Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. What does the Tibetan word gom — meaning “to habituate” — tell us about why meditation works? Ven Jampa Gendun opens this 47-minute talk with that framing before turning to the session’s main focus: the third of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, seeing deeply into the nature of reality. Drawing on Tsongkhapa’s root verse, he shows why neither determination to be free nor compassion for others can alone cut the root of cyclic existence — wisdom realizing dependent arising is also required. He defines ignorance as stubborn closed-mindedness toward anything threatening one’s ego identity, illustrated by a vivid image: insisting a snow mountain is green while refusing to remove tinted sunglasses. A passage from Erich Fromm on well-being rounds out the picture of what ego-transcendent existence might actually feel like. Part of a weekly series; prior sessions are helpful but not required.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 3 PA 1989 05 19.mp3
UUID: aca026d5-f7cf-4ac1-993f-51586151755c
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1989-05-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.9 minutes
Words: ~4,730
For meditation. I’m trying to come to some understanding of what we perhaps mean by meditation within the Buddhist tradition, and specifically in the Tibetan tradition. I think there’s probably a great deal of misconception, a lot of ambiguity surrounding the concept of meditation and what it’s about. Later on in the actual talk itself, when we talk about seeing deeply in the nature of reality perhaps it will become even more clear. But just as a preface you know each night each Friday night talking a little bit about meditation because the attitude that we bring to it very much determines the effect that we’re going to get out of it if in fact we get any positive effect at all.
The word itself denotes most of all what it’s about in the Tibetan tradition. The Tibetan word for meditation is gom. And gom simply means to habituate, to familiarize. Simply means to become accustomed to, to become accustomed to. You know we’re getting used to something, to get used to something.
What we’re getting used to in meditation? We’re getting we’re trying to establish a way of relating. We’re trying to become accustomed to, to get used to dwelling in perhaps non ego based states, dwelling in awareness, dwelling in the present moment, in the here and now with what actually is reality, and all of these qualities. So it’s like a break, a gap in our fantasy world that we usually live in, that we usually cling to. And we’re very much and I hope this will become more and more apparent as we begin the discussion on seeing deeply in the nature of reality live in a world of our own creation.
And to a large extent, this world is a fantasy a fantasy of the projections of ego. And it’s experienced as dissatisfaction, as confusion, as bewilderment. And so meditation gives us an opportunity to momentarily step outside of the fantasy world of ego and into the reality of an enlightened state. We become accustomed to that. We familiarize ourselves with actually being in the present moment devoid of any of our misconceptions, superimpositions, our mistaken notions about the way things actually are, but dwelling in the way they in fact are.
So it becomes a very clear sighted way of knowing awareness. You know, just getting the qualities of what meditation is about in general. No matter what type of meditation we might be involved in. We can talk about all the various types of meditation in the future. I think very much Tibetan Buddhism is like is like a supermarket full of meditations.
Has all the various analytic meditations, stabilizing meditations, meditations for this problem, for that problem, antidotes for anger, antidotes for pride, jealousy, you know all the eighty four thousand afflictions. And ultimately the great antidote of the wisdom understanding emptiness, dependent arising which hopefully we can gain some understanding of through this discussion on seeing deeply into the nature of reality. All designed to help us to see things as they actually are. That’s enough. We don’t need to know any more than that to be happy, healthy, loving, sane human beings.
We need nothing more than to make use of our basic sanity, to bring our innate intelligence to bear on the difficulties of our life, to help us solve our problems. And this is the purpose of meditation, is not to see color lights, hear cosmic sounds, to go into trances, to escape from your work a day world. It’s to help you in that work a day world. It’s to help you become more skillful, to develop proper, more appropriate ways of relating and therefore more satisfying, more fulfilling, meaningful ways of relating in life. And we’re learning to let go.
Let go of our constructed fantasy. Very much we’re learning to We’re discovering how to let go of ourselves. Process of letting go of who we might conceive of ourselves to be. Letting go perhaps our ground, our territory, our necessity to continually be re establishing our credentials. That is the quality of letting go of the necessity to become and allowing ourselves to be and just be in the moment.
That we can survive very beautifully by just being. We don’t always have to be involved in this ongoing struggle of becoming. Our whole lives until the time we die is involved in struggle. We always have some opponent to fight. Most generally it’s our self, our own mind.
