Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with the image of life as a train already rolling toward its destination — the wheels turning whether we sleep, laugh, or stare out the window — as a vivid prompt to stop drifting and examine what inner resources actually carry us through change when wealth, relationships, and the body cannot. He ties mindfulness of death to the “small deaths” of radical life upheaval, then introduces the sixth Dalai Lama’s image of writing in the mind as a measure of the quality we can expect to live. The second half develops bodhicitta through the seven cause-and-effect instruction, working through the first two steps — recognizing all beings as our mother and meditating on a mother’s kindness — with a psychologically searching reflection on infant helplessness and unconditional love, and the striking claim that a yogi’s bliss upon realizing emptiness draws on the same capacity for open-hearted merger first felt at a mother’s breast.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 HMA 1997 05 28.mp3
UUID: 25a6d77f-82be-4d75-8d92-edff9989095a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-05-28
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~5,991
Would you close that door, please? Thank you. So we have to begin as we normally do. In terms of adjusting our motivation, yeah, I I probably emphasize this ad nauseam. Buddhism is very much concerned with the inner quality of our mind as opposed to the outer form of our behavior in terms of the outcomes, the consequences of our actions.
It’s very much a product of our intentions, the motivation behind what we do which is going to determine the quality of the outcome whether what we do is going to help us to solve our problems, help us to find the happiness that we’re looking for in one way or another, or whether it’s simply going to be another complicating factor in our life, extend our problems, contribute in some way to the equation of our continuous suffering. So it’s it’s very necessary that we continually a question, call in call in to question, to practice an introspection, trying to determine the quality of the state of our mind. And that we’ve we get out of touch. We lose sight of our priorities in one way or another. Those ways of being those ideas and principles that we would in our final moments very much like to see our lives lived out of.
But for one reason or another whether out of simple negligence or laziness, forgetfulness, that we have to out of some sort of coercion, out of necessity, seeming necessity, we set aside or we decide to have in one way or another. So one way or another, we have to bring ourselves back. We have to keep pointing ourselves to in the direction that we want our lives to go, Keep taking stock. Now one of the ways I mean, there there are numerous ways that we can do this. But one of the most powerful means and one which the Buddha himself recommended among all means is the recollection of death.
And death is a a great reminder to to take a look at our lives and see where they’re going, to see whether we are using our lives as we might wish. No one can die our death and therefore no one can live our life. Are we living the type of life that we would want most for ourselves? In the face of death, in the reality of death which you know sitting here perhaps in a relatively comfortable, cozy, warm, comfortable manner as we are. That seems rather far off foreign.
It doesn’t it’s hard for its reality to to touch us in a in a very deep way. To have it make some kind of difference in our life and how we live our life. So therefore, it’s said by the by the Buddha that it is the mindfulness of death or the recollection of death which is above all the the most forceful, the most important of all the various mindfulness practices within within our Buddhist practice. In the the face of death is what I’m totally absorbed in, is what I’m going on about, is what my mind is continually caught up with, is it all that important? And it sort of makes us take stock, get our priorities straight.
The fact is that everyone in this room is going to die and everyone is definite. It’s inevitable. It’s not a very pleasant thought, is it? We we probably rather not talk about it, rather not confront it or deal with it. And maybe it’s just because of this very fact that most of us live live our lives in rather superficial and meaningless manners that we allow our lives to slip by.
Life creeps on at its petty pace no closer to life. Always drawing closer to death. So trying to You know, we we can’t quite live our lives as if we’re going to die tomorrow. We we can make realistic long range plans but not to become too attached to those long range plans and moreover to to try as best we can to live out the type of life we would want for ourselves in our everyday life, in each day as it comes. And then perhaps our life will very much take care of itself.
And we’ve talked about death and when we’re discussing the first of the three principal aspects of the path and developing a will to awaken. A will to go beyond our our self deception, our self ignorance, to work through a great deal of I Neurosis and to become healthy, sane, loving people. Everyone is going to die no matter who we might be, no matter how how powerful, no matter how strong, saintly, skillful, wealthy, whatever attribute. The fact is that everyone who has existed and will exist no matter what accomplishments they may have been able to achieve in the course of their life. At some point their life ended and we are no different.
