Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jamyang uses concrete, everyday examples—the glass half-full versus half-empty, the futile relief of scratching an itch—to introduce the Four Noble Truths in this 76-minute talk. He explores three types of suffering: obvious pain, the unreliability of ordinary pleasure, and the pervasive anxiety underlying all conditioned life. Rather than presenting karma as inescapable fate, he examines it as the conditioning of the mind through past habits and choices. An extended Q&A follows, featuring real struggles: wrestling with over-generosity and setting boundaries, the Dalai Lama’s compassionate response to anger and suffering, and the foundational role of ignorance and afflictive emotions. For newcomers to Buddhist thought.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2009 03 28 jamyang – Intor Buddhism 28-03-09.mp3
UUID: 26ca1e79-28b1-4ccb-ac0a-b7ce30a871f9
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Intro to Buddhism (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009-03-28
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 75.7 minutes
Words: ~8,122
We’ll just touch on it. It’s a bit loud, isn’t it? We’ll just touch on it today, but mainly next week when we come to the path. How is everybody? Good week.
You didn’t have a good week, did you? Not too bad. So we’re going to continue. Do you have any questions before we begin? Anything that we’ve covered?
We’ve covered? Yeah? If we ask too many questions, you might never get to begin. Oh, that’s okay. It’s more probably more useful.
So one of the, I guess, the fundamental teachings of Buddhism, the way in which the Buddha presented his outline of his entire teachings, is in terms of the Four Noble Truths. So that’s how we’re kind of organizing this introduction to Buddhism around. The fact that we have and are getting in touch with our dissatisfaction, this helps us to motivate ourselves to want to change. If we don’t want to change, then there’s no use in discussing much of anything, really. You can’t make somebody you can’t force somebody to change.
Initiative has to come from within. We get along fine if only you changed, you know, the kind of approach some people have, but it doesn’t work very well. So if we begin to acknowledge some of our difficulties, look at them, maybe stop distracting ourselves and we can begin to develop a motivation to make things different. Otherwise, there’s a tendency to resist change. There’s a certain fear around change.
We want to stick with what is familiar even though it might be in many ways not satisfactory. At least it’s known. We have an idea. It’s predictable and we find some kind of security in that. I mean, a lot of especially women, they stay in abusive relationships because least for various reasons, obviously, but one of them is it’s the known.
The unknown is because perhaps even more frightening. So we have to look at the actual situation. So this is where the Buddha began his explanation of his teachings in terms of looking at our actual experience. And he organized these in terms of levels or three types of suffering. Suffering of suffering, which is just as we generally understand it, mental and physical pain of various sorts, which we go through to some lesser or greater degree every day of our lives.
But then he began to look at some of our problems in a less superficial, more deeper fashion and looked at the suffering of change. But even at we never know happiness without knowing suffering. And in fact, what we do identify as happiness is, to a large extent, not even the nature of happiness. If it were, then we could prolong it, it would be reliable, it could be lasting, but in fact it’s not. Whatever happiness that we experience cannot be prolonged indefinitely.
If we could keep indulging in the causes creating that happiness, no matter what they might be, eventually it would deteriorate into some degree of suffering. But the same is not true of suffering. As long as we indulge in the causes of suffering, they will continue. Excuse me. That segment of suffering changes, is that what they call attachment?
We’re going to look at true origins of suffering, but this is just our experience. So attachment is a state of mind, a particular emotion. So suffering of change is that all our happiness is relative, only exists in relationship to suffering. It’s not true, lasting, reliable happiness. And moreover, it’s what we identify as happiness is simply more than not, is a relief or a diminishment of prior pain.
You know, we move from a difficult experience to a less difficult experience, and we label that less difficult experience happiness. What? Yeah? What could I would it be wrong in thinking that attachment and getting what you want so you when you’re actually getting your what you’re attached to? Mhmm.
So that’s that that would be the root of the suffering of change. And when you’re not getting what you’re attached to and you’re being separated attachment, would that be the suffering of suffering? When you were Sorry. The the the cause of the suffering of suffering. Would you go through that again?
If you have an attachment, a strong attachment, you’re being separated from your attachment so you can’t have it, would that be the cause of the suffering of suffering? Your attachment would be the cause of suffering of suffering because you can’t get what you want. It’s suffering of change. Some of your suffering is physical pain. Physical or mental pain.
Yeah, but if you’re not getting what you’re attached to, you’d be So that’s a separate separation from what is desired is mental pain. That’s what I was thinking, if you’re actually getting what you’re attached to. If you’re getting what you’re that moment that you You’re indulging in what might be the suffering of, would that be the cause of the suffering of change? That’s an example. It’s an example of what we call happiness.
