Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a stock-taking metaphor — counting shirts in a high-school inventory job — to frame the practice of reorienting motivation. He names two prerequisites for inner change: constructive anxiety (recognizing compulsive, self-defeating patterns) and faith in transformation. A baby in the room illustrates mother’s kindness as he introduces the seven cause-and-effect instructions for developing the awakened heart, beginning with recognizing all beings as one’s mother. He then guides a meditation sequence: nine-round breathing, love and compassion toward a near-stranger, and equanimity — freedom from projecting “friend/enemy/stranger” labels onto real individuals. The session closes with an accessible argument for rebirth: because every mind-moment requires a preceding one, the continuum is beginningless, and every being has literally been our mother.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 HMA 1997 05 21.mp3
UUID: 511e86fa-5176-48bd-b81e-ea3eead25359
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-05-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~5,668
Okay. Yeah? Is it very comfortable? That’s the important thing. So, you know, we have to have to begin this process that we always involve ourselves in.
This process of reorientating ourselves, readjusting our motivation, getting back in touch with some more deeply held values and ways of being, concerns that we have, priorities that we would like to see our lives be an expression of. But that for various reasons, one reason or another, whether it’s just distractions or self deceptions or self ignorance or pure laziness we we get out of touch with, we lose sight of, we don’t try to implement in our daily lives. So this is like a stock taking period. I remember I used to get When I was in high school, Used to be a department store that used to hire students for their stock taking sale. This was back in the old days when you had to do it with a pencil.
They didn’t have a, you know, the bar codes and all that in those days where they automatically knew exactly what they had in stock. You had to actually go through and count all the shirts and all the socks and fill out a form and they knew exactly what they had in in their stock. So I don’t know whether you have a bar code or or the, you know, any type of modern techniques. But anyway, we’re gonna have to we involve ourselves in some kind of stock taking. We take an inventory within our own minds of our our values and beliefs, what it is that we’re about in our life just to make sure to see whether our life isn’t is being lived out of of what is very important to each of ourselves, very uniquely important to each of our unique selves.
Now this is the process of going for refuge. What is it that we go for refuge in? What is it that we hope to make use of to solve our problems to find the good life as each of us uniquely defines it however we might look for each of ourselves. And we each have a And it might not be explicit to ourselves. We may never have spelled it out exactly for ourselves.
But we have some image in our mind about what is the good life for ourselves, you know, living out these stories, these narratives that we that we tell ourselves about ourselves and how we’re going to try to live our lives to to find happiness and get rid of suffering. Know, Khensur Rinpoche, our Tibetan teacher has been emphasizing these. That that’s the reason that we practice the Dharma. Why are we involved in all this? Why why do we why do I sit in front of my computer for hours on end trying to come up with with these clever words and why do people listen and why do we try to practice?
Essentially most, the reason, the bottom line is that we want to be happy and we don’t want to suffer. That’s why we practice Dharma. That’s that’s what the reason behind it all is. If we didn’t want to be happy and we didn’t care whether we suffered or not, then there are probably better things that we can do with our time. But the reason that we do involve ourselves in these practices, in this listening, reflecting, and meditating, and trying to implement them in our everyday lives is because we want to be happy and we want to not suffer.
And from the point of view of the Buddhist teachings, it is only through change, changing our minds for the better that this is ever going to occur. So the Dharma is listened to and reflected upon and meditated as a means of change. We have to change. We have to change our thinking, our behaving, the stories that we’re living our lives out of ourselves if we’re ever going to be find genuine happiness, if we’re ever going to eliminate suffering at a more fundamental level. And we resist this change.
We’re going to talk about recognizing all sentient beings as our mothers and remembering their great kindness. So we have a demonstration of mother’s kindness. And she has to forego what she might like to be doing in order to direct her attention toward her baby who needs her at that moment. And that’s what our mothers have been doing for in this since the beginning of this time, in this lifetime. But we forget.
