Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The Sanskrit word sila, usually translated as “ethics,” actually means cooling or refreshing — an etymology that anchors this 34-minute session by Ven Jampa Gendun on morality, karma, and mind. He concludes his treatment of the four powers by arguing for realistic, time-bounded commitments — “no lying for 24 hours” rather than sweeping lifetime vows — as the honest way to interrupt habitual negative patterns. He surveys antidote practices: prostrations with confession to the thirty-five Buddhas, the Vajrasattva mantra, and meditation on emptiness. He then reframes ethics through Atisha’s maxim that the highest moral practice is a peaceful mind, connecting the three higher trainings via the image of a sharp axe that must strike the same spot repeatedly to fell a tree. He closes by cautioning that gut instinct is unreliable when the eight worldly dharmas dominate our sense of what feels right.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 HMA 1996 11 13.mp3
UUID: dfaad06a-3aab-4300-ab4d-7076bdcf3ad6
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-11-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 33.8 minutes
Words: ~4,860
Rejoice. It’s tremendous places tremendous responsibility on ourselves. For most people, it’s too much, I think, once one begins to fathom what what is expected of us, trying to understand, to operate, to find out what it is we actually believe for ourselves rather than operating our lives on the basis of beliefs that we’ve assumed, which have been we’ve been conditioned by. Now what is it that you know for yourself? It’s quite a challenge, I think, to come to know that of oneself and try to work with that to begin to know ourselves.
And so we have to in this, you know, in in bringing this back to what we’re talking about at present, going off onto a lot of tangents, I think, the power of refraining. You know, we have to be honest with ourselves. We have to be realistic in in in assessing our capabilities in refraining from repeating these past actions. You know? To say to say, you know, I’m not going to use abusive language for the rest of my life.
Maybe maybe it’s really well meaning, the best of intentions. But it’s but for most of us, it would be totally unrealistic. And therefore, in the context of applying these four powers, it would be virtually meaningless. It’s not meaningless. It’s a great intention.
But it would be virtually meaningless in that we couldn’t live up to it. And what what we’re trying to do within the context of the power of refaining is, for example, to say, oh, I’m not going to use abusive language for the next twenty four hours. And that that we could real there would be a realistic challenge requiring mindfulness and determination in which we could which we could could practically meet that challenge. There’s a real there’s a real possibility of otherwise, what we think and what we say, it has no power to influence our mind. They’re just intellectual thoughts, you know, like skipping over the surface of our mind.
They they don’t have any power to change our mind. They they don’t come from any real organic depth, some some deeper place in our own in our own psyche. You know, something that, you know, I for the next twenty four hours, I’m not going to consciously kill anything. And we could we could try that. That would be a realistic challenge requiring determination, requiring mindfulness.
You know, a mosquito begins to buzz around you, and you go like that. But there but having made that determination really with a genuine thought to refrain, there’s going to be something which was going to interrupt that habitual process of unawareness, unthinking reactive patterns, the disrespect for life, which we usually operate on the basis of. The hands may come together, but they’re not going to quite close due to that determination, that mindfulness, that realistic challenge that we’ve accepted for ourselves. There’s going to be some change. There’s going to be interruption in these habitual patterns, which normally, you know, are knee jerk reactions to life.
And this is the power of refraining. You know, it’s not something magical. You know, of the, Each of these powers is able to help in eliminating one of the four types of products of karmas. And in terms of the power of refraining, it’s specifically effective in eliminating the effect which is functionally similar to the cause. You know, what that is essentially is habitual ways of thinking and behaving.
This one of the effects of karma is that we keep doing the same things again and again and again. We keep going through the same patterns over and over and over. Having killed once, you it facilitates the killing again. You will you’ll be interested interested in sports, know, blood sports. You you you’ll be you’ll, you know, you’ll like to maybe you’ll join the army.
You’ll become a butcher. Something which will be able to act out these patterns of killing, just disrespect disrespect for life. By the power of refraining begins to at least interrupt that, even if even only in small ways. But that’s the way we change, isn’t it? We don’t allow it to continue.
We interrupt. We interfere. The power of refraining. So some kind of honest estimation about what it is that that you have a regret about, you know. If if you kill, if if you lie, you know, for the next twenty four hours, I’m not going to consciously lie.
