Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a scene from Carlos Castaneda: standing on a desert mesa at dusk with Don Juan, listening to a lone dog bark in the distance — a man’s entire life, Don Juan says, like a hot dull Sunday afternoon, and then suddenly it was night. That image anchors his central argument: anxiety and dissatisfaction are not obstacles to the spiritual path but its primary fuel. He then introduces three types of suffering — physical and mental pain; the unstable seesaw of pleasure and pain (illustrated with shade and sun on a mountain walk); and the deeper vulnerability of conditioned existence — before framing refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha as the practical response to that recognition. The session closes with a guided meditation combining loving-kindness toward a stranger, breath awareness, and honest review of the past week’s dissatisfactions.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 HoM 1993 09 01.mp3
UUID: 85d04e96-9937-41f3-82ba-70820ce09b8f
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-09-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~5,153
This process of redirecting ourselves, reorientating, getting back in touch with some of more our more deeply held values, those guidelines that we’ve we’ve set for ourselves, some moments of sanity over the course of our life, and those guidelines, those principles that in our finest moments perhaps we like to live by, that we like to see as the values which determine what we do with our life and how we proceed. As I’ve mentioned, this redirecting process, in growth in general, it’s said to be brought about by two main causes. One of these is anxiety, and the other is faith. Anxiety in the sense that some kind of some quite often the term is translated as fear, some kind of dread. I think it’s kind of a it has no real clear object.
It’s an undercurrent, an underlying feeling. I dread that things are going to continue as they have been in the past, but more than that, perhaps that they’re these these dissatisfactions, all these disappointments, frustrations are going to keep reoccurring. We begin to notice perhaps some kind of recurring cycles in our life, you know, changing the things about us, new partners, new jobs, new locations, geography, new homes, whatever. But the same problems seem to be continually reoccurring. So there develops an undercurrent of anxiety.
And this is said to be one of the two primary causes for us to determine the change, to take some kind of new direction, to walk down another avenue rather than falling down in the same hole again and again and again. That kind of quality. Otherwise, we’re we’re probably going to maintain the status quo. There’s going to be some kind of psychological inertia. We’re going to, we’re going to remain stuck.
So getting in touch in touch with his anxiety, though it’s not perhaps very pleasant, but it is a legitimate suffering because it will bring about growth and change. And I think one notion of faith which is important is that a more fulfilling, satisfying, happier way of being is concomitant with growth. They’re very much tied up with one another. And talking about this first quality, this first cause of change, of growth in terms of anxiety. This brings us to the notion of suffering, the idea of suffering.
It’s not it’s not a very popular Object of conversation, yeah, generally. I don’t know if you people who go to parties and start talking about suffering, they usually become rather isolated quickly. They get left talking to themselves. I I, you know, I I don’t think it’s not the not it’s not something to get depressed about. But it’s not it is something which is worth looking into.
Something which which is usually, we distract ourselves from looking at the the texture of our life. I guess there’s a sense that if we if we were to get in touch with it, there might be a sense of overwhelming despair about it. But or there would be some sense of shame that somehow we didn’t have it quite together as as we think we should as as to some degree, we believe that others do. You know, sometimes there’s a sense that on this side, you know, there’s there’s some kind of confusion. There’s some kind of instability and not right not rightness about ourselves.
And and everything out there, the other people, they look like know what they’re doing. They look like they know what they’re up to. Mothers look like they really know what they’re doing when they mother their children. And men look look like they really know what they’re doing when they do their manly things. And and we don’t quite feel that adequate about what we do and what we are about.
So there’s a feeling of a sense of inadequacy or insufficiency or sense of shame. But I think if perhaps if we could communicate and we’re honest in our communication, then we could become aware that there’s nothing specifically wrong with ourselves. It’s the nature of the human dilemma. We’re all very much involved in the same quality of ways of being. Our particular difficulties might be very unique to ourselves, but there is a commonality among amongst us all, which is called ego based existence or ignorance governed life.
It’s just dissatisfactory. It doesn’t work very well. It’s not what life could be or all that it’s possible to be. And there’s nothing to be ashamed about it. We can begin to confront the issue at the level of unmanageability in our lives, the texture of dissatisfactoriness which permeates most of our lives.
And in this confrontation, in this analysis, there’s going to be some movement. There’s going to be some kind of shift, a gradual change will occur. Without this confrontation, then things will pretty much remain the same as they always have been. So this dread, this anxiety is said to be not something which is undesirable, but in fact was it is something which is in fact to be cultivated, an awareness of the nature of our situation, a waking up rather than a continual half sleep that most of us are involved in or distracting ourselves from the reality of of the texture of our existence. Now, what kind of life are we creating for ourselves?
