. The aspect of purpose which comes into the process when an individual can become conscious of what he is doing opens him to new and different possibilities in the future and introduces the element of personal responsibility and freedom. We’ve been talking about this particular system, the conditioned existence in which we’re all embedded in.
And to a large degree, it works on the basis of a chain like causality determinism. But we as humans are in a very unique conjuncture of conditions both external and internal, which I have a tickle in my throat. We are the juncture of both nexus of both determinism and freedom, but we’re only free to that degree that we exercise our freedom that much and no more. While you’re doing that, I’ll continue. Okay?
Where was I? You know, in some ways, you know, this is our situation. One of the analogies and the metaphors which is presented, image, we are very much like a baby in a crib. That’s its given. That’s its situation.
It didn’t choose to be in the crib. There’s these toys, know, there’s some dolls and a rattle and blocks and all these, you know. And those are all given. But within its limit of its mental capacity, Thanks for that. Wow.
Can you excuse me for a couple minutes? Feast. Within that context of what is given, what is determined, you know, we didn’t to a large degree, we didn’t determine to be here. Mean, tonight, but in this human realm as we are, it was very causally determined by our past karma, which we probably created out of ignorance and so forth, our various afflictive emotions. That is to say, we didn’t choose freely to be here.
Moreover, we’re very much like that baby. We’re given this situation. But within that context of the given, we can exercise choice. You know, within the We can choose to play with this toy or this toy and not to play at all. So, but it’s only as we become aware and we begin to exercise our freedom.
Without this awareness, you know, there’s a freedom is not a given. It only is we have to use it in order for it to actually exist for ourselves personally. And freedom is only offered in the context of where we have awareness and the ability to make choices. If you have no awareness that there are choices to be made, there are options open to you, alternatives, then there’s no freedom. Or on the other hand, if you’re aware there are options and alternatives but you simply don’t have the ability to choose, then there’s no freedom.
Look at us. We’re really fortunate of all these various beings in these various realms of existence. But, you know, as we’ve been looking at in terms of describing these states as metaphors for the types of states of mind that we all pass through every day of our lives, you know, sometimes we’re completely pleasure orientated at the gods or caught up in jealousy of the demigods or, you know, we’re overwhelmed by stupidity and closed mindedness of the animals or we’re caught up with the consumerism of the hungry ghosts or we’re full of pain. And just recently I’ve seen pain. And there’s and within that context, both mental and physical, there’s no choices.
We’re not free. We’re human beings, but there’s no freedom beginning to choose what it is that we value and implement the means to achieve it. So I think, you know, we have to appreciate what it is that we have. You know, you know, making some kind of commitment. We talk about refuge, don’t we?
Maybe, you know, anyway, it’s a word that we’ve come to use in the West. Maybe the idea of commitment. Beginning to find out for yourself what is important to yourself. What resonates at a deeper part of your being? What gives you a feeling?
You know, whatever the circumstances about ourselves, we can find meaning in your life. You know, I think it was Viktor Frankl who developed what is known as existential therapy. He was in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. And, you know, they were in unimaginable circumstances beyond our what we could even imagine could happen that a human being could bear. But some of them were able to dip through it and with when they found meaning and purpose beyond this beyond the circumstances of their physical surroundings, their mental states of those around them.
And they make they make some choices. They could go out to others in their great suffering even though themselves they themselves were suffering. So, you know, we we, you know, we can’t I think it’s important. I don’t think we can lead really a human life without beginning to find out what goes beyond what transcends the pure pleasure principle, which most governs most of our lives. You know, we talk about the eight worldly concerns.
And I think that’s what that’s trying to point out to ourselves. This kind of prison that we we’ve developed for ourselves, that we’ve built for ourselves, in which there’s no freedom. And if we can’t, you know, begin to exercise some kind of choice within that context, then we’re kind of lost what it means to be a human being at all. You know, there’s not much difference between pleasure seeking of an animal and a human. There may be human beings are a little more skillful at it, but the drive, the motivation behind it is more or less the same.
So within, you know, within this compulsive drive to for pleasure, to avoid pain, to achieve gain, to avoid loss, to have fame or avoid criticism and notoriety and so forth. You know, this this kind of it’s where we lose any freedom of real choice within the context of our lives, all of the forces that are acting upon our lives and that are coming from the path, you know, that are trying to exert their neurotic influence. There’s momentum of our past neurosis which unless we begin to exercise choice is simply going to carry along, know, infinitely into the future. There’s reason why it shouldn’t. It’s a self perpetuating feedback system.
This is what this is all about. But within that context we can begin to use our greatest human resource, our greatest gift that we all possess, our freedom of choice. I wouldn’t want to prescribe what you as individuals should find meaning in. Maybe it’s your family. Fine.
You know, maybe it’s the type of work that you do. That’s fine. Maybe we can think beyond that in different ways. You know, Buddhism is making some kind of suggestions, but it’s only that. The Buddha, you know, was a great pointer out, you know.
He said, Take a look at this. Take a look at that. In fact, that’s what he’s doing up here in this top right hand corner. He’s just pointing. And that he There is no dogma within Buddhism.