You know, there’s never a moment when we can give up fighting, when we can give up this ongoing struggle. We can never allow ourselves just to be. You know, to see how things actually are, to feel how things actually are. We’re always manufacturing some reference point, you know, the ego. So in meditation we can begin to practice how it is to be sane.
Getting used to being sane. Getting used to giving up the struggle. Just for a moment to experience that quality of mind. Getting used to a non ego based type of existence. So in meditation we’re just practicing sanity, how to solve our problems.
So that’s developing the attitude to bring to your meditation over and above the specific techniques which we need to know, that we need to know that clearly and be able to use them precisely to get the desired effect. But if we misuse the techniques, if we have the wrong attitude, then we aren’t going to achieve the results that we desire. So developing the attitude that we are beautiful people, that we have innate intelligence, that we have basic sanity, that we can solve our problems. If we use our intelligence, if we use all our faculties, Buddhism makes a tremendous demand upon us. There’s no easy way out.
We have to use our entire being to bring to bear on the problems of solving this quality of dissatisfactory ego based existence. But we can do it, and I think meditation is a primary method. To get in touch with our innate sanity, to get in touch with those the quality of being beyond the struggle involved in constantly recreating our ego to get in touch with states which are beyond our fantasy, to get in touch with reality. And as I said, reality is enough. Our intelligence is enough to solve our problems.
In a dwelling within the way things actually are we experience this peace. It’s not something that we need to superimpose upon our being. It’s our birthright. And we’re simply returning to a long lost home that we left perhaps a long time ago unknowingly that we haven’t we don’t even recognize exists. So Buddhism is pointing out that the solution is within your own mind and meditation is a way of becoming involved in its solution beginning to transcend the problem.
So maybe we can sit in a comfortable position and we’ll practice mindfulness of breathing for five minutes. And we recite the verse of refuge. As I’ve mentioned a few times, many times, that the going for refuge, reorientating ourself towards the solution of our problems in a very realistic fashion, reprioritizing our values, reminding ourselves what is important, where our problems are coming from, and therefore where the solutions to our problems lie. These are all that are involved in what we call in the traditional tradition Tibetan Buddhism going for refuge. And the ultimate solution to your problem, the ultimate basic sanity, the ultimate quality of love and compassion, benefiting others, working spontaneously.
It has real methods. Has the real quality of the goal, of well-being, of a type of meaningful, self authenticated, meaningful, fulfilling life in which we can, you know, finally stop the struggle and give up the burden. And we try to do this. Reorient ourselves with an understanding of the quality of self in others. Understanding that the quality of separateness that we see about us is merely an optical division.
That in fact as long as there’s suffering in the world it needs to be eliminated. And therefore the goal of peace is the goal of peace of all sentient beings. That we don’t exist in isolation. That enlightenment is a social phenomena, an environmental phenomena. And therefore this becomes the motivating force for finding our goal.
The goal which is the solution of our own problems and the skillful means to help others to solve their problems. Whatever goal, whatever name we want to give it. And so this going for refuge, reaffirming our commitment to sanity, to love, and to others, Reprioritizing, reaffirming, constantly reminding ourselves what is worthwhile, what is meaningful. 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.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I’m enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing giving and the other perfections, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. Through the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing giving, May I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. We’re discussing the third of the three principal aspects of the path.
The first, determination to be free. The second, opening our hearts to others. And now the discussion of seeing deeply into the nature of reality. Seeing deeply in the nature of reality. You know, as mentioned last week or two weeks ago, talking about the process of change, the process of growth and what that entails, what it becomes seems as though what becomes necessary to bring about change.
It seems as though it’s necessary that there be some tension, some challenge to our self perception, to our notion of reality, how things might be, know, the way we experience reality. And if we’re going to we have to begin to see very deeply into the nature of reality. We have to begin to challenge our model of the way our notion, of the way we think things are, to get in touch with that, in fact. You know, who in fact am I, for example? What is the nature of the things about me?
