Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A cartoon of Chico — a lottery-winning parrot in a tropical paradise birdcage, still strangely unfulfilled — opens this 45-minute session and anchors Ven Jampa Gendun’s argument that even comfortable samsaric circumstances are still a cage, not freedom. He explores the slow, fog-like nature of transformation, the power of daily choices to shape who we become, and a Japanese monk’s inscription — “Oh, what joy when I found there was no happiness in life” — as a pivot toward genuine practice. He then tackles the paradox that straining to meditate only creates more stress, using a cake-baking analogy: assemble the right causes and trust the result to arise naturally. The session closes with a guided love and compassion meditation directed toward a specific person the practitioner cares about.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 HMA 1997 01 22.mp3
UUID: 9e344fb1-f399-4d50-8513-e6924391ca60
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-01-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.8 minutes
Words: ~5,384
So we begin as we usually do in terms of this ongoing process of reorientating ourselves, redirecting ourselves perhaps, readjusting our priorities, getting back in touch. Something that something that we have to do continually every day, maybe more than once in the course of a day. Lois, one of the Buddha’s students, she she just gave me this cartoon. I know you can’t see it, but maybe I’ll I’ll share it with you. I like it very much.
I’ll describe it. How’s that? There’s it seems to be some kind of tropical island, like a very almost a paradise, you know, as far as we might conceive of it, you know, where you could get away from it all, you could have that find the happiness that you’ve always been looking for. And there’s this huge birdcage and perched in this birdcage all by himself is what looks like a parrot. And the caption So this is tropical paradise.
There’s this huge cage on the beach. This parrot inside, and the caption, winning the lottery had changed his life, but at times Chico still felt strangely unfulfilled. It’s it’s interesting because the the in Tibetan Buddhism, they use very much the same imagery in you know, that we all are very much living in a prison and, you know, we might have the best cell in the place. You know, we might have indoor plumbing and have have our walls decorated with all our favorite pictures and have a decent food and comfortable bunk and and then we’ve got ourselves a pretty nice cell. But no matter how good it might be, it’s still not freedom.
You’re still in prison. It’s not all that life could be. Somewhere there’s a message there. It’s difficult to keep reminding ourselves of that fact. We keep assuming that normality is perhaps all that we can ask for.
But normality isn’t much. Normality is at best a low grade of suffering at best. I mean, I it’s kind of a it’s a great responsibility. It places a great almost a burden of liberation upon our shoulders which is kinda hard to bear in a way. To bear our own divinity, to bear our own promise of another radically alternative way of living.
We’d rather almost not hear about it. Makes us feel uneasy at some level. We’d like to shut down and ignore other possibilities. But it’s difficult because something keeps won’t let us quite go back to sleep. We are to some degree aware and having come to that awareness, we we can’t quite go back to the same person we were.
And it’s I think Chögyam Trungpa says, once you start the path, there’s no turning back. It’s better perhaps not to have started it at all. There’s always a certain degree of dissatisfaction involved of not short change in your life and what you have a sense that it could be. I mean, I remember a number of years ago, I think it was in it’s almost ten years now, long time since I’ve come to Australia. There I lived on an island off the coast, the southeast coast of Thailand called Koh Samui.
And if if I think the I don’t can’t remember if you were By boat it took about an hour or something like that. Not very far. But if you went on there was another smaller island with another wat, another monastery. And on this smaller island that I visited once, there had lived a Japanese monk, a Japanese person who had been ordained into the Theravadan tradition and had lived there for a number of years and had died there in fact and had done a lot of painting. As a matter of fact, abbot of that monastery who had a large monastery on the mainland, Suan Mokkh, his name was Ajahn Buddhadasa and one of the most famous masters of the of contemporary times in Thailand who just died a few years ago.
He actually built a a gallery, an entire building to house his paintings. And this Japanese monk, it was always on the theme of some Dharma, a spiritual path in some way or another. And in in one of the paintings, he had this caption. He said, oh, what joy when I found there was no happiness in life. And it’s a strange revelation to realize that that the the that the way our approach to life is somehow by its very nature never going to bring us to fulfillment, to satisfaction, the the meaning and purpose that perhaps we in our heart of our in our heart of hearts, we’ve been looking for our our life.
