Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 46-minute talk with a blunt challenge: meditation is not for inducing trances, visions, or astral travel — it is for seeing clearly how the mind actually works. He introduces mindfulness of breathing as a practical tool for observing neurotic patterns without indulging or resisting them, using a cow-in-a-wide-pasture analogy for giving the mind space to settle. Detailed posture guidance and a breath-counting technique (cycles up to ten) follow. The second half uses the refuge prayer as a springboard: are our everyday refuges — relationships, money, sex — actually protecting us from suffering? He reframes Buddhahood as sanity and mental health, then closes with Śāntideva’s verse on self-cherishing versus cherishing others, connecting wisdom and compassion as the twin paths to genuine peace. Accessible to newcomers with no prior Buddhist background required.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 WtWNN 1987 08 29.mp3
UUID: c8efd2f5-5af4-447f-a152-cd243b43901a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: What the world needs now (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-08-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.1 minutes
Words: ~5,909
Shouldn’t be a means of trying to induce trances, hypnotic states, see colored lights, visions. Basically, we want to be happy. Everyone in this room wants to be happy. No one in this room wants to suffer. We’re all very much equal in that way.
We use spiritual practices, and amongst those the techniques of meditation, to solve our problems, to finally, once and for all, end our suffering. If we use meditation as another means of prolonging the neurotic patterns of our samsaric mind, In meditation, this is merely a way of prolonging our suffering or in fact increasing our suffering. So in meditation, we simply are trying to create some space consciously to expose our neurotic patterns of mind and begin to work on them realistically. Just getting in touch with the reality. We don’t we aren’t concerned with how things should be, how we would like things to be, how we might dream them to be, how they might have been in the past, but how they are now.
We want to get in touch with ourselves and see how our mind is actually operating. What are the causes of our suffering? Generally, we see all the causes of our suffering outside of ourselves, you know. My wife, my boyfriend, my boss, my car, not enough money, the guy next door. This is a mistake.
We have to begin to see, reorientate our understanding to see if our attitudes, the way we view our existence, way we view the people around us, our environment, the way we relate with ourselves is causing all our problems. So we have to quit speeding, quit acting, and begin to sit still and see how our mind is working. And in doing this, we try to leave out the ambition, competitive mind, the gaining mind, you know, all the vicious patterns that we use in our daily life. The egotistical patterns which are, you know, trying to to aggrandize ourselves, to exploit, manipulate our environment and other people for the sake of some ego, for the sake of our self-cherishing, selfishness, exaggerated self concern. So we become very simple in our approach.
It’s a very simple minded way to sanity. One approach that we’re going to use is called mindfulness of breathing. It’s a very basic meditation, especially to Buddhism. If we try to control our mind, try to hold it into a straight jacket, then it’s very active controlling the energy that we put into repressing our usual patterns of mind, that energy is going to rebound, it’s going to reflect back at us. We’re going to energize the types of mind that we’re trying to solve.
We’re going to energize if we try to repress them and they’ll come back even stronger. So we try to create some space. It’s like as if we had a cow in a big pasture and this cow is running around. If we give the cow a big enough pasture, finally the restlessness of this cow makes no sense. He finally sees that there’s nothing to resist and the cow finally begins to settle down and starts eating his grass and he eats his grass.
And he eats his grass and he falls asleep very quietly. So within a controlled discipline of gentleness with ourselves, we try to create some space of an open posture for our mind. In this way we begin to get in touch with aspects of ourselves that have remained hidden up to now. We didn’t want to look at ourselves to a great deal. There’s a lot that we don’t want to know about ourselves, that we fear.
We have a certain image of ourselves, And we want to hold on to this image very much. And so we repress, we run away from aspects of ourselves which are continually beginning to arise. So we don’t have to take a real look at ourselves to see how crazy we really might be. So we use the discipline of the technique of mindfulness of breathing. It’s not a mystical discipline, it’s quite simple and straightforward.
The basic practice is to be right here now. So that’s the goal, and that’s the technique. So we use mindfulness, which is simply the the function of mind which holds the object, that is the breath, and we use awareness, that which knows whether we are holding the object or not. It knows the environment, the situation. Because of this simple technique, the simplicity of the technique, we don’t get sidetracked into entertainment, exotic practices.
It’s not complicated, it’s very straightforward and simple. We aren’t trying to run away from our problems, our irritations, we’re trying to see them more clearly. Yeah? We aren’t trying to induce bliss, numbness, the narcotic state. We’re trying to see our problems more clearly.
