Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A striking analogy anchors this 45-minute talk: Ven Jampa Gendun compares comfortable samsaric existence to the house slave who mistakes ease for freedom, never questioning the cage. He addresses why many come to practice seeking a quick fix, and why measuring progress in small gains — more patience, more kindness over years — matters more than early results. The session then shifts to guided meditation: walking through the body’s five elements and mental consciousnesses one by one to locate the solid, unchanging “I” that surges in moments of anger or embarrassment — and finding it nowhere. Gendun closes by mapping four progressive philosophical schools, from the Hearer stage to the Consequentialist Middle Way, as rungs toward understanding emptiness. Suited to those with some prior Buddhist study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 A L B 1992.mp3
UUID: ed7932cd-8ced-4b1b-9471-b93bc7e9d26c
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: A Look at Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.6 minutes
Words: ~3,795
We begin by adjusting our motivation. Setting the context for talking about the subject and about listening to the subject, such that it becomes something more than a mechanical process, becomes something more than perhaps an object of our curiosity, something more than academic pursuit, gathering more information. And it becomes hopefully a method that we can use to help us resolve our problem. All our eighty four thousand problems. All our pervasive feelings of dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustrations, which we experience every day of our life.
This quality of distress which permeates ego based existence, whether we are aware of it or not. There’s always some underlying degree of distress. There’s always an underlying degree of tension within our mind. We’ve been looking at different methods whereby to relieve this tension, this distress. In each there varies context between both ourselves and others and within ourselves.
And on one level, through the practice of ethics, we can begin to resolve the conflict and bring to harmony our thinking and our behavior. And based upon this dissolution of a coarse distress conflict, then we can move on to the higher training in concentration, where we begin to create a harmony amongst the various elements within our own mind. There are feelings of relaxation, discrimination, where you become integrated around the focused focal object. And then based upon that, we can begin to practice the higher training, wisdom, in which we again bring into harmony. And this time we’re bringing into harmony our views, our concepts, our beliefs, our premises upon which we base our lives into accordance with the laws of reality, both conventional and ultimate.
So it’s a worthwhile process, and it has some relevance for us in dealing with our problems. It’s simply not an abstraction, though it might be hard to relate the emptiness of inherent existence to what’s happening out on the street when you get angry and things like this. But there is a connection. There is a relevance to what is being said. Buddha said that all of my teachings have only one taste, and that is the taste of freedom.
That he only taught in order to help people to resolve their problems. He didn’t teach simply because he liked to hear the sound of his voice or that he wanted to impress people, but because he was trying his best out of compassion to, in some way, bring him along to a certain discovery which he had made, reality which he had perceived, which was experienced as peace. So, you know, we all use our various methods to find the peace that we’re looking for to resolve our problems and our difficulties. And this is quite justifiable. Have every right to implement methods and whatever means we are careful enough to make use of in setting goals and achieving those goals, as long as our methods don’t infringe upon others’ rights to achieve their goals.
And amongst all our array of methods, we have spiritual methods, which are aimed at, as we’ve discussed in terms of the very first chapter in opening the eye of new awareness, at working with our problems on deepest most level. So I think a lot of people come and go to Buddha house and to spiritual practice in general because they’re looking for a quick fix. They’re looking for some easy way out of their difficulty. And it’s not an easy way. There is no easy way.
If there would have been, we would have discovered it by now. We would all be blissed out. But we aren’t. If there would have been, then the Buddha would have taught it. But he did not.
He didn’t try to make it difficult, but he did explain it as effectively and as skillfully as he could. And then it’s very much up to us according to our intelligence, according to our motivation, according to the various conditions that we find ourselves in to implement as best we can in the course of our everyday life. But I think you look only at the short term, then you could experience a lot of frustrations. You could think, well, either the Dharma doesn’t work, or there’s something wrong with me, or I’m applying it wrongly, or maybe it takes time. Maybe I’m being a little too ambitious about my expectations aren’t being fulfilled.
Perhaps I have unrealistic expectations. Perhaps some kind of disillusionment is necessary in the course of becoming a little bit humble and a little bit relaxed about relaxed in a sense about having realistic expectations. So I guess everyone has to check up for that, whether this Dharma works, whether you have heard it correctly, whether you’re applying it correctly, or perhaps everything is going well in accordance with the laws of our reality, in which we’re bound by the law of cause and effect. But it’s simply not living up to our expectations, that perhaps we have to readjust our expectations and understand it may take a little bit longer than we had hoped or we would like. But that’s our reality.
