Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A simple question — “How do you know you’re breathing?” — opens a recalibration in this 130-minute class: Ven Jampa Gendun tells students to anchor mindfulness wherever the breath registers most clearly for them personally, whether abdomen, chest, or nostrils, rather than following a fixed rule about the upper lip. He begins with reflections from a recent retreat and the notion of “deviation amplification” — how small daily choices quietly shape the person we become — before shifting to a substantial review of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, a fourteen-verse text by the fourteenth-century Tibetan master Tsongkhapa. The focus is the seven-point cause-and-effect tradition for developing the awakened heart: equanimity as psychological groundwork, recognizing all beings as one’s mother through the logic of beginningless mind, remembering maternal kindness, and affectionate love, with great compassion left for the following session.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 3PA 2008 01 11.mp3
UUID: 6a85a5ae-8f72-4d60-91cc-b26f2907eb94
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2008-2009 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2008-01-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 129.9 minutes
Words: ~10,957
Lots of familiar faces like like a homecoming. Did everyone have a good I think if it was a holiday for me, must have been a holiday for everybody. Did everyone have a good break? I had a nice time. I went to a retreat center in the Blue Mountains in Medlow Bath.
It rained a lot. It was very nice. If it wasn’t for my mind it would have been perfect. So we have to begin by adjusting our motivation. You know, the purpose for and the reason why behind what it is that we’re doing to ensure that what we do is going to help us to solve our problems.
It’s going to serve as a means to help us to find what it is that we want and begin to perhaps lessen and finally be rid of all those various states of mind and things in our life which we don’t want. So the only way that we can be assured of that is not by the outside form, but by the intention behind it and the reason why. It’s not so much what we do but why we do what we do, which is going to very much determine the outcome, whether it’s simply going to be a complicating factor in our life, just another activity in our already overly busy lives, whether it’s actually going to serve to help us. Guess it’s true but we have to talk about suffering, don’t we? I wish it were otherwise, but it seems to be the case, the nature of our situation.
I was quite struck by, I guess, the nature of the human condition during my retreat. Perhaps more so than most I had the sense that unless we I’ll personalize it unless I actually do something about the fundamental driving forces within my own mind. These obsessions, these compulsive patterns, you know, these are what we call afflictive emotions, which more often than not serve as a motivation, which serve as a driving force behind most of all of what I do. Unless I do that, unless I address that, unless I somehow work with the deeper problems within my own mind, there’s no chance for any real peace, real satisfaction, fulfillment, meaning. At best, we’re just dealing with superficialities, trying to arrange and manipulate the world into some kind of satisfying configuration, isn’t real happiness to begin with and it won’t last to end with.
You know, we just can’t avoid the fact of having to deal with our own minds. It’s a difficult confrontation, I think, and dealing with our own minds, the last frontier, that unknown realm inside of our heads. But, you know, we have to at some point, we have to stop blaming the people around us and our circumstances and our past histories and our environment for how screwed up we are. And we have to look at the reasons deep within our own mind and deal with them. You know, and we’re Sometimes in the Mahāyāna, the tradition that we mainly practice, the Tibetan Mahāyāna tradition, sometimes Buddha seems like some mythical personality from another planet.
But I had the feeling over the course of my retreat that he was something of a genius, a human genius. He really had some tremendous insights into the nature of the human condition. And moreover, he was able to develop his mind to the extent where he was able to deal with them successfully. He was a successful human being, What we call awakened person. Don’t know, awakened, whatever you want to call it, enlightened or Buddha.
And Buddha means awake. Someone who has wisdom, who sees things clearly as they actually are beyond illusions or misconceptions or our conditioning or obscurations, simply knows how things are. And someone who is a you know, it’s not just a matter of developing our intellect or our cognitive function. It’s also a matter of the heart, isn’t it? We have to learn how to love, which is no easy task.
And then Buddha was able to do that in his in like a loving compassion, like a parent for their only child, a burning desire that all others be happy, and a willingness in taking the responsibility to bring that about in fact. Devoting our lives to the welfare of others. That kind of love and compassion, that kind of dedication, that kind of heart. But also, it’s a matter of power, isn’t it? It’s okay.
And in addition, I would just like to add a matter of power. So I’m talking about some of the qualities that I saw in the Buddha. And I mean, as a not as some as, you know, as a real human being but a genius of a human human being, but a genius of a human being, who had some tremendous insight, who tried to transmit that, communicate that insight. And then we have all these tools to work with. It’s not as if we have to invent the wheel all over again.
We’re fortunate in that. If we only develop the determination to make use of them, if we decide to exercise our freedom. I was talking about the qualities of awakening in terms of wisdom, love, and compassion, but also in terms of personal power. The Buddha was not a wimp. He had an indomitable will, an inner strength of mind and body.
He was effective. He was able to make a difference in people’s lives. And more over, he didn’t withdraw from the world into some kind of solitary peace. Like we all tend to do for ourselves, we find a nice little warm, comfortable place, a cocoon. We all want to regress to the womb state in some way or another.
He was willing to stay with us, to interact within the world. human beings are a challenge. I don’t know if you ever noticed that. Working in the world with others is in itself a practice. Moreover, he was able to express his wisdom and love and compassion and personal power in in in a means of in a skillful means, in a fearless means.
He tried his best. Whatever we were capable of learning, whatever we were capable of achieving, he was there for us. And we’ve been fortunate enough to have this transmission through our teachers, a living transmission. It is not something, know, an abstract theory or ideas which were written down long ago, which perhaps have lost their relevance, surely they have to be adapted. They have to be integrated into our Western culture and our particular ways of thinking and so forth.
But the essential features of the mind are still the same, whether it is the mind of a Westerner or the mind of an Easterner, whether it was the mind of a twenty first century or the mind of, you know, two thousand five hundred BC. Ignorance is still ignorance. Attachment is still attachment. Hatred is still hatred. It’s all the same.
