Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A Thomas Merton quotation opens this 46-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun: noble aspirations are like fine clothing — kept folded away, they rot. Gendun uses this to argue that the Tibetan word for meditation shares its root with “habituation”: teachings on love must be lived, not merely understood. He guides a meditation tracing awareness back through birth and prior lives, grounding the conviction that every being has at some point been our mother. The session then turns to the third step of a classical seven-step method for developing the awakening heart: remembering maternal kindness and wishing to repay it. Gendun examines why many resist — quoting a Tibetan lama that selfishness breeds constant paranoia about being controlled — and closes with the Dalai Lama’s reported experience of meeting every stranger as a long-lost friend.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 HoM 1993 03 10.mp3
UUID: 230a00ce-4367-48b0-b01c-fdb072915108
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-03-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.7 minutes
Words: ~5,541
Begin by redirecting our motivation, getting back in touch, reorientating ourselves, reestablishing some sort of priorities in our life. What is important to me? What has worked for me? Which I come to understand through my own reasoning, my own experience, something which resonates within me, within my intuition. To a great degree we are our habits, that’s what we consistently do.
And so reorientation process, which we establish those types of guidelines which we want to make habits, want to return to consistently certain values which we want to integrate to become a part of ourselves, to become our nature. And so this process of continuing as it were reinspiring ourselves, redirecting ourselves, getting ourselves back in line with our own inner wisdom, with our own love and exuberance for life. The process becomes one of the inner focus of Buddha. The you know, Buddha becomes quite important in our mind, but not necessarily the Buddha outside of ourselves, but the inner Buddha. The possibility of another order of being.
The possibility of solving our problems at a very fundamental level. A great sense of expectation about the possibility of ourselves and the possibility of life, about the goodness of ourselves and the goodness of life. Maybe the realigning of our allegiance from the life lived passively at the influence of hopes and fears to one which is lived on the basis of actively choosing growth, actively choosing to live authentically. I think to live authentically is we have to express these deeply held values which we hold most important, which are most meaningful, which we believe in. To express things for ourselves but also for others that they be acknowledged, we be affirmed in who we are.
So, you know, we can’t We can’t really aspire. This is quite important, but we have to act upon this aspiration. We have to actually, even in some limited fashion, try to express them in our daily life, even if it’s in a limited fashion. I think I mentioned the quotation by Thomas Merton where he says, These dreams, noble aspiration, these fine values that we have deeply buried with inside of ourselves. They’re very much like fine clothing.
If we keep them put away all the time and save them only for special occasions, eventually they’ll rot. We have to, as it were, put them on from time to time. And so, you know, we all aspire to something noble from time to time. We all have our dreams from time to time. And we need to try on our dreams, to express our aspirations from time to time.
And whenever we’re limited way, whatever limited fashion we are able. And we have to, in whatever limited way we can, help others to create the conditions whereby others feel safe, they’re facilitated, they’re assisted in putting on their dream and trying on their aspiration. And then perhaps they become something more of a part of ourselves, of our waking experience, of our conscious activity. They become something of a habit or a way of life and they become us. There’s some kind of movement, some kind of growth takes place.
Word meditation in Tibetan is is related to a word which is pronounced exactly the same, it has the same root, which means to get used to, to become habituated to, to become accustomed, familiarized, to become a habit, to become our nature, to be integrated, to be cultivated. All of these notions, I think that way you’re saying that we become, what we what we we learn, we become. What we accustom ourselves to, we become. So in the process, for example, of our of our discussion of the awakening heart. The various meditation.
These are That’s new ways of looking at them that we haven’t up to this point considered. And if we consider them and we find them worthwhile to be of value, pragmatically useful in solving some of our problems, then it’s necessary to take them and make them our own. It’s not good enough that they exist in books. It’s not good enough that they exist in other people’s minds, but they have to be integrated. And the integration process is a matter of the customer.
