Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The diving board image sets the tone for this 45-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun: just as a swimmer must eventually jump, cultivating compassion requires a leap beyond self-concern. Gendun builds the case for bodhicitta using Thich Nhat Hanh’s insight that understanding and love are the same thing, and the Dalai Lama’s “wisely selfish” argument that dedication to others yields more happiness than narrow self-focus. He explains tantra by presenting Chenrezig as a personification of latent compassion, not an external deity, and uses Lama Yeshe’s teaching on divine pride to challenge the habit of identifying with smallness. The session closes with a guided Chenrezig visualization, refuge prayers, four limitless thoughts, and group mantra recitation, making it both a doctrinal introduction and a complete practice session for newcomers.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 ER 1993 04 09.mp3
UUID: db751b08-62a5-42ce-825a-53615d020ed7
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Easter Retreat (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-04-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.4 minutes
Words: ~5,390
To give some feeling for what the the practice of Chenrezig might be about. I don’t I don’t know. I I I can’t explain it, but I’ll just share a few ideas that I have around it. Now I’ve I’ve talked about the the three fundamentals of the path, developing the determination to awaken, the awakening heart, and the awakening mind. And obviously Chenrezig is very much associated with the awakening heart, development of love and compassion.
In order to overcome selfishness it is necessary to be daring. It is though you were dressed in your swimsuit standing on the diving board with a pool in front of you and you ask yourself, now what? The obvious answer is jump. That is daring. You might wonder if you will sink or hurt yourself if you jump.
We are attracted to our we are attracted to our cocoons, our selfishness, and we are afraid of selflessness, stepping beyond ourselves. So in order to overcome our hesitation about giving up our privacy, in order to commit ourselves to others welfare, some kind of leap is necessary. So this leap is the awakening of our hearts to others and the overcoming of our hesitation about giving up the cocoon of our egocentric world and committing ourselves to the welfare of others. So becoming very aware that, as I have mentioned previously, that ultimately mental health is a social phenomena, that we are social beings and we have to it is imperative that we begin to transform the distorted bonding relationships that we have with others and to replace them with with the healthiest, most effective types of interactions, which is termed love and compassion. This way of interacting, this way of connecting with others.
You know, the if we if we fail to see this failing to see this because I don’t think it’s obviously, it’s not very obvious the way the the way we ourselves act and the way the world the situation of the world is that failing this is the part of the human dilemma in the sense that we are constantly and completely absorbed in our own problems to the exclusion of others. One of the main problems one of our main problems is that we’re completely absorbed in our problems. You know, though growth is very much an individual task, but it occurs as an authentic response not only to our own needs are limited and narrow, but also to the authentic as an authentic response to the needs of others which are endless, which are universal, unlimited. So in in in responding, in an authentic response to the needs of others, we of necessity must take recourse to our resources and develop those resources in order to be able to respond. In taking responsibility for others, we have to develop the ability to respond.
Otherwise, the notion of taking responsibility really doesn’t mean very much. And it is in taking the responsibility and the necessity to be able to respond that we ourselves will grow, that we will grow in proportion to the need to respond to that same degree. So from the point of view of universal vehicle, if one takes responsibilities of all living beings, then one must be one must actualize one’s total potentiality to be able to respond authentically. There’s nothing less than that which will fill the bill which is going to be able to be an appropriate response. One must achieve an optimum mode of being, being for oneself and being for others.
So you know, opening up ourselves to others, responding needs of others, overcoming our our cowardliness, our inertia is the way that we can begin to crawl out of our cocoons. You know, the the reason that we don’t help each other, that we don’t that we don’t have any time for each other, that we don’t have any energy for one another is because we don’t understand each other. You know, each our each other’s needs, perhaps even our own needs, but for sure others’ needs and what others want. A verse by Thich Nhat Hanh, a very wonderful Vietnamese practitioner now living in France, where he says, suppose we have a son who becomes an unbearable young man. It may be hard for us to love him, that is natural, but in order to be loved, a person should be lovable.
