Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Ignyen traces anger and resentment to their root—the belief in a fixed, independent self—and offers dependent arising, Buddhism’s core teaching on interdependence, as the remedy. In this 41-minute session, he begins with meditation on generating positive motivation, then moves to dependent arising: the principle that everything, including ourselves, exists only through dependent causes and parts. He shows concretely how this applies: when someone criticizes you, only the belief in a solid permanent self makes it feel like a wound. All our positive qualities originate from others and awakened beings; negative emotions stem from our own self-centered habits. Those who criticize us are actually friends, revealing faults we cannot see ourselves. Pitched at those new to Buddhist philosophy or deepening existing practice.
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File: 06 DA 2001 06 10.mp3
UUID: 2d0c8f4c-96d0-45ff-b2b1-f91674b7b2c7
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Dependant Arising (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-06-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 40.7 minutes
Words: ~4,437
So this morning, we’ll first start with some meditation. So prior to engaging meditation, it’s good to generate a positive motivation. So our positive motivation really is our current intention. So in developing a positive motivation, we should investigate, check on what our current intention is, whether it’s distracted, whether it’s positive, in fact, whether it’s white or black or a mixture of the two. In investigating what our current intention is, we should try and develop a positive intention.
So a positive intention really is any intention that is gathering to it love, compassion, patience, wisdom, and so on. So if our current intention is not really engaging those states, then it’s probably the case that it’s either neutral or negative. But the best outcome for us comes about through a positive intention. If we have a neutral intention, then the result will be quite neutral. If we have a negative intention, the result of that in future will be a negative outcome.
So because we want a positive outcome and a strong positive outcome in future, it’s in our own interest to generate a positive motivation as often as we can. If in fact we only generate a positive motivation in what we do from morning till night, then the only outcome will be a positive outcome. So it really is enlightened self interest to check ourselves what our motivation is. Check out where is it going? What’s if it’s just drifting there somewhere and sort of taking as its object various various beings or situations, other people, but it’s not very well motivated, then it’s in our self interest to haul it back from there, drag it back, and then put it on a positive object instead.
So what is a positive object here? A positive object is, for instance, the happiness of other beings. If we focus on the happiness of other beings or that other beings may be in a state of contentment or not suffering discomfort or pain in any way, if our focus is on that, then our motivation, our motivation therefore is positive. In fact, what’s taking our mind to that object is a positive motivation. So that type of motivation will have a better outcome than a scattered motivation, or a motivation that’s sort of tinged with or completely involved in less than positive thoughts.
So in the beginning of anything we do, is good to check on what our motivation is and put some effort into developing a positive motivation. In fact, a positive motivation may already be there. If it’s there, then we should try and increase it, extend it. If it’s a positive motivation only directed towards one person, it is possible to extend the field from just one person to two, from two to three. And in fact, it’s better if we can establish a positive motivation to unlimited sentient beings.
And then we can also check on the intensity of the motivation itself. And we can increase the potency of our positive motivation. But it’s not something that, for instance, would be nice. We can have the thought it’d be nice if these beings were happy, or they’d have some ease or some space in their life for contentment to develop. But then to increase that, to think it this is a necessity that other beings must be happy, need to be happy.
It might not be easy getting to that point, of course, because maybe some resistance too. Then it’s very interesting to examine where the resistance is coming from. Because where the resistance in general is coming from is from our own negative self interest. Not enlightened self interest, but it’s the type of self interest that will tend to make us unhappy in future, makes us unhappy in the present. So that selfish or negative self interest is concern about the self really just for our own particular benefit alone.
And that is said to be the root of all unhappiness. It’s often called self-cherishing. In Tibetan, it’s called rang chag ‘dzin. Rang is self. Chag is to cherish or to chag pa, to love.
And zin is to hold, to really to hold oneself as dear. That impact at present is a great limiting factor for our development. Although at times it appears to be that one element within us that’s protecting us or looking after our interest, actually, it’s limiting our potential. And it’s focusing on just our own limited interests to the exclusion of other beings. So we have a measure of this self-cherishing attitude or this holding ourselves as dear to the exclusion of others.
