Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with a Michael Leunig poem on truth as the evening’s framing device, Ven Jampa Gendun uses this 115-minute Monday-night class to cover two distinct sections: a guided mindfulness meditation and a doctrinal review of bodhicitta’s “equalizing self with others” practice. The meditation half explains mindfulness as deliberate, non-judgmental attention and leads students through breath-focused exercises tracking sensation location, direction, and boundaries. The longer doctrinal section resumes a nine-part analysis of equality between self and others — all beings’ shared wish for happiness, the kindness of strangers illustrated through a vivid hospital scenario, enemies as teachers of patience, equality in the face of death, and finally an ultimate-level inquiry exposing friend, stranger, and enemy as mental labels mistaken for objective reality. For students already following this ongoing series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 20 3PA 2008 08 11.mp3
UUID: df00282c-a744-45d2-a9e9-8e0faff71032
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2008-2009 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2008-08-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 115.3 minutes
Words: ~12,418
Can you is that okay? Too loud? Too soft? Just right. Okay.
How’s everybody? Is it getting warm? Yeah, it’s pretty warm as you have. Yeah, actually. It’s on the there’s a switch on the to the left as you outside the door.
If you could just just Good, thanks. Okay. So we begin by adjusting our motivation as we always do in terms of bringing ourselves to the present. And perhaps, maybe you’ve had a busy day, unlike myself. I’m quite lazy, actually.
And we have to maybe pause for a moment and reflect upon what is important to each of ourselves. Maybe we could close the door. What do you think? I’m just coming in. Yeah?
Okay, okay. Yeah, that’s good. You’re late. That’s okay. What are reading?
When I talk to you, a cartoonist talks to God. Oh, really? That’s got the truthful poem, which I thought was very the truthful prayer. Is that Lonergan? Yeah.
Lonergan. Oh, I see. Okay. Can I see it? Yes.
I Do you want me to find it for you? Would you? Oh. It’s got the love and fear one here too. Yeah.
Familiar with Michael Leunig. So he’s talking about the truth. In order to be truthful, we must do more than speak the truth. We must also hear the truth. We must also receive the truth, we must also act upon the truth, we must also search for the truth, the difficult truth within us and around us.
We must devote ourselves to truth, otherwise we are dishonest and our lives are mistaken. God grant us the strength and the courage to be truthful. Amen. So it’s the truth which is going to make us free. Over and above.
It’s the way things actually are. I think Buddhism places a tremendous emphasis helping us to find methods to uncover, you know, beyond all the sets of fiction that we’re continually superimposing on the world about us and even on ourselves. Ultimately, we want simply to know how things are. In a way, we have no choice. I think it was Krishnamurti who once said that for an intelligent person there are very few choices in life.
We want to find peace, both within ourselves, but also in our relationship with the world about us. And this peace arises out of bringing about a harmony, both in terms of all the parts, the warring factions within ourselves, this committee of the mind, you know, with each of their particular agendas, but also how do we harmonize ourselves with the world about us? It seems to me that the Buddhist path is very much directed toward bringing about harmony, both harmony within ourselves where we find our own fulfillment in terms of our own welfare, this private inner experience of peace with inside of ourselves, but also in terms of how we be in this world with others. We cannot escape the fact that we are social beings, that we exist or that part of ourselves exists in relationship to others. And how do we find that quality of harmony between ourselves and others?
And that harmony, I think, is what we call love. I guess we could give it a lot of names or maybe complicate the issue a great deal, but maybe that’s all it means. That the finest way, the most skillful way, which we can find harmony with the world about us and how we’re going to relate with it is simply expressed in love. There are only two basic fears. There are only two basic emotions, love and fear.
There are only two feelings love and fear. There are only two languages love and fear. There are only two activities love and fear. There are only two motives, two procedures, two frameworks, two results love and fear, love and fear. And we live in fear, I think, more than most of us are aware of.
I think most almost all of our actions are driven out of fear. And so Buddhism is trying, as best as it can, to help us to find some way to go beyond that fear and to find love, and therefore to bring an inner harmony with inside of ourselves and a harmony with the world around us. And then there’s some kind of peace. Then we can be of benefit not only to ourselves, but also others, to help them to find the same ends as ourselves have established for ourselves. You know, I tried, in my confused way, to emphasize, I think we need to strike some kind of balance, in terms of our priorities in our life.
For sure, meaningful relationships should play a significant role in our endeavors in finding a successful life and you know, having comfortable material possessions and home and so forth, and all the good things which make up a good life. And then how do we balance those in terms of our own attitudes, our own, you know, how we’re going to make use of those, the perspective from which we relate with those things about us is equally, if not more important. You know, we can be loved, we can have all the material necessities, we can have fine homes and cars and proper positions, but unless we have the proper perspective from which to relate with them, then it’s as if we had nothing. In fact, we could have less than nothing. Not only conducive to happiness, but in fact causes of our distress of difficulties that could be problematic.
Know, as I’m fond of saying, it’s not so much the people and the things and the situations about us which cause us problems, but our ideas, our attitudes, our opinions, our perspective about them which are problematic. And so we have no choice, know, in a way, if we’re going to live our lives intelligently, that is say, sensitive to our own lived inner experience and our own wisdom, which is trying to tell us about how to how, you know, the wounds which we’ve all experienced are like mouths trying to tell us something about the way we’re living our lives. So, you know, we don’t have to it’s not a matter of giving this up or forgoing this or sacrificing that. That’s that’s not the point. You know, if anything, we are to ban the causes of suffering.
That’s all. And the causes of suffering are most basically within our own minds, in terms of our attitudes, our ideas, our opinions, our worldview. It’s problematic. It’s based upon some misconceptions. And, you know, if we’re ever going to solve our problems at the deeper level, have to come we have to work with our own minds and these basic misconceptions by trying to realize the truth.
We have to become students of the truth. Our lives have to reflect truth. That’s what I think what Leunig maybe is saying, I don’t know. So that’s what we do here on Monday nights. This is like truth one hundred one or something.
There’s going be exam, so I hope you guys are preparing. And it seems as if they don’t teach us these things in school. Somehow it’s left off the curriculum. Maybe they suppose we’re getting it somewhere else, or maybe they don’t think it’s important or it’s overlooked, or maybe they don’t know themselves. Probably the latter, I don’t know.
I don’t know why. Anyway, this is our continued education. But, you know, one of our problems, one of our basic problems is that we are so much absorbed and caught up in our own problems, oftentimes to the exclusion and expense of others. And this is one of the basic truths that we hopefully can come to do. We’re going to talk a little bit about this evening in terms of the advantages of other centeredness and the disadvantages of self centeredness.
