Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A guided self-appreciation meditation opens this two-hour session: Ven Jampa Gendun leads practitioners through recalling good actions across four time periods — more than a month ago, the past week, yesterday, and today — then extending the same appreciation to a loved one, a stranger, and someone difficult, as a direct antidote to the habit of fixating on what we do wrong. A Zen story about a student convinced he has been a dog “ever since he was a puppy” illustrates how self-limiting narratives solidify into apparent reality. The main teaching then covers the fourth and fifth stages of the equalizing-and-exchanging-self-with-others tradition within bodhicitta: why self-centeredness harms us (illustrated by the analogy of a hand refusing to remove a thorn from a foot), and a detailed walkthrough of Tonglen — taking and giving — through three degrees of compassion and love. The session closes with four compact daily practices for staying emotionally connected to the world. Part of a continuing Lamrim series at Buddha House.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 22 3PA 2008 08 18.mp3
UUID: 60e1e2c3-5d57-4cf9-a0ca-26086e4b8da2
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2008-2009 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2008-08-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 127.3 minutes
Words: ~13,484
How is there? Can you hear me okay? Yeah? Okay. It’s getting cold, isn’t it?
So we begin by how do I begin? By dividing up. Oh, okay. You can take my seat. Go to the top of the class.
So you’ve had a busy day, probably, unlike myself. You have lots of practical necessities to take care of, activities to concern yourself with. Some of them are necessary, perhaps some of them are maybe not so necessary. But anyway, whatever your day was, we have to begin by trying to understand why we’re here now. Maybe it just was something on the calendar that said Buddha House on Monday nights.
I doubt we came for a particular negative motivation. I can turn it up. Yeah. Think maybe we’ll need a five, obviously. The left hand one.
Okay. Is that better? Yes. Is it too loud? No.
Okay. And in conclusion, I’d just like to add, those inspiring words, I’d like just to add a word of thanks for coming tonight. Oh, yes, adjusting our motivation. For fame and glory or excitement, money. So we just have to bring ourselves present.
Know, we’ve talked about the fact that we have to deal with the everyday practical necessities of life and not only that, just developing a good life. Working with the people in the situations and the material things about us in order to find a successful life for ourselves. Part of our successful life is very much contingent upon developing a meaningful way of relating to these things about us. We can have all the love in the world directed at ourselves. We can have all the material things of the world.
We can have high positions. But if we don’t have the correct attitude, a skillful way of relating to all the people and things and situations about us, it’s as if we didn’t have anything. In fact, although what could be a source of happiness and well-being can become the source of complications and the source of suffering in our lives. So it’s very much dependent upon not only the external factors our lives but our internal attitudes toward those things about us. So we’re just trying to balance off how we’re going to go about this project of our life, working both with the things about us and so forth, developing significant relationships, having work which you find fulfilling and meaningful, either within the home or outside the home, creative interests.
All these things, they all go to a meaningful, rich, full way of life. But we also have to work and create that space and make it a priority in our everyday life to work with our attitudes, our opinions, our ideals, our world view about those things and people and situations about it. So that’s what we do here. Not so much, I don’t know if you’re going to develop a high status or positions of power by coming here or maybe you’ll find the right mate to come in here. I don’t know.
Someone here could meet nice people. I met one guy. He once said, I go to yoga classes because it’s a good place to meet chicks. Maybe you’re here because I don’t know. What else is there in life?
Yeah, you won’t make you know, you won’t not much material to be gained, but so we’re here in terms of our orientation, our direction of our mind is working with our mind itself. So we’re just kind of acknowledging that fact. I’m here to maybe I can learn some skills of the mind, some life skills to help me in this project of my life and being a little more successful than perhaps I’ve been in the past. And we can try to broaden our scope of what a successful life might look for each of ourselves in terms of its scope, broadening ourselves out from this one individual who we’re more than not completely wrapped up and absorbed in ourselves and maybe opening up if only one other person. I’m here not only for myself but for that one person.
Maybe it’s your parent or your partner or your child, somebody that you’d like to be there for in a more significant way than perhaps you’ve been able to in the past. I guess growth is at its simplest I think it’s simply if I could just leave here tonight at whatever time, nine thirty, ten o’clock or whatever, with a little more understanding, a little more caring, then my evening, the effort that I made here coming out in the cold and so forth would have been worth while, not only for my own self, but also for you and this one other person. Maybe just to be a little more patient, a little kinder, a little more understanding, in some way I would like to be able to be there for you more than I perhaps have been able to be in the past. Helping you to work with your problems, to solve your problems, helping you to find happiness, help you to find fulfillment in your life. If we can step outside of our usual self absorption, our usual self centeredness in how we orientate our lives, to just include one other person in that orientation, to be that much, if only a small bit, little bit other centered in why we’re here tonight.
Then the mind becomes much more receptive. It becomes more open to the process of learning, what will in fact help us to achieve those ends. Simply a shift in our perspective can add another dimension to their learning process which is normally not there. The lessons that we often miss that go unnoticed, that aren’t necessary for ourselves because they don’t seem to be of any immediate use to our individual selves. But once we have to learn something for somebody else, then we’re open to other possibilities, lessons in ways of beings that maybe we weren’t aware of that we didn’t notice before.
So we’re trying to help ourselves for sure, no question, and perhaps in much more ways than we normally go about it. But over and above that, trying to open ourselves to a greater vision of what our successful life might look like for ourselves. In terms of not only helping ourselves but others as well, beginning with one other. But we can begin to extend that out eventually just through familiarization, through habituation, ultimately for the sake of all sentient beings. So our inner focus of our life becomes broader.
This is the culmination of the process that we’re involved in, a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. And kind of crystallizing some abstraction, some nebulous idea of where want to go into some more concrete possibilities in terms of the values that we want to begin to express in our daily life, in terms of wisdom, love and compassion, and some kind of inner strength, and how these are translated in terms of working skillfully and fearlessly with others to help them to do the same. But we have to do the work. Sincerity is not enough. We have to make make use of these teachings.
It’s like medicine. We have to actually take it. It’s not good enough to have no matter how potent the medicine might be to have it sit on your medicine cabinet shelf. It won’t cure anything in that way. We have to take medicine if we ever develop the ability to heal others.
And this all occurs within this spiritual community, the social context in which mental health finds its place. Those who help us, advise us, teach us, share or encourage us, serve as models for us, inspire us, everything that’s necessary for us to move from where we’re at now to where we want to be. That’s our spiritual community. So mental health is very much a social phenomenon. It’s not something which is done in isolation from others.
That’s simply the extreme of our Western preoccupation with individualism, which we feel isolated and disconnected from the world about us and unrelated to others. It’s a sentient beings of a disease, not of a possibility of well-being. So this is where we can make kind of a we can heal this extreme of individualism, this sense of isolation from others, even if only artificially and even if only in a very limited way. We’re here together to help one another. The world is like a hospital.
It’s where we can go to find cure. And we try to raise the level of motivation such that we’re doing what we’re doing not just for our own piece of chocolate cake, our own individual limited self needs and myopic vision, but an ever widening expanding concern for others, ultimately for the sake of all others. If you can just raise that feeling in your heart. Then the heart becomes open and is susceptible to change. That’s kind of the ecology of mind which fosters new ideas and new possibilities and growth.
