Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 10-minute commentary on the Compendium of Valid Cognition, Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen explores how attention and mental consciousness work together to determine what we perceive and ascertain. He uses concrete examples: when your ear hears a sound while your mind is absorbed in a beautiful visual form, this is called appearing but not ascertained — the sound appears to consciousness but the mental mind does not determine or register it. He illustrates this during meditation, where visual forms may appear to your eye consciousness but your mental consciousness remains focused on its meditation object, such as a Buddha image, which accumulates merit and generates faith. He closes by explaining how the syllables of mantras, individually meaningless, combine to convey the Buddha’s intention: through eliminating ignorance and generating wisdom, one develops a healthy, awakened mind. Pitched at practitioners of Tibetan Buddhist logic and epistemology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1993-09-17 – 20A – KR.mp3
UUID: 08dc5d8c-1ef7-4b2a-9b49-73849a71fdd5
Teacher: Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen
Collection: Compendium of Valid Cognition
Date: 1993-09-17
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~341
This transcript was generated using AI speech recognition and has been reviewed for Buddhist terminology accuracy. Some inaccuracies may remain. Please refer to the original audio recording as the authoritative source.
# Compendium of Valid Cognition 20a 1993-09-17 **Collection:** Rinpoche Recordings — Compendium of Valid Cognition **Duration:** 10.8 minutes **Words:** 345 **Model:** Deepgram Nova-3 **Corrections applied:** 0 **Transcribed:** 2026-02-27 22:16 — Our consciousness, our ear consciousness goes to that sound along with our mental consciousness. If we see a beautiful form, our eye consciousness along with our mental consciousness goes to…
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# Compendium of Valid Cognition 20a 1993-09-17
**Collection:** Rinpoche Recordings — Compendium of Valid Cognition
**Duration:** 10.8 minutes
**Words:** 345
**Model:** Deepgram Nova-3
**Corrections applied:** 0
**Transcribed:** 2026-02-27 22:16
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Our consciousness, our ear consciousness goes to that sound along with our mental consciousness. If we see a beautiful form, our eye consciousness along with our mental consciousness goes to that. At that time when our mental consciousness is going to a beautiful form, then if someone talks to us, it’s what’s called the appearing but not ascertained. Appearing but not ascertained the mind is not ascertaining what is being said when one is absorbed and the mind is absorbed in a visual beautiful visual object. So it is the mental consciousness which is determining what is going to be ascertained.
And when we’re meditating, though things may be appearing to your eye, your eye consciousness, the mental consciousness is not ascertaining them. It is observing its object of meditation. Yes. So yeah. So it could be form.
The object of meditation could be a form. Sorry. For example, an image of a Buddha. And one would it would be very beneficial. One would create a great deal of accumulate a great deal of of merit, of creative potential through such a meditation.
So if if you abide, for example, single pointedly on that form of the of the of the Buddha image, that would be very good. So one would that that one would develop a joy, which would would which would be one would develop faith. Yeah. So mantras are the words of the Buddha and they were spoken with a positive motivation.
Therefore, the words themselves are said to be skillful. Each of the letters of the mantra Ara pa tsa na don’t have a meaning. But if we combine them, we can give them the meaning that, May I have a healthy mind? May I develop a healthy state of mind? So, you know, through eliminating the darkness of unknowing and generating wisdom, then I can achieve a healthy mind.
So the mantra is saying, May this healthy mind come. And the way it comes is through eliminating the darkness of unknowing and generation of wisdom. Okay.