Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun opens by pressing a pointed question: is the Buddhist ideal of awakening a genuine possibility or merely religious fantasy and spiritual wishful thinking? He addresses this by presenting two competing metaphors for Buddha-nature — the gradual cultivation of a seed versus the unfolding of lotus petals to reveal a perfection already present and merely obscured — and works through a series of classical similes (gold in ore, treasure buried underground, a statue wrapped in dirty rags) illustrating how awakening lies hidden within every being. He then anchors the doctrine in lived experience, drawing on universal peak moments — music, connection, stillness — as foretastes of that awakened depth. The session closes with a refuge prayer and guided loving-kindness and breath meditation. Suited to practitioners with some familiarity with Buddhist concepts.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 21 HMA 1996 07 10.mp3
UUID: e9f80cce-8e37-4651-ba2b-7ffe77ea2ced
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-07-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.3 minutes
Words: ~5,080
So we we begin as we usually do in terms of this process of reorientating ourselves and checking up in terms of our priorities, getting back in touch with some of our our more deeply held values and ways of being which are important to ourselves, which but oftentimes we lose sight of in the course of what seems like the practical necessities of everyday life, you know, the demands which are made on us. We often get out of touch or lose sight of our ways of being and values and principles that perhaps we would rather see our lives an expression of. But for one reason or another, either perhaps through laziness or the force of habit or inauthenticity or hypocrisy or what we feel coerced into for one reason or another, we set aside such things. So, you know, this is a chance and opportunity to to stop speeding, stop distracting ourselves from ourselves, and just to get back in touch, to readjust our motivation, to make sure we’re heading in the direction that we would like to arrive. And we this process is, in a traditionally term, the process of going for refuge in terms of what is it that can actually work for ourselves in our life and bringing about what we want and ridding ourselves of those things that we don’t want.
What can actually afford some type of protections, some type of safe haven can shelter us from the fears of these reoccurring dysfunctional patterns of our of our minds and all of these pathologies of our lives, the suffering that we don’t want to experience, and the sacred thing that we’re all looking for in one way or another. And, you know, we’ve tried, you know, within the terms of the Buddhist conception, the Buddhist view, these objects are the Buddha, the Dharma, and the spiritual community. And we we’ve talked about what this might mean. You know, the mind is dynamic in its nature. It’s it’s it’s not a static fixed thing.
It’s it’s always in the process of movement towards and away. And we’re trying to, you know, if you if you can see that putting your hand in a flame is pleasurable for some reason or another, and this is an extreme example, then we shouldn’t be surprised that we’re continually being burnt. Sooner or later, we have to learn by our interaction with our environment, our actual experience. And through a process of feedback, we begin to see what doesn’t work, and we begin to readjust what actually we can expect to find pleasure from, what are sources of pain. Quite often, you know, we you know, it’s like raining, reality, but like tonight.
But just like water off a duck’s back, sometimes it doesn’t soak through. You know, we’ve all had the experience, but we continually are missing the lessons that life is continually bringing to ourselves or we dismiss the lessons or we lose sight of or we forget for one reason or another and are coerced into setting aside the various lessons that life has brought us. So we’re beginning trying to reestablish within our own actual lived experience to develop an awareness of possible alternatives, a conception of what, in fact, may where our happiness may, in fact, lie. So our mind begins to naturally tend to orientate itself in those directions and begins to move away from what we begin to see, perhaps if presently only vaguely, but hopefully more and more clearly where our suffering is originating from, the objects of refuge in terms of Buddha. And Buddha is simply someone who is awake.
And we briefly mentioned what we might mean by that, to sort of bring it down from an otherworldly notion to something which is more concrete and workable for ourselves. You know, in terms of wisdom, knowing things the way they are, clearly without deception, without distortion, without fantasy, without obscurations or prejudices. In terms of the feeling quality of an awakened heart, This love and compassion comparable to that of of a parent for their only child, but extended equally to all living beings. You know, a burning desire that all living beings be free of suffering, that they they find peace, and ultimately that they themselves awaken. In terms of a sense of personal power, a a mental, physical vitality, an intensity of being, a spiritual vitality, an inner strength of our being, some kind of presence about ourselves, about an awakened individual.