And that’s what the bottom line about why we’re here, to change for the better. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. My practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and 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 sentient beings. May I 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. 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 in the wheel of Dharma for migrating beings.
I dedicate all virtue, my own and that of others, to the great Awakening. So we’re going to meditate. I thought One of the I think one of the great limiting forces in our life that keeps us very much stuck is grasping at the reality of many of the stories that we keep telling ourselves about ourselves, this inner dialogue, this loop of self talk that keeps going in our mind and telling us who we are and what we can do with our lives and what we can ever hope to achieve with our lives. And for most, this story that we tell ourselves about ourselves is quite negative more than not. And out of that, our lives become a self defeating, self fulfilling prophecy more than not.
So sometimes we have to challenge these stories. Take them literally as if they were true, a true reflection about who we are and what we actually do in our lives. I’ve told this story many times. And indulge me, okay? Just laugh when I finish you.
That’s all I ask. It makes me feel good. You know, it’s about this Zen student. Zen is the type of Buddhism which is mainly practiced in the countries Eastern Asia, Japan and Korea, parts of Vietnam, China. Quite often the students go to Zen master for an interview to discuss what’s going on for them.
And this particular occasion the student went to his Zen master and when he sat down before him he blurted out and he said, ‘There’s something terribly wrong with me.’ And the master looked at him and said, ‘What’s wrong?’ And the student hesitated a moment. Then he finally said, ‘I think I’m a dog.’ And the master said, well, that’s terrible, that’s terrible. How long has this been happening? Oh, ever since I was a puppy. So the point of that story is that I I use that story.
I don’t know what the point of that story is. I use that story. I think we become so immersed in our stories that we tell ourselves that they eventually become our own reality. And if I believe I’m a dog I have been a puppy at some time. And that’s logically follows, doesn’t it?
So I don’t know, maybe it does or doesn’t hurt. But reality is not given to us. This is my old theme, my old bumper sticker slogan: Attention is reality. What we habitually pay attention to becomes our reality. You know, we’re not just mirrors passively reflecting an objective reality, but we are co creators with our reality.
We habitually select out and emphasize various aspects of the real world. Through selecting them out, emphasizing them, those become promoted to our story, other facets. This is what they do in narrative therapy. You know, We story our lives. And in a complex story, the characters are usually not black or white.
Generally we like the good guys and bad guys, the guys with the white hats and the guys with the black hats. But that’s not real life, People are gray. Generally, people have their good points and their bad points. And so that’s a little bit hard to handle sometimes. We want to secure ourselves and we want to feel whether we know we can make predictions, we can know what to expect.
So we begin to emphasize, we begin to attention to certain aspects which are consistent, not only in terms of the world about us and the people we relate with, but in terms of ourselves as well. We want some consistent identity. You know, to wake up every morning trying to figure out who you are would be a real task. It would take up a lot of time, space, and energy. And moreover, would probably be very scary.
So we think, Well, I’m this way, I’m that way, I’m this much beautiful, I’m this much intelligent, I can do this, I can’t do that. And we develop a particular self identity. And that’s okay to some degree, but it’s when we begin to hold it too tightly. All of our ideas we should hold like a butterfly, you know. You don’t want to hold it too tightly or you’ll crush it.
They’re useful, but we have to be flexible, allow for other possibilities, allow for change, fluidity in the way that we hold things. So in this, you know, part of what we pay attention to becomes our reality. We choose what we pay attention to. But this choice that we’re consistently making is done out of habit, moreover unconscious habit. So our world seems to reinforce itself.
Know, it seems as if there’s no other way to be in this world, if you’re going be in this world in a rational fashion. It seems as if there’s really no the world keeps reinforcing, reaffirming our particular choices, that this is the way things are, this is reality. Don’t tell me about any other possibility. It’s obvious. Something like that.
Unaware that we’re in fact creating that reality, but through the habitual choices that we’re unconsciously making. But we can begin to raise, you know, we can begin to I think this is one of the values of mindfulness. You begin to become more aware of the choices that you are making, and you begin to make a conscious choice. Is this leading me to the way of life that I value? Is this enhancing my life or not?
If it’s not, then I choose something else that maybe, in fact, will. So my point is, if we give some simple concrete example, you know, that I usually use in talking about this, that all of us, we perform a variety of activities over the course of our day. And we may do ninety nine things right, and we do one thing wrong. Habitually our mind mind goes to that one thing we did wrong. It’s like, you know, it’s like a magnet, like iron filings being drawn by a magnet, it just keeps going there, you know.
And our whole basis of identity begins to be constructed, founded upon that one thing we did wrong. I can’t do anything right. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m so stupid. I’m always making mistakes.
You could do ninety nine things right and one thing wrong. I’m always making mistakes. That’s the kind of that would be your reality because that’s specifically what you habitually pay attention to. So we have to challenge that to some degree. Part of our work, I think, especially in the practice of mindfulness, is simply not to take these thoughts which arise, these stories, so literally that they don’t in fact no thought reflects reality in its full richness in all its possibilities and what is actually happening.
No story can incorporate the complexity of our being. There are always abstractions, there are always shorthand notations, even if they were relatively correct, which more often than not they aren’t. So part of mindfulness practice is simply not to buy into these stories. But we can also challenge these stories by consciously choosing what it is that we pay attention to. So this is all building up to the meditation that we’re going to do.
It’s a very simple meditation, but I think it’s very useful and effective. It counters a lot of this negative impressions that we have about ourselves as negative self-image. We’re simply going to stop overlooking the richness of our life and what, in fact, we do do, what it is that we do right. You know, we’re going to selectively look at different time periods of our life, more than one month ago, find something that you feel good about, you know, that you feel that you something that you did, something that you said or were, something that you had. And focusing upon it, value it.
Appreciate it. You know, the word appreciation is a great word, I think. When you appreciate something, it arises in value, doesn’t it? We see the housing market as appreciating. So that has this kind of two different ways.
So if you appreciate it, increases in value. It is emphasized a great deal more because you’re paying more attention to it. And we promote it to a more major part of our life story. You know, life, you know, I was talking about no, I won’t go into that. It’s another story.
So we’re just simply going to take a look at things that we did more than one month ago. Find something and value it. You know, give yourself a pat on the back. I really like that, that what you did, Jampa. That was fantastic.
What you said, you know, or, you know, I feel good about myself for having done that, or, you know, that was a really wonderful thing. Some quality about yourself, something that you did, whatever. And then we’ll just simply change the time period, one week to one month ago, yesterday up to one week ago, and then something today. And then we’ll do the same for two more individuals. Or three more individuals, a friend, somebody you love, just valuing something that they did, something that they are, stranger.
I think it’s wonderful that this person, you know, these gold medal winners in the Olympics. I’m happy for you that you won this gold medal or that you gave it your best even if you didn’t win this gold medal, whatever. And then a neutral person, then somebody you’re having some problems with, you know, just rejoicing or appreciating something about them, valuing something about them. Okay? So it’s not particularly, you know, when I say to value something, it’s not as if you have to have, won the Nobel Prize or found a cure for cancer.
