Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a diving-board image — standing in your swimsuit, the only real answer is to jump — to anchor the central theme: the courage to leap beyond self-concern. After citing Chogyam Trungpa’s quip that it is “better not to begin” once you’re already on the spiritual bus, Gendun walks through three kinds of unsatisfactoriness — pain, fluctuation, and the burden of ego — as motivation to change. He then develops the awakening heart: understanding is love, illustrated by a meditation on a difficult son. The session closes with a Thomas Merton story of two desert hermits whose doubts resolve through a year of quiet mutual service.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 H and M of B 1992 11 11.mp3
UUID: a4374972-25e5-42a2-88de-2e3226bcc39e
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-11-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~5,480
We’ll begin by adjusting our motivation with process of getting back in touch with some of our central values, redirecting ourselves, resetting our priorities What is of most importance to me? The things that we quite often lose sight of. Can you hear okay? The things that those values, those guidelines that we oftentimes get out of touch with that we lose sight of. So of reorientating ourselves.
What isn’t What works for men? What do I hold as viable? The qualities of wisdom and love and inner strength aren’t in the general course of busy lives in our society. They don’t hold much sway. They don’t have much weight in our society as it were.
And the money and power and status and beauty, things of these natures seem to have more importance. A place on a higher status than inner qualities of caring, communication, courage, honesty, generosity. So it’s not an easy situation that we find ourselves in, so we have to be quite mindful and somewhat courageous, I think, to be involved in what we’re doing. But perhaps we have no choice, I think we’re, you know, it’s difficult to to go back to sleep once you’re a little bit awake. Know, once you I think Chogyam Trungpa said, it’s better not to begin.
Because once you begin, then you can’t get off the bus. And once you begin the journey, so now that you’re on the bus, you’re stuck. There’s no stopping. So I guess maybe an acceptance of we’re all on a journey of some sort. Sometimes people are going backwards and people are standing still and someone hopefully going forward, we’re all involved in some kind of journey.
I guess accepting that fact and trying to make the best of a long bus trip. And trying to make it enjoy the countryside as it goes by. We have a tendency to withdraw either either emotionally or physically from difficult situations, difficult problems, As we generally see those problems outside of ourselves. But I was thinking today, you know, this tendency of mind as a matter of fact to to withdraw either physically or mentally from the problem. You know, this where can we go If you when you become aware that the the the basis of your problem is that your real problems are inside yourself.
There’s nowhere you can run to. You know, it doesn’t really go to to run to the Himalayas or to hide away in your room, to withdraw socially and physically or emotionally. There’s nowhere place to go. There’s there’s no real refuge physically for ourselves. Emotional except with inside of ourselves.
And once we begin to see that the basis of our difficulty, the basis of all our frustration and dissatisfaction and disappointments are within our minds. I think we’re stuck, aren’t we? We have to accept that we have to get on with the work. And there’s no there’s no other choice. I think it was Krishnamurti said for the intelligent person, there’s no choices in life.
Everything becomes quite obvious as to what needs to be done. And I think it was Ram Dass who said, for the intelligent person, there’s nothing there’s nothing else we can do with our life. There’s nothing more important than to work with our mind since it is the basis of the quality of our life. It’s the it’s the fundamental. And so this process of reorienting, redirecting ourselves to the the becoming mindful again, that it is our own quality of mind.
Our various attitudes and patterns, skillful actions which determine the quality of our lives. We have to, even though it’s difficult, I agree. We have, but we can sort of make it an important component in our life. Right? Continually creating some space, devoting some energy and time to our mind, to changing our mind, to becoming and viewing those types of qualities, those ways of being that we hold as valuable, those which resonate with some deep feeling of meaningfulness and value in our with inside of ourselves.
Some type of authentic response And then to becoming aware of that there is some kind of deep beliefs and meanings that we have which are the basis of our well-being and begin to realign our thinking and behaving in terms of most cherished values. This authentic response to our deepest most being. I think this is what the basis of ethics is. Think ethics and the various guidelines that we create for ourselves are a way of as it were helping us to realign ourselves. I think someone once said that love is the way people naturally act and they don’t have these various afflictions operating within their mind.
