Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 117-minute talk, Ven Kaye Miner, a Tibetan Buddhist nun, examines whether ignorance can truly bring happiness, using the 2011 Queensland floods as a springboard to explore complacency and apathy in Western society. She defines Buddhist ignorance as a deluded, confused state of mind—not simply lack of knowledge but a fundamental misperception that things exist independently and inherently from their own side, separate from our minds, causes, and labels. She contrasts this with wisdom, particularly the wisdom of understanding dependent arising and emptiness of inherent existence. Through practical examples ranging from watching news, to relationships, to a flower or cup, she shows how this ignorance generates the emotional turbulence and suffering in our lives, while wisdom brings clarity, compassion, and genuine peace. She emphasizes that overcoming ignorance requires cultivating analytical and meditative wisdom through Buddhist study and practice, not through passive acceptance of mediocrity. The talk ends with extended Q&A on the self, the merely labelled self, conventional versus ultimate truth, and meditation techniques for realising emptiness.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2011 01 11 Tuesday_11Jan_Ignorance bliss-.mp3
UUID: bf2c8f85-5eaa-4b00-bf53-d2177a57a7ea
Teacher: Ven Kaye Miner
Collection: Mindfulness with a Heart (Ven Kaye Miner)
Date: 2011-01-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 117.2 minutes
Words: ~13,309
Good evening everyone. Thank you all very much for coming. How about we just take a couple of moments to of settle into being here. A few of you have already been sitting here quietly while I’ve been outside. Outside.
I always think it’s just kind of good to settle down for a moment. Just to use the opportunity to to be aware of, the state of mind that we’re in. There’s been a lot happening today. Probably we’ve all been a little bit busy, with the news events, especially with the news of the floods in Queensland, it’s all a bit shocking. So sometimes these events can really disturb us and so it’s important to be able to cultivate a stable mind that is not so affected but at the same time not so distant and cold to events that are occurring.
But more being able to develop a feeling of compassion, a feeling of empathy, and a strong wish that all the problems, the difficulties, the sufferings, that they’re quickly finished. Because actually that’s what we all want in our lives. We want to be free from all of that suffering and unpleasantness and to truly be happy. So there’s not much that we can do at the moment for others that are in very difficult situations. We of course do our best.
We offer whatever support we can in terms of money or time. But probably the best that we’re able to do is to really have that very strong, stable attitude, that compassionate attitude. Rather than staying home paralyzed in front of the TV watching events, you know, we’re here. And so we’re here, we can make the most of it by having a positive motivation thinking that this opportunity is very, very precious. We’re very lucky that we have that freedom and the opportunity to spend this time to develop our mind, and so we can make that even more meaningful, more beneficial by thinking that we’re doing it not just for our benefit, but may it be a cause for everyone to experience the deeper sense of peace and satisfaction and happiness, freedom from suffering that they all wish.
I think that’s why we’re here. Okay. Have you ever had a clock that ticks too loud right behind your ear? Trying to sleep at night? Do you want me to take a nap?
I think it was pretty quiet down there. Thank you. Okay. Very good practice being able to concentrate with the tick tick tick tick tick tick tick Yes, well tonight thank you all very very much for coming. I don’t know if there’s anyone here for the first time this evening.
Yeah? Okay, but I’m Kaye. Hello. I’m a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan tradition and I’m just visiting Adelaide. This is the last opportunity that I have here to say a few words.
And tonight what I’m going to talk about is really discussing the question, Is Ignorance Bliss? And I like that title. I think I made that no I didn’t really make that one up. I did make that one up. But anyway, I like the title because do you think?
Is ignorance bliss? You don’t think so? It’s relative. It’s relative. I was thinking, you know, like I’m sorry, everyone knows about the floods in Queensland, I guess.
Yeah? Well, when I saw it on the TV this morning, and I’ve actually watched quite a bit of it during the day, and, you know, there’s sort of that know that feeling of connectedness with it and that feeling of horror and the feeling of sorrow for those that are caught up with it and then part of me sort of thinks well you know if you hadn’t turned on the TV, if you hadn’t been talking to anyone or getting on the Internet or listening to the radio you would have been completely ignorant about that situation. So then would that have been blissful? Not necessarily, I think. Because if you didn’t know it, you didn’t know that you didn’t know about it.
But then, because of not knowing, there wasn’t all that horror and that feeling of sorrow for the others so therefore that wasn’t there so maybe that would have been a blissful feeling. Depends what you call blissful. If you call blissful kind of ecstasy, no, but it would have been somewhat peaceful wouldn’t it? Yes, I think the whole quote is, ‘When ignorance is bliss, folly to be wise.’ Oh, haven’t heard that one. So it’s actually got the queen in front of her.
Oh, okay. Well, I wasn’t I wasn’t thinking of that whole title. I was just thinking, is ignorance bliss and can we get wisdom because wisdom and ignorance are actually opposites. So, you know, I think sometimes, you know, sometimes we don’t want to know and sometimes when we don’t know then yeah things seem to be going alright. And then other times we can be a little bit defensive I guess about not knowing something.
We can be a bit defensive, can be a bit belligerent because we fear not knowing something. We fear being ignorant about something especially if somebody else tries point out that we didn’t know it correctly. Have you noticed that? We get very defensive you know and we might even sort of almost have an argument to try and prove that really we’re not so ignorant but I think to answer these questions you know in terms of is ignorance bliss or is ignorance peaceful or you know are we fearful of being seen or perceived to be ignorant? To be able to answer these questions more comprehensively then I think we need to be much more clear about what ignorance is, being able to define it and then also start asking question, well ignorant of what?
And so what would you say ignorance is? Lack of Not Not knowing? Sorry? What you know doesn’t you. We use that one a lot, don’t we?
Okay. We also said to ignore. Sorry? To ignore, ignore it. To ignore something.
It might be a deliberate action. Okay, okay. Anything else? It takes courage to know about things. Yeah, well hang on, we’ll get onto that stuff later.
I’m asking a question at the moment. Is there a small you see something and you just choose to ignore it and to disregard it rather than not being aware of it? Mhmm, okay. So ignoring is like a disregarding as well, okay, something more decisive in ways, more proactive, okay. Okay, so not knowing, not being aware.
That is also an ignorance when you’re not aware. So from Buddhist perspective we say, you know, ignorance is like a not knowing, not being aware of something either actively not being aware of it or unconsciously. In Buddhism we say that ignorance is deluded state of mind, a mind that is deluded, that is confused about its object, that it’s a not knowing. But also even in the definition that we find in Buddhism, it says it’s not being clear about something. It can even mean that the inability to see objects that are far away, that this is also a type of ignorance from the Buddhist perspective that things that are like too far away for ordinary beings to be able to perceive.
From the Buddhist perspective, ignorance is one is they say it’s like the root delusion. It’s the root disturbing attitude or disturbing emotion in our mind that is really very much the source of all of our problems and the source of all of our suffering. I seem to remember, I mean, you know, I’m not I am Australian but I’m of feeling less and less Australian these days but I do remember we used to say that like or maybe this is Sydney and maybe this is sort of my background but we used to say that someone was like pig ignorant? Did you say that still? Yeah, any Adelaide people here?
This term pig ignorant was that, you know, yeah. The old people like you. It was something, calling somebody ignorant was really derogatory. It was really putting them down wasn’t it? Know?
