Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Ignyen frames his 44.5-minute teaching on the first two Noble Truths with a vivid metaphor: saṃsāra as a prison, a jungle hemmed by wrong views, full of lurking tigers and elephants. He establishes the First Truth through a direct lens — the unsatisfactory, constrained nature of all conditioned existence, which even comfortable human life cannot escape (birth, old age, sickness, death). He then explores the Second Truth: the root causes of suffering through karma (intention and mental action) and afflictions like ignorance, greed, hatred, and pride, which misperceive their objects by overestimating or underestimating their worth. Throughout, he addresses student questions on individual and collective karma, hell realms, purification through intention, and the shaping force of motivation. Suited to practitioners with Buddhist foundation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 Mindful Life 1996 05 19.mp3
UUID: d58455ec-2363-4a1a-a152-63d4a7ea59aa
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: ~3,443
Comparatively, our situation isn’t very bad. We have enough to eat, enough to drink, we live in comfort. But even so, there’s an element of unsatisfactoriness there. And that unsatisfactoriness is really expressed by the four human sufferings, fact of suffering at birth, old age, sickness, and death. We’re not beyond any of that.
So when when we’re mindful of the the body, we’re mindful of the feelings, mindful of our mental states, also, we take into account that our individual existence is simply expressed by this first truth, the fact that things are unsatisfactory. That this object that we’re aware of or the feelings, the body, mental states exists in a sphere, exists in a plane that is unsatisfactory. It’s completely immersed in the unsatisfactory. And in fact, it’s like a prison. Most most of the time, we don’t really clearly understand this.
Very difficult because we don’t have anything to compare it with. So we don’t understand that it really is like a prison. Like like we’re prisoners put in a prison. We’re born in a prison, and we get sort of comfortable there. We take it for granted.
We don’t even know that there’s something beyond that may be better. But from the point of view of Samsāra, it’s a prison that, like, has many cells. One is can be reborn as a human or an animal, still experience completely the suffering of saṃsāra. Just a changing of situation, like a change of a cell in a prison block. Doesn’t even occur to us to wanna get out of the prison.
It’s a bit like being in a jungle. Also, like in a thick dense jungle, and there’s tigers and elephants and so on lurking. All sorts of dangers there in the jungle. And it’s dark, and so on. We don’t know where we are.
We don’t know if there’s any path out of the jungle, but here we are. We’re confronted by all these dangers. Dangers. And I just by ourselves, it doesn’t occur to us that there may be something beyond this. And so it’s it’s like a jungle.
It’s like a prison. Worse, it’s a prison of our own creation based on ignorance, our own ignorance. We’re responsible for it. It’s like we ourselves put ourselves in prison, threw away the key. Because the prison of saṃsāra is founded on ignorance.
And just like the jungle, there are great dangers. At any moment, we may be killed or die, pass away, still without having resolved our situation, without having actually addressed the the real issues of existence. But realizing that existence is like a prison is the beginning of developing some renunciation, of developing the desire to get out of prison, out of saṃsāra. And then the question arises, well, how does it all come about? How does how can this prison actually develop?
How can this whole situation of things being unsatisfactory as we experience when we do some breath meditation? Where does it all come from? We might just leave it there if anyone has any questions or any we’ve got a few more minutes left. Yeah. Yeah.
It’s like that Yeah. We’re imprisoned. There’s another image of that as well that comes from one other lama. In the introduction to a text, he says that we’re in a jungle surrounded by the twenty peaks of wrong view. And, you know, the tigers and the lions and the elephants and so on of delusions lurk, you know, through the jungle thickets, and there we are defenseless, hemmed in by the wrong view, the twenty twenty different types of wrong view, unable to see a way out of the situation we’re in, unable to see a way out of this hope and fear, situation of hope and fear, of unsatisfactoriness.
And, yeah, it’s very apt, especially with the one thinks that one is surrounded by the twenty types of wrong view of ignorance. Oh, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s such that’s really a very important issue because it’s individual karma that causes our current situation or the situation in Africa that individuals experience.
