Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using psychological language as fluently as doctrine, Ven Jampa Gendun examines what it takes to get unstuck in this 46-minute talk. He opens by pushing listeners beyond hope-and-fear-based living, noting that “it’s quite easy to love humanity but hate people” — the difficult colleague in front of you is where practice actually happens. He then traces how the mind perpetuates distress through erroneous premises — self-grasping, learned worthlessness, anger as a coping mechanism — and argues that insight, information which contradicts those premises, is what shifts the mind to a higher order. Buddha nature is introduced as the working basis for transformation, validated from one’s own moments of clarity and compassion rather than taken on faith. The talk closes with the Lamrim teaching on eight freedoms and ten conditions, sealed by the image of a blind sea turtle surfacing once a century to thread its neck through a golden ring on a vast ocean.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 H and M of B 1992 06 24.mp3
UUID: 3d6a6e4c-abfc-4818-8fde-2a900f4d99f0
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-06-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.4 minutes
Words: ~5,233
Okay. Okay. Okay. In the beginning we orientate ourselves and to redirect ourselves, to get in touch with some of our central guiding principles of our life. Can you hear me okay, if I?
Remind ourselves what is uniquely important to each of us. What we feel is extremely worthwhile. Think we have various levels of goals, immediate, medium range, long term goals. We have various levels of aspiration, various desires, both reasonable and neurotic. So we’re always kind of fluctuating amongst all of these levels of goals, these levels of desires, these types of desires.
And maybe it’s necessary to consciously make the effort to get back in touch with some of our deeper feelings about what it means to feel good about oneself, to respect oneself in a way that we care about ourselves. You know, what What makes us feel good about us and our lives in spite of what the external situations might be? Going beyond the pleasure pain principle that we’ve talked about in terms of our hopes and fears, hopes of pleasure and fears of pain, hopes of gain, hopes of success, fears of loss, fears of failure. And if we’re always fearing failure, we’re never going to take a chance. Our hopes the same are fears of notoriety, our hopes of praise, and our fears of ridicule.
If we’re afraid of ridicule, we’re never going to take a chance. To take a chance means to perhaps do something, the result of which you cannot be assured of. To take a chance means to step outside some of the security of your patterned modes of behavior and try something new, to explore other possibilities or ways of being, acting, speaking, relating. And there’s certain risk of humiliation, risk of ridicule, the risk of loss, the risk of blame, the risk of pain. Or they say, no risk, no gain.
Somehow we have to remind ourselves to have to be and get back in touch with the necessity, the necessity that it will go beyond our hopes and fears if we’re going to grow. And this is extremely important to us. You know some part of our life, some part of our energy and space and time. Consciously directed. For many of us, think we need a sitting practice, a meditation practice.
But that’s not always what it means to practice by any means. That might be an unusual way to force the practice, it might be something altogether atypical. We have to somehow make our everyday experiences our practice, and this is the way we can become skillful. There’s no doubt that meditation is quite useful. It has its proper place.
It’s like a training ground that we can prepare ourselves to deal with our everyday experiences in a more appropriate and skillful manner. But it’s actually dealing with the situations which probably is where most growth takes place. You know, it’s quite easy to love humanity but hate people. I humanity because this guy can’t stand. Working with this guy is your practice.
To talk about all sentient beings, gaining Buddhism for the sake of all sentient beings is probably at one level meaningful. It’s not meaning, it’s good to say these words, think it’s useful to think those thoughts. But it may be of more value, rather than leaving it there to actually work with one difficult person in the development of tolerance, in the development of understanding and compassion. It may be more realistic, it might be more relevant, it might be a really more pragmatic approach to growth. And setting our hopes in terms of our priorities and ego, what is going to enhance our ego, what is going to help us to feel safe and secure, concrete.
