Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Drawing on a weekend Acceptance and Commitment Therapy workshop he had just attended, Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 113-minute session by framing Sangha as a “greenhouse” — a protected culture where fragile spiritual aspirations can take root — before leading a guided death meditation focused on the unpredictability of when we die, illustrated by the image of a boat drifting toward an unseen waterfall. He then reviews the three marks of conditioned existence — suffering, impermanence across its several forms, and selflessness — using the rope-mistaken-for-a-snake metaphor to show how clinging to a misconceived, independent self fuels all afflictive emotion. A Q&A on working with fear closes the session, with Ven Jampa drawing on a Rilke line about dragons that, if genuinely faced, turn into princesses.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 17a 3PA 2008 07 21 .mp3
UUID: 79aac93c-8682-4428-9620-c2446ad08050
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2008-2009 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2008-07-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 113.8 minutes
Words: ~10,733
How is everybody? Can you can you hear me okay? Yeah. Yes. Was Yeah.
Good. It’s almost too loud. No. No. No.
Fine. I can hear myself, which is frightening. So we have to begin by adjusting our motivation. I guess, you know, bringing ourselves to the present moment, the present experience. Friday and Saturday I attended a workshop on a particular type of therapy which is called ACT They were talking about motivation and he said, If you wait to be motivated to do something, there’s a good chance you’ll never ever do it.
Sometimes we have to act even when we, you know, we aren’t motivated to do it because it’s in our own best interest. Waiting, you know, waiting for some sign, some some overwhelming sensation to overtake us and carry us along and get us moving. It’d be nice if that could happen every time, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. Talking about I just you know, we we go for refuge. Would you like to shut the door?
Where was I? Oh, yes. Going for refuge. So this is a matter of getting back in touch with our priorities, our deeply held values and what’s important to ourselves. Here we’re talking about the person that the best possible person that I could imagine myself to become.
We call that a Buddha, you know. We kind of give that some make a create some kind of metaphor to get concretized what is very abstract. This kind of person that you might like to be, you know, somewhere down the line. And trying to help us to define what those qualities of that type of person, not in terms of owning or possess possessing or controlling, but being. There’s wisdom, love, and compassion, and personal power.
Then working with others skillfully and fearlessly. But as we emphasize, simply wishing it was so is not sufficient. There are lots of sincere people in this world who want things to be otherwise, but they never change. We actually have to do something to bring about that of person that we want to be, and that’s the practice of the Dharma. You know, the various the teachings, the meditative techniques, the trainings and so forth, but essentially the truth of things, the way things are in their actuality, trying to listen to descriptions around the way things actually are and begin to investigate and begin to alter our worldview to accord with that new reality which we’re discovering.
And this process occurs within the social context of a spiritual community, the Sangha. This is the third object of Buddha’s refuge in the spiritual community, those who form the social matrix in which awakening takes place and is becoming the best possible person that we could ever imagine about ourselves. The Tibetan word for Sangha, is Sangha is a Sanskrit term. The Tibetan term is Gendunpa. And Gendun means virtue, Dun means to aspire, and the Pa makes it a person, someone who aspires to virtue.
And the highest virtue is awakening. So this term spiritual community or Sangha that we quite often use comes to mean a group who are related to their shared aspiration for awakening. And there are different levels of what we mean by spiritual community. There’s Sangha. Traditionally there are at least three different levels, but there are probably more.
What we call a jewel of Sangha. You know, we get the Three Jewels, the Buddha jewels, the Dharma jewel and the Sangha jewel. The jewel of Sangha is ultimately someone who has directly realized emptiness. That’s the ultimate Sangha. They’re in a position to help us to assist us in gaining that realization for ourselves.
At another level we talk about Sangha. It’s a group of four or more monks or nuns. And because of the ethics by which they try to live, they are uniquely suited to advise us in how to implement the Dharma in our daily lives in terms of what is to be practiced, what is to be avoided, what is to be cultivated, what we are to abandon in traveling the spiritual path. But there is another interpretation of Sangha or spiritual community which is probably more, even more relevant to ourselves. And that is, it broadly refers to an association of like-minded people, like ourselves, strangely enough, who are committed to the shared idea of growth.
Know, it’s important for develop ourselves, to grow, to be to become the best possible person that we can become. That’s like a priority in our lives. It’s a shared value in our lives. You know, people understand and respect what it is that we’re all about, what it is that we’re doing here, every Monday night talking and meditating and discussing and all that we do. And they’re willing to help, you know, to teach, to advise, to share, to listen, to comfort, to encourage, to lend a hand in practical ways, you know, even helping us materially if that’s what’s needed.
So Sangha is like a greenhouse. A greenhouse is where you at least temporarily you can protect the fragile shoots of our still newly developing aspirations and ideals. This evolving world view that we’re trying to form can be sustained and nourished. It’s like some kind of protective environment where we can become acquainted with those much neglected parts of ourselves, those spiritual parts of ourselves, those parts of ourselves that we’re oftentimes ashamed of. That, you know, both the best, the gold, but also the sordid, the shadow.
The the neglected neglected part of ourselves, for the most part our society doesn’t place much value on, isn’t particularly concerned with. This is a place where we can nurture those values and ways of being, which are important to ourselves. You know, we can experiment safely with alternative ways of being and sharing with others. We can talk about things which normally aren’t talked about. We can express feelings which we might be inhibited or it might not be supported in another environment, to speak in those kinds of ways.
So ultimately the jewel of Sangha is each of ourselves individually and collectively. This integral part of a social environment which fosters growth, which supports awakening. So It’s like a therapeutic culture, if you like, nourishing our innate nature as Buddhists. There’s some of So we’re talking about the Sangha, ourselves as Sangha, as a spiritual community. There’s probably a lot that goes on that we’re not even aware of, you know, to kind of below the threshold of our awareness.
