Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of using the same ground you fell on to lift yourself back up anchors Ven Jampa Gendun’s 18-minute walk through the four powers of purification. He opens with regret — not mechanical self-recrimination but genuine acknowledgment of harm without rationalisation, the one power without which purification cannot begin. He then covers reliance (recommitting to one’s vows and to the welfare of those harmed), antidote (prostrations, mantra recitation, meditation on emptiness, or any consciously skillful act), and reversal: breaking habitual negative patterns through realistic, time-bounded resolutions rather than impossible lifelong vows. A Q&A covers collective karma — illustrated by the Vietnam War and whether silent mental acquiescence makes one complicit — widening circles of group karma in family and community, and the ethics of meat-eating, where motivation and mindful awareness are offered as the deciding factors.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 OtE 1991 11 06.mp3
UUID: 3dd3bde3-6cfa-45ed-ade7-6c87909f277c
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Opening the Eye of New Awareness 1991-1992 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-11-06
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 17.8 minutes
Words: ~1,608
Acknowledging our mistakes as mistakes. Quit trying to hide them from ourselves, justify them, rationalize them. The sense of regret, the first power. And this is the most important of this fourth power. Without regret there is no purification.
It is not something which can be done mechanically, which is something which can be forced upon us. The second is the power of reliance. It is said that we can commit two negative actions. We can commit negative actions towards two different types of objects. All our negative actions are committed either against the Buddha, the Dharma, the spiritual community, or sentient beings, ordinary sentient beings.
Why is that? When we commit ourselves to some kind of prescribed ethics, some type of prescribed ethical conduct, for example we take vows, I vow not to kill.. We do this, we consciously commit ourselves to training, to specific types of training rules in order to actualize Buddha within ourselves. This is why I take the vow to actualize my sanity, my love, all that is positive within me. I take this vow, I place myself within that ethical context.
It’s like creating a greenhouse where where these sprouts of sanity and wisdom and love are able to be nurtured, protected initially at least. Then we don’t need vows once they’re fully developed. So I take these vows ultimately to actualize Buddha. And if I live in this prescribed conduct and if I act in contradiction to that prescribed conduct, I turn my back on Buddha, the Buddha within myself. I turn my back on seeking to actualize Buddha within myself, to actualize my own sanity and love.
And just as when we fall down on the ground, we use that same ground to pick ourselves back up, we rely upon that ground. Likewise, if we’ve contradicted any vows, any type of prescribed ethical conduct, we rely upon that which we fell down upon. We commit ourselves to the principle of growth, to the Buddha within ourselves, to implementing the Dharma within our life, and to the social context of the spiritual community which we have been talking about. That doesn’t say we go through this process of redirecting. We get ourselves back on the road in the spiritual path.
When we act in contradiction to natural ethics, the natural ethics of non harming, then we are turning our back on our commitment to help others. We’ve hurt others. How can we help others if we’re hurting them? So we recommit ourselves. We rely upon the same individuals, and we generate compassion toward them.
We recommit ourselves to serving sentient beings, to seeking their welfare. That’s the power of reliance. The third power is the power of antidote. And in this we enact some kind of positive action as an antidote to that negative action that we created previously. And there is a list of specific types of skillful actions that we can do.
For example, within this listing there are prostrations, there are the reading of scriptures, the recitation of the Sūtra of the Confessions of Downfalls, there is the recitation of the hundred syllable mantra of Vajrasattva, meditation on emptiness. But moreover, any type of skillful action which is done consciously has a counterbalance to that previously committed unskillful action. That you go out of your way to consciously do something right with awareness of that negativity that you did previously. The power of reliance or power of antidote as a countermeasure. And then finally, the fourth of these four powers, the power of reversal.
Reversal, turning away. This helps to break up the pattern, the habitual nature of our negativity. This is what we just talked about before, karma in the sense of results which are causes functionally. And we have a tendency to repeat the same actions again and again and again. It becomes easier the more we’re familiar with them.
