Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using a piano-learning analogy — the teacher admits his own fingers still don’t quite cooperate — Ven Jampa Gendun illustrates that habituation can transform any mental habit before surveying two classical traditions for cultivating the awakening heart in this 31-minute overview. He maps the sevenfold cause-and-effect instruction step by step: equanimity as foundation, recognizing all beings as former mothers, gratitude, affectionate love, compassion, and the exceptional resolve to take sole responsibility for liberating others, culminating in the aspiration for full awakening. He then outlines the equalizing and exchanging self for others tradition, which culminates in the taking-and-giving visualization, noting it is both more powerful and more accessible to Westerners who lack strong conviction in rebirth. A final section introduces the awakening mind: citing anthropologist Gregory Bateson, Gendun argues that all suffering is rooted in a misconceived belief in a fixed, independent self, and carefully distinguishes that fiction from the conventionally existent everyday I. All three threads are flagged as previews for detailed study in the coming year.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 H and M of B 1992 11 24.mp3
UUID: 4dc7bc57-68fb-47b4-be8f-e09418f2e527
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-11-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 31.4 minutes
Words: ~3,897
Toward the development of awakening heart. In that we are going to make use of two meditative traditions to actually cultivate the awakening heart. One is called the sevenfold cause and effect instruction. It has its initial lineage coming down from Śākyamūni Buddha down to Maitreya, Indian masters such as Asaṇga and Atisha, down to our present teachers of today, an unbroken lineage of instruction. And there’s a second meditative tradition called equalizing and exchanging self for others.
And this, again, has its origin in the Buddha Buddha Śākyamūni coming down through Mañjuśrī through such great Indian masters as Śāntideva, is the author of that quote which I just read, again down to Atisha, and again down to our present teacher. So, you know, I think these are the meditative traditions whereby to cultivate an awakening heart. As I’ve mentioned in the past, probably just last week, this may sound There’s no reason why we can’t work toward this. You know, it may sound almost an impossibility, it may sound a romantic notion, but it’s logical, it’s reasonable that we can cultivate our mind in that direction. Least giving our mind that direction.
And think Āryadeva, another great Indian master said, there’s nothing which does not become easy upon habituation. That, you know, if you’re trying to learn the piano, which I I try to do, you know, your fingers don’t quite work. You you can’t nothing quite you feel like you there’s something wrong with your fingers. You know, like they just don’t do what you would like for them to do. But after some time in working with them, then it becomes almost natural that you couldn’t do what you you can do quite naturally what you couldn’t do a few months before.
There is nothing in terms of cultivation, in terms of habituation that doesn’t become easier. That’s the nature of the mind. And likewise, if we simply keep cultivating, keep keep familiarizing ourselves with these ideas and going into them and reflecting upon and integrating them, then there’s no reason because there’s no inherent obstacle to the expression of the potential of the mind. That it has this dynamic quality, it is open ended, there’s no inherent obstacle and hindrance. So we can move toward it.
These two lineages have come down to us through the present day. And I think this is also important to emphasize, the fact that these methods of cultivating the awakening heart have been a continuous practice for over two thousand five hundred years. They just weren’t recently invented. That they had been used successfully by a number of extraordinary people and many, many rather un extraordinary people like ourselves, ordinary people like ourselves, that they have been used successfully. There’s no reason that we cannot use them.
And I think it’s quite often good to reflect upon the fact that Śākyamūni Buddha is not some otherworldly being. There’s no qualitative gulf between ourselves and such an individual or all the various Buddhas and bodhisattvas who All of these various beings who have attained these unimaginable states. That they were like us at one time. Perhaps more deluded than ourselves. That they had hatred and they had anger and jealousy and spite and attachment just like ourselves.
I think this is an important point to keep in mind. And there’s no reason that we cannot cultivate our mind. There’s no reason that we can’t change our mind. Simply again and again taking these methods to mind familiar through the process of familiarization and directing the mind along certain course of path, the mind will change. That’s its very nature.
There’s no reason that we can’t do that. At least in some small way. Perhaps, you know, we can change. We can improve. And that we may not, there’s no reason why we can’t.
The point is that this is logical, this is reasonable. The conception that you have that you can’t change, that you probably have at some level is illogical, it’s unreasonable. It’s not in accordance with the actual reality of our situation. But still you hold on to this idea that I can’t become this. One dismisses it almost with that thought.
