Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. When a Tibetan lama driving through French war cemeteries remarks that the West has “even more beautiful places to put the corpses before their death,” Ven Jampa Gendun turns that image into the hinge of this 46-minute teaching on the precious human life. He uses Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a secular scaffold to map each level against the traditional Buddhist “freedoms and fortunes,” pressing listeners to weigh their advantages against people caught in famine, civil war, or addiction. From there he moves to Buddha nature — the innate wisdom and compassion already present within each person — as the inner compass that orients practice. The session closes with guided meditation: compassion toward someone who caused difficulty that week, then a taking-and-giving practice with a close friend.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 27 HoM 1993 06 23.mp3
UUID: c62963a6-eabb-41f2-8ca9-923a68b19d3f
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-06-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~4,109
So we begin by this process of redirecting ourselves, getting back in touch with what is important to us, reprioritizing our values. This is kind of an endless process that we’re involved in, again and again. Reevaluating what we’re doing, where we’re going, and is it what we’re doing and where we want to go to, if we could perform or express our preferred story in our lives, the type of story, the type of person and the type of ways of being that we in our noblest and finest moments we’d like to actualize, we’d like to be and relate with. Trying to take out and try on our dreams again, again and again. Out of the practical necessities and the distractions of our daily life, it’s quite understandable that we lose sight, but it’s also quite rational to get back in touch, to reassert what is important to ourselves, what has worked for ourselves, the person that we’d like to be somewhere down the line, if only five years from now, if only ten years from now.
If we don’t do this, if we don’t involve ourselves in this process, then we’re very much like the ship without a rudder. You know, it’s kind of cliche that’s often talked about. Thing is, well, maybe there’s some truth to it. You know, a ship sometimes it heads in the directions a ship without a rudder oftentimes or sometimes according to the currents and the waves and the weather heads in the direction of our preferred story, the person we might like to be. But just as often, if not more, it heads in another direction.
We find happiness and sometimes we don’t find happiness. Express the type of person that we’d like to be fulfilled and satisfied, able to be of use to ourselves and able to be of use to others. Then the times we don’t. We’re completely absorbed and in some passing thought of mind, some maze that we’ve created for ourselves within our own mind. And it seems that within the displays of ego our world begins and ends, and we’re completely lost.
And sometimes we spend a lesser or greater amount of time in this fog bound world of our own mind, we can’t see anything of any clarity, anything beyond these imperious the products, these productions of the imperious, lonely thinking mind. And we lose our way. And then perhaps sometimes maybe a day or a week or maybe a lifetime later, we wake up and wonder what we’ve been doing all that time. We haven’t been happy nor have we been traveling in a direction that we would like to be going, that we’d like to be moving, that we’d to be drawing toward. But if we begin to direct ourselves in terms of, you know, just putting this rudder on this ship, then perhaps we can’t, you know, like a I don’t know.
I guess the the metaphor of sailing It was good in a way, I think. You can’t sail a direct course more than not to any to any destination. You have to tack with the wind. You have to go with the flow to some degree. Quite often times to get to where you’re going is quite a sometimes it’s a very indirect course to people who aren’t familiar with sailing.
It looks like you’re going out of your way, but it’s quite necessary. It’s quite understandable to someone even who knows the ways of sailing, to tack with the wind. It’s the only way that you’re ever going to get there. There’s no choice. So at least But all the while, even when you’re heading in almost an opposite direction to where you want to go, as you’re moving, in fact, toward your goal.
There’s some purposefulness in the way you’re directing yourself, the way you’re sailing. And we all have this opportunity and I think we have to appreciate it, you know, to help us not to become completely lost, self absorbed in the displays of ego, in this imperious, lonely thinking mind, to appreciate all that we do have. Appreciating it, then we’re going to make use of it. If we don’t appreciate it, then it’s whether we make use of our lives and and all that we do possess, the qualities and the freedoms and the leisures that we do have aren’t particularly significant and they don’t seem perhaps important. You know, it would be, I guess a metaphor would be You know, the the traditional metaphor is that a beggar who has a gold pot, but he doesn’t recognize its value and simply uses it for to throw refuse in, throw trash in.