We have to remind us because we take the easy way out, we take the comfortable way out. So it takes some encouragement. We have to sort of encourage ourselves. I think this is correct and this is why Buddhism I think places such great emphasis on the awareness of dissatisfaction. Now, I talked about the three levels of faith.
Clear faith, longing faith, longing faith, as mentioned.. And when you listen, you begin to look at your life and the way you relate, and then begin to look at the nature of your problem, your dissatisfaction, and it becomes clear what some of your problems are. And it becomes clear to you. And it becomes clear there results as longing to go beyond those problems. So with this, I think, begin to see the necessity to confront the difficulties in a very realistic fashion.
That even though it’s painful, you the moment you up against any pain, if you’re habitually simply turning away, then there’s no growth. And it’s like I mentioned quite often. But as I think Carl Jung said, the basis of neurosis is the unwillingness to accept legitimate suffering. The things in life that are difficult, that can offer us the greatest lesson. And if we’re consistently simply recoiling away at the first moment of pain, the first moment of difficulty, And the best we can hope for is to keep continually circling within our dissatisfaction.
Okay, Where is the wire? Can you hear me now? So can you hear me in the back? Is better? Is it bearable?
I guess other people, they they make you aware of the problem that’s always been there. And then you wanna do something about By by trying to avoid our problems, by leading our life in terms of pleasure pain principles, then we’re going to ultimately compound our problems. We’re going to add to our already what is already difficult. I think we I think we know this. This isn’t a great lesson, but I know for myself.
I actually remind myself quite often. There’s some difficulty in a relationship. And then you rather I don’t I don’t find bringing up no one finds you probably very comfortable to bring bring up difficult issues within the relationship. But in the end, if you don’t, you’re only going to compound the problem, both yourself and the other person. And it’s going to affect your relationship.
It’s going to affect the way you outlook on life and the way you deal with other people. Perhaps only surreptitiously and hidden. And I think that when people get together for a meeting, if there’s hidden agendas, hidden issues, if there’s hard feelings, then there’s no possibility for reasonable dialogue. There’s no possibility to deal with the problems that issue is necessary in a manner which is going to be in a workable manner to bring about negotiation, bring about resolution. The mind will find ways to take issue.
The mind will find ways to use that as a battleground for the for the hidden issues, which are which we’re we’re trying to we’re trying to to hide in some way. It’s like the previously the Soviet Union and America fighting out by means of two little countries fighting. So in the same way with ourselves and the various issues that we have to deal with in our personal relationship. And being willing to confront the pain, the discomfort of dealing with this situation, then it’s clear that it’s over and finished. You did your best.
And I think this is a great inspiration of learning. And you see that, you know, it’s difficult at work. And there’s somebody in the feeling that feel good about this thing. And it serves as an inspiration to do the same again in the future and again and again. So, you know, this process of, you know, more or less realign the process of when we’re going going for refuge or redirecting ourselves or reorienting ourselves, whatever you want to call This is a realignment of our allegiance from a life lived on the basis of hopes and fears to one which is based on growth.
You know, whatever more than anything else, I want to grow. It’s not that we don’t want happiness. We’re not looking for suffering. That’s for sure. We’re trying to be happy.
But in the course of that, it might be necessary to work through some of the suffering to accept some difficult time to to to deal with painful issues. To cease hoping that that things things get better without creating the causes for them to get better. to better the quality of the situation. So realigning of our allegiance from a life based upon hopes and fears, but one based upon the essential necessity to grow, and hopefully raising the level of our motivation. That can come small way.
And even if it’s only for one other person, if I can the more together I am, the more selfless we are, the more caring, the more patient, and the more I can help that person to work with their partner, to help them to deal with their issues that goes beyond their hopes and fears. You know, we are we are islands of temporary stability in a sea of constant change. And these these islands are both autonomous and interconnected patterns of life. And the ecology of these patterns of life is both recursive and self correcting. And by that mean by that I mean, that the that the waves we make are always returning or even now breaking against our shore.