More than that. More than that. And then talking about these subjects and creating this ambiance in this this this environment. I think, you know, there’s some kind of resonance at a deeper part of our being. Where a part of ourselves, our long neglected selves find some kind of nourishment.
It’s it gives we creating some kind of space where our Buddha nature can take root and find sustenance and begin to grow. You know, there’s something there’s something inside of ourselves which resonates with these ideas and these feelings and this atmosphere and these ways of being, this environment that we create, this nurturing culture. You go over and above our cognitive over and above our rational thinking, intellectual processes. I think that’s terribly important. That’s not something that we can do in isolation from one another.
It’s not something that comes from just reading books or even watching DVDs in the modern ways that we have. It’s being with other flesh and love flesh and blood living beings, feeling beings like ourselves who are struggling just ourselves, who aspire just like ourselves, who are trying in all their individual ways as best as they can just like ourselves to be the best person they can become. Having faith in the Buddhadharma and Sangha means having faith in the reality of awakening and that these Three Jewels are the means of achieving that. Having faith in the reality of awakening means believing in ourselves, that we can change and be the very best possible person that we can become. We can become a Buddha.
A happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. So we don’t have to constantly buy into these stories, these self defeating, self fulfilling prophecies that it’s about poor poor me. I don’t have quite what it takes, and I’m quite I’m this limited vision that we have about what we can become and what we can do with this life of ours, this precious, crazy, one off life that we all possess, that we’re all living out. We don’t know. This mind is completely open ended.
Mhmm. We can take up the stuff of the mind just like clay, and we can form a transcendental figure, a piata, a mother and child of Michelangelo. Or we can make of the stuff of the mind an ashtray. It’s workable, depending on skills and our willingness and the blessings of our teachers and the Buddhas. And then we can create something unimaginable for ourselves in terms of our life and our experience of our life.
You know, we shouldn’t hold ourselves back. We have to be open to other possibilities of how we might be. We have to believe in ourselves, but also we have to believe in the goodness of life itself. We don’t have many models of this way of being in the world, do we? It’s a sad commentary on our state of affairs, but that seems to be the case.
But there are some, and we all exhibit those qualities in where moments, when we have these peak experiences, you know, where we all express our Buddha nature from time to time, maybe we have to be aware of those times and take some kind of refuge in those glimpses of another alternative way we might be in this world. Having faith in the Three Jewels means practically entrusting ourselves to them, putting into practice the Buddhist Dharma with the help of a Sangha in order to make it so. Faith is an affirmation of basic goodness, the basic goodness inherent in life as well as ourselves. I forgot to I’m sorry. Hand out the brushes.
So the inner focus of our life becomes becomes this best person possible person that we can become, you know, however we’re presently defining it. And the means to to achieve that end, to actually make it so, and those who are assisting us in the process of making it so ourselves. And again and again trying to raise the level of motivation. You know, maybe having a wider vision of what a successful life might look like. And going beyond our limited vision of just getting my own piece of chocolate cake, but accepting a greater role, a greater responsibility in how we be in this world with others.
If I could help one other person in some substantial way, that would bring great my life would have found purpose. It would have found great meaning. The more I am, the more I have to give. So even if you know one other person that you love, thinking about that person, and you’re stepping outside of your skin encaptive ego for just a moment and being there for that other person as best we can in whatever way we can. And the more we are, the more we can we will be able to be.
That’s all a lot to aspire for, I think. That’s a lot. I think it’s it’s really a noble lofty goal. I think it’s worth keep coming back to that magnetic north, that aspiration. It’s worth our life to a large extent.
Know, I mean, it’s and that’s what I mean by that is even if we don’t achieve even one tenth of the goal, it doesn’t matter. It’s the trying, it’s the effort which matters. I think in Zen they have this expression, I vow to liberate all sentient beings though they’re infinite. If they’re infinite, how could we liberate all sentient beings? But there’s something inside of ourselves wants to when our being in this world accords that deepest most part of our of ourselves, then there’s some kind of peace.
There’s some kind of fulfillment. There’s some taste of awakening. We’re alive to the fullest extent that we can be in that moment. So it’s kind of a that in itself is sufficient whether we achieve it or not. At least we try and we die.
Okay. We die. Whether there’s a future life or not, can’t be sure. But we led a pretty good life. We had some really fine moments along the way.
We tried. That’s good enough. I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all sentient beings be inseparable from the joy that is without sorrow. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for some and aversion toward others. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, mind, with the 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 at the end of cyclic existence, and turn the wheel of Dharma for migrating beings.
I dedicate all virtue, my own and that of others, to the great awakening. We’re going to meditate. Add a bit of tickly throat. We we begin, you know, when when we’re trying to get un stuck, you know, we’re in we’re in these these repeating patterns of ways of thinking and behaving, really haven’t gotten us very far in this this project of our life. And, you know, like like, you know, ruts at a road, you know, the vehicle just just follows around the path of least resistance, and it’s difficult to change your direction, to make the kinds of changes you want in your life.
It requires some effort, determination, some kind of energy. And we started to meditate on one of these last week, nine-round death meditation. You know, significance of meditating on death is to help us to appreciate our life, you know, to ensure that we don’t waste our lives. You know, this acceptance and commitment therapy, which I did this on Friday and Saturday. You know, commitment is part of the therapy is helping the client to clarify their values.
Clarify their values. And it’s interesting, you know, sometimes people don’t know what they value. Many people have never even been asked, What is it that you value? Or they never considered it, you know. And many people don’t know the difference between a goal and a value.
You know, a goal is something that you can achieve. You know, you want to become a millionaire? Okay. You save up, you know, you work hard, you save up all your money, and things go well, you can achieve that goal. You want to graduate from university?
