Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The Śāntideva role-play at the heart of this 100-minute session asks practitioners to imaginatively swap places with someone they feel superior to, then a peer, then someone they see as above them, looking back each time at their former self through that person’s eyes to register the envy, rivalry, or arrogance they may never have noticed. Ven Jampa Gendun builds toward this through a guided body-relaxation, breath meditation, and analytic meditation on the costs of self-centeredness, while also tracing dukkha — usually rendered as “suffering” — back to a wheel grinding off its axle, and unpacking the Greek aletheia as a clearing where obscurations have been removed. The session closes with Q&A on empathy as a trainable skill. Suited to practitioners already following this ongoing series on the Three Principal Aspects of the Path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 3PA 2008 05 05.mp3
UUID: d775b2e2-a949-437a-9b03-130d0406690d
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2008-2009 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2008-05-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 100.6 minutes
Words: ~9,584
Can you can you hear me back there? Yeah. So I see lots of new faces. You’re welcome. It’s nice to see.
Generally we begin with a process of adjusting our motivation. It’s very much basic to Buddhism. It’s not so much what we do but why we do what we do, which is going to determine the outcome, whether what we do is simply another activity amongst our already busy lives or whether it’s actually going to serve as a means to help us define what it is that we want and maybe go towards getting rid of what we don’t want in our life. Some kind of solution to our problems. It’s very much bound up in why we’re doing, the purpose behind the activity.
And this extends even to supposedly spiritual activities, the outward form. No matter what it might be. In and of itself is not going to solve our problems. It’s the mindset that we bring to the activity. So we don’t have any choice in a way but to work through our eye.
Did you guys bring a notebook? Okay. It’s hard. Sometimes I know my mind is like a mountain sometimes, a big huge rock. It’s like pushing this big boulder uphill, trying to work with my mind.
It’s pretty tough sometimes. But nonetheless, there’s a verse from Śāntideva. Śāntideva is an eighth century Indian master whose text, The Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, is the basis for our present talks on awakening our heart. And he said, There’s nothing that doesn’t become easier upon familiarity. And it sounds pretty simple minded, but in a way it’s not, is it?
In the beginning things are difficult. It’s like pushing a boulder up a mountain, but maybe after a while it begins like shoving a pebble up a mountain. And maybe after while, it’s like rolling down, rolling a rock down the mountain or something like that. Hopefully. I hope it will.
It will work that way like that. So, you know, we we we come here with all our various expectations. Maybe they can be met in some way or not. But over and above that, adjusting our motivation, developing a positive motivation behind what we’re doing to ensure that what we do is going to be beneficial to ourselves. You’ve all probably heard of Michael Leunig, the cartoonist who I like very much.
And this is a quotation from him, a little book called The Prayer Tree. In order to be truthful, we must do more than speak the truth. We must also hear truth. We must also receive truth. We must also act upon truth.
We must also search for truth, the difficult truth within us and around us. We must devote ourselves to truth. Otherwise, we are dishonest and our lives are mistaken. God, grant us the strength and the courage to be truthful. Amen.
Know, quite often hear about traveling a path. And this is very much the case within Buddhism. Buddhism, our spiritual journey, is spoken of in terms of traveling a path. And it’s the path which takes us from where we’re at now to where we want to get to. And a path is synonymous with clear realization.
You know, it’s like seeing a snow mountain as green because you’re wearing sunglasses, green sunglasses, tinted green, and taking them off. And then you see the snow mountain in its true nature as it actually is. And we begin to relate with it in terms of how it actually is in ways which are probably more appropriate, more skillful. So this idea of clear realization isn’t so far fetched. There’s the word in Greek.
It’s called aletheia. Aletheia, which is the Greek word for truth. But it also literally means a clearing, a place that you come to when all the overbrush, you know, undergrowth, you know, all the obscurations and distortions have been removed. You come to a clearing. That’s the truth.
So the path is a method whereby we come to this truth. And it is this kind of truth itself. We embark on this journey, on this path we begin to open up our minds, when, you know, I mean, not just when there’s a certain receptivity, there’s a real possibility to bring change in the mind, when we’re not struggling to maintain a particular way of being or a particular identity, when we’re not perpetually, replicating a lot of dysfunctional ways of thinking, these patterns which keep us stuck, we’re not fixated on our beliefs and our ideas, when we’re actually open up to the possibility of other ways of looking at things, alternatives. When we open up our minds such that there’s a genuine ability ability to explore other possibilities, you’re really kind of open. It’s something more than simple curiosity.
It’s when we begin to leave behind these kind of fixated, repetitive patterns of our compulsive thinking. And we’re open up to maybe new options and ways of looking at things. So it’s fundamental to Buddhism that our knowing isn’t organized into the known. This sounds pretty bizarre, maybe. That what we come to know in our experience of the world, be it good or bad or whatever, and all the various things that we come to know in our world, are inseparable from our beliefs about it.
Buddha said, We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world. So if our premises, the ideas, the beliefs, our views, what we call our epistemology and epistemology sounds like a big word, doesn’t it? Maybe it is a big word.