So we reverse from that. We develop the determination. And we honestly and we reasonably determine not to repeat this action again. I’m not going to intentionally, consciously kill for the next twenty four hours. And we can do that with awareness.
And this is going to cut through that habitual tendency to disrespect, to not value your life. That twenty four hours, having determined that, your hand may go like this. The determination is such and that awareness and that mindfulness is that it won’t quite close if you’re aware, if you have this strong determination and you begin to just cut through this pattern, this habitual way of relating, devaluing, not respecting life. In this case, whether it’s stealing, whatever, something that you can reasonably and honestly do. If you say I’m never going to lie for the rest of my life, then it’s nonsense.
You can’t do that. But for the next hour, or before you go to sleep, you say for the next eight hours. Something I want you to do. So if we apply these for the most important of these is regret. But it is said that if we apply these four counteracting agencies, four powers sincerely, thoroughly, and well, then there is no negativity whatsoever which cannot be completely purified, such that we will never have to experience the results.
So we’ll have to I didn’t finish ethics. I’ll finish it for sure next week. Anybody have any questions? Yeah, you can do both, both particular in general. I mean, you can’t remember all the negativities that you created.
But if you can recollect them, then this is even the best because you can develop a more sincere sense of regret with respect to them. But if you have very thorough conviction in the law of cause and effect, then just knowing that you’ve created negative actions not only during the course of this life, but if you have a belief in your previous life, then you’ve done it there also. And so you try to simply generate a sense of regret to the general negativities that you’ve created. And this will lessen lessen the overall potency of them, to the degree that you sincerely regret having done that. But if you can actually remember them, particularly this is the most powerful way.
Yeah, no, the actions of body, speech, and mind. Mental action. The way we think is an action. It’s interesting. I think don’t know.
It has to do with your intention. For example, I think during the Vietnam War, the American people were creating collective karma. And I think in order not to participate in creating that collective karma, you had to actively, within your mind, protest against what was going on. And maybe You know what I mean? You say, Oh, this is not right.
We’ve got to stop this war. At least you have to think in that way. Otherwise, you are probably mentally acceding to what was going on in the war. You know what I mean? You were mentally supporting that activity.
And therefore, you know, everyone who participated not participated physically, but America was creating a collective karma. All the American people were participating in the creation of that suffering that went on in Vietnam. Unless they, in some way, in their own mind, didn’t go along with it. Yeah. Does that make sense?
It’s quite often the case, isn’t it? The people who have the power can be in the minority. They’re able to exercise the power over the Having that political power is a consequence of their karma. If you were to become elected prime minister, then you would be able to exercise a great deal of power. That would be an expression of your karma.
That’s what you could do, get yourself elected. Or just the charisma of your being, like Gandhi, people like that. No, there are many levels of group karma. There’s group karma that we created by coming. The fact that we’re here together tonight is a product of our group karma that we created in the past.
You have your family, your relationship, every widening circle that you’re participating in is group karma. So you exercise more or less according. With these moralities, you can take it to almost an extreme like vegetarianism and eating meat. Eating meat is an indirect cause of killing. How How do you know whether the line is, or is it just individual, or are there any guidelines?
Comes down to your motivation, why you do what you do. For some, eating meat could be a very positive action. They could have the motivation such that it becomes a very positive action. But I think minimally, hopefully, I mean, not minimally, it would be desirable if you’re going to eat meat, you do it mindfully and respectfully, that some animal did die, that you could be eating. So awareness is a very important part of the wisdom?
I think all ethics, all the vows, are to assist in helping one to become aware and develop spontaneous caring and to inquire into what you’re doing. You just get to the point, though, when you think if you make you walk on the ground, you’ll be killing something. And I suppose you should be aware of that and like, very carefully and Yeah. Figure this out. So we’ll stop there.
May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to the enlightened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakened heart that has not arisen arise and grow. And may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more.