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 with a series of stark contrasts — a starving mother in Ethiopia, soldiers gripped by hate, people consumed by materialism or chronic illness — to make vivid just how rare the audience’s conditions for practice are. He then presents the classical similes for Buddha nature (gold in a trash heap, a statue wrapped in dirty rags) before formally concluding the first of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path: the determination to be free. A candid Q&A on whether wanting to feel loved is a spiritual problem draws a practical distinction between afflictive and reasoned desire. The session ends with a step-by-step loving-kindness meditation that expands outward from self through friend, stranger, and enemy to all living beings across infinite space.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 3 PA 1998 04 08.mp3
UUID: 535a29de-bfbf-4d17-8cd1-8ad6d92b2c9d
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1998-04-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 41.4 minutes
Words: ~3,347
That evening, go and buy a few hundred grams of rice and maybe some menthols or something to go with it to feed his family. What chance do they have? What opportunity? You know, what chance does a starving mother in Ethiopia have to meditate? Do mindfulness of breathing every morning?
You know? Can she even think about her breath when her child is, you know, starving to death? Very doubtful. What chance does a soldier, Iraq, Iran, with hate in their hearts trying to kill their enemy or defend their own lives, what chance do they have to foster love, compassion? What chance does someone who is living in a country where there is no freedom, what chance What opportunity does he have to come in contact with spiritual methods, spiritual practices, to study, to read books, to listen to talks, to gather amongst like minded people, to carry on his practice publicly with the support of others.
You know, he’s alone, he has a yearning, she has a yearning to grow, to transcend, to go to do make some meaning in their life, but they’re alone without any of the necessary conditions. What about someone who is completely caught up in materialism, completely caught up in power and status, possessions, completely oblivious to their inner life, what’s going on inside their own mind, their own feelings, their own emotions, completely lost to what they’re feeling inside themselves, what chance do they have to grow? How about people with serious illnesses, acute illnesses, chronic pain, drug addicts, alcoholics? Psychotics, mentally retarded people. We’re just simply average people, the average person on the street in our society, those for whom an entire lifetime is like a Sunday afternoon.
It’s not altogether miserable, but rather just hot and dull and uncomfortable. They sweat and they fuss a great deal. Don’t know quite where to go, quite what to do. That afternoon leaves them only with a feeling of with a memory of petty annoyances and tedium. And then suddenly it’s over, it’s night.
So we have to begin to appreciate who we are. We’re all very special people here. It’s a fact. It has nothing to do with pride. Pride doesn’t deal with the real situations, the real facts.
So you have to appreciate who you are and what you are. Appreciate your intelligence, appreciate your kindness, appreciate your your yearning, even have to appreciate your your dissatisfaction. Appreciate the fact that you live in a free society where your material needs are easily met, that you’re free from threat, free from dangers, that you have the time and leisure, that you’re healthy and a little bit awake. Appreciate yourself and your chance so that you won’t go back to sleep. You have this real opportunity, and you’re very special people.
In all the world, if we look around us, there are very few as fortunate as you are, the people who are sitting here right now. There are very few more like you. But we generally don’t appreciate ourselves. If we make effort, we can be helped, and we can help others. If we don’t make any effort, no one can help us, and we can help no one.
We have everything that we need to change, to grow, all the necessary conditions. Each of us has the seed of enlightenment within us, the seed of Buddhahood, the seed of spiritual fulfillment, seeds of wisdom, seeds of love. So these seeds are ultimately the solutions to your problems. The very mind that we have now, the mind which appears to us to be so polluted with hatred, with confusion, you know, that appears so ugly, that very mind, by its very nature, is pure, and it’s been pure from the very beginning. You know, just like polluted water, it can have no matter how many pollutants it may have in it, there’s a method whereby it can be purified.
And we end up with crystal clear spring water, brilliant, pure water. That’s the nature of water. It can never be altered. Likewise, the very nature of our mind, the mind that each of us possess at this very moment, is pure. It has always been pure.
It will always be pure. This very pure mind, the mind that we possess now, is the seed of enlightenment. This seed or this mind, which is our Buddha nature, is spoken of quite extensively in various texts to help us gain appreciation of it. And they use many similes. They’re talking about this mind, this pure mind which each of us have within us at this very moment.
It’s like a Buddha in a muddy lotus. It’s like honey covered by bees, grain in a husk, gold in a trash heap, treasure hidden beneath the earth, a sprout in its pod, a statue wrapped in dirty rags, a future king carried in the womb of an ugly woman, a precious object buried in the ground. Similarly, the element of Buddha, obscured by the various afflictive emotions such as desire, hatred, etcetera, reside within us all. So this pure quality, Buddha nature, is within all of us. It’s merely obscured at the present time by the afflictive emotions such as desire, hatred, ignorance.
But it’s always present. It’s always waiting to be cultivated. In every situation, we can choose to cultivate it to make it more and more manifest in our lives. And as it becomes more and more manifest, it begins to have a greater and greater influence on our lives. It’s like the brilliance of the sun becoming more and more apparent as the clouds begin to fade, as the clouds begin to break up.