So really ignorance is like a lack of wisdom. It’s a not knowing. It’s a delusion. It’s a state of mind that’s confused about about the object that the mind apprehends. And ignoring something is both an action, you know, and it can be a conscious action as well as an unconscious.
And ignoring something can be the reaction to ignorance. So you know, not really knowing what is best to do and consciously ignoring as a reaction. For example, we could choose to ignore a trauma, for example, and that could sometimes be quite skilful to ignore a trauma. I wouldn’t call that reaction blissful. I would say that that’s a coping mechanism and probably a very effective coping mechanism because if you’ve ever experienced a really serious trauma sometimes you just can’t really cope with all the details of it and it’s far better to not sort of pay so much attention or to it’s far better to sort of ignore it until you’ve got the space and you’ve got the skills to be able to deal with that trauma more effectively.
So, ignoring such a situation can be a very skillful and effective short term reaction. So, it’s not that ignoring or ignorance we can say is always bad. Okay? So sometimes you know it can be quite skillful to ignore a situation. So in the Western world however we’ve really been developing our ignorance.
I think I’m going to be a little bit political tonight. Are you going to cope with that? You’re not going to take it against me too much? I think in the Western world that we’ve kind of got used to the failings in our world. We’ve got used to the failings of governments.
We’ve got used to the failings of the banking system. We’ve got used to the failings of what else? Environmental thing. Think we’ve got kind of used to that and we’ve become quite content to live a life that’s almost like being a slave to materialism. And as a result of kind of getting used to, you know, this is the way those things go on and just getting caught up in this whole materialism.
Been what’s happened in the West I think and I’m sure this is also happening in the East but it’s kind of built a propensity to delude ourselves and also to be apathetic, know to have apathy. It’s like we don’t really want to know about climate change. I mean maybe we’re not the general cross section of the population here. I think if you’ve come to a Buddhist center to hear a talk from a Buddhist nun, it’s probably you’re not the average Joe Blow around. Maybe, I don’t know.
But if I think of my family members and friends of the family and stuff, they don’t want to know about this climate change business. Oh, the greenies. You know, it’s always about the greenies. And they’ve got no idea what they’re talking about but they’re against it. Know, they don’t want to know.
Even though there is such extremes in our country at the moment, of the lack of looking after our environment, we see these kind of natural changes. Our country doesn’t really cope with them so well anymore but we see how there is global warming, there are effects that have been inflicted upon our environment but even with all of that there’s a lot of people just don’t want to know. Then there are people, oh politics, politicians, I just don’t want to know. Every time I see whichever politician whose name shall we fill in on the TV, we’ll mute. No, see I’m going be very careful with my politics tonight but whenever we see a politician that’s been going on and on we just press the mute button.
Do you press the mute button? You don’t even turn it on in the first place. But I’m quite accustomed to it. You’re quite accustomed to it. Everyone says the same thing no matter what country they’re from.
Yeah, exactly but we get used it’s kind of like I can’t really be bothered too much about it so I don’t take any notice either I press the mute button or I test, press the onoff button or I just block my ears you know. We don’t necessarily and I’m generalizing okay I’m generalizing we don’t necessarily want to know the reality, truth about many many different things. We don’t want to know things the truth, the reality about the whole situation with Iraq, the weapons of mass destruction. Did we ever sort of really question whether those statements were true or not? I think some people did.
Okay. I’m generalizing. Okay? Generally, Generally, no. And terrorism.
Oh, the hype fear about terrorism. Australia, so frightened. What was it those little my mother told me that she was okay because she had fridge magnets that said be alert but not alarmed or something like that and she says I’m protected now I have my fridge magnet you know. So there’s many things like that. Know the war on terror the way America you know sort of developed this war on terror.
Things like immigration, the reality, the truth about these things, the truth about education, the truth about, the financial systems, etc. The majority of people, okay, you’re different. I understand that. I appreciate that. But the majority of people don’t really want to know.
They’re quite complacent, quite apathetic, you know? And there’s a particular image that’s sold to us us by the media. What do they call them here? Shock jocks. Do you know this term?
These radio commentators. These shock jocks. So there’s a particular view of the world that is given by these I tell you I talk to some people who have such a warped idea that it’s come from these kind of people on radio, these people that have a lot of influence or you know some of these people that are responsible for the other media outlets like the way things are presented on the news, on the TV, the way things are presented in the newspapers. I mean I’ve known some of these people and I know it’s a particular story line that they give. So, you know, we’re given this kind of image by the governments, by the media, by the shock jocks, by marketers, and ignorantly, majority of people just buy it.
And those who challenge it all, those who dare to ask why, those who want to find the answers, who seek improvement, who have quite powerful drive to be thinking, to be questioning, to be creative, know, to try and discover, you know, they’re not given a lot of time. People look at them a little bit weirdly, you know? And just look at how the people are treated who what do you call them? Whistleblowers. Whistleblowers.
You have whistleblowers here, but we have whistleblowers all over the world. Look what’s happening with the whole WikiLeaks thing and the Julian Assange. I mean, I’m not going to say one way or the other, okay? I’m trying to keep in the middle ground of the political statements tonight, but nevertheless, just think about this. You know, somebody like Julian Assange, and actually when you it wasn’t that he actually cracked the computers and got all the information, it was passed on.
But when he and his company, and it’s not just him, it’s a number of people, published a lot of this information, whether you agree with what’s been published or not, just the simple fact of publishing this information, then they’re considered to be like a traitor. They’re considered to be so abnormal, so unusual, they’re rocking the boat and we don’t like the boat to be rocked. They’re really not appreciated by the establishment. Yet, don’t you think it’s a bit arrogant to be intentionally ignorant? A bit to intentionally ignorant.
Okay but you know think to not care about learning, not to care for others because with a lot of this ignorance and a lot of this fear it’s coming down to me. Know? And like it’s not affecting me at the moment so it’s okay if I don’t know. It’s only when it starts to affect me that I’m going take some notice. I’m sure you all I live in Holland, I’ve been there for twelve years.
Everyone says, Oh Holland, what a tolerant country. You all think it’s a tolerant country. You know Holland, do you? A tolerant Yes. Yes, my mother said to me before I went, they’re a bit dour?
Who say that? That deux? So I think, oh yeah, the Dutch. They’re very tolerant. You know, they have these coffee shops where you can go and smoke your dope and they’ve got these red light areas with prostitutes in the windows and you know it’s all pretty tolerant in Holland.
Well I found out very soon after I was there that they have a thing called this. And you ‘re thinking that’s a hand isn’t it? They’ve even made an advertisement about it but it’s this and it’s called seeing through the fingers. Basically, it’s like I see what you’re doing and as long as it doesn’t affect me, I don’t care. I don’t want to know.
Okay? But as soon as it starts to affect them, the fingers close and they want to stop it. And there’s an advertisement and I think it’s this rock band that is at this hotel and they end up trashing the hotel probably like The Who used to do or something like that. Who else Lindy? These bands that used to trash the hotels.
And then the hotel manager, I don’t know, he came and he said, oh well, for this time we’ll see it through the fingers. Which basically means we’ll let it go this time. Forget what the ad was for. But there’s this idea in Holland that Holland is so tolerant that they see through the fingers until such time as it starts to affect them. So isn’t that a little bit arrogant in a way?
