Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. An Einstein quote — “this delusion is a kind of prison” — anchors the central argument of this 46-minute introductory session: that widening our circle of compassion is both the Buddhist aim and, Ven Jampa Gendun suggests, a biological imperative. He opens by framing practice in therapeutic terms — escaping habitual reactive patterns, choosing a preferred story — then explains Going for Refuge and walks through the six perfections (generosity, ethics, tolerance, joyous effort, meditation, wisdom) with grounded examples, including water-bowl offerings as daily training in letting go. A Q&A covers Tibetan kata-giving, the two bodies of a Buddha, and a sustained exchange on whether Buddhism can accommodate belief in God, before closing with a biologist’s claim that altruism is genetically programmed in social species. Suited to newcomers with no prior Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 1993 10 25 ItB.mp3
UUID: fbe51a86-b607-4b4d-9495-43966f6fbc7a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Intro to Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-10-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.2 minutes
Words: ~4,884
We begin as we usually do in terms of, redirecting ourselves, reorientating ourselves, adjusting our motivation. If what we do is to serve as a means to solve our problems as opposed to complicating our lives, then it’s very much dependent upon our motivation, why we do what we do, as opposed to the activity in itself. Know, opening ourselves up to alternative ways of being, alternative knowledges, alternative stories about our life. Getting back in touch with some of our more deeply held values, principles and guidelines that we’d like to live by. Yeah.
You know. Values that we’ve established for ourselves at some of the finer moments of our life that we’d like to see expressed more and more in our life, constitute our life in some way. Giving us a life in direction, I guess, or redirecting our life. Choosing preferred options as against perhaps our habitual reactive patterns that govern our lives. And I guess exercising our wisdom in our life, things like that.
Seems like a lot to do. Just opening ourselves up to some kind of change, I guess. I’ve talked about, you know, what what can bring about this change? You know, what what what is it that helps us to get unstuck? What helps us to actually begin to actively perform our preferred story of life?
To actively choose growth, to actively take up the struggle against these impoverishing, subjugating dysfunctional patterns which perhaps have have governed our lives to a large extent up to now. And I think this is, as I mentioned, in terms of anxiety or some kind of fear or dread and faith. Anxiety around the the continuation that things are going to be very much an extension of what they have been in the past past and nothing very much is going to change. Just these reoccurring themes and patterns that seem to same problems, I guess, that keep coming up in our life again and again and again. It gets boring.
It gets and just as, you know, there’s there’s it’s as if yeah. There’s the actual content of those patterns and then the the all the various depressions and and sadnesses and hurts. And then there’s the on top of it, when one begins to see the patterns, it begins to develop some kind of dread about, uh-oh, here it comes again, kind of dread. So let alone the what goes on inside the patterns is just begin to see the patterns evolve again to play themselves out again and again and again in our lives. And it’s that dread I think that which is one of the two causative factors.
The other is the faith that things can get better. Can we don’t we aren’t somehow bound by these patterns, that we can begin to oppose them. We can begin to resist these patterns and begin to take alternative choices in life to experience a different quality of life. So this is called Going for Refuge. And I was going to generally when we give you know, on, generally when we give a talk, on the other alternative evenings during the course of the week, like on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday night, we quite often recite a verse.
It’s like condensation to a large extent of what we do in terms of setting our motivation or redirecting ourselves, reorientating ourselves. And I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha Dharma and the highest assembly. So I am going for refuge to the Buddha, which is, you know, more than that, inner focus of our life becomes Buddha. It is, you know, we can think of this in a lot of ways, I think, but, the outcome of our most preferred story of what it might mean to be a healthy, loving, sane human being, a Buddha, go for refuge to the Dharma, that which helps us to actualize the Buddha. You know, we’ve talked about these over the course of of these the weeks that have preceded, those methods, those means, techniques, the truths, the doctrines, teachings, whatever helps us to raise the level of our consciousness to actualize Buddha within our life.
In the highest assembly, that’s the spiritual community, the social context in which growth occurs, those who assist us in performing our preferred story in our life, becoming Buddhists, solving our problems at the most basic level. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections. So and when one, you know, when like, there’s sort of a commitment to this process. And it it the first is like a mental direction that we give ourselves, but then we have to actually begin to perform our story in practice. And one way of organizing in which traditionally Buddhism has organized these these practices of performing our preferred story in our life, I’ve said to you the six perfections, the six perfections.
