Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A Tibetan lama passing through France pauses at a manicured war cemetery, then remarks that Westerners have even more beautiful places to keep their corpses before they die — meaning comfort-numbed lives lost in material pursuit. In this 9.5-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun uses that image to sharpen a Lamrim reflection on precious human rebirth. He first pushes back against the habit of treating oneself as a victim of circumstance, arguing that what limits people is not social conditions but a lack of nerve and imagination. He then works through the freedoms and fortunes most listeners actually possess — no civil war, no addiction, no religious repression, access to teachers and a spiritual community — building a felt appreciation for how rare the present situation is. A short verse from a mountain hermit closes on a quiet note of contentment and readiness.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 16 H and M of B 1992 06 24.mp3
UUID: 6567a6d8-7c0e-4202-894a-912ffc4ef15d
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-06-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 9.5 minutes
Words: ~1,103
This time we have found it. Is that maybe I don’t know. I mean, somehow trying to move our mind to to really awe. To really to get the awe or something. To feel the rarity and uniqueness and the speciality of oneself in the situation which you have found yourself in, to arouse that type of energy.
And then we have to break out of our rigid oppressive pattern of our feelings of insufficiency, of lack, This vague notion that something is missing. It’s waiting for Godot. They don’t know what they’re quite waiting for, but they’re waiting. Waiting, waiting, or waiting. We have to overcome the sense of that we are victims, condemned to a hollow meaningless existence.
There’s no other possibility, there’s no other way of life. There’s some kind of joyless struggle of existence. The patterns of I can’t, the patterns of I only wish I could, I have to wait, somebody will tell me when I can begin someday. The myth that we’ve made up about ourselves. There’s a tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsibility and treat them as victims of social circumstances.
You buy that and you pay with your soul. It’s not men who limit women. It’s not straights who limit gays. It’s not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is a lack of character.
What limits people is that they don’t have the nerve or the imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it. Yuck. Practically speaking, what’s stopping you? What’s stopping each one of us? Do we lack the freedom and fortune to practice and transform our mind?
And then begin to ask these questions of oneself. What is the reality of our situation? Are you a beggar in the streets of Calcutta? Are you caught up in the fighting of a civil war? Are you starving in Africa?
Do you to work from sunrise to sunset in order to feed your family for that day? Are you living in a country where there’s no religious freedom? Where you’re where you’re persecuted, where you where there is no religious meetings are allowed, where books are banned. Are you retarded? Are you psychotic?
Are you undergoing chemotherapy? Are you chronically in pain? Are you seriously ill? Are you actively addicted to drugs, alcohol? Are you completely caught up in materials, money, power, status?
Does your family or those about you, do they actively seek to prevent you? In practicing the path and development and growing. Do you have no access from time to time to to a teacher to guide you, to inspire you? You have no spiritual friends to support you to share your ideas with from time to time. So, you know, look and you look at all the people on the street.
You can get caught up in materialism, completely caught up in sensual pursuit and lost in materialism, lost in sensual pursuits. This constant running after bigger, better, more. More money, more power, more possessions, more pleasure. So there’s no thought of what’s going on inside their own minds. No time to stop and think about what they’re doing.
Are they happy? Are they fulfilled? There there is a there is a story about a Tibetan teacher who was traveling with his attendant through the countryside of France. They were driving along through the countryside and they were passing one of the many war cemeteries all about France. Within the war cemetery with all their beautifully manicured lawn and hedges, flowing rows upon rows upon rows upon rows of crosses, all beautifully, neatly kept gardened.
And the attendant said to to the Tibetan teacher, said, isn’t isn’t it wonderful in the west? How how they have such beautiful places to keep people’s corpses after they die? And the lama said, he said, but they have such even more beautiful places to keep the corpses before they die. So we have the freedom and the leisure to practice. Somehow we have to overcome some kind of beliefs that we may have that we’re probably most likely harboring about our situation which are not in accord with the reality of our of what we’re involved in, of our reality of our experience.
You know, we have to consider how fortunate we are. Now if we look at it in a positive sense, you know, look at it from negative sense that we’re not counted among those that we’re not on the streets of Calcutta that we don’t have to work from sun up to sundown wearing out our body and mind. That we’re not addicts. You know, We are human beings with intelligent mind. We have a kind heart.
We have reasonably healthy body. We live in a country of a free country, a country free of religious, social, and political repression. You know, we have countless opportunities to pursue our creative intellectual interests. We have the opportunity to do almost anything and to go almost anywhere. We enjoy a high standard of living.
We have all our material necessity quite easily met. You know, what what are we lacking? What’s missing? You know, we have teachers like Khensur Rinpoche that are available that we can meet with from time to time. That we have a spiritual community there, those who share the same values, same principles, ideals, our aspirations, who have been supportive.
You know, have the complete freedom and fortune to practice, to investigate, to understand, to transform our minds, actualize our potential. Everything that we need to live a life of wisdom, a life based upon love, creative skillful activity and working with others. In other words, we have everything that we need right now to solve our problem, to be happy. And we have to appreciate it, we have to value it. And now that we have the chance to grow, to awaken, and we have to appreciate how rare it is, and how special each of us are and the circumstances that we have created somehow along the line.
We’ve created the causes to be who we are now and to take advantage of it and determine to make use of it. Since I came to this hermitage, how many years have passed? If I am tired, I stretch out my feet. If I feel fine, I go for a stroll in the mountains. The ridicule of praise of worldly people means nothing.
Following my destiny for this body I received from my parents, I have only to thank. I’d like to get a cup of tea and have a discussion.