Being so selfish? So as long as it doesn’t affect me, I don’t want to know. It may be affecting other people. It may be causing a lot of problems for other people, but it’s not affecting me, so I don’t want to know. And you know what also I think is happening a lot lately I told you I just was in a political mood today.
The other thing that I find a lot is that everybody’s trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The programs on TV, the newspapers, the quality of the newspapers these days, it’s rubbish. Sorry, it’s rubbish. There’s nothing really investigative and really thinking that anyway, I mean maybe I’m just too up myself. I don’t know.
Maybe I’ve been and look I’m saying Western societies, okay? So I’m not just saying Australia, okay? It’s happening in Holland, it’s happening in Europe, I see it across the world. I go to America every year, I see the same there. Oh it’s worse actually.
So you know why is this happening? It seems like you know for me, isn’t it a huge shame that mediocrity is being held up? That that’s what everyone should aspire towards? Some level of mediocrity? Isn’t it a shame that this whole complacency is actually sort of encouraged and ordinariness and complacency are kind of almost on a pedestal whereas inquiry and questioning and not agreeing with everything is Don’t do that.
It seems to me that we are wasting you know, our incredible potential. It’s it’s a huge waste of the incredible potential that we have as human beings if we ignorantly ignorantly suppress that potential by sticking our heads in the sand. By saying, yeah, ignorance is bliss. And, yeah, it’s too challenging to actually investigate. And so I’m better off you know just going for Buddhism light.
Do you know what Buddhism light is? Oh it’s the love and light version of Buddhism that everything’s you know sweet, that you don’t have to investigate, you don’t have to do any work, you meditate and you feel fantastic and that’s it. I think that is a huge waste of our potential. If we don’t have a quest for knowledge, for overcoming this not knowing, if we don’t look and try to identify what’s meaningful in our life, then I think we become complacent, you know? And I think this complacency is a huge threat to our own happiness, to the happiness of others with whom we share our life and the entire world, our whole society.
But it seems like, you know, apathy and complacency are becoming so deeply entrenched. It’s almost like it’s seeped into the bones, you know, and it’s stimulated by competitiveness, by materialism, and by fantasy ideas of what it means to be successful. Now Buddhism is about overcoming all of the ignorance, all of that ignorance. You know, and there’s many ways of talking about ignorance, describing ignorance, but in Buddhism we talk about two main or very important types of ignorance. Ignorance is particularly significant in terms of what we are able to do with our potential, terms of our happiness and our suffering.
There’s two main types of ignorance. There’s the ignorance of not knowing the relationship between your actions and the results that your actions bring. So that fits right into the whole environmental thing. There’s an ignorance of knowing what the results of certain actions will be. And that means that we keep on performing, accumulating the kinds of actions that bring a suffering kind of result.
We keep getting it wrong. It’s like we keep putting our hand in the fire so that our hand keeps getting burnt. That ignorance about the relationship with causes and with causes and the results that they bring, that is one of the fundamental ignorances that really is a great obstacle to our happiness, the cause of our suffering. And then secondly, the other type of ignorance ignorance that’s so dangerous for us is the ignorance that doesn’t correctly understand our nature and the nature of the world around us and others. This is a very root basic ignorance that from the Buddhist perspective we say it binds us, it sort of ties us to our existence.
It’s an ignorance that grasps at self and phenomena as being what we call inherently existing, concretely, permanently existing, fixed, unchanging, independently existing. I’m going explain this because I’m using a lot of words, but it’s an ignorance that thinks everything is going to be the same forever, that things exist very, very fixed and concretely and we grasp that view. From grasping at this view of I’m very solid, I’m like this, know, very solid concrete view of our self and a phenomena, then due to that all the delusions, the disturbing attitudes arise and that causes us to create the kind of actions that bring the problems. So we end up keeping on repeating, you know, creating the causes for problems and life after life after life, you know. So, okay, this is difficult to comprehend.
This is really difficult to understand this second type of ignorance. So I’ll try to kind of put it in some other words. Does anyone have teenagers? Children? Hope there was a big sigh then wasn’t there? I can remember being a teenager.
Those who side, do you ever sort of complain or kind of think, Oh, I can’t communicate with my kids? They live in a completely different world. Absolutely. Yep? Okay.
Do you know at the same time the kids are saying, oh, my parents, they’ve completely lost the plot. You know, they can’t see beyond their own narrow lives. Now according to Buddhism, both these complaints are true, but in a sense that we’ve never really imagined. Now, what the Buddha taught was that all our troubles stem from our mind. What he also taught was that all of our happiness stems or comes from our mind.
So everything our happiness comes from our mind, our suffering comes from our mind. Well, if we think about it, then it seems seems that the entire world comes from our mind, and that’s what the Buddha said also. The assumptions that we have that there is a solid world existing out there in dependence upon our minds that’s the same for everybody and that we all move within as kind of like passive observers, that is incorrect. There is no external world that is completely independent of our mind. You know, none of us, no two people can ever have exactly the same experience.
But we have enough things in common that we’re able to project. We’re able to project things so that lets us be able to talk about things, to say, oh, our world, our Buddha house, our city, our forest, our country, our whatever, you know. So we’ve got enough things in common, you know, with language to be able to talk about our something. But our world, our forest, our city, our country, our these things are only a generalization. Because if we actually examine each of us it’s almost like we all live in our own world.
I mean sometimes we say, oh gosh, they’re living in a world of their own. But each of us has a particular pattern of projections that create the world around us. For example, maybe you can remember being in love, maybe that’s happened. When you’re in love you have a different view. The world is beautiful.
Flowers, they’re not just flowers anymore, they become temples of color. The birds don’t wake you up in the morning. I love hearing the kookaburras but that noise actually is a bit grating. But when you’re in love, the birds are not waking you up early, they’re not disturbing you, they sing the sweeter songs. Songs.
Oh, oh, did you hear the birds? When you’re in love, the world is full of hope. It’s full of promise. It’s full of happiness. True?
It’s very different our view of the world when we’re in love but when we’re depressed. Those bloody birds. Excuse me. Excuse me. And we don’t appreciate the colors of the flowers.
You know, the color seems to drain out of our world and the world seems ugly and it seems meaningless and everything just seems to be wrong, you know? When a depressed person and a person in love are walking down the street together, they have very different views. So, you ask yourself, is there simultaneously both pleasing and ugly? Interesting to start thinking about this. So we start to see that exactly the Buddha explained, that the flowers, the birds, the street, the houses, that they have no self existence.
So I want you to remember this term. They have no self existence. Basically, they are nameless entities with the potential to appear to mind in a diff many different ways according to what’s going on in the mind that perceives them. So according to our state of mind, we see only one of these potentials, and that becomes our reality. And we name the object according to the way we perceive it.
So beautiful flower, ugly flower, beautiful birdsong, raucous birdsong. Okay? So someone who sees a different potential appearance through a different state of mind sees another reality. That’s why the person in love sees one thing and the person who’s depressed sees another. There is no independent, what was that term I said that you had to remember?
Self existent. Self existent reality from the side of the object. Lama Zopa Rinpoche, my main teacher, he says, this is ignorance. The ignorance is thinking that that object has some kind of independent reality separate from our minds perceiving of it. So this flower has some independent reality that it’s a beautiful flower or it’s an ugly flower.
