Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The tragedy is not that we don’t get what we want — but that we do, and find it wasn’t what we wanted at all. With that reframing of dukkha, Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 61-minute Lamrim session on the two causes of going for refuge: anxiety about recurring dissatisfaction, and faith. He walks through three levels of faith using a desert metaphor — clear faith (the problem comes into focus), longing faith (a brook is heard but not yet reached), and convincing faith (water is drunk and the thirst actually eases). Rilke’s counsel to live the questions and Goethe’s lines on commitment and providence anchor the case that Dharma requires wholehearted engagement, not intellectual assent alone. The session closes with the refuge aspiration prayer and a brief mindfulness-of-breathing sit.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 LP 1993 04 11.mp3
UUID: a5225e70-cd91-4ee9-9ccf-72bb6b3537fe
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Lamp of the Path (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-04-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 60.7 minutes
Words: ~3,395
Reprioritizing what is important to us as very unique, self actualizing individuals. As Rinpoche and I began to mention yesterday, this process of going for refuge involves two basic causes. One is a sense of anxiety and the other is faith. And this anxiety is aroused through confronting the issues of our life in terms of quality of dissatisfactoriness. The tragedy is not that we don’t get what we want, but we do get what we want and then we’re stuck with it.
And very often we find it’s not what we wanted at all. Talking about, there’s a term called dukkha, which is generally translated as dissatisfactoriness or sometimes suffering. It has many different flavors, connotations. So there’s no particular single word in the English language which kind of covers all its shades of meaning. Talking about this quality.
This is what is really meant by dukkha, a sort of disharmony, a jarring quality that we experience in the course of our everyday life in this world. Things are never one hundred percent right. There’s always something, even if it’s a little something that goes wrong. Even in the course of the most beautiful day, seems only too often a cloud has to float across the face of the sky. Something goes wrong.
Maybe you’re prepared expect expectantly for a beautiful day. You’re going to meet somebody whom you like. Things are going to be very lovely, so beautiful. And then some absurd incident happens and it all goes wrong. Then you feel completely out of tune, completely tangled by whatever has happened.
And very often this is our experience of life. Most of the time, this is how we go through life, feeling like this. We find that everything from which we expected so much fails and doesn’t live up to our expectations. This sort of experience is what is called dukkha, unsatisfactoriness of suffering. So this becomes one of the indirect causes of one of the fundamental causes of going for refuge, this reorientating process.
This anxiety about these reoccurring patterns are going to continue into the future. And in fact, things could get worse. And unless we begin to have some insights into the nature of our situation, our predicament, beginning to reflect upon it and confront the issue of dissatisfaction that is dukkha in our life and deciding that it’s necessary to bring about some kind of change, perhaps at a more fundamental level than the level that we’ve been working with up to now. And this becomes the first of the two causes for this redirecting, this orientation toward change, toward growth. The second is faith.
And there are many types of faith. There’s faith for no reason, faith for the wrong reason, and then there’s faith for valid reasons. Faith is, it probably has a different connotation than in the traditional Christian sense. It has the idea that what one has faith in is like we connect it with value, We empower. And then there’s a sense of wanting to embrace or to imbue that object, to imbue ourselves with that object, to become that object as it were, to live, the mind moves toward that object, towards which we have faith.
There are three types of faith is a progression of faith, the sense of faith as being some stability of mind. In the metaphor which is which is used to explain these three levels of faith is that we are in a situation where we’re out on a desert and we’re experiencing pain. That’s our immediately lived experience, which cannot be denied. But we’re quite not sure where that pain is coming from. We don’t quite know where its source is, and we’re beginning to question.
Finally, it begins to dawn us this pain is coming from our own thirst that we need some water. So we develop what is called clear faith. The nature of our problems becomes clear to us. We haven’t come up with a solution yet, but the interesting thing about problems and solutions are that they’re interdependent, that there are no problems without solutions, and there are no solutions without problems. So, unless we come up with the questions, we can never find an answer because the answer is dependent upon experiencing the question.
So we, this questioning process, this searching is the first necessary step, and then it becomes clear what actually problems are, and once having become, once the question becomes clear, then an answer can begin to evolve. This reminds me of a this is sort of a digression in a way, the idea of a question, burning questions. There’s a very beautiful quote by an Austrian poet by the name of Rilke in terms of questions. He’s talking about having patience with our questions and to live our questions. Patience.
To let each impression and each kernel of feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark and the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the grasp of your own intelligence, and to await with deep humility and patience the birth hour of a new clarity. Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, like the locked rooms or the books written in an unknown script. Do not seek answers which cannot be given to you now because you could not be able to live them. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now.
So, you know, we only get probably there are only burning answers when there are burning questions. There are only answers which move us when the questions have moved us to seek them out. So at the level of clear faith, we are going through a questioning process. And in this questioning process, we begin to have some insight into the nature of our problem. It becomes our problem becomes clear, clear to ourselves.
And this is the level of clear faith. We begin to discern our problems. But that in itself is not enough. And we begin to search, actively search, taking responsibility to solve our problems. And we begin to look in the desert to see if there’s any solution to our problems.
And we hear over the next sand dune a rippling brook. We don’t see it. We haven’t experienced it, but we hear it. And we think, this sounds right. This sounds like this might be the solution to my problem.
It’s sort of a, it’s a reference, it’s a inference, you know, it’s a matter of logic. It’s, we’re using our intellect. This sounds right. Even though one hasn’t experienced it directly, the results, whether this is actually going to solve your problems, but there’s something about it which resonates with your reasoning, with your intuition, with your own experience. It sounds right.
So one develops a real longing to actually experience that solution, to actually drink that water that you’re hearing, that you only know about secondhandedly at present. So this is the second type of faith, this longing faith, which begins to move you. Out of this, we, we’re motivated to cross over the sand dune and come down on the other side, and we actually get down and we, we we cup, we cup some water in our hand and we drink, and we find, hey, this, this is beginning to solve my problem. There’s actually an experience of a resolution of some, of one’s suffering, some difficulty, of going beyond of what was once, what once was. This becomes convincing faith.
You know, beyond all speculation, beyond all dogma, beyond the intellect, one’s own lived experience, when there is a resolution of the tension, of the distress, of anxiety. And this becomes convincing faith. And it is this faith which is unshakable. Because that knowledge which comes out of our own experience cannot be denied, No matter, you know, what the vicissitudes of life may bring us, whatever, whatever others may say, one has experienced some kind of truth for oneself, one, like through one’s own inner experience. And this is the type of faith that we’re working toward.
All of Buddhism comes down to our own experience. Initially, it may involve simply working on the basis of assumption. This hearing, hearing these teachings, gathering information. This is the level of hearing, the level of listening. But then we have to begin to work with what we hear.
It’s incumbent upon us. It cannot be left at that level, like pouring oil and water, where it just kind of floats on top. It doesn’t mix with our mind, and therefore is not a real solution to our problems. You know, there’s a verse which the Buddha said, The Buddhas do not wash away sins with water, nor do they remove suffering with their hand, nor do they remove nor can they transplant their realization to the minds of others, but by their showing of the truth all would be made free. So it’s, this is the, of all the characteristics of these highly realized beings, it the characteristic of their speech, that is to say their ability to communicate their experience to us, which is of the greatest value to ourselves personally.
All their other qualities are really not accessible. Someone else’s umbrella does not keep the rain off our heads during a storm. We have to develop, we have to build our own umbrella as it were. We have to discover everything that the Buddha him or herself have discovered over the course of history. But we have a great advantage in that there are many individuals who are pointing the way, who are saying, look at this, this is useful, this is not in your best interest.
And so we can make use of this, but still we have to do the work for ourselves. We have to carry on this exploration and come to these understandings, you know, trying to integrate that truth for ourselves. So out of this comes a real convincing faith because we gain some kind of experience, even if it’s just a taste. So there’s this process of listening, gathering information, beginning to reflect upon it, and does it accord with my experience? Does accord with my reasoning?
Is it valid? And then actually once we’ve gone beyond all our hesitations, then we can, as it were, become the practice. We are the practice. I’d just say there is an integration process takes place where we become that truth. We find that, we discover that truth for ourselves, and this is meditation.
The whole process of, again and again, reliving that truth until it becomes our nature, and we become the truth. We become Dharma. We become the way ourselves within our own mind. So this involves this threefold process of listening, reflecting, and meditating. Involves an evolution of these three levels of faith.
But obviously, these are no one else can, as this quote tries to portray, no one else can do the work for us. It is our responsibility. It is, we have created the causes for suffering and we are the only ones who can remove our suffering. It is very much an individual task within the, but we do it individually together as a community of support. So, you know, Buddha is worshipped, is revered, because the Buddha is taken as a paradigm of sanity, a model of what we too can become.
This is the reason that the Buddha is revered, is worshipped, out of showing to us what we too can become, for demonstrating what is possible. Buddha is worshipped, is revered as a guide, as an exemplar, as a teacher, for demonstrating what can be achieved, what we too can be achieved. So Buddhahood is our birthright. You know, sometimes in our darkest moments when we seem to be completely confused, when All we can see is our negative qualities. You know, when we feel that we’re the lowest thing in the world.
At that very moment, that is Buddha mind. It’s saying to you, Look at your situation. Look at where you’re at. At that very mind, you know, that’s wisdom, isn’t it? Beginning to reflect upon itself, the state of our being, where we’re going, what we’ve achieved, and what we haven’t achieved.