Somehow we have to find the key which opens up our minds to another possibility. You know they have to make a difference in their lives. It is the difference which makes the difference which brings about growth. The difference there. It’s a different something new.
We’re hearing something which is different than what we’ve been accustomed to. That’s what we’re accustomed to is who we are. So we’re hearing something different and it has to make a difference. It has to move our mind. It can’t be like oil poured on water where the oil just kind of floats.
There’s no integration. It doesn’t become a part of ourselves, who we are. And so it’s very much up to our own initiative and our own, you know, doing our work to make what sounds useful to make it a part of ourselves. It all begins with the activity of listening. That is to say, the activity of coming to hear about a different possibility and a method.
Once one has those methods and these other possibilities in mind, where one becomes aware that there is a different way of looking at the same situation, the way of reframing, finding new meaning and changing our belief system, then we upon reflecting, it reasonable? Does it cause my experience? Does it resonate with something deep within inside myself? And having, overcoming all our doubts and hesitation then we integrate it. We as it were become it in our practice.
You know, aren’t studying the awakening heart as an academic subject. We’re talking about love and compassion, the various classifications and the various etymologies of the words as if they were an illicit subject. But the purpose of coming together and looking and exploring is to change, to make a difference, a difference, to become something other than who we are now. So we have to make, do the work, We have to find a way to make it a part of ourselves, to think it through for ourselves, to discover how it fits into our overall world view and incorporate it, integrate it so it becomes a part of ourselves and give ourselves over in expressing it. Know, we may not There may be, there are levels of cognitive awareness which can be in contradiction with one another in terms of our beliefs, in terms of our assumptions and ideas.
But we can begin to practice such that the understanding, the integration begins to seep down lower and lower, deeper and deeper into these more deeply held layers of belief, which are in contradiction to what the type of person we may want to become. And to overcome our hatred, our self centeredness, our egocentricity, It’s not going to happen all at once. But we can begin to try on these clothing of love and compassion. We can try on the clothing and inspire ourselves to practice the awakening heart and limit the expression in our daily life. And then it is like groundwater beginning to seep down through the porous layer of the rock until it becomes a part of our soul, until it becomes a running stream of our own mind to continuity of who we are.
And that comes who we are. So it’s, you know, it’s necessary that we begin to integrate it to and the way we begin to integrate it is through this process of listening, reflecting, and finally becoming that, practicing feeling that, being compassion. The custom in the mind, making it our second nature, who we are. And in this way, we become someone other than who we were before. Some problems are solved along the way.
Something has some difference has been made. And we have more use to ourselves and to other people. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, you know, the process of growth personified as this fully happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. And the way that Buddha is expressed is through the Dharma, the various techniques, methods, the truth, the teaching, whatever facilitates this process of integration and becoming acquainted with the difference and making a difference in our lives, such that we change, that we grow. And creating the social context where we facilitate this process of trying on these new ways of being in a safe and trusting environment where others encourage and show us and guide us, and it becomes blah blah blah.
I try to raise the level of our motivation such that we are shifting in our focus and our emphasis on our motivation becomes less and less one of self concern, but more and more emphasizing other concern. The raising of the level of our motivation such that we expand the scope of our, of our reasons for growth and why we want to change. Not only for myself, not only for my own piece of chocolate cake, but for the welfare of as many as others that we can develop the ability to incorporate into our world vision, to take a greater and greater universal responsibility. I go from the future until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfection, 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 ascended.
From the virtuous merits that I collect by practicing giving in the other perfection, may I attain the state of the state of the Buddha, to be able to benefit all sentient beings. We’re going do a meditation. We’re going to begin by adjusting our motivation in terms of the levels of compassion and love and choosing someone who that you like, that’s attractive to you, but isn’t particularly close to you, or someone that you find naturally appealing, a good feeling about them. She has a good feeling about. Then we’re going to meditate on mindfulness of breathing.
