Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A morning visit to a matric class at a Catholic college frames this 47-minute session, with Ven Jampa Gendun reflecting on the importance of questioning imposed beliefs and trusting one’s inner voice. He reads a Thomas Merton passage framing existential anxiety and faith as the two engines of genuine spiritual change, then briefly shares his own path from Jewish upbringing to monasticism. The Three Jewels are recast in psychological terms — Buddha as inner potential, Dharma as whatever helps actualize it, Sangha as the social ground of mental health and growth. The session closes with an extended guided death meditation: mindfulness of breathing, then a detailed visualization through hospital bed, funeral, and burial, continuing the series’ Lamrim sequence on developing determination to be free.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 H and M of B 1992 07 27.mp3
UUID: 925f09e1-8791-4cbf-8d7d-c94acd9fe1cc
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-07-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.6 minutes
Words: ~4,010
I haven’t met before. Initially, we try to adjust our motivation, kind of reorientate ourselves, perhaps redirect our mind, perhaps get in touch with some of our central values, kind of create some sort of space for us we can create some meaning, some possibility of change. You know, we have to deal with the everyday problems of our life, all the practical necessities. We have to deal with them efficiently so that necessitates some sort of externalization that we have to be concerned with a great deal outside of ourselves which is quite necessary. It’s quite useful.
From time to time we have to get back in touch. Have to try to sense what it is that we’re feeling, what it is that is a value to myself as a very unique self actualizing individual who has intrinsic value over and above what whatever use we may be of to others, to our society, and those people around us. This very existence is worthy of our respect and our caring. We’re creating some kind of sacred atmosphere for ourselves so we can perhaps begin to look at ourselves a deeper level than we’re normally forced to. This result against this externalization process and getting in touch with our self.
I talked to a matric class this morning. I enjoy young people very much. They’re very refreshing. They’re very alive. They’re very questioning.
They haven’t fallen into the old stale patterns that somehow we get stuck in. And I know when I talk more than that I’m talking to myself, aren’t I? I think those of you who have been listening to me for a while know that and those who know me know that also. And I was just encouraging these people were seventeen, sixteen, you know, to question. I don’t know if they appreciated what I was saying and I think they did but I don’t know if the powers that be were appreciating what I was saying.
It was a Catholic college. I took a chance like that. Not to accept, allow ourselves to be ruled by conditioning, by dogma, by beliefs which are imposed upon us from the outside but to get in touch with what it is that has meaning for us, what we feel right about, and to get in touch with our own basic sanity. I don’t know. This is whenever I talk to matric students and young people, but I’m also talking to myself to have belief in yourself, to respect yourself and care about yourself enough to ask that you live the finest quality of life that you feel that you can.
I have great hopes for life. There’s something about the goodness of life. I think Buddhism has tremendous faith in the goodness of life because it has tremendous faith in each of our individual goodness. So there’s something very fine about each of us. You know, we’re doing our best I think in our struggle.
We might make a lot of mistakes, but that’s okay. And somehow we have to keep lifting ourselves back up, keep picking ourselves back up. I received a card from one woman in Sydney. And in it she wrote a quotation from Thomas Merton. Thomas Merton was an American.
He was a Catholic monk and he died, it’s been quite a number of years ago. He was a good friend of the Dalai Lama. And I like Thomas Merton very much and I thought I would read this. And talking about this process of redirecting, reorientating, you know the motivating force for developing a determination to be free.
And it’s some kind of authentic response to our intrinsic instinct toward rightfulness. It’s a willingness to go beyond, to get unstuck. Now what is it that gets us unstuck from going in these reoccurring compulsive patterns which constitute most of our lives? It takes some kind of energy, some kind of determination, some kind of information to perturb that system that we’re involved in. To raise it up to a higher, you I’m using some jargon but a higher level of higher order of self correction, the system of the mind to improve the very quality of our life.
And these two fundamental causes for this aspiration is anxiety and faith. Now I’ve mentioned this before, it’s nothing new. Why we do what we do. The curious state of alienation and confusion in modern society is perhaps more bearable because it is lived in common with a multitude of distractions and escapes and also with opportunities for fruitful action and genuine self forgetfulness. But underlying all life is the ground of doubt and self questioning which sooner or later must bring us face to face with the ultimate meaning of our life.
