Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 37-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun pairs an Albert Einstein quote about widening one’s circle of compassion with an Alcoholics Anonymous slogan — “I’m not okay and you’re not okay, but that’s okay” — to argue that genuine compassion begins with honestly acknowledging our own suffering. He traces the structure of the awakened heart: recognizing all beings as mothers from infinite past lives, cultivating aspiring love, then compassion as the wish to remove suffering rather than merely increase happiness. A guided visualization of a dying, emaciated child as one’s own mother grounds the instruction. He then introduces “intense resolve” — compassion becoming active commitment — and uses a first-aid-versus-surgeon analogy to explain why developing oneself toward awakening is ultimately the only way to truly help others. Pitched at practitioners following the series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 18 HMA 1997 06 18.mp3
UUID: 3585711a-bf2b-4a60-bbbb-b41d9e27a0fd
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-06-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 37.2 minutes
Words: ~4,755
Just at least don’t wish to harm them. Don’t wish them ill will. That only hurts yourself. At least try to have a sense of neutrality toward them. Almost a sense of indifference.
Yeah. Okay. Let them let them get on with their life. I’ll get on with my life. But don’t hold a grudge or harmful intentions toward them.
That only hurts you. And you don’t want to hurt yourself. Have compassion in yourself. So working with that person, and then I thought we’d maybe we won’t. Maybe we’ll just meditate on mindfulness of breath after that.
Okay? So taking a firm comfortable posture. So we’re looking at the second of two meditative traditions for the awakening of our hearts. It’s developed on the ground of equanimity, an unbiased attitude of mind which is divorced of our habitual attitudes of attachment for some, aversion for others, and indifference to most. Upon that, we go on to develop a very recognize a very special relationship with others.
We we don’t allow it to remain at the level of indifference or neutrality. We we we begin to set the groundwork to develop a very intimate bond with all living beings. First, we try as best we can to recognize the fact that we have, over infinite lives, had a very special relationship with all living beings, that of a mother and child. Beginning to recognize all living beings as in fact literally as our mother. Beginning to emphasize the nature of that relationship by going on to be mindful of the great kindness that our mothers have shown us over these infinite rebirths when they were our mother and developing going on beyond that to develop a sense of gratitude which wishes to repay that kindness.
So I think it’s useful to take note of that the awakened heart has two aspects. One, it the it observes all sentient beings. So it observes others, people in terms of their suffering, in terms of their happiness, the quality of their of their life. But it also observes awakening. That’s another of its objects.
We want to develop a connectedness with others, like a sense of closeness and intimacy, a bonding with others. But that simply in itself is not enough just to feel close to others. We want to be aware of the quality of their experience in their life in terms of suffering and happiness. And that in itself is not enough. We want to observe, keep our eye on how I can be be of use to others in terms of that end quality.
If I can attain awakening, if I can, you know, work through my own problems and develop skills and understandings, then I can be of benefit. So there’s an aspiration to achieve awakening for all of these people. That’s the awakened heart. And so there’s two there’s two objects of observation. One are the people around us, and the other is our goal.
I am seeking this goal for their sake. So we’re we’re developing a sense of a real sense of bonding, intimacy with others. Being we take notice of others. We become important to others. And now we’re going to develop an aspiration to to help help them.
We do that first by cultivating a sense of aspiring love. They they appear very attractive to ourselves. And now we’re going to go on to develop great compassion. A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and the whole of nature in its beauty. You know, that’s that’s a quote by Albert Einstein. I think it’s kinda neat. This this this genius of the mind could have such a vision of the heart.
It’s quite rare, I think. So compassion is the other side of love, the other side of the coin of love. There is no there’s no set order in their development. And what applies to love and everything that we’ve said with regard to love probably applies equally to compassion also as well. The only difference is that while while love concerns itself with bringing about happiness, compassion concerns itself with the elimination of suffering.
And in and in particular, the the universal compassion that we’re seeking to develop concerns itself with alleviating the suffering of all living beings. You know, I think this is something that we which was touched on before in developing the the will to awaken and contacting our own problems, acknowledging them, being sensitive to them, willing to acknowledge them to ourselves if no one else. Very few people amongst us are sensitive to and are willing to acknowledge even to themselves the immense level of dissatisfactoriness that they experience in their life that permeates their lives. The human dilemma, the human condition in which we’re all bound up in and in which we all exist. And it seems that, you know, it it seems as if we were if we were not okay to feel this.