We forget even what what it was like to be like this baby in the course of this lifetime. If we someone hadn’t taken care of ourselves as she is doing, we wouldn’t be here now. We wouldn’t be alive. These are things that we we can make use of to change. These are the kinds of ideas that we’re working with to change our minds, to help ourselves to be happy and to rid ourselves of suffering.
Just these kind of everyday practical realities that we seem to overlook or we dismiss in one way or another. And we live in very much in a in a kind of a fantasy world that we’ve made up for ourselves. Talking about change, you know, the the another another alternative, you know, we talked about this a number of times. I guess, you know, over over some time I I begin to repeat myself. So if you have to kinda bear with me in that in that respect, but I think many of these ideas you know, I I know for myself that I could hear this very same teaching again and again and again and very much the same words from the same teacher and but my mind would be in a different place, hopefully.
Sometime, a little bit. The second time or the third time around. And I would there would be different significances which would significances which would register in my mind or different meanings or I would take it in from a different in a different way. I would go away with a different lesson. Now the basis which so the basis of a change, the basis for seeking on alternative refuge in our life, the basis for adjusting our motivation, trying to create the inner the inner ecology of mind whereby change can take place, where it will take place.
We there are two causes. What I call constructive anxiety, you know, sometimes it’s simply translated as fear. Maybe that’s okay. And the other is faith. So, you know, we we have to recognize that basically we we don’t want to change or we we probably aren’t conscious of that but our life is indicative of that.
The very fact that we keep making the same mistakes, that we’re going we keep, you know, traveling down the same streets, falling into the same holes again and again and again even against our own better judgment. That we that we keep experiencing the same outcomes over and over again is is indicative that there’s some kind of some kind of resistance, that there’s something there’s Now one of the the characteristics of neurosis is a compulsive a compulsion to repeat, to to enact the same ways of thinking and behaving again and again and again. It’s the familiar, the non. You know, that’s one of one of the characteristics of that keeps us within these repetitive patterns in these cycles upon cycles which very much constitute our lives is fear, fear of the unknown. So fear keeps us very much in our tracks.
We keep repeating the same types of thinking and behaving because the unknown is is makes us anxious. Is a sense there’s a sense of foreboding or dread about the unfamiliar, about the unknown, about the unaccustomed. And the but I think we have to become aware of that it is that the basis for our continued suffering, the basis of our continued neurosis and therefore our suffering is just this lack of willingness to expand the scope of our awareness to that which is presently unfamiliar, unknown to ourselves, and the willingness to bear with the creative tension in the process of transformation. So, you know, we’re learning about new ideas, different different ways of being, alternative approaches to life. Many of them sound rather foreign to ourselves.
You know, even talking about the notion of recognizing all living beings as our mothers. I would imagine that sounds extremely foreign to all of us. But we can begin to perhaps not necessarily this. I’m not saying that we have to indoctrinate ourselves or somehow it’s not a matter of propaganda, but at least open ourselves to to an unaccustomed idea without dismissing it. At least that whole notion that we’re going to discuss to some extent the notion of rebirth for example.
You know, can you can you simply cease dismissing it as as a wishful thinking, you know, met animistic approach to life, wishing for something for more life in the face of annihilation? Nothing more than that, some kind of superstitious nonsense. Can you, you know, can you open your mind to a foreign idea? Can you listen to it in a in a a more meaningful way? So anyway, we I think to listen, and there is this first step in this threefold activity of listening, reflecting, and meditating as a way of changing.
To listen, to begin to create a receptivity, to open ourselves to the fact that we don’t have all the answers and that there is some more there is some there’s some pragmatic use to gaining new ideas because we we there is a possibility of change and we have to change if we don’t want to continue to suffer. So like, you know, the world becomes our teacher. We we begin to see lessons all about ourselves. You know, there are teachings going on all the time if we’re open to that, if we see if there’s a necessity for it and a willingness to to recognize and a faith in the process of change itself, in in salutary change, that’s to say, of beneficial change. So, you know, when I talk about orientation, reprioritizing, and these these phrases, these words that I make use of, I think just getting to the place where we’re open to something other than the familiar, the the the habitual.
