Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The practical work of purifying past negative actions stands at the center of this 37-minute session with Ven Jampa Gendun. After a brief love-and-compassion exercise — taking a mildly disliked person as the focus — he explains why purification matters alongside study and meditation: karmic imprints block present development and seed future suffering. He walks through the Four Opponent Powers in sequence: genuine regret (singled out as the most indispensable element), recommitment to refuge and to loving those one has harmed, a realistic short-term resolve not to repeat the action, and a positive antidote practice. The session ends with a full guided Śākyamūni Buddha visualization — white-light purification, infusion of golden wisdom and compassion, dissolution into the Buddha — followed by a dedication prayer.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 HMA 1997 06 11.mp3
UUID: 82223aae-7f2b-407a-9ac6-a7e0260ef8b7
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-06-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 37.4 minutes
Words: ~5,022
In terms of, again, adjusting our motivation, developing, you know, it’s continual continually accustoming our minds. Habituating ourselves to the qualities of love and compassion, especially as our motivation behind what we do. And, you know, working through the spectrum of individuals that we have and and taking as the object of cultivating love and compassion, someone that you that you have some problems with. But, you know, not not we won’t take the worst enemy you have at present. Nothing heavy duty.
Just somebody you’re mildly upset with or you don’t particularly like. You’re uncomfortable being around them. If you saw them coming down the street, you might walk on the other side of the street if if they didn’t see you. Something something like that. Something like that.
So taking and working with that that type of person, you know, to think of an actual individual and as genuine as possible, you know, using your imagination and your your experiences and your skill and mind to to be able to evoke this particular state of mind. Even if it’s just that you’re finding some way to form a new idea in terms of how you’re going to relate with that person. You know, the the idea of love, wishing them happiness, the idea of compassion, wishing that they don’t suffer. And then we’ll do the do mindfulness of breathing. I was going to do the the Śākyamūni Buddha practice.
I don’t know how to speak. It’s a bit late. Excuse me. Yeah. Would you So there is the mantra.
Think it’s in the book. We’re going to recite the Śākyamūni Buddha mantra together. You learn it quite quickly. But if you want to see it, it’s on page six. At the bottom of page six it’s Taiyata Om Muni Muni Maha Muniye Svāhā.
Muni means, sometimes translated as sage or subdue. Probably probably subdue is more closer to the original meaning of the term. Subdued the ignorance and self centeredness, essentially, in those. Having subdued that. Maha means great.
Thayata means is a way of introducing a mantra. It means it could like it goes like this, something like that. Anyway, the literal meaning is not particularly important. It’s just that a mantra this particular mantra is associated with the Śākyamūni Buddha and it’s a form of we thought of as a form of praise. And we’re going to use it in conjunction with what are called, you know, as part of our practice and part of, you know, our putting these one foot in front of the next.
We we, you know, we’re developing a great presenting a great number of ideas, entire worldview, a great body of knowledge. But throughout this process, it’s necessary that we not only gather together the information in the process of listening and and meditating on it, but there’s another aspect which is integral to to our development. And that is with the process of purification purification and the accumulation of merit and positive potential. This is essential in the process of removing some obstacles, some hindrances that we have within our own minds at present and to accumulate a a force of positive potential inside of ourselves which which keeps us in moving in in a desired direction. It helps us propels us along toward our goal.
So the overall practice would not only be meditating on many of the subjects that we’re working with, but would also include practices which specifically specifically work with purification of past negative actions and unskillful actions and the development of positive potential. The accumulation of this positive force in our mind to propel us toward the goals that we’re working towards. So one of the most effective means for purification and past negativities. You know, we’ve talked about negativities when we talked about karma, unskillful actions. Unskillful actions, ways unskillful ways of thinking or speaking, physically, they they they just don’t end with the action.
There’s some residue left upon the mind. Some kind of imprint is implanted upon our mindstream. It’s like planting like a seed which has been planted in the field. And moreover, when when that seed that meets with the the proper appropriate cooperative conditions, just like a seed being watered, then some kind of result, a sprout arises. In terms of unskillful actions, that sprout will be the sprout of some kind of suffering in some form or other.
It’s going to be something undesirable in terms of our experience. So, and not only that, in terms of the future, but even at present these negative potencies within our mind act as hindrances to the development of our mind, development of more positive and functional ways of thinking, a hindrance to insights, and to develop of the positive qualities that we’re seeking to develop. So they interfere with ourselves at present. They act as a hindrance, some kind of barrier, some kind of obstruction at present. But they’re also going to act as causes for future sufferings, neither of which we want to experience.
