Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of a person who can never simply watch a sunset — always needing to photograph, describe, or “eat” it — anchors Ven Jampa Gendun’s opening diagnosis of the restless hollowness at the centre of ordinary life. In this 47-minute talk he proposes meditation not as another technique but as a mode of being, then introduces Tsongkhapa’s fourteen-verse text, briefly sketching the author’s biography before arguing that its three aspects — determination to be free, opening the heart to others, and insight into the nature of reality — contain the entire Buddhist path. He grounds the case by distinguishing the private experiential self from the relational social self, arguing that both must be fully developed to realise our complete potential, and closes on the text’s opening homage and the indispensable role of the spiritual teacher. Accessible to those new to Tibetan Buddhism.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 3 PA 1990 02 29.mp3
UUID: 66309202-44e4-4e05-bd4b-396a9d2d2962
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1990-02-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 47.1 minutes
Words: ~5,285
The need to find happiness, some people give up meat to find happiness. We all have our particular preconceptions about the nature of happiness and how to go about attaining it. And why is it we never quite achieve the happiness that we’re all looking for? Why is there if we’re willing to stop the speed and the activity, hollowness about our lives and ourselves. This quality is undercurrent of dissatisfaction.
Feelings of fragmentation, alienation. Like we’re not quite one with our life. So, you know, I’m trying to get across the attitude. The the practice of mindfulness and breathing and meditation in general is simply not another technique to become another activity amongst your myriad of activities to complicate your life. That is to help you to to possibly discover and to integrate within your life another mode of being.
You know, we watch a sunset and we want to do something with it. You know, we want to take a picture of it, write a poem about it, tell a friend about it. We want to eat the sunset. There’s always this quality we can never let things be and we can never let ourselves be. And life passes by never quite having been really lived.
And we simply play out all our patterns which constitute our existence. So perhaps a chance to be is a chance to dwell in a few moments outside of our normal patterns, our patterns altogether. And and this is called by various names, whatever, dwelling in unconditional goodness, our unconditional nature, Buddha nature. So the emphasis I’m making in this lead up to our meditation is that we don’t have to constantly be generating reference points to what we’re doing. How am I doing?
Is meditation going well? There’s nothing there’s nowhere to go with the meditation. The beginning is the end. I hope I’m not becoming too abstract. Simply to sit there with your full body and mind in the present moment is enough.
Nothing more needs to be achieved. Maybe we can make that a way of life. You know, we can train in that attitude of mind and develop that quality of being. So we talk about the quality of body and mind that we bring to the experience of meditation. You know, it’s not so much that we have to that we’re trying out for the Meditative Olympics become perfect meditators or whatever, but the quality of our physical posture and our mental posture.
Doing something thoroughly, properly, your fullness with complete involvement. Just for a few moments, five minutes. In the body, sitting as if you know, we can talk about the various techniques of bodily posture. There’s a system called the sevenfold posture of Vairochana. It’s like it’s like the archetype of the perfection of the play of energy in the bodily form.
But to sit with the attitude that you the physical attitude that you know what you’re doing, that you a purposiveness about what you’re doing. You know, I talk about, you know, there’s interrelationship between body and mind. And oftentimes we can understand to some degree, especially if we train through observation, what a person’s particular state of mind might be by their bodily posture, in their body language. Can tell to some degree state of their mind by their bodily posture, their gestures, their movements, because their mind is dependent upon their body, and their body is dependent upon their mind. So if we can integrate these two into a type of posture which is purposiveness, purposefulness, purposive, which has it’s as if you are the boss.
You know what you’re about. You know what you’re doing. You’re not going to be blown over by the next gust of wind that comes along. You’re in command. You are in control.
This type of physical quality that we can bring to the meditation. This is the quality of physical posture, which is the most important. You know, we can talk about the lotus posture with the right foot on the left thigh and the right left foot on the right thigh and the thumbs together. We can go through all this. And this is important.