You know, it’s not that we are to take it on simply because it’s new or it’s foreign. By all means not to do that. But at least create an open mindedness, a receptivity. And moreover, there’s a and we aren’t beggars. You know, it’s like we don’t we we need to change but we aren’t basket cases.
We’re intelligent, healthy people. We’re trying to respond to some instinct toward wakefulness and wholeness, integration in our lives. You know, we have some sort of basic sanity, some sort of wisdom which is seeking greater wisdom. So, you know, to to simply to create that kind of context for listening, for our discussions. So if there’s some kind of idea which you find of use, which kind of makes sense, which resonates with yourself at a deeper level, then to take that idea and to make use of it.
Just don’t let it sit there but try to implement it in your daily life to bring about change. You know, if there’s things that don’t make sense or that don’t work for you, that you don’t find useful, by all means, You know, you don’t have to when you go into a super supermarket, you don’t have to buy everything that’s on the shelves. You can pick what pick out what you need, what is it what you what you’re hungry for, what what you need in the way of nutrition, and you can leave the rest. That’s what Buddhism is about. That’s why these teachings are here to help ourselves to help ourselves to be happy, to end our suffering.
Nothing more than that. There’s there’s no particular proselytizing notion behind them. There’s no missionary zeal. It’s simply to help ourselves live a little better quality in our life and be of a little greater use to ourselves and to others. That’s all.
To, you know, just simply to to work out some kind of different approaches to begin to to kind of act as a resource for that kind of information and as giving some practical methods to work with to take that information and to integrate it and thereby change for the better. And they’re recognizing and they’re kind of Validating ourselves is it yeah. We aren’t though we have problems, we aren’t the problem. Though we have dysfunctional patterns, we aren’t those patterns. Though we have suffering that’s not intrinsic to who we are, Buddhism has tremendous faith in ourselves, and we too must have tremendous faith in ourselves, both in ourselves and in the basic goodness of life itself.
And, you know, and and don’t sell ourselves short. Don’t don’t sell it for anything less than you know at some deep level that you can become. If you do, you’re always going to be miserable for the rest of your life. So in this process, the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha. This person that we can become, that we’re holding out for.
We have we have great hope for. And we but simply hope is not enough. We have to do something. And what the doing is the Dharma, the means, the the methods that we work with, the truth that we try to integrate into our minds and our lives. And we seek a this process occurs occurs within the social context of a spiritual community.
Those who assist us in implementing the Dharma in our lives, who validate our Buddhist story, who are co authors of the of this type of life we would like to lead and trying again and again to raise the level of our motivation. You know, is a vision, isn’t it? It’s it’s something that perhaps most of us are not used to at present. You know, the the the great the predominant ethos of our society is me first getting mine in general. Even we may I mean, that’s said explicitly quite often.
But even if when it’s not, it’s simply lip service to a Christian idea, but very little do we see it implemented in people’s lives in our society as a whole. So what we talk about here is something which is quite unusual. And we have to we have to find some reason to validate it in terms of the pleasure principle and pain principle in our lives. You know, pleasure and pain take priority over logic. We have to have a sense that our lives would be that much better if we could be that a more loving person, a more compassionate person.
Because love and compassion will have real world impacts on how we how what we how we lead our lives and the way that we lead our lives. You know, what we what we what type of work that we do and how we do it, the type of friends, the type of interest, the pursuits that we that we put our energy and time in. It makes a difference. And if it if you don’t see that it’s going to make a positive difference, though it may you make a lip service to the notion of love and compassion, though it might be indeed it might have some intellectual fascination for you. Though you might, as an abstract idea, have have some kind of positive regard for it, were to actually begin to express love and compassion in your everyday life would be another thing altogether because you haven’t found a place for it.
