Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 40-minute commentary, Ven Jampa Gendun extracts a full teaching from a single opening line of Je Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path: “Homage to the foremost holy lamas.” He shows how those four words encode the three levels of practitioner — limited, middling, and vast scope — illustrating each through accessible analogies: the student who drops out for immediate income versus one who endures university for long-term gain; a quoted passage on what it takes to finally “become a physicist.” He then traces the etymology of “lama” (literally “none higher”; also “mother of all beings”) and maps the three dimensions along which a practitioner’s perspective expands: time horizon, depth of insight into the causes of suffering, and breadth of responsibility toward others.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 HMA 1996 06 12.mp3
UUID: ea422da7-dec1-45a1-9dab-297014ddc65d
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-06-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 40.4 minutes
Words: ~5,327
Except to be in that sense, in that state of having you’ve worked hard, you’ve accomplished your task, nothing more needs to be done. Just rest in that state of being. So we’re going to meditate mindfulness of breathing. And if it’s helpful using the techniques of counting and noting. But we also meditate on, you know, we’re exploring other possible versions of ourselves.
We’ve been talking about Buddha nature. There’s one way that we can begin to look at that and perhaps using our imagination begin to experience other possibilities about ourselves that might normally be consciously excluded from our self identity. So, beginning to work with other possible characteristics and qualities ourselves. So, it’s a matter of using your imagination. Imagination is not something which should be the domain of artists or children.
The world begins with imagination. And who we want to begin, who we want to be begins with imagination. So working with that, you know, actually, you know, taking it, being sincere about it, even serious, but not solemn, just serious. So, anyway, I’ll lead you through that meditation. Okay, just a word about posture perhaps.
I’ll just quickly You know, we’ve talked about the back, keeping the back straight like coins stacked up one upon the other, a column of coins. Bringing the chin slightly in, bowing the neck, a little bit pressure on the Adam’s apple. The tongue, the tip of the tongue placed where the hard palate meets the top teeth. Eyes closed.
The teeth resting one upon the other, not clenched nor open. In the Tibetan tradition, in terms of the legs, the feet, you know, if you’re sitting on the floor in a cross legged position, you know, whatever works for you that’s comfortable. You can sit in what is called the vajra position, where both legs are crossed over one or the other. But in the Tibetan tradition, the right leg is placed over the left. Another more comfortable perhaps posture would be simply the half lotus or the half vajra, where the left foot is placed under the right thigh, And the right foot is placed upon the left thigh.
Okay? So, right over the left. And the hands. But also, you know, by all means, if you just want to cross your legs. When you’re watching television or something at home, you can practice sitting on the floor, beginning to open your pelvis, and your knees will eventually begin to come down.
Most of our knees perhaps stick up straight up in the air. It’s not the usual posture for ourselves in the west. So you can practice it other times. But, you know, it’s something useful to work towards. But by all means, you know, if it’s useful, if it’s comfortable sitting in a cross legged posture, sitting that way.
If you’re sitting in a chair, that’s perfectly acceptable also. But perhaps place your feet flat on the floor without crossing your legs, you won’t be restricting the blood flow. So, flat on the floor. And again, in Tibetan tradition, the hands. The hands are the right is placed upon the left.
In some other traditions, the left upon the right. In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, right is placed upon the left. The thumbs are touching. This is said to facilitate the flow of the winds among the psychic channels for clairvoyance. The hands are held free, fingers below the navel, such that the thumbs are about the level of the navel.
So, you can just almost rest it in your lap. Again, I should point out I don’t sit that way because I know if you noticed. I once noticed that everybody began to copy the way I was sitting and I didn’t bring it up, but I should have. I have a problem with my hand, so I can’t sit like that for very long. I can’t twist my arm.
So I just put my right hand on my left my right knee, and I just place my left hand on my lap. That’s just my peculiarity. Please don’t copy that. But again, you want to just place your hands on your knees in some comfortable manner. But the idea of posture is there’s a physical basis or a physiological basis which is useful in that the wind energies coursing through the body upon which the mind rides are able to move more freely if the posture is correct.