And it seems quite appropriate for us. However, it’s said that this attitude is the cause of all our unhappiness. Like in one text in the Guru Puja it says that in fact all our happiness is derived from caring for others, for cherishing other beings. All our unhappiness, pain, sadness, discontent and so forth. All of that comes from just cherishing ourselves or holding ourselves as dear.
In a sense, being self centered. And generally when we have a resistance to doing something positive, it comes from this self-cherishing. That self-cherishing will often be telling us, but what am I getting out of this? If I do this, what am I going to get out of it? If I think positive thoughts towards other beings, what am I getting out of this?
What’s in it for me? And so the that resistance there is generally our self-cherishing. And seeing that self-cherishing to be limiting us or an obstacle to us takes time, takes a lot of investigation because this self-cherishing we’ve had for a long time and it appears to be a friend to us. So if we’re able to investigate these issues and then begin to oppose this self-cherishing, then benefit will be generated for us. And this has been said by many beings such as the great masters of the past like the Kadampa Geshe’s and so on.
The Buddha himself have all recommended that we overcome our self-cherishing attitude. That if anything, if there’s anything we should do, it’s to put that self-cherishing attitude to one side, to oppose it, negate it, trample on it, throw it out, discard it, destroy it, eject it, and so forth. But this we need to do gradually as well. Because it’s only when we see the fault of something that really we’re able to eliminate it. It.
But in general, what’s preventing us from generating a positive motivation is our self-cherishing attitude, that resistance there. So if we want to see where our self-cherishing is, all we really need to do is think about committing a positive action. And that resistance, what am I going to get out of this? That’s our self-cherishing attitude. So, in the beginning of any action, we should reflect on generating a positive motivation.
Because that generating a positive motivation is enlightened self interest. Helping others, not harming others, is in our own self interest, because that’s where our happiness lies. Firstly, not harming others, and then secondly, helping others. So, we’ll just do a little bit of meditation. Firstly, generating a strong positive motivation And developing a strong positive motivation sets our direction, points us in a particular direction.
So now we’ll just do some breathing meditation. The purpose of doing some breathing meditation is to lessen our discursive thinking. It’s often, especially living in a busy place, our thoughts are often quite discursive. We about this, we think about that. And often in the mind jumping from one object to another to another, it really means that we’re not thinking deeply about things.
We’re thinking discursively. This is not a great benefit to us. So breathing meditation helps us to settle the mind, because much of our thinking is not that useful to us, not that effective or practical. So here we just examine the breath, Focus on the breath. And any thoughts that come up, we can just let them pass.
We just relax. Here, in a sense, where fifty percent of the mind, we’re just relaxing completely. Twenty five percent, we’re just watching our breath. That twenty five percent is mindfulness of the breath. Another twenty five percent is introspection, just keeping an eye on the fact that we’re watching our breath.
The other fifty percent, we’re relaxing completely. And if thoughts come up, then we just let them pass. We don’t follow them. So this morning there’s actually two groups together. There’s one course that started on Friday night, and this course is on dependent arising.
And also we have the Sunday morning meditation group. So we’re combining this morning and continuing with the theme of the weekend course, which is dependent arising. So dependent arising is in fact like the fundamental teaching within Buddhism itself, the teaching on view. That in fact everything that we experience, see, feel, smell, taste, or touch, or think about everything is a dependent arising. Or it occurs dependent on something else.
We can see this for ourselves. We’re a dependent arising because our body is a dependent arising. Our body of this moment comes from our body of the previous moment, which came from the body of the moment before that. So our body of this moment is a dependent arising. It depends on causes.
And if we take this back far enough, we come back to the egg and the sperm of our parents, that genetic material. And that genetic material comes from both of our parents. Where do they get that? They get that from both of their parents. So, we can see that our physical body at present is a dependent arising.