And sometimes we feel we take it upon ourselves that somehow we’re doing something wrong. That somehow we’re insufficient and we have a sense of shame and guilt about ourselves that we just if we only got our life together, we could we could get it what what what do you what we what we want, what the promises which are held out to us, which appear to be they’re all about us. But in effect, it’s there’s a certain relief when you begin to see or even to perhaps more than see feel that this that the this approach, an ignorance governed approach, an approach which is under the the domination of attachment and hatred and anger and jealousy and spite and miserliness and pride and all the various other afflictive emotions disturbing factors within our mind. Any approach which is permeated, is dependent, which is based upon that way of life is of its nature doomed to failure. And there’s a certain sense of relief in that.
But and there’s a certain sense of like there’s almost no alternative but but to travel the path as best you can. You know, giving ourselves over to these alternative possibilities. Another path. I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence. Two roads diverged woods and I I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference.
You know, the the We’re we are continually confronted with which of these two paths our lives are going to take even in the most mundane decisions, choices that come up infinitely in the course of a single day. Which path are we going to take? The path which kinda keeps us revolving around, flying around in our birdcage in one way or another or when we’re we’re going to find we’re going to fly through the door in some way. You know, it’s not an either or proposition, isn’t it? It’s it’s a matter of degrees.
I don’t think I have a sense that one day you wake up and you find you’re liberated. It kinda sneaks up on you like the like the fog kind of permeates your clothing after a while. You don’t notice it but slowly, eventually, you find that you’re drenched, something like that. It’s not something I don’t I don’t know many if we’re going to have many radical realizations. You read about them and these light bulbs that flash.
Maybe some small ones from here there. But I think it’s more like the the creeping fog which slowly penetrates ourselves to the bone and transforms us and we find ourselves we find ourselves living in another order of being, a different way of life. We begin to cheer up. Becomes a little less problematic. Our relationships are more meaningful and more fruitful.
We begin to be more used to ourselves and the world about us. They almost unnoticed to ourselves. Sometimes we have to take stock. It’s good, I think, to reflect upon the person you were five years from previously, ten years ago, and how have you changed, in what ways? Sometimes we don’t it’s difficult to see the change.
We we keep looking for it from day to day from day to day and maybe that’s misleading, a mistake. But over some time, maybe we can begin to see something better in our lives, some another quality. Perhaps the quality we we weren’t looking for, an unexpected coherence and livability and adequacy in our life. We simply find more meaning. So you know these these various choices that are open to ourselves, you know, whether to to to continue to take to choose the path of illusion, the fantasy in which most of us live in, or whether to confront the issues of our life, feelings of disappointment and dissatisfaction, frustration, and begin to work through.
And to to take to to choose a path with heart, beginning to choose the the some kind of consistent discipline of the path with heart, a commitment, you know, to to practice the person that we want to be, you know, to make the person we want to be an everyday habit in our daily lives so that somewhere down the line, you know, five years from now or again ten years from now, we simply live into that person that we want to be. We unknowingly become that person. You’re beginning to contradict many of the stories. These self defeating, self prophecies that we make about ourselves. The I think the point is that the quality of our lives, the actual lived experience of our lives is not something other than the outcomes of the many seemingly insignificant choices that we’re making every day of our lives.
Our lives are the choices that we we have made. And with our life, we make our with our choices, we make our world, we make ourselves. And even those times when we choose not to choose, when by one strategy or another, by by one means or another, we are able to avoid having to make up our minds to decide what it is that we want and what it is that we don’t want, to take a position, some kind of stand to make it clear, to clarify for ourselves. Now still we are choosing nonetheless. We’re we’re choosing more of the same.
And we can’t escape it. Life continually demands it of us if we choose. We are never not choosing the direction of our life and therefore the therefore the outcomes of our life, our experience of our life and who we’re going to be. So, you know, I guess this is what we do in terms of this process of reorientation, redirecting ourselves. You know, trying to just simply get ourselves on another track, another you know, we’ve had a busy day or at least you have, I haven’t.
You you have to deal with the real world out there. And, you know, did it is it was the overall experience? And, you know, the the notion is quite difficult, isn’t it? And, you know, that of who we’re going to become. And all of all of the you know, I keep referring to this blood, sweat, and tears.
Maybe it sounds a bit too heavy. I don’t know. All of the all of the planning, all of the work that we go through, the struggles that we put ourselves through in one way or another, you know, what is the reward that we’re reaping? And I think very much if we look at if we look to what is most meaningful in the course of our life, it is the quality of our life is determined more what we are in terms of a person than what we own, what we control, what what power we’ve developed, what status we’ve achieved, you know, who we are as a person for having done what we’ve done. And, you know, having done what you’ve done over the course of the day, having over the course of the week, over the course of your life, hasn’t made you the person that you want to become, that you want to be.
