Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Quoting the American anthropologist Gregory Bateson — “the psychology of misery is the pathology of epistemology” — Ven Jampa Gendun opens a series on a fifteen-verse text by the fourteenth-century scholar Tsongkhapa that maps three fundamentals of the path: the determination to be free, awakening the heart, and awakening the mind. In this 34-minute introductory talk he traces all suffering to two root errors — self-grasping (a mistaken sense of a fixed, independent self) and self-centeredness — and uses the image of a cancerous cell to show how self-concern harms the social system one depends on. Love and wisdom, described as two wings needed to fly, are grounded in a verse from Nāgārjuna and a Rilke poem about dragons that become princesses. Suited to newcomers with no prior Buddhist background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 H and M of B 1992 05 06.mp3
UUID: e7ddf999-f4df-4672-a2b7-c98556a7b3c5
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-05-06
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 34.2 minutes
Words: ~3,909
We’re going to be discussing the heart and mind of Buddhism. It’s going to be based on a very short text by a fourteenth century Tibetan yogi scholar by the name of Tsongkhapa. I think it’s only fifteen verses. I’ve discussed it before. It’s in the back of the prayer book.
It sets out the three fundamentals of the spiritual path: determining to be free, awakening our hearts, and awakening our minds. Within Buddhism there is the conviction that basically we are sane, intelligent, caring people. This is the premise upon which Buddhism is based. Many of the premises, many of our ideas, beliefs are mistaken. Are basing our life on distorted conceptions, which are in conflict with the way things actually are.
There’s a disparity between our view of the world and the world itself. They don’t accord. There’s some conflict. Out of this disparity between our view of the world and the world itself leads us to acts which are inappropriate, which are inaccurate, which do not accord with the actuality of the way things in fact are. This leads us to mistaken ways of thinking, mistaken ways of behaving.
And it is this which is the basis of all our difficulties, all our frustrations, disappointments, and dissatisfaction, all our suffering. Inaccurate, inappropriate ways of thinking and behaving on the basis of distorted mistaken premises, wrong beliefs, misconception. Nothing more than that. That’s not too much, isn’t it? It’s workable.
We can get a handle on the situation. It is not as if it’s beyond our calling, our capacity, that it’s a workable situation. The basic nature of all of us is unconditioned goodness. It is as if each of us is a Buddha to be. No, I’m not talking about Buddhism, the religion, It is as if each of us is a happy, healthy, sane, loving human being to be.
This is an expression of our basic goodness. It’s not something that we need to pray for, something that we need to ask anyone for, that we need to search around outside of ourselves for, that we need to buy. It is our birthright. There’s something about us which is basically decent, which is basically sane, which is intelligent and caring. Our lives are based upon beliefs, ideas, systems of ideas, core assumptions.
But we are involved in some errors. The most fundamental of these errors we call self grasping and self centeredness. An American anthropologist by the name of Gregory Bateson, who was quite popular in the sixty’s in the United States, he once said that, and I like this expression very much, I repeat it quite often, That the psychology of misery is pathology of epistemology. A lot of words, The psychology of misery is the pathology of epistemology. Psychology of misery, that means our mental suffering is based upon, epistemology simply means the way we know.
Pathology means unhealthy. Our mental suffering is based upon unhealthy ways of knowing. Nothing more than that. We have some wrong ideas, some crooked assumptions, some distorted beliefs And we’re operating our life on the basis of those mistaken notions and our actions are inappropriate and lead to pain. The most fundamental, the most basic is self grasping and self centeredness.
This quality of ignorance or misknowledge, it is a misconception with regard to the ultimate nature of reality. Simply put, it is expressed as a misconception as to who I am, the I, the self, Kampa, this monk who is sitting up here talking to you, or perhaps from your side the person who’s listening to me. Who am I? We have some mistaken notions about it, some wrong conceptions, distorted ideas. On the basis of that mistaken assumption, wrong ideas, we act inappropriately.
There’s no moral judgment being made. There are laws which need to be acted in accordance with, which we need to come into harmony with. We cannot make the world run as we would like it to. We can only become aware of these laws and act in harmony with them. Otherwise, we’re going to experience a sense of rage because the world does not run according to my desire or a sense of powerlessness because I cannot do the impossible.
I can’t make the world run according to my wishes. So we have no choice basically. But as long as we aren’t aware, as long as we don’t strive to make that choice and to institute those ways of being which are in accordance with reality, we will continually experience disappointment, frustration, and dissatisfaction. No one’s out to get us. It is the nature of things.