It’s simply the rules by which we make order out of our life. We make sense of our world. You know, there’s just like this chaos about us. There’s sights and sounds and smells. The mind is continually struggling to make sense of organize it, order it in a sense fashion so it can find some kind of predictability, security within this chaos, this sense of groundlessness about it all.
So that’s our epistemology, the rules we follow in making sense out of our world. If our epistemology, the way that we go about making sense of our world, is somehow dysfunctional, is distorted, is mistaken in some way, then we will only come to know a world of disease, dis ease, of discomfort, of dissatisfaction, of frustration, disappointment. If the rules that we’re using to make sense of our world, to achieve what it is we want and get rid of what it is that we don’t want, are in some way pathological. Pathological just seems not healthy. Then so too will be the world that we come to know.
The psychology of our suffering is the dysfunctional ways that we have come to know our world and ourselves. We’re making some basic mistakes. And on the basis of the mistakes, we create suffering for ourselves. So we have to begin to recognize the kinds of mistakes that we’re making. Our beliefs inform our perceptions.
They permeate our knowledge. All our relation to the world are seen through our ideas, our beliefs, our worldview, our mind, all that we bring to our situation. The world that we find ourselves in corresponds to our systems of belief about that world. If we experience our world problematically, if the world is just a hassle for ourselves one after another in some way or another, then if inextricably bound up with some degree dissatisfaction. It is only because our beliefs about it are too.
So it’s fit this this is the reason that in traveling a spiritual path and making the effort, that we make effort in these activities like reading and listening and studying and reflecting upon these ideas and validating them within our experience and working them out in terms of our logic and so forth. And we meditate on them and we put them into practice. So this is why it’s important. Because it’s important because it’s a way of learning about our present situation. The nature of what is actually going on about us and how it evolved, and becoming aware of alternatives, and beginning to open ourselves up to the possibility of implementing the means which are going to help us to achieve those alternatives.
What other possibilities, ways that we could approach our life? It’s like we have this set of tools that we’ve learned, we’ve picked up over the course of our life. And if those tools are out of calibration, what do you call it? Calibration. If our levels aren’t quite low, if our hammers aren’t quite straight, what can we hope to construct with that, those tools?
No matter how hard we try, we never find what it is exactly that we’re looking for, what it is that we’re trying to create for ourselves, that kind of world, that kind of experience for ourselves, if only because the tools we’re making use of to construct that life are in some way mistaken, some way out of kilter. So we have to look at the tools, our beliefs, our ideas, and what it is that we’re basing our life on to find that good life for ourselves, the successful life, however each of us defines it. And it’s the truth which does this. The truth is what we come upon and the means by which we come there to remove these distortions, these mistaken ideas, these wrong beliefs. And then when some kind of clarity emerges and we gain some kind of understanding and other possibilities open to ourselves.
In other words, traveling a spiritual path is a way of gaining realization, a way of coming to know truth as opposed to fantasy, which very much probably unawarely we lead our life. So that we come to relate with our world in ways that are fundamentally more skillful, more appropriate. There’s a certain dishonesty demanding that the world be other than the way it is. We have no choice if we’re going to live our lives intelligently other than to bring our belief system or ideas about the world in accord with the way things actually are if we’re ever to find some kind of harmony, some kind of peace. Otherwise, there’s always a disparity between our beliefs and our belief conditioned perceptions on the one hand and the way things actually are on the other.
And that disparity is experienced at some level as dukkha. And dukkha is a Pali word. And originally, you know, usually it’s translated as suffering or dissatisfaction. But it really initially originally, it meant a wheel that grinds on its axle. It’s out of kilter.
It doesn’t fit quite properly. And that’s the way quite often our life feels. It kind of grinds down and upon ourselves. It wears grates upon us. And as we begin to travel the path, as we begin to correct our basic distortions of mind, our mistaken epistemology, and begin to see where we’re going wrong in terms of our understandings, our beliefs.
Then the fit becomes a little more smoother. In our life, we begin to cheer up. Things run a bit smooth. Life doesn’t seem quite as problematic as it used to because the way that we see the world is more in keeping with the way it actually is. So this is what we do here on Monday nights.
That’s all I’m getting around to, just a bit of introduction. It’s like an education program, trying to point out maybe, far as at least from the Buddhist conception of things, the way things actually are in their nature, and helping us to develop some tools to begin to work with those options, those alternatives, begin to help us to correct some of the mistaken beliefs which aren’t working for us in our life. Give us some more tools in our tool bag and help us recalibrate some of the tools that we already have and recognize that some of them aren’t working for ourselves. That we come to relate with the world in ways which are fundamentally more skillful, more appropriate in terms of what it is that we really want and, in fact, what the world is capable of giving us. You know, the ultimate realization is the best way that we can come to know the world.
The way of knowing, relating to it, experiencing the world is we call awakening. And unsurpassed perfectly complete awakening is Buddhahood, which we can all attain. And there’s no unbridgeable gulf between ourselves, each of us here this evening, and each of us all living beings. And the historic Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha, lived about two thousand five hundred years ago. So this becomes our model.