And even that becomes a bit of solace. We can and we should be able to look over a period of time and think I’m a little bit kinder, I’m a little more caring, little more patient. I have a little greater perspective on what’s happening to me and able to help others a little more effectively in dealing with what’s happening to them. And then I think we can feel good about that. And our practice is there’s some kind of taste on the end of our tongue where we have some kind of experience, something is happening, there’s some kind of change in our mind.
And we can use this method amongst a variety of array of methods, and then our life becomes purposeful. Something good is happening. We’re moving in direction in this process of continually making our life, redirecting ourselves, reprioritizing, so that ten years from now we simply aren’t stuck in the same patterns that we are at present. There’s been some movement, trends. We’ve moved along the path, and we can feel good about that.
We still might be experiencing confusion, but maybe it’s a higher order of confusion. I was talking to someone a couple weeks ago how confused I am sometimes. To get to my higher order of confusion. Maybe it took eighteen years of practice, which is nice to think. It kind of gives me solid.
It took me hard work to get to this level of confusion, which I think is something to that. I remember last week in the introduction of Buddhism class, when we were talking about distress and coping and suffering. And there’s always one, there’s someone who’s I think I appreciate their degree of honesty in speaking up and saying, I’m not suffering. You must be pretty bad off. Out of self defense, say things like, well, I don’t know if I mentioned this last week, but I was trying to think about this.
And the fact is I try to think in images. And my mind works easier in that way when I can come up with an analogy. And I was thinking about in the southern United States during the slave period, There were the field slaves and there were the house slaves. And the house slaves had it very good. They had nice clothing.
They got to eat the crumbs off the master’s table. They probably slept better. And they would think, oh, how terrible it is to be a field slave, how difficult it was, and how wonderful it is to be a house slave. They’re getting all the time that they’re not free. That no matter how comfortable a prison cell might be, it’s not freedom and not being satisfied with merely coping.
And also I was interested in I read something in an article in Family Therapy about a man who comes to a therapist and says, I’m always depressed. I’m always depressed. And during the course of the conversation, became apparent that what he calls normal, what the therapist calls normal, this person calls depression. It’s a matter of meaning, of the words that we use. When I say we’re always distressed, I have an idea what I mean by that, but I can’t quite know what you It’s difficult, but we have to come together on our meanings, perhaps.
But I think I was just talking today with someone, and I know there’s a sense of I can experience when I get in touch with my feelings, when I stop and quit acting, quit speeding around, quit distracting myself, there’s an underlying sense of anxiety. And it’s very subtle that it’s there. And that’s not peace. That’s not fulfillment. That’s not where I like to be.
So I guess this is just a matter of whether you’re satisfied in being a house slave, what you call freedom, what you call happiness. And the Buddha had an experience. And he said, Anything but freedom is dissatisfactory. That’s all. Anything but freedom is dissatisfactory.
Anything but liberation is dissatisfactory. Therefore, everything that we’re experiencing from the point of view of the Buddha is dissatisfactory. It’s not a pessimistic viewpoint, but that’s the terminology, that’s the meanings that we put on words. Anything short of freedom, short of liberation, short of ego transcendence is not satisfactory. There’s something wrong.
It’s not quite it. It’s not what we can be, what we could experience. Unless if we become complacent, and we will seek to maintain the status quo by default. It’s not to say that we always have to be continually bitching all the time. But once we say, ah, this is it, then you’re finished.
Ajahn Buddhadasa, a great Theravāda master, who’s now living in Thailand, said, every time your mind experiences pleasure, it becomes superficial. It’s only when it’s experiencing dissatisfaction that it begins to question. We never question why we’re happy. What is the cause of our happiness? We just kind of enjoy it.
We go along with it. We go with the flow. But it’s only when we suffer. Then we go, why is this coming? Why am I experiencing it?
