Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with the example of quitting smoking — where anxiety about consequences alone never suffices without faith in a better life — Ven Jampa Gendun uses the image to unpack the two psychological causes of going for refuge. In this 44-minute talk he argues that genuine change is blocked less by conscious resistance than by fear of the unfamiliar operating below awareness, locking practitioners into habitual patterns, and by what he cites from a Western psychologist as one of the most widespread mental health problems: the inability to wish. The session closes with a layered guided practice: nine-round breathing, loving-kindness cultivated toward three grades of relationship, and an imagination exercise in which practitioners consciously inhabit admired qualities to loosen a rigid, self-limiting self-image.
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File: 15 HMA 1997 03 05.mp3
UUID: bddd8620-c046-4e4f-9799-148ab563e16c
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-03-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.6 minutes
Words: ~5,234
You know, I was prostrating. I guess prostration is quite a point to the west, I think, in general, isn’t it? To most of us? Yeah. I never when I first went to Dharmasala and started attending classes at the Tibetan Library of Works and Archives, and there were all these westerners prostrating and I thought, don’t they have any dignity?
No. Where’s their pride? You’re never gonna find me doing that. So, you know, prostrating or I get you know, the word prostration is showing homage or reverence or respect. Guess respect is quite a word that we can identify with, kind of a workable word.
And one of the I’d say that one of the main obstacles to learning is pride. Pride in the sense that, you know, we’re so full of ourselves, there’s no room for anything else. There’s no room for any new knowledge, any new understanding, anything other than what we have already come to conclusions for ourselves about. So, you know, I think prostration or initial showing of respect or you know, is something where we simply are creating kind of some kind of room, yeah, a mental space for ourselves, and then acknowledging that we don’t have all the answers, that perhaps the object toward whom we’re showing homage or respect can be helpful in some way. So it’s mainly an antidote of pride.
Has nothing whatsoever to do with the object or, you know, that is to say and if if in the case of, you know, prostrating to a teacher or whoever, they were too considered somehow befitting of themselves to be prostrated to, they probably aren’t worthy of being a teacher. They probably aren’t worthy of our prostrate of our homage anyway. So it’s only a value from our side. It’s only there’s only to be a profit gain from our side. So it’s just that I think Buddhism is replete with skillful devices to help ourselves work with our mind in skillful ways.
And so, you know, we begin with the prostration and preparing the mind. This this idea of creating, you know, consciously or purposely creating some kind of nurturing inner ecology of mind where learning can take place, where change can take place. That’s what we want to do. That’s mainly why we’re here. There could be other motivations.
I don’t know about gaining fame or reputation. You know, I don’t think we’re gonna give out certificates at the end of the three principal aspects of the path. We could. I don’t I don’t know what could it might look good on your CV, a degree in the three principal aspects of the path. What are the possibilities?
Out of curiosity, I guess. A lot of people come back out of curiosity. That’s okay. That’s kind of a an open quiet open type of mind, open quality of mind, wants to know about what’s going on. That seems to be appropriate in some fashion.
But mostly, we’re here to help ourselves change our our minds, and and in the long run, in doing that to help others to change their minds for the better, that’s kind of what we’re about. And so this is the you know, coming back to this, again and again, this process of reorientation, reprioritizing, keep getting in touch of what is of central importance to ourselves in our lives. Our lives can go by, and we will never have lived them. At least not have lived them in according to what is a value something that we have found a value to ourselves. There’s some some autonomously derived principles and ways of being that feel are self validating and and worthwhile to pursue in our life, and that we don’t have to justify ourselves or anyone in these terms.
It’s it comes from one’s own living experience of what you find meaningful in your life. And to begin to create the space and to constantly evolve oneself to a quality of life which is imbued in greater part by those ways of being and that type of life and those qualities which we find worthwhile. You know, this process of going for refuge yeah. I I guess I have, again and again, emphasized this, probably overemphasized it. I don’t know if you can overemphasize it, but unskillfully emphasize it to the point of ad nauseam or the idea that we are going for refuge, maybe it’s necessary to, at times, stop speeding and stop acting, stop distracting ourselves from ourselves and take stock.
And then where is our refuge taking us? What direction are we going with our life? If you keep going in the same direction, you shouldn’t be surprised that you end up where you’re headed. You know, where is it that you’re headed? Is it where you really want to go?
It’s really worthwhile, I think. It makes sense, but it’s a really transcendental sense. It’s not something we exercise all the time. We do so for one reason or another. So there are you know, what are the cause?