This self questioning can never be without a certain existential dread, a sense of insecurity, of lostness, of exile, a sense that one has somehow been untrue not so much to abstract moral or social norms but to one’s own innermost truths. Know to this authentic response to the inarticulate whisperings of our own heart and a sense of anxiety or a lack of because of dread. That we simply it becomes of central importance that somehow we respond to our innermost voice, innermost need. Something is saying that there’s something not right about the way we’re living our life and that change is necessary. And this is one of the catalyzing forces to help us to energize ourselves, to develop determination to go to get unstuck.
Know, becoming You know, they asked me why did you become a monk? Why did you? And trying to answer, trying to answer. Anyway, I remember I was, I’m Jewish and I was very fortunate. My family was quite religious.
I mean, were good people. And by religious, mean in the good sense of trying to live a spiritual life. But there were questions which no one was answering. There was a sense of underlying dissatisfaction. But I couldn’t put to rest and that needed some kind of appeasing, some kind of satisfying, this search.
So basically, this uneasiness about not living all of what life could be, and having great hopes. I think perhaps maybe when you’re in there it seems to be two forces at work. One is to put it most simply, the force of suffering. It seems that suffering pushes us but there is some but that is not all But there is the life which is forcing us to to strive, to grow, to make this journey. There’s also a light, some kind of a tremendously positive experience, call them deep experiences or whatever that perhaps we all have from time to time in the course of our life.
Something which transcends our normal order of being and we see the possibility of what life could be like, of what who we actually are and the birthright as it is and wanting to reclaim it. So it seems that this powerful force of suffering pushes us, we’ve drawn toward a light, toward another way of being, toward another possibility. An authentic response. And you know, and I was talking with these young people this morning. We’re trying to encourage them to find out what they feel.
And I think that’s why we take these few moments before the teaching, before trying to involve ourselves in anything which might resemble spirituality or religious practice and try to feel what it is we’re feeling. To to get near that that that impulse towards love and wisdom to try to attune ourselves to this necessity to respond. It’s too easy to live on the, as Merton says, on a superficial level where we can be distracted, we can practice self forgetfulness. And then we live our life and it’s it becomes one hollow event after another. There’s not much feeling, there’s not much meaning.
The intellect operates on the basis of proof and demonstration, but the soul operates on the basis of belief in meaning. Belief in the possibility which transcends all necessity for demonstration, for proof. And belief in the goodness of life and the goodness of ourselves and meaning which is self authenticated. And then we have experiences that we don’t need to justify to anyone else nor to ourselves which are in themselves fulfilling this progression toward wholeness. It was interesting.
Talked a great deal about wholeness. These were quite I think sophisticated young people. It was a morning discussing ethics and what ethics was about. They were discussing quite difficult issues before I got there. You know whether if a baby is deformed and, it would probably never live a full life.
It’s been surviving solely due to, life support systems, whether it’s better just to remove his life support systems, whether, if a girl has has a gets pregnant and then she wants to have an abortion, but her boyfriend doesn’t want to have an abortion, wants to have a baby. What do you do? Whether parents have the right to search their children’s rooms. Really difficult ethical issues and they’re really wrestling. And they were quite, it was quite, it was very joyful for me to share that with them and to tell them about, you know, just kind of giving them a half-time pep talk like a coach to to keep thinking and to use their basic energies, their intelligence, their wisdom, their love and their compassion and this exuberance that they still hold for life, this zest for life.
I guess that’s my take for you, sharing that possibility. Now we have to believe in that. We lose sight of other possibilities. We become myopic. Our vision becomes very narrowed.
We think that the superficial, you know, day to day activities that we necessarily have to deal with and to deal with unwell is all that there is. And we begin to simply begin to choose amongst perhaps a lower order of possibilities within that realm the possibilities within within that realm. But we forget that there are values and ways of life and ways of being which you know I guess what I’m saying is I would like to think that coping is not enough. You know we’re all quite we do what we do we do it very well I’m sure that you all are quite efficient and you function very well and you do meaningful work whether it be in the home, in your business, whether it be in schools or in caring professions. And I think these are all necessarily a part of good constitute an important component of a good life.
But a good motive is needed also to to believe that there is something very special about you and there is very something very special about the potentiality of life. And to give some energy, some time and space in the course of your everyday life to fulfilling your higher potential as worthwhile. Then everything falls into its proper perspective. We don’t get we don’t lose our way and life becomes a very purposeful journey. So we go for, you know, as I traditionally talk about, you know, the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, but Not some Buddha in space, something outside of ourselves, but the Buddha within ourselves, actualization of the potentiality which we all possess.
