Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. An Iyengar yoga analogy — how working through physical pain teaches exact body awareness and the capacity to guide others — opens Ven Jampa Gendun’s 42-minute commentary on transforming adversity into spiritual growth. He moves through mind training principles: problems as opportunities, the Dalai Lama’s remark about thanking the Chinese for invading Tibet, and a T. S. Eliot line on the gap between information, knowledge, and wisdom. The heart of the session maps the five hindrances — desire, hatred, restlessness and anxiety, sloth and torpor, and doubt — describing the felt quality of each in careful detail. He then introduces the first antidote: recognizing a hindrance as a hindrance, grounded in the teaching that the mind’s inherent clarity remains unchanged by afflictive emotions, making transformation genuinely possible.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 OtE 1991 11 27.mp3
UUID: f9324b9a-38c3-4d0f-a828-08570011b33a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Opening the Eye of New Awareness 1991-1992 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-11-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.2 minutes
Words: ~4,735
Associated with the proper position. They can never quite feel the exact posture. The type of yoga that I learned was called Iyengar yoga as opposed to television yoga, which my teacher couldn’t stand, where you could do anything just as long as it felt good. But these had very exacting postures which you were to assume. And the people who were very flexible from the very beginning had a very difficult time feeling when their bodies were in the proper position.
But those who had worked through, who had lots of pain and lots of strain, stretched their muscles, stretched their ligaments, They knew exactly what every muscle, what every ligament felt like when it was in the exact position. And they were more than that, they were in a position whereby to help others work through this process and come to the same proper position, asana, to achieve that same end. So this is like the essence of what is called the mind training teachings or the thought transformation teachings. That problems are opportunities to learn, to practice. This is a change of attitude.
This in itself is a mind training. That problems, challenges are opportunities for learning, for growing. We’d probably rather not grow,, but we have no choice. So we should be thankful for opportunities which force us to grow, which invite us to grow. In the mind training teachings we see we try to develop the viewpoint that all adverse circumstances are sources of growth and thereby transformation. And we transform all the adverse circumstances into a path for enhancing our spiritual enlightenment, our development.
So in this sense, know the Dalai Lama once said that a way we have to thank the Chinese for invading Tibet. They forced us to develop courage to become strong. They helped us in our practice of patience and compassion. These are valuable lessons and the Chinese have been very kind to us. So this obviously is being said by someone who has transformed their mind, who has a very unusual attitude compared to the norm.
In the Zen tradition, the Zen gardener doesn’t see the weeds as obstructions to his garden or her garden, appreciates them and cuts them and buries them beneath the soil to nourish the flowers, to nourish her vegetable. And likewise with the afflictive emotions that we possess, that we have. Working through our afflictive emotions and hindrances is the source of developing healthy quality. You know, if we have this attitude, then we can welcome challenges, we can welcome difficulties. Our mind will remain happy even under difficult circumstances.
This is the advantage of having work with the mind training teachings, that one can maintain a happiness through all circumstances, mental happiness. Because we can appreciate the opportunity for learning, for growth, which the situation presents us. If we were to think, I can’t stand my mind, this garbage mind of mine, I can’t meditate, can’t do anything, I can’t stand myself, it’s not only indulging in egotism, egoism, But also it doesn’t understand essentially what it means to practice the spiritual path, to practice the Dharma. Positively stated, it means the uninterrupted production of skillful constructive states of mind. But negatively stated, it means opposing negative states of mind, opposing negative states of mind, actively opposing negative states of mind, actively opposing destructive, unskillful states of mind.
Therefore the mere fact that we have desire, that we have hatred, that they arise in our mind doesn’t mean that we’re not practicing the Dharma. If we in some way don’t indulge them, but on the contrary, in some way apply even if it’s only insignificant measure of an antidote, then we’re practicing Dharma. We’re helping ourselves, we’re growing. In fact, we may be practicing very, very well. To oppose negative states of mind.
We tend to think that because we are Dharma practitioners, that we’re trying to practice a spiritual path, we should always be sweet and loving, That we should have all these kind thoughts continually running through our head, all these wise thoughts, ideas. But the moment some kind of ugly thought comes to us, we think, oh, you know, I can’t practice that. All these years, all this effort, I’m a failure. How can I have come to this end? You know, we’re not trying to be perfect Dharma practitioners.