And the first of these is, as is mentioned here, the practice by practicing giving. So, generosity and becoming open handed with whatever we have, be it material things, be it time, be it energy, be it knowledge, becoming more free and open with what we do have. So that’s that’s one way I think we can practically begin to practice our preferred story. And it’s something we can actually do, in fact. And you know, this way of resisting our habitual patterns of of holding on to.
Know, this I remember, you know, in India, you know, there’s there’s many, many beggars. And there’s this you become aware that there are all these people saying please give, please give, give, give. And when somebody says please give or just give, there is a sense of shrinking away, one withdraws. You know, like they are going to take away something from you, and you’re you’re going to be somehow diminished in value. And beginning to resist that by becoming a little bit more open.
Even if it’s only giving what amounts to in Australian currency, you know, maybe a penny. You know, the just the act of letting go of something. And then we offer, for example, these water bowls. And I mean, the Buddhists don’t they don’t need water. It’s not so the water the physical material object being offered is really rather insignificant.
But at least one is habituating oneself to letting go of something. Each day, one one is getting into the habit of letting go, giving something. You know, it’s if we can’t give away water, a cup of water, then how can we where where are we going to begin? So it is it’s not the the material. It’s the training involved.
The habituating to opening up and letting go with whatever we have. And the other six perfections, generosity, ethics. Ethics is developing a sense of trust in our own and others’ basic sanity such that we can begin to relate on the basis of nonviolence, Generosity, ethics, tolerance — the third perfection. Or sometimes called another alternative translation for this term is transcendence. It means like going to the other side.
The actual literal word which is being used in Sanskrit and Tibetan language means to go to the other side, from where I am now to where I want to get to. So I’m kind of bringing to fulfillment. These are like ways in which we can begin to fulfill our potential. And a third of these transcendences or means of fulfillment is tolerance. You are creating some kind of space of understanding whereby we are able to work with our own and others’ neurosis peacefully, beginning to tolerate Joyous effort.
Developing a sense of tremendous energy and a willingness to work for the sake of others and ourselves through simplifying our life, for example. Some kind of inspiration to go beyond our own emotional complications and conceptual frivolities, you might say, through developing some kind of greater vision. It’s out of a sense of a greater vision. You know, the it’s important element in the notion of effort is that we’re talking about joyous effort. Simply, you know, this idea of heavy handedness that we usually work with ourselves, you know, pushing on.
Men are especially guilty of this. Or I shouldn’t use the word guilty condition. You know, a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do. This kind of attitude. Know, hurting their bodies in the performance, fulfilling some expectations of their own or others.
It’s not what we mean by joyous effort. There’s a sense that one has expanded one’s vision such that one joyfully engages in the difficult tasks that one one is working toward. So the to be a perfection, to be one of these six transcendences, there must be a sense of joy, a sense of of happiness about what one is doing, a certain satisfaction. Even though it might be difficult, one perseveres, but with a sense of joy. I think that’s important.
And then the fifth of these six perfections is meditation. And the basic practice, which is a willingness to work unceasingly with our neurosis. Working with our patterns and learning about ourselves. Meditation is a way that basically that we learn about ourselves, that we learn how our mind operates and we begin to operate it in a much more skillful fashion toward certain predetermined ends which we have found preferable in our life. And finally, the sixth perfection is wisdom.
You know, a real interest in learning and to see the way things really are beyond our beyond dogma, beyond our our neurotic misconceptions or preconceptions. That one really it’s a curiosity of wanting to penetrate beneath appearances and to understand at some deep level. So these six perfections are the way that we actually practically perform, go about performing, what it is that we’re about once we’ve determined that we want to solve our problems, once we set some kind of direction in our life, motivatively, terms of our motivation, in terms of our attention. We these are find expression expression in reality through these six perfections. And these are kinda kinda categorizations that we can think about in terms of our actual practice.
Generosity, ethics, tolerance, joyous effort, meditation, and wisdom. And then we try to to increase the scope of our motivation. Why we do what we do? Why am I doing these six perfections? Why am I involved in these various practices?
