Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with an 18th-century Japanese Zen verse — “Buddha is your mind and the way goes nowhere” — Ven Jampa Gendun grounds this 46-minute session in a single premise: the mind, not external conditions, determines happiness. He illustrates the point with a vivid analogy about hunting for lost keys in the wrong yard, then outlines what it means to shift from a life steered by hope and fear to one oriented by deliberate growth. The main body works through Tsongkhapa’s first fundamental of the path — the determination to be free — examining the three marks of conditioned existence: three types of dissatisfactoriness (pain, fluctuation, and universal conditionality) and impermanence, the latter brought home through a medical x-ray analogy and a short cemetery poem. A brief guided compassion meditation is woven in midway.
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File: 05 H and M of B 1992 11 04.mp3
UUID: 8a9fd940-b2ac-4869-ae3a-aa10a67a1bd8
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-11-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~5,232
We begin by adjusting our motivation, redirecting ourselves, reprioritizing our values, getting in touch with that which is important to us. I’d like to read a verse from an old friend of mine. I think he lived in the eighteenth century. A Japanese Zen poet. The reason I say he’s an old friend is simply because we spent a lot of time together, he and I.
At least he and myself in his book in India and in Thailand. Sort of having a sort of an affinity, feeling of brotherhood with him. Buddha is your mind and the way goes nowhere. Don’t look for anything but this. If you point your cart north and you want to go south, how will you ever arrive?
And the Buddha is your mind, and the way goes nowhere. So this process of reorientating ourselves is very much in in coming to some sort of understanding that it is predominantly the quality of our own mind, which determines the quality of our life. The degree of happiness and suffering, the degree of joys and dissatisfaction that we experience. And as I’ve tried to emphasize, I think it’s quite legitimate and quite necessary to gather all the various components of what constitutes the good life in terms of material possessions, in terms of significant relationships with valued friends and partners, stylish clothes, good food, nice home. You know, all of these things go together to bring about that thing that we want, happiness.
But we’re determined as to whether all of these things that we work so hard to gather together, and which we’re looking at in terms of the pathology of conditioned existence, the truth of suffering, dissatisfaction, is our own mind. And the mind is in its place, in its way, can make a heaven of hell a hell of heaven. It has that power. It has the determining factor. And whether these objects that we gather around us are going to be actual sources of happiness, are going to fulfill our hopes that we work so hard in gathering them together, or whether it’s simply going to complicate our lives, whether it is simply as many times we have experienced for ourselves become another complicated factor, something more to add to your troubles, to your problem, in fact become a source of dissatisfaction and suffering.
The Buddha is within your mind. That is to say nothing outside of ourselves, our own mind can be an ultimate refuge. Nothing outside of ourselves can be the ultimate source of the solutions to our problems. With our minds we create the problems and it’s only our minds which can solve them ultimately. And the way goes nowhere.
If we search outside of ourselves for the ultimate solutions to our problems, we’re never going to find it. It is as if we As if we lost the key to our door and we lost it in the back, in the lawn in the back. But the lawn in the back is very deep, it hasn’t been cut in a long time. The lawn in front was just cut yesterday, it’s much shorter. So you look in front, you know where the grass is short.
No matter how long you look for your key in the front yard, you’re never going to find it. That’s not where you lost it. No matter how difficult it may be, no matter how burdensome and troublesome, how problematic the search might, the difficulties that the search might entail, We have to look at the place where we can find the solution, where we can find the key, and that is in the backyard. And the way the key is within our own mind. We are orientated that way, so therefore it seems to be more troublesome, more difficult, more burdensome process of meditation, study, reflection, having to try to gain insight and understand and put these things into practice seems quite difficult.
And that’s naturally enough. But it seems to be a necessary process that we have to go through in order to actually locate the key and use it to open up the door of our own mind to the reality of our situation and go beyond it. If you point your cart north when you want to go south, how will you ever arrive? It’s beginning to determine the type of person that you want to be, you know, five years from now, ten years from now. And it’s to say a sense of goalfulness?
Is that a new word? No? Anyway, rather than you know this cliche of a ship without a rudder, but sometimes cliches have some meaning if we can rethink and look back into what they’re intending to get at. You know a ship without a rudder simply is tossed by the waves. In our cases the waves of hopes and fears.
Hope with pleasure, fears of pain, hopes of gain, fears of loss, all the various principles which act as guidelines in our decision making process in choosing the path that we take. And in determining the type of person that we want to become, there is this process of realigning. That is to say we begin to put a rudder on our ship, the ship of life. And we no longer use the guidelines of hope and fear as the determinant of the course of our in which we’re going to set sail. Carrying this metaphor quite far.
