Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a Krishnamurti passage on sorrow and ignorance to frame a central Buddhist observation: the recurring patterns of dissatisfaction that mere time cannot heal. He explains how anxiety and conviction together motivate genuine spiritual engagement, then argues that altruism — choosing to extend oneself for others — is the most immediately available means to personal well-being. The talk then moves into karma’s four distinct modes (results are infallible, amplifying, uncommitted actions leave no trace, and latent seeds persist until conditions ripen) before walking through the four counteracting forces for purifying negative karma: regret, reliance, reversal, and antidote. The session closes with a guided Śākyamūni Buddha visualization — white purifying nectar flowing into the body — completing the karma section of an ongoing series on the three fundamentals of the path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 19 H and M of B 1992 09 23.mp3
UUID: 0f2cb06b-575b-427f-a813-24289f2786fb
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-09-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~5,580
So we’ll get back in touch with some of our central values. We orientate ourselves, we reprioritize our values, redirect ourselves, just continue getting back in touch with that which is important to me very uniquely. As we’re all aware during the course of our day, becoming absorbed in all our activities, Perhaps we lose contact with it, which is we’ve determined at some time, the clarity of our wisdom and the clarity of our awareness and compassion, is those ideas which are central to your life, to what you believe, those ways of being which you have found meaning and purpose in your life, in some sort of self authenticating experience. This process of reorientating, redirecting ourselves is said to have two causes. These are anxiety and conviction or faith or trust.
It’s not as if this anxiety is there to depress us, but it’s there as a consistent reminder not to allow us to become completely lost in these reoccurring compulsive patterns, to maintain some sort of perspective. There’s a certain sense of anxiety that what has gone in the past will continue to reoccur when we gain some perspective. It is not as if by gaining some awareness of our problems we are going to have more problems. Hopefully this awareness is going to serve as a means, as a method, whereby to motivate us to solve our problems. And talking about this in the quality of our awareness in terms of our dissatisfactory quality of our life, A quotation from Krishnamurti.
And it’s significant because he’s talking about ignorance and talking about the twelve links of dependent origination and the necessity to go beyond ignorance. There is the personal sorrow and the sorrow of the world. There is the sorrow of ignorance and the sorrow of time. This ignorance is a lack of knowing oneself and the sorrow of time is the deception that time can cure, heal and change. Most people are caught in that deception and either worship sorrow or explain it away.
But in either case, it continues and one never asks oneself if it can come to an end. We’re talking about the reoccurring sorrows which mere time can never heal. Though we can distract ourselves from them, they still reoccur and we do get lost in that distraction, without that awareness, we don’t see the reoccurring patterns, the reoccurring themes, the cycles of dissatisfaction, which are reoccurring over the course of our life. It is if caught in the very moment, we deal with our problems piecemeal, trying to solve each one as they arise. And we don’t see the connection, the relationship between the present problem and past problems, which were very much identical except perhaps a change in time or place or partner or the plot is very much the same, just the characters perhaps have changed.
And dealing with this type of sorrow that mere time cannot heal. And we try to explain it away. We try to distract ourselves from it. We try to desensitize, to cultivate an unawareness. And this is the quality of ignorance.
And so there are two types of sorrows. The types of sorrows, which are continually recurring and the very type of sorrow effect of our ignorance. The fact that we continually ignore this cultivated unawareness, this resistance to change, to becoming sensitive and responding intelligently to our problems. So we develop some sort of anxiety that this situation is going to continue. But that in itself is not sufficient.
And we have to have some confidence, kind of something we can believe in, something over and above perhaps what we have hitherto accepted as our limits, our world as we know it. That at some time, in some places having some sort of peak experience or whatever we’re going to call them. Those moments when one is expressing one’s innermost being in terms of wisdom, in terms of compassion, in terms of self authentic way of being. Life in itself, there’s something goodness about ourselves and the goodness about life. There’s moments when nothing need more be added to our experience.
