Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A story about living in a cave beside a Buddha footprint on a Thai island opens this 45-minute session — and the phrase “begin again,” offered by Thai monks whenever Ven Jampa Gendun grew discouraged in meditation, becomes the animating thread. He makes a case for spiritual progress as a spiral rather than a circle, then argues that shifting from self-absorption to other-cherishing is the central move of the path: difficulties are not obstacles but the occasions through which love — the will to extend oneself for another’s well-being — can be expressed. He then examines the eight worldly preoccupations as internal forces that trap us in ego-based existence, before moving to Tsongkhapa on karma and rebirth: the subtle mind carried on subtle wind energy, compelled by afflictive emotions to seek embodiment in whatever form then limits its vast potential. A guided compassion meditation and choiceless awareness practice are woven throughout.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 H and M of B 1992 08 12.mp3
UUID: febf9766-7d6a-4bce-8db6-34efb330e81a
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-08-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~5,020
So begin again. Did I ever tell you that story? I think the oldest did it, unless they’re getting bored with me by now. I’m gonna tell, they’re going to tell the same stories a number of times. You know, when I was in I tell them anyway.
Just before I came to Australia, I think it was in eighty seven, eighty six, I spent a year in Thailand. And for about seven months I spent spent seven months on an island called Koh Samui, which is in the off the south eastern coast of Thailand. It’s a tourist, very touristy island. It has beautiful beaches and clear blue water. I didn’t go swimming once during the entire time.
But anyway, that’s beside the point. And I stayed at a little monastery on the island, which was in the central part. It was famous for its Buddha footprint. Buddha footprint was a sculpture which was made on top of a rock, a huge boulder of a Buddhist footprint and a large footprint about almost as long as this room. And eventually they built a building to cover it because it was being worn down by the weather.
And in the process of covering it, it made a cave underneath. And I lived in the cave. That’s another story. I lived in the cave for about four months. Finally, some bees started making a high it was really interesting to live in a cave.
It was complete on one door they had built on one side. It was open on two ends and there was between two huge boulders and when they built this, housing over the footprint, it covered over the gap between his two boulders. But still it was exposed on two ends. And they had built a out of plywood a covering to fill the gap on one side with the door, but the other side was completely open. But the other side, they built that gap because this is where the people went up the steps to go to the Buddhist footprint.
And living in a cave exposed on one side, You get used to things that you normally don’t get used to. I mean, maybe you’d be sitting there meditating and a snake would crawl by and you’d watch it crawl by or these large lizards would just walk by. Always something walking by. But he got used to it afterward except once there was a cobra. I didn’t get used to that.
But there was another. There was just one. I didn’t get used to the bees either. They are these very large bees. They say a swarm can sting you at one time and you die.
They started to make a nest on top of the rock and which was okay. I didn’t mind something like that. But one day one of them stung me and my arms swelled up. So the abbot of the monastery thought, go live in the, you know, next to the Buddha footprint up in the building. So I had to vacate my cave for the bees and live in the Buddha footprint.
But now I’m getting pretty far off the subject. At this monastery, there were two other other monks. They were both Thai and they spoke very little English. And during the course of spending seven months on this island, know, nothing, you know, an island, nothing much changes. Know, you watch sometimes I’d watch a ship out out at sea and it’d take about a half a day to go by.
That was for excitement. You know you watch the coconut tree trees grow and not much changes in a situation like that. And you know sometimes my meditation wasn’t going well. Sometimes I would a lot of delusions, lot of mental that’s an old material would come up and think things wouldn’t go well and I’d get depressed and get downhearted and get discouraged by my meditation not progressing as I would have liked to. And I would go down and I would chat with the monks, you know.
And I don’t think they ever understood quite what I was saying, but it doesn’t matter. That was beside the point. The monks would listen for a while and they would just smile and then finally one of them would say, begin again. And that was the like the slogan of the monks in Thailand. Whatever is happening, however it’s discouraging, no matter how things things may fall apart, no matter how gloomy the situation might appear.
Begin again. I think that’s pretty good advice. You know, we’re on a quite a long journey and sometimes we get terribly frustrated because perhaps we don’t see progress in the short term. And we have a sense of feelings of discouragement and dismay and questioning doubt. But I think, you know, this long journey that we’re on, at least I think we can have some sense that instead of going around in a circle and coming back to the same original point that we were five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago, and perhaps we’re beginning to move in a spiral.
