Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with a guided meditation on impermanence — tracing life’s stages from infancy to old age, shifting fortunes, fading relationships, and the moment-by-moment flicker of a candle flame — Ven Jampa Gendun grounds the session before pivoting to philosophy. In this 40-minute talk, he positions impermanence as a prerequisite for grasping emptiness, then explains the Autonomy Middle Way school’s core claim: phenomena require both objective characteristics and mental designation to exist. He works through vivid examples — fire self-defined by heat, water by fluidity, a book by its bound pages — then unpacks a magician’s illusion analogy to show three types of mind: those who grasp appearances as real, those who see through them, and those untouched by the illusion. Suited to practitioners following this series on awakening mind.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 20 HoM 1993 09 15.mp3
UUID: 3570a625-a99a-4c60-b4e5-f3fa5e2e6653
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-09-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 40.2 minutes
Words: ~3,902
I’m going to meditate on impermanence. So I’m beginning with the impermanence of changeability of the stages of our life. So let’s begin to go through considering the flow of your life, the stages when you were a baby, then a toddler, Child. Became an adolescent. A teenager.
Young adult. Middle age. Stages will continue to old age and death. The impermanence of the elements which constitute our life, and then thinking about our prosperity, thinking of times when you had plenty, lots of money, material, possessions. And think about the opposite times when you had no money, when you had need.
Consider your relationships. Think about the time that you’ve met someone, your first meeting with an important person in your life, and that person going out of your life, the separation. Think about a friend who became an enemy and an enemy who became a friend. Your physical well-being, think about times when you felt strong and healthy, full of life and energy. The time when you felt completely weak and exhausted, sick, tired.
Think of times when you’re full of love and compassion and wisdom and noble thoughts. And another time when your mind was full of hatred and attachment and dazed thoughts. In permanent, environment, civilizations have risen and fallen. Cities have come and gone. Changing of the seasons.
The trees begin to grow leaves and all the stages of growth to the point where they die away and wither. Think about when you first bought something, perhaps a car or television or VCR or whatever. How proud and shiny how proud of it you were and how shiny it looked. Eventually, he got a dent, became dirty, had a defect. Eventually, he lost interest.
Eventually, it wore out and was thrown away. Impermanence of disintegration. You can use the example of of a candle flame. Moment by moment, the flame arises, abides, and ceases to be replaced by another replica of the flame moment by moment, arising, abiding, and ceasing. The flame burning down, so it’s exhausted.
Impermanence of changeability, just the fact that if something has not yet changed, it will. That’s in its nature. All things are impermanent. This too shall pass away. Bring your mind back to your breath.
And slowly becoming aware of your body. Just gently in your own good time becoming aware of your surroundings. It is said that an understanding of impermanence is prerequisite for understanding emptiness. It’s useful, especially subtle impermanence. And it is, that things continue to change.
It overcomes our grasping. One of the aspects of our grasping at a, at permanency of objects. It can be actually used as a as a a reasoning for things do not truly exist because they’re impermanent. So we’re looking at the the third fundamental, the the way in which we’re going to develop an awakening mind, which is set out in four stages, beginning with the Hearer stage, the Mind Only stage, and we’re looking at the third stage, the Autonomy Middle Way stage. Probably within within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the greatest emphasis is going to be placed on the fourth stage, the Consequentialist Middle Way stage.
It’s the most extensive explanation because it’s said to be the final thought of the Buddha on the nature of reality. So we’re looking at the but these are the sort of the rungs of the ladder working our way up to that final thought of the Buddha, Consequentialist Middle Way stage. We’re looking at the autonomy middle way stage, which is quite similar. They’re both middle way schools, taking a middle way midway position, a centrist position between the extremes of annihilationism. That is to say, rejection that objects exist at all on the one hand, and the extreme of eternalism.
That is to say, that things, exist permanently, unchanging on the other. So a position between these two. Essentially, that’s why it’s called the middle way. One of the one of the etymologies of the word for for what we mean by middle way between these two extremes. So for the the middle way school, the central assertion of the middle way school is that nothing truly exists.
That is a has an independent has a reality independent of the mind. That all phenomena without exception depend for their existence upon the perceiving mind, depend upon the perceptual process, depend upon language and the concepts which make use of that language, The labeling process, the designating process. This is a cup. This is a book. This is a table.