And, you know, Buddhism is saying everything you know, one of the axioms of Buddhism, guess, one of the most fundamental premises of Buddhism is it all depends. Everything depends whatsoever, which is good to keep in mind if, you know, it’s it’s worthwhile. And so does this process of refuge. It also it all depends. It it depends like all products on causes.
And if we if we concern ourselves with the causes, we don’t have to so much concern ourselves with the results. We can we can have some kind of confidence that that the outflow of the of the workings of nature are such that we don’t have to oversee the process. If we simply create causes skillfully, we can relax, lie back, and wait for the results to come, which they will because result is dependent upon creating the causes. So likewise with regard to this going for refuge, and I think, you know, I think it’s good to think about this. It’s worthwhile even in a very mundane sense.
You know, the two causes for going for refuge, to become conscious of them and see how they might apply in other areas of your life aside from your spiritual growth, your own mental and internal development, the aspects of anxiety and faith. I, you know, I’ve been thinking about this. You know, people want to change their habits even in a you know, if if you could help people stop smoking, you could become famous and rich. I’m quite sure. And, you know, what are the how would you approach that?
You Then I think of necessity, you would have to do it. You make use of these two same notions, anxiety and faith. Anxiety around, what, the the probable outcomes if you continue to smoke, You know, the the rate of lung cancer, the the rate of, you know, thrombosis amputations, the deterioration of life quality and and overall health. You And you develop some kind of fear, some kind of anxiety, foreboding around that. But if you if you thought there was no alternative, you know, if you didn’t like it, if you didn’t care much for your life anyway, which I think is I think may be an underlying factor why people continue to smoke because they can, you know, at least I have this pleasure, and life is a bitch, and why can’t I have just this little pleasure?
And why are you trying to take my last pleasure away from me? If you don’t supply other people with some kind of alternative alternative and a confidence that there is a better way of life, that it’s worth living, that it’s worth living a healthy life, both mentally and physically, then even though they might have anxiety around it, it won’t matter. You have to give them some kind of purpose for their life. They must develop some kind of faith of a better quality of life. So it seems to me there’s this juxtaposition of these two factors.
It’s the the anxiety or the or the fear which pushes us and the faith which draws us forward to something other. And all of this will come some kind of a change. If we we don’t have to oh, we can I don’t think we can consciously we can consciously create the causes, but not the change itself? But creating the causes is sufficient. That’s all we need to do.
The change will come of itself. It’s a natural outflow of the law of cause and effect. So that’s what we’re doing here. And and we’re working with these ideas as best we can, cultivate listening to them and reflecting upon them and cultivating them reflecting upon them and cultivating them in meditation. That doesn’t say habituating or accustoming ourselves to them, making them a deep part of our personality structure.
That will be that will be the change, and it will will invariably bring about its own state in which we have faith in. So we’ve talked about anxiety. Hopefully, hopefully, if we live our lives intelligently, we don’t need a great deal of experience. I think maybe there’s a trade off. Some people, a little bit of experience goes a long way.
Other people it seems, if you’re like myself, you have to keep life have to keep beating you over the head with these experiences before you you get the lesson. You know, we’ve all had experiences, but we keep missing the lesson or dismissing the lesson or forgetting the lessons that we once learned. So hopefully, if we if we exercise our intelligence, we don’t have to wait till we’ve had so many life experiences that there’s finally no escape in even in terms of our own self deception, our own self ignorance. We have to see the facts very blatantly before us. They become more or less obvious, if only temporarily, for ourselves that we have to change.
Continue the way we’re going, we can see the pattern written on the wall. Our fate is kind of preordained for ourselves of what to expect. The same dissatisfactory patterns are going to continue. So we repeat them, you know, infinitum into the future, and it develops a sense of foreboding, a sense of dread. There’s some kind out of this comes there’s some kind of energy is made available for change.
There’s there’s also the creation of the the you know, we give up our hope that things are gonna get better of themselves, that and give up the the fallacy of time, and that time heals, that things will get better in time. So it is our anxiety which pushes us along, which helps us to overcome the stagnation of hope. But then the other on the other hand, the other half of the other side of the coin, the other half of the equation is faith. And the you know, the first step in change, in conscious change, is to wish that things were otherwise. And that’s may it may sound rather simple minded, but it’s not to make it to make conscious what it is that you actually want, to clarify and take a stand what is a meaning to what is meaningful to yourself.
