Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute teaching, Ven Jampa Ignyen addresses a fundamental misunderstanding: believing in enlightenment is not enough—you must produce the actual causes. He explores the pervasive unsatisfactoriness that tinges all experience, not intense suffering but a persistent sense that something is missing. Through breath meditation and the four objects of mindfulness (body, feelings, mind, dharma), practitioners can observe their situation clearly. Ignyen walks through the practical art of balancing hope and fear without being swept away, and gives concrete daily applications: preparing yourself mentally so anger doesn’t arise, understanding anger as impatience rooted in frustration. He introduces the four noble truths—the framework explaining how suffering arises and how to move beyond it. Realistic and grounded, with examples ranging from animals to contemporary war zones.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 Mindful Life 1996 05 19.mp3
UUID: 0130d95f-32a9-4c02-8ad8-59aec094e6e9
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Living the Mindful Life (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 1996-05-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.5 minutes
Words: ~4,061
Pursue this goal of of liberation, this goal of enlightenment. Some people feel that if you simply believe in something, that’s sufficient. If you accept that something exists, heaven exists, then that is sufficient to be reborn there. But we have to question whether that is in fact gonna produce the goods if we just believe in something. Is that a sufficient cause to actually achieve that end?
Or is it more that in order to achieve a result, have to produce the cause of that result, a cause that is similar to the result. So our current situation is one of of unsatisfactoriness. We are not fully satisfied with how things are. We want to get beyond that state. In fact, we really want to progress completely beyond any form of unsatisfactory existence.
It’s not easy for us either because we’re very lazy as individuals. We don’t want to do too much. We lack energy. We lack insight into where we stand. We don’t even know why, you know, we suffer the way we suffer.
We often attribute this to external causes, and this also helps to compound our situation. If we blame others for our unhappiness, this can only make us unhappier. Are other people the source of our unhappiness? This we have to closely investigate. If they are, then we have to deal with that.
But if they aren’t, then we and we blame others for our unhappiness, then this can be just like putting thorns on our back and carrying around an extra load of concerns and cares that we don’t need. In a sense, we want to get rid of the load that we carry already. This load of care and concern and worry and and so on. Everything being unsatisfactory. In fact, the whole world appears unsatisfactory to us.
There’s really nothing in the world that we look at that we can really say, well, that is how things should be. Even the universe. In fact, even when we do this is part of doing breath meditation. We get down to this level, and often we’re sitting there watching our breath, and there’s just this vague feeling of unsatisfactoriness there. All our thoughts are just pervaded by this idea of things are unsatisfactory.
And within that, we have certain hopes, and in that, we have certain fears. It’s all pervaded by this, like, ocean of unsatisfactory. And even the thought that things may be it may be possible to get beyond that, you know, hardly occurs to us, virtually never occurs to us. There is a some state maybe beyond that where things are there’s simply, you know, happiness. We probably wouldn’t recognize it anyway if we stumbled across it because it’s something we just don’t experience.
We don’t even dream of. This is one of the benefits of doing breath meditation, that hopefully we can keep just a simple observer present there just to watch this situation. But we have to requires a huge amount of energy though, because we have to be completely objective. We can’t even accept the fact that all these things are unsatisfactory as being permanent or and so on. So this is one of the benefits of doing breath meditation, simply being a bare observer on our situation.
Hopefully without any hope or fear, even to without any expectation, to look at our situation. Try and begin without any hope to understand it even. But simply to observe who we are, because the first three objects of mindfulness, the body, the feelings, and the mind, those three things are just the individual. If we define who the individual is or what an individual human being is, all it is is our physical body, our feelings, and various mental states that we experience, our discrimination, our impulses, our intentions, and so on. So those first three objects of mindfulness are the basis of designation of who we are.
So by being mindful of those three things, we’re mindful of who we are. It’s like just taking a check on who we are today. What is our state? It’s a bit like the dials on the dashboard of a car, you know, registering the oil pressure and the speed, temperature, and so on. It’s just just who we are today, this moment of who we are, what the basis of designation of this person, physical body, feelings, different states of mind, just what they are.
There is a great tendency for us then to read things into this situation. You know, to then on that basis to make conclusions about who we are, what we’re doing, where we’re going. I’ve gotta do this. I’ve gotta do that. I need to be rich, need to be famous, I need to be this, and so on.
All these other things come into play, but the bare fact is just these first three objects of awareness. Now in the next session, we’ll go on with the fourth object of awareness, of mindfulness, which in a sense explains what the first three are and explains how the first three come about. So we’ll do that in the next session. There’s a few minutes for any questions or if anyone else For us, it’s mixed with However sorry. We have goal.