It’s sort of a self validating experience where we don’t have to justify our existence to anyone else, even to ourselves. And this conviction that we’ve been talking about in terms of the qualities of an awakened state, that we have some wisdom and we know that. No matter how faint and obscure that wisdom might be, we all have some love and compassion, we all know that, no matter how limited and mixed with attachment, exclusive that love and compassion might be, that we all have some exuberance for life, some creative mental and physical energy, no matter how unrefined, unspontaneous that energy might be. So having a conviction in the goodness of life and the goodness of ourselves and the potentiality to solve our problems at a very basic level that we can go beyond our anxieties, that these reoccurring patterns need not reoccur again continually, that we can solve the fundamental problem of sorrow, that we can remove ignorance from our mind, that we can become awakened. So in our discussion last Wednesday night, there was this talk about having to remind ourselves, having to I think the term was to reengage ourselves.
We have to get back, to remind, to redirect, to reorientate, to reprioritize. I think it’s really important that we keep reminding, again and again reminding ourselves of what really works for me, what is important for me, What do I want out of my life? Who do I want to be? Not what I want to have or some status, some achievement in the external world, but what qualities would I like to imbue? What is meaningful for me?
This is a very unique self actualizing individual. And keep that foremost in front of our mind. And this becomes the inner focus of our life, this quality of growth, to become that person that I want to be, to develop, to imbue those qualities I would like my life to be an expression of. And we achieve this by means of the Dharma. Ultimately, we are our own refuge.
It is it is only our own sanity, our own Buddha inside of ourselves that’s ever going to be able to solve our problems in all occasions and at all times. So it’s only ourselves who are our ultimate refuge. And it is only by means of the methods, the ways in which we can evolve the mind to realize Buddha. And whatever form it might be to take recourse, to make use of, to orientate yourself toward making use of those methods, creating some space and time, putting forth some energy in your life to utilizing these methods, these means to actualize the person you want to become. And this occurs within the social context of a spiritual community.
And this this social system that we’re involved in, is it’s very difficult to change. You know, it it is in certain respect as if we’re swimming against the current in terms of our society. Our society has a great stake in trying to make everyone normal. It’s not as if there is an active policy which has been promulgated by the government or by some elite, but it’s simply self perpetuating institutions which were bound up in the qualities of even on a mundane level but but a very real level. The qualities of oppression which all of us experience in our various ways.
The oppression of women, the oppression of men, the oppression of the old, the oppression of young, the oppression of blacks, oppression of the mentally ill. That becoming aware that the self perpetuating oppressive system that we’re caught up in. And it’s very difficult as an individual to not be conditioned, to not be influenced by these forces which are at work to again and again returns back to the old patterns, the habitual ways of perceiving, of acting and being in the world, in society. So we need as it were a very special system set apart, you know, the Sangha or the spiritual community which reinforces in a positive fashion, positive reinforcement as opposed to negative reinforcement. By positive reinforcement, it is type of reinforcement which brings about a higher order of self correction rather than you know going about in the same circles all the time repeating the same patterns.
In terms of positive reinforcement we can begin to form a spiral, we can begin to move out, we can begin to live at a higher and higher order of being. And this is we can facilitate one another’s growth. As I mentioned that I think mental health is very much a social phenomenon. It occurs in relationship. In relationship to our past as the beings, the person who we once were in relationship to the present in terms of others who we interact with.
And so if we can help one another and reinforce the values which are going to bring about change and support that change and encourage and act as one another’s teachers, act as one another’s inspiration and guide, whatever we can do with whatever skills we have to facilitate another individual’s growth. And this very act of having to, of taking that responsibility to facilitate another individual’s growth, to help them to solve their problems, this commitment to another being is the way that we can help ourselves in terms of our motivation. Becoming deeply aware of our own problems in all their myriad fashions, all their various various levels of problems that we have to deal with from the most gross to the most subtle and types of subtleties that which we aren’t even presently aware of. When appreciating ourselves and understanding ourselves, we develop compassion for ourselves. We begin to really, perhaps for the first time, to love ourselves.