So I felt I felt very encouraged. I felt very inspired. I felt very fortunate. Somehow or another, through the kindness of my teachers and the little bit of good karma that somehow I accidentally created in a past life, I came across these teachings. And though I’m probably one of the worst of students, I still I I I’ve tried to stay with it.
And I think it’s benefited me. I think it can benefit all of us. You know, it’s a great hope. It’s a realistic hope. I don’t think You know, if we look at our lives, all the blood, sweat, and tears that we’ve expended over the course of our lives, all the worrying, the planning, the frustrations, the disappointments, and where has it gotten us in our lives?
Where have we arrived? Have we come to any conclusion? Have we found what it is that we’ve been searching for? Are we still going through the same motions, the same cravings, the same thirst, the same feelings of disillusion, of being overwhelmed, overwhelmed, of of loneliness. And, you know, the human condition, it hasn’t gone away, has it?
In spite of all our efforts, it’s still there. So, you know, the the motivation behind what we’re doing is to change this crazy mind of ours. Essentially, that’s what Buddhism is all about is change, some some directed change. The awakened person is regarded as the highest being in the universe. It’s like our paradigm.
Paradigm. One of the problems I think we have in the West is we have so few models toward which to aspire to. How many Nelson Mandalas are there, or Martin Luther King, or Mother Teresa’s, what to say of the Dalai Lama. These rare individuals do meet in our everyday life. And we have a sense that somehow these people come from a different planet, don’t we?
Or, you know, that Mother Teresa has her genetic makeup was quite different than ours. You know, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, had loving electrons or compassionate protons in their organic molecules of their being. And that’s the way they are. That’s why they are the way they are. It’s not because they didn’t have to go through frustrations and disappointments and all the difficulties of becoming the person that we they finally become.
They were always who they became, always the way they are now. And we excuse ourselves from having to to make the effort. I’m this poor schmo. I can’t help it. I guess one of, you know, there’s an idea of freedom.
It’s not and making choices. These these ideas, these they they really interest me. They inspire me. We’re always making choices, whether we’re aware of it or not. You made a choice to come here this evening.
I don’t know whether it’s a good choice or a bad choice, but anyway, it was a choice. Even when we’ve refused to take responsibility, we’re still choosing the same. We’re choosing the default pattern of all that has come before, acting out and experiencing much of what already has come before. Freedom is the awareness of alternatives, of options, and the ability to choose. And there are alternatives.
And we do have the ability to choose if we exercise that choice. And the only time that we have to choose is in the present moment. Otherwise, it’s a fantasy. It’s just a theory. It’s like money in the bank, which we can feel good about.
We take some kind of security in, but in fact, it’s not doing us any good at the moment. So we have to begin to determine the type of person that we want to become five years from now, ten years from now, a lifetime from now, a hundred million, billion, trillion lifetimes from now. And from moment to moment, we make these seemingly insignificant choices in the direction that we want our minds to travel, the person that we want to become, the kind of world that we want to live in. Just little, little, little choices, hardly noticeable. You know, there’s this idea of I’m gonna waffle on for a bit.
Deviation amplification. It sounds like a big word, doesn’t it? Yes. It is. The slight deviations over time are amplified and make a huge difference.
The little choices that we’re making every day of our lives. Probably in our lives, dramatic moments, very few, you know, earth shaking decisions that we have to make. Maybe once in a while, in a great while. But there are an infinite number of small, little choices, seemingly insignificant choices that we’re making every day. And those those choices accumulate.
One door closes and another opens. And options present themselves, and we make a choice. And that one way leads on to another. And our life goes on. And, hopefully, you know, we our life the choices we make are consistent with the kind of person that we want to be and being mindful of that.
You know, the the the Buddha, the historical Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha, he he’s you know, he looked on with immense gratitude. And if he set an example, he showed us the way he demonstrated what is possible for us. Life doesn’t have to be a bitch and then we die. There are other options, other possibilities open to us if we’re willing to exercise our freedom and make those kinds of choices, if we’re aware of other possibilities. The Buddha is honored as a guide, as an exemplar, as an ever present reminder of what is humanly possible, what is, in fact, our birthright in the awakened state of existence.
And I don’t know what awakened state of existence is. I use that word. A happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. I like that. I can I can sort of wrap my mind a little bit around that?
You know, it’s by appreciating the extraordinariness of the Buddha that we can begin to understand just how deceptive our seeming ordinariness really is. That maybe I’m not really this poor schmo that I keep telling myself that I am. Maybe I’m something infinitely more than that, something unimaginably more than that. Maybe. Maybe I can open the door of doubt just a little bit once in a while.
And by understanding how the Buddha did what he did, became what he became, we can we can understand how exactly how we can do it for ourselves. So this becomes our commitment, our refuge. This is our orientation. It’s something worth our energy and a great part of our lives. We can lead a balanced life, a family and a nice home, material prosperity.
But balancing that with our own inner development, with actualizing our own inner Buddha, our own inner wisdom, and love, and compassion, and personal power, then that’s the best life. We can have a successful life. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, this happy, healthy, loving, sane human being that we’re all seeking to become. We have to do something. Wishful thinking is not sufficient.
Have to practice. We have to train for that to come about. We have to create the causes, and that’s the Dharma. These trainings, these techniques, these meditative methods, so forth. But essentially, the truth of things, the way they are in their actual nature, is the truth which makes us free, which brings about the end of our suffering.
And this process occurs within the context of a spiritual community, the social context. We are social beings. Mental health is a social phenomenon. Those who inspire us, who teach us, who offer their assistance, emotionally and even materially, a shoulder to cry on if that’s what’s necessary, whatever we can do to help each other find our path and help each other along our path. And we try to again and again raise the level of our motivation, you know, the why behind and the reason for doing what it is that we do.
So that what we do is not just for our own selves. It’s not for our own piece of chocolate cake, you know, our own narrow needs and limited self concerns, you know, but out of a wide, you mean circle of others, you know, for their sake. Even, you know, for only one’s sake, for the sake of one other person. Sometimes I think maybe I’m a little bit heretical, hereto, something like that. You understand?