But there’s no reason that you can’t, in fact. So these two meditative traditions for cultivating the awakening heart. sevenfold cause and effect instruction. Beginning with the foundation of equanimity, whereby we cultivate a sense of an unbiased regard for all living beings. That is to say a regard which is divorced of attachment and aversion.
in dependence upon that we go on to cultivate five causes. First, trying to recognize all living beings as our mothers. You know, we’ve talked about this in the past in terms of trying to establish the notion of rebirth, that in fact all living beings have been our mothers. Trying to develop this type of bonding. This is our model of relationship between ourselves and all living beings.
That in fact all living beings have been our mothers. Secondly, remembering their great kindness just like our mother of this life. Our mothers have nursed us, all mothers, all living beings have extended that same kindness to us again and again and again. Developing a sense of gratitude, thirdly, is to repay their kindness. And fourthly, developing an affectionate love or an attractive love, pleasant love, where beings begin to appear very attractive to us.
They appear very likable, very beautiful in our eyes. Out of this arises the fifth cause, is great compassion. And then arises the two effects, the two results, the first of which is exceptional resolve. You know, seeing all our mothers in such a pitiful state, with all their dissatisfactions and frustrations and disappointments, determining to really take responsibility. The exceptional resolve is that I alone.
And I think this word alone is probably important to emphasize. It’s quite easy to think, well, we’ll do it together. And then the part of your mind is saying, actually, I’ll wait for them to to get it going, then I’ll just kind of come in behind and I’ll join in later. You know, to to to take the the idea of responsibility is to take initiative to get the job done. Like if I don’t do it, if I don’t help my mother, who can I expect to do it?
And out of that sense of exceptional resolve, that I myself accept lone responsibility, sole responsibility to liberate all living beings from their difficulties, you begin to question, well, fact, can I? Can I even help one person, let alone all? And thereby, there develops the aspiration to realize one’s highest potential as a means to fulfill this commitment to help others. And one aspires to complete awakening in order to benefit others, and one thereby develops a awakening heart. So this is the first meditative tradition, the sevenfold cause and effect instruction.
And the second tradition, the equalizing equalizing and exchange of self for others. As a basis, we develop a sense of equality. We develop an unconditioned positive regard for all living beings. Like myself, everybody wants to be happy. Nobody wants to suffer.
That’s a hardcore fact. I think we can quite immediately admit to, but maybe it’s difficult to feel. And we begin to feel that in a very profound way. And then we go on to exchange ourselves rather, first by this process begins by beginning to see the advantages of other centeredness within our own experience, through our own reasoning, and the disadvantages of self centeredness. Seeing how in fact it brings about all our difficulties, all our problems come about through this exaggerated self concern.
And then the actual exchange of self for others where we begin to empathize and identify with the situation and experiences of others. And then finally, all of these are brought together in a single visualization technique called taking and giving, where we imagine ourselves taking out on ourselves the suffering of others, giving our happiness away as a matter of training. And then coming out of this state, though we have imaginatively sought to benefit others, we in fact have we done anything in reality. Committing oneself to in fact take upon yourself the sufferings of others and give them your happiness. And the only way that you can do this is again through this development of exceptional resolve, which takes sole responsibility to alleviate the difficulties of others and work through that one must awaken, one must realize one’s highest potential so that one has the skills, has the ability, the all the necessary inner strength and wisdom and love and compassion to express this in fact, in reality.
And one develops the awakening heart. This altruistic aspiration to achieve awakening for the sake of all living beings. So these are the two meditative traditions that we’re going to cover in detail next year. And obviously one of these, it’s said that equalizing and exchanging yourself for others is a method whereby we can probably develop a more powerful awakening heart. But also I think it’s much more accessible to Westerners because as was mentioned in the sevenfold cause and effect instruction, it’s necessary to have some conviction in the notion of rebirth, or more than some, quite a strong conviction in the notion of rebirth in order to actually begin to see all living beings as one’s mother.
And so in the exchange of self with others, equalizing exchange of self with others, it’s not necessary to have a conviction in rebirth. And I think it’s the more accessible, and it’s also said to be the most powerful of these two meditative traditions. So we’re going to be working with those two meditative traditions for the development of the awakening heart next year. So that’s the second fundamental of the path, the awakening heart. And finally, the third fundamental of the path, the awakening mind.
The first step in the process of change or growth is to begin to challenge our self perception and experience as a reality. How do I actually perceive? How do I actually experience the world in myself? To the degree that our notions, our beliefs, our ideas, I keep going over this again and again, our premises in which we’re operating. To the degree that they do not approximate what we deem reality to be, that somehow they’re in discord with the actual fact, the actual given situation, our beliefs about the world and the actual fact of the world.