You haven’t created the context in which that can that part of ourselves can begin to find expression. The avenues of expression aren’t quite open because we haven’t validated this it’s not its necessity in our everyday life. It has to be you know, this notion of necessity is the mother of invention. There has to be something what we do we are only aware of reality to the to the degree that survival makes it that and that much and no more. To love and and to really to make that integral part of our life and compassion is to is to to lead another a life in a different order of being.
And it’s not going to happen of itself. We have to kind of challenge the current way of thinking about ourselves. And that requires some kind of determination, some kind of energy, and we have to see there has to be some really abiding reason deep within our hearts to make that effort, to actually do that for ourselves. So I guess what I’m saying when I when I that we have to work with these ideas. We have to play play with these ideas such as love and compassion.
Begin to see how they fit into our actual lived experience, you know, in our everyday life as we go along. You know, is what is our present mode is our general present mode of relating, is that satisfactory or not? Does it work for us? Is it is it fulfilling? Is it meaningful?
Is it what we would want for ourselves? In those instances when we do experience some kind of connectedness with others, a sense of well-being and a sense of communion with others, is that is that does that arise out of this quality this emotion we call love, this wishing of happiness for another person? Is it does it arise out of compassion? And if we begin to associate the good the good the good life with the qualities of loving compassion, then we are in a very reasonable and in a very conscious fashion through the expansion of our awareness creating that inner mental context, that ecology of mind where love and compassion will grow. We will be we will become loving and compassionate people.
It you know, it there’s no other way. Wishful thinking of itself is not enough though it’s we may have the best of intentions. We have to make a habit of being loving if we want to be loving people just as we have made it a habit of who we are now by our past actions, our ways of thinking and behaving. But, you know, why become a why we have to have good reason to form good habits and we have to supply those for ourselves in meaningful ways, in ways which we work for ourselves and see how a loving and compassionate approach to life might be that much help us to approach that much more what it is that we really want out of our life. So trying to raise the level of our motivation if we can, you know, just a little bit just a little bit to make that habit a little bit greater part of yourself.
But, you know, in our discussion tonight, you know, working with these ideas and these these these what we call an alternative approach to life. If maybe if something can just if I can recognize something, if something clicks, if if I can go away with a new idea or a new feeling can be generated, a new pattern, a new perhaps only a thought of inspiration to work towards that end. If if I can if anything can come out of this, if it can be a benefit to only one other person other than myself, what I would want. Know, may my being here, may my listening and talking together and making the effort to come here tonight and all that all that goes into the process. Can can we just help one other person besides myself to make that a kind of a habit?
If you can make the habit of one, then can you make the habit of two? Whether I have something to say or not is secondary. But from your side, in terms of your intention, in terms of your aspiration, the why, the purpose behind what we’re doing. And then you can you can be assured that that only something very positive, something very of value in helping you to find happiness and to stop suffering will come about because you’re practicing Dharma. No question.
That’s what the Dharma is basically about. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma. May I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge into awakening.
Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma. May I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech, and mind and present clouds of every type of offering, those action imagined. I disclose all my destructive acts accumulated since time without beginning and rejoice in the skillful actions of holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until cyclic existence has ended and turn the wheel of Dharma for living beings.
I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others to the great awakening. Would you like to stand up for a minute? Then we’ll then we’ll sit and meditate together. So we’ll begin with the nine round breathing meditation. And then, again, cultivating love and compassion, kind of making it a habit.
And one of the skills of meditation is being able to induce these these states to become skillful and finding some kind of key to to open these states of love and compassion, for example, within your own mind. I mean, it’s there, isn’t it? And in meditation, one of the skills is to be able to evoke it, to be able to using your imagination, your experience, using, you know, your history. You know, we all of what has happened to us becomes meaningful because we can make use of it in developing compassion. All of the pain we’ve we’ve experienced in the course of our life has some meaning because we can use it use it to to to develop compassion.
