Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 41-minute session by quoting Tsongkhapa’s warning: without wisdom seeing into the nature of reality, even renunciation and compassion cannot cut the root of cyclic existence. He defines ignorance as a stubborn refusal to learn anything that might threaten ego security — illustrated by the image of dressing for summer while autumn has arrived — and identifies dependent arising as “the slogan of the Buddha.” The session’s main thread is the three-stage Buddhist learning process: listening, reflecting, and meditating, with a careful distinction between analytic and stabilizing meditation drawn during the Q&A. Gendun then maps four philosophical schools — from naive realism through to Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka — as stages of progressively wading deeper into a river until one swims freely in the ocean of emptiness.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 3 PA 1990 08 03.mp3
UUID: 3849b482-5e71-482a-b2f5-2f9a94cf6802
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1990-08-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 40.9 minutes
Words: ~4,393
Along with their pain, are going to remain an integral part of our newly evolving cell. So first, we develop the determination to be free. This is our primary, our initial shift away from the reinforcement of our present self conception of who we are. We the necessity to change, giving ourselves some direction away from primarily ego based existence. But additionally, opening our hearts to others so that such that this newly evolving self that we’re seeking to create is still going to be integrated or connected, associated with others and with their difficulties, with their problems.
And we talk about the three principal aspects of the path. This short text by Tsongkhapa. It begins The section on seeing deeply into the nature of reality begins with the verse, if you do not have the wisdom realizing the way things are. That is to say, if you do not have the wisdom seeing deeply into the nature of reality. Even though you have developed the thought definitely to leave cyclic existence and the altruistic intention, even though you have developed the determination to be free, to go beyond these compulsive reoccurring patterns which constitute saṃsāra, And even though that you’ve developed the you’ve opened your hearts to others, you developed an awakened heart, still the root of cyclic existence cannot be cut.
That there’s no possibility for freedom. No matter how much you may determine to grow, no matter how much love and compassion you may develop, you cannot be free without seeing into the nature of reality, seeing into the nature of the self. You know, the we cannot cut the root of unenlightened existence. The basis of unenlightened existence is ignorance, or maybe we could call it some sort of distorting awareness. It’s basic misconception.
And such a type of existence is marked is is characterized by dissatisfactoriness, impermanence, and selflessness. And talking about ignorance, It’s, you know, it’s many, many qualities. Primarily, it’s this it begins with a a stubborn, closed minded refusal. A closed mindedness about learning anything which you feel might threaten your ego identity. Anything which might upset our sense of security that you get from some particular version or model of reality.
No matter how many times your conception about the way things are might be invalidated, by your experience, by your your rational understanding, we still cling to it. We still hold to it. It. We stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that it’s like, you know, summer has passed, autumn has come, but still you refuse to acknowledge that fact, and you dress inappropriately, and you become sick. No matter how many times our particular conception about the who we are, about the world around us is invalidated.
We refuse to acknowledge that. And this is that invalid that refusal, that stubborn mind, closed mindedness factor is what we mean by ignorance. It’s an absence of precision, absence of clarity. Out of this imprecision, out of this unclarity, we create all the mistaken models of the nature of reality, nature of phenomenon. So it’s it’s like a cloudiness.
It’s a veiling, obscuring quality. So it prevents us from some from seeing the absurdity of many of our most fundamental beliefs. So it’s the factor of the mind which hinders basic sanity. You know, the the factor of our Buddha nature, our own brilliant wisdom, our basic goodness, our basic sanity, which hinders it from learning about ourselves and our situation. It it is that which perpetuates unenlightened existence, ignorance.
So, you know, to be enlightened, you to be awakened, you know, talk something about this in the sense that enlightenment as a full awakening, about about total personality to reality. And the integration of all our our various models that we have into a consistently self validating holistic experience of well-being. Maybe this is something that enlightenment’s about. I’m talking about well-being. Well-being means to be fully born, to become what one potentially is.