If our son has become difficult to love, we will be we will be very unhappy. We wish we could love him, but the only way we can is to understand him, to understand his situation. We have to take our son as the subject of our meditation. Instead of taking the concept of emptiness as some other subject, we can take our son as the concrete subject for our meditation. We don’t blame our son.
We just want to understand why he has become like that. Through this method of meditation, we find out all the causes near and far that have led to our son’s present state of being. The more we see, the more we understand. The more we understand, the easier it is for us to have compassion and love. Understanding is love itself.
Understanding is another name for love. Love is another name for understanding. So, you know, in becoming aware of and acknowledging our own pain, our own feelings of dissatisfaction, frustration, disappointments, we begin to understand ourselves. And in beginning to understand ourselves, we begin to love ourselves, to become serious and sincere about solving our problems and wishing ourselves well. Understanding our own problems, we can begin to that we can then begin to understand others’ problems, others’ needs, others’ wants, and thereby really begin to love others perhaps for the first time.
So understanding ourselves, the nature of our situation, our dilemma, the human dilemma which we all share in common, where you begin to develop the determination to awaken, to grow. When this is simply when the object of that understanding is other than self, is others, then we call that compassion and we call that love. We want to help them to grow, to solve their problems. So just determination to to grow, to to awaken, and compassion and love are the same thing, the same state. The only difference is the object toward which it’s directed.
I think in a very mundane sense, but it’s emphasized a great deal within the universal vehicle, that taking responsibility for others is the most skillful means available to develop ourselves. In order to take responsibility for others, we have to develop the ability to respond. In order to develop the ability to respond, we have to grow. We have to develop ourselves. We develop ourselves in in growing in love, in growing in wisdom, in growing in inner strength.
So in You know, sometimes there seems to be a conflict between self interest and other interests. There always seems to be many tensions which arise in the course of our life which seem irreconcilable. But you know to be a essentially a self directing unique individual whose actions and concerns are valuable in and of themselves. And at the same time to be a social being, essentially related to others, are not two conflicting ways of being, but but in fact are two mutually necessary aspects of everyday life. We must you know, there are two there are two aspects to the self, as it were.
There is the the private inner lived experience, our inner world, which is inaccessible to others. And then there is the self which exists in relationship to others, our social self. So from the point of view of the universal vehicle, the lesser vehicle falls to the extreme of individualism, forgetting that that it is not simply enough to to achieve the inner experience of passive peace and bringing to full bloom the the potential of the human capacity. But we also have to concern ourselves with finding an appropriate way of relating with others which are are very interconnectedness demands of us that we have to find fulfill an authentic response to that social aspect of ourselves. And this is love, whatever however we wish to define it.
This is what this type of relationship, this optimum mode of being in the world with others, in the way of interacting with others. This type of attitude that we relate with with others we call love, compassion. It is true that we are called to wholeness, but the reality is that we can never be completely whole in and of ourselves. We cannot be all things to ourselves and to others. We cannot be perfect.
We cannot be doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, farmers, politicians, stonemasons, and theologians all rolled into one. It is true that we are called to power, yet the reality is that there is a point beyond which our sense of self determination not only becomes inaccurate and prideful, but increasingly self defeating. It is true that we are created to be individually unique, yet the reality is that we are inevitably social creatures who desperately need each other, not merely for sustenance, not merely for company, but for any meaning to our life whatsoever. So, you know, that’s the with trying to overcome our our resistance, to making the effort to open, to to take to jump off the diving board because we’re not quite sure how we’re going to land. If we if we see it’s absolutely necessary absolutely necessary to awaken our hearts to others, not simply from a point of view of sentimentality or some romantic notion, but it is based upon rationality and pragmatism.
It’s the nature of ours of the human situation that to be healthy we must do that. You know the Dalai Lama has said that if we are going to be selfish, at least be wisely selfish. What he means by this peculiar sounding advice is that in a way bodhicitta bodhicitta is the Sanskrit word for the awakening heart is that bodhicitta is like a huge selfish attitude. When you dedicate yourself to others with loving kindness, you get back far more happiness than you could have ever experienced otherwise. Ordinarily we do get so we get so little happiness and it’s easily lost.