That’s something that though we keep our circles are become much of our material, many of our problems seem to reoccur, but they’re not quite the same. There’s a slight some sort of growth, some sort of perspective has developed with respect to our problems, with respect to these reoccurring patterns. Perhaps they don’t arise as frequently nor when they do arise we have a flexibility of mind that perhaps we didn’t used to in which we can begin to work with them. Perhaps they don’t last as long nor perhaps are they as powerful or do they throw us off balance for as long. You know, there seems to be some qualitative difference in how we experience these same reoccurring problems.
And our life has some sort of direction to it, has some sort of purposefulness in it. And though it might, as I said, the themes may reoccur, still there is a spiral movement. And a spiral is going somewhere and we can take some kind of consolation, we can take some kind of sense of self respect and and feel good about ourselves in that respect that we are moving somewhere. Though at times it might be imperceptibly slowly but still there’s some movement. And no matter how discouraged and how dismayed and whatever doubts, know we can always begin again.
I think just beginning again is a a wonderful human quality. You know it’s like it’s a very Now if things perhaps, there’s some kind of challenge in our life, the overcoming of adversity, the working with situations. I think there’s a verse by Thomas Merton. He’s translated some verses of fathers of the desert in a book called Wisdom of Desert. And this one monk was saying how how he had overcome all of his problems and now everything was so easy, you know, without any difficulties.
And another monk said to him, you should pray to God that you have some difficulties. You know, that somehow it is quite a it’s not that we want dissatisfaction, not that we want suffering, because the purpose of what we’re about is to find peace. But still there is a sense of a richness and vitality. And I think we stay in touch with the profundity of our life, the profundity of what it means to be a human being, and we’re able to more identify with what others around us are experiencing. It becomes quite difficult if our life is running smoothly and it becomes rather superficial.
You know, I think as one time master, Ajahn Buddhadasa said, the moment moment your mind experiences happiness, it starts to become superficial. It is problems which may make us think. We don’t question why am I happy. Oh God, why am I happy. We question why am I suffering, what’s going wrong.
And it is more it is our problems more than anything else which will help us to grow, which give our life meaning, which is which give this experience of life its profundity, bring about the most joyous experiences in our life. I think I’m not extolling suffering for the sake of suffering, but if we can find some kind of perspective, kind of meaning in our suffering then it becomes worthwhile. Least we’re learning from it. So I think you know we’re on a long journey and a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single first step. And I think we have to perhaps gain some perspective and use all the various means that we have available to us to develop a quality of life that we’re seeking.
But amongst all the components which make up the good life to ensure that there’s some consistent effort towards development of one’s own mind because this is the context in which all of these other methods, all these other tools are operating. This is this is the way they can all become meaningful and purposeful within the context of our own growth, within within the context of our own wisdom and compassion, with some kind of meaning involved. So it’s beginning to realign our allegiance from a life lived on the basis of our hopes and fears. You know, simply avoiding fear and always simply avoiding problematic situations, hoping that things will always be well and inviting ourselves to a life of frustration and disappointment. But if we choose growth, then whatever may happen, whether it’s good or bad, we can find something worthwhile in it.
Even the problems have some meaning for us. And if we can begin to raise the level of our motivation, to a shift in our motivation, why it is that we’re doing what we’re doing, beginning to move from this habitual self absorption into our own problems and beginning to open ourselves up to shift from exaggerated self concern from that life which is completely self centered to one of other cherishing. Then at the same time as we’re growing we’re going to experience lessening of all the difficulties and problems which are concomitant with this total self absorption. Now we I think we’re going to have problems but we don’t have to compound our problems by thinking that we’re the only person in the world with problems. And the way we can begin to move out of this compounding of our problems, our difficulties is becoming more and more concerned about others.
Even within this context we’re going to have problems but at least we won’t compound them and even those problems. And if we can begin to see them as sources of growth, the challenges for us to develop, become more skillful. And we can begin to in loving ourselves, and this definition of love has the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing one’s own or another’s well-being. And loving ourselves, you know, the only time we have to really extend ourselves is in terms of problems when we have difficulty. Then we have to call upon new resources.
Then we have to go beyond our past limits, develop greater skills, a greater depth of insight. And so this is the way that we can begin to express our love is in terms of these difficulties. And we can express our love in terms of when others are experiencing difficulties and helping them and nourishing them. If things are going well, how are we going to show our love? How are we going to extend ourselves both for ourselves and others?
