Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem “Please Call Me by My True Names” — narrated from the simultaneous perspectives of a raped refugee girl and the pirate who attacked her — is the touchstone Ven Jampa Gendun sets for genuine empathy in this 130-minute session on the awakened heart, second of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path. After grounding the practice in suffering as the universal human condition, Gendun leads a guided meditation in which practitioners inhabit five viewpoints in turn — a loved one, a stranger, a beggar, someone of the opposite gender, and an adversary — each time looking back at their former self through the other’s eyes. He closes by introducing tonglen, imaginatively taking on others’ suffering and giving away one’s happiness, arguing this is not self-sacrifice but the surest path to genuine joy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 3PA 2008 05 12.mp3
UUID: 932c186f-31bb-466a-ac4d-a409914cdf9b
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2008-2009 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2008-05-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 130.5 minutes
Words: ~11,038
Hear me in the back? It’s okay? A little bit. Is that better? Yes, thank you.
Okay, good. It’s not too loud. No, it’s not. Okay. So we have to begin by adjusting our motivation.
I always mention that it’s difficult to know what our motivation is sometimes. Quite often, more than that, it’s mixed. I doubt if you come here with a negative motivation, but you might come with maybe indifferent. It’s Monday night. Oh, yeah.
There’s three principal aspects of the path: awaken your heart and mind. ‘s teaching is on at Buddha House. It’s kind of on our schedule, so we just go along and we really don’t question, Well, why am I going? What’s the reason behind it? What’s my motivation?
So we might, in fact, have some kind of indifferent motivation. So it’s important that we try to reach down and work with our minds at this present moment, even as we sit here now, trying to, as best we can, develop some positive motivation. And we begin with ourselves, and that’s a present reality for most of ourselves, and try to help ourselves and work with our problems at a deeper level than we normally work with, at a more fundamental level. You know, I mean, how many of us have ever looked pleadingly to the sky and from our hearts cried out to heaven, why me? Why am I so happy?
Why does everything always have to go so well for me? I can’t go on like this any longer. I have to understand what I’m doing so right. None of us, right? It’s unhappiness rather than happiness which makes us think.
Times of unhappiness that momentarily deflected from our usual preoccupations, our usual distractions to concerns which we seldom consider. It is suffering, or more exactly, I think, our awareness of suffering, which makes us stop and reflect upon, you know, our lives and where it is that we’re going with our lives. And is this the direction, in fact, where I want to go? You know, what’s it all about? You know, this isn’t to perversely suggest that we be unconcerned with happiness.
It’s just that happiness isn’t the problem. Suffering is. Suffering and our usual denial or struggle against its recognition as an underlying truth about our lives. There’s a quote from one of the wise fools of Islam, Idries Shah, where he says, I’ve heard all that you’ve had to say to me on your problems. You ask me what to do about them.
It is my view that your real problem is that you’re a member of the human race. Face that one first. You know, we have to face the difficult fact that as ordinary members of the human race, we suffer. It’s the human human condition. As long as we are bound by the human condition, we are going to experience in certain measure, certain degree, in all our various unique ways, some degree of dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration, you know, all that life continually brings to ourselves.
You know, granted that in any particular instant our is very unique to ourselves. But the fact of suffering is universal, and it applies equally to us all. Each of us, without exception, suffers from the daily disappointments of not getting what we want, suffers the daily disappointments and sorrows of being separated from that which we want to hold on to. In one way or we have to, in one way or another, bear with the petty annoyances of difficult people and conflicts and so forth, but also the profound hurts, the injustices, which come along at various various intervals and over the course of our life. That’s the nature of our situation.
All have our stories. Everyone here could probably tell of the difficulties they’ve had to face over the course of their life. So it’s not unusual. There’s a certain unwillingness or denial or struggle against the recognition of the difficulty, of the suffering texture, quality of our lives. You know, it’s like once we begin to admit that things aren’t as we would like them to be, then there’s a real hope for a cure.
Then there’s a real possibility. You know, as long as we’re in some way caught up in our denial, evasion, our suppression of the actual texture of our lives, and we’re never going to really be serious about finding some deeper solution to the difficulties of our life. No matter whether our suffering is being imposed by impersonal forces, like natural disasters, like what’s happening in Burma just now, whether it’s human made, like wars, what’s happening in Darfur right now, or whether it be self induced, like all our various worries, our anxieties, our feelings of loneliness and so forth. In terms of the quality of the experience, it’s all the same, it’s all suffering. It just varies in terms of the kinds of suffering and the quality of the suffering, the intensity of the suffering.
But still it’s suffering, nonetheless. You know, guess a stone doesn’t feel any pain because it’s not alive. But we, on the other hand, are alive because we are aware. But to a large extent, we’re only aware that we need to be aware, to the extent that the necessities survival force us to be aware that much and no more. And that much and no more do we ever question, you know, the nature of our suffering and if it can, in fact, ever come to an end.
And that much and no more do we ever ask, you know, if suffering can come to an end, and that much more and no more do we ever change the way that we understand and respond to our suffering. You know, we have a tendency to perpetuate, to continue to make use of the same responses that we’ve made use of in the past, which haven’t in fact worked in the past. You know, we don’t seem to be learning or we miss the lessons that life is continually bringing us or dismissing lessons that life has brought us in one way or another. We keep making the same mistakes, even against our better judgment, even against our will over and over and over and again. You know, as long as we are aware and not awake, we will suffer.
That’s the nature of the human condition. So we have to face that one first. You know, after all the tears, after all the complaining, after all the various means that we try to, that we use to deceive ourselves, to distract ourselves, to numb ourselves. You know, there is no more gene, germ, chemical, person, society, or just plain bad luck to blame. Before that next onrushing wave of the truth of suffering comes crashing in to meet us, we’re going to have to decide just how we’re going to respond, perhaps in a new way, something that, you know, in that brief interval we’re going to have to do something different if we were to expect, if there is any real, rational, well-founded hope, to expect anything different in terms of the quality of our lives.
