Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a Q&A on valid cognition — distinguishing direct perception from inference and explaining why only direct realization of emptiness can uproot ignorance at its seed level, whereas suppression merely holds afflictions in check. He then examines the three criteria by which things can be said to exist: popular convention, consistency with a conventional valid cognizer (illustrated through a scarecrow-versus-man example and the puzzle of blurry versus clear letters), and compatibility with an ultimate valid cognizer that recognizes everything as empty of true existence. A discussion of how language and conceptuality co-create experience follows, capped by a striking story about a device that lets people navigate by sensing images through their tongue. The session closes with a guided meditation tracing the mind’s continuity backwards — through this life, past birth and conception, and into previous lives — pointing to a stream of awareness with no discernible beginning.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 MP 2011 07 09.mp3
UUID: 0f152b0a-759f-462d-8bd0-a2520c9b040c
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: DB Mind and its Potential (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2011-07-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.1 minutes
Words: ~2,726
Does anybody have any questions or comments? Anything they’d like to add or subtract? Yeah, I would say in the Sanskrit word which is being translated as direct perception is Pramāna. Pra? What does Pra mean?
Okay. What does Pra mean in Hindi? No? Okay. Maybe I’m assuming.
Pramāna is ‘best’ or ‘mine is the best mind’. Pramāna. So there are two best minds. One is number one and two, direct perception and inference.
These are valid, but it is only the first one which is able to act as a direct antidote. Coming to an understanding for example of selflessness or emptiness, we want to develop ultimately we want to develop a direct realization or a direct perception of emptiness and selflessness. And this is the direct antidote, direct contradiction to ignorance. So that would be able to remove ignorance along with its seeds. We can suppress emotions.
We’re pretty good at that in a way. But that’s at best temporary. Requires a great deal of energy and struggle to keep it under check. It’s not very skillful way of working with our minds. But it is only the direct perception which is able to remove not only the manifest form of the affliction like ignorance and so forth but also the seed form, its potential.
So that’s the kind of level of understanding. It’s the most powerful, stable of the various understandings that you can have. And that’s the one we’re aiming for. It’s hard to, you know, if you have a direct perception of this as blue. Unless somebody can convince you that that you’re you’re what you were seeing was that could cause you doubt about whether that’s blue or not.
It would be hard for somebody to convince you that was red. It would be powerful enough to exclude the thought, Oh, that’s red coming up in your mind. Your direct perception of this is blue would be so stable and powerful that thought with regard to that, that’s red, wouldn’t have an opportunity to come up in your mind. Go ahead. Told you this is blue?
And? Pardon? They trusted him or her. Okay. So you’re saying that you really don’t know if it’s blue or not?
Pardon? You’re not sure whether this is blue or not? So you’re saying it’s a correct assumption? Yeah? If we didn’t have language, the world nothing would exist.
Everything is dependent upon language and conceptuality. Everything. But because something appears one way doesn’t mean that is the way it exists. When you will. Yeah.
It gets very tricky, doesn’t it? When we start delving into it. If, you know, I I have to wear glasses. If if I take off these glasses, I can’t read this page. So these letters appear blurry.
Are they blurry? Are the letters on this page blurry? So I have to but when I put these glasses on there, they seem clear. So am I seeing which is the way which is the real way they exist? Blurry or clear?
Well, no. Because I naturally, they’re blurry to me. So, Krishna was saying Krishna so you’re saying that these are really clear, aren’t right? So Krishna, is this really blue? What color is that?
It’s blue. Well Krishna said, do know it’s really blue? He’s just been told that. They would. They would.
But does that does that make it red? It’s a no. Doesn’t say. So so there are let’s see. You really got it.
You really So it has in everything For something to exist, it must be satisfied three conditions. It must be okay. I’m digging a hole for myself here. It must be renowned in the world for that being that. Renowned in the world.
So simply because I call this a dog, it doesn’t make it a dog. Why? Because it’s not really around the world as being a dog. It must not be contradicted, Not contradicted by contradicted by a valid cognizer conventional conventional The conventional valid cognizer. What do I mean by that?
If I have a friend and I are walking through a field and I say, Oh, let’s get out of here. There’s a man over there. And he said, No, that’s a scarecrow. That’s not a man. If we if you know, we’re in contradiction, aren’t we?