Yet within that, if we can help, you know, it’s there is a responsibility there as well to help because, intrinsically, they’re not different from us, beings else elsewhere. In fact, there’s no reason why, you know, we are not them, so to speak, Because it’s only action, karma, you know, a slight difference in karma that separates us. And in fact, we’re we have just as much potential as they have to be reborn in a famine. There’s no intrinsic difference between us. It’s just, you know, time and circumstance that creates that difference.
And if we can help them, then it’s enlightened self interest. It helps us. It helps to eliminate the cause of ourselves to be reborn in that situation. Because we from the point of view of karma, we’ve created, you know, such a a huge variety of potential, different potentials to be reborn in different places that if we can lessen the potential or lessen the likelihood of being reborn in such a state, then, of course, it’s good for us. It’s like enlightened self interest.
Oh, this is some these are wrong views. Yeah. You see it. Used to go to a market on Tuesday in Kushalnagar. There used to be one sadhu that would stand there with a bell every Tuesday with a bowl for donations next to it.
And, he’d stand on a bed of nails and ring the bell. And, he’d, you know, want ten paisa or twenty paisa, you know, some some donation as he went past. It was like a, you know, penance in a sense. It was his practice to do that. It’s wrong to wrong you to Inflict pain?
Yeah. It just by experiencing pain or deliberately inflicting pain upon yourself doesn’t mean to say that you’re gonna you know, it’s purifying you at all. Because the idea is that you have a certain amount of negative karma. If you suffer enough, you get rid of it all. And in that way, you attain liberation.
So it’s a mistaken view. Yeah. Well, that it’s Well, there, it’s your motivation that is important, that having the strong motivation to do a hundred thousand prostrations, which is really paying homage to a pure object, generates merit. Yeah. And that’s based on the intention to purify.
You can actually purify negative actions, But the purification depends on your intention and the regret for having done past negative actions, not simply experiencing pain. If simply experiencing pain actually, it is in a sense. It’s true. Beings in the hells simply undergo great suffering. And by that, they do consume the causes that lead to being reborn in hell.
If one could regard that as a spiritual practice, then then probably in one sense fine. But it’s one is reborn in hell out of negative intention, out of negative action. And it’s certainly a long way it’s the long way around doing things to be reborn in hell just to purify your negative actions so you can take a rebirth as a human again and so on. Like, you stay there until you become successful. Or for or just that particular negative.
Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, when that’s consumed, then a person dies in a hell. Then it depends on what karma is activated after that. It might be another hell rebirth.
Or maybe, you know, you progress outwards from the the deepest hell, the Avichi hell. Like, if one is reborn there, then one stays there a very long time, experiences fire from eleven directions, maybe spends eons purifying those negative actions, and then maybe takes a rebirth and the next hell out goes progressively through the eight hells into the surrounding hells and then occasional hells. In fact sorry. No. Sorry.
Please. Please. Your question. I was just thinking there was a one bodhisattva, Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, who took a vow to remain in the hells until all beings in the hells attain liberation. So he decided that he would make this vow, that he would help beings in the hells.
He would be there with them and just remain there until the last being attained freedom from the hells. So The Christian story of Jesus. In a sense, it is. Yeah. There’s a story of the the Buddha in one of his previous lifetimes.
He was reborn in hell through negative actions that he’d committed, and he was pulling a cart in one of the hells with a with a friend that was shackled to this, like, cart, you know, pulling it along. And the guardians, hell guardians, were standing over them with weapons and so on. And the the companion of the Buddha stumbled. Couldn’t pull a load any longer. And the guards were came over, and they were gonna kill this his companion.
So he pleaded for them not to out of compassion. And the Hell Guardians just killed him, struck him with a hammer, killed killed him. And because of the compassion that he generated, he was reborn in a divine realm, the land of the thirty three. So it said that if you have compassion, that’s incompatible with remaining in the hells. One has compassion.
Even a bodhisattva, someone that takes on the responsibility to enlighten all beings, can be reborn in hell. But for someone like that who’s developed compassion, it’s it’s a bit like a ball bouncing into hell and bouncing straight back out of it again. Because compassionate intention is incompatible with staying in hell. What is the hell guard’s intention? Have I just The elimination of karma.
Yeah. That’s what the Cittamātra say. Mind only school. It says they’re also just a product of our karma. Others say that they’re sentient beings.