And therefore we develop a clarity and stability of mind if the posture, depending upon that posture. But also there’s the psychology of the posture in that the attitude that our posture is a statement of, you know, a purposive statement, a statement about a sense of groundedness, a sense of taking control, a sense of being present. You know, all of these qualities are perhaps abstract ideas, they’re real even though they might be somewhat intangible. We might not come across them every day of our life, but they still have an influence on the quality of our lives. You know, bringing some sense of purposiveness, some sense of wholeness to this process, that you’re wholly attending to what you’re doing, wholly being there rather than fragmented, rather than being divided within yourself and part of yourself being somewhere else.
Bringing the totality of your being to a single experience, focusing upon that, of training in that way of being in the world. So this can begin with your body. So some sense of stability and some sense of purpose in this, of groundedness, of being present. Using techniques of counting and noting. I’m sorry.
Maybe we won’t do that, the other meditation. We’ll just do mindfulness and breathing. Is that okay? Okay, so taking a purposeful comfortable posture. And we’re going to work with, again, an individual that you love a great deal, you’re close to, but someone that you haven’t used before.
Maybe, you know, you’re beginning to work outside of your immediate family or, you know, your immediate circle of those who you’re closest to. You need to work towards somebody that you’re not quite as close to, but someone that you do care about a great deal. We’re going to use that individual as an object for us to develop love and compassion as a motivation for our meditation. So first, getting in touch with the body. And then note any tightnesses, any tensions in the body.
Je Tsongkhapa’s very short text called The Three Principal Aspects of the Path. Je Tsongkhapa was a fourteenth century Tibetan Yogi scholar who examined all of the various traditions up to his time that were extant in Tibet and commented on them and tried to find the essence of his various practices to the extent where he actually founded a tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, which is called the Gelug sect. Gelug means virtuous. Lu means tradition, the virtuous tradition. Sometimes it’s referred to as the reformed Kadampa tradition.
Kadampa was a tradition of Buddhism which entered into Tibet through the great master, the Indian master Atisha. And so, you know, this has come down to ourselves in an unbroken lineage. Now maybe I was going to mention the significance of that in terms of what we’re looking at in the text. The very first line where he talks about and his offering of praise, Homage to the foremost holy lamas. Sometimes it says all.
So, homage to all all the foremost holy lamas. It’s a very short text, it actually presents the entirety of the path. It has three overall divisions. There’s the prologue, the main body of the text, and then the epilogue. So in terms of the prologue, it has the preliminary of offering praise, which we’ve been looking at, the very first line.
And then subsequent to that, after that, there is a pledge to compose the work. I will explain as well as I can. And then there is an encouragement to the reader, to the practitioner to study it well, to practice it well. So, you know, we’re looking at the first of these three, the preliminary of offering praise. You know, generally, in many of the traditional texts, praise is offered or homage is offered.
This has, in a general significance, to create, to accumulate creative potential, some kind of positive force, some kind of skillful action to ensure that there’s no obstacles to the completion of writing the text. In terms of our ability to create positive actions, skillful actions, the most significant basis You know, we can create actions toward different types of objects. We can create them toward skillful objects, unskillful objects, and neutral objects. The most skillful object that we can create an action with in relationship to is the spiritual master. And there are other objects which are tremendously significant in our lives, like our parents, for example, those who have been extremely kind to us.
But it’s said traditionally that amongst all these skillful objects is that of the spiritual master. So, one, to praise or to either verbally or mentally, to develop a sense of reverence, respect is a tremendously skillful action. And it’s done here as a means to to create the the momentum to be able to finish the text without any interruptions, without any obstacles. So homage to the foremost holy lamas. I don’t know if your text says all.
