Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 40-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun takes a single opening line from Je Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path — “Homage to the foremost holy lamas” — and shows how four words quietly encode the entire structure of the Buddhist path. After a brief guided meditation on posture and mindfulness of breathing, he explains Buddhist lineage through an extended analogy: entering it resembles becoming a physicist, absorbing a worldview through practice until something suddenly clicks. He then unpacks three practitioner scopes hidden in the homage: limited capacity (motivated by karma and the relationship between actions and consequences), middling capacity (seeking to exit saṃsāra altogether), and vast capacity (extending concern to all beings). Goal-setting across different time horizons serves as a running practical illustration throughout.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 20 HMA 1996 07 03.mp3
UUID: f742585d-d21d-4c02-9782-f01c7dfbbdaa
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-07-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 40.0 minutes
Words: ~5,600
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 about ourselves. So it’s a matter of using your imagination. You know, imagination is not something which is which should be something which is the domain of artists or or children. The world begins with imagination. You know, who we want to begin, who we want to be begins in imagination.
So working with that, you know, actually, you know, taking it, being sincere about it, maybe even serious, but not solemn, just say it. So anyway, I’ll lead you through that meditation. Okay, we’ve been just a word about posture perhaps. Maybe 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 palate, the tongue, the tip of the tongue placed where the hard palate meets the top teeth. Enough, closed, the teeth resting one upon the other, not clenched nor open.
In the Tibetan tradition, in terms of the legs and 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 posture would be simply the half lotus or the half vajra where the left foot is placed under the right thigh and the left instep and the right foot is placed on the left thigh. Okay?
So the right over the left. And the hands. But also, you know, by all means, if you just want to cross your legs. You know, when you’re watching television or something at home, you can practice sitting on the floor and beginning to open your pelvis, and your knees will eventually begin to come down. You know, most of our knees are perhaps sticking up straight up in the air.
It’s not the usual posture for ourselves in the west. So you can practice at other times. But, you know, it’s something useful to work towards. But by all means, if it’s useful, it’s comfortable just 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, so that the flow of the you won’t be restricting the blood flow. So feet 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, the right is placed upon the left. The thumbs are touching. This is said to facilitate the flow of the winds along 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 don’t know if you noticed. 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, if you want to just place your hands on your knees in some comfortable manner. But the idea of posture is there’s 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 a psych there’s the psychology of the posture and that the attitude that we that our posture our posture is a statement of, you know, a purposive a posture a statement about a sense of groundedness, a sense of taking control, a sense of, you know, being present. You know, all of these qualities these are, you know, perhaps abstract ideas, but they but they they’re real even though they might even they might be somewhat intangible. We might not come across them every day of our life. But they still just have 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 being some 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 a groundedness of being present. Using techniques of counting and noting. I’m sorry.
Maybe maybe we won’t do that other the other meditation. We’ll just do mindfulness of breathing. Okay? Is that okay? Okay.
So taking a purpose of comfortable posture. And we’re going to work with, again, an individual who that you love a great deal, that 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, and 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 to as a as an object for him to develop love and compassion as a motivation for our meditation. So first, get in touch with the body.
And the other thing, 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 extent in Tibet and commentated on them and and tried to find the essence of his various practices to the extent where he actually founded a a tradition of of Tibetan Buddhism, which is called the Ganden sect. Ganden means virtuous, 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, Indian master Atisha. And so, you know, this has come down to ourselves in an unbroken lineage. You know, maybe I was going to mention the significance of that in terms of what we’re looking at in the text, the very very first line where he talks about and his offering of praise. Homage to the foremost holy lama. Sometimes it says all.
So homage to all the foremost and holy lamas. It’s a very short text, it actually has a 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. Know, generally in many of the traditional texts, praise is offered or homage is offered.
Has, in a general significance, is 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. Now there there is in terms of our ability to create positive actions, skillful actions, the most significant basis and we can create actions toward different types of objects. We 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 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 ah.
Does it say ah? No. Actually, it can be ah, but anyway, it’s definitely plural. And the significance of lamas. So paying homage not not just to one’s own immediate spiritual master, lama or guru, but to our lama’s lama or our our teacher’s teacher and his or her teacher’s teacher going back in an unbroken lineage, continuity, 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 this painting over the Buddha is meant to represent. This idea of of, you know, the the continuum of of a world 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, this it’s sometimes referred to as a like a disciplinary matrix. You know, there’s there’s a the Buddha developed a model of the universe and a way of being in the world.
And he he sought to communicate this to others to to so that they could integrate this into themselves, into their mind, and they became part of this lineage. This there’s a community of commitment to a particular worldview, a way of being in this world, a way of approaching so with certain values and certain beliefs, what is meaningful, and how how more skillfully to relate with the world and to be in the world. All 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 this this view of the world 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 actual historical individuals who 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. And this the idea of of the continuity of worldview, of a continuum of worldview is not is not particular there’s not anything particular to Buddhism or religious tradition. It’s something which is quite common in terms of for example, you know, there there is a a tradition of physics, a tradition of biology. You know, when you when you enter you try to enter into the world of a physicist, you know, way they the way they look at things, the way they think about things, you know, like the like the quantum physics quantum physicists. You you begin to learn their language, their you know, how they conceive of the world and how the world operates.
And it takes a long time to become accustomed to something something 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 so the examples that exemplify the view and methods of a discipline. You do a lot of problems and still have them 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, can say, I have become a physicist.
So the way this is the same way that one becomes a biologist or a medical student or an astronomer or a psychologist. They go go through the same 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. Okay.
