Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with the image of a butterfly dreaming it is a monk, Ven Jampa Gendun uses this 32-minute session to guide stable practitioners through the Mind-Only school’s account of reality — one rung on the ladder toward understanding emptiness. A sustained metaphor of wading progressively into water carries the argument: each stage of inquiry loosens naive realism while the student clings to a “log” of partial certainty before finally letting go altogether. The session then works through the Mind-Only framework: karmic seeds stored in the mind basis of all, subject and object arising simultaneously from the same seed, eight consciousnesses, and the three natures of experience. A vivid example contrasts how a human, fish, hungry ghost, and celestial being each perceive the same glass of liquid differently due to karma. Suited to experienced, philosophically stable practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 3 PA 1990 10 05.mp3
UUID: 407c969a-41a9-4872-8c2b-dcf05bec2b9d
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1990-10-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 31.9 minutes
Words: ~3,775
I’m a butterfly dreaming that I am a monk just awakened. And what what this tends to do is and what we have to do if we want to have if these or to have any effect on ourselves is to to begin to loosen up our tight grasp that this is the way reality is. Yeah. That’s to think that you know, it it requires some some faith, doesn’t it? It’s a it can be a little bit frightening then you begin to lose this solidity of how you want you thought things once were.
They aren’t quite so solid and concrete as you want to imagine them to be, and you don’t you don’t quite you don’t quite feel as secure. And I I think I’ve I’ve mentioned the the metaphor which is used, the kind of the imagery which is used in in explaining these four stages. You know, the someone standing on the bank of the shore, this is a naive realist. You know, everything’s very solid, secure, no problem, no questions. But then as but then as he begins to look into the situation, first degree beginning to question the nature of I, so it begins to wade out wade out in the water.
And things quite aren’t quite so stable anymore. The the ground’s not as solid as firm. And then he wades out further and further as he moves through these stages, but he hangs on to vestiges of security. He hangs on to a log. You know, that as we go through this, you’ll you’ll be able to see what they mean by that log, that we hang on to a little bit of some kind of fixed reality.
That things are really Well, there is a little bit of true true existence out there. It’s not all flux. It’s not all change. It’s not all dependent upon my conception. And then finally, with great courage, with great insight, one lets go of the log altogether.
The final final vestiges of some true existence and understands the the actual nature of reality. So there’s this, you know, this wading out which has, you know, which has to be going through. It cannot be done suddenly. The mind would resist. The ego would resist.
There’s this there’s a you know, it’s like learning to trust in someone, I guess. When you like a like a maybe a puppy that’s been hurt. Been you know, you have to at first, even though you have no intention of harming it whatsoever, you only want to help it. Still it doesn’t trust you. It runs away when you just it it it whips, it whines when you even just go to try to touch it.
But slowly it begins to build up a little confidence that you’re not going to hurt it after after trial after trial after trial. And then you feed it and it becomes a little bit closer and doesn’t it’s not so quite as suspicious of you. And so that you can that you allows you to touch it. And finally, it begins to lick your hand and you make and finally, it begins to trust you more and more. And so it’s this this process which has to be gone through.
And opening up to the possibility that we that we hold that this is our reality and we hold onto it very tightly. We don’t even recognize that we’re doing this, that we have a very partial view of of the way things actually are. And it’s very difficult to give that up. But we have to begin to question, to be able to begin to create some doubts. In one text by Āryadeva, they called the Four Hundred Verses.
He says just the very doubt as to whether things truly exist or not is able to shake the foundations of cyclic existence, is able to begin the transformation, begins to disrupt our neurotic compulsive patterns. Just this doubt as to whether things truly exist or not. Just doubt even that has this tremendous force to to help in the transformation of our mind. So we begin to question, how do I know? And to begin to take the question seriously.
It it is actually a serious question that one has to ask oneself with a a great deal of force. How do I know I’m not dreaming? It’s not to, you know I mean, this is why many of the teachings are usually reserved for These types of teachings are usually reserved for older students, stable students because when one begins to question one’s reality, things can become a little bit shaky now and then. So such teachings are not designed to be given to to just anyone. Know, someone is in a little bit of a shaky state.
