Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The eight paired hopes and fears of ego-oriented existence — pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and notoriety — anchor the opening of this 45-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun. Invoking a Janis Joplin lyric to argue that real freedom means nothing left to lose or gain, he builds the case that genuine practice requires honest confrontation of one’s own suffering before extending compassion to others. The second half moves into practical instruction on calm abiding: a guided visualization using a painted Buddha image, then a systematic walk through the five faults that obstruct meditative stabilization — laziness, forgetfulness, laxity, excitement, and over-application — and their eight antidotes. Mindfulness and introspection are illustrated by the image of balancing a water bowl while navigating a potholed road. Pitched at those beginning a structured meditation practice, though practitioners working with calm abiding will find the technical detail useful.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 A L B 1992.mp3
UUID: f0250bea-c3e6-4af1-989c-30fd300d45ea
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: A Look at Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~4,861
People in the back quite often can’t hear me, and they get discouraged. So at any time. When I say can you hear me, usually speak up. And then during the course of the night, I speak in a slower voice, so it doesn’t work out. So just raise your hand.
Maybe we should have went to the zoo. Begin by adjusting our motivation, trying to become bring our mind to the present moment in the context of the present situation, and try to create some kind of opening, some kind of flexibility, some possibility for change within our mind. And this is, in order to do that, I guess it’s necessary to have a certain degree of humility, open mindedness, and a sincere desire to change, to grow. And that sincere desire to grow, to change has as its primary motivating force a combination of an acute awareness of pain, confusion in our lives, and some kind of conviction that there is some kind of answer to the problem of ordinary human existence, that there is something which can be done. Some deeper method that we can work with aside from our usual methods of what we call, the eight principle preoccupations of ego-orientated existence.
The eight preoccupations of ego-orientated existence, this hope for pleasure, fear of pain, for gain, fear of loss, hope for praise, fear of blame, hope for fame, fear of notoriety. This is what our normal everyday expression or operation of our ego oriented existence is very much bound up in hopes and fears. We just keep going around in circles. You know, we’re not free. We’re governed by hopes and fears.
Hopes in the sense that anything is setting our priorities in terms of ego, and fear in terms of that which is seen as a threat to ego’s continued existence, is diminishing itself in some way. And in which we set our goals, we set our values, set our principles, and we concern ourselves in our daily activities in terms of our hopes and fears. And so this idea of going for refuge, a reorientating process, is a reorientation from ego-orientated existence to one of growth orientated existence. Growth orientated existence is antithetical to a life based upon hopes and fears. You know we’re trying to go beyond, we’re trying to live a life beyond hopes and fears, and confront, you know, it may involve some kind of hopelessness, which doesn’t sound very appetizing, doesn’t it?
To think things are hopeless. I hope that some maybe there’s some kind of intimate connection between hopelessness and fearlessness. I I was I was thinking of a song that Janis Joplin used to sing. And I think the one line that I remember from it was, freedom is just a word in other words, for nothing nothing left to lose. And I think if she would add it, freedom is just another word for nothing left left to lose or gain.
Then I think she would have she would have it right. Freedom is just another word for nothing nothing left to lose or gain. There’s nothing that you hope for nor fear losing, and then you’re free, at least from the from the living out the life completely based upon these eight principle preoccupations of ego oriented existence, pleasure, pain, gain and loss, fame and notoriety, praise and blame. And then there’s some kind of and you can just think of the freedom that offers you. You can choose in the light of your own wisdom, in the light of your own compassion.
You might, know, later on when we talk about the attainment of calm abiding. Here’s what what is attained called pliancy, pliancy, pliancy. It’s a serviceability of the mind and body toward skillful actions. That is the mind and the body become like your servants rather than the other way around. In terms of the fact that we are the servants of our hopes and fears, as it were.
One attains some kind of freedom, some kind of serviceability of mind and body, then we can choose how we’re going to direct our mind, how we’re going to direct our body in terms of our higher principles, higher goals. And then life becomes very purposeful. It becomes, you you can make your life a growth orientated existence. So this process of reorientation, of realignment. I think very much involves confrontation of our pain and confusion as the starting point.
And that’s where we’re at and not always a basket case. But if we never confront the high degree of unmanageability of our lives, the distress and the pain, then I don’t think we’re how can we ever sincerely want to go beyond them? Is not okay, but that’s okay. I’m not okay, but you’re not okay, but that’s okay. The situation is workable once we’re willing to get in touch with it.
