Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A parable about coconut trees sets the tone for this 44-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun: a man chanting mantras to ward off falling branches, while an iconoclast simply climbs a ladder and saws the dead limb off. The story drives the session’s central argument — material problems need material solutions, inner problems need inner methods, and confusing the two breeds suffering. Gendun reframes the Buddhist refuge prayer as a universal human habit (we already take refuge in money, relationships, or moving to Melbourne), then traces two motivations for genuine practice: suffering that pushes us, and a quiet inner longing that draws us forward. He draws on Dostoevsky, Tagore, and Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan — including the haunting image of a life that ends like a dull Sunday afternoon, never quite satisfied. Accessible to anyone starting to question whether their current methods are working.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 1987 07 09 A M of B.mp3
UUID: e181c238-7b9c-4f89-b475-5cd3b8e7d23a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: A matter of balance (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-07-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.6 minutes
Words: ~5,281
It was it was like recite the refuge. Okay? Together. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing giving and other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I’m enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing giving and other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I’m enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing giving and other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge in my own wisdom, my own sanity, our own understanding that we have within ourselves.
You know, each of us has some wisdom. No matter how low we might go. No matter where we might find ourselves one day. We can wake up and we can take refuge in the fact that we have woken up. That we have are aware that we’ve been sleeping.
That we have some basic sanity which is saying wake up and do something. It’s in this wisdom that we all have that we can solve our problems in a real way. We can go for refuge to the Dharma. This is the means, the methods to realize, to grow, to expand our own wisdom, our own truth. You know, it’s our own responsibility, isn’t it?
If we make effort, we can be helped, and we can help others. If we don’t make any effort, no one can help us, and we cannot help anyone else. It’s up to us. But we need a way. You know, some method.
We’re all practicing some method. You know? We’re all going for refuge. We’ve been going there’s nothing new to go for refuge. You know, we can read these words.
And it sounds like some eastern trip, you know, going for refuge. But no matter where we might live, we’ve all been going for refuge since beginning this time. We go for refuge to money, to sex, to drugs, to jobs, to people, to material possessions. Anything which we think can solve our problems, we take refuge. You know, when you walk outside and it’s raining and you put up an umbrella, you have a problem.
It’s raining. Okay? And you think that putting up the umbrella is going to solve your problem, and it works. And so we’ve all been running around trying to implement methods to solve our problems. So we have to stop and take a look.
Have the methods that we’ve been using up to this time been working? It’s very simple. You know, we don’t have to be idealistic in our practice. We don’t have to be idealistic about Buddhism. There’s no such thing as Buddhism.
It’s a Western scholastic idea. There is dharmas. There is the Dharma of Christ, the Dharma of Islam, the Dharma of Buddha. There are various dharmas which are methods to help us all find happiness. That’s the purpose of religion.
That’s the purpose of growth. We don’t do it to please anyone else, to please our teachers even. To plea to please our our wife or our children, we have to satisfy some inner desire for peace. And so we go go for refuge. And we go for refuge in the Sangha.
The spiritual community, now that spiritual community can be defined in many ways. But simply, it’s those who support us and help us, encourage us, act as examples. They can, as you have been kind enough to do, give me physical support. You know, all the clothes that I’m wearing, the food that I eat is given to me. I haven’t earned it, but it’s been there, you know, some way or other.
And this is due to the sangha, my spiritual brothers and sisters. They can be a real source of help, but we have to help each other. We have to acknowledge the fact that we’re trying to do something together. You know, mental health, sanity is not an individual affair. Enlightenment, whatever that might be, is not an individual affair.
It’s a social awakening. It only exists in a social context. It only exists in a relationship to other people. No one has ever been enlightened in isolation. No one has ever gained mental health, sanity in isolation.
You know, we can talk about two aspects to ourselves. A very personal, private, experiential aspect to ourselves, which only we can know, which only we can experience. Cannot, we can try to express it using words and, our gestures. You know? In a way, no one can really know our inner world.
