Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. What does genuine determination to be free actually feel like — and how do you know when you have it? In this 42-minute commentary, Ven Jampa Gendun enters the main body of Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path, focusing on the first: the will to awaken. After a brief opening mindfulness exercise, he unpacks verse three, arguing that without real revulsion toward cyclic existence, bodhicitta remains empty words — a point Tsongkhapa clinches with Sharawa’s image of resolve no stronger than “a film of barley powder on homemade beer.” Gendun clarifies that renunciation targets ignorance and clinging rather than pleasure itself, then introduces the eight worldly dharmas as “rules for how to be a model prisoner.” The session closes with a preview of next week’s topics: precious human life, death, and karma.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 HMA 1996 05 22.mp3
UUID: 595e1947-64d2-4457-adf9-9a6b3143eb93
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-05-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.0 minutes
Words: ~5,339
Have some kind of focus, some kind of directionality to our mind to be able to make it serviceable, to make it useful to ourselves. So the essential quality that we’re bringing to our motivation is to be present within the moment. You know, knowing the quality of our mind, knowing what it’s involved in, and being able to direct it towards skillful objects in ways that are most useful to ourselves. So, you know, mindfulness holds objects. It it absorbs it is absorbed in the moment.
Awareness maintains some kind of perspective, some kind of maintains you know, it knows the the panorama, the environment in which the whole thing is occurring, the process is occurring. So in this meditation on mindfulness and breathing, the very simplicity of it means that we can’t get sidetracked, that we don’t seek some kind of complicated exotic, you know, some of that exotic mind states where we can become lost inside issues and not really bringing, not really developing the skill on how to use our mind and getting to know ourselves and beginning to make our minds more supple to ourselves. So the goal becomes the practice. The goal of mindfulness and awareness. Simply being present in the moment as it is.
Bringing that quality to our meditation. It’s like something like transcendental common sense. You’re seeing things as they actually are without magnifying or what something is or dreaming about what we would like to have. But simply beginning to know the way things are, the breath, the state of our mind, its quality, ourselves, the various emotions and feelings which which usually go unnoticed, that go unaware of, which begin to rise. You know, beginning to know this dimly lit inner inner world of ourselves.
And that’s who we are and begin to without, you know, this dispassionate quality around it, an accepted quality. So if you take a comfortable firm posture, and again we’ll cultivate love and compassion. Someone, again, who isn’t in the immediate inner circle of loved ones. Someone slightly outside of that, that intimate with. That someone that you like that’s appealing to you, that you haven’t made use of before.
That you know, that there’s caring, there’s a liking, and there’s a sense that they’re attractive to you. But they’re not you have no particular intimate relationship. There’s no tight bond between yourselves. So using that individual. So taking a firm comfortable posture.
And beginning with getting in touch with our body and noticing any tightnesses, any tensions. So we’re continuing with the three principal aspects of the path by Je Tsongkhapa. So we said the overall divisions of the text were the prologue, the main body of the text, the epilogue. So we’ve actually finished the prologue. So we’ve come to the second of this overall three divisions, the actual main body of the text.
So this concerns itself with the the main body of text is going to be divided into three sections again in terms of the three principal aspects of the path. The will to awaken, the awakened heart, and the awakened mind. The will to awaken, the awakened heart, and the awakened mind. These are more traditionally translated as renunciation, the mind of enlightenment or bodhicitta in Sanskrit, and the correct view. This is, I think, these translation terms are justifiable but they are not very common and they are kind of something I have come up with.
But maybe they might be more meaningful. The will to awaken, determination to awaken, the determination to be free. That’s the prerequisite. I guess I’ve emphasized this in motivational part of our our discussion together in terms of and we really have to want to and beginning to recognize where our the fundamental source of our problems are coming from. Orientation, the most fundamental orientation of Buddhism is that our problems are coming from our own mind.