Does it say ‘all’? No? Actually, can be awe, but anyway, it’s definitely plural. And the significance of lamas, paying homage not just to one’s own immediate spiritual master, lama or guru, but to our lama’s lama, or our teacher’s teacher, his or her teacher’s teacher. Going back in an unbroken lineage, continuity, all the way back to historical Śākyamūni Buddha himself, or even probably we can say back to the primordial Buddha.
The idea of lineage. And this is what this painting above the Buddha is meant to represent. This idea of you know, a continuum of a particular worldview, which has been, you know, by that I mean a system of beliefs and values, represented by that lineage, which has been passed down, you know, in unbroken continuity. You know, is sometimes referred to as a disciplinary matrix. The Buddha developed a model of the universe and a way of being in the world.
And he sought to communicate this to others so that they could integrate this into themselves, into their mind, and they became part of this lineage. There’s a community of commitment to a particular worldview, a way of being in this world, a way of approaching it with certain values and certain beliefs, what is meaningful, and how more skillfully to relate with the world and to be in the world. All of these values and beliefs and ideas and assumptions and premises, this whole, what you might call, paradigm is being transmitted from teacher to disciple, from disciple to disciple, from teacher to disciple, down to ourselves. Know, it wasn’t you know, what we’re discussing, these ideas, this way of being, and this view of the world. It wasn’t invented in Southern California, you know, fifteen years ago, which is going to be supplemented by another, you know, technique, another new age method of technique of mental development.
You know, it’s been used, it’s been practiced, it’s been integrated and experienced by, you know, actual historical individuals and it has transformed them in such a way that their life was no longer problematic, that they were of greater use to themselves and to the world. The idea of the continuity of worldview, of a continuum of worldview, not anything particular to Buddhism or religious tradition. It’s something which is quite common in terms of For example, you know, is is a tradition of physics, a tradition of biology. You try to enter into the world of a physicist, the way they look at things, the way they think about things, like a quantum physicist. You begin to learn their language, how they conceive of the world and how the world operates.
And it takes a long time to become accustomed to something needs to click. Maybe I’ll read you a quote in this context. Let us say that a group of students decide, perhaps in their second year of college, that they want to become physicists. They take courses in physics. The experience of learning in this way is familiar to many of us.
First you hear new terms that you do not understand, but you leave your mind open and work with them. You perform the activities, the examples that exemplify the view and methods of discipline. You do a lot of problems and still have the uncomfortable feeling that I don’t understand what this is, what this is, but I’m going to do it anyway. One day suddenly you feel, Ah, now I understand what it’s all about. At that point you can say, I have become a physicist.
So, way, this is the same way that one becomes a biologist or a medical student or an astronomer or a psychologist. They go through the same sort of process. You know, maybe it takes and here it says in this example, maybe it takes ten years. Maybe it takes ten lifetimes. And they’ll find out what begin to comprehend, to be able to have that about what perhaps the Buddhist worldview might be.
So actively participating in the worldview which is being handed down to ourselves, being communicated to ourselves, a model of the world, the universe, and how to be in it. We’re beginning to integrate that model. We’re altering our world view. We each have our world view. I simply mean by that is this system of beliefs and values that we have, which we might not be terribly conscious of, or we might not be able to articulate.
Nevertheless, our life is lived out in the context of that world view, for better or worse. So we’re trying to develop, to integrate a more skillful world view such that our relationship with the world and how we be in the world is no longer problematic. We have a choice in terms of these beliefs and values. They can be orientated toward cyclic existence and neurosis, or they can be orientated toward mental health and awakening. Those are the possibilities which are these alternatives that are open to ourselves.
So the Buddhist world view, these systems of beliefs and values are orientated toward mental health, are ultimately toward awakening. And such that to the degree that we begin to integrate them and express them and be them, then our life is going to be that much less problematic. We’re going to suffer less. We’re going to experience some kind of fulfillment as a human being as far as Buddhist worldview is concerned. Homage to the foremost holy lamas.
