Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The dying monk’s words from Dostoevsky — “hell is the suffering of being unable to love” — anchor this 20-minute session by Ven Jampa Gendun on love as the heart of Buddhist practice. He begins with the Lamrim meditation on recognizing all beings as mother, tracing how that recognition produces what he calls “attractive love” — an attentive, magnetic warmth toward others — before drawing a sharp distinction: genuine love is not a feeling but an act of will. Drawing on Saint Paul’s portrait of love, Rilke’s insistence that love is hard daily labor, and the Buddha’s statement that the whole of training is for love and compassion, he argues that choosing to love in spite of felt unworthiness is both the hardest human task and the force that breaks compulsive ego-centered patterns.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 HoM 1993 03 10.mp3
UUID: 4226af25-983b-4829-89b9-a4310b729767
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-03-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 19.8 minutes
Words: ~2,381
If we meditate well on recognizing a mother, remembering their kindness and developing a sense of gratitude which wishes to repay their kindness, then we will feel a deep sense of connectedness and value extending equally to all living beings. And some kind of spontaneous gratitude which wishes to repay their kindness, which wishes to share, which we choose to involve ourselves in our life, to get get involved. And people what we mean by attractive love is people begin to We like people. People appear very attractive. There’s something very appealing about them.
There’s something magnetic, which draws you towards. What want to become a part of, what you want to get involved with, you want to get to learn, you want to see how they’re doing, what’s happening. To share. There’s an attractiveness which we which we seek to become involved. You know, it’s like it’s like, you know, people become appear appear very beautiful to you in your own.
We’re attracted. It means when we say we’re attracted, that means we pay attention. Like like a mother pays, is captivated, fascinated by her child, her baby. She can watch it all day long. She finds it fascinating.
It’s kind of the quality this attracted love has. So we begin to notice others. We begin to understand what they’re about because we’re paying attention. Maybe for the first time. And I notice that we begin to understand them and their situation.
Their dilemma. We feel a sense of closeness, some kind of tenderness, some kind of protectiveness, in a sense of wanting to make them happy, some kind of longing. So this is a sense of longing, there’s a sense of caring, sense of connectedness, sense of wanting to be involved, a sense of understanding, beauty, relatedness. But as of yet we haven’t chosen to love them. Love is not simply a feeling, but it’s some kind of conscious decision, an act of will.
The will to choose one’s welfare. That, you know, as I’ve defined a number of times, is the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing one’s own for another’s well-being. The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing one’s own or another’s well-being. It’s a choice that we we choose to make. An act of volition.
The other is supremely important. Through love we see the other individual as a great value, as a great value in the cosmos as our own. It becomes just as important to us that he or she would be whole, should live fully, should find the joy of life as our own needs be met. In the world of the unconscious, love is one of those great psychological forces that have the power to transform the ego. Love is the one power that awakens ego to the existence of something outside of itself, outside its plan, outside its empire, outside its security.
Love relates the ego not only to the rest of the human race, but to the soul and to all the gods of the inner world. This love is by its very nature the opposite of egocentricity. We use the word love loosely. We use it to dignify any number of demands for attention, power, security, or entertainment from other people. But when we are looking out for our own self power need, our own desires, our own dreams, and our own power over people, this is not love.
Love is utterly distinct from our ego’s desires and power plays. It leads in a different direction towards the goodness, the value, and the needs of the people around us. In its very essence, love is an appreciation, a recognition of another’s value. It moves a man to honor a woman rather than use her, to ask himself how he might serve her. And if this woman is relating to him through love, she will make the same, she will take the same attitude toward him.
The archetypal nature of love is perhaps nowhere better expressed than the simple language of Saint Paul. Love suffers long in this kind. Love does not envy, love does not vaunt itself, is not puffed up. Love does not seek her own way, is not easily provoked, is not anxious to suspect evil, bears all things, believes all things, hopes for all things, and endures all things. Love never fails.
But whether there be prophecies, they will fail. whether there be tongues they shall cease. Whether there be knowledge which shall vanish away. So here is a brief and eloquent statement of the difference between an ego left to its own devices and an ego under the influence of love. My ego is concerned only with itself, but love suffers long and is kind.
My ego is envious, always seeking to inflate itself with illusions of absolute power and control. But love does not vaunt itself. It is not puffed up. My ego left to its own ego centeredness will always betray that love never fails. My ego only knows how to affirm itself and its desires.
But love seeks not its own way. Love affirms out of love. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes for all things. Of connecting, that is to say, and viewing objects with value. Our mother has been tremendously kind to us.
We imbue her with tremendous value in her life, in a sense of connecting. And this is is the the atmosphere, the context in which love develops, connectedness and value. So it is not simply a feeling, but it is nested in those feelings. It is an act of will, an intentional action. It’s both aspirational and practical.
In the beginning, love might simply aspire, wish very much as we do. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you were happy? It has a longing quality. But indeed, we could even add: love thyself, which is quite necessary to love thyself. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I were happy?
But finally it sets about in practice to bring about that end. In the practical task of bringing happiness about for this person, for myself, the way we actually put on the clothes of our life to express what it is we’re about to make that decision. That is relational rather than something emotional. Rather than waiting to be swept away by love, deciding to love. We all want to be loving people, but most of us aren’t.
