Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 61-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a parable: a man stuck in a hole is offered a doctor’s prescription and a clergyman’s prayer — neither helps — until a stranger jumps in saying, “I’ve been here before, and I know a way out.” The image frames the session’s dual focus: authentic refuge and widening compassion beyond narrow self-interest. After reframing the Three Jewels in plain everyday language, Gendun leads a guided body-scan relaxation and twenty minutes of breath meditation. The doctrinal centrepiece explores selflessness through a sequence of deceptively simple questions — are you your body, or do you have one? would you accept a Buddha-mind transplant? — drawing out the puzzle of a self that seems to stand apart from both body and mind. The session closes with a reading of Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese.”
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 EW 2011 03 05.mp3
UUID: e00e004e-7be2-46c4-b49c-617c71d16b1b
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Emptiness Weekend (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2011-03-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 61.3 minutes
Words: ~3,634
To change. We we often deny the the quality of our felt experience. I think whether it’s therapy or whether it’s Buddhism, one of the first acknowledges acknowledgments we have to make is that things aren’t as as I might like them to be. And then there’s opening up to other possibilities, alternatives in our life, you know, other pathways that we might want to explore and walk down and see if they might bring us more of what it is that we want in life and help us to get rid of what we don’t want in our life. We bring about change.
It’s the notion I’m not okay and you’re not okay, but that’s okay. The situation is work able rather than our our stubborn, smug refusal to admit that things aren’t what we might like them to be. But we can go beyond this in terms of adjusting our motivation. There’s a sequel to this this story, this autobiography. Autobiography.
You know, this as the story comes to an end, this person is fallen into a hole or, you know, and he’s down in the hole, and he’s yelling up, please help me. Please help me. And then numbers of number of people walking by, and most of them ignore his cries for help. But a doctor walks by and he hears the cry for help and he walks up to the edge of the hole and he peers down and the man yells out, help, help. And the doctor writes out a prescription and crumbles it up and throws it down in the hole and walks off.
And then another person is still yelling for help. The prescription in itself doesn’t solve his problems. He’s still in the hole. And another man walks by, and this is a clergyman. And clergyman hears the man yelling for help.
And he looked he walks to the edge of the hole and peers down, and the man is yelling, help, help, help me out. And the clergyman writes out a prayer and crumbles up the piece of paper and throws it down in the hole, and then he walks off. And still the man is in the hole. The prayer didn’t have that kind of beneficial effect that what he really needs is help get out of the hole. And finally, a man walks by, and he hears the man yelling for help.
And he walks to the edge the hole, and the man yells up, help me. Help me. And he without thinking, spontaneously, he jumps down in the hole. And the other man said, that was extremely kind of you to jump down here with me, but now we’re both in the hole. And the man says, yes, but I’ve been here before, and I know a way out.
So, you know, we don’t necessarily have to do everything for just for ourselves and our motivation, our thinking about trying to get out of our own holes. We have to begin there. Our own self interest is the only reality most of us know at present, and we have to be genuinely present to that, and we have to direct our our attention to that. We can’t overlook or try to ignore the fact of our own predicament, but we can have a broader view of what it means to get out of our own holes. Sometimes our holes are our complete self absorption, and being so caught up in our own problems that we oftentimes exclude other people from our life, we create problems for other people in terms of we, in our immediate necessity of getting out our own holes, we often use others at their expense, and this becomes a greater hole for our life in general.
So, you know, we all have our own holes. We all have our own problems in one way or another. And the better we to be able to deal with them, the greater service we can help others to crawl out of their own holes. So, you know, we have we go for in general, we talk about going for refuge, don’t we? We go for refuge in the Buddhadharma and Sangha, but maybe we can bring that down to some kind of level of relevance to ourselves so it’s not something abstract.
You know, a Buddha is someone who’s learned how to crawl out of most of life’s holes in one way or another, that they’ve, you know, a healthy, happy, loving, sane human being. And this becomes like, our orientation. We keep reminding ourselves of what we could be, what we would like to be. We go beyond our limited vision of, which more than not creates a barrier to becoming the person that we we know we can be, that to bring about change in our life. But, you know, we have to do something.
It’s simply not enough to wish it to be so. We we involve ourselves in these various practices to make it so. We involve ourselves in the Dharma. Know, the Dharma is the trainings, the meditative techniques, the teachings and so forth, but ultimately, most basically, it’s the truth, the way are in their reality, in their actual nature, which makes us free. And this process that we’re talking about occurs within the context of a spiritual community, the Sangha, and those who are encourage us, who support us in various ways, even whether it be a kind word or a teaching or but also even materially, those who validate our Buddhist story, you know, safe greenhouse environment where we can explore other possibilities and with a feeling of safety, where we can experiment with other ways of being.
And this becomes like a refuge for ourselves, and again and again we try to raise the level of our motivation such that we’re not trying to get out of our holes just for our own narrow needs and limited self concerns, but for an ever widening circle of others to help, you know, even if only a little bit. You know, sometimes we talk about all sentient beings, all sentient beings. I don’t know what all sentient beings are. I can’t kind of wrap my mind around that notion, but I can begin to wrap my mind around helping my partner and my family and my sangha, those who immediately I come in contact in my daily life. You you can pick out even one other person, even now in your imagination, and say, you know, I I like for this session to be an outcome such that I’d be a little more benefit to this one person.
