Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 52-minute talk from July 2009, Ven Jamyang uses classroom questions to explore how students habitually pursue happiness through grasping and escape suffering through aversion—uncovering the emotional cycle (desire, envy, anger, resentment, hatred) that results. He then identifies the root problem: the mind systematically deceives us through three fundamental misconceptions about how things exist—permanence, unity and independence, and intrinsic identity. After explaining the mind-body relationship and arguing logically that consciousness continues after death, he emphasizes that intellectual insight alone is insufficient; practitioners must combine wisdom with meditative practice to change ingrained patterns. The session concludes with guided instruction on anchoring attention to the body and breath. Suited for those new to Buddhism.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Intro to Buddhism week 1 July 2009.mp3
UUID: ee5e0cc6-dd5a-435c-970e-c90d0f9105af
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Intro to Buddhism (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 52.2 minutes
Words: ~6,412
So far. No? No. If you’re recording. Yes.
I’m recording now. Could you do a quick recap? Not sure if I can remember anything. So we have gone through the Four Noble Truths which was the first teaching of the Buddha where the first truth is the truth of suffering, life is in the nature of suffering. The second truth is there is a cause for that suffering or an origin for that suffering.
The third noble truth is that there is a cessation of suffering that there is a state of mind possible where that suffering doesn’t occur anymore and then the Fourth Noble Truth is there is a path to that suffering, to that freedom of suffering. There’s also a path to suffering but it’s another path. We’re very familiar with that one. So if you look into the first noble truth, the truth of suffering, if you look at life is in the nature of suffering it’s like trying to understand the disease that we are are suffering from, trying to understand why we create again and again problems and misery for ourselves although we try to become happy. So understanding what suffering is can help us to understand what we have to do in order to find the cause of that suffering and then what we have to do in order to remove that cause of suffering.
So looking into suffering there is one in Tibetan Buddhism one division and it’s a division of three and the first suffering is the suffering of suffering which is all the pains that we experience, the pain of old age sickness and death and birth and any disease that we can experience, any discomfort that we can experience is part of that. And the second suffering is the suffering of change and that refers to all the pleasurable experience that we have. The pleasure that we experience is the in dependence upon things that are impermanent by nature which means that the suffering, the pleasure that we experience from that thing, that particular thing necessarily will turn into suffering if we keep taking more of that. And you know it’s very easy to understand when you think about food or drinks that the first thing that you eat or drink is really nice and then you take another one and then maybe it’s a little bit less nice and then at a certain point if you keep drinking or eating it turns into suffering. And the last suffering, the third suffering in that little row is the suffering, the all pervasive suffering and that refers to the lack of freedom that we have in making choices basically.
It’s like we are so habituated to every time when we have the experience of pleasure we grasp onto that. And by grasping onto that we create create more dissatisfaction for ourselves, more feeling of being empty, more unhappiness and when we experience unpleasant feelings our natural tendency is to push that away and if we push hard we engage in harmful activities towards others which is actually the cause of our suffering. And we do not have a choice that, we do not have a freedom on that. It’s like we do that automatically. And that lack of freedom is called the all-pervasive suffering.
Is that enough? Thank you. So where do we go from here? Does anybody have any questions? So if we turn that around, I also wanna do a meditation with you guys today at the end.
So if we want happiness at the moment what we do is we grasp onto something isn’t it? And if we want to be free of suffering we have aversion. From this aversion many different things can come. If we have strong aversion what happens in the mind? What do we experience?
If we have big suffering what do we experience? Pain. And then what do we do in order to be free of that pain? Ignoring. Ignoring.
So that’s one strategy. Ignoring. Withdraw. Withdraw. Do something else to Distract yourself?
Yeah. Try to change it? Try to change it? Try to change the external world. Mhmm.
Yeah. Stronger version: If you really do not want something, I don’t want this. The tantrums? Anger? Yeah.
What else? If that is not enough, then Resentment. Resentment? Yeah. Grudge.
Grudge. That with two g’s or one? Yeah. Yep. And two s’s?
Yeah. Then if it still doesn’t go away, we might go to the resentment and grudges and hate. So we’re civilized people so we start with this isn’t it? And we’re quite good in this. We’re also quite good in this.