And it is love which ultimately, you know, we can talk about all the various methods and wisdoms of Buddhism. But it is quality of love which is the most human qualities that we can hope to develop. It is what makes life meaningful in this experience and the journey. And it will ultimately be the name by which we’re going to solve our problems and the problems with others at the most profound level. Problems so love is based upon problematic situations where you have to extend yourself.
So it’s only in these difficulties that we can begin to develop and express our love both for ourselves and others. It’s good to talk about these things, about love and challenge, because we don’t hear these words often enough. And so this is a very, you know, it’s a very unusual situation. And you are very unusual people who who you know are trying even if it’s in only some small way to foster love, trying to direct yourself in growth. And so then you are very special people, engage in a very special pursuit.
And I hope very much that that you deeply appreciate yourself and that you rejoice in your wisdom and the love that you have for yourself and the love that you have rather. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, the Buddha withinside of ourselves. The actualization of our complete potential through the means of love and wisdom. You know, that is to say, the focus of our inner life becomes growth, extending ourselves, extending ourselves and opening our hearts to others and opening our minds to the ultimate nature of reality. And this is done through the means of Dharma at which it able, at which has the ability to actualize Buddha in the social context of a spiritual community.
So this becomes as it were our orientation, our direction. Buddha, Dharma and the spiritual community, the social context in which all of this takes place, and trying to raise the level of our motivation. You know, just making some effort to keep some consistent, opening concern, you know, awareness of social connectedness, of our interrelatedness and never allowing yourself to be fold in on yourself. You know, the primary delusion of ego is its own display. It only sees the world in terms of itself.
It’s completely self referencing and trying to become aware of others as being worthy of our caring in and for themselves not for what they can do for us. But perhaps we can raise some of our motivations such that they’re worth worthy of what I can do for them. You know just simply continually reorientating one’s awareness trying to become mindful that there are other people in this world besides myself. Maybe we can do that. Who aren’t there, who want to be happy and don’t want to suffer, who aren’t there for to serve me, for my welfare, that they had a right to exist in and for themselves and they were worthy of my caring.
Just simply I guess what develop on social awareness. This consistent remembering of others. Remember that one exists in a social context interrelated with others instead of completely closing in, engulfing, unfolding in our oneself as we normally do. And this becomes the motivating force that if I can become Buddha, if I can become a happy, healthy, loving, sane human being, then I can this is the way that I can express my love for myself and I can begin to express it toward others by helping them to experience the same end. And this becomes driving force behind our growth, behind our practice, behind the actualization of our potential.
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 and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. 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 and 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, the highest assembly.
And the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I think we’ll practice then. We develop compassion and love and then we’ll meditate mindfulness of breathing and then we’ll practice choiceless awareness. I think I’ve talked about this before in the terms of simply allowing your mind to become involved in any object that it naturally tends towards but maintaining your awareness. And one of the skillful techniques for helping you to maintain awareness not to identify with the display which are appearing to you is by noting.
Hearing, thinking, seeing, hearing, pain, thinking. Just simply allow the mind to become naturally involved in any object that it tends toward. Continue a gentle noting just for moment to moment whatever the mind is involved in. And it’s like watching watching without losing the quality of awareness. And then we’re going to to shift to focus on the mind itself, the pictures and the thoughts.
You can continue to note. Then we’re going to focus on the mind. Thinking, thinking, watching the mind, thinking, either identifying with the thought nor repressing them. Simply watching the mind, whatever rises in the mind, feeling, thinking, thinking. So if you take a comfortable but firm posture.
Let’s begin by generating compassion. And just think of someone that is not your immediate partner, but someone who’s very close to you, that you like very much, that you care for very much, but not the most immediate person in your life. And if you can’t imagine that person in front of you, They can’t feel that they did. And we’re going begin by developing compassion for this person. First with a simple friendly thought.
It’d be wonderful if you didn’t have any problems. I would like that very much. We’ll strengthen that. May you be free of your problems. May you be free of all your difficulty and suffering.
Then we’ll strengthen that. I’m going to help you. I’m going to take responsibility for working with your problems. I commit myself to freeing you from your difficulty. And we’ll cultivate love with this person.
First, with a simple gentle thought. Would be wonderful if you were happy. May you be happy. May you have all the good things in life. I’m going to help you to be happy.
