Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using a two-room mountain cabin — where nothing compels one room to be the kitchen rather than the bedroom until the mind labels it so — Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 43-minute session by grounding the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka view of emptiness in everyday experience. He walks through how every object, including the self, arises only through causes and conditions, constituent parts, and the act of labeling, then sets out three criteria that distinguish conventional existence from mere invented naming. The session opens into extended Q&A: Buddha nature is explained as both the mind’s natural purity and its dynamic, moldable capacity to evolve; students press on whether faith or analytical reasoning is the better route to realizing emptiness; and Ven Jampa Gendun argues that deep intellectual understanding of selflessness, while not equivalent to direct experience, can measurably reduce attachment and anger in the meantime. Suited to students with some grounding in Buddhist philosophy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 A L B 1992.mp3
UUID: 94595f41-ddb8-454c-955b-2937e82e36d0
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: A Look at Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.0 minutes
Words: ~4,692
Things arise dependent upon causes and conditions, their parts and upon terms and concepts. Since they arise dependent, they cannot exist independently Because they arise in dependence, they do not exist independently. They are empty of being independent. They existent because they are dependent existence. The other side of the coin of dependent arising is emptiness.
At the Autonomy school, the Middle Way School, this final thought of the Buddha, Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, there’s nothing whatsoever coming from the side of the object. If we illustrate this, if you have a cabin, In India, houses and rooms are pretty simple. They just have four walls and a roof, more or less, and a floor. If you were to build a cabin, let’s say, in the mountains, you make it quite simple. And you build one room here, and next to it you build another room.
It’s a two room cabin. You know you want two rooms. And you put two doors, and you put a window in each room. You haven’t worked out what you’re going to use the rooms for. You simply have built two rooms.
But then you start thinking, well, what should I use that room for? And you think, well, there’s a nice view over here. That would be nice to wake up to in the morning. And this room over here, it’s near the water. I can put plumbing into that room.
So in dependence upon various causes and conditions, building the house, the causes, the wood, labor, conditions. There’s a nice sunrise over here. There’s plumbing, which is a pipe. Running water is more readily connected up over here. Then the parts, the walls, the roof, the floor, we label.
I’m to make this the kitchen. I’m going to make this my bedroom. It’s a very simple house. Before that labeling process, there was no kitchen. There was no bedroom.
There was just two rooms. Now through the labeling process, you call this the kitchen. It becomes the kitchen. You call this the bedroom. It becomes the bedroom.
There was nothing which forced us. Anything from the side of the object was determined that this had to be the kitchen. You could have made that the kitchen. Could have made that the bedroom. But there was nothing coming from the side of the object which forced us, which demanded that kitchen, this must be the bedroom.
Something in dependence upon our conception. We made that the bedroom. We made that the kitchen. Nothing from the side of the object, just simply on the basis of designation. There was nothing inherent, no self defining quality.
No one could have said, well, you can’t make that a bedroom. That’s just not a bedroom. No one could have made that statement, that there was something bedroom ish about this, kitchen ish about that, as if it demanded to be that. in dependence upon causes, the building, the work, materials, conditions, a nice view, the availability of water, and dependence upon the parts, the floor, the wall, ceiling, in dependence upon the process of being designated. Kitchen came into existence.
Bedroom came into existence. They arose in dependence upon those. Therefore, kitchen and bedroom are empty of independent existence. They appear to be that way. They appear to be objectively existing, self sufficient as if existing from their own side, as if they didn’t depend upon anything else.
They had always been there, some kind of entity, something about them which makes them what they are. But this is, in fact, not the case. Now every existent object is a product of something to be given a name and something else to give it a name. There is not a single atom of anything in the universe which does not rely on this process. There is nothing which exists from its own side.
I too, then, am a product. Someone has taken two things together, my body and my mind, and called it me. I am nothing more than that. There is no me which exists from its own side. There is no me which does not rely upon someone taking my body and mind together and granting it the name.
Neither in fact do my body or my mind themselves exist from their own side. So we have in dependence upon our body and mind. These parts which arose in dependence upon causes and conditions, we’ve been labeled I, self.. So this is the conventionally existent I. This is the I which wakes up in the morning, washes, makes breakfast, goes to work, or like me, stay home all day, whatever you do,, take care of the kids.
