Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A cigarette — that long white thing meant to be put in your mouth and set on fire — becomes the central teaching device in this 17-minute session as Ven Jampa Gendun walks through the final seven of the twelve links of dependent origination. Starting with contact (link six), he traces how a smoker’s mind moves through feeling, desire, grasping, becoming, and birth — each step a compulsive reaction shaped by karmic conditioning — until the cigarette burns down and aging and death arrive. He then recasts the six realms not as literal cosmological destinations but as distinct modes of experience we cycle through daily. The commentary closes with two verses from the Dhammapada and a brief reading of the Wheel of Life image, the Buddha standing outside the whole system pointing toward liberation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 WoL 1988 09 25.mp3
UUID: 6419551b-b926-4d08-8738-4a4633ccc001
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Wheel of Life (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-09-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 17.3 minutes
Words: ~2,233
Full of dried chopped chopped leaves. And so, you know, we can we can understand. That’s our present situation. But that present situation wasn’t didn t arise out of nowhere. It evolved.
You know, we can go back step by step and see the evolution of our present situation. It may seem a minor situation, but this is a very simple example. But it has ramifications. So our present situation, that is coming in contact with this long white thing, has evolved through a series of interdependent links. You know, a sequence of a chain reaction.
So, you know almost all of us here, you know due to our cultural condition which is our group karma and that we have shared karma, conceive of or label see about or label that long white thing with stuff made of paper, stuff full of chopped dried leaves as something which is to be placed in the mouth and set on fire. I mean this is our initial conception, reactive conception to seeing this. There is, and we don’t think our thoughts do it. It’s going on, but it’s, you know, but I don’t think any of us are aware this thought, ah, there is a thing which is meant to be put in my mouth and set on fire. But we’re conditioned to have the tendency to conceive of it.
We are we label this and there’s a reason why we label this. We’re conditioned to label this object in a particular way. You know an animal does not conceive of that long white thing as something to be put in its mouth and set on fire. It’s not conditioned in that way. We had this common condition maybe in some civilization where they had never seen a cigarette, they would look at it and it would not occur to them.
They would not think consciously or unconsciously that it was something that could put in the mouth and set on fire. It’s kind of silly for me to think of. Set on fire. So whether we actually do put the thing in our mouth and set on fire is another matter. That’s another situation altogether.
But we have a tendency to conceive of this object in a particular way. That’s the point. We are conditioned to conceive of various objects in particular ways. Now among us there are some people who are predisposed to conceive of the inhalation of the fumes arising from having put this long white thing in your mouth and setting it on fire as being pleasurable. There are some who conceive of the inhalation of this smoke burning this thing as being pleasurable, and some of us don’t.
Some of us don’t conceive of it in this way. This is our individual karma. You know how due to past associations, due to our values, our views, our disposition of our body, Various conditioning factors condition some to conceive of inhaling these fumes as pleasurable. Some it’s very highly unpleasurable. So this is all, this is a very individual karma.
Our tendencies to label, our tendencies to conceive of certain objects in particular ways. We’re starting to develop a very unique world. You know we have a commonality of shared karma. But then within that shared commonality, existing within this room, but we’re all sitting in a different place for example. We all are conceiving of this situation in a very different way.
Women see the world a little different than men. Men have a rather shared commonality. Women have a shared commonality. But we have an overlap in the fact that we conceive of as from the point of being human. We’re all human beings so we have an overlap.
And then there’s this uniqueness about redefining, refining of our unique, unique, unique version of reality until we come down to the fact of a very unique reality which no one shares with us at all. And we keep constantly recreating this reality due to these karmic tendencies to label, to conceive of the various objects, situations, people that we come in contact with in particular ways, reactive patterns of labeling, conceiving. So we, you know this is all depending upon an individual’s materiality and mentality. So someone has the disposition to be a smoker. So, okay, someone has that tendency within, condition factor within his mind to be a smoker.
So he comes in contact with this long white thing. He conceives of this long white thing as an object which is to be put in his mouth and set on fire. So most of us do that. But he goes on a little bit further than perhaps many others. You know within the context of this tendency, that is to put this thing, this long white thing in his mouth and set it on fire, He also goes on to conceive of the inhalation of its fumes, of its smoke as being pleasurable.
You know this is so he came in contact and he conceives of it as being pleasurable. That is he derives a feeling of pleasure. This is the seventh link. Contact was the sixth link. in dependence upon contact may develop feelings.
In this case pleasurable feeling. This is the seventh link. So he has pleasurable feelings associated with that object. So this gives rise to desire, the eighth link of dependent origination, a craving to repeat contact, you know, re experience the pleasure associated with that object. So he develops desire, the eighth link.
This gives rise to grasping, the ninth link. You know, a specific compulsive behavior pattern to appropriate to that desire is called up. So we have a desire to repeat contact with this pleasurable object. This gives rise to grasping a particular compulsive behavior pattern which can express, live out, enact that desire. Is called up, is selected out of our various possibilities of reacting to that object.