To know this is inseparable in the way we behave, in the way that we live our life. Yet our sense of separateness is merely an optical delusion. And to help another is to help ourself. To help oneself is to help others. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and highest assembly.
From virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all things and being. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merits that I collect by practicing giving and other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the holy assembly. And the virtuous merits that I collect by practicing giving any other perfection, Beginning with meditation.
If you take a firm comfortable posture. This would be the short loving loving compassion meditation in mindfulness of breathing. And then working with some of our qualities that I found in others. We’re talking about within the three fundamentals of the power development of three fundamentals of the path, determination to awaken, to grow, awakening our heart and awakening our mind. This initial determination to awaken, we’re not going to be able to to awaken our hearts, to open our hearts of it, to awaken our mind, open our minds to the nature of reality that we have an investment as we’re in the status quo.
As I was just talking about in setting our motivation, We’re going to keep simply we’re going to be stuck, remain stuck, perpetually stuck. We have to get unstuck in developing determination to be free, to awaken. It’s the way we go about getting unstuck in the direction of our growth is in terms of outward expanding our horizons to begin to include others within our sense of well-being. And inwardly in-depth, we begin to understand ourselves, ultimately the nature of our own mind, the nature reality. But first we have to get unstuck.
We have to inspire ourselves. Have to, you know, we Generally, have a a system, we’re trying to move the system to a higher order of self correction. The mind is in distress, we have some basic anxiety, and the mind is continually involved in removing this distress. There’s always distress. Even at the test of our moment, there’s a level of distress.
And so the mind is using all its capacity, all its present understanding, its various premises, its the basis of working with the world in order to remove the distress of the mind. It uses such efforts as anger, attachment. Anger is the way that the mind has learned to deal with particular types of problems, to deal with its various levels of distress. But okay, that’s what it’s learned up to now. But it’s not a very satisfactory method of really dealing with that problem on a deep level.
It doesn’t work. So we have to consciously evolve more skillful methods, more appropriate methods. On the basis of what we know we’re doing our best, we’re doing our best. But what we know many of the premises that we’re operating on are erroneous. And anything which is based upon erroneous premises is inappropriate.
We’re going to have to continually be cleaning the messes up that we make. Our actions don’t fit with the reality of the situation. So we have to begin to contradict the logic of our erroneous premises. Have some internal logic based upon erroneous premises, crooked ideas, wrong assumptions. Based upon those we have a logic and for many people anger is logical outcome.
But it’s only logical in terms of erroneous premise that we don’t see that there’s some error. It’s not a skillful way of relating the situation in terms of our own happiness. That self centeredness and self grasping, the two basic most fundamental erroneous premises that we’re operating on simply perpetuate this neurotic compulsive pattern, which are dissatisfactory by their very nature. So we’re trying to introduce information that makes a difference, which brings insight. Insight is the way that we can move the mind to a higher order of self correction.
The way that the mind can begin to deal with its basic distress by beginning to resolve this erroneous premises that we’re operating on. So we try to make information, we have to bring information to situations which makes a difference. It is the difference that making this difference makes, which moves the mind. It’s not simply information, it’s information which contradicts our erroneous premises, our wrong belief. So this is the way that we can begin to grow, to awaken the mind.
If we have somewhere a basic assumption that I don’t have quite what it takes, that there’s something inherently wrong with me, that we’ve picked that up somewhere along the line, we’ve learned that somewhere, somehow. And it’s maybe and most likely an unconscious premise. Then the logic which evolves out of that, that mistaken premise is I can never be much of anything no matter what I try. Why bother? That makes sense.
It makes sense within that, it’s consistent. Why bother if there’s something inherently wrong with me? And so we remain stuck. We have many levels of erroneous premises and within, based upon those, we have, we tell ourselves an entire myth and we perpetuate our problem. And our life becomes the story that we tell ourselves without ourselves.