It means to have the full capacity for joy and for sadness or, to put it still differently, to awake from half slumber the average man lives in and to be fully awake. If it is all that, it means also to be creative. That is to react and to respond to myself, to others, to everything that exists, to react and respond as the real total man I am to the reality of everybody and everything as he or it is. In this act of true response lies the area of creativity of seeing the world as it is and experiencing it as my world. The world created and transformed by my creative grasp of it so that the world ceases to be strange world over there and becomes my world.
Well-being means, finally, to drop one’s ego, to give up grief, to cease chasing after preservation and the aggrandizement of the ego, To be and to experience oneself in the act of being, not in having, preserving, coveting, using. So no matter how determined we may be to grow, no matter how much love and compassion we may have in our hearts, we still are not fully awake. We have still not fully realized our potential if we do not possess we we do not have the ultimate skills to be able to benefit others if we have not seen deeply into the nature of reality. Therefore, Tsongkhapa in his text says, therefore, work at the means of realizing dependent arising. Therefore, work at the means of developing the the means of realizing dependent arising.
His holiness, the Dalai Lama says, dependent arising is the slogan of the Buddha. They used to have little badges printed up, dependent arising. And if love and compassion are the heart of Buddhism, then the mind of Buddhism is dependent arising. Now we have to understand dependent arising. We don’t have any choice, and we have to begin this gradual unfoldment of this understanding.
You know, as as I talked mentioned, talking about the qualities of ignorance, it’s this stubborn, close mindedness about learning anything which you feel might threaten, which we feel might threaten our ego, our our ego identity, and upset the sense of security that we derive from that. So there’s going to be a resistance in this learning process. Now learning here means something more than than accumulating more knowledge, accumulating information. We’re trying to see the way things actually are to the extent that our mistaken conceptions and models are completely eliminated. In a way, what we mean in you know, we quite often talk about realizations.
Within the Buddhist context, realization means to eliminate superimpositions. Eliminate superimpositions. Gaining realizations is not like getting another PhD. You know, like the Buddha is not somebody who’s who’s earned fifty five PhDs. He has eliminated superimpositions.
He has eliminated the covering over the nature of things. You know, it’s it’s like seeing a snow mountain as green, you know, because we wear sunglasses. And finally, you take off the sunglasses, and you see it for what it actually is. You realize that the snow mountain is white. You’ve eliminated a superimposition with respect to the snow mountain.
You know, unless we but we’re not going to if we have some emotional investment in seeing snow mountains as green, we’re not going to even begin to question, let alone be able to remove those those sunglasses. There’s going to be resistance against even beginning to doubt whether the snow mountain is green or not. It’s only when you begin to see that it’s in your own self best interest to learn about the nature of mountain, in fact, that they’re white, that you’re going to begin to question whether, in fact, they actually are green or not. Only when you begin to see that it’s dissatisfactory to see snow mountains as green Are you going to be able to develop the personal power and to to progress to the stage where you’ll be able to see them as they actually are? Otherwise, you’re going to stick with it.
You’re going to maintain the status quo. Even with respect to ourselves, it’s difficult to change. And we have our our our self image of who we are. It’s difficult to get a a good look even in a very mundane sense, even with respect to a negative self conception that we have. And we have a tendency to focus upon the negative facets about ourselves, to forget the discount positive elements within our personality, for example.
So we we tend to selectively filter out our experience and feedback, which might contradict or threaten the conception we have about ourselves. There’s a resistance against learning and its corollary change. To learn is to change, And to primarily, the study of Buddhism to study Buddhism is to study yourself, to learn about yourself. And to practice it is to change. This is what we’re trying to do.
And this this process is is based upon the activities of listening, reflecting, and meditating. And this is all of Buddhist training is structured around these three basic activities of listening, reflecting, and meditating. Listening involves looking at, listening to, studying the various teachings within with an open receptive mind. You know, that it doesn’t it doesn’t distort what it’s hearing. It’s it doesn’t have its its hidden agenda, which it keeps polluting or adulterating everything it hears.