When the desire is gratified, we experience happiness. That’s why I was asking that question because I was trying to figure out whether the suffering of change is if the suffering of change is saying the actual pleasure is actually suffering or if that pleasure is just a reduction of suffering. So is does that make sense? Yeah. So all all what we call contaminated pleasure, ordinary pleasure, is an example of the suffering of change.
It’s not in the actual nature of happiness. It’s the nature of suffering. You expect that this will pass. Well, will If you’re a wise person. It’s impermanent, yeah.
But it’s also, I I think it’s a difficult thing, it’s a difficult concept, not maybe to understand, but to initially I think it makes us feel like, well, they’re trying to make me believe that this happiness I do experience is really not happiness. It sounds really off putting. But what it’s saying is, well, you know, we’re not denying that it’s not happiness, but it’s not real happiness. It’s trying to develop, help us to open up our minds a bit to maybe other possibilities in terms of what we could experience in real, real, lasting, reliable happiness. But if you’re sort of a person with a little bit of experience and a modest amount of wisdom, can’t see that there are different types of happiness of this nature.
There’s happiness of a relationship with another person, which can be you know, there’s nothing wrong with that. Yeah. Sure. You know, unless it’s a nasty one. But, I mean, you’re just natural.
Or a job you’re doing, but then there might be the attachment to gotta get down to the pub to get onto the poker machines or have my class, which, you know, for some people, this is happiness. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not particularly admirable. Yeah.
No. You know? And even people get get into these sorts of addictions, step back sometimes occasionally and think, oh, you know. Yeah. I don’t want take the conversation.
No, it’s good. We’re not judging. There’s no judgment about whether this is the different happinesses that we have. I mean, whether they’re worthy of our energy and time and so forth. It’s just that all of the various what we identify as happiness, from a deeper perspective, aren’t real.
We wouldn’t it’s like this example about this idiot sitting in a corner hitting himself over the head with a hammer and he stops. He experiences happiness and pleasure. There’s a pleasure of the pain stopping. So identifies that experience of this diminishment of pain as happiness. And what Buddhism is saying is this is normally what this is our usual type of what we call happiness.
Yeah? But is that real real happiness? I mean, and Buddhism is saying, No, that’s not real happiness. And it’s trying to help us to orientate ourselves, Well, okay, I want all of that as much as possible. I don’t want suffering.
That’s what I really don’t want. But I’m not even going to completely get caught up and satisfied and just settle for this type of happiness, really, know, though it’s a positive experience, I like it, it’s not all that I could experience. So your aspiration begins to look toward other possibilities in terms of how you might experience your life, begin to open up a broader perspective about what you could experience. So this guy, he stops hitting himself over the head with a hammer. He stops.
And that cessation of pain he identifies as happiness. So Buddhism would say that what we ordinary, ordinary conceive of happiness is just a diminishment. It’s a suffering of change. It’s just that we move from one you know, like when you have a desire and you gratify the desire. Desire in itself, attachment in itself, is an unsettling feeling, it’s a disturbing feeling.
It might be very subtle, but nonetheless it is. When you gratify the desire, that unsettled feeling stops and you feel, Oh, that’s good. You feel relief and you experience what we call happiness. You get what you want. Is that enough?
Is that good enough in terms of our goal in life, that kind of happiness? Or could we aspire to something really more long lasting, real, reliable, something which is, in fact, true happiness. Does that make any sense? Yeah. And, okay, I think it’s something that we have to it’s a different idea, it’s a different perspective, and it’s something that we have to accustom our mind to familiarize.
So we wouldn’t want to believe it or accept it just because somebody said so. But it’s worth thinking about, considering. And then finally, the third type of suffering, the suffering of pervasive conditionality, this was this constant struggle that we’re all involved in. We always have to keep finding every day it’s another project to find happiness, to solve our problems, get rid of suffering. It’s like treading water almost.
And we live with this fear, to a large degree, that if I stopped treading the water, I’d sink. I’d become nonexistent. So we have to continually defend ourselves, confirm ourselves, who we are and the very fact that we exist and there’s an underlying anxiety about all this. And we call it that’s so pervasive to our life. It’s a neutral feeling.
It’s always there. We’ve never known the absence of that. Is said to be the most these three types of suffering to identify is the third. Okay, so as we talked about the fact that, you know, there are two sets of causes and two sets of results. True sufferings are a cause.