Comes home at night, tired, cooks something, and goes to bed. That I, that’s the conventionally existing I. The I which has been labeled in dependence upon the part and causes and conditions. But we conceive of an eye which exists independent of this labeling process, as if there was an eye which had always been there without our having to conceive of I. We learned the name I.
I and Jampa, this name that we’ve given to this body and mind, I had to learn. I differentiate myself. For a while there, I didn’t differentiate myself between my mother and I. There wasn’t this differentiation. But slowly, I began to have sensations which my mother didn’t have.
Or I began to have a sense that she had sensations which I didn’t have. So they began to sense that, well, we aren’t the same nervous system. We aren’t the same body. We aren’t the same person. And we began to separate.
Frightening thought. And I began to call this I over here and that you over there. That’s my mother over there. And anyway, this learned process of differentiation, that I is over here somewhere. And that’s fine, but we have this conception that there’s another I which didn’t depend upon this learning process, this labeling process, which doesn’t depend upon these parts, the body and mind, which doesn’t depend upon causes, the sperm and ovum of my mother in order to produce this body, the previous moment of mine which produces present moment of mine, conditions, my culture, my education.
All of this coming together I call I. And that’s who I am. But there’s an I which we conceive of none of this has any bearing on at all. We assign it qualities, but they’re purely qualities which are being attributed to a fabricated eye. And these qualities in itself are fabricated eye.
Whether we call those qualities singular, unchanging, independent, or whether we call these qualities substantially existent, whether we call it truly existent I, whether we call it a naturally existent I, objectively existent I, these are all attributes which no I possesses. There’s nothing there, but we can see that it exists. This process of in order for something to come into existence, it must satisfy all of these criteria. If someone were running for office, let’s say the presidency of the United States, he needs a body and a mind. His body arose dependence upon the sperm of his parents.
His mind arose from his previous moment of mind in that same continuum. But that in itself is not enough to be a president of the United States. Well, you don’t even need a mind, per se. I’m joking. There’s the body and mind.
But there’s the causes. We also need the condition. He has to satisfy certain criteria. He has to be nominated by the party, has to run for office, and has to win, get the most votes. But even that is not enough.
Then there has to be a ceremony when he’s given the title, We now make you President of the United States. Then and only then does the President of the United States exist, dependence upon causes and conditions, parts, and finally the giving of the name, the labeling, the giving of that title, the swearing in ceremony. Then the president of the United States arises and dependence upon that. We have a sense that all of these objects exist without depending, without arising in this manner, and especially with respect to self. But in fact, with every object that we ever see, they all appear this way.
Every object in the universe comes into existence in dependence upon this process. The process of labeling occurs like this. The basis to be given the name exists out there. From our side, the concept that applies the name and the name itself, we come up with something labeled. And it’s nothing more than that.
There’s something out there which is going to be given a name. From our side we have a concept and we give it a name and the object arises. There’s nothing more than that. But this can lead to the question, well, we can call anything anything, then can’t we? Well, that’s not correct.
In order for something to exist, it must meet a criteria of three factors. The first is the object must be renowned in the world. It must be known conventionally, by conventional perception. A four legged animal wags its tail and barks, I can’t call it a cat. I can call it a cat, but it’s not meaningful.
It’s a misuse of convention. I’m using the wrong label. People would say, no, that’s not a cat. That’s a dog. So in order for a dog to exist, it must be an object which is popularly known in the world as that.
It must not be contradicted by a valid conventional cognition. It cannot be contradicted by a valid conventional cognition. For example, if I were out in a field with a friend of mine and I said, Oh look, there’s a man over there. Who’s that man? And he says, No, no, that’s not a man.
That’s a scarecrow. And we got up close, Oh, you’re right. My eyes are going bad on me. His valid conventional cognition of a man would contradict my cognition of a scarecrow. His valid cognition of a scarecrow would contradict my cognition of a man.
I was, Ah, you’re right. I couldn’t maintain that belief in the face of his contradiction. So for my being able to say, There’s a man, it must be a correct, valid cognition. Or it cannot be contradicted by a correct, valid cognition. I can be wrong.
My senses can be mistaken. So for me to call that object a man, it must be based upon a correct perception. If it’s contradicted by a correct perception, then it doesn’t exist. And then the third criteria for an existent is that it cannot be contradicted by a valid cognition which is searching for the ultimate. That is to say, my conception of this truly existent table is contradicted by a valid cognition which is searching for the ultimate nature of that table.
