Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The story of Tārā vowing to always reincarnate as a woman — countering monks who told her enlightenment was easier as a male — gives this 45-minute session with Ven Jampa Gendun an early jolt of personality. The central thread is Buddha nature: drawing on a Jungian analyst’s observation that people will readily admit their worst faults before acknowledging their own divinity, Gendun argues that even the darkest moment of self-awareness is Buddha mind recognising itself. He leads a vivid guided death meditation — hospital bed, disconnected machines, funeral, burial — then turns to readings from the Dalai Lama’s Opening the Eye of New Awareness on how spiritual training reframes illness, threatened wealth, and verbal insults so that mental suffering does not compound physical pain. Accessible to newcomers.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 OtE 1991 08 28.mp3
UUID: bd2b61b8-98a6-48be-b459-8c16a6f95133
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Opening the Eye of New Awareness 1991-1992 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-08-28
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~4,714
I’ve been talking in going for refuge, that is to say, this process of realigning our allegiance from a life based upon under the control of our hopes and fears, but hopefully one which is led in the light of our own wisdom, our own love, and our own exuberance for life, the possibilities of another mode of being, something other than perhaps what we’ve experienced up to now. So this continual necessity of getting back in touch with some values and principles that are very unique to ourselves as a unique individual. We take as a paradigm, our model of sanity, we call this individual a Buddha. And this person who is a Buddha is someone who is enlightened. And someone who is enlightened is someone who has actualized their potential.
The potentials of wisdom, love and compassion, and creative energy. That we all have this possibility, this potential, that we all have some wisdom no matter how obscure and faint that wisdom might be. We all have some love and compassion no matter how exclusive, limited our loving compassion might be, we all have some energy, no matter how unrefined and spontaneous that energy might be. So that is to say that we all have the solutions to our problems, that we all have the capacity to solve our problems, to become the person that we probably would like to be in our finest moments. And the idea of enlightenment, you know, it’s questionable.
Where does it come from? It comes from life itself, from history itself, that there have been women and men who have achieved this actualization of our present, what is, for most of us at present, only a potential. The Buddha, the Śākyamūni Buddha, is a source of our particular teachings, was not always a Buddha. That is to say he, taking him as a particular example, was very much like us at some time in the past. That is to say there’s not an unbridgeable gulf between ourselves and what we call Buddha.
It’s simply a matter of quantity, a matter of removing some of our unskillful attitudes, patterns, and developing more skillful ones, becoming enlightened, becoming wise, becoming loving and compassionate, and developing our exuberance for life by spontaneous activities and benefiting others. So the Buddha became a Buddha through his own effort, and this is that he made actual what is potential within all of us. That is to say that there have been an infinite number of Buddhas, an infinite number of beings who have achieved this optimum mode of being. For example, Tārā, who was the top most picture, was one of the first radical feminists. I don’t know if you know the story behind her.
She was just about to become a Buddha. A little bit more she was going to completely actualize her complete potential. Some of the celibate monks, they came up and they said, If you only take rebirth as a male in your next life, no problem, you have it made. She said, There’s enough men, there’s enough males seeking Buddhahood, there’s enough male Buddhists. What we need now is more female Buddhists.
So she took a vow that she would always take rebirth as a female enact her enlightened deeds as a female. And in the archetypal qualities of the Buddha, she is the active component of enlightened state. That is to say, she’s out on the street really helping people while the men sit around in committees and have discussions about what needs to be done next. It’s difficult, I think, for us to believe in our potential. Most of us have a feeling of insufficiency, limitedness.
It’s hard to get in touch with our divinity. Last year there was an American Jungian analyst by the name of Robert Johnson, and he was talking about the shadow, that part of ourselves which normally, which usually we don’t want to hear about, we don’t want to acknowledge, we don’t want it to allow to be expressed in our thinking and our behavior. But through the course of analysis, once there’s a trust built up between the client and the analyst, they begin to express the shadow. That is to say, they’re willing to acknowledge it once there’s enough trust built up in this relationship. But Robert Johnson went on to say, There’s almost one thing that they will never acknowledge, that you almost have to drag it out of them.