True sufferings are a result. They have a cause. So we began last week to look at the two, what we call true origins. That is the cause of these true sufferings. And we looked at the first of these.
Basically, sufferings are of two types, karma and afflictive emotions. And karma, you know, it doesn’t mean predestination. It’s simply the way our minds have been conditioned by our past ways of thinking and acting, speaking and so forth, that we don’t come to situations in everyday experiences with a clean slate of mind. We have momentum of our past conditioning due to which we interpret. You know, it’s like we look at things through a particular like sunglasses.
We’re not seeing things without our past conditioning. We’re seeing them through the lens of our past conditioning. We interpret our situations, we relate with them, and therefore we experience them in ways which have influenced by our past ways of thinking, by our habits and so forth. So we’re not free to choose how we might, you know, one would be choose no one would choose to become sick if they had a choice, but we don’t have a choice. No one would choose to, you know, to be unhappy.
But, you know, but we do we are unhappy a great deal of the time. We live under the influence of our past habits, conditioning. And I thought if we could break up into pairs and discuss this. I think it’s, you know, we looked at the fact that, you know, what we say, what we think, what we do, this doesn’t stop with the immediate effect. It has a long range effect.
It leaves a karmic seed. And by karmic seeds we simply mean minds are conditioned, that our minds are there’s a residue left in our minds. It’s like, you know, just like if you had a traumatic incident when you were small. That may, to a lesser or greater degree, influence you for the rest of your life. It’s not like you just left it behind.
And it’s going to color the way that you look at your world, how relate with people and situations, for better or worse. But does Karl have also things you didn’t do that you should have done? Oh, sins of omission? Yes. To put it in my question.
Were you a Catholic? Yes. Well, you know, I think in my own in my own life, there are things that I should have done. Sometimes in a quite distant past, you know, I didn’t do it. And I think, oh, you you think years and years and years later, should have done that, I should have said that.
Yeah, yeah, And now the consequences go on, roll on. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, understand very well. I mean, can identify that. I don’t think not the not doing, but it’s the feeling that you thought I should have done.
Oh, I see, yes. Yes. That’s a point, yes. Because karma is intention, and if there’s no intention, there’s no karma. So just the fact that you didn’t do something I should, yeah.
You feel bad about yourself. You feel bad about yourself and you feel guilty and so on. Whereas in the context of the moment at the time, back almost, maybe it might have been a sensible thing to have done. Yeah. Also, our memories are I never go back and have a promise, didn’t I?
No, that’s right. Yeah, but you don’t necessarily have to allow you know, we can’t change the past, but we can change our attitude toward the past. It’s just that it doesn’t affect our future. That’s right. But if we’re willing to work with that, and this is one of the areas that we can work with.
I one of the positive, optimistic notions in Buddhism is that we don’t have to be bound by our karma. There are ways that we can work with our past karma such that we don’t have to experience the result of that past karma. It’s not immutable. It’s not fixed in stone. Our minds created it and our minds can remove it from our minds if we do something about it.
Otherwise, it will play itself out eventually, infinitely into the future. We said, you know, and again, there’s no moral judgment being made in terms of karma. It’s just that certain our actions have a certain ethical quality, and this is in terms of the quality of its result. Certain actions will you know, it’s like, you know, they have a glass of water. I mean, this is a very simple minded example, but I think it’s useful to look at in a way.
You know, some people look at the glass of water. Some people see it and they see a glass that’s half full. Some people see a glass that’s half empty. So we’re predisposed to look at things in a particular way. And this is our karma.
Now it may not appear to it’s no big deal whether you see a glass half empty or half full. But if you kind of generalize that to your life, your approach to life, some people say, see all kinds of opportunities and they see positive and they feel very fortunate. They look at life in a very positive fashion. Other people say, Oh, it’s half empty. What I’ve missed, what I’ve lost, what’s wrong with my life.
It could be the same life. They’re just looking at it from two different perspectives. And that’s our predispositions, you know, in which we filter our experience. We filter how we see our world through our past conditioning. That’s our karma.
No judgment. Judgment being made. It seems as if it would be, in general, in general, you know, we could play around this, just in general, it would be probably preferably to see the glass half full, in general, to see life as positive as opportunity. Mean, you wouldn’t want to be would you call it romanticize. Wouldn’t want it to be, you know, look at life through rose colored glasses, see everybody’s beautiful, there’s nothing, you know, maybe that wouldn’t work very well.
But on critical energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But I’m just making a generality. Rather than being a pessimist, optimists are actually happier people than pessimists, you know.