What’s so special about each of ourselves is somehow the universe should single ourselves out treatment even though it perhaps at some level we we think or perhaps only hope that it will. There is you know, our life is it’s like as if we’re on a journey, on a train. We’ve gotten on at and we’ve departed. And even as we sit here now, you know, as you as you’re on your journey, all the various experiences that you go through, you know, having your meals and laughing and talking, staring out at the passing countryside as it goes by. Even as you sleep, whatever you’re doing whether it’s happy or unhappy or simply experienced in terms of boredom, the wheels keep turning.
The train unrelentingly moves towards its destination. And then when it gets to when it gets there we have no choice. We have to get off. And what type of journey has it been for you? What is the quality of life that you’ve experienced up to now?
Before the train gets to its destination we still have some choices to be made, what we might do with the remainder of our life. But we we simply don’t know when it is that we’re going to die. The time of our death is uncertain. Now we we we looked into this when we when we talked about mindfulness of death. Fetuses die in the womb.
Babies die at birth. They die in infancy. Children die. Young people die when they’re forties, when they’re young adults, when they’re not so young adults, when they’re in their twenties and thirties and forties. There’s there’s simply no time at which people don’t die.
You know, you may think, and I’ll exclude myself from this, that you’re young, that you’re healthy, and that there’s great assurance that you’re going to live for a long suspect that perhaps all the people who are going to the vast majority of the people who are going to die next week never thought up to that time that they were going to die any time soon, any time in the near future. It came unexpectedly. We simply don’t know. So, you know, and talking about death as we do, you know, it doesn’t necessarily have to be in terms of the big death at the end of this life. But we can we can think of, you know, death has been described as a radical change of lifestyle and we undergo these radical changes of lifestyle many times over the course of a life that we have these little deaths that we go through from time to time when in one way or another we whether by choice or involuntarily we are we are dragged by our heels into some sort of change or other.
You know, someone dies or someone leaves us, some great upheaval in our life. Some perhaps a great tragedy but also perhaps a great transformation in some way or another in our lives, in our circumstances, in the way in what we do or where we do it or how we do it. And these these small deaths and how what is it that prepares us to face change? The these radical changes of lifestyle. Are we does fate have to drag us along or we do?
Do we accept? Do we invite change into our life? What is it? What is the difference? What is the Why do some people seem to consciously seek out change in others.
I’m so very afraid of it. You know, if we can be assured, you know, what is it we can take through change? What seizes through the difficulty? You know, don’t know if you’ve experienced a death, most of us have, of someone close to you or perhaps going through a divorce, a breakup of some sort when in all your values and all that was important to you is somehow thrown into question your lifestyle, what what had meaning, what had value for you at some time in your life. And, you know, there are people who are close to you who in fact loved you.
But we all know, we’ve probably experienced though it is comforting how much value can they be. You know, though they hold your hand and there’s a great there’s a great deal of of comfort in that. But still they can’t see you through the change itself. It’s something that is very personal, very intimate to our our being. It’s only ourselves that can go through it.
And what is it that sees us through change? What is it that gives us the confidence that that somehow on the other side of change, change we’re going to land on our feet. We may not know all the details of the possible outcomes, you know, all the the particularities of what the what the newly evolving will eventually become. But we have some kind of confidence in our own selves that we’re going to land on our feet on the other side of change, that all will be well, perhaps better than it was before in some form or some manner or other. And it is our own mind, our own development of positive attitudes.
Our own system of values and beliefs which we can take a kind of refuge in, which can we have a sense can see us through the the the trials of change. This gentle art of revolution. You know, very much Buddhism is is essentially change. Working with change in a very systematic fashion. Systematic fashion, the change in terms of our own mind.