So we can do something about them. I think, you know, this is fundamental to, especially to the universal vehicle Buddhism, that any negativity, no matter what it may be, no matter how horrendous in our own minds, no matter how terrible it in fact may be, it can be purified completely. There’s no magic involved in it. There’s no dispensations that we can somehow acquire. We created the negativity through our own mind, and through our own mind we can get rid of it.
We can do something that we can do. It’s very empowering in that way, I think, that we can kind of gain some kind of control. Now we can’t change the past, but we can change whether our our past is going to affect our future and and in what way. So we the way that we can do this is through what is called the Four Opponent Powers. This is the these are the tools we can apply in purifying past negativity.
It’s like taking that seed and scorching it. You know, if you just kind of put it in a flame, it’s it’s not burnt up, but it’s the potency has been lost. If you take, you know, if you take that scorched seed and you put it in Earth and you pour water on it, nothing happens. It’ll just rot at best. The potency, its ability to to act as a cause, bringing about a result has been lost.
And likewise with these negativities, these unskillful latencies or potencies within our mind. By applying these four opponent powers, the same result can can be brought about. But, you know, it’s necessary to stress there’s nothing magical about these. They work within the law of cause and effect. We could work out a psychological explanation, a mechanism of how they operate.
That there’s nothing magical or mystical or mysterious about them. And they very much depend upon our own mind. They, like all of Buddhism I would say, cannot be applied mechanically, without thinking and hope for any substantial result, some kind of substantial positive result. You know, when I say that, and I say we have to use our intelligence, I think feelings are intelligent also. I think, you know, the devotional attitudes feelings an expression of a type of intelligence.
Intelligence is not only rational intelligence. There are non rational intelligences also. So when I say we when I emphasize that we have to use our intelligence, I think it’s some kind of innate sanity about ourselves that we have to exercise. So the first of these four four opponent powers is the power of repudiation. The idea of repudiation is that when say I repudiate something, say, no.
No, that’s not right. I don’t want anything to do with that. That kind of idea. You don’t want to identify with that any longer. So in the past if you were going to actually recollect in our history, you know, some negativity, some unskillful action that we’ve done.
And through the part, we have to develop a genuine sense of regret. There’s there’s no other way. Without genuine sense of regret there will be no purification. There are only a slight purification at best. This is of these four opponent powers, it.
It is regret, a sincere genuine regret which is the most effective, which is the most necessary, which is indispensable in bringing about the actual purification. But you know, I guess like many things, it can be misunderstood or misinterpreted. Regret, you know, is a It focuses upon what we did in terms of the action, not upon ourselves. We added one and one to make two and we came up with three. We made a mistake.
It may have had horrible consequences. But still it’s not a reflection upon ourselves as a person. We’re not calling that into question. We’re not sitting in judgment on ourselves. But we are looking at what we have done and we can acknowledge our mistakes as mistakes.
You know we quit denying that it ever happened. We quit trying to justify it, rationalize it that it wasn’t wrong. We say it was wrong. It was a mistake. I harmed either myself or harmed somebody else which is essentially what we mean by an unskillful action, to do harm.
And in the light of the person that we want to become, that we the person that we would like to be, in light of the fact that the latencies of the past action are within our mind at present and they are interrupting our growth, interfering with our own self development, and the fact that they are going to bring us suffering in some form in the future, it’s worthy of regret. Think that’s kind of a reasonable way of looking at them. That feeling, that sense of I wish I hadn’t done that. I can’t do it over again. But if I could have, I would try not to.
But for one reason, I did it. For one reason or another, maybe out of attachment or maybe I was so jealous or I was just so angry I couldn’t help myself for one reason or another. But we regret it nonetheless. First power and the most important is developing a healthy sense of regret, but a genuine sense of regret. And then the second power is the power of reliance.
There is said to two objects toward whom we can develop, we can commit a negative action, a non skillful action. One one one is the Buddhas, the other is sentient beings. And the way that we create a negative action against the Buddhists is in the course of your practice over time that you there may be moments of real clarity and wisdom and some kind of insight, and you might think to commit yourself in a very formal fashion to a prescribed way of acting and thinking. Take let’s just say, you might want to take a vow, for example. And there are many lay people take vows.
The vow of refuge, but over and above the vow of refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, there are the vows of the lay person. There are five vows. And many people commit themselves to observing for the for the life. And for example, not to kill, not to steal, not to involve in, you know, wrong types of sexual activity, not to lie, and not to to take intoxicants. And and, you know, by all means, it’s not these are just helpful for some people.