I’m a person. This this objects depend upon that process of mind for their existence. Without that process of mind, they don’t nothing exists. Nothing truly exists. The the hearer, the important point we’re trying to get at is some things that we it’s useful to understand is that things appear differently than the way they exist.
There’s a discrepancy between what appears to us. And here at the autonomy middle way stage, what we mean by appearance, we’re talking about the appearance to mental consciousness. The appearance to a mental consciousness as opposed to a physical sense consciousness. As a for example, the eye consciousness is a is a physical sense consciousness. At this stage, we are only talking about the way things appear to our mental consciousness as as opposed to physical consciousnesses.
When we come to the fourth stage, the, Consequentialist Middle Way school, they’re going to carry this further. They’re going to say, we’re talking about the way objects appear to all consciousnesses, physical consciousness, physical sense consciousness, and mental sense consciousnesses. Things appear to our mental consciousness when we think about them. When we think about books, when we think about tables and people, they appear to exist independent of our mind. That’s the way they appear to our mental consciousness, that they aren’t dependent upon the perceptual process.
If they so the idea of true existence is, which is another important point, is that if they existed the way they appeared, then that be that existence would be true. They would truly exist the way they appeared. At the the middle way school says nothing truly exists. Why do they say nothing truly exists? Because nothing exists the way it appears.
Here, at this level, for the mental consciousness. When we think about a book, it appears not to depend upon the perceptual process. It appears that way. But in fact, it does. Its existence does depend upon the perceptual process.
Its existence does depend upon terms and concepts for its existence. Therefore, it’s it’s not a true truly existent, the way it appeared. So this is what what the word true is getting at here. The the the middle way school asserts that all phenomena are brought into existence through the process of conceptual designation. That they are all imputed by, you know, to think about something is to impute it.
It’s not like there’s two things going on. First first, there’s the, we designate it and then we think about it. The thinking about it is the imputing, the designating, the labeling. And as we talked about this, that things are are dependent upon the perceptual process. They’re dependent upon our thinking about them.
But this as we mentioned last week, if we if we try if we think hard enough, if we try to believe you know, in a way, this this is simply saying things are dependent on our beliefs about them, even to the bare fact of their existence. But this does not mean that if we believe hard enough that fire won’t burn us, and we stick our hand in a fire, that we won’t get burned. In fact, we will. Or if we believe hard enough that this room is filled with pink elephants, that somehow actual elephants will appear in this room. They won’t.
So, you know, there there is, reality creation or world making is not a matter of whims or wishes, it follows criteria of certain rules, conventions. Our reality is a social construction. It’s an agreement amongst us. We have commonly shared beliefs. And in dependence upon those commonly shared beliefs, we experience a common reality.
We bring things into existence in dependence upon those beliefs as commonly shared, concepts about what our world is. If you change people if you change people’s minds, you change reality. So it’s here at this point that we begin to distinguish between these two middle way schools, the Autonomy Middle Way school and the Consequentialist Middle Way school. Both schools assert that all phenomena do not truly exist or independently exist. Truly existent true existence and independent existence are synonyms in the same thing, that they are dependent on terms and concepts.
They both hold that, but they differ in their assertions as to the extent objects rely upon the designating process. So there’s a there’s there’s there’s a a degree of difference in terms of how much the object’s existence depends upon the subject and how much of it depends upon the object. You know, there’s a shift. There’s a gradual shift, isn’t it? In in in the the hearer stage, we accepted a world of objective existence, existing independently of our minds out there, hard cold facts.
Now there’s now there’s a shift and there’s a movement toward here at the autonomy middle way stage saying that there is both in bringing to into existence of phenomena, both the subjective and objective element. Something is coming from both sides. When we finally get to the Consequentialist Middle Way school, we’re going to see that it’s coming from completely from the subject side, that things are merely imputed by concepts. But this is another stage. This is another little bit further down the road.
Here we’re here we’re going to say that there is in the in the in the bringing an object into existence, and up to tables, glasses, whatever. That there is both a factor coming from the side of the mind in terms of the designating process, an awareness of that object, and something coming from the side of the object that that the object is self defining. It has objective characteristics. You know, there’s some difference in terminology, but it shouldn’t let the terminology kind of confuse you or throw you. The Autonomy School, that’s the stage we’re working at now, They say that things don’t truly exist.