And then start we have to stop blaming our genes, chemicals, our individuals, groups, or our luck and start seeing the evolution of our problems for our own mind. And the most fundamental of those internal causes within our own mind is that of ignorance. And associated with the dysfunctional pattern of self centeredness. But we aren’t going to be able to ever uproot these two fundamental dysfunctional patterns of our mind unless we have some real determination and to begin to interrupt these patterns of our mind continually and at and skillfully and at their deepest most levels. Now we beginning to confront the issue of suffering and these are neurosis.
And one of the main characteristics of neurosis is it’s compulsive reoccurrence. Compulsive reoccurring patterns of ways of thinking and behaving. You know, they just keep repeating. First, it’s this time, then it’s that time. Oh god, not again.
It just keeps going on and on and on. And if we can begin to see the forest in spite of the trees, we we can begin to see the overall repetitions of these patterns in our lives and the and the playing out in the quality of our lives in terms of suffering. And we develop certain no. Some kind of bottom most repulsion. You know, it’s like when a when a a maybe an alcoholic bottoms out and and they become aware that they’re either going to die or they’re going to have to get better.
Maybe some kind of fundamental level of our being is that. And they develop some kind of determination, a will to be free. So we’re going to this third section, this first section, the will to awaken, is divided into some subsections and divisions of the reasons why we should develop such a determination, the way to develop it, and then the point when you actually can tell that you have developed it, the measure of having developed will to awaken this determination. So the reasons for developing the will to awaken, maybe that’s all we have been talking about a great deal of time, why we should develop this determination. It’s contained within the third verse.
Without a complete thought definitely to leave cyclic existence, there is no way to stop seeking pleasurable effects in the ocean of existence. Also craving cyclic existence thoroughly binds the embodied. Therefore, in the beginning, determination to leave cyclic existence should be sought. Without a complete thought to definitely leave cyclic existence. You know, mentioned that the term that I use is will to awaken.
The actual Tibetan term is nges ‘byung and that doesn’t mean anything to you perhaps, but if we were to translate that literally, it means definite arisal. Definite, you know, that one is determined to arise out of these neurotic compulsive patterns of our lives. You know, they’re definitely to awaken. If we don’t develop this, we have to begin to see if we don’t develop this determination to awaken, we will perpetuate and remain stuck in these recurring compulsive patterns and we will remain stuck in the cycle of existence. It’s like, you know, it’s either or situation.
We can either orientate our minds toward freedom or we can allow our minds to be continually dominated by these recurring patterns that remain enslaved. Either our orientation is toward health or it’s toward the continuance of a problematic way of approach to life. You know, if we don’t change, nothing will be nothing is basically going to happen in terms of the quality of our life. So determining to grow, to become aware of just how self defeating our present thinking and behaving really is in terms of of what we could experience, of what we could become, and and attempting to consistently interrupt Such an approach to life, such ways of thinking, these patterns. Buddhism says that giving up is in the scene.
If you do not naturally drop your stupid assumptions, that is because you have not really understood their stupidity or because or perhaps because you have saw it once, or because you saw it once but have the insight has been lost. The insight has lost its force and the old habits have reasserted themselves. How could you give how could you cling to what you know to be false or worthless? It is as if you treasured a ring that you had found in the belief that it was valuable, and then then you discover that it’s actually a valueless, a valueless imitation. Could you continue to feel about it in the same way?
Of course not. In the moment of knowledge, some change of attitude comes, and with that, a shift in how you behave. There is no way to stop seeking pleasurable effects in the ocean of existence. You know, there is no way to stop grasping for it, to let go of ego’s projections, these fabrications, these fantasy world, these hallucinations in which we live. You know, the thing about renunciation, you know, what the term you know, pleasure is not the problem.
You know, a Buddha experiences only pleasure. That is the pleasure is not problematic for him or her. It is our grasping and clinging to pleasure which turns pleasure into pain. Now we should have pleasure. Buddhism would have us would have it that we should all be experiencing complete bliss.