Perhaps I’ve I’ve mentioned this this one example previously, but it for me, it it sets a tone. It’s it’s always marked had some connection with some deep feeling in myself. It has to do with a short conversation between Don Juan, who is a Yaqui Indian man of knowledge in northern Mexico, and Carlos Castaneda who was a PhD graduate student at UCLA University of California Los Angeles. You know, they’re they’re probably somewhere out on the desert in northern Mexico, and it’s drawing toward evening. And there’s a light wind blowing, the hiss of a soft wind.
And they’re perhaps on a mesa, slow, low rise in the desert to a low plateau. And to the distance, to the south, there’s the distant howl of a lone dog barking. And they’re trying to evoke the the the pathos of the quality to get in touch with feelings and ways and moods, which perhaps we distract ourselves with, which can be a compelling positive force in our lives. And Don Juan is speaking to Carlos Castaneda. He paused.
The the stillness around us was frightening. The wind hit softly, and then I heard the distance of a barking of a lone dog. Listen to that barking, Don Juan went on. That is the way my beloved earth is helping me now to bring this last point to you. That barking is the saddest thing one can hear.
We were quiet for a moment. The barking of that lone dog was so sad and the stillness around us so intense that I experienced a numbing anguish. It made me think of my own life. My sadness, my not knowing where to go or what to do. That dog’s barking is the nocturnal voice of a man of a man, Don Juan said.
It comes from a house in a valley towards the south. A man is sheltering his dogs since they are companion slaves for life. Don Juan’s words had struck a most disturbing chord in me. I felt as if he was speaking directly to me. That barking and the loneliness it creates speaks of the feelings of men, he went on.
Men for whom an entire life was like a Sunday afternoon. An afternoon which was not altogether miserable, but rather hot and dull and uncomfortable. They sweated and fussed a great deal. They didn’t know where to go or what to do. That afternoon left them only with the memory of petty annoyance and tedium.
And then suddenly, it was over. It was already night. You know, I don’t think we come to this this search, this exploration, this journey that we’re on, I don’t think we come to the path freely, this questioning, that process that we’re all, to a lesser or greater extent, involved and wrapped up in. It may appear that way, but I think it only comes about through some kind of a deep crisis, and some emotional pain and some important level of recognized unmanageability in our life. You know, it is pain more than anything, or that is to say our awareness of pain, which causes the question what we’re about and where we’re going with our life.
If one is unhappy, one wants to know the reason why. But it never occurs to one to ask why one is happy. It is therefore unhappiness rather than happiness that causes us to reflect upon our condition. It is unhappiness that makes us think. The acknowledgement of suffering and the question, what is life all about?
What is it? What does it mean? It’s the beginning of this process, this spiritual journey, bringing everything into question, bringing, is there any meaning to it all? It’s a frightening acknowledgment because it’s always associated with some level of felt pain, some kind of perhaps despair, some hopelessness. And we don’t quite know what to do, where to go, who to turn to, if in fact there’s anyone to turn to, if there’s anything that we can believe in anymore.
You know, it’s like it all seems like some kind of monstrous joke from time to time. We’re not quite sure what it’s all about. And we’re afraid this feeling is not going to go away, that it’s always going to stay with us. So in response to this state, this monstrous feeling that we experience from time to time over the course of our life, in moments of great despair and questioning, we have a choice. We’re confronted with two alternatives.
Either we can run away by ignoring, cultivating unawareness, desensitizing ourselves to ourselves, being absorbed in particulars, taking flight into particulars, distraction. Or we can confront the nature of our of our lived experience. You know, it is and we we can confront the actual experience, which is trying to tell us something about the way we’re living our life. We can either stubbornly refuse our own conscience, our own feelings, our own truth, or we can confront suffering and the meaninglessness of our life. So this confrontation is the and the necessity to resolve the tension which arises out of this confrontation is the beginning of a path.
Conscience demands to be heard. Such hearing is more than passive receptivity. It implies a response. Hearing the voice of conscience, man can respond by running away, obedient to the call of temptation, or he can summon up the strength to place himself under his own truth, which calls in conscience. The voice of conscience discloses to us our essential being.
So the authentic response to such disclosure is resolved to be oneself in the face of an essential precariousness and groundlessness of human existence. So I you know, simply said, there are two basic attitudes that we can take toward our experience of suffering. One is that pain and suffering are something to be overcome. They’re an interruption to our happiness. Something has gone wrong which can can be put right.