You know, we begin very much from a point of view of naive realism. It is unquestionably accepting everything as it appears to us, whether it be the ego or all the things about us. We have to bring in all our various views, all our various basic assumptions, ideas, beliefs, and begin to challenge them. It’s only through this challenge that we’re going to go beyond our present level of misunderstanding. That we’re going to develop more and more correct views, that our models are going to be more consistent with the way things, in fact, actually are.
And therefore we’re going to experience this disappointment, this frustration, dissatisfaction. Our expectations will be fulfilled because our expectations are in accordance with the way things actually are. And as I pointed out initially, that reality is enough to find perfect peace. Nothing more need be added if we can live in an actual way things actually are. You know, even though our models, our views are constantly being contradicted, invalidated by our experiences, by our rational understanding.
Still, we cling to them, and we just won’t let go of them. As I mentioned that the pathologies of misery are epistemological errors. Pathology of misery are epistemological errors. What does that mean? That means something like The unhealthy quality of our dissatisfaction is simply brought about by mistaken ways of knowing.
That our models, our views are mistaken. We have misconceptions and we base all our behavior, our relationships, all our activity, all mistaken models and therefore suffer. The pathologies of misery, of suffering are based upon epistemological epistemological errors. Epistemology is just the way we know things. If we can straighten out our crooked thinking, then we’re going to be happy.
We’re going to be fulfilled. We’re going to be satisfied. It’s not something beyond our calling to be able to do that. There’s nothing otherworldly. There’s nothing that God has to intervene for us.
And we can do that. That we have this basic intelligence. If we’re willing to make use of it, to make effort and use the methods to use all our potential. You know, we can develop a proper way of relating. A proper way of being.
A proper way of being, perhaps from a position of non attachment and love. Proper way of being from a position of non attachment and love. An appropriate way to relate to the world, which is a type of relationship which is consistent, which is appropriate to the way things are. A type of relationship, proper way of relating from a position of non attachment and love. But such a way of relating is ultimately impossible from an ego based model of the world.
And if we try to seek to bring that to its final culminative end, non attachment and love, As long as our very basis upon which we depend to relate with the world is ego based, is misconceived, then we can never ultimately bring it to fruition. You know, we can bring approximations, and that’s what we’re doing along the path. The Buddha said that all my eighty four thousand teachings were designed as a means to realize emptiness, the nature of reality. They all support this. They all are directed toward that end.
They all bring us closer and closer approximations, empower us, give us the personal power. Cutting through layers and layers of misconceptions, layers and layers of mistaken models, of wrong assumptions, of mistaken beliefs. We begin to approximate such a way of relating through developing, for example, the determination to be free, the first of the three principal aspects of the path. This is the initial disillusioning, becoming disillusioned. Quite often the word disillusion has a negative connotation in the West.
But it’s taken in the sense that we are dwelling in an illusion, therefore we experience suffering, and we want to part ourselves from that illusive quality of our being. We want to disillusion ourselves. This disillusion process begins with developing the determination to be free, challenging many of our false impressions and beginning to transform our misconceptions, our misconceived models, which contribute to our illusionary world in which we exist. Disillusioning process is the forming of a position of non attachment. So we also begin to open our hearts to others.
You know, the second of the three principal aspects of the path. The process of overcoming our false assumption that we make about ourselves, that we make about our separateness from others. And we have this false assumption that my happiness is in no way dependent upon your happiness. That I exist as a social being, uninterrelatedly. Uninterrelatedly.
That we don’t see us as part of a single being called life or humanity or whatever, sentient life. That we see our existence as separate. And so the development of opening our hearts to others, the development of love and compassion, of awakening our hearts, of exchanging self for others, of identifying and empathizing with others is a way we begin to transform this basic assumption about our separateness. So we’re approaching this quality of a proper way of relating to the world. You know, we’re developing love.
We don’t feel quite as separate from others as we did before. We begin to see the kindness of others, for example, our interdependence, for example. We begin to see the lack of essence and a purely materialistic approach to existence. We begin to see that most of our problems are not outside of our own mind, but within our own mind, therefore the solutions. We become less and less attached to manipulating, collecting the things about us as means of happiness.
We begin to approximate more and more, perhaps a more appropriate way of relating. That is in the sense of a type of way of relating, which is experienced as well-being. Through the initial two principal aspects of the path, you know, developing the determination to be free and opening our hearts to others. The determination to be free initiates a shift away from primarily ego based models of reality. Opening our hearts to others ensures that our newly evolving vision of the world will involve others, involve sentient beings and their pain.