One has to be fully stable and and firm practice and one’s trust in, for example, the teacher, etcetera. To actually address yourself to that question, I mean, it may seem like a joke at first, but it’s not. How do I know I’m not dreaming? I have. As far as I can understand you, there’s no way that I can prove I’m not.
That’s not to say that I am dreaming. It’s just that I have to open up myself to the to the possibility that I could be and what this might mean. So, you know, in the in this dream, There is a you know, I see a tiger in a dream. I see it. There’s an eye consciousness which sees a tiger in the dream.
Both the tiger and the eye consciousness were just manifestations of mind, both of them. Both are just the play of the mind. It’s just the play of the mind, isn’t it? A dream is just a play of the mind. Different impressions have been left on the mind over perhaps over the course of the day or, you know, previously.
And they become activated during the course of sleep. And the the mind just places video cassette. There’s nothing there’s nothing other than the video cassette machine. It’s just on tape. There’s not really tigers.
They’re not really people. There’s this image on a screen, an internal screen, but appears that way. It appears as it as it does now to us. And this could be all how our specific recording, you know, in our own mind. You know, recognizing that it is the mind producing both.
One could one could begin to one could choose to dream of whatever one wanted. One begins to when this is deeply realized, to gain control over one’s reality, one’s dream. What type of program would I wish to implant? What type of video cassette do I want to insert in my in my mind to to show what kind of display? So not only is one liberated from the illusion of self, but one is liberated from the sense of powerlessness that I don’t have control over what it is about me and how I experience it.
But it once you know, that sense of powerlessness that we have prevents us from realizing our true nature and limits one’s compassion. We have a sense of powerlessness about us, and we have we have no control over our world. But from this point of view, from the mind only point of view, we this world is the same entity as my mind. My world is the same entity as my mind. It’s a play of within my own mind.
You know, the you know, it’s my dream, and I can choose whatever kind of dream I want in a way. Alright. We’re going to talk about why this the reality appears the way it does, why we dream, the type of dream that we’re dreaming. And the the mind only school is is not saying that everything is oneself or one’s own personal experience. You know, there is a world that one shares with others.
But that one’s world is not a different substance from one’s own mind. And how this has come about. For for example, the the mind only school asserts what is called the mind basis of all. Mind basis of all. It is a a neutral consciousness which acts as a repository for karmic seeds and dispositions, impressions.
You know, we we commit actions of physical, verbal, mental actions. And these leave a trace upon the mind basis of all. Like, you know, the and one way one way of looking at it, they leave a seed. They implant a seed, a potency, some disposition. When when a seed is activated, it simultaneously produces a perceiving consciousness and a perceived object.
Simultaneously, they arise together. We have a seed of an action which is implanted on the mind basis of all. All these seeds, repository. When one of these seeds is activated, it ripens, it grows, and produces simultaneously the subject and object. What appears to me and the sense of a of a consciousness perceiving that appearance, that object, they rise together.
Now this is why we say that the subject object are not substantially different. That is to say that they because they are produced from the same substance. They are both produced from this karmic seed. They produce they are both come products of the same substance. They are not substantially different.
They both come from the same substance, the object and the subject. They both come from karmic seeds. And then we we are, you know, continually experiencing the effects of the activation, the ripening of these karmic seeds within our mind. And we’re constantly creating new karmic seeds and planting new dispositions within within this within this mind basis of all. And from the point again, this is all being explained from the from the point of view of the mind only stage.
That this is what takes rebirth. This was this is what goes on to a future life. This particular consciousness called the mind basis of all because it carries our entire evolutionary history implanted in it, encoded in it, all of these karmic seeds which make us who we are. And this is this consciousness, this repository is what goes on to a future life. This is what takes rebirth.
Everything that we experience is simply a a product of the ripening of these seeds. The the the mind basis of all is the is the basis of all six types of consciousnesses. Of all six types of consciousnesses along with their objects. There are six types of consciousness along with their object. There are, for example, the objects of these consciousnesses are form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and mental objects.