Irrespective. Which means that everybody looking at this flower would think exactly the same thing, would perceive exactly the same thing if it had the ability from its own side. Now what do you think by the way? Real. Meaning a live flower or an artificial flower.
Yeah I know what you were meaning. I know what you’re meaning. But we might have in common a perception that it was a flower. Yeah okay. That’s right.
We probably were all looking, we’re probably, we have enough in common to talk about a flower. Okay? There might be someone who doesn’t recognise that as a flower. Okay, they might use another word. Might say blue.
But they might not see it as a Yeah, okay, that’s true. Okay, so we might all look at this and we might say oh yes this is a flower. We might all look at it and say oh yes it’s an ugly flower because we’ve but I don’t think we all would say that. I don’t think everyone that ever saw this would say ugly flower. But the point being here we’ve got enough in common, a whole kind of system of labeling, that we can talk about the flower.
Okay? We’ve got enough in common, all of us sitting here, to be able to recognize that this is a flower, correct? Okay. Our perception of it though would vary widely because if I told you it’s an artificial flower, you’d think it’s not very nice, wouldn’t you? No, it’s not.
It’s very nice. Okay. Okay. But okay, we don’t want to get too hum up with all of that just at this moment. But our problem is that we are ignorant of the way things exist correctly and that that is like an ah hallucination.
Do you say ah hallucination? An an hallucination. Okay. So our whole problem is that we’re not really aware of the reality of things and Lama Zopa says it’s just like taking hallucinogenic drugs. Now Lama Zopa and Lama Yeshe were around with the hippies in the 60s and the 70s so they all learned about hallucinogenics in those I’ve been having great conversations people since I’ve been here talking about Amsterdam and talking about the fact that you have these coffee shops where you smoke dope in Amsterdam but you can also sort of becoming much more controlled certainly when I first went there there were shops that were selling hallucinogenic mushrooms all over the place and you could go and buy your mushrooms and you could go home and cook them up and I never did it, but I tell you what, there’s a number of weird looking people around Amsterdam.
Anyway, so Lama Zopa was saying, it’s just like hallucinogenic drugs or mushrooms that our wrong conceptions make our minds hallucinate, that we’re unable to be aware of reality. We simply do not recognize how everything that depends upon, parts and causes to come into existence, we don’t recognize that they are impermanent, that they are changeable, that they are transitory. So like this is a flower, I mean it’s got all kinds of other flowers in it you know. But you know I could start pulling it, no I better not pull it apart. But what we label flower has many different parts.
It’s got petals, it’s probably got leaves, it’s maybe got a thing, what do they call those things, stamen in the centre. So all of these parts and sort of color and its function and everything and so we label it flower. But we just think that there’s a flower existing from its own side. We’re not aware of the reality that flower actually is a label that’s placed upon the coming together of these various parts. Anyway, so Lama Zopa says this is our problem.
This is our hallucination. We forget that. You know, we forget that what appears to us doesn’t exist in the way that it appears to us. You know? Doesn’t exist the way that it appears to us.
So everything that our ignorance focus upon, whether it’s our self, whether it’s our body, whether it’s our mind, whether it’s others, whether it’s sense objects, all of these things do exist, but they don’t exist the way our ignorance apprehends them. And that’s the problem. That’s the hallucination. That is the ignorance. So due to this habit that’s been built up in our mind, this kind of conditioning, if you like, that’s built up in our mind by being ignorant in the past, this habit that we just see something or we perceive something and we think that it exists inherently from its own side, independent of parts and causes conditions and function and labeling, because of that ignorance we just, you know, it’s been this habit for lifetimes.
We keep on doing it again. We kind of, you know, it’s the easy way. Oh, yes. Flower. You know?
And it’s not only the fact that we don’t perceive accurately due to, you know, the confusion, due to the ignorance in our mind. But the problem comes, that’s one thing, being ignorant about how things exist. But the next problem comes is because we believe it to be exactly the way we think it to be. And we grasp onto that very, very strongly. We hold onto our view that this the way it is.
It’s the same with oh, let’s think of something, you know, practical in our lives. I’ve got an example, Kay. My relationship with my granddaughter Mhmm. Her mom sees child rearing so differently from me. Mhmm.
I can’t believe we’re talking about the same thing. Mhmm. She’s the modern generation where you do things in a certain way Mhmm. With very little flexibility, very little this, very little that. And she thinks I’m weird, and I think she’s weird.
And yet we’re talking, you know, about the same child, about the same activities. I think she’s from another planet and she thinks I’m from one further. Okay, so this has a lot to do with, you know, the perceptions. Yep. But it’s like when you I mean let’s try and do something a little bit more smaller.
Something smaller. Something that everyone can really relate to. Okay, where no, no, no! Just wait. So for example, I think that this is a beautiful watch.
I think this is beautiful watch and I believe that to be so strongly a beautiful watch. And I really grasp on, hold on, I believe it very strongly that this is a beautiful watch and it’s mine. It’s my watch. And if you come along and you don’t think it’s as beautiful and you just think it’s a bit of rub bish to throw in the bin because you have a different perception of it. But I think it’s so beautiful and it’s my watch that I’m going to get really upset.
Okay? So I mean I’m exaggerating and I’m going over the top like I normally do but you know but that’s sort of a bit what happens that we believe something to be the way we perceive it, absolutely, solidly, with no possibility of it being another way and we grasp onto it, we hold onto it so strongly and if there’s anything that’s of opposite to that the disturbing emotions go up. So it’s a problem. This is why it’s a problem because for example in daily life if someone says something that’s a little bit negative or a little bit positive, if they offer you a little bit of criticism or a little bit of, praise then immediately your mind becomes emotional. Doesn’t it?
Goes up and down. There’s like no stability. A bit immediately there becomes this like like and dislike. So when you don’t practice awareness, which is the antidote to this ignorance in daily life, then the mind is overwhelmed by hallucinations. And a very apt analogy, it’s just like a city being flooded by water.
So when the mind is like this, when it doesn’t practice awareness where it kind of incorrectly perceives things to be existing in a particular way and it grasps onto that, it holds onto it, then the mind just becomes flooded with, flooded, flooded, as in filled, full of, filled with wrong conceptions and wrong thoughts and wrong views and wrong appearances. And as long as the mind is overwhelmed by these wrong conceptions, then there’s no real peace. There’s no real truth. And our life is like lived in a hallucination, lived in a kind of a dream. So people who have not realized correctly how things exist, and I mean this obviously includes me, who don’t see things as being what we call illusory, who not only see that things are truly existent or inherently existent, you know, they’ve got that problem and not only that problem, they also kind of cling on to things as if they were true.
So this ignorance, this wrong conception that doesn’t understand correctly is is it makes up all of these stories. It completely hallucinates, you know, the truth. And because of that it builds up its own idea of truth and then it grasps onto that, you know, idea as being real and correct when it isn’t. And as a result, that ignorance causes us, it motivates our behavior, our way of thinking and our behavior, and that sets up the pattern in the mind, sets up the habit to react over and over again to have this hallucination, to be angry, to be jealous, to be greedy and all of this stuff and we just kind of we get caught up in this cycle of repeated frustration. Repeated frustration.