This is we’re not trying to be perfect meditators, this isn’t the spiritual Olympics. We’re not training for the Barcelona meditating team. We’re just trying in some way to solve our problems, to learn, to work through these hindrances is to learn, to lessen our destructive patterns, our destructive emotions, our afflicted emotions. We’re trying to learn about ourselves. That’s really a wonderful thing to learn about yourself.
How little we know, how much information that we have stuffed in us, that we’ve never synthesized, that we’ve never integrated, that we nothing almost nothing has come from within ourselves out of our own theme, out of our own mist. There’s There’s a line by T. S. Eliot, where is the knowledge we’ve lost in information, where is the wisdom that we’ve lost in knowledge. We must take information, having lots of material within our mind as having knowledge and we must take knowledge for wisdom.
Wisdom is seen for oneself, coming to understand for oneself. And we know very little about ourselves, about anything. I’m quite often amazed how much I how little I do know from my own experience, out of my own experience, that I’ve seen for myself. And not that what I’ve been told by others, that I’ve learned from the outside. We are trying to learn about ourselves and we take what we learn and we apply it to our everyday life, our daily life, in order to become happy and healthier, more loving people.
So we aren’t dharma robots performing perfect actions in a perfect world. But simply trying to enact appropriate deeds in a rather imperfect way. We can’t be somebody else. We can only be who we are at this present moment. And this is what we have to learn about, not how we would like to be or how we think we should be, but confronting who in fact we are at this very moment.
This means working with the raw material that we presently have and not how we might like it to be, how we think it should be. So when you’re lazy and you don’t want to meditate, you have an opportunity to learn about laziness. It’s a part of you, laziness, it’s a mental factor. You can become an expert on laziness. How many people in this room are experts on laziness?
Probably no one. The world needs more experts on laziness. That’s an opportunity to learn about something about yourself, a very important facet of your mind. Not by indulging in it, but by looking at it and trying to work through it. Then you learn about laziness.
The Buddha was a systems analyst, and said to people, Look at this. Look at this. And he showed us what to look at and maybe gave us some tools, a microscope or telescope, whatever the occasion called for, as a way to look. We have to do the looking for ourselves, we have to do the learning for ourselves. So this becomes a lifestyle, this continual questioning, investigating, confronting, looking.
But especially when we sit down to meditate, and this is the real learning, the direct transformation process. To learn is to transform your mind and knowledge is power. You may have some specific meditation program when you sit down, but your overall attitude should be that you’re going to learn about yourself and how to work with your mind, whatever might come up. So when the five hindrances arise and you are sitting, you shouldn’t think, Oh damn, now I can’t meditate. I was looking forward to such a great session.
I could have just blissed out. I needed it. No, I can’t do it. It’s just that now temporarily you have to change the object of your meditation. You have to have this kind of fluid openness to to the situations, to the changing of programs, not be so inflexible.
You know, you can you you can look at desire, you can look at hatred, you can look at doubt, and learn something about yourself because these are yourself at that moment. You are doubt, you are hatred. So you may in fact have a more productive meditation session than you would have otherwise. You may have actually learned something rather than going through the form of meditation, the ritual of meditation. So if we learn to be fluid and open in our meditation, learning from whatever arises, obviously this is going to carry over, this is going to spill over into the rest of our lives, into our everyday life.
We’re not going to be so bound by our expectations, our hopes, our fears, our opinions. We have so many opinions that we can begin to respond to situations as growth experiences in some small way. So we’ve been briefly discussing the nature of the five hindrances. The desire and hatred which make a pair since they both involve craving. In one case it is grasping at, holding on to a pleasurable object, in the other case grasping at, holding on to an unpleasurable object.
You say displeasurable or unpleasurable? Anybody? Displeasurable, unpleasurable. Unpleasurable object. Dyspleasion So that was the first pair, desire and hatred.
Then the second pair is restless and anxiety, that’s taken as one, paired up with that is sloth and torpor. These are a pair because they are expressions of how our energies are operating. In one case the energy is uncontrolled, undirected. In the other case, in the second case, the energy is blocked. And then the fifth hindrance, is doubt and indecision.
Know, uncertainty about what we are doing, inability or unwillingness to come to some kind of conclusion and commit oneself to that. To make a choice. We have many people, would if we choose A, A and B are mutually exclusive choices in our life. If we choose A, then we can’t have B. If we choose B, then we can’t have A.