A happy healthy loving sane human being. This becomes the inner focus of our life and we achieve this by means of the Dharma. Whatever we, you know, however we want to translate the term, whatever we want to mean by it, whether truth, the teachings, you know, whatever helps to raise ourselves, whatever helps us to actualize Buddha. Could be almost anything, you know, if we’re open. And I think that reality is constantly trying to teach you about itself.
Say that to study, you know, is printed on the calendar. If you received your newsletter, maybe you haven’t received it yet, that to study Buddhism is to study yourself. To practice Buddhism is to learn about yourself. And learning to understand who we are and thereby being able to appreciate and developing a willingness to actualize all that we are. We’re very special people.
We’re very special people. And this becomes and this is the social context in which this process takes place, by which we’re able to actualize Buddha, that is to say, the spiritual community. Those individuals who have freely chosen to associate with one another as a means of supporting one another. human beings are social beings. Mental health is a social phenomenon.
It’s something which exists in relationship with others. We simply cannot maintain our sense of isolation and hope to be as healthy as we possibly could. We simply cannot ignore others and hope to remain sane. But somehow we have to find a proper way of relating to others. I think this is a very necessary part of the spiritual path.
It’s simply not possible to gain various realizations in isolation from others and hope to find peace. That part of our goal must be to find a proper relationship to others, an appropriate way of relating with others, in the most skillful, the most positive way we call love and compassion, altruism. So within the social context of a spiritual community exercising our ability to love, creating that environment where we can practice love, being loving people. And this process takes place, you know, not just for ourselves, but hopefully we try to raise the level of our motivation such that we’re doing it, you know, initially for those we care about. You know, you know, that what can we do for others?
You know, we we have to help others according to our abilities. And we can help them in material terms. We can help them with with money. We can help them in terms of energy and time and comfort. But the greatest way we can help others is to be an example of what it could be possible to be and to be able to inspire others and help others to develop the skills to be that same way.
And this is the greatest benefit that we can be for others. And this becomes the motivating force behind our trying to actualize the Buddha within ourselves. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest assembly From the virtuous merits that I collect by practicing giving any 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. And 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 am 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 the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. So we’re going to do some meditation. We’ll begin with mindfulness of breathing. I think hopefully you all know the practice.
Just focusing upon the natural in and out of the breath. And then we’re going to meditate on death. We’ve been going through the three fundamentals of the path. First, developing the determination to be free, awakening our hearts to others, and awakening our minds to reality. In the course of developing this determination to be free, we begin by appreciating our potential and understanding that we have all the various conditions both internal and external to actualize that potential.
But this possibility isn’t going to last forever. Our chance to grow isn’t permanent. It’s going to be lost in one way or another. So this was our last teaching, our last talk together was in terms of death. And we consider death, we contemplate death in order to appreciate our life, What is important while we still have a chance to make, to use our life.
As I mentioned during the talk on death, our last discussion, the Zen student went up to the Zen master and said, master, how do I learn to live? And the master said, prepare for death. Learning about death, about terminal issues is the way we can enhance our lives. That we simply will not waste our lives. We will not allow this chance to go by without making use of it.
At least to live the type of life that we feel very deeply we should be living. Setting aside spiritual and religious practices. The acknowledgement that we dial on brings home to us very much how much our own life is our own. No one else can live our life for us. And it’s very much to us.
It’s our responsibility to live the type of life which we feel deeply to be best for us. So we’ll begin with mindfulness of breathing, and then we’ll do a meditation on death. If you take assume the proper posture, we’ll begin there. So beginning with the body, getting in touch with any tension and tightness, especially around the neck and shoulders. They carry a great deal of burden there.
And bringing your awareness to those areas and consciously relaxing, softening the muscles. You can almost feel a sensation of tension moving down and out your body. Your body becoming relaxed Then bring the mind gently to the breath. The easy, even, enough flow of the breath. Now imagine that you had an accident and you’re extremely ill.
You’re lying on a hospital bed. And about your doctors and nurses, machines and tubes hooked up to your body, your loved ones, those who care about you surrounding your bed, sitting in a corner. All the things that you’ve worked so hard to gather together, your car registration, the title to your house, all your material possessions piled on your bed. You’re feeling weaker. And slowly your vision is becoming dimmer.