There is nothing that there is no formula that we can automatically plug into our lives and no prescription that we can mindlessly follow which is going to simply solve all the problems in life. There’s no avoiding using our intelligence and exercising our freedom if we ever hope to transcend in the suffering state which is typical of most of our lives, almost every day of our lives. So, you know, I think trying to find out what is important and beginning to implement the means, working out strategies, both long term and those everyday short term strategies, which are going to make of us what we want to become. In Buddhism we make a commitment, you know, the types of values that we want to embody in our lives. You know, we call that wisdom.
It’s important. That’s a real value for ourselves. Seeing things clearly without misconception, without wrong conception, you know, without the obscurations, beyond this fiction that we’re continually projecting onto the way things are, trying to know things directly for ourselves. Ourselves. What is important for us in Buddhism is love and compassion.
You know, beyond the beyond the romantic notions, beyond the the from the from the mouth, beginning to feel caring for others, that others are important in our life. We feel feeling developing a sense of connectedness with the world about us. And what is important to ourselves is developing some kind of strength. You know, we we can begin to have a sense, I can make difference. That’s important, isn’t it?
Planning is one thing. That may be important. But going beyond believing I can. And as I oftentimes repeat again and again, if you believe you can or if you believe you can’t, you’re right. Believing that we can at a deep level of our being begin to turn things around for ourselves and be effective in the world.
That’s important. And how we express these in our daily life and the practicalities of how we relate with others, finding some ways to skillfully be there for others. Know, working with sentient beings isn’t easy. When you get two crazy minds together, get the craziness is not just doubled. It’s probably exponentially quadrupled or something like that.
I don’t know. Anyway, maybe that’s my own hang up. I’m not speaking from the doctrine there. We can suggest this, but within this finding, what is, within this, like, overarching possibilities, finding what is relevant for yourself at present in your life in terms of wisdom, in terms of the suggested values of love and compassion and personal power and working and making their expression a practical everyday reality for yourself and making that kind of choice. We can’t be Buddhists overnight.
It would be nice if we could. It doesn’t seem as if that’s the case. But we can begin to make these little choices. I think more than not, our life is very much constituted of lots and lots and lots lots and lots of little choices. Very few huge dramatic choices do we have to make.
Just lots and lots of little choices. But the lots of little choices, they add up. They make the difference in life. So, you know, being mindful of what it is that you’re where it is that you want to go, where it is that you’re headed. If you don’t change your course, you’re likely end up in that very place, in that very direction that you’re presently headed and is that where you want to go.
So anyway, you know, all this involves, in our talking about refuge, our talking about committing ourselves to simply reminding ourselves, you know, just taking a few minutes out of our busy lives and perhaps reorientating our cart. If you want to head north when your cart’s facing south, how will you ever arrive? And is your everyday life, the overall momentum of your life, is it taking you where you want to go? Stepping outside of the busyness of our life just for a minute and seeing forest for the trees and getting some kind of perspective on it. You know, how am spending most of my life over the last week or whatever it’s been?
And where have my energy’s been applied and my time used? Is some part of my life being dedicated to what it is I really want at a deeper level, is going to bring about the kinds of changes that I want to ultimately see in my life, those little choices that we have, opportunities to choose every day of life. And I guess it’s just to keep reminding ourselves that’s all we do. That’s all I do on a Monday night when we talk about motivation and so forth. I just remind myself and maybe I just share these blah blah blah with you and Maybe it makes you stop and think for a second.
I hope I don’t arouse any hostilities in you or anything like that. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha. We have to do something. It’s not enough simply to plan. We actually have to do something.
And that’s the Dharma, these methods that we’re working with to change our minds. We’re quite fortunate to have these tools to work with. Unless we actually take them out of the box, they’re not of much use to ourselves. It might be nice to look at, but that’s not their main function, is to change our minds, basically. And this occurs within us, our gathering together the way we do, and sharing these ideas together and discussing and meditating together, supporting one another.
Creating this kind of culture where we talk about these ideas and we develop feelings and we allow ourselves to feel. Maybe we cultivate these new ideas in our meditation and we allow them to act upon us, practice upon us, and change us. And they’re creating this light greenhouse where we can work with these new shoots of these these fragile shoots of the person that we want to be. Some of these shoots are very tender and easily damaged. They can be trampled down, and we have to be careful with one another and create this kind of safety zone of space where we can experiment.
And trying to raise the level of our motivation again and again and again. Just one other person. Always going out to one other person. That’s all. That’s a lot.
Somebody, you know, a parent or a friend or partner, child, that you’d like to be there for in a little more significant way. Perhaps a little more patient, little more loving, little more understanding. Just perhaps a little more present when they’re in need of you. Maybe when we, you know, when we go home at nine when nine fifteen, nine thirty, something like that, if I stop talking, you’ll be that much more of the person that you would like to be for that person, even if only, you know, you’ve taken a a little baby step toward that. That’s, you know, I think that’s that’s realistic.
Yeah. Consistent little steps toward the person that we want to become. Otherwise, I think it’s maybe a lot of ego ambition, driving what we’re what we’re after. Consistency, making a routine of the person that we want to be. A routine is something, there’s little things that we do every day and then there’ll be change.