You know, we can choose to be a Buddha if we so choose. We have that that freedom, that that that potentiality is open to ourselves. So, you know, choosing to be a Buddha or choosing however we want to determine and look at it, whatever story we want to write for ourselves, to actively begin to choose that in our daily life and all these these divergent paths which are we are continually confronted with in terms of Buddhism, in terms of the the the outcomes of the Buddhist story, you know, choosing love and compassion over hatred and anger and aversion, choosing clarity over confusion, choosing, you know, what where will your decision take you? Will it take you more toward wisdom or more into unawareness and self deception and ignorance? Is what you’re doing and the overall quality of your your decision making, is it making you a better person or is it simply leading you to more of the same?
You know, the greatest gift that we have as humans and that which makes us unique and precious amongst all the all the various infinite life forms of the universe is our capacity for free and conscious choice, our our potential to transcend our repetitive past, the story of who I have been, and the determinism of each of our of our particular lives, each of our myths that we live by, our heredity, our environment. You know, we it is possible. The human mind has the potential to transcend all of that and to to begin to freely create a new future for ourselves. You know, this this unparalleled window of opportunity that our humanity presents ourselves with. You know, that that we are the nexus, the meeting ground between determinism and freedom.
And we are free to begin again, free to choose again. It seems as if that choosing must be must be from moment to moment in some way. Choosing determined. And giving your mind some kind of direction, some model, it’s there. But is that the person that you want to be?
To a large extent, we’re unaware of the story that we’re living out and who that main character, who is the star of this movie that we’re that we’re we’re acting in. And at least, you know, become conscious of that because your mind is directing you there in one way or another. And perhaps it’s not all that you might want for yourself in your life and beginning to create another vision of who you might be to to make that person that you want to be a habit. So we have to, I guess, you know, to encourage one another to because though we have freedom, it’s only a potentiality for most of us. Nothing guarantees our freedom.
If you deny it often enough, one day it’s going to be gone and you’ll not know where. And if we don’t exercise our freedom, it’s as if we didn’t have it. So the choice that we’re seeking to make is the choice of awakening our hearts to all others ultimately and our minds to the nature of reality. That’s that’s part of our goal and we call that person, that individual who who realize who realizes that travels that path a Buddha, you know, just simply a tremendously healthy, loving, sane human being, someone who who experiences unobstructed peace with inside themselves and out of compassion fear fearlessly and skillfully works with all others in order to help them to experience the same. That that’s you know, that gives our mind some kind of orientation.
You know, our mind is dynamic. It’s always moving toward a goal. It’s always moving toward away from something other. So if we can keep bringing to our mind’s eye the goal of our life where we would want our life to take us, the story that we want to live by, who we want to become, then maybe without even being aware of it, we will someday live live ourselves into that person. So this process of going for refuge in in the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, who we seek to to actualize, to find give expression to.
We we we have to do some work. We we have to practice the person that we want to be to make use of these techniques, this wisdom which is being made available to us in these techniques for for exercising our freedom and realizing. And this all occurs within this, you know, this social context of the spiritual community, you know, those who are going to coauthor a Buddhist story for us. These are these are these are things that we can depend upon, things that we can go for refuge to to help us to solve our our deeper problems. You know, besides, you know, furnishing ourselves as best we can, looking for the latch.
So I mean, where we can open the door and realize an alternative way of being. And trying to, you know, to raise the level of our motivation. And then we’re going to begin to talk about the two meditative traditions for the development of the awakened heart. The the the purpose I think going for refuge requires and I talked about in terms of anxiety and faith as being the two main causes. But as in in a sense, any change requires both a cause and a purpose.
Something which is pushing us from behind, but also something which draws us on. The purp. What is the purpose behind our growth? We’re trying to create that purpose, trying to expand the the scope of our concern such that we’re becoming healthy, that we’re becoming a little more sane, a little more skillful, developing a little more of our potential slowly, day by day, in different ways, in various means so that we can be a greater and greater use, not just to ourselves, but to this ever widening circle of others. And this has great meaning.
Our life has great purpose. And then we’re talking about another vision of what the good life is about, other values, ways of approaching the experience. Living in a in a birdcage isn’t all that life could be. And that we can at least give over part of our life to searching for the latch. Maybe we’ll never find it, but it’s the the search is worthwhile in itself.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge into awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings.
Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech and mind and present clouds of every type of offering, those actual and imagined. I disclose all my destructive acts accumulated since time without beginning and rejoice in the skillful actions of holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until cyclic existence has ended and turn the wheel of dharma for living beings. I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others to the great awakening. So would you like to stand up for a moment?