Also, our current mind and our feelings, all of our thoughts, sense impressions, emotions, all of these are dependent arising. So they come from previous moments of awareness or consciousness or emotions and so forth. And if we look back in a continuum of where these thoughts and emotions, these feelings, these experiences, where they’ve come from, well then we can see that they’ve come in a stream right back to how we were yesterday, how we were a week ago, how we were a month ago, a year ago, and so on, all the way back to our birth. So our current awareness and all the different aspects of that is a dependent arising. And in fact, even the awareness we have at the first moment of conception, that also has a previous moment of awareness which acts as its substantial cause.
Because awareness doesn’t arise without a substantial cause, and the substantial cause of awareness is always a previous moment of awareness or a seed that’ll be one or the other. In this way, can establish that our awareness always has a preceding moment of awareness to act as its substantial cause. And so our mind stream at the present moment is beginningless. It had no beginning. And so our mind and body, which are the basis of ourselves as a person, really are dependent arisings that exist in a continuum from the past.
So we’re a dependent arising. And when we look around at anything else that’s around us, they’re all dependent arising. This room, other people in the room, the objects that we see, what we hear, and so forth. All the objects in the universe are in fact dependent arisings, whether in fact they’re permanent or impermanent. So Then also we can see that there are different types of dependent arising.
There are dependent arising which are generated from a cause. And something generated from a cause definitely is a dependent arising because it depends on its cause, such as ourselves, our mind and body, what we can see with our eye awareness, hear, smell, taste, touch. All of these things are causal dependent arising. Even permanent objects are dependent arising as well, because they depend on their parts. Anything which is permanent depends on its parts.
Anything which is impermanent depends on its parts as well. So therefore, everything is a dependent arising. Now the question might arise, why are we what is the purpose of this type of contemplation? Okay. We can see that things may be causally generated.
And even permanent things, if they exist, okay, they may be dependent on their parts. But what’s the benefit of this? What’s a practical benefit to me in the present? This question is not so easy to answer, actually. Understanding dependent arising does have benefit.
And the reason it has benefit is that we have this idea of things being fixed or things being independent of their parts. In fact, we have this idea that things have a mode of existence which they don’t actually possess. And that thought, that conception, actually is the root of our ignorance. Although we have many types of ignorance, we’re often ignorant of the name of the person sitting next to us or ignorant of what happened yesterday or what is happening in some other part of the world. We’re ignorant of so many things.
We don’t know these things. But those types of ignorance are not so important. The most important type of ignorance that we have is the ignorance of things being dependent arising. Because it’s that ignorance that gives rise to all our problems. It is said.
Not easy for us to see this, of course. So the reason we contemplate dependent arising is to examine this question of ignorance and to determine whether this type of ignorance does stand at the root or lie at the root of our current existence. And if it does in fact make a difference to us, whether in fact this does really affect us. At times it might appear that thinking along these lines is sort of adding another layer to something. It’s not actually gonna help us.
But it’s just adding another factor on top of a whole pile of them that are there already, and thinking about whether objects are dependent arisings or not. How can it possibly help us? It’s some abstract idea, some something that exists in text somewhere, someone’s talked about this in the path. But how does it help me in the present? Because that is a very, very good question.
And if nothing else, thinking about dependent arising may provoke us to question, well, what is at the root of our existence? What is the very what’s the the ultimate mode of abidance, the final mode of abidance of objects? Is it that by understanding this, we will develop wisdom? Because it said actually in many many scriptures we should develop wisdom. What is it that we need to develop wisdom about?
Okay. If we accept the premise that we need wisdom, we need wisdom about what? I think it said know thyself in the getting of wisdom, at least get the wisdom by which we know ourselves. So really we do need wisdom there. We do need to comprehend ourselves on the deepest level.