It’s an orientation that we keep coming back to. The inner focus of our life becomes Buddha. Maybe we don’t know what a Buddha is. But just for the time being, can just call him a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. Best thing that we could ever hope to do with our lives in terms of who we could be and what we could do with our lives, we call Buddha.
That’s however each of us might presently conceive of that, however we might see that for ourselves. But we have to do something. And it’s one thing to be sincerely about wanting to develop oneself. But your sincerity is not quite enough. We have to do some work.
And this involves the Dharma. And these are the various teachings, learning about new options and possibilities, the nature of our situation and how it evolved, the meditative techniques, the trainings and so forth. But as we said, it’s mainly the truth of things. This is what makes you free. And this all occurs within a social context.
The journey is not something which is undertaken in isolation from others about us and the gaining of salutary realizations for ourselves alone. But it’s a social phenomena. We are social beings. So we rely upon others. So it’s mutually assisting one another, doing whatever we can to help another on their journey.
And these become like our refuges. The inner focus of our life becomes Buddha by means of the Dharma in the social context of the spiritual community. And we again and again try to raise the level of our motivation, why we’re doing what we’re doing, and the why behind and the purpose for. We’re trying to go beyond just our own struggle to get our piece of chocolate cake, whatever it might be, however that looks for ourselves, but beginning to recognize, and that’s what we’re going to talk more about tonight, that one of our basic problems is that we’re so absorbed absorbed in our own problems to the exclusion and oftentimes the expense of others. So trying to define what a good life might look like more and more in terms of a balance between fulfilling our own self self interests as well as the interests of others.
And then maybe with such a motivation and trying to bring that about and why we’re here and why we’re studying and why we’re involved in these discussions, then we can be assured that some benefits are going to come about through the process. So if you’d like to recite the verse in a formal way what we’ve just talked about. 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 and the other perfections may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from the joy that is without sorrow.
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for some and aversion toward others. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, and mind. I present clouds of every type of offering those actually arranged and imagined. I disclose all my negative actions accumulated during beginningless time and rejoice in the virtues of superiors and ordinary beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of Dharma for migrating beings.
I dedicate all virtue, my own and that of others, to the great awakening. So in the form of the evening. We generally have a spend some time in meditation. So if you’d like to stand up and stretch, and then we’re going to sit and have a meditation. So generally, we begin with a process of working through the body, relaxing the body.
So if you could just I’ll lead you through this progressive muscle relaxation through the various parts of the body. If you can just bring your awareness to those areas or if you can actually feel the sensation of the tension diminishing or tightness loosening. That’s that’s even better. Just bringing your awareness to these various parts of the body following through. Then we’ll do a six part breath exercise.
This simply involves breathing in comfortably normally. But when you breathe out, extending the exhalation, completely emptying the lungs of air. Again, breathing in comfortably normally. Again, extending the exhalation and doing this six times individually. Then we’ll meditate mindfulness of the breath.
So the the bodily sensation associated with the natural breath, wherever that’s most clear and obvious to yourself, you know, just focusing upon that. And sometimes, people find it useful to use the techniques of counting and noting, if you’re familiar with those two techniques. And then we’ll have various types of analytic meditation. And in our talks together we’re going through a meditative tradition of awakening our hearts and developing an altruistic aspiration to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. And so part of this meditative tradition involves looking at the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness.
And this is what we’re going meditate on tonight. So this is, you know, you’re going to have to use your own experience, your own reasoning. I’m going to kind of prompt you. But, you know, this is quite important, validating whether this accords with your own experience or not. Otherwise, these teachings, the talks, they simply are like pouring oil on water.
They just kind of float on your mind. There’s no integration. We have to go through the process of reflecting, examining, seeing whether this premise of self centeredness being, for example, people are never more miserable than when they are completely absorbed in their narrow confines of their own problems. And they’re never more fulfilled when they are concerned with others. Looking at the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness, is that correct?
Is that your own experience? It doesn’t even have to be done on the cushion. We should be doing this in everyday life. If we begin right now, one of our tools that I talked about that toolkit. And one of our tools that is miscalibrated is that we think that I’m the center of the universe, me first approach to living of our life is the way to find happiness.
And it’s gone unquestioned, that particular belief, that idea that we harbor. And we have to begin to check it out whether that actually is true or not. Maybe we’re operating under some kind of mistaken assumption. Maybe our self centered approach, our selfish approach, our me first approach, our exaggerated self concern approach to living our life is really, in fact, only causing us more problems than it is help. But we have to actually look, examine, and see whether that’s true or not and that in accordance with our own experience.
The averse is that it’s trying to look at whether other centered, when we’re open to the needs of others, when we set aside or we create some balance in our life in terms of our own needs and we’re there for others, when we act compassionately with greater concern for others. What is our actual experience at those moments? We have to begin to look at those. And this is what we’re going to do in our meditation. So we’re going to look in terms of disadvantages of self centeredness.