Isn’t it a very high quality story at best? It’s a comic tragedy at best. So the way that we can begin to get unstuck, to develop the determination to be free, is beginning to contradict many of these erroneous premises. If we tell ourselves, we begin to see, we try to supply information which makes a difference, which contradicts the idea of our worthlessness, that sometimes I’m lacking, I don’t quite have what it takes by means of I have some basic goodness, there’s something about myself. We try to focus, we perpetuate these myths, these learning premises by focusing upon within our experience, any information, any data which confirm.
We discount, we ignore anything which would serve to contradict. We create, we develop relationships which confirm. We set up situations which confirm. So our expectations become fulfilled and our life becomes a self defeating, self fulfilling prophecy. So we have to begin to work against that by insight.
Insight is information which makes a difference. The basis of our growth is that we have some basic goodness, we have some brilliant wisdom that we have. We’re beginning to focus upon that within our own actual experience. It’s not enough to hear it. One has to actually focus upon, one has to validate within one’s own experience.
One sees, then one knows. And we call this Buddha nature. Buddha nature is the working basis of transformation. We have intrinsic wakefulness, a natural purity of our mind, our basic sanity. So this is the basis and the main cause for transformation, that we have the stuff of what it takes.
And we can validate this from our own experience, that we all act with great intelligence, with good clarity from time to time, moments of great wisdom, just like a Buddha wisdom. Probably a Buddha couldn’t think any clearer at this moment. We all have some love and compassion. As I said sometimes that we all have some wisdom no matter how obscure that wisdom might be from time to time. We all have some love and compassion no matter how unrefined, no matter how limited, no matter how exclusive that love and compassion might be, we still have it from time to time.
We all have some creative energy, no matter how unspontaneous, how undefined that energy might be. So these are all the qualities of well-being, of the optimum mode of being of a Buddha, whatever we want to determine. That we have all of the internal conditions and we have the basis for transformation, that we aren’t inherently lacking, that we aren’t worthless. In the light of any criticism we may have learned to believe in that, but we have to contradict that, we have to see within our experience that this is not the case and focus upon and we confirm and contradict our old erroneous premises. So now not only do we have the internal basis of transformation, we have to believe in ourselves in spite of ourselves, in spite of what we know is in us.
In spite of our pattern, in spite of we we don’t indulge in our distress. We work even though the patterns of insufficiency and worthlessness may be operating, we we don’t have to act upon it. We don’t have to operate on that basis. We can begin if we choose to operate on another basis and to validate within our experience. By seeing it work, then it becomes a source of encouragement and becomes our own inspiration.
Tsongkhapa goes on to say, I think it’s the third verse, leisure and fortune are difficult to find. So leisure and fortune are difficult to find. So here we’re beginning to talk, not only do we have the basis of transformation, that is to say the main cause of transformation, the main cause of Buddhism, the main cause of becoming a happy, healthy, loving, fully functioning human being is within every living being. But not only do we have that, but we have all the necessary conditions that we have some couple terms, leisure and fortune. This means that essentially that appreciating our leisure and fortune is to appreciate the uniqueness in our freedom as human beings among all the various life forms of the universe.
And moreover, even amongst human beings that we are fortunate or well favored in the sense that we have the opportunities for growth which most people don’t have. So amongst all the various life forms of the universe, beginning to appreciate the fact of being a human being. And over and above that, that even amongst all of the various multitudes of human beings, we’re very special. It’s not that everyone is not special, in fact they are, everyone has Buddha nature. But not everyone has the opportunity, the leisures and fortunes that everyone in this room now possesses.
We’re simply pointing out what it has always been there so we begin to appreciate it in a more different manner. That there’s a trying to gain insight, showing there’s a difference. You know pointing out, and the Buddha is always pointing, said, why don’t look at this? Pointing out what may be obvious, but which is not appreciated. I’m talking about leisures and fortunes.
