Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with a story about asking the Dalai Lama whether any decision can be guaranteed right — his answer: develop the best motivation, then accept mistakes — Ven Jampa Gendun frames this 121-minute review before the series turns to emptiness. He unpacks Dharma as transforming truth, illustrates realization through the image of removing tinted sunglasses, then leads a guided death meditation on the three reasons death is certain. A karma review covers four types of results and the four powers of purification, illustrated by a parable of a king who dies waiting for answers before treating his arrow wound. The session closes on the three types of suffering, using an open wound analogy and a walking-then-sitting example to show that ordinary pleasure is always temporary relief from pain. Suited to practitioners following the series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 17 3PA 2008 07 14.mp3
UUID: 81110011-6d0b-4d90-a8f0-396d00112bc7
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2008-2009 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2008-07-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 121.1 minutes
Words: ~13,409
How is everybody? Cold or anything. Can can you hear me okay? Yeah. Good.
So we have to take up the difficult task of working with these tough minds of ours. There’s a lot of inertia. So, you know, we have to adjust our motivation, which sometimes isn’t all that easy, is it? You can’t be bothered. Our intention, the reason behind and the purpose for what we do, what we do, seems like it’s quite important, terribly important.
Can’t always be sure of what we do is going to go well or we’re going to do everything right and we’re going to have the desired outcomes and so forth. I remember a number of years ago I was guess I was fortunate enough to have a few I’ve had a few audience with the Dalai Lama, you know, a cup of tea with the Dalai Lama. And this particular time I remember I was quite concerned, you know, with making these dramatic life decisions and so forth. How do you know what you’re going to decide is the right thing to do? I mean, there any way, is there any criteria that you can use?
Any means you can feel assured that you’re making the right decision? So I asked the Dalai Lama this and he said, There’s no way you can be sure. You know, we’re going to make mistakes probably no matter what we do. And he said, It’s okay to make mistakes. But there is one thing that you can do is try to develop the best possible motivation that you can in terms of the positive intention behind what you do.
And then it’s okay to make mistakes. Only have so much wisdom and so much personal power to bring about, to affect things in the way that we want them to come out. And we can’t foresee all the various circumstances and all the contingencies that are going to come into play. And that’s why people become Buddhists in order to be able to do that. So until that time, you know, we can just, we can try our best.
But we can try to have the best motivation behind what we do. So, you know, I think we have to begin where we’re at. It’d be nice to be somebody other than who I am at present, but that’s demanding the impossible. So, you know, we have to begin where we’re at and start from there. Not as we might like to be or we think we should be by now.
After all these years of practicing Dharma, I still have this garbage mind of mine. What are you going to do? You still have to work with it. Can’t avoid it. You can’t run away from it, you can’t pretend it’s not there.
So for most of us this involves a certain degree of, or a large degree probably, of self interest. It would have been nice to be altruistic and be other center and so forth. But maybe I’m projecting this on you guys, but I know for myself that’s probably not the case most of the time. So, you know, I begin with, okay, know, we’re working with all these really profound methods. You know, the Buddha was a great pointer outer.
Said, Take a look at this, you know, examine this, what do you think about that? Things that people normally don’t consider, they don’t bother to looking at and so forth, all the various subjects that we’re looking at. And I think this in itself is really a profound method. I think if we consistently do this, we’re kind of allowing the possibility for our own basic sanity to find expression, rather than allowing these compulsive patterns of habits simply to continue to play themselves out endlessly. But there’s a certain momentum coming from the past and so we have lots of habits.
I think what we’re investigating, these subjects we take up and we talk about them. And we try to, in some way, try to gain some understanding and some acquaintance with these new ideas. And I think we’re all doing pretty well. I have a suspicion on the great cosmic scope of things. We’re moving in the right direction.
I think, you know, for most, I think we can feel pretty good about our endeavors here together, the way we’re going. There’s change come about. Maybe not to the degree that we would like and sometimes it seems pretty slow, but I think maybe that’s just our impatience, our ambitiousness, spiritual materialism, our self critic dominating our thinking and our viewpoint. So we’re trying to become, find a little more peace in our life, a little more meaning in our life. And I think that’s well and good.
And I think that’s why we do what we do. We come here and we talk about these profound subjects that just aren’t mentioned in our society as a whole. Maybe we can also begin to think about one other person. We’re all in this together to some degree. Beginning to think, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could be of service, if I could develop the skills and whatever little wisdom I am developing, that discrimination, what personal power in which I am growing, however small it might be at present.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could somehow be of service to others? That would be a wonderful way to a contribution to the world about me. If we can begin with one other person, you know, somebody that you’d like to be there for in a more significant way. So, you know, what we do together, you know, this exploring exploring together, this growing together, learning together that we’re involved in, can maybe have some ripple effect, can be taken outside of this context. Somebody, a parent or a partner or a child, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could be there for you in some more significant way than I’ve been able to in the past?
A little more understanding, a little kinder, a little wiser, that’d be nice, wouldn’t it? In some way. You know, it would find, it would give what we’re doing so much more meaning, wouldn’t it? Something beyond our own egotistical ends, you know, that we normally bring to all our activities, which, you know, we have to admit is very much where we’re at. But if we can only if we can only step outside of that just a little bit, just to, you know, just maybe just to bring a smile to someone else’s face, face by what I learned here and what I come to understand.
Somebody that you love, you wish that they’d be happy and to be able to empower oneself and develop the skills to be able to do that. That would be a wonderful thing. That would be an enriching experience. My life would have meaning. It would it It would all be worthwhile.
You know, coming out in the cold and the rain on Monday night, I think that would be worth it just to be able to help you a little bit more, this one person. Know, whatever we get out of the evening, it would have been worthwhile because of the intention we bring to that. And we’re talking about what it is that we go for refuge to. This notion that refuge is not particularly Eastern, it’s not particularly Buddhist, we’re all going for refuge in one way or another our entire lives. And what it is that we see is going to help us to solve our problems, what is it that’s going to bring us the happiness that we all seek.
You know, we take as our paradigm, as our model. Something our, you know, it’s like our magnetic north that we keep orientating back to. The compass needle keeps coming back to again and again. We come back to Buddha, becoming the best possible person that I can become in terms of my wisdom, in terms of love and compassion and personal power, and how I express those in my everyday life. You know, this is important to me.
This is a priority in my life. You know, are we not getting so lost up in the dealings of our everyday life, you know, to keep some kind of balance, to keep creating some space, putting some energy and time in something which transcends all of that. You know, though it’s necessary, for sure. We have to take care of the practical necessities of life, but that’s not all there is to a good life, a successful life. There’s something more that needs to be added.
And that we have to do something to become that. We have to practice. We have to do the work. We call that the Dharma. The Sanskrit word, Dharma is a Sanskrit word.
It means to hold back. In Tibetan it’s chö. And chö has a meaning. It has its usual meaning of, for example, it simply means phenomena and so forth, that which is able to hold its own identity, its own characteristic. But it also has the meaning of transformation.
So that which has transforming power. So when we talk about the Dharma, we’re talking about something which is able to hold us back, hold us back from the pathologies of life, from the sicknesses of our life, from the sufferings of our life. And moreover, how does it go about doing it? By transforming our mind. It has that ability.