To a degree that there’s disparity, that there’s a discordance, that they don’t accord with one another, to that same degree we’re going to experience frustration, disappointment, dissatisfaction. So the path, the means by which we go from where we are at now to where we want to go to, the means by which we achieve our goal. The path then begins to consist of exploring all of our various erroneous and distorted conceptions, our conceptual models of reality. Once we begin to identify these mistaken conceptions that we have, these wrong models, these wrong ideas, mistaken assumptions that we are working with, once we begin to identify them we begin to transform these models, change them such they conform with the way things are. We have no choice in them.
We have to. And we cannot make the world over into something that we may desire. We have to harmonize ourselves with the way things as they actually are. So we begin to, and we have to become aware that we are persistently holding onto dysfunctional views. Begin to identify those views and transform them, but ultimately to go beyond all views altogether.
As I mentioned, anthropologist Gregory Bateson said that the psychology of misery is the pathology of epistemology. It is all our symptoms of suffering stem from ways of wrong knowing, how unhealthy ways that we view the world and our self. All our difficulties, all our problems arise out of unhealthy ways of knowing. If we as suffering individuals ever expect to get rid of our misery, then we have to be prepared to let go of our mistaken deep seated beliefs about the world in general and in particular about our lives. Our convictions are constantly being invalidated.
But we invariably miss the lesson, or we dismiss the lesson. Our pain, mentioned at the very beginning of our talk, our pain is indicative that we’re holding some kind of, we’re knowing the situation in a wrong way, there’s some kind of imbalance. The pain is trying to give us a lesson, and we either consistently miss the lesson, we overlook the pain, or we dismiss the pain. Don’t, as I mentioned, the wound is enough which we need to listen to. So the central assertion of Buddhism is that we are all living our lives on the basis of mistakes.
What we call epistemological error. Epistemology is simply the way we know, the way we view the world or situation. And because we have not spotted these mistakes or have not clearly seen, and this is important, although we may have spotted their mistakes, we do not see their pathological nature. We do not see they’re unhealthy, they’re dysfunctional, these mistakes are causing us suffering basically. Or even if we have seen that, we’re continually losing sight of what we have learned.
And we keep forgetting. And we continue to create for ourselves a world which is, by its very nature, is dissatisfactory. Our world is based upon varying levels of illusion. So growth then is very much a process of becoming disillusioned. These illusions might be, for example, surround our feelings of insufficiency.
I don’t have what it takes. There’s something missing. Feelings of immortality. I’m not going to die, like that’s sometime in the far distant future. Like that’s sometime in the far distant future.
Feelings of that the world, the quality of my life, my experiences of happiness and suffering are not in my hands. They are brought about by external factors, by external forces. These things about me, the people about me are primarily determining the quality of my life. That self centeredness is an effective basis upon which to find happiness in life. Or ultimately, the nature of ourselves, the nature of I.
So we have misconceptions about all of these and some kind of wrong belief. Now we grow up with models of the world which we put our trust in, but which in countless ways are false. So this is, in talking in this way, is not, I don’t think is a bitter or cynical attitude toward life, because we’re not talking about life here. Basically Buddhism has great faith in life and the goodness of life, the goodness of our self. We’re talking about a particular approach to this experience called life.
That this particular approach which is based upon error, which is based upon distortion, illusion, it doesn’t work. Dysfunctional is of the nature of dissatisfaction, frustration, disappointment. So we have to begin to let go of our illusions. We have to become disillusioned. Disillusioned with this approach and all of its various illusions which it harbors.
As a quotation, certain attitudes or doctrines that have periodically cropped up in history of a human thought. For example, the stoic theory of contentment or adjustment was that peace is to be had if you accept reality. If you are dissatisfied, you are at fault. Reality is not accountable. But in a strange way, you are.
So from the point of view of Buddhism, from a Buddhist point of view, a person suffers because he or she has a limited point of view. Or that they have a limited point of view of the way things are or they ignore other levels of reality than the one that they believe in or ignore other levels of reality that they’re capable of perceiving at present. They can’t completely dismiss anything other than what they believe in at present. This is the extent of the possibilities of what they can conceive is possible. This closed mind is sheer ignorance.
We continue to suffer because we persist in living a life characterized by a stubborn closed mindedness, about learning anything which would upset an insecurity which we get out of our present view, anything which would disturb our present view of reality, which we feel might threaten our ego identity, anything which might threaten our sense of security. We’re going to Buddhism is not telling anyone that they should believe or they should not believe in the self or not self, self not self. But that it is saying that when one looks at the way one suffers, the way one thinks and behaves in the world emotionally, one’s emotional response to life, it is as if one believed that there was a unitary, unchanging, independent self. It is as if you believed in that, when one begins to look at the nature of one’s response emotionally to life, one’s suffering. And yet upon closer analysis, no such type of self can ever be found.