You know, it’s it’s very, you know, just like everything it has to be tailored to what is what works for you and what is needed for yourself as an individual. It’s not to say that just because they’re there they’re to be taken by everybody. Don’t make a problem there is no problem. But some people find it useful to commit themselves to certain vows. But over the course of time maybe they break their vow, they act in contradiction to their vow.
They vow not to steal. For one reason or another they stole something. So they broke their vow. So this would be a way of creating negativity with regard to Buddha. When in the actual ceremony and formally taking a vow, you imagine as if you were taking in front of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and your spiritual teacher is a representative of the Buddha and you’re committing yourself to acting in a particular manner.
And you’ve you’ve acted in contradiction to that. You know what? In a way, when we are vows are a means of skillfully aligning ourselves with our own basic sanity, you know, the ways that we can allow a certain our own wisdom and our own love and compassion to find expression, and being able to give it that kind of space. The vows offer some kind of boundaries. When we break a vow, we are as if turning turning our backs on our own Buddha, the Buddha within ourselves.
So in order to the the second power, the power of reliance, we recommit ourselves. You know, we’ve gotten off the track. We’ve taken a direction that taken a direction that perhaps we’d rather not follow down, go down that road. So we recommit ourselves by taking refuge in the Buddha Dharma in the Sangha. We recommit ourselves to the Buddha withinside of ourselves.
You know, somehow we’ve gotten off, we’ve lost track of our priorities, what it is that we want. So we get ourselves back on track by going for refuge. In the other case, having committed negativity with regards to sentient beings. And negativity, as I said, is essentially is to do harm. Negativities aren’t there’s no absolutes.
We’re not there’s no moral imperatives. It’s just that a particular way of life that we are seeking to make our life a reflection of involves non violence and non harm. The Dalai Lama said that all of Buddhism can be condensed into two sentences. If you can help others, help them. If you can’t, at least don’t harm them.
But, you know, though it sounds simple, it’s quite difficult, isn’t it? Not to harm. Not to harm yourself is difficult. What to say about harming others? So, we’ve harmed.
Negativity is to harm. That’s all it is, essentially most. And we are trying to lead a type of life of nonviolence and non harm. So we’ve when you harm someone, you aren’t loving them. And we are as best as we can in our own limited and hesitant and bubbling fashion trying to be loving people.
So we recommit ourselves to loving rather than hurting. We recommit ourselves to having compassion for those we harm. So the second power in terms of the negativities that have been created against, you know, sentient beings is that we generate love and compassion for them. This is said to be the power of reliance because, you know, just like when we fall down on the ground, you use that same object upon which you fell, the ground, to push yourself back up. And likewise, we rely upon those same objects on, you know, in terms of whom we’ve fallen down to pick ourselves back up, you know, to brush ourselves off and get back on the road again.
You know? We recommit ourselves to Buddha and the Dharma and the spiritual community. We recommit ourselves to loving and having compassion for sentient beings. Second power. This third power is the power of reversal.
And, you know, we are very much our habits. And many of our habits are dysfunctional. And we have to begin to recognize that fact and we have to try to interrupt the compulsive nature of our neurosis and our unskillful actions. And this we do by by in a very practical and realistic fashion committing ourselves not to repeat the act the action again for a specified period of time. You know, something which we can a real practical challenge to ourselves that we can be mindful of and we can try and actually live up to.
Though it might be have the best intentions to say, well, I’m not going to use abusive language for the rest of my life. It may may be well intended, but in in practical ways, it’s rather meaningless because it’s probably something that you could never actually live up to or be mindful of trying to do. But if you said I’m not going to use abusive language for the next twenty four hours, that could be a very practical challenge which you could try and perhaps actually fulfill. And it would go a long way in interrupting the compulsive pattern, that that habit, a way of reacting to certain situations, to certain cues, to certain activating circumstances. And it would be of tremendous value and use to yourself.
So whatever the negativity was, yeah, making some kind of reasonable assessment of what you can in fact do and committing yourself not to repeat that action again for a specified period of time. The fourth power. Fourth power is the power of antidote. And that there is is a large body of antidotes, traditional practices which are specifically mentioned as antidotes. For examples, there is the disclosure of downfalls to the Thirty-Five Buddhas.