In the sense that sometimes I think even for one other person. And we talk about all sentient beings, all sentient beings, all sentient beings. That’s a nice goal to strive for. It’s nice to even say the words from time to time, to acquaint ourselves even with the word. But what do we do in practice?
What actually affects our mind. What is the key that opens our mind? Maybe we can access that feeling toward one person. Maybe it’s your partner. Maybe it’s a parent, a child, somebody that you’d like to be there for in a more significant way, in your mind’s eye visualizing this person.
What I do, listening, reflecting and meditating, this process that I’m involved in, this path that I’m trying to journey, I’m I’m trying to do it for you. You know? Maybe I can be there for a little more understanding, a little more patient, a little more caring. In some significant way, I’d like to be able to help you more than I’m able to help you now. That would make it all worthwhile for me and you.
I’m going to do this. Know, opening up to a greater vision of what a successful life is about. Even if we were under one other person, someone beyond our own ego, then we can be assured, we can feel some confidence that what we’re doing is going to be a benefit. Even that attitude, generating that motivation, is in itself shakes the very foundations of cyclic existence, these perpetual cycles of dissatisfaction which we’re bound up in at present. Just that attitude, just that thought to want to help one other person sincerely by your own self development.
And that becomes a kind of refuge for us. It’s going to be something which is going to help us to solve our problems in a very realistic way. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections may I become a buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am awakened to the buddha, Dharma and Sangha through my practice of generosity and other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. May all sentient beings of happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from the joy that is without sorrow.
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity free from attachment for some and aversion toward others. Reverently I prostrate with my body, 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 others’, to the great awakened. We’re gonna meditate. I like to you know, I I did this meditation as Vipassana. And we talked a great deal about mindfulness. You know, I think mindfulness is a very important practice.
It’s like a foundation practice for me. I emphasize it. You know, that’s why I’ve tried to introduce this once a month, the mindfulness day. You know, I think it’s a very simple but difficult way to help us to deal with a lot of our everyday problems. And a great deal of our unproductive thinking helps to become a little more skillful, gain some kind of perspective.
Know, this committee of the mind, what I call the committee of the mind. Don’t know. If you’ve ever been on a committee, like there’s one that’s going on next door. You know, you’ve got all these different factions. You got everybody’s got their agenda.
There’s a, you know, There’s all these toing and froing and diversity of opinions. The struggle is like in our minds. It’s this committee of all these various mental factors. And there’s this ongoing struggle. How we we find some kind of perspective on it?
How can we begin to find some peace amongst this internal war, which is constantly going on in our own minds? It’s not so much our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, but our response to them, attitude, the perspective that we take on them, which determines whether they’re going to present big problematic for us or simply going to be another mental event. After all, thoughts, emotion, feelings are simply mental events. We don’t have to buy into them. We don’t have to get caught up, identify with them if we have the skill.
And that’s, you know, that’s one of the reasons I think mindfulness meditation is quite useful in a very practical and simple simple way in everyday life. And when I was taught mindfulness, this is, you know, back in the horse and buggy days, you know, before your time when I was young, I was taught that, you know, to, you know, we pay attention as we do to the sensations of the natural breath. And the way I was taught, and this was when I spent one year in Thailand, this was in nineteen eighty eight, to pay attention or to notice the sensation of the breath on the upper lip. And that was what I used as my focal point. And it was interesting.
He was a very good teacher during my retreat. He was a Westerner, an Austrian, who spent years in Burma studying Vipassana, insight meditation and mindfulness meditation and so forth. And we were discussing meditation and teaching meditation and so forth. And he said he didn’t think that many people this might not be useful point of focus for many people, that some people weren’t able to pick up the sensation on the upper lip. And I had never thought about that.
It never occurred to me. So I apologize if I’ve been going on and on about this for so many years. Maybe you all have been wondering what’s going on about this sensation. So I thought if we can I’d like to try a little exercise if we can take the time. It’s just in the course of some notes that I was taking during his talks.
And it’s in conjunction with this mindfulness practice. And maybe it will be of help to in our meditation mindfulness of the breath. First of all, guess the question, you know, asking the question, is everybody breathing? Is there lots of ups and downs? Anybody who isn’t breathing?
Yes? Okay. Everybody’s breathing. So the question is how if you’re breathing, how do you know you’re breathing? And maybe it’s probably something you never thought about.
I never thought about. How do you know that you’re breathing? How do you know that how how do you know that you’re breathing? You are breathing. Right?
How do you know? So some kind of some kind of I think you mentioned that you I can’t feel that. Is that something? See? So it’s some kind of movement of the chest, physical sensation.
Yeah. In the chest. Anybody else? How do you know you’re breathing? You don’t know until you stop.
So you’re not sure if you’re breathing? Very sure. You’re sure you’re breathing and you haven’t stopped breathing and so you know that you’re breathing but you haven’t stopped. How do you know that you’re breathing? Okay.
So you feel I mean, do you actually experience it there? So you experience some kind of sensation inside the nose. Okay. So there we have a chest. Have sensations in the chest.
We have a nose. Anybody else? Abdomen. Good old abdomen. Yeah?
Okay, some people are so, I guess, you know, just a few people willing to answer, I think we get the and it becomes obvious that people experience the breath firstly through, the physical sensations associated with the breath and this physical sensation is unique to each person where they feel it. Some people feel it at the abdomen, some people feel it at the chest, some people feel it in the nostrils, maybe some people feel it up and up. So I’m suggesting that when we do focus upon the breath that you simply focus where it’s most clear and obvious for you. It might be quite different for this person sitting next to you. Where is your breathing most clear and obvious for you?
It’ll probably it’ll be a physical sensation but wherever it is for you and that becomes that be rather than trying to, you know, follow some misguided guidelines which I’ve been trying to instruct you with these many years about you have to find it up here, wherever you find it for yourself. Okay? And also I might add that it might move around in the course of over time. It might be more clearly and obvious in your abdomen at one session and your chest in one session. It might change location over the course of one session.
