Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 46-minute talk with a working definition of love — “the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s well-being” — and asks why, wanting to love, we so rarely choose it. Using Je Tsongkhapa’s Three Fundamentals of the Path as its frame, the commentary covers the three higher trainings (ethics, meditative concentration, wisdom) as successive layers of inner integration. Ethics reduces conflict between belief and behavior — illustrated by a vivid aside on how stuttering may be rooted in lying. A personal story about realizing his mother had her own inner life grounds the shift from egocentrism to social awareness. The session also includes a guided nine-round death meditation focused on the uncertainty of death’s timing, followed by a structured compassion and love practice. Part of an ongoing series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 H and M of B 1992 09 02.mp3
UUID: c000bb85-fb1e-4e7f-825f-cf5917d368ed
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-09-02
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.4 minutes
Words: ~5,274
We begin by reorientating ourselves, redirecting our motivation, getting in touch with a part of ourselves which is quite easy to overlook in the practical nature of what we have to deal with in our everyday life. Perhaps some of our deeply held values, our aspirations, our dreams, of what some deeply held place within us, what we feel we are able to do, what we would like to do and what we have been determined to do, to make of our lives, this experience of life. It is said that the question of raising the level of our motivation to develop love. And I think we’re going to be looking at three fundamentals of the path, the determination to be free, the awakening heart and the awakening mind. When we look at the second of these three, the awakening heart, we’re going to be looking at two different systems of cultivating an awakening heart, essentially love and compassion.
And this quality of love. I think these meditations act as a condition, a conducive condition to help us to decide to love. It is said that in psychotherapy, that psychotherapy is not about happiness, it’s about power and becoming competent in whatever we choose to do. What could be more empowering than to choose to love in spite of a habitual egocentric demanding, in spite of our feelings perhaps of unworthiness with respect to ourselves, indeed perhaps with respect to others, in spite of all of that, to make this choice to love. Last week we were discussing, what is this?
All these various types of love. What do we mean by love? I think I’ve mentioned previously, but I’ll mention again perhaps what I mean by love in this context, is the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s well-being. The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s well-being. You know, it’s it’s a matter of will, a matter of of choice.
We all want to be loving people, but we aren’t to a great extent and perhaps because we don’t choose to. And why is it that we don’t choose to be loving? Why is it that we don’t even love ourselves? And perhaps we need to Somewhere along the line perhaps we’ve learned that we aren’t worthy of love or that we have to make ourselves worthy. In other words, there’s always this struggle to become lovable.
And the fact that And I think it’s very difficult to feel at some deep level that it’s not something that we need to prove, we don’t need to make ourselves lovable, but by a sheer fact of our own existence, that we are worthy of our own love. Beginning to love ourselves, beginning to choose to extend oneself in order to nurture oneself. In terms of redirecting ourselves consistently, this realigning of our allegiance from a life based upon hopes and fears. All the hopes of pleasure and the fear of pain, the hopes of gain, the fear of loss, the hopes of praise, the fear of notoriety, the hopes of fame, and the fear of infamy. This is what constitutes our life.
Our life to a lesser or greater extent is run on the basis of under the influence of fear and hope, setting our priorities in terms of what enhances our ego as opposed to what helps us to grow. To grow means in this context of this definition of love means to extend oneself, to go beyond our habitual patterns, this prism that we’ve built for ourselves out of our hopes and fears. This consistent choice of a path with heart, consistent choice of loving ourselves and expressing this and determining to, in some small way, consistently choose to interrupt the patterns which are based upon fear, which are based upon this ego, which are based upon irrational hope. And to make the consistent effort in some small way to create the space and the time to begin to create the type of life that you feel that you want to live, the type of person that you want to be, and then somewhere down the line, as if a miracle may happen and you might become that person. I know in family therapy, quite often they will ask the client, what would you like to be five years from now, ten years from now?
And for many it’s quite a revolutionary question. The question in itself provokes some kind of therapeutic change because many people they don’t even consider it. Pleasure pain orientation is such that they never are able to look at any perspective, gain any perspective on their life and see what over and above the immediate pleasure pain, what kind of life, what kind of person would they like to be five years from now, ten years from now. And in order to become that person to some degree, have to rise above the immediate pain pleasure principle. We may have to voluntarily accept some kind of legitimate suffering, legitimate difficulties.