And our problems are within our own mind. It’s only by seeing our own mind that we’re ever going to be able to transcend to solve our problems. It’s not very In a way it is exciting to actually have a real method to work on your mind. But it’s not very entertaining from the point of view of ego, is it? It’s not very colorful perhaps.
It’s not as exotic. It’s not like flying through the air, astral travel or anything like that, which we many of you probably have some interest in. But it’s becoming realistic. Astral travel is not going to do any good. It’s just going to complicate your life and probably bring you more problems.
Even the, you know, the desire to develop these supernormal powers is in itself an expression of your problem. The need to be constantly running, to entertain yourself. So we create a space to get to know ourselves. We are gentle with ourselves. We begin to accept ourselves.
We begin to become friends with ourselves within the context of critical intelligence. You know, this is who I am now. It’s not I would like to be somebody else. We all would like to be somebody else. But we have to start from where we are now with our hang ups, with our problem, all these perverted thoughts.
Is who I am now. You have to become friends with yourself. If you don’t try to become friends with yourself, if you don’t begin to accept yourself, then you’re going to hide many aspects of yourself from yourself. Your fears, personality traits which you don’t like. And if you don’t become aware of them, how are you ever going to work with them?
How are you ever going to deal with them? So we have to begin to develop some equanimity. That is to say, we allow aspects of ourselves to arise and we just note them. We don’t indulge in them, we don’t resist them, we don’t try to suppress them, repress them, we just acknowledge. We merely say, for example, desire arises, a thought arises, thought, thinking.
We note in our mind thinking. Westerners are extremely complicated people. There’s no end to the labyrinth that you can travel in, into the neuroses of the mind, into the complexities of why your problems exist the way they are. You know, maybe your mother weaned you at too early of an age, maybe your father didn’t take you to the baseball game or the footy There’s no end to the to the to the It’s like a maze that we can go into and we’re never going to get out of it. But all these thoughts are simply phenomena.
They arise, they abide and they will cease. That’s all they are. And we can begin to treat thought in that way. A thought arises, perhaps a terribly perverted thought, you know. Something that you would be ashamed of if anyone could had clairvoyance or could understand what you were thinking at that moment, and then you run away and hide.
It’s just a thought. It will arise, it will abide, and it will cease. We just note thinking. A feeling arises, sexual feelings, blissful feelings, painful feelings, your knees or whatever. It’s only a feeling that will arise, it will abide, it will cease.
Feeling. We note feeling, thinking, feeling, sounds, people moving, hearing. So we use a technique of mindfulness of breathing and noting, But we do it in the sense of equanimity. We don’t indulge nor do we resist. Right?
It’s like if we’re sitting, generally we’re sitting on a bank, a train, a railroad bank. Is that what you call it? Railroad bank? Train track. And we’re watching this train go by and the train’s going by and the train’s going by and the train You’re watching the people in the cars and the train’s going by and you’re watching the train go by and then you’re watching the countryside go by.
You got on the train and now you’re watching this story unfold before you’re out the window as you travel inside the train. The idea is to merely watch the train and not get on it. We don’t indulge it. If we resist, we indulge it. It’s the same as indulging.
We’re feeding this pattern of mind some sort of energy by either resisting or indulging. So we developed the feeling of equanimity. We merely note sinking, we merely note feeling, we merely note hearing, seeing, tasting, touching. Merely note and go back to the breathing. So we’re going to use this technique of breathing as a basis for our meditation.
We can talk about the meditation posture. It can become very complicated but it’s not necessary. Just a few points are important, at least initially. We should feel stable. That is physically we must be able to feel stable as if I’m here, I’m solid, you know, I’m not going to blow over, I’m not ready to fall over at any moment.
If you feel that way, this will reflect in your mind. Your mind will feel unstable. So you want to feel some solidity, some presence, I’m rooted in the earth. Sitting in the cross legged posture is very good for this, but it’s not necessary. We don’t necessarily have to sit in a full lotus where we put one leg on top of the other, one foot on top of the thigh of the other foot.
If you can put one, that’s very good. This will add to your stability of mind. If you can’t do either, then that’s okay. But simply some feeling of stability whereby you can begin to relax your attention to your physical posture. You don’t have to pay so much attention to your physical posture in order to hold yourself up.
If there’s a feeling of uneasiness physically, then you’re never going to be able to develop the full force of your concentration, use the full potential of your mind. Part of your mind is constantly going to have to be concerned with your body. We want to begin get to our body. In order to do that we have to leave it in a very stable posture. So sitting in a very stable posture perhaps in a cross legged position with the back very straight.