That’s really a challenge. You could be mindful, you could you could keep that. I think it’s possible. You know, maybe you’d have to pick a day when you aren’t going to have a lot of work to do, maybe not you don’t have to go to the office or you you don’t have to be engaged in a lot of social interaction. Maybe it’s the day that you’re going, you know, that you’re going to spend a great deal of time by yourself.
So, you know, that that but there are so that’s an occasion where you could meet that challenge probably. And there’s some kind of realistic assessment of what you can do in in making that determination with mindfulness. The fourth of these four powers, the power of thorough application of the antidote, the power of thorough application of the antidote. So this is within the context of the three other powers. We’re we’re making use of these three other powers, and we here we deliberately commit ourselves to create a skillful action as a counterbalance to the already committed unskillful action in the past.
So in these skillful actions, there’s a traditional list of skillful actions that we can involve ourselves in which are said to be highly effective. And there are four examples. There are the offering of prostrations. And prostrations, again, it’s not something to be done mindlessly. It’s the more we understanding that we come we we can bring to all of these processes, all of our various activities that these trainings, the more perfect, the deeper the effect they’re going to have in bringing about the desire of change.
You know, prostration is simply there’s no one we’re trying to please outside of ourselves. It’s a way of of over for for example, when we come at the beginning of our teachings together or of our talks together, people quite often make prostrations. And this is essentially, prostration is an antidote to pride. Pride is one of the one of the main obstacles to actually learning anything. You’re full of your own self importance and knowledge that there’s no room for taking in any meaningful information and information in a meaningful way.
You’re full of yourself. So that’s why we we make prostrations. We actually physically lower ourselves than than the object toward which toward whom we’re going to show respect to. And it’s it’s like a humbling, but it’s not a matter of Self denigration. There’s nothing whatsoever to do with that.
It’s a skillful it’s a it’s a skillful means to overcome a fault in the mind. That’s all. And all of all of these can be thought of in that way. They if all of these you know, they they what you know, things do degenerate. Rituals do lose their connection with the the the feelings and the reality which they try to evoke, and they become empty and hollow after a while.
That’s the nature of and twenty five hundred years from now, Buddhism itself will become non existent. It too isn’t permanent, in like all things. But but but that shouldn’t that that shouldn’t because this is a process which is taking place, it shouldn’t mean that we acquiesce to it or that we support it. We want to try to find out why am I doing this? What does this mean for me?
And what’s significant? What is it trying to get at? You know, some of it’s quite deep and quite profound, and perhaps we can’t know rationally and intellectually, but we have to make effort in some way to to facilitate even if it’s only to to create the context where it is going to have effect, be most effective, even if that effect is at some very deep level that we can’t presently understand to to create the supportive conditions where then it it can be most it can function at its best, even that. So, you know, bringing all else that we have to the process. Making prostrations, for example, as an antidote, this is especially effective if it’s done in conjunction with with a particular prayer, which is called the disclosure disclosure of downfalls or sometimes called the confessions to the thirty five Buddhas.
There’s a a particular sūtra discourse which which is recited, and within the context of this discourse are recitation of the names of thirty five specific past Buddhas and the listing of various downfalls and a calling to mind of a sense of regret about what what we’ve done in the past. So, you know, this is specific recitation of prayer that we can recite while doing the the prostrations. It’s said to be very extremely effective method. And there’s recitation of various texts. There’s the recitation of mantras.
For example, one of the most effective of means is the recitation of the hundred syllable mantra of Vajrasattva. Behind this curtain is a picture of Vajrasattva, for example. You know, again, it’s tremendously profound. It’s not it it can be done at many levels, can’t it, according to our understanding. The deeper our understanding, the deeper its effect will be.
Vajrasattva is like an archetype of purity who we seek to identify with, and has its very profound technique, psychological means to help us to to purify, to overcome this burden of guilt and this heaviness that we feel about what we’ve done in the past, that we purify with it we identify with a sense of purity at a essential level of our being, you know, like beyond all the all the adventitious stains of the mind, the the stains and the and the dysfunctional patterns of our mind, which are not in the very nature of our mind. And in fact, our nature of our mind is essentially pure. It always has been and will always will always be, and we begin to identify with that purity of our own mind in this process. So it’s a very profound practice. There’s the we can meditate on love and compassion, especially an extremely effective meditation is is the meditation on emptiness.
