Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using the image of an ant in a parking lot — seconds from being crushed, unaware that climbing a car wheel would carry it to a sunny hillside meadow — Ven Jampa Gendun argues in this 40-minute session that options without awareness yield no real freedom. The commentary turns on verse four of Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path: “leisure and fortune are difficult to find.” Gendun first clarifies that the “will to awaken” means renouncing compulsive patterns of ignorance and self-centredness, not family or job, then works through the traditional eight freedoms and ten fortunes that together define a precious human life. He draws on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to show that basic material security must precede spiritual aspiration, and closes by tracing the cause of human rebirth to ethics — to having acted humanly in past lives.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 22 HMA 1996 07 10.mp3
UUID: 407694b7-9f7e-410d-a73e-b847ecd040b8
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: 40.6 minutes
Words: ~4,786
If you’re counting, then stop counting. If you’re noting, continue to note. If you’re not noting, then try noting the breaths. Note the in and the out of the breath. Now we’re going to allow the mind to become involved in any object that naturally tends toward, but continue to note.
So just allow the mind to become involved in any object that it wishes to, that it naturally tends to. Put a gentle note in. Thinking, hearing, feeling, sensing. Just a quiet, gentle watchfulness. Attentiveness to what the mind is involved in.
Just try to stay awake. Stay aware. Keep watching. Noting. Stay awake.
Stay away. And then bringing the mind back to the breath, just the easy, gentle flow of the breath, noting the breath. Slowly becoming aware of your body. Just feeling your body posture, physical sensations in your body. Gentle and relaxed manner, slowly becoming aware of what’s going on about you.
Don’t hurry. Just take your time. It’s interesting about, you know, quite often in in The format of of teaching. There is a great deal of emphasis that is put on transmission, that there’s some kind of passing of some kind of potency with regard to the teaching down from the originator of the teaching. In terms of Buddhism in general, that would be Śākyamūni Buddha, the historical Buddha.
But even with specific teachings, In terms of myself and and talking about this this teaching on the three principal aspects of the path Tsongkhapa, you know, I’ve had a number of teachings of various masters, various qualified teachers. Both but interestingly, both not only in the Tibetan tradition. The for example, the abbot of Namgyal Monastery, the monastery of his holiness, the Dalai Lama. And, Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, an excellent meditation master who spent some time in the United States. But even over and above the Tibetan, highly qualified masters that I received this teaching from.
I received it from two westerners, which I think is quite has a lot to say upon maybe that Buddhism is slowly finding its way to the west. I’ve been taught this by professor Jeffrey Hopkins and professor Robert Thurman many number of years ago when I lived in Dharamsala in Northern India. So I think that’s that’s maybe that’s the significance to that, having you’d say, this teaching from two westerners to two other westerners. Part of the the transmission of the Dharma from Tibet to to the to the west. So the three principal aspects of the path by Je Tsongkhapa, the fourteenth century yogi scholar of Tibet, who was the founder of the Gelug tradition.
There are four main traditions. There are a number number of subsects, sub traditions, but overall four traditions within Tibetan Buddhism, the Nyingma, the Kagyu, the Sakya, and also the Gelug tradition, and which was the most recent of these four. And it was founded by Je Tsongkhapa, who’s who’s the central figure in in the painting over the Buddha. And we said that the text, even though it’s quite short, it’s quite profound and extensive as it can be in terms of the explanation. And it has various divisions, ways of looking and ways of sort of entering into, being able to access the teaching.
It has the three overall divisions of the prologue, then the main body of the text, then the epilogue, summation. Then we finish the prologue, the various homages and directing ourselves at who who who it is that we’re going to teach this text to and and what are what are we going to teach in terms of three principal aspects of the path, the will to awaken, the awakened heart, and the awakened mind. And then there’s the body of the text. And this is the actual teaching itself in terms of setting up these three principal aspects. And then, in terms of developing the first of these Three Principal Aspects of the path, developing the will to awaken, and this is my translation term for what it literally translates as definite arising.
It has two syllables, and to actually take them literally would be definite emergence, to definitely emerge out of cyclic existence, if you like. It’s quite usually translated as renunciation. If anything, we are seeking to renounce the causes of our suffering. And sometimes it’s translated as determination to awaken or determination to be free, to be free of these recurring, these compulsive dysfunctional patterns of our minds and the pathologies of our lives. I just I just find it meaningful for myself to use this, and I think it’s justified to to use this translation term of the will to awaken.
