Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun reframes going for refuge as something everyone already does — investing money, relationships, or status with the power to solve their problems — before asking whether those refuges are actually working. He then maps the Three Jewels onto this frame: the inner Buddha as one’s own sanity and wisdom, the Dharma as whatever methods open new possibilities, and the Sangha as a greenhouse where sprouts of love and compassion find protection to grow. The second half explains the four opponent powers for purifying negative karma — sincere regret, compassion toward those harmed, realistic reversal, and an antidote action — and closes with a guided Śākyamūni Buddha visualization and mantra, including a healing recitation dedicated to a guest. Accessible to newcomers; no prior Buddhist background assumed.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 17 HoM 1993 09 08.mp3
UUID: 0f7fda78-9c4e-4a35-8079-538e5e57ca46
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-09-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~4,534
And in conclusion, I’d like to add, I’ve said enough. We’ll stop there. You really missed it all. So I was gonna talk about some profound, really heavy subject. And this process that we’re all involved in one way or another, that is the process of going for refuge.
And then we can talk about it in different ways. We can use different terms terminology. You know, I don’t think the the idea of going for refuge is not particularly Buddhist. It’s not particularly Eastern that we’ve all been going for refuge our all of our lives in one way or another, that we may not use that terminology, that we may not be conscious of the fact that you’re investing something or someone or with value and power such that we we go to them or these things, situations, people, whatever, as a means to solve our problems, however we may conceive of those problems. And some people go to go for refuge to, other people, families and friends.
Some go for refuge to their jobs, to sports, hobbies, drugs, money, power, status, something which you think is going to deliver the goods. There’s some kind of payoff that’s going to help you to solve your problems. It’s going bring you happiness. So if this works, that’s that’s all well and good. But we have to keep checking to see whether our particular refuge our particular refuges are in fact working in our lives.
And everyone has problems. Everyone Buddhist have problems. But anyway but we’re talking more in terms of the quality, the overall themes of our life. And it is, are we generally happy people? And beginning to check up within our own lived experience, is our particular refuge working?
Or do perhaps we need to reorientate ourselves in other directions for for the happiness that we’re all looking for, for the methods to solve our problems. And if we in traditional terms, we we say within the Buddhist context that we go for refuge to the Buddha. And however we may conceive of this, you know, it can be the Buddha outside of ourselves, but, ultimately, it is the Buddha inside of ourselves, which is the, the ultimate solutions to our problems. You know, it’s the only Buddha who is always going to be dependable. The only fact of our life which we can have complete trust in in a way is our own sanity, own love, our own compassion, our own wisdom, our own exuberance for life.
And these things, these qualities that we develop within ourselves will always hold us in good stead, no matter what the vicissitudes of our life may bring us. That we have some kind of real refuge, a place that we can go to, a real place to find solace, where we can, heal our wounds at some deep level, where we can solve our problems in terms of ourselves. And go for refuge to the Dharma. You know, those those means, those truths, those techniques, whatever form they may take, by means of which we’re able to to actualize Buddha, by means of which we’re actually we’re able to actualize our own wisdom, our understanding, our intelligence, our able our ability to see things free of our preconceptions or misconceptions or biases, our mistaken notions about things, to see things clearly. Those may those ways of being and methods which, facilitate the development of love and compassion.
It facilitates the development of an awakening of our hearts, our opening of our hearts to others, by going out and to others and sharing with others and involvement in the lives of others, which help us to arouse some kind of energy, kind of exuberance, some kind some kind of zest for life, some kind of spiritual and physical, mental energy. And those methods or those means, they call it Dharma. The but they can take various forms. You know, whatever has that ability that like a key, opens up some new possibility in our ways of being in our life. And we go for refuge to the spiritual community, you know, those who facilitate this process, the social context in which we grow, which we able to solve our problems, in which awakening takes place.
