Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” anchors this 45-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun, who uses the poem to reframe going for refuge as an act of conscious, moment-by-moment choice rather than a ritual recitation. He opens with prostration as a humility practice that prepares the mind for genuine learning, then argues that refuge is not a beginner’s formula but the heart of the entire path. The talk’s core is a sustained contrast between two responses to inner conflict: the path of illusion — denial, neurosis, endlessly repeating old patterns — and the path of disillusionment, meaning inquiry, expanded awareness, and real change. Gendun then unpacks the Three Jewels: Buddha as one’s own awakened potential, and Dharma as whatever genuinely moves the mind toward sanity, tracing its etymology to a Greek root shared with the word “therapy.” Suited to practitioners already following the series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 HMA 1996 05 08.mp3
UUID: c0ccca86-3d84-4d16-952c-5191b638a7e3
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-05-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.7 minutes
Words: ~6,585
Pride can be a tremendous obstacle to learning. When we’re so full of ourselves, there’s very little room for anything else than ourselves. So, you know, as a as a preliminary, to create the the inner ecology of mind necessary for perhaps some new insights, new idea to be able to penetrate, to catalyze, to help help ourselves change in some way. Before teaching, before meditation, we physically prostrate. Right?
But it doesn’t necessarily have to be done physically. You know, there’s something that we have to learn. There’s a certain degree of humility that we can bring, which is conducive to this creating the context, the motivation well, whereby some learning might actually take place. So it’s a very profound practice in actually putting yourself on the ground, stabilizing, getting getting in touch with the earth, actually physically lowering yourself in something else. It’s it’s not in our egalitarian tradition in the west.
It’s it’s perhaps thought to be rather unusual or demeaning to oneself. But when thought of in a in a proper manner, when understood, it can be not only conducive to to learning, but liberate ourselves from a lot of self importance, which can only act as an obstacle to to what it is that we’re trying to achieve. So before teaching, before meditation sessions in your home or whatever, it’s quite often the case that individuals will actually physically prostrate. But there’s, you know, it’s not what we’re prostrating to most fundamentally, ultimately, is the Buddha with inside of ourselves. Paying reverence to something which we are the final transformation of, And then creating the context where perhaps we can allow our basic sanity to find expression, creating that that interstate, that inner ecology.
So, you know, we begin as we as we have in the past week which which we’re going to do every week in terms of adjusting our motivation. Again, not so much what we do but why we do what we do. It’s going to determine the outcome whether it’s going to help us to solve our problems, you know, to help us to learn, to grow, to go beyond some of our our dysfunctional patterns that aren’t working in our life, to, you know, to to act as an aid to to finding the good life, how how each of us might define what what constitutes the good life for each of ourselves, whatever happiness, whatever form it might take for you. So process of reorientation, redirecting ourselves. And last week, I talked about, you know, all the the the notion of going for refuge and going to be talking a great deal about that because actually it’s fundamental.
It’s not something which is simply for beginners. Actually, it would be best if we were always beginners. But at some point along our practice, we we begin to think that we know something and we begin to shut it down. We begin to close off to really understanding, to always keep a beginner’s mind. A beginner is always open.
You know, the expert is closed minded. So it’s going for refuge is not something for beginners, but it’s it’s the heart of the path. And as I tried to emphasize last week in our discussion that the idea of going for refuge isn’t new to ourselves. Though the perhaps the terminology is the word going for refuge that in fact, we have all been going for refuge our entire lives whether consciously or unconsciously, whether whether we thought of it in those terms or not. And we are looking to something or someone, some direction which is going to help us to get rid of our pain, help us to find what it is whatever it is that we’re looking for.
Can you hear me okay back there? I’d like to, you know, kind of sharing together and creating an atmosphere where we can help each other. Yeah. That’s helping to change our minds, which most basically what Buddhism is all about. At some level, we have to and it’s difficult, I think, to come to confront the reality of the necessity that we have to change.
