Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “Life is difficult” — and most respond by complaining as if suffering were a unique injustice. That blunt diagnosis opens this 45-minute session by Ven Jampa Gendun, who argues that karma ripens regardless of readiness and that even a lama can only show a method, not remove suffering by hand. After motivation-setting and the threefold practice of listening, reflecting, and meditating, he leads a guided contemplation on where the I actually resides — Are you your body? Your thoughts? The session then takes up the third of the three principal aspects of the path — the wisdom of emptiness — introducing four stages of Buddhist philosophical analysis (Hearer, Mind Only, Autonomy Middle Way, Consequentialist Middle Way) before beginning the Hearer-stage inquiry: all phenomena are taken to truly exist, but the self alone, assumed to be unitary, unchanging, and independent, is the first thing brought into question.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 HMA 1997 07 30.mp3
UUID: bd919a26-50ee-49d1-8b39-deb79ec8fe4e
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-07-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~4,688
So we have to begin as we do every Wednesday together in terms of adjusting our motivation. You know, why it is that we’re here this evening, why we’re going to involve ourselves in this this dialogue, turn to our discussion together in terms of the dharma and what we’re trying to get out of it. We’ll probably get out of it very much what we put in it into it and what we put into it is very much determined by why we’re doing it in the first place, our motivation. So, you know, each in our own way within ourselves has to somehow find some means, key, whereby to adjust our motivation. We direct ourselves, re orientate ourselves.
And though it’s not a very popular subject, it’s not something we’d rather it’s something we’d rather not hear about or talk about, it seems like it’s quite necessary. In terms of getting in touch with some genuine motivation which is going to help us to solve our problems because that’s why we gather here the way we do, because we have problems. If we didn’t, then we would probably be wasting our time. We could probably be doing something else which is something more enjoyable, for sure. If there was no suffering, there would be no Buddhism.
Because there is suffering, there is Buddhism. And because there is suffering, we have to practice. Practice. And one of the practices is that of Buddhism which can help us as a means to solve our problems. You know, people talk about their problems ad nauseam, don’t they?
I’ve heard all that you have to say about your problems. My suggestion is that you face the fact that you’re a human being, that you have ignorance in your mind. Can you face that fact? First, life is difficult. Life this is a great truth.
One of the greatest truths. Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead, they moan more or less incessantly, noisily, or subtly about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy. As if life should be easy. They voice their beliefs noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race, or even their species, and not upon others.
What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration or grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair. These are uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable, often as painful as any kind of physical pain, sometimes equaling the very worst kinds of physical pain. Indeed, it is because of the pain that events or conflicts engender in us that we call them problems. And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as as joy.
So I think it’s think it’s useful to come back to that reminder, that kind of that touchstone, the base ground from which we’re operating from in our lives. The fact that we shouldn’t be surprised when we suffer. That is as long you know, what are we looking at in terms of the three principal aspects of the path, in terms of developing the wisdom of emptiness or the nature of the ultimate reality? That is to say to overcome ignorance or misconception as to the ultimate nature of reality. And as long as we have that misconception in our mind, and we all do, I’m I’m supposing, then we’re going to suffer.
And that is it’s a it one entails the other. Ignorance entails suffering. The presence of ignorance is is the fertile ground for suffering to be experienced. So, you know, as it’s we keep trying to find some other type of refuge. We keep whenever there’s suffering, we think, if only I could arrange this situation otherwise than the way it is.
If only this person would act in accordance to my preconceptions about how they should be acting. One way or another, we never quite come down to the basic necessity and confront the the fundamental necessity of changing our minds. And therefore, our life goes by and we never really practice because practice is has nothing other than no other end than the changing of our mind in in a consistent series of steps whereby to develop more skillful ways of relating viewing the world. A way that we can begin to overcome our problematic approach to life. I guess I I emphasize that I’m emphasizing that a great deal.
