Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The surprising claim that “I’m not okay and you’re not okay, but that’s okay” opens this 21-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun, the twelfth in his Heart and Mind of Awakening series. He argues that social pressure to appear fine numbs us to our own suffering and blocks genuine compassion — drawing a pointed comparison to Alcoholics Anonymous, which works precisely because members must admit their situation honestly. He then covers the three roots of awakening (compassion, the awakening heart, and wisdom), quotes Śāntideva on why self-compassion must precede compassion for others, and leads a step-by-step loving-kindness meditation starting with someone close, then expanding to strangers and enemies. The session closes by introducing “exceptional resolve” — the commitment to actually act on compassion, not merely wish it.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 HoM 1993 03 17.mp3
UUID: 0fa8fffa-2620-4b6d-a551-bddebb0c30aa
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-03-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 21.1 minutes
Words: ~2,491
Be okay. It’s kind of in quotation marks, not okay. We would not be okay if we were to feel too deeply and admit too openly the dilemma of being an ordinary person The predicament of life, everything that we’re in the commonality of all our experiences. Not being okay is not okay. It seems that it’s unacceptable in our society not to be okay.
We have to as it would be continually okay, I’m okay. If we’re not okay, we’re somehow inadequate human beings. We should be ashamed of ourselves. We’re creating these hassles for everybody around us. We should get our acts together.
You know, some kind of skillful confrontation on the issue of not okayness. Everything is not okay. Somehow, to healthily admit that I’m healthy enough to be aware that it’s not okay. You know, if we aren’t healthy enough to be sick, we die. So, you know, that we’re healthy enough to be aware.
I’m not okay and you’re not okay, but that’s okay. This is one of the founding assumptions that Alcoholics Anonymous operates on And it works. It’s one of the most successful growth organizations, you know, social organizations that’s ever been come up with because they admit, everyone must admit that they’re not okay. They confront the issues of where their life is going. Because of our lack of sensitivity to and our reluctance to acknowledge the dissatisfactory texture of our lives.
We never quite become sincere about ending our pain. That is we never really feel compassion for ourselves. This idea of alleviating problems, of alleviating suffering. Even in terms of ourselves, we’re unmoved by compassion. We never are moved to implement the methods for really dealing with our problems, for really searching for a way to clear up our difficulty.
But this holds true just as much in our relationships to others. Our insensitivity to others’ pain and our unwillingness to acknowledge their pain prevents us from feeling compassion for them, to really becoming sincere about helping them over and above a sort of a social nicety. I don’t think which assuages our feelings of guilt. We never really connect up with wanting to really help them in a deep way. So sensitivity to suffering, understanding, you know, the actual nature of our situation, the human dilemma, compassion and change, they’re all intimately connected.
They all flow one from another in a mutual interconnected system awareness. Know we’ve all, as I mentioned, we’ve all had experiences that we consistently miss or inevitably dismiss the lesson. We all suffer, but we take our suffering unconsciously. And therefore, you know, this is why suffering usually never leads us anywhere. We don’t learn from it. To be sensitive and consciously acknowledge our dilemma, you know, to thoroughly understand our predicament will bring compassion.
And with compassion, that compassion is directed toward ourselves or others, we’re going to be moved to do something. Something will change. That compassion is the difference which will begin to make a difference in our lives. It’s a force which operates in the evolution of our consciousness and others and the benefiting of others. The compassion of great compassion is directed toward all living beings indiscriminately, without exception.
So this is it is a force. It is a creative power. And it is the creative power by means of which we will actualize the fullest of our human potential. There’s a verse: If you in the world wish to gain highest enlightenment, its roots are altruistic aspiration to enlightenment that is firm as the king of mountains, compassion reaching to all directions, and a wisdom consciousness not relying on duality. So what this means is there are three basic causes for our awakening.