Our suffering is indicative of misconception, it is a statement. And it’s saying it is indicative of particular type of belief, a belief in a type of self which is unchanging and independently existent. Whether you believe that you harbor such a misconception or not is not the point. You have to begin to question from whence does my suffering arise. When we begin to understand the situation that we’re involved in, that our suffering all arises in the this misconception, then we have to look, does in fact such a type of self exist?
When we analyze, we never find such a type of self. So Buddhism would go on to say that a life based upon a model, human beings are model builders. We’re going to go into this to some degree when we discuss the awakening mind, that we understand the world through our models, representation through symbol. A life and we base our life on this model, the way that we, our perceptions are belief laden, that our perceptions are seen through the filter of our beliefs, of our ideas about the world. They’re seen, they’re experienced through the models that we make in order to understand the world.
Buddhism would go on, would say that life based upon a model of itself, of such a type of self, which is unchanging and independent, is experienced as disappointment, frustration and dissatisfaction. And we have such a model within our mind and we’re basing our life the way with which we operate in the world based upon this particular model which is erroneous, which doesn’t correspond to any reality. And that such a type of life, based upon such type of model is inherently dissatisfactory on the one hand. And a model which is based upon the absence of such a type of self is experienced as peace. That type of life.
It’s experiences clarity, spontaneity, an absence of conflict both internally and externally. So this is, you know, talking about the this is quite an extensive subject. We’re going to go into this in great detail next year. But to you know, if you, you know, you may, and just to present some ideas, you may argue that you do not think of the self, the I, as being unchanging or independently existing, but this is to miss the point. The I, the self, as such is not the problem.
The I, the self, exists. I’m talking to you, you are listening to me. This self, the empirical self, conventionally existent self is not the problem. It is the misconceived self which is the problem, which is the root of all our suffering. We can analyze the self into its constituent elements.
And Buddhism has many ways in which we can proceed in this analysis. We can analyze the self into its constituents of mind and body, into the five aggregates, into the eighteen constituents, into the twelve sources. There’s all these possibilities. The is not whether the I or the self is a composite of a changing train of mental and physical phenomena. Any type of reasonable analysis can help us to come to that conclusion, that the I is a constituent of many mental and physical complex factors coming together as a composite, as an aggregate.
We can understand that quite rationally, quite easily. Any rational analysis will show that this is the case. The question is, why is it then that we behave emotionally as if we were a singular, unchanging, independent self? That is to say a self which does not depend upon the mind body. Does not depend upon these complex mental and physical factors.
That there seems to be, we have a sense that the I is just independent of mind and body, of all of these mental and physical factors. So when we talk about the self which is problematic self, we’re not talking about the validly existent I, the I which attends teachings in Buddha House, the I which eats, which sleeps, which walks down the street. We’re talking about a misconceived I on the basis with which we generate various afflictive emotions of seeking to enhance or to protect. We develop hatred and aversion, in dependence upon which we regenerate inappropriate action, which aren’t in accord with the way things are. And as I said, to the degree that our notions, our beliefs, our conceptions are in discord with the way things are, There’s that disparity to that same degree, to that proportionately, we’re going to experience dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration.
There’s an inappropriateness about the way we think, about the way we behave. There’s a discord, an imbalance, a disharmony. And this is experienced as suffering. You know, we have to, you know, there’s nothing more important that we can do than to begin to look at the actual nature of ourselves as a basis for finally going beyond all our problems, all our misery. If you don’t believe that you harbor such misconception within your own mind, then you have to think carefully about pain and suffering.
Ask yourself who or what is it that is suffering? Who is afraid of what’s going to happen next? Who is worried about the future? Who feels bad about the past? To who does death seem like such a great threat?
And you’re beginning to ask these questions to yourself. And your answers will probably be full of contradictions, full of inconsistencies and paradoxes. So this is, that’s normal. That’s very good. There’s nothing within the whole string of mental and physical event, phenomena that constitute our experience of body and mind that has the quality of being a unitary, unchanging, independent self.
It is all change, it is all impermanent, it is all dependent arising. None of it can be called self. And it is our persistent effort to treat it as if it were that makes the body and mind a constant stream of suffering. So we’ll continue next week and just by way of introduction talking about the nature of the self and the awakening mind in terms of talking about emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality.