Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun opens Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path at its very first line — the homage to spiritual masters — and devotes the whole session to what that single line implies: the indispensability of the lama-student relationship. He argues that no one in history has realised the path through books alone, and that the lama’s role is not to transmit happiness or wisdom directly but to serve as a living mirror, instilling confidence in the student’s own potential and providing a visible proof that enlightenment is achievable. To explain why students resist acknowledging that potential, he draws on Jungian psychology: Robert Johnson’s concept of the “golden shadow,” the disowned nobility we fight harder to own than our faults. Quotes from Pabongka Rinpoche, Lama Yeshe, and Lama Zopa Rinpoche anchor the discussion, which closes by distinguishing rational reliance from transrational devotion: without the heart quality of devotion, even Lamrim meditation on impermanence or bodhicitta yields nothing felt.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 HMA 1996 05 29.mp3
UUID: f15015d0-17f7-4b56-a96d-108fb6bf604f
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-05-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.8 minutes
Words: ~4,302
To them later. And so you don’t I don’t I wouldn’t want you to forget your worries. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t want you to forget your concern. You can get all you can come back to all of your your your I mean I mean, the necessary responsibilities that you do have, that you really do have. I’m quite aware of that.
You have all of these concerns, all of these ambitions. But but if we can just say, I’m going to set all that aside. You know, why not? Just for the next ten minutes. Try something else.
You know, set aside all of the all the busyness of your life and and only focus upon a single task. That is the being aware, being mindful of the breath. You know, just as an experience, as an exercise, just to to explore that possibility. That’s all that you have to do. There’s no more work than that.
You don’t have to be good at it. No one’s asking you to to be good at it. No one’s asking you to get results from it. No one’s going to quiz you on how you did. It’s just an experiment and being with yourself, setting aside, you know, and seeing if there’s another dimension that you can begin to experience.
And you don’t only have to look for it. That’s not that’s not that’s that’s also not part of it. Part of the rules. Isn’t that that’s not part of the ambition of meditation. Just watching your breath, noting and counting.
That’s helpful. So again, we’re going to work with our motivation in terms of someone that we love, that we care a great deal about quite naturally, and developing a loving motivation toward that person. So taking a firm, comfortable posture and just for now, in terms of posture, just keeping your back straight. Just like coins stacked on one on top of another, one vertebrae on top of another. A sense of purpose purpose, a sense of groundedness in your posture, a solidity, and bringing slightly bringing your chin in.
A little bit of pressure on your Adam’s Adam’s apple. And I also might recommend is opening your chest up, bringing your shoulders slightly back. This allows your breathing to to work much more easily with less effort. So slightly bringing your shoulders back, holding the shoulders level, and slightly opening the chest by bringing the shoulders back, not in an exaggerated fashion, just slightly so that your chest is more open for breathing. There’s less labor. There’s less congestion.
Okay. So begin by contacting the body. And then you touch the body. You notice any any tensions, any tightness, especially in the neck and upper back, shoulders. And where you feel some tightness, where you feel some tension, some knot, bringing your awareness to those areas and consciously Relax.
Your attention, the tightness moving down to your body into the ground. Now think of someone that you love a great deal, that you feel very close to, that you naturally have a great deal of caring for. And imagine this person in front of you. If you can’t see them, it doesn’t matter. Just feel that this particular person is there.
I’ll begin by cultivating compassion for them. Just a simple friendly thought. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you didn’t have any problem? She didn’t suffer. I wish she didn’t have any disappointments, dissatisfaction.
I’m going to help you. I’m going to take responsibility, commit myself in working with you so that you don’t suffer. Now cultivate love toward this person. Then beginning with a simple friendly thought. Wonder if you’re if you were happy.
I wish you happy. May you be happy. I’m gonna help you to be happy. And the way I’m going to express my commitment, my way of helping you at this very moment. It’s through my meditation.