You know, rather than putting the whole of our attention, our energies, our time and resources into simply riding out each wave as it comes crashing into us, we’re going to have to find ourselves, question a way to rescue ourselves from the ocean itself. You know, what are we going to do about the fact of suffering in our lives? How are we going to understand it? Which option are we going to make use of? So we have a choice.
It’s always available to ourselves, whether it’s simply to repeat the same means that we’ve been using, the same tools, the same responses to our difficulties, or whether we’re going to perhaps investigate, explore other possibilities. So, you know, this is what we call going for refuge. Traditionally, we go for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. So, you know, the idea of going for refuge to the Buddha is making the choice and the option of being the best possible person that we can become in terms of our wisdom, in terms of our love and compassion and our personal power. You know, these are seen as the real possibilities, real means by which we can begin to work with our problems at a deeper level.
We can begin to solve the problem of the human condition in a way in which we can finally bring our suffering to an end, ourselves as the living solution to the problem of suffering. But we have to actually do something that is not sufficient, that we simply wish that things were otherwise. It’s too bad that sincerity is not quite enough. It’s a lot, but we also have to develop some skills. We have to actually put the work in.
Here we gather together on Monday nights, or whichever we study, we learn about other possibilities, alternatives, and how to implement those other possibilities in our daily life as a means of integrating some of these solutions into our own being, into our own life. You know, that is to say, we go for refuge to the Dharma. And ultimately it’s the truth of things, isn’t it? That’s going to be the basic solution to our problem, the way things are in their actual reality, beyond the fiction which we’re continually projecting on the world and the people and the situations about us. How are things in their actuality?
You know, in a way, we have no choice but to align our beliefs, our ways of thinking with the way things are, if we’re ever to find any peace in our life, if we’re ever going go beyond these cycles of frustration, dissatisfaction. There’s a certain dishonesty that demands that the world be other than the way it is, you know, trying and that we can’t make the world over into what we might like it to be, what we wish it was. We have to investigate the actual nature of reality, what is the actual situation, and begin to harmonize our understandings, our belief system, our worldview in accordance with that. And then there’s a realistic possibility, there’s a real hope. Otherwise, the situation is hopeless.
And this process, this journey, occurs within the context of a spiritual community, those like ourselves. We are our spiritual community, and it’s not something abstract. There are many ways to interpret this, what we call Sangha. There’s the absolute Sangha, those who have realized emptiness, and therefore in a position to help us to understand the same. And then there’s the Robed Sangha.
It’s said that, you know, four or more ordained monks or nuns are said to be the Sangha, but for most of us, what is of perhaps the most greatest relevance to ourselves in our present situation are our so called fellow travelers, you know, those who are on the journey with ourselves. You know, people just like you and just like me, you know, doing what we can to help each other. You know, this is unusual situation and it’s a very unusual journey that we’re on. Society doesn’t have much place for what we’re doing in normal structure of things. More than that, we’re like swimming upstream, aren’t we?
Ethos of our society is trying to carry us down in ways that we might not wish, take us to places that we’ve been before that haven’t worked for us. So, you know, we all have to, like, maybe it’s like sometimes I think of the idea, you know, it’s like a mountain, you know, we’re all climbing this mountain. But we’re all not, you know, just looking after ourselves, you know, each doing their own thing, but we can, like, form a chain, you know, of adjoining hands. And I know for myself there are those who are pulling me up and helping me get around these obstacles, these boulders as I come across them. And I know, in my small way I like to try to think that I’m pulling someone else up with whatever little abilities that I have.
And that’s what we’re all doing, this long chain down this mountain side, pulling in the same direction into some of the more basic solutions to our problems, helping each other, you know, doing what we can, advising each other, advising each other, teaching each other, sharing our aspirations, our goals, acting as inspiring examples for one another, a shoulder to cry on, somebody to laugh with, somebody to share what it is that’s going on inside yourself, whatever it takes. That’s what we do together, and it makes a difference. Even one other person can make a great deal of difference in our life, can’t they? I mean, that’s the case. That’s reality.
So this becomes our orientation, what we call going for refuge. I guess, you know, we come here when we have to. You know, this pause, this working with our motivation is simply like a chance for us to stop speeding, stop acting and take stock. Look at where we’re going, readjust our priorities. Is this where I want to go?
Unless you change your direction, that’s likely where you’re going to end up. What are my priorities? How much energy, time and resources am I putting into those priorities? Have I lost track? Gotten off the path that’s important to me?
You know, I’m not in any way wanting to advise you what is important to yourself. It’s something which is very unique to yourself. I would ask you to pause and get in touch with what are your deeper and most held values, what makes you feel good about yourself in this thing called life, give you a sense of self respect and meaning and purpose in your life. I think that’s important to keep coming back to, you know. And that’s what we mean, I think, by going for refuge, getting back in touch, getting back on course.
And we try to raise the level of motivation. Mental health is very much, I think, a social phenomenon, isn’t it? We are not these isolated individuals as we oftentimes conceive ourselves to be. We are social beings. We need each other.
And part of mental health is very much in how we relate with others. And the best possible way that we can relate with others, and with a skillful and optimal way of being in this world with others, we call that love, compassion, altruism, beneficial intention. You know, it’s not as if it’s a romantic notion or a sentimental notion. It’s just the fact of the way things are, I think. And if we’re ever to find some peace and meaning in our lives, have to, as I said before, we have to begin to accord our thinking, our ways of being with the way things actually are.
Love is the best possible way we can be in this world, you know, from a place we can operate from. And it’s the context in which all our relationships occur. So we have to work at that. It doesn’t come naturally. It requires some training.
