Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 39-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun uses a vivid image from the Bosnian war — Serbs “kill Muslims, not human beings” — to show how categorical labels block compassion by severing our sense of common humanity. He works through the gradual widening of concern from intimates to strangers to enemies, then develops the concept of “exceptional resolve”: the bodhisattva’s personal commitment to free all beings rather than leaving responsibility to others. He directly challenges the idea of postponing compassionate action until one is sufficiently realized — “Buddha is as Buddha does; love is valid at every stage” — and draws on a Jātaka tale of the future Buddha sacrificing his body for a starving tigress to argue that wholehearted dedication, not spiritual capability, is what transforms an ordinary being into an extraordinary one.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 HoM 1993 03 24.mp3
UUID: 7fe6d4c7-0cfd-4f8d-9419-a76a49ee57a2
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-03-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 39.0 minutes
Words: ~4,753
To foster these levels of compassion, but also beginning to change the object of our development of compassion toward those we aren’t quite so intimate with. And tonight maybe those who are appalling, perhaps there’s sense of foreigner, know, they’re another culture, ethnic background, perhaps another race. So we’re overcoming our sense of of difference, of strangeness. They don’t it’s as if most of the people in the world have very little to do with their lives. They they’re like they have a sense of alienation from them.
We we can find our our homes, our positive homes, to a very small network of close friends, relatives. And there’s a certain familiarity with them, a certain comfortableness. So we’re trying to begin to open out, open our minds to feeling that same sense of familiarity, the lack of alienation, strangeness about others. Know, others with different backgrounds, from different ethnic groups, different races. But still we’re working with those appeal to us because it’s somewhat easier.
Then we begin to, you know, with those type of individuals, if we can begin to actually include those into a sense of ego territory, a sense of familiarity, comfortableness and actually sincerely wishing them that things be well with them, that they’re not having any problems. Then we can, you know, it’s an evolution, a quickening in the mind to broadening out to other types of individuals. Types of individuals who we would normally not be able to develop these strong positive feelings towards because they have, we have a strong sense of indifference. Have, when we talked about development of equanimity, we talked about the labeling process and how in the process of categorizing, there’s all of these various associations which are connected with whatever category we put individuals in. Those we categorize as stranger.
There’s a sense of alienation, there’s a sense of strangeness. That’s why we call them strangers. It’s difficult as long as we maintain those associations with this particular category to develop a connectedness, a sense of including them within our sphere of concern. We have to break down the wall of that associations that we have with the category of stranger, such that even though we may not socially be acquainted with them, we can still feel a connectedness, a relatedness. We’re trying to carry over that sense of bonding that we use as our model of a mother and child, even to stranger.
And then finally, but it’s still evolution, it’s still progress. We have to break break break down the sense of alienation and indifference, this wall in which we view everyone else who is not included in the category of friend and lover, intimate relatives. And then finally working with enemies and increasingly extending that scope of our concern in an infinitely, infinitely. Compassion can be extended infinitely. It has something to do with the infinite potential of our own mind.
So when we extend our inward limits, so we’re expanding our outward limits to more and more beings. That’s this friendly thought. It would be wonderful if you didn’t have any problems. All types of being, different categories of being, different nationalities, different races, disabled, people with AIDS, blacks, yellow, all the possible categories that we make use of. Beginning to break down the these are only manners of speaking, conventions.
They’re useful if they’re not if they’re merely used as convention. But we we begin to see them as something more than convention. You know, as we talked about previously, you know, the you know, the there are no human being there are no human beings being killed in Bosnia. There are Muslims being killed, Not human beings. You know, Serbs, they aren’t looking at those people as human beings.
They’re Muslims and all the emotional associations that go along with that, that that categorization, that particular label, that’s what they’re killing. They don’t see the being, they see the label they’re applying to that person, that human being. human beings don’t kill human beings. Serbs kill Muslims, Croatians kill Serbs, and all the associations that they’ve built up over their long history of conflict. So, you know, if we the term Muslim, the term Croatian, term serve has a meaning.
It’s a convention that we can use. But we have to use these terms correctly that and we begin to divorce them of all the emotional associations that we connect with them, such that we see the people who we are applying these terms to, these labels to, in terms of friend and enemy and stranger. Then we begin to extend outwardly by strengthening the intensity of our compassion. Extending outwardly in terms of the various categories of beings, including more and more individuals into our scope of our ability to feel connected with. And then intensifying that type of connection in terms of going deeper.