Our motivation to include a greater and greater and ever widening circle of others, an ever widening circle of concern. You know, beyond our our own claustrophobic needs, own narrow limited vision to include a greater and greater vision, and to include all others. I don’t know if I ever if I’ve ever read this. In terms of vision, the quote by Einstein. You had it right there?
I don’t have it right here. A human being is a part of the whole called by us, the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures in the whole of nature and its beauty.
So this is, I guess you would say the ultimate motivation which which we are working to develop towards. The motivation that what I’m about and what I’m trying to achieve is not for my own ends, but for the sake of others, and try to to extend that others to ultimately include all living beings. And that’s why finally says, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings? So that’s a verse that we say three times, sort of condensation of what I ramble on about, you know, each evening for about the first fifteen or twenty minutes trying to it says it in, I think, four lines. But I’m a bit bit confused about it.
That is why it takes me more a bit more to say. Does anybody have any questions about what we have covered or just some questions in general? That’s a good question. I don’t so I I don’t think it’s I think it’s a it’s very much a a Tibetan practice, a Tibetan cultural practice as opposed to a Buddhist practice. And it is a way of making a connection.
In Tibet they have the in many countries they have the idea that to make a connection, I give you something, you give me something. And then we we sort of we now have a relationship. You know? So I give you a scarf. And in the case of, like, the Dalai Lama or some higher person, you know, a really highly evolved person, they give it back.
You know, I give you a scarf, then they give it back to me. And so we now we have a relationship. The way of instituting a relationship with someone is by giving a gift, and then they give it back to you. So that’s that’s probably essentially what’s what’s going on there. And it’s not like they’re gonna keep sometimes they keep the scarf, but most of the time, they get back to you.
So it’s just a way of saying, okay. Now we have a relationship. We’ve given each other a gift. It’s very it’s kind of an eastern notion, I think, of gift giving. It’s very important.
I don’t know if it helps. Yeah. Yeah. I think what she says is quite true. Yeah.
I think this is just a just a way of talking. I talk I talk talk about the inner self or a private self, that is to say, own inner lived experience. You know, like, if I you know, a Buddha, I mean, I mean, a Buddha is experiencing continual bliss. I don’t remember any bliss, but that bliss doesn’t, you know, so what? How does how does it help me?
It doesn’t happen. Because I’m glad I’m glad you, you know, that you experience inner bliss, but it doesn’t make my life any easier. So that that part that aspect of myself is a really if not, I don’t have any way of relating with it. So out of and out of compassion, a Buddha, that is the development of their social self, they go on, even though they internally are experiencing bliss, they go on to communicate how they attain their bliss. You know, that is they they teach, they perform various activities in the world.
They they just don’t go off in a corner and and space out, but they’re very active in the world trying to lead others to that same state. And this is this is their social aspect of the self. So I don’t know if we we can talk about what is called the four bodies of a Buddha. There’s what’s called the truth body, which is the Buddha’s mind. And then there’s the form body, which is the way the Buddha expresses their activities in the world, the way in which they actually relate with others.
So it’s not as if these are they’re they’re two different Buddhas. They’re two different ways of being of the same. There’s two two different ways of one’s an active and passive aspect of the same personality. The truth body is simply, you know, the experience of inner peace, freedom from suffering, a wisdom consciousness. But that’s not all that’s not available to us.
That’s not the way that a a Buddha expresses their compassion is through communication. So that is to say, in somehow relating with ourselves. So these so Buddha represents the con the consummation of these two possibilities in terms of of inner inner wisdom and peace and also communication with others, the social self. I mean, it’s even what even while they’re communicating, they never move from that state of bliss. It’s not like it’s a well, gotta guess I gotta get up and go out and help some help help some sentient beings today, you know.
I’d rather stay in bed. But, you know, they they they never move from that state of bliss. So they’re for them, it’s not a there’s no duality. It’s not It’s just a way of describing how, yeah, this how Buddhahood is experienced, how it is expressed. It’s it’s experienced, it’s internal experience, and it’s outward expression in terms of peace and communication.
So that’s what I think that’s basically what we’re working toward. I don’t know if that’s any of use. I guess the important, though I guess the implication even at our level is that we have to that wisdom without love is bondage or love without wisdom is bondage. That we have to have this this holistic approach of working with both aspects of ourselves, both in terms of the working in terms of our relationship with others and also finding inner peace. This is yeah, that our our our practice should should, involve both of those methods.