And finally, in terms of these creative transformations of this wisdom, this compassion, of this personal power in our daily life. Creatively being in and responding to the world, to the needs of others altruistically. So when we talk about awakening, you know, we’re talking about our orientation, an ultimate orientation for ourselves, an ultimate refuge for ourselves. We’re talking about the qualities of wisdom and love and compassion, personal power, and creative activity in the world and benefiting others. But I think if, you know, if we’re honest, which is difficult but tremendously necessary to be, we have to begin to question this notion about going for refuge to this awakened state.
And is this merely just some kind of religious fantasy? You know, some kind of delusions of grandeur about ourselves? You know, some kind of flight into imagination which has no relevance to where I’m actually at in my lived experience, in my real world. Are we just trying to make ourselves feel better, you know, distract ourselves from the pain of reality, the hardcore facts of life. This is just an opium for the masses, in other words.
Describing what Buddhism does describe as being a radically alternative approach to life, to the living of life, are we simply trying to impose upon ourselves some kind of artificial, prescriptive way of being. Just another way of performing for someone else or somebody else or some values and standards which are artificial to ourselves, which aren’t organic to ourselves, which we’re trying to impose like some kind of spiritual straight jacket upon ourselves. It is something which is completely otherworldly without relevance to ourselves and how actually experience our life. Or is there some kind of practical relevance to all of what we’re talking about? And we talk about awakening as an ultimate refuge.
Now, we all have some wisdom, some knowledge, some experience of reality, however profane and however obscure that wisdom and knowledge may be. We all have some feelings of love, compassion, however limited, however exclusive our love and compassion may be. We all have some power, some kind of energy, mental and physical vitality to our being, however weak and unrefined that energy might be. We all have some skill and means, some creative transformations, altruistically involving ourselves in the world of others in terms of our wisdom, in terms of our love and personal power, however unspontaneous, imprecise the expressions of our helping, working with others might in fact be. The point in saying all this is, therefore, we all have the element of awakening within each one of ourselves.
We all have the potential. Each and every one of us, whether we feel it to be the case, whether we believe it to be the case, whether we acknowledge it or not, is a Buddha to be. You know, the seeds of of consummate wisdom, of love and compassion, of personal power, and their altruistic activities expressed in the world are present within every one of us right now. You know, there’s no one we have to ask. There’s no one we need to pray to.
There’s there’s nothing that we need to to acquire them. You know, they’ve always been there with inside of ourselves, with inside of our own mind. You know, the the notion that that Buddhahood is a is a birthright. You know, beyond all our the various conceptions that we have about ourselves, you know, the various identities that we hold to, the notion of who, in fact, we are, And all the various ups and downs, all the various moments of clarity and moments of confusion in the course of our life, our feelings of confidence in ourselves, feelings of uncertainty about ourselves, feeling good about ourselves, feeling bad about ourselves, and whether we feel adequate or inadequate, and whether we like ourselves or dislike ourselves. You know, this constantly churning waves on the ocean of our life.
Beneath all of that, at the depth of our being, where resides our original face, you know, is that basically, you know, unchanging and unchanged, we are caring, decent, intelligent human beings. That we have all of the resources to solve our problems, to develop the seeds of our wisdom, the seeds of our love and compassion, our personal power, and to begin to express these creatively as altruistic activities in our lives. That is to say, you know, we have all have the seeds, the potential, the capacity to solve our problems at the most fundamental level, to find the sacred in our life, to become a Buddha, whatever you want to call that. You know, it doesn’t matter what term we might apply. There just is no qualitative difference between ourselves and Buddhas.
You know, there’s no unbridgeable gulf between them and us. Nothing beyond which we are not akin. You The only difference between Buddhas and all of these beings which are iconographically depicted around us, these ideals of perfection of the human evolution, the only difference between them and ourselves is one of degree and not of kind. You know, these happy, healthy, loving, tremendously sane human beings, It’s just a matter of nurturing the seeds inside of ourselves to where they eventually flower into awakening. There’s that and nothing more.
There’s nothing different. There’s nothing more. But, you know, talking in this way about the nurturing of a seed and having a flower, that’s that’s like a metaphor which describes how we can progress along the path, you know, going from potential to actuality. But there’s another metaphor which I think is quite useful, especially in moments when we’re feeling inadequate, when we’re feeling depressed and not feeling good about ourselves. Another metaphor, which we can use in in answering our concerns about the existence and relevance of the state of awakening.