Things should be other than the way they are. This is a temporary aberration of some fluctuating circumstances, And we can fix it up. We can put a bandage over it, and things are going to be okay. The other attitude to our suffering is to our pain is that it gives us a glimpse of what needs to be done next. You know, the that our pain and our suffering are a kind of truth about ourselves, a kind of intelligence trying to tell us something about ourselves.
They are something that there is something wrong with the way that we’re living our life. You know, just as physical pain is can be seen as a sign that there’s a a disharmony within our body, mental pain, mental suffering can begin to see that there’s a disharmony in the way that we’re living our life, that there’s some imbalance occurring within our own mind. Pain and the suffering tell us something is wrong with our processes of life, the way that we are living our lives. And we need to listen. And there is a saying that the wound is a mouth and the therapist need only listen.
So the other alternative that we have to responding to our suffering is to begin to listen to what our suffering is telling us about ourselves and the way that we’re living our life. You know, for example, reacting to a breakup with a partner. We can see this simply as interruption to our happiness and move quickly to a new relationship to avoid the the suffering of loneliness. Or we can see that the process of the pain involved in splitting up and losing our partner is symptomatic of perhaps inappropriate ways of relating to change, to impermanency, underlying problems of attachment, unrealistic expectations. We could look at we can begin to look at the nature of our suffering on a much more profound level rather than the superficial one.
And we can begin to confront it and try to deal with it and change it, change the very causes of the suffering rather than masking them over, trying to numb ourselves and moving on as quickly as possible. So in this way, our awareness of suffering, cultivating a sensitivity to our actual lived experience helps us to know what to do next, what needs to be looked into, what needs to be worked on, where we need to grow. I think it’s it’s probably a truism that positive psychological growth only comes about, only occurs when there is a deep awareness of dissatisfaction, some kind of discontentment with the present situation. If there is contentment, if there is a there is always going to be some tendency to maintain the status quo, to keep things as they are, not to change. Why should we change?
Things are okay. And even if one is even if it comes down to the simple minded notion of sitting comfortably in a chair, there’s a reluctance to even move out of the chair to get up. But the moment one becomes aware that one’s position in that chair has become uncomfortable, then without it without thought, without having to reflect upon the nature of one’s situation, one spontaneously changes with your position in the chair. So though we perhaps would not rather not if we’re ever going to develop a real, stable, consistent determination to change, determination to be free. There is some kind of determination which is going to bring us through both the good times and the bad times.
There’s some kind of consistent theme, a thread which runs through our life that whether the sun is shining or whether there’s a storm, I still have to grow. I still have to set aside the time and the energy. I still have to look at my situation and confront the issues in my life no matter what the fluctuating circumstances might be. Because one keeps in mind, at some level, the nature of our situation in terms of its quality in spite of the temporal fluctuations around us. In terms of the way that we begin to confront the issues of our life, in terms of its dissatisfactory qualities, again, in terms of ego based existence, not in terms of life itself.
Because I think Buddhism has great faith in the goodness of ourselves and the goodness of life. It’s tremendously life affirming. So here we’re talking about a particular way of life, particular style of life. Ignorance governs life, ego-orientated life, a particular approach to life which is dysfunctional, which is pathological, which doesn’t work, which is characterized by various levels of suffering and dissatisfaction, disappointment and frustration. And looking at the I think if we confront ourselves with the reality of our lived situation then we can avail ourselves of our own basic sanity.
Our own brilliant intelligence can begin to operate. There’ll be some movement. There’ll be some shift quite naturally. This is almost what we mean by sentient life. There is an approach in avoidance.
We naturally tend toward that which we conceive of as pleasure, that which we conceive of as happiness. We naturally tend away from that which we conceive of as painful, unattractive. We have to, as it were, force ourselves to strive for happiness, to move away from suffering. That is the primary quality of sentient life. And it is just a matter of checking up within our lived experience whether our conception of happiness is in fact happiness and whether our conception of suffering is in fact suffering.
You know, the example that I oftentimes use in the way if we conceive of putting your hand in a flame as happiness, then we shouldn’t be surprised that we’re continually being burned. But once we begin to see that in fact it is not happiness, that somehow I have been deceived or I have been harboring some kind of misconception, then we will drop it because we don’t want to suffer once it becomes clear to ourselves. So, you know, it’s like what we conceive of the good life, we conceive of as worthy of our energy and our time will begin to shift toward those ways of being which can actually deliver the goods, which are in fact in the nature of happiness more and more beyond our distortions and misconceptions, but when in fact by their very nature can bring us the happiness that we’re seeking and moving away from those misconceived goals of life which haven’t worked for us up to now. You know, I think we have to question, you know, all of the blood, sweat and tears that we have expended over the course of our life. Has it brought has it been of any avail?