As I talked about in the past, that love is an understanding. To understand is to love and to understand oneself and one’s situation in a very deep way is to begin to love oneself perhaps for the first time in the sense of choosing to work, to solve one’s problems at a very basic level. And then if we can take that understanding that we have of ourselves and begin to extend it to others and understand that their situation is very much like ours. Perhaps their particular difficulties, unique situations maybe are in fact different. But beneath the superficial differences, we’re very much going through the same difficulties.
We experience the same fears, same loneliness, the same isolation, the same longings, the same aspiration, very much so. And so if I understand myself and have developed a sincere love for myself, I can begin to transfer that love to others in understanding that they’re exactly like myself, completely equal, that everyone in this room, regardless of their sex, regardless of their age wants to be happy. Everybody in this room wants to doesn’t want to suffer at all. That’s a that’s a very hard cold fact of life. And if I can acknowledge that and I can appreciate that then perhaps I can begin to choose, I can make that choice.
If I am only for myself, if I am not for myself who will be? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? And when am I going to love myself? When am I going to choose to solve my problem, to work toward that end?
And when am I going to choose to love others? You know, as I mentioned a few weeks ago that psychotherapy is not about happiness, it’s about power and competence, becoming competent, becoming powerful. And perhaps the greatest decision that we can make and therefore the most empowering means that we have available to us is altruism. Know altruism is the most readily available method whereby to achieve well-being. Now we are working toward wisdom and the wisdom understanding selflessness, the wisdom understanding emptiness.
And we should work toward that end and develop that skill, develop that understanding. But in the meanwhile and as a facilitating process and as an immediate means of finding happiness in the present moment. Altruism offers us the most readily available means to choose, to extend oneself for the welfare and nourishing another person, to make that choice, how unworthy you may feel about yourself that one doesn’t have the ability, doesn’t have the skill, But to choose to accept the responsibility and therefore to determine to be able to respond is the most empowering means we have. Because it will, out of this commitment to another’s well-being and the necessity to be able to respond, we will, as almost every parent has experienced, we will develop the means, the inner qualities whereby to be able to respond. And this is the way we grow.
So it is in choosing to love others that we are most most effective, efficient means to help us to solve our own problem. In committing ourselves to the welfare of others, becomes necessary to develop the skill, the ability, the energy, the wisdom to be able to help them. And in doing this we solve our own problems and we can be of benefit rather in helping them to solve their own problems, their problems. This altruism is a choice that we can make. And it’s And all of these various choices that we can make in all of these seemingly insignificant decisions that we make over the course of a single day, a choice toward growth or a choice toward simply reinforcing what has been.
And we make this choice if we can maintain a sense of anxiety and a sense of faith. Anxiety that we simply do not want to allow to repeat what has gone in the past, what has gone in the past. And that a faith that our own goodness and the goodness of life with a possibility of another order of being. And to choose the path of growth, the path of heart as opposed to the path of these reoccurring compulsive patterns which have bound us up to now. To realign our allegiance from a life passively based under the influence of hope and fear to one which is actively seeking to grow, growing in love, in wisdom and choosing to love and working at wisdom, working to go beyond our ignorance and working to end our sorrow.
I go for refuge until I’m 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. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. In 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 a refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly.
From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain the state of a Buddha to be able to benefit all of us. I thought we had been discussing karma and tonight we’ll conclude the discussion of karma. We’ve almost finished the discussion of the first and the three fundamentals of the path. We’re looking at the three fundamentals of path developing the determination to be free, the awakening heart and as you say, the awakening of our hearts to others, the development of love and compassion, and the third fundamental, the awakening mind, awakening our mind to the nature of reality, the nature of the self, ultimate reality, emptiness. And we’ve almost finished the first of these three fundamentals, determination to be free.
We still have to look at the quality of our existence, the pathology of cyclic existence. But in finishing tonight we’re going to finish the section of karma. This is talking about the wheel of life, the ego, impure dependent origination. This is sort of the, as I mentioned, a visual iconographic representation of the outcome of karma. And in terms of a karma, we’ve been talking about the various types of karma.
