Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The session opens with a guided loving-kindness meditation — Ven Jampa Gendun leads participants through forgiving a difficult person, then extends goodwill outward from Adelaide to all of infinite space. In this 38-minute talk, he turns to Tsongkhapa’s Three Fundamentals of the Path, focusing on the awakening mind as a practical necessity rather than a philosophical exercise. He identifies two root errors — self-centeredness and self-grasping — and frames the path as two wings: compassion and the wisdom of emptiness. He surveys the four Buddhist tenet systems as a ladder toward understanding emptiness, then works through the Hearer stage’s analysis of self, using a rope-mistaken-for-a-snake analogy to distinguish a mistaken unitary, unchanging, independent self from the conventional self that genuinely exists. The session closes with a Lama Yeshe passage on why dedication is not mere ritual.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 HoM 1993 07 28.mp3
UUID: 08b80aed-49e2-496a-919d-f9a8ad22954e
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-07-28
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 38.0 minutes
Words: ~3,700
Imagine that person in front of you. This person wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. And perhaps their way of going about finding their happiness, solving their problems, has come with conflict with your methods of finding your happiness, solving your problems. It’s just a conflict of self interest. You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally to find the happiness that you were looking for.
Perhaps this person has done the same to you. It just says that you have to begin to forgive yourself for the mistakes that you’ve made. You have to try to begin to forgive this person. So just for this present moment, set aside your hurt, your grudge, your anger, and try to see someone very much like yourself, doing the best they can to get some happiness out of life, oftentimes being very confused about how to go about it, and making many mistakes along the way. And out of the richness of your heart, wish them happiness just as you would for yourself.
Now, think of these four people together, yourself and these three others. Though they appear very differently to you, though you have different feelings for each one of them, Essentially, they all want to be happy. Essentially, none of them want to suffer exactly alike. No difference. Behind those eyes, no matter what the superficial appearances may be, is a being who wants to be happy, who doesn’t want to suffer exactly the same.
Without any bias, just try to radiate it out a wish of well-being and happiness to all four equally. And all the people in this room, people who are trying to take responsibility for their lives, trying to grow, wish them that they find whatever it is they’re looking for. Peace, love, realization, whatever might make them happy. Wish that they had it. Wish everyone in the room happiness and well-being.
Extending out this wish to all of Fullarton, people in their homes, reading, eating, cooking, watching the television. Everything they do, everything they say, they hope it’s going to bring them happiness. They hope it’s going to solve their problem. Wish them that happiness. Extending this wish out further and further to all of Adelaide, all the people in the cars and buses, on the streets, in the shops and offices, their home.
Further and further, extending this wish out to all of South Australia, all the people, animals, insects. Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, the entire country. New Zealand, northward Indonesia, the entire southern hemisphere. Taking the entire world into your heart, all the people, black, white, red, yellow, all the animals, all the insects. Everything that lives on the earth is touched by your wish, that they’d be happy, that they’d not suffer. And radiating out in all the directions of space.
Further and further without any sense of limits or limits or limitations. Until finally, without any boundaries, without any center, pervading all of infinite space. I wish that may all be happy. May all things be happy. May there be peace.
Then bring your mind back to the breath. And slowly, in your own good time, becoming aware of your body, your surroundings, very gently in a relaxed manner. We’re looking at a very short text, which is called The Three Fundamentals of the Path by the fourteenth century scholar Yogi Tsongkhapa. In this picture about the image of the Buddha, the very central image is a representation of Tsongkhapa, The three fundamentals of the path: the determination to be free, the awakening heart, and the correct view. And we began to discuss the third of these three principles or fundamentals of the path, the awakening mind.
The central assertion of Buddhism is that we are all living our lives on the basis of mistakes, what we call epistemological errors. Epistemology is the rules that we make use of to make sense of our world. Some of our rules are mistaken. They’re dysfunctional. They’re pathological.
They don’t work. They bring us suffering, dissatisfaction, disappointment. To a large extent, we haven’t spotted these mistakes and therefore, we continue to repeat them. We have all had the experiences, but we continually miss or dismiss the lesson. We don’t need any more suffering.
We’ve had enough. And if Buddhism does anything, it just helps us to spot the mistakes. So, we don’t keep repeating them. We don’t repeat our history again and again and again in this continual cyclic manner. These patterns played out again and again and again, the same mistakes, the same themes of dissatisfaction.
