Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44.9-minute talk, Ven Jampa Ignyen zeroes in on a distinction so subtle that students keep asking about it: the “merely imputed I” that continues through death versus the “truly existent I” that never existed at all. This confusion—grasping at a self that doesn’t exist—is, he explains, the ignorance that seeds all of saṃsāra. He walks through different Buddhist schools’ positions on ignorance, then fields student questions about how karma follows an individual if consciousness continues but the self dissolves. His answer: the person is neither matter nor consciousness, but imputed upon them. He closes with practical instruction: build vast merit through compassion, meditate analytically on the self’s nature, and maintain balance in practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 DA 2001 06 10.mp3
UUID: d8da5954-83d2-429c-825e-81f4e1a56b36
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Dependant Arising (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-06-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~4,292
Oh, that sounds like the formless realm itself. I’m not sure. Right. So this type of ignorance we have in our mental continuum at present. I think unless we’ve understood suchness or thatness, we have ignorance in relation to thatness.
And that thatness, it’s just what it’s referring to is the ultimate mode of abidance of anything. Thatness. The ultimate mode of abidance of that. Whatever that is. Suchness is similar.
Thus ness also is similar. It’s talking about the ultimate mode of abidance of something. Its ultimate level. In fact, we’re talking about ultimate truth here, which is emptiness. Any object if we take it down to its alt if we investigate it to its further most limit, we will come to emptiness.
We’ll come to suchness or thatness. It’s ignorance that’s obscured to that which is the ignorance which is at the very foundation of the twelve links, the very foundation of Samsāra. Right. And we should probably investigate ignorance in a little bit more detail. Because there are different assertions about ignorance and these can be helpful just to clarify some of the ideas we may have about ignorance.
So here Jetsunpa, he goes on a little bit about, in the actual text, about the general principles of ignorance. And he says in general there are many different assertions regarding ignorance set forth by different people. And he says that for the Vaibhāṣika. Now the Vaibhāṣika were a particular Buddhist sect who existed in India from the time of the Buddha himself. There are a group of followers who are very practical, pretty down to earth. They had a very straightforward approach to interpreting what the Buddha said.
And the Vaibhāṣika then have a particular idea of what ignorance is. And in their idea, they say that just as the mere negation of love is not love, is not not love. And the negation of truth is not necessarily a lie. So by positing the negation of cognition as ignorance, Here they state that the confused mental factor, which is the excluding factor of cognition, is posited as ignorance. I’m just gonna check the Tibetan on this.
Sounds a bit anyway, we’ll read on a little bit from there. Because the cognition of primordial awareness is a subset of the eleven virtuous mental factors. It is called the mental factor of non-delusion. Therefore, the mental factor, which is the incompatible excluding factor of that, is posited as ignorance. What does all that mean?
Here, basically what they’re saying is that ignorance is just this fact of unknowing, not knowing something. Yes. I’m just gonna check on that. What I’ve got here is I’ve got an old translation of the text done a number of years ago, and I’m it may be wrong. Yeah.
Yeah. Sorry. That’s wrong. Yeah. So here they’re saying that just as the correct that again.
The mere negation of love is not love. The mere negation of truth is not a lie. So too, the mere negation of cognizing something is ignorance. So this for them is that’s a very straightforward approach. The mere cognition, the mere comprehension of something is the negation of ignorance.
Or the mere the mere negation of the cognition of something is ignorance. In other words, just not understanding something is ignorance. Merely just not understanding something is ignorance. Now Also on top of that, we have this other idea of the view of the transient collection. So there are there’s lots of debates, and this occurred from a very early time, the time of the Buddha right through for a thousand more or more years about two different things, where the ignorance and the view of the transient collection were the same or different.
Now the question arises, what is the view of the transient collection? The view of the transient collection is really the view that takes as its focal object, our mind body, and holds there to be an eye, a self that exists within our mind body that acts as a controlling agent and so forth. Now, there’s some debate about whether ignorance of the self or ignorance of selflessness is the same of the view of the transient collection, meaning the view observing the mind body continuum and holding there to be a self, a controlling self, and so on to exist within the mind body continuum. Right. Well, the debate is that ignorance is just a mere not knowing of something.
