Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Taking refuge gets a striking reframe at the start of this 46-minute opening session of Ven Jampa Gendun’s Heart and Mind of Buddhism series. Everyone already takes refuge, he argues — in sex, drugs, politics, or rock and roll — whatever we believe will solve our problems. He quotes Zen monk Ryokan to crystallize the alternative: “The Buddha is your mind and the path goes nowhere.” He then unpacks awakening as three qualities: wisdom beyond self-deception, an active compassion illustrated by a mother leaping into a well to save her child, and a vital energy he likens to a young colt prancing in a pasture. The spiritual path, he argues, is not a grand gesture but an accumulation of small daily choices. The session closes with a guided loving-kindness meditation moving through self, a friend, a stranger, and someone who troubles you. No prior Buddhist background required.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 H and M of B 1992 05 06.mp3
UUID: b876fb04-2da6-4d9a-a8d6-e3f665a9a45f
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-05-06
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.1 minutes
Words: ~4,513
Looks like everybody’s here. It’s nice to see. Can you hear me in the back? Yeah. It’s nice to see all my old and my new friends, people I’ve never met before.
My name is Champa and I teach the Wednesday night class. We’re going to be talking about the heart and mind of Buddhism. Generally, as a prerequisite to giving a talk or listening to a talk, there’s a process of readjusting our motivation, getting in touch with ourselves and what we’re about and why we’re doing what we’re doing. Traditionally it’s referred to as going for refuge. It may sound like something which is Eastern or foreign, but we’ve all been going for refuge our entire life one way or another, consciously or not unconsciously.
Some people go for refuge to sex, drugs, alcohol, rock and roll, politics, money, jobs, people, whatever we conceive of as being the method, the way that we can solve our problems, that we can find the happiness that we’re all looking for. This is the direction that we give our lives. So if we’re going to hopefully make this time together something of value, something which will serve as a means to realistically solve our, in a very practical way, our problems. Or whether coming together like this is simply going to be another activity amongst our already overcrowded schedule of activities and simply serve to extend, support, maintain our problems or whether it’s going to tend toward resolution of our problems. It’s purely and basically dependent upon our motivation.
Very much in Buddhism, it’s not what we do, but why we do it. The motivation, the intention behind the act is going to determine the quality of the result, what kind of effect we’re going to experience out of what we do. This reevaluation, this redirecting ourselves, this process of continually reorientating our mind is what is commonly and traditionally known as refuge. But it’s not something You’ve had a busy day.
You’re not like me, lazy, just sitting around, but you’ve had to deal with a lot of practical problems. A lot of things demand your attention. So there is an externalizing process which is occurring. To deal with the necessities of life, we can’t avoid it. Sometimes or other we have to create the space and create the time whereby we get back in touch with perhaps some of our more central values.
Those values, those principles that sometime or other in the clear light of our own wisdom, in the clear light of our own reasoning, experience and intuition that we’ve come to find meaningful, to find valuable, to be of worth to ourselves. Those noblest moments in our lives when something very deep in our hearts is touched. To get back in touch with those feelings, those attitudes, those beliefs, which are central to what it means for each of us in our own value system, however we may conceive of what a human life is all about, which we feel is worthwhile, which brings our life meaning beyond all our logic and our rational ideas about the way life should be, but actually what works for me as a unique self actualizing individual, something which touches our hearts. This process of continually reorientating, redirecting ourselves toward those central values which we, over the course of our life and our experiences, autonomously. By autonomously, I mean those values which work within our own experience, not what others have told us will bring us value or bring us happiness, not what our society or the commercials on television, not even those values which we think we should ought to uphold that we should be pursuing that would actually work.
