Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 42-minute talk, Ven Jampa Ignyen explores ethics and mind training through student questions. He opens with a striking example: killing a pirate captain to save arahants generates merit because the motivation is compassionate, even though killing violates precepts. He discusses the ten nonvirtues, addresses whether insects possess consciousness, and spends the core of the teaching on anger — how it distorts perception by fixing on negative qualities, why it is nearly impossible to quell once arisen, and how prevention through reflection and bringing to mind someone’s good qualities is the only reliable approach. Throughout, he emphasizes that the mind is impermanent and trainable: we have complete freedom and responsibility to develop it positively or negatively. Suited for practitioners with some Buddhist familiarity.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 Mindful Life 1996 05 18.mp3
UUID: ae44faf9-f26b-4181-ab73-d4f7be71ceb7
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Living the Mindful Life (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 1996-05-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 41.7 minutes
Words: ~3,946
Commit that act and therefore create such a huge store of negative potential that, you know, he’d be reborn in hell and stay there for eons. He killed the pirate to stop the pirate from killing the arahants. So that was done out of compassion. So his motivation was compassion, but the action itself is non virtuous. But it said that that act of compassion completed, I think, the intermediate eon of the collection of merit to become a Buddha.
So even though it’s a natural nonvirtue to kill, in certain circumstances, one accumulates merit if it’s done with a pure motivation of compassion. But, again, this this area is not so clear. This also comes into things like euthanasia and it’s like, euthanasia is also not is a negative act from that point of view because it’s killing. And if one doesn’t know the karma of the being, then to kill them may may be the wrong thing to do. May may worsen their situation a great deal, even though they’re suffering in this life.
If one were to kill them without knowing what their situation really is, really see into this, you know, their state of mind, then one could, end up sending them to hell, for instance, or create a very negative result for that person even though one thinks that one is acting out of compassion. So compassion must be tempered by wisdom, wisdom which understands the, you know, the the actual situation for a person. It still has consciousness, potentially the same as a human, but its level of existence is lower. It’s a has an animal type rebirth, but its its level of development as a sentient being is less than, say, a large animal, like a a horse or something like that. Is it And there is an emotion like that.
Well, here from the point of view of karma, someone would take rebirth as a as an insect for being reborn as an insect would be through generally a negative cause. If one took rebirth as, say, a horse or a dog, something on that level, it would be still generally non virtuous, but not as non virtuous as taking an insect birth. I think it relates a lot to the individual capacity of the being to control its own circumstances, to generate happiness for itself and so on. Ants have consciousness. I mean, if you look at an ant as you touch an ant, if you put your finger in front of an ant, it’ll run along until it hits that finger and then it realizes that it’s touching something alive and will run off in the other direction.
It experiences fear. So that fear is consciousness. That it’s a type of consciousness. Yeah. So it’s not just a mechanical reaction of the that ant is an individual being.
Try pursuing happiness. You know, it’s within a group of other ants that are organized in a particular way, you know, trying to preserve their society. So what do you think? Do you think they have consciousness? Yeah.
It yeah. Yeah. Within Buddhism, it’s accepted that there are different realms of existence. And animals, for instance, all levels of animals stand to insects are sentient to existence. They have possessed mind.
And in fact, it is far more beings on on on the planet than we’re aware of or, you know, that we generally discern, you know, as being sentient It’s a strange notion that, in a sense, that insects don’t have a consciousness or don’t have a soul or don’t have feelings. Because, I mean, if you were to test a human being to see whether a human being had feelings, then they’d react the same way. You know? If we you can imagine if I guess this may have happened in Africa when people first went to Africa or other places, Australia, that they really didn’t regard the local inhabitants as being human, maybe not having feelings or the potential to develop. But from the Buddhist point of view, all sentient beings possess consciousness.
That consciousness is something that is an unbounded continuum. It has no beginning or end. So that ant is just on its own particular path, and it’s achieved the result of becoming an ant from past action. Before it was an ant, it was something else. It became an ant, through negative action.
But when the karma supporting that existence is exhausted, then that ant would die and take a a rebirth somewhere else. Maybe again as an ant or maybe another type of insect or potentially even a human being simply because it possesses consciousness, and that consciousness is not fixed. It’s not predetermined. It has the capacity, to manifest, as any any form of sentient life. Because that’s all sentient life is, conscious, an expression of consciousness.