You know, also this line, you know, it’s interesting. Sometimes it’s, you know, that all of Buddha taught, there’s one hundred and eight volumes of his teachings that he gave over a forty five year period, forty five year period. And he said they can be condensed down to the word Aum. And then, you know, sometimes you hear Lama, they begin to give a commentary on the syllable om. You could go for days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months and months.
Anyway, you know, homage to the foremost holy lama and what all of this means. It’s interesting what so few words, the import, the significance that such a few words can have, can possess. Homage to all the foremost holy lamas can also be interpreted as in terms of the three perspectives. Sometimes this is termed the three scopes, the three capacities of being: limited, sometimes called small, middling, and great or vast.
So limited, middling, and vast perspectives. Capacities, our scopes of different types of individuals, rough categorizations. You know, with individuals’ abilities to conceive of their goal in terms of responsibility and time, the breadth of our perspective which we can view with. You know, some people have a very you know, they have a great need for immediate goal gratification. They have to have it right now.
You know, this is one mark of what we say as a mature person, someone who can forego immediate goal gratification. You know, some high school students, maybe they want a car, want a flat, and they drop out of school, and maybe they were able to get a job. Know, it should be very difficult these days, but maybe they can get a job. And they can more or less get what they want. They immediately gratify what their wants, their desires.
They’re not able to see that if they were to continue through matric or if they were continuing on past having some kind of training, they were going to university, that they’re in the long term, in a broader perspective, that they would that their earning power would that much increased, that they would probably be able to find a more interesting, more stimulating types of work, more more that the quality of their life would generally be improved if they were willing to forgo immediate goal gratification and to put that off and to picture their life, to see their life in a broader perspective, in a bigger picture. They can’t quite they don’t have the we always say the maturity to be able to do that. And the same applies here in terms of these three levels of perspective, in terms of responsibility, in terms of time. You know, anyone who’s most okay, immediately, even in the limited, most narrow sense anyone who’s limited in scope, as I’ve said, necessarily must take responsibility for themselves, for their own well-being. This is where it begins, initially, at least, for sure.
It’s not where it’s going to end, but that’s where it necessarily begins, with beginning to take responsible concern for ourselves. No one can do the work for us, though we have a sense that we would like for someone, that we would keep waiting for someone, but the reality of the situation is that we have to begin to actively take responsibility. If the way things are aren’t what you might want them to be, then you’re the one who’s going to have to begin to change it for yourself. That we can begin to derive our own values, to autonomously set our own goals for ourselves. We don’t need other people to set our goals for us.
We don’t need to have our goals imposed upon ourselves or our values imposed upon ourselves. So, in terms of time, it’s necessary to set goals for different levels of time. You know, immediate, intermediate, and long term goals. And begin to integrate them. You know, for example, if I think, you know, this might be useful in thinking this way, especially in terms of our practice.
You know, the theme sometimes goal seems something far fetched and abstract and, you know, far off in the distance and rather vague and not much relevance to ourselves. If you wanted to be, for example, a doctor, you would necessarily have to study physics and math. You might have no interest in math and physics at all. As matter of fact, you might find them quite difficult. If you were to look at physics and math in themselves, in isolation, from any further goals, you’d probably never study them, you’d probably never take them up, and therefore you’d never persevere and gain the necessary knowledge that you need which would go on to help you to develop more interesting values, you know, more interest in occupation, and what those, you know, help you to improve the quality of your life.
You would simply never study math and physics by themselves in isolation from any, you know, you only saw them in themselves. But once they are seen as like a necessary prerequisite or a stepping stone to something further which you do want, then you’re willing to put up with them. You’re willing to persevere and work through them. So, you know, beginning to think of our practice in long term goals and integrate them with immediately achievable goals, which is seen as a stepping stone. You know, we can redo So, you know, can set goals for all of the different concentric spheres of one’s responsibility.
