Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The draft paragraph is ready for your review in the plan file. Here it is:
In this 34-minute commentary, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a parable: a king who hurts his foot on a thorn wants to cover his entire kingdom in leather — until a wise minister suggests simply strapping two pieces to his feet. The story anchors the session’s argument that we cannot reshape the world to match our wishes, but training the mind turns out to be enough. Working through Tsongkhapa’s Lamrim, Gendun clarifies that renunciation means releasing the discontented mind — not the chocolate cake or the partner — then explains how afflictive emotions distort reality by filtering out whatever qualities don’t serve the ego’s need to feel secure. The session closes with Sharawa’s stark warning: unless the determination to be free is stronger than barley powder on beer, renunciation and compassion remain empty words.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 H and M of B 1992 05 27.mp3
UUID: 8b8ceb29-0ae1-4dd4-bb43-be431627befc
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-05-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 33.7 minutes
Words: ~4,015
Pleasure and pain come not in accordance with our desires, but in accordance with the law of cause and effect. If we create the cause for pleasure, for happiness, then even if we say, I don’t want pleasure, I don’t want happiness, it’s going to thrust itself upon us. On the other hand, no matter how much we may desire happiness, if we don’t create the cause, no matter how much we may cry and sweat, blood, sweat and tears, it’s not going to happen. But we hope it will. We hope it will.
But it won’t. This is the reality of our situation. There are certain natural laws which we have to begin to harmonize ourselves with. There’s a basic dishonesty which demands that reality occur according to our wishes. And it becomes as we think it should, And it becomes our daily lifelong preoccupation to arrange the world according to our demands, our desire.
And this is self defeating. We have to live within accordance with reality. If you throw a brick straight up in the air and you don’t adjust your behavior accordingly, you shouldn’t be surprised if you do get hit on the head with a brick. There’s no one out to get you. It’s not a malevolent universe, but that brick is obeying a simple law, the law of gravity.
And it’s wise to harmonize your conduct, your ways of thinking, to accord with these natural laws. To demand a reality that it only in accordance with your desires when your desires do not accord with these laws is either to invite a sense of rage because things are not going as they should, or a sense of powerlessness because the world does not act according to our desire. In either case, it’s dissatisfactory. Tsongkhapa goes on to say, Also craving cyclic existence thoroughly binds the embodied. So it locks us into embodiments and environments, expressions of ego’s craving as misguided attempts to secure the self in space and time.
Our world is a world of our making. With our thoughts we make the world. Each of us exists within our own particular version of reality, our own reality which we have shaped and formed into realms. These reoccurring patterns, the cyclic existence due to the fear of relating in terms of an open fluid manner. Are six realms within the desire realm.
Within Buddhist cosmology, the universe is divided up into three realms: desire, form and formless. We live in the desire realm. Within the desire realm there are six levels. All the way from the higher levels, which is the level of the gods, the celestial realm, which are completely pleasure orientated. But also down to the paranoia and physical suffering, fear of the hell realms.
So these are actual physical places, but they also can be thought of in terms of emotional attitudes toward ourselves and toward our surroundings. From the pride of being a god to the paranoia of being a hell being. And we move through these attitudes, all of these realms, during the course of a single day. But generally we’re rooted in one of the six predominantly. Whether it’s the fear of paranoia of a hell being, but the consumerism of a hungry ghost, the bureaucratic stupidity of animals, the desire quality, ambitious quality of the human realm, the jealousy of the demigods, or the pleasure orientated quality of the upper realms of the gods.
We’re orientated. We have a certain style. The determination to be free is the determination to renounce our particular style, but more than our particular style of suffering. To step outside of ego’s compulsive pattern, to see that within the fantasy world of ego, there’s nothing worth having or worth becoming. No matter which of these realms.
None of them are satisfactory by their very nature. Quite often they use the term renunciation. Renunciation does not mean giving up one’s girlfriend, giving up one’s husband, giving up one’s piece of chocolate cake. It’s giving up the mind which is discontent, which is worried and frustrated because it doesn’t have a husband, it doesn’t have a boyfriend, it doesn’t have a piece of chocolate cake, or which is frustrated, which is worried, which is discontent about losing its boyfriend, its girlfriend, its piece of chocolate cake, in fact, it does have it. That is to say, either being discontent at not having or being discontent at having to hold onto even when we have it.
This is what is to be renounced, this quality of discontentment. You know, that piece of chocolate cake is not the problem. It doesn’t need to be given up. Neither does our girlfriend, neither does our husband. They’re not the problem.
The problem exists within our own minds. This is where renunciation begins. This is where it takes place. This is where saṃsāra ends, where nirvana begins, where the struggle ends, where peace begins, within our own mind, not in terms of external factors. This process of orientating ourselves of the absolute necessity to develop more skillful attitudes to the world around us.