And that that this that these, as I’ve mentioned in the past, that these negativities that we’ve created aren’t inherently negative. They’re not negative by their very nature, only because they produce as suffering results. That they’re that they they are dependent. They they aren’t some thing, some entity which is resides within our mind, is going to harm us at some point in the future, that they that they that they are a way of looking at what we’ve done, a way of naming and thinking about them, tools to to help us to to work with our mind and our experiences. They’re empty.
We can make various offerings. We can make various images. So but practically so these are there there there’s this list of traditional, effective, skillful actions that we can specifically perform. But just in general, practically speaking, any skillful action deliberately committed with in the context of of applying these four powers can serve as an antidote. When you go out of your way to commit something positive in the context of keeping it in the thought of this as a counterbalance in a way to that past negativity that I’ve done.
So the power of this thorough application of the antidote serves as is especially effective in eliminating the effects experientially similar to the cause. Ex the effect which is experientially similar to the cause. That means, for example, if, you know, the the the experiential effect of killing is that oneself will have a short life. By shortening the life of other sentient beings, you too will have a shorter life. Somehow this, you know, this this, you know, the the the length of our life is determined by the strength of the bond, of the karmic bond between mind and the physical basis, our bodies.
When that, you know, when we talked about death, as long as that connection is maintained, which which is being supported continually by by our karmic influences from the past, As long as that that life sustaining energy is connected with this body, we will remain we will remain alive. When that connection, when that life sustaining energy is no longer supported, when it when it’s when when there’s a break in its continuity, then death occurs. So somehow the killing of others, the the shortening of life for others weakens that life sustaining energy and its ability to maintain its connection with a body, you know, a physical basis. We have a shorter life. This is what is meant by the the in this case, the effect experientially similar to its cause.
Having killed, we will have a shorter life. Having stealing, we ourselves will have less property, less resources. We’ll we’ll be we’ll be poor, things like this. If we sincerely and diligently again and again apply these four powers, there is no negative karma, and this is a doctrine of the universal vehicle, there is no negative karma which cannot be weakened and finally completely destroyed, you know, such that its effects never have to be experienced. You know, what I just said previously, you know, we can’t we cannot undo the past, but we can you know, that’s beyond our control.
But we can prevent the past from undoing our future, you know, having negative consequences in our future. So, you know, I’m just gonna talk I’d like to talk a little bit about you know, in coming you know, we’ve been talking a number of weeks about karma actions as causes and their results, and the results in terms of our our experience life experiences, the quality of our life, the the feelings that we we come to know over the course of our life. You know, the the this the process of karma could it could be easily deter be termed the law of ethical causality, the law of ethical causality. You know, it’s it’s it’s it seeks to describe the rules governing the causal relationship between our moral conduct on the one hand and our lived experience on the other. You know, there’s a connection.
Buddhism is saying that. There’s a linkage between the two, how we morally lead our life and how we experience our life. If karma has to have any real significance, then this significance has to somehow be reflected in the way that we live our life, in our ethical conduct, in our moral practices. You know, one of the greatest of Indian Buddhist masters, Atisha, said that the highest moral practice is a peaceful mind. The highest moral practice is a peaceful mind.
I think that’s terribly profound, this from my way of thinking, it is. When when our mind is truly at peace, then we can assume that our acts are truly moral. You know, we don’t need rules, regulations. You know, we don’t need tablets handed down from the sky. We don’t need, you know, extensive teachings on on what the what is what is skillful and what is not skillful.
When we’re at peace, we know that our our we are in a moral state. That, you know, moral our mind is in a skillful state in the sense that, you know, as we discussed above, skillfulness is an expression of or conducive to to to mental states characterized by compassion, by tranquility, joyfulness, clarity, you know, and above all peace. But but the question is, how many of us are continually self aware or have experienced aside from, you know, very rare and brief moments, their minds truly being at peace. You know, most of us, most of the time, live our lives in distraction, you know, and out of touch with our own inner experience about what it is we’re actually feeling at the time, you know, the state of our own mind, the state of our inner being. When a being is unaware, many of their actions are to their detriment and cause suffering.
These unwholesome actions create a burning division within your being. Śīla. Śīla is a is a Sanskrit word, and in Pali is Śīla. Śīla means is usually translated as ethics or morality. Sela is a description of how you should feel within.