There are many reasons for emphasizing this. One of them is, the most simple is, you get a backache if you sit too long with a hunched posture or you don’t want to bend your back either. Just as if you’re stacking up coins, you know. If you start going like this then you have to compensate and then you have to if the stack of coins goes out there in front then you have to compensate by coming back. We just want to stack the coins straight up.
So the back of the posture is very straight. The backbone is like an arrow in the Tibetan tradition, they use that example. We put the tongue against the palate, behind the teeth, to prevent the mouth either drying out or saliva dripping from the mouth. You don’t clench your teeth, relax your lips and teeth in a very natural position. Your eyes should be looking about positions so that they would be looking if they were in fact seen about one and a half meters in front of you along the sides of your nostrils.
This feels uncomfortable in the beginning but it becomes very natural after one. Now there are some people who have different techniques of whether you hold your eyes open or close. This is up to you very much, but it has been suggested by my teachers that you make the effort to keep your eyes open. Otherwise, you’ll become very dull mentally. If you close your eyes, everything becomes dark, there’s a good chance you’ll fall asleep.
But you don’t hold them wide open because this will stimulate you too much, so you merely rest the upper eyelid on the lower lid. So there’s just a slit of light coming in. And your eyes are seen along your nostrils. Your neck is slightly bent forward, slight pressure on the Adam’s apple. And in the Tibetan tradition, the hands are held with the right hand on top of the left, thumbs touching, and the thumbs are placed approximately at the level of the navel.
So then your hands are resting in your lap. The main thing is some feeling of stability, that you are there, that you have a presence, you feel solid, this will reflect in your mind. It gives you solidity and confidence in your mind, that your back is straight, and that you can sit for long periods without having to move. If you’re constantly moving, you’re constantly disturbing your mind. The mind and the body are interdependent, interrelated.
So by stilling the body, calming the body, we calm the mind. Also by calming the breath, the body, mind and breath are interrelated. By calming the breath we calm the mind, by calming the mind we calm the body, by calming the body we calm the breath. These three are interrelated. Therefore this mindfulness of breathing, by developing calmness of breath and evenness of breath, this will induce calmness of body, calmness of mind.
So that’s the posture. Now the technique of actual mindfulness of breathing. There are many techniques, but they’re only techniques. There’s nothing profound or mystical about them. We can use them if they’re beneficial.
If we don’t find they’re of any use, it’s not important. They’re just the tools, right? Just to help us. Basically, can talk about what we’re watching the breath, the in and out breath, that’s all. That’s the object of our meditation in mindfulness of breathing.
We are trying to mindfulness simply means memory. To remember, to recollect. We’re trying to recollect the breath, to remember the breath. Keep bringing your mind back to the breath. You breathe in, breathe out.
The first technique we merely note the general breath. Breathing in, breathing out. Breathing in, breathing out. You can think to yourself mentally. In, To help, we can count.
In, out, one. In, out, two. In, out, three. We go up to five. Up to when we get to five, come back down to one.
In out one, in out two, up to six. When you get to six, come back again to one. Up to seven, one, eight, one, nine, one, and ten. Don’t go past ten. You’ll get hum up in counting.
We’re not trying to see how well we can count. We’re trying to be mindful of the breath. We’re using counting to help us as an aid, a tool. So we can use this counting in, out one, in, out two. Just a general pattern of the breath.
Just the normal breathing pattern. And we’re not doing pranayama. We’re not trying to do breath retention. Any particular method of letting the breath out. Natural breathing.
Just calm, normal, slow breathing. Counting. In, out, one, in. If you want to drop the counting, drop the counting, don’t use the counting. Just watch your breath.
Now we have to be gentle with ourselves within the context of a wholesome discipline. You know, if you’ve ever trained a puppy, if you get uptight with a puppy, it does no good whatsoever. Things become even more difficult. That puppy simply doesn’t know what you wanted to do. You know, he wants to please you because you would you would have a good relationship.
You you will be happy. If you’re happy, the puppy’s happy. So if you get upset, you said, know, I you know, don’t you think quite often people think you should be able to understand what I I’m trying to teach you by now. But sometimes puppies aren’t so intelligent as people. And they get very angry.
When they get angry, then of course the puppy is going to react. It’s going to be even more difficult to train it. We merely keep in a very gentle manner bringing our mind back to the breath. You’re breathing one in, out, one in, one in, in, one in, in, in, two in, I wonder what how long he’s going to talk in, out, three. Your mind is going to constantly be going to wandering.
