Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a group exercise in motivation — inviting students to surface what genuinely matters to them before extending that care outward to others. He then introduces the tantric concept of divine pride through an unexpected parallel: a “miracle question” technique borrowed from family therapy, in which imagining a perfect overnight transformation helps locate solutions without ever diagnosing the underlying problem. A guided meditation follows, walking students through admiring qualities in others, claiming those qualities as their own, transforming negatives into their positive counterparts, and picturing who they want to be in five years. The second half turns to doctrinal overview, explaining the two vehicles — lesser and universal — their four associated tenet systems, and the central motivational distinction between practitioners seeking personal liberation as a foe destroyer and bodhisattvas aiming at omniscience in order to benefit all beings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 OtE 1992 03 18.mp3
UUID: 52aecaa4-c7a6-4dec-8e66-e7ea471eaf04
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Opening the Eye of New Awareness 1991-1992 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-03-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~3,644
What should we do? Should we talk about it? Discuss it? I just have motivation. How would you adjust the motivation, yeah?
Yeah. How would you go then? Sounds good. How would you go about doing that? Our motivation.
Our motivation, help us to adjust our motivation. And how would you go about doing that? What would be some of the reasons that you might hear? Okay. That sounds great.
So we pause a moment and reflect upon why we’re here and what we’re doing and what we’re about. We create the space and the time to get in touch with ourselves and some of our more central values. What is important to me is a very unique individual. What is important to me? What has brought meaning to my life?
Satisfaction, fulfillment, whatever we value most. There’s a variety of experiences that we’ve had over the course of our lives. And we don’t want to suffer anymore, but still we suffer. So we have to begin to use our intelligence, basic sanity, to begin to evolve new solutions to old problems perhaps. We all want to be happy, we’re all exactly alike.
No one wants to suffer, there’s no difference between myself and anyone in this room. And what’s so special about myself that I’m only concerned about this one individual. And if I can find a way, if I can find a viewpoint, a world view, a way of relating, a way of approaching my life that I can bring happiness to others and to myself simultaneously, this seems like the optimum mode of being, the best of all possibilities, I would think. It seems it’s not only plausible, but it seems as if it is the only way to actually find real happiness. As social beings, to take into consideration others beyond self isolating patterns and begin to open up to a larger vision of what it means to be a successful person, what it means to have a meaningful life.
And if we’re going to be able to not only respond to ourselves but to take responsibility for others, then we have to be able to respond to their needs also. And so the taking of responsibility entails the necessity to be able to respond, and this entails that we necessarily have to grow, grow not only for ourselves, but able to meet the needs of others. To that same degree that we take responsibility and live up to meeting the needs of others, to that same degree we’re going to have to develop ourselves. We’re going to have to begin to express and cultivate our basic sanity and our Buddha nature, in our life. If we don’t need that, then we won’t achieve that.
Necessity is the mother of invention. When it becomes necessary, it will be there. So we have to cultivate this sense of necessity. That change and growth takes place is interpersonal, it’s not interpsychic. It’s something which evolves in relationships, a social phenomenon.
So taking the time to reflect upon our own needs but extending that understanding to others. Though we have superficial differences, differences in sex and age and education, whatever, these are fairly superficial considering some of the basic existential problems that what it means to be an ordinary person, what it involves, that we are confronted every day of our life whether we’re sensitive to them, whether we’re aware of them or not. That we’re all very much alike in that fact. The fact that ordinary ego based existence is dissatisfactory for anyone. And I guess to share in that suffering, that difficulty with others.
And then out of that developing the determination to be able to respond. Beginning with oneself, developing compassion, the caring sense for oneself, and then extending that to others. And this is the context, you know, this is the environment in which our problems can be solved and we can begin to work with specific methods, use our knowledge, intelligence, use information techniques, methods to actually change our mind. This is kind of the milieu in which all of this process is operating. A sense of determination to respond, being able to respond to the needs of not only myself and others.