Now I’m not saying you have to get a sex change or you have to leave your partner or you have to go run away to the Himalayas. But something these dysfunctional patterns within our mind need to be altered in some way. We need to we need to to look at the world out of different eyes, different ideas to to perhaps, you know, achieve some higher order of being and help us to solve our problems to get rid of the pain, to to find the sacred in our life. You know, beginning to reorientate to what is really important for myself. And it’s not something that we just do on Wednesday nights together or something that we do occasionally when we do our meditation practice in our own home.
But in fact, we are going for refuge, perhaps almost every moment of our lives, way or another whether we are aware of it or not. There’s a there’s quite a famous verse that I’d like to read to you. It’s by the American poet Robert Frost. And talking about choice, choice is tremendously important. You know, there’s there’s many ideas, many terms which have become very important to myself, my own personal practice, and and my own thinking.
Freedom and choice, responsibility, and awareness. These are these are seminal ideas, essential understandings that we have to begin to see. Now life is serious. Life is is tremendously profound, and beginning to get a handle on it to see how we can begin to work with it, work with the situation with our own minds, to get what it is that we want, to work with it intelligently, and to avail ourselves of our own basic sanity, the resources of our own mind as self healing systems, which they are, to learn about ourselves, you know, about the world about us, and to gain some wisdom and some understanding, and to grow in compassion, to empower ourselves and to develop some kind of competency in how we go about living our life, making choices in our life, taking responsibility for our life. I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence.
Two roads diverged in a woods, and I I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. You know, almost every day of our lives, we’re making decisions. You know, there are very few dramatic decisions which perhaps we’re going to be called on to make over the course of our lives. We’re they’re really earth shaking when the the whole direction of our life will be altered in some way or another. But we are making almost an infinite number of seemingly insignificant decisions every day of our life, choices to be made, and what path our lives are going to take.
Now whenever one of our our misconceptions, one of our our many erroneous ideas, our mistaken beliefs, our distorted views, when they wrap up against the world, the reality of the world, the way things are in their true nature, we experience some sort of tension, some sort of inner conflict, some sort of dissonance of mind, dis ease of the mind. Now, you know, we suffer in some way. There’s a certain anxiety. Now our minds in their intrinsic instinct toward wakefulness, towards self correction, will then take a variation on either two diverse paths. You know, one path proceeds in the direction of ignoring, evading, denying, shrinking down the area of our awareness, withdrawing the scope of awareness, absorbing ourselves into fantasy, into our own mind’s projections.
The neurotic distorting of reality. That’s one path that our mind will take. One possibility when it when it confronts conflict, tension, inner anxiety. The alternate path, the other possible path that our minds can take is in the direction of confrontation, of inquiry, and extending and expanding of the scope of awareness. And awareness is tremendously important concept in in developing our wisdom, our our understanding.
You know, expanding our awareness in the process of exploring, challenging, you know, beginning to investigate these superimposed fantasies that we’re project we’re constantly projecting upon the world, these various images and fantasies, these hallucinations, in fact. In other words, our minds take a path of disillusionment. You know, the idea of disillusionment, that sounds very discouraged, doesn’t it? I was very disillusioned about him. I was very disillusioned about what I bought.
But it has a great meaning in the sense that to become disillusioned, initially, you had to be laboring under some kind of illusion. And as I’m going to try to emphasize in the course of our discussion tonight, Buddhism places tremendous trust trust in the truth, and the truth shall make you free. As long as we harbor illusion, as long as we labor under the the bonds of illusion, we will suffer. It is only becoming disillusion through through touching the reality, the true nature of things that we can ever hope to alleviate our problems at their most fundamental level. But we work with these two possibilities, these two possible paths.
Now one way takes us toward the neurotic distorting of reality, you know, into a world of our own fantasy, in fact. You know, the the the displays of ego are the world in which we live in more or less. We very rarely can touch the reality of the situation, who and what we are, and the things about us in the true nature. You know, though we you know, why do we do this? If if if we can begin if we can begin to recognize this in in our own daily behavior, in our own ways of thinking and dealing with situations.
And the one the path of illusion leads in the direction of neurosis, of ill being. And it narrows down all of our life’s possibilities. We endlessly repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Therefore, we perpetual we perpetuate the same fundamental problems and outcomes of our lives. You know, there’s constantly recurring patterns and outcomes of our lives, cyclic existence in some form or another.