Training. But we can aspire to that, you know, and that can be a priority in our life. We, you know, even if for one other being. So we’re here to study together, right? To learn.
It all begins with hearing some new ideas and learning of other possibilities, other options that are available to ourselves and how to implement those alternatives. We’re studying, we’re learning, and we’re beginning to integrate these ideas and we’re beginning to change. We do it not only for our own piece of chocolate cake, not just for our own solitary well-being, but for ever widening the circle of others. Even if it’s only one other person, that’s a lot. By one other person, I don’t mean what’s in it for you, but as best we can, out of a sense of altruism, out of a genuine intention to benefit that person.
You know, maybe it’s a parent, maybe it’s a partner, a child, a friend, whoever, it doesn’t matter. But somebody besides your own egotistical inner end, something that lies outside of your own agenda, your own exaggerated self concern, just somebody that you would like to see a smile on their face just for their own purposes, just for their own well-being, regardless of what’s in it for you. And we can all come up with somebody if we try and think of somebody in that way. So what we’re doing this evening, that we come together in this learning and integrating process, this journey that we’re on, is for ourselves. That’s our present reality.
We have to begin there. But maybe we can include only one other person, you know, in your mind’s eye. I’m doing this for myself, sure, but I’m also doing it for you, for the both of us. I would like to think that maybe I can go home tonight, maybe just a little bit further along the path of becoming the person that I want to be, both for myself, but also to be able to be there for you in some more significant way than I’ve been in the past, in whatever way. A little more understanding, a little more loving, little more wise, a little more patient.
Just a little bit of being able to be of benefit to you. Then this evening, coming to Buddha House and spending the time, my energy would have been worthwhile. We can feel something good will come out of that. We can be assured of that. So we formalize this notion in the verse of going for refuge in the generation of the awakened heart.
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 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 that is actually arranged and imagined. I disclose all my negative actions accumulated during beginless time and rejoice in all the virtues of superiors and ordinary beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the Dharma for migrating beings. I dedicate all virtue, my own and that of others, the Great Awakening. So we’re going to meditate.
If you’d like to sit up and stretch before we meditate, you’re welcome. So we’ll begin with relaxation of the body, working through the body, moving through the various parts of the body, bringing awareness to those areas, and consciously relaxing, softening those areas. And then we’ll do a six part breath exercise where we simply breathe in comfortably normally. But breathing out, we extend the exhalation, completely emptying the lungs of air. Again, in comfortably normally, again extending the exhalation, doing that six times.
And we’ll practice mindfulness of the breath, and then we’re going to meditate on what we discussed last week. We’re going through the tradition of equalizing exchange of self for others as a method for developing an awakened heart. And last week we were looking at the exchange of self for others. Essentially, the psychological center of gravity, which our overriding concern shifts from our self, or more exactly the self centeredness, to others, to other-centeredness. So, we looked at the exchange of self for others, we began to develop the intention to begin to concern ourselves with the welfare of others and pay less attention to the self of our own selfishness, our exaggerated self concern.
We’re looking at the equality of self and others, disadvantages of self centeredness, the advantages of other centers, and now last week we looked at the actual exchange of self for others. And in completing that exchange with others, we looked at it in terms of developing our training in empathy. You know, we’re going to practice this this evening in exchanging ourselves with others. First we’re going to exchange places with someone that you’re close with, perhaps your husband or your wife, your partner, maybe a parent or a child, a friend. And we want to put yourself in their place as best you can, vicariously.
Try to look at the world out of their eyes. How would it be to be them? And as best we can in terms of our present understanding, how they might be experiencing their world. And we’re going to look back at our former Self and we’re going to see what we feel, what we see when we look back at our former Self. What do you experience when you back at yourself?
Are you looking back through this loved one’s eyes? Do you feel as if your needs are being met? Do you feel understood? Do you feel valued? Do you feel respected?
Do you feel loved? And express what you feel to your former self, and what it is that you experience, what it is that you see, what it is that you feel when you look back at your former self. Exchanging with somebody that you’re very close to, you know, a very intimate relationship with, a parent, a partner, a partner, a child, and so forth. Then we’ll exchange places with somebody, a stranger, somebody who we don’t know very well, but as best we can, perhaps somebody that you work with, that you see often time to time. And putting yourself in their place, trying to experience the world out of their eyes, how would it be to be them?
And as best you can, putting yourself in their place and looking back at your former self. And how do you experience? How do you see your former self? Do you see, when you look back at your former self, a sense of friendliness? You see indifference.
You see competitiveness. And you can express what it is that you feel, that you see when you look back at your former self. We can exchange places with, for example, a beggar on the street. We don’t have so many beggars in Adelaide, do we? But maybe once in a while.
And now imagine how would it be to be that? You know, probably people sleeping in the park right now, you know, on cardboard or newspaper, we made a few blankets if they’re lucky. How would it be to be them? How would it feel? You know, you can imagine yourself being a beggar and you’re reaching out your hand to your former self, putting yourself in their place.
When you reach out to your former self, what do you see? What do you feel? And do you see you see fear, contempt? You see compassion? Do you see indifference?
And express what it is that you feel when you look back to your former self. We can explain places with someone of the opposite gender. If you’re a female, exchanging places with a male if you’re a male, exchanging places with a female. From this point of view, in terms of the opposite gender, how would it be to be a member of the opposite sex? And looking back at your former self, how do you experience your former self?
Do you feel oppressed? Do you feel objectified? Do you feel devalued? Do you feel understood in terms of your gender differences? Also, can but we can also exchange places with somebody we don’t get along with, somebody we don’t like, we’re having some problems with.
Perhaps you’re having an argument. Put yourself in their place and look at the situation out of their eyes. How are they experiencing? What’s going on? And looking back at your former self, what do you see when you look at your former self?