But if he were able to recognize its value, then he could sell it and lift himself out of a situation. And likewise with ourselves, we don’t appreciate to a large degree all that we in fact do have. Traditionally, this appreciation and these qualities that we do possess, the type of human life that we all are fortunate enough to have, are presented in terms of leisures and fortunes. You know, we have certain leisures, freedoms, opportunities presented to us. You know, that freedom from certain restrictions that most people, the vast majority of people don’t have, these freedoms from misfortune, these freedom from restrictions.
Know, the I perhaps many of you have heard about this the Abraham Maslow. He was a I think he died he was an American psychologist who died in about nineteen seventy one. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s like a pyramid. You know, on the bottom most level of this pyramid are you know, these are needs which are prerequisite to needs which come later.
The bottom most needs are physical necessities of life, food, clothing, shelter. Without those, there’s no way to move on to more subtle levels of needs. Above those are feelings of security, feelings of safety, a lack when there’s no war going on. You know, if we gave examples, you know, we we if you were in Ethiopia or Sudan and your children and your family were dying of hunger, and you yourself were starving, what opportunity, what freedom do you have to actualize your potential, the potential that we talked about last week in terms of our Buddha nature, in terms of our basic sanity, in terms of trying to solve the more subtle problems of what it means to be an ordinary person. And just try to get through that day is the goal that you would set for yourself.
Just scratching out enough weeds or pieces of grass to keep your child alive would be the only goal that you could conceive of, that you would set for yourself and work toward. So having our physical needs, material needs met. But then above that, you know, having a sense of security, freedom from persecution and war. You know, what could we do if we were in, Bosnia? They were in our if Adelaide was being constantly bombarded under artillery fire day and night, snipers.
You know, I don’t think we can meet here tonight. Probably wouldn’t be inclined to when your when your family was under threat and many had actually been killed. Then there’s the, you know, the feelings of of companionship, mutual assistance and caring for one another, a sense of psychological well-being, which comes from harmless situations. A group that, for example, we have here, where like minded individuals come together in a caring manner, to assist one another, and each in their own ways trying to grow, but also acknowledging that others are striving in the same way that themselves, and encouraging and acting as guides and as examples. You know all that we can do for one another.
On top of this very most pyramid, at the very peak is self actualization. So this opportunity to really grow, to really dedicate some space and energy in our life, to actualizing to its fullest extent our human potential, of what it means to be a human being, of what we can achieve in terms of wisdom and love and creativity. It is it’s very rare. It’s the peak, the apex of having all of one’s lesser needs met. It doesn’t occur very often if we look in the world today in a very dispassionate way.
The fullness of human life cannot be measured by anything that happens only to the body. Life is not merely a matter of physical vigor or health. Life is not merely a matter of physical vigor or the capacity to enjoy oneself. What is life? It is something far more than breath in our nostrils, the blood beating in our veins, the response to physical stimulation.
True, all these things are essential for human life, but they themselves do not constitute that life in all its fullness. A man can have all this and still be an idiot. And one who merely breathes, eats, sleeps and works without awareness, without purpose, without ideas of his own is not really a man. Life is 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 belong 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 carry on the activities proper to his own specifically human kind of 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. So, you know, we have to appreciate that we have everything that we need, that there is nothing lacking for us to be fully alive. And further that what we take so much for granted, you know, all of our these qualities that we take so much for granted and all the opportunities that we have are in fact extremely rare. You know, if we were How did we come to experience such a life? You know, that we all in fact created causes for such a type of life.
The basic causes for a human life are ethics. That somewhere along the line we created the causes for our present life, but over and above that. You know, there are many human beings who just simply don’t have the choices, the chances, the opportunities that all of us here have. It’s not available to them, that they aren’t on top of this peak, this pyramid. You know, to some extent, whether we are willing to acknowledge the fact or not, living on the sweat and the lives and the tears of a great bulk of humanity.
If we look at the way in which the world economic order has evolved, and that we have a great debt to repay. And the only way that we can repay this debt in the present is by filling, is by maximizing, making use of this opportunity which others are affording us. Then we can repay the debt that we owe to this great bulk of humanity who have brought about the conditions whereby we’re able to enjoy this life of leisure and fortune. You know, we have to ask ourselves in terms of developing ourselves, in terms of becoming of great use, not only to ourselves but to others. What is stopping us?
