Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with a Michael Leunig prayer on “gentle revolution,” Ven Jampa Gendun uses this 107.5-minute session to examine what genuine change actually requires: not the accumulation of teachings or retreat credentials, but becoming a different person. He works through the two causes for going for refuge — constructive anxiety (the unease of repeating the same mistakes against one’s own better judgment) and faith as active courage to enter unfamiliar territory — then leads a guided tonglen meditation focused on a loved one’s future suffering, using visualised ferocious animals to destroy self-centredness at the heart. The second half reviews the will to awaken: Tsongkhapa’s verse on the preciousness and brevity of human life, the nine-point death contemplation, and the prospect of rebirth as grounds for redirecting priorities beyond this life’s preoccupations. Suited to practitioners already working through the Lamrim.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 3PA 2008 06 20.mp3
UUID: b4a806d6-0dcc-429a-9307-2625d816d914
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2008-2009 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2008-06-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 107.5 minutes
Words: ~10,955
How is everybody? Good. Good. Yeah. My book, actually.
Shall we wait? Or That’s okay. Oh, it’s a bit early, isn’t it? What what time do you have? It’s seven twenty.
Yeah. Seven twenty? Oh, goodness. Oh, goodness. I think most of you are familiar with Michael Leunig.
This is, I think, from his Book of Common Prayers. God help us to change, to change ourselves and change the world, to know the need for it, to deal with the pain of it, to feel the joy of it, to undertake the journey without understanding the destination, the art of general revolution. Amen. So this gentle revolution that we’re all involved in, it’s pretty radical in a way, I think, what we’re asking of ourselves and what Buddhism is asking of us. It’s It’s reestablishing our priorities, a shift in our priorities, where we see as ultimate meaning.
Religion is very much concerned with what is ultimately meaningful, what is bringing about some kind of ultimate transformation. And this involves perhaps looking at alternate refuges in our lives, the idea of going for refuge. And as we’ve gone through, a number of times we’ve talked about the fact that going for refuge isn’t particularly Eastern or Western, and it’s not particularly religious or Buddhist, we all go for refuge to something or other, or to someone or some idea. So it becomes important for us to stop and reflect, well, is my refuge actually working? Is it bringing about what it is that I want in my life?
Or in fact, I know what I want in my life? Have I ever stopped and questioned that? What is it that I value most? Not in terms of having or doing, but being. Who do I want to be ten years from now or twenty years to make sure, you know, that the overall direction of our life, where our particular refuge is taking us, it heading where we would like to go?
If you keep going in the same direction, you’re likely to end up where you’re headed. And is that where you want to hit? Is that where you want to go? So we talked about how it’s one thing just to talk in this way. I think it’s useful, it’s necessary, but we have to go a step further.
You know, well, how do I change my priorities if I see this isn’t taking me where I want to go? How do I go about shifting what it is that where I see my refuge? And, you know, we have to have some means and methods. We just it can’t be posing a question and then not giving us some answers. So we began to talk about it last week in terms of the two causes for going for refuge.
The first was constructive anxiety. It’s kind of a dressed up, sanitized phrase for usually it’s called fear. Yeah, but people find it more palatable if I say constructive anxiety. It’s bit of jargon, I think. But anyway, I think it’s meaningful.
It’s meaningful because it’s constructive. But there develops a sort of an undercurrent of anxiety, an uneasiness. You know, we keep making the same mistakes again and again and again, even against our better judgment, even against our will. We keep, you know, experiencing very much the same outcomes in our lives. You know, over the course of it all, and most of us are old enough that we can we have some life history to look back upon, life experiences.
Where has it all gotten us? How far have we gotten in this project called our life? And all the blood, sweat, and tears that we’ve expended has brought us what we’ve been looking for. It’s amazing, isn’t it? All the thinking, the planning, all the money, the efforts, all the hurt that we cause to others and ourselves in this struggle to find we’re not quite sure what.
So there’s this sense of constructive anxiety and unease that we don’t seem to be getting what it is that we really want. So this is one that’s constructive in the sense that it actually begins to cause us to open up to other possibilities, redefine our priorities, look for alternative refuges in our lives. And the second cause for going for refuge is faith. Without faith, we cannot positively wish. And the first step in conscious change is to consciously wish that things were other than the way they are, or than the way they appear to be headed.
It’s faith which overcomes our inability to genuinely wish that things were otherwise. To wish and deepens our capacity to do so. Without faith, we’re going to remain apathetic, we’re going to remain very much impotent. So, you know, the Tibetan word for prayer is mönlam. Mönlam.
Lam means path. Mun means wish, the path of wishing. For prayer to have any real meaning, it has to be accompanied with a care and a power of faith. Because of our faith, what is happening to us matters. We care about ourselves.
We have to care about ourselves. And what is happening makes a difference, and we’re determined empowered to wish it were otherwise. And normally when we’re confronted with the unusual, the unexpected, the unknown, we become afraid. You know, I’m sometimes staggered when I reflect upon how much fear runs our life, the average person’s life, my life, and I don’t think I’m so much different than the rest of us. But we aren’t even, to a large degree, aware of it.
Normally we cope with fear by withdrawing and narrowly circumscribing our lives so that we don’t come across the unfamiliar too often. You know, we consistently take the path of the familiar in order to avoid the uncomfortable feelings which fear arouses in us. You know, fear you know, in this way, fear keeps us on our habitual tracks as we go through life, you know. The unfamiliar is never explored. We remain forever stuck in much the same patterns of thinking and behaving.
So this is very much the compulsive repetitiveness of the characteristic of neurosis. You keep going through the same patterns. You’re not open to alternatives out of fear. Fear not only blinds us to the need for change, but it reinforces our resistance to it as well. Hi, Michelle.