In this I’m going to read a quotation, it’s termed here free and well favored. Free refers to freedom from eight forms of existence, in which spiritual practice is virtually impossible. So you know, first in a negative, appreciating ourselves via that we’re free of some negative states. Eight negative states that we’re free. As a hell being, as a a preta, a preta — a hungry ghost, or as an animal.
And each of which limitation posed by confusion and pain precludes spiritual concern. As a god, where one is continually distracted by sensual pleasures, to be born in an age when no Buddha has appeared or in a primitive uncivilized society, as someone or we’re free from someone with mental or physical incapacity or someone who does not accept the validity of the Dharma. These are eight negativities which everyone in this room is free of. But then in a more stated more positively, well favored refers to the conditions needed in order to practice. Five conditions derived from oneself.
These are to be a human, to be born in a region where the Dharma is accessible, to have the use of all one’s faculties, not to be swept away by the tides of one’s bad karma, and to have faith in the Dharma. Then there are five conditions derived from others. A Buddha must have appeared, he must have taught the Dharma, the Dharma must have lasted there, there must be many who follow the Dharma, and there must be people who support and maintain the practice of Dharma. So these are what are called eighteen qualities and conditions which constitute our unique freedom. You know, it’s just a way of a systematic systematizing the conditions of factors, which make us unique, which make us beginning to appreciate that we have all of the internal and external conditions necessary, that there’s nothing lacking, there’s nothing that needs to be added, that there’s no need to wait for something better, a better time, a better place, better condition, because everything that is needed is there.
We’re trying to help us to create the motivation, create some inspiration to act while we have this opportunity, to appreciate. And even that we have these qualities amongst all the multitudes of being, have trying to emphasize our great fortune and to appreciate. But even among human beings, there are many who are completely caught up in violence, in aggression like hell being. Many who believe lives of greed and consumerism like a hungry ghost. Many who are dominated by insensitivity and stupidity like animal.
And many who are continually seek in this absorption and pleasure like like God, even amongst human beings. There are these those who are completely dominated by by states which preclude the possibility temporarily of making use of their Buddha nature, of actualizing their potential, but we aren’t. Okay, even even amongst those who are, those who we live in an age when where Buddha has appeared, where the teachings exist. They do not comprehend their value or what they stand for. And though many people have full mental and physical faculties, they simply don’t make use of them for anything of real meaning, anything of real purpose.
And though many accept the validity of Dharma, of spiritual teaching, they simply do not practice. So we have to appreciate our freedom. We have to and moreover, we have to exercise our freedom or it is as if we didn’t have our freedom. Freedom is only realized when it’s an exercise. Simply to say one is free, A slave can say one is free as long as he doesn’t want to do anything that his master doesn’t want him to do.
He’s only aware of it when he wants to begin to break out of some dissatisfactory situation. To exercise our freedom is to be a human as a human being, to be completely a human being, to fulfill the potential. And what it means to be a human being. We were physically born as human beings, but perhaps we are yet to be born mentally. The fullness of human life cannot be measured by anything that happens only to the body.
Life is not merely a matter of physical vigor or of health or the capacity to enjoy oneself. What is life? It is something far more than breath in our nostrils, the blood beating in our wrists, the response to physical stimulation. True, all of these things are essential for a full human life, but they do not themselves constitute that life in all its fullness. A man can have all of this and still be an idiot.
And one who merely breathes, eats, sleeps, and works without awareness, without purpose, and without ideas of his own is not really a man. Life in this purely physical sense is merely the absence of death. Such people do not live, they vegetate. For a man to be alive, he must exercise not only the acts that belong to vegetative and animal life. He must not only subsist, grow, be sentient, not only move himself around, feed himself and the rest.
He must carry on activities proper to his own specifically human kind of life. He must that is to say think intelligently and above all he must direct his actions by free decisions made in the light of his own thinking. These decisions must tend to his own intellectual, moral, and spiritual growth. They must tend to make him more aware of his capacities for knowledge and for free action. They must expand and extend his power to love others and to dedicate himself to their good, for it is in this that he finds his own fulfillment.