And taking that responsibility and knowing that you have to develop yourself to grow. And the Buddha within ourselves becomes the central focus of our lives. And Buddha is actualized, that is to say that our basic sanity, our love and compassion, that we become healthy, loving, sane human beings through the truth. We call that the Dharma, but whatever it might be, whatever form it might come in, we have to be alert, not to let it pass, not to miss it. And this has been emphasized, it’s all done within the social context of the spiritual community.
Interdependence, the sangha, is sort of an environment of questioning and sanity where the best of us is made available, is fostered, is allowed to develop, is called upon by others, is asked for, is demanded. And living up to the needs of others, living up to the call of others, living up to all that we can be. And we raise to elevate our own motivation for actualizing our wisdom and our love and our spontaneous energy such that we’re going to take whatever has been said, what will be said tonight, if anything of any value. Not only for my own benefit but for the benefit of everyone. Equally.
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 the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merits that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. 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 the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. So begin with mindfulness of breathing and then we’ll do a meditation on perhaps adjusting our self image of our self. The self image that we have of our self is very much of course depending upon the quality, for most of us is quite a limiting factor in our life. And so very much of Tantra, the practice of Tantra is developing a sense of divine pride. We can imagine maybe a miracle happened last night and somehow we’ve or they it’s like someone comes to your door and says, There’s been a mistake at the hospital when you were born.
They took the wrong baby at home, actually you’re the next in line to become the King of England. There was a mistake made. And actually you have royal lineage, you’re ahead of Prince Charles actually, something like that. Oh, there’s been a mistake there, I thought I was just an ordinary, limited, clumsy. The idea of tantra is to overcome our sense of ordinariness, that everything, including ourselves, is somehow filled with potentiality and mystery.
It isn’t as solid and limited as it appears to us. And we ourselves are divine beings. I it’s quite interesting, I’m going off on a tangent, I was reading some material on I think most of you know that I’ve been doing some training in family therapy and they were talking about working with the client. One of the methods they use is called, well, how would things be different if a miracle happened last night and everything is exactly how you would like it to be. How would that day be?
How would you experience that? And the idea is maybe you don’t know what the problem is, but you can find solutions without ever knowing the problem. Never knowing the cause of the problem, we can find solutions. And this is very much what Tantra is about. We imagine ourselves to be divine beings and we begin to live up to that.
We never quite knew what our problem was, why we were so limited in ordinary, but maybe it’s not important to know if we’re successful, if we find solutions, maybe we never have to know the problem. So beginning to adjust your self identity, who you conceive yourself to be, you know, this is facilitated if you understand selflessness. I think it makes your ego boundary, your ego identity a little more permeable. You don’t have such a rigid fixation on this way, and I’ve always been this way. And this is what selflessness allows.
When one goes into a state of selflessness there is like an open fluid state. Otherwise it becomes like putting dolls clothes on your ego. You just dress it up in different soldiers costume, or a chef’s costume, sailors costume. It’s the same old ego, it’s just different appearances. But if you can, in the context of some understanding of selflessness, understanding that I don’t have a permanent unchanging identity, maybe your identity becomes more like clay, it’s more workable, it’s more fluid.
And then imagining yourself as various individuals with various potentialities and identities can facilitate actually drawing forth those qualities, one can actually begin to identify and express those. And one experiences a change perhaps in personality and the world changes. So if we take a comfortable firm posture, we’ll begin with mindfulness of breathing and then we’ll go through a meditation. Beginning with mindfulness of breathing if it’s useful using techniques of counting and noting. Let’s begin by thinking of someone that you admire.
Begin with a female, a female that you respect a great deal. What is it about them, what characteristic, what quality do you admire so much? Then imagine that you yourself have that same exact quality, that same characteristic that you admire in this other person. Imagine a situation where you express that newfound quality. And you in turn are admired and respected by others.
So play a role, take upon yourself this quality and express it in some situation. Now think of a male that you respect, that you admire, And what is it about them that you respect, admire, similar quality, with characteristics. And again, imagine that you yourself have that same exact quality and express it in a situation where you are admired and respected by others in the same way. Then think of something that you don’t like about yourself, some quality, something negative that you see within yourself. Now imagine that you have the exact opposite, the counterpart of the negative, the positive aspect.