And I’d like to be able to be understanding, a little kinder, a little more patient to just this person. And then I think, you know, no matter how your meditation session goes, out of that intention something positive will come about. And as I began began with, it’s not so much why we, you know, what we do, but why we do what we do, which is going to determine the quality of the outcome. So however our meditation session goes today together, you know, if you have a positive motivation, if only to help that one other person and including yourself, it will be a benefit. Do you normally read this?
Maybe you don’t. Uh-uh. Okay. Do you normally read the the the prayer of going for refuge? Yes.
We do. Refuge in Three Jewels. Okay. Here you go. So this is kind of, formalized in in the the prayer of going for refuge.
So Going for refuge to the Buddha, ourselves as the final transformation of the person that we want to be, a healthy, loving, sane human being which we actualize by means of the Dharma, the teachings, the meditative techniques, but ultimately the truth of things, the way things are in their actual nature within the context of a spiritual community, and again and again trying to raise the level of motivation that what we’re doing is not done just for ourselves alone, but out of an ever widening concern with a growing circle of others. And then we recite the the four immeasurables. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly. By my practice of listening to the teachings and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly.
By my practice of listening to the teachings and the other perfections, I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the supreme assembly. By my practice of listening to the teachings and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all sentient beings be inseparable from the happiness that is free from suffering. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for friends and hatred for enemies. So we’ll begin with twenty minutes of mindfulness of breathing, and perhaps I’ll just lead you in just for two minutes of progressive relaxation of the body, getting in touch with the body. If you wish, you’re welcome to tune me out and not listen to what I’m saying. You alternatively, if you wish, you can just kind of follow along with what I’m saying and imagine or actually feel what is being described in the course of relaxing the body.
So taking a comfortable firm posture. So we can begin by, process of relaxing, getting in touch with the body, bringing your awareness to the crown of your head, to your scalp, feeling the wrinkles in your brows smoothing out. The pressure in and around your eyes diminishing. The muscles of the face softening. The the awareness to perhaps the back of your neck and very gently if you wish, turning your head to each side a few times just loosening, stretching the muscles in the back of the neck.
And lowering your awareness to your upper back and shoulders and perhaps raising your shoulders up towards your ears and rotating them a few times just like rowing a boat. And then drawing them up towards your ears and allowing them to drop comfortably to the sides, and with that feeling some kind of weight or burden moving down through your body into the ground as if some kind of burdens been lifted from your back that you’ve been unknowingly carrying around a sense of lightness and ease. And bringing your awareness all the way down to your hands. Your hands are soft and loose. Relaxing your lower arms and your upper arms.
Your chest is at ease and relaxing through the heart area, the center part of the chest and the middle part of your back, the stomach. Relaxing your stomach muscles just allowing your belly to go soft releasing the tensions that we often hold there and throughout the abdominal cavity. And keeping your back straight, your trunk erect, consciously relax your lower back muscles. And your upper legs and thighs, lower legs, and finally your feet soft, loose. We’re just going to roughly scan through our body once again from the crown of your head downward and as you move through your body notice any tensions or tightnesses which might remain in the body, any areas of discomfort.
And as you move through, if you come across an area of tension for example, imagine breathing through your nostrils and though you’re only doing this imaginatively, follow that breath to that area of tension, suffusing it with the breath, breathing out from that area of tension and feeling the tension relax, the tension diminish. Breathing into the area of tightness, suffusing the area of tightness with the breath, breathing out from that area wherever it might be in your body following it out the tightness loosen. If there’s an area of discomfort we don’t try to avoid it or resist it. Breathing in surrounding that area of discomfort with a breath of kindness like a mother cradling her child allowing accepting it’s okay, it’s okay and breathing out from that area. Breathing into the areas of tightness and tension within the body and discomfort breathing out from those areas.
The body becoming relaxed at ease. It’s a nice place to be in your body sometimes we forget we’re so much in our heads. The body breathes in and the body breathes out. Just allow the body to breathe. You don’t have to breathe the body.
The body will do it all by itself. If you’d like to stand up and stretch, you’re welcome. So in the sequence of Sunday morning teachings, we’re following the graduated path, and the final section has to do with the ultimate nature of reality, emptiness or selflessness. We’d meditated on it last Sunday, and this weekend we’re doing a discovery in Buddhism workshop, which is a bit of a commercial announcement. So I thought we’d just carry that over one more week, and then next Monday, you’ll next Sunday, you’ll begin the sequence from the very beginning again.
So we’re going to do some meditation on selflessness emptiness, and we’re just you know, it’s a it’s a big, big, big topic. We were in talking about motivation, we talked about the necessity to change, and and, ultimately, we want to change our hearts and minds and this is coming to a realization of the way things ultimately exist to overcome misconceptions about the nature of who I am and how the various things in the world actually exist in their own nature. We have some misconceptions around that, but also in terms of our hearts, you know, developing a kind, warm hearted attitude, compassion and love, most most basically. We want to develop wise minds and kind hearts. And so there there’s like two wings of a bird.