On the basis of this fundamental mistaken premise as to the nature of an unchanging independent eye, you know, there’s something over here somewhere on this side of the mirror which I sense, I feel to the depth of my being is unchanging, independent, independent of causes, conditions, independent of parts, independent of my mind, thoughts, imputation. Something over here. It’s gone unexamined. I never checked up. On the basis of that unexamined fallacious assumption, all of my various problems arise.
I either try to enhance or protect this now solid concrete self. On the basis of this misconception arises self centeredness, this exaggerated self concern. There arises the tendency toward the misconception with regards to the efficacy of self serving behavior and thinking to bring about oneself interest at the expense and exclusion of others. By efficacy, mean we have a sense that if I get mine first, this is the best way to go about finding happiness in my life. This is the most effective way, me first attitude.
Know, okay, others can get theirs, but I’m going to search for my happiness for myself and quite often at the exclusion and expense of others. This nature of this type of relationship with others. Initially I said that we are social beings. It’s like a cancer cell, a self centered cancer cell. A self centered cell becomes a cancerous cell.
It becomes harmful to the entire system in which it is an integral part of and it destroys the very system. And we likewise, through our self centeredness, are in some ways a cancerous cell. We don’t see ourselves as interdependent and we aren’t able to find the most appropriate way of relating with our fellow members of our system, which we’re involved in. The most appropriate way is another centeredness in terms of love and compassion, in terms of communication and caring. We have a distorted notion about the most effective way to find happiness.
So these two are the primary causes for all our difficulties, all our problems. These are the two that we’re going to seek to overcome, we’re going to bring to awareness and contradict. By means of awakening our hearts to others, we can go beyond our self centered attitude. By means of awakening our mind to reality, we can go beyond our misconception. That’s the nature of the self.
We can go beyond misknowledge or ignorance. You know, most simply we’re discussing love and compassion. Love and compassion are likened to two wings of a bird. In order to fly, a bird needs two wings. Though we have great love, which is terribly important, it must be combined with wisdom.
We have to bring about a total integration, a holistic method of becoming healthy in terms of integrating our emotional and intellectual life, in terms of finding integration between love and wisdom, in the sense that this is the way we can fly depending upon these two. This is the way that we can realize the fullest potential of what it means to be a human being, by actualizing these two, love and compassion. We are all on some kind of journey, whether we’re aware of the journey or not. Some of us are going forward, some of us are going backwards, and some of us are standing still, but we’re all on a journey one way or another. And this journey involves a path.
The word for path in the Pali language is the language which is generally used in the Buddhist context in countries such as Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia. The word for path in Pali is patipada. patipada simply means putting one foot in front of the next, one foot in front of the next. And in this context, to travel a path, to put one foot in front of the next, is to develop love, wisdom, love, wisdom, one assisting and enhancing the other, supporting the other. Through developing love, love acts as a precursor as a means for developing wisdom.
Wisdom, in turn, supports our love. We’re two working together. In the Tibetan language the word pali, the word for path, is lam, which simply means clear knowledge, clear knowing. It means to make vivid and actual all of the various realizations. The primary state of mind, the primary achievement of our realization is to make actual and vivid the awakening heart and the awakening mind, to make actual and vivid love and compassion.
These two, this is the direction of spirituality. There’s nothing more noble than this. There’s no greater purpose to which we can put our life to, no greater meaning that we can bring to our life. And there’s no loftier aim. There’s no higher path.
There’s no path higher than this. There’s no path which is somehow more mystical, more exotic, could produce more beneficial results of whatever it might be to find the goal of a spiritual life. These are the central themes of the path, the fundamentals of the path, love and compassion. They are the culmination of the evolution of the cosmos. One of the greatest Buddhist masters of India by the name of Nāgārjuna in a text called Precious Garland, he said, If you and the world wish to attain unsurpassable awakening, its foundation is the awakening heart, firm like the king of mountains, Mount Meru.
Compassion extending to all the directions and wisdom rely not on duality, that is to say, the awakening mind. So these two, the awakening heart and the awakening mind, are the two fundamental causes for awakening, for becoming a Buddha, a happy, healthy, sane human being. A Buddha is someone who has found peace within and motivated out of compassion, skillfully works without in order to bring peace to others. And this is simply what we mean by Buddha. And the cause of this is wisdom and love.
The consummation of wisdom and love is what we’re calling the awakening heart and the awakening mind. Overcoming these two faulty premises, fallacious ideas upon which we presently operate in our lives. This is like the goal of spiritual life, at least as seen by Buddhism. Walking this, to make this journey, to walk this path, to go padi padi, love wisdom, love wisdom requires a great deal of determination. It’s a necessary prerequisite.