I’m going to commit myself to working with you to find happiness. And for this present moment in order to develop myself so that I can bring that about, I’m going to meditate on mindfulness, deep breath. I’m going to do this for you to help you, to work with you. And bring your mind to the breath. Just gentle, easy, even.
In and out, flow the breath. We’re looking at the three fundamentals of the path. Developing the determination to be free or to awaken, the awakening heart, awakening our hearts to others, the awakening mind, awakening our mind to the nature of reality. Amongst these three, we’re looking at the first fundamental, the ultimate determination to awaken, to grow, to get unstuck. And you know we’ve through deeply appreciating our potential, our chance to actualize that potential, to grow, to awaken, that we have that ability, that potentiality and that this chance is not going to last forever.
We begin to de-emphasize this life is reversed. That is to say that we begin to diminish the attachment to our hopes and fears. Our hopes for pleasure, fear of pain, our hopes for gain, fear of loss, our hopes for praise, fear of ridicule, hope for fame or fear of notoriety. That by means of they don’t quite have the sway, the influence that they once had. Now we begin to go beyond the pleasure pain principle in determining what course of action I’m going to take in this particular situation, this particular situation.
And we aren’t lost in the present pleasure principle, in the gain-loss principle, you know, doing anything we can in order to gain fame, in order to gain praise, doing anything we can to avoid notoriety, in order to avoid ridicule. Now what happens if you’re lost in these principles, these eight worldly preoccupations ego based existence and become normal? These are the internal oppressive forces which are forcing us continually back into the same pattern which prevent us from moving out and expressing, actualizing our unique individuality, our unique potential. We become very much like everyone else. All of these, you know, we’re involved in a system and these are the feedback mechanisms which counteract growth, fear and hope.
Hope for pleasure, fear of pain, hope for gain, fear of loss, Hope for fame, fear of ridicule. Hope for praise, fear of notoriety. These are self oppressive internalized oppression which are operating forcing us back into normality. And by normality I mean you know that I have said this quite often to be be a normal in an insane society is not to be very healthy. But we have we cannot take the standards of of the world as our measure of well-being.
And we have to begin to go beyond that because it’s hollow. It it doesn’t deliver the goods that it pretends. You know, going beyond the priorities of self confirming patterned actions of ego. Simply to that which reestablishes these patterns. If can begin to see how our hopes and fears, our hopes coerce us into perpetual states of struggle for some unfulfilled future happiness and the present goes by without having ever been lived.
Fears limit us to merely replaying of old patterns, of old possibilities out of anxiety about an open fluid way of relating and trying to secure the self in space and time, trying to hold on to what has gone before, to repeat it because it’s familiar, this fear of the unknown. So we begin to gain some kind of perspective, you know, creating some kind of space for solutions to some of the problems of human existence to arise, creating the mental space for some types of solutions to arise. You know, the mind is a self healing system. All systems are self healing if they’re left undisturbed. It has that potentiality.
The way we can begin to It is these reoccurring compulsive patterns. It is the afflictive emotions such as desire, hatred, spite, jealousy, miserliness, which afflict the mind. That’s where they get their name. They disturb the mind. As we begin to move away from them then the mind can begin to heal itself.
As we begin to gain some perspective where we are no longer completely under the influence of hopes and fears then we can begin to give our basic sanity an opportunity to operate. Otherwise it is as if unavailable to us. We can’t take recourse to it even though it’s there. So this is the way that we through recognizing our potential, appreciating our chance to actualize our potential but understanding that it’s not going to last forever. That’s definitely we’re going to die.
Then we begin to de emphasize. We begin to not allow ourselves to completely become overwhelmed by hopes and fears. We begin to gain some kind of perspective. We realign our allegiance towards more and more toward growth that which is going to help me to grow as opposed to that which is going to reconfirm past patterns, that which is going to confirm my own ego, that which is going to help me avoid that which I fear. Then Tsongkhapa goes on.
So we’re de emphasizing the appearances of what he calls this life. And by this life, I mean the eight worldly preoccupations of ego-orientated existence. He goes on to say, If you think again and again about actions and their inevitable effects and the sufferings of cyclic existence, the emphasis on the appearance of future lives will reverse. So if you think again and again about these inevitable effects, it involves reflecting upon karma, actions as causes and their effect. And the sufferings of cyclic existence involves reflecting upon the inherent dissatisfactory quality of any state bounded by ego.