But over and above that, the physical gesture of rightness in what you’re doing, of full consciousness in what you’re doing. And this is going to reflect in your mind. Now bringing your your full embodiment to a meditation is going to bring enhance the possibility. It’s going to facilitate the mind being brought completely to the situation, to the meditation. And then we can bring the mind to the situation.
Now, okay, we’re talking about the technique of mindfulness of breathing. By mindfulness of breathing, we take as objects of observation, all of the bodily sensations which are associated with the breathing process. The expansion of the muscles, abdomen rising and falling, the air rushing in and out of the nose on the upper lip. You know, if you if you pick up these various sensation, all of the tactile sensations taken together are the focus of our our meditation. Nothing more.
A natural breathing process. We’re developing the two factors of awareness and mindfulness. And by mindfulness, I simply mean the factor of memory, recollection. By awareness, I simply mean the factor of knowing, introspection, sensitivity. These are the two factors which we’re seeking to develop.
Coincidental was the development of a new mode of being, a quality of attitude bringing to our life. And we’re trying to use meditation to solve our problems. It should be a part of our learning process. And whatever happens, we can learn. You know, people talk about, I had a good meditation.
Meditation. That means they had a pleasurable meditation. It doesn’t mean they had a good meditation. Sometimes the most agonizing excruciating meditations are the best meditation because it may be an opportunity to learn the most about yourself, to help you to grow. And that’s what we’re trying to do, to to learn about ourselves and take what we learn to help us to solve this problem of ego based existence, of ordinary human life, to begin to solve our problems in a realistic way.
And that takes a careful examination. It takes a high degree of awareness of the training and the ability to observe ourselves, the world around us, the way we relate with other people. And we can train in this. It doesn’t come naturally. So we’re training in an attitude, a way of the quality of approach to life.
We’re training in the ability to observe, to become aware. We also train I don’t want to maybe we’ll stop by a while. We can train to be patient. So maybe let’s try it. Let’s all take a comfortable firm posture.
You know, really going to determine the results of what we experience. It’s not so much what we do but how we do it. And last week I was talking about the setting of a direction. And in traditional Buddhist terms, we call this direction the three refuges. We take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, in the spiritual community.
And I explained briefly, you know, when we say Buddha, what do we mean by that? You know, an enlightened person, an awake person. Buddha means someone who’s awake, who’s you know, as as if we we are presently sleeping and if we wake up, we wake up early in the morning from the previous night’s sleep, but we haven’t quite completely woken up. We’re still there’s an ongoing dream which we call our waking state, which the ordinary person calls their waking state. And there’s still a little bit of more waking up that needs to be done.
So this is the direction that we set in our life, to become completely awake, fully awake. And I talked about the qualities of what this awakening state would be like. Setting some kind of direction. You know if you want to go north and you point your cart south, how will you ever arrive? Determining where you want to get to and then implementing, you know, looking within the all of the all of the myriad choices which we are continually being confronted with, bombarded constantly in the course of our daily lives and choosing.
This leads toward awakening. This one leads to perpetuation of sleep. Consistently making the right choice. You know the past is determined. We can outline a series of cause and effect relationships and say it couldn’t have been any other way.
But the future exists as probability and there’s many hidden variables. Some are beyond our control, but some are within our choice. To the degree that we have a choice, choosing the path with heart, the path of awakening. So it’s our direction that we try to consistently be aware of, keep in front of our mind’s eye toward awakening and the awakening quality, you know, an awareness of the way things really are beyond our fantasies, beyond delusions, beyond how we might like things to be, how we wish they were, beyond our projections, our overlays that we put upon reality. Seeing things clearly and directly without any prejudice, without any misconception.
This is the know we generally call this wisdom. This type of quality clarity, awareness. A state of intense love and compassion, a deep desire that others not suffer, that they grow, that they be free, that they be happy. And setting this as a direction. And experience, that’s the quality, that’s the feeling quality of enlightened mind, an awakened mind, love and compassion.
And experientially, the experience of inexhaustible mental and spiritual energy. You know, this creative spontaneity. Unconditioned freedom. Responding like environmental generosity. Simply the play without any restriction, without any patterning with the environment and the beings therein.