Oftentimes, rather than foregoing one or the other, we don’t make a choice at all. So the feeling tone, know, just talking about these five hindrances. The feeling tone of desire, There’s a sense of being drawn toward an object. The object that appears attractive, alluring. And there’s a movement toward it.
The object appears extremely desirable. It’s like saying, come to me. I could bring you complete contentment. I could satisfy you completely. So at that moment our discrimination is not operating.
We overlook the faults of the object as if it only had desirable qualities. So with hatred there’s aversion, there’s anger, there’s a sense of revenge, there’s wanting to destroy. We want to get rid of this object, remove it permanently from our territory. This way of thinking gives us some kind of temporary direction in our life. It’s very exciting to be angry.
We feel very alive, sharp, clear. Maybe there’s some kind of self righteousness and there’s no tolerance. We want to hurt the object. At that moment we are unable to discriminate and we see only the undesirable, the negative quality of the object. The mind is out of balance.
So that’s the first two of the five hindrances. The remaining three hindrances are more subtle. They are worrying. Desire and hatred are quite exciting emotions, but the rest of them, you know, like doubt and indecision. They’re uninteresting.
So they’re more difficult to see, to become aware of. With restlessness and anxiety, there’s mental and physical agitation. You want to get up and do something, stop meditating. You want to go somewhere. And the mind wants to be somewhere other than where it is now.
There’s a feeling that you must cease what you’re doing and move on to something else. So there’s this all this, there’s a sense of impulsive shifting, restlessness and anxiety. Sloth and torpor, the mind is bored with its object. The object is not interested, it’s not stimulated. There’s a slight lack of clarity and this slight lack of clarity leads to fuzziness.
This fuzziness leads to cloudiness. This cloudiness leads to stupor. This stupor leads to sleep. And our meditation is finished. Then with doubt and indecision.
The doubting mind is continually churning out questions and doubts. Am I doing it right? Is this the right meditation? Maybe I should be in another tradition. Maybe can women become enlightened?
Can men become enlightened? Maybe I should try Zen Buddhism. Maybe I should go back to Christianity. Wonder what may be the best thing for me to do now. Continue to always churn out an industry of questions and a desire to know the answer.
And even when you come up with an answer, the doubting mind says, yes but or only but maybe if it so another question arises. In this state of doubt, state of question, there’s no satisfying answer, there’s no answer which could ever turn it off like a water tap. Just in this stream of questions no matter how many answers we come up with. Just more questions. All these unresolved conflicts about not being able to decide.
So now, having described these five hindrances, now we’re going to look at the antidotes, the way to work through them. Briefly, the methods for working with these five hindrances. The first method is to recognize the hindrances as hindrances. Recognize the hindrances as hindrances. They are only hindrances, desire, hatred, etcetera.
They are only hindrances if we recognize them as such, if we recognize that they obstruct learning, that they obstruct growth, that they obstruct raising the level of our consciousness, of our awareness. They obstruct our ability to see deeply and to respond lovingly with creative energy. That is to say, there is a path which leads to a more fulfilling, authentic, self validating way of being. And these states, these patterns obstruct moving along that path, traveling along that road, the spiritual methods. If a storm came up and blew down a tree over the only road leading from your house, you may and you didn’t particularly want to go out that day anyway.
Might go out of curiosity you go outside and look at the tree and marvel at the power of nature, how what a shame it is that this beautiful old tree was blown down. But it it wouldn’t be any obstruction to you. If you have nowhere to go, there’s nothing that can stop you, you know, you if you don’t want to go anywhere. But if you wanted to if you had to go to work, if you had to go to a concert that night, then you’d find some way to clear that tree on the road. You would see this as an obstruction from you, preventing you from attaining your goal.
If we don’t have any goal, then there’s nothing stopping us from getting there. Likewise, if we don’t see that there’s something to be with the potential of the mind, that there’s somewhere to go, that there’s something that we can achieve, a more satisfying, fulfilling, meaningful way of life. And these aren’t obstructions, they’re not hindrances. They’re just who we are. In order to recognize these hindrances as hindrances, we must deeply appreciate the potential of our own mind.
And that it is through meditation that our potential is most directly actualized. Then they become obstruction. Then we recognize them as such, we identify them as hindrances. The nature of the mind is clear and knowing, clear and knowing, clarity and knowing. Within the mind there are, at present, reoccurring patterns.
Desire, hatred are reoccurring patterns. They’re habitual mental ways of reacting to conditions, habitual mental ways of reacting to specific conditions. So is love, so is compassion. So some bring suffering, some of these types of patterns. Some bring confusion, some others bring happiness, clarity.