Like, there’s there’s an open mindedness. Well, I’m going to hear what this is all about before I pass any sort of judgment. And using your own reasoning, using your own intuition, using your own experience, but initially, listening to the you know, filling up your database, getting the facts, trying to understand what it is that’s being taught, what is it that’s being said. So this is the initial stage, gathering information, understanding the categories, understanding the words, the terms, the basic structure of the teaching. You know, during the course of this study, during the course of listening, as you’re going to hear during the course of learning about Buddhism, you’re going to hear many things that that you cannot believe, that you that you find, that you dislike.
That’s fine. You too it would probably be strange if you didn’t. But so you can just just simply take those and put them on a shelf and take them down from time to time and reexamine them in the light of more learning as you go along, more understanding as you go along. You know, Buddhism doesn’t ask us to believe in anything. Doesn’t ask you to believe in Buddhism.
I don’t the Buddha wasn’t a Buddhist, so there’s no reason that we have to be ourselves. You know, the Buddha said, you know, upon almost one of his final words before his before his death was, know, do not accept what I’ve said out of respect for me, but to assay it, that is to examine it, analyze it just as you would go. You know, there’s a process of and as you that’s I think they rub it, they scratch it, and they put some kind of chemical on it to determine whether it’s whether it’s it’s purity or type of gold. So likewise, everything that you hear within the context, within the light of your own reasoning, experience, and intuition, you are to analyze it. In other words, something I think dogma is antithetical to growth, is antithetical to Buddhism, that we have to understand, we have to believe, we have to rediscover everything that the Buddha, him or herself, discovered for ourselves.
We’re trying to become Buddhas within ourselves. This is our our direction. This is our ultimate refuge. Listening with an open mindedness, with receptivity. And then we begin the second stage, reflecting upon what we hear.
You know, begin to carefully to think about it, to contemplate it, what we we we have received in order to clarify its significance. Examining what you’ve heard, what you’ve studied. You know, is it true or not? Is it is it is it consistent with my actual experience or not? No.
It’s I think it’s it’s really difficult to think for yourself. I think it’s more difficult than most of us have ever thought To be your own person, to be no one but yourself, you know, in a world which is nice and night and day trying to make everybody else is a very difficult battle to think for yourself, To go beyond it’s a very insecure possibility because you may be quite alone in your thinking. To go beyond the shoulds and the the oughts, to go beyond the heard and to think, you know, this is really makes sense to me. This is accord with my experience. It takes a tremendous amount of self confidence and trust in one’s ability to understand.
You know, looking at everything that’s being taught in the light of your own wisdom. Is it true or not? Is it accord with my experience or not? And two, are then we have to question. Are my methods of reasoning and my experience themselves, are they valid?
So through this questioning, doubts will arise. And here, we’re not talking about we’re we’re talking about healthy doubts. Now a real sense of calling into question, a real sense of a fluid you know, doubt represents an an openness of mind when the mind is in a flux. It could go almost any way. You know, I I I mentioned that realization is a elimination of superimposition.
It’s as if we have we have loosened up our holding on to that previous position, and the mind is in a state of equilibrium. That there’s a real possibility for some understanding to arise. Within within Buddhism, doubt is considered a precursor to real knowledge. Without doubt, there’s no knowledge. They’re calling into question.
And here, you know, we it means healthy doubt as opposed to cynical doubt. You know, with with respect to to seeing deeply into the nature of reality, one great Indian master, by the name of Āryadeva said, that even to have doubt with respect to the nature of reality, that things whether things are truly existent or not, is to shake the very foundations of cyclic existence. Just to have that doubt as to whether things truly exist or not, just to have that doubt as to the nature of the self brings about a tremendous transformation. You know, so obviously, here doubt is a very deep question. It’s a very deep experience, a real opening to the you know, to other possibilities than what perhaps what we’ve clung to up to the present.
As opposed to cynical doubt, which is simply a persistent confirmation of your own preconceptions. And finally, the third stage, meditation. Listening, reflecting meditation. This is where the actual integration of some newly acquired knowledge takes place. Some new integration of some of a new understanding into one’s character, into one’s into one’s being.