Imagine, play a role in a situation where you express this fully developed positive counterpart. Now think of something that you actually like about yourself, a positive quality that you see in yourself, that you respect about yourself. Now imagine that quality is even more developed, completely developed. A wonderful positive quality fully developed about yourself. Now think of a significant female in your life.
And what do they admire about you most? What quality is it that they respect about you? And imagine that quality even developed more, completely developed, fully blown. Express it in a situation playing a role that fully develops significant quality. And think of a significant male in your life.
What do they respect about you most? What quality about you do they admire so very much? And then imagine a situation where you express that quality but if it’s even more developed, fully developed. And then finally, what kind of person would you like to be five years from now? What qualities would you have liked to have developed?
What would you like to be like? Now imagine a miracle has taken place. When the bell rings you will be that person. With all those qualities that you desire. I have a cold.
Thought I wouldn’t after five years from now. We’ve been talking about the three higher trainings: higher training in ethics, higher training in meditative stabilization, and then finally, in dependence upon that, higher training in wisdom, special training in wisdom. So these are how we’re going to practice. And then in the next chapter, His Holiness the Dalai Lama takes up, how to proceed on the great and small vehicle paths. It depends upon these three trainings.
So this is like the activities that we’re involving ourselves in. We’re involving ourselves in different types of ethics depending upon our motivation, depending upon our goals, different types of meditative stabilizations and different methods of attaining wisdom, the type of wisdom depending again on the goal we’re seeking to attain. So how are we going to proceed on the great and small vehicle paths in dependence upon these three trainings? And this may be, I don’t know, a little bit academic, I don’t know. Maybe we can make it a little bit interesting together.
One of the things that it does do, it does give a sense of confidence that this entire path from where we are now as seemingly ordinary beings up to Buddhahood or whatever our spiritual life is, is very well laid out. There’s nothing missing, there’s no point where there’s some doubt or confusion that could take place. It’s very clearly, methodically laid out based upon reason, based upon logic, based upon other people’s experiences, how they traversed the path. And so when one begins to see how such minute detail, and it is laid out in great detail, it gives a sense that Wow, there’s something there, there’s something very substantial, something real. Mean people have worked on this and have experienced it and set it out what their experience was very clearly and for all to see and for all to make use of.
So it gives one sense of confidence that there is something there to be done and it can be achieved. It’s not just some kind of pie in the sky, a new age fad which will be gone tomorrow. That is something really substantial. It’s been worked out over thousands of years. So we’re going to be talking about the vehicles.
Buddhism teaches two vehicles of practice. Practice is the activities that we involve ourselves in in order to transform our mind. Essentially that’s what it means to travel the path, to go from where we’re at now to where we want to get to. It involves change in our mind in some way, removing certain obstacles, hindrances within our mind and developing certain qualities, understanding. These vehicles, there’s the lesser vehicle in Sanskrit called hinayana and the greater vehicle.
I like the word universal vehicle. So sometimes when I translate I’ve been using that universal vehicle, but generally it’s called the greater vehicle, mahayana, great vehicle. So the Sanskrit, if we just look at this, what we mean by vehicle, to give you some background. Vehicle in Sanskrit means yana. Yana.
So You means to go and na means the way of proceeding. So how are we to proceed on our going is yana. And as we say, we are going by a vehicle. We are going to proceed by means of a vehicle, something that’s going to take us there. Like getting into a car.
There’s a great car and a little car. You can have a choice. But anyway, however you’re going, depending upon where you want to get to. And then within there have been taught various tenet systems or systems of philosophy which are associated with the lesser vehicle, and I’m going to call it the universal vehicle. Universal, it will become clear what we mean by these terms.
So there are four tenet systems or systems of philosophy that the Buddha set forth. He didn’t teach these tenets. His later students formulated, categorized his teachings into four systematic categories of teachings. And these became associated with the two different vehicles, lesser vehicle and universal vehicle. Generally the lesser vehicle is associated with what is called the great exposition school and the sūtra school.
The universal vehicle is associated with the tenets of the philosophic system, what is called the mind only school and the middle way school. All four of these tenet systems set forth and I hope we don’t get too confused here, three vehicles. So we have these two overall vehicles, methods of getting to a goal of spiritual life however we can see with it. It depends upon our motivation. The lesser vehicle and universal vehicle.
