Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this brief 5-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a pointed challenge: how much of what Western culture treats as accepted truth is actually dysfunctional mental fabrication absorbed uncritically? He argues that genuine liberation demands the individual question inherited assumptions rather than defer to cultural conditioning. He then turns to the Buddhist concept of emptiness, carefully unpacking why standard translations — void, nothingness, blank — mislead: emptiness is not an absence of things but the quality of phenomena being free from conceptual overlay. The root concept to be dissolved, he explains, is the imputation of inherent existence — the projection that makes all phenomena problematic and fuels afflictive emotions. Pitched at practitioners with some grounding in Buddhist philosophy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 HoM 1993 11 03.mp3
UUID: 38b5af9e-603a-41f0-8dde-d703b81b15a0
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-11-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 5.2 minutes
Words: ~528
The the idea of true existence or independent existence, what a great part it has played in in in the history of of humankind, especially in terms of Western philosophy. You know, we aren’t divorced from these social consequences of these philosophies and these cultural influences, social influences. That they they they they become a part of our ways of thinking. And and we we it’s useful to become aware that a great deal of the current accepted truths out there aren’t necessarily truths. It does place a great deal of responsibility on the individual, doesn’t it, to question.
But, you know, it’s probably only through this process that we can be liberated from many dysfunctional views, which we have taken on, which have become part of our value system, basis of our beliefs and our ideas and assumptions about the world and ourselves, which have become dysfunctional and which aren’t working in our lives. Said I just wanted go a few more minutes on that. Śūnyatā. The word Śūnyatā has been variously translated as empty, void, nothing, or open. And the suffix ta can be translated as ness, n e s s.
Therefore, the straightforward translation of Śūnyatā would be emptiness, voidness, nothingness, or openness. However, one must, as always, be very careful when trying to understand a term such as this. The words empty, nothing, and especially void all convey the impression of a blank. Empty and void contrast with full. Nothing contrasts with something.
Again, are caught in thing thinking. All these terms convey to us the feeling that there was a blankness where there could have been things, objects, or perceptions. Such a contrast is not the intention of the word Śūnyatā. What is meant can be more readily understood if we ask empty of what? The answer is something like empty of concept, empty of mental fabrication or projection.
Śūnyatā then means the quality of being empty of mental fabrication. That is, it means what is free from concepts. Now, the concept that is the root of all other concepts, the most powerful and central mental imputation we make, is the concept of thingness or inherent existence. Emptiness is the very heart of Buddhism. So this is the most fundamental of conceptual overlays, superimpositions that we’re projecting onto all phenomena.
It is only upon this basis that phenomena, things, people, would have become problematic. All these dysfunctional patterns arise on the basis of this fundamental distorted awareness, which projects a way of existing, a fantasized way of existing continually on all phenomena. Upon this, a lot of wrong thinking misconception, afflictive emotions, and oppressive patterns. So we’ll continue looking at that next week. Is it making sense?
So we dedicate the positive energy that we have created together, its creative potential. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to that 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 So those of you who’d like to stay for discussion, you might