And so this ignorance, believing that everything exists from its own side inherently, you know, that’s what continually ties you to problems and suffering. So that from the Buddhist perspective, from life to life, whilst ever you have this fundamental ignorance, you’re going to have problems and suffering. So not only is it a great obstacle to your happiness but it’s a great obstacle if you’re on the spiritual path and you wishing to become free from the sufferings of cyclic existence wishing to experience nirvana or liberation or if you wish to experience enlightenment for the well-being of all sentient beings then this ignorance is the major obstacle to all of that. So it’s it’s this ignorance doesn’t benefit you and it doesn’t benefit others. So Lama Zopa Rinpoche, he says this ignorance is completely childish.
This ignorance is nonsense for the mind to believe. It reckons it’s unnecessary, it’s meaningless, and there’s so many shortcomings from doing so. And like the harm that comes from ignorance is enormous. So I will make this clear statement now that ignorance is not blissful. It’s not blissful.
There’s no reason at all to follow this ignorance which apprehends everything as truly existent, existing inherently from its own side, independent of your mind’s perception, independent of its parts and the labeling and its function, etcetera. You know? There’s no reason at all to follow this ignorance except that’s what we’ve always been doing, and that’s what just about everybody else is doing. And there’s no point at all following this ignorance and thereby having attachment and anger which cause us so many problems. Have you ever heard of Edward de Bono?
He wrote a book called I think, what is it, The Happiness Purpose and he talked about shrugging. You know, the shrug. And he said that the shrug is a very important human activity. He said it is a way of not being ignorant. You’re aware of something, like someone insulting you, but you shrug and you don’t let it affect you.
Now that can help us avoid the ups and downs. We may not have quit completely cut through this ignorance grasping at inherent existence yet, but we can just try to shrug off some of the insults and some of the concrete sort of concepts and views of things. We can shrug it off so that we can try and remain a little bit stable. So what can we do about ignorance and this apathy and this complacency and the suffering that comes from it? What’s the antidote to it?
Well, for those of you who’ve been here to the other talks that I’ve given during the last week, me, I keep talking about self responsibility, don’t I? So I think that we need to take self responsibility. We need to use oh, excuse me. I think I’m getting a bit too fired up tonight. I think that we need to take the responsibility to use our intelligence, to use the opportunity that we’ve got, to reclaim our right to think for ourselves and not to succumb to mediocrity, not to become sheep, not to follow everybody else.
I think we need to use our intelligence and the opportunity we have to really think for ourselves. Edward de Bono again, he said, ‘If we want to try and live in a world of truth we should make an effort to live in a world of possibility.’ And so, you know, I think this kind of means that, for example, you know, people behave in a way and we say, oh, they’re aggressive.’ And we feel that that’s very or they’re an aggressive person, very inherently existing, very solid, independent, permanently aggressive person you know. But if you follow what Edward de Bono is saying, you know behave or make an effort to live in a world of possibility what it means is that then you say well you know maybe there’s a possibility. Maybe this person is behaving aggressively because they’re insecure. Maybe there’s something else going on that is causing them to behave aggressively.
But what we do most of the time, oh they’re aggressive and we kind of react to that. We don’t take the time to think of the possibilities. We don’t make enough effort to open up our universe to the possibilities to be thinking about what might be going on there and we all have infinite possibilities so we need to take self responsibility. We need to use our intelligence and our opportunities. We need to try and recapture the ground that we’ve lost to apathy, to complacency, to our ignorance while we have the opportunity.
We need to try and recapture that ground. We need to think logically. We need to be honest. We need to be ethical and not just with other people, with ourselves. And I guess in a way that is being heroic.
Is that answering you? That’s what you’re saying. It’s being heroic. It’s being courageous and all it requires is a commitment to the truth. You know having sort of a what do you call it an ethos that know I’m not going to lie anymore even if it suits me to lie, even if it suits you know my what I’m trying to do but we try to examine ourselves honestly you know our position and we try to strip ourselves of these you know these untruths that we make about ourselves are quite comfortable that you know these untruths that we tell about ourselves in order to sort of keep this kind of warm inner glow that everything’s alright you know.
So this does take some courage and it requires developing wisdom and wisdom is the opposite, the antidote to ignorance. And I think, you know, there’s a humility that comes with wisdom. A humility that comes in recognizing your own ignorance. So we’re frightened that someone else will recognize our ignorance. But when you start to recognize it yourself through your eyes of wisdom, there’s a certain humility that comes.
We were talking about humility on the weekend, weren’t we? Saying it was quite difficult. Didn’t we talk about humility? Okay so you know, now quite often when it comes to sword of wisdom, the pursuit of wisdom, then a lot of people think the pursuit of wisdom is selfish because it’s a selfish process that’s about amassing information and knowledge, about educating ourselves, doing lots of courses to get wisdom. Know and it seems to some people it seems a bit selfish because it’s about getting wisdom and then being superior.
What did they say? There’s some saying isn’t it? Being like Francis Bacon, knowledge is power. Something like that. Knowledge is power or information is power.
Something like that. Knowledge is power. Okay, so a lot of people think equate getting wisdom with this kind of selfish pursuit of being powerful and stuff like that. But from a Buddhist perspective, the motivation for the cultivation wisdom is actually selfless. However, to really develop the correct understanding of selflessness, well, that can only come from trying to find the self.
So, first of all, you need to, acknowledge how much you are involved with the self, yourself. How seriously we take ourself. How strongly one feels that the self is there and then we look for it. This self we feel so strongly, know, we take so seriously. So we’ve got to really, you know, acknowledge it.
We’ve got to feel this self that is so strong and then we go and look for it. We try to find it within. And then the wisdom comes and you can’t find the self. So knowledge and wisdom are a little bit different. In the Buddhist tradition, we generally say that knowledge is usually dualistic knowledge.
That is to say that you have a subject and you see something and then you recognize it and you kind of place it under a certain category. A category that you’ve already got in your mind. And you think that’s it. So there’s a subject here or an object. We’ve got, you know, a flower.
We look at that, we place it straight into a category in our mind and that’s it. We don’t need to worry about it anymore. We’ve got our labeling, we’ve got our concept. That’s it. Know?
Don’t have to worry anymore. But wisdom is seeing that that concept doesn’t actually fit. It doesn’t exactly fit. With wisdom we’re open and we measure. We kind of check up on our concept and we realize that we can look at it from a lot of different perspectives.
I think maybe I’ll use this one. What do we think it is? I’ll forget about the stuff inside it at the moment. Just think, you know? A A carafe.
And so we would normally think that this is a carafe that we would put water or wine in it. Okay? And that we’d normally pour something out. That would have its function of holding a liquid that we could pour out, right? What is it now?
Carafe the flower vase. Oh, I love these, smart Alex. But now it’s like a vase, isn’t it? We just look at that. Because the flower is sitting out, it would say, that’s performing the function of a vase.
Okay. I hope I haven’t poisoned myself now. Anyway, so that’s what normally happens. We just kind of, you know, we look at something, we put the categorization and that’s it. That’s it.
But with wisdom we kind of open up that there are other possibilities. Remember this possibility business. So the more you open up to the depth of life, to the possibilities, then the more the possibilities come to you. When you start to realize how your mind keeps putting labels to almost defend you from having to really feel and really experience and really understand things, you know, that’s when your wisdom starts to come in, when you recognize how you do that. So non dualistic wisdom is a way of knowing that kind of breaks down these distinctions.