If I can develop some abilities, if I can develop my mind, realize some of my potential, then eventually I can be a real significant practical benefit. In a way, what I’m doing now is for you. Somewhere down the line, this is going to benefit you. Bring the mind to the breath. And easy and gentle.
Just getting in touch with your body. Posture, physical physical sensations. And then in gentle and relaxed manner, become aware of what’s going on about you. Just take your time. There’s no hurry.
We’re going to be looking at the Three Principal Aspects of the Path by Jé Tsongkhapa. The Three Principal Aspects of the Path. The will to awaken, sometimes this is translated as a renunciation. bodhicitta in Sanskrit, bodhicitta, sometimes translated as the mind of enlightenment, and the awakened mind or the view of emptiness. I think in the back of the text, there’s a back of your prayer books, there’s actually a translation of the text.
Is that correct? I believe it’s there. You know, we’re gonna look at the first line tonight. What does it say? Homage to all the spiritual masters.
Homage to the foremost holy… Homage to all the foremost holy lamas, spiritual masters. So I’m going to begin to go through this text. And Tsongkhapa begins with a homage to spiritual masters. In Sanskrit we use the word guru.
In Tibetan language, it’s lama. It can be translated as perhaps spiritual master, spiritual teacher, mentor. It’s a I as I mentioned previously, some something that’s quite often not talked about and perhaps will become more apparent why that is. And I I have to I’d like to assure you that in throughout this entire discussion of spiritual master and the nature of the relationship between a student and the spiritual master, the lama. I’m not talking about myself.
Okay? So in terms of being a lama or or a spiritual master of anything of that nature. So that that’ll make it easier for us, won’t it? That’s why it’s in terms of a spiritual friend, just kind of sharing what I think is important. And it’s quite often not talked about because it’s it can be misinterpreted and misunderstood quite readily quite easily.
But I think it’s terribly important. So I thought, you know, I’d like to share with you, you know, some ideas around it. So maybe even if only to plant some kind of seed, some something that for you to think about in terms of your of your spiritual journey and the path and whether it’s going to involve Buddhism or not and and to, you know, how you’re going to go about relating with the spiritual teacher, the spiritual master. So, Tsongkhapa, he begins with paying homage to his to the foremost holy lamas. In order for us to understand that in order to realize these Three Principal Aspects of the Path, the will to awaken, bodhicitta, and the awakened mind, we are going to have to depend upon a lama.
I use the word lama. Think it’s just an easier word. I hope it doesn’t sound too foreign to you, too exotic. But it simply means a spiritual master. And some of the qualities perhaps will become apparent, some of the qualities I mean by a spiritual master.
In fact, it will. I just used the word lama. That we we’re going to have to have a lama necessarily so. And moreover, that the realization of these Three Principal Aspects of our other path, and therefore our journey, spiritual journey, at least in terms of Buddhism, is very much determined by the quality, not only having a lama, but the quality of our relationship with our lama. You know, one of the foremost Tibetan masters of the twentieth century, he gave a teaching on the same subject, these three the same text, the Three Principal Aspects of the Path.
And and he in his text, he quoted a Kadampa teacher. Kadampa teacher Kadampa lineage was established by an Indian master by the name of Atisha who rejuvenated the Buddhism in Tibet, of which Tsongkhapa is said to be a new Kadampa or he again re established its lineage. To reach liberation, there is nothing more important than a Lama. Even in simple things of this present life, with things that you can learn just by sitting down and watching someone, You can’t get anywhere without a person to show you. So how on earth are you going to get anywhere without a Lama when you when you want to go somewhere you’ve never gone before and you’ve only just arrived from a journey through the lower rebirth?
And then, Pabongka Rinpoche goes on to say, therefore, you’re absolutely going to have to go and learn from a Lama. Just reading dharma books is not going to work. There has never been a single person in history who gained his spiritual goals without a Lama. Just by reading books on on Dharma, and it will never happen in the future either. So, you know, in coming to the to the practice of Buddhism, we are faced with the problem of of our relationship with a Lama or the spiritual master.