Look at the evolution of our various feelings of loneliness, conflict, defensiveness, jealousy, fear, feelings of being unloved and unable to love, feelings that we and others are just so many objects to be used, manipulated, consumer items, exploited, and so forth. Where does all that lead us? Where do all those feelings come from? On the other hand, you know, thinking about other centeredness. Through other centeredness, we can begin to heal some of the some of the suffering that that that our lives are not very meaningful, when our lives are not very useful, when we don’t feel so good about ourselves and what it is, the direction that our life is taking.
When we’re other centered, when we’re more concerned with others, we feel a kind of relief and joy within ourselves that we can be there for others, that our life that we can be an instrument of compassion for others. We can actually do something for others. People like us, you know, when you’re there for them. We all like to be liked, don’t we? They’re kind to us.
They trust us. There’s greater intimacy in our life, greater communication in our life. You know, we we you know, it’s like we’re we’re welcome. This world is our home. It comes from particular perspective, what we’re calling altruism or other centeredness.
You know, the more selfish a person is, the more suffering. The greater there is caring for others, the happier we are. But, you know, we don’t recognize this. This isn’t something that is on the evening news quite often. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that.
Or it’s never on the front page of the advertiser. It’s not talked about. Maybe the adverse is talked about. This is part of our education process that we have to examine within our meditation for ourselves. So I’ll just give you some prompts and see if you can validate, see if you can see whether this is your own experience or not.
Okay. So taking a comfortable, firm posture. We’ll begin with the relaxation of the body. Starting at the crown of the head, the scalp, feeling the wrinkles in your brow beginning to smooth out. The pressure in and around your eyes diminishing.
Muscles of the face softening, relaxing. Your jaws relaxed. And bringing your awareness to the back of your neck. Perhaps gently turn your head to each side a few times. Very gently loosening, stretching the muscle at the back of the neck.
Relaxing the muscles of the throat. Bring your awareness to the upper back and shoulders, perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times. Lifting them and allowing them to drop comfortably to the sides, feeling this burden, this weight that we carry around on our backs moving down and through your body into the ground. Bring your awareness all the way down to your hands. Your hands are soft and loose.
Relax in your lower arms, your upper arms. The chest is at ease. Relaxing throughout the heart area, in the lungs, in the middle part 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 keeping your back straight, your trunk erect, relax your lower back muscles. Your buttocks, through out your upper legs, lower legs. And your feet. And then bring your awareness to your body in general and noticing any tightnesses, any tensions which remain in the body, any areas of discomfort. And focusing upon those particular areas, consciously relaxing, softening, feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen.
If there’s some discomfort in the body, don’t struggle against it. Don’t resist it. Just surround it with a kind acceptance. It’s part of who you are at present. Just allow it to be.
It’s okay. Your body becoming comfortable, at ease, relaxed. The feeling of physical well-being pervading every part of your body. Just be with your body. Just come back to your body.
And then we’ll practice the six part breath exercise, breathing in comfortably normally, breathing out extending exhalation, completely emptying the lungs, again breathing in comfortably normally, again extending exhalation and doing this six times individually. And when you’ve completed the six part exercise, then bring your mind to the breath. Just easy, gentle, in and out flow of the natural breath. Bring your mind back to the breath. Bring your mind back.
Now we’re going to look at the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness. We’ll begin with the disadvantages of self centeredness. Looking at some of the difficulties, not instances perhaps, but some of the themes of your life, maybe the problem areas of your life, you know, the feelings of loneliness or conflict or feeling defensive or feelings of jealousy, feelings of fear of others, feeling of not being loved. Now can we trace these back? Can we see how they all evolve out of a sense of completely caught up in our own agendas?
Just seeing the world only out of our own eyes, completely absorbed in our own problems? That is, say, our own selfishness, our own self centeredness, our exaggerated self concern. To see if we can these feelings of loneliness or fear or conflict, jealousy, the difficulties in our relationships and so forth, are most of all of them simply coming from a place where we only see ourselves what’s in it for us. To check up. So keep coming back to some of the problem areas of your life.
See if you can trace the origin of those problems in terms of your own self centeredness. I, me, mind, selfishness, completely caught up in your own agenda, to seeing the world out of your own eyes. Let’s take a look at other centeredness, cherishing others, being concerned about others. And looking at those times when you really feel fulfilled, you feel a sense of joy, you feel you you feel really in contact with some deep values inside yourself. You feel good about yourself deep down, like your life is really worthwhile when you’re really there for somebody else, somebody that you love.
The deepest, most meaningful experiences in our life. Can you check? Can you trace them back to a sense of other cherishing? Setting aside your own agenda and being there for somebody else. Be concerned with somebody else’s welfare other than your own.
To check up within your own experience. What happens when you set aside your own stuff, your own needs temporarily, and you’re there for somebody else. You’re trying to bring a smile to someone else, someone trying to help sincerely someone else. What’s your own We’re never more miserable than when we’re caught up in our own problems and never more fulfilled when we’re there concerned with others. Is that true?
What do you think about that? And then bring your mind back to the breath. And get in touch with your body. Perhaps the pressure of your buttocks on the chair, on the cushion, your feet on the floor. Just some feeling sensation within the body.