Last week we looked at, we’re looking at the two meditative systems for the development of an awakening heart. The sevenfold cause and effect precepts, equalizing and exchanging self with others. And last week we looked at the specific meditation of recognizing all living beings as one’s mother. Which could regain a real conviction that is quite difficult, but we can use it as even a psychological challenge to begin to broaden our sense of relatedness, connectedness with more and more people. And we’re seeking to, and this is based upon the understanding of rebirth in the sense that over the beginning of this time we have taken different numbers of rebirths and in the course of these rebirths every living being, whosoever, every other person in this room, every person that we met in the course of our day or will meet tomorrow, that we will read about or that we will hear about has at one time been our mother.
So trying to recognize all living beings as one’s mother. This is the type of model or the type of relationship we’re using as a basis for relation, for relating with others, that of a child and its mother. So we can begin to approach this, get some feelings of this to allowing coming to an understanding of the nature of the continuity of mind. The whole logic of rebirth is based upon the fact that all products have a cause which is similar in type to themselves. The mind is a product therefore it must have a cause which is similar in type to itself.
And we trace back, we’re going to trace back in our meditation. That is to say, in our present mind, our present sense of awareness, whether that awareness, whether it might be a taste, whether that knowing might be, whether it’s seeing a color, hearing of sounds, it’s the thinking of thoughts, the feelings of pleasure and displeasure. There’s always a factor of knowing involved, where knowing something continues. And the present knowing is related to the previous knowing. The fact that your present state of mind is related to the state of mind which you drove to Buddha house, where you walked to Buddha house with.
There’s some relationship between the current mind rose in dependence upon that previous state of mind. There’s always been a previous state of knowing from which the mind is arising in dependence upon. Today’s mind arose in dependence upon yesterday’s mind. There’s never a gap and there’s never no gap in knowing. The fact of being a mom is the fact of being a subject.
And the subjective experience is the knowing, the knowing of objects. So the various factors of being a subject of being a mind is the factor factor of knowing is always present. And this knowing has a continuity. Years ten years ago. And there’s always the present moment of mind is always arising from its previous moment of mind.
And we keep tracing this back and back and back to the childhood mind. There’s a continuity and from moment to moment there’s come into a mind arising at the moment upon a previous moment in the mind. And we we trace it back to childhood, to infancy. Back to the first moment of birth, but even that mind arose in dependence upon the previous life,, the very last moment of the mind in the previous life is the direct cause for the first moment of the mind of this life. It continues.. It is mind in every moment arising in dependence upon the previous moment of the mind.
And likewise, the mind present at the moment of conception arising in dependence upon a previous moment of mind, no different. And that previous moment of the which likewise arose from the mind of the previous life. And then again, the last moment of that mind or previous life, arose in dependence upon a previous mind. And we keep tracing it back and back to infinite regression. We can never point to any one moment where we can say this is the beginning of my continuity of mind.
But this process is going to be infinitely traced back, beginning infinitely back. And over the course of this infinite time in which the continuity of our mind has existed, we have taken an infinite number of rebirths in different places. There’s no place where we have not been born, there’s no being that’s not been our mother. We’re trying to develop a sense that wherever one goes, a sense that one has been everywhere, a sense that one has been had a relationship, infinite varieties of relationships with every living being. They were focused on one particular type of relationship, that’s another.
Because then we’re going to go on to understand the kindness of our mother. And we talked about this last week. Fact that after the moment of our conception, there were just a clump of cells basically. But still my mother began to care about us. She began to be concerned about And then we’re, and all of these, all of mythical things, all of these, you know, life threatening possibilities of pregnancy and the pains of labor and then finally that of birth.
But we could not have earned any of that. There’s no way that we can knowingly return anything for all the great kindnesses which have been showered upon us from the moment of our conception. We come into a completely helpless, naked, and in need. Could we rationally expect that only one month after having given birth to after hours of exhaustion, you know, week, that someone would would take us lovingly in their own, forgetting all that had gone before, all the pain, all the problems associated with their grief, forgetting all that and take it into their arms as if you were the most precious object in the world, at that moment we were in their eye. In reality, such a moment did happen simply because we existed.