You can you can do that. You want to travel to to India? Okay. You can achieve it. A value is is is an ongoing way of life.
You know, like, you value compassion, you value good health. Good health is not something that you simply arrive at and then it’s finished and you start something else. It’s an ongoing project, isn’t it? You continually take care of your health. That’s an important value.
It’s a priority. Or compassion is an important value. So, you know, getting in touch with our values is seems like it’s terribly important. Yeah. Death can help us.
The reflection upon death can help us do that. You know, it cuts through a lot of the shoulds, the rules, the regulations that we’ve adopted, which get in the way of our seeing what it is that we value. The social imperatives, the social mores and the standards of our society, which we the the the measures of a successful life as set out in Women’s Day or something like that. I think it requires a great deal of courage to begin to not only to formulate what it is that you value, to declare that for yourself, but to work out strategies where you actually begin to live it in your everyday life. Can oftentimes come at some kind of cost, you know, in terms of status or position, being well thought of by others in various ways, to become your own person.
It’s called individuation. That’s the Jungian term for it, I think. And this meditation of death can help us to do that. That’s why it’s it has some practical meaning, it’s a purpose. You know, it’s not there’s nothing morbid about it, not in the least.
You know, so, you know, find out what it is that you really want, and not waiting until there are some ideal conditions which are more favorable in your life, so that we don’t live a kind of compromised life, or a substitute life, or we live somebody else’s life, our parents, or you know, don’t even know whose life we’re living. The, you know, the life of hypocrisy or inauthenticity, or a life of impotency, impotency or pettiness. You know, it can be very empowering. We can become the authors of our life. I think that’s what much Buddhism is very much trying to help us to do.
A Buddha takes charge, takes responsibility, both for themselves, but also for others, the author of their life. Last week in this working on this nine-round death meditation, we meditated on the fact that death is certain. And the second root is that the time of death is unpredictable. We simply don’t know when we’re going to die. So not only is there, you know, this overcoming the sense that I’m always going to be here, there’s always time.
But in fact, there isn’t that time that we normally that we take that we unthinkingly assume is going to be the case. We don’t know. It’s not a nice thing to think about. That’s why most people don’t think about. And their life goes on.
Life creeps on at its petty peace, you know. Nearer to death but no nearer to life. Meditation is not have pleasurable experiences. It’s to help us to grow, to implement this person that we want to become. And this is one way we can do that.
So death is unpredictable. This has three reasons: that human life expectancy is uncertain. We simply don’t know when we’re going to die, you know, in the human realm. I don’t know. We don’t know.
Fetuses die in the womb, babies die at birth. These are nice things to talk about, aren’t they? But what happens. Shit happens. Shit.
Child, you know, children die, and the adolescents, teenagers, young adults, middle aged, you know, what what what are we talking about? Thirty five, thirty seven, thirty nine, forty one, you know, forty six, forty seven, forty nine, fifty two, fifty seven, sixty one. And then there’s me, you know. People die at any age. Any age.
People die at every age. There’s no guarantee. Statistics assure us that we have a good chance to lead, to live an average, to live to an average age. But probability is not certainty. And I think the average for, I think males is eighty now and females is about four years more, think.
That’s the average. Average means that there’s many below and there’s many above. We don’t know which one we are. Within this average are those who are babies. And then there’s people who live to a hundred and so forth.
We don’t know which side of the average we’re on. We don’t know. The vast majority of people who will die next month probably didn’t think probably thought probably now thinking that they’re going to live for a long, long time into the future. That’s what we all think, everybody in this room. We have this sense of I’m going to live for a long, long time, if we think about it at all.
And just like those, the vast majority people who die next month are thinking at this very moment the same thing we are thinking. But they’re wrong, and we could be wrong. We don’t know. And then the second reason, there are many causes of death. You know, are all kinds of natural catastrophes, earthquakes and floods, and wars and famines.
We’re pretty safe here in Australia from all that, aren’t we? But then there’s just the, you know, the normal ways of dying, know, car accidents and cancer and all the, you know, all the various diseases and We don’t know. You know, people die in their sleep, they die at work, they die coming home from work, they die in school, they die playing sports, they die cooking dinner, they die watching television, they die listening to Dharma talks. They die at any age, doing almost anything. That’s reality.
The rest is our fantasy. Fantasy. And then the third reason is that the human body is extremely fragile, and we’re surrounded by inimical conditions. It’s kind of a hard hard world out there. You know, this body is just flesh.
Know, within minutes it can change from being strong and vital to being helpless and full of pain like that. And it it it and it doesn’t take so much. A sliver of glass, a a piece of sharp piece of metal or even a bubble in your bloodstream, a virus you can’t even see can end your life, can act as a condition. And our life depends on a delicate balance of all of its myriad parts, from the various minute organs within the cells themselves, to these cells and the way they interact with one another, and the way that they come together to form organs, and the way that organs form systems, and the way these systems are interacting with one another. Know, just like this dance of life, you know, all these causes and conditions coming together, which sustain this life.
And it’s like, you know, we’re we’re we’re I think a nice metaphor for this, a picture of this, the unpredictable unpredictability of the time of our death is like we’re riding in a boat cruising down this river. Obviously, it wouldn’t be in Australia, but it’s supposed and, you know, we’re we’re looking over out over the stern of the boat, you know, and and the ship, you know, that’s the back. And and and the ship’s going forward, you know, the boat’s going forward down this. And all we can see is where we’ve been, and we can see the present moment to the sides. That’s the limit of our vision, where we’ve been, and the place that we’re now passing.
We can’t see that there that, you know, somewhere in the in the along this river is a waterfall, a steep drop. We we can’t see you know, even if we try to turn our head, we can’t see the future. We don’t know. But we know there’s a waterfall there. But we don’t know how far that waterfall is.