While the path of disillusionment leads in the direction of of sanity, of of well-being. You know, we begin to expand the possibilities for ourselves in all the various areas of our living. You know, what what is conceivable for ourselves? You know, there’s a there’s a a learning, a transforming takes place, a correcting of life’s mistakes, and a coming to some kind of final resolution of many of our life’s problems. You know, we could we could perhaps intellectually begin to see that this may be the case.
But still, of the two, it is the path of disillusionment which is the less traveled. You know, less traveled less traveled because of the two, it is the more difficult. The more difficult because of the two, it it it is the very inertia of our mind. You know, the the the the momentum, the habitual patterns of our mind run counter to, you know, the the path less traveled runs counter to the reoccurring patterns of our present minds. You know, the the less the path less traveled, the difficult path is contradicts to a great extent the prevailing stories that we’re telling ourselves about ourselves and who I am, what I can expect out of my life.
It’s it’s more difficult because it’s incompatible with many of our the maps, the mental maps, the the this inner network of of premises and presuppositions and beliefs and ideas by which we navigate, by which we we we we negotiate the train of our lives. So it seems as if it’s more difficult, you know, that the path does travel because it runs counter. It was like as if we were had to swim upstream, and obviously, it’s much easier to swim down. You know, most every day over the mundane course of our lives, and this is the point I’m trying to get at, that the idea of going for refuge, of redirecting ourselves is something which occurs in the in the the insignificant events of our lives. You know, this is where refuge takes place, if anywhere.
Not the huge dramatic moments, not in the formulas that we recite at the beginning of the teaching or whether in a meditation session. Perhaps these are necessary. These are valuable only as a reminder of something greater, as an act of an ongoing process which hopefully we can involve our minds in. Most everyday over the mundane course of our lives, of our everyday lives, we’re confronted in one way or another which of these two paths our lives are to take. The path of illusion or the path of disillusionment.
You know, the path less traveled or the one that we normally take, the one that keeps taking us back into the same bondage again and again and again. You know, the one that proceeds in the direction of sanity and well-being or the one that proceeds in the direction of neurosis and character disorder and ill being, you know, all that that goes with it. You know, whether it be in the direction of learning or ignoring clarity or confusion, liberation or bondage. In some way, these are the overall directions that we’re taking for ourselves in one way or another. The the refuge that we’re going for in our everyday lives, in the very the in insignificant choices that we’re making continually constantly over the course of our everyday lives.
You know, what more often appear as insignificant choices are in their deeper sense, choices between which of these two diversion paths we want our lives to take. You know, whether in one way or another, whether consciously or unconsciously, whether whether with wisdom or in ignorance, we’re constantly choosing one of these two paths. And the choosing of the one path over the other leads us along that path’s distinct direction, you know, toward that path’s particular options and outcomes and brings with it further choices which are unique to that path. And at the same time, you know, if you read this poem by Robert Frost, there’s a there’s a path that he couldn’t take. He said, maybe I’ll come back at another time, another day.
I’ll I’ll take this other path because we can only choose one. But you get the feeling in the back of his mind, he knew he would never get back. He would never come back to that same place and be able to to, again, make that same choice and choose the alternate path. But he had to choose nevertheless. So, you know, we by making a choice, we preclude other paths, other possibilities, all other alternatives.
And those options and outcomes that that alternative path, the path that wasn’t chosen would have brought to ourselves. And one path leads on to another path. You know, one choice leads on to another choice. You know, having chosen once, we are forced to choose again. And and amongst the the alternatives which are presented by having chosen that one path.
And taking that path to the same direction, coming to those particular outcomes, those options, we’re forced to choose again and again and again. One path leads on to another, onto another. And I think this was the idea that Robert Frost was trying to get at. One choice leading on to another, a maze of choices, a path plotting out in one way or another the course of an entire lifetime, almost a destiny. The point is that the quality of our life, you know, that is our actual lived experience, is not something other than the outcomes of these many, many, many seemingly insignificant choices that we are constantly making every day of our lives.