So we don’t have to go that many times to this. But you can imagine that if you would live in another society or if situations would change and you cannot get what you want no matter what you try, you know, then this can actually become very strong. So as long as the conditions are good we can appear as very peaceful people but only when the conditions changing we can check if we are really peaceful people. So what do we do in order to find happiness? How do we behave?
What appears in our mind that is part of that? Like, and you give off a — I’m trying to find the word. Make it look like you’re happy. You make it look like but what do you feel? You try to feel happy.
What do we describe as happiness? Free? Do you get free when you follow the grasping mind? What do we do in order to get what we want? Maybe I’m asking the We desire things.
Desire? And what if our neighbor has a nicer car than we have? Oh, one. Envy. Envy.
Yeah. That has Jealousy. Jealousy. Strong attachment, craving. And this can turn into violence, isn’t it?
So all these things make us quite miserable isn’t it? There’s no happiness in that. But what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to find happiness and we’re trying to be free of suffering and what we’re creating if you really look like it this is what we suffer from all the time unless we have some you know little breaks because we have some temporary pleasure. But if we would stop doing that, stop constantly feeling that comfort, we would end up in a quite miserable mind. So if we want to change that then I already mentioned there are two things that we try to do in Buddhism we try to get more wisdom, more understanding about reality because somehow our mind is fooling us all the time.
Our mind is telling us if you want to be happy you just follow this. And we do it and it’s not happening. If you want to be free of suffering this is what you follow and it gives us unhappiness. Somehow our mind is deceiving all the time. It’s giving us messages that are not in accord with reality and we believe it every time we prepare to believe it.
So by developing wisdom we try to counteract that deceiving nature of our own mind by seeing things for what they are That’s one thing The second thing that we can do is change this attitude Somehow try to stop this or turn it around or and there are many different techniques in doing that. Shall I start with the reality or with the change of attitude? You’re the teacher. I’m the teacher. Well the teacher sits down and thinks I’ll check with my students and see what they want.
The The reality. Okay. So we have this fooling mind. Why is our mind constantly fooling us? Well, let’s let’s see how Buddhism says that we exist, you know.
We have a body and we have a mind. In Buddhism, the body and the mind are two completely different things. First of all the mind is not only the thinking. You know we say when we talk about the mind we are talking about our thoughts. Mind in Buddhism is seated in the heart.
The mind is all our experiences and that what experiences. So every experience that we have is mind and that what we feel is experiencing is also mind. So the whole experience world that we have, that is the mind. And then we have the body. And the body is like the vehicle of the mind.
And everywhere where there is a mind there is a body and where there is a body as long as there is a life there is a mind. Right, they go together. They need each other in order to manifest like this. So when we die in Buddhism we say the body and the mind split. The mind goes its own way and the body, the moment that the mind leaves the body, the body is really dead.
You know, there is it’s just matter. The body is made out of matter. The mind is made out of an other kind of energy and that continues and that will look for another body. Then gets another body, comes into existence, functions person for a lifetime however long that is and then at the end of life there is that separation again. So the energy of the body is matter, is the same as everything that we see around in our environment, same energy.
The mind is a different energy. These energies they meet when we are alive. So they meet. They cannot interchange each other you know so mind cannot become matter, matter cannot become mind, they’re just very separate. If we think about reality, if we think about our own reality what we somehow believe is that whatever happens in the mind is reality and if you look at how our mind behaves then our mind is constantly engaged in stories.
It’s constantly commenting what we’re doing in the moment and where we are and who is all around us and then when we go home we can still see where we just been and we still keep on making stories and giving comments and we believe that that, these appearances, that that is reality. And we believe that that is true, that’s the truth. And Buddhism says that has nothing to do with the truth, nothing. It’s all made up stories. It’s all fantasy, our own fantasy world.
And because we believe it is true we base our whole, you know, how we look for happiness and how we try to become free of suffering, we base that on how we make the stories and it doesn’t work. So that’s one thing. So the thoughts that we have and the stories that we create is not the reality itself. Right, if I’m sitting here and I have a story about each of you in my mind going on and I believe that all these stories are true, I don’t know if they’re true. You know I describe things that I can say that is true but then we add a lot to that, isn’t it?