And notice they say the gold within the shadow, the divine element within the shadow. There’s almost a stubborn refusal, almost a shame to acknowledge that one is divine. That one perhaps gets glimpses of it from time to time spontaneously arising. People will say the worst things about themselves but they’ll never reveal, they’ll never acknowledge their own divinity, their own Buddha nature,, Christ, Christ likeness, whatever you want to call it. You know, I was in a number of years ago, I was in Sri Lanka.
This has been about maybe eighteen years ago when it was quite a wonderful, peaceful, beautiful country. It was like a paradise. And I remember walking through the central area of Sri Lanka Sri Lanka is just full of old Buddhist ruins. And walking through the bush, it’s more like a forest. We walk through the forest and then it’d come along a stone wall overgrown with weeds and vines.
And I remember coming upon one of these old ruins, you know, forgotten, left to fall to ruin. And I went around the other side and there was, covered with vines, covered with weeds, overgrown, was an image of a Buddha, a stone image, you know, sitting patiently as if it had been waiting, with infinite patience, infinite compassion, waiting for infinite years of time. And it reminded me of the fact that the movie two thousand and one, screenplay in the book was written by Arthur C. Clarke, and he wrote it when he was living in Sri Lanka. And I had the suspicion that maybe he came upon one of these Buddha images.
There’s this infinite patience, quality that has always been there, waiting to be rediscovered. In the movie two thousand and one, if you remember it, there were these great leaps in the consciousness of humankind whenever these large pillars, monoliths, were present. And it seems that, you know, that deep within our heart, this is Buddha to be, this waiting patiently to be rediscovered, overgrown with the weeds of our obscurations and the vines of our sense of limitation, feelings of insufficiency. And the enlightened person is regarded as the highest being in the universe. It’s simply that there has to be a highest being in the universe.
It may be you, but anyway, there has to be a highest being in universe. And we take this as our paradigm. It’s a psychology based upon sanity, on mental health. Up until quite recently, perhaps with Abraham Maslow in the United States, all of psychology was based upon pathology, upon sickness. We began to have a sense that we were sick people, just trying to get by as best we can, that we couldn’t allow any of our inner world to be expressed because it was full of demons and satans and devils, all kinds of nasty things.
I think within the East, this has never been a fact, never been true. But we have a basic intelligence, basic sanity, there’s a basic goodness about us, that basically we’re good people waiting to rediscover our basic sanity and our basic goodness. The enlightened person is taken as this paradigm, regarded as the highest being in the universe. It’s for this reason that the Buddha is respected and revered, that he is worshipped out of a sense of gratitude for setting an example, for showing the way, for demonstrating what it is possible to become as a human being. In other words, the Buddha is worshipped as a teacher, as an exemplar, and as a guide.
Buddhahood is our to be a happy, loving, healthy, sane human being, which is Buddhahood, is our birthright. Sometimes we see in our pain, our confusion, our sense of insufficiency, our conception of ourselves as worthless, we have this extremely negative self-image coloring of who we are. And our only limitations are those we acknowledge. I’ve talked about the story that we write for ourselves and what kind of story have we written. Are we just playing out the part and already having filled in the climax, how it’s going to end.
However you may conceive of yourself is simply not who you are either conventionally or ultimately. In your blackest moments, in your most discouraged moments, when you look up out of your garbage mind and you think you’re the lowest thing, that mud puddle out on the road is higher than you are. That very mind, it’s a Buddha mind. It’s saying, look at yourself, look at where you’re going, Look at your present state. That’s awareness.
The first step in wisdom is to acknowledge our ignorance. If someone is mentally imbalanced, there’s no hope until he becomes aware that his actions are inappropriate. The real insanity is not to know that you’re insane. There’s always hope if you become aware. So that’s your moment of awakening.
And that’s compassion, it’s saying, Be happy. In this suffering, there’s love for yourself. And it’s saying, Wake up, don’t go back to sleep, that’s energy. So at that very, what appears to be our darkest moment, Rather than being discouraged, rather than being depressed, when we become aware of our present state and we can take joy in the fact that we’ve discovered our own Buddha mind, covered over by those weeds, by those vines, obscured by our feelings of insufficiency and limitation. That your brilliant sanity is beginning to break through.
All we have to do is to believe in ourselves. I knew for myself that one of the greatest I lived on an island in Thailand for some time, and I came to two thoughts about myself, an overview of my life aside from all the various ups and downs. And one of them was how much my lack of belief in myself, my lack of confidence in myself had cost me over the course of my life, in what I tried and what I didn’t try, what I achieved when I did try. So this believing in oneself, using believing in your own wisdom, using your own wisdom, using your love, your creative energy, and believing in your own Buddha nature, that’s your ultimate refuge. And something good will come out of that.
