Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A coiled rope mistaken at dusk for a snake anchors this 44-minute commentary by Ven Jampa Gendun on the Dalai Lama’s Opening the Eye of New Awareness. He frames Buddhism around basis, paths, and fruits — the two truths as basis, method and wisdom as path, the two Buddha bodies as fruit — then unpacks what the two truths actually mean. Teachings on conventional truth help us live better with the snake; only teachings on ultimate truth reveal the snake never existed. Along the way he describes the mind as inherently pure — like crystal water that can be cleared of pollutants — before introducing emptiness not as nonexistence but as the absence of fantasized independent existence, and warning against nihilism as a common misreading. He closes with a personal anecdote about asking the Dalai Lama how to tell wisdom from delusion.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 OtE 1991 09 04.mp3
UUID: aca93158-81f5-42bb-943b-5787b1a71b03
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Opening the Eye of New Awareness 1991-1992 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-09-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.9 minutes
Words: ~4,998
We’re practicing a spiritual path. And in practicing a spiritual path, we are transforming our mind. And in transforming our mind, we’re solving our problems. He goes on to say in another section of the same book, talking about cultivating compassion. To cultivate compassion, altruism, and meditation, it is necessary to have the assistance of wisdom.
It is said that with the help of wisdom, compassion can become limitless. This is because afflictive emotions prevent the development of limitless compassion. And in order to destroy the afflictive emotions, it is necessary to know the nature of phenomena. The reason for this is that the afflictive emotions superimpose a goodness and badness upon phenomena which exceeds the measure of what is there. The sign of this being that after we are either very desirous or very angry and that the emotion has subsided, when we look at the same object we see it entirely differently and even burst into laughter at ourselves.
To counter this superimposition and hence prevent the arising of afflictive emotions, it is necessary to know the final nature of phenomena correctly. Without superimpositions, we need to know the absence of inherent existence of all phenomena. So The essence of spiritual practice is compassion. In order to develop compassion toward its limitless potential, it must be assisted by wisdom. This wisdom of seeing deeply into the nature of reality by means of which we can remove the various afflictive emotions from the mind.
By afflictive emotions I mean such emotions as hatred, anger, spite, jealousy, miserliness, attachment, desire, etcetera. So the entirety of the basic structure of Buddhism, the Buddhist doctrine, is built upon the twofold theme of compassion and wisdom. I talked about the three principal aspects of the path. On the foundation of the developing determination to be free, we go on to develop an altruistic heart or an awakening heart. And we go on to develop the wisdom to see deeply into the nature of reality.
Entire structure of Buddhism is based upon this twofold theme of wisdom and compassion. Now this twofold theme of wisdom and compassion is presented from many different points of view in many different ways in order to assist us in different individuals with different capacities, with different viewpoints, dispositions. We come at the same problems, the same methods, the same means from different points of view. One point of view, one way of presenting these factors of wisdom and compassion is from what is called the basis, paths, and fruits. This is to divide the basic structure of the Buddhist teachings into a threefold category, bases, paths, and fruits.
The bases are the two truths which we’re going to look at tonight, the conventional truth and the ultimate truth. The paths depend upon these two truths. And the paths are the methods, the means by which we are able to travel to attain the fruit. The paths consist of method and wisdom. The wisdom is various levels of understanding of the nature of conventional reality and ultimate reality.
Methods are such as generosity, ethics, tolerance, effort, the love, compassion, the awakening heart. These all are the components of method. It’s very much like a rocket. The fuel of the rocket is method, love, compassion. The rocket itself is wisdom.
These two together can help us to traverse the path to attain the fruit. The fruit are the two bodies of a Buddha, which we’re going to look at also tonight. The two bodies of a Buddha. Another way to look at it is the two aspects of an optimum mode of being. A being who has reached that level has attained what is called the form body, which is the optimum mode of being for others, that aspect of the self, the social self, the public self which brings about the welfare of others.