And our mind begins to penetrate beneath the surface and tries to come up with some answers to these deep pressing questions. Buddhism is not pessimistic, but he does like to keep reminding us that until we have peace, let’s not be complacent. Let’s not get absorbed in what is less than we could be. Let’s not simply reinforce our existing pattern and maintain the status quo. Let’s find freedom and transcendence and realize the potential in becoming a happy, loving, healthy, sane human being.
The fact that we experience dissatisfaction is an indication of our own Buddha nature. It is a sign. That we want to be happy people, and the mind will naturally begin to move toward that happiness, whatever it might conceive of it to be, as long as it conceives of what at present is dissatisfactory. Once you begin to see the present situation as satisfactory, then you’re going to stop growing. But again, it’s not another, I guess what is it, a balance?
I don’t know. I guess it’s keeping that feeling of dissatisfaction in perspective, enjoying life as it comes along, but knowing part of their mind that there’s always something more to be experienced, more richer experiences and deeper experiences. So the central focus of our life becomes Buddha and the Buddha within ourselves. We actualize that Buddha by means of the Dharma, the techniques, methods, the teachings, the truth, that whatever is able to motivate us, inspire us, and open ourselves to our potential and help us to realize it, to fulfill it. And this is done in the social context of a spiritual community.
Other individuals who take place as a central focus of their life, the qualities of growth, of love and compassion and wisdom, and important values amongst all our other pursuits. These have become central to the focus of their lives, their internal lives, and supporting one another and helping one another. In every way we can, I think we need each other, we’re dependent upon each other? As I say quite often over and over again that mental health is a social phenomenon. It’s something that occurs within relationship.
That’s how we can know that we’re healthy, by our relationship. So others are dependent upon us, and we are dependent upon them. And we seek to raise the level of this relationship, the level of the motivating force of our practice, such that we’re not doing it solely for ourselves, which would be self defeating since we’re not isolated individuals though it might appear that we are, but we exist in interdependence with others. And so recognizing this and beginning to act upon what this entails, that it is in helping others that we help ourselves. To the degree that we take responsibility, we will have to be able to respond.
And in trying to be able to respond, we will have to grow. And to the degree that we have to grow, it becomes a psychological necessity, we will grow. So altruism, as the Dalai Lama has said, is the way that we can be wisely selfish. Out of altruism, out of a sense of caring for others, we will find more happiness, find more of everything that we want than we could have imagined simply seeking our own exaggerated self concern, seeking our own purpose, seeking our own welfare alone. 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 and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
So I thought we’d do the same meditation that we did last week. We do mindfulness and breathing, and then we try to identify the object of negation. The first of the four essentials ascertaining the object of negation, trying to, in our own experience, try to have a feeling, try to identify. We have a mode of a type of self which arises, becomes most apparent in emotional situations. Just as we have an I, a model of a type of self which has a correspondence to reality, we have a mode of a type of self which does not correspond to anything which has ever existed.
And this model becomes most apparent when we’re in emotional situations. When we’re angry, I hate you. When we’re full of pride, I think I’m beautiful. When we’re experiencing great joy, when we’re embarrassed. That’s embarrassing.
They’re cringey. I want to hide my I. There’s something that hurt me. Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me.
All of the various afflictive emotions arise dependently. afflictive emotions are a sign that we are operating on the basis of this particular type of model out of the nature of the self, the I. It’s a sign, just like smoke is a sign of fire. The afflictive emotions are a sign that this type of I is operative. We’re operating on the basis of this conception, this belief in a particular type of self.
And here, the type of self that we can begin to look for. It is something which is singular. It doesn’t have any parts. It’s amorphous. It’s a unity.
It is unchanging. I’ve always been this way since I was a little boy. Remember my mom told me I’ve always been this way. And I’m always going to be this way, unchanging, something about it. Independent, It’s not dependent upon my social context, not dependent upon whether I’m sick or not, not dependent upon my culture, not dependent upon my history, not dependent upon my body and mind.
And see if you can identify with your own experience. And then we’re going to look for it. And we’re going to look for it in the same way that we did last week in terms of the elements. We’re going to go through where that I appears. It appears somewhere over here.
So it’s quite natural that’s where we’re going to look for it. And we’re going to go through the body, looking at the various elements, and then we’ll look through the mind and see if it’s either within the body or the mind. So if you’ll take a comfortable but firm posture and begin with mindfulness of breathing. Using your imagination and your memory, try to induce an emotional experience. Embarrassment, fear, someone calling you stupid, sometime when you’re angry.