We may have to work through some of our fears. We may have to forego some of our hope in order to grow, in order to create the type of life which we feel is more authentic, which is more a reflection of some deeper values that’s somewhere along the line that we have created for ourselves, that we feel are worthwhile. I think we have to create some kind of wholeness about it. And this requires some kind of authentic response from a deeper part of ourselves. In the sense that will be talking about what I call the three higher trainings.
Higher training in ethics, higher training in meditative concentration, higher training in wisdom. And as I’ve mentioned, all Buddhism is tending toward an integration, movement toward wholeness, a movement toward wholeness, word whole, holy and whole, have the same root. And through the practice of ethics, we can begin to heal the split between our ways of thinking and our ways of behaving through ethics. And this is the value of ethics. And on the basis of that integration, that we begin to think and act in harmony with one another, moving toward integration, moving toward wholeness, moving toward harmony.
On the basis of that, then we begin to integrate all the various elements within our own psyche. Begin to focus the energies upon a single object, to integrate them around a single theme, creating more harmony, more integration. And on the basis of that, moving toward wisdom in which we begin to accord our ways of being with the reality, the laws of reality, the way things are, the way we believe and therefore the way we act in the world is in accordance with the reality, the laws of reality of the world. And then there’s a harmony, there’s a correspondence, different kind of integration. All of Buddhism is moving toward a sense of wholeness so that we can give up this schizophrenic split personality where we’re always in a way struggling.
One of the great masters of the students of Milarepa by the name of Gampopa, who wrote a text called Jewel Ornament of Liberation. He said that the essence of cyclic existence is reoccurring neurotic compulsive patterns which we’re caught up in is conflict. That it seems as if our lives are marked with conflict. There’s always at least two possible alternatives and we continue struggling between these two possibilities, and it’s a never ending struggle. So Buddhism is a way of solving this basic conflict of the mind, this basic struggle, this basic duality which we find ourselves caught up in.
And it’s a beginning in a gradual process, in a very mundane process in terms of our practical behavior. Beginning to do the practice of ethics, which is not in the sense of trying to please anyone as if there’s some kind of absolute formula which is handed down in golden letters, which we are to follow for some abstract reason which we are quite unsure of. But it’s simply to create this harmony, this movement toward integration so that our life becomes authentic. There’s another word I’m trying to think of. We have a so that it accords with our basic sanity so that there’s some peace.
You know, I think perhaps someone who’s ethical, it may be the case in the long in the short term that you want that you may have to you know, if you don’t cheat on your income tax, you don’t cheat here and there, you don’t try to sell a useless product at a moderate price. It may cost you in the immediate term. In that perhaps you aren’t going to have you aren’t going to make that great of a profit, you aren’t going to have that much more money than others, you aren’t going to have that much more material affluence. But the one thing you will have is a sense of harmony, a sense of a lessening of conflict, a lessening of this struggle. This is something that is perhaps quite overlooked, practical usefulness of ethics.
You know, they say, for example, that a great deal of stuttering may have its basis in lying. That there may be as if some factor of conscience which when one knows one is lying, creates a conflict. And then what one is saying, the way one is behaving, and what one believes knows is correct, there’s a conflict. And I think that this is the quality which permeates most of our lives, this sense of conflict. And we can begin to organize our lives and begin to create some kind of wholeness and harmony and integration in life on the basis of these various levels.
Beginning with integration through ethics, beginning to accord our deep seated held beliefs, beginning to respond to our conscience if you will, some kind of authentic aspect, some kind of deeper values in the way we behave in our life. I think we all want to be rather spontaneous people. We rather not have this what super ego or this censor, this censor always looking over our shoulder. And I think, you know, I think we can begin to approach that by acting, making an ethical manner a natural part of our life. In the sense of according our deeper sense of our deeper values with the way we act in the world.
Then moving from there and beginning to integrate all the various volitional and all the various factors within our psyche around that central theme, focusing our mind by creating some kind of integration. Then through wisdom, extending that. And through love, according our own you know, we’re always going to be in conflict with others. And that’s where we begin to develop a sense of social awareness. Unless it are very unless we move from self centeredness to other centeredness.
I don’t think it has to be a necessary heroic path. It’s a matter of beginning to feel deeply that finding an appropriate way of living in the world in the context of that there are other people aside from yourself. It took me a long time to realize that for example, my mother wanted to be happy that she that she wasn’t there to serve only my needs. I was the center of the world. That may sound, maybe I was a slow learner, that could be the case.
But it was a great insight that my mother had a life apart from me. You know she had her dreams, her desires, her longings, and I wasn’t the center of the life. And but that’s the way I felt like she was there. I could take she should be there. I could open the closet door and she’d be there waiting for my needs to be met, and I’d bring her out and she would do it and I’d put her back.