I say it’s a man. He says it’s a scarecrow. So if we approach it closely, if we investigate, we come and go, ah, it’s a scarecrow. My thinking of it as being a man would be contradicted by his valid cognizers thinking it’s a scarecrow. So in order to name something properly, it must not be contradicted by a valid cognizer.
And there’s a third one, not contradicted by a valid cognizer. This is an eye waver. I’ll just mention it. It’s a technicality. Valid Cognizer.
Knowing the ultimate. Knowing the ultimate. So not contradicted by this is just a it has to do with everything that appears to be truly existent. But that would be contradicting, you know, this table, that’s contradicted by a valid cognizer knowing the ultimate, which understands that everything is empty of true existence. But anyway, this way you don’t have to pay so much attention to.
Don’t tell the teachers I said that. It’s these two. So it has to be, you know, people do. They make up conventions within families. You know, some people say, Today let’s say yes is no and no is yes.
And within that linguistic community it makes sense for them. If they step out of that linguistic community, people, you know, if you do that too often they put you away. Know, they say you’ve to keep quiet about these things. So people do, they play these games. They call different objects by different names.
And it’s understood within that family. But that doesn’t make it so. Within that linguistic community, that’s name. But things are known by known by renowned, by popular convention. This is blue by popular convention.
It’s not inherently blue. There’s nothing about it which makes it blue by way of its own nature. It has just become commonly known as blue, the color of this. And that’s all that we need to know. Nothing more than that.
It’s not particularly complex or profound than that. But it does have meaning. So we can’t call that red. Amongst us we can say, Well, let’s start calling this red. But it’s not renowned in the world as that.
It’s not popular convention. And it must not be contradicted by a valid cognizer. A valid cognizer would see this as blue. If I had jaundice, I might see it as yellow. My cognizer would see it as yellow, my consciousness would see it as yellow would be wrong consciousness because it’s not yellow even though it appears yellow.
So just because something appears to us doesn’t mean it exists. There’s certain criteria that it has to meet. Yeah, I think we have when we talk about mental images, we are very we’re predominantly visually oriented, most people are. And so when we talk, we talk as if people were visual. But some people are thinking, like a cook, a good cook, they can think of taste.
Most of Beethoven’s symphonies were written when he was deaf. He never heard with his ear what he wrote. He just working with sound images in his head. Yeah, but he had a sound image in his head. That’s what he was playing with.
Sound images. Not real sound. He couldn’t hear. So it’s interesting. It’s really getting kind of weird.
There was a show on SBS. And it was about a man what oh, yeah. They have a pad. It’s like a little popsicle and it has sensors on it. There’s about twenty five sensors.
They put it on your tongue. They have it’s hooked up to a camera. And you can blindfold yourself and they will put up an object. And this will act the camera sees the object and it translates this into impulses on these twenty five dots on this pad on your tongue. So you can actually begin to by the experience of these dots on your tongue get a visual image of the object without using your eyes.
You blindfold yourself. And you can tell whether a person is holding a round object or a square object. You can even begin to walk down a hallway and navigate objects. By So we can begin to so they’re beginning to sense that the mind is such that we don’t have to see with our eye, which is quite interesting. Have to do a little rework with Buddhism here.
You may be able to see with any of your senses. You might be able to see with your tongue. Yeah. It’s quite amazing. Quite amazing.
So something was appearing to his mind, which normally for us would be coming through our visual consciousness, our eyes. He was seeing with his tongue. And there was a blind man that emitted high squeaking sounds like a bat and he could hear the echo like a bat and he could navigate. So anyway, it’s quite amazing I think. Anyway, maybe that it’s quite this is quite this has profound implications.
You know we talked about language. That the world that we come to know is based upon language. According to the middle way philosophy, all phenomena are dependent upon language and conceptuality. So what we come to know is very much dependent upon our ideas about it. Things don’t exist independent of our ideas about it.
That we are very much involved in co creating our world. So it has kind of profound consequences. Any other comments? Should we meditate? Yeah.
We can. Can we do that? Move around. So if you’d like to stand up and stretch for a moment. So if you’re just taking a comfortable, firm posture.
We’ll begin with a short while on just meditating on the breath. And it’s helpful if you might want to make use of that technique, simply a gentle noting of what it is you’re actually experiencing in the present and when the mind is distracted or wanders, simply noting whatever it was, hearing or thinking, gently in a consistent patient patient bring your mind back to the breath. Now we’re going to trace back the continuity of our mind. Mhmm. Thinking about your present mind.