That’s one aspect of ourselves. Ourselves. It’s one aspect of ourselves which we have to, bring peace to. And this is, one aspect of practicing Dharma. But if we were to direct our sole attention to this inward peace, it would create an imbalance in our lives.
You know, this is, mainly what the criticism of the great vehicle or the Mahāyāna has about the Hīnayāna, the lesser vehicle, that they’ve created an imbalance, that in fact there is a social self, a so a self which only exists in relationship to others. It’s the public self, the self, which you know about me. And so there’s two aspects of ourselves if we’re going to have a whole and the word whole is related to holy. You know, something very precious. Something very lofty.
If we’re going to be whole, we have to be concerned with both aspects of ourselves. Our individual, inner, personal, experiential self, and our social, public self. We have to develop both these aspects. So in going for refuge, we can go for refuge to our own wisdom. We can go for refuge to the means and the techniques where we can develop our own wisdom.
And we do this in the context of a spiritual community of those who themselves are trying to reach the same goals that we’re trying to reach. And in this way, we have a balanced approach to our practice. You know, we all want happiness. Everyone in this room. There’s no doubt.
You know, if you know anything, if I know anything, it’s that everyone in this room wants happiness, and no one wants to suffer. You know, we’re all very much equal. And the fact that you come here is a statement about yourself. You say, I’m searching for a way, and we’re all searching for a way. We’re all members of the spiritual community.
And we have to acknowledge this fact, and we have to acknowledge the fact that I’m suffering and that you’re suffering and know that we can help each other. We can help each other if we make effort. If we don’t, there’s not much we can do. We’re just going to continue in our suffering as we’ve been doing up from beginning of this time to this time. So we’ve all been going for refuge.
You know, we just have to check up within our own experience. Have the methods I’ve been employing up to this time, have they been working? You know, have I actually been getting the happiness that I’m seeking? If you never stop, if you keep running, you know, bigger houses, better cars, a new, mate, wife, husband, You know, we keep changing constantly, auspicious beginnings. You know, things are gonna be better.
If I just had if I just had a better job, you know, everything would be okay. Then I’d be if I just had more little bit more money, then all my problems would be solved. Or if my wife doesn’t understand me or my my boyfriend, you know, if he would help me a bit more, then I think I could make it. Everything would work out. You know?
Or maybe I should move to Melbourne. There you know, there’s more happening in Melbourne. Adelaide’s dead place. You know? It’s all the methods are out there somewhere.
And, we keep running around, sincerely looking for happiness. But we don’t have any wisdom. You know, Lama Yeshe once said, Westerners are very sincere people. You know, they’re trying to find happiness, but they have little wisdom. So we need to create some balance in our lives.
It’s not to say that we don’t use external methods, materialistic methods to find happiness. This, in fact, would be another imbalance. But we have to create a balance between the methods that we employ to find the happiness that we’re all seeking. We have to create a balance between spiritual methods to find inner peace, to find inner happiness, to develop our inner life, and materialistic methods, external methods to to lead a comfortable, you know, profitable life. You know what?
I last year, I I was in I spent a year in Thailand, and I was on a for about seven months, I was on a small island. And on this I I lived in a monastery with two Thai monks in a in a it was in a cave, actually, beneath a small temple on the side of a hill. And I used to look out during my breaks from meditation. And the only thing that I could see was literally maybe a million coconut trees in this ocean out there. And they never changed.
You know, it was every day, I’d I’d go to this little rock, I’d sit there, and there would be these coconut trees. And it didn’t move. And the ocean, it was flat. It didn’t move. And so you start thinking, of course.
And it occurred to me that at that time in Koh Samui, it’s a it’s a island in southern Thailand, just before monsoon started. It’s a very tropical area. And the trees for they grow very quickly. And for some reason, these these trees parts of the trees would begin to die, would begin to rot even though the tree rest of the tree was still living. And just before monsoon began, there was a strong wind that lasts for about a week.