Yeah. I think you have chosen this teacher this morning because and then I make a story. Or if I see you I might think that I can see your house and your family and your must have you know. And somehow if that is very vivid that looks like that is reality it’s almost like you give me that information and somehow we believe it. Or when you hear me speak something you hear something.
I do not know what you hear. And whatever I say to you something starts to happen in your mind and you start believing that that is what I’ve said. Right? And then at the end we can’t remember exactly what was coming really for me and what was your own additions. We don’t know, they become one story.
And if you go home and you tell somebody home where you went and what happened then you tell a story. You tell what happened but you add something. You add your own flavor. And then we believe that that was true. And we can’t see where we add the flavor and what was, we can’t see that.
It just happens like that all the time. So there is a level of deception that is happening all the time. That’s one level. There’s only one level. So then one level.
So then we have a level of deception that we somehow believe that everything is permanent. Right, I just said a little bit about death that we believe that we’re not going to die. Somehow we have the feeling that we’re always going to be in this body because this is who we are. We do not have the feeling I borrowed this like a coat and one day I’ll drop the coat and I’ll find another coat. We believe this is who I am.
When I won’t have this body I don’t exist. True or not? We also have the feeling that somehow the body is not changing or we are not changing. So that this gives a disappointment after so many years to look in the mirror. Who’s this person?
We hold on to a permanency which is not there. We believe that everything around us is permanent. You come to Buddha house every weekend it looks like it’s every time the same. And yes some things are changing but in general it’s there all the time, permanent. If you look into reality and your own rational mind knows this, you know, then you know as soon as you start thinking about all the material things everything is impermanent.
It is impermanent on a gross level, you know, everything that comes into existence naturally will cease to exist. No matter how long it takes some things come into existence and they stay a long time before they cease. But whatever comes into existence has to cease, cannot stay in existence. True? Whatever is created will naturally die.
It’s like in birth there is already the package of death. It’s in birth itself that we die. We don’t see that, do we? When something comes and oh we are so excited, wow look what is this, and somehow we have believe it’s always going to be there. And when it ceases to exist we are disappointed.
How is that possible that that is gone? So that holding on to permanence why are we doing that? We are doing that. That is how our mind deceives us. That’s another way how the mind deceives us.
Then how we hold on to things is that if I see this table, this table appears as one thing or if I see a person I appear as one thing. There is only one Jamyang sitting here, isn’t it? One person. So the table comes across as unitary thing, a single thing. But if I’m to look into it then I’m going to say: So which single thing? I’ve seen many parts. Hands and arms and legs and then they’re going to say: So then which part is it? If there are many parts which part is Jamyang? And I say I can’t really point out one part because they’re all part. So I can say Oh it’s the whole collection’ but if I would chop up the parts and put them on a pile you would not say that was Jamyang.
So the parts have to work in a certain way for you to see me as that single entity. So I come across as a single entity and exist out of many parts. I come across as a permanent entity and I’m impermanent. And then I somehow come across as being independent and we all have that same feeling, you know. I’m an independent entity.
I do not depend on you guys for being here, but actually I do. You know, if you were not here, you know, for me it’s not much to do. And you depend on me, you know, and we all depend upon each other. And not only right now but if you look into for instance I want to go to the shop and buy a sweater. I have this feeling that you know I have the money in my purse.
I don’t think where does the money come from it’s just my money, it’s my money and I can decide if I go to the shop and I, you know the shop is there and I decide which sweater I buy and I feel complete in control. And I think I do this on my own, I do not need anybody to do this. But if I’m going to check where does the money come from, not only where does the money come from, who gave it to me, but where does the money come from, who makes the money and what is that whole system behind making money? And where does the purse come from? And what is the whole system behind making a purse?
Then I’m going to the shop. In order to be able to go to the shop there has to be a shop, there has to be a place where I can walk over, there has to in the shop there have to be the articles that I can choose from. How did I come into the shop? How many beings were involved in creating all this? And if you start thinking about that it’s like you can almost see the whole universe and everything that appears in front of us.
But things do not appear like that. Things appear independent And in fact they are completely dependent upon many, many, many beings, but also, you know, all their parts, all their causes and conditions. Things depend upon things. Nothing is independent. You understand what I’m saying?