You want things otherwise in the way they are. But without faith, we cannot wish. We cannot positively wish. It is faith that helps us overcome our inability to wish. And strangely enough and there’s a book called The Limits of Change, I believe.
He cites this as one of the most prevalent it’s written by a PhD psychologist in the United States. It says one of the most prevalent mental health problems is the inability to wish. That sounds rather strange in a way, doesn’t it? It’s like an ennui or an apathy of life or a sense of powerlessness or a sense of it doesn’t matter anymore. We just go, you know, along through our life mechanically carrying on out.
Life becomes a series of events, and we just kind of fulfill a role as we go along. And we we the the sense of that it matters anymore, a sense of ability to to positively wish that it were otherwise. We lost our capacity to do so. Without faith, we will remain apathetic and impotent. The Tibetan word for for prayer, and there are various types of prayers within within the Buddhist context, but just in general, the Tibetan word for prayer is mönlam.
Mönlam literally means the path of wishing. And for prayer to have any real meaning, it must be combined with the care and power of faith. Now due to our faith, what is happening to us matters. It makes a difference to ourselves, and we care. We care for ourselves.
I shouldn’t I don’t want myself to be experiencing this any longer in a way of actually expressing a sense of love toward ourselves, a caring and concern about what’s happening to ourselves. And moreover, we’re moved, you know, we’re empowered. We want to do something about it in spite of our our possible fears around change, in spite of our hesitations about traveling another possible path. So, you know, the faith anxiety is the means by which we can overcome our ungrounded hopes, our unfounded hopes, our false hopes that things are going to get better of themselves, which at some level we all harbor. Faith is the means by which we can overcome our fear.
And it is these two, hope and fear, which very much run our lives at present, whether we’re conscious of it or not. It is by overcoming these two factors that we begin to take control of our lives, that we begin to live the type of life that we would want for ourselves, beginning to choose our own fate, what we come to experience in the future. You know, fear is the mother of cowardice, and hope is its father. And by fear, fear is like a reaction to a perceptual mismatch. There’s different types of fear.
Here, fear is when we perceive something that is not that we don’t anticipate, and that that takes us by surprise. You know, we have we have some kind of conjecture about what we should perceive, whether it be about a person or a thing or a situation, and and the outcome doesn’t conform to our conjecture, our expectation about it, our ideas about what should have happened. So whenever we’re confronted with the unexpected, with the unusual, the unfamiliar, the unknown, we become afraid. That’s our natural reaction. And normally we cope with fear by withdrawing and narrowly circumscribing our lives so that we don’t come across the unexpected or we don’t come across the unusual.
We don’t meet with the unknown too often. You know? We can’t control our lives to the extent where it never happens, but we try in some fashion or another. You know, we we habitually take the path of the familiar, the known, in order to avoid fear and its associated displeasurable feelings. So fear keeps us in our habitual tracks.
We keep going over the same paths throughout our lives in one way or another. The unfamiliar is never explored, and we remain if we’re ever stuck in the same patterns. You know, this is one of the characteristics of neurosis, is the compulsive repetition of past patterns. So the unfamiliar is never explored. We just remain stuck in certain patterns of thinking, certain patterns of behavior.
So fear not only blinds us for the need for change, but also reinforces our resistance to change. So somehow we have to overcome our fear. And the point is, and this is and I don’t I think it’s a subtle point is, that all of what we’re talking about at present may not be conscious to ourselves. You may, at an intellectual level or even deeper, a superficial emotional level, want very much to change, But your deep seated fear is going to act as an inhibitory condition to the actual change that you want to bring about. You have to admit that there is a great deal of our life which goes on at an unconscious level or a subconscious level, and we must concern ourselves with that level if we’re going to create this what I mentioned as the nurturing inner ecology for change to take place.
It’s not as if we can simply intellectually think ourselves into who we want to be. We have to be a little more skillful than that, work with the more subtle causes within our own mind than that. It is through faith that we develop the courage and the confidence necessary to explore the unfamiliar, the unknown in spite of our fears, the fears which are there, that we’re willing to take an alternative direction in our lives. You know, maybe not in consciously and we’re not Maybe the the alternative direction, the the movement away from the past toward new possibilities is concerning is more concerning with unconscious intentions of the mind than those which they can intellectually recognize at present. And that that we’re willing to abide with the painful tension of fear and act in spite of our fears, you know, act fearlessly even though we may be afraid.