Consciousness itself is not form. It’s not something that has a location or a size. All it is is simply knowing, the act or the capacity to know something. So the ant has that capacity. And the consciousness that pervades that body of the ant, if reborn as a human, can equally pervade a human body.
Because consciousness itself is not form. It’s not limited by a particular form. In fact, it doesn’t even require gross form. So that physical harm is is more serious. The worst type of verbal harm is to lie.
There’s really four types of verbal harm, lying, slander, harsh words, and gossip. Probably the worst we can do well, slander is pretty bad. If we slander other people, we can divide other people, separate friends, and so on. Lying is actually regarded as more serious. We can lie to deceive others.
The worst type of lie, though, is lying about our attainments as a human being. If we were to lie to others to convince them that we were realized beings and exploit other beings for our benefit because of that, that’s the worst type of lie. About, you know, someone’s cheating in a relationship and you know about it? Would you tell the innocent I don’t know. I don’t especially as a as a monk also.
Yeah. That yeah. That’s not easy. Actually, comes in about. Yeah.
But there are skillful ways that one can go about, you know, trying to prevent harm. Yeah. I guess it’s a level level there of skill if you if you can really find a skillful way of of dealing with that then so that all parties, you know, accrue the least amount of harm, then that’s the best. In terms of physical harm, though, that is worse than verbal. Like, killing is killing is one of the worst, perhaps the worst.
It’s an you could probably say it’s the worst because it’s a natural non virtue. Never killing never has a positive identity. It’s always negative, the act of killing. Theft also is there’s three main physical non virtues, sexual misconduct, killing, and theft. If we could eliminate those three, then society would be much happier.
They create a huge amount of disruption in society, of course. It is really just the taste of the object. It’s simply the bare experience of the object. The discrimination is another mental factor. It’s another function of mind, which is separate.
But feeling is one of the major components of a a human being. If we were to define what a human being was, we would have to include feeling because It would it’s related there definitely because negative feelings arise from non virtue. And even when we commit a non virtuous act, we have a negative feeling associated with that as well. So the the cause and the result are both negative. Yeah.
Yeah. That’s right. Your intention would be negative. And it may be the memory. You might harm someone else because of the memory of the harm they gave to you.
When you think about the harm they gave, you get unhappy, decide to harm them instead or in turn. Yeah. So there’s a continuation. Yeah. And that’s part of the process of being aware of feeling, noticing the negative feeling or noticing the positive feeling and just being aware of it.
But also to note that they come they do have causes. But a negative feeling I say when we get depressed, which is negative mental feeling. That depression, stems from a cause. It’s not a causeless thing that just suddenly arises. You know, it has a definite cause which is similar to the result.
It really comes from ill will. You know, holding strong, like depression, often a result of just having the intention to harm others, or it’s a result of actually acting out that negative intention either on a verbal or a physical level. But it’s impermanent as well. When a cause is finished, then that depression also finishes. It’s impermanent.
It comes and goes, but it does have a cause. The only thing is the cause may may not have been even in this lifetime. Well, that’s right. It depends on discerning what are the causes of unhappiness, whether it’s an external something external or whether it’s something internal. If it’s external, then we have to try and manipulate the external world in order to become happy.
And, of course, this is how we often act. We try and arrange the external world to suit ourselves, you know, to control our enemies and strengthen our friends in an external way because we see see them as being causes of our happiness. They may not be. Well, that’s right. Those friends may, next week, turn out to be not friends in a sense that they don’t affirm who we think we are or our opinion of ourselves.
You know, often a friend will come out and point out a fault that we have, for instance. And then since they pointed out that fault, they become an enemy, perhaps. So trying to externally subdue our enemies and enhance our friends is a very difficult process. Not only is it difficult externally, but even the identity of who our friends and enemies are changes. So it’s not easy to control or arrange or perfect the external world.
That is the story of this Indian king who was walking out his garden one day and he stood on a thorn. And so he called one of his ministers and and said, look, this is unacceptable. I can’t expect it to walk on these thorns. Cover my kingdom in leather. So the ministers got together and thought about it and said, well, this is going a bit far.
You know? Can’t we haven’t got that much leather to cover. So one of them came up with the idea of, you know, just making shoes for the king. So wherever he went, there was leather under his feet, which served the same purpose. So that’s often given as an analogy to the fact that we can’t control the external world.
You know, we can’t keep the external world, a sense, compatible with our wishes. But we can control our wishes internally. You know, we can do something to control ourselves. And if we control ourselves, then we also control the outside world. Oh, here it’s basically harming another.