Yeah. So that is how we have so when I think about me I think about that I’m unitary, that I’m independent and that I’m permanent. And all three is not right. All three is completely wrong. If you use your rational mind you can see that that is not true.
Can everybody understand this what I’m saying? So there is this for whatever reason, this is what our mind is telling us. This is and our mind what our mind is telling us depends upon this body, this human body. So this human body gives us these messages somehow And we believe it because that’s just how things are. We never check, is that right what my mind is telling me?
It feels my mind is always there, mind is always telling the truth. We don’t even have the idea that my mind can deceive me, that we might see things in a distorted way. But we see things all the time in a completely different way than they actually exist. And that is one of the reasons that we make mistakes, you know. When we see something, know, the cup of coffee, that appears as going to make me really happy.
And I never question that appearance. But there is a whole deception in that. If I buy a new car, some other car appears as permanent and then the first scratch comes on it and you think: How is that possible? It’s my car. It is a new car.
It shouldn’t happen, you know. But it happens. If you think about it, it happens. From the moment you drive out of the garage it’s going to happen. When we look into our own body, how is that possible?
Know, it is possible because our body depends upon many causes and conditions. We are impermanent so we will change all the time. So that’s one level of deceptiveness and I’ll stay with that today. You can go more subtle, you know, but we won’t do that today. And then if you have the body and the mind coming together we also have this feeling from the one side we’re never going to die.
How to say this? And from the other side we have the feeling that when I’m going to die I’m gone. These are also two, two, and if you look into how Buddhism explains reality then they say the mind is the one that keeps on living and the body is the one that we dispose of. That’s a very strange word to use that. Shit!
So when we when we have the feeling I’m going to live forever we in a way we are right because the mind stream will continue. But somehow we believe that the body is going to live forever. So we make a mistake there too. The body is not going to live forever. The mind is going to live forever.
And if we think that when I die I’m going to be annihilated that feels like I won’t exist anymore that’s a mistake again because what won’t exist anymore is the body but the mind will keep on living on. What we do Buddhism doesn’t have the theory that the mind exists, keeps on existing, you know they have reasons to say that. And one way of using the reasoning is saying that everything that comes into existence there are many causes and conditions needed for that. It’s like when you plant a tree you need many things for the seed to grow into a tree. When I have the seed of an apple tree having the expectation that it’s going to become a mango tree is not realistic.
That it’s necessarily going to become an apple tree. So I need a seed that is going to give me the result what I want. If I want to have a body I need a sperm and an egg and then I know that that can become a body, right? So the body comes into existence due to the sperm and the egg coming together but then you would need also certain conditions around that for the sperm and egg to become fertile, right? So yeah we know that.
If not all the conditions are there then the child will just go before it’s even born. In the same way the mind depends upon many causes and conditions. The mind comes comes into existence from something. If we look into the body and say it comes from the sperm and the egg then we can say it comes from there. We can point it out.
There is the causes. Then we need many many conditions and then we can also point out and there the body dies. We can say that point in time there the body dies. If you look into the mind where does the mind come from? The mind is a moment of experience.
So where does the moment that we have right now, where does that come from? So Buddhism says previous moment. If I feel happy now the chance that I feel happy in the next moment is quite big and the chance that I feel happy in the next moment is quite big. Then maybe certain conditions arise. I’ve just finished my cup of coffee so these conditions start feeling unhappy.
Then the mind starts to change. But they’re based from moment to moment to moment. And if we look back into our life, I can go back to when I was twenty and when I was ten years and I still had a feeling that was the same person, that was the same mind stream. I’ve grown in that period of time and that growth came about due to causes and conditions. If I invest my time in working like that I will end up quite miserable.
If that is the only thing I’m doing, feeding my grasping mind, trying to get away from all suffering that exists I become quite miserable. Right? If I want to be happy I have to create a cause and conditions to do that. So if mind comes from the previous moment of mind then I can say that must come from the previous moment and then I can trace back to the day I was born and then what was before that. I was in the womb.
I cannot remember but my mom taught me that I was kicking and moving. So there was a previous moment. There was already somebody doing that. That was me. And even I can’t remember doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
I was there. I can’t also remember my birth but it doesn’t mean I wasn’t born. So I trace back I must have been born because I have a body. So there must be a time before that that was in the womb. And then I go back to the time of conception and what was before that?