But the view of the transient collection is actually an active interpretation. It’s actually interpreting the way we exist, taking our mind body continuum as the the basis. So one in a sense, one is passive and one is active. There is a Please consider it again. Yeah.
Well, the the view of the transient collection is that there is a self. It’s holding to a self. It’s focusing upon an existent entity, which is our mind body continuum. And it’s just interpreting that mind body continuum that we have to be controlled by our self, to be controlled by the I. In other words, it’s asserting that there’s an I there substantially different, for instance, from the mind body, which is controlling what we do and so forth.
That’s that’s the I. Yep. Yeah. Now there is debate. There was debate from a very early period about whether the ignorance which is the first link of the twelve links and that type of view are one and the same or different.
So actually, this school here, the Vaibhāṣika, we got them as being distinct. Yeah. The fundamental result that we experience is still contaminated, whether we assert those to be different or or the same. Anyway, what we’re dealing with here is ignorance as the first link. And ignorance, in general, is refers to a sort of a passive type awareness or simply just a non awareness, unknowing of things.
The view of the transient collection or the view of the mind body continuum is active, but they have a very similar outcome, very similar result. When ignorance is overcome, that view of the transient collection also is overcome. Yes. They’re they’re saying that the Well, no. They’re not saying that it’s projected.
They’re saying that there is an eye that exists within the mind body, which is substantially different than the mind body, which acts to control the mind body, is the thinker, is the actor. And when we say that, you know, I’m sitting here at present, that I that’s sitting here, they’re saying is substantially different than the physical body, substantially different than all the states of awareness that exist in a continuum of a being. Well, this well sorry. Well, yeah, there is well, there has been a lot of debate from the time of the Buddha, even no doubt before the Buddha, about whether in fact that ignorance and a view of the transient collection are one and the same or not. Yep.
It depends on which particular school they follow. Well, it depends. Certain texts will present it one way, another text will present it another way. But generally, I think we can say pretty much that they’re the same. But in order to develop an understanding of the issues, it’s probably useful to understand the different positions that occur.
The more information we can bring to bear, the easier it is for us to understand. The less information we have about something, the more difficult it is to actually, it’d have been very nice if we just had a few words and we understood. And the really sharp facultied beings amongst us, they just need to hear a few words and they understand. The rest of us, we need a lot of detail because just a few words brings up so many doubts that it seems that we’re worse off by hearing those few words. Then we have to pursue lots of explanations.
But what about this? And what about that? But that’s okay. We need to investigate these issues at our leisure over a long period with nice long explanations that make lots of sense, get rid of lots of doubts. But that that’s okay.
Anyway, we’re gonna keep generating doubts until we begin to overcome them. Those doubts themselves can be very useful, and it’s actually being able to express our doubts is really useful. Because once we’re able to express our doubt about something, generally, we can clear it up very quickly. As long as we’re not we don’t have very clear focus on our doubts, then it’s very difficult to eliminate the doubt. If in other words, if we know what question to ask, then we can get an answer.
If we’re not too sure what the question is, we might hear the answer a dozen times, a million times, but it doesn’t not gonna make much sense. Well, at present, in a sense, we can say that we have there’s two eyes that we possess. There’s like the existent eye, which is the mere I. And then there’s a nonexistent eye that we hold to exist. All of our problems come from the nonexistent one.
Strange as it may seem, a nonexistent eye can create so many problems for us. But it’s it’s true. At present, we have a sense of I, and that sense of I is actually a conception of I. And that conception of I has as its object, its reference object, I. Right?
When we think I, that reference object actually doesn’t exist. But it’s it’s that conception of I that is really the ignorance, which is the first link. No. Once we have that the idea of a self in that way, we can’t see suchness. Conventional eye and the ultimate eye?
