Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Ignyen opens with etymology, tracing the Sanskrit and English roots of ignorance and wisdom before addressing the core Buddhist problem: not knowing the true nature of self. In this 18-minute talk, he shows how ignorance gives rise to attachment, anger, doubt, and other afflictive states, all stemming from misunderstanding how the ‘I’ exists. Rather than asking for faith, he emphasizes direct investigation, invoking the Buddha’s teaching of testing gold through burning and rubbing. The talk unfolds through dialogue, moving from etymological foundations to practical guidance on understanding causality and developing patience with the mind. For newcomers to Buddhism or those exploring the doctrine of selflessness.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 Intro to B 2001 05 21.mp3
UUID: 4c2672a6-2289-4659-92d1-ec659c3b3771
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Introduction to Buddhism (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-05-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 18.2 minutes
Words: ~1,663
Means to cognize something. Is the opposite of that opposite of that, not to cognize. So ignorance is the opposite of knowing something. It’s interesting. To know is actually related to the Sanskrit word, to know.
And I said the English word could well be sourced in the Sanskrit term. And then from that you have various other things, like in English we have no knowledge and so on. In Sanskrit we have prajna, as in prajna paramita, the perfection of wisdom. Prajñā means wisdom. Jñāna means to know and so forth.
The opposite of that, the opposite of knowing is ignorance. So it’s just not knowing. It’s just like being it’s like the our current state, we look for instance, if we look at the nature of the I, we don’t know the nature of the I. Although we’ve we’re familiar with the I, we’re always thinking I. Really, when we ask ourselves, we it’s hard for us to actually state what the I is, to know what the I is.
And in that sense, we’re ignorant of the nature of I. And it’s just that ignorance which is at the source of our negative feelings. The fact that we don’t know what this I is, does that sound reasonable? This is very difficult to discern. But it said that from ignorance, then the various various other states arise, such as the six root afflictive states.
And the first of those is ignorance, then attachment, doubt, afflictive view, pride, anger, those six are really are called the root afflictive states, and they’re the states that give rise to our negative feelings that we experience in the present. But at the root of those is ignorance. And there, that’s ignorance of the I. And it’s from that ignorance that everything that we experience emerges. Does that sound like too negative of an appraisal of our current situation?
Everything is coming from ignorance. It it is. Yeah. Yeah. Desire really comes from ignorance.
First, we have ignorance about the nature of objects, the nature of ourselves, and therefore the nature of the world in relation to ourselves. And based on that ignorance, then we generate attachment for things. Or based on that ignorance, we develop hatred and anger towards objects. In a sense, there’s two two ways we can relate to any object. There’s well, actually, there’s three.
We need to be attracted or repulsed or have some neutral response. And that’s basically how it is. Being attracted, being repulsed, or even having a neutral relation to an object is really stemming from ignorance about the nature of that object. But also, even more fundamentally, ignorance about the nature of ourselves, how we exist. Does that sound reasonable?
Oh, yeah. Hearing intelligence, I think, is often used as a synonym of wisdom. Like in Tibetan, there’s different terms, Like, wisdom is in Tibetan. Intelligence is more like a or in Sanskrit. But they’re often used interchangeably as terms.
But they’re not physical. They’re more like a mental attribute. They’re the type of awareness itself. Yeah. If it’s physic no.
It wouldn’t be a physical attribute. But Not necessarily. No. The feelings always remain, but the source of our current feelings, whatever they are, is said to be ignorance. But the feelings that we experience at present feelings.
They said to be contaminated or defiled or they’re contaminated by suffering on a gross, intermediate, and subtle level. In other words, our current feelings, no matter what they are, whether they’re positive or negative, are unsatisfactory. So that’s an indication that they’re contaminated. In a sense, they’re contaminated because they derive from ignorance. The of wisdom.
Taking the opposite of ignorance. The path is that which opposes ignorance, that which severs ignorance, that which stands against ignorance. At present, ignorance is not something that’s, that’s, you know, really like a, you know, a hundred and eighty kg wrestler or, you know, someone that’s really powerful, like a sumo wrestler or something that’s standing on the path that’s stopping us from proceeding. Ignorance is really very meek. It’s not very aggressive.
But unless we understand it to be ignorance, then we will never try and eliminate it. But simply, just by shining light onto that, it disappears in and of itself. Ignorance is also likened to darkness. In a sense, within the center of our being, there’s a type of darkness that just prevents us from understanding. I mean, it is just not understanding.
That’s what it is. It’s ignorance that’s there. It’s like darkness. It’s a question of how do we bring light to that. This is not easy because unless we understand the problem, the resolution is not possible.
And it’s not that we’re completely ignorant. We in fact are aware of many different things. You know, we’ve had an education and we know how to do many different tasks. We’re not ignorant of those things. Here, the ignorance is of the nature of the the I itself, person.
At present, we have a conception about how how I exists. And it’s that conception. Well, actually, we just have a we just have ignorance about how the I exist. That is really the root problem. But independent in dependence on having that ignorance about how the I exist, we develop a conception of how the I exist.
Right? And that’s what we do with the present. When we think I, we have an idea of the I. You know, whatever we do, and we think I’m gonna go and do this, I’ll do that, I’m sitting here, I’m feeling this and so forth. That I that we think about, we don’t comprehend.
So this is the Buddha has said that it’s that type of misunderstanding, that type of ignorance that gives rise to the present limitations that we experience. And in dependence on that ignorance, ignorance, then we engage in all manner of negative mental states. We get angry, for instance. If we understood the nature of the I, we would not get angry. But when we get angry, that’s especially when the sense of eye becomes very strong.
When we really feel as if we’ve been wronged or someone’s harming us and deliberately targeting us, me, why should they do that? That sense of I there, especially strong in anger that comes up, that sense of I is a very strong conception, isn’t it? It comes up very strongly at times, doesn’t it? The ego. Yeah.
Ego grasping. The object of that conception doesn’t exist. That’s said to be the nature selflessness. But anyway, this is something we need to investigate. Because at present, it is these feelings that we experience which which we have not got beyond.
We experience them all the time and they’re unsatisfactory. Unsatisfactory. And we do need to pinpoint where their source is, where they’re coming from, where these thoughts, where these feelings are emerging from. Anyway, this is something we should do at our leisure. It’s not something that we’re gonna discover straight away.
So we can just sit back and put our feet up and and just maintain a sense of awareness of these issues. Because again, it’s not it’s as the Buddha himself said, monks and scholars, just as you have if you have gold and you seek to test whether it’s gold or not, then you engage in burning it and rubbing it and scratching it. You really examine it quite carefully. And then when it passes those tests, accept it to be gold. So as he says, just as you examine or test gold by burning, scratching, and rubbing it, so to test what I say.
Don’t accept it merely out of respect. So this is very important that we need to investigate our situation very carefully because it’s it’s really our own investigation of our own experience and where it’s coming from that will be a benefit to us. And especially if it’s if our investigation, our contemplation, and so forth is getting to the very fact of how things are. Because it’s only the fact, things actually as they are, understanding that which will actually help us. Anyway, I’m not sure.
Were there any other points that We’ll do some on that, yes. Yeah. But really what’s really essential is understanding the first truth as clearly as possible. Oh, that’s right. If we can begin to understand the causal process from where our feelings are coming from, then it’s easy for us to be patient and not become impatient with how we’re feeling.
Because overcoming the actual cause of negative feelings will take a long time because the mind is just so deep and so extensive. And the causes may be coming, you know, from a long time ago, even in the present moment. We do need to understand gradually this causal process, and then that gives us more and more insight into the process and more patience with ourselves within the process. Oh, then in time one can completely eliminate contaminated feelings and just have uncontaminated feelings. That’s the Feelings never stop.
There’s no way we can ever stop our experience of feeling. But our problem at present is the contaminated feelings that we experience. It just means that they’re gonna be unsatisfactory by their very nature. Even the positive ones are unsatisfactory. It doesn’t matter, you know, when the feeling we have when we win something or achieve something really, you know, really good, profound, is still unsatisfactory.
That’s because the feelings themselves are contaminated. They’re coming from a contaminated source, like an apple comes from an apple seed. An apple can come can only come from an apple seed. Our current feelings can only come from a contaminated source because they’re contaminated. Alright.
Okay. We might just finish there. And next week we’ll deal with the the third and the fourth truth. So, anyway, we’re only dealing.