So then Buddhism says logically you have to say there was a moment before that. There was a moment of mind before that. If my mind would come into existence at the moment of conception my mind will cease to exist when I die. And if my mind comes into existence you have to give me a cause. Just like the sperm and the egg of body, what is the cause of the mind?
And you can’t find that, you know. And you can think about that when you go home you think about it. What is the cause of the mind? And mind is that what experiences, right? Your experience, that is mind.
Not just your thoughts and say oh that comes together with the brain. But what you experience, who you feel is you, that is the mind. Where does it come from? So you can trace it back. And then you can think so where does it go, you know, because I can think about how my mind is going to be tomorrow and you know next year and the year after and then there’s going to be a time that I’m about to die and I go through death and then what?
Do I stop to experience when I’m there? Or do I just continue to experience but I just shed my body? This is using your rational mind and trying to apply logic and then thinking about it. You don’t accept reincarnation, you think about it. And if it makes sense then you can say well yeah well you know.
And if it doesn’t make sense you say no that can’t be true, investigate it. And only when you can feel what this must be true then you can accept it. In the meantime you either investigate it or you just leave it. Moment you say I do not believe in reincarnation does that make reincarnation non existent? So whether or not we believe in it doesn’t mean it exists or not.
Yes so that is what I’m asking you not to say I do not believe it because what you do is you actually you can block yourself in your development. If you cannot make it a conclusion that’s fine and you say I don’t know if it exists or not. At the moment I can’t say it exists, but you know I’ll keep trying to think about it. And if you find another logic, tell me. And if you find the moment that you can say there the mind comes into existence, tell me.
You know because everything that exists must come somewhere in existence. True? So the mind we say the mind has existed since beginningless time but the moment of mind comes into existence somewhere. So Buddhism says that’s from previous moments it arises. And these are different, you know, this is like you have to think about it first and you put it away and then maybe the next day you think again and then you put it away and then you start thinking deeper and at a certain point you might come to the conclusion that you say: Wow!
With the suffering that’s true, I can see that. And then what you’re going do is you’re going to meditate on it so that you not only on an intellectual level can say that is true but you are actually going to bring it to deeper levels in your mind. Because where we are coming from every moment of our life is from a deep instinctive level. I want this in order to be happy. I need this.
If I have this I will be happy. It’s very, very deep instinct isn’t it? It’s like animals act on that instinct very, very easily. They know how to be happy. They’re constantly doing that. They know how to be free of suffering. We come from the same level most of the time. If we do not use a rational mind we come from exactly the same level. So if we want to change that habit we have to go to these deeper levels that are actually subconscious for us. We do not know why we actually engage in certain things. We just do it. And for some issues in our life we try to use our wisdom and we try to think about it and then we try to and then at a certain point we decide. If most of the time this is at least part of your motivation why you’re doing things. So if you want to change that mechanism you will have to go deep. We start on the surface and then everything that you’re doing will have an effect.
Right? But then if you want to take the root out of it, have to go to the deepest level. But we can start on the surface and then every step you make will have an effect. That’s the good thing about cause and effect, you know. Every step that you make will have an effect.
I think enough for today or not. I think your brains are going to go numb if I keep on talking. We can do a small meditation and just a meditation not to go into this but to give you feel about what meditation is. Meditation, I don’t know, it’s like becoming friends with your mind or learning to understand your mind, learning to connect with your mind, learning to sit with your mind. We know that if we have this addictive behavior we don’t like to sit with each ourselves is that we’re constantly driven to run away.
If we have a lot of suffering we do not like to sit with ourselves because it’s horrible, we just want to get away from it. So sitting with ourselves is in itself is already not always easy. In order to feel happy to sit with yourself you have to become good friends with yourself. So when we meditate we try to become friends with ourselves. We try to be gentle with ourselves, we try to be kind to ourselves and in the beginning what we do is we just look into the mind and we just sit with it and our mind has the habit to take off to another place.
Distract ourselves to get rid of the suffering, to free ourselves from suffering and a whole attachment is one big distraction Attachment means I want something which means the mind is already gone. Wanting something that means that I’m not happy with what I have right now. So both the mind of wanting and the mind of wanting to be free of things is a mind that is distracted. And we’re engaging all the time in that mind. So when you start sitting down what we try to do is to bring the mind to the body.