And the truth body which brings about one’s own welfare, that experiential aspect of our mind, of our self. This is the fruit of having traveled a path based upon the two truths. So there’s the basis, paths and fruit. To solve our problems is to transform our mind. To solve our problems is to transform our mind.
To become a Buddha is to transform one’s mind. There’s no difference. The mind is the mere factor of luminosity and knowing. It’s very difficult to understand what mind is, but never mind. Luminosity and knowing.
Luminosity and knowing. This is the basis of transformation, this mere factor of luminosity and knowing. All the various it is essentially pure by its very nature. All of the various negative states, the unskillful patterns, all of our various neurosis whatsoever are not inherent to the nature of mind itself. They are what is called adventitious to the mind.
That is they are temporary obstructions, defilements to the mind. The very nature of mind is pure, just like crystal clear water, but it is polluted. And all of these factors can be removed from the mind, just like all the pollutants can be removed from the water. And what is left is the very nature of water. No matter how much garbage you surround a molecule of water, H2O, it doesn’t alter the integrity of that molecule.
If we can come up with some method to remove all the garbage around it, we’re left with crystal clear, pure water. The same with our mind. The very nature of our mind is luminosity and knowing. It is pure by its very nature. But it has these adventitious obstructions, temporary obstacles, afflicted emotions, unskillful patterns, whatever you want to call them, which hinder the free expression of the purity of the mind itself.
If we can implement various methods, then we can return to this natural purity of the mind. There’s this basic stuff called mind. It’s almost like a stuff. It’s really hard. Somebody says, show me your mind.
It’s really hard to locate. I’ve been looking for it for a long time. Some people lose their mind. This mere factor, there’s this stuff which is a mind. And we can create out of this stuff a happy, healthy, loving, sane mind or that same stuff we can create a tormented psychotic mind.
That it has that potential, this stuff. We can take this stuff of mind and we can create a pietà of Michelangelo, Madonna and Child. Or we can create a sculpture of Rodin out of this clay of the mind by molding it with different means, different methods. Or we can take that mind and we can make an ashtray out of it. This is workable stuff that we have.
It can be molded into any shape. It can be conditioned into any fashion according to our skill or lack of skill. We can perpetuate our enslavement, or we can find liberation through the mind. The Dalai Lama begins the section on the second chapter on the two truths in the opening of the eye of new awareness. In order to achieve liberation one must know the presentation of how to ascertain the basis, the two truths.
The basis is the two truths, conventional truth, the ultimate truth. How to practice the path, method and wisdom and in dependence upon that how to achieve the goal, the two Buddha bodies, form body and truth body. First, what is the presentation of the basis? That is to be ascertained, what are the two truths? And quoting from a sūtra, a sūtra is a discourse of the Buddha.
Quoting from a Sūtra by the Buddha, a verse that says, The knower of the world without listening to others taught in terms of just these two truths, the conventional and the ultimate. There is no third truth. So the two truths, you you probably, it’s hard enough to learn one truth, now they talk about two truths. Anyway, the two truths are not concepts of truths or beauty. They are objects of knowledge.
They are objects. The two truths are objects. It is a way of categorizing all phenomena. That is all phenomena like tables, people, cars, houses, space, emptiness, all phenomena are included within these two truths. There’s nothing left out of these two truths.
There’s no phenomena which is not included as either a conventional truth or an ultimate truth in these two categories. Every phenomenon is either a conventional truth or an ultimate truth. The Buddha taught in terms of these two truths. Maybe we can say the Buddha presented his teachings in terms of two levels of reality. There are two levels of reality.
That’s hard to understand, isn’t There is a quotation. The Buddhist teachings of the Dharma relies on the two realities. The two truths, the two realities, all of the Buddhist teachings, he presented his teachings in terms of two realities, two levels of objects of knowledge. Two realities, the social superficial reality and the reality of ultimate import. There are such persons as Buddhists.