That others are going to be an integral part of our newly evolving vision, our new perception of another level of reality. I think there’s a copy. I photocopied some of the text. It’s a very short text called The Three Principal Aspects of the Path by the fourteenth century yogi scholar Tsongkhapa. You’re welcome to have one.
The Tsongkhapa is represented on the altar as it On the top level there’s a small statue between the two pictures. That’s Tsongkhapa. And this is an extremely short text that he wrote on the three principal aspects of the path. And on the backside, the three principal aspects of the path, it begins with explanation of the path of seeing deeply into the nature of reality with the third from the top verse. If you do not have the wisdom realizing the way things are, even though you have developed the thought definitely to leave cyclic existence and the altruistic intention, the root of cyclic existence cannot be cut.
Therefore, work at the means of realizing dependent arising. This begins the explanation of seeing of the third principal aspect of the path seeing deeply into the nature of reality. So, you know, we’ve gone through this up to this point. If you do not have the wisdom realizing the way things are that is, to say, if you do not see deeply into the nature of reality, even though you have developed the thought definitely to leave cyclic existence, even though you have developed the determination to be free, to go beyond ego based existence, even though you’ve done that, and even though you’ve developed an altruistic intention, even though you’ve opened your heart to others, still the root of cyclic existence cannot be cut. That in itself is not enough to bring about the ultimate goal.
You know, the root of cyclic existence the root of cyclic existence cannot be cut. The root of ego based existence, you know, rooted in the three marks of unenlightened existence. That is, you know, existence grounded in ignorance. Existence grounded in ignorance. We’re going to hear a lot about ignorance.
Existence grounded in ignorance. The three marks of dissatisfactory existence: dissatisfactoriness, impermanence, and selflessness the quality of ego based existence. Now we have to cut the basis for ego based existence. We have to cut the root of ego based existence, and the root is ignorance. You know, most generally ignorance is a stubborn, close mindedness about, you know, learning anything what you feel might threaten your ego identity.
We’re going to begin in a very rough level of understanding. And we’re going to as it’s going to become parent, we’re going to work toward a more subtle and subtle view of the nature of reality. So here we’re talking about a very coarse, a gross type of ignorance. The type of ignorance which is characterized by a stubborn, closed mindedness about learning anything which may threaten your ego identity. Anything which might upset your sense of security that you derive from your particular version of the world, your particular version of reality, your model.
No matter how many times it might be invalidated, it might be contradicted. It might be contradicted and validated by your experience, by your rational understanding, but still you cling to it because you find security in that. It’s home. It may not be satisfactory, but at least there’s some place I can go to, that I can feel secure, that the world doesn’t seem so harsh and frightening, that there’s always this friend I can go to. The ego, our particular version, model of the world.
And we cling to it no matter how much pain it brings us, no matter how it may be invalidated, contradicted by both our experience and our rational understanding. It’s this quality of closed minded stubborn refusal to let go. That’s why meditation helps us develop the ability to let go. We see that we don’t have to hold on so tightly to our particular notion of the way things are, our position, our reference point, our version of the way things are. You know, it’s an absence of we’re talking about ignorance it’s an absence of precision and clarity.
Out of this imprecision, out of this fogginess, unclarity, we create a mistaken model of the nature of ourselves, of the nature of all phenomena. Ignorance is a cloudiness. It’s like veiling and obscuring all these qualities. It prevents us from seeing the absurdity of most of our fundamental beliefs, you know, and most of our fundamental assumptions, ideas. It is what prevents perpetual enlightened experience, enlightened based existence.
That which prevents the perpetual manifestation of our basic sanity. A type of existence, a type of enlightened, basic existence, a type of ego transcendent existence which possesses the qualities of fearlessness, skill, compassion, and equanimity. And it’s said that a Buddha is worthy of refuge because he or she has these four qualities. That an object, if it is to be an ultimate refuge, an object worthy of refuge is to be fearless, is to have skill and means, compassion and equanimity. And it’s this quality of ignorance which prevents us from manifesting refuge within ourselves.