The moment you note that you become aware that your mind has wandered off the object of meditation, the object of meditation being the breath, you simply bring it back again to the breath. In and out one, in and out two, in and out three, in and out. Or there’s too much noise, the guy next to me is snoring. In and out and you bring it back to the breath. Constant over and over again but in a very gentle manner as if you were training a puppy.
Know, paper training a puppy, just keep setting it back on the paper. It runs away, you put it back, it runs away, you put it back. But there’s no sense in getting uptight, getting upset, saying I can’t meditate, I can’t do this, I’m no good, whatever. This is just another ego trip when we’re trying to lead those outside of our meditation. It’s not reasonable.
Anyone can meditate. It’s just a matter of wholesome discipline and applying some effort. We can think of meditation in the sense of tuning a guitar. We neither want to tune it too tightly, let us be repressive, over disciplined, nor do we want to relax too much and let the mind run wild. So just like in order to get a good sound from a guitar string, you have to get the perfect pitch and the perfect tautness.
Likewise, with our mind, we have to know how we must become skillful in how tight to make our mind or when to begin to loosen our mind. We’re simply trying to hold this object in a very relaxed manner. Most of you cannot relax. You know, people say try to relax, try to relax, try to relax. It’s the very act of trying prevents you from relaxing.
But by simply bringing your mind over and over again back to the breath, your mind will become naturally relaxed. If you become uptight with yourself or you become too loose, too relaxed, not relaxed, too undisciplined, then you’re not going to relax. And it’s only in this relaxed state when we have equanimity that we begin to get in touch with these patterns of our mind, that we begin to get in touch with parts of ourselves that have been hidden to us because we didn’t want to look at them. So we’re going to meditate for a while on the mindfulness of breathing, and then we’ll recite this verse of refuge. We’re doing this to be to find some happiness.
We’re not doing it to please anyone. We’re not doing it to please our boyfriend or our husband, our wife. So there should be some similarity between the cause and the effect. For now, we should we should be happy to meditate if we’re going to have a a happy result, some sort of something good come out of it. You know, it’s something we can take some pride in what we’re doing.
You know, we’re really trying to do something with our lives in a very realistic way. We’re really doing something. It’s very meaningful. This is when we can begin to solve our problem. We can begin to go beyond the neurotic suffering pattern of our mind.
You know, we’re always crying out when we’re suffering a great deal. Somebody help me. Somebody help me. Why are things like this? And at those moments, we would quite willingly do just about anything to get out of that suffering.
But then everything becomes okay again, at least for a while. And we forget how things were. And we forget that the potential for that suffering to reoccur is still present within our own mind. It’s just a matter of the right conditions, the right situations arising, and again, we’re right back to where we started. Nothing has really changed.
Nothing is ever going to change. If you don’t change, you’re going to continue to suffer. This is the beginning of a way to change. And we should take some happiness and rejoicing in the fact that we’re really trying to work with some method. Even though it’s a very simplistic method, it’s a beginning.
We’re doing something extremely worthwhile for our own happiness and ultimately for the happiness of others. If you don’t get your own house in order, if you don’t get your own mind in order, it’s senseless to talk about helping others. So we’ll sit in mindfulness of breathing, and then we’ll recite the verse of refuge after that. Now we’re going to recite. The taking of refuge in the generation of bodhicitta.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. By the merit from giving and other perfections, may I reach Buddhahood so as to benefit beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. By the merit from giving and other perfections, may I reach Buddhahood so as to benefit beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. By the merit from giving and other perfections, may I reach Buddhahood so as to benefit beings.
So going for refuge is not a new thing, not something that we haven’t done before. It’s not an eastern trip particularly. We’ve all been going for refuge our entire life. Go refuge to our husbands, our girlfriends, sex, drugs, politics, money, jobs, pleasures, possessions. We take refuge in all these things in the hopes that they’re going to solve our problems, that they’re going to eliminate our suffering, that they’re going to bring us the happiness that we desire and that we want.
So the question is, are they working? Are they effective refuges? You know, refuge is something which should protect you. Like when you go outside and it’s raining, you put up an umbrella. An umbrella becomes a refuge from something that you don’t want to occur.
You don’t want to get wet. Likewise, we don’t want to suffer. So we go for refuge. Does your husband solve all your problems? Is your girlfriend able to eliminate all your suffering?