And there are those who help us to fulfill our preferred story of the type of life that we would like to lead or the type of life or type of death that we might want to experience. And I think very much that that you have become a spiritual community. That over the over the course of this year and last year, however long that you’ve been coming and gathering together and and sharing each of your resources, each of your skills, each of your your wisdoms, and sharing your compassion and and your love, caring for one another, and some opening of the hearts to one another, and some kind of understanding of one another, and identifying with one another. That there has been a real growth, individually, but also in terms of, a social awareness amongst us. Some kind of new entity arises, which wasn’t there before, that something which is more than the mere sum of its parts.
A spiritual community where, we can, it’s like the place where the best of us can can find nurturance, where they you know, I think in very much a a spiritual community is like a greenhouse in a way, that where the the sprouts and the the shoots of of all of all our goodness, of our wisdom and love and compassion can find temporary protection, that they can have the the they can enjoy the radiance, you know, of each other’s love and each other’s caring and each and sharing in each other’s understandings. And within that radiance, one’s own sprouts of wisdom and love and sharing are able to grow and mature. And then perhaps this reaches a point when the you know, that we can replant, transplant, what were what were sprouts that which would which at one time needed protection, which at one time needed some kind of artificial environment. And we can go out into the world and we can hold our own. We can maintain our authenticity.
We don’t lose our way in terms of holding our priorities in life centered around wisdom and love and compassion and benefiting of others. And then the you know, I think and then where you where you begin to change the world. We begin to extend the boundaries of spiritual community. And, you know, this in a way, you have all of you have your work to do and your families to raise. You have all of these things that you have to get on with in your life, which are practical necessities.
But I think it’s it’s really remarkable and really marvelous that you’ve created the time, that you put the energy and the thought and the caring into this process of your own growth. But not even more above that, that I noticed the process of growing amongst you in togetherness into a spiritual community. And for me, this is, very heartening. I feel A great sense that that, you know, in all of my confusion, in all of my, in spite of all my afflicted emotions, in my my, my problems, in my my shortcomings, ignorance. That that together we have done something really worthwhile.
We have advanced ourselves along our journey. And we are happier people and better people for having come together as we do. I guess I thank you for all of you for that, for sharing this opportunity, for allowing me these these moments to share my thoughts with you and and the the thoughts that I’ve been, fortunate enough to have transferred from my teachers to myself in some in spite of their of my obstinacy and my my pride and all my shortcomings that somehow over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to have been exposed to enough great teachers that simply through the process of osmosis, think, maybe something something some kind of something rubbed off, was worthwhile that I feel able to share in some my limited fashion. And I think something and I feel very good about what has come out of it in terms of us together. I think it’s a really wonderful thing to to turn one’s mind from time to time as we do toward the most noble thoughts which have ever been born in the mind of humankind.
The thoughts of wisdom and love and compassion, caring for others. That is a really it’s like stars during the daytime. They’re very rare to be even to be even heard of, let alone sought to cultivate in one in ourselves. And that we continually listening to the to the news each day about, and somehow, it is only the horrors which go about go on in our world, which make news, which the media seems to want to communicate. But and it’s like, in spite of that, in spite of all this darkness about this, there is this continual rekindling of life.
And, you know, it’s said that, the darkness of of a thousand years is dispelled in a moment by a single candle. And I think what we do each Wednesday, and I I think what each of you do in your daily lives is rekindle like a candle and taking a little bit of light out into what is a very dark world on the whole. And I think it will make a difference. I think as individuals, we can change the world if we begin by changing ourselves. So I think, you know, this is a wonderful process that we’re involved and, to stick with it, to make it a way of life, a lifestyle.
And then there’s some kind of goodness both for yourself and for others, not only the your immediate others, but also, though we may not be able to recognize it as present for the world at large. Some kind of goodness will come about in the world through what we do as individuals. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha or the Buddha within inside of ourselves, actualizing our own basic goodness and the goodness of life. And this process is facilitated. Buddha is actualized by means of the Dharma within the social context of spiritual community.