But we use the compass of growth. You know, whatever helps me to grow, whatever takes me from, you know, practically speaking from holding on, from attachment to open, letting go. From miserliness to generosity, from impatience to tolerance, anger to caring communication, from ignorance to wisdom. That’s what I want, that’s my these have become my prime determining values in my life that beside the course I set and all of the various seemingly insignificant choices that I have to make over the course of my daily life. I choose that which is going to facilitate the actualization of my goal.
Out of these choices a path is created, A consistent choice in terms of some predetermined goal that you’ve at some point in your life that you felt worthwhile, that you felt was worth the time and energy is worth your life to achieve. So there’s a process of realigning our allegiance away from a life passively led under the influence of hopes and fears to one which is actively led on the basis of choosing to grow. And we try to raise the level of our motivation, our intention for traveling this path, such that we’re not doing it just for ourselves, but hopefully that we can in developing ourselves through growing within our own minds, finding some insight and some love and compassion within our own depth, we can begin to help others to grow. Know, this we’re looking at the determination to be free. And the determination to be free is just another word for having compassion for oneself.
When this this quality of compassion, the quality of love, you know when it’s when it’s directed, when the object of that quality, that attitude of mind is directed towards oneself, then we call it determination to be free. Determination to awaken, to become sincere, to become serious, the will to extend oneself, to begin to solve ones problems at a very basic level, to determine that you’re going to end your problems. At least you’re going to put forth the energy and create the time, learn the skills to work towards that end. That becomes a priority in your life. And then shifting, simply shifting that attitude, the object of that attitude toward others, which we normally call love and compassion.
We can also call the determination to help others to grow, help others to awaken, to help them to develop the skills to become sincere about their difficulties and to help them to work toward the solutions to their problems. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, a Buddha within inside of ourselves, which we achieve by means of the Dharma, the techniques, the methods, the truth, whatsoever helps to raise the level of our consciousness. And this all occurs within the social context of the spiritual community. And we do this not just for ourselves, but for an ever widening circle of concern for others until ultimately it includes all living beings in our in our circle of concern. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, 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. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and highest assembly. And the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfection, 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. 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.
We begin with the meditation session. The development of initially of love and compassion and taking as an object someone of the same sex, someone who is not particularly intimate, who you’re not particularly intimate with but that you have an attraction for, someone that you have a liking for, but are not particularly close, someone in the same sex. And then we’ll do mindfulness and breathing, and then we’ll do I’ll lead you through a guided meditation. So if you take a comfortable, firm posture. Think of someone that you someone of the same sex that you like, that you find attractive, you aren’t particularly intimate with, not particularly close, but that is appealing to you quite naturally.
And if you can imagine them in front of you, if you can’t it doesn’t matter, just feel that they’re in front of you. We begin by cultivating compassion and first with the simple friendly thought. It would be wonderful if you didn’t have any problems. You’re free of all your dissatisfaction. So try to generate that sense of feeling behind those words.
Just the fairness, the careiness for this person. Then straighten that feeling. May you be free from bothering the difficulty. I wish that you didn’t have any problems. I’m going to help you.
I’m going to commit myself to working with you to help you to solve your problems, taking responsibility. I’m going to cultivate love toward this person. First with me, simple friendly thought. Would it be wonderful if you were happy? I would like that.
May you be happy. I’m gonna commit myself to work needs, take responsibility to help you to be happy. The way I’m going to express my commitment to you at this very moment is through my meditation and by developing myself. I can fulfill my commitment to you. That’s why I’m going to meditate.
Bring the mind to the breath. Just ease gently in and out flow of the natural breath. If it’s helpful, use the techniques of counting and noting. Looking at a very short text by fourteenth century yogi scholar, Tsongkhapa, who is the central figure in this very elaborate painting above the image of the Buddha. He is the central figure in Tibetan Buddhist tradition that is mainly practiced here at Buddha House.
Looking at the three fundamentals of the path: developing the determination to be free, the awakening heart and the awakening mind. And amongst these three, the first of these, the developing determination to be free. And we’re talking about the pathology of conditioned existence. The Buddha said that I teach two things, just two things: suffering and the way to go beyond suffering. And in terms of our present discussion of the pathology of conditioned existence, that is a by pathology I mean unhealthy, undesirable, unproductive, destructive, of existing and by conditioned, a way of existing, a way of being which is being conditioned which is being which is lived out under the influence of karma and afflicted emotions.