I think we can that’s the nature of the mind. That’s the nature of things. They’re all dependent arisings. You create the causes, eventually the result will come. So I admire you.
I have great respect for what you’re are trying to do. From my side, I just try to share what my teachers have given me with as much integrity and sincerity as I can and hope hopefully we can create a kind of situation where it can be of use. It’s okay. 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 beings. I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha through my practice of generosity 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 of suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all sentient beings be inseparable from the joy that is without sorrow. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for some and aversion toward others. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, present clouds of every type of offering, those actually arranged and imagined. I disclose all my negative actions accumulated during this 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. Okay. So I thought we could continue with that kind of the theme of appreciating, valuing our life that we all have. You know, traditionally this is termed the eight freedoms in ten richnesses or endowments. It’s more or less we’re counting our blessings, appreciating the quality of life that we have which affords us this freedom, that we do have choices if we exercise those choices.
If we don’t, it’s as if we didn’t have it at all. And if you value something, you’ll make use of it. And here we’re trying to value our opportunity to make choices and therefore to actually, in our everyday life, begin to make those choices which are going to make of us the person we want to become. So we’re simply going to work through our freedoms using your begins in imagination, doesn’t it? Creating new pathways of the mind.
You know, looking, you know, what would happen if I was a beggar on the streets of Calcutta, or I were living living in a war zone in Baghdad, or starving in Ethiopia? What happens if you’re in serious pain? You’re in agony most of the time, many people are. What kind of choices, what kind of options are open to you in such a situation? You’re a human being.
You have a human form, but you don’t have what’s called a precious human life. Temporarily, at least, there are no options. You’re confronted with this pain. The management of the pain consumes everything that you are, your totality of your mind, your life. There’s no alternative possible for you at that time, at that moment.
But we’re pretty well off, aren’t we, in that way? But we’re only that well off if we value it, if we don’t take it for granted. So, anyway, we’re going to work through these. We’re just simply going to look at some of these freedoms and some of the richnesses. Richnesses.
You know, we’re intelligent people. I think the people who come here are the most intelligent and really exercising a lot of wisdom. And we shouldn’t overlook that or simply take that for granted as if this was normal. To be normal in an insane society is not to be very healthy. I think you people represent the healthiest people of our society, by all means.
You know, we value the fact that we have an affluent society. We have all our material needs easily met. The fact that we can come here like we do says something about the opportunities which living in Australia affords us, doesn’t it? That we shouldn’t take that for granted. We have to value it.
And thereby valuing it, we’ll take advantage of it. We’ll make use of it. Anyway, we’re going to work through these, some of our freedoms and richnesses in a very practical level. So if you’ll take a comfortable, firm posture. So we’ll begin with progressively relaxing throughout the body, and then we’ll do the six part breathing exercise, simply breathing in normally comfortably and breathing out, extending the exhalation, having a sense that you’re completely emptying the lungs of all the stale used air that’s built up, breathing in normally, comfortably breathing out, extending the exhalation, doing that six times individually.
Then we’ll meditate on mindfulness of the breath. And then we’ll meditate on freedoms and richnesses. So beginning at the crown of the head, the scalp, the forehead, feeling the wrinkles in your brow beginning to smooth out. The pressure in and around the eyes, diminishing. Diminishing muscles of the face softening, loosening, relaxing.
Your jaws relax. Moving to the back of the neck, the muscles, and perhaps gently turning your head to each side a few times is very easy manner, stretching and loosening. Relaxing the muscles of the throat. Moving to the upper back and shoulders, perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times and letting them drop comfortably to the sides. Feeling this burden, this weight that we carry around our backs beginning to move down through your body into the ground.
The burden of the day falling from your shoulders. Moving down all the way down to your hands. Your hands are soft, loose. Lower arms. Upper arms.
Chest is at ease. Relaxing throughout the heart area, and the lungs, and the central portion of the back. In the stomach area. Releasing the tensions that we hold in our stomach muscles, allowing your belly to go soft. Relaxing throughout the abdominal cavity.
And holding your trunk erect, relax, soften your lower back muscles. Your buttocks. Upper legs, thighs, Lower legs. Your feet are soft. Relaxed.
Then bring your awareness to your body in general. Notice any tightnesses, any tensions in the body, any areas of discomfort. Focusing upon those areas and consciously relaxing, softening, feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen. Breathing into those areas of discomfort, feeling the discomforture dissolve. Your body becoming comfortable, relaxed, steady.
Feeling of physical well-being pervading all of your body. It feels good to be in your body. Just be with your body. Just be with your body. Just stay with your body, relaxed and comfortable.
And then bring your mind to the breath just the easy gentle in and out flow the natural breath. If it’s helpful use the techniques of counting and noting the breaths. The mind wanders as distracted. Congratulate yourself for becoming aware of that. Gently and patiently bring your mind back to the breath again and again and again.
Bring your mind back to the breath. Stay awake, stay alert. Maintain a strong posture, straight back. The mind is distracted. Note the distraction and gently bring the mind back to the breath.
