Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with an unexpected reference — a talk on child sexual abuse heard that afternoon — Ven Jampa Gendun uses the theme of accurate information to show why faulty beliefs, however sincere, produce actions that never quite fit. In this 46-minute session from a continuing series, he walks through the threefold path of listening, reflecting, and meditating, illustrates gradual inner change with an image of walking in monsoon mist until soaked, then turns to awakening the heart. He distinguishes divine pride — expanding one’s self-image to include latent capacities — from deceptive pride, argues that caring for others is wise selfishness rather than self-sacrifice, and closes with a guided meditation on love and compassion directed toward a stranger in the room.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 H and M of B 1992 11 18.mp3
UUID: c5ab2657-4704-4e6d-9895-fbcd7ff47fdf
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-11-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~4,930
This afternoon, I was listening to a talk. It was on child sexual abuse. And the woman who was giving the talk was saying how important information is. Having the correct information we can begin to function more skillfully around difficult problems. Sometimes without information we act rather stupidly.
We can act out of ignorance unknowingly even with the best of intentions. And I think it’s quite true. I mean we’ve talked about the three activities in which we’re mainly involved in, determines our practice, our methods of developing ourselves, our methods of growth. And these are simply listening, reflecting and meditating. And I think it’s quite wonderful, this process that we’re involved in.
Know, I think it gives great hope, it has great meaning, it has great purpose because it can bring about significant change. We’re actually going somewhere. You know, in terms of listening, gathering the necessary information, beginning to see how the categories fit together, beginning to receive an explanation of a certain worldview, increasing our knowledge. And then in the process of reflecting, continue to evaluate, try to determine the significance of what you’ve heard, trying to analyze, investigate in the light of one’s own reason, one’s own experience, one’s own intuition? Does it resonate with what I believe to be true?
And then finally having seen the validity of it, the process of integration actually rather than thinking about it, being it. The actual process of integration, of change, of cultivation. You know, think if we are continually involved, I tried to emphasize quite a great deal I think, that our lives are based upon sets of ideas, beliefs, assumptions, premises. And these go to the very core of our being, almost impregnated in our bones, in our muscles. And the problem is that if the context in which we’re trying to lead our life, know, we’re trying the best we can to figure out how to get the goodness out of life, how to experience the best of what we’re involved in, all our various situations and relationships, you know, how to get the goodness out of life.
That’s what we want. And if if our belief systems, if if the basis upon which we’re operating, our premises are somehow faulty, then no matter how intelligent, how sincere we may be, It’s a difficult situation, isn’t it? You know, it is all our judgments are going to be made on the on the basis of some mistaken notions, wrong ideas, crooked assumptions, erroneous premises. And therefore at best, our actions are going to be slightly inappropriate at best, but they’re going to be inappropriate nonetheless. They don’t quite fit.
There’s always going to be a certain degree of dissatisfaction. So I think it’s quite, you know, we can change. We’re trying to work with our beliefs ultimately to go beyond all beliefs, but immediately to begin to become aware of, to make conscious some of the premises which we’re operating on. And as I mentioned, at deepest most level we’re operating on two epistemological errors, wrong ways of knowing, self grasping and self centeredness. But there are many lesser, more gross, mistaken, unskillful premises in which we’re basing our life upon.
And the point I’m trying to make is that we can, if we’re given an accurate description and we’re willing to work with that description and use our wisdom, use our intelligence, use our gifts and our potential, then there’s great hope that some kind of change will come about. There’s no reason why it can’t. We don’t have to keep going around in the same circles, the same desperate struggle which constitutes most of our lives. Simply coping. But we will change and we will change for the better.
Our beliefs will begin to shift. Our ideals will begin to evolve. Our assumptions will begin to accord with the actual reality. A world view which is experienced as peace and as caring and appropriate communication and skillfulness, compassion. All of these authentic qualities which probably each one of us wants to imbue, wants to express in our life.
So I think we’re working with ideas and with beliefs and assumptions. We’re kind of sharing information, exchanging, communicating. And slowly, even if we aren’t conscious of it, there’s some kind of change in our perception. Our life begins to change. We begin to cheer up.
Things begin to go a little bit better. Our mind is not quite as rough. We begin to, as it were, begin to spiral upwards. I know we still go around slightly in the circles, but then we don’t quite come back to the same point we were before. There’s been some movement, some evolution and life becomes a very purposive.