Know, The Dharma is whatever helps us to raise the level of our consciousness. Whatever helps us to bridge the gap between attachment and generosity, between hatred and love, between jealousy and rejoicing, between ignorance and wisdom. Whatever assists an individual to go from simply being an ordinary individual to becoming an extraordinary individual. That’s what we call Dharma. Know, it might the Dharma might take the form of a leaf floating down from a tree, giving us a teaching on impermanence.
Or it might be something as complicated as the eighty four thousand collections of the Buddhist teachings. And there’s a saying, at one time, one blade of grass can equal a sixteen foot high statue of the Buddha. At another time, a sixteen foot high golden statue of Buddha can be equal to a blade of grass. I don’t know what that means.
I just thought I’d tell you. No, I can guess. I’ve never had an explanation or commentary. But what I guess is Dharma is what is actually effective for ourselves changing our life. Sometimes it might be a sixteen foot golden statue of Buddha, sometimes it might be a blade of grass.
Sometimes we can have tremendously elaborate teachings and they mean almost nothing to ourselves. Other times the word here and there can change your life. Dharma is what works for each of ourselves, regardless of its outward forms and expressions. So, you know, conventionally the Dharma appears as the teachings, all the various practices, the meditative techniques by means of which we actualize Buddha. But in a real sense, and I think it’s hard to hold this in mind and fathom what it might mean, is that the Dharma is the truth of things.
The reality that lies beyond the set of fictions which we’re continually projecting on everything and everyone continually. What this fiction that our mind is continuing one way or another, inventing. It’s like a Buddha’s world. It’s like this is the reality that a Buddha is trying to communicate to us. You know, there’s a beautiful verse in which it says that the Buddhas do not wash away sins with water, nor do they remove suffering with their hand, nor do they transfer their realizations to the minds of others.
But it’s by the showing of the truth that all will be made free. Buddhist truth is his Dharma. It’s a therapeutic truth. There’s a Greek word, which has its root der, which is related to the word Dharma. There’s some correlations between many of the Greek and Sanskrit terms.
And there’s a relationship between the Greek word from which we get the word therapy, and the Sanskrit term, Dharma. The Buddhist Dharma is Buddhist therapy. The Buddhist Dharma is the truth of things. The way things are in their own actuality. So it’s this truth, the truth of things, the way things actually are that we’re trying to get at, that we’re trying to come to.
This is what’s going to make us free. You know, this is what you know, what we, you know, go for refuge to. The way things are, what we’re trying to, you know, the idea of, you know, this idea of realization. Sometimes it sounds like some exotic or abstraction that, you know, some fantastic knowledge or a philosophic system that we have to learn and build up. The idea of realization is like, and I probably mentioned this a number of times before, it’s like if you’re wearing sunglasses you see a snow mountain and you see it as green, you know, because you’re looking at it through the lenses of your sunglasses.
The realization is that taking off the sunglasses and seeing the object for what it really is, in this case, it’s white, and thereby relating to it in a more appropriate, skillful, more productive manner. And in terms of what it’s able to, you know, there’s certain dishonesty in demanding that the world be other than the way it is. In a way we don’t have any choice if we’re ever going to find peace other than coming to know the world for what it is and harmonizing our world view in accordance with that reality. I mean that’s very much what we’re trying to do. So that realization is simply taking off the overlay which we’re continually projecting on the world about us.
So that’s the dharma. Dharma. The jewel of dharma is we have to become a student of the truth. We ourselves become a living embodiment of that truth. Our lives become truthful.
Ultimately, the dharma is not something outside of ourselves. It is each of us who are the living embodiment of that Dharma, our own realizations, our own self sustaining solutions that we generate in our own mind. This is our actual refuge. You know, the Buddha is the shore of refuge. The Dharma is the actual refuge, ourselves as our own actual refuge, as the embodiment of the truth.
Oh, that’s not too abstract. And I guess, you know, what this means for me is that somehow in my life I always wanted to be authentic. I always wanted to be honest. And when you question that, I think most of us do in some way. We want to be real, don’t we?
And in order to that, we have to go beyond fear. We have to go beyond all our afflictions, which makes unreal, inhibits expressions of our own truth as we know it, as best we know it. And I think that’s what the only authentic person is a Buddha. They’re real. They are just who they are.
They just, you know, expression. They are the expression of the Dharma. They’re truth. So this possibility becomes our inner focus of our life. And we actually have to do something, we have to cultivate the truth, that we can find that truth in our everyday life, looking about us, if we’re sensitive to it, if we’re aware, if we investigate.
And this occurs within the social context of a spiritual community, people like ourselves in creating this culture where we can find expression of our inner truths. We get a little bit closer to the Buddha that we want to become. And trying to raise and continue the level of our motivation, the reason behind and purpose for what we’re doing. Just that one other person. And open your heart just a little bit of that little crack and trying to leave it open as much as possible in whatever vicissitudes we experience in the course of our everyday life.
So we don’t shut down, we don’t numb out, we don’t close our hearts. And we keep having to remind ourselves to 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.
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 in the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from the joy that is without sorrow.
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for some and aversion toward others. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, and mind. I present clouds of every type of offering, those actually arranged and imagined. I disclose all my negative actions accumulated during beginningless time and rejoice in 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. So we’re going to meditate. If you’d like to stand up and stretch before we do it, you’re welcome. You know, we’re talking about the last few, you know, we’re going over a summary, a very brief summary of some of the first of the two principal aspects of the path, the will to awaken and the awakened heart, before we actually begin the third principal aspect of the path — we go off into the cosmic void of emptiness. And we looked at the fact, talked about death.
You know, I just talked about being authentic and the fear most of us live with and why it is that we are afraid to be quite the person that we would like to be and so forth. Think contemplation of death might help in that way a great deal. Idea that death cuts through a lot of bullshit, doesn’t it? When you think you’re going to die, you don’t particularly care what other I guess for the part, that’s not completely true. You know, you you stop living for other people.
You stop living according to the rules of other people, the imposed the impositions of who I should be or what I, you know, what I pretend I want to appear to be for others. It makes you a little more real, I think. The significance of contemplating death is to begin to appreciate our life while we still have it, so we don’t waste our lives, so we stop postponing what it is that we really want to do with our lives, so we don’t live a kind of compromised life. And I guess we have to compromise in some form or another, don’t we?
In some to some degree, in some way. And maybe that’s the nature of our our human condition. I don’t know. But it’s, you know, it’s the degree of compromise. And do you compromise your deeply held values?
Then maybe looking at that. To ensure that we are not one of those cowards who dies many times before their death. You know, the the the existential death. You know, the body is still moving, but the light’s gone out of it in one way or another. The, you know, a life of impotence and hypocrisy and inauthenticity, know, kind of a life.
It just becomes a series of hollow events. Anyway so we, you know, we we to ensure that we we take advantage of this opportunity, however it is that you want to take advantage of it. This precious, you know, this crazy wild life that we’re trying to get through and, you know, struggling through and wrestling with trying to make the best of it, whatever tools that we’ve developed over the course of our life. Know, helping helping us to keep our priorities clear, if you have priorities, if you’ve ever really thought about it. I might have more to say about that next week.