Now here it said that on the deepest level, we’re a dependent arising. That we ourselves as sentient beings, as human beings, we’re dependent arising. We’re completely dependent on causes and conditions. However, in general, we tend to have this idea that we’re fixed, unchanging, that there is a type of self that we possess, which is the controlling agent of all that we do. And this self is the one that experiences everything, that undergoes the trials and tribulations of our everyday existence, suffers, you know, all the criticism that we have to suffer, all the people pointing at our faults or telling us that we don’t know how to do this or and so forth.
But there is this We have this idea that there’s this type of self. If in if in fact dependent arising is true, then such a controlling type self cannot exist. So one of the reasons for contemplating dependent arising is to examine just how we exist on our deepest level. In fact, we may possibly be laboring under a misconception that the I that we’re always thinking about doesn’t actually exist in a way that it appears to exist. And is it possible that that really lies at the very root of our problems or our limitations, whatever they may be?
Does it lie at the root of our birth and death? Is it the fact that the way we think about I in the present moment actually contributes in some way to the fact we have to die? Or to the fact that we were born in this life. So in a sense, reflecting on dependent arising is really reflecting on these questions. What is the ultimate mode of abidance of selves?
And does the way we think about I in the present or hold ourselves to exist, what effect does it have upon us? These issues, of course, we should comprehend because what we experience in the present and what we will experience in future is of central importance to us. And in fact, if we’re determining moment by moment what we experience, and if this experience depends on how, in fact, how we actually hold ourselves to be, then we should investigate these issues. Of course, it’s not easy. They’re subtle.
And they’re often often we take them to be somewhat removed from our everyday life. But on the other hand, when we think about it, this sense of I that we have is always there. I gotta get up in the morning, the alarm’s gone off. I gotta make breakfast. Then I gotta go and go to work and so forth.
This sense of I is always there. Someone steps on our foot and this sense of I, oh, step on my foot, my foot. That my, that sense of I is always with us. But often it’s hard for us to really zero in on what is actually, what is this I? Okay, it exists, but how does it exist?
The I that we have actually is a dependent arising. It doesn’t exist in and of itself. Doesn’t pull itself up from its bootstraps. It’s not independent, but that’s how we hold it to be. We tend to hold this eye as being independent, existing in and of itself.
And it said that based on that, then our anger and hatred, resentment, pride, jealousy, all of these things then develop. Without that the sense of I that we have at present, we it would be impossible to become angry or anger would fall away. Hatred would cease to exist. And the fact that we do have the sense of I that we have at present that we are susceptible to becoming angry. And really it’s clear when we get angry, it’s this sense of I that’s becoming really strong.
Oh, they said that to me. Oh, they they said that I couldn’t do the job. They didn’t give me the promotion. That was me they said that to. Oh, how could they have done that?
We have a strong sense of I, and we’re and really we’re directing then a very strong negative. When we get angry, have a strong negative thought directed at another person or a situation and so on. But at the root of it is this sense of I, this thought of I. And that sense of anger, thought of anger, then really wants to harm that other object. Really because they’re not accepting I in the way that I accept I.
They don’t affirm my sense of I. Then we get angry with others. Then we hate them. Then we have resentment. It goes on for a long time.
Oh, that’s right. They said that to me. And this is it’s our sense of I that’s supporting this, isn’t it? Assuming even when we think about that incident, however long ago it was, that we keep thinking about. It’s because of our sense of I that it keeps coming up.
Oh, they said that to me. They stopped me from getting that promotion. They put in a bad word about me. Or or they tried to tell me that I couldn’t do this or it could be anything. My mother told me that I wasn’t able to do this, do that.
My father stopped me from doing this. We have a lot of resentment based on this sense of I. We take all this hatred and anger and resentment to be quite valid and justified. It’s fully justified because my sense of I is unfailing. It’s got it’s it’s true.
My sense of I, the way I take I exist is just as it is. So therefore I’m entitled to get angry. I’m justified to get angry at these other beings who don’t affirm my sense of I. They’re deluded. They just don’t understand my qualities, all my good qualities.
