Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The opening story sets the tone: a king wounded by a thorn orders every road in his kingdom covered with leather — until a minister suggests wrapping leather around his foot instead. In this 45-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun uses that image to introduce the central claim that controlling the mind is the only lever needed to transform one’s experience of the world. He works through the Dhammapada’s opening verses, then maps three areas where mistaken assumptions drive suffering: the nature of the external world (interdependence, impermanence), how we ought to relate to it (non-attachment, compassion, harmony with natural laws), and the nature of the self (the illusion of a fixed, independent “I”). He closes by framing Buddhism not as absolute truth but as a coherent narrative that, once inhabited, replaces chronic frustration with fulfillment. A general-audience introduction that draws on Einstein, anthropologist Gregory Bateson, and a bluntly quoted American psychologist alongside the classical sources.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 OtE 1991 08 14.mp3
UUID: 63fe850c-2872-4987-8cfe-add6d3288679
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Opening the Eye of New Awareness 1991-1992 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-08-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~4,677
It contains many of the essential subjects, the essential teachings of Buddhism. So I think if we can get some rough idea of what the Dalai Lama is trying to tell us, we can exchange some views and ideas and have some discussion. We have to change our present, distorted and limited view. To think, to see things in a different way than we presently do. You know Buddhism is about a personal experience.
It’s not an impersonal philosophy. All there are said to be eighty four thousand teachings that the Buddha gave this paradigm of sanity that we use that we make use of in the teachings. And all of them are for the sole purpose of helping us to develop healthy minds. That’s all. In order to become happy, loving, healthy, sane human beings.
Determinant of all things. And we simply cannot order, we cannot arrange the world to our liking as we might have it to be and as we think it should be. As we think it should be. You know, if we try to, that’s what we try to do normally. We have a preconception about the way things should be.
And if we think heavenly, persist with this attitude of demanding that reality occur, be arranged, proceed according to our desires as we might wish it, then we are going to either experience a sense of rage that things are not as we want them to be as we think they should be or a sense of powerlessness because we cannot do the impossible. We will be doomed to a perpetual experience of disappointment, frustration and dissatisfaction which you know is characteristic of most of our lives I think, my life. So you know it turns out we don’t have to be able to control the world to be happy. We don’t have to be able to do the impossible to find fulfillment, meaning, satisfaction. It turns out that it’s really not necessary that if we can control one factor, that’s all that’s needed.
If we can control one factor, it’s as if we control the world. And out of that we can experience fulfillment, contentment, satisfaction. That is to say it’s not necessary that we do the impossible and control everything. For if we can control the one factor of the mind, then we can control the world the way that we experience the world. The, you know, I mentioned a quotation from the Dhammapada, compilation of many of the most pithy sayings of the Buddha.
In the very first two verses of this text, We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. People act with an impure mind, and trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox across the cart. We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow you as your shadow unshakable. The opening of the eye of your awareness begins with an awareness of the necessity for change. The necessity that where this change takes place within our own mind.
There’s a story. If we change our mind, we’re going to change the way we experience the world. We can’t change the world but we can change our mind. We want to change our experience. Our present experience of the world is dissatisfactory.
We can’t change the world but we can change our mind. We have that control. There’s a story of a way of illustrating this fact of a single factor things about great change. A different change in perspective, change in viewpoint. It happened long ago in a country far away that the king was walking down the road and the king stepped upon a thorn and it was quite painful.
So he he was quite upset about this and he called together all of the ministers and he said, you know, look at my foot. You know, it’s all swollen. It’s very painful. It hurts. I I didn’t want this to happen again.
We have to do something about it. Now what can they thought to me. One of the ministers came up with a bright idea. If we covered all the roads in your kingdom with leather, then you would never step on a thorn. Wonderful idea.
Great. Let’s let’s get on it. But then the treasurers will come as they usually do. We don’t have the money. We don’t even have the cow let alone money to be able to cover all the robes in your kingdom with leather.