So it is through our this caring and power of faith that we constantly invite change into our lives, that even methodically cultivate it systematically in the cause of growth. You know, we can’t know all of the outcomes of the changes that we’re seeking to make. To demand to know all the details of the outcome of change is simply another strategy not to change. We but we have to develop some at some deep level of our being, we must develop a confidence in the method, in the means, in the outcome. And thereby, it’s like you know, I’ve talked about this process of reflecting of listening, reflecting, meditating listening, reflecting, and meditating listening, reflecting, and meditating.
At some level, we have to be able to give ourselves over to our meditation. Without these prior two steps, listening and reflecting, there’s always going to be some hesitation, some defensiveness, some mistrust about actually allowing ourselves to be whatever the meditation may be, you know, allowing ourselves to be love, if the meditation is love, allowing ourselves to become even absorbed in a meditative concentration. There’s always going to be a holding back, some defensive posture, some mistrust, some hesitation, some fear. And this and this is only when we have worked through, have listened well, that we that we have reflected upon and have validated the teachings and their significance within our own experience, within our own lives, that we are able to forego the mistrust, the defensiveness, that we’re able to clarify all our doubts and give ourselves over, as it were, to the meditation, that we can be the meditation, that we allow the meditation to act upon ourselves, to transform ourselves, that we become whatever is that we’re meditating. At some subtle level, there’s going to be some kind of holding back, some kind of hesitation out of fear.
So, you know, we’re talking about a very deep seated psychological process, and the way that we we necessarily have to overcome this fear which is there, you know, of the unknown, of the of the unfamiliar is through faith. So, you know, talking about faith as as we do, it’s not simply a religious artifact, something for the devotional, some point something for the simple minded. It’s none of that. And we all have faith in something, and that’s why we have become what we are now. And that which we are now perhaps for most of us is not enough.
We want to become something other than what we are now. Therefore we must consciously develop a faith in something other than what we presently have faith in, to take some kind of other refuge for our life, to create another kind of faith for ourselves in a world and experience of life. So, you know, trying to cultivate faith, and it’s not it can be cultivated. It’s not something you know, there are various types of faith, And, you know, we can talk about this and have it. And there are moments of faith, profound moments of faith that when faith, as it were, sweeps over ourselves, you know, When we hear something or meet someone and we’re deeply moved and we feel something at the very depths of our hearts emotionally, is an experience of something, an opening.
But for most of us, this is a These moments are short lived and infrequent in our life, and therefore probably play very little role in the overall direction of our lives. So in view of the, you know, of the in view of this, then we have no alternative but to do the hard work of creating faith, consciously developing faith in something other than what we have faith in at present, and thereby constantly creating the type of future that we want for ourselves. So in this process what we’re trying to create faith in is Buddha and the Dharma and the spiritual community as real practical resources for our lives, for finding what it is that we want, for ridding ourselves of what it is that we don’t want. To begin to believe in ourselves, to begin to believe in the method, and to begin to rely upon the social context in which change takes place. So the inner focus of our becomes Buddha, and we must believe that some we must overcome our disbelief in ourselves, our self imposed limits, have faith that we can change, that we can become very much the person that we want to be.
We can become a Buddha if we choose to be. Our only limitations are very much those we acknowledge. And having faith in the method, you know, the Dharma, the truth of things, the teachings, the meditative techniques, the trainings, you know, all that we’re working with trying to share and communicate with one another. And having some kind of confidence that that others are just like ourselves, that they too are on a journey of change, and that they can help me and I have something within within my experience which they can use in helping them, that we all have our our wisdom that we can share even though it might not be well formulated, it might not be clear even to ourselves. It’s still there as a resource that we can share with others and trying to to raise the level of motivation, the why behind it all, such that we do it not just for ourselves but for an ever widening circle of others.
And then I think very much we can be assured that we’ve created the inner ecology of mind where some kind of salutary change can take place, some kind of beneficial result will of itself be sure to come. We can have some kind of confidence in that. We can take refuge in that. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, 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 the 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 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 is ended, and turn the wheel of Dharma for living beings. I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others for the great awakening. So, yeah, meditation we can take as a you know, beginning with the nine round breathing meditation and then adjusting our motivation once again in terms of the cultivation of love and compassion, taking as objects toward whom we’re trying to develop these attitudes. And as someone we’re extremely close to, have a primary relationship with, someone who is a little bit distant from that, someone we care a great deal about but is not our most significant other, I guess you say.