Yeah. But conventionally, like, you you you said. Conventionally, we do exist. In fact, everything exists conventionally. Yeah.
Yep. Oh, okay. Right. Mere I is the existent I which does exist. No.
The mere I is just the I imputed upon the mind body continuum, which does exist. There is an I which we impute upon the mind body continuum, which is just that. It’s a mere I. Is it the same I? No.
That’s the existent I. Right. It’s called the mere I because it’s just a mirror imputation. Oh, well, it’s the I don’t know. What would you Fred.
Yeah. Fred would that be better. That’s the merely yeah. That’s the mere I. the mere I.
It’s oh, okay. the mere I does exist, but at present, it’s pretty much mixed up with the conception of a truly existent eye. So it’s hard for us to separate these out. If we’re able to separate them, we understand emptiness. The mere I does exist.
The the object grasped by ignorance, the ignorance which grasps at itself, that object there, that reference object there doesn’t exist. Now what would what is that eye like? That eye is like the controlling eye that’s substantially different from the mind and and the body. That’s the truly existent I. That’s the inherently existent I.
That’s the I existing from its own side, independent of its base of designation, and so on. The non dependently arising I. The independent I, in other words. Sorry? No.
No. Not really. Here, that eye here, the subconscious because we do possess states of awareness that are unmanifest and so forth. And that’s probably close to the idea of the subconscious that comes up in Western psychology. But there’s probably not one concept or not one term, say, in Tibetan Buddhism that would be an equivalent of the term unconscious or subconscious that comes up in Western psychology.
Here we’re talking about conception grasping at an eye, grasping at a self, And that is the ignorance here that’s being talked about. And this we have. This really is the foundation stone of the twelve links. A rose by any other name. We could call it anything.
In fact, at present we do. We call our I our current name as well, don’t we? And in fact, in this lifetime, whoever we are, our name, is applied to that I. If it happens to that person, it happens to that I as well, doesn’t it? But I and the name we have in this life only remain together in this one life.
At death, that name falls away. The eye continues. The mirror eye continues. No. This the mirror eye is a dependent arising.
No. Ignorance which grasps an eye, in general, it’s grasping at an inherently existent eye. That inherently existent eye doesn’t exist. Okay. Okay.
We’ll We we were discussing is when you meditate and you’re doing an analytical meditation, you’re basically talking to yourself. Yeah. Are you talking to which eye? We had a wonderful time. Are you talking to your consciousness or your eye when you’re sitting down and meditating on death and you go through all your birth or any sort of work or even if you’re doing a mindful of the breath and you are the voice arises and it’s saying, why are you doing this?
Are you really doing this for the right reason or whatever? It’s not this which eye, you know, we’ve got two eye. There’s no more lens. Which one are we dealing with? Or are we dealing with the eye or are we dealing with the conscious Well, probably we’re dealing with both of them together.
Because when the thought eye comes up, for us, there’s probably a mixture of both. And it’s hard hard for us to separate. But there there is a level there’s an ignorance also that exists, that is holding to a non existent type I, which is always there. This is the first link. This is quite confusing.
It’s it’s not easy. Sorry? To the eye. Yeah. Eye is not consciousness.
The eye is something vast and okay. Let’s first talk about the existent eye. Okay? When we say I’m gonna do something and so forth, we are actually talking about an existent person, aren’t we? Right.
That existent person is merely I the I or the mere I imputed upon the mind body continuum. That certainly exists. That’s the full measure of our existence as a person. Okay? That I continues from one life to another to another.
And that’s the I that we refer to. But also we have a level of ignorance about the I as well. And that level of ignorance, it generally takes that I as its we can say that it can take that I as its focal object and hold that I to be truly existent. But there is no truly existent I. There is no inherently existent I, a substantially existent I, and so on.
So what we seek to overcome here is all false conceptions of of an eye. Because here, those false conceptions, false ways of interpreting the eye, have this profound effect on us. They that those types of conception, which are ignorance, and the first of the twelve links establish saṃsāra for us. Sorry? Yeah.