By will, I mean, the organizing of our mental capacities in a particular direction, and that direction is to awaken, to awaken from the sleep of ignorance, the dream of ego, if you like, to wake up, and to transcend delusion illusion that we live in. So in development of the will to awaken, you know, it’s something that it’s not something that we have automatically, but it is something that we can methodically create, that we can develop it. You know, in developing this renunciation, it’s not that we aren’t to renounce our families or our job. You know, it’s not a matter of renouncing something outside of ourselves. What is to be renounced, what is to be given up are these dysfunctional patterns within our own mind, most basically ignorance and self centeredness.
And so we have to develop a real longing, a real determination to to begin to interrupt these these negative patterns which keep reoccurring, these tendencies of our mind, of our present way of thinking and behaving. And some kind of real intention is necessary, you know, to become really serious about this beyond a mere intellectual curiosity or or a sense of how nice it would be, but actually making it some sort of deep necessity in our life to be that I really have to wake up. I I don’t want to continue in this way any longer. I’ve had enough. That kind of thinking, that attitude of mind.
So Tsongkhapa, in his presentation of the means, the causes for developing this will to awaken, divides the training into two, emphasis on the present state of existence and then emphasis on future state of existence. And so in terms of the present state of existence, it’s contained in verse number four where he says, Leisure and fortune are difficult to find, and life has no duration. Through familiarity with this, emphasis on the appearances of this life is reversed. So, you know, this is what we’re going to begin to look at. Development of the will to awaken in terms of our present existence.
You we have a basis. This has been somewhat emphasized before in terms of what is the basis of awakening. If we don’t have a sense that we have a basis of awakening, if we don’t have a sense that there is a real goal to be achieved, then we can never develop a sincere will wish to, in fact, awaken. And there’s always something that’s not there, either a sense of insufficiency in terms of I don’t have the basic cause or that our emphasis or our orientation is still in terms of finding the good life outside of our own minds. Or there is no real goal that we’re working toward.
It’s just a vague notion, the kind of feel good, fuzzy feeling that we have about what it is that we want, but it’s never quite clear to ourselves. In either case, we won’t get very far. So we have a basis for awakening. That is to say, we try to understand that we have a Buddha nature, you know, that that there is an intrinsic purity to our our minds and an instinct toward wakefulness itself, that we have a basic sanity about ourselves, that we are intelligent, caring, decent people, but we have some dysfunctional patterns which obscure this basic goodness about ourselves. Now this is what we’re working with.
This is the foundation that’s already present within our mind, and we’re simply beginning to work from there to find means of expressing it and cultivating and developing it. But not only do we have the inner basis, but it’s also necessary to rely upon the external basis in terms of we’ve emphasized the necessity for relying upon a spiritual master, someone who is going to lead us in this process, who is going to show us, guide us along our spiritual journey. So, we have both of those. I mean, not in terms of myself, of course, but I mean, from time to time having access to qualified teachers, Or just the truth of the Dharma itself can be a spiritual master for ourselves, can guide us along our spiritual journey. So, you know, having the basis, we have to begin to appreciate that.
But now we begin to go beyond that. We begin to appreciate that not only do we have indispensable basis, the substantial and the cooperative causes for awakening, for what is that we’re trying to achieve, But we also have all the necessary conditions. And this, you know, brings us up to what we’re going to discuss tonight in terms of leisure and fortune are difficult to find. And we have to begin to you know, a great deal of what the Buddha is pointing out is terribly simple. It’s fundamental.
It’s common sense. But common sense isn’t all that common. You know? Maybe maybe it’s kind of like a transcendental common sense, maybe. You know, that that we we have to begin to appreciate that we presently have all the conditions necessary to actualize our potential.
That, you know, that what we might call that we have the window of opportunity of a precious human life. And that that we simply take it for granted. You know, we we it’s never been pointed out how, in fact, valuable it is, and therefore, how what a great loss if it were to be wasted. You know, how many people actually rejoice in the fact that they’re a human being, that they have a life and all that we possess, and begin to look at it and not take it for granted? Often we do not choose, but drift into those modes which eventually define us.