There’s a story about a king who was walking through his kingdom, one day he stepped upon a thorn and he hurt his foot. He gathered all his ministers together and he said, Leila, look at my foot. He said, It’s sore. I don’t want this ever to happen again. You’ve got to think of something.
You’ve got to do something about this. And the ministers thought and he thought, and one of the ministers spoke and said, I have an idea. We’ll cover all the roads in your kingdom with leather. And that way you can walk wherever you please and you’ll be safe from stepping on thorns, rough objects, sharp articles. The king, I like that idea.
That’s a great idea. Let’s do it. But then the treasurer spoke up, No, can’t do it. There aren’t enough cows in your kingdom to make that much leather. And even if there were, it would bankrupt the kingdom, the treasury would be lost.
It won’t work. So they all thought and they thought and thought. And finally after a long silence, one of the wise ministers spoke up. And she says, I have an idea. Let’s take a piece of leather and we’ll cut it to the shape of the sole of the king’s foot.
And we’ll make two of these, and we’ll bind these with leather thongs to the bottom of the king’s feet. And in this way, this will serve the same purpose as if all the roads in your kingdom were covered with leather. Wherever you go, it will have the same effect. It will serve that same purpose. We cannot order the universe to conform to our desires, to our wishes.
We cannot control the world. But we can control one thing, and that is our own mind. And that, as it turns out, is enough. If we can control that one thing, our own mind, it is as if we can control the world. So without this determination to be free, we’re going to perpetuate and we’re going to remain stuck in a reoccurring neurotic pattern.
I don’t know if I should use the word neurotic. What I mean by neurotic, I mean modes of thinking and behaving which are in conflict with reality, our situation, and coupled with an irrational demand that reality conform to our wishes, our demands. So somehow, our thinking and our behaving is in conflict with the actual situation. And on top of that, we demand that it conform to our wishes and our desires, our demands. That’s what I call neurotic.
As long as our demands and expectations are not in accord with the way things are, then we can only hope to experience frustration, dissatisfaction, and disappointment. This is in the nature of our situation. So it is the essential characteristic of all the afflictive emotions. And by afflictive emotions I mean emotions such as desire, hatred, spite, jealousy, mis-knowledge — eighty-four thousand afflictive emotions. They all either depreciate or exaggerate the quality of the object.
They either depreciate, they take something away, none of them see the object as it actually is in itself. They’re either filtering out, when you see Now a sexual object, at that moment when desire arises, it only has appealing qualities. You only see its attractiveness, its desirability, its beauty, its softness, its beautiful shape, color. That’s all you see, that’s all that’s appearing the mind at that time. You don’t see at that time all of the undesirable qualities, the unattractive qualities, the blemishes, the smells, whatever, aren’t appearing to the mind at that very moment.
They’re being filtered out. Only the positive, attractive qualities are appearing to the mind. Otherwise, desire would not arise. If you saw both the desirable and the undesirable qualities at the same time, the attractive and the unattractive qualities at the same time, the mind would simply be in a balanced state. It would neither have aversion or attraction.
It’s not to say that In the long term, would be just as unskillful to cultivate aversion toward an object as it would to develop attraction toward an object, in the sense that we immediately, we can bring the mind back to a balance by looking at the negative qualities of an object, to see it in a more balanced way. But we want to go to the other extreme and begin to filter out its positive qualities. What we want to see is the reality of the object, that it has both positive and negative qualities at a conventional level. And to see it realistically in a balance with all of its various attributes. And then our expectations about it can be fulfilled, we can deliver whatever goods we hope we want from it, because we’re seeing it as it actually is.
But it’s the quality of all the various afflictive emotions that they either exaggerate or depreciate whatever the object may be. The object of the afflictive emotions do not exist. The object of your desire does not exist. It never has. It’s a figment of your imagination.
There’s nothing out there which corresponds to what your mind is involved in at that moment. The object of your hatred does not exist. There’s nothing that corresponds to the object of your hatred. So all the very subjective emotions are not dealing with real people who have good points and bad points. They’re not dealing with real situations, with the actual nature of things.
This is what I mean by the fantasy world of ego, which is built upon exaggeration and depreciation, which does not see objects in and of themselves, which is simply a matter of our projections, these various filtering processes. These patterns, we hold them in shape. We tend to remember anything which confirms our patterns. We discount anything which would tend to negate our pattern. We forget anything which tends to disconfirm our pattern.
We set up relationships which confirm our pattern. Someone has a pattern of I’m not much. You know what I mean? I’m not much. They’re very attracted to someone who has a pattern of, You’re not very much, are you?