It’s a complex of attitudes and memories and predispositions to certain emotions, understanding. It’s quite a complex of traits and qualities which makes you uniquely you. It makes it a unique mind. And it’s pretty much similar to the mind that you first sat down to meditate with. That all of those attitudes and understandings and predispositions to certain emotions and so forth remain quite similar to what they were you first sat down to meditate.
We’re simply going to trace back the qualities and attitudes, characteristics, see that the mind is a stream of similar types of features to itself. So we can trace that mind all the way back to the tea break. We had a cup of tea or just sat around and talked. Our session before the tea break. You might have seen different sights and sounds, thought different thoughts but most of these features were quite similar in time.
And when you’re tracing it back to when you first came here this morning, you walked in the room for the first time. This continual stream that we can work, we can flow back up against the stream to this morning when we first walked in the room. Various mental qualities. Making this mind pretty much what it is, our particular mind. The mind that we left home with this this morning, we could go tracing that back.
And then you got up out of bed this morning. It’s pretty much the mind you went to sleep with last night. There’s been changes. Some of them more than others with the vast majority of qualities and traits pretty much the same. Continuity of features of the mind, characteristics of the mind.
Tracing back maybe a week ago, thinking something about a week ago and thinking about your mind then. It’s in a continuum of mental qualities with your present, with the mind of last night before you went to bed, that mind of a week ago. Maybe a few more bigger changes but not so much. Can you think of yourself a month ago, something that you might have been doing or thinking and something that happened to you a month ago and the quality of that mind is tracing the stream of one week ago’s mind back and back. That mind was a little more different but not so much.
Mind continues replicating itself giving rise to similar types of qualities and features and attitudes, beliefs, understanding, memories. Little changes introduced here now and then. Going back, can you remember one year ago? Something where you were, what you were doing? Going back to that same mind a year ago.
Maybe some bigger changes but nonetheless the same qualities. And moving up stream like working your way up a long river, flowing qualities of mind, stream of consciousness and qualities and working your way back up. Even to five years ago, can you remember how you were five years ago? Some instance, something that you experienced, how you were in terms of your mind back then? Might have been some large differences in some ways.
We’ve changed. The same continuity. Can you remember all the way back up the stream to twenty years ago? Body is quite different. The mind has changed in many ways.
It’s the same stream. Some of the traits have changed more than others. Different memories, maybe different understandings. Many the same, some different. Can you go back upstream, like taking a boat up the river?
Back here when you were a four year old. Wonder what it was like to be a four year old, what your thinking was, who you were. As a child, working way back up that mind stream over time. Going back up the river. When you were a baby.
Slowing from that. You were a baby at one time. That’s the mind of the baby. That baby’s mind injects continuity and can flow back up to the moment that you were born. You have no memory but you can understand, you can imagine, you can feel that that mind, your continuity, your stream going back further to when you were first born.
Came from your mother’s womb. Reminder. Certain attitudes, predispositions, feelings. And even into the womb during gestation. You can keep tracing that mind back, unbroken continuity, working our way back up the river of mind.
In the moment at our conception, where do all those traits and qualities, predispositions, emotions, Where did they come from? Working our way back. Did they all just start new there? It can, just like all the other moments of mind. Can we go back again?
Stream further. Working through the river. The last moment of a previous life. Same stream, a different embodiment, unbroken continuity. And working our way up the river further.
All the mental features, qualities, attitude, feelings, emotions, changing embodiments, growing, maturing, changing. There’s no source, no beginning. Just keep on going. All these mental qualities undergoing transformation. So quite often we can create some positive energy and we can dedicate that positive energy whatever way we wish.
We can put one bigger piece of chocolate cake we can dedicate towards that. But maybe we can have a greater vision about why we’re doing what we’re doing but each in our own way, dedicating that whatever virtue or wholesomeness and positive energy I may have created during the course of the day, doing what I’ve been doing. Thank you. So thank you for a nice time. Hope it wasn’t too confusing, but never mind.
Tomorrow is Sunday morning meditation. So I’ll be taking morning meditation from nine to ten and then we’ll continue from about ten fifteen. We’ll take a break after morning meditation. See some of you tomorrow, but others, thank you for coming along. It’s been nice.
Thank you.