Can’t be done. Can’t possible. We don’t have that ability, that capacity. What are we going to do? And we’ll cut it just to the size of the sole of your foot.
And then we’ll wrap a leather thong around your foot, binding it to the bottom of your foot. And this will serve the same purpose as covering all the roads in the kingdom with leather. So it’s not that we want to develop tough minds, that’s not the analogy. It’s that if we can control this one factor of our mind and our attitudes towards our various experiences, the world around us, the fact. It is if we control the world.
A more contemporary terminology, we can reframe the situation. The fact remains the same but our way of interpreting it, our way of viewing it, how we’re going to react to it can be modified. But once a source of pain can become a source of pleasure. The mind has that ability to change heaven into hell, hell into heaven. In a way many of the things around us are like are neutral.
Like for example a knife. A knife in the hand of a surgeon is life giving. It’s beneficial. That same exact knife in the hand of a fish is destructive. It’s harmful.
It is what we make out of this stuff around us that we call the world. It’s going to determine our experience, not the stuff in itself. Our attitude towards those things. So if we can begin to reframe, become more skillful, develop more highly adaptive coping mechanisms, whatever it would be called, then we can experience the same situation and we can become rich sources of happiness rather than the sources of difficulty. In the course of changing our mind, our world is going to change.
We’re actually changing our environment. The very place that we exist will change in the course of changing our mind until the very place that we exist becomes a pure land. Our environment. We do exist in a social context. We are social beings.
Quotation from one of the teachers: If you want to solve the world’s problem, you have to put your own house, your own household, your own individual life in order first. That is somewhat of a paradox. People have a genuine desire to go beyond their individual cramped lives to benefit the world. But if you do not start at home, then you have no hope of helping the world. So the first step in learning how to rule is learning how to rule your household, household, your immediate world.
There is no doubt that if you do so, then the next step will come naturally. If you fail to do so, then your contribution to the world will be further chaos. The forerunner of all change in the world is change in an individual’s mind. Many people want to change the world but they’re not willing to take up the bit of that task of changing their own mind first. So whether we simply want to help ourselves or we want to help the entire world, it’s necessary that we change our mind.
We change ourselves which is changing our mind. Our beliefs, which means to change our ideas, our assumptions about the world, ourselves, in a way to relate with the world. And thereby we change the very premise upon which we live our life. A quotation from an American psychologist. I think that practically the whole human race is out of its goddamn mind and could use therapy.
All are biologically prone to think crookedly. All humans are somewhat nutty because they refuse pig headedly to accept reality and therefore make themselves depressed, anxious, enraged. With respect to the areas of concern of Buddhism, there are basically three areas, three major concerns of Buddhism about which we have deeply held beliefs, assumptions about. This condition our mind. This condition our view of reality which in turn guides and determines our own actions, which in turn causes us to experience our world in a particular way.
The first of these assumptions is about the nature of the world. That is that which we see to exist external to ourselves. All that is perceived external to our own minds, we are. You know, we might believe for example that the world is cruel or is benevolent, that it’s orderly, that it’s chaotic, that it’s explicable, that it’s ineffable, that it’s permanent, that it’s impermanent. The Buddhist position is that we exist in interdependence with the world.
You know as was mentioned in Dhanapada, with our thoughts we make the world. And a world like a feedback loop conditions our thoughts. We are creating a world and that world is creating our mind. It’s conditioning how we create the world. We exist in a dynamic ongoing conditioning process with our mind and external reality.
You know the mind is there was an anthropologist in the United States by the name of Gregory Bateson and much like Gregory Bateson, his view that the unit of evolution is the being along with the environment. Generally the tradition here is that somehow the being is independent of the environment. Single celled animals become multi celled animals and they climb up this ladder to evolution and finally they end up as us. But in a more holistic approach, a more interpretation is that the being and the environment are not separate. They’re not disconnected.
That they are a unit of evolution. Evolution. That the two are naturally conditioning one another. So Buddhism holds that the person is inextricably a part of the context in which they exist. That we do not exist separate from the world, the world around us.