Yes, I’m not very much. It’s a complementary fit. They’re very attracted to that, because it confirms who they believe themselves to be. Makes them a little more solid, little more concrete, a little more they know who they are, they feel more secure. It doesn’t feel very comfortable, but basically we want to secure ourselves.
That’s one of our most basic ambitions of the ego. This is what this is all about, trying to secure ourselves in space and time. They focus upon those instances, those experiences, which tend to confirm who they believe themselves to be. So all of these various ways we hold these patterns to reoccur. The mind is in pain.
The mind is in distress, and it’s doing its best to remove that distress. Hatred, attachment, all of these emotions are simply ways the mind has developed to deal with distress, the basic distress of the fear of nonexistence perhaps. How am I going to deal with that? But it is a way. That’s all that we have to work with at this point, is our hopes and our fears, our hatreds, our attachments, our jealousies.
These are the methods by means of which the mind is seeking to solve the problem of basic fear, of insecurity, of having to reestablish its existence again and again, this constant struggle which ego is involved in. But we have to go beyond that because it’s not satisfactory, it’s not working. We have to develop higher orders of self correction. Begin to see if these are the way that we’re trying to solve our problems. We all have our concepts of the way that we can work with our problems, but they aren’t working.
Hatred is a way that we use to solve our problem. It is a type of pattern. When confronted with a specific type of situation, it is a learned reflex. We come out with hatred. We want to remove this object permanently from our ego identity.
That’s all we’ve learned up to now. That’s our tools that we have to work with, but they’re not satisfactory tools. They’re better tools that we can develop, more skillful tools, which can actually lessen our distress to the point where it can remove the distress completely from the mind. We’re doing the best we can. We’ve always done the best we can with what we’ve known up to this point, with the skills that we have view of all of our various conditioning, that we can do better.
There are more skillful patterns that we can develop. And then finally, we can go beyond all the necessity for patterns at all, that is by removing the very basis of ego based existence, misknowledge. Then none of these patterns exist. Then there’s only spontaneity, creativity, openness. None of the afflictive emotions deal with real people, with real situations, with the reality.
Real needs, existential needs can be satisfied. Rational, reasonable desires, rational, reasonable needs, we can be fulfilled. But no matter how many times we try to satisfy our neurotic needs, our neurotic desires, they can never be fulfilled. Impossible. It’s like drinking salt water.
The more you drink, the more you have to drink. It becomes a way of life. It can never be satiated. Our expectations can never be filled because that object doesn’t exist. Only that object which could fulfill that expectation simply doesn’t exist.
We can never find complete satisfaction. We can only satisfy real needs, real desires, rationally reasonable based needs and desires. Not the needs and desires of our hopes and fears, of our attachment and hatred. So we’re always involved in conflict, in some level of distress. So to determine to grow is to determine to step out outside of our neurotic patterns, to go beyond our egocentric demands, to begin to give up our cocoons, to deal with real people, real situations, to work through our legitimate problems, and to deal with the real nature of things.
Here there’s a real possibility to find some kind of new harmony. There’s a real possibility to go beyond We’ve always had these same problems which keep continually reoccurring in the course of our lives. There’s a real possibility to really solve them on a very basic level. Go beyond our limited selves and find some kind of real peace, some kind of meaning in our lives. Somehow to become one with this thing we call life rather than standing outside of it.
So therefore, as Tsongkhapa says, In the beginning, determination to leave cyclic existence should be sought. Then he goes on to talk about the way to develop this determination. I’ve tried to emphasize that our lives are based upon sets of ideas, belief systems, core assumptions. We operate our lives on certain premises. This makes sense.
That’s the basis upon which we work, our mind is operating, dealing with situations and people. On the basis of these ideas, our beliefs, our premises, we try to find happiness. On the basis of these ideas, we try to rid ourselves of suffering. To a very large extent, men and women are a product of how they define themselves. As a result of a combination of innate ideas and the intimate influence of the culture and environment we grew up in, we come to have beliefs about the nature of being human.
These beliefs penetrate to a very deep level our psychosomatic systems, our minds and brains, our nervous systems, and even our blood and sinews. We act, speak, and think according to these deeply held beliefs and belief systems. So determining to grow, determining to become aware of and transform our erroneous ideas, our erroneous beliefs, our wrong assumptions, which find expression in these neurotic patterns, inappropriate behavior, unskillful ways of relating. Trying to transform them into correct ideas, new premises which are based within reality, assumptions which are valid. And these become expressed in healthy patterns.
It’s not so much that we’re seeking to perform perfect actions in a perfect world, but we’re trying to perform appropriate actions in a rather imperfect world. We’re trying to make the best of a difficult situation. But that’s enough. We have many wrong beliefs, wrong assumptions, mistaken premises upon which we’re operating our lives, out of which evolves all our very self defeating behavior, out of which arises all our feelings of dissatisfaction, disappointment, and frustration. And we believe ourselves to be limited, to be insufficient, to be incomplete.