They actually experience a greater amount of happiness in their life, people who see life as positive as opposed to those who see the negative part. They might both see the same situation, but one sees the positive aspects and another sees the negative aspects. And the person who sees the positive aspect experiences more happiness. Okay, those actions actions is a Sanskrit word for karma, are past ways of thinking, speaking, and acting which result in positive effects. Basically happiness, we call positive karma.
That’s the only reason we call it positive karma. Generosity, patience, love, these all bring about positive results. Therefore, these are positive attitudes. They create positive karma and so forth. Know, killing, stealing, lying, covetousness and so forth, these are said to be negative actions.
Why? Because they bring about types of negative results. That’s the only reason we call them negative, because they bring some kind of dissatisfactory experience in the future. That’s the only reason. So there is this correlation between the action and its result.
Positive actions bring about positive results. Negative actions bring about negative results. And this relationship is just by way of definition, it’s invariable. I thought if we could break up just for a few minutes into groups, where we have maybe pairs. What I’d like you to, in terms of a karma, just a way of looking at karma, and just reflecting upon your everyday experience and considering how much conscious control you have over your happiness and suffering that you, you know, your everyday experiences, how much conscious control do you feel that you have over that, whether your average everyday experience is happy or suffering?
And can identify in any ways that your past conditioning, your past, your habits are playing a role in what happens to, how you experience your life. You know, just like in this half glass of water. Is there any way that you feel that maybe you can identify that your past conditioning, the way that you approach things, the way that you see things, your past habit, are the part they’re playing in bringing about your experience of life in terms of happiness and suffering. So two questions, related in a way. How much conscious control do you feel that you have in terms of your everyday happiness and suffering?
Or sometimes we feel like life is just an accident. It just happens to us. You you get hit by a car and you’re just driving down the street and some car runs into you. Sometimes that’s the way that we have. We have a sense about the way happiness and suffering just kind of run into us.
Other times we feel, Oh, I’m in control of my life. How much control do you feel that I can exercise in how much happiness I have every day? Can I choose to be happy and I’m happy? I don’t know if anybody chooses to suffer, but maybe they do. Or is it like just simply completely out of my control, like an accident, or is it somewhere in between?
And how much part conditioning, your past habits, your habitual ways of looking at things, the way you approach, your tendencies, how much is that playing a part in your happiness and suffering? Okay, is that fairly clear? Could we divide up into pairs I think people could have kept on going. A belief in what way? You’re confident yourself that you can be happy.
I think that helps, yeah. Look at, for sure. So in terms of how much conscious control we have of our daily happiness and suffering, and whether we can begin to identify any past tendencies of the mind, conditioning of the mind, play a part in our happiness and suffering. Have anything? Just saying, I was just saying, like, have always thought I did to some degree and sometimes would still do think I have control over, but I’m happy.
I’m not I think experience kinda contradicts that belief. Yeah. Because I some some days, everything is externally really, really good. Yeah. Conditions around.
Yeah. But sometimes still feel like discontentment You can’t identify where I’m fan of works the opposite as well, sometimes. Can’t identify your happiness? You can’t identify the source of your happiness? Well, yeah, yeah, Sometimes things covered can be, like, like, like, you know, all over my surroundings.
Yeah. You feel totally content and totally followed by it. It’s interesting. I’ve found the cause of that is actually a stable mind and bit of meditation or something like that. Yeah.
So I think the cause of that is a bit easier to identify. Yeah. Do you have any do you like to share? Yeah. This is confusing.
You were talking about like, karma. You should be kind. No. Not should. What do want to do should on yourself?
Kind, loving, generous. These are kind of examples of positive Yeah. But my experience is the more you are, I think the more people take advantage of it. Yeah, that’s interesting isn’t it? Lately I feel I just have lodgers in my house that I don’t want.
I can’t say no and I seem to be getting phone calls. We know where to stay, can we come to you? And I keep saying yes. I’m totally frustrated. There’s also, sometimes I want to do it when I can’t, there’s a capacity or a limit of what we can actually do without it being too much.
I think there’s a personal capacity that’s always I just seem to have a flow all the time, you know that. Sometimes I just want to go and live in an aisle. Want to go away. Can’t get any time to myself and I need that. I want that.
If you say no, you feel guilty? Yeah, don’t like myself if I say no. Sometimes. But you won’t like yourself even more if you say yeah and then you get annoyed of them. Yeah.
So I don’t know what to do. And you know you’re supposed to help people and I keep thinking what would the Dalai Lama do? They live in temples and all passers by seem to welcome them into their temples and feed them and look after them. Yeah, but they are not going to starve and they are not going to go homeless if you say no, they just going to find somewhere else. Know.