And I think I probably know the answer why. Where would the answer be? Someone told me that because god we cannot comprehend god. So, therefore, there’s no point wasting energy thinking about god because it’s something you can’t comprehend. Is that karma or not?
I’m glad. But I look on, like, rebirth and karma. There’s almost things that you cannot comprehend also for me personally. But the books I’ve read, creator or god, it seems to stop at Buddha for some reason or other. Maybe my reading is limited.
Yeah. No. It’s probably not. At least as far as that’s concerned. I guess, well, first off, we’d have to come to some kind of definition by what we mean by God.
I think one way to answer that question, I think, is that the goal of Buddhist spiritual life can be achieved without ever having to take recourse to God, whether God exists or not. So there’s that, that we can achieve the ultimate aim of Buddhism with whether God exists or not. We can achieve it without ever having to to come to some position on as to whether god exists or not. Now if you if you say that then as to whether I mean, Buddhism would reject a creator god and that, the first cause as we’ve talked about in terms of rebirth, that there is no first cause. In the end, karma is the creator of all things, and that karma is created by minds.
Therefore all things are created by mind, the mind of sentient beings, the minds of beings. And there’s no, so there’s no creator god in that sense. There’s no there’s no transcendental force in the universe that can that can work outside of the law of cause and effect. There’s no omnipotence force in the universe. That everything, Buddha included, is is bound within the law of cause and effect.
And that There’s no getting around that. So we have to work within that. Buddha is only quantitatively different than ourselves. There is no unbridgeable gulf between ourselves and a Buddha. It’s just a matter of continuum, a matter of training and development of wisdom and compassion and removing various obstacles and negative factors within our mind.
But qualitatively there is no difference between ourselves and Buddhas. There is no unbridgeable gulf. Buddhism very much is in terms of self-powered as opposed to other powered in in in leading a spiritual life. But, you know, how our practice is is come how it comes about. Now I think what you said was was is quite profound in in a way that about the Buddhism would also say that nothing cannot be comprehended.
Everything can be comprehended. There’s nothing which is beyond comprehension whether everything can be comprehended. But there’s there’s one there’s a there’s a one Christian mystic mystic theologian who said that Paul Tillich, where he said that if you have any conception in your mind about god, then you’re not doing god’s will. You’re only doing your projection about your own projection about what you think god wants you to do. It’s It’s when you have no conception in your mind about God that you’re actually doing God’s work.
So that maybe whether I’m getting off in speculation here. That maybe that if you say you believe in God and as Mother Teresa says, if you believe in God and you don’t or you say you love God and you don’t love your brothers and sisters, then you’re lying. How can you love God who you cannot see if you don’t love your brothers and sisters who you do see? So if we if we if we primarily if we live the Christian if we live out the the the the if we take Christ as an example of a life lived according to God’s will in in learning to love and to alleviate suffering of others, then whether whether we say we believe believe in god or not is it doesn’t matter. We’re doing god’s will, and it becomes it’s not important.
I don’t know if I answered your question You know, it’s yeah. Yeah. I mean, this way, I imagine Paul Davies would say something like that, wouldn’t he? You know, why complicate life? Why not just call them laws of the universe?
Mean, maybe You’re not gonna throw out God. I hope that works for You know, but why I don’t know if praying to laws makes much sense. I don’t know. I don’t know. I haven’t read much of Paul Davies yet.
I have to check out. I mean, I mean, it’s a hard subject, isn’t it? I think we have to admit that the esoteric form of most religions and the popularized version are very much different. And I think this is very true of Christianity. That I think most one of the problems with I mean, intelligent people reject Christianity because they reject the popularized notion of God.
And that’s not to say that that’s all there is to Christianity. You know, that there’s a very profound esoteric teachings involved. Many great thinkers, some of the greatest thinkers that have ever lived, had firm belief in God when when we’re committed Christians. So it’s quite easy to reject the popular notions of God as being maybe, you know, as it was fifty years ago, some an old man sitting with a long white beard and enthroned in the sky. Or even God is love.
You know, all these lots of, ways of or people even think about it at all. So it’s a bit it’s it’s not easy to understand what what some of these great thinkers have been getting at. But you may be right in terms of I mean, may be going in the right direction. Or you may be right in the thinking that it’s beyond our conception. I don’t know.
