Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 69-minute session, Ven Jamyang guides practitioners through breath meditation and analytical reflection on the three poisonous minds—ignorance, attachment, and aversion—as root causes of suffering. Using quotes from the Dalai Lama and nun Thubten Chodron, he shows how ignorance about our true nature fuels self-grasping, which generates attachment to the pleasant and aversion to the threatening. Thubten Chodron illustrates how attachment becomes mental glue, while aversion distorts perception into hostility—both sowing seeds of greater karmic suffering. Practical techniques include investigating attractive objects by visualizing their components or reflecting on repulsive aspects. Throughout, Ven Jamyang emphasizes that delusions, not external circumstances, are the true enemy, and frames their recognition as the essential first step toward freedom. For those who have received Buddhist initiations.
File metadata (for organising)
File: session 5 Meditation on 3 poisinous minds with Chris Ridley.mp3
UUID: 639113b1-26b2-4395-810f-2ed19cad882e
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Presenting the Path (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 69.4 minutes
Words: ~3,020
Just becoming mindful of our posture. A good posture just helps to orientate the mind as to what we’re doing. So having a a straight back. Just tucking the chin in a little. In this tradition, we have our eyes slightly open.
You can just focus following a point down the bridge of the nose two or three feet in front so that we’re aware of what’s happening in the world around us, but drawing our attention inwardly. Relaxing the jaw so the teeth are not clenched. The tongue, the roof of the mouth just stops the flow of saliva. Us from dribbling. Just having our arms loosely by our sides.
You can have your hands on your knees or on your lap, but traditionally right and left with thumbs touching to form a triangle about the level of the navel. It just helps with our concentration, the flow of energy, and among many things symbolizing the bringing together of wisdom and compassion. So have a sense of being connected to the earth, being grounded like a mountain, with a sense of dignity. Just scanning the body for any tension and tightness, especially where we hold stress in the muscles, in the face, the brow, around the eyes, the back of the neck, across the shoulders. Just noting how our body is at this moment.
Just relaxing the shoulders. Noticing the well, the muscles supporting our spine, our back, and chest, the lower back, the abdominal area, pelvic area. Just settling into the body. We may not like what we experience, but just having the courage to be with what is. Feeling the chair or the cushion supporting us underneath.
The muscles in the thighs, around the knees, the calves, the feet, and, of course, the arms and hands, fingers. Fingers. So just being happy to be with the body. And then the most important thing is to be thinking of our motivation, our purpose for being here this morning, to find some peace of mind, to try and connect with what is important to us, recognizing that we don’t want to suffer, that we want to be happy, that we have tried throughout our life and infinite lives to find a state free of suffering and happiness. But then thinking that just as I don’t want to suffer and want to be happy, then we’re are no different to anybody else.
In fact, all beings are the same. We are all equal. And so we can expand our concerns to others, our family, loved ones, friends. That the greatest motivation that we can have is to actualize all our positive, all our good qualities, separate ourselves from all those that cause us to harm, so that we can be of ultimate benefit, not just to ourselves, but to all beings. And the Buddha was just like us, an ordinary person, and he did this.
He achieved it. So he is a reliable model, one that we can take refuge in. And he has given us the teachings to show us how to do this, so that we can have faith and confidence that it is possible to actualize our own Buddha potential, our own Buddha nature. And we can have the support and encouragement of those who are on the path, our spiritual friends. And so, these sentient beings are summarized and capsulated in the refuge and bodhicitta prayer, which is on the yellow sheet.
We’ll say this three times together and the four immeasurables. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. My practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from the happiness that is free from suffering.
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for friends and hatred for enemies. So as I said earlier, we are taking the breath as the object of our meditation this morning. So just noticing a point of as the air enters and leaves the nose or the rising and falling the diaphragm and just resting your attention at this point. You can be sure that the mind will be curious, but then distracted, being drawn into thinking about what’s been happening in the past or what’s about to happen in the future or down the track. So just gently but firmly making a determination to bring the attention back to the breath.
Just lovingly and kindly but firmly. And this is the practice. Not getting caught up with the story, the endless chatter, or the distraction that our body of any aches and pains. When we are distracted, just say thinking, bring your mind back to the breath. It’s it’s helpful.
You can count the breath. Breathing in, breathing out one, breathing in, breathing out two, say up to five. When we’re distracted, just say thinking, bring the mind back and start counting again. May not get past one or two, that doesn’t matter. And then when the mind settles, you can suspend the counting.
Whatever is helpful to you. So, just taking two or three deeper, slightly deeper breaths, we’ll continue until it’s time to stop and you hear the bell. Just watching the breath. Just watching the breath. Just take a minute to quietly stretch.