May you be free of suffering. There’s more involvement. There’s more intention. Awakening our hearts to others is not really constituted of love and compassion. But also thinking I can do something.
I can take some kind of responsibility for these people that I’m wishing well, that I’m wishing them to be free from their suffering, that I can help them. So you know, it goes beyond love and compassion. We dedicate ourselves to lead them out of their suffering and help them to be happy. This applies to all living beings. It is universal in scope.
All living beings, all suffering. This is where we’re working toward. This is where the mind can evolve to this. There’s no reason why it can’t. It’s not totally it’s not qualitatively removed from our capacity to feel at present.
It’s simply a matter of quantity, the development of what is already there. So this is this attitude is reflected in great compassion. I will free you from the suffering extending to limitless being indiscriminately without regard to whatever categorization we may conventionally place them in. So when the depths of this attitude is such that we accept sole responsibility, and there’s a great emphasis on this word sole, s o l e, individual responsibility, personal responsibility, to actually actualize this dedication. We develop the attitude that I will by myself free all living beings, then this is the first part of exceptional resolve.
You know how many of us have have driven down the highway and seen a car broken down along the side of the road or seen an injured animal along the side of the road. And unconsciously thought, well someone else will come along and take care of them. You know, we just keep on driving. No, in fact we have this, we are good people. We sincerely don’t want those people to have problems.
We sincerely don’t want that dog lying on the side of it to suffer. That’s That’s true. We don’t want to see that dog inside of it suffering. And we hope someone will come along and take care of it, take it to the vet or whatever comfort it. Then we keep driving along.
So we have to question, if we don’t help our mother, who who can we expect to help our mother? Who will help our mother? How can we as daughters and sons rationally and honestly expect others to help them when we ourselves do not? There’s no kind of ill defined vague somebody out there who’s going to do it for us, someone to whom we can abdicate our responsibility. It’s up to each of us to personally to help, to take responsibility.
So it is a real commitment. You know, the bodhisattva, that individual who has developed the awakening heart makes a real commitment. He takes a bodhisattva vow. It’s a real commitment based upon the realization of the suffering and the confusion of ourselves and others. The only way we can begin to break this chain of confusion and pain is to begin to work our way out towards an awakened state of being.
Awakened state of mind is to take responsibility for ourselves and others. If we don’t deal with the situation of confusion, if we don’t we don’t take responsibility for ourselves, nothing is going to ever happen. You know, we cannot count on others to take our responsibility in working the confusion and the pain out for others. We have tremendous power to change the karma of the world. But you know we ask, what can I do?
I can’t even help myself. I can’t free even one person. You know, isn’t it very much the blind leading the blind? Wouldn’t it be, you know, once I finally get myself together, then I’ll do something. It is a false view that the will to enlightenment The will to enlightenment is the awakening heart.
It is a false view that the will to enlightenment, the spirit of enlightenment that is love and compassion, is not genuine before enlightenment and hence to be postponed until some presumed threshold is achieved. The correct view is that love is valid and essential at any point in the path. One cannot therefore excuse oneself from the responsibility of compassionate acts on the grounds that that one had better wait until after enlightenment, and so remain uninvolved in that ultimate self interest of gaining individual enlightenment. One is enlightened when one acts enlightened, that is for the sake of others. Whatever one’s cognitive state may be, Buddha is as Buddha does.
The fact is, while we are cultivating love and compassion, while we are cultivating love, compassion, wisdom, and all the other insights that lead to enlightenment, we can be helping others continuously. First of all, merely by living a simple life with a heart dedicated to overcoming self-cherishing. We automatically benefit others. And secondly, each stage of the spiritual development, from the first to the last, has its own power and ability. Depending on which level we have reached, we can help others to that extent.
To be realistic, we should help others to the limit of our present capacity. The thought that we cannot do anything until we are enlightened is in fact egotistic and ignorant reflects the basic misunderstanding of what spiritual training is all about. This misunderstanding is related to an attitude we have all had throughout our lives. At school for instance, we thought I must study these boring subject now so that eventually I can pass my examinations, receive my degree, get a good job, make a lot of money and then I’ll be happy. All this emphasis on the future when I have enough money, when I have my own home, when I retire, is easily transferred to our spiritual practice.