No. We usually we don’t separate them out like that. It’s just that we have a sense of I. And the sense of I that we have is for us, it’s not very clearly defined. Right?
It’s true. A continuum. Well, it continues. We can see it present from moment to moment. A sense of I does continue.
After death? Death? Continue. Through death, continue. So is that like self awareness?
No. No. It’s it’s really what is a person? Is a person awareness or something other than awareness? It’s neither matter nor awareness.
A person, the I, the self, is neither matter nor awareness, not consciousness. The I has consciousness. The I has awareness. The I can possess feeling, have feeling, and so on. But the I, at least in the highest school, there the person is regarded as being neither awareness.
The person themselves are not awareness, they’re not physical. That’s our status as a sentient being. And what what is that I? It’s it’s something which is neither physical nor awareness, which is imputed upon a mind body continuum. When you say that this near eye is the most subtle part of consciousness?
No. No. It’s not consciousness. The mere I is just labeled, it continues with consciousness. It continues along with consciousness.
Oh, no. The mere I does exist. Yeah. Even the No. Well, the I does exist.
Here, we’re not saying that when we talk about selflessness, we’re not saying that the that a person is completely nonexistent. That’s not the meaning of selflessness. The meaning of selflessness is that all fabricate fabricated senses of I do not exist. That’s what selflessness means. But there is a mere I.
Person does exist. It’s true, isn’t it? The person does exist. We exist, don’t we? Some thinking through.
The point, death and religion. That’s just the mere I that just progresses. That’s associated with consciousness. Because during the death process, consciousness doesn’t cease, does it? Consciousness does continue.
Whose consciousness is it? It’s that that person’s consciousness. The person doesn’t continue to exist during the death process. True? Well, it could be going into A person?
A person. But then if we think about it But wouldn’t that consciousness wouldn’t that consciousness belong to a particular being? The consciousness of The consciousness. So like it’s the it’s the stream of consciousness entering the ocean and then merging with all the other drops of water in the ocean. How much?
And then How much you cook a can how much you get your own karma? Eggs. Yeah. Where did this sense of I come from if we went into this ocean and emerged from it? We need a compatible cause to establish why we are ignorant over it.
Well, if we say that it’s difficult there to establish that consciousness does merge in such a way that we have all these various streams. And like a death, all the streams of consciousness just finally enter this great ocean of death or whatever. Consciousness. Well yeah. No.
But the thing is that even now we have consciousness, don’t we, from moment to moment? And the consciousness that we have is really the consciousness of I, isn’t it? My consciousness. Isn’t it? It’s Oh, can they?
Or is it just that we’re not noticing it? Yeah. Okay. But generally, notice we have an ongoing sense of I, don’t we? Well, within the notes, not that all senses of I are false.
Even the Buddha, when he taught, he he started talking about I. And if the I didn’t exist at all, then one would wonder why the Buddha talked about I. Right? It wouldn’t make no sense if it doesn’t exist. You wouldn’t negate cause and effect in the sense that if you didn’t have I, how would your karma follow you?
In that sense. If it went into the pool, how would your individual karma go? That’s I’ve done all these bad things. It was in the pool and the next person pops my bad karma. Yeah.
It’s not that scary. No. Well, it’s hard to see it. No. This this is really important because we do have awareness, and the person really is imputed in dependence on this awareness that we have, isn’t it?
I have this feeling. Who has the feeling? I. Am I the feeling? Well, I have the feeling.
That I is me. I exist. I was born on such and such a date. Okay. We can establish the existence of I.
The mere I. It’s very important that we label it the mere I that does exist. Mere there excludes all the non valid fabricated senses of I that we also have. Mere there means the existent one, the mere one which actually does exist. At present, we haven’t understood that mere I.
If we understand the mere I, then we understand the mere I. If we understand the mirror, we understand what’s wrong with all the other senses of I that we have. That we haven’t understood yet. But at present, the I that mirror I does exist. That mere I, however, only exists imputed upon our consciousness, our awareness, and our body.