So it’s through our faith that we have the courage and confidence necessary to abide with the uncomfortable feelings of fear. We extend ourselves, our self enters into new and unfamiliar territory, so to speak. Our self becomes a new and different self. We do things we are not accustomed to do, we change. The experience of change, of unaccustomed activity, of being on unfamiliar ground, of doing things differently is frightening.
It always was and always will be. People handle their fear of change in different ways, but the fear is inescapable if they are in fact, to change. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the making of action in spite of fear, the moving out against the resistance engendered by fear into the unknown, into the future. On some level, spiritual growth always requires courage and involves risks.
So, you know, should we close the door? Thank you. You know, demanding to know every detail of the outcome of change before we set out is just another strategy for doing nothing, And thereby, just another way that we can feel assured and be assured that nothing will change in our lives, everything will remain very much the same. We need faith. Basically we need faith enough to say, to care enough, to boldly declare enough’s enough.
I’ve had enough. Want such and such. I want it to be so. And to trust that on the other side of it being so, we will land on our feet, that our lives will be better lives, we’ll be better people. We have faith in this, in the salutary nature of growth itself.
We don’t know in a way, do we? You know, I’ve studied what a Buddha is for quite a number of years, but, you know, I’m not sure. You know, I have some models that I look to, like the Dalai Lama, and think, Well, I’d like to be like that. That looks pretty good to me. And maybe I could become like that one.
That looks pretty good to me. But all of the details of how this is going to work out, you know, I can’t be quite sure of. This poor Shmojampa becoming a Buddha, I have to have faith. You know, in trying to grow, we are trying to constantly direct ourselves along a systematic course of change. That’s, I think, I guess, one way we can describe what Buddhism is all about, a systematic course of change.
You know, we’re trying to change our thinking, our behaving, our stories. Essentially, we’re trying to change ourselves. You know, it would be a great mistake and this is, you know, it can get off the track quite easily. You can fall into spiritual materialism quite easily. To think that growth was merely the accumulation of more and more information or the acquiring of further and further credentials.
I did that course, I did that retreat, studied this, I studied that. You know, like becoming a Buddha was a spiritual equivalent of becoming an Encyclopaedia Britannica or something like that, getting a whole string of Ph. D. S. A Buddhist is just somebody who has got a lot of Ph.
D. S. Something like that. This is a verse from, by D. H.
Lawrence. I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections, and it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly that I am ill. I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self, and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time. Only time can help, and patience, and a certain repentance. Long, difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistakes, and the freeing of oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake.
You know, the endless repetition of the mistake, and a pattern of mistakes, is a call to change, not to accumulate or acquire, not to correct some part of ourselves, or even a section of ourselves, but who we are as a being. Growth is characterized above all else by change and change to the whole person. Our thinking, our behaving, our stories, they are our relationship to the world. Our world changes. This is what constitutes our lives.
So maybe I’d like to get across one point in this. You know, for example, in Buddhism we talk a great deal about the development of qualities such as love and compassion, Especially in Mahāyāna Buddhism, especially in Tibetan Buddhism, this is greatly emphasized again and again the importance of cultivating love and compassion in the development of these altruistic qualities. So, you know, they’re seen as an integral part of the spiritual path. You know, they are both a means, but also an end in themselves. You know, without love and compassion, there’s no real awakening.
But even in a secular humanistic point of view. Altruism is necessary if only to find some measure of meaning and purpose in our life, connectedness with others, the happiness of life. So when we talk about these qualities of love and compassion in just the ways that we normally do, we can begin to think of love and compassion as isolated factors, as independent functions of our mind that we can make effort in cultivating, like growing a particular variety of flowers in the garden of our mind. There is an unexamined assumption that somehow we stand apart from these mental flowers that we’re developing, that we can cultivate love and compassion and remain relatively the same person as we were before. You know, eventually we can take these beautiful blooms of love and compassion that we’ve been cultivating and we can decorate our inner world with them.
On special occasions, we can give them to special friends. We can bestow our love and compassion by choice on them. So, I guess, in other words, we harbor a mistaken notion that somehow we stand apart from inner change. But in fact, we aren’t these isolated egos cut off from the rest of our own minds, you know, from ourselves as persons, from our world that we live in. So So it’s not just that it’s part of our Buddhist training.
We are to intentionally cultivate love and compassion so that we and the emphasis is on the word acquire some additional quality of equality, but more that we become loving and compassionate people. You know, people who are aware of or sensitive to and concerned about the happiness of others. You know, people are where love and compassion permeate other areas of our thinking, our behaving, you know, they color various other qualities about ourselves. Love and compassion in a sense are living and operative even when they aren’t manifested in our mind. They pervade our entirety of our being, alter our perceptions, our experiences, our relationships to world.
They change ourselves and the world. Grow is to change. Who are to change who we are is to change our world. Both we and our world will be different than we were before. We won’t be able to go home again to the same world as we once knew it.
We will never, you know, we’ll never be able to go back to the same, to the old neighborhoods, to the same familiar streets that we’ve been down, to the places that we know so well, you know, what we’ve called home up to now. Our self identity, our values, our beliefs, what it is that makes us happy, what it is that makes us unhappy will, in as yet fully understood ways, will all change to some degree or another, in some way or another. What we are willing to invest our time in, our energies, our resources, relationships, our work, our interests, pursuits, everything that makes us who and what we are will naturally have changed in some fashion to some degree or other. They will be different because we are different. We do not stand apart from who and what we are because we are them.
We are the change. And I don’t know if I’m getting across the idea. We are the change. The point in emphasizing growth as change and its nature is that cultivating qualities such as love and compassion inevitably have a real world impact, if not on many, if not most of the areas of our life. And though we may not be able to foresee all the details of that impact, because of our faith in the salutary nature of love and compassion, we trust that our life is going to be a better life, our world is going to a better world for having cultivated them.