Circumstances push and we yield. We did not choose to be what we had become, but gradually and perceptibly became what we are by drifting into the doing of those things which now we characteristically do. Freedom is not an objective attribute to life. Alternatives without awareness yield no leeway. And then this author goes on to give a simple account, which I think might be useful.
I open the door of my car and notice in a corner a vision an ant scurrying about the smooth, barren surface of the concrete parking lot, doomed momentarily to be crushed by one of the thousand passing wheels. There exists, however, a brilliant alternative for this gravely endangered creature. In a minutes, a woman will appear with a picnic basket, and she and I will drive to a sunny hillside meadow. This desperate ant has but to climb the wheel of my car to some sheltered ledge, and in half an hour we’ll be in a paradise for ants. But this option, unknown, unknowable, yields no freedom to the ant, who is doomed.
And the only irony belongs to me who observes, who reflects, that options potentially as meaningful to me as this one, to the ant, may at this moment be eluding my awareness. So too I may be doomed. You know, like, quite often you know, there’s been cases where, for example, when a bird flies in the house and you have the best of intentions, you know, the bird is flying and hitting the the wall and hurting itself. And you open all the windows, and you try your best to to shoo the bird out the window. But, you know, there’s an option open to it, but it simply doesn’t have the intelligence, the awareness to take advantage of that option.
It actually possibly thinks that you’re actually you’re trying to hurt it when in fact you have only the best of intentions. You know, like, you know, like a dog that’s been abused. And you can have the best of intentions. You want to pet it or feed it. But because of its of its conditioning, its paranoia, it it’s not able to to break through and allow itself to be fed for you by you, for example.
Simply by way of its conditioning, you can’t see that you only want to help it and take advantage of the opportunity to of the food which you’re trying to give it. You know, the idea about freedom is that we have to have both the awareness of alternatives and we have to have the ability to choose. If either one is not present, then actually we aren’t free. So, you know, the the point that we have some kind of alternative open to us and we have to become aware of them, and then we have to choose them. If we don’t, we’re not free.
This is what Tsongkhapa is trying to get across to ourselves. Leisure and fortune are difficult to find. To begin to appreciate the opportunity that we have, to be aware of opportunities, and to appreciate the fact that we have the option to choose. The leisure and fortune, freedom and privilege that we all possess. That, you know, the appreciate the uniqueness of our freedom as being human beings amongst all the various life forms of the universe.
And that, moreover, even amongst human beings, that we are what is called well favored or privileged amongst, you know, many, many peoples of the world. You know, there’s a traditional way of presenting this notion, this notion of what is called leisure and fortune or freedom and well favored endowments or just getting across the idea that we possess a certain freedom, which is quite rare and unique amongst the all the infinite life forms of the universe. And that we we also possess in that’s presented in a in a negative sense of what we’re free of. But even in a positive sense, we have endowments or opportunities, you know, even amongst humans. We we are very privileged here, all of us here tonight, in the west in general, but specifically those who are seeking who have the who have the connection with the Dharma, a connection with the spiritual path, and are inclined to make use of it.
In terms of a a traditional presentation, there are said to be eight freedoms and ten fortunes. Free refers to freedom from eight forms of existence in which spiritual practice is virtually impossible. You know, this is a traditional presentation, you know, it might be meaningful for you. And then we can expand expand upon it and make perhaps make it more accessible and relevant to ourselves. Free refers to freedom from eight forms of existence in which spiritual practice is virtually impossible, as a hell being, a preta, a preta — a preta is a hungry ghost —, or as an animal, in each of which the limits imposed by confusion and pain preclude spiritual concerns.
As a god, where one is continually distracted by sensual pleasures, in an age when no Buddhists have appeared, or in a primitive, uncivilized society, as someone with mental or physical incapacity, or someone who does not accept the validity of the Dharma. So those are the eight freedoms that we we’re free of all of those eight conditions. And then in terms of what its privileges or fortunes are, being well favored. Well favored refers to the conditions needed in order to practice. Five conditions derived from oneself: to be a human, to have the use of all faculties, not to be swept away by the tides of one’s bad karma, and to have faith in the Dharma.
Then five conditions derive from others: a Buddha must have appeared, he must have taught the Dharma. The Dharma must have lasted. There must be many who follow the Dharma. And there must be people who support and maintain the practice of Dharma. The essence, the intention is to help us to appreciate what it is in fact we have, both in a positive and negative sense.
