Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 18-minute teaching, Ven Jampa Ignyen traces how the false sense of “I” strikes vividly when others praise or blame us—a moment that anchors our entire afflicted experience. He maps the path from this deluded self-sense to attachment, anger, and delusion toward others, then presents six conditions that perpetuate ignorance: mental seeds, objects, bad company, wrong views, habit, and distracted attention. Central to his analysis is the “transient view,” the mistaken belief that body and mind constitute a solid, permanent self—which quietly supports all our destructive emotions. He emphasizes the difficulty of releasing this self-sense because we cling to it as our protector, and stresses that understanding selflessness requires patient investigation and sustained contemplation. For practitioners engaged with the Lamrim path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 2001 06 07 LR.mp3
UUID: 2c3d0a4d-fe54-4e68-b9d9-fddeca19c429
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Lam Rim 2001 Month 04-06 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-06-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 18.7 minutes
Words: ~1,853
And we come become aware of this when, for instance, others praise us, you know, say a few nice words. You know, our name comes up in a good context or and so forth. And we begin to think, oh, that’s that’s really nice. But They’re they’re saying that about I. They’re saying that about me.
When we hear praise about ourselves, then we really have a nice nice thought, oh, they’re saying that about me, I, this I. And we have this this sense of I actually strikes us at that point. And the sense of I makes an impact on us. And that and we think, oh, that really exists. That I really exists.
And then we hold that to be the I. And then the fact that we have a there is a utilizer being, an I that’s able to utilize objects and so forth also arises or appears. The utilizer, the user, the controller, etcetera, all that sense also arises within us. In fact, here, this section here is dealing with how karma arises in the sense in terms of the sense of I. And then and then we think that since that exists or because that exists, then one craves the I.
Well, craving in relation to the I arises, And then hatred in relation to others arises. And then those for those who benefit us, then we develop attachment. For those that harm us, we develop anger. And for those that are indifferent to us, we develop sort of deluded states or delusion. All of those are generated.
So in fact, initially, we have this this sense of I that arises in the when others praise us, for instance. So when others yell at us, we have this strong sense of I arising. It’s true, you know, suddenly, we’re in a group of people and our name is called out and, oh, you’ve won a hundred dollars, you know, or something. You won a million dollars. The sense of I arises at that point.
Or in the other the other way too, you know, you did it. You know, if there’s a hundred people there and suddenly says, he’s the one that did it, and we’re looking around. Mean me? Yes. Yes.
You. Suddenly, there’s a sense of I there. It really hits. And So we do have this sense of I. We do have this transient view that’s holding to an I that becomes more clearly manifest from time to time according to circumstances, either positive or negative.
No. No. That arises in dependence on the transient view. Yep. Transient view is an example of that too.
But the transient view itself is neutral. It’s a neutral state, not a negative state. Because it’s it’s a neutral state, isn’t it? Because if it wasn’t neutral, it could only arise it could only serve as a basis for if it were negative, it could only serve as a basis for negative things. If it were positive, it could only serve as a basis for positive things.
Because it’s neutral, serves it’s there no matter what we do. Whether our thoughts are positive or negative, they’re all supported by the view of the transient collection. And ignorance itself, there also is neutral. We may think that ignorance is a negative thing, but ignorance is not negative in that sense. It’s not because it actually supports both virtue and non virtue, it’s neutral.
Right. So we have this sense of I, and this really is the root of the afflictions. And So the various quotes are also given. For instance, in the Pramānavārttika, it says says here, Because if the I exists, if the self exists, one knows others. One knows also others.
And then and then knowing others, also then hatred and so forth can arise. And then through in relation to that, then various faults, faulty types of state also begin to arise. And so, in fact, here, it is giving examples that the view of the transient collection is really at the root of all the actions that we commit, whether they’re directed at attachment towards the self or hatred towards others. And all of the relationship that exists between self and others, as we know it, is currently based on this this ignorance about the I, this sense of I that we have. And so this then expresses the current process that we’re experiencing about how we interrelate with others and develop karma and perpetuate this contaminated state of existence in which we are in.
And as it said in one in a sūtra on the ten stages, in this world, all misdeeds ever committed came from manifest clinging to a self. Without manifest clinging to a self, these would not happen. But it’s very hard for us to give up the sense of self because we tend to think it’s it’s everything, and without it, we wouldn’t exist. It’s our old friend, our protector, this sense of self that we have. But in a way, we’ve got to die to all of that.