Man then can only fully be said to be alive when he becomes plainly conscious of the real meaning of his own existence. That is to say, when he experiences something of the fullness of intelligence, freedom, and spirituality that are actualized within him. What we’re trying to do is to begin to appreciate very deeply that we have all that we need, That there’s nothing lacking to be fully alive. And that further that what we take for granted, all of these freedoms, all of this fortune, all of these leisures. That would we take it for granted about these qualities, about these opportunities.
In fact, they’re extremely rare. And in fact, they’re extremely rare. The rarity of life in the text, the rarity of life centered around growth, around spiritual practice. Explained from the point of view of causes in classical analogy. So a life that we possess with these various leisures, these various fortunes, these freedom, these opportunities is explained in terms of the causes, the rarity of it is explained in terms of causes and analogies.
In general, the cause of human life is ethics. Additionally, you know, just the human life, the main cause of being reborn. You know, we’re not even talking about in terms of We can talk about it in terms of being reborn as a human being. But to live a life as a human being, we can think of it in those terms. What it means to be a human being other than a physical apparatus, the physical embodiment of a human being.
To live the life of a human being. The basis is ethics. But additionally, to live the life of a spiritual human being, have a life based around growth, a life based around a heartfelt aspiration to transcend ego-based existence, that type of a life which is dedicated to something beyond one’s hopes and fears. That type of life one additionally has to have heartfelt aspirations. To have the freedom and opportunity to practice the Dharma.
So somewhere along the line, we’ve all practiced ethics. Somewhere along the line, we’ve all whether these aspirations were articulated or whether or not, we’ve we’ve we’ve we’ve longed to live live a spiritual life. These are the causes why we why we’re here now, why we have this opportunity, why we have these freedoms and these leisures. Most essentially ethics is to act like a human being. We can talk a great deal about ethics, various types of ethics and various levels of vows.
But what we’re saying is to be ethical is to act like the way a human being should act. To carry on activities proper to a human kind of life. And those activities which tend toward the experience of the fullness of intelligence, of freedom, of spirituality. And above all, in terms of the universal vehicle, our most human-like quality that we possess. Those activities which extend and expand our power to love.
Love is the most human fulfilling human like quality that we possess and to dedicate ourselves to others good. It is the paramount quality of the human capacity. This is the main cause to be a human being, to a human life, and we all possess this from the very fact that we now are humans, specifically having the opportunity, the freedom and leisure to practice, to develop, to grow. And there must have been some longing, some prayer, as I said, whether this prayer was articulated or not, to have this freedom, this opportunity. So the fortune to grow and to practice the path.
All of this, can see for ourselves is extremely rare. But we did it, somewhere along the line we did it. And we should greatly value the fact and cease taking it for granted. And then talking about this rarity, you know, we’re trying to appreciate who we are very deeply, both internally in terms of our Buddha nature and our conditions that we created for ourselves in order that to get us unstuck, to get us moving, to inspire ourselves. The the rarity the type of life that each of us possesses is also this is a rather classical example, or a classical analogy.
Anyway, that’s interesting. Finally, a life like ours is hard to find from the viewpoint of the classical example. Suppose there was a single yoke like ring of pure gold that could float upon the surface of the great ocean. So you have this yoke of gold floating upon the surface of the ocean, very big ocean. The swells of the sea push it back and forth in every direction you can imagine.
Far down in the very depths of the ocean lives a great sea turtle. He is blind. Once and only once in the span of an entire century he swims through the surface to poke his head up momentarily. And suppose the golden ring happens to catch him around the neck, The odds against this are nearly infinite. So our case is the same.
The teachings of the Buddha passed now and again among the various planets of the universe. Here we are. Here we are, blinded by ignorance.