Beginning to listen to the inarticulate whisperings of our own heart telling us to try to become all that we can be, all that we should be, and responding in this authentic response to our intrinsic instinct toward wakefulness. This is what we, in some way, in some fashion or another, have to redirect ourselves toward. Outside of all the hustle and the bustle and the practical necessities of life, to get in touch with these central values, these central aspirations, the noblest part of ourselves. We take as our paradigm of sanity a Buddha. But it’s not the Buddha or not necessarily the Buddha outside of ourselves, the Buddha within yourself.
This becomes like the central focus of our spiritual practice. A Buddha, a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being. The realization, the actualization of what it means to be a human being. This becomes our model. A Buddha is simply, not simply but in a few words, enlightened being.
Somebody who has awakened. And the idea of enlightenment, awakening. It has a sense that maybe we sit here, we’ve had to deal with the practical necessities of life The idea of awakening sounds so foreign to us. It sounds so irrelevant. It sounds so something which is far off in the sky, something which has very little bearing to our actual daily difficulties which we all experience.
How can we make the idea of awakening a little more relevant to ourselves? Make it something we can touch, something tangible, something which is workable, that we can find some kind of suggestion of it within our daily experience. So we take the idea of awakening as a central focus. And awakening has three qualities. It has a sense of wisdom simply by wisdom and knowing beyond all our preconceptions, beyond all our misconceptions, beyond all our self deceptions.
Simply knowing the way things are, in fact, clearly and with awareness. An awakening has the idea, the sense, the feeling tone quality of an intense burning love and compassion, an overflowing sense of caring for others. One of the models, one of the metaphors which is consistently used throughout Tibetan Buddhism is that of a bond between a mother and her child. But maybe that doesn’t work for you. But some type of bond which goes beyond the ups and downs of a conditioned relationship, some type of bond which seems to almost as if it were a biological part of ourselves and another person.
Then it’s looked upon as the bond between a mother and a child. There’s an example which is often given of the quality of this bond. The quality of this type of relationship is that between in a situation where, for example, a child has fallen down a well. This is obviously a typical Tibetan example. There are many people milling around and they’re very all concerned about the welfare of the child.
They want the child to be saved. They have a lot of compassion for the child. They’re wondering how best to go about saving the child. Then the mother comes along and spontaneously, without thought for herself, climbs down the well and saves the child. So it is this type of love, this type of compassion, an active love working in the world.
It’s a choice, a will to extend oneself for the well-being of another individual, another person. This is what the tonal quality, the feeling quality in an awakening mind, a burning desire that others be happy. And then there’s the energetic and the creative energy of the awakened mind, an energetic generosity responding in this immediate way to the needs of others. When we talk about a Buddha, one who is awakened, a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being, we’re speaking of someone who has an awakened mind, someone who has wisdom, knows the way things are clearly beyond all misconception and deception, who has an overflowing love and compassion and has this creative energy, a spiritual and mental vitality, a sense of living quality, life. The image which comes to me is a young colt prancing in the pasture.
Exuberance for life. This becomes our refuge. This becomes our direction. This is our orientation which we keep coming back to. Among all the vicissitudes of life which visit us during the course of our everyday experience.
We keep coming back to this. This is our paradigm. This is our model. That which we hold as worthwhile, that which we hold as valuable. It’s like giving ourselves a magnetic north to keep coming back to again and again and again.
Keep picking ourselves up. There’s a verse by the Zen monk, Ryokan, where he says, The Buddha is your mind and the path goes nowhere. Don’t look for anything but this. If you want to go north and you point your cart south, how will you ever arrive? Determining for yourself what type of person do you want to be, what qualities, who do you want to be ten years from now, fifteen years from now.
Determining that for yourself and then consistently making that choice in all the insignificant situation which life is continually confronting us with, with the consistent choice of becoming that person that you want to be, this continual reorientating, this choosing. That’s all we have to work with is the almost seemingly insignificant choices. During the course of our life there are to be very few dramatic choices that we’re going to have the occasion to make which are going to be life determining. But we are confronted with an infinite number of seemingly insignificant choices. And if we can consistently make that choice of the path of heart, of the path which is going to lead us to the type of person that we want to become somewhere down the line.