They do teach and they do not teach only one reality or one unreality. They teach two realities, a relative one that is superficial lying on the surface and social. Conventionally structured by culture which shapes consciousness through language, that’s one level of reality. A level of reality which is shaped by our conditioning, by our language, by our culture, which lies on the surface, which is superficial, which is mere conventions, agreements that this table is a convention. We’ve decided this is a table, we call it a table.
We aren’t analyzing it very deeply. There’s something there we say it’s a table on the basis of language. This is a conventional truth. This book is a conventional truth. I am a conventional truth.
These are objects which are quite easily found. On the other hand, there is an ultimate truth, an ultimate absolute that is profound, transcended yet real, knowable and hence of supreme import being ultimately liberative and transformative. There is another level of truth which is very deep, which lies beneath the surface of conventionalities, of language, of cultures, which is unconditioned, which is transformative. By getting in touch with this level we can liberate our mind. Those who do not discern the difference between these two realities do not understand the profound, the principle of the Buddha doctrine.
The Buddha taught in terms of these two realities, The social superficial reality conditioned by language and culture, There’s tables, houses, peoples, space, all these things around us. These are all superficial realities, social realities. We come to know them through our conditioning, through our culture, through our language. And he taught a deeper reality, which is unconditioned by language, which is not dependent upon our culture. And he called it ultimate truth.
There’s one ultimate truth, emptiness. Phenomena has these two levels of truth, has these two levels of reality about them. But nothing is both. Nothing is both an ultimate truth and a conventional truth. This table has two levels of reality about it.
It has a conventional truth. The table is the conventional truth. The emptiness of the table is its ultimate truth. And in terms of the table, I talk about its conventional truth, its color, its shape, its hardness, its thickness, it’s made out of wood, it’s painted red. That’s his conventional truth.
That’s a superficial level of understanding the table. But if I want to look deeply into what is the nature of that table, in what way does it exist, what is its mode of being, its subsistence, then I look at its level of its ultimate truth, its emptiness. Last week I used this metaphor of a snake. You’re walking along in the evening, it’s dusk, it’s growing dark, walking on, perhaps in the grass near the sidewalk, there’s a striped coiled rope. A striped coiled rope.
And due to various conditions, that striped coiled rope appears to be a snake. There’s no snake there, but due to the dimness, due to the similarity of that rope and a snake, due to poor eyesight, whatever, not being able to see well, that striped coiled rope looks like a snake. A snake appears to us and we react, we believe that there is a snake there. We believe that that appearance is true and we react with fear. The snake is a mere appearance arising on various conditions.
The snake is a mere appearance arising in dependence upon various conditions. The striped rope is one of the conditions, the dimness of the light is another condition. Ultimately there’s no snake there, but it appears to be a snake. There appears to exist a snake. Ultimately, in fact, there’s no snake there.
In reality, there’s no snake there. Still for this mistaken awareness, this awareness which arises, which believes there is a snake there, for that mistaken awareness a snake exists. In fact, there’s no snake. But for that misconceived understanding, that wrong idea, that wrong belief, for that awareness a snake exists. And therefore we generate fear.
Now I mentioned in using this metaphor of the snake, how a great deal of psychotherapy and a level of Buddhism are concerned with how we can become well adjusted individuals, how we can become well adjusted to our fears and the snake. One level of psychotherapy, one level of Buddhism is trying to help us to deal with the snake, to deal with our fears, how we can be well adjusted individuals. Though in fact, the snake is not real, but we believe it to be real. For a person who believes that snake to be real, we have to work in that person’s reality with their misconception, with their wrong belief, their wrong ideas. We have to work within that context.
You sort of have to get into that person’s mindset and work within their parameters and help them to work with their fears and how to deal with that snake. For them that snake is real, that fear is real. Because there appears to them to be a real snake. And as long as one believes in that appearance, then one is going to be afraid. So the best thing we can do is learn how best to live with snakes, study all the variety of snakes and learn various coping mechanisms to deal with the fear.