Again, adjusting our motivation. You know, this getting making love a habit, making compassion a habit. That’s what the term the equivalent in Tibetan language for meditation. It simply means to it almost means habit, it. Has the same root.
Means a customer feel familiarized to get used to getting used to being a loving person, getting used to productive states of mind, making them a habit. Habit. They become second nature. They become who we are. We’re not We’re very much I think it was David hume, the English philosopher, we are our habits which is quite true to a large degree.
And we can Habits can change and our habits very much determine our fate, the quality of life that we experience. So making a habit of love, compassion. Is our meditation is like our laboratory where we can expand experiment with other versions of ourselves of who we might be. Experiment with being as opposed to having, owning, controlling, affecting, which we normally identify with as being a as the only means to be a worthwhile person. That’s interesting, isn’t it?
I I I was thinking, you know, if if we don’t value being, it’s almost we don’t quite even know what it means as opposed to doing. We know what doing is. We’re not quite sure what being is. You know, if you you if you came home from work and you said to your your partner, what’d you do today? Oh, I was all day.
Yeah. Sure. Why didn’t you do anything? It’s not highly prized. So I think I think meditation is very much rerouting our sense of identity and being as as opposed to becoming, controlling, doing, owning, achieving, affecting all of these, you know, these characteristics which our society and our culture places so much value upon.
So, you know, we we’ve to be love. I think that’s why sometimes, you know, we we had a introduction to Buddhism, you know, introduction to meditation course this last weekend. And and so I had I thought a lot about meditation. And also I’ve been teaching some introduction to learn to meditate. And the the problems of meditation.
You know, I mean I mean I mean not I think basically meditation is about transformation. But, you know, most people who come to learn to meditate aren’t aren’t particularly interested in that. They most of them just wanna find a little bit of peace in their life. Maybe their doctors told them there’s they’re they’re stressed out and then why don’t you go learn how to meditate or something like that. And I okay.
Yeah. You know, that’s okay. That’s legitimate. You know, we have to provide some kind of service for whatever level of motivation. But more than that, we bring the same habitual ways of relating with ourselves and see our act the way we work in the world to the process of meditation.
And so for most people, it just becomes another struggle. Meditation becomes becomes simply another part of the problem. It doesn’t matter what something which was meant to solve the problem, it incorporated into the problem. The problem. It kind of makes their life a little more complicated, a little more difficult.
They can find something else to fail at. Now they’re going to become a failure at meditation. Meditation can be some another way of agitating their minds, you know, stressing themselves out even more. I can’t meditate. Damn it.
I’ve come here to relax and I can’t do it. Really, it it happens more than you would imagine. Meditation just becomes another way for people to get uptight with themselves because they can’t meditate. So how are we to do that? How are we and I’m I was thinking about that and and it’s this it’s you know, it’s like to maybe trying to be spontaneous.
The more you try, the less spontaneous you become. The further away from what you’re trying to achieve, you go. So it’s paradoxical in a way to be and how to be, how to struggle to be. We we try to make our being another part of our doing, you know. I bet maybe I’m talking very abstractly here.
That’s been on my mind this last weekend. And I thought I thought about it and, you know, it’s like, you know, if you if you make a cake, you you you combine you get a recipe and you combine all the ingredients together in the proper proportions. You you put, you know, two cups of flour, some baking powder, and some salt, and a couple eggs, chocolate. Awesome Anyway, I’m gonna I’m gonna get carried.
Couple of go ahead. Cocoa, cup and a half of milk. And then you preheat the oven, right temperature, and you get a nice a baking pan. You you you grease the baking pan and you got you pour the batter in. Put it in the oven and you’ve got one of these windows, ovens with windows on it and you and you stare at it.
Come on, kick. Come on. Come on, rise, rise. Here, come on. You gotta, you know, thing we don’t we’ve done if you create the causes, if you provide provide the correct conditions, that’s that’s all that’s necessary for us to do.
That’s our work, you know, to do just that. We don’t have to oversee the process of the cake. You know, if you if you follow the recipe, if you put the batter, if you’ve put the ingredients in the in the correct proportions together, you you’ve you’ve provided the conditions of the preheated oven, etcetera. You can relax now. You’ve created the causes.
The result will come of itself. It’s the natural outflow of dependent origination. So we can you know, this is the way the world works. This is we can begin to trust the world that it’s going to we don’t have to oversee its operation. I think and and also in terms of our meditation, we have to do some work and we have to discipline ourselves, but the work is simply creating the causes.
We don’t have to worry about the result, the process. We don’t have to oversee it. We don’t have to struggle with it. We don’t have to try to control, to manipulate our minds in any way. Simply create the causes.