And to and the quality of communication and caring and the qualities of wisdom and inner strength. It seems as if these are a very much part of our nature of who we are at some basic level. And all of this this journey of a process is like a coming home to what has always been there. It has always been there. There’s a zen saying that before you begin the path, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.
But why are you traveling the path? Mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers. But once you reach the goal, mountains are once again become mountains and rivers once again are rivers. But there’s been things that aren’t exactly as they were before, but there’s been a tremendous transformation in our perspective, in our attitude toward all the things about us in our self. And somehow we live out of a very a deeply felt part of ourselves.
Something which we are one with and we’re one with the entire world. We are one with ourselves. There’s a sort of a wholeness and integration. There’s an end to conflict both internally and between ourselves and others and then we’ll we’ll begin to find some kind of harmony in our way of being. So this reorientation process, this realigning, reorientating, reprioritizing, Once again trying to move away from our allegiance.
From a life passively lived on the basis under the influence of hopes and fears to one which had lived on the basis of choosing to grow, choosing to awaken, choosing to to realign oneself with one’s most basic cherished values, our noblest parts of ourselves. Our deeply felt deeply most felt needs and beliefs. And to begin to shift our motivation for this process, and for carrying on this journey, Our motivation for growth from that of self concern to that of other concern to develop a sense of social awareness in our journey. That that even if it’s not perhaps obvious to ourselves that we exist in interconnectedness with others and the journey is a journey of all that lives, of us all in some way or another. And becoming acknowledging that.
And so the motivation for this process becomes one of both self and others. As we’re going to talk about, we’re going to begin our discussion of the awakening heart. And one of the most basic problems that all of us experience at some degree or another is that we’re completely wrapped up in our own problems. One of our problems is that we’re totally absorbed in our problem and perhaps gain some perspective, a universal perspective. And as we’re as the Dalai Lama calls it, begin to taking taking on a greater and greater universal responsibility and thereby developing the ability to respond on a universal level.
And this is becomes the motivating force. The the power behind, the directing force behind our journey. So the inner focus of our life becomes the Buddha. The Buddha within inside of ourselves, our paradigm, our model of the goal of the journey. Something towards which we can continually be orientating ourselves, redirecting ourselves.
And the way we actualize Buddha is by means of the Dharma, that which is able to raise the level of our consciousness. And by means of which we can actualize authentic being in our lives. And this process takes place within the social context of the spiritual community. You know, those individuals who are assisting us in a journey. I think we’re very much in it together.
So we aid one another, we help one another’s, Inspire one another, teach one another whatever we can do for one another. And then level the the motivation behind this process. It’s both for self and others. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and 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, Dharma, and the highest assembly. By the virtue of merit that I collect We’re going to begin with the meditation. And first, we’ll meditate on compassion. So we’ve been looking looking at the three fundamentals of the path, developing the determination to awaken, to grow, to go beyond our reoccurring compulsive neurotic patterns. Awakening heart, awakening the hearts to others, expanding our our sense of concern, our social awareness to include ultimately all that lives, all living beings.
And the third fundamental that of awakening our minds, awakening our minds to reality, coming to understand the nature of the self, the nature of all phenomena, uprooting the very root They really found the essential cause for all of our dissatisfaction, all of our problems, which is ignorance or misknowledge with respect to the nature of the self. So we’ve we’ve finished the the first fundamental. Congratulations. We’re going to get a certificate. determination to be free, to awaken.
And that we begin with the paying homage to the formless holy lama, that the teacher, the spiritual master is the root of life and the result of the path. I think as the Buddha himself said that that you are your master, who else can be your master? By being your own master, you will be free. And I think this is quite the case that ultimately we are own. We we must be our own spiritual teachers, our own guru.