And then after that, the rains began. So when this month when the monsoon winds began, it became very dangerous to stand underneath these underneath these trees, you know, because for no reason at all, a huge limb would just, come crashing down. Crashing down. And so you had to be very careful where you stood during this period. And it occurred to me that, you know, someone who became very idealistic about spiritualism.
You know, I can just, imagine such a person. You know, he he sees that that there’s some problem. And if he’s not careful, he’s gonna his limbs are going to fall on him. So he starts thinking, well, maybe if I make some prayers to the tree or something like that. If I start thinking, oh, tree, don’t let that branch fall on me.
And he starts repeating this like a mantra. You know? Oh tree, don’t let that branch fall on me. Oh tree, don’t let that branch fall on me. And it works fairly well, you know?
He, he doesn’t, he doesn’t get hit by any falling branches. And, of course, sooner or later, as he’s sitting there reciting his new mantra, oh tree, don’t let the branch crawl on me, you know, some people are gonna walk up, and they’re gonna, you know, what are you doing? And they’re going to ask him. And he says, I’m reciting this, you know, this far out mantra, which protects you from falling branches. And he says, sit down, and I shall teach it to you.
And so slowly, you know, he gets a small following, and they’re sitting there. Of course, the o changes to om. So and pretty soon, the words become a little garbled, and it starts sounding very mystical. You know, om, don’t let that friend follow me. You know, and they’re all very much into their their mantra and thinking it’s protecting them from something.
And then one day, you know, some kind of a revolutionary what do you what do you say? Revolutionary guy comes along. An iconoclast. He comes along, and he looks up at the branch that’s up there dying. And he says, you know, there’s a problem there.
So he go gets a ladder, you know, and he brings the ladder. And then this this guy who’s now the high priest, he he he watches him walk by. And, they’re just all watching him walk over to the tree, and he’s carrying this saw. And he he walks up the the ladder, and he starts sawing this branch. You know?
What is he doing? There’s a material problem, a very simple material problem. And he’s relating with it in a very straightforward, direct way. He’s not trying to use methods which aren’t necessary to solve the problem. It’s a physical problem.
He’s gonna solve this branch off with a saw, which is, you know, quite reasonable, quite rational thing to do. Of course, you know what what would happen as this guy, you know, he climbed the branch and he started stalling the tree off. You can imagine the priest sees, you know, his all his income going out the window. And he’s he would, naturally enough, say, you know, here’s a heathen that has come to destroy our, you know, our spiritual trip. And he’d probably get stoned or something like that, which usually happens to people who try to solve problems directly and try to disrupt the institutions.
So, anyway, the moral of that little story is if you have a material problem, you know, you solve it with material means. But if you have a internal problem, you solve it with a psychological method or an inner means. If we create this balance, we’re going to have a lot less problems. It’s not that our problems are going to go away, but we’ll be able to deal with them effectively. It’s not that we’re trying to, perform perfect perfect actions in a perfect world.
You know, it’s a shitty world sometimes, but we’re just trying to perform appropriate actions in an imperfect world. You know, become a little more skillful in how we deal with the world. You know, in in this refuge that we’ve been taking all this time running. You know, some people think if they can run fast enough, they won’t feel the pain, you know, if they can keep things changing enough. So they keep constantly changing their external environment.
But they never look to see that the main source of their problems is internal. So though they enact new scenarios, new dramas in their lives, because the mind is still the same, the same problems arise again and again and again. You know, no matter whether you move to, to Melbourne, you’re going to have the same problems. You move to the United States, you go to India, you I’ve been there. You know, whether I’m in Adelaide or in India, very much the same problems.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re in India or not. You know, whether you solve your problems here in Adelaide or not, it doesn’t help you to run to India, to think somehow the Himalayan lamas are gonna solve your problems because they’re not the same mind that’s going to be carried with you. We have to change our, you know, our attitudes towards our problems. And then we can really begin to deal with them effectively. In their running, you know, trying to change, constantly trying to manipulate their environment, the people around their environment, making objects of people for their own pleasure, for their own manipulation.