We all grew up with models of the world in which we put our trust, yet which in countless ways are false, which in countless ways they don’t work in our own self best interests. I don’t think this is a bitter or cynical look at life. I think it’s a critique on a particular approach. Think one of the most fundamental doctrines of Buddhism is that we’re all going to be Buddhas one day. We’re all going to be a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being someday.
But it comes down to just a matter of when. I think that’s optimistic or that’s the reality of our situation. So, you know, we have to become disillusioned. We all live our lives on the basis of varying levels of illusion, and we’re trying to become disillusioned. Disillusioned with our presently dysfunctional approach to this thing called life.
You know, life Buddhism has great faith in the goodness of ourselves and the goodness of life, to the extent that someday we’re all going to be Buddhas, and we’re all going to experience unremitting peace. It’s just a matter of when. So trying to help us to spot our mistakes, to go beyond these dissatisfactory cycles of existence, to help us to develop more productive attitudes, patterns, and then finally to go beyond all views, patterns, modes of existence altogether, to exist within spontaneity and freedom and joy. One of the most basic of these, the two most basic epistemological errors upon which we are leading our lives, are based upon our sets of ideas, core assumptions, premises.
The two most fundamental mistaken premises upon which we are basing our way of being upon is self centeredness and self grasping. Self centeredness is the seeking of happiness for oneself alone at the exclusion and expense of others. We see this as an effective context in which to get the goodness of life for ourselves and it doesn’t work. It’s self defeating, but we haven’t seen that as of yet. It still is the basic premise upon which we deal with the world, our relationships to it.
We haven’t seen. It’s flawed that it doesn’t work. It’s not in our self best interest and therefore we suffer. The other fundamental, epistemological error, the wrong dysfunctional rules by which we are living our life through is self grasping, a misconception as to the nature of the self, the nature of the things about us. This leads to the awakening mind.
Without developing the awakening mind, then no matter how much love, how much compassion, how sincerely we may wish to alleviate the sufferings of both ourselves and others, At best, we can only make a suffering situation a little more comfortable. We can never eradicate from its root the causes of suffering, which is ignorance, misconception, a wrong premise, mistaken beliefs. Now, we have to develop the awakening mind, the wisdom of understanding emptiness in order to remove If we’re going to try to live out the bodhisattva idea of freeing all living beings from suffering. Otherwise, it’s simply a sublime ethic, but it is a futile pursuit. If we’re ever going to ultimately solve our own problems as well as be in the most optimum position to be able to help others to solve theirs, we have to develop the awakening mind.
We have to realize emptiness. It’s something it’s not merely an academic pursuit, something which is philosophically interesting but of no practical use. It’s a practical necessity. It’s one of the two wings of this bird. By means of which we can The two wings of the awakening heart, love and compassion, and the awakening mind, the realization of emptiness.
By means of which we can fly across the sea of sorrows and lead others to the shore of peace on the other side. So we’re looking at the way of actually developing an awakening mind, this realization of dependent arising of emptiness. So let’s see. Are within Buddhism four overall schools of thought or tenet systems. Great Exposition School, Sūtra School, Mind Only School, Middle Way School.
You know, the Buddha taught in keeping with the capacities, the disposition, whatever would be of use to a particular student at a particular time, at their particular spot on their journey, where they were at. He didn’t give the same teaching to everyone. So his teachings were later systematized and they were organized into these four schools. He didn’t teach these four schools, but his teachings were organized, systematized into these four tenet systems. Because of their similarities, the first two of these tenet systems, Great Exposition and Sūtra Schools, in coming to an understanding of emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality, are combined into a single stage.
We call that the hearer stage. Then, with respect to the middle way tenet system or school, because of some differences within that school, the middle way school is divided into two stages. Autonomy middle way stage and the Consequentialist Middle Way stage. An intermediate in subtlety as to the presentation of the ultimate nature of reality, There’s the mind only stage. So we’re working through four stages.
It’s like climbing a ladder, coming to an understanding of a very profound subject, beginning with the simple principles and then working our way up the rungs of this ladder to come to the final thought of the Buddha as to the ultimate nature of reality, emptiness. We’re moving through four stages: hearer stage, mind only stage, autonomy middle way stage, Consequentialist Middle Way stage. So we began to look at the first of these four stages. The Hearer stage. And we said that at the Hearer stage, all phenomena, bodies, minds, tables, glasses of water, bells, people, houses, tables, pens, notebooks are taken to truly exist, that they exist the way they appear.