We have to find the inner guru that’s inside of ourselves. But I think as a remedial measure, probably necessary to work with the flesh and blood living teacher to sort of check up on us. To help us to, you know, it gives us a chance to to project, as I’ve talked about previously, our own divinity. We find it incredibly difficult to bear the burden of our own wisdom and our own nobility. And so initially it may be necessary, it probably is, to project it onto an individual someone who is a worthy basis for that projection.
And then to begin to reintegrate it taking a potentiality of ourselves, projecting it outward on a worthy basis, and then begin to reintegrate it into ourselves to bring it to full conscious awareness to it. This process of individuation of totality. So this, the teacher is the root of the path. There’s a saying Buddhism that before the teacher, there was no Buddha. There wasn’t even the word Buddha.
So it is the Buddha who awakens, who keeps us in touch and finally brings to fulfillment. All of our noblest potential, finest aspect of ourselves. And all that we can all that is possible all the possibilities which lie dormant with inside of ourselves are are activated and are cultivated and brought to fruition by the power of the teacher. It’s not enough. Books by themselves are not enough.
Something that we need, something to believe in, something which is really real and solid. Someone who who personifies at least to some extent the possibility of the path in a real living example. Then that is the basis of the path. Then we begin to develop the determination to be free, to awaken. And Tsongkhapa in the text divides the this process into two sections.
One with emphasis on the present, our present existence and secondly in terms of emphasizing the future states of existence. You know we’re trying to to energize ourselves, to motivate ourselves, to take up the difficult task of going beyond these compulsive patterns which we’re stuck in, we’re stuck, we’re stuck. To overcome this inertia, our basic resistance to change requires a tremendous amount of effort that requires motivation. And so we begin to see, we have to develop a healthy dissatisfaction with our present way of being. That is not all that we could be.
It’s not all that we can be and we determine to be, all that we should, all that we know we feel at some deep level that we are. That is within our grasp, within our potential. So in terms of the present state of life and present state of existence, we talked about on the basis of the working basis growth is our Buddha nature, some sort of basic sanity, some sort of native intelligence with an intrinsic instinct of an instinct toward wakefulness which is moving us on which actually the very fact that we feel discontent is indicative, is an expression of our Buddha nature. It’s saying be all that you can be and it doesn’t allow us to simply be satisfied with mere coping, that there’s something more to life. Understanding that we have the the potentiality, that we have the stuff of mind which can be shaped in any way according to our skills and according to our effort.
We can make up the mind, you know, whatever. A beautiful mother, Madonna and child of Michelangelo or an ashtray according to what we will, what we have the skills and effort to do. And we have all the necessary conditions to transform the mind. Even we talk, we come here week by week, we talk about these things, we think about these things. We are not the same person as we were last week.
We are changing. And to talk about these things, to think about these things, to read about these ideas of wisdom and love is the way we can begin to mold, to create the conditions for change, to direct our mind along the course of the type of person that we want to become. The mind is dynamic. It’s constantly changing. It’s not fixed.
It’s not static. And we begin to channel in the direction where we want to go. And we have all of the necessary conditions both external and internal to bring about this transformation. Simply most to begin to overcome our taking for granted what great freedom and fortune that everyone in this room presently possesses. That we’re very, what we have is very rare in the world.
That we’re very fortunate in terms of our of our material, economic, physical, spiritual fortune. And then we all the freedoms that we enjoy, the prosperity that we enjoy. But this this chance to actualize our potential is not going to last forever. It’s definite that we’re going to die and the time of death is uncertain. And the time of a death, know, of what is going to be of any use to you at that moment.
And you know again talking about death, not necessarily a big death at the end of this life, but there’s small deaths over the course of our life. There’s little there’s little major upheavals which occur to all of us in one way or another when our life is turned upside down, when all our values are brought into question when we’re not sure what to believe in or if there is anything to believe in. When we’ve lost everything that was familiar, we’ve lost something that’s come to an end and the new is yet to begin and there’s a transition and everything in a state of flux. And what can stand us well through that state? Now will we be willing to enter into change voluntarily?