So, know, kind of even for yourself, don’t take it for granted. It’s always going to be in the exact same position. So anyway, there are some other ideas that we can maybe we can talk about those in the future. So we’re going to practice our mindfulness of the breath. We’ve talked a lot about this in the past.
If it’s helpful you can use the techniques of counting the breaths and especially when your mind is very agitated or initially in your session when the mind isn’t settled counting each breath in out one in out two in out three, out four, in out five, coming back down to one, one through six, one through seven and so forth. If you lose count, your mind is distracted and just begin that particular sequence again. And then I think the technique of naming, know naming what it is that you’re presently experiencing. You know that’s why I think this mindfulness practice is so useful. It’s a way of retraining ourselves to pay attention to our present experience.
More than not, we’re we’re preoccupied with the past in terms of memories or the future in terms of fantasies or planning. And I think if we’re honest, and this is my own evaluation, but it’s been borne out by what I’ve read, is that most of our thinking, perhaps as much as ninety five percent of our thinking, is unproductive, is of no use. We’re thought addicts. We can’t stop thinking. And we can begin to find, take some kind of perspective on thought.
You know, we normally, we see our thoughts as true, as reality, as important, as orders, as threats, and then we buy into our thoughts and we spin off into all these stories. But if we can simply our see our thoughts simply as mental events. What are thoughts? Essentially, are mental events. Emotions are mental events.
These images visual images within our minds and our mental events. And if we can simply treat them and say, I’m not saying that we should not think by all means. When it’s time to use the intellect, the cognitive function, that’s the time to pay attention and use your mind well. At other times, it’s quite useful to be able to set aside the thinking process. And one way we can begin to create some kind of perspective on the thinking process is simply to give a name.
What am I actually experiencing in the present moment? A thought. Good thought, bad thought, virtuous thought, unvirtuous thought, whatever. It’s a thought. I don’t have to be caught up in the content.
I can just note the process. It’s only a thought. You can actually try and experiment with yourself sometime. Having the thought, I’m a bad person. I don’t know if you’ve ever had that thought.
If you identify with that thought, if you buy into that thought, at least in terms of your reality. You are a bad person for that moment. I am a bad person. But if we can simply what happened? You know, there there’s the the idea of that it’s it’s kind of almost like a it’s like almost like a bumper sticker.
I think they should make bumper stickers. Reality is attention. What we pay attention to becomes our reality. So in in a way, meditation is a way of training our attention. What is it that we pay attention to?
Most of our attention pain is habitual and is driven unconsciously. A lot of it has to do do with our own karma. And karma in this in this context is simply habit. We habitually pay attention to various factors within our experience. If you pay attention so what we pay attention to becomes our reality.
When you buy into that thought, I am a bad person, that becomes your reality. You pay attention to that. But what happens if you simply shift your perspective and you give that a name? I am having the thought I am a bad person. I am having the thought I am a bad person.
If you buy in I am a bad person, it becomes your reality. I don’t have quite what it takes. I’m insufficient. I’m always making mistakes. It becomes part of your self identity.
It becomes your reality for you. But if you can gain some kind of perspective on that way of thinking, I am having a thought. I am a bad person. It’s only a thought. It’s not a reality.
It’s not truth. It’s not important. It’s not an order. It’s only a thought. Thoughts arise, they will bias, and they will cease of themselves.
We can’t control them. But we what don’t what control that we can’t take around all these various thoughts and emotions and feelings that’s arising is our response, our attitude that we take toward them, the perspective that we have on them. And this is the training in mindfulness. What is my present experience? What am I actually experiencing?
I’m experiencing a thought. Nothing more than that. So by attending to the breath you know, the breath is no big deal, is it? There’s nothing particularly mystical about it, perhaps. I’m not sure, though.
I am training in the ability to determine to choose what I pay attention to. I choose to pay attention to my breath. That in itself is no big deal. But it is developing the ability to pay attention to what I choose to pay attention to, which is the big deal. If I want to pay attention to my partner and what they have to say to me, I can attend to them.
If I if I want to choose to plan something for the future, I can attend to that thinking. If I if I choose to attend to what the flavor of the food I’m eating, I can attend to that. I I can begin to take some kind of authority, some authorship of my life. I’m taking control. You know, it’s not a it’s not an un I’m not being driven by unconscious obsessions, by these unconscious urges, which are my my unconscious habits, which are directing my attention.
I’m taking conscious, making conscious choices choices about what I tend to. So, you know, I think it’s a worthwhile practice. Developing the skill and using the breath, you know, all we have is the present moment to make choices. It seems almost absurd to say that in a way it does. The past is simply something which is our we remember.
The future exists only in imagination. The only time that we have to make choices in our lives, the only time that we have to be alive is in the present moment. What am I presently experiencing? What kind of choices do I want to make? We can always, no matter what our situation is, no matter what the state of our mind, we can always come back to some kind of reality in the present moment.
Our breath, If we’re not breathing, well, we don’t have to worry about it anymore. That’s our present experience. It’s some kind of reality. And there’s something very healing about being in touch with what we’re actually experiencing in the present moment. You know, the old saying, be here now.
Being able to name breathing Breathing in, breathing out. Rising, falling. Thinking, it’s only a thought. Hearing, it’s only a sound. We don’t have to get caught up.
We don’t have to become lost, identify in all of these stories that our mind is continually fabricating for ourselves. I’ve gone on much longer than I had anticipated. Anyway, we’re going to try that. So if you’d like to stand for a moment, and then we’ll sit and meditate. So we can begin as I forgot how we begin.
That’s what happens when you take a break. We did a six part breath exercise. It’s quite simple. It’s a way of invigorating the body and mind, breathing in normally, comfortably, but upon the exhalation, extending the exhalation completely as if we’re forcing all the air out of the lungs, completely emptying the air out of the lungs. So again, breathing in normally, comfortably.