Are three basic causes for us to be healthy people: compassion, the awakening heart and wisdom. Wisdom understanding the nature of the self. I often talk about it in terms of a bird needs two wings to fly. On the one hand the wing of compassion, on the other the wing of wisdom. We need wise hearts and compassionate minds.
We need to integrate our emotional and rational minds into one whole. So, you know, this all comes about through initially developing a determination to awaken, a determination to be free. That is to say, confronting our own personal lived experience of suffering or problems or whatever we want to call them, dissatisfaction. There’s a verse by Śāntideva in his book, Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds, he says, If those beings who have never before even dreamt of such an attitude for their own sake, how would it ever arise for the sake of others? If we have never had compassion for ourselves, if we have never loved ourselves, how can we ever, you know, knowing our own experience immediately, our own lived world, how can we ever hope to generate a powerful, stable, sincere, loving compassion for others knowing their experience only vicariously, secondhand, only by appearance.
No matter how much we may be able to empathize, identify, it still is to some degree removed from our direct experience. If we don’t develop the sense of love and compassion for ourselves, developing the intention to work through our own problems at a very deep level, how can we ever hope to develop the motivation to work with others, to help them to work through their problems? So it begins with ourselves, loving ourselves, developing this determination to awaken, understanding our predicament. And then by extrapolating, extrapolating from our own understanding of ourselves, then we can begin to understand others and we can begin to love them. You know, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, to understand another is to love them.
To love and understanding are two names for the same thing, when wisdom and emotions become united. Compassion and determination to awaken are just two words, two names for the same emotion. In one case, the determination to awaken is when that quality of wishing to solve problems is directed toward ourselves. When the object becomes another, we call it compassion. This quality of compassion, caring, sensitivity, respect and knowledge.
Caring sensitivity, respect and knowledge. A caring, you’re feeling concerned. It makes a difference what happens to you. A sort of a connectedness, an involvement in somebody else’s life. A sharing in their experience, an identification with.
Ideally this identification is that of a bond, of a mother and child, this feeling of that connectedness, of that closeness. It is the quality of sensitivity, an awareness of the consequences of what we do upon others. You know, what we say affects others. And how we are how what we say and what we do is altering the situation, a sensitivity to what to what we’re how we’re relating, how we’re interacting. This this person’s life is affected by me, what I’m saying, by what by what I’m doing.
And I can significantly affect their life for the positive, for the in a beneficial manner. In a sense of respect, in a regard which affirms people the value of another in and of themselves, not for what they can get out of them, not for any utilitarian sense, but in and of themselves. Mother Teresa once said that beggars, and she’s an expert on beggars, she said more than your money they want to be respected as human beings. And so therefore it becomes more of how we give, how we relate with others than what we give. What we can, how we relate in terms of respect and in terms of honoring and valuing becomes more important than the actual, what we actually are able to do.
And then some kind of knowledge, you know, using our intelligence, using our abilities, our resources, our experience in helping to direct change toward alleviating people’s difficulties, their problems. The implication of this is that the more we are, the more we have to give. This motivates us to become more and more, more and more of who we can be. So in the cultivation of compassion, it’s necessary to confront the fact of our own suffering and begin to confront, come to understand and confront the suffering of others in their own lives. You know we can begin by someone you feel very close to, imagine him in front of you.
You know, perhaps ideally your mother. But if that’s not if that doesn’t work, someone else that you have a natural sense of caring for, sense of connectedness, a sense of value. And remember them in terms of the kindness, that this person has been your mother. Maybe actually say, my mother, my mother. It’s kind of a startling thing to to think that toward this person, someone who you’ve never thought in that way of before, and to connect up this kindness of mothers which you which you cultivated in coming to an understanding of how kind your natural mother of this life was, and beginning to associate that kindness with this individual and their kindness.
But the but the going beyond that, you’re beginning to consider some of their difficulties, some of their problems. This person is hurting in some way, maybe some kind of loss, some kind of disappointment, some feeling of loneliness, of isolation, of need, some hopelessness. But over and above those mental qualities is simply physical suffering, physical pain that they may now be experiencing. And generate a sincere friendliness, you know, towards this person, a gentle caring. You know, we go through this every once in a while in the evening.