Stay awake, stay alert. Now we’re going to meditate on our freedoms and richnesses, beginning with our freedoms. So putting ourselves in various imaginative situations and ask in such a situation how much freedom that we can exercise, you know, how much opportunity do we do we have to develop our minds, to to take the essence of our human life? Imagine that you were a beggar on the street of Calcutta, which you have a family at home and little children, and they’re depending upon you to find enough money to feed them for that day. Imagine from sunup till sunset, finding a little bit of work here, bit little bit of work there, a little money here, all your energy and time just to feed your family for that day.
You come home tired and weary at night. How many choices, choices, how many options are open to you? Again imagining perhaps you’re a refugee in Darfur in Sudan. You’ve been driven from your home. Many of your family members have been killed.
And from time to time, the soldiers come and kill and chase you off again. You don’t even have a place to lay your head for two days in a row. There’s no safety, no security. What kind of choices, what kind of options do you have to practice, to meditate, to study? You just have to get by for that day.
What would happen if you had cancer in great constant pain? How your mind was consumed by dealing with managing the pain moment after moment after moment. Moment? What kind of choices and options are open to you? What if you’re addicted, actively an alcoholic, a drug addict?
All your mind, your time, energy is completely consumed with getting high and finding your next fix or simply staggering out drunk. Where’s the freedom in any of that? Okay, let’s look at the positive side, the richnesses that we have. You are intelligent and have a good heart. You are intelligent and have a good heart.
That’s your reality. You are intelligent and have a good heart. Intelligent and have a good heart. You have a relatively healthy body. There may be some minor problems here and there, but in general you have good health.
You have all your material needs easily met. You work, but you don’t work all the time. You have enough leisure, enough money to support yourself. They lead a good life. And think how safe we all feel.
Nobody’s gonna come crashing through that door with guns. We we feel secure. We can relax. We’re all very very fortunate out of all the billions of people on the earth, were they probably the most fortunate on the planet? You can do anything that you want.
You can become anything that you want to be. That’s your freedom. That’s your great fortune. That’s your reality. And then bring your mind back to the breath.
And then get in touch with your body, the feelings and sensations within the body. In an easy and relaxed manner slowly become aware of your surroundings. Taking your time, there’s no hurry. So we’re looking at the wheel of conditioned existence, a life which is conditioned by karma and afflictive emotions. You know the driving force at the hub of the wheel are what are call, the three poisons.
Ignorance, hatred, and attachment. Most basically, ignorance. This is what drives this whole process, and this is how this entire realm evolves. It all arises out of ignorance, basically. Due to ignorance and the various afflictive emotions and so forth, we’re motivated to create actions, both negative and positive actions.
These go on to influence the type of reality that we become, that we create for ourselves. Within our particular realm, which is called the desire realm, there are six levels. We went through these six levels, you know, beginning with the God realm and the demigod and humans and the animals and hungry ghosts and then the hell beings. We looked at them in rather, I guess, a figurative way, a metaphoric way, looking them at particular states of mind that we as human beings pass through in the course of a single day but predominantly rooted in one of them, whether it be the pleasure orientation or the absorption into the good life of the gods or the jealousy of the demigods, the desire of the humans or the close mindedness of animals or the craving and grasping and consumerism of the hungry ghost or the physical and mental torture pain of the realm beings. We usually have one predominant overall attitude toward our surroundings and how we relate to it.
And we began to see how this is coming about. What is the mechanism which keeps this wheel turning, which keeps this reoccurring perpetual cycles of dissatisfaction going for ourselves? And this was in the outer concentric circle of the twelve links of dependent origination. And we began that last week. We began to talk about the first of the twelve links which is ignorance.
And we said that the ignorance here is the distorted conception regard to the nature of the I, the self, the person. The I, the self, the person exists, but ignorance misconceives the way it exists. We’re not talking about if it exists, but the way it exists. Okay? And what we’re trying to do is, in discussing dependent origination, we’re trying to appreciate the fundamental role that ignorance is playing in our life, in the lived quality of our life, what it is that we actually come to experience in our life, what we call our life.
And appreciating the fundamental role of ignorance, we will develop a determination to be free from it. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter to us. And then we just try to get by as best we can to make the best of a bad situation. We don’t determine, Let’s get out of this situation altogether. Let’s evolve a life not out of ignorance but out of wisdom and love and compassion.
So, we have to develop, you know, through a process of educating ourselves to the part that ignorance is playing in our everyday life. It’s not something philosophic or abstract. It is impacting on the nitty gritty of our actual of our our lives. This is why we experience what it is that we experience, most basically because of ignorance. And so developing is like, Well, this isn’t good enough.
I’m a bit weary of this process. And developing I want to be free of it. And we develop the determination to develop the awakened mind, develop the wisdom which is the antidote to that ignorance. You know, it’s not we can do something about it. There is an option open for ourselves, but it’s only an option if we avail ourselves of it.
Otherwise, it’s as if it’s not there. So we can also but also it’s useful. So we’re developing this, you know, we want to go on to motivate ourselves to develop an awakened mind. But we can also understand that, you know, we’re all not that much different, you know, perhaps different genders and social backgrounds, education, economic status, whatnot. And we can look to others, you know, Hollywood, Brad Pitt’s, know, the movie stars and so forth, and the powerful people, George Bush and so forth, and famous people.