Again, exhaling, extending exhalation, emptying the lungs and we do that six times as a preliminary to the actual meditation on the breath. Okay. And oh yeah, that’s right. We do a press process of body relaxation. So first we’re going to move through the body, relaxing the body, grounding ourselves in the body, getting in touch with the body.
And I’ll just take you through that and just bring your awareness to these various parts of the body. And if you can actually experiencing what is being suggested, you know, the tension being reduced, tightness loosening, but imagining it or just being aware as we move through the body. And we’ll do the six part breath mech breath exercise, and then we’ll practice mindfulness of the breath. And you might use, if you wish, use the technique of counting the breaths. You might use it at the beginning and just set it aside when your mind has settled down.
And you might use the technique of naming whatever it is that you’re presently experiencing, whatever it might be, the in and out of the breath or thinking or hearing, discomfort, pain, whatever it might be, just to emphasize and clarify what it is that your present experience actually is. So taking a comfortable, firm posture, Beginning at the crown of the head, the scalp, feeling the wrinkles in the brow beginning to smooth out. The pressure in and around the eyes diminishing. The muscles of the face softening, relaxing. Your jaws relaxed.
Coming around to the muscles at the back of the neck perhaps gently turning your head to each side a few times, loosening, relaxing the muscles at the back of the neck, and moving your down to your shoulders and upper back, perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times, allowing them to drop comfortably to the sides. And feeling burden, this weight that we carry around on our backs beginning to move down and through your body into the ground. It’s like some weight’s been taken off your back. Moving all the way down to your hands. Hands are loose, soft.
Just let them lie relaxed at ease. Relaxing your lower arms and your upper arms. Your chest is at ease. Relaxing area of the lungs. And the central portion of the back.
Stomach, Releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles just allow your belly to go soft. Relaxing throughout the abdominal cavity. And the muscles of the lower back. The buttocks, the upper legs, the lower legs and finally your feet. And bring your awareness to your body in general.
Notice any tightnesses, any tensions which remain in the body, any areas of discomfort, and focusing upon those areas. Feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen. If there are feelings of areas of discomfort, allowing them to be accepting. Don’t struggle against them. Just befriend the discomfort.
It’s okay if it’s there. Allow it to be. Your body becoming comfortable, at ease. Just be with your body. Stay with your body.
Nothing to think about. Just relax within your body. That’s enough. And then we can practice the six part breath exercise. Just breathing in comfortably normally, breathing out, extending the exhalation.
Again breathing in comfortably normally and again extending the exhalation, emptying the lungs and doing this six times individually. And when you’ve completed the six part breath exercise, then bring your mind to the breath. Just easy gentle in and out flow of the breath. If it’s helpful use the techniques of counting and naming the breaths. Bring your mind back to the breath.
Okay. Are you hot? Should we turn on the would somebody like to push the button? Is you wanna turn up the ask Chris. Chris, there’s volume number three.
It’s on the on the yeah. It’s channel number three. If it no. No. Yeah.
No. So is that better? Tell me if you can hear me, okay? It’s better. So we’re looking at the two meditative traditions for developing an awakened heart.
We’re looking at the three principal aspects of the path. It’s a very short text. I think it’s about fourteen verses long by the fourteenth century yogi scholar, Tsongkhapa. And these pictures, this row of pictures around the back wall and the side here at the top, those are all depicting various episodes in the life of Je Tsongkhapa, who is the source of the tradition which Buddha House centers its practice around. He sets out in fourteen verses the essence of Buddhist practice and development of the three principal aspects of the path.
A path is that which takes you from where you’re at now to where you want to get to. And this path, this process, this means has three fundamental aspects or themes involved. One is the will to awaken and to change. It’s not easy to change. It’s difficult to quit smoking, let alone become a Buddha.
It really requires some determination. It has to be something more than speculation or curiosity or wouldn’t it be nice to be a Buddha? I could hang out with the guys all day. Anyway, you really have to develop some real determination to be free. But we go beyond in terms of our vision of what the good life is about, what a successful life is all about, we begin to see it not only exclusively in our own terms, but beginning to have a wider vision of the possibilities of our own human potential.
You know, there are fundamentally two aspects to ourselves. There is that private aspect, our own inner lived experience, the inner dimension of our being, which is inaccessible to others, our feeling world. And that is found in terms of peace. We find some inner peace. But that’s not the full extent of what it means to be a human being.
human beings are essentially social beings. We live in relationship to the world. We live in the world with others. So part of our being very much exists in terms of how we are going to relate with the world and the people about us, the social dimension of our being. That is experienced in terms of you know, I’m not in talking this way, I’m not talking when I talk about love and compassion, it’s not meant to be sentimental or romantic.
It is just that love and compassion are the most skillful ways of being in this world with others and how to relate with the world about us in those kinds of terms. That’s what we call love and compassion. That skillful most way of relating to the world we call love. And so part of our being, part of our potential, what we are trying to actualize is in terms of how we are going to be in this world in an optimum mode of being with others in terms of love and compassion and being of service and benefiting them. But all of that is well and good.
But unless we go beyond our own neurosis, our own dysfunctional patterns of our mind, however much we want to grow and find peace within ourselves and be of service to others, it’s more like the blind leading the blind more than anything else. We actually have to go beyond our dysfunctional patterns of our minds, go beyond the afflictive emotions, all the obscurations, and then try to realize our fullest potential. We have to awaken our minds to the nature of reality, go beyond ignorance altogether. So these are three principal aspects of the path. Developing this determination to awaken, the will to awaken, the awakened heart, and the awakened mind.