Even now, and as we’re looking out over the the stern of the ship and watching the the shore go by in the present moment, Even now, our boat might be only meters away from dropping over the edge. We don’t know. So, the point of this is to begin to now to do something. Something. In terms of you know, I’m not saying, you know, okay.
You know, know, it doesn’t have to be all of this doesn’t have to be necessarily couched in terms of religiosity or Buddhism or whatever. But begin to question now what it is that makes your life meaningful purposeful. And we can offer some suggestions from the point of Buddhism in terms of wisdom and love and compassion, altruism. These are extremely important values as far as Buddhism is concerned. But, you know, maybe you have to find out what resonates for yourself.
And to and to begin now, to begin that person that you want to be, to begin to live in those values now. There’s a saying that in terms of Buddhism, at least, today of our future existence might come before tomorrow, the tomorrow when you began when you had planned to practice. And tomorrow is a tomorrow and tomorrow is a tale told by an idiot. We’ve got to change, and the only time we have to change is now. We don’t know how long we have this opportunity, this this precious human life affords us.
Don’t know. We don’t know. It’s not a nice thought, but it can be a liberating thought in some ways. So we’re gonna we’re gonna meditate that. Okay?
So if you’d to stand and stretch for a moment, then we’ll meditate. I don’t know if we need to meditate on this. Then we just talk about it. I don’t know. So taking a comfortable firm posture.
A posture of dignity, a purposefulness, a sense of stability. Stability. Begin with relaxing the body, starting at the crown of the head, the scalp, feeling the wrinkles in your brow beginning to smooth out. The pressure in and around your eyes diminishing. Muscles of the face softening, relaxing.
Your jaws relaxed. Bringing awareness to the back of your neck. Gently turning your neck to each side a few times. Very gently stretching, loosening the muscles of the back of the neck. Relaxing the muscles of the throat.
Bringing awareness to your upper back and shoulders. Perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times. Lifting them and allowing them to drop comfortably to the sides. Feeling this burden, this weight that we’ve been carrying around on our backs all day, moving down through your body into the ground. Bring your awareness all the way down to your hands.
Your hands are soft and loose. Relax your lower arms and your upper arms. Your chest is at ease. Relaxing throughout the heart area and the lungs. The central region of the back, stomach, releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles, allowing your belly to go soft.
Relaxing throughout the abdominal cavity. And keeping your back straight, your trunk erect, relax your lower back muscles. Your buttocks. Upper legs and thighs. Lower legs.
Finally, feet soft, loose. Bringing your awareness to your body in general, noticing any tightnesses, any tensions within the body, scanning roughly through the body, and bringing focusing, bringing your awareness on those particular areas. Consciously relaxing, softening, feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen. If there’s an area of discomfort, don’t try to avoid it, or resist, or struggle against it. Just breathe in, surround it with a kind, caring acceptance.
It is part of who you are at present. Allow it to be. Be kind to yourself. Your body becoming comfortable at ease. The feeling of physical well-being pervading every part of your body.
It’s a nice place to be in your body. Just be with your body. Aware of your body. We’ll practice the six part breath exercise. Just breathing in comfortably, normally.
Breathing out, extending the exhalation, completely emptying the lungs. Again, breathing in comfortably, normally. Again, extending the extending exhalation, and doing this six times individually. And when you’ve completed the six breath exercises, then bring your mind to the breath. Wherever the sensation is most clear and obvious, if it’s helpful you can count note the breaths.
Now we’re going to meditate on death. The time the fact that the time of our death is unpredictable. It’s uncertain. We’re going to work through three different reasons. The first is that the human life expectancy is uncertain.
Working through all the various possible ages and times that people die. And see if you can come to some kind of conclusion where the penny drops. There’s really no assurity about when anyone dies. We simply don’t know. It’s uncertain.
And the second reason, there are many causes of death. This this thinking in terms of what is relevant to yourself, your daily routine, your various activities that you work through over the course of your day, over the course of a week, foreseen and unforeseen possibilities. We don’t know. And then the third reason, human body is extremely fragile. Consider your own body, the systems, what it takes to maintain life, how that could be easily interrupted.
And see if you can come to some conclusion to begin to find out what it is that you want, your values, and begin to implement the means, the strategies to live out those values, to grow and become the best possible person you can become, to begin all that now, because the future is uncertain. We don’t know how much more time we have left. And then bring your mind back to the breath. Get in touch with your body, feeling sensation within your body. And relaxed manner become aware of your surroundings.
So I’m doing doing a review of the the first of the three principal aspects of the path, the will to awaken. So what kind of trying to get a sense of developing a determination to be free, and what is it that we’re actually being trying to be free from. If we don’t know what we’re being free from, we’ll never be determined to to be free, and what liberation actually means. So we’ve looked at, you know, there are three marks of conditioned existence. And conditioned existence is a way of life and approach to living, which is under the control of karma and afflictive emotion.
So what is the nature of our experience within that situation of being controlled by karma and afflictive emotions? And it has three marks, characteristics. One is suffering, and we we last talked about all the various levels of suffering. The suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and the suffering of pervasive conditionality. But, you know that the fact that no matter what we do or what we have, who we are within this system, this approach, this process, the living of our life, it is not completely satisfactory.
There is always it’s not all that life could be. But we try, and we try to make the world over into our preconceived image of the way things should be. Whether we’re aware or not, to clear clear for us or not, we have some kind of conception of the good life. What it is we’re struggling for. Anyway, and and we’re trying to manipulate the people and the things and the situations about us to conform to some preconceived notion and demanding that reality conform to our expectations in some way or another.
If only we can arrange all the desirable elements of our our world into some ideal, unchanging constellation of all the goodies of life. Then we would be we could just eternally snack from them. Then we then we would be the captains of our ship. Then we’d be in control. The masters of our happiness.