So we take as the principal internal focus of our life Buddha, our own Buddhahood, and we seek to actualize that through the Dharma in the social context of a spiritual community, the Sangha. And we try to raise the level of our motivation I’m trying to be well for the sake of making others well, trying to be happy in order to make others happy. 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 the other perfections, May I attain the 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, the highest assembly.
From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the 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, and the highest assembly. And the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving any other perfections. May I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. We’re going to sit in meditation.
So if you take a firm but comfortable posture, we’ll begin with mindfulness of breathing. Let’s see. Do we talk about counting? Counting and the natural breathing. Don’t try to adjust your breath in any way.
Focusing on the various physical sensations associated with the breathing. Or if you can, from time to time, try to come in contact with the sensation either on your upper lip or inside your nostril depending upon the shape of your nose, of the sensation of the air rushing in now. You can go to that and if you don’t feel the sensation, then go back to the general sensation of breathing. And then a few minutes later, come back to that again. Just try for a few seconds.
If you get it, if you feel a sensation, that’s fine. If not, it doesn’t matter. Just go back to the general sensation. Breathing naturally, in, out, counting, one and out, two and out, three mentally, not verbally, and out, four and out, five. Coming back down, one through five, one through six, one through seven, one through eight, one through nine, one through ten.
If you become distracted, you lose the counting, then begin again on that particular series of counting. Then we can make use of noting mentally and verbally, but noting whatever the mind is involved in. Ideally, theoretically, it’s involved in the breath. Breathing in, we know that we’re breathing in, we note that we’re breathing in. Breathing out, we know that we’re breathing out, we know that we’re breathing out.
Now we have this pattern of mentally saying to ourselves, in out one, in out two, in out three, in out four, in out five, in out one through six, one through seven. You’re going to be distracted. The moment you become aware of being distracted, simply note whatever it was. Maybe it was pain, and your knees are painful, became distracted, pain. Then immediately you go back to the breath without judgment, without finishing the shopping list, finishing the story, whatever it was.
And if it’s thinking, thinking, go back to the breath. Hearing, go back to the breath. So a possible sequence of noting and counting may go as follows. I’m going to say it because it would be going on mentally inside your mind. In out one, out thinking.
In out one, in out two. In out three, hearing. In out one, in out thinking. In out one, thinking. Hearing.
Pain. Pain. In out one, in out two, in out three, pain. You’re not even getting to five. That’s okay.
You can never get to five. Doesn’t matter. You’re maintaining the factors of awareness and mindfulness. The mind is continually being aware. So then we’re going to meditate, a short meditation on death.
We meditate on death to help us to appreciate our life while we still have it. There’s nothing particularly morbid about it. The more that we become aware of death, the more we will appreciate life while we still possess it. Additionally, it’s a good time to talk about death because we’re going to talk about rebirth tonight. So if someone gets a little bit down from contemplating death, then maybe the fact that they might have a rebirth will help them out.
So please take a comfortable but firm posture. Now imagine that you’ve had an accident or you’re very ill, and you’re in the hospital, lying on a hospital bed with all kinds of tubes and machines connected up to you, doctors and nurses running here and there. Your loved ones are at your bedside, holding your hands somewhere in the corner crying, praying that you’ll get better. At the end of your bed, stacked up all your possessions and all the things that you worked so hard to gather together. There’s your car registration, your bank book, the deed to your house, your video cassette recorder, everything that’s materially worthwhile that you worked so hard for.
As best you can, just try to imagine such a scene. Put yourself in such a place. The things are growing dim. Shapes are becoming indistinct. You can’t quite make out what the face of the person next to you is, who it is.
Sounds are becoming indistinct. Light is growing dim. The mind is beginning to break its connection with the body. Slowly, it’s growing dark and silent. Find that the mind slips from the body.
And you look back down upon this scene, your body lying upon the hospital bed. They’re beginning to disconnect the machine. Your relatives are beginning to leave the room crying. Some are still holding onto your body, trying to wake you from your death. Now the room is empty.