It’s compassion. It’s saying, take responsibility, care of yourself, becoming sincere about solving your problems. And then, that’s created some kind of creative energy saying, you know, now that you’re a little bit awake, don’t go back to sleep. So, in these darkest moments, there’s a Buddha mind. You know, there’s there’s some wisdom operating.
There’s some love and compassion. And there’s some creative energy mental and spiritual energy, physical energy operating in our lives. So, we have to believe in ourselves, in our own potential, and begin to take responsibility and make some kind of commitment. Perhaps some people don’t like that word commitment, I don’t know. But I think commitment means a consistent choice, you know, through all the ups and downs of our lives, whether it’s good times or bad times, whether the sun is shining or there’s a storm going on outside.
We are like a constant stream moving toward some value, goal that we’ve autonomously set for ourselves which we find meaning, which we find belief. Consistently redirecting ourselves to some internal values, some guiding principles, using these as a beacon in directing ourselves. Years ago, I told you that in his day to day life, a warrior chooses to follow the path with heart. It is the consistent choice of the path with heart which makes a warrior different from the average man. He knows that a path has heart when he is one with it, when he experiences a great peace, a pleasure, traversing its length.
So, you know, they say that Dharma is good in the beginning, in the middle, and the end. And I think it holds out great hope that we can go beyond these reoccurring cycles of dissatisfaction and disappointment and frustrations. We can resolve some of the anxiety at a very basic level. And also, even in the middle, when one is in tune with one’s basic nature, when one is acting authentically, when one is feeling one’s most inmost desire to go beyond the frivolities of one’s own ego, our self deception, our hypocrisy, our inauthenticity. Then there’s some kind of resolution.
And even in the middle, there’s some kind of peace which is achieved because one is healing the split between one’s basic nature and how one acts in the world. There’s a wholeness, a holiness about one. And then in the end, there’s a resolution of all tension, of all conflict, in terms of oneself and the relationship with others in the world, but also internally. And there’s only peace, and there is the one becomes of great use to oneself and to others. This idea of commitment there’s a beautiful quote by Goethe about commitment because commitment has magic.
It is something very special. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative in creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no person could have dreamed would have come their way.
Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. So, you know, we have beyond our narrow ability to understand the mystery and the magic of life, you know, that we can have some intuition that if we could in committing ourselves, we are drawing upon other resources which are normally inaccessible, are normally out of our ego boundaries, which we have limited ourselves to. And providence begins to work in our favor.
The laws begin to work in our favor are being reinterpreted in a new and more supportive way. You know, that it become, it becomes There we arrive at some sort of consistency and new harmony. And I think we’re working on another level of being and making this commitment. Commitment to be all that we can be, all that we should be. Whatever we haven’t done up to now, we can begin and we can become that.
And this is, you know, in a way our real refuge. This is a real resolution to our problems. You know, as I mentioned yesterday, I don’t think, you know, we don’t have be saints, we don’t have to be superhumans, but we have to begin to some degree to live, to live out our waking dreams, to try to express our noblest aspirations, to try to live authentically, to live out of our essential nature, our Buddha nature, or whatever you want to call it, our basic sanity. Then there’s some kind of resolution both in the moment and also there’s all of these factors become supportive in our journey. Our life becomes a purpose evolutionary movement toward fulfilling all our potential.
And, I think we simply will be happier people for having done that and we can be of greater service to others and to ourselves. So, the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, the Buddha withinside of ourselves, the possibility, the potentiality of becoming a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. And the means by which we implement Buddha, means by which we actualize Buddha, is through the Dharma within the social context of a spiritual community. And then, we seek to raise the level of our motivation why we’re doing what we’re doing, ever widening our circle of concern to an ever increasing number. You know, this has great power in itself because if we work, we will only draw upon those resources which it is necessary to make use of.
If it is necessary to, if, if we work only for ourselves, then it will only be necessary to draw upon those resources for which are necessary to bring the, to bring ease and comfort to one person. But if we were to extend that and take universal responsibility, then we must draw upon unlimited universal resources. And therefore, this is the most effective means to help us in our growth. You know, the awakening heart is like a panacea. It’s really the solution to all our problems.
The development of love and compassion will drag us to enlightenment, whether we want to go or not. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha, to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect, by practicing giving and other perfections, may I attain a state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, in the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. Practice mindfulness of breathing. Approximately midway during the course of the session, we’ll take one minute just to relax ourselves. But during that one minute, maintain your awareness.
If it’s probably most helpful to use the technique of noting. During the course of trying to concentrate, trying to focus, sometimes we build up a sense of physical or mental tension, and this is not useful. So, allowing that to dissipate, relaxing, and then having that sense of what it feels like to relax, then bringing that back into your meditation. But maintaining the awareness. It’s not a matter of simply giving up one’s meditation, but simply meditating in a different way.
So if you take a comfortable, firm posture.