So if we want to be as happy as possible, the only thing to do is dedicate ourselves wholeheartedly to the welfare of others. When some people first hear about bodhicitta, this this awakening heart, they confuse it with a sentimental highly emotional state of mind. Oh, how I want people to be happy. I can’t stand to think of their suffering. They feel so overwhelmed by the needs of others that their mind becomes depressed.
But true bodhicitta is not like this. It has nothing to do with such an upset and paralyzed state of mind. Instead it is clear and easygoing, possessing calm wisdom as well as deeply felt compassion. It is an attitude of opening our hearts completely and leaving it open as much as we can from the point of view of rationality and pragmatism, but also from the point of view of our own experience, the necessity to to begin to make the effort to cultivate love, to cultivate compassion, and to practice it. So often we make such a fuss.
This last quote and this quote are quotes, teachings by Lama Yeshe, who was the founder of Buddha House. So often we make such a fuss of insignificant events in our life that we turn minor difficulties into major problems. As we develop a more universal view of bodhicitta, however, these small concerns become unimportant and no longer bother us. As this burden of self concern drops from our shoulders we experience a small taste of the complete freedom that comes from full spiritual fulfillment. Experiences like this are encouraging because they demonstrate so convincingly the practical day to day value of training and transforming our mind.
You know, the as I just mentioned, one of our one of our problems is that they were completely wrapped up, absorbed in our own problems. Problems. You know, we have to deal with our problems. We we can’t avoid confronting them and working with them, but we have to put them in some kind of proper perspective, you know, on a more if we look at our problems on a more global scale, seeing what’s happening in the world, that very instant you become aware of others difficulties. It does not diminish the necessity to work with your problem and the fact that it is hurting you.
But you don’t add this extra burden onto the pain by thinking that you have the only problem in the world with this myopic vision which narrows down to and ex ex expands and magnifies whatever difficulty we might be experiencing. You know, sometimes it’s as if we’re on a mountaintop completely surrounded by clouds. We can’t see even a foot in front of us. And we are completely isolated, involved in our own sphere of concern. That’s all we know.
That’s all we can see. And in such a situation, even our own intelligence, our basic sanity is not available to us to be able to solve the problem. The moment we become concerned with others, we begin to gain some kind of perspective on our situation. It’s like the sun of our own wisdom beginning to break through those clouds. You know, love is one of the best definitions of love, or the definition that I I appreciate most, is the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing one’s own or another’s well-being.
The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing one’s own or another’s well-being. It seems as it seems as, you know, the the state of love, whatever that might be, it it creates an atmosphere within the mind where it is able to access to a greater extent resources within the psyche than are normally available. You know, it is like a context in which more of our potential is able to find expression. It because it begins to break down our ego boundaries. We there’s a connectedness.
And it is, you know, if we had if the psyche it is as if we demarcated part of our psyche and built and identified with a small portion and say that’s me and this is my world. And within that egocentric demanding there’s no possibility for for for accessing the rest of our psychic potential. But love has the I think this this other centeredness or this going beyond, our self centeredness, has the possibility to make this wall of the boundaries of ego a little more permeable. And we’re able not only to interact with others, broadening our sense of concern, but even internally, the boundary of our psyche begins becomes more permeable. And we’re begin we’re able to access more of our own resources.
Our basic sanity, our own wisdom becomes available to us. From the point of view of our own experience, the moment we become aware of others difficulties somehow there’s a lightening of our own burden. And two, from the point of view the necessity of waking our hearts from the point of view of our intuition, the poetry of our hearts, speaking to us with almost the inarticulate whisperings of our own hearts. There’s a line or a verse by Shelley where he says, For when the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul requires no other heaven. So, you know, we don’t have to be saints, we don’t have to be super humans, but we have to at least try in some small way to live the life of our waking dreams, to to to you know, even to be happy in a very mundane sense, have to respect ourselves.