All these various people, they look sometimes we feel, well, they must be happy. If you’re rich, must be happy in some way. You’ve solved the real problems of life, and that way you can get whatever you want. But, you know, even when people are undergoing presently at least a good life and comfortable and everything seems to be going well, we can be assured and when we begin to get a greater perspective on what’s happening to ourselves, that they’re in the same situation. That no matter what their present, no matter how satisfactory it may be at present, this wheel is going to turn eventually.
And we can develop a sense of compassion, not just for those people who are undergoing suffering at present that we can see that’s obvious to ourselves, but even people who seem to be experiencing a relatively happy life. That’s only a temporary aberration that the wheel will eventually turn. As long as they’re within this system, they have not transcended suffering. Therefore, we can go on to in a real way. It’s hard for us to develop compassion for when people are happy for them, for rich people, for powerful people, for famous people.
You know, maybe we can react when we see someone in terrible suffering, especially if there’s an accident or something like that. It becomes I get almost situation as if overwhelms us. We only can It calls our compassion forth. But it takes a lot of work to develop compassion even for the rich and the famous and so forth. And we have to look at it, begin to appreciate it from various perspectives.
And one of the perspectives is any life which is lived under the control of karma and afflictive emotions, any life which has evolved out of ignorance is dissatisfactory by its very nature. It made me relatively less dissatisfactory at present but that’s only a temporary aberration. Eventually they will return and so maybe we can develop the awakened heart and then beginning to develop some real love and compassion not just for those who are undergoing obvious gross types of suffering, but for all people, for everyone in one form or another. Ignorance is a wrong consciousness. It see if the opposite way that the self, that the I actually exists.
You know, just a little bit of expanding upon, we’ve been talking a lot ignorance lately. Maybe just to, you know, give it a feeling tone. You know, there’s a certain bewilderment associated with ignorance. You know, like there’s a fear of non being. You know, one of the marks if your meditation on emptiness or selflessness is going well, it evokes a fear.
You know, if I don’t exist this way, I don’t exist at all. There’s a fear of non being, of going out of existence. So associated with ignorance is a sense of fear or a bewilderment of nonbeing. We don’t we you know, the if I’m not this solid concrete self that I’ve always continually seen myself to exist, at least ignorance has seen myself to exist, then I must not exist at all. So, you know, it’s like as if we’re walking along peacefully, comfortably on beautiful day and enjoying ourselves and find ourselves near the edge of a cliff.
You know, nothing basically has changed. Know, our ground is just as firm as ever. Our legs are just as strong as ever. But there’s still there’s a confused sense that we don’t quite know how to manage the situation, you know, how to conduct the situation. Situation might take us over.
The situation might overwhelm us. There’s a feeling of a high degree of unmanageability in what’s occurring, what’s going on. You know, the universe could swallow us up. I’m not saying that any of you think this rationally or reasonably. This is a feeling tone, I think.
We have to conduct ourselves. We have to do the right thing. If we do the wrong thing, terrible things might happen. We have to be on guard or we could be lost forever. It’s like, you know, when you’re treading water when you’re over your head as opposed to relaxing.
What would happen if you relaxed? There’s a sense that you’d be lost. Have to secure the very ground that we exist. We have to keep redefining ourselves. We have to keep grasping at continual experience of I ness.
If I don’t keep reinventing myself, this I that I presume myself to be will no longer be. So we have to keep treading water, this continual struggle that we’re involved in. From moment to moment, we create this self that we conceive of ourselves to be. It’s a lot of work. It’s weary to keep up this process, to reconfirm ourselves, to defend ourselves, to maintain this sense of I ness of who we think we are.
You know, we ignore the possibility that it might be, we might, might be possible to relax, you know, that we don’t need to keep recreating the very ground upon which we stand, that there, you know, we don’t have to keep there’s a more basic ground to our being than ego’s ground. We aren’t going to go out of resistance if we relax. We will be there but in a different way than we normally, in ignorance, conceived ourselves as being. But it’s too afraid. It’s too frightening to look.
We you know, ignorance is bliss from the point of view of ego. We don’t want to confront that issue. There is an unexamined assumption that to give up the struggle is to lose control, you know, to become powerless, you know, like a a a mindless vegetable which has to be fed intravenously or something like that to be lost, to be no more. But it’s painful. It’s too painful to look.
Nothing within the whole stream of body and mind which constitutes our experience has the quality of a solid, concrete, isolated I with any fixed identity. But we, at the very core of our belief belief system, ignorance is belief, feel that we do, that there is that there. The body and mind are nothing but a stream of constantly changing mental and physical events upon which we label I, self, person, jiva, whatever. Is, you know, it is ignorance’s persistent effort to view the body and mind as if they were more than that or present something more than that which makes our body and minds this constant stream of suffering which we experience, this constant struggle, this constant need to be on guard, to confirm our existence, to defend our territory, to be. So this is the first link in this twelve links of dependent origination.
It’s like, you know, it’s like this is the first piece in the puzzle with a particular shape and the next piece will fit that particular shape. So the first piece determines what the second piece, what shape it can be. It interlocks. And that piece determines the third piece, and that piece the fourth piece. So the very initial piece, in a way, influences the whole outcome of what comes into existence, of the very picture that we’re building out of this puzzle, each piece interlocking with the other.