One can set goals for oneself. One can set goals to achieve in relation to one’s close, immediate loved ones, for one’s extended family, for one’s various groups, for one’s city, country, state, nation, province, for one’s continent, for one’s species, for the world of living things and for the universe as a whole. Not only can one set goals at all of these levels, but setting them at all levels greatly reinforces the power of the goal, the goals. Every level of the goal becomes more workable if integrated with other levels. One can also set goals at all levels of time.
In fact, one needs to set goals for all levels of time. One needs to plan at least what one will accomplish today, this week, this month, this year, and so on, in ten years. So you set these goals for all these times and at all these levels and integrate them makes immediate goals more easily achievable. You know, we’re going to work with, persevere, with practices, with studies, which in isolation might not hold any value to ourselves, but which are seen as a prerequisite indispensable step towards something that, in fact, we might want for ourselves. Not in in themselves but means to goals that we’re seeking to achieve.
So, it’s possible to set goals at least in these two dimensions, in terms of time and responsibility. So in his homage, homage to the foremost holy lama, the word ‘foremost’ denotes a person of limited perspective or small scope, small capacity. This person has been convinced of the invariable relationship between cause and effect, that somehow my present actions, in terms of their skillfulness or unskillfulness, are going to bring about, have some kind of consequence. They’re either going to bring about according suffering or happiness, depending upon whether they’re skillful or unskillful in the future. So, you know, they’re no longer controlled by their desire for immediate goal gratification.
They’re gaining some kind of perspective on their life. There’s some kind of purpose of quality in the way that they view things. they are willing to forego unskillful actions, understanding that they are going to have negative consequences in the future. They begin to broaden their perspective and the ramifications of what they’re doing, what consequences, what results they’re going to experience due to these actions. On the other hand, they’re willing to involve themselves in some skillful actions even though they might be hesitant at present, even though they might not see the advantage at present, even though there might not be any advantage at present.
Seeing that it’s going to be a skillful way of gaining some type of happiness, some long term goal for themselves as a consequence. You know, we all do this in some way or another. When people save up in superannuation, for example, or they save up for a rainy day, they’re foregoing perhaps spending that money and some pleasure that they could have immediately. Why? Because they are willing to forego that present pleasure for future possibilities, for future pleasures, and some greater goal perhaps.
And so, you know, this is the same idea only extended in terms of length of time. That being of limited perspective is willing to forego certain pleasures in order to experience greater pleasures in the future. He’s willing to forego certain negative actions in order to avoid greater suffering in the future. Seeing the relationship between their actions and the results that they’re going to experience. Here, it’s just a matter of that rather than money, it’s a currency of cause and effect, a currency of karma.
So, this is what So, you know, beginning to gain some kind of perspective, beginning to view what we’re doing with a greater vision of where it’s taking us, some kind of direction in our life. Maybe, you know, we’re going to discuss the logic behind rebirth in the future. Maybe being able to extend that perspective to even future states of existence in terms of future lives. You know, maybe, know, we can’t it’s difficult for us, It is a mark of maturity, we would say, to be able to forgo, to be able to go to, you know, like going to university might not be all that pleasurable. You might have to forgo a lot of material advantages.
Might have to be poor for a great deal of time. You might have to go through a great deal of difficulty. But you’re willing to persevere in that because you have a perspective of what greater advantage is, the quality of life that you might be able to enjoy further down the line somewhere. So, this is the notion of being able to see your actions in a broader perspective. And you have a capacity to see it with a greater scope of awareness.
Likewise, this individual, they’re beginning to have the notion of not only this life, but in fact lifetimes. And the quality of experiences that they want to undergo in the future, they’re beginning to concern themselves with now. And this begins to determine the quality of their actions at present, at the very present moment. Foremost, holy. This denotes a person of middling capacity or middling scope.
This person sees the actual nature of our situation, you know, with cyclic existence, saṃsāra. That is to say, this problematic approach to life in general that we’re all caught up with in, this ignorance driven existence, And begins to say, you know, anything which is the outcome of such a way of existing, that there’s within cyclic existence there’s nothing worth having, nothing worth becoming, nothing worth being. Therefore, they want to opt out of the whole system altogether. This becomes their perspective. This involves a deeper discrimination as to the nature of happiness and the nature of suffering.