And karma we’ve discussed in terms of these repeating compulsive patterns which have been imprinted from our mind through our various verbal, physical and mental actions, and by afflictive emotions, the various types of emotions or various types of patterns of the mind, negative patterns such as attachment, desire, hate, spite, miserliness, jealousy, but most basically, mis-knowledge or ignorance. So, you know, we’re trying to throughout this discussion of this first fundamental of the path, developing the determination of will to be free, we’re trying to arouse the necessary energy, the determination whereby to become unstuck. You know, there is a sort of psychological inertia which is binding in this and these reoccurring compulsive patterns. It is only to the degree that we become aware of and have a concomitant, discontentment with the dissatisfactory quality of our present situation only to that degree will change be brought about. That a healthy dissatisfaction is the necessary nurturing condition for growth.
Otherwise, there’s going to be a maintenance of the status quo. We’re going to if you believe your prison cell is comfortable, you’re never going to think about a way to be free is what it comes down to. So it’s necessary to look very closely at the actuality of our lived experience. You know, we’re not talking in terms of an abstract theory or philosophy, but trying to see if perhaps we are overlooking something within our actual experience which would help us, which if we were to become aware of, would help us to develop this healthy dissatisfaction and help us to develop the motivation, determination, the intention to go beyond these reoccurring dissatisfaction compulsive patterns which very much constitute our life. That we can do better.
It’s not all that life could be. And just a way of illustrating. You know this is a, I guess, would say an analogy of what perhaps we’re trying to do in looking at the pathology of conditioned existence. We’re looking at the three marks of conditioned existence. And that it’s dissatisfactory.
The dissatisfactoriness of The three marks of conditioned existence, dissatisfactoriness, impermanence and insubstantiability or selflessness. So you know, we’re trying to point out something that’s already there. To help us, we’re trying to, you know, it’s there but it’s not being recognized within our experience. We are experiencing it, it’s not as if we talk about by talking about suffering it’s going to make you suffer more. That won’t happen.
Hopefully the opposite effect will occur. It’s there, are experiencing it simply is below our threshold of present awareness. We’re not able to recognize it, we’re not able to discern it accurately within our actual experience. So a way of analogy, know, to make this point a little bit clearer. So using the example of a medical student in being able to read x rays.
Think of a medical student attending a course in the x-ray diagnosis of pulmonary diseases. He watches in a darkened room, shattering traces on a fluorescent screen placed against the patient’s chest And here’s the radiologist commenting to his assistants in technical language on the significant features of these shadows. At first the student is completely puzzled. For he can see in the x-ray picture of the chest only the shadow of the heart and ribs with a few spidery splotches here and there. The expert seems to be romancing about figments of their imagination.
He can see nothing that they are talking about. Then as he goes on listening for a few weeks looking carefully at ever new pictures of different cases, a tentative understanding will dawn on him. He will gradually forget about the ribs and begin to see the lungs and eventually if he perseveres intelligently, a rich panorama of significant detail will begin to be revealed to him of physiological variations and pathological changes of scars of chronic infections and signs of acute disease. He has entered in a new world. He still sees only fractions of what the expert can see, But the pictures are definitely making sense now and so do most of the comments made on them.
He’s about to grasp what he is being taught. It has clicked. So I think many of the things that were taught, we don’t have expertise in terms of Vipassana. We’re not able to see their significance. Only gradually are we able to enter into world in which they are describing and what they are speaking of becomes more and more clear to our self, becomes more recognizable.
It was always there. It seems as if we have to cultivate some skills and be able to discern what is already there. So that’s very much I think what we’re trying to do in terms of discussing the pathology of conditioned existence. You know we’re talking about our lived experience. The experiences are there just like the scars and the chronic diseases are indicated within the x-ray.
But we have to be able to read them, we have to be able to discern them, we have to be able to recognize them. They have to, as it were, be pointed out again and again and slowly they begin to dawn the validity of what is being said, meaning, the significance of what is being said. They were always there. It’s not as if we’re creating them by talking about them. So we’re looking at the three marks of conditioned existence of our actual lived experience.
The first of which was the mark of dissatisfaction and we talked about it in terms of three types of dissatisfactoriness. Dissatisfactoriness of pain, physical pain, headaches, stomachaches, teeth, toothaches, bruises, cuts, abrasions, all of them there is a little and big physical traumas and sufferings that we go through every day. And then there’s the dissatisfaction from mental pain. Being separated from that which you desire, coming in contact with that which you do not desire, not finding happiness that we seek, all the various depressions, low self-esteem, illnesses. And we looked at the dissatisfaction of fluctuation, the unsolvable dualistic puzzle of relativity.