I’m going to do a Friday and Saturday I’m going to do a course. It’s called ACT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. And commitment part is a type of therapy. And the commitment part of the therapy is helping people to clarify their values, what is important for ourselves. You make a commitment to that, work out strategies of how you’re going to enact that in your everyday life, both in terms of short term goals and long term strategies.
Anyway, I’ll probably bore you with that next Monday night. It will work its way into my talk some way or another, I’m sure. Anyway, clarifying our priorities. What is really important for us? So they’re clear, you know, otherwise, is default pattern?
What is the momentum of the past in terms of our habitual ways, our unconscious choices that we are making? Most more than not, they are in terms of what we call traditionally the eight worldly concerns, aren’t they? Our preoccupation with the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, gain and loss, praise and criticism, fame and notoriety. These are the rules on how to be a model prisoner in Samsāra. If above all your life is pre occupied with the pursuit of pleasure and you avoid pain at any cost, you won’t grow.
You won’t go anywhere. You just keep circling back in the same stuff. The material will never change. So we’re going to meditate on death, in other words. And we’re going to begin with this certainty.
You know, nine-point death meditation, there are three roots: that death is certain, the inevitability, the unpredictability of the time of our death, and at the time of our death what will be of any importance. There’s only in terms of the development of our own mind. So we’re going to look at, we’re going to meditate and contemplate this factor, this first root that death is inevitable. And we’re going to use three reasons. The first is that everybody has to die.
Yes, Jampa, you’re going to die. It’s hard to feel that. It’s hard to, like, floating on oil, floating on water. It’s hard to touch the button which is holding at some deep place in my psyche. Jampa, you’re always going to be here.
You’re immortal. You know that, don’t you? You can never go out of existence. I wouldn’t allow that to happen. Not to you.
As his voice keeps telling me it’s going to be okay. Anyway, we have everyone got, you know, the kings, presidents, philosophers, writers, saints, criminals, whoever it might be, matter how wealthy, no matter how powerful, no matter how skilled, sincere, no matter how inconspicuous we try to make ourselves, death is going to find us. That’s for sure. You know, overall, from beginning this evolution of life on this planet, which started about maybe four and a half billion years ago, all of the organic molecules bonding together and forming single celled organisms and then forming multi celled organisms and amphibians and fish and amphibians and crawling onto land and mammals and the human beings which began perhaps what, five million years ago, know, all those living creatures which had just this planet over the course of four and a half billion years. I mean we’re talking about billions and trillions of living beings and they all lived and they all died.
And what’s so special about you, Jampa, that you think that the universe is going to single you out for special treatment? Why do you think you’re so special? Every one of us thinks we’re special. We’re unique in that way. So maybe we have to overcome that.
You know, this is like taking the sunglasses, the fictional, and seeing the reality. That’s a realization. And then the second reason is that our lifespan is continually decreasing and there’s not going to be any more coming. You know, I don’t know. Maybe if we cry enough, maybe we’ll get more.
Maybe the Lord of Death will have pity on us. I don’t know. If we’re really sincere and we feel bad enough, we say, Please. You know, like to go on this journey. I talk about this train, you know, traveling.
Even, you know, There is this one Canadian Lama who does meditation retreats on courses on ships. You dock at one port and everybody gets on while the ship is sailing to the next port. They have this meditation course. And then you get to the port and you get a get off. And, you know, even though we’re not rocking back and forth, know, we’re doing this having this sitting around, discussing the Dharma as we are.
We’ve but even as you know, this we feel pretty stable here, but it’s metaphorically this we’re we’re nonetheless we’re all moving not through space, but through time. And when that time, as we reach a certain time, we’re going to reach the port of the terminus of this life. And we can’t stay on board. We have to get off. We don’t have any choice.
There’s no more stops left. No matter what we might do, how, you know, whether we’re enjoying ourselves, whether we’re happy or sad, whether it was a smooth journey or, you you got seasick along the way, you still gotta you still have to get off. There’s no choice. And then finally, the third reason is that this body, which is a composite of causes and conditions, changes from moment to moment. And we don’t see it.
We we can we it’s so difficult for us to recognize gross impermanence, let alone the more subtle level than impermanence. It’s like this there is this huge dance of inner workings of the body, molecules of all these various hormones and transmitters and compounds are being released and all these systems working together in the organs. Eventually, there will be introduced in this process some mutation, some interruption in this process, even at a very subtle level. And it begins that interruption to the process begins to magnify and systems begin to disorder and they begin to break down and they don’t quite work as properly as they once were. And finally the system begins to shut down altogether.
It begins to dissipate and decompose decompose and our life can become and it comes to an end. Our body returns to its elements. That’s where it came from. So we’re going to look at all that. Death is definite.
So take in a comfortable, firm posture. So a dignified, stable posture. Beginning with relaxing the body, starting at the crown of the head, the scalp, feeling the wrinkles in your in your brow, your forehead, smooth it out. The pressure in and around the eyes diminishing. The muscles of the face soften, relaxing.
And jaws relax. Bring your awareness to the back of your neck, perhaps gently turning your head to each side a few times. Just gently stretching muscles, loosen the muscles of the back of the neck. Relaxing the muscles of the throat. Bringing your awareness to the upper back and shoulders, rotating your shoulders a few times and lifting them and allowing them to drop comfortably to the sides.
Feeling this work, burden, this weight that we we carry around on our backs moving down and through your body into the ground. Some weight’s been lifted your shoulders, off your back. And bring your awareness all the way down to your hands. Hands are soft and loose. Relaxing your chest is at ease.
Relaxing throughout the heart area. And the lungs, the central region of the back, the stomach, releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles, just allowing your belly to go soft. Relaxing throughout the abdominal cavity. And keeping your your back straight, your trunk erect, relax your lower back muscles. Your buttocks.
Upper legs and thighs. And lower legs. Finding your feet soft and loose. Bringing your awareness to your body in general. Just briefly scanning your body, noticing any tightnesses, any tensions which remain in the body, any areas of discomfort.
And focusing particularly on those areas and consciously relaxing, softening, feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen. Tightness loosen. If there’s some discomfort, don’t resist and struggle against it. Be kind to yourself, just surround it with a caring acceptance. It’s part of who you presently are.
Allow it to be. Your body becoming comfortable, at ease. Feel ing of physical well-being pervading every part of your body. Feels good to be in your body. Nothing to do.
No place to go. Nothing to think about. Give yourself a break. Give yourself a chance just to be. That’s enough.
Be your body. Stay with your body. And then bring your mind to the breath. Easy, gentle, in and out. Follow the natural breath.
Bring your mind back to the breath. Now we’re going to meditate on inevitability of death. We’re going to use three reasons. The first of these three reasons is that everyone must die. So we can go through all the possible examples of humans and non humans which have ever existed that we know of or we can imagine.
They all lived. They did what they did. And they all died inevitably. Is there something special about myself that this shouldn’t happen to me? What’s so special about me?