And the reason that we do it, the reason that we’re involved in this journey is for hopefully, to some extent, the sake of another or others. Trying to ever widen our scope of concern of why we do, to include a greater ever widening circle of others until, ultimately, sometime along our journey, what we do is for the sake of all that lives. And this is the way that we can solve our problems at the most profound of all levels. This is what pays off. This is what is going to deliver the goods.
This is our ultimate refuge. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and 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 all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain a state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and 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 all sentient beings. So we have a very special guest tonight. Many of you know Valerie, don’t you? I was very happy to see that Valerie could come tonight.
Not that we do a special practice since Valerie was here. You know, we we often do a purification. Not often, but from time to time, we do a purification practice where, involves a visualization. But more than visualization, it also involves an application of what are called the four opponent powers. And I I’ve talked about these previously, the four powers, the four, sometimes called counteracting agents,, the means of, purifying negativities.
We’ve all created some negative actions in the past. And, one of the one of the four distinct modes of karma or actions is that that karmas are not dissipated. That is the karmas are not lost, and that they don’t go away by themselves. They’re until they will remain until they are they meet the correct conditions. And just like a seed, when it’s watered, it ripens.
It germinates. And a shoot a shoot arises. The plant grows. You know, they they found seeds in the pyramids of Egypt, which are five or six thousand years old. And they’ve taken these seeds, and they they put them in earth, and they watered them.
And they grew actual wheat plants from these seeds. So the wheat maintained its potency. It was able to be germinated at even after five or six thousand years. Likewise, with various karmas, which have been planted within our mind. These are various potencies or like information, which is encoded, which is impressed within our mind.
When this information, just like a like a a DNA molecule of a of a plant or when it when you when the seed is placed in the earth, it begins to interact in with its environment, begins to, arrange its environment Mhmm. To draw nutritions out of its environment, the soil and water, etcetera, and begins to, create a configuration, a very specific type of structure, the way through its interaction with with its environment, with the soil. And likewise, with these, karmic seeds within our mind, the various impressions of actions that we’ve created, They are going to interact with their environment when they meet the proper conditions. And this the the the nature of negative karma is that it produces suffering. It’s there’s no moral judgment being made.
It is simply that there is a there are a class of actions which seem to produce a result of suffering. And it’s simply a matter of cause and effect. There is another class of karmas or actions which produce a type of result, which is which is experienced as happiness. It’s another categorization. So it is simply a matter of cause and effect.
We we don’t want to suffer. Therefore, we should try as best we can to lessen our our unskillful actions, our negative actions. But again, additionally, to try to purify the the negative actions which have already been implanted within our mind stream. Sometimes this is, by way of analogy, the purification process is such that, like taking a seed and just scorching it. The seed isn’t burnt, but it’s the it’s it’s lost its, ability to germinate.
It’s lost its potency. Even no matter how long it’s or how much, water or earth you put you you place it in, it won’t grow. It’s lost its potency. Likewise, with these negativities within our mind. So the most powerful and the main, the four counteracting agents is the sense of regret.
This is distinct from guilt and that it’s not a we don’t think of it of this negativity as in in any way a reflection about our basic character, about our nature. It’s simply we made a mistake. We added one and one to make three under the influence of some distorted conceptions, attachment, or hatred, or anger, or whatever, we made a mistake. And if we were in our if we were thinking clearly, you know, in in with our basic wisdom operating, we probably wouldn’t have involved ourselves in that type of action, but we weren’t. We made a mistake.
So without reflecting upon, with no with no reflection upon our basic nature, we simply acknowledge our mistakes as mistakes and develop a sincere sense of regret. I wish I hadn’t done that. That’s the most important, a sincere sense of regret. There’s no magic involved in the purification process. It has to be done there’s only one’s mind which creates negativity, and there’s only one’s mind which can purify the negativity.