Without this confrontation and this acute awareness and this acknowledgement, then perhaps there’s no real sincere determination to be free, to change. Perhaps it becomes another activity amongst all your various activities, a curiosity, an academic pursuit, something which makes you feel good sometimes. But there’s not just consistent awareness of the necessity to orientate oneself in terms of growth, and that no state bounded by ego is going to satisfy you. It’s just hopeless. Ego’s oriented existence is hopeless.
It’s dissatisfactory by its very nature. We can’t hope to find fulfillment, satisfaction within that context of that type of mentality. And initially by that mentality a life is based upon hopes and fears. So this reorientation process, this redirecting process, is a realignment of our allegiance from leading a life passively based upon, according to hopes and fears. A life based upon hope for pleasure, fear of pain, hope for gain, fear of loss, hope for praise, fear of blame, hope for fame, fear of notoriety.
Reorientating from that way of life, in those values, in those Those Significant features of your life toward a life based upon growth, actively choosing growth. Actively choosing growth means we may have to give up our hope for pleasure, we may have to confront our fears. To be fearless mean you don’t have fear. It means that one acts in spite of one’s fear. And knowing that one must, to make that choice freely in the light of one’s own wisdom and basic sanity.
We will never give up our neurotic fears unless our existential fears are greater. We have fears, there are certain fears which are quite reasonable, and one of them is the fear of continued ego-orientated existence. And we will never go we will always be bound by our ego based fears until we realize that there’s something greater to be feared than the fears of ego. And that is simply that hopelessness of ever finding going beyond fear, unless we confront the fear of the ego. And this type of fear, this existential fear which is based in reality, the laws of the way things are.
And we try to raise the level of our motivation such that we’re seeking growth not only for ourselves but for others. As Rinpoche was saying last night, we have to begin with ourselves. It would be quixotic, overly idealistic to think that one could have compassion and love, a sincere and strong, stable compassion and love for others without first having for yourself. And a compassion in the sense of sincerely wishing and taking responsibility to free oneself from suffering and cause of suffering. And love in the sense of the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing the spiritual growth, well-being.
Knowing our own pain, knowing our own difficulties directly, intimately. If we don’t have that kind of love and compassion for ourselves, how can we ever develop for others when we can only know their difficulties and their pain secondhandedly, vicariously, indirectly. So we begin with ourselves, wanting to help ourselves, developing compassion for ourselves, learning how to love ourselves, and be gentle with ourselves. But we don’t stop there. We extend the same understanding that we have developed for ourselves toward others.
Out of our compassion, when we direct this wish to be free from suffering toward ourselves, we develop the determination to be free. When we direct that same attitude toward others, we develop compassion. Compassion for oneself is to develop determination to be free. Compassion direct toward others is to help them to grow. To ultimately to free themselves from all ego based existences and to find freedom and peace.
So there is a confronting of our own fears and conviction that we can grow in terms of our own difficulties and then extending that. Raising the level of our motivation. Developing the same attitude towards others. And so with this attitude in our mind we are open to the possibility of of we become receptive to what we need. Begin to have some idea of what it is we need.
We need to grow, we need to change, we have problems and we want to deal with them. And so we begin to look for answers, we begin to question. And without questions there are no answers. The questions are what is important. To live with these questions and then they will begin to be answered.
But without this question, this need, this determination to find another way of life, another way of being, then there’s no change. Out of this, this becomes the context. The sincerity and openness, and this becomes like a way of life. This is going for refuge. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly.
From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving in the other perfection, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving in the other perfection, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma in the highest assembly. In the virtuous merits that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
Begin with some meditation. We’re going to be as we usually do with mindfulness and breathing, but then we’re going to practice our calm abiding. And as we did last week, can take this as an object to practice with. Not necessarily mean that you have to use this object if you were to go on to use calm abiding, but just for today’s sake, practicing calm abiding, we can use an image of a Buddha, as for example in this painting of the Buddha. And so we’ll begin with session of mindfulness of breathing, and then we’ll take a short break and we’ll examine the picture.