Then the second reason is that our lifespan is continually decreasing and there’s going to be no addition forthcoming. There is a time, there is a point out there that we’re moving toward, the moment of our death. Continually, relentlessly moving toward that point, that time. And when it comes, that’s it. It’s over.
And then the third reason, the body is a composite of constantly changing causes and conditions. This intricate web subtle, almost infinite causes and conditions which have come together forming my body. And they’re going constant change. And eventually, those causes will exhaust themselves. The elements of my body will disperse, and I will be no more.
So we’re going to put one more question to ourselves. Since death is inevitable, inevitable, what should I do? What am I going to do with this life that inevitably is going to come to an end? What should I do? So don’t try to answer it.
Just live the question. Just open yourself to that question. This life is inevitably going to come to an end. What should I do? And bring your mind back to the breath.
And then get in touch with your body. Perhaps the sensation of your buttocks on the cushion, the chair, your feet on the floor. Some sensation. Become aware of your body. And in easy and relaxed manner, just slowly become aware of your surroundings.
So if you’d to stand up and stretch, you’re welcome. So we’re going through this brief review of first two, the three principal aspects of the path. So last week we began discussion of karma. You know, our actions as causes and the experiential results of those actions. karma describes a mechanism whereby the intention of the individual brings about, leads to bodily and verbal actions, which leaves some kind of residue upon the consciousness that conditions the consciousness.
Let us say, karmic seeds are implanted. And when activated, when they come in, you know, meet with particular conditions, just like a flower seed coming in contact with water and soil and so forth, there is an experiential result that the agent of that action undergoes some type of experience. And that experience can be positive or negative, corresponding to the quality of the action itself, the intention behind the action. We talked about all the various, you know, the four certainties of karma. You know, we talk about karma from a general point of view in particular, specific types of karma.
And the certainty of karma that there’s a correlation between the quality of the action and the quality of the result in terms of positive and negative and so forth. There is a magnification of karma that even from insignificant, minor karma, highly increased results can occur. If we don’t perform an action, we won’t experience its results, which is not particularly rocket science, but it’s useful to think about if you want to undergo a particular experience, if you want to have a particular result, then you have to create the causes. We can’t wait for God to intervene in the process or chance. We actually have to do something to help ourselves.
And then finally, and we’re going talk more about this later, the fourth general principle is that actions that are done, they don’t dissipate. They’re not lost or they’re not wasted. They move from one rebirth to another, know, some of them fall through the cracks or something like that. When, unless they’re acted upon by a countervailing agent, then upon meeting with the proper circumstances, no matter how great a time has elapsed between the time of committing the action, an appropriate result will be experienced. So that’s in terms of general principles.
And then we talked about, we can talk about, well, what kind of experiences are we going to undergo. Mean, we’re talking about which Buddhism is trying to explain why it is we experience what we experience. It’s empowering in the sense that we, according to the Buddhist explanation, we have, we are to a lesser or greater degree in control of what we experience. It is not haphazard. It is not chaotic.
It is not by the intervention of a supreme being. We are the agents of our actions and therefore the creators of the result. We are responsible. So in that way it’s empowering. We can create the kind of experience that we want for ourselves if we’re skillful enough and we are determined enough.
So what kinds of experience do these types of actions create? There are said to be the consequences of our karma. There are four overall types of results of our karma. The first one is called the Fruition result, sometimes termed ripening result. So this is the main result, the overall realm that we experience.
We all are experiencing the human realm. That’s our fruition result. Went from the lowest hells to the highest realms of cyclic existence, the God realms. These are all fruition results. So this is a particular type of experience, a result of our karma.
Result corresponding to the action in terms of experience. This is simply the formulation as you sow, so shall you reap. We experience a result that corresponds to our past action. So this characteristic of karma points out that our specific experiences, you know, whether it’s wealth or whether it’s poverty, whether it’s beauty or whether we’re ugly or whether we have a short life or we have a long life, whether we have lots of loving friends, whether we have lots of hateful enemies, is all the results of the particular actions that we’ve created in the past. A result corresponding to the action in terms of experience.
For example, experientially the action of generosity will bring wealth. Things will come to us quite readily. We won’t have to expend a great deal of effort. We won’t have a great deal of obstacles. On the other hand, selfishness, miserliness results in poverty.
Even if you have the opportunity, there are obstacles. And even if you make the effort, things don’t quite turn out the way you want them in terms of gaining what it is in terms of monetary wealth and possessions and so forth. Patience results in beauty. The opposite, that is anger and hatefulness. Impatience results in ugliness.
Don’t know, Khensur Rinpoche once said, said, This is easy to understand. Have you ever seen somebody, their face on somebody when they’re really angry? It’s not very pretty. And you get a result which corresponds to that. Know, saving life, you yourself will have a longer life.
Taking life, you yourself will have a shorter life. So there’s a correspondence in terms of our experience with regard to the types of actions that we do. The third, this resultant experience of karma is result corresponding to the action in terms of behavior. And this is an important one, in a way it’s kind of obvious in a way that we are predisposed predisposed to repeat the same types of behavior. Having done the action once facilitates its doing again.
The more you do something, the easier it is, the less resistant, the more the greater the tendency to repeat that same action. It’s called facilitation. The more you get angry, the more you get angry. The more you love, the more you love. It becomes like, you know, the first time it’s difficult to love.
Second time it’s not quite as difficult. Third time it isn’t quite as difficult as it was the second. It becomes easier and easier. You become predisposed. You develop a habit.
Anyway, we’re talking about habits. You enjoy killing, you will have a tendency, and you see this in children sometimes, to take life, you know, they enjoy torturing ants or something like that. Or you grow up and you become a butcher or you enjoy the military, you know, somewhere you can in enact this predisposition, you have a tendency in this way. It’s not to say that it’s not predestined, it’s just there’s a predisposition. And if the conditions are right, expression.
You’ll join the army and you’ll go off to Iraq or something like that or whatever, I don’t know. And then finally, the environmental result. So these are the types of results which are not within continuum of the person. They’re in terms of our surroundings. Like your environment, whatever possessions you have, your resources that are at your disposal, the things that you have.
The environmental result of killing is that there is food and drink and medicines, they’re not very effective. The food’s not very nutritious. Sometimes the medicines that prolong life, they don’t work for you. So that would be, so these resources that you have, these possessions, these things about you, you’d be born in a barren place where life forms have difficulty surviving. So that type of environment, those types of resources, possessions and things would be the environmental result of having killed in the past.
When we went through these four general principles of karma, we said that the fourth one was that actions once created do not dissipate. They’re not lost. They just don’t go away by themselves. So this is meaningful. It has some implications.
One of them is that there was a qualification that we made in terms of these general principles. And let’s act upon by countervailing force. Countervailing force, that’s a fancy word. By that I simply mean something that’s going destroy it. In the case of positive karma that we’ve created, things like anger is said to destroy our positive actions that we’ve created.
You know, this is one of the disadvantages of anger and hate is that it destroys the karmic, positive karmic seeds that we’ve created. Another is regret. Know, we’ve all, if you regret a positive action, that will weaken its force. You you cleaned out your garage, gave that old lawn mower to the salvos and next week you go to mow your grass and the new lawn mower that you bought isn’t working. And he said, did I ever give that old lawn mower away?