It has no it couldn’t be that our consciousness went in one direction and our eye went in another. There are only ever, you know, I’s imputed upon that consciousness, that body. Oh, of course. Oh, absolutely. That’s that basically is our situation.
So we get some idea of these things, but to actually look inside and see, oh, that’s how it is. It’s gonna take a lot. Yeah. Actually, having a little bit of fear arise in this type of contemplation is a good sign. Well, that’s one of actually, in the process of rebirth, this craving to exist, of the three types of craving.
Craving to exist is one of the major conditions for rebirth. We wanna continue to exist. We have a fear of in death that we become nonexistent at the time of death. That, you know, we can see the signs of death approaching. They’re there.
And I thought, I I will cease to exist soon. And we have such a craving to continue to exist that we establish a new rebirth. In a sense, there’s no danger we would cease to exist because our consciousness has no end. It doesn’t come to an end. Even if the process of saṃsāra came to an end, we would continue.
The mere I would continue. But saṃsāra only comes to an end when all the nonexistent senses of I that we have, they come to an end. And you want to be able Yes. Yep. And that’s a dependent arising.
The nonexistent eyes or selves that we tend to hold to exist, they’re not even a dependent arising. They don’t even exist. They’re nonexistent to begin with. But at present, have a conception that that type of I exists. Not some.
Not some. Not. Not. Means mere. Mere I.
Not. No. That’s not quite renunciation. Renunciation is really the uncontrived thought to definitely leave saṃsāra, to leave the contaminated mind body. Anyway so anyway, generally, we have a level of ignorance here, which is the first link of saṃsāra.
Whatever that level of ignorance is. It’s actually ignorance of the I itself, of the way the I exist. So therefore, it’s it’s ignorant of the of that ness. That ness there refers to the ultimate mode of abidance of I, the mere I. Now this can be quite difficult to comprehend in the beginning.
And there’s no and the fact that it’s difficult to comprehend, you know, is something I think common to us all because, actually, it’s very subtle. It’s not easy to, you know, to gain a foothold and so forth in this this particular area. But gradually, through contemplating these issues, it’s possible for us to develop an increasing understanding of these issues. We need a lot of patience though. Especially a lot of patience directed at ourselves, just as we have love and compassion directed at ourselves.
Also a lot of patience we need. This is very, very important. Yep. Yeah. When we understand the mere I, we understand suchness.
Well, you’ve still got twenty five minutes and I expect a little bit of progress in this front. Well, what we need is a lot of merit. In order to understand selflessness, we need a huge amount of merit, an ocean of merit. And what is merit but the accumulation of positive actions? So this we need first and above all.
So therefore, what we need is to engage in strong positive actions all the time. Probably the best thing we can do is engage in generating compassion. So that compassion for all sentient beings. As strongly and as often as we can. How many lifetimes will me and I have to travel to get there?
I I’ll right. The next ones, this is the one. Of course. This the big aim. Well, we also need a plan b as well.
So plan b is plan b is also the the compassion option. Love and compassion towards all sentient beings from morning till night, night till morning. Eliminate all thoughts of harming others, and also to engage in thinking about the nature of the eye. Just checking a little bit here and there. So this is important, to do a little bit of checking.
Would you go crazy like doing twenty hours a day? Yeah, you wouldn’t want to do it twenty four hours a day. Yeah. So thinking about or trying to evaluate or analyze the actual mode of existence of the eye. It depends.
We need to observe ourselves. If we’re getting, you know, you’re a bit strung out, can we do something else? Do something we like doing, go and have a game of tennis or go to the movies or do something we like doing. But here it’s like the the example of the the lute player that the Buddha gave. Our practice should be like someone who’s playing a lute.
If the strings are too loose, then the sound is pretty, you know, nothing much there. If it’s too tight, also, doesn’t sound too good. So we need to have a proper, you know, loosen up when yeah. Exactly. We need to be able to relax.
Even though we haven’t understood emptiness yet, okay, we still need to be able to relax.