Like a wish granting tree. So this is you know, these qualities are and we can give a direction. We call this Buddha. We say, this is what’s gonna solve my problems. You know, there’s no other reason to to pursue Buddhism or pursue religion in general, a growth technique of any sort.
This is going to solve your problem. That’s why we do it. This is going to solve my problems. Me becoming a Buddha, me awake me waking up, me becoming clearer, more aware, more loving, more compassionate, developing going beyond my my my restricted, unrefined, unspontaneous patterns which govern my life and develop the creative response. It’s mental and physical, spiritual energy.
This is this will solve my problem. This will make me a happy person, fulfilled person. It will give me a meaningful purpose in life. It is the fulfilling my destiny if you like. The the end product human evolution.
This thing called Buddha, this thing called awakening, whatever we want to call it, it doesn’t matter. And we we talked about the Dharma, the means by which we achieve Buddha as a direction and the spiritual community, the social context in which all of this takes place. Know, but you know we have to ask a question. This sounds very nice. Sometimes Jampa talks very sweetly.
It’s nice to hear. But kind of poetically, I like to talk poetically. But, you know, maybe but out on the street, you know, it’s sort of different maybe. You know, maybe this is a a kind of a romantic notion, idealistic notion. We’re trying to impose some kind of preconceptions upon ourselves.
Some kind of straight we’re trying to squeeze ourselves into some kind of idealistic straight jacket, contort ourselves, twist our minds enough, brainwash ourselves enough, maybe we maybe we can believe that we can become such a type of being, that we can do these things. It isn’t really possible. You know, what suggests the possibility within our own experience? How do can we validate this idea for ourselves experientially, you know, beyond dogma, beyond doctrine? Is there something about us which suggests that an awakened state is simply perhaps an extension of who we are presently?
You know, the seed of awakening is present in every woman and man. We all have some knowledge, some experience of reality. Now however faint and obscure it might be, the spark is there. The seed is there. We all have some love and compassion, some feeling of caring, of kindness.
No matter how limited and how exclusive that our love and compassion might be, the spark, the seed is there within our mind. We know this. This is our experience. We all have what? Some energy.
However unrefined, however unspontaneous that energy may be. There’s a spark there. There’s a seed. So the seeds of what we’re talking about, Buddha, awakening, of becoming a happy, healthy, sane human being, that potential is there. We don’t have to buy it.
We don’t have to pray for it. We don’t have to join a club to get it. It’s there. We simply have to create the conditions. And just like a flower, no matter how long a flower seed stays on the shelf, it’s never going to bloom.
Stay there for hundreds of years. But once we take that seed down from the shelf and create the conditions, however we may conceive of those conditions, whatever vast and however vast and varied those conditions might be, The moment that fertile sea comes in contact with the cooperative conditions, first there’s a sprout and slowly through a nourishment there comes the flower. The flower in this case of awakening. So it’s just necessary, and the potential is there. As I hope we can, if I get around to it, develop this idea of becoming believing in ourselves, in our own divinity if you like.
It’s very necessary to believe in yourself, to have confidence in yourself, to see that there’s the potential for real change. You just have to create the conditions to foster change. Today we’re talking about conditions as the three principal aspects of the path. You know, a path, a path with heart. And if I can quotation from Don Juan and the series of books by Carlos Castanada.
And Don Juan is who is a a Yaqui, Spanish American Indian. Spanish American, Yaqui Indian. He’s talking to Don Juan, an old wise man talking to a rather young man who learns very slowly. Years ago I told you that in his day to day life a warrior chooses to follow the path with heart. It is the consistent choice of the path with heart which makes a warrior different from the average man.
He knows that a path has heart when he is one with it, when he experiences a great peace, a pleasure traversing its length. So it’s I talked about these choices which are continually confronting us. More than not, it is this consistent choice of the path with heart, which is our ultimate refuge, which is the direction which will act to cultivate these potential, these seeds to bring about our awakening, the solution to the problem of ego based existence. So this is the quality, and then we we reaffirm it formally by reciting some words. But words are for weak minds.