We don’t know how this love and compassion is going to be expressed, all the details, our evolving relationships, the type of work that we do and how we do it, what’s going to make us happy, what’s going we don’t don’t know all those details. We have trust and love and compassion. We go to refuge to love and compassion. We have faith in them that I’m going to be a better person living in a better world for having cultivated that. Otherwise you won’t change if you don’t have that confidence, that trust.
We have to create the inner ecology at the deeper level of our being which opens to the possibility of change. We have to have faith in all this. If we do not, whatever else that we may become, we will not become loving and compassionate people. You know, the words, the gestures, all these practices of love and compassion will all just float on the surface of our mind like oil and water. They won’t really become a part of who we are.
It’s through our faith that we create the nurturing, you know, this inner ecology of mind necessary for change to take place, that we’re actually open to change. We don’t want to change at a certain level of our being. It’s frightening. It always has and always will be. We don’t know the outcomes, so we require some faith to act in spite of our fear.
So courage is not the absence of fear. We act in spite of our fears. You know, it’s due to their faith that we’re willing to take a chance, forgo our fears and a deeper level of our being, give ourselves over to the processes and outcomes of cultivating love and compassion. Mean, just using love and compassion as an example, since they’re such an important part of the path, because they’re emphasized very much in the path. You know, we allow love and compassion to carry us where they will.
They’re in charge. They are not against us but for us. By the power of our faith and love and compassion, we are going refuge to love and compassion themselves. That this is nothing new, what we’re talking about, the ideal faith. It’s not a particularly religious matter.
You know, all of us are continually empowering people and things and symbols around us and ideals with inside of ourselves, such that they’re able to exert a tremendous influence over us. You know, like when you fall in love. Just if your lover smiles, this is a turning upward of the lips. You can send the lover into a palace of ecstasy. Ah, bliss.
It’s like turning downward of the lips. How do you feel like throwing yourself off the edge of a cliff? Tragedy. Or, you know, some people know, for some people, you know, like money runs many people’s lives. It has a tremendous power over their mind.
You know, some people, know, the old diggers, when they see the flag waving, you know, especially on Anzac Day, tears coming to their eyes, and that symbol, the emotional investment, what it represents for them, the meaning that they attribute to it. Even an idea, you know, some people work, dedicate their life to world peace. It’s an idea, but they want to see that idea translate into some kind of reality. So we empower people, things, symbols through the idea, through and ideas through the significance that we attribute to them. An investment of value in life energies is granted to that something which makes it extremely important to us.
You know, when this significance is positive, then we naturally tend to gravitate toward it. We make use of these objects. You know, there’s a thought, there’s a sense that by, you know, by we trust that by calling upon this person, making use of this object, believing in this idea, trusting in this idea, trusting in this symbol, that we will experience some kind of well-being. You know, they will contribute to the achievement of our goals. They are worthwhile goals in and of themselves.
So whether we are religious or not, whether we are aware of it or not, a great part of our life is led on the basis of faith. So there are many types of faith, you know, and each has ability to influence our mind in various degrees. You know, there’s blind faith, where, you know, faith lacking any supportive reasoning or evidence. There’s mistaken faith, you know, faith which is based upon mistaken reasoning or faulty evidence. So faiths such as these are continually being undermined by contradicting logic and our own personal experience.
And for most of us, types of faith only have passing and superficial influence over our mind. On the other hand, there are types of faith which are based upon valid inference, reasoning, logic, and our own personal experience, what we come to know for ourselves. Faiths such as these exert a profound influence, you know. And this is, they are very much the types of faith which emphasize foundation of our Buddhist practice. So the faith of Buddhism is centered around the heartfelt trust that the objects of our refuge have the power to protect us from the anxieties surrounding the continued reoccurrence of the dysfunctional patterns and the perpetual cycles of dissatisfaction in our lives.
There’s crediting crediting of the fundamental importance of our refuge to ourselves that gives us a substance. It endows our refuge with a reality for us, a reality which might not at present be obvious to ourselves or accessible to ourselves at present. But nonetheless, it plays a primary role in shaping our thinking and how we behave, and therefore the kind of life that we lead. So in practice, the faith of Buddhism is a courageous, trusting and an intelligent dedication to our own basic goodness and the basic goodness of life. That’s not always that obvious to ourselves, isn’t obvious to ourselves, isn’t it?
We we have these stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, and we believe them more than not. You know, and our life becomes a self defeating, self fulfilling prophecy more than that. But maybe there’s something much more to ourselves than we have ever been willing to admit about ourselves, acknowledge about ourselves, believe about ourselves, that within the shadow there’s also gold. And having some kind of faith in that, even though perhaps it’s not obvious, at least always to ourselves, nor always accessible to ourselves. And then life can be something completely contrary to what we’ve come to know to now.
We’ve had times when that was the case, and those times can be expanded upon. They can be lived they can be part of our way of being in this world. And, you know, there’s a goodness about ourselves and the goodness of life. And it involves this kind of ongoing commitment to working with the deeper causes of our problems and the goal of realizing our fullest potential. So, you know, instead of the Buddha, the Buddha said, In the beginning, they ask us only to be acknowledged and to make offerings of flowers and fruit.
But in the end, they demand our very flesh. Don’t worry. What this means is that ultimately our Buddhist faith asks us that we progressively give over more and more of ourselves, our life and our life energies, to that which we ourselves are the final transformation, ourselves as Buddhists. So, the consummation of Buddhist faith lies in a life consuming dedication to achieving complete, perfect Buddhahood, awakening for the sake of all sentient beings. Where where our treasure lies, there too will be our heart.
So what it is that what is it that you value most? I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
Through my practice of generosity and other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness in the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering in 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 the beginning of this time and rejoice in all the virtues of superiors and ordinary beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of Dharma from migrating beings. I dedicate all virtue, my own and that of others, to the Great awakening.
Would you like to stand up and stretch? And then we’re going to meditate together. So we’ve been in terms of our meditation last week, if you remember, we were meditating on taking and giving. And I like to acquaint you with that meditation and to continue with it. So last week we chose someone that you naturally care about, that you’re close to, that you love, and we worked with them in terms of their present suffering and bringing them present happiness.