They necessarily must become insensitive to their suffering. You might think this is a good idea. You know? If we can numb ourselves to our suffering, you know, it then we’re okay. You know, it’s like taking anesthetic.
You know, it can. No. Only problem with that is as we become insensitive, you know, we become more and more like a rock. You know, the the most successful goal of the ego might be to become a stone. You know?
The stone doesn’t feel anything. It doesn’t hurt. But if we don’t hurt, then we can never really love. You know, I think Dostoevsky in his brother’s Brother’s Karamazov, said there was a Greek Orthodox priest, a father. He was on his dying.
He was on his deathbed. And he was speaking to the to his, the fathers and the, and the brothers who were gathered around him. And he said, fathers and brothers, I ponder. What is hell? Hell is the inability to love.
So though we might try to become stones through our developing insensitivity by, you know, constantly changing, never having to stop and look at ourselves. In this constant running, in this this morphine injection that we’re trying to give ourselves, we’re never going to be able to find love. And without love, that part of ourselves which relates with others, which has to be which has to grow if we’re ever going to find real mental health, is left dormant. You know, it’s as if it doesn’t exist. There’s a part of ourselves missing.
So we have to confront our problems, know, admit our pain, and check up to see whether the methods that we’ve been employing are working for us. You know, this very question is a method for developing wisdom, acknowledging your suffering, your problems, and and seeing whether the methods that you’re employing are working. The mind will naturally go towards the solution of your problems once they’re confronted. So we have to stop our running and just take a look. The methods we use, we call Dharma.
In this case, you know, I have found that the Buddha Dharma has been effective in my own life. You know, I don’t care whether you become Buddhist or not. But in many ways, I care whether you’re happy. Why do we practice the Dharma? There’s a quote by, Rabindranath Tagore, an Indian poet.
He’s talking about the Dharma or the religion. The religion that we get acquainted with from outside, from books of scripture, can in no way become our own religion. Its association with us is only a matter of habit. To unfold one’s religion within oneself is a lifelong aspiration of every human soul. It has its birth in acute suffering.
You know, we have to the Buddha said, in Sūtra, the Buddhists do not remove suffering with their hands nor do they remove nor do they clean sin with water nor do they transfer their realizations to the minds of others. But by their showing of the truth, all will be made free. We have to rediscover for ourselves all the wisdom that the Buddha discovered for himself. You know, we don’t quite know who the Buddha is. Right?
There’s a a representation of the Buddha. Whether he looked like that, I don’t know. But we can talk about mental health. We can talk about sanity, wisdom, and love. We have to discover within ourselves the way to sanity, the way to love, the way to wisdom very much for ourselves.
You know, it’s a new searching process which each of us has to make. We cannot take the Buddhist teachings and somehow, do a transplant. There’s no way. It has to be an internal growth process. We’re very, very fortunate that the Buddha showed us the methods whereby we can make this discovery for ourselves.
You know, we aren’t without some guidebook, but we have to make the journey for ourselves. But why make the journey in the first place? It’s born out of suffering. The suffering pushes us. No one wants to suffer.
I don’t want to suffer. Consciousness demands to be heard. Conscience demands to be heard. Such hearing is more than passive receptivity. It implies a response.
Hearing the voice of conscience, man can respond by running away, obedient to the call of temptation, where or he can summon up the strength to place himself under his own truth, which he calls conscience, which he calls unconscious. The voice of conscience discloses to man his essential being. The authentic response to such disclosure is to resolve to be oneself in the face of the precariousness and groundlessness of human existence. You know, I call I call this voice, know, the inarticulate whisperings of the heart. You know, it’s it’s a it’s a very personal thing, isn’t it?