We are choosing who we are. We are choosing the quality of our life every day of our lives in one way or another, in one form or another, if we can only be aware of that fact and the insignificant choices that we are constantly making every day of our lives. And even at those times when when when we choose not to choose, you know, when we when we procrastinate or or by one strategy or another, we avoid having to make a choice. You know, we we don’t have to make a stand. We don’t have to make a decision about what it is that we want.
You know, nonetheless, we’re choosing, aren’t we? We’re choosing the the path most traveled, the reoccurring path, the default pattern, the one that’s always been there. You you we can’t help but make choices. We can’t escape. You know, life continually demand demands it of us that we choose.
We are never not not choosing the course and the direction of our life and thereby its outcome, our actual lived experiences of our lives. You know, if and if this is the case, then the really significant choice for us is to begin to freely and consciously choose where we want to go in our life. You know, to begin to begin to in some kind of awareness, to begin to take a stand, to make some kind of decisions about the quality and what you want to be and who you want to be in the course of your life. You know, to to to take control of one’s life in some form, to to to the limit that we can, to the extent that we can. Otherwise, you know, if we don’t choose at all, then we we sanctify life’s mistakes.
You know, they’re simply going to recur infinitum into the future, into the the senseless circular motion of our mind, you know, a going which goes nowhere, which is, you know, I I try to emphasize that that quality of the circularity of our lives and the reoccurring patterns of our lives, the the constant themes, the plots which remain the same, you know, the the characters and the and the props and the the scene we change, but the plot of our lives. And the theme of our lives remains very much the same. Just the shifting patterns of of who the actor is and and where the action takes place. You know, maybe after all that’s said and done, the only real tragedy of of our lives is not to choose. It’s important that we choose.
That is, you know, to freely and constantly choose what it is that we want, who it is that we want to be ten years from now, twenty years from now, you know, a lifetime from now. Not own or possess or control, but be. Our greatest reward for what we do in all our planning, all our work, all our struggle, all our toil is not what we get out of it, but what who we become by it, who we are for having done it. The tragedy of our lives is not to freely and constantly choose who we are by choosing what we do. You know, we we we are we are what we do and may do what we choose.
You know, we are now the outcomes of the many choices that we have made. You know, the the Buddha has said, if you want to know what you’ve done in the past, look at your body, the embodiment. It it it an expression of your choices, the quality of your life. If you want to know what you’re going to become, look at your mind, the choices that you’re in the process of making every day of our lives. You know, the the real you know, maybe the the human tragedy is not so much choosing a wrong path.
You know, not it’s okay to make mistakes, but not choosing at all. Alright? At least if we choose, even if it’s a mistaken method, some mistaken way, something goes wrong, we can learn from that. There’s a going beyond the path. Something can change, But I’m not choosing at all.
And in in that not choosing to to abdicate our freedom and avoid our responsibility, if only to ourselves. You know, wasting the opportunity to to learn, you know, to change and to grow, and and, you know, to create something new rather than the same continual old, the same patterns, the same constant themes, the plots, which very much constitute our life. You know, these reoccurring dysfunctional patterns of our of our of our minds and behavior. You know, we can find, you know, different meanings for ourselves, different purposes for our life. If we don’t choose, we lose the possibility of going beyond the old, you know, what has been, what once was.
You know, we give up the opportunity to find an alternative way of being in this world and all that that might hold for each of us, the quality of our lives, the coherence, the the the livability, the adequacy of our lives. You know, know, to say, I am such and such a kind of person is perhaps to to state a fact, but that’s not a destiny. And if you if you were to go on and say, and that’s the way I’ve always been, and that’s the way I’m always going to be, I might as might as well accept that, is to abdicate our freedom to change, you know, to begin again new. You know, it and to exploit what we have been in the past in order to avoid taking responsibility for ourselves in the future. You know, to our responsibility for choosing what we shall have ourselves be in the future, what we shall have ourselves experience in the future, what type of life we want to live.
You know, to to to to not to choose is to make our ourselves prisoners of myths and forces over which we have no control. You know, that we can change. I think it’s difficult to believe that about ourselves. In fact, I’ll read you a a quote. It’s from a an American psychologist.