The words in the Sanskrit, they don’t do much, but they’re better than nothing. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing giving any other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing giving any other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings.
To the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened through the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. So we’re talking about the three principal aspects of the path. Extremely short text by Lama Tsongkhapa. There’s a stack behind you. There’s a stack of and maybe I could pass those out.
This is the copy of the text. It’s fourteen verses. You can keep those. Je Tsongkhapa is the author of the text. And this is I think I mentioned last week, this image on the highest most level is a representation of Je Tsongkhapa, sometimes called Je Rinpoche, and this central painting print, the central figure with all of these multitudes of people, beings.
The central figure is, again, Je Tsongkhapa. He is the founder of one of the four main sects of Tibetan Buddhism, Gelug tradition. I just you know, just a few words about him so you have some historical context. He was born in thirteen fifty seven. Thirteen fifty seven in Eastern Tibet in a place called Tsong.
That’s where he gets his name, Tsongkhapa. Tsong means onion. So he’s the onion person. The man from onion valley, something like that. He was it said that his birth was prophesied by Śākyamūni Buddha and by Padmasambhava.
He took lay vows when he was three years old. He took novice ordination when he was seven and became a monk at the age of twenty one. He studied with all of the great masters of all the various sects. At that time there were four main sects. There was the Nyingma, Kagyu, and Sakya.
But there was an additional sect founded by Atisha called the Kadam sect. Gelug is often termed the reformed Kadam sect. Kadam became in a way the Gelug sect. During the course of his life, Tsongkhapa wrote on almost every subject of both the discourses of Sūtra and Tantra. He compiled eighteen volumes of writings, commentaries that he is said to have direct relationship with Mañjuśrī who was the embodiment of wisdom.
He once did a retreat and did three and a half million prostrations. It’s said that the floor of the cave there was a groove where he slid back and forth prostrating. He said that he did a million eight hundred thousand mandala offerings. Mandala is a symbolic representation of the universe which offered to the field of assembly of spiritual beings such as that pictured on the altar. You know most succinctly he was one of the three most important figures of Buddhism in Tibet.
The other two being Padmasambhava and Atisha. He wrote this little text, fourteen verse text as a letter to one of his students who lived far away and wanted to ask for his advice on how to succinctly develop himself to achieve awakening. He wrote this simple text. And you know I’m trying to you know we talk about there’s a multitude of growth techniques these days and various types of religions. And within Buddhism there are various sects, various traditions.
Within Tibetan Buddhism, in my limited narrow understanding. The entirety of all of the teachings of Buddha are contained within these three principal aspects of the path. The determination to be free, opening our hearts to others, seeing deeply into the nature of reality. If you want to know what Tibetan Buddhism is, it is these three paths, these three aspects of the path. It’s not something other than that.
If these three don’t interest you, then you aren’t interested in Tibetan Buddhism is what I’m saying. That there’s nothing hidden. There’s nothing more than that. There are many profound practices which enhance, which implement, which supplement these three. But this is the essence.
We can see the entirety of Tibetan Buddhism within these three. So we’re getting an understanding of Tibetan Buddhism, of Buddhism, of a way to grow by understanding these three principal aspects of the path. And I mentioned mentioned what a path was from the various different etymologies. For example, the Pali, putting one foot in front of the other. Wisdom, love, wisdom, love empowered by the determination to be free.
From the point of view of the Tibetan term, to become, to clearly realize, to actualize. That which actualize, that’s what makes you real for us is a path. And there are three aspects to this path. There was a one of the greatest twentieth century masters, Tibetan masters by the name of Pabongka Rinpoche. Pabongka Rinpoche.
Think he died in nineteen forty seven. I’m Anyway, he gave a teaching on this very same text, these fourteen verses. And his teaching, they didn’t have tape recorders so they took notes and they compiled these notes and they published it. And in one of his texts, this commentary that he gave on these three principal aspects of the path and talking about the three principal aspects of the path. He said, now there is a great highway along which each and every Buddha of the three times travels.