That was stupid. And you develop regret about what was in fact a generous action. You develop regret. And so that would weaken the positive potency of that past positive action. But then, so that’s But also, on the other hand, is that we all have negative actions, negative karma seeds within our mind at present.
And these will remain. They aren’t going to go away unless and when they meet with the appropriate activating condition, then we will undergo an undesirable experience, something we don’t want. It will be negative. We don’t want that. But we can make use of this effect that unless it comes in contact with a countervailing force, unless it’s destroyed.
That is to say we can actually, what is termed purify, or we can remove or we can damage these negative karmic potencies within our mind, these karmic seeds within our mind. And this we talked about applying the four powers. So it is said that by thorough application of these four powers again and again there is no negative karma which cannot be completely destroyed, purified, such that you will never, you will not have to experience any result. And they shouldn’t give you license to just do whatever you like. You know, I’ll do this now and then I’ll regret it.
I’ll apply the Four Powers later. Then you’d have to call in and question your sincerity in applying these Four Powers. Anyway, we can talk more about that. But So there is something we can do. You know, is not predestination.
It was our very minds which created the action and it is our minds which will experience the result of that action and moreover, it is our minds which can intervene in this process before there is this result and experience within our mind. We can intervene by applying these four powers. The first of these four powers is the power of repudiation. And you probably aren’t familiar with that term. Sometimes it’s termed the power of regret.
Repudiation is, I think, the actual what the Tibetan word actually is getting at. It’s like you bring the mind some negative action that you create and you say, Wow, I don’t want anything to do with that. You cease identifying with that type of action. In other words, you do develop a sense of regret. I made a mistake.
Again, this is a complicated practice, isn’t it? How are we to do this without causing more harm to ourselves, giving ourselves a hard time, which we probably more than not do in an unhealthy way? You know, we’re not calling ourselves into question as a worthwhile person. We made a mistake. We had one and one made three.
You know, I was so angry. I was so jealous. I just had to have it. Lost it there for a moment. I wish I had done it, but I did.
Okay? You know, we just like how we relate with others. Might not approve of their behavior, but it’s not the person that we’re calling into question. It’s not ourselves as a person, but that particular behavior. We can, I think in a very healthy way, a constructive way, we can call into question what we did and up a genuine wish?
I wish I hadn’t done that. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t have done it. I regret having done that. So that quality. This is the most important of the four powers.
If there’s no sincere regret, then there’s no purification or little, if any. This is why I say, you know, you just can’t think, well, you know, I’ll just go ahead and do this and later on I’ll regret it. You’d have to call question whether your sincerity regret. You probably really don’t regret it. You don’t want to experience the suffering results of it.
Okay, the power of repudiation, developing sincere regret, the power of reliance. So this has the idea that there are two, in general, big generality here, there are two objects toward whom we can create a negative action. One is said to be the Three Jewels and the other is sentient beings. And when we say committing a negative against the Three Jewels, it simply means that if you’ve taken a vow or if you’ve made some kind of commitment, a formal commitment of some sort, and you act in contradiction to that vow or that commitment. vows and commitments can be quite useful for ourselves.
They can act for supports of our mind. Sometimes, I don’t know for you, but I know in my case, sometimes I’m not thinking all that clearly. Sometimes I get a little bit overwhelmed by some of my delusions and I don’t exercise the kind of wisdom and good judgment that I might like to. Maybe this is only my case, maybe you don’t experience this. But if we have taken a vow, you know, you know, Say, you know, what?
Not to steal, you know, nobody’s looking. Why can’t you use that? If you have a valve, it’s it’s something it’s almost like there’s some kind of almost physical form that they kinda you gotta reach for it. Or if you’ve taken a vow not to kill, and there’s a mosquito, and there’s something that kind of holds your hands from coming quite together. You’ve committed yourself.
You made a promise. And if that promise has any meaning for you, it will help you to not perhaps be overwhelmed or indulge in these past habits. It can help interrupt the momentum. Remember when we talked about one of the results of karma was a result corresponding to the action in terms of behavior? This will help.
Making a vow, a commitment will help to interrupt that habitual unconscious playing out of these patterns. It actually has some it has that ability. Mean, it’s really if it’s meaningful for yourself, if you’re really sincere about it, there there there it does it affects the mind in a very positive way to interrupt these. You know, most of our our behavior unconscious compulsion coming from there. And here and by taking the value, you become more aware of what it is you’re doing, of your actions.
And and you begin to make conscious choices more conscious. And there’s an interruption in this unconscious compulsive quality. This is the basis of neurosis. We’re not aware of what we’re doing. It’s just a playing out of these patterns.
So the power of reliance, contradicted a vow or commitment that you’ve created. And you’ve created these with respect to the Three Jewels of Buddhadharma and Sangha. So in the way that you rely upon that same object to you know, it’s like you fall down on the ground, you rely upon the ground to pick yourself back up, you go for refuge to the Three Jewels, you commit yourself to this basic course of sanity, you know, this becoming a Buddha as best you can. The other object toward whom we can create a negative action are sentient beings. There’s infinite numbers of ways that we can do that, aren’t there?
So we use the same sentient beings. You rely upon them to get you back on track. You know, what is it we’re about? And as I think the Dalai Lama said that all of Buddhist ethics is, you know, ethics isn’t something special. Ethics is the way we lead our life.
And the basis of that, from Buddhist way of our life, is that it can be summed up in two sentences. If you can help, help. If you can’t help, at least don’t harm. That’s a pretty good axiom and a principle to live your life by. So, you know, if you’re sincere in bringing about positive change in your life, then we’re not about hurting others.
Okay, maybe we can’t help. At least don’t harm. So having hurt somebody, what does it mean to commit a negative action? You harm. That’s the bottom line.
That’s what it means. You harm. So instead of harming, that’s not what we’re about. The way a power of reliance is, we generate compassion toward that same individual. Rather than wishing them harm, you wish them to be free of that harm, harm in general, suffering in general.
This is the way we are reversing that past intention, the way that our past way of relating in terms of power of reliance. The power of restraint. Okay, there is this habitual tendency. Know, doing an action once facilitates doing it again. We’re predisposed.
We try to interrupt that process. And the way we do this is by determining in some constructive and realistic way, I’m not going to repeat this action again for the next, well, when I go to bed until I wake up in the morning. I’m joking. But for the next twenty four hours, something that you can maintain, some mindfulness awareness that you can practically and realistically interrupt, that you can really uphold. And if you say, I’m not going to lie for the rest of my life, you might as well say, I’m going to fly tomorrow or something like that, you know.
It doesn’t have all that much force on your mind. But if you say, I’m not going to kill for the next I’m not going to kill voluntarily with awareness for the next twenty four hours. And you could probably you do that. You could be mindful of having made that commitment. You could be aware of your bodily actions, your mental actions, and that would help you interrupt that.
And there might be, you know, this mosquito, it would intervene. There be some awareness which wouldn’t allow you to carry that through. Then the power of applying the antidote. So within the context of applying these four powers, the power of repudiation, the power of reliance, and the power of restraint. We do something positive within that context.