And this requires some kind of faith, faith in the in the methods, the process, and the outcomes of our change. Because it’s kind of a little death. We’re never quite going to be the same person that we once were. Our world is going to change in some kind of to a lesser or greater degree. We’re never going to be quite able to go home once again to the same world that we once knew and how we knew it.
So how can we foster the inner ecology of mind necessary for change to take place? How can we invite change? How can we willingly accept the small deaths with change entails whether it be those over the course of our life or the big death at the end of our life? The teachings in in terms of gaining a mindfulness of death, some experience of of death, lay out or outline the very fact that no one, even those who love us, cannot be of help at that moment of change. That that all our wealth and possessions, all the things we’ve gathered together cannot be of any assistance and even our own body.
That it is only what we’ve implanted in our mind. You know all that we the the sixth Dalai Lama said, all that has been written throughout time can be lost by this single working of a drop of water. But it’s what is written in your own mind is there for eternity. So, you know, what are we writing within our mind? What kind of dispositions?
What kind of latencies are we implanting in our mind? What types of attitudes are we developing? And this we can you know, this is a a barometer, a measure of the quality of life we can we can hope, we can reasonably expect to experience in the future. The types of attitudes and beliefs and values and ways of being that we’re fostering now, the types of habits that we’re forming now. We are very much our habits and our habit is our fate.
And what type of person are we habitually becoming? You know, we have to make a habit of the person we want to be, the type of world that we want to live in, what we want to experience. So if if what you are now is not good enough, is not what you want to be, then arousing the determination to to make a habit of being just that, of the person that you want to be, to be experiencing that which you want to follow. We don’t have all that much time. There’s a certain urgency about it all.
So in a it’s kind of I guess a sobering thought, kind of jilting ourselves back to a kind of reality out of the usual fantasy most of ourselves live in. So we don’t waste this opportunity to create, to reinvent ourselves, to be that person, and to create that type of habit, to be that kind of to exist in that kind of world. So in this process, the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha. This is the person we would have ourselves be and beginning to define that self that for ourselves. And implementing the methods, the actual techniques of creating the the working habit, the operational means of being that person.
And this process occurs within the social context of a spiritual community. You know, those who who contribute to who validate this this new story that we’re trying to write for ourselves in some way, our co authors of what we might call a Buddhist story that we’re trying to star in in some way or another. In order to change ourselves, we have to change. We can do this. And we try to do it in terms of our motivation, trying to continually expand our vision of what the good life is about and how it’s to be lived beyond our narrow present narrow conception such that we seek to include an ever widening circle of others in terms of this Buddhist story, in terms of what the good life is about.
And they’re trying to be that much of a better person that simply through who we are as a person has some kind of effect on the world about us, you know, if only a limited and only if only, you know, for a a limited number of people in a limited way. But can they’re trying to become that Buddha such that we can be all things to all people in all ways to be able to help an unlimited number of people in an unlimited number of ways in an unlimited amount of time. And that’s kind of the goal, kind of the the orientation. So, you know, what we talk about tonight, you know, what we the the thoughts, the new ideas, You know, trying to maybe take them and try to put them in some kind of a practice to make them some sort of a habit if they if they if you find them worthwhile, if they if they resonate with you in some way. Not just to leave them, not just to go back and and remain the same person, but to try to use them as a catalyst for change.
So in this process, inner focus of our life becomes Buddha which we’re seeking seeking to implement, to to actualize, to give some sort of expression, real expression by means of the Dharma within the social context of spiritual community. And again and again and again, trying to expand the scope of our concern to include an ever widening circle of others. And this becomes a style of life. This is the way the Buddhist conception of a worthwhile way of life. 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. Through 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 the Buddha for the sake of all living beings.
Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech, and mind. I present clouds of every type of offering, those actual and 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 moment then we’ll meditate again? So if we can use that in terms of cultivating love and compassion again, you know, someone that a stranger, someone we feel rather perhaps indifference toward, neutral feeling, And just trying our best we can to arouse these feelings to even if only in a limited even if only the beginning of the feeling. That’s now we have to begin somewhere. That’s where we begin, where we’re at. We can’t it doesn’t it’s it’s of no use to ourselves to pretend otherwise.