And we do that and the mind says: Oh, you know, where am I going? In ten minutes time this class is finished and the first thing I’m going to do is Or the mind says: True? I’m reading you guys’ minds. We’re all the same. Or you say: Oh I really want to you think about instead of being here you keep on thinking about what we just have discussed.
And it’s very difficult for the mind just to be here and to observe and to do nothing. Our mind is always doing something, trying to look for happiness, trying to be free of suffering. It’s doing that. So meditation is about stop doing and start being, start becoming a human being. We are these human doings all the time.
It’s like we wind ourselves up. When you meditate you first have to unwind unwinding feels like you sit on your cushion and you watch your body, you watch your mind and you ask your mind to be with your body or you try to focus your mind on your breathing where you observe the movements of your abdomen. Naturally the mind will take off and when you notice that you bring your mind back and then the mind runs to something else and when you notice it you bring your mind back. The next second the mind runs up and you bring your mind back. It’s like going to the gym and you do the exercise again and again and again and one day you will become strong you know with the mind same.
You keep on doing that, you keep repeating and at a certain point your mind will become stronger which means that when your mind starts taking off you say already oh no, no, no, no, come back. And then at a certain point you see the mind and you say oh no, come back and you can stay longer and longer. You can only do that when you train. So if you like to try that you can do that every day five minutes in the morning you just sit down and you do exactly what we’re going to do now. I’ll just guide you through that but the main instruction is that when you notice that your mind is thinking about something else than what I ask you to do you bring your mind back and try to refocus.
When your mind takes up you don’t get angry, you don’t get impatient, you don’t get agitated, nothing, you just okay come back, okay come back, okay you stay kind in doing that. What can focus on? Oh I’m going to tell you. You can focus on anything. I’ll tell you now.
You can focus on anything but our body is always in the present moment. So if we want to bring our mind to the present moment what is easier than to focus on your body? Then you can focus on your breathing because your breathing is there in every moment. But it’s more subtle than the body so it can be more difficult, know. The body itself can be easier than the breathing.
Then you can focus on the mind and you start looking in the mind. If you are beginner when you start looking in the mind the mind goes even more mad, know, so that can be difficult but we will try that somewhere, and the last one. When you see the focus on the mind, is the mind? How do you identify it and focus on it? How can you see the mind?
What you experience. So we’ll do that and maybe the last one. So you can focus focus on your thoughts and your emotions. You know, whatever is in the mind. But the body, you know, you can you can you can I don’t know?
I still enjoy just focusing on the body and just letting the mind calm down and that’s it and then you have space in your mind and then you know whatever seemed to be a problem before that it looks like when there was space in the mind somehow the problem can go. So when we meditate we try, the main thing that we’re trying to do is to have a straight back and further that we sit comfortable. So although we keep the back straight, at the same time, try to relax all your muscles. So you have an active posture, and at the same time, you are relaxed. And then you’re just aware that you’re sitting here on a chair.
You can feel your bum resting on the seat. And then you try to focus on your whole body, to let your mind stay with your body. If your mind is wandering off, you bring it back. And your mind doesn’t have to stay with one part of the body. It’s okay that if it wants to move around your body.
But you try to tell your mind that it is okay to take a rest. That it can stop doing. And when you start doing that, you can feel that mind keeps rushing and it doesn’t want to stop. Know that that is normal. But if you can somehow observe that in your mind and you just stay with your body, then you’re not running with your mind.
Then you’re not caught up into that running mind. You step out of it. By bringing your mind back to your body, you step out of the running aspect of your mind. If you notice that your mind is wandering off here, bring it gently back. And then you can bring your focus to your stomach where you can observe the rising and falling of your abdomen every time you breathe in and breathe out.
So now you don’t allow your mind to wander around on your body, but you try to let it rest on your abdomen. You try to focus it without pushing too hard on your abdomen. If your mind is distracted, bring it back. So next week, I’ll go more into the root of our why we are suffering, the root of that, the cause of that, which has a lot of to do with reality. And we’ll do a few more meditation exercises that you can try at home if you like.
Thank you. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you. And I hope to see you next week.