If we can begin to take into consideration in how we’re going to lead our lives, even one other person and what I mean by take into consideration is if we can set aside our own agenda, material, even if slightly diminishes its force, even if only temporarily, and be there for someone else. And of course, we have to begin with our own self interest. There’s no question about that. We can’t be somewhere else. We can’t be someone else.
But, you know, someone that we presently love, you know, a parent or a partner or a child, and just being there for them. But the more that we want to be there for them, the more we realize it is ourselves and all that we come to understand, you know, what we have to give, which will determine how much we will ever be to be there for them. You know, the more that we are ourselves, the more we have to give. You know, if you want to be there in some way, some significant way, for somebody else, then you begin to realize your own limitations, you know, and how much you need to grow. And by grow, I simply mean to be a little more caring, a little more understanding.
You know, can you think of someone else? I mean, right now, this present moment. I don’t mean abstractly or when you go home tonight, but right now, that in some way you’d like to be there for, in ways that you haven’t been able to in the past, that you’d like to be perhaps understanding, a little kinder, a little more patient. In some way, you know, help them to solve their problems, to help them to find happiness. Not what is it for you, but for their sake.
If you want that, then that becomes our motivation for being here tonight, because in Truth one hundred one, maybe we can go just a little bit further in becoming that person whereby you’ll be able to fulfill that desire, wish to be there for them in a more significant way than you’ve been able to in the past. You know, the motivation behind what we do could be for them as well as yourself. And I think in this way, you know, we’re creating that kind of harmony. We’re bringing about harmony with inside of ourselves by finding inner peace within outside of ourselves, but also beginning, if only in some small way, to find a way of integrating our way of life with the world about us and being there for others in terms of love, altruism, caring. And then I think, you know, if that’s the motivation behind our coming together here tonight, then whatever Jamfah says in all this confusion, blah blah blah, it really pales into insignificance behind the benefit that even just a thought, just that aspiration has, both for ourselves and others.
So, you know, we talk about going for refuge. This is simply this idea of reprioritizing, getting back in touch. We lose sight of what’s important to ourselves. We call the best person that we could possibly become a Buddha. Okay, that’s a name we give it.
Whatever. And you have sort of an image of what that Buddha represents for you, you know, whatever it looks like for you. And that becomes a priority. And this is a strategy to help you become that Buddha, you, our coming here this evening in the ways that we do, our discussions and our talks and so forth. But, you know, as was pointed out, simply wishing it was so is not sufficient.
We have to do the work. We have to implement the means to realize the truth. Have to become the students of the truth. And this occurs within within the social context of ourselves, of a fellowship of practitioners who understand one another, what we’re about, and who respect, admire all that we’re trying to do together, and are willing to assist in whatever way we can, you know, advising, teaching, lending a hand materially, emotionally, just trying to be there for each other. Sometimes I see it as we’re all climbing this mountain in one way or another, whether we’re aware of it or not.
We’re all kind of reaching up and grabbing hold of somebody’s hand a little bit higher along the mountain than ourselves. And at the same time, we can be reaching down and giving someone else a lift up as best we can. That’s our spiritual community. We depend upon each other. And we try to raise the level of motivation, the why behind, the purpose for, you know, all of what I’ve been going on about, such that we’re not doing for our own piece of chocolate cake.
And that hasn’t worked, and it probably never will work. But maybe we can step out of that just if only a small bit, just for a moment, and open up to a wider vision of what our life could be like. Maybe we can do what we do for the sake of a growing circle of others, ultimately all other sentient beings. The vast vision, the cosmic vision of what our life could be like. 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 become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings.
May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from the joy that is without sorrow. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for some and aversion toward others. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, and mind.
I present clouds of every type of offering, those actually arranged and imagined. I disclose all my negative actions accumulated during beginningless time and rejoice in all the virtues of superiors and ordinary beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of Dharma for migrating beings. I dedicate all virtue, my own and that of others, to the great awakening. Meditate.
I thought we would just expand upon our practice of mindfulness. Our meditation, our mindfulness is part of our meditation practice. And I just thought I’d say a few words about mindfulness. I think it’s a very practical and useful practice for us all. Mindfulness is a type of awareness that emerges when there are three qualities present: when we pay attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non judgmentally.
So it’s a way of paying better attention, a different way of attention, wiser attention. It’s not just more attention. Mindfulness is paying attention intentionally on purpose. You know, we’re no longer on automatic pilot as we normally are, as we usually are. Minds are not being powerlessly drawn to external objects, sounds outside or whatever, or our internal objects like thoughts, and feelings and so forth.
It’s like, normally our minds are being powerlessly drawn like iron filings to a magnet. It’s as if out of our control. In mindfulness practice we are actively choosing what our mind attends to. What our mind becomes involved in. We’re making a choice.
So when I say intention, another word is we’re making a choice, a consistent choice. We’re learning how to consciously choose what our mind is paying attention to. We always pay attention, but more than not, our attention is driven by unconscious choices, habitual choices. What we attend to is beyond our conscious awareness. And it draws us into modes of thinking and ways of being which often aren’t in our own best interests, which simply perpetuate a lot of past dysfunctional ways of acting and thinking and speaking.
Here we’re paying conscious attention by choosing what we attend to in mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is always asking the question, What am I presently experiencing? So mindfulness is experiential. It’s always concerned with the present moment. Mindfulness is focused directly on the present experience.
So, you know, in contrast, normally our minds are habitually caught up in anxiety around trying to hold on to some pleasure, or to find pleasure, or fear about avoiding pain. Normally our minds you know, our minds are caught up in rumination about past remembrances, rumination about past remembrances and fantasies about the future. We spend very little time in the actual present moment, what it is that we’re actually experiencing in the present moment. We have made absorption into the past and the future an overriding habit. You know, much of the time we’re not even aware of it, that we are spending so little time in the present moment.
As a consequence, we may feel that we have very little control over our own minds. And having very little control over our minds, we have a sense of having very little control over our own lives. You know, people talk about antidotes to stress. One of the underlying causes for stress is a sense of powerlessness in terms of what’s happening to you. There’s a sense that things are out of control.
We lose a sense of agency in our life, like a leaf being blown by the wind. But this all evolves out of a sense of our minds in themselves are out of control because we don’t exercise control. Our minds simply are drawn mindlessly to whatever is most stimulating in terms of our minds are driven by unconscious past habits. We aren’t making conscious choices. So when we talk about intention or purpose, we’re talking about making conscious choices.