Do you see hostility? Do you see defensiveness? Do you see openness? Do you see an effort to understand? Trying to develop a multifaceted perspective so that we begin to instinctively see the situations and circumstances, not in terms of our myopic vision, our tunnel vision, which we see everything from our own point of view, from the position of our own self centeredness, but in a multifaceted perspective.
We begin to see how others are experiencing instinctively, naturally. We develop a more universal perspective. So we’re going to train in this way way working with these various individuals. Take in a comfortable, firm posture. So a posture that you feel comfortable, but that you can maintain for some time without moving.
Beginning with relaxation of the body, starting crown of the head, the scalp, the forehead, feeling the wrinkles in your brow beginning to smooth out. The muscles around the eyes and the pressure within the eyes diminishing. Muscles of the face softening, relaxing. Your jaw is relaxed. Bringing awareness to the back of your neck, perhaps gently turning your head to each side a few times, very gently loosening, stretching the muscles of the back of the neck.
Relaxing the muscles of the throat. Bringing awareness to your upper back and shoulders, perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times. Lifting them and allowing them to drop to the sides, feeling this burden weight that we normally carry around on our backs moving down and through your body into the ground. Like some burden’s taken off your back that you didn’t know was there all the time. Bringing awareness all the way down to your hands.
Your hands are soft and loose. Relaxing your lower arms and your upper arms. Your chest is at ease. Relaxing throughout the heart area, the lungs, middle area of the back, the stomach, and releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach Relaxing throughout the abdominal cavity. And keeping your back straight, your trunk erect, relax your lower back muscles.
Your butt ocks, throughout your upper legs, and your lower legs and finally your feet. Bring your awareness to your body in general noticing any tightnesses, any tension which remain in the body. Perhaps some area of discomfort. Focusing on those particular areas, consciously relaxing, softening, feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen. If there is an area of discomfort, don’t struggle against it, don’t push it away, don’t try to resist it.
Surround it with a gentle, caring acceptance. It’s part of who you are now at present. Present. And now to be, it’s okay if it’s there. Your body becoming comfortable at ease.
Ease. Feeling your physical well-being pervading every part of your body. It feels good to be in your body. It’s a nice place to be in your body. Just be with your body.
Stay with your body. Stay with your body. Bring yourself back to your body. Now we’ll practice the six part breath exercise, breathing in comfortably, normally, breathing out, extending the exhalation, completely emptying the lungs. Again, in comfortably, normally.
Again, extending the exhalation, and doing this six times individually. And when you’ve completed the breath exercise, then bring your mind to the breath. Just the easy, gentle, in and out flow, the natural breath. If it’s helpful, use the techniques of counting and noting the breaths. Bring your mind back to the breath.
Bring your mind back. Now we’re going to practice the complete exchange of self with others. We’re going to begin with somebody that you feel close to naturally, a parent or partner, whoever. Imagining that person in front of you, if you can’t see them it’s not so important. The feeling is most important.
Try to set aside your own agenda, your own material, and as best you can, as best you understand this person, put yourself in their place. Feel their feelings. Look at the world out of their eyes. How would it be to be them? And now looking back at your form Self, looking back at your former Self through their eyes, from their perspective, what do you see?
How do you feel? Do you feel loved? Do you feel valued? Respected? Understood?
Express what it is that you see and feel to your former Self. And we’re going to do the same again, but this time choosing some an acquaintance, someone here you don’t know particularly well, maybe somebody that you know from work or that you see from time to time, that you come in contact with a shop or a trades person. You have only a slight knowledge of what they’re like, what their circumstances are. And as best you can, putting yourself in their place. Feeling their feelings, looking at the world out of their eyes, looking back at your former self.
What do you suppose they see? What do you see as them? Do you see friendliness, indifference, competitiveness? Express what you see and feel to your former self. Try to open your mind as best you can, set inside your own agenda, own material.
See the world out of their eyes. See yourself out of their eyes. Again, we’ll do the same, this time with regard to perhaps a destitute person, somebody who’s down and out a beggar. How would it be to be them? Looking back at your former self, holding out your hands, for some small change, what do you see?
What you feel? See compassion, indifference, hostility, fear, contempt. Express what it is that you see and feel to your former self. And again, this time with regard to someone of the opposite sex, as best you can. How would it be to be someone of the opposite opposite gender?
How would that feel? What would the world look out look like from that viewpoint? Looking toward your former self, what do you see? What do you feel? Do you feel devalued?
Like, do you feel like you’re being made into an object? Do you feel understood, misunderstood? And express what you see, feel to your former self. And then finally, someone you’re having some problems with, perhaps an argument, difficulties. And put yourself in their place as best you can.
Look at the situation out of their eyes. How are they experiencing you and situation? Looking back at your former self, what do you see? Hostility, defensiveness, open mindedness? An effort to understand, closed mindedness?
Understand, close mindedness, look at the situation and your former self out of their eyes and express what you see, what you feel. And then bring your mind back to the breath. And get in touch with your body. Perhaps the pressure of your buttocks cushion, on the chair, your feet on the floor, just some feeling sensation within the body. In an easy relaxed manner, slowly become aware of your surroundings, taking your time.
So if you’d like to stand up and stretch for a short bit, you’re welcome. Last week we were talking about the we’re going through this five part method of equalizing and exchange of self for others on the basis of equality of self and others. We then go on to look at the disadvantages of self centeredness, the advantages of other centeredness, and then last week we looked at the actual exchange of self and others. I want to read something that I didn’t have time to last week. It sort of gives you an idea of how this multifaceted viewpoint, the perspective that I was talking about.