It’s not okay to to be too sensitive, to to to to acknowledge this in in a in a in an open fashion, the degree of the dissatisfaction of our lives. If, you know, if we if we were to feel too deeply and admit too openly the dilemma of ordinary human existence, it would not be okay. You know, it’s you know, not not being okay is not okay. It seems to be unacceptable in a society where at at demands that everything with few exceptions be continually okay. You know, if we’re not okay, we are somehow inadequate human beings and we should be ashamed of ourselves in some way or another, you know, for for not having our act together and causing all this trouble for everybody else.
Making a nuisance of ourselves because we’re not okay for one reason or another, and everybody should be okay. You know, as I think, you know, as skillful confronting of the fact of not okayness. I’m not okay and you’re not okay, but that’s okay. You know, is is that’s what behind maybe lies behind the the success of Alcoholics Anonymous. That’s one of their slogans, one of their basic slogan.
I’m not okay, you’re not okay, but that’s okay. We we can accept that. Maybe we can start to Delusions Anonymous. I’m not okay and you’re not okay. That’s okay.
But it’s not satisfactory. We’re not going quite leave it at that level. You know because of our lack of sensitivity to what we are actually experiencing and perhaps our unwillingness to acknowledge the dissatisfactory nature of our lives. And I hope I’m not being cynical or pessimistic or heavy handed about this. I don’t think I am.
Maybe I’m the only one that’s not okay. Sorry, I’m making a nuisance of myself like this. You know, to acknowledge the texture of our life. We, you know, we don’t, we never quite become serious about ending our pain because we never quite become sensitive sensitive to and acknowledge how it very much is associated with our lives. You know, we never really feel genuine compassion for ourselves.
That sounds strange, doesn’t it? And and and not having felt real compassion for ourselves, we’re never we we are never moved to implement the methods whereby to end the suffering of our lives, end our pain. But this holds and what holds equally terms of ourselves, holds equally true in terms of our relationships with others. Insensitive to and unwilling to acknowledge the level of their pain, we never really become serious about helping them to end their pain, their suffering. That is we never develop real compassion for others.
And if we don’t develop if we don’t aren’t willing to become sensitive too and stay with the creative tension and the this anxiety anxiety which it provokes and acknowledge the high degree of unmanageability and all that may be going wrong with our lives. And develop and allow that to operate upon ourselves in the course of developing real compassion for ourselves. So it’s a place where we’re actually moved by our own compassion for ourselves to do something about it in a very substantial and real way. And obviously we can’t do that for others. We will never really develop real compassion for others.
You know, an awareness of suffering, it’s acknowledgement of suffering and understanding of its nature and compassion and change are all inextricably linked together. Change only comes about to and here we’re talking about a course of change or constructive change, a sequence of change which takes you from through through through a series of steps of growth. It only comes about through a constellation of of necessities, you know, of where there’s some acute suffering or not or at least an awareness of suffering in our lives and a willingness to acknowledging it, acknowledge it, and some kind of understanding, gaining some kind of perspective on it, and having some kind of compassion, then perhaps maybe change will take place. They’re kind of inextricably connected. We are, know, we’ve all had the necessary life experiences.
Now we’ve all we all but we keep missing the lessons that these life experiences have the potential to bring us. You know, we’ve all had enough suffering, but it it it was taken unconsciously. This is why our suffering never really seems to lead anywhere. You know, our suffering becomes meaningless. It it it our suffering doesn’t have any value.
You know, where nothing is learned from it because we aren’t willing to be sensitive to and acknowledge it and try to understand it. You know, I’m okay. As if we can pretend even to ourselves that we’re not suffering. And therefore our suffering becomes meaningless. It serves no value in our growth.
It’s just an unwanted experience that we continually go through, nothing more. You know, to be aware of and to consciously acknowledge predicament will bring some kind of understanding. And with that, some kind of compassion. Compassion is an expression of the understanding of the heart, if you like. Some kind of wisdom of the heart.