And then in an easy and relaxed manner, slowly become aware of your surround So, you know, the the overall teaching is the three principal aspects of the path. You know, we thought the path is what takes you from where we’re at now to where we want to get to. And this path has three themes or three central principles. Developing a will to awaken is determination to change, become the best possible person that we can become, awakening your heart and awakening your mind. So at present, we’re looking at the second of these three principles aspects of the path, development of an awakened heart.
This is usually described in an altruistic aspiration to become awakened for the sake of all sentient beings. So it’s quite an achievement. And there are two meditative traditions for developing this awakened heart. Seven cause and effect instruction and equalizing and exchanging self for others. And we’ve looked at the first of these two, the seven cause and effect instruction.
And presently, we’re going we’re working our way through the the second of these two meditative traditions, equalizing and exchanging self for others. And, this has five paths. First, to develop the sense of equality of self and others. Beginning to appreciate the fact that all of us and then myself and all of you and all sentient beings, are exactly alike, all the same, in wanting to be happy and not wanting to suffer. I mean, that sounds rather evident truth, isn’t it?
But it’s not how we emotionally relate with others. We relate on the basis of ourselves as being feeling beings primarily. But when we when we view others, our mode of looking upon others is in terms of objects, in terms of form, you know, shapes, colors, male, female, good looking, not so good looking, young, old, but hardly ever in terms of primary quality of being a feeling being who wants happiness and doesn’t want to suffer. I mean, how many people do you meet and you think, ah, here’s somebody who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer? Usually, you’re sizing them up on some superficial quality, some feature about them, usually in terms of their body in some way or another.
Really a think this is in itself, I think, a profound realization that everybody is the same and wanting to be happy and not wanting to suffer, that we’re essentially feeling beings. This is essential to all of us. It’s universal. And on dependence upon that, we look at the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness, which we just looked at. And upon that, we go about the actual exchange of self for others.
And this is what we’re looking at now. And we talked about this in the last few weeks. What we’re exchanging is, you don’t become me and I don’t become you. The psychological center of gravity shifts from self to other. The primary importance that know we now place upon the self of self centeredness, we we now begin to place upon other.
And the indifference, which we now usually feel toward others, we now begin to place upon the self of self centeredness. Not the self in general, but the self of self centeredness or exaggerated self concern or selfishness. We have to We have to see the truth of this in our own experience if it’s going to bring about any kind of change. We can’t just twist our minds around to conform to some theoretic idea or some tradition which has been handed down, some dry words on a page. We have to see the living reality of what is being talked about here, we have to see it in our own experience.
In terms of, you know, we’re never more miserable than when we’re completely caught up in our myopic vision, our claustrophobic world, completely absorbed in our own problems to the exclusion and expense of the rest of the world. And never more happy and fulfilled and our life is never more purposeful and meaningful than when we’re really there able to help somebody that we truly love and that we’re able to feel purposeful in bringing about their welfare. If we see that, then we can begin to see that self centeredness is really, in a way, our worst enemy. If we were to have one enemy in life, it’s just that, our own selfishness. It’s destroyed all our happiness.
It destroys all our relations. It destroys intimacy, trust. It creates all our conflicts. And then you could keep could do a workshop and go down long, long distance, but we have to see this. And that’s where it’s important.
That’s where the work of I said it’s not enough simply to be sincere. We have to do the work. And this particular work is actually validating whether that’s true or not within your own experience. And if you do that, you will naturally change. You begin to rely upon your own innate sanity.
We want to be happy, we don’t want to suffer. Once we begin to recognize that our selfishness is simply a source of our suffering and that other centeredness is, in fact, a way to become happy, then it’s great when we will quite naturally begin to shift the focus of our concern more and more away from our own self centeredness to to others. And we don’t have to force ourselves, coerce ourselves into believing some some something that’s been handed down to us, seen as the truth of things and validating it with our own experience. So as I mentioned before, think it’s important to and we have to validate this and then begin to see begin to accustom ourselves to when we begin to see that we’re coming from a place of selfishness, when we’re completely wrapped up in our own purposes, looking at things only from our own side, our own perspective, from our in terms of our own agenda, and then offer some resistance.
Not you know, you don’t have to completely squash it. That’s you know, there’s, you know, do damage to yourself. Just offer a little bit of resistance each time to expressing that, acting that out, indulging in that. And then some kind of change. And then beginning to place greater imports upon the welfare of others.
It’s in in it’s not some abstract or complicated practice, but a practical, straightforward way in which we can stop harming hurting ourselves. It’s just a matter of keeping our priorities straight and being aware and making the effort when it’s necessary. It may be difficult, but this is our main practice. Just that. People talk about, oh, do we determine how far I’m getting in terms of my spiritual practice, in terms of my Buddhist practice?
I think one good measure is that you’re not as selfish as you used to be. I think that’s a good I think that’s a good criteria. Major yardstick. It’s difficult it’s difficult for us to know what our motivation is. Some yeah.
Quite often, motivation is mixed. It’s both both negative and positive. But if in our interactions with others, if we keep this in mind, then we can ensure that what we do will be consistent with our ultimate aim of our practice, the welfare of both ourselves and others. So if you’re interacting with somebody, if you can recollect, remember some way in which this person has been kind to you, either directly or indirectly. And we’ve talked about this when we talked about the kindness of all sentient beings.
