Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 28-minute session with a framed Dalai Lama quote hanging outside the meditation room — “the purpose of life is to be happy” — then argues that compassion without wisdom is like two people in quicksand trying to help each other, their efforts only speeding the sinking. He cites the Buddha’s statement that the whole of practice, not merely part of it, is for developing love and compassion, and unpacks Scott Peck’s definition of love as “the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing oneself or others,” framing it as deliberate choice and effort rather than romantic feeling. The session ends with a step-by-step guided loving-kindness meditation moving from self-acceptance through a loved one, a stranger, and a difficult person, then expanding outward through Adelaide, Australia, and all of infinite space. Accessible to newcomers and general audiences.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 CR.mp3
UUID: 8eadd52d-d92c-4949-92bc-da73dfdc7904
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Christmas Retreat (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2008 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 27.7 minutes
Words: ~1,873
There’s a sign outside that door there, on the inside of the other room. And it’s a framed quote from the Dalai Lama. And in this quote he says something, The purpose of life is to be happy. Okay? It’s not to please God.
It’s not to please your mommy and daddy. It’s to be happy. In doing that, you will please your mommy and daddy. You will please God. You can feel assured of that.
And the quote goes on to say, he didn’t say that about God, okay? He’s a master. I wouldn’t want you to misquote him. And the best way to find happiness, of inner happiness, is through love and compassion. But not just compassion, but effective compassion.
Compassion. Otherwise, you know, we can be very much like two people standing in quicksand trying to help each other out. They can have a very tremendously compassionate attitude toward one another, but their very efforts to extricate one another can cause each of them to sink faster into the quick sand. There’s no question the intention of compassion is transformative, but we want effective compassion. And it has to be mixed with wisdom. I like to just and we’re going to do a meditation on loving kindness, okay?
Just this quote by the Buddha. The Buddha was once asked by a leading disciple, Would it be true to say that part of our training is for the development of love and compassion? And the Buddha replied, No, it would not be true to say this. It would be true to say that the whole of our training is for the development of love and compassion. I think, generally we say love is the wish to be happy, directed at oneself or others.
And we say compassion is the wish to be free of suffering, whether it’s directed towards ourselves or others. There’s an interesting I’ll paraphrase his definition, I think it’s a useful one to keep in mind. Strangely, it’s by an American psychiatrist, so stay open to it, okay? But you know him, Scott Peck. He wrote a number of books called The Different Drum and so forth.
He was in Adelaide about twelve years ago, I think. And he said, Love is the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing oneself or others. The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing oneself or others. The will. Okay?
It’s a choice. You know, we would like to be carried away by love so that, you know, there’s no hardship in it. You know? Just like we can we just go off into this state and we’re carried away. And we just do these wonderful things and do these nice, you know, pleasing people and being kind and and putting shirts on the natives and things like that.
But maybe there’s some kind of volition. Maybe we have to actually choose. It’s a will. It’s a choice. The will to extend oneself, the word extend.
It, you know, if we wait till we get our bodhisattva certificates until there’s no pain, until there’s no, you know, there’s no difficulty, then we’re never really going to love at all. So there is an extension. What does it mean to actually extend? It means to work. You know, when you love something or you love somebody, you’re willing to put yourself out, aren’t you?
You’re willing to go that extra distance, that extra mile for that friend because you love them. You want them to be happy. So it’s a choice to work for the benefit of others, consciously, a willingness to extend oneself. It’s not a it’s not a romantic notion. It’s not something that’s going to sweep you away.
It’s something that some day you’ll decide to do in lesser or greater degrees. And that’s what we want to try to cultivate, that quality of love. So we’re going to if you’d like to stand up for a minute, then we’ll meditate on loving kindness. And we’ll practice a simple breath exercise, just breathing in comfortably normally. Exhaling, extending the exhalation, gently forcing all the air out of the lungs.
Again, breathing in comfortably normally. Again, extending the exhalation. And then bring your mind to the breath. Just the easy, gentle in and out flow of the natural breath. Now we’re going to meditate on loving kindness and we’re going to begin with ourselves.
Whatever you may have done in the past, the various mistakes that you feel you’ve created, you can develop a healthy sense of regret and you can begin again. And whatever you may want to achieve in the future, you can do that. But just for this present moment, we want to set aside the past and the future and simply befriend ourselves as we are now in the present. Be kind to ourselves just as we are now with all our hang ups, with all our neuroses, with all our problems. We want to wish ourselves happiness.