We have to like ourselves. We have to feel that some part of our life is being lived out of a very unique and personal part of ourselves, a part which we might not fully comprehend, but a part which brings meaning to our life. The intellect operates on the basis of proof and demonstration. The soul operates on the basis of belief and meaning. And we are in danger of losing our soul in a in a part of ourselves which which when which when we are at one with, we are oneness with ourselves and oneness with all else.
And it’s some kind of healing of the split in our in our very basic part of our being, authenticity. So this consummate in in through the two meditative traditions of cultivating the of love and compassion, its consummation is the awakening heart. This altruistic aspiration to achieve to awaken, to to reach, to actualize all of one’s potential, one’s skills, one’s fearlessness, one’s compassion, one’s equanimity in order to be able to help others. You know a Buddha is someone who simply experiences peace within them, within themselves, and out of their compassion skillfully works with others order to help them to do the same. And talking about the awakening heart, the magnificent conception of this will to enlightenment is the central moment in the evolutionary career of living being.
The moment in which a new spirit of love and compassion pervades its whole life and destiny and its further evolution becomes a purpose of creative progress. From this moment, a living being becomes a bodhisattva worthy of honor by gods as well as humans. Śāntideva states that Śāntideva was an eighth century Indian Buddhist master. Śāntideva states that as soon as a being conceives the spirit of enlightenment, he or she becomes at once a son or daughter of the Sugatas. Sugata is an epithet of the Buddhas.
It means one gone to bliss, a Buddha child. He or she should rejoice in the new found fruitfulness of their existence. This spirit is a kind of spiritual gene, a DNA molecule of universal evolutionary life after life. Once one possesses it possesses it by conceiving the will to attain Buddhahood for the perfection of wisdom and compassion for the sake of all living beings, the quality of one’s experience and even one’s biological continuum is marked forever onward. You know, there’s no more noble thought than this.
There’s there’s no greater meaning that we can bring to our life than this. There’s no more powerful method to go beyond our suffering, no greater way to help others than this, that is to say to awaken our hearts, to cultivate love and compassion. So in this You know, I mentioned in the course of what I was just saying that there are two methods, two meditative traditions, the seven cause and effect instruction and the exchanging and equalizing self for others. But there is an additional method which is the method centered within tantra in which we make use of a meditational deity. So this practice in conjunction with the with the methods of outlined in the Lamrim, the graduated path which Rinpoche has been teaching, and especially these two meditative traditions of the seven cause and effect instruction and the equalizing exchange and others are the most efficacious methods to actually begin to awaken our hearts to develop love and compassion.
And we can make use of these practices. The more understanding the more the more we’re able to bring the practice, obviously the more effective we will be. But there is some blessing even within the practice with our limited understanding. You know, it’s in the it’s It’s a part of tantra. Tantra means literally means continuity.
Continuity. We find some appropriate way of relating and we try to continue that way of relating. We find as I mentioned probably several times, that we have a our only limits are those we acknowledge, and we have acknowledged many limits. That we have a particular identity which we have fixated upon. Usually it’s quite This this this identity that we fixate upon is freezes the energies of our psyche as it were.
It is one of the main inhibiting barriers to our development. We take refuge in the Three Jewels. I’ve talked about going to refuge. The Three Jewels are the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. This can happen on various levels.
There is an ordinary physical level of just repeating the formula. This also involves a process happening within us. Regarding this inner level, we have the instruction to take refuge in something which is abiding, something which can actually offer refuge. We can only take refuge in something certain, otherwise taking refuge would be a pure fiction and would not provide the security we want. So on the inner level taking refuge means surrendering to those forces of which we are which are, so to speak, the last transformation.
These forces have in a way become frozen in us. Taking refuge thus means to commit ourselves to a process of unfreezing so that life’s energies, or whatever we want to call these forces, that operate through us and somehow get blocked can flow freely. So, you know, we may not be able to comprehend at present. Now what what are you responding to? What what what is this intrinsic instinct toward wakefulness which which necessitates this some kind of authentic response.