When I have finished practicing, when I’m enlightened, but to think in this way is quite deluded. This dream fantasy of an unreal future makes our present actions unrealistic as well. It is important to understand that true practice is something we do from moment to moment, from day to day. We do whatever we can with whatever wisdom we have and dedicate it all to the benefit of others. We just live our lives simply to the best of our ability.
This in itself will be of enormous benefit to others. We don’t need to wait until we are Buddhas before we can begin to act. So whoever we are, we can assume some responsibility for others. It’s just that the level of our responsibility will be according to our ability to respond. If you never assume any responsibility, you’re never going to be aware you’re never going to be motivated to develop the ability to respond because you’ve never been called upon to respond, because you’ve never accepted responsibility.
It is only when you begin to take that responsibility, to accept responsibility and the need to respond, then you become motivated to increase the level of your ability to respond. And this is the force that will solve your problem of you as an individual and bringing about a change in the world for the better. Choosing to respond to others’ needs, in fact our own needs, choosing to respond to our own needs is taking responsibility. It is not some It is a choice that we make. It is not some burden which is being thrust upon ourself, this idea of responsibility.
It often has the association of a burden, of carrying a huge weight around on your shoulders. But this is something extra added. We are not assuming the responsibility of our actions when we think in this way. We are seeing all the determinant factors. We remain a victim in thinking this way.
Whenever we think of ourselves as doing something for someone else, we are in some way denying our own responsibility. Whatever we do is done because we choose to do it, and we make that choice because it is one that satisfies us most. Whatever we do for someone else, we do because it fulfills a need we have. Responsibility is not a duty imposed upon us from outside. It is my response to request, which I feel to be my concern.
Responsibility and response have the same root, responder, to answer. The responsible means to be ready to respond. Through our love and compassion, we value and feel some sort of of connectedness with other people. Their requests, articulated and unarticulated, both apparent and unapparent, are felt to be our concern. We choose to make their concerns our concern.
And therefore, we seek to respond to answer their needs. This becomes a choice. And I talked about how if we Power is where the decisions are made And to choose to respond is the way that we empower ourselves and that we develop the ability to respond. But why should I cultivate such an attitude? Accepting sole responsibility.
And there’s a great deal of emphasis on soul, on individual responsibility. If ultimately there are infinite numbers of Buddhas out there working their butts off trying to help all these living beings. Why should I take sole responsibility? And there are so many Buddhists dedicated to the same end. One, it’s empowering.
How many times have we thought I’ll leave it to someone else? Someone else will take care of it. Someone else who can do it better than I. But over and above that, each of us has their unique sphere of influence, of karmic affinities with others. You know, with one particular person, just a simple smile, a simple frown can have a tremendous impact upon another.
So we have that kind of connection with that other person, intimacy of relatedness. With another person, no matter how much time we may spend, no matter how much energy, no matter how much resources we may give, it can have no effect whatsoever. So there’s a tremendous difference in the ability to influence others at different times, in situations. Our relationships and our potential to influence others are the outcome of discernible variables, of our karmic affinity, the types of relationships that we’ve developed over infinite numbers of lives. For example, you know it is said that Śākyamūni Buddha, the historical Buddha who was born two thousand five hundred years ago in Lumbini, is what is called the fourth universal teacher of this eon.
And the next, the fifth will be Maitreya Buddha. And it is said there will be one thousand universal teachers. What it means by universal teacher is that there though there are infinite numbers of Buddhas, there are individuals who have developed such types of karmic affinities, relationships with such a vast number of individuals that it is as though they can influence a universe of being, of people through their actions, through their activity. That they develop purposefully infinite members of relationship such that they’re able to exert tremendous influence over others. But still even within our limited capacity, you know in the course of our meditation it is emphasized that in cultivating love and compassion we should do so with respect to many, many, many particular individuals.
Doing so, we are not only growing in love and compassion, but also creating affinity with a greater and greater number of persons who will be able to significantly influence in a positive beneficial fashion in the future. You know each of us relate with individuals who at various given times we can and do significantly influence. So this influence that we have on others can be even more far reaching, have more impact upon the lives of another than highly realized beings and great spiritual masters. This is true. Due to our karmic closeness, the type of connection that we have with other individuals.