There’s always some way we can see this person as having been kind to us. Remember that this person is primarily a feeling being, whoever it might be. That is, essentially, they have happy feelings. They don’t want suffering feelings. That’s primary about them.
And finally, if you recall the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantage of other centeredness. And then you can feel pretty assured that the way that you’re interacting is only going to be a benefit to yourself and that other person. So now we’re going to look at a method of completing the exchange of self from others. This is a very special practice in Śāntideva’s text. So remember that when we talk about the actual exchange of self for others, we are transferring the emphasis of concern that we now place upon the self of our own self centeredness, we’re transferring it to others.
And we’re exchanging the we exchange placing the unconcerned. You know, we we really don’t care much about others to some to a large indifference that we now feel in terms of others, we begin to place that upon our own self centeredness. Not upon ourself. We we made that kind of distinction. You know, we want to be happy too.
We don’t want to suffer too. But upon our own selfishness, our own exaggerated self concern. That’s self. So there’s a method now which is very special to Śāntideva where he completes what’s called the actual exchange of self for others. And it’s a way that can essentially, it’s a matter it’s a way that we can develop empathy.
We can begin to identify with the experience of others, what it might be like for them. There’s a North American Indian saying, don’t judge another person until you’ve walked a month in their moccasins until you’ve walked in their shoes. So we’re going to practice walking in other people’s shoes so we can understand what’s going on for them. Normally, we see everything out of our own perspective, this myopic vision. We only know ourselves.
But we can train in developing a multifaceted perspective. We can instinctively begin to see how the other is looking at this situation, how they might be feeling. We do this to some degree naturally. Some people do more than others. Some people are more empathetic than others, quite naturally.
But we can train in this, learn to identify with what’s going on for them, their world. We put ourselves in their shoes, in other words. So I’d like to read a quote. Empathy is very different from sympathy. Sympathy too is important, but much less so.
With compassion, we feel deeply for the other, with feelings of sympathy with him. For example, if we think he is distressed, we feel sorry for him and he feel that he feels so badly. In empathy, we experience for brief periods the feeling of the other. That is, we feel the same way that he does. There is no empathy without compassion and sympathy.
But for empathy to occur, another experience must implement them. An introspection which, on the basis of our our experience, permits us to feel as the other person does. If we can’t find within ourselves something closely akin to what is going on in the other person through introspection, then we can’t empathetically understand him. This may be illustrated by the simple example. This all goes on to give an example.
We see a person who is unusually tall. It is not to be disputed that the person’s unusual size is an important part is an important fact for our psychological assessment. Without introspection and empathy, however, his size remains simply a physical attribute. Only when we think ourselves into his place by vicarious introspection begin to feel his unusual size as if we’re our own, and thus we revive inner experiences in which we had been unusual or conspicuous, only then there begins for us the appreciation of the meaning unusual size may have for this person. The words sympathy is best rendered as feeling with somebody.
Empathy requires, in addition, the feeling oneself into somebody. So we’re going to systematically cultivate empathy and re identifying ourselves through role play. So this is a special method within this particular text. It’s called the exchange of self for others. The center of gratitude of our concern begins to shift from our primary concern with the focus of our cherishing being on our self, of self centeredness to the self of others.
So our frame of reference becomes more and more other centered. We become less centered around ourselves. You know, we’re all this is habitual. It’s instinctive, isn’t it? Our our initial reaction to any input is in terms of how does it affect me?
What’s is in it for me? Is it a threat to me? Is going to benefit me? And this is our initial direction in terms of any input, any new information, anything that we meet in external world. How does it affect me?
Subsequently do we begin to consider how does it affect the other. Here we can begin to create some kind of balance in terms of this emphasis, this orientation. We can begin to see, you know, we can develop a multifaceted perspective of how this is affecting us and you. So normally, terms of our self centeredness leads us to habitually classify people into three fairly distinct categories. We categorize them into those we see lower than ourselves, those our peers, those we see equal to ourselves, and those we see superior to ourselves in some way.
So we’re going to work with these three different categories in developing in the course of working with our empathy. Generally, we relate with somebody who we categorize as lower than ourselves, we develop a sense of arrogance, a sense of conceit or pride, I’m better than you in some way. When we relate with somebody that we categorize as equal to ourselves, we develop a sense of competitiveness, rivalry. And when we develop, when we relate with somebody we categorize as better than ourselves in some way, maybe in education, maybe we place everyone in these three general categories. And then relating with these three categories, we generate these these particular emotions.
So here but we’re going now we’re going to practice. This is a role play. It’s an imaginative practice. We’re going to we’re going to exchange places with the place of another. And here, describes it as follows.
We’re going to begin with a person that we now categorize as lesser than ourselves. It’s an example training in this particular method. Considering lesser beings and so forth as myself and considering myself as other with a mind free of reservations in the following way I should meditate on envy, competitiveness, and arrogance. So it’s important to remember that when we talk about exchanges of exchanging exchange which is taking place here is not a physical exchange. You know, we’re not I’m not becoming this other person.