And then there are consciousness which perceive these, and the the eye consciousness which perceives form, the ear consciousness which hears sounds, etcetera. So the mind basis of all is the basis for all of these six types of consciousnesses and the six types of objects. They all rise out of this, from these seeds. This and all that manifest does so on the basis of this consciousness. Both the perceived object and the perceiving six types of consciousness is like waves on an ocean.
And the the the waves of the the waves of an ocean are never separate from the ocean. They’re just manifestations of the ocean. Though, you know, though they manifest very differently, they never are separate from same substance as the ocean. So all of these various objects, sounds, tastes, sights, individual objects, and the consciousnesses, eye consciousness, nose consciousness. They are simply they are never separate from the basis, the mind basis of all itself.
They’re just like the play of the waves on the ocean. So in in this in this school, the mind basis of all is the eighth consciousness. So this school, the mind only school, posits eight consciousnesses. The six that I mentioned, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mental consciousnesses, plus the eighth consciousness, which is the mind basis of all. Then they also posit a seventh consciousness, which is called afflicted mind.
The seventh consciousness is that which conceives the mind basis of all to be a self sufficient self. The afflicted consciousness views the mind bases of all and misconceives it to be a self sufficient self. So, there are these eight consciousnesses. The six normal consciousnesses that we usually list, a seventh consciousness which is the afflicted mind which misconceives the nature of the self, and then the mind bases of all, like the repository in which all these karmic seeds are implanted which acts as the basis for developing all these various other consciousnesses and their objects. They all arise out of this.
You know, at this stage when we talk about at the mind only stage, when we talk about seeing deeply into the nature of reality, this means that seeing that the emptiness of subject and object as substantially different entities. This is what we want to understand at this stage. The emptiness of subject and object being substantially different entities. As to the subject and object, my eye consciousness perceiving this table and the table are the same substance. They’re not substantially different.
You know, essentially, you know, we talk very simply that that there is there are no external objects, that there is no matter, that things are not constructed of atoms and matter. That mind and matter are of the same substance. And they’re not different substances. Mind and matter are not different substances. Atoms aren’t the world isn’t constructed out there.
So in order to do this, in order to to we’re going to go into this a little bit deeper than what we this is like way of introduction. We’re going to have to talk about what are called the the mind only school divides our experience into the three natures. How we experience phenomena. It divides all of these experiences into three natures, imaginary nature, dependent nature, and thoroughly established nature. And then also looking at the way our language influences our way of how how how the way the the part language plays in misconceiving the nature of our phenomenon, of our experience.
How the way our thinking process and the way we use language influence our experience. So we’re gonna continue. The fact that you know, trying to look into the the dream like quality of our existence. And, you know, again and again trying to loosen our grasp, our fixation that things are very solid, real concrete. Allowing developing the flexibility of mind and confidence.
You know that again maybe to come back, this is a particular stage in the development of an individual in coming to an understanding of the final mode of reality. This is not the final mode of reality. This is will be refuted. This is argued against by upper schools. They say, no, this is not right.
But still, this is a in this in this this journey, we have to be able to understand, sense what they’re getting at. Otherwise, we won’t be able to to you know, as in the sense of running walking up the rungs of a ladder. We’re not going to be able to really get at the point, see the significance of the later stages. So you know here, trying to get into the the feeling of of everything is, you know, that I see you out there. I have a sense.
I have an eye consciousness which sees in your your coat and your pants. And this is that is eye consciousness and your coat and your pants are my impression of your visual of your form is arising simultaneously by the activation of a karmic seed within my mind. That it is not something cut off for myself out there, separate from my own mind. And if we can, you know, we’re we’re constantly constantly working. If I if I can make this adjustment, you know, in the in the the dream example at the Hearer stage, when one is being chased by a tiger, there’s the the person experiences fear, the dream person, because I identify with that person, the I entity in the dream.