And out of that there arises a sense of being able to control our own mind. Don’t have all that much control. It’s limited, and realistically speaking. We everything that we might want to do. That doesn’t seem to be in the nature of things.
There is an area in which we can exercise more and more control, and that is in terms of what it is that we pay attention to. And out of that we begin to gain a sense of authorship in our life, and therefore greater control of our life and less stress in our life. And also this quality of attention, paying attention, has a quality of nonjudgmental quality to it. Allows us to see things for what they really are without our having to demand that they be different. There’s a certain dishonesty that demands that what is be other than what is.
That what is be other than the way it is. What is the actual present moment? And it allows us to allow that to be as it is. Whether we like it or not, it is what is. We don’t have any choice.
You know, we can revert to a doing mode, we can bring about, we can plan things out, we can implement strategies to change so that the future will be different, but we can’t change the present moment. That’s to be on our control. It’s already there. It’s already happened. To demand that it be otherwise is simply to demand that reality be other than reality, and that’s impossible.
And we either react with a sense of rage because we can’t do the impossible or a sense of failure or a sense of powerlessness. You know, if we have to harmonize ourselves, as I was talking about before, with the way things actually are. You know, we can learn to allow things to be just as they are in this moment without demanding that they be different. There’s a great lesson there to be learned. We don’t have to react.
We don’t have to do anything about them. It’s nonjudgmental, non evaluative. But this nonjudgmental attitude also extends to ourselves, applies equally to ourselves. You know, the habit of judging winds up functioning as an irrational tyrant that is never satisfied. So not only do we not judge what the present experience is and relate to it with an open, curious, warm hearted sense of goodwill, but we also extend that to ourselves.
We can bring about change in the future. That’s for sure. That’s what Buddhism is all about. But how do we accept ourselves in the present moment? We’re really hard on ourselves, much harder on ourselves than I think we imagine, demanding of ourselves that we be in this present moment other than where we are.
We reject a great deal of ourselves. We wall off parts of ourselves, the shadow and inner events, which don’t live up to some standard, some way, some preconceived way things should be. So, you know, think it’s no I talk about mindfulness practice. It’s not just concentration. Some people try to reduce it to that.
I don’t think they understand what mindfulness practice is, actually. There’s no small practice. It’s about paying better attention on purpose in the present moment, non judgmentally. You know, mindfulness, like I said, is always asking the question, What am I actually experiencing in the present moment? Coming back to reality rather than living in a fantasy of the future or memories about the past in one way or another.
Answering that question requires that we learn how to be fully present right here and now, right now with whatever is here and now. Presents us how most of the time, when things are not going well, We don’t want to be here now, either mentally or even physically, we don’t want to be here now. It’s not easy to stay focused on the present moment. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that in your meditation. It doesn’t seem to come naturally out of the force of our past habits.
Our minds tend to be all over the place. So how do we stabilize and deepen our capacity for paying attention? You know, just as an experiment, you can try to think of not think of, try not to think of, say, a white bear, okay? For the next one minute, try your best not to think of a white bear. Okay.
We’re going to give a prize. Anyway, you get the idea. Resist persists. We’ll see that if we try to suppress thoughts, what we resist will persist. Our very attempts to force the mind can rebound in the exact opposite direction.
You know, they’ve done this some I don’t know how they do these things, they’ve actually carried out some psychological evaluation experiments. Repressed thoughts actually come back even to a greater extent than they would if they weren’t resisted. You cannot force the mind. But what we can use rather than force is intention. We stabilize and deepen our capacity for paying attention by choosing.
So, you know, we choose where and how we’re going to pay attention. This involves training and intentionally focusing and refocusing again and again and again our attention on a single object. So, you know, we gently direct the spotlight of our attention upon a chosen object over and over and over again. Whenever our mind drifts away, we choose to I don’t think life presents us with many dramatic moments, when the course of our maybe once in a while, in the course of our lifetime, you know, when this choice or this decision is going to have far reaching ramifications all the way down the line, you know, it’s kind of a dramatic moment when when our life hangs in the balance in one way or another. But our life is made up of infinite accumulation of seemingly insignificant choices that we’re making all the time.
One choice leads to another, one leads to another leads to another, which maps out entire life. A path evolves in some way or another, for better or worse. So, you know, when your mind wanders, it’s no big deal, is it? I mean, you become aware that your mind has wandered. Ah, I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do tomorrow for the last five minutes.
Okay. At that moment, there’s a choice. You can make you you have you can make a choice. It seems like a terrible almost, you know, in the cosmic scheme of things, it’s hardly worth talking about. But maybe maybe that maybe that’s our misconception in a way.
Maybe these are the only choices we can really make, that are really open to us, that we’re free. You can choose to keep on with what your mind has, by the force of unconscious choice, chosen for you, by the force of past habits, or you can choose to take conscious control and pay attention to what you choose with awareness. It seems like an insignificant choice, but I think it has major ramifications ramifications if it’s done, you know, over the accumulative time of making that choice consistently. You begin to choose consciously what the quality of your life, the way it’s going to work, how it’s going to run, the types of minds which will arise and will not arise, the way that you’re going to relate and experience our world. And our reality is what we pay attention to.
And we can begin to choose choose in terms of our wisdom, in terms of our compassion, what we pay attention to. Now our world, at present, has evolved out of ignorance, has evolved out of self centeredness, mostly all the various particular emotions. But we can begin to evolve a different world, a different reality, simply by what, how, and the quality of our attention, a type of attention which is evolving out of wisdom, out of compassion. So we’re training to begin to constantly make a choice in what we pay attention to. The breath is no big deal.
It’s simply a training object. But hopefully, and in fact it will, we can carry this life skill out into the world around us. And we can begin to create the kind of world we want for ourselves. And what did know, sometime or rather we have to get back to our values. What is important for ourselves?
This is what I quite often talk about when adjust our motivation, isn’t it? I mean, this is what it’s really about, isn’t it? What kind of values would help you in creating a rich, full, meaningful life for yourself? What would that look like? And how do you begin implement the means, the strategies for creating that kind of life?
I’m not suggesting what kind of life you should be, but I would like for you to have a sense that you’re living your life out of your deeper, most held values. And those ways of being and which you find, which resonate, you know, give you a sense of purpose in your life, a sense of meaning in your life, a sense of richness and fullness of your life. That just life becomes a rewarding experience in and of itself, whatever else we may achieve in it. We just experience living our life to its fullest. So, you know, we begin to pay attention to what those elements within our own mind and within our environment which are conducive, which are going to help us to implement those values.