But the mind in itself is pure. None of these afflictive emotions, none of these patterns, these reoccurring ways of reacting are in the nature of the mind. The mind has no inherent qualities, only primary characteristics, the primary characteristic of clarity and knowing. This is what we mean by Buddha nature, The dynamic open quality of the mind, its changeability, that we’re not stuck. That is anger, desire, whatever it might be, is not an inherent quality about ourselves.
It is simply an adventitious, temporary quality of our mind. It is not in the nature of the mind itself. It’s like a pollutant in water. We can make no matter how much garbage surrounds a molecule of H2O, if we can make use of some kind of method to filter it out, we’re left with crystal clear pure water. The integrity of the water has remained unchanged, that somehow the pollutants were only temporary, obstruction to the purity of the water.
All of these very afflictive emotions, these hindrances are not within the nature of the mind themselves. The nature of the mind is clarity and knowing. The nature of a Buddha’s mind is clarity and knowing. The nature of our mind, the nature of a Buddha’s mind are the same, clarity and knowing. But we aren’t Buddhas.
What’s the difference between ourselves and Buddha? Now Buddha is an individual who has removed all the destructive and unskillful states from their mind, unskillful reactive pattern, and has developed fully all of the constructive, skillful pattern. That’s the only difference, nothing more than that. So the point in talking about Buddha nature is that it as if we have some clay, is the working basis for transformation. And out of this clay, according to our skill, according to our talents, according to our effort, according to our methods, we can make out of this stuff of the mind a sculpture of Michelangelo or Rodin or we can make an ashtray out of it.
It’s open, it’s dynamic. It doesn’t inherently have any quality which predetermines what it can become. And this is what we have, this potential, the stuff of our mind. Where there is mind there is Buddha nature. That is to say the stuff out of which a happy, loving, healthy, sane human being can be made out like the seed of Buddhahood, the seed of mental health.
However, you might conceive of yourself, the potential to develop the compassion and wisdom of a Dalai Lama, of a Mother Teresa, of a Christ, of Lao Tse are within you. It’s not as if these people had some kind of spiritual molecule in their brain. We have only a few and they have lots of them. And therefore this is the reason that they are the way they are or the way they were. Somewhere along the line they made a choice and it depends upon that consistent choice and taking a direction, they became who they were for no other reason than that.
It wasn’t as if we would like to forgive ourselves, we would like to avoid taking up the difficult task of transforming our mind and remain victims when in fact it is in our own hands, our destiny. You know what we do now is what we’re going to become. Know making this consistent choice of becoming the type of person that you want to be. And that you have this power and that you have the basis for transformation. As I say, our only limitations are those that we acknowledge and you know we are perpetually grasping at and holding on to some type of inferior but familiar identity because it’s familiar.
We hold on to it. We’re continually limiting ourselves to at best a few superficial pleasures. As I mentioned at the beginning of the session, the overall quality of our life, one of weariness and dissatisfaction. When in fact our lives could be filled with meaning, with peace. We have fairly consistently made the wrong choices in our lives.
We have chosen to live in a world of ego’s fantasies, to identify with desire, to identify with hatred, all of these afflicted emotions, these five hindrances, are delusions, and to operate our relationships with the world on the basis of self centeredness. And that’s the reason we are where we are now. It makes sense. It couldn’t have been any other way. Our history, we are an expression of everything that we’ve done up to now.
It is no accident that we find ourselves with our present mentality, with our present situation, our present difficulty. in dependence upon specific variables, have arrived now. And what we have done is who we are now. And it has been our responsibility. But then too, is our future.
You know where has, again I guess maybe I’m repeating myself, but where has all our selfishness, where has it gotten us? You know all our worrying, all our struggling to accumulate, to possess, to manipulate, you know, all of our greed, all of our anger. All of these we did all of these because we conceived them that they would bring us happiness, that they were a means to find what it is we thought was worthwhile. Everything we do is dedicated to one end. However we may conceive of happiness, that’s what we dedicate our lives.
We each have our different conceptions about what happiness, what form it might take, but all our actions are dedicated to that one end, happiness. Some people give up sex to find happiness, some people have as much sex as possible to find happiness, some people become vegetarians to find happiness, some people eat lots of meat to find happiness, some people become nurses, teachers, doctors, factory workers, prostitutes, criminals in order to find happiness. Some people try as best they can not to do anything in order to find happiness. But all of it dedicated to finding happiness. So looking at our lives in terms of what are the dominant themes within our life.