This other person is not becoming me. We’re not giving we we are not giving up our present form and taking on the body of the other. We are transplanting transplanting our cherishing attitude from the place that it currently resides here in terms of ourselves to there where in terms of others. We’re cultivating it in a new place, the thoughts, feelings, and concerns of others. So we’re gonna use the power of imagination and empathy.
We’re going to play a role. We’re going to change places with, first off, with somebody who we see as lower than ourselves. And then we’re going to move on to somebody equal, and then we’ll somebody higher than ourselves. And, you know, we look back at ourselves. So we’re ourselves in their place.
And we look back at ourselves. And we look at the world out of their eyes. How are they experiencing this situation? How are they experiencing my former self, for example? How does it feel to be them as best we can?
We try to find some way of feeling into them from our own experience, how we might have felt it in the same exact way. And we will probably go on to develop these emotional reactions of arrogance, competitiveness, and envy with these three different categories of others. So in the first, we’re going to look at exchanging place with somebody that we feel is lower than ourselves. That maybe they’re lower than ourselves in education or status intelligence. In some way, we feel a little bit arrogant.
We feel a bit superior to them. So they’re lower than ourselves. But now we identify with them. We put ourselves in their place. We put ourselves in their shoes, in their moccasins as completely as possible.
And having done this, now that we look back at our former selves. So Śāntideva, he gives us some examples in the verses that follows. Confusing because he’s transposing the I by which we normally refer to ourselves and applies it to others. And uses you, which we normally refer to others, and is applying it to ourselves. If that makes sense, you’re doing very well.
Anyway, maybe we can work this out as we go along. So here is somebody. There’s somebody I wish I had a dummy. It’d be good. There’s somebody.
Okay. So there’s somebody here. This person I I categorize as lower than myself. I’m going to transpose my eye to that other person and you, which we normally refer to that person, to my own self centeredness, to myself. Okay?
So in this verse, this is what is going on. Maybe we can discuss it as we go along. He is saying, Okay, is he says, you are honored, but I am not. I have not found wealth such as you. You are praised, but I am despised.
You are happy, but I suffer. So is have we ever stopped to think how this person we feel so superior superior to might be actually experiencing ourselves. Know? I have he says, I have to do all the work while you remain comfortably at rest. You are renowned as great in this world, but I am inferior with good qualities.
So putting yourself in their place, looking at the world out of their eyes, how do you feel? Were you aware about how this person might be You know, how how they might be feeling, you know, possible feelings of inferiority, how how they might be feeling insufficient, how they might be envying you? Have you ever stopped to consider how many of the things that this person wants, needs, is aspiring to achieve in terms of your own wealth, in terms of your own intelligence, your own status? Intelligence, your own status, and maybe the healthier position that you have in life. Okay?
So try to put yourself in their their place and look back at your at your at your former self and how they might be be be viewing yourself. And and and as best you can, try to empathize. Put yourself in their place, and how they might be viewing you. Maybe they’re jealous of you. Maybe they really see you as having everything that they want.
Have you ever thought about that? You know, rather than seeing them as as, you know, yourself as in your in your in your sense of arrogance looking down upon them, if you would see how they might be admiring you, how they might be, you know, envying you, how they might be wishing that they had what you had. You know, trying to take on trying to change our usual perspective completely from our own eyes and looking at it from the other from the other person’s point of view. We have to ask ourselves, the way that we are, this feeling of self importance, this feeling of arrogance, this conceit that we have toward this lower person, can we really justify it? Who are we to think ourselves better than that person?
What what have we ever done for them? And here we are, and we talk about traveling the spiritual path. We talk about practicing Buddhism. And this person, who we see as lower than ourselves, they aren’t thinking that way. They envy us.
But have we ever, ever, ever helped them? If we aren’t to help somebody, then who can we expect to? All that we do for anybody else is done from an ulterior motive. Have we ever done anything for anybody else without expecting something in return? You know, who are we to look down upon them?
He says so he’s talking back to us. The deteriorated state of my morals and views is not due to me, but due to my disturbing conceptions. In whatever way you are able, you should heal me willingly. I I I shall accept any discomfort involved. But I am not being healed by you.
Why do you belittle me so? You know, how can we feel superior to this person when we’re not helping them in the least? And here we are talking about practicing Buddhism, practicing the path, and all that we talk about in our arrogance. What use are your good qualities to me? Although you have good qualities, you did not benefit me.
With no compassion for beings who dwell in the poisonous mouth of evil realms, externally you’re proud of your good qualities and wish to put down the wise. You know, how can we feel so smug and self righteous? Do we ever really go beyond our own petty desires, own petty needs? With all our, you know, with all our, our material affluence, all that we have, all the money we have, all the knowledge that we have, all our position, still we only profit for ourselves. We really don’t do anything for anybody else without expecting something in return.
Most of us talk about growth. We talk about love. We talk about spiritual practice. But we never really do anything about it. It’s just talk.