Presently, we view everything and everyone from the vantage point of self centeredness. That’s our present orientation. To a large extent, we’re unable to see the world out of other people’s eyes, we find difficulty, and this is varying degrees naturally with different individuals, we have difficulty identifying with others and how they might be experiencing what they’re going through. And the world, to a large extent, is perceived, evaluated, and responded to in terms of our own self centeredness, of exaggerated self concern. And we feel deeply committed to this self of self centeredness.
At the self of self centeredness we lay our entire lives. We lay all other people, all other things upon the altar of self centeredness. We’ve, more than not, created a kind of prison for ourselves. We’re continually struggling. How can I be happy?
All the worrying, all the planning, how much time and energy has our self preoccupation consumed in the course of our life, and how far has it helped us in finding what it is that we want and getting rid of what it is that we don’t want? You know, if it was working, okay, by all means, keep it up, do it better. But maybe we never see that it is this very struggle for our own happiness alone at the exclusion and expense of others, which in fact prevents us from ever finding the happiness that we what it is that we all want, that maybe, in fact, is the source of all our problems. So, you know, we’ve been looking at the method to develop a more natural, instinctive way of looking at situations from varying viewpoints, instinctively, rather than this myopic perspective, which we usually bring to all situations and to our relationships. And there’s a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh.
I’m sure most of you are familiar with Thich Nhat Hanh. He’s a Vietnamese monk who has a center, a village in France called Plum Village. So this is a poem he wrote, and I think it gets across this sensibility. I mean, he is living what’s being described here, I think. Embodies that.
So this is his preface to his poem. I have a poem for you. This poem is about three of us. The first is a twelve year old girl, one of the boat people crossing the Gulf of Siam. She was raped by a sea pirate, and after that she threw herself into the sea.
The second person is the sea pirate who was born in a remote village in Thailand. And the third person is me. I was not on the boat. I was tens of thousands of miles away. But because I was mindful, I knew what was going on in the Gulf.
I was very angry, of course, but I could not take sides against the sea pirate. If I could have, it would have been easier, but I couldn’t. I realized that if I had been born in his village and had lived similar life economic, educational and so on it is likely that I would now be that sea pirate. So it is not easy to simply take sides. Out of suffering I wrote this poem.
It is called Please Call Me by My True Names, because I have many names, and when you call me by any of them, I have to say yes. So this is the poem, Please Call Me by My True Name. Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive. Look deeply. I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird whose wings are still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive. I am the mayfly metamorphosizing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly. I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond, and I am also the grass snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself upon the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve year old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself in the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. I am a member of the Politburo with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his debt of blood to my people dying slowly in a forced labor camp. My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and my pain are but one. Please call me by my true name so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. On the basis of self and others, go on to look at the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness. Then we go on to the actual exchange of self and others.
We’re trying to develop some determination from seeing all of what we’ve understood up to this point of exchanging our present orientation, seeing the world out of our eyes, our own agenda through our own material, and trying to put ourselves in other people’s places and how they might be feeling, beginning to train empathy, trying to understand their world and how they’re feeling. And said, we’re going to take up the practice, we’re going to bring this to completion in this final practice of taking and giving. You know, all sentient beings, without exception, want to be happy and don’t want to suffer. And this is the essential lesson. You take nothing away from this whole discussion on the second principal aspect of the path, the awakened heart is just that: all sentient beings want happiness, don’t want to suffer just like myself.
I think that’s a great realization in itself. And if you could be mindful of that, it would transform our lives. Just that. You know, if we look into anyone’s eyes, and those eyes could be your own, you know, looking back at yourself, they could be the eyes looking back in a mirror. Behind those eyes is someone who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer.
And whose ever eyes they might be, they could be our own. So this is essential, this is universal. Our differences are superficial that we place so much emphasis on, that we usually cling to, that we usually react to. And in refusing to acknowledge and maintain awareness of the basic fact of ordinary human existence. We conduct our lives as if we were the only individuals in the world who want to be happy, who don’t want to suffer.
It is as if we alone sought happiness in the elimination of suffering. Somehow we’re unique in this. This is our emotional approach, not rational, reasonable, but our emotional approach to life. There’s a big difference, isn’t there? There’s an absolute, unquestioned commitment to the well-being of this single entity we call me.
We hardly know anything about what this me is, but all we do is expend all our time, energy and resources in meeting and gratifying this me in whatever we can, you know, its continual demands, its one track goal in life, its own gratification above all else, happiness and elimination of its problems. That is our priority in our life, is the gratification of this Self centeredness in one way or another. You know, a life based upon self centeredness is a life dedicated to the cherishing of the I. It’s like our God. And in the course of complying with this constant demands, we don’t see others as essentially feeling beings.
They become things, objects for our use, for our exploitation in one way or another. You know, What can you do for me? And that’s the most immediate primary reaction upon meeting anyone. You know, is this a threat or is this going to enhance my existence? We don’t see it in terms of the other.
At best, if that ever comes, it’s secondary, somewhere else long way down the line. We devalue, we exploit, we manipulate, we make use of others as a possible source of pleasure. And in the process we objectify ourselves, we make ourselves into an object, we devalue ourselves, we lose our humanity, we lose our ability to love, to trust, to communicate, to make possible experience of intimacy. We’re always competing, always comparing, always struggling, always defensive and isolated, afraid. Basically, this way of life, we live in fear.
I mean, you don’t think you’re not afraid. This is pervasive. It’s so pervasive in our lives that we call it normality. The fear, the primordial fear, the basic fear is always there. I compare myself with the saint, with the master, the great musician, the man who knows, the man who has arrived.
In this comparison I found myself wanting and insufficient. Have no talent, I am inferior, I have not realized, I am not, and that man is. So out of our measurement and comparison comes the enormous cavity of emptiness and nothingness, and the flight from this cavity is fear. And the fear stops us from understanding this bottomless pit. Do you know what it means to be without psychological comparison when all your life you have been conditioned to compare at school, at games, at university, in the office?