Which sees awakening not in terms of the cultivation of a seed, but the unfolding of a perfection which preexistently resides inside of all of ourselves. It’s like an image of petals of a lotus opening up, revealing deeply hidden within them ourselves as Buddhas who we already are. There’s nothing that needs to be developed. There’s no path to be traveled, Only the making manifest of what is already perfect with inside of ourselves, what is already complete and pure, but presently lies obscured with inside of our own minds. You know, it’s a different notion, a different way of approaching the same principle, the same idea.
It is not because awakening is far away or extremely near or because it moves here and there, but because it lies shrouded in veils of mental afflictions. And by mental afflictions, I mean simply the qualities of patterns of mind such as ignorance and attachment and hatred and pride and jealousy. But because it lies shrouded in veils of mental afflictions, that it remains unrealized. The awakening, using this metaphor of a lotus, is not simply a progressive development over a series of stages gradually developing over time. But it’s an unveiling, the notion of the coming to full conscious awareness and integration of some of a primordial perfection existing within us right now, but which presently lies hidden even to ourselves.
And looking at some similes of how it lies hidden, like a Buddha in a muddy lotus, honey covered by bees, grain in its husk, gold in ore, treasure hidden beneath the earth, a bean in its pod, a statue in dirty rags, a future king carried in the womb of an ugly hag, a precious object buried in the ground. Similarly, the element of those thus gone, the Buddha’s, abides in all beings, obscured by adventitious stains of mental afflictions. You know, I I there’s another way that this can be put and perhaps in more in ways which might be more accessible to ourselves in terms of our Western ways of thinking. We can look at the geography of the psyche and understand the religious life in a new way. It is the same religious faculty but approached with a different language.
We see that this ego, this so called conscious mind, is like an island in a vast ocean of psyche. Out there in the ocean of being, outside the limits of the ego’s world and beyond what it knows or can see are the missing parts of our total selves. We are psychological beings. The greater portion of our totality is not physical but psychic, and most of that is unconscious. Contrary to our popular notion of psychology, the unknown and unconscious parts of our totality greatly exceed the conscious parts.
We do not find our sentient beings, wholeness, or fulfillment within this tiny ego world. And they’re trying to gain some connection between what we’re talking about and our own actual lived experience. And then to see if there’s actually if it’s more than simply an intellectual notion, simply more than a story dreamed up, a fantasy. But does it actually connect with our own actual experience? You know, in in our life’s finest moments, during its those rare and fleeting moments, those peak experiences in our life, we in a very in limited but very real way experience a foretaste of what awakening must be like, what awakening, what enlightenment must be like.
You know, whatever we want to call this state, you know, these experiences that we’ve all had, maybe only briefly and rarely over the course of our life, but they begin to point at least in that direction. You know, they begin to point to another order of being, another possibility which lies just beneath the surface of our minds. You know, moments of freedom and openness, of clarity and freshness, of power, and intensity at the center of our being, and moments of awe and reverence and wonder, you know, of of an experience of some sacredness in our lives, you know, noble moments full of of dignity and undreamed of courage, your moments of vision and insight, know, wordless understandings and profound wisdom. And your creative moments filled with filled with with an exhilaration bringing something new into the world. Moments of rapture when, for example, you’re carried away by music, moved by the arts.
Moments of self forgiveness when sharing in the enchanted world of a child. Know, joyous moments when we’re deeply touched by another human being, when we touch someone else and are touched by them. You know, moments of of union with the beloved, of communion with others, with the world, with nature, with the universe. You know, moments when the world reaches deeply into ourselves and we into it, you know, a sense of a feeling of oneness, a wholeness about ourselves in the world, you know, a sense of of deeply felt peace when nothing more needs to be added to life, when when all that is before us is enough, you know, just to see colors or to to hear sounds, to to feel the textures of things. It’s enough just to be alive, you know, just just to be.
When moments when in the restless you know, this restless struggle that we’re all involved in, when in this restless search, we find a moment’s rest, you know, when we find, if only just for a moment, what we’re constantly looking for in our life. It’s a very sweet feeling, he said, very sweet and easy and peaceful. I am grateful to each moment for being itself. I feel so contented like I’m at home after a long, hard journey, just as warm and peaceful as a cat by a fire. And this was exactly how he looked at that moment, like a cat asleep on a chair at peace, in peace, and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress home in the house of the living, sleeping on the hearth and yawning before the fire.