And I thought we would make use of some of our understanding tonight and do a practice which we haven’t done up to now, a very simple practice. It involves first, know, we’ve talked about karma in terms of what are called the four distinct modes of karma. The results of actions are infallible. The results of actions are infallible. This was simply the biblical teaching as you sow, so shall you reap essentially.
That there is an infallible or unvarying relationship between the quality of the cause and the quality of the result. in dependence upon positive types of causes we will experience a positive type of result. That is to say in types of in dependence upon skillful actions we experience a happy result, some kind of positive, constructive, desirable result. On the other hand, upon negative causes we experience a negative result. in dependence upon unskillful actions we experience suffering, some kind of dissatisfaction, frustration, disappointment, some undesirable experience.
And there is this unvarying or infallible relationship just as in the external world. If you plant a rice seed, a rice plant grows, not a wheat or barley, but there’s an unvarying relationship between the cause and effect. And this is what the point which is being gotten at here, trying to become aware of this fact. And the second distinct mode of karma was the results of actions are amplifying. This was the fact that even from insignificant causes, highly increased results can arise.
Therefore, even insignificant actions can have tremendous results. Third was the results of uncommitted actions are not experienced. And that is to say, if we don’t commit an action, we don’t create the cause, then we’re not going to experience the result. If we want to experience some type of result, then we have to consciously engage ourselves in creating the cause which will bring about that result. And then the fourth is actions once committed are not dissipated.
This is to say that actions leave latencies within the mind. They leave latencies, some kind of coded information and upon coming into contact with the correct objective conditions there is a ripening just like a flower seed when it’s placed in right conditions, the soil and the water, it begins to be activated, it’s germinated and it grows. Likewise with these predispositions, these latencies within our mind that they simply do not go away, they remain within our mind. All the various actions, our evolutionary history is encoded within our mind and upon meeting various conditions, they’re going to ripen just like the flower seed and they’re going to bring about some type of experience, some type of positive or negative experience in accordance with the quality of their cause, the type of action, whether it’s skillful or unskillful. So we have, I presume, I know I do, various negative actions implanted within our mind at present.
These are not going to go away by themselves. They’re going to remain there until they meet the correct conditions. Except if we were to intervene with a method. And this method as I mentioned previously in explaining what is called the four counteracting forces is a method whereby to purify or it is what would you call it, the simile which is used as, it is like taking a seed and scorching it. The ability to germinate is destroyed, its potency is destroyed.
And likewise through applying these four counteracting agents, the potency, the ability to be activated and thereby to bring about a result, some kind of effect is destroyed. It becomes impotent. These karmic seeds, these informations are no longer able to express themselves. They lose their ability to be activated. And these four counteracting agents, the first of these was the force of regret and we talked about regret in the sense of acknowledging, first we have to acknowledge our mistakes as mistakes and see, you know, confronting the issues of the unskillful actions that we’ve probably created, not trying to pretend that they weren’t negative or that we can be justified in creating a negative action, that that bastard deserved it, whatever, I don’t know.
Some way we can justify whatever we do. But it was a mistake. It’s not, We’re doing this for ourselves, developing a sense of regret, acknowledging our mistakes as mistakes, as a means whereby we won’t have to experience the negative effects of these mistakes. We’re not trying to please anything, anyone or anything outside of our own self. We’re just trying to become skillful in how we’re dealing with these past mistakes.
We can’t undo the path, but we can work with the results of those past actions which exist within the present moment and those results are presently in terms of potencies within the mind and we can work with those potency and we can deactivate them as it were by applying these four counteracting agents. And the first of these and the most important is regret. So it’s a temporary, temporary emphasis on temporary loss of self esteem. We made a mistake. We didn’t act with in light of our own wisdom.
We acted under the influence of perhaps anger, jealousy, spite, attachment. There was some motivating force which we probably If we had the clarity and a second chance perhaps we wouldn’t have acted in that way, but we didn’t. We acted in appropriate fashion, but we in retrospect perhaps we would have liked to have acted in a different manner. So we have a sense of regret if I acted in perhaps an unskillful manner and destructive manner. Not as we might have liked to have.