It takes a tremendous determination to become awake. We don’t have to become awake. We have to want to and we have to want to very much. How much will determine how far we go along the path and how quickly we travel along the path. But at least we have to desire that much.
We have to determine to actualize our potential, to actualize love and compassion, to go beyond our fantasies, our self deception, our wrong ideas. To follow this, as I mentioned previously, the inarticulate whisperings of our own heart, some kind of authentic response to our instinct toward wakefulness. There’s an instinct, there’s a movement of the mind towards away from self deception, away from fantasy, toward awakening, toward awareness, toward sanity. This is our Buddha nature operating in our lives. The urge to penetrate beyond the continuing cycles of ego’s self justification, ego’s self aggrandizement, ego’s self deception.
The determination to end our suffering once and for all, enough is enough. When you get sick and tired of being sick and tired, you find a way to get well. Then maybe you have to become sick and tired first. We really have to want to change or there will be none. You can almost rest assured of that.
Maybe you can make cosmetic changes, but basically the attitudes remain the same. Think it was Don Juan who said to Carlos Castaneda, You think changing slowly because you’re not changing at all. If we don’t change, if we don’t determine, if we don’t see the necessity, I mean almost a burning necessity, the mother of invention is necessity. Then there’s only going to be the continual maintenance of the status quo. We’re going to remain stuck.
We have to intelligently confront our basic dissatisfaction, the reoccurring theme of disappointment and frustration of the struggle in our lives, and develop an ongoing determination to awake, to grow. As I said, our lives are based upon sets of ideas, our belief system, core assumptions, To the degree that our paradigm, our model of reality, these beliefs, ideas, assumptions are mistaken and distorted, we will correspondingly experience disappointment, frustration and dissatisfaction. There’s an American psychologist, his name is Ellis, a quotation from, he’s into emotional rational therapy. I think that practically the whole human race is out of its goddamn mind and could use therapy. All are biologically prone to think crookedly.
All humans are somewhat nutty because they refuse pig headedly to accept reality and therefore make themselves depressed, anxious and enraged. So the determination to wake, the determination to transform our models, our paradigms to more accurate ones, models which conform with the way things actually are. Ultimately, we have to see the absolute necessity and develop the skill and energy to completely uproot these two most fundamental misconceptions that we’re basing our life at present upon, self grasping and self centeredness. What we’re saying essentially is that we’re stuck. We’re stuck in particular dissatisfactory patterns of existence.
This is a self reinforcing system which we’re involved. There’s a negative feedback loop at work. The same problems keep reoccurring again and again and again. We keep making the same mistakes again and again and again. We’ve all had the necessary experience, but we either miss or dismiss the lesson and we simply make the same mistakes again and again and again.
So if Buddhism is doing anything, it is simply helping us to become aware and pointing, helping us not to miss the mistakes, helping us not to dismiss the lesson which our experiences are continually bringing us. We don’t need any more suffering. We’ve had enough. But we need to learn by becoming aware of our suffering and penetrate its nature and go beyond our wishful thinking and our self deception about its nature. And to see that basically the one factor which needs to be changed is our own mind.
What is the basis of that change is in terms of overcoming these two distorted fundamental premises upon which we base our life, self grasping and self centeredness. It’s a beautiful paragraph by an Austrian poet by the name of Rilke. It’s quite nice, I like to read it. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.
We are set down in life as in the element to which we are best corresponded. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. As it tares, they are our terrors. As it abysses, those abysses belong to us. Our danger is at hand, we must try to love them.
And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which consoles us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act beautifully and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. We must be beautiful and brave and with full conscious awareness take up this difficult task of awakening.
We have to grow in wisdom and love. Buddhism doesn’t offer anything but that, a way to awaken, a penetrating analysis of the conditions we find ourselves in as well as powerful and proven methods, techniques developed and refined over hundreds of years by means of which for helping us slay the dragons of our own projection, of our own hatred, of our own attachment, of our own miserliness, of our own spite, pride, of our own misknowledge. And to help us to free ourselves from this self imposed prison in which we all exist. But that’s enough, I think. We don’t need anything more than that.
That’s quite sufficient. But first we have to develop the determination to wake. We have to develop the determination to be free. We have to develop the determination to change. One must see the absolute necessity at some very deep level of one’s being.
It is the seeing which is change itself. It’s not two things. The very seeing, the necessity to change, is change itself, to get unstuck. So as I mentioned in terms of the refuge and taking a direction, Dharma is the way we get unstuck. And you’re first by means of evolving more skillful patterns of thinking, more skillful patterns of behaving.