Therefore, it’s not it hasn’t gone to waste. It’s it’s gonna be a great purpose, great meaning for ourselves. So part of a great part of meditation, the skill of meditation, is not just development of concentration, but the skill and being able to evoke these tremendously productive states as it were on call and becoming and accustom our mind to them more and more such that they become they become our second nature. They become who we are. We become loving, compassionate people.
That’s that’s and everything becomes easier upon accustoming, familiarization. It’s perhaps it doesn’t sound very profound but or very abstract or mystical, but it is, I think. And we’ll practice the development of love and compassion and choosing someone that you’re not particularly close to but that you have some some sort of acquaintanceship with, some sort of a friend. But and but they haven’t have a even though you’re not close to them, they still have an appealing quality about them, something about them is very attractive to you though you’re not very close to them at present. Using that person as as the object for whom we’re going to develop love and compassion.
Then we’ll meditate on mindfulness of breathing. Then we’re going to meditate on what we talked about last week. Equanimity. This equanimity, you know, is slightly different than the equality of self and others that we work with in in equalizing and exchanging self and others. The equanimity as the foundation for the seven cause and effect instruction is an equanimity which is an even minded attitude divorced of attachment and hatred.
It’s one of the it’s classified within one of the four immeasurable. Many many of you are familiar with those. Immeasurable, compassion, love, joy, and the fourth is immeasurable equanimity. So I think what we can get out of working with the idea of equanimity and and one of the one of the insights that’s to be to be gained is to not to be captivated by the labels that we use in categorizing people. This is not divorced from wisdom, is it?
I mean, it’s a very it it can lead us into a very profound place, a very profound understanding as to the nature of reality in general. But here we’re specifically applying it to the nature of our relationships with others. That coming to gaining some appreciation at these labels that we apply. And here we’re just using the overall categorization of a friend, enemy, and stranger. That these are arbitrary and easily changeable.
That that but And so we don’t grasp to these labels as firmly, as tightly as possible. That there is there is an openness to a potential of alternative ways of relating. Therefore, will help to diminish our our attachment, our aversion, and our indifference. These these labels are meaningful, they’re useful, but we are not to be captivated. And moreover, we we carry a great deal of emotional baggage along with these labels.
That this whatever individual that we unknowingly, unthinkingly label as an enemy or a friend or even a stranger, that we are we are mixing in with this person the emotional associations of many of our past experiences in terms of people we didn’t like in the case of an enemy, people who hurt us, people who harmed us. We are beginning to filter our relationship through the eyes of these difficulties that we’ve experienced in the past. And the same holds true for the loved one. Same holds true for the person we feel totally unrelated to, the stranger. The person the the map is not the territory.
As long you know, we can’t value a person as a unique individual. You know, people there is no person who’s not an individual. There is no friend who’s not an individual. There’s no enemy who’s not an individual. And it’s not to say that these labels aren’t meaningful conventions that which are quite useful.
But we we will never be able to relate with a person in and of themselves who who they are for themselves. We will only be relating in to some degree or other with our idea about them, our projections upon them. This may be okay, but that person but no one can can sustain that label for long. No one can can be the hook upon which we’re going to be able to put that label forever. We will have expectations, we will have disappointments, we will have conflict through it all.
And moreover, we’ll never relate with a real flesh and blood person. This person is there in front of us for all seeing them for themselves with all their good points and all their not so good points, you know, for their uniqueness, for the idiosyncrasies, for who they really are and appreciate them for just that. And to value them for just who they are, not for what we can make out of them who we think they are to be. Nobody likes to be put in that position, even ourselves. Ourselves.
So working with these labels and beginning to recognize and appreciate and not being so captivated by them. So we’ll try that. Okay. So taking a firm comfortable posture. So sitting up straight.
The vertebrae on the back, one on top of the other like coins. Bringing the chin slightly in, a slight bowing of the neck. A comfortable but firm posture. So getting in touch with the body and noticing any tensions, any tightness. Bringing your awareness to those areas.