We were unconditionally lost. In the years that followed after that, of self sacrifice, of worrying, that there was nothing we can do a way to return. There was nothing that we could give back. It was completely a process of giving. You know, feeding us, clothing us, cleaning us.
A hundred times a day our mother turned their attention to concern, to our welfare. A hundred times a day our mother saved our lives. The fact is a child, a human child cannot live upon birth without the care, without a caregiver. And usually this is my mother. That we would not be alive now, if it were not for someone’s kindness and it was probably my mother.
Out of which I, as a child, our mother was our whole world. There’s probably, there’s very few greater moments of this that we can experience as human beings tend to be psychologically in union at the moment of nursing that unknowable spirit. And trying to get back in touch with this primordial feeling that we will all once experience that perhaps have been dinged over time, been lost. So trying to regain, to open up the possibility of this me experiencing the bond that we once experienced, that we once had with some others. You know if you can’t, there’s no doubt that we, as we talked about last week, many of us perhaps had unskillful parents who did not fulfill the role well as a mother.
Or rejected the role entirely, perhaps toxic parents. But still there was that moment of our birth that someone did take care of us, someone did help us to survive. And whatever we are now, we owe it to that caregiver at that time and it was probably one mother. And you know, trying to, we’re not to talk about this more, but we’re going to, if you can’t work with another and work with someone that you have a natural caring for, someone who you look upon as parental role that you feel a relationship, a strong relationship, deep bond with, and use them as a model. And we’re going to try to generate, try to get in touch, Try to remember the kindness of our mother.
And then we’re going to seek to reassociate that with others. And looking at your mother visually, imaginatively, and remembering all the great kindness. Try to open yourself up to the possibility that you could be wrong, that you might be that there might have been other aspects to your relationship which had long been forgotten, Other possibilities that you have a relationship which did exist at some time. And just experiment with that possibility. Open yourself up to the opportunity to experience another way of looking at this being in person.
Reminding, remembering all their points from the moment of our conception up to the day. And then begin to think of someone that you’re very close to, that you like very much, that’s very appealing, someone you’re intimate with. And put that person next to them and think this too is my mother. Of this life. And begin to evoke and transfer the same types of feelings that we have as our mother, as the object of this life to this person, to this other person, remembering that this person also is your mother.
And begin to work using this model, using it as a type of relation, the way of relating, the way of the feeling mode of viewing this person as that of mother and child. Begin to extend that same type of feeling, that same body towards others. Trying to evoke the same feeling that this person too is my mother. Evoke raising the conversation as this person or this guy raised me as mother, as my mother, and begin to work on other individuals. And then begin to extend, broaden the scope of individuals who we have the same way of relating to.
But first we have to have a sense that all beings, if you ever, have been our mother. And then we have to get in touch, we have to re evoke that bond in relationship that we aren’t having with our mother. And to get in touch with those feelings with our mother this life and then begin to transfer to evoke those same feelings towards others who in fact have been another. So we’re going to try that. Okay?
So if you take a comfortable posture. Looking at the first of the two meditative traditions for the development of an awakening heart. Seven cause and effect instructions. Based upon the foundation of equanimity and even minded attitude, the basis of any sense of attachment or aversion, avoiding, not holding out some close and others distant. Upon the foundation we begin to engage in these six causes bringing about this singular effect that of the awakening heart.
As was just mentioned, looked at the first of these, and that is recognizing all living beings as one’s mother. Having done that, once I get a sense that these in fact, everyone that we meet is in fact our mother. You know we’re trying to use the model or the relationship of mother and child as a basis for relating with all living beings. The most profound bond between two beings, that between a mother and a child is our model. That’s what we’re trying to reproduce, that framework of relating with all beings.