That’s all. That’s our work. That’s that’s that’s the technique. The rest will take care of itself. If we have some confidence in what we’re doing, the process will will with an outflow of dependent origination in these terms, not something external but in terms of productive states of mind.
I think that maybe that’s useful to think about you know, because many many people, they they they there’s a lot of self surveillance going on as if they if they didn’t watch, if they didn’t you know, they they can’t give up this, what do they say, this control trip they’re they’re on. They want to, you know and maybe they maybe they want to be maybe the ego wants to say, well, look what I did. I created this or something, you know, because they controlled the whole possibility. They they oversaw everything that occurred and therefore they can take responsibility for it. Look what I got.
Look what I did. Look what I made. Maybe we have to become a little more humble and a little more modest in our approach. Simply, you create the causes and life will take care of the rest. There’s something or or, you know, maybe if we were in a theistic tradition, god would take care of the rest.
If we’re in a Buddhist tradition, cause and effect will take care of the rest. You know, karma will take care of the rest, whatever. Dependent arising will take care of the rest. Anyway, so to bring this back down to where we’re at in reality, in our meditation, for example, just mindfulness of breathing, The essence of meditation is relaxation, but we can’t try to relax. There’s a paradoxical situation that appears at first glance, but only because we’re if we’re in the doing mode, if we’re willing to to set that aside and simply create the causes, nothing more than that.
Our our work, the job is only to bring the mind back to the breath. That’s all that’s all we have to do. That that is, you know, we don’t have to concern ourselves with any more than that. We don’t have to concern ourselves with making with relaxing. We don’t have to concern ourselves with making our mind peaceful.
That is going to be a natural outflow of the process itself of creating if we’ve created the the causes. Just like with the cake. So okay. I went off on a tangent, didn’t I? So we’re going to also practice the the nine round breathing meditation we’ve been doing previously.
And then I was gonna say we were going to do another meditation, but talking about meditation I think I’ve we’ll just do that. Okay? We’ll do And then we’ll do mindfulness of breathing. But with the mindfulness of breathing, I think if we can approach it from something of what I’ve mentioned, if it made any sense to you, that we’re just going to bring the mind back to the breath. You know, that there’s some there’s going to be some kind of similarity in type between the cause and the result.
If if if if our approach is nonviolent, non manipulative, simply without judgment, without any sort of self criticism or evaluation, bringing the mind back to the breath. That’s all we have to do again and again. It’s a great learning, I think. There’s there’s there’s something to be learned from just that, bringing the mind back to breath. That’s just all that we have to do.
And a process will be instituted and a result will arise. And that result will our mind will begin to relax. It will begin to experience peace that we don’t have to control the process. We don’t have to manipulate ourselves in any way. I’m sorry.
I went kinda off on a tangent. So taking a firm comfortable posture. Now getting in touch with the body and noticing any tensions, any tightnesses, especially in the shoulders, the neck, upper back, but wherever you feel a tightness, maybe in your scalp. Bringing your awareness to those areas and simply soften. Relax.
Just letting go. The tension moving down and out of your body into the ground. Your body becoming comfortable, easy, soft, Relax. Feels good. Now imagine someone that you love a great deal that you actually care about.
Imagine that person in front of you. If you can’t see them and it’s not too important, but just feel that that particular person is there, that you’re you’re thinking about them, you’re addressing them. And begin by cultivating our compassion toward them. And beginning with the simple friendly feeling. It would it would be wonderful if you didn’t have any problems.
I wish you didn’t suffer at all. Heartfelt caring in terms of their suffering. And strengthen that feeling. May you not suffer. It’s like you really come to some conclusions about how you want them to feel.
I don’t want you to suffer at all. If some feeling comes up, then hold on to that feeling. You don’t have to continue to analyze or think. Just feeling. I’m going to help you.
Alright? Take responsibility for helping you solve your problems, get rid of your suffering. We’ll cultivate love toward this person. Again, beginning with the the simple friendly thought it would be wonderful if you were happy. I wish you happiness.
May you be happy. Let it be so. I’m going to take responsibility for ensuring that you’re happy. And the way I’m going to express my commitment, my taking responsibility for you in this present moment is through my meditation. If I can develop my mind, develop my skills, learn about myself.
And eventually, I can be a real and practical significant benefit. I I can really do what I I want to do. I can really help you in solving your problems and finding happiness. If I develop myself, can really do that. In some small way, if only indirectly and if only somewhere down the line, this meditation is for you.
I’m trying to do this in some small way, at least for you.