You know, people always come to to the practice with some idea of already fixing their mind what they’re going to get from this person. You know, how they’re going to deal with this person, how they’re going to deal with this teacher, this this lama. You know, the very notion that that that we’re going to get something from a lama, you know, whether it’s happiness, whether it’s peace of mind, whether it’s realization, wisdom. Whatever it is I think we’re going to get from this person is one of the most difficult preconceptions of all. So I try to come to some intelligent, grounded, clear understanding about what we can we I’m having grounded expectations.
You know, what we can expect from a lama, what we can expect from a spiritual master and a teacher. You know, the role of the lama is not to transmit happiness, is not to, peace of mind or even wisdom. But the role of the lama is to to help us to believe in ourselves, that we can attain these, to help us to generate the inspiration, to work toward their attainment, to give us the skills, the methods, the means by which we can actually and practice attain them, and to act as a living example of their attainment itself. Trying to gain some realistic framework so that our relationship can be an authentic one with our spiritual teacher. We have to know why it is both necessary and possible to abandon our ordinary limited view of ourselves and to generate in its place the awakened self identity of a fully evolved being.
We have to realize that our low opinion of ourselves, which keeps us trapped in the cycle of perpetual dissatisfaction, only arises because we are ignorant of our basic, essential, pure nature. By generating the prerequisite renunciation and bodhicitta and wisdom, and by delving into the clear nature of the mind, we create the space in which true self transformation can take place. Yet it is not enough merely to know such self transformation is possible. We must also generate the strength and confidence that will enable us to follow this radical approach to fulfillment. In other words, we need to be inspired.
We have to know that the attainment of enlightenment, complete completion, Buddhahood, totality, or whatever you want to call it, is not only a theoretic possibility, but something that people like us can do and actually do achieve. This is a quote from Although, so far what I’ve read and further, Although it is true that tantric teachings of Śākyamūni Buddha have been in existence for twenty five hundred years, do they exist for us if we have not yet met a qualified tantric master? Are they real for us or not? Despite the extensive explanations of such realized adepts as Naropa, Marpa, and Milarepa, can we say that Tantra is a reality for us before when someone has introduced us to it? Of course not.
And the same is true for the teachings of Sūtra as well. The fact that Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths a long time ago does not make them true for us. They only become part of our reality once we have realized them, and this depends upon our having met a guru who can show us their truth clearly in a way that we can understand it. If we do not have a living example and inspiration of the external guru, our inner wisdom will remain weak and undeveloped. And again, Lama Yeshe.
Just talking about the lama as a living example. And I really really want to put a lot of emphasis on it. I think it’s terribly important. It’s to begin to appreciate the significance of this relationship between the student and their and their lama, the importance, and the profundity. The main reason that religion in both the east and the west has degenerated so much nowadays is the rarity of meeting good spiritual examples.
If people never high if people never meet highly realized beings, they have no way of knowing the limitless possibilities of their own consciousness. It is not enough that there are texts recorded recording the deeds and accomplishments of past masters. By themselves, such stories cannot inspire us very much. In fact, it may only increase our feeling of remoteness. Buddha and Jesus lived such a long time ago, we may think, and their purity belongs to another age.
It is impossible for someone like myself living in this degenerate twentieth century to attain anything resembling their level of purity. Or we may reject these accounts of the past masters completely, dismissing them as fairy tales fit only for gullible children. The only way that we can lay to rest these feelings of doubt, incapability, and cynicism is by coming face to face with someone who has activated his or her highest potential. Only then do we have an example of purity and spiritual evolution who we can actually see and relate to ourselves. Thus, the outer guru is of utmost importance.
We need the example of someone who, while human, like ourselves, has developed beyond the bounds of what we presently think possible. When we see someone who has reached beyond selfishness, someone who has transcended the petty concerns of this world, who speaks out and acts out of intuitive wisdom, and is truly dedicated to the welfare of others, then we can have faith and conviction that these attainments are possible for ourselves as well. Otherwise, if our only models are those of greed and aggression, our vision of what we are and what we can be becomes sadly limited. You know, that’s all that we know. Why should we know anything other than what we see about it?