Like and I can’t see it ending because I know I’m expecting a lot more. Sorry. I keep saying, you have to let say no!’ You don’t have to say no badly, but you can say no, I’m full up. No fake. You don’t even have to say lie, you can just say no, I’m just exhausted at the moment’.
So you don’t have to invent something, can just say no, I’m sorry, I’m just feeling like I need some time to myself’ and feeling very run down and I have to say no at the moment and please respect my wishes. You should have been a diplomat. That sounds good but I don’t know if I can put it into practice. Sounds right. I mean, I I will Even if you write it down to say something.
And the ones that are there that you find people you’re gonna sign up, you know, you’ve been here for so long, you have you have to find somewhere else in the next couple of weeks. Anyway, that was my point. So this experience of frustration and Yeah, but Ed was saying to me, Where did this begin? And I remember where it began. Okay.
I always remember growing up. My mother always said, Yvonne won’t mind. Yvonne won’t mind running to the shop for you. Or Yvonne won’t mind this. Or, Yvonne won’t mind that.
And I remember the nonsense school saying, go over there, Yvonne. So what what lesson did you take from there? I didn’t, that was the problem. Mean, mother’s not around anymore, so something’s continued in you. I’m still doing it.
What are you doing? I just seem to be running around after everybody, you know. With what kind of attitude? I don’t mind until I get tired. And I get tired, you know, sometimes I stop and I think I want to do things.
I’m trying to write a book at the moment and I just can’t seem to get time. Even when I am in and I close my bedroom door, want to put do not disturb’ sign on the door. Somebody will always knock. You know when you’re writing and you’re in the middle of something and you’re getting this inspiration from somewhere and I’m getting these ideas. They’re my pen and suddenly my husband might come in and say, Did you know the Turks built the pyramids before the Aztecs or this?
And he’d go on and on and on. And then he leaves the room and I’m thinking where’s my idea gone? It’s gone! All the inspiration I had in my head is gone and there’s nothing on the paper. Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
You know, or where’s my socks or something silly. Anyway, anyway, I just need time on my own something. So you you have you don’t have much control over that area of your life? Busy, very busy household. Yeah.
So these things are always somebody coming. So you’re suffering happiness or pretty out of your control? I wouldn’t say I’m unhappy. I get frustrated. Very frustrated.
I just feel like, leave me alone. Leave me alone. I’m drained, drained. And in what way does your past conditioning or past habits, how are they playing a part? Are they playing a role in this situation, in creating these kinds of situations?
Yeah, that’s because I was sort of brought up to So was talking about, you know, being, trying to put circles around ourselves when situations got very difficult so that you’re able to stay positive and calm in the middle of chaos, or say a difficult work environment or something. Yeah. So you’re not overly I mean, it’s this business of being overly empathetic and to the point where you’re taking on somebody else’s suffering and that you’re not being a good enough parent or whatever because you’re not able to stand back and say no and look after yourself because you’re so busy dishing out all the time and trying to make everybody else happy. It’s quite similar isn’t it? It’s bit silly.
That’s That’s all we get on to, well, so So that’s a source of dissatisfaction? Well, I just think it’s, for me, it’s become completely unproductive, like in terms of say with my daughter that’s quite distressed at the moment. I can’t take on her distress because that’s not going to help her, it’s just going to make her even more distressed. So I’ve got to sort of learn to stand back and say no, you know, not no but just leave her if she’s over the top. I’ve got to learn to just stand back and it’s alright not to go in and try and rescue all the time.
I just need to be trying to rescue you everywhere. And it’s okay, it’s okay not to. You know, you rescue children but you don’t rescue people with some sort of autonomy. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you have this tendency to rescue? Yeah. Try to rescue, try to make things better. This becomes they just make things worse. Make things worse.
And becomes a source of difficulty for yourself? I think that’s pretty common. That’s pretty common. So when when does compassion and empathy and trying to help, when does it fall over into rescue? What’s the borderline?
I see that’s where I think it is difficult. I see it’s where you’re starting to get as distressed as they are, then you’re not helping anymore because you’ve sort of become so caught up in their suffering or their that you can no longer you’re no longer a help. You become you take on their suffering, but it doesn’t harm their suffering. Just So you become part of the problem rather than the solution? But where that dividing line between empathy and, you know, I mean it’s like going to India and you see, you know, people so poor and you can’t help everyone and you want to.
And people so rich. And people so rich. You know what I mean? Like if you can’t manage it in your own life it’s very difficult to manage it even globally as well, you know. So some discrimination.