So, you know, even though we may go further in the meditation, we may go through these three levels of compassion and love in terms of first developing a wish and then a will and then finally some kind of resolve, maybe it’s necessary to work with that initial step. You know, to where you can have and work with your imagination and, you work with your your actual lived history and then your experience that you’ve gone through and make use of all your your innate wisdom and your your resources to be able to skillfully evoke these feelings such that we can make a habit of that such that they become accessible easier and more easily. And they become manifest that much easier and they become that much stronger and they begin to permeate other areas of our lives and thinking and behavior. And they become very much a part of ourselves. They become part of our own nature.
They become our habit and therefore our fate. And we develop into a loving and compassionate people who are concerned and aware of what’s going on about them and concerned about the and aware of the suffering and the happiness of others and that there’s change. It it has to be something more than than oil floating on water. We have to somehow find the key whereby we we mix the method with the mind. There has to be some kind of integration.
It has to organically express itself out of ourselves rather than trying to impose some kind of prescriptive way of being of being upon ourselves, trying to arouse some feelings that are already there and they will we will find a way of being in the world naturally. Something very positive we can be feel assured of will evolve out of that. We don’t have to adjust ourselves in any particular way. So we’ll begin with the nine round breathing meditation and then we’ll do the cultivate loving loving compassion and then mindfulness of breathing. And I thought we you know, last week we talked about recognizing all mother all living beings as our mothers, all mother sentient beings.
And this required some, I guess, a great deal of confidence and conviction in the notion of past and future lives. And I thought one exercise which many people find quite useful is is simply to regress. Regress, don’t mean in their in your mentality, but to progress backwardly in terms of trying to gain a sense of the continuity of mind, that the mind is you know, we have a sense that there is discrete moments of mind. We probably don’t even have that sense. We have a sense that that the mind is presents itself as a blank slate.
We aren’t aware of that the present mind that I have as I speak to you now is very much dependent upon a previous moment of mind and all the all the values and beliefs and all the conditioning factors which produce that mind. And that mind in turn arose in dependence upon mind moment previous to that and all the values and beliefs and all the conditioning factors which produce that state of mind. So there’s a we have to think of it, the mind rather than a solid thing, as as a as a flux, a continuing as a continuum. Just like a candle flame. You know, if you look at a steady candle flame, the flame appears to be a solid single unit.
But if you but in fact, over time, the flame burns down. And if we were to examine what appears to be a solid single unit, we would come to understand that it is actually a a flux of momentary change. That one moment the flame arises, the heat of the flame ignites vaporizes the wax, ignites it. That moment a flame ceases to exist and another flame comes into existence to take its place. You know, just a constantly changing continuum, arising, disintegrating, arising, abiding, disintegrating.
And the candle flame burns down slowly. It’s never the same from moment to moment. One moment giving rise to the next moment, giving rise to the next moment, a constant similarity of type, a homogenous series of similar types giving the appearance of a solid discrete unit, but in fact a constantly changing continuum. Our mind is just like that. And we we’re trying to get the notion of a sense of this feeling of continuum that the present mind that we have at this moment is in relation only exists in relationship to a causal continuum extending back and back and back and back and back and gaining a feeling for that, a sense of that so that we can come down to the very moment of conception.
And that moment of mind, it also arise independent arose in dependence upon a previous moment of mind and all the values and beliefs, the conditioning factors latent within that mind. And that moment of mind and back and back and back. That the moment that beliefs that a mind constituted of beliefs, values, latencies, predispositions, all that that quality of knowing, that quality of clarity, all that makes all that goes to making up a mind does not arise from physical matter, but necessarily arises from a previous similar type, a type similar type to itself. A homogenous causal series going back without end, without beginning, and tracing it back to get us to get us to develop a feeling, a sense of this infinite regression in mind, this causal continuum mind stretching inwardly back and back. So maybe we can work with that just to gain a sense, the feeling of that.