The way that we think we exist at present is mistaken. But in a way, think that if we don’t have the current way we think we exist, we wouldn’t exist at all. And it’s almost as if we’re completely convinced anyway that we exist as we appear to exist to ourselves. We have a few doubts from time to time, but pretty much, you know, we think we understand how we exist. And we’ve this is how we’ve been anyway from the beginning of time as far as we can remember.
And we pretty much think we’ve got ourselves worked out. Maybe a few doubts around the edges, but but at the very but at root, actually, we haven’t comprehended ourselves. But it’s very hard to die to this sense of I that we have, because we think then we become nonexistent. There’s a tendency to think that. But at present, everything that we experience is emerging from this sense of self.
And although on this very surface of our mind, we get some idea, oh, yeah, this is probably this does make sense. But deeper down, we’re like, you know, hundred percent, You know? I you know, it’s interesting, but actually, I’m probably the sense of I’s not too bad. So, you know, it’s pretty good. And because we have this sense of I, it’s very difficult for us then to really start to develop the path and to generate compassion also.
We tend to get very much locked into this way of interpreting other beings because of the way we interpret ourselves. So anyway, takes, of course, a long time because our habits are so strong. And, anyway, by applying a little bit of dharma from time to time, eventually, does start to penetrate, does start to work its way in a little bit. We’re very resilient. We resist quite strongly not to re examine our sense of I and really look to see if we exist in that way.
But also it’s not easy for us because these areas are just so complex. And even though we look and we look and look again, still it’s hard to work out what the eye is, and so on. So it’s something that does take once the conditions are put into place and all the conditions are there, then in time, the understanding of selflessness will arise. But prior to that, we need a great deal of patience. And we need to contemplate this the presentation of selflessness.
And in order to do this then, we really need to contemplate what ignorance is and what the view of the transient collection is. And whether in fact we have, do we have ignorance? Do we have the view of the transient collection? Does it exist in my mind in the present moment? What’s it doing?
Is it useful to me? Is this sense of I that I have useful to me? At present, think that our sense of I is absolutely central. Oh, yeah. It’s protecting me.
It’s my word, if I didn’t have it, what would become of me? Actually, everything negative that’s happened to me from beginningless time has come about from this sense of I that I’ve got at present in this long continuum of disasters and so forth. It’s a long continuum, weary continuum of events that have occurred. So we do need to investigate because, of course, it’s it’s only through our own investigations that we can progress. That’s the only possibility.
There’s no other possibility. So then also we have the causes of the delusions and then there’s six, their foundation. The seeds or the latencies of afflictions are their foundation or their basis or their support. Really, the afflictive states that we currently experience, the contaminated states that we currently experience, their real basis, their foundation, the seeds and the latencies within our mental continuum, which are awaken due to causes and conditions in the present moment. And then so from a seed level they are generated.
Also, they’re generated in terms of an object, whatever the object is, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, from those the afflictions arise, afflictive states, attachment, doubt, pride, anger, ignorance, and so forth. And then the third cause is society. Here’s society in a in a sense of bad company. So these are these afflictive states are generated through these various conditions. The conditions of dik drok in Tibetan, negative friends or negative associates that would tend to lead us in directions that are not so useful to us.
And through that then our afflictions will tend to increase, More will be generated and so forth. And then the fourth condition for the arise of afflictive states is discussion. Here also explanation. Explanations of others that are not, you know, like, they’re not correct. That actually stop us from discovering the true nature of the afflictions and so on.
And then also we have the fifth cause of familiarity. So we have so many bad habits. A few good habits and also many others that are not so good. And so these act as a condition for the generation of afflictive states, negative feelings, and so on. On.
And then also we have as a sixth cause unrealistic thinking or attention, paying attention to the wrong objects. So these core these are quite easy to understand, but these act as conditions for the generation of afflictive states And don’t lead to the undoing of the tangle of the sense of I that we have at present. Our internal state tends to be in a tangle because of this grasping at an I, which is the view of the transient collection. And these six causes tend to compound the condition, and what we need is something to undo the tangle. And so we avoid these six as much as possible so that our emotions become less tangled.
Anyway, we should stop there. Have a break. Have a cup of tea.