So presently, we’re looking at the two meditative traditions for developing an awakened heart. There is the the meditative tradition of the seven-point cause and effect instruction, which has lineage from Śākyamūni Buddha, the historical Buddha, to Maitreya, to Asaṇga, and in an unbroken transmission down to our present day teachers and to us. And there is the second meditative tradition of equalizing and exchanging self for others, which has an unbroken lineage from, again, Śākyamūni Buddha down to Mañjuśrī, Mañjuśrī, Śāntideva, and again, in an unbroken lineage to our present teachers and down to us. Emphasizing the fact that these meditative methods, the ways of developing love and compassion, essentially, weren’t a matter of pop psychology. He invented coming out of Southern California last week and be supplanted by another method next week.
It’s just not another psychological method or school of thought. But they’ve been in use successfully for over two thousand five hundred years. And so there’s something to be relied upon in terms of a solid tradition of training which has been effective. So now we’re looking at the first of these two meditative traditions, the seven cause and effect instruction. First, on the basis of foundation of equanimity, we go on to develop six causes which bring about a seventh effect.
Go on to first we recognize all sentient beings as our mothers, remembering their kindness, developing a sense of gratitude which wishes to repay that kindness, developing affectionate love, great compassion, and exceptional resolve, and this culminates in the seventh effect of an awakened heart. I think, you know, as I’ve mentioned, this particular tradition perhaps is a little more of a challenge for us Westerners. It requires a strong conviction in the idea of rebirth, that we have been born infinite numbers of times in the past, and therefore all sentient beings have been in fact our mothers, literally, not figuratively. And perhaps the second meditative tradition of equalizing and exchanging self for others might be more accessible to some. But we’re explaining both and can make use of both and adapt it to whatever works best for you.
But there are these two meditative traditions. First, as a foundation, develop equanimity. It’s an even minded attitude. There’s an impartial, open, fluid attitude toward others, which is free of attachment, holding some close and others at a distant and still others, the vast majority of the remainder of people on this planet, sort of indifferent, sort of in between attachment and aversion. Quite don’t know what to do with them.
They don’t matter. It’s as if they don’t exist for us. So this is our habitual way of relating with the world. We make these categorizations, these classifications, into friend, enemy, and stranger. And we react in terms of attachment, aversion, and indifference toward these classifications.
Our minds are presently dominated by these judgmental attitudes, these reactive patterns of attachment, aversion, and indifference. In such a state, it would be impossible to cultivate an awakened heart, a real unconditioned love, unconditioned by whether someone helps us or hurts us. We’re there for them, or whether they neither hurt us nor help us, still we’re there for them. Know, equanimity means that we no longer employ the tactics of judging and sorting out others into these boxes. And it’s a nice shorthand notation of dealing with the world and making generalizations and stereotyping people.
But there is no one who is not an individual who is not unique. We’re not trying to stop the notion of friend, enemy, and stranger when we develop equanimity. We are beginning to work with the automatic emotional reactions to these categories. You know, we can classify someone, categorize someone as a friend, but we don’t have to automatically, unthinkingly, habitually react with attachment. We can classify someone as an enemy, but we don’t have to unthinkingly, automatically, habitually react with hostility.
And the same holds true for a stranger. The vast majority of the people in this world, we don’t have to react with indifference and ignore them. So we’re trying to develop an even minded attitude, you know, creating the psychological space where we can begin to nurture attitudes of love and compassion in place of these judgmental attitudes of attachment, aversion, and indifference. I think equanimity is like sometimes it’s compared to psychological level ground. It’s like pushing back the weeds, which have been overgrown by the afflictive emotions of attachment, hatred, and so forth.
This even mindedness is characterized by the absence of attachment, aversion, and ignorance. And it serves as the fundamental ground upon which we can awaken our heart. We’ve talked about this. So this is this is like a review. You know, sometimes it appears that that we discover a friend.
We we don’t see the part that we’re playing in that appearance. You know, we see a friend, and we see someone who’s very appealing. They’re inherently likable. They’re a good guy from their own side. They’re appealing.
They’re very attractive. There’s a certain warmth, a glow that they exude, which attracts us, which we want to draw closer to ourselves, to make a part of ourselves. It’s as if we discover a friend rather than inventing or creating a friend. We don’t see the part that we are playing in that creation of a friend. And the same holds true for an enemy.
The enemy is seen by their very nature to exude some despicable, unlikable quality which we want to push away, which we want to make a permanent not part of ourselves. So we’re continually reacting in terms of hostility and attachment, not seeing how the part that we’re playing in creating this appearance, how this appearance is easily changeable. Even if from one moment a friend can become an enemy, an enemy of friend, there’s no openness to a fluid way of relating. There are other possibilities. There’s no space for love to be nourished toward the enemy, for example, as long as we’re holding them in that way, as long as we hold so tightly to that categorization.
On the basis of equanimity, we go on to recognize all sentient beings as our mother. You know, Pabongka Rinpoche, one of the great early twentieth century masters, Tibetan masters, said, There are the two most difficult realizations of the graduated path, the system of cultivating the mind from its initial stages up to and including awakening. The the two which are the most difficult to realize are one seeing one’s spiritual teacher as a Buddha, and the other is recognizing all sentient beings as one’s mother, literally. We’re trying to see a relatedness in developing a sense of equanimity, a sense of impartiality, an even mindedness, an open mindedness, we then are able to replace that create within that space a sense of connectedness and a very profound relatedness to others. The relatedness of a mother toward their child, that bond, perhaps the most profound and intimate of all relations that exists within the human realm, that between her mother and her child.
There’s a primordial connection between. But in order to, you know, we have to get a sense that the mind is beginningless. And we’ve, again, we’ve talked about this, some of the reasoning behind establishing this fact. You know, the mind of the present moment arose from the mind of the previous moment. For example, we have our present dispositions, our present attitudes, understandings.
And even our own present feelings are somehow connected to the mind that we possess when we walk through that door at seven o’clock. There’s a connection. There’s a relationship. One moment of mind giving rise and replicating itself in almost the exact similar type to the present mind, and that mind replicating like one candle flame giving rise to another candle flame giving rise to another candle flame and so forth. And that mind that we walked in this room with at seven o’clock arose in dependence upon a previous moment of mind.