You pull the sheet over your head. And they wheel you down into an elevator down to the basement. There, they prepare your body, locking up all the orifices, tying the legs together, tagging a number on the inside of your leg. And they take you away. Imagine now it’s your funeral.
There you are in a coffin, looking very handsome, very pretty. Flowers are around, people crying, people saying nice things about you, how wonderful you were. That’s you in the coffin. And then it’s at the gravesite. They’re lowering the coffin into the earth, throwing dirt on top.
Placing artificial grass on the mound of earth. The mourners going, driving home back to their meals, back to their family, back to work. And it’s finished. It’s all over. Do you stay where you are?
What kind of life did you lead? What kind of life was it? We’ve been discussing the first chapter of the Dalai Lama’s book, Opening the Eye of New Awareness, in which he discusses the need for religion, you know, whatever that might be, whatever you want to call it, some kind of spiritual method. He points out that the function of religion is to help us to solve our problems on the most profound level. And not only temporally, but ultimately, at least as far as Buddhism is concerned.
And probably all valid religions would be the same. As we quoted last week from Opening the Eye of New Awareness, where he said, all beings are equal in that they want happiness and do not want suffering.’ This does not apply merely to us humans, beings of bright intelligence. All even dumb and obscured creatures, from the tiniest insect on up, only want happiness and do not want even small suffering. Therefore, everyone, ourselves and others, must find a method to cause happiness to arise and to keep suffering from arising. Without it, it is impossible for happiness to rise and for suffering to be eliminated merely by waiting with great hope.
How nice it would be if I had happiness and did not have suffering. Consequently, we must establish the causes from which happiness arises and abandon the basis of the arising of suffering. He goes on to say, The means for establishing the causes of benefit and happiness and for abandoning harm and suffering cannot be gained by any other way as fully and completely as they are through religious practice. Through religious practice we are able to bring about happiness and alleviate suffering in this and many future lifetimes. This life, the next life, and the life after that and so forth.
Life is difficult. I think that’s a great know, everybody’s talking about wonderful and high realizations like realizations of meditation or deities or emptiness. But I think that’s a great realization. Life is difficult. In that the process of confronting and solving our problems is painful.
You know, I talk from time to time about legitimate suffering. This is where legitimate suffering comes in, in making use of techniques, methods to solve our problems. This discipline which may be necessary to go beyond our problematic situations in a more profound level They involve some kind of legitimate suffering. And spiritual growth entails a deepening in our understanding and a broadening of our perspective. They’re talking about finding happiness.
Again, the Dalai Lama. Even in the case of this lifetime, nothing surpasses religious practice for bringing about happiness and abandoning suffering. For example, in the case of physical illness, there is a very great difference between those who have and who have not understood the essential meaning of religion in terms of degree of their mental and physical suffering and their ability to alleviate the suffering. A person who has not understood the essentials of religious practice and who does not have any of the ambrosia of the magnificent impact of such practice has, in addition to strong feelings of physical sickness, the great suffering and not being able mentally to bear that illness. He or she is troubled by both physical and mental suffering with no opportunity for happiness.
I think one famous American, Benjamin Franklin, said, Those things that hurt us instruct us. We can learn a great deal through pain, through difficulty. And we have a sense that it shouldn’t. But if we don’t have an attitude, some sort of framework to put our difficulties in, then we’re going to be lost. On the contrary, if we think I shouldn’t be ill in this difficulty, I shouldn’t be sick, which unconsciously many of us, that’s the way we confront our illness.
This shouldn’t be happening to me, there’s something going wrong with the universe. There’s been a mistake made. I didn’t do anything wrong, I don’t deserve it. This only exacerbates the situation. The reality is we’re sick.
If we can create some attitude — again, Buddhism is pragmatic — in the sense that we can say I shouldn’t have this sickness or I can say this sickness is perfect, it’s appropriate, which is going to be more useful to us in dealing with that sickness? Either way we’re going to be sick and we’re going to probably continue to be sick. But with one, we have the addition of a mental suffering. In addition to the physical problem, we have the mental turmoil of thinking that one doesn’t deserve this. But on the other one, the mind remains at peace.