Everyone in this room should be at peace and experiencing bliss. So pleasure, you know, bliss, peace is not the problem. It never has been, you know. We have we have some sort of attitude, some sense that, you know, without this pleasure, there is there is never going to be any more pleasure. You know, there’s only going to be unhappiness.
And so we try to hold on to this particular happiness, you know, whether it’s a person, whether it’s a possession, whether it’s a circumstance. It is as if this pleasure, this person, this situation, this thing is going to have to rest last me the rest of my life. And therefore, trying to hold on to that person, that thing, that situation, that circumstance. You know, style, our way of relating. But, you know, it’s it’s it’s a self defeating behavior in the way of thinking because in in the end there’s nothing we can’t control.
The holding on to. You know, someone someone who has developed the will to awaken is no longer captivated, no longer struggles to hold on to these pleasures. It’s not, you know, the question is not rejecting pleasure. We’re not to wear hair, shirts, to lie up on beds and nails. If we are to renounce anything, are to renounce the cause of our suffering.
We are to renounce our own ignorance, our own self-centeredness. Now we you know there’s a certain perhaps basic dishonesty that we bring to our experience through how we relate with the world demanding that it run according to our agenda, how we think it should run. And therefore we experience only frustration and disappointment and there are various forms of dissatisfaction. The way to develop the will to awaken. I think I’ve tried to emphasize that our lives are based upon sets of ideas, on beliefs, assumptions, premises.
And to the degree that these beliefs and sets of ideas and assumptions, these premises in which we are basing our lives are not in accordance with the way things are and the true nature of things, as long as there’s discrepancy between our expectations and reality, we’re going to experience some sort of disappointment and frustration, dissatisfaction, some type of suffering. To a very great extent, men and women are a product of how they define themselves. As a result of a combination of innate ideas and the intimate influence of the culture and environment we grew up in, we come to have beliefs about the nature of being human. These beliefs penetrate to a very deep level of our psychosomatic systems, our minds and brains, our nervous system, and even our blood and sinews. We act, speak, and think according to these deeply held beliefs and belief systems.
So, you know, if the will to awaken is determining to become aware of and transform our various erroneous ideas, mistaken beliefs, incorrect assumptions which find expression in our various neurotic patterns and begin, you know, in all our various inappropriate actions into ideas, beginning to transform into ideas and beliefs and premises which which reflect the way things actually are. And and which are reflected in more healthy and more types of ways of thinking and more appropriate ways of acting, appropriate to what we want out of our life, what life has the capacity to give us. So in determining to awake, we’re not trying to perform perfect acts in a perfect world, but appropriate acts in the way in the way the world actually is. You know, beginning to kind of access, come to know the way things actually are. You know, we we have, you know, like that, this archaeological dig of layers upon layers of mistaken assumptions, wrong ideas.
You know, we we believe ourselves, you know, that we’re limited, insufficient, incomplete, that we don’t have quite what it takes. You know, we believe that our happiness and our suffering perhaps rise haphazardly by chance, by external causes, that we are more or less victims, that our life is out of our control, that we believe ourselves to be immortal at some level of our being. That and even if we were to acknowledge the fact that we’re going to die, it’s going to be at some distant time in the future, you know, that to you know, we have enough veils between ourselves and the actual actuality of our death and the uncertainty of its time not to allow to affect our lives in any way, that we go on leading our lives as if we had enough time to not have to change, to not have to take conscious control of our lives. We hold that that which is impermanent as being permanent, that which is in the nature of suffering as having the capacity to bring us complete satisfaction and happiness. You know, that which is we hold that which is dependent as being independently existing.
That which is changing as being unchanging. That which is non truly existent to exist truly. You know, that there these are just some of the beliefs and assumptions upon which we we base our lives. And because they don’t accord with the way things actually are, inevitably we meet with some type of disappointment or frustration, some type of dissatisfaction or suffering. You know, we have to have a very strong will to awaken because without it we are never going to be able to overcome the tendency of neurosis to avoid legitimate suffering, to overcome the tendency to avoid self confrontation and analysis.