For example, the mind that you woke up with this morning with all its temperaments and dispositions and all its understandings feelings and so forth. And this mind arose in dependence upon a previous mind. And we can trace back, an infinite regression, back to conception. And we have to ask the question, well, where does the mind at conception arise? Does it arise from matter?
Or did it arise from a mind similar in type, something which is as similar in type to itself? Well, throughout nature, all phenomena arise through in dependence upon a phenomena which is similar in type to them. Even matter. Where did the first atom come from? The first bit of matter?
The world as we know it, this physical world, is recycling of previous matter in that world. Buddhism accepts infinite universes. In the West, in current scientific thinking, we have this idea of the Big Bang, the creation of the universe as we know it, and the Big Crunch. It’s eventually come to implode on itself and come to an end. And this episodic coming into existence and going out of existence is very much in accord with Buddhist thinking.
But this process has been going on beginninglessly. There was no first Adam. There is no first bit of matter. Matter necessarily arises from a previous moment of matter. Mind necessarily arises from a previous moment of mind.
Our minds arose from a previous moment of mind in the same continuum. The mind at conception arose from a previous moment of mind. What was that previous moment of mind? It was the last moment of mind of our previous life. That last moment of mind of our previous life gave rise to first moment of mind of our present life.
And that mind gave rise to the next moment and the next moment in an uninterrupted continuum up to our present mind as we sit here now. And likewise, that mind, the last moment of the mind of our previous life, it existed in a continuum. And we trace that back, back and back, infinitely back without beginning. And over the course of beginning this time that this mind has existed, it has taken infinite rebirths. And in these various rebirths, it has been born to infinite numbers of parents.
Therefore, we cannot point to any sentient being who has, in fact, not been our mother, literally, in the past. Everyone in this room has, in fact, been our mother, just as our mother of this life has been our mother. So we’re trying to create you know, maybe this works for some. You know, it’s worth thinking about. You imagine if you could begin to have that sense that whoever you meet, every person that you meet that you met today over the course of the day, every person that you met that you will meet tomorrow, every person in this room at present has in fact literally been your mother in some past lifetime.
Gaining that kind of recognition that you have this connection. Right now we feel completely unrelated to most, to the vast, vast majority of sentient life. But in fact, they have all, we have a connection with them all. The connection, the relationship of a mother and child. But we don’t stop there.
That in itself is not sufficient. We have to go on to remember the great kindness of our mothers, just as the kindness of our mother in this life. You know, thinking how we come into this world, it’s a nice thought. It’s a nice thought. You know, baby, completely vulnerable, completely helpless in need.
It it has no way to earn its mother’s love. It it it can for the time being, at least, it can only take it’s it it only has its own needs. It has it has nothing that it knowingly can give in return for the for all the protection, all the concern, the attention which is constantly being showered upon it. It’s totally oblivious to the physical and mental hardships and the sacrifices that his mother is making constantly, the long sleepless nights, detriment to their physical health, the actual pain of the birth itself, the danger involved in that birth. Completely helpless.
And in need, we come naked into this world. We were like that. We don’t remember that. Maybe it’s worth thinking about that. And then we’re strong.
I can take care of myself. I don’t need anybody. At one time, that wasn’t true of any of us. We needed someone desperately or we would have died. And that someone was most likely our mother.
Probably our father too, but we’re talking about our mother. How could we expect, after a mother, after long hours of labor, the pain of birth, setting that all aside, this little creature, almost like a worm, you know, taking and forgetting all the pain and all the the the difficulties which you have, you know, just experienced. It’s forgetting all that and taking this warmly to her breasts and feeling her life flow into us, her nourishment. And just hours after, having gone through this pain, this difficulty for us. And it’s like we’re some kind of treasure, the most precious thing in the earth, smiling upon us with great love and forgetting all the troubles involved.
And it did happen. It happened for each one of us. We probably don’t remember. We probably never even tried to recall it. But it happened.
It’s probably reality for all of us. And all the years that follow, you know, after the birth, you know, years of selfless giving and concern for our welfare, and the years of feeding us and clothing us and cleaning us and educating us and hundreds of times a day, you know, paying attention to us, hundreds of times a day protecting us from harm, and trying to create safe environment for us, a nurturing environment, an environment where we feel secure, where we can grow. And we’re putting our welfare above our own welfare hundreds of times in different ways. And she washed us. She played with us.
She sang to us. She fed us. She cleaned us. She provided all that she could. She worried about us.
She made plans for us. She gave up a great part of her life for this little creature who couldn’t give anything in return. It was it was unconditional love. It was just giving to us undeservedly just because we were hers, we existed. Know, out of our in our infant eyes, we she was our world.
All that we needed was her to be near, to feel her touch, to hear her voice. And we felt safe from all the dragons of of the world about us. And that gave us courage to explore, to confront. You know, remembering the kindness of our mothers is is trying to open up a wellspring of emotion. It’s meant to it’s something of the heart.
It’s not of the head. And it’s it’s it’s it’s meant to be a vivid re experiencing of of a long forgotten event and what and, you know, what has been displaced, what or repressed emotions associated with that. What it meant what we meant at some time for another human being. That connection, that bond that we’ve all experienced, even if in only some small way when we were babies, when we were ditto, when we were helpless, when we were in need, when she was there for us. Know, reconnecting with all the the the fundamental bonding instinct of a mother and child.
That that’s you know, can you imagine that? The Bodhisattva? Someone who is actually experiencing connecting that and associating that with every living being, that connectedness. There’s no strangers. There’s only my mothers.
What implications of that and how they lead their life and what they can do and what they try to do. So recognizing all sentient beings as our mothers and beginning to remember their kindness. And we develop a wish to repay their kindness. We develop you know, we’re we feel an abundance. We’ve been loved unconditionally.
We want to return the cuddle. Because it’s this wish to repay. It’s quite natural. Most of our lives and our relations there’s a certain banker’s mentality, isn’t there? And we we keep we keep our our little account book, our credits and debits.