In a sense, it’s just like it’s putting into practice. And when we talk about meditation practice, it it’s not as if we are are practicing meditation so that someday we will have perfected it and be able to give a perfect performance of meditation. Whether it’s practice in the sense of actually being or doing it, being it, or doing it, as opposed to thinking about it. Now when we meditate on love, we want to become love rather than think about love. When we meditate on emptiness, we want to become that emptiness, become that selflessness, to dwell in that selflessness rather than think about selflessness.
We’re actually practicing. We’re doing it. This is the way integration takes place. So in listening stage, we gather all the various facts. We see how the information gets together.
Then at the reflecting stage, we we use our reasoning, our experience, and we begin to get some kind of certainty. And they’re creating some kind we clarifying our doubts, creating and clarifying doubts. So we gain some knowledge and confidence. And this confidence is a very important part of the process. Now with this confidence, then we can embark on meditation.
And in the meditation, we allow we we go beyond all hesitation, and we become that. All doubts, all fears are set aside, and we experience directly whatever it is that we’re meditating. And this we experience the true meaning of the teachings. We feel them. We we see directly.
You know, this confidence, we allow we let go as a necessity to maintain a particular position. To maintain We allow the possibility for change. This is where the true integration of the teaching takes place. But this requires great confidence brought about through these two prior stages. When we we develop this fearlessness to allow allow ourselves to actually be the meaning of the teaching in meditation.
You know, we we go beyond the hesitation, the thinking about, and we become, we do, we become love. We exist within selflessness. Now this requires confidence. It requires a process of of working through one’s fears, of coming to an understanding. It said that meditating without listening and reflecting is like is blind.
Meditation without re and reflecting is blind. Listening and reflecting without meditation is as if we don’t have any legs. We really don’t get anywhere. So we’re going to be talking about these, about dependent arising. And as the corollary to dependent arising, we’re going to talk about emptiness.
Is the and in Buddhism, dependent arising is the ultimate nature of reality. It is the endpoint of our analysis. In other words, the most basic or fundamental element of existence, of our experience, is emptiness, is dependent arising. You know? For example, if one takes a clay pot, a potter might say that in absolute terms, the clay pot is clay.
That’s in in absolute terms. That’s his final mode of existence. But a scientist might say that it was a collection of atoms. But if he were even more precise, he might say that all the atoms themselves consist of even subatomic particles moving in space. And this would be a rough approximation of reality.
In absolute terms, even atomic particles can no longer be defined exactly, precisely. You know, they they can be said to only exist as probabilities. And this this this situation will probably change in the future. In the same way with respect to any object, The ultimate analysis from the point of view Buddhism is the object’s emptiness, is the object’s dependent arising. But in the same way that we can talk about the pot on different levels, likewise, we can talk about emptiness dependent arising from various levels.
Ultimate truth presents itself differently to different practitioners in the various levels of practice. You know, just as just as in the case of an individual, there the experience of an individual, there emerges different levels of practice, different understandings. Likewise, in the there is within the historical development of Buddhism, there emerges a progressive increasing subtlety of the teachings with respect to the ultimate nature of reality. What we want to ultimately understand or finally understand is dependent arising as presented by what is called the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school. This is the final thought of the Buddha on the ultimate nature of reality.
This is what, you know, this is what we’re aiming for. This is our goal. But in coming to that understanding, it’s highly doubtful that a person will gain an accurate understanding of the most profound teaching with having without having gone through progressive stages of the teachings leading to that. And coming to that realization, you know, there are progressive stages of realization. There are at least four recognizable stages that we’re going to discuss.
Each of these have a more and more subtle level of understanding as to the nature of reality. We’re going to look at the Hearer stage, which we discussed last time, and we’re going to review that very quickly. Then after that, there’s the Mind Only stage. After that, there’s the Autonomy Middle Way stage. And then finally the Consequentialist Middle Way stage.
So, you know, as I mentioned there’s a resistance due to the factor of ignorance. A stubborn closed minded refusal to learn about anything which will threatens ego security. It’s it’s the way its existence. So it has to be approached very gradually. There’s no other alternative.