There’s an infinite number of possibilities of ways to react with any particular object. Here we’re out of our compulsive patterns, our tendency, our karmic tendencies, we’re selecting one particular way of reacting with that feeling, of carrying out, developing that contact with that object. One particular specific compulsive behavior pattern which is appropriate to our desire. So this gives rise to becoming, the tenth of the twelve links of dependent origination. The program has been selected at grasping how, you know, a compulsive behavior pattern, how we’re going to react to that object.
Then it’s fully activated. It’s energized. This is, you know, like putting the program in the computer. This gives rise to birth, eleventh link of the twelve links of dependent origination. The program selected is fully activated giving rise to birth.
That is one reaches over, the hand moves, puts the long white thing in the mouth and sets it on fire and inhales and is reborn in the realm of smokers. Rebirth is the eleventh link. So you know, having come into this particular mode of being, the mode of being of smoker. This is a particular type of mentality and materiality. The smoker mentality and materiality.
You know, it’s a unique style same stock, same occupation. There naturally ensues a diminishing capacity of the situation to sustain that mode of being, that particular style. You know, there’s going to be reach a point where the situation can no longer support that style of being. That is to say the cigarette’s going to burn down and it’s going to be exhausted, aging. And then he passes from the realm of smokers.
He becomes a non smoker and then he dies from that realm of smoker. This is the twelfth link, aging and death. So you know with respect to this realm of smoker, you know there’s some, you know I’m trying to sort of help to develop the feeling for what is being talked about here when they talk about the six realms. That we have to cease to concretize, to think it more in conceptual terms. You know, for example, when we talk about the realm of a smoker, did you know that, for example, the realm of the that the inhabitants of a realm of a smoker have an average lifespan less than that of inhabitants of the realm of nonsmokers.
You know, these are two different realms, aren’t they? And one inhabitant has an average lifespan longer than the other. Or those inhabitants of the realm of smokers, those inhabitants of the realm of smokers experience mental and physical discomfort for long periods when they forced to abide in no smoking zones, which the people in the realm of non smokers, they don’t experience this. So, you know, they’re both they’re beginning to experience the reality in a slightly different version, our own unique version. One experiences these no smoking zones as being dissatisfactory, as being uncomfortable.
The other one is no problem. You know, the the inhabitants of the realm of smoking, the smokers, they have to they don’t quite have the acute taste, the ability to taste foods as the inhabitants of the realm of non smokers. And it’s one curious fact that is the inhabitants of the realm of non smokers do not particularly like to speak face to face with the inhabitants of the realm of smokers. But interestingly enough, some people choose to be born there. Even though there’s these drawbacks of being born in the realm of smokers, some people choose to be reborn there again and again.
You know this person, this guy or this woman that we have just been talking about, who has this tendency, you know this person has a strong karmic tendency to be reborn again and again and again in the realm of a smoker. You know, smoker may not presently be craving a cigarette, but the potential for craving is there. You know, latency, a tendency. You know, when the proper conditions aggregate, come together, such as, for example, seeing another person smoking, having just finished a meal, the lowering of the nicotine level in blood, then this is going to an impulse is going to be activated due to having meeting with these particular conditions, to this contact with specific type of situation, seeing someone smoke, having finished a meal, the nicotine level in their blood being lowered. A specific impulse is going to be activated.
A tendency is going to be energized. At that moment, out of all the possible objects which the mind could be dwelling upon, which the mind could be seeking, considering, moving toward, infinite number of things. It’s going to seek, it’s going to be impelled, it’s going to be forced to grasp at a cigarette. It’s going to be forced to grasp at a cigarette due the activation of this impetus, this impulse. This impulse may be so short lived that it may go, it may not have it carry out and express itself in actual behavior pattern.
And it may be so fleeting, you know, which most of the impulses are, that it may not actually manifest itself. On the other hand, it may trigger other reactions. When you’re setting off a more grosser types of reactive patterns of becoming. And before we know what happens, we’re placing that long white thing in our mouth and setting it on fire. You know, before we know what’s happening, we’re born in the realm of a smoker.
So these are the twelve links are a description of the karmic process by which we’re constantly recreating our version of reality, our particular version of reality. We are compulsively driven to live in a world of our own making. And this particular world is characterized by three marks, marks of dissatisfactoriness, impermanence, and selflessness. And this is the opening two verses from the text the Dhammapada, a collection of sayings of the Buddha. We are what we think.
All that we are all that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. Speak or act with an impure mind, and trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart. We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow you as your shadow unshakable. So this is the teaching of dependent origination, dependent arising. The Buddha stands pointing outside of cyclic existence. The whole of cyclic existence is being held in the teeth of the Lord of Death, Yama.
Continually revolving from beginningless time, continually turning the wheel to another program of compulsive behavior patterns, reactive patterns, which by their very nature are dissatisfactory. And the Buddha stands outside of this complete system and he’s inviting us to he’s pointing to it. He’s saying he’s trying to show us the way out, to exit from this system. The way out of cyclic existence to finally bring a halt to this ever turning wheel to find peace. So we’ll stop there.
Just what’s the other feature opposite of the other corner? That’s the that’s do you see this little there’s this path that starts There’s a path here and it goes all the way up to Buddhahood which is outside of this entire system of dissatisfactory quality of ego.