And now we’re going to do the same, but we’ll work with in considering some future suffering and their future happiness. So again, it’s a matter of working through the three levels of compassion. Compassion is concerned with suffering and wishing to relieve that suffering. And so, to mind some possible future suffering that this person might have to undergo. Maybe the loss of a loved one, their health, youth, maybe the loss of their job, something that is in store for them in the future, expected or unexpected.
Doesn’t have to be perhaps so dramatic or traumatic. Could be maybe they have a dentist appointment next week. Maybe they have to go to the tax office to check that and have their income tax return audited. Anyway, some type of future suffering that you foresee for this person, and developing with regard to that the three levels of compassion. First, beginning with a simple caring.
It would be wonderful if you didn’t have to undergo this future suffering, whatever it might be. Would like that very much. And then try to strengthen that, intensify that level of compassion. May you not undergo this future suffering. Coming to some kind of conclusion what it is that you want for them in the future.
I wish you didn’t have to undergo that future suffering. And then finally, intensifying that and making some kind of resolve, I’m going to help you. I’m going to work with you in alleviating that future suffering. And then again, this is as we’ve done in the past, imagining that one’s own self centeredness, and this time in the aspect of a chunk of raw flesh at the center of your chest. So this piece, this chunk of raw meat, it represents your self centeredness, you know, everything that has caused you problems in your relationships, trusting, a great deal of fear that we feel, the feeling of insecurity, paranoia, all the difficulties, most of the difficulties in our life stem from our own self centeredness.
And for once, you know, we’ve gone along with it all our lives. We’ve bought into its story that somehow it was going to bring us the happiness that we wanted, but it hasn’t. It’s brought us the opposite, in fact, if we were to analyze it deeply. And that I’m going to use this loved one’s suffering. The one thing our self centeredness doesn’t want is suffering.
And moreover, it doesn’t even want to be involved with other suffering. I’m going to use your suffering to destroy my own self centeredness. I’m going to take your suffering and I’m going to place it upon my own self centeredness. And imagine that there’s this future suffering that they’re going to experience is transformed into all types of ferocious animals, like tigers and lions and jackals, carnivorous animals, meat eating animals. And they stream upward through your nostrils and down and they begin to tear to shreds this piece of meat of your self centeredness in your heart.
You know, really get uptight, really get, you know, get a bit angry. You know, you can this is a good place to use that energy way. Again and again, taking on their suffering in the form of these these ferocious animals, again and again, they they tear into and rip the shreds and devour the meat of this this chunk of meat of the self centeredness, your heart, until finally they’re not going to you know, this is purely an imagination. Developing these levels of emotional emotion with, you know, we’re practicing an imagination, working with this idea of an imagination that They no longer are going to experience this future suffering, but still they don’t have the future happiness, which is the counterpart to those past future, to those sufferings. Developing the three levels of love, again, beginning with a caring love, just a friendly thought, I wish you had a future counterpart of that previous future suffering that you had.
You know, maybe it was a useful body that didn’t deteriorate, your faculties didn’t degenerate, a peaceful death, whatever it might be, that you didn’t have to go to the dentist next week, that somehow your teeth were healed, whatever. I would like that. That would be wonderful. And then intensifying that level of love. May you not experience that future suffering.
May you have the future counterpart to that previous suffering. May you have that happiness. And intensifying that, I’m going to bring you, I’m going to take responsibility for bringing you that future happiness. And then again, remembering all the advantages of other cherishing. So, we can check this out in our own experience.
As mentioned, our faith should be based in sound reasoning and in terms of our own personal experience. See, check up, that most of our finest moments in life, those which are most meaningful, in fact joyful, probably involve a self forgetfulness when we were there in some way for another, in some significant manner, when we shared another’s life and brought them happiness, for example. And those are really fulfilling moments, joyful moments. They bring a great deal of meaning to our lives, purpose to our lives. In the barren landscape of our lives, they’re like oases which we can find, you know, we can come to and have our thirst quenched, we can find nourishment.
And, you know, so just going some advantages of other cherishing. I’m going to give it all away. I’m going to with all that I have, you know, and thinking about what it is that you value most my computer, for example, my possessions, my body, all my virtues, my merit transforming them all into this brilliant white light at your heart area and it rises up and goes out. And as it approaches them, it transforms into the positive counterpart of that future suffering, a beautiful, strong strong body, so that the sense faculties will never deteriorate, you know, a peaceful death. Whatever would make, you know, whatever was the positive counterpart to that future suffering, again and again, give them that.
And then now you’ve brought them future happiness and simply share in that future happiness, empathetically, you know, rejoice in their newfound future happiness. So this is somebody that you love. You want them to be happy in the future. Wouldn’t you like them to be happy in the future? And this is a training of the mind and imagination.
So it’s, you know, as I mentioned previously, it’s like military maneuvers of the mind. This is the, you know, that going through these exercises, just like soldiers do with their their blank guns and smoke grenades, all the noise and confusion about them, such that when they go into the real battle, they can they they can they remain they maintain some kind of composure. They don’t get confused. They know their purpose. They’re able to to follow through.
There’s some kind of tracks, some kind of ways of thinking have been ingrained in their mind, ways of acting. So, likewise, it has a purpose. It’s simply not childish fantasy. We’re laying down pathways of the mind in imagination. And these will find slowly begin to translate into some practical reality in subtle ways.
We can have maybe we can develop some kind of confidence and faith in that. And maybe you actually begin to change in these ways unbeknownst to yourself at first. Over time, something will be left behind and something new will have taken its place. It all begins in imagination. That’s the source of it all.
So if you want to take a comfortable firm posture, Begin with relaxation of the body. Starting at the crown of the head, the scalp, forehead. Feeling the wrinkles in your brow, smoothing out. The pressure in and around your eyes diminishing. Muscles of the face, softening, relaxing.
Your jaws relax. Bringing your awareness to the back of your neck, perhaps gently turning your head to each side a few times, and gently loosening, stretching the muscles of the back of the neck. Relaxing the muscles of the throat. Bringing your awareness to your upper back and shoulders. Perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times.
Raising them and allowing them to drop comfortably to the sides. Feeling this burden, this weight that we oftentimes carry around on our backs moving down and through your body into the ground. And bringing your awareness all the way down to your hands. Your hands are soft and loose. Your lower arms, and your upper arms.
Chest is at ease. Relaxing throughout the heart area, and the middle region of your back, Your stomach. Releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles, allowing your belly to go soft. Relaxing throughout your abdominal cavity. And keeping your back straight, your trunk erect, relax your lower back muscles.
We carry a great deal of tension there. Buttocks, and throughout your upper legs, your lower legs, Finally, your feet. Soft and loose. And bring your awareness to your body in general. Scanning your body, noticing any tightnesses, any tensions which remain in the body.
Any areas of discomfort. Discomfort. And focusing upon those areas and consciously relaxing, softening, feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen. If there’s some area of discomfort, don’t resist it, don’t struggle against it. It’s part of who you are at present.
Be kind to yourself. Just surround it with a caring acceptance. It’s okay if it’s there. Be gentle. Your body becoming comfortable, at that nothing that needs to be thought about.
It’s just time to be. Just be your body. Stay with your body. Nothing more than that. It’s enough.
Just be with your body. Then we’ll practice the six part breath exercise. Just breathing in comfortably, normally. Breathing out, extending the exhalation, completely emptying the lungs of air. Again, in comfortably, normally.
Again, extending the exhalation. And doing this six times individually. When you’ve completed the breath exercise, then bring your mind to the breath. Just the easy, gentle, in and out flow of the natural breath. If it’s helpful, the techniques of counting and noting the breath.
Bring your mind back to the breath. Now we’re going to meditate on taking and giving. Going to develop this practice with respect to someone that we love, that we feel very naturally close to, imagining that person there in front of ourselves. So if you can’t see them, it’s that secondary, the feeling are most important. These feelings are being directed toward this particular person.
Begin by imagining, foreseeing some future suffering that might be in store for this loved one. It might be something dramatic, their aging, deterioration of their sense faculties, a difficult death, loss of their job, loss of a loved one, perhaps less dramatic. Maybe they have an exam coming up. Maybe the dentist office next week. Some type of future suffering, and you don’t want them to suffer.
So we begin developing compassion first with a simple friendly thought. It’d be wonderful if you didn’t have to undergo this difficulty, this suffering. I would like that. Just a simple caring about someone you love, about something that’s going to happen to them in the future. It matters to you.
Now see if you can intensify that feeling. I wish wish you didn’t have to undergo this suffering. May you not have to undergo something a bit stronger. Just keep working with it. Try to evoke that level of compassion, that feeling.
Practice. I’m going try to intensify this even further, making come to some kind of resolution. I’m going to do something and commit myself, taking responsibility and working with you to alleviate that future suffering. It really matters to you and you’re going to do something about it. And the way I’m going to express my commitment to you in this present moment is by taking on myself that suffering, and I’m going to put it where it belongs, in my own self centeredness.
This self centeredness has done nothing but caused me trouble and suffering my entire life. And I’m going to use your suffering once and for all to destroy self centeredness is a chunk of raw meat at the center of your chest. I’m going to take on your future suffering, all of it. Imagine their future suffering transforming into all these various types of ferocious animals, tigers and lions and jackals streaming upward and downward and ripping the shreds, devouring the self centered piece of meat at your heart again and again, taking on their sufferings again and again, destroying your own self centeredness. Now they’re not going to undergo that future suffering, but still they don’t have the future happiness, the counterpart of that suffering.
It’d be wonderful if you had that happiness. I would like that very much. Your future happiness matters to me. I wish you had that future happiness. May you have it.
That’s what I want. I’m going to do something about it. Take responsibility for your future happiness. It’s important to me. I’m going to give it all away.
Everything that I feel like I want to hold on to. My possessions, my body, even my my positive merits, my actions. I’m gonna give it all to you because you’re important, because I love you. Transforming it all into a white light to heart, streaming upward and out, and as it approaches them, transforms into future happinesses for them. Again and again, give it away.
Again and again, make them happy in the future. Now they’re going to be happy in the future. Isn’t that wonderful? That’s something worth rejoicing in. Rejoicing in, sharing in your future happiness, delighting in your future happiness.
And bring your mind back to the breath. An easy relaxed manner, slowly become aware of your surroundings, taking your time. If you’d like to stand up and stretch, you’re welcome. So we’re trying to, at least, the plan is to do a quick review of what we’ve covered thus far. We’re working with the three principal aspects of the path, and so we’re doing a quick review.
We’re coming to the third, the three principal aspects of the path, the will to awaken, the awakened mind. So I thought it was useful to reacquaint ourselves with some of the aspects of these former two and the will to awaken and the awakened mind. In his text, last week we were talking about the will to awaken and it was more kind of an introduction, to come to some understanding that it is very much our present approach to the problem of ordinary existence. By that I mean the ridding of ourselves of suffering and the finding of happiness. The problem of ordinary human existence.
Part of our difficulty is that the very solutions that we are trying to implement to bring about the ends that we want become part of the problem itself. So maybe we have to develop a radically different approach to the way we’re going to and we all have we have an innate desire to be happy. And we have every right to to implement, to to find fulfillment. But it’s but it’s terribly important if in the pursuit of that happiness that we have an understanding of what real happiness is and the means to achieve it. In a way, we don’t have any choice around this if we’re able to find fulfillment.
So maybe we need a greater vision about what constitutes happiness and a greater understanding about what are, in fact, our problems are and what it means to be free of our problems. So Tsongkhapa says in his text, Freedoms and richnesses are hard to find, and life does not last long. Keeping this always in mind will alter the priorities you give to this life. So, now Tsongkhapa is beginning his teaching on how to develop the will to awaken. You know, will to awaken, again, it’s my jargon.
I think I like it. Anyway, it used to be translated as renunciation or sometimes it’s translated as the determination to be free, which is also a nice idea. It’s, you know, it it accords the Tibetan language, so as far as the translation, it’s okay. The will to awaken. In other words, we’ve got to get unstuck.
We’ve got to energize ourselves. We’ve got to open ourselves up to other possibilities possibilities and actually begin to explore them. And this requires some kind of determination. So as Tsongkhapa begins his explanation, his teaching on how to develop just such a determination, his will to bring about a different approach to the living of our life. First by discussing the window of opportunity that our precious human life affords us.
The way he says, freedoms and richnesses are hard to find. So, you know, we take our life for granted, don’t we? It’s quite unusual way to to even think. Okay. I’m a human being.
We’ve never really thought about. What does that mean? It seems as if we don’t have any option. Were it’s it’s what other possibility is there for ourselves? You know, there’s a there’s a connect there’s an intimate connection between fact and value on the one hand and their relationship to action.
You know, we have to recognize the fact that there are options open to ourselves and that we have the ability to to make choices to achieve those options. You you know, that we have a human life. If we and we have we can’t take it for granted. And we have to begin to value our human life so we don’t take it for granted. You know, we we may not have a million dollars.
We may not be, you know, commander in chief of a vast, of a big army or country or whatever. We may not be terribly beautiful, wonderfully talented, but we have all that we need to make a success of our life. We have all that we need to take the essence of our human life to be really happy. We have that. So very practically, what is stopping you?
Do you lack freedoms to practice, to transform your mind? And this is what Buddhism is all about, change. What is the reality of your situation? Is presented in a traditional manner. I try to translate it into ways that actually I can access access for myself and I try to share those with you.
It’s like, essentially, it’s like counting your blessings, isn’t it? So that you appreciate what you do have. We begin to pay attention to more how full the glass is rather than how empty it is. And it has meaning, it has purpose in that. You know, what could you do if you were a beggar on the streets of Calcutta?
And, you know, I lived in I lived in India for fifteen, sixteen years. I’ve seen, you know, where they, you know, from sunrise to sunset and passed. They’re trying to get enough money to get enough rice at the end of the day and maybe a few vegetables to feed themselves and probably their family. If they don’t get that, if they themselves or their family, they don’t eat that night. That’s the reality of many people’s lives.
What would you do if you were in that kind of position? You know, what know, what would we do if you were, you know, you know, living in again, if we’re fighting in Iraq, you know, afraid to go outside, afraid to send your children to school because they might not come home. There might be a roadside bomb going off. All that hate, all that bitterness. You know, what would you do if you were living in Darfur?
Your village is being burnt up. You run away, so they chase you wherever you go, raping and killing. If you were, you know, living in Ethiopia, starving, and your little baby has your breasts dying, there’s no milk, there’s nothing, what can you do in such a, you know, could you come here to Buddha House on a Monday night? You know, could you have time, do you have the mental space, the energy to meditate, to cultivate your mind, to practice, to study, to read, listen to teachings? It’s not possible, is it?
You know, what if you lived in a country where you were persecuted for any types of beliefs outside of, you know, the state sanctioned religion, could we meet together like this in Iran? I don’t know. Maybe if we kept quiet about it, I don’t know. Are you intellectually disabled? You know?
Are you addicted active actively addicted to drugs and alcohol? Does your family actively try to prevent you from doing what you’re doing to to pursue your religious studies and your spiritual path? Do you have any access from time to time to teachers and to teachings and to people who support you in what you’re trying to do. Your practice, who can share what your feelings are with, your ideas with. And this is we’re we’re free from all those limitations.
This is looking at our freedom this is looking at our situation from a negative point of view, what we’re free of. We’re we’re not in Darfur. We’re not in a war zone. We’re not starving. We’re not living under regime of persecution.
And then we’re talking about a large segment of the population and on our planet. But but over and above that, let’s look at it from the positive view. What do we have? These are called richnesses. You have a you’re a human being with an intelligent mind, and it may be a kind heart.
You have a relatively healthy body. That’s a hell of a lot as a working working basis for finding what you want. That’s a lot. But we don’t recognize it. We take it for granted.
We think there’s something more that we need. We’re all waiting. You know, you live in a free country. We can we can pursue all our interests. We can we can do almost any anything we want.
We can go anywhere we go, where we want you to go. We have all our material needs easily met. You know, we don’t have to work that hard to live to have a to live at a high standard of living. We have all this leisure time which it affords us. You You can, you know, you’ve met with some kind teachers who I’m not referring to myself so you know what they’re talking about, the teachings.
They’re available readily. There are many centers, and even in Adelaide, many avenues of pursuing your spiritual growth. Lots of possibilities. Look at what you have. Look at what is right about your life.
You know, we have all the complete freedoms to bring meaning and purpose to our lives, to learn, to practice, to transform our mind, to extract the essence of what it means to be a human being, to be happy and to be able to effectively work with others and helping them to do the same. We all have that. That’s the operational basis. That’s the working basis that we all have. And we need to be aware of that fact and value it so that we don’t it leads us to act and make use of it.
If we don’t value it, we won’t make use of it. You know, we we we have to appreciate how special our human life is and how useful and how rare and how how hard it is to obtain. If you don’t value it, you’ll take it for granted and you won’t make use of it because this life is not going to last long, Tsongkhapa says. This life does not last long. It’s not we’re not it’s know, if we were immortal, okay, take your time.
It’s okay. Relax. But we’re not, aren’t we? It’s necessary to think about death, you know, the closing we have this window of opportunity, which our human life affords us, but that window is going to close. So the significance of contemplating death is to begin to help us to appreciate our life while we still have it, and therefore we don’t waste our lives, that we stop postponing what we really want to do with our lives, that we don’t live a life of compromise, an imitation of life, some kind of substitute life.
We find out what we want, what we value, and we begin to get on with the practical means of achieving that end. That we don’t live the life of a a a coward, you know, someone who dies many times before their death. You know, the the the living death of banality, emptiness, hypocrisy, inauthenticity, pettiness, like an existential death before the body goes. Know, life becomes a series of hollow events, one after another, this is a poor imitation of life. So the purpose of mindfulness of death, and this is the Buddha said there are many mindfulnesses, aren’t there?
We always talk a lot about mindfulness, don’t we? It is death which is the most profound. So we don’t don’t waste our opportunity this present human life presents us with so that we don’t allow it to slip away through laziness, procrastination so that we keep our priorities clear for ourselves. You know, death has a way of cutting through a lot of bullshit, doesn’t it? When death brushes you, you begin to think of what is important for someone near to you.
I have to tell them I love them. I forgot about them, that they’re important to me. They might not be there again. That opportunity might be lost. So then we don’t die with regret about having lived other people’s lives and pleasing others and doing what we thought was expected of in some way.
The shoulds and ought tos. Finding out what you want as a very unique self actualizing individual and getting on with living that out as best we can, as best we can. Know? So in Buddhism, it Buddhism, makes use of, you know, okay, we talk about death, but how do we come to feel it? And again, it’s, we’re not just left with the question.
We need some answers. Buddhism makes use of what is called a nine-round death meditation, and we went through this. So this is a review, right? So I’m just going over some of these points very roughly. The word meditation means to familiarize.
This is like familiarizing ourselves with some of these points. There’s three main roots to the contemplation of death. That death is inevitable, the time of death is unpredictable, and at the time of our death, only the development of our mind will be of any use to ourselves. So each of these has three supporting reasons, bringing about three determinations. So for example, beginning with the first root, that death is definite.
I mean, it’s certain. It’s inevitable. Know, we can and we went through. You have to go through, you have to think about these things. All think we’re so special, that we’re unique, that maybe the universe is going to give me special dispensation.
I’m not going to die. I’m going to be the one that doesn’t die. Look at, you know, after the evolution of this planet, from life forms, from single celled creatures, you know, to multi celled organisms, you know, amphibians and reptiles mammals and up to ourselves as human. Over the course of, what, four and a half billion years on this planet, there hasn’t been one organism, one being, one person who has not died. What’s so special about me?
That I think the universe is going to single me out for special treatment? That’s stupid. It’s not. It’s not very pleasant to think about it, but it’s useful. Everybody must die.
First reason. Your lifespan is continually decreasing with no extension forthcoming. Our life’s going by. You know, we have this sense that death is some out there in some vague and distant future. Not soon.
Not tomorrow, that’s for sure. Not even next month. That’s okay. Sometime, way out there. And it was like, you know, we’re on this train.
You know, if you’ve ever been on an Indian train, you know, you know, they on a long train journey. You you’re sleeping, have your if you’re lucky, you have a berth, and it’s night, and you hear the chain chugging, chugging through the night, the wheels just rolling along. And, you know, even as you sleep, whether you’re happy or unhappy, whether you joke, whether it’s you’re having a good time or a bad time, the train is unrelentingly moving through the night toward destination. And when it gets there, you have to get off. You don’t have any choice.
And even as we sit here, the train, this journey that we’re on, this movement through this life, progressing moment by moment, minute by minute, we’re coming closer and closer. There’s definitely a point out there when we’re going to have to get off. It’s not a very pleasant thought to think about, but it’s there nonetheless. And this body, third reason, this body of composite of constantly changing causes and conditions. All the you know, this this the complexity of the body, all these systems, this it’s like a dance, a very intricate and delicate balance in act.
All these chemicals being released and receptors and the transmitters and the immune system operating to prevent interruption in this process. It doesn’t, you know, but it’s the coming together of a myriad of causes and conditions. But we have to understand that anything that arises from the coming together of causes and conditions is susceptible to decay when those causes and conditions disperse. That this dance will come to an end, this life will stop. It’s inevitable.
But we don’t know when. The time of death is unpredictable. The human life expect is uncertain. We don’t know. Fetuses die in the womb.
Babies die at birth. They die at the age of two, five, fourteen, fifteen, thirteen, seventeen, young people, twenty four, twenty nine, thirty six, middle age, forty one, forty seven, fifty three, fifty nine. We’ll stop Anyway, we don’t know. People die at every age. There’s no age that people don’t die at.
We think, oh, you know, you ask an insurance actuary. They’ll say, Oh, the average age is eighty, I think for males. No, it’s for females. Think it’s three years younger. The average age is three years shorter for men.
That’s That’s not a certainty. There has to be people who die before that. You might be the one of those. You don’t know, is the thing. There are many causes of death.
Accidents, sicknesses, even some things we can’t even see, viruses, germs. We can’t even see it. These little things like a bubble in your bloodstream. But then there’s earthquakes, storms, floods. But we feel pretty safe from all that.
But then there’s cancer, heart attacks. Anyway, there’s something. This human body is extremely fragile. It doesn’t take all that much. You know, soft skin that keeps this body together, our organs intact.
The fact that the time of her death, only the development of her mind will be of any benefit to ourselves. You know, we went through description of, you know, trying to imagine ourselves at the moment of our death. And then you have all those people who love you, sincerely want you to live, to go on live many healthy years, be happy. They really want that from the depths of the heart. You know, they’re holding on to your hand, digging their fingernails into your skin, trying to hold you back, hold death back.
And you have all your valuables, what you’ve spent your entire life gathering together. There’s my laptop computer, mobile, I don’t know what my car registration. Maybe you have I don’t have a house. You have your your deed to your house there. Don’t know.