So these teachings which help us to learn about snakes, which give remedial measures and methods for dealing with fear are teachings on conventional truth. This is the level of Buddhism which is addressing itself at that level of misconception which we all have. Such teachings as the workings of karma, what is to be adopted, what is to be rejected, teachings on how to work with our hatred, how to work with our attachment, the means for developing love and compassion, disadvantages of cyclic existence. All of these teachings are dealing with conventional truths to help us to live better lives within the sphere of misconception of wrong beliefs within that context. But the method of conventional truth can never liberate us.
It can only help us to lessen our fears, help us to live with that snake a little bit better. But living with a snake is no fun, no matter how friendly it may become. You never can be quite sure about snakes. There’s always a little bit of anxiety in the background somewhere. It is only the teachings on ultimate truth which is the transcendental method which can liberate us completely from fear of that snake because it teaches us the snake has never existed at all from the beginning of this time.
And therefore, what is the need for fear? In the context of this metaphor, the teachings on ultimate truth help us to see the snake as a mere appearance to a mistaken awareness. The teachings on ultimate truth help us to begin to understand that this belief is unfounded, that it is a mere appearance of a snake. But upon ultimate analysis, in reality, in fact, there’s no snake there. So the force of our belief begins to diminish, to become less powerful, and therefore has less effect.
Therefore our fear begins to lessen. The ultimate truth is saying that a snake does not exist, it never has existed. It is the teachings of ultimate truth which directly help us to completely overcome our mistaken beliefs in the snake. And it is the only way, the only way to help us to completely transcend our fears. Any other teaching, any other way can only help us to lessen our fears.
It cannot help us to transcend our fears. We must understand ultimate truth to be liberated. Teachings on conventional truths help us to become well adjusted to the snake. Teachings on ultimate truth help us to become liberated people. So then the question arises, why bother teaching conventional truth?
Why bother teaching karma? Why bother teaching about the methods of working with attachment, with hatred? Why bother with all these? Talking about suffering, talking about the path. Why not just talk about ultimate truth and get on with it?
Although it is true that the erroneous conventionalities that appear to be real but are not are to be abandoned. So we’re true. Although it is true that the erroneous conventionalities that appear to be real but are not, are to be abandoned. The ultimate cannot be taught without depending upon worldly conventions such as objects of expression, expressor, knowing, object, object known, and so forth. The conventions related with superiors,
Superiors are individuals who have directly realized emptiness. The conventions related with superiors that are asserted to be conventional truths. Also, without teaching the ultimate, it cannot be realized, and without that nirvana cannot be attained. Therefore, because of being the means of attaining liberation, just as one who wants water needs a vessel, so initially one definitely should assert conventionalities just as they are. So what is being said here is that without understanding conventional truth we cannot understand ultimate truth.
In the course of progressing from being a maladjusted individual to being a liberated individual, we have to necessarily pass through the stage of being a well adjusted individual. That is we must learn all about the varieties of snakes and the means of coping with fear. And more than that, that though the ultimate truth, the ultimate truth is beyond words because it’s not what? It’s not conditioned by language. It’s not conditioned by culture.
It’s not conditioned by concepts about it. Though it’s beyond words and conventions, it is approached through language, through concepts, through words and convention. That’s the way we’re able to to move toward its understanding, in dependence upon words. Even though it’s beyond words, we make use of words to arrive at the point of understanding it. Just as in this quotation, just as water is held in a vessel, the water of ultimate truth is held within the vessel of conventional truth.
That is to say, we understand ultimate truth in terms of conventional truth. Without conventional truth, there’s no way to understand ultimate truth. Without words, without these various practices, without these various paths, means, there’s no way that we can bring the mind to understanding ultimate truth. Though conventional truth cannot liberate us, in dependence upon them we can come to understand the ultimate truth and be liberated. But without relying on conventional truth, there’s no way that we can come to understand the ultimate truth.