And we begin to choose a course in little insignificant ways. And we begin to map out a pattern, a path, a way of life for ourselves, which brings about the kind of life that we want to live, the world we want to live in. So you have this little it’s almost an insignificant little choice whether to take control of your life by choosing what you pay attention to, or simply to fall back to the default. Well, I’ve been thinking this is quite interesting, this is fascinating, you know, what I’m going to do tomorrow. It seems, you know, my breath is boring.
You know, is that your criteria? Entertainment? Immediate gratification? Or do you want to take some kind control over what you pay attention to? So this refocusing involves intention and not force.
So you can think of the image of a glass of water, a muddy glass of water. You try to as long as we keep stirring the water, the water will remain opaque, it will remain unclear. If we have patience and simply wait, the mud and the water will naturally settle out to the bottom, and above that mud will be clear, pure water. In the same way with our own minds, trying to suppress unwanted thoughts of our mind, it merely stirs things up. So we stop contributing to the agitation of our minds by encouraging it to simply alight and dwell upon a single object of our attention for a time.
When we intentionally let go of our urge to force things to be a particular way, you know, the mind naturally settles in by itself, you know, it becomes clear and calmer. And then the mind is like these, there’s like waves, you know, thoughts come, emotions come. That’s what minds do. Just like the ocean has waves, we have mind waves. And they come and they go and they come, these fluctuations of the mind, the states of mind.
These mind waves are both natural and inevitable. But we don’t have to we can surf them, we don’t have to overwhelm them, have them carry us away. We just keep coming back, placing our attention. You know, this is part of the learning process. We’re learning how to meditate, aren’t we?
They teach us to recognize when we have drifted on to a different object. So simply choosing intentionally, just choose to come back to the breath without any sense of force. That’s all. I choose. I choose to come back to the breath.
I choose to come back to the breath. And we we we the quality of the quality of the attention has a sense of curiosity, a sense of interest, a sense of of warmth, of goodwill. You know, it’s it’s it’s learning how to be. It’s perhaps an art we’ve lost in our in our habitual habitual doing. We can survive beautifully just by being.
So we’re going to try that. Okay. Oh, I know what I was going to do. I almost forgot. I just thought I’d take you through an exercise.
We’re just going to do an exercise, okay, using mindfulness. And it’s simple. Know, we’re going to first of all, as we normally do, we go through the body, simply relaxing the body, then the simple breathing exercise. Then we’ll come to the breath, where were the sensations associated with the natural breath that most clear and obvious to yourself. And then we’re to with you in talking about, you know, we’ll focus upon for example, the first one we’ll talk about is the location.
We want to simply refine our attention, just as an exercise. So where is the location? Where is the sensation associated with that is most obvious and clear to yourself, associated with the sensations of the breath? And we want to watch it. Does it move around?
Does that location of the sensation, does it shift from one place to another? Just watching that particular characteristic of sensation. And then we’ll look at another characteristic of sensation, for example, is the direction of the movement. Does the sensation move up and down? You know, for example, if you’re watching your abdomen or perhaps the sensation of the air rushing in and out of your nostrils in your nose and so forth on your upper lip?
Is that sensation? Is it moving out and in? Is it moving right and left? Does that direction change, shift over time? So it’s simply a way of refining our ability to pay attention.
This is an exercise, okay? Okay, we talked a lot about it. So would you like to stand and stretch for a moment? And then we’ll sit. So we’re going to begin.
So take in a comfortable, firm posture. Dignified, stable, like a mountain, and a firm, grounded, tall, your peak, the peak of the mountain, the head held in the sky. And we’re going to begin with relaxation of the body, just moving through the body, beginning at the crown of your head, the scalp. Feeling the wrinkles in your forehead and your brow beginning to smooth out. The pressure in and around your eyes diminishing, muscles of the face softening, relaxing, Your jaws relax.
Bring awareness to the back of your neck, and perhaps gently turning your head to each side a few times, very gently loosening, stretching the muscles at the back of the neck. Relaxing the muscles in the throat. And bringing your 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 oftentimes carry around on our backs moving down and through your body into the ground. Like some weight’s been lifted off your back that perhaps you weren’t even aware of. And bring 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. Area and the lungs, the central region of the back, stomach, releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles. Just allow your belly to go soft. Relaxing throughout the abdominal cavity.
Keeping your back straight, your trunk erect, relax your lower back muscles. Your buttocks. Throughout your upper legs, your lower legs, And finally your feet, soft and loose. And bring your awareness to your body in general, just scanning roughly through your body, noticing any tightnesses, any tensions which remain in the body, any areas of discomfort. Discomfort.
And focusing upon those particular areas, consciously relaxing, softening, feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen. If there is an area of discomfort, don’t try to avoid it or resist it or struggle against it. Just breathe into that area surrounding it with a kind, caring acceptance. It’s already happening. It’s part of who you are right now.
Be kind to yourself. Allow it to be. It’s okay. Your body becoming comfortable, at ease, the feeling of physical well-being pervading every part of your body. No place to go, nothing to do, nothing that needs to be thought about.
Just give yourself a chance just to be just be your body. Just come back to your body. Stay with your body. And then we’ll practice the six part breath exercise, simply breathing in comfortably, normally breathe out, extending exhalation. Completely emptying your lungs.
Again, breathing in comfortably, normally. Again, extending exhalation. And doing this six times individually. When you’ve completed the breath exercise, then bring your mind to the breath. Just the physical sensation associated with the natural breathing, wherever it’s most clear and obvious to yourself.
Focus your attention on that sensation. If you’re distracted, then with great patience, simply re choose to focus back on your attention back on the breath. Just choosing again and again to focus upon the breath. Now we’re going to practice some exercises in our mindfulness meditation, beginning with the location. So focusing on the location of that sensation that you’re paying attention to at present.
Does that location move around? Does it shift from one place to another? So paying special attention to the location of the sensation. Now we’re going to pay attention to the direction of that sensation. Perhaps it’s moving up and down, in and out, sideways.
The sensation, does that change over time? So paying special attention to the direction of the movement of the sensation to see whether that changes over time. Now we’re going to pay attention to the relative length. Which is longer, the in breath or the out breath? Or are they about equal?
Which is shorter, which is longer? The in breath or the out breath? Are they equal? And does that change over time? Now we’re going to pay attention to the clarity.