So and the main factor of this purification process is a a strong sincere sense of regret, a genuine sense, I wish I hadn’t done that. Acknowledging our mistakes as mistakes, quite, quite apart from trying to rationalize them, that they are trying to avoid the fact that they weren’t mistakes, or somehow you’re justified in it, but acknowledging, hey, that was wrong. I wish I hadn’t done that. That’s the most important. Then we go for refuge.
In terms of, if we feel there are said to be two objects toward which we can create negativities. One is the the Three Jewels in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, the spiritual community. And the other is sentient beings or living beings in general. You know, if you take a vow, you make a promise to act in a certain way, to refrain from certain actions, and you contravene that promise, you go against that promise, then this would be a negativity created against the Buddha Dharma or the spiritual community. On the other hand, most of our negativities are created in terms of just general general living beings, people in general.
And like all our various actions of killing, stealing, lying, sexual improprieties, things of that nature are are not done out of, breaking a vow or some kind of a restriction that we’ve placed upon ourselves, but simply, creating unskillful action toward others. And if we’ve done that, then we simply, as a, as a means of, the reliance, the power of reliance, give rise to compassion or love toward that person that we harmed. You know, rather than turning your back on that person. You know, when you create a negativity, you know, there’s a saying that perhaps the only real evil in the world is the time it which elapses into our enlightenment. And negativities are simply a prolongation of the unawakened state.
And so we have to we’ve lost our way as it were. We’ve gotten off the our path in which we’re involved in our journey. And so we recommit and part of our journey, a a integral part of our journey is love and compassion. So in creating negativities toward others, we in order to, reverse from that trend, to recommit ourselves to loving others, to helping others, to benefit others, instead of harming others, committing yourself to actually helping them. So this is like a turning around it’s in place, some deep seed of our own mind getting back on the path.
We we we, you know, to begin again. To begin again. We can always begin again. And no no matter what has come up to the to this moment, no matter what confusion, whatever mistakes, whatever the complexities, the issues involved, we can always begin again. That’s always an open possibility for us.
So recommitting ourselves to beginning again. And then the fourth of these four powers is to reverse it, you know, with some honesty and some, real some realistic expectations, reversing from that action for a specific amount of time. You know, if you’re I’m not going to to, intentionally kill for the next twenty four hours or something like that. Something that you can mindfully and honestly and realistically and very practically try to uphold, committing yourself for the next certain amount of time not to repeat that action again. But then the third power is the power of antidote, and there are various types of antidotes.
There’s, various prescribed antidotes and various meditations. The most powerful is said to be the meditation on emptiness. But there are others, such as the recitation of various texts, various prayers. But we can we can perform, any skillful action in general and just dedicate it as a way of balancing out that negativity previously created. But I thought we would, do as the practice of recitation of the mantra of Śākyamūni Buddha, as we’ve done before.
But we’ll do it in a slightly different way than than we have in the past. The mantra itself is on page six. Yeah. It’s at the bottom. So we’re going to We’re going to, visualize before yourself, each of us.
Know, Śākyamūni Buddha is the metaphor for the outcome of our preferred story of life. You know, how whatever you find whatever you find is the you conceive of as the finest goal of life, giving that some kind of form or some kind of shape, so that something for you to relate with. Whatever it may whether if you want to use Christ, that’s fine. Whoever or whatever, whatever has great meaning for you. The embodiment of all that you think is worthwhile in life, of the human potential, personified.
Give it some kind of shape relating with it in that way. And then we’re going to the in this case, Śākyamūni Buddha is visualized before you. You can use this you can study this the painting to my left. And imagining about a meter and a half in front of you at the level of your eyes, approximately the size of your hand, a figure of the Buddha. And it should it should be made of light.
It’s very it’s not heavy, but it’s brilliant. You know, it’s actually has it’s incandescent. It actually is luminous in itself. And, applying the antidote of regret. And remember recollecting some negativities that you’ve created, developing its sincere sense of regret.