This is why the Buddha taught the two truths. He wants us to be liberated. He wants us to realize ultimate truth. But in the process of coming to this understanding the deepest reality, we must necessarily as a means, as a method to approach it, understand superficial reality. That we only understand ultimate reality in terms of a superficial reality.
So I’ve been talking a lot about the two truths, but what are the two truths? What do we mean by the two truths? As I mentioned, the two truths are not are not romantic notions, they’re not aesthetic concepts, they’re not concepts of beauty. They are objects of knowledge. They are two ways of categorizing objects.
They are two levels of reality. I don’t know whether that’s enough for this or not. What do you think? We’re going to talk about what are ultimate truths and what are conventional truths. And this serves as a basis.
Then depending upon this, then we’re going to talk about the paths and then the fruit of the path. But maybe it’s a bit much. But do you have any questions? Any comments? It probably sounds terribly confusing.
Do you have any questions on what we talked about? That is clear. Somebody explain it to me. That’s a very complex and difficult question, isn’t it? I don’t have an answer, but I can just make an answer.
I know one time I asked — I’ve been fortunate enough to have a few occasions where I’ve talked to the Dalai Lama privately, and I asked something like this. I was very concerned. Said, You you try to do your best and you try to use your wisdom. But how do you know when you’re using your wisdom? How do you know when what you’re doing is based upon wisdom or just another delusion?
And how do you know? And I asked him this very, very same question. He thought about it. He said, well, He said, well, you probably can’t. But you do the best you can.
And this is what he went on to say, that if your motivation is right, if it’s based upon compassion, it’s okay to make mistakes. You’re probably going to make mistakes no matter what you do. But at least if the motivation is correct, then it’s okay. But even if you have the greatest wisdom and all the technical knowledge, which if the motivation isn’t compassion, then it’s probably going to lead to problems, trouble. So here’s the simple.
As I mentioned initially, one of my first comments was, it’s not so much what we do, it’s why we do it. We’re going to make mistakes. We don’t know all the ins and outs of whatever we do. But if we can cultivate some level of compassion and caring and beneficial intention, altruism, then Maybe that’s enough right now. I mean, it’s not to say that we don’t we should try to understand.
Mean, we shouldn’t and if you’re going to help someone, I mean you should try to develop as much technical know how as you can so you don’t make mistakes. But the essential ingredient is motivation of compassion. I don’t know if that answers it really. Anybody have a comment about that question? It’s very difficult.
So this is just a if you’re walking along and there’s a real snake, so the snake is the conventional truth? The non inherent existence of the snake. Emptiness, we have to talk about emptiness. Emptiness is like if the heart of Buddhism is compassion, the mind of Buddhism is emptiness. We have to come to understand what emptiness is, selflessness.
His Holiness in this book devotes a whole chapter to training in special wisdom, which is coming to an understanding of emptiness. So here we’re talking about ultimate truth. There is one ultimate truth that is emptiness. That is the deepest mode of abiding, the way the deepest nature of the reality of the table is its emptiness, is its selflessness. And we’re going to discuss that at length because it’s quite difficult and it’s quite necessary that it be understood thoroughly.
A little bit of understanding is quite dangerous, something like that. But we can say emptiness is an absence, a lack of a fantasized way of existing. I talked about we have a misconception, a misbelief about there being a snake there. There appears a snake but in fact there isn’t a snake. Likewise, carrying that analogy through, we have a misconceiver.
We have a mis-knowing, ignorance or a mis-knowing, whatever you want to call it, which misconceives the way every object in the world exists. This table, people, it misconceives them. These objects appear to us to exist independently, objectively, from their own side without depending upon my mind, without depending upon my language, without depending upon words and concepts. That’s the way these objects, it looks like we discover objects rather than create objects. But in fact, it is a participatory universe.