We act as if we’re going to live forever. And even if we were to acknowledge the fact of our eventual death, we’re sure it’s not going to happen anytime soon. It’s going to happen sometime in the vague and distant future. We feel as if we’re victims of society, we’re victims of our class, our family, that somehow we have no choice, that our happiness and unhappiness are not ultimately our responsibility. I don’t know, maybe you don’t identify with some of these, but maybe you should check up at some deeper level, not on your conscious perhaps, not on the intellectual level.
I don’t think any of you would, most of you wouldn’t agree that you have these intellectually. But nevertheless, these may be being held at a deeper level of cognitive awareness of which you’re not aware at present. We have a sense that our happiness is not in our own hands. We hold that which is by its very nature unsatisfactory as having the potential to give us lasting complete satisfaction. We hold that which is impermanent as being permanent.
We believe that this me first attitude, of our self centered attitude, the context in which we operate our whole lives out of, is the most skillful, effective way we can relate to others in the world about us. And most basically we believe that we ourselves are a singular, unchanging, independent self, that I am a singular, unchanging, independent self. These are just some of the beliefs that we have, some of the assumptions upon which we’re operating on. It stands to reason if your information is wrong, then any action which proceeds, which is based upon the information, is going to be inaccurate. It’s going to be inappropriate.
It’s not going to fulfill your desire, even if they’re rationally based. It’s not going to accord. It’s going to be not in harmony with the way things are. And this inevitably is going to lead to disappointment, frustration, and dissatisfaction. So we have to develop a very strong determination to awake.
Without it, we’re never going to overcome the tendencies of neurosis to avoid legitimate suffering, to avoid self confrontation, to avoid self analysis. We’re never going to engage in these acts. We’re never really going to take up the difficult task of change, of growing. To change is difficult. It involves some pain.
We’re never going to become sincere about transforming our most deeply seated mistaken beliefs, which find expression as our self grasping and self centeredness. We’re never going to really become serious about correcting them. There’s another text by Tsongkhapa called The Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path. And he’s talking about this attitude, this attitude of this determination to be free, this determination to wake, and how powerful it has to be in our life. About this attitude, it’s just the way Sharawa was a Tibetan master in a particular tradition called Kadam tradition, which preceded Tsongkhapa.
About this attitude, it’s just the way Sharawa described it. Suppose it’s no stronger in your heart than a thin film of barley powder spread on the surface of some homemade beer. Then your feeling that you want to avoid the cause of the cycles of life, what we call origin, will be no stronger than that. Then your aspiration to reach nirvana where you stop both suffering and its origin will be exactly the same. And then your wish to practice the path that brings this nirvana will be nothing but empty words.
So too compassion, the state of mind where you no longer bear to see other living beings wander through the cycle. There’s no way you will gain it. Then finally, you will never find a genuine form of the wish to achieve matchless enlightenment for all living beings, a powerful wish that can urge you on. So the greater way becomes for you nothing but some flimsy understanding of the descriptions you find in a book. So without this determination to be free, then there becomes no necessity for change.
And without this feeling of the necessity to change, there will be no change. There will only be the maintenance of the status quo. There will only be the perpetuation of what has gone in the past. Not because there is anyone out to get us, it’s simply because of our habit. We are, to a large extent, our habits.
And habits, as we all know, are quite difficult to break. It requires some kind of intervention, some kind of energy, and energy in the form of new information, new insight. And insight will only come about by making the effort to think in new ways, to investigate, to confront, to analyze, to raise the level of our consciousness. One has to want to change. That only come out of the desire, seen necessity to change.
Otherwise it won’t happen. We’re not going to naturally change. What will happen naturally is continuance of these reoccurring patterns. That will happen naturally. Change will not happen naturally in the sense of some higher order of change.
You may change your location, you may change your jobs, your spouse, changes in order of things in terms of impermanence. But it’s going to be recursive in the sense that the same themes, the same motifs, the same patterns are going to continue to play themselves out. The same sequence is going to happen, the same plot, just different characters, just different locations. But the basic format of the story is going to remain constant. And we begin to disrupt, intervene, to purposely, purposely provide insight.
There are many factors which are operating to hold us where we are, to maintain our present way of being, our present way of thinking, our present way of behaving, both internal and external. And without some radical change, some radical experience, some kind of insight, some kind of therapy, some new truth, some new insight, this will continue. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t. It’s in the very nature of the thing, the situation. Therefore, as Tsongkhapa says, In the beginning it’s necessary to develop the determination to be free, to awaken.
So if you’d like to get a