No. We should we should have the goal, but realize that it’s also mixed with various other hopes and aspirations that we have. That Keep up. Keep up. If you keep up, can you not?
We do need direction. We do need the goal. But we need to understand attachment within that. And that as ordinary beings, most of most things that we do are gonna be very much wrapped up with attachment. It’s that everything that we are attracted to, we have we are attached to as well.
Something like that, a goal to attain liberation, actually leads beyond attachment, although in the beginning we’re attached to it. So I think we have to be aware that there’s, in a sense, there’s two levels there. If we become attached to attaining enlightenment, then it’s not gonna be a source of happiness to us. We’ll just get It just becomes contaminated by the attachment, which is the opposite of wanting to attain enlightenment, because enlightenment is getting beyond attachment. But in a sense, it’s just realizing our limitations that in the beginning, we’re not going to be able to get beyond attachment in one day or ten years.
We have to gradually try and have the attachment just fall away. But the goal still remains. Yeah. That’s right. I guess it’s it’s not easy to have a balance there.
You know, sometimes we go you know, we tend to wobble between those two, and sometimes we get too far towards fear and, you know, we get depressed. We’re not gonna attain this. We’re not gonna attain that. The other times, we you know, our hopes become very strong. In a sense, it’s a matter of balance.
I guess being aware of of our susceptibilities and knowing in a sense what we need to do from time to time. You know, if our fears are too strong and what antidotes that we can apply to that. Sometimes we become very attached, very strongly attached, and so on. Our hopes become very strong. But both of these things are not much value in the beginning to it, of course.
We want to, as much as possible, want to even that out so that we’re not going to be too much affected by fear. We’re not going be too much affected by hope. And in that, we need a lot of patience. That’s right, that’s right. Yeah.
Well, we said we have a certain amount of wisdom, a certain amount of discrimination, inborn wisdom, really, from coming from past life, and that we have to try and strengthen. Certainly we’re often buffeted by hopes and fears. I think we know that every day. We’re sort of somewhere in the middle there. What we should try and do is just to even that out to some degree so that it’s not going to affect us that much.
Even if we have strong fears, then they’re impermanent. They’ll go, you know. If they have strong attachments, strong hopes, and so on aspirations, then they occur today, but maybe tomorrow they’re, you know, subsided again. In a sense, the wisdom there is just maintaining this middle course, not going too far in one direction and too far in the other direction. You know, if I guess someone suddenly said, you know, you’ve won a million dollars, not to be too carried away by that, you know, to say, well, it’s just money.
It’s not gonna not the cause of happiness. And then on the other hand, you know, if we’re gonna be thrown in jail for something for ten years or, you know, we experienced a, you know, separation or something like that, then, okay, that’s life. These things happen. You know, to keep like a middle course, you know, understanding that our life is an expression of just this range, you see, And that we should also focus on our next life, that we should bring that into consideration now that what we do now has an effect on the future, and that we should maintain a balance, an even attitude, only towards others, but to our own situation. You know, you can think of it like the Tibetans, you know.
Many Tibetans were thrown into jail for twenty years, thirty years during the Cultural Revolution and afterwards during the uprising in Tibet. And, you know, suffered terrible conditions. Also, it occurs still in China. Many parts of the world people undergo incredible suffering. But that’s just the that’s the pit, that’s the essence of our existence.
To be susceptible to that sort of suffering is just who we are. We’re not beyond that. So we have to take that into account. And also see it’s impermanent. This life is impermanent.
That’s right. Is That’s a terrible thing you have to wrestle with. Right. Well, this is a I think this is where we really have to be very realistic about our goals, you know, on a day to day basis about, what we can achieve. And to really get beyond distraction, to attain high levels of concentration, to attain Samādhi and so it’s not very easy.
Not easy at all to attain those levels where one really can attain some degree of stable happiness. But for ourselves, it’s yeah. I think we have to be very realistic on a day to day level of what we can achieve. You know, like, if we set our goal in the in the morning, okay. I’m I’m not gonna get angry today.
Or, you know, I’m just gonna take note of whenever I get angry. When I do, I’m gonna apply the opponent powers to it. Or even in the beginning of the day, we can think to ourselves, okay. Now, if I think of this person, I’m not gonna get angry. Set ourselves to do that.
Or even ourselves, our internal situation. Okay. If I think today about my own situation, I’m not gonna get upset. I’ll see it as just being impermanent. You know, to really prepare ourselves to do that.
So during the day when that thought arises, oh, I don’t like my situation, then we’re prepared for that. So we’re not gonna dislike we’re not gonna generate dislike at that moment. I think this we can do. That’s right. That’s right.