The table, in fact, is not truly existent. So the cognition which is searching for the ultimate nature of that table would contradict my conception of it as being truly existent. Even from the point of view of the consequence of Middle Way school, which says that nothing is coming from the side of the object, it has profound ramifications that things don’t define themselves. They don’t have any particular markers forcing us to call them what we do. But we can’t call anything anything because we are bound by a convention.
And this convention is continually shifting, changing over time. And so our reality is continually shifting, changing over time. Now there’s no objective world out there with our thoughts that we are making the world. As our view, as the universal view, commonly held view of the beings changes, our reality changes. It’s in flux.
There’s nothing to fix. Any questions? See that the mind dividing depends upon past state of mind. Yeah, previous moment of mind, same continuum. So can I bring the mind back to something?
You brought the body back to the abdomen. Yeah. I can’t no. I can only bring it back to a previous moment of mine, and a mind a mind moment previous to that and back and back and back and back. And we identify with the mind.
We identify the eye with the mind because it is the mere I. It is the I which is labeled onto this, the subtlest wind and the subtlest consciousness, which goes onto future life. And it’s the mind which carries the evolutionary history of the individual, that is to say, is karma. And therefore, the eye is identified with the mind, not with the sperm and ovum. Not with all the elements of the father’s body which may produce that sperm and the mothers which produce that ovum.
Because they have no common consequences. They have no information about who we are carrying with them. They do act as a condition which condition our mind. So I don’t know. Maybe it’s because the mind contains our evolutionary history that we label on that this is the I and that we’re most concerned with the mind.
Tracing it back, we can only trace it back to a previous moment of mind in this continuum that’s beginningless. Whereas the continuum of our body, I mean we may have used every element in the universe in the course of taking infinite bodies, I don’t know. But it would just be a recycling process of material elements. And because it doesn’t carry our history on it, it doesn’t make much difference. I don’t know if I answered your question There are two types of Buddha natures.
One is called the naturally abiding Buddha nature, and the other is evolutionary Buddha nature. Naturally abiding Buddha nature is the emptiness of the mind. That is to say, the natural purity of the mind. That these are very afflictive emotions, these neuroses, are not intrinsic to the mind. They are adventitious, accidental to the mind.
Therefore they can be removed. They are not the same entity as the mind. If our neuroses were like the heat of fire, then in order to get rid of the heat, we would have to destroy the fire. There would be no way that And if in fact that was the situation, then we would just have to live with our neuroses. We would never be able to extricate them from the mind because they’re in the very nature of the mind.
So the nature of the mind is pure. These afflictive emotions are not within the nature of the mind itself. Mind is empty. It doesn’t have any inherent characteristic. It’s like space.
But then there’s evolutionary Buddha lineage, represents the dynamic quality of the mind, that it’s able to evolve, that it’s able to develop, that it’s able to change. That it’s like the stuff of mind is like clay. And out of this clay, depending upon our skill and our motivation, we can create sculpture of Michelangelo or Rodin, or we can create an ice tray. It’s open ended. So it can be molded into any shape in any way that we can, that we have the ability.
So we don’t have any abiding personality characteristics. It’s like everything is possible, this potentiality of the mind. We can create whatever it is we wish depending upon how we shape it, depending upon our skill. So it’s open ended. It’s dynamic.
It’s, by its very nature, pure. And this is what we mean by Buddha nature. No, you make a lot of sense. So I think we touched upon this last week a little bit, that there is the I which wakes up in the morning brushes his teeth and eats breakfast, etcetera. And the conventionally existent I, which is labeled, is a name given to the body and mind.
Whatever happens to the body, we say happens to I. I’m sitting, I’m thinking, I’m talking. And this I is the conventionally existent I, empirical I. It exists. It’s hard to understand what it is, but we can find it.
We can locate it. We can come to an understanding of what it is. But there’s another I which we believe to exist, which in fact doesn’t exist at all. And this is the I which is the basis of all these emotional experiences such as hatred and spite and jealousy, attachment. This I has certain characteristics such as, for example, it appears to be singular, unchanging, independent, independent of the body and mind.
There’s something there which needs to be protected. I hate you. I hate you. There’s something there. When we feel it’s under threat, then we act with aversion.