It’s interesting. This word Sela actually means cooling. I think I mentioned this last week. The word that is usually translated as ethics or morality really means refreshing, cooling. Is a description of how you should feel within, a cool stream of consciousness which is refreshing.
Unfortunately, many people think they are being refreshed when in actuality their innate being is burning in conflict. Look into your interior state to judge the wholesomeness of your actions. Do they unfold and refresh you, do they produce states of turmoil? Your actions are known by their fruit. A truly moral being is in flow with the cool stream.
We are not concerned with making a moral judgment about the action, but what we are concerned with is the resulting state. Are you refreshed? Is there a wash washing of your being with a greater feeling of life? Or does it produce conflict, blockage, and suffering? Wholesomeness is not defined by the act, but by the result.
Your task is to be more and more immediate, to see instantaneously the fruit of your action. Does the action feel refreshing? You can’t live by the voices of the world. You have to look into the action itself, beyond the voices of mommy, daddy, and society. What are you directly observing?
What are you experiencing? You cannot come to certainty until you reach the core of your being and read the message without the taint of conditioning. You know, perhaps what we mean by ethics is simply a description of the way a, you know, a happy, healthy, loving, and sane human being naturally thinks, naturally speaks, naturally acts. You know, someone who is at peace with themselves and at peace with their world, someone who is aligned with their own basic sanity, their own basic decency, you know, their Buddha nature. You know, such a person has no need for for, you know, prescriptive ways of being, for rules and regulation, for laws and commandments.
Their own natural way of being spontaneously promotes their their own welfare as well as the welfare welfare of those people about them. And as the Buddha, he formed a Sangha, the spiritual community of robed monks and nuns. He didn’t he didn’t and he said, I’m going to establish the the the monastic community. He didn’t have a a set of vows which he took out and said, these are the rules we’re going to run by. He had no vows initially.
He only made vows as he went along, when he saw the when the necessity began to arise, when there was conflict, when there was difficulty, when there when due to unpeaceful ways of being amongst the community there was disruptive behavior. So, you know, in talking so the idea is that at some level ethics is a description and brings us to the peace at the very depth of our own being. In in a way, there’s we haven’t talked about this, but with especially in training in the vows of individual liberation, that is there is the training in what is called the three higher trainings, higher training in ethics, higher training in meditative concentrations, and the higher training in wisdom. You know, we want wisdom, and moreover, most profoundly, the wisdom, understanding emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality. This is what overcomes ignorance, the root of all our suffering.
But wisdom only arises in dependence upon a penetrative concentration, a type of concentration which is able to to to maintain a single pointed concentration. A single pointness pointedness of mind is by which it’s able to penetrate, you know, able to uproot, able to act, you know, act as able to be powerful enough to overcome the habitual patterns of ignorance, this distorting factor within our mind. And it it has to be that powerful, you know, that that penetrating, that simply having that wisdom in itself is not enough. It has to be focused. It’s you know, the the image which is used is like the wisdom is like the sharpness of an axe.
Yeah? It has that that insight. But if we’re cutting down a tree, we have to hit at the same place each time. If we hit up here once, down here once, and no matter and we continually move about the trunk of the tree, no matter how sharp our axe is, We’re never going to accomplish our purpose. So we need both a sharp axe with which is wisdom, but we also must strike at the same point, and that point here is the ignorance misconceiving the nature of reality.
Again and again and again, that is concentration. So wisdom is dependent upon concentration, but concentration is in turn. What is concentration? Concentration is an integration of focusing of all our of our mental activities, you know, a a an integration focusing of all our mental energies into one directed stream, one directed channelizing the power of mind in one in one way. And this arises in dependence upon ethics.
This is the way that we can begin to approach the process, bringing our minds to peace. You know, ethics is not to please. It’s not there’s no moral judgment to be made. It’s the way that we can begin to pacify the heat of our neurosis, that we can begin to refresh our mind, that we begin to to to overcome our conflict between ourselves and others in the individual in in in the in the division within our own being, that we find some kind of harmony about us and we begin to find some kind of true harmony with inside of ourselves. It’s based upon ethics.