Traditionally, most people in the West have believed that human character is fixed and unalterable, that people do not and cannot improve, advance, or perfect themselves. The change from a deep belief in the unchangeability of to an equal equally deep belief in the capacity to improve is recent. And it represents one of the most fundamental and important revolutions in modern thought. You know, of course, obviously, is coming from a a western thinker because this has been around for two thousand five hundred years. The the idea, the notion that we can change, that we can in fact perfect ourselves.
Perhaps it’s only been around the west for fifty, so it’s rather revolutionary. And perhaps it hasn’t penetrated to a very deep levels of our belief system which hold that we can’t change, that somehow this is the way I am and this is the way I I’m always going to be. I might as well accept that. You know, the the the the greatest gift that we humans have, and we have to begin to appreciate this about ourselves and not take it for granted but to value it, that which makes us most unique, you know, amongst precious, amongst of the infinite life forms of this universe is our capacity for free and conscious choice. Free and conscious choice.
Our potential to to to transcend the chain like repetitive past, the determinism of each of our histories, you know, the myths that we live by, you know, our heredity, our environment. That is to say, the opportunity to transcend our history, our past. Everything that I’ve been up to now may not determine what I shall be in the future. I’m beginning to believe at a very deep level of our being that we can, in fact, change, that we can begin anew if I so choose to begin. You know, we are the nexus, the joining point between determinism and freedom.
You know, we’re we’re we’re free to begin again if we so choose. If we don’t choose, then it’s all determined. The the the past patterns will play out infinitely into the future. But nothing guarantees our freedom. You know, if you die if you deny it often enough, one day it will be gone and we’ll not know where or when.
You know, if we don’t without awareness, without making responsible choices, it is as if we didn’t have freedom. You know, it has always been and will always be our habitual avoidance of the difficult path. You know, this this path of disillusionment, the one of confrontation, the one of challenge, the one of exploration, and finally of of transformation, and the legitimate suffering that traveling such a path always entails and inevitably entails, which always will be and always has been in spite of all the blood, sweat, and tears that we’ve expended over lifetimes to the contrary. The basis for our lives struggles never having really born any real and lasting fruits, never having come to really any decisive conclusions. Our struggles never having come to an end.
You know, we’ve struggled. This is you know, if we can just talk about this life, all the worry, all the planning, all the mental anguish that we’ve put in to finding the good life in our various forms, however each of us might imagine it for ourselves. All the various conniving, manipulating, the work, the toil, and has it what what avail? What what’s it brought us? What has what has it come to?
We’re still struggling. We’re still conniving. We’re still manipulating. We’re still suffering in one way or another. And what’s it come to?
It should have come to some kind of conclusion, some kind of things should be better if this is the way, if this is the path which is going to take us to the good life. I don’t think it has, and I don’t think it ever will. And it’s going to be, you know, the the path the path less traveled, you know, the difficult path, you know, the the consistent choice of that path. A path which Buddhism conceives of as an awakening of our hearts to all living beings, an awakening of our minds to the ultimate nature of reality. You know, the path of awakening, you know, which which in ages hence, which in years hence, which even in a moment’s time hence.
Well, that made all the difference. You know, which kinda brought some some meaning and some purpose to our life. You know, a sense of a sense of dignity and love to our life. Some kind of a measure of joy, of of vision. And that these are very profound values and goals for our life.
We can do more with our life than simply try to feel good all the time. There’s more meaning. There’s more possibilities which life offers ourselves, finding the sacred in our life. There’s coming to some kind of final and fundamental solution of what it means to be an ordinary human being, that we are living in a world with other ordinary beings like ourselves, the human condition, the human dilemma in which we all share, in which we all exist. You know, the process of orient orientating ourselves and redirecting ourselves, getting back in touch with these ideas and feelings and values.
Yeah. Bringing our mind in that direction to that point again and again and again, and maintaining some degree of mindfulness, you know, throughout the course of our everyday lives. So that, you know, we choose which of these we’re taking. I mean, it it may be difficult for us to to take what seems to be an abstraction and bring it down to the practicalities of our everyday life and how we deal with the, you know, the people around us and in our work and all our various situations. But it’s there.
