Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “Can you be certain you are not dreaming right now?” is the unsettling question Ven Jampa Gendun poses in this 43-minute commentary on the Mind Only school. He opens with a guided reflection on the week’s dissatisfaction — physical pain, frustration, thwarted desires — before introducing the school’s three natures: imaginary (fabricated concepts, including the appearance of truly external objects), dependent (things arising from causes and conditions), and thoroughly established (emptiness). Dreams, cinema tigers, and the Chuang Tze butterfly verse illustrate how the apparent externality of objects deceives us. The practical point: if objects were never truly separate from mind, attachment and aversion lose their grip. He closes by arguing that peace is the mind’s natural state — not created, but uncovered by removing ignorance. Suited to students following a series on developing the awakening mind.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 HoM 1993 09 01.mp3
UUID: 21b91d20-2d46-420b-ad4d-4d2e0cfb6489
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-09-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.9 minutes
Words: ~4,609
We’re going to take a look at our experience over the last week in terms of dissatisfaction. Beginning with the dissatisfaction of physical pain. Just reviewing the course of your week, remembering the various headaches or toothaches, stomachaches, colds, bruises, cuts. Just taking a look at those and enumerating, reviewing your past week, those physical pains, dissatisfaction. And mental dissatisfaction.
About the occasions over this past week when perhaps you were frustrated or worried, depressed, anxious. Times when you didn’t get what you wanted, and you’re separated from that which you wanted and you had to experience things you didn’t want, fears and loneliness. Look at the the unsatisfactoriness of fluctuation. And try to see if you can find some examples over the course of this week. Like a fighting couple making up experience great happiness, but it only came about because of the pain of fighting, or the pain of hunger being assuaged by eating.
The pleasure of eating comes about only through the pain of hunger. Think of some of the pleasures that you’ve experienced over the course of the week. Were they always tied up in some kind of pain, some kind of lessening of tension, some deprivation? Finally, the dissatisfaction of universal conditionality, simple fact that we’re vulnerable, that we’re susceptible to pain, to hurt beyond our control. Things happen to us.
We don’t have the power to stop them, and they hurt. And bring your mind back. Slowly becoming aware of your body. And gently, in your own good time, becoming aware of your surrounding. So we’re looking at the second of the four stages in the development of the awakening mind.
They have the hearer stage, and presently, the second stage, the mind only stage. And we’re going to complete it tonight. So there you know, I’m going to try to find out what is what we should come away with in the mind only stage in our understanding what is important. In the, at the mind only stage, we question the truth or falsity of the of objects appearing external to our mind. And we begin we begin to examine them with greater precision precision, distinguishing them into three natures we talked about last week.
Those which are merely fabrications of mind, imaginary objects, imaginary natures. Those which have relative existence, dependent natures. And those which are have ultimate existence, thoroughly established natures. So imaginary natures are simply imaginary or conceptual objects, things that we make up with our mind, things that we make use of concepts to develop, to to to manufacture. This is like there are two different types.
There are existent imaginary natures and nonexistent imaginary natures. An existent imaginary nature is something like space. Space is the the absence of obstructability. It is an abstraction that we create with our mind. The I idea of the the lack or the absence of obstructability, the fact that my hand can move through this area.
I abstract from that notion of space. It is simply an idea that I come up with in my mind, but it exists because that idea was valid. It’s a quick it’s dependent on quick thinking process. There are other types of imaginary natures which don’t exist. Like, you know, if we imagine that there is a snake when in fact there is a rope.
That’s a nonexistent imaginary nature, that snake where there’s actually a rope. Here, the most important imaginary nature is external objects, objects which exist external to the mind. They don’t exist at the mind only stage. The second nature is dependent nature. This word means relative.
Literally, it means other powered. In the sense of other powered arising from causes and conditions. This table, this glass, and then the table is built is made from wood and paint and glue. Carpenter. The glass made from various elements.
Manufacturing process. These all are dependent upon causes and conditions for their existence. They have a certain relative existence. That’s the second nature. And finally, the third nature is thoroughly established phenomena.