But we want to watch the central figure that’s involved in that experience, the I which is afraid, the I which is ashamed, the I which is angry. With a part of your mind, try to identify what does that I look like, what does it feel like. Try to get a sense of it. Very subtly try to watch. Let’s examine, let’s analyze the body and mind to see if we can locate that I.
Beginning with the body, with the earth element, all the very sense, solid, dense parts of the body moving down from the top of your head to the tip of your toe. All the organs and muscles and teeth and bones, all the solid bits. Take them one by one and look at them. Examine. Is this the I which appeared that felt humiliated, that felt ashamed, that felt afraid?
Examining one by one the hard part, the solid part. And we’re going to look at the water element, all the fluids in the body, the blood, saliva, urine, moving down from the top of your head to the tip of your toe, analyzing, looking at all the fluids in your body, seeing whether they are I. And then the fire element, the warmth of the body, the heat of the body. Is that the I which appeared in this emotional situation? Then the wind energy element, the respiration, the flow of the breath, the various energies flowing throughout our body.
And the space element, all the cavities in the body, the hollow parts, the spaces in the body. Are those spaces? Are they the I? And we’re going to look at the consciousnesses. First, the eye consciousness, that which sees colors and shapes.
That which sees colors and shapes, is that the eye which was afraid, which felt ashamed? Ear consciousness, that which hears sound. Nose consciousness. That’s what smells odor. Tongue consciousness, that which tastes flavor.
In the body consciousness that which experiences objects of touch. And we look at the mental consciousness. We look at first at feelings, pleasurable feelings, unpleasurable feelings, neutral feelings. Are they, any event, the I? The perceptions, the patterns of discriminating thought.
This is good, this is bad, this is John, this is long, green, this is blue, this type of thinking discrimination. And these mental constructions, all the various emotions love, anger, faith, pride, jealousy, wisdom. Are any of these the I? All the various emotions. The I.
And finally, the mental consciousness itself, that which is doing the looking, that which knows. Knows pictures, it knows thoughts, knows mental images. Is that the I which was afraid, which was ashamed, which was full of pride? Is there any place else? Has there been something left out that needs to be looked at?
Just mental and physical events. Mental and physical events. When you look, you couldn’t find it. You thought it was there. You believed it was there.
But when you looked, you couldn’t find it. So try to get a sense of you thought it was there, but you couldn’t find it. This sense of unfindability, a lack. It’s not there. I thought it was there, but it’s not there.
Just mental and physical events. I can’t find that I. It’s not there. So we’re looking at the higher training wisdom, trying to understand emptiness, selflessness. It has the same meaning, Selflessness and emptiness.
It means the same. They are synonyms. Same meaning, selflessness and emptiness. And we said there are two types of selflessnesses. Selflessness of persons, and by persons I mean all sentient life.
Not just persons, I usually use the term persons because it seems to be more relevant to us. And then the selflessness of phenomena, that is to say everything which is not sentient life, tables, chairs, roads, buildings, space, empty. They’re all phenomenal. They are empty. And we said at the beginning that there is no difference from the point of view of the Consequentialist Middle Way school as to the subtlety of the emptiness of persons and the subtlety of the emptiness of phenomena.
There’s no difference in the subtlety. There are in other schools, and we’ll talk about that briefly. But in the point of view of the final thought of the Buddha, which was contained within the system known as the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, there’s no difference in the degree of subtlety of the emptiness of persons and the emptiness of phenomena of non persons. But because we are more familiar with the selflessness of persons, we take that as our initial object. We work on that first.
If we’re more familiar with it, it’s easier for us to get at than to talk about the self of a table, the emptiness of a table. So in describing and talking about emptiness and selflessness, are four progressive stages in coming to an understanding of emptiness. There’s the Hearer stage, the Mind Only stage, the Autonomy Middle Way stage, and the Consequentialist Middle Way stage. These are like rungs on the ladder. As Geshe-la points out, these are the tenet systems, the philosophic systems, which the Buddha set forth in order to educate people to his final thought as to the nature of reality.
So it’s a progression. Step on one rung, then you’re able to step on the next, and then the next, and then the next.