So it’s not sufficient simply to have some conviction as to the fact that all living beings have been our mother. We have to actually remember their great kindness to reestablish that powerful bond that we once experience between ourselves and our mother. Having done that, then the third of the sevenfold cause and effect precepts, we develop a sense of gratitude, a sense of wishing to repay our mother’s kindness. That’s what we’re going to begin to talk about tonight. So you know there there are various reactions which may occur for different types of people when they begin to explore their feelings toward their mother, When they begin to think about their mother’s kindness.
It’s interesting that many of us probably have never consciously sat down and thought about this. I mean we have, from time to time we may experience a sense of gratitude that we remember some kindness of our mother. Maybe many are not, maybe many are simply feeling rather neutral or indifferent toward their mother. I know. It’s quite an unusual experience to consciously sit down and remember what your mother has given to you.
And it’s a different way of thinking and it is a difference which can begin to make a difference. And as I was talking about before, these are new ways of thinking perhaps that we’re not used to. And meditation is simply a way of getting used to new ways of thinking, different ways of thinking. And it begins to make a difference in our mentality. The way we begin to view the world and relate with it.
Some people, for example, argue that what a mother does for the child is simply done out of obligation, a social obligation, maybe even a legal obligation. But we forget that there was a time when we were completely dependent upon someone else, upon a caregiver. Our very life is dependent upon being cared for by another person, someone else. And for most of us, this was our mother who accepted the responsibility for it. And bore all the hardships and whatever sacrifices that this responsibility entailed.
So whatever was her intention, whatever was her motivation, it was a kindness. You would not be alive if someone had not accepted this responsibility, made the necessary sacrifices, went through the various troubles and hardships for our individual particular welfare. This person here, someone who had not done it, you would not be alive now. That’s the comment, regardless of what their intention and motivation may have been. For some people there’s an unwillingness to acknowledge their mother’s kindness.
There’s a sense that their minds are very much bound in by a sense of fear of being controlled by others. The fear that if they begin to get in touch with feelings of gratitude, of appreciation, then they’re going to, if you begin to deeply admit somewhere within their heart the great kindness and fact of their mother, then they’re going to be obligated. They’re going to have to obey their mother, obey their mother’s every wish. They’re going to come under their mother’s control. There’s a sense of indebtedness and a sense of loss of freedom and control.
That is to be vulnerable to being taken advantage of. Because we have attachment and selfishness, we are always paranoid. This is a quotation by longization. Because we have attachment and selfishness, are always paranoid. You people are not paranoid.
Paranoid means you are always thinking maybe she is taking advantage of me, I better be careful. Or maybe he is taking advantage of me, I should be careful. You understand? You are always paranoid thinking that society is taking advantage of you. Your boss is taking advantage of you.
Your mother is taking advantage of you. Your father is taking advantage of you. Your girlfriend is taking advantage of you. Your boyfriend is taking advantage of you. Your husband is taking advantage of you or the Tibetan monk is taking advantage of you.
You know what I mean? Police are taking advantage of you. Jesus is taking advantage you. So we are some extent paranoid about being taken advantage of. And so all the feelings of tenderness and intimacy remain locked down inside our hearts.
Because we feel if we come in contact then we’re going to be vulnerable, we’re going to be open to being taken advantage of. Spontaneous feelings of gratitude and appreciation. They’re expressions of These are expressions of our basic sanity. They’re expressions of our mental health. To open our hearts to others is as much to open our heart to the love others have for us as it is to open ourselves to the love that we have for others.
It’s quite a frightening prospect to feel that others love us. But this is also an important part of the process of opening one’s heart. Simply not to generate love which is important but there is the other side of that. Opening up to the love that others have. But we don’t have to fear out of a sense of paranoia that our vulnerability is going to be, in our vulnerability we’re going to be taking advantage of.
The point is that we have to keep in mind is that we are no longer children. That as adults we can choose how to repay. I think we have a debt. It’s not the debt of an accountant or a banker’s mentality. It is a spontaneous expression of our wanting to return kind.