I mean, on a more profound level. You know, everyone has problems over the course of their life. But what is the overall quality of one’s life? The themes, the patterns which constitute our lives. Have we solved any of life’s problems on a very basic level, on a fundamental level?
Or have we only been, as it were, manipulating the superficialities and never really looking toward and working with the more basic factors which constitute the quality of our life. And we won’t unless we see that it’s imperative, it’s an absolute necessity. You know, this quality of necessity as being the nurturing condition for change, when it becomes necessary, when we get sick and tired of being sick and tired, then we find a way to get well. The mind is a self healing system. It has the potentiality to completely rid itself of all pain.
If we avail it, if we avail ourselves of its innate sanity, of its resources, of its potential. And we won’t unless it becomes necessary. We only are aware to the degree that it is that our survival demands of us and no more. So I was going to talk a little bit about the three types of sufferings, but I won’t put you through that. Maybe we’ll talk about that next week.
But, you know, the this process of redirecting, availing ourselves of our inner potential, is made tangible in the formulation of refuge, this redirecting process. In terms of when we say that our inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, this is to say that we take our inner potential to heal ourselves and give it some kind of tangible form to which we can relate to. And we take refuge in that. That becomes the direction of our life. And in practice, in operative terms, the way that we actualize Buddha, the inner Buddha with inside of ourselves is through the Dharma.
You know, those the truth, however, if we want to look at it, that which is able to to help us to overcome our misconceptions, our wrong conceptions, our biases, prejudices, our wrong ways of thinking in terms of how to operate most optimally in our life, how to begin to perform our preferred story in our life. Within the social context of a spiritual community, those who help us to live our story, those who help us, who remind us, you know, who keep waking us up, calling us back from our distractions and trying to ever widen our circle of others for whom we are seeking to develop ourselves for. You know, a shift in our motivation from one which is completely self orientated, involved in one’s exaggerated self interest, to an ever widening circle of others as the reason that we’re seeking to grow and the reason that we’re seeking to be healthy. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, actualized by means of the Dharma in the social context of a spiritual community and the various practices involved in living our story and raising the level of motivation such that we’re not doing it just for ourselves alone but for an ever widening circle of others for the benefit of others.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. And the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, 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, the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving any other perfections, may I attain a state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the highest assembly.
From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit. So I thought we’d begin with cultivating our motivation of loving compassion toward a stranger, someone that you aren’t acquainted with, and trying as best you can to to develop these feelings, these attitudes toward that particular object, that that individual. Then we’ll meditate on mindfulness of breathing. And then we’ll meditate on just looking at the past week of our life in terms of its quality, in terms of some of the disappointments and dissatisfactions, frustrations that we might have felt over the course of the week. You know, I didn’t talk about the three types of sufferings or three types of dissatisfactoriness of an orientated existence.
In terms of dissatisfactoriness of pain, dissatisfactoriness of fluctuation, and dissatisfactoriness of universal conditionality. And maybe we can talk about those next week. But still, we can just look at them very roughly. Know, dissatisfaction of pain, mental and physical pain, all the mental and physical pains perhaps that we have gone through this last week. You know, headaches, toothaches, stomachaches, bruises, cuts, getting your finger caught in the door or something, mental dissatisfaction, frustrations, depressions, disappointment, loneliness, and having to continually guard one’s territory, having to to maintain one’s self image in front of one’s self and in front of others, The feeling that you’re going to goof up, you’re not quite sure how or what or what.
Feeling of uneasiness, some kind of discomfortness about the quality of our life. The struggle for union with oneself, with others, with nature. There is the pain of the dissatisfaction of fluctuation, the psychological suffering, the very nature of our thinking process, the way it operates in terms of we can never quite have unchanging, stable, consistent happiness. We can never have happiness without knowing suffering. We can never know the pleasure of and the warmth of a friend without knowing the coldness and displeasure of an enemy.
We can never know the the sense of harmony without knowing the sense of conflict. But all of these are known in a dualistic sense. They’re only known in terms of what of their opposite. Without that opposite, we can’t know either. It would be meaningless without them.
That’s the situation that we’re in. And we’re continually fluctuating one from the other. Things are continually changing. One of the traditional examples which is given is that when we walk in the mountains, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been in in the mountains, but the atmosphere is very thin so that quite often the sun is very harsh. And you’re walking in the mountains, and the sun is very harsh.