There is a meditation on emptiness, the recitation of various scriptures. But essentially we can anything which is positive and which is done with the thought and mind as a calm abiding positive action to that previously created negative action can be used as an antidote in that way. And one of one powerful method that we can make use of is practicing together this the practice of Śākyamūni Buddha. Reciting this mantra. You know, the the recitation of the mantra is like, you know, is a is a is a very positive skillful action, verbal skillful action form of praise.
And, you know, the visualization that we’re going to describe and it all comes together as a means of creating something very positive as an antidote to the past negativity that we recollected and generated a sense of regret for. And so I’m going to describe the practice and then we’re going to do it together. Is it okay? I’m sorry. Didn’t I don’t know what time is now.
Anyway, I’m gonna check if you find it worthwhile. We’re going to visualize the Śākyamūni Buddha in front of ourselves. This is a a painting of Śākyamūni Buddha. You know, we don’t know what Śākyamūni Buddha looked like. Anyway, that doesn’t really matter.
But what matters is our feelings and the attitudes that we that we’re we’re able to arouse around that. You know, that Śākyamūni Buddha as pictured is is is an embodiment of something for ourselves, something which is, you know, a a greatest something sacred for ourselves, something of greatest importance for ourselves. It embodies all that we could ever hope to make of our life and ourselves. All the all the qualities in terms of wisdom and love and compassion and personal power and expressing them in our everyday life and benefiting others, you know, a model of sanity, a paradigm of another order of being. You know, if you look at people, look at our teachers for example, and you see all that, you know, what and you see their happiness and their laughter and their wisdom and their compassion.
And you take that feeling and you say, I’m going to give it some kind of visual shape. And that’s what it looks like to you. Something that you can relate with tangibly, you know, in a in a less abstract fashion than simply an an abstract idea. You give it some visual imagery for yourself. Then it has great meaning, and we can work with that.
It has some kind of makes some kind of impression on your mind, that that visual imagery. So anyway, something very real for us. So we we use this image to embody all of that and we try to memorize it. You know, just as you memorize a verse of a telephone number, try to memorize the visual imagery of it, looking at the colors and the shapes. And then you cause it to arise in your mind’s eye.
And so you’re you’re no longer looking at it with the physical eye. But the the mental image is held by mindfulness. It’s caused to evoke it and it’s held by mindfulness. And know, it’s some people it’s quite find it easier to visualize very large. Most people it’s difficult to visualize.
Okay? So don’t feel that you’re having that you’re unique in your difficulties. You aren’t. That it is a a some people find it quite easily. That’s very rare.
But it it is a training. You you can develop it, the the ability to visualize and to hold that visualization. So imagining Śākyamūni Buddha in front of you, perhaps about a meter, a meter and a half in front of you. In general, you can make them the size of the size of your hand. But if you find it easier to make it bigger, by all means.
If you don’t see if you see just a little bit of gold, be satisfied with that. Don’t don’t try to keep seeing more. Don’t try to keep making it clearer and clearer or you’ll you’ll agitate your mind and you’ll lose it altogether. If you just see a little glimmer of gold, find a a little hand, leave it at that. Be satisfied with that.
If you don’t see anything, he’s still there or she’s still there. Just that it’s not more it’s not he or she is not that apparent to you at present, but still there and not nevertheless. And you’re relating with that with that that awakened being there in front of you. And then we okay. And then we’re going to first we’re going to apply the first three of the four powers.
We’ll inspect the regret. We’ll cause the visualization to arise in our mind’s eye. And then we’ll, as antidote, we’re going to recite the Śākyamūni Buddha mantra. Thayata Om Muni Muni Mahamuni Ye Svāhā. And imagine from the heart Buddha Śākyamūni, a shaft of white light comes down to the crown of your head.
And along this shaft of white light, white nectars begin to flow. And these white nectars and lights begin to fill your body and mind. And try to you know, don’t you know, we all have our preconceptions, don’t we? You know? We come we come to everything that we do with preconceptions.
We we already have it worked out, well, we’re gonna get out of this or not going to get out of this. You Try you don’t know. Really, it’s useful to have that kind of approach. Like, you don’t know what’s gonna happen the next second. Anything could happen.
And you’re kinda open wide eyed like before you figure it all out and you were you were an innocent child. You know, the world was amazing place to be in. And it was full of surprises and beauty, things you could never imagine appeared all the time to you. But as we grow older, we figure it all out and became rather dull and lifeless to ourselves. But anyway, here in in this, you don’t know what’s you do, you know, you know, you could be open to anything.