And as I said before, you know, we have this own our own internal world, which no one can know about. We try to express it, and then we try you know, poets try to talk about using the words as best they can. There’s a quote by Saint Augustine. I think it was, you know, this Wittgenstein, he used to like to quote this. Saint Augustine said used to say to himself when he was trying to express something of this internal world.
He said to himself, oh, he said, you wretch. He called himself a wretch. You wretch, speak your nonsense. It doesn’t make any difference. He knows sometimes when we try to express these whisperings within our heart, our innermost longings, you know, what’s in the heart of our hearts, it comes out like nonsense to others perhaps.
But it doesn’t really matter, you know, if they’re part of our spiritual community because in their hearts, they understand what we’re trying to say. So there’s some longing. You know, it’s an inarticulate whispering which is trying to tell us that there’s something beyond, you know, what we know now, that there’s some destiny that we all have to fulfill. I was in Sri Lanka about fourteen years ago. And, you know, they had many old ruins, Buddhist ruins in Sri Lanka.
And they’re just overgrown in the jungle. And I remember I was just walking around, you know, through the through the forest. And I came upon this, you know, image, a stone statue of the Buddha. It had been sitting in the jungle overgrown with vines and trees. Just sitting there.
You know? I don’t know what it really was, but I had the feeling it had been sitting there for thousands and thousands, thousands and thousands of years just waiting, just sitting there patiently, waiting to be discovered. So there’s two reasons why we practice. Suffering, which pushes us and this whisper within ourselves, which draws us towards the light, towards sanity. You know?
We we talk about enlightenment. It’s difficult to understand what that is, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve studied a little bit about all the ins and outs of enlightenment. And maybe sometimes when I have a little bit of understanding, you know, a little bit of compassion. When I have a feeling that I perhaps know something, then maybe I get a glimpse of enlightenment.
I have some understanding for enlightenment and it’s just that draw draws us along. Suffering pushes us, and the whisperings of our hearts tell us, you know, let’s not stop here. There’s something waiting. There’s a series of books by Carlos Castaneda about an old Yaqui Indian, probably in northern Mexico. You know, he’s just by all appearances, he’s just an old bum, you know, who an old tired old man who doesn’t know anything.
And Carlos Castaneda is a very sophisticated PhD from University of Southern California doing studies on hallucinogenic drugs. This book, a series of books about Don Juan came out of his relationship with this Old Yaqui Indian. And this is from one of those books. This is Don Juan. Don Juan speaking.
He’s talking to Carlos Castaneda. He says, years ago, I told you that in his day to day life a warrior chooses to follow the path with heart. It is the consistent choice of the path with heart which makes a warrior different from the average man. He knows that a path has heart when he is one with it, when he experiences a great peace, a pleasure, traverses it to its length. It’s the consistent choice of the path with heart with heart which makes a warrior different from the average man.
And from moment to moment, we can make a choice in our lives, whether we’re going to take the path which is going to lead us, to growth, to wisdom, to love, or we’re going to take the path which is going to lead us to darkness, to egoism, to selfishness, to ignorance, you know, from moment to moment. You know, if we understand this, then we can practice Dharma anywhere, can’t we? We can practice Dharma at any time. We don’t have to be sitting in a lotus position. We don’t have to be in the Himalayas.
You can work in an office, in a factory. You can even be a monk and do it. It’s just that from moment to moment, you have some awareness, and you make choices, and you always choose consistently the path with heart. You know, this is another quote by Don Juan. And in many ways, you know, this kind of sums up my feeling about the nature of of ordinary life, you know, everyday mundane aspects of life.
This is Don Juan when he’s talking to Carlos Castaneda. They’re on, you know, maybe somewhere in the north of Mexico out in the desert. And there’s these high plateaus. And it’s evening is approaching, and the sun is going down. And it’s, you know, it’s a desert region.
It’s very arid. And they’re staring they’re standing on the edge of one of these plateaus. And it’s very quiet. And the sun is going down, and dusk is coming. Evening is coming.