So I find this a great heart, very heartening. You know this process, you know we look at ourselves and sometimes you know this change I think is if you walk in the mist, I remember living in India in Dharmasala during the monsoon when it was on a mountaintop, you’re just surrounded by clouds. And unknowingly while you’re walking around, your clothes become slightly damp and damper and damper unknowingly and imperceptibly until you find yourself almost soaked though it didn’t rain. Your clothing begin to absorb the dampness in the air and the atmosphere and unknowingly you become completely drenched. And I think very much that’s what we’re involved in.
You know, if we keep just talking about these ideas and working with them, questioning ourselves and what we’re doing and what what we’re about and beginning to reflect upon what we’re hearing discuss it and communicate it, then we will change, no doubt. We are intelligent. And we talked about Buddha nature, this potentiality and these resources which we can begin to draw on. If we have good information presented to us in a clear and concise manner, if there’s some kind of communication that goes on. And I think something something wonder we create an atmosphere of growth, of learning, of change And things will get better.
I think we can have faith in that. We can have some kind of conviction in this process in which we’re all involved in. It’s, you know, it’s it’s perhaps not very dramatic. But there are these deeply moving moments that we experience from time to time which bring us great inspiration. But overall a sense that I can respect myself and I can take confidence that my life is moving toward a way of being which which I have always wanted for myself and which I would want very much for others because I care about myself and I care about others.
And I think there’s something very reassuring about that even in difficult times. Anyway, I’m just kind of sharing an idea with you that we together I think this is why Buddhism emphasizes this spiritual fellowship, spiritual community, the Sangha, a place of sharing, place of creating the nurturing conditions for this evolution to begin to take place where we can exchange and support one another. It holds great promise. You know outside of all the various other methods that you’re making use of to find the happiness, the goodness of life, but to make this an essential component of this array of methods, this questioning, this learning, this integrating, cultivating. I think it’s a very something we’re very fortunate and something very wonderful to have this opportunity.
It’s very rare I think. You know, we are actually moving somewhere. So the inner focus inner focus of our life becomes the Buddha. The Buddha inside of our soul. And this goodness inside of our soul, finding a way to express it, itself as a mode of being, as a way of life.
Someone who experiences unrelenting peace with inside themselves and compassionately works skillfully with others in order to help them to experience the same. Someone who’s laid down the burden of the struggle of ego-orientated existence and can go beyond themselves and become other centered, who has the skill to actually be of tremendous value to others and has the skill in communication to be able to help others in very realistic fashion, to communicate. And someone who sees things as they are, who has love and compassion, taking the responsibility, commitment to others, who has inner strength, the energy to express that commitment in realistic fashion in the real world. And we take refuge, we orientate ourselves towards the Dharma, you know the means. That which is able to move our mind.
That which is able to act as a key to begin to unlock this potentiality that we all possess. That which you know that which transform the stuff of mind that we all carry around inside of ourselves which we know so little about. These various reoccurring patterns somehow you know begin to to create a a shift in the quality of those patterns. You know the way we our world view, all of these beliefs, assumptions, they begin to evolve. They begin to there’s some kind of movement from a different way of being to another, a more optimum, self fulfilling, self authenticating way of being.
All of these words that I say, trying to indicate that I think there’s a real possibility. I don’t, you know it’s hard to talk about for myself at least. Because we want to pin it down. We want to say, we want to think in a very linear fashion as if if I could win the cross Lotto, a million dollars and I could have a measure of what it takes to be happy. But the whole our whole approach to our existence, all our values, way we the way we look at things, way we view things, the way we all our various beliefs have to evolve.
Not one single facet, not one you know like It’s a whole connecting interconnected world of views and beliefs and assumptions. A whole our total being is what I guess I’m talking about. That which is able to affect the totality of who we are, not just some random aspect of that, but the totality is able to to bring it to some more optimum way of existence. Some way of expressing more and more our inherent potential. That which is able to bring that about is a source of refuge, is something that we should orientate and try to integrate more and more.