There’s a, you know, it’s the being and its environment. What we come to know has evolved from this first piece, which is ignorance. It all fits together. That happens is appropriate to what has gone in the past. You know, it’s like, you know, if you throw a brick straight up in the air and you don’t move out of the way, you shouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t land on your head.
Why is that? Because it follows the natural law of gravity. There’s no one out to get us. There’s no one organizing the situation. There are these invariable influences which are in operation.
There’s no one organizing it. There’s simply dependent upon that, this happens. Dependent upon this, that happens. So it’s natural outflowing, an natural unfolding from what has gone before. Given this, then this will come about.
If that didn’t come about, this wouldn’t happen. There’s discernible variables obeying natural laws, bringing about predictable outcomes. So, you know, the Buddha formally described this, this process that we’re talking about, what he called dependent arising. It was one of his great insights. You know, there’s no outside deity running the show.
It’s not haphazard. It’s not by chance. It is simply a matter of, as the Buddha said, When this is present, that comes to be. From the rising of this, that arises. When this is absent, that does not come to be.
Cessation of that, this ceases. So in the case of dependent origination, what we are discussing actually is the whole process of karmic development. What do we mean by karma? This causal chain internal to beings, the law of cause and effect, essentially, without any particular reference to which developments are good or which developments are bad. We’re discussing the karmic situation, the natural patterning, the evolution of our present situation.
How is it coming about? What is its origin? How is it perpetuated? What can we expect if we keep creating this? We can only expect that again.
If this happens, that happens. If this is absent, that won’t happen. If we keep doing doing this, that’s going to happen. That’s going to keep happening. That’s all the Buddhists say.
And it’s not rocket science, but it’s hard to keep in mind and to see its implications, its significance in the practicalities of our everyday life. We cannot have the potential of the future exists in the present moment. We cannot have a prearranged future. Our future hasn’t happened yet. It’s still open ended.
It exists as potentials within the present moment. Predestination, predeterminism only comes up, goes that far, no more. It only comes up to the present moment. The future is yet to happen. It’s not completely open.
You know, we talked about the baby in the crib. Yeah? Given that situation, it has there is a certain element of determinism involved. Its choices, its options are limited. But within within those, there’s a possibility for there’s various potentials which have yet to be played out.
So we can begin to learn about the present situation, seeing how the past has brought about what we come to present experience and what options are open to ourselves and begin to make choices without that awareness, then what has happened in the past will recreate itself endlessly into the future. This will always happen again, bringing about that in the future again and again and again. You know, this perpetual feedback loop that keeps the whole thing turning. You know, it just unless we bring about changes, unless we perturb the system, it just keeps feeding back on itself. We keep making the same mistakes again and again and again and again.
We have to keep cleaning up the same messes again and again and again and again. That’s the situation we find ourselves in, no matter what it is that we do. You know, many our choices seem to be illusions in a way. Makes us unique amongst all these various life forms within this system is our capacity for free and conscious choice, the potential to transcend our chain like paths. What was true for us previously need be true for us no longer.
We aren’t bound by our past. There is a degree of of freedom open to ourselves if we have awareness and we exercise our options. We are free to create a new future for ourselves. So this is kind of the message of ourselves. If we don’t exercise that freedom, then this is simply going to continue.
We’re bound in this system forever. So the description of dependent origination seeks to point out that there’s no one organizing this situation, that that that all our various experiences arise in particular unique ways and depend upon appropriate causes and conditions. So the potential for the ways of arising of these causes and these conditions exist within the present moment, internally, in terms of our minds, in terms of our mental patterns that keep playing themselves out, in terms of our predispositions, in terms of these karmic seeds, and in terms of our environment, our situation. So it’s the dynamics between our culture, our environment, our physical, social, our, you know, all that is conditioning us from the outside, but also what is conditioning us from internally in terms of patterned thinking and our predispositions and our tendencies, our ways to react, to perceive, and to evaluate and so forth. So the past is contained in the present moment in the form of conditioned latencies within our own mind in terms of our karma.
That’s the way our past is relating to our present situation. It’s bringing about that situation like the child in the crib, you know. But the situation is workable. There can enter into this process a degree of choice. We don’t have to remain the victims of our past.
We simply have to try to understand the present situation, all its near and far causes. What brought it about, the circumstances, the system that we’re all embedded in, this system, and beginning to skillfully relate into that system. You know, we can’t do everything, can we? The baby in the crib is limited in its choices, but there are choices open. We have limited choices.
We have to understand those choices are available and make those consistent choices. They might be even small choices, but there is always the possibility of creating, you know, reinventing ourselves. You know, who we are is a learned process. What has been learned can be unlearned and new learning can take its place. We can learn to be who we want to be.
That’s an option within this that’s allowable within all of you know, what appears to be simply a causal chain of events, determinism. There’s still a degree of openness within the system. It’s not that we’re trying to perform perfect actions in a perfect world. It’s that we’re trying simply to learn how to act appropriately in a world as it is, you know, given what it is we want and what are the options available to ourselves. So in dependence upon the first link of dependent origination, ignorance, we involve ourselves in actions.