You know, there’s a traditional set of skillful actions. You know, for example, offering praises and prostrations to the thirty five Buddhas, recitation of various texts such as the perfection of wisdom and so forth, or even just listening to the perfection of wisdom sutras, recitation of mantras, for example the hundred syllable mantra of Vajrasattva or the mantra of Avalokiteśvara Om Mani Padme Hum. But anyway, these are said to be, these are traditional skillful countervailing actions. We’re trying to balance out the negativity with some purposely and consciously creating some kind of positive actions. But it could be any type of positive action.
And something which you do, you’re going out of your way in a sense as if to counterbalance the past negative action that you created. So this is the power of the antidote. So, I mean, the upshoot of this is that there’s a saying, for the wise, a great action, a great negative action is small. For the foolish, a small negative action is great. For those who are skilled, what wise here means, somebody who’s skillful and has is even if they commit some heavy negativity by skillfully applying these four powers, they can diminish to the point the negative the effects of that action such that they won’t have to experience.
On the other hand, the foolish, even if they committed small negative action, due to the magnification of karma, it can end up bringing about a great result. They don’t apply these four powers. Anyway, the the point is, you know, know, the you know, as we’ve tried to maybe it’s become obvious, but trying to convey that actions and the result, this is extremely subtle phenomenon. Know, The subtleties of karma are only open to the omniscient consciousness of a Buddha to thoroughly understand. We can only stand at a gross level at best.
But nonetheless, maybe we can take this on board that the Buddha has a pretty good track record on on the whole. And maybe we can’t understand all the details of these explanations sometimes. But maybe there’s a little bit of a good advice. You know, there’s a story. I I mentioned that story when we had a discussion last Monday night.
It’s a parable that the Buddha told. He said that, you know, there was a time when this, in ancient times, this king was involved in this war and they were fighting the enemy. And this king was shot with an arrow. And all his ministers and physicians, they gathered around him. And the physicians were just about to pull the arrow out.
He said, no, no, wait. Stop. Stop. Before you pull that arrow out, I want to know what type of wood this arrow was made from, what tree it came from, what types of feathers, what type of bird these feathers on the arrow came from. I want to know who shot this arrow and the background of their family.
And before they could find out, they sent the dispatchers out to find out all the information before they could come up with all the answers. The king died. So, you know, it’s best, though, you know, we might not be able to establish, verify all of these, some of these, these very subtle doctrines for ourselves. It seems if it’s expedient if we were to make use of them. Just because simply the Buddha seems to have a pretty track record, pretty good track record in other areas, just for as a working hypothesis, as an operational basis to make use of these methods, even though we haven’t verified them at present for ourselves.
Otherwise, we’re much like this king who died before he found out the answers. If don’t do anything, we’re going to die before we verify all these for ourselves. Anyway, you might consider that. So what kind of, you know, we’re talking about karma as our intentions behind the various things that we do, bringing particular types of experiential results. We experience, what we mean by life is experience.
And what is it that brings about these unique and varied experiences? These are all the outcome of the causal train that we have set in motion by our intention. The end result of intention is experience. And what are we experiencing? And this is the it comes up with in our discussion of suffering.
What in terms of the quality of our life, you know, our approach to life. You know, we are living a life under the control of karma and afflictive emotions. We are not in control of our life. This is what we mean by cyclic existence. It is repeating, compulsive experiences that we are continually going, reoccurring to ourselves, which have a feeling quality of being dissatisfactory.
There’s a flaw. There’s something, there’s always a struggle involved. There’s never quite coming to the place where we feel we we resolve. We’ve come to some conclusion. This is where my my life has finally arrived, and it has come to how many of us could look in the mirror and say, I would I I I always want to be experiencing what I am now and, you know, having come to that kind of conclusion.
You know, there’s like, we’re always the happiness that we’re all seeking always seems to be just over the horizon, around around the next corner, the next bend. We’re trying to find out how we’re going to get there. There’s always a sense of anticipation of what is the real life we’ve always wanted to experience, the life that we’ve been waiting for. What it is that we’ve been struggling to get is just out there, just slightly out of our reach. Tomorrow and tomorrow, you know.
Pardon? This is, you know, this this this is the this is the tone, the feeling quality of what it means to live a life under the control of karma and afflictive emotions. So we talk about suffering. And the reason that we’re talking about suffering is to help us to, you know, just as we talked about death, it was to help us to motivate ourselves to make use of our life. The reason we talk about suffering is to help us to overcome this this, you know, to get us to get help us to develop some perspective on the nature of our situation such that we’ll we you know, what what do we mean by freedom?
What do we we have to know what we’re trying to be free from. The the idea of freedom is not some abstraction, and that it’s not there’s no freedom in and of itself. It’s freedom from something. And what are we trying to be free of? Unless we identify that, we will never seek that freedom.
So we we try to describe you know, the Buddha points to our life, and as he looked at pointed to his body and said, this is the truth of suffering. This is what we’re trying to be free from. And a a particular approach to life, a life which is lived under the control of karma and afflictive emotion, and in our life poses an endless series of problems for ourselves. It’s one problem after another after another, great or small. Nonetheless, there are always some difficulties, some problems.
These problems at their deeper level are characterized by three marks, suffering, impermanence, and selflessness. So the the mark of suffering. So, you know, why do talk about suffering? And sometimes Buddhism is is sometimes accused of being rather pessimistic, cynical. You know, why you guys are always going on about suffering.
Why don’t you cheer up? You know, lighten it up a little bit. You know, it’s not all gloom and doom. The reason why this is the Dalai Lama, the reason why the Buddha laid so much emphasis on developing insight into the nature of suffering is because alternative. There is a way out.
It is actually possible to free oneself from it. This is why it is so crucial to realize the nature of suffering, because the stronger and deeper your insight into suffering is, the stronger your aspiration to gain freedom from it becomes. So the Buddhist emphasis on nature of suffering should be seen within the wider perspective, where there is an appreciation of the possibility of complete freedom from suffering. If we had no concept of liberation, then to spend so much time reflecting on suffering would be utterly pointless. And no one is saying that life itself is suffering.
The contrary, Buddhism is terribly optimistic in this way, that life there is a basic goodness to life and a basic goodness to ourselves. But when we talk about suffering, we’re not talking about life itself, but a particular approach to the way we live our life. That is, by its very nature, dissatisfactory. A particular approach which is dominated by the deterministic chain of our past actions, our karma. We’re carrying this weight of our history on our backs, and it is dominating our present and will extend itself endlessly into our future.
And we’re driven by afflictive emotions, you know, most basically ignorance. So there’s a texture, a feeling quality, you know, about such a way of life that our life is uncomfortable, it’s frustrating, it’s disappointing, we experience anxiety. You know, I think anxiety is probably an ongoing it’s like there is always a level of undercurrent of anxiety in all that we do. I don’t think we’ve ever experienced a moment where we weren’t anxious in some way. I don’t know.
This is just an ideal moment. Again, maybe I’m just talking about myself. Even at its best, it’s not completely satisfactory. It’s not all that life could be. Our life is problematic.
So we’re looking at suffering and trying to develop a sense of what it is that we’re trying to be free of. What is the nature of our problem? Three types of suffering. We’re just going to go through these rather quickly. The suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and the suffering of pervasive conditionality.