And says to Carlos, he paused. The silence around us was frightening. The wind wind hissed softly, and then I heard in the distance the barking of a lone dog. Carlos says, listen to that barking, Don Juan went on. That is the way my beloved Earth is helping me now to bring this last point to you.
That barking is the saddest thing one can hear. We were quiet for a moment. The barking of that lone dog was so sad and the stillness around us so intense that I experienced a numbing anguish. It made me think of my own life, my sadness, my not knowing where to go, what to do. That dog’s barking is the nocturnal voice of a man, Don Juan said.
It comes from a house in the valley towards the south. A man is shouting through his dog since they are companion slaves for life. His sadness is boredom. He’s begging his death to come and release him from the dull and dreary chains of life. Don Juan’s words had cut a most disturbing line in me.
I felt as if he were speaking directly to me. That barking and the loneliness speaks of the feeling of men, he went on. Men for whom an entire life was like a Sunday afternoon, an afternoon which was not altogether miserable, but rather hot and dull and uncomfortable. They sweated and fussed a great deal. They didn’t know where to go or what to do.
That afternoon left them only with the memory of a petty annoyance and tedium. And then suddenly it was over. It was already night. You know? We aren’t basket cases.
You know? We aren’t rolling on the ground suffering, grieving in pain. We just don’t know what to do or where to go. You know, it’s just an uncertain anxiety, which is constantly in the background. It’s just we don’t know quite what to do.
Just like a Sunday afternoon when maybe the whole family’s going out for some reason, and you’re left at home by yourself. And there’s nothing good on television. You keep turning on. And you you watch a couple minutes of this and a couple minutes of that. And it’s never quite satisfied.
And you pick up a book and well, I’m not quite satisfied. And you keep going from one thing to another trying to find something that satisfies you. And then you realize it’s night. Your sunny afternoon is finished. It’s over, and you never quite found the satisfaction that you were looking for.
That’s kind of expresses my feelings, the way an ordinary life evolves and finishes. You know, we don’t have to be basket cases to practice a method, to practice Dharma. I know some years ago, I was divorced during the process of my divorce. It was a very initially, it was quite a painful experience for me. And I began to go to a clinical psychologist.
You know, we had a group. A clinical social would work with this in a group. Then I moved from my hometown to, like most people do in such situations, I moved to California. Again, I wanted to continue this group work. So I went to the county mental health center.
Health center. I was talking to the or the person who interviews you to see whether you can enter into the programs at this center. And as I talked to him, I began to realize that, you know, I wasn’t you know, I’m not so bad off. Know? I I think, well, if I’m if I’m not careful, they won’t let me in the program.
So finally, he’s he I guess he was sensitive to what I was the problem that was beginning to rise in my mind. And he said, you know, to enter our program, you don’t have to be a basket case. It was quite a revelation for me to realize that, that, you know, that the bureaucracy that some people are members who are working within the bureaucracy were aware that people are not only trying to find some kind of normalcy where they can function adequately to get along in society, but there are many people who are trying to gain mental health, who are trying to gain sanity over and above what might be called a normal normalcy within our society. So sometime or other, you know, I think we all become a little tired of suffering. You know, I’m going to quote his little red book.
There’s no Tibetans in it. He said, when you get sick and tired of being sick, you’ll find a way to get well. So when we become aware of the extent of our suffering, its nature, then our own wisdom can begin to operate in our lives. And not only that, we’re going to seek methods to implement our own wisdom. And then we’re going to use dharma.
It’s not a panacea. It’s not like taking a pill, which most people would prefer. But it is a way. Necessary that we take responsibility and we make effort. So we get tired of our hypocrisy of using people, of making objects of people, of trying to manipulate our environment.
We reach a point where we want to lay the burden of ego down, once and for all. It’s quite a burden that we’ve been carrying around with us all this time, always trying to secure our own territory. There’s no room for any spontaneity. No room for love, compassion.