That’s right. Because it oh, it’s exactly for that reason. Because anger really sweeps one away when it occurs. That unless we prepare ourselves beforehand, then we can’t prevent it. Because once it’s occurred, very difficult to stop it, you know, to hatred is the same.
You know, once once it arises, once that object arises in the mind, you know, someone that we hate or something that we hate, very difficult just to stop it there. We try and stop it, it again comes back. Same object comes up, you know, ten seconds later and so on. So what we should try and do is even before those states arise, to try and prepare ourselves for them so that if we remember that object, it’s not going to generate that attitude. So this is really applying the opponent powers to it.
That’s right. And really beginning to investigate a negative attitude arises towards that object. What is the real reason for it? Exactly. Revolves around our sense of who we are and how other people treat us, how other people relate to our sense of who we are, whether they accept it or not, or whether they see things the way we see things.
Oh. Oh, it it can be. Yes. Yeah. That’s right.
Well, this is one of the benefits of breath meditation, that it can help to settle the thoughts to some degree so that we can get some clarity. Because if we have, you know, various thoughts coming up, you know, our mind is not so clear, you know, about the mind and the objects that appear to the mind and the attitudes that arise in relation to those objects. If the mind is, you know, not so settled, then it’s, you know, it’s not so easy to discern what the what our attitudes clearly are, and then how to how to deal with these attitudes. So that’s one of the benefits of breath meditation, because it does help to settle the mind, settle those thoughts down so that we can begin to see more clearly what our attitudes are. And then from that point, we can begin to deal with these attitudes.
The attitude of hatred, for instance, anger, jealousy, spite. Know, because there’s so many. All of them are negative. All of them are as soon as we have any of those attitudes, we’re unhappy. That’s unhappiness right there.
Because most of our day is taken up with negative mental attitude, negative objects, then we’re unhappy. All we gotta do is get rid of those negative attitudes. In fact, that’s what enlightenment is. Sorry? It depends what sort of idealism.
Positive, then it’s no. It’s it’s positive. No. Not not in itself. Yeah.
It well, really, anger is impatience. Frustration is more like a precondition. Maybe a yeah. Yeah. Frustration, not getting what we want.
Yeah. Whatever that is directed towards can generate negative a negative attitude. Whether it’s frustrations with an external situation or frustrations with our own self and whether it’s people, whether it’s objects and time. It seems that way, yeah, that it would be maybe a preliminary stage to developing hatred and anger. Just not being satisfied with something and perhaps not feeling that we can change it, or all our efforts to change it come to nothing, and then becoming impatient.
That’s right. When the impatience sets in with that situation, then that really is the anger. Is the anger anger the very nature of anger is impatience. Not being able to endure something, and it builds up until we act upon it. Yeah.
And they Sit back. Yeah. Yeah. That’s very interesting. I mean, if you work as a teacher and you’ve got responsibilities to, you know, teach them a curriculum and get them through a course, and they’re not following what you tell them, and it is actually your responsibility to get them through the Course, then maybe you have to use forceful methods there.
But this is one thing I’ve seen with Tibetan monks who have young students to look after. Sometimes they use physical force. They’ll get their mala out. They’ll hit them with their rosary. I remember seeing one monk one day.
This young monk, he just wasn’t learning his scripture. And he was standing against the wall. He was angry, and he was standing against the wall getting rid of his anger. Right? He felt anger towards his students.
So, he stood there until he got rid the anger, then he went over and hit him with his mala. So, if you can act without the anger, then it’s good. If you act with anger, then the action itself is not going to be based on something valid. The regret will set in. Yeah, if you act with anger, then in time it gives rise to regret.
If it’s done not from anger, then it won’t be regret. Depends also on what the idealism is. If you mean like a philosophic view about something? Yeah. Yeah.
That’s right. Here. Yeah. That can lead to frustration as well If we have a certain idea about how things should be and it’s that’s not occurring, then that can lead to impatience and anger and frustration and so on. Yeah.
Here, if we can be flexible, adaptable, it’s good. You know, we okay. We have a view to begin with, and if that’s not possible to implement, okay, we can adjust that to the reality of the situation? Yeah. This is not so much a philosophic view, but well, I guess I can touch on philosophic view, but that also brings in the whole field of cross cultural interaction.
What is suitable in this culture? What can we take from other cultures and transplant in this culture? Oh, it’s a huge field. It means understanding what this culture is. That’s hard enough.
Oh, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It in theory, it may may seem, you know, quite possible to do in a certain way, but in practice, it may not work out that way at all. And I think this is, you know, in history this has occurred so often, that what is accepted in one culture in a certain way is not going to be accepted in another culture in the same way.