The moment I become aware that I’m dreaming, that this is simply a dream figure, this is not I, Then all the fear ceases immediately. All the suffering of being chased by a tiger ceases immediately. Again, if, you know, the the I carry that even further in the mind only stage. When I when I see that the even the tiger, let alone the dream tiger, let alone the the the dream figure, the I figure in the dream, are both simply the play of my mind. Then I I I can begin to then ceasing to identify with not only with that I figure, but being able to gain control over the the nature of what kind of experience I wish to go through, what type of environment I want to create.
Now we’re beginning to see that you know, we talk about the Buddha’s developing a pure land through the force of their prayers, the force of their karma, that we can actually create a type of world through if we are willing to create the karmic causes for that. That that worlds can, in fact, exist simultaneously. You know, just the you know, that we have different different levels of mentality in viewing what is. For example, you know, we have we we can we due to our karma, we can see the same object, what appears to be the same object in radically different ways. You know, some people just a very mundane example.
Some some people these days, see Saddam Hussein, for example, as being, you know, mad, evil. Other people see him as being a savior, as being a very politically astute, a master politician. A mosquito would see him as a meal. A a parasite would see him as a home. So they they both have their slide.
Due to the force of their karma, they have We They all have their various conceptions about what appear What we would think to be a a very solid externally existing object. But in fact, it can be to the to the karma, it’s it can be viewed from many different perspective. A glass of water, a glass of liquid can be a home to a fish. It can be viewed as a home for a fish. It can be to a being in hell, it’s full of molten lead.
To a hungry ghost, it’s full of pus and blood. To a human, it’s water. To a celestial being, it’s nectar. Now this these are all used to establish that things do not exist externally to the mind, that they are dependent. They’re not only dependent, but they are the same substance as the mind.
Otherwise, we would all have agreement. If things existed external to the mind, we would all have agreement on it what everything was. There would be that they wouldn’t be they would exist independent of our mind. Everyone would have the same view of the same object, but in fact, they don’t. People think see the same objects in radically different ways.
So next week, we’ll look into the week after that, work into these three natures, the way of categorizing our experience into imaginary, dependent, thoroughly established natures and part our language plays in our thinking process in determining how determining the quality of our experience. And then we’ll go on to the Autonomy middle way stage. See how far we get. So any questions? The higher schools?
Do they say they’re wrong? Or Yeah. Yeah. They they would yeah. They they they hold that their school is true.
They wouldn’t they wouldn’t hold the school if they thought it was false. Yeah. They all they all they all think they’re right. And no question about that. So there’s these huge debates which are continually going on back and forth.
Yeah. Are these practitioners next to them today? Or The I mean, the the mind only school is a useful way of looking at. It’s useful to use. I mean, Dharma some of the greatest masters in Indian Buddhism were mind only school, Dharmakīrti.
The the reason that it was it was formulated I mean, it can be drawn out of the Buddha’s the teach teachings of the Buddha, the mind only school. They can be extracted out of if it’s interpreted in a particular way. And it was Asaṇga who formulated into a system the mind only school. And he did that because to help his brother who was stuck at the Hearer level and he couldn’t make the jump up to the middle way school, so he had to give him a bridge. So he formulated the mind only school to help his brother to to make this step.
So I mean, everyone I mean, it’s very difficult to let go of your your position. But then then so there are I mean, the there are many great masters who hold on to the hearer level, mind only school level, and especially within the middle way, the two levels of Autonomy and Consequence. We have tremendous battles between those. Don’t I mean, we we you know, we talk about I can talk about the final thought of the Buddha being the the Consequence school of the middle way, but that, I mean, I when I really think about it, I have no idea what they’re talking about. And I just my mind is kind of it’s like slipping on ice.
It just doesn’t go anywhere. Like, wheel on ice. So so yes. Yes. That’s right.
That’s the final thought of Buddha. It doesn’t do much up here. I don’t know. Right here, wherever it is. Yeah.
Well, actually, we’re very much we’re probably not and we’re not even at the Hearer stage yet. We’re still but at least we’re thinking about. So we dedicate the positive energy that we created, all the karmic imprints that we implanted on our mind basis of all. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to the enlightened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish but increase more on me.
Thank you.