That the very nature of our ordinary thinking processes predisposes us to experience dissatisfaction. That we can never know the warmth of a friend without knowing the coldness of an enemy, that we can never know success without failure. We can never know pleasure without pain. That’s the nature of our our particular situation. I can say ego based existence.
You know beginning to see beyond the meaning of some of the shadows. This is operating within our lives, but we haven’t had it pointed out. It’s not been clear. And finally the third level of dissatisfaction is in terms of dissatisfaction, it’s the universal conditionality. Simply having an ego like a bundle of thorns carried about on our back.
Wherever we go, whatever we do, there’s always stickiness. There’s always this You know all of these more subtle types of anxieties, dreads, feelings of alienation, fragmentation, feelings of separateness, feelings of aloneness, loss of innocence. And to establish our credentials, guard our territory, the fear of foolishness. We don’t know quite what is possible. The fear that we could be swallowed up by the universe.
It’s there to feel some anxiety, undercurrent of uneasiness, discomfort. This is the quality, texture of our lived experience. Not life, we’re not talking about life. We’re talking about ego based existence, a way, a particular way of living life, an approach to life that we’re trying to go beyond. We just have great faith in life, in the goodness of the possibilities that life has to offer in terms of actualizing our potential and loving, healthy, sane human being.
So it’s not life. Life is not the problem. Is our approach to life which we are trying to look at and trying to go beyond. And then we’re going to begin to look at these latter two marks of ego based existence impermanence and then finally insubstantiality or selflessness. So the mark of dissatisfactoriness constitute a pain, fluctuation and universal conditionality.
It can never be mastered and I think, know, I try to emphasize this point. You know, it can never be brought under control as if we, you know, it were extraneous to us, as if it could be cut out of us. But in fact, it is it is the very fabric of our life. It is our life, this mark of dissatisfaction. So pain, fluctuation and conditionality, you know they have to be recognized, then they have to be confronted.
And this acts as a means whereby to eventually to transcend them, to transcend the experience of that approach, that way of experiencing a type of existence. But still we try, We try and try, we struggle. All our struggling, all our sweating, all our crying. We try to make the world over into some preconceived image. We try to make the world as if how it should be.
There’s a certain basic dishonest, dishonesty involved. Demands that reality somehow conform to our hopes, our expectations. If only I could arrange all the desirable elements of life into some kind of preconceived order and freeze them there. You know, if I could I could gather all the goodies and hold on to them and just snack from them from time to time Then I could then I’d be on top of it all. I’d the master of my life.
I’d be the captain of my ship and control of my destiny. That everything would be okay. That’s what we’re holding out for. That’s one of our basic assumptions that we’re working with, that we’re under the influence of, that it’s possible that we can do that. And we expend all this blood, sweat and tears to that end to arrange a perfectly ordered world according to our preconceived ideas of what constitutes happiness.
But even if we were able to do that, still there’s a mark of impermanency. You know whatever, all things are in constant process of change. All things, this too shall pass. The marked impermanence. Impermanence refers to the fact that there are no permanent things to be found anywhere in the universe.
No permanent material objects. No permanent thought, idea or perceptions. No permanent laws of nature. No permanent beliefs or systems of belief. All without exception is changing.
We see this wherever we look, around us or inside our own mind. The weather changes, the trees and flowers change and decay, our loved ones are constantly changing, Our own bodies are changing, growing and decaying. One day we may be happy with good family, a group of friends, sensible political and religious views, and a job. The next day one of our children becomes seriously ill. Our political views are shaken by revelations of corruption, one of our friends turns on us, turns out to be selfish.
We discover that we have suddenly lost heart in an artistic activity that has brought us joy for twenty years. We develop a fear of flying that means we cannot keep our jobs. These are the vagaries of life, we say. Yes, but the mark of impermanence points out that there is nothing other than the vagaries of life. The idea of changing is not even the best way of talking of impermanence because this implies that there are things and those things change.
The mark of impermanence says that the universe should not be thought of as composed of things that change. Rather, the universe in all its parts should be thought of as processes of continual becoming and decaying. At a very deep level we do not accept the mark of impermanence. We surround ourselves with objects that we feel are permanent and we become attached to them. We hold to certain beliefs that we regard with certainty as true and unchanging.
We seek permanent laws of nature and for a final theory of matter and of human personality. All this is an attempt to fix an ever changing universe as if we could take a snapshot of it at this moment and it will always be like that. We’re trying to overcome, Many times I’ve talked about the fact that our lives are based upon sets of assumptions, ideas, belief systems, that our perceptions are belief laden. Many of the assumptions, ideas, beliefs, premises that we operate our life on are mistaken, are wrong, are erroneous, that we are under the influence of epistemological fantasies. Amongst these is that we hold things at some level of our cognitive awareness to be permanent.