And why aren’t we? Because we have not decided to love. Decided to love in spite of our feelings of insufficiency or lack of self worth over unlovability and in fact, the level unlovability of others. It’s a choice, it’s a commitment to someone’s, to another’s true happiness. And doing whatever needs to be done to promote that happiness.
‘s supposed to be a willingness to struggle, to work toward that end, to suffer toward that end, but also to enjoy, to share the pleasure and love. There is scarcely anything more difficult than to love one another. It is work day labor, day labor. God knows there is no other word for it. For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all attempts.
The ultimate, that last test in proof, the work for which all other work is by preparation. Explain that the essence of love is to labor, for something, to make something grow. That love and labor are inseparable. But love for which one labors and labors for one for that which one longs. So I think we mentioned this last week.
It sounds like a big hassle business. A lot of work, a lot of effort. Why bother? Why choose to labor? Why choose to learn?
And life is difficult enough without more work. To take love seriously and to bear and to learn it like a task. This is what young people need. Like so much else, people have also misunderstood the place of love and life. They have made it into a play and pleasure because they thought that play and pleasure were more blissful than work.
But there is nothing happier than work and love just because it is the extreme happiness can be nothing but work. Whoever loves must try to act as it is that great work. He must be much alone and go into himself and collect himself and hold fast to himself. He must work, he must become something. For believe me, the more one is, the richer all that one experiences.
When we grow, it is because we are working at it, and we are working at it because we love ourselves. It is through love that we elevate ourselves, and it is through our love for others that we assist others to elevate themselves. Love is the extension of the self, is the very act of evolution. It is the evolution to progress. The evolutionary force present in all of life manifests itself in mankind as human love.
And there’s a thought, a saying, whatever, in the West that we can learn to love many by loving a single individual. It may be more true to say that we can truly love one other by seeking to love all. Love for a man cannot be separated from the love for one individual. To love one person productively needs to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual insofar as it’s divorced from love for man can refer only to superficial and to the accidental.
Of necessity it is rather shallow, it remains shallow. When choosing to love all persons we can truly love ourselves. The primary teaching of Christ does not mean to love your neighbor as you love yourself, but in the same way that we love our neighbor, that we treat our neighbor, that we care for our neighbor. In that same way we are going to love ourselves, we are going to treat ourselves, we are going to care for ourselves. Someone who cannot love feels unworthy.
At the same time feels that somehow no one is worthy. Perhaps he cannot feel love because he thinks he is unworthy of love And because of that, he also thinks no one else is worthy. There’s a line from brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky, in which takes place in a Greek Orthodox monastery and one of the elders is dying, dying and is at his deathbed. And he’s speaking to a number of his students gathered around him. And he says fathers and teachers, I ponder what is hell?
I maintain it is the suffering of being unable to love. In spite of all our feelings of unworthiness, of unloveliness, We have to choose to love. We have to take a difficult task. If we are going to escape, escape the hell of not being able to love. And unable to love ourselves, escape the suffering of our of our own self hatred.
One is not loved accidentally. One’s own power to love produces love. This is being interested makes one interesting. People are concerned with the question of whether they are attractive while they forget that the essence of attractiveness is their own capacity to love. The Buddha was once asked by a leading disciple, Would it be true to say that a part of our training is for the development of love and compassion?
The Buddha replied, No, it would not be true to say this. It would be true to say that the whole of our training is for the development of love and compassion. Being extolled as the fact that far more than all other lofty and loftiest religious and ethical deeds is capable of softening the hardened ego structure or the ego delusion, and so opens the way to liberation and enlightenment. He said, therefore, amongst you should learn that, that love, that is the liberation of the heart and the mind, we will produce in ourselves, increase it further, make it holy, develop it. Practice it, perfect it more and more, and employ it to perfection.
Talked about in terms of psychotherapy as being not about happiness but about power and confidence. Power lies where decisions are being made. What is more empowering than to decide to love? In contradiction to our habitual egocentric demanding, in contradiction to our perceived unworthiness and the unworthiness of others And I choose to love, to extend myself for the purpose of my own and others welfare, to love ourselves and to love others. And the creative power of love is the force which will enable us to break out of our self destructive compulsive patterns which govern our lives.
Ultimately, we can find liberation. Beyond our self hatred, our delusions, our afflicted emotions. But even immediately, to break out of this self perpetuating reinforcing cycle of feelings of unworthiness, of feelings of inability to love. When we love someone, our love becomes demonstrable. We’re real only through our exertion.
Through the fact that for someone else or even for ourselves, we take an extra step, we’re willing to walk an extra mile through that extra little bit. And if it is pretty dull. If we are loving people, then it should be shown. There should be something about the way we are, the way we act, the way we relate to the people in the world. It is the consistently choosing to extend ourselves and taking that extra step and walking that extra mile for ourselves and for others that we will grow.
And as we’ve said many times, to grow is commensurate, is coincident, is simultaneous with more meaningful, more fulfilling, more authentically redeemed, happier life. So stop there. Dedicate the creative energy of it to accumulate through our meditation and listening, talking. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to the enlightened realm through these virtuous actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakened heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish.
Think I’m doing a short announcement, and then if you’d like to get a cup of tea, we’ll have a discussion group. Have commercial break.