Which is clearer? Which is more obvious? The sensation associated with the in breath or the sensation associated with the out breath? Which is clearer? Which is more obvious to you?
Does that change over time? And then finally we’re going to look at the boundaries. So can you notice when the in breath begins, when it ends? When the out breath begins, when the out breath ends? Can you notice the beginning and end of the in breath, and the beginning and end of the out breath?
So you’re going to have to watch very closely. You have to pay very careful attention. So watch closely and try to see if you can catch the beginning of the in breath and the end of the in breath, the beginning of the out breath, the end of the out breath. Those points, those boundaries, can you notice those? As you do this exercise, are you in any way interfering with your breath?
Are you breathing deeper than normal in order to generate a stronger sensation? If so, interfering with your breath. Just allow the body to breathe itself. You just watch it. The body will breathe breathe itself.
Just watch. Bring your mind back to the breath. And then get in touch with your body. Relaxed manner, just slowly become aware of your surroundings, taking your time. So we’re doing our review of the second of the three principal aspects of the path: the awakened heart, bodhicitta.
And we said that there were two meditative traditions for awakening our hearts, the seven cause and effect instruction, and equalizing and exchanging self with others. And we reviewed the first of these two traditions, the seven cause and effect instruction, So tonight, and I guess next week, we’re going to review equalizing and exchanging self for others, okay? And then we’ll begin, ta da, the third principal aspect, emptiness, the wisdom realizing the nature of mind, awakening our minds. Seeing deeply into the nature of reality, whatever that is. I’m not quite sure yet.
I still have to study it. Equalizing and exchanging self for others. So in this practice we’re going to move through a series of five meditations. First, equalizing self and others, seeing the disadvantages of self centeredness, the actual exchange of self for others, and then finally the imaginative technique of taking and giving. Equalizing equalizing yourself and others is like the prerequisite to actually exchanging yourself for others without seeing and feeling deeply the basic commonality of the human experience all share in.
And this was the sameness of our felt core experiences of what it means to be a human being or what it means to be a sentient being at all. We will never be able to identify with the plight of others. And without that we will never be able to take the suffering and happiness of others as seriously as we do our own. Our mind will always be in a state of imbalance, bias in some way or another. So the foundation of a feeling of equality of self in others, on that foundation we then go on to look at disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centers.
You know, the guiding principle and this is a we have to relate this to, you know, have to take it out of the tradition and see its relevance within our experience. That the guiding principle upon which we are presently leading our life is flawed. And our egocentric, you know, me first, I am number one, center of the universe way of approaching our life isn’t working. You know, it’s not working for us. If it were, we’d be happy now, but we’re not.
It’s not working in our relationship. It’s not working in terms of how we’re finding solutions to our problems. It’s not working in terms of our finding happiness. On the other hand, when we genuinely are concerned with others, are concerned with others, we experience a kind of relief, you know, within ourselves from the struggle for our own happiness alone. And there can even be a sense of joy when we know that we can be an instrument of compassion in helping others, when we can forgo this sense of self consciousness, this constant struggle, this trying to figure out how am I going to be happy, how am I going to be able to exploit this present situation for my benefit, and we forget all that, we set all that aside just momentarily, and we’re there for somebody else so wholly, altruistically if possible, to whatever extent we are able.
There’s almost a relief, a peace in the heart at that very moment, a sense of freedom from the burden of self centeredness. And there’s a sense of joy in being able to really be of use to someone else. Seeing this, we determine to begin to reverse. We’re going to expand on each of these a little bit more. But if we see this, we determine to reverse our usual attitude.
This is the, you know, of cherishing ourselves for the cherishing of others. You you can’t force the mind to do anything. People try, but it doesn’t work in the long run. They might get some kind of short term benefit or some kind of change. But in the end, the mind will come back to its present vision of how it’s it’s going to be happy, how it’s not going to suffer.
We can’t control our feelings, but we can change our minds by seeing the nature of our feelings. We can begin to, you know, we on the basis of how we feel and getting in touch with that experience, we can begin to see that it is in our own self best interest to begin to whatever degree place a greater deal of interest on the happiness of others than ourselves. Or finding some kind of balance as opposed to our present orientation in seeing everything and everyone, in perceiving, evaluating, responding to, What’s in it for me? And then this is then we begin to exchange. This is completed by actually exchanging roles with others.
We complete the actual exchange of self with others through the development of empathy, being able to identify with the actual experiences of others. Finally, we use the visualization technique of taking and giving, you know, compassionately giving away our taking upon ourselves the suffering of others and lovingly giving away our happiness to others. And then out of this there develops an intense resolve. This is simply an imaginative technique. I want to be able to do in fact as best as I am able, as best as humanly possible.
So we develop the altruistic aspiration to become a Buddha, the best possible person that we can become for the sake of others. So it has its foundation. So the first of these five that we’re going to review very quickly of the series of meditations is equalizing ourselves with others. And we looked at this from many different points of view. As matter of fact, we went through a nine part meditation.
The overall meditation is divided in terms of the ultimate point of view. So we’re looking at the equality of self and others, from the ultimate point of view and from the conventional point of view. And this conventional point of view is further subdivided into from the side of others and from our own side. So we have three major divisions: from the conventional point of view, from the side of others and from our own side and from the ultimate point of view, making three. So we’re just going to go through these because we’ve looked at them in some detail.
Just to sort of prompt our mind, just to remind ourselves. The equality of self and others from the conventional point of view, from the side of others. And each of these has three parts. Okay? All beings, whosoever, want to be happy.
First part. All beings, whosoever, don’t want to suffer. Second part. All beings, though wanting happiness, don’t have real happiness. And all beings, though not wanting to suffer, in fact, continue to experience suffering.
So we went through each of those and looked at each of those three parts. You know, we might say, you know, we might these premises that all beings want to be happy equally, all beings don’t want to suffer equally, they’re wanting happiness, they don’t have true happiness, they’re not wanting to suffer, they still continue to suffer. We might accept those premises as being quite reasonable, you know, as the way things actually are. But, you know, that’s not the way we emotionally react or relate relate with others. We might say that these are obvious, but emotionally we normally relate with others in terms of we draw those who we love, who are beautiful, who are attractive, who are rich, who are desirable.
We draw them to us. That’s the way we normally relate. On the other hand, those we see as we have hostility to, that we see as being undesirable, we reject them, we push them away, we want to be separated from them. And the rest, the great majority of people, we simply neglect them. We remain indifferent to them as if were a piece of furniture, if they didn’t matter to us at all.