Yeah, think some sort of filter has to go on. I think it’s very difficult to know when you stop. I think that’s what you find as well. It’s where to Set boundaries so far. Yeah.
That’s yeah. It requires a lot of wisdom, doesn’t it? Discrimination. Would We want you to go off a bunch of stuff. We were just talking about we thought a lot of our suffering, of course, was conditioned conditioned from where when we were growing up.
And so but in fact, I think, agreed that we found little strategies strategies in in on a day by day basis for overcoming suffering, doing, you know, different different things. And but the the problem was, yes, that’s true. These strategies did overcome the suffering, but as an ongoing thing, the suffering came back. So it’s not vanished from our Just came back by itself. Exactly right.
And also, of course, you have your good days and your bad days. And on the bad days, you have to think, oh, well, you know, good days will come maybe in another hour’s time. So know? And and but, of course, it’s all it’s all conditional. You know?
Much of it is conditioned. But but learning learning how to to change on a day by day basis from unhappiness to that that’s the thing. You know? And developing the strategies, yes. Alright.
Of course. Course. But So you feel you. But but the the permanent movement to a happier sense, a happier a happier relationship with yourself is, I guess, what Buddhism is all about, isn’t it? Yeah.
Well, what I want anyway. Yeah. So you feel that you do have some control? Control? Well, yes, but only on a temporary basis.
Because suffering comes back. Out of your control. Out of our control. And of course you can do these things, the little things that you do do to set it aside. Who’s to say that tomorrow might be a week later, so we usually do it a week later, it’s tomorrow sort of thing, a couple of days later.
But isn’t that the human condition? What’s that? You know, there’s suffering and happiness and all shades in between. So this is this is what the Buddha this was the burning question that the Buddha wanted to before he was enlightened, he wanted to answer. Is this the situation we just have to put up with?
We have to take the bad along with the good. That was his question. He discovered that maybe it’s not the case. We don’t have to take the bad along with the good, but the life can be experienced in a completely what we might call, positive fashion, there’s no suffering whatsoever. That must be there.
Well, it’s an ideal, isn’t it? It’s an experience. But somebody like the Dalai Lama, you’ve got what’s going on in Tibet. That must affect him. I think it does.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it’s a matter of well Would he not get angry about that? He’s He just controls himself.
I don’t think he has I I don’t think it’s a matter of control, but I I doubt if he has much anger or any anger. No. I’ve I’ve been stunned reading letters that he’d write. Like, I I he basically and even even Sydney, he still described the Chinese as his brothers and sisters. He basically said that they don’t it was quite it was quite moving to see that all anybody else who had such anger, he he was still trying to to connect all of them brothers and sisters?
Yeah. Is that the way it is? So he just accepts the situation? No. He doesn’t accept the situation.
It’s just that you don’t I mean, anger is not an effective way either for yourself or a very effective way to deal with the situation. It doesn’t. It’s not a very productive way. When you become well, I mean, when you become angry, you don’t become very right, you’re not very rational, and you don’t think clearly. You’re not a very effective person in coming up with a solution.
But you must feel I mean, I think one of the images I always think of, you know, is some of the people passing from Tibet trying to go to India on the thing and somebody shooting people off. And that image of these little figures, which look like nothing, know what mean? But they’re human beings. There’s somebody shooting them. The Chinese shooting them as they’re trying to get away.
And I just think It’s a very upsetting image. Yeah, just think you see them fall on the snow and things and you just think, how could somebody do that to another human being? I mean, I don’t know how, you know, but the Dalai Lama must have seen Oh yeah, yeah, It must be very hard. Look what did the Twin Towers. Yeah.
But the point being that the guys that did it and the people who are sympathetic to their cause still probably mark this up as one of their big achievements. Yeah. You see? You know? They they probably see it as extremely positive.
We showed those yanks, those westerners, those Christians, whoever they choose to think of them as. Usually, people who do those sorts of things don’t see the other people as as human beings like them. Yeah. They’re Christians or they’re Westerners or whatever. We do that as well.
And we do. Absolutely. I’m not being superior about this. We see them as Muslims or Yeah. Or whatever.
You know? So it just that’s true. I was thinking watching the AFL last night for a while, and this this might seem rather trivial, but but, yeah, the the one of the halftime or something or quartertime break or something rather, the coach on the other side would say, these guys beat us in the grand final last year. We’re gonna go out there and make sure we don’t have this humility. Visit the dollars again sort of thing.