Be kind to ourselves and wish ourselves well. So just generate some kind, caring feelings and direct it toward yourself. You’re a sentient being who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like everybody else. You deserve your own caring. May I be happy.
May I be well. May all the good things of life come to me. May I be at peace. Be kind to yourself. Wish yourself all the good things of life.
Care for yourself. And now think of someone that you love, that you like a great deal, bringing that person to mind. If you can see them in front of you, if you can’t it’s not so important. The feelings are what is important. Bring to mind, recall some of the good times that you’ve shared together, the many kindnesses that this person has shown you.
Evoke a real sense of caring and closeness, a gratitude. And begin to radiate out, direct out toward this person the kind, caring feelings which naturally arise when you think of this person in this way. Feelings of wanting them to be happy, not suffer. May all the good things of life come to you. May you always have a smile on your face.
May be at peace. Wish them well. Wish them happiness. Try to mean it. Think of someone you neither like nor dislike, a stranger, just somebody that you see once in a while or maybe you see them on television or at a shop that you work with and you don’t know them very well, you don’t know their story.
Imagine that person there in front. And though you don’t know their story specifically, one thing you do know about them is that they want to be happy and they don’t want to suffer, just like yourself. And just as you wish your own self happiness, simply out of the basic goodness of your heart, it won’t cost you anything. Reaching to a fellow sentient being who’s just like yourself, be generous with your caring and wish them well. It won’t cost you a cent, it will cost you nothing to wish them well sincerely.
Now think of someone you don’t like, somebody you have some problems with. Imagine that person there in front. This person wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. And perhaps their methods of finding their happiness, solving their problems, has come in conflict with your methods of finding your happiness, solving your problems. It’s just conflict of self interest, yours and theirs.
And just as you have to forgive yourself for the mistakes that you’ve made in the past, maybe it’s time to forgive this person. If you ever hope to be free, you have to learn how to forgive. So just for this present moment, can take up your grudge later, but just for this present moment, set aside your hurt, your grudge, your anger, your hostility. Just for this present moment, okay? And try to see someone like yourself, the best they can to get some happiness out of life, making lots of mistakes along the way.
And just as you do for yourself, wish them happiness. Wish them well. Let go and wish them well. Stay with it. And now think of consider all of the people in this room, people who are searching, exploring, taking responsibility for their lives, for their happiness.
Just radiate out a wish of happiness and well-being to everyone and well-being to everyone in the room. And I wish that they find whatever they’re looking for, whatever would make them happy, wish that they found it, that they not suffer, that they be well, that they find peace and love in their life. Wish them all the good things of life. Radiate out a wish of happiness and well-being to everyone in the room. And extending this wish out to all of Burnside and people walking on the streets, in shops, in their cars, in their homes, watching television, eating, sleeping, taking naps, radiating out a wish of happiness and well-being touching everyone in Burnside.
Extending this wish out even further to all of Adelaide, people in offices, in department stores, in buses, in trains, in cars, walking on the streets, in their homes, in factories. However you might imagine it feels as if it were actually happening. And further to the suburbs around Adelaide and the out the small outlying towns and individual homes isolated. Extending your wish out to all of South Australia. Melbourne, Hobart, Sydney, Brisbane, Cairns, Alice Springs, Darwin, Perth, extending the wish of happiness and well-being to the entire country.
Further and further to the east, to New Zealand, and to the north, East Timor, and Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore. However you can imagine it, feel it as if you’re extending that wish out further and further. In Southeast Asia, and Asia, And westward to Europe. Southward to Africa. South America.
North America. This feels as if you’re taking the entire world into your heart. All the people, black, white, red, yellow, all the animals, all the insects. Everything that lives on the earth is touched by a wish that they’d be happy, that they not suffer. And extending this wish out in all of the directions of space.
Further and further without any limits, without any feelings of limitation. Until finally, without any boundaries, without any center, pervading all of infinite space, the infinite wish, may all beings be happy. May there be only happiness. May there be infinite peace. May there be infinite peace.
May there be peace. Vast infinite space and the vast infinite feeling, the wish of peace. Keep coming back to that. Stay there. Stay there.
And then bring your mind to the breath. Just the easy, gentle, in and out flow of the breath. Become aware of your body, feeling sensation within the body, perhaps the pressure of your buttocks on the cushion, on the chair. Aware of the sounds about you or the absence of sound. Opening your eyes, orientating yourself where you are in the room, become aware of your surroundings.