When something enhances it, we act with attachment. We want to draw that object into this eye and make it a permanent part of its territory. But when we search for that eye, even though we have a belief it exists and we operate on the basis of it, when we actually search, is there anything which corresponds to that belief? You can have beliefs in things that don’t exist, belief in flying saucers or whatever. When we look, we can’t find it.
It doesn’t exist. So that begins to undermine. We begin to create something that maybe it really doesn’t exist. Maybe I might believe. Maybe I’m wrong.
And it begins to undermine that. And all of the various ways of thinking, emotions which arise in dependence upon those types of beliefs in such a type of I begin to fade away. The mind is no longer afflicted by them. There are people who are predisposed to traveling the path by faith and those who are predisposed to traveling by reason. But they still have to realize emptiness.
Can’t you realize it and then explain it the other way around? I think that’s the question. Is that your question? But we’re trying to think about it first and understand it and then do it. The the just do it and then explain it to yourself afterwards.
The thinking about it and doing the same thing, simultaneous. You can’t, yeah. Some people do have experiences of it. But you need a context to put it in, or it’s simply dismissed. The mind will dismiss it.
It’s not able to be integrated into your worldview. And it has no ramifications. You have an experience that’s lost because it doesn’t fit. I mean, would be quite frightening to have some kind of spontaneous experience of selflessness. I mean, people in LSD, they freak out.
And then they forget it. I don’t want think about that anymore. But if they have some kind of context which they’ve built up, then these experiences can be developed. It can be quite forceful in their lives. And we do have experiences.
But they go unnoticed or they’re dismissed or they’re repressed. I think so. Yeah. Well, especially in Tibetan Buddhism, say that intellectual understanding is very close to experience. The more sophisticated your intellectual understanding, it’s coming very It’s not the same thing.
There’s no question about the actual experience. But it is coming very close, it’s almost like a jump. It makes a slight jump to the actual experience. And for example, in Theravadin Buddhism, when they do Vipassana, you sit there and you just observe the body and the mind, the body aggregate. And you never see the eye.
You you just note mental and physical events. That’s all there is, arising, abiding, ceasing. That’s all you see day after day after day after day. And you begin to wonder whether maybe there’s no eye. And hopefully there’s some insight.
Hopefully there’s some kind of insight. Mean the Tibetans especially, they emphasized intellectual development as a support to experience. It would facilitate experience. Brings you closer to that point when you’re I mean we want to experience. I mean that’s all of what this study is about.
But the study, I mean it does affect your mind. It cannot remove the ignorance, but it can begin to reduce the consequences of your ignorance. Really deep intellectual understanding of selflessness may help you to overcome lessening your anger, lessening your attachment. It can’t remove ignorance. Only the direct experience can.
Yeah. No doubt faith can move mountains. I think sometimes I think maybe you’re going to have to have realization of emptiness at some point. I mean the Buddhists do not wash away sins with water, nor do they remove suffering by their hand, nor do they transfer their realizations to others. But by the showing of the truth, all who hear are made free is through the teachings, the conversation with the Buddhists, that people actually are liberated.
And though one can have great faith and it would make a great difference in one’s life, one has to be rid for oneself, one’s own ignorance and one’s own mind. And how you go about that might be different methods. But don’t But everybody’s got to become a Buddha., And these capacities aren’t inherent. We have Buddha nature. Our only limitations are those we acknowledge.
We aren’t stuck with our particular present capacity. That the more you use wisdom, the more wisdom that you develop. The more you use your intelligence, the more intelligent you become. I would try and differentiate between wisdom and intellect. Oh yeah, yeah, I would also.
So you can be wise and a lot of fact, you really need not be an intellectual of great capacity. Oh, yeah. Mean, great master is Milarepa. Milarepa, he didn’t he had great experiences. I once asked the Dalai Lama about studying, whether it was all that necessary.
And he said you can have great realizations like meditating on the graduated path. But unless you’re able to put them in some kind of intellectual framework, your ability to help others is limited. Yeah, for oneself. Oh, just on faith. Wow.
Yeah, you have to, yeah. My faith is it would be a tremendous force, powerful force motivating your practice. It would reduce self-created hindrances and obstacles and help you to create the conducive conditions to have realization. Faith, you’re going to be forced to come to an intellectual understanding at some point. And you don’t feel confident.