These things they say that things do not exist independently, but they do exist naturally. That is by the word natural, it means by way of their own nature. They have some nature of them of themselves which does not is does not depend upon the mind. They are self defining. And we’re I’m going to hopefully we’re going to explore this and sort of hopefully become clear.
Things are self defining. This is this glass defines what it is. I know it it has some objective existence which, as it were, forces me to think of it as a glass. And in dependence upon something coming from the side of the object, its, its natural existence, its intrinsic characteristic of being a glass, and in dependence upon me thinking that it has a glass, and it’s upon those two elements, the glass comes into existence. So there’s something coming from it’s I can’t call that a dog and and would well, we’re gonna talk about that.
You could call it a dog. Oh, well. In terms of, the self defining nature of or the self defining nature or intrinsic characteristic of fire is hot and burning. That’s in that’s its self defining nature. That’s its its intrinsic nature, its intrinsic characteristic of fire.
By the force of that nature, hot and burning appearing to my mind, I conceive of it as fire. And therefore and that therefore, fire validly exists. So hot and burning are the basis of my thinking about that object. Hot and burning are what are called the basis of designation, the basis of labeling, the basis upon which I’m going to apply a concept, fire. So that that the basis of designation is exist by its own, by way of its own nature, objectively, in its own right.
What is water is moist and moist and fluid, I think. That which is moist in fluid. By that for by the force of it, that that intrinsic nature of moist in fluid appearing to my mind, I conceive of water. There’s something coming from the side of the object, something my my conception using language, concepts, thinking of it as water. in dependence upon those two factors coming together, water comes into existence, actual water.
My concept of water is not water. It’s not it’s not moist and fluid. My concept of water in combination with moist and fluid, comes together to bring water into existence, real water. Before that, there wasn’t water. So particular entity comes into existence through a combination of both subjective and objective factors.
So so in the process of bringing phenomena in existence, something is coming from both the side of this object and from the side of the subject. Object, glass. Subject, mind. Thinking about glass. It’s in dependence upon these two that things come into existence.
So for example, in in dependence upon the mind designating book designating book to an objective base, basis of designation. That is to say, bound, ordered, arranged printed pages. There are bound, ordered, printed pages. That’s the basis of designation. That’s the basis of the labeling.
That’s the basis on which I’m going to apply names to. And I apply, my mind applies the name book to that. The word book, the concept, the term my concepts are using is not a is not a book. The map is not the territory. So I’m using a concept book, and I’m applying it to that which is a bound ordered printed pages.
Those two things coming together, a book comes in into existence. Without one or the other, there would be no book. Without bound ordered pages, without my my labeling book upon that object, there would be no book in fact. So it’s not an arbitrary process. Why?
Because there is something which determines what I can validly call book. I can’t call this glass a book. It’s not bound ordered printed pages. It is if if I, what is validly designated is determined by the intrinsic characteristics of the basis of designation, appearing to a non-defective awareness. So, you know, for example, okay, just just because we we call a horse a cow, just because we call a horse a cow does not make it a cow.
A horse is not a proper basis basis upon which to be labeled cow. You know, it’s you know, I said there are criteria. There are rules, conventionalities. A horse has no intrinsic, cowness about it. It’s utterly without cowness.
I’m sorry about that. There’s no inherent characteristics which allow us to correctly designate it a cow. We are as if as as as it were forced to call a horse a horse and not a cow. That is the if we are to name it correctly and thereby think about it and relate with it in terms of normal social conventions, a social con if we are to relate with things and think about things in terms of normal social conventions, we have to call a horse a horse. We can’t call it a cow.
There is something inherent in it that requires us to think about it as a horse. But we we but we can if we are if we’re going to label it correctly, if we’re going to think about it in a in a normal manner in which are in which which is dictated by the conventions of our of our of our of our of the social context in which we exist, then if we’re going to work in that, operate in terms of that, we have to call it a horse. We can’t call it a cow. We have to think of it as a horse. We can’t think of it as a cow.
If we’re going to relate with it, if we’re going to think about it in terms of normal social conventions, We are in a that everything is in fact a social construct. And we’re gonna come back to this because this is a very important point in distinguishing the assertions of the autonomy school, autonomy middle way school, and the Consequentialist Middle Way school. So I’d I’d like to, I’d like to get through one. This this will be helpful, I think, in understanding what we’re getting at. It’s a a traditionally used analogy.