That is to say the Dharma, the truth, the teachings, whatever. And then finally as I just mentioned, the reorientation process towards the spiritual community, the social context in which this evolution takes place. And I think this is tremendously important and I think the universal vehicle, the Mahāyāna recognizes and tries to emphasize the importance of the sangha. Not in terms of the hierarchy, but in terms of the context. You know that that well-being is not a not not the mere gaining of realization in isolation from others.
Because in in many ways love is an ultimate realization. In many ways and many of my teachers have said this that all of Buddhism whether in all of its various aspects whether it be Tantra and even that of wisdom is simply there to help us to realize more and more love. More and more compassion, more and more to become, go beyond our isolation, our self centeredness and begin to shift towards other centeredness. Know, this is the solution to the basic problem of inauthenticity, of fragmentation, the alienation, all the very subtle sufferings that we struggle with in the course of our daily life. And we’re going to be talking about a way to begin to awaken our heart.
But all of Buddhism and I think all religion as the Dalai Lama has emphasized many times, the essence of all religion is compassion. And our wisdom is only there to in a way compassion is wisdom, isn’t it? And wisdom is compassion. There’s different aspects of the different the same mode of being. One is an expression of social wisdom, the other in terms of the wisdom understanding our inner nature.
And the social expression and experiential expression of a single mode of being, a single state of mind, of an attitude, of a way of understanding. So we try to reorientate ourselves over the course of our busy life, you know, getting out of touch. And we have to do this. It’s not something it’s something which must be understood in the sense that we shouldn’t practice coercion with respect to ourselves. We shouldn’t do violence to ourselves.
We have to try to use our wisdom and our understanding and have compassion for ourselves. In this way our practice will evolve of itself. We don’t have to force ourselves, we don’t have to push ourselves, we don’t have to pretend, we don’t have to do violence to ourselves. If we use our understanding, try to understand. That’s all we have to do is involve ourselves in this this threefold process of listening, reflecting, and meditative integration again and again and again and things will work for them out for themselves.
We don’t have to oversee the process. There’s something going on perhaps that we don’t even understand at present and we can have some kind of faith, some kind of trust in that process, trust in our own basic goodness, the goodness of life. And the Buddhism simply, it doesn’t ask us to believe in anything. It doesn’t even ask us to believe in Buddhism. It just asks us to make an experiment to try to try to take us the the primary principles around which we live our life as guidelines for for the practical activities of our day to day life.
Love, compassion and wisdom and some kind of creative exuberance for life expressed as working with others, communication and caring. And I think out of this something good will evolve. I think we can begin to solve our problems in a very significant way to begin to help others to solve theirs. 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 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 the other perfections, 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, and the highest assembly. And the virtuous merits that I collect by practicing, giving, the other perfection may attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. So we’re going to meditate.
We’ll begin with the development of love and compassion as we normally do And perhaps perhaps you’d like to look around the room pick on somebody that that you’re not acquainted with. Almost someone a stranger, but obviously you probably feel some kind of kinship, some kind of affinity with being here as we are together. So just pick up somebody that’s attractive to you, but that you don’t know, very you don’t know. Perhaps just you said hello that’s all in passing. And we’ll cultivate love and compassion with respect to them taking them as our object for the development of love and compassion.
Then we’ll meditate on mindfulness of breathing and if it’s useful using the techniques of counting and noting. And then finally we’ll guide you through a meditation whereby we’ll try to assume, try to go beyond our present conception of ourselves, which we hold very strongly to. human beings are model builders and moreover it seems like a mind is such that it within it has a model of itself. Within, so we have a conception of who we are and you know this conception has been learned. This self image, the model who we conceive of ourselves to be.
And anything which is learned can be taught. So we can dig in and but moreover, this conception that we have of our self can act as a very tremendous limiting factor in our lives. You know, it doesn’t include the totality of who we are. We tend to discount, overlook, forget anything which doesn’t fit. We cultivate an unawareness as to those aspects of ourselves which do which in some way are in conflict with our preconceptions of who we are.
So we limit ourselves to a very narrow band of our personality potential, of our potential resources. So in tantra, one of the tremendous emphasis is going beyond this limiting conception of ourselves, developing what is called divine pride. Divine pride is quite different than deceptive pride. In divisive pride, we’re trying to become something that we aren’t. We try to assume qualities which we don’t possess.
But with divine pride, try to try to become aware of and acknowledge who in fact we are. So we’re not trying to become Napoleon or the Queen of England because we can’t. But we can become ourselves. And so we can begin to learn more about ourselves and begin to reshape our self image. Ultimately to go beyond any type of self image the need to have any conception, any identity altogether.
But immediately beginning to expand the scope of our self identity of who we conceive of ourselves to be to include more and more our resources and positive qualities, everything, our totality. So that’s what we can begin to work with. So if you want to assume a comfortable firm posture. Taking someone in the room who you’re not acquainted with but probably have a good feeling for, imagining that person in front of you, if you can’t see them it doesn’t matter, just feel that they’re there beginning the development of compassion towards this person. First with the just a simple friendly thought.
It would be nice if you didn’t have any difficulties, if you didn’t have any suffering. That would be wonderful. I would like that very much. May you be free of all your difficulties, all your problems and frustration. I’m going to commit myself.
I’m going to take responsibility for working with you to help you to solve your problem, to end your suffering. Now cultivate love. First, with a simple friendly thought. It’d be wonderful if you were happy. I like that.
May you be happy. I wish you all the good things of life. I’m going to help you. Take responsibility for working with you to to find happiness. In a way I’m going to express my commitment to you at this very moment is through my meditation.
By developing myself, I’ll be that much more skillful, that much more able to put into practice my commitment to you to really be able to help you. And bring your mind to the breath. Be easy, gentle in and out flow of the natural breathing. And we’re talking about the discussing the second second fundamental of the path, the awakening heart. We went through a process of developing the determination to awaken, determination to be free.
And actually I think this means the way that we love ourselves, the way that we develop compassion for ourselves. As I’ve mentioned the definition which I like most about I like most about love is the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing one’s own or another’s well-being. So I think this is what going through this process of developing the determination to awaken to grow is this determination to awaken is is the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing oneself, to develop oneself, to awaken oneself, to go beyond these reoccurring compulsive patterns which are dissatisfactory by their very nature. So this is the way that we express love for ourselves. This is loving ourselves.
This development of this determination to be free, to awaken, to have compassion for ourselves, to care about ourselves, to begin to take our problems seriously, and to become sincere about changing the way things are. And I talked about the the two most you know, I mentioned the two most basic epistemological errors in which we’re involved in these mistaken ways of knowing in terms of self grasping and self centeredness. And these are the directions in which we’re seeking to grow. We begin to talk about this second fundamental, the way that we can finally go beyond our self centeredness. This most basic, one of the two most basic problems, misconceptions that we have.
And by self centeredness I mean the misconception with respect to the effectiveness of activities engaged in at the expense and exclusion of others as a means to find happiness for oneself. It’s a misconception that we simply cannot find happiness at the expense and exclusion of others. But we struggle, we try and try and try our best. In fact, we are social beings, we are interdependent with others And this very interdependence with others necessitates that we take others into consideration in all actions. That to use others as means to find our own happiness is self defeating.
It’s only another way of extending, complicating, expanding our problems. So the necessity to begin to awaken our hearts to others. We began to talk about it last week and I thought, you know, over the next few weeks, I’m going to tonight I’ll talk about the second fundamental developing the awakening heart. And then next week I’ll talk about the awakening mind. Understanding and just by way of introduction, understanding the ultimate nature of reality.
Because I think the term is coming to an end. And the meditative process, there’s two traditions for the development of an awakening heart, which there’s seven-cause-and-effect instruction and equalizing and exchanging self for others. And we’re going to go through these, each of these two meditative traditions in detail. So I don’t think it would be useful to begin the first of these traditions and then have to break off in the middle of the the holidays. So I’m going to talk about finish our discussion of the second fundamental, the awakening heart tonight and then next week and the week after.
Talk briefly by way of introduction, the awakening mind. Just go over some of the ideas about selflessness and emptiness, the way to actually overcome this epistemological error with respect to self grasping. Last week I’m trying to set the foundation for why we should take up this difficult task of loving others beyond our romanticism, beyond our sentimentality. Now why, if we don’t have some rational basis, if it doesn’t make sense to us, then we’re never going to be able to develop a consistent determination to actually pursue, to actually take, to make effort and joyfully take, make effort to love others. And we have to have some, we are, basically selfish people.