Have we found fulfillment, contentment? What attitudes have been associated with the most satisfying moments of our life? What attitudes have been associated with the most painful moments of our life? So we must see for ourselves whether desire, hatred, restlessness and worry, sloth and torpor, doubt and indecisiveness are of any use to us, have brought us an iota of happiness in general. And in particular, how they interfere with the process of meditation.
That is the process of transformation. Have any of the small and great goals that we set for ourselves brought the happiness that we expected? Our spouse, our children, getting various degrees, university, our house, our job, our travel, possessions, All of these good things of life without the correct attitude are meaningless. More than just meaningless, without the correct attitude they can just become sources of dissatisfaction and frustration and difficulty, of disappointment. Simply complicating factors in an already complicated life.
To develop a good motive, to develop wholesome skillful states of mind, to transform our mind is the purpose of meditation. You know without changing our minds, quality of our life is not going to improve. It’s not that things are going to get any better than they have up to now. On the contrary, the quality of our life is probably going to worsen Because now we have to confront deteriorations of our own bodies and minds, something we haven’t had to face up to now. We have to begin to confront the issues of the death of our parents and loved ones.
And ultimately, we have to begin to confront the issue, the prospects of our own death. These are things that we have to look forward to. Ultimately, we have to transform our mind if we are ever going to find any real happiness, real peace. Begin to actualize our potential. And the most effective way to do this is meditation.
And to meditate effectively we need to remove these five hindrances. These are obstacles to our meditation, to our transformation, and therefore to our happiness. But even temporally, we’re not going to be able to experience the peace of meditation or the relaxation and contentment, just in general, if our minds are dominated by these five hindrances. Just one last quotation. Buddhism says the giving up is the seen.
The giving up is the seen. If you do not naturally drop your stupid assumptions, that is because you have not if you do not naturally drop your stupid assumptions, that is because you have not really understood their stupidity. Or perhaps you have seen it once, but the insight has lost its force and old habits have reasserted themselves. How could you cling to what you know to be false or worthless? If you treasured a ring that you had found in the belief that it was valuable and then you discovered that it is actually valueless, a valueless imitation, could you continue to feel about it in the same way?
Of course not. In the moment of knowledge comes a change of attitude and with it a shift in how you behave. So this is an important point, that diagnosis is the first step in intervention. And if we think deeply about the afflictive emotions in general, and in particular these five hindrances, We will simply no longer put up with them. The knowledge becomes the power to change our mind, to transform ourselves.
To see for yourself, to understand for yourself is the way to transform your mind. It is power over your own mind. By seeing, we will be motivated to put forth the effort to deal, to deal with these five hindrances and seeing them as obstacles to our ultimate and temporal happiness. So this is the first method of dealing with the five hindrances, recognizing the hindrances as hindrances. Now if you see them as the very first step, whatever the afflictive emotions might be, is to see that it is destructive in your life, whether it’s hatred, whether it’s pride, jealousy, miserliness, whatever it might be.
If you want to quit smoking, you have to see very clearly how it’s destructive for you. Then the natural sanity of the mind empowers you to overcome, as a source of energy to break out of that habitual pattern. Otherwise, if it simply remains on the level of intellect, then the mind simply isn’t strong enough to overcome. Or even if it were for a short time, you’re going to revert back to old patterns, habits. To see very deeply, it’s just like saying we are intelligent sane people, we have a great deal of wisdom if we make use of it.
And enlisting that wisdom on our behalf as a means for transformation, becoming whatever it is that we choose. The gaining of enlightenment is not a matter of will, it’s a matter of wisdom, of insight. We can’t otherwise, we’ll do violence to ourselves for no real benefit. We won’t achieve anything. Only the perpetuation of unskillful patterns, you know, which have governed our lives up to now.
I’m going stop there. That’s the first method. There are to be a few more ways that we can work with the hindrances. These hindrances and working with all the various types of afflictive emotions is the first step, to see the disadvantages very deeply within your own experience. How it hurts you, how it hurts others, whatever it takes, what the actual situation is.
And then we’ll change, that knowledge is transformation, that learning is the changing. There’s not something other than that. Anybody have thoughts or questions or maybe you’d like to share? Okay. So we dedicate the positive energy that we create.
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 awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more.