And to be normal in an insane society is not to be very healthy. It is only by coming into contact with these great beings that we we get a glimpse of another possibility, that normality simply isn’t enough for us any longer. You know, a few years ago, I there was a Jungian analyst. It’s an American Jungian analyst came to Adelaide. His name was Robert Johnson.
And maybe some of you are familiar with him. He’s written books such as We and He and She. And he gave a talk entitled Owning Your Own Shadow. And the the shadow is is a part of our unconscious personality. It’s it represents unknown or little known attributes of ourselves.
Most often the shadow is seen as reprehensible, you know, having despicable qualities which we wish to exclude from our conscious sense of who we are. So Robert Johnson went on to talk about his relationship with clients. And he said that, you know, after a trusting relationship is built up over time in the course of analysis, then slowly the client becomes willing to talk about, to share their shadow, to get in touch with it, to begin to reveal it. You know, there’s such things as as egotism, laziness, sloppiness, unreal fantasies, schemes, plots, carelessness, cowardice, inordinate love of money possessions. You know, all of these dark and negative things about ourselves that we would rather not think of as being part of ourselves.
You know, we we would we would rather feel we would there’s a tendency to disown these qualities of ourselves. And quite often, they get projected or they get dumped on other people. You know, whenever there’s a, you know, this quality of scapegoating, whenever there’s an effective quality in our relationship with another, there’s always a degree of projection. And quite often what we see outside of ourselves, that we’re projecting part of our shadow on others. So Johnson went on to say, talking about these individuals and how they’re, in the course of a trusting relationship, are beginning to get in touch and begin to talk about and reveal these disowned parts of themselves, their own shadow, you know, that these people will readily let the skeletons out.
But they will put up a terrific fight against acknowledging the gold within them. That within the shadow not only dark base sordid qualities, but also divine, also noble qualities about ourselves. But we fight, and it seems strange, but perhaps it isn’t all that strange, that we fight against acknowledging these of ourselves. You know, that that those those finest parts of us, our our own divinity about ourselves becomes disowned. You know, for to omit the gold about ourselves, it it becomes we are forced to live it to some degree.
You know, it’s it’s hard to bear the weight of our own divinity, of our own special ness about ourselves, you know, our own Buddha nature, our own Christ nature, our own godliness, or whatever terms we want to make use of. You know, to to the weight that goes with owning the golden element within inside of ourselves is is to to to assume greater responsibility that goes with growth and to to to begin to actually live out the golden element inside of ourselves. You know, to once we begin to to realize who in fact we are, that begins a necessity to to become authentic, kind of being to get to find ways to express it in our life and be there. It is the lama who helps us to become aware of and actually own or, like I said, integrate the golden element within our own shadows. You know, someday with someone, we have to go beyond our cynicism, our mistrust, our defensiveness, our fears.
You know, someone who can soften the the ego leather of our hearts and allow something that’s been deeply buried within ourselves to find to, you know, find to find some kind of daylight, to to find some kind of expression to if only to be admitted in the consciousness. You know, the the the lama is like a mirror. You know, you’ve you’ve probably heard this expression many times, which we’ve in which is reflected the totality of who we are. You know, the lama doesn’t have their own agenda from their side. You know, it’s how many times in the course of our life will we meet someone who’s only interested in our well-being?
How many times have we ever met such an individual? The lama mirrors not only what is wrong with us, but also what is right with us, profoundly right about ourselves, our own Buddha nature, our own unconditioned goodness. You know, as we just mentioned, the central role of the lama is to instill confidence in ourselves, that we can change, that we can go beyond our perpetual cycles of dissatisfaction, that we can grow in compassion, that we can grow in wisdom and love, and to inspire us to work toward these things, and to give us the, you know, techniques, the actual methods, the skills to actually achieve them and to serve as somebody who’s actually done it, reminder of the real possibility. And we have to have these living reminders of someone actually achieving what we’re just simply talking about in words or what we read about in books. But the effectiveness of a lama in doing just this is very much dependent upon our relationship with him or her.