You guys ride Off they go. Yeah. There’s steam coming out from from their ears and the top of their heads and so forth. I mean, it it’s not it’s not I mean, there are there are degrees and types of anger I know, but within the context of the AFL, which is a pretty trivial sort of business anyway, these guys, they were motivated. You see?
They were vandered. You want this humiliation again like we had last year. You remember that? No. You’ll ask.
We’re going out and you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the armies, I believe.
Exactly right. Or companies. You know? Or like daughters Against their computers. If you die in the name of Allah, you go to heaven.
Of course. They believe that. Yeah. And the guys believe it. The the guys that were did the nine eleven thing, all being good Muslim lads, or went to Las Vegas or something a couple of weeks beforehand and watched all the strippers take their clothes off.
Shocking business. The reason they were doing it was they knew they were going to die. When they got to heaven up their valour, they could have any number of virgins they like. So sorry. No, No.
No. No. No. Just you know, the and, of course, we we think we they think these terrible things about us, and we think those terrible things about them. So Okay.
She started to talk. No, nothing else to say. Sally Ann said it very well. Can I ask you if, you know, how much do you feel like you have control over your happiness and stuff in your everyday life? And do you see the tendencies from the past, habits and the ways of viewing things that have playing a part in how how you experience what kind of experiences you have?
Yeah. I I do think I’m getting better than I know I can’t control the things outside of my mind, so I’m Yeah. Wax. And and your past these past ways of seeing things and past habits, they play a part in your everyday happiness and suffering? I think I can see ways from my past and ways from my upbringing that haven’t been entirely positive and using that as a way to move forward in Yeah.
Yeah. I thought you you can change. You can come to a point of happiness by changing your mindset or or point of resolution. And in terms of patterns from the past, I mean, this morning was a great example. I was rushing out the door thinking, oh my god.
I’m gonna be late. At least I wasn’t as late as last time. I’m thinking, you Yeah. Yeah. So I’m just trying to get across the idea that karma is not some abstract principle.
It has practical effects in our everyday life. But it doesn’t as was mentioned, that we can change we work with our karma, these patterns of mind and these predispositions and tendencies that we have, these karmic seeds in our mind, so it’s not set in stone. Within the true origins of suffering. There are two types, karma, but the other is afflictive emotions. And afflictive emotions, again, Buddhism does not make in any moral judgments.
We have certain we have a variety of emotions. Some we call positive, some we call negative. Are those negative emotions, and by negative emotions I mean emotions such as hatred and jealousy and attachment and pride and, most basically, ignorance or lack of wisdom. The mind is simply prejudiced in one way or another. You know, for example, hatred.
It’s a sort of emotion which might rely upon superficial reasons, you know, like this person really hurt me terribly. But deep down, if you really pursue that reasoning, you find it really doesn’t go very far. So emotions without any proper reason as a basis, we would call negative emotions. On the other hand, another kind of emotion, such as compassion or altruism or generosity and so forth, emotions which are Because if we investigate them, we can see that they are good, necessary, useful. So they seem to be quite reasonable.
They work. So we call those positive emotions. So we’re not making, you know, we’re not saying you shouldn’t have hatred just simply because, you know, it says so in a text and so forth. It’s simply that negative emotions don’t work very well in our lives and that moreover they bring about, they motivate us to create actions which, let us say are of a negative type, bring about an experience of suffering in the future. So it’s all very kind of pragmatic.
It all hinges around what causes us problems, suffering, what causes us happiness. And the basis of all of the afflictive emotions is ignorance. Now this is a very big central subject within Buddhism. But what do we mean by ignorance? In the West, use the term ignorance.
It can mean we just simply don’t know something. You know, I’m ignorant about computers. I don’t know what’s on the other side of that wall. That’s simply not knowing is not what we mean by ignorance here. Ignorance is more of an act of misknowing.
So it’s a wrong wrong knowing. And specifically in terms of the nature of we can use one level of ignorance, one understanding of ignorance, for example, with regard to the I, the Self. Whenever a desire, desirous attachment or hatred is generated in our minds, there is always at its core a sense of a very solid, concrete I or self. You know, when we get angry, for example, I can’t stand you. I hate you.
And it’s like we almost are pointing to something. There’s something deep within inside of ourselves that repulse, that feels threatened. On the other hand, when we feel in a very strong attachment, you know, I can’t live without you. I can’t go on like this any longer. That I is a very strong, very concrete, solid I.