We’re never going to take up this difficult task of changing ourselves. It has to go beyond mere intellectual speculation. It has to become have the quality of a deep, they felt necessity. Tsongkhapa, in in another text of his called the the Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path, talks about this attitude of the will to awaken, this determination to be free, to go to go beyond these compulsive patterns of our minds and lives. About this attitude, it’s just the way Sharawa described it.
Sharawa was a great Kadampa master. Kadampa tradition was a tradition of Buddhism which preceded Tsongkhapa. It’s just the way Sharawa described it. Suppose it’s no stronger in your heart than a thin film of barley powder spread on the surface of some homemade beer. Then your feeling that you want to avoid the cause of the cycle of life, what we call origin, will be no stronger than that.
Then your aspiration to reach nirvana, where you stop those suffering and its origin, will be exactly the same way. And then your wish to practice the path that brings this nirvana will be nothing but empty words. So too for compassion, the state of mind where you can no longer bear to see others living beings wander through the cycle. There is no way you will gain it. Then finally, you will never find a genuine form of the wish to achieve matchless enlightenment for all living beings, a powerful wish that can urge you on.
And so the greater way universal vehicle becomes for you nothing but some flimsy understanding of the description you find in books. So Tsongkhapa is emphasizing, unless we really develop a genuine sense of determination to be free, his will to awaken, that all of these fine sounding concepts, all of these ideas that are found within Buddhism and more specifically within universal vehicle of Buddhism of developing great compassion and inspiring to awaken ourselves for the sake of all living beings become mere words. They really have no effect on how we lead our lives in fact. Simply kind of concepts that we hear about and read in texts. So the second division within the will to awaken.
You know, how how are we actually going to develop? You know, maybe there’s a good reason. Maybe you really want to develop the will to awaken. Maybe you really want to go. You know, you really have become sick and tired of being sick and tired.
And you’ve gone beyond deficiency motivation and you’ve actually developed some type of growth motivation where you want to fulfill your own self interest in terms of some general and well-being. And how are we actually going to do it? And we have to have some kind of method. So Tsongkhapa begins to outline the method whereby we’re going to do it. It’s set out in the fourth verse where he says, Leisure and fortune are difficult to find and life has no duration.
Through familiarity with this, emphasis on the appearance of this life is reversed. Of what we’re going to talk about in terms of developing the will to awaken is to is to help us to empower our minds, to gain some kind of competency. We’re captivated. It’s like, you know, like like our our the spiritual director of FPMT, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahāyāna Tradition of which Buddha House is a member. Like, he he was continually saying that as long as you hold on to the hot coal, you’re going to continue to be burnt.
And sometimes we have to let go of it. We have to see that we’re being burnt, that it’s not perhaps what we thought it was. We have to we have to gain some kind of insight into the evolution of our problems, the sources of our difficulties, develop and empower our mind whereby the patterns which keep us stuck, which keep grasping at these and clinging to these the pleasures of cyclic existence, you know, are no are no longer dominating our thinking to to the to the extent that they were. That it begins to open, you know, open up, evolve another another orientation toward liberative ways of thinking, toward other possibilities and other goals, which, you know, we it’s like, you know, this idea of liberation, nirvana, now whatever we want to call it, this idea of waking up, you know, within a it’s it can be compared to a dream. That all of saṃsāra is by analogy comparable to a dream.
Within that dream, we can do lots of things. You know? We we can there are all these various options open to us ourselves within that dream, within the context of that dream. But Buddhism is saying within that dream there is no satisfaction. There’s no fulfillment.
There’s no real happiness. You can within within all the variables within that context, we can no matter how skillful we may be able to to manipulate them, how we can never master them. It’s not that happiness is not a variable within cyclic existence. That that there is only the only alternative to going beyond this dissatisfactory situation is to wake up from the dream. Then the whole process is transcended.