And, if it’s against, the Buddha Dharma or the spiritual community, going for recommitting yourself to, to actualizing Buddha within you, recommitting yourself to the the practices of the Dharma, and just recommitting yourself to the spiritual community. Or in the case of living beings in general, developing a sense of love and compassion toward that person that you might have harmed or that being, whoever it might have been or whatever it might have been. Then the reversal, determining not to do, again, do that action for a specific and practical realistic amount of time. And then the antidote. And then as the antidote, we’re going to recite the mantra and imagine that from the heart of Śākyamūni Buddha, whoever you’re visualizing before you, a shaft of light comes down to the crown of one’s head.
And along this shaft of brilliant white light, nectars, white nectars and lights begin to flow into one’s body, completely purifying, ridding oneself of all negativity, all darkness, all heaviness, all disease, all all the undesirable factors within one’s body and mind. And, you know, having a sense of purity, sense of innocence, a sense of lightness that the burden has been lifted off, that you’ve really done something, and now you don’t have to worry about it anymore. It’s finished. It’s there’s some kind of finality, innocence, purity that you’ve done something. You don’t have to carry it around any longer.
And while we’re while we’re doing this visualization, reciting the the mantra of Śākyamūni Buddha. And then you you become crystal clear. Your your body becomes as if crystal, and your mind clear. And then we’re going to do this again. And this time, we’re going to do it visualizing that the ray of light extends from the heart of Śākyamūni Buddha, but extends down to the crown of Valerie’s head.
Valerie is sitting here. So it’s just to my right. And just imagine that from the visualized Śākyamūni before you, the shaft of light goes to the crown of Valerie’s head and the lights and nectars enter her body, completely purifying the negativity, the heaviness, the darkness within her body and mind. Imagine her mind becoming crystal clear and her body becoming pure as we recite the mantra together. And then at the very end, Śākyamūni Buddha comes down to the crown of our heads and dissolves into ourselves.
And we will slowly dissolve from the top downward, from the bottom upward until there’s only infinite, vast, open space and peace. So let’s try that. We’ll begin with the cultivation of love and compassion, and we can work with a stranger. But in this case, a stranger with whom you might feel some uneasiness. You know, perhaps they’re of a maybe they’re a different race, a different, nationality that different somehow, though they’re a stranger, you feel some uneasiness with this particular person that there may be some kind of bias at some level or some kind of prejudice.
And using that person, working with this person to develop these levels of compassion and love, and then we’ll meditate on mindfulness of breathing and then the purification practice. Step. If you take a firm, comfortable posture. And beginning with thinking of someone that you feel no particular relationship with, but still you just by their appearance, you feel a bit uneasy. There’s something about them that doesn’t feel quite right to you.
Imagine that person in front of you. Beginning with compassion toward this person and trying simply to develop the thought, it’d be wonderful if you didn’t have any problems, you didn’t have any suffering. See if you can feel that thought toward this person. May you not have any problems. May you not suffer.
I’m going to help you. I’m going to commit myself in working with you and solving your problems. It would be wonderful if you were happy. I would like that. May you be happy.
I’m going to help you and commit myself to working with you and finding happiness. The way I’m going to express my commitment to you at this very moment is through my meditation. By developing my skills, my wisdom, my love, eventually I can be of significant and practical benefit to you. And then bring your mind to the breath. Just a gentle, easy, in and out flow of the natural breath.
If it’s helpful, using the techniques of counting and noting. So we begin by recollecting some negativities that you may have created, Acknowledging these negativities as negativities and developing a sincere sense of regret. And power of reliance, if you committed negativity toward a living being, Try to develop love and compassion toward this person rather than harming them. Think about benefiting them. And power reversal, determining some realistic and practical time frame that you’re not going to repeat this action again.
And the power of Antidote. Visualizing before you at the level of your your eyes, a figure of Śākyamūni Buddha or whatever you value, have great reverence for and respect in your life.