And that this feeling of isolation, this feeling of alienation that we experience is a product of our misconception, but it’s a product of a distorted premise. And just as our thoughts, you know we’re talking about the Buddhist position on these major concerns. Just as our thoughts are constantly in flux, so too the world which depends upon our thoughts and which depends upon our mind is in constant flux. The world follows definite order and though we may not be able to at present to be able to comprehend that scheme of things, this order in which the world follows is explicable. So you know we’re, for example there’s a verse from the Dhammapada where it says in this world hate never dispels hate.
Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible. This is the working out of various laws and these laws become explicable. And we’re going to discuss the ramifications of what we’re saying. First in terms of external world.
Then, you know, the second concern of Buddhism is our assumptions about how we ought to relate to the world. Our assumptions are deeply held values about the external world, then our assumptions, beliefs, our ideas about how we should relate to that world. You know here are possibilities of how we might relate in the ideas, beliefs that we may have about how we should relate to the world. And we might believe that our relationship to the world is best characterized characterized as loving, as hating, as dominating, as submissive, as clinging, non-attachment, mutually supportive or abusive. We’re describing, each of us has, I believe,, a very unique combination of our beliefs, assumptions, ideas.
This is your life story. This is the premise of the point which you’re living your life. And we have to bring these to awareness, in the opening of the eye, in the awareness. Bringing these to our conscious attention to begin to evaluate them to see if they are working for you. You know the Buddhist position, you know first we can give a rough idea of the different possible positions, concerns, the way that an individual could have.
And then we give, we set out what the Buddhist position on this is in terms of the way to relate with the world. The Buddhist position is that in his second possibility is consistent with the first. You know if one sees the world as separate from oneself, as independent of our self. If we seek to conquer the world then because we are dependent upon the world, our environment, because we are inextricably bound up with our environment, if we seek to conquer our environment, we’re only going to destroy ourselves. There’s a quotation from Albert Einstein.
A human being is a part of the whole called by a universe, a part limited in time. 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 near us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. You know if the world is in constant flux then the only appropriate way, appropriate relationship to it should be one of non clinging and non attachment.
You know it stands to reason that if one attempts to grasp and to cling to something which is transitory then we can only be doomed to frustration, to pain. And if the world follows definite laws then the appropriate relationship is to live in harmony with those laws. For if one were to attempt to control forces which one has no say in, then that very act is not only aggravating. But it’s futile. You know, if one were throw a brick up in here, It’s going to obey certain laws and if one doesn’t move out of the way, you shouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t come down and hit you on the head.
There was no one out to get you. It was in the natural flow of things. Have to, whether we like it or not, we have to become aware and begin to live in harmony with the natural flow of things, with these natural laws which govern our lives. If we were trying to, as I just said, try to control forces in which we have no say then we’re simply going to aggravate the situation in this completely futile way. So therefore, thinking in this way, the only appropriate relationship to the world is one of respect, compassion, harmony, and love.
The third major area of concern is our assumptions about the nature of the self. So Buddhism is concerned about the world out there, how to relate with that world and the nature of the self. We already have some basic assumptions about the self as we have assumptions about the way we should relate with the world, as we have assumptions about the nature of the world. You know we may believe, for example, that the I or the self exists or doesn’t exist. That if it does, that it’s illusory or real.
If it does exist, it’s immortal. It’s mortal. It’s important. It’s unimportant. It’s responsible.
It’s irresponsible. That it was created by God, that it was created by chance. We can have all these possible beliefs, assumptions about the nature of the self. In terms of Buddhism, again from the text of Dhammapada the Buddha said, vainly I sought the builder of my house through countless lives. I could not find him.
How hard it is to tread life after life. But now I see you, oh builders, and never again shall you build my house. I have snapped the rafters, split the ridgepole, and beaten out desire, and now my mind is free. Buddhism in terms of what we are to believe with respect to the self, this I, this self, there’s something over here that we are so concerned about. Buddhism is not telling us that we should or should not believe in a self or an ātman.