Sleeping on the hearth of the living world, yawning at home before the fire of life, feeling the presence of the living God like a great reassurance, a deep calm in the heart, the presence, as if the master is sitting at the board in his own greater being in the house of life. And moments, this transcending, all full of vast feelings, you know, great meaning. And we’ve all had some such moments in the course of our life, you know, if only few and if only briefly. And and though these moments are rare and though these experiences are fleeting, they do occur. And that we’ve all if only limited and if only for moments, and if only a few times in the course of our life, experienced these moments.
And they point to something beyond themselves, to some kind of dimension of depth and mystery at the core at the root of our lives, you know, to something dwelling close beneath the surface of our own minds, you know, of of other possibilities, radical other possibilities, another order of being, which in the Buddhist context we call awakening. Aside from the self validating nature of these experiences, they also hold for us that rather than becoming something that we are not, awakening is becoming more and more and more of something that we already are. The unfolding of a perfection, the unfolding of an awakened presence at the center of our being, which we glimpse from time to time, which we we have fleeting intimations of a few times, a few moments in our life. So acknowledging and responding authentically to the message of such moments constitutes a journey of opening that needs some training and some discipline. So, you know, if we use the you can think of this in terms of metaphor of a seed being cultivated.
And we we need to nourish those seeds. We need to nourish the seeds of wisdom and love and compassion within ourselves and our personal power and begin to find ways of of more to express them, transform them in altruistic activity and working with others and benefiting the world. But we can also think of the process of this journey in terms of the other metaphor, the unfolding of the petals of a lotus, you know, revealing an awakened presence, a perfection that’s always been there. But in this context, the discipline and the training is more of of a removal of obscurations. You know, removing the obstacles preventing the continuous and unimpeded expression of our awakened being.
And so, you know, this becomes our motivation. You know, these This becomes our inspiration behind our journey. It’s too easy to dismiss. It’s so easy to become lost and think that what we experience in our mundane existence is all there is. You know, we we our society places very little value on these moments.
They don’t quite fit into our world view. We don’t know quite what to make of them. How are we to respond to them? So they’re lost. These most important, these most intense moments of our lives, have little place for ourselves and little place within our society.
So I think it’s important if if somehow all of what we talk about is to find some kind of emotional relevance, some kind of connection with our own feelings and experience, We have to go beyond the intellect and the rational and see how our own limited experiences are reflecting, if only in a in a vague and obscure way at present, what it is that we’re struggling for, why we’re on this path, and why we’re trying to make this journey, what it is we’re actually searching for, what the sacred might be. And perhaps then, you know, it all becomes that much more meaningful. We find some resources to to carry on, some greater purpose in our life. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha. It becomes just this experience of awakening in all that in all the ways that it’s it is termed intellectually, but also in terms of how we experience it in these feelings.
And we try to you know, the process involves some discipline, involves some training. Some way we we we can involve ourselves in the process. We can there’s some kind of evolution, conscious evolution that we can direct ourselves along, the dharma. And this process occurs within the social context of the spiritual community. You know, those who are on the same journey as ourselves, who assist us in the process, who assist us in our training and our discipline.
And we try to raise the level of motivation, you know, why we’re involved in this process, such that it becomes something greater than our individual selves, that trying to, you know, go beyond this island of ego, not only in terms of our own mind, but in terms of this of the society of minds, which we’re all an integral part of. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I 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 until awakening. To 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 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. Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech, mind, present clouds of every type of offering that is 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 has ended and turn the wheel of Dharma for living beings.
I dedicate the skillful actions of myself and others to the great awakening. So we’re gonna meditate. Everyone, would you like to stand up for a moment and stretch your legs? So we’re just going to continue with the mindfulness of breathing and also make use of the technique of practicing choice less awareness. So we’ve talked about the bodily posture in terms of the sevenfold posture.
Sometimes it’s termed eight. You know, there is one particular Buddha called Vairochana, who is said to be the expression of the purification of the aggregate or the aggregate of the body. And and he is particularly used as a model for for the meditation posture. And it’s it’s spoken of as a sevenfold or sometimes eightfold posture of Vairochana, Vairochana. So we’ve talked about, you know, the sitting either in the cross legged position, either in terms of lotus or half lotus or just cross legged, works for you, or on a chair.
And if you’re on a chair, putting your perhaps putting your feet flat on the ground and not crossing your legs. And just so that the blood is able to circulate, but most importantly, you have a sense of stability in your posture, which is going to reflect the attitude of your mind. And then the hands in terms of the traditional placing of the hands in Tibetan Buddhism, the right is over the left. The thumbs are touching, and the thumbs are about the level of the navel. And we place the hands about three fingers below the navel.