As if she didn’t have a world of her own, a life of her own. I think somehow this carries over for me to a lesser or greater degree into my relationships with others over the course of my life. But somehow everyone about this is not there our particular needs, facilitate particular wants, meet our demands. They may be able to fulfill our needs. They may wish to help us find our wants.
They have from their own side, they have their own needs and wants. And somehow if we can create a sense of harmony between ourselves and others such that our wants are our overall ones, our common ones, the ones of the planet can be met together interpersonally, our interpersonal ones, then we’re not going to have this tremendous conflict that it seems like we’re always having both on a personal level and between, as is obvious, between ethnic groups, in between nations. A sense of social awareness that we are social beings, that somehow mental health is very much involved in going beyond our own immediate egocentric demanding and finding appropriate way of living with others such that their needs and our needs are of central focus. And then within that context, we each have our idiosyncrasies, our own particular unique needs, we can fulfill as long as it doesn’t violate the right of others to fulfill their needs. So I think creating some kind of harmony.
Think perhaps I’ve been saying for the last few weeks that much of what we’re doing here I think is much more subtle than perhaps our usual mechanistic way of approaching problem. Seeing our problems in a sense of a context rather than a linear aspect where because of A, I have problem B. But it’s the whole, our entire world view, all our various values and beliefs and assumptions, all our various premises that we’re operating on, all in some way, in some part contributing to what we may conceive as a problem. Contributing to the ongoing feelings of conflict of alienation of this lack, this need for union, loss of spontaneity. Now all of the very subtle and and grosser problems that we try to solve every day of our life.
Somehow, I think if we cultivate our mind, The Buddha had a particular worldview. It is not a worldview amongst other possible worldviews. Each of us in this room has a particular worldview. All our various interlocking network of beliefs and ideas and assumptions about the world and how to relate to it and about ourselves. And Buddhists have a particular worldview which is experienced as peace.
That’s the experiential quality of it. But how it’s lived is very unique to you know, are wrathful Buddhists, are happy jolly Buddhists. One Buddha is not going to fulfill all your needs. You know, said that a wooden Buddha cannot pass through fire, a stone Buddha cannot float across the water. So in different situations we have to be different Buddhas to fulfill the different in the context of various situations.
But still there’s an overall world view, a way of relating to others, to the world, to ourselves. And this worldview is experienced as peace. And think as we grow, as we make this consistent choice of extending ourselves and doing some kind of work, making a little bit of effort, creating the time and space for your development to go beyond your fears, making these choices, then I think one simply experiences less problems. The world is not quite as problematic. It’s not to say that you’re not going to have difficulties, but I think even when you have this difficulty, you won’t be thrown off balance or if you are, then it won’t be for as long.
So I think perhaps like one’s clothes, walking out in the mist. Imperceptibly, one’s clothes become saturated, become damp, wet. One doesn’t notice the moment, from one moment to the next, when they have become wet, when you’ve become soaked. But in fact, eventually they do. And it seems as imperceptibly, your life becomes permeated with less difficulty, less problematic situations.
There’s a degree of harmony, a degree of integration occurs. So looking at each moment, just like in the case of one’s clothing becoming permeated with the dampness of the dew or the mist, one can never notice from one moment to the next. One can’t make the distinguishment only over time, perhaps a long distance of time is necessary to be able to make that distinguishment where we can see change, where there’s some kind of difference. But I think the overall quality of one life changes, the context in which one is viewing, all of these values, all of these beliefs that one is bringing that determine whether this is going to be a problem and how we’re going to deal with it gradually change until one simply experiences peace. One’s life becomes permeated with peace.
So I guess I just want to encourage you to make this process an important component of your life, You know whatever form it may take to take a legitimate path, you know one that stands up to your reasoning, your experience, your intuition that feels right, that feels valid, that can withstand the light of your wisdom. And to within the context of all the other tools and methods that you have for finding all the various happinesses that you want that you want that you’re willing to work for within that context of all these varieties of happinesses and the means to achieve this varieties of happiness. To make this this to make the some kind of method of growth an important part of your life so that the overall context is going to be changing. And aside from the immediate content, there’s going to be an overall enhancement of one’s being. So the the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha In this way of thinking, that is to say, the inner focus of our life becomes growth.