Everything is comparison. To live without comparison, do you know what it means? It means no dependence, no self-insufficiency, no seeking, no asking, therefore it means to love. Love has no comparison, so love has no fears. And so in other centeredness we acknowledge others as essentially feeling beings.
As I’ve mentioned a few times, I guess I repeat myself quite often. Maybe they say, You teach what you need to know, so I have to keep reminding myself. The mode in which we experience ourselves and the mode in which we experience other are quite different. We experience ourselves in terms of feeling, Am I happy or am I unhappy? And then we go on to question why and we begin to work out plans in order to enhance that happiness enhance that happiness or remove that suffering and not to repeat it again in the future.
Experience others in terms of form we see as as bodily images. We don’t see them primarily as feeling beings as we do ourselves. We think and see ourselves primarily as feelers. But what does it mean that to be alive means to feel, this is primary. And what is true of ourselves is equally as true of others.
Though we see others as objects, essentially they are feeling beings. This is primary to them as well as ourselves. They want happy feelings, they don’t want suffering feelings exactly like ourselves. So, you know, in this process of acknowledge the essential feeling nature of ourselves, we begin to affirm others’ intrinsic worth as feeling beings. You know, it’s difficult to hurt somebody that you know at the same time, at the same time be mindful of the fact that they want happy feelings, they don’t want suffering feelings just like myself.
We have to, you know, when we’re harming someone, at that moment, we have to overlook, we have to set aside whatever understandings, whatever love, whatever, you know, all that we’ve trained, all that we’ve come to know. So the actual exchange of self and others, we begin to psychologically identify with others. We immerse ourselves in other people’s worlds. Know, it’s like Thich Nhat Hanh, you know, it would be easy to hate the pirate. We want the world black and white, the bad guys and the good guys.
What he did was abhorrent, was terrible. But we can’t quite do that, can we? That’s not what we’re about, or trying to be about, at least. That’s the ways of the world, and that’s not our way. And this job of learning to love, it demands a great deal of ourselves, a great deal of understanding.
Understanding is areas that we would not go, that we’d rather simply, in our self righteousness, place some kind of judgment, that we can’t, that’s not an option for us. So in this actual exchange of yourself or others, we identify what that is. If you were a pirate, if you were raised in Thailand, in their economic situation, in their social situation with that background, you know, what do we say in the Christianity? If they’re but for the grace of God, go on. But for the grace of our particular circumstances, our unique situation, I probably be doing it very much the same.
If it weren’t for the grace of karma, I’d be in the same situation as them. So it becomes difficult for us to judge on this. Gradually the psychological center of gravity begins to shift. Our apathy toward others begins to develop into sympathy, sympathy begins to grow into empathy, and empathy becomes the ability to identify with others, able to, in a very real way, place ourselves in their position, you know, instinctively, automatically. We develop a universal perspective.
Rather, there’s myopic vision, there’s tunnel vision, which we now presently look at the situation that we’re all out of. So this entire process that we’ve been describing finds consummation in this final practice of taking and giving. We’re going to imaginatively take other suffering upon ourselves and give away our happiness and all our sources of happiness to others. It’s quite radical thinking, isn’t it? It’s unusual.
So it’s a technique employed to overcome our hesitation, our fear around getting involved in other people’s lives, in the nitty gritty, in what’s going on for them, in the suffering that’s going on all about us. It’s a way of opening our hearts allowing us to remain open, whatever situations occur. And you could go into hell and you could keep your heart open, whatever it might be, instead of shutting down, instead of numbing out, desensitizing. Desensitizing. So, you know, in many ways, which we’re going to explore later when we come to the third of the three principal aspects of the path, the awakened awakened mind, our reality is imagination.
It all begins in imagination. Who we are and the reality that we perceive very much depends upon the images ideas within our own mind. Know, that there is no world out there independent of our own minds. We are the co creators of our experience, of our reality. And the type of reality that we would come to know is very much dependent upon the images and ideas, the belief system, our worldview within our own minds, the images within our own imagination.
So, you know, who we are and the way that we relate and experience the world are to a great extent the product of the images within our own mind. Our beliefs, which are composed of these images, to a great extent, determine our experience of the world. It’s not as if our minds are blank slates, like we are simply mirrors, the passive observers, world kind of impinges upon ourselves. The Buddha said, With our thoughts we make the world. All that we are arises out of our thoughts.
Here we’re going to work with our self image. Each of us has a particular self image. Saying, we have an idea about ourselves. We have, you know, who we conceive of ourselves to be. We have an idea about the world and how we’re going to relate with the world and how we’re going to go about getting what it is that we want from the world.
These images and ideals, they contribute to what we actually perceive, what we come to experience about the world. You know, the world continually reinforces our ideas about the world. It’s like this world out there, it’s just this chaos, just colors and shapes and sounds, smells. And we’re constantly trying to order our world to make it some kind of consistent, coherent reality, to try to secure ourselves in what appears to be chaos. And we use these various images in our mind, these various ways, these rules of coming to know our world.
There’s an area, it’s called epistemology. Epistemology is like the rules by which we make sense of our world. human beings, we’re continually trying to make sense out of what appears to be chaos. We try to order our world. We are world builders.
Our particular world version, the world that we come to know and experience, arises out of the rules by which we serve to order the world. And how we categorize, how we order, bring sense, meaning to the world, our experiences. There was a famous — I can’t remember his first name — Bateson. He was a big American guru back in the 60s, I think. He wrote a book called Steps to an Ecology of Mind, and he had a great notion, which I’ve kind of adapted here.
The psychology of our misery is the pathology of our epistemology. If you want to write that down, put it on your bumper sticker, people, put it on your dashboard. The psychology of misery is the pathology of epistemology. Psychology of misery. That means the mental contributor to our suffering experience is the pathology.