But Buddhism, the Buddhist position is that when we look at the way one suffers, when we look at the way that we suffer, and the way that we think and the way that we emotionally respond to situations, it is as if we believe in a partless, unchanging, independent self. And that based upon and that upon investigation, no such type of self has ever been found. So you you don’t have to believe in yourself or that the self exists or it doesn’t exist, the eye exists and doesn’t exist. But when we actually look at the way we experience our world, when we look at the way we think, our emotional responses, the way we suffer, it is as if these experiences are signs, are marked that we have a belief, though it may not be a conscious belief. It may be below the surface of awareness.
These are signs that we believe, have an assumption, an idea, conception of a type of self which is partless, unchanging, independent. Then when we use analysis and look for that self, we never find it. It has never been found. It never will be found. And that a life based upon such an assumption of the existence of such a type of self is characterized by dissatisfaction, discontent and frustration.
But a life which is based upon the deeply held conviction of the nonexistence of such a type of self is experiencing the exact opposite. Fulfillment, contentment and compassion. So you know, maybe complete what you want. You know, to the, whether we’re aware of it or not we have beliefs, ideas, assumptions. To the degree that these are in accord with the nature of reality, to that same degree we can experience, we can expect to experience fulfillment, contentment, satisfaction to the degree that our beliefs, ideas, assumptions are in discord, are not congruent, are in conflict with reality the way things are to that same degree we’re going to experience frustration, disappointment, dissatisfaction.
We can’t help it. I mean we have to live in harmony with reality, with the way things are. It’s unavoidable if we ever hope to find peace. It’s because that we have all of these mistaken ideas, wrong assumptions, crooked ideas, distorted premises that we experience all the pain that we have seen. This is why, as I mentioned before, Buddhist Buddhism holds very dear the thought that the truth, that is the reality, is therapeutic.
The closer that we can You know to grow. Then what it’s to grow is to transform our beliefs, our assumptions, the premises upon which we base our life. And what are the beliefs concerned with? They’re concerned with the nature of the world. They’re concerned with how we should relate with that world.
And they’re concerned with the nature of the self, these three areas of concern. A quotation from, Maybe I’ll just, I’d like to get the question one idea and then I’ll stop. Yeah, the idea that we’re telling, we’re telling a story. Buddhism is like a story. We all have our story.
Someone once said that everybody’s life is a a book that someone was reading. We were we were trying to make sense of this world and so we have to make up a story about it. We’re trying to cope as best we can. We organize the world in little packets, name them stories, call them stories, call them parables, call them premises, call them themes. It’s as if reality consists of the tales people tell themselves to make sense of the world and to navigate within it.
In other words, maybe it’s not sufficient to try to change somebody’s behavior. Maybe we have to get to the narratives they are using to make sense of their lives, the metaphors they live by. You know the way that we are presently relating to the world, it’s appropriate to the particular way that we make sense of the world. In light of our particular story. You know, the story that we have about ourselves and about the world.
We’re trying to find some kind of security. We’re trying to find a place in the world. We’re trying to cope with our hopes and fears. We’re trying to find happiness eliminate our problems. This is the business of life.
And we only have so much information to go on. We have so many we have we only have the belief, the conditioning factors that we what we’ve been taught, what we learned to go on. That’s all we have to go on. With that information, with those beliefs, with that condition, we try to make the best of our world we can to live the happiest life that we know how. Happiest life that we know how.
Given our present belief, our ideas, our assumptions, our story, which is our story is our life. In a way it’s a brilliant expression of our basic sanity. In a way we are making the best use of what we have, of what we’ve learned. And the best use of our of the various solutions are aren’t what we think. You know if we’re not satisfied with our story, if we’re not finding our life fulfilling, if we’re not finding our life meaningful, then we’re going to have to get in touch with the narrative upon which we’re basing our life.
And by this, I mean, the various assumptions to me, ideas that we have about life, about the the world, about the way to relate with it, and about ourselves. We’re going to have to get in touch with them upon that which our life is based upon because with our mind, we make the world. With our thoughts, we create a reality. The metaphor by which we live by. And begin to rewrite a story, the type of life we want to live.