And so it’s hot and sweaty. So you you stop underneath a rock in the shade to cool off. That’s first moment, it’s very comfortable. That feels good. That kind of quality.
But if you if you’ve ever experienced this, just in one or two minutes, because of the altitude, you begin to cool off. It gets cold, and it gets become uncomfortable again. So you you go back out into the sun. Oh, that feels good. Nice sun on my skin.
It feels great. But after a few after a few minutes, just a few minutes, the sun again becomes harsh. And it’s, ah, it’s getting hot again. So you go back into the shade. And then at first, it feels good.
And that quality of that pleasure, which which can which turns into some kind of pain by its very nature. It it’s not as it’s the very nature of the of our of the conceptualizing process in terms of our feeling. You know, it’s like the like the the idiot sitting in a corner, hitting himself over the head with a hammer. And someone comes up, why are you hitting yourself over the head with a hammer? He said, because it feels so good when I stop.
And it and it does feel good when you stop. And that’s that that feeling of goodness and happiness is what Buddhism calls contaminated pleasure. All our pleasure is from the point of view Buddhists contaminated pleasure. Why? Because it always is only exists only relative to pain.
It’s a it’s a cessation of prior deprivation. It’s a cessation of prior pain. A lessening of pain is experienced as pleasure. In itself, it’s not pleasure only relative to what has just been experienced as pain. Compare it to that, this is great.
That that kind of healing. That’s the nature of our situation. Then finally, there’s the dissatisfaction of universal conditionality, which is a metaphysical suffering, I guess, in the sense that, you know, the the very nature of our of our human condition is that we’re susceptible or vulnerable. I don’t know if you know what that might mean to be that we have we have we’re vulnerable to experiences outside of our control. And just like in, you know, sometimes you you read about small children or babies, how how vulnerable they are to all the influences around them, how how dependent they are on these other people, and in the course of their dependency, what can happen to them.
They’re susceptible to all kinds of difficulties and pains and harm can be brought to them. But we’re all involved with it to some degree. We’re all susceptible. We’re all vulnerable. We didn’t choose to be born.
We won’t we don’t choose to grow old. We don’t choose to get sick. We don’t choose to die. We don’t choose most of our desire undesirable experiences, but they happen to us. We’re vulnerable.
We’re susceptible to such experiences out of our control. And this this this is perhaps the most difficult level of dissatisfactory quality of ego oriented existence to to to get a feeling for it, to come to some kind of sense of it. It’s said that those who who the there’s an analogy. Those who have some kind of deep realization from this level of dissatisfactoriness as compared to those who do not for most of us. It’s it’s comparable to taking a hair and put it in the palm of your hand.
In the palm of your hand, it’s it’s of no consequence. We we don’t even notice it’s there. But for someone who has a realization, a deep sensitivity to this level of dissatisfactoriness, It’s like taking that same hair and putting it in their eye. They simply can’t stand it. This not standing, this not this this unwillingness, this inability to to stand that level of dissatisfactoriness will impel oneself to liberate oneself from that condition, to draw upon one’s resources to be free of such a state.
If the state is never recognized, if it remains unrecognized, if we’re insensitive to it, then we’re never going to seek to be free of it. It’s just like someone who is in a prison. If their, you know, if their prison cell is comfortable enough, then there’s no thought about a plan for escape. It’s only when they become in some way aware of the dissatisfactory quality of prison life. That is not all that life could be.
It’s not freedom that they begin to plan and escape and begin to take the effort, make the effort to implement that plan to be free. So we’ll we’ll meditate on these levels of suffering. So if you take a firm, comfortable posture. So thinking of someone that you have no particular relationship with, a stranger, imagine that person in front of you. And if you can’t see them, just imagine that such a person is there.
And beginning to with the cultivation of compassion for this person, trying to feel as best you can. What is expressed in the words be wonderful if you didn’t have any problems, if you were free of your difficulties. May you be free of your problems and your difficulties. I’m going to help you. I’m going to commit myself in working with you in solving your problems.
Cultivation of love. It would be wonderful if you’re happy. May you be happy. I’m going to help you in committing myself and working with you to find happiness. And the way I’m going to express my commitment to you at this present moment is through my meditation, by developing myself, my wisdom, my compassion, my skills, my abilities.
And then eventually, I can be of real and significant practical benefit fulfilling my commitment here. And bring your mind to the breath. The gentle, easy enough flow of the natural breath. If it is helpful using the techniques of counting and noting.