You know, the the the the Tibetan word which which goes along, which is used in this context is den. It means to depend to depend upon a lama or to depend upon a spiritual master. But it’s interesting that the word encompasses the meaning of both to rely upon and also to devote to. So in saying in Tsongkhapa’s text, when he pays homage to the foremost holy Lamas. Tsongkhapa is emphasizing that in order to realize these Three Principal Aspects of the Path, it’s not only necessary that to rely upon a lama.
Sure, we need that. That’s understandable. You know, to learn any almost any skill, we need to rely upon. But something more than that is asked of us or necessary is that we devote ourselves also to our lama. That in other words, our relationship with the lama encompasses not only a rational reliance of our mind, but also a transrational devotion of our heart.
There has to be a heart quality involved in this relation. And I’m I’m hope I can emphasize that in this quality devotion, there’s only benefit to ourselves. That the lama from their side, him or her, doesn’t require adoration. If they did, they’re not they’re not qualified to be a lama. That this is some you know, this there’s a pragmatic quality to this, that that the the greater our devotion, the greater that our our the the we empower our lama as a radical force to change our lives for the better.
This is a quote by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the central photo on the altar. He’s the spiritual head of foundation for preservation of the Mahāyāna tradition. He’s the spiritual head of Buddha House in other words. He’ll be here probably.
I don’t know if this is a secret or not, but I’ll I’ll let you know. Don’t tell anybody. In October, probably. And then, you know, if you want to meet someone who is worthy of your devotion, then I can from my humble perspective and my distorted view, I could think of no one better than him. It may seem a little funny to say that you need guru devotion to have these realizations.
To the ear of somebody with a certain type of mind who has not accumulated much merit or fortune and who has not planted much seed to the teaching, it may sound a little bit funny when you hear, you need guru devotion for the realization of the path to enlightenment. It looks like the guru is talking is taking advantage of you by telling you this. The lama who says this looks like he is admiring himself and asking the disciple to look at him as Buddha and to make offerings. It’s very it’s very easy to think. It’s strange when you hear this.
It looks like worldly politics, not Dharma politics, but worldly politics. When you hear this for the first time, especially before you begin to practice, it seems very strange. It’s like cheating. Actually, the proof of how the realizations, development of the mind, and experience of the path are dependent upon the very root of the strong, stable Guru devotion comes when a person actually practices. The person’s own experience answers his own question about how important Guru devotion is.
He can see the difference in his everyday life between times when seeing the Guru in the essence of Buddha and devoting to the Guru in thought and action are not done correctly and correctly. When there is no longer devotion, the mind is like a hot desert where nothing grows. Or there may be devotion but very weak and about to disappear like the very thin clouds in the sky. When the mind is like this, the very root of the whole path does not exist or is a very thin cloud about to disappear in the sky. And with all the rest of the path, the meditation’s on Lamrim, whether Lamrim is the graduated path or or Tantra.
No matter how many times you repeat the words, no matter what different Lamrim teachings you read, nothing gives you any feeling. There is nothing you feel from your heart. Even if you meditate on impermanence and death, it becomes just words. You feel nothing from your heart. Even if you meditate on renunciation or bodhicitta, you feel nothing from the heart.
And with Śūnyatā, your mind is like a rock. Your experience itself gives you the answer. You can understand from the life stories of the lineage lamas of the Lam Rim path, how they practiced guru devotion and had incredible realizations. You can understand guru devotion from this, but the actual proof comes from your own experience through meditating on the path. You know, whether we’re whether we’re aware of it or not, whether we’re conscious of it or not, we are constantly, consciously or unconsciously empowering people and things, symbols and ideas through through the meaning that we that we give them, through through the significance that we attribute to them, you know, our lives.