So this is a review, right? I think we caused ourselves a lot of pain by going through this previously. We went through the agony of going through all the details and so forth. So, I’ll save you from all of that. But just to remind you, okay, Three types of suffering.
I think a good example, and this is worth keeping in mind I think, this example of how these three sufferings can be illustrated quite simply. We have an open wound. When that open wound is irritated in some way, maybe somebody bumps into us or maybe some kind of substances spills on the open wound. And that open wound is irritated. It flares up.
The pain becomes very sharp and intense. That’s what we ordinarily identify as an unpleasant feeling. This is the experience of the suffering of suffering. Okay? So when that open wound is irritated in some way, the pain becomes sharp and clear, intense.
That is the suffering of suffering. But suppose we relieve the pain of that wound, we apply some kind of smooth lotion, some salve, or we run, you know, clear, cool, clean water over it. So there’s a we would experience what we ordinarily identify as a pleasurable feeling. Is a temporary relief of pain which is experienced as pleasure. That temporary relief from pain, which we identify as pleasure, is the suffering of change.
Let’s say we have this wound and, you know, is neither being irritated nor soothed. Okay? It’s neither pleasurable nor unpleasurable. The mere fact of having a wound that we, you know, the mere fact of being a vulnerable creature, susceptible to forces outside of our control, the mere fact of having a wrong wound that needs protecting. We walk around guarding.
Can you imagine walking down Rundle Mall on a busy Saturday afternoon with a raw, open wound that was susceptible the slightest you know, like, I I like when you get you get a burn, you know, a big just a little breath of it, motion of the air. Skin becomes so sensitive. Just the emotion blowing is painful. So we’re not but this wound isn’t undergoing any pain nor pleasure. But the wound isn’t there nonetheless.
So this is what we call a neutral feeling, isn’t it? This exemplifies the suffering of pervasive conditionality, the raw wound itself. The other one is undergoing neither pleasure nor pain. Okay, just go through these quickly, these three types of suffering, the suffering of suffering. So, you know, we and it’s good to do.
You can enumerate these, list these, all the mental and physical sufferings. Even over, you know, you could keep a list, you know, when you wake up in the morning, just, you know, all the mental and physical difficulties that you go through over the course of your day. You know, some of them are pretty small, aren’t they? You know, maybe you have a slight headache or a scratch or maybe a bruise or maybe you just feel tired or maybe a little bit sore. Can you can you recall a single day that you didn’t experience some, if minor physical difficulty, some minor pain?
Generally, we just dismiss it. But nonetheless, this cumulative minor physical uncomfortableness is like a background in which we experience the body, our physical being. But then but then there are the big pains of our life, you know. You know, there’s the accidents and illnesses, you know, major illnesses and is growing old. There’s a deterioration of our sense powers and so forth.
But then for most of us, at least in the West, it’s not physical suffering which predominates. It’s mental suffering. It’s mental pain. You know, there’s all the various, you know, not getting what we want. They’re all our daily disappointments frustrations that we experience.
Is meeting that which you don’t want to come in contact with. You know, people and, you know, the weather and things about us. There’s there’s being separated from that which you want to hold on to. You don’t want to let go of. Then there’s, you know, there’s there’s the injustices, know, being treated unfairly, having to deal with in a world which we have little or no control.
There’s there’s all the little annoyances and there’s all the the the little hurts in our conflicts and so forth. You know, none of us are free for long from the self generated afflictions of anger and jealousy. Painful, aren’t they? Jealousy is quite painful. Or being abused by our own hopes and fears, or being torn by conflicting emotions.
What should I do? You know, if I do this, then I do it. It’s painful. Painful. Desperately, wanting longing to be loved.
And then there’s the having once found that love, the fear of losing that love, and having to hold on to to guard that love. There’s there’s the, you know, the the bitterness of a closed heart when you shut down. And then there’s the the anxiety of the vulnerability of an open heart when you start to open up to the you realize that you can be hurt again. But you there’s, you know, there’s all these past memories that we carry with us in one way or another, you know, of past of guilt, of shame of what we’ve done in the past, of times that we’ve been humiliated, you know, the times that, you know, that we’ve been ridiculed in the past. We still carry those painful memories.
Maybe we don’t remember. Maybe we’re not open to them. Then there’s the, you know, the build the bewilderment about having, you know, not having not quite you know, we’re missing the mark in life. We’re doing we’re doing something wrong, but we haven’t quite identified what it is that we’re not we’re not doing right in our life. But there’s something basically wrong about me, the way I seem to be leading in my life.
You know, we we see ourselves as as isolated egos, you know, skin encapsulated egos, this boundary of the skin. And we experience ourselves in one way or another this feeling of being imprisoned, alone, isolated. Constantly we have to restrain to maintain some kind of self image, guard our territory, you know, reestablish our credentials, prove to ourselves and to others who we really are or what we think we should be in one way or another. This is an ongoing struggle, constantly, that we’re all involved into a lesser degree or other. And then at the end of it all, there waits for us all, you know, the terrors of death and the going forth alone.
We don’t know where. We don’t know. Leaving it all behind, the familiar, the loved, the people, and the things. So this is describes this is all the suffering of suffering, mental and physical suffering, the existential condition that we all find ourselves in. But, you know, even it’s said that even animals can identify this to some degree.
So this is not all what Buddhism is talking about when they talk about freedom from suffering. You know, these mental and physical difficulties. They’re talking about something more profound, something deeper than that. There’s the suffering of suffering, you know, the suffering of change. This, you know, just like we talked about terms of this wound that we’re carrying around, the psychological character of the feeling of happiness.
You know, suppose there was an idiot sitting in the corner, you know, hitting himself over the head with a hammer. And you walk over and you say, Why are you hitting yourself over the head with a hammer? And he says, Because it feels so good when I stop. And it does feel good, you know? That’s the thing, it is pleasure.
But this in a way, all our usual feelings of pleasure can be seen in the exact same way. They all have the nature of a cessation or diminishment of some suffering. They all have some release or reduction of some tension. You know, we get, you know, you take an aspirin and you have a headache and it goes away, I feel better. Or you’re really hot and thirsty and drink a cool, cold glass of water.
It really tastes great. It’s really refreshing. Or, you know, when you make up after a fight with your partner, I think that’s why some partners fight, so they can make up. You know, it feels nice. Or you get back successful result exams that you’ve been worried about or, you know, going on a holiday as a relief from the drudgery of your everyday work perhaps.
But the temporary quiescence, the temporary pacifying of an afflictive emotion like desire. Desire is tension. When that tension is relieved, there’s a sense of relief, you know, there’s a sense of well-being, of comfort. You know, when you get what you wanted, ah, there’s a relief which experience is pleasurable. So we have to ask ourselves, you know, are our experiences of pleasure, are they in the actual nature of pleasure or not?
I think it’s trying to see in practice. All of our pleasure is intimately tied up with pain, a relief from previous suffering. Pleasure is the feeling when the pervasive pain or dissatisfaction stops temporarily. Pleasant feeling is actually only experienced in comparison to previous pain. It’s only relative to previous pain.