And with that, some kind of some kind of creative power. You know, compassion is a power of the mind, of the heart of your life. Necessary for change to occur. And having some kind of compassion for ourselves is a necessary motivating force to to to can catalyze, which can bring about the change, which is the force behind the change that we’re seeking to make. And to begin correcting our mistakes.
In proportion to the power of our compassion, whether it’s directed outwardly toward others or whether it’s directed inwardly toward ourselves, we will grow and we will actualize more and more of our potential, you know, the measure of our human potential which this change can bring about. The compassion of the compassion of the universal vehicle, the universal compassion is is directed toward every sentient being. And this is significant because it represents this compassion directed toward every sentient being without exception represents the creative power by means of which we will actualize the fullest possible potential of human beings, and to say, will achieve highest awakening. It is only that, no other power which has that ability. You know, people talk about the power of love, the power of compassion.
It’s not only a literary notion or some kind of figurative way of speaking. It’s it is a real force in the universe. It is the only force which can remove the most subtle barriers within our minds which prevent complete awakening. No other force, no matter no will, no wisdom, nothing other than compassion directed toward all living beings can do that. If you in the world wish to gain highest awakening, its foundation is the awakened heart, firm like the king of mountains, Mount Meru.
Compassion reaching in all directions and wisdom transcending duality. So we’re talking about awakening, talking about the goal of as seen by the Buddhist path. This, you know, this happy, healthy, loving, seeing human being. And it has three fundamental causes. The awakened heart, universal compassion, and here it says non dual wisdom.
Essentially, the awakened mind. That things though existing do not inherently exist, which we are going to talk a great deal ad nauseam when we come to the awakened mind, the third aspect of the path. In our context, making it relevant to ourselves, this translates into simpler terms is that compassion is a fundamental and necessary component of mental health. If we say awakening or Buddhahood, we are saying mental health. We are saying well-being.
A being of great use greater use to yourself and to other people. And a necessary component of that is compassion. You know, if we we can’t avoid making that effort to to to develop It’s an it’s it is just as necessary to our our overall well-being. I mean, real well-being as the food that we eat for lunch. You know, we wouldn’t skip a meal, but we don’t develop compassion with the same feeling of necessity.
Maybe that’s just our lack of understanding at present. Initially, we talked about this before, in developing the will to awaken, it was necessary to awaken compassion for ourselves, to confront our and and understand the dissatisfactory quality of our own lives. And out of this deep awareness of our own suffering arises a determination to be free. The determination to implement the means to change our lives for the better, to change our minds, and therefore our lives, therefore our experience. So in the context of such an awareness of our own suffering, when we begin to confront the suffering of others, compassion arises for them and we develop a will to help them awaken, a will to help them, to assist them in implementing these methods, these these means in which to change their minds, to help them to grow, to experience a better quality of life.
So, you know, in in the will to awaken and the awakened heart, it’s very much the same attitude of mind. It’s simply directed toward two different objects. In the will to awaken, we direct we develop love and compassion, which is directed toward ourselves. We determine to grow, to develop ourselves. In the awakened heart, this this compassion and love is directed toward others, and we determine to help them to grow, to help them to awaken.
So the all that, you know, what we mentioned previously, you know, when we we have if we’ve never felt a genuine compassion for ourselves, knowing our, you know, our own pain and problems as we do directly within our lived experience, and still not develop that compassion, not to become sincere about wishing ourselves not to suffer. To to think ourselves worthwhile enough to to be worthy of our compassion. To to to that just simply because of who I am and what I’m experiencing, I I am deserving of my own compassion. You know, if we can’t develop that in terms of ourselves, then it would be foolish to think that we could develop toward others. You know, compassion is is is characterized by a sense of caring, a sense a feeling of concern about our own or another’s suffering.
You know, a feeling of involvement in someone else’s life, even in our own life in terms of our lived experience. A sense of connectedness with others. Ideally, this connectedness in this context is that of a mother and a child, and a respect for others. So some kind of positive regard toward others that affirms another’s value in and of for themselves. So it’s, you know, becoming sensitive to the consequences of what we say and what we do.