That those loved ones that you are so attached to are conceived of as permanent and unchanging. Intellectually you may not agree, you may say, I don’t think that. But another level you must because otherwise attachment would not arise. The very fact of attachment is a sign, is indicative that at some level you are holding a concept of permanency. So the discussion of impermanence is a means to act as an antidote to overcome that wrong belief, that mistaken assumption that we’re basing our way of thinking, our way of behaving upon.
Everything changes, is continually passing away, is becoming something other than it was before. There is simply nothing that we can hold on to, nothing that can remain fixed and unchanged. Nothing that can endure. It is not in the nature. Everything that we love, everything that we hold dear, everything that we work so hard to attain and obtain is from moment to moment changing, is from moment to moment slipping through our fingers like fine grains of sand.
We simply can’t hold on to it. All of it will eventually be forever lost, never return again. That’s in its nature. We we have no choice but to accept the way things are. It may be sad.
We may not like it. But if we’re ever to overcome our if we’re ever to find peace, we have to live in harmony with it. We have to learn to adjust to the way things actually are, to adjust our way of thinking and behaving in accordance with our reality. Whether it be everything is undergoing change, whether it may be never to return again, to be lost, Whether it be something as simple as a beautiful sunny day or something as deeply embedded in the fabric of our life as our relationships with a spouse or with children or even our own bodies, even our lives will someday be lost. We’ll come to an end, that’s the reality.
You know, we all have to be given up someday. That’s the mark of impermanence. Walking along a narrow path at the front of a mountain I come into an ancient cemetery filled with countless tombstone, and thousand year old oaks and pines. The day is ending with a lonely plaintive wind. The names on the tombs are completely faded and even the relatives had forgotten who they were.
Choked with tears, unable to speak, I take my staff and return home. So discussing the various types of imprints to begin to gain a sense, to begin to overcome grasping that permanency. First there’s the impermanence of changeability. The impermanence of changeability. There is for example, the many different states which we pass through over the course of our lives.
There’s a constantly changing from birth until our death. We begin with as babies and we become children and we attain adolescence. We become adults, later we become middle aged, old age and finally we die. The form of the individual from birth to death is never in fact fixed. It is always changing.
We think about the present, we think about this process in terms of fixed forms changing into one another, like individual frames of a movie. But this is not how it is in nature. In nature there is always the process and continually changing patterns. We could understand process itself as fundamental, the forms being momentary appearances of this process of greater and lesser duration. From the second moment of our birth, from the second moment of our life, the process of aging death begins.
You know with all the inevitable changes through which it manifests itself. From physical vulnerability of the infant to the careless innocence of an infant, to the strength and power of youth, to the fluctuating fortunes of middle age, to the weakness and the dysfunctions and mental disorientation of old age and then finally there’s death. And now we may be may be in our prime, we may be beautiful and strong. But did you ever see in the world a man or woman at eighty, ninety or a hundred years old, frail, crooked as a gable roof, bent down, resting on crutches with tottering steps, infirm, youth long since fled with broken teeth, grey, scanty hair or none, wrinkled with blotched limbs? And did the thought never come to you that you were also subject to decay, that you also cannot escape it?
And now we healthy, we may be healthy, we may be able to you know care for ourselves. We have a certain independency we can take care of ourselves. Did you never see in the world a man or a woman who being sick, afflicted and grievously ill, wallowing in his own filth was lifted up by some and put in bed by others? And did the thought never come to you that you were also subject to disease, that you cannot escape it? And now we all are alive and we are seemingly immortal.
But did you never see in the world the corpse of a man or of a woman one, two or three days after death swollen up black blue black in color and full of corruption. And did the thought never come to you that you are also subject to death, that you also cannot escape it. Then there’s the the changeability of in all the various elements which constitute our life. You know, our our prosperity, our our relationships, our physical and mental well-being. Everything is undergoing a flux.
Everything is from moment to moment becoming something else. You know at times everything goes well, at times nothing goes right. At times we have plenty of money, have all the things that we need. At other times we simply don’t have enough. At times, you know, are all the things that we gather together are constantly wearing out of being loved.
All our meetings are the beginnings of separation. There are times when our closest friend becomes our enemy and our worst enemy becomes a friend. There are times when we enjoy being with others and there are times when we can’t stand around, can’t stand to be around anyone. Sometimes we experience pleasant feelings, sometimes we experience neutral feelings, other times we experience painful ones. At times we are healthy.