That is patterns which produce predominantly less suffering, predominantly more happiness. But finally, as a method to go beyond all patterned modes of existence, all styles of suffering, all samsaric modes of existence, all together. As I mentioned, we’re making two basic mistakes, the mistakes of self grasping and self centeredness. But we are also making other mistakes. It’s almost like an archeological dig.
They’re at the very basis, the very primordial foundation of these various layers of civilization, of misconception, is misknowledge, self grasping, self centeredness. But upon these there are other misconceptions. And so we have to begin to dig down level after level till finally we are able to penetrate and resolve the very basic misconceptions, the very basic fallacious premises on which we live our lives. We have to deal with more superficial, more understanding towards the surface of our mind, which we’re able to more readily access. We believe ourselves to be limited.
We believe ourselves to be insufficient, incomplete. There’s something lacking in myself, something I don’t have, something inherently wrong with myself, feelings of insufficiency, feelings of lack of self worth. That there is something outside I need which is not there, which isn’t complete. I don’t have all the conditions necessary to develop myself to grow. We act as if we’re going to live forever, that I’m immortal.
But even if we were to admit to ourselves that, Ah yes, I’ll die, not too soon, sometime in a vague distant future. Not soon, not We feel as if we are victims of society, that our life is not in our hands, that I am the way I am because of my family, that my mommy didn’t love me enough. That’s why I’m such a mess. And that overcoming what one has been is beyond one’s pale, that it’s out of one’s control, that it is one’s destiny. That somehow we have no choice, that our happiness and unhappiness are not ultimately our own responsibility, that they lie outside of ourselves.
We believe that that which is by its very nature dissatisfactory to be satisfying, able to bring complete enjoyment, contentment. We believe that which is impermanent to be permanent. All of these various levels of misconception, type of thinking, any type of behavior, verbal, mental, or physical, is based upon misconception is inappropriate because it doesn’t accord with the reality. And this disparity, this discord is experienced as suffering. These are just some of the beliefs upon which we base our life.
And because they do not accord with reality, we inevitably meet with disappointment, frustration, dissatisfaction. It’s like leaving a photograph of a piece of chocolate cake to be a real piece of chocolate cake. No matter how much you may eat of that, it’s never going to bring you the satisfaction you hoped it would. It’s never going to be able to fulfill your expectations due to that basic misconception. We’re only going to experience disappointment, frustration, and dissatisfaction.
So this path that we’re going to be talking about, that we’re going to be journeying along, is a matter of overturning and relearning. To study Buddhism is to study yourself. To learn something is to begin to know yourself. If we are determined enough to learn, then anything can be Dharma. Anything can help us to get unstuck.
But above all, we must get unstuck. There must be some kind of movement, some kind of direction in our lives. One of the greatest twentieth century masters, I’m going to finish in a minute, Trijang Rinpoche, a Tibetan master. In a teaching he gave on these very three fundamentals of the path he said, Now there is a great highway along which each and every Buddha that of three times travels. It is a single guiding lamp for living beings in all three worlds.
It is none other than the teachings known as the steps to Buddhahood. In the very heart, the very life of this teaching is the instructions on the three principal paths, these three fundamentals of the path. And he goes on to say, Everybody’s got some mystic being they’re meditating about, and everybody’s got some mystic words they’re talking about, and all because nobody’s got any real practice they’re thinking about. And he continues, Therefore, those of us who are thinking about doing some real, pure practice of the spirit should try to find one that will take us onto freedom and all knowing. And for practice to be this way, it should make us masters in the three principal paths.
These three are like the heart, the very life within the teachings on the steps to Buddhahood. So these three fundamentals of the path, these three principal themes which take you from where you’re at now as an ordinary being with all your hang ups, misconceptions and wrong ideas to awakening, to a happy, loving, healthy, sane human being, has three fundamentals, three principal themes: developing the determination to be free, to change, awakening our hearts, awakening our hearts to others, and awakening our minds, awakening our minds to the nature of reality, to ourselves. That’s what we’re going be talking about over the next number of weeks. So I’m going stop there. I don’t know, we were thinking about having a circle to make it a little more informal so people would feel more readily, more at ease in expressing themselves and talking about and sharing with others.
Do you think that’s practical? Yeah? Okay. Would you like to stand or get a cup of tea and we’ll come back and we’ll have a circle and we’ll carry on from there. Maybe the microphone, but Okay.
Maybe I’ll repeat that.