Yeah. In that sense, they’re like the servants of the Lord of death. But if one takes it from the point of view of the Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva Sūtra, Even the Hell Guardians are performing a task of helping beings purify their negative actions, and that’s done for a positive motivation. That’s right. Dependent on future action.
Yeah. Yeah. So maybe that was enough for compassion. I didn’t know what to do. It’s possible.
Yes. Well, in the Shiksha Sūtra, they say that the guardians in hell are often bodhisattvas. But here, this is hard to say. This yeah. But, certainly, the being reborn in hell is serves the purpose of purifying negative action.
It’s just said that if you take a fiery hell as such, someone said that it burns up all your. Oh, burns up the cause of the karma, of that instance of karma. So, they become each of the creatives? Not every karma? No.
That’s right. It yeah. Our existence is supported by our karma, whether it’s in a house or as a human, like it’s the ground under our feet. That’s our karma. And at present, because we’re humans, it’s positive virtue that, like, we stand on.
And when that that virtue is exhaustible, it’s it’s limited. It’s like Devadatta, the cousin of the Buddha, when he tried to kill the Buddha. Well, he tried many times to kill a Buddha. And I think in the last attempt, the ground opened up and swallowed him. He was directly reborn in hell.
It was as if, you know, his his karma, his virtuous karma that supported him finally was consumed. He’s reborn in hell. Yes. Yeah. Well, one can take the mind only school.
Well, it has more or less the same result. All it’s saying is there’s no external help. It’s really saying that there’s nothing external whatsoever. Alright. So Right.
It might be the same. That’s right. That, you know, our impressions that things externally exist are merely an impression. Right? But the thing, you know, all the senses, you know, we pick something up and it feels heavy or some something seems, you know, ten miles away or a hundred miles away is merely an impression.
It’s part of the other function of the mind itself. There’s nothing external. How we actually become aware of other people is interesting. And this is explained in terms of there being common karma, common action. You know, the beings don’t exist in a spatial dimension as such.
There are just individual beings that possess individual consciousnesses, and they’re related by common action. They interact, but not in an external space, more an internal space. And in that respect, the hells are not an external reality. They’re simply a product, or they’re an expression of states of mind. That’s right.
That’s exactly it. Yeah. Enough to intimidate you to not not do the water bowls, actually. Yeah. I sorry.
Sorry. Oh, it has probably the same the same purpose in a way. Yeah. Yeah. To stop us from doing negative actions.
And if it works, then then it serves a purpose. Oh, I think that’s an interpretive statement as well. Because it no. No. About if you spill or if a drop of water or if you don’t fill up the offering bowl to the right height, you’ll be reborn in hell.
It’s an interpretive statement. It has a particular context in which it was stated. No. It well, if it does, then it serves its purpose. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. And and, you know, with refuge, it’s the way you almost hope is the same. Yes.
Yes. Yeah. One of the causes of refuge is fear. Fear of the hells primarily. Yeah.
And it’s a creative fear. I don’t think it’s really blackmail. But if it prevents us from doing negative actions or committing negative actions, then it serves its purpose. Yeah. Yeah.
Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That means it’s kind of creating That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. I think the whole exposition of the hells is from that point of view of it’s beyond our direct experience whether hells exist or not in one sense.
Actually, in another sense, they’re within our realm of experience because people, you know, at times experience almost hell like states. Very deep depression. They have unnamed fears. You know, they feel absolutely terrible. And it’s like a hell.
Like Port Arthur three weeks ago. That’s like Port Arthur. Yeah. That’s like an occasional hell. So, you know, they’re part of our experience.
But actually, as being a separate realm, you know, where which is completely infused with that type of experience, we directly experience that. But hellish experience is part of our general experience, think, even in terms of war then some conflict. Like hot wars and cold wars. They almost represent the hot and cold hell. So actually thinking about that can be of such great benefit.
Yes. That yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
Because even the the virtue that prevents one from staying out of hell is eventually exhausted. So no matter how high we go, that we still are susceptible to falling in terms of just our contaminated actions. Actions. We have to go beyond contaminated action, whether it’s virtuous or non virtuous. That’s right.