Only to the degree that we have a sense that confidence within ourselves that I have have trained impeccably as best I could. I’ve developed skillful attitude, insights, understandings. I don’t know what the circumstances or the eventual outcome may be, the specific details, but I know I’m going to land on my feet. I’m not quite sure where it’s going to be or the situation, but I have confidence in my own development, my own wisdom, my own love. It’s going to stand me in good stead through this transition.
Therefore there’s a sort of inner confidence which is going to facilitate you willingly into change, difficult situations. So this brings us to the question of karma. What kinds of patterns are we developing? The ways of thinking, behavior, our habits. And the question of karma that the results of actions are infallible, that there’s going to be a result which exactly accords with the cause, This relationship is unfailing.
Skillful actions always bring about happiness. Unskillful actions always bring about suffering. And they can distinguish between what is skillful and unskillful. And the actions, the results of actions can be greatly amplified even from insignificant causes can arise great result. And if we do not we don’t experience the result of uncommitted actions, you know, there’s some type of product or some type of experience that you want to to to have, then you have to create the cause for it.
This is you know, it’s These are, as it were, the way things are. We have to harmonize ourselves with the way things are. We have no choice. That things arise in dependence upon causes. If there’s some type of experience which we wish to have, then we have to create the cause.
And this as we talked about in terms of the purification process, that these actions in terms of these repetitive patterns, in terms of seeds, latencies within our mind of these actions are not dissipated, that they remain within the mind until activated, until they meet the cooperative condition and then some type of result arising. And then what types of results have been arising in terms of the various types of dissatisfactory states. And we talked about the unsatisfactoriness of pain, mental and physical pain. The unsatisfactoriness of fluctuation in the way in which the thinking process is operating where we can continue oscillating between pleasure and pain, pleasure and pain, success and failure, all the various dichotomies that we have to go through. By the very nature, we cannot become masters of this process.
We can only begin to understand it and transcend it. This dualism, the unsatisfaction is a fluctuation then the unsatisfaction is a universal conditionality. There’s simply the burden of having ego and all that that entails, all the you know having to reestablish our credentials, guard our territory, the loss of innocence, watch ourselves, feelings of guilt, feelings of inauthenticity, fragmentation, alienation and all of the more subtle types of feelings that we all experience to a lesser or greater degree. This is unsatisfactory and then it’s the unsatisfactoryness of impermanence. And everything that we gather together will eventually slip through our fingers.
There’s nothing that we can hold on to forever. In fact it is a very clinging and grasping of pleasure which turns the pleasure to pain. It’s not in our control, that there’s nothing within the impermanence which can bring us eternal, unchanging happiness. It’s not in their nature. They don’t have the capacity.
And then finally the in terms of the unsatisfaction of selflessness. We keep struggling to secure the self in space and time. That’s an ongoing preoccupation. All our energy, all our efforts are devoted to trying to make secure what is in fact something illusion. So this process is very worrisome.
It’s not all that life could be. You know, Buddhism has great faith in the goodness of ourselves and the goodness of life. So when we talk about the dissatisfactoriness of ego-orientated existence, we’re not talking about life, just a particular type of approach, a certain perspective, a certain attitude, attitudes which we bring to this experience we call life. And so determining, developing determination to go beyond this approach, Go beyond this reoccurring types of attitudes, compulsive patterns which very much constitute a present way of being. And then so developing the determination to awaken, to go beyond it, to grow.
And then so that brings us to the the second of the three fundamentals of path. How we’re going to grow, in what directions, in terms of our awakening. The awakening heart and the awakening mind. In order to overcome selfishness, it is necessary to be daring. It is though you were dressed in your swimsuit standing on the diving board with a pool in front of you and you ask yourself, now what?
The obvious answer is jump. That is daring. You might wonder if you will get if you will sink or hurt yourself if you jump. We are attracted to our cocoon, our selfishness, and we are afraid of our of selflessness, stepping beyond ourselves. So in order to overcome our hesitation about giving up our privacy, in order to commit ourselves to others welfare, some kind of leap is necessary.