It’s all there. All the good all the goodies that you you LCD, your television with the big screen. You can’t take one cassette with you when you die. And even your own body. You know, taking the best care it that you could, you kept it warm, comfortable, gave it nice clothes, washed it, put perfume on it, lotions, shaved it, gave it vitamins.
At the moment of our death, you know, subsequent to the moment of our death. It’s just be like a a slab of meat in a butcher’s window. No different. None of that can help. Neither those who love us nor the things that we’ve accumulated, even our own body, at the moment of our death, it’s all going to have to be left behind.
And we’re we’re we’re on a journey, and we have to have some provisions to see us through that journey. Only the development of our mind can we take with us, nothing else but that. In this way, we begin to gain some kind of perspective to help us to ensure that we make use of our life, and that we’re not allowed to go to waste. You know, death is, you know, live in a materialist society. We identify life with the body.
Therefore, with the demise of the body, we think of that I die. I am no more. You know, it’s like the fading, you know, the sense that we have, most of us have, is like the fading away of a rainbow. And when the conditions change, the rainbow vanishes and likewise we vanish. But that’s not, you know, that’s not necessarily the case, you know, that that death is not the ultimate end.
You know, if you if you you know, it’s perhaps for most of us, it’s a it’s a theory. And maybe, you know, having been raised in a materialist society, most of us believe that with the with the demise of the body that our life ends. You know, that follows from that. Maybe some of us have some experiences or some thoughts around the world, maybe that’s not the end. Maybe some of us who have studied, especially within the context of Buddhism, which holds that we will go on to take rebirth, that something does continue.
You know, then if we begin to take that seriously, then death is not simply the easy way out that we had always imagined it would be. You you just go to sleep and you don’t dream anymore. It’s over. That’s the implication. The easy release from dissatisfaction, sorrow, all the difficulties of our life.
We simply go out of existence like a candle flame being blown out. No more. So understanding this that perhaps we do go on, that something does go on might lead us to take the matter of human liberation more seriously. If we knew that we were going to end up in the same situation? At best it is the same, at worst it could be much worse than what we have now.
Would you like to go through the whole thing again and again? You know, like Groundhog Day, again and again and again. At best, there are a lot of worse places that we could be, even within the human realm as we describe a beggar in Calcutta, a starving mother in Ethiopia. But there a lot worse there are places which are even worse than that. But would you like to, you know, go through the whole process of your life again, just as it is now, if that were the case?
So if you have the sense that, you know, that something does go on. We want, you know, minimally, we should try to ensure that we create the causes to find a level of rebirth whereby we can carry on our practice, this evolutionary process, this journey that we’re all on, that we can go from life to life, moving higher and higher to the ultimate goal of Buddha. And then we’re all on this long cosmic journey, and we have to make provisions for the next steps, the next stages along the path. And that would make sense, minimally, to use our life in that way. So I think in this verse, Tsongkhapa is trying to, you know, we talked about priorities.
We’re trying to help us to change our priorities. You know, we have to begin to expand our perspective. We have to some extent take into account the prospect of future lives as well as present one. Some of our time, some of our energy, resources have to be directed toward recreating the causes that will now ensure our future well-being, you know, that we’ll be able to carry on our practice, uninterruptedly. Therefore, Keeping this always in mind will alter the priorities you give to this life.
And it does, doesn’t it? You don’t get so caught up, so lost in the story of this life. You get some kind of perspective. You know, I’m not saying by any means that, you know, what we are to renounce is the causes of suffering. When people talk about renunciation, we’re not talking about hair shirts or eating one grain of rice a day.
What we are to renounce is the causes of our suffering. We are to give up looking for the happiness in the wrong places. So I think we can have a good life. We can have a balanced life. Family and significant relationships with others.
A comfortable home, nice car. Accepting that not to get lost in that story. Some energy, some part of our our time, our space in our mind, in our lives has to be directed to something over and above that, in addition, in addition, then I think we can have our cake and eat it too. Can lead a balanced life. You know, we can think, we can have some degree of happiness now, at the same time, be ensuring that we are creating the necessary conditions whereby we can carry on in terms of our journey.
This life is but a way station on this long, vast cosmic journey we’re all on. So we can have the pleasures, we can have some of the goodies of this life, but at the same time keeping an eye on a greater meaning, a greater purpose. That’s part of our life. So we’re trying to change our priorities, develop the will to awaken. Anyway, I didn’t get very far tonight, but we’ll continue with this.
It’s supposed to be a summary, okay, with the will to awaken next week. Okay, so we can dedicate some of the positive energy that we’ve created together. May beings everywhere plagued by suffering of body and mind attain an ocean of happiness and joy by virtue of my merits. May no living creatures suffer, commit evil, or fall ill. May no one be afraid or belittled with a mind weighed down by depression.
May the blind see forms and deaf hear sounds. May those whose bodies are worn with toil be restored on finding repose. May the naked find clothing, the hungry find food. May the thirsty find water and delicious drink. May the poor find wealth, those weak with sorrow find joy.
May forlorn find hope, constant happiness and prosperity. May they be timely rains and bountiful harvest. May all the effective and wholesome prayers bear fruit. May all who are sick and ill quickly be freed from their illness. Whatever diseases there are in the world, may they never occur again.
May the frightened cease to be afraid and those bound be freed. May the powerless find power, and may people think of benefiting each other. For as long as space remains, for as long as sentient beings remain, until then may I too remain to dispel the miseries of the world. Through these skillful actions may quickly become an awakened spiritual master and lead each and every living being to that awakened realm. May the supreme jewel, the awakened heart that has not arisen, arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more.
In the land encircled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful Chenrezig Tenzin Gyatso, please remain If you like to get a cup of tea, we’ll have a discussion. And if not, have a good night. Okay? Thank you.