I think we overlook a lot of the good things that we do do, we dismiss them, as if we discount them, as if they weren’t important. It becomes a habit. Diminishes who we see ourselves as. The little thing we’re so hard on ourselves. Make a little mistake and we get down on ourselves.
We punish ourselves. I’m so stupid. And I do that all the time. We do a great deal of damage, harm to ourselves. Anyway, this is kind of challenging that way of looking at ourselves and relating with ourselves.
Okay. We’ll take a comfortable Would you like to stand up for a minute and stretch and then we’ll sit? So we’ll begin with relaxing the body, grounding ourselves, becoming aware of the body, and then practicing the six part breath exercise, breathing in comfortably normally, breathing out, extending exhalation, just emptying the lungs of all the air, again breathing comfortably normally, again extending the exhalation, and doing this six times individually. Then we’ll practice mindfulness of the breath. So just paying attention, this keyword attention, to the sensation which is associated with the natural breathing, wherever it’s most clear and obvious to yourself.
Could be your rise and fall of your abdomen or your air rushing in and out of your nostrils on your upper lip. So picking some sensation associated with natural breathing. So starting at the crown of the head, the scalp, and feeling the wrinkle in your brow beginning to smooth out. The muscles of your face softening, relaxing. Your jaws relaxed.
Bringing your awareness to the back of your neck, gently turning your head to each side a few times. Just very gently loosening, stretching the muscles of the back of the neck. Relaxing the muscles of the throat. Bringing your awareness to your upper back and shoulders. Gently rotating your shoulders a few times, lifting them, allowing them to drop comfortably to the sides, feeling this burden, this weight that we oftentimes carry around on our backs unknowingly, moving down and through your body into the ground.
And bringing your awareness all the way down to your hands. Your hands are soft and loose. Relaxing your lower arms. And your upper arms. Your chest is at ease.
Relaxing throughout the heart area. And the lungs. Central region of the back. The stomach. Releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles, just allowing your belly to go soft.
Relaxing throughout the abdominal cavity. Holding your trunk erect, your back straight, relax your lower back muscles. Buttocks. Throughout your upper legs, your lower legs. Under your feet, soft, loose.
Bringing your awareness to your body in general, just roughly scanning your body, noticing any tightnesses, any tensions which remain in the body, any perhaps some area of discomfort. And focusing upon those particular areas, 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, struggle against it. Just breathe into it gently, surrounding it with a kind, caring acceptance. It’s part of who you are.
It’s already happening. Allow it to be. It’s okay. Your body become uncomfortable, at ease, and feeling your physical well-being pervading every part of your body. It’s a nice place to be in your body.
Just be your body. Now we’ll practice the six part breath exercise. Doing this six times individually. And when you’ve completed the exercise, then bring your mind to the breath. Just the easy, gentle in and out flow of the natural breath, wherewith the sensation of the breathing is most clear and obvious.
Bring your mind back to the breath. And we’re going to meditate on appreciating, and we’re going to begin with ourselves. So recall something that you did or were or had more than one month ago? Something that you said or something that you did that you look back upon, you feel good about and appreciate it, value it. Congratulate yourself.
Be pleased for yourself. I like that about myself. That was a that was a very kind thing you did, Jampa. Be good to yourself. Appreciate yourself.
Something more than one more than one month ago that you said or did or had or were. Just go through its details and appreciate it. Value it. Be pleased with yourself. And we’re going to do the same.
We’re simply going to shift the time period that we’re paying attention to. So something that you did more than one week ago, but less than one month ago. More than one week ago, but less than one month ago. So reviewing that time period and recalling, it doesn’t have to be major or shaky, dramatic. Even something small, that’s fine.
And we’ll do the same again, simply shifting the time period more than one beginning yesterday up to one week week ago. From yesterday up to one week ago. Then finally, with regard to yourself, something that you did today. Now we’re going to do the same with regard to three other individuals, beginning with someone that you like, that you love. Something about them, who they are, what they did.
Simply appreciate them, value them for having done that, for something that they are, what they have. Appreciate them. And then we’ll do the same with regard to a stranger. It could be somebody famous, it could be somebody who’s not famous, somebody that you know, but you don’t know them well, but there’s something about them, who they are, what they have, you admire, that you like, that you value, that you could appreciate. And finally, somebody you have some problems with, especially if you can think of someone that you’re jealous of.
Think of something about them, who they are, what they have, what they did that you could look to and value, appreciate. And then bring your mind back to the breath. And get in touch with your body, some sensation feeling within the body. In a comfortable and relaxed manner, just slowly become aware of your surroundings, taking your time. So if you’d like to stand and stretch, you’re welcome.
We’re doing a review before we begin the third principal aspect of the path, bodhicitta. We’ve looked at the first principle, which is the wish to be free, and we’re looking at the second, which is bodhicitta. And we said that there are two meditative traditions for awakening our heart. The Seven Causes and Effects Instruction, Equalizing Self and Others, and we’re looking at the second of these, and we’re almost finished with it. That’s five parts of the meditative tradition of equalizing and exchanging self with others, beginning with equalizing ourselves with others, simply most.
Coming to a sense that primarily we are feeling beings beneath all the superficial differences, beneath all the superficial characteristics which we normally pay attention to. Essentially, we are feeling beings who want to be happy and don’t want to suffer equally. There’s no difference amongst us. That’s universal. That’s deep and universal.
The rest is superficial and particular. Then on the basis of that, then we begin to look at the disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness. Then finally, where we’re going to begin tonight is the practice of actual exchange of self for others. So when we talk about exchanging self so this is a review, okay? I’m just going to go over some of these ideas just to familiarize ourselves with them, just to refresh our memory.
When we talk about exchanging self for others, it doesn’t mean that you train yourself to think, Other beings are me and I am others. It doesn’t mean that your I is theirs and their I is yours. Okay. It means that we replace the attitude that you alone are important with an attitude that cherishes others. That others are important as well.
In other words, the degree of high value that we presently place upon ourselves, we begin to place upon others. We cherish others. There are two obstacles to this practice of exchanging self and others. The major one is ignorance. So, you know, this is the fundamental mistake grasping the I or the Self to be independently existent.
And we have a sense of an I at the core of our being, which we identify with as our self, and moreover, this self, this I, appears to us to exist unrelated to all the causes and conditions, to others, to our world. It is I over here, and like a skin encapsulated ego, everything that is not I, which is on the al- inner, on the other side of the looking glass, on the other side of the boundary. There is I and other, and they appear to us to be unrelatedly other. Absolute I and other, existing independent of one another. So there’s ultimate difference between ourselves and others.
And this is the way it appears, this is what we are seen to through the force of ignorance. Once you hold this wrong assumption about me, about I, your self centered attitude will then proceed to label your body, possessions and so forth as mine. We have I and then we begin, due to self centeredness, begin to label that I and what that I possesses as mine. And dependence upon that, we begin to all the various aversions, attachments begin to arise. What is mine, I develop attachment toward.
What is on this side of the boundary, I want to hold on to. It enhances my well-being in some way or another. What is on the other side of the boundary, I develop hostility. It is a threat to what is mine. I want to hold on to mine and others could somehow detract from mine, could take it away from me.