I think I mean, you know, a great deal of what I say, let’s face it, is just directed toward myself, isn’t it? I’m just kinda Lamrim-ing out loud to you. You know, this so don’t pay any attention to Talking out loud here. You know, I was talking I guess the way, you know, what what the reason that this comes up for me, I was talking to someone last night and, you know, they had a problem. Okay.
But the problem, I have a sense. And I’ve been talking to people with problems for some time now. And you get you get to be you develop a little perspective, a little bit of experience on the nature of how people are viewing their problems and how they’re working with their problems. When the sun’s shining, who needs Dharma? Who needs meditation?
Who needs to study and work with their mind? The sun is shining. Everything is fine. And life is wonderful. When the, you know, when the storm comes and you know, they’re they’re the the these waves of suffering come crashing down upon them and wash them away and they’re completely lost, then they cry, dharma, dharma.
But it’s too late. There’s no power on earth or in heaven or or between or otherwise that transcends those two that can change their situation. The karma has ripened. They’re experiencing suffering. I had the I had the great fortune to to be a translator and had translate very intimate conversations between lamas and and various people, students, whoever.
And the lama said, you know, what can I do? You’re undergoing suffering. I can’t wave my hand and make it go away. What you can do is begin to work with your mind, work with your attitudes, work with your karma so it’s not going to repeat itself again in the future somewhere down the line. But you’re undergoing the experience of past actions in your present life.
It’s at present. And there’s no power that can alleviate that. You know, the the there’s a verse by the Buddha where he says, the the Buddhas neither wash away sins with water nor do they relieve suffering with their hands nor do they transfer their their realizations to the minds of others. But it’s by the showing of the truth that all shall be liberated. That’s all they can do.
That’s the all who all the best that we can hope from another human being or another transcendent being that transcends our our ordinary humanity is that they can show us some method to help us work with our mind and to change our attitudes and to to act in more skillful fashions. Nothing more than that. But that is enough, you know, to find some kind of peace, some kind of happiness. We can find a refuge in our life, but we have to work at it. There’s no escaping that fact.
And some consistent practice which the context which a particular context prescribes for ourselves. Buddhism presents a particular world view, a particular way of training and working with your problems. And if you have some, you know, it’s not to say that we are to buy the whole package of Buddhism. You know, we can make use of various parts of it. What works for us?
What makes sense for us at our present level of understanding? You know, what helps ourselves. The rest we can leave on the shelf for the time being. We don’t have to take the whole package together. But you have to do something.
And then merely merely by osmosis, being around the dharma, not much will change. I know. That’s my experience. You actually have to make it your own. You have to work with these ideas and change your mind for the better.
So, I guess, you know, this is why we come together and have these discussions order to help ourselves change our minds for the better. And this, you know, we’ve we’ve we’ve emphasized this fact that this this threefold activity of listening and reflecting and finally meditating, you know, gathering the facts together, getting, you know, the information, getting it correctly coming and beginning to reflect upon it, validating it with your own within your own with your own reasoning, with your own experience. Is it true or not? You know, if if it’s not true, then leave it, by all means. But also beginning to to check up to see whether your methods of evaluating your your experience and what is true or not are in themselves correct and and and valid or not.
And then once you, you know, we have coming to through this process of reflecting, we come to some kind of assurance. You know, the our our our our unwillingness to involve ourselves totally is overcome. And we give ourselves over to new ideas and new ways of being. We put them into practice. We’d be what it is that we’ve only been talking about and thinking about.
And there’s change. And then there’s hopefully, out of this comes a you have greater use to yourself and greater use to others. And there’s a you begin to cheer up and there’s perhaps a great deal more of what you want for yourself and those about you and your life in general through this process. But, you know, know, we are suffering. That’s a very it’s a great truth about ourselves.