And you want to memorize the visual image, analyze it as to where, what is, what is color, what is the shape, the different proportions, the relationship between the arms, the head, the legs, etcetera. And just as if you were memorizing a piece of a verse from a piece of poetry, and you’re trying to hold it in your mind. All that information, it’s information, it’s visual information. And then we’re going to cause this to rise in our mind, to our mental eye, not our physical eye but to our mental eye. And you can imagine it appearing about four to five feet in front of you at approximately the level of your eyes.
So perhaps if you’re agitated a little bit lower between all the way down to perhaps the level of your neighbor somewhere in that area. If your mind is very agitated, it’s best to lower the site where you’re seeking to visualize it. If your mind is sleeping, tired, then raise it up to the level of your eyebrow. If you can imagine it to be about the size of your hand or even smaller. The smaller the better, but it gets more and more difficult to visualize this.
You can get it down to the size of a mustard seed, but it gets a little bit difficult when it gets very small. And maybe the size of your hand. And so to overcome any type of agitation, excitement in your mind, you can imagine it’s heavy. To help to glorify your mind, to enlighten your mind, you can imagine it’s made of light. So it shouldn’t be two dimensional.
It should be made of light, like a light beam, it’s actually alive and it’s vibrant and it has a sense of presence. It’s simply not a two dimensional picture, but it actually has a sense of solidity about it, but the nature of light. So if you take a comfortable and firm posture, you begin with mindful breathing. And And then when you go to visualize it, you know, whatever appears to you, be satisfied with that. Don’t try to clear it.
Don’t try to make it. Don’t try to see more. If you see an arm, simply be satisfied with that and hold that. If you just see a golden spot, or a red spot or whatever, be satisfied with that, hold that. If you try to see more and more, you’ll agitate your mind, and you’ll lose whatever it is that is appearing to you.
If you don’t see anything, that’s okay. Just keep trying gently to squeeze the mind, just like trying to remember a telephone number, but very gently trying to see the picture. But once you see something hold up, just be satisfied with that. In a very gentle and comfortable manner, just try to cause that image to appear to you, four to five feet in front of you. And whatever appears, just hold on to that in a relaxed manner.
We’re looking at the opening of awareness by the Dalai Lama. The chapter on the three higher trainings, the higher training in ethics, in meditative stabilization and wisdom. We’re looking at the second higher training or special training in meditative stabilization. And the way in which we achieve meditative stabilization is by means of attainment, achieving calm abiding. We’ve been talking about calm abiding.
The Dalai Lama goes on to discuss the means, the methods for achieving calm abiding. And this is to abandon the five faults by means of the eight antidotes. And we began to discuss the five faults and how they are overcome by the eight antidotes. The first thought as we discussed last week was laziness. Laziness in general is a lack of enthusiasm for skillful actions, virtuous actions.
Here specifically, lack of enthusiasm for meditative stabilization. One doesn’t particularly care whether one attains it or not. There’s a disinterest. And so in order to overcome this disinterest, the lack of enthusiasm, making use of the first four of the eight antidotes. And the first of these was a conviction that in the importance of developing meditative stabilization.
In order to bring about a thoroughgoing, a radical transformation of the mind, it’s necessary that we have a strong concentration. The process of meditation is to habituate the mind to skillful state of mind. And that way the skillful state becomes integrated and becomes part of our second nature as it were. In order to generate these skillful states and be able to habituate, to accustom, to familiarize the mind with them, it’s necessary to be able to proceed without distraction in generating. And then once the state is generated, to be able to hold onto it as long as possible before it’s lost, before it fades away.
And this requires concentration. So if we conceivably want to progress in the development of skillful state of mind and transforming our mind, it’s very necessary that we develop concentration. If more concentrated our mind, the more effective our meditation will be, and thus the transformation of our mind. So this is a kind of conviction that we necessarily have to have. Once we gain that conviction, then we’re going to aspire.
We’re going to see the benefits of meditation and we’re going to aspire from it. That’s the second antidote, aspiration. And out of aspiration comes effort, which is the third antidote. And then out of effort comes what is termed pliancy. Pliancy is the serviceability of the body and mind.
We can do with it whatever we want. Know just like the Tibetans, they would use an analogy such as a horse. A horse which has been trained well is at your service. It goes wherever you like, just at the mere touch of the rein, like a quarter horse. It almost knows what you want before it, when you give it the signal.
