Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 3-minute closing excerpt, Ven Jampa Gendun crystallises a key point from the evening’s discussion of the three natures: the difference between our concepts of a thing and that thing’s emptiness free of all such concepts. Using a tree as his example, he distinguishes an existent imaginary nature (the mere concept of a tree) from a nonexistent one (mistaking that concept for the real tree), then identifies the thoroughly established nature as the tree’s emptiness of all our fabrications. He immediately grounds this in a sharp contemporary parallel — the 1993 war in Yugoslavia — noting that combatants are killing not actual persons but their own fixed projections of who Muslims, Serbs, and Croatians are. The session closes with a traditional dedication prayer.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 HoM 1993 08 25.mp3
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-08-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~427
All the see, the tree which possesses the inherent qualities which I associate with the word tree as being separate from is the imaginary nature. My conception of a tree as being the real tree. Both my conception of the tree is my conception of a tree is an existing imaginary nature. My conception of the tree as being a real tree is a nonexistent imaginary nature. And the emptiness of that tree, free of any of my ideas about a about a tree, the emptiness of the absence of my beliefs, emotional associations, the absence of my symbol about the tree, my fabrications of thought of the tree, the absence of those in the tree, the lack of those in the tree, the emptiness of all of those ideas about the tree in the tree is a thoroughly established nature.
Clear? Anyway, stop there. I I yeah. I think yeah. I think, don’t know.
For some reason, I think the you know, I come back to the idea about the the the what’s going on in the in Yugoslavia that, you know, people really are are very much relating with symbols and and their their ideas about what who who Muslims are, who Serbs are, who Croatians are. They they don’t see the the person divorced of their ideas about the person. They can they they are holding their ideas about the person to be the person, and that’s who they’re killing. So it has some, relevant, application in our lives, what these ideas that we’re talking about. So let’s, dedicate the the creative potential that may be accumulated.
May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to the enlightened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel, the awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow. And may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more. So those of you who like to remain for discussion, you might like to have a cup of tea. Thank you.
Good night.