As the Dalai Lama said, we should try to be wisely selfish. And to be wisely selfish means to concern ourselves with others. Because in concerning ourselves with others, at least on an equal basis with ourselves, is the most functionally efficient means to find happiness for ourselves. But we don’t recognize this at present. We’re under some misconceptions.
So you know the possibility of tapping into all of our resources is only through the powers of love and compassion that the fullest extent of the potentiality of our human resources can find expression, can be evolved. There’s no other way. It is only the force of love and compassion which can bring about the culmination of what it means to be a human being. This is our evolutionary destiny. It is only in fact, you know, taking the responsibility for others is the most skillful method available to us to be able to develop ourselves.
Because in order to take responsibility and in a realistic fashion, one must be able to respond. To take responsibility entails being able to respond. And that we can only ultimately do a profound and far reaching level to the extent that we develop ourselves. You know, it is the difference between someone who knows first aid and is able to apply a band aid, able to wrap a broken arm and someone who can perform a heart bypass operation or brain surgery. They both have both may have the same beneficial intention.
But they have vastly different potentialities in being able to be a significant benefit. Someone who needs a heart bypass operation needs more than a band aid. And though you simply have taken a first aid course, though you might have the greatest intention, desire, aspiration to benefit this person, you simply do not have the skillful means to be able to help them at your particular level of understanding, at your particular level of expertise. And out of that desire to help, that real commitment to take responsibility to be able to respond to their needs, they’re going to say I’m going to have to train myself further. My present capacity allows me to help others.
I’m going to have to go on. So it becomes a motivating force to to go beyond our own narrow singular needs which are limited. And we can begin to fulfill the needs of all others, which are unlimited, which are universal. So it is the only way that we can really develop a motivating force to to completely give all of our potential a way of expression. Necessity is the mother of invention.
It is only when it becomes absolutely necessary to develop ourselves completely that we will develop ourselves completely, that we will find a way, that we will make the effort. You know, even within our general selfishness and self centeredness, there are moments when another individual elicits in us the capacity to reach out towards others, to deeper and wider dimensions which abolish momentarily the sense of isolation that we have. This temporarily self imposed loneliness and prison that we exist within. Something someone who calls us out of ourselves, out of the necessity of the situation that we have to be able to respond. That there’s there’s some kind of spontaneous going out having to meet the need of the moment, the situation.
It’s very direct. There’s no, There are individuals who have acted as catalysts, who have acted as conditions for drawing upon all of our resources, all of our inner strength, all of our caring, all of our wisdom. You know, situation called for that. These individuals they elicited and we all that lay dormant within ourselves. We had, it was a natural response to some need, a very deeply felt need.
A way that we could participate in the life of another being. You know to participate in To participate means as much to give ourselves to others as it means to receive others into our own life. Existentially, there are two aspects to the self. There on the one hand there is the the private aspect. That part of ourselves which is inaccessible to others, which is lived through our own unique inner experience, our own inner world on the one hand.
On the other, there is our social self, the social aspect to ourselves. You know that part of ourselves which is which exists in relationship to others. Which is which is lived out through our outer shared relationship with others. You know, that is it. It is lived out through our shared relationship with others.
And a part of If we don’t live out that relationship, part of ourselves is not living. To be essentially self-directing, to be essentially a self-directing unique individual whose actions and concerns are valuable in and of themselves and at the same time to be a social being essentially related to other persons are not two conflicting ways of being, but are two mutually necessary aspects of our everyday of existence. That we are both these two aspects of being a private self and a social self. They’re like two facets of a diamond, two ways of viewing the same unique being. So from the from the viewpoint of the holistic approach of universal vehicle within Buddhism, the individual vehicle, the Hīnayāna, is seen as falling to the extreme of individualism.
That is to say, it’s an imbalance in the emphasis with regards to these two aspects of the self. It fails to take into account that basically we are social beings. That basically we are social beings. That if we’re going to become happy, loving, healthy, sane human beings, then we must not only make effort at finding peace within ourselves, but we must make some type of effort, expend some type of energy, cultivate some means to find an appropriate way of relating with others, a skillful way of relating with others, to develop a social awareness, a social concept to become aware of our interdependence, interrelationship with others, with our interrelationship with the entire world, to find our proper place, our rightful place within the world. We have to make that effort.
We have to cultivate that understanding, way of viewing our existence, our interdependency.