But it’s very serviceable, it’s there at your service. It’s very enjoyable and it’s very functional to ride such a type of horse as opposed to a horse which is trying to drag you where it wants to go and you want go in the opposite direction. So this is pliancy. It associated with bliss. So bliss in its pliancy is the ultimate antidote to laziness.
And the second fault is forgetfulness or forgetting the precept or forgetting the object of meditation. Whatever object that we’ve chosen as the basis for cultivating, accommodating, forgetting that. And obviously, not obviously, but the antidote is mindfulness or non forgetfulness. So in order to overcome our forgetfulness of the object, have to develop the factor of mindfulness. Throughout the course, the two main factors we’re going to develop in the course of achieving calm abiding are mindfulness and introspection or sometimes called awareness, the knowing quality of the mind.
And we said with respect to mindfulness that it has three characteristics. One, that it has to be familiar with its object. We can’t be mindful of something that we’re not familiar with. If I don’t know your telephone number, then there’s no way that I can remember it. If I’ve never learned your telephone number, there’s no way I can be mindful of it.
I have to be familiar with it. So whatever object that we choose, we have to familiarize ourselves with it in order to be mindful of it. So we have to study it, we have to analyze it. Some people go to the extent where they’ll draw the if they were using a picture of Buddha or whatever, they would actually draw it. They would learn how to draw it.
They would paint it. And this would be a forceful way to familiarize the mind with the object they’re going to use to develop calm abiding. The other two features of mindfulness is that it has the way it apprehends its object is in a continuous fashion. It’s like if you’re hungry, then whatever you might be doing, there’s this sense of hunger which is present. Likewise with mindfulness, there is always this the way it holds its object is in a continuous fashion, just like the sense of hunger.
And then finally, the way it functions. The function of mindfulness is to cause non distraction. The function of mindfulness is to not allow the mind to be distracted to other objects. If we have strong mindfulness, then we can place our mind, we can set our mind on any object, and our mind will stay there. That’s the function of mindfulness.
It causes non distraction to other objects. And the third fault is laxity and excitement. We say laxity and excitement, but really what we mean here is the non identification of laxity and excitement. And this is where we left off last week. I’m talking about the fault.
So laxity is like a dullness of the mind. There’s a certain unclarity, a certain looseness of the mind. It can go all the way from coarse laxity, or very coarse, what we call lethargy, which is close to sleep, the cloudiness of the mind, to a very subtle type of laxity. There’s a coarse laxity in which the object is clear, but it’s not intense. The object appears to you clearly, it’s there, but it doesn’t have an intensity.
And then the most subtle type of laxity is that the object has clarity, but the mind is not vivid. The mind is not intense. So the subtle laxity is the most difficult of the faults to be able to identify and correct. Therefore it’s said to be the main obstacle to the achievement of calm abiding, subtle laxity. Many people mistake the state which subtle laxity is present as being full achievement of calm abiding because there is clarity of the object.
The object doesn’t have the intensity, the sharpness of both the object that which is appearing, and the mind which is holding the object. It doesn’t have the full intensity, the clarity of mind. Have to, on the other hand there is excitement. coarse excitement, the object is actually lost. The mind is distracted.
With subtle excitement, the object is not lost, but a part of the mind is involved with mental gossip or discursiveness. The mind is on the object, the object appears, and the mind is set on the object. The part of the mind is like it’s compared to water flowing beneath the ice. There’s something going on in a small part of your mind, and this is called subtle excitement, and it’s like the flowing beneath the ice. So the main antidote to laxity and excitement is introspection, this factor of awareness.
It’s not actually the direct antidote. That’s why it’s necessary to say the identification of laxity and excitement. It is introspection which identifies laxity and excitement. And the way I’m holding my object of visualization, my object of calm abiding, I’m holding in an incorrect manner. That means there’s either some coarse or subtle excitement or some kind of coarse or subtle laxity involved.
And it’s introspection which tells me there’s some fault in the way I’m meditating. So it is introspection which identifies there’s some problem. And then we go on to apply specific antidotes. In the case of excitement, we have to bring the mind down. We have to loosen the mind, relax the mind.
In the case of laxity, we have to tighten the mind. We have to invigorate, enliven the mind. And we’ve discussed many types of methods whereby we can achieve this, we talked about in terms of the Theravāda tradition of overcoming the five hindrances to meditation. But it is the faculty of introspection which tells you there’s some fault. Without introspection, then we could carry on our meditation, and there would always be some kind of fault in our meditation.