Negative by beginning to appreciate what it is that we’re free from. These eighteen and conditions constitute our unique freedom and emphasize our great fortune among all the infinite life forms, all the varieties of beings in the universe. But even among humans, for example, there are many who are completely caught up in violence and hatred like a hell being. You know, many who who are full of greed, caught up in consumerism like a hungry ghost. You know, many who are consumed with jealousy and aggression like a demigod.
You know, many who are completely, continually seek mindless absorptions, you know, like gods, you know, being completely absorbed in pleasure like a god, like a celestial being. You know, and though many people who live in in a fortunate age when when a Buddha has appeared, you know, in this age that we all, in fact, do exist, in a place where the teachings, in fact, do exist, they don’t they don’t comprehend them or they don’t value them or they don’t value them. They don’t value what they stand for. And though many people have full mental and physical faculties, capacities, they don’t make use of them for anything meaningful or for any great purpose. And though many people have accepted the validity of Dharma, they don’t really practice it.
So we have to appreciate this freedom that we all share in and exercise it. You know, if you don’t exercise your freedom, it’s as if you didn’t have it. You know, we we in the West, especially, are members of of an extremely privileged class no matter who or what rung of the social ladder or the economic situation we might be in. You know, whether we are aware of it or not, a great deal of what we take so much for granted is dependent upon the blood, sweat, and tears, and literally the lives of a great deal of the rest of the world, of the third world, of the developing countries, or whatever, you know, of the the in terms of north, you know, whatever, you know, whatever category. However, want to categorize them.
We are living on their backs in one way or another. You know, all our our various needs. You know, we have a there’s a notion that Maslow talked about, the psychologist who I mentioned last week, terms of hierarchy of needs, like a pyramid of needs. And as those levels as those needs on the bottom most level are satisfied, then we can move on to higher needs. The lower needs always take precedence over higher needs.
For example, first there are physiological needs. We have to have food, water, shelter, sleep. Those are basic necessities. Once those are satisfied, then we can concern ourselves with higher needs, such as safety and security. Once we feel safe, generally secure, then we are free to occupy our attention and efforts with even higher needs.
For example, a sense of belonging, a sense of feelings of love, feelings of self esteem, bringing meaning to our life. We can concern ourselves with higher truths. We can all go on to concern ourselves to awaken spiritual paths. And that’s at the very top of this pyramid, the peak. It’s very rare that people have this great privilege to be able to concern themselves with spiritual matters, with truths, and the development of themselves.
You know, it’s a great fortune. We have to have all of these more primary basic needs met because they take precedence, before we can begin to concern ourselves with higher and higher needs, before we can begin to concern ourselves with the highest need of awakening, development of our own minds, you know, the pursuit of Buddhahood. These we have that. You know, we have an obligation to make use of our life. You know, the to live our life to its fullness.
You know, what it means to be a human being, to fulfill at least some of our of our infinite potential. The fullness of human life. So what, you know, as I’ve mentioned several times, I’m sure, the path is a means of empowering ourselves, a way of gaining competency. Here, we’re trying to empower ourselves, aren’t we? We’re trying we’re we’re trying to begin to value and appreciate something that perhaps we’ve taken completely for granted unnoticed to ourselves so that it so that it it acts as a motivating force for us to do something, to act, to break through these feelings of insufficiency of I can’t or I won’t or I have to somebody else has to help me, to begin to think that I have everything that’s necessary to to to work through my problems, to become of use to myself and to others.
There’s nothing lacking. There’s nothing missing. There’s nothing more that needs to be added before we can get on with our life and living it the way that we’ve always wanted to. The fullness of human life cannot be made by anything that happens only to the body. Life is not merely a matter of physical vigor or or of health or of the capacity to enjoy oneself.
What is life? It is something far more than the breath in our nostrils, the blood beating in our wrists, the response to physical stimulation. True, all of these things are essential for a full human life, but they do not themselves constitute that life in all its fullness. A man can have all of this and still be an idiot. And one who merely breathes, eats, sleeps, and works without awareness, without purpose, and without ideas of his own is not really a man.
Life, in this purely physical sense, is merely the absence of death. Such people do not live, they vegetate. For a man to be alive, he must exercise not only the acts that belonged to vegetative and animal life. He must not only subsist, grow, be sentient, not only move himself around, feed himself, and the rest. He must also carry on the activities proper to his own specifically human life.