And that is achieved by means of the Dharma, then whatever we want to how we want to look at it, the truth, that which is able to raise the level of our consciousness, which is able to help us to find integration, wholeness, to help us to bring about the cessation of conflict and suffering. And this is done in the social context of a spiritual community. The individuals who have support one another, who inspire one another, guide one another, and whatever it takes to facilitate another’s growth, to make that choice, to choose, choosing to love oneself and others, and raising the level of motivation such that we’re doing it not just for ourselves, but also for the sake of others. Consistently trying to emphasize one’s social awareness, to empower oneself. The power won’t come about by accident as it were to create the person of power.
Power is where the choices are being made. Was talking about psychotherapy and power. Where choices, where the decisions are made, that is where power is. And we give our power away almost every day of our life. We let others make decisions for us, what type of life, what we’re going to do, how we’re going to live.
So it’s only by by you know people want to re empower themselves, then they must make they must make the determination to make their own decisions in the light of their own understanding. And this decision to grow and the decision to help others to grow is the way that we love ourselves and that we can love others in a way that we empower ourselves such that we become able to respond. By taking responsibility for oneself, we find the means, the resources to be able to respond. And this is the way we grow. To choose to take responsibility, we become able to respond and we go beyond our present limit.
You know what we’ve created for ourselves, the boundaries that we’ve determined for ourselves in one way or another and to do the same toward others to make this decision. Know to, what more could, what a greater decision? You know, for example, when Christ said, you know, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who maltreat you. You know, I think I don’t think he was a romantic nor a misguided. I think he was offering a very powerful means of becoming sane, a powerful means of regaining power.
Now in the face of our, greater decision making process could take like, what more empowering could there be, the means of empowering, than for you to act for the well-being of another person in the case of an enemy. Love those who hate you. What could be more powerful as a means of interrupting the neurotic compulsive patterns which constitute our life, our egocentric demanding? Could be a much, what it could be a great more creative force in our life than to love your enemy. To choose to extend oneself, to nourish them in the face of what appears to be to you as someone who’s out there harm you.
To bless those who curse you and to pray for those who maltreat you. This is a radical and revolutionary means to work towards mental health. Anyway, I think it’s good to talk about. Let me keep reminding myself. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the highest assembly.
From the virtuous merits that I collect by practicing giving and the 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, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. In the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the 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, the Dharma, 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.
We begin with our meditation. Let me meditate, continue the meditation on death. It’s called a nine-round death meditation and it has three roots. First is that death is definite, everyone’s going to die. That’s the first root.
And then the second root is that the time of death is uncertain and that’s what we’re going to be meditating on this evening. The time of death is uncertain and trying to actually gain a feeling for that. It’s said that the first one is not so difficult to break through our sense of immortality that we harbor at some level. But the second one is quite difficult. We have a sense that, you know, that, okay, I’m going to die, not anytime soon.
Sometime in the far and distant future, when I’m old and gray. I can’t do anything anyway, it doesn’t matter. But trying to overcome that that misconception that in fact the time of it is uncertain. So if you take a comfortable but firm posture, Begin with the cultivation of loving compassion. Begin with someone that you like, but someone who’s not in your immediate circle of intimate friends or relative.
Just someone that you have an acquaintanceship with, but and that you like but are not very close to him. Imagine that person in front of you. And begin by cultivating a sense of compassion. First with a simple friendly thought. It’d be wonderful if you didn’t have any difficulty.
I would like that very much if you didn’t have any problems. You’re free from dissatisfaction. And then strengthen that. May you be free from all your problems. I wish very much that you didn’t have any difficulties.
Then straighten that. I’m going to work with you. I’m going to commit myself to helping you to free yourself from your difficulties, your problems. I’m going to do that for you. And we’ll cultivate love.
First with a friendly gentle thought, it’d be wonderful if you were happy. I would like that very much if you were happy. Then strengthen that. May you be happy. I wish very much that you have happiness in all the various causes of happiness.
I’m going to commit myself to working with you to help you to find happiness. I’m going to take responsibility. And the way I’m going to do that, the way I’m going to fulfill that commitment at this present moment is through my meditation and listening and reflecting. This is the way I’m going to work with you, for you at this present moment, developing my own skills so that I can really fulfill my commitment to you. And then bring your mind to the breath.
The gentle, even, in that flow of the breath. Can you use the techniques of counting and noting? So we’re looking at a very short text, extremely short text. It’s only fourteen verses long by Je Tsongkhapa.