There might have been a healthier way to deal with that particular situation. And a sense of regret, not only regret with the there was a possibility of a more skillful way of dealing with this situation, but having dealt with it unskillfully, we’re going to we’ve created for ourselves a negative potency within our mind which is going to eventually bring about some negative experience for ourselves, some kind of destructive undesirable experience for ourselves. So a sense of I wish I hadn’t done that. That was unskillful. I made a mistake.
The force of regret. Then applying the second force, the force of reliance. This type of negative action that we’ve created, We can create a negative action either against the Buddha or sentient beings or living beings in general. In terms of when we say committing a negative action against Buddha, we can look at it in terms of that we have in this redirecting process that we go through. The Buddha becomes the focus of our inner life in the sense of this is the paradigm that we’re making use of, the model of sanity that we’re working toward and we’re trying to actualize Buddha within inside of ourselves.
So if we were to, you know, if we have taken a vow or some precept, we have made some kind of promise, a commitment to growth, some kind of restraint, then by acting in contradiction to our commitment, We as it were, we’re turning our back on the Buddha within inside of ourselves. The goal of our spiritual life, the goal of our growth, this model that we have of what it means to come to the end of our growth. We’ve gone in another direction as it were. So we have to as it were redirect ourselves towards Buddha. So we recommit ourselves to spiritual growth, to the actualization of Buddha within ourselves, this happy, loving, healthy, sane human being that we can become.
You know, getting back on the path, refocusing, redirecting, reorienting, reprioritizing. If we have committed a negativity toward living beings in general, you know, just some type of unskillful action, hurting someone, killing. You know there’s three of physical unskillful actions, killing, stealing, sexual impropriety, there’s four verbal unskillful actions, lying, divisive speech, hurtful speech, and idle chatter. And then there’s three of mind. Three unskillful actions, mental unskillful actions.
There’s covetousness, harmful intention and then various types of distorted views. So if we have harmed others in some way, then we’ve also, you know, we’ve gotten, you know, minimally if we want to grow then we have to seek actively to abandon harming others. You know, this is the antithesis of growth. This simply perpetuates one’s egotistical, ego-orientated behavior in the sense of seeking happiness at the exclusion and the expense of others simply is a way of perpetuating our problems, seeking and perpetuating ego based existence. This is the reason that we’re stuck in this situation that we are at present.
So if we want to transcend this situation, if we want to grow out of it, then we’re going to have to at least minimally cease, you know, actively cease harming others. But over and above that we should if as best we can seek to benefit others, to help others as a means to facilitate this process of growth. So if we’ve harmed others, we have It’s necessary to again reorientate ourselves and this reorientation involves the development of loving compassion. In general toward living beings, but specifically toward the person that we harmed in some way. Recommitting ourselves to their welfare, developing a sense of love, a sense of compassion for them.
And this is the second force, the force of reliance. We rely upon those objects toward which we have as it were fallen down on and we use them to push ourselves back up, redirecting ourselves toward the Buddha inside ourselves, recommitting ourselves to the welfare of sentient beings and living beings of these people in particular toward whom we’ve committed some unskillful action. And the third is the force of reversal. You know, some kind of honest commitment which you can which can you can a challenge to yourself that you can mindfully and with awareness actually fulfill. That for the next twenty four hours, next three hours, next two hours, next one hour I’m not going to consciously actively commit this skillful action again.
And so as a way to break up this repetitive pattern, these habits which govern our lives, We can interrupt these reinforcing process whereby we commit the same actions again and again and again. You know we can interrupt that process by mindfully committing ourselves to not become involved in the unskillful action for an honest an honestly possible period of time. And then the last is the fourth counteracting agent, the force of the antidote. And as I’ve mentioned, there are various traditional antidotes which are made use of. But in general we can consciously create any type of skillful action as with an awareness that this is as it were a counterbalance to the negative action which I created previously.