But approximately, you can simply place your hands in your lap or, you know, if it’s comfortable, put your hands on your knees. But some again, some some sense of symmetry, a sense of purposefulness in your posture. Then the back straight, perhaps most important, like a coin stacked one upon the other, where the vertebrae are stacked one upon the other in a column. It’s able to, you know, support a a column is able to support a great deal of weight. The weight moves down into the ground.
If there’s a slight bending forward or a bending back, then you’re going to have to employ more muscles in order to maintain an upward posture, to maintain your trunk upward. And therefore, you’re going to get sore muscles, a sore back. So just keeping your back straight in terms of this column of vertebrae, one on top of the other, like a stack of coins. And slightly bowing the neck, bringing the chin slightly in. That’s a slight pressure on the Adam’s apple.
The tongue is the tip of the tongue is placed where the hard palate and the upper teeth meet. The the teeth are held in a natural position, not clenched. The mouth is closed. Generally, the eyes, and, again, this is according to what works best for you, you might want to try keeping the eyes open. But when we say open, it’s not that they’re not wide open, but there’s a slight a slight slit of light that’s allowed to enter the eyes.
So the eyes are held just barely open. And they’re positioned such that if you were looking, you would be looking along the sides of your nostrils or a point perhaps a meter in front of you or three quarters of a meter in front of you. And then the seventh that’s seven. And then the eighth, when we talk about the eighth full posture of Vairochana, is mindfulness of breathing, which is what we’re going to be doing, and making use of the techniques of counting and noting the breaths. So if you take a comfortable firm position.
And I think it’s important to to you know, our intention to have the intention that the moment I become aware that my mind is strayed, it’s wandered, I’m going to bring it back. Eventually, it will require no conscious effort to bring your mind back. It will begin to come back of itself. Once the awareness has taken notice that the mind is no longer in the breath, it will it will automatically come back to the breath. And this is this will happen if we’ve created the causes which are similar to that.
That is, if we, in fact, continue bringing the mind back to the breath and having the quality of intention that the moment I realize that my mind, I’m aware that my mind has wandered from the breath, no matter what it is. That very moment that I become aware, I’m going to bring the mind mind back to the breath. You know, this is like our work at this moment. You know, we said that this unfolding process, this the the journey requires some some discipline and training. And this is part of the discipline which seems to be quite necessary.
You know, part of the training which is needed. So having the intention that the moment I become aware that my mind is wandering to bring it back to the breath, just the the natural in and out of the breath using techniques of counting and noting that that’s useful. So taking a comfortable, firm purposeful posture. And we’re going to make use of in term in terms of cultivating love and compassion, just someone that a stranger, someone that you that you don’t know, particularly. But, again, someone who is who is appealing to you.
There’s certain you feel good about them in terms of they they are attractive to you. You might like to get to know them better with that kind of quality about them, in terms of their physical or something about them in terms of their presence. But something attractive, appealing about them. So try to to think of such a person that perhaps you come across in your daily life and using that person to work in the development of love and compassion. So first, getting in touch with the body and noticing any tensions, any tightnesses in your body, especially in the in the shoulders and neck, the upper back.
Bringing your awareness to those areas and consciously relax ing and softening. Stretching the tension moving down and out to the ground. Body becoming relaxed, comfortable. Feels feels good. Call to mind this this person that we’re going to make use of, we’re going to work with in the development of love and compassion.
A stranger, but someone who appears appealing to you. Just imagine this person in front of you. Just feel it there there. And first try to generate just a simple friendly thought. It’d be wonderful if you didn’t have any problems.
I wish you didn’t suffer. So if you can just feel that friendliness toward this person, feel connected and caring about them. May you not suffer. It’s like making some kind of determination what it is that you want about this person. You don’t want them to suffer.
I’m going to help you commit myself in working with you to solve your problems, alleviate your suffering. And then love, beginning with a friendly thought. Wonderful if you were happy. I wish you happiness. May you be happy.
I’m going to help you to be happy. The way I’m going to express this commitment to you at this present moment is through my meditation, by developing myself, my abilities, my skills, my understanding. And eventually, I can be of real and significant benefit. I can really help you. I can fulfill my commitment.
So in a way, if only indirectly at present, I’m gonna meditate for you. This is for you. And then bring your mind to breath just easily in an outflow of the natural breath. It’s helpful using technique of counting and noting the breaths.