So this leap is the awakening of our hearts to others, the overcoming of our hesitation about committing ourselves to the welfare of others. You know, going quote, you know, escaping from outer world, the cocoon of our ego centrism, our ego centric world and committing ourselves to the welfare of others. Mental health is ultimately a social phenomenon. Failing to understand this and as I mentioned at the very beginning, a great part of our problem is that we are completely wrapped up in our problems. That this is the part of the human dilemma.
We expend blood, sweat and tears trying to find happiness for ourselves. And a great part of that expenditure is at the exclusion and expense of others and the very effort becomes self defeating. We’re completely absorbed in our own problems at the exclusion and the expense of others and there’s no solution to our problems within this context. It’s unworkable because we are social beings. The growth is essentially an individual task, it occurs some kind of authentic response not only to our own needs which are limited, which are narrow, but also if we only respond to our own needs, are limited and narrow, this can only at best lead to a partial and narrow growth.
But if we respond to the needs of all others whose needs are limitless, universal, then this can lead to a corresponding proportionate growth, a complete all encompassing actualization of all our potential. You know, Buddhism is saying this is the only way that it is, I mean, least from the point of view of the system, the world view of Buddhism, there’s no other way to actualize the force of human potentiality than through the power of love. There’s no greater force within or without the mind. There’s nothing else that can accomplish this task which has the power to transform the mind to such a radical such a radical way other than love and compassion. There’s no way that we can actualize the fullest of our potentiality than by means of the power of love and compassion, awakening our hearts.
To that same degree that we begin to awaken our hearts, to that same degree that we we develop love and compassion, we will grow. We will begin to find the solutions not only to our own but develop the skills to be able to help others to solve their problems. To that same degree, proportion, corresponding. Opening up our hearts, responding to the needs of others is the is the way that we can become begin to overcome our cowardice. Our cowardice.
You know this this our inertia. You know we can’t even help ourselves without loving ourselves. And the way of this is the way that we can begin to to summon up some kind of inner strength. That you know we can we can go beyond our limited conceptions of our ourselves and we can respond to the needs, the immediate necessities of the situation in spite of ourselves. As in we can surprise ourselves as to what we can do.
Necessity is the mother of invention. If it becomes necessary for you to grow out of the demands of your own compassion then you will you know, the environment, the universe and all that you are internally will support that growth. You will find a way to change and to awaken. The process of committing oneself brings about all the subtle complex of causes and conditions into your favor and acts as support. Know they use the simile of a bird.
To fly we need two wings. The wings of wisdom and love. We need wise hearts and loving minds. That is to we we have to begin to develop we have to begin to integrate our rational and emotional lives. The awakening heart and the awakening mind.
As I’ve mentioned, the psychology of misery is the pathology of epistemology. Our wrong ways of thinking, are wrong ways of knowing and healthy ways of knowing. So a life based upon ignorance and self-centeredness is doomed. It’s doomed to pain, it’s doomed to fear, it’s doomed to anxiety. All of the best, know, the the qualities of ego oriented existence which I talked about in terms of universal conditionality.
You know, this continual process of struggle that we’re involved in. There’s no peace, there’s no fulfillment, there’s no wholeness. So we’re borne aloft by these two wings of love and compassion. We can begin to cross over our sea of trouble, our sea of suffering. And we can begin to actualize a potentiality of being our loving, sane human being.
I think these things are good to talk about, but I think it helps to orientate ourselves. It helps to activate something within us. It’s quite necessary. And the reason that we don’t love each other, that we don’t have the time for each other, that we don’t have the energy for one another is because we don’t understand each other. What each other needs, each other’s problems.
Suppose we have a son who becomes an unbearable young man. It may be hard for us to love him, that is natural. In order to be loved, a person should be lovable. If our son has become difficult to love, we will be very unhappy. We wish we could love him, but the only way we can is to understand him, to understand his situation.