If one is in relationship with someone, it would mean losing the trust of that person, harming that person in in some way, maybe being with someone else or That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Exploiting other people. It basically comes in harming another person’s situation on that level.
So avoiding that, is, abandoning sexual misconduct. Or it’s just being aware. Right. Right. Right.
Right. Yeah. I I don’t know. Here, I think it’s, you know, simply just being aware of our emotional state, you could say, or what feeling we’re experiencing, just for the sake of being a bare observer, not necessarily to judge it one way or the other. You know, as you say, to be the simple awareness of the object.
Beyond that, to discriminate its causes and so on is actually another function of mindfulness that we’re gonna go on to. So so here, this mindfulness of feeling is not so much to do with the origins of the feelings. It’s simply the just the bare awareness of the feeling. But Oh, that’s that’s it. Yeah.
Yeah. Right. It is relevant, but once anger has arisen, certainly, it’s very difficult to contain. We can prepare ourselves before it’s arisen by reflecting on the possible objects of anger so that we don’t experience the arising of anger if we think about that object. But certainly once anger arises, it’s very difficult to to quell.
Is it? Yeah. If we can’t quell it, try and think of something else. Because it, yeah, it’s all once the anger has arisen, it’s almost impossible, you know, to, you know, like, put anger away again. What’s advantage of anger?
Well, one then begins to understand its disadvantages. And we can prepare ourselves for the potential arising of anger. And if we drill ourselves, prepare ourselves for it, then even when we’re in a situation when anger would normally arise, we may be able to prevent it. But, certainly, once anger is there, then it’s difficult. You know?
We we’re not happy. And then, you know, we start thinking about the object, and however we think about it makes us unhappy. Very difficult to deal with at that point. Even if we stop you know, for instance, if it’s a person, they say something to us that, you know, we we don’t like it, really offends us or or whatever. Then in that situation, it’s difficult then to think of that person and apply a remedial or an opponent force to stop the anger.
Because the antidote is to look at the purse I mean, to take to to mind that person and think of their good qualities. But the anger only wants to see their negative qualities. Oh, yeah. If you can, yeah, look at it that way, that’s good. I think in Śāntideva, it mentions that type of approach.
But, you know, when you can’t do anything well, what he says in that particular text is that, you know, if the mind is unruly, if it’s overcome by anger and one cannot successfully oppose the anger or quell it, then just regard the mind as like being a bit of wood, a lump of wood. You can’t do anything with it. Just leave it. But it’s not feeding the anger. It’s not feeding the anger.
Yeah. It’s trying not to aggravate, make the anger worse. Just perhaps putting it to one side so that it it, you know, subsides. Because if you can really strongly think of the good qualities of that person, there are ways and means you can lessen anger. Because what happens when the anger arises is that it just takes the negative side of a person and looks at that.
It’s just focusing on all the negative aspects of a person or, in fact, of anything. It can be a physical object. We can get angry at a door or we can get angry People get angry with television sets and smash them, get angry with cars, get angry with all sorts of things, kick them out of anger. People stub their toe on a rock and kick it with the other foot out of anger and so on. So we can get angry at other people, other objects.
Our own situation, can get angry with. We can be so frustrated and angry with our own situation that we smash something, for instance. People do that. And that’s an an internal situation, not even an external object. But the the anger is just looking at the negative.
That’s just we get angry at a person. Even though that person may have, you know, innumerable good qualities. They may be a pillar of society. They help all these charities. They’re compassionate and so on and so forth.
But they may say something to us and we get angry. So when we’re angry, when that mind of anger is manifest, all we’re seeing is their negative quality. If the anger would bring to mind one positive quality of that person, any anger would disappear. The anger can only be maintained while it’s focusing on the negative qualities. And that’s why the anger is totally unreliable because it’s only looking at one side of the object.
It’s only seeing the negative qualities of the object, whereas that the object has positive qualities as well. Well, yeah. It’s not yeah. Well, here, the the object is not to become attached or repulsed. It’s simply being aware of one’s feelings.
You know, whether it’s a negative feeling like anger, hatred, so on, or whether it’s a positive feeling. Just to take note, oh, that’s the feeling. Not to, become attached. No sense in becoming attached because it’s gonna change anyway. One becomes attached to it, which we often are anyway, and that is another, what can I say, also creates unhappiness for it if we become attached?