Or when we have a pride, you know, I’m the best thing that ever came along. We’re not talking about our body, we’re not talking about our mind, we’re talking about I, me. There’s always an exaggerated sense of I, of Self, a very solid concrete I. When we look at the way we suffer and normally think and react in motion to life, it is as if that we believe that we are a self that is a partless whole, that is unchanging and enduring throughout time, and that exists there’s an I which we identify with which exists independent of the body and mind. That which believes in the existence of such an I, of self, is what we call ignorance.
It is a wrong conception. It is a wrong belief. Due to this ignorance, we conceive of ourselves as totally separate from everything else. Based upon that, self self centeredness, we develop attachment to this I. In developing self centeredness, we go on to develop a sense of I in mind and out of that me versus the world.
I’m over here, you’re over there. There’s this thick boundary between ourselves and other people, the world about us, our environment and so forth. We develop attachment for anything which we have a sense that is enhancing, is going to somehow bring about the welfare of this I. We develop hostility, hatred, repulsion to anything which we see as a threat to this I. So all of the very specific emotions, and therefore all karma, which is motivated by these afflictive emotions, has its origin in the root affliction of ignorance.
And this root affliction of ignorance is this wrong belief in the nature of the I, the Self. Now one thing we should understand is that the I, the Self, exists. We’re not saying the I, the Self, exist. I’m talking to you, you’re talking to me, you may be listening to me. Jamyang exists.
This person exists. But I don’t exist the way that ignorance conceives of myself to exist. And we have some wrong conceptions around that. We’re going to talk more about that when we come to the true paths because we have to develop a wisdom understanding the way things actually exist, which acts as an antidote to this ignorance. The basis of all our afflictive emotions, all our suffering, is ignorance.
Due to ignorance we develop hostility, we develop hatred, attachment, and so forth. Motivated by hatred, attachment, and so forth, we involve ourselves in action, ways of thinking, speaking, acting. We create karma, and therefore this tends to cause us to condition our mind in such a way that we go on to perpetuate what amounts to a dissatisfactory way of life, a particular approach, a way of living our life. Operationally, so the basis is ignorance, but operationally in our day to day life it is attachment attachment which is most immediate cause of our problems. Know, ignorance is the root, but at an immediate level it is attachment due to which we experience our difficulties in our everyday life.
It might be attachment to it could be a person or money or possessions or sex or power or position, any idea, almost anything. What do we mean by attachment? We mean that the mind is unable to let go. It’s like it’s fixated, you know, on some object. It exaggerates the agreeable qualities of the object.
There’s a sense of only I were able to make that mine, then I would be eternally happy. The nature of the object is such that it is able to bring me bliss in some way or another. So the mind is addicted. It can’t let go. Anything which we see as obstructing us getting what we want, what we’re attached to, what we desire, we develop hostility.
So we develop attachment, let us say a fixated, we become we can’t let go, we can’t move on, And anything which we see as obstructing us from fulfilling our desires, we develop anger. We develop hostility. So in our everyday operation of our everyday life, it is attachment which is functioning most apparently. You know, but I think one thing that we have to make a distinction between is we’re not saying that all desire is afflictive. Not all desire desirous attachment.
We can have reasonable desires, you know, desire to get to work on time, desire to, you know, to have some space in your everyday life perhaps, or the desire to be happy. You know, these are quite all very reasonable desires. The desirous attachment we’re talking about here is there’s always an exaggeration. All the effects of emotion exaggerate either in terms of, in the case of a desire, desirous attachment, the attractive qualities of the object. In the case of negative emotions such as hatred, unattractive qualities of the objects are exaggerated.
And the mind is unable to let go. It’s fixated. It can’t move on. Just because we engage in doing something we want does not mean that it’s being necessarily motivated by an afflicted desire. So we’re going to come back to that, you know, in terms of the nature of the I, the nature of the Self, ignorance.
True origins. There are two causes of suffering. We call these two origins. Origins. The first is karma and afflictive emotions.
Of these two, the main is afflictive emotions. Why? Because it is these emotions which motivate us to act, to create karma. The root of the afflictive emotions is ignorance. This misconception or wrong belief in the nature, and here we can just talk about in terms of the I, the self.
We believe that we are an unchanging, partless, independent I at the core of our being. That which believes this, which holds that, is ignorance. Based upon that we go on to develop attachment for which seems to enhance this I, this Self. We develop hostility for anything which we see as a threat, which is somehow going to bring about, disturb the welfare of this I, this Self. So all the afflictive emotions have at their root basic ignorance.
And then we’re going to look at, so those are the true origins of suffering. And then we’re going to look at the remaining two of the Four Noble Truths. Should we take a break? Get a cup of tea or coffee? Was listening at the same time.