And this is the quality of being complete without any type of relative existence. And this is the notion that of the absence. We’re introducing the idea of emptiness, the absence of our concepts about things and things themselves. I’ve used this idea about the map is not the territory. The territory that the absence of the map in the territory is a thoroughly established phenomena.
And then my idea about I have ideas about Tibet. I’ve never been there. I have lots of ideas about Tibet. But there is a reality of Tibet aside from my thoughts about it. I might have all kinds of notions of Shangri La, which I don’t anymore.
That’s true. And what it might be like. You know, people used to think Tibet was a Shangri La. And now, it’s we all know it’s not. I I I didn’t even know where Tibet was thirty years ago, twenty five years ago.
So, anyway, I had certain ideas about Tibet. But there was a reality to that, which was completely divorced from my ideas, my dreams, my my fantasies about Tibet. So that that that the non existence of my ideas, fantasies, my dreams about Tibet in in the reality of Tibet is a thoroughly established phenomena, a thoroughly established nature, unconditioned real. So these are these are concepts that we’ll be making use of as we go along. We’re going to use these concepts later on when we in terms of the the middle way school.
So these these three natures are extremely important. The Buddha said that, every phenomena has three natures. There is the phenomena itself, the table itself arising in dependence upon causes and conditions. There is a thought about the table, and then there is absence of our thoughts about the table in the table itself. Before we actually start thinking about it, there is the table.
So the, in terms of the mind only school, that there is an absence of external phenomena. Though they appear that way. In in in subject and object appear to be cut off and in distance, it appears that objects, they don’t, exist in relationship to our own minds. That’s the way they appear to ourselves. That is an imaginary nature.
The object in itself is a dependent nature. And its absence of being external to the mind is a thoroughly established nature. So it will just, you know, we can use the idea of a dream. The dream in itself arises in dependence upon causes and conditions, various impressions which have been, made in our mind. It can be past impressions.
It can be impressions over which, experiences which have been impressed in our minds over the course of the day. Also, if you eat late at night, you have you have lots more dreams. That in all of these various physic physiology, psychological, social conditions, impressions are are going to bring about a dream. The dream so there is a dream there are the things in the dream before we begin to think about them. Maybe there’s a car in the dream, a house in the dream, a person in the dream.
We are in the dream. So all of these manifestations arise in dependence upon causal conditions before we begin to think, this is the house, this a car, and this is me, before we begin to conceptualize about these things. So the these things in the dream, the house which appears, the car which appears, the eye which appears, these are dependent natures. They arise in dependence upon causes and conditions. Then there is the house in the dream, which we think to be external to the mind, to the dreaming consciousness.
There’s the person in the dream we we imagine to exist external to the dreaming consciousness, that there is a real person there that that exists outside of what is in fact a dreaming consciousness. That is in a manner imaginary nature. Alright. You know, we begin to think and that in fact it is a nonexistent imaginary nature because it doesn’t exist. There’s no person within the dream.
There’s no person outside of the dream consciousness that’s separate from the dream consciousness. There’s no house which is separate from the dream consciousness, but we think it is. We imagine it is. That’s an imaginary nature. The thoroughly established nature is the nonexistence of these separate independent entities, the nonexistence of a separate person from the dream consciousness, the nonexistence of a separate house from the dream consciousness.
These are thoroughly established natures. So a quotation. Another example would be a film of a tiger or a snake. The concept of a real tiger or a snake is the imaginary nature. So we’re we’re we’re at the cinema.
We’re watching a movie. And the movie, the it’s a film of depicting, showing a tiger and a snake. The concept of a real tiger, a real tiger, something that can actually bite, you know, or a snake, is the imaginary nature. So I can see if I think there’s a real tiger. I think there’s a real snake.
That concept is an imaginary nature. The mere appearance of the tiger or snake, that is the light playing on the screen in the form of a tiger or snake, is real and it is dependent nature. One could also think of the screen itself as dependent nature, like the Alaya Vijñāna, which is this mind basis of all, from which all the other manifestations appear. The emptiness of the mere appearance, in the sense that they’re merely being light, empty of any real tiger or snake, is the truly existing nature or a thoroughly established nature. So if the the emptiness emptiness of those of that light play of light in the forms of tigers and snakes as being real tigers and snakes is the thoroughly established nature.