Even before, you know, one becomes one might enter into these stages of understanding. We are we have some view of reality. We quite naturally, we have a particular worldview. And our particular worldview, like most people’s, is probably a naive realist. This means that it’s an unquestioned acceptance that everything exists the way it appears.
To a great extent that’s where we’re at. And to some extent that’s where the hearer stage begins. Accepting all of these appearances, things that all of these matter is built up out of discrete indivisible particles, atoms. And that minds are composed of indivisible moments of consciousness. These are the it’s like fundamental building blocks of the universe.
It’s all constructed out of this stuff. And they accept that. They don’t question that. The only thing they begin to question is the nature of the self, the I, the person. Throughout this entire discussion, these are going to be These terms can be used interchangeably for our purposes.
I, self, person. They can present synonyms for all practical purposes. And we begin to ask the question, Well, who am I? To which we might answer, Well, who cares? And Buddhism would say, Well, it’s extremely important that you do care and that you do ask yourself this question because your ultimate happiness directly relies upon finding the answer to this question about who am I.
Know, Buddhism is not telling us that we shouldn’t believe in a self or that there is no self that we should not believe in. The Buddhist position is that when we look at the way that we suffer, when we look at the way that we think and respond to the world, when we look at the way that we respond emotionally to life, it is as if, it is as if we believed in a self that has a nature of being unitary, unchanging and independently existent. We all have beliefs. These beliefs are probably not conscious, but the belief is there. Why?
Because the way we respond emotionally to life, nature of our suffering, the way that we think is predicated, is indicative of a belief. And it is as if we believe, the way that we express, the way that we emotionally respond is as if we believed in a unitary, unchanging, independent self. And that upon analysis, when we look thoroughly in a very systematic, penetrative fashion, no such type of self can ever be found. It has never existed and will never exist. But we believe at the very basis of our being that it is there and our life is totally preoccupied with enhancing and protecting what is in fact the object of misconception, the object of a wrong belief.
But we haven’t discovered that as of now up to this point. And we continually make the same mistakes again and again and again. And it was just the I used the example that the fact of the analogy of walking along a path and seeing a snake. What is in fact a coil of striped rope. But because it’s dim, we perceive a snake and we generate fear and all of the emotions associated with that.
It may be repulsion, anger. But if we’re not afraid, if we’re willing to confront our fear and work through it, and we investigate the object of our fear, then we’re going to see that our perception was mistaken. And we’re going to see what is in fact appears to be a snake is merely a rope. Then we’re going to understand on the basis of that discovery that all the fear and all of the associated suffering which arose that we experience, arose in dependence upon attachment to something that was never there. Once we discover that it in fact is only a rope, then all of the tension, all of the anxiety, all of the fear dissolves of itself.
Its cause is gone. The cause of it was mental grasping at something that was never there. It was baseless. There was nothing rationally appropriate to be fearful of, to suffer from. But we didn’t perceive that.
It was only through using analysis, penetrating, examining and developing an understanding. Likewise with the self that we all perceive to exist and upon which we base our life, upon which we are totally preoccupied in serving, enhancing, protecting. We have that same misconception and we have to look, just as in the case of the snake, in a penetrative, analytic fashion, and see that all this suffering that we’re experiencing, all the anxieties, all this fear, that almost totally permeates our life, is rising on the basis of a misconception, just as in the case of the snake. Once we see that, then that tension, that fear and all the sufferings associated will dissolve themselves. The cause is gone.
The cause was in a mental grasping at something which has never existed, has never existed and will never exist. One of the most fundamental beliefs that we have is belief in a self. Let me preface that, okay? Because we’re going to be talking about selflessness. We can have three conceptions of a self.
One is conception of and remember we’re talking at a particular stage, the stage of a hearer, a hearer stage. We can have a conception of a unitary, unchanging, independent self. That’s what we’ve been talking about up to now. This arises under the influence of ignorance, misknowledge. That’s one conception we can have of self.
It’s a mistaken consciousness, mistaken conception. The second conception of self that we can have is a conception of an imputedly existent self. Imputedly existent self. We’re going to talk a lot about what we mean by imputedly existent when we come to the final highest most stage, the Consequentialist Middle Way stage. Imputedly existent means existing under the power of language and concepts, being designated, being labeled.