You can never no longer recognize shapes, what they are. They’re just colors. Sounds become indistinct, just noisy. Your mind is beginning to slip away from your body. It’s growing dimmer and growing weaker.
And those who love you are holding on to your hand trying to stop your death, trying to bring you back. It’s going dimmer. Your mind is beginning to slip away. And though they love you, they want to help you. That moment, as it grows darker, and more silent, what use can they be to you?
Can any of them hold you back from death? Can any of them accompany you into death? And all your possessions that you worked so hard to gather together. Can you take any of them with you? Of what use can they be at this moment.
Your mind is going to break the connection with the body. And even your body that you’ve taken such good care of, that’s been your constant companion throughout your life. It’s going to have to be left behind. It’s going dark. Now imagine you’re looking down on your body.
You’re beginning to disconnect the tubes and machine. Relatives and loved ones are leaving the room crying. The nurse pulls the sheet over your head. That’s you underneath that sheet. When your orderly comes and wheels you out into the corridor and down to the elevator, down to the basement, you may wash your body.
Put a number on the inside of your thigh. Plug the orifices of your body. Tie your legs together. That’s you. They’re doing all this too.
And it’s the funeral with lots of flowers, and people are saying very nice things about you. People crying. Now to the cemetery. They lower the coffin into the ground, Throw dirt over it. Now this is the mound of freshly dug earth.
Everyone’s gone now, and it’s all over. It’s finished. What kind of life did you leave? Was it all worth it? How would you have done it differently if you had the chance?
Bring your mind back to the breath. And to even, and deepen, the breath. So last talk we were discussing death. We were trying to penetrate the veils which we psychologically place between ourselves and in the inevitability of our own demise, our own death. You know, we’d rather not talk about it.
We’d rather not confront it, it’s death is terribly sad, but it’s quite normal. And trying to somehow penetrate some of our erroneous beliefs about death, confronting the issues in terms of the fact that death is inevitable. It’s definite that we’re going to die. Everyone, everyone in this room will eventually die. Everyone who lives on this earth will one hundred and twenty five, one hundred years from now be dead.
What’s so special about me? And somehow the universe is going to single me out for special treatment. Kings, queens, dictators, saints, criminals, artists, monks, Australians, everyone. And slowly, you know, time of our death is approaching. Even as we sit here, The time, the moment of our death is continually and inexorably moving toward that moment of the time of our death.
And how much of our life is spent in terms of really trying to create happiness for ourselves on very profound level in terms of developing our mind. We simply don’t know when we’re going to die. The time of death is uncertain. People die at all ages just because you are young and healthy. At the moment doesn’t mean that an hour from now you couldn’t be racked with pain, weak.
Doesn’t take very much. And people die at any age, thirty, thirty five, forty, thirty five, fifty. They died any place. Going to work, coming out from work, cooking, listening to the dharma talk. There’s no place and no age that people cannot die in.
We’re trying to bring home to ourselves the possibility of the indefiniteness of the timing of our death. Simply there’s no guarantee that you know, we have a sense that we’re going we’re almost immortal. We act as if we’re immortal, but we aren’t. And at the time of our death, what is going to be of any benefit? And, you know, I I try to everything that we say about death we can apply to the small death which occurs during the course of our lives.
Know this famous phrase of mine that’s famous one. Death is a radical change of lifestyle. That we undergo these radical change of lifestyle many many times in the course of our lifetime. It’s quite painful. There’s an interruption, there’s an interval, something has come to an end and the new is yet to begin.
And there’s a state of flux, there’s a transition. And how are we going to go into the states of transition whether we’re going to be dragged into them against our will or whether we’re going to enter them voluntarily with confidence that not knowing what’s going to be on the other side but having confidence that you’re going to land on your feet. And that which is yet to come is unknown. There’s no surety of what it might be like. But understanding, having confidence in your own development, in your own ability, potential, to such an extent that you welcome it because you know things will go well in whatever context that may arise.
So now we’re going to talk about the death process. We’ve talked about the death and we’re going to talk about the death process and then we’ll discuss rebirth. In the death process, an advanced practitioner of Buddhism, that is to say especially someone who is practicing Tantra, seeks to make use of the opportunity of death as a means to achieve awakening. Death represents a practice.