And we thinking this way, we have to in examining what we are about, we can we can diminish our sense our feeling of arrogance. You know, we’re not really doing anything with this person we feel superior to. Now we can begin now we can so exchange somebody we feel equal to and we feel competitiveness, somebody that we feel on the same level as ourselves in some way. And we strongly identify with them. And we label that person as I.
And we label ourselves you. And we develop a sense of competitiveness or rivalry with this person. So this how describes this. In order that I may excel, you are regarded as equal to me. I shall definitely strive to attain gain and honor. I will be venerated, but not you.
I will find a great deal of material gain. I will find a great deal of material gain. I will be honored, but you will not. For a long time, I shall look with pleasure at your being made inferior.
You will become the laughing stock of all regarding regarded among everyone as an object of scorn. So we’re trying to diminish the force of our own self centeredness, trying to see how it in fact is the source of all our problems, all our suffering. And we’re trying to promote this sense of other centeredness and the concern for others. We’re kind of stuck at present in seeing everyone and everything exclusively from our own point of view, from the point of view of the self of self centeredness. And through training in this actual exchange of self for others, we begin to develop more universal perspective.
Like when you see your partner or you see your children or your parent, how has it been for them? What’s going on for them? Initially, maybe it’s artificial in the sense that we have to make an effort to do this. It doesn’t come naturally. But we can, you know, what we’ve come accustomed to becomes easier, becomes natural after a while.
So just, you know, practice exchanging with your children, with your partner, with your parent, with the person that you work with. How are they experiencing their world, especially if you understand their world? And how are they relating with you? How do they see you? And how are you relating back to them?
We are able to view situations from this multifaceted perspective. The very context of our being in this world with others instinctively includes more and more others’ points of view rather than just our own single point of view as it is now. There’s a verse which I like very much. If only I could throw away the urge to trace my patterns in your heart, I could really see you. Rather than seeing our projections upon them, if we can begin to see the world out of their eyes, then we can begin to understand others and how they are experiencing their lives.
And as Thich Nhat Han says, To understand another is to love another. Love is another word for understanding. Understanding is another word for love. So, you know, we here’s Chanticovere as just simply, used as an, you know, as a basis for illustration. Somebody you feel superior to, somebody you feel equal to, and somebody you feel lower than, who you see as superior to yourself.
But as I just mentioned, we can do this with all the various people in our lives. And just try to feel it into them, what the world must be like for them. Know, this is how we can meditate, how we can practice on this, developing a sense of empathy, being able to identify with what they might be experiencing. So exchanging places with all the various people we come in contact in our daily lives. How does it feel to be them?
And kind of accustoming the mind to that way of relating with You know, we can, with poor people, with, you know, it’s like, in India, you know, there’s lots and lots of people who you can work with, who we can practice exchanging. I was thinking about somebody who reaches there’s lots of beggars on the streets. And when imagine yourself as that beggar and you’re reaching out your hand to your former self, and what do you see in your former self’s eyes when you reach out your hand? Do you see compassion, caring? Or do you see fear, indifference, aggression, anger?
What do you see? Trying to get a sense of how you actually experience yourself out of that person’s eyes, exchanging places with them. Anyway, we’re going to talk more about this, a little bit more about this next week in this actual exchange of self for others. And then we’ll go into the final method in this practice of equalizing, exchanging yourself for others where we practice sending and taking, giving away our happiness imaginatively and taking upon the sufferings of others. It’s like to accustom ourselves even to this notion about maybe giving up some of our privacy, some of what we’re trying to hold on to, and being willing to be there for others, even in their difficulty, even when they have problems.
And even just of equating our mind with that notion, with that way of relating with others even in our imagination. So if you have is there anything that you would like to talk about or discuss, Any questions or any ideas you’d like to share about what we’ve talked about? It’s rather, I guess, a radical different idea. Yeah, I think different categories of individuals, those ‘re close to, like your partner? You putting yourself in their place as best you can and looking back out of their eyes to your former self?
And what do you see? Do you see someone who is understanding, someone who is there for them, is all that you would like to be able to see in terms of them for you. You see that from their point of view in yourself. You can exchange with if you’re having some difficulties, some problems with somebody and you look back at your former self, you know, exchanging places with them. You see somebody who’s defensive, somebody who’s aggressive, somebody who’s close minded, someone who’s trying to understand the difficulty and the nature of the problem.
I guess empathy seems like tremendously important quality in our relationships to have. And it seems like this is the way that we can begin to actually train in it purposely. So using all these different individuals like your partners, your loved ones, those near to you, also people who are giving you a hard time, difficulties, people you’re having arguments with, but also beggars on the street. I guess there aren’t so many beggars in in Adelaide not so many but all the different varieties of people. Anyway we’re going to meditate more on this.
Anybody have any comments or questions? Yeah. It’s quite a challenge, isn’t it? It’s quite contrary to our normal way of thinking and acting. There’s like two glimpses of it, like, at the time of the talking.
How is that? Yeah. Yeah. Any other comments? Anybody?
So, if you like to grab a cup of coffee or tea, we’ll have a discussion. Otherwise, good night. Have a have a good night. Okay? Thank you.