He must, that is to say, think intelligently. And above all, he must direct his actions by free decisions made in the light of his own thinking. These decisions must tend to his own intellectual, and moral and spiritual growth. They must tend to make him more aware of his capacity for knowledge and for free action. They must expand and extend his power to love others and to dedicate himself to their good, for it is in this that he finds his own fulfillment.
Man then can only fully be said to be alive when he becomes plainly conscious of the real meaning of his own existence. That is to say, when he experiences something of the fullness of intelligence, freedom, and spirituality that are actualized within him. Trying to there’s an intimate connection between fact and value on the one hand and action on the other. Buddha has and the path and what is being presented here was always pointing out facts. You know, this that painting that on on your right side, the the wheel of life, the Buddha is pointing.
He was always you know, he was a great pointer. He said, why don’t you take a look at this? Take a look at this. What do you think about this? You know, pointing out the facts, you know, the fact of suffering, the fact of the cause of suffering.
You know, these are great truths. And why? Because if the fact is if it’s pointed out to ourselves, you know, if if it if we can begin to develop some kind of discrimination about what is pointed out to ourselves, perhaps we can begin to value it. And once we begin to value it in terms of, for example, our life and and, in fact, what it is and what it can mean for ourselves, then we won’t allow it to go to waste. We will act in ways which bring it greatest meaning, make greatest possible use of it.
We empower ourselves. You know, we have to appreciate that we have what is trying to be presented here, what is trying to be gotten across here is that we have everything that we need, that there’s nothing lacking to be fully alive. And that that what we take so much for granted is, in fact, extremely rare. And talking about the rarity of the life centered around growth or life centered around spiritual practice, It’s explained from the point of view of causes in a classical analogy, classical example. So, you know, how did we come to get this life?
You know, this is a we simply, you know, take it for granted. We never even thought about it, perhaps. We we never even questioned that I’m a human being. It’s never occurred to us to even begin to consider how I achieved a human being. It’s just a given.
But in fact, it had a cause. The cause of a human life is ethics. And additionally, for a human life in which we can carry on a spiritual practice, heartfelt wishes, aspirations, prayers to have the freedom and opportunity to practice and to grow. So most essentially, ethics is to act human like. You know, there’s always a similarity between causes and results, a similarity in type, what’s called a homogeneous result.
To attain a human life is to have acted humanly in the past. And that is expressed in terms of what we mean by ethics or morality. Ethics, morality simply means to act like a human being, to carry on the activities proper to humankind, those which tend toward the experience of fullness of intelligence, of freedom, the experience of our spirituality. And above all, in terms of the universal vehicle, our most human like quality of all, those activities which expand and extend our ability to love others and dedicate ourselves to their well-being. That’s the most human like of qualities.
The essence of humanity is love. So, you know, this is the main cause. We all did that. That’s the point. We can’t take it for granted.
Or Buddhism would say, don’t take it for granted because it is disempowering yourself by doing that. The main cause for human life that we all now possess, everyone in this room, we have created. Then there must have been some longing, some great wish, and some prayers, whether articulated or not, to have the freedom and the opportunity, the fortune to practice a spiritual path. So all of this is extremely rare, but everyone in this room did it. That’s the point.
If we can appreciate that, then we will value it, and we won’t allow it to go to waste. We’ll cease taking it so much for granted, and thereby lose this window of opportunity which our human life affords us, which it presents us with. You know, the ant is lost. There’s a there’s a way out. The bird keeps flying against the wall.
The window is open. The dog is being presented food. It refuses. It runs away. It doesn’t have the basis for the awareness necessary to realize the opportunity take advantage of the opportunity that the situation is presenting it.
It doesn’t have the intelligence that we, as observers, can see, and therefore it has no freedom. Then there’s a, you know, trying to appreciate that. You know, we’re like the bird, aren’t we? Or we’re like the dog. Or we’re like the the ant.
That we’re all doomed in this way become aware and begin to make choices. You know, begin to take up our options, make use of this window of opportunity our life presents us. Otherwise, the same reoccurring patterns continually, continuing into the future. No change. Nothing different is ever going to happen.
Then there’s a classical example in terms of the rarity. I can only I’ll