And to find out what begin to comprehend, to be able to have that about what perhaps the world Buddhist world view might be. So actively participating in the world view 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 into it. 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 might not be we might not be terribly conscious of, but we might not be able to articulate. Nevertheless, we we our life is is lived out in the context of that world view, you know, for better or worse. So we’re trying to develop to to integrate a more skillful worldview such that our our relationship with the world and how we be in the world is no longer problematic. You know, 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 are open to ourselves. So the word of the 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 the Buddhist worldview is concerned.
Homage to the foremost holy lamas. You know, also this line, you know, it’s it’s interesting. Sometimes it’s know, that all of all of the Buddha taught a hundred there’s a hundred and eight volumes of his teachings that he that he gave over forty five year period, forty five years period. And he said they can be condensed down to the word om. And then, you know, sometimes you hear Lama, they begin to give a commentary on the syllable om.
It could go for days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months and months. Anyway, so we’re in a Homage to the foremost holy lamas? What what all of this means? That’s interesting what what so few words the import, the significance that such a few words might 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 or three capacities of being. Limited, sometimes called small, small, limited, middling, and great or vast. So limited, middling, and vast perspectives. You know, our capacities, scopes of of different types of individuals, rough categorizations. You know, with the the one’s individual’s abilities to conceive of their goal in terms of responsibility and time.
The the of our perspective that which we we which we can deal with. You know, people have a you know, they have a great need for immediate goal gratification. They have to have it right now. You know, this is, you know, one mark of what we say as a mature person, someone who can who can forego forego immediate goal gratification. Like, you know, some some high school students, they they maybe they want a car, they want a flat, and they they they drop out of school, and maybe they’re able to get a job.
You know, bussing tables may be very difficult these days, but maybe they can get a job. And they can more or less get what they wanted. They immediately gratify what their wants, their desires. They’re not able to see that if they were to continue, you know, through matric or if they were to continue on past that with 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 be that much increased, that they would probably be able to find a more interesting, more more stimulating types of work, more more that the quality of their life would generally be improved if they were willing to to forego 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 like the same applies here in terms of these these three levels of perspective, in terms of responsibility, in terms of of time. You know, anyone who’s, you know, most okay. Immediately, even in the limited, most narrow sense, anyone who’s limited in growth, as I’ve said, necessarily must take responsibility for themselves, for their own well-being. You know, 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. You know, 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, you know, 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 thing sometimes our goal seems something far fetched and abstract and, you know, far off in the distance and rather vague and not much relevance to ourselves. You wanted to be, for example, a doctor, you you might might you would necessarily have to study physics and math. You might have no interest in math and physics at all.
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 know, you’d never persevere and gain the necessary knowledge that you need which would go on to help you to develop more interesting values, and, you know, more interest in occupation. What those, you know, help you to improve the quality of your life. You you would simply never study math and physics by themselves in isolation from any, you know, if you only saw them in themselves. But once they become then once they are seen as like a necessary prerequisite 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. Now we can I’ll read you. So, you know, this one 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 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. To 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, that we wouldn’t which in isolation might not hold any value to ourselves, but which are seen as a prerequisite or an indispensable step towards something that in fact we might want for ourselves. Not in ends 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 lamas, 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 unskillful in the future. So, you know, they they they are no longer controlled by their desire for immediate goal gratification.
You know, they’re some kind of perspective on their life. You know, there’s some kind of purpose of quality in in the way that they view things. You know, they’re they’re willing to forego unskillful actions, understanding that they’re going to have negative consequences in the future. You know, they begin they’re broadening their perspective and the ramifications of what they’re doing, what these what these what consequences, what results they’re 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 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. You people forego, you know, when people save up in superannuation, for example, or just 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 something something some greater goal perhaps. And so, you know, this is the same the same idea only extended in terms of not in terms of length of time. You know, that that the being of limited perspective is willing to forego certain pleasures in order to experience greater pleasures in the future, is 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. You know, like here, it’s just a matter of that the rather than money, it’s a currency of cause and effect, you know, the 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, you know, we can’t it’s difficult for us it a mark of maturity, we would say, to be able to forgo to be able to 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 not you might be living you 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 to 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 life times.
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, what what cyclic existence, saṃsāra. That is to say, you know, this problematic approach to life in general that 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. And that there’s within cyclic existence, there’s nothing worth having, nothing worth becoming, nothing worth being. Therefore, they’re they’re not cons they’re no longer they want to opt out of the whole system altogether. This becomes their perspective.
They they they 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 the 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, irregardless of others. This brings us to the perspective of the being is denoted by the word Lama. This is to say that a being of vast perspective or great scope.
You know, 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 of responsibility. So, you know, it’s interesting that the word you know, we’ve talked I’m sorry.
It’s getting late, isn’t it? I’ll just finish off this sentence. Maybe There’s only it’s a very short text, really. Lama. You know, I’ve talked a lot about lama.
And the the Tibet 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 of less a title but 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’s 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 like the lama is seen as the ultimate mother of all sentient beings. And he’s seeking to to alleviate the suffering of all sentient beings like like our own mother. So the three perspectives.
So homage to the foremost holy lamas is not only appraised, 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 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 this 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 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 in terms of responsibility, from the narrow scope of consuming ourselves only with ourselves, to expanding our perspective in this sense, our responsibility to take on the greater and greater wider concern of others.
Okay? I think we made it through the first sentence. So we dedicate, you know, the creative potential that we’ve accumulated together. You know, I mean, you know, this creative some kind of energy that we’ve some potentiality of mind that’s been imprinted on our consciousness. We can we can sort of direct that.
We can give it any direction that we wish and it will facilitate if we’ve created the the the substantial causes, the development of whatever it is that we want. You know, it will it will assist. You know, there’s there’s this in this infallible relationship between causes and effects that, you know, 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 dedicate it for something which lies beyond our own egos, our own immediate goal gratifications, our new ideas of 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. In 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, remain until the