But we have to tell how we’re going to repay. How we’re going to show our gratitude to our mother for our kindness. This wish to repay is like a natural response of a clear awareness of just how much we have been given. There is some kind of spontaneous generosity wanting to return benefit. We are in contact with our mother.
We feel cared for and we feel rich enough to admit our debt. We want very much to return the kindness. There’s something healthy about that. And if we can feel this love that we have all about us and that we have received that condition. And there must be something basically all right about it.
We have been we have been shown unimaginable kindness and we did nothing to deserve it. Anyway, just by our very existence, you were worthy and being shown unconditional love, unconditional care and concern. If we can begin to acknowledge that kindness given to us, then we can begin to feel what wonderful beings we must be. To be recipients of that type of love and that much caring, we must be pretty wonderful ourselves. And all of this feeling of abundance and remembering the great kindness of our mother.
How natural it is to repay. And to repay all living beings. So what is the kindness and the concern and the caring that they show it upon. That we probably never knew. Neither others kindness for us nor our own self worth.
And I think the real connection isn’t there. We avoid carried around with ourselves the feeling of unworthiness. That there is something I don’t quite have it or take. A sense of, almost a sense of self pity, insufficiency. I’ve never never really felt loved.
And so, we find it difficult to love others, though we desperately want to. And as as we’ve mentioned, to open our hearts to others is as much to open our hearts to the love others have for us as it is to cultivate and express the love that we have toward others. To get in touch and express express the love that we feel toward others. You know, to to know that we are lovable, that we were once loved, is to know our own self worth in a very deep level. You know, we have been have been loved unconditionally at one time and it was a gift given to us by our mother.
As we just did in our meditation, you picture this person, this mother, and you try to feel the kindness that she showed you. It begins to, your heart begins to soften, the hardness begins to go away, and the tension begins to open up. So you begin to question how could we ever repay her? There’s no greater way than to awaken her heart, than to awaken her mind, to help her to become a happy, healthy, loving being, And this is, now we’re going to get in touch with these feelings. And I think that there is a natural response of wishing to repay.
And then we question how can I repay? How can I show my gratitude? Trying to develop a sense of connectedness. People talk about feelings of isolation. Everyone is living in their own world within their own two, unconnected to others.
And there are crowded, lonely people. So we’re talking about a way of connecting us, a feeling of related. A sense of belonging, a sense of family, social view of expanding our perspective to encompass all other and our sense of well-being. All the various expressions of religion and spirituality join stressing the importance of nurture and love and compassion in the development of spirituality. Our own human experience supports the urgency and necessity for developing and actualizing love and compassion.
The mind which is disconnected from the heart, that vision of interconnectedness lacks the power of inner transformation. How often do we need to see our revolutions fail, our glorious progress corrupt our society and rape our planet before we hear the message that our minds need to be attuned to our heart and grounded in the vision of connectedness. If the power of our minds is to be used in life enhancing rather than life negating way. Thought alone cannot contain the clinging, greed, prejudice and self centeredness that undermine the balance of our planet and the fundamental structures of human relationship. A vision of connectedness is not only one that disregards the power and application of the mind.
Nor is it one that glorifies the heart to the exclusion of all else. It is a vision that appreciates the interconnectedness of our own heart and mind and recognizes that we have potential to actually have rapport and a sensitive and intelligent relationship to life. Now I even once the Dalai Lama said that He came, know, as he does traveling around the world continually, meeting crowds of people who he has apparently never met before. And I remember once he said, it’s like coming home, like meeting old friends. And wherever he goes, whoever he meets, it’s like meeting his mother.
This way of relating, this connecting us. There’s never, no one’s ever a stranger. What to say of an enemy? There’s always this intimacy, this communication and relationship. That’s what we’re trying to put.
That’s how we can be. That’s what we have to move towards. What we’re trying to evolve in our social aspect of ourselves towards. Out of the sense of gratitude in wanting to repay our mother, in remembering the kindness. We want to give them something.
And I think, you know, this again, it’s not a banker’s mentality. You know, we’re not keeping score. It is simply that