It will be modified, you know, in accordance with the needs of that culture. Yeah. There’s probably a little bit lost in the translation. But here in terms of Buddhism, his holiness, like the Dalai Lama has mentioned that the essentials really can’t be altered. But the way that they’re presented or the way they’re practiced is up to the to the people themselves.
But if you change the essentials too much, then or if you change the essentials, then you lose the the meaning. But, I mean, it they can be changed, what’s all the culture can be changed. You know, entire cultural context of something can be changed. Definitely. But that’s a huge job, of course, and that’ll take hundreds of years to do.
I’m just trying to think of an example of it. Maybe it’s a bit like Japan, you know, like the Meiji Restoration, where the Meiji Emperor decided he was going to introduce Western culture, capitalism into Japan and get rid of the feudal system. And he did it. There they’d be they had huge capitalist success. They were able to adopt Western ideas lock, stock, and barrel, but they’ve done it in their own cultural context.
Or maybe we should have tea. Yes. And again, we should be aware of our physical posture, just how we are sitting as meditation on the body, and the feelings, different states of mind that come and go. So this is the field of our awareness. Within that, we’re watching the breath.
Fourth object of mindfulness. We’ve done three. So the fourth is dharma. Dharma is a a Sanskrit word. It comes from the Sanskrit root dhr, meaning to hold.
So dharma means something which holds its own nature. So in that sense, anything that exists is dharma because everything which exists retains an identity. However, here, it’s also meant from the point of view of fact, things as they are. And also ethics has that meaning as well. So in a sense, it is dharma which ties together the other three objects of mindfulness.
Because dharma or facts really refers to how the other three come about. And in essence, it refers to the four noble truths or the four ārya truths. The four ārya facts. So we’ll just briefly go into this. The first two are concerned with our situation as it stands.
And they’re the truth of unsatisfactoriness and the cause of that. And the second two truths are the state beyond unsatisfactoriness and the path leading to that. So there’s two causal sequences. Here we have suffering and the cause of suffering, and then that which is beyond suffering, and what causes that. Now, we’ve also mentioned a little about the first truth, the truth of suffering or the truth of unsatisfactoriness.
It’s like when we meditate on the breath, we discover a level of unsatisfactoriness, type of contaminated reality that we’re not fully happy with. Something is, you know, not as not suitable to us. It doesn’t suit us. There’s something that we require beyond this. That we’re not getting what we’re seeking from just our current experience at present.
We’re caught between hope and fear. No matter what we try, no matter how we try to arrange the external world, we’re still not getting from it what we seek. There’s something missing. It’s tinged by unsatisfactoriness. We still long for something else.
And this is not only the truth for ourselves, but wherever we look. We look in other people’s eyes, and we also see the same reality there. This is the first truth, dukkha. Dukkha meaning that which is problematic. Dukkha.
Dukkha. So this is the first truth and it’s something we experience all the time. And our lives are an attempt to, keep it at bay, so to speak. Usually it just drifts into the background and we can amuse ourselves with, you know, various things. And we can derive a certain amount of worldly happiness from what we do.
We get a certain amount of pleasure, certain amount of worldly happiness by eating good food, having a nice house, having a nice car, and so on. But always beyond that, there’s longing for something. It’s tinged with this unsatisfactoriness. So there’s a bit of a mixture here. There’s a mixture of worldly happiness and that worldly happiness exists within this sphere of general abiding unsatisfactoriness.
So that’s the that is the fact of the first truth. The suffering that we experience is certainly not very intense in general. But for other beings it’s much more intense. Like animals often experience much greater suffering. Like if one thinks about the fish in the sea, fish swim around and they’re always in danger of being consumed by a bigger fish.
They themselves consume smaller fish. So something like that is very difficult. Fish are born in the ocean and they have to eat to survive, and so they eat other fish and they’re in turn eaten. This is suffering of animals. They don’t have the type of control that a human being has over their environment.
They’re preyed on by other animals. They’re eaten. They suffer the continual fear of being eaten and put to use by other beings, even humans. humans have a little bit more leisure, a little bit more control over their environment. So humans are regarded as being a higher level of existence than animals.
humans also have the ability to conceive of this situation more clearly than animals do. They can objectify rationalize it, can even begin to think about dukkha, about the whole pervasive question of life itself, about what is our actual situation. Animals cannot do this. humans can. humans can even begin to question what is the very basis of existence?
So it gives human humans a a privileged position. Then beyond that, there are if we look at the six realms of existence, there’s ghosts and there’s also there’s hell beings. Although they’re not necessarily perceivable. In fact, whether we believe in their existence or not doesn’t necessarily matter. The fact that there are sufferings equivalent to the hells on the earth is quite understandable.
Like in war zones, can see, like in Bosnia, what happens in Bosnia with the population there, The torture, the killings, just total disregard for human values.