The Dalai Lama goes on: However, if a person has understood the essential points of religious practice, he or she voluntarily accepts suffering with the thought, for example, this is one possibility of framing the situation so that it’s no longer problematic. For example, that it is the fruit of ill deeds accumulated in the past and seeing that suffering is the nature of cyclic existence. Which is to take responsibility for previous actions. As a result, mental suffering does not arise. And because it does not arise, the pain can be alleviated when the power of internal thought suppresses the external suffering of physical sickness.
The reason for this is that between body and mind, the mind is, so to speak, the prime controller of the body. And the body is as if under the control of the mind. Therefore, mental feelings of pleasure and pain are stronger than those of the body. So if the mind can remain at peace, it can influence the physical sensations to the point where one no longer feels physical pain, what to say mental pain. This is the potential of the mind in dealing with physical pain, physical illness.
Similarly, in the Dalai Lama, it goes on to mention other types of difficulties and problems, such as the suffering associated with desire to be rich, to be wealthy, to have lots of things. We’re talking about different types of suffering and how a spiritual or religious training could help one in dealing with these difficulties, with these problems. Similarly, some people who desire the happiness of riches accumulate and guard their wealth, incurring great physical and mental fatigue. They suffer initially from the inability to amass as much wealth as they had hoped for. Even after gaining some wealth, they suffer in the meantime from the inability to protect it from being stolen by others.
It’s loss and destruction. It’s being squandered and the like. In the end, there is suffering that no matter what they do, their wealth becomes the property of others and they themselves must part from it forever. All such suffering related with wealth and resources result from not having understood the essential topics of religious practice. When those are understood, one sees that all wealth is as essenceless as dew on the tips of a blade of grass, which evaporates quickly at dawn.
And consequently, one does not undergo any of the sufferings that are associated with the weary accumulation and guarding of wealth and the suffering of separation from it against one’s wish. It’s not to say that we shouldn’t have all the good things of life. But like the example of the knife, that in themselves they’re quite neutral. But that knife in the hands of a surgeon can be beneficial, it can be life giving. That knife in the hands of a thief can be harmful.
It can take life. So it’s not to say that we shouldn’t have all the good things in life but how much value are we going to invest in them? Are they worth our life? And if we can maintain a sense of impermanence with respect to them, then we aren’t going to be hurt so much when they do pass because we can expect it. It doesn’t take us by surprise.
There’s no resistance to the reality of the situation as if it shouldn’t be like this. It’s appropriate to the nature of the order of reality. We have been schooled in the ways of the world, the ways of reality. And our attitudes are harmonious, are in agreement with those ways. We’re not in conflict.
And therefore, there’s no unnecessary suffering. In the same way the Dalai Lama goes on, ‘When unpleasant words of open abuse, covert blame, slander, and so forth are spoken by others about oneself, There arises a suffering like being pierced in the heart with a thorn. However, if we understand the essential topics of the religious practice, we see that all these are essenceless, like an echo. And even slight suffering does not arise as if mindless matter had been abused. Obviously this takes some training of the mind, there’s no doubt.
This is what religion is about, to help us train our mind, to deal with these situations, to help us to go beyond our suffering. Similarly, in this lifetime, the suffering of not subduing enemies, the suffering of not keeping friends, the suffering of others winning and oneself losing. In short, all the hopes and fears based on gain and loss, happiness and unhappiness, all physical and mental pain whatsoever. And not only those, the rising of terrifying warfare due to mutual hostility and discord between nations, destroying the happiness of countless beings with not even the name of happiness remaining. Such that suffering roils like turbulent water.
In brief, the great and small sufferings that occur in this life are due to not understanding religious practice, or though understanding it, not putting it into use. All products whatsoever arise in dependence upon causes. All our various experiences are products. They arise in dependence upon causes. Both happiness and suffering arise in dependence upon causes.
Our patterns of mind I talked about with our mind, we make the world. The patterns of our mind predispose us to interpret our various sensations and create constructs by means of which we undergo various experiences. Unskillful actions, and by unskillful actions, I mean unskillful actions arise by means of unskillful mental states, unskillful patterns of mind. Desire, hatred, spite, jealousy, hatred, anger, and there’s said to be eighty four thousand. These are unskillful states of mind, they are unskillful patterns of mind.
Why? Because they predispose our mind to interpret sensations, to interpret contact with objects and to create constructs due to which we experience suffering. A very simple example. There’s a glass of water, it’s half full. For one person it’s half full, for another person it’s half empty.
Due to their way of viewing the same, the objective fact remains the same.