In the same way, our Buddha nature, our potential to solve all our problems, our basic sanity, becomes more and more a greater influence as we choose more and more in the direction of growth and away from the various afflictive emotions such as desire, hatred. So we have to look at the reality of our situation. I think everything that I’ve said is the reality of our situation. I’m describing how things actually are when I say that we have pure mind, when I say that we’re going to we have the chance, all the conditions necessary to grow right now, that we’re going to die, we don’t know when, That the significance of the law, the cause and effect, is that our happiness and our suffering is in our own hands, and that any state within the realm, the boundaries of ego, is dissatisfactory, is not freedom. I think those are the facts.
But I think in many ways, we have to constantly, again and again, review these facts so they become more and more apparent to us, know, gain realization of them, integrate these facts into our very being so they begin to become a part of our way of relating with the world and ourselves. Now we live in a fantasy world of ego, which has no relation to reality. I do not say do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this. But such is the character that more that morrow, which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. The determination to be free is the morning star which lights up the path along the way to opening up to others and seeing deeply into the nature of reality. So the determination to be free is like a morning star, but we still have far, far to go.
So that completes the first path and the three principal aspects of the path. Have some time. We’re going to meditate on loving kindness. But if you have some questions you know, about what we’ve covered, we can discuss those. No.
Yeah. With regards desire, would the Buddha suggest that it was not helpful to desire to be loved. And with our family and our children, our husband as close to us, we want to be able to feel they love us. And we’re meant to be self sustaining in sort of loving ourselves. Okay.
Anyway, after And this is a difficult question, which I’m going to ask you. What? It’s a difficult question. But tell me, do you think love is? Can you give me a I know it’s I hate to ask anybody this.
I would hate to But what do you think it is? Can you give me a little short meaning of the word? The very first thing that comes to mind is To feel wanted, to feel cherished. Security? You want to feel secure?
Security of love. Yeah? The security is When you say you want to be loved, what are you asking for? What do you want? Do you want what?
Well, that someone else in the world cares about you, that you are not alone. Someone cares about you. He cares whether you’re happy or not. Well, just cares about you, yes, cares. Me.
Yes. Cares. Yes. And that and that they’re expressing that they love me would would would would make me happy. We can talk about love in the Buddhist sense, for example, simply the wish that someone be happy.
May you be happy. It’s a friendliness. Maybe you will. May good things happen to you, whatever. It’s a wanting someone else to be happy, whatever is necessary.
Is, most simply stated, is what we mean by love in a Buddhist context. Now, you take it in your context, Is it a statement about yourself? Are you saying something about yourself that you I mean, where is it coming from? What is the motivation from it? Is this relevant to anyone else?
Well, when you well, you’ve spent a lot of time talking about the desires, and I can understand how we can get trapped in wanting things. And yet I find that in my normal person, a normal family situation, occasionally, in short applies to a lot of people, desire for someone to express their love towards me. I might intellectually know that the people love me, but sometimes I need it to be shown. And I’ve been thinking in the last few weeks of this in the Buddhist context of would it it be a good thing to try to work towards not needing that love, not wanting that love, but somehow rather being able to be self sufficient. Yeah.
Okay. And I find that very difficult, the thought of, of just not kneeling to feel that other people love me or Okay. Now this love that you desire other people to express to you, Yeah. That love is? What is that love?
Well, that they love me, just that they love me. Yeah. But what what do that they care about you, that somebody cares whether you’re you’re unhappy or unhappy. Yeah. Yeah?
Okay. So first off, we can talk about There are reasonable desires. We can Not all desire is necessarily to be gotten rid of. You know, we can desire to grow, we can desire to help others, we can desire to achieve enlightenment. As these desires are based on reasoning, their their objects exist.
As I said, all the various afflictive emotions, the afflictive desire, their objects don’t exist the way they appear. But in fact, reasoned desire is quite a could be healthy because its object exists and we can attain it. Therefore, we can, you know, we can desire to help others, we can desire to grow, whatever. These are quite These are to be cultivated, you know, quite useful. Now, if you the desire to to want to be cared for, Seems quite natural, doesn’t it?
It seems like a Because it causes a lot of pain if you don’t get it. So Yeah. What what does that tell you? Well, that suggests to me that it’s not a good idea to desire it. Do one need to be cared for?
I don’t know. It’s difficult, isn’t it? Anybody have an idea? It would you know, in in a sense that I mean, you’re seeing your happiness lie outside of yourself. You know, there’s condition something outside of yourself represents a condition which could either bring you suffering or happiness.
And therefore, there’s always going to be some fear. Isn’t there? Fear of loss, fear of loss of it, whatever that has potential to bring you happiness. And I think maybe whenever there’s fear, there’s some degree of hate, I think. And it is What we fear, we we So there I think from your own side, the desire to be loved may prevent you from loving others.