It is the single guiding lamp for living beings in all the three lands under earth, upon the earth, above the earth. It is none other than the teaching known as the steps to Buddhahood. And the heart, the very life of this teaching is the instructions on the three principal aspects of the path. So this this is the heart of Buddhism as it was preserved in Tibet. determination to be free, determination to be free, opening your hearts to others, awakening your heart, and seeing deeply into nature of reality, the development of wisdom.
Ultimately, the wisdom of selflessness, of understanding emptiness. And I talked about going to that. Anyway, he goes on. Pabongka Rinpoche, and he quotes this one sect that I mentioned, Kadampa. He quotes one teacher in that sect by the name of Geshe Potowa.
Quotation. Everybody’s got some mystic being they’re meditating about. And everybody’s got some mystic words that they’re talking about and all because nobody’s got any real practice they’re doing anything about. And Pabongka Rinpoche continues, Therefore, those of us who are thinking about doing some really pure practice of the spirit should try to find one that will take us on to freedom and all knowingness. And for practice to be this way, it should make us the masters in the three principal paths.
These three are like the heart, the very life within the teachings. These three, determination to be free, opening our hearts to others and seeing deeper into nature of reality. You know, I talked about the necessity of the development of these, why there are these three paths from the point of view of epistemological view last week. That a basic most fundamental misconceptions which we root our way of being in is they miss the ego forming tendency and ego centering tendency.
And therefore to overcome these there are the two latter of the Three Principal Aspects of the path. Opening your hearts to others as a means to uproot this ego centering tendency and seeing deeply in nature reality in order to uproot ego forming tendency. And to energize these two to facilitate we have to develop initially the determination to be free. But we can also look So this is from the point of view of what we say epistemological viewpoint, but also existentially. If we look at ourselves in the way our being is constituted, what do we mean by I?
You know, going to this, I’ve mentioned this before, so these ideas I’m just refreshing and maybe some of the new people can get a new perspective. What There are two aspects to the self, to this thing we call I, whatever it might be. There’s this private experiential part to ourselves, our own little inner world which is not accessible to anyone else. No matter how much you someone may care for you, love you, want to share your entire being with you, they can’t. There’s a part of you which is always going to remain unknowable to others.
This is the very experience of who you are. But there’s an additional aspect to ourselves which is the social aspects to ourselves. The public aspect. That part of ourselves which exists in relationship to others, which is constituted by our relationship to others. So there’s these two aspects which constitute our being, the experiential and the relational.
I have an experience. I eat some chocolate cheesecake. I have an experience. I can’t let you know that experience. No matter if I’m the most gifted poet, the most gifted chemist, I don’t know, I can’t duplicate it.
You can’t know what I’m experiencing. I can talk about it. I can try. We have an experience, we interpret it, we try to communicate There’s all these steps which intervene in the process of other people coming to know about this inner world of ours. They can never know it directly.
Then there’s the part of ourselves which exists in relationship. The social. So if any holistic method of growth, development, it’s going to have to take in these two aspects of ourselves. We’re going to try to develop both of these aspects of ourselves, experiential and social aspects of ourselves, private and relational. And these in traditional Buddhist terminology are called when they have fully developed.
When we become this thing we call Buddha, we call the experiential aspect the truth body, Dharmakāya. We call the social aspect form body, Rūpakāya, Sanskrit. So we’re trying to achieve, they call them bodies. We call it truth body, being as truth. But it doesn’t, it’s not a physical embodiment, it’s being.
It’s an expression of some potential which we call life. It’s a it’s a exponential expression of awakened being, the truth body. It’s like space. It’s it’s without any beginning or end. It’s total simplicity.
It’s beyond any logical determination and free of all limitations or obscurations. It’s a very important in tantra. It’s a very important object of meditation. What we call this truth body. Complete, unpatterned being without any determinations, without any obstruction like space, experienced as bliss without any subject object.
And there’s the form body This social part of ourselves. It’s the embodiment. It’s a social expression of awakened being. A social expression of awakened being. It’s the fulfillment of our being for others.