But I thought as part of our meditation that we would do a practice involving Śākyamūni Buddha, which is on page six. And what I would like to do is, first as we usually do, we’re going to develop love and compassion, then we’ll do mindfulness of breathing. And then I would like for you to recall some negative action that you’ve been involved in And to go through this process, these four counteracting agents. First, developing a sense of regret. Then if it’s in terms of having harmed someone, recommitting yourself, developing love and compassion toward them, then determining, challenging yourself in some honest fashion not to commit this action again for the next whatever you can honestly commit yourself to.
And then as a means of antidote, I thought we would perform a visualization practice. As I’ve tried to emphasize that this Buddha, it’s like a If we give the evolutionary potential of humanity some kind of visual form, This an iconographic form, visual form. This is the traditional Tibetan or the traditional Buddhist representation. We don’t know what the Buddha Śākyamūni looked like and they didn’t have, there weren’t any photographers. They said there weren’t any images made till at least six hundred years after his death.
So it’s not important what he looked like. It is just that this is an iconographic, you know, we’re giving a, we personify the human potential and give it a visual representation, some archetypal manifestation for our mind to work with. So this is, we can think of this as in terms of what I can become. Anything which you, whatever you find is meaningful in your life, that which you find, that which you have some kind of reverence for, that you respect, that which you hold as worthy of your admiration, whatever it might be. And then we can use, if you wish, you can visualize Christ, you can visualize a white light.
We need these supports for our mind. We give them something which we hold as worthy of our reverence and we give it some kind of visual substance and we hold that in front of our mind and imbue it. We connect it. We imbue it with a sense of power and then we internalize that power. And we talked about that when we In talking about the the spiritual teacher, how the the spiritual teacher, you know ultimately we have to be our own masters, we have to be our own spiritual teachers.
But as a remedial measure, we accept, we empower an individual as a means of coming into, a means of becoming aware of, hitherto unconscious potential within our mind. Giving some expression to our potentials and we project them and if we cannot, as it were, support our divinity, the gold within the shadow. So we someone who’s going to support it, who can hold that weight and We project it outside of ourselves. And then once we’ve at least given an expression, we begin to reintegrate it into ourselves and we become our own spiritual master as it were. So this process of imbuing, empowering, of perfecting an object and then reabsorbing it into oneself so that what is now unconscious is integrated in the conscious level.
Anyway, I’m getting off the track here. So in this process what we’re going to do is we’re going to if you want to use the image of a Buddha and you can study the image, know, try to study the outline, the way the hand is positioned, the various colors and then try to cause that mental image to hover before one at eye level, about one and a half meters in front of you, the size of one hand span approximately and it’s made of light, should be very light. It’s not something which is heavy and if you can’t see that, it doesn’t matter. Just imagine it’s there and then we’re going to this is something, this is your potentiality given some kind of visual form. And you are as if showing reverence, exalting something, some sort of what is present or potential within yourself.
And you are taking recourse to that. And imagine that as we recite the mantra which is at the bottom of page six, That having gone through the first three counteracting agents coming to the fourth, the fourth agent. And imagine as we recite the mantra that from the heart of Śākyamūni Buddha that a white light extends down to the crown of your head and nectars, white nectars begin to flow inside of you and they begin to fill up your body completely. Your body becomes completely filled with white light and white nectars. Bright luminous nectar and light.
Completely purifying all the various negativities. There’s no darkness. There’s no there’s no impurities whatsoever left in your body. Your body becomes clear as crystal. And then have a sense of lightness, a sense of innocence, a sense of okay, I did something about it, it’s finished and let go into a sense of innocence, into a sense of purity, to let go into a sense of well-being, of having let go of any burden that you’ve been carrying.
It’s finished. It’s over. And just let go into the purity and innocence. Okay. Shall we try that?
Okay. So, yeah. The nectar extend from the heart of Śākyamūni Buddha to the crown of your head and you can imagine the light coming in and also like maybe the white nectar is running along this ray of light, this beam of light entering your body and slowly filling your body with white radiant nectars and light. And we’ll recite the mantra together. Okay?
So if you take a comfortable firm position. So let’s begin by developing love and compassion. And think of someone that you aren’t close to, but you see once in a while. But two people, a male and a female. See if you can imagine two people, a male and a female in front of you.
Something you you don’t know well.