Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 25-minute commentary by distinguishing indirect methods of spiritual development — voluntary service, healthy lifestyle, good music, simple altar offerings — from the direct method of meditation, which alone carries genuine transformative power. He then unpacks the classical three-stage process of listening, reflecting, and meditating, giving particular attention to the middle stage: doubt. Drawing on a line from the Indian master Āryadeva, he argues that even a flicker of genuine doubt about how things exist can shake the foundations of cyclic existence, and that welcoming doubt rather than suppressing it is what clears the way for real integration. He closes with two memorable teaching frameworks — the three pots (closed, leaking, dirty) describing unproductive ways of listening, and three recognitions casting the student as a patient, the teacher as doctor, and the Dharma as medicine. Suitable for those new to Buddhist study as well as practitioners revisiting foundational ground.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 H and M of B 1992 05 20.mp3
UUID: 965047d0-4bfb-42a5-979f-c7f965962247
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-05-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 25.5 minutes
Words: ~3,235
Working directly in order to benefit others, some type of where one’s occupation is of direct benefit to others. Also, our daily lifestyle, know, having some kind of daily spiritual practice, eating nutritious food, having regular intervals of quiet periods, study, work, relaxation, silence, exercise. Things like tai chi, hatha yoga, all of these can be helpful as indirect methods to raise the level of our consciousness. You know, the enjoyment of good music, good literature can raise the level of our consciousness if they’re reflections of the author’s higher state of consciousness. In practical ways, there’s the helping of others in doing voluntary work for a worthwhile cause.
Activities done out of little no selfishness, self interest. And it’s helpful to associate with those who are trying to travel a spiritual path, who take the qualities of love and compassion and wisdom and working for the benefit of others as very important principles in their life and associating with such individuals. It’s helpful to associate with spiritual teachers whose level of attainment and realization is higher than our own. It’s helpful to, for example, offering a few flowers of an image or a candle on an altar, making prostrations, chanting rituals. It all has some beneficial effect on our mind.
All these indirect methods are combined with one another in various ways. But though they are a necessary part of a spiritual practice, they by themselves cannot take us to the levels of realization and understanding that we need to travel to. They support, They accompany. But they by themselves do not have the capacity, the ability. In order to do that, we must additionally work directly with our mind.
And this direct method involves the direct method of meditation. So the method of meditation involves three stages. The three stages of listening, reflecting and then finally meditating. It is said that meditating without listening and reflecting is like having legs with no eyes. Listening and reflecting without meditating is like having eyes but no legs.
In either case, we don’t get very far. So it’s the combination of all of these three taken together. Listening, reflecting, and finally meditating taken together can take us to where we want to go in conjunction with these various indirect methods. So the first step in the process, in this three stage process, is listening. This involves listening to or studying the teachings with an open, receptive mind, a type of mind which doesn’t distort with what is being heard.
So this is the initial stage. This is where we are simply gathering information and understanding the terms, trying to understand the categories that we’re going to be working with, you know, the basic structure of the teaching. Then the second stage is reflecting upon what has been heard. This involves carefully thinking about or contemplating what has been received in order to clarify it for oneself. It’s trying to understand its significance in terms of oneself.
We examine what we have heard or studied in the light of our own reasoning, in the light of our own experience. Are these teachings true or not? Do they agree with my own experience? But also, are my methods of reasoning and my methods of experience, are they also valid or not? So through this questioning process, doubts will begin to arise.
And doubt is a very powerful state. It’s a state doubt is a precursor to real knowledge, to real understanding. There is a Now we move from assumptions to doubts. Assumptions are those true statements which we have taken as our own, but we have not validated within either our own experience or by means of our own reasoning. And they have some effect, but they don’t have that great a force on our behavior, on our thinking because they have not been validated for us.
We have not seen the validity, the truth of them in terms of our own experience, in terms of our own reasoning. And it’s only in this terms, in terms of when we have integrated them, that change will come about on a more basic level. So part of this integration process involves doubt. In one text, one of the Indian masters, Āryadeva, said, Simply to have doubt whether things truly exist or not is to shake the very foundation of cyclic existence. It’s just doubt.
Doubt can be that powerful, that transforming. So in the process of going from wrong beliefs to correct beliefs or assumptions to realization, to integration, we have to pass through doubt. And this doubt necessitates that we question, that we examine from the point of view of our own reasoning and our own experience. So doubt is something which is to be welcomed. The mind has been opened up to the possibility of going beyond its previous position and moving to a higher order of understanding.
There is a certain openness, a flux, a fluidity, an openness where there is doubt. There is a very creative state. It is not a very pleasant state, but the mind is open to a possibility of change when there is doubt. Doubt is something to be welcomed. It’s a precursor to true knowledge.
So during this second stage, this reflection, we want to invite doubt, we want to create doubt and then move to clarification, to come to understanding. Then we can finally move on to the third stage, meditation. This is integrating the newly acquired understanding, trying to make it a part of our very being and a part of our character. In a way, this is like putting into practice. It’s practice in the sense of actually doing or being as opposed to just thinking about.
