Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 22-minute closing session, Ven Jampa Gendun opens a final group discussion at the end of a weekend program by surfacing a less obvious point about compassion: its subtler enemy is not hatred but discouragement and a felt sense of powerlessness. He connects this to the Buddha’s three tragic misunderstandings — seeing the impermanent as permanent, suffering as a source of lasting happiness, and the selfless as a self — arguing that recognising these gives practitioners the foothold to act compassionately without being paralysed. The session ends with a brief but pointed teaching on dedication: not empty ritual, but a genuine reorientation away from ego and toward the welfare of all beings. Suited to students completing an introductory or intermediate residential retreat.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 MP 2011 07 10.mp3
UUID: 4a6624e2-6df7-475e-89ac-26039e75637f
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: DB Mind and its Potential (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2011-07-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 21.9 minutes
Words: ~988
So like to spend the rest of the time is just having a general discussion. If you have any impressions that you’d like to share. Also, we’re going to take a few minutes out to there’s a student survey. So I’m going to have to evaluate you as being old you were as students. So be nice to me.
Any comments? Anything you’d like to share with the with the group on how your weekend went for you or didn’t go for you? If you say nice things, you’ll get a book. The bribe. What have you learned?
I have to break it down. The cold. I think we talked about before. In the Theravadin tradition they talk about, for example, the four immeasurables. And each of them immeasurable love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.
And each of them has a near and far enemy. Something which is antagonistic to each of those states of mind. And with regard to compassion, the most obvious antagonist mind enemy of compassion is the wish to harm. But nonetheless, the other is a feeling of discouragement and powerlessness. So that’s recognized as an enemy to the development of compassion.
When one feels powerlessness and gets discouraged and upset And that destroys one’s ability to be compassionate. So, you have to have it’s necessary to couple your compassionate with some degree of discrimination that recognizes that you can do, that there is something you can do. It may not be all that you might like to do. And I’d say that we filter, the Buddha said that we filter all our perception through three tragic misunderstandings. We see the permanent as we see the impermanent as permanent, that which is the nature of suffering is able to bring us complete happiness, and that which is without self, as having a self or being a self.
And that you know these are three tragic misunderstandings that all human beings, ordinary human beings, are under the influence of. And it’s this level of understanding that empowers a Buddha in their compassion. It’s tragic, but it’s unnecessary. There’s something we can do. And so in that sense, if there’s something that we can do, then we’re not overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness.
You know, we don’t regress to a child’s state, for example, that we talked about this morning. That we are adults. We can. There is something we can do. It may not be all that we would like to be able to do, but there is something. And in that we can empower, we can take some kind of solace, and we can allow ourselves to feel compassion.
Otherwise, as you say, it would be mindless torturing oneself. It wouldn’t serve any purpose. Any other thoughts or comments about the weekend that you’d like to share? Otherwise, I’m gonna give you some work to do. I think that’s module twelve.
Something like this. Oh, have ten minutes, okay. What I’ve been asked to do is if you would kindly take the time to fill out a student satisfaction survey or dissatisfaction survey, whichever, and hand it back in so that in the future that we can make the program even more relevant or some way improve it according to people’s needs and wants. Can I hand these out? You.
You all know how to spell fabulous? Thanks. That’s great. Yeah. Thank you.
Exam. Okay. Take your seat, please. So I’m going to check these out before you leave the room. Thank you.
So, okay. I’ll get a couple more minutes. So we can I’m sorry. Thank you. Here we can dedicate time.
Now, dedication is sometimes not a mere formality, not a meaningless ritual. Dedication, I have no idea how we do some things. It just occurred to me. Yes, lama said. Dedication is very important too.
It’s not just unnecessary ritual or words. The meaning of dedication is that your meditation is not for your own ego pleasure. You are dedicating it for other beings. That way you don’t become proud. Often philosophically religious people are proud.
Religion and philosophy can become equipment to produce more problems. So in Buddhism, that is the reason for practicing dedication. It’s very useful. It’s just not a ritual. Buddhism teaches you complete liberation, how to completely free the mind from any problem of worldly existence.
If you have a problem of attachment to Buddhism or Buddha, you are still deluded. You aren’t free. Buddhism tells you that you shouldn’t be attached to your own religion, to your own body, to your own views. Simple, isn’t it? So dedication is very useful.
Normally we do dedicate our life, but in a limited way. Our goal is limited. That’s why in this dedication we dedicate all our merits of our meditation to benefit other sentient beings in order to attain enlightenment. So the purpose of our meditation is not only for getting chocolate, not only for getting cake. Our goal lies beyond that.
That way it becomes a transcendental attitude. Okay? Thank you very much. Good night. We each in our own hearts, we can do something.
We only dedicate the positive energy toward improving the lot of the world, even though we have people we can’t directly benefit at present. We can aspire to be able to benefit them in the future. And that’s doing something. We can do that. So each and our one way, dedicating whatever positive energy you might have accumulated over the course of the weekend in whatever way you feel is most beneficial.
Thank you. I’ll see some of you at dinner. Otherwise, I’ll see you again, I hope. Practice well. Thank you.
Six o’clock. Right, I’ll see you on the road.. On the road. Oh, I’m sorry. You you you Buddha House would like to present you all with a present, a book by Lama Zopa.
I’ll place them here. Please take one.