I guess, yeah, analogy. Trying to help us to understand, you know, the the autonomy school uses the the analogy or the example of a magician’s illusion to illustrate how the status of existence is posited through the force of an awareness. The status of existence is posited through the force of awareness. Thing things have to be things don’t exist out there independent of our minds. They have to to appear to our minds in in order for them to achieve a status that they in fact exist.
And they use a an analogy where I think is quite useful. I think it’ll it’ll help. I’ll just get through this. Stop. Okay?
So it’s a there’s a magician, and the magician is giving a magic show. And this magician is, uses a special mantra. And this mantra is is is chanted and it’s directed toward toward all of those who are present, the members of the of the audience who are there. But also, it affects the the magician himself or herself. And it causes what it does through the force of this mantra.
You know, he’s he has set up on stage a pebble and a twig, a stick and a small stone. He has put that up on the stage. And to be forthright, you know, whether it works, whether it’s possible or not is not the point. It’s just the way of of analogy, a way of thinking about it. So through this mantra, it affects people to see what is in fact.
A stick and a pebble as a horse and an elephant. Through the force of this mantra, everyone who is comes under the influence of this mantra, they see up on the stage a horse and an elephant. Okay? Now, we can in this analogy, there are three different categories of people that that we can we can analyze, that we can look into. There are, there is the magician.
There is the audience which has been affected by the mantra. And as usually is the case, there’s someone who comes in late and, hasn’t been affected by the mantra. They’re just sitting in the audience. They’re sitting in the back row and they’re wondering what all the what all the fuss is about. Someone whose eyes hasn’t been aren’t affected by the mantra.
So as so the mantra the the magician has chanted a mantra. it has also affected this mantra is extremely powerful. It has also affected his vision. He he sees on the stage a horse and an elephant. But he knows he knows that there’s no real horse and elephant there, that it’s merely the effect, that what is appearing merely arises due to the effect of the mantra.
So so so there though there is an appearance of horse and elephant for the magician, he does not grasp at that appearance as being true, as being a real horse and elephant. He sees it as an illusion. For the audience that got there on time. There is the apparent there there are two is since they are affected by the mantra, there is the appearance of a horse and an elephant on the stage. But they don’t have the same understanding that the magician does.
And therefore, they there is not only the appearance of a horse and an elephant, but there is also the grasping to that appearance as being a real horse and a real elephant. So there are two things. There’s both the appearance of horse and elephant and the grasping as real, that horse, that appearance. For the latecomer who wasn’t affected by the mantra, there is there’s neither the neither the appearance of a horse and an elephant and what to say of grasping at that appearance as being horse and an elephant. So the base the basis of this illusion, the basis of this conjuring is is a pebble and a twig.
And due to the influence of this mantra, they appear to be a horse and elephant. So, okay, let’s begin begin to explain what this analogy means. Phenomena appear to us to truly exist, to independently exist due to the influence of ignorance. So there was an appearance due to the force of ignorance. This is the case of the magician.
There’s an appearance of a horse and elephant due to the influence of a mantra. The magician is analogous to someone who has a realization of emptiness, but has not removed influence from their mind. Yeah? They have an understanding of emptiness, but they still their their mind is being influenced. What appears to them is being influenced by ignorance.
So though so this is analogous to someone who has a an understanding, a real you know, someone who has a realization of emptiness, but has not removed ignorance. True existence still appears to them. Independent things still appear to them, but they don’t believe in them. They don’t grasp at them as real. A a true exist a truly existent table appears to the to that person.
But it still appears because he is under the influence of ignorance. But because he has a realization of emptiness, an understanding of emptiness, he does not accede to that appearance. He does not he is not captivated by that appearance. He he understands that that appearance is false. That that though it appears to be in the independently existent table, it in fact is not.
It appears that way, but he knows it’s not. And so he doesn’t fall for it. He doesn’t grasp to it as being true, as being a real, independent table. The the, you know, it has a looser quality for him. So the the audience is analogous to to someone who has no understanding of emptiness.
The audience does not understand that the appearance of a horse and elephant arises through the influence of the mantra, of some external effect of the mantra. So they conceive of a real horse and a real elephant on the stage. And at the, you know, at the spot where these there is the appearance of a horse and elephant. There is the appearance of a horse and elephant. And at that place, they they conceive of, they grasp as real, a a real horse and a real elephant.
And the thing about it is that if if they are attracted to that horse and elephant, they will develop attachment. If they’re repulsed by that horse and elephant, they would