And how these how these what we say and do, how they alter the situation of another person. Awareness of of another person’s life, how another person’s life is affected by what we do, by what we say. And then and that awareness, because we’re going to begin to involve ourselves in the life of others. And so we have to begin to become aware that we can, in fact, significantly affect the life of others for better and worse. To to trying to begin to to use our capacity, our intelligence, our abilities, our resources to to in in helping to direct change in terms of others in alleviation of their suffering.
The implication is in all of this is that the more that I am, the more that we’re able to give, that we’re able to affect, that we’re able to do for others. And this motivates us to become more and more of what we can be. It’s the one it’s the in compassion, there is there’s a need to be effective to make a difference in that object of compassion to remove their suffering. You know, you you want to somehow make a difference to what’s to what’s being experienced. You don’t want it to remain the same.
So there’s when you begin to become sensitive that you can make a difference and to the degree of who you are in terms of your skills and your abilities, your understandings, who you who you are very much as a person. So in to that same degree, in proportion to our compassion, the power of our compassion, we will be want to become more and more of what our potential as a person can be. So in cultivating compassion, it’s necessary to consciously confront the fact of suffering in others’ lives. And in cultivating universal compassion, you need to confront the suffering of the fact of the universality of suffering. And that that is the suffering of all living beings.
So, you know, for most of us, this is contrary to our habitual way of relating, obviously. You know compassion is we all have some compassion which certain people at certain times are able to evoke within us. And most easily and naturally is evoked for most of us when we are presented with gross suffering. You know, example, see on the you’re watching the news and you see the emaciated little bodies of starving children on the television, you know, for example. You know, unless we’re completely desensitized, you know, we feel something when we see that, that image.
We we may feel annoyance or we may feel guilt. We may feel feel fear. It can evoke lots of various emotional responses in within us. But amongst those various feelings that may cross quickly through our mind, one of those feelings is probably compassion. I wish that this suffering not be happening.
That’s probably there at some point. So this is an uncomfortable feeling. Compassion is an uncomfortable emotion. And our normal reaction to it is to distract ourselves from from what is occurring, from what we are observing, from our own experience, to numb ourselves in some form or another. But in cultivating compassion, we must constantly try to keep our hearts open to stay with that uncomfortableness, to stay to confront other suffering and what it must mean for them and what it means for us.
You know, you know, you’re like visualizing visualizing this that little emaciated child staring expressionlessly. And, you know, this huge big eyes and the gaunt face. And and the there’s it’s like there’s almost existential death which occurs before the physical death. This is a this is a the eye is just staring out toward yourself. And this this little child is waiting to die.
This, you know, little creature, you know, is your own mother in the context of what we’re talking about at present. This little creature who’s on the verge of death is that’s your mother. And and then you you put your finger in their in their tiny little hand and let them hold on to you. And you and you feel the bond with with her, with your mother, and and a value in in that sense of of gratitude for all that she’s done for you. And now she’s dying.
And now she needs you most of all. All the kindnesses that she has shown you through all the many lifetimes. And you allow these these feelings to arise in you, a sense of of of tenderness, of of affection that you have for her, and a sense of, you know, how beautiful she appears to you. You know, this this aspiring love that we talked about. You know, like like like a like a how a child appears in its mother’s eye.
And allow her pain to come into your heart and begin to operate on you to to it’s like acid eating away at the cold shell that we’ve built around our heart over the course of our life for one reason or another. You know, you allow this pain of your mother and what is going on before you at this moment to affect you. You don’t remain unaffected by it. It’s not very pleasant to be affected in that way, but you stay with that. She doesn’t want to suffer, but she is suffering.
And you develop you don’t want her to suffer. Please don’t suffer. I wish you weren’t suffering. You know, I wish I wish you could be completely rid of this suffering. I wish you weren’t hungry.
I wish you weren’t sick. I don’t want you to suffer. You know? And then we we try you know, we work through these different levels of of love and compassion, you know, wishing. May she not suffer.
You know, you you come to some kind of stand, some kind of conclusion in your mind, some kind of determination of what it is in fact you want. It’s simply not wishful thinking. I don’t want you to suffer anymore. I don’t want you to be sick. And then you but as we as we do in in cultivating our our motivation at the beginning of our meditation session, you go on from that and there’s a a developed sense of resolve around this that you personally are going to get involved and make it so.