I don’t know. Someone you’re a little bit further than that, a warm friend. Someone that you like, but not particularly close to. You see them once in a while, you’re happy to see them, they’re happy to see you, but perhaps you don’t think about them any interval. Just a good friend.
So those, you know, those working down a spectrum of possible ways of relating with different people. So these three people, see if you can have that sense of these three types of people there. Someone you feel, you know, is central to your life, someone who’s who’s important to you in overall emotional well-being of your life, and someone you just enjoy being with, quality, the ways of different different ways of relating. And then we’ll do mindfulness of breathing, And then we’ll I thought we’d go back and do some meditations on I think one of I mentioned in the course my earlier remarks was about the necessity to overcome our sense of limitations about ourselves, this self-limiting self-identity that most of us harbor about ourselves. And one of the ways I think is through the process of imagination.
Imagination plays a terribly important role in our lives, whether we’re aware of it or not. And we can make use of that fact by imagining creating scenarios for ourselves and being exploring other versions of possible other possible versions of ourselves of who we could be and having perhaps beginning to break down this rigid self image that we have, which is usually self limiting and by exploring other possibilities and expanding our sense of who we could be. So, you know, beginning to appreciate certain qualities about ourselves. There’s a term alienated personality potentials. I don’t know.
That kind of blows off your tongue, doesn’t it? Alienated personality potential. Quite often what we, you know, hero worship hero worship is, you know, seeing something within that is in fact quality of yourself projected outward, and then it’s unknowingly unknowingly projected outward, and then cutting off the actual projection and seeing it as if it were on the that quality were part of the person on whom it’s been projected. So, you know, when we can begin and when we think of somebody that we really admire, you know, what is it about them? It’s probably we can be sure that there is at least in germ form or a limited form, that same quality in ourselves, that simply what we’re seeing is very much a reflection about ourselves.
That we perhaps we can begin to reintegrate that around ourselves, both in terms of mostly in terms of our own self identity about incorporating incorporating that quality within our self identity, this image that we have about ourselves. It is not all outside of ourselves. So would you like to stand up for a moment? We’ll try that. Beginning Mhmm.
By taking a firm, comfortable posture. And first, getting in touch with the body, noticing any tightnesses, any tensions, knots within the body, bringing your awareness to those areas and consciously softening, soothing, relaxing. All your troubles, all your feeling the weariness and tension in your body, tightness moving down and out of your body into the ground. It’s just a chance to relax and simply to be with yourself, feeling comfortable and relaxed, indeed. And we’ll do the nine round breathing meditation, beginning by blocking your left nostril, breathing the brilliant white light through the right three times, then reversing three times, then both three times.
And the techniques of counting and noting the breaths, if you find that helpful. We’re going to explore other possible versions of ourselves and begin by thinking of a female who you admire a great deal, that you respect, that you look up to. And what is it about her, what quality does she have that you admire so very much, that you respect, that you value? Now I’m going to play a role imagining that you yourself have the same exact quality to the same degree, and you’re going to imaginatively express it. You’re going to create an imaginative situation expressing the same quality that you now possess.
Try to feel as if you had that quality. Be that quality. You are that quality. Now think of a male that you admire, that you look up to. And what quality, quality, again, is it about them that you admire, that you respect so very much?
And, again, create this and imagine a situation where you express this same quality to the same degree playing a role. Feel this quality. Be this quality to the same degree. Think of a significant female in your life, a female who you have a close relationship with. And what is it about you do you suppose that they might value?
What is what quality do you possess that they might respect and care so very much about? Imagine this this quality is now many, many, many times more developed, completely fully developed and express it in an imaginative situation. This quality which is presently admired by a female in your life has many more times developed. Try to feel, be that fully developed quality imaginatively. Think of a male, a significant male in your life, a male to whom you you feel close to.
And, again, what is it about yourself do you suppose that this this person, this male admires about you? What do you suppose they value about you, that they like so very much about you? Creating an imaginative situation where this this quality is now many, many times more developed. Completely fully developed and feel and be that quality and express it in an imaginative situation. And finally, think of something that you like about yourself, something that you value about yourself, some quality about yourself, your present Create an imagined situation where you express this quality, but now it’s again many times more developed completely, fully, fully developed.
And feel that fully developed quality. Try to give yourself over to the imaginative expression of this fully developed quality. Nine. Back. To the breath.
Easy and gentle. Inhale, flow the natural breath. Just a very relaxed and easy manner. Become aware of your posture, your body, your sensations. Just get in touch with your body.