This is the second link of dependent origination, what are called formative actions, the second link. Due to ignorance, we compulsively engage in various types of activities, extending ourselves, defending ourselves, maintaining our self. We’ve fictionalized the self and now our whole life is under the governance of keeping up a fiction, of maintaining this fiction. And we involve involve ourselves in activities to act out that fiction. It’s called formative because these actions form or they shape they compound experiences.
All karma comes down to as its ultimate conclusion. You know, however complicated the process may appear to be, it all comes down to a feeling. A pleasurable feeling, unpleasurable feeling, or a neutral feeling. So out of these formative actions, they are forming what will ultimately become a resultant feeling, a pleasurable feeling, unpleasurable feeling, or a neutral feeling of some sort. So actions out of ignorance were forming what will eventually become a feeling.
They’re called formative actions forming, shaping, compounding, bringing about the types of feelings that we will begin to experience in the future. How do these actions arise out of ignorance? Again, we’ve talked about this to some degree. First, there is a very vivid sense of self. When the innate sense of this larger than life I is present, okay, a particularly sharp distinction is made between oneself and others.
So there’s a relative distinction, isn’t there, between self and others? You know, I’m here, you’re there. This is simply relative. You know, high depends upon low. Short depends upon long.
They don’t exist absolutely in isolation from one another. Long doesn’t have any meaning except in relationship to short. Things are only long relative to short, not absolutely, in all of these dichotomies. I exist relative to others. If others didn’t exist, I wouldn’t exist.
If I didn’t exist, others wouldn’t exist. It’s like near and far. If near and far absolutely exists, then if that were a far mountain, no matter how long you drove, it would always be a far mountain. It would always be a far mountain because it’s absolutely a far mountain. But it’s only far in relationship to near.
When you drive toward a far mountain, it becomes the near mountain, and the mountain you left behind becomes the far mountain. So it’s not absolute, it’s only relatively so. So first there is a very vivid sense of self. When the innate sense of this larger than I is present, a particular sharp distinction is made between oneself and other. I and other are no longer thought to be relative.
There’s a sense, I am absolutely I. There is, of course, an I, and there are others, but when the misconception is operating, these two are viewed in a special way that gives rise both to self together with everything we consider to be on our side and to aversion toward anything we see as other, hostility. From that distinction and from the strong sense of me and mine comes clinging to my happiness and the happiness happiness of those associated with me and fear and repugnance to anything that threatens it. Then we act physically, verbally or mentally to ensure our happiness, to prevent others from interfering with it, and protect ourselves from what we perceive as harm. So formative actions arise out of ignorance.
All of our various actions of body, speech and mind to maintain this fiction, this absolute distinction between I and other arises out of ignorance and misconception. And this formative actions will eventually bring about a particular result. All of saṃsāra karma, all of causes which are maintaining, perpetuating, creating this evolve out of ignorance, basically. Good, bad, indifferent, they all come from ignorance. Formative actions here are depicted by a potter.
Let’s see if we have that one picture. Yeah, so, you know, as we the first picture is ignorance. That was a blind man supported by a cane. The second picture is a potter working at a wheel. So this depicts formative actions.
So the idea behind this is that the potter is forming or creating actions, creating karma. But also the potter’s wheel, when it’s set in motion, it’s able to continue to turn for a long period of time by itself. It doesn’t need any more effort to maintain that momentum that’s been built up. So this symbolizes that once we’ve created the karma, you know, the certain predispositions, our minds are conditioned, and we create a karmic seed and that karmic seed will continue until it’s resolved. We don’t have to, as it were, keep creating that action.
There’s kind of some kind of momentum which carries over from our previous action, just like the turning of the wheel. Our experiences, you know, we’ve discussed this before, I guess, are never devoid of the influence of our previous experiences. Our minds, which determine our experience and motivate us to act, are conditioned by our previous experiences. You’ve experienced before like, you know, if you eat a piece of candy and then, you know, let’s see, say you like tea with sugar because you take one teaspoon of sugar. You don’t like it too sweet but you like it sweet.
And before somebody’s going to say, Oh, I’ve got to give you here’s a piece of candy before yeah, chocolate before you I’ll give you a cup of tea and this candy is very sweet and somebody puts a teaspoon of sugar in tea and says, Wow, this isn’t sweet enough. The other hand, if you hadn’t had that piece of candy, this would be sweet enough. So your mind has just been conditioned relative to that previous experience. This experience of this cup of tea is not sweet. Same amount of sugar but relative to immediate experience, there’s a perception that this, even though it’s the same quantity of sugar being used, is not as sweet as you like it.
So what we experience, what we come to know, what we perceive is being conditioned by our previous experiences or previous activities. Our minds simply aren’t blank slates as we, you know, sometimes we think of them to be. So our minds have been conditioned and this conditioning factors causes us to perceive, evaluate and react to triggers in our environment in particular fixed patterns, in deterministic ways. We organize our world along particular lines because we react to them in particular manners due to these conditioning factors within our mind. So our minds aren’t blank slates.