You gave me this much, I’ll give you this much. And you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours next week. And our tran it’s a it’s a our relationships are more transactions in some ways. But this isn’t, is it? It’s a natural response.
It’s not of the head. It’s of the heart. And there’s a clear awareness of just how much we’ve been given. It’s a spontaneous generosity, wanting to return benefit. It’s quite natural.
You know, if we use wisdom, if we use our understanding, if we use skill, then we don’t have to force ourselves into any straight jackets. We don’t the spiritual practice isn’t about shoulds and ought tos. If we use our wisdom and our understanding, it’s it’s organic. It flows out of that understanding, that wisdom. It’s a natural response.
Alright? You know, we we we are in contact with our mothers and just how much we have been cared for. And we we feel rich enough. We feel an abundance. I must be really something worthwhile to have been given that much undeservedly.
Just just because I exist, I am worthy of love. How many of us have ever felt that for ourselves, let alone for others? I never could earn my mother’s love. I didn’t have to. It was freely given.
We have all been given so much, and we want so very much to repay. We have been loved unconditioned. It was was a gift, and it was given to her by our mothers. You know, here we can picture our mother. You know?
Maybe you had a difficult time with your mother, but there was a time when it wasn’t difficult. And as you know, the and we have to begin to kind of soften our hearts a little bit to overcome this tough ego leather of our egos. And with defensiveness and defensiveness and mistrust that we all feel. You know, what can I do for my mother? There’s no greater way to repay my mother than to help her to go beyond her own suffering, to help her to find peace.
You know? That’s what we all want. That would be to help her to find true happiness. You know, to see, you know, to to to see my mother truly happy. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
And this leads to affectionate love. Affectionate love is, you know, there are different ways to translate this term. This is my kind of my translation, appealing love. It’s the kind of it’s it’s, you know, people look beautiful in our eyes. Right now, we’re scared about this.
We have to check them out. Are they a threat to me? Am I safe? Am I scared? Here, we begin having this notion of all beings are our mothers and their great kindness and wanting to repay them.
They all look beautiful in our eyes. They look very appealing. They look very attractive, alluring. It’s like when a mother is playing with her, watches her little baby play with the little rattles and things. She’s captivated by them, fascinated in all the little, cute little things that are doth always in he or she clever.
Isn’t she beautiful? So in this way, you know, others begin to appear very beautiful like a mother toward her own child. We feel a deep connectedness with others. And then this this is what leads us to to the sense of beauty, this affectionate love. They appeal to our caring instinct, and that we want to take them to ourselves, to nurture them.
We are tender people. We are caring people instinctively. And this is allowed to flow. We begin to open our hearts to others. We are attracted to them.
We pay attention to them. And that’s a great word, paying attention. Like a mother is totally fascinated by her child. We notice what what they’re about, what’s happening for them, what they need, what they want. We begin to learn what we can do for them.
We begin to understand them because we pay attention to them. You know, understanding is another word for love. Love is another word for understanding. And then that’s about as far as far as we got last December. Okay?
So we went through. We developed the basis of equanimity, this even minded attitude, creating that psychological space, that open ground. And now we’re going to fill that open ground by the development of love and compassion, the awakened heart fill that psychological space with the same quality of connectedness of a mother with her child and that sense of unconditioned love. And the dependence upon that that ground of even-mindedness of equanimity, equanimity, we went on to recognize all sentient beings as our mother to develop the remembering their kindness, developing their gratitude, which wishes we repay their kindness. Out of that, naturally, begin you know, beings begin to look beautiful to ourselves in our eyes.
We develop affectionate love. The next step in the in the what is this? This this fifth cause in this process of awakening our hearts is great compassion. How are you guys doing? Maybe that was good.
We did sort of a review of where we got to last December. Next week we’ll take up great compassion and depends upon great compassion. Love is concerned with happiness. Compassion is concerned with suffering. You know, developing this attitude of wanting others to be happy, but we see in fact they aren’t happy.
In fact, they’re suffering. And so we develop a compassion which wishes to not only is concerned with their happiness, not only wishes that they not be suffering, but takes the responsibility. And this is the big step. You know, a lot of us, you know, you see on television, you see this famine in India or famine maybe in Sudan, in Darfur. You see, you see a baby, an emaciated baby, just skin and bones.
And it affects us unless you’re completely insensitive, unless you become so desensitized. It become it affects you. And maybe it arouses irritation and unease, maybe fear. But probably amongst those various feelings that arise is compassion. I wish that baby wasn’t suffering like that.
When I wish that baby’s suffering was ended. But that’s not quite enough to end their suffering, isn’t It’s it’s wonderful. It’s transformative to make to have that kind of genuine wish. But it’s another step to go on to say, and I’m going to do something about it, to commit yourself. I’m taking responsibility.
That’s a big step, isn’t it? I’m going to take I’m going to commit myself in helping you not to suffer. So this is the quality of great compassion directed toward all sentient beings. And we understand the human condition, and we develop a sincere wish that others not suffer. But we go beyond that to the level of intensity, and I’m going to do something about it.
And this leads to an exceptional resolve. I’ve got to take responsibility, but right now, I can’t. What can I do? You know? I have to develop myself.
The more I am, the more I have to give. The more I can give, the greater my wish that others not suffer can be actually realized in practice. And therefore, you know, for the sake of all these beings, my mothers, I have to develop my wisdom, my love and compassion, my personal power. I have you know, if I’m going if this is going to be something more than wishful thinking and abstract idea, something more than intellectual masturbation, I have to do something in practice. I have to become a Buddha, and we awaken our hearts.
So next week, we’ll we’ll we’ll look at great compassion and how to cultivate that. So tonight’s been something of review. Okay so if you like we’ll we’ll if you’d like to get a cup of tea we’ll have a discussion If not, have a good evening. Okay? Thank you.
And we have a cake to celebrate Jampa’s birthday. So you’re all welcome to the birthday party. Thank you.