You know, it’s a part we have within our control because we have control over our own mind. To get in touch to become more aware, to open our eyes to our deeply held beliefs, our ideas and assumptions and to begin to transform them. You know this, it is our life. It’s world. We are what we think.
We are thoughts we make the world. Buddhism is nothing more, nothing less than a narrative to live by. It’s a coherent, consistent, deeply relevant, organic description of a particular reality, of a particular world. Not an absolute reality. There is no absolute reality.
You know, one of most fundamental premises of Buddhism is that there are no absolutes. It is because you know holding to the absoluteness of our view, the way we see and the various interpretations about what we see as being absolute, as if this is the way it is, has led us to where we are right now, in pain, alone, and confused. In this respect, the reality, on the other hand, is experienced as peace. It’s experienced as fulfillment. It’s experienced as love.
It’s just another story. But it’s quite it’s quite a beautiful story. It’s kind of it’s a meaningful story. It’s a transcendent story. You know, Buddhism doesn’t ask us to believe in anything.
It doesn’t ask us to believe in Buddhism. It simply asks us to to carry out an experiment, to get in touch with our actual experience, our narrative, and to open up our eye of awareness. Usually try to allow time for questions or comments, share some ideas, we’re running and maybe we can just have a few minutes tonight but maybe in the future I’ll try to give more time. I sometimes get carried away. Few give more time.
I sometimes get carried away. I used to be such a quiet person. My story is yeah? Does anybody have any So in the context of what I’m saying tonight is attachment can only arise dependent upon the story’s premises. All the various afflictive emotions are not in agreement with the reality.
Attachment must be based upon the presupposition that the object is permanent. It sees that you see your wife as permanent when you actually think about it. But at another level of cognitive awareness, there is a deeply held conception that that she is permanent. That you want to make her a permanent part of the ego identity of your territory. This is called attachment.
It’s bound to suffering because it cannot become a permanent part of the ego identity. Therefore, it’s bound for pain. Now we’ve discussed in the past and I’m going to take a guess about where some of the parts of what your question may be about that you can’t avoid that there’s a great difference between love and attachment. And the attachment that you have about it. And we can remove the attachment.
We can remove the premise that she is permanent, that she exists out there objectively independent, and that somehow you can bring it into your ego identity to make a permanent part of yourself. We can remove that without destroying in any way the significance and the value of your and the meaningfulness of your relationship with her and the joy that comes out of it. So, yeah, I’m just pointing a bit further than your question. The nature of truth is that the closer you come to it, the more obvious you care it becomes. The nature of falsehood is that the closer you come to it, the more vague it becomes until it actually disappears.
The more if what is true upon analysis becomes more and more obvious to be true. That which is false upon analysis becomes less and less significant, what it was worth prior to investigation becomes less and less. Nothing. Nothing absolutely exists. What do you mean by absolute?
Nothing objectively exists. Nothing absolutely exists. Everything objectively exists Nothing exists independent of our mind, the view, our conceptions about it, upon language, Yeah. That saying comes to a very good point.
Buddhism can’t say that this, its presentation of reality is absolute. Nothing absolutely exists. Says I have a presentation of a type of reality which if it’s integrated is one experiences a sense of fulfillment, meaning, and peace. That’s all I can tell you. The Buddha taught two things.
He taught suffering and a way to go beyond suffering. The rest he left to philosophy. You know, this is a pragmatic approach to problems, to our problems of life. What, you know, what there is out there, we don’t know. We can only know in terms of our own mind.
So in terms of our own mind, if we if we develop a a coherent, consistent view, which is cannot be contradicted, and this is, it cannot be contradicted. That is to say what cannot be contradicted we say is true. Within that view we have experiences And these experiences are self authenticating in that they seem to be, of their very nature, desirable. About emptiness and the the nature of how how things are dependent upon concept, then we we can understand that there cannot be a reality divorced from how we conceive of it. So and how we have our view of it.