Their perspective, ability to see into the actual nature of their situation is much more deeper than a person of lesser capacity, or the being of limited capacity or perspective. But still, their perspective and the goals that they’re setting themselves are seen solely in terms of themselves alone, regardless of others. This brings us to the perspective of the being which is denoted by the word lama. This is to say that a being of vast perspective or great scope. Such a person has not only seen the nature of the situation that we’re in, of ego governed existence, ignorance driven existence, but sees it also not only in their own terms but also in terms of others.
Everyone is just like them, just like ourselves, and everyone is equal in this dissatisfactory quality of their lives. And therefore, their perspective is such that they begin to take responsibility not only for their own welfare, not only to achieve their own self interest, but also to achieve the interests of others as well. So their scope, their perspective is increased not only in terms of time and penetrative insight and discrimination, but in terms of responsibility. So, you know, it’s interesting that the word I’m sorry, it’s getting late, isn’t it? I’ll just finish off this sentence.
Maybe It’s a very short text, really. Lama. You know, I’ve talked a lot about Lama. And Lama is a Tibetan word. In Sanskrit it’s Guru and sometimes it can be translated as, Maybe you can advise me how you would like for it to be used.
And I keep searching for the most relevant word for ourselves, you know, like a spiritual master or a spiritual teacher. It’s rather, you know, it’s more or less not a title but a type of relationship. So the word Lama is made up of two syllables. La means high, literally. Ma is a negative particle in Tibetan language.
So the word Lama can come to mean none higher. There is no one higher than someone who has given up their exaggerated self concern, their own self centeredness, and taken upon themselves the altruism of other centeredness. Now, there’s none higher. That’s the connotation of lama. Also, the word la-ma can mean mother.
Like the lama is seen as the ultimate mother of all sentient beings, And he is seeking to alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings, like our mother did. So, the three perspectives. So, homage to the foremost holy lamas is not only a praise, but it also indicates the three perspectives. These three perspectives are in terms of the dimensions of time, beginning to broaden our concept of our perspective in terms of time, past this immediate, you know, from the nearest perspective of immediate goal gratification to an infinite, and that we’re all on this infinite journey and that we’re beginning to see one’s actions in terms of a greater perspective of this great journey, this evolution that we’re all involved in. But also in terms of discrimination, in terms of our ability to look into our situation and understand its actual nature.
Begin to deal less and less on a superficial level, but to begin to deal with the more deeper causes of what brings about happiness and suffering. Begin to see our situation in terms of whether they are taking us back into these repeating dissatisfactory patterns of existence or whether they are in the nature of opting out of the system, whether they transcend that whole way of thinking altogether, whether they are taking us toward awakening. Also, terms of responsibility, you know, from the narrow scope of concerning ourselves only with ourselves, to expanding our perspective in this sense our responsibility to take on a greater and greater, wider concern of others. Okay? I think we made it through the first sentence.
I’ll stop there. So we dedicate the creative potential that we’ve accumulated together. You know, this creative, some kind of energy that we’ve some potentiality of mind that’s been imprinted on our consciousness. We can sort of direct that. We can give it any direction that we wish and it will facilitate if we’ve created the substantial causes, the development of whatever it is that we want, it will assist.
There’s infallible relationship between causes and effects that we can facilitate the fruition of these effects through dedication. But here, maybe we can broaden our mind, our perspective, And we can take on, if only in some slight manner, the perspective of the being of a greater scope, of vast perspective and dedicated for something which lies beyond our own egos, our own immediate goal gratifications, our own narrow ideas by which we now govern our lives at present and trying to open our minds to other possibilities. 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. May that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more.
And the long life prayer for His Holiness. In the land circled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful Chenrezig, please remain until the end of saṃsāra.. So those who like to remain for discussion group, let you get a cup of tea. Have a good week.
Good night. Thank you.