You know, do we lack the freedom and fortune to practice, to transform our minds? What is the reality of our situation? Are we beggars on the street of Calcutta? And what could you do if you were a beggar on the street of Calcutta? What would you do if you were living in Bosnia, caught up in civil war, in ethnic cleansing?
What could you do? What could you do if you were a peasant farmer in India working seven days a week, thirty days a month from sunrise till sunset to feed your family? Know, are you asking yourself, are you living in a country where there’s no religious freedom? Where you’re persecuted for trying to practice what you believe openly? Where books on religion are banned, where religious meetings are not allowed.
Are you retarded? Are you psychotic? Are you undergoing chemical therapy? Are you seriously ill? Are you in chronic pain?
Are you actively addicted to drugs, to alcohol? Are you completely caught up in materialism which prevents you from practicing? Completely bound up in money, power, status, bigger, better, more? Do you have no access even from time to time to qualified spiritual teachers to guide you and to inspire you? Do you have no spiritual friends to support you in your practice and with whom you can share your ideas and your feelings?
So if you look at all the people on the streets that you meet, completely caught up in material and sensual pursuits. That is their world. The world begins and ends there. And they’re constantly running after bigger, better, more without any thought about what is going on inside their own minds, about where the life is leading to them, never questioning. No time to think about what they’re doing.
Are they happy? Are they fulfilled? Are they Have they lost touch with their own dreams somewhere along the line? You know, there’s a story about a Tibetan Buddhist lama, a spiritual teacher who was traveling in France through the countryside driving in a car with his attendant. And they were passing these rows of war cemeteries with their immaculately kept lawns and flowers, and rows, and rows, and rows, and and rows, and rows of neat white crosses.
And the attendant said to the teacher, his lama, he said, Isn’t it wonderful how beautiful places they have to put the corpses after their death in the West? And the lama said, But in the West they have even more beautiful places to put the corpses before their death. We have to make use of our life, or it’s as if we didn’t have it. We have to make use of all of these opportunities afforded us, or it is as if we didn’t have it. We have the complete freedom and fortune to practice, to investigate, to understand and transform our mind.
We have you know, consider our fortunes. We are human beings with with an intelligent mind, with a kind heart, and a relatively healthy body. And we live in a country relatively free of religious or social persecution or political repression. We have countless opportunities to pursue all our creative and intellectual pursuits or interests. We have the opportunity to do almost anything, to go almost anywhere.
And we enjoy a high standard of living such that all our material needs are very easily met. And we have been fortunate enough to meet with immensely kind and qualified teachers. So we have everything that we need right now to really to, in a realistic and practical way, solve the basic problems of our life, to be happy, and to work in such a way that we can be of help to others to be happy. So we have to appreciate and value what we in fact have, Otherwise, we’re never going to make use of it. We won’t see its significance.
That we have a chance to grow, that we have a chance to awaken, and how, in fact, rare that is amongst all the peoples of the world and determine to make use of it. There’s a verse by Ryokan, the eighteenth century Zen poet, Zen monk. Since I came to this hermitage, how many years have passed? If I am tired, I stretch out my feet. If I feel fine, I go for a stroll in the mountains.
The ridicule of praise of worldly people means nothing. Following my destiny, for this body I have received from my parents, I have only thanks. You know, making use of this opportunity, making use of our life in some small way, you know, try continually, at least beginning to make that first step on this thousand mile journey. At least trying to keep yourself redirected, at least giving away some time, some energy to solving your problems, to investigating the nature of your mind, to trying to understand yourself, to cultivate love and wisdom, to work at benefiting others. And then our life is purposeful, and we have made use of our human life in a very significant fashion.
The way that we continue to redirect ourselves, the way that we can begin to continually reorientate is in terms of the Buddha with inside of ourselves. There is a wisdom mind within you, a basic sanity, a knowing. There is love and compassion within you. There is creativity and energy within you, in all of this. And this is, you know, in terms of our ultimate solution, the ultimate direction of our life becomes the inner focus of our practice.