Yeah. Mean, as I mentioned last week, when some teachers just say there’s no I, they don’t talk about conventional I and etcetera. There’s no I. Yeah, if you were talking to children, you would speak that way, wouldn’t you? I don’t think it can be said.
I think different people have different predisposition capacities. Some people are just like Hui Neng, the sixth patriarch of Zen Buddhism. He was a wood chopper, and just by hearing someone recite the Diamond Cutter Sūtra, he was enlightened. So he had all these predispositions. He had done all of his work in previous lives.
And just by hearing some words, it was enough. So who’s to say what it takes and doesn’t take? We’re all very much different. Okay, where does environment get into conventional existence? Intervene.
And the ancestors of that and also the food we intake, and that’s related to the crops, and that’s related to the clouds, everything is related to everything. Does that fit in with cause and condition? Is that dependent arising? Yeah. That would be one way of viewing dependent arising.
That things are arising dependent upon a vast web of causality coming from the past and extending outward in the present moment. Everything is like systemic theory, systems perspective. That things are not isolated entities. Exist within the context of vast array of conditions and causes. Well, in that case, everyone would have the same conditions and causes.
Well, no, the substantial cause. I mean, we have very distinct evolutionary history. Even in this room, we’re quite different. Get a bit confused when I reach that stage. I’d love to see this mass being converted to energy, and all of a sudden there’s no mass.
Whatever energy it is. But you can always come down to directional parts, that part of whatever it is, the northern part, southern part, eastern part, upper part, lower part, any part nearest to you. The mind can always conceive that there’s something, a way it’s a composite of something other than what it is. It’s built up as something else. Well, you go down further in parts, and you’re getting smaller, smaller, is that like approaching zero, as in approaching emptiness?
So do you eventually reach maybe less? The lowest tenet systems, the great exposition school, they believe in finite particles, irreducible particles which are the elements, which the things are built up out of. And these truly exist. So there are these like little balls, like ping pong balls floating around. Things are built up. Didn’t proceed any further than that in their analysis.
I think maybe they were afraid of what they’d find. There are schools which say things are infinitely reducible. So we just basically keep infinitely reducing it and the search is going to be fine. Yeah, there’s always some part. Everything will have a part.
Pardon? Nothing in the universe is truly existing. And there is only the conventional eye. Why, what were you getting at? Conventionalize this.
Conventionalize that eye which will go into Buddhahood. The Buddha has an eye. And it has a self.. And that’s the one continuing with the I of the present moment, which will go on to achieve Buddhahood. I will become a Buddha.
It’s the conventional eye. We continue on with that conventional Or I will become a dog or something. How you how do you get different personalities of Buddhists if they’re all the same monastery? I think it depends on what kind of day they had. Yeah, like Tārā was this one, and Bruce was this one, and etcetera, etcetera.
Yeah. I think that’s hard to say. I mean, that’s going be very difficult. Don’t think Buddha is a robot or automaton, kind of blank slate. But I think a lot has to do with how we conceive of them, how we perceive them.
And that is determined by our own karma. So Buddhas don’t have their own agenda. So they’ll become whatever is going to be helpful to us. If we want a jolly Buddha, they’ll be jolly. If a wrathful Buddha is going to be helpful to us, they’ll be wrathful.
They don’t have any investment in some particular personality up on their own side. So I think whatever is going to be helpful to us, that’s what they’ll be. Are we talking about there’s just one Buddha Buddha, and they’re just labeling all these different types of Buddhism? Of Buddhism? I think they’re different beings.
They’re different beings. But we have different karmic affinities with different Buddhas from our past experiences. Some aren’t able to be of much use to us. Sometimes someone who’s not even a Buddha can be of more use to you than the Buddha himself. I’m just curious because in the Bodhisatt examples, you name all these different Buddhas and it seems to represent different personas or personalities or Yeah, that’s right.
Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I think gets confusing, doesn’t it? I think they specialize. Some Buddhas specialize in different areas. Oh, I was just wondering if it was just the one person in different ways.
So one Buddha will not serve all your needs. What is it they say? A bronze Buddha cannot float across water. A wooden Buddha cannot pass through fire. So we need different Buddhas for different occasions.
So great. Dedicate the creative potential that we can do. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to the enlightened state through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel in the awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish but increase more and more.