So the mind only school views the world as merely the play of the mind initiated by the ripening of karmas within the mind itself. And we talked about the the mind basis of all, the repository of all these karmic impressions, like karmic seeds. That the the world is simply a play of these ripenings of karmas, of these impressions, due to which we have various experiences, visual experiences, auditory experiences, olfactory experiences, you know, experiences of taste and touch, etcetera. These experiences arise in dependence upon these seeds ripening within the mind itself. It’s like, all the effects and are like the the waves on an ocean.
The ocean itself is like the mind basis of all. And then out of these out of the ripening of these various karma appears various waves, shapes of waves, sizes of waves, durations of waves. But the waves are never separate from from the ocean. They’re the same entity. So there’s though we there’s all these experiences arising, all these appearances, they’re never separate from the mind.
They exist within the mind itself. But we we conceive of these as separate from the mind, and this is due to the afflicted mind, or we said ignorance. What are, in fact, simply waves or manifestations of the mind itself are seen as external to the mind. You know, the important now what difference does that make? The important point here is that we’re seeking to overcome.
You know, ignorance from ignorance arises all the various afflictive emotions. Most basically, we can list the emotions of desire and hatred, aversion and attachment. If if we were to begin to conceive of the objects which appear to us to be not separate from the mind, then this would begin to interrupt our our these these this reoccurring pattern of trying to incorporate attractive objects into our identity to make them a part of us because we can understand that they have they are not separate from ourselves and never have been. We there wouldn’t we wouldn’t be there would not there would simply would not be the tremendous desire to to make them a part of ourselves because we they have never been apart from ourselves. On the other hand, toward objects which we have an aversion for, they would never they would not arise this this pattern which tries to separate themselves from oneself, one’s from one’s identity or from ego territory.
Since one realizes that they are are a part of oneself, one’s own mind, they don’t exist external to one’s own mind. So overcoming, this of ignorance in the sense of overcoming this tendency to see these attractive and repulsive objects external to one’s own mind would overcome attachment, would overcome aversion, and therefore, would overcome all afflictive emotions, and the mind remain in peace. So this is all of this is all of these systems of thought are try are working toward overcoming aversion and attachment of the various afflictive emotions by removing ignorance and what they conceive of as ignorance at these various different levels. What they conceive of ignorance becomes more and more subtle as we work through. At the level of the hearer, the ignorance concerned itself with with an entity which was conceived of as a solid, concrete, unitary, unchanged, independent self.
On this basis, the basis of this misconception, we develop a particular type of attachment, a particular type of aversion. If we remove this ignorance, then we’ll remove that particular type of attachment, that particular level of aversion. Here we’re now we’re talking about a more profound type of ignorance, which gives rise to a more profound another level of attachment, another level of aversion. By removing this ignorance, again, we’ve removed a more subtle level of attachment, a more subtle level of aversion. And we’re going to keep working our way until we remove the most subtle level of ignorance.
Thereby the most subtle levels of attachment and aversion in all the afflictive emotions, thereby the mind comes to peace. The basic nature, the underlying premise is that the very nature of the mind is peace. It’s not something which we need to fabricate. It’s not something which needs to be manufactured. It is the natural, innate, inherent quality of mind, Peace.
This is what afflictive emotion means. It means that which disturbs the natural peace of the mind. The mind is, by its very nature, at peace. But there are certain factors in the mind which disturb this natural peace of the mind. If we can simply remove these factors from the mind, then the mind can return to its original state, which is peace.
So so it is simply this that we’re trying to that we’re working toward. Removing the disturbing factors from the mind. We don’t have to create the peace. It is already there. So we simply have to to remove those conditions which prevent unbroken, uninterrupted peace, continued uninterrupted peace.
This the the linchpin is ignorance, and there are different levels of ignorance. So we’re working at trying to remove these various levels of ignorance and we’re and concomitantly experiencing more and more subtle levels of peace. So, you know, we’re trying so we’re learning we’re learning a few things as we go along. One of them is the idea of falsity. You know, as I mentioned previously, we we are very much, before we begin this process, naive realists.