You know, you’re not going to be unobserving in what’s going on before you. I’m going to make it so. I’m going to do something. I’m going to take responsibility in alleviating the suffering, know, cultivating these attitudes. This this is this last level of compassion, this level of resolve is the first part of what we’re going to look at next, which is called intense resolve.
So, you know, in developing this ability toward a vast number of individuals going through these these uncomfortable feelings, working through them. You know, have it’s necessary to to develop it and then we have to practice. We have to custom, familiarize our mind to make such a way of thinking and feeling a habit. And our habit becomes our fate. We work with, as we’ve talked about previously in other meditation teachings, a spectrum as many different individuals one after another in all the various possible types of relationships that we could have with these individuals, trying to arouse this way of feeling toward them, this compassion attitude.
Otherwise, we might end up like a person who, you know, who our compassion for all sentient beings is like a form letter to whom it may concern. May you not suffer? It doesn’t really it’s not it doesn’t touch anything inside of ourselves, in fact. Compassion most is simply most is seeing another person’s suffering, even our own, and not wanting that suffering to continue. There’s a certain experience going on that we don’t want to continue.
Normally our compassion is limited. Usually it’s extended only to those people we like. But but also to those who are undergoing extreme suffering. You know, like the starving of Africa or or maybe the homeless people of Bangladesh. We can get into that a bit of that.
Maybe somebody who just had an accident or somebody who just had a great loss. Someone died in their family. No. We can. These are these these very powerful moving experiences do evoke compassion within ourselves.
But it, you know, but when people are laughing and singing, we we don’t feel compassion for them. And we might, on the contrary, might even feel jealous wishing we were laughing and we were singing. But but true compassion does not it doesn’t distinguish between peoples, whether they’re rich or poor, it or whether they’re laughing or crying because it is it’s coming from a place of wisdom. Understanding the human dilemma, which is which is the substrata of whatever is going on in this particular moment with this particular person, which they are is they are inextricably bound up in, the human condition, the human dilemma. Understanding the nature and the universality of suffering.
Universal compassion extending to all beings at all times. It’s universal. So Working through these various levels of compassion, wishing, determining, resolving. So the next step that we’re going to work with is when we come to intense resolve. You know, it’s it’s when we actually begin to to determine to get involved, to do something, to to take responsibility.
But it’s twofold in that way. We begin to look at whether in fact we can take responsibility. You know, it’s one thing to wish someone not to suffer and it’s very much another to actually have some abilities to alleviate their suffering. And so, you know, to at this point, we’ve developed a very powerful willingness and a resolve to work with others, all others at all times in numerous fashions, such that they not suffer, to to bring them happiness.
At some point, we have to look to ourselves and say, you know, can I actually deliver the goods? What can I do in fact? And this is where the we actually develop the aspiration to achieve awakening. You know, if, you know, it’s like sometimes it’s like I have, like, the image of, you know, like, you do a first aid course. That’s really useful, practically beneficial to people.
But this guy is just lying there on he just had a heart attack. He needs a needs a quadruple heart bypass. And you you know how to put a splint on. And you have this sincere wish it that it not be suffering. And maybe you maybe you you apply a splint, you know.
You do what you can, but that doesn’t alleviate the problem, You know? You know, if the more we are, the more we can actually benefit that we can, in a very practical fashion, do. And this becomes the motivating force behind our our our practice For them, for this quadruple bypass, I’ve gotta become a skilled surgeon. You know? Can you hold on for a couple of years?
I’ll be right I’ll be right back. But so but in this case, it’s for all of these living beings. Can you hold on while I become a Buddha or at least get my act together to where I can I won’t be adding to more into your confusion and suffering? I’ll be able to alleviate it slightly. So anyway, this is involves, this is what is involved in the next step, intense resolve.
So as usual, I didn’t get very far, but maybe that’s far enough. So we’ll dedicate and create a potential that we’ve accumulated together. In the land encircled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful, remain till 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, the awakened heart that has not arisen arise and grow. And may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more.