And it’s we’re going to continue to suffer to suffer unless we do something to alter our present problematic approach to life. So, you know, we talk about going for refuge to Buddha and going for refuge to Dharma. You know, there is something to that. You know, Buddha was a genius, the historical Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha. And he showed others means to work with their problems in a very realistic and practical fashion and be able to resolve some of the human dilemma.
And he did this by teaching, communicating. And there are those who are actually practicing and realizing what these teachings are within their own mind. And they’re willing to help us, the spiritual community at whatever level. And so this is something that is really tangible. A great deal of what we strive for is fantasy, is simply wishful thinking.
And and if we’re ever going if human beings are ever to stop suffering, if we are ever to to actually solve some of our more basic problems, then we’re going to have to work with these three. Work with the Buddha, work with the Dharma, and the spiritual community as effective resources for changing our lives for the better. But we’re all in this together, you know. The person sitting next to you in front of you, in the back of you, and the person who’s sitting all the way up on this about a foot and a half or whatever half a meter above the ground in front of you, they’re all suffering in one way or another. And maybe we can develop the attitude that in this process of working through my own problems, maybe I can develop some skills and some abilities along the way to be able to help that person work with their problems in a much more effective and efficient manner, some effective manner.
Help them to solve their problems. Maybe we can all work together in overcoming the human dilemma. And that we this shared, fact of suffering that we all, that is common to us all. Then I think our life has meaning. Our life has great purpose.
We can have tremendous we can have respect for ourselves. And that in itself I think goes a long way to resolving a great deal of our own problems. Life is difficult. I think that’s where we have to begin. But acknowledging that fact and working through that fact for our own sake as well as the sake if only of one other person to help them to work through the basic fact of the suffering of their life.
So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha. You know, both the both the Buddha the Buddha’s historical past who are the shower of the path who seek to communicate their worldview to others, that the Buddha within inside of our own selves, the Buddha which we are trying to realize, the the ultimate solutions to the basic problem of the human condition, and trying to actualize, to bring that to manifest that Buddha, to bring it into some kind of practical reality by means of these teachings, by means of the realizations, by means of the Dharma. And asking and giving assistance to one another as best we can according to whatever level we are able to, that is to say, taking refuge in our spiritual community. And again and again, you know, not falling back in on oneself in some kind of isolated self complacency where one simply tries to work out, create some kind of sanctuary for oneself. But continually overcoming that that tendency toward centering our our world upon ourself to develop a social awareness and begin to to reach out, continually overcoming this tendency to to implode.
But can but on the contrary, you know, seeking to as as a as part of our force behind what we do, practice, all the activities, our changing of our mind, let it be for somebody else, an ever widening circle of somebody else’s. So maybe, you know, with that kind of motivation, you know, we’re going to talk about ignorance. We’re going to talk about wisdom. Very necessary to develop these understandings. If I can develop just a little bit more of an understanding, maybe I can transcend my own narrow conceptions, my own self absorption, and my own ignorance driven approach to life.
And I can be you know, I can be a great of service not only to myself but to others through our discussion tonight here together and by what goes on here tonight, here together. Maybe something meaningful. Not just another activity. Not just some another distraction. But I’m going to change myself and others.
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 the 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. 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 erroneous 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. Would you like to stand up for a minute and then we’ll meditate? So take these questions seriously and grapple with them. Try the best you can to come up with some answer that satisfies yourself. Beginning with, I’m sitting on a cushion.
I’m sitting on a chair. What reason can you give yourself to establish that fact? How can I prove to myself that I’m sitting on a cushion? I’m sitting on a chair. I have that feeling that I am, that sense.
What reason can I give to establish that? I’m meditating. I am meditating. What reason can I give myself to establish that fact that I am meditating? When you stub your toe, you might say, I’m hurt.
Are you your toe? Is it wrong to say that? Is it correct to say that? Are you your toe? What do you mean when you say that?
Are you your body? When you have pleasant thoughts, you say I’m happy. Are you your thoughts? Are you your mind? How many eyes are there?