In fact, they are in some way a threat to you, to your own well-being. Then but this is what I’m talking about is I mean, down on the street level, you know, where where we’re at, it’s I would say it’d be extremely difficult not to want to be stroked once in a while, not to want to be feel something someone else was caring about your well-being. I could only answer that ultimately, it would be necessarily you would want to go beyond this. But practically and then temporarily, we could begin to look at its disadvantages. That in fact, this need in itself is a feeling of self insufficiency, and there’s a feeling of fear involved.
That same object is sooner or later going to be a source of suffering. Because sooner or later that object is not going to be there one way or another, either through death or they’re going to leave, or maybe you’ll die first. Ultimately, it’s dissatisfactory. But dissatisfactory quality about it is pretty far removed from perhaps where most of us are at, That there would probably be not of any It would probably be a forcing issue to try to presently, be forcing the the idealistic to think why that I shouldn’t be this way because it’s dissatisfactory. Do you know what I mean?
That you would have to There are probably other areas which would be more useful to work on. That this is probably a more subtle problem. There would be more growth growth afflictions or problems that it would be more useful to direct your attention to rather than this particular one. This is It may not be of be productive at this time because it is such a subtle problem. But it and ultimately, it’s a dissatisfactory situation.
But its subtlety is such that perhaps right now is not not the time to to really to really look at it. And perhaps your attention could be more well used, being directed toward grosser types of dissatisfactory experiences, which you can really work with very solidly. That’s about the best answer I can give. It’s not very helpful. No.
I’m being upset, I’m upset. Yeah? Yeah. Well, another question? Then we can meditate.
Do you think you shouldn’t desire? Okay. So we have to consider our dissatisfactions, our problems, difficulties, and the fact that we want to be happy. Whatever you may have done in the past, whatever mistakes you may have made, you can simply regret them and determine not to repeat them again in the future. However you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold, you can change, can begin again.
For the present, have to make friends with ourselves, be gentle with ourselves, have compassion for ourselves and wish ourselves well. So simply direct positive feelings towards yourself, care about yourself. May I be happy, may I grow, may I be well. Direct good feelings, positive feelings towards yourself. Now think of someone that you like, that you love, someone of the same sex.
Imagine that person in front of you. Think about all the good times you’ve shared, all the happiness, all the kindness that this person has shown you. Simply direct the natural feelings of caring, of wishing happiness towards this person. Radiate that positive feelings towards this person. May you be happy.
May you find everything that you want, that you’re looking for, peace, fulfillment. Now think of someone you neither like nor dislike, a stranger. Imagine that person in front of you. I want to go beneath the superficial appearances that we usually cling to, appearances of sex or age, beauty, color, appearances of economic status, personality, intelligence, education. Try to see the essence of that person.
There’s someone there who wants happiness and doesn’t want to suffer just like yourself. And just as we wish our own self happiness, we have to begin to wish this person happiness because it’s very much a reflection of how we feel about ourselves deep down, how we feel about the essential person. Radiate out positive feelings to this person. Now think of someone who disturbs your mind, who you have problems with, an enemy. Imagine that person in front of you.
This person wants happiness and doesn’t want to suffer exactly like yourself. And perhaps their method of finding happiness, eliminating their suffering, has come in conflict with your method. It’s just a conflict of interest, yours and theirs. You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past in order to find the happiness that you were looking for. This person has done the same to you.
Just as we have to forgive ourselves for the mistakes that we’ve made, we have to begin to forgive this person for being just like us, wanting to be happy and confused about the methods we’re finding it. So just for the moment, aside your grudge, your hurt, your anger. And see someone just like yourself and wish them happiness. Now imagine all four people together, yourself and these three others. Usually, we feel close to some and distant from others.
I try to see they’re essentially all exactly the same, all one happiness, all don’t want to suffer, there’s no difference. Essentially, they’re equal. And radiate our positive feelings equally without any bias to all four. All the people in this room, people seeking to take responsibility for their lives, for their happiness, Try to find a real method to find fulfillment. Wish everyone in the room happiness.
May you find everything that you’re looking for, find fulfillment and peace and help others to find the same. And all the people on the block cooking and eating, watching television, reading. Whatever they’re doing, whatever they’re saying, they’re doing it and saying it in order to find happiness. Radiate out positive feelings, touching everyone on the block. And spreading that further to all of Adelaide, all the people in their cars and buses walking on the streets, shops.
Extending out further and further, just wish to all of the South Australia, all the people, animals, insects. Extending out further, radiating out further, Alice Springs in Darwin, Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, the entire country. Further and further, New Zealand, the entire southern hemisphere. Radiating that further, enveloping the entire world in your heart, touching all the people with your wish, all the people black, white, red and yellow, all the animals, all the insects, everything that lives on the earth is touched by your wish that they’d be happy. Extending out further, radiating out further.
So finally, without any boundaries, without any center, pervading infinite space, you wish, may all things be happy. May all things be happy. And dedicate the positive energy that we create. Audrey, does the desire to to be loved, does does that make you happy or unhappy? Unhappy.
Okay. Through these merits, may I soon attain the enlightened state of Guru Buddha. May I lead every migrating being without exception to that state. May the precious bodhicitta not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore.
Thank you.