And then these have different schools which are teaching the methods, the techniques, the theories, how to go about achieving the goal of each of these two different vehicles because they have different goals and they have different motivations. But even within these schools, these tenet systems, each of them teaches three vehicles. So sometimes you hear two vehicles, three vehicles, four vehicles. So it gets rather confusing. The three vehicles they’re setting forth on, the vehicle of the hearer, the solitary realizer, and the bodhisattva vehicle.
So when we talk about lesser vehicle, we talk about for example the great exposition school. There are eighteen sub schools of the great exposition school. One of these is Theravadin Buddhism, a type of Buddhism which is mainly practiced in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, parts of Vietnam. That is one of the eighteen sub schools of the Great Exposition School, which is a part of the lesser vehicle. Set forth, that is even in Theravadin Buddhism, they set forth three vehicles.
A hearer’s vehicle, a solitary realizer vehicle, and also they set forth a bodhisattva vehicle. And they don’t talk much about that. Maybe it will become clear why they don’t talk much about that. So each tenet system is setting out what is called three vehicles. A hearer’s vehicle, solitary realizer vehicle, bodhisattva vehicle.
So in the lesser vehicle we are taught that instead of Buddhahood, the path of the hearer and the solitary realizer is seeking to attain the state of a foe destroyer, an arahat. So the path here or a solitary realizer is not trying to attain Buddhahood. They are trying to attain the state of a foe destroyer. And this can be attained in the quickest in three lifetimes by the fastest methods. They aim to be a foe destroyer.
There is a foe which needs to be destroyed. There is something which is obstructing our liberation and these are the afflictive emotions. So a foe destroyer(s) or an arhat is someone who has destroyed the foe, someone who has destroyed the afflictive emotions in the mind or these various distress patterns which obstruct liberation. For example, desire, hatred, attachment, miserliness, jealousy, These are all afflictive emotions. These obstruct one from liberation.
They bind one from cyclic existence. They disturb the natural peace of the mind. So these are what they are trying to get rid of. This is what they are trying to destroy. Once they destroy this, the object of their spiritual life, they have destroyed the foe and they attain the goal of the hearer’s vehicle or solitary realizer vehicle.
But the enemy, the foe of the great vehicle is not the obstructions to liberation. Their foe is the obstructionist to omniscience. So they they have a different goal. The bodhisattva vehicle on the one hand and the hearer and solitary realizer vehicle on the other. These two are seeking to attain liberation for themselves alone.
The bodhisattva is seeking to attain omniscience, Buddhahood, for the sake of all sentient beings. So their motivation is quite different and this is the basis for distinguishing the lesser and the greater vehicle. Even though they are associated with different tenets, the main use of the term lesser and universal vehicle is in terms of motivation. If an individual is seeking the basis of one’s spiritual life is to attain freedom and happiness for oneself, then this is considered a lesser vehicle motivation than one is a lesser vehicle practitioner by way of path. If one is seeking to become a healthy person, a Buddha, for the sake of others, based upon altruism, based upon the awakening heart, then one is a practitioner of the universal vehicle by way of path.
They may use other’s different techniques, theories, tenets, but by way of path, by way of motivation, this distinction is made. So the bodhisattva sees his obstacle not as the obstruction to liberation, that is to say the afflictive emotion, but the obstructions to omniscience. Because it is at omniscience that we could be in the best position to respond to the needs of others. And obviously an omniscient person would know exactly where another person was, what was needed at the right moment, at the right time, in the right way. They would have all of this knowledge, this information at hand.
And therefore they could be most skilled in bringing about this person’s liberation. So this is what the bodhisattva wants. This bodhisattva is developing him or herself in order to help others. Therefore he wants to be in the best position to have the most skills to be able to apply the methods most skillfully. And therefore to that end it’s said that omniscience is necessary.
So anything which stops him from omniscience is his foe and he wants to destroy it because he wants to go on or she wants to go on to attain that state where being optimally able to be in benefiting others. Is that clear so far?