That within ego based existence, within these reoccurring neurotic compulsive patterns there’s nothing worth having, nothing worth being within these states. And understanding this very deeply, appreciating this very deeply, then we deemphasize even the attractiveness of future states of possibility within cyclic existence, within these reoccurring compulsive patterns. States of existence which are an expression of this self-reifying tendency to struggle to maintain a sense of solid independent self, the maintenance of some kind of unchanging identity. Now all of this which perpetuates our problems. As long as this problem remains, this underlying tendency to try to secure the self in space and time, any type of self that we take, any type of identity that we try to hold to, any situation that we try to live within is going to be inherently dissatisfactory.
So we want to develop the attitude, the determination to free ourselves completely from ego based existence to transcend. And this we can begin to do by looking at karma and the dissatisfactory quality of ego based existence. So we’re going to talk about karma tonight. karma in the sense, karma is a Sanskrit word. It simply means action, work.
Actions as causes and their effects. So we’re talking about actions but in terms of the quality of the types of actions which produce a specific type of effect. Essentially, we’ve been talking about, that’s what we talked about, revert, future states of existence. So essentially what goes on to a future state of existence is a very subtle mind supported by a very subtle wind energy. It is our mind because it carries our evolutionary history imprinted on it.
It carries latency, predispositions, capacity, our tendency. All of this information is encoded in the mind. So it’s our mind. It’s a very unique combination of subtle energy and subtlest mind. And upon this combination we label I.
This is when you were born. On the combination of body and mind, they label John, they label Mary. On the combination of the subtle most energy and subtlest mind, we label I. So this combination will under the influence of karma and afflictive emotion compulsively re-associate itself with a gross energy pattern. That is to say it’ll reassociate itself with a body.
The tendency is to express in terms of trying to solidify, trying to secure, trying to anchor the ego in this chaos reality as it appears. So it’s going to seek embodiment. It’s going to seek solidity. It’s a driving force. It’s purely compulsive under the force of afflicting emotions and our previous actions.
The mind by the force of its karma and afflicting emotions is going to be driven to seek solidification in terms of physical embodiment. And if the ego had its way and it tries its best, it would try to identify with the entirety of the universe, solidify it, freeze it. That would be egohood. That everything and everyone in the universe was I, frozen, solid, static, you know, the boundless I, frozen. Then it would be nothing outside of it which would it would have to fear any longer.
It had achieved its destiny, its ultimate fulfillment. It had become universe. It can’t do it but then we struggle our best to try that, to do that incorporating. Coarse consciousness, so the subtlest mind, subtlest energy reassociates itself with a gross energy pattern, with a gross body, and consciousness enters into the union of sperm and egg compulsively. Like a wisp, like the wind, like the leaves being blown around by the wind.
They don’t have any choice. They just go along under the power of the influence of something other than themselves by the wind, by the force of the wind. So coarse consciousness such as sense consciousness and the conceptual consciousness will be generated in accordance with the specific type of coarse body supporting that consciousness. If the gross body that it reassociates with is for example a dog then in dependence upon this it will develop a dog-like mentality. And it’s still labeling I.
You know upon this subtlest mind, subtlest energy, this combination we label I. This enters into a sperm and ovum compulsively without choice. It’s driven, forced to it’s continually identifying this as I, labeling I, calling I. If this gross energy pattern is that of a dog then it will begin the mentality which we talked about how the body, the brain is a cooperative condition of the mind. Depending upon what type of brain this is going to determine, this is going to condition the type of mentality, the type of consciousness which we are able to arise.
Though this mind in potentiality has almost unlimited potentiality because of the limitation of the physical basis, it’s going to express that potentiality in a very limited way. I remember when I worked at, many years ago I worked at NCR. They make computers and things in the laboratory behind where I work. Back then it was a huge computer these days you have a PC and would be more powerful than that computer, but back then we had a large computer and I used to get you know do my checkbook and things like that right on this huge you know five hundred thousand dollar computer And all I could do is know you know all these buttons and everything. I could only add and subtract and that’s all I could do.
That’s all I knew how to operate the computer. So there was this huge potential. This machine could do a lot, I was the limiting factor. And likewise, due to the limiting factor of the quality of the material basis, the body, the brain, then the mind has this huge potentiality, capacity.