So normally, others seem so in this way others seem at a distance from ourselves. Others appear, aside from the social niceties, I’m talking about from a, if I could pronounce it, would say it, from a phenomenological standpoint. Got it out. Other appears to be unrelated and at a distance from ourselves. You know, we might develop nice relationships with them, but that’s only a social convenience.
It’s not in terms of the actual you know what I mean, phenomenology. That is the way things actually exist. You know, it’s like others, the happiness of others and my own happiness, the suffering of others and my own suffering are distinct like the colors yellow and blue. Know, the colors yellow and blue, they don’t appear to be particularly related to one another. And that’s the same sense we have about the happiness and suffering of others and my own happiness and suffering, like the colors yellow and blue.
You know, for example, we talk about this side and the other side. You know, there’s a mountain. You’re on this side of the mountain and over there is the other side of the mountain. And they appear very distinct from one from the other. But, you know, it simply depends upon where you’re standing.
It depends upon our thought. This side of the mountain is only this side because this is from my particular perspective. If I were to go over to the other side of the mountain, what was the other side of the mountain then becomes this side of the mountain, and what was this side of the mountain becomes the other side of the mountain. So it simply depends on our perspective, how we see things. Their nature is dependent upon your perception and they depend upon each other.
The other side depends upon this side, this side depends upon the other side. They’re mutually interdependent. They are relative concepts just like long and short, high and low, all of these dualities. But they don’t appear that way to us. They appear distinct and absolutely separate, independent of one another.
So when selflessness is realized and this is what we’re going to look into when we come to the third of the three principal aspects of the path, the awakened mind when selflessness is realized and ignorance is removed from the mind, this grasping and absolute distinction between self and others ends. And self and others are correctly seen as mutually dependent upon one or the other. And there’s a radical transformation in the way that you relate both to oneself and to others. Part of our difficulty relating with others arises out of this major obstacle of ignorance. The second obstacle is training in the practice and training this exchange of self for others.
There’s a thought that the suffering of others does not affect me. So why should I do anything about others’ suffering? And I think in trying to be nice people we try to rationalize, Oh, I should do something. It would be a good thing to do. Know, it’s not based in terms of having seen the actual nature of things, in what is, in fact, the reality of our own welfare and bringing about the welfare and removing suffering from the world.
You know, thinking that you do not need to help others because self and others are absolutely separate is as ridiculous as thinking that the hand does not need to remove the thorn from the foot because it is the foot that’s suffering and not the hand. So why should the hand remove the thorn from the foot since they’re separate entities? The whole is imputed to its parts. Your body is imputed to all of its various parts, its arms, its legs, its head, and so forth. So the parts do not exist independent of the whole, and the whole doesn’t exist independent of the parts.
They’re mutually reliant on one or the other. So just as you have become habituated to take as seriously whether the hand is suffering or the foot is suffering, you don’t make a distinction, Oh, it’s only the foot. Yeah, who cares? If it was the hand, that would be another question. Then I’d be concerned.
We take pain wherever it occurs within the body as seriously wherever it appears, wherever it occurs, wherever it’s experiencing the body. Because your attitude to why then cannot we take as seriously the suffering wherever it occurs within this great in any of the parts, in any of the limbs of this being of sentient life as seriously whether it occurs within what we call self or whether we call it others. You know, because your attitude toward others, self and others, is based upon how you grasp at them, if you change your perceptions, you can feel for others what you now feel for yourself. There’s this great being that we call sentient life. Yeah?
We are all parts of that great being. Whether that suffering occurs in that part we call self or whether it occurs in that part we call other, still it’s suffering. And it is to remove, just in the way that we take it seriously, the suffering, whether it occurs in the part we call the hand or the foot. Self centeredness arises as a result of ignorance, which misconceives the self to be an autonomous entity cut off from the rest of the world, our surroundings, from all the causes and conditions, in fact, which make us who and what we are. It holds in dependence upon that ignorance, misconceiving the I.
Self-centeredness then arises out of a sense due to self attachment to that I. That misconceived I, that self, is now your sole frame of reference. How are you going to perceive, evaluate and respond to the world in terms of this Self, this I. It’s always in terms of the welfare of this I, this Self. This is our total preoccupation through the force of self centeredness.
So, you know, defining something as the Self, you cling to it and you cherish that Self. And distinguishing something as other, you neglect it, you discount it to some degree or other. So the perspective of these two minds has to be switched. So this is what we mean when we talk about exchanging self from others. First by seeing and treating the self and others as equally important, equalizing them, and then by emphasizing importance of others.
Initially we talked about equalizing self and others, where others became we take their suffering and their happiness as seriously as we do our own. And now we’re going to begin to emphasize the importance of others. So what you’re seeking to exchange in the practice of exchanging yourself for others is the object of your cherishing. You know, rather than at present cherishing ourselves alone, perceiving, evaluating, responding to everything and everyone from a totally self orientated perspective, we begin to cultivate an attitude of cherishing others, the cultivation of an other orientated perspective. If you meditate, there’s nothing to prevent you from realigning your perspective.
It’s only a matter of familiarization. I mean, this is what the word meditation means, in fact. It simply means to accustom, to familiarize. So, I think one interesting thing, and I think it’s important to kind of emphasize this, because no one is It doesn’t have to be this practice that we’re involving ourselves in, that we’re becoming acquainted with. It shouldn’t be seen, or it doesn’t have to be seen, as somehow a great heroic sacrifice that you’re going to make for one reason or another.
We naturally want to be happy. We naturally don’t want to suffer. That is a defining quality of sentient life approach and avoidance. We move toward that which we see as enhancing our existence, we move away with that which we see as a threat to our existence. Somehow all of what we do somehow appeal to that.
If we’re going to be authentic, if it’s going to if we’re going to involve ourselves in it from a deep sense of what it is that we in fact value. If it’s to be our practice, we have to see validity of that in terms of where we’re at now, our own reality. And our own reality at present is our own self interest. So how is this going to help me? Is all I’m saying.
So in examining this practice of exchanging self with others, it’s important to understand that we do not cherish ourselves because of any particular kindnesses that we show ourselves. You know, this might sound rather strange, bizarre in a way, but if you think about it, there are many people who are self destructive, who are self abusive, who experience a great deal of self hatred. They are highly self critical of themselves, but they’re just as self centered as anybody else. Our self centeredness is not a matter of any rational justification in terms of who it is that helps us the most. Many times there are others who treat us with greater respect and kindness than we treat ourselves, but we don’t cherish them as we do ourselves.
Cherishing yourself does not arise out of simply, you know, somehow justified. If it were, then we, you know, then we should stick with it, we should develop it. The point is, it’s not justified in terms of the proportion of happiness that we bring to ourselves, or who it is that is kind to ourselves, or who it is that respects ourselves the most. It’s not always ourselves. As matter of fact, we cause ourselves a lot of harm.
Self abusers, they cause themselves a great deal of difficulties. Still, they cherish themselves. It almost sounds they’re just as self centered as anyone else who sets out only to bring themselves happiness. Self centeredness is simply a product of conditioning. That’s all we’re saying.