And though it may not appear that change is taking place in the short term, we can have some kind of self confidence, some kind of self reassurance that things are going to be okay, that things are working because I’m working towards my long term goal within the present moment, within these seemingly insignificant choices as I go along. All the minor mundane dealings of my everyday life. It’s not something other than one’s everyday life. This idea of journeying a spiritual path, this idea of a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first single step. The spiritual journey to this exalted state somewhere up in the sky, which we refer to as awakening, as Buddhahood, begins with the very insignificant choices that we’re consistently making every moment of our life.
As you sit here, when you walk out that door, you’re going to be confronted with choices. Some of those choices are going to take you in the direction of your dreams. They’re going to take you in the direction of your aspirations and they’re going to open up other doors. And those doors will open up other doors and they’re going to form a path. Others are going to take you in another direction, a tangent, perhaps somewhere you don’t even want to go, perhaps a momentary pause along your path.
But the choices are still there and keeping before oneself one’s goal. We are continually empowering people, things, objects around us either consciously or unconsciously such that they’re able to influence our mind. They’re able to have power over us. And what types of objects, what types of goals, what types of person’s aims are you empowering for yourself? The mind is dynamic, continually changing.
It’s continually becoming something else than it was the moment previously. The slightest variables will make it slightly different than it was the previous moment. And if you take as your point of aspiration, your goal, that which you hold as high, that which you hold as worthwhile, as valuable, rambo, then you shouldn’t be surprised if in fact you begin to express rambo like qualities in the course of your everyday life. Maybe we’re a little more thoughtful about it, I don’t know. Maybe it’s neither better nor worse.
But anyway, we take as our model, as our goal, as our paradigm, someone who’s awake, someone who knows, someone who’s very loving and caring and communicative, and someone who acts with activity, spontaneous generosity in the world. And we hold this up to ourselves as my direction in life consistently and consistently make the choices which will lead me to actualize that Buddha within myself. And we achieve this by going for refuge, taking a direction in the Dharma. The Dharma is traditionally thought of as the teachings. Sometimes it’s translated as the word truth.
But we can expand our idea of what Dharma might mean. Anything which is able to raise the level of our consciousness, anything which is able to bridge the gap between hatred and love, between miserliness and generosity, between clinging and openness, between ignorance and wisdom. Anything which has that key, that possibility to open the mind to a new pattern, a new way of being, a new perspective, a contradiction to what has been, and opening up to a possibility of what could be. That’s Dharma. And we go for refuge to the spiritual community, the Sangha.
And this is the social context in which this process of growth takes place. We are social beings. This is an existential fact and being social beings would entail that mental health is a social phenomenon. It’s not something which can be gained and experienced in isolation and separate from others. So we have to find an appropriate way of relating with others.
The social context in which spiritual development takes place and which growth takes place is within the spiritual context of a Sangha, a spiritual community. Those individuals who take the idea of awakening as central to their life, they hold as prime values the ideals of love and wisdom and helping others and caring and communicating. These are prime values to them. And they share with one another. Teach one another.
They guide one another. They inspire one another. They cry on each other’s shoulder, whatever is necessary to assist another fellow journeyer along the path. This is our support. So this becomes our continual direction, our reorientation.
In this whole process, we are trying to raise the level of our motivation such that I’m not doing it simply for chocolate cake, simply not for my own solitary welfare, my own happiness alone. But maybe by getting my own act together, maybe by being a little more loving, a little more understanding, having a little more energy for others, I can be of more benefit to others. But if I find some peace to myself and I develop the skills, I can help others to find that same peace. So the motivation, the basis for our practice becomes not only to help oneself but in helping oneself in order to be able to help others. And there’s nothing more that we can do.