There are two possibilities for us. And there is seeking to become more skillful within the context of the dream, making the best of a bad situation, or developing the determination to wake up altogether, to transcend. You know, it’s another order of learning. Know, we we’ve talked about last week, were talking about becoming more skillful in terms of our actions, in terms of our karma, if you like. And we were talking about it in terms of of definitive and interpretive teachings.
That definitive teachings are those which orientate us toward waking up, toward liberation. This is essentially where the teachings are seeking to take us. Anything else is provisional. You know, the teachings that by skillful actions we experience happiness is not a definitive teaching. It’s not an ultimate teaching.
It is simply provisional. It’s to help us to make the best of our dream, make the best of a difficult situation. Because even skillful actions, generosity, ethics, all that we can do in terms of the dream are are spoken of as golden chains. And the idea of golden chains, it might it might be attractive. It might be more desirable than iron chains.
But nevertheless, there’s still chains. There’s still chains. They aren’t liberation. So, you know, the the I think it’s to be honest, I think it’s terribly difficult to I think it’s necessary to orientate ourselves, to work at it. You know, it’s just difficult for for me.
You know, more more than not, what are our operative principles in our life? They are what Buddhism terms the eight worldly dharmas or the eight principles of the world. Are the standards by which we operate in our lives? Are they the standards of that which binds me and that which liberates me, or are they something else altogether? You know, are they the standards by which that which directs me toward my dream or that which wakes me up?
More than not, they are simply all within the context of this dream of cyclic existence. You know, in terms of the eight principles of the world. You know, the the principle of pleasure and pain, the principle of gain and loss, the principle of fame and notoriety, the principle of praise and blame. This is what these are the principles on which we run our lives. You know, later on we’re going to talk about this in terms of the emphasis on the appearance of this life is reversed.
The priorities of our lives are reversed. The principles upon which we conduct our lives begin to change. Now what kind of standards are we going make use of in terms of how we’re going to think and behave? You know, what premises are we going to operate on the basis of? You know, if I think it’s an evolution.
And I think we have it seems to me quite skillful to expend some time and energy to involve ourselves in it. This evolution of waking up. And to begin to see that simply working on the standards of of avoidance of pain and the preoccupation with pleasure do not lead to a quality way of life and all that you might want of your life. That the standard or the principle of avoidance of anything, any type of loss, the preoccupation with gain are not the standard, the principle by which is going to lead you to the quality of life that you might want for yourself. In fact, these eight principles of eco based existence are how are are the rules for how to be a model prisoner.
There’s no freedom in any of this. Being able to choose what how you want to live your life and what you want to get out of it. It’s being run for you by the force of, you know, our preoccupation with gaining pleasure and avoiding pain, our preoccupation with gaining praise and avoiding blame, our preoccupation with gaining gain, and with receiving gain and our avoidance of loss. You know, it’s like, you know, we slaves to these ideas, these principles. And they may, in fact, may not be in our best interest, but perhaps we’ve never questioned that.
To reverse the emphasis on this life, to begin to reverse the priorities of our life, is to begin to see how these eight principles, preoccupations of ego based existences are operating in our life and how they’re binding us to our suffering. How we, you know, if if if, you know, I think in the most basic way types of orientation that we can begin to give our mind is not allowing our preoccupation for pleasure to run our lives. That our best interest might at times involve some kind of legitimate suffering and being willing to to work through that, the difficulties of change, for example. If every time you you come you begin to touch suffering, you back away, nothing is ever going to change. You’re you’re going to continue to to move in the same repetitive ways of thinking and behaving.
If every time, you know, you you you are completely caught up in the gaining of pleasure, then you’re a slave. You’re no longer free. You no longer have choice in your life. So I think, you know, I think Lama Zopa has said that the dharma comes down very much to these principles, these these eight preoccupations of ego based existence, these eight principles of the world. And beginning to see how they’re how they’re running your life.
And you are you are not in control, but in fact they are. And, you know, beginning to this the path, you know, is an empowering whereby we we regain our control of our life. We begin to make choices and accept responsibilities in in what we do do and begin to direct our lives. You know, the human life is the nexus between determinism and freedom. More than not, our lives have been determined for our for ourselves.