That self centeredness is simply a habitual mode of the way that we relate with ourselves without a rational or pragmatic basis. And habits can be changed. What has been conditioned can be unconditioned, what has been learned can be unlearned, and new learning can take its place. We can change our priorities. It’s just an unconscious habit.
Nothing more than that. If it were in our self best interest, then by all means we should stick with it. But it’s not. We have to create some inkling of doubt that maybe this me first, I’m the center of the universe, I’m number one approach to living our life really isn’t working for ourselves. I mean, that’s what it comes down to.
Does it work? This particular mode of life, this approach to our living. We can change our orientation. For example, you live in your particular house and you feel a certain affection toward that house. It’s very familiar.
It’s home. And you don’t have that same feeling for the other houses on your block or what to say of, you know, on the other side of town. But some time or other, you move to a new place. And after some time, you begin to become accustomed to this new house. It becomes familiar to you.
It becomes your home. You develop attachment to it, a liking for it, something that you didn’t have before. And your old house, the one you felt so much affection to, becomes distant, foreign, alien in a way, unfamiliar to yourself. So, you know, it’s simply a matter of custom, of familiarizing yourself. What was foreign and alien becomes our home.
What was our home becomes something which is foreign and alien. It’s just a matter of acquaintance. So the motivation behind exchange of self for others comes when you see the cost to yourself, of your own self centeredness. If you don’t see that, then motivation, there will be no intention to actually bring about this exchange of self for others. We went through this when we looked at all the disadvantages of self centeredness.
If we look at our and somehow dispassionately, if we can get that perspective on it, we can begin to see and trace back its evolution of our difficulties. Stop blaming what’s outside of ourselves, you know, that if it wasn’t for you, I’d be happy. You know, that kind of attitude. If only had more of this, I’d be happy. In fact, it’s, you know, it’s the source, the origin, it’s within outside of ourselves in terms of our attitudes, opinions, our ideals.
Most basically, here we’re talking about our self centeredness. It’s me first, I’m the one center of the universe approach that we bring to all our relationships. These feelings of loneliness, feelings of conflict, of defensiveness, of jealousy, feelings of being unloved and unable to love, and feelings of that people about us are just so many objects, like pieces of furniture to be manipulated, devalued, and objectified in one way or another. And we do, we exploit one another. All stems from self centeredness.
Big nations invade small nations. Big kids, big children take away candy from small children. It’s all the same. It’s just on a bigger scale. So in a space, there’s really no communication with others, there’s no possibility for real intimacy with others, there’s no touching or being touched by another.
And everything becomes like a transaction between self and other, you know, like an accountant’s mentality. We build this, you know, there’s an I and mine over here, we build this iron fence around it, keeping ourselves imprisoned and everyone else out. We live in most basically. You know, like I think I mentioned last week, basic emotions, love and fear. We live in fear, paranoia.
You know, paranoia being taken advantage of, keeping everyone else out and yourself imprisoned within. And all these fine feelings within us, feelings of tenderness and intimacy, they remain forever locked inside of ourselves, deep inside of ourselves, unwilling to take the risk. And we live bitterly isolated, alone. Maybe once in while we let somebody in for a moment at a time, then the iron door shuts. Presently, we view everything from the vantage point of our own self centeredness.
We’re unable to see the world out of other people’s eyes, identify with them. The world is simply seen exclusively in terms of the self of self centeredness, and we feel the self to be worthy of our altered commitment. Upon the altar of our self centeredness, we sacrifice everyone and everything in some way or another. And we’ve created a kind of prison for ourselves, we continue torturing ourselves. Our constant struggle to find happiness for ourselves alone at the exclusion and oftentimes at the expense of others.
There’s no, you know, it’s you never, you know, we never truly see that it’s just this very struggle for our own happiness, our complete absorption in our own problems to the expense and exclusion of others that prevents us from ever finding the solutions to our problems, from ever finding true happiness. This is what the Dalai Lama means, I think. I don’t know what he means, but I can guess. It talks about, you know, we can be wisely selfish, to cherish others, to place, to emphasize others, the welfare of others, is to be wisely selfish. So, you know, it’s pragmatic.
It’s not idealistic. It’s not some pie in the sky, sentimental, romantic notion. I mean, if your way is working, fine. Okay. So it’s not unrealistic, even compellingly practical that you develop, that all of us should develop a natural, rational, instinctively powerful altruism, a beneficial intention.
And this is probably the most deep healing of psychological methods that’s available to ourselves. Love, you know, if we just make it simplified. But I don’t, again, it’s not some sentimental romantic notion. It’s a beneficial intention, you know, about how the way that we can lead our lives. That’s all.
That’s not it’s a lot. So in the actual exchange of self for others, You know, we have to see our self centeredness as, in fact, our worst enemy. You know, yeah, while other-centeredness is our best friend. Kind of seeing it in that way. Becoming aware of our state of our mind in all our various relationships, all the various situations that life continues to bring in us.
See, when you see that you’re acting out of selfishness, you know, oppose it. What I mean is, minimally, when you begin to see that you’re simply acting out of selfishness, complete concern for yourself, disregarding welfare of the other. Offer some resistance to that state of mind. At least don’t indulge in it. Don’t give yourself selfishness a free hand.
On the other hand, you know, be mindful of the value of other-centeredness and the kindness of others. You know, we should kind of push the envelope a little bit when we can, you know, that others are more important in some small way, to whatever extent, even if in only small ways. You know, if you continually think and act in this way, slowly the psychological center of gravity of your life will change. Will will consider others more important than yourself will come just as naturally as considering yourself more important than others yourself more important than others does now. There’s no reason why it can’t.
And there’s no there’s no you it’s an evolution, it’s not a revolution if it proceeds from the organic source, your own wisdom, from your own understanding. You know, it’s difficult, isn’t it, if we’re honest with ourselves? You know, trying to understand what my motivation is behind our various actions. Most often when we examine our motivations are mixed. Most often.
So, you know, how can we know? It’s difficult, you know, what is behind what it is that we’re doing in our interaction with others. So I think it would help to ensure that what you’re doing is consistent with the ultimate aim of your practice, that is, bringing about your own welfare as well as the welfare of others. You keep in mind maybe three things. One of them is, in your interaction with another person, is to recall some kindness with respect to this person.
And remember we talked about when we went through equalizing self and others, we went through the fact that even that all three friends, strangers and enemies are each kind in their unique way. So there’s always some kindness you can always find, even if it’s only this person is really helping me to learn patience. Friends can’t do that for you. Your teachers can’t do that for you. Only this person can do that for you.
Somebody who’s pushing your buttons is giving you a hard time. They’re being kind to me. Anything which helps us to grow is kind, is benefiting us. So anyway, what I’m saying is, first try to recall the way in which this person you’re relating with has been kind to you, either directly or indirectly. And we have to expand the sphere of our mind, what may be my kindness.
Then remember that this person is primarily a feeling being, that you don’t objectify them, you don’t make them into an unfeeling thing, that there’s a being there, a feeling being who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer. And then finally, recall and this is something that you need to reflect on this week. This is what meditation is about, this analysis. The disadvantages of self centeredness and the advantages of other centeredness. So if you recall that this in whatever the interaction, this person is we recall some kindness with regard to that person.