We actually be love rather than simply thinking about love, for example. It’s integrated. It’s become a part of us. So at the listening stage we gather the bare facts. We see how the information fits together.
Then at the reflecting stage, when using our reasoning and our experience, we gain certainty, certitude. You know, creating and clarifying our doubts, we gain some kind of knowledge and confidence. And with this confidence we can embark on the third stage, meditation. All doubts and hesitancies have been removed and we experience directly the true meaning of the teachings. There is some resistance to change.
There is some resistance about doing anything wholeheartedly. There is some resistance about giving ourselves over. There is always some hesitancy. Unless we are willing to We would rather not unless we are willing to really bring up to the surface all the reasons for hesitation. And that’s why we are willing to work with that information such that we see at a very deep level the validity of what is being presented.
That we have even the obscure, even the absurd doubts that we’re holding at some level of our awareness. Until they have been removed, we’re never going to be able to give ourselves wholly over to anything and that this is even in fact a relationship. Unless you can remove all the doubts that you have about this individual that somehow it’s going to be safe, that you can remove all hesitation, that you have confidence in both themselves and you, that you can trust the situation and them, then there’s never going to be a total giving over. And the same is true of the teachings. Unless one is willing to work with the teachings, See all the various doubts.
Test them, examine them, investigate them in view of all the absurd, subtle and unconscious doubts and bringing them to awareness. Then there’s never going to be a wholehearted giving over such that they can totally become a part of your being. So there has to be this If there’s ever going to be meditation, that is to say if there’s ever going to be real integration, all hesitancy. Hesitancy has to be given up. Many people have If you practice a concentrated meditation, there’s always a sense of duality in the sense that I’m over here as an observing subject and my object in meditation is over there, for example, the breath.
Very few people are able to give themselves over and become absorbed into the breath as if they were one, where subject and object, the duality become lost. Because there a sense of threat, there is a sense of unease, about losing control. One doesn’t have the confidence in what one is practicing. One doesn’t have the confidence in what could be the outcome, the consequence. Then there’s some hesitancy.
There’s some inability of the mind. There’s some holding back. And likewise in everything that we do, and likewise with respect to practicing the spiritual path, it involves a deep searching in such that we can overcome. What’s holding me back? What’s my hesitancy?
Why am I not convinced? Why have I no real confidence? So this represents the second stage. And the third stage, we can actually give ourselves over in terms of integration and making it a part of our being. All hesitancy disappears and we experience directly the true meanings of the teaching.
And then we accustom. This is what meditation means as far as the Tibetan word is concerned, gom. It means to accustom, to familiarize, to habituate. We accustom ourselves, the mind, to this newfound experience again and again and again. And the level of our consciousness is raised in that way.
It becomes our primary nature. So our progress along the path involves skillfully putting into practice both of these indirect methods. And the direct method begins with listening. Therefore, those fortunate ones who listen with a clear mind. So there’s a traditional teaching on how we are to listen.
The way to listen is explained through analogies of three pots and three recognitions. Three pots and three recognitions. So the first type is called in terms of unproductive ways of listening. The first is likened to a pot which is with a lid on it or upside down. Nothing can be put into it.
It’s filled up. It’s closed. It’s upside down or it has a lid on it. Our minds are constantly distracted and our minds are constantly allowed to wander or we simply are not open to listening. We have our own preconceptions about the way things are and we’re not going listen.
Our minds are closed. So either way, either whether our minds are distracted, they’re completely wandering or we’re simply closed minded, We don’t really hear what is being said. So this is the fault, the unproductive way of listening of a closed pot. The second pot is one with a hole in it. Whatever is poured into it immediately runs out.
But we listen to the teachings and nothing is retained. But even after the teachings you’re not quite sure what was said. The third pot is one which is dirty. And whatever is placed into it is polluted. And this involves listening with various types of prejudices.
We take what is said and we simply filter it through our own preconceptions, our own prejudices. We’re not listening to what is actually being said in its own right, for its own sake, evaluating by means of our reasoned analysis and experience. But we’re looking at it filtered through our own preconceptions in terms of our own hidden agendas, our own issues, our own projections, our own associations. So it is as if we’re polluting it. It’s the unproductive way of listening to have a dirty pot.
And then there’s the three recognitions. So these three recognitions are intended to assist us in opening up to help and to change and to encourage us to try to see the personal relevance of what is being said. So I think these three recognitions, I think if we put them in a positive connotation, a positive sense, it’s more useful. It’s not something that we are readily willing to admit to ourselves Here’s a quotation. He’s quoting William James, the American psychologist.
What James brings up so importantly in these chapters is something that is very significant in working with people and which underlies all psychopathological phenomena. It is the ground based question of, What is the meaning of life? Appears to be such a corny question and it seems that for the most part there has been a conspiracy against even asking this question. But on the other hand, we see it continually arising spontaneously in children and then crucially in adolescence and again as one grows older. The question appears, what has this thing been about?