And this is ego’s dream. Take control of our destinies in some way or another. Or at least that’s what that’s one of our basic assumptions that we’re operating our lives under. But in reality all things are impermanent. I’m sorry.
Even if we could arrange all the people, things, and situations, we’ve got it just where we want them to be. For that one brief moment, we have achieved perfection, satisfaction, contentment. Next moment, things change, and we have to begin the struggle all over again to get it back to where it was, that moment of ecstasy. All things are in the process of constant change. You know, whatever it is, that too shall pass.
The second mark of condition exists is the mark of impermanence. There’s various ways that we can describe impermanence, different types of impermanence. For example, there’s the impermanence of changeability. You know, for example, the many different states that we go through over the course of our life, you know. At one time, we were just these little tiny little babies.
It’s hard to imagine. I don’t know, this old body was at one time soft and smooth and cuddly with little baby fat. Anyway, bold. Well, it’s almost bold now. My head, Little tiny fingers.
I’m just amazed at baby’s nails. The little nail. Anyway, you don’t wanna hear that. The states we go through over the course of our life, these tiny little babies, and then we grow up into toddlers, we become young children, then we become adolescents, then we become young teenagers, then we become young adults, then we become middle aged, then we become seniors, and then we become old, and then we die. There’s these states that we’ve been passing through.
And then that’s the changeability. Then there’s the changeability of all the various elements which constitute our life, which our life is made up of, our prosperity, our relationships, our physical and mental well-being. At times everything goes well for ourselves, where other times, you know, nothing goes right. It’s all going wrong. It’s all chaos.
It’s a mess. My life is a mess. You know, sometimes we have plenty of money, sometimes we don’t have enough. Sometimes we have all the various things that we need, sometimes we don’t have what what it is that we want. Sometimes all, you know, we gather, you know, we gather these things about us, these possessions, these these material things, but they’re constantly wearing out.
We lose them. All our meetings end in separation. Our closest friend becomes our enemy, our enemies become our friends. At times we enjoy being with others. At other times we can’t we just want to be I just want to be alone.
We can’t bear being with, you know, with even one other person, with the same a crowd. And sometimes we have we experience pleasant feelings, sometimes we experience unpleasant feelings, sometimes we experience neutral feelings. And at times we’re healthy, strong, and excited about our lives. Sometimes we’re sick and worn and weary of the whole thing, and we wish it would just end in one way or another. And then sometimes we feel we’re full of hatred, and attachment, and pride, jealousy.
Sometimes we we have noble feelings, noble ideas. We’re full of love and compassion and wisdom. Gosh, it’s hard to keep track of it always, isn’t it? And we try to make some kind consistent coherent self out of all this. There’s no one day you believe this, the next day you believe the opposite, and you try to think, it’s a bit of a chaos.
Then there’s the changeability of all the things about us. Civilizations are born and die. Cities, are raised up and then they they they fall into ruin. Seasons change one into another. You know, floods and droughts come and go.
The flowers bloom. You know, there’s there’s a bare tree and then little buds in the spring and the buds begin to grow, and leaves form, and the leaves are green, and then they turn red and yellow, and then they turn brown, wither and dry up, and they fall from the tree. And once again the tree is bare, and then once again spring comes and the buds form. You know, the mountains are worn down by rain, worn smooth, Rivers run dry. That’s we’re familiar with that one.
minds are exhausted. We haven’t got to that point yet. It will happen. New cars eventually, you know, break down, need repair. Eventually, they’re consigned to the junk heap.
You know, we have to we have a new car. You know, dishes break, styles change, clothing goes out of style, songs become unpopular. They were once, you know, the the latest fad, you know. Things change. Then there’s the the impermanence of separation.
And whether other words, we have to keep moving on. You know, we we are we’re like these what are called the fleas on the hot griddle of life. You know, the you know, inevitably, the flea has to jump, and the and the and the flea that jumps must inevitably fall. Every falling, it must land. In landing, it must jump again.
You know? We’re all like these fleas on the hot, hot griddle of life. We have to keep hopping from one place to another. There is no place that we can rest for long, that we can stay for long. You know, there is no lasting niche that we can carve out for ourselves.
You there’s no place that the Son of Man can rest its head for long. There’s no identity that we can maintain permanently. No no realm of existence that we can that no version of reality that we can, that have created for ourselves, that can be sustained indefinitely. We’re just constantly continuing moving on, having to begin and begin anew anew. And then perpetually cycling through all the various mental and physical versions of our existences from blissful absorptions of the of the gods all the way down to, you know, the paranoia and hatred and pain of the hell realms.
And there and all the levels in between, continue to continually cycling through these various versions of reality, continually moving on, leaving behind, beginning again. You know, within the human realm, the rich become poor, the poor become rich, the the oppressors become the oppressed, and the oppressed become the oppressors. You know, the wheel just keeps moving on, turning again, again, and again. And then there’s the the the impermanence of of disintegration. This is subtle impermanence.
You know, the the by moment arising and passing away of all that is compounded. Things are such that when the appropriate causes come together, the thing comes into the thing arises, the object comes into existence. If in the next moment, similar types of causes and conditions come together, the thing comes into existence similar to what it was previously. Coming together, causes coming together, there’s integration of causes. Next moment, there’s disintegration.
The next moment, the same similar types of causes come together, there’s, again, integration forming a a continuum of similar type. Integration, disintegration, moment by moment. And finally, there reaches a point when those causes, similar causes or conditions, no longer come together, then the continuum that whatever it might have been ceases. That’s gross impermanence. So, light like a candle’s flame, you know, it appears affixed and unchanging.
But in fact, from moment to moment it’s undergoing creation and destruction, replenishment and exhaustion. That moment is just moment by moment flick a flicker of existence coming in and going out. But it appears to be a steady, unchanging, fixed entity. It gives us the illusion that appearance gives ourselves. Or you can think of a wave moving across the ocean’s surface.
