Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 57-minute teaching, Ven Jamyang walks students through meditation posture and breath awareness, then explores how we unconsciously escape pain through numbing and withdrawal, compulsive pleasure-seeking, or anger. He traces how these patterns, rooted in aversion to pain, paradoxically deepen the suffering and emptiness we’re fleeing. His central teaching: genuine freedom comes only by sitting with pain directly, allowing wisdom and compassion to arise naturally. Rather than something to escape, suffering becomes a gateway to spiritual growth. Jamyang maps each habitual response with clarity—the hungry-ghost cycles of craving, the isolation of anger—helping practitioners recognize their own patterns and discover that facing what we fear is how we actually find liberation and develop tools to help others.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Track 2-1.mp3
UUID: 48885224-d709-47bd-b988-a76901471e87
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Ultimate Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 57.3 minutes
Words: ~2,340
Taking care of the body. The body is not the one who is meditating, it’s the mind who meditates. But at the same time we can help the mind by bringing our body in a certain posture. And if you sit sit on the chair, it’s good to not lean backwards, but really have an an active posture. You might need a cushion under your feet to support it a little bit.
And if you sit on the ground, then it’s good to have enough cushions under your bum so that your back naturally straightens up. And then you can close your eyes and bring your awareness to your spine starting at your sacrum. And you can check the position, the posture that you have, and you can move your pelvis a little bit forward and backward, and find that position where you feel that your back naturally starts to straighten up without any effort. And it might be that you need very subtle movements in order to find that space. And if you feel that your pelvis is in the right posture, move your attention a little bit up to your lower back.
And you can imagine that you see all the vertebraes, one stacked on top of the other. And try to make a nice pile of it like coins. Starting with the lower one and then moving your attention slowly up, vertebrae by vertebrae to the middle of your back. All the way up to your neck. Drop your shoulders.
Your hands are in your lap. Relax. Your head is a little bit forward. Your jaws are relaxed, and your tongue is touching the palate. Having our eyes closed helps us not to be distracted by what we see.
But it can also help us to fall asleep or to get a dull mind, a heavy mind, a dark mind. So if you notice that your mind is sinking, you can open your eyes a tiny little bit to allow a little bit light to come into your eyes, and that can help to lift up the mind. And then be aware of your posture. The posture of sitting. We have the position of every joint and of your body as a whole.
When you try to be aware of your body posture, maybe you notice that parts of your mind are still wandering off, thinking about this morning or yesterday or previous experiences. Try to contemplate that your mind, even if it goes there, cannot change or influence whatever has happened there. Try to let it go and invite that part of your mind to the present moment to your body. And maybe you notice that parts of your mind are already dwelling in the future, trying to prepare for what might happen. If you notice that, first of all of recognize that we can never act in the future.
Our actions always happen in the present moment. So if we bring our mind also these parts that are dwelling in the future to the present moment, we actually have more control over our actions. And if you can see that, invite that part of your mind to come to your body. Being fully aware of what is happening right now. And then bring your awareness to your abdomen.
And observe the rising and falling due to the inhalation and exhalation of your breath. Simply let your mind rest on these movements. As if you sit on a wave or lay down on a wave going up and down. At the same time, be very alert of every movement of that wave. Observing how it looks like, how it feels like without judging, without expectation.
And if you notice that your mind gets distracted, just bring it gently back. Try to relax in the movements, and then make sure that you’re alert of every part of the movement. And if your mind wanders off, just bring it gently back. Relaxing on the movements of your breath and being alert of every part of the movement. And if you get distracted by the sounds, you can try to focus on the silence that is inside you.
Try to hear the sound of the silence. If you notice that your mind gets agitated, try to focus more on the relaxing part, imagining that you’re laying on the waves caused by the movements of your abdomen. We can connect with the quietness in our mind. We connect with our own inner wisdom. We can go beyond our disturbances, the distractions.
What was the most naturally there? When we meditate, we try to connect with our own inner potential of wisdom and compassion. We try to find a way to become more kind and wise. And we do that not just because we become nicer to ourselves, but also that we can become better people that can help others. So let that try.
Let that help you to set a motivation for doing the meditation. We’re trying to increase our wisdom and our compassion until we achieve our full potential. And that we do not only do that for our own sake, but also for the sake of others. And with that motivation you can generate the mind that takes refuge. And in Buddhism we take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.
And all three of them represent an aspect of our own inner potential. Ultimately, we take refuge in our own potential. Of wisdom and compassion. We take refuge in the state where we have achieved that full potential. And try to generate that mind.
And then we try to stay focused on that mind. If you need to stretch your body, you can do that now. But if you feel comfortable in meditation, you just keep on meditating and be aware of each other, not disturbing each other with whatever you feel you have to do now. And then if you feel ready, go back to that mind where you set out your motivation. Where you’re very clear about the purpose of your meditation.
And where you are clear that that purpose is eventually in your own mind. We all share the same wish. And that we would like to develop our heart, our capacity to love and feel compassion for sentient beings. Compassion means that we have the wish to free others from their suffering. And if we talk about others, that includes ourselves.