What are we doing with our lives? It may deteriorate into staggering philosophical turmoil and intellectual stupor. It comes up again in psychotic phenomena in an insistent way. Highly disturbed people continually ask this question in one form or another. Now that I have gotten this far or now that I have not gotten far enough, what is it all about?
And yet it is a question that is subdued and pushed back and virtually not allowed to be asked. And that has led to a lot of depressive phenomena. Because they suffer much from the circumstances and conditions of life, they are always bound to provoke this question because they search for an answer to this neurotic or philosophic question and they search with so much energy, they actually might be more in tune with the answer than the rest of us. James says that we have to face the fact, the very simple fact, that some of the ablest, most creative, most productive and profound people in all Western culture have been extraordinarily disturbed. Such people often pass through severe disturbances and actually conquer them to some degree.
Their own personal journey of development began with an acknowledgment of suffering and the lack of meaning of life, which the rest of us are not quite so sensitive to. When, for example, we read the lives of some of the greatest teachers and practitioners of Buddhism, the Mahasiddhas, time after time we see them at the end of their rope, razor at their throats, on the verge of suicide, and suffering intensely with the endless quality of this question of the meaning of life in a state of cataclysmic nihilism. And then a teacher appears and says, Perhaps the Dharma can help you. This seems to be a repeated theme that constantly is going on with people who have the courage to ask this question and acknowledge their own suffering. The life histories of all religious leaders have pointed to the same kind of crisis, that there is a flash point of suffering.
And because of that, there is the opening of some quality of path and personal development in their lives. And beyond that, there develops some usefulness to other people. So the first of these three recognitions is the recognition that we ourselves are sick persons. You may not like to hear that. But importantly, there’s a vast difference between being sick and being helpless, being powerless.
Without admitting, without acknowledging the high degree of unmanageability in our lives, the feelings of alienation, imprisonment, meaninglessness in our lives. There’s simply no opening up to the possibility of cure, of change. Just some kind of smug complacency that I’m okay, and that everything is okay. And the speed by which we distract ourselves from confronting the fact that everything is not okay, The diversions, the distractions, the numbing through all our various devices, through drugs, alcohol, to make ourselves blind to the fact that everything is not okay. Know, we are healthy enough to admit our suffering.
We’re healthy enough to be sick. But we neither indulge it nor do we repress our pain. We simply are acknowledging it. And it’s the first step in eliminating it. As I’ve said, when we get sick and tired of being sick and tired, then we’ll get well.
But first we have to be aware of just how sick and tired we may be. So the first recognition is to recognize or acknowledge that we are sick people, that things could be better, that things are not okay, that things could be better, that things are not okay, that we are not helpless, we are not powerless, but that things could be different. So the second recognition is the recognition that the teacher is the doctor. Another problem, right? Most Westerners will quite readily put their physical well-being in the hands of a person who has a diploma hanging on their wall in their office, some kind of medical certificate.
But they find it extremely difficult to admit in a mature way that someone else may be more skilled in the ways of the mind. Definitely other people are more skilled in the ways of the body. They find it difficult to admit that there are others who may be more skilled in the ways of the mind than themselves. We all have our methods of finding happiness and solving our problems. And though our own experiences may again and again invalidate our methods, still we obstinately hold on to them as if we knew best.
We find it difficult to admit that someone else’s diagnosis of our problems and someone else’s prescription for cure may be more valid, may be more applicable, may be more skilled than our own. That the teacher is a doctor. And the third recognition that that the medicine is the Dharma or the path, the cure of our ill. So without actually taking medicine, without actually practicing the path, there’s no way to get better. No matter how potent a medicine might be, if we don’t take it, if we actually don’t swallow it, it’s never going to do us any good.
No matter how effective the method of Dharma might be, we have to actually put them into practice before they can solve our problem. So in order to listen effectively to the teachings, must try to focus on what is actually being said, try to retain it and not to distort it. And we have to come to the teaching with a certain degree of humility, a certain degree of openness, but also with dignity. You know, I have some problems, but I also have the capacity to solve those problems. I have the resources, but perhaps I could use some help along the way We’re working together.
So I’m willing to listen. And in light of my own wisdom, in light of my reasoning and experience, if I hear something which is of use, then I’m going to make use of it. I’m going to put it into practice. Otherwise I can just put it back on the shelf. I can leave it here and I walk out the door.
No problem. So I’m sort of realism, realistically going to try. So this is what Tsongkhapa means by listen with a clear mind. It is clear in our mind why we are here, what we are doing and what we can expect. So this completes the first of the three basic divisions of the text, the preliminary that leads into the composition of the text.
And next week we’ll begin the actual body of the text. So maybe, should we get a cup of tea and then we’ll form a circle and have a discussion?