From moment moment, water, which is an element of that wave, is being left in the wake, and new water is being swept up into its form. moment to moment, there’s a recycling of the water elements which constitute that form, that wave. It’s changing from moment to moment, but it appears like a solid fixed form moving across the ocean surface. But in fact, it’s constantly changing from moment to moment. Then there’s the changeability by nature.
I hope you’re getting across this idea of change. It’s a bit scary actually. Changeable by nature. This is an easy one to explain. It’s probably the most difficult to understand actually, but it’s the simplest to explain.
The fact that even if something has not yet changed, it eventually will. That is nature. So, you know, the point in going through all this and talking about impermanence in this way: impermanence in itself is not a problem. Things remain impermanent even for a Buddha. This glass is just as impermanent for a Buddha as for me.
It doesn’t become something other than that. That’s his nature. But that impermanence of the glass is no longer problematic for a Buddha, or the impermanence of my body, which is a problem for me, is not a problem for a Buddha. Impermanence is not a problem for a Buddha. Things remain impermanent.
The problem in terms of the mark of impermanence is our denial, our rejection, our struggle against recognizing this basic fact of life, of our existence. Impermanence. We’d rather it not be there. We don’t want to be there at a level of our awareness. We assume it’s not there.
We hold things to be permanent, unchanging. They’re always going to be there in some or another. You know, the the the the problem in, you know, is, you know, we we expect of the constantly changing that remain unchanged. Holding on to that which is doomed to decay as if it were going to last forever. You know, demanding that of the impermanent, that it that it bring it bring its permanent pleasure.
You know? We cry like little children when we lose our, you know, our toys, when they break, or when the pleasure runs out. It was always there from the beginning. It was impermanent. You know, what we mean by this simply is that it is our grasping and struggling to cling to transitory and its pleasures that turns pleasure into pain.
The market of conditioned existence, the marks of conditioned existence, conditioned by karma and afflictive emotion: suffering, impermanence. It is a struggle for permanence, when in fact the nature of things is impermanent, that makes our approach to living of our life dissatisfactory, pathological. And I talked about the beginning, we don’t in a way we don’t have any choice in talking about these things, our world view, where we’re coming from. What is it that shape our relation to the world, to the things out there, to the people and situation? We’re operating under a lot of false assumptions.
We haven’t identified them at present, and we suffer. That discrepancy between our mistaken ideas about the world and the way the world actually is in its true nature, that discrepancy, that gap, that disparity, that suffering, dissatisfaction, frustration, disappointment, that gap. If we can close that gap, if the way that we approach the living of our life in accordance with the way things are, that gap, then all of this is gone. The dissatisfaction, frustration, the disappointment. Our mind is at peace.
Things remain impermanent. But we’ve incorporated that understanding, that reality in our world view. We don’t expect the impermanent to be permanent, and therefore we’re no longer disappointed. We don’t cry like little children when their toy is broken, when the delicious food runs out, or whatever it might have been. And third, okay, I don’t know.
Am I being too heavy handed here? Three marks of conditioned existence. This particular way in which we’re approaching our life. A life led under the control of karma and afflictive emotions. Three marks.
It is in the nature of suffering or dissatisfaction, you know, whatever word fits works for you. It is impermanence. And the third is selfless. Selflessness. There’s the mark of selflessness.
So, again, you know, it’s just like impermanence, selflessness. human beings are model builders. We’re going to talk a lot about this when we come to the third principal aspect of the path, the awakening mind. We’re model builders. We’re continually trying to make sense of our world, to secure ourselves in this what amounts to could amount to chaos.
The power of thought enables us to construct mental models of things apart from the things themselves. We can think about things. We have symbols, we, you know, metaphors, images that we work with in order to think about the world, to to find some coherence in the world, to find our place in the world, to find how we can see how how we are going to relate with the world, how we fit into this experience, what this experience means for ourselves? So we rely upon these inner models to make sense of our experience of the world. But this model building extends as well, not only to the things and the people and situations and the forms and so forth about our but it extends as well to ourselves as persons.
Our I, our self, you know. Our experiences are conditioned by our belief in a self. We are formed on the basis of a constructed model of a self. Because and this model of a self that we all have constructed, because it’s so more comprehensible, so much more stable than the fact we come to unthinkingly identify ourselves with what is in fact a mere a mere mental representation of ourselves, and moreover, one that is in many ways mistaken. You know, that the self is chaotic, if you think about it, which we don’t think about it very often because it’s frightening.
We want a consistent, coherent personality. Somebody you know, we want other people to to to be that way as well. But, you know, in fact, it doesn’t seem to be the case. You know, somebody you know, we we say to somebody if they’re not acting consistently with the with the with the way that we normally expect them, we say, oh, you’re not you’re not quite yourself yourself today, are you? How can you be somebody else other than yourself?
What we’re saying is, I’m not you’re not acting as I expect you to act. Or we do that with, oh, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I’m just not myself today. And we we we try to keep ourselves, you know, from one day we think yes, one day we think no, one day we believe this, one day we don’t believe it.
And and we we box ourselves into a great deal. We we we try to we force ourselves to sense some patterns of thinking out of a fear of a more fluid open way of being. It seems as Buddha, it seems like he’s Buddha is anything he could be anything. You want him to be a great guy? If you want him to be a doormat, he’ll be a doormat.
You want him to be a mountain, he’ll be a mountain. He doesn’t have his own agenda. He’s his his his he’s coming from a place of compassion. That’s all. There’s nothing in it for him.