You know? You’re kinda you don’t know what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna do this practice, but you’re kinda open to any different kinds of experiences. But you you you know, you’re not going to force it. Just, you know, maybe something could happen that’s never happened to you ever before.
Possible. Know, kind of attitude. So that, you know, the white lights, the white lights, the white nectar is filling completely filling your body, all the negativities, all the heaviness, all the guilt, all the you know, everything that’s been associated with that past negativity, completely gone, purified. And having a sense of purity, a sense of innocence, like some huge big burden taken off your back. And just just let yourself go into that sense of purity and the sense of lightness.
And then you’ve done something about that past negativity. Let okay. You can drop it. You can drop it now. You don’t have to carry it around with you the rest of your life.
You’ve actually done something very positive. You can’t go back to change it. And it happened. It’s history. But you’ve done something on its present effects on your mind and and and the future possibility the future consequences.
You know, you actually did something. You know, with all these powers. You did. You did do something. It’s not game.
You did. And give yourself an opportunity to experience the results of what you did. Okay. Then but, okay. We’ll just do that.
I will go on. I don’t must must But having purified these negativities isn’t quite enough. That’s that’s really something very significant and needed. But we still need to develop. Develop.
You know? We still have even though we’ve gotten rid of some of these hindrances, obstacles to our development, but still we do that. We need to develop. So, you know, developing a sense of requesting. You know, knock and the door shall be opened, ask and it shall be given.
Ask what you want in terms of your own development, you know, to grow in love and compassion and wisdom, you know, all that work. All that’s going to help us to get where we want with our goal. You know, ask. You know, there’s there’s this opportunity presented to ourselves in a very sincerely, in a genuine fashion, to whatever forces there are in universe, to something that’s inside yourself. However you want to see those, to where this asking is being directed toward, but ask nonetheless.
And in response to this request, a golden shaft of light extends down from the heart of Śākyamūni Buddha to the crown of our head and along it golden nectars begin to flow, completely filling our body and mind with a wordless wisdom and compassion. You know, beyond our limit beyond beyond our conception about what wisdom and compassion are. Just the thought that they’re there in a in a fully developed form and that go into that sense. You know, with beyond this garbage, the sense of poor me attitude, you know, that we use inadequacy and insufficiency that we have about ourselves, and I can’t quite do anything right. And you know, give it let it go for a while.
Give yourself a chance and just, you know, just be in that pos that possibility of something much greater than you had ever imagined about yourself. And give yourself that opportunity experience, to let go into the combination of wisdom and compassion and some kind of power within inside yourself. And then Śākyamūni Buddha. So we’ll come down to the crown of your head, dissolve into light. Dissolve into you yourself.
You become in union, oneness with the goal of the path. You become in union, oneness with the body, speech, and mind, Śākyamūni Buddha. Beyond words, beyond conception. You know, if thoughts arise in your mind, just note them and let them go like clouds moving across the sky. Just let them go.
Just just be in that state as best you can. And then but, you know, look, you know, what we’ve been what we’re gonna talk about tonight, love and compassion. The fact is that we aren’t alone in this world. There are others who are just like ourselves who want to be happy and don’t want to suffer, and they’re suffering. That’s the reality.
What’s going on in this world? And not to to make that not to forget about that and to make that a part of our approach to life and to become mindful of that fact and then being willing to do something about that. And here in terms of our practice, while we recite the Śākyamūni Buddha mantra again, you know, radiating out lights from your body, touching every living being in the earth, purifying them, and transforming them into Buddhas themselves. Transforming them into Buddhas themselves. It’s it’s it’s only imagination, but everything begins with imagination.
This building began with imagination. And then they built it, But it began with the idea in somebody’s mind. So this is like the beginning of something. So then we we then absorb all of these living beings into ourselves and the environment into ourselves. We ourselves begin to dissolve from the from the top down, from the bottom up until there’s nothing left but vast open space and peace.
You know, we’ve done all our work. We fulfilled our own as well as the welfare of others. There’s simply nothing more to be done, and we can rest in in this vast open space and peace And try to stay there. And if thoughts arise, thinking, thinking, just let them go. Just be with that.
Okay. Sorry. Where was that? Would you like to stand up again? Are you okay?
Okay. So take a firm comfortable posture. I apologize. I kept you really late. So we’re dedicating you.
Potential that we’ve accumulated. In land encircled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful Chenrezig, Tenzin Gyatso, please remain to the end of cyclic existence. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual master and lead each and every living being to that awakened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakened heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more.
Thank you.