What is this quality of enlightenment? To be enlightened. The full awakening of the total personality to reality, the full awakening of the total personality to reality, and the complete integration of all our various models, our versions of the world into a consistently self validating holistic experience of well-being. Well-being. I’ll give you a description of well-being, what it might be like.
Well-being is possible only to the degree to which one has overcome one’s narcissism, to the degree to which one is open, responsive, sensitive, awake, empty. Well-being means to be fully related to man and nature effectively, to overcome separateness and alienation, to arrive at the experience of oneness with all that exists, and yet to experience myself at the same time as a separate entity I am, as an individual. 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 the 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 to respond as the real total man I am and 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 a strange world over there and becomes my world. Well-being means finally to drop one’s ego, to give up greed, to cease chasing after preservation and aggrandizement of the ego, and to be and to experience oneself in the act of being, not in having, preserving, coveting, and using. There’s something about what it might mean to be experiencing well-being. You know, an enlightenment based existence, an ego transcendent based existence.
No matter how determined we may be to grow, how much love and compassion that we may have developed in our hearts, we still are not fully awake. We still have not fully realized our potential. We still have not cut the root of ego based existence. We still don’t possess the skillful means to be of ultimate service to others. We have to see deeply into nature of reality.
Therefore, as Tsongkhapa says, work at the means of realizing dependent arising. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, has said that dependent arising is like the slogan of Buddhism. They even printed up some badges one year, dependent arising from the badges. You know, if love and compassion are the heart of Buddhism, then dependent arising is the mind of Buddhism. We have to understand dependent arising.
It’s necessary. But this coming to understand dependent arising is necessarily also a gradual unfolding. You know, as we mentioned above in connection with the qualities of ignorance, it’s a stubborn, closed minded refusal about learning anything which it sees as a threat to itself, which is a threat to its ego identity, for example. Anything which upsets its feelings of security that it gets in its particular model of the universe, even though it might be a mistaken model, even though it might be a model based upon which we experience suffering, still it refuses stubbornly to change. There’s a resistance.
Our particular version, the way things are, it refuses to learn. Learning here means something more than merely accumulating information. I tried to look for there’s a poem, maybe I can find it for next time, a poem by T. S. Eliot.
I couldn’t find it. In which he says, where is the knowledge we have lost in information? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? And I just accumulate more and more knowledge, less and less wisdom perhaps. Learning means something more than simply gathering knowledge, gathering information.
Means, if anything, means seeing the way things actually are, to the extent that mistaken conceptions, mistaken models are eliminated. Mistaken conceptions and mistaken models are eliminated and are replaced with more correct ones. Ultimately, trying to see the way things actually are directly over and beyond our conception of them, over and above our model of them, our symbol in which we use to interpret them. Seeing them directly as they actually are in and of themselves. Not having to interpret.
This is what Buddhism means when it talks about realization. Realization, the term in Buddhism, means the elimination of superimposition. Realization, and this term comes up again and again. It simply means the elimination of superimpositions, the elimination of our mistaken conceptions about how an object is, Actually seeing the object the way it in fact is. That is to realize the object.
It’s like seeing a snow mountain as green because you’re wearing sunglasses, and then you take off the sunglasses, and you see it as it actually is. It’s actually white. This would be a realization in a way. We were superimposing something which wasn’t there, the greenness of the mountain. And the realization is eliminating that misconception, that superimposition.
If we have some emotional energy, if we have some emotional investment in seeing that mountain as green, then there’s going to be a stubborn refusal even to bring up the question to oneself. We’re going to accept the greenness of that mountain totally, unquestionably. There’s going to be a natural resistance to even creating a doubt as to the actual color of that mountain. We aren’t going to entertain the notion that it could be some other way than it appears. We’ve got too much invested in green mountains.
Only when you begin to experience that your conception of a green snow mountain is continually being invalidated, and that this contradiction is bringing you suffering, is bringing you dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration, discontentment. Only when you begin to see that very deeply are you going to develop the determination to begin to replace, to bring into question, to doubt your mistaken conception? Until that time, the force of your security, the force of the closed mindedness quality of your ignorance is going to resist even entertaining the possibilities of new modes of being, of new ways of seeing, of the possibilities that you could be wrong.