Just a simple and it’s just a simple friendly thought. It’s not too hard to to generate you, but you may have to work at it because we’re good people, basically. It would be wonderful if you were happy. And that’s not you can be that generous with this person. There’s enough happiness to go around that this person and I this and I also can be happy at the same time.
Yeah. I would like for you to be happy. That would be nice. I would very much like it. It is a sincere like. Oh, that would be nice if this person were happy.
And there’s certainly gladness about that comes in your heart. I would like that. That would make me happy to see this person. There’s there’s an openness. There’s there’s a generosity in that kind of attitude that you’re rich enough to actually wish that that person was happy and then strengthen, may that person be happy.
I would really, more than it would be nice, I would really like to see it come about. And then finally, as we do with everyone, we do with each with these various individuals, I’m going to do something about it. I’m going to take some kind of responsibility. Make some kind of commitment for working with you to bring about that happening. Now this is really getting involved.
Taking a chance, really putting yourself out. And this is the first step in the development of exceptional resolve. Exceptional resolve. That’s the next step. Actually, you know, it’s one thing to say really sincerely wish somebody happy, wish they did not suffer.
It’s a hell of a lot of another thing. You actually say, I’m going to do something about it. It’s a it’s a huge quantum leap. You know when you’re, when you’re able to generate these feelings, these feelings of these levels of compassion, wouldn’t it be nice? May you.
I’m going to commit myself to working with you and your problem. Then begin to use other people. Many, many different people. Use people who aren’t quite so attractive to you that you don’t have a natural liking for. Use strangers.
Use enemies. Very difficult, obvious one. Through acquaintance, anything can become easier. We accustom our mind to a new way of thinking and it becomes part of our mental pattern. Working with all types of various categories of people.
As many types of relationships as possible. Anyway, it will not it will be impossible to develop a strong stable compassion for an undifferentiated mass, sentient beings, whoever they might be, without working on developing many, many, many, many, many, many, many particular instances of compassion of particular people. On that basis we can begin to develop a sense of what this undifferentiated mass of living beings might be like and actually begin to have some feeling toward them. Know, we won’t be like the person who says, oh I have a great deal of compassion for humanity and says I don’t like people very much. That kind of attitude which many people expel in some way or another.
Simply this compassion is seeing other persons suffering and wanting to do something about it, wanting them that they be released from their problem. You know, normally our compassion is limited, usually extended only to those that we like. But sometimes we might we might develop compassion for the starving in Somalia, the the the the those who are undergoing the tragedies of Yugoslavia, maybe somebody who was just in a car accident, someone in a broken relationship. But when we see somebody laughing, somebody having a good time, it’s probably difficult for us to have compassion with them. We probably more than likely are jealous of them.
So trying to develop true compassion does not distinguish between people, whether they’re rich or poor, whether they’re laughing or crying, or whether they’re attractive or unattractive. Because it’s looking not at the superficial differences, but at the core dilemma of what it means to be a human being, what it means to be a living being under the influence of afflicted emotion. And understanding the nature and the commonality of our suffering, which permeates all of us, which is common to all of us. Great compassion begins to extend to all living beings all the time. It’s universal.
This is like a sun radiating out in all directions, touching everything that comes in its path, enlightening, bringing to life. in dependence upon that, we go on to cultivate the next step, which is exceptional resolve. That’ll have to wait till next week. Okay. So we will stop there.
Dedicate the the creative potential that we accumulate through our practice. And we can dedicate it as we as we normally do. But, additionally, maybe for those who who are so inclined that Bruce may have a positive rebirth and that his family, Amy and Michelle, may work quickly through the grieving process. And may all be well for them. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to enlightenment’s realm through these skillful actions.
May the supreme jewel of the bodhicitta heart that is not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase in more and more.