So when so ethics is is this peaceful peaceful state of mind. A peace a mind at peace is a mind which is abiding in ethics. But, you know, this is not to advocate this should not be taken as advocating that if it feels good, do it, that kind of mentality. Because what feels right to a confused mind or to an attached mind or or to a mind which is full of anger is more than not detrimental to both oneself and others, is more than not the cause of suffering. So we can’t simply say, oh, it feels right.
I think I’m going to do it. The feeling of rightness for most of us is not based upon inner wisdom, is not based upon inner decency, but on our familiarity with eight worldly dharmas, the eight principles of ego’s world, on our in our preoccupation with the pursuit of pleasure, our preoccupation with the avoidance of pain. That’s what feels right to us. That’s what coincides with our way of our present way of thinking. You know, it fits, you know, our preoccupation with pursuing profit, avoiding loss, you know, pursuing fame, avoiding notoriety, pursuing praise, avoiding ridicule.
That’s what feels right to us. So, you know, when we say, oh, if it feels if it feels right, do it, we really have to check up, you know, why does it feel right? It may feel right only because it’s it’s so familiar in terms of the eight worldly dharmas, how these eight it might be in terms of these eight principles of ego’s world, which very much constitutes our our present way of thinking. You know, that isn’t you know, the eight worldly dharmas are not a criteria for for deciding whether actions are skillful or not. You know, think just because it feels right, it must be skillful.
You know, though our though our minds are at times clear, are in a healthy state, you know, wise and loving for sure. And we can at such times we can trust ourselves in what we feel and think is right, and we can speak and act in a spontaneous manner. We can operate very authentically out of the depth of our being, the deepest core of ourselves. But how often are these times? And what do we do in the interval when our minds are not clear, when our our compassion is not operating, when when we are not thinking in wise ways?
What do you know, when when our mind is not in in a healthy state, a peaceful state, what do we do in those in those times, in the intervals? What do we do what do we do if we lack self awareness and we don’t even know what our condition of our mind is? You know, we don’t know whether our mind is at peace, whether it’s refreshed or being cool, what we are actually saying or thinking or doing. So for for most of us, there there there’s a tremendous disparity between our noblest ideas and and and our aspirations and principles that in our finest moments, you know, as we talked about at the beginning of our our talks each week, that we would very much like to see our lives lived out of and the practical reality of what we do in our everyday life. And it quite often is not what we want for ourselves.
Most often it’s pleasure pain principle, it’s gainloss principle, you know, praise ridicule principle, fame notoriety principle, which dominate and therefore determine our actions. So And I’m gonna stop in a minute. So if ethics is simply a description of the way a sane person thinks, a caring person speaks, a decent person acts, then perhaps it makes sense, it’s skillful, to try to to emulate them, at least temporarily, you know, by adopting for ourselves as guidelines, as training rules. And that’s all of the various vows and commitments of which, you know, of of Buddhism is meant to be, training rules, to adopt them, their ways of speaking, ways of thinking, their ways of acting for ourselves temporarily, you know, as you know, this is the basis for all the various types of vows and commitments of vows of wandering, all the various modes of conduct which are prescribed in Buddhism as as an approach to realigning and transforming the way in which we express ourselves and the way we we are with others. So, anyway, I’m going to get at the point of what is the basis for all of the know, I’m going to talk next week about some of the various vows and the ways of conduct, the commitments which very much make up practices of ethics in Buddhism.
But but, again, we have to understand them not as prescriptions, not as you know, that that we need we do need discipline, but we have to bring some kind of wisdom to our discipline so it doesn’t harm ourselves, so it acts in a way which is going to be helpful to ourselves. You know, understanding the thesis that ethics is most basically a way that we can begin to refresh our mind, align ourselves with our basic sanity, and find some peace as a basis for being in the world with others, as a basis for helping ourselves by developing by going on to develop, you know, wisdom and insight ultimately. So we’ll stop there for tonight. Okay? So the four powers, the power of repudiation, the power of reliance, the power of refraining, and the power of the thorough application of the antidote.
You know, these are really useful tools that we can make use of. We we don’t have to remain victims. It’s an empowering process given to us, some tools to work with. So we’re going to dedicate the the creative potential that we’ve accumulated. In the land encircled by snow mountains, you are the source of happiness and well-being.
Powerful Chenrezig Tenzin Gyatso, please remain till 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. Have a good week.
If you’d like to stay in the discussion group and get a cup of tea, you’re welcome. Thank you.