He’s already got his. All of us have an innate sense that there is a thinker thinking our thoughts, that there is a feeler feeling our feelings, that there is a doer behind our doing. There is somebody running the show. We believe in and perceive a solid, fixed, autonomous, concrete Self existing at the core of our being. We strongly grasp to that Self as who, in fact, we are.
We identify. The greater part of our life is dedicated to the welfare of that I, that Self, that we conceive of ourselves to be. Both humans and animals act as if they were such a self or they possess such a self, and we regard this behavior as perfectly normal. Though we are unlikely to be aware that we harbor such a belief. All our afflictive emotions, such as attachment, hatred, jealousy, spite, miserliness, pride and so forth, all of them are indications that we do harbor such a notion of a type of self, because they all arise in dependence upon just such a conception, such a notion that we hold.
When we look at the way that we suffer and normally think and react emotionally to life, it is as if we believe that we are a self that is partless. We believe ourselves, and we’re going to go into this ad nauseam when we come to the third principal aspect of the path. We believe ourselves to be a self that is a partless whole, enduring in an unchanging manner, existing independent of body and mind, and all the causes and conditions and circumstances and so forth, which in fact make us who and what we are. There’s this entity who we conceive of ourselves to be. Yet, when we investigate, and this is what we have to do, when we examine, no such self can ever be found.
What we do search for just that self that we’ve identified existing at the core of our being is its very absence. We, you know, we hear this term selfless. That means an absence. There is an absence of just such a type of self. That’s what we mean by self less ness, the quality of the absence of that particular type of self.
And this denotes the Buddhist doctrine that describes the deeper nature of ourselves. The self does exist. I exist. The person exists. Jampa exists.
That this is what we call the conventionally existent self, the empirically existent self. We have lots of different terms we can use. This self is not a problem. More or less. Tonight it’s got a cold, so it’s a bit of a problem.
It is the misconceived self, that model that we adhere to as being, in fact, who we are, which has the sense of being a partless whole, enduring in an unchanging manner, existing independent of causes and conditions, the values of my society, the peer pressure. It’s just a self contained entity, substantially existent, at the core of my being. That self is problematic. On the basis of that self, we go on to develop aversion to what we see as as threatening to that self. We develop attachment to that which we see as enhancing to that self.
We go on to the thought, and out of aversion attachment, go on to create actions, karma. This is the approach to life that we are living under control of, afflictive emotions and karma. And this is the basis of the problem. You know, believing in the existence of an independent self is like believing a coil of striped rope in the grass, along a path in dim light, you know, to see it as a snake. You know, it’s getting dark and in the grass there is what is in fact a coiled rope, a striped rope.
And due to the conditions as such, such, you can see that as a snake. Instinctively react emotionally with fear and aversion, you you jump back. But if we were to generate a strong contradiction to that belief in the reality of that snake, you know, we we investigate the object. You know, we we shine we a torch on it, we get a stick, we’re we’re really fearless, we’re really brave. Hood down, poking around.
Yeah. Maybe it’s a dead snake. You know, it’s not moving. It’s got a strange head. Doesn’t even have a head.
Maybe its head’s cut off. And then you poke and poke and just moving and oh my god. How stupid of me. You’re really hard on yourself, of course. I’m so stupid.
It’s not a snake. It’s a rope. You know? There was, you know and we would come to understand that all our fears, all our aversion were totally baseless. There was never ever, ever anything to be afraid of, to fear in the very first place.
You know? There as a result, all result, all our inappropriate mental and physical reactions, and thereby all the many sufferings that they induced would dissolve themselves. All the sufferings around the aversion and the fear that we felt previously, we don’t need to oppose them. We don’t need to take antidepressants, you know, to get ourselves drunk, numb ourselves. There was nothing ever to be afraid of in the first place.
They would just dissolve of themselves. So in order to end our suffering, there is nothing more important than to realize that when under the influence of ignorance, we think and act as if the body and mind constituted or possessed a partless, unchanging, independent self, we are unthinkingly attributing qualities to them to which they do not possess. They are nothing more than a stream of constantly changing, you know, our body and mind. I’m nothing more stream of constantly changing mental and physical events, upon which we label I, person, self, Jampa. It is our persistent effort to treat our body and minds as if they were more than just that, or possess something more than just that, that makes our body and minds a constant stream of suffering.
That makes conditioned existence, suffering, dissatisfactory, pathological. I get this get cold too. I wanted to I’m sorry. I wonder I was going to go into maybe we can you know, at this point, when we went through the original, in the long version, now we’re going through a summary of the first principal aspect, the path of developing this will to awaken. We looked at conditioned existence, then we began to investigate, well, what kind of existence have we actually developed for ourselves?
And this, we went through a discussion of the wheel of life, in a condition of this ignorance driven world of conditioned existence, the wheel of conditioned existence, the wheel of life. So I thought we’d just go through that very briefly. But maybe we could hold off for that, and we’ll just go through that quickly next week. It’s a few minutes till nine. Is there anything that you’ve any kind of questions, any points you’d like to bring up or discuss?
Come on, you guys. You talk about fear and anxiety being baseless. I can understand what you’re saying because there’s nothing that’s permanent. But subdue the anxiety. Just what’s a good method to work with anxiety and fear?
Is it just intervention and relay labeling it and putting it aside? Well, I I guess, first off, I guess there are there are things worthy of fear and there are things which are not worthy of fear and making that kind of distinction. There are, I guess, were there irrational fears, any irrational fears? Fear is a, I guess, in the evolution of ourselves was a survival emotion to keep us from acting very stupidly and kept us it has survival value. So I guess we have to make a distinction what type of fear we’re talking about.
And I don’t know. I I I kinda I kinda am becoming intrigued or really, I don’t know, it’s my flavor of the month, I guess. With this this I mentioned that I did a course of ACT therapy over Friday and Saturday. And they do a lot of work with fear and anxiety. And, you know, the way that they would work with them, I mean, and well, first, you know, I think, you know, one is to actually to feel the fear, to feel the anxiety in its fullest way.