You know, for example, if you were bush walking, you know, it really feels good to be out there in the clean air and the beautiful trees and it’s a beautiful day and you’re walking, it’s very pleasurable. And after maybe, what, an hour and a half or two hours, you get a bit tired. Your legs get a bit sore. I think I’ll sit down for a moment. Sit.
Ah. Yeah. That is what we call pleasure. The pleasure of sitting. Sitting there, we feel pleasurable the pleasure of just sitting.
There is a pleasant feeling that we call pleasure, happiness. But we have to ask ourselves, is that sitting itself a natural cause of happiness? Is the nature sitting pleasurable? Isn’t pleasure of sitting merely the gradual reduction of the pain from walking? You know, it appears deceptively to be pleasure, but pleasure is not an intrinsic quality of sitting.
You sit, and you sit, and you sit, and you keep sitting. After a while, it’s no longer quite as pleasurable as it was. After a while, becomes neutral. You become indifferent. It doesn’t matter whether you sit or not.
You sit, you keep sitting. After a while, it starts to become uncomfortable. It actually becomes painful if you keep sitting and sitting and sitting. So you say, I think I’ll start walking again. So you stand up and start walking.
Ah, that feels better. Feels good to walk. You know, this is what happens. We get up and we walk again. Too much sitting, too much walking, leads to pain.
So we might argue, this just means that we should do things in moderation, not too much, too extreme. There’s some truth to this. But what that truth is, it recognizes the fact that acknowledges there is no activity which is intrinsically pleasurable. If sitting were intrinsically pleasurable, then as long as you sat, you should experience pleasure. Or even that the pleasure should increase.
But it doesn’t work that way. Therefore, you know, the pleasant feeling does not reside in the activity itself. There’s nothing inherently pleasurable about sitting. There’s nothing inherently pleasurable about walking. But it is the relief from the suffering that the activity offered, which we term, which we label as pleasure.
And that relief is short lived. You know, if we are doing something pleasurable and we keep doing it more and more, we keep indulging in the causes of that pleasure, continuing, it will inevitably turn into pain. But the same is not true of pain. If you keep indulging in the cause of the pain, it doesn’t have you ever noticed it doesn’t turn into pleasure? It would be great if it did.
That pain can continue indefinitely. In fact, it will probably increase. So the point is that the nature of our ordinary pleasure is that it will eventually turn into suffering. It is not in the nature of pleasure. This is why we can say that all the pleasurable feelings, this is what we mean by contaminated pleasure.
It is in the nature of suffering. It is simply a relief, a momentary suspension of a prior deprivation, prior tension, prior difficulty, prior suffering in some way or another. In some way or another, it is always inextricably bound up with suffering. We can we can we can it’s only relative to a greater suffering that we label this pleasure. I mean, I don’t know if that sounds cynical or pessimistic.
We talk about so now we’re getting a notion about what Buddhism is talking about when they talk about freedom from suffering. We’re talking about a type of happiness which is not bound up with suffering, which is reliable, which is lasting, which is by which in its very nature is pleasurable, which will continue. Continue. Any other pleasure is in the nature of suffering. It’s unreliable.
It’s temporary. It’s always bound up inextricably with some suffering one way or another. All our usual feelings of pleasure are called contaminated pleasure. They are instances of the suffering of change. They are not in the nature of pleasure.
And finally, I’m going to stop very quickly here, the suffering of pervasive conditionality. And this is said to be the most difficult of these three levels of suffering to identify. You know, this is the metaphysical character of feelings which are neither pleasurable nor unpleasurable. We are vulnerable creatures. At some level, I think we know that.
We are susceptible to forces beyond our control. At some level, we know that. Have a very limited range of control over our our life experiences. We can step out of we can step up a curb, some drunken driver, and you’re finished. We have no control.
I think we know that. We’re like leafs blown in the wind by the winds of karma and afflictive emotions. This this past inheritance of our of our previous actions come, you know, playing out in terms of our various experiences in the present moment. And we, you know, and the rising of afflictive emotions. Nobody wants nobody chooses to be jealous.
Nobody chooses to become angry. They’re very they’re not they’re unpleasurable experiences in and of themselves, and they have all the unpleasurable consequences. But nonetheless, we have no as if we choicely, we’re overwhelmed, we’re taken over by these. No one asks if we want to die or not or if we want our parents or our partner or our children to die or not. No one asks if we want to be sick, if we want to grow old and to die.
Yeah. No one asks if we if we want our our our partner to stop loving us or our our once, you know, beautiful warm love to grow cold and full of pain. Nobody asked. Or if we want to lose our job or if we want to for it to rain on our holidays or not to rain, and there’s droughts. Karma and afflictive emotions simply don’t ask us what it is that we want, what it is that we want to do.
We’re not asked. And then we, you know, sometimes we experience these few brief moments of respite, you know, out of the wind, we find a little niche in a doorway, and we find a little bit of peace and contentment where everything seems to be alright. And then the winds of karma and afflictive emotions pick up again, and we carry we’re carried away even against our choice, out of our control. We’re not asked. This is the nature of ordinary human existence.
I think, I don’t know, this is a suspicion of mine. I haven’t seen this. I haven’t been taught this. Is passing on my own conclusion. They call this the neutral experience, that which is pleasurable and non pleasurable.
But I have a sense that, you know, I was talking about before that there is never a moment when we’re not experiencing some uneasiness, an undercurrent of anxiety. And it is as if that anxiety is normality. That’s what we call a neutral feeling, is this low grade undercurrent of anxiety which pervades our experience. Experience. Freedom, and we have never experienced a moment when that when we weren’t experiencing that.
Freedom, liberation is when that anxiety comes to an end. That’s real peace. We’ve never experienced that. Even there’s never been a moment that we’ve known that. We we it’s it’s, you know, we it’s it’s like it’s outside of our our present imagination to even, you know, to get to get a sense of what that might be like.
Anyway, that’s the suffering of pervasive conditionality. It pervades the entirety of our life. It pervades all realms of existence. The fact of being conditioned by karma and afflictive emotions under their control, under their influence. This is the most subtle level of suffering that we try to identify, what we’re trying to be free of.
The cessation of that, the stopping of that is nirvana, peace. Okay. So we’ll continue with this review next week. Okay? We can we can dedicate the the positive.
I didn’t I forgot to hand out the sheets. I noticed when we were taking previously. We can dedicate the positive energy that we created. We give it some kind of directionality. It serves in some to facilitate the ends, our goals that we aspire to.
To. Thanks. Male beings everywhere plagued by suffering of body and mind attain an ocean of happiness and joy by virtue of my merits. May no living creature 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 the forlorn find hope, constant happiness, and prosperity. May there be timely rains and bountiful harvests. May all medicines be effective and wholesome prayers bear fruit. May all who are sick and ill quickly be freed from their ailments. Whatever diseases there are in this 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 I quickly become an awakened spiritual master and lead each and every living being to that awakened realm. May the supreme joy of 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 circled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful, please remain to the end of cyclic existence. Thank you. If you’d like to get a cup of tea, we’ll have a discussion.
Otherwise, stay dry. Just have a good evening. Take care.