This happens all the time. But the Dalai Lama, know, who has tremendous compassion, tremendous wisdom can have little influence upon a particular person. But another individual who has far less compassion, if we can compare, far less wisdom, if we can compare, can significantly influence that other person for the better, that one who is unable to be influenced by even someone like the Dalai Lama. This is true. We all know this.
This is our experience. So our potential to work with others does not exist exclusively from our own side. If it did, then the Dalai Lama would be able to help everyone because he has that ability, that potential, he has the compassion and the wisdom to be able to significantly influence others. From his side it’s there, that ability, that potential. But this ability to significantly influence others simply does not exist exclusively from the side of the person themselves.
But it does not exclusively depend upon the individual. It depends upon the quality of interaction, unique context in which these two people are relating. It is a type of relationship. You know, even to think in one way and this is looking at perhaps a little more profoundly, but even to think we can help someone could be deceptive. In the sense that a bodhisattva, someone who is awake in their heart, tries to understand himself or herself as best they can.
Tries to understand the reality of their situation, the nature, the ultimate nature of all things about them, the phenomena, and tries to open their hearts to others and their minds to others and leave it open such that it remains open. Within this state of openness, some kind of communication can take place. There’s a sharing. There’s there’s a kind of inspiration, some kind of insight can take place. You know, it is said that the the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas, the Buddhas had no intention of helping others.
That may sound very strange. They are compared to a wish granting tree. You know, it’s like a fruit tree. It is continually producing this fruit for all to enjoy, the sweet, nutritious, delicious fruit, continually bearing this fruit. Others can come along and pick it as they choose according to the nature of their situation, their affinity, their relatedness, their openness.
Whether they choose to pick that fruit or not from the side of the tree, it’s always growing, it’s always producing, it’s always there for the taking, for the asking. There is always the openness, there’s the potentiality for some kind of transmission, communication, for insight to take place. Different individuals will pick the fruit or not. We all have some insight, some kind of understanding, we all have some love, some caring. So we can help a limited number of people in a limited number of situations, a limited time, as if we were a Buddha.
Buddha is as Buddha does. So the aim of the bodhisattva is to help unlimited being at unlimited times in unlimited situations. To be a Buddha in unlimited way. To be all things to all people so that in some way they might be able to help a few. One of the themes of our lives, this dissatisfaction, this unease that we continually experience, which permeates our being as it were, is that we never really dedicate ourselves to anything.
Never really commit ourselves wholeheartedly to anything. Everything that we do is at best only done partially. We are butterflies in the spiritual supermarket of our lives. There’s always like butterflies flitting from one flower to another, from one attractive diversion to another. There is always some kind of holding back, some reservation.
You Remember the experience of giving ourselves over wholeheartedly and completely to any one thing, any one person, any one activity. So it is that this dedicated attitude of the awakened heart which has the power to completely transform, which has the power to transform an ordinary being into an extraordinary being. This is what does it, this power of the dedicated heart and the awakening heart. It is compared to an alchemist’s elixir, which can change base metals into gold. It is something that we can develop and that will transform us at the very basic of our being.
But you know, to a large extent we want to possess our love and compassion. We want to possess the awakening heart, make it another object in our collection. Rather than being compassion, rather than being the awakened heart, We want to be able to turn them off and on at will, when it’s at our advantage, when it’s at our convenience. We want to keep it in our pocket and take it out whenever on special occasion. In the birth stories of the Buddha, it’s called the Jātaka tales.
It is recorded that when the future Śākyamūni Buddha was still a bodhisattva on his journey to Buddhahood, while he was training, this is we are training now, presently. He sacrificed his body for the sake of a tigress who was unable to feed her young. To the modern man, such a story may appear unreasonable and exaggerated. Because he judges from a purely intellectual, that is external point of view, according to which the sacrifice appears to be out of proportion to its cause. The preservation or rather the prolongation of the life of some wild beast does not seem to be worth the sacrifice of human life.
The Buddhist, however, sees this story in quite a different light. To him it is not the factual or objective reality that matters, but the motive, the power of compassion, which caused the bodhisattva to act in this way, irrespective of external consequences. The spiritual and symbolic meaning of this deed goes far beyond the frame of its apparent cause. That the lives of the tigress and her cubs are saved is not of such fundamental importance as that the bodhisattva experiences within him their suffering and despairs in all its terrible reality. And that he proves by his deed that there is no difference for him between his own suffering and the suffering of others.