So our normal habitual ways of relating, if we check up, are in terms of the three simply variations on the three themes of attachment, hostility, and indifference. That’s the way we normally relate. Emotionally, there’s great gap, disparity between the way we rationally approach our life, we think about things, and the way that we emotionally approach our life, the way we feel about things. So the insight that we’re trying to gain here is that from the side of others, their happiness and suffering are essentially no different from our own happiness and suffering. That we can see that everybody wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like ourselves.
But we have to keep reminding ourselves of that, to make that understanding a part of our daily mindfulness in terms of how we’re going to relate, interact with others. Otherwise we’re going to go on automatic pilot, and our automatic pilot is a habitual way relating with others in terms of attachment, aversion, hostility, and indifference. That’s the default pattern. That’s always arising habitually without awareness, without mindfulness. Know, Understanding this, we begin to take other happiness and suffering as seriously as we do our own.
Okay? So those are the three parts to the first major division, from the conventional point of view, from the side of others. From their side, every person in this room and outside this room wants to be happy, doesn’t want to suffer, just like myself, most basically. And checking that out to see whether you can validate that with your own experience, within your own intuition and wisdom and understanding. Okay, now we look at it from the second major division, from the conventional point of view, from our own side.
How do we understand that all beings are equal in those terms? So firstly, all living beings have been equally kind to us in the path. Okay, this is one of those ones in this context that may be difficult for us to work with, that we can’t quite accept. We saw this one when we went through the Seven Cause and Effect Instruction, when we said that all sentient beings have literally been our mother in the past. So this presupposes that we have some degree of conviction in the notion of infinite infinite beginningless rebirths.
You know, the mind is beginningless. You know, we can’t point to a first moment and say, This is when my mind began. Each moment of mine arises from a previous moment of mine, an infinite regression, back, back, back, without beginning. Just as we can apply that same understanding, there is no first moment of matter. Things do not come from nothing, nor at least from the point of view of Buddhism do they come from a creator God.
That they come from a cause which is similar in type to themselves. That which is similar in type to matter is in previous moment of matter. That which is a similar type of mind is a previous moment of mind. Each of our mind streams is beginningless, it’s always arising from a previous moment of mind, from a previous moment of mind in the same continuum, and it’s endless. It will continue without end.
Over this beginningless infinite continuum of mind, our minds have compulsively, due to karma and afflictive emotions, taken rebirth. In the course of these infinite numbers of rebirths, we’ve had infinite numbers of mothers. So everyone has, in fact, been our mother. But additionally, every living being has been kind to us as my mother, as my father, as my brother, as my sister, as my partner, as my best friend, and on and on and on, you know. All of these many, many ways that people have been kind to me, equally kind.
So, you you might say, Okay, I’m going to be tricky here, Jampa. Yeah, and we talked about this also, you know. They’ve been equally kind to me, but they’ve also been equally nasty to me, you know. Over the course of these infinite births, these very same people have been my worst enemies, killed me, robbed me, you know, done all kinds of despicable things to me over and over again, you know. So then we go, Okay.
Fair enough. We have to then go on to the second part of this three part analysis in terms of ourselves, how all beings are equal. We have to see that from the conventional point of view, all beings are equal as friend, as stranger, and as enemies. And this is not easy. This is counterintuitive.
It’s not the way that we normally think. We have to really work with it. We have to train the mind. So it’s easy to appreciate the kindness of our loved ones and friends. It’s because we do appreciate, at least to some degree or to some degree are aware of the kindness of these people that we call them our loved ones, that they become our loved ones, that they are our friends.
But what about the majority of people whose kindness is not obvious to us at present, you know, people we call strangers? And we went through. You know, this is simply a review, just to remind ourselves of some of these ideas that were presented previously. You know, the clothes that we wear, the food that we eat, the house that you live in, the car that you drive are all dependent upon the kinds of others, you know, of being benefited by others. And all these people that present we feel so indifferent toward, it’s as if they don’t exist for us more than none, that, you know, what we feel so totally unrelated to are in fact an integral part of our well-being.
Almost everything that we have, almost everything that we do, all that we derive pleasure from, all that we value in one way or another, all our needs, all our wants, our physical and mental pleasures and whatnot, are all tied into the actions of others in one way or another. You know, okay, so you say, okay, what you say is, okay. Partly true, partly true. I do depend upon others. But what they do, they do because they get some kind of reward.
You know, they have an ulterior motive. They’re not doing it for me, being kind. They do it for money. That’s the bottom line. Okay.
And then this example that we talked about, you know, where, you know, your child has just been injured, deathly ill, could die, and you rush your child to the hospital. And then the child is rushed into the operating room, the operating theater, and you’re waiting in the waiting room, your mind is frantic. The one thing that you want most in your life, at that one moment, completely absorbs your entire being, is to see your child well and happy again. I mean, that’s all that you could want for your life. You would actually literally give your life so that would come about, that would happen, to be able to see your child smile again, to be healthy again, to run and be happy.
That’s all that you want in life at that moment. Your whole being is absorbed in that longing, in that want. And you wait and you wait and you wait. And finally the doctor comes out and she says, The operation was successful. It went well.
Your child’s going to be okay. So what do you feel at that very moment? What do you think? What’s your natural response? Do you think, Damn, I wonder how much is this going to cost me?
You know, there’s the doctor surgeon, anesthesiologist, and he’s, Oh, God. Is that what you would think at that very moment? You know, no doubt you’re going to receive a bill in a couple of weeks, okay. Wouldn’t the most natural and healthy response be one of appreciation and thankfulness? That someone had gone through all the training, had developed all the necessary skills, that enabled you, enabled that person to save your child’s life.
That there existed all these facilities, the staff, the surgeons, the doctors, the nurses, the clerical staff, the janitorial staff, the architect who built it, the brick layers, the masons, the electricians, the carpenters, all this came together and it gave you the one thing that you wanted most in the world at that moment. Moment, that there existed all that you could have wanted to bring you what it is that you wanted most. Sure, you know, they may all be doing what they wanted for money, but that’s not the important thing. Whatever their motivation is or maybe or not is not important for oneself. What is important is, isn’t it an attitude of gratitude, thankfulness, a healthier, more desirable response than an attitude of an accountant?
Either way, you’re going to have to pay the bill. You know, it’s simply a shift in the way that we view others and what they do for ourselves. Know, maybe there’s no reasonable argument. It’s a pragmatic argument, in a way. We can choose which type of life we want to lead, and what kind of response we would prefer.