Je Tsongkhapa was a fourteenth century Tibetan yogi scholar who was the foundation of a particular sect of Tibetan Buddhism called the Gelug tradition. Gelug means virtuous, Lu means tradition. Gay is a virtuous tradition. This picture this is a in this picture that’s bordered with the maroon, the very central figure is you can recognize him up there, is Je Tsongkhapa. He wrote I think about nineteen volumes of work on commentaries and text, original text that he wrote. He’s one of the most important of the Tibetan masters. He wrote this particular text as a as a letter to one of his students outlining the means of practice, the fundamentals of practice. That’s how it derived its name, the three fundamentals of the path and the developing determination to be free, the awakening heart and the awakening mind.
We’re working, you know, I’m using this as a basis for presenting what I see as a very practical aspect of Buddhism, you know, the way that we can actually change ourselves. And Buddhism has a little bit for everybody, According to whatever your dispositions or capacities, interests, inclination, there’s all the way from very abstract philosophies to very practical mundane precepts that you can follow in your everyday life. There’s like a whole gamut of possibilities in order to facilitate some kind of change. So this path of working from where we’re at now to where we want to arrive, to the solution to our problems at a very fundamental level involves journeying a path. And I’ve talked about what I mean by path, in the word for in the Pali language, the type of language which is the Buddhist scriptural language which is used in the southern countries of, for example, Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand.
Their Buddhist texts are generally written in the Pali language. And the word for path in Pali is patipada. patipada. patipada means you’re putting one foot in front of the next. And essentially what this would be analogous to would be love and wisdom.
Love and wisdom, you know developing in wisdom, developing in love, developing in wisdom. Now this is a completely integrated approach. We we’re trying to develop, wise heart and loving mind so it can become whole. I tried to emphasize that integrating in this process of integration, integrating our emotional intellectual life into one becomes one. There’s no conflict.
So we went through in this process developed the awakening heart, is essentially a development of love and compassion, and the awakening mind, is essentially the development of wisdom. But we’re not going to be able to develop this. We’re not going to make that effort. We’re not going to be able to change unless we develop some determination, determination to change, to grow. And that’s what we’re working at present.
You know, think we have to acknowledge the fact that we have some emotional investment in our particular worldview, our particular belief systems, you know, that we find some kind of security in our particular know, who we conceive of ourselves to be. If I wasn’t this way, if I had different attitudes, if I had different beliefs, if I was a happier person, I just wouldn’t be me. And that’s kind of scary to be somebody else. We have a real emotional investment in the status quo. And as I’ve mentioned before, it may not be much, but at least it’s home.
And it’s predictable. It may be even dissatisfactory, but at least I know what’s going to happen next year, what I’m going to be like tomorrow. There’s no surprises. So I think know someone asked me, how do you know when you’re ready for death? And I said, you’re when you’re ready to live.
When you’re ready to live. And what is that? I think, you know, that’s kind of a catchy clever thing you say perhaps. And I was trying to say, well what does that mean? And it may mean that one is open to something new at every moment, a new possibilities at every moment.
That’s something a new discovery, a a new possibility. And we won’t unless, know, we’re going to we’re going to hold on to that status quo. Know, You don’t even get up out of a chair there’s something there’s a sense that there’s something better or there’s a sense of dissatisfaction with your position. You know, let alone go through all the legitimate suffering, through all of the to work through your fears and to go beyond your hope to nurture one’s well-being. But the moment you become aware that your position in that chair is is uncomfortable, then spontaneously you shift your position.
And likewise, at at a very deep level when we become aware of the dysfunctional nature of many of our beliefs, our attitude, our premises in which our life is operating, then nothing more needs to be done. That insight is changed. So we have to this becomes the determination to be free is is seeing that the way we’re operating is not in our best interest. Beginning to see at a very deep level the dissatisfactory quality which permeates our lives, that it’s not simply enough to cope. That we have, you know, we’ve been working through these levels of awareness that we’re trying to develop in the sense that overcoming our sense of self insufficiency that I can’t do, you know, Feeling of there’s something no more needs to be added.
I’m waiting till somebody tells me I can till everything’s just right. You know beginning to understand isn’t this possibilities, this chance isn’t going to last forever. And what type of situation are we creating for ourselves in the future. In other words, we’re looking at we’ve looked at Buddha nature, we’ve looked at that we have the chance to grow, all the conditions external, internal, necessary. This chance isn’t going to last forever, we’re going to die.
And looking at the question of karma, what type of life are we creating for ourselves? And in the context of that, karma, what type of life are we creating for ourselves? We’re going to be looking at what I call the ego empire. This is this is high-tech Tibetan visual aid stuff.