You know, the one image that is presented in Tibetan Buddhism to get across this idea is in the sense that these these gradual stages of realization is progressing through these four schools. It’s like a first a person standing on a bank of a shore, of a river. And this is, you know, like, not what we call naive realist. Everything exists the way it appears. Doesn’t even call it into question.
I’m here. Everything is solid. Everything truly exists. No problem. But then we begin to question.
Do I really exist the way I am? Am I am I the body? Am I the mind? Am I neither the mind or the body? We begin to we begin to rise some doubts.
And this is as if beginning to slowly wade into the water. And then finally, we begin to question more deeper as to, am I separate? Is the mind separate from from the object? Are they the same substance? Are they different substances?
And this is like the water gets so deep that you have to hold on to a log. But so we begin to to understand, well, there is no truly existent self of persons, but there is a truly existent self of objects. We have to have something to cling onto, some shred of an anchor, some security. There’s still a great deal of fear. But as we begin to develop some confidence, we reach the stage where we let go of the log and we swim in the ocean of emptiness, that nothing truly exists, that everything is empty.
But it would be impossible to come to this this understanding indirectly without going through this gradual process of overcoming the resistance to understanding, to overcome our fear of understanding. Working through these four stages of gradual realization. Hearer stage, Mind Only stage, Autonomy Middle Way school, and finally, the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, the final thought of the Buddha with respect to the nature of reality. So that’s what we’re going to be talking about, working through these four stages. Do you have any questions about anything that I’ve said?
So that’s the difference between contemplation or reflection and meditation. Meditation is is the there’s two types of meditation. There’s analytic and fixative or stabilizing meditation. And the difference between analytic meditation and contemplation or reflection is that one’s no longer one sees. And then one and then, for example, you know, one would if you were analyzing the nature if you were looking at the selflessness of persons and and you would think that that the if the self exist, it must be either one with the body and mind or it must be separate from the body and mind.
And you’re contemplating this, reflecting upon this. And then you go on to say, well, it’s not the same as the body and mind, and it’s not separate from the body and the mind. And then one would so this this was done through reasoning, through an an one looks. And then one would see that there is no one would see that there is no self which is one with the body and mind. There’s no self which is separate from the body and mind.
When you’re still distinguishing between between the self. You have a non you have a self which that you’ve identified as the the object of negation, and it’s not one with the body and mind. It’s not separate from the body and mind. One sees this. One does not one no no one no longer reasons.
One sees it, and this is the analytic aspect. And then there’s a feeling of selflessness which arises out of that, and this is a stabilizing meditation. So one reflects this this self is not one with the body and mind. The self is not separate from the body and mind. That’s reflecting.
Then one sees that the self is not one with the body and mind. The self is not separate from the body and mind. And then out of this arises the feeling of selflessness, and this is a stabilizing meditation. So there’s one sees in the analytic aspect of meditation the the selflessness. But one but one has yet to feel it.
Then there’s this the actual sense one becomes selfless as it were. It dwells in a state of selflessness. One first sees it and then feels it. So there’s no reasoning at this point. Cynical.
I think Cynical questioning. Yeah. Well, it’s just when you have your hidden agenda and you’re simply trying to reconfirm. And then you’re not really there’s no real openness, a sense of real possibility of learning something. Just seeking to refute or reconfirm in accordance with your own some preconceived idea that you have.
People are oftentimes ask questions and it’s quite easy as one becomes aware that they’re not really out. There’s no real question behind that. They’re simply trying to they’re coming from some certain place and they’re trying to reconfirm what they’re thinking or refute what you’re thinking. That’s okay. There’s no real question involved.
I think it’s quite difficult to It’s almost asking too much for people to be open continually, isn’t it? Mean, it’s selflessness, but that now we’ll jump into the river next week. So we can dedicate the the energy that we created. Page five, verse verses eight and nine. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to that enlightened realm through these skillful actions.
May the supreme jewel of the awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow, may that which has arisen never diminish and increase more and more.