So if you take a comfortable, firm posture, set body back. So we’re looking at the the second of Three Principal Aspects of the Path, the awakened heart, trying to open our hearts as best we can, trying to develop an aspiration to make ourselves better people so that we can be of greater use both to ourselves and to others. And there are two meditative traditions by means of which we bring about this opening of our hearts. The first we worked through, that was the method of equalizing and exchanging ourselves with others. In the present present meditative tradition that we’re looking at is the seven cause and effect instruction.
And as I mentioned, perhaps the the first of these two methods, the equalizing exchange itself for others, is more is probably most accessible to for us as Westerners. It doesn’t require a a strong conviction in the in the notion of rebirth, whereas the seven cause and effect instruction does since as we talked about last week, it’s necessary that we recognize all living beings as our mother. Now this is the model of the way of relating that we’re seeking to establish with all living beings, that the archetypal relationship of a mother and child, mother love. So the first of the the seven cause and effect instructions was was that of recognizing all living beings as our mother. So once we’ve done that then we have to to proceed from there.
And they’re gaining a sense that we have a a very intimate relationship over these numberless lives with all living beings, that we aren’t in fact unrelated as we as it we may feel it to be, as it we as we presently think it be the case. But we want to that we have this very intimate connection over the course of infinite beginningless lives with every living being, whosoever that we meet. And it’s all the people that you’ve met over the course of the day, the people sitting in this room, and the people that you’re going to meet tomorrow, each and every one of them has been a central to your has been central to your life in some lifetime. And I can can can you begin to open your mind to that? We go on to develop an appreciation for their great kindness.
This is the second of the seven cause and effect instructions, that of remembering our mother’s kindness. Not only have we established the nature of the relationship, that of mother and child, but also we are going to begin to appreciate the the quality of that relationship. You know, it’s not sufficient that we that we merely feel a sense of relatedness to all sentient beings. Even though even a relatedness as profound as that of a mother and child. You know, we have to reestablish and nourish the existential meaning of this deep the of these deep emotional associations which this sense of relationship holds for us, that it held for us at one time.
And each of us is a human being and and thus each of us possesses a human life. And human care is literally vital to that life. You know, if we didn’t have human care at some point over the course of this life, at the beginning of this life, we would not be alive now, that we had that. You know, mere mechanical or or hygienic care is not enough to sustain life either physically or or psychologically. You know, when human beings when when when human attention or warmth or care is deficient or absent, we perish.
Absent, we perish. The more quickly and surely, the more vulnerable we are. And that death in such a such context is first and foremost an existential death, a dying away of the will to live. And that paves the way for physical death. You know, and though it it it’s difficult for us to even imagine, let alone, you know, remember what it must have been like, What what what what could be more vulnerable?
What could be more defenseless than in in need of such care than each of us actually was at some point in our life when when we ourselves, each of ourselves was a newborn baby. You know, it’s really it’s almost sitting here as as the adults we are. It’s almost unimaginable to be able to emotionally place ourselves in that place. A place that in fact each of us was was at at the beginning of our life. That each of us was, you know, like this baby.
And maybe we should hold it up. Each of us was sitting, lying in a crib like that, completely defenseless, completely in need of care, of attention, of mother, of father, of all that it takes to sustain life. Each of us was like that. It’s hard to actually to actually have it penetrate to some it’s almost like it’s a an alien from another planet, that that kind of concept. It feels so unrelated to ourselves.
But we were there at one time, all of us, everyone in this room because we are human beings and this is part of the human cycle of life. When we first come into the world, we are utterly dependent. Without food, physical care, and emotional sustenance, we cannot grow. Emotional connection is such an important feature of our survival that babies taken to care but given no love and personal attention cannot sustain life. They give up and die.
Whoever cares for us first and most consistently, usually our mother, becomes our psychological umbilical cord. We depend upon her for our very existence. We are merged with her and have no sense of where we begin or where she ends. What she gives us emotionally forms the very essence of our personality. Her love and attention is an essential food that builds us and builds our personality.