They just look at a few of my negative qualities to the exclusion of all my positive ones. They’re at fault. And we justify. We spend a lot of time. It’s amazing how much time we spend thinking and justifying the sense of I that we have and trying to subdue all these people that see our faults.
Actually, all these other people that see our faults are really our friends. And when they point them out to us, we should thank them because it’s hard for us to see our faults. We’re so caught up with our sense of eye. So when people criticize us, especially if it’s our parents or someone really close to us, we should welcome it. Thank you.
Yes. I probably have that fault. I don’t see it at present, but I’ll think about it. I’m actually sure you’re wrong, but I’ll go along with it. The fact that we’re sure that they’re wrong comes up again and again for the next twenty years.
But all of this is dependent on this sense of I that we have. And this sense of I that we have is going against dependent arising. On the one hand, have dependent arising. On the other hand, we have our sense of self. This independent self, this self arisen self.
And so forth. This this self that we focus on when we have a sense of I. So one of the purposes of reflecting on dependent arising is really to examine how we exist. And if in fact we are a dependent arising, that can act as an antidote to the sense of I that we have. Of course, the I, our sense of I, tends to resist the thought of dependence arising.
But this we need to examine. And so in developing or in contemplating dependent arising, first it’s good to examine other objects and see whether they’re dependent arisings or not. So we can look at causal objects, you know, like trees. We go outside and look at a tree. We can see that a tree is a dependent arising.
It doesn’t exist in and of itself, although that’s how it appears to exist. Actually, a tree comes from a seed, and that seed came from a previous tree, and that previous tree came from a previous seed, and so forth. So the trees that exist are dependent arising. They don’t exist in and of themselves. We’re like that.
We come from past causes, so we don’t exist in and of ourselves. So anything we observe, other people, external objects like trees, like the environment, other people. All of these things are dependent arisings, depend on their parts and so on. Just thinking about this is beneficial. You know, we can look at any object.
Look at a tree. It’s something that depends on its parts. Without the parts, the tree couldn’t exist. The tree doesn’t exist. Separate from its parts, the tree, in fact, what is its mode of abidance?
It exists there imputed by conception because it is a dependent arising. So this type of analysis we can apply to everything. Of course, this will bring up doubts then about what the meaning of dependent arising is and so forth. But it’s very useful to contemplate this. But in fact we can go around and say, this is a dependent arising.
This is a dependent arising. It’s not fixed. It doesn’t arise in and of itself. It’s dependent. This book is dependent.
I’m dependent. Even on a gross level, this can be beneficial. We remind ourselves that we depend on other beings. We depend on our parents. Our parents have actually given us this current body.
Our present physical body is a gift from our parents. They may not have had the intention to make a gift of this body, but it’s something that we accept. We’ve accepted it. So thinking, oh, this physical body depends on our parents. We can think then of how kind our parents are parents are to actually make it available to us.
We can think how dependent we are on others. Even our mind itself is dependent on others. It’s said that everything good in our mind is dependent on others. The rest is dependent on ourselves. But the rest generally, the negative elements within our awareness are there because we generate them.
What’s positive tends to be inspired from beyond ourselves. Actually, it’s said that all virtue in the universe there’s two types of virtue in the universe. There’s virtue in the continuum of a fully awakened being and virtue in the continuums of ordinary beings. The virtue in the continuum of ordinary beings, which means the sum total of our positive thoughts, actually is sourced in the virtue in the continuum of a fully awakened being. In other words, what is positive within us is inspired by beings outside of us.
So in a sense we can say that what’s positive within us is dependent on others. Generally, what’s negative, all that hatred and anger, resentment, jealousy, and so forth, that we cultivate very efficiently. Meditate on and cultivate. Cultivate. That’s coming from our side.
That’s dependent on our previous habits and so forth. So we can contemplate dependence here in many different ways. And contemplating dependent arising has many benefits in the present and in the future. Alright. So we might just stop there and have a tea break for fifteen minutes and then come back and have some more discussion.
You.