And I think wisdom comes from being critical about knowledge. That’s alright. I love ringtones. I really like to see what people have got on their ringtones. I you can tell a lot about a person from their ringtone.
Do you want to know what my ringtone is? Don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Jeff Buckley? He’s the son of Tim Buckley and the last album before he died he had this song and the choruses say Everybody here thinks he wants you, everybody here thinks he needs you. So my phone goes instead of ringing it says Everybody thinks they anyway, they need you, everybody thinks they want you. I think that’s wishful thinking.
Anyway, so I think I didn’t hear exactly what you heard but I won’t. I’m not which it was either. Okay. I think wisdom comes from being critical about knowledge, from checking up whether we know something correctly. For example, if someone was to say to you, you know, ‘Hey, do you know K?
Is that Kay sitting there?’ Then you’d probably say, oh yeah, yeah, I know Kay. That’s her sitting there.’ Wouldn’t you? Yeah, okay, okay. But in ways, in some ways that’s a mistake because I’m also a lot of other things. I’m a nun and I’m a woman and I’m a daughter and I’m a friend and I’m a, you know?
Yes, I’m still there. Just follow. Just be patient. You see, I’m still there but it’s not the full picture, you know? People are saying, ‘That’s K!’ and not thinking about the the full picture.
We have to operate like that, you know, at a daily basis, but the fact is we’re doing that with everything and we’re not appreciating the full picture. We’re not appreciating the full reality. So wisdom comes when you have when you’re sort of critical about your knowledge with when you have checked up in your mind about whether you may know something correctly. Now our problem problem comes when we lock into particular image, a particular, for example, a particular self image and that is it. That is the way it is.
That’s what we think and that limits us. So wisdom comes when we begin to recognise that, you know, and we begin to recognise that there’s different perspectives of looking at something, you know. That we wisdom helps us open up to the possibilities, you know, and to the potential and that wisdom and opening up to the possibilities and the potential is incredibly liberating because we get so narrow. It’s like this and it’s like that. We get so narrow.
But when we when we’ve got wisdom, you know, we open up to the possibilities. Well, it can be like this and it can be like that and it can be another way. There are many different possibilities and that’s liberating and that also helps to develop compassion. Remember the aggressive person I was just talking about? You know, when you open up to the possibilities just rather than saying, oh, it’s an aggressive person, you open up to the possibility.
You use your wisdom to understand, oh, well, you know, aggression depends upon and he is this part, you know, got all of these parts and you start to open up more fully and you start to appreciate that there’s not there is an aggressive person behaving with aggression but there are many, many factors associated with it. You know, it’s not possible to get wisdom overnight. It’s really so rare, almost impossible, to become enlightened overnight but I won’t say it’s completely impossible. But it’s a gradual process and there’s a lot of elements to that and you know we strengthen the elements of the mind you know to become more aware, to become more wise and through the development of our wisdom we become more compassion. Wisdom is completely equated with compassion.
And so there are ways of doing that. There are ways of developing gradually the awareness and strengthening the elements of the mind to develop this wisdom. The wise beings that we meet in our world, someone like the Dalai Lama for example, it’s not that they just happen to be wise. Wisdom is something that they’ve cultivated and within the Buddhist tradition there’s a whole system of education for developing wisdom and you know we need wisdom, in order to be able to practice positive qualities like generosity and kindness and love, know, for these positive qualities to be effective, then we need to have wisdom wisdom that clearly and correctly knows what a positive quality is, knows why they are positive, knows what the significance of these qualities can be. So we need wisdom in the sense to know about positive qualities.
Then we need, you know, in order to be able to learn correctly about these things, we need wisdom to be able to think about what we’ve heard, you know, to try and develop our understanding to the extent that we’ve got confidence. And then thirdly we need wisdom to be able to meditate, to put this kind of intellectual understanding to actually bring it through to some kind of experiential insight. So what do we mean? And this is coming back to you, don’t worry I haven’t forgotten you. What do we actually mean by wisdom?
And from the Buddhist perspective, in general there are two classifications of wisdom. What we call conventional wisdom and ultimate wisdom or relative or, you know, yeah, relative wisdom and wisdom beyond relative or something like that, you know? Okay. And this conventional or this relative aspect of wisdom is known from our experience, our experience of phenomena. And the ultimate wisdom, the ultimate ultimate nature of things is perceived from a more ultimate perspective.
Now, okay, what do I mean by that? Well, relative wisdom is like our ordinary knowing. We’ve got the ability to know a lot lot of different things in our world. We’ve got the ability to become expert in a particular field. I don’t know.
Astrophysics or something. You know, we have that ability to know these things. You know by investigating different fields of learning we begin to understand the outer material things around us. We learn to be able to put them together in various ways, you know, in order to bring out various results. We, you know, we have conventions so that we’re able to communicate, conventions like flower etc.
So we can operate in our world. So when we examine an object, whether it’s the flower, whether it’s this carafe, whether it’s our self, know, whether it’s a situation, the degree of reality that we experience with that object relates to its relative truth. For example, I’m choosing another object just to keep it going. What is it? This is a cup.
We can all see it. You can probably come up here and touch it if you want. I can touch it. I can drink from it. You know, if I let you, you could probably do the same, you know.
We all experience this relative truth about this cup. So conventionally, we call this a cup and conventionally, we can drink from a cup. And as long as we remain content within this conventional relative framework, then we remain at the level of conventional reality. And that’s what most people do in the world. And that’s fine, just operating at conventional reality.
That’s how we function. That’s how we can communicate. However, the moment that we’re not content with the validity of of this conventional framework and we seek to go beyond the limits of our conventional framework questioning, well, what have we really got here? Scientists, you know. So what have I hit?
Do you ever remember was it? Julius Sumner Miller? Why is it so? So when we start to go beyond the limits of this conventional reality questioning what have we really got here, what is really going on, then we’re searching for a deeper or a truer essence or a core identity. That’s when we start to question, well, where is the core or the essence of the cup?
We say this is a cup. Where is the essence of the cup? I look at this object and immediate immediately cup springs to my mind, you know. And it’s like it’s coming from the side of the cup without my mind having to do anything about it. But when I start to question the process and begin looking for the essence of the cup, doing this whole kind of research and this questioning and this analysing, then I’m led to the realisation that this realization that this essence cup is actually unfindable and that actually applies to all other things and events.
So when I start to analyze and I say, well, where is the essence of the cup? Is this the cup? Here. Is that the cup? No.
Is this the cup? This bit here. Is this the cup, the shape? Because if it’s the shape then I could do this. So it’s not the shape that makes it the cup.
Is it the fact that I can put something in it? Is that the cup? Is it the fact that I can drink something out of it? Is that the cup? So that when you start analyzing, when you start searching, you can’t find anywhere here that is actually the cup.
But all of those things together and my mind labeling cup shows me the conventional reality of the cup. That it depends upon all of these parts and its functioning and the mind labeling for it to be a cup, but there is no inherently existing cup from its own side. So that when we begin to realise using our wisdom, we begin to realise that there is no inherently existing cup, in dependence upon its own side, that the cup is in fact a dependent arising depending upon its parts and its function and the mind labeling, etc. When we realize that there is no inherently existing cup, then we start to begin we begin to we start to begin we just begin to relate to the cup at its ultimate level, that it is empty of inherent existence. Because it is a dependent arising, it can’t exist inherently.