That’s right. Yep. Yep. Well, that’s right. We use what we can.
Yeah. Put to use what we can and test it to some degree what way we can. I think it’s very good to experiment with different things, to be creative in that way. Yeah. Yeah.
I think we have to use what’s, you know, appropriate to us or what what, you know, suits us. Yeah. Just use that. Just anyway, I guess it’s a quarter past. We should call a break there.
Present, I think it’s just about lunchtime. So so far, we’ve dealt with the first of the four truths, which is the first topic of the practice of mindfulness. And the second truth is the truth of cause or the truth of origin. And so, again, the this unsatisfactoriness that we experience has a cause. And the cause is not something outside of ourselves.
It’s very much a part of ourselves, and it’s something that we’re quite aware of. And it’s very much part of our daily activity. And there’s fundamentally two types, of course. There’s karma and affliction. So the first one, karma, refers to action.
Mental action. And in fact, in Tibetan, it means intention. So karma is really intention, our current intention that we possess. Our intention to act, our impulse to act. This is the identity of karma.
So positive intention, positive impulse to act, is really positive karma. Negative impulse, negative intention, is negative karma. That negative intention that accompanies verbal and physical action doesn’t go to waste. It imprints the mental consciousness and remains within the mental consciousness, within the mental continuum until causes and conditions arise to awaken that potential, awaken the result of that potential. So, really, our intentions are very important.
This function of intending to do things, and motivation. In fact, the entire universe is a reflection of motivation and intention. All the different realms come into existence through karma, and karma itself is intention. So the hells exist because of intention, negative intention, action through negative intention. The divine realms exist because of positive intention.
Virtuous, strongly virtuous intention gives rise to the to the divine realms. Even the human realm is, primarily a virtuous state. human realm reflects the general action of the ten virtuous deeds. So, really, what is being said is that mind itself creates these realms in which we live. And in fact, as Vasubandhu stated, that the various world systems arise through action, arise through intention.
So really our destiny is in our own hands. It’s what we intend. We act with positive intention, then we create a positive future. If we act through negative intention, then we experience the result of that. Not only does it become our intention, especially if intention is on a common universal level, like group intention, group karma, we experience it as a result of group karma and as a result of individual karma or intention, both externally as external physical environments as well as an internal internal experience as well.
And then the second one, second part here is affliction. So affliction refers to really the afflictive mental states. So all the negative states that we experience, ignorance and shamelessness, unconscientiousness, restlessness, anger, hatred, doubt, avarice, pride, greed, and so on, deceit. All these negative attitudes that, we experience within our daily life, all these are affliction. They afflict us.
They’re the nature of our unhappiness. They occur when we’re unhappy. So they’re afflictions. Fundamentally, there’s two types of affliction, repulsive and attractive. The attractive are those afflictive states that are attracted towards an object, like greed and attachment, avarice, or pride, and so on.
Like pride may take the self to be an attractive object and overestimate the value of the individual self. We think we’re better than what we actually are. We overestimate our own worth and so on. On the other hand, we have the repulsive type negative mental states such as hatred, which is repulsed by the object, anger, spite, so on. There’s fundamentally two types, or we can even say three.
Ignorance, we can say, is like a more neutral state where there’s neither repulsion nor attraction. It’s just simply not knowing. So these are all afflictive states. Either the neutral mode, which is exemplified by ignorance, or the attractive, which is exemplified by greed and attachment, or the repulsive, such as hatred. All these states are actually wrong are wrong states of consciousness.
They’re they don’t properly understand their object. And we’ve touched on this before. For instance, when we have greed or attachment, we’re overestimating the worth of the object. We’re looking at an object and we’re seeing more in it than is actually there. Seeing more in it, we get become greedy towards the object.
We become attracted towards it. We develop pride about it. We become jealous about it, And so on. All this because we’re overestimating the worth of the object. And the opposite to that is, being repulsed by the object to which is also an incorrect evaluation of the object, an incorrect assessment.
It’s only looking at the negative. It’s underestimating the value. It’s looking only at the negative side of the object, such as with hatred. When we hate something, that hate is not assessing the object correctly. It’s only looking at the bad side.
It’s only looking at the negative qualities.