We accept everything at face value, but things are not very much the way they appear. We go through life unquestioned, without questioning these these what are taken to be real. At the level that here, we we call in we accept everything, but we call into question this appearance of a unitary, unchanging, independent self. That’s all we call into question. At this level of the mind only school, we call into question external phenomena.
We call we begin to to analyze. We begin to look with more precision at the nature of our reality and our experience of it. You know, we’re we’re developing a flexibility of mind. We’re developing we’re we’re we’re there’s a very gradual process of loosening up the mind. The the mind the the reason that we’re in the position that we are is this this persistent drive of ego of ignorance striving to secure the self in space and time, to find some security.
You know, we mentioned this previously, that there’s a there’s a there’s a sense that of there’s an unwillingness to to let go because there’s there’s a lack of understanding that the the the ground of ego, the ground of being is more basic than the ground of ego, that we cannot go out of existence. But it’s a very frightening prospect to even begin to to, seriously entertain that idea that we might be able to relax or you can give up the struggle. So there’s we have to so there’s we have an investment in this reality, in a very fixed identity. We find some kind of security in it. We know who we are and we know where things are.
You know, it’s it’s a We take We can almost drive some kind of comfort from such a reality, from such a fixed way of being. It may not make much it may not be much, but at least it’s home. That kind of idea. So we’re beginning. So, know, it make it would be preposterous to think that we can overcome that tremendous drive for security simply through a description of of the highest of the most profound ultimate reality.
But if we can begin to develop some kind of pliability of mind, some flexibility, we we can begin to inter introduce some doubt, some questioning on on the on the fringes, on the edges. Now, we can’t we can’t attack the very the very core of our being. What we if this isn’t real, then nothing’s real. There is a level at which we’re you know, that we couldn’t entertain it. This is one level.
This is one understanding or one high one reason that emptiness is quite often not taught in public because it does begin to call in question all that you have felt to be real. You know, if this I isn’t real, then nothing is real. And one can fall into the extreme of nihilism. Nothing exists. And it’s a very debilitating state.
So it is a process. It’s a working through, beginning to call into question at more gross levels and working down to more subtle levels and beginning to develop a flexibility of mind, finds acceptance, is able to tolerate the notion of uncertainty, of indefinability, of of of the lack of of security. There’s a great wisdom in insecurity, but that has to become known. Initially, there is a resistance. So here, we’re introducing the idea of almost like a dream, beginning to call and question the world about us, which we have taken so much security in, that we have that we have fixated upon, which which seems so solid and real.
You know, all that appears in a dream, how the houses, the people, the cars, appear to be separate external phenomena from ourselves. That’s the way they appear. But that appearance is deceptive. Do you see what we’re talking about? If we can the analogies work very well, the dream analogy, because it is an experience that we all have had.
When we’re in a dream, we take the things of a dream to be real. And those dreams appear to be external, to be solid things external through the dream consciousness to ourselves. But none of what exists separate from the dream consciousness is external to it. You know, understanding this, we have to ask ourselves, how do I know that I’m not presently dreaming? I don’t know.
You know, they’re actually seriously entertaining that question. How do I know that I’m not dreaming at this very moment? Maybe you feel like saying, because dreams are never so vivid as this, colors are not so bright. Forms, sounds, smells, touch touches, and tastes are not so clear and precise. However, someone else might disagree and say his dreams are even more vivid than his daydream than his daytime experiences.
Does this mean his dreams are his waking experience? Does this mean that his dreams are waking experience and is waking a dream? Does it mean if your faculties become impaired so that can no longer experience things so clearly and precisely that your life becomes a dream? On further reflection, might suggest that you know that you are not dreaming because of the continuity of your life. Everything is in a predictable place.
There is a sense of cause and effect, regularity, an established pattern of events, and so on. You might say that dreams are not like that. They are unpredictable. They can change in bizarre ways without warning and for and for no apparent reason. There is no real continuity, and you might find yourself in any place, time, shape, or form.