That this is a feeling being who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like myself. And if you keep in mind the disadvantages of other cherishing, the disadvantages of self-centeredness, you can feel assured that your motivation is going to be positive, as positive positive as we can be. That’s the fourth the the fourth of the five part tradition of equalizing and exchanging self with others. So in the actual exchange of others, we replace the attitude of that you alone are as important by beginning to emphasize the importance of others, cherishing others, that they too are as important as well as yourself. Okay?
We develop the high value that we place upon ourselves, it begins to be extended toward others. This process that we’ve been talking about, equalizing self with others, seeing disadvantages of self-centeredness, advantages of other centeredness, and the actual exchange of self for others. It all comes together in this fifth practice called taking and giving. So you imagine and take upon yourself the suffering of others, compassionately take upon the suffering of others and lovingly give away your own happiness to them. You know, we have to it’s a way that we can train, you know, you overcoming our hesitation about our fears around getting involved.
You know, most of us, we don’t want to get involved. Overcoming our fears about getting involved in the lives of others, you know, their happiness, their suffering, you know, what is actually going on in the world, the nitty gritty of the world. You’re taking a risk, a chance, the way you can begin to train in that. You know, something affect you, you’re willing to respond. You begin to open your heart and you try to leave your heart open as much as possible in all the various situations that life continually is bringing ourselves, what are the circumstances?
Know, gently, we’re using imagination. So, you know, we and I talked about the fact that we story our lives. We have an ongoing narrative about who we are. We’re the essential character in this narrative, this story that we’re telling ourselves about our lives. And you take that story as literal and the world seems affirm who you conceive yourself to be.
You know, we set ourselves up in various ways in which the reactions and responses we get from the world simply affirm who we it seems to affirm who, in fact, we think ourselves to be. Message that the world keeps sending ourselves about ourselves, I am this way, the world is that way, you know, as opposed to simple, like, metaphors that we’re making use of to think about the world. We take these metaphors as concrete realities about what in fact exists. And there seems to be no alternative of how we can be. Our experiences keep channeling us back in the same behaviors, in the same ways of thinking.
We keep getting forced back into patterns of thought and relating. There seems to be no choice involved if we’re going to act rationally. Everything that happens seems to confirm our view of ourselves, reinforcing our particular patterns of relating. There seems to only one valid way possible for ourselves in realistically being in this world. And it’s difficult for us to change.
It’s difficult for us to even imagine that we could be different. Because why? Because we don’t imagine we could be different and how we might relate with the world. So this practice of giving and taking affords us an opportunity to reimage ourselves. Other possible versions of who we might be.
It’s training in that. Sending and taking is, so this practice of taking and giving, sending and taking, is just like the field training. Actually, like soldiers learning how to puncture a bag full of sand regarding that as the enemy. They yell, Oh! As they pierce that bag of sand with their bayonets.
A lot of soldiers might have a hard time being involved with nature because they come from cities where people have no idea how to work with snow or the heat of the summer. They don’t know how to ford rivers and how to dry their clothes, or how to work with dirt and cleanliness. So soldiers have to be trained in the field. In a similar way, warriors who follow the Bodhisattva’s path go through the same kind of field training. So this is field training of the mind, okay?
Imagination. We image our self image about who we could be and we begin to change. And out of that image we develop different attitudes about how we’re going to relate with the world. You know, we can’t conceive of ourselves, normally we can’t conceive of ourselves as relating with the world in any other way, in any radically different way, than at present because we don’t imagine ourselves as being able to be any different than we are. We’re not open to that possibility.
So the practice of taking and giving is simply to train in imagination as a means of opening the imaginative space to conceive ourselves of the possibility of being a different way, conceiving of yourself as how you’re going to interact with others in your world, in the way of a Bodhisattva. We’re taking that idea of the bodhisattva. Idea of the bodhisattva, the way someone who has completely opened their hearts to others relates to the world. All you need to do in order to do Tong means to take, Len means to send or to give. So in Tibetan it’s called is to is to have experienced suffering and to have experienced happiness.
Even if you’ve had only one second of suffering in your life, you can do Tonglen. Even if you’ve only had only one second of happiness, you can do Tonglen. Those are the prerequisites. In other words, you are an ordinary human being with pain and pleasure just like everybody else. However, if you were just like everyone else, you would take the good part and give away the bad part.
Sometimes that makes a certain amount of sense. But this path, the path of the warrior, is more daring. You are cultivating a fearless heart, a heart that doesn’t close down in any circumstance. It is always totally open so that you can be touched by anything. You can open your heart to the point that you can enter into the hell realm, the hungry ghost realm, the jealous god realm, the god realm, any place.
You could be there with your heart completely open and not afraid. That’s the aspiration of a bodhisattva. That means that you really wish to be fearless enough to help others. You are aware that you yourself have a lot of fear, but you aspire to have your heart wake up completely, to be like a Buddha in any realm that exists. If you start to think about it, what it would be like to be in some of those realms, you should think you should thank your lucky that you aren’t in them.
But if you were, you could still be there with an open heart. The essence of the practice is willingness to share pleasure and delight in the joy of life on giving, and a willingness to feel your pain and that of others on taking. That’s the essence of it. So like a Bodhisattva, you know, we try to open our hearts to others, you you fearlessly, and with great compassion, take upon yourself the suffering of others, and with delight and great love, give away our happiness. This is the training.
It’s done in the imagination. So that it becomes so familiar, we begin to reinvent another version, another story about who we could be. And lo and behold, we begin to find, even if only in small, insignificant ways, that express in our everyday life through this inner transformation. The way that we relate towards the world begins to change. So, you know, through this imagined technique of taking and giving, we transform an aspect of ourselves, a self limiting, this poor schmuck, this self pitying, I can’t do anything, I don’t have quite a right take.
We look upon these great beings like Martin Luther Kings and the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresas, if they were to come from a different planet completely from ourselves. Are qualitatively different from ourselves. That they have something about their, maybe, their physiology or their chemical makeup or their genes. They have loving electrons and compassionate protons running around in their brains. And that’s why they are the way they are.
And here I am, poor me. You know, I’m just trying to tweak the edges and get the, you know, to smooth the edges of my pain just a little bit, and I’ll be satisfied with that. A very limited vision about what we could be. And out of that vision, nothing changes. You may be asking yourself, If I take in the suffering and pain of others, won’t I risk harming myself?
The one thing you should know for certain is that the only thing that Tonglen could harm is the one thing that has been harming you most, your own ego, your self grasping, your self-cherishing mind, which is the root of suffering. For if you practice Tonglen as often as possible, this self grasping mind will get weaker and weaker, and your true nature, compassion will be given a chance to emerge more and more strongly. The practice of Tonglen is one that the masters and saints of every tradition know. In living it and abiding it with abandon and fervor, true wisdom and true compassion, it is what fills their lives with joy. In a way, in very real way, I think, you know, I think, you know, that we are essentially compassionate beings.