And like when a baby is born, let’s call it John, let’s call it Mary. in dependence upon being labeled, designated. John comes into existence, Mary comes into existence. Mary and John are dependent upon being named, upon language, upon concept. That’s what it means to be imputedly existent.
So we can have a conception of a self which is imputedly existent. This type of conception arises through wisdom, arises through investigation, analysis. It is a valid cognition arising through understanding the nature of the object, in this case the self. Third type of conception that we can have is our everyday common sense conception of self. Our non reflective sense of self, the sense of self which says, I’m going to the store, I want something.
I’m talking to you. The I which or the self which eats, which talks, which cries and laughs. And this is our common everyday unreflective, which is not the type of conception of self which does not arise under the influence of ignorance nor under the influence of wisdom. Conventional self, conventional conception, idea, sense of self. It’s a valid conception, I do exist.
So we can have these three conceptions. The reason I want to emphasize this because when we talk about selflessness a great deal and when we at this level of selflessness, when we say selfless, less means absence, something doesn’t exist. The self which doesn’t exist is not the conventional everyday common sense self which gives talks, which listens to teachings, which drinks water, which writes notes, which goes to work, raises kids. That self exists. We can’t deny what in fact exists.
It’s interesting. The nature of truth is that the closer that we come to it, the more we penetrate toward it, the more obvious it becomes, the more self evident. The nature of falsity is that the more we analyze it, the less distinct, the less obvious it becomes until it actually disappears. The self which is sitting here talking, the self which is listening exists. We can find such a self.
This is not the absence of the type of self we’re talking about. At this level of the hearer stage, that which is less in selflessness is a unitary, unchanging, independent self. That self doesn’t exist. It never has. This is what the type of self that we’re looking at here.
And we’re going to talk about each of those terms, what unitary means, what unchanging means, what independent means, that type of self. So we can come to an understanding that that self does not exist. This is what the self of selflessness means. It does not mean the conventionally existent self, the self which talks, which listens, which goes to work and takes care of the kids. So that should be kept in mind, that I exist, you exist.
We’re trying to under I’m trying to understand Buddhism. I’m trying to grow. That I exist, validly, can be understood, can be found. One of the I think I’m going to have to stop there. Just getting started.
Sorry about that. Okay. There’s a lot to talk about. I think it’s good to do slowly and then in detail and go over some of these ideas again and again. So we’ll dedicate the creative potential, the positive energy that we generated.
Maybe I’ll read the paragraph by Lama Yeshe on dedication. Just to put dedication in some kind of context to give us some kind of handle what dedication might be about. Lama Yeshe was the founder of the FPMT, which is the foundation for the preservation of the Mahāyāna tradition of which Buddha House is a member. He was the inspiration behind the founding of Buddha House itself when he came here to give a course about it’s been almost eleven years now when he came to Adelaide. Lama Yeshe says:.
Dedication is very important too. It’s not just unnecessary ritual or words. The meaning of dedication is that your meditation is not just for your own ego pleasure. You’re dedicating for other beings. That way you don’t become proud.
Often philosophically religious people are proud. Religion and philosophy can become equipment to produce more problems. So in Buddhism that is the reason for practicing dedication. It’s very useful. It’s not just a ritual.
Buddhism teaches you complete liberation, how to completely free the mind from any problem of worldly existence. If you have a problem of attachment to Buddhism or to Buddha, you are still deluded. You aren’t free. Buddhism tells you that you shouldn’t be attached to your own religion, to your own body, to your own nose. Simple, isn’t it?
So dedication is very useful. Normally, do dedicate our life, but in a limited way. Our goal is limited. That’s why in this dedication we dedicate all the merits of our meditation to benefit other sentient beings in order to discover enlightenment. So, the purpose of our meditation is not for only getting chocolate, not for only getting cake.
Our goal lies beyond that. That way it becomes the transcendental attitude. Okay? Thank you very much. Good night.
So, we’ll dedicate the creative potential that we’ve accumulated to something beyond our chocolate cake, something beyond our hopes and fears. I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being that enlightened realms 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 in all. So those of you who would like to remain for discussion group, you might like to get a cup of tea.
Thank you. Good night.