The connection is there. We’re willing to make it. And then our life becomes a path itself. It becomes you know, going for refuge becomes a way of life. It’s not something distinct, some some special act.
Something removed from from who we are and what we do every day. And our life becomes a purpose of evolution, life after life, in the course of this life. And we go beyond some boundaries, some limitations, even unknown to ourselves. And perhaps unknowing to ourselves, we become the person that we’ve always wanted to be. We’ve always in in our heart of hearts.
And we begin to build put the foundations beneath those castles that we built in our noblest of dreams and create the kind of life that we would have for ourselves. We go for refuge. And I began to talk about, you know, what the objects of refuge, at least Buddhism is concerned. You know, what is worthy? What can we trust in that is worth our life, our life’s energies?
Now in terms of the Buddhist perspective, the Buddhist worldview, we go for refuge to Buddha, Dharma in the spiritual community. And I talked about, you know, very briefly and very superficial, I think, about what that might mean in terms of going for refuge to a Buddha. But I think it’s important that we always come back to the fact that we’re we’re going for some for refuge to something with inside of ourselves at which we ourselves are the ultimate transformation, and we call that a Buddha. This this metaphor for the outcome of the finest story that we could ever hope to tell ourselves about ourselves. And whatever might that embody personified, we call a Buddha, and that’s what that is our ultimate refuge.
In terms of the qualities of a Buddha, you know, someone who is awake, is no longer asleep, who’s aware, you know, the qualities of wisdom, qualities of love and compassion, qualities of personal power, and their creative transformations and expressions in our everyday life. You know, these are our refuges, one’s own wisdom, one’s own love and compassion, one’s own personal power, and expressing these, finding ways to to creatively be them in all of the various relationships of your life. This is a ref refuge, and these are the choices. These are the the the the magnetic north that we can keep coming back to. You know, is this decision is is this Buddha talking, or is this, you know, my own ignorance, my own attachment, my own hatred, my own self centeredness, or is this wisdom, or is this love and compassion, Or is this, you know, coming from a sense of centeredness and personal power?
Is it am I, you know, in a creative fashion, skillfully expressing, you know, all of my finest of qualities and what am I doing in what I am now doing. You know, making these kinds of decisions. We go for refuge to the Buddha. We the second object of refuge is the Dharma. You know, the the Dharma is essentially most, are the various paths that lead to awakening.
Also, the the self sustaining solutions in our mind that are actualized, that that we are able to develop by means of traveling the path. It’s the Dharma. In in practice, whatever is able to raise the level of consciousness, you know, whatever helps us to bridge the gap between attachment and generosity, and between hatred and love, between self centeredness and other centeredness, between ignorance and wisdom. You know? That whatever helps us to bridge the gap between being an ordinary human being and becoming an extraordinary one, a Buddha.
That’s Dharma. You know? The Dharma can take many many forms. It can you know, it can be something as seemingly simple as as a leaf, you know, floating down from an autumn autumn tree giving us a teaching on impermanence or something as seemingly complicated as eighty four thousand collections of the Buddhist teachings. And the point is that the that that the Dharma that we get acquainted to from outside, from teachers and from books, is not necessarily our Dharma.
And whatever the form the Dharma may take, it is only ours when it has the power to move our mind, you know, to perturb the system in which we all are embedded in, you know, to bring about changes in our lives for the better. Then it becomes our dharma. We’ve integrated. It’s ours. It’s no longer something outside of ourselves, external to ourselves.
You know, there there’s a saying, at one time, one blade of grass is equal to a sixteen foot high golden Buddha. At another time, the sixteen foot high golden Buddha is equal to a blade of grass. That is the Dharma is what works for us. Sometimes it might be a blade of grass which moves our mind, which takes us in the direction in which we would have ourselves be become. And sometimes the sixteen foot high golden Buddha can leave us indifferent, cannot cannot touch our hearts, cannot touch our minds, cannot do this anything.