But our problem all the time is that we see that there is an inherently existing problem. Forget about the cup. I mean who cares whether it’s conventionally existing or dependent or ultimately existing. But it’s when there’s a problem, for example, we see problem. Solid.
It becomes like its identity is so strong, but when you actually analyze where is the problem, you can’t find any inherently existing problem. Your mind has labeled problem on a number of parts and factors and functions and mind perceiving it that way. And so when you use your wisdom to understand that things don’t exist inherently the way you project, then there’s no inherently existing problem to get so upset about. And isn’t that a relief? You know?
So perhaps we can say this conventional and this ultimate way of existing are like two aspects, you know? Yeah, two aspects, two kind of different perspectives on objects, on things, on events that make up the world and both the conventional, you know, conventionally these things exist. Conventionally, yes, K is here. If you said, is K there? And you said, oh, yes.
Yes. K is here. K definitely exists. But the question is, how does she exist? Very loud at the moment but you know how does she where is the K?
Is the K the head? Is the K the knee? Clothing? Is K the charming personality? You know?
Where is the K? If there was an inherently existing K when I was born I would have already been K. Then my parents didn’t need to give me the name and if they did give me the name K then I would have been KK. Well I’ve been called that too. But anyway, so in the conventional world things work.
In the conventional world, there is right. There is wrong. There is positive. There is negative. These are conventions that we all accept that we need, that we use in order to function in our world, you know.
Even if I said that a hammer doesn’t exist ultimately, if I hit my thumb with that hammer, it would still hurt. So conventionally a hammer exists but ultimately you can’t find the hammer. You see that it’s actually empty of inherent existence. You know a car for example, a car is a collection of all the parts. It’s a collection of the wheels and the motor and the steering wheel and the windscreen and seats and seat belts and GPS’s these days and airbags.
A car is a collection of all the parts, you know. A car is a car. A car is not a bicycle. Okay? So it exists, but it doesn’t exist inherently from its own side.
So conventional reality refers to the collection of the parts, what we call the dependent arising. Because it is a dependent arising, it cannot exist independently, inherently from its own side. So I can go on and on and on all night about this but I probably won’t but you know, Maybe. Maybe. We don’t overcome our ignorance by trying to, develop our wisdom to understand correctly how things exist conventionally but do not exist inherently, that they’re empty of inherently existing.
If we don’t develop that kind of wisdom, then there is no way that we can gain insight into the ultimate nature of reality. And this wisdom that has the insight into the ultimate nature of reality is the only way that we are able to root out our confusion and the suffering that comes from it. When we understand these what we call two truths, what we call conventional truth and ultimate truth, when we understand these two truths, then we can recognize very clearly how our perceptions of the world arise. We can understand how our emotional states arise. We can understand what is going on when the person in love walks down the street and the depressed person walks down the street at the same time.
We can understand what’s going on. We can understand how these perceptions arise. We can understand how the emotional states and we can work with that and we can uproot the ignorance. We can overcome the very source of suffering. We’re able to develop, enhance our positive mental states.
All of our delusions, our anger, our attachment, our jealousy, our greed, our false false pride, etcetera. All of these delusions are rooted in the mistaken belief of inherent existence. And so by realizing that nothing exists inherently but only exists as a dependent arising, when we realize that, we’re able to cut the root of our suffering. So the more you understand the way things correctly exist, the more you have the wisdom that perceives things clearly and accurately, then the more you realize that you can end your suffering and that every sentient being has the potential to do the same. And so that’s how your compassion arises.
So wisdom actually helps to increase the compassion. So I know this subject, this wisdom, the wisdom of emptiness sounds incredibly abstract in the beginning, but in fact it’s really very practical and relevant to our lives. If we’re always going to allow ourselves to be pummeled by life and the experiences that we have in life, then we’re always at the mercy of whatever winds might blow us around. Whereas if we can find the peace that kind of passes all understanding, which is which is the peace, you know, in a very deep bliss, you know, then you wouldn’t ignore anything. It was a bit deep.
A bit deep. But you know I haven’t realized this but I’m starting to get some kind of idea of this and it’s like some of you have heard me say before about anger you know and the anger comes up and it kind of sit and I say where is the anger? Because anger feels so solid and so inherent and it kind of almost I say where is the anger? And I try to look at it and I try to find it and I can’t find any inherently existing anger but I can see that I become angry because of due to this, due to that, All are dependent arising. And then what am I angry at?
And then I say, okay because of this situation I’m angry. Well this situation isn’t so concrete. Have a look at it. Is there some inherently existing, unpleasing situation? Then I look and I think well depending on this, depending on that, that’s how I’ve gone and labeled it unpleasing.
You know and then there’s nothing to get angry about. I can’t grab it on. You know there’s no inherently existing thing. So this is also a great vehicle to cut through these kind of delusions. Anyway, just it’s a very worthwhile subject but you need somebody who’s got some realisation to explain it.
But just to know that there’s this kind of subject. So is ignorance bliss? No. Is wisdom bliss? Yes.
Can you get wisdom? Not overnight but you can grow it. Okay. Enough. Questions?
I understand the teaching used to talk about, there being self, so you have the exercise of looking at the side and you have no inherent self. Mhmm. Abby, could you speak up? Oh, sorry. Go on.
Yes. In the exercise where you discover that you don’t have an inherent self, so you look inside and you can’t find self. And then I come to the thing, so who or what pursues enlightenment? Mhmm. What is the entity that then Mhmm.
You know, kinda somehow makes the effort Mhmm. And goes through life and all those? Mhmm. The the last time I heard Geshe la talk about he talked about that is don’t know what he called it. Designated it.
Call it the merely labeled self. Yep. And yeah. And I was puzzled by that. Mhmm.
Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah, that’s right, it’s the merely labelled self. So I wouldn’t have thought about the merely labelled self is going on through lives. But the merely labelled self does not exist inherently.
Yeah, I understand that because it’s synonymous with the same thing. But, so what is it that goes through? So you’re saying It’s self, we label self upon a continuation of moments of mind. So there’s still something continuing. I guess what I’m thinking and my problem is that we don’t seem to have a word for it think.
We think it’s continuing. Yeah and I think we also come from a culture where if we think about something after death, you know life after death, kind of see it as the soul continuing, that there’s some kind of essence that is us that continues. I’m not talking about that but I’m trying to get the hang of what it is that this particular Buddhist tradition postulates as continuous and I was only I’m kind of thinking about the last teaching you gave. I’ve never actually heard anyone call it that before. I mean I wasn’t here so I don’t know what he said.
Yes but it becomes incredibly subtle and I think we need to understand or to investigate what merely labelled self means because that becomes even more and more subtle. But basically there is no inherently existing self or I, you know, and if you try to investigate, try to find that, won’t find that. But we label I or we label self upon the valid basis for that labeling. And so, we would label mind for example, well what is mind? Mind is not something that is fixed and permanent either.
But we label mind upon moments of mind and even a moment of mind you know is not something permanent but it depends on its beginning, depends on its middle, it depends on its end. So basically when you start to investigate more about how things exist and you look upon the parts then each of the parts also do not have inherent existence. They exist conventionally. And so you go further and further and further and you know each time you’re coming to the point that there’s nothing that is sort of anything that you can kind of grab onto that you can grasp onto. So yeah I think it’s good to meditate a little bit more on that and to investigate what the merely labelled self is.