But we we how are we going to risk being compassionate and loving? How are we going to seek, stop defending ourselves? How are we going to avail ourselves of this inner potential of ourselves? How are we going to translate all that, in fact, of what we are now into some kind of practical reality. You know, in reality, we don’t even want to deal with our own suffering, let alone the suffering of others.
Suffering of others. We’d rather avoid thinking about our own difficulties, let alone getting involved in the suffering of others. It’s difficult enough for us to confront our own problems and confuse and sincerely wish ourselves well what to say of extending that to others. There’s a verse by Śāntideva in the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life where he says, If you’ve never dreamt of this attitude for yourself, how could you ever genuinely develop it for others? So in this process of taking and giving, we have to begin with that object toward whom we are most concerned at present, and then it’s ourselves.
So in this practice, in the actual imaginative practice and I think many of you there are different versions of this practice called Taking and Giving. And I’ve written out and many of you already have a copy, I photocopied a few more copies and if there’s not enough I’ll photocopied more. I have a very elaborate practice, I won’t go through all the details of this particular practice. If you want a copy, there’s some copies there. So it’s simply, you know, we begin with our ourselves and we’re going to work with our present suffering initially, then we’re going to work with our future suffering, and then we’re going to work with our ultimate obstacles to realizing our complete potential.
Okay? So, three different frames of reference: present suffering, future suffering, and then our inner most obstacles to achieving our ultimate welfare, realizing our full potential. And with regard to that, we develop three levels of compassion. It’s like we have to work with what is actually there, what we actually feel. We can’t be somebody else.
We can’t feel what it is that we don’t feel. We have to begin with getting in contact and be aware of our present generating these states of mind. There are three different levels of compassion. There’s caring, wishing and resolve. So initially we view ourselves in some present difficulty that we’re having.
Maybe, you know, some loneliness or some it might be physical sickness, some conflict, something’s not going right in your life, and you develop some compassion. Compassion concerns yourself with suffering, difficulty. And you develop, initially, a sense of caring and compassion, Going out to another human being, in this case it happens to be ourselves, but nonetheless we, like everyone else, want to be happy and don’t want to suffer. That’s basic about ourselves. And you become involved.
It would be wonderful if you didn’t have this problem. I would like that. That would be nice. It’s just a friendly caring. We could probably develop that quite readily toward everyone we like, and even toward a great number of strangers if they appear attractive to ourselves.
It would be wonderful if you didn’t have this present difficulty. I would like that. But then, okay, then we strengthen that. We go to wishing. We come to some conclusion, May you not suffer.
You know, like, it matters. You come to some decision in mind, I don’t want you to suffer. Then that’s wishing, I wish you didn’t suffer. I wish you didn’t have this problem. So we’re working at each of these.
Yeah? We work with them and work with them until we actually feel them. Then we move on to try to strengthen it more, the intensity, the degree of that compassion. Compassion isn’t just one whole, one mass, one single thing. Is degrees of involvement and how it’s relating the intensity.
And then finally we develop resolve. This is, you know, the fullest degree of compassion. I’m going to do something. I’m going to take responsibility. I’m going to help you.
Okay? And we’re training, aren’t we? So we imagine, and this is a very detailed and elaborate visualization technique here and it’s spelled out in this photocopy teaching. I’m just going to mention it very roughly because we’re going to run out of time. Imagining, I’m going to help you.
I’m going to take responsibility for your suffering. And how am I going to do that? Right now, I’m going to take that suffering and I’m going to take it upon myself. But not ourself as such, but our own self centeredness, and our self-exaggerated self-concern, our selfishness, our self attachment, and this attitude which has caused us so much pain and trouble and problems over the course of our lives. You give that some kind of visual representation.
Imagine it to be like, in this visualization, it’s like a black egg at the center of your chest and your heart area. This is what’s caused you your problems your whole life, what’s caused you all your difficulties, your conflicts, your mistrust, your inability to relate with others, your sense of loneliness, you know, all of that is embodied, is represented, symbolized by that black egg of self centeredness. And for once, you’re going to do something really heroic. You’re going to get so involved with this person’s suffering that you’re going to, moreover, you’re going to take that person’s suffering and you’re going to use it to destroy your own self centeredness. Self centeredness doesn’t even want to hear about other suffering.
Other people are just there to make us happy. What to say of taking on their suffering? This is the exact opposite to what this self centered is actually wants of ourselves, for ourselves. But, you know, you’re making you’re not going along with that agenda any longer. It hasn’t served you well.
It’s not working. You’re to do the exact opposite. And taking upon that person’s suffering in the aspect of a thick black smoke, you know, all their suffering. And it’s, you know, it’s using our imagination symbolized by this black smoke that rises up and comes into your nostril and down and begins to eat away at your own self centeredness, the black egg of self-centeredness at your heart like acid. Again and again, taking on this person’s suffering, again and again, using it to destroy your own self-centeredness.
And then finally this person is no longer suffering, but still they don’t have it. We’re working at the level of present suffering. So we go on to develop the qualities of love. Love is concerned with happiness, and we develop the three degrees of love, just as we do with compassion, in terms of caring, wishing, and resolve. First, developing a simple, kind thought.
Happy. I would like that. That’d be nice. Intensifying that, love, at least coming to the kind of conclusion, May you be happy. That’s what I want.
It makes a difference. Difference. It matters. And intensifying that, I’m going to make you happy. I’m going to take responsibility for you.
So, in the way I’m going to take that responsibility at this present moment is by giving away all that I want to hold on to. I’m going let it all go. Everything that my self centeredness wants to hold on to. You know, remembering all the advantages of other-centeredness. How it’s the source of our most fulfilling, joyous moments in our lives are there when we forget about ourselves, even if only momentarily, and we are there for someone else, when we can become an instrument of compassion for another person.
The great joyful and joy that fulfills our lives. I’m to give it all away, my body, my possessions, my laptop computer. I don’t know about that. Okay. Else?
Everything you want to hold on to. It’s training, okay? It’s training, training. If you can’t do it in imagination, you’re never going to be able to do it in reality. Is like a laboratory, a safe place where we can experiment.
We can carry it out in meditation session. And so we imagine that all that you want to hold on to, your body, all your valued possessions and so forth, they all transform into brilliant white light at the center of your chest. Developing these three levels of compassion and of love, this white light rises up and comes out your nostril. And just as it’s about to reach them, it transforms into the positive counterpart of their previous suffering. If they were lonely, a loving, committed partner.
If they were sick, a healthy, beautiful body. Whatever. It’s not for you to decide. Whatever makes them happy, that’s fine. And then when you see them happy, you brought them present happiness.
Then you empathetically share in their newfound happiness. Rejoice, delight, you made somebody happy, and you share in that happiness. Then you move on to future sufferings, all the possible future sufferings that this person, in this case beginning with yourself, might experience. Separation from loved ones, aging, the fears of death, the death process, all of that. That’s what life holds in store for all of us.
Developing these three levels of compassion, taking on that suffering. And there are various different visualizations. And then doing the same thing with giving away future counterparts of happiness, the positive counterparts of those possible future sufferings. Again, in terms of the three levels of love. And then you do with the ultimate, with the obstacles that represent our realizing our fullest potential within our mind, taking those on, your own self centeredness, compassionately, lovingly giving away everything that we have until they achieve complete Buddhahood, peace, fully a loving, loving, happy, sane human being.