We, you know, We are only free to the extent that we exercise our freedom. And we are only free to be aware to the degree that we realize that we have options, that we are aware of those options. But we are aware only to the degree, for most of us, to the degree that our survival is necessary and no more. So what it means to begin to wake up is to begin to wake up to other possibilities, other options, and begin to to to take control. Begin to exercise your freedom in directing your life.
And not let these eight preoccupations, ego based existence of the eight worldly dharmas, you know, these rules for how to be a model prisoner, run your life, determine your life, which they more or less have done up to now. A bit of a lecture there. Sorry about that. I mean, I I I in all of these talks and the ways that I talk, know, I’m talking to my self, you know, the as I probably mentioned, you know, we it’s said that what we most need to learn, we teach. And I’m confronting this issue in my own life.
And I I we we all want you know, the Dalai Lama has said again and again and again, on the basis of an I, the innate sense of I, we seek happiness and to remove suffering. And this is quite legitimate. This is quite we have every right to do that. So but we have to, you know, become perhaps begin to look at what, in fact, really is happiness a little deeper than we have, maybe have up to now, and begin to see what it means to avoid suffering. You know, in the in the in the Vinaya, which is an area of the teachings of the Buddha on moral discipline.
It says that that type of suffering which brings happiness is to be thought of as happiness. That happiness which brings suffering is to be thought of as suffering. So, you know, many of these ideas sound quite foreign perhaps. They sound foreign because they they don’t quite they aren’t they aren’t in keeping with our present dysfunctional ways of thinking perhaps. They aren’t in keeping with our many of our delusions perhaps.
In that way, perhaps they sound foreign, but but they may by they may be pointing to something which is quite worthwhile, which which may which may, if you stay with them, these ideas, and begin to see their validity, be able to transform us and and may begin to help us to to take control of our lives and begin to really cheer up and be a greater use to ourselves and to others to really be happy. And ultimately, they may be able to liberate us, liberate our minds. So I think it’s it’s quite worthwhile, you know, to we need to to amongst all our various activities in creating the good life for ourselves, to set aside sometimes some energy and put some energy into trying to understand yourself in the way your mind is operating and the evolution of your problems and to become, you know, making use of these of these these profound this profound wisdom which has been handed down, you know, for over two thousand five hundred years as perhaps a guideline to facilitate this process, to help us develop our own wisdom, to help us develop our own skills and finding happiness for ourselves and helping others to be happy as well.
So we’ll there. Okay? So we dedicate the positive energy, the creative potential that we’ve accumulated. So, you know, next week we’re gonna be going into, you know, the way to develop the the will to awaken. We’re going to be looking at, you know, this window of opportunity that our human life presents ourselves.
You know, we take so much for granted. Beginning, you know, there’s a great, there’s a relationship between fact and valuing on the one hand and how it changes the way we act. You know, trying to see the fact and valuing the fact of our human life, for example, and how this is going to change the way that we actually act in the world. Know, overcoming our sense of that we have of taking for granted this this this potential that we have. If we value it, it’s going to change ourselves.
You know, we’re going to look at death. Know, if we if we as long as we hold it, you know, the belief in immortality is disempowering. That the that the the fact of our of uncertainty of our time of our death adds some kind of intensity to our life. And that is all of these we’re trying to empower. We’re trying to gain competency and skill, take control of our life and our minds.
So we’re going to look at karma. We’re going to look at the nature of cyclic existence and developing the will to awaken. In land encircled by snow mountains, hear the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful Chenrezig Tenzin Gyatso, please remain until the end of cyclic existence. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual master and lead each and every living being to that awakened realm through these skillful actions.
May the supreme jewel of the awakened heart that has not arisen arise and grow. And may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more. Thank you very much. If you like those who would like to stay and join in discussion, make a cup of tea. Have a good week.