Rather than persisting with our present feelings of indifference and our attitude of unrelatedness, paying attention to the benefit that we from others, the world is no longer seen as hostile. It’s actively supporting us. It’s a kind and benevolent world. I would rather live in a kind and benevolent world. You know, in a way it’s our choice of how we pay attention.
You can live in a hostile world, a threatening world, a world which is full of dangers. Or you can see, you know, I’m not saying that you should look out of the world out of rose colored glasses, you know, because the world isn’t rosy. But we can make a choice. There is an option. What fits with the fact?
It’s not predetermined. It is our worldview, the context in which we bring to the situation. Where would you be? What would you be doing? How could you survive without all these wonderful beings doing what they do for us?
What would we be doing right now? You know, the world’s not quite the world becomes our home. And so the kindness of strangers, the kindness of strangers. All beings are equally kind to us. Strangers equally kind, each in their own way.
I guess it’s just a matter of looking, beginning to pay attention in a way which is consistent, with a better what is going to bring you a fuller, richer, more meaningful life. We can persist. Know, I know I’m right. Jampa’s just talking kind of woolly nonsense. And you gotta take care of number one.
It’s a hostile world. Nobody else is gonna take care of me out there. That’s a way that’s a possible approach to the way that you can live your life. But we have a choice. Is that is that going to lead you to help you to implement the values that you would like to see your life as expression of, a way of being and a way of experiencing this wild, precious thing we call our life.
You know, what are you going to do? It’s more up to you than not. You know, the world doesn’t force itself upon us. You know, like, we aren’t passive observers like a mirror, simply reflecting. We are involved in the co creation of our reality.
Our values, what we believe in, what we pay attention to determines our reality. They’re consistent with the fact. I mean, never this would never ask us to see black as white or bad as good. We never do that. But within the facts, there’s a tremendous variable, a variety of possible interpretations.
And some of those interpretations are life enhancing and some are quite destructive. And we can become a little more skillful in how we’re going to interpret our world, the values we’re going to implement in our lives. So, okay, friends and strangers. What about enemies? Hard one, very hard, okay?
I think we are, if we’re honest. How do we see the kindness of enemies? It depends upon enemies. And, you know, you have to value growth. You have to value your own self development of your mind.
That has to be a real priority. Otherwise, doesn’t make any sense. in dependence upon the enemy, those people we don’t like, that we don’t get along with, who give us a hard time, we develop patience. Learn forgiveness. We learn what love is really all about.
Know, we can begin to see the disadvantages of self centeredness. We can begin to see the disadvantages of anger. It doesn’t take much effort to return kindness for kindness. But is a real triumph of the Spirit to return kindness for harm. You know, something which goes beyond the Eight worldly concerns.
The Eight worldly concerns are the outer wall of the prison we’ve built for ourselves. The eight worldly concerns are like the rules on how to be a model prisoner in saṃsāra. And these are the rules that we live by. These are the criteria of how we’re going to determine the way we are in this world. Complete absorption, preoccupation with pleasure, the avoidance of pain, the pursuit of gain, the avoidance of loss, the pursuit of praise, the avoidance of criticism, the pursuit of fame, the avoidance of notoriety these are our present criteria and they don’t work.
They’re not a way they’re not a skillful way of how to determine what is the best course and way of being in this world, what kind of actions, what kind of strategies. If you always avoid pain, you’re never going to grow. If you’re completely preoccupied with pleasure to the avoidance of any discomfort. And without growth, without self development, you know, can’t be sure, you know, we have to change. That’s the bottom line of what Buddhism is all about.
And we can’t be sure of every detail of that change. But we can have some kind of faith, trust, in the solitary quality of change, you know, becoming a little more caring, a little more understanding, that I’m going to be a better person than leading a better life in a better world. We can of have some kind of conviction, some kind of confidence in that. You know, if we don’t change, there’s two things that we can be assured of: the things will repeat themselves endlessly in the future. And if we do change, though we can’t know all the details of the change, we’re going to have a better life.
So, you know, when we say, you know, with an enemy you learn patience, that you learn how to really love, then we’re talking about from very unusual point of view, aren’t we? It’s not a view of the eight worldly concerns where you’re completely preoccupied with avoiding difficulties and be in to finding pleasure? Obviously not. There’s some you have your values, your standards, your criteria transcend those. So it’s people who give us a hard time to show us where we’re really at.
And sometimes that’s terribly important. And it’s people who criticize us that help us to reduce our pride, and sometimes that’s terribly important. It’s difficult people who strip us of our cocoons of nice, sweet tit for tat kind of relationships, these transactions which pass for relationships between ourselves and others normally. In other words, it is our enemies who help us to grow. You know, if we really think about it, it is our enemies who ultimately will bring about our greater welfare.
And the final analysis may be even more so than those we hold dear. And that’s it. Anything which helps us to grow is kind. A difficult thing, baby. That’s a difficult notion to get our minds around.
Anything which helps us to grow is kind. Growth is central to Buddhism. It’s what it’s all about. If we ever hope to be happy, if we ever have to go beyond our problems, we have to grow. And anything which helps that is kind.
Whether we call it a friend, enemy, or stranger, it’s completely beside the point. They’re all equally kind if they help us to grow. Anything which teaches us and presents us with an opportunity to learn is kind. We can change the entire person’s significance, the meaning that we attribute to the people and even our lives. The facts remain the same.
This person did that. How are you going to interpret that? You’ve got a choice. In a way you have a choice. If you react in terms of habitual patterns, then there’s no choice.
Here we’re trying to see that there are alternative ways of looking at the same facts and seeing them in a totally different light. Just through shifting our point of view, the enemy, rather than conceived as an obstacle to our happiness, on the contrary, is seen as contributing to our ultimate happiness, not our present happiness. That would be silly. That would be maybe that’s not silly. Maybe that would take a really fantastically trained mind.
Maybe it’s not very pleasant, but it’s contributing to our ultimate happiness, to becoming a better person. And that’s our real refuge. Then finally, in terms of conventional point of view, from our own side. That all beings are equally kind in terms of their path in the past, our mother, father, and so forth. All beings are kind in terms of being, whether they’re a friend, enemy, or stranger.
And then finally, thirdly, from the point of view of the conventional, from our own side, that all others are equal in terms of death, in the face of death. And this is really a heavy duty one, right? And it’s something we perhaps normally don’t like to talk about, think about very much. Yet, you know, death cuts through a lot of bullshit, doesn’t it? Trivialities.