There would either be excitement present or laxity present, even though we have the object in front of us. It still wouldn’t be a proper meditation, a correct meditation. One analogy they use in explaining these two factors of mindfulness and awareness or introspection. If you had to walk down a very rough road full of potholes and full of big boulders, and someone put a bowl of water on your head, and they said if you spill a drop of water, they’re walking behind you. They said, they said, I’m going to cut off your head.
So you want to be very careful. So in the course of going from A to B, where you want to get to, it would not be enough simply to be aware of what was on the road. I mean you would come across a boulder, that’s enough. You might jump over it, or if you came to a hole in the road, you might jump over the hole in the road. But you must also remember that there’s a bowl of water on your head.
Remembering that there’s a bowl of water on your head and aware that there’s an obstacle in front of you, you operate in such a way as not to spill the water. Mindfulness is holding some kind of information for you. In awareness, introspection is telling you the lay of the road, how things are going. You have to make use of these two factors together in order to get from one end of the road to the other without spilling a bowl of water. So introspection and mindfulness are operating together.
Mindfulness will induce awareness, eventually. But we all have these factors to some degree at present. And the fourth fault is called non application. This means that not making use of an antidote, Even though there’s some kind of fault in a way our meditation is proceeding. Maybe there’s laxity, maybe there’s excitement, but really we just let it go by for one reason or another.
We identify, or even though we identify, we don’t apply an antidote, either to raise the mind in the case of laxity or to lower the mind in the case of excitement. So the antidote to non application is naturally enough the intention to apply an antidote application. Either not identifying a fault, or though identifying the fault, not applying an antidote is a fault. And we have to apply some kind of antidote, which therefore the antidote is called application. And then the fifth fault we have to overcome is over application.
This means that even at those times when there’s no fault, actually our meditation is going well. Perhaps you had some difficulty before. Maybe you were excited. So you used a method, an antidote, to bring down your mind. And now your meditation is actually going well.
But still you persist in applying the previous method to bring your mind down, to loosen, to relax the mind. And so you’re over applying. You’re applying when it’s not necessary. So this is over application. And the antidote for over application is, you could call it non application or equanimity.
When things are going well, you let it go. It’s good enough to leave the mind as it naturally is at that time. So being able to have equanimity and allowing when the process is working that it can move on naturally. Equanimity. Then the Dalai Lama goes on to explain how calm abiding is achieved by overcoming these five faults by means of the eight antidotes and this is over nine levels of mental abiding to using six powers and four types of mental engagement.
So it sounds like it’s quite a complicated process. If you, like anything, if you familiarize your mind with information, it doesn’t, it’s not all that complicated. I mean to know it intellectually to do it is quite another thing obviously. So we’re going to move through nine levels mental abiding. Nine stages in order to achieve calm abiding.
From where we are at now, we are in the first mental abiding, moving through the nine levels to achieve calm abiding up here. In the course of that we have to overcome these five faults by applying eight antidotes and we’re going to assist. This is going to be assisted by six powers and over the course our mind is going to engage the object in four different ways. Four ways of engaging or ways of approaching the object. So by the word calm abiding in Sanskrit, it means calming of the mind to external objects and abiding on an internal object.
This is where the term calm abiding comes from. Calming the distractions to an external object and the mind abiding stably on an internal object is calm abiding. So in the process of developing calm abiding, have to choose an object. It can be anything, but once we choose an object, until we achieve calm abiding, should stick to that same object. This is when you actually, I say, going to set aside a period of time or a course of meditation and say I’m going to seek to achieve calm abiding and I’m going to pick this object.
It’s not to say that from now on you have to use the image of the Buddha in order to concentrate. This wasn’t perhaps your initial step in developing calm abiding. It’s when you determine that now I’m going to begin my sequence, I’m going to begin the process of moving through these nine mental abiding(s). Then pick one object and stick with it throughout the entire process of attaining calm abiding. In terms of the various objects we can make use of, There are objects for different uses.
For example, there are objects for purifying behavior. There are objects for counteracting or dominant afflictive emotions. There are five groupings, for example, of classes of afflictive emotions which we can choose a particular object for in the development of calm abiding. There’s groupings of desire, hatred, obscuration, pride, and discursiveness.