And you share love with their newfound joy, their happiness. Once you be able to do that to some extent, then move on to someone that you love, to someone that you like, to acquaintances, to various attractive people, to all the various categories of strangers, various nationalities, Chinese, Russians, Germans, various religions, Jews, Buddhists, Christians, Islam, all of these categories. And then you begin to add those you don’t like, and you begin to work with enemies until you have a sense that you’re taking on the suffering of all sentient life and giving away your happiness to them in that way. Okay. No easy task, I just want to round this out.
The essence of Tonglen practice is that on the in breath you are willing to feel the pain. So there’s this, yeah, you’re willing to One of our great difficulties, I think, and this is becoming more evident for myself in terms of my studies, but also in terms of my own life experience, is our avoidance of pain, experiential avoidance. We don’t want discomfort. We don’t want to know anything that brings displeasure, even with inside ourselves, even in terms of our own private events within our own experience. You know, we push them away, we wall them off, we compartmentalize, and our life becomes narrowed down.
It becomes we lose our emotional repertoire. Something goes out of our life and we are stuck. I it’s quite necessary to open up to pain, to open up to unwanted experiences both internally in terms of our own inner experience, but also begin to open up to the pain of the world. I think that’s the road to mental health. The essence of Tonglen practice is that on the in breath you’re willing to feel pain.
You’re willing to acknowledge the suffering of the world. From this day onward you’re going to cultivate your bravery and willingness to feel this part of the human condition. Suffering is part of the human condition. There’s nothing that any of us have done wrong. You breathe in so that you can really understand what the Buddha meant when he said that the first noble truth is that life is suffering.
What does that mean? With every in breath you find out by acknowledging the truth of suffering, not as a mistake you made, not as a punishment, but as part of the human condition. With every breath you explore the discomfort of the human condition, can be acknowledged and celebrated and not run away from. Tonglen puts it right on the line. The essence of the out breath is that the other part of the human condition.
With every out breath you open, open, you connect with the feelings of joy, well-being, satisfaction, tender heartedness. Anything that feels fresh and clean, wholesome and good, that’s the aspect of human condition that you wish were the whole show, that part. If you could finally clear up all your problems, you would have as your daily diet. The menu would read only happiness, no pain here. There would be all the things that you think would bring you everlasting happiness, maybe bittersweetness, a few little tears, but definitely no heavy duty confusion.
No dark places, no closet doors that you don’t want to open. No monsters under the bed. No ugly thought. No rage. No despair.
No jealousy, definitely not. That’s the out breath, the part you like. You connect with that and you breathe it out so that it spreads and can be experienced by everyone. So I’d just like to close with giving you a small practice, something that we can do every day in any situation in life. Not complicated, it’s quite simple.
Most basically, in simply taking and giving, you’re trying to find a way to stay connected to others. This is the unhealthy extreme of our individualism of the West. You know, individualism has its place. Because of our individualism of the individualism of the West, we can determine our own values, we can set our own goals. What it is that, you know, that I want for my life in particular, what is unique to myself?
And we can pursue those interests. That’s the advantages of individualism. But the extreme of individualism causes us to feel completely isolated from others. We don’t feel related to the world any longer. That’s dysfunctional quality of individualism.
We feel unconnected. So, you know, this practice is trying to help us to reconnect. So on the one hand, not avoiding or shutting down in the face of pain, or becoming completely caught up in our own pain. Shutting down when we come across others’ pain or becoming completely absorbed in our own pain, on the one hand. On the other hand, just forgetting about others and getting completely caught up in our own happiness at the exclusion and expense of others.
Forgetting that others exist when we are happy. In one way or another, we shut off the world in one way or another. We stop relating with the world in one way or another. So this is a very easy way to help us to keep connected with the world, emotionally, psychologically connected with the world. So, four simple little practices.
When you experience some pain or difficulty of yourself, and we talked about this before, you know, when something is not going right, when you’re unhappy, at that moment, just take a moment. And if you get, you know, maybe at first it takes a lot more moments, but you can get, if you become accustomed to it, it just takes you can develop a shorthand notation in your mind. It just takes a moment. The moment you experience some difficulty, some unhappiness, at that moment, remember, there are literally, tens of millions of people on this planet who are experiencing the exact same thing that you’re experiencing. Whether it’s physical or mental, whatever the difficulty, you can be assured that there are millions and millions of people who are experiencing that exact same suffering.
Exactly, just like yourself at that moment. So you can use your suffering to remember about others, to reconnect with the world, so that you don’t lose yourself in your own suffering, become totally absorbed in it. Just for that moment, think, you you can connect up and use your suffering. You can just think, ‘May this suffering, this difficulty, be enough for all of us. Okay, why not try that?’ try that?
And just take one in breath and imagine that you’re taking the suffering of all these millions, literal millions of others, and they’re suffering upon yourself. And whatever that suffering you’re experiencing now is sufficient for all of them. So it just takes a second, just that in breath, connecting with the world and bringing in the suffering of others. When you experience some pleasure, okay, for sure, go for it. Experience your pleasure.
I’m not saying don’t, but take one second and remember that everyone else wants to be happy as well. And just for a moment share that happiness with others. Just breathe out one intentional breath as if, you know, whatever pleasure you’re feeling, maybe you just took that piece of chocolate cake, you know, just, for one second, breathe that pleasure, share with the world about you, with an out breath. Okay? Then, thirdly, when you see someone else experiencing pain, you know no one wants to suffer.
That’s the reality, that’s the deeper, that’s the essential. If you see someone difficulty, just take one moment, breathe in that pain, take it upon yourself and upon your own self centeredness, and then connect up. And then finally, when you see others experience experiencing happiness, rejoice. Connect up. So, you know, whatever is happening, whether you’re experiencing happiness or suffering, whether others are experiencing suffering, it can all be a cause, all be a method, a way of connecting up with the world about it.
All the time. When you experience happiness, you can share it. When you experience suffering, you can take upon the suffering of others. When you see others experiencing suffering, you can take upon yourself. When you see others experiencing suffering, you can share in that.
And I think it’s a real training method for helping us to overcome this extreme of individualism, which isn’t serving us well in the West. We maintain a connection with the world and with others. We become social beings. And as I tried to emphasize, mental health is a social phenomenon. It occurs relation with others, in how we relate with the world about us.
Okay, I kept you very late and I apologize, but we finished. That’s what’s important. So we can dedicate the merit. We can dedicate the positive energy that 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 merits.
May no living creatures suffer, commit evil, or fall ill. May no one be afraid or belittled with a mind weighed down by depression. May the blind see forms and deaf hear sounds. May those who are worn with toil be restored upon finding repose. May the naked find clothing, the hungry find food, may the thirsty find water and delicious drink.
May the poor find wealth, those weak with sorrow find joy. May the forlorn find hope, constant happiness and prosperity. May the prosperity. May every time 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 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 of the awakened heart that has now 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 until the end of cyclic existence. Thank you.
Good night. If you’d like to stay for a minute and have a cup of tea and discussion, you’re welcome. Otherwise, have a good night. Thank you. You got a cold?