Pathology simply means sick, unhealthy, not so good. Epistemology are the rules by which we make sense of our world, that we make order out of this chaos of our world. If your ways world building, the rules that you’re making use of are dysfunctional, are pathological, unhealthy, then you come to know a world of dysfunction, a world of ill health, dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration, and all the ways that we come to experience our world. You know, we look at our world out of dark glasses. A world of health and well-being is not possible when seen through the lenses of a dysfunctional way of making sense of our world.
If our rules by which we come to create our world, the means by which we find meaning in the world, that we come to order the world, that we come to know our world, are somehow dysfunctional, then we can only experience disease and all the disappointments and frustration. Here we’re talking a particular area of our process of rulemaking in terms of our own self image, of who we conceive of ourselves to be. If ignore the role imagination plays imagination plays in bringing forth our lived world, we will take literally the truth that our world is continually feeding back to ourselves. You know, I am this way and the world is that way, as opposed to metaphors, ways that we’ve come to know the world, only possibilities. It becomes more and more difficult to change the more literal we take the world.
It seems as if present. You know, there’s only one realistic way to be in this world and how I’m going to relate with it. You know, it sounds like sometimes, you know, people, they come to me and they talk and they say, Oh, know, Buddhism is a bunch of pie in the sky. You know, it’s very nice what you say, very romantic, but let’s get down to the real world. What’s really happening?
Know, everything seems to confirm our particular worldview and it becomes extremely difficult to think that things could be otherwise, to think of ourselves being any other way we are, another possible radical alternative way we could be in this world with others. If we can’t imagine it, we can never hope to be it. We can’t even begin to imagine it. We’re trying to open our mind to another possible way of being in this world, who I can be, the best person I can become, and changing the story, making it a little more fluid, open. It’s not set in concrete, fixed in stone, chiseled away, as we now, you know, most of us think of it.
Simply more, it becomes difficult for us to change. But the fact is, through training, we can reimagine ourselves. We’re always in the embrace of an image. This was Carl Jung’s contribution to our psychology. There’s various archetypes.
There’s the warrior, the hero, the orphan, the wanderer. We’re always in the embrace of a particular image. And here we’re trying to consciously work with that image and trying to create the imaginative space to embrace the archetypal bodhisattva image. Tremendously compassionate, loving person who’s dedicated to the welfare of others. You know, a radically alternative way that we might be and relate with the world about us, from the viewpoint of bodhisattva.
And we can be a bodhisattva. We don’t have to be these poor schmucks that we know, think of ourselves. It’s not fixed. It’s not chiseled in stone. If we can allow ourselves that possibility, even opening a slight crack that I’m not quite the person I presently conceive of myself.
Maybe there is an alternative. Maybe I do have potential that I keep overlooking or I keep dismissing. Allowing for the possibility. So we’re going to practice what’s called taking and giving. It is a practice in imagination.
Sending and taking is like field training. He calls it sending and taking, okay? This is a quote from Chögyam Trungpa. It was a Tibetan master who lived in the United States. He died about, I don’t know, maybe it’s been about twenty years ago or something.
He was quite communicator. Sending and taking is just like field training, actually. It is like soldiers learning how to puncture a bag full of sand regarding that as the enemy. They yell, Oh! As they pierce the bag of sand with their bayonets.
A lot of soldiers might have a hard time being involved with nature because they come from cities where people have no idea how to work with snow or the heat of summer. They don’t know how to ford rivers or how to dry their clothes or how to work with dirt and cleanliness. So soldiers have to be trained in the field. In a similar way, warriors who follow the Bodhisattva path go through the same kind of field training. Sending and giving is like taking and giving, sending and giving is like field training, okay?
It’s like when they go on maneuvers in the Army, in the military. They have blank bullets and all these explosions and smoke bombs and all that confusion and chaos. It’s like training for the actual thing. When the actual thing comes, their mind is present. They don’t react emotionally.
Can remain fixed on their objective. So we’re training in imagination. We can begin to re image our self image, re imagine who we could be. We can change conception about how we are going to relate with the world. It all begins in imagination.
You know, we cannot ordinarily conceive of ourselves and our way of relating to be any way very much different than as they are now because we don’t imagine them to be. We can’t imagine them to be any different. To some extent, like to make little cosmetic changes, you know, a little bit of lippy here. But we can’t imagine ourselves being any way different. Oh, I couldn’t be like that.
If you could ever imagine yourself being like that, you can’t be like that. Be like that. So the practice of taking and giving, we train in just that imagination as a means to make real an alternative way of who we might be and how we relate with the world. Try to change the way that we perceive of ourselves. A way of somebody who has completely opened their heart to others.
All that you need in order to do tonglen, okay, another word, tonglen. Tonglen is the Tibetan. Tong means to send, len means to take, taking. All that you need in order to do Tonglen, the practice of taking and giving, is to have experienced suffering and to have experienced happiness. Even if you’ve had one second of suffering in your life, you can do Tonglen. Even if you’ve had only one second of happiness, you can do Tonglen.
Those are the prerequisites. In other words, you are an ordinary human being with pain and pleasure. But just like everyone else, however, you were just like everyone else, you would take the good part and give away the bad part. Sometimes that makes a certain amount of sense. But this path, the path of a warrior, is more daring.
You are cultivating a fearless heart, a heart that doesn’t close down in any circumstance. It is totally open so that you can be touched by anything. We can open our hearts to the point that we could enter into the hell realm, the hungry ghost realm, the jealous God realm, the God realm, any place. We could be there with our hearts completely open and not afraid. That’s aspiration of the Bodhisattva.