Does your job bring you all the happiness that you are seeking? Does that new video cassette recorder give you the final bliss that you feel that you should be experiencing? So we have to check up to see whether our refuge is an effective refuge. It’s many people when they they can do talk about refuge. I think perhaps Buddhism is it was founded by a bunch of dirty old men who were just trying to take away all our pleasures, and they they don’t want us to have any fun anymore.
Something went wrong in their childhood and they want everybody else to pay for it. You know, like sex for example. People take refuge in sex. Now there are many realized, and there are many realized, holy enlightened beings who have families, who have sex. Sex is not the problem, is it?
It’s our attitude towards sex. Whether it becomes just a neurotic an expression of a neurotic pattern of mind, whether it’s just another way of manipulating, dominating, hurting, fulfilling our neurotic needs. So there’s nothing wrong with money, there’s nothing wrong with sex, jobs, marriage. It’s our attitudes and how we relate them that causes the problems. So we begin to see that the real refuge is in changing our own attitudes, is in changing our own mind.
We go for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha in order to do this as a way of changing our own mind, of finding the happiness that we’re trying to find, and eliminating the suffering that we don’t desire. Going for refuge is an existential commitment of our entire being, not just our intellect, our emotions, our will, but our entire being to Buddhahood. And what is Buddhahood? Somewhere out there perhaps. I don’t know.
It’s difficult to understand, isn’t it? Sanity, mental health. Growth, we commit ourselves to growth. So this becomes the inner aim of our existence. By going for refuge to Buddha, we make this the inner aim of our existence.
Sanity, love, wisdom, fearlessness, skill, compassion. Our entire lives become integrated around the central theme. We call that Buddhahood. And we go for refuge to this. We go for refuge to the Dharma.
We go for refuge to truth, to reality. You know, it is said that all our sufferings are extinguished in the sphere of reality. If we can begin to accord our behavior, our attitude with the way things actually are, we aren’t going to suffer anymore. It’s because of our mistaken attitudes, our perverted conceptions, wrong emotions that we suffer. Or making some simple mistakes, we’re not in accordance with reality.
If we think in body, speech, mind, in accordance with the way things actually are, we’re not going to suffer anymore. So we go for refuge to reality as a means, the method to actualize the Buddhahood, which has become the inner aim of our life. We go for refuge to the Sangha, with the spiritual community, which is the supportive community. Our brothers and sisters, our fellow practitioners, who are like us trying to aspire to a more meaningful, healthy way of life, supporting each other, acting as examples, encouraging. So we go for refuge to the Buddha, and the Dharma, and the Sangha as an effective refuge for once and for all to begin to solve our problems in a very realistic way.
So we take Buddha in our world. The Buddha becomes our paradigm a standard of what we call mental health, of what we call sanity. We use this as our paradigm. This is our model. We say this was a healthy person.
The ideals of perfection, perhaps, or the ideals of absolutism, we don’t know about these things. Whether, you know, all things are ultimately really conceived of by mind. What we call healthy, what we call sanity, is just another conception of our own mind. They aren’t apart from our minds. There’s nothing perfect, nothing absolute apart from how we conceive of it.
So we have taken the Buddha as the model which we are striving to emulate. The model of sanity, the model of love and wisdom, the model where all problems, all suffering has come to an end. The model where we can be of greatest benefit to ourselves and to others. And we try to work toward this model to express Buddhahood within our own lives, within our body, speech and mind. When I was in Sri Lanka many years ago, I was just there’s many, many Buddhist ruins in Sri Lanka.
And I would walk through the jungle and come upon a small clearing. And there would be a Buddha statue made out of stone, similar to this statue here, this image here. And it would be overgrown with weeds and moss, and the tree branches. Now I’d be alone and I would look at it, come upon it as if by accident. And the Buddha is sitting there waiting.
It’s as if he’s been waiting there for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, just waiting, patiently waiting to be discovered. You’re interestingly enough who is it? The author of two thousand and one, Stanley Kubrick? Arthur C. Clarke, he lived in Sri Lanka during that period when he was writing in two thousand and one. And if you remember, there were these huge monoliths.
Something I don’t know. My image that comes to mind is some marble slabs and huge stone. And whenever these were present, it always represented a great leap in the evolutionary process of mankind. They would come upon these. I think perhaps Arthur Clarke, he saw one of these Buddhas sitting in the jungle Sri Lanka and maybe he felt moved in some way, that there was some movement in his own mind, some leap in the evolutionary process of his own mind.