There’s nothing more noble, worthwhile, purposeful that we can make of our life than to try to actualize our fullest human potential and do it for the sake of all sentient beings. And this becomes the continuous reorientation, the continuous direction that we’re seeking to take in our life. Then everything that we do has meaning. Everything that we do is worthwhile and has purpose and only good can come of it. There’s a verse that we usually recite.
If you’d like to recite together, it’s verse number one. We usually recite it three times. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, 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 am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the highest assembly.
From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving in 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 am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving in the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. So we’re going to divide our time together up into first as we just did, we’re going to prepare our motivation, trying to open ourselves up to the possibility of change. And we’re going to do a meditation together.
The basis of the meditation will be mindfulness of breathing. I think most of you are familiar with that practice. Then each evening in combination with the meditation session, having meditated on mindfulness of breathing, then we’ll do another type of meditation which will be different each evening. I’ll lead you in that particular meditation. Tonight we’ll do a meditation on loving kindness.
Then I’ll try to say a few words about the subject, the heart and mind of Buddhism, And then we discussed this at the end of our last session before the break. What would be most relevant to people? Something which actually not superimposed upon but what actually works. What is of benefit to you and to me, us together, working together as a group, creating something which in the time together are hour and a half or two hours, is going to be a really practical benefit and use to you. It’s going to help you out to solve some problems.
It’s going to help me out to solve some of my problems. So we thought in combination with this readjusting our motivation meditation session and saying a few words about the heart and mind of Buddhism, which is going to be our subject for the next quite a number of weeks, Then we’d take a break and everybody could get a cup of tea or coffee or whatever and we just form a circle and have an open discussion just sharing. If you have some questions, we can go over the questions, but also hearing each other. Sometimes we don’t know all that we know until it’s said. The conversation is extremely important to evolving ideas.
It clarifies, it makes them concrete. We come to know a great deal that we didn’t know before simply by bringing them out and sharing them with others. So this process of sharing and our feelings are whatever. I hope this is agreeable, this kind of format with everyone. I thought we could even go till nine thirty each evening.
I hope that’s not too late for you or you’re not too tired. Why do you have to work? I don’t work. So I have it easy. I also hope that you, in the mindfulness of breathing meditation, that you all have some familiarity with it.
I’m going to assume that. I don’t know if that’s permissible. What do you think? About those who have never done mindfulness of breathing? Can have yeah.
That’s good. There’s a learn to meditate at six o’clock on Mondays, which you’re quite welcome to come along to. But perhaps we can discuss it in private. Simply focusing upon the breath, the natural breath without trying to alter it in any way. Just keep bringing the mind back to the breath again and again and again.
It is by bringing the mind to rest upon the breath consistently that the mind will finally come to rest. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Again and again and again. We’ll begin the meditation sessions each week with a short meditation on love and compassion. In terms of love, going to love has three different levels and compassion has three different levels.
In initial level, we try to actually generate the thought, It would be wonderful, a kind, friendly thought. It would be wonderful if others were happy, all living beings were happy. You don’t have to hurt yourself in trying to push in your mind. Just try to get a sense of gentle friendliness and try to extend this to as many beings as your imagination will allow you. Wouldn’t it be wonderful?
It’d be wonderful, it’d be great if all sentient beings, if all living beings had happiness and the causes of happiness. And we try to strengthen that, actually try to gain that sense, that feeling beyond words, some feeling, some movement of the mind, and try to strengthen that. May all living beings have happiness and the causes of happiness, a little more involvement, a little stronger, and try to raise the level of your love to that level. And then finally, I myself will bring happiness to all living beings and the causes of happiness. And this is quite difficult to achieve and to actually sincerely authentically feel that toward all sentient beings.
We can work toward that and it’s really wonderful just to simply habituate to accustom one’s mind even to the words, let alone the feeling. And this is something very rare, isn’t it? If you look over what the types of thoughts and words that you experience over the course of day, if you listen, if you watch the television over the course of one evening, how many times do they say, May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness? Maybe you never hear that on television except when he interviewed the Dalai Lama last week. Maybe that’s the only time, Even accustoming one’s mind to these words acts as a start. At least we can feel friendly, we can feel familiar with the words.