Priorities straight. We come down to some essence in the face of death. When we talked about the inevitability of death, that everyone must die, that our lifespan is continually decreasing, and that whatever comes together is subject to dispersal, will come apart. So it’s definite that we’re going to die. Each person in this room is definitely going to die.
And that what holds true for myself holds equally true for everyone else. So, you know, all of us are doomed, all that is born is doomed to decay. All these feeling beings, we’re feeling beings, at some level we have some awareness that we’re going to die and we don’t want that death. We don’t want to die, but we will. So in the light of death, the enormity of death, the magnitude of death, how insignificant the superficial differences that we focus upon and we magnify amongst ourselves.
From the point of view of the universality of death, you know, petty the mind that discriminates amongst ourselves on the basis of, ‘If you make me feel good and you make me feel bad, what is the use of your attachments and hostility and indifference in the face of death, all of these beings are going to die. And what use will your hatred and your anger and your indifference be to them, to yourself? Then finally, the third division. We’re going go through the ultimate point of view. The ultimate point of view is simply looking at the equality of self and others from a deeper point of view, a more profound point of view, than even these ones from the conventional point of view, the two types that we’ve just previously talked about.
But maybe we’ll hold off to next week. Maybe we shouldn’t because I’m not going to finish next week. If I do, I’ll go for it. Maybe we can go through one, one point. So we’re going go through three points from the ultimate point of view, equality of self and others.
From the conventional point of view, from the ultimate point of view, don’t know if I can okay. Friends, enemies, strangers do not exist the way they appear. How are you guys doing out there? Yeah? Okay.
Friends, enemies, and strangers do not exist do not, in truth, exist the way they appear. So this is I said that the ultimate point of view is a little deeper, a little more profound. We’ve gone through this. So this is meant simply to be a review. It’s difficult, I think.
It takes some analysis, some thought. So we employ labels, mental images, models. human beings are model builders. We use models, representations, in order to think about the world, in order to make sense of the world. You know, we’re continually trying to make sense of this chaos all about us, these sounds, smells and tastes, you know, these thoughts.
And so we develop representations in order to think about them, shorthand notations, labels. So we employ, especially in terms of our relationship with others, three labels. The labels of friend, the label of stranger, and the label of enemies. Okay? These labels appear to us to be the objects that they refer to, the people themselves.
We talked about this, the fact that all conceptual consciousnesses are mistaken. But we have no understanding in what way are they mistaken, because we mistake our label, our idea, for the thing itself. When you think about the person, person, you mistake what appears to you is an idea about the person, and you mistake that idea of yours for the person themselves. That is why conceptual thought is mistaken. Those I discriminate as benefiting myself, I will go on to label as friend.
I label them as friend. And strangely enough, they appear as friends. They appear as kind, as pleasant, as likable people. Those who I discriminate as in some way harmony, I label as enemy. So, you know, I talked about how we co create our reality.
in dependence upon that label, they appear as if from their own side as an enemy, as being, you know, people who are unkind, who give us a difficult time, know, unlikable, unpleasant. Unpleasant. That’s the way they appear. They appear from It appears as if their quality is coming from its own side. Not that we labeled it.
It now appears it’s coming from its own side. Those who we see as neither we discriminate in some way as neither helping us or harming us, we label as strangers. And they appear as strangers. That is to say, they appear as neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither likable nor unlikable or dislikable. So then we assent to these appearances.
So there are these appearances. And we assent, we accept that this is the objective truth about these objects, these people, and we will automatically react with attachment, hostility and indifference. We react with attachment what to the friend, aversion or hostility toward the enemy, indifference toward those we consider as strangers. We will help our friends, we will look upon their well-being with pleasure, we will seek to harm our enemies, we will look upon their problems with pleasure, and the rest of the we will ignore the stranger and look upon them with indifference. It doesn’t matter what happens to them.
So friend, stranger, and enemy do in fact exist, just as Christians exist, Jews exist, women exist, men exist, blacks exist, white exist, Russians exist. Chinese exist. These all are established in dependence upon conventionally defined criteria. Discriminations. Okay?
That in itself is not the problem. The problem arises when we mistake the label for the person themselves, our idea about them for the actual flesh and blood human being. The map is not the territory. So, you know, feeling It’s like the person who says, Oh, humanity. I just can’t stand people.
Know, such a person does not love humanity but simply has a sentimental feelings associated with their idea about people, about what they call humanity, which has little to do with real flesh and blood people. You know, they are in love with their idea humanity, but real love for humanity is not separated from love for many, many, many, many, many, many, many individuals with all their good qualities, their light and dark, warts and all, good qualities. That’s what makes us up. So the insight that we’re trying to gain here is, though the categories of friend, stranger and enemy and all the various categories that we continue to use, which are quite useful in our everyday life. Shorthand notations for thinking about the world around us, making sense of it.
You know, the Christians and Jews and Buddhists, what they can include Buddhists, and Russians, and men and women, black blacks and white. All these categorizations that we’re continually the boxes that we’re continually putting people in, they’re useful. Valid distinctions. But such categories refer only to the arbitrary, to the superficial, and not to the essential, the universal of what it means to be a human being, which we are seeking to relate with. So in practice this means not to divorce our ideas about people from actual flesh and blood people which these ideas refer to, the feeling beings, sentient feeling beings.
Sentient beings, people are essentially feeling beings. This is primary. Whatever else we may, you know, ideas that we may have about this person and that person, underneath all of those superficial discriminations, there is a feeling being there who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer. That’s deep, that’s universal, that’s essential. However we might discriminate them, not to lose sight of this deeper reality that there’s a feeling being there who’s just like myself, who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer.
Whether I put them the box of Christian, a terrorist, Muslim fundamentalist, whatever. There’s a feeling being who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer. That’s essential. The rest is simply discriminations on the surface. Anyway, we’ll continue next week, okay?
So we can dedicate the positive energy we created together. May all beings everywhere, plagued by suffering of body and mind, attain an ocean of happiness and joy by virtue of my merit. 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 foe find wealth, those weak with sorrow find joy. May the forlorn find hope, constant happiness and prosperity. May there be time in the 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 the world, may they never occur again. May the frightened cease to be afraid, and those bound be freed. May the powers 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 jewel, the awakened heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more. In the land encircled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful Chenrezig, Tenzin, Gyatso, please remain at the end of cyclic existence.
So if you’d like to get a cup of tea, we’ll have a discussion. Otherwise, a good night. Okay? Thank you.