In his supreme sacrifice, he overcomes the delusion of his own self, and thus he lays the foundation for his later Buddhahood. If the modern man fails to be moved by the Jātaka tales, it is because he regards their picture of the bodhisattva’s life not as an ideal to be followed, but as a doctrine to which one may agree or disagree on purely theoretical grounds. Seizing the letter, he misses the spirit of the teaching. A bodhisattva doctrine in the sense of a conceptual formulation of the bodhisattva spiritual attitude does indeed exist. But this doctrine, like all doctrines of Buddhism, has a strictly pragmatic value.
It functions to facilitate the realization of the ideal. You know, our lives, and if you disagree, you’re welcome to disagree. But I speak from my own experience and what I have gone through in the course of my life. Our lives are very much marked by a sense of hollowness, by a sense of conflict, sense of doubt, some kind of vague hesitation. We are somehow ashamed and we are isolated.
In our seeming reasonableness, we have lost our dignity, have become out of touch with our dream, our idea. And in trying to protect our own territory, we find it in order to find a sense of personal security, we have become impoverished. We have become poor. In our life there’s no dedication. There’s some kind of unending calculation.
There’s no wholeness. Just all these things, these fragments. These conflicts perpetuate war with ourselves. You know, I’ve returned to the notion of psychotherapy is not about happiness, but about power and confidence many times. And the idea of power, and we need to be empowered.
Power is as I have said, where the decisions are made. Do not allow your life and to not allow yourself to remain a victim is the way to take power, to take control of your life, to begin to make decisions. That power is in the deciding. An even greater power lies in making consistent choices and dedication. So it is the bodhisattva’s consistent choice of love and compassion in all the various situations, all the vicissitudes of life that he confronts, that she experiences, in all of her various feelings, that empowers the bodhisattva to take responsibility for others.
That makes the bodhisattva an extraordinary being. That makes the bodhisattva different from an ordinary being is because they are dedicated and through their dedication they have become powerful. But again, the idea of not only power, but competence, the ability to respond. The motive is the will to take personal responsibility. But can we respond?
If we are not able to respond, then how can we take responsibility? Truthfully, in fact. Dedication to take responsibility for all beings and all suffering leads to the resolve to be able to respond, to be able to be confident in limitless ways. And there arises from the depth of our hearts an all consuming aspiration. And for the sake of their sake, I must become a Buddha.
I must awaken. I have to become a happy, healthy, supremely sane and skillful human being so that I can unerringly show all others the way to be the same. So this is the awakening heart. This is what arises through this process of the sevenfold cause and effect precept. There is no more virtuous mind than the awakening heart.
There is no more powerful mind than the awakening heart. There is no more joyous mind than the awakening heart. To accomplish the purpose of all living beings, there is nothing superior than the awakening heart. The awakening heart is the unsurpassable way to accumulate creative potential, to purify obstacles, to protect from all interference. It is the unique and all encompassing method.
Every ordinary and supra mundane power can be attained through just this, the development of the awakening heart. It is said that it’s absolutely precious. I’m just end with a verse. All my mothers, I shall go with you and be your guide. In your most need, be by your side until upon the vantage ground of truth, we stand together in love and wisdom, incomparable together.
And then next week we’ll start, we’ll begin the discussion of the second meditative tradition for the development of the awakened heart, equalizing and exchanging self for others. So we dedicate the creative potential that we did accumulate. And you notice one of these dedications, which and these are the two most common, most used dedications in all the various prayer ceremonies, in all the various rituals, in all the various meditation sessions. One of them is specifically dedicated to the awakening heart. That’s how important, how valuable, how highly it’s held.
If we can even begin to sincerely aspire to achieving it, We have done something wonderful in the course of our journey, something really worthwhile. We can that’s a real punctuation in the course of our evolutionary history. Just to sincerely aspire develop such a mind is like a star seen in in the course of the daytime. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to enlightenment through these skillful actions. May this supreme jewel of the awakening heart not yet arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more.
So if you like to get a cup of tea, we’ll then have a discussion group. Thank you. Good night.