Is there more than one eye? What do you mean when you say, I was going to go but I changed my mind? I was planning going shopping today but I changed my mind. Is the I in control of the mind? What do you mean when you say, I didn’t mean to do that.
I was overwhelmed by anger. I lost control. I was overwhelmed by anger. Does anger control the I? And then finally, this experiment where you come down to the laboratory or something comes down to the laboratory.
And there is a vat of liquid. And you look. Are you seeing your brain? Or are you experiencing your eyes seeing you? Are you seeing your brain floating in that nutrient, or are you experiencing your eyes in that body outside there seeing you?
Where’s the I? And then bring your mind back to the breath. Get in touch with your body, physical posture, sensation. And then in a gentle and relaxed manner, slowly become aware of what’s going on about you. Did we lose anybody?
Everybody come back. So we’re looking at the third of the three principal aspects of the path, the awakened mind. And we’re going to in this trying to understand the ultimate nature of reality, whatever that might be. Tsongkhapa advises us to seek to understand dependent arising. If we if we understand dependent arising and its corollary emptiness, we will overcome ignorance.
If we overcome ignorance, we will liberate our minds. And from from the remaining under the control of common afflictive emotions, We will no longer suffer. And we’re if we go on to couple that with the the awakened heart then we will achieve Buddhahood Yeah. And be in the we’ll have to be in the position where we can be of optimum benefit to others. We will have achieved not only our welfare but we will be able to achieve the welfare of others as well.
So coming to this understanding is realization of the nature of reality. And we said that there were four readily recognizable stages of progression from a gross understanding to a more and more subtle understanding. The Buddha taught differently to different students in accordance with their present capacity, their disposition, their present understanding. Four stages. You know, we we’ve I mean, Buddha taught for almost fifty years and it’s probable that he taught many times each day.
So that’s the tremendous volume of literature and teachings that that were built up over time. And these were systematized, organized in various fashions into various schools, for example, or tenets, philosophic systems. But they can also be presented in terms of gradient from the Buddha’s rough approximation of his presentation on the nature of reality to his final thought, his most subtle and exact explanation. So the Hearer stage, the Mind Only stage, the Autonomy Middle Way stage, and finally the Buddha’s ultimate thought on the nature of reality, the Consequentialist Middle Way stage. So we’re going to begin it at the beginning, at the Hearer stage.
Actually we’re quite sophisticated as Westerners in many many ways. We take the atomic theory, for example, quite for granted. That in a way is already a sophistication in our notion of the way things exist that we can even though we might not understand it, can readily accept that this table isn’t quite as solid as it appears to our senses, to our naive conception that it’s in fact made up of whirling atoms. I guess that’s what they tell us. Anyway, that’s the notion.
We can we can sort of well, we’ve been brain washed, I guess. I don’t know. Anyway, that’s we can we can readily accept that. I mean, though we may not understand it. So that’s already a step in direction of such sophisticated thought in terms of the nature of reality.
Reality. It’s quite quite it’s the idea of not quite accepting appearances as final. Things aren’t perhaps as solid and concrete as they normally appear to us to be. Beginning at the Hearer stage. At the Hearer stage, all phenomena, and by phenomena I mean bodies and minds, tables, houses, whatsoever, are taken to truly exist.
And this word is going to come up again and again and again and again, Truly exists and it can be defined in various ways. But one way that we can define it is that things exist the way they appear. That things in fact exist the way they appear. The way they appear and the way they are are congruent. They accord with one another.
They are in agreement. Therefore we say that’s true. Like, you know, if somebody says one thing and does another or they’re thinking one thing and they’re saying another, you say, Well they’re they’re hypocritical. We might say they’re false. There’s a discrepancy between what they say, what the appearance that they give others, and what they’re actually thinking in their own mind.
There’s there’s incongruity between the two. And we could say they’re false. They’re not true. They’re not honest. They’re not straight.