The words don’t feel so foreign. And then with the words comes perhaps the feelings slowly. We’re accustoming ourselves to a new idea, a new way of relating. Then we’ll do the same with compassion. We’re not going to spend long on this, but we’ll take compassion.
It would be wonderful if all living beings were free of suffering and the causes of suffering. That would be great. Wouldn’t it be great? And then having some familiarity, some sense of feeling of that, then we try to strengthen that. May all living beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.
And we try to familiarize ourselves and try to actually feel, get a sense of what that might be like. And then finally, strengthen that to its ultimate end. I myself will free all living beings from suffering and the causes of suffering. So we’ll go through those three stages of love and compassion. I’ll mention them as we go along.
Then we’ll do a session of mindfulness of breathing and then different meditation each evening. This evening we’ll do a meditation of loving kindness. So if you take a firm but comfortable position, we’ll proceed with the meditation session. Begin with a simple friendly thought. It would be wonderful if all living beings had happiness and the causes of happiness.
May all living beings have happiness in the cause of that happiness. I myself will bring happiness and the causes of happiness to all living beings. It would be wonderful if all living beings were free of suffering and the causes of suffering. May all living beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. I myself will free all living beings from suffering and the causes of suffering.
Then bring the mind gently to the breath, the natural, even, in and out flow of the breath. Bring the mind back to the breath. Now consider some of your own difficulties, some of your own problems, and the fact that you want to be happy. Whatever you may have done in the past, whatever mistakes you may have created, you can simply regret them. As best you can, not to repeat them again in the future.
You can begin again. However you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold to, you can change. You can become anything that you want to be. But just for this present moment, we want to try to make friends with ourselves, all the various parts of ourselves, even perhaps those parts we don’t like very much. Try to be kind with ourselves and treat ourselves well.
So generate some kind, caring thoughts, feelings towards yourself, wishing yourself all the good things of life, all that you’ve ever wanted, wishing yourself well, wishing yourself happiness. May I be happy. May I grow. May all good things come to me. Be kind to yourself and wish yourself well.
Think of someone that you like, that you love, someone of the same sex. Imagine that person in front of you. If you can’t see them, it doesn’t matter. Feel that that person is there. And remember all the good times that you’ve shared together, all the various kindnesses that this person has shown you.
Begin to radiate out, to direct the kind, caring feelings which naturally arise when you think of this person in this way. Feelings of wishing that they’d be happy, that they not suffer, that all be well within. May you be happy. May everything that you desire come true. May you never hurt.
May you never suffer. Wish them well. Wish them happiness. Think of someone that you neither like nor dislike, someone you feel indifference toward, a stranger. Imagine that person in front of you.
You want to try to go beneath the superficial appearances that we usually cling to, that we usually judge people by, whether they’re beautiful or unattractive, male or female, rich or poor, young or old. Try to go beneath all of that and try to see that there’s someone there who wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. That’s the essence of that person in front of you. Try to see that. And begin to wish them happiness just as you would for yourself since essentially you’re exactly the same.
Radiate out some kind caring thoughts in this person. Now think of someone who you have some problems with, someone you don’t like, someone who disturbs your mind. Imagine that person in front of you. This person wants to be happy and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. And perhaps their method of finding their happiness, solving their problems, come in conflict with your methods of finding your happiness, solving your problem.
It’s just a conflict of self interest. You’ve heard others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past to find the happiness that you were looking for. Perhaps this person has done the same to you. And just as you have to forgive yourself for the mistakes that you’ve made, you have to begin to forgive this person. So just for this present moment, set aside your hurt, your grudge, your anger, and try to see someone very much like yourself.
Trying the best they can to get some happiness out of life. Often times being very confused about how to go about it and making many mistakes along the way. Wishing them happiness just as you would for yourself.