Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this brief 4-minute closing segment, Ven Jampa Gendun introduces a three-part framework for examining experience: the thing itself, our concept of the thing, and the absence of that concept. Using the example of a table, he highlights how we ordinarily collapse these categories — mistaking our ideas about something for the thing itself — and explains why developing that distinction is foundational to removing subtler levels of ignorance. He is careful to head off a common misreading: this analysis does not question whether things exist, only the way they exist. Problems arise, he says, not from the table or the person but from our view of them. The talk closes with a dedication prayer, and he notes the series will move on to the Middle Way School the following week.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 HoM 1993 09 01.mp3
UUID: 486c63db-c147-48ff-bd47-c64873ba2e46
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-09-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 4.1 minutes
Words: ~482
The extended idea that things don’t necessarily exist as they appear. We’ve developed some precision with respect to the nature of phenomena, categorizing them into three groups. Introducing the notion that there is the thing and our concept about the thing and the absence of our concept about the thing. This notion of there is the thing, the table, there is my thoughts about the table, and then there is the absence about my thoughts in the table. Generally, we we you know, we’re developing some tools, some ways, some skills in the way we’re going to, analyze our experience.
Generally, we don’t make these distinctions. We think our ideas about the table are the table. We think our ideas about the people are the people. We don’t make this distinction. So we’re beginning to become a little more discriminative.
We’re developing some skills, analytic skills, which are going to help us in development of our more more profound wisdom. So we can begin to work at more and more profound means of removing more and more subtle levels of ignorance. And just calling into question our rock firm belief in the reality of this of this world about us. It, you know, calling to question that it may in fact be in a dream beginning to question what, you know, things that we have taken so much for granted. Developing a more some pliability, some flexibility of mind.
Not having to that becoming perhaps a more a little more sophisticated in our our thinking about the world and its nature. So I think we’ll stop there. Okay? And we’ll we’ll begin, next week on the Middle Way School, the third of these four stages. So just, I guess, I mean, in this room exists.
Okay? I don’t want anybody to have nightmares tonight. This the building exists. We’re not talking about whether things exist or not. That is never called into question.
We’re talking about the way things exist, That we have some misconceptions around the way things exist. We’re not questioning whether I exist, whether this table exists. We’re questioning the way it exists. We have some misunderstandings about the way things exist and dependence upon those we have problems. The things in themselves are no problems.
I’m not a problem. This table is not a problem. But it’s it’s my view of those things which are the problems. So dedicating the positive energy that we’ve created. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to the enlightened realm through these skillful actions.
May the supreme jewel of the awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow. And may that which has arisen never diminish but increase more and more. Thank you. If you’d like to stay for the discussion, might like to take a cup of tea. Thank you.
Good night.