So here it’s necessary to distinguish between we talked about many types of karma, didn’t we? Another type of karma that we didn’t talk about was one type is called propelling karma. Propelling karma is that which is activated at the moment of death and it will influence influence the orientation of the mind, the directionality of the mind that it takes, you know, what you will grasp for, what type of re-embodiment. The mind is as if, you know, we’re going out of existence. We grasp for some physical re-embodiment which confirms who we are, that I am, the I ness for that to continue.
And in particular, what type of embodiment will that be? Well, this is dependent upon what type of embodiment that you grasp. The mind is given some kind of directionality, some kind of orientation at the moment of death. What is it that’s causing that particular impetus, you know, that urge to be in this particular way? We want to be.
We always want to be. This is the urge of ego. But be But be what? We just be is not an abstraction. And we want to concretize, make it a physical reality.
And if we the ultimate egohood is to be a solid block of concrete, impregnable, you know, hard, fixed, always there, immovable, unchangeable. That’s the kind of perfectly complete egohood that we’re all seeking to achieve someday, but we can never quite achieve it. You know, as if the earth, the eye was a huge block of granite. You know, it gives us a sense of fixity, a sense of security. We feel solid as the ground.
We are the ground. So it is what is it that gives us the orientation at the time of death? It is propelling karma. And this is the type of karma which is meant by when we talk about formative actions. Actions are karma, aren’t they?
So the second link of the twelve links of dependent origination is a particular type of karma, particular type of action. It’s propelling action. This is what will be activated at the moment of our death, which is going to give impetus, an urge to our mind to grasp, to seek out a way of expressing a particular urge of mind to be in a physical reality called a particular human body or a hungry ghost body or an animal body or a God realm body or a hell realm body. All these possible ways, but nonetheless an embodiment. There’s another type of karma called a completing karma.
So these act in conjunction with one another. We can have a skillful propelling karma. For example, to take rebirth as a human being. It’s said to be a result of a skillful propelling karma. But you might take rebirth as a human being and be born in Darfur or in the slums of Calcutta and have a short life, be sick all the time.
That’s called good propelling karma, bad completing karma. Okay? On the other hand, you might have good propelling karma. You might be born in Australia living in Adelaide, you know, a nice, fairly comfortable, affluent life and good health and so forth. That’s both good propelling karma and good completing karma.
You might have bad propelling karma. You might be born as an animal, but you might be who is it? I don’t know. Who’s a famous movie star? Give me a famous movie star.
Who? Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt. You might be born Brad Pitt’s dog or something like that. Would be bad propelling karma, good completing karma.
So there’s various combinations. But here we’re talking about the type of karma which throws us into a type of rebirth. Okay, talking a little bit more about so the second link of dependent origination is compounded formative actions. Those types of actions which rise due to ignorance, which form our future experience, a particular type of re-embodiment. The third link is that of consciousness.
But this doesn’t, you know, we have to make some kind of distinction, doesn’t mean just mere consciousness. In general, within Buddhist psychology, we reckon there are six, what are called six primary consciousnesses eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mental consciousnesses. There’s, you know, eye consciousness, which sees colors and shapes. Ear consciousness, which hears sounds. Nose consciousness, which smells odors.
Tongue consciousness, which tastes flavors. And body consciousness, which experiences tactile sensations, smooth and rough and so forth. But finally there’s mental consciousness which perceives thoughts and emotions and mental images and so forth. So here we’re talking about mental consciousness when we talk about the third link of dependent origination. But not not just mere consciousness.
It’s specifically mental consciousness which has been conditioned by formative actions. The second link, conditioned by formative actions, the second link. So the second link formative actions, that is, we involve ourselves in activities. These activities condition the mind. Another way of saying this is they leave seeds on the mental consciousness.
So when we talk about the third link of dependent origination, we’re talking about mental consciousness on which is deposited the seeds, another way of which has been conditioned by our previous ways of thinking, speaking, and acting out. So it’s conditioned consciousness. It’s this consciousness which carries the karmic seeds forward, which will ripen into a particular way of life, a lifetime, a future life and our experiences of that life. So here, there’s two ways it can be depicted. One way is depicted as a monkey climbing around a tree, and this tree has fruit, you know, hanging from the branches.
So the monkey here symbolizes the consciousness, and the fruit are the karmic seeds. So they haven’t been picked yet. They haven’t ripened yet. They haven’t been activated, but they will. Here it appears that the monkey is climbing in this, in our drawing here, it appears that the monkey is climbing around a house full of windows.
So which of those windows is going to enter is determined by the karma. The monkey is the mind. We have monkey minds and it’s going to express itself through one of the windows, you know, through the way that we see things, the way we hear things, and so forth. Let’s see how long So the next one is a little bit long. The next, the fourth link of the twelve links of dependent origination is called name and form, and this is a particular state in the developmental a period of development of the embryo in the womb, a a particular time period of the mind and body and this we’re going to have to do, we’re going to develop this.
We’re going to talk about the five aggregates and so forth so this will take a little bit more time than we have. So we’ll we’ve covered three of the twelve links of dependent origination. So if you’d like to, get a cup of tea, we’ll form a circle and have a discussion together.