We recognize that we share the same wish with all living beings, that we want to be free of suffering. And we want to develop the heart that helps with that. So if we want to free ourselves and others from suffering, we have to know what it means when we talk about suffering. We have to know how suffering feels like. And the better we know our own suffering, the better we are able to understand what others go through and generate empathy for them.
Try to contemplate that. And maybe you think, I do want others to free from suffering, and I do everything I can to help them. So then try to look at the attitude with what we help at the moment. Is our attitude influenced by wisdom that knows the suffering? Or is that attitude influenced by an attitude that doesn’t wanna know about the suffering?
Are we able to really listen to somebody who shares their suffering? Or do we actually not wanna hear the suffering? Suffering? Do we try to help them before they can even express what they really feel? Why are we not able to bear the suffering?
And try to connect with your own aversion for suffering if you notice that. Because that’s the place where we can transform the mind, where we have the opportunity to generate more compassion. And I first of all recognize that from that place where we would like to run away from suffering, we engage in certain actions. It’s our attempt to be free from suffering. So try to see how we react, how you react to that suffering.
And it might be that you have the tendency to numb yourself, to engage in action so that you do not have to feel it. And if you don’t recognize the tendency in yourself, maybe you recognize it in others, that as soon as there is pain we can take painkillers or we sleep. We indulge in food. We watch telly without really knowing and seeing what is going on in a telly. We withdraw emotionally from a social life.
Our mind becomes more dull. We do not want to think about it. We do not want to use our intelligence. We withdraw in fear, not knowing what to do. Try to imagine how it feels like that.
Try to recognize the tendency in your own mind. What we’re actually looking for is love. Love. Somebody that understands us, that can see our suffering, that understands where we’re coming from. But if we have developed this tendency strong, strongly, and when we meet somebody that does love us, that can see us, we do not know how to open up because it hurts too much.
Which means that we can’t receive the love. And eventually might lose it. So this habit of withdrawing, not wanting to feel, running away, is similar than the habit of some animals. And if we keep on reinforcing that habit, we might create causes for another rebirth. One that might be even more unpleasant than what we experience right now.
Try to see that that habit where we want to run away from the pain is not actually freeing you from the pain. It’s moving you further and further away from your own self, your own truth, your own capacity to love and feel compassion. And if we want to develop our wisdom and our compassion that we set out for before the meditation, we will have to face the pain. We will have to sit with it. How would it be if you choose another way of dealing with your pain?
How would it affect your life, change your life? Way that we use to deal with our aversion for suffering is with indulging in things that make us feel good, that stimulate us, that give us excitement, pleasure. We might find that in drugs, sex, alcohol, speeding, dancing, constantly looking for heights, constantly looking for more and better. And try to recognize that part of your mind. And if you don’t see it in your own mind, try to imagine how it would be like to have a mind like that.
And when you feel it, contemplate that this is an attempt to be free of suffering. And then imagine what would happen after the heights when you wake up the next morning, when you are exhausted, Feel the emptiness, the hollowness, to dissatisfaction And maybe you can also feel that emptiness while you are trying to find your pleasure, your heights. Maybe you can feel that they exist together. Like two sides of the same coin. And then recognize that we do this because we’re looking for love.
We’re looking for happiness. We are looking for freedom from suffering. And then maybe we find somebody who loves us, wants to be with us. And due to our habit, we crave, we cling, we completely want to possess that person. That habit might lead to the fact that we’re going to lose that what we love most.
Living like this is living the life. It’s like living the life of a hungry ghost. Never able to find what we need. And if we find it, not able to digest it, to swallow it. Try to see that this habit is not leading to what you want.
It’s leading to the opposite. And then another way of dealing with our pain is that we react with defense, anger, jealousy, violence. And if that doesn’t give us the result that we want, we can turn that into resentment, hate. And look at the activities that we engage in when we feel like that. Look what happens at the level of your thoughts, at the level of your speech, and even on the physical level.
We engage in harmful actions in order to free ourselves from our pain. Check if these actions really lead to what you are aiming for. What we are looking for is love, compassion, happiness. Then imagine that you meet somebody that you receive that love from. With that love also hurt comes.
And because we are so habituated to reacting with anger. We will do the same. We will react to anger with anger, to those who are most close to us. Scaring them, chasing chasing them away. And we might end up alone physically, emotionally.
Nobody wants to be with us, share with us, and still no tools of how to deal with our hurt. And this habit can feel like living in a hell, sometimes in the burning fires of our anger, sometimes in the cold of our isolation. The only way to get out of these places in our mind is to deal with our hurt, to sit with it, to allow it to be there, to experience it fully. And if we can go to the bottom of our pain. Naturally, and wisdom will arise from that.
And with that, the tools will come how to deal with the situation. If we can approach our pain or hurt like that, Pain becomes an opportunity to connect with our own inner wisdom and compassion. It becomes an opportunity for spiritual growth. And if we use it like that, we create only causes for happiness for ourselves and for others. Now we can dedicate the merits for the peace and well-being of all living beings, including ourselves.
Thank you very much for coming. Thank you. Have a cup of tea before you go home.