And consciously relaxing, softening, just letting go. Feeling the tension moving down and out of your body into the ground. Body becoming soft and comfortable. At ease, relaxed. And then beginning by blocking the left nostril, breathing in the brilliant white light, the blessings of the Buddha’s and Bodhisattvas, all that is of worth, value in universe through the right nostril.
So practicing the nine round breathing meditation. So it’s on this even minded ground of equanimity that we begin to develop the awakened heart. Possibly working through these seven causes and effects. First cause being recognizing all living beings as our mother. It’s not as if we’re going to simply remain indifferent.
We’re going to develop a very profound bond, a way of relating using the the relationship of a mother and a child as our model, a way of relating. Recognizing all living beings as our mother, beginning to recognize, appreciate their great kindness, developing a gratitude which wishes to repay that kindness, developing aspiring love, great compassion as the five causes which brings about the two results, an intense resolve, and finally, the awakened heart. So we’ve we’ve we’ve laid the ground of equanimity and we’ve, you know, began to talk about the first of these seven cause and effect instructions. The and recognizing all living beings as our mother. And, you know, as I mentioned when I first introduced these two meditative traditions for the development of an awakened heart, these equalizing exchanges of others in this particular tradition of of seven cause and effect instruction.
I think, you know, this is difficult. It’s a challenge. Perhaps the the other method of equalizing and exchanging yourself for others is more accessible to most of us, doesn’t require that we have any firm conviction in the notion of rebirth whereas this, it would seem very much does to use it in its full to its fullest potential. You know, I talked about rebirth in the previously in the past. We were talking about when we were talking about impermanence in terms of death talked about death and the death process and the fact that death is simply not the end of it all but there is something which goes, continues on.
So, you know, we’re going to develop this or even be open to this possibility of recognizing all living beings as a mother, then we’re going to have to have some feeling for the the notion of rebirth. And just to to very in a very brief fashion, go over some of the ideas that we use in establishing or at least giving some of the the rationale or some of the reasoning behind the what Buddhism makes use of in in in trying to establish the existence of past and future lives because that that’s what it comes down to. If we’re you know, if the notion is that we’ve had beginningless rebirths and that in itself is kind of difficult to get your mind around, I think. It’s like I remember the first time I heard that, I did say I don’t believe it. And someone said to me that said this to me last night, it’s not logical. But it is.
That’s that’s what That’s the unusual nature of the situation. If if we can find no first cause, if we can if we if we are forced to enter the position where we we say that every moment of mind must have a preceding moment of mind acting as its cause, Then there must be an antecedent mind. There must be a previous moment of mind preceding every present moment of mind. Then we have, you know, we have an infinite regression back. We can never point to any first moment and say this is when the continuum of my mind began.
Just as we cannot point to the first moment of the continuum of matter, the first atom. Then we are forced into the difficult but logically consistent position that the process is beginningless. I mean, It doesn’t quite fit into our notion of western logic but it is logical. It’s consistent. That we can’t point to a first cause.
If there’s always a cause preceding, then we we are forced in a position where we have to accept the notion of beginninglessness. And that’s the notion that we want to try to have gain a sense for, feeling for. Because what we want to arrive at is is is the sense that they’re over these, not just infinite, which is big enough, but beginningless course of rebirths that we’ve been taking. There is not one living being who has in fact literally not been our mother over the course of these infinite numbers of rebirths. There is not one place where we haven’t taken rebirth.
You know, the the universe is our home and everyone is our mother. The kind of sense that we’re trying to develop at some deep level of our mind. You know, I guess, you know, talking about rebirth, we have to, you know, just talk about it briefly. That there is some kind of logic to it. It’s not, you know, the question of establishing rebirth can be can be approached from many directions, many possibilities.
Know, some people call it reincarnation. I I I think I just choose to use the word rebirth. Think it’s there’s less it’s more straightforward, isn’t it? It’s not as there are any emotional issues kind of connected to it.