And we have being for self, being for others. The combination of that. And it has two parts. One is called the complete enjoyment body. Complete enjoyment body.
This is being for others in its maximum utilization. And when we call it when you use this term complete enjoyment, it completely enjoys everything that it is. You know it’s like complete maximization of every quality and intensity of being and what it means to to be a living creature, a sentient life. And its domain is only in pure realms. And perhaps this is becoming a little bit doctrinaire, I don’t know.
The natural realm of natural well-being. And it rises in a variety of forms as an expression of compassion and communication in the social quality. Sometimes the form body is roughly called the communicative body. It only exists to communicate, to relate with. It communicates awakening as transcending awareness.
And it only communicates to high level bodhisattvas. Then there’s a second type of complete enjoyment body, the form body, which is called an emanation body. It’s the what? The maximum manifestation. You know, domain is the world of the experience of ordinary sentient beings like Śākyamūni Buddha.
Behind me was an emanation body. It reveals awakening in many different ways that inspire beings to seek freedom. You know from ego-orientated existence. So from the point of view of Buddhism, a completely evolved being is constituted of these two ways of being. Being for oneself and being for others.
When he’s fully maximized, the main cause for the actualization of being for others, optimal being for for for self. Optimal being for self is wisdom. The wisdom understanding emptiness, seeing deeply into nature of reality. That’s the main cause. The main cause for optimal being for others, being in the world, in relationship to others is love and compassion.
Open our hearts to others. So in the prerequisite for both of these, the driving force behind these is determination to be free. So these three are the heart and path of Buddhism. These are the way we can completely develop the entirety of our being. You know we talk about sometimes you hear about the lesser vehicle.
And the lesser vehicle practitioner is seeking only to seeking liberation for himself, herself alone. This is seen as an extreme. Why? Because even if they fulfill being for self, being for other is left untouched. It hasn’t been actualized.
It hasn’t been developed. It’s the extreme of individual realization. It’s short sighted. There’s still something left to be developed and that is our being for others. So therefore to actualize our complete potential the Buddha set out these three principal aspects of the path.
Both we can look at it from this epistemological point of view and existential point of view. It’s necessary if you want to be essentially if you want to be a happy healthy loving sane human being you have to work at love, at becoming loving, at becoming compassion. You have to work at developing your awareness, at seeing the way things actually are, by developing insight. And these two are energized by developing the determination to be free. And where do we grow?
We grow in love and wisdom. And this is the path we follow. So it’s all there contained within these three principal aspects of the path. So then the text itself. It has three basic divisions.
Even though it has fourteen verses, it still has three basic divisions. The preliminaries that lead to the composition of the text, the main body of the text, and the conclusion of the explanation. So these three divisions. The first, the preliminaries, again has three divisions. Three sections, an offering of praise, a pledge to compose the text, and a strong encouragement for the student to to study the text well to to strive in his practice or her practice.
So the actual text. First line begins with an offering of praise. How much the foremost holy lama. Homage to the foremost holy lamas. So the purpose of Tsongkhapa paying homage at the beginning of the text is to create positive potential, personal power necessary to enable him to bring the composition to completion without any obstacles, without any interruptions.
When it says all, homage to the foremost holy lamas. So you know what? The point of paying homage in general is to help us to realize you know from the very onset, from the outset, Tsongkhapa is paying homage to the spiritual teacher. You know Lama we can just say spiritual teacher. From the very onset of the text to help the reader realize that the development of these three principal aspects of the path within his or her mind is dependent upon the way he or she relates to a spiritual teacher.
You know, in this so we know we have to develop a healthy relationship with a spiritual teacher and what it means the qualities of a spiritual teacher and what it means to really the necessity for having a spiritual teacher in the first place. And Pabongka Rinpoche in his commentary to this text, again he quotes Geshe Potawa. For each liberation there is nothing more important than Lama. Okay. Lama is a Tibetan word.
In Sanskrit, guru. Maybe in English, spiritual teacher. Nothing more important than a spiritual