I don’t know. But but many but Buddhism would reject the meaning that there’s no omnipotent, there’s no omnipotent, creator of the universe. If that’s what you mean by God, then I think Buddhism would reject that. They would refute that. If you might mean something else by that.
I mean, one American Buddhist who I have great respect for said, emptiness is god. I’m not sure what he means by that, but I I he’s a very thoughtful person. And he must he’s my you know, because he he says all things arise out of emptiness and all things arise out of God. It’s probably easier to get a handle on emptiness than God. So, you know, I think so it’s a difficult question.
Think we can reject many of the popular notions of God and say, well, Buddhism may reject those. But maybe if there are ways of thinking about God, which Buddhism say, yeah, I can we don’t call that god, but but in we do we wouldn’t reject what you’re saying. But it seems that we can get to the goals of Buddhist spiritual life without having to take this course to that however we may conceive of it. But yeah. So I always kind of get out of these questions.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I I don’t know. I mean, the Dalai Lama has said that, you know, that he was there’s no reason why we can’t think of him as as a Buddha. That’s for sure.
I mean, he he would his life was lived, in the service of of humankind out in compassion and trying to free them people from suffering. And that’s what a Buddha is about. So would you think that? Yes. Yeah.
No. The Buddhism would have no problem with that. They they would be very comfortable with that. And basic goodness. I I I would I mean, this I think this is becoming I don’t know.
This is a very difficult question. I can’t answer it very I can’t answer it adequately very I mean, I’m sure many of you can answer it. I I don’t know. It’s like there’s there’s there’s there’s occurring a shift within many areas of thinking. For example, within evolutionary biology, away from the Darwinian notion of survival of the fittest and the tooth and claw of nature, to where Maturana, I don’t know, he’s a Chilean biologist, says that there is a gene for altruism.
And that altruism is a natural state of all social beings. That we are social beings. That’s that’s we do we cannot live. I mean, some beings, you know, they they are born from eggs and they need they need no nurturing, for example. human beings require nurturing for a number of number of years or they don’t survive.
They die. There’s a you know, when when a lamb is born, there’s a bonding which takes place between the lamb and the ewe. And without this connection, the lamb will die. The mother is always watching out for the lamb and the ewe. Whenever it gets in trouble, runs towards its mother.
There’s bond there’s a bonding which takes place. And this is survival. This is the clear survival benefit. And so therefore this way of relating, which we we could call that love, This bonding which takes place is has survival benefit to the continuation of the species. So love and compassion may be may be biologically programmed in ourselves.
Otherwise, that we are, you know, we I think I I think so. So rather than this survival of the fittest where everybody’s war, it’s a big war. In fact, most species, they’re they’re beginning to look and see that most species have an organization of of of like in deer, deer, you know herds of deer. Some of them will keep lookout. They’ll protect the rest of the herd by its going running off from a predator.
And because this if by by even though this this deer puts themselves in danger for for the overall survival of the group, that this has survival value. So it’s so the the social the social species are social beings. So some some of them will put themselves in danger in order that the that the whole be able to survive. And this has survival value for not for the individual, but for the species as a whole because there is so so I think likewise human beings are social beings. And that we that the sense of altruism, the sense of social awareness, the sense of finding our that love is simply attuning oneself to this natural way of this natural order of our biological being, this way of relating.
I don’t know. And that ignorance is and hatred and these interruptions into which will bring about our end. And and that so our our natural tendency is cooperation. I think so. I think biologists are beginning to see that.
That the natural types of relationships are collaborative, cooperative, as opposed to adversarial. And that the hatred and these various dysfunctional are actually detrimental to the survival. And they will selected out. So something that was natural to the survival of the species may be more basic to who we are. There is an uprising of violence in society?
Was that media perception? Well, I mean, first thing is that we have become we’ve gotten out of somehow, what? We have we have gotten out of touch with our with our more basic roots. Our what do you think? Yeah.
That’s right. Yeah. It becomes a negative feedback system. Just gives it yeah. Well, then you have to become a Buddha.
And you interrupt that system, don’t you? By joining that system, you the system, reactivates around you, and it changes, it evolves. Conscious choice? Strangely, no. A Buddha makes no choices.
And Buddha has no doesn’t intend to help anybody.