One of the problems is what they call experiential avoidance. We avoid uncomfortable feelings. And this only compounds our problem. We set up a struggle with our own private experiences. This forces us to begin to avoid, you know, we develop a habit of avoiding difficult experiences internally, but also externally.
And our life begins to constrict. We begin to narrow down the boundaries of what it is we’re willing to feel. And it seems as if it seems as if, you know, it’s like you can’t have it both ways. You know, if we had our choice, you know, on our menu we’d say, only pleasure here, you know, Only nice feelings, and we would select from our menu of pleasant and wonderful feelings. We don’t we don’t we wouldn’t want any suffering feelings or difficulties or sadness or but it seems like it seems like if we’re going to and and we’re talking about in the in the in the the in the experience of ordinary people like ourselves.
The course of avoiding, we begin shut down, we begin to numb ourselves out. We have to desensitize ourselves. We begin to live not in the present moment because that involves experiences which we are seeking to avoid. So we begin to live in our heads in terms of future anticipations or past memories, and our life becomes hollow and there’s not much feeling involved. We lose the vitality, the vividness of our life.
And so it seems as if we have to begin to relate with all our experiences in a more skillful way. When fear arises or anxiety arises, actually develop the willingness to experience them fully. And then are in permanent phenomena. They will abide for a while and then they will cease. It’s not to say it’s pleasurable.
Psychology, in a way. And I think a lot of Buddhism is not about happiness, it’s about empowering oneself, becoming the authority of one’s life, finding out what it is you want and developing the competency to achieve that. You know, happiness will come along as byproduct of all that. Happiness in itself can be a trap. In Buddhist terminology, it becomes an eight worldly Dharma.
Your preoccupation with pleasurable feelings in avoidance of unpleasurable feelings. And that becomes like a prison for ourselves. We have to constrict it, we have to restrict the area of our repertoire of emotions and feelings. And life loses its vitality. So according to this particular model, you just become extremely mindful.
This is why mindfulness is an integral part of this particular therapy. In a very curious, open, willing, caring matter, feel that feeling fully. And then it will, if you’re willing to do that, it will cease. It’s in its nature, it’s impermanent. That’s why we just went through all this list of impermanent phenomena.
If you try to avoid it, it will find a way to to suppress it, it will come back all the more stronger. You will lead a life of fear, of avoidance. All these unwanted feelings inside of ourselves and around ourselves. There’s no freedom in that. But so if you’re willing to feel what it is that you feel, hold but it’s not, you know, it’s not a it’s a very gentle and opening.
And there’s value in this. It’s not heroic stance. It’s not sacrificing ourselves. It’s opening up to life. You know, it’s variety.
Life can be very sad, but it can be very happy. But you know you’re alive. Over and above that, if you’re willing to open up to fear and all these difficult feelings, then you won’t continue the story. They they’ll have their ending there in that moment. You know?
They’re impermanent. If you try to avoid them, they’re going to come back to haunt you again and again and again. Your life becomes narrower and narrower because you’re continually trying to avoid fear and anxiety. Anyway, that’s very long answer and convoluted to your good question. I don’t know.
I wish I had a good answer. So anyway, I’m just talking about from that particular therapeutic point, that particular model. They would say, Just completely open up to that fear. Beautiful I wish I had it. There’s a quote by Rainer Maria Rilke, the Austrian poet.
It is from Letters to a Young Poet. He said something like, no, I wish I had it with me. I’m gonna blow it. It won’t be mean it won’t it’ll be meaningless. How shall how shall we how shall we ever forget those myths from the which were at the beginning of time, the myths about dragons, which in the last moment turn into princesses.
Perhaps everything that we fear is in its deepest mode, something that simply wants to be loved. And this is the notion that if we’re willing to confront the dragons in our life, our fears and anxiety, that very willingness with a sense of compassion and caring and not heavy handedness that you bring to that willingness transforms these very fears into the princesses, into what can be beautiful beauty in our life. And there can be a great healing taking place in that. And this seems to be the this this notion in in many different ways. The dragons in the last moment become princesses.
Oh, yeah, yeah, anyway. So I wish I had that. It’s a beautiful quote. If we’re just waiting for us to, one moment, be courageous and beautiful. Something like that.
So it’s not a it’s being kind and gentle. It’s a way that we can be most kind to ourselves, is to confront these feelings, even if they’re unpleasurable. I mean, that’s not particularly Buddhist, but I think in a way it is, because it’s using the factor of mindfulness. Mindfulness is quality of intention, the way we pay a particular way of relating. If we want the coin, if we want beauty, on the other side is ugliness.
If you want one side, you have to take the other, it seems. And how are we going to relate with them? If you try to avoid the ugliness, then you’re pushing the beauty away from yourself. Anyway, don’t know if that even came near your question. My preoccupation, maybe it’s my cold.
Okay. So we’re almost finished with our review, and then we’ll begin the third principal aspect of the path. So we can dedicate the dedicate the positive energy that we’ve created together. 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 creatures suffer, commit evil, or fall ill.
May no one be afraid or belittled with a mind weighed down by depression. May the blind, the deaf, and mute hear sounds. May those whose bodies are worn with toil be restored and find and repose. May the naked find clothing, the hungry find food. May the thirsty find water and delicious drink.
May the poor find wealth and those weak with sorrow find joy. May the forlorn find hope, constant happiness, and prosperity. May they 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 disease 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 thy power and may the 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 an awakened realm.
May the supreme jewel 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 encircled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful Chenrezig, Tenzin Gyatso, please remain at the end of cyclic existence. Thank you.
If you’d like to grab a cup of tea, we’ll have a discussion. Otherwise, have a good night.