Because I guess I’m thinking that difficulty is the labeling. The difficulty is that kind of convention that like you were describing. Mhmm. The I mean, I don’t think it’s laziness. It’s it’s an ability to to manage in the living world Mhmm.
By not analysing everything that you see and touch and move around. Oh you’d go crazy. When we talk about dependent arising there are different levels of that. We’ve got depending upon causes and conditions, we have depending upon naming and function. So for example I’m short compared to everybody else who’s tall, you know, but compared to a child I’m probably tall.
There’s kind of that mutual dependency. So there’s different level of dependent arising. As I say it’s a very complex subject and there’s a lot to tease your mind about but I think at this point all I wanted to try and do tonight was just to give an idea that you know the way that we perceive things at the moment is hallucinated. It is mistaken. We kind of grasp at things as being exactly the way we perceive them, but if we investigate further we will find that they don’t exist like that.
They can’t exist like that. And so that helps to just give us a little bit more space and a little bit more openness to look at the possibilities of well how can things exist. Can I just say something? You were talking before about complacency, but then I find sometimes in situations in the past, I can think of word situations where you do end up saying something, and then you get attacked. So so so you need to protect yourself too.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. So are you saying that I’m saying anything against that? No.
I’m just trying to say how do you protect yourself because I’m trying to say is that I found that I had I had to keep quiet. Mhmm. Mhmm. That was the wisest thing for you to do? Sometimes it’s hard to keep quiet.
Yeah. I think again that’s you know with wisdom with wisdom then we don’t get ourselves so upset by those things And then with wisdom there’s the space also to have the compassion which then helps us to know what is the right way to behave to be able to say. So I think the wisdom is absolutely essential. You know I’m not trying to blame people about oh you’re all complacent, you’re all apathetic. I’m not saying that okay?
But I’m just saying there’s a bit of generalisation. There seems to be some tension between truth and relativism. And Is that the conventional versus the ultimate? Is that the relativism versus truth? Like I’m not big on relativism, so I tend to get therefore tend to get stuck into the narrow views about my perceptions about judgments about situations or politics and stuff.
I view my politics as like this. That’s it. Yeah. I think relativism and relative truth for example may be two different things. I think sometimes we’ve got to be very careful what words we use.
So therefore I would rather say conventional, you know conventional existence and ultimate. But I mean, yes, so I think that’s kind of been but yes the problem is that we don’t even perceive conventional truth correctly. We don’t perceive how things exist conventionally. We make the mistake to see that things are inherently existing. So we project another way of existing and that’s the hallucination.
All things exist conventionally and ultimately. Conventionally they exist as a dependent arising. Ultimately they are empty of inherent existence but we project true permanent existence inherent existence on things and that’s where the tension comes because it’s mistaken. It’s not the way things exist. Quite a subject, isn’t it?
In Buddhism, in Tibetan Buddhism there are huge courses of study about this subject. Unbelievable. And you know I don’t understand it all very well but at least to start to stop always believing that my view is correct, that my view is the only view. That already gives you that much space. That already stops you from immediately reacting.
So I think that’s good enough and just to recognize that things change. I think those kind of understandings are very good to begin with. And then as we become more curious and we have access to somebody that knows some of this subject better and can explain it better and there are books and we can do different courses of study. We can try and get the wisdom. Gradually our understanding develops.
But at least in the beginning not to completely react and to completely believe that everything is the way we perceive it, then that’s enough to start relaxing you. When Well there are many different types of meditation and meditation is not just always about being calm and not just sinking. In fact meditation really is always some element of activity happening in the mind. But on this subject we would perform analytical meditation. For example, you know, we would be thinking about ‘okay I’m not going to do the cup, I’m going to do the cup, put myself’ you know, about the self, where is the self?
And so we try to get a very strong idea of this sense of I, of self. And so the meditation is an analytical meditation where we actually try to recreate or to feel that strong sense of self. And we most often feel that strong sense of self when we’re frightened, when it’s kind of like oh you know or when someone’s really hurt us. It’s a very strong feeling of how could they do that to me? Or ‘I am sad’ or when you’re really angry.
This sense of self becomes very very strong. So one part of the mind is like a spy. One aspect of the mind. It’s a bit like a spy and it’s watching and it’s looking at this self and it’s saying okay, it just tries to keep that in mind and then it says okay so where is this self? Is this I?
Maybe say I. Is I the body? And then it’s analysis. Okay well if it’s the body, where in the body? Is it the head?
Is it the leg? Is it separate to the body? If it’s the body, why do I talk about my body as if I am the owner of the body? So then is I something separate from the body? Can I exist without the body?
And then it’s like, oh, maybe I is the mind. And so then, okay. Well, which part of the mind? Is I the thought or the emotion? But then why do I talk about my thought or my anger, my emotion?
Is I something separate to the mind? Can I exist without the mind? And so you go through this whole kind of analysis to the point that you see that I is not the body, it’s not the mind, but it doesn’t exist separate from those and then you get to a point that there is no inherently existing ‘I’ but that ‘I’ is labeled upon the basis, the combination of body and mind. So it’s an analytical form of meditation that uses the learning that you’ve already developed about a subject and then through a process of questioning and analyzing you come to some conclusion and then you, stabilize your concentration on that. So it is a more advanced form of meditation than, for example, mindfulness of the breath.
But it has the ability to take some kind of theoretical knowledge and transform it into something that is sort of understood. So it is that kind of meditation, analytical meditation is a way of taking the knowledge and transforming that knowledge into wisdom. You have to realize it. Yeah. Or to get closer to realizing it.
Mean, just one meditation won’t help you realize it, but you get closer to it. Realizing a bit more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Definitely. Okay. But you do need to have a calm mind and, you know, be able to concentrate quite well to be able to do, you know, also. So you do the other meditation, silence, is it? Mindfulness?
Calm abiding. Calm abiding. Yeah, to develop the wisdom that directly realises the way things correctly exist then one needs to have a very stable, calm mind that is developed through the practice of calm abiding. Calm abiding is like the support for developing this special insight that is what does the analysis and comes to the realization. So you need both.
So is not an end in itself, calm abiding is not an end in itself but it’s a very important ingredient. Alright, well it’s quarter past nine so I think we’ve gone as late as we possibly could. So thank you all very very much for coming and for attending the various classes that I’ve been able to been so fortunate to be able to give this last week. I really appreciate your interest and your patience and your questions and your attention. I thank you very much and if there’s anything that I’ve said that is of benefit then please use it.
Otherwise you know what I’ve said over and over again don’t worry about it you’ve got enough things to worry about. Thank you. Before you leave Venerable Kaye? I just wanted to thank you very much because Kaye has been studying with us for eight days and she has a very busy schedule in the Netherlands and she works extremely hard and to actually have taken her holiday time out to come to Adelaide when she comes to Australia to see her mother was a huge thing to ask her and she has done this so graciously and she has put so much energy into the teachings that she has given. I’m sure that she probably feels quite exhausted tonight and the preparation that she has put into these teachings.
She’s actually taken us through the whole path in eight days, she’s covered everything I could possibly imagine that you could cram into that period of time. On behalf of everybody at Buddha House I want to thank you Kay for coming and please please come again! Thank you very much. Yes, well we’ll see. Okay, thank you, thank you all very much.