That kind of idea. So the world though we may not have conception at present about it, we do have a notion about the way things appear to us. You know, the way this building appears to us at present, the way the I, the way this table appears to us. We do have some ideas about it. May not have articulated them for ourselves up till now, but we still have conceptions about it.
And at the hearer stage, they’re going to say, well, there’s various conceptions, there’s valid conceptions that we have about the world about us are true. The world appears to exist out there. You know, this building, this table, it doesn’t appear to in any way depend for its existence on my own mind, for example. And then if if there were no minds in the universe, it would it would remain. It’s out there hard, solid, objectively existent, truly existent.
So the at the hearer stage, they accepted all these phenomena about us houses, books, cars. They all truly exist. All matter is is composed of discrete, indivisible particles. And all minds are are composed of indivisible moments of consciousness. So the the world is the notion of building blocks.
This is what you you know, what we were taught in school. This there are these fundamental building blocks. And and that’s and everything has its own intrinsic nature, intrinsic identity. And we come to know things through through through recognizing this intrinsic nature, this their identity. We on our part are merely passive observers.
The world is out there, exists from its own side, and we simply are looking out upon the world. So this is, you know, a basic notion that most of us would hold, harbor. I think we would go along with a great deal of this thinking. You know, we we are experiencing an objectively existent universe out there. It’s independent.
It’s solid. It’s self defining. We don’t define the universe. It defines itself. The world and everything in it are taken to exist very much the way they appear to ourselves.
That is except for one thing, the I, the self, the person. So in all of our discussions, these are we’re going to use these terms synonymously, interchangeably. I, self, person. They’re synonymous terms. So whatever I say about I, I also can just as readily say about self or in terms of human beings, I can say about persons.
So is it is only the I, the self, the person which is called into question at the hearer stage. At the hearer stage, in exploring the nature of reality, it is the nature of the I and only the I, the self, the person that is brought into question. Everything else is accepted to exist the way it appears to ourselves. So at the level of the hearer stage, we begin our exploration about the nature of reality with the question, Who am I? You know, who cares?
And Buddhists would say, You should care because we would do well to ask ourselves this question because it is due to our presently unconscious confusion around the nature of the self which is in fact gives cause or is the cause giving rise to all our conflicts, all our dissatisfaction, disappointment. It is precisely this confusion, this misconception around who I am which causes us all our suffering. Therefore, it is an important question. It’s simply not it’s simply not philosophic speculation. It has therapeutic value in terms of alleviating our suffering.
The Buddha, all his entire doctrine is based upon that criteria, upon the standard of suffering. You know, you could take in discerning and formulating a philosophy. You could take could you could take many premises and and based upon that, you could develop a a worldview. The Buddha took the practical notion, the fact that no one wants to suffer, and he built his worldview upon that premise. And anything which was so it was not you know, there were certain questions which weren’t relevant to that.
There are many questions that the Buddha simply didn’t investigate, questions that he didn’t even answer for various reasons. And one of the most important reasons was that it was not relevant to the question of suffering. The question of the nature of the I is central to the question of suffering, to, you know, to that premise. Therefore, it is essential to to the Buddhist Dharma. So, you know, in talking about the I, talking about the self, you know, it’s something that I guess we need to emphasize.
Two things that we need to emphasize. One is that Buddhism is not telling us that we should believe or that we should not believe that we have a self. The Buddhist position is that when we look at the way that we suffer and the way that we think and respond emotionally to life, it is and here’s the hearer’s this conditional clause. It is as if we believed. And when we look at the way we suffer and the way that we emotionally respond to life, it is as if we believed in a self that had a nature of being unitary and we’re going to go into these various meanings of what we mean by these characteristics.
And we’re at the hearer stage, okay? We’re at the hearer stage. At a particular level of understanding and all our discussions are located at this level of understanding. It is as if we had a self which was unitary, which was unchanging, which was which is independent. And yet