It’s not ours. You know? It is whatever is effective in changing our minds for the better regardless of the outward forms and regardless of those expressions. So in in its in its broadest form, in its broadest sense, dharma is whatever can act as a key to opening our minds to a greater vision. I don’t know.
It’s hard to understand how very narrow minded we are in our perception of the world and what the world is about. Are at the limits of our vision and our openness to other possibilities of what is about us. Whatever can open our minds, act as a key, opening our minds. Whatever acts as an antidote to all, you know, to the dysfunctional patterns of our minds or dysfunctional behavior. Whatever brings us a sentient beings and connectedness with others.
You know, whatever is able to act as a means to solve our our our fundamental most problems. It it helps us to experience the sacred in our lives. You know, it’s interesting, the word dharma. Dharma. The word there’s a Greek word, which is from which the word from which the English word therapy comes.
Therapya is related to, as its root, dharr. Dharr. And dharr is related to Dharma. That the the the word Dharma literally means to to hold, to support.
The Buddha used it in a very unusual fashion when he said, this is my teaching. This is my Dharma. It literally means to hold to support that which holds us back from from the dysfunctions in our own minds and the pathologies of our lives, and that which supports, maintains, supports the unimpeded expression of our basic sanity, this Dharma. You know, conventionally, this can take, you know, various forms that all the various teachings, the the methods of training, the meditative techniques, you know, the practice the various practices which contribute to the blossoming of our Buddhist practice. But in in a very real sense, the Dharma is the truth, the truth of things, you know, the way things are in their actual nature.
You know, this is coming back to this what I mentioned in very brief the very beginning that Buddhism places tremendous trust in the truth the way things are. If only we can get to it, if only we can penetrate to that level through our obscurations and hindrances. And the truth ultimately is what’s going to make us free in the way things are in in their actual true nature. You know, the the the truth’s comprising the world view which Buddha tried to communicate. You know, the the Buddha had had a discovery.
He wanted to know what you know, whether life is just a bitch and then you die or whether there’s an alternative open to ourselves. And he he always he he looked at at the nature of our situation in terms of our experience. And he saw it’s always a that there is there is suffering. And what is the root of that suffering? So he turned within himself, and he made some kind of discovery.
He came to some kind of truth for himself. And that truth transformed him at the deepest level of his being. He became an awakened being, an extraordinary being. And he he developed he tried to communicate that truth to others. That was his Dharma.
And we ourselves, in turn, have to realize that same truth for ourselves. There’s no other way. You know, but when Buddhism speaks of truth, and I think this may be difficult for me to speak of, even the truths of Buddhism, it lays no claim to to an exclusivity, a monopoly on the truth. There’s no it doesn’t hold any preeminence of its particular worldview. The the Buddha presented a particular worldview, his truth, the way he saw.
The the amongst the many truths of Buddhism is that there is no the truth. And if I can get across this idea that that there are no truths corresponding to a reality independent of our thoughts about it, you know, our concepts about it, and the language that we use in describing it. There’s no there’s no objectively existent reality in which these truths could reflect. All we can you know, the the Buddha wasn’t interested in the truth because it simply doesn’t exist. And he stressed the relativity of all truths, the relative relativity of any worldview.
You know, what we are trying to do, we all have a worldview whether we’re aware of it or not, whether we’ve formulated or not in any conscious fashion or not. You know, we all have a ways of how we’re going to find happiness, the ways that we’re going to get rid of our suffering. And we have ideas and beliefs, attitudes, which interconnect, which which we form some kind of notion about how we’re gonna go about getting this happiness, how we’re going to go about getting rid of our suffering. This constitutes our worldview, our values, our our various understandings, the stories that we tell ourselves, the nature of what it means to be a human being, and and how I’m going to relate with this world. All of this adds up to, you know, the the the eyes through which we look upon the world and interact with the world, our worldview.
So, you know, the the Buddha presented a worldview, a way a way of dealing with the world, a way of being in this world. And though he he didn’t say there was any he didn’t he stressed the fact that that that all truths are relative. That was part of his world view. But to say that, it’s important to understand that that is not to say that any worldview is as good as any other. Or