You’re continually reorientating yourself such that the inner focus of your life becomes Buddha, this Buddha within side of ourselves. You’re trying to give it the opportunity to find expression in who we are, in our being. The way that we can promote, the way that we can facilitate this expression of Buddha is in terms of the Dharma, the means, the methods, the techniques that we can put into practice in small ways in here and there. And then this process of actualizing Buddha through by means of the Dharma occurs within the social context of a spiritual community. The Sangha, those who assist us in the process.
We’re trying to raise the level of motivation such that we’re not doing it just for ourselves, but for an ever widening scope of others. I was thinking today of all have our conceptions about what happiness is, what the goal of the good life is. And for the vast majority, the bulk of humanity, these goals are very individualistically determined. And perhaps this is not working. If the goal of the good life, if what we can see of as happiness were determined in a social context, that in terms of a more collective consciousness, then all of humanity, all of life could achieve their common goal and that all beings could be happy.
That there would be no conflict. There would be no competition for this limited limited good stuff of life. So it seems as if, you know, if we’re going to, you know, this development of a social awareness, of a social consciousness, You know, some kind of universality of what we conceive of as happiness. That we all have to mutually educate one another in globe and develop a global consciousness. Such that what the good life is is somehow developed the goals of happiness or somehow evolved out of a social awareness so that so that the planet as a whole can find happiness.
If our conception of happiness is completely determined from the extreme of individualism, then there can only be conflict, there can only be struggle and isolation. But if it’s determined within in the social context with a global perspective, then we can all find our happiness. We can mutually assist in that single goal. And it can be a commonly held experience. So I think this is what the great universal vehicle is trying to tell us, is trying to educate us toward.
To begin to set our own goals of the good life within our social context. This way we can own seeking, our own implementing the means to find happiness is integrated with others. And it’s workable. It’s harmonious. And we can find our happiness at the same time others can find their happiness mutually, you know, some kind of sharing way.
This idea of universal responsibility, developing social awareness. Perhaps that’s the only way. The rest is some kind of illusion which has never been realized. So, you know, I think we’re all on this great journey. It’s cosmic in scale, and we’re trying to educate ourselves.
We’re trying to educate a planet to think in a more universal way, have a greater universal perspective about what happiness and what is achievable and how can we achieve it. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. Then the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, May I attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly.
From the virtuous merit that I collect, by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. So, begin with a meditation and cultivating as our motivation for our meditation the love and compassion that we can take as an object. There’s someone that you’ve had some difficulty this week with, someone who’s really disturbed your mind in some way, someone you had some conflict with and going through cultivating the levels of compassion and love toward them. And then we’ll meditate on mindfulness and breathing, and then we’ll again meditate on taking and giving, and thinking of someone of the same sex, and someone that you’re close to, that you like, have a natural inclination, feeling of closeness and inclination of caring for them, someone of the same sex. If you take a comfortable, firm posture and thinking of someone that even if it was only a small difficulty, you had some problems with over the course of the week, maybe there’s still some residue hurt or anger.
And imagining that person in front of you as best you can, just feeling that this person is there. Beginning with compassion, just a simple thought, It would be nice if you didn’t have any problems. It’d be wonderful if you had no suffering. May you not have any problems. May you may you not suffer.
I’m going to help you. I’m going to commit myself to working with you and solving your problems. Would it be wonderful if you were happy? May you be happy. I wish you great happiness.
I’m going to help you. I’m going to commit myself to working with you to find happiness. And the way I’m going to express my commitment to you at this present moment is through my meditation, by developing my wisdom, my compassion and love, my skills. Eventually I can be of real significant actual benefit in fulfilling my commitment to you. And bring your mind to the breath.
Easy, gentle, in and out flow of the natural breath. If it’s useful, use the techniques of counting and noting. So we’re going to practice taking and giving. We’re going to use this object, someone who you feel very close to of the same sex. As best you can imagine that person in front of you, if you can’t see them, doesn’t matter.
Just feeling that that person is there. Beginning with recognizing any particular suffering that they might be experiencing at present, mental or physical, It could be subtle, it could be gross. And they’re just like yourself, they want to be happy, they don’t want to suffer, just like yourself. And how would it feel to be them going through this present difficulty? What would you want of yourself if you were them?
Remember all the disadvantages of self centeredness. It’s really probably nothing but problem.