So we proceed with our analytical meditation. And as I said earlier, we take whatever stability of our mind that we’ve achieved from being mindful of the breath and this time we actively engage with the topic, toss it around in our thinking, check it out against our own experience. And when we get a sense of the topic, then we hold that, suspend our analysis until that feeling fades and then continue again. So, today’s analytical meditation topic, as I said, is the causes of suffering, which can be summarized as the three poisonous or deluded minds. And the Buddha describes these as attachment and aversion, which naturally arise from their common root, ignorance.
Ignorance of what? Ignorance of how we and everything actually exist. It is an all pervasive misunderstanding that what appears in the world of our experience, especially our sense of being me, this I, is independently, inherently, truly existent. Intellectually, we may appreciate that we and everything is interdependent, interconnected, not separate from causes, conditions, beliefs, culture, language, and so on. But at the ordinary day to day level Buddhism asserts, and we must investigate this for ourselves, our experience is the opposite.
It’s like talking about the sun rising and setting, because this is how it appears to us. But of course we know that the sun isn’t moving at all, it’s we are. We and phenomena definitely exist, but how things exist and how we know this has seen modern science engaged in intriguing dialogue with such wisdom traditions as Buddhism. We don’t have some biological flaw in our nature, just a long standing confusion about the true nature of our own mind. A major consequence of this wrong view, as Buddhism describes it, is that we understandably grasp onto what we identify as me and mine with a subtle and usually not so subtle sense of superiority, self justification, self importance, self importance, self centeredness, including self pity and unworthiness.
However, it’s only when we stop and think carefully, we come to realize that there is in fact no rational basis to such a position. We are all equal in wanting to be happy and not wanting to suffer. However, we experience aversion at the most subtle levels such as faint irritation right up to blatant homicide against the other. We can also mistakenly turn against ourselves as the enemy, engage in self harm. Our delusions are the enemy, not us.
We then act, speak and think in ways which, like a musician with a faulty instrument, create discord and disharmony. Or to use a traditional agricultural analogy, we unwittingly sow poisonous seeds. Now karma, which in the fertile soil of an unpeaceful deluded mind gives rise to its poisonous suffering results. Unfortunately, following the laws of karma, the result is always much greater than the original cause. And there are many ways this plays out in the ways that we suffer, which was the topic last week.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, and I quote, This attitude underlies most of our ordinary states of mind as well as the various states of existence in saṃsāra and this is the root of all delusions. Therefore, he says, the first task of a practitioner of compassion and a good heart is to gain an understanding of the destructive nature of the delusions and how they naturally lead to undesirable consequences. So the aim of today’s meditation is to realize that it is the most powerful vicious cycle of attachment and aversion due to our confused mind that are the causes of our suffering. Just as with a snake bite, once we’ve identified the cause, the source of the poison, we can seek out and apply the correct antidote. So just taking up your posture, I’ll present some ideas for us to contemplate.
His Holiness says, One of the best human qualities is our intelligence, which enables us to judge what is wholesome and what is unwholesome, what is beneficial and what is harmful. Negative thoughts such as anger and strong attachment destroy their special human quality. This is indeed very sad. When anger or attachment dominates the mind, a person becomes almost crazed, and I’m certain that nobody wishes to be crazy. Under their power, we commit all kinds of acts, often having far reaching and destructive consequences.
Person gripped by such states of mind and emotion is like a blind person who cannot see where he is going. Yet we neglect to challenge these negative thoughts and emotions, which then lead to near insanity. On the contrary, we often nurture and reinforce them. By doing so, we are in fact making ourselves prey to their destructive power. When you reflect along these lines, you will realize that our true enemy is within, not outside ourselves.
Again, His Holiness. Let me give you another example. When your mind is trained in self discipline, even if you are surrounded by hostile forces, your peace of mind will hardly be disturbed. On the other hand, your mental peace and calm can easily be disrupted by your own negative thoughts and emotions. So I repeat, the real enemy is within, not outside.
Buddhist nun Thubten Chodron says: How I am deceived by attachment. It appears to bring happiness. I want something, and I do actions to get it. If I succeed, a temporary pleasure arises and I think I’m happy. Then my mind thinks up another thing to get to make me feel good.
Soon I run around doing things and saying things to get this other thing that I want. I feel unhappy when I don’t get it. I feel good when I do get it. It never stops. I think of another thing to get to make me feel happy.