So we talk about Buddha becoming the innermost goal of our life. It’s difficult to understand what a Buddha is, isn’t it? If we’re honest. We can talk about his two most prominent characteristics, the prominent characteristic of wisdom and compassion. How do they relate to us?
Wisdom and compassion. There are two aspects to our personality, overall categories of our personality. There’s the private, experiential part of ourselves which is not open to anyone but our own experience, our own little inner world. There’s another aspect to ourselves which exists solely in relationship to others, our social self, our public self. Very much there are two aspects to ourselves.
These two aspects are completely realized or fulfilled through the methods of wisdom and compassion. So if we take our personality and we want to realize its fullest potential, And it’s necessary to develop wisdom and compassion within ourselves. We want to experience peace. Everyone here wants peace. You may think you want other things.
You may want a new car or a better job. You may want a husband who understands you or something. But in the end you want peace. And the way we can find inner peace, the cessation of our sufferings, is through wisdom. So we develop our inner aspect of our personality, our inner self, through the cultivation of our wisdom.
But if we allow it to go at that as, in fact, the lesser vehicle in their extreme of individualism, they have neglected the social aspect of themselves, this public aspect, the aspect of their personality which exists in relationship to others. Therefore, it’s become one-sided. There’s an imbalance. In order to become a fully integrated human being, it’s necessary to develop our aspect of ourselves which relates with others. And this is most skillfully done through the development of love and compassion.
So this has to be our goal if our goal is Buddhahood, to develop wisdom, love, and compassion. The reason we aren’t at peace within ourselves, this personal aspect of ourselves, is because of the basic problem of ignorance, the conception of a truly existent self, of a permanent, independent, partless self. In dependence upon this self we imagine that there is a self which does not exist in relationship. It does not depend upon our culture, of who we’re with, of our situation, of our education, even of our body. There’s something there inside of us.
This becomes most prominent when we we become very angry, have great emotions. I can’t stand you. Get out of my way. When you say, I can’t stand you. I can’t At that moment, what is the I?
What is that sound? That word I? What is that referring to? Who is that? I can’t stand you at that moment.
Something very solid there. There’s a solid feeling as if you could point to that I. It’s merely an illusion. And based upon that illusion of a self, of this permanent, partless, independently existing self, When someone enhances that image of ourselves, this fixed identity that we have of ourselves, we want to draw them closer and we become attached. When they somehow bring harm to this image, this identity of ourselves that we hold as permanently fixed, we want to push them away and we develop aversion, hatred.
So all these various negative emotions arise in dependence upon ignorance. These negative emotions, these afflictive emotions disturb the natural peace of the mind. Therefore, it’s necessary to correct, to eliminate the negative emotions, to eliminate afflictive emotions. In order to do that, we must cultivate wisdom. And thereby, our main our mind, this personal aspect of ourselves can reach a state of peace.
But also there’s the social aspect of ourselves, the self which exists in relationship to others. The problem here is based upon self-cherishing and selfishness, exaggerated self concern, self centeredness. It brings us all the suffering that we don’t want. So we have to apply an antidote, some method to begin to diminish, lessen the power of selfishness and self-cherishing within our lives. Yes, we do through the cultivation of love and compassion.
So we can begin to see that the way to mental health is through wisdom and love and compassion. There is a verse from a book called Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds by Śāntideva. It’s one of the most important books in the Tibetan tradition. Śāntideva was a great Indian master. He’s talking about cherishing others.
Cherishing others. Whatever joy there is in this world all comes from desiring others to be happy. And whatever suffering there is in this world all comes from desiring myself to be happy. But what need is there to say much more? The childish work for their own benefit.
The Buddha’s work for the benefit of others. Just look at the difference between them. You know, our paradigm, model that we’re making use of, the Buddha. They said he spent three countless eons of lifetimes working in order to perfect his skills, in order to help all sentient beings. They said that Christ died for the benefit of others.
His Holiness says that if you want to be happy, develop love and compassion. If you want to make others happy, then develop love and compassion. And he has dedicated his life to the service of others. Mother Teresa says that a heart filled with love for others is a heart filled with joy. And she has dedicated her life to the service of others.
Lama Zopa says, as long as the fire is not given up, the burning cannot stop. Like that, you know, if you don’t let go of fire, you’re going to be constantly burned. What is the fire? Like that, if the I is not given up, suffering cannot be abandoned. To purify one’s own mind and the suffering of others, give up oneself for others and cherish others as oneself.
And Lama Zopa has dedicated his life to the service of others.