It is as important as the physical nurture we receive to develop our bodies. She fills up our world and our first experiences, pleasurable and painful, take place in an emotional context which she has created. We are enraptured by her, fascinated by and very much in need of her. And then when when our mother and we don’t remember this, but maybe we can open our hearts to the feelings which we can associate with the this possibility. You know, when our mother tenderly took us into her arms and held us lovingly at her breast and we felt her warmth, you know, flowing into ourselves, into our very being.
There is probably no greater bliss for ourselves as ordinary human beings than that moment of psychological merger with our mother. Psychological merger with our mother. You know, we and there’s there’s a point when the a yogi, an advanced meditator, when they have a profound realization of emptiness, when they have a direct realization of emptiness, their mind is merged with a greater reality, the the emptiness of all phenomena in the universe. And they experience an even greater bliss. But if they have never if they had not reopened their heart to the joy that they once felt when their mother held them to her, They could not have opened themselves to to this indescribable bliss of an even greater merger, a merger with all of reality.
So this is why this is why the the mother is taken as the epitome of the most beloved being. You know, the the relationship of mother and child is like a paradigm. It’s the it’s the model that we’re making use of. The mother mother love, the archetype of a way of relating with all beings. You know, how many of us how many of us have ever felt thoroughly loved?
Know, loved not for what we not for what we could offer or what we withheld, but what we but not for what we do or not for what we don’t do, but felt a love which which can never be earned, for which we can never make ourselves worthy, for for just why can’t we make ourselves worthy? Because of the very fact that we are worthy by the fact of our existence. The simple fact that we exist make us worthy of that love. It’s not something that we need to earn in order to receive. We already are worthy.
We already are deserving if only for the very reason that we exist. That is the how many of us have ever felt unconditioned love? You know, that is to say for all of ourselves. Everyone should be able to look back in their memory and be sure they had a mother who loved him, all of him. This is written by a woman, by the way.
To be sure he had a mother who loved him, all of him, even his piss and shit. He should be sure his mother loved him just for being himself, not for what he could do. Otherwise, he feels he has no right to exist. He feels that he should never have been born. No matter what happens to this person in life, no matter how much he gets hurt, he can always look back to this and feel that he is lovable.
He can love himself and he cannot be broken. If he can’t fall back on this, he can be broken. You can only be broken if you’re already in pieces. You know, a a baby’s vulnerability and helpless you know, a baby is vulnerable. It’s helpless.
And and in its need has it has no way of earning its mother’s love. And it has nothing that it can knowingly give in return for all the attention, all the protection, all the care which is given to it. It’s totally oblivious to the physical and mental hardships and sacrifices that it that it brings to its mother who bore it and all that it takes to maintain its existence, its life. You know, how is it that that that we come to take for granted that somehow that we were so deserving about all of this? You know, that the pain and all of the difficulties that that we bring our mother from the very moment subsequent to our to our conception are somehow our due.
Why is that the case that we think it’s our due for some reason or another. You know, just sort of shortly after our after fertilization, you know, we we are when we’re we’re nothing more than a clump of cells. Nothing more than that. Yet amazingly, still we become the object of our our mother’s love, our mother’s concern, our mother’s attention. You know, how can a mere lump of cells command the right to bring to anybody a health threatening possibilities and discomfort which which pregnancy entails?
You know, all the morning sickness, the pains of labor, and the the real possibilities of of death in the course of birth. You know, but somehow we we received all of that undeservedly so. We weren’t we can’t we didn’t earn that right. We didn’t earn we went we didn’t earn the ourselves being worthy of that attention, that sacrifice, and all that the hardships that our development entailed for our mother. And they’re completely helpless and in need we come naked into the world.
You know, could we could we rationally or or maybe even irrationally expect or even imagine that any human being only moments after having given birth to ourselves, you know, that any human being after having endured the long hours of labor and the pain, exhausted, weak, would take us tenderly into arms. You know, forgetting totally everything that had just gone before. Forgetting totally themselves and the pain, you know, that they would take this