How many times do I do this in a day, in a week, a month, a year? She says desirous attachment exaggerates the attractiveness of a person or thing, and this mind wishes to possess and hold onto it. She says it’s like mental glue or an oil stain on a white cloth, as if this mind absorbs into its object. We experience this continuously because our minds are always in contact with desirous objects. It is the attachment, she says, that clings to self and phenomena as inherently existent, that is the basis of all delusions and the root cause of cyclic existence.
With grasping mind, we become attached to our money, possessions, friends, house, our own body, food, ideas, sleep, our appearance, our career, even our mistakes, or our spiritual practice and the virtuous things that we do. She advises that visual appearance has two components, shape and color. If it is the shape that you find most appealing, he says, imagine the shape of the object of desirous attachment dissected into its various components. If the color is what attracts you, then imagine the color changing into something unappealing. One can also reflect on the repulsive aspects of the object, such as, for a body, blood, feces, pus, urine, decaying, flesh, etc.
Thubten Chodron reminds us to be clear of what we are abandoning. I’m not giving up sense objects or pleasant feelings, she says, only the attachment that craves for happiness. It is not an attitude of rejecting the world, but rather of being objective about my experiences of pleasure and pain. Feelings come and go, and it is possible to experience them without craving. I can do that.
Why? Because ignorance is the cause of attachment. Ultimately, I’m working to abandon ignorance and realize the empty or interdependent nature of myself and of all phenomena. Who is there to crave? What is there to crave after?
The problem is not within the object of my attachment. The problem comes from my own mind. So my way of thinking and perceiving must change. Then I will see things as they really are. We exaggerate what we perceive to be unattractive, and so push it away in subtle and gross ways.
We become frustrated, depressed, irritated, speak harsh words, develop ill will and even kill. How we suffer due to the poison of aversion of anger. Venerable Thubten Chodron, also a psychologist, says: The root cause of our suffering is a misapprehension of how our sense of self, our I, exist, not really understanding one’s own true nature. This produces a wrong conception and a mistaken view of oneself, and so anger arises against anyone who disturbs one’s happiness. It may be the weather, a mosquito, or a person whom one loves very dearly.
What to do? Some final encouraging words from His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. As long as you remain under the domination of the delusions and their underlying states of ignorance, you have no possibility of achieving genuine, lasting happiness. This, I think, is a natural fact. If you feel deeply disturbed by this truth, you should respond by seeking a state of freedom from it.
If, as in my own case, you do not have sufficient time, it is quite difficult, isn’t it? I know that one factor preventing me from devoting myself fully to such a committed way of life is my own laziness. I’m a rather lazy Dalai Lama, the lazy Tenzin Gyatso, alright? Even if you cannot lead a single-minded life of Dharma practice, it is very beneficial to reflect on these teachings as much as possible and make efforts to consider as transitory all adverse circumstances and disturbances. Like ripples in a pool, they occur and soon disappear.
Insofar as our lives are karmically conditioned, they are characterised by endless cycles of problems which arise and then subside. One problem appears and passes and soon another one begins. They come and go in a ceaseless continuum. However, the continuum of our consciousness, for example Tenzin Gyatso’s consciousness, is beginningless. Though in a state of constant flux and ever changing dynamic process, the basic nature of consciousness never changes.
Such is the nature of our conditioned existence. And the realization of this truth makes it easy for me to relate to reality. This realistic outlook helps me to maintain my peace and calm. Through my own experience, I know the mind can be trained and by means of that training we can bring about a profound change within ourselves. That much I know, it is quite certain.
The topic for next week’s meditation is the Four Noble Truths, which encapsulates the Buddhist path. You’re very welcome to remain if you’re just here for the meditation this morning for a cup of tea, and there are some who are here for the day. And some of some of you have got a yellow ribbon which indicates silence. So we won’t talk to those people. Respect.
As usual, there’s always a feast of teachings and meditation teachings here at Buddha House. If you are new and don’t have a complimentary copy of the newsletter, then help yourself or have a look on the website. There are a lot of things coming up. There’s a weekend retreat with Geshe la, and he’ll be teaching at half past ten this morning. On the three principal aspects of the On the three principal aspects of the path, yes.
Which is the entire Buddhist path summarized under those three three topics. Is there anything that you would like to say, Julia? About a program or to About anything. People who are doing the weekend course, maybe we keep the as the place where you can be sure that you can stay in silence or you can have your tea in here. For the programme, I think next week there’s going be a meeting on Sunday at two o’clock about Buddha House and about the situation of Buddha House.
It will be if as many people as possible come to that meeting to hear what’s going on and to give you ideas and input. Another announcement is that my time at Buddha House is coming to an end, so I’m going be here another month and then I’ll be leaving. Teaching impermanence. Teaching in impermanence. Okay.
Well, thank you everybody. Help yourself to a cup of tea.