That’s right. Often, yeah, a friend will tell us something like that. Oh, you you’re really angry these days. And, you know, if we take that advice to heart, then we can use it to, you know, examine our own situation and see if there is anger there. And, yeah, that sort of advice can be very beneficial to take note.
I don’t know. Some babies are born in a an unhappy state. Well, if there is past consciousness, past lifetime, then there’s no reason why a sentient being can’t be angry in the womb. The mother is drinking too much coffee or maybe she’s dancing when she shouldn’t be dancing. Maybe even the embryo gets angry because even the fetus has consciousness.
And in fact, it’s during the process in the womb that the sense organs develop and that a fetus gains the potential of utilizing sensory objects so that even a fetus could experience a negative situation, could feel heat or cold and so on. Oh, that’s that’s right. I think the more aware we become, the better certainly, the better it is for us Because we can begin to see, you know, where where we stand, what our toleration level is, and so on. And we can even begin to see ourselves become angry. And and if we’re skillful, you know, we we can stop that process.
You know, we can see the avenue of anger opening up in front of us, you know, the impatience building, and we can think, now I’m going to become angry. What am I becoming angry at? Who’s it gonna benefit? If I get angry, then, you know, it’s not really gonna harm necessarily that person there at all. That’ll end up harming me.
It doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t, work for the benefit of the other person. It doesn’t work for my benefit. It is. Yeah. That happens all the time.
You know, we we often allow ourselves a great deal of latitude with what we can do without really connecting. The fact that we these types of actions or negative types of actions make us unhappy. You know, it’s like a self imposed blindness in a way, you know, that we become addicted to, you know, hating people, addicted to getting angry at people. Like, it’s something that we allow ourselves. It’s an indulgence that we deserve for some reason.
And we we act it out. Even though we know, you know, once we’ve acted it out that, you know, we feel, you know, we feel bad about it. And we’ve harmed the other person too, but doesn’t really produce the results that we want. We have this strange idea that we’ll be satisfied if we harm someone. Very strange.
You know, that by, you know, somehow offending them that we’ll get our satisfaction. We’ll get our own back. Or But oh, yes. I will put a break there after three now. Have a tea break.
And we have the responsibility to employ the mind in whatever way we want. We have that freedom. We have free will. So, we can use meditation. We can use the mind to develop in a positive way.
There’s no one who stands over us and with a stick to beat us into thinking this way or thinking that way. That’s within our control. That’s our prerogative. It’s our responsibility. Even if someone throws us into prison, binds us and shackles us, still they cannot force us to think one way or another.
The way we think, the way we use our mind is up to ourselves. And, really, the mind itself is impermanent. It’s a result. It’s caused by something. Each moment of mind is a result.
Each moment of mind again is a cause of a future state. So we have the ability to develop our mind, to engage in training. And again, we can train the mind in a negative way or we can train it in a positive way. For the most part, we train our mind in a negative way. There’s no doubt.
We have a lot of hatred. We have a lot of anger, a lot of jealousy. We have a lot of ignorance. If we check to see what the state of the mind is, we can see that quite often the objects that we think about are not very positive. You know, it’s hatred, for instance.
We think of those we don’t like. We think of all the reasons why we don’t like them, all the reasons why they’re no good. The reasons why we should get angry with them or the reasons why we’re jealous of someone or the so on. All this actually becomes like a meditation because we for instance, with a mind of hatred, we think about the negative qualities of a person and we become very familiar with that. Well, we think, oh, they have this fault.
Not only do they have that fault, but they have this fault. And we think of all their faults, for instance. So we have responsibility for the way we think, and we can use the mind in a positive way or a negative way. The mind itself is impermanent. It’s an ongoing continuum.
The mind itself is a vast field of activity. Consciousness itself is defined as the ability to know something. In fact, it’s defined as in Tibetan, it’s clear and knowing. Just the knowing quality. We as individuals, we have a as part of our being, we have this ability to know things.
And this is consciousness. Consciousness always has an object. The consciousness doesn’t abide just by itself. It always has an object that it’s aware of. There’s two types of consciousness, either consciousness which is valid, correctly understand the subject, or it’s an invalid type of consciousness.
And there’s also two types of consciousness. There’s either perception or conception. And also, both of these are very important. Use them all the time. We use sensory perception all the time.
And then we use conception, which is the ability to conceive of things that are beyond direct perception, beyond the senses. Like we can remember someone who lives in another state of Australia, for instance. You know, we think about various things. We use the conceptual mind a great deal. So all these functions are part of the mind.