We are co creators of the world in which we exist. But it doesn’t appear that way. It appears that these objects are existing out there independent of my mind. This stick appears to me not in any way dependent upon my mind, upon language, upon concept. It appears out there, hard, cold, objective, as if it had an intrinsic identity out there, divorced from my mind, independently.
That’s the way it appears. That’s appearance. But it is empty of that way of existing. It lacks that way of existing. It doesn’t have that way of existing.
That way of existing is a hallucination. And this is what I have to come to understand. This is the ultimate truth. So we discussed that in the way of going about coming to that wisdom, that understanding. But this is the only way the mind can ever be liberated.
Because it believes in the realities of these things, it’s always going to be hooked on to them. So that’s the snake. That independent existing stick is the snake which is appearing to me. But in fact there’s no snake there. There is a stick there.
There’s a rope there. That’s what I want to know. I want to know the absence of snake. Well, the danger is, which I don’t think is I think the danger is that if one misunderstands it, if what you’re hearing is correct, a correct explanation, and you hear it correctly, then there’s no problem. If the explanation is incorrect or you hear it incorrectly, then you can fall to the extreme of nihilism.
That is to say, when we talk about that this stick doesn’t ultimately exist, to misconceive of what is being said and say it doesn’t exist at all. And one can develop a frame of mind where they think, oh, it’s just, wow, nothing really exists. No, you don’t stop to say, who is it that’s thinking that nothing exists? So there’s this danger of what they call falling into nihilism or annihilationism. It sort of gets spaced out and you think nothing exists, nothing matters anymore, nothing’s real.
But in fact, the stick exists. We’re not talking about whether the stick exists or not, but talking about the way it exists. We’re not talking about whether I exist or not, but the way I exist. So you exist, the stick exists, I exist, there’s no problem with that. But we have a misconception as to the way you exist, I exist and this stick exists.
This is the problem. And so we’re not talking about existence but the way things exist. So on that basis, it’s necessary to listen again and again. I still am baffled. And then I still learn a lot about emptiness.
I’m still learning a lot, different ways of looking at it. I mean that very sincerely, trying to put it in my terms, what it means. So I’m listening, reading books, listening to teachings again and again and again. It’s like trying to understand quantum physics, isn’t it? One teacher said, for six months you aren’t going to understand anything that’s said in this class.
But after six months, a penny will drop. There’ll be a click in your mind and you understand what quantum physics is about. I’m still waiting for the penny to drop. So you keep listening. Then you go back and you reflect.
What is that? What are talking about? And you go listen some more. You read books. And then this threefold process of listening, reflecting, and meditating, integrating the significance.
And it makes sense. But there are levels to this understanding. This is like trying to learn the theory of relativity without having learned a b, without maybe having learned how to add and subtract yet. There are levels. And there are four discernible levels coming to an understanding of emptiness, four stages.
It’s called the Hearer stage, the Mind Only stage, the Autonomy Middle Way stage, and the Consequentialist Middle Way stage. And one way to present it is we sort of go through these stages, more and more subtle presentations of of ultimate truth. So it’s good to have an explanation in terms of these graded stages of coming to a more and more subtle understanding of ultimate truth. But it’s good to listen to it in general. No, nothing to be afraid of.
If you panic, yeah, it’s the great meditators. It’s a sign that those who have great creative potential merit. Those who have little, those who have little merit, those who have little merit, when they gain an insight into emptiness, into selflessness, they become very afraid. They’re losing their best friend, for example. That thing that’s always been hanging out with them as long as they can remember, this thing that’s always watching somewhere over my shoulder somewhere.
It’s like an old friend is slowly being lost. It’s kind of sad. But those who have a great deal of great potential and merit, it’s like a huge big boulder being lifted off their back. It has a great sense of release and joy. So there’s different ways of responding to an understanding of emptiness depending upon how much personal power you have.
But this happens even with the greatest meditators. So there’s nothing to be afraid of if one has a correct understanding.