When we formally take the Bodhisattva vow, we are given the Tonglen practice. That means that we really wish to be fearless enough to help others. We are aware that we ourselves have a lot of fear, but we aspire to our hearts wake up completely, to be like a Buddha in any realm that exists. If you start to think what it would be like in some of those realms, you should just thank your lucky stars as you’re not in them. But if you were, you could still be there with an open heart.
The essence of the practice is willingness to share pleasure and delight and the joy of life, on giving, and the willingness to feel your own pain and the pain of others upon taking. That’s the essence of it. So, like, practicing, imagining, I am a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is someone who has awakened their heart. That’s all that means.
It could be anyone. It could be a very ordinary individual, working at a very ordinary job. It could be some high official. It could be a holy saint in a cave in the Himalayas. It doesn’t matter who it is.
Just someone who has developed the altruistic aspiration to become a Buddha for the sake of others. You know, essentially someone who is tremendously loving and compassionate. That this is a priority in our life, benefiting others. You know, we have our hierarchy of priorities, don’t we? Now it’s benefiting ourselves to largest extent, for sure, no question.
But their priority is unlike the world where the priorities of the world. For them it’s benefiting others. This is the training in taking on that way of being, that mentality. With the bodhisattva, we open our hearts to others and we fearlessly and with great compassion take upon ourselves the suffering of others. We’re going to do this imaginatively, okay?
This you know, I’ve tried to emphasize, I don’t see it emphasized in the teachings, this is no self sacrifice. This is not, you know, the bodhisattvas are the happiest people around. As I keep emphasizing this quote by the Dalai Lama where he said, The purpose of life is to be happy, and the greatest degree of happiness is experienced in terms of love and compassion. You know, it’s a difficult lesson to learn. We have to really keep our eye on it our daily, actual everyday experience.
When are we the most miserable? You check up. When are we most happy, fulfilled? When is our life full of meaning? When do we feel of greatest use?
So it’s not self sacrifice. It’s being wisely selfish to develop love and compassion. It’s not something it’s not a self sacrifice, an ascetic practice that we’re giving we’re forgoing our own happiness. We aren’t. We’re trying to find where happiness really lies.
We’ve looked in the wrong place most all of our lives, and then we’ve never found what it is we were looking for. Maybe it’s over here in terms of love and compassion. The Bodhisattva knows that. He or she knows that his or her own happiness will automatically arise as a byproduct of being there for others. The more that I am, the more that I’ll be able to give.
The greater that giving, the greater my own happiness will be. You know, they have great reassurance in that. They actually that’s validated within our own experience. It’s validated within our own experience, but we keep overlooking or dismissing the lesson that life is continually bringing us. And all these teachings are simply there to help remind us to pay attention.
You know, our way hasn’t worked. In this great endeavor of finding happiness in our lives, you know, I’m sixty three. How far have I gotten in this struggle to fulfill the ends that I’ve been trying to gain this entire life of mine? I’m still struggling. And if I extend that to my death, which I don’t know when, I’ll still be struggling at the moment of my death.
It will never have come to any conclusion. It hasn’t gotten anywhere. Treading water. It just keeps me, you know. Maybe there’s an alternative.
So this practice, you know, with great delight giving away our own happiness. This is an imagination, okay? I’m not saying you should do this, in fact. First, we begin in imagination and taking the sufferings of others upon ourselves. Through this imaginative technique of taking and giving, transform aspects of our self, limiting self image.
Who we are now. I can do this. We can do this. You can be a bodhisattva. We all can be bodhisattva.
We can be so much more than we have ever hoped or imagined that we could be. And that we are begging for little crumbs from the table of life when we should be, you know, supping at this banquet. But we settle for much less. So we’re trying to change all that. Beginning to, you know, the self limiting, and transforming the self-limiting self image of our present self and the way that we relate to the world into that of the archetypal bodhisattva.
So, you know, who they are and the way that they relate to suffering and happiness of the world. You may be asking yourself, if you’re listening, you may be asking yourself, If I take in on the sufferings and pain of others, won’t I risk harming myself? This is a quotation by Sogyal Rinpoche, who wrote The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
You may be asking yourself, If I take in the sufferings and pain of others, won’t I risk harming myself? One thing you should know for certain is that the only thing that only thing that Tonglen could harm is the one thing that has been harming you the most: your own ego, your own self grasping, self-cherishing mind, which is the root of suffering. For if you practice Tonglen as much as possible, the self grasping mind will get weaker and weaker, and your true nature, compassion, will be given a chance to emerge more and more strongly. The practice of Tonglen is one that the mystic masters and saints of every tradition know. In living it and embodying it with the abandon and fervor of true wisdom and true compassion is what fills their lives. So we train in this actual imaginative process of taking and giving, with a great sense of joy, of delight, taking upon the suffering of others, compassionately taking upon the suffering of others, lovingly and giving our joy and happiness to others.
And we are beginning to actually embody this. And we won’t shut down in the face of difficulty, in the face of other problems, because we’ve been there. We’ve trained in this. It’s just like these soldiers when they actually go into battle, having trained in maneuvers, doing these practices. Then they can execute whatever their objectives might be, very effectively, efficiently. They don’t panic, they’re not confused.
Normally when we come to pain, difficulties, suffering situation, we shut down, we close our hearts, we go into defensive mode, we aren’t there. It’s even difficult to be there sometimes for loved ones. So we’re trying to to train in opening our hearts and the ability to leave them open in whatever life brings us, both the good and the bad, and be there for others, both the good and the bad. And it matters, both the good and the bad. Okay, so anyway, we’ll talk about this next week.
We’ll actually explain the training and practice. Not much time for Does anybody have a quick question or a comment or something I’d like to share? No. Okay. If you’d like to get a cup of tea and come back for just a general discussion.
You’re welcome. Otherwise, have a good evening. Okay? Thank you.