Are you saying then that if a dream were to stabilize so that there were that there were a continuity and a fairly predictable pattern of events, if then it were to continue for long periods of time and your waking experiences were only to last brief periods in which you were very confused and disorientated, then the dreams then the dream would have become a waking experience. An awakening experience a dream? For after all, it is not unusual for people to dream of ordinary situations. For example, that they have got up and had their breakfast and gone to work and so on. You may laugh at the suggestion that you are dreaming now.
You may think that if you were asleep and dreaming, everybody would stop interacting with you. They would tell you when you woke up that you had been dreaming. So there is no way that one could confuse dreaming with waking. However, there is no inherent reason why you should not dream that people have woken you up and told you that you have just awakened from a dream. So I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the verse by the the great, Taoist master, Chuang Tze.
In a way, he’s describing how he dreamed that he was a butterfly. And upon waking, found to his astonishment that he was Chuang Tze. But then it began to question. And it was hard to be sure whether he was really Chuang Tse having only dreamed that he was a butterfly or whether he was a butterfly and was only dreaming that he was Chuang Tse having just woken up. That’s rather frightening, isn’t it?
So beware those who enter here. Finally, one has to admit that there is no characteristic of waking experience that clearly distinguishes from dreaming. It is only a matter of degree and of one’s emotional predisposition. You believe you are awake because you want to feel secure and feel that the world is solid, real and supportive around you. If you were to seriously doubt you were awake, you would feel frightened and confused.
The stability of the experience of being awake reassures you, so you believe in it and give it a reality that you are not that you do not afford to dream. You may want to argue that there must be a world out there that is not mine, or there would be no consensus what the world was like. We tend to take as real whatever the general consensus of opinion dictates, especially when it coincides with our own experience and opinions. However, consensus is only a matter of degree. We have no means of knowing whether any of us ever see or experience anything exactly the same way as anybody else.
At the same time, there is plenty of evidence that we do not see and experience the same thing in the same way. The difference is even more marked when one considers how different differently different creatures experience the same thing. Take water, for example. We experience it as something refreshing to drink. You know, this glass of water, something refreshing to drink.
Although somebody with hydrophobia would experience it at very as someone who has fear of water when they have rabies. That’s very threatening. We do not normally see it as something to live in. However, fish do. A fish’s view on the nature of water is totally at odds with ours.
And also, you know, if we can carry this through, a hungry ghost would experience this as pus and blood. A celestial being would experience it as nectar. Again, take the example of someone like Mao Tse Tung. To some, he appeared as a dangerous enemy and to others, a dear friend. Yet to a mosquito he appeared as just as a source of nourishment and to the parasites in its body a complete universe.
Since for any object its every aspect is established through the perception of the moments of consciousness perceiving it, how can its existence independent of this consciousness be established? Consensus does not prove anything other than that certain relationships exist between different streams of experience. It does not prove that there is anything other than mind and substance. So the mind the mind only the mind only school says we’re running out of time. The mind only school says, you know, trying to account for consensus.
That is the agreement. We, you know, we all have, some agreement that there’s a table present before us, I think. Alright? They they account for this consensus by positing two types of karma. I said that on the mind basis of all, there are karmic seeds.
And through the ripening of these karmic seeds, there arises both the object and the perceiving consciousness of that object. For example, the table. There would arise a table, and there would arise an eye consciousness perceiving the table. So there are two simultaneous karmas ripening two karmas ripening simultaneously. For example, we may agree that there is a table present before us.
We can agree on its color, its size, its shape. So this general feature of the table arises there’s a commonality of perception amongst us. So this is the ripening of similar karmic seeds within each of our consciousnesses as to the general table. But simultaneously, there is a ripening of another karmic seed. And this in our individual mind streams, which results in a we see a unique table from a different angle.
We see, a different shade of color. We notice a scratch here. We notice a particular, quality of the table. So in it, we each have there is a general table which appears to us all. But within that general table, there is a very unique table that we experience.
So in some respects, it is as if two tables, a common table to us all and a unique table, which is unique to our own experience. And this is accounted for by the ripening of two simultaneous karmic seeds within our minds. So the mere fact of consensus, we say publicity, that there is a public object that we can all agree upon, is not in itself cannot serve as proof that the table exists external to the mind. So let’s take a few things that we’ve learned in the mind only school. We learned that trying to understand the nature of falsity.