But it is the process of unblocking, finding expression to our basic sanity. To all the qualities which we in fact possess but which we have limited due to having fixated upon a particular identity, a particular conception about who we are. You know, our embodiment involves our being. Our presence involves an embodiment, the activity of communication, and certain patterns of thinking. This is constitutes our being essentially.
A particular embodiment, a particular the activities of communication, interaction, and certain patterns of thinking. So this is the way our being is expressed through these three modes. These are the ways that we relate with situations. So so rather than aiming at some enlightened state which is far in the future, the the the unique quality of tantra, and it’s often termed the resultant vehicle, is that we try to see the continuity of the enlightened state in our present situation. We become in other words, our present body, speech, mind are manifestations of a rather half-baked meditational deity.
We are we have been practicing tantra all our lives unaware and we haven’t been doing a very good job of it. The meditational deity that we’ve we have cultivated is a rather poor quality one. So we’re going to try to open ourselves up to a new mode, open ourselves a new conception of embodiment, new modes of communication, and new modes of ways of thinking. And we’re trying to get the you know, unfreeze our you know, we are locked into certain roles, certain concepts, frozen. And so tantra seeks to help us to unfreeze our concepts and get our energies moving again, to to allow some kind of transformation so that we can upgrade the quality of the deity, the role that we’re playing in life, in a way, in a manner of speaking.
Again, Lama Yeshe, the tantra, main problem, the main problem, the main problem. What is the problem? It is the ordinary recognition that I am poor man, poor woman. Do you understand? Perceiving holding as poor one, poor object, poor quality, and perceiving also such poor, acting ugly, having lower opinion of our body, lower opinion of our quality, that is the worst symptom to be healthy, to be liberated.
That is the main problem to eradicate, to cut by practicing Chenrezig yoga method. As long as you decided, having preconceptions that I am the self pitying one, you decided. You decided already that you are the bad guy. You decided already. So when you decided you are a bad guy, you did always bad actions.
Anyway, I’m worthless. I’m bad guy, so I do bad one. Of course, that’s the way it is. It’s true. This is psychology, psychological reality.
So by identifying with enlightened attitudes there is a feeling that we can give up clinging to our old conception of ourselves. If we let go of identity that we fixated upon, we will not go out of existence. We we can we can relax a little bit. You know, we can develop some kind of divine pride. You know, divine pride comes from from facing the reality of who we are, in fact, are, our actual nature.
It’s not a question of becoming what one would like to become. It is confronting and accepting what one already is. You know, it’s it’s radically different than than the than the the deluded pride of the confused ego, you know, the which is simply an indulgent wish for indulgent wishful thinking about what one one would fantasize one is. But here we’re trying to get in touch with what we in fact are. You know, we are in a way Chenrezig.
Again, Lama Yeshe. So useful using the skillful method, it is possible life becomes transcendental experience. Life becomes enlightened experience. That is, isn’t it? I don’t know.
Maybe I cannot use that word. I think that is enlightenment experience. One way is that tantrayana, one having comprehension or recognition that I am Chenrezig, I am Buddha. Tantrayāna, you become real rather than disappear. So you emanate the body of Avalokiteśvara.
In your consciousness, your pure body, is transforming and manifests as the total complete pure body of Avalokiteśvara. The reason perhaps this way put together. Each each of us, we do have the psyche or consciousness or physical body we have. This body, this bloody body born, this body we we we are not transforming. Radically, my body become Chenrezig?
No. No. But my consciousness, my psyche can transform. Perhaps you can say one of my psychic aspects is Chenrezig. For example, our life, each day, each month, we manifest different.
Sometimes wrathful manifestation when anger comes out. Sometimes like Chenrezig, loving kindness. Try to keep all body, speech and mind. So getting at the idea that sometimes there’s a spark of the enlightened quality of Chenrezig coming out in our ordinary experience. And we try to become mindful in that and continue it, to expand it as an appropriate way of relating.
We we don’t miss it. We’re constantly missing the enlightened moments which are continually expressing in our everyday existence. But we overlook them. We discount them. We are as if blind to all of these qualities because we’re so fixated upon a particular mundane conception about who we are.