We have to take our son as the subject of our meditation. Instead of taking the concept of emptiness or some other subject, we can take our son as the concrete subject for our meditation. We don’t blame our son. We just want to understand why he has become like that. Through this method of meditation we find out all the causes near and far that have led to our son’s present state of being.
The more we see, the more we understand. The more we understand, the easier it is for us to have compassion and love. Understanding is love itself. Understanding is another name for love. Love is another name for understanding.
And becoming aware of and acknowledging our own pain, we begin to understand ourselves. And we begin to understand ourselves, we can begin to love ourselves. And by love, mean the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing oneself, one’s own well-being. The will to extend oneself. That means the will that you begin to choose, to begin the work, to make the effort, to take the responsibility, to develop, to cultivate, to nourish one’s own well-being by understanding ourselves, our situation, becoming sincere about your problems and solving them.
By recognizing the extent of them, their nature, understanding what you’re about. And can we can in understanding our own pain, we can think what is what we’ve done up to now. You know, developing this determination to awaken and looking at our suffering and confronting the issues in our own self deception. Then we can really begin to love and then perhaps love ourselves for the first time in a very stable, sincere, mature way. Loving ourselves, understanding ourselves, we can begin to understand, we can begin to extend to others that same understanding that we have for ourselves.
And we develop a determination to help them awaken, to help them to grow. So you know taking responsibility for others is the most skillful method available to us to to solve our problems, to develop ourselves which is the same thing. To solve our problems we need to develop ourselves. Know, because in order to take responsibility for someone else sincerely in reality. We must be able to develop the ability to respond and taking responsibility we must be able to respond to their needs and that we can only ultimately do by developing ourselves.
Through growing in love and compassion and wisdom and skillful means. This is the way that we can be of most use to other and if you necessarily must be able to respond to the needs of others, then you will find a way to be able to respond because of taking that responsibility. I’ll just tell a little bit a little story. It’s from a book from The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton. And he’s talking about there there were two Christian fathers who lived in the desert hermits who lived in the Egyptian desert.
Like, perhaps fifteen hundred years ago, something like that. And these two desert fathers were quite renowned. And people came to them to seek advice and to confess. And one of them was quite wrathful. And those who like maybe had a guilt trip or something, who liked really really heavy penances, they would go to the wrathful father.
And the other one was quite gentle, quite mild. Those who were inclined that way would go to him. But anyway, it occurred that approximately about the same time that they both began to have doubts about their location. Both began to wonder whether in fact what they were doing was right, was suited to them. And they were very troubled by their doubts.
And they thought to seek advice, and in fact they sought they thought to seek advice from one another. And so what happened is they set out on a journey to the other’s cave living a few days apart. Halfway between their two caves, it was coming toward evening and they met. And the kindly father said to the met the wrathful father. Mhmm.
Said, I’m on my way to such and such a hermit’s cave. Can you tell me how to get there? And the wrathful father said, I know where he lives, but why were you seeking him out? Why didn’t you want to visit him? And the kindly father, the gentle father said, you know, I’ve been I’ve been all these years living as a hermit in my cave and and now I’ve been struck with many doubts.
I’m concerned about my vocation. I’m seeking this father to give me advice, to answer my questions, to resolve the conflict within my mind. There’s great danger of losing my vocation. And the wrathful father says, yes, yes, I understand. I’ll tell you what, I’ll take you there in the morning.
So in the morning, they set off to the wrathful father’s cave. Having come to a cave, it became apparent to the to the kindly father that in fact this was the wrathful father who had let him back to his own cave. And the the wrath father says, yes, I’m the person that you were looking for. Now, I want you to stay with me for a while. And so the the the kindly father acted as the servant of the wrath of the father and he fix his food.
And during the course of acting as a servant, would listen to the various advices that he would give to the people who came to visit him. And after about a year’s time, the kindly father went to the wrathful father one day and said, and now I’ve I’ve found my way again. I I’ve I’ve eliminated all my various doubts. I I have no conflict. My mind is at peace.
I know my way.