To be a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being, we not only need wisdom, but we also need love. You know? These these are the two dimensions of our being. We want to develop an inner experience of peace with inside of ourselves, which is brought about through wisdom, but we are social beings. We exist in this world with others, so trying to find the most relevant, the most skillful way of living in this world, and that is love.
So we can’t escape it if we ever hope to, you know, to find some peace and real meaning fulfillment in our lives. We have to work in the development of wisdom, but also compassion and love. It’s not religion or it’s not morality. It’s basic sanity. So we’re going to just ask a few questions around this notion of emptiness and selflessness.
Okay? So we’re just gonna ask questions. Questions are more difficult than the answers, actually. Getting in touch with them, the questions kinda evoking some of the the ideas so that maybe in the future you’d like to investigate it further. So I’m going to propose a few questions, paradoxes maybe.
So if you’d like to take a comfortable posture, we’ll begin with a couple minutes of mindfulness of the breath, and then as best you can from your own experience, in your own terms, in your own way, if you find it relevant and useful, trying to come up with some kind of answers to these questions. And if we if we live the question then eventually we’ll live it our way into the answers. So begin with a few minutes of mindfulness of breathing. So we’re going to put to ourselves a few simple questions, playing with the questions. I have a sense I’m sitting on the cushion, I’m sitting on the chair.
I’m sitting on the cushion and I’m sitting on the chair. Just take that for granted, that notion, that sense. But if we were to question that, how could I, you know, what reasons could I give? How could I establish that? How do know I’m sitting on the chair?
I’m sitting on the cushion? I, the self, am sitting on the cushion or on the chair. Because? How do I know that? So let’s put another question.
If you were to, stub your toe, say I’m hurt. When you stub your toe you say I’m hurt. That’s quite natural, instinctive. Are you your toe? Are you your body?
Am I the body? I’m hurt. I’m in pain. Or do you have a body? I have this old body or this beautiful body.
I have this male body or I have this female body. Are you the body or do you have a body? Or maybe both? We can do the same with the mind. If you have happy thoughts, you say I’m happy?
Are you your mind? I’m happy. There are happy thoughts in my mind? I’m happy. Am I my mind?
Or do you have a mind? You’re not the mind but you have a mind. I have happy thoughts. I have pleasant thoughts. I had a nice pleasant dream last night but you’re not the mind you have a mind or maybe both.
Let’s say someone someone in the future time were to offer to give you a body transplant. You could have a healthy, beautiful body and say I would like that. Wow, I’d like to have a different body than the one I have now. I’d like to have a healthy, youthful, strong body, beautiful body. I’d do that.
Doesn’t that suggest that there’s an I which would be benefited by getting a new body? An I would be benefited by getting a body transplant? I’d like to get a new body. What about a new mind? Somebody said we’ve developed this technique where we can give you a new mind, a healthy, loving, wise mind, a Buddha mind.
I’d like like to have a Buddha mind. Doesn’t that suggest that there’s an I that would be benefited by getting that new mind that stands apart from that mind? So how many eyes do you sense yourself to be? How many eyes are there? I would do when you stub your toe you say I’m hurt or maybe the eye is the body, there’s the body eye.
When you have pleasant thoughts, I’m happy, there’s a mental eye. There’s an eye which could get a new body, could get a new mind. There seems to be an eye which is exists separate from the body and mind. Are there all these different eyes? How many eyes do you sense yourself to be?
Lots of different eyes or just one eye. When you go to buy a ticket at a show and the cashier asks you, how many out there are you? And you say, just me, just one, just me, just I, only one. Or do you buy So if you feel a bit confused around that, that that’s a good sign. But we want to, within that confusion, understand that I in fact do exist.
We might not exist the way that we normally conceive of ourselves to exist, but nonetheless we do exist. So we want to simply reconfirm the I, the conventionally existent I. I’m meditating, I’m going to get up from my cushion, have a cup of tea or get into my car and go home. I’m going to cook lunch and I’m going to have a nice relaxing day. I have lots of nice things to look forward to, lots of activities.
I’m going to do all these various things. That I exists, no problem. I’ll read you a poem to go away with. Okay? It’s by an American poet by the name of Mary Oliver.
It’s called wild geese. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You have only to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about your despair, yours, and I’ll tell you about mine.
Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese high in the blue sky are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things. So we can dedicate, you know, the positive energy that we’ve created today together in this way, and we can dedicate it toward whatever ends we wish, and we can dedicate it for a better piece of the world, a better piece of chocolate cake, or we can have a greater vision of what we would like our life to be.
Due to the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into the enlightened state. May the supreme jewel bodhicitta that has arisen arise and grow. May that which has arisen not diminish but increase more and more and we can read the long life prayer of his holiness the Dalai Lama in the land and circled by snow mountains you are the source of all happiness and good all powerful Chenrezig, Tenzin Gyatso, please remain until Samsāra’s end. Have a nice day. Thank you.