We aren’t able to see the enlightened nature that already exists within us. So we begin to notice more when we’re expressing real compassion and the Chenrezig’s quality, which is finding expression. And we begin to continue that tantra, to continue. We find some way of relating and we try to continue that way of relating in all the various situations that life brings us. Loving kindness tried to keep all body, speech and mind on others.
You can see an entirely different person that we know according according to our life we know. We check up, we know. Our dear friend sometimes becomes so like Chenrezig, sometimes so wrathful, hurt, broken heart. Mommy, yes she is. As I said, he was he had very creative grammar.
So trying to identify, you know, with the Chenrezig that we all have within our side, of ourselves, this enlightened spark of being which is embodied which is this way of relating this type of relating is called compassion, a way the most skillful way of interacting. So we bring all of our energies of compassion to blossom. And that’s the way we begin to relate in situations according to our patterns of thinking, our way of communicating, and the way of conceiving our environment. So Chenrezig is a a personification of a psychic potential, if you like, in a way. That’s one way to look.
Personification of a psychic potential and we can objectify it to make it workable. And we can we can make requests of Chenrezig. We can relate with Chenrezig in this objectified manner. It becomes very tangible. It becomes very workable.
It’s not something quite as abstract as some inner potential of compassion that we might have. We can actually see it. We can talk with it. We can relate with it. Something almost really that we can almost touch and we can become.
Then it is like if there is a seed, if there is some kind of seed of compassion within us, it is as if overgrown with the weeds of our preconceptions about who we are. And the sun is never allowed to strike that and activate it. And so if we can temporarily push aside those weeds, forgo our habitual identity of who we normally think ourselves to be, and give this seed a chance to meet the light and find expression. So that’s what we’re going to do. Or Judy’s going to do it.
So if you’d like to stand up for a minute and then Judy’s gonna lead us in our practice. Do Buddha House on Sunday mornings at nine o’clock before meditation. So if you like the practice you can go along on Sundays and continue with it. Can you hear me? So when we’re doing the practice, we are trying to visualise Chenrezig as he is up here and this Chenrezig has four arms and you might also see pictures of Thousand Arm Chenrezig in Buddha House as well.
This is the four-arm Chenrezig. So I’m going to describe the visualization. You can join in saying the prayers and I’ll describe the visualization. And it’s Okay. So I’ll describe the visualization, and if you try to concentrate on it, and if it’s difficult, then just as long as you have some sense that, Chenrezig is there, not it’s not important to have every detail of it.
In the middle of the practice we will say the Chinrezig mantra we will say that together twenty one times and then you can continue saying it silently or if you wish you can meditate on the breath or on compassion or whatever you wish until we finish the practice off. So I will start with the refuge in generation of bodhicitta and we will say this three times. To the absolute Buddha, Absolute Dharma and Absolute Sangha, I go for refuge until the great enlightenment is attained. By the accumulated merit from the practice of generosity and other virtues, may I attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings. To the Absolute Buddha, Absolute Dharma, and Absolute Sangha, I go for refuge until the great enlightenment is attained.
By the accumulated merit from the practice of generosity and other virtues may I attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings to the absolute Buddha absolute Dharma and absolute Sangha I go for refuge until the great enlightenment is attained by the accumulated merit for the practice of generosity and other virtues, may I attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings. So the four Mahāyāna limitless thoughts. And as I say each one, we can contemplate on that. How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings attained equanimity, free from attachment and hatred holding some beings close and others distant. May they attain equanimity.
I myself will make them to attain equanimity. Please, guru buddha, bless me to be able to do this. How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings attained the true cause of happiness and true happiness. May they attain true happiness and its cause. I myself will make them to attain it.
Please, Guru Buddha, bless me to be able to do this. How wonderful it would be if all sentient beings were released from the cause of suffering and all sufferings may they be released from all sufferings and their cause I myself will make them to be released. Please, Guru Buddha, bless me to be able to do this.